“The explorers wondered the same back when the empire was expanding. What they found was that there have been waves of expansion in the galaxy that have seeded myriads of planets with similar genetic stock. According to genome maps and artifacts that we have found, there have been a minimum of three and a maximum of ten such expansions. The most recent was a couple of hundred thousand years ago, the earliest hundreds of millions of years in the past. That’s why there is such variety among lower forms of life, which evolve independently after they arrive on a world. That’s why we find Srihani, or Aalori, or one of the other three civilized species throughout the galaxy that has been explored. That’s also why there is the occasional odd world where life-forms bear no resemblance to any others—some worlds have never been touched by the waves.”
It occurred to me that the last theory I saw on the origin of man, before I left Earth, claimed to trace everyone by mitochondrial DNA back to a single woman who lived a couple of hundred thousand years ago. “You’re sure of this theory?”
“Well, there are some holes in it. We have found some traces of the earlier waves, but not enough to prove the theory. Still, it’s almost impossible to prove the opposite, that Srihani, for example, completely evolved on any particular planet.
“Wait a minute. You’re saying that we, I mean Srihani, have been around for millions of years? I don’t believe that.”
“I didn’t say that. Srihani, or a close ancestor, were here two hundred thousand years ago. But before that, sixty-five million years ago, we have no idea what the beings were. They destroyed themselves too thoroughly. And, it was not a cosmic accident. How many planets, after all, can be struck by giant asteroids all at about the same time in the past? There are thousands of systems where such an event occurred about sixty-five million years ago. Think about it. What can make a star-faring civilization vanish so thoroughly that, across a whole spiral arm, we have to struggle to find artifacts? There may be some fatal flaw in civilizations that reach the stars that dooms us; I don’t know, but it’s not just the Srihani disease.”
Ruoni decided that he had forgotten to check something on his status boards and left abruptly. I guess he didn’t want to talk about this anymore.
I thought about the implications of what he had said. I had learned that dinosaurs ruled the Earth sixty-five million years ago and a giant asteroid wiped them out. What might have been standing where it hit that we know nothing about? And not just Earth. I thought about billions of beings on each of hundreds of thousands of worlds, all obliterated not once, but many times. I swallowed hard. It was frightening. I could believe that the Fleet left the kvenningari alone out of fear of what might come of the confrontation. However, while I’ve never been elected to anything (not even in grade school), I do know about leadership, especially leading groups of combative prima donnas. And I was sure that the Fleet’s approach—if you ignore the problem, it won’t really be a problem—was wrong, dead wrong. Of course, no one was asking me.
When I went back to the Aalori area, neither of us spoke of the Srihani disease again, whether from courage or cowardice I can’t tell. The repairs were done shortly thereafter, anyway. Then it was back into space to make some money.
Chapter 15
With a fast and powerful ship, it was possible to operate much closer to the Inner Empire, since planetary defenses and patrol ships were not an absolute deterrent. That meant more profitable and richer targets, since trade closer in was heavier. We stayed out of the Inner Empire itself, though. There were just too many concentrations of kvenningari and Imperial ships for it to be safe, nor was it necessary. As the Fleet dwindled and the kvenningari fought among themselves, more and more systems were exposed to freebooters each year.
However, in spite of taking six merchant ships in about five months, a phenomenal rate that established our reputations throughout much of the gray zone and the Outer Empire, it was a problem to keep the outfit running. Why should that be? After all, in taking six ships Franny never took any significant damage and we had all that loot to peddle. True, yet I felt chronically broke.
The officers’ conference I convened after we took that sixth ship was a good example of what made me feel that way. It was a small group: me, Jaenna, Ruoni, Cardoni, and Warrik, our chief engineer.
They had barely sat down before Cardoni opened with, “Captain Danny, before we get to the big items, please reserve some of the proceeds for fresh food. We need it.”
“Why?” I asked. “I thought the reprocessors on this ship were very efficient.”
“They are.” Cardoni pointed at the glass in front of me. “That water was pissed out by the crew this morning. That’s not the point. Reprocessor food lacks taste and texture. If I can’t put fresh food in the galley, the crew is likely to put me in the reprocessors.”
“I doubt that will improve the taste,” Ruoni said. Cardoni stiffened.
“Forget the taste,” Jaenna said. “They need to be alive to worry about the food. If we have extra funds, there are at least twenty shipsuits that are more patch than suit. And where I’d really like to spend some money would be on an upgrade to full armor.”
“Jaenna, you bring up full armor every time,” Cardoni said. “It’s not worth the expense.”
“It’s not?” she retorted. “You’re not the one who has to do the work to get one of these rejects we recruit to mesh with the Strike Force and then do it all over again with another one because the half-armor got burned through.”
“Can we stop arguing about luxuries?” asked Warrik. That turned everyone’s attention to him. “The hull plating fore of railgun two has eroded to the point where it needs replacing.”
Ruoni whistled. I just asked, “Eroded?”
Warrik stared at me. “Space isn’t a complete vacuum. Half a millennium without adequate maintenance, well …” He shrugged. “It’s at the point where the risk of a breach in battle, either beam or shot, goes up exponentially.”
“Oh, great.” That was my comment.
“Yes,” he said. “Also, one of the plasma bottles needs to be relined. And we need to do maintenance on the gravatic compensators because all those rapid vector changes burn them out faster than you think.”
“And how do you recommend we do all this?” I knew it wasn’t going to be as simple as popping the hood and pouring in a can of 10W40.
Warrik shrugged again. “In the past, we would take her to a Fleet depot. If they had supplies, of course.”
“That’s impossible now,” I said. “Yttengary again?” I looked around the room.
Warrik said, “They can do the work; I’m sure of that. The problem is that our ship was built as a Fleet cruiser. Many parts have unique designs, planned that way at the time to make it harder to mesh with kvenningari units if the captain changed first loyalty. Yttengary may be able to get them, but they will charge a premium.”
I groaned. “So will anyone else. Can you estimate the cost?”
“Done. It’s in the computer.”
“Wait,” Ruoni said. “We shouldn’t finalize allocations without considering our weaponry. The solid shot hoppers are at twenty-eight percent capacity. I’m not comfortable below forty percent. Number four railgun isn’t holding charge. It needs maintenance before it burns out. And we still need to replace two broadswords.” That was the archaic name for the top-of-the-line Imperial missiles Franny carried.
“Those damned broadswords are ridiculously expensive,” Cardoni put in.
No kidding, I thought. More expensive than slow horses and fast women put together. Every time we fired one, I watched it on the screen trailing red ink all the way to the target.
“The ship is designed for them,” Ruoni said.
“He’s right,” added Warrik. “When we refitted just before our engagement with you,” he indicated me, “the depot put in an inferior model—I’m sure someone got rich—and it caused trouble during the fight. They didn’t interface properly.”
That trouble might
have been the reason the Flower had survived long enough for us to take the cruiser. Warrik had been a Fleet officer then and I had to think about the flip-flopping “we” and “you,” although it didn’t bother anyone else.
“The counter-missile racks are at seventy-three percent,” Ruoni continued as if the rest of the conversation wasn’t happening.
“All right!” I said sharply enough that they all looked up from their own displays. “I thank you for your analyses and I appreciate the concerns in each department. Just leave me your lists and estimates. I’ll match them up with the manifest of what we took and we’ll do the best we can at the station. Let the crew know that the crewshare will be the usual, even if we skimp a little elsewhere.” That was important. Freebooters became freebooters for many reasons, but the ones who stayed with it hoped to become obscenely rich and retire to some quiet world. I would have gladly foregone the captain’s share, but if I did that, my officers would have to follow suit and only Jaenna would have done it without second thoughts. My officers wanted to get rich too.
After they left, I held my head in my hands as I looked at the figures. Paying for even the necessities was going to eat up most of our cash flow, as it always seemed to do. The stations would want their money up front, of course. No one extended unsecured credit to a freebooter, who could, literally, vanish into space. Tetragrammaton had given Carvalho credit, but that was because they had the Flower there as a prize. When someone writes the definitive treatise on the economics of space piracy, I’ll have a few things to say to him. I was watching our account more closely than I had ever watched my checkbook on Earth. Hell, if I’d watched my checkbook that closely, I would still be on Earth. Franny didn’t need a captain. She needed a CPA.
I had good reason to be concerned about the economics. For all of Franny’s success in taking ships during our first few months, we were far from rich. Barely breaking even was closer to the mark. This wasn’t lost on the crew, who made their unease known subtly but definitely. I was able to keep a lid on it by pointing out that many of our expenses were due to the previous neglect of the ship and wouldn’t recur. The fact that neither I nor any of my senior officers was taking anything beyond standard shares helped. So did our burgeoning reputation as galactic bad news. The crew took pride in belonging to a feared ship. Regardless, I knew Franny needed to make a big score soon, or I would be facing more than occasional grumbling.
Aside from this chronic low-level tension among the crew, there was another impediment to my domestic tranquility. That was Jaenna. The more I knew of her, the more she puzzled me. She settled into her role with the Strike Force with all the assurance of one born and raised to command, her earlier reticence gone. She was skilled at it, too. The performances at Gar and during the fight for Franny were not flukes. Despite that, Jaenna consistently understated the military side of her education.
Why had she received military training? The empire didn’t teach its youngest daughters to lead troops, in fact, it taught no daughters to lead troops. Even harder to understand was why Tyaromon would be willing to throw all that training away. He must have known what his daughter was doing. It made no sense to me and I doubted I would resolve it until we finally reached Kaaran. I could live with the puzzles, though. My real problem wasn’t intellectual but hormonal.
The nature of our positions would have thrown us together often, but I suspected that she really sought out my company, duties aside. I certainly enjoyed hers, now that her concern over my taking her debt out in trade was a thing of the past. She had proved to be a very tough lady with an equally sharp mind. However, the bland gray of the shipsuits that Jaenna preferred accentuated her figure by giving the eye nothing else to focus on. Further, I believe that she, in all innocence, had no idea what her flashing green eyes, quick laugh and purposeful stride did to my hormonal balance. I liked Jaenna and that made it all the harder to keep my defenses up. I had sworn off women and I had meant every word and I had been a perfect Boy Scout but I wasn’t sure anymore if I could keep it up. When I found myself entranced by the motion of the blaster on her hip, I knew I was in trouble.
I was in trouble because I could do nothing. I couldn’t even say anything. I’m not sure what would have happened if I had; Jaenna was fond of me. However, there was more involved than just the two of us. When there is only one female on a ship with three-hundred-and-fifty armed and dangerous males, that female had better be above any suspicion. As it was, after our early victories, the Strike Force’s attitude toward Jaenna had swung from suspicion to damn near hero worship. That, even more than her speed with a blaster, had ensured that she wasn’t bothered, but if it were known that she was favoring one of us, the situation might change. Even if the crew would tolerate a liaison, no ship anywhere can have its captain and strike force commander sleeping together. Fortunately, the ship recycled cold water very efficiently.
Hard bargaining at the station (I was getting better at this) covered almost everything on my officers’ shopping list. I also came away with an interesting tip. It was the itinerary for a merchanter with a (reportedly) very valuable cargo. Time and space said that we could hit them at Mlyanna, if we were willing to pull a raid in the Inner Empire itself. It also meant no time to head for Yttengary and our refit, but if this was going to be the chance to fix up our ledger, I wanted to take it. The action went smoothly. The merchanter had an escort ship along, but neither of them was expecting a freebooter lurking by a wormhole in Fleet space. Franny managed to blow the escort without needing a missile (hurrah for the checkbook!) and we swooped after the merchanter. A lucky shot from one of our railguns turned the merchanter’s main engine to scrap almost as soon as we engaged. The Strike Force went in and the action was over in minutes. Having seen their escort blown away so easily seemed to take the starch out of the merchanter crew. The operation was off to an auspicious start with not a single casualty.
We couldn’t take the ship as a prize since the main engine was really wrecked, so we transferred the cargo hastily and left the wreck for the ships from Mlyanna, already scrambling as we worked, to salvage. Due to the rush at Mlyanna, we simply loaded the cargo and ran for the wormhole. It wasn’t until we were safely away from Mlyanna that we had a chance to examine what we had grabbed. Most of it was standard stuff, everything from household items to industrial machinery. All of it could be sold in the Outer Empire at a reasonable discount. Hidden among all the chaff, however, we found our prize. My informant hadn’t been able, or willing, to tell me what the merchanter carried that was so valuable. Once we opened that small container, we knew. It was full of cynta.
Cynta is a gemstone. It looks a lot like sapphire, but a variety of metallic impurities cause the interior to have a multicolored sparkle. The stone is found only on a few unusual low-gravity, highly volcanic worlds. Aside from its obvious value as a jewel, cynta was important in the construction of instruments that depend on low power magnetic fields, like the interactive helmets used in the Teacher and the physician’s operating tools. The empire has produced, over time, many synthetic versions of cynta, but has never quite reproduced the natural stone. Authentic stones, and it didn’t take long to prove these to be authentic, were wildly expensive. They were valuable enough to assign an escort to the merchanter even within the Inner Empire. We had a treasure in our hands.
“This is a problem,” Ruoni said when we saw the extent of our treasure.
“And why is it a problem?” I asked in return. “This makes us rich for sure. Selling it will finally make the crew happy.” It might even be enough, I thought, to make Jaenna feel ready to head home to Kaaran. That would take care of my problems, although how happy it would leave me was open to question.
“It is a problem,” Ruoni said, “because we have to sell it somehow and I do not see how we are going to do that. There is too much of it. Industries that use authentic cynta are in the Inner Empire. Places in the Outer Empire that use it are small and widely scattered. No one of them could absor
b this amount, not even a few of them together. You know what will happen if we transit back and forth across the Outer Empire selling cynta.”
I started to see the problem. “We’ll draw a crowd. Of freebooters.”
Ruoni nodded.
“So, we’ll unload it at one of the stations like we do with most goods. Pick a big one. Tetragrammaton, maybe?”
“It won’t work. Even Tetragrammaton would have trouble dealing this much cynta quickly and they’ll be nervous for sure sitting on it for very long. We’re going to have to deal with someone in the gray zone, maybe even in the Inner Empire.”
Finding that kind of contact was going to be hard. Normally, when a freebooter approached a trading station, business was never discussed on the comm channel. The freebooter identified himself as a private vessel (true statement) desiring liberty for his crew (also true statement). Only when the captain reached the station office was the cargo discussed. This satisfied the Imperial need for a polite fiction. Anything could be done behind closed doors, so long as it looked good on the surface. In this situation, though, the ritual made life difficult. The Outer Empire stations knew they were dealing with freebooters. The formula was as hollow on their side as it was on ours. Closer in, that might not be the case. I wouldn’t know, until I was on the station, whether they were willing and able to deal.
In this, Ruoni wasn’t much help. “I know very few of the gray zone stations,” he said, “and none of the ones with close ties to the Inner Empire.”
The Imperials in our crew, for all that they had patrolled these regions, also had little to contribute. They knew a number of stations, including some very large ones, but couldn’t tell me whether the stations would deal with a freebooter. Worse, since these were all stations the Fleet visited regularly, the odds of finding a Fleet unit in port were too high. I wanted to trade, not fight.
In the end, Jaenna turned out to have the best lead. I had been blowing off steam to her one evening about having a fortune in the hold and no place to sell it, when she interrupted me.
My Life: An Ex-Quarterback's Adventures in the Galactic Empire Page 21
