Phil blinks up at me, then pulls his face into a scowl. His octopus solidifies into a squat, blockish maroon blob obscuring half his face while simultaneously — through some arcane alchemy of facial expression interacting with the nano-tattoo — conveys bullish obstinacy. “I ain’t gonna get tired climbing up a couple a goddamn ladders. Lemme find some cable cutters. You got any idea where I can lay hands on somethin’ like that? They never sent me no equipment, they just shoved me in a aircab and said t’ come out here. You gonna shoot me if I go rummagin’ around in the tool bins?” He is craning his neck around to study the immense wall space of my maintenance depot’s interior. “Where are the fuckin’ tool bins? The trade school shop never had nothin’ like this stuff.” He jerks his nano-tattooed head toward the high-tech equipment racks and ammunition storage bays lining the walls.
I console myself with the thought that he is, at least, not particularly afraid of me. Unsure that I should find consolation in this fact, I guide him step by baby step through the process of locating cable cutters and guiding him to the access ladders on my near fender. Despite his boasts, my new mechanic is huffing badly before he has climbed halfway up my warhull.
“Remind me,” he says, breathing heavily, “t’ stop smokin’ fryweed.”
I am unfamiliar with this combustible and suspect I should be alarmed that someone who enjoys it now possesses the security clearance necessary to tinker with my internal circuitry. It takes Phil three hours of clambering, swearing, snipping, and jerking on snarled cables to free me from my macabre netting. By the time he has completed the chore, his natural skin is as red and blotchy as the crimson nano-tattoo on his face, which has taken on the appearance of a mottled egg recently fried in ketchup.
He manages to complete the task, tossing the debris to the floor where the traffic fixtures shatter — creating a secondary mess that he will have to clean up — and eventually descends to the floor again without falling or breaking any major bones. I suspect this is one of the most sterling achievements of his life. I fear that I face a very unpleasant future and can see no way in which to materially improve the situation.
Phil rearranges sweat on his face with an arm that is equally soaked and says, “Whew, that’s one pile o’ shit I cleaned off you. Where’m I supposed to put it, now I got it off?”
I answer truthfully. “I have no idea.”
Oddly enough, he brightens, beaming up at my forward turret. “Hey, that’s great news! Must be a couple hundred, at least, in the salvage price them cables and connections and stuff would bring on the tech market. I gotta borrow my sister’s truck or somethin’ to haul ’em off, t’morrow. Got a couple a guys oughta give me a good deal on ’em. Maybe even enough t’get the nano-tatt for the other side of my face!”
I decide against pointing out that selling the power cables and traffic signals qualifies as theft of government property. I seriously doubt it would make the slightest difference to his plans. At the very least, I suspect Phil Fabrizio will rarely be boring. It is even possible that his scrounging habits may one day be useful. This is little enough to hope for, but in a resource-poor situation that has all the hallmarks of worsening substantially during the next few years, one takes what hope one can, wherever one finds it, and does one’s best.
That is what Bolos are programmed to do.
Chapter Eighteen
I
Kafari massaged the crick in her neck muscles, concentrating on the lines of code she was scanning. She was looking for the glitch that had caused a replacement module in the Ziva Two cargo controller to assign the inbound Star of Mali docking fees eighteen times the correct rate.
That glitch had sent the Star’s captain into an apoplectic fit. Freighters were required to pay the estimated docking and restocking fees in advance, with any difference credited back upon departure. She’d spent a quarter of an hour just soothing the irate woman’s seriously frazzled temper, while the Star was inbound on a cross-system transit from the jump-point. Freighter captains were learning that technical service on Ziva Two — or anywhere else on Jefferson — was generally not up to snuff. In some cases, it was downright life-and-livelihood threatening.
That disastrous state of affairs was due to POPPA’s replacement of critical station personnel with crews more ideologically acceptable. Jobs on Ziva Two were handed out like ripe plums, these days, as a reward to loyal supporters of the cause. POPPA’s upper echelon hadn’t shown the slightest concern that the men and women they were rewarding were incompetent.
What they did very well, however, was scan cargo for contraband, levy staggering fines, and skim right off the top, helping themselves to substantial portions of the fines collected and appropriating “contraband” passing through the station in both directions. More than one irate captain had threatened to drop the Jefferson route, entirely. Scuttlebutt held that POPPA had paid some pretty hefty “incentive fees” to keep the freighters running.
Kafari had finally said, “Look, my cousin Stefano Soteris is one of your crewmen. Ask Stefano what it means when Kafari Khrustinova gives her personal word of honor that this error will be fixed.”
“I’ll do that,” Captain Aditi said in a voice as cold as interstellar vacuum.
Eight minutes later, a vastly calmer captain called again, with a look in her eyes that made Kafari wonder just what Cousin Stefano had been saying. “Mrs. Khrustinova, you have my apology, ma’am. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”
“Thank you, Captain. I’ll be in touch.”
Her chrono read 4:38 p.m. when Kafari spotted what looked like the trouble with the module’s controlling code. “Aha! Gotcha, you wriggly little beast.”
She rattled keys, uttered voice commands, and punched “send.” The Ziva Two Module in orbit hummed and spat back an answer. “Yes!” Kafari crowed. The docking fees switched to exactly what they were supposed to read. She informed Captain Aditi, who ran a hand through her short hair and said, “Honey, I don’t know how you did it, but you’ve got my thanks. I don’t fly this bird for some big trade cartel, this is my ship. It’s got all my money in it, and between you, me, and the fencepost, trying to pay that fee would’ve run me so far into the red, I’d never get another license to dock at Ziva Two. Not with what’s in my cash reserves.”
“Understood, Captain. I’m just glad I could be of some service.”
“Honey, ‘some service’ is telling a customer, ‘I typed your request into the maintenance logbook, where it will be reviewed by our computer intelligence system.’ What you did, angel, was save my job, my ship, and my grandkids’ inheritance. You want something, child, you just ask for it, you understand me?”
“Yes, I do,” Kafari smiled. “And thanks, I’ll keep you in mind.”
She was starting to close up her office, ready to head home, when her wrist-comm beeped. She touched controls. “Kafari Khrustinova.”
“Turn on the news,” her father’s voice said, harsh with anger. “Dinny Ghamal’s been arrested.”
“What?” She whipped around to her computer, found a newsflash headline that screamed, Granger terrorists massacre peaceful demonstrators! Her gut constricted so painfully, her breath expelled with an audible whoosh. “Oh, my God…”