Portmaster

Tulips. Tulips for breakfast, lunch and supper. Fifty bits for a small one, way out of reach of a cop's salary, even in Hayburg, where the prices were ones of the lowest, and here I was already getting sick of the taste and scent.

Luckily, I could leech power off the container through its control panel. I didn't need to eat much of the accursed flowers, just enough to satisfy the needs of the biological part of my body.

Tulips lose moisture, even a third of their mass, so the weight match was very loose.

Tulips require life support system to survive space travel. Not quite like for passenger transport, but survivable for ponies. Cold, but above freezing; a mist of water spraying us every hour or so; very weak artificial gravity but also no extreme accelerations.

And they would go bad in a couple days. That meant express travel, expensive swift courier lorchas with lepton beam engines, not the cheap solar sail barges or ion jet galleons that take weeks to reach their destinations.

And then there was the set of destinations. Destinations where the customers would pay a thousand bits for a single lunch composed of two flowers and other fancy, but less expensive ingredients. Where there were enough rich customers to assure demand for a full cargo container of those.

We were heading for Orbital Station Elysium, an artificial luxurious paradise orbiting Mars. The place where martian millionaires spend their vacations.

The place that prided itself to be independent from the Solar Empire.

And on top of that, we did about two million bits worth of damage in the cargo.

I squirmed on my bed of flowers. Mashed to a pulp under my hooves, and with first hints of spoilage in the scent.

Portmaster leaned against me. I squirmed away from him.

"Baton, please. It's cold and I'm wet. I'll catch cold."

"Last germs of common cold were eradicated six centuries ago, stupid."

"Pwease?" He mumbled and grinned to me, a flower held by the stem across his mouth, the most goofy lover expression under the sun.

I turned away from him.

I wanted to be mad at him. I really did. I tried to recall the events from The Anchor.

On top of spark of anger I felt a pleasurable stirring in my loins. I shut the memory away quickly, my embarrassment feeding my anger more. I was wet, miserable and cold. If not him, I would be after hours right now, probably relaxing, sipping a drink in The Anchor right now...

...while watching him over the rim of my glass, trying not to let him catch my gaze, and blushing like an idiot if he did anyway.

"Fuck!" I shouted out.

"Baton?" he asked with worry.

"You are really getting on my nerves."

"Sorry." He lay down, resting his chin on his front legs. Soon it seemed like he fell asleep, but then I heard sniffing. Short sobs were shaking his body.

I tried to ignore him. For a whole of thirty seconds I kept ignoring him. Then I put my hoof on his back gently. "What is it this time?" I failed to sound scornful.

He was silent for a long time, then he sniffed some more. Then he spoke quietly. "I'm a bad pony. A monster. I killed so many, and I dragged you down with me, and I did a horrible thing to you, and then I ruined your life, and I abandoned all to whom I was important, and possibly made the situation of your whole species worse... and all because..."

He sniffed. I brushed his mane with my hoof.

"...all because I... I'm so selfish."

"Selfish? Care to explain?"

He raised his head and looked in my eyes with his one good eye. "I could never fit in with the ponies. I was always the outsider, no friends, no talents, no skills, no strength. Then I got to oversee a team of replicants in an orbital warehouse and within two days we became best friends. They held no prejudice. They didn't think themselves better than me. They worked hard, harder than any pony, and for the first time I enjoyed working with them, even if I wasn't as strong and as efficient - but then, flying a shuttle is not that hard. Then my employer saw I don't just oversee them, that I work alongside with them. I got a stern lecture. I had to oversee them from afar, punish if they wouldn't follow the orders to the dot. Our friendship crumbled. Their efficiency crumbled along with it. I was fired, they got reflashed.

"I studied logistics and got another job, at a small transport company, and I made friends with replicants again. And this time it worked out. I was buying out replicants off their way to the incinerator, then helping them put their lives back together, and they really repaid with dedication. Rick Planner, the owner, was curious about my methods, he asked me to teach him my secrets."

"The R.P. corp?" I asked. "Nowadays it's every replicant's dream job, and a mighty corporation. How did you leave?"

"Rick did learn well. He really made friends with the crew. He hired a helper for me, and she was ecstatic to learn she was not expected to be a slaver. By that time I got the reputation of one who can 'handle difficult replicants'. I got the job offer from the Count shortly after you fished my predecessor out from the port bay. I had a talk with Rick. He told me to take it, 'fix up that shithole' as he put it. And I took it to my heart. I didn't take it as a job, I took it as a mission."

"And then you met the Count?"

"Most evil sick bastard I'd ever met in my life. And his son taking after his father. And I knew I couldn't build anything permanent. I could only maintain it as long as I watched over it. And I couldn't build more, I couldn't extend my influence. I watched the Red District in helpless rage."

"And you decided to leave a permanent mark."

"Yes, but not in form of a crater in place of the castle. I wanted to quit, to move on, to pick another mission, one that would be possible. But before that I decided I wanted something out of it for me. A simple selfish wish. You."

"Why me?"

"I saw how you blushed over your cup. How giddy you were whenever you saw me. My rants at The Anchor? Half the time it was to get you to come. I loved how you twisted the regulations never to harm me. How you fought with yourself about approaching me."

I grimaced sourly. "You knew you could have me. You could have bought me, you could have kept me as a personal pet, I'd never be happier in my life, and nopony would even frown."

"Except I didn't want to have a personal pet. Not even in the name. I wanted you to choose freedom. I'd buy you out, then release you. Then I'd ask you to stay with me."

"And you'd get fired. This kind of relationship on a position so high would not be acceptable."

"No, I wouldn't. I was creating too much profit. The port was thirty percent more efficient than with any of my predecessors."

"Then Count would lead to me having an 'accident'. And then you'd do something terrible in your despair."

"Then we'd move out of his reach."

"And you'd leave all the replicants to a new portmaster who'd get all the old ways in place."

"I could keep Count in check. Anything bad happens to you, I destroy him."

"Are you even listening to yourself? Trying to out-blackmail the expert villain?"

"Shit. Was that really a no-win situation?"

"Pet."

"Shit. No. I'd drink myself dead just imagining you're merely following my orders."

"Then all that was left were blushes over the cup."

"Not enough. I lost patience. I really wanted you to drop that mask. And when you refused, I realized: we could not be together, but I could still set you free. I made all the arrangements, Rick would buy you out later this week, you'd get your release and an honest job offer at The R.P."

"Except you wanted to set me free from yourself first?"

"Yes. For you to forget me. Short, simple pain you'd overcome, not an eternal wound of love lost."

"I must say you were not quite successful at that," I scoffed.

"That's where the second part of the plan came. For you to forget me, without regrets and without second thoughts. 'He was an asshole and now he's dead'."

"So, the Count..."

"I wanted to go with a bang, to take out as many assholes with me as I could, but see, Baton, that wasn't about them, about my mission, about my fight. It was all about you. Killing the Count was just added value, just a cover-up, a show to hide my own suicide, to make you think I did it because of my ideals, not because of you."

"You stupid asshole..." I squeezed tears off my eyes with my eyelids. "Blow up the castle just to set one mare free?"

"Just the ghost of my selfish wish."

"You stupid asshole." I ground my teeth through tears. Then I put my hoof over his back and pulled him to me, putting my chin on his neck. I leaned into him. "You damned idiot, look up the definition of 'selfish' in the dictionary. And then look up 'generous'."

"I don't know what you're talking about," he muttered, resting his head on his hooves.