A Hop Skip and a Jump
Book Four of the Family Law Series
(Merged with the April Series)
Mackey Chandler
Cover by: Sarah Hoyt
Image by: Luca Oleastri
Chapter 1
The stars flashed in a kaleidoscope display again, until a yellowish star showed ahead. It was hard not to get all excited and act like a little kid at her first fair. It was an impressive display of superior technology for somebody used to a several days long run to jump and literal months spent to cross the same distance. Lee was already desperate not to seem terribly young and unsophisticated. But she was like somebody yanked from a world of clipper ships being the hot mode of transportation, and seated on a ballistic sub-orbital.
For all the worlds she'd visited, Lee had very little social exposure. She was aware from videos that there were all sorts of elaborate customs in many cultures. And some of the strangest groups had left Earth so they could practice their oddities without outsiders contaminating them. She just had to trust Gabriel wouldn't thrust her into a situation where she had no idea how to be polite.
"I'm taking us to a world about half way to the other end of the Human sphere of exploration," Gabriel said. "It's a semi-terraformed world. They named it Bountiful. That's more hopeful than descriptive. It already had some life in the sea and it is robust enough to have produced a respectable oxygen atmosphere. The land had very little in the way of life, and they have set aside islands and even a small continent as a park to preserve it. I have my doubts the native ecology will survive if they allow humans to set foot on those lands. Once you have a few mice or Earth insects get loose it's game over for the sort of simple organisms there."
"How long have people been there?" Lee asked.
"About forty years, but the world was sown with all sorts of plugs earlier. Prairie grasses, prickly pear and wild grains, wild rose and mosses, bamboo and marsh grasses about twenty years before that. They dropped some aquatic plants in fresh water bodies. Some of them did very well, and the colonists brought just about every plant known to man to test out. The colonists found enough wild rice and prickly pear established near Landing to be a real benefit the first year. They have quite a few serious tracts of trees started, and non-automated agriculture. It's an odd mix of modern and old, but it works for them. The penalty for introducing a weed is shunning and banishment. Their government has a fund and will buy you a ticket out on the first ship that will take you for not checking your fields and killing any weeds before they go to seed. That's a job for the kids in the spring. If they find a weed they get a nice reward for bringing it in, with the root attached."
"Where would weeds come from?" Lee asked. Don't they have control of their imports?"
"You'd be surprised how insidious they can be. No matter how careful you are, bulk seed will have an occasional weed. Seeds get stuck to other imports. They claim seeds have even survived on landing jacks and remained viable. When a shuttle lands they spray herbicide around the landing pads. Of course what is a weed is in the eye of the beholder. There are factions that want kudzu and dandelions, but neither has been approved."
"Do they have any weird customs I need to know to not offend?" Lee asked.
"Not really. Not around Landing City. Now, if you want to stay past thirty days, you have to get accepted in a community. That's a different story. Most of the colonists are Amish or Mennonite, and they get along well enough with each other. They have a charter to possess the main continent, and the other minor land masses only have some scientific outposts. You'd be expected to conform to their customs if you applied for immigration. You'd have to be sponsored, actually. But around Landing you don't have to wear a head covering. Even bare arms are OK, but shorts would be really pushing it. Somebody might politely ask you to cover up because they have children present. I've never seen you dressed immodestly, so I wouldn't have mentioned it," Gabriel explained. He looked at her considering... "You might shift your pistol back on your hip, under your jacket, and the knife too. It isn't their custom to display weapons."
"Why did you pick this world?" Lee asked.
"I want to get you back to Derfhome quickly, and a lot of developed worlds would have questions about this ship landing directly. They'd want to know where our ship in orbit is, assuming this was a shuttle from the size. Here, they have no traffic control and no station in orbit or system scan. In fact they often go weeks between ships, so there is little need for any traffic control. They are remarkably good at minding their own business. There is no customs examination, and they assume if I have business I know who I'm meeting and it's none of their concern. So we can have dinner and leave without filling out forms and being delayed. Oh... and the food is good," Gabriel added like an afterthought.
"I want a ship like this," Lee said. "If we'd had this it would have cut months off our recent voyage of exploration."
"It's a convenience," Gabriel admitted. "But you accomplished the same things. Indeed, you might have skipped over some of the things you discovered if you didn't slow down and look thoroughly at each system along the way. If you and your crew are all life-extended it won't matter as much either."
Lee thought about how some of their discoveries had unfolded. "I have to admit I can see that."
"And now that you have life extension there's not as big a rush to get things done," Gabriel repeated. "I doubt the full impact of that has hit you yet, but it will change and color how you do everything."
"You think I will be a very different personality?" Lee asked.
"No, my experience says your basic personality is already formed. You're how old now?" Gabriel asked.
"Closer to sixteen than fifteen," Lee said, refusing to be exact.
"Yeah, but an outlier," Gabriel said. "You don't fit the mold for your age. In some ways you are less mature and some ways more. You're an odd bird by the standards of any human society."
"I'm not a terrific fit for Derf or Badger society either," Lee admitted, "but I am what I am..."
"You are very much like my Lady April when she was your age," Gabriel said.
His voice took on an odd inflection when he spoke of her. Lee started wondering what his long standing relationship with April had been. She'd have to find a way to bring that up...
Gabriel meanwhile continued. "She also grew up without being embedded in the usual crowd of children her own age, although she wasn't nearly as isolated as you. She had the association of a habitat, though mostly adults, and not just her family. When do you first remember meeting others outside your family?" he asked.
Lee soon found that with an occasional small nudge and a few single sentence questions she had talked over an hour about her life as an explorer with her parents and Gordon. Right up until Gabriel had to pay attention to setting them on the ground. His ship had a very impressive AI he called Dilbert, which was named separately from the ship, which was the Cricket, but Gabriel didn't trust it to talk to strangers and land on an unimproved field. She never got to inquire much about him.
* * *
Back at Derfhome, aboard the Retribution, Gordon watched with amusement as there was a sudden surge in com traffic when they appeared on scan. Neither the USNA Albuquerque in orbit around Derfhome nor the visiting aliens had expected them to return from Earth so quickly. Gordon had moved his command to the Retribution in a rush, including his critical bridge crew. Thor's crew stayed. The Retribution had more room for them than the High Hopes, being short crew who mustered out after the long voyage. The High Hopes and the Dart would follow them to Derfhome at their normal pace. Neither was short of people qualified to command a ferry operat
ion, and there was nothing more to be done at Earth since the Claims Commission declined to administer their claims in the Back of the Beyond. Who knew what the Caterpillars would do? They'd come and go on their own agenda.
Thor had experience running the Retribution before, and had recently switched back to her at Derfhome, when the Little Fleet had ended its voyage, and Captain Aristotle wanted to be released. They had no complex structure or tradition like a naval vessel against switching commands at need, or other crew for that matter. The biggest inconvenience was that Gordon boarded and boosted away without a chance to grab personal items from his cabins. He inherited a cabin with a human bunk and refused to boot Thor from his. He'd have to sleep on a temporary floor pad if they had stayed in flight as long as normal, but with the help from Gabriel this flight had been shortened until he didn't really need a cabin. It felt strange.
The fact they suddenly appeared so deep in the system scan without a long velocity shedding approach, that should have made them visible for a day already, upset the humans in the system worse than the aliens. The aliens weren't as sure what their drive and jump capabilities were, but the USNA crew in particular found it disturbing to have a heavy cruiser appear fifteen light minutes away, well inside system scan. Far too close to energy weapons range already. They probably figured it was some stealth tech. There was also the fact their entry burst had been echoed in a few minutes by what looked like a burst of exit radiation, which was just impossible. They had no idea about Gabriel's ship having the capacity to grab another vessel in its field and yank it along in multiple jumps. None of it made any sense, and anything he didn't understand was a danger, so the captain of the Albuquerque, already subject to aggressive taunting from the Fargoers in system, announced his immediate departure.
"He's in a hurry all of a sudden, isn't he?" Thor said to his captain.
"At two and a half G, straight from orbit within ten minutes of seeing us on scan?" Gordon asked. "I feel bad for the galley crew and maintenance guys. If somebody was changing filters or making bread dough they probably threw everything in a storage locker and scrambled for their bunk. They'll have to go back and scrap up dough or look for lost tools and fasteners after they jump."
"Better to do that, than broken legs or cracked skulls when the burn catches you in maintenance spaces, or worse, in a long corridor. At two and a half Gs you don't have to fall far to get hurt, and if you need to do a rescue that heavy it's pretty iffy too," Thor pointed out.
"They aren't on an Earth vector either," Brownie their navigator noted.
"Running to collect their backup and lurker out-system," Ha-bob-bob-brie suggested. "The one they sent a drone to when we were here last."
"Yes, they're on the same heading as the drone they released on our last visit," Brownie confirmed.
"They fail to understand that, once used, that tactic it loses most of its value in the future," Thor said.
"They still are arrogant and don't see us as capable of any finesse in tactics," Gordon concluded.
The Badger they called Talker watched all this from a jump seat, and spoke. "I'm just happy none of my people accompanied him. If these government officials had been talking with him all this time, and they agreed on to some scheme to leave with him for Earth, we'd have higher officials than me trying to form gods only know what sort of deal with the Claims Commission. I don't think they could budge the Commission, but it would put everything to which we agreed with you in question."
"I'd be surprised if anyone on the Albuquerque was allowed to have a dialogue with your people," Gordon told him. "The way he undocked as soon as your unarmed ship with the high officials docked speaks volumes. I'd guess he's firmly in the xenophobic camp of Earthmen. I mean, what did he expect? That the aliens were going to swarm across the dock and attack his ship?"
Thor and Ha-bob-bob-brie looked at each other from widely separated consoles and cracked up laughing.
Talker looked askance at them, and when no explanation was offered was forced to ask, "I get most Human and Derf humor, but I fail to see why this was so funny, and it obviously amuses the Hin too."
"Indeed, it is hilarious, Talker," Ha-bob-bob-brie said. "May I explain?" he inquired of the Derf. He was the junior member of the bridge crew and conscious of his place.
Thor waved his privilege away, as did Gordon, although looking less happy about it.
"The humor is that Gordon did exactly what he brands somebody else trying as ridiculous. The present ship we are in was hijacked off the very same station. The Retribution used to be the USNA Cincinnati. It was the first act from which the Earthies knew that they were at war with Red Tree clan. The Cincinnati was docked at Derfhome station oblivious to the fact that an Earth court had kidnapped Gordon's daughter Lee and forced her into foster care. The officers went aboard the station to enjoy a nice dinner. The Derf planted a bomb on her nose right in front of the flight deck view ports, and got in the station maintenance spaces and jammed her grapples so she couldn't leave.
"When the commanding officers returned from dinner they found a different set of guards, all Derf, armored up and with modern weapons guarding the airlock instead of their own. Gordon has such a reputation for deceit and subterfuge now that the Fargone Navy was nervous having the Little Fleet in orbit when we were outfitting for our voyage to you. They made the government ask him to remove to Derfhome and provision in stages so their navy felt safe."
"They don't understand my thinking," Gordon complained, still irritated with the Fargoers. "I have no motive to threaten Fargone. They are our allies and have treated us well. It's foolish to be afraid of a friend just because they can harm you. Honorable people need cause."
"Well then, I guess aliens swarming across the station and seizing their ship isn't so far-fetched," Talker said, grinning. "I knew you had a war, and it was over Lee, but I didn't realize how Gordon initiated it."
"We went on to seize or destroy a few hundred billion dollars of shipping and naval assets," Thor said. "The Sharp Claws conducted a strike right into the Earth-Moon system that took out their naval shipbuilding yard. Come to think of it, with that we probably topped the trillion-dollar mark. I'm not sure anybody has ever run exact numbers. Let's just say we hurt them. It also made both Fargone and New Japan declare USNA military vessels non-grata in their systems. That's a major humiliation too."
"I am aware of the bare outlines of that conflict, if not every interesting detail like that, but I'm surprised that these other governments have excluded USNA vessels but Derfhome hasn't," Talker said.
"First of all, you don't declare such a thing unless you are prepared to enforce it," Gordon said. "We don't have sufficient vessels to always have some here to exclude them. In the end, the only way we have to really enforce it would be to destroy the USNA, and that's a clumsy tool we don't really want to use. They have shown a reluctance to believe we'd do that in the past. I've lived with Humans for years, I have some idea how they think. If you keep making a threat over and over they become inured to it. It would end badly, and we'd be a stink to all the rest of the Human nations and worlds even though we simply did exactly what we warned. No, it's better at present to appear not to care if they wish to visit. I suspect that irritates them as much as being excluded."
"Well, that answers another thing that was bothering me," Talker said.
Gordon just lifted an eyebrow, a learned Human gesture, and refused to beg for an explanation.
"I wondered at your sending Lee off with what appears to be your new ally Gabriel," Talker explained. "I am also a father and I'd be nervous sending my daughter Tish off our estate to have dinner with new friends. However, if Gabriel is aware the last people to treat Lee with disrespect suffered hundreds of billions of dollars in damages, and I assume thousands of deaths, it would seem he'd be quite mannerly."
"I didn't send her, she wanted to go," Gordon pointed out. "She was raised much differently than your Tish. I mean no disrespect to Tish or you, but she would se
em to have been sheltered within a large family. That's nice if you have the luxury of it. We never had the circumstances to be able to shelter Lee. She had to learn to be safe in an adult environment and contribute to our business. She's near sixteen going on forty in some ways, other ways she isn't even up to speed for her real age. Being naive got Lee in trouble on Earth, but she's a semi-adult by Derf law and goes armed. If Gabriel was disrespectful I doubt I'd have to chastise him at all. Lee would probably cut his ears off and send him home with them in his pocket needing to grow new ones to teach him to be mannerly. Gabriel has his own agenda. Don't be sure at all that he is my ally. I'm not."
Talker smoothed down his own ears with a hand and looked distressed at the idea. "You're right. Tish would cry and be upset if someone treated her badly. She's never had to assert herself, and I doubt she has ever touched a gun. I'm not even sure she has had fruit that the kitchen didn't slice for her. Tish and Lee are far more different by upbringing than by race," Talker realized.
"I'm more nervous about how we're going to deal with the high mucky-mucks from your government waiting for us," Gordon said. "How are we going to persuade them they are obligated to back your acceptance of our own claims authority? They are going to demand details of how it works when we haven't even formulated exact rules and obligations. The possible claims structure is mostly a vaguely formed copy of the Earth system in Lee's mind at this point. It will be part of the High Hopes Exploratory Association, because that gives us a legitimate existing organization to which it can be attached, but it doesn't have any people, or separate funding, or a public mission statement yet."
"Well, then we better hope she's back from dinner before we have to speak with my superiors in depth," Talker said.
"I did some reading on raising Human children," Gordon remembered. "I think if they come back late from an outing with friends the experts recommended grounding them, removing some privileges for a time to alter their behavior. I'm not sure how that works with a girl who has her own fortune and starships."
A Hop, Skip and a Jump (Family Law Book 4) Page 1