Home: Interstellar: Merchant Princess

by Strong, Ray

  Elizabeth gritted her teeth and put her hand on Meriel’s shoulder.

  Meriel did not want to believe the inference. “Maybe he was just trying to keep track of us,” Meriel said.

  “Maybe you, in particular,” Elizabeth said with a sneer.

  “Wow. That shatters an image.”

  “We don’t know for sure that he’s part of this.”

  “And we don’t know that he’s not. Regardless, these people are much too powerful for us to approach or oppose. I need to see John about this,” Meriel said. Then she removed the chip to transfer the files to her link and console and slipped it into her pocket.

  “Whoa, Sis,” Elizabeth said. “Stop by the galley and get some snacks for me on the way back. I’m starving.”

  ***

  Meriel took Moira’s message chip to John’s cabin.

  “Meriel, I’m so glad you came by. I wanted to talk to you. Did you hear the XO’s message?”

  “Yeah, yeah, soon,” she said. “Take a look at this first.” She synched the chip with John’s console, and the Treaty of Haven appeared,

  “Interim Treaty of…,” he began and then read silently. “Where did you get this?”

  “Widow of a BioLuna fixer. He died about the time the Princess was hit.”

  “Fixer?”

  “A corporate lawyer type who does ‘special projects.’”

  “Legal?”

  “I’m sure that’s what they would say if the press found out.”

  After reading the whole treaty, John leaned back, sighed, and nodded. “Damn,” he said finally. “I thought this was just between us and BioLuna.” He went to his console, converted it to anonymous with a proxy at the communications beacon, and then did a search for Alan Biadez. “Alan Biadez was also a member of the UNE/MAC, the military appropriations committee.”

  Meriel put her hand to her mouth and read the rest of the article. There it was. Biadez would have known about the mil-tech devices and the logistics—he would have known that the Princess carried it. He might have set up some other committee member to send it, but he’d know where and how.

  “The client behind the client,” John said.

  Space just got a whole lot colder for Meriel. She stared at the wall and clenched her fists. “We thought he was looking out for us.” What would the kids think if their hero was brought down to size? What will they think of me if I am the one doing the downsizing? She thought of Liz and came back to the present.

  “Can you pull up the other MAC members?”

  John pulled up the list, and the connection was obvious to both of them: General Adam Miyamoto, the MAC chairman at the time, died in a plane crash of mysterious cause the same day that the Princess was attacked.

  “He found out, and they killed him before he could talk,” Meriel said.

  “It’s not proof. None of this is proof,” John said, and Meriel nodded.

  “So why all this fuss over Haven?” she asked.

  John smiled. “You remember. You just didn’t believe me.”

  “Go on.”

  “It’s gorgeous. The most Earthlike colony anyone has settled so far.”

  Compared to Mars, that was not saying much, she thought. “How many moons?”

  “Two,” he said.

  Meriel stopped. In her mother’s song, Home had two moons, and so did TTL-5B3. Then again, so did Mars and Celesta, and she had already excluded Haven as a possibility for Home. He’ll think I’m crazy.

  John noticed her thinking. “Any connection?”

  “No. Just an old fairy tale,” she said, but now she had doubts. “You said that BioLuna wants to keep Haven hidden?”

  John nodded but stared at the wall. “So that’s what was going on. We suspected something, but nothing so elaborate, so well connected.” His attention drifted away.

  “John?”

  “My wife, Annie, my kids’ mom, died at Kilgore when the mercenaries attacked.”

  “They used the Blackout-Box?”

  John nodded. “They tried. Annie died deactivating it. After that, we offered the mercs land to settle on. They said BioLuna violated their contract and joined us. They’re loyal to Haven now.”

  “What about the box?” she asked.

  “Still broken. We tried to fix it and couldn’t. No one knows how.”

  “How many of your people died?”

  “About one in ten. We’re scientists and engineers, M, not fighters.”

  “But clever,” she said.

  John went back to his console and pulled up a video of the BioLuna CEO.

  CEO of BioLuna, Cecil Rhodes, is the largest shareholder of a conglomerate with diverse interests that span the galaxy…named chairman and CEO after consolidation of rivals to monopolize lunar manufacturing…

  “Wait,” Meriel said. “Zoom in on that vid. See the guy behind the CEO to his right?” John nodded. Meriel went back to graphics file on Moira’s message chip and placed the image next the man near the CEO. The photos matched.

  “That’s the fixer, Leo V. Apparently he worked for the CEO, Cecil Rhodes. Leo sent a copy of the Treaty of Haven to his wife just before he died, and she sent that copy to me.” She looked closer at the vid, and another man seemed familiar, but she could not place him.

  John leaned back. “So BioLuna and Alan Biadez planned to put us on a reservation and divvy up the rest of Haven. And they had someone steal mil-tech from the Princess to help them do it.”

  “That leaves the archtrope. I don’t know much about him, except that they say his people run the drug trade on Etna. I think some of his followers attacked my sister.”

  John sat up and returned to his console. “A religious fanatic. His envoy visited and told us—told us, mind you—that he was our savior and that we should prepare for his spiritual leadership or prepare for the apocalypse.”

  “And one of his followers is General Khanag,” she said. “Sounds like a threat to me.”

  John nodded. “We only needed to provide the appropriate space for his millions of followers to pilgrimage.”

  “Let me guess,” she said. “You said no.”

  “Right. And he did not like it,” John said. “The emissary swore that we would submit to the archtrope’s vision in time.” He pulled up a video.

  “When was this?”

  “Right after BioLuna made its first demands—about eleven years ago,” he said and played the recent vid.

  …the Archtrope of Calliope, seen in this clip being escorted from tau Ceti-4 after the failed coup attempt when the elections on Stevenson colony went against his follower, Fredric Allen. The Supreme Court has agreed to bring an indictment against his followers on charges of treason and conspiracy following an attempt to suspend the Constitution…

  “Drugs, sex trafficking, and terrorism,” John said. “Not a good neighbor. They profess piety and abstain from all vice, but they feel no remorse about selling vice to their neighbors.” The video continued.

  The archtrope is seen here boarding a ship with General Khanag, a former colonel in the UNE Space Marines, to return to his theocracy on Calliope. The Calliope Foundation is listed as a nongovernmental organization by the UNE and is currently nominated for a seat in the UNE General Assembly, a first for an NGO…

  At the ship’s portal, Meriel noted the handsome young captain again, this time bowing to the archtrope

  “It’s a cult and a criminal conspiracy,” John said. “Somehow, violence always shows up when they want something. It’s never directly linked to the archtrope, but people know that if you oppose the theocracy, you risk your life.”

  “OK, then what did the archtrope do to earn his place at the trough?” Meriel asked.

  John and Meriel thought about it for a few moments, and it came to both of them—piracy.

  “Oh, no,” Meriel gasped. Whose core business was smuggling contraband and contract executions? Pirates and terrorists. Who had the resources? Drug smugglers with a galaxy-wide network of ships and contacts.<
br />
  Meriel teared up and couldn’t talk. Everyone was killed and the kids were still suffering just for a piece of junk that got blown up on some stupid little colony. And Biadez was mixed up with them.

  John moved to sit next to her and put his arm around her shoulder. She melted into his chest and sobbed.

  “We were just in the way.” When her tears stopped, she said, “This is the last piece in the puzzle, John. This could clear the Princess and my family.”

  “This isn’t proof, M.”

  “No, but it’s pretty strong inference. If this is made public, President Biadez, the archtrope, and the BioLuna executives would have big problems trying to explain it. The treaty puts their fingerprints all over this.”

  John nodded. “This is too big for us.”

  Meriel remembered what her sister said about the Biadez Foundation tracking the kids—“Maybe just you.” And she remembered the nondescript men she had seen at the Pink Palace on Etna and on Enterprise. She pulled up the two vids she’d recorded and played them side by side, vids that both showed the same man.

  “Oh God,” she said.

  “Who is this guy?” John asked.

  Meriel did not answer. She pulled up the vid with the CEO of BioLuna.

  “Objects,” she said and numbered flags appeared to annotate each object. “Focus object eighteen. Full screen.” Her subject filled the display but appeared fuzzy and was looking away. “Reflection,” she said, and the console searched nearby objects for a reflection that might clarify the man’s face. A number appeared in the lower corner and approached 25 but then stopped at 28 percent and beeped. “Reconstruct full frontal,” she said. “Compare.” The fuzzy image clarified and appeared side by side with the two other photos. They were the same.

  “Oh, no. I’ve been followed,” she said. “Here. To the Tiger.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know, but he was there with Leo just before he died. I gotta tell Molly,” she said and pushed John away from the console.

  “About the conspiracy?”

  Meriel did not hear him. “If he’s part of this, they’ll be coming back in force.” She pulled up the cargo manifest to check the contents for viruses and quarantined anything that might trigger one. John opened his mouth to speak, but Meriel raised her hand to silence him. The manifest was free of viruses, but something could still be sleeping. She needed to talk to Cookie, and that meant warning Molly first.

  “I’ve got to go,” Meriel said while dashing out the door.

  “M, wait, about your sister,” John called, but Meriel had already rounded the corner.

  ***

  Meriel knocked on Molly’s ready-room door.

  “Ah, Meriel,” Molly said. “I wanted to talk to you. The—”

  “XO,” Meriel interrupted, “I think the Tiger may be in danger because of me.”

  Molly stopped. “How so?”

  “Someone followed me here.”

  Molly smiled. “As a pretty young woman, you should be flattered. How does that endanger the Tiger?”

  Meriel fidgeted uncomfortably. “May I sit, ma’am?”

  Molly nodded.

  Meriel sighed and began, “You know about the Princess, right?” she said, and Molly nodded. Without mentioning Cookie or John, Meriel told her what she had learned about the conspiracy, about how Alan Biadez, BioLuna, and the archtrope had tried to take over Haven using the mil-tech pirated from the Princess. She showed Molly the Treaty of Haven document.

  “Where did you get this?” Molly asked.

  “From the wife of a BioLuna executive who died about the time of the Princess attack.”

  “How do you know it’s legitimate?”

  Meriel’s jaw dropped. The document had no routing information to verify the provenance. That meant it had never been transmitted and was either the original or a copy. It also meant she could have just typed it up a few minutes ago—that is if she were crazy enough.

  “I trusted the source,” Meriel said softly, realizing how unreliable that sounded.

  “You think they followed you and will attack the Tiger to get to you?”

  “Maybe not me. But the information? Yes.”

  “How will we know that this threat is real?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” Meriel said. “I think the Princess had an aggressive military-grade virus in the cargo manifest. I checked the Tiger manifest and found nothing. Please, ma’am, don’t accept any late cargo.”

  Molly nodded. “Acknowledged. Stay, please.” She tapped an icon on her link. “Captain, Cookie. Be on alert this trip for a hijacking.”

  “What do you expect?” Meriel heard the captain say.

  “If we’re lucky, an annoyance,” Molly said. “If we’re not so lucky, a hijacking.”

  “On it, ma’am,” Cookie said.

  “And, Chief, please scan our systems for aggressive viruses, mil-tech. And check the bonafides on our new passengers.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” Cookie said, and Molly tapped her link again.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Meriel said.

  “I’ve always been straight with you, Meriel. I need the same from you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Are you taking your meds regularly?”

  The question came out of the blue, and Meriel immediately betrayed herself with a blush. “I’m not making this up, ma’am. Really. I have it all here, the treaty, the photos—”

  “Doc came by and said you had some daydreams about the Princess and the kids you grew up with,” Molly said.

  Meriel wondered how Doc had found out. She looked at her hands in her lap and could barely speak. “I only talk to a very few people about them anymore.” Apparently not few enough, she thought.

  “The meds are a condition of your work card, Meriel. Promise me that you’re taking them.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I am,” Meriel lied again.

  “Dismissed, Chief,” Molly said, and Meriel left.

  Molly thought for a few moments and then called the doctor.

  “Doc, any particular reason why Meriel might be feeling anxious about being followed?”

  “If she’s off the meds, she’s delusional. A paranoid fantasy would fit her symptom profile.”

  “Acknowledge. Out.” Molly put the link down and shook her head.

  ***

  Meriel elbowed her way through the overcrowded passengers to the galley, where Cookie checked the Tiger’s systems for mil-tech viruses.

  “I did a standard Hff4 virus sweep of the manifest and data sets,” Meriel said while loading up a tray of food for her sister, “but found nothing sophisticated—no hot links in the manifests. Cargo memory is cold.”

  Cookie nodded. “You’re hungry.”

  “Yeah, girl stuff, real snackie,” Meriel said to shut him up.

  “Eat fast and report back here afterward. I’m calling the security team together. Five minutes. And try the applejack,” he said absently, and Meriel grabbed some pastries.

  Inside her cabin, Elizabeth tore into the food. “You left me starving, M.”

  “Sorry. Took longer than I planned, but I learned a lot.” She described what she and John had learned about Haven, the treaty, and the conspirators.

  “You’re kidding,” Elizabeth said with her mouth full of pastry. “An Earthlike colony? Makes sense that they’d try to steal it. Earthers will kill to get out of Sol system for a little freedom.”

  “The people doing this, Biadez, the archtrope, the BioLuna CEO, they’re already on top of the system, fat and happy. They want to exploit everyone else who is trying to immigrate.”

  “Those are big carnivores, M,” Elizabeth said. “You remember the dino-sims on Enterprise?”

  “Yeah, it feels like that to me, too.” Meriel wanted to rant, but Elizabeth had drifted into her own thoughts.

  “Everyone we loved, real people, killed just for being at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Elizabeth said. “It could have been any ship,
any crew…” She raised another bun to her mouth but stopped and closed her eyes.

  “What is it, hon?” Meriel asked.

  “It couldn’t have been just anyone, M. Only the Princess.”

  “Why?”

  “Mom knew about Home. Or almost. She was close and would have gone public with information she should not have had.”

  “The Alderson video?”

  Elizabeth nodded and looked down at the treaty on the console. “Damn. It’s like the cheap novels; some thug burns down the family farm just because it’s in the wrong place.”

  “Except that no hero is coming to the rescue. The hero lit the torch. It’s Alan Biadez, for God’s sake,” Meriel said, crossing her arms. “I didn’t think it would feel this bad. It’s like a kick in the chest. Harry keeps Biadez’s poster in his cabin like he’s a holo star.”

  “I’ll bet that’s why they issued restraining orders to cut Teddy out of the custody hearings,” Elizabeth said. “To keep us isolated. That was the Biadez Foundation’s doing.”

  “Damn. The Foundation paid for the investigation and worked side by side with the troopers.”

  “Wow. They could have covered up anything.” Elizabeth said.

  “Oh, jeez!” Meriel said. “The Biadez Foundation knows how to contact all the kids. If Biadez knows, then BioLuna and the archtrope know too. Damn. The only people who don’t know are the people who can protect them.”

  “I’ll alert them, M,” Elizabeth said.

  “Tell ’em to go dark, hide.”

  “They’re not gonna like it,” Elizabeth said.

  “They’ll like dead even less.”

  “OK. I recycled my link. What do you have here that can I use?”

  Meriel pointed to the comm console, and Elizabeth began to draft the messages.

  “I know you look up to Biadez and the Foundation,” Elizabeth said while she drafted her text, “but they’re bastards. I’ll never forgive them for what they did to you. What they tried to do to all of us. The drugs. The separation. We were just kids.”

  Meriel sat with her head down. “I brought this on us, Liz.”

  Elizabeth stopped texting. “What are you talking about?”