Artemis Read Free

Offshore Platform Artemis. This platform is the property of the Kenya Space Corporation. International maritime laws apply.”
    I stared daggers at Dale. He didn’t notice. Damn, I wasted a perfectly good bitchy glare.
    I checked the landing zone schedule on my Gizmo. No meatship today (that’s what we call passenger ships). They only come about once a week. The next one wouldn’t be for three days. Thank God. There’s nothing more annoying than trust-fund boys looking for “moon poon.”
    I headed to the south side, where the freight airlock stood ready. It could fit ten thousand cubic meters of cargo through in a single cycle, but bringing it in was a slow process. The pod had arrived hours earlier. EVA masters had brought the entire pod into the airlock and gave it the high-pressure air cleanse.
    We do everything we can to keep lunar dust from entering the city. Hell, I hadn’t even skipped the cleanse after my faulty valve adventure earlier that day. Why go through all that hassle? Because lunar dust is
extremely
bad to breathe. It’s made of teeny, tiny rocks, and there’s been no weather to smooth them out. Each mote is a spiky, barbed nightmare just waiting to tear up your lungs. You’re better off smoking a pack of asbestos cigarettes than breathing that shit.
    By the time I got to the freight airlock, the giant inner door stood open and the pod was being unloaded. I slid up to Nakoshi, the head longshoreman. He sat at his inspection table and examined the contents of a shipping box. Satisfied that it contained no contraband, he closed the box and stamped it with the Artemis symbol—a capital
A
with the right side styled to look like a bow and arrow.
    “Good morning, Mr. Nakoshi,” I said cheerfully. He and Dad had been buddies since I was a little girl. He was family to me, like a beloved uncle.
    “Get in line with the other porters, you little shit.”
    Okay, maybe more like a distant cousin.
    “Come on, Mr. N,” I wheedled. “I’ve been waiting on this shipment for weeks. We talked about this.”
    “Did you transfer payment?”
    “Did you stamp the package?”
    He maintained eye contact and reached under the table. He pulled out a still-sealed box and slid it toward me.
    “I don’t see a stamp,” I said. “Do we have to do things this way every damn time? We used to be so close. What happened?”
    “You grew up and became an underhanded pain in the ass.” He set his Gizmo on top of the box. “And you had so much potential. You pissed it away. Three thousand slugs.”
    “You mean twenty-five hundred, right? Like we agreed?”
    He shook his head. “Three thousand. Rudy’s been sniffing around. More risk means more pay.”
    “That seems more like a Nakoshi problem than a Jazz problem,” I said. “We agreed to twenty-five hundred.”
    “Hmm,” he said. “Maybe I should give it a detailed inspection then. See if there’s anything in here that shouldn’t be….”
    I pursed my lips. This wasn’t the time to make a stand. I brought up my Gizmo’s banking software and initiated the transfer. The Gizmos did whatever magic shit computers do to identify each other and verify.
    Nakoshi picked up his Gizmo, checked the confirmation page, and nodded with approval. He stamped the box. “What’s in there, anyway?”
    “Porn, mostly. Starring your mom.”
    He snorted and continued with his inspections.
    And that’s how to smuggle contraband into Artemis. Pretty simple, really. All it takes is a corrupt official you’ve known since you were six years old.
Getting
the contraband to Artemis…well, that’s another story. More on that later.
    I could have picked up a bunch more packages to deliver around, but this one was special. I walked over to my cart and hopped in the driver’s side. I didn’t strictly need a cart—Artemis wasn’t set up for vehicles—but it got me around faster, and I could deliver more stuff that way. Since I’m paid per delivery it was worth the investment. My