“I think so,” I said uncertainly. “What do you need me to do?”
“There are errands to run on station. Dusty is organizing the purchase of additional supplies, but many vendors do not deliver. Also, several passengers have requested assistance in moving their goods to the ship. Unfortunately local law discourages the use of unattended bots, so it would be best if someone accompanies the work crews.”
I sighed. “Is it always this busy?”
“Not usually. But when an opportunity for profit presents itself, we must move quickly to take advantage. This should simply be a matter of following the bots, and ensuring that they are not stolen or vandalized. Can you do this?”
“Sure. I’ll figure it out. I’d better bring Smoke and Ash just in case, though. Chief West wouldn’t be happy if he heard about me leaving the ship without them.”
I was a little nervous about being responsible for hundreds of credits worth of bots and cargo when I barely had any idea what I was doing. But pitching in was my job, so I’d just have to muddle through.
That was how I ended up spending my first visit to a foreign station alone, rushing frantically from one errand to another with no time to sightsee. Not that there was anything to look at anyway, in the service tunnels that the navgrid’s directions always sent me through. Just endless kilometers of bare metal corridors, broken up by giant hatches every few hundred meters where they passed through internal bulkheads. The bigger hallways had roads running down the middle, filled with a constant stream of automated cargo vehicles.
My first errand was picking up a load of local spices from a shop less than a kilometer from our berth, so I just walked there with a couple of utility bots following along behind me. Smoke spent most of the trip perched on my shoulder, his long neck craning around as he took in our surroundings. Ash liked to move around more, darting ahead to scout the way and then flying back to circle around the bots before heading off to scout again.
Their programming was pretty amazing. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear they were real animals. Curious, affectionate little critters that loved to cuddle and get their chins scratched. I knew that part was real, too, because they had an empathic relay option that let me tap into their feelings. Their little AI brains weren’t smart enough for abstract thought, but they sure were concerned about protecting me. It made me feel a lot better about being in such an alien place.
By the time I got the spices back to the ship Dusty had unloaded a cargo truck, and configured a team of bots to act as movers. He sent us off to pick up a load of crates from one of the passengers, and then to help another one pack. The bots were perfectly capable of doing all of that on their own, so I was mostly just standing around keeping an eye on things the whole time.
It was a little odd, how many people I saw. At the homes of our passengers most of the packing was being done by androids, with just a few bots here and there working under close supervision. The locals had a real mythological theme going, too. There were lots of big-eared elves and giant, green-skinned trolls along with a few more exotic morph types. Angels, dwarves and a lot of less identifiable variants, with cosmetic mods like horns and tails. No furry types, though, and none with muzzles or other big facial oddities.
Almost all of them were women. A discreet check of the colony’s Xenopedia entry told me that the human population here was almost all male, like a reversed version of Felicity. I tried not to think about what that probably meant.
After a few hours of errands I was starting to get a handle on things, when of course life threw me another curve ball. I’d just finished loading up the truck, and was stowing the bots for the trip back to the ship when a blonde elf girl came hurrying up to me.
“E-excuse me, Mistress? You’re a spacer, aren’t you?”
I took in her oddly worn-looking dress, and the worry in her eyes.
“Yes. I’m Alice Long, with the Square Deal.”
“Finally! We’ve been searching for days. Please, Mistress, can you spare a few minutes to help a lost household? We’re desperate, and you’re our only hope!”
Chapter 7
She stood gazing up at me earnestly, with her hands clasped below her chin and her big blue eyes full of hope. Darn it, I was on a schedule. But how could I say no to that pleading look?
“What do you need, cutie?” I asked.
She glanced around nervously, and leaned in to whisper to me. “Our master is… well, there was a shuttle crash, and… we, we’re all alone now.”
Her lip was trembling. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, and for a second I thought she was going to start bawling right there on the sidewalk.
“That’s terrible,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. “But what can I do about it?”
She wiped her eyes, and managed to get a hold of herself.
“Master didn’t leave a will,” she said. “He didn’t have any close relatives, either. The Security Directorate is supposed to take care of cases like this, so there won’t be any unsupervised serfs wandering around. But they’re so overworked it could take months before they do anything about us, and the household account ran out of money a week ago.”
I sighed. “Are you looking for money?”
“No, Mistress! Just the opposite. You see, our accounts elf knows all of Master’s passwords, she just has orders not to use them without permission. She keeps a hardcopy of them printed out next to her workstation, though. So if some other elf just happened to lead a human there, well, then they could access all of Master’s accounts. They could transfer some money to the household account, so we can take care of ourselves until the courts get around to us, and maybe pay themselves a nice fee for their trouble.”
Well, that was interesting. “Wouldn’t that be stealing?”
She shrugged. “The lawyers could spend years arguing about that one. But you’ll be long gone before anyone finds out, and who would bother trying to track down a spacer over something like that?”
“Hmm. What’s your name, cutie?”
“This unworthy one is called Lilia, Mistress.” She hesitated, and a sly look stole across her face. “You know, if the Mistress so desires it would be child’s play to use Master’s money to buy me from his estate. Or anyone else of the household that Mistress might fancy.”
I chuckled. “You can call me by name, Lilia. All this exaggerated bowing and scraping feels kind of weird to me.”