In a certain sense, nearly everybody in the history of everything has spent the majority of their lives clinging precariously by their feet to the skin of an isolated rock that whizzed endlessly through the void, never stopping and never getting anywhere.
Life on Rylea was like that, only more so.
For one thing, it was more obviously a rock than most proper planets. For another thing, there was a whole lot more void around it. Rylea hung in space, several hundred light years from anything less tenuous than the interstellar medium. How many such rogue planetoids there were within what might be called “known”–or human habited–space was difficult to say. They weren’t that easy to find, and there was very little reason to look for them.
The rock which became Rylea had been found purely by chance, and its relative position marked down, almost a century before it had been settled. It had been first noted as a curiosity, not as a navigational hazard. The reality of deep space navigation was that you almost never hit anything much larger than a hydrogen atom unless you deliberately aimed at it. Even when a ship passed through a comparatively crowded asteroid belt like the two in the Sol system, there was only a very slight danger of even seeing an asteroid. If one, for some reason, ended up directly intersecting with the ship’s path, it was a very easy matter to spot it and go around.
The captain of the freighter which made the discovery that was to be Rylea had a debate with herself before allotting it a line in the sblog. Not because space in the computer was at any great premium… there just didn’t seem to be much point to it. Nobody would ever have any reason to visit such a desolate chunk of minerals hanging out in the middle of nowhere.
Naturally, the first people to establish a base on Rylea had been smugglers. Over time, what had begun as a simple cache for illicit goods had become a secret cove for refueling and resupplying a couple fast vessels and then a comfortable headquarters for an entire fleet of ships and their crews.
Now, it was a port of call unto itself. The descendants of the rogues who’d originally settled the rogue had become legitimate citizens of the galaxy, by trading on the convenience of Rylea’s inconvenient location. It was still in the middle of nowhere, but that was conveniently halfway to everywhere, in its corner of the galaxy. When a medium-range ship had to make a long haul across that sparsely colonized region, Rylea offered a handy stopping point.
Those were the bare essentials of the matter, which Regan related to Handy as she–with some difficulty, as she only had three hands free for walking–crawled backwards, pulling a wagon full of engine slag up a sloping street in Rylea’s financial district. Physical space was at something of a premium on the asteroid, and most people lived close to their business holdings or place of employment, so this was also the equivalent of a fashionable neighborhood.
Of course, the version of Rylean history which Regan told had a great deal more explosions, and in the end the smugglers made a deal with Old Scratch himself in order to secure their asteroid’s future prosperity, but having already expended an entire chapter in digression we’ll stick with our more, ah… factually streamlined… version.
“Excuse me for interrupting, the Boss,” Handy said, just as Regan was getting to the part where the Lord Mayor of Rylea was forced to arm wrestle a representative from both the Unified Homeworlds and the GCC at the same time in order to preserve their independent status. “But the street’s getting steeper.”
“Sure an’ that’s what it looks like, alright,” Regan said, nodding. “But it’s actually more what ya’d call an optical illusion, like, on account of the way they’ve got all the towers built sort of slantwise.”
“I’m certain that you’re correct,” Handy said. “But the wagon seems convinced it should be rolling down the hill, regardless.”
“Wagons are highly suggestible,” Regan said. “Everybody knows that.”
“Of course they are, the Boss,” Handy said deferentially. “But, if I may be bold, that makes me wonder why we’re using a wagon instead of the autocart.”
“Autocart would never work,” Regan said. “Not for what I’ve got in mind.”
She looked around. The day was nearing standard median, and the streets were beginning to fill up around them with lunch time traffic, pedestrians and pedestrian equivalent vehicles… that is small, open air personal conveyances. Rylean weather was monotonous; its unvaryingly black sky did not produce any elements that required shielding against. That, coupled with streets that were often narrow and haphazardly winding, meant that most vehicular traffic consisted of gyroscooters or similar.
“Right,” Regan said. “This looks good. We need to split up. Ya carry on with pullin’ the cart, like, an’ I’ll come up an’ offer to help ya.”
“And I refuse,” Handy said.
“Right,” Regan said. “But ya need to really sell it, you know? Pretend it’s really hard work draggin’ the cart like that.”
“I’ll do my best,” Handy said, adjusting her position to change which hand held the wagon’s handle, and leaning back to better dig in her palms against the strain.
“An’ when ya tell me no, ya need to make it sound like pullin’ this slag is some kind o’ high honor, like,” Regan said. “Like it’s the bleedin’ high point o’ your life.”
“And doing this will enable us to earn more money for refueling than we would trading in the slag for recycling,” Handy said.
“Loads an’ loads more,” Regan said. “Acres of money, even… an’ we can still sell the slag when we’re done.”
“If I may ask another question, the Boss?” Handy asked.
“Well, if it’s just one more,” Regan said.
“What happens if somebody sees me all alone with the cart full of slag and takes it upon themselves to simply relieve me of it?” she asked. “I must confess to suspecting that’s slightly more likely than anybody consenting to pay me for the privilege of pulling it.”
“Well, it don’t seem at all likely to me, but if it does happen, that’s even better, like,” Regan said. “Y’see, it’s perfectly legal to rob from somebody as is tryin’ to rob from you.”
“Not to be impertinent,” Handy said, “but are you sure of that?”
“Course I am,” Regan said. “Haven’t I ever told ya about the time I accidentally went to law school?”
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