The Callisto Gambit Read Free Page B

the boss’s goodwill … and by the way, he still owes me money. And now 6 Hebe is gone, there’s nowhere to run to if the situation goes to shit.” He pulled his helmet off its velcro patch, fitted it over his head, and inflated it, shutting out the smell of growing things. “You bet your ass I’m going to be careful.”
    But he couldn’t leave it at that.
    As he flew towards the Startractor, towing the pigs in their airtight cage, he pinged Jun again. “Don't worry about me, OK? Just watch your back out there." Jun might be an ASI, but Kiyoshi was the elder brother. It was his job to sound reassuring.
    Many of the Galapajin were still buzzing around outside the Startractor. That little airlock in the quarterdeck was a real bottleneck. 
    They all stopped and turned to watch when the Monster’s drive spun up. 1.5 kilometers away, the powerful, fifth-hand fusion drive, originally made for a Hyperpony courier, blazed brighter than the sun. The plasma plume seared a violet after-image on their eyeballs. The old ship arrowed away, accelerating at a pace that would take it to the L5 Earth-Moon LaGrange point in … oh, about a month and a half.
    When the Monster got closer to Earth, Jun would enable the Ghost, the stealth system he and Kiyoshi had stolen from the PLAN. It would prevent Earth’s ships and IR telescopes from detecting his approach. At that point they would no longer be able to communicate. For now they could still talk by radio. But as the Monster’s drive plume shrank to a speck, and then to nothing, Kiyoshi felt a keen sense of abandonment.
    Guessing the others felt the same way, he said cheerfully, “Well, let’s get moved in.”
    “Yonezawa- sencho.” A senior nun, Sister Terauchi, addressed him as captain. “Does this ship have a name?”
    Kiyoshi scowled at the ugly length of the Startractor. Its conical drive shield sprouted heat radiator vanes. The small engineering module nestled atop the radiators. Forward of that, the Galapajin were busily tethering their Bigelows to the ship’s spine, in between the circular plates where cargo would have been anchored. The propellor arm that rotated around the ship’s nose was aleady slowing down. He was going to halt it. Spin gravity? The Galapajin didn’t need no stinking spin gravity. Waste of power. One of those modules was for passengers, the other for crew, but it was a good bet they’d be using both of them for food production.
    “Yeah,” he said. “It was a recycling barge, as I understand. Fomerly known as the Kharbage Collector.”
     
     

ii.
     
    Michael Kharbage crouched in his mecha, trying not to cry. Kiyoshi Yonezawa had let him keep his mecha when he threw him off the Kharbage Collector . That was a crumb of comfort amidst his shock and despair. Nothing like this had ever happened to him. Would this be the last thing that ever happened to him?
    He floated helplessly into space, together with the other people Yonezawa had tossed off the Kharbage Collector : Captain Haddock—a self-styled pirate—and Haddock’s family. The Collector and the Monster shrank to tinker-toys adorned with LEDs. Captain Haddock uttered a monotonous string of piratical swears. Michael used to think Captain Haddock was a real pirate. That was why he’d hired him when he needed an adult to help him steal the Kharbage Collector from his dad. But compared to Kiyoshi Yonezawa, Haddock was a piker. And now he was as helpless as Michael himself.
    Fear yammered in Michael’s head. They drifted closer to the fragments of the asteroid 99984 Ravilious. The free-floating iron mountains blocked out the sun.
    Back in the inner system, humanity was embroiled in a life-or-death war against the PLAN, the voracious AI that had occupied Mars and wanted the rest of the solar system, too. Ships were battling. Carriers and orbitals were exchanging barrages of unthinkable destructive power. But it was all so far away. Out here, in this black void sprinkled with stars, the