I, Woman Smuggler

The Flying Squirrel hung in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, a three-story house worth of real estate cunningly shaped into an FTL-capable freighter. He recognized every bulkhead of it, even from fifty thousand miles off. The combination cargo hold and hydroponics bay that bellied the hull. The wings like the arms of a K, mirrored on either side of the fuselage. The slender rapier of the cockpit, stabbing forward until it narrowed into a needlepoint.

Nick Pantera leaned in until the Viewcaster he held in front of his face clinked against the glass of the window. “That’s my fucking ship! Bandit, look at this! This is unbelievable!”

Bandit stretched his neck up to see above his four feet height to the window, then extended his telescoping eyes to replicate the work of Nick’s Viewcaster. “It is a GR-71f,” he said in his rough voice, staticky after being in Power Save mode for the long flight. “But there are a lot of GR-71fs out there…”

“No, look at that scorch mark on the neck, the one shaped like a guitar! We got that one in the Sqiikk Nebula last month, remember?” As Nick watched through eyes made huge by the Viewcaster, the Flying Squirrel reddened, hull picking up friction as it descended into full atmo. “They’re landing it! They flew my fucking ship right fucking here and they got here before me!”

He saw an aghast look on the camel face of Nehiliite he’d leaned over to get to the window, retracted back into his aisle seat. “Sorry,” he said, squeezing the Viewcaster so the lenses turned sideways and collapsed between the closing halves of the device into a neat little rectangle.

Bandit rolled back to get out of the way as Nick stepped into the aisle. He was one of the few on his feet; most were still asleep. The transit ship had hours yet until it was done waiting for a berth in spaceport. But that was the way with these budget runs: save on the lightspeed, suffer the low-priority docking.

“There’s nothing we can do about it now, even if it is the Squirrel,” Bandit pointed out. With his spindly arms and squat body and three flickering displays on his chest, Nick had dubbed him a regular one-armed bandit. The name had stuck over the forgettable factory registry he’d been created with. “They didn’t have to wait for an entire ‘liner to board, so they got here before us, so they’ve already waited for landing clearance. We’ll just have to do the same.”

“And get down there just in time to see them taking off again? In my ship? Oh no! We’re landing right now and I’m getting my Squirrel back. Bandit, get the bags.”

It had been a long, noisy, smelly flight from Qort’s World to even the orbit of Panopia, and walking row after row of seats brought back a memory of it with each step. The cramped bathroom. The lousy food. The nonalcoholic beer. All of which he should have been avoiding in his own ship, laughing at those suckers who flew commercial. Nick was almost more pissed about the state of public transportation in Sector Delta than he was about being ripped off.

Out of some high-minded ideal, the pilot was made to suffer in the same compartment as the rest of them, though he had a bulletproof Conglas shield between him and his passengers. The arrangement, Nick remembered, could be pretty cozy. As long as no one bothered him, he didn’t throw the switch that cut off running water.

Nick put on his best smile and bothered him. “Hi there, sorry to bother you, but this is a matter of national security, life and death, good versus evil—”

“What do you want?” the pilot blared like a foghorn running low on juice.

“We need to land immediately.”

The pilot laughed—or coughed. It was hard to tell what was making it through his sinuses. “You and everybody else, buddy.”

It was then Nick spotted the Marine tattoo on the pilot’s bicep, and he should’ve clocked it sooner, given how his upper arm had fattened up like the meaty end of a drumstick. “C’mon, man, help out a comrade-in-arms?”

The pilot looked him over. “What unit?”

“Eight-oh-nine.”

“The 809th? That was a resupply unit! You flew ammo from the depots to the frontlines, you were never in the shit.”

Nick heard Bandit rolling up behind him, having finally managed to get his luggage from the overhead compartment. ”That is not true! Bandit, tell him.”

“He was in a great deal of danger. He was shot down many times.”

Nick winced. “Not many times… multiple times…”

“Get back in yer seat.” The pilot spoke like a hammer was pounding the words out of him. “We’re not leaving holding pattern unless there’s an emergency.”

Nick could see this would take some lateral thinking.

He turned on his heel, scanned his fellow public transit enthusiasts. Many of them hadn’t yet shaken off whatever drugs they’d taken to get through the flight. It was a disturbing cross-section of society’s malcontents: everything from illegal immigrants to tourists. But he seized on a female Barpetta, about ready to explode with pregnancy, and rushed to her side.

“Hi there! You probably don’t remember me, but when we were first boarding I gave up my seat for you and helped you with your bags?”

Her compound eyes squinted at him. “I thought you were taller.”

Nick hunched. “It’s okay, I know Barpettas have a hard time distinguishing between species that don’t express themselves through thermal radiation. Here’s the thing: I do need a favor, but before I ask, I need to give some context. Context about an injustice. An injustice involving Gibraltians…”

“Oh, those awful Gibraltians,” she moaned.

***

A few fake labor pains later, they’d landed in a field outside the spaceport. Nick paused only long enough to right Bandit after he came off the slide sideways, then they were on the move.

The surface of Panopia was dirt, but a few feet underneath it was a vast fungal organism that grew shoots of hair up into the atmosphere. The locals’ religion involved keeping it combed. Thankfully, there were bald spots, or civilization would be impossible.

Nick ran, pushing Bandit along. It was like stepping on an endless buffet of spaghetti as they approached the spaceport.

“There it is, Bandit! The Squirrel’s gotta be there and if we time it right, we can take her while those assholes are stretching their legs.”

“Sir,” Bandit moaned, wishing Nick would let him go slower on all the dips and hills his servomotors were having such trouble calculating. “I think there’s a high probability the Gibraltians will physically assault us in defense of their property.”

“My property!” Nick corrected him. “They stole it, we’re stealing it back.”

“You mean they won it and you’re stealing it back.”

“It was a rigged game!”

Nick put on a burst of speed, shoving Bandit onto the solidly paved ground of the spaceport’s outskirts. He visored a hand above his eyes to look around, spotted the constellation of hangars that the rest of the spaceport was built around, and took off at a run.

Bandit motored after him, clicking and whirring as if (impossibly) groaning at the physical exertion. “In case I am destroyed in the reacquisition of the Flying Squirrel, I hope you take some lesson from my being inoperative.”

“Yeah, yeah—”

“And since I won’t be around then to say so, the lesson you should take is not to mix inebriation with playing cards.”

“You’re victim-blaming! I was doing fine until those Gibraltian bastards slipped me a mickey.”

“You lost the ship,” Bandit reminded him pointedly.

“I would’ve won it back if it weren’t for the mickey!”

The spaceport was as prefab as Styrofoam packaging, even the chain restaurants the same. The only difference was in the graffiti that blurred by as Nick ran from one hangar to another: garbage scow. Fishing trawler. Military surplus gunboat. A pleasure cruiser absolutely covered in pictures of Holovee star Trisha Thanks. And, finally, the Flying Squirrel.

Nick pressed himself to the wall beside the open doors, poking his head in as Bandit caught up. He drew his slagger and checked the clip. Twenty-five pellets of ultra-dense norburiem, ready to be superheated, expand into a gallon of liquid, and jet into whatever he needed to be coated in molten metal.

“Even if they’re not onboard, how do you plan to take off?” Bandit asked. “They won the master-chip off you.”

“Don’t you remember? I always keep a spare, just in case. Remind me to buy you a new hard drive.”

“I haven’t been?” Bandit’s head twisted an inch to the left and an inch to the right. “Where is this master-chip?”

Nick reached over to Bandit and popped open the access port on his temple. A wad of chewing gum held the master-chip against the lid. He plucked it away and shoved the lid back into place.

“I feel violated,” Bandit said.

“And that’s why I waited until you were in Power Save mode to put it there.” Nick flicked the wad of gum away. “You know, I don’t think they make that flavor of gum anymore. Could be worth something.”