He threaded himself through the dense crowd of the spaceport. Nip knew he was going to be in trouble whether he got home on time or not, so he just gritted his teeth and elbowed past a few grease-monkey hekshanians before plunging back into the work sector. He’d been almost home when something had caught his eye and something else in his mind had clicked. Genius. Today was Rekka’s birthday and with no gift for his surly girlfriend, she’d most likely throw him out again. Not that he couldn’t handle that, but still. It was principle, and it was his apartment anyway.
The green-gray of the Resh jupiter class filled up the majority of the arcing window. The planet was almost full now, and bright with the reflected light of its sun. There was a chuian festival tomorrow to celebrate---mostly just for the heck of getting a paid day off---and Nip didn’t really feel like being in the doghouse for that.
At least he had an idea of what to get for her.
But the obscure Ceres wrenches and their power sources were rare, and there was no way he was going to come across one tonight. By himself at least.
He wasn’t on duty now, but he was still in his work clothes. The things were clogged with dust and grime, the product of a long day in a diamond blister mining for iridium and yttrium and other obscure unstables that were rich in the gas giant’s moons. Some trick of the magnetic field keeping them temporarily stable, something he’d heard explained at least seven times; but like they say---in one ear, out the other.
There. Nip pushed his way past the last of the oncoming crowd and slid up to the transport booth. Only way he could get back inside the maintenance bay at this time of night was with clearance, which he didn’t have himself. But chuians had lots of friends in convenient places.
“Hey, Kero,” he said, standing on tiptoes to throw his arm over the counter casually. “Think you can do a favor for me?”
The nikitak looked at him, amused. “Seems like Oi’m always doin’ stuff for you, ratboy. When are we gonna take that skimmer of yours out like you keep promisin’?” He had all but one of his hands elbow deep in paperwork, and the chuian all but scowled at this bit of blackmail.
“Hey, what am I gonna do about it?” Nip asked, arms thrown up in mock helplessness. “Like I said, it’s all tied up in legal stuff since the last time me and the boys took it out.” That had been quite something, and most of it he didn’t even remember. Too much booze and not enough piloting skills between the four of them.
“You just see what you can do, Nip.” A grin and a wink as Kero shoved a stack of papers into a drawer. “For now, what can Oi do for you?”
He shot a grin back, and started on his cover story.
..................
The nikitak let him inside with the slash of an ID badge, and Nip gave him a smirking salute before scampering off into the maintenance bay. He’d fed him something about forgotten equipment and hefty fines if he misplaced his pH sipper again. None of which was true, and whether Kero believed it or not wasn’t his problem. He’d gotten what he needed. Hopefully the rest of this would be as easy.
This portion of the sector was crammed with tinkering species during the day. Mining equipment was in constant flux between the various mineral rich moons and the repair bay. Working the rocks was hard, and when the machines broke down to the point where they couldn’t be fixed on the spot, they were shipped back to the station for in-depth repair. Nip had worked the shipping crew more than once. This week on a trip back from Redrock, he’d peeked into one of the hauling crates and seen a pile of junk. Junk that was crammed full of the broken remnants of rare and useful equipment.
He’d seen two Ceres wrenches in the pile. If he could get one of them fixed tonight, and if he could pinch it and get away free, tonight would be a very good night indeed.
There were no windows here, just long decorative vidscreens with a real-time feed to outside cameras. Most of the people that worked this sector were home for the night, it being over an hour since punch-out. Peeking in doors, Nip passed at least seven locked rooms and one empty one with a cold soldering torch and a rivet gun. There was a hekshanian in another, her arms smothered to the elbow in engine grease. He stepped inside to pop her a question, but she glared at him through sliver hair and he backed off before she could snap at him.
Here was the door. It was three to the left of the last open one, and as Nip looked in, he saw the tuft of lavender fuzz he was looking for.
“Zeri, don’t you ever go home?” He lounged in the door, leaning against the jamb and waiting for her to glance up from the guts of the drill she was working on.
“There is work to be done, chuian.” The myche’s tone was dismissive, her eyes on her work. “Leave Zeri to her silence.”
He grinned ear to ear and stepped into the room. “Hey, even you need to take a break sometimes. Stop and smell the roses or whatever it is you do for fun.” He thumbed his nose at her and ran a finger over the grime on the drill’s threads. “Take a break, go for a stroll.”
It was all coaxing, and they both knew it.
“Doubting that Nip wants a simple stroll. Nip wants something specific, or this would not be tried on someone who fails to fall for trickery.” She was watching him with a hint of fire in her eyes now, annoyed with his intrusion.
Fine. He could play that way, too.
“Look, Zeri. I need your help with something. I can make it well worth your while. Besides,” he stared her right in the eye and smirked at her, persuasive as always. “You do owe me for that Auto-Sorter you flubbed.”
The myche growled at him, pushing him away with one of her silicon-stained hands. “Auto-Sorter was simple mistake. Nip said it was nothing, why should Zeri do anything to help now?” She flicked the goggles down over her eyes and lighted up a heat torch.
Nip stood back and watched with his arms crossed as she worked the clog of grease out of the drill’s mechanics. He’d laid down his cards, now he just had to wait for the offer to go through her stubborn donkey head.
Zeri wrestled the blob out of the gears and let it drop disgustingly on the floor. The torch boiled off the rest of the residue, and then she shut it off and peeled one lens of the goggles off her eye.
“Chuian still here? Perhaps silence is possible for the species.” She crawled off the stool she’d been perched on and dropped a heap of tools on the low bench. The myche hit a water tap and slathered her hands in soap, scrubbing the silicon and grease off her violet skin. “So, how will this be worth Zeri’s while?”
Nip grinned. “You’re good at keeping stuff like this confidential, Zeri. That’s why I like you.” Which was only a little bit lie.
A wave of a still-wet hand, and she toweled them dry before sitting on the grease stained floor to listen to his proposition. Nip gave her the story of the Ceres wrenches.
“I know where they’re being stored in the mean while, waiting for the proper maintenance. Trouble is, I don’t have the ID to get into the high-class storage units.”
“Which Zeri does not possess either,” she cut in, sounding bored already.
“Yeah, but I know your skills, babe.” He threw in a wink for good measure. “You’ll be able to get us inside, nice and clean. Little electronic persuasion, little brute force applied to the right locks in the right way. No one’ll be the wiser and we’ll split the loot. You get one wrench, I get the other.”
“Wrenches are broken, chuian. Takes time to fix complicated wrenches. Looks suspicious, too.” Zeri was packing up her tools for the night, and despite her negative tone, Nip could tell he had her.
“So you’re chicken?” He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Endangered Terran avians have nothing to do with myches. Hand Zeri the cutting torch behind Nip.”
He grabbed the thing off the bench and tossed it to her, watching it disappear along with the rest of the tools she’d selectively removed from the racks. Oh yes, she was getting ready. He cracked his knuckles in anticipation. This was going to be a fun night.
................
They tracked their way out of the maintenance bay and over to the small-parts storage center on the other side of the work sector. It was almost empty now, only a sprinkling of bored looking myches and an odd Tresh. With Nip carrying the heavy bag of tools, the two blended right in. Zeri slashed into the green-level center and the chuian scampered in after her before the heavy sliding door thumped closed.
“Since Nip knows the way, lead,” she said, a hand spread out in front.
He stepped down the metal mesh floor. Right now they were in the low-security sector. This was where they stored the simple, high-demand tools like drills and jackhammers---the kind of stuff that was always in heavy use. Anyone had access to this level, since anyone with a wrench and a few extra parts could piece these back together. Ceres wrenches were deeper in; stored in Orange level.
A yellow banded door marked passage to the next level.
“You have access to this one?” he asked over a shoulder, hands in his pockets.
“Move aside, chuian.” Zeri slashed her ID through the reader again, and the door slid open, the hallway the same drab grey on the other side. “Yellow is Zeri’s highest clearance without team.”
Nip shrugged. “Guess you’ll be using some skills on the next door.”
The myche pushed on ahead of him and flipped her tail dismissively. “Seems Nip should have access to Orange if transporting orange level items. Why not, chuian?”
He frowned, jumping through as the door closed. “I only have it when I’m on transport duty, space donkey. I was on mining this week, only came back for the festival.”
Zeri scoffed, but didn’t probe the subject any more. They traced the halls, Nip peeking in the windows of a few wide yellow doors. Deep core drills and big earth-moving tractors were here, all of them coated over in a fine film of mining dust. Yellow was bigger than Green, and it took a little longer and a little creative dodging past cameras before they were in front of the next door, three orange bands across the grey metal.
The myche girl looked just a bit excited now. “Bag,” she ordered, and he dropped it to the floor.
Violet hands reached inside and started searching through the odd contents. Eventually, she pulled out a persuader and slid the card into the reader. The big myche fingers worked adeptly at the buttons for a moment before a computer-automated voice made Nip jump in the silence.
Enter access code now.
He laughed to himself, caught Zeri glaring at him because she didn’t have the code and then laughed again. “No problem. Even if I don’t have ID access, I know this one.” He punched in the string of numbers and stood up proud as the door slid open with a whoosh.
Zeri packed up her equipment and gave him back the bag. They stepped through into Orange.
Nip whispered the door number to the myche, and the two of them set off, glancing at door numbers. The chuian took it slow, working around to the section he knew had the wrenches. Zeri saw the number first, a tug at his pant leg and a point in the right direction. He grinned at her, and she smiled back with a little enthusiasm. There was excitement in the air now.
“Let’s get to work.”
................
The doors on the high level equipment sectors had always been a lock-and-key operation. No ID readers and no number punch pads; those had been deemed too hackable after some high-end tools had disappeared without a trace. Keys were a mix of computer memory and actual physical variation. The plastics had a basic morphing ability, and every time a key was issued, the memory was updated with the right code for just one door. Tiny batteries were keyed to expire after a certain amount of time, and then the plastics would revert to their default orientation and the memory would blank.
It was some complex engineering based on simple computer programming and electrostatic molding plastic. The keys had been foolproof as long as Nip could remember, and going around one was a torturously complicated procedure.
Zeri had her stuff spread over the metal mesh floor. A palm-sized computer was attached to a long cord, tipped in a finger of the same electroplastic. The myche had already stuck the thing into the keyhole, and was trying to get a feel for the shape. Electrodes were spaced on the metal lock, probing the memory every so lightly.
There was no sure way of getting into a lock without its specific key. No matter what, there was always guesswork, and Nip was already starting to sweat.
She had been silent for the past fifteen minutes, and he had nothing to do, just watch her as she made cryptic tweaks to the hacking equipment and frowned at the screens.
“Is very high-quality lock you want to get into,” Zeri muttered darkly, still staring at her mini-computer. “Multiple backups and alarms. Unlikely Zeri will be able to crack.”
He frowned, fighting the urge to kick a dent in the wall. “Try it again, why don’t you. Maybe it’ll work if you start over?”
“No,” she pushed hair out of her face and started pulling electrodes off the door. “Better way to get in. Noisy, but better.”
He slapped a hand over the last of the grey cups as she pulled the cord. “Noisier that setting off every alarm in the station and getting both our butts thrown in jail for a nice long stay?”
A myche grin. There was a hint of odd fire in her eyes. “Zeri would rather work around second part and just pull off the first.”
Suddenly something clicked in his mind and he knew exactly what she meant. Which entailed a lot of running and a lot of luck if it was going to work out in their favor. But it was a lot more fun, too.
Nip helped her pull the rest of the equipment off the door, and after Zeri had stashed it all back in her bag, she pulled out a few choice items: a nice shaped explosive, a block of C4 to back it up, and a long, long detonator wire. The explosive went right in the keyhole, and with luck they’re take out the locking mechanism just with that, but there were backups that might kick in beforehand. That was what the C4 was for. Zeri pressed the grey block flush against the rest of the lock and backed off, letting the chuian reel the wire out a good ways past the door and around a corner.
“Hopefully Nip knows where wrenches are. When charge blows, all the alarms are going to go off.” The myche girl shot him a grin as she lit the fuse. “Real loud and flashy.”
Nip hunkered down, watching the flare edge away from them down the hall. Toward the explosives. He had fingers in his ears and was already braced for it. Zeri waited until almost last moment to do likewise, and suddenly the whole place was shaking with deafening noise and the blood-red flashing alarm sirens.
He couldn’t exactly hear, but he was up and running for the door, Zeri at his heels. The air was still raining metal shrapnel from the lock, and the door hung open on its top hinge, the others left shattered. Bare feet jumped over the worst of the hot shards and flaming plastics, and he was already on the pile of equipment inside. It had all shifted toward the far wall from the force of the explosion, but he knew where their quarry was. He’d stashed them in a rather noteworthy place, under the only volatile-baker in the shipment. Zeri was next to him, and he could almost hear their hands moving the electrodrivers and shattered buttresses and every other piece of odd metal equipment, digging for the wrenches as the alarms went off behind them.
There. The handle of the first one came into view, and Zeri’s digging faltered for a second before she recovered. He grabbed the red-and-brown plastic of the handle and tugged, most of the wrench budging and the whole pile of junk shifting around them. Then the other wrench was in view, and the myche’s violet hands were around it, pulling it out just as he got his free.
They were outside the door in the next second, the red fire klaxons still screaming in their ears, but Nip was grinning for ear to ear. A glance at Zeri, and she was too, adrenaline pumping through both their veins as they ran over the metal mesh of the floor, racing for the exit. The main doors were wide open, calling for the fire crews that were already on their way. As long as they could get past those, they were home free.
Nip was halfway through Green, running with Zeri almost on top of him, when he saw the first of the crew. He slid to a stop, tearing up his feet on the mesh, and they hugged the wall of another branch until the mess of hekshanians and rakwulfs were past.
“Put wrenches in bag, chuian. Bound to be people outside.” Zeri’s hand grasped at his shoulder for a moment, and then the wrenches were inside with the rest of the hacking equipment, and they were outside.
The work sector wasn’t clogged with people like it had been before. The fire crew was there, holding back the civilians and listening on their radios to the men inside. Chuian and myche were out in the open and pushing into the rest of the crowd before anyone could identify them. Nip’s heart was beating loud in his ears, and he gripped at the fur along Zeri’s spine, holding her back. A nikitak glanced at him, noting the odd behavior, and Nip bit down on the excitement.
“Look,” he said to Zeri, loud enough so the nikitak could just hear it. “I’m sure your equipment will be okay. It sounds like the fire’s in a higher level.”
She caught on, feigning anger with him. “Zeri said you shouldn’t have left them in there over night. If anything is lost, Nip pays the balance.”
“Relax. It won’t come to that.” He chanced a wink as the others around them shifted attention toward the front. “Let’s get a little closer, see what’s going on.”
They pushed their way through the taller species and slid up near the edge of the fire barricade. The big cars’ roofs were still flashing red, and the one Animarian was listening with her radio cranked up loud while rakwulves pushed the crowd back. Another chuian was next to Nip, her ears flared to hear what was going on over the static-charged radio.
“Sounds like it wasn’t really a fire,” she whispered to him. “I heard explosion, I think. You catch it?”
Nip shook his head, ears still half-ringing from the charge and the sirens. “Sounds like someone was having fun tonight.”
The girl grinned at him. “Wish I could’ve been in on it. What a way to start a holiday.”
Zeri gripped his wrist and he glanced at her, eyes following her finger as she pointed toward the Green door. Another Animarian and a hekshanian were leaving the storage bay, coming out to report to the rest of the fire crew. A few seconds later, and someone was speaking into a radio, police sirens already screaming toward the scene.
One of the rakwulves stepped up, switching on his microphone to amplify his voice toward the crowd. “All right, people, let’s clear the area. We have cops coming, looks like this might be an arson prank.”
A murmur went through the mess of civilians, and already the clog of people was starting to disperse. No one wanted trouble from the cops, much less if they already had some odd record that they weren’t serving at the moment. Nip and Zeri slipped away with the rest of them, heading back toward the maintenance sector and back to grinning to themselves.
Home free. What a night.
“You think you can fix mine tonight? I kinda need it for something.” He pushed blue hair out of his eyes and caught Zeri laughing to herself.
“Will take another half hour, but Zeri has equipment to fix one. Nip will wait?”
“Sure.” He had to, if he wanted to live. “And thanks again, Zeri. We’ll have to do this again, sometime.”
A grin between them. “Yes. Zeri looks forward to it.”
