By the enemy. The competition.
What was General Motors up to?
This was the most unlikely raid in the history of Warlock, if not the entire Confederation. Was there something larger in play here? He perked up. There just might be a chance to salvage something from the ruins.
“Yes,” he said, slowly, thinking it out. “Tell them we are happy to have them return our test pilot. And if…” What was the name? “If Gioavanni Estrella De la Sangre has further need of Ceres Metals, then Overseer pro-tem Nikolai Kwiatkowski stands by to receive word.”
“Governor De la Sangre’s representatives are standing by at your convenience,” the tech said after relaying the overseer’s response. Putting one hand over her wire-mic, she looked askance in his direction. “Sir, what is this about?”
“I think,” Nikolai said cautiously, “the most bizarre inter-corporate memo ever placed.”
Which put Ceres Metals, and Nikolai, in one hell of a bargaining position. Warm offices on Capella might not be in the offing any longer, but neither, he hoped, was a cold cell on Sian. He could get used to life on Warlock. Either way, he decided, after this the job would be one hell of a lot more interesting.
He just needed to keep his head above water, and one hand in the deal.
MCKENNA STATION
by Kevin Killiany
McKenna Maritime Academy
McKenna Shipyards, Over Kathil
Capellan March, Federated Commonwealth
7 December 3062
Armis Tolan hated planets.
Which surprised no one; dirtsiders expected asteroid miners to hate planets. What they never understood was why.
Most thought it was the openness, as though anyone pasted to the side of a rock could understand what open space was. Others thought it was being on the ground itself, but the novelty of walking on an unbonded particulate surface had paled halfway through his first visit to a planet at age five. It wasn’t even the weight, though the monotonous drag distorting vectors at the bottom of a gravity well was annoying.
It was the atmosphere that scraped spacer nerves raw.
Even indoors, concealing the oppressively opaque sky, the air was wrong. Wild fluctuations in humidity, sometimes as much as two or three percent, shrilled failing life support to nerves reared in space, while airborne grit screamed overloaded filters. But worst by far were the uncontrolled breezes; each random breath had his every reflex leaping for a hull patch.
Armis could not understand why anyone would intentionally live on a planet.
Though he did concede some worlds were beautiful, viewed from a sensible distance. Kathil, for example. At the moment it covered half his field of vision with bright golds and greens punctuated by brilliant white bands of suspended water vapor—clouds, he remembered. Nearly four thousand kilometers below him, it seemed close enough to touch.
Any other cadet would have taken a sled for the nine hundred meter trip from the loading gantry to the palette, but the Tolans had been asteroid miners for thirteen generations. Unless the task called for a vehicle, Armis simply free-jumped across distances that most people wouldn’t chance without a shuttle.
Few miners left the asteroid fields to crew civilian DropShips or the JumpShips that plied interstellar space, binding the Sphere together. Fewer still went to Maritime Academies like McKenna, putting in the years to earn their Merchanter’s papers—certification to tech the Kearny-Fuchida drives.
Most asteroid miners left their home systems because they wanted new and different lives. Others were like Armis—younger sons and daughters looking for a new system in which to establish their claims.
Every ship’s Captain knew the legends, that a miner was only passing through. But folklore also had it that miners were tireless workers and pragmatists who would spend decades finding just the right asteroid field and give good value for their wages as they searched.
The legends, like all broad statements about a race or culture, were only true just often enough to keep them in circulation, which suited Armis just fine. Because of them miners were always welcome, and a miner with his K-F tech license from McKenna could pick his JumpShip.
Or he would have, before the situation became so complex. Now the merchant fleet, usually neutral in all conflicts, seemed polarized by the brewing political upheaval. Even among the Merchant Cadets, Armis found himself expected to declare for one side or the other—as though a miner would care who the dirtsiders took orders from. He refused, of course. He’d even concealed his home system to prevent the others from assigning him an allegiance he didn’t feel.
Swinging his arms with the unconscious calculation of a lifetime in space, he imparted spin. His view shifted from Kathil to the palette of machine parts he’d been assigned to secure. Today’s exercise had the cadets rounding up cargo that had drifted free of the loading bays. Armis had never heard of such an event in real life, but perhaps DropShip cargo handlers were more lax than miners.
Content the palette was where it should be, he didn’t counter his spin, letting inertia carry him in slow rotation. McKenna Station and the Shipyard were out of sight “beneath” his boots, of course, but he could see the flares of several worksleds nearby.
Most of the other cadets were working in teams—SOP on salvage/rescue. That no one wanted to team with Armis had not gone unnoticed. Admin had specifically ordered the team retrieving a near-by water cylinder to keep an eye on him.
These two, both planet-born, had taken a sled. Armis noticed that contrary to Academy regs, each wore mailed fists below their merchanters’ patches. Lyrans. One of them was a sharp-faced woman whose name he’d forgotten, but the other was Brogden Baylor, the closest thing to a friend Armis had.
A giant of a man, over two meters, Brogden was from the Odessa system. Armis knew that system had been mined out for easily accessible metals generations ago. Just as his was, or would be within
