This isn't great, but it's been a while since I did straight sci-fi. This is a setting I may develop further, I was just getting the feel for it really.
The monolithic structure spun high above the red planets surface. It was not a beautiful creation, not even one easy to comprehend at first glance. It was an amalgamation of design styles and technological philosophies set against the backdrop of eons of cultural and political evolution, revolution, and regression. It's many spires, docks, and protrusions of more esoteric or obsolete nature bore the scars of a thousand vicious arguments and their resolutions, from hostile economic takeover to hostile enemy fire.
Cradled in the outstretched arms rested a thousand ships of all sizes and descriptions, dressed in the colors of independent traders, or the great houses of Mars and the outer belt corporations. A few were shrouded in diplomatic baffle-netting, a service provided to customers of a sensitive nature.
At the center of the sprawl was a single ancient grav-ring spinning leisurely, driven by engines that were relics of the days when chemical fuel was neither rare nor terribly expensive. It was within that ring that the wealthiest ship owners and dock investors lived. It was isolated from the rest of the station by spindles, walkways punctuated by security doors and trip wires, doors venting into the vacuum of space. These spindles had, over the years, proved proof against shareholder rebellions and interplanetary intrigue, they had withstood general strikes and civic unrest, and a lighting raid by members of the Titan Ring Alliance.
Georric Ramaslovich liked to say that it was he and his that kept those spindles intact. He said so loudly and drunkenly in bars all throughout the third growth, fourth quadrant neighborhood. He would lean in, across a stretch of plastic or scrap metal that served as a base for layers of spilled vat beer and Blind (the pale yellow kind, not the pure stuff you found in the better quarters), and shout about the generations of his family that had been lock workers, “and damn good ones at that,” before the 'bots had taken over.
He would shout, not only because he was drunk and half deaf, but because the sorts of bars he invariably frequented poured Sound from ancient wall monitors, its absurd cadences sending some into frenzies of ecstasy (during which they could be easily robbed in compensation) while others simply found their senses dulled, slurred or twisted. In either case it allowed them to charge more for inferior, home distilled Blind and cheap vat beer skimmed from the top of down-spin yeast cultures.
It was while he was engaged in one of these rants that destiny found Georric. Destiny, in this case, took the form of marine staff sergeant Cadence Near on leave from the merchantman Alliance Scum docked three days ago in an expensive birth in the up-yaw. The Scum was carrying a load of Bestimm, a highly addictive chemical stimulant popular amongst intellectuals and workforce managers alike, though for very different reasons. Cadence Near was carrying a packet wrapped in black sheep-skin, purchased at great cost from Earth and used for its ceremonial value. She also carried a needle pistol loaded with poisoned shards and brought openly through customs, hidden at the bottom of the clip was a device that not even the Mars Corp considered legal.
It was this device that weighed heavily on her mind, as though its AI were already active and probing. “Mr. Ramaslovich?” she said, placing one gloved hand on his right shoulder. He jumped, and have turned, looking at her out of one drooping eye.
“What do you want?” he spoke with the exaggerated precision of the self conscious drunk as he took in Nears black suit with its distinctive white piping. Civilian clothes with an unmistakable aura of military precision.
“I walk around, Mr. Ramaslovich, and I listen to what is said in the bars, on the streets, between friends. You could say that it's a part of my job.” pushing aside Georric's comatose companion she seated herself opposite him and rapped on the bar, “So, what do I hear? These days, I hear you're gunning for a bullet between the eyes, and a quick shove out the nearest airlock. I hear that Ramaslovich's word is as bad as his breath and that he owes too much money to the wrong sort of people.
“It's not good for you that this news is so widely spoken of.” the bartender at last made his way over, wiping a dirty glass with a corner of his filthy apron, she turned two him, “Blind, two, on me.”
The bartender nodded slowly, the chrome plate in his head catching the sickly green light of the worn out chem-strips. He reached under the counter and pulled out an unlabeled clear bottle, two-thirds empty. Ducking again he drew out a pair tin shot glasses into which he liberally splashed the slightly viscous liquor. He slid them wordlessly across the bar and waited, hands folded in front of him.
Near reached into her coat and drew forth a wad of local bills. She placed one of significant denomination on the bar and picked up on of the glasses, motioning with it for Georric to take the other. He complied, unsure of her intentions, and he locked eyes with her as she drained the glass in one deliberate slug. Ramaslovich followed suit, rather more slowly, and grimaced.
Face impassive Near cheated towards him, allowing her coat to slip open, flashing him the butt of her pistol, wickedly curved and immediately recognizable, his eyes widened slightly but he made no other sign of acknowledgement, there were almost certainly those at the Lock Step more heavily armed than she.
“So I have a proposition to make you. You've seen my money, you know that it's good, and you know that I have a lot of it. What you don't know is that I have access to a nuked account. Do you know what that is?” he shook his head, “the account is tied to a decaying isotope, all the information associated with the account is dynamically generated based on the state of decay and a series of algorithms. If any part of the puzzle is missing the account is untraceable, but you need only an encrypted key to access it.” she thrust out her left arm and shook it, knocking back her sleeve, and revealing a silver band into which was set a green square. This she popped loose with a thumb nail and passed to Georric. “Hold it up to the light.”
He did so, and observed that, pervading it, was a network of fine fibers in three dimensions and dozens of colors. It took his Blind addled brain a full minute to comprehend the meaning of the structures but at last he understood that the lattice was memory storage. “Is this...?”
“Yes. And its yours if you do me a favor.”
“And that would be?” he was clearly torn between suspicion and greed.
“Follow me.” she stood up and grabbed the barman by his collar and hauling his bulk half way across the counter. “I was never here,” she told him, and threw him back, into a rack of distressingly colored bottles that anyone knew better than to ask for. They crashed to the floor satisfactorily every pair of eyes in the bar swiveled towards her. She grinned, and walked over to the toughest looking man, a tattooed Neanderthal calling itself Ben the Bastard. Cadence only came up to his sternum but, still grinning, she punched him hard enough to send him over his table, clutching his face.
All hell broke loose, but from the melee Cadence emerged to snag Georric's elbow and hurry him away from the Lock Step moments before the arrival of suppression 'bots.
“You want me to do what?”
“I told you, entertain a friend of mine.”
“And why does that mean I need to kneel down?”
“Don't ask questions, or we can do this at gun point.” Cadence and Georric were in the maintenance tunnel for a drive shaft that hadn't been used in decades. She drew her pistol and Georric flinched. She laughed, “I'll stop with the euphemisms,”she ejected the clip and carefully thumbed each lethal crystal cartridge from its housing until she revealed a tiny metal construct, it was neatly collapsed to a size no greater than that of one of the bullets but it was infinitely more intricate. She held it up between her thumb and forefinger. “All you need to do is wear this. It has a battery life of three days, at that time it will send a signal to the encrypted key, activating it. You can then access your money at any time.”
“And in the mean time I have to do?”
“Exactly nothing more than you would otherwise.”
Georric bit his lower lip, but Near could see that he was already decided. She held out her hand, palm up, with the device resting in its center. Ramaslovich knelt.
With a jerk so sudden that he barely saw it before he felt the stinging she clapped the device onto the back of his neck. Ramaslovich started, and went rigid, his eyes wide and rolling. The device began to unfold its legs which proceeded to burrow themselves into the skin on either side of Georric's spine. The tightened and it clasped itself into place just below the point where his spine entered his skull. Eyes still wide he fell face first onto the metal grating of the floor.
The next day, business complete, the Alliance Scum departed the Mars Shipyards. Two hours later and several miles away an explosion tore through the outer hide of a midspin garden deck, among the dead was noted weapons developer Brian Kingsley.
Seven months later the blame was placed at the foot of general maintenance worker grade one Georric Ramaslovich, a citizen well known for his subversive comments. The ensuing crackdown closed the shipyard for one hundred sixteen days.
Posterity has widely held that it was this closure that proved the decisive factor in the brief, bitter war with an out gunned, but better maintained and supplied Titan fleet.
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