What Kate Found in the Fringe

by Nemo West

Table of Contents, parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

part 7

Since their breakup, Kate and Quince hadn’t spoken much. Their busy routines and staggered shifts had made it easy to avoid one another. However, locked together in their cramped tent now, the uncomfortable silence between them couldn’t last. Besides, there was something Kate wanted to know. “So, what’s an otter?” she asked.

Reclined on his cot, Quince hunched his brow. “Why are you asking me?”

“Because when Janco said he had one, your reaction told me you knew what it was.”

Quince gazed down at his feet for a moment before answering. “Otter is slang for OTR — Orbital Threat Response.”

“Which means what?”

“Which means Oberon has a planetary defense system.”

Kate blinked. “Whoah!”

Quince made a grim smirk. “Quite the surprise, isn’t it? Who’d expect a piss-ant little dirt farm to have planetary defenses?”

“But... how could Oberon afford something like that?”

Quince shrugged. “Most of the components are actually pretty cheap. A handful of satellites with panoptic scanners to monitor all approaches, and then a few deterrents like comm jammers, tracker mines, or null torpedoes. You can get things like that for less than a fleet of agri-bots. But the processing power required to actually run an OTR system is what gets pricey.” Quince turned to her with a peculiar expression. “For that, you’d need something like... an Eschbach drive.”

Kate’s eyes widened. “Oh!”

“Yeah,” Quince agreed.

Kate pressed a hand to her forehead, trying to make sense of that revelation. “Wait a minute. Then that would mean... your broken leg... gave Janco leverage with me... to unlock the Eschbach drive he needed for the otter... which is now keeping us from being murdered by pirates?”

“Well, smugglers, actually, but... yeah, I guess that’s right.”

“So, are we actually safe then? I mean, the smugglers can’t get to us because of Janco’s otter, right?”

Quince pursed his lips and bobbed his head noncommittally. “Kind of.”

Kate frowned. “That’s not exactly the reassuring answer I was hoping for.”

“You have to understand,” Quince explained, “putting up an otter is like putting jewels in a safe. If someone really wants to crack that safe, they need enough time and the right tools.” He glanced toward the sky. “Same goes for an otter; with enough time and the right tools, someone who really wants to can eventually crack it.” He turned back to Kate. “The real point of an otter is just what Janco said: buying enough time for Colonial troops to intervene. Most cartels are run by predators, not gladiators; they’re not looking for a fight, they’re looking for prey.”

Kate’s brow furrowed and she sat back slowly. “You... seem to know an awful lot about this stuff.”

Quince fidgeted with his gangly fingers. “After getting my Q-Sys degree in undergrad, I was planning to specialize in weapons design. Do you know how much defense engineers make?” He sighed and slumped. “But then things went bad with my parents. They stopped paying my tuition and I couldn’t get enough financial aid, so the life I had planned just kind of... evaporated.”

Kate sat forward. Nervous about the answer she’d get, she nevertheless asked, “Then... what kind of life did you wind up with instead?”

Quince didn’t turn to face her. “What kind of life do you think I wound up with?”

Kate gathered herself before replying. “You specifically asked to handle all of the data encryption and transmission.”

He seemed to sink further into his cot. “I was living on freelance programming gigs. It was just another job ad. I didn’t know what I was getting into.”

“Every signal that left this planet... came from you.”

“They liked my work and kept hiring me for more. The money grew fast, more than triple what I was making with anything else. But I never knew who was behind it.”

“You’re the cartel informant.”

“They have ears all over the frontier. When they heard about the claim on Oberon, they asked me to join the Terra Novus expedition as a spy. I was just supposed to confirm the claim and report it to them because they knew I was clever enough to sneak out a signal. But they never told me what was supposed to happen next. They always just fed me one little task at a time. I never knew the big picture.”

“Quince.”

He turned to her, eyes watery, features taut with dread. “I just thought this was some piddling corporate espionage job. Worst case: some big mining company would lose a claim on some nowhere frontier colony, so what? Kate, I had no idea what this really was! A cartel gunship! Commandos! Are you kidding me?”

“And what about Bucknam?”

Quince grimaced nervously. “That guy scares the hell out of me. Do you know he’s a wanted hitman? He told me they sent him along to keep me safe, but I think he was really here to do a lot more than that.”

“Like what?”

“The way I’ve seen him talking to some of the other guys on the security team makes me think he wasn’t the only one they sent, and that they were planning something.”

“Planning what? And how many others?”

He spread his hands. “Kate, I’m just a programmer. They hired me to sneak out a signal; they didn’t tell me their master plan. But if they put a guy like Bucknam in charge of it, I’m sure it was something ugly.” As if someone had cut his strings, his slapdash marionette frame crumpled on his cot. “God, I’m such an idiot,” he groaned. Then he stared at the ceiling, overwhelmed and defeated.

Kate sat facing him but didn’t respond for several minutes. At length, she said, “Do you remember when you told me that people only come out to the Fringe because they don’t care about making it back?”

He sighed. “Yeah.”

“Do you really want to die out here?”

He didn’t answer at first. Eventually, he said, “I don’t know if I can honestly say that I want to die.” His entire body shrugged. “I guess it’s more like a game of chicken I don’t really care about losing. I’m willing to put myself in harm’s way, and if I can’t jump fast enough... oh well.”

Kate nodded slowly. “And you don’t respect my reason for coming out to the Fringe because it’s not as... self-destructive as yours?”

Quince’s expression melted. “I’m really sorry for what I said before, Kate. I was an asshole.” He buried his face in his elbow.

“And what are you now?”

He managed a grim laugh. “Well, now I’m just screwed. If Colonial troops get here first, I’ll be arrested. If the cartel breaks through the otter first, then I’ll either be murdered or dragged off to the Beyond.” He shook his head and groaned. “Guess I should’ve read less books in college.”

“Fewer, actually.”

“What?”

“You should’ve read fewer books, not less.”

He shifted his arm to peer at her over his elbow. “Gee, thanks.”

Kate sat back on her cot. “Hypothetically, what if you got out of this? I mean, what if you somehow found a way off this planet that didn’t lead to prison or death? What do you think you might do?”

Quince slowly lowered his arm and rolled onto his elbow, facing her. “What do you mean?”

“If you make it out of this, you’ll be damn lucky — a close call, like the gun going off right after you pass it to the very next guy in Russian roulette.”

“Okay.”

She shrugged. “When some people have a close call like that, it helps them realize how good they actually have it, and that... maybe the life they wanted to escape is a lot better than no life at all.”

He slowly sat up opposite her. “Do you think you’re realizing that?”

Kate vented a long breath. “I think I’m starting to. Not that I’m ready to move in down the street from Mom or anything,” she quickly added. “But on the spectrum of options between the life my family wants for me and dying on some piss-ant dirt farm out in the Fringe, I think there’s more than enough room for compromise.”

“A little brush with death brings a lot of clarity, huh?”

“Something like that, I guess.” She sighed. “When all those commandos showed up and herded us into the administrative tent, I honestly thought we were all going to die right there. I could just picture them lining us up like a firing squad.”

“Actually, they would’ve been the firing squad in that situation, not us. We would’ve just been target practice.”

She cocked her head and stared at him.

He raised his hands. “Sorry. I can’t help it. I’m just—.”

“You’re not normal,” Kate interrupted. “I know.” Then she smiled. “That’s what I like about you.”

Surprised, Quince blushed and his gaze slid to the floor. After a few moments, he shuffled his feet. “Kate, hypothetically, if we made it out of this, and I wanted to get back together... would you be interested?”

Kate pursed her lips. “I’d need you to do something for me first.”

He looked up. “And what’s that?”

“Give me a second.” She leaned across her cot and grabbed her Digit from its charging cradle on the trunk they shared as a nightstand.

“What are you going to do with that?” Quince asked. “Janco shut down the transmitter, so we can’t reach anyone off-world.”

“I’m not trying to reach anyone off-world,” she said as she tapped out a message. “This is strictly local.”

Quince’s brow wrinkled. “Who’s going to be able to help us here?”

“Janco.” Kate finished her message and sent it: Need to talk... I remember who my friends are.

The furrows on Quince’s brow deepened. “But why would he help us?”

“Because I’m going to make another deal with him,” Kate answered, dropping her Digit in her lap to await Janco’s reply. “To save you again.”

“How? Last time you had to unlock an Eschbach drive. What are you going to offer him this time?”

“I’m not going to offer him anything.” She pointed at Quince. “You are.”

Quince cocked his head. “Me? What could I possibly have that he’d want?”

“Your testimony.”

Quince blinked. “My what now?”

“You said Bucknam is a wanted hitman.”

“Yeah. He showed me some of his wanted bulletins on the Net. I think he was trying to scare me.” Quince grimaced. “It worked.”

“So that means a big mining conglomerate like Terra Novus had such a poor screening process they allowed a wanted hitman and a cartel informant to infiltrate their expedition.” Kate raised an eyebrow. “How do you think Raumstrasse might feel about such corporate negligence? Because it seems to me that would be grounds for a lawsuit, which might just allow a tiny settlement company to renegotiate for better terms on a profit-sharing agreement.”

“Whoah!” Quince sat up straight. “That could actually work! I mean, Janco might really go for it.”

“And if he does, then you might not have to go to prison.” Kate glanced toward the sky. “Assuming Colonial troops get here before that gunship cracks the otter.”

Quince faced Kate with an astonished expression. “Jesus, I’m glad I met you.”

“Please.” Kate waved a dismissive hand. “Leave Jesus out of this; it wasn’t his idea.”

“Wow.” Quince shook his head. “Well played, Kate.”

“Yeah,” she agreed with a smirk. “I’m not normal either.”

* * *

Proceed to part 8...

Copyright © 2021 by Nemo West