Tanager's Fledglings (The Tanager Book 1)

by Cedar Sanderson

  A large omelette later, laden with mushrooms, cheese, and a fried sweet onion, he leaned back from the table, replete. The coffee was done, and he had a cup at hand. The tablet propped in front of him, he was filtering through the search results. He’d looked through his library, and the ship’s logs, and the archives. The archives included the logs of the other ships connected to the Tanager - the Robin (which he had accessed before when Moskvin was telling him about Termine) the Sparrow’s Fall, and the oddly-named Kea - and extended back in time almost to the earliest diaspora from Earth. It was, as he’d feared, a lot of material. In addition, while he was using Walter’s tablet, he’d run a search through Walter’s private files. Jem thought he’d be forgiven the invasion of the old man’s privacy.

  Jade had admitted a connection to Moskvin. Moskvin had fed Jem a story about aliens, a long-destroyed planet and station, and had told Jem he was part of a shadowy organization which was trying to find the aliens. Jade had said she was a ‘ghost in the machine’ and something about that had not struck Jem as facetious. She was part of that, the cabal hunting some alien menace. Moskvin had implied that he was trying to contact Walter, the Tanager, not necessarily Jem. So...

  Jem found what he was looking for in the Robin’s logs. Buried in the contract files, he got the number of the contract, and then he went back to the bridge, leaving his dishes on the table behind him, forgotten. Alone, he ran the searches with the number in front of him. Then he simply sat and stared at the board for a long time, lost in thought. Jade was... He got up, locking the board by habit, and went looking.

  He found her in the engine room. She was lying on the decking half under the fusion reactor. Jem walked up and kicked the sole of her boot, none too gently.

  She jerked in surprise, and he heard a muffled curse and clatter. When she scooted out, he leaned over her. “How old are you?”

  He hadn’t meant to yell; it just came out that way. “How old?” He repeated more quietly.

  She didn’t try to get up, just lay on the scooter looking up at him with those calm, ancient eyes. “I reckon I’m about 236 Old Earth years. Not sure of that, there’s some missing time. I have lost memories, as I told you.”

  “Two hundred...” Jem closed his mouth with an effort. “Walter was a very old man. He lived longer than anyone else I know.”

  “And he would have been about 112 when he passed.” Jade said quietly. Jem felt like he’d been punched in the chest hard.

  He stepped back. Then took another step, before forcing himself to stop. Running wouldn’t help. She sat up, slowly, not making any sudden moves. “How... What...”

  She wrapped her arms around her knees, and just like that, she looked very young and fragile. “I’m human. Moskvin briefed you, I know. I’m just... augmented.”

  “Augmented?” Jem parroted. He wasn’t sure he was processing this. “Walter. You knew him.”

  “Since he was born. I knew his parents well. I, ah, engineered the Robin coming to Thaddeus when he was ready to leave home. And the contract, later.”

  “I found the contract.” Jem said.

  Jade nodded. She looked sad. Jem shook his head. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this.”

  “I can do my best to give you answers.” Jade stood up gracefully, and he wondered how he’d ever thought her old. “I promised I would. There are very few who know as much as you do, and none living who know all of it.”

  “Want coffee?” Jem didn’t know what else to say. “Um. You knew Walter when he was....” Jem choked. He suddenly couldn’t speak and there were tears pouring down his cheeks.

  “We’ll talk. Come on.” Jade put a hand on his arm, her fingers warm. “First of all, Walter was very proud of you, Jem. He never regretted bringing you aboard, even when you were a little hellion.”

  Jem shook his head, clearing his eyes. “You talked about me.”

  “He considered me like... an aunt, I suppose.” Jade shrugged. “His family became my family, in an odd way. It’s part of the long story.”

  They reached the galley, and Jem stared at his dishes, abandoned earlier. “I’ll, um, are you hungry?”

  “I ate ‘round noon ship’s time.” Jade fetched a cup of coffee and he took what was left of the pot, then started a fresh one after a second thought.

  “It all started when I was ready to die,” Jade told him. “I was a doddering old lady, the matriarch of a rockjock clan, and my name wasn’t Jade, then. That came later, after the aliens found me and patched me up, then sent me to fight other aliens on a station called Termine...”

  Jem listened, and she talked. It took a long time to tell all of it. When she got to the end, they sat quietly for a moment. Jem looked at his empty cup and up at her. “What happened to the cat?”

  She blinked in surprise, then chuckled. “Lived to a ripe old age. She was a mean old queen, and made it to twenty-one Earth years. Start of a long string of ornery cats that kept me company.”

  Jem looked over at Eby, whose paws were twitching in some doggy dream. “Makes sense to me.”

  Jade said, “it’s not easy or good to be too much alone.”

  “Yeah. And sometimes you have to trust someone.” Jem looked back at her, meeting her eyes squarely. “How did you know what they used on me?”

  “Because it probably came out of my box of tricks.” Jade looked regretful. “There was time, between when Moskvin called me and us getting back to the Tanager. Your consignee likely had to let them in when he got his cargo. Probably the cost of getting it, actually. You said you left the Tanager under guard, and open.”

  “Yeah.” Jem rolled his shoulders, feeling stiff. This sleeping anywhere but his own bed and constant stress had him feeling like he was tied in knots. “You abandoned your stuff?”

  “Had to, if I was going to convince them I was your crewmember shipped in ahead of you and meeting you. Having too much luggage would have looked suspicious.”

  “I don’t,” Jem shook his head. “I still can’t figure out how you pulled it off.”

  “Moskvin laid some of the groundwork.” Jade shrugged. “Knowing his skillset, I’m going with hacking their system to show me coming in with the stated purpose of meeting you. The briefing we had was necessarily coded. Couldn’t meet and talk in the open, they surveil every-damn-thing on station.”

  Chapter 26: Plans for All Angles

  Jem sat at the table looking at Jade in silence. She looked back at him, her face at peace. The tension he’d seen before was gone. “You needed to get that off your chest, didn’t you?”

  She shrugged. “I thought, once, that I’d never get to be a part of the human race again. It brought home how important companionship is. We’re not made to be all alone.”

  “I never meant to stay alone.” Jem looked at his cup. “I think instead of another cup of this, I need to sleep in my own bed.”

  “Sounds like a good idea.” She got up and took both cups to the galley.

  “Hey,” Jem was struck by a thought. “What happened to your ship?”

  “The Persistent?” Jade grinned. “She’s lurking.”

  “Where?” Jem stopped himself. “Sorry, I’m being nosy.”

  “It’s ok. Today, you get a pass.” Jade shrugged. “She’s in orbit around Loki, far enough out that she’s not easily seen. The cat’s aboard, but it’s all on autopilot.”

  Jem felt his jaw drop for the ... he’d lost count of how many times today he’d been shocked. You would think it would wear off and he’d become inured to it. “You can do that?”

  “I can.” She said. “You can’t. I have some highly special systems onboard. Really, for as old as she is, she’s in sweet shape.”

  Jem got up. “I am going to bed. My brain is full. Maybe tomorrow I can process more new things.”

  He didn’t go straight to bed. He headed to the bridge, to check systems, and route alarms to Walters... his tablet now. The old one was still in the hold, and could stay there. Jem knew he wa
s being petty, but it had been a rough day - no, couple of days. Week, even. He went to bed.

  The alarm beeping woke him up, but even as he sat up, he knew it wasn’t that kind of alarm. It was the one he’d set to waken him after eight hours of sleep. Pulling the tablet to him, he shut that off, and opened the bridge monitor. All was well, it told him. He’d check for himself, anyway. Rolling out of bed, he wished for another shower, but that wasn’t a good idea. Some ships had systems to return water to potable; he’d have to look into that for the Tanager. He made a note on the tablet.

  A message was blinking for his attention, and he opened it. Jade was in her sleep cycle, and would rejoin him in a few hours. He was as alone as he was going to get until Loki at the earliest. Jem headed for the galley. Once he had food and coffee he returned to the bridge, and his searches for information. He’d expanded his bots beyond their focus on Jade, seeking information on the ancient history of Termine, and the more recent of Tianjin. There wouldn’t be a connection, but he felt that knowing as much as possible would only be helpful in the coming days. He had a respite. In foldspace, the Tanager was an island unto itself. In realspace, enemies could be coming at him from multiple directions. Aliens, piracy under cover of law, spies, politics...

  Jem started compiling information, first a simple timeline, and then into a mindmap with connecting lines. Jade’s story checked out, the events and times she’d given him coinciding with the information he gathered from other sources. Walter’s father had indeed a silent partner who had put an influx of capital in for the purchase of the Robin, and later the Tanager. It wasn’t one-sided, Jem was relieved to discover. A steady stream of dividends went back to the unnamed investment group, which he was now sure was just Jade. That meant that his ship, the family business, wasn’t depending on charity.

  The contract for information and occasional small cargo shipments had expired the year of Walter’s death. There was a note about it in Walter’s tablet. ‘Unable to fulfill.’

  Jem looked at the terse sentence, and wondered what it had taken out of the old man to admit that he was failing. And then he wondered why he hadn’t been told about the contract. He would have taken it on. Had Walter doubted his ability?

  He shook his head. He couldn’t dwell on this. Walter had his reasons. He likely hadn’t written them down. Information had been Jem’s thing, since Walter taught him to read, and then unleashed him on the libraries. Walter had aided and abetted his data gathering. Had used it unhesitatingly once Jem could articulate and defend his conclusions. He’d given Jem his own name, even if he hadn’t shared that with Jem himself. He hadn’t needed to, Jem realized, sitting there staring at the screens of the bridge that had been the center of Walter’s life since he was not much older than Jem was now. He’d known that Jem was his son. He hadn’t needed to make a fuss over it. That was just Walter.

  Jem saved his work, and opened the data up for the Loki run. He was empty coming in. The Tanager had taken nothing on at Tianjin, other than a crewmember, and a body. He wondered what Jade had done with that. He made a note to talk to her about pay. Did you pay a former owner, part-owner, but still, of a ship who also wanted to work on it? How did that work? He had the beeves, still. Auto-feeders kept them going during his unplanned absence, and Jade had taken over their care. Once the beeves were offloaded, he wasn’t sure he wanted to do livestock again. It was a lot of work, for relatively little return. He’d talk to Jade. He started drafting a note to Peter. He couldn’t mention Jade to Peter. Either Walter’s brother knew about her, or didn’t. Jem wasn’t going to talk about it in an unencrypted message.

  The deal was that Jem would finish the route, unaltered, after Walter’s death. Then and only then could he make changes. And those changes had to go through Peter, the half-owner of the Tanager. Owner of the half that wasn’t Jade’s share. Only that wasn’t clear, either, her share was registered to Walter, but was it in name only? Jem rubbed his temples. This was giving him a headache. All he knew was that it was his job to make the Tanager profitable.

  He needed a break. Lunch, fetch with Eby, and maybe see if he could brainstorm Loki trade with Jade. Walter had taught him that walking away when he got frustrated was the best way to get something done. Beating his head against it just defeated any progress.

  Jem headed for the garden. He wanted to pick berries, ignore the financial obligations, and laugh at the puppy. Instead, he met Jade in the corridor.

  “Do you want strawberries?” He asked her.

  She did a classic double-take. “Oh, from the garden. Yes, but we need to talk.”

  Jem’s heart sank. “About?”

  He kept walking toward the garden, hoping to salvage at least a little of the peace he’d been craving, and she fell into step beside him. “We need more crew.”

  “We?” He opened the hatch and took a deep breath. The smell of the fresh, warm earth, even with a faint hint of manure spread over it, made him happy. It was a smell he’d been surprised to learn was more planetary than space... where he’d spent his first few years planetside, there were few good smells, and nothing like this. This was his favorite memory, digging in the dirt with Walter, one of those first weeks. Learning to trust.

  “We. You know who and what I am. Most of it.” She shrugged. “There’s more, yes, but for the moment you know that I’m not entirely human, but I do own a share in the ship.”

  “I meant to ask you about that. Do I issue you pay? How does that work?” Jem picked up the wire basket he used for harvesting.

  Jade giggled, a surprising noise from a woman of her age. He was still trying to reconcile the dissonance in her appearance and what he knew of her. She should be scary, but instead she was... She picked alongside him. She was cute. Like a fuzzy bunny with razor-sharp fangs. He found himself remembering Misha, standing beside him doing the same thing. He didn’t feel the same way about Jade as he had Misha. Misha made him feel...

  Jem diverted his thoughts firmly away from personal feelings. “Yes, we need more crew. I, ah, don’t know if you are aware of what my conditions are? Until I’m officially captain?”

  She raised an eyebrow and lost the young and cute look. “You are very much Captain Raznick. And no. Walter’s ship was his own domain, I didn’t interfere.”

  “So here’s the deal. I have to finish the trade circuit, just as he had planned it, and make a profit. At the end of that season, Peter decides if I stay, or if he replaces me with a captain of his choice. And probably crew. It’s not normal for me to be out here alone. But...”

  Jem ate a berry, taking his time with the rest of it. “It’s not been a good season so far. I did well off Altressa, and Tas, but Flinders was a literal disaster. I’m not sorry I helped, and they did give me a full load of fuel, wouldn’t let me pay for it.” He put more berries in the bowl. “There was a bright spot, but then Tianjin... I need to get out on the hull and look over the damage the tug did on the way in. I’d almost forgotten about that. And, oh, drat.”

  He juggled the tablet and the basket for a minute, until Jade took the basket. He made a note on his list, and then moved an old one up to the top. “I used a drone at Flinders, and it may need maintenance. I also forgot that someone, don’t know who, put something, don’t know what, in the drone storage locker.”

  “You don’t know what?” Jade had the mother-glare down pat, Jem noted.

  “I don’t know!” Jem held up his hands in an exaggerated shrug. “I trust Mac, though, and he was supervising the crew. I was pretty out of it.”

  “Let’s take a look.” Jade, carrying the basket, went for the hatch, and Jem followed obediently, like the puppy.

  “Where’s Eby?” He asked as they headed for the engineering bay.

  She didn’t look around. “Asleep in my bunk. I told him no, but...”

  Jem laughed. “Traitor. He usually sleeps on mine, although he’s not allowed there, either.”

  Jem got to the drone cradles and opened the first one. The others,
which ought to be empty and were, were out of sight. “I used this for comms at Flinders.” He patted the sleek cylinder. “Walter was a bit evasive about its full capacity, but I know it’s expensive. He’d yell at me if he knew I’d used it.”

  Jade shook her head, slowly, a smile growing on her face. “Let’s see what MacTavish slipped in.”

  Jem pressed the button to rotate the cradles. “You know Mac?”

  “Let’s say I know of him. Jamie MacTavish is a gifted engineer, with a special talent for improvisation. I make it my business to be aware of people like him.”

  The cradle clanked to a stop and the maintenance hatch slid open. “You’re Moskvin’s boss, aren’t you?” Jem asked, staring down at the drone. He assumed it was a drone. “Um.” He crouched and looked at it more carefully. “What the hell?”

  “Yes, and what you are looking at is a AC-187, also known as a Hunter-Killer.” She bent over his shoulder and pointed. “Retractable wings. Stubby, but atmosphere-capable, hence the designation. It can be launched like your drone, with them flush like this.”

  Jem could feel her warmth radiating against his side. She seemed to run warm, or maybe it was his hyper-awareness of her. She kept telling him she wasn’t entirely human, which made him nervous. He repeated himself.

  “You’re Moskvin’s boss.”

  She straightened with a sigh, and he felt suddenly cold. To buy himself time before he had to meet her eyes again, he shut the cradle. Then he looked up, but she was looking at the berries in the basket she still held. “I still owe you the other half of the story. While we have the time.”

  “Why would we run out of time?” Jem said. They had left Tianjin behind them. The aliens, however many of them there were, were a distant threat. Weren’t they?

  “Let’s see. Getting away from the Tinjins was too easy. I think it was set up so they could grab us once they could claim innocence.” Jade lifted the basket. “I need a drink. Ever have a strawberry daiquiri?”