Moral and Orbital Decay Read online

  Moral and Orbital Decay

  Mission 14 of the Black Ocean Series

  J.S. Morin

  Copyright © 2017 Magical Scrivener Press

  Few places in the galaxy respected a bounty hunter. At best, they were a necessary evil; at worst, they were thugs playing cops and robbers with live ammo. Carl Ramsey had never been big on hauling human cargo. Even with all the charges against Zim Soren, Carl still felt dirty handing him over to colonial lawman wearing overalls and farm boots.

  “Reckon this is him all right,” Officer Obie said, squinting one eye and looking Soren up and down. “Tell the big feller to heap in back of the hover.”

  Rai Kub looked to Carl with a somber question in his eyes. Carl sighed and nodded to the stuunji to comply. With a quick jerk, Rai Kub hoisted Zim Soren into Officer Obie’s open-backed, closed-cabined hover-hauler.

  Jameson IV was a backwater among backwaters. It was rich in nitrates and strange purple scrub grasses that cattle seemed to love. By all other standards, the planet was useless. It was desolate wastelands dotted with pockets of passable farmland. The colonists were mainly subsistence farmers and retroverts of an earnest sort that grated on a technophile like Carl—that was to say anyone who liked holovids, high-speed access to the omni, and regular showering.

  Carl tried to lighten the mood with a little humor. “Say, with a name like Jameson, does this bounty pay out in whiskey?”

  Officer Obie’s eyes widened. “Hey now, stranger. I can whistle that tune if you hum a few bars. Lemme drop this here feller off, and I’ll come back with some of our best four-year-old stock.” When Soren squirmed in the back of the hover-hauler, Obie casually drew his blaster and swung it into the back.

  Carl winced at the hearty crunch of the impact.

  Roddy tugged at Carl’s jacket. He didn’t need any more elaborate signal that he was on board with getting paid in booze.

  Holding up his hands, Carl forestalled a payment that would earn him no good will among any of his friends aside from Roddy. “Just joking, officer. We’ll take cash. Just like the posting said.”

  Officer Obie lifted the brim of his cap with the barrel of his blaster. “Don’t that beat all? Who’d a thunk this varmint would come back in irons from a few tipitty taps on the omininny.” Reaching inside his overalls, Obie pulled out a sack that looked hand-sewn from burlap and tossed it to Rai Kub. “All in there. Rainy day fund’s out for the season, but leastwise we won’t have to worry ‘bout the womenfolk no more. Not from this yellow-belly, anyway.”

  To punctuate his comment, Officer Obie reached into the hauler’s back and took another slug at Soren.

  Carl forced a smile. “Pleasure doing business.”

  As a cloud of dust kicked up, Roddy took custody of the payment sack from Rai Kub and sifted through the scattered hardcoin.

  “Look about right?” Carl asked. “I’m not eager to chase down Obie and his buddies if they came up short.”

  “Looks like what we agreed on,” Roddy confirmed. “Whether that’s right or not… ask me again after we make the split official. There’s a reason why bounty hunters tend to work alone. Decent money split nine ways stops being decent money.”

  “Aw, quit yer bellyachin’,” Carl said in imitation of Officer Obie. “You heard the stuff that guy was guilty of.”

  Roddy snorted. “You heard eight counts of rape. I saw a smooth human who got a few colonial girls pregnant. How hard’s a guy gotta try to look like a better option than these toothless radish farmers?”

  Carl shrugged. “Hey, they’ve got an ARGO charter out here and everything. Local judge was born on Titan. Not like this is some kangaroo court.”

  Rai Kub brightened. “I have the greatest respect for the jurisprudience of the Yanti people.”

  Roddy rolled his eyes and shoved the heavy sack of hardcoin back into the stuunji’s hands.

  A chime in Carl’s earpiece was followed by Amy’s voice over the comm. “Get back to the Mobius. On the double.”

  “Just finished up here, sweet thing,” Carl replied with a grin that accompanied hearing Amy’s voice. “How’s about you rev up the Mobius’s engine and I’ll rev up—”

  “No time for that,” Amy snapped. “We’ve received a distress call. Us. Personally.”

  # # #

  Carl had left Roddy and Rai Kub with custody of the bounty they’d collected. It was an odd sum for a bounty—27,352 terras—but it made sense when Carl worked out that they’d taken up a collection at a community potluck. Nice to know a wholesome, salt-of-the-earth colony could pool their piggy-bank hardcoin for a little retail justice.

  On his way to the bridge, he heard the ship’s engines powered up from idle to lift-off. Carl got intercepted by Esper.

  “It’s Cedric,” Esper said hurriedly.

  “What’s Cedric?” Carl asked. He’d long since gotten past the naive stage of falling for open-ended statements. That sort of ham-fisted trick worked on lowlifes now and then, but even Carl was above using that unartful ploy.

  “The distress call came for me,” Esper said with a huff. “Cedric is in trouble. He didn’t have anyone else to turn to.”

  A lump formed in Carl’s throat. No one else to turn to probably hadn’t meant You got my father killed, so I’m out of options, but Carl heard a hint of that anyway. Swallowing past the lump, Carl poked the most obvious hole in Esper’s premise. “What about the Convocation? They have a whole division for bailing out wizards in jams. They’re practically on duty to help terramancers.”

  Esper flashed one of those priestess smiles—the kind meant to reassure. Carl wasn’t buying it. “Well, Cedric gave the impression that he might not be on the best terms with the Convocation hierarchy at the moment,” she admitted.

  “For the love of whatever theological concept of God you currently believe in, spit it out!”

  Esper’s eyes darted aside. “Well. It may be possible…”

  Carl was growing exasperated. “I don’t have time for this.” He turned and headed for the cockpit. At least Amy would give him answers without making him stand there watching her blush.

  “It’s Mort’s past catching up with him,” Esper blurted.

  “Huh? Since when does the Convocation go after a son for his father’s crimes?” Carl asked with a furrowed brow. “Cedric was a little kid when Mort ran off, and they still let him become a terramancer.”

  “He might—possibly—have indulged in one of Mort’s old vices,” Esper replied with hesitation.

  “What?” Carl snapped. “Read the wrong book? Burn a book? Murder a few dozen wizards? Cheat on his taxes? Mort had plenty of vices. I’m not even sure I could list them all.”

  Esper turned aside and scowled into the corner of the room. “I’m not here to defend Mort. I’m just saying Cedric needs our help. With the Convocation against him, he really does have nowhere else to turn. We’re the only other people he knows.”

  Family.

  If Mort had been like an uncle to Carl, that made Cedric a younger cousin. But as Carl headed off to the cockpit, he wondered if Mort had triggered some sort of familial curse.

  Would Carl spend the rest of his days cleaning up Mort’s messes?

  # # #

  Esper closed the doors to her quarters, stopping just short of slamming it. “Shut up,” she scolded in an angry whisper.

  Mort’s apparition took the chastisement in stride. There was only so much Esper could do to him, what with the wizard having taken up apparently permanent residence in her mind.

  “What?” Mort asked, spreading his hands. “You did a good job. Carl’s not going to let Ceddie hang out to dry while a Convocation murder squad comes calling.”

  “He never said anything about
a murder squad,” Esper argued, trying so so hard to keep her voice down. Nothing would have felt better than screaming at the top of her lungs for Mort to leave her alone. Instead, she had the choice of arguing or simply enduring his side of the argument unopposed.

  Mort waggled a hand in a brushing gesture. “No matter. All the same in the end. Whether they light him up like a tiki torch or drag him back to Earth for a trial first, the end result is the same. The Convocation doesn’t equivocate on matters of justice. They especially appreciate getting to a fugitive before he can start a family. Generational vengeance plots have been the bane of the Convocation’s existence since its founding. Most dark wizards start over matters of righting a perceived wrong.”

  And others get their start reading the wrong book, she wanted to argue. But Esper wasn’t willing to tip her hand just yet.

  “Still,” Mort said, stroking the stubble on his chin as if it were an elegant beard. “Makes you wonder what they want a goody-good like my boy for. Who accuses a terramancer of anything? First off, they’re hardly ever anyplace where trouble is a thing. You can’t even commit most crimes on a barren rock with a half dozen other wizards. What, did he play out the working man’s fantasy and kill his boss?”

  “He didn’t say,” Esper replied coldly.

  More importantly, Cedric hadn’t needed to say. Esper could tell from the desperation in Cedric’s message what had gone wrong. She’d been wrong to trust that he could resist the temptation that had already claimed his father and may or may not have taken a firm grip on Esper’s soul as well.

  “No matter,” Mort said, taking a seat on a patch of empty air and treating it as a sofa. “I’m sure you’ll take good care of him. After all, what good is training an apprentice if she can’t even finish up old business? I mean, it’s not like you’ve never met Ceddie. You and your bright notion of a family reunion might just be the thing that got him started down the path to ruin, after all.”

  Esper’s gut twisted under the knife blade of Mort’s words.

  “Then again,” Mort said. “Perhaps if I hadn’t read that bedratted book in the first place, maybe I’d still have my nice, cushy job on Earth, and Ceddie would still be happily playing in his planet-sized sandboxes, making air of our household cleansers and celestial flatulence.”

  “Don’t you have a bowling league to worry about?” Esper asked.

  “You forget how time passes out here,” Mort said with a chuckle. “I’ve played half a season while we’ve been chatting.”

  “You’re splitting yourself to be out here?” Esper asked, incredulous. When did Mort start performing that little trick?

  Mort shrugged and pulled a beer from a point in space that Esper imagined might be the right height for the ship’s refrigerator. “If Carl could manage it, why shouldn’t I? Not like I had anything to do besides practice. Now that I’ve got a convincing Mort Who Bowls Non-Stop, there’s little to keep me tethered inside your head.”

  Esper flopped down on the bed and pulled the pillow tight around her ears. She loosed a muffled scream into the faux-feather stuffing. “Leave me alone. Go be dead somewhere else.”

  “Gladly,” Mort replied. “But change that from ‘dead’ to ‘alive again,’ and we’ve got a deal.”

  Esper cried. This wasn’t supposed to be this way. Mort was supposed to learn his lesson, repent, and move onward to the afterlife. She wasn’t going to stay sane if he was a constant apparition by her side.

  When Esper finally ran short of breath and had to emerge from her pillowy refuge, Mort had taken his leave. She let out a shuddering sigh and wondered how long before the stir-crazy wizard grew resistant to her tears.

  # # #

  The engine hummed. A hammock rocked gently. A light froth of suds escaped the top of a can of Earth’s Preferred, and Roddy slurped it hastily before any was lost over the rim.

  “Ah, the life,” the laaku muttered to himself.

  They were on course for a rescue mission. Big whoop. On the seismograph of important missions in Roddy’s life, bailing out a lost wizard ranked somewhere between the bass from a nightclub band and an unbalanced load of wash. Cedric The Stuffy was an echo of a shout Roddy was happier not hearing.

  It wasn’t that Roddy never missed Mort. It was more that Roddy’s life had grown so much easier without the wizard around. Keep the laws of physics intact a while, and the Mobius started functioning like a proper piece of machinery. There weren’t so many mysterious coolant failures, premature bulkhead cracks, and important items to be fished out of the waste reclaim since the old tyrannosaur had finally met his meteor.

  Esper took a light hand on the ship’s magic. A mechanic could appreciate that.

  The ship’s systems were all in tip-top shape. Things hadn’t been this nice even when Jean Niang was working on them with a full battleship repair bay at his disposal.

  “Yup,” Roddy said before taking a long, satisfying swallow of beer. “I’m really something.”

  With a decreased maintenance load came an increase in leisure time, which Roddy was enjoying at that very moment. It was nice having Shoni aboard, but sharing quarters came with downsides as well. He had to justify his actions around here. There was no amount of sitting in his underwear chugging beer that seemed to pass muster these days. At least, not in their quarters. Down in the engine room, if Roddy wanted to air out his fur a little and relax, it was his own business.

  The comm buzzed to life, startling Roddy and almost making him snort beer through his nose.

  “Rodek,” Shoni called out. “Are you almost done?”

  Roddy coughed and managed to swallow his current mouthful of beer before hitting the comm panel to reply. “Why, what’s up?”

  “You remember that hormonal supplement regimen I started?”

  “Yeah…” Roddy replied cautiously, treading lightly on ground covered in ball bearings.

  “Well, I’ve reached my peak ovulation window, and the effect is noticeable. I may have to reduce future dosages, but for now I’m growing rather uncomfortable. You have five minutes to get up to our quarters before I resort to electromechanical relief.”

  “No!” Roddy shouted into the comm panel. “Don’t do that. Lemme just close up a couple access panels, and I’ll be right up.”

  Making sure the comm was off, Roddy scrambled. He shoved his half-finished beer back into the makeshift refrigerator compartment next to a bare coolant line. It’d go flat, but he’d still finish it later.

  There was a box buried at the bottom of his stash of booze. Roddy dug it out and retrieved a pill bottle. Taking a single glossy pink pill, Roddy tried to steady his nerves. The stimulant always made him a little edgy as it kicked in, but the effects were worth it.

  After all, Roddy had a lady to keep happy.

  # # #

  Amy bent over the sink in the quarters she shared with Carl. One hand held her nest of braids in a fist. The other steadied her as her stomach convulsed.

  Breakfast came back out the way it had gone in, possibly taking a little of dinner with it. Amy gasped for breath, still nauseous, wondering what might possibly be left to evacuate.

  The door opened. Carl strode in.

  Amy’s stomach muscles clenched and up came a mouthful of bile and stomach acid, burning and leaving an acrid sting in its wake.

  “You all right?” Carl asked lightly. In his world, a little vomit was just a sign of a few drinks over the limit for an evening’s entertainment.

  “I might live,” Amy said hoarsely, fighting back as her stomach continued to try to force out any fluids it could find. “Something I ate.”

  Carl scratched the back of his neck. “Cereal? Must have been the milk, I guess. Man, I remember back in the day, you had a stomach like the lining of a garbage scow.”

  Amy cupped a hand beneath the faucet and lifted a sip of water to her mouth. She swished and spat it into the sink.

  “Remember that time the whole squad was on leave? We went to this sketchy clambake on
Oceanus V. Every last one of us was in the med bay with food poisoning that night… except you.”

  “Shellfish,” Amy replied weakly. “Remember?”

  Carl gave a bemused chuckle. “Huh. Didn’t think of that. Why’d you come to a clambake, then? I mean, you wore a bikini and everything.”

  “That’s me,” Amy replied. “Just one of the guys.”

  Carl cracked the door open and looked ready to head back out. “Well, you don’t need me spectating. Feel better, sweetie.”

  Amy stood and collapsed against the window, her back facing the astral nothingness as it sped by. “No. I’m OK now. Worst is passed. What were you coming in for?”

  “You,” Carl replied, waggling his eyebrows.

  Amy managed a weak chuckle. “I think I’m all set on that front for now.”

  “Well, obviously,” Carl stated.

  “I actually wanted to talk about something before I got… sidetracked,” Amy said. She took a slow breath, and nothing in her stomach threatened to come back up just yet. This storm might have passed. “Are you sure this is a good conflict to put ourselves in the middle of?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cedric. The Convocation. This is Mort’s deal all over again, isn’t it?”

  Carl shrugged. “Maybe. No one seems to be able to tell me just what sort of trouble he’s in, but it sounds pretty serious.”

  “So, what then?” Amy asked. “We take in another refugee Brown with a sparkly, glowing target on his back? What if this one can’t fight off his own pursuers?”

  “It won’t be like that,” Carl assured her.

  “You hear stories about stuff that happens to people who cross the Convocation. Mort was an exception, being on the run as long as he was. What if we end up getting turned to stone and left in some Convocation building’s courtyard? Or we might wind up trapped inside tiny gemstones, never aging and never able to escape.”

  Carl stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. “I dunno. Most of them seemed pretty intent on incinerating people. Don’t see how it’s much different from all the nice people who try to put holes in us with blasters.”