Shooting the Rift - eARC

by Alex Stewart

  “The Simon Says.” The grand mistress looked at me, with a hint of amusement. “You contracted Clio as a privateer to steal it for you. Under Guild rules, that makes you the owner, unless you want to sell it on, or back to the League. And you still owe her a third of its market value, by the way.”

  I sat still for a moment, gazing at the planet below, and the starfield it was embedded in, speckled with the moving motes of distant ships. Astonishingly, this simply hadn’t occurred to me before; I’d been thinking of the vessel we’d stolen simply as a means of escape, without a thought of what to do with it afterwards.

  “That’s an interesting thought,” I said. “We could run cargoes . . .”

  “You could do a lot more than that,” Clio’s mom said. “She’s armed, don’t forget. There’ll be plenty of work for a privateer when the League and Commonwealth start shooting at one other.”

  “That’s true,” I said, heavily. The Commonwealth would be certain to react to the information I’d found by moving a task force into the Rockhall system ahead of the League infiltrators, and the diplomatic wrangling would end in accusations of bad faith on both sides, followed shortly by a bloodbath. Accusations which would be perfectly justified, unfortunately. Unless, of course they both needed to save face. . . .

  “You’ve got some nerve, I’ll give you that,” Wymes greeted me, as he stepped through the airlock from an external docking port, and glanced round at the reception area the Guild maintained for visitors it needed to do business with, but preferred to keep at arm’s length. Comfortable chairs surrounded islands of coffee tables, marooned in the middle of a carpet the deep purple color of the upper atmosphere, and I waved a perfunctory greeting from the nearest.

  “Coffee?” I asked, as a serving drone deposited a tray containing two cups, a steaming pot, and a plate of cookies in front of me, before buzzing away to take an order from the far side of the room, where Clio and the Freebooters were huddled in earnest consultation.

  “Why not?” Wymes dropped into the seat opposite me, pretending to ignore the faint sound of flatulence emitted by the deforming upholstery. He waited while I poured, and handed him a cup. “What do you want?”

  “Strangely enough,” I said, “I wanted to talk to someone on your side I trust.” He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, just sipping his coffee. “You want to do what’s best for the League, and in this case so do I.”

  “Pardon my skepticism,” Wymes said, “but you’re a Commonwealth agent. Which inclines me to doubt that.”

  “I’m a Guilder,” I said, indicating the patch on my jacket, both of which were new. “I wouldn’t be here, otherwise. And I’ve a proposition for you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Good. I have proof that the Commonwealth’s been planning a preemptive strike on Rockhall, just like you were.” Which was stretching what I’d deduced of Mother’s brief a little, but not all that much. “Show them you know, and you’ve both got a chance to save face, stand down, and go back to the negotiating table. Otherwise you’ll both lose a lot of ships and people. Am I making sense?”

  To my relief, Wymes nodded. “And this proof would be . . .”

  I held up a memory cache, like the one Mallow had slipped into my pocket at our first meeting on Numarkut, into which I’d loaded a copy of the file Tinkie and I had found in the node at home. “Movement orders for a Commonwealth warship. My mother’s, in fact. To Sodallagain.” He reached out reflexively, and I twitched it away. “So let’s talk about the price.”

  For the first time I saw a smile of genuine amusement on Wymes’s face.

  “It seems I owe you an apology,” he said, taking a cookie from my plate, and chewing with what seemed like genuine relish. “You’re clearly a Guilder to the bone.”

  My business at last concluded, probably on less advantageous terms than Clio would have managed, but satisfactory nevertheless, I wandered over to join her. “How’s it going?” I asked.

  “I want to hear this from you,” Ertica said with a scowl, before she had a chance to reply. “She says the two of you own the ship we stole.”

  “Technically, under Guild rules, Clio owns a third of it,” I said. “The rest’s mine. For the moment.”

  “And you want to cut us in too.”

  “It seems fair,” I said. “We’d never have got away without you.” I turned to Clio. “You’ve explained the proposition?”

  She nodded tightly. “Till I’m blue in the face.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” I asked. “We need a crew, you need a ship. And you’ll have a third share between you, to divide up however you want.” How Ertica wanted, anyway; I was fairly sure the division wouldn’t exactly be equal. “And you’ll have the Guild behind you as well. That’s got to be worth something.”

  “That seems to be the sticking point,” Clio said.

  “I’m not going to be anyone’s apprentice at my age,” Ertica said. “Least of all a child.” She glared at Clio, as if mortally offended.

  “That’s just a technicality,” I explained. “I’m her apprentice too, at least on paper.”

  “That makes me feel so much better,” Ertica said.

  “We can pay you off instead, if you prefer,” I offered. Wymes had promised me enough for that, and we hadn’t even started taking bids on the list of compromised cargo brokers yet.

  “Well, I’m in,” Rollo said, unexpectedly. “I’ve missed being on a ship with guns. Big guns are fun.”

  Baines was nodding too. “A chance to join the Guild’s a huge opportunity, Carolyn. We won’t get another.”

  “I suppose not,” she admitted grudgingly. “Or another chance at a share in a ship.” She sighed. “All right. But I’m not taking orders from her. Unless I agree with them.”

  “The same goes for me,” Clio said, “but otherwise you’re the skipper.” She signaled to a loitering drone, which promptly dropped to the table, and deposited five glasses she must have ordered earlier in front of us. She lifted one in salute, which we all echoed a moment later after picking up our own. “A toast then. To the Simon Says, and all who sail in her.”

  The former Freebooters drained their glasses in unison. “The Simon Says.”

  “We’re changing the name,” I said.

  END

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Those without whom, etc . . .

  Novels, alas, don’t spring straight from the mind of the author to the shelves of Barnes and Noble (or Waterstone’s, if you live on this side of the Atlantic.) The intermediate process involves a lot of hard work, and occasional profanity.

  Fortunately, most of us get help and encouragement from a variety of sources. In this case I’d particularly like to thank David Drake, for first suggesting I’d be a good fit for the Baen list; Toni Weisskopf for listening, and inviting me to pitch something; Kelly Marshall, my agent, for contractual I dotting and T crossing; Duncan Lunan and others on the Milford email list for help with the diagram on page xx, any technical errors in which are entirely due to my own scientific illiteracy; John Lambshead, for much invaluable advice on being English and writing for Americans, which turned out to involve a lot more than simply omitting the occasional vowel; and, most importantly of all, Judith, for remaining married to a writer for so long in spite of the obvious drawbacks.