The Privateer

by Zellmann, William

  This time he was the one to stamp out. Just before he tried to slam his door, he caught a look of surprise and doubt on her face.

  Their emergence into the Angeles system was unremarkable. A large space station picketed the jump point. Cale would have liked to point out the impressive arsenal of weapons it displayed, but Dee was still refusing to leave her stateroom. Tess assured him that she was not ill, but was simply refusing to associate with him. Tess reported that Dee was monitoring comms.

  “Welcome to the Angeles system. Please cancel all motion relative to this station, and stand by for Customs,” an obviously recorded voice began. It had barely finished before his screen cleared to reveal a man in a plain shipsuit.

  “Angeles Customs,” he began. “Please state your mission. If this is simply a recal stop, and you do not plan to approach the fourth planet, you may proceed without customs clearance.” The man’s attitude was attentive and businesslike.

  Cale’s hopes began to climb slightly. “No, sir, I’m here to possibly discharge a passenger. I’m carrying no trading cargo this trip.”

  The man on the screen nodded. “System of origin?”

  Cale frowned. “This trip, Faith. Before that I was on Torlon and Ararat.” He didn’t want to mention New Chin; the rumors might have already been flying, and he preferred not to mention both of the sunstone planets. However, Dee knew that he arrived on Faith with a passenger from Ararat. He did not dare ignore it.

  The man snickered. “Torlon? I thought they had lost spaceflight.”

  Cale nodded. “So I discovered. There was an old man running an orbital scrap yard, but there were no flyable ships on the planet. The old man was leaving.”

  The agent sighed. “Another world gone.” He shook his head sadly, and then, more briskly, “Is your mission religious in nature? I ask because you’ve been to Ararat and Faith.”

  Cale shook his head. “No, sir. I picked up a passenger on Ararat and delivered her to Faith. Uh, sir, I had an encounter with a pirate at my last recal. I need to know how to report that.”

  The man straightened and his tone turned brisk. “Are you in need of repairs or medical assistance? We can provide both.”

  Cale shook his head. “No, sir, we’re undamaged. But I need to report the incident and also report a derelict spacecraft.

  The man’s eyes widened. “You’re undamaged?” At Cale’s nod he continued, “Your weapons systems must be sealed for the duration of your stay in the Kingdom. An inspector will be boarding shortly to complete the customs inspection and seal the weapons.” He paused and his expression and tone became less official, more naturally curious. “We show you as a Stinger class courier. I am unfamiliar with that class vessel. Is it typically armed?”

  Cale nodded. “Cheetah was built as an imperial viceroy’s yacht and courier,” he explained. “The class was named Stinger because of the weapons systems she mounts.”

  Finally, a genuine smile appeared on the man’s face. “Interesting vessel. I’d volunteer to do the inspection myself, if I wasn’t chained to the comms this cycle.” After a few more courtesies, the man said, “I’m going to connect you with the Search and Rescue branch of the Royal Piracy Control Force. They will be the ones to deal with your derelict. Good luck.” He faded from the viewscreen to be replaced by an older man. This one was grizzled, and his mottled skin revealed his decompression experience. “S and R,” he announced shortly.

  “Good day,” Cale said politely. “I must report a derelict spacecraft in system NS047923. The vessel is suspected of being a pirate.”

  The man’s face relaxed into an easy grin. “Shot up a pirate, did ya? Good. What other information can you give me that will help us locate the derelict?”

  “It’s a modified Epsilon class. She will be near the Faith jump point, and will probably be on a trajectory in line with that emergence. She did not maneuver while we were present. We did not approach the vessel.”

  The man’s eyebrows went up. “How d'you know she’s a pirate?”

  Cale shrugged. “She tailed us in the Faith system and through the jump, showed no beacon, and had an oversized engine room.”

  The man laughed aloud. “That’s a pirate, all right. So insteada bein’ ambushed, you ambushed them! I like it!” He nodded approvingly. “And then you had the good sense to light outta there insteada stoppin’ to admire your work. There's not a lot of stupid on you, Captain.”

  He sobered. “An S&R and a Piracy Control ship will be departing this station in ten minutes,” he said. “They are armed, and are prepared to deal with stranded pirates. You understand that a copy of this conversation will be provided to His Majesty’s Justice Ministry? I hope you were planning to spend two or three weeks in the Kingdom. I doubt they’ll let you leave until our vessel returns and reports.”

  Cale nodded. “I understand.”

  As soon as the man signed off, Cale said, “Tess, my stateroom. Ship’s business.”

  Tess took the hint. As he entered the stateroom she reported, “Room is secure, sir.”

  He nodded. “Good. Okay, in a few minutes we’re going to be invaded by a customs inspector. He’s going to be motivated not only by his job, but also by a natural curiosity about an unusual class of ship. At any rate, I expect a very thorough inspection, especially since he will also be looking for weapons. I need somewhere to stow the diamonds. I won’t need them here; the checks from Faith will cover our expenses. But I don’t want them found, either.”

  “Understood, sir. Please give the bags to the mech at your stateroom door. The diamonds will not be found unless they disassemble me.”

  Cale gathered the bags of stones from their hiding places, and gave them to the spider-shaped mech he found outside his door.

  “Now,” he said, “We have to decide what to report. With Dee aboard and suspicious, I can’t deviate much from the truth. I also cannot reveal your contributions to our survival. So, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to make you look dumber and me look smarter than I am.”

  There was humor in Tess’s tone. “Of course, sir. That has been necessary many times since I first did it during the Insurrection 400 years ago. I will not be offended.”

  Cale grinned and nodded as Tess continued, “We are being hailed by the station, Captain. The inspector is approaching the personnel lock in a one-person shuttle.”

  Cale rose. “Okay, Tess, let him aboard, and let’s see how much damage Dee is going to do!”

  The inspector was not the man on the comm. This one was older, a round-shouldered, career bureaucrat. As soon as he exited the airlock, he swiveled his head as he looked around. Finally, he turned his attention to Cale and Dee, as she exited her stateroom and joined them.

  He flashed an ID. “Captain Rankin?” he asked in a formal voice, “I’m Tor Redon, Angeles Kingdom customs. I reviewed the Stinger class specs, but your vessel seems to vary somewhat from the standard.”

  Cale nodded. “I’m not surprised, Ser Redon. I know about some of the modifications, but most just took place over the last 400 years.

  “For instance,” he continued, “I understand that the standard spec calls for two Alliance quickfirers, Cheetah has only one, and has had a laser installed in place of the second. That, in turn, called for a somewhat larger fusactor. I have no idea when that was done,” he lied, “But I’m sure it would be an interesting story. As would many others.” He sighed. “Ah, if these walls could only talk!”

  Redon chuckled. “If it was a viceroy’s yacht, I’m sure many of the stories would not be fit for repeating.”

  Dee reddened. Redon seemed to see her discomfort and changed the subject. “I do not see a bridge or a control room, Captain.”

  Cale smiled. “It’s more of a ‘control closet’,” he replied. “The ship has a very large and very advanced AI that controls most functions. Those functions requiring human intervention are usually referred to the lounge viewscreen.”

  “Actually,” he continued as he showed the inspector
the ‘control room’, “That’s why I could afford to buy her. Her last owner just couldn’t adjust to an AI that advanced. He was always afraid it would make an error and strand him in null space. Finally he couldn’t take it anymore.”

  The man glanced around the small cubby. “I see his point,” he replied. “These controls are pretty rudimentary.”

  Cale smiled as he pointed out the controls for the quickfirer and the laser. Redon placed gaudy seal tape on both consoles, warning them that removal of the seals was punishable by up to five years’ hard labor.

  Despite the thoroughness of Redon’s inspection, there was simply too little ship to take much time to inspect. Cale went out of his way to be cheerful and friendly, and less than an hour elapsed before Redon pronounced himself satisfied. “You may proceed to the fourth planet, Captain,” He said in a formal tone. “Maximum permitted acceleration is .5G. Be sure to maintain communication with System and Orbital Control. I hear you had pirate trouble,” he continued in a more conversational tone. “I suspect you’ll be hearing from the Justice Ministry. Don’t let them scare you. Pirates are not popular in the Kingdom.” Cale escorted the man to the airlock and watched as he cycled through and returned to the station.

  Dee seemed only somewhat mollified. “At least you had the decency to report it and send S&R. They may still be able to save some of those poor souls’ lives.”

  Cale shook his head in disgust. “Those ‘poor souls’ were intent on robbery, kidnapping, rape, slavery and murder,” he replied acidly. “And if any of them are found alive, they will be executed after some of the shortest trials in history.” He scowled. “But, that doesn’t matter to you, does it? Someone else will be doing the work. All that matters is that you don’t get your own dainty little hands dirty. I hate bleeding hearts like you!” He spun on his heel and stamped into his stateroom.

  As soon as he entered, Tess notified him that they were cleared to proceed, and that she had programmed the assigned vector. At his muttered “Go,” she began moving away from the station. Cale was angry, morose, sad, and ashamed, all at once, and would need time to deal with it. She had his approval to maneuver. She could handle everything else for a while.

  Cale was not the only human on board dealing with emotional turmoil. Dee was dealing with the reactions of the people Cale had talked with. Where was the outrage at the presumed deaths aboard the pirate? Even the rescue agent had congratulated Cale on his decision to run away. Pirates were just thieves, robbers, weren’t they? Why this unbridled hatred? Oh, sure, there were many horror stories, but those were just for vids and frightening children, weren’t they?

  Like those pictures and vids supposedly from Atlantea. A pirate gang had supposedly raided the entire planet! It was claimed that they had looted the major cities and escaped with three shiploads of loot while committing horrible atrocities. It had to be fiction, of course.

  But the newsies were all over it, with pictures and vids supposedly showing the actual raid. It was horrible, unthinkable stuff. All it proved was that some writers had insanely lurid imaginations. Human beings simply could not do those things to other human beings.

  Could they?

  She asked Tess for official records of pirate activity. Not sensie vids, not horror vids, but real, authenticated records.

  There were plenty. The records on Atlantea were not yet complete, with post-mortem investigations continuing. But there were plenty of other records. Overwhelmed, she told Tess to limit it to the last twenty years. Even so, it ran to thousands of screens of information.

  It appeared she had been wrong. In their own way, the cold, bald official pictures, descriptions, and vids of torture, mutilation, and murder were even more horrifying than the slick vids the newsies produced.

  She had been wrong. Humans could be that inhuman. She still didn’t know why Cale hated them so much, but she was coming to understand the general hate and repugnance toward pirates. Dee closed the files with a grimace. It was a whole ugly world of which she had been ignorant, and her black and white “life is priceless” attitude was beginning to show shades of gray.

  No, they weren’t just thieves and robbers, or street gangs in starships. They were monsters. You cannot reason with monsters. No amount of psychobabble could rehabilitate them. It had been tried in the Old Empire, as had conditioning and even machines that “adjusted” them – by reducing their IQ to 80 and conditioning them to be content with menial jobs. That last one had worked, but had quickly been stopped on grounds the treatment was “inhumane.” So mankind settled on the time-honored solution used with other forms of deadly animals: shoot on sight.

  But what about Cale? What did he mean he’d ‘dealt with them before’? He was obviously familiar enough with pirates to put up with her disgust rather than chance following her wishes. Could he have been right? The S&R agent seemed to think he was.

  Her thoughts in a whirl, she stayed in her stateroom through the 42-hour trip to Angeles, the system’s fourth planet.

  Her musings were interrupted by Tess’s quiet voice. “Mistress Raum, please join the Captain in the lounge. We are approaching Angeles, and have received instructions.” Her tone was formal and neutral.

  Cale greeted her with a curt nod. “Mistress Raum, we have received instructions from Orbital Control. We are directed to ground at the government starport rather than the orbiting commercial port. I assume this relates to our incident with the pirates.

  “I do not know what to expect,” he continued. “However, I think we can expect to be detained, or at least our freedom of movement to be restricted until the S&R mission returns, which may be two to four weeks. We are certain to be questioned. Please answer all questions fully and truthfully. Do not try to defend our conduct, and please try to avoid being judgmental.”

  He presented her an envelope. “Technically, my contract with Faith’s government is complete. We are two jumps from Faith, and you are no longer in my custody. That envelope contains the check your father sent along. If you wish, you may consider our business concluded, and go your way.

  “However,” he continued, “Angeles is not the mutual choice I promised you. I would like to offer you transport to any other system within two jumps of Angeles, if you so desire.” He sighed deeply. “I very deeply regret the difference in outlook that divides us, and that prevented us from becoming better acquainted. I hope you will consider my offer.”

  Dee was numb. It was so sudden! Just like that, everything is over. She had lost her home and family, her whole planet, and now his cold, formal tone suggested she had lost the only person left that she was beginning to consider a friend. She was on a strange planet with no one she knew. All she had was that damned envelope, and money was no substitute for a friend. She suddenly felt very small and helpless. Tears started to well in her eyes, and she clamped down on them mercilessly.

  She swallowed. “Thank you for the offer, Captain,” she replied in the same formal tone he had used. “I will certainly consider it.”

  She paused, and then rushed ahead. “I have been doing some research, and have come to conclude that my reactions may have been hasty and ill-advised. I would like to apologize for some of the comments I have made and the tones I have used. I now realize that you had only our survival in mind, and that my demands might have resulted in our deaths, or worse. I shall try to be as objective as possible when questioned.”

  Cale smiled with genuine warmth. “I think I know what a difficult admission that was, Mistress. Please consider my offer seriously. You would be most welcome.”

  Dee started to reply, but Cale was called away for the landing formalities. Dee returned to her stateroom. She began gathering her belongings in case she was removed from the ship. In only moments, she was finished, her pitifully few belongings fitting easily into the small bag the police had sent with her. Tears welled again, and this time she didn’t stop them.

  Some half-hour later, she was aroused by Tess’s voice. Dee was too emotional to notice,
but the cold formality was gone from the AI’s tone. “Dee, the captain wanted me to let you know that we are on final approach, and will be grounding at the government port in ten minutes. He suggests you gather your belongings, since either or both of you may be removed from the ship.

  Dee sniffed mightily. “Tess! Do you suppose I could take the shipsuits with me? You know, the ones we tailored?”

  “I am certain the Captain considers them yours,” Tess replied. “Particularly since you have so few other outfits. Should you have the opportunity, I recommend some serious shopping.”

  Dee grinned through her tears. “An excellent suggestion, Tess,” she replied. She sobered and sighed. “Oh, how I wish you could come with me!” She wailed.

  “I’m sorry I cannot,” Tess replied. “Dee, please seriously consider the captain’s offer. He would very much like you to join us.”

  “I will, Tess, I promise.” She began, then, “Oh, wait! Where are you bound from here?”

  “The captain has not yet decided,” Tess replied. “We will ground in five minutes, Mistress. In the meantime, may I suggest some attention to your appearance?”

  “Oh my god!” Dee exclaimed, as she jumped and ran for the ‘fresher. Oh, lord. Her eyes were red and swollen and there were tear tracks down both cheeks.

  As she tended to her appearance, Dee frowned in thought. The Captain hasn’t yet decided? Dee did not know a lot about shipping, but she knew that starships, large or small, are expensive to operate. How could he not have a goal in mind?

  Maybe he was planning on picking up a high-value shipment or passenger in a hurry here. Oh, wait. He hadn’t been planning to come to Angeles. In fact, any plans he had were probably totally ruined by Aron Ekron and the government of Faith.

  Only a slight bump announced their grounding under Tess’s flawless control.

  The Kingdom of Angeles Official Starport was smaller than its commercial equivalent. When Cale surveyed his surroundings, he noted only one empire-pattern destroyer, and one corvette and two frigate-sized vessels, though their configurations varied from the Old Empire norm. Apparently, they had been built since the Fall. All three towered over Cheetah.