The Princess & The Privateer

by Peter Rhodan

  They encountered several other people, mostly stevedores moving cargo on strings of grav floats, as they neared the controlled area but no one seemed overly interested in them or at least in their identity. Several groups of dockworkers eyed the two and made probably crude comments to their fellows, but they were quiet enough or too muffled to be heard clearly. Gizel had never really been exposed to this sort of unwanted attention before, but noted Corinne’s totally indifferent attitude and determined to model herself on the spacer walking ahead of her.

  Reaching one of the entry points to the station proper there were two armed and armored guards on either side of the gate carrying plasma rifles at port arms, their helmets flickering in movement as they watched everyone in the area. Their guns were a relatively older style and underpowered weapon that was produced on Nue Limborg. Their only real selling point was cheapness, as far as Gizel could determine from their statistics in the game of Starmaster, which she played a lot.

  The actual gate area was quite wide and consisted of two sections. The first was a large area with a massive scanner through which all cargo had to pass, and was manned by two uniformed men. The second section, which they were approaching, was off to one side where a smaller, human-sized scanner stood.

  Gizel felt her tension levels rising as they walked up to the checkpoint where they each were divested of any metal object. Corinne producing a wicked-looking knife from inside her left boot before they both passed through the scanner without setting off the machine. Once they had successfully negotiated the metal detector there was a customs office, where a bored-looking woman took Corinne’s ID. The officer inserted the ID into another type of scanning device, had Corrine put her thumb on a print reader, and handed the ID back.

  The woman then reached for Gizel’s ID and having nothing else Gizel handed over the card Karvon had supplied her. The woman scanned the card, studied the screen, and looked up.

  “Name?” she asked.

  Gizel thought quickly.

  “Alexa Dorotina,” she answered after a slight pause, using one of her middle names as a surname.

  The woman looked at her for a moment, causing Gizel’s anxiety levels to climb even higher while she tried to maintain a stoic, bored-looking demeanor. Finally, the woman bent forward and tapped a few keys, and asked without looking up.

  “How do you spell that?”

  “Alexa, a, l, e, x, a and Dorotina, d, o, r, o, t, i, n, a.”

  The woman typed away then held out a thumb scanner and took Gizel’s print. A moment later the card was returned to her and the woman looked up without smiling.

  “Have a nice stay on Lennister Station.”

  She said this in a staid, bored tone and was already looking behind them to where other people were waiting to get through the checkpoint before she had even finished the sentence.

  Corinne led Gizel into the main station through growing numbers of people. Gizel tried hard to keep her head down without looking like she was trying to hide her face as they moved through a corridor full of shopfronts offering money exchange, brokerage, travel, and freight arrangements throughout the galaxy.

  At the first opportunity, she quizzed Corinne.

  "That was all? They didn't do any checks on my identity?"

  Corinne shook her head.

  "No. Their policy is to take everybody at face value. If you commit a crime then they do look very hard at who you are. DNA, the whole works. They have the death penalty on this station for lots of things as well. But their basic attitude is if you don't cause trouble they don't look."

  Gizel simply shook her head in puzzlement as they walked past the various businesses. Some appeared to be small local operations while a couple were the gaudy local branches of large transtellar companies. After a couple of hundred meters of these business-type shops, the corridor they were strolling along opened out onto a broad walkway that ran around the entire circumference of the station leaving the center open. Moving over to the clear wall that had been designed to stop people from jumping Gizel could see the top of the lower section several floors below. A glance upward showed a roof deck only one floor up. The vidcams were easy to spot and she came up with several simple ploys to avoid them being able to focus on her face while at the same time not seeming to be actively avoiding them.

  The concourse was several meters wide and the shops here were much more mainstream retail. There were hairdressers, beauty salons, clothes and shoe stores, electronics stores, and more, with many of the main Kimerian chains represented, but also others from Brython and elsewhere.

  Corinne led her to a store specializing in clothing for spacers and they quickly filled out her wardrobe with practical clothing for working in space. A quick trip to a lingerie store, a couple of pairs of ship boots, and a nice pair of shoes for more ordinary wear and they were good to go. Gizel had never really been shopping like this before, walking around on her own, unguarded, among the multitude. It was a novel experience not being treated as someone special, and she was both appalled and pleased at being treated just like any other spacer.

  The change in Corinne’s attitude was interesting too. Aboard ship she had been quiet, diffident almost, yet on the station, she turned into someone who came across as confident, assertive, and not at all intimidated by the officials or aggressive shop assistants. Gizel couldn’t work out if she was intimidated by the rest of the crew, Karvon specifically, or whether one of her demeanors was an act, and if so which one.

  The ladies surprised everyone by returning to the ship within an hour. In the event, their quick return saved the crew nothing, as they had to wait until the examination of the missile feed mechanism had been completed. Karvon and Moxton found where the troublesome contact was located and had replaced it. Gizel sat listening to their report about the faulty contact without making any comment, but it only increased her level of puzzlement. She knew cargo ships were sometimes armed, particularly those out at the fringes of civilization, but she did not think missiles were a common form of armament due to their expense and complicated systems. She was not certain of course, her knowledge of such things being fairly limited, so she reserved judgment. It did however add one more anomalous piece of information to the several other such strange things she had noticed.

  Then of course there was the whole going to catch a pirate thing. At first, she had assumed they were being hired to act as bait for the Medio Navy warships but she was getting the distinct impression that they were intending to hunt the pirate ship down on the own. Of course, if they had a missile launcher that would help she supposed, she did not imagine a pirate would be expecting missiles to be fired from a lowly cargo ship.

  Chapter 8

  To Medio, we go

  After exiting the Horvath system without any problems from the Kimerian warships, which was undoubtedly due to the quick change of identity they had pulled, the trip went quickly. They stopped at Horus, a small, but not very habitable planet that was at the edge of the region of space controlled by the Kingdom of Brython. Its only real claim to fame was providing defensive stations at the jump point from Lotharian space, and the fleet base station where a cruiser and two destroyers floated at rest. The much smaller civilian station boasted little in the way of amenities being small and run down. There was little traffic to and from the planet whose population barely touched a million and the only real external income came from cargo transfer.

  Observing the Brython fleet station and the three ships floating there was interesting to Gizel, and the flight path they were following took them not too far from the military station. Brython ships tended to be very similar in design to Kimerian ships, the two states having been allied for centuries, but even so, they were still a foreign power and of interest to an Imperial Princess. The civilian station where they docked was considerably less interesting, being a smaller and not nearly as vibrant a replica of Lennister Station. She was already coming to the conclusion that to have seen one station was to have seen them all, a
part from size.

  Karvon found a shipment of electronic parts bound for Medio from Nordland that had been dropped off by a freighter heading towards Brython itself, which was not on the route to Medio. It was not a large job but it helped cover the cost of fuel and food for the trip. To increase the profit margin Karvon and Lothar loaded it aboard themselves. They were both paid-up members of the stevedore's union so no trouble came from that quarter once the locals checked.

  Lothar had kept his word and shown Gizel the extremely well-equipped gym on the Kormorant. Having fulfilled his part of the bargain he demanded she run through a kata or two. Despite feeling extremely self-conscious she managed to complete a few routines but in the process made several mistakes. Gizel was extremely annoyed with herself, but Lothar made no comments on her gaffs. She must have made at least a reasonable impression as he asked her if she would like to learn real martial arts. She readily agreed to his offer and promptly found herself being worked harder and longer than she had ever been before.

  Gizel had taken up karate because it offered fitness, muscle toning, and physical coordination similar to other activities such as ballet dancing. The main attraction for Gizel though was that it happened to be taught by a very hunky instructor at her school who she had a huge crush on when she was in the ninth grade. The crush had not survived the tenth grade but she had kept attending training religiously until her final year when the pressure of the academic demands left her with no time for karate training.

  By the time she had finished her first session with Lothar her body ached and her limbs felt like lead, yet she persevered and as the days went by she began to feel like she was achieving something. Next to the gym, the ship boasted an indoor shooting range which surprised her no end. As far as she knew only large capital ships and the big assault transports were equipped with such things, but on this strange ship she probably shouldn’t have been as surprised as she was. Gizel had always had good eye-hand coordination and much to the initially dismissive Karvon’s surprise, she quickly became a good shot with just about any weapon he produced from the surprisingly large armory the ship boasted.

  Her favorite was a light blaster pistol which she practiced doing snapshots with, gradually becoming more and more accurate. Lothar, watching her impressive weapons handling skills finally enquired where she had learned to shoot so well. She laughed and waved her hand.

  “Starmaster. I used to play Alien Buster too, but I prefer Starmaster.”

  Lothar and Karvon laughed with her.

  “She’s a VR combat vet!” Karvon said.

  Lothar nodded then asked. “Starmaster is hard. How highly ranked were you?”

  Gizel smiled as she racked the last weapon away, Imperial Princess or not they made her do all the work while they just watched.

  “I used to play competitively in the Kimerian Star League. I qualified for the finals three seasons in a row but couldn’t attend of course. Mum and dad weren’t keen on me wasting my time on video games.”

  “Ha. Star League finals qualifier eh? You truly did zat tree seasons running?”

  He sounded surprised. Karvon looked from the apparently surprised Lothar back to Gizel.

  “That is good?”

  Lothar half laughed.

  “Kimerian Star League is toughest in galaxy. Only top five players on Iskander qualify to go to Kimerian finals. Only top five from Brython too. Most good players move to Kimeria to compete. Very tough competition, pay is good if you are good zough.”

  Gizel acknowledged this by nodding.

  “I won a thousand credits each time just for qualifying. Had to give it to a charity of course. Mum and dad never understood. Lucas was impressed though when he saw me actually play for real.”

  Karvon considered her with his head on an angle. “Interesting. I don’t know much about the game except that it is a shooter, right?”

  Lothar nodded. “Yeah. You play as Marine. More you play and ze better you get, ze better ze gear ze game unlocks for you.” He turned to Gizel. “If you qualified for the finals you must have been using Nordland Assault Armor, yes?”

  Gizel nodded. “Yeah. I love that stuff!”

  Karvon looked at her in a considering way.

  “We will need to discuss this Lothar,” he said finally.

  Lothar nodded without elaborating and Gizel was left wondering what they had been communicating to each other with their unspoken mannerisms. Nothing more was said to her for two days but when they finally emerged in the Medio system Lothar, Andreas and Karvon took her down to the lower deck and moved forward past the gym to what they called the armory. This looked to be a small room with racks containing a couple of old-looking handguns and two ancient blast rifles. Karvon went over to a bulkhead wall and opened a panel in what appeared to be a section of solid metal, pressed something and the panel slid aside revealing another compartment.

  Inside was a storage room for combat armor, Nordland combat armor! Okay, this is getting weird, Gizel thought. Nordland combat armor was restricted, expensive, and not the sort of thing to be found on a cargo ship, or even a regular military ship for that matter!

  Lothar moved down the passageway to the left of the ranked suits of armor. About four meters down he stopped and pressed a button on the wall. A mobile rack containing a suit of armor moved out from its brothers and filled the passageway. He beckoned to Gizel and she slowly moved forward not understanding where this was leading. The armor was set up so that a person could step into the lower legs and put their arms into the metal equivalents although it needed a second person to close the armor up. She knew personalized suits could be set to automatically close once you were positioned and that had been the norm in Starmaster.

  “Go on, step into it,” Lothar said, indicating the legs.

  Gizel hesitated but gained support from Lothar’s friendly smile and one by one put her legs into the holes indicated. Then she eased her arms into their points as well.

  “Good.”

  She heard Lothar say then there was a click and the sides of the armor closed around her and this was followed, before she could react, by the helmet lowering over her neck, auto tightening and locking into place.

  Gizel experienced a horrible sensation of claustrophobia, her panic rising rapidly by this unexpected enclosure, but fortunately, the armor quickly powered up and the front of the helmet turned translucent letting her see her surroundings again, which in turn allowed her to hold the panic attack in check. Ahead of her was the rest of the passageway that was lined with more suits of armor before ending in a blank metal wall. The ordinary appearance of the wall was not very exciting but she found it comforting in a way. She turned her head slowly and saw Lothar standing near her smiling.

  “How is it?” he asked, his voice being communicated through the helmet clearly.

  She felt large and clumsy in the armor, her height having grown to nearly three meters, but as she tried to move she found the armor responded quite smoothly to her motion. She tried bending and lifting one leg and found there was no difficulty with either.

  “Very smooth,” she commented.

  “Good,” Karvon said. “When we exit the system we’ll find somewhere to give you some proper training.” He paused. “If you want to, that is.”

  He tried to look casual but she could tell he wanted her to say yes.

  She cocked her head while looking down, as her eye line was now considerably well above his.

  “Proper training?”

  Karvon nodded.

  “Yeah. With real weapons on a moon or such. Both systems out from Medio are unsettled apart from some wildcat miners so we should be able to find somewhere suitable. If you want to have a go with the real thing that is?”

  Gizel looked from Karvon to Lothar. By their expressions, she could tell they both seemed keen for her to undertake the training. Andreas, who was hovering behind the others, seemed a little more reserved about the training idea and waved his hand in possibly a motion of neg
ation.

  “It could be dangerous letting her try out the armor like that,” he said.

  “Nothing in life is without chance as she found out at Starfire,” Karvon replied.

  Lothar looked her over. “She is good. It be all right Andreas, you see. Princess maybe, warrior certainly.”

  Gizel heard this with mixed emotions. She was growing to like this motley crew and she found herself wanting to be part of them. On the other hand, she should not be risking her life unnecessarily. The Empire was at peace at the moment, and therefore her brother was fairly safe serving in the fleet, especially as he was on that big arse battlecruiser he’d been so proud to get assigned to. Even so there was no denying that being second in the line of succession behind him did impose some restrictions on what she could do. The unexpected death of her grandfather from a brain aneurism only five years earlier had shown her that life was a precious and fragile thing, even for the high and mighty. If there was someone actively moving against the Royal Family clandestinely, as the bugging of her clothes suggested, then all the more reason not to take too many risks.

  ‘How dangerous is it really, Andreas?” she asked the Kimerian.

  He considered the matter for a few moments.

  “For someone with no training, very dangerous, Your Highness. On the other hand, Lothar is probably the best trainer you could possibly find. More to the point, why would you want to do this at all when you are an Imperial Princess?”

  She smiled. “Because aboard this ship I have felt like a person, not a title, for the first time in my life. Yes, I know you have been careful to show me respect, and the others have too, but they do it to be polite not because they are toadies or flunkies. In fact, I would rather everyone just call me Gizel. I would certainly feel more comfortable. In answer to your question, these two obviously think I can learn to use the armor, and well, I just can’t help myself, in here it’s just like being in the game, only for real!”