Flowers From the Dead, Part 2
As a young woman, Odrida Chan had survived the destruction of her world, an orbital habitat called Mayberry Centauri. As a Coast Guard rescue technician, she'd boarded close to a dozen disabled starships looking for survivors, including one that turned out to be a Trojan Horse filled with criminals looking to hijack themselves a Coast Guard Cutter. As the captain of her own starship, she'd dealt with crooks not used to taking "Hell no" for an answer, and successfully guided her ship and crew out of potentially life-threatening situations.
Odrida Chan was not the sort of woman who intimidated easily.
Yet somehow, Philippa Rodriguez, her ex-lover's widow, was up to the task.
"You're probably wondering why I called," Philippa said.
Odrida nodded. "Crossed my mind, Mrs. Rodriguez."
"Actually, that's Mrs. Sojak these days. Dekembe and I married."
Ah, yes; Odrida remembered that name. Philippa had abandoned Mitch for the man a few hours before Odrida had shown up on Mitch's doorstep trolling for apocalypse sex.
"Well, uhm, congratulations to you both!"
Waitaminnit -- Philippa had married her extra-marital lover? And the both of them owed their lives to the scratch-built "escape pod" idea Odrida and Mitch had cooked-up. Where the hell was this wronged-woman 'tude coming from, anyway?
"Thank you," Philippa said. "We were wondering if you might be able to do something for us."
"My ship is available for hire," Odrida said. She crossed her arms, her anxiety melting into annoyance.
"'Hire?'" Philippa said. "Seeing as how you slept with my husband, I was hoping--"
"Hope's a beautiful thing," Odrida said. "I, for one, hope that you'll recall you were cheating on your husband years before I met the guy. And that you'll remember that if it weren't for me, you and Dekembe would both be dead. So let's just yank this 'Scarlet-Woman-Needs-To-Soothe-Her-Troubled-Conscience' bullshit off the table, 'kay?"
Philippa scowled. "I see."
"So, does this conversation have a point? Or is this just a bit of girl talk for old times' sake?"
"Dekembe and I were looking for somebody to recover some personal items from Mayberry Centauri."
Odrida laughed. "Holy hell, do you have a set of brass ones, lady! You really thought I owed you over a hundred grand worth of 'sorry?'"
"What are you talking about?"
"What you're asking for here is a salvage operation. Trouble is, Mayberry is still owned by AstralHab. They own the salvage rights. Now, from what I understand, they don't plan on doing anything with them, so they'll cede temporary recovery rights in exchange for monetary considerations. One hundred thousand dollars worth of consideration, in fact."
Philippa had the decency to look shocked. "You're joking!"
Odrida shook her head. "You're not the first Mayberry survivor to think of recovering personal artifacts. Unfortunately, AstralHab doesn't want anybody sniffing around the wreckage -- they're still damned embarrassed over the whole 'Killed-Ten-Thousand-Paying-Clients-With-Our-Own-Negligence' thing. But, they figure that if they outright forbid access to the site, they'll just make people think they have something to hide. So they've cranked-up the access fees to be well in excess of the resale value of anything you could possibly pull out of the wreck." Odrida chortled. "And from a strict business point of view, the fuel, supplies, and time you'd burn on a salvage op are already enough to make your profits razor thin. Me and you used to live in a slum, homegirl."
"I see." Philippa's lips were drawn into a thin, tight line. "Let's set that aside, for a moment. Aside from the blood money AstralHab wants to extort, how much would you charge?"
Odrida nodded and thought about it. "Shallow end of four digits, I think. I'd need to get some more intel and crunch some numbers before I commit to anything, but this sounds pretty do-able. For starters, I'd need to rent some salvage gear -- this is a bit outside our ordinary field of expertise. Travel time isn't bad, round-trip we're talking two jumps and four legs. On-site, recovery time may be a variable; I don't know what condition the hab's interior looks like, and I don't know how easy it'll be to find and move whatever it is you're looking for. And then, of course, the Laws of Capitalism dictate that I jack the price a bit to make it worth my while -- and I'll probably jack it more than a little bit, since poking around an airless derelict meets just about any definition of 'hazardous' you'd care to offer. All in all, probably in the four thousand range."
"Four thousand dollars."
"Yup. Not including the hundred-thousand-dollar gorilla scarfing-down bananas in the middle of the room."
"I see." She paused. "Thank you, Odrida. I'll be in touch."
The screen flickered out.
"Bitch," Odrida muttered. What, not even an apology for wasting her goddamn time?
"False lead," Odrida said, pulling herself through the hatch to Deck 3-Port, where her crew were still playing cards. "What'd I miss?"
"A lively debate," Morg said, "on whether bluffing counts as bearing false witness against thy neighbor."
"Oh, yeah? How'd it come out?"
"I don't think the act of bluffing violates Scripture," Izzy said, "but it's difficult to say. After all, being the son of God, Christ really didn't need to bluff."
"Don't matter," Ham said to Izzy. "When you do bluff, you get this look on your face like you're coping with an ethical dilemma so profound that the fate of your soul depends upon your decision. In poker terms, that's called a 'tell.'"
Odrida reclaimed her place at the table while Ham dealt her in. Damn, would have been sweet if Philippa had come through with a legit job. No sense dwelling on it, though.
Atlantis, the heavily-populated second planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A, the oldest human colony in the galaxy other than Mother Earth herself, was looking like a dry well for Odrida and her crew. The Trade Authority was being its usual useless self, providing job leads that required either corporate connections, a ship at least ten times Mitch's size, or both. That left Odrida hustling, looking up personal contacts who might have an inside track on somebody looking to charter a ship like Mitch for ...
Odrida sighed, scarcely looking at her cards as she picked them up. That was the problem, wasn't it; Mitch was a ship without a mission profile, an obsolete Coast Guard patrol bird turned into low-end private yacht. She wasn't meant to make money, she was supposed to be some rich twit's plaything.
Even more fun, Odrida was starting to realize people just didn't want to deal with independents. Last week, they'd been contacted by a couple looking to rent a ship and do a little asteroid-hopping. They were working-class spacers who'd come into some money and wanted a little adventure; Mitch would have been the perfect ship for them.
But the husband had gotten cold feet about working with an independent operator. Instead, they'd wound up chartering a ship though a nice, familiar corporation for well over twice what Odrida would have charged them.
Goddamn Sheep, wanting to keep their "adventure" as familiar and comfortable as possible.
That was the way it worked, especially in the core worlds closest to Mother Earth. Most people were Sheep, complacent and scared of the unfamiliar, only comfortable when somebody was telling them what to do and think. If you wanted to rebel, chances were you'd become a Trog, loud and aggressive, making "trouble" in ways easy for the corps to predict and control.
As a young adult, Odrida had numbered herself among the Evolved, thinking herself too smart and cynical to be manipulated by the Powers That Be. Nowadays, she realized she'd been merely a pretentious Sheep with a hipster attitude; she scoffed at the helplessness and complacency of all the people around her, never noticing that those same traits had been ingrained in her so deeply that it had taken the destruction of her world to throw them off.
Now, she really was free, she really was above all of it. But thinking of herself as "Evolved" seemed like a cruel joke. Natural selection favored the species who were best suited for their environment. That description just didn't apply to a free-spirited starship captain trying to figure out how the hell she was going to make ends meet.
This was the Age of the Sheep, evolution having cast several hundred billion votes in their favor.
"Reeda?" Ham asked. "You are aware you're playing poker, yes?"
Odrida shook herself out of the depths of her own head. "Sorry. What's the bid?"
"Quarter to you. And toss in your ante while you're at it."
She looked at her hand, really seeing it for the first time. It looked like crap at first glance, but ... hey! four of her five cards were diamonds! One in four chance of a flush; that didn't suck. "See the quarter, raise another fifty."
A chime sounded from the intercom. "Incoming message for Captain Chan. Shall I take a message?"
"Goddammit," Odrida muttered. What was the point of being unemployed if you couldn't waste some time with your crew? "Caller and subject?"
A pause.
"Caller is Philippa Sojak. Subject is: 'You're hired.'"
Three heads jerked up, staring in surprise at Odrida.
Odrida's jaw dropped.
"Captain," Morg said, "just what was this 'false lead,' anyway?"
"My ex-lover's widow hiring us to sift through the wreckage of a dead hab."
Ham's eyebrows shot up. "Could you take the call in here, Reeda? I have got to hear this!"
Odrida nodded. "But we need to get the cards and chips out of here first. And can you guys ... look busy or something?"
"What, you mean act like we're a real starship crew?" Ham said. "Yeah, I think we can fake that."
