Short Story: Smugglers in Second Class

Smugglers in Second Class

“Mom, I’m serious.” Junia replied, her tone strained.

“You’re fifteen T-years old, Junia.” Faye replied, trying not to scold. The long trip out to Maribel was nothing for Faye, who had once served on long-haul cargo runs to resupply the Navy garrisons on the Hegemony border, but her daughter had never known any world but Planet at Centauri. Months confined to the spartan passenger liner were a new and unwelcome experience. “There are no monsters under your bunk.”

“I heard what I heard, Mom. He was talking to someone… talking about a payload.”

“A payload? The monster was talking about cargo?” Faye was legitimately confused.

“Mom, are you even listening to me?” Junia tossed her head back and clapped her hands dramatically to her face. “Not a monster. A mobster, like in those old vid-shows you like so much. He talks all night, and I can’t sleep. He’s got a gun, he said so.”

“A mobster.” Faye tried to figure out what Junia meant by the archaic term. Clearly, she was comparing what she heard – or thought she heard – to the old 24th century crime dramas which Faye favored. There were no mobsters anymore in the sense the term was used in that context, of course – it was probable that nobody even used the term for real organized crime during the era which produced that sort of cinema. “Under your bunk. On a passenger liner.”

“Yeah.” Junia, her voice incredulous, replied, standing up, her breakfast barely touched. “I’m going to the gaming lounge.”

Faye didn’t try to stop her. The liner was safe enough; most of the other passengers were, like Faye and Junia, permanently relocating to the Frontier. The liner, like many others, was filled with people who'd never left their home planets but who were now chasing rumors of work and a better life to be found on newly settled worlds. There weren't many teenagers onboard for Junia to socialize with, and those few there were seemed to keep their distance. Faye suspected her daughter had brushed them all off. Junia seemed to think that, by being miserable, she could make Faye book a ticket back to Planet as soon as the liner arrived at Maribel. The fifteen-year-old was, by a combination of the conditions in transit and her own efforts, largely alone on the whole ship.

With a heavy sigh, Faye absently stirred her own breakfast for another minute before gathering up her own tray and her daughter’s. Dumping them into the overtaxed recycler near the exit, she walked out into the somewhat quieter corridor, where there was enough space between the voices of the other passengers for her to think properly. Junia had always been imaginative, like Faye herself, but fantasies of criminals lurking in her cabin was something new. Abandoning her plans to spend the morning in the ship’s full-gee gym (which was in reality barely providing point-eight gee), Faye decided she’d check out Junia’s cabin, just to be sure that her daughter’s story was, in fact, a product of overactive imagination.

There wasn’t much traffic back to the cabin decks so early in the shipboard day, so Faye had a lift all to herself. When she reached the deck she and Junia were berthed on, a group of about a dozen late-risers filed into the lift she had just vacated, talking loudly among themselves. Even in second class, the cabins were so tiny that nobody wanted to spend any more time in them than necessary during their artificial days.

Junia’s cabin was not next to Faye's own – it was at the end of the corridor, with a thirty-meter walk between the two. When Faye had booked the voyage, she had been forced to choose between having two adjacent bunks in economy-class, or having two separated cabins in second-class, and she’d chosen the latter, hoping that a bit of privacy and independence would ease the transition for her daughter.

Because she was registered as Junia’s guardian in the ship’s systems, the teenager’s cabin opened for Faye just as it would for Junia herself. Discarded clothing and the wrappers of several meal-replacement cubes lay on the floor, and the bunk was neither made nor folded up into the wall. Suppressing a grimace at the mess, Faye picked her way across to the bunk and, feeling silly for even doing it, folded the shelf-like sleeping arrangement into its wall recess. As she expected, the deck below it was as much a mess as in the middle of the cabin, but there was nothing there that might explain Junia's story. A splatter of bluish, sticky goop on the floor and wall was all that remained of a long-forgotten, spilled confection which, in violation of all good sense, Junia must have been eating in bed. Faye had half-expected to find a forgotten vid-player, but the only device of that sort in Junia’s cabin was perched precariously on the edge of the corner desk.

Letting the bunk drop back into its deployed position, Faye sat down, dropping her head into her hands. She wasn’t sure if Junia was having auditory hallucinations, or simply making a play for attention, but either option was a bad sign. She wondered if it was time to have one of the ship’s overworked med-techs examine the teen, and dreaded the drama such an imposition would cause.

As Faye weighed a set of equally bad options, she heard a dry cough. It sounded like it was coming from an adjacent cabin, but she remembered that second-class was soundproofed – someone would have to scream at the top of their lungs to be heard in the next cabin, and even if they did, it would only be heard faintly. Where, then, did the cough come from?

Faye flipped the bunk back up once again and pushed all the clutter into the middle of the floor. There was nothing there, of course – only a tiny vent to allow the ship’s atmospherics to service the cabin. Every berth on board had its own atmospheric ductwork, and the two-inch port under the bunk was certainly not big enough to admit an intruder, mobster or otherwise – and the system was designed with enough baffles to prevent it from carrying voices between cabins.

“Receiving.” A gruff man’s voice muttered, and despite knowing it was impossible, she could tell it was coming from the vent. “Yah, nothing to report. Next time, Gus, we’re switchin’ places, ya hear? If they have eggs down there, bring me some.”

Faye blinked slowly, trying to figure out what was going on. The voice’s odd accent was probably that of an insular region of Earth, and it did sound remarkably like the accents used in her treasured crime dramas. Junia, it seemed, wasn’t hallucinating or lying. There was actually someone – a stowaway, evidently, with a passenger helping him – walled into the liner’s interstitial ductwork. Faye knew enough about spacecraft maintenance to know how much would have needed to go into such a stunt to keep the crew from finding out.

Even as she wondered to what end the man was voluntarily entombed, he spoke again, replying to his collaborator, though Faye didn’t hear the other man’s voice. “This had better be as foolproof as you said it was, Gus.” He warned. “I'm just glad the payload is quiet.”

Faye remembered Junia’s observation about a shipment. The man and his accomplice were smugglers, secreting themselves aboard an already overpopulated interstellar liner to move contraband. She knew she had to inform the crew. Dropping the bunk with a clang, she hurriedly grabbed Junia’s data-slate, overrode its user-lock with her parental code, and jotted down every word she’d just heard. It would not do, she knew, to forget any details.

Tucking the device under one arm, Faye hurried to the door, which opened to let her out.

Before she could step outside, a large man blocked her way, clapping a hand over her mouth and pushing her back into Junia’s cabin.

“Now now, Miss.” The man grinned unkindly as the door shut behind him. His accent was different; it was more cultured than the gruff man in the vents. “We can’t have that, can we?”

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Originally posted on Cosmic Background on 2946-06-12. This story is part 1 of a three-part short story sequence. It is followed by "Irridescent Intercession" and then by "Azure Amber."