by Tom Shepherd
“We already have a case,” J.B. said.
Tyler nodded. “Yes, but you’re not keen on flying to Pirate space on behalf of Flávio Tavares.” And I’d rather not dodge the question about why Mom’s sending me there without you. “We could divide the workload. You, Rosalie, Parvati and Chief León accept the job Dennis requested.”
Rosalie started to protest. “I want to go with you.”
“Baby Sis, if we’re playing in a First Contact sandbox,” Tyler said. “J.B. will need an exo-anthropologist.”
She nodded, glumly.
“Extricating Bertie from trouble at Olathe-5 was your project,” J.B. said. “He probably expects you.”
“Tough titty. I’m taking Mom’s assignment. Do you want the case referred by Uncle Dennis, or not?”
J.B. turned to Demarcus. “What about an investigator?”
“Officer Matsuda can accompany you,” Demarcus Platte said.
Tyler and Suzie exchanged glances. For the first time, he wished she could read his mind. Apparently, she could.
“Forgive me for disagreeing, Inspector, but you are the right man for the job at Ounta-Kadiis space,” Suzie said. “Seasoned investigator with a flair for making contacts among the locals.”
Tyler nodded. “Yumiko and her family unit would be a great asset to my case in Pirate court. Lovey and Mr. Blue are attorneys.”
“I’ve trained Yumiko to be a top-notch security specialist,” Platte said. “Besides, J.B. will need legal help, and a Quirt-Thymean lawyer like Mr. Blue might know the Ounta-Kadiis.”
“I am also an attorney,” Parvati said. “Jeremiah downloaded a legal education to my program. He has been instructing me in courting behavior.”
“Uh… court-room,” J.B. said, red-faced.
“Yeah, Primo,” Julieta snickered. “We kinda figured she was instructing you in the other skill set.”
“Demarcus, this is a tough call,” Tyler said, “but I’m going to send you with J.B. You’ll have Rosalie to provide cultural context and extra security, on demand.”
Platte shrugged. “You’re the Boss.”
“With Julieta headed for Pirate space,” Suzie said, “you will need a doctor aboard the Beagle.”
Julieta nodded. “Dr. Sarnai is fully qualified in med-surg, and the Beagle will easily accommodate her holo-matrix. She can download two lab techs and a few nurses to assist her. Is that okay, Jerry?”
J.B. thanked her. “Sarnai is a good doctor. And we’re not flying into a combat zone.”
“Then it’s settled,” Tyler said. “I promised we wouldn’t leave until everybody had a chance to speak. Anybody want to add anything?”
Esteban raised a hand. “I will accompany J.B., if I can be of service.”
J.B. nodded. “Your skills as an emote-reader will be quite helpful.”
Esteban smiled. “I was thinking about the chaperon position.”
The crew adjourned with lingering laughter. Well, good, Tyler thought. They need to start this double-mission cheerfully as possible. Now, how do I tell my half of the team we’ll be flying to Mom’s assignment in a confiscated pirate ship?
Four
Inspector Platte unlocked the cabin where Arrupt Kilub Riff squatted on the bed. The Dengathi had pulled off his prison jumpsuit and adjusted the climate control to simulate a steamy afternoon by a tropical pond. His bony limbs and belly-bloat gave the naked amphibian the unmistakable look of a huge, green, Terran frog.
“Matt Junior, you got food I eat?” he said in raspy Terran Standard.
Suzie stepped into the room between Tyler and Demarcus. “We invite you to sample the cuisine from our food dispensers,” she croaked in Regalik.
“Allza human women Dengathi speak?” he said in broken Terran.
“This is a special crew,” Tyler said.
Arrupt’s big eyes scanned Suzie. “You ugly. Also Catholic?”
She responded with a distinctly ribbit-peep sound.
Tyler was constantly amazed at how much data his beautiful blonde fiancé-former-AI-program still had at her fingertips. As a bioenergetic entity, she was now a fully functional human female, yet retained her ability to link with computer networks to access data. Suzie could also computer-hop, vanish from one location to reappear at any point in linked systems. No problem to flash from this cabin, to the bridge, to the cargo decks in the blink of a nanosecond.
Arrupt clucked, bobbed his knobby head, and chanted in guttural cadence. “Áve María, grátia pléna, Dóminus técum…”
Tyler could almost hear Suzie’s Neo-British voice in his head. “This bloody amphib is praying to the Virgin Mary in Latin. The Universe has gone croaking mad.”
Suzie waited until Arrupt had finished his Áve María. “Would you like to speak with Father Cárcel? Perhaps he could hear your confession.”
“Not need confession. Not do nothing bad.”
“He will listen to your concerns with compassion.”
“Why I need priest? Can be good Catholic with self.”
“Okay, Mr. Arrupt, back to business. I’ll make this simple.” Tyler quickly added, “For my benefit.” Yeah… bad diplomatic opener to remind this ectotherm he’s dumber than a pet rock.
Arrupt chirped and clicked and bobbed his head.
“You have something we need, Phibby,” Tyler said. “We have something you need. Let’s negotiate.”
Arrupt dropped into Regalik and rattled off a paragraph of clucks, grunts, croaks and whistles. Suzie asked him a question and he replied with a single syllable.
Suzie pursed her lips and turned to her fiancé. “He says he won’t help any Dirt Monkeys.”
“What’s with the ‘Dirt Monkeys’ crap?”
“They call our homeworld Dirt.”
“Why Dirt?”
Suzie flipped a hand. “Why not? Even though Terra is seventy percent covered by water, some people still call it Earth.”
Arrupt croaked and made the ribbit-peep sound.
“He says he’s ready for you to beat him now.”
“Okay, okay. Translate please.” Tyler sat on the bed. The Frog did not flinch. “Mr. Arrupt, nobody on this ship will beat you. We don’t do that to anybody.” He dropped into rapid Spanish, for Suzie’s ears only. “Although occasionally I’ve been tempted to smack the mierda out of Rodney Rooney.”
She laughed and translated it to Regalik before Tyler could protest. The Frog smiled and Suzie said, “I told him you have a few fingerlings you’d like to throw on dry land. It’s the Dengathi equivalent to slapping the shit out of a fool.”
“Terran-speak, please?” Arrupt clucked. “No hablo Español Nuevo.”
Tyler and Suzie burst into laughter. “Good one, Mr. Arrupt,” she said.
“That allza I know speak.” He turned to Tyler. “Why Matt Junior come prison, save from fry me?”
“Recruiting a crew member. I have an opening for a navigator who can find the TF-Drifter.”
His eyes bulged. “Take back Burl Cain. Rather die quick.”
“I carry a message from Capitão Flávio Tavares. He gave me the codes to enter Pirate space, but I don’t know how to find it.”
“You think I help find Drifter Gate?”
“Can you?”
He grabbed his bony knees and rocked back and forth on the bed. “They kill Kilub Riff.”
And now we find out if the files Mom sent from captured Pirate ships were good intel. “You will be a crew member aboard my ship. Under Pirate Law, our immunity shield extends to everyone aboard.”
Arrupt turned his head sideways. “How you know that?”
Alleluia! “Am I correct?”
“That the law,” Arrupt said. “But it Pirate Law. They no men of honor. No can trust. Maybe let you into Corsair dominion for big-huge prize bribe. Maybe if big-huge enough, they kill and take anyway.”
“I bring something they will want, but they won’t be able to steal it.”
“What you bring?”
“Will you
be my harbor pilot, get the Tadpole past TF-Drifter?”
“That allza I gotsa do? Get Matt Junior crew through Drifter Gate?”
“Then you are free, with full clemency for your crimes against the Terran Commonwealth.”
Arrupt rocked on the bed, croak-twittering. “Kilub Riff need think. Pray. When you next Mass?”
Tyler shrugged. “Suzie?”
“I’ll activate Father Cárcel and get him on it.”
Arrupt made ribbit-ribbit sounds.
She smiled at her fiancé. “I think it would be smashing if every Creeping Jesus attended, don’t you?”
He frowned. “Creeping…what?”
“Allza Catholics aboard the Henry,” Suzie said cheerily. “Let’s have a classical Latin bloody Mass.”
Fuck, no. “Sure, sure,” Tyler smiled bravely. “First I’ve got to make a course correction.”
“Tyler, I expect you to—”
Claxons blared. Tyler’s data comm buzzed. “Just a second.”
“Captain Matthews to the bridge!” It was Arabella.
“Meet you up there.” Suzie disappeared.
Arrupt gasped. “She an angel?”
“On her better days, Phibby. See you in Church.” He fled the cabin.
Demarcus locked the Dengathi inside and hurried after the Boss as Yellow Alert boomed throughout the ship.
* * * *
“Captain on the bridge!” Arabella vacated the command chair when Tyler bounced from the lift onto the flight deck. Tyler relieved her of the conn, and the Lebanese holographic beauty flashed to assist Rodney and Chief Léon in engineering, one deck below. Suzie and Rosalie already occupied their posts on the half-deck above and aft of the command section. J.B. arrived by the next elevator and took the XO seat to the right of the Captain’s station. With Myong Li at navigation and Parvati as helmswoman, the Patrick Henry had its starting team on the field.
Tyler punched up his screens. Red buoy lights pulsed in the blackness to indicate a Matthews Corp Jump Gate ahead. He studied the image and saw they were not alone.
“Parvati, what’s the sitrep?”
“We dropped from FTL to make a standard, low-speed approach to the Meenaz Gate. The vessel was waiting for us.”
Most Jump Gates were from ancient times, perhaps millions of years old. Nobody knew who built them, or how their wormhole-generating system worked. Long-lost, advanced technology anchored these dark circles of metal in place by a station-keeping procedure that locked onto two thousand marker stars and compensated for galactic drift through a propulsion system, which no existing civilization has been able to understand.
Even more mysterious was the Gate defense mechanism. Any vessel foolhardy enough to approach the event horizon at normal velocity met a wave of eerie, greenish energy that disintegrated the hasty spacecraft. Star-faring travelers learned quickly. Docking speed only, not faster, or the Gate will hurt you.
Four generations earlier, the first Tyler Noah Matthews ordered a decade of relentless scrutiny of the ancient Gates. Tyler’s great-grandfather hurled thousands of engineers, physicists, chemists, and scientists from dozens of other disciplines at the monumental task. Matthews Corp researchers performed endless deep sensor scans, energetic analyses, metallurgical surveys, and every other test imaginable.
To cover all bets, Great-grandpa hired fifty exo-biologists to study the hint of organic material embedded deep within the Gate mechanism.
The result was a reverse-engineered, meticulously crafted, exact replica of the ancient, floating donuts. Miraculously, they worked like the original Jump Gates. Matthews Interstellar Industries began seeding the Orion and Perseus arms with the new Gates. They were such perfect copies of the older mechanisms that travelers could only distinguish M-double-I Gates by their distinctive red beacons.
In his last media interview, before he was murdered during a robbery at Corporate HQ, Tyler’s great-grandfather had said, “I still don’t know how the goddamned things work!” The mechanism could be cloned, not comprehended.
No fees were charged for the use of the Matthews Gates, but free trade flowing through the additional portals recouped M-double-I’s investment and boosted the Family fortune. Today, Matthews-Solorio Corporation was unrivaled in wealth and influence within the Terran Commonwealth.
“Okay, tell me about the ship out there,” Tyler said.
“Two hundred twenty four kilometers at zero-zero-one degrees,” navigator Myong Li reported. “She is at station-keeping, less than five hundred meters from the Gate.”
He tapped his control panel. “Why am I not getting sensor readings?”
“Optics only,” Parvati said. “They are blocking all scans.”
“Now that’s downright unfriendly.” Tyler rotated his chair to face the raised support stations, half a deck above. “Did you hail them, Suzie?”
“Repeatedly. No response, no identity code.” She turned from her screens. “These blokes are dark.”
“Communications failure, coupled with engine problems?” J.B. said.
“Possibly,” Suzie said. “And they might not be intentionally blocking our scanning attempts. It’s impossible to get detailed readings when they’re inside the Gate’s blackout zone.”
Tyler frowned. Oh, yeah. That shit happened to me all the time when I was planet hunting.
Gates exuded an inexplicable dampening field that knocked out sensors, auto-pilots, and most communications. The only way to fly through these chubby metal rings was hands-on, visual flight rules, like piloting a biplane from the first years of winged flight.
“Ensign Parvati, full magnification,” Tyler said. “I want to see the bugs on their windshields.”
The Henry’s optical package delivered a crisp view of a ship obviously configured for combat. She looked like a white whale, wide and long, with a tail section ringed by FTL nacelles. Turrets for laser cannon dotted the underbelly and top of the ship, and missile slots streaked her sides. Forward of the nacelles, a dark gray, five-leafed flower provided the only identifying information about the ship. It was enough.
“Note the markings, aft section?” J.B. said.
“Sakura House.” The emblem of Hideki Tsuchiya, often called the grand old Shōgun of Tsuchiya Galactic. Tyler thumped his thumbs on the armrests. “Damn.”
J.B. leaned toward his younger brother. “M-double-I litigators filed for preliminary injunctions against TG two days ago.”
Tyler grunted. “We knew it was coming. Sakura House sponsored that Pirate armada. Dad wants massive compensation for ships and lives lost during their attack on Alpha and Beta Gates.”
“Our litigation is tantamount to a declaration of war,” J.B. said.
Tyler nodded. “Only question now is whether that Sakura House ship is looking for assistance, or fishing for us.”
Parvati rotated her seat to Tyler. “Captain, the vessel is moving.”
“Distance to bogy?” J.B. asked.
“One hundred ninety kilometers and closing,” Parvati said. “They’ve cleared the danger zone, picking up speed.”
“Guess we’ll find out.” Tyler touched a colored square. “Bridge to engineering. I need FTL on command.”
“You got it, Boss,” Paco Léon replied. “Lt. Rooney has the engine core sizzling to go. But it don’t matter. Light-plus or sublight, nobody catches the Henry.”
“So you’ve told me, Chief. Keep this link open.”
Paco chuckled. “Hot engines, hot mike.”
Tyler glanced at J.B., who shrugged. Originally designed as a holographic whorehouse and gambling den, the unarmed Patrick Henry’s only defense was powerful shields and blinding speed. Tyler silently prayed they didn’t need to field test Chief Léon’s confidence.
“They’re hailing us,” Suzie said. “Voice and image.”
“Twenty kilometers and holding,” Parvati said.
“Are we in tractor range?”
“Yes, Captain.”
Tyler cursed softly. “Standby
FTL. Let’s chat. Accept the link, but raise your anti-virus filters to max.”
Suzie nodded. “You’re connected, Ty.”
A middle-aged, balding man in gray kimono gazed impassively from Tyler’s viewscreen. He knew the caller instantly.
“Hello, Tsuchiya-sama.”
“Konbamwa, Tyler Matthews. And, of course, Jeremiah, and Rosalie Matthews. Greetings to your fiancé, Suzanne London, and your bridge crew—Parvati Mahajan, Park Myong Li. Since Arabella Mahboob is absent, I assume she is one deck below in engineering with her lover, Lieutenant Rodney Robert Rooney.”
Jesus H. Christ. This old fucker knows the names of my crew better than I do!
“What can Star Lawyers Corp do for you today, Señor Tsuchiya?”
Parvati sent Tyler an eyes-only text. “Vessel is the battleship Nagoto, Hideki Tsuchiya’s flagship. Eighty laser cannons, fifty missile tubes, thirty-six kinetic railguns. She carries seven hundred attack drones. A daunting weapons platform.”
Tsuchiya continued, pleasantly. “It is always a delight to encounter sons of my very old friend, Noah Matthews. And to see your lovely sister, the Red Fox, whom my son has admired for a long time.”
Tyler smiled. “And we reciprocate the pleasant greetings, Señor Tsuchiya. But you still haven’t told me what I can do for you.”
“I wish to discuss business, Tyler-san,” Tsuchiya said. “Reasonable men can come to an accommodation, neh?”
“What are we talking about, sir?”
“You acquired a certain item while sojourning in the Andromeda Galaxy. Since the item rightfully belongs to Sakura House, and since you are an honorable man, I am certain you will return it without hesitation.”
So, that’s what he wants. The crystal cube with his youngest son, Kichirou, and the crew of the Yamato, in micro-compressed, energetic suspension.
“You want the data cube with your son and his crew?” Tyler said.
“I am only interested in Kichirou. Please prepare to be boarded.”
“Wait a minute—”
“I will not harm you, or your crew,” Tsuchiya said. “However, honor demands me to insist. I must have my son.”
“He is irretrievable,” Tyler said. “The super-science to extract Kichi-san safely from that cube doesn’t exist in our galaxy.”
