Cornered

LOCATION: MTC Patrol Cutter Brig

STATUS: Detained

The first thing they took was the suit.

Without his hydraulic frame, Jimi felt like a jellyfish dragged onto a beach. He sat in the interrogation chair, his limbs heavy and useless. The Cold Moon was spinning at a simulated 0.8 Earth Gravity. It was standard for MTC officers, raised in the settlements on Mars, crushing for a space-bound scavenger.

His chest ached. His heart, adapted for the float of the suit, thumped against his ribs like a trapped bird.

The room smelled aggressively clean, sterile. It smelled of ozone, vanilla, an MTC favorite scent, and the chemical tang of recycled air that had been cycled and recycled until it had no soul.

On the metal table between him and the door sat the black box. It looked small and stupid under the harsh fluorescent lights.

The door opened.

Captain Delavan stepped in. He wasn't wearing a suit. He wore a crisp, midnight-blue MTC uniform. All the features of an exo-suit were hidden in the uniform. He looked well-fed. His skin was tight and rosy, the sign of a man who drank real water and slept in a gravity bed every night.

He didn't look at Jimi. He looked at a pad in his hand.

-Jimi Phoenix, Delavan said, smacking his mouth as if it were dry. Bit of a dramatic name?

Jimi leaned back, trying to look comfortable while his spine compressed.

-The gravity, man, he spat back.

Delavan tapped the pad. "

-Your name is Lyons. That sounds fake too.

Jimi kept his face blank. It was a small thing, a name. But hearing it out loud made him itch. It reminded him of the orphanages in the Tumble. It reminded him of being a nobody.

-Who cares? Jimi rasped, struggling to breathe without his suit. What do you need a name for if you’re just gonna yil me in the derriere. You charging me or what?

Delavan finally sat down. He picked up the black box, the drive. He turned it over in his manicured fingers.

-This is a Class-A Pre-Zero artifact, Delavan started. Encryption is military grade. Probably contains telemetry data from the old Earth defense grid. On the open market, this buys you a new ship. Maybe even a condo on Io.

-Then keep it, Jimi said. Consider it a bribe. Just let me go, would you?

Delavan laughed. It was a dry ugly sound. He dropped the drive on the table.

-I don't want the drive. I have warehouses full of them. We strip-mined the Halo fifty years ago. The only reason we leave scraps like this out there is to bait the rats. That was a lie. He didn’t know what it was. He was just patrol. A different department of the MTC handled acquisitions, the Settlers’ word for what Dwellers call scavenging.

Delavan leaned forward. The vanilla smell coming off him was suffocating. Phoenix eyed the drive. He could get it back, pocket it when Delavan wasn’t looking.

-I pulled your file. You owe fifty kilos of Heethree to some nasty people. You have three outstanding warrants for smuggling in the Belt. And your air subscription looks like it expired two days ago. Technically, you're stealing MTC oxygen right now just by breathing in this room!

Jimi swallowed. The dryness in his throat wasn't just the air mix. How’d he get this cornered?

-Get to the point, Jimi said, starting to fidget in his seat but moving closer to the drive.

-The point, Delavan said, is that a Circuit Judge is docking at Checkpoint Zero in forty-eight hours. If I process you, you go before him. For the smuggling alone, that’s ten years in the sulfur pits on Io. You won't last six months without your suit.

Delavan swiped his pad and slid it across the table. It showed a grainy image of a ship—a massive, ugly freighter comprised of rusted cargo containers welded together.

-This is the Marley, Delavan said. Flagship of the Earth Zionist Movement Fleet. They are currently headed to The Tumble. It took them months to get there. They depart for Earth in three days.

-Zionists, Jimi scoffed. Nutjobs. They want to go back to Earth. For what? It’s not hospitable.

-They have a new leader, Delavan said. One of the flippers from the Sagan Cities.

Flippers were young people who turned away from the careers the scientifically minded Sagan Cities on Jupiter prepared them for to join the society and economy, such as it was, of the wider Solar System.

-Can’t be older than twenty one, named Himalaya Market. Been with the EZM for six years, big part of their gains legitimacy-wise. Now He claims he has a route through the debris field.

Jimi raised an eyebrow.

-A Saganite? Leading a bunch of Dweller fanatics? With a route I don’t know about?

-Market is a problem, Delavan said. He’s charismatic, educated, and convincing thousands of indentured workers to break their contracts and join his little pilgrimage. It’s going to be bad for business.

-So kill him, Jimi offered. You know, with your railguns.

-We can't make martyrs, Delavan replied. And besides, the New Earth Consortium approved a flight plan. They need to keep the EZM mollified or they’ll walk out of the consortium. They can’t afford that kind of challenge to their legitimacy, not right now. They just let them in.

Delavan tapped the table. The black box drive was gone but he didn’t notice.

-You can see the dilemma. We need someone to infiltrate the fleet. Someone who knows the Halo. Someone who can fly a piece of junk ship through a debris field without hitting a mine.

Jimi stared at the officer.

-You want me to pilot for them?

-I want you to guide them, Delavan corrected. Market wants to land on Earth. You will get them through the blockade. You will guide them to the surface. And once they land, you’ll plant this.

Delavan reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, silver disc. It looked like a coin, but it hummed. A homing beacon of some sort.

-You plant this in their camp, Delavan said. It broadcasts a distress signal on a pirate frequency. That gives me legal clearance to enter the atmosphere and secure the area.

-Kill them. Why bother? The poisoned atmosphere on Earth will do that. What are we talking about? No one’s been on the surface for hundreds of years. Do you buy the EZM’s hokey about a healing Earth too?

-What’s that matter to you? You plant the beacon. You leave. I wipe your debt. All of it. The Syndicate, the warrants, the air tax. You walk away with a clean slate. And your lungs will be fine. We’ll take you and your ship to the Tumble, where the Marley’s supposed to arrive in a few days. Jimi looked at the silver disc. It was heavy. It was the weight of a thousand lives.

He looked at Delavan. If Jimi said no, he was going to the Pits. He’d die coughing up lung tissue in a sulfur mine.

It’s better to live for one more day. He reached out and took the beacon.

-I want my suit back, Jimi said. Not your slop. And I want my tanks topped off with the premium gas.

-Fine, Delavan said, welcome to the MTC.

-Don’t say that, Jimi shot back.