Angel Station by Walter Jon Williams

Author:Walter Jon Williams [Williams, Walter Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: runaway, space opera, genetic engineering, alien, space travel, mutant, high tech, colonization, singularity, hive mind, walter jon williams, angel station, ubu, beautiful maria
Publisher: Walter Jon Williams
Published: 2015-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

“Bossrider,” he said, bowing. “Shooter.” He had to shout to be heard over the resonant grinding of Dock 15A’s autoloaders.

Ubu and Maria towered over the smaller man. Ubu wore a pair of shorts, his silver reflec vest, a bracelet on the left lower arm, and a pair of grips on his feet. He looked at Mahadaji and smiled. “Mr. Mahadaji. Pleased to make your acquaintance. You’ve done good work for us.”

Mahadaji waved a hand. “The difficulties were common ones, as were my solutions. What was uncommon was your own good fortune in finding such a cargo.”

“Yeah.” And wouldn’t you like to know how we got it? he thought. He looked at Mahadaji’s companion, an angular black man in pipestem trousers and a baggy velvet jacket that billowed out about his waist in zero gee and was obviously designed for Mudville. He carried a satchel of equipment for testing the purity of Runaway’s cargo.

“This is Mr. Cody,” Mahadaji said. “He represents OttoBanque in this matter.” Contempt twisted in Ubu’s belly as he looked at the groundling.

“This is my sister, Beautiful Maria.”

“Honored.”

Maria was a cool monochrome fantasy, wearing only black shorts and halter that contrasted with her pale skin. Her hair was pinned back out of her eyes but otherwise drifted free, a free-floating dark halo behind her head. She was barefoot and floated motionless within arm’s reach of the personnel lock’s castoff bars.

An autoloader horn bleeped down the causeway. “Okay.” Ubu grinned at Cody. “Let’s get started so we can return Mr. Cody to someplace with gravity before his jacket strangles him.”

Mahadaji gave a polite, restrained laugh. Cody’s face flushed a shade darker. Ubu reached behind him for a castoff bar, jerked his grips free of the velcro deck patches, and pushed off for the cargo gate. Once there, he gave the code that opened Runaway’s cargo hatch, then, when the dock’s safety mechanisms showed pressure equalization and gave him a green light, opened the inner hatch.

The colossal container stacks were blood-brown under the intense light of the docking bay. Ubu rotated in the air, looked at Cody. “Check one at random,” Ubu said. “Check any or all of ’em.”

“Thank you, Mr. Roy.” His voice was a generic type, a soft accent acquired in expensive Mudville schools.

Ubu laughed. “Never been called that before.”

“Sorry. I thought Roy was your surname.”

“Be so. It’s the mister that’s new.”

“Sorry. It’s bossrider, then, isn’t it?”

Amusement rippled through Ubu at the sight of Cody trying to pin down his jacket with one hand while he unstuck his grips and pushed off for the open cargo hatch. He succeeded, but his trajectory was uneven and he began to tumble slowly. The 15 A autoloaders rattled silent.

“Bossrider,” said Ubu, as Cody rotated past. “Or shooter.”

Cody grabbed the hatch coaming, halted himself, pushed off again for the containers. He came up against a container, steadied himself, tried to open his case, and began drifting away from the cargo. One of his hands flailed out, missed the nearest container by half an inch, and the drift into nowhere continued.

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