Stargazer: New Home - Ancient Foes

by Ivan Ertlov

  "Frank, prepare the service contract. Then, I'll show our newest crew member to his quarters. Welcome aboard, Florbsh!"

  A loud but more amused than excited hooting from the door area now had them all up from their seats, whirling around or looking curiously towards the main aisle.

  "The Stargazer Prospectorate welcomes its first employee! What a historic moment! I am honoured to have been an eyewitness to this event."

  Was there a hint of sarcasm or even contempt in Aarashkvachora's voice as she strutted gracefully into the ready room with Matosh in tow?

  No, not really - and that worried Frank even more, not to mention that it wasn't every day that you had unwelcome visitors twice, and one of them turned out to be the Council Speaker with her bodyguard. Dila snorted and reacted quite undiplomatically.

  "Are we having an open house today?"

  Frank winced and gave the astrotelepath a brief, reproachful look before bowing his head and offering his greetings like Troshk and Bettsy. In the end, it was logical that the Metaltaster took over the official part.

  "Dear Speaker, Grand Layer of the Creesh, welcome to the Stargazer Prospectorate. What brings you to us?"

  Aarashkvachora slid forward and looked around demonstratively while her voice took on a casual, chatty tone that sent a cold shiver down Frank's spine.

  "Just an evening walk in the lovely cool air of the Borshtsplinter - and sincere appreciation for your work here. As I always emphasise in numerous council meetings and public statements, I care most about small and medium-sized businesses. They are the engine and soul of our economy and therefore at the heart of my politics, aren't they Matosh?"

  The hulking Borsht, who had just given Troshk a respectful nod from warrior to veteran, growled in agreement.

  "Of course, Speaker. You talk incessantly, so to speak, about the efficient, hard-working operators of the family consortia. Those who honestly pay their taxes."

  The speaker clicked enthusiastically.

  "Exactly. It is the small, daring companies that lead the Protectorate into the future, those who don't try to deprive the community of an honest, solidary contribution."

  Florbsh let himself flow from the table as panic-stricken as he was discreet, becoming an inconspicuous puddle beneath it, while Aarashkvachora moved ever closer to her hosts.

  "You've really furnished it very nicely here. Rustic, no doubt, maybe even a little too Terran - but nice. And ..."

  She paused, stretched her head segment even higher in the air and let her mandibles click with pleasure.

  "... Is that coffee I smell? Really good coffee with an intense, exotic aroma almost reminiscent of Özgür's famous smuggled goods?"

  Frank surrendered; any resistance was futile here. The speaker knew everything, saw everything, could not be fooled. Of course, he knew the rumours, knew at least from hearsay about the massive network of spies and informants who supposedly all reported to Aarashkvachora - and to her alone. But it was one thing to know about it like any halfway interested citizen, quite another to see the speaker in action. Even more so within your own home. And it was clear what she desired, at least on the surface. So who was he to oppose her wishes?

  Exactly, a nobody. A human nobody.

  "I'll go put the Bialetti on. Troshk, shovel some larvae on a bad of ice. The good stuff, from Bettsy's secret stash."

  Surprisingly, the Metaltaster protested only very subtly and reservedly. She waited until her layer had the cup of coffee in front of her and clicked contentedly in view of the wriggling, juicy larvae before she asked Aarashkvachora the question that was burning on all their tongues and mandibles.

  "Okay, what to the moons do you really want from us?"

  Matosh growled involuntarily in the face of this disrespect, but fell silent after a brief glance into Troshk's eyes, who, despite his age, still looked several levels more dangerous than his younger counterpart. He was, after all, a living legend among all the Borsht. Aarashkvachora, on the other hand, took Bettsy's temporarily lost composure with humour.

  "I want us to watch a recording together. And sip an ice-cold larva or two while we're at it. Holonet and chill, so to speak. Only very different from your practice with the Stormcommander."

  "But from the dull, grey distance

  The storm announces itself silently,

  Presses the birds down upon the waters,

  And the swelling of men's hearts is laid low.

  And it comes. Before its raging fury

  The skipper wisely stretches down his sails,

  With the fear-filled ball play

  Wind and waves.

  And on that shore over there stand

  Friends and loved ones, quivering on the firm:

  "Alas, why did he not stay here!

  Ah, the storm! Away from happiness, slyly!

  Shall the good man perish thus?

  Oh, he should, oh, he could! Gods!"

  But he stands manly at the helm;

  Wind and waves play with the ship;

  Wind and waves not with his heart:

  Ruling, he looks on the fierce deep

  And trusts, failing or landing,

  His gods."

  - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  3.

  Wanted Slimers on Hot Worlds

  "I've seen that before!"

  Astonished, they looked at Dilara, who was visibly shifting back and forth in her seat, the tips of her ears stretched stiffly upwards. Troshk growled in amazement.

  "What, a mined wormhole? A moon that's been stripped of its raw materials?"

  The astrotelepath shook her head vigorously as her fingers slid over the control panel of Aarashkvachora's projector.

  "No, that! I am talking about the hulls of those mines!"

  They stared spellbound at the enlarged image section showing one of the smart drones - or space mines, depending on the area of operation. A nondescript thing, no more than propulsion, navigation and warhead, but under an overlapping, almost insectoid-looking armour. Frank shrugged his shoulders.

  "Looks like Plachtharr technology."

  Matosh leaned forward.

  "That's what we thought at first, but the readings show a completely different composition. It's not something our intelligence classifies as an Alliance technology."

  Dilara's ears were quivering by now.

  "Methane fart, listen to me! This is not Plachtharr, it is not Protectorate either, this is - something else. I've seen a hull configuration like this before; it must have been twenty years ago or so. Not on a mine, but on a light bomber, maybe it was just a heavy fighter - but definitely a pirate ship."

  Now she had the full attention of everyone present.

  "Well, I was a smuggler back then... I mean, a freelance merchant pilot, and we flew three freighters - full to the brim with Durash slime! - through the Rim Worlds. Between Birum Belt and Kahar Nebula, we were ambushed; three such bug-eyed ships wiped out our entire escort in less than two minutes."

  The speaker was all ears. Or whatever it was that took over that function for her.

  "And then?"

  Dila shrugged her shoulders.

  "They crippled two of us, so precisely that the cargo took no damage. I managed to escape."

  "How so?"

  The astrotelepath looked up indignantly.

  "What the fuck kind of question is that? I lost them, flew erratically with evasive manoeuvres until I could hide in the Kahar Nebula. Don't forget, I'm probably the best pilot on the planet, maybe even better than our Commander here."

  Frank was beaming inside and could not prevent himself from blushing despite a superhuman effort of will. Thanks to Hasselhoff, Aarashkvachora at least didn't seem to notice.

  "Interesting. Has there been any investigation into the incident back then?"

  Dila laughed cynically.

  "By whom? It's anarchy out there! No orderly military, no police forces to survey more than their own system - and even they are often indistinguishable
from the pirates. The cartel that actually owned our goods ended up accusing me of hawking the other two freighters under the table, and I had to leave the marginal worlds quickly for health reasons. But as I'm sure you know, dear Speaker, the lawless systems are full of stories of lost convoys, missing ships, and even ghost planets."

  Aarashkvachora clicked approval and let her antennae bob.

  "Yes, I am aware of that. But most of them are just that - stories. Tales, legends, rumours interspersed with more or less credible excuses as to why a valuable cargo just didn't turn up at its destination."

  Bettsy, who had been following the conversation so far with a mixture of reserved observation and remarkable composure, hoisted so piercingly that the conversation fell silent, and all eyes turned to her. Even the purely cosmetic ones on a trembling pseudopod.

  "Alright, my laywoman, back to my original question - what do you want from us?"

  If Aarashkvachora was angry with her offspring, at least she did not let on.

  "I have made it clear to the Mining Consortium that I cannot tolerate their presence in the Rim Worlds. So there will be no search and rescue mission from them. However, I cannot send the fleet either, not even our planetary guard force. Do you know why? "

  Troshk stretched through and nodded slowly.

  "Because of the Plachtharr Alliance. Any operation on our part in the non-aligned worlds will be interpreted as an attempt to extend the influence of the Protectorate. And for the symbiont bearers, that would be a signal that our peace is not to be trusted. Whether the Consortium sends an armada or the Council itself - we would risk war."

  "Exactly, Stormcommander. But a small, independent company that has often operated on business in the Rim will be tolerated."

  Dilara hissed disparagingly.

  "I still don't understand what the problem is. The Consortium lost a bunch of raw materials that, strictly speaking, they shouldn't have mined anyway. But on their balance sheet, it's not even a larva shit."

  "They didn't just lose the raw materials and a few ships ..."

  The speaker said this with an undertone in her voice that made Dilara fall silent, and Frank's blood ran cold.

  "... they lost their workers. We are talking about more than a thousand miners, ordinary low-level employees on annual or three-year contracts, who have not returned. Thousands of relatives who are in the dark, only provisionally provided for thanks to my intervention, at least financially. And - although this probably matters less to you, Frank Gazer, than it does to others of your species - more than eight hundred of the missing are human."

  Indeed, the race of the disappeared was beside the point - but their profession was not at all. Bettsy hoisted angrily, while Frank, Dila, and Troshk exchanged grim looks.

  Miners.

  Simple workers of the Mining Consortium sought to improve their humble lives by prospecting in stuffy mining pits and on rugged surfaces of alien worlds for the profit of others. People who were handed their asses by fate with a resounding "Fuck you!" on its lips, but didn't let it get them down. In their very own, often thuggish and boozy way, the true heroes of the Protectorate.

  And especially their former colleagues.

  Frank's voice was busy, and he had to clear his throat several times before he admitted defeat.

  "We're in. In whatever."

  Bettsy now appeared more conciliatory but by no means trusting.

  "Exactly - in what, actually? You're not going to tell us you don't have a spy in the Rim, are you?"

  Aarashkvachora clicked her mandibles, and this time Frank had a hard time picking out the meaning.

  "Of course not. I even have a smart, halfway reliable agent operating out of Pseudohursh. But, unfortunately, he has not been in touch for weeks. Your task, if you accept it, is to seek him out first - and then find the missing miners."

  If you accept it.

  The rhetorical phrase was as unnecessary as a goitre on the neck or seasoning sauce for Shrava larvae that had not passed their best-before date and demise three months ago. Dila poked Frank in the ribs, nodded curtly at him as he turned to her.

  No negotiations about payment, alright. Troshk sighed, and Bettsy surrendered to her fate.

  "What do we need to know about your agent? How are we going to recognise him?"

  Aarashkvachora sat back and took another sip of the coffee, whose smuggler qualities she greeted with a pleasant click.

  "Quite simply by his exotic appearance. His name is Gurabsh Himmelfeind-Kreuzpointner, and ..."

  "What a stupid name."

  The speaker skilfully ignored Dila's interjection.

  "... he's half-human, half Durash. Hard to miss."

  That had done it. Bettsy clicked in amazement, Frank's eyes widened, and Dila's mouth was so wide open that you could still see a little bit of meat rotting away between the pointed rows of teeth.

  "That - that's completely impossible!"

  "No, it isn't."

  Matosh jumped up and just as quickly had his assault rifle at the ready as Troshk's paw on his shoulder.

  "Take it easy, young warrior, take it easy. Our new employee, remember?"

  Indeed, Florbsh had now rejoined them, in all his decrepit and formerly salt-addicted glory, his pseudopodia causing spontaneously grown antennae to bob instructively.

  "It is not impossible. Difficult, yes, hopeless without talented bio geneticists wielding few scruples and an empty bank account, but not impossible. However, the procedure is highly illegal in almost all Protectorate worlds. The parents would have to hide their child, and even if it can then stand on its own feet - if it has any! - it will be an outsider all its life. An outlaw who can only hide among the biggest scum without attracting attention."

  Dilara whistled through her fangs.

  "In other words, the perfect spy for the Rim Worlds."

  "So it is. And if there is one place in this ocean of outlaws that is particularly far from the eyes of even the most questionable laws; a world that is at the same time highly interconnected with everything that happens beyond our and the Alliance's reach, it is Pseudohursh."

  *

  "Pseudo is derived from an old Terran language and means imitation or fake, doesn't it? So we're on our way to a fake planet?"

  Frank blinked, turned to the side and looked at Dila, who just shrugged her shoulders. Okay, she didn't know either, just as he had no idea from where their target world got its strange name. The triad was only superficial at the moment, a loose association that helped them steering the curious Yrsha far away from any trade routes or stations. They needed a safe, low-traffic area to open a wormhole that would take them more than a thousand light-years away. A simple activity alongside which one could certainly chat.

  "I'm sorry, I only know that there is a world called Hursh, but it is part of the Plachtharr Alliance. The inhabitants are humanoid bipeds with pale skin, which doesn't matter because it's covered by symbiotes anyway."

  "You're already on the right track, kid."

  Bettsy scurried down the stairs from her console and nimbly crawled between the two couches where Frank and Dilara had made themselves comfortable. Their little oasis of comfort from which they piloted Yrsha - no, wait, that was the wrong phrase. From which they flew together with Yrsha, yes, that hit the spot. And usually a place of that intimacy between astrotelepath and Commander that the latter secretly wished for much more often.

  But not today and certainly not with the naturally armoured body of the Metaltaster between them.

  "Hursh joined the Alliance more than eight hundred years ago - but it was a close call. The Hurshians were not unanimously considered worthy by the symbionts. Some of the population were deemed too emotional, too violent, too criminal in their thoughts and actions to join the Alliance."

  Frank could only vaguely imagine what such deliberation might look like in a sea of millions of symbionts, what criteria they used to welcome new races. But he knew that their decisions were usually final.
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  "What happened?"

  Bettsy clicked in amusement.

  "They've cleaned out - their whole damn planet. All the crooks and criminals, mobsters and individuals of questionable character, all the thieves, fences, whores, and swindlers were stuffed into gigantic cargo ships and abandoned on a planet mapped a few decades earlier in the Rim. An ocean world with a single huge continent that promised abundant fauna, flora and raw materials. This was the birth of Pseudohursh."

  "Actually a lenient, reasonable and empathetic decision."

  Bettsy straightened up, stretching her antennae vaguely towards the ceiling from where Yrsha's voice was coming - at least for the moment.

  "Actually, yes. The problem was that the island already had an indigenous culture, millions of years old and spiritually sophisticated. Oh, and a fauna and flora where pretty much everything was eager to kill the newcomers. Paradise turned out to be hell for most."

  "And then what happened?"

  "There were several wars with the indigenous people, all of which were lost by the newcomers. Today, the descendants of the outcasts live in a kind of reservation, have built cities there, and profit mainly from space trade. It is a transhipment point for hot goods and information, and in recent centuries shady characters of pretty much all races have settled there. It's the ideal retreat for anyone who doesn't want to be found in the Protectorate."

  "Or for a spy."

  "Exactly."

  Frank leaned back, letting the soft, intelligent coating of the pilot's chair gently massage his shoulders while his thoughts circled around the strange world to which they were setting out. And about the Hursh people themselves. Who would settle a newly discovered island with whole shiploads of convicts?

  How stupid did you have to be, and how stupid were those who voluntarily moved to a world where the wilderness itself could kill you?

  Shaking his head, he bonded with Dilara a touch more intensely, enjoying her impetuous wildness and unbridled cynicism as they prepared to leap in the holy trinity.

  *