Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

“Well, good luck,” Etsudo said. “If you change your mind in the next eight hours, please contact me.”

“You leave that quick?”

“There is nothing in the warrens of this small habitat for us. In the quiet of space we have the time to meditate, studies to attend to. Goods to deliver.”

Nashara smiled. She liked Etsudo. He was straightforward enough. “Thank you for your time, Etsudo. I wish you the best.”

“I’m truly very sorry this didn’t work. The best to you as well.” Etsudo smiled sadly and the air lock hissed shut.

Damn.

Double damn, she thought, walking past an empty air lock between the Takara Bune and the Hongguo ship not too far down from it.

She paused outside the ship, shaking an odd feeling of dislocation. Something that kept evading her, like a blind spot, the more she thought about it. Several feng walked out into the dock bays. Smooth-moving, like oiled machines, human warriors bred back for far too many generations, then trained in the martial algorithmic arts of the Hongguo. Nashara watched them melt out into the crowd dressed in khaki overcoats. Overcoats: an oddity on a weather- and temperature-regulated station.

What weaponry were they packing? It made her nervous. She needed off this habitat. Soon. She must have spotted them out of the corner of her eye and gotten the jitters.

She turned back the other way, putting distance between the Hongguo’s trained killers and herself. Next she needed to talk to the Queen Mohmbasa .

“You what?”

Her roommate, Len, sputtered the words. Danielle’s cousin had balked at splitting a room, but Nashara had come with a message from Danielle and some fresh Villach produce from the Daystar to guarantee a place and some time to get things in order.

He raised his hands in frustration.

“Turned them down,” Nashara said. She tossed him a plastic pack of body sponges. He reeked of the shitfarm. The whole room did. He hardly noticed it. And sponging off didn’t cut it for him, he needed disinfected and run through a sterilizing chamber.

He’d come in the door several hours earlier than she’d expected. First thing, he’d asked her about her visit aboard Takara Bune , and she’d just laughed and asked him if he paid the dock gossips for their chatter.

No smile. He asked her if she’d gotten anything.

And Nashara told him.

Len looked down at the packet, kneaded it, then looked back up at her. His baby-face looks, earnest brown eyes, curly hair, strong arms, all of that melted away. Just anger now.

“I can’t fucking believe you.” He threw the body sponges down. “You’re ruining me. I put you up for three weeks since you ran out of money, and you’ve been lurking around the docks, smoking up your debt, and you finally get an offer and you turn it down. I agreed to help Danielle out, but that’s bullshit.”

“Look,” Nashara said.

“No. I have no debt to you. I have been nice. Now I know you’re just taking advantage of me.” He quivered as he shouted at her.

Nashara bit her lip. She owed him, but this was getting annoying. He’d been nice enough before, thinking he had an attractive roommate. No doubt some sliver of hope about that had let her get three weeks of rooming off him. “They wanted me to interface with their ship, pilot it.”

Len squatted and picked up the packet. “You know, there are some who could only dream of being given an offer like that.”

Nashara looked down at him. Stained boots, dirty fingernails, waterproof waders.

“I can’t do that…” Her existence in this room rubbed his face in his status. Len worked deep in the almost literal bowels of the station in recycling, monitoring the bacteria levels in giant pools of sludge percolating around the waste-disposal points.

In his view, she had some psychological hang-up not to make more in a few months than he would ever see in his life. She could go anywhere, do almost anything.

He would spend his life here.

Nashara was doing anything she could to get out of this as-yet-unnamed, still-under-construction orbiting pit of a tin can.

She just couldn’t allow a direct neural access with the lamina. She couldn’t afford to unleash herself on it. Chimson had created her as a weapon. She’d watched her nine sisters let loose on lamina, out there in the cold space. Watched them rip apart an entire ship as they took it over.

It was her secret. Her burden.

“Len. You know I owe you. Big.”

That was all that kept her here. He knew that she had more opportunities than he did, that she could repay him. Big. And damnit, she would.

“Yeah.” He didn’t look too excited about it.

The door chimed.

Len looked even less excited about that.

Nashara nodded at it. “Who’s that?”

“No one.”

He walked around her to it, pulled it open, and revealed four Honggua. Their black-and-white leather uniforms identified them as zhen cha: station scouts for the Hongguo. Had it been Hongguo feng, she wouldn’t have had time to worry about uniform design.

All across the habitat alarms sounded, doors locked. The Hongguo had shut the place down. They’d just been waiting, cautious, biding their time.

“They paid you,” Nashara said.

Len looked down at his dirty boots. Avoiding her eyes.

Three zhen cha remained guarding the door, one of them covering the corridor with his eyes, hand near his belt. The first one, a pair of gold pips on his tight collar indicating he led the group, stepped in front of Nashara.

He pulled out a Geiger counter with a flourish, ran it over Nashara’s chest, arms, then stomach. It blipped, gave a reading, and satisfied, the man snapped it back onto his belt.

“You are under arrest for technological progress violations under the Benevolent Satrapy. Do you have anything to say?”

Nashara shook her head.

They cuffed her while she stood there glaring at Len. Moron. He had no idea what he was turning her over to. And for all his hatred of antihuman Hongguo, Len had rolled over quick for a large reward.

Stupid, she chided herself. But then she knew almost nothing about lying low or settling down.

She did know, however, that she did not want to end up as a brainwashed foot soldier for the Hongguo.

“Len.” He looked up at her, face uncertain. No doubt hovering somewhere between happiness at finally seeing a drain to his financial security gone, and guilt at turning over a family member’s friend. “You know what the Hongguo do, right?”

“You’ll be given a fair chance to explain yourself,” the zhen cha cuffing her said.

Nashara shook her head. “Did you and Danielle set this up when she dropped me off? A little extra profit off the whole experience?”

Len shook his head. “No. It’s just me.”

“You lousy shitfarmer—” One of the zhen cha put a patch over her mouth to shut her up.

“If you’ve done nothing wrong,” Len said, “then it should not be a problem. They’ll get your DNA sample, give you your documentation back. They’ll prove you didn’t set off a nuclear bomb on Villach. I gave them the records from Danielle’s ship proving you were aboard and couldn’t have done it. You can open a formal line of credit. It’ll be okay. Everything will be fine.” He still stared at the ground miserably.

Nashara’s eyes narrowed.

He was hunting for ways to sleep at night now.

Full of shit.

She walked past him, looking straight ahead.

Best of luck to you, Len, she thought. He’d need it if she ever ran into him again. She should have roomed with one of the human pets that got off the Daystar , she could have kept him intimidated and quiet.

Enough remorse. She focused on figuring out how to get out of this, wondered how she’d make him pay for this.