Moral and Orbital Decay Read online

  “Because we don’t have someone to defend us against those bastards,” Amy snapped. Instantly, she regretted it and took a moment to steady her stomach. “Esper’s a sweet kid. Heart of gold. Does a nice job taking care of our wizarding. She even seemed to hold her own on Champlain VI. But she’s not a killer, not deep down the way Mort was. I don’t think his son is, either.”

  “What? So we abandon family now because we’re scared of the consequences?”

  Amy shook her head. “Mort was family. I get that. But family-by-choice doesn’t carry blood ties. Cedric’s not your problem. Not our problem.”

  Carl sighed. He pushed the door open. “Well, we’re about to make him our problem. I heard stories about Cedric as far back as I can really remember. And if Mort were alive today, we wouldn’t hesitate to run to Cedric’s rescue, whatever the trouble he’s in. I won’t dishonor Mort’s memory by abandoning his son when he’s asking for help. Feel better, sweetie.”

  The door closed behind him, and for the first time, Amy wondered if Carl was trying too hard to be the good guy.

  # # #

  The Mobius set down inside a Size B hangar bay at Mobile Excavating Station YF-77. This was the place that Cedric had told them to meet him. It hadn’t looked like much from the outside, just a habitation and docking ring surrounding an orbital mining laser and ore-processing facility. The planet below was, if possible, less interesting—just a drab brown rock floating around a pale sun. As the steel doors shut, sealing them in, an automated message came over the comm.

  Welcome to Mobile Excavating Station YF-77, operated by the Maho Saigai Mining Concern. This station is set to make a planned repositioning maneuver in… thirty-two… minutes. Station repositioning is a normal part of planetary mining speculation and should be completed within six to eight hours. Station gravity will maintain guest and worker comfort during motion, but for safety purposes, all hangars will be locked down during the move. Thank you for your cooperation, and enjoy your stay.

  “Great,” Carl muttered as he watched the hangar’s air level rise on the monitor beside the personnel door leading to the rest of the station. It was at 58 percent and rising. “We’re locked in unless we find Cedric before this place starts moving.”

  Beside him in the pilot’s chair, Amy shrugged. “If he’s on the run, at least we won’t have to worry about anyone else coming aboard while the station heads for browner pastures.”

  Carl sighed and shook his head. “A hundred quadrillion asteroid fields to choose from, and these guys still prefer mining the old fashioned way.”

  “I think you’re confusing a fifty terrajoule mining laser with a pick axe,” Amy pointed out.

  “I mean mining planets. Period. Some people just can’t stand knowing there are minerals somewhere and leaving them where they are. I bet you in a couple hundred years, this place is a tourist trap, terraformed and tidy, and they’ll be embarrassed by all the holes these lousy meatheads lasered into it.”

  The air indicator continued to climb. At least the station had a top-notch environmental system by the look of things. Carl itched to be off this station, preferably before he became an unwilling passenger as a factory the size of a navy cruiser moved to a new orbit.

  “You planning on being the crotchety old man on the crew now?” Amy teased.

  Carl watched as the air indicator hit 100 percent and a green light flared to life on the panel. “I’ve just got a bad feeling about this place.”

  # # #

  Carl clapped his hands once to grab everyone’s attention. The cargo bay held the entire Mobius crew. All eyes turned in his direction.

  “OK, people,” Carl announced. “We’ve got a missing wizard—wait, he is still missing, right?”

  Esper gave a nod. “He hasn’t answered a comm since that distress message. And yes, I had Yomin check that I wasn’t doing it wrong.”

  Yomin gave a supporting nod to Esper’s statement.

  “Great,” Carl said. It wasn’t great, but it was just the way these pseudo-military pep talks went. “Everyone remembers what he looks like except Rai Kub.”

  “Mort with fewer wrinkles,” Rai Kub repeated back from his earlier briefing.

  “Right. Now… I think this is the time when I buck all common sense and say we just split up and look for him. This is a mobile mining outpost, too remote and corporate owned to be a major smuggling hub. Odds of us running into any crime bosses are minimal. We’ll be dealing with miners, techs, corporate data shepherds, and the odd assortment of peddlers and visitors.”

  “What’s the cover story?” Roddy asked. “I mean, what business have we got being out here?”

  Carl scratched the back of his neck. “This is gonna sound weird, but hear me out. We tell people we’re here looking for a friend. If they ask who, we describe Cedric and ask if they’ve seen him.”

  Esper scrunched up her nose. “You mean… the truth?”

  This was where Carl was on shaky ground.

  “Well. Technically. Yeah. I mean, think about it. We’re not on the run from anyone in particular right now. This place is too far out to care about Earth Interstellar or Convocation business. If we catch any blowback from the Keesha Bell incident, it’s not likely to come from this place. We’re not here to kidnap any information brokers or rob anyone. We’re not pulling a job at all. I mean, unless Cedric The Brown has caught a case of Mortanian Incinerating Flu, we can just take him on board and leave.”

  “In six to eight hours,” Amy added.

  “We’ll get a better estimate from someone from the station crew,” Carl promised. “Until then, we go our separate ways, keep a comm handy, and first person to find Cedric, report in.”

  Carl strode over and hit the button for the cargo ramp with the butt of his fist. The hydraulics kicked in, and the ramp lowered.

  Nobody had any questions. The plan was so simple that there was nothing to ask.

  # # #

  As he ambled through the narrow pedestrian walkways of the station, Roddy wished he’d thought to ask a few questions before they’d all split up. Where was everyone else planning to look? What were Cedric’s likes and dislikes? Was he more the Buckaroo Grill sort or a Noodle-O-Rama guy? What was he last seen wearing? Now that he was on his own, Roddy could think of little else but questions he could have asked.

  As he trekked through the station, Roddy’s attention was drawn to some of the technological amenities. An inner-ring window looked out over the central core of the station, where Roddy saw the distinctive shape of a massive star-drive. Not many space stations had those. Somewhere nearby was also probably the magical stone that was keeping up a pretty good imitation of Phabian Standard Gravity.

  Roddy went to tip back his beer but remembered that he wasn’t carrying one. He hadn’t managed to smuggle one off the Mobius with him while Shoni was watching. Usually he ended up carrying a tool kit or a pack of supplies that had room for an emergency can or two. This time all he had were a couple pocket tools and a blaster strapped at his side.

  “Well, we don’t have any better plans,” Roddy muttered to himself as he looked up at the sign over a door in the next concourse. It read: Dogger’s Shack, but Roddy knew the scent of beer on tap well enough to know a bar when he smelled it.

  The place was a dive. Considering that for the most part the station had been in good repair, that vibe had to be intentional. Roddy scoped the place out, picked his way through a forest of human-sized tables and chairs, and found himself a small booth by a wall.

  His table had console ordering. No judgmental human eyes narrowing at a laaku ordering booze at 2PM station time. Roddy browsed the menu with a gloved foot, wary of the filmy coating on the glass. The beer selection was shit, so that’s what he ordered.

  A minute or so later, an overhead crane delivered Roddy a Titan Lager. The bottle had umlauts over every letter that could fit them, and the emblem on the label was a bull squatting in a weightlifting pose. Roddy just shook his head in disbelief a
nd pressed his thumb to the digital currency reader to release the brew.

  “Crazy humans,” he muttered, shaking his head.

  Sooner or later, in Roddy’s experience, everyone came by a bar. Information, socializing, or even—like him—just for the booze. Cedric was a drinker, he knew. The only time they’d crossed paths with the younger Brown wizard, he’d ended up piss drunk.

  A gray-stubbled human in station-logo coveralls sat down across from Roddy with a glass mug from the bar, frothing with something that was probably tastier than Roddy’s selection. “What brings you out to the old ‘77, stranger?” the man asked.

  “Just meetin’ a friend,” Roddy replied noncommittally. “Nothing big.” With an expert twist of trigger guard of his blaster, Roddy popped off the cap of his beer and took a drink. If the safety hadn’t been engaged, it would have fired.

  As the local backed up a step, Roddy noticed the insignia on his sleeve. This corporate outfit had their personnel ranked like the navy. This was a mining sergeant Roddy was trying to brush off.

  “Name’s Fagin,” the miner said, edging back toward Roddy’s table. “Fancy trick there.”

  Roddy shrugged. “Heard they weren’t allowing open carry of bottle openers on this station.”

  Fagin chuckled until he wheezed. “C’mon. Let an old feller in on the fun. I’m not lookin’ for trouble. Just curious what brings a bounty hunter out to these parts.”

  Roddy didn’t look at the bottle as he lifted it to his lips. Fagin looked the type to double as station security—thrusters aligned just off-kilter enough to avoid suspicion while he pumped the coolant lines of newcomers for information. Near as he could tell, the guy wasn’t armed. Not that that mattered; it was his station. Backup could have been right around the corner or just behind the bar.

  But why would a nowhere station like YF-77 bother? The galaxy didn’t put random obstacles out there for unwary spacers to trip over. Sometimes, a bored miner on a space station was just a bored miner on a space station.

  Having sized up his drinking companion, and with no sign of Cedric yet, Roddy leaned across the table conspiratorially.

  “Can you keep a secret…?” Roddy began. Then he passed the afternoon making up a tall tale on the spot that would have shamed Carl to recount.

  # # #

  Esper walked briskly down the corridor of the habitat ring. The passage was just wide enough to walk two abreast, so long as neither pedestrian was especially plump. Still, Esper could reach out and touch both walls at once and nearly reach the ceiling if she stretched. The close quarters and smooth steel walls gave the impression of being down the gullet of a great steel beast.

  Pushing the imagery from her mind, Esper stopped at the first door she came to. There was no name, just a designation: A-01.

  She knocked.

  The door was steel plate, painted over in a muted gray that might as well have been the bare metal. In the middle of the door, roughly face high, there was a tiny hole that gleamed with an inset glass lens.

  “What?” came the curt reply from inside.

  Esper imagined that whoever was inside could see her through the peephole. Stepping back, she held up a hand in front of her, fingers loose. In the space between her fingertips, she formed an illusion of the Convocation’s thunderstruck ‘C’ logo.

  “Convocation business,” Esper replied crisply. “I have questions.”

  The voice from inside turned more respectful but no more helpful. “Don’t want no wizard trouble.”

  “Then answer truthfully,” Esper replied with a smoothness she didn’t know she had.

  Crouched at her side, Mort gave two thumbs up. “That’s good. Nice gravitas. Aside from the pink hoodie, you’re the very image of wizardly dread.”

  Esper ignored him and waited as the door slid open.

  Changing the illusory image from the convocation symbol to the face of Cedric The Brown, Esper held it up for the room’s occupant to inspect. “I’m looking for this man.”

  The man in the doorway wore nothing but a sleeveless undershirt and checkered boxers, neither of which appeared to be clean. He squinted at the image of Cedric, and when that didn’t appear to jog any memories, he squinted harder. “Nah. Never seen him.”

  The door slid shut.

  Esper moved to the next door and knocked on it.

  This time, no one answered. She waited what felt like a proper amount of time and knocked again.

  Quietly, Esper cleared her throat. “Want to make yourself useful?” she whispered, barely moving her lips and certainly not looking in Mort’s direction. “Slip inside and see if there’s anyone in there.”

  Mort cackled. “I’m an hallucination, remember? I’m not actually standing here, ghost or not. Can’t see a bloody thing without you looking at it.”

  Poo.

  She’d hoped that for the first time since he’d begun appearing to her, Mort might actually prove to be more of a boon than a hindrance. And Esper didn’t have to worry that Mort was lying about being able to look through walls on her behalf. If anything, he was more motivated to find Cedric than she was.

  The next door was opened by a bleary-eyed woman wearing pajama bottoms and carrying a steaming cup of fresh coffee. “Ugh. Can’t you people give it a rest? I haven’t seen the guy.”

  “You people?” Esper echoed.

  The woman slurped her coffee, wincing at the near-boiling liquid as it went down. “Your buddies already came by asking about that same fine slab of meat. If I’d seen him, I’d have his clothes on my bedroom floor. Now scram. I’ve got a shift in twenty minutes, and I need to shower.”

  Esper didn’t object, and the door shushed closed between them.

  “My boy isn’t meat,” Mort groused. “Least of all to a mining station harlot like her. If I ever caught wind of him lying with flotsam like that, I’d have willed myself into corporeal form just to slap some sense into him. Ceddie’s meant for a woman of keen mind and a firm…” Mort trailed off a moment. “Grasp of magical fundamentals.”

  Casting the wizard a glare, Esper moved along.

  All down the residential ring of the station, Esper knocked, and station personnel answered. Many of the apartments were unoccupied, or at least the residents weren’t home. The others offered responses that ranged from the unhelpful to the downright rude. Two were so forward and lewd that Esper considered hollowing out a skull and seeing if Mort would fit in it.

  But today wasn’t the day to solve her Mort problem.

  Despite her troubles, Esper pressed on, undeterred.

  “Yeah, I think I saw him,” a short, squirrely mechanic replied. He’d answered the door with the sleeves of his coveralls rolled to the elbow and the aroma of fresh bread and garlic wafting from inside. “You mind? I’ve got a sauce to stir.”

  The mechanic retreated into the apartment but left the door open. Esper leaned to peer inside. She didn’t set foot over the threshold.

  “C’mon in. Just making a batch of my ex-mother-in-law’s lasagna and some rolls. Got a shipment in from back on Sol. Nothing says family like food from the factories back where you grew up. Am I right? Name’s Rico, by the way.”

  Esper gingerly entered the tiny apartment and made her way to the kitchen. “I grew up on Mars, actually.”

  Rico swirled a faux-wooden spoon in a saucepan of tomato, basil, and garlic. “So, I was on my way back from the Quadrant A thruster array after finishing up the pre-move preventative maintenance inspection, when I come across this guy—the one you showed me—huddled in the corner of a data storage relay. He was wearing fancy duds that’d seen better days and was wolfing down fried chickenoid nuggets from a Sal & Andy’s box.”

  “Did he say anything to you?” Esper pressed.

  “I asked if he was lost or anything,” Rico said. A timer chimed. “Excuse me.”

  Esper stepped aside as Rico opened the oven and used a towel to pull out a baking tray dotted with fresh dinner rolls.

  “Anyway,” Ri
co continued. “He gives me this look that shot reactor coolant right up my spine. Then he relaxes a little and says that he’s fine, that he’s just ‘biding his time until such time as he can abide no longer’ or some line. I gave him directions to the med depot, just in case, and left him alone. That was about four, four-and-a-half hours ago.”

  Esper’s heart quickened. “Where was this, exactly?”

  Tucking the towel under his arm, Rico retrieved a datapad from the kitchen table and tapped through a few menus. When he turned it to show Esper, there was a station map showing. Two locations were marked—where they were and where Cedric was.

  “How long’s it take to get there?” Esper asked when it appeared that she might need transportation to make it to Cedric’s last known location.

  Rico shrugged. “Visitor… maybe two hours on foot. Station badge might cut it to half an hour, taking the maintenance ducts. They don’t make it easy for visitors to get to the mineral processing ring.”

  “Thanks,” Esper said with a smile.

  “Take a roll. Just be careful. They’re hot.”

  Esper picked one up and decided that it wouldn’t burn her fingers. “Thanks for the warning. But I’m a wizard, too, after all. Playing with fire is all in a day’s work.”

  “Good luck finding your friend,” Rico called after her as Esper departed, munching on the warm bread.

  # # #

  Carl made his way to the dregs of the station. Every inhabited civilian community developed them at some point. Keep a place around long enough without a rigid hierarchy to hold everyone together, and eventually you’ll wind up with residents too poor or too lawless to live among the general population. On YF-77, they called that place the Core Apartments.

  Carrying a blaster in that sort of place went without saying. As Carl entered the ducts and crawlways of the Core Apartments, he regretted not having sent Roddy.

  “Me and my big ideas,” he muttered, ducking under a low-hanging power cable and shoving a ventilation hose aside.

  Most of the equipment down here was obsolete. Scrappers had salvaged most of it from starships; at least most of it was junk Carl recognized from salvage yards and parts depots. In a way, he was proud to have provided stuff like this over the years, salvaged from shipwrecks and pilfered from scrapyards. Carl was the kind of guy who kept these dreg-dwellers in waste reclaim filters and environmental circulators.