“I lost six jump drones and only had two left,” April said. “I had to get them in really close to be able to target the engineering spaces. If the majority of the warships had been as effective as the five that took my drones out, I’d have had to retreat and call for help. I damaged fifty-six vessels. The majority of ships in orbit never maneuvered or made any attempt to contact me. None of those were emitting active radar. Quite a few of them I have to wonder if they had any crew at all.
“I suspect most of them were stage props to distract us from their real strike. The two cruisers who ran for jump knew what they were up against and would have caught me with beam weapons if I hadn’t been making random jumps before the speed of light lag let them locate me. The one cruiser burned two of my drones before I got him.
“By the time I shot the second North American ship every Chinese ship in orbit started squawking their identity on radio as well as their radar transponders.”
“That’s too fast for a report and a command decision to do a swap,” Heather said.
“Yep, they knew what the North Americans intended and planned to stay out of it,” April said, “now whether the Americans expected their help and they bailed out on them instead is another good question.
“Respectfully, I’d rather not stand down at the moment. The snatch teams are going to go much slower than a ship. Which team is going to Derfhome?”
“Delores is taking Home to Derfhome,” Heather said. We have an older solid relationship with Fargone. They understand our politics and that Beta shares the same Assembly with Home and is really part of the same nation. I’m not so sure that is clear to the Derf and the Mothers. That’s why Home went there. Also Home has the lion’s share of the ship-building industry. They would be unwelcome competition at Fargone. With Beta, that is not so much a problem. Derfhome should welcome them.”
“I’d like to leave now, not rest, and I should arrive a full day ahead and inform Jeff what is happening. I’ll crash and get some rest there,” April requested.
“Go ahead and do it, but give your number two the comm, or take a fresh pilot with you,” Heather insisted, “and give my love to Jeff.”
“Thank you,” April said, getting back up. “I’ll do just as you say.”
* * *
It was dark and the com was buzzing. Jeff didn’t sleep as much as he used to before gene mods, but he still slept deeply, valued it, and didn’t appreciate being roused in the middle of his night.
“Lights up five percent,” Jeff ordered.
He touched the side of the monitor by the bed and swiped up gently to brighten it until he could see the corner clock. It was two in the morning, which was just as early in Derf hours as Earth hours. He accepted the message verbally.
“This is April. I’m on approach to Derfhome station and forwarding this to you through them. If you see this before breakfast wait for me and I’ll relate everything in detail then. I’ll probably crash and sleep to noon after. Everyone is safe and Home is coming to Derfhome about a day behind me. Kurt is taking Beta to Fargone. We left Gamma parked around Mars and will sort that out later. Love you. Be there soon.”
It was his fault for leaving his com on priority alert for April and Heather, Jeff supposed. They could override and force an alert on him if they needed to, but he was afraid they might not. Maybe he could get back to sleep. He’d give it a try.
* * *
April reviewed all the entry cautions for tourists and traders on the station web. It didn’t seem oppressive. She didn’t intend to import fertile cats or kudzu. She noticed radioactive waste was prohibited but not nuclear kernels or radioisotopes for medicine or manufacturing. Insects were an obvious hazard to their ecology, but it seemed to her that was more danger from unintended inclusions in imports. Central so far had avoided importing cockroaches, but twice had to open both a residence and a food storeroom to vacuum to keep it that way.
Her shuttle seemed nice and modern, but the four Human sized seats in front were occupied, and she had to take a single Derf seat behind two Human size seats. The instructions on the back of the seat in front of her detailed how to configure the belts differently. There was another belt anchor hidden between the seat cushion in the middle. She decided to take the aisle side of the seat instead of the window. Why not put a second belt on each side so you could put two Humans in one seat?” April wondered.
Her crew opted to sleep on the station and catch a later shuttle. She called ahead and reserved a smaller suite for them to use at the same hotel where Jeff was. She didn’t know how many rooms Jeff had or if he already was using any of them. She would just as soon have some privacy with him and not have to worry about her crew coming and going or trying to politely include them in any activities.
The autocab taking her to the hotel didn’t let her see much of the planet’s trees and land before it was deep in an urban environment. It seemed like a nice enough planet if you were into planets. Getting deeper in town, it was very different than an Earth city or Fargone’s Landing for that matter. The roads seemed to go every which way and the buildings seemed old fashioned for the most part. Few of them were multistory, and none had glass facades or enameled panels. Tile or copper-sheathed roofs seemed the norm and they had a variety of glazed tiles instead of terra cotta. That was rather pretty and shiny in the morning sun. Exteriors seemed to favor larger blocks or stonework instead of bricks. At least some earth-sheltering seemed the norm.
The hotel had someone waiting to greet her as she left the cab. He expected her, and double checked that he had the right person, even though the odds of another Earth human arriving in the same time frame were slight. April expected him to ask after her luggage and was surprised when he never did. On Human worlds she’d found they almost always did that, not infrequently regarding you with visible suspicion, and questioned your moral integrity if you had none.
The greeter walked her to the elevators and called Jeff to send the elevator down. He stood there facing the lobby, not the elevator, making April think he was more than a guide, he was serious security, and good at not making that obvious. She tipped him a quarter solar before entering the elevator and he took it graciously.
Jeff was waiting on the fourth floor. There were no stops on the middle floors, that was a nice arrangement for security. They hugged and he took her hand and led her through a big room with high ceilings to a large balcony with a breakfast table set. The balcony wrapped around the corner and Jeff had the table placed right on the point. It gave them a little more room and a glorious view across two hundred and seventy degrees of horizon. It was in full sunlight now, but in the heat of the day, it would be shaded. Looking each way the mass of the city seemed behind the building. There were fields to be seen in the distance east, and the port, because she saw the hot spark of a drive as a vertical lift shuttle dropped tail first in the far distance, too far away to hear.
“This is pretty comfortable,” April decided.
“If you like it you can use it in the future,” Jeff said. “I decided we had enough long- term business here to lease it. If you really like it you can try making the owners an offer they can’t resist. It’s a local institution and a destination attraction for locals. I imagine it would be a good investment with returns on a longer time scale than the natives are used to considering.”
“If done quickly,” April said. “Lee and company are determined to introduce Life Extension Therapy for Derf. Once that takes hold, the local's attitudes on investments and long-term projects will change pretty rapidly.”
“They already live longer,” Jeff reminded her, “but you have a point. Maybe we should buy up some outlying land for development before that happens.”
“This is decaf,” Jeff said, pouring her a cup. He was aware she intended to sleep. “The beans are locally grown and the decaf is surprisingly good. I commented on it and was told they add some flavoring to make up for the absent caffeine. I’d have never known because they don’t have any labe
ling laws. Come to that they’re almost as lawless as Home. Law is whatever the Mothers say it is, and they aren’t given to issuing a lot of them. Other clans can challenge them, so they tend to tread lightly and avoid conflict.”
“I’m sorry to report that we avoided conflict over the L1 doctrine for a long time, that however, has come to an end,” April said.
“Well yes, if you activated Bug-Out I knew that. It’s a major, historic, shift. If it’s too upsetting to relate just eat breakfast and leave it for another time,” Jeff offered. “You said everybody is safe. That’s basically all I care about. The Earthies can all go to the Devil.”
“I cleared Earth orbit of as many USNA warships and support vessels as I could,” April decided to tell him anyway. “It’ll be up to others to hunt down their forward starbases and clear them. Heather made it clear that was her intent, once the jackasses flip-flopped again to war again, instead of keeping their treaty. It was a close thing. They put several clouds of gravel through where the habs were. Johnson stopped one, but it didn’t matter, there were three more. I’ll tell you in detail about doing that, maybe tomorrow after I have some sleep. I managed to do it without getting my butt shot off, but just barely.
“They made one crazy attempt to drive a destroyer right at Central. I have no idea if he intended to release weapons or just do a suicide crash and detonate his weapons at the last. It could have even been another robot ship like the others that jumped in. We had some freighters with drone capacity overhead and took him out.”
“That could have been one crazy commander acting without direct orders,” Jeff theorized. “The level of propaganda they disperse can incite some people who believe easily to unreasoning hatred, and fanatics can’t be controlled as well as they’d like.”
“That’s an interesting idea, because there was no other aggressive action against Central. They didn’t even mention Central when they started making the required public excuses for their actions. Apparently, they knew Central is more than they can handle.”
“Which just means that they are waiting to do so later, not that the idea has been permanently abandoned. I don’t know whether to tell Heather that, and upset her, or keep it to myself. She might benefit by thinking on it, slowly coming to see its inevitability,” Jeff said.
“I bet if you asked her, she’d say, Well of course. We’ve known that ever since we retreated beyond the Moon and they still wouldn’t let us alone.”
“Whatever will the Earthies do without Home handy there to blame for their own failings?” Jeff wondered. “They still have Central to abuse.”
“It had to be quite unexpected to them. I assume they will say they have driven us off and that’s what they intended all along. It may take some time to replace the things they imported. You don’t just set up to manufacture in zero-g overnight.
“Even with all the sanctions and embargos people still mostly obtained what we made. They just ended up paying more, except the poor souls who couldn’t afford the drugs they needed. That will be much worse for a while. Of course, we are going to have to find new things to sell and new markets. Most of it will be too dear to sell as star-goods I’m afraid. Heather could decide to expand our trade. That would make it obvious to even their public that we have a better drive. I’m not sure that’s a good thing yet.”
April looked really unhappy and didn’t say more, but Jeff knew her and waited.
“If they follow us to the stars, and keep pulling this same old crap, we are eventually going to have to drop a few rocks on them and knock them back to where they can’t build a starship.”
“And no matter how justified, you will then be a monster in the history books,” Jeff said, basically agreeing. “I’m rather hoping they abuse the Hin or the Badgers and they have to do it instead of us. I already have enough of an evil reputation.”
“Let’s do it Heather’s way and put it off as long as possible. Like you said, somebody else may spank them or as unlikely as it seems they may grow up and stop inflicting their way of living on everyone else.”
“Or the horse may learn to sing,” Jeff said.
“Yeah, seems as likely,” April agreed.
Jeff slowly buttered a biscuit like it was an art form, and gently changed the subject.
“Did someone dart off like you, and give Gabriel a heads up that Fargone is going to get an entire habitat with thousands of people arriving in their system?”
“No, but Heather felt they will be more receptive to Beta than Derfhome would be. I came because it was you, and I felt a personal need to give you a heads-up that Home is coming. Heather didn’t send me, but she did send her love.”
“I’ve never doubted it. She could hardly leave Central under these conditions. What about Gamma? Where will it end up? Surely they won’t send it after either of the others and double up on a system?” Jeff said.
“Gamma is probably happy to be at Mars. They had the largest proportion of residents wanting to leave when the move was announced, and they were given no time to do so. Now they can sort out what they want to do. Any who want to go to the Moon or are crazy enough to go back to the Slum Ball can do so far easier from Mars. I expect some will ask passage to join Home or Beta. If the Martians give them any grief, they may just decide to conquer Mars and put a stop to their brand of endless whining. They disapproval of every world and people who are not Martian. It wouldn’t bother me if the Gamma people fixed that permanently.”
“We’ll have to talk to Lee later today,” Jeff said. “I imagine she’ll want to ask her Mothers if another station is welcome around Derfhome. They seem to be the primary clan to concern themselves with the heavens. I suppose if they want a bit of separation Home could take up station elsewhere in the system. They could even ignore the other planetary bodies and take up an orbit around their sun.
“I had another idea,” Jeff said. “Lee spoke of the center of Human population and business shifting towards those metal-rich brown dwarf systems her little fleet found. Why not send Gamma on to one of them and give them a start at exploiting it? Lee’s registration company would get a tremendous boost from that. How many of the Gamma residents would object to being filthy rich? They would probably be among the top hundredth of a percent of wealthy Humans in short order. When they run out of room, which I’d expect to happen quite soon, they’d have all the materials right at hand to start making a multiple habitat system just like they had back home.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” April agreed, “but we need to make a quick trip back to Sol in a few weeks. I’m happy to own some cubic in Home that will be here now, but I’ve never bought a blessed cubic meter in Gamma for anything. It seems to me that as soon as those dissidents you expect to leave Gamma for the Moon and other points are gone a lot of them will want to unload their cubic on the station at fire-sale prices. Let’s go back and see what we can snatch up before anybody talks about moving it to a brown dwarf and the prices go nuts again.”
“It would be a kindness to mention that to Lee,” Jeff said. “She has an excess of cash reserves, and she’s the sort to remember you did her a favor and hooked her up to a good thing.”
“I’d consider her a good neighbor to have too,” April agreed.
“She has been here so far. She has a quarter of the floor around on the north point,” he said, pointing off that direction.
”It occurs to me that if the three habitats aren’t going to be together now, they won’t have a common Assembly, voting as one,” April said. “That’s another reason to have a presence on each to have the voting rights. So I suppose we should have property on Beta too, just to cover all the bases.”
“And whatever gives us a foot in the door on Derfhome,” Jeff agreed. “Nothing is going to be the same. It will take a long time for all these changes to shake out.”
April couldn’t stifle a big yawn. A big breakfast was making her crash even faster.
“I need to sleep three or four hours,” April insisted. “There
’s none of this that won’t wait that long to talk to Lee. Ask her for a meeting this afternoon. Do you mind waiting so I can be in on it, and rested enough to track what’s going on?”
“Not at all. Somebody woke me with a message about two in the morning,” Jeff said, not naming any names, but looking pointedly at April. “I never did get back to sleep. I could use a little nap with you to be in top form later myself.”
“Are you really going to let me sleep?” April asked, knowing Jeff too well.
“Eventually,” he promised.
* * *
Just before drifting off to sleep Jeff had a thought and looked to make sure April was still awake. “I don’t know if you remember. You once told me that History is the sum of all the low probability events added up.”
“I don’t remember, but it certainly sounds true to me. I’ll own it if you say so.”
“Well, I’ve decided you are right,” Jeff said. “When I look back at all the little things that determined where we are now, none of them jump out at me as obvious choices. A lot of them were almost random, such as whether I happened to be with Heather when you first called her to have her build you something, or whether I was home or hanging out around the cafeteria when my dad was off at a conference. None of them were huge willful decisions, and there’s no way to predict which small acts are critical.”
“That’s OK, life would be boring if it was really that predictable,” April said.
While Jeff pondered whether that was true or not, April went to sleep, deeply sure of her statement and not at all troubled by the messy randomness of life like Jeff. It just kept happening no matter what he thought of it.
* * *
Born applied power to the new sample they had on disk. There didn’t seem to be the expected result, but then he saw the speed was slowing down and the bearing temperature climbed a bit. Apparently, it was generating thrust on the long axis.
“This is really odd,” he told Musical, “come take a look at this.”
Friends in the Stars Page 37
