Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(8)
James watched them all disappear down the corridor toward triage. He hoped she pulled through. Palia and Shizzu were the only surviving chronmen from his graduating class at the Academy, and James couldn’t stand Shizzu. The rest had either died on assignment or poked a giant in the eye, which was chronmen-speak for steering your collie toward a gas giant and letting go of the controls. Palia dying would make for an awkward reunion between him and Shizzu.
Another group of engineers rushed by, this time toward a collie he didn’t recognize. James got out of their way and headed out of the dock. He was supposed to report to Smitt at Hops—Handler Operations—but instead, he headed to the lower levels and toward the Tilted Orbit.
Himalia Station wasn’t as large as other bases. Though the largest moon after the four satellite colonies around Jupiter, Himalia was only 170 kilometers in diameter. Still, it had a population of a quarter million, mostly gas miners, military, and ChronoCom personnel, which skewed the gender demographics slightly toward men. More like six to one. The pleasure boys and girls were so scarce and sought-after that they were almost as well respected as chronmen. Even then, most of them were transient. They’d arrive, get rich in weeks from nonstop work, then bail out as fast as they could.
The halls of the station were three sides’ metal and the ceiling a layer of natural rock. The moon’s elliptical orbit subjected the surface to extreme temperatures, necessitating that the majority of the base be kept underground. This made all the corridors incredibly cramped and dusty, as showers of pebbles and debris continually rained down on the station’s inhabitants.
The light flickered, as it tended to do when the power was kept to a third, which these days had become the new norm. James, walking in a hallway barely wide enough for three people abreast, moved with the downward flow into the residential section. Though cramped and claustrophobic, Himalia Station was one of James’s favorite bases of operations. Most inhabitants were too transient to bother knowing, and the few permanent residents knew to leave one other alone.
James reached the Tilted Orbit and sat down at the bar. Several of the grease-faced miners sitting on both sides of him got up to give him space. It wasn’t that people hated him; they just knew better than to get in his way. No one messed with a chronman. And if one messed with you, you just took it. James didn’t abuse his position of power often, but he knew some who did. Since chronmen were all that stood between society functioning and completely falling apart, it was a capital offense to injure one of his kind.
By last count, there were fewer than twenty chronmen on Himalia Station and maybe a hundred on Earth, with possibly three thousand across the rest of the solar system. Three thousand minus one if Palia didn’t make it.
“Jobe,” James gestured. “Whiskey. Whatever crap no one else can afford, and a round to every soul here.”
The bartender nodded, brought over the bottle and a tin cup, and gave him a generous pour. “On your tab, James.” He walked away to provide each patron his free drink.
James barely looked up as a few of the other patrons toasted him with their tin cups. It was something he did every time he returned from a job. Some had mistaken the gesture for friendliness. Nothing could be further from the truth. The few who tried to thank him personally were met with a blank stare and a turn of his back.
For the next hour, James sat alone, ignoring the increasing number and the growing cacophony of the patrons as more miners and station workers streamed into the Tilted Orbit. He stared at the bottle of whiskey, the level of which decreased by the pour; it was down to half now. His thoughts wandered back to the whiskey Grace had ordered him to pour for her. Swails’s job was also that of poison tester, and the two whiskeys he had tried while in her service were divine. The past had some truly great whiskey, not this crap they had here at the edge of hell.
James looked around the packed bar. There were only two drinking holes on the station, so both were rarely empty. A few other chronmen had walked in, each staking their claim at different parts of the bar. Other than a slight tilt of the head, none of them acknowledged the others. Like James, they sat and drank alone.
Even with this many people in such a confined place, there was still no one around him. No one was willing to take the chance of standing too close to a chronman. James lifted the tin cup and took a sip. Well, almost no one.
“You’re supposed to report to Hops before you make your way here,” he heard Smitt say behind him. It was better than having his handler’s damn voice piped directly into his head.
“I broke a dumb rule; fire me.” James shrugged and signaled to Jobe to bring another cup. He poured the so-called whiskey to the brim and slid it over, sloshing a third of it on the counter.
“Easy there.” Smitt cupped the whiskey gingerly in his hand. “Just because you’re a rich god among men doesn’t mean the rest of us are. There’s a reason the miners are drinking swill and you’re drinking…”
“Swill,” James muttered, taking another sip. He turned to his only living friend in the solar system. “You want to know what I’ve tasted before? What I’ve seen? Remember that salvage during the twenty-first century with the formation of the Luxe Empire? There was this drink they were just handing out like water…”
Smitt lifted his drink. “It’s called champagne, James, and thanks for rubbing it in.”
“Not just that. It seems every time period before ours was better. We’re sucking on the dregs of civilization. Frankly, I’m tired of coming back.” He slammed his fist on the counter. The bar got quiet. Usually, fights breaking out between the patrons was no big thing, but when a chronman was involved, everyone paid attention. James looked around at the staring eyes, then shifted his gaze back down to his cup. He hated the attention; all chronmen did. They were trained to keep a low profile. “It’s like waking up to a nightmare every time I return,” he said, eyes focused back on the dark liquid at the bottom of his cup.