“Because we’re not here to waste our time,” Bridget said, irritated. “The biggest trading power in the Signatory Systems and the biggest conglomerate on Earth couldn’t make a go of that area. Do you really think we could?”
Jamie looked around at the meeting room. “No, I guess not,” he said. He didn’t know whether Yang’s surge team was good at its job or not, though Yang certainly seemed to like yelling at people. But he’d known from the financials that the traders of the Altair expedition were third-rate, and the shabby look of the boardroom confirmed it. This was a place to make deals?
Falcone stood, silent, staring into the images. “You know, it might work,” he said.
Bridget looked up, seemingly startled to hear hope in that gravelly voice. “What?”
“He’s right. Not one planet on that whole path has been opened,” Falcone said. He looked at her, bloodshot eyes dead serious. “You know the deal. Any first-contact contracts the expedition writes go to our bottom line, not the corporation’s. We find a hundred billion dollars in new business out there, and we erase what’s just happened here.” He fished for his pocket isopanel.
Falcone seemed interested, but the more Jamie thought about it, the more it felt like grasping at straws. The odds weighed against the idea; most trailblazing trips never earned a dollar. “I guess you could try,” Jamie said, sensing Falcone was in the mood to try anything. “But it’s no sure thing. It’d be a hundred-day sales offensive into a part of the Orion Arm humans have never visited—”
“‘Orion Offensive.’ Catchy. You’d better get to it,” Falcone said.
“Me?” Jamie bolted upright.
“Your problem. Your solution,” Falcone said. He started figuring.
“Hold on,” Jamie said, flabbergasted. This wasn’t what he’d intended at all. He stood. “I’m a commodities guy, not some…traveling salesman!”
Bridget glared at him, eyes steely. “Some of those salesmen die on this job,” she said, voice dripping with disdain. “And their escorts.”
“All the more reason I’m not going!” Jamie looked at her, flustered. “Besides, I thought your job was to protect these people. How many do you lose?”
“Don’t you ever read your attrition reports? It’s no trip to the beach out there!” She looked directly at him. “No,” she said, reading his eyes. “You don’t read the reports. We’re just numbers to you. Color me shocked.”
Jamie stepped around the table and pleaded with Falcone. “Leo. Really, you don’t want me for this—”
“I don’t,” Falcone snapped. “But thanks to you, you’re what I’ve got. My traders aren’t here and my depot’s falling apart. It’ll take weeks to reposition product for Sigma Draconis. You’re a great hustler when you’re trading across the light years, Sturm. Let’s see how you do in person!”
Bridget laughed. “He’ll be eaten alive by the first thing he pisses off,” she said, smirking at Jamie. “If they can stomach him.”
“I’ve taken that into account,” Falcone said. He passed her the handheld data device. “Here’s your new orders, Yang.”
The chief gawked. “You don’t mean—”
“You’re rebased. Surge Altair is now Surge Sigma Draconis,” the administrator said. “I want you headed there to set up shop within the hour.” Wiping his nose, Falcone walked past the stunned pair. He called back from the doorway. “You’ve had to take down some real menaces in this job, Bridget. Let’s see if you can keep this menace alive…long enough to save us!”
* * *
“Die, Black Priest!”
The shockpulse cannon fired, its deadly discharge enveloping one of Kolvax’s true believers. The armored Xylander shook and fell, cooked inside his own armor. The mutineers weren’t playing around. If not for the true believer heroically stepping in to protect his leader, it would have been Kolvax on the deck of the space station.
Simple fool, Kolvax thought, casting only a glance at the baked entity before dashing down the side hallway. His devotees had saved him again, but he was running out of them.
He’d made a mistake, ordering the heads and bodies of the heretics in the chapel attack marched through the commissary at dinnertime. True, that way led to the atomic furnace, and the Severed were too fastidious to allow a dead body to lie for any time at all. Even now, that fact was helping him as his attackers paused to dispense with his fallen protector. But the provocation had simply set up the next round. Rather than set an example, the sight of the heads had both angered the rest and tipped his hand about the traps in their collars. The devices weren’t responding to his signals anymore. Kolvax didn’t doubt that some smart person had deactivated them.
His followers weren’t all incompetent.
Kolvax could always count on Tellmer, though, whom he now found fearfully cringing behind a metal staircase. The alien builders of the space station had crafted ways for many different kinds of creatures to go between decks, expecting traffic that never came. That was the saving grace of the place: lots of ways to flee.
But fewer ways now than there were. “Everything below the transit axis is blocked,” Tellmer said, cradling his newly reattached hand. The surgeon hadn’t done the work right, and this was the first time Kolvax had heard his mawkish aide speak of anything else.
“How many are we?”
Tellmer’s helmeted head dipped. “Just you and I, Great Kolvax. Parrus and Jerroj never made it.”
“Then that’s it,” Kolvax said. “Come on!” The black-armored leader scaled the steps quickly, Tellmer right behind. The transit rings atop the rotating station were the only escape. There was a passenger container loaded in the rings pointed at Xylanx space, where the Dominium’s sentries would likely kill him the minute he arrived. However, there were other rings directed at unknown places. His fellow exiles had refused to use them for fear of emerging someplace unclean. Now, his movement shattered, Kolvax cared nothing for that. But he had to get to the rings quickly, and the long trip up to the hub would only be the start. Shifting a container from one track to another took time—
“Hold!”
Kolvax stopped dead — still alive, but maybe not for much longer. He saw his former followers blocking the way into the departure center. Behind, Tellmer turned to run — only to be struck from the side by a fire-bolo launched from cover. Tellmer screamed, his left arm sheared off at the elbow.
Weaponless, the Black Priest looked down at Tellmer’s limb as the Xylanx moved to surround them. “Well, maybe you’ll have a matched set now,” he said sardonically. No one laughed. He looked at the leader of the insurgents. Rumber had become one of his high priestesses, back in the days when he’d felt like doling out titles. Now, she held a hand-cannon on him.
“Will you give me a weapon,” he asked, “to make this fair?”
“No.”
Kolvax smiled. “Neither would I.” He stepped forward, hands outstretched, ready to make a good show of it when above, the crashing bang of an arriving container reverberated through the station. The rebels looked at one another, startled.
“It could be deliverance,” Rumber said. “We’ve been pardoned!”
Promptly forgetting about Kolvax, Rumber turned toward the surveillance monitors behind them.
The leader looked back at Tellmer. “Pick up your arm,” Kolvax said. He joined his former followers before the image.
“It’s not the rings from home,” Rumber said, astonished. “It’s…it’s one of the other portals!”
Inside his helmet, Kolvax’s eyes narrowed. The image focused on the dimly lit receiving area in the hub, where arrivals made their weightless entry into the station. Several space-suited bipedal figures emerged through the airlock.
Two arms. Two limbs. And faces the Xylanx could see through transparent faceplates. The lead figure, checking something on a handheld device, nodded to the others, who began removing their helmets.
The Severed watched the newcomers in awe. Skin. Pale, yellow, brown. And hair, w
hich even the most liberal Xylanx foreswore. Another figure joined the leader, speaking.
“Audio,” Kolvax said, reasserting control. “Audio!”
It was all gibberish. “What are they saying?” Rumber said.
“Shut up,” Kolvax said. “Listen!”
* * *
“…two trips in one day,” Bridget said, surveying the receiving area. “You’re racking up the light years, Wall Street.”
“Coral Gables,” Jamie mumbled, looking around fearfully.
“What?”
“I’m from Coral Gables,” Jamie said. “Florida.”
“Well, you’re not there now. Welcome to Quaestor Center Sigma Draconis — also known as the Dragon’s Depot.” Bridget looked behind her. There were lots of shadows here, but it seemed as advertised — big, functional, and unoccupied, if cold. “Standard recons, people, but looks okay so far. Let’s get moved in!”
* * *
Kolvax gawked. They were humans. Humans! Here!
The others saw it, too. He turned from the monitor to the people who, moments before, had been trying to kill him. “You know what this means,” he said.
“Yes.” Rumber dipped her head, and the others followed. “Your message — your prophecy — it was right.”
“Humans,” Tellmer said, the very word acidic to him. Every Xylander knew about humans. The mere presence of humanity threatened everything the Xylanx stood for.
Even if the humans themselves didn’t know the Xylanx existed.
“We should never have doubted you, my priest.” Rumber said. “You warned us. You were right.”
Kolvax smiled. That wasn’t all it meant. He wouldn’t be the nuisance anymore, easily dismissed. After this the Dominium would have to contend with him. He was back in the big game.
He snatched the weapon out of Rumber’s hand; she didn’t protest. “Hurry,” he said, heading for the staircase. “We’re going hunting!”
Episode 2
Golden Handshake
8
Bridget heard the high-pitched voice in her headset. “Uh — this is Jamie. You know, the trader you’re supposed to be protecting?”
As if I could forget. The security chief holstered her sidearm and rolled her eyes. “What do you want?” Bridget asked.
“I keep hearing things,” Jamie said. “You said this station was unoccupied—”
“It is occupied. You’re in it.” To the station’s everlasting regret, she thought. The Dragon’s Depot hadn’t seen visitors from Earth since Quaestor took ownership of it, years earlier. But today was moving day, with her newly retitled Surge Sigma team helping to move the trader in. Their security sweeps, like hers that had just ended, had turned up nothing. Not even much dust.
But the trader still had to be humored. “Why didn’t you tell this to Welligan, Jamie? I sent his team with you.”
A pause. “Yeah, they kind of got pissed at me…and left,” Jamie said.
Bridget chuckled. Her opinion of Hiro Welligan was improving. “Just find them,” she said.
Lissa Trovatelli slid out from beneath the alien-built console she was working on. “Was that five times?” she asked.
“Six,” Bridget said, watching her frosty breath in the air. Trovatelli slid back underneath the console and returned to work. More lights were functioning here on the command deck now, but the biggest job lay ahead. Bridget’s new base was two kilometers long, and she still hadn’t seen a tenth of it.
Only one of the two giant habitation drums had been completed by the station’s builders, and even this one — deemed “north” by her team — was full of exposed walls and half-finished work. The Regulans had seen the futility of trading in the region and given up.
Dubbed the Dragon’s Depot by its purchasers, the station was a dumbbell of sorts: two giant rolling drums rotating in opposite directions around a fat central tube. The habitation cylinders turned slowly, generating one gee in the outermost decks without any of the Coriolis-induced dizziness of some of the smaller, Earth-built stations. One end of the station’s spine was tipped with a circular collector dish with the same diameter as the station; it shielded occupants from Sigma Draconis’s rays while harvesting necessary energy. And ringing the center between the “north” and “south” habitation bulbs were eight whirlibangs, connected to the axial cylinder by a spiraling network of tracks and girders.
The place was built for business, to be sure. Bangboxes by the thousands could pass through the depot, switching to other whirlibang tracks and going right out again. More still could be warehoused in the station itself. And eight transit rings was plenty. Bridget knew where five of the whirlibangs went, but the other three were still a mystery. One of them had a ’box loaded, ready to go.
She’d investigate that later — after Trovatelli got the climate controls fixed. The air was breathable but frigid. Maybe they turned the heat down because nobody was home? Bridget knew that was ridiculous, of course: the same elemental forces that powered the whirlibangs had made it possible to keep the place running, even unoccupied. “I thought the Regulans left us an owner’s manual,” she said.
“They did,” Trovatelli answered, hand tool sparking as she fused a connection. “Somebody’s fooled with the controls. Odd — Regulans usually like it warmer.”
The statement surprised Bridget. “You sound like you’ve been on the range before.”
“Born out here,” Trovatelli said with just the trace of an Italian accent. “Giotto Colony, Luyten’s Star.”
Bridget was glad to hear it. Jake Temmons, her last Q/A, had left abruptly and was probably settling in at his new university fellowship now. Bridget hadn’t been too sorry to see him go. Baby-sitting precocious wunderkinds wasn’t her idea of a good time. But Trovatelli’s work had impressed so far, even as the young technician’s appearance had caught many of her teammates’ eyes.
Bridget had wondered about something else. It was rare to find a woman in her twenties born on the other side of the whirlibang. Trovatelli belonged to what was still a small subset of humanity: the children of pioneers. The ease with which such people handled life on the range meant they were coveted by all the major corporations. What was she doing with such a hard-luck outfit? Bridget made a mental note to check into her record later.
Trovatelli closed the console’s maintenance panel. “That’s it,” she said, wiping her hands on her flight suit. “Should be tunic weather in an hour or two.”
As the chief started to offer congratulations her earpiece beeped. “Here we go again,” she said, touching the device. “What is it now, Jamie?”
“I’m telling you, this time I saw something!” Jamie’s voice had gone up an octave, if that were possible.
“I’m sure it’s Welligan’s people messing with you,” she said. They were hiding from him if they were smart.
“I thought you hotshots were supposed to be pros,” the trader replied. “Can’t you — I don’t know — scan for life-forms or something?”
“Yes, I’ll check my vids archive for space opera and see how they did it.” Bridget shook her head at Trovatelli. “Jamie, I’m working my way to your level. Hang in there.” The broker started to say something else, but she muted the transmission.
Trovatelli gathered up her tools. “What’s the story with him? I didn’t catch all that back with Falcone — I was worried about the building falling apart.”
“Idiot gambled with the expedition’s money and lost it all, basically. Now we’ve got a few weeks to get it all back.”
“How much?”
“A hundred billion dollars.”
“Good luck with that,” Trovatelli said. She looked at Bridget slyly. “Still, he’s kind of cute…for an imbecile.”
“I’m sure he thinks so,” Bridget said. “He’s gonna have to hope the judge back on Earth thinks so too, if this doesn’t work.”
***
This isn’t going to work, Jamie thought. Here he was, 158 trillion kilometers from home and a h
undred billion dollars in the hole. Well, more than that, actually — he hadn’t told Falcone everything, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to.
And he was freezing his ass off.
Alone on one of the rotating cargo decks, he sat in his space suit, helmet and gloves off. He only had the one suit he’d worn to Altair, and that still smelled like guacamole. He’d asked for more clothes, but they’d left Altair in such a hurry he could only get the space suit. He was in his jockey shorts underneath, and the suit’s warmer wasn’t doing its job.
The troopers had promised more clothing was packed in the gear they’d shipped. He hoped it was true: at this point, he was willing to make a turtleneck from one of Arbutus Dinner’s socks. The entourage had brought a total of six ’boxes from Altair. That included two for personnel and two for shuttle conversion, plus one more for supplies they weren’t likely to find stationside. He hoped something his size was in there.
And then there was the final container, jokingly known as the “general store,” which had all any itinerant trader needed to open negotiations with new species. The store would be married to one or more of the personnel containers and an engine to make the trading vessel. The smaller items had been unloaded, and he had been spending his time studying up on his new job.
There was “the briefcase,” a throwback to the traveling salesmen of the twentieth century. One side of the case contained the handheld menu that operated the large fabricator in the store. Up to a certain level of complexity, many products could be manufactured on the scene: it made a lot more sense than shipping one of everything by the ’boxful. So rather than bringing a sample of everything Quaestor had for sale, the trader could use the briefcase to produce a small number of items as examples, as long as all the component elements were in supply. After a sale, Quaestor would bring in an entire factory to produce the desired items in whatever quantity was demanded. Quaestor sold the fabricators, too, but in custom sizes suited for the consuming species — and loaded with whatever patented recipes the customers had bought licenses for. Jamie hoped someone had programmed it with some tailored shirts from Ascot Chang. The Dragon’s Depot was a long way from Manhattan.
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