The Box of Tricks

By Kimbli d’Rohan

I should have realised she was trouble as soon as I saw her. When we docked up, I’d seen a yacht in the next berth. You don’t often see craft like that in the industrial section of the station; quite a contrast to the pockmarked oil-stained rustbuckets that actually keep this place going. This ship was sleek, clean, elegant and hadn’t seen a day’s work in its life. Exactly like the woman who stepped out of its airlock and onto the jetty just as I did.

“You’re late” she began – hardly the best of starts. I opened my mouth to tell her she’d mistaken me for someone else, but she continued, “Kimbli d’Rohan? You are expecting me? My father told me….”. Then I realised: THIS was the favour that Freolur had asked me to do for him.

“I have a favour to ask” he had said. When the station’s biggest middleman for plagioclase ore asks you for a favour, you pay attention. Especially when your only assets are a tired old Scythe mining cruiser and a family reputation for being good with mining lasers. Those things only help as long as you have customers for the ore in your hangar.

“There’s a new employee joining my payroll” Freolur had continued, “I’d like you to be part of their orientation. Show them the sharp end, take them on a mining trip, let them see where the ore that we buy comes from. Then they’ll follow it on through refining to manufacturing but they have to start with you. No problems?” Of course there were no problems, I’d be delighted to squeeze a useless and unproductive passenger onto my poor old ship, where they could complain about the air conditioning and the poor quality of the food while getting in the way at shift change and asking damn fool questions. “I’d be delighted” I replied, without missing a beat – well, the second thing my dad taught me after how to handle a Gaussian extractor beam was how to keep a customer happy. And now here was the customer.

I had expected some weedy beancounter, some pasty-faced management trainee beginning the climb up the corporate ladder. Instead here was this slender goddess, dressed in a flight suit that fitted like a second skin and fixing me with a steely gaze. In the moment it took me to gather my wits I realised that the purple of her hair exactly matched the purple go-faster stripes adorning the sides of her yacht. Had she changed her hair to match the stripes, I wondered, or the other way around? The colour rippled and shifted in both her hair and the paint job – good grief, nanite impregnated pigments in both! The colours began to shift in sympathy with one another and I snapped my attention back with difficulty.

“Pleased to meet you miss… er…”

“My name is Calla Freolur. You may call me Miss Freolur. My baggage is in the airlock, have someone take it to my cabin. I’ll be joining you in an hour, I have some shopping to do. I expect us to leave immediately I get back”. She swept off down the jetty and disappeared, and as she did so the sympathetic pigmentation on her yacht flickered and went out, waiting to be reawakened by her return. At the same time I snapped out of my daze, picked my jaw off the deck and took a deep breath.

Going back into my ship I hailed Calamity on the intercom and we met in the cramped bridge. Calamity and my family go back a long way and I couldn’t want a better First Mate but she is not the sort of woman to be impressed by nanite-impregnated curls, nor is she hot on customer relations. “Where are we going to put a useless brat like her for a trip? She’ll probably puke as soon as we undock and she’s bound to want to bring some stupid pet on board. Then she’ll sit in the way, complaining about the air conditioning and…”

“Yes Calamity, I had the same thoughts myself. But Freolur is our best customer and we need to keep on his right side. We’ll put his daughter in my cabin and I’ll bunk in the spare berth behind the bridge here. We’ll take her on the shortest trip we can, warp out, fill the holds and back. Let her pose with a mining laser, smile and wave bye-bye when it’s done. Freolur will see us all right, probably pay us a premium on our next load.” Calamity shrugged, cursed, scratched her armpit through her filthy overalls and made as if to spit. Something stopped her and she said “I’ll see to the unloading, better get this lot shifted if we have to turn round in an hour.

An hour later we were ready, just. My cabin was empty and had been approximately cleaned. For lack of laundered bedding I had bought a new set. We had hastily restocked the galley and this time had managed to get more fresh food and less frozen. I discretely got rid of the spittoon on the bridge. It was a rush, but we were ready in the hour.

Another hour later we were still ready, with no sign of our passenger and no message, but every sign of dissatisfaction from the crew. Scythes were never meant to carry more than 20 crew and we had converted crew space into storage for more ore, squeezing 20 crew into the space for half that number. Nobody complained: more ore means more money and they could see the gain for each of them in double-bunking. But they couldn’t see any ISK in taking a spoilt heiress on a pleasure trip.

An hour later her arrival was announced by the stripes on her yacht flickering into iridescent life. The technology for that probably cost more than a brand new Retriever, I thought with disgust, and it’s never going to return a single ISK. Give me a year with that kind of capital and by the Gods, I’d turn some profit!

But I smiled my best customer service smile and welcomed her on board. Her extra hour had obviously been well spent: her skin tight flight suit had been replaced by a newish but not too new looking orange overall, just like mine and Calamity’s. Well, a good deal cleaner than Calamity’s it had to be admitted. But how in all the nine Hells had she got it tailored to fit her like THAT?! I saw the small case she placed on the decking and prayed it wasn’t some spoiled exotic pet that would pee in the corners and chew what passed for upholstery on the bridge seats; to my relief when I picked it up it was surprisingly heavy and when I ‘accidentally’ dropped it, there was no squeak of protest.

“Well, shall we get under way?” she asked without apology or explanation. I showed her up the companionway to the bridge and motioned her to the co-pilot’s seat. She made for mine instead and turned a smile like a laser on me. “I’ve been running the Scythe on the simulator at Pator U – passed my certification first time. May I?” A question that required no answer really, and got none except me quietly sitting in the co-pilot’s chair.

I’ll give her this, the time on the simulator had not been wasted. She went through the pre-flights like a pro and was only slightly put out when I stopped her before she punched the ‘Release’ button. “Sorry Miss, but the Heap of Junk hasn’t quite been simulated at Pator U yet. She has a couple of peculiarities all her own.” I turned to Calamity sitting behind us in the engineer’s chair. “Clam, how’s the backup hydraulic tank? Do we have enough to keep up with the leak if we make this a short trip?”

“She’s full Cap’n d’Rohan, we can be away a week if you like” Calamity cleared her throat to spit then realised there was nowhere to do it, so turned it into a cough and a swallow. I shot her a look. Cap’n d’Rohan? Where had that come from, it was usually Clam and Kim on the flight deck. But of course today was not a usual day.

I turned to our guest pilot. “Clear for release Miss Freolur, destination Aldrat VII, Belt 9. Take her away.”

I’d been assuming, well maybe hoping, that her experience had been restricted to the simulator. There’s a world of difference in undocking for real, and the microgravity eddies as you leave the station can be really tricky. But she seemed to have done this before – perhaps she enjoyed showing her skills off to her boyfriends in the yacht. It should have made me respect her just a little, but all it did was make me even more angry and resentful.

Here I was, half a life of sheer hard work and only this rusting museum piece to show for it. While in the bay next to us we had left a yacht, every atom of which had been mined, hauled, refined and manufactured by dumb jerks like me for the idle pleasure of a spoiled kid like her. I began to hate the Heap in a way I never had before; I was imagining all the snotty things our passenger was thinking about her and to be honest, she was probably right.

“Why do you call her the Heap of Junk?” she asked pleasantly. Instantly I was on my guard, my shame about the Heap turned to defensiveness. “I had a girlfriend a while ago, said I cared more about this heap of junk than I did about her. She said I was to spend more time with her or she’d trade me in for a better model. But as it happened that weekend the jump drive went down and we had a big order to mine the week after. So I dumped the girlfriend, spent the weekend on the ship and we filled the order on time. After we got back I got the paint can out and painted the new name on her side: Heap of Junk.” I took a deep breath – hadn’t really meant to tell her half of that. But in for a cent, in for an ISK, so I carried on.

“She may look ready for reprocessing but she’s tough. She’s not pretty – what Minmatar ship is – but you can fix her with string, chewing gum and tape and she’ll keep going for you. She’s put food on my table and the crew’s for the last 20 years, and mined a hundred times her own weight – maybe some of her minerals are sitting in that pretty hull of yours back there.”

I heard a grunt from the seat behind me, which I interpreted as Calamity’s sign of approval. I dialled up a coffee and wondered how much of a mistake I’d just made with my big mouth.

…oo0oo…

Again, I should have realised there was trouble ahead as soon as we warped in to the belt. My favourite warp –in spot was at one end of the belt, above the arc of ‘roids where you could see the whole belt in one glance. That first glance showed me half a dozen wrecks in view, but I just thought someone had been shooting down belt rats and been lazy about clearing up. We were almost on top of our first ‘roids, so I began to target up, remembering to give a running commentary to our guest, assuming that she’d understand about one word in ten.

“You seem a little low on CPU”, she broke in. “If you swapped out one of those cargohold expanders you’d have room for a co-processor, and that would let you upgrade to Miner II lasers.” Calamity and I had been having the very same conversation on the last trip. Now I don’t mind being told what to do by a miner with fifteen years experience but what the heck was this little socialite doing telling me my business?

“Well miss, that means less cargo space which means less profit. And since we generally fly alone there’s no-one to haul for us and we need every metre cube of space we have.” I checked myself; I was sounding defensive again and why the hells should I be? I was a mining ship captain about to turn ‘roids into dust and profit, an honest day’s work the like of which Miss Freolur had never done in her life.

The first shift of three turned their Gaussians towards the nearest three Plagioclase ‘roids and opened up. I glanced at our guest as they did so, waiting to see how she took it. For those who have never heard it, one Gaussian excavation pulse is bad enough but three is torture. The high pitch sound seems to lodge in the roots of your teeth and shoot up into your brain, like drinking ice water. The low pitch is felt rather than heard, like a fist reaching into your belly and squeezing gently but persistently until your guts ache.

To be fair to her, she flinched but she didn’t collapse into a heap like I’d expected. “Sounds pretty bad, huh?” I commented. “But do you hear that other sound, the one that comes up through the soles of your feet? A kind of rattling, banging clatter as if someone is throwing stones at the Heap? That’s the sound of the return beams bringing Plagioclase dust into our holds. That, Miss Freolur, is the sound of profit.”

So, we got to the boring bit. Cycle, check targeting, inch forward to bring the next ‘roid into range before the last one was exhausted, nurse the capacitors to restart the laser cycles as fast as possible without emptying cap. Only lazy miners let a full laser cycle pass, with the chance that you’ve been mining an almost dead ‘roid the whole time. This is hard work and demands concentration if you’re going to do it right. Only a miner knows that there’s more to this job than sitting like a pudding until the holds are full. ‘Carebears’ the hotshot pilots call us, swaggering into the station bars and looking down their noses at our dust-stained overalls. Well, I’d like to know what they’d fly if we hadn’t mined the minerals that ended up in their fancy hulls.

So we changed shifts, ate (badly) slept (even worse) and watched the indicators move past half full towards the maximum capacity indicator which meant ‘home’. Coming back on watch I saw her puzzling at the overview. “These wrecks,” she said; “what do they mean?”

“Just belt rats that people have blown away while they’ve been working, Miss. Nothing to worry about.”

“Belt rats called Hulk and Retriever?” she asked, and my blood ran cold. I moused over the nearest wreck. What had once been a beautiful Hulk exhumer was now a pile of scrap. The specks surrounding it were presumably what was left of its payload – and its crew. The wreck was empty, looted by whoever had blasted it to bits and there was no way it was belt rats.

“Turn for home,” I called to Calamity who was at the helm. “We’ll mine aligned.” Then it began.

We’d strayed too close to the nearest ‘roid and as we turned, our force field caught it and we were knocked way off heading. Then we got into one of those sticky situations you sometimes get in a tight field, where you wonder how you ever got into a hole this small because try as you might you can’t get out. The ship wallows and heaves but gets nowhere fast. And then one eye on the overview tells you that a Catalyst is warping in and looks to be coming in right to its optimal. No way was this good news.

I launched the drone, for all the good it would do. A single Warrior can usually keep a belt rat busy but I doubted it would be much use against a destroyer if it meant business. And this one looked like it meant business.

The warning tone told us what we knew would happen: the Catalyst was targeting us. And yes there was his mate, an Iteron hovering at 20km, ready to suck up what was left if us after we blew. A tractor beam and salvager, thousands of cubes of hold space: think of the dust I could mine if I had one of those hauling for me. And instead someone was flying it for a laugh, trading our lives for a few thousand ISK of lousy salvage.

I took the helm from Calamity who had already switched off the lasers to save cap for our shield booster. The shields were glowing already and it was now only a matter of time. Could we get aligned before the Catalyst ate through our meagre shield tank? If not he would tear through our armour and hull because there would be nothing to protect them. So the priority now was to pilot her out of this maze of ‘roids as if nobody was aiming a bank of weapons at me.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught Calla Freolur fiddling with that heavy little bag of hers. What was she doing, arranging her makeup so she could go to her doom looking good? I cancelled the warp and tried nudging the Heap past an obstruction and out into free space. As luck would have it, if I could steer her out we’d be nearly lined up for a warp home, but time was running short.

“What channel do you use to control the Warrior?” she cut in, the amused tone in her voice vanished. “Channel 16, but what are you playing at?” I asked her, all attempts at politeness gone. I glanced across and saw her clipping leads from the box on her lap into the control panel in front of her.

“In your haste to write me off Captain, you’ve missed the fact that I’m majoring in electronic engineering at Pator U. This box of tricks will make your Warrior look like a battlecruiser in their overview, might scare the destroyer off.” As she spoke a Minmatar battlecruiser bloomed into life on my screen: I was never so glad to see a Hurricane! If she hadn’t told me about her trick I’d have sworn it was the real thing.

“They’ll see through this if they hit it – forget the destroyer” I ordered, “send that Hurricane drone off to the Iteron. I didn’t have the time to explain, but was guessing that the Catalyst was a suicide boat, barely crewed enough to blow us away before CONCORD arrived. The real assets would be in the Iteron, full of scavenged material from other miners they had ganked.

The girl seemed to know what she was doing: rather than letting the Warrior streak away towards the Iteron at full drone speed she slowed it down so it looked just like a ‘Cane making its lumbering turn towards the industrial ship. Shame she couldn’t mimic the effect of a few autocannons as well….

The firing from the Catalyst slackened just as our shields went down and we began to take strikes on our armour. The pirate destroyer was presumably vainly trying to target a Hurricane that was turning out to be a much trickier target than their overview was suggesting. If once they did get a lock, a single volley would be enough to uncover our deception. But the breathing space gave us just enough time to get our nose out of the maze of ‘roids and my hand hovered over the warp button, waiting for the green light to tell me we were aligned.

Now it was the Iteron’s turn to spin up its warp and run for home. They must have been flying aligned because they blinked out almost straight away. At the same moment the Catalyst must have found lock, because the ‘Hurricane’ went from full shield to space dust with a single shot and now it was just the Catalyst and ourselves.

Green light, punch warp.

Still at zero velocity, armour down to 75% and about to drop fast as the pirates realised they’d been fooled, and switched their fire back to us.

50% velocity, impulse engines straining as they drive us up to that magic 75% threshold. A flash image of the last maintenance check I did: was that replacement fuel link going to hold?

Armour gone, into hull. The sound of chunks being taken out of the Heap, lights flickering on the bridge display with each hit.

70% velocity, down to 25% of hull. Now I hover over the warp to planet button, ready to hit it as soon as the pod ejects. If the pod stays in one piece long enough. If it ejects at all – it’s not the kind of thing you test every maintenance.

And then the blessed, beautiful moment when the roar of the impulse engines dies away. The gentle kick in the backside as the warp engines take over with their barely heard music, rising through the scales as the AU pile up. The wonderful sight of the photon streams shooting past the cockpit as we ride the warp bubble home.

…oo0oo…

Things eased up a lot on the way back, even when we got stuck in a holding loop outside the station. Seems the pirates had visited pretty much every belt, and the miners were coming home in droves – the ones who were still alive, that is.

We broke out the beer, made pointed remarks about the shiny clean nature of others’ hulls, ignored the smacktalk in local about the heap of junk we were flying. By now it was Calla, Kimbli and Calamity – enough of Miss this and Cap’n that. Kind of hard to stay on your dignity when you’ve stood next to someone in your last moments. I probably made some remark about the repair bill, and how insurance only pays out on a total loss (and only then if you survive it). We must have asked Calla about her box of tricks but I don’t remember understanding any of the explanations.

“Leave the unloading till tomorrow, folks” I said over the speakers as the hum of the tractor beams died away and we bobbed at our berth. “We’re thirsty, plagioclase dust can wait but beer gets warm if it’s left too long.” Next thing I remember, I woke up with one hell of a hangover.

There was a chirp from my comms unit with a convo from Freolur – was I free for breakfast at Zorg’s? I tapped a reply, yeah I was free: maybe he’d even stump up the repair bills for the Heap. But why Zorg’s? Sure it had a great view of the industrial wharves and the coffee was good, but it was hardly fine dining.

He orders coffee for two and we sit in a window seat looking at the wharves, crowded with refugees from yesterday’s excitement. Ships of all shapes and sizes, and one with 90% of its hull gone and looking fit for the recycling yards. I wait for him to get to the point – is he going to make me an offer, or chew me out for nearly getting his daughter killed? Then he nudges me and points. There at the berth immediately in front of us is Calla, looking fresh as a daisy and with her hair a disconcerting colour – the exact colour of the flaming plasma jets that dying bits of hull make as they slew off into space. She pantomimes and makes some big gesture behind her at the Retriever bobbing there, the ship managing to look as sleek as Calla somehow but businesslike too. “I’d like to make you an offer d’Rohan,” says Freolur. “Nothing charitable you understand. But never let it be said that I’m ungrateful. I’ve invested in that Retty and Calla has persuaded me to make her over to you. You can pay me back in instalments. Don’t worry, I haven’t taken leave of my senses – you didn’t think I was actually going to give her to you, do you?”

Then he waves to Calla, as if giving her a cue. She steps aside and throws back a tarp that had been covering the Retty’s bow. There in letters the disconcerting colour of flaming plasma jets I can read the name: The Box of Tricks. We raise our coffee mugs and toast a new start.