Planet Pirates Omnibus

by neetha Napew

  “What was that Thek doing here?” Lunzie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Stev explained, puzzled. “I’m not sure what it was looking for out there in the asteroid field. They’re not easy to communicate with. This one is clearly friendly, but that’s all we know. It was instrumental in finding you. It pointed you out to young Miner Romsey.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t thank it,” Lunzie said flippantly. She pulled herself up into a sitting position. The human in white tunics rushed forward to support her as she settled against the head of the bed. She waved them away. “Where am I? This is the Mining Platform?”

  “It is.” The female medic smiled at her. She had perfectly smooth skin the colour of coffee with cream, and deep brown eyes. Her thick black hair was in a long braid down her back. “My name is Satia Somileaux. I was born here.”

  Lunzie looked at her curiously. “Really? I thought the living quarters on the Platform were less than fifteen years old. You must be at least twenty.”

  “Twenty-four,” Satia confessed, with a friendly and amused expression.

  “How long was I asleep?”

  The two doctors looked at each other, trying to decide what to say. Lunzie stared at them sharply. The dark-haired young man in the coverall shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other and cleared his throat. Banus shot him a sly, knowing look out of the corner of his eye and turned to face him. “I haven’t forgotten you, Illin Romsey. There’s a substantial finder’s fee for bringing a pod in, you know that.”

  “Well,” the young man grinned, squinting thoughtfully. “It’ll make up for losing that strike. Just. But I’d’a brought her in anyway. If I was shiplost, I sure hope someone would feel the same about bringing me home.”

  “Everyone is not so altruistic as you, young man. Self interest is more prevalent than your enlightened attitude. Computer, record Miner Romsey’s fee for retrieving escape pod . . . ?” The tall doctor looked to Lunzie for assistance.

  “NM-EC-02,” she said.

  “. . . and verify by my voice code. If a check is necessary, refer requests to me.”

  “Acknowledged,” said the flat voice of the computer.

  “There you go. Miner,” Stev said. “There’s no security classification, so if you want to beat the rumour mill with your news ...”

  Illin Romsey grinned. “Thanks. I hope all’s well for you, Dr. Mespil.” The young man dropped a courteous bow and left the room.

  Stev returned to Lunzie’s side. “Of course, the fee is nothing compared to the back salary that is owing to you. Doctor Mespil. You were in the Company’s employ at the time you underwent deepsleep. Descartes is honest about paying its debts. Come and talk to me later about your credit balance.”

  “How long have I been asleep?” Lunzie demanded.

  “You must understand where the miner found you. Your capsule was not recovered when the other two pods from the, er, ‘Nellie Mine’ were brought in. Even they were difficult to locate. The search took more than three months.”

  “Is everyone else all right?” she asked quickly, immediately concerned for the other fourteen members of the Nellie’s crew. Jilet had been so frightened of going into deepsleep again. She regretted not having ordered a sedative for him before he took the cryogenic.

  Dr. Banus swivelled the computer screen on the table toward him and drew his finger down the glass face. “Oh, yes, everyone else was just fine. There are normally no ill effects from properly induced cryogenic sleep. You should be feeling ‘all go and on green’ yourself.”

  “Yes, I do. May I make use of the communications center? I assume you notified my daughter, Fiona, when we escaped from the Nellie Mine. I’d like to communicate with her that I’ve been found. She’s probably been worried sick about me. Unless, of course, there is an FTL shuttle going towards Tau Ceti soon? I must send her a message.”

  “Do you think she’s still there?” Satia asked, frowning at Stev.

  Lunzie watched the exchange between the two. “It’s where I left her, in the care of a friend, another medical practitioner. She was only fourteen ...” Lunzie paused. The way the doctors were talking, it must have been a couple of years before they found the shuttle. Well, that was one of the risks of space travel. Lunzie tried to see Fiona as she might be now, if she continued to grow into her long legs. The adolescent curves must be more mature now. Lunzie hoped her daughter’s mentor would have had the clothes-sense to guide the girl into becoming fashions instead of the radical leanings of teenagers. Then she noticed the overwhelming silence from the others, who were clearly growing more uncomfortable by the minute. Her intuition insisted something was wrong. Lunzie looked suspiciously at the pair. When an FTL trip between star systems alone could take two or three years, a cold sleep stint at that length would hardly provoke worry in modem psychologists. More? Five years? Ten?

  “You’ve very neatly sidestepped the question several times, but I won’t allow you to do that any more. How long was I asleep? Tell me.”

  The others glanced nervously at each other. The tall doctor cleared his throat and sighed. “A long time,” Stev said, casually, though Lunzie could tell it was forced. “Lunzie, it will do you no good to have me deceive you. I should have told you as you were waking up, to allow your mind to assimilate the information. I erred, and I apologise. It is just such an unusual case that I’m afraid my normal training failed me.” Stev took a deep breath. “You’ve been in cryogenic sleep for sixty-two years.”

  Sixty-two --- Lunzie’s brain spun. She was prepared to be told that she had slept for a year, or two or three, even twelve, as Jilet had done, but sixty-two. She stared at the wall, trying to summon up even the image of a dream, anything that would prove to her that amount of time had passed. Nothing. She hadn’t dreamed in cold sleep. No one did. She felt numb inside, trying to contain the shock. “That’s impossible. I feel as though the collision occurred only a few minutes ago. I closed my eyes there. I opened them here. There is no gap in my perception between then and now.”

  “You see why I found it so difficult to tell you, Lunzie,” Stev said gently. “It isn’t so hard when the gap is under two years, as you know. That’s generally the interval we have here on the Platform, when a miner has an accident in the field and has to send for help. The sleeper falls a little behind in the news of the day, but there’s rarely a problem in assimilation. Working cryogenic technology is slightly over a hundred and forty years old. Your . . . er, interval is the longest I’ve ever been involved in. In fact, the longest I’ve ever heard of. We will help you in any way we can. You have but to ask.”

  Lunzie’s mind would still not translate sixty-two years into a perception of reality. “But that means my daughter ...” Her throat closed up, refusing to voice her astonished thoughts. Fumbling, her hand reached for the hologram sitting on the pull-out shelf next to the bed. She could have accepted a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old Fiona instead of the youth she left, but a woman of seventy-six, an old woman, more than twice her own age? “I’m only thirty-four, you know,” she said.

  Satia seated herself on the edge of the bed next to Lunzie and put a hand sympathetically on her arm. “I know.”

  “That means my daughter . . . grew up without me,” Lunzie finished brokenly. “Had a career, boy-friends, children. ...” The smile in the Tri-D image beamed out at her, touching off memories of Fiona’s laughter in her ears, the unconscious grace of a leggy girl who would become a tall, elegant woman.

  “Almost certainly,” the female doctor agreed.

  Lunzie put her face in her hands and cried. Satia gathered her in her arms and patted her hair with a gentle hand.

  “Perhaps we should give you a sedative and let you relax,” Stev suggested, after Lunzie’s sobs had softened and died away.

  “No!” Lunzie glared at him, red-eyed. “I don’t want to go to sleep again.”

  What am I saying? she thought, pulling herself together. It’s just like Jilet described to me. Resentment. Fear o
f sleep. Fear of never waking again. “Perhaps someone could show me around the Platform until I get my bearings?” She smiled hopefully at the others. “I’ve just had too much relaxation.”

  “I will,” Satia volunteered. “I am free this shift. We can send a query to Tau Ceti about your daughter.”

  The Communications Center was near the administrative offices in Cylinder One. Satia and Lunzie walked through the miles of domed corridors from the Medical Center in Cylinder Two. Lunzie was taking in the sights with her eyes wide open. According to Satia, the population of the Platform numbered over eight hundred adult beings. Humans made up about eighty-five percent, with heavyworlders, Wefts and the birdlike Ryxi, along with a few other races Lunzie didn’t recognise, making up the rest.

  Heavyworlders were human beings, too, but they were a genetically altered strain, bred to inhabit high-gravity planets that were otherwise suitable for colonisation, but had inhospitable conditions for “light-weight” normal humans. The males started at about seven feet in height, and went upward from there. Their facial features were thick and heavy, almost Neanderthal in character, and their hands, even those with proportionately slender fingers, were huge. The females were brawny. Lightweight women looked like dolls next to them. They made Lunzie nervous, as if they were an oversize carnival attraction. She had an uncomfortable feeling that they might fall over on her. Their pronounced brow ridges made many of the heavyworlders look perpetually angry, even when they smiled. She warily kept her distance from them.

  Satia kept up a cheerful chatter as they walked along, pointing out people she knew, and talking about life on the Platform. “We’re a small community,” she commented cheerfully, “but it’s harder to get away when you’re feuding with someone. Privacy centres are absolutely inviolable on a deepspace platform. They help at most times, but Descartes really does detailed personality analyses to weed out the people who won’t be able to get along on the Platform. There are community games and events every rest period, and we have a substantial library of both video and text. Boredom is one of the worst things that can happen in a closed community. I get to know everyone because I organise most of their children’s events.” Numbly, Lunzie kept pace with her, murmuring and smiling to Satia’s friends without retaining a single name once the face was out of sight.

  “Lep! Domman Lepke! Wait up!” Satia ran to intercept a tall, tan-skinned man in a high-collared tunic who was just disappearing between the automatic sliding doors. He peered around for the hailing voice, and smiled broadly when Satia waved.

  “Lep, I want you to meet a new friend. This is Lunzie Mespil. She was just rescued from deepsleep. She’s been lost for over sixty years.”

  “Oh, another deadtimer,” Lepke said disapprovingly, shaking hands. “How do you do? Are you a ‘nothing’s changed’ or an ‘everything’s changed’? Everyone is one or the other. That’s nothing. Listen, Satia, have you heard the latest from the Delta beacon? Heavyworlders have claimed Phoenix. It must have been pirated!”

  Satia, her mouth open to rebuke Lep for his insensitivity, stopped, her eyes widening with horror. “But that was initiated as an inhabited human colony, over six years ago.”

  “They claim not; that the planet was empty of intelligent life when they got there, but there should be lightweights on that planet right now. No sign of them, or their settlement, or any clue as to what happened to them. Wiped clean off the surface, if they ever made it there in the first place. The FSP are releasing a list of settlers - the usual: ‘anyone knowing the last whereabouts,’ and so on.” Lepke seemed pleased to have been first to pass along the news. “Possession and viability make a colony, so no one can deny their claim if there’s no evidence the planet was inhabited before they got there. The Others only know who’s telling the truth.”

  “Oh, sweet Muhlah! It must have been pirated! Come on, Lunzie. We’ll hear the latest.” Pulling Lunzie behind her, the slim paediatrician raced toward the communications center.

  When they arrived, there was already a large group of people gathered around the Tri-D field, talking and waving arms, tentacles, or paws.

  “They had no right to take over that world. It was designated for lightweight humans. They’re adapted to the high-gee planets. Let them take those, and leave the light worlds to us!” a man with red hair expostulated angrily.

  “It is not the first planet to be stripped and abandoned,” said a young female with the near-perfect humanoid features a Weft shapechanger usually assumed when living among humans. Lunzie looked around quickly to find the Weft’s co-mates. They always travelled in threes. “There was the rumour of Epsilon Indi not long ago. All its satellites were attacked at once. Phoenix is just the most recent dead planet brought to light.”

  “What happened to the colonists assigned to Phoenix?” a blond woman asked.

  “No one knows,” the communications tech said, manipulating the controls at the base of the holofield. “Maybe they never made it there. Maybe the Others got ‘em. Here, I’ll run the ‘cast again for those of you who missed it. I’m patching down files as quickly as I can strip them off the beacon.” The crowd shifted, as viewers who had already seen the report went away, and others pressed closer.

  Squeezing between a broad-shouldered man in coveralls and a lizardlike Seti in an Administrator’s tunic, Lunzie watched the report, which featured computer imaging of the new colony’s living quarters and their industrial complex. What had happened to the other colonists? They must have relatives who would want to know. Humans weren’t raised in vacuum. Each of these was somebody’s son. Or somebody’s daughter.

  “The FSP’s official report was cool, but you could listen between the lines. They are horribly upset. Something’s breaking down in their system. The FSP is supposed to protect nascent colonies,” the blond woman complained to the man standing beside her.

  “Only if they prove to be viable,” the Weft corrected her. “There is always a period when the settlement must learn to stand on its own.”

  “It was their gamble,” the Seti said, complacently, tucking its claws into the pouch pockets on the front of its tunic. “They lost.”

  “See here, citizens, if the heavyworlders can make a go of it, let them have the planet.” This suggestion was promptly shouted down, to the astonishment of the speaker, a florid-faced human male in coveralls.

  “It’s a good thing the FSP don’t have an attitude like yours,” another growled. “Or your children won’t have anywhere to live.”

  “There are plenty of new worlds for all out there,” the coveralled man insisted. “It’s a big galaxy.”

  “Look at us, we’re all acting like this is news,” the red-haired man grumbled. “Everything we get is months or years old. There’s got to be a faster way to get information from the rest of civilisation.”

  “Speed of light’s all I’ve got,” the tech smiled wryly, “unless you want to pay for a regular FTL mail run. Or talk the Fleet into letting us install an FTL link booster on the transmitter. Even that’s not much faster.”

  Lunzie peered into the tank at the triumphant face of the Phoenix colony’s leader, a broad-faced male with thickly branching eyebrows that shadowed his eyes. He was talking about agreements made for trade between Phoenix and the Paraden Company. All that was needed for a colony to be approved by the FSP was a viable population pool and proof that the colony could support itself in the galactic community. “. . . although this planet appears to be poor in the most valuable minerals, transuranics, there are still sufficient ores to be of interest. We have begun manufacture of . . .”

  “The heavyworlders shouldn’t claim that planet, even if the first colonists didn’t survive,” Satia declared. “There are many more planets with a high gravity than there are ones which fall within the narrow parameters that normal humans can bear.”

  “In my day,” Lunzie began, then stopped, realising how ridiculous she must sound, using an elder’s phrase at her apparent physical age. “I mean, when I
left Tau Ceti, the heavyworlders had just begun colonising. They were mostly still on Diplo, except for the ones in the FSP corps.”

  “You know, there must be a connection there somewhere, “ the red-haired man mused. ‘There was never planet-pirating before the heavyworlders started colonising.”

  A huge hand seized the man’s shoulder and spun him around. “That is a lie,” boomed the voice of a heavyworld-born man in a technician’s tunic. “Planets have been found stripped and empty long hundreds of years before we existed. You want to blame someone, blame the Others. They’re responsible for the dead worlds. Don’t blame us.” The heavyworlder glared down from his full seven feet of height at the man, and included Lunzie and Satia in his scorn. Lunzie shrank away from him. With a heavyworlder in its midst, the lightweight crowd began to disperse. None of the grumblers wanted to discuss Phoenix personally with one of the heavyweight humans.

  The Others. A mysterious force in the galaxy. No one knew who they were, if indeed a race of Others, and not natural cataclysm, had caused destruction of those planets. Lunzie suddenly had a cold feeling between her shoulder blades, as if someone was watching her. She turned around. To her surprise, she saw the Thek that had rescued her waiting on the other side of the corridor. It had no features, no expression, but it drew her to it. She felt that it wanted to talk to her.

  “Ccccccooooooouuuurrrrr . . . aaaaaaaaggggggeee .... Ssssuurrrrrr ..... vvvviiiiiiiivvvveee . . . .”it said, when she approached.

  “Courage? Survive? What does that mean?” she demanded, but the pyramid of stone said nothing more. It glided slowly away. She wanted to run after it and ask it to clarify the cryptic speech. Theks were known for never wasting a word, especially not on explanation to simple ephemerals such as human beings.

  “I suppose it meant that to be comforting,” Lunzie decided. “After all, it saved my life, leading that young miner to where my capsule was lodged. But why in the Galaxy didn’t it rescue me sooner, if it knew where I was?”