Levi's Rock - Chapter Three - Crossed Paths - Part One

Spencer was drawing in a hammock while several other men egged on Affwell and a tank-shaped man named Jimenez who were wrestling and had been locked in a tough hold for a while—when there was a bang on the door and Hawking leaned in.
“Jimenez—and Spencer—on deck, now. We’ve got a visitor.”
After their latest visitors, the crew were wary about the word, so there was some hesitation. Hawking didn’t move, and Jimenez suddenly seemed to snap out of it. He punched Affwell in the shoulder and said, “Re-match later, che,” and then he was out the door with Spencer close behind.
“Who’s the visitor, sir?” Jimenez asked on the way to the flight deck.
“Not a client, if that’s any relief,” Hawking grunted.
Jimenez’s eyebrows shot up. “Supplier?”
“Nope.”
Jimenez shot a look at Spencer and got the same look back, both of them at a loss. After they entered the bullpen, Hawking cranked the manual seal and thumbed a code into the commlink on the wall. Spencer didn’t recognize it, but Jimenez did; it was a black-out code, effectively sealing off the room against eavesdropping. The temperature seemed to go up in the room.
“Alright, listen closely, you two,” Hawking murmured, barely moving his lips. He was apparently concerned with lip-reading from the video surveillance, which could not be counter-coded. Spencer glanced up at the cameras in the corners involuntarily, then chided himself for doing so.
“I don’t know where this guy is from, but the manifest he transmitted to us is fake, he is arriving at—not leaving from—Earth, his ship has battle scars, and he is carrying cargo in lead-lined containers. He says his name is DaSilva, which is basically Portuguese for ‘Smith’ and he … uh,” Hawking cleared his throat, “well, he says he ‘lost’ his passport code.”
Jimenez and Spencer both snorted in unison, which made Hawking crack a small smile.
Pathways, the official police of the space lanes, issued an algorithm to every ship authorized through inter-planetary customs, and that algorithm governed the transmission of a code sequence back to Pathways that was unique to the ship to which it had been issued; it was always programmed remotely, and if a ship was not broadcasting its code it meant it was not cleared to navigate into planetary space. Marques Station, in upper Earth orbit, was at the limits of planetary space, and such stations usually charged fees for ships leaving orbit to lay over until a customs crew could inspect the ship. For DaSilva to claim that he had already been issued a code was obviously false, but it raised a question: how had he left the last planet he’d docked without one?
“So he’s a pirate,” Jimenez muttered, mimicking Hawking’s careful stone-face.
“Oh, no,” Hawking quipped, “this guy is just a poor, wayward pilot in need of an emergency layover. Now, he’s going to think you two guys are interested in his ship—which you will be when you see it—and I want you to get as good a look as you can while it’s docked here, but most importantly I want you two to never … leave … his … side while he’s here. Is that clear?”
Jimenez and Spencer nodded carefully, and then Hawking led them to the hatch that opened onto the deck. He stopped to thumb a code into the commlink, and then cranked the hatch open.

DaSilva—whatever his real name was—was sitting on a crate just inside the bay door of his ship, but neither Spencer nor Jimenez noticed him at first. They were staring at his ship.
The Ojira was a class of ship all by itself, long and sleek, shaped like a dart but with a cone-shaped cockpit and a ring-shaped propulsion unit. It could have been a small cargo ship for its capacity, but the engine in it made too many mouths water in the private sector, and for the first few years of its run it was bought out almost exclusively by rich, immature guys with racing streaks. On an almost daily basis, interplanetary trade was interrupted by the twin streaks of two Ojiras trying to outstrip each other—followed closely by a Pathways officer at a safe distance. Although the Ojira was un-catchable at its peak speed, when it inevitably ran out of fuel—racers usually had lightning quick reflexes but no math skills to speak of—the Pathways officer would come toodling along and tow the ship and its meek owner back to impound.
Pathways started a collection of the ships at first, but by the time the second series of Ojiras came out, they had had so many instances of people stealing the first-run Ojiras from impound that they decided to just auction them off as soon as they could and use the proceeds to obtain faster ships and bigger guns to combat the few who had begun to use the Ojiras for bootlegging and gun-running.
DaSilva’s Ojira was in bad shape. Most wealthy ship owners would have restored an Ojira, treating it with every protective coating they could apply until it shone in the decklights, effectively putting it off limits to everyone and every thing. The idea was to make the ship look never used. Well, this one looked used. The long, trim Ojira had prominent—and painful-looking—scarring along its prow, corroded gels on its landing lights, scoring on the viewplates, some kind of welding or melting on two of the struts, and other, more serious structural problems. Far from trying to protect his ship, this guy seemed to be running her into meteors.
DaSilva laughed out loud at the horrified looks on the men’s faces. Hawking introduced them, told Jimenez and Spencer to “get DaSilva squared away,” and then disappeared.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” DaSilva chuckled.
“Well, that’s a relief, because it looks pretty bad,” Spencer growled.
DaSilva looked taken aback. “Hey, she’s my ship, not yours, buddy.”
“You’re damn right,” Spencer snapped, “because if she was my ship, I’d at least have her sand-blasted. You need to see a domestic abuse counselor, ‘buddy’.”
DaSilva laughed out loud at that, and Jimenez shook his head.
“Seriously, though,” Jimenez interjected. “This is either the oldest Ojira I’ve ever seen, or you are guilty of criminal negligence, muchacho. Did you take a wrong turn through the asteroid belt on the way here?”
“She’s old—she’s an original. See the wing tilt? They didn’t do that on the second series, or any series after that. But the scoring is from asteroids.”
Jimenez tried nodding as though that was a perfectly reasonable explanation, didn’t quite pull it off, and then was rescued by Spencer breaking into a rowdy laugh.
DaSilva seemed to freeze for a moment, then decided it was safe to laugh as well. “Yeah,” he drawled, “those asteroids sure put up a hell of a fight. Especially when you’re not broadcasting your customs code.” They all laughed again, and everyone was trying to sound natural for different reasons.
“Damn asteroids,” Spencer cracked, “think they own interplanetary space and everything in it, am I right?” Then he laughed so loud and with such a phony bent that they all stopped laughing and dropped the charade all at once.
Jimenez spoke first. “Just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page.”
For a full minute, Spencer and DaSilva stood staring each other down while Jimenez tried to think of an excuse to get on the ship. Finally one occurred to him.
“So, did you mod up your console or what?” He took a step toward the hatch, and DaSilva intercepted him neatly.
“Nah, I like her just the way she is,” DaSilva said, and as they watched, he thumbed a code into the hatch door and then closed a levered hatch over the code pad. As soon as he had done this, he returned to the cargo bay door, activated the mechanism, and turned to stare them down, while behind him the bay door groaned and hissed shut and then thunked loudly three times, old barlocks ramming into place automatically from the inside. “Hey, anybody hungry?” he asked suddenly, and began ambling toward the bullpen hatch.
Jimenez and Spencer hung back a bit.
“Suspicious old fart, ain’t he?” Spencer hissed to Jimenez.
“You get the code?” Jimenez hissed back.
“Of course.”
“Me, too.”
And then they followed DaSilva off the deck.