The navigator examined the situation before rendering a diagnosis. “These contacts appear to have fused into the input jacks. Removing the implant will require a medical facility.”

  I sighed. “Any chance you could ask the doc to come look?”

  “Captain Eyal has restricted crew interaction with you.”

  “You’re here.”

  U442330 walked across the cabin and backed into his charging dock without another word.

  Great. A station doc will cost me a fortune.

  Over the slow grind across what felt like countless parsecs, the heat in my core dwindled to dead coals. A quick turnaround at the spaceport would get us back out into the black and hopefully back to that abandoned rover to reclaim its cargo. Afterwards, several rover loads would pay for cargo bay increases, better equipment and maybe even some internal crew luxuries.

  If Eyal didn’t take us right back out, my share would pay a doc to separate the control halo and implant or remove both. If that became necessary, maybe I could dig up an implant that I hadn’t had to cut out myself.

  A loud thump on the docking bay deck caught me off guard. I whipped around, to find my duffle on the metal plates between me and Shiva’s onramp. Eyal stood at the head of the gangplank.

  “You’re dismissed.” In the moment it took me to grasp his meaning, he filled the silence. “Never let me see you again.”

  Warmth spread around the back of my neck. “Fine, just pay me, and I’m out of your hair.”

  “Your share of the whole cargo leaves you indebted to me for thirty-three hundred MU.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’ve sold your debt to the dockmaster. Work out payments with him.” Eyal turned back into his ship, closed the door and raised the ramp.

  I just stared, unable to believe what had just happened. With a debt to the Velox dockmaster Tryp, I couldn’t leave the spaceport. If I couldn’t leave the station, I’d be hard pressed to pay off the debt. My personal account didn’t hold enough for even a week in one of the station’s coffins let alone food. If I’d had the money for a shuttle planetside, I might’ve been tempted to get off station before Tryp caught me.

  Eyal can’t do this!

  I grabbed my bag and marched toward the concourse before Eyal did something else petty, like venting the bay to vacuum before I cleared the airlocks. All the time under house arrest left me restless, so I bee-lined to the station’s core.

  Centroid served engineering types and poorer residents. Situated in the Starport’s bowels, it seldom saw starship captains or officers, but it stayed busy. Several reptilian Thrynn clustered along the wall nearest the Starport’s reactors in patched morph-seats that shaped themselves to their occupant’s body. Dead comm boards divided scarred and re-welded tables which hosted close huddles of Velox and Elowan sharing whispers. Garish, mismatched chairs strained under grease-smudged Humans.

  I picked an empty morph-seat that was still more chair than hull patches, pulled out my second-hand slate and called up my contract with the Shiva. A scratched and dented robotic server wobbled through the air into range, emitting a soft and yet somehow annoying chime. A wave sent it away so I could focus on my crew contract. I hadn’t read the whole thing before agreeing, only verifying the pay Eyal had offered. The bored, mechanical voice in my earbud lulled me to sleep—at least until he reached the negligent damage clause.

  Irritation blazed to a supernova only to be extinguished in the cold of vacuum.

  I didn’t have a legal leg to stand on.

  While not technically in the wrong, Eyal had all but condemned me.

  I couldn’t pay the debt.

  I couldn’t leave.

  The station had a few jobs not handled by robots, androids or automation, but it’d take a miracle to get one before I ran out of funds.

  Is there anything I can even do on the station that’ll earn enough to pay off the dockmaster before I die of old age?

  Doomed to homeless exile in the station’s bowels, there seemed little left to do but drink away my last MU. Maybe I could afford a lethal case of alcohol poisoning...maybe.

  “One hundred meters,” I repeated with an ever more muscular slur. “It was downhill!”

  Centroid’s barman was a garishly painted three-armed, two headed android named Z-84. He wasn’t as poorly maintained as Centroid, but occasionally gargled his words. A shaker in his middle hand caught liquor pouring from either side as he offered a noncommittal nod.

  “One hundred meters!”

  “Very troubling.”

  “One hundred meters, but no, we just abandoned a rover and fifteen thousand MU worth of cargo!”

  “Totally unfair. Would you care to see a menu?”

  I scoffed. “What would be the point?”

  Server bots drew Z-84’s attention away.

  A sinking feeling about the vanishing gap between my tab and available MU threatened my buzz. If I wanted to avoid ringing up more debt I couldn’t cover, I had to pay up and stagger away.

  “Hey, buddy, let me thumb out.”

  Z-84 turned back to me. “A benefactor has already settled your tab.”

  The alcohol had either affected more than my brain, or a dream someone had covered the tab of random drunk passed out of the floor.

  “They’ve asked you to join them in meeting room two. They’ve apparently provided a waiting buffet table...,” He hesitated. “...and an open bar.”

  I followed his gaze to a scarred and peeling section of wall, first with my eyes and then the rest of me. Weaving between the sitting areas and tables seemed easy, though between my drunken steps and blurry vision I probably looked as elegant as a three-legged, newborn calf.

  A wall section swept up into the ceiling, offering a large enough doorway for any species aboard the spaceport. Centroid’s private rooms offered engineering supervisors home court advantage in labor disputes, but I’d never been in one. Part of me expected something exotic, like real wood shipped up from planetside, but the long, scarred table matched the others in Centroid. Eight empty seats in a subdued blue surrounded the tabletop. Bars braced either end of the room. An assortment of bottles containing every natural and some unnatural colors of liquid populated a bar to my right. To the left where I expected tiered platters of foods to make my tastebuds weep, a single covered terrene dominated the small surface. Even without delights and dainties seen on holo-dramas to capture my attention, the free food sang a siren’s serenade.

  Pulling off the lid filled the room with a rich aroma that nearly broke my heart. Warm brown sauce dotted by huge meat chunks and white dollops rested atop a nest of delicate egg-noodles.

  Stroganoff? Real Stroganoff? But how did—

  “Good evening, CT.”

  The smallest, scrawniest Thrynn I’d ever seen stood just inside the room. A shiny evergreen leisure suit with a complicated scaling pattern looked plastic against his dull green skin. As if the outfit weren’t bad enough, the bright orange cravat around his throat cradled what could only be a diamond endurium crystal.

  He showed me his gold-plated teeth. “May I call you CT?”

  I repressed a sudden urge to giggle.

  His lips bent downward, hiding his fangs. “Ssseems I’m a bit too late to thisss party. Pleassse, eat. We have important busssinesss to discusss.”

  “Business?”

  His tail jabbed toward the buffet table. “Eat. I’ll be right back with sssome dermal caffeine patchesss.”

  He’d barely exited before I fell on the food. A more sober me might have savored the food, but I inhaled it like a drunken glutton. The plastic-wrapped, walking iguana returned just as I shoveled the last of my third plate down. A sudden bout of nausea arrived with him.

  I blame the cravat.

  He clapped together clawed hands. “Ssso, I hear you know where to find a sssizeable amount of promethium.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “You were rather vocal about your recent ordeal. We think we can help you.”

  “I’m sorry, but who are you? And who’s we?”

  Light reflecting off of his golden teeth blinded me for a moment. “You can call me Phillkh. I represssent a group of businesssbeingsss who invest in talented yet downtrodden individualsss like yourssself.”

  “What? Invest how? Why me?”

  “You’re young. The way you made it to the ssstation ssshows you’re driven and not afraid of work. Whissspersss from Ssshiva’s crew also sssuggest you’re clever.”

  I wasn’t sure what to think. How did this Thrynn know how I’d gotten to the station? Checking my chrono gave Phillkh only a few hours to research me, assuming I’d mentioned the promethium early in my drunken fugue.

  Maybe more importantly, what did he think I would do with his undisclosed investment? Paying off the dockmaster meant freedom to leave, maybe even some training, but I had to get on a crew before I could make anything to pay him back. Besides, how would I convince my new captain to go back for the promethium in the rover?

  “We will loan you thirty thousssand MU at an interessst rate of two percent per Arthian sssolar day.”

  Thirty thousand MU?

  “Until you pay off your debt, we’ll take a fifty percent ssshare—in addition to your paymentsss—of all cargosss brought back in.” He smiled. “What do you think?”

  Fifty percent share? What cargos brought in?

  It hit me. He expected me to take out my own ship to get the promethium.

  “I—I don’t have a ship.”

  “Sssurely an engineer of your ingenuity can put sssomething together for thirty-thousssand.”

  I just stared. He expected me to run my own ship. That meant being in charge of not only myself but others, giving orders, being the big cheese. I’d get the biggest profit share. I wouldn’t have to deal with unreasonable lectures.

  Just one problem—being a ship’s captain was the absolute last thing I wanted. Okay, maybe second to last after ending up one of the homeless dregs in the station’s underbelly.

  Still, I definitely didn’t want to be the one on the hook for everything. I didn’t want to deal with dockmasters, ISF, regulations, licenses or life and death decisions. I wanted to tinker and fix things and spend spacer money on myself. Sure, captains could be tyrants, but I wanted someone else carrying all the responsibility while I just tuned engines and bettered my lot in life.

  Phillkh took a deep breath. Apparently, my musings had taken too long, and he expected me to turn his enormous loan down as too little. “I sssuppossse we could increassse the loan to fifty thousssand MU, but we must double the interessst rate, too.”

  Two percent interest on thirty thousand meant owing the tiny Thrynn six hundred MU a day. Logistically, that meant my debt increased by six thousand after a ten-day trip to the Arth system’s first planet and back.

  Am I calculating that right?

  Assuming we could find chromium or better on the highly prospected planet, every fifty cubic meter cargo pod would net sixty-five hundred credits after his cut—not including crew shares. So, maybe one pod to pay off the trip’s interest, then one, no, two?

  Guh! I’m too drunk for math!

  “Minor note, we can only accept a sssingle payment in full—intergalactic transssaction feesss, you understand.” He extended a hand. “Ssso, do we have a deal?”

  Do we?

  If I found a small ship that could manage four cargo pods, and I got lucky, I could pay off the debt in two trips. Running all the ship’s systems myself would cut crew costs. After all, attacks inside Arth’s solar system weren’t common. If things didn’t go to plan, a few more trips, and I’d be free of all of my debts. Suffering command beat starving in the station’s bowels. If I lived through any failure, it wasn’t like the station’s underbelly ever ran out of vacancies.

  Why the hedrin not? What could go wrong?

  I took his hand. “Thirty thousand. It’s a deal.”

  The moment the words exited my mouth, repeated chimes in my earpiece alerted me to notifications. My slate displayed a deposit of thirty-thousand MU into my station account. Another notified me of a thirty-three hundred MU deduction by the dockmaster office. Lastly, an electronic statement from the Black Flux Consortium displayed my current outstanding debt of thirty thousand six hundred MU.

  “You’re charging me interest for today? It’s night.”

  “You have accessss to the fundsss today, you owe interessst for the day.” Phillkh flashed gold fangs. He drew back his coat, showing off a curved, serrated knife and making a last comment before exiting. “Best get to work. You don’t want to disssappoint your new partnersss.”

  Partners?

  Robots flew in before the door closed, collecting the various bottles of alcohol. It took some effort, but I stopped them from collecting the unfinished food. The impatient attendant approached the tureen multiple times, forcing me to eat directly out of the serving dish cradled in my lap.

  A lump formed in my gut that had nothing to do with overeating. My waning buzz let enough of my brain cells free from occupation that they got together to accuse me of not thinking things through—again. With the first day’s interest already accrued, I couldn’t repay the loan. If, for whatever reason, I couldn’t find a ship with the loan money, my ‘partners’ wouldn’t remain silent.

  “There they are.”

  I stared down into the rover bay from an observation room. They ranged in age from old and dented to brand spanking new. Rather than organize them in neat rows, the station’s rover supply personnel had clustered them in a circle around what had to be the oldest terrain vehicle still functioning.

  I frowned at the ancient Velox labeled Stahnteivei by his uniform. Ages ago, his carapace seemed to have given up in exhaustion rather than complete its last molting. The discolored, ragged-edged exoskeleton drew my attention no matter how much I tried not to stare.

  Stahnteivei shrugged, an odd movement for a Velox. “Every once in a while, some practical joker sneaks in and rearranges the TV’s.”

  “Why?”

  “No idea.” He rubbed his hands together. “So, a new ship’s rover is five thousand MU.”

  I damn near choked. “That’s over five year’s rent on a planetside coffin apartment. Hedrin, Class-1 starship shielding doesn’t cost that much.”

  Stahnteivei shrugged.

  Ugh, that just isn’t right.

  “I’ll think about it.” I made my exit, mind still reeling. Very few starships, particularly in my price range, had more than one vehicle bay. There seemed no good reason for Eyal to have abandoned the old F1-D0, and I intended to inspect it when I went back for its load. Still, the debt mounting almost by the hour encouraged my wasted side trip to rover supply.

  Five thousand MU?

  I shook my head.

  Food, board, and the dockmaster had already dented the money Phillkh loaned me. So far, none of the ships available on the community board had asking prices under fifty thousand. Z-84 mentioned an old scientist apparently marooned in system by the condition of her old starship. The craft floated near a flotilla of old wrecks Interstel had some sudden interest in revitalizing. When I’d messaged her about a visit, her single word message hadn’t filled me with a lot of confidence: okay.

  An in-system shuttle to her wreck wasn’t as expensive as one planetside, but the cost still felt like a knife in the gut. Maybe I’d been too poor too long, or maybe I was a miser at heart. Either way, the MU in my account shrank by the hour. I’d even run the numbers for launching myself off the station in a spacesuit. Fortunately, the ROI just wasn’t there for spacing myself.

  Let’s keep the suicidal plans on the back burner in case I fail.

  On approach, her ship’s condition didn’t look too bad. Menagerie couldn’t compare to Shiva, but her hull had no holes. Considering the wrecks floating behind Menagerie, the old scout ship looked like the belle of the ball.

  Nesha Ensu waited for me inside the airlock. Her old spacesuit made my patched second-hand suit look the poor cousin. The little old lady leveled a laser pistol at me.

  Nothing in her voice came across as old or frail. “You CT?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Armed?”

  “No.”

  “Got anything worth stealing?”

  A sudden pang for the departed shuttle shot through me.

  She threw her head back, letting loose a loud, mad cackle that didn’t make me feel any better. “Just kidding, just kidding. Come aboard. I don’t get many visitors.”

  The inside of her ship looked like a cross between a xenobiology classroom, an alien meat market, and an exploding clothing thrift shop. She gave me a rolling tour of the craft, collecting unmentionables from unconventional locations and apologizing for the mess.

  Menagerie could support four cargo pods—two of which were already installed and stuffed with shelf after shelf of alien body parts. From the looks of them, her Class-2 engines had far exceeded their design runtimes and without proper maintenance. She had no shields, no weapons, and a comm system that sparked when turned on. She couldn’t support modules above Class-2, nevertheless, she possessed a sound hull and her navigation array had been top shelf five years ago.

  In short, Menagerie was perfect.

  Luck’s finally on my side for once.

  “I’ll take her.”

  Nesha narrowed her eyes. “Menagerie’s not for sale.”

  “Wait, what? I thought my message was clear. I need a ship. That’s why I asked to visit.”