Lee, Sharon & Miller, Steve - Liaden Books 1-9

by Liaden 1-9 (lit)

  The comm's beep changed from the single, 'attention' beep to the three-toned phrase belonging to calls from Security—Natesa or Cheever McFarland, that would be. Both of whom were at Surebleak Port, awaiting the contracted delivery from the Juntavas. He snatched the unit free.

  "Conrad," he said, terse; no longer hesitating over the assumed name.

  "Our shipment has arrived in good order," came Natesa's musical voice, unstrained and unsurprised. "Transhipping is well under way. I must admit to an error, however, in scheduling your visit to the country. It appears that certain matters have run ahead of us and your countenance is required at port, rather sooner than later. The portmasters themselves make the request."

  Pat Rin sighed—for both portmasters to be on duty together was not a good sign.

  "No news without complexity, eh, Natesa? Shall I rush?"

  "Yes, denubia. It would be best."

  Silently, Pat Rin damned the device for its lack of visual screen— or even a speaker capable of transmitting nuance.

  "Soonest, then," he said, briefly, discreetly. "I will be there."

  He thumbed the comm off, leaned forward and spoke to the driver.

  "Gwince, if you please, we are in need of the banshee. Take me to the portmaster's office quickly."

  She nodded. "Right, Boss. To the port!"

  The siren wailed into life, startling the peaceful street outside his window into chaos. Lesser vehicles pulled quickly aside. Pedestrians, reflexes honed by years of violence, jumped for the meager protection of doors and alleyways. Some few, bolder, stood their ground, staring wide-eyed as the big car surged forward, pressing Pat Rin deep into the comfort of the big back seat.

  "What we have here is a conundrum," Dayside Portmaster Claren Liu said, from the head of the hastily cleared conference table. "The port has taken the report of First Class Pilot Bhupendra Darteshek—" This was, Pat Rin had learned, the name of the very tall, very thin, very dark-skinned Juntavas pilot—and the corroborating report of First Class Pilot Vilma Karapov—" Pilot Darteshek's co-pilot, a well-muscled blonde with skin so pale it seemed tinged with blue—"that we've got what might be pirates in the system. They say that they were shadowed into Port—and they've provided instrument verification."

  As the ability to come and go like shadows themselves was the claim the Juntavas—through Natesa—had made for their couriers, this hardly seemed auspicious. Pat Rin spoke across the table to Pilot Darteshek.

  "How is that you allowed yourselves to be followed?"

  White teeth gleamed in a thin, feral grin. "We don't be followed. They was here when we Jump in."

  Pat Rin felt a chill run his spine, and inclined his head courteously. "That does put a different face on the matter. Thank you, pilot."

  "Right," said Portmaster Liu, and looked 'round the table to be sure she had everyone's attention—everyone being the two courier pilots, Pat Rin, Natesa, Cheever McFarland, and nightside portmaster Etienne Borden—before proceeding.

  "We all know that Surebleak is a low tier port. We do have two guild portmasters; we've got a few hands and two back-up volunteer portmasters who're on call in case of an emergency. We have two weather satellites to back up comm traffic and a comm satellite that backs up the weather satellites. We've got one space-going tug. What we don't have is defense." She shook her head.

  "Why this is so…" she made a wry mouth and sipped from a dispenser cup of coffee.

  "History lesson," she said apologetically. "See, Surebleak is a corporate world. It belongs—belonged—to something called the Gilmour Agency, which was set up to develop the planetary timonium deposits. They were pretty good-sized deposits, and the planet itself was near enough to habitable that they had some big plans for it—the designs for the orbiting mirrors they were going to use to eventually bring the temperature up a few degrees are on file in the port 'base." She shrugged. "The assumption was that there'd be a real economy here. Timonium and by-products going out, with maybe some specialty ores, gemstones, local lumber, and such to sweeten the load. Incoming would be supplies for the mines and the miners. In addition to development rights, Gilmour Agency was empowered to establish a local government corporation, which would have the responsibility of upgrading and maintaining the port." She had another sip of coffee and continued.

  "Gilmour had barely gotten started here when their competitors located Tanzir's System two light years to galactic west. Three big airless rocks of not much else but high-grade timonium left over from the same event that helped make Surebleak the garden spot of the galaxy that it is. Gilmour Agency folded—defaulted on everything—and the local government never did get established—" She looked sharply down-table.

  "I hope I'm not boring you, Boss Conrad."

  Pat Rin bowed slightly in his seat. "Not at all. In fact, I expect that I will be needing as much of the formal history of Surebleak as you have…"

  "Right," she interrupted. "You will. Because all this comes down to the reason why we don't have weapons or defense. It's because the local planetary government has to approve, authorize, certify, and assist in providing all planetary or system defenses. And until just lately, Surebleak hasn't had a planetary government."

  Pat Rin stared at her, deliberately haughty, while his mind raced. He was, by a vote of the Affiliated Bosses, Head Boss, empowered to speak for all if the need arose. His proposed structure had been somewhat different, modeled, as it had been, on the Council of Clans. His fellow bosses, however, had insisted that there must be one Head Boss—"Boss Boss," Penn Kalhoon had joked—and he had bowed to that, seeing that this was the model they understood. He had then appointed Penn Kalhoon Second Boss, and between them they had begun to match the tasks that needed to be done with those who had the talents to accomplish them. Which in effect meant…

  He looked up to find Claren Liu looking at him with grim amusement.

  "Boss Conrad," she said, with a formal nod of the head. "As Surebleak portmaster, I request your approval to begin planetary defense planning, your permission to act in the name of Surebleak in the case of incident, and your agreement to assist in developing an on-going security net." She paused. "Without your OK, all I can do is pass a note to the guild, saying I've got possible pirates in-system."

  Pat Rin glanced out the window. The second level port office was bathed in sunlight, and overlooked the tarmac to the east, and with a portion of a road that connected to the Port Road. On the tarmac sat two ships—the port's tug and the courier's surprisingly large vessel.

  "I assume that I must regard this as an official request?" he finally asked, facing the portmaster once more.

  "That's right. It has to be witnessed by two master pilots or a master pilot and three first class." She offered him a sympathetic grin.

  "We can't have ships running around shadowing our incoming now that we have an ad out," she said. "It'd be—"

  "Bad for business," Pat Rin finished gently along with her.

  He rose, and inclined his head.

  "I acknowledge your proposal, Portmaster, and I hereby approve your request to begin planetary defense planning. I give you permission to act for Surebleak in case of incident. As for a planetary security net—" he glanced aside, catching Cheever McFarland's eye. "I may be able to provide assistance, especially if there are pilots to hand."

  Cheever's eyes widened, then closed. Pat Rin suppressed a smile and sat down.

  "I will sign documents, if that is required," he told the portmaster. "Mr. McFarland, if you would do me the favor of going to the car and bringing up the contents of the back seat. Portmaster, I propose a working lunch."

  She grinned at him merrily. "Right you are. I'll send for food—and there's a couple others we'll want here, if you'll let me call them in?'

  He inclined his head. "Certainly."

  Day 45

  Standard Year 1393

  Sherzer System

  "Told you there was something spooky about them 'quations, Shugg. I must know something d
eep down…" that was Andy Mack—the Colonel, so-called—idly stropping a credit chit along the flowing silver hair falling across the front of his leather jacket as he leaned against the back of second board's acceleration couch.

  "Well, the screwy thing is it ain't exactly obvious, no matter how much you think about it…" Shugg agreed.

  The grizzled and short-haired Shugg—Flyer Shugg to his Surebleak acquaintances—sat second board at the moment, with Cheever McFarland at first. Crowding behind them were the other seven members of the expedition: Boss Conrad, Natesa, Etienne Borden, Juntavas pilots Darteshek and Karapov, Andy Mack, and "call me Dostie," the taciturn pilot of the port's official tug, whose hair—today at least—matched the electric pink tunic she wore beneath her jump jacket.

  They had all sat second at one point or another during the trip. Pat Rin's glare had been ignored by the master pilot when his name came around on the roster; perforce, he had taken the seat warmed by Dostie, who had had it after the Colonel, who had it after Natesa, and had run his board with a cool aplomb he was very far from feeling. Now Shugg sat second, his grin slow and easy as he played with the screens.

  "Lookit. We got a brown dwarf as primary and one-two-three neat as a pin stepping stone blue-and-green gas cousins with halos and then little Miss Blue running a bit askew in an outside orbit. Me, I'd like to know what happened to the missing planet!"…: ..

  "Oh, hain't missing, Shugg!" Andy Mack scolded him genially. "You always want to find something missing. Check the resonance and you'll see…"

  Natesa smiled and raised her eyes; Pat Rin smiled in answer. He had, quite unexpectedly, enjoyed the trip, despite the crowding and the lack of opportunity to be private with his lady. But truly, he not found a group this convivial since…well…ever.

  "Might be some rocks out beyond," Dostie offered. "But the Colonel's right, anything bigger than grains will get swept out of that gap because the mass ratio's almost a perfect 9, 5, 4, 3…and with orbital periods being what they are—might be your Miss Blue is what's missing!"

  "Now," Cheever said, raising his voice to be heard over the chatter, "we get to the fun part. If you were looking for a ship-stack out in the middle of this nowhere, where would you look?"

  It was, of course, a joke, and Pat Rin was relieved to hear Pilot McFarland refer to their destination as other than a "ship graveyard"—an image not conducive to hope, which had so delighted the pilot that he had used it in every other sentence. Likewise, he had dropped the word "derelicts," which the ships they sought assuredly would not be, from his vocabulary.

  "Shall we ask them where they are, Mr. McFarland?" Pat Rin murmured.

  Cheever, careful of watchful eyes, keyed in the call phrase, shrank the info screen to thumbnail on the second's board, and said, "I'll take bets. Who'd care to name time—minutes and seconds—before we get an answer from the beacon? Boss, you sit out, OK?"

  The assembled pilots laughed, placed their bets, and settled into an animated exploration of the Sherzer system by instrument.

  The universe was not something Pat Rin yos'Phelium contemplated often, he being too much in it to feel apart from it. Now, however, he sat at the second board of Fortune's Reward, listening to its systems chuckling wistfully against the sudden silence of a ship with no one else in it, and shivered.

  He had been to the brown dwarf’s system only once before. Cousin Er Thom had brought him—as surly and as graceless a halfling as one might ever wish to drown—insisting first that he memorize the coords, the call phrase, and the gate codes.

  He had not, of course, wasted his time with Er Thom contemplating the universe. Instead, he had with cold dignity refused the shuttle's controls when they were offered, having already failed his piloting test for the fourth time. The terms of his refusal must have distressed his cousin, but Er Thom had merely nodded and changed the subject, filling the hours of the trip with stories of Clanmother Cantra, tales of Uncle Daav, arcane bits of ship lore; and, as they approached their goal more nearly, he had told of the strange mechanism which kept this collection of ships and ship parts together, for the use of Korval—and those whom Korval allowed.

  Unwillingly, Pat Rin had listened, and despite his firm intention, found himself charmed out of surliness, so that he actually enjoyed sharing the picnic lunch Er Thom had brought along. After, and in closer accord, they crossed to the automated office, where he was shown the keys and the folders, and had his palmprint filed with the guardian computers.

  That done, Er Thom had taken him on a tour of the stacks, showing him the controls and several ancient ships—one of which was still spaceworthy some six centuries after it was built!

  Eventually, they had returned to the shuttle. As the ship-stack dwindled behind them, Cousin Er Thom had spoken to him seriously of his future, offering several alternative courses of education—all of them based away from the homeworld—borne his clumsy, halfling scorn with patience, and taken him back to the Passage as if all were well.

  Now Pat Rin—perhaps the last of his clan; perhaps Korval-in-Truth—had returned to mine the ship-stack, for the defense and preservation of the clan. He had been astonished that the access numbers he had memorized so long ago still worked; that the robot guardian recalled his palmprint; that the system of key and folder was precisely as the ill-tempered halfling had recalled it…

  Around him, the ship burbled, and the familiar cycling of the air system failed to disturb his patient consideration of the past.

  It was, truth told, the first time Pat Rin had ever been quite so alone. He had never—as his younger cousins had—done a solo run; and, though he not infrequently traveled alone, there had never been a time in his life when he had been more than a moment or two away from another human; even in space he had always had a pilot of superb skill to depend upon.

  Now, the person nearest him was a pilot he'd barely met— Dostie. She, too, sat alone in a ship, more than two dozen Standard Minutes away from him. Natesa—alone in her vessel—was approximately three dozen Standard Minutes away, while Cheever McFarland, Flyer Shugg, and the nightside portmaster oversaw the checking and selection of the last of their potential fleet, lashed neatly together nearly four dozen minutes away.

  To beguile himself, Pat Rin sat at second board, and began to tentatively explore the Sherzer system with instruments and screens. Sherzer II loomed in front of him; one long range screen showed the remaining cluster of ships to be explored, as well as the seventeen other "ship-stacks"—some no more than a collection of parts—with the limb of the planet and a distant view of the multi-hued planetary ring beyond. Fortune's Reward was in effect orbiting in formation with all of these ships, in the trailing LaGrange point of Sherzer II.

  It was a lovely place for a junkyard, and Pat Rin found himself absorbed in the shimmer of the innermost ring; the colors of the storms swirling across the planet's surface; and the beautiful tracery of the lightning flashes—

  "Boss?"

  Cheever McFarland's voice boomed into the quiet ship, startling Pat Rin out of his reverie.

  "Yes?" he snapped. There was a delay, longer than could be accounted for by the relative nearness of their ships.

  "Um, yeah," Pilot McFarland said. "Sorry to bother you. But anyhow, we might have ourselves a problem, a kind of decision problem, if you know what I mean?"

  Pat Rin shook his head, a habit which his mother had deplored in his cousins, and to which he had finally succumbed on Surebleak.

  "Pilot, I am destined for problems of decision on this project," he said, making a conscious effort to lighten his tone. "If you can explain the situation in non-technical terms I will hear it and contribute what I may to the solving."

  Again, he shook his head. The decisions. First had been the decision of which cluster of ships was most promising; then, after nearly two days, the decision to abandon them in favor of a potentially more… useful… solution.

  The first cluster chosen had been a mixed collection of ships, all operable, but with v
isible problems ranging from missing space-suits to thruster fuel supplies too ancient to be reliable. A notation in the folder indicated that they had been for sale and were awaiting inspection of a potential buyer—fifteen Standards before. Apparently they had been passed over, and for good cause.

  The possibly more useful solution came in the form of a pod of vessels of strange design and even stranger decor. Passed over in the first glance because they were parked among what looked to be random parts of two or three space stations, they proved on second glance to be asteroid miners. One side of each ship was painted flat black, and other a white so bright that it was nearly silver. And gaudily adorning each side—in white on the black side, in green on the white side—was the tree-and-dragon shield in so large a size that it could easily be seen before the true shape of the ships.

  There was no way, of course, to quickly alter the look of the fleet, and because they were non-standard ships, checking them for utility was more difficult. Morever, their keys had been filed in a folder marked "reserved," though for whom Pat Rin had been unable to discover. Thus, each vessel was serially inspected and tested, and proved to be in remarkably good repair for ships left on their own in deep space. So far of the dozen, five had been found unfit.

  Cheever McFarland cleared his throat. "Boss, this boat here is the queen. Call it a command ship. We got the complete package running and everything looks to be in great shape. Got a test program right here on the board that lets me check out the other ships remotely."

  Pat Rin considered. This hardly seemed to be a problem…but the other man was continuing without waiting for an answer.