by Jason Fry
“Yer mother send yeh up here, boy?” Huff asked, turning to peer at his grandson.
“No, Grandfather,” Tycho said, sitting on the chair bolted to the deck near Huff’s worktable. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Been better. That Earthman still squawkin’ ’bout the laws of war?”
“Mom’s letting him think things over in the brig. But she allowed the other members of the prize crew to give their parole and sling hammocks belowdecks. She thinks a few hours of reflection might make Mr. Haines cooperate with Mr. Vass a little better.”
“Arrr. Don’t like that Vass, but ’ave to admit he don’t scare easy.”
“Mr. Vass wasn’t doing anything bad earlier, Grandfather. We were talking about the Securitat, and the JDF, and what’s happening in the solar system. It was interesting.”
Huff turned and Tycho could hear the contents of the tank sloshing as he moved—it was filled with salt water that kept Huff’s flesh from developing sores at the attachment points for his mechanical limbs.
“Listen, Tycho,” Huff said. “I’ve seen yeh learn so much these last few years, an’ it’s made me proud. But there’s things yeh still don’t know, lad. Like how to deal with these intelligence types. They start by flatterin’ yeh, actin’ like what yeh know will help the Jovian Union, an’ all they want is to listen. But then . . .”
Huff’s voice trailed off and he leaned back against the padded rim of the tank, closing his living eye as something beeped irritably inside the tank.
“I’m sorry, Grandfather,” Tycho said. “I should let you recharge.”
Huff opened his eye again.
“No, boy, I’ll be fine. Listen to me. What spies like this Vass want ain’t information—it’s people. People they can use for their own purposes.”
The old pirate leaned forward, both his living and artificial eyes ablaze.
“Don’t let them do favors for yeh, Tycho. Because them favors ain’t free. Sooner or later they’ll ask yeh for somethin’ back. Won’t be nothin’ important, not at first. But eventually it’ll be something yeh don’t feel quite right doin’. An’ if yeh agree, they’ve got yeh. Yeh understand me, Tycho?”
Tycho nodded, his heart thudding in his chest.
Seven bells rang out—it was 1530.
“I know yeh think it can’t happen to yeh,” Huff rasped, sinking lower into the tank. “But it can. Seen it happen to boys as honest as yeh, with futures as bright as yers.”
Huff’s eye closed, and Tycho watched him for a moment. His grandfather’s beard was more gray than black where it covered the living half of his face, and the flesh was sagging and deeply lined. The tattoos on his flesh-and-blood shoulder had faded, the mermaids and old sailing ships dull and blurred.
He’s an old man, Tycho thought, and even as he rebelled at the thought, it was replaced by a worse one: his grandfather wasn’t even that. Less than half of him was living flesh—the rest was metal and machinery, circuits and ceramics, grafted to cauterized tissue and sheared-away bone.
Did he ever wish he’d died at 624 Hektor, when an Earth destroyer’s missile had ripped through the Comet’s quarterdeck? Would he have preferred to be sewn into a shroud and set adrift in eternity, rather than forced to spend several hours a day trapped in this tank? Did he wish he’d never seen the once-mighty Jupiter pirates reduced to privateers and outlaws and hermits?
The scarred, gray-haired old head shifted slightly, living eye still closed.
“Look like yeh seen a ghost, boy,” Huff grunted.
Tycho started in surprise, then realized Huff’s artificial eye never shut, not even while the living remnant of him slept.
“Sorry, Grandfather. I was just thinking.”
“That’s a sure road to trouble,” Huff muttered, but a smile creased the living half of his face, and Tycho smiled back.
Tycho opened his mouth to excuse himself, to leave the old man in peace. But then he hesitated. What had happened at 624 Hektor had been a forbidden topic throughout his childhood—a tale pieced together from furtive searches through information databases and overheard snatches of conversation, whispered about when grown-ups weren’t listening. But all at once, there in the dim room that smelled faintly of salt water, he discovered he was tired of wondering.
“I know the Securitat gave you the software programs that were supposed to protect against the jamming, Grandfather,” he said, relieved to hear his voice was strong and clear. “Did they lie to you about what they were for?”
Huff’s eye opened. He turned his head slowly to stare at Tycho, who forced himself to look right back at him. A muscle in the old pirate’s cheek spasmed.
“I know you don’t want to talk about it, Grandfather. But it matters. And I need to know. Did the Securitat have something to do with it?”
Huff said nothing for a long moment. But then he raised his chin until he was staring at the hull above their heads.
“I forget yeh ain’t a child no more,” he muttered. “Seems like just a couple of weeks back yeh an’ yer siblings were mere babes, but then I realize it’s been years. Yer practically a man now, Tyke. An’ I’m proud of the man yer becomin’. Proud of all of yeh.”
Huff sighed. “Hard to think of anythin’ in this coffin. But yeh deserve to know. So ask me yer question agin.”
Tycho swallowed.
“Did the Securitat have something to do with 624 Hektor?” he asked, forcing himself to say the forbidden name.
“Arrr, of course they did.”
Tycho drew back, surprised. But he said nothing, fearful of breaking whatever spell had unbound his grandfather’s tongue.
“The freighters in the Martian convoy we ambushed was carryin’ United Collective hardware to the warehouses of Ganymede Quint-X. Never found out exactly what, but it was sophisticated stuff, worth a fortune. Part of some sweetheart corporate deal. Our commerce ministry didn’t like an Earth corporation gettin’ that much control over one of our own, but a Jovian court had said the deal could go ahead. So the Union leadership decided ’twas best for the shipment to go missin’, on account of pirates. It had to be a secret, of course. That’s where the Securitat came in. We didn’t know that Earth was behind it all—that they were pullin’ strings, plannin’ to destroy us an’ embarrass the Securitat by trickin’ ’em into helpin’.”
“I understand the Securitat was involved,” Tycho said. “But who sabotaged the program? Was it Earth? Or was it the Securitat, and they just blamed it on Earth?”
“Arrrr, that’s just a grog-shop yarn, boy,” Huff muttered. “An’ ’fore yeh say it, I heard what that old witch Oshima tole yeh, back on Io. It ain’t true, Tyke. It was Earth, an’ it was Oshima.”
“But she said you and Mox were the ones who distributed the program. She said she wasn’t involved.”
“She didn’t distribute it. But that ain’t the same as not bein’ involved.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oshima didn’t like to get her hands dirty—she’d rather work in the shadows, pulling strings. Most impossible person in the solar system, even ’fore she turned traitor. If she got a hint of a better deal she’d sell yeh out in a second. Her daddy, Blink, was a decent sort, but he never taught Oshima that we don’t swindle our own. The way I peg it, she used Mox for her plan ’cause she knew no other Jupiter pirate would listen to her.”
Huff laughed, then grimaced as the laugh turned into a coughing fit that sent water sloshing in the tank. Tycho extended his hand, concerned, but Huff shook his head.
“We all did a lively business poachin’ crewers from Oshima, y’know. Good captain, but a right hard horse to her own people. She drove all the Yakata family retainers away within a few years, so after that she had to use hired hands. The time to get one of Oshima’s crewers was after his second cruise with her—if he didn’t have any brains she’d sack him after the first, an’ if he had any sense he’d be ready to sack himself after the second.”
“Why?
What would she do?”
“Arr, what wouldn’t she do? Articles for each cruise longer than a flight manual, an’ she’d use the fine print to chisel her crewers out of prizes. Even traveled with a pet lawyer to draw up the articles an’ settle disputes with other pirates—fella by the name of Satterwhite, what couldn’t practice no more cause he’d shot someone for bein’ slow to pay him.”
“But if Oshima was so bad, then why did Mox trust her?”
“He didn’t. But Thoadbone thought everybody was out to swindle him, so he didn’t take it personal when Oshima tried to do it. An’ he’d listen to any fool plan from somebody what had two livres to rub together.”
“And . . . where did you come in, Grandfather?”
Huff leaned forward, his living eye shut. The lines around his mouth deepened into furrows.
“Mox came to me,” he said quietly. “At the Hygiea roadstead. I figgered he was cross ’bout somethin’ an’ fixin’ to kill me for it—that was usually the case—so I drew my persuader and stuck it ’tween his eyes ’fore his brain got around to sayin’ how-do. But he jes put up his hands an’ smiled, real reasonable-like. That weren’t like Thoadbone, an’ truth be told it kinda stumped me.”
Huff let his head settle with a bump against the top of the tank.
“What a fool I was,” he said. “’Bout that an’ so much else. If only I’d settled his hash right then an’ there, like I wanted to. It would ’ave saved so many good people so much grief.”
Then why did you let him go after we captured the Hydra? Tycho wondered. But he knew that asking would end the conversation immediately—and perhaps forever.
“So Mox told you he was working with Oshima?” he asked.
“No. Connected them dots later. Thoadbone told me ’bout the convoy, an’ what it was carryin’, an’ how the Securitat planned to make it disappear. Sounded like an easy prize, Tyke—solid intelligence, a big reward, an’ no questions asked.”
The tank began beeping insistently again.
“Give me a minute, lad,” Huff muttered.
He closed his living eye, his breath low and labored. For a moment Tycho thought he’d fallen asleep. But then, with his eye still closed, he began to speak again.
“It was a big score when we needed one. I let that blind me, when I should ’ave been askin’ questions. An’ . . . let’s say there were family reasons, too.”
“What do you mean, Grandfather?”
For a long moment Huff said nothing, the only sign of life a lone muscle leaping in his cheek. Then he opened his eye and began to speak, his eyes fixed straight ahead, avoiding Tycho’s gaze.
“Yeh know yer aunt was engaged to Sims. She’d run off with him—said she didn’t care ’bout the captaincy no more. Said yer mother could have it, because she was goin’ to serve aboard Cassius Gibraltar’s ship instead.”
Tycho had never heard that. Huff’s face twisted at the recollection.
“My own daughter, willin’ to give up the captaincy of the Comet—everything she’d worked for—to take orders on a Gibraltar quarterdeck. Left me in a right clove hitch, lad. I couldn’t let that happen—would ’ave been the ruin of the family, one of ours signin’ on with our archrivals. Yeh see that, don’t yeh?”
Tycho nodded, but Huff had continued talking, not even looking at his grandson.
“Centuries of history an’ honor, all reduced to bilge. So I did what I had to do.”
He paused, then bit his lip. The expression made for a strange contrast—the anxious, flesh-and-blood side of his face next to the grinning half of a chrome skull.
“I said I’d make Carina my successor, an’ let Sims serve on our quarterdeck. But then yer mother . . . yer mother an’ Mavry . . .”
“They made a deal with Cassius instead. To join his bridge crew.”
“Aye.”
Huff shook his head, staring into the recesses of his gloomy cabin.
“It’s hard on the ones what ain’t named captain—I know that,” he said. “But the ship is the family, an’ that’s more important. Every Hashoone has accepted that rule, for centuries. But yer mother . . . yer mother decided it didn’t apply to her and Mavry. Everythin’ I’d done, they was determined to undo. I thought a big score like what Mox had brought us . . . well, I thought it would make ’em reconsider. I thought it would remind ’em what we could do together, as a family.”
“But Mom still wouldn’t have become captain.”
“No. It’s nothin’ against yer mother, lad, but Carina had earned the chair. Yer mother an’ Mavry would ’ave had a place on the quarterdeck till yer aunt’s children came up the ladder. An’ then we’d ’ave found somethin’ for them, like we always have. Water Authority, Callisto Minerals, one of the guild halls—somethin’ easy, with plenty of livres.”
Tycho nodded, but he was thinking of the Hashoone cousins who worked at those places, and the resentment on their faces during privateering discussions at Darklands. Of his mother saying how she and his father had refused to accept spending the rest of their lives as dirtsiders. Of Yana insisting she’d rather die than live as a nobody.
And how would Tycho feel to know the captain’s chair would never be his, and he would be replaced by one of his siblings’ children?
“But I still don’t understand why Oshima would agree to help Earth,” he said.
“Neither did any of us, for a while. Oshima was on hard times herself, boy. She’d gone missin’—at first rumor had it she was dead, an’ then that she’d caught a sentence. If so, it weren’t no Jovian jailer what put her in irons—nobody who did time on 1172 Aeneas saw her there. Always figured Earth had her locked up on Vesta or even Mars. Yeh ask me, that’s when she turned traitor—they broke her while she was in the brig.”
“You told me Oshima sold her ship after the battle. Sold her ship and retired to the outback on Io.”
Huff nodded. “Nobody saw her for a few years after she hightailed it out of the asteroids—the survivors looked, believed me. By the time she turned up on Io, I figured ’twas better to let her rot, out there alone with what she’d done. She’s still there, so I s’pose the others felt the same.”
“But I’ve seen where she lives. It sure didn’t look like she was rich.”
“It wouldn’t. Oshima could squeeze a coin till it bled. Kept her ship near cold as space, air scrubbers dialed to the minimum so everythin’ stank, short commons throughout a cruise. Still, I don’t think she did it for the money.”
“Then why?” Tycho asked.
“Revenge. She was desperate. Just out of prison, no luck huntin’ prizes, an’ more an’ more trouble findin’ able spacers who’d sign her endless articles. She hated the rest of us for it. Hated us for stealin’ her crews an’ for swindlin’ her, though that last was only in her mind. If she had to hang up her musketoons, this was a way to take us all down with her.”
“She hated all of you enough to plot against the Jovian Union?”
“Oshima weren’t no patriot,” Huff growled. “She ain’t never believed in any country or cause ’cept her own. An’ neither has Mox.”
His voice rose, the flesh of his cheek darkening.
“Answer me this, boy: If she was innocent, why didn’t she install the program that was supposed to protect us?”
“Grandfather—”
“Why didn’t she do that?” Huff demanded through clenched teeth, as a chorus of alarmed beeps rose from inside the tank. “How’d she know, if she didn’t know it was booby-trapped? If she wasn’t in on the plot?”
“Grandfather, please. I didn’t believe her. Not then and not now.”
“That’s better.”
Tycho waited until the beeping had subsided and the angry color had faded from his grandfather’s cheek.
“Forget Oshima for a minute,” he said tentatively, trying to keep straight in his head what he had learned and what he still had to ask. “So it was Mox who told you about the Securitat, and why they wanted to stop the convoy?”
Huff nodded, his living eye closed.
“Got the full story from them spooks meself, though. Fool though I was, no way I was signin’ on to somethin’ on just Thoadbone’s say-so. The Securitat’s dirty business weren’t new to us, Tyke. A pirate could profit from it, provided he was careful. They tole me ’bout the convoy, an’ the jammers, an’ their plan to protect us against ’em. An’ I agreed to recruit more pirates for the ambush—pirates what wouldn’t listen to Oshima or Mox.”
Tycho hesitated.
“Who did you meet with? From the Securitat?”
Huff grunted and looked away. “Don’t remember his name. An’ it don’t matter. All them spies use fake names anyway.”
Tycho nodded. DeWise had told Tycho that wasn’t his real name, without the least bit of shame.
“And the Securitat gave you the software to give to the rest of the pirates?”
“No. Got it from Mox. Vesuvia looked it over six ways from Sunday an’ concluded there weren’t anythin’ wrong with it. She’s a paranoid ol’ bag of circuits, yeh know that. So then Mox an’ I passed the programs on to the rest of ’em. I didn’t know we were flyin’ into a trap. A trap what killed Thane D’Artagn an’ Stearns Cody. Habadon Alkasis. Helga von Stegl. An’ . . . an’ . . .”
Huff’s eye shut and he swallowed convulsively. Beads of sweat had appeared on his brow.
“And the Gibraltars,” Tycho said gently. “Cassius and Sims.”
“An’ them. Tyke, could yeh . . . would yeh fetch me that cloth?”
Tycho picked a rag off the desk. It was damp and cool. Huff lifted his head and water sloshed inside the tank.
“Let me do it, Grandfather,” Tycho said, wiping the sweat from Huff’s forehead. The old pirate’s eye closed and he exhaled gratefully.
“Thankee, lad. That’s better. Yeh met Simsie once, when yeh were naught but a babe. Did yeh know that?”