Bodyguard

12

“Unauthorized personnel will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

A sign posted in locks one through twelve of the Mgundo Tug and Barge Company’s Hull 264

Ships have names, but barges don’t. Don’t ask why…it’s one of those traditions spacers like, because it makes their profession more romantic. It seems silly somehow, especially when the barge is a hundred times larger than the ship that pushes it around, but that’s the way it is. Ask, and spacers will feed you some bull about how a ship has a soul, and a barge doesn’t, whereas the only real difference is that ships have propulsion systems and barges don’t, or so it seems to me.

This particular barge was cylindrical in shape and at least three miles long. Numbers, each of which was white and about three stories tall, slipped by as our shuttle made its way towards what I assumed was the bow. One of them, a “ 4,” was cratered where something had hit it. My stomach contracted. A meteorite? Traveling at what? Twenty miles a second? Whipping out of nowhere to hammer the barge?

No, I told myself, chances were the crater had been caused by something more prosaic. A docking accident or a collision with another barge, perhaps.

Whatever the cause, the crater gave way to an almost featureless gray hull and disappeared behind us. The barge did have some solar arrays and a small antenna farm, but nothing like the maze of sensors, duct work, and other installations that crowded the skin of the average ship. But so what? It didn’t matter as long as the barge was well built and headed in the right direction. The “right direction” being defined as the asteroid belt, since passenger ships bound for Europa Station were way out of our price range.

Sasha resourceful as always, had rummaged through some of the habitat’s seedier dives until she found a half-stoned shipping agent willing to accept half fare in return for a ride on the barge. A ride that, while illegal, and minus the comforts of a liner, would be quiet and peaceful.

Sasha painted a glowing picture. Rather than work as we had aboard the Red Trader, and kowtow to the likes of Killer, we would eat and sleep our way to the belt, grab some new transportation, and arrive on Europa Station in tip-top shape. I should have known better.

We sat three abreast with Sasha occupying the jump seat in the middle. Our pilot was a sallow little man with a pitted face. The green, yellow, and red half-light filled the craters with darkness and made the condition seem even worse. His eyes pecked at the readouts while his hands jumped from one control to the next. “You be ready now…I can stop for two, maybe three minutes. Any more and the tug crew will get suspicious.”

I knew problems could result from the fact that the tug crew wasn’t aware of us but wasn’t smart enough to know what they were. Which just goes to prove that ignorance isn’t necessarily bliss.

The pilot touched a series of keys. The shuttle slowed relative to the barge, tractor beams made contact, pulled the smaller vessel into place, and held it against a lock. Metal clanged and a motor whined. The pilot swiveled towards Sasha and rubbed thumb against fingers. Sasha nodded, pulled a roll of currency out of an inside pocket, and dropped it into his hand. The pilot slipped the rubber band off, counted out loud, and nodded his satisfaction. “…One thousand eight, one thousand nine, two K right on the nose. Grab your gear and haul ass.”

We hurried to comply. Sasha went first and I followed. I had released my harness, floated free, and was pulling myself towards the stern when the pilot grabbed my ankle. “Hey, chrome-dome.”

I looked back over my shoulder. “Yeah?”

“The barge is loaded with all sorts of stuff, including crystal generators.”

“So?”

“So, the generators don’t work worth shit during zero gee. Makes the crystals come out all weird or something. That means the tug crew’s gonna put some spin on the moment they break orbit. The results could bust your butt.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

The pilot grinned. “Hitched a ride once myself. Nobody told me. Now get the hell off my shuttle.”

I nodded and propelled myself down the short passageway. There were equipment racks, padded corners, and lockers from which most but not all of the uniformly olive drab paint had been worn away, leaving patches of shiny metal.

Sasha had transferred most of our supplies to the shuttle’s lock, and I was surprised at how bulky they were. Our food was concentrated but still took up a lot of space, as did the first aid kit, a cube reader, and our clothes. I was worried about water but Sasha had assured me there was plenty on board.

And so it was that we sealed ourselves into the lock, waited for pressures to equalize, and watched the hatch iris open. It took about fifteen seconds for the airtight door to open all the way. The adjoining lock was larger and padded to protect it from damage. We pushed our duffel bags through and followed with our bodies. My boots had barely cleared the hatch when motors whined and the opening closed. A few moments later we heard a thud and felt the hull vibrate as the shuttle pushed itself away. We were alone. Or supposed to be, anyway.

A duffel bag hit me in the nose. I pushed it away. The suction pulled a piece of paper in front of my nose. I knew what it was before I grabbed it. A Mars Bar wrapper. I held it out for Sasha to examine. “What’s this?”

She looked defensive. “The tug crew ran a check on this tub yesterday. One of them left it.”

Spacers are a tidy bunch-they have to be-so I had doubts about her theory but knew better than to pursue it. Sasha would stick to her point of view until forced to change. That reminded me of someone else I’d known, but I couldn’t remember who.

Joy had agreed to maintain a low profile aboard the shuttle, but the promise had expired. She floated free of my pocket and peppered us with questions.

“Where are we? What’s going on? Why is Sasha holding that wrapper?” It was like dealing with an articulate six-year-old.

I did my best to answer Joy’s questions while trying to capture a duffel bag under each arm and maintain my equilibrium all at the same time. I handled the zero-gee stuff better than I had at the beginning of the trip but was clumsy compared to Sasha. She took pity on me and grabbed the second bag in addition to her own. That left the emergency pressure suits we had liberated from Marscorp. They had been duct taped together and were floating just below the overhead. I was about to reach for them when Joy launched herself off my shoulder. “Don’t worry about the suits! I can handle them.”

And handle them she did, using a combination of zero-gee savvy and some highly skilled gymnastics.

Air hissed as the inner hatch irised open. Joy pushed herself away from a storage locker and drifted through the aperture. I formed words but didn’t get them out in time to do any good. My stomach muscles tightened. She would draw fire if someone was waiting on the other side. Nothing happened. I heaved a sigh of relief and made a note to speak with her later. Yes, she was an android, but with a difference. Maybe it was the fact that she’d been a present, or maybe it was her pseudo-personality, but the result was the same. I liked Joy and would be sorry if she were hurt.

I passed through the hatch next, towing the duffel bag with one hand and holding my weapon with the other. I noticed that Sasha made a point of leaving her gun in its holster. I tried a flip, hoped to land feet first, and hit the bulkhead with my back. Sasha laughed, did what I had tried to do, and hung there with a smirk on her face.

I looked both ways, made sure the corridor was clear, and holstered my weapon. It wouldn’t hurt to have a free hand.

Joy was disgustingly cheerful. “Hey, this is fun! Where do we go? This way or that way?”

Our head swiveled as Sasha and I considered the alternatives. There wasn’t much difference. The passageway was sufficiently wide to accommodate a standard autoloader or a train of power pallets. And, judging from the longitudinal marks that scored the walls, a good deal of cargo had been hauled through this corridor. Though pretty much interchangeable during zero-gee conditions, the distinctions between overhead, bulkheads, and deck were more meaningful when gravity was present.

The deck, or what would be a deck during a normal gravity situation, was covered with heavy-duty mesh. Conduit and cable snaked along below.

The overhead was comparatively smooth, interrupted by little more than rectangular glow panels and a recessed track. Hundreds on hundreds of vertical ridges gave the bulkheads an organic look, as if we were inside a worm, or a giant serpent. The intent was obvious. By grabbing the ridges with our hands, or pushing on them with our feet, zero-gee pedestrians like ourselves could make pretty good time.

The bulkheads had other features as well, including emergency com sets, surveillance cameras, fire-fighting equipment, and slots where one could escape an oncoming cargo train. Arrows pointed in both directions and words announced possible destinations. I tried to read them and was thrilled to find that I could. The first set said, “Holds 1- 12,” and the second set said, “Holds 13- 24.”

It went without saying that someone who had legitimate business aboard the barge would know where they were headed. I didn’t, but Sasha did, or pretended to. “The shipping agent said that holds one through twelve would be crammed with cargo modules. Let’s try thirteen through twenty-four.”

I nodded, motioned for Joy to stay behind me, and was about to launch myself in the proper direction, when something whooshed over my head. It came and went so quickly that it took me a moment to realize that whatever it was had traveled via the recessed channel. A small robot, perhaps? Rushing from one end of the vessel to the other?

I looked at Sasha, she looked at me, and both of us shrugged. The channel and whatever it was that traveled within it seemed harmless enough and could be investigated later. We needed to get where we were going, and get there fast, or we would suffer what could be painful consequences.

I repositioned my feet, pushed off, and coasted for twenty feet. The ridges were spaced about six inches apart, which placed one wherever you needed it, and a sort of rhythm emerged. Push, coast, push. Push, coast, push. Over and over again as we made our way down the corridor. It became kind of hypnotic after a while, so much so that my senses were dulled, and it was Joy who gave the alarm. “Look! Something’s coming!”

I looked, and what I saw scared the hell out of me. It turned from a dot to a blob to an oncoming train in a matter of seconds. The drive unit had diagonal yellow and black stripes across its front end, mounted no less than four flashing red beacons, and filled the passageway from side to side and top to bottom. Rollers kept the vehicle from scraping against the bulkheads and explained the wear marks I’d noticed earlier. The train, if that’s what it should be called, was making a good fifty or sixty miles an hour. And why not? The humans were gone, as far as the barge and its computers knew, so cargo could be redistributed by the fastest and most efficient means possible. Sasha was first to get the words out of her mouth. “The next niche! Move!”

It felt crazy to launch ourselves at the oncoming train, but the distance between us and the niche ahead was less than the distance between us and the niche behind. I put all the strength I had into the push, but the air felt as thick as old-fashioned molasses. The deck and bulkheads moved with maddening slowness, and the stripes hurtled towards me with what seemed like unbelievable speed. Seconds seemed to stretch into minutes as I willed myself forward. I saw Sasha make her way into the niche, followed by Joy. Good! Someone would live, someone would…

The Beep! Beep! Beep! of the warning buzzer filled my ears and drove all the remaining thoughts out of my mind. I felt the outermost wave of displaced air touch my face, waited for the mind-numbing impact, and felt a hand grab my jacket. The beeping sound turned into a long, thin scream as the train roared by. The heel of my left boot bounced off the side of a cargo module and threw me deeper into the niche. My head hit the bulkhead with a distinct clang. Anyone who had a full load of brains would’ve been injured. I was momentarily dizzy but otherwise fine. The train was gone as quickly as it came. I looked at Sasha. “Thanks. You saved my life.”

There it was again. The flash of compassion, of caring, quickly hidden by a shrug and a flip reply. “It was my turn.”

We paid attention after that, pushing our way down the corridor, watching for oncoming trains. That’s how I spotted the change in what had been dull uniformity. The difference was hard to describe, except to say that the lighting was different, and the bulkheads had been replaced by a vague haziness. But the area acquired definition as we moved closer, rolled into focus like a carefully adjusted lens, and became a vast open space.

The bulkheads fell away and the corridor became a sky bridge that spidered out over a large cargo bay. It was filled with bushes. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. They were lushly green, almost identical in size and shape, and heavy with purple blossoms. Light glittered off tiny wings as a host of robotic insects flitted from one blossom to the next, spreading pollen, or doing whatever it was they had been designed to do. I noticed that the bushes, and the containers they sat in, were secured to the deck.

My stomach flip-flopped as I drifted out and over the abyss. Heights don’t bother me, but floating does. I wouldn’t fall, not till gravity had been restored, but I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere either. Not unless the air-conditioned breeze blew me against something solid. I made a grab for the railing, got it, and checked to see if Sasha was watching. She wasn’t, thank god, and neither was Joy. Both had ignored the view and were well on their way to reaching the other side.

I followed, careful to plan my movements, and was grateful when the corridor closed around me. We had gone about fifty feet down the passageway when the vertical access tubes appeared and the hall ended. That was interesting, but not half as interesting as the foot-high letters that spelled out the words, “Corpies Suck!” followed by some incomprehensible lines and squiggles. It didn’t take an art historian to see that the artist had used some sort of marker rather than spray paint. I turned towards Sasha. “The tug crew, I suppose?”

She gave me a dirty look and pushed herself towards the access tubes. “Come on. Let’s camp on the main deck. I’d rather look at bushes than metal bulkheads.”

That seemed reasonable, so I tagged along. Sasha had rigged a way to tow her duffel bag one after the other. The second one bounced off the coaming as she pushed herself down through the tube. Joy shoved her cases into position, waved cheerfully, and dropped feet first into the tube.

That left me. I pushed myself into position, planned my approach descent, and “climbed” down the rungs intended for use with gravity. It worked pretty well.

I was concerned about where Sasha would lead us once we arrived on, or in this case near, the main deck. I needn’t have been. In spite of the fact that she had pooh-poohed my concerns regarding security, the girl had good instincts, and headed for the point where the bulkhead intersected the vessel’s hull. While not exactly a fortress, this would protect our backs, and allow space for a kill zone between our quarters and what I increasingly thought of as the forest.

Though not as tall as your average tree, the bushes did tower over me, or would have if I’d been standing rather than floating. That made them a forest, as did the brooding feel that surrounded them, and the rather large amount of space that they occupied.

A cloud of glittering robo-insects rose into the air, hovered for a moment, and settled back down. Light glinted off their silvery wings and made them look like branch-grown diamonds.

It was then that I noticed the fragrance that drifted up around us. It smelled good at first, like perfume on a high-priced hooker, but grew thick and cloying after a minute or so.

Once there we found the corner already occupied by four storage modules. I tried one and found it unlocked. A quick investigation revealed that the boxes contained hand tools, fertilizer concentrate, and a whole bunch of lab equipment that I didn’t understand. But density is density, and if lab equipment can shield me from darts, then I don’t care what it’s for.

Sasha grumbled when I freed the containers from the deck, and insisted on rearranging them into a protective semicircle, but went along with the plan. Not because she liked it, or thought it was necessary, but because I’m a crotchety old bastard who has to be humored.

Once our newly formed bulwark was in place, and was mag-locked to the deck, our next requirement was furniture. Beds had first priority, since they could do double duty as acceleration couches, and would cushion us from the effects of gravity.

With that in mind, we spread out to see what we could find. I wanted to say something cautionary, like “watch out for people with Mars Bars,” but knew better than to push my luck. I took the port side and headed towards the bow, while the others took the bulkhead and headed towards the access tubes.

We’d been at it for fifteen minutes when a squadron of mechanical insects took to the air and Joy came swinging through the branches. You could see bushes swaying all the way back to where she’d come from. Her last swing, followed by a split-second release, sent her flying towards my shoulder. She hit with a thump. I fell backwards and struggled to right myself. “Damn it, Joy…what the hell are you doing?”

“Arriving,” she said brightly. “And I found what you’re looking for.”

“You did? Where?”

“In a storage room near the access tubes. Cargo pads…lots of them.”

I used the bush tops to pull myself along. Blossoms came loose and floated through the air like organic confetti. The smell of them stuck to the back of my throat. Joy held onto my right shoulder tab and chattered the whole way. I didn’t pay much attention to what she said, but realized how pleasant her voice was, and understood how lonely Wamba must have been. I wondered if he’d make another Joy, or if that was possible, since she was one of a kind. I hoped so.

The cargo pads were right where Joy had said they’d be, and while some of them were raggedy, and others were stained, most were reasonably clean. It was a simple matter to free the pads from the straps that held them in place, sort them in mid-air, and take the ones we wanted. Sasha arrived towards the end of the process and helped tow them to our newly created home.

It didn’t take long to discover that securing the pads to the deck was going to be a problem. But through the judicious use of magnetic clamps borrowed from here and there, and the huge roll of duct tape that I had included in our luggage, we created what looked like comfortable beds. Gravity would provide the true test.

With that effort out of the way, Sasha and I discovered that we were tired. So, after eating some rather salty ration bars, and washing them down with water siphoned from the irrigation system, we strapped ourselves in for a good night’s sleep. Not that “night” had any particular meaning within the realm of the eternally lit cargo bay.

I felt one of us should keep watch, but Sasha thought it was unnecessary. So, since robots don’t sleep, and she would be up and around anyway, Joy was the logical compromise. I’ve got to admit that I felt some qualms about entrusting our safety to a twelve-inch-tall android, but my eyelids grew heavy, sleep beckoned, and I went along.

It was two or three hours later when I was awoken by the sudden and unannounced imposition of Earth-normal gravity. And, while I was growing more and more accustomed to zero-gee conditions, it felt good. And so it was that I had just rearranged my bed, snuggled under a cargo mat, and drifted off to sleep when Joy jumped up and down on my chest. The poppers attacked two minutes later.