Chris Bunch & Alan Cole - Sten 1 - Sten.pdf - Chris Bunch - margozap

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BOOK ONE—VULCAN

CHAPTER ONE

DEATH CAME QUIETLY TO THE ROW.

The suit stank. The Tech inside it stared out through the

scratched port at the pipe that looped around the outside of the

recreation dome and muttered a string of curses that would've

peeled a deep-space trader.

What he wanted more than anything was a tall cool narcobeer

to kill the hangover drumrolls in his head. The one thing he

didn't want, he knew, was to be hanging outside Vulcan, staring

at a one-centimeter alloy pipe that wouldn't hook up.

He clamped his waldos on the flange, set the torque rating by

feel, and tried another round of obscenities, this time including

his supervisor and all the stinking Migs enjoying themselves one

meter and a world away from him.

Done. He retracted the waldos and slammed the suit's tiny

drive unit into life. Not only was his supervisor a clot who was an

exjoyboy, but he was also going to get stuck for the first six

rounds. The Tech shut down his ground-zeroed brain and

rocketed numbly for the lock.

Of course, he'd missed the proper torque setting. If the pipe

hadn't been carrying fluorine, under high pressure, the error

wouldn't have made any difference.

The overstressed fitting cracked, and raw fluorine gradually

ate its way through, for several shifts spraying harmlessly into

space. But, as the fracture widened, the spray boiled directly

against the outer skin of The Row, through the insulation and,

eventually, the inner skin.

At first the hole was pin-size. The initial pressure drop inside

the dome wasn't even enough to kick over the monitors high

overhead in The Row's roof control capsule.

The Row could've been a red-light district on any of a million

pioneer planets—Company joygirls and boys picked their way

through the Mig crowds, looking for the Migrant-Unskilled who

still had some credits left on his card.

Long rows of gambling computers hooted enticements at the

passing workers and emitted little machine chuckles when

another mark was suckered into a game.

The Row was the Company-provided recreational center, set

up with the Migs' "best interests" at heart. "A partying Mig is a

happy Mig," a Company psychologist had once said. He didn't

add—or need to—that a partying Mig was also one who was

spending credits, and generally into the red. Each loss meant

hours added to the worker's contract

Which was why, in spite of the music and the laughter, The

Row felt grim and gray.

Two beefy Sociopatrolmen lounged outside The Row's

entrance. The older patrolman nodded at three boisterous Migs

as they weaved from one bibshop to another, then turned to his

partner. "If ya gonna twitch every time somebody looks at ya,

bud, pretty soon one of these Migs is gonna wanna know what

you'll do if they get real rowdy."

The new probationary touched his stun rod. "And I'd like to

show them."

The older man sighed, then stared off down the corridor.

"Oh-oh. Trouble."

His partner nearly jumped out of his uniform. "Where?

Where?"

The older man pointed. Stepping off the slideway and heading

for The Row was Amos Sten. The other man started to laugh at

the short, middle-aged Mig, and then noticed the muscles

hunching Amos' neck. And the size of his wrists and hammer

fists.

Then the senior patrolman sighed in relief and leaned back

against the I-beam.

"It's okay, kid. He's got his family with him."

A tired-looking woman and two children hurried off the

slideway to Amos.

"What the hell," the young man said, "that midget don't look

so tough to me."

"You don't know Amos. If you did, you would've soaked your

jock—specially if Amos was on the prowl for a little fight to cheer

him up some."

The four Migs each touched small white rectangles against a

pickup and Vulcan's central computer logged the movement of

MIG STEN, AMOS; MIG STEN, FREED; MIG-DEPENDENT

STEN, AHD; MIG-DEPENDENT STEN, JOHS into The Row.

As the Sten family passed the two patrolmen, the older man

smiled and tipped Amos a nod. His partner just glared. Amos

ignored them and hustled his family toward the livee entrance.

"Mig likes to fight, huh? That ain't whatcha call

Company-approved social mannerisms."

"Son, we busted the head of every Mig who beefed one on The

Row, there'd be a labor shortage."

"Maybe we ought to take him down some."

"You think you're the man who could do it?"

The young patrolman nodded. "Why not? Catch him back of a

narco joint and thump him some."

The older man smiled, and touched a long and livid scar on

his right arm. "It's been tried. By some better. But maybe I'm

wrong. Maybe you're the one who can do something. But you

best remember. Amos isn't any old Mig."

"What's so different about him?"

The patrolman suddenly tired of his new partner and the

whole conversation. "Where he comes from, they eat little boys

like you for breakfast."

The young man bristled and started to glower. Then he

remembered that even without the potgut his senior still had

about twenty kilos and fifteen years on him. He spun and turned

the glower on an old lady who was weaving happily out of The

Row. She looked at him, gummed a grin and spat neatly between

the probationary's legs, onto the deck. "Clot Migs!"

Amos slid his card through the livee's pickup, and the

computer automatically added an hour to Amos' work contract.

The four of them walked into the lobby, and Amos looked

around.

"Don't see the boy."

"Karl said school had him on an extra shift," his wife, Freed,

reminded him.

Amos shrugged.

"He ain't missin' much. Guy down the line was here last

offshift. Says the first show's some clot about how some Exec

falls for a joygirl an' takes her to live in The Eye with him."

Music blared from inside the theater.

"C'mon, dad, let's go."

Amos followed his family into the showroom.

Sten hurriedly tapped computer keys, then hit the JOB

INPUT tab. The screen blared, then went gray-blank. Sten

winced. He'd never finish in time to meet his family. The school's

ancient computer system just wasn't up to the number of

students carded in for his class shift.

Sten glanced around the room. No one was watching. He hit

BASIC FUNCTION, then a quick sequence of keys. Sten had

found a way to tap into one reasoning bank of the central

computer. Against school procedure, for sure. But Sten, like any

other seventeen-year-old, was willing to let tomorrow's hassles

hassle tomorrow.

With the patch complete, he fed in his task card. And

groaned, as his assignment swam up onto the screen. It was a

cybrolathe exercise, making L-beams.

It would take forever to make the welds, and he figured that

the mandated technique, obsolete even by the school's standards,

created a stressline three microns off the joining.

Then Sten grinned. He was already In Violation…

He drew two alloy-steel bars on the screen with his lightpen,

then altered the input function to JOB PROGRAM. Then he

switched the pen's function to WELD. A few quick motions, and

somewhere on Vulcan, two metal bars were nailed together.

Or maybe it was a computer-only exercise.

Sten waited in agony as the computer screen blanked. Finally

the computer lit up and scrolled PROJECT COMPLETED

SATISFACTORILY. He was finished. Sten's fingers flashed as he

cut out of the illegal patch, plugged back into the school's

computer, which was just beginning to flicker wearily back into

WAITING PROGRAM, input the PROJECT COMPLETED

SATISFACTORILY from his terminal's memory, shut down, and

then he was up and running for the door.

"Frankly, gentlemen," Baron Thoresen said, "I care less about

the R and D program's conflicting with some imagined ethical

Chris Bunch & Alan Cole - Sten 1 - Sten.pdf

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