Planet Pirates Omnibus

by neetha Napew

  “Oh, Tee, I am so glad to see you. Did the captain tell you what happened?”

  “He did. What an ordeal, my Lunzie!” Tee exclaimed. “What was the scream I heard?”

  “An overactive imagination, nothing more,” Lunzie said, self-deprecatingly. She was ashamed that Tee had heard her panic.

  “The captain suggested that you would trust me to bring your possessions. Of course, you might not want to see me ...” He let the sentence trail off.

  “Nonsense, Tee, I will always trust you. And your coming means that the captain got safely back. That’s an incredible relief.”

  Tee grinned. “And I’ve got orders to continue to confuddle whoever it is that sends assassins after my good friends. When I leave here, I am going to the local Tri-D Forum and watch the news until dawn. Then I am going to an employment agency to job hunt.” Tee held up a finger as Lunzie’s mouth opened and closed. “Part of the blind. I go back to the ship when you are safely out of the way and no connection can be made between us. Now, is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “Yes indeed,” Lunzie said. “I never got past the appetizer and I haven’t eaten since you and I had breakfast this morning. I don’t dare trust room service, but I am positively ravenous. If the wooden walls didn’t have preservative varnishes rubbed into them, I’d eat them.”

  “Say no more,” Tee said, “though this establishment would suffer terrible mortification if they knew you’d gone for a carryout meal when the delights of their very fancy kitchens are at your beck and call.” He kissed her hand and slipped out of the room again.

  In a short time, he reappeared with an armful of small bags.

  “Here is a salad, cheese, dessert, and a cold bean-curd dish. The fruit is for tomorrow morning if you still feel insecure eating in public restaurants.”

  Lunzie accepted the parcels gratefully and set them aside on the bedtable. “Thank you. Tee. I owe you so much. Give my best to Naomi. I hope you and she will be very happy. I want you to be.”

  “We are,” Tee smiled, with one of his characteristic wide-flung gestures. “I promise you. Until we meet again.” He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. “I always will love you, my Lunzie.”

  “And I, you.” Lunzie hugged him to her heart with all her might, and then she let him go. “Good-bye, Tee.”

  When she let him out and locked the door, Lunzie sorted through her dufflebags. At the bottom of one, she found the holo of Fiona wrapped securely in bubblepack. Loosening an edge of the pack, she took the message cube out of her boot. At the bottom of the bubblepack were two small cubes that Lunzie cherished, containing the transmissions sent her by her daughter’s family to Astris and the Ban Sidhe. One more anonymous cube would attract no attention. Unless, of course, someone tried to read it in an unauthorised reader. She hoped she wouldn’t be in the same vicinity when that happened. She could wish they’d used a less drastic protection scheme; what if an “innocent” snoop were to get his hands on it? She would have to be very careful. Hmm . . . she mused. Maybe that was the point.

  Lunzie tried to go to sleep, but she was wide awake again. She put on the video system and scrolled through the Remote Shopping Network for a while. One of the offerings was a security alarm with a powerful siren and flashing strobe light for travellers to attach to the doors of hotel rooms for greater protection. Lunzie bought one by credit, extracting a promise from the RSN representative by comlink that it would be delivered to the hotel in the morning. The parcel was waiting for her at the desk when she came down early the next day to check out. She hugged it to her as she rode down to the spaceport to find a berth on an express freighter to Tau Ceti.

  Chapter Ten

  Two weeks later, Lunzie disembarked from the freighter Nova Mirage in the spaceport at Tau Ceti and stared as she walked along the corridors to the customs area. The change after seventy-five years was dramatic, even for that lapse of time on a colony world. The corrugated plastic hangars had been replaced by dozens of formed stone buildings that, had Lunzie not known better, she would have believed grew right out of the ground.

  She felt an element of shock when she stepped outside. The unpaved roads had been widened and coated with a porous, self-draining polyester surface compound. Most of the buildings she remembered were gone, replaced by structures twice as large. She had seen the Tau Ceti colony in its infancy. It was now in full bloom. She was a little sad that the unspoiled beauty had been violated although the additions had been done with taste and colour, adding to, rather than detracting from their surroundings. Tau Ceti was still a healthy, comfortable place, unlike the gray dullness of Alpha Centauri. The cool air she inhaled tasted sweet and natural after two weeks of ship air, and a week’s worth of pollution before that. The sun was warm on her face.

  Lunzie appreciated the irony of carrying the same dufflebags over her shoulder today that she had lugged so many decades before when she had left Fiona there on Tau Ceti. They’d all showed remarkably little visible wear. Well, all that was behind her. She was beginning her life afresh. Pay voucher in hand, she sought Nova Mirage’s office to collect her wages and ask for directions.

  The trip hadn’t been restful but it had been fast and non-threatening. The Nova Mirage, an FTL medium-haul freighter, was carrying plumbing supplies and industrial chemicals to Tau Ceti. Halfway there, some of the crew had begun to complain of a hacking cough and displayed symptoms that Lunzie recognized as a form of silicosis. An investigation showed that one of the gigantic tubs in the storage hold containing powdered carbon crystals had cracked. This wouldn’t have mattered except that the tub was located next to an accidentally opened intake to the ventilation system; the fumes had leaked all over the ship. Except for being short fifty kilos on the order, all was well. It was merely an accident, with no evidence of sabotage. A week’s worth of exposure posed no permanent damage to the sufferers, but it was unpleasant while it lasted.

  Lunzie had had the security alarm on her infirmary door during her sleep shift. It hadn’t let out so much as a peep the entire voyage. The hologram and its attendant cubes remained undisturbed at the bottom of her dufflebag. None of the crew had sensed that their friendly ship’s medic was anything out of the ordinary. And now she was on her way to deliver it and her message to their destination.

  “I’d like to see Commander Coromell, please,” Lunzie requested at Fleet Central Command. “My name is Lunzie.”

  “Admiral Coromell is in a meeting, Lunzie. Can you wait?” the receptionist asked politely, gesturing to a padded bench against the wall of the sparsely furnished, white-painted room. “You must have been travelling. Citizen. He’s had a promotion recently. Not a Lieutenant Commander any more.”

  “Admiralties seem to run in his family,” Lunzie remarked. “And I’ll be careful to give him his correct rank. Ensign. Thank you.”

  In a short time, a uniformed aide appeared to escort her to the office of the newly appointed Admiral Coromell.

  “There she is,” a familiar voice boomed as she stepped into the room. “I told you there couldn’t be two Lunzies. Uncommon name. Uncommon woman to go with it.” Retired Admiral Coromell stood up from a chair before the honeywood desk in the square office and took her hand. “How do you do. Doctor? It’s a pleasure to see you, though I’m surprised to see you so soon.”

  Lunzie greeted him with pleasure. “I’m happy to see you looking so well, sir. I hadn’t had a chance to give you a final checkup before they told me you’d gone.”

  The old man smiled. “Well, well. But you surely didn’t chase me all the way here to listen to my heart, did you? I’ve never met a more conscientious doctor.” He did look better than he had when Lunzie saw him last, recently recovered from cold sleep, but she longed to run a scanner over him. She didn’t like the look of his skin tone. The deep lines of his face had sunken, and something about his eyes worried her. He was over a hundred years old which shouldn’t be a worry when human beings averaged 120 Standard years. Still, he had b
een through additional strain lately that had no doubt affected his constitution. His outlook was good, and that ought to help him prolong his life.

  “I think she came to see me. Father.”

  The man behind the desk rose and came around to offer her a hand in welcome. His hair was thick and curly like his father’s, but it was honey brown instead of white. Under pale brown brows, his eyes, of the same piercing blue as the senior Coromell’s, bored into her as if they would read her thoughts. Lunzie felt a little overwhelmed by the intensity.

  He was so tall that she had to crane her head back to maintain eye contact with him.

  “You certainly do tend to inspire loyalty, Lunzie,” the Admiral’s son said in a gentle version of his father’s boom. He was a very attractive man, exuding a powerful personality which Lunzie recognized as well suited to a position of authority in the Intelligence Service. “Your friend Teodor Janos was prepared to turn the galaxy inside out to find you. He certainly is proficient at computerised research. If it were not for him, I wouldn’t have had half the evidence I needed to convince the Fleet to commission a ship for the search, even with my own father one of the missing. It’s nice to finally meet you. How do you do?”

  “Very well. Admiral,” Lunzie replied, flattered. “Er, I’m sorry. That’s going to become confusing, since both of you have the same name, and the same rank.”

  The old man beamed at both of them. “Isn’t he a fine fellow? When I went away, he was just a lad with his new captain’s bars. I arrived two days ago and they were making him an admiral. I couldn’t be more proud.”

  The young admiral smiled down at her. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one Admiral Coromell,” and he gestured to his father. “Between us, Lunzie, my name will be sufficient.”

  Lunzie was dismayed with herself as she returned his smile. Hadn’t she just vowed not to let anyone affect her so strongly? With the painful breakup with Tee so fresh in her mind? Certainly Coromell was handsome and she couldn’t deny the charm nor the intelligence she sensed behind it. How dare she melt? She had only just met the man. Abruptly, she recovered herself and recalled her mission.

  “I’ve got a message for you, er, Coromell. From Captain Aelock of the Ban Sidhe.”

  “Yes? I’ve only just spoken with him via secure-channel FTL comlink. He said nothing about sending you or a message.”

  Lunzie launched into an explanation, describing the aborted dinner date, the murder of Aelock’s contact and the attempted murder of the two of them. “He gave me this cube,” she finished, holding out the ceramic block, “and told me to tell you, ‘It’s Ambrosia.’ “

  “Great heavens,” Coromell said, amazed, taking the block from her. “How in the galaxy did you get it here without incident?”

  The old Admiral let out a hearty laugh. “The same way she travelled with me, I’ll wager,” he suggested, shrewdly. “As an anonymous doctor on a nondescript vessel. Am I not correct? You needn’t look so surprised, my dear. I was once head of Fleet Intelligence myself. It was an obvious ploy.”

  Coromell shook his head, wonderingly. “I could use you in our operations on a regular basis, Lunzie.”

  “It wasn’t my idea. Aelock suggested it,” Lunzie protested.

  “Ah, yes, but he didn’t carry it out. You did. And no one suspected that you were a courier with top secret information in your rucksack - this!” Coromell shook the cube. He spun and punched a control on the panel atop his desk. “Ensign; please tell Crypotography I want them standing by.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the receptionist’s voice filtered out of a hidden speaker.

  “We’ll get on this right away. Thank you, Lunzie.” Coromell ushered her and his father out. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to keep this information among as few ears as possible.”

  “Well, well,” said the Admiral to an equally surprised Lunzie as they found themselves in the corridor. “May I offer you some lunch, my dear? What d’you say? We can talk about old times. I saw the most curious thing the other day, something I haven’t seen in years: a Carmen Miranda film. In two-D.”

  Lunzie passed a few pleasant days in Tau Ceti, visiting places she’d known when she stayed there. It was still an attractive place. A shame, on the whole, that there hadn’t been a job here for her seventy-four years ago. The weather was pleasant and sunny, except for a brief rainshower early in the afternoon. By the hemispheric calendar, it was the beginning of spring. The medical center in which she worked had expanded, adding on a nursing school and a fine hospital. None of the people she’d known were still there. Flatteringly enough, the administrator looked up her records and offered her a position in the psychoneurology department.

  “Since Tau Ceti became the administrative center for the FSP, we’ve seen a large influx of cases of space-induced trauma,” he explained. “Nearly a third of Fleet personnel end up in cryogenic sleep for one reason or another. With your history and training, you would be the de facto expert on cold sleep. We would be delighted if you would join the staff.”

  Tempted, Lunzie promised she’d think it over.

  She also interviewed with the shipping companies who were based on Tau Ceti for another position as a ship’s medic. To her dismay, a few of them took one look at the notation in her records indicating that she’d been in two space wrecks and instantly showed her the door. Others were more cordial and less superstitious. Those promised to let her know the next time they had need of her services. Three who had ships leaving within the next month were willing to sign her on.

  She spent some time with old Admiral Coromell, talking about old times. She also found it affected her profoundly to be in a familiar venue in which no one remembered many of the events that she did. To her, less than four years had passed since she had left Fiona there. The Admiral was the only other one who recalled events of that era and he shared her feelings of isolation.

  Two weeks later, Coromell himself stopped by to see her at the guest house where she had taken a room.

  “Sorry to have booted you and Father out of the office the other day,” he apologised, with an engaging smile. “That information required immediate attention. I’ve been working on nothing else since then.”

  “My feelings weren’t hurt,” Lunzie assured him. “I was just incredibly relieved that I’d got it to you. Aelock had impressed its important on me. Several ways.” The assassin’s grim face flashed before her eyes again.

  Coromell smiled more easily now. “Lunzie, you’re a tolerant soul! To cross a galaxy with an urgent message and find the recipient is brusque to the point of rudeness. May I make amends now that all the flap is over and show you around? Or, perhaps, it’s more to the point that you show me around. I know you’d been here when Tau Ceti was just started.”

  “I would enjoy that very much. When?”

  “Today? With the nights I’ve been putting in, they won’t begrudge me an afternoon off. That’s why I came over.” He held open the door and the sunlight streamed in. “It’s too nice a day, even for Tau Ceti, to waste stuck indoors.”

  They spent the day in the nature preserve which had been Fiona’s favourite haunt. The imported trees, saplings when she left, were mature giants now, casting cool shade over the river path. Following her memory, Lunzie led Coromell to her and Fiona’s favourite place. The brief midday showers had soaked the ground and a heady smell of humus filled the air. In the crowns of the trees, they could hear the twitter of birdsong celebrating the lovely weather. Lunzie and Coromell ducked under the heavy boughs and clambered up the slope to a stone overhang. At one time in the planet’s geologic history, stone strata had met and collided, shifting one of them upward toward the surface so that a ledge projected out over the river.

  “It’s good for sitting and thinking, and feeding the birds, if you happen to have any scraps of bread with you,” Lunzie said, half lying on the great slab of sun-warmed stone to peer down into the water at small shadows chasing each other down the stream. “Or the fishoids.”<
br />
  Coromell patted his pockets. “Sorry. No bread. Perhaps next time.”

  “It’s just as well. We’d be overrun with supplicants.”

  He laughed, and settled next to her to watch the dappled water dance over the rocks. “I needed this. It’s been very hectic of late and I get to spend so little time in planetary atmosphere. My father has talked of no one else but you since he got here. He married late in life and doesn’t want me to make the same mistake. He’s lonely,” Coromell added, wistfully. “He’s been working on throwing us together.”

  “I wouldn’t mind that,” Lunzie said, turning her head to smile at him. Coromell was an attractive man. He had to be on the far side of forty-five but he had a youthful skin and, out of his official surroundings, he displayed more enthusiasm than she supposed careworn or rank-conscious admirals usually did.

  “Well, I wouldn’t either. I won’t lie to you,” he replied carefully. “But be warned, I can’t offer much in the way of commitments. I’m a career man. The Fleet is my life and I love it. Anything else would run second place.”

  Lunzie shrugged, pulling pieces of moss off the rock and dropping them into the water to watch the ripples. “And I’m a wanderer, probably by nature as well as experience. If I hadn’t had a daughter, I’d never have been trying to earn Oh-Two money to join a colony. I enjoy travelling to new places, learning new things, and meeting new people. It would certainly be best not to make lifetime commitments. Nor very good for your reputation to have a time-lagged medic who’s suspected of being a Jonah appearing on your arm at Fleet functions.”

  Coromell made a disgusted noise. “That doesn’t matter a raking shard to me. Father told me about the chatter going on behind your back on the Ban Sidhe. I should put those fools on report for making your journey harder with such asinine superstitious babbling.”

  Lunzie laid a hand on his arm. “No, don’t. If they need shared fears and experiences as a crutch to help them handle daily crisis, leave it to them. They’ll grow out of it.” She smiled reassuringly, and he slumped back with a hand shielding his eyes from the sun.