“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” she quoted at him. “Plus, every day we’re swanning around the galaxy, this ‘Azure Legacy’ is detailing the target on your back. On all of our backs, really. Red Falcon is a big target.”
“I know,” Rice admitted. “So, what, you think we should take the job?”
“Have you got another cargo on the docket?” Maria asked. “Because if you don’t, I think we’d all rather get out of New Madagascar as quickly as possible—and Conroy’s job is how we do that.”
Rice nodded.
“I guess you’re right. Are you able to swing back in with me?”
“No,” she admitted. “I promised Acconcio a rain check on a date—a rain check I am determined to honor!”
Her Captain chuckled at her.
“Don’t stay out too late, first officer.”
“Oh, I have no intention of staying out,” Maria purred.
22
From the silly grins on his tactical officer and Ship’s Mage’s faces, David could only conclude that the dinner the previous night had gone according to everyone’s plans.
The rest of the officers gathered for the staff meeting he’d called didn’t look quite as pleased with themselves, but everyone was looking accomplished at least. They’d delivered their second cargo, got paid, and survived a full-scale assassination attempt to get there.
“All right, people,” he told them. “Maria and I met with our potential client last night. While I have some issues with the job on the table, as Maria pointed out to me, we don’t have any other good options at the moment.”
He smiled.
“We’re working for a private company that handles trade imports to Legatus,” he told them. “Officially, at least, they have contracted us to deliver a load of raw materials to Legatus itself.
“What doesn’t go beyond the senior officers, at least until we’ve left this system, is that the import company we’re working for is a front for the Legatus Military Intelligence Directorate,” David continued. “They arrange for covert smuggling of resources around Protectorate worlds to enable projects that the Legatus government doesn’t want becoming public knowledge.”
Unless he’d severely mistaken his crew’s allegiances, hiring him for those tasks was a mistake. But it wasn’t one he could bring himself to correct. Soprano was right, after all—Red Falcon couldn’t sit empty. She cost too much doing so, and that was before the opportunity cost of what she could have been doing.
“We are going to make one jump along the regular New Madagascar–Legatus Jump Line,” he concluded. “That’s our officially declared course, which presumably is where our hunting friends will look for us if they’ve caught up.
“From there, we are diverting to Svarog. For those of you aren’t familiar, Svarog is one of the MidWorlds, colonized by one of the interstellars as, basically, a company town.
“While most of the worst results of that have been corrected since, Svarog remains one of the two or three most industrialized systems outside the Core,” he concluded. “Like most systems, they have an asteroid belt they’re raiding for raw materials, but refined metals like our new cargo will be gratefully accepted.”
“What’s our loading cycle?” Kellers asked. “Svarog is a good place to get refits and repairs done. Falcon doesn’t need much yet, but I wouldn’t want to pass up the opportunity while we’re there.”
“Most of the cargo is already in containers. The Conroys have promised we’ll have everything aboard in forty-eight hours, at which point I plan to get the hell out of this system,” David told his engineer.
“Jenna, Nicolas,” he addressed his XO and first pilot. “I want you to coordinate with Conroy & Conroy’s people. The last thing I want at this point is issues in the loading.”
“So long as we’re being paid,” Campbell responded. “Nicolas and I’ll make sure everything is clear.”
The pilot simply nodded agreement with her.
“Svarog isn’t a great place for leave, but I agree with James,” David continued. “We’ll want to get some minor repairs and refits while we’re there. With three trips behind us, we should know what bits are fragile by now!
“Once we announce the course change to the crew, we’ll sweeten it with a week’s leave while we’re getting the work done,” he told them. “I’d say Svarog is safe, but…I’d have said the same thing about New Madagascar or Cinnamon.
“Our luck hasn’t been promising on safe of late.”
Plus, while he didn’t have the details yet, there was apparently enough of a Blue Star Syndicate successor organization in the system for the Conroys to have a contact there.
“We’ll be ready for trouble,” Skavar told them all grimly. “Time to ratchet the paranoia, people. Before, we were running regular security. Now we know the Captain is being hunted—and that makes us all targets.”
“You write the rules on that,” David promised. “But remember, we need to get our work done too.”
“I know,” the security chief allowed. “But I’m not losing anybody else, Captain. I refuse.”
David nodded his agreement in silence.
David was honestly surprised by how long it took after the meeting for Campbell to show up in his office. He’d been expecting her inside of an hour, but it was actually late evening—and well after the cargo had started loading—before his executive officer knocked on his door.
“Come in, Jenna,” he instructed. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Am I that predictable?” she asked, dropping into the chair across his desk. “Been around that long?”
“No, but you and I have much the same history with LMID,” he pointed out, “and since I almost turned the job down…”
“You figured I’d be asking what the hell you were thinking,” Campbell said. “Because, well, what the hell were you thinking?”
“I laid my thoughts out clearly earlier,” he noted. “There weren’t a lot of other options. It was take this or fly back to the Core empty. This seemed like a better option, despite the risks.”
“Last time we worked for LMID, people died,” Campbell replied quietly. “A lot of them, even if only a handful were ours. And we don’t have Narveer anymore.”
Their last contract with LMID had ended in a boarding operation that had collided head-on with their then first pilot, Narveer Singh. Singh had acquired a suit of exosuit combat armor and had massacred the attackers—but he’d died in the process.
“I know. There are two factors I didn’t tell the rest of the staff,” David told his oldest remaining friend. “First, Maria is damned convincing. And she was right. Most of what I reeled off was her argument after I walked out on Conroy.”
“I’d have figured the damn Mage would have been against working with LMID,” his XO replied. “Unless…she’s not as ex-Navy as she told us.”
“Oh, she’s ex-Navy,” David confirmed. “Cashiered for disobedience to orders. Barely skated out of a ten-year stint in a Navy penitentiary because her intentions, at least, were in line with the traditions of His Majesty’s Navy.”
He shook his head.
“I have my suspicions,” he admitted. “I want you to keep an eye on her. I trust her more than I thought I would, but I’m also quite certain our Ship’s Mage has another agenda in play.”
“Then why are you taking her advice?”
“Because she was right,” he said. “I can’t have Red Falcon sit around collecting dust or flying empty. Between salaries and reactor fuel, this ship costs something like thirty thousand dollars a day just sitting there.”
And almost four times that when she was in motion. His profit on the Cinnamon trade was barely enough to keep the ship in motion for a year. A single quarter of Red Falcon’s operating expenses would have paid for Blue Jay for eighteen months.
“And secondly,” he continued, “because Conroy offered us more than just money. He has an ally in Svarog that he’s going to give us contact information
for. One with their own fight with Azure Legacy.”
Campbell shook her head and sighed.
“Boss, from what you said about the Legacy, there’s only one other type of person who’d have their own clash with the Legacy,” she pointed out. “It was created to do what, again? Avenge Azure and make sure the Syndicate had a single successor, right?”
“Right,” David agreed. He knew what conclusion his XO was stretching for.
“So, this contact…is a Blue Star Syndicate member?”
“Or was,” he confirmed. “Probably someone who has taken over Blue Star assets and regional operations.”
“So, a pirate, a slaver…a criminal.”
“Hopefully not a slaver,” David replied. “Or a pirate. I’m hoping for a nice ‘innocent’ smuggling operation.”
“Wonderful.”
“The problem is that we don’t have a choice, Jenna,” he told her. “The Navy is already using us as bait; we know that. If we’re going to dig our way out of this hole, it’s one inch at a time, on our own.”
“We don’t work for the Protectorate, David,” she said. “We’re not spies. We’re a goddamn merchant ship. Why don’t we just…I don’t know, run? Opposite side of the Protectorate?”
“We could probably be safe if we stuck to Core System runs,” he admitted. “But…most of the big cargos in the Core are locked up by the big shipping lines. Falcon’s speed and firepower aren’t that much of an edge there. In the MidWorlds, though…our advantages are worth a lot.
“We can make a fortune out here, enough for everyone to retire.”
“Or die. We could also die out here, especially if we’re being hunted by assassins and pirates.”
He nodded.
“But they found us in Tau Ceti,” he pointed out. “No, Jenna, I think the only way we’re going to survive this is if we throw every resource and ally we can gather at this Azure Legacy—the Navy, the Legatans, whatever remnants of Blue Star will work with us…
“I’ll take what allies and work I can get to make sure my people are safe and paid,” David concluded. “I have no intentions of being the Protectorate’s spy, Jenna, but I didn’t pick this damned fight. If Azure’s hand wants to reach out from the grave to start it, then I will damned well finish it!”
“You know, you could have just stuck with ‘the ship costs too much to leave empty’,” Campbell pointed out. “I don’t think I needed to know we were about to start a war with Azure’s interstellar hit squad.”
David smiled grimly.
“You’re my XO, Jenna. Whatever I’m digging us into, you do need to know.”
“Thanks,” she said dryly. “Your confidence enthuses me.”
To Maria’s pleased surprise, it turned out that Iovis Acconcio, unlike many officers, actually knew how to cook. Red Falcon was large enough that the senior officers’ quarters each had their own kitchenette, and the heavyset man set to it with a will in preparing her supper on their second “date.”
“The ship is almost half-loaded,” he observed as he spiced the sauce for the pasta. “We’ll be out, what, day and a half?”
“Give or take an hour or so,” Maria replied, sitting in a chair she’d leaned against the kitchenette wall as she watched her new lover cook. “I am looking forward to getting out of UnArcana space.”
“Even if we’re working for Legatus?” Iovis asked. “Goes against the grain a bit, doesn’t it?”
She shrugged.
“We’re not Navy anymore,” she pointed out. “Legatus is just another employer, and it’s not like they’re asking us to do anything illegal. Deceptive, yes, but not illegal. There’s no legal requirement to file an accurate interstellar course plan; it’s just smart, as it enables search and rescue.”
“And unexpected intercepts,” he replied. “That’s why we were doing the short jumps, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.” She shook her head. “Won’t need to do that this time, not with the course being off from our declared plot. It’s going to be an unpredictable-enough course, leaving towards Legatus and then bouncing to Svarog.”
Iovis nodded as he served up spaghetti onto two plates.
“The Captain seems to be dragging us into more politics than I was expecting,” he admitted softly. “I worry—especially about you; the Ship’s Mage is in the middle of everything!”
“And the man in charge of the guns isn’t?” Maria asked with a soft smile, touched by his concern. She sniffed at the pasta and her smile widened. “This smells amazing.”
“My mother’s secret recipe,” Iovis replied with a grin of his own. “Figure it’s a good start for buttering you up.”
“And just what do you think you’re buttering me up for, mister?” she purred at him.
“Well?” David asked Conroy as the Legatan’s image appeared on his screen. “How are we doing, Mr. Conroy?”
It was late at night, but it wasn’t like David kept regular hours or had anything else to distract him. The only contact he had with Keiko Alabaster was occasional messages, mostly sent to wait for him at Tau Ceti, and a promise that she’d make time for him whenever he made his way to Amber.
He envied the couples taking shape on his ship, but it wasn’t wise for the Captain to have entanglements aboard, even on a merchant ship. Plus, well, he liked his understanding with Keiko.
“We’re doing better than I expected,” Conroy told him. It wasn’t clear to David whether Leonard and Rihanna Conroy were actually married, or if that was just their cover there—but they’d been there long enough, he doubted it mattered.
The Augment almost certainly had somewhere warmer and less lonely to be tonight than David did.
“We’re about sixty percent loaded already,” he continued. “Your pilots have set to with a will; they’ve been making my people look slow and lazy.” Conroy grinned.
“My people don’t like that, so it’s a feedback loop that gets a lot of work done,” he concluded. “You’ll be good to go in plenty of time.”
“And payment?” David asked dryly.
“You’re carrying the details in your encrypted databanks,” his client promised. “Our partners at your destination will see you paid, I promise.”
David shook his head at the phrasing. Secure as the line might be, Conroy still wasn’t going to say they were heading anywhere other than Legatus on a communication channel.
“And the rest?”
“Of course,” the spy confirmed. “I’ll provide you contact information on a chip before you leave, but the contact is a woman named Turquoise. She runs an organization made of Blue Star Syndicate leftovers.”
Conroy shook his head.
“Last I heard, she hadn’t named her new organization anything in particular, but she controls all of the resources and surviving personnel that were part of Blue Star in six star systems. There are bigger fragments, which makes her a target for the Legacy as they try to force a reunion of the Syndicate.”
“A reunion she’d rather have under her control or not at all, I’m guessing?” David asked.
“Exactly. I don’t know Turquoise’s real name. My understanding is that she was relatively junior in the Syndicate before you and Azure had your final encounter. How she parlayed whatever position she had into ruling the underworld of six systems, I don’t know, but she’s been a useful asset for us.
“She’ll meet with you as a favor to us. Anything after that, you’ll have to convince her of mutual interest.”
“If nothing else,” David said, “we appear to make great bait for anyone hunting the Legacy.”
“I refuse to admit if that thought crossed my mind, Captain Rice,” Conroy told him with a smile. “Good luck.”
23
Despite all of the chaos beforehand, the process of loading and leaving New Madagascar went perfectly smoothly. Shuttles holding cargo containers swarmed out from Darwin Orbital, locking onto the long “stem” of Red Falcon’s hull and its support struts.
Everything went so
according to plan that almost before David knew it, they were on their way. Even with the detour, they were only thirty-six light-years from Svarog, a little over three days’ travel at Red Falcon’s pace.
The middle of the trip found him alone on the bridge, watching the stars of a random chunk of space a dozen light-years from anywhere. Deep space was reassuring these days, the knowledge that out there, he and his people were safe.
In theory, he was safer in port, but given Legacy’s apparent reach, he wasn’t as sure about that. When he posted accurate flight paths, he could be intercepted by knowledgeable enemies. Knowing he was being hunted, however, he could avoid those threats. There were others, but they were rarer, less predictable threats.
Which made the depths between the stars the best safe haven he had. He couldn’t stay out there, Falcon didn’t have the supplies or capacity to be self-sufficient, but while they were out in the void, they were safe. Mostly.
So, David Rice sat on his bridge and sank into the humming rhythm of his ship. Soon enough, he’d be in Svarog and have to decide whether or not he was willing to make common cause with criminals.
Survival was a powerful motivator, and he’d lain down in the muck before. Flight wasn’t an option—the Protectorate’s gift was a millstone around his neck. To keep Falcon flying, he had to work, had to carry cargo.
Had to be bait for the Mage-King’s enemies.
Maria should have been resting. She’d jumped barely three hours beforehand, and it would be another five before it was her turn to cast the spell that carried the starship through the stars again.
Nonetheless, she’d left Iovis sleeping in his quarters and returned to the simulacrum chamber, surrounded by the screens that showed the stars through which Red Falcon drifted.
There was no point to engines there. A few thousand kilometers more or less wasn’t going to change anything in the end; they could arrive only so close to Svarog’s star.
The big freighter’s speed was normal to her, though most of the rest of the crew were impressed by it. The whole point of the AAFHF design, however, had been to keep up with the warships of the Royal Martian Navy.
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