Efficiency

Point Hadrian to Target City is the longest haul we've done on Oberon, but its a good jump if you've done it before. Caban didn't believe the route plan I gave him, but grinned when Ice nodded her acceptance of it. We appreciate each other's work. I'll be staying awake tomorrow night to jump, but in the long Run it will save time.

Take a moment, Scout, to examine the phrase "save time". It is completely nonsensical--you can't squeeze minutes together here and there and spend them out later. Time isn't coin, you may steal it or waste it but it can never change hands, and it can never change form. The clocks we've made keep pressing on, and even without numerical display we cannot deny the wear on our bones.
Things happen no matter what we do, if I sat back and let us drift through the night, we'd get to Target City eventually. We'd miss our contact, have to make another, would never know what might have happened if we had been there "on time." So I have chosen to push on, take the fast jump and see where it gets me. My grandmother used to say that I was too curious to sit still. "You just always have to see!" she'd exclaim as I clambered up and over, or devoured the lessons she'd prepared. A smart woman, my grandmother.

Maybe this Log is a waste of time, or perhaps energy. The way I speak and write...too deliberate for these pushy times. Maybe this ship, this job, this life...maybe its all a waste of time. But what else would I be doing?

I tell myself I don't fly alone because it is inefficient. It is hard to make deals with no backup, foolish to load cargo by myself. Having someone in the engine room while you're at the helm...no matter how fast you go you can never be two places at once. Sometimes I think my mind can be, sometimes it has been, but it would never be enough.

Its also terribly inefficient to go insane.

skills

Once Ice saw that I agreed with Caban, or atleast wouldn't join her in resisting Caban's newest plan, she became cross. The rest of the time spent in the Jump Bar involved her trying to needle me into irritation, which might have worked better if I could have heard anything over the noise.
At one point she called my abilities into question, implying that maybe we did need new crew because I wasn't good enough. Sometimes her moods get sharper than her namesake. But we all have tempers.
"What can you do, Scout?" she asked.
"I can reveal past aliases and outstanding warrants." I shot back. I'm never sure if threats work with her. Of course, Caban didn't pick up on the hostility, or perhaps he chose not to acknowledge it.
"Come on, Scout, show us a trick!" he said, pressing me for entertainment. I am not here for entertainment. I am here for information. But what else could I do? After looking around for a moment, I got up and moved through the crowd. Dancers, crushed together, are easy targets. They don't care who is moving against them, they don't notice jostling or exploring hands. Barely worth the talent I've developed.

Within a minute or so I returned to the table with three money wallets, tossed them in front of the crew. Ice pretended not to be pleased, Caban laughed joyfully.
"Well. I knew there was a reason I kept you around. Always useful."
"Live like this, you get bored." I replied, borrowing those long-ago words from the man who taught me to pick pockets. For a moment I remembered all the clubs we'd worked over, the idle time spent lifting coin and, when Lys was feeling particularily mischevious, replacing the empty wallets. He had a harder time moving unnoticed through crowds than I do. We're both ghosts.


We didn't return the money wallets, but Caban was spotted leaving them in the trash, which is why we left slightly sooner than expected, and reminds me why I am glad that they do not allow weapons of any sort in Jump Bars.

Sometimes words are the only weapons we can weild.

dancers

We made a contact and got a deal, which means we're taking a legit cargo out of the system, making a deal in Target City, and bringing something slightly less legit back in through Hadrian's Point. The jumps are easy, and Target City a pleasant destination, and with some planning I'm sure we'll make it through the Point. Again.

We made the contact in a Jump Bar in West Jaidev . They call most music Electronica, now, its made by computers owned by Corporations. Humans still react to a pulsing beat and flashing lights, even if vocalists have been phased out and replaced with electronic beats. No one cares enough to tell the difference, we all just want some noise to drown out the silence of space. The sound was almost pleasant, almost moved me to want to dance. Strange reminders of humanity.

After the deal Caban insisted we stay in the club, he actually enjoyed the atmosphere. Ice and I sat to the side, pretending we didn't mind the head-throbbing crowd, watching Caban charming a small blonde woman at the bar. Another reminder of the strange dances humans insist on performing. I suppose he must get bored, flying with two near-silent women in a near-empty ship. If he weren't so easy to speak to, I would hardly speak at all, not with Ice spreading silence around her.
After the woman left Caban returned to our table, flush-faced.
"We ought to get a crew!" he shouted over the music. He looked back and forth between our skeptical faces. "This job is going to be rough without more. And we can afford to hire them."
"Less profit." said Ice finally.
"Well. For a bit, but we'll be able to take bigger cargos. More profit eventually."

I suppose he is right. I had gotten used to flying light; building a crew means risk, trust, taking a chance...but there are always new people to learn from. From this optimistic haze that surrounds me, I think they might even be friends. And just like that, I knew what was to come. Oberon will fill with strangers, strangers will become comrades, I'll have a crew to look out for.

Point Blank

The last time I came through Hadrian's Point I killed a man.

It was maybe two years ago, I was flying for a man named Yen Li. He was brutal, lawless, but he paid well, which is what I needed at the time. I was a drifter, hiring out for jobs here and there, crashing in junkspots in between, A waste of time, but there wasn't much else to do. Space debris.
Li had a penchant for stealing from other Runners, he'd go out of his way to prove himself the pirate king. We made it into the system and found the only other Runner ship there. We got aboard, as was Li's style, and took out the crew to get the cargo. I came up against a man, he was angry and desperate, swinging and shooting wildly. I knocked the gun from his hand and brought my leg up to break his jaw, but he dodged and caught me. Though he was stronger I managed to twist away and wrench myself out of range of the knife he had pulled from his belt. As I slipped free he dove at me again, so I brought up my gun between us, leveled it at his heart, and pulled the trigger.

He stopped, suddenly, and opened his eyes wide in surprise. He had brown eyes, with tired-looking rings beneath them. His hair was shaggy and black, there was a tattoo on his hand.
There was a strange moment of silence around us as he took a stumbling step toward me, a confused look on his face. Seconds later his heart couldn't find any more blood to pump through the hole in his chest, and he toppled forward onto the deck.
He was a young man, probably new to Running. I could feel the warm spatter of his blood on my face and hands.
"You saved the boy from a lifetime of crime!" laughed Li, which is why I didn't care when, a year later, I heard that he had turned up dead.

That young man's death doesn't haunt me, I'm not sure that it should. Being here reminds me of him, but it reminds me of a lot of things. Space looks pretty much the same no matter where you go, and I've been most everywhere. I've spent fourteen years wandering, two years jumping wildly from end to end, months drifting alone past the borders of what we know. If I filled it with memories I'd go mad.

The universe is a void, like the last choking breath of that man I shot. The only warmth, the only hope, the only chance we have is here, with people. Here on a ship of criminals, a tiny compartment floating through the night. If I didn't believe that, I'd have let myself out into the emptiness long ago.

possibilities

You can't jump past Point Hadrian.

I won't say its impossible, because it isn't. It can be done, of course, with the right ship and the right system and enough daring to give it a try.
But it puts a stop to a lot, its just the way the universe works sometimes. Feds gleefully post all along the asteroid belt near the point, knowing that they have the ability to check every ship coming into or out of the system. It's a wall, really. The only ways to get a ship through the border are to either hide it in the hold of a mining rig; bribe the Feds; hide what you've got and get through clean; or jump it.
The first option is nerve-biting, risky, damaging to profit margins, and deliriously exciting. If you can pull it, you can carry anything and make a profit to match. The Runners game in the system past Hadrian is wide open, ready for anything. The problem is you've got to find crooked miners with a big enough hold and you've got to pay them enough. Same with paying Feds--crooks don't last long, and they're expensive. There is no strict duality in this world, no reason to expect it, either. There are decent-minded criminals and lawless Feds. They are duty-bound to uphold the law, and that makes them worse than Runners. I may break laws, I may steal and shoot and bribe, but I never made a promise to do otherwise. I get paid by what I do, not for something I lie about doing. But crooked Feds make Running possible, or at least easier. They'll get their business done, or have it done for them.

Caban is a traditionalist. We've got an empty hold since Palidiar, and with a legit and boring cargo there is no better time to get through the Point looking decent. Check points make me nervous, of course, even when we're clean. I don't like the feel of scans sweeping through the decks, laying bare my bones. Worse are the boarding checks, strange people judging our hold. Caban has gone by countless checks like these legitimately, his lines are glib and easy. Strange that I trust in his lies.
Another consolation is that Ice is more anxious at checkpoints than even I am. She barely shows it, but I know its there. When I plotted in the course to Hadrian's point she pried in with her sharp smile and asked me why we didn't jump past. Caban laughed, but he hasn't heard all the stories of Jameison's glory days.

So we'll get by, empty hold and legit IDs, fill up and try to get back out past the wall with a fortune or two. Such is Running. I would have thought it impossible to be this optimistic, but then again... not much is as impossible as we believe it to be.

more debris

I don't dream often. My brain goes through its cycles, commonplace images present themselves and swirl away. Flashes of stars and ships, conversations, places. I don't dream of the past, memories come in waking hours or not at all. People I have known come to me, but they're just there, meaningless characters.
Last night I dreamt of my grandfather. He was sitting in the cargo bay, pounding on one crate after another and reading Shakespeare. I think it was The Tempest, but I cannot be sure. Its hard to remember the words, he was reading the old translation, not the new tracks found on Comweb. Most literature is gone, but the watered-down plays linger still. Probably because they still touch what matters to most of us; confusion, lust, love, and loss. The originals have been reworked (that is to say, murdered) to be accessible, schools buy Accessworks packages in some attempt to tribute humanity's outdated genius.
I wonder what else has been lost, what books I'll never have the chance to find.
All day my head has been ringing with my grandfather's voice, "Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him". There's no way I'll ever know where that comes from. How can I be a keeper of knowledge with no place to find it? I can only carry so many books, and while there must be others like me out there, I haven't met them. Maybe I never will.

Perhaps such dreams mean nothing. Random collections of brain tissue crackling inside my spaceshook skull. Oberon itself is an ancient Shakespearean name, dredged up from nowhere that anyone remembers. Consider that two days ago I dreamt of Caban wearing a pink shirt and filling a bathtub. So then that is it, I simply want a bath. Which explains why Ice has been looking at me so strangely these past two days. She thinks I don't notice.

For all that we have lost, some things never change.

hungry wolves

Another day on Palidiar:


Caban swung back into cover, falling back against the wall to reload. Shoulder to shoulder again. He is too jubilant for firefights, though I know he takes it seriously. The only way to deal with the threat of death is through blind happiness. Ice empties her guns into her opponents silently, like an avenging spirit. I prefer a grim face, it is the face of survival. And my captain, laughing gleefully, making my own lips curve despite themselves. Looking back, that fact scares me only slightly less than the bullets.
He told me to cover him so he could get over to Ice's position. Another sweaty smile flashed across his face as I popped back up above the barrier and began shooting, allowing him to scramble to Ice. The two of them opened fire as I ran to them as well. There was less return fire that time, we'd probably taken down a few. I hate to think of the other side, bleeding out together over there, dying for money or desparation. People just like us. I can't help but think that every time I fight Runners: they're just like me. It could just as easily be me, sometimes it has been.
We needed to rush past them to make it back to the ship, Caban locked eyes with us and nodded. We know what to do, but he leads us anyway. Ice nodded in return, brimming with danger. I took a deep breath before I ran, and spoke.

"The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee."

I love old battle poems, they fortify me. Give me rythym and precedence. They also remind me that humans have been fighting for centuries...wasting ourselves. I hate a waste of bullets, I hate more the waste of people.
The charge went well, bullets wailing past us as we sped to the ship and took it out again.
Caban looked at me, a look of confusion and wonder in his eyes. "Shakes, Scout, what was that?"
"Battle song. Picked up from somewhere."
"Well. It worked!" He grinned, humming with the energy of a successful deal, and clapped us both on our shoulders. I use the word 'successful' loosely...it is harder to unload so much refined ore without attracting unwanted attention. It was sloppy work, and we knew it, but the thought occured suddenly that we were for once very wealthy indeed.
Ice paused to reload her guns, not even onboard will she let her guard down.
"You haven't got the stomach for battle" she said.
"You've got enough for us all."
"We work better now than with Wilson."
"He's...it's something."

I forget sometimes that I am a murderer. I have nearly been killed, and to avoid it I have been the one doing the killing. All of us have blood to pay out. We're criminals, we steal fortunes and lives. Sometimes I wonder if it bothers anyone else. Does Ice care about the bodies she left behind? I know some who have convinced themselves it doesn't matter, others who are tortured by the very thought. I've had my hold full of death, but I don't stop gleaming down on this starry path of blood.

economy

Trade brought us to the mines on Noxxe 47, a cluster of dead moons and asteroids delved by one of the mining corporations. They’re not worth terraforming, but shiploads of men are dumped there to dig. Mostly men from the slums of Earth, too poor to settle anywhere else. Depending on the company, there can be decent money made and usually sent back to earthbound families, who lack in money but not in, say, sunlight or air. Some companies pay wages of water and protein tabs, and their workers spend whats left on enough chemicals to keep them blissfully unaware.
Shipping businesses can make a neat profit with contracts to miners, though corporations tend to deal exclusively with big shippers, there is always a place for independents. There are family rigships, always living at the border of legitimacy. Some hold there own, some are squeezed out, some fall ungloriously into Running. Luckily, most corps don’t pay much attention to who is supplying them as long as the price is low and the mining output is steady.
Noxxe 47 is held in a bolthold by its suppliers, the only way to make a profit is to smuggle. We found a connection, a boss in a company who managed to organize his crew to pool together what they’ve stolen from work. He’s gotten a nice load of refined ore. Raw ore floats free in space, but refined ore is a Runner’s pillow—that is, what we make our dreams on.
A previous deal must have gotten him a Comweb pad, though personal connections are banned in the system. Ice found the line on Raceweb, the subpage where encoded messages are posted and picked up by Runners. Its risky, but the line seemed secure and Caban went for it.
Caban is one of those shippers that seems to have fallen into the game through a series of accidents and profitable, illegal deals. I wouldn’t have picked him as a criminal, he’s different than most. Talented, but…innocent, in a way. Its an innocence that makes him daring, almost like he doesn’t know enough to be cautious. He can think of things that wouldn’t occur to practiced, bitter old rusters like me or Ice. Its my job to feed practicality into his plans, Ice is there as backup but she’ll do whatever the shakes she wants no matter what.

The poor wretches on Noxxe 47 plunged this spacedarkened heart into throes of pity. They don’t need the ore, they don’t care about it, they’ll exchange it for water, alcohol, medicine, news…anything other than what they have.

I don’t like mines. They are full of nightmares.

The look in Caban’s eyes when we left Noxxe 47 told me everything I need to know on how he feels about those mines. If we hadn’t rusted our bolts getting here, he might have supplied them for free. I might have done the same, but it wouldn’t have mattered. They’re dead men anyway. Such a beautiful world we’ve made out here.