Chapter 4: Sol Shifts Gears and Makes a New Friend

“What the fuck is all of this extra money?” Sheba asked Sol.

“If you don’t want your half...” Sol began.

“No, fuckhead, it isn’t that. Where the fuck did it come from?” She asked again.

“I had to fence a ship. It was pretty hot,” Sol explained.

“Dolgas ... did you?”

“Kill him?” Sol cut her off. “Technically no, but I doubt the feds will care much about the technicality. Can we just agree that you don’t become healthier by knowing the gory details?”

Sheba sighed. “Ok, Sol. But I don’t want to be an accessory to murder. You and I are in a commercial business. Not organized crime.”

“Dolgas was a Narc,” Sol said. He pulled out his handheld and brought up the documents Sophie had lifted from Dolgas’ ship. Sheba’s eyes widened as she read it.

“Put that away, Sol,” she said. They were at Dylan’s and while Sol was pretty certain that nobody was watching them – he wasn’t all that interesting yet – her reticence was understandable. “Don’t show me that again, Sol.” She paused. “Am I in there?”

“Only by reference,” Sol said. “Your name doesn’t come up, and he doesn’t have any info that could lead to you without quite a bit more. I’m going to wait until we leave for our next port of call and leak that he was killed to the undernet, with a threatening message for traitors. I think that’ll slow down the leaks to the feds for a few weeks while we work out our new game plan. Have you set anything up with Eliza?”

“Wait, you’re going to confess to the murder in an online post?” Sheba asked.

“Yeah. It won’t be traceable. Don’t worry. We need to make sure the message gets out that traitors won’t be tolerated. Otherwise, there was no reason to kill him in the first place. I need revenge like I need a hole in my head,” Sol explained. “He was just a shithead trying to feed his family like everyone else out there. What he did makes perfect sense. It’ll happen again and again if there isn’t a steep price.” He let the thought linger before asking again, “did you set anything up with Eliza?” He wanted to keep the conversation moving forward.

Sheba seemed to accept Sol’s explanation for the moment, so she followed his lead. “Yes. Can you make it to Thiaki in a couple of weeks? Eliza works out of Thiaki.”

“That depends on where you’re sending me today,” Sol explained. “If you want me to go back to Naxos, which makes sense, then no problem. If you want to send me to Thera, that might not be doable. Paxi would be out of the question.

“Naxos makes sense. Lets build a regional business rather than try to take over the Isles. Thera and Paxi can fend for themselves,” Sheba said.

“I would be tickled by the idea other than the fact that I just murdered our contact on Milos, but this actually works pretty well. Cepha, Naxos, Thiaki, they’re all pretty close to one another. And they’re all in a different part of the Isles from Kithira,” Sol concluded.

“Ok, so Naxos it is. I’ll set up a meeting in a couple of days. That’ll give you some time between the handoff and our meeting on Thiaki.” Sheba took a small disk out of her handheld and gave it to Sol, who inserted it into his com. The coordinates for the meeting on Thiaki were transferred to his phone, along with Eliza’s contact information.

Another gift from Doc, the great engineer. Most handhelds don’t have slots for disks. Everything was sent through the net. It was more efficient. But some information shouldn’t be in the miasma. It was why Sol met Sheba in person. The location of a meeting between a pair of smugglers and a pirate was one of those pieces of information. Sol had no desire to release it into the ether.

As Sol got up to go, Sheba told him “keep the money from the ship. That’s not part of our business, and I don’t want it to be. Now, are you going to be escorting me back to my ship?”

Sol smiled. He liked this part.

“How is life?” she asked as they walked together.

“Another day another dollar,” he said. It was an old world expression, but its meaning was clear enough.

“Seriously, Sol,” she said. “We just talk business. I mean, you killed a guy. Are you doing ok?”

“It isn’t how I would have wanted to spend a day on Kimolos,” he said. “I’ll be fine. It is what it is. I was in a war, remember?”

“I remember. How much combat did you see in your federal-issued truck?” She punched him in the arm to emphasize the point.

“Fair,” he said. “It helped that it was him or me, I guess.” That wasn’t strictly true. Sol was the one who organized the meeting; and it was possible enough to get out of the illegal trade business. After all, he did have marketable talents. He could get a trucking gig for any of the sub-contractors about the galaxy that haul shit for the big conglomerates. Hell, at this point, he could retire to Kithira and offer shitty tours to dumb Inlander tourists. Sol had chosen this life, and he knew it. But, being hooked as he was, there was a reality he had to face: people like Dolgas were obstacles that had to be removed if his life was going to continue on its trajectory.

“If you need to talk,” she started.

“I appreciate it,” Sol interrupted. “Fucking is therapeutic enough for me.”

“That’s why I like you, Sol,” she said. “That and the money.”

When they got to her ship, Sheba didn’t waste time. No sultry dance, and no leadup. She took Sol by the shoulders and kissed him, hard. That out of the way, she threw him to the bed. She grabbed Sol’s pants and pulled them down enough to expose his manhood. Then she knelt over him on the bed and took his shaft into her mouth before he was fully hard. He felt it harden in her mouth. She sucked on him, first almost delicately. Then she pulled him all the way in. Sol grabbed her head and pulled himself into her. She half-groaned, and half-grunted. Sol knew from their past that she sometimes liked being roughhoused. She was tough, and didn’t like being treated like some delicate flower. She ran her tongue up his shaft on her way up, then jealously gobbled the whole of it into her mouth on the way back down.

“You deserve some attention too,” Sol said.

She looked up at him and offered a toothy smile. Then she pulled her clothes off and jumped into the bed next to Sol. Sol got up on his knees and straddled her head then lowered himself over her body. He felt her angle his shaft into her mouth once again. With Sol in control, he licked the folds of her lips and pumped his shaft into her mouth. As Sol parted her lips with his tongue, he heard her moan, stifled only by his cock in her mouth. The vibrations of her lips against him sent a chill of pleasure through his body.

Her labia became slick. Sheba started to whip her waist back and forth. Sol held himself up with one hand and put two fingers into her cleft while he ran his tongue around her clit. That caused another moan, and another pleasurable chill sent through his body.

Sheba pushed him off. “Cum on my tits,” she said. Sol liked it when she took charge. And he loved it when she was kinky. She jumped off the bed and knelt on the floor. Sol stood in front of her and forced his shaft back into her mouth. She squeezed her nipples while she sucked him off. He didn’t last long.

“I’m going to cum, Sheba,” he said. She pulled him out of her mouth and started to masturbate him fiercely. When he orgasmed, his semen landed on her chest. She continued to masturbate him until the orgasm subsided. She dabbed at some of the white liquid and rubbed it onto a nipple. Then she pulled his shaft into her mouth and sucked it clean.

“Damn,” Sol said.

“I’ll see you on Thiaki, Sol. Maybe we can rent a boat and have a fuck,” she said. She winked.

As Sol got ready to leave, some minutes later, Sheba stopped him. “Sol, thanks for protecting me. Really, if you want to talk, I’m a friend.”

“Damn good friend,” Sol said with a smirk. Then he walked back into the station and made for Sinaan Reis.

–

Mars might have been the first galactic slum, but it wasn’t the last. People had long ago stopped watching space flicks. The idea of humanity searching far and wide for new civilizations, hoping to gift the galaxy with their presence, was the stuff of fiction. Colonization was almost always about dumping people you didn’t want here ... over there. After the first generations of high-level tests were done on Mars, world governments advertised it as a new home, and a new hope, where people could start over and be somebody. So people saved up to get a spot on one of the many shuttles to the Red Planet, whose small cities were under large domes, and whose promises were as out of reach as the earth’s atmosphere once reality had set in.

Today, property values in most Martian cities were so high that it was impossible to live there without a serious income. The janitors and garbagemen of Mars commuted from nearby space stations – the slums had been shot into space where their smell wouldn’t bother the city sophisticates. And, of course, it was expensive to commute in such a fashion – expensive and inefficient. But the price of the commute beat the price of a small lease turfside.

None of that stopped the Martians from claiming the first pioneers as their forebears and their inspirations. The great Mikhail Cochrane, first governor of the provisional Martian colony, stood ever watchful in the center of Terra Beta Park, with his imitation bronze finish, looking down, from twenty feet up, over the park and towards the historical capitol building in Independence, the oldest city in the galaxy that still could be called inhabited. But his eponymous grandson, Mikhail Habash, had led the first rebellion against Mars’ government, a satellite of Earth’s government, and the precursor to what later would become the Federation government, from his substandard housing pod on Elysium IV, one of several space stations that used to orbit the Martian colony. Cochrane was celebrated in history books as a pioneer. Habash was typically not taught at all.

Sol’s domicile growing up was on a Martian satellite unofficially called Mikhail XI. Some of the inhabitants were aware of the fact that it was named that in honor of Habash, a one-time populist hero, not Cochrane. Most didn’t give a rat’s ass about history.

The first colonists were the stuff of legends today. The nations of the world had found the perfect method to deal with massive overpopulation, and scarcity of resources. Colonization of space worked in tandem with the familiar method of population control: constant warfare. The specifics of it were not widely taught, nor were they relevant to the average person’s daily struggle. Most of the story, at this point, was propaganda. Earth was a hollowed-out shell of its former beauty, its cities had emptied out leaving people who didn’t matter, and it had been ages since anyone “terraforming” a new planet had used a living memory of the old one to base the project on.

But if you had the creativity and critical thinking to pierce through the bullshit of your average elementary education, the overriding theme was unmistakable: if we’re sending you to another planet, you aren’t a pioneer. You’re fodder.

That underdog mentality had been born into most of the Isle’s residents. For some, it had given birth to a new spirit of capitalism. The only way to get by was to work hard, after all. And those who worked the hardest, with a little bit of luck, could do just fine in their new homes. But that was less and less true when the second purpose of a colony was driven home: creating a purchasing base for non-colonial businesses, and providing cheap raw commodities to the parent planets. Whole communities had been paid for by massive firms, from deep Inland, that mined and sold raw commodities. These firms knew that if the farming communities they’d founded were free to trade with anyone, it would undercut their supply of cheap commodities – just like the Federation government knew that if the Isles could trade with each other, they’d stop being valued customers of Inland firms.

Some former colonies – now almost all federalized planets – felt that more acutely than others. Naxos was a great example of that. It had almost no natural resources other than those that were mined from deep in the ground. The Adriadne Sea offered some potential for tourism, but nearby Kimolos was by far the more famous tourist spot, and crime in most of Naxos’ cities drove wealthier tourists away. The terrain over most of the planet was not conducive to farming. So the economies in its two largest cities – at opposite points of one large continent – were based largely off of mining. Small mining colonies dotted the landscape between the megacities, but they were fed through, and traded with, whatever megacity was closest.

This wasn’t just academic knowledge to Sol. He’d been to Naxos more times than he could count, to both of its major cities, and to what habitable lands existed elsewhere on the nearly barren planet. Naxos City was on the east coast of the central land mass, which topographers called Chora, and which everyone else just called “The Rock.” Gia was on the west coast. Gia’s city planners, whether out of a commitment to art, or, more likely, sheer laziness, made Gia a mirror image of Naxos City. But the two cities were actually very different from one another. Early on it its development, Gia had become a religious center, a hive of moralists who, in Sol’s eyes, preyed upon the poorer residents of Gia. It had very few bars, a small handful of underground brothels that soldiers stationed on Gia during the conflict frequented – many of which were now likely shut down – and other deemed sinful attractions. But local law largely prevented many adult forms of entertainment from gaining a foothold, except illegally.

Gia also was home to one of the largest loyalist contingents in the Isles outside of Kithira; and Kithira wasn’t loyalist so much as apathetic. Since the Federation government touted its moralist principles – as a contrast to the Isles planets’ alleged hedonism – it had won converts on Gia among the churches, the religious leaders, and the moralists. That the Federation also financially supported some of the better-known moralists also helped.

Not so for Naxos City. Until the planet had been federalized, Naxos City boasted a healthy district where prostitution was legal, and where most hard drugs could be purchased openly. The alcohol had flowed like water in parts of the City. And it had once had a thriving sex-bot trade, a one-time cottage industry of Naxos. Much of that had changed since Sol had been there during the war. Much, but not all.

The process of federalization took time, and Naxos City’s sheer size made it difficult if not impossible to put all of the federal moral codes into place overnight.

Policing the slums had never been easy; and Naxos City had more than its fair share of slums, including the neighborhood surrounding the port where Sol had docked his tender. He was in a dive bar called Grady’s drinking some cool – but not cold – piss called Naxbrau. His companion was a woman who looked like she was thirty going on fifty-five. It was the middle of the day in Naxos. The plan was to unload the cargo in the early afternoon and be on the way for a quick vacation before heading to Thiaki.

She was giving him coordinates for unloading his cargo, some twenty miles from where they now were, at a makeshift port that was easily accessible from some of the warehouses just south of the City. His last drop-off had been on the other side of The Rock, in Gia, so this was his first time dealing with “Mary,” the only name she’d given Sol. Mary wasn’t a licensed distributor. This might have been favorable, given the issues they’d had with Dolgas, except that it was easier to lean on someone who was acting outside of the law once they were caught, than it was to lean on someone who acted, by all accounts, with the law’s sanction.

“You heard about Dolgas from Milos?” she asked Sol, at one point.

“I certainly did,” Sol told her. Money was a funny thing. That she mentioned Dolgas meant, to Sol, that Mary was worried about being turned into the Feds herself. That wasn’t confirmation that she was legit. He’d never get that kind of confirmation in advance of a sale, but this was as good as it got. It showed that Mary was worried, and she was going through with the sale all the same. The world was becoming a more dangerous place by the minute. It didn’t mean people stopped eating.

Sol’s response was cold, and, he hoped, menacing. Whether Mary understood what Sol was implying, she lifted her glass of Naxbrau and said “to hell with snitches; God should favor the redeemer of blood.” Sol lifted his glass and drank. As he walked out of the bar, with half of the bits they’d bargained for in his account, his handheld buzzed. He pulled it out and accepted the incoming call: get back to the ship!

Fuck, Sol thought, and ran towards the port.

–

As Sol closed in on Sinaan Reis, he saw the pirate ships clearly. They beat him to it, but not by much. There were two pirate ships. One was patrolling the skies, and the other was docked to Reis. Both pirate ships were smaller than Reis. They looked like they had crews of four or five people, each, with room for booty in the hull. If they determined that a ship was valuable, the protocol for pirates was simple: take the ship. If the owners of the ship disagreed with that plan, kill them. If the owners of the ship were women, God help them.

Had Sophie been human, she would have been in a world of trouble. As it stood now, Sol was communicating with her during his approach, and she could control the ship from wherever she was – which, presently, was the foredeck.

“There are two pirates physically holding me. Two more are fanning through the ship. There might be another in the ship. I’ll take care of the patrol. You get aboard. I’ll be fine. But our odds get better if you’re here, too,” came the message.

“Ok,” was all Sol sent back. Sophie didn’t need a handheld. Her brain did that just fine. Sol was almost jealous.

“Ready.” Came the message. Then...

“Now.”

Sol hit the throttle on the tender. One of the burners on Reis’ wingtip fired for a second, just long enough to put the second ship within reach of Reis’ guns, which came into view momentarily to let out a few short bursts. The shots hit the boat in the engines, starting a fire. As Sol came upon Reis, it opened its back bay doors, admitting the tender.

“One of the guys holding me ran for it. He thinks there must be secret controls in the back of the ship, so now they’re looking for whoever was controlling them. Another one is joining him. That makes two pirates coming your way. The guy holding me is about to be dead.”

Sol got out of the tender, and grabbed his firearm. The bay doors were close to the arms locker. Sol peered into the cargo hold from the antechamber where the tender rested. The coast looked clear. He pushed the button to open the doors to the cargo hold, and quickly slipped into Sinaan Reis. The doors made a hell of a lot of noise as they opened, and Sol heard at least two people on the other side of the hold start heading his way. If he could just get into the arms locker room without being shot...

Sol looked around some cargo to see if he could get a lock on where the pirates were. He saw one of them gesture to his compatriot. They were heading his way, but he hadn’t been spotted yet. Sol sprinted to the arms locker and slipped inside. There was no mistaking it, the pirates had heard him. They were running towards the arms locker as Sol grabbed a semi-automatic, military grade gun. The arms locker had no window, so Sol waited inside for the pirates to come to him. There was silence. Finally, he heard a couple of voices just outside the locker. If they weren’t looking for an opening here, they wouldn’t find it.

He checked the handheld before deciding what to do.

“Done. I’m coming your way,” was the only message. That meant one of the pirates was already dead. Two of them were on the other side of the arms locker door. One more was either searching the ship, heading to Sophie, or towards Sol.

Sol counted to three in his head, and charged the door. It opened into one of the two men, who lost his footing. The other man had been looking away from the locker when Sol burst through the doorway. Sol put a bolt into him as he began to turn around. The gun-blast went through the man’s neck. Blood spattered onto the walls of the cargo bay, and onto Sol’s clothing. The other man, who had managed not to fall, fired wildly, missing Sol by a mile. Sol fired another bolt into that assailant, hitting him square in the chest. He went down.

That left one more, and the guys on the other ship. Sol heard someone enter the cargo hold from the foredeck of the ship. “Sophie?” He yelled.

No response. The handheld buzzed. “Fucker,” was all it said. As Sol walked towards the foredeck, past the pallets of product, he spotted the last pirate. He was against the wall, just on the inside of the cargo hold, with his face to the wall, and his hands behind his back. Sophie was holding him there without struggling. She smiled at Sol as he came upon the scene.

“My way is much cleaner,” she said, apparently talking about the blood on Sol’s clothing. She pulled the pirates arms up. He yelled in pain for an instant. “Alright shithead,” she said. “Who’s on the other boat?”

“Go fuck yourself,” the man said.

Sophie punched him in the gut. Sol heard a couple of ribs break.

“You get another chance to answer. Don’t fuck with me this time,” she said.

“Two crew and a prisoner,” he said. Prisoner meant a woman. Men were rarely taken prisoner.

“Sol, we should rescue the prisoner,” she said.

“Kill him,” Sol said, as he ran back to the tender. The man started yelling.

As he closed the doors to the cargo hold behind him, he heard the man scream followed by quiet.

The other ship was disabled, but the fire was partially contained. It was possible that there were survivors on board. Sol approached the craft in his tender from above, first checking that its guns weren’t functional, and then attempting to peer in. He couldn’t see anybody in the foredeck. They were probably below trying to save their ship. Sol spun the tender around and brought it parallel to the pirates’ starboard dock. He sealed the connection and pressurized it before opening the hatch. First, Sol attempted to use his radio to contact the ship. But communications seemed to be down. So Sol used his handheld to ask Sophie if she could override the locks on the door.

“One second.” The response read. Then, “there.” Sol opened the hatch and slipped into the pirate ship with his gun drawn. He could hear yelling in the ship’s aft. He didn’t truly need to approach it quietly. The yelling was pretty consistent. But he tried to be stealthy all the same.

The aft of the ship was a small cargo bay, which had been partially outfitted with cells. One of them held a woman who was cowering at the back of her cell. The voices were coming from beyond the carbo bay, in what had to be the engine room. Sol slipped into the cargo bay, and motioned to the woman. She looked back at Sol at first with fear in her eyes, and then realization. He was not one of the pirates. That meant he might be here to help.

“How many people are down there?” he asked.

She made a V symbol with her fingers. Two.

Sol sent a message to Sophie: “cell block in the aft cargo hold. Open?”

Sophie sent back: “Not computerized. Sorry.”

He looked at the prisoner. “Do you know where the key is?” he asked her.

She pointed towards the aft. “Sam,” she said. Sol cursed to himself then peaked into the engine room. The pirates looked like they were taking care of what had been a fire. One of them was a huge motherfucker. He was facing away from Sol, looking at a part of the engine that was inset into the wall of the ship. Sol could see the other guy’s profile. He was smaller than his partner, but not small. Both were armed.

Sol hated fair fights, and the smaller guy was about to notice him. So Sol pointed the gun at them and yelled “which one of you fuckers is Sam?” The little guy instinctively reached for his gun. Sol pulled the trigger and blew a hole in his head. The big guy was smarter. He put his hands up.

“Is everybody else dead?” He asked.

“Yes,” Sol told him.

“What do you want from me?” He asked.

“Just the key to that cell,” Sol said.

“You’re a sentimental idiot,” the pirate said. “And you just killed Sam. But I can let her out just like he can. I’ll make a deal with you. I let her out. You let me live.”

“You’re wearing at least three guns. Take them off slowly,” Sam said.

“I’m wearing one gun, and that’s only because I’m extra careful. The away team is armed. My job was to sit here.” He said, reaching to his waist and picking the gun out. He set it on the floor, and looked back up to Sol.

Sol didn’t want to frisk him. That would be more dangerous than simply trusting that he was unarmed. So he pointed in the direction of the cells. The man walked past Sol into the cargo bay. He pulled a key out of his pocket, and used it to open the door to the woman’s cell. She looked at the pirate and at Sol. Sol held out his hand. She walked past the man, flinching as she passed him, and took Sol’s hand.

“Sophie, if this fucker tries something, you know what to do,” he said into the handheld. Then he walked out of the cargo hold and towards the starboard hatch. Once there, they climbed into Sol’s tender. She could have been about Sol’s age, but she looked a few years younger. She was thin; and though perhaps she had been thin in a healthy way not long ago, she now looked sickly and depressed. Her dark brown hair was disheveled.

Sol disengaged from the pirate’s ship, and flew the tender towards Sinaan Reis’s aft bay. “Some pirates are real pussies,” Sol said into the Com. He received a smiley-face icon from Sophie in response. The bay doors opened, admitting the ship. Sol stepped out of the tender, and then helped out his companion. He walked her through the cargo bay to the foredeck, taking the long route so that they would not have to see any dead bodies. Sophie was there, on the bridge. “Can you get our guest some clothing, and offer her a warm shower?” He said to her. What she was wearing was ripped and dirty.

“Aye captain,” Sophie said, without a trace of irony. As soon as the bridge was clear, Sol sat in the captain’s chair and hit the button that engaged the ship’s weapons. He targeted the disabled ship and lit it alight. Something Mary had said about the redeemer of blood – an old-world expression meaning avenger – gave Sol the idea that leaving a pirate alive after killing five of his buddies was a bad idea. For people in Sol’s line of work, the biggest “honor” was not being killed. Anything else was optics. Besides, who knew what that big motherfucker had done to the young lady who Sophie was now helping into some normal clothing? Sol wasn’t about to mourn his early removal from the world, regardless of the terms of his deal.

Now they had the issue of the pirate’s ship attached to the hatch to deal with. What they did about that in the next handful of hours had everything to do with what their prisoner told them. First thing’s first, though: Sol went to the cargo hold to make sure that the bodies of the pirates were tossed. When he got there, he found that Sophie had already taken care of the situation. He’d need to remember to kiss that robot when he got a chance. He walked to the com in the cargo hold, opened it, and yelled “Sophie. Mess hall! Five minutes!”

“Aye aye,” came back through the com. Sol grabbed a beer and went to the mess hall to wait for Sophie.

When she came into the mess, she had their new guest in tow. She had showered quickly and was wearing one of Sophie’s more conservative outfits. It pretty clearly didn’t fit. She was taller than Sophie, so not only were the shorts almost ridiculously short, but the shirt left her navel exposed. Also, it might have fit Sophie’s chest nicely, but the shirt’s new occupant was at least at least a size bigger than the shirt in her chest area. Sol found himself trying not to stare. The brunette just seemed shocked and stymied.

“First of all, you have all of my sympathy for the situation we found you in just now,” Sol began. “Second of all, what’s your name? My name is Sol. You’ve met Sophie.”

“Nicole,” she said. Her voice was high pitched and quiet.

“Ok Nicole. We’ve neutralized the six pirates who tried to take this ship. Are there any others we have to be aware of?” Sol asked her.

She looked at Sol for a moment and looked confused. Sol noticed now that she had light freckles on her face. Her brow furrowed. Her nostrils flared. Her mouth opened for a second, and closed again. Then it opened again. “There are nine. And a woman. There’s another ship.”

“That means we need to be not here,” Sol said. “Sophie, I need to make a delivery. I’d like to commandeer that ship that’s attached to our hull. Do you think you can pilot it?”

“No problem. Its a little vintage,” she said. “But it looks maneuverable, and has a nice cargo bay – not as big as this sucker, but still, it’ll help.” She meant with the smuggling, so long as they had enough skippers. They’d have to figure out whether it made more sense to sell the ship. But that was a question for the future. For now, Sol had to get Reis on the ground so they could make their transfer on time.