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Eustis walked by the endless rows of stalls where vendors sold items from all over Sol System. The market was a multi-kilometer stretch of noise and hustle. In the distance, the reason for the market’s location, one of GovCorp’s finest achievements, was Earth’s only space elevator. It had taken two centuries to build and made space travel accessible to all. All but Eustis, apparently, because he had never been up. He hadn’t had a need until today. He had no idea how he would do it, but he had to secure a ride on the next up-shuttle. If only he had a few hundred thousand credits on his account.
“This is useless,” a customer said to a pushy vendor nearby, dropping the item and walking away. Eustis came out of his mental fog with a start. He had been on edge since he got the call. He hadn’t had time to mourn. That would come soon enough, but for now, he had a job to do. He had to stay focused.
“Ma’am, do you know where I can find—” Eustis tried, but the woman kept on walking. He tried another. “Sir, can you tell me where I can find the enlistment kiosk?”
The man pointed. Eustis glanced in the direction indicated. The scene was chaos and noise. Eustis turned back, hoping to ask for clarification, but the man was gone. “Thanks,” he said to no one. He pulled his duffle bag over his shoulder and started walking.
About a quarter of a kilometer down the crowded corridor, and after saying no to about fifty pushy hawkers, Eustis spotted the recruitment bureau sign. A tattered propaganda banner read, See the Sol System. Be a Part Of Something Big.GovCorp Security Brigade. Join Today! He glanced down at the little table with a portly recruitment officer snoozing at a one-seat kiosk. It was underwhelming, but he needed off-world, and this was his one idea.
“If this isn’t what you want me to do, then stop me.” He stood there, waiting, hoping, wishing. “Anytime.” Nothing happened. He took a deep breath to calm his nerves. He put a foot out, intending to step toward the recruitment officer, when someone caught his foot.
A young woman tumbled forward, tripping over Eustis’ outstretched leg. He reached out to help her, but before he could, someone grabbed his arm with a bone-crushing grip. The woman caught her balance, and Eustis turned to see what had him by the arm. Attached to the grip was an enormous man with a robotic arm bolted to his shoulder. The arm wasn’t one of those modern, incognito prosthetics, but instead, it looked as if it had been scavenged from a battle suit dating to the previous century. The man who wielded the arm was in his early sixties but was massively muscular. The mechanical grip was cutting off the circulation to Eustis’ forearm and hand. This is it. Eustis thought. This is who GovCorp sent to murder me.
“You want I should pulverize him, Captain?” The big man said.
“Let go of him,” said a kid standing next to the aging giant. The young teen had walked up after the others but clearly had some familiarity with them. His skin was dark, his black hair was a mess, and his speech was too confident for a child his age. “He’s just a dirt-licking scobberlotcher. Let him loose, Rudwick.”
“You heard him, Rudwick,” Eustis repeated. “Let me go.” The big man’s grip tightened. By now, the young woman had straightened and turned toward the three. Eustis was getting the impression that these were not GovCorp goons.
“Well, Cap,” Rudwick said. “What you want I should do with this dirt dweller?”
Eustis turned to the young woman and was about to protest the injustice, but the sight of her face made him forget how to form words. Her soft skin was out of place in this rough environment of grease and titanium. She had the kind of eyes that were sad but strong. Her hair was mostly tied back but hung loose on one side as if her appearance was only an afterthought. Nonetheless, Eustis was spellbound. Her full lips had the slightest hint of a frown. Eustis wondered what a smile might look like on those lips. Her hand lifted a half-filled bottle of unlabeled, amber liquid to those lips. Not a smile, exactly, but not a frown, either. She wiped her other sleeve across her mouth. She was holding a small item with frayed wires jutting out of one end. He recognized the piece of comm gear immediately.
“If you had made me spill this,” she lifted the bottle aloft. “Then that would have cost you your teeth.” She took another drink. Well, that wasn’t what he expected. “Let him loose, Rudwick. He’s just a high-G mud sucker who doesn’t watch where he’s putting his big dumb feet.”
Rudwick released his mechanical grip, and Eustis rubbed the spot where he had been squeezed mercilessly. It was sure to leave an indentation.
“I’m Eustis,” he said, putting his hand out to shake.
“Earthers,” the young woman said, shaking her head, as she turned and walked away.
“They do be a dense breed of bleeders,” Rudwick said as he followed his young captain through the crowd and out of Eustis’ life. He watched them both go before he looked down at the kid who hadn’t.
“People who live most their life in space don’t shake strangers’ hands.” Eustis glanced after the woman and the big man once more and then back at the kid. “Newton’s first law. You know, inertia and whatnot.” The kid smiled as if he were talking to a baby.
“How old are you?”
“How old are you?” the kid repeated in a mock voice.
“I’m twenty-nine,” Eustis said.
“Wow,” Enzo said. “When you die of old age next week, can I have your boots?”
“Nice one,” Eustis said. He glanced in the direction of the captain’s unwelcome disappearance and then back to Enzo. “Are you with them?” Eustis asked.
“Good point. See you later, old dude.” The kid was off, chasing after the other two. Eustis glanced at the Security Brigade kiosk with its fat, sleeping recruitment officer and then after his new acquaintances. The choice was clear.
“Hey, wait up,” Eustis shouted. He wove his way through the crowd for a few minutes before he got to them. They were entering a shop. The sign read Earth’s Best Shipwright and Parts. Eustis followed them through the swinging door.
The smell of rocket lube and fission fuel assaulted his nose. The place had the look of a warehouse—Eustis had no idea what most of it was—but he recognized the comms equipment cached twelve shelves high. He had the urge to stop and see what they had, but he resisted. By the time he caught up to the trio, the woman was talking to a clerk at the shipwright’s counter. The big guy, Rudwick, was standing near her with his arms crossed, no doubt, intimidating the shipwright. The kid was riffling through some items on the shelves aimlessly.
“Hey, kid,” Eustis said. The boy looked up.
“Oh, good grief. What do you want?” the kid said. “Looking to get that beating from Rudwick? I wouldn’t. Getting a punch from him is like taking a fission fracker to the jaw bone.”
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Enzo. Ship’s Engineer.”
“Eustis,” he said, putting his hand out to shake. He pulled it back quickly when Enzo didn’t offer his.
“Slow learner, huh?” Enzo said. “Just a word of warning. Captain won’t take kindly to you following us. And by the sound of it, she’s going to be pretty nuked after talking to that primate of a shipwright.”
Eustis looked over at her and Rudwick haggling with the clerk. It was getting heated. “What’s her name?”
“Marianna Byrne,” Enzo said.
“Marianna,” Eustis said to himself as if the name had a favorable taste.
“Ever heard of her?” Enzo said.
“No,” Eustis said. “Should I have?”
“So, what do you want, Eustis Shakes-a-lot?” Enzo said.
“I need off-world, like yesterday. I need to get to Musk City, Mars.” Eustis said, dropping his voice to a whisper.
“What’s in Musk City?” Enzo asked.
“I’m a planter and—” Eustis said.
“There’s hydroponics all over the system. It’d be better to go to Enceladus or Ceres.”
“Not that kind of planter,” Eustis said. “I plant ideas. Ideas that will grow into a movement. The capital is the place where my seeds will have the greatest impact. Where my ideas can spread the farthest.”
“Sounds weird,” Enzo said. “I’m not sure you really know what a planter is.”
“Someday, kid.” Eustis looked upward as if there was something to see in the middle distance. “Everything’s going to be different. Just takes a seed, and it can grow. You’ll see.” Eustis straightened up. “So, I was wondering, since you guys have a ship if there might be a spot—”
“Whoah, wait a minute, dust snorter,” Enzo said. “Don’t even think about it. We don’t have a ship. Captain Byrne has the ship, and her word is the law. Trust me. She doesn’t want a dense-bone gravity hog on her hotrod. We’re already—” Before Enzo could finish his thought, the transaction at the shipwright counter spilled into shouting.
“A month?” Marianna shouted. “You told me you’d have it fixed in an hour. We came here from Ceres to see you. What the—”
“It’s gotten busy since we talked,” the clerk said. “I might be able to get to it in six weeks.”
“Cursed be the lips that uttered such rot,” Rudwick bellowed. He reached for a holster at his hip and was about to draw on the clerk, but Captain Marianna reached for his trigger hand and touched it with the bottle she was holding. The glass clanked against Rudwick’s metal wrist. She nodded him down from his towering rage, lifted her bottle, took a long drink, wiped her mouth with her sleeve, and spoke more calmly.
“Come on, Rudwick,” Marianna said. “This place was a bad idea.” The captain and Rudwick walked for the exit. When she spotted Eustis, she rolled her eyes.
“Come on, kid,” Marianna said. “But leave your pet here.” Eustis didn’t take the hint. He charged after them with the gusto of a golden retriever.
