“That’s just your short left leg, Gimpy. I wasn’t talking about the game, anyway. I’m saying about the mystery box.”
That’s what they’re calling the suspension cube in their cargo hold.
Hunter says, “What’s the bet?”
“What it is. My guess is a bomb. When Dandy’s people get here, we all go boom.”
“They wouldn’t bring us all the way out here to detonate a bomb.”
It makes enough sense to Lana, actually. “If it’s a prototype, maybe,” she says, and feels immediately guilty. The undertone of this conversation is that Jack is going to get them all killed.
“That’s right,” Stetson says. “We’re in the perfect place to test a weapon. It wouldn’t register on any sensors.”
“You know what?” Hunter says. “I’ll take that bet. I can’t lose.”
“How’s that?”
“If you’re right, and it is a bomb, we’ll be dead before I have to pay up.”
Stetson grunts. “You always find a way to weasel out.”
Hunter frowns and glances at Lana, goes back to the game.
Lana pretends not to notice the implications of Stetson’s remark. He and Hunter have always acted like rivals. Lana never thought to ask if they’d been romantically involved, though if they had been, romance would have had little to do with it. She used to maintain psychological profiles on the crew. They were unofficial, and she did it more for her own peace of mind than theirs. When you’re stuck in a tin can with five other people for months at a time, it helps to know what makes them tick. And what sets them off. Stetson has a mean streak, especially when threatened. He lashes out because he’s insecure. Hunter’s not exactly a saint, either. According to Jack, she fought in the war when she was just fifteen, but not for the Star Nation. She was a pilot for a rebel faction loosely affiliated with FROST. In a very real way, she could have wounded the same soldiers Lana treated. Once it became clear FROST would lose, Hunter abandoned and went underground. It probably saved her life. She comes from a large family, but most of her siblings didn’t make it through the conflict. She’s always been closed off. If she and Stetson did have a tryst in the past, it could only end in fireworks. Then again, supposing they did, it’s impressive they’ve remained as civil as they have. Lana didn’t manage as well with Jack.
Speaking of Jack, she’s seen little of him since their arrival. When something’s on his mind, he hibernates. Last she knew, he went to make a late breakfast, which means he’ll be in the kitchen or his bunk.
She stands and heads for the door. “Gonna check on the food.”
Stetson says, “You didn’t place your bet.”
She thinks a moment. “Something bad,” she says, and ducks out.
Eggs are pretty much impossible to store on a spaceship. Even in suspension, they crack and lose their innards, end up congealed. Something about micro-pressure changes. The only way to guarantee their safety is to plop them into a grav tank typically reserved for human beings, which would be a waste of resources. Powdered eggs, on the other hand, may be artificially colored and taste like rubber, but they last. Jack combines the powder with water in a large bowl, stirs it with a spatula, pours it out on the grill beside a row of sausages. He should have had a real egg or two on Earth. He’d have settled for hardboiled. And he hates hardboiled eggs. Why is it that even something loathed becomes an indulgence when rare? He folds the eggs and sausage and onions into a tortilla and leans over the counter and eats. He leaves the rest out in the dining room and heads back to his quarters. He lies on the bunk and tries to get his head on straight.
He knows the others are on edge, wondering what they’re walking into, the lovely little note, what Dandy’s intentions may be in all of this, and just what kind of clown might pop out of the mystery box. Personally, Jack couldn’t care less about its contents. It doesn’t matter why they’ve gone through all of this trouble, why they have to make the handoff in the astronomical equivalent of a shady back alley. He cares only about the fact that they have been given a task and they have to complete it. They’ve done their part. It’s up to Dandy to follow through. If Jack can make good with him, maybe he can make good with the second party, the buyer, back on Earth. He’ll go legitimate like he said, jump through the Star Nation’s hoops and scrape by with a penny here and a penny there.
Except the more he thinks about it the less appealing it sounds. He doesn’t owe the Star Nation. Did they compensate him for his time as a POW? Did they help with his medical bills? Did they do anything to end the nightmares when he got home? Did they pay for his therapy sessions with the quack doctor who, after all his diagnosing, calmly told him to “put it out of his mind and move on”? The Nation left them to their own devices. It took a solid month after the war ended for the camps to be rescued. There were food drops, but no evacuations, no medical experts pouring in. The sick were still sick, and anyone who was seriously starved overate and burst their guts and died. FROST’s prison guards had different reactions to defeat, depending on the camps. On Enceladus, they let the air out. Killed over 15,000 prisoners. Europa’s entire prison population was supposed to have been ordered into hand-dug pits and then sliced up with laser rifles. A handful of the camp commanders refused, knowing that the war was over and they’d been defeated. Most were not so merciful.
At Gertrude on Ganymede, where Jack was held, the guards went skittish. Turned tail. Some abandoned. Suddenly the prisoners ran the prison. It was a strange and immediate switch. Jack watched ten prisoners take turns beating a guard to death with his own baton. Blunderbuss, the one who beat him so bad the day of the big announcement, vanished from the camp, but was eventually arrested. He was never executed, though. Within ten years, the new prisons housing war criminals were deemed too costly, so they were shut down and the serial murderers released. The show of so-called justice had ended.
Anyway, profit and justice are the same thing in the eyes of corporations, and the Star Nation is little more than that. Today they let men like Jim Dandy corner the weak because it works for their system. They add new laws and regulations to the shipping industry so they can collect heftier fees. A new tax here, a new fine there. All in the name of controlling the flow of cash. Petty criminals scraping by are punished, but billionaire murderers and thieves will never see the inside of a jail cell. As for the everyman, the hardworking blue collar asshole who abides by the law because he’s either scared or believes himself loyal, he belongs at the bottom of the food chain. Scraps for the suckerfish. It has always been this way. Nothing to get upset about. Just keep your head down till the guillotine drops.
His thoughts are interrupted by a knock at the door, followed by Lana’s voice. “You in there?”
He swings his legs over the bunk and sits up. “Come in.”
She holds out two steaming mugs, offers one, and he takes it and inhales the coffee steam and carefully tips it to his lips. It burns his tongue, waking him.
“Careful. It’s hot,” she says.
“Thanks.”
He pats the bed. She hesitates, then drops beside him, leaving a noticeable gap. He feels the shadow of an urge to wrap his arm around her. Funny how years of separation can’t erase that fondness.
“You okay?” she says.
“Yeah. Healed up after the last jump.” He slaps his belly where the bruises used to be. Grav tanks are great for the wounded.
“That’s not what I meant.”
He sips his drink. She wants him to say that he’s scared, that it’s unrealistic to think Jim Dandy will forgive his debt, that this hole can only get deeper, that maybe he saw it coming when he first got into this business, that it was all a self-fulfilling death wish, punishment for his unforgivable sins. But none of this is true. He feels like a cornered animal, ready to claw out the eyes of whoever’s responsible for all this shit. Except “all this shit” is indefinable, and there is no one to blame but himself.