Grayson shuttled Jersey up to her ship in the wee hours of the standard night and gave him the grand tour. She was curious to see if he would guess where she carried her contraband, but when they finished the tour up on the control bridge, he threw his hands in the air. "I give up. Where is it?" he demanded.
"A girl's got to have some secrets, you know," she replied coyly, thrilled that the crafty smuggler hadn't guessed. He preferred his smuggling on flatland, but he knew ships well enough to suss out most contraband holds. And if he could figure it out, so could the Feds. Grayson popped open a hidden panel in her command console and dug through her various gadgets for defeating customs seals until she found the one she wanted. "I want you to meet someone," she told him. "Say hello to Hal."
"You're not flying solo?" he said with surprise.
"Just say hello."
"Um, hello, Hal."
"Welcome to the Breathless Dragon," the computer replied formally, on its best behavior.
"You named your computer?" he asked skeptically, raising an eyebrow. "Or is that an acronym?"
She shrugged. "I'm lazy. One syllable versus three."
"And I suppose it's one of your vague Earther references that nobody else understands?"
"Hal does, right Hal?"
"You have expressly forbidden me to watch the movie or read the book," the computer replied stiffly.
"Computers watch movies?" Jersey asked, his eyebrow raising even further.
"Turn of phrase," she said with a wave, heading back toward the cargo hold.
"Learned everything he knows from you, I suppose," he said with a shake of his head as he followed her.
"Of course," she replied airily.
"I don't think the galaxy is ready for two of you."
"Careful. Hal might take offense," she said with a laugh. She tossed the anti-customs device to him. "You know how to use one of these, I assume. You start taking the seals off the first 30 crates and I'll be back with your brandy. We'll unload the meat and load up the brandy."
"Sounds like a lot of work," he said doubtfully.
"Nah. The inner crate for the meat is the same size as the crates of brandy. Pop one out and pop the other in. Seal it back up and turn off the freezer unit on the outer shell as soon as customs okays it on the ground."
"What will you do with the meat?"
"The small storage unit on the bottom level has temperature control. I can put it in there until I get more freezer crates." She waved at a warehouse bot as she headed to the back of the hold.
"I don't get to see where you're keeping it?" he asked, hoping to sound deeply wounded.
Grayson only laughed. "Some secrets are just meant to remain a mystery."
"I bet you told Hal," he hollered after her.
She blew him a kiss as she headed out the cargo port. "You're my lover, but Hal's my partner."
"I'm hurt," he shouted as the door closed behind her.
Grayson scowled at the warehouse bot as it insisted on positioning itself in the very center of the freight elevator. When they reached the bottom floor, she pressed the door button twice, causing the back wall of the elevator to rise, then she scowled at the bot again when it tried to go forward out of the elevator. "This way, dummy," she snapped, heading for the large portal into the engine room. Once out of the elevator, she glanced up to the middle level of the cargo hold to make sure Jersey hadn't emerged to try and see where she went. In her business, you learned to trust no one, or you didn't stay in business very long. Still, Jersey was one of the good ones. She entered the engine room and waited impatiently for the bot to follow. When it was finally inside and the door was closed, she turned to look at the massive shell of the hydrogen conversion engine. It was the standard model for the year and make of her ship. Grayson directed the bot to the port side of the room. "Open engine compartment, Hal."
Slowly, almost silently, sections of the seemingly solid engine separated and moved apart. The top half rose, stopping just short of the ceiling of the three-story room. The bottom divided into three segments, with the starboard section moving out to the far wall, the aft section swinging aft and starboard and the smallest port section twisting outward toward the aft wall, providing a roomy access for the warehouse bot and for the thirty crates of Tantalean brandy waiting to be loaded. "Load crates," Grayson ordered as she admired the compact, state of the art Soloid Hydrogen Converter that was the actual engine for her ship. Far more powerful and much smaller than the typical converter, such engines were normally found on space yachts of the rich and famous. Not on traders scraping by with loads of animal byproducts. She had done some fast talking as well as palm greasing to get the Soloid engine installed, convincing skeptical engineers that she was converting the ship into a yacht for a client with more money that sense. Then she had salvaged and installed the shell of an old engine around the smaller one, creating space for contraband as well as a ship that was far faster than any trader had a right to be. Faster even than some of the lumbering Fed ships. Unfortunately, the superfast engine also required a state of the art gravitron field to be able to compensate for the acceleration it could generate. It had taken a good deal of risky smuggling and gambling to raise the money for both.
While the warehouse bot would never rival an AI device, it did know how to load crates and made quick work of the brandy, creaking slightly under the load. Grayson backed it out of the way and ordered Hal to close the compartment, then checked a handy screen next to the portal to be sure Jersey was still in the cargo hold unloading the meat crates. When the sections were all back in place, Grayson opened the portal and led the bot back to the freight elevator, returning to the middle level where Jersey was just finishing up with the meat. They worked together to quickly load the brandy crates into the freezer shells and reseal them with the customs seals. Grayson noted the crate numbers on her paperwork then the warehouse bot was loaded again making several trips to the freight shuttle with both meat and brandy cases. As they glided back down to the moon's spaceport, Jersey gave her the information regarding his pickup men and she dutifully made notes on her paperwork. It wouldn't do to have a meat vendor open a case and find Tantalean brandy, though she suspected few would actually complain about the mix-up.
A couple of hours later, she had cleared customs groundside, rearranged her warehouse and already taken orders for almost half the inventory, sight-unseen, before she had even opened the doors. It seemed the unrest in the bordering Siriun sector was making traders and freighters nervous, leading to shortages. It was the sort of run that Grayson savored. She wasn't the nervous sort by any means, though she had no intention of venturing into Siriun space. She may not be nervous, but she wasn't stupid, either.
By three o'clock that afternoon, the last case was going out the door. Always good on his word, Jersey's men had filtered in and out between eleven and one to pick up the crates with brandy, neatly bracketed by and interspersed with real meat vendors. Grayson had made a tidy profit on both ventures and was breathing much easier as her galactic account began to rebound. She was just waiting to sign off on the warehouse rental when Phileas Fogg walked in the doors. She eyed him warily, wondering if he had found out that her Tantalean brandy had hit the market before his. He didn't seem angry, but then she knew how good a poker face he had from their past encounters. She climbed off the fender of the warehouse bot and stood to face him, subtly preparing to defend herself if need be. He hadn't quite reached her, though, when the warehouse manager came through the doors, old fashioned clipboard in hand. He was glancing around and checking off items as he approached and Grayson stepped around Fogg to meet him. She made small talk with him as she signed the paperwork, and was disappointed that he had no desire to inspect anything. She really hoped he wasn't in a hurry to get off work because he'd heard there was Tantalean Brandy in town. She couldn't expect Jersey and his cartel to sit on the information forever. But she desperately hoped it wouldn't get out until after she left and that would be just as soon as she could figure out how to get rid of Fogg.
Taking a deep breath, she turned to face Fogg as the warehouse manager left. "What can I do for you?" she asked with just a hint of impatience.
He shrugged. "I thought perhaps now that your business dealings were done, you might have time for socializing."
She coughed to hide the snort at the suggestion. "Sorry, picked up a touch of space lung."
He was unfazed by mention of the infectious disease. "I know of a nice restaurant. Have you had a chance to eat today?"
"I was just headed off planet," she explained, noting that he was casually moving into a position between her and the doors.
