The Human Edge II

Part 2 of the Human Edge story, starring Antonio Botella.


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II.

Antonio was not a traitor.  As he sat on the lounge chairs in the Everest’s common room, he repeated it over and over in his head until it almost sounded true.

“What a fucked up crowd we got ourselves here!” The man with the bright green hair laughed out loud.  He had removed his long blue coat, and his short-sleeved shirt revealed that his tattoos covered more than just his face.

“This ain’t usually the crowd you see on a station-station hop.” Antonio tried to focus on the holoprojection of the fish swimming across the blue of the common room’s wall, but couldn’t.  “Usually you see all kinds of scum.  Bail-jumpers, smugglers, ‘enemies-o-the-state’.  And here we’ve got ourselves a scruffy hard-tech and a handful of rich suit-wearing motherfuckers.”

“Watch your mouth.” The short, balding man looked up from his lap, where he cradled a small toolkit.  “There are ladies present.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet, I’ll bet.” The tattooed man laughed.  “Athena here could curse you to NeoTerra and back, if she wanted.  And she could do it in six languages!”

“Seven.” The girl next to him said softly.  “Seven languages, Klaus.  If you’re going to boast, at least do it right.”

“That’s impressive.  Athena, was it?” Antonio offered, and the girl nodded.  She wore her almost-black hair in the coronet style that was so popular these days, and her purse was a Pon-Pon original.  Huang’s observations about her style – and its apparent cost - had been spot-on.

“Athena Giges.  Yes.” She replied.  “And thank you.  My parents made sure that I learned more languages than I needed to.  I think they were afraid that I wouldn’t be able to communicate with all the cousins I’ve got scattered around the Sphere.”

Antonio appreciated the sarcasm in her voice.  This girl Athena was probably only staying quiet around her companion because she just didn’t feel like stooping to his level.  Francesca was like that – opinionated, but unwilling to put up with idiocy when it shouted right into her ear, louder than her thoughts.  She had often complained of this before he had left.

“A pleasure.  I’m Antonio, Antonio Botella.  If you don’t mind my asking, what brings you aboard the Everest?”

“Klaus is on a business trip.  I’m just taking some time off to tag along.” She offered, modestly.  Antonio couldn’t help but notice that Mr. Huang was paying close attention to their conversation and trying to look distracted by the off-the-shelf beauty all at once.  Then the girl smiled.  “What about you?”

“Would you believe tourism?” Antonio smiled in a way he knew was disarming.  He had given the same smile hundreds of times, in front of hundreds of people in hundreds of meetings.    “I want to see the universe.  I’ve spent most of my adult life on a single planet, buried head-deep in files and briefs and reports.”

He saw Xu Huang’s eyebrows rise, infinitesimally.  He thought of the small black box in his pocket, and suddenly felt more vulnerable than he had ever felt before.

“Stupid place to visit.” The tattooed Nomad man – Klaus, it was – laughed, and loudly too.  “You know where you’re at, Botella?” The man had a sharp memory.  “You’re at the Human Edge, last bit of populated space just before you hit nowhere.  We don’t have no Bourak, no NeoTerra, no fancy resort spas or simulated heavens.  It’s all shitholes and floating habs this far out.”

The balding man looked up again.  “If it’s really that bad, then why are you out here?”

“Business.  Freedom.  Both.” Klaus grinned broadly, and Athena Giges rolled her eyes.  “I’m a bioaugment developer for Krupp Industries – the shit I do, they wouldn’t let that even get off the ground in the inner sphere.  You ever seen something creative come out of the Inner Sphere labs?  Fuck no.  That’s ‘cause they’ve got limits.”

Everyone was quiet, and it was Xu Huang that broke the silence.

“So you’re a criminal.”

“Criminal only means shit if you’re caught in the wrong jurisdiction.” Klaus laughed, not phased by those old eyes in that young face.  “As things go, everything I do here is perfectly legal.  Hey, I see the look you’re all giving me...don’t get your comlogs all jammed up.  Krupp’s bioaugment program does a lot of good.”

“I find that very hard to believe.” The off-the-shelf beauty muttered under her breath, and Xu Huang laughed.

“We’ve helped stop types 4 and 5 cancer.  We’ve reduced cube rejection rates in new lhost bodies by an extra 2.2%.  We’re even the number one provider of soft-tech services for Paradiso.  So who the fuck are you to talk, lady?” Klaus looked over at her, unaffected by so much as a flicker of sexual interest.  His voice had lost its jovial quality.

“Watch your mouth, I said, or I’ll knock your teeth in.” The short, balding man cut in again, not taking his eyes off the Nomad.  “Think you own the place?”

“It’s alright.” The off-the-shelf beauty smiled.  Antonio watched her shift her posture ever so slightly, from half-facing Xu Huang to addressing the common room as a whole.  Even though he had more important things to think about, some small reptilian part of his brain appreciated her presentation, her frame, the way her smile casually disarmed the conflict.

“I’m Malina.” She added, after a small pause.  “Malina Rubisic.  I’m a publishing representative with KaymNet.  I make sure that news gets out this far, so that people like you actually get to see it..”

There was no malice in her voice.  Klaus snorted, but Antonio found himself thinking about her accent.  Where someone came from interested him almost as much as what they had to say, because it revealed hidden biases and context that informed their relationships with others.  Malina’s accent was hard to place, but Antonio was practiced at decoding the syllables that gave people away.  To him, it was obvious that the beauty had clearly spent a lot of time somewhere on the planet Dawn.  Interesting, because Dawn was a backwater with little to recommend it besides the mineral industry.

“The system-wide network of satellites that broadcasts Aristeia matches in the Human Edge?” The short, balding man cut in on Antonio’s thoughts.  He was clearly impressed, and not only by her attributes.

“Yes, but I’m only a low-level functionary.  I haven’t had the luck to meet with the stars, yet.  But I’m hoping to be transferred in-sphere soon.  It’s not that I dislike the Human Edge, but we have to go where opportunities present themselves, don’t you think?  How about you?”

Malina flashed the balding man a smile, crossing her legs and leaning back in her seat.  It was a gesture that did not go unnoticed by some of the men in the room.  Antonio caught Athena rolling her eyes again, and he couldn’t help but smile.  Francesca would have done exactly the same.

“Corvino.” The man offered.  “I’m a ship technician.  It’s not glamorous, I know.  Not really a job for the Maya feeds.  But I keep things working.”

“Where ya headed, hard-tech?” Klaus cut in, grinning again.  “What’s the next job?  You know, I’ve got some respect for you now.  You got balls, stickin’ up for some Maya-jockey you don’t even know.”

Corvino grunted.  The feeling obviously wasn’t mutual.

“Next port of call for the Everest is Station Yugi,” He said.  “I’m sure none of you are getting off there, but that’s the place where I’ll be transferring over to a larger ship for a new contract.  Seems like they need thruster techs out here, and who am I to argue?  It puts food on the table and keeps my MayaNet up and running.”

“You make things work.  I can appreciate that, glamorous or not.” Malina favoured him with another smile full of perfect white teeth.  “I’m sure you must...”

Her voice was buried under the loud hum of the Everest’s projection system.  Moments later, the empty space in the centre of the common room flickered and a holographic display lit up, almost floor to ceiling.  It showed a man maybe in his mid-30s, with jovial eyes but a set jaw with several faded scars across it.  By this time, Malina had stopped talking, probably realizing that no one could hear her.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.  Welcome to the Everest.  The weather outside is lovely, and we will be encountering minimum turbulence on this flight.”

There was some laughter around the common room.  The captain was borrowing dialogue from MayaNet history broadcasts, which were particularly popular lately.

“Our first port of call is Yugi, after which we’ll be heading to Bron Three and finally to Gala, where we will be well in advance of the Circular that will be taking most of you into the Inner Sphere.  My first mate will be down shortly to assist you with baggage, bunking requirements, and that all-important transfer of any sensitive data to our onboard crypt.  Don’t worry – we won’t ask what’s on it, but be warned that our vault is equipped with advanced systems that’ll fry malicious data that moment it does so much as look at us funny.”

The holographic projection of the captain flashed a grin.  Apparently this was funny, but Antonio felt himself grow anxious.  Was the small black box going to trigger those systems?  They had told him that the final destination of the data he carried was the data-crypt of the Everest, but they had said nothing of security measures.  What would happen to him if everything got wiped?  What would happen to Francesca?

Antonio snapped out of his thoughts to notice, if only for a moment, that Huang was watching him.  Those old eyes in that young face saw his fear, his anxiety, and he felt like they had puzzled him out.  He had to get the little black box into the Everest’s data-crypt, and he had to do it fast.

“Have a good trip.” The captain offered, and the display disappeared.  The common room burst into noise once again, but Antonio Botella sat silent.  This could only be a good trip if he somehow got Francesca back at the end of it, and to do that, he had to outsmart an agent of the O-12.

This was more than a simple delivery, it seemed.  But he knew that if he wanted to see his daughter again, he needed to get to work.