The Star Pirate's Folly

Chapter 9: Orbit

"Thanks," Buttercup said.

"Yep," the attendant replied as she shut the door.

And just like that Buttercup found herself standing in another vault-like room of airlocks aboard the orbital station—her old home, not that she remembered much about it. There was something familiar about the air, though. It was scrubbed, filtered. Devoid of any particular odor. It wasn't like the air of the city with its mixture of different, sometimes disgusting, scents mingling together. Up in the station it was sterile. Nostalgia gripped her momentarily as her brain sparked connections within her memories. She shook the feeling as best as she could and headed to the exit hallway.

Buttercup stopped to examine a chart on the wall and found dock B46. It was close. As she walked the hallways a few other people passed her in a hurry—they must have come through one of the other gates in Capitol City. There was a fit young couple walking together, the woman dressed provocatively in sheer garments that left little to the imagination. The man kept looking around like he might catch someone eyeing up his mate. He walked close to her, and kept reaching out to touch her as though she might drift away.

Buttercup turned around a corner the opposite way the couple had gone. The docking bays for Section B were just up ahead. Soon she'd have the other half of her payment, and she could go back to Hargrove and tell him the good news. He probably wouldn't be happy at the circumstances through which she had acquired the money, but her only other option was waiting for a few more years and scraping together whatever she could until she finally had enough to buy a ticket to the outer rim, the settlements beyond the asteroid belt Styx.

Once she was out there she could really start her hunt. Trawling the bounty boards was keeping her mind at ease—it was really the most she could do—but Buttercup knew her best chance of finding him was to actually get out there and look for him. With as much money as she had she might even be able to hire a real bounty hunter to help her.

Buttercup arrived at the docking area, where the hallway ended in a T-junction. The wall in front of her had a series of small round windows at about eye level, with some signs between the windows pointed left for docks 1-25 and right for docks 26-50. She took a right, gazing out the windows as she passed them. Ships were parked outside, attached to the station's airlocks by docking tubes. She watched as several of them retracted their tubes and, synchronized by the orbital station's autopilot program, glided smoothly into a line together and departed the station. They were most likely headed to one of the nearby orbital launching platforms for interplanetary travel.

 Continuing down the hall and around a corner, Buttercup saw the sign for B46 several airlocks ahead on the right. Next to each door was a screen with a built in scanning lens. Buttercup stood in front of the airlock and waited for the scanner to flash her with its red beams. Nothing happened. She wondered briefly if she was supposed to open it manually, like the attendants had before, but then Bill Silver's face popped up on the screen.

"Good," he said. "I'll let you in."

Silver opened the airlock and squeezed off to one side of the entrance, waving her inside. He was taller than Buttercup thought he would be, and without his apron his protruding gut was exposed. Buttercup slipped past him, close enough to walk through the clean, vaguely masculine scent of his body wash or cologne.

The docking tube curved to the right, and she saw the inner airlock had been left open. She boarded the ship as Silver closed the outer door behind her. His metal hand clicked against the wheel as he spun it. The cockpit was to her right, and the body of the ship to the left. It was just a short range shuttle. She stood just inside and waited for Silver, who hurried past her.

"Just wait here, you won't be staying long. I'll get a pad to send your money," he said.

Buttercup nodded and stayed where she was. Just as he disappeared around the corner a buzzer sounded from the screen beside her. She watched as the camera focused on the buzzer-ringer: it was a suave clean-shaven blond man, maybe forty, dressed in a sleek olive green business suit. He seemed agitated, wringing his hands together and glancing around. He was accompanied by a thin-framed teenage boy dressed in a similar style who stood with his back straight and stared ahead with a blank expression.