Chapter 12

Sol was on his second whisky at the Cuda, Sol’s favorite bar in Piso, the pirate haven, when the conversation turned to business. They started with the small stuff.

“I don’t want to keep carting around a prisoner,” Fortuna said, during a lull in the conversation.

“Tough. Your boat has cells. Mine doesn’t,” Sol said.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said.

“Then let’s look at our options: We can kill her. We can let her go. What else?” He said.

“We can let her join our crew,” Erinys said.

“That’s the same as keeping her captive,” Sol said. “It would be a choice that isn’t a choice. Join us or die?”

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be that kind of a choice,” she offered.

“Its hard to see how,” Sol offered. “The implication is waiting in the wings no matter how we phrase it. Plus, I don’t trust her. Does anyone here?”

There was silence for a few moments.

“I sure don’t,” Stefano said, then went back to being silent.

“I think we may be going about this the wrong way,” Aurora suddenly said. “Our choices are to kill her, to keep her to prison, to let her go, or to offer for her to join our crew. Nobody else has any other ideas before I go on, right?” She paused. “Ok, well I think its safe to say that she’d rather not be killed, and I think its safe to say that we’d rather she not be free. So as bad an idea as keeping her in prison is, and as bad an idea as letting her join our crew is, those are our options if we don’t want to kill her. Personally, I don’t care if we kill her. But lets understand our options.”

Nobody spoke at first. Then Laura chimed in “I think we should let her join the crew or keep her in prison. And we should give her the choice.”

Fortuna followed. “Kill her. She isn’t welcome on my boat as a free person. I don’t want my throat split.

Aurora offered, “I can appreciate that,” immediately on Fortuna’s heels.

Sol turned to Sophie. “Thoughts?” he asked.

“I don’t make judgments like that. I can tell you my capabilities. That’s it,” she said.

“So...” he said, inviting her to continue.

“I can monitor her, make sure she doesn’t send messages, keep her safe, so to speak. Its easier to do all of that if she’s dead, of course. But if we keep her on Reis, I can do it there,” she explained.

“That’ll limit your ability to join away missions,” Sol said.

“We can lock her up during away missions, I suppose,” Sophie said.

“So ... not really a member of the crew,” Sol concluded.

“Its better than nothing,” Erinys said.

“I guess we aren’t voting on this,” Sol said.

“No Commander,” Fortuna said. “You need to make a decision.”

“Lets put the choice to her,” Sol said. “I haven’t gotten the impression that she’s shy.”

-- “What kind of bullshit question is that?” Olympia asked.

“If you don’t like your options...” Sol trailed off. They were in the mess hall of The Revenge. Olympia was sitting down. Erinys and Fortuna were in the other room. The AI was nowhere to be seen. For some reason, Aurora had stuck around to participate in the interrogation, such as it was.

“Yeah, these options suck,” she said. Sol was quietly impressed by her resolve. He’d offered to let her join the crew – with some restrictions – or return to the cell. Unstated was the third option: if she didn’t want to be a prisoner, they could let her off into the dark recesses of space between their current location and wherever the fuck they were going.

“Well, let me put it to you this way,” Sol said. “You made my life pretty difficult back on Naxos. I’d love nothing more than to sell food to people who want to buy it. And that should be a really easy job. But when some ass-wipe mole tries to get me impounded by the feds, it makes shit a little inconvenient. And the last guy who I caught doing that was given a different choice. I gave him a gun and told him that he could discharge it into his head, or he could get spaced. Then I counted down from three. I’m not a bad guy. Frankly, I think of myself as one of the good ones. But in my line of work, we need to protect ourselves.”

“So why the choice?” Olympia asked. “Why don’t you just space me?” Her voice conveyed suspicion – something that Sol thought she didn’t properly have the luxury of at the time.

“My first mate has a bigger conscience than I do,” Sol said.

Olympia, naturally enough, looked at Aurora – the pretty blonde lady who looked barely old enough to pilot a ship.

“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I was content to space you.”

“What can I do?” Olympia asked. “Clearly, you think I can help you.”

“You’re politically astute, and you have connections,” Sol said.

“I had connections. I just made a deal with a powerful alderman to sell out the director of a food collective, and I’m pretty sure that you’re not going to let me do that. As soon as he realizes I’m AWOL, there go my connections. The Feds will probably be looking into me - just like they’re looking into you - within the next couple of weeks. So tell me what I can do for you,” she said.

“You gained those connections through being politically astute. You can do it again. I can give you a new identity, and I can promise you good and fair treatment aboard my boat,” he offered.

She raised her eyebrows at the word ‘boat,’ but didn’t say anything for a few moments.

“I don’t feel like you’ve given me a choice, which I hate. But I also don’t see the down side of helping you out if you’re going to give me a new identity,” she said.

Sol smiled. “Great. I’m happy you said that. Its time to meet the crew.”

Tammy had gone with Sophie and Erinys to get some clothing. She’d need it. A few hours ago, her name had been Olympia. But now she was Tammy, legally anyhow. And a few hours ago, she’d been fairly anchored in Naxos – where most of her clothing was. Sol had sent the rest of his crew with The Revenge. They were going to rendezvous with Sol in a week, quite a bit more time than was strictly necessary. But for one thing, Sol didn’t want to be seen leaving Piso at the same time as The Revenge. For another, he didn’t want to be seen arriving at Corfu at the same time as them. He’d leave tomorrow and fly in the opposite direction from Corfu. The Revenge was planning on going almost directly to the next port of call, and then just sitting there. It was more dangerous in some ways than sitting out in space somewhere, but it made it harder to connect The Revenge to Sinaan Reis if they didn’t seem to have anything to do with one another.

And so, leaving Stefano, Laura, Aurora, and Fortuna to their devices on The Revenge, and having sent Sophie and Erinys into Piso with Tammy, Sol was finally alone on Sinaan Reis, his ship. It felt like it had been ages since he’d been a solo act. But in fact, it had only been a handful of weeks. The world was changing fast, but Sol was changing faster. He almost felt lonely in the boat. So he grabbed a beer, sat on the bridge, and picked up the book he’d been working on, Colonized Minds. He hadn’t had the time on Thiaki to read like he’d wanted to, and his life had been nothing but chaos since then. He wanted to actually read the thing, not skim it.

“The nature of freedom is so simple that it is often neglected or dismissed as child’s play,” it read, somewhere in the beginning third portion of the book. “The test of whether one is free is equally simple. Let him ask himself whether he is permitted to do an act that does not harm the freedom of another, and if the answer is no, then he is not free with respect to that act. For example, may he sell his wares at whatever price he wishes? If the answer is no, then he is not free. That others may not buy at his price, or that others may purchase all of his stock, creating a shortage, and leaving no profit at his chosen price does not mean that he lacks freedom – only that his choices are foolish or unrealistic. But if the answer is that some regulation prevents him from making the sale – for whatever altruistic reason – he is not free.”

“The next question, of course, is whether that matters. We tend to think of freedom as an end in itself. Is it? Perhaps more importantly, our detractors reject freedom as an end in itself. They call it – particularly as we define it – an ethereal concept that is at odds with reality. How free is the wage slave to make an honest living by doing a reasonable amount of work? If only some law made his life easier, the world would be a better place, and if the sacrifice is someone’s freedom – a mere ethereal concept – who cares?”

“The proponents of massive governments have always claimed that giving up some freedoms is necessary to increase in aggregate happiness. Pretending for the purpose of this exercise that governments were not run by charlatans who make such vaunted claims while having very different ends in mind, is that a reasonable trade? This chapter shall attempt to answer that question by analogizing...”

“Hey Sol,” a voice said. Sol looked up to see Erinys walking onto the bridge.

“I thought you were out,” he said.

“Sophie has it covered. I asked her if it was ok for me to come back here,” she said.

“Grab a beer,” Sol told her.

“If its ok, I’ll grab some rum,” she said, smirking. Her newfound confidence was a put-on, Sol could tell. But most confidence was a put-on. Every time Sol stepped out of his ship, his hackles raised. What made him effective wasn’t that he was never nervous. It was that he hid it well. And he had to give Erinys credit for playing it cool.

She reached into the cupboard and grabbed one of the bottles of rum. Then she waltzed over to Sol and sat down on his lap, bottle in hand.

“Want any?” she asked.

Sol smiled. “I’m good,” he said. She shrugged and took a swig – perhaps bigger than she intended. She grimaced for a moment and then giggled.

“I wanted to thank you,” she said.

“About Olympia?” he asked.

“Tammy...” she corrected, “but yes. Thanks for listening to me.”

Sol kissed her in response. “Its good to have a conscience here,” he said.

She put her forehead against Sol’s and pushed against him lovingly. He opened his mouth and pressed his lips against hers. He tasted the rum on her tongue.

“Arrrr” she said, softly.

Sol grinned. He pulled Erinys closer. She set the rum down on the dash in front of the captain’s chair and put her knees on either side of Sol. He wrapped his arms around her body and looked up at her. Again, they kissed. She had to lean over a little bit due to their position. Sol ran his hands up her body, cupping the undersides of her breasts with his thumb and palms. Erinys’ breath quickened momentarily when he touched her. She pulled off the shirt she’d been wearing. She didn’t have anything on under it. She took off Sol’s shirt as well.

Sol dipped his fingers beneath her waistband and pulled her close again. He liked the feel of her soft skin against the backs of his fingers. Erinys put a hand behind Sol’s head and pulled him into her kiss. Her nipples brushed his chest.

Sol’s hands again crept up her body. He found one of her nipples and squeezed it between his thumb and forefinger. She exhaled sharply and giggled, even as they kissed.

The com buzzed. “Sol, we’re coming back. All is well,” it intoned. Sophie’s voice sounded, as usual, disembodied over the com. She wasn’t speaking into a device. She was just transmitting her voice.

“I guess we’d better put this on hold,” she said. Erinys climbed off of Sol and grabbed her shirt off of the floor. Once she had it on, Sol came up from behind her and wrapped his arms around her. She turned her head to look at him, and he pulled her into a kiss. Her back pressed into him. His right hand held her face as they kissed. His left reached under her waistband yet again.

“Sol, they’re going to be back soon,” she said.

“Not for a few minutes,” he said.

She made to protest, but her voice caught when Sol reached down and put a finger between her lips, touching her just above her clit. She kissed him again. He rubbed his finger around her clit. Erinys gasped as they kissed. She grinned at him then pulled his hand out. “More of this later,” she said. She grabbed the rum and took another swig of it. Then she pranced off of the foredeck. Sophie found him there a few minutes later with his shirt off, reading Martian political philosophy.

“I see you’re having fun,” she said.

“Would’ve been,” Sol said.

The AI chortled. That shouldn’t be possible, Sol thought.

“You know that killing that fed is going to change everything,” Tammy said. It would take some time for Sol to come around to calling her that. They’d been having a fairly light conversation in the mess hall. Sol was taking a longer route to their destination so that they’d arrive a few days after The Revenge.

Sol grimaced.

“Its not like we ever had it easy,” he said.

Tammy looked around the mess hall as if to indicate incredulity.

“You haul food, and up until recently, you did it with the help of people who had inside connections,” she said.

“If I’d known about our ‘inside connection’ on Naxos, I’d have begged off. I don’t need politicians covering for me. I just want to be left alone,” he said. “Most of the people we’ve contracted through just want to feed their families and their communities. They aren’t going to fancy balls with local pols, or whatever it is that you do,” Sol said.

“Woah there boy,” Tammy said, widening her eyes in mock offense. “I’m just pointing out reality to you. Besides, between people who want to be left alone and those who want control, the latter always wins. You should know that.”

“And what gives you the right to lecture?” Sol said, a bit intemperately.

“The fact that you kidnapped me does, you asshole,” she said. “Besides,” she said, “I’m offering you what you wanted: my politically astute advice.”

“Look,” Tammy continued, now that she had his attention again and he didn’t look like he was going to start shouting. “I wasn’t covering for you. I thought of the grey market in food as a great opportunity to make more money. I never wanted to involve anyone other than the people I was dealing with. The feds started cracking down, and the politicos used my involvement with Gian food collectives as a tool to blackmail me.”

Sol was beginning to see where she was going, but he let her continue.

“So I was blackmailed. I offered you up to the feds. I did it anonymously, of course, but it makes no sense for me to try to pretend it wasn’t me.” Tammy took a sip of her rum before continuing. “When you made that raid on the police station, I’m sure some of your food collective friends applauded you as heroes, but you were also alerting the feds that you were a serious criminal. Now that you’ve killed a cop...”

Sol finished the thought. “It will be easy to paint smugglers as true enemies of society, which will make our lives that much more difficult. I get it. The reality is that our lives have always been difficult. Your mistake was in thinking that food smuggling is low risk. We threaten something much more valuable to the feds than the lives of a handful of cops and informants. We threaten the bottom line of some of the biggest crony capitalists in the galaxy. So this might make it easier for the feds to mobilize the public to sit on their asses and hate me – something that never was all that difficult. But I think the danger for us only changed by degrees. And here’s the other thing: they were asking for it. I don’t mean that in some cosmic sense. I mean that the feds were looking to escalate. They’d find some other way to do it if I didn’t give them the excuse.

“And what about that officer’s family?” Tammy asked.

“It was his to protect. He made a choice. I did what I had to do,” he said.

“It must be nice to be able to wash yourself of responsibility with a handful of sentences,” she said.

“That’s where you’re wrong. The moment will replay in my head a hundred times a day, and each time I’ll ask myself if I did the right thing. I did, by the way. But I hate the system that puts me in the position to make that kind of choice about something that should be as mundane as feeding people,” Sol said. “The politicos put themselves so far above these mundanities that they sleep just fine. Its us in the trenches, who actually worry about the caloric intakes of families in Naxos, who have to suffer the consequences of our actions. That cop was in the trenches too. His death is a tragedy. Anyone who celebrates it is an animal. I sure don’t celebrate it. But put the fault where it belongs.”

Tammy didn’t look like she agreed. But she also didn’t appear to want to argue any more. There was a difference between winning the battle, and simply beating your opponent into a stalemate. This was the latter. But Sol was happy to take the W and move on.

“What can I get you, captain?” Sheba said, as Sol sat down at the table. Aurora and Fortuna were already there. Stefano and Laura weren’t, but that made sense. If the meeting got too big, it would be impossible to have. Likewise, Sol hadn’t brought either Erinys or Sophie. He had brought Tammy, giving Sophie the freedom to do whatever the fuck she did on Corfu. Erinys was similarly free to do whatever she felt like. So the meeting consisted of Sol, Tammy, Sheba, Aurora and Fortuna. He was outnumbered by the women.

Before getting down to business, Sol ordered a whisky for himself.

“This presents us with the perfect opportunity to make a raid on a slaver ship,” Fortuna said.

Sol had no desire for his ships to engage in even limited combat – despite the fact that it had just come from its first real sortie. But Fortuna was right. First, he’d agreed that he would help them. Second, the smuggling market would be fed-saturated over the next couple of weeks. It would be easier for Sol if he stayed out of the limelight. Of course, they’d defaulted to heading to Corfu because that’s where the food was – and if they were going to raid a slaver ship, it was important to travel light. But it helped to get out of the inner-Isles for a few days anyhow. This also gave Sol an opportunity to talk with Sheba, and try to get a lay of the land – something that was hard to do, even with Sophie’s real-time access to the undernet – from inside a ship.

“I suppose that’s true,” Sol finally said after a long pause. “But here I’m at a disadvantage.”

“I thought you were a big tough fighter for the Federation during the war,” Fortuna said, cracking an awkward smile.

“No you didn’t,” Sol said, raising a glass to her. “I’m just asking if you want to lead the mission. You’re the ranking officer other than me, and you actually know what the fuck you’re doing.”

“You honor me,” she said. “I’d like to stay in The Revenge, if that’s the same to you.”

“Between it and my ship, its better made for combat anyhow,” Sol offered.

“Then my thoughts are this: importation of slaves in the Isles is routed through two major ports: Cepha and Kithira,” Fortuna said.

“Cepha I understand. Its poor and there’s need for cheap labor. Explain Kithira,” he said.

“Kithira is a major tourism planet. From Kithira, its only a few hours at the most to Potamos. In the early days of the Isles, they sometimes didn’t even use FTL to get there when the planets were close in their orbits. It’s the next planet in the Kithiran system away from the sun, and its rich in raw materials.”

Sol interrupted. “Right,” he said. “During the rebellion, Kithira made a great base of operations for us because the government was mostly loyal and the proximity to Potamos meant that our ships were never in danger of running out of fuel or whatever else they needed.”

Fortuna looked annoyed at the reference to the rebellion – or perhaps to Sol referring to the government of Kithira as ‘loyal.” The reason it had sided with the Federation was obvious. Its economy had always been tied to the Inland colonies. Tourism was a big industry, to be sure. It was mostly enjoyed by those of means – of whom the Inland colonies supplied the greatest number. Kithira was not only a destination for the well-to-do, but it also doubled as a quick vacation spot for working people who lived comfortably enough to vacation every now and then.

But it originally was established as a home base for the mining operation on Potamos. Potamos was not a hospitable planet at all. It had not been terraformed. Most of the people living there dwelled within small enclaves that abutted the mines and were dug out of the rock. Newer communities were made using small terraform-bubbles which mimicked life in a life-sustaining planet over the course of a small area. Nothing there was like even the ancient Martian colony – now the seat of the Federation’s power – which originally existed within massive domes.

It was a frequent destination for Sol during the rebellion. He brought food and other goods from Kithira to Potamos, and raw materials to Kithira back from Potamos. But he was always happy to leave there.

“But why would there be a slave trade there?” he asked.

“Both the tourism industry and the mining colonies make use of them. Parents who aren’t able to take care of their children sometimes entrust them to off-world orphanages, which make extra money by renting the services of their charges...”

Sol grimaced.

“As you can imagine, the conditions that these kids are frequently put in ... Kithira has a nice reputation. But it has plenty of slums. In fact...”

Sol interrupted again. “Its mostly slums,” he said. That was true. The economy supported many enterprises, but most of the people who lived there hardly benefitted from those. And unlike Milos, the planet was extremely well populated. It wasn’t dotted with depressed communities catering to seasonal travel. It was a planet of beautiful beachfront properties behind which slums extended for as far as the eye could see. Many of the people there were employed, if not gainfully. Many were not. But cottage black market industries could likely thrive there, and not all of them were legal or moral.

“The Cephan slave trade is mostly for labor,” Fortuna explained. “There’s plenty of sex trade in there, but what’s mostly needed is bodies to do work. The outsourcing companies get their labor from a bunch of different places. They recruit, but they’re ridiculously misleading and the contracts are ridiculous – basically indentured servitude. Sometimes, they’ll contract with other ‘agencies’ and they just don’t ask about where the agencies get their people from. And sometimes, its pretty clear where they get their people from: simple slavery.”

“Ok,” Sol said, “but what about people who move to Potamos willingly because there’s work there? How do we distinguish?”

“You’re channeling Colonized Minds,” Fortuna said.

“I’m a Martian by birth,” he said. Technically untrue. He was born in a space station orbiting Mars. But most “Martians” by birth were actually from one of the space stations.

“Colonized Minds makes for good reading. It was made famous by Mikhal Habash, no?” Fortuna asked. She apparently was well-read. “Habash rejected its’ central thesis: to do no violence. Habash recognized the important place violence has in any successful revolution. He wasn’t a starry-eyed libertarian.”

“And are we looking to Habash for what a successful revolution looks like? Because his failed. You know that right?” Sol intoned.

“Regardless,” she said, “if your point is that terror activities are no better a restraint on trade than government, I disagree. The government and the corporations are one and the same. That’s not theory, by the way. It’s the truth and you know it. And besides, we’ve already done plenty of violence.”

“Violence isn’t the issue. Its whether violence is effective. I mean, where do these slaves come from?” he asked.

“A few places,” Fortuna offered. “Out here in the Isles, its all over. Plenty of Kitharans end up as slaves. Even plenty of Cephans, truth be told. But the real breeding grounds are planets that are destitute and well-populated.”

“That’s a lot of places out here,” he said.

“There are levels. Life is hard in Naxos. But people don’t starve there. Have you ever been to Crete?” she asked.

“No,” Sol admitted.

“It’s a whole other level,” she concluded. “Its where most of the slaves we’ve rescued come from.”

“Ok fine,” Sol said. “I already agreed to help you guys with this. Where are we going? Kithira?”

“Potamos,” Fortuna responded.

“Here I was looking forward to the sun,” Sol said. Fortuna smiled. Sol didn’t like it when she did that.

“And now I’m a pirate,” Sol said to Sheba as they walked back to Reis.

“You were always a pirate,” she said.

“No. Now I’m going to be raiding ships,” he said.

“Believe it or not, its probably no more dangerous than what you’re already doing.” Tammy was walking alongside them. Sol didn’t want her out of his sight for the moment. Whether it made sense to bring her to their meeting, Sol didn’t yet know. If anyone was going to be a problem, it was her. So letting her know their plan close to a week before it would be put into action had its risks. But the ship was small. And if she was going to be part of the crew, Sol wanted to at least pretend to treat her as exactly that: part of the crew. Her presence, though, meant that Sol was unlikely to escape to Sheba’s little tender for a rendezvous.

“I’m calling bullshit on that,” Tammy said. “The corporations know how to protect their assets.”

“They know how to insure their assets,” Sheba corrected. “If anyone is providing protection, it’s going to be the insurance companies. And so far, they’ve found that its cheaper to pay out claims than to provide real protection. That’s a failure on our part, by the way. It’s what Eliza’s trying to change.”

“I think that’s overly simplistic, Sheba,” he said.

“I guess we’ll see,” she shot back. The two parted without saying much more to one another.

Sol returned to Sinaan Reis to find Erinys waiting for him. Tammy ducked into her room, leaving the two of them to themselves.

“Hi there Sol,” she said, from the captain’s chair in the foredeck. She had a beer in her hand, and a glass of rum. Sol was guessing that one of those was for him. He jogged up the companionway to greet her. She kissed him very quickly and handed him the beer. Life was good in space.

“This is new,” he said, after taking a sip.

“Sophie recommended it based on the other beers you like,” Erinys said. “Now that I’m rich, I can buy you things.” She grinned at him. “The rum is new, too. Wanna try?” She was acting cute and almost girlish. It was a put on, Sol realized, but it seemed to put her at ease.

“I’m fine with the beer. This is really good. What the hell is it?” he asked. It was dark, almost black. There was little carbonation, and the beer had a bittersweet quality. He liked it.

“Its called ‘Revolutionary Grog,’” she said. “Kind of a dumb name.” She wrinkled her nose.

Sol knew this tactic well. In high stress negotiations, Sol sometimes told himself to act as if he was the kind of person who handled stress well, and didn’t flinch. And then he just became that person. Nobody is naturally that tough, or – more specifically – that kind of tough. Its always a put-on. But the put-on wasn’t fake. In a way, he was just recalling the part of him that was stoic in the face of danger, as opposed to the part of him that would later agonize over the details and wonder if he’d gotten everything right.

And in Erinys’ case, what she’d been denied was just this: her girlhood. She’d been handed responsibilities early in her life – nothing that anyone else wasn’t asked to handle – but she’d also been saddled with guilt, shame and judgment. She’d sought a release from those things with Artur, and had only been given more shame as a result. Her predicament was easy enough to understand. Now she was recalling that part of herself that should have been brought to the fore some years ago. That was Sol’s reckoning anyhow.

“So ... we were interrupted before,” she said.

“You don’t think we’ll be interrupted again?” he said, grinning at her.

“I think that Sophie has some plan and won’t be back until late. And she knows how to sneak in quietly. And she’s seen both of us naked, so who the heck cares? Also, she’s not a real person” Erinys said.

“That’s convincing,” Sol said.

Erinys took off her shirt.

It was a fluid motion, a statement. Her bra followed almost as unceremoniously. Her dark pink nipples swelled like small promontories from her breasts. Sol touched the side of her face with his hand, a loving gesture. She rubbed her cheek against his palm. Then she looked up into his eyes and kissed him. Her soft lips met his, and her tongue probed his. She wrapped her arms around Sol’s neck. Sol wrapped his around her waist, and rested them on her rear. She pulled him towards her. He felt her exhale.

Sol put a hand under the waistband of her pants and felt something lacy give way to bare skin. “What are you wearing?” he asked her, breaking the kiss for a moment.