by Baen Books
It was just part of the redefinition of relationships, after all. Because they had one. Stildyne, and the rest of them. On his own merits, whether or not Koscuisko had sent him out with them into Gonebeyond, to facilitate their transition from under Bond to normal human beings.
The sooner Stildyne could make up his mind to that, the better it would be for everybody.
###
Langsarik Station. It was a pretty place, though it lacked contour; Robert appreciated the fragrance of spring blossoms in the air, blowing in from the greenery that clothed the walls of the launch-lanes off in the middle distance. He remembered the Provost Marshal, Hilton Shires; and wondered, a little, what warranted the presence of the senior man in the Port Authority at the arrival of a freighter-courier like Bammers.
“You remember my friend Kaz?” Shires was asking Stildyne. Of course we do, Robert thought, but did his best to make his mental tone appropriately polite. It had been Kazmer Daigule who’d piloted the ship that had brought them here, after all, and it hadn’t been more than a few weeks. Three months. Maybe. “We might have to check his pockets. We might have to check my pockets. But our Malcontent cousins specified the crew, as a condition of access.”
Traffic Control had brought Bammers in next to a ship already on the tarmac, beautiful ship, heavy courier. Robert thought he’d seen it before. Stildyne was apparently sure, but Stildyne would know; Stildyne—and Lek—had been on board of the Kospodar thula when it had made its famous mid-vector intercept of the Ragnarok. Also when it had shot a way through the mine-field that Taisheki Station had been laying to trap the Ragnarok, and saved Ragnarok and its crew from prosecution to the fullest extent of the law for crimes they hadn’t committed.
“Ship’s Engineer would tell you he’s got first dibs,” Stildyne said. “Don’t say anything to him. He’ll come after us.” Ragnarok was in Gonebeyond Space too, that was so. Nobody had come looking for them yet, though. Robert wasn’t sure Captain ap Rhiannon really cared about chasing them down: but maybe it was just that the Ragnarok had other things on its mind, just now. Distracted.
“He’d have to fight my Aunt Walton for it,” Shires noted, mildly. “That would be something. We could sell tickets. But he’d lose.” The Provost Marshal’s “Aunt Walton” was the Flag Captain of the Langsarik fleet, the senior official—semi-retired—in all of the Langsarik quadrant of Gonebeyond space. She probably had experience, fighting with Ship’s Engineers.
Pulling a short stack of data wafers out of the bosom of his overblouse Shires passed them to Stildyne, with an expression of moderate regret on his face. “Here are your codes, Chief. I heard your crew would be wanting to move in right away, I’ve scheduled you for a briefing tomorrow midshift, come see me for ship’s next assignment. Please. We’d like Fisher Wolf’s help with station management out Perjuki way. Nowhere near the Ragnarok.”
“Fisher Wolf? Is that what it’s calling itself, now?” Stildyne asked, with that subsonic rumble of amusement he could get in his voice from time to time. Robert wasn’t quite sure he could parse the joke, but he knew what Dolgorukij men usually meant when they were talking about “fish” and there wasn’t a fried filet with chopped pickle on the side anywhere in sight. So there was a joke. He just wasn’t entirely in on it. “Robert. Call Lek out. Tell him his cousin Stanoczk’s brought him a present.”
The Kospodar thula. Fisher Wolf. Long and almost straight through the flanks, its forward sector bulging out like a tilted pitfruit. The wheelhouse’s clearscreens beneath the forward hood of the ship’s top skin took a rakish angle down to their thermal sills on the slant; six back stabilizers, two to a side, one dorsal, one ventral, and the dorsal stabilizer was at least twice the size of any of the others.
It reminded Robert of nothing so much as an aquatic predator, a famous monster out of the great ocean worlds of Tabyhee Allegate; he’d had seen pictures. Ancient beasts. Primitive, efficient, and beautiful in their savagery. Stildyne had been on board as one of its weaponers, at Taisheki; Koscuisko as well, as insurance against any potential conflicts between Lek and his governor. And Lek on pilot’s station. People had talked. People had said that Lek and the thula were beautiful together.
Their hot showers were maybe going to be delayed for a little bit, then, and their laundry besides. Whether Cousin Stanoczk—Stildyne’s lover—was actually here at Langsarik Station or not Robert didn’t know; and that was actually none of his business. There was the thula. Here were the security keys and the control authorizations. Holding out his hand Robert waited: Stildyne dropped them into Robert’s hand, one, two, five.
“Right away, Chief,” Robert said, and turned to trot up into the Bammers’ cargo bay to find Lek and tell him he had a girlfriend waiting. One with teeth. One with attitude. One with a Dolgorukij accent.
They’d get out to Safehaven to see the officer sooner or later, but in the meantime there were adventures waiting, and they were just the crew to meet anything head-on.
Cutting Corners
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
"Therny, you awake up there?"
That was Gwiver, his supposed assistant, and emergency back-up, just like in the rule book, with the exception that "assistant" and "emergency back-up" were supposed to be two separate bodies. Any wise, it was a silly question, even given Gwiver's standards, since he'd seen Therny Chirs squeeze his long and lanky self into the pallet lift maintenance bay a ship's hour ago, and it wasn't like there were two ways out.
An hour he'd been working on the double-dorfle-damned thing, not in the cargo master's job description, not by a long Jump, it wasn't. Ought to have a real mechanic at the job. Mechanic? Engineer! He slanted a look at the several pieces of metal that weren't suppose to come loose from the main housing. Horrifying as that discovery had been, it wasn't really surprising. Not having a proper mechanic on-board—just one more way that the line cut corners, and saved itself, so the story went, a goodly amount of money.
Therny Chirs shook his head, only half at himself and his jerry-rigged repair, then he punched the button that, in theory, cycled the lift door to full-open.
This time, for eighteen wonders, the door did open. To a point.
Chirs's helmeted head was pressing against the putative ceiling of the bin and his eyes a hands-width above deck level. He could, this time, actually see out, onto the dock, the slight breeze going past his ears letting him know that the ship’s proper over-pressure was at least functioning.
He watched as several pairs of legs passed close, pushing a cart, probably cutting corners across what was marked out as their private work area. Out on the dock’s main way, half a dozen pilots, arms and mouths in motion as was usually the case with pilots in a group, strode by with a will. Probably coming from the bar, or maybe from the regional cruise ship that taking up four gates at once and making the working ships crowd hard into the rest of Codrescu Station's ramps.
In the wake of the pilots came a smaller figure, small enough that Chirs's small window on the dock drew its attention. He thought it was a child, even as it bent closer and he saw its eyes—as knowing as any of the pilots’, those eyes, and looking at him with interest. It came closer, the shadows shifting over the oddly-shaped face—
He felt shock then, the eyes having fooled him, for his auditor was not a child, after all, but a . . . creature, with a fur-covered face, and—
"Hevelin!" shouted a voice.
The . . . creature turned, there was the sound of running steps, a pair of legs rapidly coming into Chirs's view, and a large pair of hands scooping the creature up, and away.
"Shoulda taken you right back to the garden!" The voice said, the tone somewhere between scolding and laughter. "Don't you gimme that sad—"
A loud BEEP BEEP BEEP drowned out the voice. The half-open hatch rumbled, the readout on his belt chimed, all telling the same story. Safety auto-close had kicked in.
The view went away, the breeze stopped. Therny Chirs did not swear.
"Therny, are you up there?" That was Gwiver, again. "Did I hear something working?"
He took a careful breath.
"Yeah, it was working. It’s not working right now, though. I’m . . ."
"Chirs, we got to make up some time here, you know. Get it moving!"
That was not Gwiver. That was the captain himself, the line's representative, and therefore the author of this particular set of problems.
Fringe Ranger should have had a major refit done five Standards ago. When Therny Chirs came aboard as cargo master, three Standard Years back, he'd been promised that the ship was in line for refit in two Standards. They'd promised other things, too, like apprentices for Cargo Master Chirs to train, who would then be promoted to cargo masters of their own ships, while more 'prentices came to the Ranger to learn. That had been the hook for Therny Chirs: Teaching. Students . . .
All dust and ice. Instead of doing anything they'd promised, or even following their own damn rule book, they kept saving the wrong credits and insisting that you got profit out of cutting corners, instead of good maintenance, full crews, training up the next generation, and delivering goods on time . . .
"Chirs, we’re almost on schedule. You're supposed to start unloading in three hours. You’ve got another half-hour to—"
He took a deep, deep breath, and let it, carefully, out.
"Captain Jad, this one can’t be hurried," he said, just stating facts. "It ought to be fixed if you expect to be carrying break freight handled through a cargo tube. Fixed, Captain, or maybe replaced entire."
"Replaced, at Codrescu Station's prices?" the captain said, outraged. "Just get it working!"
And that was the break point on the pullion screw, so there was no use crying about it or pushing past it. Down . . .
He took a particular breath, counted himself lucky he knew that relaxation technique, and moved things so down was possible.
It was shimmy, and bend, and back, and back, and watch the head, and pull the tub of tools around with him and down, and not drop them on the captain’s deserving head.
"My suggestion, Captain, is that you show an engineer what I’ve got here. I’m two hours past regulation shift end and that puts me in the redzone for safety—my light’s been flashing like a pulsar for the last hour! Just you—and an engineer—look at this!"
The final four feet wasn’t that bad, except that Captain Jad had no sense of self-preservation and had almost managed to get his shoulder shlagged by the tool tub anyway. Chirs was the skinniest man on the ship, but not weak, and that was a bonus for sure for the captain whose hat still had a place to sit.
Chirs pulled the work helmet off once the tub was settled safe, meaning the sweat was free to run down his neck now.
He pushed the dupe button, watched the amber lights flash three times, and pulled the duplicate chip out of the helmet control bar and tried to hand it to the captain, but ended up giving it to Gwiver since the captain was sucking on his trucafe like he did when he got nervous. Damnnnity well ought to be nervous!
"Take a look. And here, I brought ’em out because there was no way I was going to be able to put them back on."
Gwiver took them, too, after managing to hand off the recording to the captain.
"There’s metal missing, sir. There’s grooves in thing that oughtn’t be touching anything, sir. There’s a spot of something that’s flaking and several things that are bent. I’ve been measuring and checking and . . . I’m done with this until it gets fixed, sir."
Probably he’d been overdoing the sir, Chirs realized, but if worse came to worser and the captain put him on warning he had a lot of stuff to go against a complaint. In fact, for backup, he slipped a chip he owned into the slot, duped it while the captain watched him, and shoved that down into his personal work-wallet.
"The cargo master reports and certifies to the best of his abilities that the inner lift assembly is out of true and that he will not utilize it for any purpose until it is repaired by a technician fully pedigreed to fix and certify it right."
"We’ve got to move that . . ."
Chirs pulled a ’sorb sheet out of his pocket, and wiped his forehead. He nodded, rubbed his hair down past his ear, and threw a pilot’s “I can do it if we have to” hand-sign at the mechanism, at the captain, at Gwiver . . .
"When I come back on duty we can do an eval. That’s ten hours, regulation, before I can come back on duty. There’s a way to do it—open hold—with a rent-boat. It’ll take losing some air, and you’ll have to cut grav, but the ship will let me peel it out of there pretty quick as long as you get the pod-packs tethered and secured ahead of time. Gwiver can do that while I take my break."
"Open hold. That’s pilot work, Chirs."
"Yessir, and that’s why the line hired me, wasn’t it? I got a secure Pilot Third and you don’t have to void any of the contracts by having outside haulers involved. I’m good for it. That lift’s not good, and that’s a fact."
"I hear your suggestion, Chirs. I’ll take it under advisement if we can’t get the lift going while you’re on break. I’ll note the cargo master’s scheduling issues for later discussion."
The glare was so cold it was hot, but Chirs strode away, wondering if he could recall where his Third Class certificates were.
He lost a little bit of heat on his way across to the station, official IDs and records to hand, found right where he’d thought they should be. Doubts about things—Fringe Ranger was making him doubt what he was doing more each docking.
He was a very good cargo master all the time and just about a decent warehouse-grade in-system pilot, on an average day. He knew it and the pilot’s guild knew it . . . and his certificates were perhaps, maybe, just a little, on the wrong side of the re-up date. With luck, he could point to the routes they’d been on and sweet talk the rules and get this port done.
It would be a long walk from here to Skaller Three if he couldn’t.
The Pilot’s Guild office was bigger than he’d expected, given the overall size of the station. It was crowded, and it was also noisy. His plea went to the first person who recognized what he was saying. Not that his Trade-talk wasn’t good, but an on-going lament from someone claiming a stolen first class license and jacket had a couple of people’s attention, and there was some other ruckus to be heard through an open door to another room, some of it the lilting sound of Liadens speaking at speed. Doubtful ID seemed to be the gist of the situation, and he guessed he wasn’t supposed to know about it.
"Pilot, you have a date issue here . . ."
He’d caught the attention of a uniformed woman hurrying past the desk, who’d listened to him, looked at his info, and looked at him, suspiciously. Her name tag read “Sterna” and her rating was . . . First Class Provisional. A Jump pilot.
He nodded.
"I’m on Fringe Ranger." He jerked his head in the general direction of the docks, "and they don’t give me much time to . . ."
She looked up; her mouth was borderline grim.
"So why haven’t you taken this to Second?" she asked. "You’ve had ten years."
He grimaced, tucked his annoyance away where it wouldn’t show—it was a good question, after all. Not really her business but . . . there, straight was the best answer.
"No time for hobbies, Pilot. Started in with cargo twenty Standards ago—just exactly what I wanted to do. The third class, that was an afterthought; it'd be useful to me, in my work. Hard to carve out the time, truth said, but I did get it, and I was right—real useful to have."
She blinked, then, grudgingly, smiled.
"There's a reminder for me. Not everybody wants to be a master pilot!"
She waved at the noise around them.
"Here's our problem. You showed up here in the Guild Office in person. If you'd filed from your ship, I could've given you a flight-length extension, so you could get your cargo settled. Since you came in, that means a re-test to fresh up the ticket."
She frowned, her nose wrinkling sl
ightly.
"You’re not looking for up-grade?"
He shook his head, and she nodded.
"You'd never know it, with all this drama going on, but we've got the resources available right now to do your physical, and the sim. Take a few hours. Then we’ll see what the boss wants to do about a ship-test. How’s that?"
It was fair, Chirs thought. More than fair, from her point of view. Unfortunately, he doubted Captain Jad would waste a day, waiting for his cargo master to freshen up his pilot's license.
"I was hoping to be able to rent a local to do some transfer that’s come up . . ." he said, omitting the potentially troublesome news that the ship at the dock couldn’t open the main internal hold.
Sterna sighed a real sigh then.
"Oh, dreamer, dreamer, dreamer. Codrescu Guild Hall is hosting the annual members meeting. You'll have noticed we're a little pilot-heavy, and they're all here on business. I doubt you could hire much more than a hand cart and a part-time handler right now."
Chirs sighed, and turned his hands palm up.
"Right," Sterna said. "Sometimes the route flies you.
"Let’s see what we can do about your first problem, then we'll know what we can do about the second. Can’t always cut corners, pilot."
He’d done well enough on the sim tests to see that he could pass a live-board test—and to see that he was rusty and ought to get more ship time. But there, the line’s officers had been promising ship time, too . . .
Chirs shook his head. Past was past. Right now, he needed to focus on the fact that, despite all the unruliness caused by pilots with too much off-board business to do, Sterna had managed to put together a live-board test for him.
"We've got a local switch-tug that can use some side-work, but isn’t certified for the higher class ships. We’ll give you a testing key and the captain will let you get your two hours in—enough for you to pick up another couple years of cert. You in?"
