Port L’Évèque, Nineteen Kilometers Below
Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge
4454.2.19 Interstellar
Janus and Callie followed Lira past the commercial storefront of Port L’Évèque, and it wasn’t what he’d expected. From the brothels, strip joints, cabarets, bars, smoke shops, dispensaries, clubs, and various eateries that clogged the areas of the station near the docks, Janus had expected the station’s heart to be a climb into more exclusive, expensive, and eccentric venues, but while he’d seen two champagne bars and a restaurant that only served land animal meat, the heart of Port L’Évèque was surprisingly functional, with simple workers’ fare, residential and commercial blocks, well-maintained recycling and maintenance facilities, a parts store Janus wouldn’t have minded browsing through if they’d had the time.
“This part of the station reminds me of home,” Callie said.
“Or the caravan yards at Crossroads,” Lira said, but she’d grown up and spent most of her time in a different part of Prime Dome than Janus and Callie had.
In any case, Janus agreed with them. Bright-colored lights, red carpets, and gaudy paint had given way to more efficient lighting strips, structural metal, bare floors, and visible utility pipes and cables. People wore clean coveralls color-coded to their work sections, with stenciled name tags that Janus didn’t understand the usefulness of until he remembered the assault of ads and hacking that had caused him to switch his own wrist comm to autonomous mode.
“Can you imagine living like this, disconnected all the time?”
“There weren’t that many networks in the jungle,” Lira pointed out.
“It’s different,” Janus said. “You know it’s different. We can’t even use our light amplification implants here.”
“Don’t need them,” Lira said.
Janus stared at her. The three of them—Janus, Lira, and Mick—had acquired a number of additional surgical mods and programs to help them deal with the risks inherent to being aspirants. Part of those mods were retinal implants that sensed and amplified the light when things got dark, as they were year-round in most of the Twilight Valley. Janus had forgotten what real dark looked like until now.
“Syn would lose her mind in an hour,” Lira said.
“There, we agree,” Janus said with a nod.
“I just think it might be restful to not be connected at all times,” Lira continued. “I mean, think of it. There could be some kind of emergency on the Seraphine right now. We wouldn’t know. They know where we’re headed, but they can’t just reflexively message us. They have to send a runner or figure it out by themselves. Maybe that’s what it was like on Old Earth before the tech ruined everything, and people could actually get some peace and quiet.”
“I can see how that would seem restful,” Janus said, his skin crawling at the thought of Lira’s hypothetical emergency.
“Yeah, I’m with Janus on this one,” Callie said. “I haven’t been out of touch with Matthias for this long in months.”
Janus scowled. “Maybe that’s a good thing.”
Callie punched him in the shoulder, but it was a light, good-natured tap, and Janus smiled in spite of himself. It felt like the first time they’d really agreed on something or talked without fighting in weeks.
As they approached the Port Authority office, he noticed that about two-thirds of the people they came across seemed to be carrying portable terminals or wearing digital lenses and monocles. He got the feeling that the people here had found a way to return to the forty-fifth century using a variety of security-hardened devices, but he didn’t mention it to Lira. Let her have her day off.
They stopped in front of the Port Authority door. Nothing happened, and then Lira looked around and hit an honest-to-goodness mechanical button on the door panel, and the door slid aside.
“Barbaric!” Callie said with mock horror.
Janus grinned in return. It was good to have his sister back.
***
The three of them were ushered through a large, open room with dozens of desks where operators connected to their terminals through hardlines were orchestrating arrivals, departures, onloads, offloads, and storage. The port director’s office was a glass-walled square room at the heart of it, which was also where all the cables from the terminals converged.
“Yes?” the port director said, looking up as Lira, Janus, and Callie walked in. He was sitting in an undershirt with the top of his coveralls rolled down, full-sleeve tattoos on display on both of his burly arms. The stylus he was using to take notes looked minuscule in his oversized hand. He looked more like a warehouse worker than a functionary.
“We’re here to make a delivery from the fabricators,” Lira said.
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“You’re not the usual crew.”
“We’re not.”
“Well, that’s a problem,” the port director said, setting his stylus down.
Janus sighed and crossed his arms. “He’s going to ask us for something.”
“Am I?” the port director asked, pushing down on his desk as he rose to his feet. “I was under the impression you were here to make a delivery.”
“We are,” Lira said, glancing at Janus.
“Great. I need you to take it to mining station alpha-twenty-one.”
Janus’s jaw clenched, and he could feel his temper flaring, but Lira beat him to the punch.
“That is not our problem or our contract,” Lira said. “We agreed to bring the cargo to Port L’Évèque.”
“You agreed to transfer the cargo at Port L’Évèque. Miner supply ship isn’t here, so I need you to go there,” the port director said, using hand gestures to explain in a way that was really pissing Janus off. The port director noticed, and he took a deep breath. “Look, I get it. It’s an extra trip, and normally, I’d just store it for you until the supply ship showed up, but it’s the Alignment. I’m trying to coordinate dozens of shipments and transfers every hour.”
“We’re making a run to the Core,” Janus said. “We can’t take side trips.”
“And I can’t offload you,” the port director said. “I don’t have the storage or the personnel to spare. So either you go to alpha-twenty-one, or you dump the cargo.”
“What’s the penalty for breaking the contract?” Janus asked Lira.
“We can afford it,” Lira said flatly.
The port director frowned. “Now, hold on. This isn’t just an issue of breaking a contract. If the rig doesn’t get those parts, it’s eventually going to break down, and I’m going to wind up with facility failures all along the Correas Trench.”
Lira looked at Janus.
Janus looked at the port director. There was something about the man that reminded him of Barry, his old supervisor at the recycling plant in Prime Dome. Barry had been a man who did what he had to in order to get the job done and be as fair to his people as he could. He cared more about the people than the job, but he never showed it. That was the kind of thing that got you replaced by someone less competent. “The supply sub. Late often?”
“Never,” the port director admitted.
“We ran into pirates on our way here, through the Reach,” Janus said.
The port director took the blow with a long-suffering attitude that reminded Janus of the new Ivan. Did Janus want to help someone who was half-Ivan, half-Barry? It was probably someone who was doing the right thing and taking on too much, and Janus didn’t like what that said about him. “You know exactly who we are. You certainly know who our captain is. You think if we go there and pirates have taken the rig, we’ll at least avenge the crew.”
The port director’s eyes got shiny and a little bit pink. “So, are you going to do it?”
“We are,” Janus said. “But I want something.”
“What?” the port director asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Janus said, looking at Callie and Lira. “I need to talk to my team.”
***
Janus, Lira, and Callie sat down in a small, clean, and quiet diner in a nearby residential quarter. The booths were made for six, with red synthetic leather cushioning over brushed steel, and there were strange laminated menus on the table with pictures and words that weren’t interactive at all.
“Feeling hungry?” Lira asked.
“How do you order?” Janus said.
“That would be with me,” a waiter with one of the handheld terminals said, walking up to the table. “And before we start, you can only pay with vouchers here. If you don’t have any—”
“We have enough,” Lira said, pulling out pieces of synthetic, plasticized paper that had intricate designs printed onto them.
The whole concept of the place was weirding Janus out.
They gave the waiter their order.
Once he was gone, Callie asked, “Don’t you people ever talk things through?”
Lira frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, Janus basically agreed to go out of our way, and you didn’t say anything,” Callie said.
Janus looked at Lira, the amused hint of a smirk on his face.
“Look,” Lira said, “I know you two grew up close, but you haven’t actually spent that much time with your brother as an adult, working together.”
Callie glanced at Janus, and he thought he was going to hear about how he wasn’t around enough for them to work together, but instead, she said, “Go on.”
Lira made the palms-up gesture that was easier in a void suit than shrugging her shoulders, even though the aspirant suits were far more flexible. “We’ve been through a lot together. Learned from each other. Seen each other think under pressure. I’m just glad Janus stopped to think for once instead of charging off without asking what’s in it for us.”
“Isn’t the greater good enough?” Janus asked innocently.
Lira scoffed. “There are no wayfinders tallying a score for us here.”
Janus nodded. “I know. That’s part of why I wanted to talk.”
The waiter came back with a tray full of sweet soft drinks. Janus thanked the man, taking his frosty glass of bubbly brown juice, and they waited until the waiter left to continue.
“I’ve been thinking about what the captain said to me,” Janus said.
“We’re aware,” Callie said, and Lira smirked.
“Not just about the survivor’s choice, but about Nikandros listening to conversations that weren’t meant for his ears. He had Reef security breached. What do you want to bet he listens to every word we say?”
“That’s a lot of words,” Lira said. “You think Ryler’s parsing it for him?”
“He’s been eager to get back into his faction’s good graces,” Janus said.
Callie looked like she’d just tasted something sour. “I used to think he was such a great guy.”
“I wouldn’t say you’ve been making the best choices in that department,” Lira said.
“Matthias is a good kid,” Janus said, surprising them both. “And so was Ryler. They’re both good guys. They’re just easily swayed.”
“Unlike Invarians,” Callie said.
Janus nodded and took another sip from his drink. It was refreshing, and it was supposed to be good against scurvy.
The waiter returned with their food, which was fried everything: fried pickles, fried squid rings, fried tubers, and balls of fried batter.
“It’s not bad,” Lira said. “Needs lamsa.”
“What’s lamsa?” Callie asked.
“Citrusy leaf on Krandermore. Made great dry rubs and seasoning,” Lira said. “So what about Nikandros?”
Janus wiped his mouth with his napkin. “He’s like the captain,” Janus said. “Bit of a monster. Hundreds of years old. Always wins because he’s better prepared than anyone else.”
“I know that,” Lira said. “I’m not sure how us losing time chasing pirates is going to help us.”
“It doesn’t,” Janus said. “But do you see us having a problem against some run-of-the-mill pirates? It’s a situation we’re well adapted to, and it might just give us the edge we need to move into the old man’s blind spot.”
“It’s great theater, Janus,” Lira said. “But how?”
Janus grinned and flagged down their waiter. He was making it all up as he went along, but he had that old feeling he’d had, during the Trials, when things were finally getting clearer and starting to go his way.
“Can I get you something else?” the waiter asked.
“I was just curious,” Janus said. “Those portable terminals you all use, the ones that are hardened against hacking and surveillance. Where can we get them, and how do they work?”