Scott Cleveland - Pale Boundaries

Terson did not look forward to the day of that confrontation.

Cormack MacLeod knelt beneath the cargo sled playing a flashlight beam across the craft’s once-smooth undercarriage. The surface was gouged and creased beyond normal wear and tear; several of the scrapes looked deep enough to cast doubt on the integrity of the sheathing, a serious matter given the necessity of operating in low pressure and toxic atmospheres.

The front third of the port repeller unit had broken loose from its mounts and shifted several centimeters inward where the retractable taxi gear had apparently caught it during extension and damaged it further. Cormack found the remains of a tree branch as big around as his wrist jammed cross-wise between the top of the repeller and the undercarriage. He pried it loose and crawled out to confer with the supposed owner.

“Not a lot of trees hereabout,” Cormack commented as he handed over the incriminating evidence.

The big spacer rolled the thirty-centimeter stick over and over in his fingers for several moments. “I got no idea where this came from.”

“A tree,” Cormack explained.

The spacer’s face turned red and he studied the object at length for several more seconds, unable to concoct a suitable explanation, and finally crossed his arms behind his back, transferring it out of site in a clumsy attempt to conceal it. “So you can fix it?” he asked of the sled.

“Aye, no problem there. Have to overlay and bond new sheathing. Repeller ain’t hard to get if I can’t rebuild this one—expensive, either way. When ye need it back?”

“Tomorrow.”

“This time next week, if I work on her straight through,” Cormack grinned. “I charge overtime.”

The spacer looked skyward, rubbing the back of his neck. “Just great! Okay; I’ll have the money when I pick it up.”

“Two-thirds, up front,” Cormack corrected.

“Fine,” the spacer groaned. “Will you take an electronic transfer?”

“Absolutely,” Cormack nodded. “This against a ship’s account, then?”

“No!” he exclaimed hurriedly. “Personal.”

“Alright.” Cormack flipped to a fresh sheet in his tattered work order book. “What name?”

“Ben Grogan,” the spacer mumbled.

“Ship and account code?”

“I told you this is personal,” Grogan snapped.

“Aye, an’ your ship’ll know if ye got credit t’cover it,” Cormack explained patiently, “unless ye got a planet-side account ye want t’draw against?”

“No, okay, I understand. Ladybird. Five oh eight eight three oh six. Can you make the charge read kind of vague?”

“Aye. ‘Materials an’ services rendered’ or some such suit ye?”

“I guess so. You, ah, don’t need inside, do you?”

Cormack shook his head. “Not unless ye want me to test her ahead o’time.”

“No, that’s fine. I’ll do it when I pick it up,” Grogan said with visible relief. He left the vehicle parked in Cormack’s compound and departed on foot.

Cormack waited until the spacer was out of sight before he broke the lock encryption and climbed in to take a look around. Based on what he saw of the cockpit the sled had been hard used but well maintained. A few personal items protruded from seatback pouches in the passenger compartment below, but nothing worth stealing. Moving aft, he opened the hatch leading to the cargo compartment where he found three banks of large, self-contained cold storage units full of bush meat.

The spacer was poaching, as Cormack already suspected, but it wasn’t a case of a crewman running amok with his ship’s equipment for personal gain and trying to hide the damaged of some misadventure. The freezers and the alterations necessary to mount them indicated a long-term operation, suggesting it was a bone fide endeavor blessed by the Ladybird’s captain.

None of this really surprised Cormack. God’s Saucer lay only a couple of hours away from the Great Northern Preserve, a heavily forested region of several hundreds of millions of square kilometers taking up most of the Alpha continent’s northern half. The pickings were rich for those willing to chance a lethal encounter with the EPEA and transient spacers frequently took advantage of the opportunity to smuggle bush meat to the Belt where it sold for extraordinary prices.

The morality of the issue didn’t interest Cormack in the least; the financial rewards for exposing an organized poaching operation, however, were substantial. There was no hurry, though. The Ladybird wasn’t going anywhere without her wayward son or the sled.

Besides, it was in Cormack’s best interest to complete the work he’d been hired to do and collect the pay for it before he turned them in.

“Sir, good to see you again!” Stan McKeon grasped Hal’s hand firmly. They stood in the base’s cavernous landside entrance, amid the bustle of sailors and vehicles. “I hear you’ll be with us a while.”

“Looks that way,” Hal conceded. His father had always been amazed at McKeon’s ability to ferret the most unlikely information out of the Minzoku’s colloquially tangled grapevine. Though not Family, McKeon was a trusted agent in charge of the expatriates’ physical security who’d lived on Nivia for over twenty years, married a pair of Minzoku women, and never requested or accepted a transfer in all that time.

“It’ll grow on you,” McKeon assured him.

He tossed Hal’s bag into the cargo compartment of his squat armored ORV and held open the passenger door while Hal boarded. The housing of a high-output nuclear battery separated the two front seats by an arm’s span. Conduit vanished into the floor, feeding the independently powered electric motors at each wheel. A gunner’s chair hung from a turret mount between and slightly behind the front seats. McKeon chirped his siren as the vehicle accelerated silently toward the exit.

Outside they turned south, away from Tessaoua. The vehicle hardly swayed as it crossed ruts and potholes in the primitive roadway. The road turned west gradually, winding up through the low coastal mountains. McKeon skirted a short convoy of Minzoku trucks at the summit. “That should be the salvage they’ve brought up so far,” he told Hal.

Their destination hove into view on the opposite side. Unofficially, the Fort was the oldest permanent settlement on Nivia. It stood on the crest of a hill, surrounded by a wall of native stone ten meters high, spaced evenly with watchtowers and gun emplacements. None of the structures therein rose above the height of the wall except an array of satellite dishes and antennas near the center. Three fences of increasing voltage ringed the wall, with land mines in between.

The Fort housed nearly six hundred offworlders, including families. It contained a hospital as well equipped as any Federal facility, a commissary, and any number of recreational endeavors. It once housed Minzoku domestic servants as well, until an uprising orchestrated by a tiny cadre of Minzoku officers thirty-five years before. The poorly executed coup was destined to fail, but the loss of life would have been significantly higher if not for a timely warning from Den Tun.

Hal’s father suspected Den Tun of being involved in the plot himself and informing on his co-conspirators only to eliminate a powerful rival. The old man would have joined his colleagues in the killing fields had he not assumed leadership of his people so quickly.

From that day on the Minzoku were forbidden to enter the Fort and the compound went “dry” in regard to the carnal pleasures some of the Onjin indulged in. An aggregate of drinking houses and brothels sprang up around the Fort, inevitably named Sin City, and later the shops and homes of more legitimate means. McKeon’s siren chirped constantly as the car cruised through the de facto town.