House of the Silent Moons

by Tom Shepherd

  “No! They wrenched it out of my pocket and played ring-toss. I don’t know which one of the bitches has it now.”

  “Someone special, I’m sure.”

  “Matthews, please, in the name of Jesus Christ and All Angels—I beg you, please come back and get rid of these galinhas so I can run my ship. My men can’t get to their stations. Ravenous she-wolves everywhere!”

  Tyler sighed. “How many providers are aboard Capitão?”

  “I can’t count them! Maybe a thousand, and more every minute. I tried to blast them, but they turned to vapor and laughed at me.”

  “Oh, my goodness. You punched the blue square, didn’t you?”

  “You said it would get me an insatiable woman.”

  “And did it?”

  “No! It shit out hundreds of them! And they’re rioting… they’re demanding I screw every one of them. Nobody can do that! Mãe de Deus! I never thought I’d want to toss so much good pussy out the airlock, but they’re sent by the very Devil to torment me.”

  “Kilub Riff no send Devil,” the Dengathi muttered. “Good Catholic. Send ‘ponder code.”

  Lovey said, “Ten klicks to Roger’s Gate. Braking with thrusters.”

  “Capitão Curilak,” Tyler resumed his ship-to-ship, “have you ever heard of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice?”

  “The what?”

  “Nineteenth century French composer Paul Dukas. Early animated video by Disney, starring Mickey Mouse.”

  “Inertial glide,” Lovey said. “Gate locked.”

  “All hands, prepare for jump,” Tyler announced shipwide.

  “Video, French composer?” Curilak said from the viewscreen. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Tyler chuckled. “Tag, you’re it, Mickey.”

  “Matthews, you son of a whore, you did this on purpose!”

  “Payback’s a bitch, Capitão. A mob of them, actually. Yours just happen to be in heat.”

  “I’ll choke you to death with my bare—”

  The bridge crew burst into applause as the Howling Tadpole slipped across the event horizon.

  “You are an evil man,” Suzie said with a grin. “Those over-sexed holograms weren’t A.I., were they?”

  He shook his head. “Amusement level, holo-playmates. About as smart as a hand puppet, but well programmed in certain functions.”

  “Boss-man, we’re still in transit. Black space.” Lovey glanced at Arrupt. “Is that normal?”

  “It is not,” Zenna said softly.

  “Long jump. Normal, normal. Hold breath. Surface soon.”

  Suddenly, darkness burst into luminous blue clouds that drenched the main viewscreen in light. Suzie located a fat, cobalt donut in the aft viewer as they coasted clear of the receiving Jump Gate.

  “Now, we in Pirate space,” Arrupt declared.

  Thirteen

  “Well done, Phibby,” Tyler said.

  “Kilub Riff leave ship now, go free?” The Dengathi rotated in his seat at the aux command station.

  “Right now?” Tyler said. “Drop you ashore on some unexplored planet in a globular cluster outside the Milky Way?”

  “If I have place to go, Matt Junior, you let me go?”

  Suzie glanced at Tyler. “You promised.”

  “You can go, Phibby, but where?”

  “That mean I free Frog, no prisoner, yes? Stay or go, I choice.”

  Tyler sighed. “Yes.”

  “Good!” He rubbed webbed hands together. “I choose stay. Join Star Lawyer crew.”

  Suzie stifled a laugh. “He wants a job, luv.”

  “I never said—”

  “Kilub Riff can fly ship, navigate. Also fix, patch up.”

  “Ty, we need another pilot,” Suzie said. “You sent all the holograms with Jerry. You know Lovey needs to concentrate on practicing law, not sailing a Dengathi raider.”

  “I don’t mind flying,” Lieutenant Frost said. “But she’s right.”

  Suzie continued. “And Chief Léon would kill for a maintenance… uh… Frog.”

  “I wanted him to stay aboard while we’re in Pirate space. Never said anything about a permanent position.”

  “What is the motto of Star Lawyers Corp?” Suzie said. “‘Give me liberty or—’”

  “All right!” Tyler said. “But just for this cruise. When we return to Terran Space, we’ll reconsider the options.”

  “Hold on, luv. I’m picking up a hailing signal, requesting a transponder code,” Suzie said.

  “I send now?” Arrupt said.

  Tyler nodded. “Do it.”

  Lovey tapped her panel. “They’re providing a heading. 111 mark 47.2.”

  “What’s along that trajectory?” Tyler said.

  Arrupt croaked. “Lotsa blue gas nebula. Libertalia system near cloud center. Home system Free Enterprise League. Very strange name. Oughta calla ‘You Make, We Take’ League.”

  Tyler laughed. “Distance?”

  “We close. Maybe fifty-sixty light year. Arrupt make readings, tell quick soon.”

  “Lieutenant Frost, set course along the heading provided. Go FTL.”

  “Speed, sir?”

  “Let’s give ourselves time to get acquainted with the neighborhood. FTL 50. Execute when ready.”

  Mr. Blue said, “I never understood the increments of Faster Than Light travel. What is FTL fifty?”

  “Simple percentage, Indigo. FTL 100 is normal. It’s the maximum speed a particular ship can safely muster. The Tadpole is a bit sluggish. The Beagle would be flying a bit faster at her FTL 50 setting, and the Henry rides a thunderbolt from Zeus. Maybe three times the Tadpole’s speed.”

  Zenna said, “That is helpful. But how fast is FTL 100 aboard this ship?”

  “Mr. Arrupt?” Tyler said.

  “Tadpole max FTL, go twenty-seven Terran light years per Terran hour. Dengathi different system, based onna Frog calendar an’ time. Too hard for Dirt Monkey. Maybe blue Doodle-gooks okay-okay.”

  “Friend Tyler, I withdraw the question,” Zenna said.

  “Kilub Riff have distance now,” the Frog reported. “Libertalia system fifty three light year.”

  “So, at FTL 50,” Tyler said to Prince Zenna, “we’ll be there in four hours.”

  Suzie said, “The name of that system is significant. Libertalia was a utopian pirate colony on St. Mary’s Island on the northeast coast of Madagascar.”

  “Utopian?”

  “Right. Well, it’s mostly myth,” Suzie said. “Stories survive about pirates intermarrying with native women, electing their leaders, and setting up a democratic society based on plunder from ships in the Indian Ocean. At least some of that was true.”

  “We aren’t cruising the Indian Ocean in wooden ships,” Tyler said.

  “Yes-no.” Arrupt twittered and clucked. “Different place-time but very same-same. Privateer vote for captain. Gots courts an’ judges. You do bad, you die badder.”

  “What is bad to a pirate?” Mr. Blue asked.

  “That what we here to find out,” Arrupt croaked.

  Tyler laughed. “Friend Phibby, I withdraw the objection.”

  “May we break for Second Lunch?” Mr. Blue said.

  Lovey patted his azure arm with her ebony hand. “You have the box lunches, Zenna.”

  “Cold food is for emergencies.”

  “Go,” Tyler said. “Everybody take three hours. Eat, rest, exercise. Whatever you need. I want you fresh and frisky when we sail into Blackbeard’s lair.”

  The bridge cleared out, leaving Tyler and Suzie to stand watch as the Howling Tadpole hurled down the Cumberland Tunnel in the maelstrom of hyperspace. After the crew had gone she leaned over and kissed him, and they lingered in awkward embrace across the armrests of dual command chairs. They kissed again and pulled back to their respective consoles.

  “Snogging on duty.” Suzie gave him a sly smile.

  “Damn, I miss our cabin on the Patrick Henry,” Tyler said.

  She nodded. “The food pro
cessors in his bloody Frog ship don’t know how to prepare a decent fry-up.”

  “That and other things,” Tyler said.

  “We had a smashing bed. Plenty of room to shag ourselves to exhaustion, comfortable to sleep.”

  “Do you want to get married right away?” Tyler said abruptly. “I mean, after this Tavares business is settled?”

  “Well—”

  “I mean, after springing the bastard, and he leads us to the House of the Silent Moons?”

  “I’d say—”

  “I mean, if that’s a bit sudden—”

  “Shut up and wait for a bloody answer!” she howled. “Yes.”

  “Yes, it’s sudden?”

  “Yes, marrying you suddenly would be lovely.”

  “Mom will want a big cathedral-class wedding site. I’d settle for Father Cárcel in a holodeck chapel aboard the Henry.”

  “Anywhere, anytime. We almost died in EVA suits in Andromeda. I would’ve married you then.”

  “Why?” He shook his head. “I am a rude, bull-headed, recovering playboy with daddy issues. I wouldn’t marry me.”

  “You’re not.” She looked deeply into his eyes. “I am.”

  “Suzie—”

  “Trust my judgment on this one. We’ll make a great couple. I’m smarter than you, speak more languages, and had you pussy whipped from our first date.”

  He laughed hard. Then sat up sharply. “Oh my God—we’re starting to sound like my parents.”

  “Wonderful. I love Bianca. And your father—” Suzie cocked her head as if listening to a distant sound. “Incoming transmission from an unknown source.”

  “Point of origin?”

  “Libertalia system.” She took a sharp breath. “It’s our defendant.”

  Tyler cursed softly. “Main screen.”

  Suzie touched a yellow square and Capitão Flávio Tavares appeared. His dark hair streaked with silver had been carefully combed, and the furry waistcoat and heavy stubble were gone. Instead, a clean-shaven prisoner in a yellow-and-red striped prison smock stared out at them from the viewscreen. His facial scars—one per cheek—appeared more vividly with the dark stubble shorn. The Capitão still looked ruggedly handsome, even though Tyler despised the sonuvabitch.

  “I have one hour to communicate,” Tavares said. “Where is Jota Bê?”

  “Did you really think I’d let my brother defend you in person?”

  “Ah, the other one.”

  “The fool, you usually call me. You’d better hope this fool knows how to bail your ass out of the hole you’ve dug for yourself, or your troubles will end at the gallows.”

  Tavares smirked. “In which case, Matthews Interstellar Industries will not recover the ancient derelict for which your father hungers so deeply.”

  “Jettison the bullshit.” Tyler sat back in his seat. “Tell me why we’re having this conversation.”

  “It is sunset here. My trial starts in sixteen hours. Do you have what I left on Emily-4?”

  “Yes,” Tyler said. “It took three weeks to gather and sort through everything. Why did you scatter the evidence over half a continent?”

  “I accumulated the items over twenty years. They were to be my retirement fund. You cannot deposit valuables like that in the Bank of Rahjen.”

  “You’ve proposed a radical defense strategy,” Tyler said. “I’m not convinced it will work.”

  “Tyler, you do not know these pirates like I do. They will not be moved by documents which disprove my guilt.”

  “So, you want me to prove you are guilty as hell?”

  “Of piracy, yes. They accuse me of working for your father.”

  “You were working for my father.”

  “Would you rather I took the witness stand and denied everything?”

  “I can’t let you do that. It’s called—”

  “Suborning perjury, I know this,” the Capitão said.

  “Whatever I argue in defending you,” Tyler said, “must be based on the truth.”

  “So, what is your alternative defense strategy?” Tavares growled. “‘Sim, ele é espião da polícia’?”

  Tyler leaned to Suzie, who translated the Portuguese. “Yes, he is a spy for the police.”

  “Prove that,” Tavares said, “and I’m a dead man.”

  Tyler tossed his hands. “Okay, I’ll defend you by prosecuting you for piracy.”

  “Good! That will get me acquitted.”

  “Here we go again,” Suzie said. “Down the bloody rabbit’s hole.”

  They discussed the tactics for a prosecute-to-defend strategy until the communication was abruptly terminated at the point of origin. His time had expired. Suzie and Tyler reviewed the plan for a while, then drifted to silence. Tyler slipped into reverie as the Tadpole hurled down the Cumberland tunnel.

  His mind returned to their three weeks on Emily-4. Tyler and Suzie ostensibly made day trips into the countryside from the Patrick Henry’s parking slot at Aunt Violet’s Starship Command School. They were actually gathering “items” from a list of sites provided by the Capitão. He flew the Jackknife, the Henry’s expandable heavy cutter, while Suzie entered 256 grid coordinates where Tavares hid the goods.

  It was hard work but oddly romantic, hunting buried treasures deposited by a pirate captain in hope of returning one day. They dug a lot of holes, but not all secret spots required excavation tools. Several dozen caches lurked in old warehouses, and a handful lay in private dwellings with old fashioned steel vaults. Tavares apparently had a few friends, even on heavily policed Emily-4, who agreed to store his packages until the privateer Capitão reclaimed them.

  When the first location proved to be an empty pit, Tyler worried if looters had made off with the “evidence” of Flávio Tavares wrongdoing at all 256 sites. Before flying off to location 2/256, Suzie spread a picnic blanket under an umbrella-shaped tree and they ate a box lunch of peanut butter and cheese sandwiches and sliced fruit prepared by Dorla León.

  “I really don’t want to find any exculpatory evidence,” Tyler said.

  “Well, that’s not what we’re looking for, is it?” Suzie reminded him. “Hiding pirate booty would get the rotter mind-wiped at any Commonwealth court of law.”

  “Happy thought.” Tyler sipped fruit punch. “If there’s any secret loot left on this planet, and if Tavares escapes the pirate court, we can always prosecute his ass in the Terran legal system.”

  “Your mum doesn’t want that.”

  Tyler stood. “Back to the Jackknife. We’ve got 255 sites to go.”

  After three weeks treasure hunting, Tyler and Suzie found stolen goods at 197 of the locations listed. Loot included jewels, data wedges, and precious metals; objets d’art and collectibles from dozens of star nations. And they found the most surprising treasure of all in a commercial storage unit at a town in mid-continent dry lands.

  It was a set of three oil paintings. Very old. When Tyler removed the carefully wrapped canvases from their slots in an environmentally controlled container, Suzie excitedly declared them original works of Leonardo da Vinci. They offered new portraits of the woman who sat for the most famous painting in human history, Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo. Three new Mona Lisas!

  Suzie recognized the handiwork of da Vinci immediately. She gasped and sank to her knees. Tyler could only imagine the impact on his fiancé, who’s bioenergetic mind stored the art history of multiple civilizations, as she put her hands to her mouth, as if afraid to speak and destroy the masterpieces with her breath.

  “Art historians believe he re-worked the Giocondo portrait for several years after it was due,” she said. “Maybe these are the product of the master’s drive for perfection.”

  “More enigmas behind three faces,” Tyler said.

  Suzie stood. “We can’t take these to Pirate space.”

  “They stay aboard the Henry. We’ll get them home where scholars can authenticate the work.”

  She nodded. “How did Tavares get
unknown works by da Vinci?”

  “Somebody from a high space culture paid a covert visit to Renaissance Europe and acquired da Vinci’s early attempts at the portrait.”

  “No, Ty. The brush style, the advanced use of color and shade—these were after the Mona Lisa.”

  Tyler looked closely at them. “I wonder if da Vinci kept the version we know because it was his first draft, and he thought it wasn’t very good?”

  “If so, history proved him wrong,” she said.

  They repackaged the new Mona Lisas for storage in the Patrick Henry’s security vault. The other treasure items went into containers for transfer to the Howling Tadpole, to rest in anticipation of serving as evidence against—therefore twistedly in favor of—Flávio Tavares.

  Suzie’s voice jarred him back to duty. “We’re receiving flight control data from Privateer Central. Libertalia system, third planet.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “No voice message, just text. ‘You are cleared to touch down at the coordinates provided, weapons disabled, no defensive shielding. Any deviation will get you killed.’” Suzie clucked like a Dengathi. “Ruddy unfriendly reception.”

  “They’re not exactly greeters at the church door,” Tyler said. “Where’s the LZ?”

  “Doesn’t specify. Their main starport, I assume.”

  “How far, how long?”

  “We’ll drop to black in ten minutes,” Suzie said. “Landing twenty minutes after that.”

  Tyler hit the shipwide intercom. “All right, boys and girls and Frog. Duty stations. We’ve arrived.”

  Libertalia surprised even Suzie, whose bioenergetic brain held images and data about thousands of hab worlds. No oceans or large bodies of water, which wasn’t particularly uncommon on populated planets. But instead of land and sea, green and black zones fought for dominance, pole to pole, as though fire tsunamis the size of continental glaciers had swept through and reduced forest and prairie to charred wasteland.

  “Recent asteroid impacts?” Tyler suggested.

  “Too localized,” Suzie said. “Hits large enough to incinerate corridors wide as Europe would have thrown a firestorm across the world, not to mention the nuclear winter to follow.”