opportunity

Back in the days of aimless drifting, I took any job that sent coin my way. I found myself in a junkheap bar working for a man named March, and sat watching the deals go down. My view was suddenly obstructed by a man I hadn’t seen coming. I was dulled and didn’t care about what I was doing, I’m surprised that I didn’t get killed during those dark months. Suddenly a handful of discs clattered on the table in front of me. I jumped, hand on my holster. Looking up, I saw silhouetted by the barlights a lean, grim face, clearly not the Fed I had expected. A tall man loomed over me, his eyes the sharpest thing I’d seen other than the void itself. I glanced down at the charts before speaking, saw the tracks of some of the insane jumps I had taken on the way here. No real reason to make them so wild, I just didn’t care. I glared up at the man with contempt instead of fear.
A hint of a biting smile played on his lips and he spoke, his voice soft, “Let’s get out of here.”
“No.”
“You’ve no idea the trouble you’ve put me through to find you here. I’ve been watching long enough.” This should have scared me more than anything, especially as this man did nothing but put me on edge. There was a ferocity in his eyes that unsettled me.
“I’m on a job” I replied, but he shot back, “I’ll give you a better one.”
“Who are you?’
This was Jameison, the most legendary Runner of any of us. Asking me to work for him, though he could never bring himself to ask for anything properly.
“You’re the one who made these jumps?” He returned my attention to the discs. I nodded.
“Do you have any idea how hard this is to track?”
I nodded again, my brain humming, tumbling over possibilities. It was as if a spark had fallen from his mind into mine, and was settling itself in.
“My last navigator has fallen out. Fly for me.”
“I’m on a job right now.”
“Who is it you’re working for? The fat man in the grey suit? And the contact is the other one, with the three men at his back?” He looked at me and I scarcely nodded, but it was all he needed. He turned to face the bar, and slowly put his hands on his hips. Gunfire rammed through the room, innocent patrons screamed and ran for cover, only one of the contact’s men got a gun out before falling into his own blood. The pot-bellied Captain March had no idea what had happened in the moments preceding his death, he had no notion of betrayal, clarity, forgiveness. In those days, when I was between jobs, I often waited in Runner bars, eyeing those who came and went, sensing when gunfights were imminent. Then I’d stand my ground, and when the shooting ended I’d have my hands on the corpses before anyone’s ears stopped ringing. A sickening job, but it kept me alive for far too long.
The bartender stood up, still holding the glass he had been filling when the guns had started. He looked at Jamieson and caught the bag of coin that was thrown to him. Jamieson’s contacts were more widespread than his legend, at that point. He had indeed been waiting for me. The rest of the crew had holstered their guns and were proceeding rapidly out the door. Jamieson looked down at me, saw the gun in my hand and the rest of my body unmoved, unshaken. In those days, I was bold.
He smiled fully for the first time, and the sparks burst into full flame. I’d go with him.


“Free?” he asked, and for the next two years, I was.

sweet deals

We finally got a good haul, a pull from one junkheap to another, but a paying job. Oberon is filled with crate upon crate of sugar, and it reminds me of the first days on Roller, a full hold and Caban as a genial salesman. Hands in his pockets, he whistled as he inspected the crates, and joking with Em about finding a boxrider half-drowned in sugar. Kon was also considerably cheered, and I managed to illicit looks from Ice that were not threatening but rather long-sufferingly amused as we had to listen to his endless puns about the cargo.
I used our brief stop to conduct business as usual, asking the bartender for recent news. She was new, and young, too young in my opinion to be taking on the hazardous job of bartender and contact for countless Runners. They tend to last a long time, know far too much, and end badly. Maybe she’d retire after her child was born, though I doubt she knows she’s pregnant yet.
The girl told me that Milano has had his business done by the Feds, and he won’t be out for the next several years, with the usual Runner’s charges (unlicensed trade, trespassing, unregistered ship, tariff violations, resisting arrest, unregistered firearms, the same we’d all get) along with broken parole. When I asked about the rest of his crew, she cocked her head and shrugged, “Dead.”
“Dead?”
“Pershing sent them out but they never come back. Contacts said they never showed, so a course Pershing hadta pay. Then Slick shows up in Delaya shot dead.”

The girl was too glib about it, and I doubted she’d seen much death here yet. I wondered if we died, who she’d report it to. The next travelers asking after…who? No one would care, no one would notice, if we never came back to this junkspot, they’d find another Runner to fill our place, with scarcely more than a “remember when”. Anyone who asked would figure we had our business done by the Feds or one of our kind, and we’d be added to the long list most Runners carry inside but refuse to acknowledge.

I shuddered, and remembered the vial waiting for me, all the viable possibilities of life. I thanked the girl and told her to eat another vitamin packet, it would help, and walked away from her quizzical eyes, back to where Caban waited. Suddenly I was flooded with the knowledge that Caban won’t let it happen. He’ll die before he’ll let us die, and nothing in me speaks to an early death for him. There is too much potential there.

Funny thing that those what crossed us would end up dead.

dependence

“How much do you know about Ice?” asked Caban, quietly. As if he was afraid she was listening. She might have been.
“Enough” I replied, wondering why he asked. They had worked together for nearly two years before I showed up, and I was never sure what had conspired during that time. What pacts had they made? Why did they stay with one another? As best as I can reason, they keep each other safe. If he is doubting her now, then these are hard times indeed. He’d asked me about our shared past before, I told him enough that he knows I left our crew and she hasn’t seen past that since. He was surprised by the admission, but took it to mean we’re watching each other carefully, which we are, more than he knows. “That is to say, Caban, I don’t know very much. She’s gone by enough names to make herself untraceable. Even if I did have Govweb tags on her, they’d be useless.”
“How many Govweb tags do you have?” he asked, and I calculated rapidly. My parents and my old captains, and a few folks I never want to run into again. “Enough” I said again, and he smiled.
“Well. I guess none of us really know where the others come from,” he said, and it was almost a lament, “That’s the way of it.”
“It is,” I replied, then ventured, “why are you wondering after Ice?”
“I’m worried. She’s stiffened up some, since before she got hurt, and now its worse.” He didn’t know that she had been haunting me, suspicious of a betrayal I wasn’t planning. A pang of guilt ran through me, that I had deceived this man who trusted to intensely.
“You’re worried she’ll take off again?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” He shrugged and ran his hand through his now-shaggy hair, looking older than he’d looked in a long while. “Not sure I’ll be able to chase her down again.”
“Not sure you’ll need to. Ice takes care of her own. Blackthorn…he’s been a rustspot on her for some time. We’ve all got pasts, you know that. She’s done a fair amount of work making sure that hers never bothers her again.”
He opened his mouth to speak, and I heard the words before he said them. He wanted me to look at her, find her records, go delving where I didn’t belong. So he would know. Caban often asked me what I studied, those long space-nights when I would sit in the nav seat with a book or a pad, he knew that I had resources. He needed to feel that he could trust her, but anything I did would be a break in trust. I cut him off before he spoke, to save his dignity.
“What she does with it, then, is her business alone. She’ll back us.” His mouth snapped shut, then began to open again to ask me how I knew. At that moment, however, Oberon gave a shuddering flicker and I felt once again the sensation of slowly lifting from the ground, my blood and the food in my belly becoming as weightless as the void outside. Someday this will become too much for my bones. I looked over at Caban, who floated beside me, and he reached out to bat at the hair that surrounded my head like a corona. He was not angry that Em had turned off the grav yet again, and for a moment all age fell from his face. Caban looked at me and laughed, and I had no choice but to laugh with him.