The Callisto Gambit (16 page)

Far below on Callisto, Kiyoshi said, “Kill yourself if you must, Father. But I want my people off that ship.”

“It has to be their choice, Kiyoshi.”

Kiyoshi carried on speaking as if he hadn’t heard. “Otherwise,
someone’s
going to die. And I promise you this, it won’t be me.”

Time to go! The boss wanted them in place to pick him up.

Someone was using the elevator, so Michael popped out of the maintenance airlock on the roof of the command module. He scurried up the outside of the spoke, towards the docking pad. The distance was 430 meters. The spoke was as wide as a highway. He couldn’t fall off. He was not turning. Not swinging upside-down. Jupiter seemed to suck him towards its maw, like a plughole in the black, black sky. He stood still for a moment, telling himself:
not scared.
NOT scared.

So he didn’t have his mecha. That was OK.

He was about to be reunited with his mecha, and … so what, because he didn’t need it anymore. He
didn’t.

He started moving again.

Green light splashed rhythmically across him as the torus swung around the docking pad.
Green—
that meant another ship was coming in. He couldn’t see it yet. From his angle, Jupiter was the only thing in the sky.

Behind him, Dr. Hasselblatter—the boss’s brother—walked with an exaggerated gait, placing each gecko boot down securely before lifting the other one.
He
wasn’t worried about looking like an Earthling.

Junior Hasselblatter zoomed recklessly over Michael’s head, provoking cries from his father. Michael had no idea why that squirt was coming with them, except that Junior always got to do whatever he wanted. He sternly radioed the younger boy: “Cool it. There’s a ship coming in. What if they see you bobbing around like a noob up there? They might have to abort their docking procedure. Or they might
not
see you, and toast you by accident!”

Junior swooped back towards him. Twin gas plumes spilled from the mobility pack of his child-size suit, which was even more pricey and multi-functional than Michael’s. “What ship?”

“The Pegasus lander.”

“Oh. Father Tom?”

“I guess.” Michael hadn’t expected the priest to be back so soon. Did that mean he’d succeeded in his mission, or failed? Michael really hoped he’d failed. He didn’t want any of those Japanese people on board.

Ahead of him, on the still-distant docking pad, the
Angel
danced into view and glided away.

A new voice crackled into his helmet. “Hey,
Salvation,
what’s the
Angel
doing there? Get her out of my way.” It was Zygmunt Antoniak, the boss’s most trusted pilot. He was flying the Pegasus lander today.

Michael spoke before Comms could blame him for the mix-up. “I’m trying!
We’re
on schedule.
You’re
early.”

He ran the rest of the way. The closer he got to the docking pad, the faster it seemed to rotate, although in reality
he
was rotating, while the docking pad stood still. The
Angel
swept past him again. Her raked-back wings flared from her conical fuselage.

Michael was going to get to pilot her!

But first, he had to get her spaceborne and out of the way, so the Pegasus lander could, you know,
land.

Directly ahead, the spoke he was running along vanished under the docking pad. His suit squawked, warning him that he was approaching an intense magnetic field. That would be the torus’s magnetic bearings. Thousands of volts running through there. He took a running leap, and cleared the lip of the docking pad with a bump and a scramble. Behind him, Dr. Hasselblatter moaned, “Ye gods, my pacemaker.”

Michael ran towards the
Angel
. His inner ear told him that he was dizzy. He kept his gaze fixed on his ship. She practically
was
his ship! The boss had given him all her security codes. He panted, “SHIP COMMAND: Initiate pre-launch checks.”

“Certainly, Michael,” the
Angel
replied in the sweet feminine voice that tricked everyone into calling this ship
she,
whereas most ships just got called
it.
“Would you like me to lower the gangway?”

“Yes, please.” Dr. Hasselblatter might appreciate it.

The Pegasus lander plunged out of the sky. Auxiliary thrusters snorting gas, it synchronized with the
Salvation
and hovered a ship’s length above them. The ex-Star Force landing craft sported a long ‘tail’ of radiator fins that made it look like a dragon. Its keel-mounted laser cannon had been removed, but it still had its secondary armaments … as well as its drive, which basically was an armament.

Michael peered up into its drive cone. A few last wisps of ionized propellant drifted out, glowing red in the light that splashed the Pegasus’s fuselage. The lights ringing the pad had changed to red, meaning
Stop—don’t dock.

“What’s the hold-up, Mikey?” Zygmunt snapped.

A flight of stairs unfolded from the
Angel’s
command airlock. Dr. Hasselblatter climbed them, shouting for his son to follow. “Just give me a minute!” Michael said. “You’re
early!”

“What can I say? I get shit done,” Zygmunt chuckled. He was Polish. Yet another of the Catholic mafia, as Michael thought of them—it was a phrase his dad used to use. The boss had laughed grimly when Michael shared that with him.

One of the Pegasus’s airlocks hinged open. A spacesuited figure flew out and swooped down to Michael. “Where are you going, son?”

It was Father Lynch. “Nowhere,” Michael said, which was patently not true. But the boss had told him not to tell anyone …

“Are you going to pick him up?”

“None of your business.”

“Did he really give you command of his own flier?”

“Yes,” Michael shouted, outraged that the priest might think he was taking the
Angel
without permission. “If you don’t believe me, ask Brian or anyone!”

Dr. Hasselblatter popped his head out of the
Angel’s
airlock. “JUNIOR! … Oh, it’s you, Lynch. Yes, believe it or not, the boy has the command. Qusantin trusts
him.”
He spoke the last phrase with an odd inflection that Michael couldn’t interpret.

“I’m glad to see you’re going too,” Father Lynch said.

“For my sins. Are you returning in triumph?”

“Indeed I am. They were more than happy to leave Callisto. I don’t blame them. It’s a shambles down there. Half of the Belt is sleeping on the floor of the spaceport.”

“Did they
all
come?”

“All,” Father Lynch said, “except Kiyoshi Yonezawa.”

Michael breathed a sigh of relief. He had no wish to confront Yonezawa when the boss wasn’t here.

Then his grin faded. If Yonezawa hadn’t come up to the
Salvation
with the rest of his people … that meant he was still down on Callisto.

Well, it’s a big moon.

And I’ve got the
Angel.

“Hah!” Dr. Hasselblatter said. “Declined to stick his head in a noose, did he? Wise man.”

The red lights reflected off Father Lynch’s faceplate. “If there’s a noose,” he said. “we’re the ones holding it.”

“Watch your goddamn mouth, priest,
ja?”

Michael had no idea what the two men were talking about. But he had no trouble understanding the irate interruption from Zygmunt. “Hey! I need to dock. I’ve got five hundred people asking me what the hell is the problem. OK, they’re too polite to say it like that. But we don’t want to give them the impression that we’re disorganized.”

Dr. Hasselblatter raised his voice, although there was really no need to shout on suit-to-suit radio comms. “JUNIOR! Get in here NOW!”

Junior arrowed out of the blackness and into the
Angel’s
airlock, knocking his father over.

The Pegasus’s jackstands shot out like pulled punches.

Michael jumped up the
Angel’s
gangway, elbowed the Hasselblatters out of his way, and ordered the airlock to close.

They all rolled into the cockpit. Michael planted himself in the pilot’s couch and panted, “SHIP COMMAND: Launch!”

Kiyoshi left the piglets snorting happily in one of the Heinlein Hotel’s biggest suites. He’d scattered feed all over the floor for them. He went downstairs and asked to speak to the manager. “My people have left. So I’ll only be needing one room from tonight.”

“You paid in advance for
forty
rooms.”

“Yes, I know. For a week. But I’ll only be needing one of them, so I’d like my money back, please.”

The problem was that he’d paid with a combination of Canadian farmland, physical iridium bearer’s certificates, and tourism stocks. The manager claimed he couldn’t refund that stuff, as it was now worth more than it had been two days ago. Kiyoshi said he would take cash. The manager said he didn’t have cash. Kiyoshi called him a liar. The manager gave him back a few of the bearer’s certificates so he wouldn’t do anything violent.

Kiyoshi stomped out of the hotel, almost as broke as he had been to begin with. He hoped his pigs would still be there when he got back, although he couldn’t bring himself to care much either way. What did pigs matter, when his people were gone?

He walked to Westhab. Along the way, he thought about what he was going to do. His steps slowed as he neared Legacy’s Leather Goods.

The plaza of Westhab 2 was busier now. When he was here before, it had been early morning, local time, the shops barely open. Now it was noon. The sun-tube blazed. Ice-creams dripped in tourists’ fists. Window-shoppers wandered in and out of the boutiques. The better-off refugees had to fill their time somehow.

Coming level with the doorway, he glanced inside. He saw that in addition to luggage, the shop also sold leather clothing.

He smiled to himself and went in.

People pulled away from him. Guy in an EVA suit, empty-handed, stinking like he’d spent months on a tramp hauler. No wonder.

The shopkeeper moved towards him, clearly intending to ease him out of the shop—and checked.

At the same time, a flyer knifed into Kiyoshi’s inbox.
Would you like to sign up for our customer loyalty program? Enter your name and ID here.
He deleted it. Not falling for that.

The shopkeeper was an older man. His gray hair grew in wings curling back from his ears. The deep lines on either side of his mouth—so easy to fix with cosmetic surgery—spoke of well-earned wisdom and taste. Just what you wanted in a fellow who was about to sell you a four-figure handbag. But there was a petulant twist to his lips.

“Can I help you?”

“Yeah,” Kiyoshi said. “I need clothes.”

“You may be interested in our genuine calfskin line. Trousers, shirts, and jackets …”

“Got anything cheaper?”

The petulant set of the shopkeeper’s mouth grew more pronounced. He led Kiyoshi to the back of the shop, where leather garments hung on a standing rack. “These are samples. If you see anything you like, we can print it up in your size.”

“Printed? Then it wouldn’t be real leather.”

“No,” the shopkeeper said, “it would not.”

He turned his back on Kiyoshi and went to help other customers. Kiyoshi browsed through the samples. There was a mirror behind the rack. He watched the shopkeeper explaining the merits of a rucksack with way too many pockets, zips, and tool holsters for the couple who were interested in it. The shopkeeper spoke fast, whizzing through his sales patter. He was clearly rattled.

He suspects,
Kiyoshi thought.
But he isn’t sure.

Kiyoshi himself, on the other hand, was now quite sure who the shopkeeper was.

And he was also sure that he didn’t want his help.

What help could he give me, anyway?
Jun was AWOL. The solar system was being bombed into rubble. Star Force was tied down in the Martian theater. The entirety of the UN’s resources, both material and human, were being sucked into this stupid, destructive war. All that remained out here on the frontier was empty promises and rubbish.

Exhibit A: Oleg Threadley, formerly a colonel in the dreaded Information Security Agency, now running a leather goods boutique on Callisto.

Kiyoshi called him back. “I’d like two pairs of these, two of this, one of these, and that rucksack you were showing those people.”

“What fabric did you have in mind for the trousers and shirts?”

“Oh, something cheap.”

“And what color?”

“Black.”

Threadley tapped on his tablet. A printer started up in the room behind the shop. “It will take just a few minutes to print those up for you.”

“Print me up a couple of plain t-shirts and some underwear, too. I’m sure you’ve got templates on there.”

Threadley shot him a hostile glare. “Of course. Black?”

“Black,” Kiyoshi confirmed. “How much will that be, with the rucksack?”

“The rucksack is real leather. It’s treated with a special polyurethane layer which prevents cracking in extremely cold environments, while also making it resistant to the chemicals commonly used in decontamination procedures. Translation, you can wear it in vacuum. It costs 6,000 spiders.”

“Whew. That’s steep.”

Threadley smirked viciously. “Did you wish to pay in cash?”

“Do you take physical iridium bearer’s certificates?”

Kiyoshi walked out of the shop wearing drainpipes, a shirt with lots of pockets, and a jacket with even more pockets
and
superfluous zips and buckles, all in black fake leather.

“You look like a collision between a gothic folk band and a cutlery drawer,” said Threadley. They were outside.

“How much’ll you give me not to post your identity on the internet?”

“You don’t know my identity.”

Kiyoshi fended off some more wifi-borne spam. Some of it was almost good enough to get past his filters. The old man really wanted to confirm
his
identity.

Kiyoshi didn’t need data scraper programs for that. Memory sufficed. “Your loyal customers might want to know that Legacy’s Leather Goods is a front for the ISA …
Oleg.”