by Jason Fry
“I say, is this table seven?”
“Six!” Tycho all but crowed.
The boy gave him a curious look and headed back the way he’d come. Tycho turned back to Sewickley and spotted Kate behind the young Cybelean, hitching her dress up slightly as she walked his way.
“Oh, don’t get up,” she said with a smile, and Tycho kicked himself mentally that getting up hadn’t occurred to him.
And then she was in the empty seat right next to him. She smiled at him and started to say something, but Sewickley all but spun Tycho’s shoulder around to tell him about debt ratios. When Tycho was able to turn back to Kate, she was deep in conversation with the young Cybelean woman next to her.
You’re supposed to turn and talk to the other person after each course, he reminded himself, and turned back to Sewickley, who was sopping up salad dressing with an entire dinner roll.
“So as I was saying, our ROI—that’s return on investment, you know—for shipbuilding has been off the charts,” Sewickley said, accidentally spitting a chunk of half-chewed dinner roll onto his plate.
“Right, right,” Tycho said around a mouthful of salad. “Wait. Did you say shipbuilding?”
“I did,” Sewickley said, flinging the half-chewed piece of roll on the floor. “Cybele’s been a center for shipbuilding for centuries, of course. But we can’t keep up with the demand right now. Firms are doing work for local customers, for Earth, and for independents.”
“Independents like who?”
“Oh, mostly shipping firms with operations on multiple worlds. From their perspective this dispute is an annoyance more than anything else. They can fly whatever flag is convenient on a given run—and perfectly legally, too. Lots of them are reregistering ships as Cybelean, though—takes the guesswork out of it. But registrations isn’t our business—too many lawyers, not enough fun.”
“How interesting. So building all these ships must take more facilities than are here on Cybele. Where else does this work happen?”
Sewickley eyed him. “I forgot your name. What is it you do again?”
“Tycho Hashoone. I’m a midshipman aboard the Shadow Comet, operating under a Jovian Union letter of marque.”
He risked a quick glance at Kate as he said this, but she gave no sign that she’d heard him.
“You’re a pirate, then?” Sewickley asked.
“Privateer,” Tycho said icily.
“Right, of course. I forget there’s a difference. Still, given the situation, I’m not sure how much I should be telling you.”
Sewickley followed this remark with a nervous bark of laughter, then blew his nose in his napkin.
“Oh, ships under construction are no use to us as prizes,” said Tycho with a casual wave of his hand. “I’m curious because my family has shipbuilding interests of our own at Jupiter, and we’ve talked about expanding. If we can find the right partner, of course.”
“Ah. What was your question again?”
“I’m interested in the shipbuilding facilities you’ve invested in. You must visit them, right? To see how your livres are being spent?”
Sewickley shook his head.
“I get spacesick something awful. We just put up the livres and make connections between interested parties. All of that happens down here. Most of our construction facilities are in orbit, but there are plenty of asteroids within a day or so of here where your family could establish an operation.”
“I understand,” Tycho said, trying not to sound disappointed.
He glanced in the other direction as Sewickley tore into his salad. Kate Allamand was still talking with the Cybelean woman. Tycho admired Kate’s delicate ear, graceful neck, and black curls, then forced himself to turn back to Sewickley.
“But what about the people?” he asked. “You know, the labor. Where do you get them?”
“Oh, you know, local contractors.”
“You mean crimps,” Tycho said sharply.
Sewickley shrugged, his face a mask of bland indifference. “Like I said, we just move the livres—and try to make our stack grow, of course. That’s how it’s been done on Cybele forever, you know. We’ve got nothing to mine except water, so we’ve always been traders and connectors. Fortunately, there’s never been a better time to be in that business than right now.”
“That’s apparent,” Tycho said, looking out over the lavish banquet hall—and then up at the ceiling, and the graceful curve of the spacedocks above.
“Still, shipbuilding . . . that’s a tough business for a newcomer right now,” Sewickley said. “There are real shortages in both raw materials and labor, because of this one shipbuilding project we’re not part of.”
Tycho leaned toward Sewickley.
“What project is that?”
Someone was tapping on a glass—a barrel-chested Cybelean noble three tables over, standing next to a rail-thin, frail-looking man with white hair. The noble tapped more insistently until the conversation level finally dropped.
Tycho fidgeted through the white-haired man’s speech, and the one given in response by Earth’s envoy to Cybele, and the one following that from the Jovian Union’s envoy. The waiters were clearing the salads by the time he was able to lean back over to Sewickley.
“Sorry, I asked what shipbuilding project you meant,” Tycho said. “You mentioned a big one that’s taking up all the raw materials and labor.”
“I don’t know what it is—wish I did. Then maybe Dad and I could get some of the action on it. Whoever the client is, though, they’ve got plenty of livres. And they don’t want attention.”
Waiters reached over their shoulders to put down covered plates, then lifted the lids to reveal some concoction that appeared to be made up of fish and flowers and sticks. When Tycho looked up from poking at it, Sewickley had turned to address the person on the other side of him.
Oh, now he remembers his manners.
The arrival of the new course meant it was time for Tycho to switch conversational partners as well. His heart fluttered in his chest and his mouth felt dry. He lunged for his water glass, almost knocking it over, and forced himself to turn to the right, where Kate was smiling at him. Her irises were deep brown, nearly black, and startling against the bright whites of her eyes.
“So I understand you’re a privateer, Master Hashoone?” she asked.
“Yes—a midshipman aboard the Shadow Comet, operating under letter of marque for the Jovian Union,” he said, wincing at how stilted and formal he sounded.
“And what do midshipmen do, exactly?”
“Whatever the captain tells us to, but I typically handle navigation and communications. But wait . . . aren’t you part of your father’s bridge crew?”
“Me?” Kate looked astonished, then faintly amused. “Oh no. I have a room aboard the Gracieux, but while my father’s in space I stay here in our fondaco.”
“Oh,” Tycho said, trying to get his bearings. “So what do you do, then?”
“Homework, mostly,” Kate said, then nodded at the musicians. “And I practice the viola—though I’ll never be good enough to be part of a real string quartet. I want to be an ambassador. Or a minister—preferably in the commerce ministry.”
She scowled, and Tycho thought to himself that somehow it made her look even more beautiful.
“Though I’ll be lucky not to be married off as soon as I’m of age,” she said. “And then I’ll never be allowed to do anything ever again.”
“Married off?”
Kate nodded, looking morose. “Girls like me don’t have the same opportunities you do out in the colonies. My father brought me out here so I could see the solar system.”
It had been centuries since anyone in the Jovian Union had referred to their home moons as colonies, but Tycho decided to ignore that.
“So you’ve never left Earth before?” he asked.
Kate shook her head and smiled. “I’m sure I must sound very sheltered to you.”
“Of course not,” Tycho said, though he’d been t
hinking exactly that. “So now that you’re out here, what do you think?”
Kate wrinkled her nose. “It’s very strange not to be able to go outside. Or for there not to be an outside. I feel cooped up all the time. And . . . well, everything smells bad. No, not bad exactly. More like stale. My father says it’s because the air’s been recycled so many times.”
Tycho nodded, trying to wrap his head around the idea that air might smell different other places, that it wasn’t simply air.
“It seems strange to me that you could open a door and just walk outside,” he said. “Where I come from, if that happened you’d be dead in less than a minute.”
“So you’ve never been to Earth? Or even Mars? Never stood under a sky?”
“No. I mean, in simulations, sure. But even with the best ones you know they’re fake.”
“Oh, I wish you could see Earth. It’s so beautiful. Maybe after all this is over.”
They smiled uncertainly at each other, then ate in silence. Tycho had to admit that the flowers and sticks were delicious.
“Do you do homework?” Kate asked. “I mean, you don’t go to school. . . .”
“Oh, I do plenty of homework. Vesuvia’s our instructor for most everything.”
“Vesuvia? Is that your mother’s name? It’s very nice.”
“No, Vesuvia is our starship’s artificial intelligence. She’s kind of a pain.”
“Your teacher is a starship?” Kate asked, looking skeptical.
“Sure. She’s programmed for instruction in most anything you’d need to learn. Like I have a paper due next week on how Shakespeare’s works have been turned into motion pictures and interactive dramas.”
“But when do you have time to study? Aren’t you on duty aboard your ship?”
“We call it being on watch. But mostly that means looking out the viewports and waiting for something to happen. There’s plenty of time for homework, unfortunately.”
“But you must have been in battles.”
Tycho nodded, resisting the urge to add that this morning’s battle had involved her father.
“It sounds terrifying,” Kate said. “I’ve been going crazy while my father’s away. It’s nerve-racking sitting around thinking something might have happened to him. Don’t you get scared?”
Tycho smiled and raised his chin.
“Of course not—I’ve been a privateer all my life. I don’t know what scared is.”
Even before the first word was out, he knew his grand and heroic declaration sounded thin and uncertain.
Kate cocked her head at him.
“That didn’t sound too convincing, did it?” Tycho asked.
Kate shook her head. But then she smiled at him, and he found himself smiling back.
“Can I try that one again?” he asked.
“Please do,” Kate said, leaning forward expectantly, her eyes bright.
“I get scared,” Tycho said.
“This version is more convincing already.”
Tycho smiled but then found himself turning serious. “The thing is, I’ve trained for this since I was eight. You keep from getting scared by focusing on your responsibilities. And by having faith that the person next to you will do that too.”
They resumed their silence. The string quartet sounded beautiful, Tycho thought—he’d heard classical music before, but never as it was actually being made by hands on instruments.
Kate looked over at him tentatively.
“Have you ever killed anybody?” she asked in a small voice.
Tycho’s mind jumped back to four years ago, spinning in zero gravity aboard the Hydra. To screaming and firing his carbine over and over again, until old Croke took hold of his shoulder and assured him it was over.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I was part of a team that invaded an enemy ship during my first boarding action. I was twelve. My brother got hurt and I had to go in after him. I was firing my carbine at people, but I’m not sure if I hit anybody. Everything happened so fast—it was just a blur. I still dream about it, though.”
“A boarding action? Who were they?”
“Pirates. They were seizing Jovian ships and kidnapping the crews.”
“Oh,” Kate said, and he could see she was relieved. “I was worried you’d say it was an Earth ship.”
“It wasn’t,” Tycho said, thinking that it easily could have been. Kate’s father was his enemy. What did that make her?
“But the pirates were working for Earth,” he said reluctantly. “It was part of a scheme cooked up by an Earth bureaucrat on Ceres.”
“I see.”
They were silent for a moment. Tycho hesitated, then jumped. “That bureaucrat’s now your father’s boss, you know.”
“What are you talking about?” Kate asked.
The warmth was gone from her dark eyes now. But Tycho felt she needed to understand who her father worked for.
“Your emperor’s new war minister, Threece Suud. A couple of years back he was hiring every thug in the asteroid belt. He pretended they were diplomats and put them on merchant ships so privateers like us couldn’t seize them. And he hired a bunch of other thugs to serve as crewers for pirates led by a man named Thoadbone Mox.”
“I remember the incident you’re talking about,” Kate said stiffly. “The emperor was furious—he’d been lied to. And my father had nothing to do with it. He’d never associate himself with something like that.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Tycho said, trying to be gallant. “I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.”
She smiled at him. “But . . . misguided though they were, the ministers behind what happened were responding to a real problem—piracy in the outer solar system.”
Tycho shook his head. “If they were trying to do that, they would have been trying to capture Mox. Instead they were paying him. Their real goal was to stamp out privateering.”
His voice was raised, he realized—Yana was looking his way, her expression quizzical.
“Which shouldn’t exist,” Kate said, raising her own voice. “How are corporations supposed to do business knowing their cargoes will be stolen, or their factories won’t be supplied? They’re caught in the middle of a political disagreement that isn’t their fault. You’re attacking people who have never attacked you.”
“We’re defending our interests the only way we can.”
“By stealing from us?”
“By targeting your economic interests. We can’t compete with your military power, and we have no voice in your parliaments or corporations.”
“You have no representation because you declared independence! And you do have a voice in Earth corporations.”
“You just called them Earth corporations,” Tycho said smugly. “Which is correct, because they serve you, not us.”
Kate dropped her fork, which clattered on her plate.
“You know what I meant,” she said, snatching up the utensil. “Those companies have shareholders and operations all over the solar system, not just on Earth.”
“Even if we do have a voice, it isn’t heard,” Tycho said. “There are, what, twenty-five billion of you and a couple of million of us? Anything decided is always going to be in Earth’s favor.”
Kate smiled, and Tycho wondered what trap he’d fallen into.
“Shouldn’t what benefits twenty-five billion people outweigh what benefits two million?”
“Not if it means the two million people aren’t treated fairly.”
“And what would fair treatment mean?”
“That’s easy—freedom. What happens to our homes should get decided on Ganymede, not Earth. We need to be able to develop our own industries, without having to compete with yours at the same time. And we should be able to figure out these things without worrying that your war fleets will show up to stop us.”
“That seems fair to me—in a few hundred years,” Kate said.
Tycho blinked at her.
“Why’s that?”
&n
bsp; “Because it cost Earth trillions and trillions of livres to establish colonies in the asteroids and outer solar system. And it wasn’t just our government that did that—our corporations spent trillions of their own livres. That’s why they got a charter for the asteroid belt.”
“You’re talking about something that happened six hundred years ago. They’ve made their money back by now.”
“They haven’t come close, because of the independence movements. We did the work and are now expected to give you the rewards.”
“You didn’t do the work,” Tycho objected. “Settlers and miners and prospectors did—people like my ancestors.”
“We put up the livres, didn’t we?”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“Without the money, none of the work would have mattered.”
They glared at each other for a moment.
“So you’re saying we should all work for you,” Tycho said. “That we should be slaves paying off a debt we inherited from our ancestors.”
Kate shook her head. “I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that there are obligations in both directions.”
“What you’re saying sounds reasonable,” Tycho said, and Kate glanced at him suspiciously. “Except I’ve seen what Earth corporations do when no one’s looking. It was my family that found the secret Earth factories where Mox’s prisoners were taken, you know. They were slaves—and they’d still be there if we hadn’t found them.”
“We already discussed that. What happened was illegal, and a lot of people on Earth paid the price for it.”
“Threece Suud didn’t, apparently. I believe you that your father’s an honorable man. But he works for someone who’s anything but.”
Waiters were taking away the plates now. The string quartet took a break to scattered applause.
“My father can’t control who’s war minister,” Kate said.
“Fair enough. Why did he become a privateer, anyway?”
Kate bit her lip.
“He gave up his commission in the navy when I was a baby. He tried to rejoin the service a few years ago, but they wouldn’t take him—they said he was too old. So he responded to the call for privateers. He missed the adventure, I guess.”
Tycho nodded.