by Alex Stewart
It certainly was a desperate gamble; the SDB came about and set off in pursuit, working hard to make up the lead the Freebooter had established. I started running the numbers. At that speed she’d be back to the rift point in a couple of hours, and away through it before any of the scattered customs cutters could move to intercept, although hopping from one League system to another without the proper paperwork didn’t seem to offer much in the way of a long-term solution that I could see. One riftcom message, and they’d be run down before they had a chance to shoot the rift back to Numarkut.
Anyhow, the question soon became a purely academic one. The pursuing boat was suddenly surrounded by a nimbus of charged gravitons, which could have only one explanation: I’d been right about the weapons suite.
They’re firing, Sowerby confirmed, no doubt after checking her own, more highly tuned, instruments.
Space rippled as the defense boat lashed out at the fleeing Freebooter, engulfing the fugitive ship in a dense pocket of increased mass, then tore open for an instant too short to measure. The Poison 4 vanished into one of the uncountable dead-end rifts riddling the system, then popped back into existence looking much the worse for wear.
“Rift bounce,” I said aloud, involuntarily. The extra velocity the Freebooter had put on to escape the pursuing defense boat had worked against her now, massively increasing the amount of damage she’d suffered from ricocheting off the closed end.
She’s leaking atmo, Sowerby sent, pushing the cleaned-up data she was gleaning into the wider ‘sphere, where Remington and I could see it more clearly. And that doesn’t look too good either. She focused in on one of the readouts. The crippled vessel’s core temperature was climbing exponentially. Power plant’s redlining.
Why don’t they shut it down? I asked.
I imagine they’re trying, Remington commented dryly. Wouldn’t you?
Then they’d better be quick about it, Sowerby added, self-evidently. Even to me, with only the most cursory knowledge of such things, it was obvious we were watching a runaway fusion reaction; and I’d heard enough dinner-table talk about naval engagements to know that those seldom ended well. A skilled, dedicated, and cool-headed engineer might be able to damp one, vent the plasma, and leave a crippled hulk to limp its way home or await rescue, but they’d need a healthy side-order of luck into the bargain: and I somehow doubted that a Freebooter crew would have anyone of that caliber aboard.
But I was wrong. There she goes, Sowerby commented, as a plume of concentrated star-stuff erupted from the crippled Freebooter; but instead of converting the whole vessel instantly into a cloud of expanding vapor, as I’d expected, it bled off harmlessly into the void, merely taking a section of hull plating along with it. Now that was impressive.
A comment I couldn’t help but agree with, although the surviving crew was still in serious trouble. There wasn’t much air leaking out any more, which implied that someone had got to the pressure doors in time, but without power they’d start to suffocate and freeze before too much time elapsed. Can we help them?
Help them? Somehow, Remington managed to inject a tone of surprise into the neutral message. They’re not Guild. And even if they were, I don’t think now’s a good time to break formation.
Besides, the pursuit ship’ll be there long before we could arrive, Sowerby added. Which was a good point. It was already maneuvering to match course and velocity with the drifting wreck. And we’ve got troubles of our own. Which was an even better one. The system defense boat I’d noticed before was approaching on a course, and at a speed, which could only be intended to intercept us. An assumption that was confirmed almost instantly, as a voice burst suddenly from every speaker aboard.
“Commerce Guild vessel Stacked Deck, this is the System Defense Force vessel Presumption of Innocence. Please maintain your current speed and heading, and prepare to be boarded.”
“Presumption of Innocence, this is Captain John Remington responding.” The skipper’s voice was on every channel too, no doubt intended to reassure the rest of the crew; although, mercifully, no one else would be aware of the destruction of the Freebooter yet. “Maintaining course and speed as requested.” This was a nice touch, reminding the Presumption’s skipper that we were Guilders, and not to be ordered around, or threatened with force. Potting Freebooters was one thing, but firing on a Guild vessel without a very good reason could escalate uncontrollably, damnably fast, with career-terminating consequences for the trigger-happy captain. Of course that would be scant comfort to us, if our flash-frozen corpses were on a leisurely cometary orbit around Freedom. “We’ll have our manifests ready for customs inspection.”
“That won’t be required at this time,” the Presumption’s skipper replied evenly. “Your vessel is hereby impounded, on suspicion of engagement in espionage against the League of Democracies.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In which our delivery is indefinitely delayed.
“This is completely ridiculous,” Remington expostulated, for about the hundredth time. The young officer in the uniform of the League Navy inclined his head, with the expression of someone who’d heard it all before and wasn’t about to believe it this time either, but was determined to be courteous in any case. I assumed his name was Neville, as that was stenciled on his light grey body armor, beneath the single star and thin line denoting his rank. If I remembered League insignia correctly that meant he was an ensign, barely an officer at all, probably on his first posting after graduation; but the novelty of seeing a man in uniform in a real position of authority, being trusted to act independently of his immediate superiors, shook me more than I’d expected. If I’m honest, I also felt a faint pang of jealousy—it was like being brought face to face with myself in a couple of years time, if I hadn’t screwed up so badly at the Academy on Avalon. “We’re on a contracted cargo run, for a broker on Numarkut.”
“That would be Farland Freight Forwarding, correct?” The young ensign smoothed his moustache, which failed utterly to impart an air of gravitas and maturity to his faintly cherubic face. Clio seemed fascinated by him, though, gazing in his direction at every opportunity, occasionally glancing briefly at me to see if I’d spotted whatever it was about him that was so compelling: although so far I hadn’t, unless it was the party of armed matelots accompanying him, most of whom were wandering around the hold poking at things, apparently in the vague hope that something incriminating would fall on their heads. Unsurprisingly, the talk of espionage had me thoroughly spooked, and I found myself wondering if Mallow had been right, and the League’s intelligence agencies had become aware of my mission after all. But in that case, why hadn’t they simply arrested me, instead of impounding a whole handful of ships, and blowing the Poison 4 to kingdom come?
“It would,” Remington confirmed, quite pointlessly, as their logo was all over the paperwork.
“Which turns out to have been employing an undercover agent of the Commonwealth Security Service.” Neville paused, although whether for dramatic effect, or to see if any of the members of the Stacked Deck’s crew who’d turned up to enjoy the show were suddenly and visibly stricken with guilt, was beyond me. Drawing on the experience of years of hiding large segments of my social life from Mother, I continued to present a largely unruffled exterior to the world. I did, however, find myself wondering how Mallow was faring, and hoped he’d made a clean getaway. I had no idea what the penalty for espionage was on Numarkut, although from what I’d seen of the place I rather suspected it depended on how much money changed hands. “The broker, in fact, who contracted you for your present delivery.”
“Ellie’s a spy? Really?” Remington asked, in the tone of voice peculiar to a polite simulation of interest. “Well, she certainly fooled me.”
“She seems to have fooled a lot of people,” the young ensign said. “But our people on Numarkut are certain she used her position to engage agents among merchant crews to gather information on their trips into the League. Several of them, in fact.�
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“Lets us out, then,” Remington said easily. “We’ve been in the Commonwealth for the last few months. Hauling supplies for their Fleet Auxiliary.”
Neville’s upper lip quivered, in what might have been a smile, but looked more like a tap-dancing caterpillar. “Hardly good reason for us to trust you,” he pointed out. “Although I’m sure my superiors will be happy to debrief you about that.”
“I’m open to offers,” Remington replied, making it clear that any information about his earlier contract for Aunt Jenny would have to be paid for: although I was pretty sure that, knowing Guilders as well as she did, she would have been careful not to let him know much of any use to the League’s intelligence analysts in any case.
Of course I hadn’t just been standing idly by while this exchange was going on. Typically for Leaguers, none of the boarding party had any neuroware, which left nothing for my sneakware to exploit; but Neville had a handheld with him, gravid with data, which hung there like a ripe fruit just out of my reach. The problem was, he wasn’t using it to link to the node aboard the defense boat, which meant there was no obvious way into it. Although I’d incorporated some military grade datanomes into my skeleton keys, filched from Tinkie while we were rummaging through Mother’s forgotten message, they were for Commonwealth protocols, and attempting to use them on a League system would simply be asking for trouble. I’d just have to bide my time, and hope for an opportunity before the boarding party left the Stacked Deck.
“Everyone seems to be taking this remarkably calmly,” I said, as Clio ambled over in my direction, her gaze still fixed on the young ensign.
“Why wouldn’t they?” She seemed honestly surprised. “These things happen every now and then. Pretty much every government issues information-gathering contracts to Guilders, so they just take it for granted that a few of the Guild ships in their space are doing the same thing for other powers. Sometimes they think they’ve found one, and move in on it.”
“And the Guild just lets them?” I asked, not quite believing that. The Guild’s power depended on everybody else being too scared of a trade embargo to confront them, at least directly. Impounding a ship looked pretty much like confrontation to me.
“So long as they stick to the rules,” Clio said.
“Right. There are rules.” Of course there were rules. Rules and custom seemed to dictate pretty much any interaction between the Guild and the rest of the galaxy.
“They’ll just escort us to a secure location,” Clio said, “while they investigate. When they find out they’re wasting their time, they’ll let us complete our run, so we don’t break our word on delivery.”
“And pay us a nice big sum of money to compensate for the earnings we’ve lost while we’re twiddling our thumbs,” Remington added, looking remarkably cheerful at the prospect. He spoke a little louder than normal, intending the League officer to overhear. “So it’s in everybody’s interest to get this nonsense sorted out as quickly as possible.”
“Right,” I agreed. I tried to make my next question sound casual. “And what happens if they do find a ship’s been spying?”
“Not a lot,” Remington said, his voice returning to normal. “Just keep it impounded until the information’s too out of date to be useful, so the crew don’t renege on their contract.” That made sense. Completely preventing a Guilder from fulfilling a promise would definitely have serious consequences, but most of them would be perfectly happy to live up to the letter of an agreement while letting the spirit fend for itself. “And if there’s an actual shooting war going on, we’d have to sign an undertaking not to return to either side’s territory until the dust settles.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound too bad,” I said, trying to sound as casual as everyone else did about the situation. Things might be tense between the Commonwealth and the League at the moment, but they hadn’t escalated to open conflict just yet, and if the diplomats on both sides did their jobs, with any luck it never would. I tried not to think about the consequences if they failed to, but a series of vivid mental images exploded in my mind anyway: Mother’s lone cruiser drifting through the desolation of an uninhabited system, venting air and plasma like the Poison 4, while wave after wave of League ships poured through the rift towards Rockhall; Tinkie plummeting through the atmosphere in her deployment armor, while the ground defenses filled the air around her with lethal countermeasures, dying before she even hit the ground; Dad alone at the funerals, deprived by my selfishness and stupidity of even the presence of a son to help him grieve.
“It’s bad enough.” Rennau appeared with a small datacache, which he handed unceremoniously to the nearest matelot; who promptly shouldered her small arm and went trotting off with it towards the officer. “Always a lot of money to be made in a war zone, and we’d miss out.”
“Which wouldn’t be good.” Remington nodded in agreement. “Moving supplies, evacuating wounded, all kinds of contracts. Hazard rates, good bonuses—”
“Getting shot at,” I added, perhaps a little more sourly than I’d intended—if I’m honest, I found their casual attitude rather callous. But then, I suppose, neither of them had people they cared about in the firing line.
“Fire on a Guild ship?” Clio actually laughed at that, and both the men smiled at me tolerantly. “No one would dare.”
Her father nodded. “All the Guilders in their own logistics chain would regard that as a breach of contract, and pull out at once.” Which would hand victory to the enemy overnight. An even better guarantor of good behavior than the threat of a trade embargo.
“I can see that,” I said cautiously. A thought occurred to me. “What if one of the combatants pretends to be a Guilder? So as not to be shot at?”
“Same result,” Remington said. “Any violation of Guild neutrality would be taken as an act of bad faith, and we’d unilaterally rescind the contract.” Thereby letting the other side win and risking an embargo. Definitely not a strategy worth taking a chance on.
“Besides,” Clio added, “you couldn’t disguise a warship as an ordinary Guilder, the weapons would be too obvious. And any privateers in the warzone would already be accounted for.”
“As well as having very specific contracts,” Rennau added. Which was also true. The handful of armed merchantmen on the Guild registry tended to take commissions which weren’t entirely legal according to the local governments; which probably accounted for them, or their neighbors, being the privateers’ biggest clients.
Though it was undeniably interesting, my attention hadn’t been entirely on the conversation. While it was going on, I’d been eyeing the datacache through my ‘sphere, following the little sparks of information as the matelot carried it over to the young ensign with the comely facial hair. They conferred for a moment, the League sailor gesticulating in Rennau’s direction, then, as I’d hoped, Neville meshed his handheld with the cache.
I watched the whole process avidly, recording everything as our manifests, crew list, and Sowerby’s maintenance records drained into the ensign’s device in less than a second. There wasn’t time to try piggybacking on the transfer, and I was by no means sure I’d have dared to in any case; there were bound to be traps and countermeasures in place to prevent that kind of thing, and even in data time I’d have to react almost instantly to what I found there. Far better to take my time, and what I’d learned, to craft a piece of sneakware which would be taken for a legitimate mesh right from the start: it certainly sounded as if I’d have plenty of time to practice.
Any luck? Remington asked, having noticed my momentary distraction, and I shook my head, almost imperceptibly.
Too well protected. But I’ve seen enough to get started.
And I really thought I had. But, of course, the Leaguers knew about neuroware, even if they didn’t use it themselves, and they were bright enough to have take precautions against it.
Eventually, the Leaguers seemed to decide that they’d wasted enough time rummaging around the Stacked De
ck in search of nonexistent contraband or evidence of spying, and retreated to their ship, leaving us to our own devices. No one was particularly sorry to see them go, although Clio took a little longer than seemed strictly necessary in escorting Ensign Neville to the personnel lock, and assuring him of our full cooperation. I may have remarked on the fact, because Rennau looked at me in what I can only describe as a faintly pitying manner.
“Well, what did you expect?” he said. “You’ve had your chance,” but before I could respond to that, Clio returned, looking faintly flushed, and he quickly changed the subject.
It took us the better part of two days to reach our destination, which, despite what I’d expected, was nowhere near Freedom itself. We left the main shipping lane an hour our so after being boarded, the Presumption of Innocence remaining alongside the whole time to ensure our compliance; although, after having witnessed the crippling of the Poison 4, I have to confess that her presence made me feel more than a little uneasy. Not that there was any need for force in our case, or even the threat of it; there was apparently a protocol for this sort of thing, which Remington and his crew seemed happy enough to follow.
So it was that we found ourselves coasting in to dock at a military void station hanging just above the Freedom system’s biggest gas giant, an ominous, looming presence, striated in shades of blood and bile, and pockmarked with storms the size of the world I grew up on. If it had been very much larger it would have collapsed into a small protostar, a dim binary companion to Freedom itself, but as it was it remained nothing more than a planet of prodigious size. Which made it the perfect place to site a naval base, of course: departing ships would have all that mass to boost against, letting them accelerate quickly towards any of the rift points in the system, without having to slingshot around anything to build up momentum. Not to mention the dozens of moons, hundreds of smaller rocks, and millions of tiny objects orbiting the place, which would confuse the sensors of any enemy attempting to attack it, and which provided an almost inexhaustible supply of raw materials for the shipyard hanging in the same orbit. Coasting in, I spotted half a dozen vessels undergoing refit, surrounded by work drones and void-suited hulljacks, although with their beacons powered down there was no obvious indication of their names and classes; judging by their mass readings, however, most were about the same size as the Stacked Deck.
