The Flight of the Tombaugh 1/5
J2 RPS AU
PG-13
Part 1 of 5
Master post
Art
The Tombaugh, an innocent-looking but heavily-modified smuggler’s spaceship, floated serenely through space. Her pilot sat in the cockpit, gazing out at stars and planets and distant moons. His name was Jensen and he’d been trained to fly freighters for a mining conglomerate, but as soon as he could free himself of that job he’d taken to the sky for himself and not looked back. He’d fallen into smuggling the way he imagined a lot of people did - he needed money and didn’t much care how he made it. His crew was just himself and his co-pilot Jared (who’d been born in space and had an affinity for the ships that made their way through it), and even though it was just the two of them, the Tombaugh was a fast ship, Jensen was a skilled pilot, and while they’d been chased plenty, they were infrequently caught.
Which was all well and good, Jensen thought now, but it would help if their reputation found them a job. They were in hock to his old friend Chris who'd gotten them out of trouble several months ago, because while they weren't caught often, that didn't mean they weren't caught at all. Chris had paid their bail, freed the Tombaugh from impound, and most importantly - and expensively - cleared their records in that sector. He'd given them two choices to pay him back: either work for him, and he'd keep their ship as guarantee, or treat his help as a loan, with the ship as collateral. Jensen hadn't wanted to work for anyone ever again, even someone he knew and generally liked, especially if he couldn't even fly his own ship, so he and Jared had taken the second option. But even if they didn't have this debt to clear, man could only lay low among the back lanes of settled space for so long before he needed to restock and refuel and -
“Fuck!” Jared said over the internal comms. Jensen heard a crash.
“You okay?” he called.
No answer.
“Jared?”
“Fucking screws,” Jared called back.
“What are you doing? Don’t break my ship.”
“I’m not gonna break your ship.” He sounded annoyed.
Jensen and Jared were equal partners in all their shady business endeavors, and one of the reasons they started working together at all was because Jared was an excellent and inventive mechanic, but the Tombaugh was Jensen's, and if anyone was going to break anything, it should be him.
There was another, smaller, crash, followed by a clatter, followed by indistinct noise that sounded like Jared talking to himself, or to the ship. Jensen swiveled around in his chair and decided he should go check on things.
“Fuck,” Jared said again, before Jensen could get up.
“What?”
“Water recycler's busted.”
“Fuck.” Jensen thought for a minute. “How long do we have?”
“If we're careful? Four days.”
“Fuck.”
Jared loped into the cockpit and sat in the co-pilot's seat. “We can make it to Port Wombat if we push it.”
Jensen considered. He looked sideways at Jared. “You just want to see Genevieve, don't you.”
“I want to fix the water recycler.” But he was grinning. Genevieve owned a bar, the Glass Lamp, where the drinks were cheap, the food simple, and the crowd familiar. They'd picked up several jobs there, and if anyplace on the ground could feel like home, it did.
Jared's expression changed suddenly. “We got the credits for a new recycler?”
“Depends where we look. We'll need fuel too.” Jensen considered his co-pilot. “Brush up on your bargaining.” Jensen hated dealing for parts and supplies. He'd just as soon pay the asking price and be done with it, except a lot of the asking prices in Port Wombat were yanked up for the desperate and ignorant, and he hated knowing he was being taken advantage of more than he hated to dicker. Jared, on the other hand, liked to bargain, and he liked talking to strangers. He could get what they needed for a good price, and Jensen could ping some of their contacts in search of work.
Three days later Port Wombat appeared on the Tombaugh's screens. Jensen and Jared had been sparing with their water, using it only to drink and not for things like washing dishes or themselves - they hadn't even cooked with it - and Jensen was already starting to feel gritty and grimy. It was purely psychological, he knew, but the fact was that he couldn't wait to find a cheap room with its own shower so he could wash.
After that, parts for the water recycler and fresh fuel cells, and after that, hopefully, if all the stars aligned, a job.
The external comms crackled. “Approaching ship, please acknowledge.”
Jensen jerked himself out of his daydream. “This is the Tombaugh,” he said, “Colony Cluster registration NL12-967M4, requesting a land berth. No cargo.”
“Registration acknowledged. Please dock in Yard G.”
“I told Genevieve we were coming,” Jared said, appearing in the cockpit as the ship started to descend. Jensen glanced over and noted that he’d changed out of his grimy coveralls and into more presentable pants and shirt. He'd even combed his hair. Jensen glanced back at the windshield. He could find Yard G with his eyes closed but he liked to watch their approach.
You could park your ship above the stratosphere over Port Wombat and have one of the landing field shuttles pick you up and ferry you to the surface - big ships did it all the time - but why do that, when you could drop through the atmosphere, feeling your ship adjusting to each successive layer, watching the change in cloud cover and the way the buildings of the port got closer and closer until you finally touched down? It was exhilarating and he wouldn't pass it up for anything.
He found an empty berth and set the Tombaugh down on new-looking asphalt. He hadn't even finished the shut-down procedures before Jared had unbuckled himself and jumped out of his seat. Jensen heard the starboard hatch open, followed by faint whoops of joy, followed by the sound of Jared clattering back up through the hatch and into the cockpit.
“Fresh air!” he cried. “It smells so....” He gestured vaguely, as if trying to find the right word.
“Don't say 'clean'.” Almost nothing about the air in Port Wombat was legitimately clean.
“So fresh! You're rolling your eyes at me. I don't care. We're gonna eat fresh food and drink cold drinks and take long showers and shoot the shit with people in person. And I'm gonna fix the water recycler for cheap.” He swatted Jensen on the arm to get him to move. “Come on, the day's a-wasting.”
They grabbed their overnight bags and went out through the starboard hatch, Jared trotting between ships towards town while Jensen made sure the Tombaugh was locked up tight. Just three days ago they were staring down dehydration, and now they were staring down the exciting prospect of food and drink and bathing facilities. They could have asked the control tower to send a tram to collect them at the landing field, but after having been cooped up in the ship, they both wanted to stretch their legs.
Jensen took stock as he ambled towards town, looking for ships he knew. There was the Lovelace and her sister ship the Lovecraft - both of them owned by some friend of Jared's and both of them looking like they'd lost a game of bumper boats - and the humped shape of the Canned Ham, instantly recognizable by her pink paint job and silver trim as much as by her smooth lines and compact shape. She belonged to a bounty hunter named Danneel whose career had actually started in official law enforcement in the Colony Cluster, long before she met Jensen and Jared.
Jensen was half convinced she and Genevieve were an item, and half convinced Jared knew it too, but what people did in the privacy of their own rooms was their own business, and anyone who lived on the fringe lived a precarious life, so why shouldn't they take their pleasures where they could?
And speaking of pleasures... there was a cheap hostel not far from the Glass Lamp with decent beds but more importantly hot water and lots of it. But food and drink first, and he should find Jared.
Jared was unsurprisingly ensconced at the bar, two glasses already in front of him, chatting with Genevieve while she wiped the counter. She was wearing a high-necked green shirt with baby blue trim, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, brown hair tied in knots all over her head. She looked fresh and pretty, clearly having made herself look nice for Jared just as he'd tried to make himself presentable for her.
Jensen plopped down onto a stool. Jared slid one of the glasses over without looking at him, and Jensen took a grateful sip. He wasn’t sure what was in it, only that it was cold and wet and a little spicy, and it perked him right up.
“Jared tells me you need a new water recycler,” Genevieve said.
“And a shower,” Jared added, grinning.
“And a shower,” Jensen repeated. “A long hot one. And fuel.”
“So we'll be here a couple days. You'll get tired of seeing us.”
“Never,” Genevieve said. She flicked her rag at Jared. “You should know Aldis is gone.”
Aldis was one of Jared and Jensen's favorite people for cheap parts of uncertain provenance. Everything in his shop had probably fallen out the back of a freighter, but he could acquire what he didn't have on hand, he was a friendly guy, and he was about as honest as it was possible for a black marketeer to be.
“Gone as in 'left the port'?” Jensen asked. “Or as in 'left the surface'?”
“He's not dead, is he?” Jared added.
“Gone as in 'vanished overnight but left his stock behind',” Danneel said, appearing out of nowhere and leaning over Jensen's shoulder. “Word is someone recognized some part he sold them - it came from a ship they'd reported stolen - the law found parts of three missing ships in a bunch of storage sheds they tracked back to him. Little personal cruisers, all previously reported stolen. Next day he was gone.” She reached between Jensen and Jared to snag Jensen's drink and finish it.
“Hey!” he protested.
She put the now-empty glass back on the counter, wrapped her arms around Jensen's neck, and kissed him on the temple, before releasing him to do the same to Jared. Violently pink hair swung into Jensen's face as Danneel turned her head. He didn't know the true story of why she'd left law enforcement in the Cluster to hunt bounties across settled space, but sometimes he wondered if it had anything to do with her dislike of the uniform and its attendant regulation hair.
“It's nice to see you,” she said. She rested an arm on each of their shoulders. “Your timing's good - I'm chasing a bounty and just stopped to refuel. You passing through? Looking for a job? Can I get one of those?” she asked Genevieve, nodding to the glasses on the bar. Genevieve turned to mix her drink.
“We need a new water recycler,” Jared said. “Did law enforcement impound Aldis's stock?”
“Actually, they did,” Genevieve said. She put a glass on the counter. Danneel reached between Jensen and Jared, picked it up, and took a swig. “They're learning to move quick without broadcasting all their plans first.”
“That sucks. He had decent stuff. I liked him.”
“You boys want something to eat?”
Jensen suddenly realized how hungry he was. “Please,” he said. They'd have to restock the galley, too, once the Tombaugh was fixed and ready to go. “Surprise us.” She went into the kitchen and Jensen turned to Danneel. “You said you're chasing a bounty? Where is it?”
“The Cluster. I figured I'd get a drink while the Ham was powering up.” She shook her head, drank some more. “Fuel's so fucking expensive here.”
“Fuel's fucking expensive everywhere.”
Jared pulled his handheld out of a pocket. “I just want to check the news,” he explained, when Jensen tried to see what he was looking at. “See what people are up to. Hey, this is interesting. You remember Adrianne Palicki? She's trying to get to the Cluster. She says she's been stuck in Port Wombat for a couple weeks.”
“Why?”
“Looks like her ship was impounded and she can't get the credits to get it back. And, uh, there might be a warrant out for her arrest.”
“What, here?” Why would she even come to Port Wombat if she was wanted here? “For what?”
“I can't tell.” Jared scrolled through the feed, no doubt trying to get more details on the warrant. He looked over at Danneel. “You're going to the Cluster. You could take her.”
“Oh hell no,” she said, with some heat.
“Why not? The Ham's big enough, and you'd do it for us.”
“I like you. She's a rancid bitch and I don't want her on my ship. Don't look at me like that - you think just because you're nice to people and people are nice to you - of course they are, I mean look at you, you're adorable - you think everyone's a decent human being. They're not. She stole contracts from me. I lost bounties because of her. She wants off this rock so badly, you take her.”
“We're not going to the Cluster,” Jensen said mildly. He bore no great love for Adrianne - she was sneaky, even by the standards of bounty hunters and smugglers and other generally shady characters - but he didn't see the point in getting bitchy about it. “Right now we're not going anywhere.”
“I'm not letting that cunt on my ship. But now I know there's a warrant out for her I might just turn her in.”
“You can't do that!” Jared protested.
“Why not?”
“Because! If you cash in Adrianne's warrant, then anyone we know could do it to us. You don't want us to go to jail.”
Danneel raised an eyebrow at him. “First, you've already been to jail. Second, that's not how it works. Besides, I told you, people like you. Not everyone likes her.” She put her glass down and patted him and Jensen on the shoulders, then dug in her pockets for money. She slapped some credits on the counter. In most places, for most people, a credit was just a line of code instantly transmitted from one account to the next, but in places like Port Wombat, places frequented by smugglers and conmen and those whose business was semi-legal at best, cold hard cash was just as common. It was harder to track.
Bounty hunting was a legitimate, licensed career choice, but bounty hunters sometimes inhabited the same shadowy corners as their bounties, and conducted their personal business the same way.
“I'm out,” Danneel went on. “I'll drop you a line when I've finished this job, if you want to get up to something fun together.” She turned on her heel and walked out, bright pink ponytail swinging behind her.
Jensen and Jared looked at each other, no doubt both thinking the same thing - What was that all about?
“Where's our food?” Jared asked. So maybe they weren't thinking the same thing. “Genevieve!” he called, leaning over the bar to yell in the general direction of the kitchen. “We're hungry!”
“What's Adrianne's warrant worth?” Jensen asked.
“We're not turning her in.” Jared was still looking towards the kitchen. A couple of women in coveralls sitting a few stools down also leaned forward and called for the bartender.
“I'm curious. What's she worth?”
Jared gave Jensen his handheld. Jensen glanced over the warrant, which had indeed been issued from Port Wombat. Smuggling of a controlled substance, smuggling of regulated goods, falsification of documentation, resisting arrest -
“Sorry that took so long,” Genevieve said, appearing out of nowhere and putting two plates on the bar in front of him and Jared. Each plate held a pile of spicy shredded meat of uncertain provenance, a pile of slightly charred greens, and a couple slices of dark bread. “My cooktop heats unevenly. Do you mind giving it a look, when you get a chance?” That question was directed towards Jared, who for once seemed more interested in his food than her.
“Sure,” Jensen answered for him. They weren't bounty hunters but there was no reason they couldn't turn Adrianne in, assuming they could find her. “Wait for him to finish stuffing his face. I'll see if I can find us a job. What is this?” He gestured to the greens on his plate.
“Water kale. You didn't see the hydroponics shed on my roof? Call Sam Ferris.”
“Shit,” Jared and Jensen said at the same time. Sam was an old hand at finding semi- or not-at-all-legal work for people who needed to make a quick credit. They should have thought of her first.
“Okay,” Jensen said to Jared, “we'll call Sam. I'll go see her, you'll fix Genevieve's cooktop, we'll find a new water recycler, we'll be good.”
Jared nodded, the best agreement he could make with a mouthful of water kale. Jensen made a sandwich with his shredded meat and bit into it. It tasted like spices and sauce. He couldn't tell what kind of meat it was, which meant it was just as likely to be synthetic or soybean as it was to have come from an actual animal. He didn't care.
Genevieve went off to serve other customers. Jared and Jensen finished their food and drinks, and Jensen left to get a room at the hostel so he could finally wash. Jared could pay the tab.
It didn't take Jared long to source and bargain for a new water recycler, and installing it went quicker with both of them working on it. Paying for it practically cleared them out of credits. Hopefully Sam would have something and they wouldn't be broke for long.
Sam ran a caffeine bar in one of Port Wombat's covered markets, and Jensen was looking forward to cajoling a free cup of hot caffeine out of her while they talked shop, but it was not meant to be. He was within sight of her place when he heard someone call his name and felt them grab his arm. Jensen almost punched the person out of reflex but they put their arms up in defense.
“Don't hit me, man! My skies, you're jumpy.”
“Misha,” Jensen said, not sure if he was pleased or apprehensive. Misha was an old colleague with whom Jensen and Jared sometimes did business, and while he and his crew were more thieves and conmen than smugglers, sometimes they'd have a job that was worth a good number of credits. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you! Although some caffeine wouldn't go amiss.” He glanced sideways towards Sam's stall, then shook his head. “But later. You look well. I have a proposition for you.”
“Okay. Is it for a job?”
“You'll see. Chad has a plan.” Misha's eyes darted around. “Come back to the Glass Lamp. I'll buy you a drink.”
“Does it involve a job?” Jensen repeated.
“You know Chad.” Misha winked. “Always planning something.”
“I do know Chad. That's why I need details before I commit.” Chad was Misha's second. He was a fun guy but Jensen didn't fully trust him.
Misha glanced around again. They were surrounded by stalls and people. No one seemed to be paying attention to them, but you never knew what kind of security was hooked up around these places. What law enforcement there was on Port Wombat was interested in catching people who disturbed the peace, not low-level criminals making their low-level plans - unless those low-level criminals had warrants out - but stall owners could have set up their own security, or someone could be wandering around the market recording any chatter they came across. It was a paranoid way to live, to assume someone was always listening to you, but it was a good way to stay off the radar.
“Not here,” Misha said. “Genevieve's holding a booth for us.” He started to walk off, pulling Jensen with him. Jensen gave Sam's caffeine bar a longing look over his shoulder but followed Misha out of the market.
Jared was sitting at the bar working his way through a plate of steamed buns when they got to the Glass Lamp, but as soon as he saw Misha and Jensen he slid off his stool and followed them to a booth in a dark corner.
Genevieve caught Jensen's eye as they went, lifted her hand to her mouth, and tilted it - Do you want a drink? He shrugged and pointed to Misha. I don't know. Only if he's buying.
“I got hungry,” Jared said, once they were seated. He pushed his plate towards Jensen. “Have a bun.”
“So tell us about this proposition,” Jensen said to Misha. “Where is Chad, anyway?”
“Talking to people. Setting things up. You know.”
“If it's not a big job, we don't have time for it.”
“It's not a job yet. But you can make a lot.”
“Are you going to give us any details?” Jared asked.
“Have you heard of Sahar Technologies?”
“It's a terraforming outfit, isn't it?”
Misha looked around the bar, leaned across the table, lowered his voice, and said “It used to be Green Worlds.”
Jensen and Jared looked at each other. Green Worlds was a now-defunct terraforming company, put out of business after a catastrophe on a reasonably-sized moon called Bernon on the edge of settled space. Terraforming in its early days was a trial-and-error kind of business, because sometimes it was hard to know how a planet or a moon would react to the process until things were underway. But by the time Green Worlds got the contract for Bernon, improvements in science and engineering meant that disasters were rare, and full-scale catastrophes almost unheard of.
The terraforming on Bernon held long enough for a good-sized settlement to plant itself, but the forced climate suffered a swift chain of breaks that not only destroyed the settlement and killed everyone in it, but left the moon too cold and too inhospitable for a permanent colony. And you couldn't terraform twice. Green Worlds was subsequently accused of a host of crimes. Payouts were made, high-level resignations were accepted, fines were levied, regulations were passed, contrition was expressed. The firm was allowed to dissolve its assets and go out of business. There was a research station on Bernon now, as the failure of the terraforming and the frozen nature of the moon apparently offered some great research opportunities, and it was rumored that the destroyed settlement had been taken over by a doomsday cult, but the place was mostly known as a cautionary tale, and no one went there because there was nothing to go there for.
Jensen was pretty sure the mining conglomerate he used to work for had done some business with Green Worlds back in the day, but he couldn't remember exactly what business, and in any case the conglomerate had nothing to do with Bernon.
Jared bit into a bun and said “Are you getting into terraforming now?” with his mouth full.
“The owner and CEO put up a reward for his daughter. She's missing.”
“So?”
“It's a private contract. It's a lot.”
A private contract meant there was no competition to find the missing person. The fact that the reward was a lot of money meant... nothing, yet.
“Why are you telling us?” Jensen asked. “We don't do missing persons. Neither do you.” He sat up in the booth and tried to get Genevieve's attention. Now that he could guess Misha was going to keep talking, Jensen was going to get a free coffee out of him before having to tell him no.
“True. But we consider it when a contractor gets ahold of us with a proposition. Did I mention it was good credits?” Misha dug around in his jacket pockets and retrieved a beat-up handheld. He poked and swiped at the screen for a minute before handing it across the table to Jensen. “That's the job listing. Look at the reward.”
Jensen tilted it so Jared could see as well. There was a picture with the listing, a headshot of a young woman, maybe in her mid-twenties, with blonde hair and a pale green jacket that even Jensen recognized as being out of style. It was clearly an old picture. Jared stuffed the rest of the bun in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. It was a lot of money.
“Do you know where this missing woman is?” Jensen asked.
“Not quite.”
“'Not quite'?”
“Why did you tell us you had a plan?” Jared asked.
“Because I do,” Misha said. “And it's 'We're still finalizing some details but if you meet us in ten days we'll tell you everything'.” He popped a bun in his mouth and grinned around it.
“That's not a plan.”
Genevieve came over. “What can I get you boys?” she asked. She nodded at the remaining buns and said “I love you, but you have to pay for those,” to Jared. He pointed at Misha.
“Coffee,” Jensen said. “Add just enough milk to make it a shade lighter and spike it with something. Surprise me.”
“I'll take a beer,” Jared added.
“I'm good,” Misha said.
“That's not what I heard,” Genevieve said, winking at him before walking off to get the drinks.
“Let me get this straight,” Jensen said to Misha. “You're buying us drinks just to tell us the head of Sahar Tech put up a reward for his missing daughter? That's not worth anything to us.”
Jared took the handheld, wiped his hands on his shirt to clean off any bun crumbs, and scrolled around. “It is a lot of money,” he reminded Jensen, and to Misha he said “You told us it was a private contract.”
Misha nodded. “And the person who got it asked us for help. It could be a big job.”
“It's finding one person. How big could that be?” He bit into another bun.
“This is dumb, Misha,” Jensen said. “You don't need us for this thing. Thanks for the coffee, but you wasted your time.”
“Meet me and Chad in ten days and you'll change your mind,” Misha said, sounding very sure of himself. “I promise.”
“We'll see.”
Genevieve brought the drinks and took Misha's credits. Once she was gone, Misha took a bun and said “Ten days. You remember that bar on La Spina?”
“The Unseen?” Jared said. “That place is a hole. Some girl shot at me the last time we were there because she thought I looked at her funny.” He sipped his beer. “Good fried mush, though.”
“Ten days from today.” Misha put his handheld back in a pocket and slid out of the booth. “Meet me and Chad. You won't regret it.” He took a bun and walked out of the bar.
“That wasn't totally a waste of time,” Jared said. “He paid for the buns. You think it's worth it to meet him? The reward's a lot of money but La Spina's a dumb place to get killed.”
“Who do you think got the contract?” Jensen asked, curious. “Why would they ask Misha for help? You need to find a missing person, you ask a bounty hunter or a PI. Not a couple of thieves.”
Jared ate another bun. “We can't just hang around for another ten days, though. I mean, I can, but we still need credits.”
“We'll go back to Sam's. She's gotta have something.”
She did.
“You're in luck,” she told Jared and Jensen, as they crowded into her tiny office in the back of her caffeine bar. “I just got a line on a bunch of crates of vapor sticks. Take them to Heda Station, see your friend with the hair.” She winked at Jensen.
Vapor sticks were considered addictive and so were taxed all across settled space. They were regulated especially tightly on space stations, which made them easy targets for smugglers and left customs officials open to bribes. Acquiring the crates, and then acquiring forged tax stamps and documentation, required some sweet-talking on Jared's part and some promises on Jensen's part and the very last of the credits on both their parts. But they'd make back their money and then some, and besides, Jensen hadn't seen Bob, the friend with the hair, in a while.
Bob was, among other things, their original contact on the station, the guy who had done the important work of introducing them to a customs officer willing to accept some credits to look the other way and allow the occasional shipment of contraband through.
“Everything looks good,” she said now, running her scanner over the many stamps and bar codes pasted and stamped on each crate. Jensen and Jared had docked the Tombaugh and taken the vapor sticks off the ship for inspection. The scanner beeped cheerfully, indicating that all duties and taxes were marked as paid for one crate, then buzzed as it scanned a second one. “Hold on, this one's hinky.” She gave Jensen a meaningful look as she fiddled with the scanner. He nodded briefly, nudged Jared, and waited while the last of their credits were transferred from Jared's handheld to the officer's account.
“Probably just a glitch,” Jared said.
“We've been having problems with the scanners.” It beeped this time. “Now you're good to go. Duties paid, customs satisfied.” She patted the lid of the second crate and waved Jensen and Jared out to where Bob was waiting for them and their vapor sticks.
He'd buzzed his head. Now all his curls were reduced to a quarter inch of fuzz.
“What the hell,” Jared said. “Were you sick?”
Jensen jabbed him in the side, embarrassed, but Bob only laughed and ran a hand over his scalp. “You don't like it?” he asked, teasing. “My mom almost cried.”
“Sam's going to be so disappointed,” Jensen said. “Why did you do it?”
“I had an over-enthusiastic barber. No, I just wanted a change. You really don't like it?” Now he sounded a little disappointed himself.
“You're not 'Jensen's friend with the hair' anymore,” Jared said. “Now you're 'Jensen's friend with the peach fuzz'.”
“It'll grow back. The next time you're here, I'll have a full head of curly mess again.” He winked.
Heda Station was big and bustling, if a bit run-down once you got past the customs office and the administrative levels. The place kept slightly more laws than Port Wombat, but it was close enough to the freewheeling, semi-legal atmosphere of the port that Jensen was comfortable there. Besides, every time he and Jared swung by with contraband, Bob took them to an open cafe with cheap and delicious food once he'd taken possession of and paid for whatever they'd brought him.
“We need a grill,” Jared said, his mouth full. Jensen ignored him. They'd had this conversation before. “I know what you said about - holy shit.” He interrupted himself to smack Jensen on the arm with one hand and point with the other. “Is that Sterling K Brown?”
Jensen turned just in time to see a guy wearing a rust-orange jacket and flanked by a pair of bulky dudes in lightweight body armor vanish down a corridor.
“Oh, yeah,” Bob said, “he just did a show here last night. Total surprise. No one even knew he was in this sector until he pulled into a docking bay.”
Sterling K Brown's music wasn't really Jensen's taste - he preferred an actual rhythm and some lyrics - but Jared really liked the long, meandering songs the guy produced.
“You know where he's going next?” Jared asked.
“Not a clue.”
Jared sighed.
“He'll have to drown his sorrows with another order of mixed grill,” Jensen told Bob.
“Still the best grill on the station.” He glanced at his wrist. “I should get back to work. Meet you afterwards, yeah? 21:00, Blake's. Don't eat too much,” he told Jared. “I know a great place for dinner.”
“We're going to stalk Mr Brown,” Jared said, and Jensen wasn't sure if he was kidding.
Bob went back the docking bay where he had a legal job as a mechanic, and Jensen and Jared finished their food and promptly got lost trying to find a library terminal from which to research Sahar Technologies, Green Worlds, and anything else that might give them a clue as to whether or not Misha's missing-persons job was legit. Jared discovered a little news item about an environmental study being done at the research station on Bernon, and Jensen though he recognized the Sahar Tech CEO's name, but other than that, there was nothing. The moon and its terraforming failure had fallen out of the news cycle a few years ago, after the trial concluded and Green Worlds shut down. There just wasn't much worth knowing anymore.
At dinner Jensen casually asked if Bob knew anything about Sahar Tech.
“It's basically Green Worlds,” he said. “Remember them? I guess that's supposed to be kind of a secret.”
“Do you know anything about them, besides that?”
“Nah. Good friend of mine was a trainee tech for Green Worlds when it froze that moon, and she followed all the news about them for a while. She works for some ag outfit now. That whole thing scared her off terraforming.” He slurped up some noodles. “Why do you ask?”
“We know a guy,” Jensen said. “He's looking into it.”
“Huh. I can ask my friend, if you want, but I don't think she cares about Sahar. They're pretty straightforward and she does something else now.”
“Are you thinking we should meet Misha and Chad after all?” Jared asked Jensen later that night. They'd found a room in a hostel that catered mostly to freighter crews. The rooms were small and so were the shared showers, but Jensen didn't care as long as the water was hot, the pressure was good, and no one tried to steal his soap.
“I'm not sure,” he said now. “What do you think?”
“I think we should see what they have to say.” Jared flopped back on his bed. “I know you don't trust Chad - I don't really either - but they did get us that job with the diamonds, remember? That was a good haul.”
Jensen and Jared had smuggled the gems inside the hollow pull-up bars in the Tombaugh's tiny workout space, and Jensen still couldn't believe that worked. He'd outfitted his ship with an EMP cannon with the credits that job had earned.
“If this missing-persons thing really is a job, we need to know what our role is and what we're gonna make from it. I'm not making a decision until we get that solid.”
“Obviously.” Jared stretched. The bed was barely long enough for him. “Are freighters all crewed by short people? Why are these beds so short?”
“They're not short, you're just weirdly tall.” His handheld pinged, and he checked it to discover a message from Genevieve, that someone had apparently paid Adrianne's warrant and gotten her ship out of impound, because she'd left Port Wombat.
“Why's she telling us?” Jared asked.
“So we can warn Danneel, I don't know. I wonder who paid the warrant. I didn't think she had those kinds of friends.” Although he couldn't discount the possibility that someone had sprung her just to have her in their debt. He sent Danneel a quick message, just to warn her that Adrianne was free, and put it out of his mind.
Onward!
PG-13
Part 1 of 5
Master post
Art
The Tombaugh, an innocent-looking but heavily-modified smuggler’s spaceship, floated serenely through space. Her pilot sat in the cockpit, gazing out at stars and planets and distant moons. His name was Jensen and he’d been trained to fly freighters for a mining conglomerate, but as soon as he could free himself of that job he’d taken to the sky for himself and not looked back. He’d fallen into smuggling the way he imagined a lot of people did - he needed money and didn’t much care how he made it. His crew was just himself and his co-pilot Jared (who’d been born in space and had an affinity for the ships that made their way through it), and even though it was just the two of them, the Tombaugh was a fast ship, Jensen was a skilled pilot, and while they’d been chased plenty, they were infrequently caught.
Which was all well and good, Jensen thought now, but it would help if their reputation found them a job. They were in hock to his old friend Chris who'd gotten them out of trouble several months ago, because while they weren't caught often, that didn't mean they weren't caught at all. Chris had paid their bail, freed the Tombaugh from impound, and most importantly - and expensively - cleared their records in that sector. He'd given them two choices to pay him back: either work for him, and he'd keep their ship as guarantee, or treat his help as a loan, with the ship as collateral. Jensen hadn't wanted to work for anyone ever again, even someone he knew and generally liked, especially if he couldn't even fly his own ship, so he and Jared had taken the second option. But even if they didn't have this debt to clear, man could only lay low among the back lanes of settled space for so long before he needed to restock and refuel and -
“Fuck!” Jared said over the internal comms. Jensen heard a crash.
“You okay?” he called.
No answer.
“Jared?”
“Fucking screws,” Jared called back.
“What are you doing? Don’t break my ship.”
“I’m not gonna break your ship.” He sounded annoyed.
Jensen and Jared were equal partners in all their shady business endeavors, and one of the reasons they started working together at all was because Jared was an excellent and inventive mechanic, but the Tombaugh was Jensen's, and if anyone was going to break anything, it should be him.
There was another, smaller, crash, followed by a clatter, followed by indistinct noise that sounded like Jared talking to himself, or to the ship. Jensen swiveled around in his chair and decided he should go check on things.
“Fuck,” Jared said again, before Jensen could get up.
“What?”
“Water recycler's busted.”
“Fuck.” Jensen thought for a minute. “How long do we have?”
“If we're careful? Four days.”
“Fuck.”
Jared loped into the cockpit and sat in the co-pilot's seat. “We can make it to Port Wombat if we push it.”
Jensen considered. He looked sideways at Jared. “You just want to see Genevieve, don't you.”
“I want to fix the water recycler.” But he was grinning. Genevieve owned a bar, the Glass Lamp, where the drinks were cheap, the food simple, and the crowd familiar. They'd picked up several jobs there, and if anyplace on the ground could feel like home, it did.
Jared's expression changed suddenly. “We got the credits for a new recycler?”
“Depends where we look. We'll need fuel too.” Jensen considered his co-pilot. “Brush up on your bargaining.” Jensen hated dealing for parts and supplies. He'd just as soon pay the asking price and be done with it, except a lot of the asking prices in Port Wombat were yanked up for the desperate and ignorant, and he hated knowing he was being taken advantage of more than he hated to dicker. Jared, on the other hand, liked to bargain, and he liked talking to strangers. He could get what they needed for a good price, and Jensen could ping some of their contacts in search of work.
Three days later Port Wombat appeared on the Tombaugh's screens. Jensen and Jared had been sparing with their water, using it only to drink and not for things like washing dishes or themselves - they hadn't even cooked with it - and Jensen was already starting to feel gritty and grimy. It was purely psychological, he knew, but the fact was that he couldn't wait to find a cheap room with its own shower so he could wash.
After that, parts for the water recycler and fresh fuel cells, and after that, hopefully, if all the stars aligned, a job.
The external comms crackled. “Approaching ship, please acknowledge.”
Jensen jerked himself out of his daydream. “This is the Tombaugh,” he said, “Colony Cluster registration NL12-967M4, requesting a land berth. No cargo.”
“Registration acknowledged. Please dock in Yard G.”
“I told Genevieve we were coming,” Jared said, appearing in the cockpit as the ship started to descend. Jensen glanced over and noted that he’d changed out of his grimy coveralls and into more presentable pants and shirt. He'd even combed his hair. Jensen glanced back at the windshield. He could find Yard G with his eyes closed but he liked to watch their approach.
You could park your ship above the stratosphere over Port Wombat and have one of the landing field shuttles pick you up and ferry you to the surface - big ships did it all the time - but why do that, when you could drop through the atmosphere, feeling your ship adjusting to each successive layer, watching the change in cloud cover and the way the buildings of the port got closer and closer until you finally touched down? It was exhilarating and he wouldn't pass it up for anything.
He found an empty berth and set the Tombaugh down on new-looking asphalt. He hadn't even finished the shut-down procedures before Jared had unbuckled himself and jumped out of his seat. Jensen heard the starboard hatch open, followed by faint whoops of joy, followed by the sound of Jared clattering back up through the hatch and into the cockpit.
“Fresh air!” he cried. “It smells so....” He gestured vaguely, as if trying to find the right word.
“Don't say 'clean'.” Almost nothing about the air in Port Wombat was legitimately clean.
“So fresh! You're rolling your eyes at me. I don't care. We're gonna eat fresh food and drink cold drinks and take long showers and shoot the shit with people in person. And I'm gonna fix the water recycler for cheap.” He swatted Jensen on the arm to get him to move. “Come on, the day's a-wasting.”
They grabbed their overnight bags and went out through the starboard hatch, Jared trotting between ships towards town while Jensen made sure the Tombaugh was locked up tight. Just three days ago they were staring down dehydration, and now they were staring down the exciting prospect of food and drink and bathing facilities. They could have asked the control tower to send a tram to collect them at the landing field, but after having been cooped up in the ship, they both wanted to stretch their legs.
Jensen took stock as he ambled towards town, looking for ships he knew. There was the Lovelace and her sister ship the Lovecraft - both of them owned by some friend of Jared's and both of them looking like they'd lost a game of bumper boats - and the humped shape of the Canned Ham, instantly recognizable by her pink paint job and silver trim as much as by her smooth lines and compact shape. She belonged to a bounty hunter named Danneel whose career had actually started in official law enforcement in the Colony Cluster, long before she met Jensen and Jared.
Jensen was half convinced she and Genevieve were an item, and half convinced Jared knew it too, but what people did in the privacy of their own rooms was their own business, and anyone who lived on the fringe lived a precarious life, so why shouldn't they take their pleasures where they could?
And speaking of pleasures... there was a cheap hostel not far from the Glass Lamp with decent beds but more importantly hot water and lots of it. But food and drink first, and he should find Jared.
Jared was unsurprisingly ensconced at the bar, two glasses already in front of him, chatting with Genevieve while she wiped the counter. She was wearing a high-necked green shirt with baby blue trim, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, brown hair tied in knots all over her head. She looked fresh and pretty, clearly having made herself look nice for Jared just as he'd tried to make himself presentable for her.
Jensen plopped down onto a stool. Jared slid one of the glasses over without looking at him, and Jensen took a grateful sip. He wasn’t sure what was in it, only that it was cold and wet and a little spicy, and it perked him right up.
“Jared tells me you need a new water recycler,” Genevieve said.
“And a shower,” Jared added, grinning.
“And a shower,” Jensen repeated. “A long hot one. And fuel.”
“So we'll be here a couple days. You'll get tired of seeing us.”
“Never,” Genevieve said. She flicked her rag at Jared. “You should know Aldis is gone.”
Aldis was one of Jared and Jensen's favorite people for cheap parts of uncertain provenance. Everything in his shop had probably fallen out the back of a freighter, but he could acquire what he didn't have on hand, he was a friendly guy, and he was about as honest as it was possible for a black marketeer to be.
“Gone as in 'left the port'?” Jensen asked. “Or as in 'left the surface'?”
“He's not dead, is he?” Jared added.
“Gone as in 'vanished overnight but left his stock behind',” Danneel said, appearing out of nowhere and leaning over Jensen's shoulder. “Word is someone recognized some part he sold them - it came from a ship they'd reported stolen - the law found parts of three missing ships in a bunch of storage sheds they tracked back to him. Little personal cruisers, all previously reported stolen. Next day he was gone.” She reached between Jensen and Jared to snag Jensen's drink and finish it.
“Hey!” he protested.
She put the now-empty glass back on the counter, wrapped her arms around Jensen's neck, and kissed him on the temple, before releasing him to do the same to Jared. Violently pink hair swung into Jensen's face as Danneel turned her head. He didn't know the true story of why she'd left law enforcement in the Cluster to hunt bounties across settled space, but sometimes he wondered if it had anything to do with her dislike of the uniform and its attendant regulation hair.
“It's nice to see you,” she said. She rested an arm on each of their shoulders. “Your timing's good - I'm chasing a bounty and just stopped to refuel. You passing through? Looking for a job? Can I get one of those?” she asked Genevieve, nodding to the glasses on the bar. Genevieve turned to mix her drink.
“We need a new water recycler,” Jared said. “Did law enforcement impound Aldis's stock?”
“Actually, they did,” Genevieve said. She put a glass on the counter. Danneel reached between Jensen and Jared, picked it up, and took a swig. “They're learning to move quick without broadcasting all their plans first.”
“That sucks. He had decent stuff. I liked him.”
“You boys want something to eat?”
Jensen suddenly realized how hungry he was. “Please,” he said. They'd have to restock the galley, too, once the Tombaugh was fixed and ready to go. “Surprise us.” She went into the kitchen and Jensen turned to Danneel. “You said you're chasing a bounty? Where is it?”
“The Cluster. I figured I'd get a drink while the Ham was powering up.” She shook her head, drank some more. “Fuel's so fucking expensive here.”
“Fuel's fucking expensive everywhere.”
Jared pulled his handheld out of a pocket. “I just want to check the news,” he explained, when Jensen tried to see what he was looking at. “See what people are up to. Hey, this is interesting. You remember Adrianne Palicki? She's trying to get to the Cluster. She says she's been stuck in Port Wombat for a couple weeks.”
“Why?”
“Looks like her ship was impounded and she can't get the credits to get it back. And, uh, there might be a warrant out for her arrest.”
“What, here?” Why would she even come to Port Wombat if she was wanted here? “For what?”
“I can't tell.” Jared scrolled through the feed, no doubt trying to get more details on the warrant. He looked over at Danneel. “You're going to the Cluster. You could take her.”
“Oh hell no,” she said, with some heat.
“Why not? The Ham's big enough, and you'd do it for us.”
“I like you. She's a rancid bitch and I don't want her on my ship. Don't look at me like that - you think just because you're nice to people and people are nice to you - of course they are, I mean look at you, you're adorable - you think everyone's a decent human being. They're not. She stole contracts from me. I lost bounties because of her. She wants off this rock so badly, you take her.”
“We're not going to the Cluster,” Jensen said mildly. He bore no great love for Adrianne - she was sneaky, even by the standards of bounty hunters and smugglers and other generally shady characters - but he didn't see the point in getting bitchy about it. “Right now we're not going anywhere.”
“I'm not letting that cunt on my ship. But now I know there's a warrant out for her I might just turn her in.”
“You can't do that!” Jared protested.
“Why not?”
“Because! If you cash in Adrianne's warrant, then anyone we know could do it to us. You don't want us to go to jail.”
Danneel raised an eyebrow at him. “First, you've already been to jail. Second, that's not how it works. Besides, I told you, people like you. Not everyone likes her.” She put her glass down and patted him and Jensen on the shoulders, then dug in her pockets for money. She slapped some credits on the counter. In most places, for most people, a credit was just a line of code instantly transmitted from one account to the next, but in places like Port Wombat, places frequented by smugglers and conmen and those whose business was semi-legal at best, cold hard cash was just as common. It was harder to track.
Bounty hunting was a legitimate, licensed career choice, but bounty hunters sometimes inhabited the same shadowy corners as their bounties, and conducted their personal business the same way.
“I'm out,” Danneel went on. “I'll drop you a line when I've finished this job, if you want to get up to something fun together.” She turned on her heel and walked out, bright pink ponytail swinging behind her.
Jensen and Jared looked at each other, no doubt both thinking the same thing - What was that all about?
“Where's our food?” Jared asked. So maybe they weren't thinking the same thing. “Genevieve!” he called, leaning over the bar to yell in the general direction of the kitchen. “We're hungry!”
“What's Adrianne's warrant worth?” Jensen asked.
“We're not turning her in.” Jared was still looking towards the kitchen. A couple of women in coveralls sitting a few stools down also leaned forward and called for the bartender.
“I'm curious. What's she worth?”
Jared gave Jensen his handheld. Jensen glanced over the warrant, which had indeed been issued from Port Wombat. Smuggling of a controlled substance, smuggling of regulated goods, falsification of documentation, resisting arrest -
“Sorry that took so long,” Genevieve said, appearing out of nowhere and putting two plates on the bar in front of him and Jared. Each plate held a pile of spicy shredded meat of uncertain provenance, a pile of slightly charred greens, and a couple slices of dark bread. “My cooktop heats unevenly. Do you mind giving it a look, when you get a chance?” That question was directed towards Jared, who for once seemed more interested in his food than her.
“Sure,” Jensen answered for him. They weren't bounty hunters but there was no reason they couldn't turn Adrianne in, assuming they could find her. “Wait for him to finish stuffing his face. I'll see if I can find us a job. What is this?” He gestured to the greens on his plate.
“Water kale. You didn't see the hydroponics shed on my roof? Call Sam Ferris.”
“Shit,” Jared and Jensen said at the same time. Sam was an old hand at finding semi- or not-at-all-legal work for people who needed to make a quick credit. They should have thought of her first.
“Okay,” Jensen said to Jared, “we'll call Sam. I'll go see her, you'll fix Genevieve's cooktop, we'll find a new water recycler, we'll be good.”
Jared nodded, the best agreement he could make with a mouthful of water kale. Jensen made a sandwich with his shredded meat and bit into it. It tasted like spices and sauce. He couldn't tell what kind of meat it was, which meant it was just as likely to be synthetic or soybean as it was to have come from an actual animal. He didn't care.
Genevieve went off to serve other customers. Jared and Jensen finished their food and drinks, and Jensen left to get a room at the hostel so he could finally wash. Jared could pay the tab.
It didn't take Jared long to source and bargain for a new water recycler, and installing it went quicker with both of them working on it. Paying for it practically cleared them out of credits. Hopefully Sam would have something and they wouldn't be broke for long.
Sam ran a caffeine bar in one of Port Wombat's covered markets, and Jensen was looking forward to cajoling a free cup of hot caffeine out of her while they talked shop, but it was not meant to be. He was within sight of her place when he heard someone call his name and felt them grab his arm. Jensen almost punched the person out of reflex but they put their arms up in defense.
“Don't hit me, man! My skies, you're jumpy.”
“Misha,” Jensen said, not sure if he was pleased or apprehensive. Misha was an old colleague with whom Jensen and Jared sometimes did business, and while he and his crew were more thieves and conmen than smugglers, sometimes they'd have a job that was worth a good number of credits. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you! Although some caffeine wouldn't go amiss.” He glanced sideways towards Sam's stall, then shook his head. “But later. You look well. I have a proposition for you.”
“Okay. Is it for a job?”
“You'll see. Chad has a plan.” Misha's eyes darted around. “Come back to the Glass Lamp. I'll buy you a drink.”
“Does it involve a job?” Jensen repeated.
“You know Chad.” Misha winked. “Always planning something.”
“I do know Chad. That's why I need details before I commit.” Chad was Misha's second. He was a fun guy but Jensen didn't fully trust him.
Misha glanced around again. They were surrounded by stalls and people. No one seemed to be paying attention to them, but you never knew what kind of security was hooked up around these places. What law enforcement there was on Port Wombat was interested in catching people who disturbed the peace, not low-level criminals making their low-level plans - unless those low-level criminals had warrants out - but stall owners could have set up their own security, or someone could be wandering around the market recording any chatter they came across. It was a paranoid way to live, to assume someone was always listening to you, but it was a good way to stay off the radar.
“Not here,” Misha said. “Genevieve's holding a booth for us.” He started to walk off, pulling Jensen with him. Jensen gave Sam's caffeine bar a longing look over his shoulder but followed Misha out of the market.
Jared was sitting at the bar working his way through a plate of steamed buns when they got to the Glass Lamp, but as soon as he saw Misha and Jensen he slid off his stool and followed them to a booth in a dark corner.
Genevieve caught Jensen's eye as they went, lifted her hand to her mouth, and tilted it - Do you want a drink? He shrugged and pointed to Misha. I don't know. Only if he's buying.
“I got hungry,” Jared said, once they were seated. He pushed his plate towards Jensen. “Have a bun.”
“So tell us about this proposition,” Jensen said to Misha. “Where is Chad, anyway?”
“Talking to people. Setting things up. You know.”
“If it's not a big job, we don't have time for it.”
“It's not a job yet. But you can make a lot.”
“Are you going to give us any details?” Jared asked.
“Have you heard of Sahar Technologies?”
“It's a terraforming outfit, isn't it?”
Misha looked around the bar, leaned across the table, lowered his voice, and said “It used to be Green Worlds.”
Jensen and Jared looked at each other. Green Worlds was a now-defunct terraforming company, put out of business after a catastrophe on a reasonably-sized moon called Bernon on the edge of settled space. Terraforming in its early days was a trial-and-error kind of business, because sometimes it was hard to know how a planet or a moon would react to the process until things were underway. But by the time Green Worlds got the contract for Bernon, improvements in science and engineering meant that disasters were rare, and full-scale catastrophes almost unheard of.
The terraforming on Bernon held long enough for a good-sized settlement to plant itself, but the forced climate suffered a swift chain of breaks that not only destroyed the settlement and killed everyone in it, but left the moon too cold and too inhospitable for a permanent colony. And you couldn't terraform twice. Green Worlds was subsequently accused of a host of crimes. Payouts were made, high-level resignations were accepted, fines were levied, regulations were passed, contrition was expressed. The firm was allowed to dissolve its assets and go out of business. There was a research station on Bernon now, as the failure of the terraforming and the frozen nature of the moon apparently offered some great research opportunities, and it was rumored that the destroyed settlement had been taken over by a doomsday cult, but the place was mostly known as a cautionary tale, and no one went there because there was nothing to go there for.
Jensen was pretty sure the mining conglomerate he used to work for had done some business with Green Worlds back in the day, but he couldn't remember exactly what business, and in any case the conglomerate had nothing to do with Bernon.
Jared bit into a bun and said “Are you getting into terraforming now?” with his mouth full.
“The owner and CEO put up a reward for his daughter. She's missing.”
“So?”
“It's a private contract. It's a lot.”
A private contract meant there was no competition to find the missing person. The fact that the reward was a lot of money meant... nothing, yet.
“Why are you telling us?” Jensen asked. “We don't do missing persons. Neither do you.” He sat up in the booth and tried to get Genevieve's attention. Now that he could guess Misha was going to keep talking, Jensen was going to get a free coffee out of him before having to tell him no.
“True. But we consider it when a contractor gets ahold of us with a proposition. Did I mention it was good credits?” Misha dug around in his jacket pockets and retrieved a beat-up handheld. He poked and swiped at the screen for a minute before handing it across the table to Jensen. “That's the job listing. Look at the reward.”
Jensen tilted it so Jared could see as well. There was a picture with the listing, a headshot of a young woman, maybe in her mid-twenties, with blonde hair and a pale green jacket that even Jensen recognized as being out of style. It was clearly an old picture. Jared stuffed the rest of the bun in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. It was a lot of money.
“Do you know where this missing woman is?” Jensen asked.
“Not quite.”
“'Not quite'?”
“Why did you tell us you had a plan?” Jared asked.
“Because I do,” Misha said. “And it's 'We're still finalizing some details but if you meet us in ten days we'll tell you everything'.” He popped a bun in his mouth and grinned around it.
“That's not a plan.”
Genevieve came over. “What can I get you boys?” she asked. She nodded at the remaining buns and said “I love you, but you have to pay for those,” to Jared. He pointed at Misha.
“Coffee,” Jensen said. “Add just enough milk to make it a shade lighter and spike it with something. Surprise me.”
“I'll take a beer,” Jared added.
“I'm good,” Misha said.
“That's not what I heard,” Genevieve said, winking at him before walking off to get the drinks.
“Let me get this straight,” Jensen said to Misha. “You're buying us drinks just to tell us the head of Sahar Tech put up a reward for his missing daughter? That's not worth anything to us.”
Jared took the handheld, wiped his hands on his shirt to clean off any bun crumbs, and scrolled around. “It is a lot of money,” he reminded Jensen, and to Misha he said “You told us it was a private contract.”
Misha nodded. “And the person who got it asked us for help. It could be a big job.”
“It's finding one person. How big could that be?” He bit into another bun.
“This is dumb, Misha,” Jensen said. “You don't need us for this thing. Thanks for the coffee, but you wasted your time.”
“Meet me and Chad in ten days and you'll change your mind,” Misha said, sounding very sure of himself. “I promise.”
“We'll see.”
Genevieve brought the drinks and took Misha's credits. Once she was gone, Misha took a bun and said “Ten days. You remember that bar on La Spina?”
“The Unseen?” Jared said. “That place is a hole. Some girl shot at me the last time we were there because she thought I looked at her funny.” He sipped his beer. “Good fried mush, though.”
“Ten days from today.” Misha put his handheld back in a pocket and slid out of the booth. “Meet me and Chad. You won't regret it.” He took a bun and walked out of the bar.
“That wasn't totally a waste of time,” Jared said. “He paid for the buns. You think it's worth it to meet him? The reward's a lot of money but La Spina's a dumb place to get killed.”
“Who do you think got the contract?” Jensen asked, curious. “Why would they ask Misha for help? You need to find a missing person, you ask a bounty hunter or a PI. Not a couple of thieves.”
Jared ate another bun. “We can't just hang around for another ten days, though. I mean, I can, but we still need credits.”
“We'll go back to Sam's. She's gotta have something.”
She did.
“You're in luck,” she told Jared and Jensen, as they crowded into her tiny office in the back of her caffeine bar. “I just got a line on a bunch of crates of vapor sticks. Take them to Heda Station, see your friend with the hair.” She winked at Jensen.
Vapor sticks were considered addictive and so were taxed all across settled space. They were regulated especially tightly on space stations, which made them easy targets for smugglers and left customs officials open to bribes. Acquiring the crates, and then acquiring forged tax stamps and documentation, required some sweet-talking on Jared's part and some promises on Jensen's part and the very last of the credits on both their parts. But they'd make back their money and then some, and besides, Jensen hadn't seen Bob, the friend with the hair, in a while.
Bob was, among other things, their original contact on the station, the guy who had done the important work of introducing them to a customs officer willing to accept some credits to look the other way and allow the occasional shipment of contraband through.
“Everything looks good,” she said now, running her scanner over the many stamps and bar codes pasted and stamped on each crate. Jensen and Jared had docked the Tombaugh and taken the vapor sticks off the ship for inspection. The scanner beeped cheerfully, indicating that all duties and taxes were marked as paid for one crate, then buzzed as it scanned a second one. “Hold on, this one's hinky.” She gave Jensen a meaningful look as she fiddled with the scanner. He nodded briefly, nudged Jared, and waited while the last of their credits were transferred from Jared's handheld to the officer's account.
“Probably just a glitch,” Jared said.
“We've been having problems with the scanners.” It beeped this time. “Now you're good to go. Duties paid, customs satisfied.” She patted the lid of the second crate and waved Jensen and Jared out to where Bob was waiting for them and their vapor sticks.
He'd buzzed his head. Now all his curls were reduced to a quarter inch of fuzz.
“What the hell,” Jared said. “Were you sick?”
Jensen jabbed him in the side, embarrassed, but Bob only laughed and ran a hand over his scalp. “You don't like it?” he asked, teasing. “My mom almost cried.”
“Sam's going to be so disappointed,” Jensen said. “Why did you do it?”
“I had an over-enthusiastic barber. No, I just wanted a change. You really don't like it?” Now he sounded a little disappointed himself.
“You're not 'Jensen's friend with the hair' anymore,” Jared said. “Now you're 'Jensen's friend with the peach fuzz'.”
“It'll grow back. The next time you're here, I'll have a full head of curly mess again.” He winked.
Heda Station was big and bustling, if a bit run-down once you got past the customs office and the administrative levels. The place kept slightly more laws than Port Wombat, but it was close enough to the freewheeling, semi-legal atmosphere of the port that Jensen was comfortable there. Besides, every time he and Jared swung by with contraband, Bob took them to an open cafe with cheap and delicious food once he'd taken possession of and paid for whatever they'd brought him.
“We need a grill,” Jared said, his mouth full. Jensen ignored him. They'd had this conversation before. “I know what you said about - holy shit.” He interrupted himself to smack Jensen on the arm with one hand and point with the other. “Is that Sterling K Brown?”
Jensen turned just in time to see a guy wearing a rust-orange jacket and flanked by a pair of bulky dudes in lightweight body armor vanish down a corridor.
“Oh, yeah,” Bob said, “he just did a show here last night. Total surprise. No one even knew he was in this sector until he pulled into a docking bay.”
Sterling K Brown's music wasn't really Jensen's taste - he preferred an actual rhythm and some lyrics - but Jared really liked the long, meandering songs the guy produced.
“You know where he's going next?” Jared asked.
“Not a clue.”
Jared sighed.
“He'll have to drown his sorrows with another order of mixed grill,” Jensen told Bob.
“Still the best grill on the station.” He glanced at his wrist. “I should get back to work. Meet you afterwards, yeah? 21:00, Blake's. Don't eat too much,” he told Jared. “I know a great place for dinner.”
“We're going to stalk Mr Brown,” Jared said, and Jensen wasn't sure if he was kidding.
Bob went back the docking bay where he had a legal job as a mechanic, and Jensen and Jared finished their food and promptly got lost trying to find a library terminal from which to research Sahar Technologies, Green Worlds, and anything else that might give them a clue as to whether or not Misha's missing-persons job was legit. Jared discovered a little news item about an environmental study being done at the research station on Bernon, and Jensen though he recognized the Sahar Tech CEO's name, but other than that, there was nothing. The moon and its terraforming failure had fallen out of the news cycle a few years ago, after the trial concluded and Green Worlds shut down. There just wasn't much worth knowing anymore.
At dinner Jensen casually asked if Bob knew anything about Sahar Tech.
“It's basically Green Worlds,” he said. “Remember them? I guess that's supposed to be kind of a secret.”
“Do you know anything about them, besides that?”
“Nah. Good friend of mine was a trainee tech for Green Worlds when it froze that moon, and she followed all the news about them for a while. She works for some ag outfit now. That whole thing scared her off terraforming.” He slurped up some noodles. “Why do you ask?”
“We know a guy,” Jensen said. “He's looking into it.”
“Huh. I can ask my friend, if you want, but I don't think she cares about Sahar. They're pretty straightforward and she does something else now.”
“Are you thinking we should meet Misha and Chad after all?” Jared asked Jensen later that night. They'd found a room in a hostel that catered mostly to freighter crews. The rooms were small and so were the shared showers, but Jensen didn't care as long as the water was hot, the pressure was good, and no one tried to steal his soap.
“I'm not sure,” he said now. “What do you think?”
“I think we should see what they have to say.” Jared flopped back on his bed. “I know you don't trust Chad - I don't really either - but they did get us that job with the diamonds, remember? That was a good haul.”
Jensen and Jared had smuggled the gems inside the hollow pull-up bars in the Tombaugh's tiny workout space, and Jensen still couldn't believe that worked. He'd outfitted his ship with an EMP cannon with the credits that job had earned.
“If this missing-persons thing really is a job, we need to know what our role is and what we're gonna make from it. I'm not making a decision until we get that solid.”
“Obviously.” Jared stretched. The bed was barely long enough for him. “Are freighters all crewed by short people? Why are these beds so short?”
“They're not short, you're just weirdly tall.” His handheld pinged, and he checked it to discover a message from Genevieve, that someone had apparently paid Adrianne's warrant and gotten her ship out of impound, because she'd left Port Wombat.
“Why's she telling us?” Jared asked.
“So we can warn Danneel, I don't know. I wonder who paid the warrant. I didn't think she had those kinds of friends.” Although he couldn't discount the possibility that someone had sprung her just to have her in their debt. He sent Danneel a quick message, just to warn her that Adrianne was free, and put it out of his mind.
Onward!