The Iceman's Lament

“You need these suits,” he shouted at the three of them as they met on the gantry to the docks, the clamor of haulers making it almost impossible to hear. F-351 awaited, already warmed up, clouds of hydrogen vapor curling up from the exhausts.

“What are they?” Lucy Lin shouted.

“Pressure suits,” Jared yelled, taking one. “For safety, right Tom?”

“Rules is rules,” Tom replied. “Once we get underway I’ll show you how to use them.”

Gail had turned an interesting shade of purple. Lucy Lin bent down and talked into her ear. Gail was shaking her head. Jared bent down and joined their conference.

He came back to Tom. “Do we really need them?”

Tom just looked at him.

“OK, right,” he yelled, and bent back down to Gail.

And in the end it was just the three of them, Tom and Lucy and Jared. Gail apparently was claustrophobic, Lin explained, once they were inside the cabin.

“Yeah, not a good place for a claustrophobe,” Tom laughed. He settled into the control seat, making ready to ease the giant rig forwards, away from the docks, towards the airlocks.

“I gotta say mate,” Jared rumbled, “Its pretty fucken tight in here…”

And then two things happened. First, Tom powered up the screens. Instantly a 180-degree window appeared, the cameras on the exterior of F-351 making it seem as if a shield had been lifted, that they could actually see directly outside. The cabin flooded with warm ambient light. Then he raised the steel panel that separated the front part of the cabin where the controls were from the rear, where there was a full, if tiny, bathroom and an equally tiny kitchen.

“Air-seals,” he explained. “Everything compartmentalized…”

They both chuckled, Lucy and Jared.

“Little better now, huh?” Tom laughed.

“Why didn’t you tell Gail about this?” Lucy asked.

“She didn’t ask me,” Tom said simply as they got underway.

And Lucy Lin became all business. She took out her tablet and began to type.

“So Tom,” she began. “You piloted a J22 shuttle. That was a little claustrophobic too…”

Lucy Lin grew bored fairly quickly as the nine-hour haul commenced. She took out her tablet and keyboard and began to work on something. Jared, however, was fascinated with everything hauler-related.

“You can calibrate the screens,” Tom showed him. “See…?” The view outside took on a green tinge. The foothills suddenly grew rolling meadows; the sky was a glacial blue, the surface of Phoedrus becoming lush, grassy rangeland.

“Here, have a go.” He set the speed, slid out of the pilot’s seat and let Jared take the helm. “The rig weaved from side to side as Jared tried to find his bearings. Ain’t that hard, really…just, er…find a point of sail, as it were, mate…” The Minder chuckled like a schoolboy as he got a feel for the controls.

Tom watched him, a grim smile on his face.

Why am I being so fucking nice to these people? He asked himself. He had a feeling of swimming with sharks or sleeping with the enemy, whatever analogy suited this precarious situation where they were all pretending to be friends yet there was Lucy Lin, tapping her tablet, building the story that would ruin him.

He had toyed with the idea of crashing the hauler. It was still a possibility: set the auto to send the whole rig nose-diving off a declivity while he sealed himself into the airlock, into his pressure suit, popping the hatch and leaping free at the last moment. He might even get away with it. Shit happened. Or maybe he’d lash himself securely into the pilot’s seat and blow the hatch, purging all of the oxygen from the cabin in an explosive rush that would suck Lucy Lin and her Minder into oblivion.

Messy, though, he cautioned himself. Too many questions. Too obvious a ploy.

And he liked Jared. The big goon had grown on him.

No. He had a much better idea.

The usual dreams had plagued him the night before. Untethered objects etc., and then the new nightmare with the ice, both of which had actually happened in real life.

And that’s how you know I’m not really a father-murderer, he’d thought. I don’t dream about it. Annie had been the one to point that out.

He hadn’t told her the truth about Gottlieb but, somehow, she’d suspected something was remiss about the incident off Shawmut 71. Maybe because he’d rambled at length about his mentor, relating hilarious escapades with the alcoholic philanderer that had been his CO.

Annie had soon ceased to be amused.

“Sure that man sounds like a feckin’ train wreck,” she’d sniffed. “How is it people like him hold so many lives in their hands and behave like a bleddy teenager?”

“No,” he’d protested. “He’s a good man, a decent man…”

“Is he, Tom? Is he really…?”

“Well yeah I mean…”

“Or is that just what you want to believe?”

“What d’ymean?”

“I think ye conflate him with your father, or maybe your brother…”

And he’d stormed off, furious with her.

Furious because he knew she’d hit upon the truth.

“Whatcha doin’?” Tom asked chattily, settling himself next to Lucy Lin. Abruptly she locked her tablet, placing it on her knees, smiling at him.

“Working,” she said.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“It’s OK. Just…er, taking notes on this whole ice-hauling thing, the pipeline. You know…” And she yawned.

“Yeah, the pipeline,” he grinned. “Mesmerizing story. Should get a lot of hits.”

She looked at him evenly.

“We have another 100 days before the next perigee to Clamatis opens up. We’re still waiting on parts for our ship and meanwhile there’s a Deep Space mission departing from Io that we’re supposed to be covering. I don’t mind telling you, Tom, it’s kind of a shit sandwich, being stuck here…”

“But you’re gonna get this great story about an officer of the Fleet getting blamed for an accident he didn’t cause.”

“Am I, Tom?”

“Like you said, Lucy…you can tell it the right way. I’m relying on you for that.”

Something disconcerting in the way her eyes followed him. Epicanthic. Inscrutable. Merciless.

“You’re full of shit,” she told him.

He busied himself, checking instruments, pushing buttons, calibrating various and unnecessary controls.

“Tell me about Flanagan,” she said abruptly.

“Flanagan?” he asked weakly.

“That fat fucker?” Jared called. “Good luck dropping his ass down the Well.”

“What about him?” Tom asked.

“He’s on the take….”

“Really? I haven’t heard that.”

She laughed. Again he felt that flutter in his loins. OK, so I have the hots for you, Lucy Lin, he thought. Me and and a hundred million others.

“Yes Tom, he’s on the take. This whole operation is rotten to the core.”

“Well, isn’t every operation? It’s like the Wild West out here. People like Flanagan get things done...”

“You don’t like him.”

“What’s to like?”

“No, you really don’t like him. I mean, he takes a cut from your pay, from everyone’s pay. He runs the gambling, the prostitution, the drugs. It goes way beyond ‘getting things done’, Tom.”

“Take the fucker down!” Jared called out.

“Hold on, hold on,” Tom held up his hands. “How do you know that?” For a moment he toyed with the idea that he could swap one story for another. He had plenty of evidence against Flanagan, most of it inadmissible but still useful, all backed up in his secure dropbox.

“Not hard to find out once you have a suspicion,” she muttered, looking down at her tablet.

“He’s not very careful about things,” Jared called out.

“And neither are you, Tom,” she said quietly, looking up at him.

“I was wondering when you were gonna bring that up. When you were gonna roll out your next thinly-veiled threat.” He met her eyes.

“Actually, it’s none of our business. We didn’t go looking for it… “

“You found it, though,” he said acidly. “Bloody convenient.”

Lucy Lin waved a hand dismissively. “Whatever you and Meng do is not our concern nor do we intend to ever bring it up again. And I’m sorry, Tom. Gail is…well…she’s thorough. But you are careless. Flanagan is dangerous. Meng is his woman. You must have some kind of death wish…”

Tom turned, checked the forward screens. Ahead of them, mountains loomed. He scrubbed at his scalp, looked back at Lucy Lin. He had no response for her.

“I’d like to see him taken down,” she muttered, typing furiously. “That would be a story.”

He stood, looking down at her.

“Yeah…” he said quietly.

“Maybe you can help us with that.”

“Not worth my life,” he said shortly.

And then she gave him that wolfish grin. He thought of Meng.

“Let’s talk about that,” she said.”

“Tell me what you know,” Tom said. “And maybe I’ll tell you what I know.”

And so they talked. Part of him marveled at how loose his tongue had become. Lucy took furious notes, Jared tried to keep the hauler on course.

It doesn’t matter, he thought. For one thing it was keeping the conversation off him. For another, once he had shown them the Lights, they’d forget everything else.