Planet Pirates Omnibus

by neetha Napew

  “I’ll handle this my own way,” Orlig said brusquely. “Out. I want to go to sleep.” He sat down on the examination bed and swung his legs up, ignoring her.

  Irritated by his dismissal, Lunzie left. The door shut behind her, with the double hiss that meant the seals were being put on. What they had both forgotten was that Lunzie was the medic on record attending that accident. The CMO asked for a report on the status of the victim. Lunzie filled out the requisite forms but asked the CMO to keep it secure.

  “The man’s suffering from a mild paranoia.”

  “Don’t think I’d blame him with a wall blowing out like that. Those heavyworlder vendettas are costly.”

  “I’ve put him in one of the small treatment rooms. He felt safer there, but I’m trying to get him to transfer to the infirmary. He’d be safer from retaliation here.”

  Her next visit was brief, too. Orlig was improving so much that he had a raging case of cabin fever, and exploded at Lunzie.

  “Why haven’t you passed that brick on to Tor? What in the comet’s tail are you waiting for?”

  “I suppose I should just list it on the Bulletin Board that Lunzie Mespil, medic, wishes to speak with Thek Tor?” Lunzie snapped back tartly. “You told me not to draw attention to myself so I’m not.”

  “I risked my life for that information. You light-weights think you’re so smart - well, think up a plausible reason but pass that information on.”

  “When circumstances permit!”

  That began a screaming argument in which, to her surprise, Lunzie managed to hold her own. In retaliation, Orlig threw a few very personal insults at her that questioned her parentage and personal habits, and showed an intimate knowledge of the details of her life. Had Coromell actually given him access to her file? Shocked and offended, she marched out, vowing that it would be a warm and sunny day midspace before she’d go back.

  Three more shifts passed. Lunzie felt guilty for having lost her temper with Orlig. He was as much under strain as she was, and it was wrong to indulge in a petty fit of temper at his expense. She returned to the infirmary and tapped on the door.

  “Orlig? It’s Lunzie. Oh, whisky! Orlig? Let me in.”

  She tapped at the doorplate and the door swung partly in. It was neither locked nor sealed. Startled, Lunzie leaned cautiously forward to investigate. The chamber was dark inside, reeking with a peculiar, heavy smell. She passed her hand over the panel for lights, and jumped back, gasping at what she saw.

  There had been a fight. Most of the furniture was smashed or bent, and there were smears of blood on the walls. The sink had been torn out of the wall and stuffed halfway into the disposer unit. The equipment cabinets were smashed open, with their contents strewn throughout the chamber. Still attached to the wall, the shattered hand dryer sputtered fitfully to itself, dropping hot sparks.

  Orlig lay sprawled on the floor. Guiltily Lunzie thought for a moment that internal bleeding had begun again. The cause of death was all too evident. Orlig had been strangled. His face was darkened with extravasated blood, and his eyes bulged. She had seen death before, even violent death. But not ruthless murder.

  The marks of opposable digits were livid on the dead man’s windpipe. Someone with incredible strength had thrown Orlig all over the room before pressing him to the ground and wringing his neck. Lunzie felt weak.

  Only another heavyworlder could have done that to Orlig. And she’d thought that he was the biggest one on the ARCT-10. So who? And what did that person know or suspect about her? She checked the door to see how the killer had forced its way. But there was no sign of a forced entry. The seals were unsecured. Orlig had let his assailant into the room himself. Had the killer followed her, undetected, and overheard her use the agreed password? Or had Orlig overestimated his own returning strength and cunning? Sometimes being a lightweight was an advantage - you found it easier to recognise physical limitations.

  If the murderer should decide to eliminate Orlig’s medic on the possibility that the dead man had passed on his knowledge, she was once again in jeopardy from heavyworlders. How long had Orlig been dead? How much more “safety” did she have left?

  “I’ve got to get off this ship. Just finding Tor and passing on that brick are not going to be the answer. But how?”

  First she had to report the death to the CMO, who was appalled by the murder but not terribly surprised.

  “These guys are temperamental, you know. Strangest things set off personal vendettas.” But the CMO could and did slam a security lock on the details.

  Since the CMO didn’t ask more details from her, Lunzie ventured none. Enough people had seen Orlig manhandle her after the accident so that she would seem an unlikely recipient of any confidences. But she wouldn’t rest easy on that assumption. She continued to feel vulnerable. To her own surprise, she felt more anger than fright.

  She did take the precaution of attaching her personal alarm to the door of her cubicle at night. She was cautious enough to stay in a group at all times.

  “They wanted me to find him, that’s clear,” Lunzie mused blackly as she went about her duties the next day. “Otherwise, they’d have stuffed the body into the disposer and let the recycling systems have it. His absence might even have passed without any notice. Maybe I should grumble about patients who discharge themselves without medic permission.” She doubted that would do any good and scanned the updates on mission personnel with an anxious eye. Surely she could wangle the medic’s spot on the next one. Even if she had to pull out her FI ID.

  Chapter Twelve

  “It’s Ambrosia,” was her greeting from those in the common room the next morning. She recoiled in shock. “It’s Ambrosia!” people were chorusing joyfully. “It really is Ambrosia.”

  Lunzie was stunned to hear the dangerous statement delivered in a chant, taken up by every new arrival.

  “What’s Ambrosia?” she demanded of Nafti, one of the scientists. He grabbed her hands and danced her around the room in his enthusiasm. She calmed him down long enough to get an explanation.

  “Ambrosia’s a brand-new colonisable, human-desirable planet,” Nafti told her, his homely face wreathed in idiotic delight. “An EEC Team’s on its way in. The comlinks are oozing news about the most glorious find in decades. The team’s called it Ambrosia. Believe it or not, an E-class planet, with a 3-to-l nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere and .96 Earth gravity.”

  Everyone was clamouring to hear more details but the captain of the EEC Team was wisely keeping the specifics to himself until the ARCT-10 labs verified the findings. Rumours ranged to the implausible and unlikely but most accounts agreed that Ambrosia’s parameters made it the most Earthlike planet ever discovered by the EEC. Lunzie wasn’t sure of her reaction to the news: relief that “It’s Ambrosia” was now public information, or confusion. The phrase that had already cost lives and severely altered hers might have nothing at all to do with the new planet. It could be a ridiculous coincidence. And it could very well mean that the new planet might be the next target for the planetary pirates. Only how could a planet, which was now known to the thousands of folk on board the ARCT-10, get pirated out from under the noses of legitimate FSP interests by, if the past was any indication, even the most violent means?

  The arrival of the Team meant more than good news to her. Zebara was the captain. A lot easier to find than that one Thek named Tor. She asked one of the communications techs to add her name to the queue to speak to Captain Zebara when he arrived. A moment’s private conversation with him and she’d have kept faith with Orlig.

  Like most of her plans lately, that one had to be aborted. When Captain Zebara arrived on board, he was all but mobbed by the people on the ARCT-10 who wanted to be first to learn the details of Ambrosia. Lunzie heard he’d had to be locked in the day officer’s wardroom to protect him. Shortly afterward, an announcement was made by the exec officer that Zebara would speak to the entire ship from the oxygen-breathers’ common room. With a shipwide and translated broa
dcast, everyone could share Zebara’s news.

  Lunzie waited with Coe amid a buzzingly eager audience packing the common room. There was a small flurry as the Team Captain entered the room. Lunzie peered around her neighbours, saw a head of fuzzy blond hair, and belatedly realised that the man towered a good foot above most of those in the surrounding crowd.

  “He’s a heavyworlder,” she said, disbelievingly.

  “Zebara’s an okay guy,” Grabone said, hearing the hostility in Lunzie’s tone. “He’s different. Friendly. Doesn’t have the chip on his shoulder that most of the heavyworlders wear.”

  “He’s also not from Diplo,” added Coe. “He was raised on one of the heavyworld colonies which had a reasonably normal climate. I’d never thought climate had that much effect on folks, but he’s nowhere near as bad as the Diplos.”

  Lunzie did not voice her doubts but Coe saw her sceptical expression.

  “C’mon, Lunzie, he’s a fine fellow. I’ll introduce you later,” Coe offered. “Zebara and I are old buddies.”

  “Thanks, Coe,” Lunzie murmured politely. Zebara had a very catholic selection of friends if both Orlig and Coe were numbered among them.

  “Wait, he’s starting to speak.”

  Zebara was a good orator. He had a trick of smiling just before he let go of a piece of particularly encouraging data. His audience soon caught on and was almost holding its breath, waiting for the next grin. For a heavyworlder, whose features tended to be rough, Zebara was the exception, with a narrow face, a beaky, high-bridged nose and sharp blue eyes.

  Lunzie decided that his composure was assumed. He was as excited as his listeners were about his subject.

  “Ambrosia! Nectar of the gods! Air you want to drink as well as smell. Only it doesn’t smell. It’s there, light in the lungs, buoyant about you. This planet is fourth position out from a class-M sun, with a blue sky stretched over six small landmasses that cover only about a third of the surface. The rest is water! Sweet water. Hydrogen dioxide!” There was a cheer from the assembled as Zebara took a flask from his pouch and held it aloft. “There are of course trace elements,” he added, “but nothing toxic in either the mineral content or the oceanic flora. No free cyanides. Two small moons far out and one large one close in, so there are some spectacular tides. There’s a certain amount of vulcanism, but that only makes the place interesting. Ambrosia has no indigenous sentient life-forms.”

  “Are you sure?” one of the heavyworlder men in the audience shouted out.

  Sentience was the final test of a planet; the EEC prohibited colonisation of a planet which already had an evolving intelligent species. “Brock, we’ve spent two years there and nothing we tested had an intelligence reading that showed up on any of the sociological scales. One of the insectoids, which we call mason beetles, have a complicated hive society but EV’s are more interested in the chemical they secrete while hunting. It can melt solid rock. There’s a very friendly species which my xenobiologist calls kittisnakes but they don’t even have very much animal intelligence. There’re a lot of pretty avians” - a squawk of alarm rose from the Ryxi scattered throughout the crowded chamber-“but no intelligent bird life.” The squawks changed to coos. They were jealous of their position as the only sentient avians in the FSP.

  Zebara threw the meeting open for questions, and a clamorous chorus of voices attempted to shout one another down.

  “Well, this will take hours,” Coe sighed. “Let’s leave him a message and see him next shift.”

  “No,” Lunzie said. “Let’s stay and listen for a while. Then we’ll go down and wait for him by the captain’s cabin. I’m sure he’ll go there next, to give the administrators a private debriefing.”

  Coe looked at her admiringly. “For someone who hasn’t been with the EEC long, you sure figured out the process quickly.”

  Lunzie grinned. “Bureaucracy works the same way everywhere. Once he’s thrown enough to the lower echelons to keep ‘em happy, he’ll be sequestered with the brass until he satisfies their curiosity.”

  They timed the approach perfectly, catching the heavyworlder as he emerged from the turbovator near the administrative offices.

  “You came back in style from this one, didn’t you, Zeb!”

  “Coe! Good to see you.” Zebara and the brown- skinned man exchanged friendly embraces. The big man reached down to pat the smaller one familiarly on the head. “I’ve got to talk to the bitty big bosses right now. Wait for me?”

  “Sure. Oh, Zebara, this is Dr. Lunzie Mespil. She asked especially to meet you.”

  “Charmed, Citizen.” Cold blue eyes turned to her.

  Intimidated, Lunzie felt a chill go up her backbone. Nevertheless, she had a promise to keep. She thrust a hand at the heavyworlder who engulfed it in polite reaction. He felt the Fleet ID disk that she had palmed to him.

  “Congratulations on your discovery. Captain. I had a patient recently who told me to see you as soon as you got back.”

  “As soon as the brass finish with me, Lunzie Mespil,” he said, keenly searching her face. “That I promise you. Now if you’ll excuse me . . . Lunzie Mespil.” He gave her one more long look as he palmed the panel and let himself in.

  “Well, he got your name right at least,” Coe said, a bit sourly.

  “Who can ignore the brass when it calls? I’ll catch him later. Thanks for the intro, Coe.”

  “My pleasure,” Coe answered, watching her face in puzzlement.

  She left Coe there, right in the passageway, and went back to her cubicle to wait for a response from Zebara. The disk alone was tacit command for a private meeting. Why hadn’t she anticipated that he might be a heavyworlder? Because you don’t like heavyworlders, stupid, not after that Quinada woman. Maybe she should find Tor. She trusted Theks. Though why she did, she couldn’t have said. They weren’t even humanoid. Just the nearest thing we have to visible gods, that’s all. Well, she was committed now, handshake, cryptic comments and all.

  The passageway along which her space lay was almost empty, unusual for that time of day but she hardly noticed, except that no eyebrows or feather crests went up when she kicked a wall in frustration.

  Both Coe and Grabone spoke well of Zebara, and they hadn’t of any of the other heavyworlders. That said something for the man. If he’s at all loyal to the EEC - but if he doesn’t get back to me as soon as he’s finished debriefing, I’m finding me a Thek named Tor.

  Then something Zebara had said bobbed up in her thoughts. Zebara had been on Ambrosia for two years. Her first courier job had been less than a year ago, with Ambrosia the important feature. Had Zebara had an informant on his scout ship?

  With such uncomfortable thoughts galling her, Lunzie let herself into her room and changed into a uniform tunic for her infirmary shift. She tossed the off-duty tunic into the synthesiser hatch, to be broken down into component fibres and rewoven, without the dirt. The cool, efficient function of the machine made her recall Orlig’s body on the infirmary floor. Why had his killer left the body there? What had he expected her to do when she found it? Maybe she ought to have followed her initial impulse and run screaming from the little chamber, alerting everyone in earshot that she had found a murder victim. Maybe that would have been smarter. Maybe she’d outsmarted herself?

  The communications panel chimed, breaking into her morbid reflections. It let out a click as an audio pickup was engaged somewhere on the ship.

  “Lunzie,” said the CMO’s voice, “please respond.”

  She leaned over to slap the panel. “Lunzie here, Carlo.”

  “Where are you? There’s a Brachian in the early stages of labour. She’s literally climbing the walls. Someone said you were good with the species.”

  “Who said that?” Lunzie asked, surprised. She couldn’t recall mentioning her gynaecological experiences with anyone on the ARCT-10.

  “I don’t know.” That didn’t surprise her, for the Chief was notoriously bad at remembering names. “But if you are, I need you ASAP
.”

  “I’m on my way, sir,” she answered, fastening the neck of the tunic. Anyone would be a more capable midwife for a Brachian than the Chief.

  Lunzie slipped into the empty corridor. Her quick footsteps echoed loudly back to her in the long empty metal corridor even though she was wearing soft-soled boots. Where was everyone? She had neighbours on both sides who had small children. Probably all were still in the common room, rehashing Zebara’s talk. There wasn’t a spare sound within earshot, just the swish-thump swish-thump of her step. Curious, she altered her pace to hear the difference in the noise she made. There was a T-intersection just ahead. It would pick up the echoes splendidly. Abruptly, she lengthened her stride and the swish grew shorter and faltered. That wasn’t an echo of her own step. There was someone behind her, carefully matching her.

  She spun to see a human male, half a head taller than she, about ten paces behind her. He was a burly man, with brassy brown hair and a wide, ape-like jaw.

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  The man only grinned at her and moved to close the distance between them, his hands menacingly outstretched. Lunzie backed away from him, then turned and ran toward the intersecting corridor. Letting out a piercing whistle, the man dashed after her.

  He couldn’t be Orlig’s killer, she thought. He wasn’t big enough to have strangled the heavyworlder. But he was big enough to kill her if she wasn’t careful. She initiated the Discipline routine, though running was not the recommended starting position. She needed some time. Lunzie thought hard to remember if either corridor ended in a dead end. Yes, the right-hand way led to a thick metal door that housed a supplementary power station. She veered left. As she rounded the corner, a gaudily coloured female Ryxi appeared, stalking toward her.