The Callisto Gambit (12 page)

“You seem pretty sure of that?”

“I’ve worked with spaceship propulsion systems for forty years. I would not put my family on that ship, and I would not ride it myself.” Zulu gave a shrug that made his whole body wobble. “I told them they should buy a reactor to power the lasers,
at least.
They told me to frag off.”

“Of course they did,” Kiyoshi muttered. “You’re an actual professional.”

The boss had no real, credentialed propulsion technicians on his team. No matter how smart they might be, everyone in his inner circle was some kind of misfit or maverick, and half of them had criminal records. What’s more, they were clannish as all hell. Jacob Zulu would have been the first outsider to ever clap eyes on the
Salvation.

So of course they hadn’t listened to him … any more than they listened to Jun, who—without access to information about the
Salvation’s
drive—had offered a pure-math critique of its life support sustainability.

“Crazy,” Kiyoshi muttered. Was there any way he could convince Father Tom and the other Catholics to get off here?

“Crazy,” Zulu agreed.

“But you sold them the propellant anyway?”

“I sold them the propellant anyway.” Zulu’s gaze didn’t flinch. “This is my business, man.”

“And business is booming,” Colin Wetherall sang. He did a little dance step.

The likely fate of the
Salvation
was nothing to them, of course. Ten ships a day were
crashing
on Callisto. They couldn’t be expected to care about one more.

Jacob Zulu sighed. “Yeah. It’s a great time to be in hydrogen … or real estate. But Colin, you listen to me for a moment. You know what’s the most explosive substance in the universe?
Panic.
The concentration of panic on this moon is already way too high. So don’t go around spreading fear, you hear me?”

That was definitely a warning meant for Kiyoshi, too. Zulu paused to make sure he’d understood. Kiyoshi nodded. Zulu meant:
don’t involve the peacekeepers.
Having already met the peacekeepers of Callisto, Kiyoshi had no intention of doing so.

“Good,” Zulu said. “Now drink that and get out of my hair. I’ve got work to do.”

Kiyoshi stalled, pretending to finish his coffee. “What do you do with the oxygen?” he asked.

Zulu’s eyes flashed surprise. “The oxygen?”

“Yeah, the oxygen you pump out into the atmosphere.”

“You just answered your own question. We pump it into the atmosphere. Now scoot.”

On board the
Salvation,
the boss-man was examining maps of Callisto. He walked around and around a holo projection of Callisto a little taller than himself, frowning at the icy topology. A red hula hoop around the moon indicated an orbit. The boss kept pulling on this, changing its plane, lowering or raising its apogee. Michael couldn’t work out
what
orbit it was supposed to be. It wasn’t the
Salvation’s
current orbit, anyway. They were in a sedate equatorial parking orbit 19,000 kilometers up.

From time to time, the boss swept a hand out from the surface, or down towards it, at the same time making a
brrr
noise with his lips, as if he were pretending to be a spaceplane. Michael found this disturbing.

He was trying to concentrate on optimizing the mass distribution of the propellant. They’d already received one delivery and two more were on their way. He’d had the hub do it first, but the hub of the
Salvation
was quirky and mistake-prone—a sure sign that it had been fiddled with too much by people trying to improve its performance. Having learned its quirks, Michael was now checking its calculations. They didn’t want a propellant tank falling off in the middle of the Kuiper Belt, and potentially taking a chunk of the fuselage with it.

In space, there were so many ways to die, it could be exhausting to think of them all. But it was also
fun
thinking of them all, and trying to find a solution for each one.

The holographic sphere of Callisto glowed in the dusk beneath the apple trees. When the boss walked in front of it, his shadow leapt across the fish-pond.

The pond was real. Real water, real koi. Equally real were the apple trees dropping the last of their brown-edged petals into the pond. The air was warm, dry, sweet-scented.

Michael had the honor of living in the boss’s own personal module now. The
Salvation’s
torus consisted of eight modules—seven for the communities of 99984 Ravilious, plus this one, for the team that did the actual work of flying the ship.

The boss’s brother, Dr. Abdullah Hasselblatter, had done the landscaping in here. He described it as a Southern California ecosystem, not that Michael would know.

Having grown up on the wintry surface of Ceres, or else on ships, Michael found the resolute pastorality of the
Salvation
crew both puzzling and fascinating. But he’d got used to it quickly. He’d even got used to the minimal information environment, where the only news you could access was life-support updates, harvest festival announcements, educational articles penned by somebody or other about their unique culture, and stuff like that.

After all, he had his work to keep him busy. And he could find out anything he wanted, just by asking the boss.

The boss always answered Michael’s questions.

At least, he had … until today.

When Michael asked what the giant map of Callisto was for, the boss had told him to shut up and get on with his work.

So he was trying. But the reproof stung. On top of that, uneasiness nagged him.
Why
was the boss so interested in Callisto’s surface? This was just a pit stop. Right?

Suddenly, the boss stopped pacing. He spoke into the air. Someone must have pinged him. “Ransom here.”

Michael smirked to himself. ‘Elwin Ransom’ was the alias the boss had used to order the propellant. It was neat: this imaginary ship-owner Ransom had a whole life history, built on the genuine DNA record of someone who’d died. It would stand up to any amount of checking, even if the ISA took an interest in their purchases.

He was also relieved that the call was
only
about the propellant.

“Good to hear from you, Lopez,” the boss said. “Yeah? No kidding? Did you get his name? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU DIDN’T GET HIS NAME? … Oh, you got his internet profile. Good for you. Anyone can fake those … Wait a minute.
Kay,
did you say? At the
Paladin?”

A smile split the boss-man’s beard.

“OK. He’s not trying very hard not to be noticed.”

Michael jumped up, letting his tablet slide off his knees.

The boss strode around the pond. “That was Ricky Lopez. He works for Jacob Zulu at the hydrogen refinery. Someone’s been there, asking questions about us.”

“Was it Yonezawa?”

“I think so.”

“When did he get here?” Michael yelped. “What’s he done with my ship?”

Ever since the
Salvation
reached Callisto, Michael had been monitoring the public arrival and departure announcements. According to that list, the
Paladin
wasn’t here.

The boss-man set his hands on Michael’s shoulders and looked into his eyes. “Mikey … something that looked like a twin-module Startractor crashed outside Doh Crater yesterday. I didn’t say anything. Wasn’t sure it was your ship. But I guess it was.”

Michael saw in the boss-man’s face that he was wondering if Michael was going to melt down at this news.

The implied doubt offended him. In his few weeks aboard the
Salvation,
his confidence had bounced back from the blow of losing the
Kharbage Collector.
Having the right meds helped, but more importantly, his work on the propulsion systems had given him back his belief in himself.

So the news that Kiyoshi Yonezawa had smashed up the
Kharbage Collector
didn’t send him into an emotional tailspin.

It just made him angry.

“Let’s go get him,” he said.

The boss smiled that mysterious, magical smile of his. “Oh, we’ll get him. We’ll get him
good.
But there’s something else we need to take care of first.”

Michael tensed. He hoped he wasn’t going to be sent on another weird errand, like the time he’d had to lurk outside the Irish priest’s apartment with a microphone.

To his relief, the boss straightened up and shouted, “Junior! JUNIOR!”

A couple of minutes later, the apple trees shook. A boy jumped down, bringing young foliage with him—which provoked a shout of rage from the boss. Junior Hasselblatter shrugged that off, whereas Michael would have been devastated if the boss yelled at him like that. But Junior Hasselblatter had a special status of his own on the
Salvation.
He was the boss’s nephew. Two years younger than Michael, he was just an ordinary kid. A fake tiger-skin loincloth graced his skinny pelvis. He’d probably been playing Tarzan or something.
What a waste of oxygen he is
, Michael thought.

But the boss spoke warmly to his nephew. “Put some clothes on. I need you to run and fetch Tom Lynch. He’s not responding to my pings. Probably meditating or some damn thing. Tell him I want to see him here, ASAP.”

Junior stuck his tongue out at Michael before he darted away.

“So,” Kiyoshi said, as he and Wetherall waited for the train. “You’re in real estate, huh?”

“That’s right,” Wetherall said. “A little of this, a little of that.”

“I met a peacekeeper named Greg yesterday. Greg something. I sold him a couple of Jupiter trojan asteroids.”

Wetherall laughed. “Sweet! So you’re in real estate, too?”

“Sure. That’s been my main gig for a while. Buying, selling.”

That was one way of putting it. A more honest version would have been,
I’m looking for a piece of real estate my people can call home. Just one piece, that isn’t gonna get nuked, slagged, or blown up.

“High five, brother,” Wetherall said, extending an EVA glove. “The asteroid market is going down hard. You made the right move getting out.”

This was news to Kiyoshi, who hadn’t wanted to sell his asteroids—he figured there was still a lot of upside left in the market. “Greg seemed pretty keen to buy,” he said.

“Sure, the stupid money is still riding the wave. But it’s peaked. Did you hear about 433 Eros?”

“Shit, no. Another one?”

“Yeah. Like half an hour ago. Blown to nanodust.”

“God damn the
goddamn
PLAN,” Kiyoshi said, unguardedly. “Where is this gonna end?” Dark premonitions assailed him. Out here, they were just spectators, dodging the shrapnel from the war. Jun was in the middle of the inferno. If his journey with Tiangong Erhao had gone according to schedule, he’d reach Mars tomorrow. It suddenly seemed insane that Kiyoshi was standing on a train platform on Callisto, talking about real estate.

But Jun trusted him to look after their people, and one way or another, that’s what he was going to do.

“So can I ask,” Wetherall said, “what was your interest in the bug-out crew in the Bussard ramjet?”

Kiyoshi hunched his shoulders. “I’ve got friends on board.” He looked down the platform. The train was coming, yellow headlights spearing across the frozen waste. “Let’s get back to town.”

He hadn’t yet decided whether to tell Sister Terauchi and the others that he’d found the
Salvation
,
kind of. He was thinking not. All the Galapajin would start trying to contact their friends on board. It would be a big mess.

As the Callisto Interrail neared its last above-ground stop—a farm dome cluster nestling in the foothills of the Doh range—Wetherall rose and picked up his EVA helmet and rucksack.

“You getting off?” Kiyoshi said in surprise.

“Yeah, this’s my stop.”

“I was going to offer to buy you a drink. Thank you for your help.”

Wetherall grinned. “I never say no to those kind of offers. How about I take you to a place I know?”

Kiyoshi had only a few seconds to make up his mind. If no one triggered the airlocks, the train would move on automatically after 20 seconds. “OK.”

They strolled along the platform, which ended at a rail spur for the farm domes. The Interrail track actually forked at this station. The other fork shot off to the southwest, rising on steel trestles, a low arc glittering in Jupiter’s light.

“Where does that go?”

“Oh, the branch line? Down south to the ice spires,” Wetherall said. “You know. The natural marvels of Callisto. Before the war, they were trying to get them on the list of the Seven Wonders of the Solar System. Now? ‘Tourist’ numbers this year have broken all records. But none of them are interested in the ice spires. They’re interested in a nice safe hole in the ground.” He sniggered. “Most of them didn’t want to be here at all, but they couldn’t afford entry visas for Ganymede.”

Wetherall was skipping over the lumps of rock and ice, his boots scuffing up low-gee showers of frost. A low ridge hid the farm domes from sight. For a moment they seemed to be entirely alone on Callisto. Only the maglev rail proved humans had ever been here, and even that looked alien, with starlight reflecting off the steel, the arch of the southbound track inhumanly perfect. Kiyoshi stopped walking.

“So what’s your scam?” he said.

Ahead of him, Wetherall turned around, balanced with both feet together on a rock. His big rucksack made him look hunchbacked, like some kind of bird. “You are one suspicious S.O.B., aren’t you? I’m taking you to a place I know. I can’t be more honest than that. You’ll like it.”

“Don’t fuck with me.”

“I’m not fucking with you. I got that message loud and clear.”

Kiyoshi knew he did project a ‘don’t fuck with me’ aura. Not everyone noticed it, but a survivor like Wetherall, attuned to nuances, could probably tell he’d been to scary places, seen scary shit. Killed people.

Of course, Wetherall didn’t know he was currently broke and unarmed.

Well … not quite unarmed. The Galapajin had abandoned their guns in their hasty evacuation from the Startractor, but Hardware Engineer Asada had saved his personal hoard of blades, and Kiyoshi had one of those in his thigh webbing now. On a spacewalk, a knife was as good as a laser. Those bulky old suits like Wetherall had on ripped easily.