Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers

by Helena Puumala

  Lank turned the sound off.

  “Do I answer that?” he asked Kati. “Their systems are pretty old, I’d say, but I guess they must have enough satellite eyes around to have detected us.”

  “We weren’t planning on sneaking in,” Kati replied. “Maybe Captain Katerina should be the one to talk, and ask for permission to land at the Strone City Space Port, assuming that such a place exists. I suppose that the capital of the largest continent is as good a place to start our hunt for a knife manufacturer as any.”

  She switched the voice communications of the ship back on.

  “Unregistered Free Trader ship, you must respond,” the crackling voice was saying. “If you refuse to respond we have no choice but to shoot you down. You are trespassing....”

  “Well, isn’t this a fine welcome to a Free Trader coming to peddle valuable cargo,” Captain Katerina snapped. “You’d shoot down an unarmed vessel? Without even asking me what my business is? Do you people do commerce at all, or are you just a bunch of trigger-happy fools?”

  “We like to know who we’re dealing with,” the voice crackled back. “Your ship has no registration number so we can’t determine your identity. You could be an enemy spy, for all we know.”

  Lank rolled his eyes.

  “With the system they’ve got, a ship registration number would mean nothing,” he muttered in a tone too low to be picked up by the external communicator. “He’s bluffing.”

  “You could try asking me who I am,” Captain Katerina said into her microphone, while winking at Lank.

  A moment’s silence followed her words. Then the crackling began again.

  “And who are you, then?” a different voice asked in less belligerent tones. “And what is your business on Wayward?”

  “I am Captain Katerina of the Free Trader ship Spacebird Two,” Kati answered. “Based on the planet Tarangay. I’m travelling with my uncle, a niece, a nephew, and a female companion whom we picked up on a planet where we did some trading. Like I said, I have valuable cargo to sell. My information is that there are manufacturers on Wayward who can make use of what I carry.”

  “With that many people on board I doubt that you have much room for cargo,” responded the voice.

  “Like I said, what I carry is very valuable,” Kati repeated. “Are you going to allow me to land in Strone—I presume that you have Port facilities of some sort in your capital city?”

  “I’ll relay your specs to the Port. They’ll contact you and slot you in, once you’re in the vicinity.”

  *****

  “This place is smaller than the Port on Greyrock!” Lank exclaimed when they were above the Strone Port.

  Nevertheless, they were getting minute instructions as to where to land on the almost empty stretch of tarmac.

  “Follow them,” Kati said, while Lank grumbled as he piloted. “Let them have their fun; it affects us not.”

  “I bet the locals hardly use this Port,” Lank said. “They probably have their own stretches of tarmac or rock that they use instead, and avoid paying the fees.”

  “And don’t have to worry about any inspections,” Kati added. “Assuming that inspections actually happen on this world, at least, occasionally.”

  Lank set The Spacebird Two next to a high wooden fence, as instructed by the Port personnel. The spot assigned to them was not far from the low building which apparently housed the Port facilities. Once he had the ship on the tarmac, two uniformed officers came out of the building, and walked to the ship, the personnel of which were instructed to remain in the vessel, but open it up for inspection.

  “What were you saying about inspections?” Lank muttered in an aside. “They do seem to want to inspect little Free Trader ships, at least.”

  “They probably want us to pay some kind of fees to be allowed to do business on their world,” Kati responded. “Hope they don’t want us to pay large sums before we’ve done any business. We don’t have much cash or chits of any kind on board.”

  “I’m sure they’ll take lace crystal, or even amber salt crystals as payment,” Llon said, grinning. “Either one of those is much better than the coin of any world, or Federation credit chips, for that matter.”

  “One of the smaller shards of lace crystal should be adequate,” Chrysalia said. “Their potential for use as communicator resonators makes them very valuable.”

  Chrysalia’s notion seemed practical to Captain Katerina. The Crystolorians had been very generous, much more generous than Kati had expected them to be, especially since they claimed that they had what amounted to a psychic connection to lace crystal. The Spacebird Two contained a handful of the long lace crystal pieces suitable for knife manufacture, and two full sacks of the smaller pieces which could be further cut into resonators. One of the sacks was stowed under the Captain’s bed, destined for stops other than Wayward. Some of the amber salt crystals had immediately gone into the engine room, becoming part of the vessel’s provisions, while the rest were in the cargo lockers, as part of the ship’s trade goods. No decision had been made as yet, as to where they would be sold, or bartered.

  “I’m not even sure if the Waywardians have anything that we can sell elsewhere,” Kati had said when the five of them had discussed the issue of how they were going to conduct the trading.

  “I hear that certain merchants have an ample supply of slaves, these days,” Lank had responded, one eyebrow raised. “One of Gorsh’s prime markets apparently collapsed, quite recently.”

  Llon had snorted.

  “And you two,” his eyes had shifted from Lank to Kati and back, “had nothing to do with that collapse, no?”

  “Well, maybe, a little something,” Lank had conceded with a crooked grin. “Along with a bunch of others of our kind.”

  “And what kind would that be?” Chrysalia had asked.

  “The kind that are good to have on our side,” Kati had said firmly. “And I intend to find some of those on Wayward, too. I cannot believe that a whole world doesn’t have a lot of honest folk who want what’s best for their planet. Wayward may have its villains and its problem spots, but we will find ourselves allies in our quest to free our friends, and the others people who have been snatched into slavery, and to bring Gorsh and his minions to face Federation justice.”

  Lank had turned his grin on Chrysalia.

  “That speech is Kati all over,” he had told her. “We’ll find a way; we’ll get us some locals to help us. We’ll never say die, or ‘I quit’.”

  “It works,” Llon had commented.

  He, too, had grinned.

  There had been optimism in the recycled space ship air in spite of the difficulties that they expected to have to face.

  *****

  “In the name of the Grand Council of the Continent Nord, we demand that you pay the customary business tax and the Port facility fees, before we allow you the freedom of Strone, and the rest of the Continent.”

  The male official sounded quite pompous as he addressed Captain Katerina at the hatch of The Spacebird Two. Kati could not help but smirk, and hoped that Llon, behind her, was doing a better job of controlling his face than she was. The uniformed woman beside the man registered the smirk, and seemed to judge it to be the obvious response of a Free Trader to a demand for cash.

  “If you don’t have money or credit chips on hand, we can take a trade item as a surety,” she said. “You can always redeem it later, if it’s valuable, once you have local currency available.”

  “We may have to do that,” Kati said, rearranging her face into a thoughtful expression.

  At least the officials had said nothing about wanting to go through the vessel, inspecting it. Not that The Spacebird Two was hiding anything, but she was really not all that keen to display the lode that they had collected on Crystoloria. Not much use in arousing envy, if they did not have to. At least not this early on.

  Kati glanced behind her, to where Chrysalia was standing behind Llon.

  “Crew woman Chr
ysalia,” she said, even as they had agreed earlier, “could you fetch one of our small, valuable items, so that I can sign it over to the Strone Port and the Wayward Customs as proof of our intent to honour all of the planet’s laws and regulations?

  “If we cannot redeem it before we leave this world,” she added to the officials, “the Port and the Customs will, of course, be free to sell it, to recoup their costs.”

  Chrysalia went. She had asked to be the last of them to handle the piece of lace crystal that was going to be the offering. She had chosen it, as well, from among the ones in the sack in the cargo locker, a piece that by Ciela’s reckoning of the resonators that she had seen Xanthus Hsiss use, easily could be split into four parts, enough for two paired communicators.

  Although Ciela had been somewhat dubious about the Waywardians’ ability to recognize the value of such a crystal:

  “Do they have the know-how to build communicators?” she had asked, bristling with contempt at people who would snatch slaves to work their tuber-fields.

  “Don’t forget that Wayward once was a Federation world,” Llon had reminded her, “and, nominally, still is. They’ve had space flight capacity for a few hundred years. Space flight means communicator capacity as well.”

  “Mind you, they haven’t been getting translation nodes since they quit paying their Federation taxes,” Lank added. “So communication systems based on them are probably in short supply. Except where Gorsh rules, since he was, without doubt, getting them from Vultaire, in exchange for human bodies, and who knows what else.”

  Kati’s attitude had been that if the Waywardians did not want to use the crystals themselves they could always resell them elsewhere. The members of the Space Trade Lanes’ criminal class would, surely, pay good money for them, she thought cynically, although she did not speak such words out loud.

  “You’re quite right about that,” subvocalized The Monk. “And an occasional smidgen of cynicism suits you, young woman.”

  She refused to answer him.

  Chrysalia brought the chosen crystal shard from the sitting area where it had been waiting for this moment. It was wrapped in a worn piece of Narra-cloth, a fragment of one of the tunics Kati had bought on Makros III, how long ago was it, now? The tunic had seen a lot of wear, until, finally, an unexpected snag had torn a large hole in it. Kati had brought the item of clothing from the Captain’s Quarters when Chrysalia had asked if they had any natural fibre cloth with which to shield the piece of lace crystal. Chrysalia had been delighted with the Narra-cloth, worn as it was, and had handled it with great respect, carefully cutting out a piece next to where the tunic had torn.

  “This is excellent insulating material!” she had exclaimed. “It’s animal fibre, isn’t it?”

  “Narra-cloth from Makros III, the Drowned Planet,” Kati had replied. “The clothes made from the Narra fibres were wonderful. There’s still some use left in the rest of the things I bought, but that tunic was finished. I’m glad if the material can still be used for something.”

  “The rest of it we can use to wrap the long pieces of lace crystal,” Chrysalia had said immediately. “This cloth, together with the bag from Crystoloria should keep even the larger shards hidden from inquisitive ESPers!”

  “Inquisitive ESPers?” Kati had subvocalized to the Granda. “I’m an ESPer, but I haven’t noticed the lace crystals announcing their presence to me in any way.”

  “Maybe you’re not inquisitive,” had snapped The Monk, and once again, Kati had regretted the fact that there was no way to actually tweak the old reprobate’s nose.

  When Chrysalia undid the folds of the Narra-cloth to display the crystal at Kati’s nod, there were two gasps from the Waywardians. Apparently they knew what they were looking at!

  The woman swallowed, and turned to stare at Captain Katerina, while the man’s eyes remained on the crystal, his lips twitching noiselessly.

  Captain Katerina shrugged at their discomfort.

  “I did say that I carried valuable cargo,” she said. “Will this piece do as surety, since we do have to make some sales before we’ll have in our hands anything that amounts to legal tender on this world?”

  “Of course it’ll do,” answered the woman. “But we’ll have to log it into our records at the Customs, and stash it into a safe for the time being.”

  “If you have more of its kind to sell,” said the male official abruptly, “I can show you, on the Customs computers a list of outfits that are looking for lace crystal. I can even tell you who offers the best price for it.”

  Kati stared at him for a moment. Lank was on the bridge, trying to hook into local communications system so as to try and find just that sort of information. She had intended to send Llon with Chrysalia to look after the logging of the shard, and to make sure that it was, indeed, stored in the Port Facility. Maybe it would make more sense to send the ship genius with Chrysalia, to download into his node whatever information the Waywardian could offer them. And anything else that he could pick up, including data that the officials did not realize that they were dropping.

  “I’ll fetch Lank, Captain,” Llon, behind her, said.

  He must have been reading her mind—but she merely nodded at him.

  “Crew woman Chrysalia will carry the crystal to the Customs; she is our crystal expert,” she said to the Waywardians. “Our pilot, Lank, has the expertise to deal with computers, as well as with large amounts of detailed information. He will accompany Crew woman Chrysalia, while the rest of us will put the ship to sleep, and collect our gear and merchandise as we prepare to go on-planet.”

  *****

  Strone. The capital of the Continent Nord of Wayward.

  The five of them stood on a windswept street corner outside the meagre Port Facilities, staring at the dusty city around them, wondering how they were to proceed from there. They were surrounded by their bags and the two sacks of lace crystal: the large one containing small pieces minus the one now resting in the Customs safe (with a receipt for it nestled safely in one of Captain Katerina’s pockets), and the smaller one with the longer pieces wrapped in what was left of Kati’s torn Narra-cloth tunic. Chrysalia had charge of the crystal sacks; there was a demonstration bottle of amber salt crystals in Kati’s luggage. They had decided to leave the bulk of the amber salts aboard The Spacebird Two, since they were more interested in being known as peddlers of lace crystal than in selling the ship powering crystals.

  Kati had a handful of Federation credit chips which she had obtained on Space Station Plata in the same pocket that housed the Customs receipt for the crystal shard; that was it for ready cash on hand.

  And they had not the least idea of what transportation, accommodation, or meals were going to cost them, or even where such could be procured.

  “Looks like the Space Port is in a seedy part of town,” Lank commented. “And I don’t see any flyer or flit rental places.”

  “Maybe they don’t use flyers or flits for transportation,” Kati responded. “Or maybe just the rich folks use them, and we poor tourists get to walk.”

  “And to haul our worldly goods by runnerbeast carts, like we did on Vultaire,” Lank added with a chuckle. “And sing for our suppers, like we did there. Well, that last you and I, Kati, can manage, anyway, having had a lot of practise. But we’ll miss Joaley’s piping and Rakil’s juggling, for sure.”

  “If we have to walk,” said Chrysalia, “It would be useful to know in which direction we ought to be heading.”

  Like Llon, she seemed to be having no trouble communicating in whatever language was necessary, even though neither was noded. Kati assumed that Chrysalia’s ESP abilities, combined with whatever resonance relationship she had with the lace crystal, was what was enabling her to be multilingual.

  Ciela was the only one of the Team who struggled with the local language, and Lank was helping her out with that, every chance he had. Fortunately Ciela was a quick study, although Kati did regret the fact that, so far, there had been
no opportunity to get a translation node for her. One problem was that since she was in her late teens, implantation would almost certainly mean at least a few days of, at minimum, discomfort, if not outright illness, and they had had no time for that. Besides, what free time they had had, had been aboard the ship, in deep space, without anything resembling a medical facility, or a supply of nodes, anywhere near. Kati, with her healing abilities, might have been able to handle the implantation and the subsequent allergic reaction, but she did not feel at all confident about it. She knew too little, and had not had the opportunity to practise under the watchful eye of an experienced Healer. Perhaps it was just as well that the travellers had not come across a supply of the nodes; there was no temptation to meddle with Ciela’s nervous system. A bright young woman that she was, she had been managing remarkably well without the help that a node could provide.

  “Were you able to get any information along those lines from either your probing on ship board, or from the Customs’ computer?” Kati asked Lank.

  The teenager grinned at her.

  “Sure. However, Rudi, the official who helped me, told me that he was contacting some ‘important citizen’, as he called him, to come and fetch us with his flyer. He said that this guy was a grand fellow, and would help us get the best prices for our merchandise. He’d done a favour for Rudi—got him the Customs job when Rudi had come into the city from some little back-of-the-beyond place—and Rudi wanted to repay him. I said that I didn’t really know how saddling a man with five off-worlders was a favour, but he just laughed, and said that it certainly was, in this case.

  “Sorry to not have consulted the rest of you about this, but there really was no opportunity for us to have a discussion in the Port Facility, so I just decided to go with my gut feeling, and trust Rudi.”

  Kati nodded. It was true that there had been no opportunity for all five of them to talk about anything since they had landed. The Customs officers had been officious, but not inquisitive, and she had not been quite sure what to make of that. They had made her sign a declaration that she was responsible for the behaviour of every member of the group while they were on planet, but had not asked to look at the contents of any of their bags. To the best of her knowledge, therefore, the fact that they had four long lace crystal shards with them was still a secret. Unless the Port or the Customs had some mysterious way to detect their presence, but were not disclosing it.