Crudrat: The Tinkered Stars Read online

  Maura looked down at her pay, a handful of ration cubes. A pathetically small number on most occasions, it seemed tiny now that it made up her last food allotment for the foreseeable future. It sure was a good thing she’d been starving herself recently. She’d a bit of a stash from the last couple cycles.

  Someone made a grab for her hand.

  “”You don’t need ‘em now,” said Ger. He was a stocky boy, few turns younger than she, and never fast enough to get over resenting her. He’d started all red hair and freckles, but now both had gone blue. Blue freckles made him look like he’d contracted some weird alien plague.

  “You ain’t got more than a few months breathing without tunnel time.” His eyes were calculating.

  Rees kicked Ger in the shin. “Shut up, you. Maura’ll last. She’s best ‘rat of us. That’s gotta count for something.”

  “With no license? In whose universe would she last?”

  A brief scuffle ensued. Ger and Rees were about the same height, but Rees was a good deal slimmer. He clouted Ger on the ear, but soon enough Ger got an arm wrapped tight about his neck. Rees began to go blue in a totally non-crud-induced way.

  Maura tucked her rations inside her shirt and waded into the breach. She picked the two of them up and shook them like the rats they were. “That’s more than enough of that. You two want your licenses pulled as well? You be thinking mine lacks for company?”

  They looked about for foreman. He hadn’t noticed the scuffle, but that wasn’t to say he wouldn’t do something drastic if he did. Crudrats may be licensed to work, but they were still rejects. Rejects were invisible. Rejects weren’t there. If rejects got noticed, they got trouble and pain with the noticing.

  “So you’re fast, but how you gonna live?” asked Ger, shaking off Maura’s grip and backing away. Rees, he could take easy fist to fist, but Maura? She had a mean right kick and half again his reach.

  “Maura has a plan.” Rees crossed his arms and glared.

  “Ha!” Ger scoffed. “Ain’t no place on this spaceport for a reject who’s too big to run. Ain’t no plan can change fact.”

  With that, he and the other ‘rats scampered off into their various tunnels and ducts, back to whatever hole they called home.

  “Don’t mind them.” Rees put an arm around Maura’s waist, which was about all he could reach comfortably. “By going at you, they’re going at their own fear.”

  How’d a kid with only nine turns to his credit get so smart about the brains of others?

  “Do I have a plan?” she wondered.

  “You’ll be needing to get off the port.” Rees was confident.

  “And go where, exactly?” All Maura knew was portside life. She wasn’t sure what planet-bound rejects did to survive, no crudratting down there, but she was relatively certain her lot until now had been at least moderately better than theirs. At least spaceports put their rejects to use for a short while, even if they rejected them in the end.

  “How would I get off port anyway? Even if I’d the credit to pay, I don’t have the implant to travel.”

  They moved across the engineering yard bay towards one of the larger air duct mains.

  Air ducts were the crudrat’s pathways around portside — the corridors of the unwanted. Maura swung herself in. It wasn’t tall enough for them to walk upright, nowhere near the size of the scyther tunnel. Nowhere near as blue-tinted either. Of course, everything spaceside had a little blue dust on it, couldn’t keep all crud out, no mater how many filters subgenetors rigged up. Still, air ducts were easy on the eyes, more silver and white than blue — comfortable. But they were only big enough to crawl in, which was hard on the knees.

  “Why not stow away?” Rees raised his voice over the rush of air as he climbed inside the duct and crawled after Maura.

  “You spending far too much time down dockside, lead-brain. You’re needing help. This obsession with spacecrafting be getting mighty creepy."

  When he wasn’t running blades, Rees haunted the air ducts that fed into the spaceskiff docking arenas. It was dangerous stomping ground — docks decompressed all the nearby air ducts whenever a new skiff came in from one of the orbiting spaceships.

  Rees didn’t bother to defend himself. “Some spin my brains will be sucked straight out my ears and into space.”

  “What you speeching on about? They obviously already gone there.”

  Rees took minor offense. “Control does a ten tick countdown over the voice amp before decompression. That’s enough time to get behind safety barriers. I be a crudrat after all’s said and done — air duct is just another kind of tunnel. I may not be as fast as you, but I be fast enough to escape decompression.”

  “Cocky and crazy. Look at you, with the living-dangerously.” Maura whistled and rolled her head about expansively.

  “So here I be thinking, if you can’t stow away on a big ship, how about stealing a skiff?”

  “Thinking and you – never a good combination.” Maura decided to humor him. “You have a specific skiff in mind?”

  “Yeah, actually I do. Follow me.”

  Maura shrugged. She had nothing better to do at the moment, or frankly, for the rest of her life.

  She let Rees squeeze past her and lead the way through the duct. She followed his scrawny backside past the larger branching tunnels leading down to port central, the slightly smaller ones to crossgenetor arenas, and the narrow clean lines leading to progenetor hotels and clubs, until she felt like they’d been crawling forever.

  At a main tunnel hub, where a whole bunch of ducts met, up, down, and in at the sides, Rees paused.

  Then with sudden decisiveness he dove forward over the edge. He used one of the ladder bars from an up-tunnel to swing himself over the hub-gap and slide, head first, into one of the smaller tributaries below and across. It was one of few tunnels that wasn’t white or silver, but black. Maura grimaced at the color, but followed.

  In the smaller tunnel the air was more compressed, making it louder and with a low whistle to it. That whistle, with its a high single tone ringing throughout the port, caused more than one planet-born sucker to go mad. Maura and Rees were born to it. Silence, now that might drive them crazy. Crawling one after the other, the noise made conversation near impossible. So they said nothing.

  The black tunnel made Maura nervous. Black tunnels meant military, the steel Spoke – armigers. Not generally a Spoke of the Wheel rejects went looking for. Maura had been in lockup a couple times, caught out for vagrancy like most rejects. Licensing chip got her out, but the experience didn’t endear her to armigers one iota. Now she’d no licensing chip, a catching would go ill.

  Still she followed Rees to one of the armiger docking areas.

  Maura looked at Rees, respect in her angled silver eyes. “You do like to live dangerously,” she yelled over the duct whistle.

  The tunnel angled downwards. The two rejects switched tactics and began to climb down its sides, like four legged spiders, using the joins and seams as foot and hand holds. Where others would have slid or fallen, the crudrats were as confident as murmels. They’d had no lessons, no learning, no family life, no professional training, naught to do since their own traitorous bodies first rejected the citizen implant. They’d had no play but what the ducts provided, no work but what they could scare up begging and crudratting. Tunnel running, crawling, climbing the metal of a spaceport’s bones – that was what they did. It was what they were.

  Eventually, the duct ended.

  Maura and Rees crouched down on a tiny ledge that surrounded the round slatted bottom where it fed air down. It was one of a hundred other vents. Through the grated bottom they could see the armiger dock arena spread below them: a huge arched room, leveled off in areas with skiff clamps and towing machines. A few authorized civilians bustled about – subgenetor deck and maintenance crew in brown vests and trousers over white shirts, but most of the people below wore crisp military red and gold. The only major exception was a gaggle off to one si
de, surrounding the strangest looking spaceskiff Maura had ever clapped eyes on. That gaggle all wore white.

  Involuntarily, Maura flinched. They can’t see me here. I’m far above them in one air duct among many. Those white robes frightened the breath right out of her.

  “Sequensors.” She found her voice at last, but it was changed to a hiss by rushing fear. “I always thought they were like comets — traveling alone and like to destroy anything that got too close. But there’s near on a half dozen or so down there. All together!”

  “Sometimes they’s more like asteroids, I guess.” Rees wasn’t as scared as he should be.

  Sure is a waste of good white material, thought Maura, getting over her fear a little. She was offended by the largess of those sequensor robes – all for show. They wore the darn things over proper highstock suits – matched tails and trousers, white vest and shirt, white cravat tied high and stifling. Of course, everyone spaceside wore a suit of some kind, modesty demanded it. ‘Sept us rejects. They’re lucky to get a rag shirt and knickerbockers. What if the scythers stopped working? Everyone would take up all floaty-like. Those robes would be pretty darn undignified then. Maura smiled. Those sequensors must be awful warm with all that clothing. Maybe that’s why they take on more than their fair share of meanness. Maura had never seen a sequensor she didn’t think would serve the universe better by being all-over dead.

  “They brought in that crazy alien boat this morning,” said Rees. “They ain’t left off prodding it all shift.”

  Maura raised an eyebrow at him.

  “I like to check out the docks pre-shift before hitting the scythers.” He tugged on a tuft of his blue hair in embarrassment. “But it ain’t the sequensors I brought you to goggle at, it’s that boat they got their peepers fixated on.”

  Maura squinted at the odd skiff. For a small landing craft it sure was about the weirdest she’d ever clapped her silver eyes on. It looked nothing like the military fighters squatted around it. They were all chubby almond-shaped worker-beasts. The alien craft was almost boxy, with a flattened nose. Strangest of all, it had no visible scythers. Yet it was too skinny for a single scyther to be running down its center like in big spaceships. Not only unusual, then, but puzzling for the tech-heads. How did it get through space without scything? No wonder the sequensors were all a’cluster.

  “How’s it move with no scyther?” Maura asked.

  “Look close at the hull, see all them smallish tubes? The ones like veins running along it?”

  Maura squinted down through the grating and nodded. Instead of a smooth outer hull like the fighters, the skiff was corrugated, ridged with thousands of tubes running along its surface.

  “I been thinking – them’s baby scythers. Who knows how they keep ‘em from clogging with crud. But that’s the best explanation I can roster up without getting in any closer. Looking in detail seems a problem for everyone, leastways me.”

  As they watched, one of the sequensors tapped at the flat nose of the skiff with a tool. The spaceboat shivered, like a murmel with an itch. A crack sound echoed 'round the dock arena. The white robe caught air as the sequensor was thrown violently backwards by some invisible force.

  Maura tisked. “Poor landing. He should have somersaulted to take some of the motion off his joints. What do they teach them in sequensor school these ticks?”

  Rees laughed. “They be trying to get inside when I left for the tunnels.”

  The sequensor picked himself up. His movements were jerky with either pain or anger. Since sequensor implants were modified for enhanced abilities, including pain suppression, Maura figured it was anger. He brushed at the wrinkles in his precious robe and retrieved his cane with every sign of annoyance.

  Maura’s up-tilted eyes sparked in amusement as she glanced over at Rees. “That one looks mad as all get up.”

  Rees agreed. “If you ask me, they all are. I’m thinking they want alien tech more than most else in the universe. Always stealing what’s best for the good and profit of the Wheel, you know how that song goes.”

  Maura nodded. “Almost as much as they don’t want the aliens who made it to come visiting. So Rees, my whiz-type friend, if the sequensors can’t get inside, how you be thinking I might?”

  Rees shrugged. “I always had an overblown sense of your skills. Ain’t no one never ran a scyther the way you do. There’s magic to it.”

  “Well,” Maura looked serious, reached cross the tunnel mouth, and clapped her little friend on the shoulder, “When I manage to steal it, I be certain-sure that magic of mine will augment all my vast training in pilot academy.”

  Rees snorted at her.

  Maura had no training to speak of, let alone piloting. She couldn’t fly a spaceship any more than she could breath in the vacuum of space.

  Rees knew it. “Well, you got any better ideas ‘bout life without crudratting?”

  “I was rather thinking of withering away and dyeing young.”

  “Very positive.”

  They watched the sequensors below them in silence for a while. Watched them try, over and over again, to crack into that alien boat. It was a real pleasure to see how frustrated this made them.

  “I wonder what happened to the alien what owns that there skiff.” Maura rubbed a spec of crud out of her eye.

  “Nothing good. Unless it was smart enough to stay inside.”

  Maura nodded.

  Something chittered softly above her head and Maura felt a sudden weight on one shoulder. A blue fuzzy tail wrapped itself about her neck, almost choking her.

  “What you doing here?”

  The murmel leaned around and twisted his head to stare meaningfully into her face out of large pale blue eyes. He twitched his whiskers back and forth coquettishly, his breath acrid with the smell of partly digested crud.

  Rees looked up and grinned. “Guess when foreman chucked you out of crudratting he chucked him out too.”

  “We both lost our job, huh?” Maura scratched the beastie beneath his fuzzy chin.

  The murmel chattered agreement.

  “It’s your choice, small one. There’s always work for murmels. Leastways, hush up, were watching.” The blue creature did as he was told. Maura bent once more over the slatted grating of the duct.

  Below them one of the sequensors had pulled out a sonic gun, and was aiming it at the spaceboat. This produced a virulent argument with the sequensor who’d been thrown earlier.

  White robes swished about in a seething mass for a while. It was darn scary to watch — augmented people with high-end traits and triggered for superior abilities, grappling with one another. It was all speed and muscle. Eventually, one sequensor grabbed the trumpet of another’s gun and yanked it down.

  The other jerked away violently, aimed the gun once more, and fired full on the ship.

  The sonic whine echoed around the port dock, a higher more ear-piercing shriek than even a murmel could make.

  The murmel, crouched on Maura shoulder, seemed mighty impressed by the sound.

  Everyone stilled. The sequensors stopped fluttering about, their robes settling in long drapes from shoulder to feet. Deckhands and other subgenetor lackeys paused in their various labors to turn and stare. A group of progenetor bucks, disembarking a shiny pleasure yacht, turned in a body to sneer at whomever had made such an uncouth noise. Aristocrats of the highest order, their triggered appearances explained it all – tall toppers, high cravats, shiny boots – except what they were doing in a military zone.

  Maura, Rees, and the murmel hardly dared breathe. Well, Maura and Rees hardly dared breathe, the murmel found a bit of crud lodged in the pad of one paw and began nibbling at it.

  Nothing happened for a few ticks, and then the alien ship emitted a high keening whirr, shuddered, and released an amplified sonic wave back at the sequensors. The scream was so loud it shook the entire docking area and probably the rest of the spaceport as well. The sequensors ate deck. Canes scattered.

  Maura and Ree
s, along with everyone else, clapped hands to ears in a defensive movement so automatic that decades of sonic gun use hadn’t yet trained the pointless instinct out of them.

  Rees stumbled forward slightly off his perch. One foot came down onto the duct grating. It buckled, not designed to take even his tiny weight.

  Maura lunged. She slammed into him with both hands, pushing him back onto the ledge. She held him steady. With her toes still perched on her side of the ledge, she now bridged the mouth of the duct. She was only just tall enough to do it.

  The whole duct swayed ominously.

  Below them citizens picked themselves up from where they’d cowered down. The deckhands and other subgenetors all seemed to decide a break was on order. The high-up-mucky-mucks were getting restless with alien tech, and the low Spokes didn’t want anything to do with it. They gave up all pretense of continuing with their tasks in the face of such a massive sequensor presence and exotic technology and fled the docking area. The progenetor teens, however, seemed suddenly interested, but even they were not arrogant enough to approach sequensors without out proper authorization. They paused in their disembarkation process and stood in a loose group observing the robed proceedings from a prudent distance. They leaned casually on silver canes, as though watching some sort of blood sport.

  Maura looked briefly into Rees’s eyes, so close to hers. He nodded to indicate he’d caught his balance. She shifted her center of gravity, rocking back to her side of the ledge. The murmel’s weight on her shoulder caused her no trouble. He was a familiar presence in her balance calculations.