Rick nodded. He stood, leaving the chips on the table in front of his chair. “Take those,” he told the man. I have a feeling you know some deserving folk who could do with a little help.”
The Oaxian grunted in the non-committal sort of way that you’d expect from somebody used to screening suspiciously generous visitors.
Rick motioned for Tim to stay where he was and headed for the back corner.
“So,” the skinny man began, waving Rick to a seat, “you’re the guy that married Freya? Thought you’d be bigger!”
“Yeah.” Rick took his seat. “I get that a lot. You’re about as skinny as I expected, Mo’Tennan.”
“Cut back on meat ten years ago,” Mo’Tennan said. “Well,” he amended, “my wife cut back on meat, which pretty much means I cut back. You know how that goes.
“Nice to see you can blend in,” the rebel said. “Nothing worse than a covert agent who avoids trouble and darts shifty looks around the room.”
“Was the guy with the bottle one of yours?”
“Nope. No need to arrange trouble in a place like this.” He gestured to the bar where the crowd was suddenly surging back from someone who had a knife-hilt protruding from his throat.
“I always enjoy watching your wife fighting,” he said. “Folks always hesitate ‘cause they’re reluctant to mess up such a pretty face but it’s not like they would have had a chance anyway.”
For a moment, Rick wondered whether he meant a chance at messing up Freya’s face or a chance at something more romantically inclined. Then he realized he probably meant both.
“Does your presence mean we won’t be seeing her much anymore?” Mo’Tennan asked. “Not that we have anything against you, personally, but she’s easier on the eyes…”
“Really?” Rick tilted his head back so he could look down his nose. “You think I’m the one in this meeting who’s not pretty enough?” He knew an insult would work far better than some self-deprecatory bullshit. He already knew the result.
The rebel gave him a look of surprise, then burst out laughing. He shoved a shot-glass over. “To the forbearance of good women!” He tossed back the drink.
“To your wife, especially,” Rick added, timing it for maximum effect. He drank his own shot, coughing at the strength.
The rebel had his own problems. Caught in mid-swallow by Rick’s jab, he half-laughed, half-choked the drink down. “Oh gods!” he cried, hands flying to his face. “My sinuses!”
“Is this reactor coolant?” Rick asked. “You’re trying to kill me?” The liquor wasn’t quite that bad, but painting himself as a victim would help the rebel to laugh at his own predicament.
“I ought to kill you,” Mo’Tennan wheezed. “Making me laugh this stuff up into my nasal chambers.” His eyes were wide open and watering. Sweat poured down his forehead. “Maybe your wife sent you here to get rid of you?”
“Nah. We just decided to divide up the work. She’s better than me at fleet operations and I’m more of a tactical guy. I’m doing a lot of the surface rendezvous work now.”
“I get that,” the rebel said hoarsely. “At home, I take out the garbage and my wife nags me to take out the garbage.” He chuckled, but moaned suddenly, reaching a hand up to his nose. “That’s not really a very complimentary analogy as far as our group is concerned,” he admitted.
Rick slid a currency chip across the table. “The amount corresponds to a street address,” he told him. “Two days ago, we landed a small shipment for you. Forty-two micro drives that can turn any shuttle into a distortion-capable strategic asset and three hundred G-20 caseless rifles with a half-million rounds.”
Mo’Tennan managed to keep his face mostly neutral but he was clearly pleased. He slid another shot over. “That almost makes up for losing my sense of smell!” He raised a shot, arching an eyebrow at Rick.
“From the food I’ve seen in this pub, it may not be such a bad thing.” Rick carefully avoided his precognitive senses. If he was about to choke on his drink because his contact had a clever verbal jab ready, he’d rather not know in advance.
Supporting rebels was a messy business…
Angling for a Profit
The Skidbladner, Republic space
Odin rolled his eyes. He’d stayed on the sidelines of this argument for nearly ten minutes and he was getting ready to step in, now that Fenris and Mol Dineb were running out of steam. This was what he excelled at – letting his subordinates wear themselves out and then stepping in with a compromise.
“Look,” he said forcefully, “the angle doesn’t need to be precise. Same with the materials. We just need to get this first prototype into production and line up the distribution networks.”
He reached out to the lists below a holographic image of a wedge-shaped pillow. “Thirty degrees will do for now.” This was a salve to Fenris’ insistence on a more steeply angled product.
Odin was tempted to remark on Fenris’ sudden interest in the project but he didn’t want to risk losing his input. “Mol Dineb recommends the denser foam and, frankly, I think we need to trust him on this. He’s the expert on this sort of thing.”
And it wouldn’t do to drop him off with a set of specifications and a simmering resentment at having none of his ideas listened to.
Neither of them complained, so Odin moved on to a new subject, effectively stamping his pronouncements as agreed. “Distribution. We’ll need to get it smuggled in to a fringe world in the Alliance. From there, we can simply declare it as raid-spoils and sell it openly.”
“Really?” Mol Dineb asked. “It’s really that simple in the Alliance? Here, we need to falsify import documents and hope we don’t draw the wrong sort of attention. Anyway, I think we should focus our efforts in the Alliance for now.”
“You don’t think there’s a market for this in the Republic?” Fenris asked, surprised.
“Not unless we include a cavity,” Mol Dineb replied, reaching into the holographic prototype, “right about here. Remember, eighty percent of the market in the Republic is Dactari, especially after they’ve evacuated from all the worlds taken by the Alliance.”
“Ah.” Fenris nodded in comprehension. “Their tails. This would be quite painful for a Dactari.”
“We could sort out how to distribute in the Alliance first,” Mol Dineb mused, “and develop a more Dactari-friendly model for the next phase.”
“Develop?” Odin exclaimed. “You just need a cavity, yes? How hard can that be? Let’s do it right now!”
“But it would increase production costs by roughly five percent!” Mol Dineb countered. “Why waste money if we don’t need to?”
Odin threw his hands in the air, more for dramatic effect than from exasperation. He shook his head. “You have a captive market for your planet’s pillows, don’t you?” he said in a tone that needed no answer.
“I’ve spent two thousand years on a planet where marketing infuses every single aspect of humanoid life. I was living in Norway when men came back from the raid on Lindisfarne Abbey. To hear them tell it, the entire island of Britain was surrounded with isolated offshore monasteries, all of them stuffed to the rafters with gold, silver and beautiful virgins.”
“Virgins?” Fenris asked.
“As I said,” Odin replied, “marketing. Complete fabrication. Having women around would have been counter-productive in their pretense at celibacy.”
“Pretense, eh?”
Odin arched an eyebrow. “Not all of them were pretending but the ones who did weren’t breaking their vows with any women, for there were none on the islands with them.”
“You actually killed monks?” Mol Dineb asked. “Were they professional or scientific orders, like we have here, or strictly religious?”
“Strictly religious but don’t let that fool you.” Odin wagged a finger at their ‘prisoner’. “Their marketing was just as outrageous as those who led the raids. I went on a raid to an island called Iona. They told us it was the richest of them all, a great build
ing made entirely of gold and such.”
“Not so much?” Fenris asked, grinning.
“Short stone buildings and a pack of wild-eyed Scottish monks and priory servants. I picked up a reliquary, a windowed case, and one of them was screaming at me for desecrating the finger-bone of some saint of theirs.”
“What the hells is a saint?” Mol Dineb asked.
“They’re the holiest of their mortals. Usually for some extraordinary feat, though some have been elevated for trivial efforts – driving off a flock of geese from a field of grain, preaching a sermon to sea-mammals...
“I never did hear what that particular saint was known for but I assume it has something to do with being born with the bones of a dog.” He shook his head. “The point I’m making here. is that we have a massive marketing opportunity before us. The pillow, as it is, should sell well enough in Alliance territory but, if we’re claiming it to be the spoils of a raid…”
Fenris caught the point first. “That alone makes it a hot item! But if we make it look more like something used in the Republic…”
“If it looks the part more convincingly,” Odin agreed, “and we charge more accordingly, it adds a certain… piquancy!”
“A what?” Fenris screwed up his face.
“It means…” Odin waved his hands vaguely. “…it adds a certain spice to the product.”
“Like a performance-enhancing herb?” Mol Dineb asked dubiously. “There might be allergy issues if we…”
“No,” Odin cut him off impatiently. “It’s just a figure of speech. It means there’s an element of excitement added to the whole idea. It also reduces the buyers’ inhibitions because we’re implying that the product is in common use elsewhere.”
“Marketing,” Mol Dineb said to himself, nodding. “This venture is going to make us very…”
“Why is he on the ship?” a woman’s voice demanded.
They turned, surprised that the door had opened without their even noticing. The guards outside were under strict orders not to permit entry to any crew or officers without first checking with Odin.
That would suffice to keep almost anyone out but June wasn’t just anyone.
“Eh, what’s that, dear?” Odin asked, playing for time to frame a suitable response.
“I asked you what he’s doing on the ship,” Odin’s wife replied, “as I’m sure you heard perfectly well, husband.”
“Oh, this,” Odin gestured at Mol Dineb. “This is our… he must have, you know…”
“Stowed away?” suggested Mol Dineb improbably.
“Ah,” Odin added informatively. “and we were just trying to decide on the best way to, um…”
“And what…,” she pointed at the holographic prototype of Odin’s ‘fornicating pillow’, “the hell is that supposed to be?”
“This?” he asked stupidly, tilting his head toward the holo, brain racing at a snail’s pace. He’d married June in South Carolina, five years before his son, Caul, had found him. Her parents were pretty reserved but she took a more liberal view.
“This is just something Mol Dineb, here, had seen in a… gentleman’s publication… on Casparia…” Odin looked toward his two unhelpful comrades. “He was just explaining…”
“Good Lord!” June exclaimed. “You don’t need to get in such a fuss! I know a body-pillow when I see one.”
“Is that how it’s marketed on Earth?” Fenris asked, half to himself. “Seems vague.”
“I used to have one myself,” she continued. “Really helps you to get to sleep.”
“I suppose it would, at that,” Mol Dineb muttered, scratching at his chin.
“June!” Odin knew she was talking about a pillow that supported the body during sleep but the other two had no idea. “Would you please give us a moment?”
“You would need to make it longer for the Alliance market,” she said, undeterred by her husband’s discomfort. She held out her hands and sketched a growing distance between them.
“Indeed?” Fenris asked not bothering to hide his amused smile.
“Women would be the target for this,” she said. “They would get more out of it. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you what men are like. They get into bed and they’re snoring inside of ten minutes.”
“Norns, cut my thread now!” Odin grumbled. “Did you not hear me when I asked…”
“Men are indifferent,” she continued blithely, “but for women, the longer the better.”
“I have heard that, yes,” Fenris said, his voice starting to crack.
Mol Dineb giggled.
“Well then,” Odin tried again, “if you’d excuse us, June, we still need to…”
“You know,” June said speculatively, “Shelby would probably love to test one of these out for you.”
“Shelby?” Fenris suddenly misplaced his amusement. u
“Yes!” June nodded enthusiastically. “I’m sure your lovely wife would be glad of sch an interesting gift! Longer, do you think, or is she more inclined toward a shorter version?”
“Yes, Fenris,” Odin jumped in, suddenly glad of June’s involvement. “Perhaps she can provide us with a testimonial if we decide to import these into Alliance territory!”
“There’s a market for it,” June added. “I’d be more than happy to use it in a promotional video.”
“I think we’re done here!” Odin said forcefully. “Fenris, I’ll see you back to your shuttle and then I’ll return our unlikely friend, here, to the detention cells.” He’d finally given up any hope that his wife would stop embarrassing him and leave their quarters, so he opted for a strategic withdrawal.
As soon as they were in the corridor, he was able to get his mind back on the details. “Incorporate the cavity so the Dactari can use it without spraining their tails and then get it into production,” he told Mol Dineb.
“Can you find a way to get them to Chaco Benthic?” Fenris asked the prisoner/partner. “The lady there is a descendant of mine.”
“That should pose no problems,” Mol Dineb assured them, “but I’ll need some seed-capital for an initial production run and for the smugglers.”
“I’ll arrange for that as soon as we figure out how to get you home again,” Odin said as they turned into the main shuttle bay.
They stopped under the nose of Fenris’ shuttle.
“Give my regards to your wife,” Odin said, somewhat uncomfortably.
“Er, yes,” Fenris replied, “and the same to yours,” he said foolishly, having just seen her.
Both were oddly unsettled by June’s contribution to their meeting and they were eager to get away from each other in the hopes of forgetting their discomfort in peace.
Fenris walked onto the loading platform and it began to retract up into the small craft.
“So,” Mol Dineb ventured, “do you at least have some relatively comfortable detention cells on your ship?”
“Never mind that,” Odin said. “If I’m going into business with you, I’m hardly going to stick you in a cold cell. I’ve got some decent officer’s quarters that are currently going unused. I can put you in one of those.”
“Excellent!”
“With a guard, of course.”
“Understandable,” Mol Dineb said cheerfully. “We are still technically enemies, after all.”
Hunter as Prey
Planet 3428
Viggo held the string of his bow. It should have slipped from his fingers by now, the kill an easy one, but this was wrong. He eased the string, lowering the weapon, and slipped quietly back a half-pace to put more foliage between him and the three people waiting for him to use this narrow pass.
They were his people, not off-world traders but his fellow descendants of the original Guadalcanal crew. Whoever led this uprising had most likely spread vicious stories about Viggo and his family in order to secure the goodwill of the populace. Cara’s murder was probably being used to whip them up as well.
They would have had to present the public wi
th some shocking story about the Heywoods in order to rebrand treason as salvation. He knew it sounded implausible but that was one of the reasons the strategy worked more times than it failed.
Present the public with an outrageous lie and they’d probably fall for it. It had led to the original mutiny, generations ago, by convincing the crew that the inoculation would see them all dead. It had let them paint the mutineers as heroes and Alliance loyalists like the Heywoods as villains.
Viggo’s parents had proven that lie to be false, bringing the vaccination and the vastly extended lifespan that went with it, and yet there were still those who were willing to destroy everything if it meant a chance at power.
And there were thousands willing to believe whatever was necessary to go along with it.
Humans were not nearly as rational as they liked to think. They were social animals – like sheep. As an individual, a Human might think for itself but, as part of a group, Humans tended to conform with the panicky herd, assuming someone else was doing the thinking.
An individual watching a news holo branding the Heywoods as criminals or traitors might not be so individualistic. They were, after all, letting someone else tell them what to think; letting someone else temporarily step into the alpha role.
It wasn’t as though all Humans were beyond redemption, though. The crew of his parents’ ships were more experienced, more cynical of anything they heard from strangers and friends alike.
There were also many ordinary citizens living in the Solomon arco who knew how to think for themselves but the vast majority were content to let others tell them what to do and think.
The immediacy of the on-demand network in Solomon and elsewhere in the Alliance systems was having a bad effect on the relatively younger population here. It offered a feeling of enfranchisement to users. Hallie herself had built up a sizable network of contacts though she mostly used it for harmless pursuits. It was the slightly older crowd that posed the majority of the problems.
The ones that thought their age was sufficient to impart wisdom…
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