In the margins

I never chose to become a smuggler. You could say that smuggling chose me.

In the inner planets with their orderly administrations and effective police forces, many people don't even believe that smugglers exist. But out here in the margins, towards the edge of the known worlds, where corruption is rife and the law has little reach, we thrive.

I grew up on Harn, a scorching world of burnt sands. You've probably heard of its luxurious oases and waterfalls where rich people like to go on vacation. But for the people who live there, it's hell. We experienced very different lives from those few affluent visitors. We lived in slums and opportunities were scarce. The closest I got to an oasis was seeing from a distance the great steel walls that fence them in.

We were treated as a nuisance on our own planet, good for nothing more than working the mines. Worse still, we weren't allowed to leave. If I stayed there I would be stuck in a dead-end, wasting away my days. That was not what I wanted. I knew some who could accept that as their fate, but not me. I always dreamed of seeing other worlds.

I didn't have many skills, but I knew a lot about spaceships and thought I could be a ship's systems engineer. On Harn there was nowhere to study, so I learned what I could from watching screens. My cousin Caruba, she had good medical knowledge and wanted to be a doctor. Together we decided to escape.

In one of the downtown dive bars, I met a smuggler. He was a bear of a man by the name of Gragg. He offered to fly us to Lazos for fifty thousand pieces each, with ten per cent to be paid in advance. It was a lot of money – all my savings and much of my parents' too – but it sounded reasonable and Gragg felt trustworthy despite his rough exterior. He had honest eyes.

Caruba wasn't so sure. “How do we know they won't just kill us or rob us out in space?” she warned.

Somehow she heard of an alternative route out. An agent named Jev had persuaded her that teleportation was the way. It was a new technology and this group had got hold of a few machines. They could send us to Aranthar for half the price of the smuggler.

We argued about it, until finally I gave in. Caruba got her way and we booked ourselves a trip to Aranthar. I had my doubts – any new technology was likely to be risky, and it sounded like it was stolen equipment – but Jev had persuaded her that it would all work perfectly.

They couldn't send us both on the same day so she would travel on the Sunday and I would go on the following Moonday. I went with her to the facility to wish her farewell.

The concrete building was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by masked armed men. They didn't let me in but they led her inside. Before they took her away I told her to contact me as soon as she arrived on Aranthar. We parted with few words, and that was the last time I ever saw her.

I had my suspicions about the teleportation gang – they looked far too secretive – and when I didn't hear from Caruba I became very worried. But I could hardly ask the police to investigate. They wouldn't care, and would probably arrest me for trying to leave. So I contacted Gragg, and he said he could fly me out in a couple of days.

He drove me out into the desert and told me to hide in the hold of a ship half-buried in the sand. There were six others already there who would be my fellow passengers. We whispered softly to each other, swapping names and stories until takeoff came, then we shivered in fear in the shaky compartment.

They say that you never forget your first trip through hyperspace. I certainly won't forget mine. Trapped face-down in that hold, hearing the low rumble and the feeling of breathlessness as space tears itself apart briefly. Kara screamed, then all was still.

It wasn't over, of course. We had two more hyperspace jumps and long flights in between. The smugglers had left us a few packets of protein biscuits to sustain us for the trip. Thankfully, Denka had brought a home-made threehorn pie. She unwrapped it after that first jump and the smell of it brang comforting memories of home.

Eventually the flight was over. We landed in a remote corner of Lazos and were told we would not be allowed to leave the ship until we had transferred the rest of our money to the smugglers. Kara didn't have enough money so they pulled a gun on her. One of the others offered to pay for her, I forget who.

Gragg told us we would stand a better chance of evading detection if we split up. We obeyed and split into pairs or went alone before making our way to the nearest city. It wasn't far. I went on my own, I thought I would have the best chance that way.

Those first few days were the hardest, searching for scraps to eat and places to hide and sleep. I heard that a couple of the others got caught stealing and were sent away. They aren't too strict on Lazos about unregistered outsiders, as long as you don't break the law. Or at least if you don't get caught.

I got lucky after a couple of weeks when I found a mechanic shop willing to take me on. They were impressed by my knowledge of Harbin quantum relays, which had been a fascination of mine as a boy. It was a turning point for me.

Soon I was able to afford a small place to stay and I could message my family back on Harn regularly. They had been worried, as I had only been able to contact them about two or three times since I arrived on the planet.

Within a year I earned full citizenship, which was a great relief. I no longer had to worry about being caught without any ID.

One of the first things I did was to travel to Aranthar. I wanted to find out what had happened to Caruba. At that point I was certain there had been an accident or something had gone wrong, but I wanted to know how and why.

The gang had given us an address of where we would arrive in the main colony on Aranthar. The address didn't even exist – the street number would have placed it outside the dome that covered the colony. I searched for any clues and asked around about the mysterious teleporters but there was no sign of them. I learned nothing.

So I returned to my life on Lazos and tried to settle in. The work was good and I made a few friends. But it always felt like something was missing.

It was as if I had been looking forward to escaping my homeworld for so long that everything afterwards felt like a disappointment. Maybe the excitement of getting away was what I craved, and I needed to escape again. But where was I going to escape to this time? Would I keep hopping from planet to planet?

One day a ship came in for repairs, and I recognised it immediately. It was the same ship that had smuggled me off Harn. Gragg recognised me but he said little.

After finishing the job, I handed him his ship back. I told him how we'd fixed it up, and he asked me, “Did you do this?”

“Yes,” I said, explaining some of the tuning we had done on the oxygen recyclers.

“We could do with somebody like you,” he said. It took me a while to realise he was offering me a chance to join him.

I wanted to say yes immediately, but I gave him one condition – that he help me find out what happened to Caruba.

After I finished work we went to a local bar to talk and I explained my story. He was very interested. He told me that he had heard of the transporter gang. Jev had been performing this stunt in worlds all over the sector. The smugglers cursed them – not so much because they were losing business but because it was giving smuggling a bad name.

So he agreed to take me on and we went after Jev. We set up a couple of traps with contacts on nearby worlds, and we found that he was operating out of a small mining world called Maravol.

A large force of smugglers flew alongside us to take them out. Gragg must have invited a lot of the other gangs.

We caught Jev and most of his team – a few of them died during the assault. They knew they were outnumbered and surrendered. Some tried to negotiate their way out of there.

Gragg wasn't having any of it. He made Jev and every member of his gang go through the teleporter. It turned out it was just one half of a stolen transporter. It appeared to read in the atoms then vaporised the traveller. Jev begged for mercy but we gave him none. I'll never forget the look on his face before he was atomised.

I wondered how many thousands he had killed like Caruba, people just trying to get away and find a better life. There was a never ending supply of people looking for a better world, and even with the small amount of money they charged, the transporter gang could earn a fortune. They only had to give the illusion that the teleportation was successful to persuade more to come. Of course that never lasted long, so they had to keep moving to a new system.

So that's how I joined a smuggling gang. It's not a bad life. I still love to fix ship systems and I still feel the excitement of travelling to new worlds that I felt on that first journey. I'm glad I didn't stay on Harn.

I have my own ship now – I named it the Caruba. Every now and then I'll even go back to Harn and help a few more people escape. I brought half my family out of there.

In just a few more years I'll be able to buy a house on one of the pleasure moons – I'm thinking maybe Marinaro or Laguba. I could even afford an oasis house on Harn, but that would be a betrayal of everything I've worked towards. We may be smugglers, but we are honest.