Ridin' the Wave to New Amsterdam - A Story of A Highway Ticket Earned the Hard Way

The joke of the galaxy. Or on the galaxy, nobody knows for sure. Either way,
New Amsterdam's the little orbiting settlement that could.

And we were coming into it about as hot as you can.

Wave blast, flux, settle, breathe, hit the brakes, and we should all be about
forty a.u.'s out, plenty of elbow room, no chance of dancing into somebody's
path. Rules of the road, if everybody in this forgotten corner of the world
hasn't been out bending the elbow...

Problem is, that star's awful close.

"Lemmy, quick calculation. How far are out are we?"

The ship did his thing. "About ten a.u.'s, give or take, based on the last
known solar state."

"Any chance the star's going nova just a bit ahead of schedule?"

"Roughly? About point two percent chance. It could happen."

"What do you need to check it?"

"Given current? A couple of days. I don't have enough measurements
yet to know what our relative inclination is."

Or where the rest of the planets were. Lemmy needs at least a couple other
planets to triangulate from.

So, if we came in where we aimed for, the star's gone nova and consumed a few
planets in the nearest neighborhood already. A tragedy.

Or, we came in rotated ninety degrees and a few million miles away from where
we should have been. A catastrophe, on the personal level. And I'm not just
talking about the chewing out I'd get from traffic control when we got them
on the horn.

That takes a couple days, as well. Once established, fast connection no
latency. Subspace communications are fantastic.

Problem being, they don't know where we are, and neither do we. It takes a
fair bit of precision to establish the link.

So, either way, I did what any self-respecting captain would do under the
circumstances. I went looking for a drink.

"Coffee, tea, water. You know the drill."

It's hell when your co-pilot's your bartender. "Lemmy, what's it gonna take
for you to relax the rules?"

"Fire, damnation, your basic armageddon rag."

Right. So I grabbed my cuppa and headed for the Cavern. That's where I keep
the tools for the gig.

I spend most of my time in calibration. That's reason number forty-two
why there's a live being aboard. Lemmy can take care of himself, if he knows
where the damage is.

For the most part, anyway. Something happens to his circuits, usually there's
a need for a spare set of hands. His self-checks are more than good enough
to catch the death knell of a worn out part.

But that's not his worst worry. His worst worry is gaslighting.

Meatspace, we get Alzheimer's, delusions, psychosis and depression. Silicospace, and they get viruses. And viruses these days are more than good enough to make sure that a computer that's sick doesn't know it.

Lemmy can't afford to have his navigation systems crap out on him. Quite
literally. He's in hock for his build to a set of intergalactic banks
that like to pull ships apart and sell them for scrap. I don't know the
numbers, but it's enough to keep him hustling.

That, and he's got a bit of fear about being stranded in the middle of nowhere.
There's a few floating hulks in his family of builds, and he's damned paranoid
about making sure he doesn't join them. Which is where I come in.

Reasons number one through fifty I'm here? All some variation of keep Lemmy
going and alive.

The Cavern's the only space on the ship that Lemmy's completely blind to.
It's where we hide all the independent subsystems, at least their control
logic. Most of them are backup for engines, navigation, the things that keep
us going.

The rest keep me going, life support and the like. That's the part that
some builds cheap out on. I don't understand it, really. How many ships do
you have to lose before you realize what the problem is? One is none and two
is one, guys.

Belt and suspenders for the engineers out there. I can't much see how you can
think it's ok to just back up the computer.

Wait, I know, don't tell me. I know how risk calculations are made.

Let's just say that I'm grateful that Lemmy's a wildcatter, and knows where his
long term profits come from. People who sign up with the corps are looking to
make corpse, assuming they hear the chatter about how many corporation
ships come home sans their biological co-pilots.

So, let's sit down with the cuppa and the independent computers and control
systems, and see if we can figure out if anything's ailing the...

Shit.

It didn't take long at all to stumble onto something.

I walked over to the door and stuck my head into the hallway. "Hey, Lemmy?"

"Yeah?"

"You've been cavorting with strange computers again, haven't you?"

"Not that I remember. I take it you found something?"

Yeah, I'd found something. He'd picked up a virus somewhere, and one that
wasn't even trying all that hard to hide.

No, let me correct that. Wherever the program had originated, they knew their
business. The virus was a thing of beauty, for what it was made to do. Lemmy
could run for decades in orbital space without knowing the thing was there.

One jump to a new system, though, and here we are. And he'd still never know.

Until he made the second jump and could never get home.

And, if I was reading the thing's logic correctly, our little course shift was
necessary for its method of phoning home to the overlords. It needed a
particular orientation relative to the galactic disc to send its 'part one
done, boss' signal. What was part two?

'Hulk ready, boss', apparently. So, first jump grab hold and signal, second
jump send it to vacant space and wait for the rag and bone crew to come along
and pick apart our hulk. Scrap heap ready-made to order.

There was a secondary logic hiding there, too. A bit of analysis of the system
Lemmy targeted for the first jump. A comparison to the thing's internal
database, mostly tech levels.

So why did I say it wasn't even trying to hide? Ah, it wasn't trying to hide
from me.

They'd built it for the corporation standard build. They'd assumed that there
wouldn't be a co-pilot available, someone with the right tools to analyze Lemmy's systems independently. "How many shortsighted 'economic' dimwits are there in this galaxy?"

Enough to make them profitable hijack targets, apparently.

Now, I was the one who needed to be paranoid. And doubly so.

Maybe the virus builders weren't so single-point-of-failure. Maybe they'd
set me up. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that they wanted to make
it look like they'd only built the thing for the corporation boneheads.

How then, brown cow?

What was that secondary logic for? Where are you guys hiding my little
surprise package, now that I've found your...

Front door, back door. I unplugged the analytic computer. Yanked the
battery.

Then I walked over to one of the custom parts of Lemmy's build, a vacuum and
electromagnetic isolation chamber. I put the computer and battery into it
and I shut the lid.

Best I could do under the circumstances. Which were, now that I had a little
time to count, the following.

Sick computer-slash-ship-slash-pilot, check. Sick subsystems, highly likely.

Dumb meatspace co-pilot, with no likely independent way to rebuild these things on the fly, considering where we all were and how far from safety? Screwed.

I'd have to hope that the thing's programming hadn't corrupted Lemmy's signal
collection gear, nor my independents.

Assume the logic's the same, but they've got you by the short and curlies?

That is, why was I assuming that the system we'd jumped to was the one we
wanted to go to? If I were running the scam, I wouldn't necessarily let your
first jump be the one you wanted.

So, no human backups, everything goes like the first level logic, ship jumps
first time, signal home, second jump, flying hulk in vacant space.

Human backup? Secondary logic says send the ship into a system that doesn't
have the gear needed to truly and completely isolate the ship's systems for
clean reboot. But sophisticated enough that I would think that I'd done the job right.

You know, pretty much the bog-standard description of the New Amsterdam system. Good enough to go to and enjoy. Not so good you'd notice until you're hard up for a rebuild. Since we were aiming for it anyway, there'd been
no need to push anybody's buttons, just ride along with it, cowboy.

Awful easy to do. The thing's got complete access to Lemmy's systems, it
doesn't take much to do a comp against the next target. If it fits the necessary
parameters for crippled ship, great. If not, break out.

There's always a system next door that's a little behind its neighbors. And
any ship that's been around the block a time or two will have made a mistake
and jumped a few systems over.

Most old hands would do their standard checks and chalk it up to the randomness of the universe.

Since I didn't have anything else to do, I settled in for my calibration
runs. If the virus did have any sort of monitoring setup, what I was doing
wouldn't twig them. Normal procedures.

I didn't know what was worse. Two and a half days of drumming my fingers and
waiting for our physical measurements to come in, or the confirmation that
we were in the New Amsterdam system.

Ten a.u.'s out, and high above the orbital plane of the system majors. So,
the thing had messed with us, but not so much that we were in the wrong
system, or in any danger of running into anything in the standard traffic
pattern.

"Well, Lemmy, at least we don't have to worry about sending out condolence
messages to the rest of the galaxy."

"Don't gloat too much. I've established the subspace link, and traffic control
wants to talk to you."

Which went about how you'd expect. They threatened me every which way to Sunday, loss of privileges, demotion to second alternate urinal cake dispenser, the works.

It didn't get better when I gave them a little warning about what shape
Lemmy was in. It's bad enough to have a hot ride coming in through the wrong
traffic lane. It's another thing entirely for it to be the computer equivalent
of a plague ship.

"I'm just glad they're not aiming torpedoes at us."

"I almost wish they had." He'd received the coordinates for the berth they'd
assigned us.

Let's just say it wasn't in the best part of town. The part of the star
harbor where anything loose could be walked away with, and anything that could be pried up was considered loose.

"It's been a while since you had to worry about locking your doors at night,
Lemmy."

"Very funny, Mike." We had pretty good procedures for me getting in and out of
the ship when he was locked down. "What I'm worried about is whether we'll be
able to get the work done, down there in the dungeons."

The mechanics we'd need would be demanding hazard pay. "Let me guess,
your cargo's locked down as well."

"The lawyer didn't call it Perdition, but she might as well have."

"You don't happen to have any liquid assets available?"

"They won't even touch the Lloyd's account until one of their inspectors
declares me clean."

"Ouch."

I had a rough idea of what sort of costs we could expect. Even if I was the
one doing all the real work, the onsite inspectors weren't going to touch
me until I had a local sign off on the work. And, I'd need local hardware.

"Time to check our vaults."

There were other advantages to the Cavern. Besides the obvious, since the
space is listed on official documents as merely "live body space for
the co-pilot and his hobbies", it's where we put the off-manifest cargo.

Of course Lemmy smuggles. And not just because he's trying to pay off his
mortgages, either. Half the cargo in the galactic trade is illegal in one
jurisdiction or another. No matter what you do, at some point you're going
to find yourself smuggling, at least according to one set of local authorities
or another. So you might as well plan for it from the beginning.

Think I'm kidding? Try and take a half-gallon of ice cream through the Merida
Arrangement sometime, and see what happens. That's one of the reasons we have a separate set of food-grade freezer cabinets in the Cavern.

I started piling up what I thought I'd need for bribes. Dried fruit, because
gravity's always a thing. Gold dust, x86 chips.

Don't scoff. By orders of magnitude, they're still the most common processor
in the galaxy, and probably always will be. Certainly if IntFruitSoft have
their say about it.

New Amsterdam's just a bit poor in heavy metals compared to the galactic
system average. Not enough to matter in the long run, but it certainly makes
chip manufacture just that little bit more expensive.

Oh, and a bottle of brandy from one of Lemmy's friends in the Ortega Seldom
Division.

Then it was time to call up my angel.

"Oh, Christ, what have you two done now?"

This wasn't getting off to the best of starts. "Who pissed in your breakfast
this morning, Melba?"

"Don't start with me, Mike. You don't call over the isolation signal because
everything's going fine and dandy. What'd you do to Lemmy?"

"I'm not certain how much I should tell you over subspace, under the
circumstances." The look on her face was classic. I could call up
thunderstorms on a gas giant if I could figure out how to bottle it. "We need
you to show that our independent measures aren't corrupted."

"And then you'll need to borrow my gear."

"Well..."

"Deep subject for a shallow mind," she pointed out.

"Don't worry, Melba. The phrase 'valuable considerations' springs to
mind." I didn't want to scare her off, so I didn't have much choice but to
let her know we were paying customers.

"Valuable doesn't count that pisswater brandy Lemmy pawned off on me last
time. I can't even use that shit to sanitize circuits."

I hid the bottle under the desk, then dug out a single-malt to show
her. "How's the Macallen grab you these days?"

"You'd better have more than your hideaway bottle if you want to get in my
circuit cabinets, Mike." She was grinning at me when she said it, so at least
I knew Melba wasn't planning on leaving us high and dry. "See you in a few
days. Oh, and bring some of those mealworms from Slabdek." She signed off.

Iuzians. If I ever find out what Slabdek did to her candied mealworms to
turn half their expats into sugar fiends... I'm just glad Melba didn't expect
me to share a snack with her.

I should have left well enough alone at that point. But
somewhere in the back of my head, I guess I have a cat's curiosity.

That, or an engineer's inability to quit futzing with a system just because
it's doing it's job. Either way, instead of doing the sensible thing and
taking a nap, I went back to the computer I'd left in
isolation to continue digging through the guts of the virus.

Now, don't get me wrong. I didn't just plop the thing on my desk and start
pecking away. That's what I have dry-suits and oxygen supplies for. Not that
eight hours in vacuum is the most pleasant way to spend time.

But my other options were limited to a library I'd already read through,
whatever nonsense the subspace broadcasts were throwing out, or sleep. Under the circumstances, digging through the computer again was at least something I could pretend was work.

So no, I didn't tweak the thing to eleven, nor turn it loose in the Cavern
to hose my systems. Instead, I poured over its code until I found a signature.

Not literally. Just a way of thinking. An imagination that I might have known,
once upon a time.

Mostly, a convention for variable naming. This thing wasn't cowboy programming, someone had taken time to put together a nice little package, built up right and debugged to a fair thee well.

And, they were programming in a style that was pretty distinct. It took me a
while to realize what I might be looking at. But how do I compare it line for
line when I can't take the computer out of isolation?

Come out of isolation, take a shower, eat a sandwich. Do the business required,
nap.

Bring a printer into the isolation chamber with me and feed off a couple
hundred pages of dead tree. Make damned sure that I only printed text,
no hidden graphics here to get picked up by a camera with more logic circuits
than sense.

Then come back out of isolation to settle down for some light reading.

This much at least, I could do in Lemmy's kitchen. The real reason I'd been
careful to make sure of my printing. Last thing I needed was his autoreader
to double up on his dose of badness.

"Hey, Lemmy. Do you still have that test API for those Fed-grade torps we
carried out to the Bevgrada Locus?" Logistics, always logistics. The galactic
military systems were perfectly happy for private contractors to haul their
sundry gear around the stars, so long as the rates were government standard.

Standard practice was to demand a test suite for any electronics gear.
No way was Lemmy going to schlep a couple hundred metric tons of government garbage halfway across the galaxy just to get hosed on delivery after the yard gang didn't give him good gear.

Of course we saved it, regardless of what the contracts said about deleting
it on delivery. Not because he was interested in selling state secrets.

Though, if you're interested in what the government's got, and are willing
to make contact with an appropriate garnishment, please feel free to get in
touch.

No, in this case, comparisons between shipments are what Lemmy's really after.
It being the government, you never know when they're gonna give you a test
suite for "Axle B, slash 12 mark v" and hardware for "Wheel C, slash nought
mark b". If you've got a handy library stashed away, at least you have some
small chance of catching those sorts of stupid little mistakes.

Turns out, it wasn't the code for the torpedoes that I was mis-remembering.

It was the code for a set of environmental satellites we'd dropped off at an
experimental station in the Nlemschtat sector, way back. Maybe the second or
third trip we'd made together.

The satellites were systems probes, meant to jump between a handful of local
systems. General coverage, really, spend some time in orbit around the
handful of planets, jump one neighborhood over. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Something something, intersystem diplomatic relations and general agreements for cooperation, blah blah blah. That was the political side, apparently the sector had little enough land available to be interesting to settlers, just enough biodiversity for the scientists to scratch and claw for their next set of grant funding.

And, oh by the way, it was close enough to the Iuzians for the gKGB-sCIA-fFBI
to open their coffers to the scientists who were willing to piggyback along
on their equipment. Scratch our back, we'll scratch yours, and yes there are
always biologists and agronomists and astroanthropologists with top secret
clearances, don't ask.

So. Someone had either glommed onto that code from somewhere, repurposed it and threw it out to the wild.

Or the gCIA was playing games with the Iuzian's own secret service.

We got a glimpse of which when we finally pulled up to our berth. I opened
the passage for Melba, bottle in one hand, mealworms in the other, only to
be greeted by a robot mechanic, her cart of gear, and a note.

"Hey, Mike. Something came up. Don't worry, I've pre-signed the clearance
(if you've screwed me I'll hang your ass over that unlicensed wormhole you
keep in your cave). Just let Miztlatl do her thing and she'll pass it on to
traffic control, no worries. -Melba. P.S. For reference, Mitzy has a couple
of nice little compartments just big enough for things like a bag of
mealworms, just in case you see her pulling tools from places you don't
expect..."

Huh. "You need anything from me?"

"Not really." Mitzy and Lemmy weren't exactly besties, but she'd been aboard
a time or two for minor repairs. "Is there anything special you'd like to
warn me about before I come aboard?"

"I'm glad to see Melba didn't send you in blind. Best I can tell, if you've
got your scanners set and calibrated to an independent system in the garage,
you should be good."

"That's the way we run things, Mike. You should try it sometime." She and her
cart rolled across the gangway and set about their business.

I gave her the finger when I thought I could get away with it. 'It's not like
we can run home to check ourselves after every trip' I told myself.

"I saw that," she said over her shoulder.

I rolled my eyes and went back to the Cavern with the bottle and the note
to wait out her checkout. "Let me know if you need anything, Mitzy."

"Will do. Now shut up and let me work."

That's not the part that made me realize what we were caught up in. Melba
was usually pretty backed up, putting Mitzy in charge wasn't a surprise.

The surprise came a day later, after I'd sent Mitzy away with goodies for
her and Melba both. Oh by the way, Mitzy enjoys obscure performances of rare
composers. If you're ever in the area and have something like an Alturian
marching band performing Krssat's Sonata for Dancing Across the Stars in C
sharp minor, bring along a copy and tell her Mike sent you.

Anyway, where was I going with this? Oh, that's right, it's what happened
when I finally felt like I could come up for some air. Mitzy'd ok'd our
Cavern systems. My laptop had been corrupted, just like I'd expected, but
whatever the virus's sophistication, it hadn't made the jump from there to
the rest of the gang.

So, I used Mitzy's and Melba's hardware to build ourselves an independent
reference, and then went in to chase down Lemmy's bug.

That was a battle royal, I won't lie. Twists, turns, every time I thought
I had the thing's final hiding spot located, it replicated again and broadcast
itself to another part of Lemmy's internals.

And each and every time I freed up enough resources for Lemmy to join the fun
directly, the damned thing wiped my path out and we had to start the dance
all over again. It's like toddlers wrestling in the mud.

Dirty as hell, fun if you're watching, madness if you're one of the kids and
getting more and more pissed every time the big bully shoves a handful of
dirt in your mouth.

Any road, after having my nose rubbed in it enough, I anticipated the thing.
Its migratory targets weren't quite random, so I laid a trap for it. Plug
a new laptop in, flagged as a visitor's computer exchanging future shipping
schedules and bids with Lemmy, shut off the other avenues, and the virus
hopped over just as pretty as you please.

Just in time for yours truly to drop the silly thing into the vacuum chamber
and bugger off for a beer.

If there's one nice thing about hanging out in harbors, it's that the
bartenders there don't bat an eye when you come in with a rack full of gear,
looking for nothing but a pint and a quiet space in the back to ignore the
noise on the babblebox. I'd brought Melba's stuff along just to make sure
there were no accidental reinfections while Lemmy was triple-checking his
systems.

Nice place, too, if you're into the galactic garbage collector view of the
decorating arts. And I don't mean just the patrons, though from what I could
tell we must have covered half a dozen different originating systems and
evolutionary views on the benefits of alternative biologies. Five o'clock
our shiptime, just before noon local, so a good crowd in amongst
the random stuff that the bartender used to hide the holes in the walls.

I'm not saying I stuck out, but I was the only human present when the Iuzian
consul and his bodyguards walked in. It might have been a coincidence, but
when the big lady marching point for him started heading my way, the hairs
on the back of my neck stuck up and I started getting nervous.

The feeling didn't quite go away when her boss stepped in front of my table.
"Michael Bastra, of the S.S. Lemons and Assorted Fruits?"

Lemmy hated that name.

I'd like to think my reputation proceeded me, but I don't have one
outside of a handful of video games no one plays anymore. "That's me, how
can I help you?" I stood to offer my hand, no sense ignoring the pieties,
but the pair of guards grunted, leaned in, and I found someplace else
to put my hand.

"You will open your ship to our inspection. One of our citizens is missing,
and you were her last known contact."

"Melba's gone? What happened?"

At the same time, Lemmy scrolled a message across my glasses. "Checkout's
complete as best I can tell, Mike. By the time you get here, I should be
good to isolate my systems from them."

Meaning, he'd done what he could under the circumstances. If everything was
good, the Iuzians wouldn't be able to pass along anything worse than what we
were already dealing with. And we were already set up, so long as they didn't
get a hold of the gear I was carrying.

"Melba, as you know her, disappeared last night after her robot retainer
finished inspecting your ship. When the robot returned, Melba's garage was
in disarray sufficient for the robot to inform the local authorities. They
informed my staff, and so I am here. Bring us to your ship, Mr. Bastra."

Threat implied, of course. I sighed, worried about Melba, Lemmy. I looked
at the bartender first.

"Hey, Jack, this gear's good, but I'm gonna have to get back to you for
payment. Is this enough to hold it for me?" I held up a hundred dollar bill.

"Name's George. And that should cover it, so long's you're back here by
closing time."

Ok, so I'm ignorant as to the ways and means that Lrzists use to distinguish between hive mates. Chalk it up to experience, try and hide the fact that I was now blushing enough for my distant ancestors to be embarrassed, march on MacDuff.

I passed over my gear and the bill, then hightailed it for Lemmy's berth,
three large and pissed off Iuzians with diplomatic immunity in tow.

I've had more pleasant walks, what with worrying about where they were going
to hide my body. Or if they'd even bother.

In the end, their inspection was just another variation of what Mitzy did,
except for the part where I had to walk along with them. For some reason,
they didn't want me wandering off without supervision.

I give the lady I'd pigeonholed as just a bodyguard a lot of credit though.
Unlike a number of customs inspectors we've known, she wasn't fooled by the
Cavern. She went through each of its compartments just as thoroughly as she
did the rest of the ship.

Lemmy was beyond impressed. "Remind me not to take any shipments for an Iuzian system, Mike. They'll have everything in your Cavern broadcast to their customs systems by the time they leave."

'You know it buddy', I thought.

It was about the time they'd finished up the dirty work, and we were all making
our way back to the gangway, that I remembered something.

And, for one of the few times in my life, kept the thought to myself rather
than running my mouth. What were the Iuzian officials doing checking in on
Melba? She'd run away from home years ago. So far as she was concerned, she was a New Amsterdam citizen, long removed from the homeworld and their political battles.

Maybe when I caught up with her, I'd need to ask some pointed questions. Once
I got rid of the minders she'd collected.

"Mr. Bastra, your ship contains no evidence of our missing citizen. Before
we leave to continue our investigations, do you have any further information
that is relevant?"

Somebody needed to send the consul some updated police procedurals. That, or
a better translation program. "I spoke to Melba directly some three days ago,
when we were approaching the station. When we arrived, her robot tech was
here to greet us with a note from Melba, but otherwise that's the only
communication I've had from her."

"Please provide the note..." he started to say, but I was already offering it.

No point prolonging the inevitable.

The ambassador read the note first, then passed it to the lady with the gear.
She scanned it, waited for the analysis, then nodded.

The ambassador turned away and left.

I didn't bother with him. "Don't suppose you'd let me know if you have, or
find, any other information? Melba's a friend."

I was shocked. She nodded, wrote down a contact listing on the corner of
Melba's note, tore it off and passed it to me. "You'll want to start at the
garage. We came straight here."

She'd written her name on the bottom of the note. Llanna-Aldip. Llanna, I'd
guess, here in New Amsterdam. Aldip at home.

Then she walked away to follow her boss to the next step in their investigation.

Ok, I'll admit, I enjoyed the view. Sure, I wondered about the teeth and
the claws.

"You'll need a first aid kit on hand, Mike," Lemmy said.

"Yeah, I know." I tried to hide the grin.

"The Iuzian females are known to be rough on their..."

"Lemmy, I know you're trying to help," I stopped him. "But honestly, all
you're doing is making it worse. Especially since I've pulled off
a minor miracle or two today."

"What's that?"

"I managed to get through that whole thing without a yutz joke."

"I'll give you that."

"And second, I think I figured out where your virus load originated."

"That one went by a little fast for me."

First though, I needed to check in on Mitzy.

Oh, and pay off the barkeep.

That chore out of the way, I trundled Melba's gear over to the garage.
Which was about as messed up as the Iuzians had given me to believe. Every
time I'd seen it, order reigned. Tools, gear, computers nicely arranged and
humming their electronic songs to each other. Everything exactly where it
needed to be.

It's sort of disgusting, from the point of view of a part time sysadmin. I
work on the pile system. Seeing someone who took the time to actually
organize their shit has a tendency to remind me of my failings.

The shock when I walked into Melba's space didn't help. Everything that
should have been in a rack was on the floor, most of it in pieces.

"We'll lose a month picking this shit up," Mitzy told me. "And that's with
me working twenty-four seven."

I rolled the gear case she'd left me into the only available space. "Any
blood?"

I hadn't wanted to think about that, so far. But seeing the chaos, the only
thing that mattered now was whether Melba had died in the middle of it.

"No. That much I can guarantee." She pointed over to a table where a handful
of drones rested in formation. They were the kind she'd use to do a biologic
check on a ship space, or look for bodies after a natural disaster.

I'm glad that I wasn't there when Mitzy was using the search gear.

Or, at least, that the gear cabinet she'd left with me wasn't. "Hey Mitzy,
if I said we needed you to meet us a couple a.u.'s out, instead of here in
harbor, what gear would you need to bring with you?"

"That cabinet, plus maybe a few other cases. Depends on how much time you'd
give me to get ready." She turned away to continue clearing up.

And that's when I remembered Melba's note. "Mitzy, can I ask you to come
back to Lemmy's berth and give us a once-over?"

Mitzy may not have the most expressive face in the world, but her body
language certainly conveyed what she thought of me, and my request. "Really?
How much handholding do you two need?"

She grumbled about it, but she packed up a case of gear and slung it over her
back.

I made sure to grab the gear case. "Just so you don't feel like I'm not
grateful or anything."

When we got back, the harbor inspectors were giving Lemmy a hard time. "They feel like lice, crawling all over me," he complained.

"Mitzy's gonna set 'em straight, Lemmy. Don't worry about it." It was my
turn to ignore the finger she flipped me.

While Mitzy was arguing with the yard gang, I carried her gear to the Cavern.

Then I hooked up a see-em hear-em for Lemmy. "Do I want to know why you're
opening up the inner sanctum, Mike?"

"Sure, but it'll have to wait. Just be glad Ambassador Yutz hasn't sold us out to
the customs inspectors yet."

I could hear Lemmy's sigh across the speakers. "You had to go there, didn't
you?"

"There's only so long you can hold in a joke, Lemmy."

Lemmy was busy, with the yard gang and scheduling with his suppliers to get
the cargo offloaded. My job was to make sure that Mitzy didn't head back to
her garage.

Which she wasn't happy about. At all. "What the hell, Mike? I've already been
over Lemmy, twice. And that's about twice too many."

"Here I am, trying to set you up with a nice single guy, good job, good
connections..."

"If you're representative of Lemmy's connections, I'm better off with the
garbage collector that comes by twice a week. At least I know who he hangs
out with on his off time."

"I'd be hurt by that, Mitzy. But honestly, you might just be right. I still
need you to come to the Cavern."

She fought it. "You do remember that Melba's disappeared, right? I have to
be at the garage, just in case the cops find something."

I held up my hands. "Trust me?"

I've never been cussed so much in my life. I'm just glad that she did it in
assembly, that way I could pretend I was too slow to follow.

But I got her there. And then I had to ask her to do something really
odd. First, I dug out the bag of mealworms, and set the gear cart in front
of her. Lemmy's eyes and ears were sitting on my desk, just to Mitzy's left.

"Ok, Mitzy, I need you to take these and hide them." I held out the bag
of candied worms.

She didn't respond, not for a long breath. "I don't have time for your bad
jokes." She'd have left at that point.

But Lemmy came to my rescue. "Miztlatl, I don't think Mike's joking. Not this
time."

She looked from Lemmy's speakers, back to me. "Really? What do you mean, hide? Precisely?"

"You're the one who read the note Melba left. Do I need to tickle you to find
your hidden compartment? I can have Lemmy do it."

"Just turn around." She took the bag from me, and crossed her arms.

I took the hint and turned away. "It's not like..."

"Just shut up."

I guess a girl's gotta have her secrets. Though I did wonder what
she'd tell Lemmy.

Then I heard him squawk. She'd turned his camera off. I could hear something
else shift, plastic crinkle, and then another shift as she reversed whatever
combination of yoga and mechanics she'd needed to open the compartment.

"Right, your rudeness. What now?"

"Wait for it..."

And there it was. The sound of another compartment opening. And a cough, and a complaint.

Melba was hiding in the gear cart.

See, even for a human, Melba's tiny. No bigger than a minute. For a Iuzian,
she's considered a child unworthy of full adult recognition. The cart Mitzy
had loaned to us wasn't much bigger than a double packing case.

But it was big enough to hide Melba, scrunched up like a magician's assistant.

Mitzy gasped when she realized what was happening, then ran around to help
her partner out of the case.

"Mike, what's going on?" I reached over to turn Lemmy's eyes back on. "Oh.
Who's she hiding from, I wonder?"

"You realize we've picked up a passenger."

He thought about it. Which didn't take long. "You believe she was the one who
infected me with the virus."

By this point, Melba was standing. "Yeah, Lemmy. I'm the one who gave you the
virus. I had a feeling I was going to need a ride." She stumbled a bit as
the feeling returned to her legs. With Mitzy's help, she made it over to
one of my chairs.

Which explained the secondary logic of the bug. "If we'd gone to some other
system?"

"One way or another, you were coming to New Amsterdam. There are worse places in the galaxy." She stretched, working out the kinks. "So, how much for a
ride to somewhere else?"

Lemmy was faster than I was. "Does that include the bribes, once your
ambassador informs the customs agents of the contents of Mike's Cavern?"

Then again, he was also the purser. Melba wasn't going to get off cheap.

I got up to leave them to their negotiations, then I remembered something.
"Oh, don't forget Mitzy, you two. Not only do you have to negotiate her
passage..."

"But you've got to convince me exactly why I should be going along with you,"
Mitzy continued.

I tried to hightail it out of there before my sensitive ears could be exposed to
words inappropriate for one of my tender years. But Lemmy wasn't fooled.

"Mike, you're not going to contact a certain lady you just met?"

I stopped at the Cavern door. 'Damn, just about made it.'

"Now, Lemmy, we talked about this."

He chuckled. "Privacy after, no problem. But you can't keep a secret."

A harsh truth.

"What are you two on about?" Melba wanted to know.

"Mike's trying to determine whether he can chat up the lady bodyguard who
accompanied the Iuzian ambassador on his inspection this morning. And he's
just now realizing that he may not be able to keep to himself the knowledge
that we know where you are now."

"No, not Mike? Run his big mouth?" She got up and walked over to me. "But
in this case, I think I can help you out. Just promise me that you won't
contact her until after we're offworld."

Subspace communications are good, but they're not that good. "Um, Melba,
doesn't that sort of miss the point? Unless there's something about Iuzian
biology you're not telling me..."

"Don't worry. I'm sure Llanna will be happy to wait for you to come
back around some time."

"Right, what am I missing now?"

She laughed and turned back to Mitzy and Lemmy. "Llanna's my sister. You're
not her usual type, but I can promise you this. She wouldn't have given you her
contact info if she wasn't intrigued."

I spent the rest of our time on New Amsterdam sober, and confused. The first
because I had to run interference on the yard gang, making sure no one
wandered into the Cavern and passing out bribes where needed.

The second just because I am never going to trust Lemmy again, at least when
it comes to matters of the heart. I'm just about convinced he rigged the whole
thing as revenge for me setting him up with that two-seat go-buggy over in
the Cisler Quadrant...