by Tom Shepherd
“Your Honor,” Kaito said from the prosecution table, “Señor Matthews is stalling.”
The Captain-Judge frowned. “I want to hear about these pricey exhibits.” Camran made a few derogatory remarks about Kaito’s ethnicity and told him to sit down.
“You’ll love this evidence, Judge,” Tyler said. “And if you find my arguments compelling, perhaps we can contribute some of the more noteworthy items to the general good of this honorable court. And to the jury, of course, in appreciation for their service. More appealing than a few drinks at the corner tavern, I assure you.”
Kaito shot to his feet. “That is a bribe! He should be arrested, or executed on the spot.”
The Captain-Judge stood, leaned forward on his desk. “Mr. Matthews, are you offering a bribe to this honorable court and jury?”
Suzie tugged at his sleeve, but he pulled away.
“Think of it as compensation for carefully weighing the evidence. An interesting, even lucrative expenditure of time.”
“So, it is a bribe?”
“Yes, sir.”
The Judge smiled. “Well, why didn’t you just say that, laddie?”
“Your Honor!” Kaito sputtered.
“Never stand between a Scotsman and his fortune. Sit down, Jappo-sand,” the Judge ordered. “All right, young Matthews, you bought a continuum, or whatever. Will four hours do?”
“Four weeks, Your Honor.”
“Weeks?”
“Great wealth awaits in those exhibits.” Tyler smirked. “Surely privateers know that fat prizes must be taken when they appear.”
A little ripple of laughter swept the room. “A sly young wolf like you, Matthews, don’t need four weeks. I give you four days. Tavares be remanded to your custody until trial starts again.”
“Remanded?” Tyler said softly. “Wait—I have to take him?”
“You bought him; you keep him.”
Tyler swallowed and managed to smile. “Thank you, Your Honor.”
“And this evidence, contributed to our general good, had better be more than generally good.” He hammered the gavel. “Court’s adjourned. Next case after liquid lunch, if I can still find the courthouse.”
Kaito and the Sakura House lawyers departed, but the middle son of Tsuchiya shot an angry glare at Tyler before his entourage melted into the crowd. Yumiko and Julieta approached the defense table and stood beside the shackled Capitão.
Tavares said, “Thank you, Tyler.”
“Why aren’t you wearing these god-damned cannulas?”
He smiled. “Oxygen boost capsules. I have more aboard the Henrique. My people will deliver a shipment to your vessel.”
“I’m fine with the cannulas. Just didn’t want you passing out on the witness stand.”
“Can we talk about my defense strategy? I will tell you exactly—”
“Not here. Probably more bugs than Missouri in the summer.” He turned to his cousin. “Get him uncuffed and back to the Tadpole. Yumi-san, please go with her. If anybody interferes, deal with them accordingly.”
“Ay, ay, ay, Primo!” Julieta snickered as she disabled the neural cuffs and leg restraints. “You are becoming capo crimini of the Matthews Familia.”
“That would be my father.” He locked eyes with Tavares. “Answer no questions from anyone except my people. Make no sudden moves or gestures. Keep close to these women. Do what they tell you. Is that understood?”
“If I am attacked?”
“Defend yourself. But unless they bring an army, nobody will get past Julieta and Yumiko.”
He leaned close. “Tsuchiya—”
“Not here.” Tyler thumbed at the door and Tavares nodded.
The Star Lawyers dispatcher and martial arts master escorted the defendant away. Tyler and the remaining shore party huddled at the defense table in the mostly empty courtroom. Suzie used the datacom to create a short-range disruptive cone around them, just in case Tyler’s fears about local bugging were correct.
“Folks, we have four days to save his sorry ass and we don’t know squat about the case. Lovey, find the charge sheet or equivalent. What do they allege Capitão Tavares has done? See if you can figure out the prosecution’s theory of the crime. Dig into the files of similar cases, too.”
“Got it, Boss-man,” she said.
“Terran seems to be the official language here,” Tyler said, “so you won’t need an interpreter.”
André Mercier raised a hand hesitantly. “May I contribute?”
“For example?” Tyler sat on the edge of the table.
“Even though I am on probation, Monsieur Matthews, I would like to talk with the Public Defender, Félix Koshka, whose client received an unhappy verdict today. I know him well. Félix has many contacts in Port Royal. He is a good resource.”
“Suzie, you’re sure about this guy?” Tyler said.
“André had several nasty viruses mucking up his ethical subroutines, so I completely debugged him and boosted his desire to serve others.”
Tyler put a hand on Mercier’s shoulder. “You’re a Star Lawyer now. Temporarily, at least. Go and sin no more, or I will fucking delete you from existence.”
He thanked Tyler profusely and hurried away.
“I wonder if he can cook?” Mr. Blue said. “French cuisine is so tasty.”
“Prince Zenna, I have a job for you.”
“Yes, friend Tyler?”
“Go find Vida Decuir.”
“Ah, the officially designated French whore who copulated with everyone on the planet.”
Lovey said, “I’m sure that was exaggerated, honey.”
“What do you want from this public-access paramour?” Zenna said.
“Scuttlebutt,” Tyler said. “If she docked with a fleet of pirates, Ms. Decuir has heard lots of interesting shit.”
“Do you want specifics on the scatology of the Free Enterprise League?” Mr. Blue said.
Lovey sighed. “I’ve tried to teach him Terran profanity.”
Tyler specified. “Find out what Ms. Decuir knows about Tavares and his enemies,”
“Shall I pay to copulate with her first?”
“I’ll… uh… leave that up to your ethical subroutines, Indigo.”
“I’m on her.”
Lovey sighed again.
“Suzie, would you be willing to merge with Flávio’s MLC? I want ship’s logs, communication records, flight information—anything that proves what a rat bastard he is.”
She closed her eyes. “The Henrique is parked a kilometer away from Mr. Arrupt’s ship. I can remote-access her net through the Tadpole’s commlinks.”
“Let’s collect Mr. Arrupt and catch a six-wheeler back to the ship,” Tyler said. “Even with a cone of silence, this strategy is getting too specific for a public discussion.”
* * * *
Tyler yanked off the nose hose as soon as he entered the airlock of the Howling Tadpole. With Suzie deep-diving into the Henrique’s Main Library Computer from her vantage point inside the Tadpole’s network, he sat down with Flávio Tavares to have the conversation he had dreaded since his mother contacted him six weeks earlier, when the Patrick Henry was docked at the Quirt-Thymean orbital Hub half a galaxy away from Kansas City.
“I did not want to cause grief,” Tavares said when Tyler entered his cabin. “Not to her. Not to her family. Certainly not to Jota Bê.”
“But you did.”
“Think whatever you want about me, Tyler, but do not judge what happened between me and your mother.”
“Nothing that matters happened between you and my mother.”
“You were not there!” Tavares sank to the cot and put his face in his hands until he could continue.
“I don’t want to hear any more about that subject,” Tyler said.
Flávio recovered his voice. “Too bad. You’re my attorney. You need to know everything.”
Tyler sat in a chair at the small table near the door. “All right. Tell me your sad story.”
/> “That is the point—my story is not sad, just difficult to explain.”
“I imagine so.”
“When I met Bianca—”
“Don’t call her that.”
“It is her name.”
“She is Admiral Matthews to you,” Tyler said.
“You believe I was never worthy of your mother’s affection, or to father her child.” Flávio nodded slowly. “And you are right.”
“Noah Matthews is J.B.’s dad. End of discussion.”
“Tyler—”
“My sister, who doesn’t know about J.B., wants to kill you. I can control Rosalie. But if the other dispatcher in the Family learns your history, she may not listen to reason.”
“Are you speaking of Julieta?” Tavares smiled slightly. “The other dispatcher in the Family?”
“Who else?” Tyler said.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what? I’m tired of word games.”
“I met Bianca Solorio—excuse me, Admiral Matthews—at the Solorio mining colony on Olathe-5. She worked with Camilla Abellán.”
Tyler nodded. “Aunt Camilla and Mom were friends. They worked for my grandfather, Tobías Solorio, who sent them to Olathe-5 for field experience. They waited tables at a company cantina to acquaint themselves with the miners.”
Tavares shook his head. “Bianca and Camilla were not waitresses in a frontier cantina.”
“Right. I told you,” Tyler said. “They were getting field experience with Grandpa Solorio’s—”
“No, Tyler. She and Camilla were undercover, completing their education at Transformación University on Mindorius, where they met and became best friends. Since Bianca was a Solorio, she arranged for Camilla to accompany her to Olathe-5 for their final phase of education.”
“Education for what?” Tyler said. “They were prepping for administrative internships at Solorio Mining when Mom met Dad at the Olathe colony. After my parents got married—actually at the wedding, I think—she introduced Camilla to her brother, Xavier Solorio. Her future husband.”
“Did your parents explain how they met on Olathe-5?”
“It was a bar fight. Some rowdies tried to force themselves on Mom, and Dad intervened.”
Tavares laughed. “Forgive me, Tyler, but you have it backwards.”
“Excuse me?”
“Bianca and Camilla came often to an Olathe-5 cantina, the Ruby Star. In my younger days, between voyages, I played my guitar and sang at places like that. Women liked my voice, and barkeepers gave me free drinks because I filled the place with young women in a colony of lonely miners. Your mother often requested old songs, and I would sing them for her.” He smiled with the memory. “She loved ‘Besame Mucho’ best of all. I would sing it for her every night.”
“Stop it!” Tyler leaped up. “I don’t want to hear anymore.”
“Yes, you do. Let me finish.”
Tyler closed his eyes and processed the pain. “Besame Mucho”—the tune his mother sang to Rosalie when she was a baby. He often heard her voice in his mind, singing the words to his young sister. Now Tavares had stolen the memory and painted it with garish colors.
Flávio continued. “One night my friend Noah came to hear me, too. He got drunk, picked a fight with three Segerian privateers—my people, I am ashamed to admit. Rough men, secretly armed despite the Colony’s strict weapons-free zone. Bianca stopped them from killing him. She actually took the blaster away from a big cabrao and gave him a nasty wound on the side of his face. The cowards fled. They got off lucky, considering they faced two opponents who could have easily killed them.”
“Mom and Dad?”
He pursed his mustachioed lips. “Bianca and Camilla. Two of them.”
“Two of what?” Tyler took a sharp breath. “No!”
Flávio nodded. “Justicia Para Todos.”
“That’s not what happened. That can’t be what happened.”
“You may as well hear it all. Before that night your mother and I were… close. Just a few weeks. Then she met Noah, and I knew immediately that I had been a halfway house between girlhood play and the love of her life.” Flávio raised his eyes to Tyler. “When we said goodbye the next day, Bianca did not realize that two new loves grew within her.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Yes, you do. I am so very sorry, Tyler.” Tavares reached for his shoulder but paused and withdrew the hand. “This is the truth. I am not your enemy. And you are correct—I am not Jota Bê’s father. Merely his sire. The secret is safe with me.”
Tyler forced himself back to the main goal. “Do you know the location of the Imperial derelict?”
“No.”
“So, you lied to lure us here. Why? To sell us out to Kaito?”
“I don’t know precisely where it is located, but I know how to find it.”
“The second Drifter Gate.”
“Muito bom,” Tavares said in Portuguese. “You know about Portão de deriva número dois.”
“Español Nuevo or Terran Standard, por favor.” Tyler crossed his arms. “How do we find this mysterious other Gate?”
“Get me acquitted. I will take you there.”
“Your trial resumes in four days. I need to know everything. All the crooked deals, all the ships you boarded and sacked, all the stolen cargoes, all the men you killed and women you raped.”
“Never.”
“Which never?”
“Never have I raped a woman. Nor has any sailor under my command.”
“But you’ve taken prisoners, sold them as slaves?”
He closed his eyes, dropped his head. “Yes.”
“And what did you think the slavers intended for the women? Jobs in the front office, careers in marketing?”
“Not every space faring society shuns the practice of holding captives in servitude.”
“That’s your excuse? It’s legal in the Nosrika Domain, Zamkalon Purview, the Zone of Winmolk, the Lutzak Horde, and a dozen other places at the edges of civilization—so you’ve done nothing wrong?”
“Privateers carry letters of marque.”
Tyler stood. “You know what? Fuck you, Flávio. I’ll find the House of the Silent Moons without you.”
Tavares lifted a hand. “Wait. You know the name?”
“I’m not stupid. I know it isn’t a derelict starship.”
“Do you also know the Dengathi are negotiating a contract with Tsuchiya Galactic to lead them to the abandoned starbase?”
“I suspected something like that when Kaito showed up.”
“And do you also know Tsuchiya believes there is a terrible weapon aboard?” Flávio said.
“We know about the screen-buster. We have a prototype.”
“No, Tyler. Mucho, mucho peor.” Much, much worse.
Tyler took a breath. “What then?”
“They called it an ‘Asteroid Crusher’ because it was designed to break rocky planetoids into small chunks which could be mined easier.”
“That doesn’t sound so horrific.”
“It is a devil’s device, with graduated settings which start at planetoids the size of Europe and extend to full-sized, Terra class worlds. The Galactic Empire never considered this mining device might be used on settled planets, because they could not conceive that any race who achieved starflight could be capable of killing a whole world.”
“Does this thing really exist?”
Tavares nodded. “The World Crusher fell into enemy hands during the Second Great War against the Lutzak. They demolished three Miyosian planets before the device was recovered by Aurelio Lupetti.”
“Lupetti? He was just an explorer. Captain of the first FTL starship launched by humans.”
“He saved the galaxy, Tyler. And swore his crew to secrecy. Lupetti handed the World Crusher over to the last remaining Imperial forces, who towed the House of the Silent Moons to its final destination.”
“Why didn’t they just destroy the goddamn thing?�
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Tavares shrugged. “You can’t put a baby back in the womb, even an evil one. This weapon has no defense. They wanted it hidden away to use as a deterrent in case warlike star nations acquired the technology again. But the Miyosians never returned to the starbase. They were so spent by the war that their economy collapsed and the whole civilization retreated from FTL commerce. Today, Miyosian descendants are a string of planet-based agrarian societies unaware of their past. Except for Rahjen.”
“Wait a minute. The Bank of Rahjen is a—”
“Miyosian institution. Their single enduring accomplishment is Rahjen fiscal stability, operated by a small circle of financial institutions. All our economies are based on Bank of Rahjen Galactic Credits, so Rahjen is safe. Neutral. As humans like to say, Rahjen is the Switzerland of the stars.”
“How do you know all this?” Tyler demanded.
“I have someone dear to me who has worked and studied on Rahjen.”
“How do I know you aren’t inventing the whole nightmare scenario?”
“On my love for your mother—I swear.”
Tyler’s face flamed hot, then quickly cooled. The Capitão had dug deeply into his soul with those words. Yet, something in Flávio’s eyes told Tyler it was all true. His mother and Aunt Camila, former JPT dispatchers. The House of the Silent Moons, Aurelio Lupetti’s role in neutralizing and sequestering the World-Crusher, and Flávio’s ongoing love for Bianca Matthews.
“With so much at stake,” Tyler said, “why are you withholding the second Drifter Gate’s flight path, pending the outcome of your trial?”
“I don’t know the moving Gate’s exact trajectory, but I can find it.”
“How?”
“With a special instrument you have brought for me, I hope.”
“From your ‘retirement fund’?”
“Miyosian pendalux. Jewel-like shaft of coral red crystal, something to dangle from a woman’s neck. The device operates at a technological level beyond anything I comprehend. With the pendalux, I can find Drifter Two and the ringed planet where an inoperative Imperial starbase has orbited for a thousand years.”
“I’ve got your crystal ornament.”
“Get me acquitted. Together we’ll prevent Tsuchiya from destroying the Terran Commonwealth and establishing his New Empire.”