Read Online The Callisto Gambit by Felix R. Savage - Free Book Online
Authors: Felix R. Savage
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yours is mine, what’s mine is yours … and it’s all tied up in Canadian farmland and Jupiter trojan asteroids. You could sell some of those.”
Kiyoshi groaned, “I can’t sell now! There’s plenty of upside left in real estate and TEOTWAWKI assets.” His belief that the war panic had a long way left to run meshed with his belief that Jun was going to bring the war to an end singlehandedly in a couple of weeks. It was the ultimate insider trading opportunity. He’d plowed all his capital into real estate and space tourism stocks, which had already tripled in value. “C’mon, Jun … what do you mean you haven’t got any money? You stole a Chinese prince’s passwords. Can’t you steal a few thousand out of his bank account? I’m not asking for a couple of million, though it would be nice.”
Another 38 minutes. He fixed the leaky seal in the reflux condenser. The pig woke up. He fed her a bowlful of kibble. Still hungry, she rooted in the rubbish around the captain’s workstation.
“Dame [That’s wrong],” Jun said, the single Japanese word conveying the depth of his disapproval. “I’m not stealing anything, Kiyoshi. We’re in this to save humanity … not to turn a profit.”
“You’re stealing a fifty-kilometer, multi-mega-billion SPACE STATION!” Kiyoshi howled.
He got so fed up with Jun’s strict morality sometimes. In a rage, he dug into the surveillance camera logs. Unlike the Startractor’s previous owners, Kiyoshi didn’t care to keep tabs on everyone around the clock, but the cameras were automated. He clicked and pasted stills. The hydroponic farm. Yellow, spindly seedlings. The rat’s nest of power lines around the reactor. The dead pigs. A recent Mass, held in the crew mess. You could see how skinny everyone had gotten. Zoom in on Father Tanabe’s hands, elevating the Host. A moon of see-through-thin wheaten wafer, which would be portioned into nano-sized crumbs.
This is why we need money … this … and THIS.
On the verge of hitting send, he growled, “Goddammit.”
Jun was trying to save the human race. But Kiyoshi knew he would have much preferred to stay here, gardening, praying, and teaching kindergarten. It had been an agonizing decision for him to leave them all behind. What if Kiyoshi’s complaints pushed him to drop the whole scheme and come home? And what if, as a result, humanity lost the war?
It would be on me, Kiyoshi thought, and he erased the pictures.
“OK,” he said. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. Stealing is wrong.” We’ll get by somehow. “I was just throwing the idea out there. Heh. You know me.”
As he spoke, he idly flicked through the surveillance logs on an adjacent screen, going further and further back. Suddenly, a new figure caught his eye. A lean Earthborn woman with a sunburst of yellow and orange hair. She was doing yoga on the bridge, in the very place where Kiyoshi now sat. He leaned closer to the screen. Watched her flow through her poses. “Still plenty flexible, aren’t you, Alicia?” he murmured wistfully.
Alicia Petruzzelli had been the last official captain of this ship, before it embarked on its illegal journey to 99984 Ravilious. Kiyoshi checked the timestamp of the surveillance vid—six months ago—and bookmarked it, planning to have another trawl through the logs later. Hopefully, she had also let the cameras catch her changing out of that very fetching yoga outfit.
Sighing, he turned back to the comms screen. “I found some old vids of Alicia Petruzzelli,” he told Jun. “You know, I never have gotten her out of my mind.” They’d met briefly, years back, before the war. “I didn’t know her that well, of course.” They’d spent most of their time together in bed. “But there was something about her … I dunno, something kind of fragile … as well as, y’know, the fact that she was hot. It feels almost necrophiliac to look at these vids now. Because she’s probably dead. She quit
Kiyoshi groaned, “I can’t sell now! There’s plenty of upside left in real estate and TEOTWAWKI assets.” His belief that the war panic had a long way left to run meshed with his belief that Jun was going to bring the war to an end singlehandedly in a couple of weeks. It was the ultimate insider trading opportunity. He’d plowed all his capital into real estate and space tourism stocks, which had already tripled in value. “C’mon, Jun … what do you mean you haven’t got any money? You stole a Chinese prince’s passwords. Can’t you steal a few thousand out of his bank account? I’m not asking for a couple of million, though it would be nice.”
Another 38 minutes. He fixed the leaky seal in the reflux condenser. The pig woke up. He fed her a bowlful of kibble. Still hungry, she rooted in the rubbish around the captain’s workstation.
“Dame [That’s wrong],” Jun said, the single Japanese word conveying the depth of his disapproval. “I’m not stealing anything, Kiyoshi. We’re in this to save humanity … not to turn a profit.”
“You’re stealing a fifty-kilometer, multi-mega-billion SPACE STATION!” Kiyoshi howled.
He got so fed up with Jun’s strict morality sometimes. In a rage, he dug into the surveillance camera logs. Unlike the Startractor’s previous owners, Kiyoshi didn’t care to keep tabs on everyone around the clock, but the cameras were automated. He clicked and pasted stills. The hydroponic farm. Yellow, spindly seedlings. The rat’s nest of power lines around the reactor. The dead pigs. A recent Mass, held in the crew mess. You could see how skinny everyone had gotten. Zoom in on Father Tanabe’s hands, elevating the Host. A moon of see-through-thin wheaten wafer, which would be portioned into nano-sized crumbs.
This is why we need money … this … and THIS.
On the verge of hitting send, he growled, “Goddammit.”
Jun was trying to save the human race. But Kiyoshi knew he would have much preferred to stay here, gardening, praying, and teaching kindergarten. It had been an agonizing decision for him to leave them all behind. What if Kiyoshi’s complaints pushed him to drop the whole scheme and come home? And what if, as a result, humanity lost the war?
It would be on me, Kiyoshi thought, and he erased the pictures.
“OK,” he said. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. Stealing is wrong.” We’ll get by somehow. “I was just throwing the idea out there. Heh. You know me.”
As he spoke, he idly flicked through the surveillance logs on an adjacent screen, going further and further back. Suddenly, a new figure caught his eye. A lean Earthborn woman with a sunburst of yellow and orange hair. She was doing yoga on the bridge, in the very place where Kiyoshi now sat. He leaned closer to the screen. Watched her flow through her poses. “Still plenty flexible, aren’t you, Alicia?” he murmured wistfully.
Alicia Petruzzelli had been the last official captain of this ship, before it embarked on its illegal journey to 99984 Ravilious. Kiyoshi checked the timestamp of the surveillance vid—six months ago—and bookmarked it, planning to have another trawl through the logs later. Hopefully, she had also let the cameras catch her changing out of that very fetching yoga outfit.
Sighing, he turned back to the comms screen. “I found some old vids of Alicia Petruzzelli,” he told Jun. “You know, I never have gotten her out of my mind.” They’d met briefly, years back, before the war. “I didn’t know her that well, of course.” They’d spent most of their time together in bed. “But there was something about her … I dunno, something kind of fragile … as well as, y’know, the fact that she was hot. It feels almost necrophiliac to look at these vids now. Because she’s probably dead. She quit
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