Free Stories 2018

by Baen Books

  The clothing the man wore was unfamiliar, grey leather. Who wore grey leather? “Call me Ainsvo,” the man suggested, moving toward that low art-print-chest-looking-thing at the wall. Weird name, Ainsvo, but it had a hint of familiarity about it. Where had Jonesie heard that name before? “Let’s have a look at your charts.”

  Jonesie was happy to let Ainsvo take charge. He didn’t know anything about the tanker, not really; he could drive a small cabin cruiser with the GPS to provide him instructions, but that was about his limit. “I have sent some people down into your galley stores for resupply,” Ainsvo said, pulling drawers out, checking chart titles one after another. “There will be no problem? I apologize for the inconvenience.”

  Jonesie wasn’t sure he understood that, exactly, but he’d heard Ainsvo speak German—he was pretty sure it was German, he’d heard it in movies—so he made allowances for the translation of a non-native speaker.

  “No problem,” he assured Ainsvo, who had started to extract charts from the chest, rolling them up into tubes. Jonesie could help. They weren’t his charts, but with luck Ainsvo wouldn’t guess that. Anything to get these people off the ship before the rest of his gang returned. Jonesie didn’t know whether he was supposed to have stopped them from getting on, so it was better all around if the issue didn’t come up.

  It wasn’t as if he was in a position to resist Ainsvo, him with just a pistol. It had taken all ten-twelve of the boarding party to herd the tanker’s crew into the store-room to lock them up, before the others had left. “Here, let me—”

  He knew where to find the rubber bands. He’d searched the bridge once he’d been left alone on it, looking for a bottle of booze or some pornographic media—print or digital, he didn’t care—to occupy his time while they were waiting, he and Kalf, for the yacht to come in the morning and retrieve the tanker’s smuggled cargo.

  “You are very cooperative,” Ainsvo said, his eyes meeting Jonesie’s for just a moment longer than Jonesie was comfortable with. “We stack these here, to take away. I have an hour, I think.” Picking a seat near the front of the bridge Ainsvo moved Jonesie’s gun casually to one side and folded his arms. “I admit I recognize very little of this equipment. What can you tell me about all of this, yes?”

  Jonesie had initially taken Ainsvo as someone from the gang that he hadn’t been told about, or as someone familiar with the tanker’s crew and out for a little free diesel. Maybe Ainsvo was something more than that. How had Ainsvo gotten here, exactly, with no radio traffic on the marine band transceiver, and nothing Jonesie had seen on approach from the bridge? Maybe Jonesie was accidentally in the middle of something much bigger than a small home-grown drug smuggling operation.

  All right, Jonesie decided. He’d play along. Fortunately for Jonesie he’d been a quick study all of his life, and he’d been bored once the others had gone. He’d toggled all the toggles and switched all the switches. He could wing this, just so long as Ainsvo was telling the truth about lacking familiarity. He could open up the software binders for Ainsvo to read. If English wasn’t Ainsvo’s first language Jonesie could be reading ahead as they went, and cover for his ignorance that way.

  “Well, you can see what condition some of this stuff is in,” Jonesie said, gesturing broadly with an air of regret. “But there’s your usual stuff, depth finder, navigation, environmental monitors. All of it strictly 1990, I’m afraid. Here. Course and steering. Password is ‘tankerbridge,’ all one word, no caps.”

  He’d wondered, Jonesie had, when he’d threatened it out of one of the ship’s crew, whether that would turn out to be a warning signal, an alert of some sort. That would have been what he would have done. He thought. But he’d found it written down in the margins of more than one software documentation binder, and so he felt pretty sure of himself about that.

  “Good, you’re in. Now. Top view. We’re here. Got that? Sorry, let me know if I’m talking down to you. Respect.”

  Ainsvo shook his head, thoughtfully. “No, this is perfect,” he said. “Just as though I knew nothing. Walk me through this. I’d like to see as much as I can before we have to leave you in peace once again.”

  Couldn’t come fast enough for Jonesie. “So you can see, here. We’re only making enough speed to stay in place, more or less. Treading water. Have a look at the specs on the engines.” If that was what they were. He didn’t care. They looked like engine specs to him.

  If it was a test, Jonesie knew he could spin a line of bullshit with the best. And if it was anything else he didn’t even care, so long as Ainsvo was gone before Kalf turned up to demand what was going on, so long as the ship was all theirs again by the time Harris and the rest of the gang got back.

  ###

  By the time Oldorp came up to let him know they could leave Goond’s brain was stuffed so full of new knowledge that he thought his skull would crack. All of this equipment. All of this information—much more than he was getting from Jonesie, because he could read English much better than he could speak it, and statistics were statistics in any European language. And what information—not just the quantity, but the quality, and Jonesie denigrating the equipment for being old at every opportunity. If only Jonesie knew.

  Goond wasn’t going to tell him. He didn’t like the boy. Jonesie apparently thought they were something quite other than they actually were, although Goond wasn’t very sure of the details. Jonesie was young and stupid enough to be taken in by a bit of fancy footwork, though, so that was something Goond could be grateful for.

  “And on this station, radio communications and satellite up-link with the Coast Guard,” Jonesie was saying. They’d moved on from where they’d started at least an hour ago, Goond making sure he absentmindedly tucked that pistol into his waistband as he rose to relocate. He’d checked the safety. The pistol was an unfamiliar make, but there were familiar elements, and fortunately the safety was one of them. “We’ve disabled it, of course. By the time they can get a signal out we’ll have been gone for hours. Clean get-away—”

  “Herr EinsVo.” And there was Oldorp, thank God. There seemed to be a hidden message in his tone of voice; Goond sharpened his alertness. “Fueling operation is finished. I also report that stores are loaded, with assistance from a man named Kalf. The captain of this ship has asked for a word before we go.” In German. Goond didn’t know whether Jonesie could understand any of it: Oldorp had apparently spoken carefully.

  And there was a lot of information there. It connected with the hints Goond had been collecting from Jonesie’s remarks; just now, for instance, with his indication that Jonesie’s “they” would be gone before the other “they” had restored their communications and called for help. That was why there’d been so few lights, why there’d been no crew. Jonesie was a pirate. Goond had thought they were going to have to deal with his misgivings on that issue prior to their departure, but perhaps the situation was dealt with, without him.

  “We will take these charts,” Goond said in German. Though what he had learned from Jonesie confirmed that this ship was in no real need of them—except as back-up—Goond still felt a little awkward about annexing them. He switched to English to take his leave of this child-pirate. “Keep to your post until you are relieved, Jonesie. I have appreciated your company, thank you.”

  He had Jonesie’s pistol. Helping Oldorp with the charts—there was an armload of them, even tightly rolled—gave him a natural cause to go to the door; he kicked the stop away from under the lower edge and swung it shut with decision and dispatch. The latch was also original issue. Goond knew how to secure it from the outside.

  Then he hurried after Oldorp, through the corridor, down the ladder-stairs, toward the galley—where the ship’s crew waited. Six of them; and one prisoner, Kalf Goond presumed, but apart from that one everybody seemed relaxed and friendly. At least at first sight. Taking a quick scan of the group Goond made his nod to the one he took for the senior among them. He felt a little exposed: but he was closest to the door t
hat would lead him to the deck, and they wouldn’t know whether people were waiting out there to cover him.

  “There were maybe ten of them,” the captain said, without preamble. He was an older man in plain civilian clothes, but there was old worn tarnished braid along the shoulders of his jacket. “Locked us up in our own dry stores locker. We’re lucky your people heard us.”

  At the same time Goond could see quite well that the captain had his thoughts about Goond and his people as well. It was a good time to get away, before anybody could get a clear view of the boat: Goond knew what he could use for a distraction. “There is a boy called Jonesie on the bridge. I have locked the door. He is expecting people to come back tomorrow, and it may be that he and Kalf were the only pirates left on board. Here is his pistol.”

  Please do not shoot me with it. They wouldn’t know he was carrying his own side-arm and Goond saw no reason to mention that. He pulled the clip out of Jonesie’s weapon and checked for a chambered round before he put the pistol and the clip down on the floor beside him as a wordless way of making the request. “We have taken some diesel for our boat and helped ourselves to some of your ship’s stores, including some ice cream, I hope. And I have raided you for ship’s charts. Wishing you all the best, gentlemen, good-night.”

  It would be dark. With luck the master control for the ship’s lights was on the bridge and the ship’s crew could not get to it in time to embarrass U-818. There would be little enough to see with the boat low in the water. They could tow the inflatable rafts until they were safely out of sight, when they’d have the time to stow them.

  “God-speed,” the ship’s captain called to Goond’s now-turned back as Goond retreated. “Safe passage.”

  Goond locked the last door behind him on his way out, for insurance. It wouldn’t stop the ship’s crew if they came in pursuit, but it might slow them down, and maybe they would take their time about it. And maybe there would be ice cream—that had not melted—when he got back to the boat with the charts, and the amazing story that went with them.

  ###

  Charlie Montrose was still sitting in the kitchen of the house he shared with his old mother, enjoying his morning cup of coffee, when the tone from the general store sounded to alert him to the fact that someone had come in. Oh, well, he told himself. It was nearly May. The weather had already begun to moderate, though the boating season wouldn’t really start into full swing until Memorial Day.

  Pushing himself to his feet he walked slowly down the corridor that separated his living quarters from the store and went through to the front counter. “Hello,” he called out. “How can I help you?”

  He didn’t see anybody, not immediately; but he heard someone, rustling amongst the shelves where he stocked wine—stovetop meals—snacks for the benefit of the vacationers that would come to enjoy the bit of lake-front and the recreational opportunities that the Salmon Shore resort, established 1950, had to offer families during the summer season.

  People did turn up before and after, attracted by the lower rates: but he’d seen nothing on his parking lot monitors that would indicate the arrival of a car or an RV. Maybe it was a hiker stopping in. That happened. Sometimes people who’d gone for a long walk in the woods found that they weren’t quite as prepared for the rain and wet and cold as they’d thought they were, and decided to check themselves in to one of his cabins for a warm dry night and a hot bath before returning to their communities with tales of their adventures as modern-day explorers.

  Charlie was all in favor of that. It wasn’t just that they generated revenue for the little old-fashioned resort; it also cut down on the number of search-and-rescue efforts that had to be mounted, at taxpayer expense. One way or another a man got used to walk-ins. His cabins could be warm and ready to receive customers within ninety minutes. They all had in-line hot water heaters. Salmon Bay was an old-fashioned resort, perhaps, but they weren’t still living in the 1950s, even though their architecture was.

  Then suddenly his guest appeared from between the shelves of packaged chips and sugary-salty grazing foods, a genial moon-faced bearded fellow in a double-breasted black leather coat with a ready smile and the proverbial piercing blue eyes and a cap pushed to the back of his head, black hair curling over his forehead. He wore what seemed to be a standard Army-surplus officer’s headgear, if lacking the horsehair ring that would stiffen it; and with a somewhat dirtied white cotton cover, as though he thought he was the commander of a U-boat. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “The door was open. Look, I found beer.”

  And so he had. The man was carrying a six-pack canned, and had another tucked under his arm. First thing in the morning, but Charlie didn’t judge. For all he knew it was actually at the end of a long night. “That you have,” he said. “I keep the hard stuff behind the glass. If you’re in the market.”

  He cocked his thumb back over his shoulder at his locked cabinet. It wasn’t that his prices were tempting: just that a pocket-flask of rye hid out in a man’s pocket that much more easily, and nobody could be faulted for having forgotten to pay, surely? Why, yes. Yes, they could. “Thank you, but no for now,” the man said. Charlie noticed his accent, slight but present. German. “Let me just put these on the counter. You have rooms? I have people.”

  He unloaded his beers, and some packets of candied caramel corn as well. “And questions,” Charlie thought the man said, but under his voice, so that Charlie wasn’t really sure. His hearing was perfectly good for a man in his age: the doctor told him so every six months. Yet and still Charlie was sixty-five, and couldn’t be bothered to keep up on all the biological peripherals all of the time.

  So, all right, things on the counter. “We have rooms, yeah,” Charlie said. “How many people, how many nights? We’re on winter rates for another ten days. And there are group discounts. Veteran’s discounts as well.”

  This seemed to spark the man’s interest; he seemed to find it funny, in a mild way. Charlie hoped he wasn’t going to be one of those “veteran of the race wars” types: they’d been getting the white supremacists through the woods, in the past few years, perfectly law-abiding people by and large but Charlie didn’t like them. He’d been far too young for Korea and physically rejected for Viet Nam, but he knew how to respect a genuine soldier.

  His father had been an officer, whether or not his mother had ever wanted to talk about it. Both of them, really, both of the men his mother had married, but Charlie’s genetic sire had been on the wrong side of the war.

  Charlie’s widowed mother had married an American, and Charlie’s stepfather had been as good a dad as anyone could have asked for. Charlie had grown up hearing about other peoples’ fathers, so he knew. “We believe we may be veterans,” the man said. “But never mind that for now. There are fifty and some of us, but not all at once. And I understand there may be a family discount.”

  Fifty-plus people? That was one heck of a family. A reunion of some sort, then, though why they’d elect to gather at a seen-better-days resort in the off season was anybody’s guess. “Big family,” he said, because surely that would be expected. “We can offer a ten percent additional credit for any booking of eight of our cabins or more. I’ll need a credit card. Your name?”

  “I have no credit card.” And, strangely enough, the man didn’t seem to feel that was a problem. Charlie was starting to have his suspicions. He’d been taken for an Aryan sympathizer himself, more than once: just because he’d been blond, before he’d gotten grey. And blue eyes. His father’s eyes. “And I think you misunderstand about the family discount. My name is Lachs. Verricht Lachs. I spell—”

  Wait, there had been that one peculiar contact, nearly a week ago now. Someone claiming to be U-818. There’d been people in high school who’d dug up his past, his mother’s past, and teased him about it. And the man was spelling out his name by tapping his finger on the counter, staccato bursts for the “dit,” finger pressed to the surface a little bit longer for the “dash,” as though the sealed woode
n surface was a Morse code key. V-e-r-r-i-c-h-t L-a-c-h-s.

  “You have my device up there, on your banner,” the man said, even while he continued to tap out Morse code against the counter-top. Verricht. Amherst. Heinrich. Stefan. Annamaria. Lachs. “You are not my son. But by tradition, you have declared yourself with our flag, and therefore we are your guests here, is it not so?”

  What.

  Charles fought to process the signals. Yes. There’d been the strange radio contact. Yes. He’d discounted it. Yes. That was his father’s name. Yes. He had the cartoon that had been painted on his father’s boat, his father’s personal artifice, his sigil, on the resort flag, flying on the dock along with the United States flag and that of the state of Michigan. No. This could not possibly in any rational sense be happening.

  “Some joker made contact with me some days ago.” That much was not in question. “Claiming to be U-818. Which sank in 1945, with my father on it. You want to stay here, you give me a valid credit card. But I’m about thirty seconds from turning you away, credit card or no credit card.” He was getting angry. This went beyond pranking. His mother had mourned his father for all the days of her life; it had been only a part of her new life in America, but it had always been there.

  “Some joker claimed he was the son of Verricht Lachs,” the man retorted, as though he were the one who was offended. “And that his name was Charlie. While I am in a position to know that the son of the Smoking Salmon was baptized Mattias Ulrich Pieter, among others. Pieter. What kind of a good German name is Charlie?”

  Suddenly something had gone sideways. It was thinking of his mother, Charlie thought. His baby pictures were in her special box, tucked away; he’d only ever seen them once or twice, and never since he’d gone away to college. There was one of his mother sitting with him as a baby on her lap, and a man at her shoulder, dress uniform, proud happy smile. His natural father. His mother’s first husband. The man in front of him. Something about the eyes seemed suddenly, unfairly, provocatively familiar.