Embustero- Pale Boundaries

by Scott Cleveland

  “He wasn’t even there, Meg! Lad Hussein and Jerrell Mackey are responsible for their own actions regardless of what Grogan may have said or done. Unless he threatened Lad with bodily harm if he didn’t harass O’Brien? I didn’t think so.”

  “Okay,” Druski conceded, “what about the release of privileged medical information?”

  “Unless you have hard evidence that he got into your records, I’m not going to waste my time,” Shadrack said.

  “How else could he have found out?” Druski demanded.

  “For all you or I know Mackey or O’Brien got drunk and let it slip themselves,” Shadrack replied. “At that point it’s fair game for the gossips, right or wrong.”

  Druski knew she’d lost the battle, but gave the captain something to think about. “Grogan is involved in better than half the fights on this ship,” she said. “You can’t let him keep it up forever and we both know it.”

  “Beside Vasquez, he’s the only person we’ve got who’s even close to being an atmospheric pilot,” Shadrack said.

  “That isn’t worth the trouble he causes,” Druski pressed.

  “I’m the one who decides that,” Shadrack replied coolly. “Maybe if Pelletier works out things will change, but not now. That will be all.”

  “Aye, sir.” Druski left Shadrack’s office somewhat mollified. At least he’d conceded the possibility of replacing Grogan.

  A furtive shadow slid down a cross-corridor a few meters from Shadrack’s door. Druski quickened her pace but the owner was out of sight before she could identify him. She doubted her senses for a moment, but then detected the sound of the lift doors swishing shut.

  Screw it. Her opinion of Grogan wasn’t a secret and as the only fully qualified medic aboard she had nothing to fear even if he found out she’d lodged a complaint against him.

  TEN

  Nivia: 2710:03:17 Standard

  Tamara Cirilo’s agitation as she entered Hal’s office was unusual but not unwarranted given that it stemmed from the loss of yet another lot of IGA. “It went aboard a freight shuttle bound for Caliban Station but station records say it’s not there,” she told Hal. “The entire shipment is just gone!” Which was impossible. She’d tracked down the shuttle and circumspect inquiries revealed that the consignment was definitely not aboard. It was not listed in Caliban Station’s receiving records, but there were a hundred ways goods could vanish between one port and another. Misdirected freight had once been the Family’s mainstay.

  “Whoever stole it is in for a surprise,” Hal replied moodily, “especially if we find them.”

  “Chances are the people who end up with it won’t know it was stolen,” Tamara clarified. “They’d assume it was just mislabeled, which gives us a decent chance of recovering our property without raising any suspicions.” She spread out a half-dozen pages of hard copy before him. “The Old Lady already had a list of ships in-system at the time; part of our attempt to find those poachers. I cross referenced that with flight plans listing Caliban Station.”

  “Still a couple of hundred,” Hal noted. “Can’t we narrow it down any farther?”

  “I’m sure we could,” Tamara nodded, “but that would involve the local authorities. Once they start investigating freight-jacking they might discover a trend in mislabeled cargo leading back to us.”

  “We have to find it, Tammy,” Hal said. “Our market will collapse if we have to dedicate another run to existing orders.”

  “I’m working on it,” she assured him. “I sent word out through a front that we got someone else’s property by mistake. Hopefully we’ll get a response.”

  It wouldn’t be a quick one, however; not with the transit time involved. “I’ll try to get more materials from the Minzoku,” Hal said, “but right now we don’t have enough to start a normal production cycle.” Much less ship half to the second production facility.

  “Is Den Tun still holding out?”

  “Not really,” Hal replied. “He’s making deliveries, but they’re all late. Problems with machinery, problems with the mineshaft, problems with transportation. Always one thing or another.”

  “That’s not unusual, especially when he wants something from us,” Tamara pointed out.

  “That’s the strange thing,” Hal said. “He’s not making demands. He’s been unusually cooperative, as a matter of fact.” Hal first attributed the old man’s tractability to the Onjin’s help in treating victims of the fever plaguing Minzoku communities. Lately he began to wonder if it wasn’t something else entirely.

  “Problems with the mine?” Tamara theorized when he voiced his suspicions. “Real problems?”

  “Maybe. How could we know?”

  “Hal,” Tamara sighed, “we have access to one of the most sophisticated satellite reconnaissance systems ever employed. All we have to do is use it.”

  Tamara brought up images of the mine site from the Fort’s archive. The satellite passed overhead twice a day every fourth day. She sequenced the images in reverse order and ran them in rapid sequence like a jerky stop action motion video.

  The mouth of the mineshaft and roads around it bustled with constant activity. Huge earth movers hauled the ore to the processing plant hidden at the head of the Rainbow River valley, then picked up spent tailings to back-fill exhausted veins inside the mine.

  “That’s interesting,” Tamara murmured. She ran the sequence again, then selected a number of tailing piles and queried the image processor. “I thought so!”

  “What is it?”

  “The tailing piles move,” she explained, “but the total volume remains about the same. I’d expect to see the piles grow and shrink as the shafts are dug out and filled in. I think they’re moving the same material back and forth. But why?”

  “Maybe Den Tun worked out a deal with Sorenson because he had to,” Hal suggested. “Maybe the mine is played out.” The ore could have been exhausted for years. Den Tun knew its importance to the Onjin and no doubt suspected, accurately, that the Family would abandon Nivia if it ran out.

  If so, the old man had played the Onjin and Sorenson off each other masterfully. If the exporter had known what Den Tun did, given the sentiment he’d expressed shortly before his death, he could have rid Nivia of the Family by denying them the elements they needed to sustain their clandestine industry.

  If Sorenson’s assassination had severed the Minzoku’s supply chain, they were doing their damndest to stretch what stockpiles they still held as long as they could.

  “The Old Lady needs to know if that’s the case,” Tamara said firmly.

  “Have McKeon get samples of the ore and tailings,” Hal told her. “We have to confirm this before we pass it up.”

  “Do we tell him why?” Tamara asked.

  “Not yet,” Hal said. “Keep it between the two of us for now.”

  “I’ll take care of it first thing in the morning,” she said, then, casually: “You haven’t stopped by for a while. Are things better with you and Dayuki?”

  “Getting there,” Hal confirmed. “Our trips outside the wall helped quite a bit. I shouldn’t have left her cooped up in our quarters for so long.”

  “Maybe I’ll stop by to chat,” Tamara suggested. “Even I’d go crazy with no on to talk to but you.”

  “She manages to keep busy,” Hal said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He trudged back to his quarters through the thirty centimeters of fresh snow that had fallen from the leaden sky that day.

  Dayuki was waiting for him when he opened the door. “Are we going outside, Hal-san?” Her eagerness overcame her reserve and she fairly leapt to the closet for her coat at his nod. The depression he’d attributed to her for the purpose of his subterfuge was closer to the truth than he liked to admit. Until recently she hadn’t left their quarters for any reason for several weeks. She’d lost her natural enthusiasm and taken to sleeping late. Her skin had taken on a sunless pallor.

  Through her isolation, loneliness and depression she hadn’t uttered a w
ord of complaint, despite what he told the other Onjin. It broke his heart to put her through it but there was no choice if he was to save her life.

  I can do more to make it tolerable, though. A good long dose of natural sunlight would do her good. So would some female companionship, though he didn’t know if Tamara Cirilo could provide that given the women’s past conflicts, not to mention what would happen if Tamara discovered the situation between he and Dayuki was not exactly what he’d advertised.

  The Embustero: 2710:03:17 Standard

  Terson watched the monitor of Neuchterlien’s micro-welder as the device transformed wire no thicker than a human hair into beads of alloy on the pistol’s slide, filling in pits left behind by corrosion, building up surfaces worn down by hard use. The tiny welding nozzle withdrew when it reached the end of its programmed routine and polishing belts guided by laser micrometers went to work, buffing the bead welds smooth.

  A final inspection by the micrometers satisfied the device’s single-minded intelligence and it signaled with a soft chime. Terson removed the slide and turned it about, light reflecting from a surface smoother than it had been after its original machining. The welder had even managed to detect and resurrect the original manufacturer’s markings: BANA .50 MAG.

  He turned to the workbench where the rest of the pistol’s component parts lay on a white cloth, ready for reassembly. Terson fit them together in rapid sequence, finishing with a functional check. Then he just sat, looking at it, until Druski noticed.

  “You did a good job, Joseph,” she said over his shoulder. “It’ll look like new once it’s re-blued.”

  “Kind of a shame, though,” Terson replied, “not getting to finish.”

  “Ah,” the medic murmured. “You’ve decided to leave us, then. Have you told Shad?”

  “No,” Terson said, placing the gun in its storage bin. “Figured it was safer to wait.”

  “The captain learned his lesson,” Druski said as he followed her to the armory’s hatch. “You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  Learned a lesson, Terson corrected silently. Learned that subtle measures of confinement were not sufficient to hold his less-than-willing passenger, learned that he’d have to be more direct if he intended to keep Joseph Pelletier aboard against his will. Terson did not doubt that the confrontation, if it came, would be swift and overwhelming.

  General Quarters wrenched him from a sound sleep several hours later. He struggled against the straps holding him in his bunk for a few moments before his mind understood the reason for the alarm. Feet pounded the deck past his cabin and forty seconds later airtight hatches began to boom shut, preparing for transition. His inner ear flip-flopped and for an instant he felt like he was falling toward the ceiling as the inertial compensator came on line and self-calibrated.

  The Embustero was in normal space.

  The shipboard pace shifted instantly from the monotony of jump to frantic preparation. Terson spent the next several days in the Embustero’s holds, helping stage cargo for off-load when they entered orbit around Tammuz. He found it especially easy to give it his all; his remaining time under Shadrack’s command was limited and volunteering extra time kept him out of sight, delaying the inevitable interview with the Embustero’s commander.

  Colvard conveyed the summons at breakfast on the day the starship began the last leg of its approach. “Pelletier, the captain wants you in his office,” the second mate informed him. “ASAP.”

  Terson’s anxiety mounted as he plodded up-deck. He debated the wisdom of attempting to appease Shadrack with deceit: agree to remain and jump ship at the first opportunity. That opportunity might not come for months and, Terson’s luck being what it was, might present itself at a time or location far less conducive than this one. He would, Terson decided, deal with it like he’d always dealt with life: by the seat of his pants. He raised his hand and knocked on the door.

  “Open.” Shadrack sat at his desk leaning on his elbows with his hands clasped before him. The top of his desk was clear but for a single document and a stylus. He motioned Terson to take a seat. “We got off to a rough start when you came aboard,” Shadrack said. “Mostly my fault. In spite of that you’ve shown the makings of a competent spacer; a good man to have around. The Embustero would be well-served to have you aboard on a permanent basis.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Terson said.

  Shadrack blinked slowly. “Is there a particular problem?”

  “Beyond the fact that you’re poachers aboard a ship with two names? That should be particular enough.”

  “Like you’re one to find fault with too many names,” Shadrack huffed.

  Terson offered a nod to his logic. “Granted, but I have my reasons—you’ll have to take it on faith that talking about them won’t change either of our minds.”

  Shadrack propped his chin on a meaty fist. “You’re making a mistake, Pelletier, but it’s yours to make. You are released from duty; you may disembark at any time after we dock.”

  Terson stood and extended his hand. “Thank you, Captain--for everything.”

  Shadrack returned the gesture gruffly. “You’re welcome. That will be all.”

  Shadrack put the contract and stylus in a desk drawer. The young man’s rejection of his offer was an unwelcome surprise, but he put it aside and headed for the bridge. There were other things to worry about, now. “What’s our position, Mr. Colvard?”

  “Just entering parking orbit,” the second mate replied. “ETA on the docking platform is two hours.”

  “Very well. Any movement by our stowaway?”

  “No, sir.”

  The image of the baffle-rider clamped to the freighter’s hull was unchanged; the cambot hadn’t detected any signs of activity since the ship dropped out of jump. “We haven’t had any close traffic, though,” Colvard added. “I expect he’ll head for cover when the platform arrives.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Shadrack said. “Any contracts offered yet?”

  “Half a dozen or so,” Colvard said. “Nothing unusual.” Which meant nothing lucrative.

  Ah, well, we’ll take what we get. Shadrack filed a flight plan indicating a return run to Nivia in four days time. In reality the ship would be in port less than forty-eight hours. An abrupt departure and false destination would catch the Embustero’s stalker flat-footed.

  Shadrack set aside the distraction and immersed himself in the myriad details of arranging transport for the ship’s port-bound cargo and taking on stores that the ship would likely not be able to acquire at reasonable prices on Assend.

  Tammuz hove into view as the helmsman oriented the Embustero to mate with the approaching docking platform. The planet’s surface shined like a thumbnail-sized emerald marble against black velvet. Named after the Akkadian god of fertility, Tammuz fed nearly a quarter of the Commonwealth. Its temperate surface was covered with fields, its comparatively small oceans sectioned by gigantic nets, its governmental policies diametrically opposed to those of Nivia in certain respects, parallel to and even more stringent in others.

  As the breadbasket of the Commonwealth, Tammuz was both an economic and strategic asset of immense importance. The system based the largest single concentration of military vessels in the Navy and perhaps the largest concentration of trade and transport vessels in the known galaxy.

  It also employed the most aggressive quarantine protocol known. The import of organic material from outside the planet’s immediate sphere of control was expressly forbidden, lest some obscure biota wreck havoc among the fields of nutritious but genetically fragile grains. A human being that applied for a landing visa was in for a regimen of tests and isolation lasting at least two weeks. As a consequence a number of stations orbited the planet to house the few thousand visitors undergoing the long quarantine and thousands more who chose to conduct business by electronic data stream.

  The sheer volume of shipping made accidents a statistical certainty. To forestall any incident that might send unsteri
lized vessels or cargo plunging into the atmosphere, trade vessels were kept at a great distance from the planet itself. Thousands of small, mobile docking platforms cruised the vast parking lot, further reducing the chances of collisions or cross contamination by journeying out to meet the giant freighters and barges rather than concentrating them at a few central hubs as in most systems.

  The platform moving to meet the Embustero closed to ten kilometers and slowed to a few meters per minute. “Make ready to dock,” Shadrack ordered.

  “Command, Systems.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “That baffle-rider is still clamped to one of the grapples.”

  Shadrack switched his auxiliary monitor to the cambot’s view and cursed venomously. If the parasitic little ship didn’t move away it would be crushed like a mosquito. Such a happenstance didn’t particularly alarm the Embustero’s captain, but the foreign material would damage the grapple, if not the ship itself.

  “Run the cambot’s inductive microphone up against him,” Shadrack directed. “Tell him to get the hell off my hull!”

  “Negative, that,” Systems reported a few moments later. “Cambot is not responding. There’s something really wrong here, Captain. The shadows…”

  Shadrack turned his gaze from one monitor to another. The Embustero was oriented bow-first to Tammuz’s sun. The ship’s external features all cast shadows parallel to the vessel’s axis—except in the cambot’s view, where the shadows ran perpendicular to the axis.

  “Get another cambot out there!”

  The second robot approached from the opposite side of the hull. Its camera revealed an unobstructed docking grapple and a cable curling sinuously about itself like a blind snake, its tail firmly anchored to the circuitry within the first cambot’s split carapace.

  Cormack MacLeod cursed his ill luck when he realized that he’d been discovered, but not too vehemently—the ship’s captain could have killed him any number of ways. He disconnected his umbilical connection as a precaution, though, forcing him to subsist on his own store of oxygen for the remainder of the jump.