The Vulture God erupted out of unspace, close enough to set Roshu’s traffic control systems complaining, and Idris began bootstrapping the ship’s systems and waking the others. Roshu wasn’t his favourite place in the galaxy, frankly.
Just about all human colonies had an AI kybernet to standardize legalities and trade within human space. At Idris’s request, Roshu’s version confirmed docking privileges at the planet’s single groundbound spaceport, Roshu Primator, and he began their approach.
Rollo strolled in, wearing nothing but white long johns and munching on a stick of something purple-flavoured. He scratched idly at his paunch. ‘You fucked up the approach again. Careless, boy, careless.’
Heritage had hailed them by then, wanting to take the Gamin out of the Vulture God’s claws. Money changed hands in the ghostly ether where the computer systems meshed. Job done, and Idris was happy to be rid of the wrecked freighter and all its grisly contents, even happier to count the Largesse added to the Vulture’s account.
Some of the older colonies still ran their own currencies but the Polyaspora had wrecked any wider human economy. The entire fugitive culture had been living from day to day for decades on a barter-economy. Largesse had started when people began swapping skills and services for whatever necessities could be gleaned. Colony kybernets had formalized it into a credit system, at least nominally backed by Hugh. It remained rough around the edges, intentionally shadowy, a cobbled-together system for a cobbled-together civilization.
‘Well now, my happy little family,’ Rollo announced to the crew, as they levered themselves groggily from the suspension pods. ‘I would love to tell you all we just got rich, but take docking fees, repair costs and the usual bribes out of it and we’re all just very slightly better off. Kit, Kris, Barney, Medvig: shore leave, one day. Idris and Uncle Rollo are going to see a man about putting bread on the table. Mesdam Olian, dearest of all my surrogate daughters, has drawn the short straw. She will be minding ship for the first day, during which she will doubtless attend to various niggling matters of maintenance. Those that do not require Menheer Barnier’s technical acumen.’
‘Fuck off, Unca Rollo,’ from Olli, not best pleased at sitting out the first round of shore leave.
‘Oho, yes indeed,’ Rollo twinkled, cranking the avuncular up to eleven. ‘For the rest of you reprobates, we will be on the ground two days maximum. Whoever fucks up the worst on day one gets to mind the ship on day two.’
Rollo took oversight of their landing approach into the docks at Roshu Primator – ‘The Primate House’ as the city had somehow become known. The docking ring was set around the very apex of the covered city’s outer bubble as if the place was wearing some kind of hat. Under this encircling platform was a gravitic drive, whose ministrations maintained atmosphere over the landing pads, supported ships during the last few hundred metres of their descent and, not least, held up the whole unlikely city’s structure. Idris could only imagine the maintenance schedule this demanded, and what might happen if someone cut corners.
With the surly exception of Olli, the crew assembled at the hatch, dressed for shore leave. For Idris and Barney this didn’t require any changes to their printed ship gear. Idris liked not standing out, and Musoku Barnier had probably accepted he wasn’t going to win any beauty contests. He’d been caught in some engineering-related mischance long before he joined the Vulture God’s crew. Wherever he’d been, the medical facilities had been efficient but utilitarian. Half his face was craggy bronze-brown and deeply lined. The other half was greying pink, smooth as youth, the eye a milky marble. Kris said the true root of Barney’s ill temper was that the grafted side looked better than the original.
Kris had donned her fancy clothes: the long tunic with wide sleeves, the artfully draped poncho. On her slim frame, all that unnecessary cloth served to at least mimic the impression of wealth and good living. The red scarf around her neck was vivid as a murder scene. Anyone seeing them stepping off the ship would take her for a passenger, slumming her way across the galaxy before taking up a position in her parents’ company.
Medvig didn’t dress up. They were a three-legged armless frame, with a head purely for the convenience of dealing with humans. However, the crew’s other non-human member had made his own planet-appropriate arrangements.
Hannilambra weren’t really like crabs, because crabs came from Earth. Yet to any human who’d seen a shellfish farm, the comparison was unavoidable. Evolution had designed the Hanni to present their armoured backs to predators, protecting a broad body set on three pairs of legs that let them skitter in just about any direction. Kittering’s focal point was a fork-shaped prong jutting from under the butterfly-wing curve of his shell. Five round amber eyes stared unwinkingly from this, with the bellows of his two breathing membranes rising and falling on either side. The sagging sack of his belly was mostly hidden by his shield arms, evolved for defence but co-opted for display. Above the arms, a cluster of mouthparts was in constant fidgety motion. Kittering’s eye-crown didn’t come much past Idris’s waist, but the little accountant pushed through his human crewmates with perfect assurance. The screens set into his back and shields displayed a lurid advertisement for some no-holds fight match. Kittering was always on the lookout for a little extra Largesse.