“Of course, sar.” She looked at me. “Is there anything else, Captain?”
I shook my head. “Just let me know when you’ve dropped it off.”
“Of course, Captain.” She stood and nodded to the chief before leaving.
“Now we wait,” I said.
“Are we being too clever to send it with her?” the chief asked.
“Maybe.” I pondered it for a moment. “The risks are low. She’s not going to attract the same attention you or I might. It’s just a simple invitation to dinner, isn’t it?”
The chief nodded. “Nothing anybody would look twice at.”
“Except it’s on real paper,” I said. “Carrying a message that could have been sent more easily electronically.”
“It may come as a surprise to you, Captain, but some officers of a certain age engage in private correspondence using mashed and dried cellulose fibers.”
“Kondur is an officer?”
“He was,” she said. “A long time ago. Seems like a lifetime now.”
“Before he took over the station?” I asked.
“No. He owned the station before going to the academy. Graduated near the middle of his class. Engineering, actually, with a minor in closed-ecosystem environmental science. Came back to the Toe-Holds and focused on making the station one of the top places to live in the Western Annex.”
I settled back in my seat and pondered that.
“Changes your perspective on him, doesn’t it,” the chief said.
I nodded. “It’s completely at odds with the image he projects.”
“Protective coloration,” she said. “It’s not just for insects.” She stood and headed for the door. “I don’t want to make myself a liar. I better go see if I can finish another chapter or two of edits.”
“I’ll ping you when Pip gets back,” I said.
She just nodded on her way out the door.
I went back to contemplating Verkol Kondur, wondering if he was actually being extorted—or if he was behind the gang currently inhabiting the very large hull on the outskirts of Telluride.
Chapter 22
Dark Knight Station: 2376, March 11
Pip showed up just before 1600. His pants had a smear of dust across each thigh, and he carried a streak of dirt across his left cheekbone.
“That took a while,” I said as he parked himself in a guest chair.
He leaned back and rested his head on the chair back. “I’ve had a tour of the cargo-handling facility,” he said. “Cans move directly to the marshaling yard. The contents get pulled out. Mixed-cargo shipments get broken down. They get transferred to the cargo depot—which is near the chandlery, by the way. They stay there for up to a month. After a month, they go to a long-term storage facility and the routing slips get moved to a storage terminal. Basic data like what, who, when, and any provenance along with the resting place in case anybody comes along to claim it.”
“I’m exhausted just thinking about it,” I said. “Where’s the long-term storage?”
“Oddly enough, under the docks. It’s one of the oldest parts of the station. When they outgrew it, they just moved the current operation to the new facility and left the old one to handle the overflow and long term.”
“How often do they clear it out?”
“Funny you should ask. They auction off unclaimed cargo after five stanyers. There’s nothing there older than that.” He shrugged. “Apparently, they wheel out the old shipping crates and bidders get a couple of stans to look them over, see if there’s anything they want to bid on. Highest bid wins. The catch is you can’t open the crate before the auction. You can look at the outside, but not inside.”
“Sounds like fun. You might get a shipment of gold or a shipment of cow dung.”
“Basically,” he said. “According to the dockmaster, it’s pretty well attended.”
“When’s the next auction?” I asked.
“Couple of months.”
“Maybe we should be here for it,” I said.
Pip laughed. “You never struck me as a gambler.”
“I’m learning a lot about myself this trip,” I said.
“So, that’s what I learned. Does it help?”
“Might be just what we needed to know.”
“Where are we going for dinner tonight?” he asked.
“I’m going to be in the wardroom with the chief and Verkol Kondur, I hope.”
“Am I invited?”
“It’s just a quiet little get-together to find out how long Kondur’s been being extorted.”
“Sounds dull,” he said.
“Seriously?”
He shrugged. “Kondur’s not going to admit anything. You two will have a lovely evening trying to figure out whether or not he’s lying. In the end you’ll be no further along than you are now.”
“You sound pretty sure.”
“He owns the whole station, Ishmael. Why would he tell you two anything about his business?”
“Well, mostly because he’s setting us up to take a one-way trip to Telluride.”
Pip straightened up at that news. “The can?”
I nodded. “It’s supposed to be filled with supplies. We’re to trade it for a can that’s waiting for us and bring that one back.”
“But we’re not coming back?”
“My guess is no, but that’s what I’m trying to get a better handle on. Which is why the dinner with Kondur.”
“Why would he set us up?”
“Well, if somebody had planted a bomb on his station that he can’t find, he might be willing to take a few shortcuts with an itinerant freighter.”
“There’s more to the story than that,” Pip said. “You mentioned a bomb?”
“Seems there’s a band of extortionists working the area. Pay or boom.”
“How do you know this?” he asked.
“The chief.”
He frowned. “She’d know. You’re not supposed to tell me any more, are you?”
“Probably not even that much but you’re a business partner.”
“And the chief thinks this merry band of bomb-makers operates out of the mega,” he said.
“That’s the working theory. She’s been looking for them since ’68.”
He nodded, but he was looking over my right shoulder at nothing. “So, your hypothesis is that the bomb-makers saw us do the flyby, and tracked us to Dark Knight where they already had a bomb, so they could extort Kondur to send us back out with a can of supplies and pick up a bomb of our own which would theoretically take us out of the picture permanently? Seems a bit complex, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“A bit.”
“It supposes that they tracked our course out of the pocket, that we didn’t change course after that, and that Kondur would be able to finagle a can just for us.”
“That last part was pretty neatly done, you have to admit that,” I said.
“What if Kondur’s behind it?” he asked. “What if the call he got about us was ‘Boss, we have a problem?’”
“That’s why I wanted to know where the long-term storage was. If we can find the bomb here, we’ll be better set up to talk to Kondur. We’ll know he’s not the boss but a victim.”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“The chief is pulling a radiation detector out of stores.”
“A nuke?” he asked, straightening up in his seat. “It’s a nuke?”
“Yeah. Working hypothesis only at this point. If we don’t find it, we still can’t rule out that it’s there and we didn’t find it. If we find it, we’ll be in a better position.”
“I can get you into the facility,” he said. “But you’re going to have to take the caretaker in with you. No unaccompanied visitors.”
“The auction?”
“Yes. Some skullduggery in past events. Poisoned the well, as it were.”
A quick knock preceded the chief’s entry. “I have a detector.” She held up a standard wand.
“Pip
can get us into the storage facility but we’ll need to take a caretaker with us,” I said.
She grimaced for a moment. “I can deal with that. Strap it to my leg and run an earplug to hear the readouts.” She eyed Pip. “How much do you know?”
“Nukes. One-way ticket. Kondur maybe setting us up.” He looked at me. “You know, this could all be a simple trade deal. He needs to get supplies to the ship and get the goods back. They contacted him to broker the transaction because he’s the owner of Dark Knight.”
“Why us?” the chief asked. “Why now? We just flew by the mega and now Kondur wants us to fly back?”
“I’ve seen less likely things happen,” Pip said.
“Like what?” she asked.
“Ishmael owning the ship he found as salvage and was only able to get it because some shipping bigwig took the final jump, the dead guy’s company fired him then sold him a ship cheap, which he turned into multimillions worth of success before selling out to the daughter of the same dead magnate so he had the money to invest in that salvaged ship—which, by the way, he never wanted to step foot in again?” He shrugged. “Worse than that?”
“What time did you invite Kondur for?” I asked.
“Normal evening mess. 1800. We should probably alert Ms. Sharps that we’ll be three for dinner in the wardroom.”
I checked the chrono on my console and typed a fast message to Ms. Sharps. “Done, I said. Good catch.”
“Let’s move then,” the chief said. “I’d really like to find this before we meet with Kondur.”
Pip sighed and shook his head. “I want to see this in action.”
“I’ll just tape this down.” She held up the wand. “Be right back.”
We left the ship and Pip led us down the gallery, around the back of the chandlery, and into a dusty office. A middle-aged woman in station livery looked up from a comfy-looking chair in the corner. “Yeah?”
“Ms. Nance, I’m Philip Carstairs. I was here a little while ago asking about the unclaimed cargo?”
She nodded, squinting her eyes at the chief and me. “You brought your captain and engineer?”
“Yes. The reason I was here before was to see what kind of long-term storage you had. We thought maybe a cargo we lost a few stanyers ago might still be here.”
“Nothing older than five stanyers,” she said. “Told you that before.”
Pip nodded. “We’re looking for a crate that went missing from one of our shipments. We just discovered the problem during an audit and since we’re here, we wondered if it would be possible for us to take a quick look.”
She stared at him for a few heartbeats. “Quick look?”
He nodded.
She burst out in a braying laugh. “You folks have no idea what kind of mess you stepped in, but sure. You can go have a quick look.” She levered herself up from the chair, grabbed an oversized tablet off the counter, and led the way deeper into the compartment. “Come on. I want to see the expressions on your faces.”
She slid a door open and stepped through, turned to the right and started flipping switches. A lot of switches. Overhead lights began coming on high above us. The storage facility stretched almost as far as I could see. “There,” she said. “Hope you wore your walking shoes.”
Pip whistled. “We could park the Chernyakova in here.”
The chief looked at me. “Plan B?”
Chapter 23
Dark Knight Station: 2376, March 11
Verkol Kondur showed up on the dot of 1800. Mr. Bentley had the brow and logged him aboard for me.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Kondur. It’s not every day we get to host a station owner,” I said.
The chief reached out to shake his hand. “I appreciate your coming on such short notice. I hoped we could have a quiet chat away from extra ears.”
His smile looked genuine enough. “Talking with you, Maggie? Always an interesting conversation.”
“Right this way,” I said.
I led them down the passageway and into the wardroom. I felt a bit like the maître d’ in a boutique restaurant, the ship merely creating the ambiance for a special dining experience.
Kondur seemed perfectly at ease. “Nice ship, Captain. Recent refit, as I remember.”
“We’re still shaking some of the bugs out, filing down some of the sharper edges. I’m getting pretty attached to her.”
“Can’t say as I blame you,” he said.
I crossed to the sideboard. “Can I offer you a drink? I’m afraid our cellar isn’t very deep.”
He shook his head. “I’m a coffee drinker. Have been for decades.”
“Chief?”
She shook her head. “Perhaps later. Why don’t you ask Ms. Adams to serve and we can settle in?”
I pressed the call button on the sideboard and Ms. Adams popped her head in through the galley door. “You can serve now, Ms. Adams.”
She smiled at me, nodded to Kondur, and ducked back into the galley.
We settled around the table, the chief and I took our customary seats and I waved Kondur into Al’s chair. By the time we’d settled, Ms. Adams had the coffee poured, a carafe on the table, and dishes arrayed in front of each of us.
The first course, a salad of fresh greens, started us off. When the door latched behind Ms. Adams, the chief said, “I’m so pleased you could join us tonight, Verkol.”
He crunched through a bite of salad and swallowed. “Real paper? How could I refuse?” He speared another forkful. “How are you finding Toe-Hold space, Captain?”
“It hasn’t lived down to my preconceived notions.” I shrugged. “I didn’t grow up as a spacer, so life in the Deep Dark has always been a process of unveiling.”
Kondur grinned and lifted his coffee mug, cradling it in both hands. “You’ve done very well for somebody without the family connections.” He took a sip and his eyes widened. “Good coffee.”
“Thanks. It might be the only vestige of my youth that followed me into space.”
“A penchant for good coffee?” he asked.
“Yes. It was my first job in space, mess deck attendant. The coffee on that ship was atrocious.”
He laughed and addressed his salad. He took a bite, chewing while he seemed to consider us. He swallowed and raised an eyebrow toward the chief. “You have things to talk about that you feared might be overheard, Margaret. You’re being uncustomarily quiet.”
“I’m a little paranoid these days. Honestly, I’m not sure where to begin.”
“Why not start at the beginning and continue from there,” he said.
“You know about UMS17.” She made it a flat statement instead of a question.
Kondur nodded. “Anybody with an ear knows that story. Usoko Mining station got blown to shreds. Rumor is somebody smuggled a nuke—if not on board, then at least close enough to obliterate the station.”
She nodded. “My people have been tracking the organization that did it. We may have found them, but I’m concerned there may be other nukes out there. Stations giving in to the extortion.”
He finished the salad and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “A rational assumption. I’ve heard some echoes in the Dark. Stations going missing. Financially secure stations suddenly unable to support themselves. We’ve noticed a slow trickle of new residents here that are one step above refugee.”
“Are we ready for the next course?” I asked.
They both nodded and I signaled Ms. Adams.
She appeared almost immediately, swapping the salad plates for dinner plates of roast beefalo, mashed tubers, and carrots. She hustled the dirty dishes out, closing the door behind her with a click.
“She’s very efficient,” Kondur said, leaning forward over his plate and inhaling. “This smells divine.”
“I’m blessed to have good crew,” I said.
He looked at me out of the corners of his eyes. “You may not have grown up as a spacer, Captain, but you’re being modest. Good crews aren’t a matter of luck. They�
��re almost always a function of picking good stock and developing them into a team.”
“You make it sound like breeding cattle,” the chief said.
He laughed. “It’s not that much different, other than most ships aren’t trying to raise the next generation of crews through careful application of genetics. Even family ships crossbreed with others.”
“Hybrid vigor,” the chief said.
I found the image at once humorous and disturbing, which forced a laugh out of me. It made me think about Pip’s family in a new light.
After a few moments of savoring the main course, Kondur looked at each of us for a couple of beats. “Let’s stop dancing around the table, shall we?”
The chief placed her fork down. “Are you being extorted, Verkol?”
He smiled around his fork and held up a hand while he chewed. “I suspected that was where you were going.” He took an appreciative sip of coffee. “Not directly, but I have friends who are. A threat to a loved one is a dagger to your heart. One of the stations that went dark belonged to a rather stiff-necked colleague. It’s been over three stanyers but I still miss our periodic arguments.”
“But you’re supplying them,” the chief said.
He nodded. “I am.” He shrugged. “I’m not the only one supplying them, but I’ve been biding my time. Staying on their good side. Learned a bit about their operation.” He shrugged. “Not enough, but some.”
The chief frowned. “Like what?”
“Like they have a standing order for potassium iodide tablets.”
The chief frowned. “That’s not good.”
“That’s actually rather dumb, isn’t it?” I asked.
Kondur smiled at me. “You see the implications?”
“They know they’re being irradiated but not what radiation is doing to them,” I said.
He nodded. “The iodine pills keep their thyroids from absorbing any radioactive iodine in the atmosphere but does nothing to stop the breakdown of cellular structures through direct exposure to radiation.”
“Placebo?” the chief asked.
Kondur shrugged. “Possibly. More likely a solid PR campaign to keep the underlings in line and working. Auto-docs can help mitigate the damage. If the exposures are relatively minor, it could take decades for problems to emerge.”
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