Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

It beat being simply pushed out an air lock. Small habitats were brutal. You pulled your own weight. No one had time for dilettantes. Still, this all beat the hell out of Pitt’s Cross. And League people playing games with her.

“Be careful,” Danielle had told her, before shutting the lock door to leave. “The Hongguo will come across you if you slow down and sit still.”

“I’ll be looking for work aboard a ship. I need to get to New Anegada.”

“Right.” Danielle grabbed her shoulder. “Listen, if you really want a place in the League, contact me. It may take a week more, you know how throttled buoy traffic is, but I’ll help you. They need your skills, your experience. Just contact me when you simmer down, okay?”

“I thought you weren’t League?” Nashara raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not.” Danielle smiled. “Not at all.” And then she’d shut the air lock.

Nashara took another drag from the cigarette, watching the tiny numbers at the far right of the display tick up. It flicked over. New dockings.

Takara Bune . On its way into dock. What was that? Some freighter, run by Buddhists out of Avak Samarah. They had docked a long way from home, but were headed downstream toward Ys. That could put her closer to New Anegada.

Heart of India , a Nova Terra–bound ship. There was a long journey upstream for you. All the way up to the spot where a wormhole used to lead to Earth. Nashara took a final long drag from the cigarette and rubbed it out between her fingers.

Shengfen Hao . Hongguo. Her heart skipped a beat. The Hongguo were here. But hopefully not for her. They would have shut down the station and issued warrants already. It would have been loud by now. So far they’d only shut down the outgoing buoys so that no message traffic came in or out, standard Hongguo protocol before docking at a station, though it made everyone here nervous and on edge. Rumors had been percolating about a full communications lockdown throughout dozens of worlds. Just jittery rumors.

And the Queen Mohmbasa . Just docked within the last several hours. That old name that triggered a flicker of memory. Ragamuffin ship? Maybe. If her memory wasn’t tricking her. It was worth a shot. She would have to talk to them and see if they were what she suspected before they left port tomorrow.

But for now she already an appointment with the Takara Bune she meant to keep. Even if Takara Bune worked out and she didn’t check with the Queen , she could flit from system to system and take her time on the other, figure out what to do next without pressure. It sounded appealing.

Nashara flicked the images away and looked over to see a teenager in greasy paper overalls. Pale face. She could almost see the veins under his skin.

“Hey, station boy.” He quit staring, eyes flicking aside, embarrassed at being caught. “What you looking at?”

“That a cigarette?” he asked.

Nashara held up the brown cylinder, end stumped off. “If it isn’t, someone ripped me off.”

He cracked a smile and his posture eased. “A sinful decadence in these closed quarters.”

Nashara looked up at the metal bulkheads slowly curving away overhead. Corroded metal merged into stroid dirt and then turned over to large, distant patches of sustainable greenery.

Mankind came into space to become farmers, she thought.

“I think the ecosphere can handle me,” she said.

“Maybe the ecosphere can,” he said. “But I don’t know about the citizenry. They may be freedmen, but they’re awful uptight.”

Nashara laughed and threw him the cigarette.

He caught it. Looked at her in surprise.

“Not many indulgences in a place like this,” she said.

He pocketed it, and Nashara smiled and walked past him, reached out and ran a finger down his cheek. He pivoted with it, his eyes fixed down her hand to her neck.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Out of your league, deckboy.”

She took an access tunnel out of the Commons and down toward the docks. But the quick flirt had put a nice spin on the day cycle. The corners of her lips lifted.

Now all she had to do was get moving again.

On the Takara Bune the ship’s captain introduced himself as Etsudo. He treated Nashara to pot noodles and some tiny sugar cookies with decorations of smiling animals traced out in the glaze. It was evening on ship, lights dimmed and slowly fading as she made her way through.

They met in his cabin, looked down on by pictures of his family in formal mounted frames.

He chattered with her about their ship, his face flickeringly lit by a pair of candles in ceramic bowls. A nuclear engine ran down the center of the ship, and a small pebble bed reactor gave it power. Cargo bays ran along the interior of the ship’s short but cyclindrical body, and the Takara Bune usually spun up to one-third a standard gravity. More if the cargo demanded it. They ran on a standard twenty-four-hour cycle with the usual four-hour crew shifts, alpha, gamma, and zeta, though Nashara saw no crew out anywhere. Just Etsudo in a plain, gray jumper.

Nashara settled in for interview, but once she put down her pair of chopsticks, he clasped his wiry hands together and leaned forward.

“While I always enjoy the pleasure of an interesting guest, I will be honest and tell you we have no positions for a person of the, um, skills that you forwarded to me.” He held out his hands, showing her rough calluses. “We work hard and are just a small crew. A ship’s bodyguard, or security force, as you call yourself, is unnecessary to us.” He smiled. “You must realize the Takara Bune is not in the habit of making enemies. That is not our way.”

Nashara also leaned forward, placing her hands on her folded legs. “Etsudo, we do not always choose to make enemies. Sometimes they come whether we create them or not.”

Etsudo rocked back slightly. “I won’t argue that. However, it is simply not the desire of me, or the crew, to do this. We are comfortable in our practices and will take the chance of ill will against the desire to follow certain peaceful precepts.”

Nashara folded her arms. “Then why am I here, Etsudo?” Her voice dropped an octave.

Etsudo spread his arms. “Reading the information you forwarded, and looking at you, I’m sure you have a skill we need. Our secondary pilot left. We are short someone with the ability to pilot a ship, access our lamina.”

“No.” Nashara said. “I don’t do that.”

“But you are built for this? My ship’s scanners show an amazing buildup of machinery in your cortex and spine for interfacing with advanced lamina.”

Nashara breathed deeply. He shouldn’t have been able to see past her skin so easily. Something wasn’t quite right with this.

“I don’t access lamina via straight neural interfaces anymore.”

“If you have had past experiences that trouble you, we can teach coping mechanisms. I am a teacher. I am good with people’s minds.”

“Etsudo, I have my reasons.” Nashara unfolded her legs and stood up. “I would say, if you are truly a wise man, you would find ways to also lessen your dependence on such things like that.”

Etsudo stood up with her. He groaned and held the side of his chest as he did so. “I could hardly call myself a teacher if I did not offer such cautions myself,” he said. “Can you really live here while you wait for another ship out?”

Nashara shrugged. “I’ve managed.”

He smiled. “So far. Yes.” He helped her back through the ship to the air lock, guiding her by an elbow, and paused at the entry back out onto the docks.

Nashara blinked as the door opened into full light. A blazing station high noon with full-spectrum lights glowed all up and down the curved corridor.