Drifter (6 page)

"No offense, Citizen Lando, but your ship has seen better days."

Warned by the use of his last name, Lando looked around. Suddenly he saw the worn fittings, the stained bulkheads, and the trash underfoot. There was no doubt about it. The ship
looked
like a deathtrap. He rushed to explain.

"Don't be fooled by appearances, Doc.
The Tink's
in tiptop shape. When you go through customs it pays to understate the condition of your ship."

Wendy nodded slowly. Lando had confirmed her worst fears. The attraction she'd felt the night before had been physical in nature. The man was little more than a common criminal, and a boorish one at that. Wendy's voice was as cold as the void itself.

"Well, you certainly succeeded. This is the most understated ship I've ever seen. And the name is Wendy, not
Doc."

More than a little chagrined, Lando showed Wendy to her tiny cabin, and spent the next half hour picking up the worst of the trash and wiping things down. The ship
was
filthy. Lord help him if the argrav failed during a run. The cabin would be full of floating trash. He made a note to clean up more often.

At precisely 0930
The Tinker's Damn
lifted for space. The ship was little more than a vapor trail by the time the black limo screeched to a stop on the still-warm pad.

The woman with one eye stepped out into a pool of Number 3 lubricant. It stained her 500-credit boots. She swore and took a step forwards. "Damn." Just fifteen minutes earlier and she'd have had them. Unfortunately it had taken the rest of the night and part of the morning to find Troon's office, break in, locate his safe, blow it open, and scroll through the 167 data cubes stored inside.

In the meantime, one of her assistants had been hard at work identifying the spacer and his ship.

Finally, after hours of staring at boring junk, she'd hit pay dirt. It was just as her boss suspected. The Chosen
were
trying to import fertilizer. Fertilizer that would help them become self-sufficient, stay on Angel, and screw up the company's plans.

The woman forced herself to remain calm. They were gone. No big deal. Weller's World was only days away, and the Wendeen bitch was traveling on a piece of clapped-out space junk. The woman would charter a speedster and get there first.

She got in the limo and slammed the door. Her boots smeared oil on the expensive gray carpet. "The terminal and step on it," she ordered.

Tires screeched as the driver stepped on the gas. The woman was pushed deep into the soft leather seat. She ground her teeth in frustration. All this trouble over a shitload of chemicals. It didn't seem right.

Lando touched a key and watched data flood the screen. Destination, speed, ETA, a routine systems check, and so on. The NAVCOMP equivalent of "Hey, I've got things under control, go find something to do."

Good advice, but do what?

Lando took a sip of coffee. He'd done a lot cleaning during the last three days, performed maintenance checks on every system he could access, and started a dozen conversations with Wendy. Conversations that always seemed to end shortly after they began.

Oh, she was friendly in a distant sort of way, and willing to share in the chores, but seemed to prefer an unending series of medical texts to his company. So much for the Lando charm.

Lando decided to give it one last try. He left the cockpit, stopped off at his cabin, and grabbed a small box. He had it under his arm when he entered the lounge.

The main aisle split the lounge in half like line through the center of a circle. Wendy sat to port, so Lando chose that side as well.

Wendy looked up from her cube reader, nodded politely, and went back to her reading.

Lando sat down and unwrapped the package. His slug gun and a cleaning kit were inside. The smuggler thumbed the magazine release, worked the action to make sure the weapon was empty, and began to take it apart.

"Must you do that here?"

Lando looked up. "Do what?"

Wendy nodded towards the table. "Play around with that awful gun."

There was the rasp of metal on metal as Lando released the trigger mechanism and pulled it free of the pistol's stainless steel frame. Her comment annoyed him.

"I'm not playing. I'm cleaning a weapon. What's so awful about that?"

Wendy frowned. "That's rather obvious, isn't it? Guns are used to
kill
people."

Lando put a small drop of lubricant into the hole provided for that purpose.

"Well, that's one way to put it, although guns are also used to
protect
people."

"Only because guns are used to
kill
people," Wendy insisted stubbornly. "And I don't like them."

Lando held the barrel up to the light. The bore was clean and the rifling was intact. "Well, I don't
like
them either. But what's the alternative? It's a violent universe. You have to protect yourself."

"Not
if it means taking a sentient life," Wendy replied. "Thou shalt not kill."

"An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," Lando answered, sliding the weapon's barrel into the receiver mechanism with a positive click. "Your pacifism is misguided."

Wendy stood. "And
you
are hopeless."

She left the lounge, stepped into her cabin, and closed the curtain with an angry jerk.

Lando looked at the magazine, checked to make sure it was full up, and slid it home. The smuggler shook his head ruefully. "Smooth, Pik. Real smooth."

The Tinker's Damn
left hyperspace two days later and entered orbit a day after that. Weller's World was a blue marble surrounded by wispy white cotton. Blessed with broad temperate zones above and below its equator, it was an agricultural planet. Genetically modified Terran crops and animals had been crossed with native flora and fauna to produce a variety of hybrids. Some of the hybrids were quite valuable. Especially those that were used to make pharmaceuticals.

But Weller's World had other assets as well, including some apatite deposits from which phosphate fertilizers were made. All they had to do was land, pick up the shipment, and lift. Or so Lando hoped.

The trip down to the planet's surface was extremely smooth, which should have left Lando in a good mood, but didn't. The situation had gone from bad to worse after the discussion about guns. They barely spoke to each other now, and when they did, it was born of strict necessity.

They left the ship together, having secured the lock behind them. Wendy made it a point to ignore Lando's slug gun, and he made sure the mini-launcher was hidden inside his sleeve. There was no point in giving her something more to complain about.

Neither one of them noticed the weasel-faced boy at the spaceport, who slipped into a com booth, consulted a crumpled piece of paper, and keyed a number.

A comset chimed in a hotel room on the other side of town. The woman with one eye was busy doing sit-ups. She swore at the interruption, bounced to her feet with the energy of a woman half her age, and grabbed the handset next to her bed.

"Yeah?"

"They just arrived. You want me to follow?"

The woman wiped sweat from her forehead with a corner of the bedspread and looked at the resulting stain. "No, that won't be necessary."

The woman with one eye dropped the handset into its cradle. She knew where they were going, if not this minute, then very, very soon. The Wendeen bitch had arrived a full rotation earlier than expected. Pretty fast for a ship that seemed to be on its last legs. Interesting.

She lifted the handset and keyed a number. A male voice answered. "Dulo."

"They just arrived," the woman said. "Is everything ready?"

"Yes, ma'am. Ready and waiting."

"Good. I'll be there in fifteen or twenty minutes."

"Fifteen or twenty minutes. Yes, ma'am."

"And, Dulo…"

"Yes ma'am?"

"Don't screw this up." The phone made a hollow plastic sound as it hit the cradle.

Wendy got out of the autocab and looked around. Although the establishment looked like a muddy lot filled fender-to-fender with used vehicles, the electronic billboard claimed it was RUDY'S MOTOR MECCA, "where you can rent, buy, or practically steal the vehicle of your dreams. Come on in."

Wendy's boots made small sucking sounds as she followed Lando onto the lot. "Are you sure this is necessary? Couldn't we hire a freight company to move the fertilizer for us?"

Lando paused to kick the rubberized skirt of a used but still serviceable hover truck. "We could, but I'd rather not. It's like my father says: 'He who controls the most variables wins.'"

"What does that mean?"

"It
means,"
Lando replied patiently, "that transportation is a variable, and since we have the power to control it, we should do so."

Wendy wondered if the transportation issue wasn't much ado about nothing, but decided to let it go. There was enough tension between the two of them already.

After protracted negotiations with no less a personage than Rudy himself, Lando handed over a deposit of 200 Imperials,

and received the ignition code for a decrepit ten-wheeled truck in return. The vehicle came equipped with a light-duty crane, a flatbed in back, and a world-class collection of dents. It would have little difficulty coping with a ten-ton cargo module.

Lando climbed up and into the driver's side of the cab. Wendy entered from the opposite side. The seats sagged, the paint was worn, and the interior smelled of stale cigar smoke. Wendy tried to open a window. A motor hummed and nothing happened.

Lando entered the ignition code, hit the START button, and listened to the turbine spin up. A little tired but okay. He smiled, touched another button, and felt the truck lift itself up on a cushion of air. So far, so good.

Lando eased the truck out of its slot, waved at Rudy, and slid out onto the street. The hover truck steered like a tank. Lando's turn was too wide, but traffic was light, and no harm was done. He was afraid to take even one hand off the controls.

"See if the mapper works."

There was a screen set into the center of the dash. Wendy touched the power button, and much to her surprise, a menu appeared. She touched "path, most direct," and entered the address Troon had provided.

The menu disappeared and a map took its place. The truck was a bright red delta, their destination a glowing green circle, and the jagged blue line the most direct path between the two.

Lando looked, nodded his understanding, and followed the mapper's instructions.

Wendy watched as retail businesses disappeared and processing plants and warehouses took their place. Long, low affairs most of them, busy freeze-drying food, manufacturing pharmaceuticals, or storing them prior to shipment.

And then the landscape changed again. The buildings became taller and uglier. They sprouted tanks, cylinders, and pipes. Wendy saw piles of ore, rivers of molten metal, and power pallets piled high with shiny ingots.

Then the buildings shrank as a variety of retail establishments reemerged and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their larger two- and three-story cousins.

Lando pulled over to the curb. He cut the power and felt the truck sink onto its skirts. The turbine sighed as if exhausted by its labors.

"There's the building." Lando nodded towards a long, low warehouse on the far side of the intersection.

Wendy consulted the mapper. It agreed. "Okay, so what are we doing?"

Lando leaned back in his seat. "We're watching."

Wendy looked at the warehouse, then back to him. She was puzzled. "Watching for what?"

Lando shrugged. "For unusual activity, signs of an ambush. Who knows?"

Wendy considered the smuggler's comments. They might make sense if the cargo in question were something a little more exciting than a load of fertilizer. Mega-Metals might care, but they didn't know about it, so why the big deal?

No, the whole thing was a waste of time, and Wendy was tempted to tell Lando so. And she would've too, except for the fact that it would heighten the tension between the two of them and last leg of the journey even less pleasant. Wendy reconciled herself to a wait. What would it be? A half hour? She could handle that.

Time passed. One hour turned into two. Wendy wished that she'd brought something to read. Lando had insisted on her wearing body armor, and it felt uncomfortable under her clothes. Lando drummed his fingers on the side of his seat. It started to rain. The raindrops made little paths through the dirt on the windshield. Wendy imagined that she was in her father's house on Angel, staring out of her bedroom window.

The sound of Lando's voice jerked her back to the present.

"What did you say?"

Lando eyed her curiously. "The fertilizer. Once we get the stuff to Angel, then what? How will you get it dirtside?"

Wendy felt a sense of alarm. "What do you mean? That's
your
job!"

Lando lifted an eyebrow. "Oh really? I don't remember agreeing to that."

"Of course you did! You said…"