Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [5]
As grinding creaks shuddered through the mine and heaving groans echoed in a brief crescendo before settling into intermittent clanks and sudden snaps, the pilot reported. ‘Bay level is constant, all pressure points are equalised, Storm Mine Seven is stopped, all drives are disengaged, all stop, repeat all stop.’
‘All stop. Thank you, Tani,’ Toos said and smiled for the first time in what seemed to her to have been months. Thinking about it, she realised it probably had been months. She thumbed the short-wave. ‘Docko, this is Captain Toos reporting Storm Mine Seven is all stopped, all down and all secure.’
‘Thank you, Captain,’ a voice from Docking Coordination acknowledged. ‘Welcome back to civilisation. Any robots left this time?’
Tani stood up and stretched. ‘They take bets on how many,’
he said.
Toos nodded. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘but I’m too tired, I’m too beautiful and I’m far too rich to care.’ She thumbed the communication button again. ‘Docko, I shall want full independent monitoring on the offload.’
‘Don’t you trust us, Captain?’ The voice sounded amused and hurt in roughly equal measure.
As much as I trust anybody who’s counting my money for me,’ Toos said. ‘Make sure they’re properly certificated, won’t you, and no relation?’
‘Of yours or mine?’ the voice said.
‘I don’t have any relatives,’ Toos said. ‘Let me know when you’re set up.’ She broke the link and yawned copiously.
‘Why don’t you take a rest, Captain?’ Tani said. ‘I’ll make sure they don’t siphon off a Dockmaster share.’ The pilot was a squat man with a large head and a broad, sour smile. ‘Or don’t you trust me either?’
‘You know better than to ask me that,’ Toos said, shedding the captain’s head-dress and tossing it on to a seat in the rest area. She shook her slightly greying light brown hair loose so that it hung down across her shoulders and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and yawned again. ‘Yes, why not? Some sleep might be a good idea.’
Tani switched hopper surveillance to his main board and put a lock-down alarm on it. ‘We have heavy-duty celebrating rostered. Stamina will be called for.’
Toos strolled towards the entrance to the control deck.
‘Stamina’s for robots and poor people,’ she said, rolling her hips in an exaggerated swagger. ‘We don’t need it, Tani. If we get tired of celebrating we can hire people to do it for us. Remember the old saying: wave cash above your head and they’ll never know how short you are.’
As the door slid back and she stepped through into the corridor the pilot called after her: ‘So how tall do you want to be, Captain?’
‘Tall enough not to have to look up,’ Toos called back cheerfully, ‘at anyone.’
The door soughed shut and Toos turned back into the passageway and headed for her quarters. She was relaxed now, looking forward to refreshing herself with a bath and a brief sleep before leaving the mine to finalise the business details of the tour. As well as the mineral tallies to be agreed, there were damage reports and equipment inventories to be verified. And then of course she would have to sign off on the number of deactivated robots corpse-marked for return to the construction centres. The cost of robot reactivation was set against profits but as far as Toos was concerned it was worth the price not to have to look at the things, not have them creeping around behind you.
Especially not to have them creeping around behind you.
The mine’s independent power plant was already beginning to close down as the docking bay’s umbilicals homed in, linked up and took over. Even when a chief mover was paying attention - and Toos knew that Simbion would be quite drunk by this time - such transfers occasionally got out of phase and temporary power-downs were common. When the lights began