The Serrano Succession

by Elizabeth Moon

  "That's ridiculous," the Benignity commander said. "Only a guilty man could have made up a farrago of lies like that—"

  Goonar leaned into pickup range. "It's not a lie that you people invaded Xavier. As far as I'm concerned, you're the guilty ones. The worst I ever did was get drunk and punch a Fleet ensign back when I was greener than grass."

  The Benignity commander glared, and Goonar met his gaze glare for glare. He'd been glared at by experts in his time—his own father and Basil's among them—and he wasn't intimidated. In fact, now that he'd worked himself into believing his own story, he was able to project patriotic ferocity. Finally the Benignity commander sighed. His gaze shifted to the Security commander. "Did you actually inspect every compartment?"

  "No . . . only the shuttle bays and the freight compartments adjacent."

  "And they had only thirty minutes . . . What was in that auto-shuttle?"

  "What was on the manifest . . . sealed containers, marked with the shipping agents' codes . . ."

  "Did you open them?"

  "Not all of them, no." The Security commander, who had been sounding sulkier throughout this exchange, now burst out. "Listen—you're not my commander, and I know the Terakians. As far as I'm concerned, they could well be right, and I see no reason why I should do your dirty work."

  A long silence, during which Goonar tried to pump up his resentment of Basil for getting them into this mess into a visible rage at the Benignity. Evidently he succeeded, because the Benignity commander, after a last glare, relaxed slightly.

  "All right, Captain Terakian. You may depart. I suppose you're taking those rather useless specimens of Station Security with you . . ."

  "Not if they don't want to go," Goonar said. "But since you appear to be in command of a civilian Station, they might rather." He glanced at the Security commander, whose face had paled as he thought through the implications of that.

  "We intend no harm to the civilian population," the Benignity commander said.

  "Just like at Xavier," Goonar said.

  "Can we stay?" the Security commander asked Goonar.

  "I'm not going to put Familias citizens in the hands of the Benignity if they choose to avoid it," Goonar said. He sounded pompous, almost theatrical, and hoped the Benignity commander would simply think he was that way by nature. Maybe he was. His family always insisted that the real character showed in times like these. "Ask your men."

  Chapter Three

  Merchant ships always used tugs for undocking, but Goonar didn't trust the Benignity commander; he'd signalled his crew and powered up the ship the instant the Benignity commander appeared on screen. When he realized that the only real threat could be the Station's own defenses, he knew that his insystem drive was the only viable counterthreat. Yes, the Station could blow his ship . . . but with the insystem drive up, it was suicide for the Station and every other ship docked there. Now he ordered his pilot to pull away from the Station, as slowly as Fortune's attitude thrusters permitted.

  As soon as possible—it seemed longer than the chronometer indicated—he increased power and set his outbound course toward the jump point. When it appeared that the Station was not, after all, going to spend any of its meagre store of missiles on him, he turned to glare at Basil.

  "Come on, Bas, we need to have a chat."

  In the privacy of the shielded captain's cabin, Goonar rounded on Basil. "I ought to fry your kidneys for breakfast," he said. "Of all the stupid plots to get us tangled in—"

  Basil didn't even try to look innocent this time. "It was important."

  "And you didn't bother to tell me—"

  "We didn't have time, cousin. Truly, I would have told you—"

  "But you didn't." Goonar folded his hands together, rather than around Basil's neck. "Bas, we've been partners for years. You know me, and I thought I knew you. You chose not to put yourself forward for captain; you wanted to work with me—"

  "Of course, I did—!"

  "Wait. You know—you must realize—that a captain needs to be able to trust his second-in-command. You should have found a way, some way, to give me warning . . ."

  Basil muttered something, looking away.

  Goonar could feel his own neck stiffening. "Basil," he said. "What did you just say?"

  "I said, I thought you'd act the innocent better if you were." Basil had flushed. "And you did."

  For some reason, this struck Goonar as funny. He was still angry, and not ready to laugh, but he couldn't help it. "I might have done even better if I had known, cousin mine . . ."

  "I'm sorry," Basil said, this time seriously. "I should have found a way. I will next time."

  "There's going to be a next time?" Goonar asked.

  "Not that I know of, but if," Basil said.

  "Well, then. What is the great secret we're hauling? Did they tell you why the Benignity wants them? Or did you just fall for a pretty woman in distress?"

  "It's one of the stage hands, they said. He's not a criminal, they said, but he is a fugitive."

  " 'I am innocent of all wrongdoing, but envious rumor has spread lies around my feet,' " Goonar sang. "Act Two, Scene Four. Is that it?"

  "I don't know," Basil said, spreading his hands. "I did ask, but they just insisted he wasn't a thief or murderer, and begged sanctuary."

  Goonar sat up straight. "Sanctuary. That's a religious word. Did you speak to the person yourself?"

  "Well . . . yes. I wanted to size him up. He's a quiet fellow—older man, pleasant voice—"

  "A con artist," Goonar said.

  "No . . . I don't think so. Not plausible and charming—I had the sense of . . . of someone like a scholar, maybe. The quietness wasn't fear or shyness, just a habitual quiet."

  "An escaping professor? Someone with technical information?"

  "I don't think so," Basil said. "I know some of them are supposed to be halfwits in the real world, but this man isn't that kind of halfwit. He doesn't seem distracted or abstracted or whatever they call it—he's right there with you when he's talking to you, and he doesn't try to drag the conversation to his pet theory."

  "Odd," said Goonar. "And he used the word sanctuary, or the woman did?"

  "He did. It wasn't dramatic or anything." Now that Basil was spilling all he knew, he seemed almost annoyed with himself that it was so little. "I asked if he'd committed a crime, and he paused a moment before saying no, no crime, but he had angered someone in power."

  "And you asked how—" Goonar prompted.

  "Yes. And he didn't say. He said he wished sanctuary, not to spread rumors."

  "Right. So now we've had a Benignity diplomatic ship giving orders to a Familias Station . . . and he thinks there won't be rumors."

  "I haven't talked to him since we came aboard," Basil said. "Do you want me to?"

  "No, I want to see him myself," Goonar said. "But not now. Now we have other work to do. For one thing, I don't want the Security team to know the troupe is aboard. They're actors; they can pretend to be our crew. Brief them."

  Basil grinned. "That's a great idea."

  "Meaning, you had it first. Fine. Just be sure it's done thoroughly. At the same time, I don't want the troupe having access to any of our critical information—see that our crew know that. And when you've straightened that out, find something for the Security team to do. Not all dirty work—they didn't really ask to be here, and we don't want them angry with us."

  "Right," Basil said, jotting notes on his compad.

  "I'll speak to—what's his name?"

  "Simon. That's all he said."

  "Right. I'll speak to Simon three or four days from now. I don't want to make him obvious at this point." He sighed, and tapped his fingers on his desk. "I don't know what's wrong with Falletta Station . . . I don't think much of a security team that didn't notice a bunch of actors and actresses, plus a whole stage set . . ."

  "Well . . . they didn't exactly look like actors and stage sets . . . remember, we had the best part of two hours
," Basil said. "I wouldn't be the cargomaster I am if I couldn't dismantle and reassemble big loads to fit into available space."

  "So . . . the flats you broke down . . ."

  "No, that wouldn't have worked. We used them as is."

  "As is what?"

  "Well . . . you know the crew's rec compartment?"

  "Of course," Goonar said.

  "It's got that little raised area—actually for the cross-connecting vent pipes, but it makes like a little stage . . ."

  "Yes, I know that . . . .wait . . . you mean you made it into a stage?"

  "Yeah . . . they had scenery for more than one play, so we put up some of it, and stored the rest in plain sight, in the crew storage area. Now that wouldn't do for the costumes, or all the props, or the lighting control panels—"

  "Wait—I thought theaters had their own lighting."

  "They do, sort of, but many traveling troupes bring their own extras. It's expensive stuff, and—"

  "So—what did you do with the lighting?" Basil was dying to tell him, and Goonar thought he should know, just in case.

  "I'll show you."

  The tour that followed convinced Goonar that his cousin was wasted in the Terakian family business, as much talent as he had for it. The troupe's stage lighting panels gave the shuttle bay better lighting than it had had since old Fortune came out of the yards . . . and only by climbing up among the overheads would anyone discover that it was an addition.

  "They did compliment us on our safe lighting," Basil said, clearly referring to the Station Security team. "Said lots of ships tried to hide things in a half-dark compartment."

  The costumes, bulky and spangled, were now on the programmable mannequins shipped by a famous fashion design firm, and the data cube in the container included those images. "It's only a copy," Basil said. "We have the original, so the shippers will never know. And Security didn't know the mannequins are normally shipped neutral. They did comment that the costumes looked used, and I pointed out that they had already been through several runs—that the big shipping firms get the new stuff, and we're stuck carrying last year's trash to the smaller systems."

  "I see," said Goonar. He was not surprised when Basil handed him a revised crew list that included an astonishing number of Terakian relatives he'd never heard of before.

  Five days later, the Terakian Fortune was still accelerating toward the mapped jump point, and Goonar was still worried. They were alive. No one had shot at them. No one was following them. No one they could detect was following them, he reminded himself. The Security team had settled in, working their assigned shifts alongside his crew. His augmented crew.

  One thing about actors, they could play a role, and they learned quickly. The Security team knew little about the crew arrangements on free traders, and had accepted that the Fortune had an entirely unlikely complement of Terakian family members aboard. Wives, sisters, cousins . . . all of them supposedly certified and practiced crew, except for the old costume mistress, who was thoroughly enjoying her role as an aged great-aunt with delusions of matchmaking. She had already queried the Security team about their status and prospects.

  Goonar had avoided talking to the troupe's leader himself—he'd had the excuse of being busier than usual—but finally he couldn't put it off any longer. She wanted to see him, she said.

  Betharnya looked as good close up as on the stage. Goonar, conscious of his role as staid merchant captain, tried to keep his gaze on her face, but he did not miss the lush shape of her, or the delicate scent.

  "I wanted to thank you, Captain Terakian," she said. "It was very brave of you—"

  "Basil didn't tell me anything about this until after the performance," he said. "Then it was too late—but I have to say that while I admire you as an actress, I am not happy to have been misled. You may have irreparably damaged not just my reputation, but that of our family. We do not involve ourselves in politics."

  "I understand," she said. "I would be angry too, if it were my ship. But when I approached Basil—your cousin—I didn't know about all that."

  "So—you are from the Benignity?"

  "No, but the kind of shows we do tend to go over better there. Traditional, you know. Like Brides."

  "I liked it," Goonar said. "I've seen it on Caskadar—"

  "We've never played Caskadar, but I've heard of it. Anyway—I suppose you want to know what happened?"

  "It doesn't matter now, sera. We're already breaking the laws, whether for good reason or bad. You will, I hope, help me explain to the authorities at our next port . . . ?"

  "Of course, Captain. I'm very sorry to have made trouble for you. Would you like to see our passports now?"

  "When we're in the next system. Um . . . I must say your people are doing a good job of being crew . . ."

  "Thank you," she said. "I'd better get back to work, in that case."

  He wished she could stay and talk, but he couldn't think of anything to say. If only she weren't an actress . . . He fantasized, after she'd gone, about meeting someone like her at a Terakian gathering, instead of in the theater.

  "We have to tell Fleet," Goonar said, when they came out of FTL flight into the Corrigan system. The few days in FTL had been uneventful, just the way he liked it. "It's the only way to clear the family of the charges that will be levelled against us."

  Basil rolled his eyes. "I can just imagine what they'll say—we'll be held up for months while they investigate us down to the rivets."

  "We don't have rivets," Goonar said. "You know that."

  "You know what I mean," Basil said. "Down to the monomolecular seals, if you want to get technical about it. Not that we have anything to hide . . ."

  "Not other than illicit foreign nationals, a hijacked security team, and a very unhappy Benignity search team," Goonar said. "Aside from that, we're as clean as ever."

  Basil looked down.

  "Aren't we?"

  "Well . . . there might be a little sort of private stock here and there . . ."

  "Enough. We're going to turn ourselves in at the first opportunity, and explain, as best we can, how we got into this mess."

  Goonar sent a message about the situation at Falletta. The Fleet picket, now three ships in this system, tightbeamed them.

  "What kind of Benignity ship?"

  "A diplomatic mission, they said. I never actually saw the ship—we were docked on the other side of the Station. But my scans didn't show live weaponry on it."

  "Did you get any data on the captain?"

  "I got a video," Goonar said. "We record incoming communications in full, and I copied it to deep storage, just in case."

  "They threatened you? The Benignity or the Station?"

  "Some Benignity officer was in the Stationmaster's command center, and he threatened us. Told us we'd never leave the system alive if we didn't let him search the ship. I figured he wanted a way to snatch a Familias-registered independent to go spying in."

  "But he let you go in the end?"

  "Yes . . . not too happily, but he did. The Station's own Security team was aboard—"

  "Why?"

  "Well, before I realized what was up, they'd requested a routine search of one of our auto-shuttles, and I'd agreed, of course."

  "Of course. Well, we'll want that copy of the transmission—we'd prefer to get it in person, not squirted—"

  "So would I," Goonar said. "Who knows what's lurking out here?"

  "Nothing right now," the captain said. "But just in case."

  At Corrigan Station, Goonar handed over the data cube to the uniformed officer who waited in the loading area. The security team from Falletta had come with him; they were all to be interviewed. Basil, luckily, wasn't on the list that Fleet wanted to speak with.

  The Fleet interviewer asked Goonar to tell what happened, and leaned back to listen. "It all started," Goonar said, "when my cargomaster, my cousin Basil, told me he'd moved the ship up in the departure queue. I asked him why, and he didn't say at firs
t. We were on our way back to the ship, after a night on the town, and I had been looking forward to a late morning the next day."

  "A night on the town?"

  "Theater. Basil's been after me, the last few voyages, to loosen up . . . he thinks I'm too morose. My wife and children died, you see, a few years ago; he keeps trying to fix me up with beautiful women."