COPERNICUS BROWN
I trudged through the foot-churned mud at the side of the road, walking with my head down and my hands in the pockets of my leather jacket, avoiding eye contact. One hand gripped a hidden pistol, the other a concealed knife. I wasn’t looking for trouble but in my line of work, and especially in this part of town, you didn’t grow old by attracting attention or being unprepared.
Grant’s Landing was a typical Swirl settlement. It had grown outwards from an improvised and ragged kernel, with each new wave of refugees and immigrants accreting like rings around a tree stump. On the outskirts of this newest ring, the store owners had constructed their frontages from cannibalised packing materials, with hand-painted signs above their doors. Here on the edge of town, and the edge of the shattered solar system, there hadn’t yet been time to erect anything more permanent.
My grandmother had been in her late thirties when the Swirl started to coalesce from the wreckage of the gas giants; my father, Malcolm, had been among the first generation to move out to the territories that had been created from their material; and now here I was, hunting criminals through this new frontier—neither a part of these streets nor entirely apart from them.
I knew the rest of my crew awaited me back on the Jitterbug. With luck, they would have completed the repairs and maintenance that the old ship so desperately needed if she were to fly again. I hunched my shoulders against the thin wind. As soon as I had my target secured, I’d be able to join them; and if this bounty paid out, I’d be able to fuel the Jitterbug, fill the kitchen with enough ramen to keep us all fed for a month, and perhaps even get those janky landing motors overhauled when we got back to Luna. Our three-week enforced layover on this backwater dump would be at an end and we could spiral inwards, to warmer climes.
That’s if we didn’t kill each other first.
As you’d expect, since we’d run out of fuel, tensions had been running high. Boredom and poverty can be a combustible mixture.
I put a call through to the ship.
Hey, I thought, how are we doing?
The ship’s personality stirred at the back of my mind.
>Things have been better.
In my head, her voice was that of a particularly eloquent parrot, the sentences punctuated by clicks and whistles. I even ‘heard’ the occasional clack of her beak.
How are the crew?
>Restless. How goes the hunt?
I’m close.
>Take care. This one’s a real piece of work. Four counts of conspiracy to commit piracy. Two of being an accessory to murder. Seven of fencing stolen goods…
I tightened my grip on my weapons. I’ll be fine.
>Make sure you are. Ulf’s very hungover, and Kiki’s needling him about it. It’s going to end in a fight, and McKenzie can’t keep them apart forever.
Tell them I want them all alert, sober, and ready to fuel up and clear atmo’ the moment I get back.
Ahead, sepia tavern lights spilled out onto the dirty sidewalk. Mutters of conversation. Jagged laughter. I was close now. If my information was correct, my target used this place to sell stolen property. I drew myself up, and pushed my way through the door.
Inside, the place reeked of sour beer and stale sweat. Eyes turned towards me. I hesitated for a second, then squared my shoulders and strode up to the counter.
“What’ll it be?” The barman was more machine than man, with scars that suggested old radiation burns.
“Vodka and coke.”
“We ain’t got no coke.”
“Surprise me.”
He poured a thimble’s worth of neat potato vodka. The bottle clinked against the lip of the glass.
“You’re new here.”
I leant against the bar. “Isn’t everybody?”
He gave a shrug to show he neither knew nor cared, and moved off to serve someone else. I picked up my drink and turned to survey the room, seeing a selection of the sorts of faces you’d expect to see in a frontier town: itinerant construction workers, farm labourers, spacers looking for work, two-bit hustlers, and assorted lowlifes. The set of their shoulders showed they were tired, disillusioned, and probably thinner than they had been when they’d left Earth. A few of them glanced at me, then looked away. Either they figured I wasn’t worth their time, or they’d guessed what I was and wanted no part of what was about to happen.
Jimmy Malbec fell into that second category. He hunched in a corner booth like a cornered rat, his collar turned up and his thin chin almost touching the top of his beer glass.
Got him.
>Be careful.
Where’s the fun in that?
I drained my drink and carefully placed the glass on the counter. Then I walked over, my footsteps suddenly the only sound in the place. Jimmy didn’t look up. “What do you want?”
“You know why I’m here.”
“You got the wrong guy.”
I pulled my licence from my back pocket and flashed it at him. “Jimmy Malbec, you are a wanted man and I’m here to take you in.”
“I told you, I ain’t no Jimmy Malbec.”
“Of course you are. Now, do you feel like cooperating, or are we going to cause a scene?”
His eyes darted to the holdall on the seat beside him, and I guessed he had a weapon there. I pulled my own gun from my pocket and showed it to him. “Let’s not do that.”
Jimmy looked from his bag to the barrel of my pistol, and he seemed to deflate. The resistance went out of him, leaving only a skinny guy in a cheap coat.
“I still say you got the wrong man.”
I tossed him a cable tie. “That’s for the judge to decide. Now, shut up and put that over your wrists.”
“Why should I?”
We were attracting a lot of attention now, and I wanted to get out of there before any of the local chucklefucks decided to get involved.
“It’s either that,” I said, loudly enough for the others to hear, “or I shoot you in both kneecaps and drag your sorry ass out by the collar.”
It was a bluff, but it worked. Malbec blanched and did what I told him.
“Now, tighten it,” I said. “Use your teeth.”
I watched him grab the end of the tie in his mouth and pull.
“Tighter than that,” I said.
My heart bleeds for you.” He gave the plastic a final tug, and I nodded my satisfaction. “Now, get on your feet and we’re going to walk to the exit, all nice and easy, okay?”
I waited for him to edge out of the booth, then followed him, keeping the pistol trained on the small of his back.
We almost made it to the door.
A boot tripped me. I stumbled but didn’t fall. Then a pair of plaid-wrapped arms grabbed me from behind, pinning my arms to my sides. I saw Malbec, still tethered, looking back wide-eyed.
The guy holding me snarled. “Fucking bounty hunter.”
I stood six feet tall and weighed 180 pounds, but this guy was a full head and shoulders taller than me, and probably twice as heavy. With that size and strength, he was either a construction worker or hired muscle, and maybe even both, and I knew I was going to have to fight dirty. I raked the heel of my boot down the front of his shin and ground it into his foot. He growled in pain and tightened his grip.
Seeing his chance, Malbec bolted for the street.
I struggled, but the guy holding me was strong, and some of the other drinkers looked like they wanted to get in on the action. I had to get free and get after Malbec before I lost him altogether. I dropped my arm and put a bullet through the big guy’s boot. He gave a cry and, as his arms dropped, I turned and smashed the butt of the pistol into the bridge of his nose. Blood exploded across his beard and chest, and he dropped onto his ass. Everyone else froze. I backed towards the door with the gun at the ready, and then turned and ran.
I found Malbec in an alley a little way down the street. He was trying to saw the cable tie against the edge of an open dumpster. He looked like a racoon trying to open a food packet. He saw me and straightened up, holding his still-bound hands in front of him in a gesture of surrender.
“Sheriff’s office,” I said. “Start walking.”
He gave a long, low sigh. “Okay,” he said. “You got me. But maybe we can do a deal?”
“What kind of deal?”
“I got some information that might be worth a few credits.”
“What kind of information?”
“If I tell you, you’ll let me go?”
I smiled. “Sure…”
* * *
I cleaned my gun while one of the deputies processed Malbec, locked him in a cell, and transferred the reward money to my account.
Start refuelling, I told the ship.
>Thank you. (Whistle) Are you coming back now?
I’m on my way.
I left the sheriff’s office and took a grateful lungful of cold night air. The adrenalin had started to wear off, and I had to clench my fists to stop my hands from shaking. I’d been lucky and I knew it. I had a couple of new bruises, but tonight could have gone very differently.
When I got back to the Jitterbug, I found Kiki in the galley watching cartoons. She looked up and grinned as I entered. “What’s the good word, Captain?”
“I got him.”
“Yes!”
“Where are the others?”
“Below decks. I think Ulf’s sulking.”
“Well, this might cheer him up. We have a full tank, and we’re ready to leave. I’ll need you in the pilot’s seat, running pre-flight checks, and I need the other two down in the engine room, working
their magic.”
She leapt to her feet. “Fuck, yeah!”
I walked over to the companionway that led down to the engine room and yelled, “You two down there?”
“Yes, Captain,” Ulf replied.
“We’re here!” McKenzie added.
“Wheels up in five minutes,” I told them. “Get everything squared away and ready for flight.”
“Yay!”
I smiled, and then followed Kiki up the ladder to the bridge, where she was already buckling into her chair and activating her consoles.
How are we doing? I asked the ship.
>Raring to go. It’s been a long three weeks standing in slush. I was starting to worry I’d rust.
Let me know the moment you’re ready to go.
>I will, but, Captain…?
Yes?
>Where are we going?
I strapped into my own couch. Take us to Mars.
>Mars is dangerous. Nobody goes there anymore.
That’s the accepted wisdom.
>So, why are we heading there?
I got a lead.
>A lead on a bounty?
Malbec told me some of his old smuggling contacts have a cache there. They use it as a staging post for runs into the Swirl. If we can find it and tag it, we’ll be able to sell the location to Sol-Sec for a decent chunk of change.
>And he just told you this (click, whistle) voluntarily?
Well, I may have lied to him about letting him go
They’ll like it well enough when we get paid.
* * *
I sat in my command couch as the Jitterbug powered away from the shard on which I’d had to leave it parked for so long. I cradled a hot cup of tea in my hands. Around me, I heard the familiar creaks and groans as different sections of the hull warmed in raw sunlight and froze in airless shade.
To someone of my grandmother’s generation who remembered the stately orrery of the planets, our altered solar system might have appeared chilling in its artificiality—but to us, it was home.
Almost a century ago, something had disassembled the gas giants and used their material to create an entirely new set of structures. Where the asteroid belt had once been, now eight sections of a hollow sphere hung in stately orbit around the Sun.
Imagine an orange. Slice it into eight equal pieces and remove the peel. Now arrange those eight pieces of peel at regular intervals around a tea light. If you move them inwards, they will meet to form a hollow sphere with the candle at the centre, trapping all its light within. Spaced out, they only block half the light, letting the rest escape. Their inner surfaces are warm, their outer rinds turned to the darkness. The eight shards of the Swirl were those pieces of orange peel writ large. They measured 340 million kilometres from tip to tip, and 85 million across at their widest points. If they moved inwards, they would meet and join somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Earth, completely enclosing our sun in a colossal sphere. Fortunately for us, they seemed content to stay where they were for now, equally spaced around its light. Their inner surfaces were habitable, with oxygen-nitrogen atmospheres, cold-but-manageable surface temperatures, skies that somehow polarised to provide a thirty-hour day/night cycle, and a gravity approximately three-quarters that of the Earth. Nobody knew how or why they managed to maintain these characteristics, nor why the orbits of the inner planets had been seemingly unaffected by their ferocious mass, but for the past few decades, humans had been slowly colonising these strange new habitats. And with the scientific community’s general consensus that the Swirl’s creators were most probably long dead, what had seemed frightening and inexplicable to my grandmother’s generation now represented a wide-open land of opportunity.
Sitting at her console to my left, Kiki said, “Hey, Cap. Are you going to give me the skinny on why you’re taking us to Mars?”
I called up a magnified image of the red planet. It looked like a cracked nut. Parts of it had begun to flake away. Dust and rock streamed out behind it like the tail of a comet—a savage reminder that the mechanism responsible for taking apart the gas giants wasn’t finished yet, ...
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