by Jason Fry
“No. I didn’t.”
“Had no use for his father, but Simsie was a good lad,” Huff said quietly. “Would ’ave made yer aunt a fine first mate. That was my hope, yeh know—Carrie in the captain’s chair, Simsie as first mate, an’ yer father flyin’.”
“And what about Mom?”
“Sensors and navigation. Wish I could ’ave seen that crew come together—I might ’ave asked yer aunt to let me stay on an’ run the commo board, just to be a part of it. An’ it would ’ave worked, yeh know, if everythin’ hadn’t gone so wrong. If we’d had a little more time, it would ’ave worked. I know it would ’ave.”
Eight bells rang out, signaling the end of the afternoon watch. Tycho tried to imagine his aunt in the captain’s chair, turning to bark orders at the children she would have had with Sims, the ones who’d never had a chance to be born. What would he and Yana and Carlo be doing now, if that had happened? He might never have left Jupiter’s moons. Perhaps he and his siblings would be working in one of the family businesses in Port Town, arguing about whose turn it was to drive the grav-sled back to Darklands and dreaming of the next time they might get to go somewhere as exotic as Ganymede.
“The thought of that spy in your aunt’s cabin . . . ,” Huff muttered.
“I meant to ask you,” Tycho said hastily, hoping to steer his grandfather away from that unhappy topic. “What would have made Aunt Carina such a good captain?”
“Arrr. Brilliant strategist, cool under fire. But most of all, she was sure of herself. That’s what yer mother’s always struggled with—she’s learned to keep it hidden, is all. Once Carrie made a decision, she never doubted it—an’ she made everyone around her believe in it too. That belief can make or break a starship crew, once things start to go wrong.”
Tycho crossed his arms over his chest. Sometimes he felt like he’d doubted every decision he’d ever made on the quarterdeck.
Huff saw his reaction and smiled.
“Go easy on yerself, lad. Yer still young, still learnin’. Far as I know, yer mother ain’t ready to pick a captain yet.”
“What if it was your choice, Grandfather? Who would you pick?”
Huff’s living eye widened. “Arrr. Yeh sure yeh want me to answer that, lad?”
Tycho nodded.
Huff looked away, his yellowed teeth working at his lip, and Tycho suddenly regretted his question. His grandfather wasn’t the captain anymore, and it was wrong to ask him to play that role, even here in his cabin.
He opened his mouth to apologize, but before he could get the words out, Huff turned to look at him.
“I’d pick yer sister. Reminds me of yer aunt at that age, Yana does—always arguin’, even when she knows it ain’t no good idea. Looks like her, too—sometimes I get them mixed up in my mind, an’ have to recall me heading agin. But yer mother will never do that. Dio would be too worried Yana’s temper would get her killed. Her an’ everyone else. An’ she might be right about that.”
“If Mom won’t pick Yana, who then?”
“I’d bet on you,” Huff said, and Tycho felt his heartbeat accelerate. “Yer brother’s the easy choice, but Carlo ain’t got no head for people. He can give orders, but he don’t listen to the people he’s givin’ ’em to. A leader has to do both. Yeh can learn how to fly, Tyke, but Carlo ain’t gonna learn how to lead—if he could, he’d ’ave done it already. An’ yer mother knows it.”
Tycho looked away, trying to calm himself.
“The chair could be yours, Tyke,” Huff said. “Most important thing is yeh learn to trust yerself—which is the hardest thing for any captain. Yeh have to trust yerself that yeh know what’s right, and that when it matters yeh’ll do the right thing.”
10
ASTEROID CONVOY
As the Comet followed the main spacelane that led to 65 Cybele, she passed pinwheeling lumps of beige, gray, and reddish rock, dodged slabs of tumbling black debris, and flew through loose clouds of stones and dust, the remnants of asteroids blasted to pieces in ancient collisions.
It was the third day of the voyage, and alertness had eroded into boredom, as it tended to do on an uneventful cruise. Tycho and his siblings sniped and snapped at each other on the quarterdeck, drawing Diocletia’s ire, while everyone vented their frustration at Vesuvia, whose programming at least allowed her to remain unperturbed. Nor was the Comet a happy ship belowdecks—the morning watch began with Grigsby bellowing about scurvy malingerers and plenty of room in the brig.
Grigsby was midrant when Vass ascended the ladderwell to the quarterdeck at impressive speed, looking pale and shocked.
“The language belowdecks . . . it’s like being inside a cell on 1172 Aeneas,” he muttered.
“In my day, Minister, there weren’t no difference ’tween the two,” Huff said with a grin. He had finally returned to his regular routine on the quarterdeck the night before, though he and Diocletia were limiting themselves to the absolute minimum of conversation.
Vass gave the old pirate a wary nod and took his now-customary position on the other side of the ladderwell.
“Don’t forget to strap in, Mr. Vass,” Diocletia said.
“Oh, I thought I’d forgo that blasted contraption today, Captain. I’m quite proud of my space legs by now, if I do say so myself.”
“As you like. And how is Mr. Haines this morning?”
“More talkative. I bribed him with some coffee and asked Mr. Speirdyke to season his crowdy with cinnamon sugar.”
“Hmm—that might’ve worked on me too,” Mavry said.
“No thanks,” Carlo said. “Spooning sugar’s about the extent of Speirdyke’s skills, and his coffee’s always burned. If we make a few livres on this cruise, how about we pick a cook for some reason besides he’s missing a limb?”
“And what would Mr. Speirdyke do after that?” Diocletia asked. “His family’s served ours since Anna Barbara Hashoone was captain, and he lost his leg manning a gun to protect this ship from harm. Should we abandon him—a one-legged spacer—to beg for alms in Port Town?”
Carlo raised his hands placatingly. “I just wanted better coffee!”
“Then why don’t you learn to make it?” Yana asked.
“If you’ve touched the coffeepot five times in your whole life I’m the emperor of Earth,” Tycho said.
“That’s enough,” Diocletia said. “Yana, step up your scans. Tycho, get up on the comm board. If everything’s on schedule, we should run across our freighter convoy within a half hour or so. But there’s a lot of ship traffic in these parts, not all of it friendly. So eyes peeled.”
“Never thought I’d see the barky reduced to shepherdin’ a flock of tea wagons,” grumbled Huff, his forearm cannon whining in agitation.
“You’ve made your feelings on this subject clear, Dad,” Diocletia said without turning. “But that’s the mission, so let’s see that it’s done properly. Your starship, Carlo.”
The convoy soon appeared on Yana’s scopes: a trio of bulk freighters and a massive dromond, with seven smaller hoys interspersed among the bigger ships.
“And I’ve got two frigates—one at point, the other trailing,” she said.
“That would be the Izabella and the Berserker,” Diocletia said.
“Min Theo’s ship?” asked Huff, brightening.
“Morgan Theo’s in the captain’s chair now,” Mavry said. “Min retired to Ganymede about six months ago.”
“Arrr, I hadn’t heard,” Huff rumbled, then added mournfully: “Now why’d ol’ Min go an’ do a thing like that?”
“Vesuvia, display colors,” Carlo said. “Tyke, get Captains Andrade and Theo on the comm.”
Tycho entered the command to raise the Comet’s communications mast from its housing atop the ship and began transmitting her identity to the convoy ahead.
“Channel established,” Tycho said. “The comm’s yours, Carlo. Wait—incoming transmission.”
“Nice to see you, Comet,” said the smooth, cultured voice of Gari
balda Marta Andrade, the veteran privateer commanding not only the Izabella but also the Jovian privateers assigned to the Cybeles. “Be advised this has been a hot zone. The Berserker will protect our port flank. Take the trailing position and mind the hoys and the dromond.”
“It’s Carlo Hashoone, Captain Andrade. The Comet’s faster than the Berserker. I’d suggest the reverse formation.”
Tycho saw Diocletia and Mavry exchange a glance, but neither said anything.
“We’ve been running these lanes for three weeks and have a sensor profile of every rock and snowball along the route,” Andrade said. “On this run we need you at trailing.”
“Understood,” Carlo said sullenly.
Tycho eyed the main screen and the line of crosses that marked the location of the Jovian convoy. After a few minutes the ships became visible through the viewports, a cluster of bright lights in motion against the seemingly fixed stars. Closer still, and those bright lights took on shape and definition, becoming the bulbs of long-range tanks, their starships tucked beneath them. Their ion engines were a blinding blue.
“That dromond’s throwing ions halfway back to Jupiter—careful of her engine wash,” Yana said, inclining her chin at the giant freighter in the center of the convoy. A quintet of massive fuel tanks cradled the ship’s vast bulk.
“Don’t tell me how to do my job, Yana,” Carlo said.
He reduced speed and guided the Comet into position at the tail of the column, behind the last three hoys—needle-nosed freighters about twice the length of the privateer. The Comet’s bulky long-range tanks robbed her of her speed and grace, but Carlo still guided her with an expert hand, maneuvering the frigate with practiced ease that bordered on nonchalance. Tycho knew if he’d been flying the Comet, he’d have wound up goosing the engines repeatedly, wasting fuel while he struggled to properly align her with the rest of the convoy.
“We’re in position, Izabella,” Carlo said.
“Nicely flown, Comet,” Andrade said. “We’re just shy of the first buoys—and it’s three hours to port after that. Don’t let those hoys creep up on the dromond—their pilots have been flying with heavy feet.”
Scanners identified the three hoys as the Marcus, the Camden, and the Hambrook. Tycho couldn’t blame their pilots for riding the throttle too hard—the massive dromond maneuvered like an artificial asteroid, barreling ponderously through space in whatever direction she’d been pointed.
“Locking in course,” Carlo said. “Keep your sensors on active scan, Yana. Particularly the port array.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job, Carlo,” Yana said, smiling innocently at Diocletia’s warning look.
Curious, Tycho called up the dromond’s sensor profile: She was the Nestor Leviathan, little more than a bridge and engines separated by half a kilometer of cargo holds. He wondered how much the cargo she was carrying was worth. Hundreds of millions of livres? Billions? Whatever the amount, it was enough money to throw legendary shindies for at least a decade.
“You ever capture a ship that big, Grandfather?” Tycho asked Huff.
“Arrr, yeh read my mind, lad. Tough prize to take—yeh’d need yer own fleet of tugs, an’ in my day a ship that big carried gangs of roughnecks to repel boarders. Answer’s not to take her as a prize at all—with a beast that big, yer in it for the ransom, not the condemnation.”
Tycho glanced at his screen.
“I’m picking up pings from the buoys. They’re thirty thousand klicks ahead.”
“Roger that,” Carlo said, easing his control yoke slightly to the right. “Heading looks almost perfect . . . there. We’re in the pipe. Next stop, Cybele.”
“Wait, Huff,” Mavry objected. “Didn’t Ursula Hashoone take a dromond as a prize in the Themistians?”
Huff tapped at his chrome temple, frowning.
“A dromond? Don’t believe so, no.”
Diocletia turned in her chair.
“That’s the way I heard it too. The ship Ursula took was called the Capistrano—she wasn’t a dromond?”
“Arrr, lemme think. No, the Capistrano was a converted Lophelia-class bulk hauler. Dromond-sized, p’raps, but a different configuration—basically a cylinder covered with magnetic grapples for attachin’ deep-space containers. She could carry sixty or seventy of ’em when fully loaded. Made loadin’ an’ offloadin’ a snap, but meant she was a ridiculous-lookin’ scow. Father always said a fully loaded Lophelia looked like a pine cone.”
“What’s a pine cone?” Yana asked.
Huff shrugged.
“Some kind of mountain, I s’pose. Like a volcano. They got cones, don’t they?”
“A pine cone is a—” Vesuvia interjected.
“What kinda mountain it is ain’t the point, yeh useless compendium of trivia,” Huff growled. “See, takin’ the Capistrano weren’t Ursula’s goal. She sent in two boardin’ parties. First one headed for the bridge, but that was just a feint—second boardin’ party were the important one. They stormed the supercargo’s control room an’ performed an emergency decouplin’ of all the magnetic grapples.”
“Oh my,” Vass said.
Huff chuckled. “Would ’ave liked to see that one meself—sixty-odd containers firin’ their release jets an’ hurtlin’ off into deep space in every direction. Ursula pulled the boardin’ parties, an’ they let the Capistrano go while they started huntin’ down the containers. They say some of them are still out there—Father plotted their probable courses an’ programmed Vesuvia to sing out whenever the Comet was within two million klicks or so of one. Ain’t that right, Vesuvia?”
“Your account contains a number of inaccuracies,” the Comet’s artificial intelligence said. “Fifty-six containers were deployed in all. Twenty-one were recovered by three generations of captains of the Shadow Comet, the last one hundred nineteen years ago. Sixteen containers were recovered by Earth merchant vessels or their agents. Pirates and other unaffiliated vessels are believed to have recovered twelve. Four were either destroyed during recovery operations, impacted celestial bodies, or incinerated on close approach to the sun. Three have yet to be recovered. The nearest one is currently an estimated twenty-four billion kilometers from our current position, bearing two hundred eleven degrees.”
“Unless you want to extend this cruise by a year or so, I think we’ll let that one go,” Carlo said.
“Prolly best,” Huff said. “The problem was that Ursula didn’t get the Capistrano’s manifest. So nobody huntin’ them containers knew what was in ’em. Father said on one cruise Ursula intercepted a container filled with high-density computer cores, an’ made a fortune fencin’ ’em on Ceres. Next cruise, she took the Comet out halfway to Uranus an’ reeled in a container full of tubs of freezer-burned synthetic butter.”
Tycho joined in the laughter on the quarterdeck. Even Vass grinned.
“An’ that particular trick never worked agin. The shipwright what made Lophelias locked the supercargoes out of the emergency decoupling procedure, but insurers was so spooked, it became too expensive to fly ’em. They cut up the last Lophelia for scrap above Mars when I was a middie.”
“Master Hashoone?” asked Vass, peering over Tycho’s shoulder. “What’s that red light?”
Tycho gaped at his console in horror.
“Priority signal from the Izabella,” he told the quarterdeck. “Patching it through.”
“Repeat, we have sensor contact at three hundred and ten degrees,” Andrade said.
“That’s outside our current scanning cone,” Yana said. “Can’t see a thing out here. Wait, I’ve got it now. Looks like three—no, make it four bogeys.”
“Sensor profile?” Carlo asked.
“That’s a negative,” Yana said. “We’re out of range and in the back of the line. Izabella will have them painted while I’m still collating position data.”
“Understood. Pass on whatever you’ve got as soon as you get it.”
“Aye-aye. They’re coming hot, I can tell you that. T
oo hot to be attached to tanks.”
“Vesuvia, stand by to detach on my order,” said Carlo.
“Acknowledged.”
Tycho listened to the chatter on the convoy’s shared communication channel, trying to pick out anything useful to pass on to his brother. The freighter pilots were frantic, screeching about bandits and arguing about defensive formations.
Tea wagons, he thought with a sigh.
“Marcus, Camden, Hambrook, maintain your position and await orders,” Tycho said sternly into his microphone. “This is the Comet—we’ve got your back.”
Captain Andrade’s voice filled the channel. “Berserker, Comet, we’re transmitting sensor data to you. We have four frigates, flying black transponders. Easy on the triggers and stick with your freighters.”
Tycho’s eyes jumped to the main screen and the mysterious triangles off to port. Three were inbound, while the fourth was hanging back, screened by the tumbling asteroids of the Cybeles.
“Bogeys are activating transponders,” Vesuvia said. “They are flying Earth colors.”
11
EARTH’S PRIZE
Tycho could hear Huff’s forearm cannon squealing.
“Verifying transponder codes,” Vesuvia said. “Bogeys identify as the Loire, the Resolution, the Kerensky, and the Gracieux.”
“Captain Allamand, I presume,” Diocletia said.
Tycho glanced at his mother in the captain’s chair and saw Carlo’s eyes turn that way as well. Diocletia’s gaze was fixed on the main screen, but she said nothing else, fingers steepled beneath her chin. The Comet was still Carlo’s to command, and Tycho fought to keep a scowl off his face—his brother couldn’t ask for a better opportunity to show off his piloting skills.
“Vesuvia, tag all four bogeys as hostile and beat to quarters,” Carlo said. “Mr. Grigsby, get the crews to their guns, but no firing till I give the word—and then let’s not damage the merchandise.”
“Aye-aye, Master Carlo,” Grigsby said as the bosun’s pipes shrilled. “We break it, we buy it.”