The Star Pirate's Folly (5 page)

“Jensen Lee thinks he destroyed it. Slack Dog wasn’t the
real target, the map was. I know for a fact a backup copy was saved on that datapad.
Come on, it’s easy money. You’ll have plenty to spend during the Festival. Have
you not got any steel inside you at all? You just scared?”

Bee straightened her spine and glared into the screen.

“No, I’m not
scared
. But for one thing, I don’t trust
you.”

“So you’re not empty-headed, that’s a start.”

“And for another, why should I risk my life for you when I
could just take this to the police and be done with it?”

“The police?” he sputtered.

Now she had his attention.

“Well, it
is
evidence,” she said. “Actually, it seems
like it’d be illegal
not
to turn it in.”

“You don’t want to do that, girl,” he said. There was a
growl of anger in his voice. He used his robotic left hand to clean the knife,
rubbing the rough fabric of his apron against the blade with dexterous metal
fingers.

“I really do.” Bee said. “Why should I get involved?”

Silver put away the knife and wiped his hands with the
apron—first the dark metallic one with its eerily natural movements, then his
real hand. He seemed to reconsider his approach and shrugged. “Fine. I can see
your point. Go ahead, take it to the police. They’ll be looking for it after I
report it stolen.”

“I told you I didn’t steal it,” Bee said with a snarl. “Your
slobbering drunk
accomplice left it sitting on the bar before he went up
to his room and passed out with the door open
.
I was trying to give it
back to him, which is the only reason I’m talking to you. Asshole. I’ve got
people who trust me here, okay, so don’t think you can just go making
accusations like that and expect them to hold up.”

Silver waved away her indignant bluster. “Fine, fine. I can
see you’re just a daft girl who doesn’t know a good offer when you see one.
Absolutely no ambition, no drive at all. I can see it. In this world, you’ve
got to reach out and
take things.
Enjoy your lot in life, girl, because
you’ll only ever amount to what you’re given.”

She didn’t like the derisive inflection he used when he said
girl.
Her eyes flashed with anger.

“What does
that
mean?” she said.

“With enough money you can fuel any ambition you’ve got. And
I can pay you a whole lot of money for that map. But since you don’t want it
I’ll have to find someone else.”

“I notice you still haven’t given me a price.”

“A thousand credits,” he barked. “Five hundred up front.”

Bee’s heart jumped. It would take years for her to save that
much. It was enough to make it all the way to the belt—and on a decent ship,
too. In the back of her mind she thought she heard Mother’s familiar whisper.
She kept her expression flat, suspecting Silver may be lowballing her based
on her age. If it was worth as much as he said it was he’d be willing to pay.

“One thousand now,” she said. “And another thousand after.”

“Seven-fifty before and after.”

“One thousand or I walk.”

Silver balked and squinted at her, but she kept a
thin-lipped silence until he rumbled his acquiescence: “Fine.”

A thunderous knock at the door
made Bee jump and she ended the call with Silver.

“Police,” a muffled male voice
said. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Okay, sorry,” she said. “Coming
out.”

She’d have to call Silver back.
She swiped the screen on the little pad to activate it, but it prompted her for
a four-digit pin—no way to verify Silver’s claims. Bee stuck it in her pocket
and changed out of her uniform’s top. It occurred to her that she didn’t really
know how she would get her money. Some kind of transfer? Panic bubbled up in
her chest—she was flying blind, way out of her league.

More pounding on the door. “Let’s
go! Waiting on you here!”

She wriggled into a thick
long-sleeved shirt. “Coming out!”

Bee grabbed her pack from its spot
next to the door and slung it over her shoulder. She lingered a moment to look
back over her room. The bed was made, its sheets arranged just the way Hargrove
taught her. Nothing cluttered the bare desk. Already prepared for another
guest. Bee turned the door handle.

“Sorry,” she said as she squeezed
by the two officers.

Her pack had everything she needed
already—a habit she’d picked up long ago in preparation for the day she found
Mother’s killer.
She wasn’t sure if she’d tell
Hargrove about the map yet, or Silver’s offer, but she knew she had to at least
say goodbye before she left. He’d worry if he noticed her missing. She might be
gone for hours and didn’t want him calling her later at some inconvenient
moment.
Just then Slack Dog’s pad went off in
her pocket again. She hurried the rest of the way down the hall and answered it
as she opened the door to the stairwell.

Silver’s face appeared on the
screen.
“So far I’ve found working with you
extremely unprofessional.”

“Yeah, sorry I hung up on you. But
I never claimed to be a professional,” Bee said, her voice echoing off the
walls.

“Well do you want your half up
front or not? I don’t like waiting.”

“How will you pay me?”

“Go to the Rising Star Bank on
inner Fifth,” he said. “Just walk in, ask for Julissa—remember that:
Julissa—and tell her you’re interested in opening a new account. Mention my
name. Julissa will take care of the rest.”

“Okay, I know where it is,” Bee
said.

“Good. I’ll call again when it
goes through.”

Silver hung up. Bee pocketed the
device again and continued downstairs. The Rising Star Bank on Fifth was only a
five-minute walk from the hotel, but she still had to track down Hargrove.

Upon reaching the bottom floor she
opened the door and walked into the empty lobby. She was used to seeing it like
this during the night shifts, but even then someone was always behind the front
desk. Now in the middle of the day, no one.

Bee heard a thump and a yell from
Hargrove’s office. She edged her way around the front desk so she could peek
through the blinds. Hargrove sat inside at his computer. He pounded a fist
against the desk and ran his other hand back through his thick hair in
frustration.

She tapped her fingers against the
glass and Hargrove flinched. He turned and glared through the window but
softened when he saw Bee. She opened the door and stepped in, shut it behind her.

“Just trying to chip away at these
endless incident reports,” he said, waving a hand at the computer. “But this
piece of junk machine—!”

“Let me see,” she said, and
Hargrove scooted off to the side in his rolling chair. He had about a thousand
windows open. The man truly had a talent for making computers suffer. Bee
closed some of the programs gumming up the ancient machine’s dwindling memory, but
stopped when she saw a news window about the bombing. A photo of Jensen Lee
stared at her from the screen.

“They find him yet?”

“Not yet.”

“They know why he did it?”

“Could be someone was trying to
send a message. They’ve been coming closer to the Core every year.” Hargrove
noticed her pack and poked it. “You going somewhere?”

She closed a few more extra programs
and stepped away.

“Yeah,” Bee said. “Yeah, just for
a little while. I’ll be back by tonight.”

Hargrove scowled. “Jensen Lee may
know you’re the one who tipped the police off. I need you safe, little worker
Bee.”

Bee smiled at the nickname. “The
streets are crawling with police right now. If he’s still in the city he won’t
be looking for me. And besides, he didn’t look too bright.”

Her joke didn’t even crack
Hargrove’s grim mask.

“I figured you would stay in like
every other night in your life.”

“I’ll be back tonight,” she said.

Bee stung with shame at lying to
him, but she couldn’t tell him the truth. She could see he’d never let her go
in peace. Her lame excuse hung in the air as Hargrove searched her face.

“Okay,” he said.

He turned back to his forms.

***

“Look here please,” said Julissa,
a plump middle-aged woman with shimmering pink lipstick. She pointed to a
biometric scanner on the desk.

Red light flashed across Bee’s
eyes and her information immediately popped up on Julissa’s display. She looked
maybe fifteen in the photo, thin as a rail and glaring at the camera. She never
liked having her picture taken.

“Lovely,” Julissa said. “We’ll
have your account open in just a moment, that’s the easy part. Then you can
deposit any funds you obtain into your account. That’s the part people tend to
have trouble with.”

Bee laughed since Julissa seemed
to be looking for one.

“I do have a customer already,” Bee
began, unsure what to say. “He wants to pay me up front for the month today,
but I don’t have his number.”

“What about his name?”

“Yeah, it’s Bill Silver.”

“Oh, you’re Mister
Silver’s
associate.” Julissa’s green eyes flared with excitement. “He’s already cleared
the funds to be transferred. Just let me take care of that.”

Mister Silver. He commanded respect
from this woman. Bee wondered who he really was. Julissa turned the projected
screen out of Bee’s line of sight and tapped away at the keyboard, issuing a
flurry of commands in quick succession.

“All set,” Julissa said brightly
as she swiveled the screen back with practiced precision.

Bee struggled to contain her joy
when she saw the balance.

***

After leaving the bank, Bee hung a right onto Gateway Street
and headed to the heart of the city. The gate station was the city’s only path
between Surface and Overlook Station. There were dozens of other cities on
their planet equipped with similar gates, and each could be reached in an
instant from any gate station. Instant travel between the planets was possible
with the proper equipment, but there were no interplanetary gates left after
they’d been destroyed during the rebellion.

There were several remaining gates between the planets that
shortened the distance between them but the majority of the journey had to be
made in sleek nullsteel ships. She knew at one point there were incredibly
powerful gates that could even bridge the gaps between stars, but the only one
in the system had been destroyed in the Interstellar Revolution along with most
of the interplanetary gates.

Decades of work went into those machines, and in a few
instants of violence they were rendered totally useless. Scrap metal. People
said back when it was just Sol, before any of the other systems had been
settled, great scientists discovered how to stabilize and manipulate
infinitesimally tiny wormholes that randomly appeared and disappeared in space.

They started very small—just enough to see through to the
other side—and gradually the technology improved. Locations were charted,
equations were written, and before long there was a database of locations all
across the universe that they could observe from afar.

The next big breakthrough was the discovery of wormholes
that opened near other Earthlike planets. By the time that happened the
technology had improved to the point that the wormholes could be expanded wide
enough and held open long enough to send matter through. They sent through
drones and materials to build a sister gate to open the two points permanently,
and humanity thus began its expansion across the so-called “infinite frontier.”
Colony ships were ferried through, easing the massive burden of human life on
Mother Sol. It was the Golden Age of Expansion.

But in order for it to be properly considered a golden age,
it had to end. Eventually the supply lines stretched far across the Milky Way,
shipping valuable resources back to hungry Mother Sol and her closest colonies.
It became unsustainable. Some settlements that would have otherwise been
self-sufficient were forced to send so much they barely had enough for
themselves. They attempted to use the proper bureaucratic channels, but Earth
was far and the settlements had such distant voices.

Several colonized star systems revolted against Sol, having
seen that they needed to act quickly to secure their futures. The crucial
objective of each rebel cell was to take down the interstellar gate in each
system—they were ludicrously expensive, and each system had only one at most.
It was the perfect Goliath for the underdog resistance, so their first task
became finding some good stones to throw.

As largely a confederation of laborers—miners, farmers, dock
workers—they used what tools they had at their disposal. Asteroid wranglers
supplied ammunition while others cobbled together slings made up of
industrial-grade antigravity equipment. Biding their time, keeping to the
shadows, the resistance seeded the asteroid belt with dozens of these gigantic
gravity slingshots. And when the time was right, they started throwing stones.

The first system to successfully cut itself off by
destroying its own gate was Bee’s, the Luxar System. The system's interstellar
gate had been built between Surface and the asteroid belt, and they never saw
the first few shots coming. The initial barrage was partially destroyed by the
planet’s orbital defenses; the gate was damaged and disabled, but it was far
from beyond repair.

The Fleet stationed in the system took defensive measures to
prevent more asteroids from being slung at them, but the rebels assaulted the
gate in full force before reinforcements could be rallied. With the rebels
engaging their warships and asteroids being flung at the gate, the Interstellar
Fleet was kept busy long enough for another shot to get through—and the gate
was smashed for good.

The Luxar System was reinforced by the Interstellar Fleet
after news of the rebel victory reached Earth. They managed to punch a few
ships through, but without the sister gate there to hold the wormhole open
their response time was crippled—and crucially, they couldn’t retreat. It was a
one-way flight for every soldier that got sent out there. The Fleet immediately
got to work on repairing the gate, but their construction efforts were impeded
by the guerilla-style resistance of the system’s rebels.

No matter how many of the asteroid slings the Fleet
destroyed, another they didn’t know about would start lobbing rocks their
way—and all the while the rebels worked on more. The asteroids they chose were
large enough to be dangerous, but small enough that they were difficult to
detect on approach. With the assault coming from all around the belt, it was
impossible to predict where the next attack would come from.

Other oppressed systems threw their lot in with the
upstarts, and soon what started as another rebellion to be crushed turned into
the Interstellar Fleet fighting a war of many fronts, struggling to defend
their precious interstellar gates. The ships they were sending to reinforce the
fleets already in combat were too little too late, and many of the gates were
destroyed along with a significant portion of the Interstellar Fleet.

Mother Sol saw her back was broken, and retracted what claws
she had left. The Interstellar Fleet ships still left in the rebel systems
surrendered. Earth still controlled the majority of settled star systems, most
of which were near Sol. The colonized systems which revolted declared
themselves independent.

The first Interstellar Revolution was unarguably a success,
but it came at a high cost. Despite the oppressive nature of Earth, cutting off
all contact was a drastic measure which not everyone agreed with. A lot of
people from the Core planets signed up with the Fleet when they came blazing in
to quash the rebellion, and there were simmering resentments on both sides.

There was a lot of collateral damage done, most notably to
the network of gates that created “roads” throughout the Luxar System. At times
it was tactically necessary for one side or the other to destroy the gates. It
took decades to rebuild them, and during that time a gulf developed between the
more developed Core planets and the frontier-like resource planets beyond the
asteroid belt Styx. It became much more difficult to transport supplies and
equipment to the far planets, so most people abandoned the frontier for the
safety of the Core.