Orbital Claims Adjuster Page 11

  “He is offering two or three times the price of gold in TGI credits for them. He has got very little so far.”

  “TGI credits? He’s trying to use TGI credits on GG stations?” Jake smiled.

  “Yes, is that a problem?” Suzanne said

  “Well,” Jake tried to stifle a small laugh behind his smile. “Where are they going to spend it?”

  “Spend it? Anywhere,” Zeke said, finally looking up from his tray and joining the conversation.

  “Nobody out here will take TGI credits. Not without a huge discount.”

  “A discount? Why?” Suzanne asked.

  “Didn’t you discount other corps credits in the Verge?”

  “Well, on the Verge we took TGI or GG or CT credits. But we don’t discount them,” Zeke said.

  “That’s because you could verify them.”

  “Verify them?” Suzanne asked

  “Money is money. How do you verify it?” Zeke said.

  Jake looked at him for a moment. Were they serious? Money is money? How naive could somebody be. Then again, they were groundsiders and always had network access. He started to explain.

  “Zeke, on Delta money is issued by the corporations. Each corporation creates a special electronic form that says, well, basically it says ‘this is money.’ They issue a form that says its 100 credits, and they sign it with their secret password. There are two passwords, a public password and a private password. They publish their public password, so anybody who wants to check it just makes sure they can decode it with their public password. That way you know the money is real.”

  “That makes sense,” Zeke said.

  “Wait, you said this is an electronic form. So, can’t people copy it. People can make hundreds—thousands of copies of these forms,” Suzanne interjected.

  “Right, they could,” agreed Jake. “But what happens then is when they give it to me, they want it to go only to me. I have my own passwords too. That’s what you have when you have your own payment chip—that’s just a chip with two passwords as well. They encrypt it with my public password and send it to me. Then I’m the only one who can spend it. When I spend it and give it to you, I use your public password to further encrypt it, so only you can use it.”

  “But how does that make it secure?” Zeke wondered.

  “Well, when you receive the money, your chip backtracks the purchase—it uses the public passwords to track back the source of the money, all the way to the beginning. We all have to sign it.”

  “Sounds complicated,” Zeke said.

  “Wait, but how do I know you are really you. These passwords are secret, correct? So, can’t you just make up passwords and steal the money?” Suzanne said.

  “They’re not actually called passwords. They’re called certificates. And I do make them up, but then I register them with one of the corps—GG, or TGI, or OWA, or whoever. So, you’re guaranteed that it’s somebody the corps do business with.”

  Suzanne and Zeke were quiet for a moment. Zeke looked confused. Suzanne was thinking.

  “So…” she started “So…if I have one of these certificates from GG, it’s no problem to take GG money, because I can prove its real. But if I don’t have one from TGI, there is a risk that it is fake.”

  “Exactly,” Jake said. “Not a great risk, because you can validate some of it or you can pause the transaction until you’re in communication distance to check a certificate or just tell the person that you take the money pending approval. But you charge a premium for the distance.”

  “How much is the premium?” Suzanne asked.

  “It varies. At my old station, if it was a good customer and you’re just waiting for a comm window, you might charge five percent for the trouble. If it’s a new customer or supplier but a reputable company, you might charge ten or fifteen. If you don’t know the person at all and it’s a certificate issued by a minor corp, you might discount fifty percent or more. One of the guys in the finance department made a living discounting chips ninety or ninety-five percent.”

  “What do you mean?” Suzanne asked.

  “If you gave him a hundred credit chip from somewhere strange, he’d give you five credits and take a chance that it was valid. He didn’t risk that much, and when he won he won big.”

  “We didn’t do anything like this on the Verge,” objected Zeke.

  “Yes, but you were on a planet. You could always authorize the certificates. And if you wanted to spend the credits, you could just take the monorail into Landing and trade them there for things.”

  “Yes, so?” Zeke said.

  “Mostly only GG ships come this way. Where will they spend TGI credits? GG won’t pay them face value. They’ll discount them. These folks will lose money on every trade if they have TGI credits, and they know it.”

  “Oh,” Zeke and Suzanne said in unison. Jake wasn’t sure they actually understood everything he’d said, but that didn’t matter.

  “Is Vidal offering to trade instead of giving TGI credits?”

  “No. We aren’t offering to trade anything,” Suzanne said.

  “Wowser,” said Jake.

  Suzanne cocked her head at Jake. “What are you thinking, Jake?”

  “Suzanne…” Jake began and stopped. He couldn’t believe he was about to ask this. “You’ve become…close with Vidal, right?”

  Suzanne smiled. “Yes. Bassi has been very unhappy and his arm continues to pain him.”

  “Bassi? You’re on a first name basis now?”

  “Yes, why not?” Suzanne arched her eyebrows. “That’s what I call him off duty when we--”

  “That’s fine,” Jake said. “Not my business. But—"

  “Are you jealous, Jake?” Suzanne smiled.

  “Jealous?” Jake squeaked. “Why would I be…never mind. Look Suzanne, when will you see Bas…I mean Vidal next. Outside of work, I mean.”

  “We have dinner together many nights. We are to meet later tonight.”

  “Yes…okay…great.” Jake stammered and shook his head. Suzanne continued to stare at Jake and smile.

  “Don’t take it too hard, Jake,” Zeke said. “She likes it if you are jealous. It is what she does.”

  “I’m not…Suzanne,” Jake asked, ignoring Zeke’s comment. “Does he have a list of places to go and buy things from?”

  “He does. I heard him talk about it.”

  “He said something about not being able to go to some of the places because of the orbital geometry,” Zeke said. He looked proud that he had used the word “geometry.”

  “Can you get me that list?” Jake said, looking at Suzanne.

  ***

  “So, let me understand this,” Suzanne said.

  Jake was standing in his room staring at the list of stations Suzanne had brought back that morning.

  “You want me to ask Bassi at dinner tonight to provide you with all these supplies because you have a plan to get all the metals he needs, if he agrees to not send you back to jail?”

  “And not to shoot me or throw me out an airlock or any other means of untimely death, yes,” Jake responded.

  “And the supplies that you are asking for will be used to trade for metals.”

  “Yes.”

  “And this will work, why is that?”

  “Because I’m a Belter,” Jake said, straightening his back. “I know what how these stations work. I know how they buy and what they buy. I know what they need and what they just want. And I know how much they pay.”

  “How do you know that there will be enough of the metals Vidal needs at these places?” Zeke queried from his spot on Jake’s bed, tossing an empty cup of basic up to the ceiling before catching it again.

  “We’re a far trader—Type A2—we can go farther and self-lead at these remote sites. There are not a lot of ships that can do that, so we’ll be able to go where there isn’t much competition.”

  “That makes sense. But he will ask why you are doing this? What you want? He does not trust you.”


  “I want out of jail, for good. I want a good recommendation from Vidal. If this works, he can recommend dismissing the charges against and you guys too. We’d be free.”

  “He can do that?” Suzanne asked.

  “Yes. If he says we did our work satisfactorily and that we’ve fulfilled our debt, then the charges are dismissed.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Yes. I looked it up.

  “Of course, you did,” Suzanne said, smiling, in that way that made Jake’s knees wobble just a little.

  “It clearly states in sub-section…”

  “We trust you, Jake,” Zeke said, standing up and draping his arm over Jake’s shoulders. “Now we must wait and see if Vidal likes my sisters smiles as much as you do,” he said, smacking Jake on the back and walking out of the room, his sister grinning slightly as she followed him.

  ***

  Vidal’s face stared at Jake from across the desk.

  “I hate you, Stewart. You know that?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do, sir.” Jake nodded.

  “I’d like to see you sent south.”

  “Yes, I know that.” Another nod.

  “And I’d like to shoot you myself.”

  Jake didn’t nod at that. He didn’t want to encourage that line of thinking. Mostly because he figured Vidal probably could get away with it.

  “I know that too.”

  “But instead of that, you think I should listen to this plan you have, is that right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Vidal stared at Jake silently for a moment, then looked at his screen. “Our mutual friend, the bald guy has sent out a message. He gave me some more stations to try. And he sent a directive,” Vidal said. “This ship is to come back with as many platinum group metals and we can get our hands on.”

  “Yes, sir. If I understand things correctly, specifically ruthenium and rhodium?”

  “Yes, money is apparently of no object, but that doesn’t seem to matter to these low-life stations.”

  “Yes, sir. I grew up on stations a lot like these. I understand what they’re looking for.”

  “Well, then. By all means, Stewart, enlighten me,” Vidal said. His eyes bored into Jake’s. Jake began to sweat but kept his focus.

  “First of all, offering them TGI credits won’t work. They can’t use them out here. And if they do, they have to discount them too much.”

  “I figured that part out myself, Stewart,” said Vidal. He sighed. For the first time he actually looked weak, defeated. “So, if they don’t want credits, what do they want, Stewart?”

  “These stations all receive visits from corporate ships coming out here with standard packages of supplies. They can trade bulk, low-value items for needed things like food and such. And they do it in corporate credits they can use for other things. We’re not doing that, so we have to sweeten the deal.”

  “How so? I gave them 20% off standard prices. That’s a great deal.”

  “Will you get into trouble if you sell all the goods at a loss, sir?”

  “A loss? Well, no, not really. From what I understand, our bald friend wouldn’t care if we sold most of the ship, as long as we got the rhodium and other metals he wants.”

  “Okay, sir, so here’s my plan.”

  Jake explained. First, they had to have something to sell. He wanted to break all the food containers up into person-year packages. Rather than having them all one type of tray, they’d split it into half red-green-blue, the cheapest, a quarter red-green-white, the next cheapest, and so on, down to five percent of the coveted buffalo meat trays. Then they’d combine those with miscellaneous items from the other cargo containers and trade the whole thing as a package.

  “Ten pairs of pants? Ten shirts? Two skinsuits? Two kilograms of wood? Ibuprofen? That’s a package?” Vidal asked.

  “Yes, sir. They don’t need a full container with 500 shirts. That would last them forever. It’s just a waste of storage space. If we sell them ten person-years of food, they can always eat that. Belters like to carve wood because it’s hard to find. They have a problem making clothes, and they can always use an extra skinsuit. They’ll probably re-trade that to some other free-trader or wandering miner. And consumables like medicine are always welcome.”

  “I see. And you want this delivered in a container sized unit?

  “That’s the way it’s done in the Belt, sir. We swap containers. Ours for one of theirs.”

  “And what about this pricing?”

  “It will make sense to them, sir.”

  “I don’t necessarily agree, but for the sake of argument, let’s say that I do. How do we get out there?”

  Jake wanted the supplies delivered via a TGI freight ship to a rendezvous in empty space. There, they would unload all the attached containers in free space and then begin re-attaching them. This allowed him to put the containers full of fuel and O in specific places on the truss systems so that fueling hoses from the barge could reach them directly. With everything positioned correctly, the Petrel could self-fuel herself without moving anything. Then he wanted to dump the empty containers onto the other ship and arrange to partially unload two external containers into the internal storage before the other ship arrived. He had scanned the cargo manifests of where they were going and had an inkling of what would be needed, so he wanted to load some items that otherwise would have gone away.

  Vidal listened quietly while Jake talked, then asked, “Where did you learn to shift cargo like that, Stewart?”

  “In the Belt, sir. But I also was on a tramp, a free-trader, for a time.” He had actually been running from a warrant for murder and had taken a crew slot on a tramp trader under an assumed name. His crew boss took advantage of his illegal employment to steal half his wages, and Jake had been nearly killed by a container that broke loose and nearly crushed him.

  “That’s not in your records.”

  “No, sir. It isn’t,” Jake agreed.

  Vidal waited for Jake to say more, but Jake kept his mouth shut. Vidal shook his head. “Okay, Stewart. I don’t like you, but this is the best plan we’ve got. But remember this,” he paused. “If this doesn’t work, well, accidents happen every day.”

  Chapter 10

  They met the TGI freighter in orbit. Vidal initially handled the coordination of the whole event, but by the end of their thirty-hour window Jake was organizing everything and Vidal was just overseeing.

  Suzanne and Zeke had great fun leaping around with the regular crew and helping them attach and detach containers. Jake was more stressed than he’d ever been and didn’t sleep for the entire thirty hours until they got underway. This was his last chance. If his plan didn’t work, Vidal would ensure Jake never made it out of jail, if he even made it to jail in the first place.

  The next station they arrived at was what Jake would call a family station—about thirty people, probably all related to each other. Family stations usually started from a couple and their kids working a particularly rich claim. These family groups had usually split off from larger stations they were in some sort of orbital resonance with and would meet up with in orbit two or three times a year to swap needed items. They were usually of two types—families that were working a rich ore body with cash to spare and general happiness or families where the best days were over and everybody was broke, bitter, and violent. All happy families are alike, every unhappy family was different.

  Since there were only thirty people on this station, it didn’t have a docking truss. Jake, Zeke, and Vidal met in the airlock. Vidal glared at Jake and made an “I’m watching you” gesture with his fingers, but he wasn’t overtly antagonistic.

  “We need to take the broomsticks,” Vidal announced.

  “Yes, sir,” Jake said. He’d been driving broomsticks since he was five.

  “What’s that?” Zeke asked.

  “Two-person transports,” Jake said. “A cargo box, control panel, seats, and a simple reaction system. Battery operated powerplant charged by
the ship.”

  “I’ve never ridden one,” Zeke said.

  “We have some time before we need to go down. Stewart, you take one, Zeke can take the other. Show me what you got.”

  “Yes, sir.” Jake said. They edged around the hull to where the broomsticks were charging and disconnected them from the ship. Jake hopped on and waited until Vidal gestured at him, then used the jets to gently lift the broomstick above the ship, spin around in a 360-degree roll, and then float gently to Vidal’s side.

  “Not bad, Stewart. Zeke, you’re next,” Vidal said. “Let’s see how you do.”

  Zeke was able to disconnect the broomstick and climb on board, but everything else went wrong. He began spinning in a circle but took way too long to find out how to counteract the spin. Then he set off forward and began a rolling motion as he headed away from the ship.

  “Follow him, Stewart,” Vidal ordered.

  Jake followed behind as Zeke headed toward the station. He was spinning from side to side and having difficulty correcting. He over-corrected and began spinning in the other direction, slowly. Jake caught up with him.

  “Small pulses, Zeke. Small pulses.”

  “I am trying,” Zeke said. He pushed the throttle again and the broomstick accelerated toward the station.

  “Zeke, slow down,” Jake advised.

  “Where are the brakes?”

  “There aren’t any. Spin around, then fire the thrusters.”

  Zeke complied but didn’t quite correct properly. His broomstick bumped into the door, nozzle first. It tipped to the side, and Zeke slowly floated away. Jake came up and nudged Zeke’s cargo basket. Gently working the controls, he slowly stopped the spin and brought them to a halt relative to the station, then gently pushed them toward locking bars nearby.

  “Good thing you are around to help me out, Jake,” Zeke said.

  “He has to be good for something,” Vidal said, as he came up behind the other two.