by Adam Carter
Instead of being annoyed, however, Harman was somewhat amused. It was things like this which made Iris Arowana such an exceptional woman to be around.
“It is my role, sir,” Harman said with a low bow. “The foolish slave with ideas above his station.”
Gardener did not seem to know what to say about that, but thankfully Arowana pushed matters forward. “If I am to buy a slave,” she said, “perhaps it would be an idea for me to be shown a few.”
“Of course, of course,” Gardener said. “Do you have any objections to us continuing our journey while we negotiate? It’s just that we have a schedule.”
“Non, non, you must do whatever necessary to meet your schedule, Captain. Do not let me keep you.”
“I’ll send word to Haskell. She’s what we call our slave driver. It has a somewhat aggressive sound to it, I’ll grant you, but it’s just her job title.”
“Excellent. Then you can let her know we are coming.”
“Certainly not, Mademoiselle. I would not dream of forcing a lady of the house of Dubois to go wandering down endless corridors. No, the slaves shall be brought to you, while you accompany me to better quarters.”
“Better quarters?”
“Somewhere we can drink, eat if you wish, and discuss terms of business.”
“Ah. This sounds a very good idea. Although … I think I should like to see where the slaves are being contained. I wish to see the conditions of their captivity.”
“Their conditions are company standard, I assure you. This ship is inspected every time we return to Malkavia.”
“Every time, Captain?”
He paused. “Most times. It’s true, we’ve missed a few checks recently, but we have schedules to keep. I can show you all our awards. Five-star certificates from every inspection we’ve ever had.”
Harman sucked in a breath. This was the moment where everything could fall apart. If Arowana insisted on going to the slaves, everything would fall apart here and now. Thankfully she smiled. “That would be acceptable, Captain. Come along, Wyatt.” She even clapped twice in his general direction, which forced him to stifle a grin at her performance.
The four of them departed the hangar and made their way to what was probably, for Captain Gardener, an impressive chamber. One entire wall was formed of transparent metal, so the blackness of space and the shining of the stars could be viewed from any of the comfortable chairs. There was a single oval table and little else. Harman had brought many women to many such places in his time, and he could have given Gardener about a thousand pointers on how to make the room actually appealing.
“What a splendid little chamber,” Arowana said.
“The crew come here to relax,” Gardener said. “We also use it whenever we have guests, which is rare.”
It wasn’t used every time they had guests, Harman noted, for Hawthorn and Wraith had not mentioned it. It seemed Captain Gardener meant it was used for female guests and Harman’s respect for him went up a notch.
“How about some music,” Gardener said, flicking a switch on the wall. The gentle sounds of pianos and harpsichords flooded the room. Gardener was using music to charm Arowana and he wasn’t even playing it himself. Harman considered that cheating.
Arowana glided into a seat and Harman almost joined her; then he remembered he was a slave so stood just beside and behind her chair. Captain Gardener sat opposite Arowana, while Rayne herself remained standing. It seemed junior officers did not get to sit down, either.
The door opened almost immediately and a man appeared. He was smartly dressed, mainly in black and white, and Harman felt if the man just wore a bowtie he could have been the cliché butler. The man wheeled a trolley into the room, upon which sat a bucket of ice. Within the ice was a bottle of something Harman decided was cheap but feigning to be expensive, which was a bad thing to give to a lady who had said one of her country’s chief exports was wine.
The butler set two glasses onto the table and uncorked the bottle.
“To business,” Gardener said, raising his glass once it had been filled.
“Always to business,” Arowana said. She swirled the wine in her flute before sipping it. “A most heady texture, sir. A New Berlin ’46?”
“A fine palate you have, Mademoiselle. I truly am impressed.”
“I know my wines, sir.”
Gardener raised his glass again. “Aux affaires, et aux bons vins.”
Arowana raised hers also. “I always toast to good wines, Captain.” She studied him while she sipped and as she set her glass down said, “You have reservations about me, Captain.”
“Reservations, Mademoiselle? No.”
“Yet you are testing me. You test my knowledge of wines and you test my knowledge of French. You are not certain of who I am.”
“You must forgive me, Mademoiselle. It is just that I’m a courier, little more. To find my vessel in all of space is difficult.”
“It is purposefully black, yes.”
“I meant to know my route as well. And you know my name, when, as I say, I’m just a courier.”
“A courier with schedules to keep,” she mocked playfully.
Harman wished he could make his excuses and leave, but that was not an option when one was a slave.
“I’m interested in personal slaves,” Arowana said. “My good friend the Lady Roberta Dumont has such pleasant slaves. Easy on the eye and without the insufferable backtalk one sometimes endures. I enquired as to where she purchased her slaves and, to cut the story short, your name cropped up. I reasoned you have a particular area from which you harvest your slave crop, so I came out here to intercept you. The Lady Roberta is looking to acquire two or three more for her household when next you pass through and I – well, I desired first pick.”
“I understand,” Captain Gardener said. “It’s rather pleasing to know my reputation precedes me. I wonder what’s happened to Haskell. She should have been up with some choice slaves by now.”
“Should I go see what’s keeping her?” Rayne asked.
“Good idea.”
“Pardon me, sir,” Harman said, “but might I accompany her? I know precisely what my mistress is looking for and could help with the selection.”
Gardener considered that. “If you have no objections, my lady?”
“None at all, Captain.”
“We shan’t be long, my lady,” Rayne said.
“Take as long as you need. Oh, and Wyatt?”
“Mistress?”
“If you so much as make a suggestive comment to young Miss Rayne I shall have you castrated.”
“Yes, mistress.”
“Oh, no, hang on, I won’t. I forgot, I had you castrated following the last incident. A nasty encounter, that one, Captain. Involved a horse of all things.”
Harman left with Rayne before Arowana could have any more fun at his expense.
Rayne proved pleasant company, yet while she smiled and nodded in all the right places Harman sensed she was a little nervous around him.
“That was a joke, by the way,” he said. “About the castration and the … other things.”
“It’s not my place to dictate how another woman’s slave behaves.”
“No, really, it was a joke. My mistress just loves to have a laugh at my expense.”
“Really, it’s nothing to do with me.”
The only way Harman could think to entirely disprove Arowana’s lie was to show Rayne some evidence, yet somehow he felt that would fall into the realms of making a suggestive comment. Instead he decided to keep silent.
The corridors of the Obsidian were long and somewhat bleak. They passed very few people, none of whom paid them much attention, and the farther they travelled from the captain the hotter the air was becoming. In fact, Harman was finding it a little difficult to breathe and he feared for a moment there may have been a leak into space somewhere.
“The systems tend to fail more often down here,” Rayne explained when she saw him taking deep b
reaths.
“Don’t you ever get them fixed?”
“They’ll be fixed. Eventually. The priority is getting the slaves to their destination intact and unharmed. If they’re a little uncomfortable along the way, it’ll be ironed out the other end.”
“Even chickens have laws to protect them.”
“Whether human or chicken, all livestock have laws to protect them when they’re being trafficked.”
“What do you think about what you do?”
“What do I do that I need to think about?”
“Human trafficking. Slavery’s illegal everywhere but Malkavia. Doesn’t that tell you it’s wrong?”
“Slavery’s wrong?” she asked with a twinkle to her eye. He might as well have told her Jupiter wasn’t a gas giant. “It’s strange how many volunteers we get if slavery’s so wrong.”
“Where do they all come from, anyway? I know you’re not allowed to export slaves outside of Malkavia, but you’re bringing these people into the country to begin with.”
“I don’t export anyone.”
“I mean you as a country. We as a country.”
“You are a strange one, Mr Earp. But, to answer your question, we usually target war zones. Captain Gardener is very good at swooping in, like a Valkyrie, and rescuing those who have been left behind and who would likely die otherwise.”
“And everyone knows what they’re getting into?”
“How do you mean?”
“They don’t just think they’re being rescued or something?”
She frowned. “They are being rescued.”
“Being rescued to be sold into slavery is not being rescued.”
“It’s having their lives saved. And yes, they each sign a contract before setting foot aboard the Obsidian. That’s the law, after all. Every single slave on this vessel has a contract in the captain’s desk. Everything’s legal and above-board.”
It was still wrong, but pressing the issue would not have made any difference so Harman surrendered on the idea. Carla Rayne was a sweet girl, but her morality needed to be reset. He was trying not to judge her too harshly, for she had grown up in a society where owning slaves was completely acceptable – she probably even had one herself. Harman did not like to think how he would have reacted to being born and raised in such a society. As a gypsy, Harman’s life was about freedom, and the thought of being owned by another human being was sickening to him.
“You should remember your station,” Rayne told him. “I can see Mademoiselle Dubois jokes with you, but you have to remember she does so because you amuse her. Push her too far and she’ll beat you.”
“My lady would never beat me.”
“No? Slaves need to be beaten from time to time, just to remind them they’re only half-people.”
Harman could not believe such harsh words could tumble from such sweet lips but bit back his response. The more time he spent with her, the more he was coming to dislike Miss Rayne. He was incredibly glad he had not made any lewd suggestions to her after all, for it would only have made him feel dirty.
They finished their journey in silence.
CHAPTER FOUR
There was nothing he could do, but that did not stop Hawthorn from worrying. The plan was for Arowana and Harman to scope out the slaver vessel and return with intelligence enough for the Glory to disable the Obsidian without needing to blast them to smithereens. Being a Carpoan battleship, Jupiter’s Glory would end the fight simply by turning up. If they could target key areas they would put themselves in a much better position to negotiate. Right now there was nothing Hawthorn could do but drum his fingers on the pilot’s console and wait, and he did not like waiting.
“Run this by me again.”
Hawthorn looked irritably across the command deck to Cassiel. There were six people who called the Glory home: Hawthorn, Arowana, Wraith, Harman, Hart and Cassiel. Ever since Hawthorn and Arowana had gone on the run together they had acquired more and more baggage.
Cassiel was someone who had stowed away when they had passed through the small moon of Themisto. Being tiny, Themisto had a population to match and their entire society was devoted to one religion. Cassiel was – apparently – eighteen and had wanted to see something other than the inside of her church walls for the rest of her life. Hawthorn could not blame her for stowing away – he had himself wanted to get away from Themisto only two minutes after having set foot on the place – but getting rid of her would now be a problem. With Arowana on the run from Securitarn, it would have been a very bad idea to let anyone off the Glory knowing as much as they did.
Cassiel, as with all acolytes of Themisto, was completely covered at all times. It was extreme sacrilege to allow any of her skin to show, the idea being that if all acolytes were always covered no one could tell an acolyte’s age, skin colour or sex. It made all worshippers equal before God and was something Hawthorn could even understand. That Cassiel continued the tradition seemed a little pointless, because everyone on the Glory knew who she was and that she could not possibly have been any other random acolyte.
She had abandoned the clumsy robes of Themistonian society and had taken to wearing a rather odd form-fitting black suit made of leather and cloth. She claimed to have found it in a storeroom aboard the Glory, which was probably true since Hawthorn had not explored every inch of the ship. Why she had chosen to wear something like that was another question entirely, and he was somewhat afraid of the answer.
“Run what by you again?” Wraith asked when Hawthorn did not answer her. “The plan? Harman and Iris go in. They come back. We take the Glory in and rescue the slaves.”
“Oh, I get the plan,” she said from where she was leaning against a wall, her arms folded while she thought. “I just don’t get why we’re doing it.”
“Why we’re doing it?” Hawthorn asked. “We’re doing it because Iris doesn’t like slavery. I’m not too keen on it myself.”
“Why didn’t we at least vote on this?”
“Vote? What would we need to vote for? You’re saying you agree with slavery?”
“I’ve read about slavery,” Cassiel said. “Not all slaves are treated badly, and it can even be beneficial. Debt slavery, for instance.”
“Debt slavery? Why am I afraid to ask?”
“If someone has debts, he can sell himself into slavery for a few years to pay it off.”
“Isn’t that just called getting a job?”
“Saint Onesimus was reunited with his former master, Philemon, when they independently converted to Christianity. There’s a wonderful quotation about him returning not as a slave, but as a brother.”
“I could do without biblical quotations, thank you.”
Cassiel shrugged. It was an extremely teenaged thing to do; it really got on Hawthorn’s nerves when she did things like that.
“For what it’s worth,” Wraith said, “we don’t have slaves on Carpo. We don’t have much of anything on Carpo and all the people who are there are busy trying to kill each other in our fight for space.”
“We’re both from small worlds, Wraith,” Cassiel said, “but we couldn’t be more different. Themisto doesn’t have slaves, either. I’m just saying I understand the benefits of slavery. On worlds where there are far too many people, job opportunities must be scarce. I reckon for the people on board the Obsidian, this is the only way they can feed themselves and their families. Which is why I mentioned debt slavery, because this isn’t all that different.”
“I’m not getting into this debate with you,” Hawthorn said.
“Well maybe you need to. How far are you willing to go, Gordon? Are you willing to kill the slavers just to free slaves who don’t want to be freed? And what are you going to do with them afterwards?”
“No one’s killing anyone. Wraith, tell her.”
“I happen to agree with her.”
“What?”
“Unless you have an alternative life for all these people, we’d be doing them a favour just leaving the
m where they are. We may not understand other people’s cultures, but we should at least respect them.”
Hawthorn looked from one to the other, but he could see there would be no getting through to either of them. Wraith thought it was too much trouble to do something and Cassiel was adamant they would be the ones in the wrong should they actually do anything. It was pointless continuing the argument but he was glad it had not gone to a vote after all. Hart did not care for rescuing the slaves, either, so even if Harman agreed with Hawthorn and Arowana it would have come down to a tie.
He resumed drumming his fingers upon his console. Arowana and Harman would be back soon, and if they brought enough intelligence with them they could move in with the Glory no matter what half its crew believed.
“Gordon,” Wraith said, “you going to answer that?”
Hawthorn noticed the flashing on his console and angrily thumped the receive button. He should have been paying attention, but these two had got him so riled up he wasn’t doing his job properly.
“Iris?”
“Hello?”
The voice belonged to a woman, but it was not Iris Arowana.
“Hello,” Hawthorn said. “Who is this?”
“Is this the Lady Dubois’s ship?”
Hawthorn exchanged a concerned glance with the others. “And who might the Lady Dubois be?”
“She came here in a small craft, I saw it through the window. It was short-range so she must have a main ship out there somewhere.”
“What’s your name?”
“Rosalita.”
“And what can I do for you, Rosalita?”
“Are you the Lady Dubois’s ship?”
“Does it matter if we are? What do you want?”
“I’m on board the Obsidian. It’s a slaver vessel.”
“Good for you. What do you want?”
“I want a rescue.”
Suddenly Hawthorn was interested. “Explain that. I thought,” he said with a smug look at his companions, “the slaves on board that ship were happy and content with their lot in life.”