The Privateers

The smuggler

"Don't you bloody move." I'd been pulled by the hand into one of A Block's corridor wall-nooks, not out of sight of passing foot traffic, but enough out of the way that nobody was going to look very closely. There was something pressed into the small of my back, could have been a gun. A small hand gripped itself around my left wrist, and then pulled backwards until both of my arm and theirs were nearly crushing into my throat. "I need a ticket away from this place. You have a ship? Answer quietly." The hushed voice I was hearing was both female and young.

"Guessing you're the escapee I was warned about," I whispered back, trying not to move my lips. I couldn't think of much reason for someone like her to be aboard the station unless it was against her will.

"And what if I am?" The thing pressed into my back was pressed harder.

"Hey, geez, no need to get rough...if you did escape--"

"Don't turn around, you bellend, you'll draw attention to us both."

As if the arm around my neck wouldn't be enough of a giveaway? I bit my tongue and stared directly forward instead. "No, listen, I have a good idea why you're here and I hate it. You need off the station? I've got a little merch ship docked in D Block with a spare seat that I don't keep filled."

"Keys."

"No."

She jabbed the maybe-gun into the back of my neck. "Take out your bloody keys."

"You don't understand. I will take you off this station. Wherever you wanna go, whether you can pay me or not. Now can you quit poking me with... whatever that is?"

I heard - or maybe felt - a tension being let off of my back, and the prodding sensation went away, though the arm did not. "How far away is D Block?"

"Up three levels. Bit of a walk." She might not have had the gun up to me, but I still didn't dare look back. "Public lift's the fastest way--" She gave me a sudden shove in the back and let go my my wrist at the same time.

"Get walking. Don't look back."

It was a lucky thing the public corridor didn't have many people in it. I wasn't sure how she planned on staying hidden from anybody but me. I kept my ears open as we moved; just behind the clink of my boots against the raised metal floor grates, I heard the non-metal slaps of bare feet. The footsteps were uneven, but fast. If I stopped moving, she'd probably run right into me.

I finally reached the lift and pushed the button to call it. It blinked to confirm that it was on its way, but that was about it. It'd be a bit before we could continue; the thing was probably at the top floor, and we were nowhere near it.

"It's taking too long," she muttered.

"It'll be here. This is a big place." I almost turned around, but had to fight the urge. "You keeping an eye on our six, kid? Since you insisted I not look back..."

I heard a sigh behind me. "I'd rather you didn't see me right now, but I guess I can't keep that up forever."

I turned, very slowly, to observe my assailant. She was just about five feet, and young. Her honey-blond hair was wet and messy, and went about to her shoulders, very much giving her the look of a pathetic thing caught in a rainstorm. Her skin was quite pale in some places, red in others; she looked like she was freezing, and no wonder, because the only clothing she had on was a leather bomber jacket that was several sizes too large for her, zipped up as high as it'd go. And at present, she was struggling to tug the waistband down past her thighs.

"So you are the one Howard's guys are looking for."

"I'll thank you not to stare. Not exactly my finest moment."

"Yeah, nah, staring's not exactly my thing. Even if it was, you're too young for me." I glanced up and down the corridor instead, making sure the coast was still clear. "I've got some extra clothes in the locker on my ship. Might still be a bit big for you, if I'm honest." She was a couple of heads shorter than me, for sure.

"Anything's better than this." The shivering was starting to affect her speech by now. I figured she had to have come from Howard's little project back on A block, but damned if I could figure out why he thought she was an acceptable mark.

As soon as the lift arrived, the both of us piled into it as fast as we could, and I dragged the door shut and ratcheted the shift lever up to the letter D. We took off slowly. Lifts on starports can't move too fast without a lot of expensive safety equipment; it's much cheaper to just run them slow. Once we were moving at a decent clip, up three whole blocks that were quite a lot taller than the corridors suggested, I leaned against one of the walls and decided to introduce myself. "I'm Burroughs. Freelancer Theta seventy-seven."

She stood there quietly, still shivering, and leaning on the opposite wall, hugging herself with her arms. "Call me Lucia," she finally said back.

"You picked up on why they were keeping you here?"

"No. I don't expect it's anything good."

"You know what a cryo-bank scam is?"

"No."

"Well, let's see, I might have to simplify a few things here. but bear with me. I imagine you know all money transactions in the system are handled digitally, right?"

"Right. Fiat currency's more of an Earth thing. They've got the resources to waste on minting it." Smart girl.

"And doing something as big and important as wiring money back and forth needs some kind of authority to govern it, or else anybody'd be able to just pull money out of thin air, whether they had any or not. Except out here in space, sending those transactions around takes a damn long time. Whatever wavelength you're sending your signals on, those waves can only go so fast, and most people aren't patient enough to wait for it to go through. Could take days sometimes."

"Makes sense."

"So that's why we have DACS. That's, uh... the Distributed Asset Control System. Big network of satellites scattered around the system, any one of which can act as an authority to approve or deny your bank transactions within seconds, and then distribute the changes along the other satellites on the chain until it propagates to the whole network. Whole thing's encrypted extra-hard, plus all the satellites are equipped to defend themselves if anyone ever tries to hack them directly."

"Defend?"

"They're licensed to maim. Heard about a guy the other day that wanted to see if he could bilk a few extra credits out of the system as a man-in-the-middle. The satellite EMP'd his ship, killed his shields, blew off a wing, and alerted a nearby Coalition patrol. You don't mess with government property." I sighed. That guy was always a dumbass. "So if you're looking to get access to money that isn't yours, of course, you can't target the bank itself. So you grab somebody else who happens to have money. They won't give you any consciously, but what you can do is keep them on ice and use their neural fingerprint to authorize transfers out of their bank. Drain the account a little bit at a time, in order to not trip any fraud flags."

"That... makes enough sense as a scheme, but..."

"You don't know why you were in it?"

"Yeah..." She slid down the wall a bit until she was sitting in the corner. "I don't have money. I don't think..."

"Well, we can figure it out later once I've got you away from this place. Suffice to say, though, I don't abide by schemes like that." The lift shuddered to a halt, and the door slid itself open with a ding; I peeked outside quickly to make sure nobody would accost us in the process. "We're here. The docks aren't far. Follow me, keep close and quiet. With any luck, you're on the home stretch, and I can get you to a Coalition base. Somewhere these guys won't want to look for you."

Lucia wasn't following me out of the elevator. She was - figuratively - frozen to the spot.

I reached out a hand to her. "You don't want to stay here. Trust me. Anywhere's better for you than here." She wasn't taking my hand at all. "I'm trying to help you, damn it. You were so keen on threatening me earlier and I'm still helping you."

She raised a hand, but not to take mine; she pointed at something over my shoulder.

I spun around. Standing in the elevator door, holding it open with an arm, was a stocky man with an old-fashioned cigar in his mouth, flanked by two heavy-looking fellows with batons. "Well, so this is where my precious cargo wound up," the man said.

"Howard."

"Burroughs. Thought you were a runner I could depend on." He slicked his fake-dark hair back over his forehead with his free hand, and then shoved it into the pocket of his suit pants. "I gotta know what you're doing with my quarry."

"Your quarry? She's just a girl." I stood over her with my arms raised, hoping I was big enough to hide her from direct view. "If what I've heard is true, and you've been running a cryo-bank on A Block..."

"Since when did morals matter to you?" Howard interrupted. "Ain't you a deserter?"

"As if the damn Coalition are the picture of morals," I countered. "But let's make a deal, Howard. Let the kid and me go free."

"And what's your side?"

"We don't paste you and your posse to the wall on our way through." I hoped clacking my heel on the floor next to her was giving her the right signal. Howard's guys didn't seem to notice what I was doing, at least, not while I maintained eye contact with their boss.

"And why's a nobody like you think he's got anything to threaten me with?"

"Not just a nobody. Two of 'em." I double-tapped my foot on the grated elevator floor, then quickly swung an arm in Howard's direction. He moved his head slightly enough to dodge a sucker punch, but I wasn't aiming for impact; my arm hooked around his neck, exactly as Lucia's had mine earlier, and I pulled Howard into the lift.

His goons chased him in, completely ignoring the girl on the floor... the girl with a rather large-looking sidearm in her hands. Two electrically-charged thunks later, the goons were down and jittering. I shoved Howard to the floor, giving him a boot to the side for insurance, then grabbed Lucia's wrist - gun included - to pull her out of the lift. For good measure, I shoved the lever back to A Block and pulled the door shut.

"Alright, kid," I started, "security's gonna find them in a few. Keep up with me, and don't look back."