‘Well yes,’ Pagan said, surprising me.
Cat had bristled but remained calm.
‘Don’t you get this? We’re just guns, that’s all. It’s information warfare and all we’re here to do is keep them safe. They’re going to be the ones doing the fighting,’ Cat said.
‘Demiurge will fucking destroy them if they try.’
‘Right, that’s it. Shut up, both of you,’ Pagan snapped. ‘This is my problem. I may be over the fucking hill, but see how far standards are slipping. Like this we’re just going to get ourselves killed.’
‘So you want to leave me and Mudge behind? Fine. Fuck off with your American friends then. What, are you licking up to her to get in her pants?’ I was just being petty but I wasn’t liking this picked-last-for-PT bollocks, even if I really didn’t want to be here in the first place.
‘Figures that’s how you’d think of it,’ Cat said, an edge in her voice. I was going off her rapidly. Not as rapidly as she was going off me though.
‘No, we want you and Mudge to sort your shit out so you’re not a fucking liability,’ Pagan said, remaining calm.
I turned to give him another mouthful but something about his expression stopped me. He looked serious, maybe even formidable, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was pity there too.
‘Why don’t you go and have this conversation with Mudge?’ I muttered, looking away from the pair of them.
‘You know why,’ Pagan answered quietly.
I did. If Mudge was going to listen to anyone, and he probably wasn’t, it’d be me.
‘I’ve a good mind to just turn around when we get to Freetown and head back,’ I told them both.
‘Well let us know if self-pity wins out, won’t you?’ Pagan said, and then he and Cat turned and walked away.
It was a long and miserable journey in a rusting, damp, dripping, metallic piece of shit that seemed to echo every time somebody moved. It was claustrophobic because there were no external views and it smelled due to rudimentary facilities. I’d had worse trips, but everyone being pissed off with everyone else was what truly put the cherry on top. The only time that Morag even met my eyes was to glare at me. I felt like those looks could cause physical pain. With Pagan and Cat it was strained politeness. Mudge was the only cheerful one, but that just got on everyone’s nerves. I didn’t have a chat with him like Cat and Pagan wanted me to, largely because they wanted me to. But I didn’t get fucked up with him either, which was what I felt like doing.
I felt like a Jonah. Like I was screwing everything up. When I told Mudge this he agreed with me.
I was so pissed off with everyone I didn’t care if they didn’t like me learning the trumpet. I played what I thought were suitably mournful blues numbers that echoed through the ship. I thought it was better than listening to a fellow passenger strain on the cludgy. The others thought differently and the captain threatened to space me. By that point I think I’d managed to piss everyone off. I was almost revelling in it. Like Mudge. I wondered how he managed to keep up his cheerful demeanour.
Of course, at the end of every shit journey is a perfectly shit destination. We were going to Freetown Camp 12.
In theory the Belt was open to exploitation by anyone. In practice everybody had to rely on logistics from the extra-planetary Belt Prospect Industrial Corporation. Outside the big Belt cities of Ceres, Vesta and Hygeia, it was the Freetown stations that provided docking facilities and supplies for their own fleet of factory refinery ships. BPIC were pretty much a law unto themselves, and as long as the minerals kept coming nobody on Earth cared. Any smaller corporate attempts to exploit the Belt were charged exorbitant prices for what they needed from the Freetown stations until they went out of business. If they didn’t take the hint then BPIC could more than afford the corporate army and space forces necessary to protect their assets. More underhand activities were handled either by specialists or by contracting out to the inevitable organised crime elements that ran the Freetown vice franchises.
Anything went out on the Belt as long as it did not disturb the flow of ore. Smuggling, gambling, prostitution and drugs were all fine as long as BPIC got its cut. You could kill someone provided you knew the right people and had enough money. There were rumours of gladiatorial snuff games as well.
In short it was like Earth, maybe a bit more honest about things, although unlike Earth the Belt was one place you were guaranteed a job. That was as long as you didn’t mind indentured servitude and a short life expectancy due to cheap suits with shitty radiation protection. See, humans were cheaper to run than machines. They didn’t even need training any more. Cheap skillsofts would do for on-the-job training. Though you had to pay the company back for that and for your ride out to the Belt — and for your ride back in the unlikely event you ever earned enough before dying in an industrial accident or from radiation poisoning.
You also had to pay for the performance-enhancing drugs you needed to keep up with your quotas. What little money you might have left, instead of saving for your future, you were better off spending at the vice franchises, on alcohol, drugs, sense booths and the truly desperate, and if rumour was true, often slaved, hookers.
Any attempts at unionisation or even basic workers’ rights were stamped on hard. Insurrection or revolution was a joke. Who had the energy? Any ship attempting to bring out seditious materials was impounded, its entire crew executed. BPIC had more power than many Earthbound governments, a virtual monopoly and the muscle to back it all up. They ran their own corporate feudal empire. Their employees were known as Belt zombies.
Breaking Merle out would have been a major operation. Instead we were going to negotiate. Or more accurately use Sharcroft’s money for a bribe. It would have to be a large bribe.
What Cat’s brother had done was audacious. Most ore or other bulk cargoes like ice (it was cheaper to import ice from the Belt than from Earth, to turn into water for the various habitats in Earth orbit) were fired by mass driver, either from the stations or the factory ships themselves. The mass drivers propelled them into high Earth orbit, where net tugs caught them and shunted them to the Spokes’ high ports. Precious metals were mined with automated machinery, as it was more precise and trustworthy than Belt zombies. BPIC Armed Response, the corporation’s well-trained and equipped security force/private military, kept the precious metals under guard. These were transferred back to Earth on high-security, high-speed, intra-system clippers.
Merle had tried to hijack one. On his own. He nearly succeeded. He’d somehow gained access to it via EVA after it had left its security bay at Freetown Camp 12. Got past its electronic security. Taken out its security and crew and then, through a combination of pre-programmed hacks and high-end skillsofts, attempted to divert it. He would have got away with it except that the prearranged security responses he’d bribed a lower-echelon BPIC security employee for were a day out of date. There was a pursuit and a firefight and Merle got caught.
What I couldn’t figure out was why he was still alive. I could understand why they’d want him alive long enough to work out how he’d done what he’d done, but this had happened eight months ago. They would have that information by now. Why go to the expense of locking up someone with his skill set? BPIC didn’t need brigs; they had airlocks to push the troublesome out of. On the other hand, I could make this someone else’s problem and just fuck off back to Earth with Mudge and get drunk and fucked on drugs. I wondered if I had enough money now for my own sense booth. It wouldn’t be difficult to get a ship back home. Hell, the way I was feeling they could just fire me out of one of the mass drivers.