by Daniel Gibbs
"By its very existence, it is a threat to our nation," countered Caetano. "We have our own churches. Allowing the Coalition's Christians to proselytize among our people gives them the means to turn our citizens against the Estado Novo. I have reason to believe Coalition Intelligence uses it as a safe house."
Vitorino rolled his eyes. "Your paranoia is worse than Ascaro's. If this coalition fails, you will be the cause."
"Likely, and I will undoubtedly win the resulting election." Caetano's grin turned wolfish, justifying her nickname. "I wonder how many incidents of corruption your successor will find in the Trade Ministry?"
Vitorino paled with anger at that. "Do you have an accusation to make?"
"No need for one," Caetano said, almost laughing. A smile formed on her face. "Your corruption is well known, Vitorino." She leaned forward over the table. "Here, in private, let us not mince words. You are a corrupt, greedy man seeking wealth and riches. You’re a poor excuse for a Culture Minister whose knowledge of our national art begins and ends with Hakkaoui and the make of our wines, and your very existence offends me as a patriot of our world."
Vitorino listened to the calm diatribe and gave no reaction. "Then, honestly, I believe Ascaro and her democrats are right about you," he said. "You are a brute and a thug in a party built on brutality, and we are cursed that you can restrain those impulses enough to be an effective parliamentarian. Your election would be the downfall of the Republic."
Caetano showed no signs of caring about what he called her. "Then, we understand each other. I look forward to your trial, Minister."
"Perhaps it will be yours instead," he replied before standing from the chair. "Now, I have other work to get to that doesn't involve fomenting mobs against other Lusitanians. A pleasant day." The last was spoken with a cold formality that belied the sentiment supposedly expressed.
"The same to you."
They departed through opposite doors.
17
The Trifid Nebula's three lobes were a bright backdrop against the void when the Shadow Wolf completed its last jump. Piper was at the helm, and Tia seated behind her in the central chair. "Jump complete," Piper said. She turned and noted the displeased look on Tia's face. "Feels like the drive needs realignment again. Pieter's getting overworked."
"I think he enjoys it secretly," Tia said. "It gives him an ego boost to be able to say he's the only one running the ship's engines. But you are right about him being overworked." Lawrence drives were sophisticated pieces of equipment, an unsurprising fact given that they could punch holes through the fabric of space to permit instantaneous wormhole travel between solar systems. The maintenance required to maintain such machines could be extensive and time-consuming. Military vessels had the luxury of affording the necessary manpower to keep constant watches on the system and maintain it in the face of any problem. Commercially-owned ships didn't always have that same luxury. Independent ships rarely did.
Without waiting for orders, Piper ran her course calculations. She noted the various gravity fields from the planets between their ship and Harron, not to mention Harron's star itself. She ultimately chose to go "above" the system's elliptic and then "descend" on Harron. She used the maneuvering thrusters to orientate the ship and then fired the vessel's main sublight drives, a quartet of matched GXR-4500 plasma drives. When in operation, the old-fashioned electro-plasma engines gave the Shadow Wolf respectable (and expected) acceleration for her mass.
"It's a shame we can't play with the toys in the rear holds more often," Piper said while the ship gained acceleration. Inertial compensators quickly absorbed the relatively light G-forces the main drives caused. "Our runs would be much faster."
"We’d also get a lot more attention than we'd prefer," Tia noted. "And Linh made it clear that the more we use it, the more often we need to go to Trinidad Station for maintenance work."
"Well, Trinidad's not bad," Piper mused. "Not that I'd want to live there."
The door to the bridge slid open, and Vidia walked in. "I'm here t' relieve you, Ms. Lopez," he said respectfully.
"I've got our sublight course all loaded and ready," Piper said to him as she stood. Vidia knew his way around the helm. He wasn't often manning it these days, though, since he was fourth on the helm rotation since the addition of Felix to the crew.
"Understood," was the reply she received from him.
"Get some rack time," Tia said. "I have a feeling we'll need to be in top form when we reach Sektatsh."
"With this little extra mission? Yeah, we will," Piper agreed. She didn't like Harron, on reputation alone. Getting mixed up in Lusitanian politics and Coalition intelligence stuff made it worse. Not that she'd lost faith in Jim Henry to deal with it, though. The entire thing was the price she paid to have the freedom she'd craved since her grandfather had first taken her stargazing as a child.
She left Tia and Vidia. The corridor from the bridge first passed Henry's office, and his cabin on the right, while, on the left, were the quarters for Tia and Cera. Then came the first cross-corridor running the width of the ship, providing upper deck access to the forward holds and the first set of stairwells to go to the lower deck. Astern along the central corridor were the quarters for everyone else. Piper's quarters were on the starboard side. They weren't quite a live-in closet, but she'd seen horse stalls that were larger. She had a bed, a desk with a chair, and on the opposite wall, a dresser. A small shelf with viddiscs she'd collected over the years was present at the right-hand corner beside the entrance. A second shelf to the left of the door had some figurines and knick-knacks she'd bought from various worlds during her life in space. And finally, the far corner across from her bed had the portable holo-viewer she'd bought. Beyond was the small walkway which had the closet on the right-hand side and, on the left, her bathroom, with a commode and a small sink. Its far end had her shower stall.
It was not a luxury room on an interstellar liner, not even a coach room, but it was better than she'd seen on some ships. The designer of the vessel had bothered to assign enough space to each set of quarters for private facilities, after all. She didn't need to go to the common areas to shower or use the restroom. It was a useful perk.
After shedding her jumpsuit and taking a quick shower, Piper put on sleeping clothes and lay on her bed. To ease her way to sleep, she felt for the holoviewer controls and used them to activate it, then her particular program for it.
Like most people, Piper used holoviewers to watch holovids. But she'd acquired a program that used the holoviewer's networking capability and a link she'd set up with the Shadow Wolf computers to create a holoimage of stars as they would appear in her current location if she were in a planetary atmosphere. The ceiling and walls of her small quarters lit up, covered in tiny stars, while her front door had the three-lobed Trifid Nebula covering it.
Content with the view, she settled down on her bed. While it had a proper mattress, her mind reached into childhood memories and replaced it with a sleeping mat rolled out on a grass field. She was six again, and her grandfather Pete was lying beside her outside of his homestead in the Cherokee district. The smell of the grass and the soil returned, as did the memory of the weather-hardened face of her mother's father, the gentle look in his eyes, and the tone in his voice as he began pointing out stars. "That's our ancestral home, little Piper," he said once, pointing to a distant star. "Right by that star." And he would identify other stars in turn, what worlds were around them.
"Do people live on them?" asked little Piper.
"Yes. And they have great cities too, and quiet countrysides, and even little homesteads like mine."
With wonder, the little girl looked at those distant stars. "I want to go to them," she said. "Can I?"
"One day, little one, you shall," was the affectionate reply. A hand touched her shoulder. "Dream your dreams, Piper. Believe in them and reach for those stars."
Piper closed her eyes to keep the tears from forming at the old void in her heart now reki
ndled by the memory. "Love you, Grandpa Pete," she said softly, in the belief his spirit could hear her now. She turned in her bed and closed her eyes, seeking sleep in starlight much as when she was a child.
The planet Harron loomed large on the liquid crystal display built into the inside wall of the Shadow Wolf bridge. It was an impressive garden planet from orbit, thought Cera, with crystal blue oceans and continents covered in vibrant green and brown land. Majestic mountain ranges showed as white, given the snow-capped peaks they formed around.
"A lovely world," Henry murmured, loud enough for Tia to hear. "It's such a shame the locals are slaving bastards."
"Another injustice of the universe, really," Tia agreed.
Cera considered their remarks and found herself in agreement. She didn't say so because there was little need for it, and all of her attention was on orbital space. Harron had many satellites put up by the various kings and theocrats that ruled the planet, everything from communication satellites to orbital weapons. Hitting any of them would be bad for the Shadow Wolf and her crew, and Cera prided herself on her piloting skills, not to mention the years of training and experience that refined them.
Vidia spoke up from the auxiliary station. "It looks like our fees just went through, Captain. We're bein' granted landin' clearance to the Sektatsh Spaceport."
"Finally," said Henry. "Cera, take us in."
"Aye, sir." Cera triggered the maneuvering thrusters.
The change in positional attitude turned a stable orbit into an atmospheric entry course as provided by the traffic controllers below, while Tia gave the landing alert over the ship intercom.
The Shadow Wolf's trajectory shifted, bringing the vessel into the atmosphere. Cera's approach vector was more vertical than horizontal this time, obeying the particular restrictions the local rulers had on their airspace. For her, it was one of the trickier approaches. The thrusters would be under greater strain to resist the planet's gravity since she couldn't use the same to benefit a longer, flatter approach vector. She started to redline a couple of them and compromised with a spiral descent, letting her use the lateral thrusters and relax those that she was pushing too hard.
This also meant increased turbulence for the crew, since the course caused more strain to the inertial compensators from the higher G-forces present. It was a bumpy, uncomfortable ride down.
Gradually, the distant beige speck on green land and blue ocean turned into the outlines of a city on a sea coast, complete with a river bisecting it. Cera angled the ship toward the western side of the city, where a vast expanse of buildings and runways indicated the location of the spaceport.
Gradually, Cera evened out the spiral and brought them in from the southeastern corner of the airspace, using the final approach to finish cutting their velocity so that she had the Shadow Wolf hovering over her landing spot. She lowered the power on the thrusters and allowed Harron's gravity to bring them to a landing.
"Great landing, Cera," Henry said behind her. "Now, I know why they call it the Sektatsh Spiral."
"That you do, sir. Always wanted t' try it." Cera flashed him a grin before returning to her primary post-landing duty, cutting all power to the ship's various motive systems.
"Going bar-hopping again?" Tia asked jovially.
To that prospect, Cera laughed harshly. "I enjoy partyin', ma'am, but not that much. I'll not end up slaved t' some sassenach takin' advantage of a good drink."
"I'd rather no one left the loading area," Henry said. "I don't like this place or its reputation."
"And we may need to beat a hasty exit when this mess blows up in our face," Tia added, a wry tone to her voice.
"So no gettin' into my stash, either." Cera shrugged and finished her last task before standing. "It's all right. I want t' see about th' inertial compensators anyway. The spiral was tough, but not that tough. They may need a wee bit of realignment."
"Just don't drive Pieter up a wall" was the condition she received from Henry just before her departure from the bridge.
The landing was just the beginning of work for Henry, in more than the usual way. He left the bridge shortly after Cera, with Tia following. "That descent was a little rough, even for the course," she noted, echoing Cera's earlier sentiment. "The inertia compensators may need some work."
He answered with a nod. Henry would ensure Pieter looked into it and reminded himself he needed to hire an engineer's mate or two. Brigitte was fulfilling the mechanical role well enough, but she had a long way to go before she was a qualified engineer. He was also arguably short another hand beyond the engineers. It might be time to bring someone on.
But it could wait for later. Henry and Tia had other matters to attend to.
They met Yanik in the middle-port hold. The hold was already opened to the loading dock, where a mix of Harr'al and other species waited with pallet jacks. Among them was a stout little H'taram in something like a bathrobe designed by someone obsessed with rainbows. Only about a meter and a half in average height, the H'taram was as wide as most of his people, and in general, that matched their usual proportions. It gave the H'taram the look of a particularly wide and overweight dwarf, at least to Human eyes, but Henry knew that appearance could be deceiving.
It was the H'taram that spoke. "I am Teyanak, chamberlain to the Most Gracious Lord Pyta Sikna."
"Ah. His Lordship is not present, then?"
The reply was clipped and immediate. "Obviously not. Understand, human, that the Calnin nobility does not speak with those of lesser station that are not part of their immediate household. That is my role."
"Ah." Henry glanced toward Tia and briefly considered the idea of relegating her to be his voice, since he didn't like to deal with snooty alien nobles. But he couldn't do something like that to her. Nor would she let him, he figured. "Well, your boss's cargo is here, as promised by Minister Vitorino."
"So we are told. Before accepting the shipment, it must be inspected to His Most Gracious Lord's satisfaction."
"Who is not here?"
Teyanak indicated the necklace he was wearing. Now that Henry took a closer look at it, he realized it had a small dot in the middle of its central disc. A spy camera. His Lordship would, indeed, be observing.
Henry nodded in understanding. Better a nod than the sigh more true to his feelings. Better get this done as quickly as possible. I've got a retired spy turned spacer to find.
Stakeouts were a part of Allan Kepper's life. In his line of work, people didn't want to be found, and finding them demanded watching people. Friends, family, and lovers—surveillance was often crucial to finding a mark.
His target had none of those. The closest she had to a contact was the Harr'al Kepper's little scouts had identified. To get her, Kepper had to get him.
Doing so in Sektatsh was not easy. As a human, Kepper could only move through the Alien Quarter with ease. He counted himself lucky that "Vasily," as the target's contact was known, lived near the border of the Alien Quarter and one of the city's residential districts. Close enough that some of the denizens of these districts were non-Harr'al. Kepper didn't stand out.
Vasily lived in a small apartment in a building along a secondary avenue. Kepper found that a building across the street let out rooms daily. Sektatsh was, thankfully, the kind of city where people didn't ask questions when you did so, so there were no pointed ones when he showed up to pay a few days' worth of rent and hauled his equipment up to the desired room.
Single-man stakeouts were technically impossible since you couldn't be awake and functional at all times. Technology made up for this. The software was among the best Kepper could find, an automated system that pinged him whenever his subject was spotted and recorded the subject's movements while they were visible.
Over the course of the first day, he figured out the subject's patterns. Rarely home, for one thing, an annoyance to be sure. But he could work with that.
The second day, he received a call from Li. "You should know that you must step
your timetable up," the Leaguer said. "Another party has sent an extraction team. They could arrive as early as today."
Well damn. Kepper wanted another night to get a better read on the schedule his quarry held. "I'll step up my plans," he promised. "What can you tell me about them?"
"They're a bunch of independent spacers, and we have no indications they're a threat. All you need to worry about is securing the target before they get her offworld. Li out."
Arrogant League prick. He sighed and went to his notes on Vasily's schedule. It would be time soon to for him to come home, it appeared. Kepper would be waiting.
There was no rushing Teyanak. The diminutive alien spent two hours meticulously checking every crate, even individual bottles, presumably receiving instructions from his aristocrat boss over a private commlink. During this time, no unloading was done, nor could Henry justify getting away to begin his other job. He was ready to strangle the H'taram by the end of the inspection.
Finally, Teyanak closed and re-sealed the last crate. His head turned to Henry, and two dark violet-toned eyes focused on Henry's face. "On behalf of His Most Gracious Lord, I accept this shipment. Minister Vitorino's payment is being processed as we speak, and my people are ready to transfer the shipment to our transport." He eyed where Felix, Vidia, and Brigitte were standing by with pallet jacks. "That will not be necessary; our people will handle this." Teyanak smiled gently. "Without an unloading fee against your account, Captain."
"Fine by me, then," Henry said. He turned to the others and shook his head. "They're doing the loading. Felix, stay with Yanik to observe."
Felix nodded. The trio headed for the stairs to the upper level of the hold. He took up a spot on the catwalk while the other two headed on to the door. Yanik took his place by the ramp to observe the teams coming and going.
Henry waited while Teyanak got the work crews from the loading dock before he went up to join Felix. He noticed a scowl on his old friend's face. "What is it?"
