Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(98)
Smitt unhooked himself from the handler console and leaned back in his chair. The worst part of all of this was he would have to do it all over again with Horner, another Tier-5 scheduled to jump to the nineteenth century in seven hours and run a smash-and-grab on anything of worth from a steamship sinking into the Marianas Trench.
“The damn handler captains are running me ragged,” Smitt moaned, covering his face with his hands.
Sitting beside him, Punil, a Tier-2 handler, smirked. “Haven’t seen you this pissy in years. All the Academy brats driving you crazy?”
Smitt shrugged good-naturedly. “Just forgot how much of a grind it is and how green we all were back in the day. Fresh fodder, the lot of us. Been taking the Tier-1 experience for granted way too long. Even handling Tier-2s feels like I’m being spoiled. Can you do me a favor and haul Hurls in when he reaches Central? I need to get some rack time before my next babysitting trip.”
“No problem,” Punil said. “Get some rest.”
“Thank you, my friend.”
Smitt stood up and stretched, patting Punil on the shoulder as he walked down an aisle half-filled with handlers of various tiers managing dozens of other jobs. In reality, his irritation with these lower-tier fresh fodders was feigned. Being knocked down to the bottom rung of hand-holding was actually the perfect cover to scout potential marks to help James’s illegal jumps for that savage-tribe pet project of his.
No one would question Smitt’s research into some of the low-tech jump zones, considering all the crud jobs he’d had to run recently. Knowing the auditors were keeping tabs on him, he had carefully covered his tracks, making sure he had reasonable alibis for all his hits into the chron database. For unavoidable queries that could tie him to James, well, he had a secret weapon for that too.
Smitt clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth as he turned toward the exit. James was playing a very dangerous game. By helping him, Smitt was uncharacteristically doing the same. He would even go as far to say that his friend was in way over his head, but in the twenty years that he had known the man, James had always come through. As long as both he and James were careful, they could pull this off. He was a Tier-1 handler after all.
Several other handlers waved as he walked past them. He made sure to acknowledge every one of them. While other Tier-1 handlers acted almost as haughtily as chronmen, Smitt knew better. He wasn’t the smartest handler, or the quickest-thinking. Nor was he the best administrator or tactician. He was actually average in every metric that defined a good handler. However, he had something going for him that most other handlers didn’t: Smitt was a damn likable guy. In the grim business of salvaging, where almost everyone detested everyone else, the intangible currency of people liking you was as good as a Titan source.
Smitt checked the time. Instead of heading upstairs to his quarters, he headed down toward the lower armory level. A few minutes later, he reached the quartermaster auxiliary and chatted his way past Kiesche, the monitor on duty, to retrieve the gear Horner needed for her job tomorrow. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to requisition the necessary equipment until the day of the job but, again, being a swell guy had its perks. A few seconds later, he was given access to the armory.
As Smitt walked inside, he glanced at the spot on the floor where James had laid him out a few weeks earlier. He hated to admit it, but that was probably the best thing that could have happened to him. Sure, it had given him a splitting headache and fuzzy vision for the following week, but it did clear him of some of the auditors’ suspicions. That was worth getting his head cracked over. Even better, the events that followed allowed James to escape with the bands he needed. Smitt hadn’t planned things out that way, but he felt the results justified his concussion. No matter how the others now viewed him, he was still loyal to his friend of twenty years.
When the two of them were graduating from the Academy, only James made it to the chronman tier. Smitt, with his anxiety and nerves, had completely bombed his final test. He was resigned to packing it up and returning to the processing plants back on Proteus for a life of hard and frigid menial labor. In fact, he had flamed out so spectacularly that he had not only failed to tier as a chronman, but as a handler as well.
James, one of the highest-rated graduates, had gone to bat for him and demanded Smitt be allowed a retest, saying he wanted no one else to be his handler. He even went as far as to offer his resignation from ChronoCom. Their mentor, Landon, already a Tier-2 chronman at the time, had agreed. That second time, Smitt passed, and was spared a short and miserable life building oxygen replicators. No one ever thought he would make it to Tier-1.
“Showed those *s,” he muttered as he opened the lockers and pulled out the bands Horner needed for the job. Tier-5s, basically apprentices, were not allocated their own equipment and had to be spoon-fed every step of the way, with their bands given and taken from them at the beginning and end of every job. As he put all the bands into his netherstore, he glanced over as another handler walked into the armory. With a practiced sleight of hand, he slipped an extra charged paint band into his container.
“Hey Smitt,” Eve, the other handler, said as she went about her own work. “Sorry to hear about what the caps are doing to you. Some bad business all around, giving you those little shits to manage.”
“Right? I should be packing my bags for Europa,” he complained, waving his arms in an exaggerated fashion. “Someone had to take the fall, and as long as they didn’t take anything out of my savings, I’ll earn out with these scrubs just as fast. I’ll just have to work harder.”