Moral and Orbital Decay Read online

  “Don’t bother, Markov,” Chester said. “He won’t be able to do it. Just look at him.”

  Rai Kub grew offended. “I can. Watch me.” With a deep breath that sucked in a lungful of sterile station air scented with the aromas of too many kinds of food, Rai Kub closed his eyes.

  Without being instructed, he pictured Cedric, using the image from his datapad since it was the only way he knew to identify the wizard. In just moments, he began to feel a tingling sensation and assumed something was working.

  High above, there was a snickering sound. Why would someone broadcast that across the overhead public address system?

  A massive hand grabbed Rai Kub by the back of his shirt. The stuunji’s eyes snapped open. Looking up, he suddenly felt faint.

  The whole world had grown around him. What had been a cozy little concourse was now a vast indoor cathedral of steel and glass. The two humans had turned into giants. Chester’s was the hand that had grabbed hold of Rai Kub, but it was only to pinch the back of his shirt between his fingers.

  “Did anyone notice?” Chester asked in a whisper. He shielded Rai Kub’s view of the rest of the concourse with his body as he lifted the tiny stuunji into the air.

  Rai Kub screamed.

  “They will if you don’t shut it up,” Markov snapped.

  “Stop it,” Chester scolded him. The giant human’s breath stank of meat and barbecue sauce. “I can do more than shrink you if you don’t behave. We’re only here for the rogue wizard. If you cooperate, we’ll return you to your natural state. But for now, you’re leverage.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Rai Kub pleaded.

  “We’re getting odd looks,” Markov reported.

  Chester toted Rai Kub by the back of his shirt and brought him into the washroom. Premonitions of being flushed down the waste recycler pipes flashed in the stuunji’s thoughts.

  “Please don’t flush me!”

  “Quiet,” Chester snapped. “We’re not flushing you. You’re a bargaining chip. I can turn you into something without a mouth if you won’t shut yours; I’d just rather not draw the attention. Now, into the carton with you.”

  Despite his fear, Rai Kub found himself puzzled by the phrase. His exposure to Savior Carl and the Mobius crew had done wonderful things for his vocabulary of human idioms. For the life of him, Rai Kub couldn’t figure out what this one meant.

  Then he saw Chester set a bag down on the washroom counter in between a pair of sinks. He removed a plastic carton of chicken parts and emptied the contents into the waste chute.

  Rai Kub descended into a prison lined with frying grease and scraps of crispy chicken flesh. “I’m an herbivore,” he protested at the top of his tiny lungs just before the lid snapped into place.

  All Rai Kub could make out of his captors was a distorted image through the clear top.

  A muffled voice hummed overhead. “For Blackstone’s sake, Chester, poke some air holes in it.”

  Rai Kub covered his ears as a plastic fork jabbed through the roof of his prison. The tines bent and bowed but broke through, leaving a ragged hole through which he supposed there would be enough air to breathe.

  By standing in the middle of the carton, Rai Kub could just manage to avoid touching the slimy grease that coated nearly every surface of the carton’s interior.

  A rustling of thin plastic heralded the closing of the bag his prison rested inside. The handles closed together, hooked under a tree-trunk finger. Nearly all the light vanished save for a sliver peeking down from directly above.

  Without warning, the whole carton lurched. Rai Kub slipped on the slick floor and crashed against the wall. The carton swayed back and forth with the gait of the giant human carrying it.

  All Rai Kub could do was wedge himself in a corner of the greasy animal goo and hope someone would find him before the wizards either grew weary of him or forgot him and tossed him down a waste chute.

  # # #

  Radio silence sucked.

  Why did Amy keep agreeing to sit on board the Mobius while everyone else went off searching the space station? Well, not everyone. Archie, Yomin, and Shoni were still on board. They were officially non-combatants. Amy had been an official combatant during her navy career. She was better with a blaster than Carl or Roddy. She was willing to use one, unlike Rai Kub.

  Amy was halfway to hitting the comm before she slumped back in the pilot’s chair. She put a hand on her stomach to quell an uneasy feeling simmering inside her.

  “I’m psychic,” she muttered. “Maybe I’m having a premonition. Maybe this is what it feels like sensing a disaster more than a split second in advance.”

  She’d never stopped to think much about how her foresight felt. It came as a flash. Reactions came before thought formed. Then it was gone. Often times there was a residual shakiness afterward, but that seemed like a reaction to the scare that usually came along with sensing someone about to shoot you.

  Rai Kub. She would check with Rai Kub. Nobody checked with him about operational security. He was unlikely to be in any sticky situations. Plus, he was just so damned polite all the time. He’d probably appreciate someone checking in on him.

  “Mobius to Rai Kub,” Amy said briskly, as if nothing were amiss. “Come in Rai Kub.”

  No response.

  Amy tried again, the bile rising in her stomach. “Rai Kub, this Amy. Just looking to see how things are going. Let me know.” Maybe it was just the overly formal navy lingo making him freeze up.

  Still no response.

  Hand shaking, Amy quit fooling around and switched channels. “Carl? Routine check in. Rai Kub’s not responding to his comm. Please confirm signal.”

  No response.

  Amy’s grandmother had told her once that a loved one could feel you thinking about them. If Carl knew about Amy’s worries, he would comm back as soon as he was able. Maybe Carl was just in the washroom. Maybe he was shaking down thugs for information. Maybe he was in a noisy bar and couldn’t hear the comm alert.

  Amy waited, checking the ship’s chrono and giving Carl five minutes to respond.

  Five minutes passed. Switching channels again, Amy uttered a quick prayer. “Roddy, you there?”

  “Yo, Peachfuzzette,” Roddy came back within seconds. “Technically this is called ‘radio loud,’ this thing you’re doing. We’re supposed to be radio silent.”

  “I can’t reach Carl or Rai Kub,” Amy blurted, ignoring Roddy’s attempt to make light of her contacting him.

  “Tech issue or user-related?” Roddy said. He was all business now. It was one thing to give Amy crap about mission protocols; it was another thing when their friends might be in trouble.

  “Can’t say. I haven’t checked with Yomin or anything. If I hadn’t been able to get you either, that would have been my next stop.”

  “What’s the call, boss-lady?” Roddy asked.

  With Carl unavailable, Amy was in charge. “Esper was heading for the residential wing. Rendezvous with her and find out what happened to Carl and Rai Kub. If they’re not in deep shit, you are free to smack either or both of them upside the head.”

  “Tell someone taller, lady,” Roddy replied. “But I’m on it.”

  Roddy’s comm cut out, but it was just the normal end of a transmission.

  Collapsing into her chair, Amy wondered why little things were bothering her so much. Carl had gone missing before, and it hadn’t bothered her like this.

  “Psychic,” she muttered to herself, shaking her head.

  # # #

  Esper tried to keep up a positive attitude, but it was growing difficult. Aside from one tip that was hours too old to be any use, Esper hadn’t gotten anywhere in her search. The prospect of traipsing two hours into the bowels of the space station on the unlikely chance that Cedric had camped out with the castoff population filled her with unease.

  Cedric was waiting for them. He knew the Mobius would come to his call. Esper had promised. Cedric wouldn’t have called her if he didn�
�t trust her word.

  Plus, what if the next person she spoke to knew where he was staying? What if by leaving now, she was making a four-hour round trip that might delay the Mobius departing Space Place YF-whatever—scientific mumbo jumbo just wasn’t sticking to the folds of her brain the way they used to.

  Esper knocked on yet another door. She’d lost count of which one this was. There was no answer.

  “When are you going to get tired of this pointless exercise and do what needs to be done?” Mort griped.

  That was part of the reason she didn’t want to leave the residential ring. It was needling Mort the longer she stayed. He was scouring the insides of her skull raw with his badgering, and the dirt, muck, and filth of her personality was crumbling loose from its prison of propriety and decorum.

  Running to the station core might be the quickest way to find Cedric. It might not. But sooner or later, the exhaustive approach would find him, sure as the tides. With hours until the possibility of escaping the station, Esper was in no rush.

  “Hey,” a familiar voice shouted, short of breath. Esper turned and saw Roddy stumbling toward her, one hand braced against the wall for support. “Change of plans. Got people missing.”

  “Who now?” Esper asked in annoyance. Wasn’t one missing person enough?

  “Carl. Rai Kub,” Roddy said between pants. “Fucking mining station is too big for its own good. Comms down. Not responding.”

  “Maybe one of these days I’ll figure out how to turn translator earrings into magical comms.”

  “Like hell you will,” Mort grumbled.

  Roddy put a finger to the comm hooked over his ear. “Amy? Yeah. I’ve got her… still no word from… nope… no… well, fuck. Of course, they didn’t… Roger that. Roddy out.”

  “Bad news?” Esper asked.

  “No, just the regular sort,” Roddy groused. “Neither of our missing bozos had checked in before going comm dead. Radio silence was only supposed to be one-way in case we were in a delicate situation and sneaking around or negotiating with local gangs or crap like that.”

  “Had you been checking in?” Esper asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Roddy cleared his throat. “No time for that. We’ve got missing idiots to find.”

  “Where have you already checked?” Esper asked. She could smell the answer on him before the laaku said a word. The ship’s alcohol supply was common knowledge, and the scents of various brews and distillations were as familiar as the scents of wood polish and incense in a church.

  “I… uh… staked out one of the local social establishments,” Roddy said hesitantly. He looked up and down the halls of the residential ring where they were standing. “Looks like you’ve taken the more active approach. See? It’s like I’ve been fishing the wharf, and you’re out in the boat trolling. Same idea, just different techniques. Plus, I get a sore back being on my lower hands all day. You wouldn’t get it, still being young and fit and all.”

  Esper crossed her arms. “You spent your search time drinking.”

  “Mingling,” Roddy corrected. “It’s not like I wasn’t on the job. Like I said, different techniques. Mine was better suited to the middle-aged and sociable. You took the energetic and polite approach. Guy like me knocks on a million doors, I end up with more blaster holes than a target dummy.”

  Esper brushed past the laaku. “We don’t have time for this nonsense. Where was your ‘wharf,’ so we can rule it out?”

  “Concourse J.”

  Esper tucked her hands into her sleeves and strode off back to the main traffic corridors. She made sure she was moving just fast enough to make Roddy regret a life of drinking and shirking exercise.

  # # #

  Carl felt like he was towing a live anti-matter bomb along behind him. Cedric had already tried two minor spells, accidentally shutting down a lift and an automated cleaning drone in the process. A nagging voice in Carl’s head, possibly Carl Who Had a Lick of Common Sense, kept telling him that bringing Cedric on board the Mobius in his current condition was going to get them all stranded in the Black Ocean.

  “Hey, we’ve got two hours left on this station move,” Carl said. “Maybe we oughta wait for Esper someplace… not on my ship.”

  “You’re worried I’ll destroy your sails,” Cedric replied with a solemn nod. “I understand. I was hoping that Esper might help counteract my instability. Without her, perhaps we are better off waiting to board your vessel.”

  “C’mon,” Carl said with a beckoning gesture. “This place looks as good as any.

  Of all the lies Carl told, that statement ranked among the most bald-faced and easily refuted. The bar Carl led them into had a flatvid sign with several panels on the blink. Its logo was a poorly drawn attempt at an English bulldog with an eye patch, scowling over a mug of ale. On the inside, if anything, things went sub-orbital.

  Cedric followed Carl with the reluctance of a man set for the gallows. He made pained attempts not to touch the furnishings until they reached a corner table near the back. Every surface seemed coated in a thin, tacky residue of unknown origin. Carl guessed that Harmony Bay could come in with a pocketknife, scrape up a few samples, and clone most of the bar’s former patrons.

  “Disrepute suits me, I suppose,” Cedric muttered.

  Carl tapped in a drink order, preferring bottled off-world stuff to anything that might come from a tap in this place. He selected the best option he could find, a Titan Lager, and spread a hand over the terminal for Cedric to make his choice. “Nothing’s good. Pick your poison.”

  But Cedric shied away, tucking his hands deeper in his sleeves. “I’d best not. Just pick anything. I’m not very thirsty.”

  Carl chuckled and doubled down on the Titan Lager. “This isn’t the kind of place where you come for hydration. You look like someone who’s got too much on his mind for his own good. Drowning those troubles in a bottle is more what this sort of shithole is good for.”

  It wasn’t long before the whirr of an overhead crane system delivered their beverages. Carl paid the crane and took his Titan Lager. Cedric looked at his skeptically.

  Carl offered a bit of friendly advice. “It’s a twist top.” He demonstrated by opening his own bottle. The ridges around the edge of the top bit into his hand as he gripped it, but it was more macho than using the end of his shirt to protect his skin.

  With the care of a surgeon, Cedric bit his lip and gingerly took the cap between two fingers. The light over their table flickered, and the cap popped off, bouncing away. “Used to be able to manage that without half a thought,” he muttered as he took a long pull from the bottle, wincing as the swill first his tongue but not stopping.

  There were gruff mutters throughout the bar at the station’s shoddy power distribution of late.

  “I’ll buy you a bottle opener if you promise not to do that again,” Carl offered.

  Cedric stared off into space. Well, not into actual space since there were no outside windows in their little dive bar hideaway, but he at least stared nowhere in particular. “I used to have such control. I could summon elemental air from its home dimension without fouling the scanners of the terraforming techs. He could be standing just ten feet away and his fussy little gizmo wouldn’t so much as whimper.”

  “Hey, Mort must have gotten it figured out,” Carl said before taking a casual sip. Objectively, it was better than Earth’s Preferred but not by a lot. Unfortunately, it wasn’t covered under the same grandfather clause with his taste buds.

  Cedric tilted back his bottle and drank until tears welled in the corners of his eyes. “And look where it got him,” he said with a cough. “All my life, I thought I saw my father’s footsteps stretching out before me. I figured if I kept one eye on that path, I could avoid it. But the terrain of my life hit rocky ground, and before I knew it, my feet slipped into that rut; my shoes and my father’s matched perfectly down to the length of our stride.”

  Dammit, wizards could get maudlin. He couldn’t even imagine eno
ugh of the booze had worked its way into Cedric’s bloodstream that he was even halfway drunk yet. Surreptitiously, Carl checked his chrono, but it was still on the fritz from his first meeting with the junior Brown.

  When their beers were finished, Carl ordered up another pair. If he was going to have to listen to Cedric reciting the litany of hardships he had to put up with as an upper-class wizard with an unlimited line of credit, a cushy job, and the power to turn barren rocks into habitable worlds, he sure as hell wasn’t going to do it sober.

  # # #

  Eventually Esper had slowed down. It wasn’t that she’d started feeling a little bad about Roddy huffing and puffing to keep up with her—though that was true as well. It was mostly that the station was at once both a circle and a maze. There was no wizardly logic that explained how a habitat that amounted to a loop had any more complicated set of directions than “clockwise” and “counterclockwise.” And yet, at every turn, there seemed to be intersections, junctions, concourses, and lifts.

  Roddy had a datapad with a map on it.

  “Left up here,” Roddy said, pointing.

  “Where’s that going to take us?” Esper asked. She knew better than to trust the laaku after how he’d started this mission.

  “It’s past the… uh, spot… where I’d been watching for Cedric. Rai Kub and I had walked together for a while, and he kept on going that way.”

  “Fine,” Esper said. She fell in behind as Roddy led the way.

  Roddy put a finger to his earpiece. “Amy…? Yeah, we’re just heading for Rai Kub’s last known location now… No, no sign of him… Well, he didn’t tell me, either… This place isn’t exactly Carousel; know what I mean? He’s fine.” Roddy winced and pulled off the comm, shoving it into his coveralls. “Talk to the pocket,” he muttered.

  “That’s not nice,” Esper replied, though as someone who’d stopped carrying a comm, she’d known the welcome feeling of wandering free without a voice nagging in her ear.

  “Hey, you wanna find Peachfuzz and Hay-Breath?” Roddy asked snidely. He didn’t wait for the obvious response. “Well, so do I. But getting my ears cleaned with vinegar isn’t helping anyone. Let’s just get those two dopes rounded up, tell Amy they’re all right and get back to finding Mort’s kid.”