Excerpt - Frankie Takes a Dive, chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

She wasn’t the kind to willingly spend time with the riff-raff, so the shuttle from Shepherd Orbital Space Station to the platform nearest to Valdes Underwater Resort was murder.

Rosing System Superior Court Judge Aino Miller did not suffer fools. But apparently, only fools took this ancient, airplane-shaped shuttle in the middle of this brutish, backward, planet’s day.

Her own fault, she supposed, watching the alleged human next to her handle some sticky neon green food substance while simultaneously dragging their fingers across their portable device. But Aino had refused to rise early today. It wasn’t a vacation if she had to travel at some blasted groggy hour. She did plenty enough of that for work.

She shifted closer to the wall of the shuttle, trying to avoid splatter. Aino always demanded a window seat. She closed her eyes, ignored the weird cheese odor wafting over the seat in front of her, and called up in imagination the images from the brochure.

Two full days to roam the sturdy tubes and spacious pods of the sector’s biggest undersea playground. To eat terrific meals while scores of multihued fish watched enviously from the other side of triple-reinforced windows. Swim with the colorful fish in strictly supervised safety conditions. Pet a dolphin! Really a rosicant, this planet’s version of a dolphin, only furrier.

All of that was what everybody—every superior body—enjoyed at Valdes Underwater Resort. What the resort was offering her, and no more than a dozen similarly discerning, deep-pocketed clients, was something special.

Aino had heard about it from a close friend, but of course had done her own due diligence. The place was legit. The owner, Monica Valdes, was a hands-on person who somehow still maintained a shockingly clean legal record.

In addition, Valdes had managed to make the introductions to previous attendees in a way that Aino could ask them about the experience without either party giving away their identities. Quite clever.

And the cover story was a logical one, in a world filled with fools.

Aino left her shuttle companions to haul themselves and their slop into the arrivals terminal. Valdes Resort had an air limo ready and waiting for her directly on the landing platform. She was its only passenger.

The ten-minute trip to the beach was dull. Row upon row of stunted brown tree-things whipped back and forth in the planet’s scirocco winds. She didn’t feel it; the limo must be reinforced. No people, until they neared the beach, where a narrow town hid behind parallel windbreaks.

Aino had expected to transfer to a hopper at the beach to get to the resort itself. Limos were less reliable over water. But her limo took her the entire way. From the white sands on the edge of Dorian Bay and into the bay itself: a tube wide enough for two-way wheeled traffic. Once past the docks and such, the upper half of the tube went transparent. The underwater adventure started even before she arrived.

Smart. Impressed despite herself at the number of different fish even this close to land, Aino almost didn’t notice the progressive increase in air pressure as the car descended. Then her ears started to pop. She wriggled her jaw, and the pressure quickly eased. The rest of her body didn’t feel any different, buckled loosely into a velvety bench seat.

The drive down was sedate—almost enough time to count all the fish—but the return trip on Sunday would take eight times as long. The resort guaranteed that guests who followed its depressurizing routine would not get the bends when returning to shore. Must be what they used those half-domed cul-de-sac turnoffs on the sides of the road for. Waiting out the pressure.

Did the air already taste different? The brochure said the mix at the resort, 194.3 meters from the surface, was “near-normal” for standard air-breathing humans. The scent reminded her of the gas they used on kids who were frightened of booster shots. Helium.

A shadow passing overhead caught her attention. One of those furry porpoises—rosicants—had streaked over the top of the tube. Silver and black, long nose and thick-rocket body, it shot straight down the side, its wicked tail passing out of view at the bottom edge of the window. The bruised-green tips of swaying plants peeking up from the underside swayed out of view for a moment as the big fish passed. Must be hungry.

When Aino looked forward again, her breath caught. She hadn’t realized how steep this tube-road really was.

Still far below sat a dome the diameter of a sodding level of the orbital station she’d just left. Thousands of people could fit in there, each in separate rooms. And it wasn’t the only dome. To one side ran a collection of far-shorter round-top buildings, most connected by tubes to make hexagons, some off on a tube of their own. A living organic molecule diagram.

Opposite that side, the resort sat hard upon the edge of a chasm, its waters a blackened blue. Perfect for deep diving, the brochure said, but the thing looked blasted dangerous to her.

Good for orientation, though. The VIP area was only steps from the abyss-viewing dining room farthest from the molecule-town. Her room, with its double-tall view of the open sea, was just steps away. Probably hundreds of steps, knowing how the marketing copy oversold everything, but still.

Aino rapidly revised her opinion of this operation, and its proprietor. Valdez Underwater Resorts wasn’t just an economic driver for the planet Kitt, but most likely the main economic driver. Up top, with its slashing winds and poisonous fauna, Kitt offered nothing compared to this. Cropland enough for its paltry inhabitants and the resort’s tourists, but not for export. Mining difficult, manufacturing expensive due to import fees.

Even without the special events planned, Aino would have been glad to see this. She’d have to come again, and stay longer.

Where ever had those sticky people gone? Maybe waiting out the weekend at the beach hotels until the Valdes re-opened. Mid-week rates and all. Good luck to them.

As the limo dropped closer, Aino could make out the intricate gardens around the domes. Tall pale seaweedy plants crowded the spaces between the main dome and the smaller molecule, offering privacy—and probably a lot of fish. Around the front and her side of the resorts stretched tall shelves of coral and a rainbow of plant life. Giant gardens to play in.

From above, she could easily see the round tops of the promised emergency stations, dark gray cylinders set at regular intervals around the seabed at least as far out as the width of the dome itself. At the level of seabed, they would be harder to see. Coral and plant life, which may or may not be real, draped on many of them. But at at dive suit’s signal—or a diver’s tapping their emergency wrist band—the nearest cylinder would announce itself and stand ready.

No one died at Valdes Underwater Resort.

Unless they were meant to.

 

CHAPTER TWO

So yeah, now Frankie knew why no one wanted to transport glimmerantin beans. She could just picture that cabal of deep-space cargo haulers back at Xeri Station laughing in their weak-tea beers when they heard she’d picked up this freight.

Ten days was all it took for the three dozen bright yellow shuttle-sized crop containers to sweat out buckets of some skanky oil.

“Vacuum sealed,” the manifest had read. Sure.

But the giant containers had looked as tightly sealed as all the others she’d ever hauled, and newer than most. Reinforced dull-metal edgings over standard, if sunny bright, polymer sides. Long rectangled boxes with doors at the short ends—doors with triple seals. Two meters taller than Frankie; it was always tricky even in the half-gravity at the docks to inspect the top of each container.

So yeah, she’d signed the manifest, and watched the parade of sunflower-tinted giants float themselves into the wide waist of the big bulb of her cargo hold. That cavernous space, dim with only the lights along the curved inside braces on, dwarfed even three dozen boxes. Frankie was dead-heading back to Rosings, her home station, and couldn’t afford to pass up the chance to pick up a short-haul that would cover the base cost of the trip.

Or so she’d thought.

The first hint of trouble was three days in, when she woke to a reek worse than rancid wet-wool socks. Someone had left the inner cargo bay door ajar. Someone who did not have opposable thumbs.

Frankie had to put a respirator on to force herself into the hold. The shipment huddled in neat clumps of six around the outer bay door, each container tethered separately to the wall of her ship. Their bright yellow had morphed to thick, snot green.

The oil—whatever it was—wasn’t coming through the doors, but leaching through the walls of the containers themselves. Nothing she could do now—besides keep the inner door shut.

She’d thought about powering up the gravity in that part of the ship. The Spear was three bulbs stacked, like a snowman, with the hold having separate controls for gravity, temperature, and air. She’d have to start the hold spinning to create the gravitational force, and had worried that the spin would unleash the reek all along the walls of the hold. It seemed localized to the containers now, so why mess with it?

Instead, the bean goo had aerosolized itself—somehow—and spread evenly through the whole of the hold.

Frankie watched it from the oval window cut into the inner cargo bay door. Relentlessly coating everything—the walls, the long gantry/ladder she used during big runs. Eventually, even the oval window.

Thank Safra she hadn’t had any other cargo.

So now she stood on one of Rosing Station’s secondary docks, atmosuit on with helmet down, lightly balanced in its half-grav, glaring at her outer cargo bay door. She sure as Safra wasn’t going to open the door from the inside.

“So, maybe a little problem,” she said to Rosings’ assistant cargo chief, standing next to her.

In the bright artificial light at the far end of this dingy too-thin metal pier jutting away from the central hub of the station, Assistant Chief Saleh’s shadow stretched large as a mountain. Weird that he was even here, what with the port so noisy with freighters, all with much bigger cargo than hers. Frankie had expected one of the servos to handle the transaction.

“No time like the present,” he said. In the half-gravity, the tips of his locs lifted off his green-atmosuited shoulders, giving his stern wide face a dash of whimsy. Frankie would never dare tell him that.

Right. She spun the two main latches on the cargo bay door by hand, powering on her gravity boots for support. Did the spindles feel sticky? No way those blasted beans could soak the door. Right?

The door lifted open from the bottom like a hinge.

Now the reek had texture, and force. Frankie swayed as if the smell had slapped her. She clamped her mouth shut, trying to keep foul stench out. Even Saleh wobbled a bit.

“Don’t know what you expected,” he said. He float-hopped away from the door, his grav-boots clamping down nearly a meter away. Frankie pushed away, too, getting more space between herself and the gunky self-propelled cargo containers slowly parading out of her ship.

Salah pressed a spot on the tablet in his hand. A rumble like a giant’s snore started, and then air began to blast past them. The wind swept the reek toward the port’s main outer entry. The entry, protected by a force shield, would keep the air in, but maybe not the reek.

“Never seen a shipment that didn’t come in all coated in the gunk,” he continued.

“Super,” she said. Extra cleanup was going to suck out all the measly profit from this run. “Do I need to wrap them in something before you take shipment?” That would set her back even more. If it even worked.

“Nah,” Salah said. “We always put them in the old water tank, over on the underside.”

“Must smell fantastic.” Frankie wrinkled her nose, but it didn’t help. Back on Xeri Station, the cargo had smelled like, well, beans. Nothing much. Now she couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to come near them. These beans were supposedly super tasty. What did chefs do about the reek?

“These are actually the freshest I’ve seen in awhile,” Salah said. “And you’re lucky it stuck to the packaging. Not onto all your surfaces.” He peered into the hold. “Much.”

Now she knew what was coming.

“Don’t tell me. You know a guy can clean it up in no time.”

“Brother-in-law,” Sala said. “Good at mopping up.” He snorted. “Just about all he’s good at.”

Frankie didn’t say anything about that, either. She had no experience with brothers-in-law, and her experience with brothers had ended when she was eight. But she was not going down that trail of thought today.

“You want, I can call him for you,” Salah said. “Get you to the top of the list.”

Frankie wiped hopefully imaginary gunk off her hand and onto the back of the knee of her second-best atmosuit. “Sounds good,” she said. Always good to be friendly with the station deputies. They did all the work. “Not sure when I’m headed out, yet.”

Salah’s wise brown eyes gave her a long look.

He wouldn’t see anything she didn’t want him to see.

Rosing Station was the home base for Systems Analysis Incorporated, a very-private concern that performed gray-area services for deserving clients. No one was supposed to know that Frankie worked for them. She really was a small-time hauler of cargo. But with no fixed routes, thanks to the Skoll mafia’s hold on shipping, she was free to take whatever loads would get her closest to her next real assignment.

Which she did not have, yet. Not that she was worried. Not at all.

“Where’s your ratty sidekick?” Salah’s attention had turned back to the inside of the cargo hold.

“Hiding. I think the smell turned her stomach.” How that smell had tracked its way into their living space had been a heated topic of conversation between them. With all the talking on Frankie’s side.

Spike was a cat.

In public.

In fact, Spike was a cyvlossic, with a synthetically enhanced smarter-than-thou mind in the body of an oversized, scruffier-than-respectable feline. Spike had worked for SystA for years, and had recruited Frankie.

Frankie wasn’t exactly sure why Spike was still with her. Hard to recruit new folks when you were spending all your time with the old ones. Then again, every assignment they’d done so far had needed the both of them, so Frankie wasn’t about to complain.

Except about leaving cargo-bay doors ajar.

As the last container hummed itself through the hatch, Salah held out his tablet for Frankie to sign.

“Don’t go out to the float-park,” he said. He waved toward the space behind her. “Go to yellow dock, down by there. Garth’s pilot license was...recalled. He has to use the docks to get to your ship. Safer for the cleaning materials, anyway.”

Frankie took a deep breath of the now only metal-sharp air of the dock. Then she stepped back into her ship and reached for the door’s controls.

“Thanks, Salah. You’re a lifesaver,” she said. She pressed the button to lever the door closed and got out of the way.

“My pleasure. And say hi to Bruce for me.”

Bruce was SystA’s on-station manager.

“Such a cutie, that one.” Salah winked at her. “So shy.”

The door clanked shut.

So much for secrecy.

Frankie Takes a Dive is available in paperback and ebook