Catch up with Chapter 1
The door marked 21-45 with stencilled black, flaking spray paint, slid to the left into its pocket between the inner and outer skins of the bulkhead. As it did, the air that gushed into the corridor hit me almost as hard as Cora’s punch. The pungent, fruity tang of marijuana was as pleasant as it was heady. If Cora reacted to it at all, I never saw it.
In the central districts, named for their proximity to the axial center, the heart of the station, as opposed to the commercial centers of each district, the lukshae field stabilisers didn’t quite counter the coriolis effect. It was enough to make me lightheaded even before the contact high I’d just received. It was almost like the feeling you got in those vortex tunnels in Earth funhouses, the ones with a bridge through a rotating tube. You know you’re walking on a straight and solid walkway but your eyes and brain can’t help but be fooled and you feel like you’re going to fall over the edge.
A window at the end of the corridor offered an unrestricted view of the cuboidal structure that ran the length of the station. The heart. It stretched away into the distance, foreshortened by the perspective. As well as providing the biggest source of light for all districts, the structure housed the primary control centres for the station’s major life support systems. Discrete regulatory control systems for air, temperature and water for each district. It also housed a great deal of infrastructure for the station’s computational core. A huge amount of it was distributed throughout the station too. Backups upon backups. Redundancies upon redundancies. There was no way the autonomic function of the station’s primary means of keeping its inhabitants alive was ever going to fail or be compromised.
The thing about Khalo was that it was supposed to be some utopian space station where nothing ever went wrong, no one ever took advantage of anyone else, and nowhere on the station would you feel like you were standing on anything but terra firma. The destination ads still boasted as much.
Elegant in design, clumsy in execution. But, a great marketing campaign.
The thousands of construction crews who built it, piece by piece, almost a quarter of a millennium ago, failed to account for some of the physical intricacies of building a 20 kilometer long, rotating cylinder with a 2 kilometer radius, in space, and the thousands of engineers and architects involved failed to manage the entire effort effectively. You could call it human error but both Earth and Luksha volunteered their best builders to the project. As it turns out, one thing humans and lukshae have in common is their ability to fuck things up. The result was still a very functional space station but over a century worth of work has gone into ‘fixing’ some of the major issues it’s had since it’s conception. Still, its bulky, slightly imbalanced outcome meant inconsistent ‘gravity’ in certain areas, even with advanced lukshae technology designed to stabilise grav-field variations.
The closer you got to the heart, no matter which district you were in, it was a safe bet for 2 things; grav-field fluctuations and cheap housing. My stomach braced for the former as we stood in front of the latter.
“Adio.” said Cora.
The tall figure stood in the doorway, stick thin and backlit by blue incandescence that further darkened the complexion around his wide smile and bright eyes.
“Miss T’lokha, nice to see you again.'' His voice was low and friendly, with a thick african accent.
“And you. May we come in?”
He took a step to the side and looked me up and down when I walked past him.
“This is your friend, the mechanic?” he said as we entered his boxy cabin.
Cora turned and gestured to each of us in turn.
“Adio, En. En, Adio.”
She’s still pissed at me. Wonder how long this time. At least it’s not because I’d genuinely fucked up, she just doesn’t like it when I mess with her.
I extended a hand and he took it, squeezed it with bony fingers.
“Miss T’Lokha speaks highly of you” He said.
I shot a look at Cora.
He palmed us towards the couch while he took a seat on a small hassock across a small faux wood, circular table from us.
“What’s ‘En’ short for?” he asked
Nathan. Ned. Nelson.
“Neil.” I looked him in the eye and tried to not let my voice waver. It’s easier with short names.
I could feel Cora rolling her eyes.
“Well, Neil–”
“En. Please.”
“En. You and Miss T’lokha have a reputation for good work on Khalo. Everyone I have spoken to about you has said wonderful things about you and your ability to get things done. I must say, it is impressive. There are very few mercenaries here who have this level of confidence among such a spectrum of employers.”
“Thank you, Adio.” she said. “We’ve come to you today to ask for your help.”
He raised an eyebrow, bidding Cora to continue.
“You’ve heard about Del’s Data Dominion.” It wasn’t a question.
The man in front of us just nodded, slowly, his chin perched on the steeple of his hands.
“We want to find out what happened. Del is incommunicado and we cant get close to the scene thanks to Khal-sec.”
“Khal-sec.” He spat and relaxed a little into his squat. “Thugs in uniform under a banner of peacekeeping. Ch’ek’wanyochi!”
His long, thin limbs hung over each other as he sat on the low stool, forearms resting on knees that pointed to the ceiling. In the dim blue light from his hydroponics nook, his skin looked almost ashen grey, washed out by the UV like the colours of the portrait draped on the wall behind him. It was a profile image of a bearded man wearing formal military dress in front of a green, yellow and red flag. Set in the bottom third was a banner that read:
“Peace demands the united efforts of us all. Who can
foresee what spark might ignite the fuse?”
Adio considered us for a moment.
“I am a charitable person. Ask anyone in my community.” He gestured broadly. “When I’m in a position to help someone in need, I will. Right now, I am not in such a position. Many of the people in Cho Central are suffering and I am consumed with finding a way to help them.”
Cora jumped in “What if we could help? Would you help us then?”
“Quid pro quo?” Adio pretended to consider this for a moment, as if he hadn’t already decided. We came to him, which meant we needed something. If we needed something, he could get us to do something for him. Something he didn’t want to do himself.
“Yes. There is a man on Khalo who takes more than his share.” He said without missing a beat. “More than he deserves. Another corporate rat, living off the misery of the people he is supposed to protect. Ryker Ferro. Owns a wing of habitats along the Greyson Concourse. He ignores complaints, turns a blind eye to the protection rackets, and has raised rent for the third time in six months.”
Corrupt landlords are not an uncommon thing on Khalo. Every square centimeter was owned by someone, or some corporate entity.
Capitalism.
Yay.
“What d’you want us to do?” I asked.
“I want him taken care of.”
“Woah there,” I held my hands up, “that’s really not our wheelhouse.” To do what Cora and I did for a living on Khalo, you needed to have a little bit of emotional detachment from the lives you were impacting but we drew a hard line under directly causing death or serious harm.
Cora and I exchanged a look and I could hear my heart beating.
The tall man stood and strode slowly to his growing nook, and began to spray his plants with a fine mist that could’ve been water but smelled somewhat sweeter. The majority of the plants he grew were surprisingly not marijuana, but an array of colourful orchids interspersed with gnarled looking red and orange chilli peppers. He examined the bright flowers like a carpenter might survey his joinery.
“You misunderstand. I want his status as a landlord overturned. Official channels have been of no use and will not bring him to justice because in their eyes he has done nothing wrong. Legal loopholes and workarounds have allowed this man to profit while his tenants starve, freeze, and live in squalor. Enateh tebeda!” He threw up his free hand, exasperated.
“I need you to find something that will get him removed from his position of power. Something…compromising. I know he is involved in something nefarious, a man like that never has clean hands. Find me some information that he will not want discovered, I will do the rest. Of course, if, by some unforeseen circumstance, he were to meet an unfortunate end, I would not consider your job a failure.” He leaned against the counter rendering an unsavoury smile.
Finding dirt on people was never a pleasant job. There was always some element you didn’t expect that changed your perspective and made you think twice about delivering.
One job stood out in my memory, when Cora and I had first started working together. We had been hired to obtain proof that a businessman had been embezzling money from the corporation he worked for. The employer, a mid-level manager at Terl Ltd, had tried everything to nail the guy legitimately but came up with nothing. So he came to us through a mutual contact. We followed the mark and investigated his affairs for about a week. Eventually, we were able to crack some of his financial records and it turned out the reason he was stealing from the corp was that his partner was really sick, rare form of cancer. A kind there was still no cure for. Terl Ltd’s insurance didn’t extend to their employees’ families, and they didn’t have the resources to pay for treatment, so he started embezzling to pay for his partner’s medical bills. It shouldn’t have mattered why he was stealing the money, we were just hired to prove that he was doing it. But knowing is knowing. In the end, we told the employer we couldn’t find anything and went without our payday. For the next month, we lived off ramen packets and oatmeal.
Cora remembered too, judging by the look she gave me. She spoke up first.
“Adio, we’ve done this kind of job before and, trust me, nothing’s ever as black and white as it seems from the outside. You might find out some things that’ll change how you’re looking at it.”
“I am willing to continue. Regardless of what this man’s reasons are, his exploitation of these people must end.”
He wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to have someone else do the dirty work.
“Do this for me, and I will see what I can find out about Madame Del’s unfortunate situation, yes?”
Cora stood. I followed suit, trying my best not to let the marriage of weed and coriolis get the better of me. My head was heavy and my legs had become stalks of jelly.
“We’ll see what we can do.”
She made a gesture over the watch on her arm and Adio immediately conjured a holodisplay from a small unit on the table consisting of several lines of text.
“Our terms.” She said.
A couple years earlier we–Cora–worked up a standard contract for our services after being burned one too many times. Now we only worked for people who would sign off on our very reasonable terms.
With a few gestures, Cora waived our fee from the contract citing an ‘exchange of services’.
A moment later, Adio thumbed a signature agreeing to the terms of our standard contract and we were officially hired.
“I eagerly await your return.” He smiled at us both, in turn, then turned back towards his cassock and squatted on it. “When you do, I will have something for you.”
Cora and I exchanged a look and left.
***
Putting one foot in front of the other was a conscious and continuous effort.
“Can we please get back down into some decent pull? I am not okay.” I said as I stumbled back along the constricted corridor to the lift. One hand on the wall.
“Yeah. fine.” Cora said.
Oh, come on!
The redness of her eyes was barely visible under her burdened eyelids. It was the first time I'd noticed that she’d actually been affected. But she still walked like she was stone-cold sober.
“Oh, come on! I was just winding you up a little. If it makes you feel any better I got my ass handed to me in Connor’s. And the Tanaka mark is long gone, sans drive. Everything is fine!”
“Yeah, i know.”
“Then why are you still mad at me?!”
“I’m not mad at you.”
Cora stumbled over her next words. Took a moment to sigh, then said:
“I’m worried about Del”
Ohhhhhh … Wow Hagen, can’t believe you missed that.
“I didn’t know you two were..” I said, not quite knowing where to look. Cora was very rarely this vulnerable.
“Yeah, a while. Remember the Garrison job? Well we got to talking after handing in that last box of gear from the pirates. Nothing special, really, we spoke about growing up on Luksha, how difficult it was for me with no other humans around, and how she had been bullied for not fitting in.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t much more than small talk. But then, a desperate-looking scav pulled a piece and tried to hold up Del’s stall.”
“Oof. Mistake.”
“Right? Couldn’t have been more than a few seconds later, Del had disarmed him, knocked him out and some people were dragging him off the promenade. I would’ve helped, and I was ready to, but she handled it so effortlessly. It was as routine as rotating her stock.”
The long corridor ended with the only lift shaft on this level. We both stood looking at the red light above the door, willing it to turn green. And, I guess, using it to avoid eye contact while we spoke about feelings and stuff.
“Something about the way she held herself through the whole thing. She was brave, calm, in control. I was actually really impressed. She made me feel safe in that moment. As soon as the scav was dealt with, she picked up our conversation where we had left off, where we learned to fight, music we liked, politics… We talked for a long time. We had a sparring date a couple days later and since then,” She paused, “I like her a lot.”
She trailed off. I saw her try to swallow the lump in her throat and it made her eyes water. I nudged her with a friendly shoulder.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find her. Badass like Del? She knows how to take care of herself, probably just laying low somewhere.”
“Where would we even start?”
“Bound to be something to go on at her stall,” I said as the light finally relented. The door irised open and we stepped in together. “We just need to wait for Khal-Sec to back off. In the meantime, let’s get some rack time and do this thing for Adio. Keep our distance from Del’s place for the moment.”
“What about Tanaka?” She asked.
“I’ll drop it off in the morning.”
A moment of silence passed as we waited for the pod to take us back to a more comfortable, and stable, pull.
“Thanks, En.”
The door irised closed.
Great second chapter!
Enjoying seeing the characters develop and meeting new ones. Cool development of the station too. Looking forward to the third!