Starliner

by David Drake

  If necessary, ceiling nozzles could spray contact anesthetic. With a full manifest of four thousand plus, it would normally come to that at least once during loading.

  "You think Colville's got a bleeding heart for the Thirds, the way Ms. Holly does?" Mohacks asked idly.

  "That one?" Babanguida sneered. "His heart don't bleed for nobody, starting with himself. But I don't think he likes us, Howie boy. Saying something about the cattle sheds—"

  Babanguida waggled an elbow toward the interior of Third Class.

  "—where he can hear us would be just the kind of excuse he'd like to bust us back to Ship Side and get a couple newbies he could snow."

  The black rating snorted. "He's got games of his own, you bet. He knows we'd see through him and he'd have to cut us in."

  The barracks sections were being filled in a checkerboard pattern rather than solidly from the ends to the middle. When the bulkheads were down, they outlined a narrow corridor in woven shades of gray and pastels. Once the ship was under way, the corridor bulkheads would become transparent though those between sections remained opaque.

  "Like a prison in there," Mohacks said as his eyes followed the spaced column of emigrants. "Get out for two hours exercise in twenty-four, and that with a thousand others. Never see a woman—or a man, if you are one, 'cepting the crew."

  "Bloody little of that this run," Babanguida muttered. "Not till we suss out Colville, and I'm not real hopeful."

  He chuckled, then went on, "Still, so far as these Chinks go . . . It's clean in there and it's safe. The food's not fancy but it's good enough. I ate worse when I signed on with Union Traders out of Grantholm. You don't need to feel sorry for them."

  When a staff guide had delivered a group, he or she returned quickly along the even narrower passage mounted on one side of the emigrant's walkway. Occasionally an emigrant would be startled to see someone in uniform going in the opposite direction. The guides patted the passengers' shoulders and murmured reassurance before they moved on.

  "Sorry for them?" Mohacks said. "Not me, buddy. My brother Buck was on a tramp carrying a Mahgrabi labor battalion around the Rutskoy Cluster—harvesters, you know."

  "Your brother Buck?" Babanguida interjected. "You were on the Ildis in the Rutskoy, and I know it because I saw your experience record on your ID."

  "That may have been," Mohacks said in an aloof voice, "but this happened to Buck. Like I was saying, they got to Marignano for the vintage and it was just good luck that there was a squad of hardcase Grantholm labor supervisors aboard because they could catch a scheduled run home from Marignano. You know that sort—they didn't trust anybody with a dark complexion."

  "Happens I do know them, you bet," Babanguida agreed grimly.

  "So there's Buck on watch, half asleep and nothing but a pistol by him. The Ildis, the tramp, she comes out of sponge space, and bingo! up come four hundred Mahgrabis and tear down the bulkheads. He shouts and drops the first five—"

  "He just started shooting?" Babanguida said. "At passengers?"

  "At Thirds," Mohacks replied, "except on the Ildis they called them cargo. Anyway, one of Buck's rules is 'When in doubt, empty the magazine.' It wouldn't have done much good, though, only about the time Buck got to the hatch with the other three hundred and some screaming Mahgrabis behind him, down come the Grantholm crew. They carried shotguns and submachine guns in their cabin baggage, and I don't mind telling you the next thirty seconds was pretty busy."

  "I don't believe you've got a brother," Babanguida said.

  "Sure I do," his companion said. "Well, when the smoke cleared, damned if the captain didn't sober up enough to see there was an intra-system packet bearing down on a converging course. It blew two magnetics, trying to brake when it saw the Ildis wasn't stopping. Buck hopes they went sailing on out till they all froze, 'cause a hundred to one they were going to crew the ship once the labor battalion took it over. It was all planned."

  Babanguida sniffed.

  "It happened just like I said," Mohacks protested. "Any starship, even a tramp, is worth a fortune. What the Empress's worth, well . . . if you ask me, they could mount flamethrowers down here in Third and I wouldn't mind."

  "That I might believe," Babanguida said. "But if you've got a brother, then I'm President of Trident Starlines."

  Gray-clad emigrants moved along. A child began to sing in a loud voice. His mother shushed him, then flashed a nervous smile at Mohacks and Babanguida as she passed.

  Her expression glowed with inner hope.

  * * *

  The male Szgranian facing Kneale in the VIP Lounge was twenty centimeters shorter than the commander and, though relatively broad in proportion to the human, had a flattened look. He wore a parcel-gilt silver breastplate covered with jagged symbols which Kneale supposed were writing, and his harness was hung with six holstered weapons.

  One for each hand.

  A generation or so ago, Trident Starlines had accepted the argument that the weapons of a Szgranian warrior were cultural artifacts which the warrior had to be allowed on shipboard. Even then, the company had forbidden projectile weapons, but the swords which Szgranians wielded with their upper pair of arms and the broad-bladed push daggers for the middle pair were permitted.

  That ended with an unfortunate incident on the old Princess Royal. An aide to the female head of a Szgranian clan decided his mistress had been defiled by the offer of a birthday cake. It was the chef's unfortunate notion to mold the cake in the lady's own likeness, but the table steward paid the price. He was lopped into several pieces before four of the vessel's officers piled onto the aide and overpowered him.

  Since then, Szgranians wore cultural artifacts of demonstrably non-functional plastic, for so long as they were in spaces controlled by Trident Starlines. Nevertheless, the aide had a set of teeth developed to pulp hard-shelled grain—Szgranians were vegetarians, not omnivores—and which could go through major human bones like a hammermill.

  "You are the captain?" the aide squeaked forcefully. He was accompanied by five other Szgranians. They were presumably of lower rank, because their rig-outs were less glittering in precisely regulated stages. Despite the strong jaws, most Szgranians could be mistaken for Terrans from the neck up.

  "I'm Commander Hiram Kneale," Kneale boomed back. No one familiar with Terran hippos expected a species to be placid because it was vegetarian. "If you want a starship navigated, Captain Kanawa is your ma*. If you want honor done to a passenger, I am the highest ranking officer for the purpose in Trident Starlines. I represent the Empress of Earth!"

  The aide snorted and stepped back to the group of his subordinates. They chittered at one another, waving their arms like a storm in a pine thicket, while Kneale waited stolidly.

  Szgranians per capita traveled about as frequently as any other non-human race with which mankind had come in contact. The handiworks of the Szgranian craftsman class, particularly carvings in the round accomplished on a jig with double mirrors, were exquisite and in demand at high prices throughout the civilized universe. The foreign exchange they earned permitted the upper level of Szgranian society to travel at will.

  Despite that, relatively few starship officers had experience with Szgranians. The mistress of a clan traveled with a huge entourage—several hundred in the present case of Lady Scour—but no individual ever left the planet. Either you had scores of Szgranians on your plate, or none. Given that most of the travelers were nobles, warriors by birth and breeding and extremely punctilious of their clan's honor, learning to deal with Szgranians was much like learning to swim by being thrown into the deep end of the pool.

  This was Kneale's third experience with a party of Szgranians, but it would be the first for Holly and Colville. They were both solid officers, though; and they had to learn some time.

  The aide returned. Szgranians moved with the grace of gazelles. They seemed stiff until you realized how fast and precisely they accomplished every physical task.

  "Commander Hi
ram Kneale," the aide trilled. He curtsied to indicate Kneale's high rank—a prerequisite if the clan mistress was to be entrusted to him. "Lady Scour will honor you with her presence. Please await her."

  He took a spherical gong of chiseled iron from his belt and struck it with the fingertips of the middle hand on the opposite side. An angelically clear note filled the lounge.

  The aides crouched like a party of Hindu gods preparing for a footrace, their culture's attention posture. In the bottom pairs of their holsters, above the "quaint" swords and knives, were non-functioning copies of pistols every bit as modern as those in the Empress of Earth's small armory.

  The same wealth on which Szgranians traveled the galaxy allowed them to import the advanced weapons which guaranteed planetary independence. Szgrane's nearest neighbor through sponge space was Grantholm. The degree of Grantholm influence was limited sharply by knowledge that a planet with a suicidally brave warrior class and energy weapons could be destroyed but not ruled by outsiders.

  Commander Kneale braced his back and clicked his heels together. In theory, every First Class passenger boarding the Empress of Earth was a VIP. Certainly most thought of themselves in that fashion. Realistically, though, a foreign potentate who took a block of sixty-four cabins and an imperial suite expected bowing and scraping beyond the general norm. Thus the VIP lounge, though it was officially called the Special Needs Room of the Trident terminal.

  A double line of Szgranian attendants entered the room and flared to either side. Lady Scour stepped between them like shot from the muzzle of a blunderbuss. Commander Kneale bowed low, thinking, Good lord, she's beautiful!

  Szgranian females of the upper class were larger than the males—a common occurrence in polyandrous species. Lady Scour was Kneale's height though of a willowy build. She moved with a suppleness so strikingly different from that of her male attendants that the commander wondered whether their metal breastplates made them awkward. Again, it was possible that the clan mistress was simply unique of her species. Kneale was willing to believe that.

  Lady Scour's garment was a one-piece trouser-suit of purple silk matched perfectly to the color of the irises of her large eyes. Instead of sleeves, her arms extended through a fringed slit on either side. Her skin was covered with a light down like the belly fur of a cat, and the thin fabric left no doubt that Szgranians were mammals—albeit four-dugged mammals.

  "You may rise, Commander Kneale, and lead me to my quarters," Lady Scour announced, speaking Standard in a well-modulated voice. Szgranians of all classes were notable linguists. Those who traveled beyond their planet rarely needed AI translators. Even so, Lady Scour's accent and enunciation were exceptionally good.

  "Thank you, milady," Kneale replied. He touched his commo transceiver to the inner doorway of the , lounge and said, "Kneale here. Is our path clear? Over."

  Bridge replied to the prepared question by throwing' a holographic chart up from the commander's reader. Kneale had arranged a route to the Szgranian wing which, though not the most direct, was fully controllable. It went through the Cabin Class areas in which Bridge could lock passengers in their compartments while stewards cleared the corridors. That sort of highhandedness in First Class would cause problems.

  Fewer problems, though, than running a party of hot-tempered Szgranians—not human, and not civilized by human standards—through a mass of people, some of whom were certainly arrogant enough to gawp and laugh. During most of the voyage, Lady Scour's party could be expected to stay within the wing blocked off for their use. Commander Kneale was determined to avoid insults—and retribution—during boarding and disembarking. If he'd had to cleara First Class corridor, he'd have done so.

  Lady Scour offered her lower right arm. Szgranians used their various pairs of arms for socially distinct purposes. No doubt she was making a statement regarding their relative rank, but that was her affair. Kneale had only to keep her happy. He crooked the arm in his and stepped through the automatically opened inner doorway.

  Kneale's two ratings, Bechtel and Blavatsky, had manually draped the portion of the gangway beyond into a red velvet tunnel. Kneale strode up it with Lady Scour beside him. Her entourage, except for the aide with the gong who marched alone, followed the leaders in double column.

  "How did you get along with Rawsl?" Lady Scour asked. "My chief aide?"

  "Hmm?" said Kneale. Szgranian hearing was within human parameters, though biased toward slightly higher pitches. Rawsl could certainly listen to diem. "Quite well, madam. He appeared very—" Professional? Alert? "—gallant."

  "I rather fancied him at one time," the clan mistress said coolly. "Indeed, he's quite well born, and I was thinking of adding him to my lovers—until one of my maids mentioned that she thought Rawsl was handsome. Don't you find that things are terribly denied by the appreciation of the lower orders, Commander?"

  "Umm," said Kneale. "That's a—an understandable attitude, madam."

  Maybe somebody understood it. Kneale wasn't sure he wanted to meet that person, though.

  Their feet touched the firm resilience of the Empress of Earth's deck. Lady Scour's fine legs flexed like a cat's.

  "Welcome to the finest ship in the galaxy, Lady Scour," Kneale said, glad to be able to change the subject.

  The bulkhead at the head of the gangway was mirrored. In its reflection, Commander Kneale saw that Rawsl's fists were clenched, all six of them.

  * * *

  Abraham Chekoumian looked at the Social Hall's bandstand—a copy of the Rostra, complete with projecting bronze rams like those the Romans had taken from captured Carthaginian ships. Holographic temples cloaked the wall beyond. Chekoumian thrust his hands in his pockets, flaring the skirt of his magenta jacket, and laughed loudly.

  "Pardon, sir?" asked a female crewman passing at that moment. She was attractively short and plump, with shingled black hair that contrasted nicely with her brilliantly white uniform.

  "Oh, I—"Chekoumian said. He grinned broadly. "I'm very happy, you see. I'm here in this—"he took out one hand and pointed, waggling the index finger in a circle "—this luxury, I who worked my passage from Tblisi five years ago in the hold of a tramp freighter as a baggage handler. And—"

  He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a pack of letters in durable spacemail envelopes. Chekoumian's garments were cut and styled to the moment. His trousers were pale pink, while his shirt and shoes were identical shades of teal—the Now Neutral, according the arbiters of Terran fashion. The slight shimmer at the seams came from threads of metallic gold used in the stitching.

  "—I'm going to be married!" he cried. "Do you know what these are, ah—Blavatsky! But what is your real name?" He waved at her nametag. It rested at a slant on the rating's breast because of the swell of the bosom beneath it. "Your given name?"

  "Well, Marie, sir," Blavatsky admitted, "but I think Commander Kneale would prefer that with passengers—"

  "Poof, Commander Kneale!" Chekoumian said with a theatrical flourish of his letters. "When you have the same name as my beloved Marie, I should call you 'Blavatsky' as if you were some cargo pusher in my warehouse? And I am Abraham Chekoumian, but you must call me Abraham."

  "Well, I certainly wish you and your fiancee every happiness, Mr. Chekoumian," Blavatsky replied. She'd come to the conclusion that the passenger was simply very happy, as he'd said, rather than a madman about to erupt; but it was her job to check dining table assignments with the Chief Steward in three minutes, and she couldn't dismiss Commander Kneale with the aplomb of a First Class passenger.

  "I came to Earth to make my fortune," Chekoumian said, looking around the Social Hall with satisfaction. "And so I have done!"

  There were already several hundred passengers present, many of them with their seat backs reclined so that they could look upward. On the morning and afternoon before undocking, it was traditional for First Class passengers to gather in the lounge. A bird's-eye holographic projection on the ceiling showed the Empress of Earth in her
berth as ground crews and their machinery swarmed about with the final preparations.

  Blavatsky realized that Chekoumian wasn't bragging about his wealth, precisely. He knew that no matter how successful he had been, a substantial part of the Empress's passenger list could buy him a dozen times over. His was the self-made man's pride in his success—a matter worthy of the emotion, in Blavatsky's terms.

  "Well, sir," she said, "you've picked the right ship to go home on, then. The Empress means success!"

  Unless you rode her in Third Class, in the spaces that would double as cattle byres when the Empress of Earth lifted from Calicheman.

  The passenger beamed at Blavatsky. He wasn't listening, but he was glad of her presence because he needed an audience to burble his joy aloud. "Marie doesn't know I'm coming back," he explained, waving the sealed letters again. "I'd return when I'd made my fortune, we agreed, and every two weeks of those five years she's sent me a letter. By the Brasil or by the Empress, voyage and voyage. And what I've done—"

  Chekoumian looked around to see who else might be listening. No one was. He added in a confidential voice anyway, "—you see, these past three months, when I knew I was going home to marry Marie, I've saved her letters. I'm going to read one at each planet-fall, and then when we reach Tblisi—I'll have my Marie herself."

  Blavatsky looked at the passenger. He was a sophisticated man as well as being rich and successful. Unlike many of those in the Social Hall, Chekoumian wore his stylish clothes with practiced ease. He wasn't dressing up for the voyage; he looked as he did to his business associates, at what must be a very high level of his field of endeavor.

  But he was also childishly enthusiastic, especially when he was talking about his Marie. Blavatsky smiled, genuinely pleased by Chekoumian's good fortune—and his fiancee's. Her expression couldn't be pure laughter, though, because she remembered how recently she'd thought she was that happy also.

  "Five years ago, I had nothing but the clothes I stand in," reminisced Chekoumian. He looked around at the ivoroid and silk, at successful passengers and the images of a supernal empire on the walls. "Ship's clothes they were, too, bought from the bosun's slop chest. And now, only five years—the Beakersdorff chain decides they must have my connections on Szgrane and K'Chitka. They pay me a million three—so much from nothing, in five years!"