4
The ledger I’d given the Captain was more than just a record of shipments, meetings, and storage locations; it also contained similar logistical data for the coming week’s operations. The next shipment transfer that matched the few anomalous entries I’d noted was scheduled for that following evening, which gave me just enough time to finish a project of mine. Well, okay, it was a project of Paige’s that I was helping with. But it was for me, so whatever. Either way, it meant obtaining the last component, a rare element called Barsoomium. One of the only stable elements above 100 on the periodic table, it got its name from a centuries-old story where Mars, the planet it was first synthesized on, was called Barsoom by its inhabitants.
Regardless of the element’s nomenclature, I needed a chunk of the stuff, and damn was it expensive. Fortunately, I had a supplier who was willing to get me some. He’d agreed to meet me over coffee, something else that was going to cost me a pretty credit. It still had to be naturally grown—and by naturally I meant on real plants, even if they were genetically modified to grow on a three-dimensional latticework and produce a massive number of beans. Any naturally grown foods were bound to be expensive due to the resources required, particularly space on a garden deck.
The café—no other name, since it was the only one—was located in the ritziest part of the ship, a small residential/commercial block in the central open-air hold. It had a whole classical pre-Dim-Ages style going on, with outdoor tables that had individual fabric domes over them. I took a seat under one and waited for my supplier to arrive. An attractive young Feyn waitress came to take my order. She had dark maroon hair cut