Friends in the Stars

by Mackey Chandler

  It seemed obvious to Mike after listening to them speaking to departure control and inhabited systems along the way that Lee was just as familiar with the ship and dealing with traffic control as Gordon. Gordon was in command, but it really was her ship. Mike was pretty sure she could pilot it herself if she needed to. Gordon had handed off just about anything that needed to be done to her at one point or another.

  When they arrived at Providence, Gordon called ahead to Providence Control, describing the Kurofune as an Armed Diplomatic Courier for the Nation of Red Tree out of Derfhome. He recited his full name as Master and Lee’s full name as second very formally, adding their short customary names for Humans, but only mentioned they carried a passenger and private freight, without detail.

  Gordon detailed his entry vector and estimated arrival at Providence station as two days from now, requesting a detailed system scan, a berth at station with utilities, and a schedule of shuttle service to and from the surface, as they intended to join the group presently working on Providence for the Nation of Red Tree, and resupply them.

  A lesser vessel might have swung around the far side of the star and made a long chasing approach to the planet at lower acceleration, but Kurofune had legs to spare to make a direct approach and match velocity. It was another ten hours from sending their request that Providence traffic control’s answer arrived with no system scan and they objected that there was no visit scheduled for a ship of their name. They informed Gordon the planet was in its development stage without open public access and station dockage and service to the surface was only available to lease-holders, corporations licensed to create infrastructure or those with very specific permits to explore. The planetary manager for the Claims Commission offered fueling at commercial rates if they needed it to depart the system, but they would have to exit after fueling since it was a closed franchise planet.

  “Providence Control, you forgot to append a system scan,” Gordon said back. “That is how you treat a vessel you consider a hostile presence. It is irresponsible for the safety of your own traffic to deny it even to a vessel you only plan to fuel and then evict. Since you are neglecting that courtesy, we’ll run our own radar scan to make sure we are clear of all other traffic and natural hazards.

  “The crew of the Kurofune discovered Providence aboard the explorer High Hopes, and are not contractors or lease-holders. The two of us retain allodial title to approximately two percent of the land surface of the planet and are the beneficial owners of the claim on the planet that their manager is administering for the Commission. We do not need your permission to visit the system, nor to obtain fueling, because we both retained personal private fueling rights to the system gas giants.

  “We do require shuttle service to the surface. You may, of course, refuse us such service if you wish, but we will take that to be an act breaking your contract with us over the system claim, to refuse us access to the surface and our personal claims. If I have to go home and return with our own shuttles, we’ll return with a fleet and take the system back since you reneged on your contract.

  “Since the entire reason for the Claims Commission was to avoid such unpleasantness, his masters at home may not be amused if the local manager decides to break the back of the claims system for them. It’s already damaged and in crisis from our other recent dealings with them. I’ll also point out I can do a round trip to Derfhome faster than you can send a message and get a response from Earth. So no matter what their response, they would arrive to find it an accomplished fact.

  “If you have not understood it yet from the tone of my response, I am irritated with you. I suggest you find it in your heart to offer a much more conciliatory response to this transmission than the previous one. Don’t hurry to reply, think about it instead.”

  In the back seat, Mike watched in horror. The angrier Gordon became the softer and more pleasant his voice got. The air was electric with emotion like just before a thunderstorm broke over the Keep. He didn’t want to see the lighting let loose.

  “Copilot, draw us a system map from a general sweep like you’d do for an uninhabited system, then ping the planetary volume with a maximum power pulse in a tight beam. We may repeat that occasionally as we approach.”

  “Roger, shutting down secondary systems,” Lee acknowledged.

  Mike watched as Lee’s fingers danced on her board and the ventilators he wasn’t aware of hearing before stopped their sigh. All the lighting went off except their screens and the drive shut off so they could turn and present the full number of emitters where they wanted them aimed. Most of their boards were in amber lights and Mike felt himself float against his belts since they were in zero-g again.

  “System scan sweeping,” Lee reported. “That’s away,” she said, after a couple of minutes. “Covering double the planetary diameter with a single pulse. Going to a hundred and thirty percent power on radar for five-hundredths of a second.”

  The screens flickered briefly but there was no other sign anything had happened.

  “Maintaining power saving for thirty seconds to give some elements a chance to cool down,” Lee said. It took her almost that long to say it, and then she started bringing back systems. When her board was almost all green Mike felt the ship rotate and stabilize and they brought the drive back up.

  “Task finished, your ship,” Lee said, like she did that every day.

  “Do we have any more of that honey ham for a sandwich?” Gordon asked. “Being grouchy makes me hungry.”

  “I’ve got it,” Mike said. Basic cooking was something else they were teaching him.

  * * *

  “Tell me about these insects,” the Safety Agent on Derfhome station asked Pamela. “I am familiar with honey, when I can afford a little, but not the source. We prohibit very little entry. But birds and most insects are on the list. Once let loose, there is little chance they could be eradicated. Why aren’t these the same?”

  “They do fly, but they are easily contained as a hazard for becoming exotic invasives, because the fliers can’t reproduce. It is in the economic interest of the beekeepers to contain the hives from splitting to the wild. Wild hives could be collected by whoever found them first and become competition to our business. If a hive did escape they are pretty easy to locate. The workers can be made to take bait and display the direction they fly back to the colony. You just check from a couple of locations and triangulate their location on a map. The bees return rather directly.”

  The agent nodded, to indicate he could visualize that.

  “The benefits are significant,” Pamela told him the volume in Ceres dollars that Derfhome imported each year. “Of course we have no guarantee the bees will find enough Earth flowering plants or can adapt to similar Derf plants. They could also find tiny predators or something like a mold they can’t deal with. But it’s worth a try to us.”

  “Run through the reproductive cycle again so I’m sure I understand it,” the Derf requested. Pam was happy to oblige and showed details in pix off her pad.

  “It seems like a hazard that can be reasonably contained. I’ll add it to the list of acceptable imports,” the officer decided.

  “We don’t have to fill out forms or wait for an organizational review?” Pamela asked.

  “If they didn’t trust my judgment, I wouldn’t be out here doing the inspections,” he said. The idea of red tape amused him and the lack of it shocked Pamela. He hadn’t even asked for any fees or hinted for a bribe.

  * * *

  On Derfhome, two lawyers looked across the old town from one of the new towers on the surrounding hills. Lee’s hotel stuck up, barely visible at the extreme other side of the city. Sam Burnstein was actually experienced at business law in North America. Bill King was technically a lawyer but had never practiced or tried a case in a courtroom. That didn’t matter, he knew the lingo and how to step to the music. Their business was to advise Derf or Human citizens how to deal with Earth law and regulations. That was more often for trade th
an travel or immigration. The lack of invasive accounting or taxes tied to income made it much easier for them to hide the fact they operated at a substantial loss. Their real job was intelligence, North American Interstellar Intelligence. They didn’t operate under their real names of course. But checking their bonafides on Earth would show a full clean professional history. The occasional walk-in business was a bother they might accommodate to maintain their facade. They tried to charge enough to discourage any volume of business. Most of their day was spent searching the public records the Derf maintained of all contracts and the areas of the local net that dealt with business.

  “Hey, Bill, you worked for State for a while. Do you know a Pamela Harvac?”

  “Lawd, noo,” King denied in a fake east coast Yankee accent. “She was fa’ above me, from a good family, and being groomed for Great Things. She’s the sort that moved me to leave State as soon as I had an opportunity,” he said, returning to a normal voice.

  Sam ignored the conflict in his snarky reply and pressed on. “Her name was flagged on my computer as a government employee at State as soon as I scanned the entry list for Derfhome Station. She was a passenger on the Fargone freighter Unlikely. Further digging shows she is with a fellow by the name of Kirk Fuldheim. He didn’t pop up on any lists by himself. Supposedly they are here on a commercial mission promoting agricultural tech.”

  “Our lists don’t extend down to every flunky and technician,” Bill said. “Figure that he’s a buffer and coffee fetcher. I don’t believe the private business story for a minute. If she screwed up and got bounced out of the State Department, Ms. Harvac would be shuffled off to a very respectable position in one of her Daddy’s businesses or one of his friends would find her something suitable as a favor. There’s no way she would ever end up on Derfhome getting her hands dirty with common business.”

  “What are they doing then?” Sam asked.

  “Same thing we are, spying on something. It’s probably something pretty limited in scope and specific to their political interest in Derfhome. As far as I know, State doesn’t have the budget or expertise to dabble in broad general intelligence gathering. If they tried, they’d get their hands slapped for going beyond their mandate. And they wouldn’t send somebody like Pamela to run a wide-net fishing expedition.”

  “Pamela could be the cover and this Kirk the investigator,” Sam proposed.

  “That’s possible. I can’t see her doing any serious investigation,” Bill agreed.

  “We probably are already monitoring whatever their interest is. They should at least ask us,” Sam said.

  “Would you give them what you have?” Bill asked.

  “Well, at least a few bits of it, if they told me why they want it. Keeping a little back to bargain with and digging for much more once we knew their area of interest.”

  “There you have why they won’t ask. We’ve trained them that it is pointless.”

  “Hmmm, we’ll have to keep an eye on them,” Sam decided.

  * * *

  The Central ship Mesektet diverted on request and met the Phantom well outside the Derfhome system on private business. They took on two vacuum gurneys for medical transfer and continued to Earth. Eileen Foy hadn’t been sure Heather would go along with it, but she’d agreed and sent the ship to pick up the two spies. She made no promise how they would equip them but said to expect pictures. The Mothers would be pleased.

  Chapter 10

  Replacing the rotor on the centrifuge was a bigger job than Born or Musical expected. You didn’t just slide a shaft in a hole with a squirt of oil. They had to rig a lift and lower it with the magnetic bearing active to centralize it. They rigged a plastic tent to ensure clean room conditions and wore paper suits and respirators because both of them were fur shedders.

  “Obviously we can’t keep blasting a hole through the roof,” Musical said. “Do you have some idea how to point it a safe direction?”

  “I just wanted it back together before worrying about that. It would be terribly difficult to assemble it in any other orientation. Using the same hole has some appeal actually. You’d have to check to make sure nobody is on the roof, but you could block that off. We’d have to make sure there is no air traffic. I suppose that might be difficult to arrange,” Born said, thoughtfully.

  “I suppose it might be difficult to explain why we are doing all that,” Musical said. It was obvious he didn’t think much of the idea. “How do you know you don’t need to make sure you are safe to avoid orbital traffic?”

  “Oh, do you really think that could be a concern?” Born said, skeptically.

  “Even assuming you don’t kill anybody, how amused would people be if you punched a hole through Derfhome Station like we did the roof?” Musical asked. He didn’t look up, he just pointed a single digit skyward.

  “There hasn’t been anything on the news, so we must have missed,” Born said, and he did look up, but he was starting to look worried.

  “Indeed, we lucked out as the Fargoers say, but it was sheer dumb luck.”

  “How about the other way?” Born suggested. “Surely the effect will be attenuated by enough mass. It won’t punch out the other side of the planet.”

  “I’ve come to the same conclusion. Also, I checked. The opposite side of the planet is in open-ocean, far from any trade routes. So we have to alter the frame to turn it over to test, and then be able to return it to the upright position fairly easily in order to load new disks and service it,” Musical said.

  “I’m reluctant to engage the engineers to design that,” Born said. “Even if we don’t tell them why we want the ability to do this, it tells them entirely too much about our operations to help them figure out what we are doing. They are irritating and difficult, but they aren’t entirely stupid.”

  “I’m sure I can design something simple and rugged,” Musical said. “It would just be cheap iron ‘L’ shapes and hardware, probably not pretty, but it would be strong and I know enough welding to get the pieces together.”

  “Excellent,” Born said. “Then we shouldn’t have any more accidents.”

  * * *

  “Mr. Larkin, I have a favor to ask,” Heather told Old Man Larkin. If he had a first name Heather had never heard it, and she would be afraid to presume to use it uninvited. The fellow had such a reputation that despite life-extension therapy erasing most of the craggy signs of age on his face he was still Old Man Larkin to those who knew him even more so than strangers.

  Larkin dipped his head a bit and regarded her with a pouty moue of disbelief. “I don’t think we have ever done any business together.”

  Heather had not introduced herself, but Larkin hadn’t played the petty power game of asking who she was. They both knew each other by sight from speaking in the assembly if nothing else.

  “Not directly,” Heather agreed. “I’m sure you have done business with my partners and me through our company if only to transport something or someone for us. I know we have traveled on your ships as paying passengers.”

  “Amazing, since you have ships of your own, much better ones than mine. That’s a fact I know beyond any rumor,” he said quickly, as if she might deny it and he didn’t want to have to argue the point with her.

  “Indeed, thank you,” Heather said, with a little nod, just accepting it as a compliment. “But yours are well crewed, beautifully maintained, and more importantly, they go regularly to places where ours would be noted and watched because it’s unusual for them to be visiting there.”

  “Ah, well that could be useful at times. The thing is, what do you want to be transported to one of our usual stops that should not be observed too closely? Are we talking about smuggling or something even more serious? For all your praise we are well regarded by many habs and ports and value those relationships. We would not damage it for a onetime favor, no matter who is asking. I know you are a queen, even if you don’t flaunt the title, and if I had your money I could throw mine away without taking count of it, but
if this venture hurts our business and welcome at the stations of which you speak, it would take a huge sum of money to make up for our loss of income and damaged reputation over a long period of time.”

  “This actually won’t make a centum,” Heather revealed. “It’s more for satisfaction than profit. Both satisfying an ally and mocking an enemy.”

  For the first time, Larkin looked interested.

  “There is a pair of spies who are associated with North America, who have at the least mixed loyalties. They made a poor, awkward attempt to run an operation to intrude on an ally’s ship in Derfhome orbit and were captured. We’d like to return them as a message of sorts.”

  “Like that fellow that the Chinese sent some time back, who tried to assassinate your friend April in the cafeteria? The one who was dead so many ways nobody was sure who to credit? He was shot and scalded and knifed so badly he probably didn’t have time to know what had happened to him before he hit the floor. Word is he was delivered back to his people stuffed in a rescue ball. We could probably drop a couple of bodies out the lock easily enough for you.”

  “That would be awkward because they are still living,” Heather said.

  “Wow, they really messed up to be taken alive.”

  “They boarded an armed ship unauthorized thinking it empty and came through the lock to find a ton and a half of unamused Derf waiting for them with an ax across his knees,” Heather said.

  “Oops. Then I’m not sure exactly how you intend to repatriate them,” Larkin said. When Heather told him, he smiled.

  * * *

  “Wilson is going to have a stroke when he finds out what it costs in dollars N.A. to maintain a mission on Derfhome,” Pamela said.

  “I’d bet he checked before he ever discussed the idea with us,” Kirk said.

  Pamela opened her mouth and then snapped it shut, looking chagrinned. Of course, he did, she realized. Going to Derfhome was the obvious necessary end to the whole line of inquiry, and Wilson would have never started it if he hadn’t known it was doable. That meant the Under Secretary had far more resources than she realized, and this mission was more important than she’d assumed. She wasn’t just being shuffled off on a matter of no importance on a whim. That gave her mixed feelings. She liked thinking she was being taken seriously, but she suddenly realized if she blew this kind of money and didn’t get any results it would be a black mark on her record. Kirk once again wasn’t as stupid as she thought. That was an ongoing reevaluation that wasn’t comfortable.