Profiteer

He pointed at the fringe of the city/spaceport. In a vast, flat, stretch of land that spread away from both the foothills and the city, were ranks upon ranks of parked spacecraft. As Tetsami stared, she realized that all those craft, parked in formation below her, were derelicts. Some were missing control surfaces, others lacked drive sections, cabins, landing gear. In many cases, the original markings were obscured by age, but what she could see came from all quarters of the Confederacy.

 

A few of those ships could have been military, and a lot of them looked as though they’d been shot down.

 

No one stopped them as they descended from the foothills and began to walk between the endless ranks of dead spacecraft. It was eerily quiet; even the hectic activity of Proudhon Spaceport didn’t seem to leak in here.

 

“Damn,” Tetsami said, “Tjaele Mosasa must have the concession on every abandoned or shot-up spacecraft that passes through this place.”

 

“It’s quite a profitable salvage arrangement with Proudhon Spaceport Security.” The voice wasn’t Dom’s.

 

They both turned around to see a squashed sphere, about a meter along its wide diameter. It was floating about eye-level with Tetsami. It aimed at least three different sensor devices at them. The voice came from somewhere within the brushed metal shell. “The lady and the cyborg, here to see Mosasa?”

 

Cyborg? What’s that thing looking at?

 

The device began a slow orbit around them, just wide enough to avoid bumping into the spacecraft that marched away on either side of them.

 

“Afraid he’s busy,” it said. “Can I help you?”

 

Tetsami watched the floating lump of salvage, fascinated. There had to be a contragrav unit in mere.

 

“We need to see Mr. Mosasa.”

 

The machine made a derisive noise, as if it had been insulted. Tetsami began to wonder who, exactly, was operating the thing. It didn’t sound like they were conversing with a security program.

 

“May I ask who’s calling?”

 

Dom said, “No.”

 

The machine tilted itself at what could only be called a sarcastic angle. “Oh, really now. Do you expect for me to disturb him for a couple of street flotsam who won’t even—”

 

“Johann sent us,” Dom said.

 

The robot righted itself and said, somewhat petulantly, “You could have said that right off. Follow me.”

 

With that, the flattened sphere spun on its axis and sped down the aisle between the spacecraft at a brisk walking space. It floated off for about ten meters, spun back, and asked, “What are you waiting for?”

 

They followed.

 

As they walked behind the device, weaving between the ranks of spacecraft, Tetsami asked, “Who do you suppose is flying that thing?”

 

Ahead, without changing course or slowing down, the robot turned around against and regarded her with its triple video array. “The name is Random Walk, Miss. An advanced holographic crystal matrix late of the Race— who are rather late themselves—currently full partner in Mosasa Salvage Incorporated.”

 

The robot turned a corner as Tetsami felt a chill run through her. An AI? But that was ...

 

She stopped herself before she thought the word, “illegal,” or, just as bad, “immoral.” There really wasn’t any reason why Mosasa couldn’t be working with an artificial intelligence on Bakunin. It would be the only place in the Confederacy he could.

 

Well, only because Bakunin wasn’t part of the Confederacy.

 

Considering where her ancestors came from, feeling uncomfortable around an AI was hypocritical. After all, a lot of people would feel the same way about her. If they knew where her parents came from.

 

They rounded the gutted remains of a Hegira luxury transport, and found Tjaele Mosasa standing at the edge of a circular clearing.

 

Mosasa was an extremely tall black man with a dour expression. He was hairless, without eyebrows or lashes. He wore khaki shorts, a tool belt, a half-dozen earrings, and nothing else. He was adjusting a device on a tripod that pointed across the clearing at a gigantic ring that seemed to have come from the drive section of a military transport.

 

He looked up at them, and Tetsami saw that most of the left side of his body was dominated by a gigantic dragon tattoo. The tattoo was luminescent and changed color in the ruddy light of Kropotkin. It looked as though it was some photoreactive dye. The dragon’s neck curled around Mosasa’s and its head curled around his left ear. When Mosasa looked at them, it was with three eyes, one of them from the dragon’s profile.

 

“I’ll talk to you in a moment,” he said, and bent back over the tripod. The device looked like some sort of particle beam. The upright torus it was aimed at was about ten meters in diameter.

 

The robot—Random Walk, Tetsami corrected herself— floated up next to her and Dom and said in a self-satisfied tone, “I told you he was busy.”

 

Great, Tetsami thought, a snide computer. Worse, it and Mosasa were a package. The thought of working with a self-aware computer gave her a crawling sensation under her scalp.