The Empire's Corps: Book 05 - The Outcast

by Christopher Nuttall

  He sobered. “Have you given any thought to your own future?”

  “Some,” Sameena admitted.

  She’d earned millions of credits from the sale of Firewater Mead, all of which she’d plunged into her own personal project. Building up a stockpile of old or decommissioned industrial equipment hadn't been difficult; refitting it so it could actually be used was much harder. There were reasons, it seemed, why no one else had invested in mobile factories ... but she knew that there was no choice. Having a fixed industrial base was just asking for someone to come along and take it from her. Much as she liked Jamie Cook, she had no doubt that the Imperial Navy would seize her ships when the supplies ran out for good.

  Brad hesitated, then plunged ahead. “I finally signed the contract for a freighter of my own,” he said. “The Lead Pipe is a smaller ship than Logan, but much faster. And it doesn't need so many crew. Would you be interested in shipping with me?”

  Sameena hesitated. “Why me?”

  “Keeping it in the family,” Brad said. “Besides, you need to broaden your experience for the day you come out into the open.”

  He had a point, Sameena knew. She might own seventy percent of Khadijah Incorporated – the limited corporation she’d set up to handle her affairs – but she had never revealed her involvement to anyone outside the family. Spacers looked to experience rather than money or family contacts and they simply wouldn't take her seriously, not until she had far more experience. A few months or years as Brad’s XO would definitely bolster her credentials.

  “True,” she agreed.

  “And mom and dad aren't going to move on,” Brad added. “If you happen to be ambitious ...”

  Sameena nodded. Captain Hamilton and Ethne owned majority interests in Logan, ensuring that they could never be displaced – and, unlike the military or the big corporate shipping lines, they would never be promoted upwards to clear the decks for younger officers. If she wanted experience as an XO – or a Captain – she would have to go elsewhere.

  “Lead Pipe,” she mused. “How many crew do you need?”

  “She’s a Poseidon-class fast freighter,” Brad said. “Heavily automated. I’d only need one other crewman, apart from myself.”

  Sameena mentally ran through what she knew about the class. The ships were small, barely forty metres long, with very limited carrying space. But they made up for that by their speed; they were in considerable demand to serve as courier vessels or simply to transport goods from one star system to another at breakneck speed. They’d originally been a military design, she recalled. The civilians had found another use for them.

  Experience told her that maintenance was going to be a problem. Even a relatively small starship would need plenty of maintenance – and two people would be pushed to the limits as they struggled to handle it all. But if the ship was newer ... perhaps they could work out a schedule that would work. On the other hand, it would be tricky ... perhaps they’d be safer taking on a couple of other crew.

  “I’d prefer to avoid it,” Brad admitted. “The funds are running very low.”

  Sameena nodded in understanding. The down payment on a freighter could be staggeringly high, particularly if the freighter was relatively new. Brad would need years to pay off his debt to the banks and assume full ownership of his new vessel. Limiting the number of crew would help save money ... assuming, of course, that he didn't run into problems that only a larger crew could handle.

  I could pay for it, she thought. But she knew that Brad’s pride would never allow him to accept money from her. Captain Hamilton and Ethne had had qualms about collecting their share of the Firewater Mead money and Sameena would never have disputed that they’d earned it. If they hadn't taken her onboard, she would be dead – or worse – by now.

  And then she realised that she’d made her decision.

  “I think it would be a good idea,” she said. She’d wanted a new challenge. “What sort of contract should we sign?”

  Brad flushed. “I ... would you be interested in a marriage contract?”

  Sameena couldn't keep her surprise off her face. A marriage contract ... she should have seen it coming, but she hadn't. Jannah cast a long shadow over her; the thought of a man asking her to marry him – and that was what Brad was doing, to all intents and purposes – still seemed alien. But it wasn't as if his family could approach her family.

  She hesitated, thinking as fast as she could. Brad was a nice guy, but she didn't love him ... and she’d grown to value the freedom of living in space too much to simply give it up. And yet ... the traders respected marriage contracts far more than anything else. Refusing one would definitely raise eyebrows.

  “I don't know,” she admitted, miserably. She knew that there were hundreds of traders who would jump at the chance. But a combination of old and new cultural mores told against it. “I do like you ...”

  “But you don’t love me,” Brad said. “I do understand the need for a trial period ...”

  Sameena fought down the urge to laugh. There was no such thing as a trial marriage on Jannah. The wife went to her husband’s house – normally, her husband’s family house – and was effectively trapped there from that moment on. She would be the lowest person on the family tree, treated as a servant by her mother-in-law and her new sisters ... it would be hard, almost impossible, for her to leave the house. And there were whispered stories of worse horrors awaiting disobedient wives.

  She reached out and clutched Brad’s hand. “I can't marry you,” she said. Would she consider it? The hell of it was that she didn't know. Thanks to Jayne and modern medical science, it would be years before she had to have children. In fact, she could keep that option open until she died of old age. “It’s too soon.”

  Brad tilted his head. “Are you still seeing that Lieutenant?”

  “Just for dinner, every once or twice in a while,” Sameena admitted. “But I don’t know how I feel about him either.”

  He surprised her by laughing. “You’ve been seeing him on and off for two years,” he said, dryly. “Do you know how far the relationship might have gone by now?”

  Sameena flushed. Jayne had told her in far too much detail for her peace of mind. Outside a marriage contract, traders and other spacefarers enjoyed a sexual freedom utterly unknown on Jannah. Even inside a marriage contract, there were clauses that would allow for affairs and periods of separation ... there seemed to be nothing sacred, as long as the contract allowed for it. But she still felt reluctant to take part.

  “If he finds someone else,” she said, “I will be happy for him.”

  But she wouldn't be, she knew. Part of her did find him attractive, did enjoy the kisses he gave her ... and would hate it if someone else married him.

  “I think you protest too much,” Brad said, reading her face. “But there are other contracts we could use.”

  “Let me buy my way onto the ship,” Sameena said, quietly. “I don’t want to be just a hired hand.”

  “You’d never be just a hired anything,” Brad said. He sounded reluctant, even though it would help solve some of his money problems. “Forty percent?”

  Sameena pretended to consider it. Forty percent would give her a share of the profits – assuming that there were profits – but it wouldn't give her any actual authority. But then, it was well understood that a starship could only have one commander. Brad would be the final authority in any case. And offering her so much was a gesture of complete faith and trust. If she left the crew, she could cripple him merely by demanding repayment.

  No wonder they prefer to keep these matters in the family, she thought. One person leaving at the wrong time could cost them the ship.

  “Forty percent,” she agreed, finally. “And what other terms should we have?”

  She’d learned more than she wanted to learn about writing contracts over the last two years, thanks to Ethne. Starship commanders couldn't afford loopholes when they lived far too close to the margins. Brad haggled for a fe
w minutes, but it was clear that he wasn't really interested in negotiations. That, Sameena had to admit, was a very good sign.

  “Leave room for a marriage contract,” he insisted, when they'd finished haggling. “You might change your mind.”

  Sameena looked back out of the viewport. The two worlds were slowly disengaging, the stream of water that linked them together breaking up and falling back into the gravity wells. It would be ten years before their orbits pulled them back together, she knew ... and one day they would probably come too close and collide. What would happen when two large bodies crashed together?

  “There are people,” Brad said quietly, “who believe that this entire system is artificial.”

  Sameena sucked in her breath. Humanity, in the thousands of years it had explored space, had never encountered another alien race. Hell, relatively few worlds had even had the same biological complexity of Earth. Normally, when a terraforming package was dropped on a newly-discovered world, the newcomers rapidly overwhelmed and replaced the local flora and fauna. There weren't many non-Earth animals on the same level as dogs or cats, let alone humans.

  But there were always rumours, whispered tales of strange encounters out along the Rim ...

  “God created everything,” Sameena said. She gave him a smile. “Or wasn't that what you meant?”

  “No,” Brad said, dryly. “That wasn't what I meant.”

  Sameena shrugged. She hadn’t had the time to engage in a full study of religion in the Empire, but she had learned that there were no shortage of religions claiming to know the One True Way to God. Islam had thousands of different sects that Jannah had never acknowledged; it still stunned her when she thought about just how much had been cut out of the history books. Ali had been listed as one of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, the successors of the Prophet, but she’d never even heard of the Shia until she’d left her homeworld. History had been rewritten to suit the Guardians.

  And Islam was just one of thousands of religions.

  “Tell me,” Brad said, quietly. “Are you refusing my offer because of religion?”

  “No,” she said, firmly. It was true enough. “I just don’t want to be tied down, not ... not like I would have been back home.”

  Brad squeezed her shoulder. “This is your home now,” he said. “Why don’t you take us back to the ship?”

  Sameena smiled as she took control of the shuttle. Learning to fly had been fun, if hair-raising; Paddy had later confessed that he’d borrowed the training program from the Imperial Navy. Their pilots were expected to fly through the atmosphere at breakneck pace, avoid defensive fire and drop down to the ground before they could be shot down. It wasn't something the average trader had to do, which was a relief. Sameena knew that the two cargo shuttles on Logan would have been easily blasted out of the sky by any halfway competent defence force.

  She took one last look at the water worlds, then steered the shuttle back towards Logan. Several other ships were clustered nearby, linked together by tubes that allowed their crews to move freely without spacesuits or shuttles. Sameena hadn't been too sure about allowing outsiders such unrestricted access to the ship, but Captain Hamilton had insisted that it was perfectly normal. The Sunflower Berries had been carefully hidden away before they reached the system.

  “Take us in to dock,” Brad ordered. “And then we will have to have a long talk with mum and dad.”

  Sameena nodded. “When are we going to say goodbye?”

  “There’s always a few dozen crewmen wanting berths at the Meet,” Brad said. “They won’t have any difficulty finding replacements for us.”

  The airlock clanged as they docked with the freighter, then hissed as it opened. “Welcome back,” James called. He was working on an opened hatch, just down the corridor. “Did you have a good time?”

  “We did,” Brad said. “Where are mom and dad?”

  “Dad’s just talking to Captain Vinson,” James said. “Mom should be on the bridge.”

  “Come on,” Brad said. “Let’s go give her the good news.”

  Sameena had half-expected Ethne to raise objections to her leaving the crew. The guardianship they’d assumed over her did give them certain rights, even if they hadn't used them to control her in the past. But instead Ethne’s only comment was that they would be better off with a marriage contract. Sameena kept her thoughts to herself.

  “Just make sure you take care of each other,” Ethne cautioned. “After that, everything will take care of itself.”

  She hesitated. “And we’ll take care of the Mead production,” she added. “You won’t have to worry about that.”

  Sameena, who was more worried about accidently flooding the market, nodded.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Matters were made worse by the damage this could cause to the law. In order for the economy to grow, or at least remain stable, the law had to be impartial, without taking sides in economic disputes. However, the rapidly-changing economy often raced ahead of the law’s ability to keep up, while those on top attempted to use their vast political power (through cash) to subvert the law and use it against their rivals. This allowed them to warp the free market to their advantage, at least in the short term. In the long term, their houses of cards always came crashing down. The results were not pleasant.

  - Professor Leo Caesius. The Science That Isn’t: Economics and the Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire.

  No one knew, at least as far as Sameena had been able to discover, just who had founded Tabasco Asteroid. It was a simple rock, one hundred kilometres across, drifting in orbit around an otherwise planet-less star. The Imperial Navy and Department of Colonisation had taken one look and dismissed the system as worthless. In their wake, smugglers and black colonists had turned the asteroid into a semi-legal trading port. It was nowhere near as civilised as Madagascar.

  She sat at a table in the cantina, keeping her expression firmly under control. The large compartment was heaving with humans, many looking far more disreputable than anyone she’d seen on Madagascar. On a stage, several naked or near-naked girls were dancing to a tune so loud that it was a wonder that anyone could hear anything; the stench of desperation and hopelessness was strong in the air. Sameena mentally checked and rechecked the location of her concealed weapons. She'd never felt so threatened since the day the Guardians had invaded her father’s house.

  Brad’s insistence on visiting Tabasco had puzzled her, even though he’d explained that it was a good place to make contacts that might help him to find work. Lead Pipe required a steady inflow of money and he refused to allow her to offer him funds from selling Firewater Mead, even though she could have paid off the entire debt. Instead, the money had been reinvested and they were looking for more contracts. The only upside of the whole episode, Sameena had decided, was that it allowed her to gather more data for her theory. It was no longer possible to deny that the Empire was in serious trouble.

  She looked up, one hand reaching for her weapon ... and then smiled as Brad sat down on the other side of the table. A topless waitress appeared out of nowhere, took his order and then retreated. Sameena couldn't help noticing that the cantina’s denizens seemed to take an unholy delight in groping her as she passed ... and that she did nothing to stop them. Like so many others, she had no choice but to sell herself. It was all she had left.

  “I found us a contract,” Brad said, cheerfully. He put a privacy generator on the table and clicked it on, wrapping them in an invisible sphere that should prevent anyone on the outside from overhearing them. It wouldn't draw comment. Almost everyone used such devices when they could get away with it, even though they were technically illegal. “And it’s a good one.”

  Sameena nodded. The very first contract they’d been offered when they’d reached the asteroid had been to ship children from one star system to another. It had seemed odd to her ... and Brad, despite his money worries, had flatly refused to take it. He’d explained, afterwards, that the children would be sol
d into slavery. The thought of children being used as slaves was disgusting. They would be lucky, Brad had said, if all that happened was that they were farmed out to new colonists and treated as spare labour.

  “Go on,” she said. “Where are we going?”

  “Rosa,” Brad said. He made a face. “They want us to transport weapons to the planet.”

  Sameena frowned. It sounded much better than shipping children into slavery, but it raised its own problems. Transporting weapons was technically illegal without permits and the Imperial Navy would take a dim view of it, if they happened to be caught. The last thing she wanted was to wind up on a penal world, staring up at the stars and knowing that she would never be able to fly amongst them again.

  “Weapons,” she repeated. “And do they have the proper permits?”

  Brad shrugged. “They have permission from the government to import weapons,” he said. “I checked the papers very carefully.”

  He shook his head. “We’re quite short, Sameena,” he admitted. “We’re going to need a contract soon.”

  Sameena gritted her teeth, cursing male pride under her breath. Tabasco had almost no laws at all, but the ones they did have all revolved around paying debts. A person could rape or murder with impunity, yet those crimes were regarded as harmless pranks when compared to failing to pay what one owed. There would be no extension or mercy if they failed to meet their payments.

  And we might have to do something dreadful just to survive, she thought. Weapons would be preferable.

  “Very well,” she said, tiredly. Their first two contracts had been simple, if boring. This promised to be far too exciting. “Let me see the contract.”

  Brad passed her his datapad, allowing her to skim through the document. It was relatively simple; they would be paid half of the money upfront, while the remainder would be paid by the shipping agent on the planet’s surface. The attached certificates stated that the shipping agent was an authorised weapons dealer, representing the interests of the planet’s government. But that didn't explain why they needed to send to Tabasco for weapons.