Space Rodeo

by Jenny Schwartz

  After confirming the coded greeting to use with Ululani, Helen signed off.

  Thelma slumped. She was confident of the bunyaphi’s safety once aboard the Dobbin. However, Helen’s ghosts had been scary. The trampship captain was haunted by her past.

  That was the nature of the frontier. Some people sought their fortunes. Others hoped to escape their pasts. Except for the current crazies who had overwhelmed Owen. They were just here for the Space Rodeo.

  But events left ripples. Thelma wondered how the Saloon Sector would have changed by the time the Space Rodeo ended.

  She slapped the arms of the office chair. Musing could wait, and as much as she’d like to call Max, she had a promise to keep: lunch for a family of hungry, grumpy yprr. Evo’s famous curried tubers would score her hospitality points, but she’d have to hurry before the spacedock eatery sold out. With the Space Rodeo crowds, it would happen fast.

  “Have you met Owen’s Uncle Ioan?” Thelma asked Max three hours later. “He is terrifying.” That was the truth, but she was also hoping to coax a smile from Max. He looked so serious, and tired, on the viewscreen.

  “I’m glad Ioan’s around. Thelma…” Max scrubbed a hand over his face. “You can’t come back to the Lonesome yet. We’re hiding from Covert Ops.”

  “Well, that sounds exciting.”

  He grimaced. “Carl Jafarov, my new deputy, is a Covert Ops cyborg. They’ve invested a significant operative in infiltrating us.”

  “Oh.” She bit back a swearword. She was tired, too. She missed Max and had been anticipating her homecoming. This call had been meant, among other purposes, to set up a rendezvous. “So if I made my way to the Lonesome, they’d track me.”

  “Yes.” He barely paused. “I’m also worried, maybe it’s paranoia, but if they want to draw me out, you’d make the best hostage.”

  She inhaled so sharply that her tongue clicked the roof of her mouth. “I’ll stay alert.”

  “Can you also stay on the spacedock? Owen is fiercer than he’ll admit, a match for his family. If they’re around you’ll be safe. Also, Customs is a stronger force in the Saloon Sector than Galactic Justice believes. Sharing office space with them is a good idea. Walking the spacedock with a group of them is a good idea.”

  Apprehension shivered over her skin. Max was right. Covert Ops sending a cyborg to the Lonesome was serious. There were very few cyborgs; probably a thousand times more existed in movies and comics than in reality. When her brother Joe had suffered his injuries in the Star Marines, she’d researched the possibility…anything to restore his life and potential. But he’d never been offered the cyborg option. Cyborg enhancements had to be approved by a board of Federation authorities, and such approvals were rare.

  “Max, why are you hiding?”

  He shifted in his chair. “We’ve locked Carl up as a prisoner on the public deck. Kitchen, lounge and a single cell.”

  Of course they had. They couldn’t let a cyborg, his capabilities unknown, roam the Lonesome. But still. “You’ve imprisoned a Covert Ops agent?”

  “Yes.”

  Between Max, Lon and Harry, they wouldn’t have done so without considering the repercussions. They’d evidently decided that the consequences were worth it.

  Thelma puzzled through their probable reasoning. “So as long as this Carl Jafarov is locked up, incommunicado, you can continue as sheriff. But as soon as he makes contact with Covert Ops, or anyone, you’ll be fired, possibly charged for acting against a Galactic Justice agent?”

  “Protective custody,” Max said. “I judged it unsafe for Carl to live freely on the Lonesome, dangerous to both him and my ship. So I kept him secure. It’s obviously bunkum, but if I threaten to expose him as a cyborg…I might be able to survive this. You are not involved.”

  “Max!”

  “And since we’re stealthed, Harry can, if necessary, slip away, too.”

  Thelma glowered. “Leaving you and Lon to shoulder the blame.”

  “Our choice.” Max sighed. “As much as I want to keep our secrets from Covert Ops, they’re not the enemy. Not even the cyborg. But we have real ones, and they’re partly why I want you safe on the spacedock, in sight of allies at all times, unless you’re locked in the office.”

  “Who?”

  “Elliot Keele.”

  The name spiraled Thelma back to her first space battle, the one instigated by ex-senator Gua’s desire for revenge, her need to see Thelma dead.

  The Lonesome had been lured into an ambush with two of Elliot Keele’s spaceships leading a motley collection of bandits’ vessels. Harry had obliterated Keele’s ships, the Elegant Dame and the Guinevere. A destroyer and cruiser were heavy losses for the crime lord’s mercenary corporation to bear. He couldn’t wriggle out from under the financial blow, but he had finagled his way out of legal responsibility for the Elegant Dame and Guinevere’s attack on an Interstellar Sheriff. Even with his finances taking a hit, Keele hadn’t skimped on buying the best legal talent.

  “I thought he’d be licking his wounds,” Thelma said. “His senator is gone.” Senator Gua had been more than Elliot’s connection to Federation political power. She’d represented the Reclamation Sector before Covert Ops had targeted her and strategically released information sufficient to remove her from office following her instigation of an attack on the President’ son. Although Max believed she hadn’t known of his identity beyond that of sheriff.

  Gua had been in the Boldire Sector when she was removed from office, and she was still making her way home, the long way around, via civilian starliner. Stripped of access to Galactic Justice vessels, she couldn’t traverse the perilous wormhole in the Saloon Sector which had been her shortcut to the Boldire Sector and her official role as part of the Senate Worlds Development Committee mediating the bunyaphi clan war.

  Thelma had a file dedicated to keeping track of her enemies, and although Gua was mostly defanged, the former senator still headed that list.

  Apparently, Max felt differently. He’d stuck a crime lord at the top of the list. Why?

  “Is Elliot Keele after revenge for the destruction of his spaceships?” and their crews? The loss of lives had been the worst part of the space battle. Thelma felt cold despite the climate controlled office.

  “I doubt Keele loses sight of his goals, even for revenge,” Max said. “I think we’ve underestimated him. And that Gua did, too.”

  “Just a minute.” Thelma got up, grabbed a jacket Max had left on a hook by the door, and sat back down with it wrapped around her.

  “Honey.” His voice was rough with emotion.

  She smiled crookedly at the screen with its camera. “Next best thing to a hug. Go on, tell me about Keele.”

  Max cleared his throat. “Lon’s focused on his data map and the first signs. They’re effective. We’re getting the jump on trouble.”

  “Say congrats to Lon from me.”

  The AI could eavesdrop on their transmission, but wouldn’t.

  The “first signs” that Max mentioned were the predictive capacity Lon had developed and now applied to the problems of policing the area around the Space Rodeo arena.

  Lon had mentored Thelma through establishing herself as an information broker, and in doing so, he’d revealed a lot about himself, his interests and values. It would be an overstatement to say he was obsessed by human intuition. However, for years Lon had committed significant processing power to running and refining predictive algorithms. Now, that ability was focused on Max’s sheriff territory and identifying incipient potentialities, at which point a minor action could prevent trouble developing down the line. This was chaos theory applied in awe inspiring form.

  “The Navy reservists are the ones making it work,” Max said. “Lon sends Regina a sheriff’s order and she passes it on to the nearest reservist to fulfil. They don’t question why they’re being asked to hail a certain ship at a certain time or to stop off at a repair facility or to start a themed conversation on the discussion boar
ds, they just do it. Lon has taken five amber alerts off the board as a specific minor action cascades through and de-escalates trouble.”

  There were others in Max’s network of influence that Lon would also be drawing on, sometimes with an official request, other times by manipulation.

  “Lon is fully occupied with preventing trouble and with hiding the Lonesome.” Stealth shields were only part of the trick to hiding a spaceship. A major element was choosing unpredictable routes and utilizing the concealment opportunities provided by natural hazards. Max rolled his shoulders. “The reservists sighted two ships with false IDs near Xlokk. I started thinking about bandit activity, and that started me thinking of Keele’s ties with the bandits, demonstrated by Mazod’s involvement in the ambush on us near Levanter. It’s not only the bandits or organized crime that can take advantage of the chaos surrounding the Space Rodeo, I could, too. Our actions are masked. Far less predictable.”

  “As Covert Ops is discovering,” Thelma interjected.

  Max grinned fleetingly, fiercely. “That’s when I thought of Carl, an unused resource. So I set him a target. Elliot Keele. Lon provides him with any data he requests, and the idea is for Carl to come up with a strategy to take down the crime lord.”

  Thelma hesitated. “But if Covert Ops left Keele in place even as they tore down Gua, why would your spy help?”

  “Because of who he is. People approved to become cyborgs have to have moral codes that emphasize service and justice. Carl will follow the orders of his Covert Ops handler, but he has some wriggle room. Remember, he’s meant to be undercover on the Lonesome, which means acting as a deputy. I’ve ordered him to shut down a crime lord, and he’ll grab the opportunity. He’ll want to get justice for Keele’s victims.”

  Service and justice. That sounded a lot like the principles that drove Max. Possibly Covert Ops had chosen their agent to infiltrate the Lonesome for more than his technical abilities. Shared values built rapport, and that lowered a person’s defenses and blunted their suspicions. “Max, is Lon monitoring Carl?”

  “At all times. Harry is active back-up. Don’t worry. Carl is staying locked up while he’s on the Lonesome.”

  She nodded.

  “Carl is still profiling Keele. A couple of years spent undercover on Tornado gives Carl a different perspective. He paints Keele as a snake.”

  “Duplicitous?”

  “Sheds his skin. Keele is in his seventies, my dad’s age. The man has reinvented himself a few times. Evolved, others might say. The thing is he’s willing to burn his past to establish the next life he’s reaching for.”

  A laugh caught Thelma unprepared, and she choked. “He’s a criminal phoenix.”

  Max leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees. “We thought Keele set up the ambush of the Lonesome as a favor to Gua. What if that was merely an excuse? He gambled the Elegant Dame and the Guinevere, and he lost them, but he had his legal defense ready.”

  “…his legal defense ready,” she repeated slowly, thinking. “Yes. Yes, he did.”

  “But if he wanted me, as sheriff gone, he didn’t have to try again because the comet helices appeared and the Space Rodeo has me completely occupied—and distracted, if not for Lon’s work.”

  Thelma rose and paced. The camera would follow her. She looked at the viewscreen. “You’re turning our thinking upside down, so that it’s Keele who used Gua to go after us rather than vice versa.”

  “Yes, and if he wants extra insurance that I’m distracted, he’ll go after you again.”

  She perched her butt against his desk. “I’ll be careful. But you have to be, too. Don’t let that cyborg strategize you into doing something crazy.”

  “Crazier than imprisoning him?” The tired lines at the corners of Max’s eyes deepened with his smile.

  Thelma smiled back. “Calculated recklessness. I love you. One last thing before you go.” She briefly described the favor she’d done for Aubree.

  Max consulted Lon’s data map. “Bill comm’d us the information on the arrival of the first bunyaphi spaceship at the Deadstar Diner, but we didn’t know there’d be a second.”

  “And a third stopped somewhere for repairs.”

  “I wish I knew where Aubree gets her info,” he muttered. Then he looked back at Thelma through the camera. “Love you. Stay safe.”

  The transmission ended.

  Thelma sighed. A couple of minutes later she strolled out to speak with Owen.

  With the horde of Saloon Sector complainants…ahem, visitors redirected to his family’s less than welcoming reception, Owen’s domain was relatively empty. A sole saurelle courier chatted with him, making a routine complaint against her latest speeding fine.

  Thelma waited till the courier had gone before briefing Owen that not only was she staying, but that Max had asked for her to request Owen’s family’s protection.

  “Thank goodness you bought them lunch,” he said. Then his antennae wriggled in amusement. “I’m kidding. They’ll love to have an excuse to stomp around the spacedock being borderline berserker.”

  “That’s not reassuring at all.”

  He nudged her on his shuffle to the door. “I have more cousins. Let’s go see who’ll volunteer for Thelma protection duty.”

  Chapter 4

  “So, I have three bunyaphi aboard the Dobbin, thank you very much,” Helen said to Thelma after the latter comm’d her to check that Ululani’s extraction had gone smoothly.

  “How? Why?” Thelma put down the dagger she was sharpening before she cut herself.

  The dagger was one of the many sharp implements Owen’s uncle Ioan insisted she’d be training with, starting tomorrow. He’d be inspecting her preparation of them. Yprr believed in the efficacy of sharp pointy things.

  Helen laughed, so at least she wasn’t angry about the unexpected guests…crew? “After you comm’d, I hustled into the diner—and boy is it busy. I think some people are docking for weeks just to join the party, what with all the tourist dudes dropping in. A belated second lunch gave me cover to casually share my ‘idle notion’ of hiring on a crew member for company on the remainder of the journey to Levanter. Naturally, the old timers laughed at the idea of venturing somewhere as tedious as Levanter with no other ships likely to be at the endpoint to hire on with, and so, having to travel back with me on the Dobbin, and all for minimum wage.

  “But their derision meant the idea was established before the bunyaphi vessel docked. They allowed pretty much their whole crew to enter the diner, which brought conversation crashing to a halt. The bunyaphi stick so much to the Boldire Sector, that few had seen them in person before. However, a smart ass asteroid miner did my work for me, suggesting sarcastically that one of the ‘fairies’ might be dumb enough to crew for me.”

  Helen paused. “Pretending that I was challenging his taunt, I repeated my employment offer to the bunyaphi and…all of them asked to see the Dobbin, the captain included!”

  “No!”

  “Yup.” Helen sounded amused. “Aubree outdid herself with this ploy. All the bunyaphi on the Biting Teeth are interested in experiencing more of the world beyond Boldire. Why they can’t roam around on the Biting Teeth, I didn’t ask. And I won’t. Those with me can’t cause trouble traveling out to Levanter.”

  Thank the heavens for a smart and commonsensical friend. Thelma smiled with relief. “It’s smarter to stay out of this. Whatever this is. Getting Ululani away is more than enough. But go on…the captain and crew came aboard…”

  “To be fair to the captain and officers, they were checking on conditions if any of the crew decided to jump ship to the Dobbin. I got the impression that they’d overdone the number of crew in the expectation of losing a few to the big bad outer galaxy. Katu was a hit with them. Apparently, dragons haven’t made it out to Boldire as pets. They gave me their approval after they met him. Single female with pet dragon. Ululani elected to stay with me, but so did another female and a male. The captain took me aside and assured me t
hat Tivor was an honorable male.”

  Thelma lost her desire to giggle. “They sound nice.”

  Helen sighed. “Most bunyaphi I’ve met are, in the right circumstances. They care about their own.”

  “I asked you to help someone who’s been spying on them.” Abusing their trust. And trust was important to Helen. Thelma picked up the whetstone, but not the dagger. She fidgeted with it.

  “I agreed, knowing what I was getting into.” Helen changed the subject. “I lowered the gravity in the third transport so that the bunyaphi can fly around in it. Katu had a wonderful time zipping around with other flyers. It’ll encourage him to exercise and strengthen his wings.”

  In other words, Helen was okay, and Thelma shouldn’t worry. “Thanks for extracting Ululani.”

  With the transmission ended, Thelma concentrated on cleaning and honing the sharp weapons. The situation with the bunyaphi was not her problem. She couldn’t focus on it. Researching it could draw attention to them, or to her, and while she didn’t know what was going on with them, the latter possibility meant danger.

  Why had a ship from each clan traversed the perilous wormhole? Did they intend on belatedly joining the Space Rodeo, but if so, why skirt it to arrive at the Deadstar Diner? Was it simply that the bunyaphi had caught the somewhat clandestine news that it was at the diner a few months back that the Kampia had introduced themselves to the Federation, via Max and Thelma? A lot of people wouldn’t be able to pass by even a slim chance at encountering an alien.

  “You’re overthinking things.”

  The bunyaphi had probably heard Wild Blaster Bill’s tall story of a secret cache of raphus geodes at the asteroid the Deadstar Diner was parked on and couldn’t resist a treasure hunt.

  Thelma put the dagger down and chose a complicated throwing star to clean next. Its multiple sharp edges would keep her attention. If she turned up to her first lesson with Ioan with injuries from careless weapon cleaning, he might wash his claws of her and abandon her to her inept fate.

  The yprr preferred life planetside to spacefaring, and tended to specialize in the more militant, aggressive professions. For relaxation, Owen’s family had a vast shared range on Zephyr in which they hunted. The yprr were naturally equipped to fight with sharp weapons. The claws that tipped their second pair of appendages were multi-faceted and could break apart or lock together for a stronger strike. Yprr who earned elite team roles in the various branches of the military were custom fitted for armored carapaces that sat outside their natural carapaces and could both shield and house weapons. Ioan had retired from active duty, but kept his armor. The least Thelma owed such a prestigious trainer was to demonstrate her respect.