Starliner

by David Drake

"Yes," Ran's lips agreed.

  "There's a fishing community on the other side of the planet," she said. "It's been growing for fifty years. And it's been very successful commercially."

  "That's where you come from?" asked Ran. Her flesh was warm and smooth. The contact reassured him.

  "No," she said, "though I visit." Her slim, muscular fingers caressed Ran's bare shoulders.

  "They're good people," she said. "Their fathers cared about more things than they could find in Tarek's Bay—or in the New Port either." Her mouth worked in a moue of distaste. "That place is almost worse. It's sterile."

  "And their mothers?" Ran asked quietly.

  She pulled him dose again. Her erect nipples tickled his chest hair. "Their mother cares about the planet," she said. "Very much."

  She made a soft purring noise in her throat before she continued. "There's an address in the pocket on the driver's side. It's a public garage. Leave the car there when you get back to Tarek's Bay."

  "But . . . ?" Ran said.

  "I'm going to stay here and swim for a while," she explained. She giggled. "But afterward."

  She drew him down over her. Ran couldn't imagine that he'd be able to do either of them any good under the circumstances—

  But the circumstances took over. As she'd said, she was human. Or as dose as made no difference.

  HOBILO

  "Stabilized," said the Second Officer in a tone of relief, as though he personally had been pushing upward to bring the Empress of Earth to a halt above the surface of Hobilo.

  "Very good, Mr. Bruns," said Captain Kanawa. "Ms. Seligly, initiate docking sequence."

  The First Officer engaged the autopilot. The starliner shuddered as the artificial intelligence took command of the six tugs locked against the hull. Seligly's fingers fanned over the manual keyboard, touching nothing but ready to assert control at the first sign of a hiccough in the software.

  The Third Officer's console displayed the Mainland Terminal, a sprawl of buildings on raw red soil. The terminal was in the central highlands of Hobilo's larger continent. A web of pipes and monorail tracking joined at the terminal, but the lines' further ends disappeared into the mist-shrouded lowlands where all other human development on the planet had occurred.

  Seven ships were already on the ground at Mainland Terminal, besides the rusting hulks of a dozen more dragged to the edge of the plateau. Four of them were purpose-built tankers, comparable in size to the Empress herself. The others were combination vessels with large cargo holds and provision for a limited number of passengers.

  "Sir, we've beaten the Brazil in," the Third Officer noted.

  "We have?" said Kanawa. His voice was so empty of emotion that the officers who had served with him for several voyages knew that he was concerned.

  The Empress lurched, steadied, and began to drop at a smoothly constant rate of acceleration. Seligly tapped in a command to counteract a hint of rotation. One of the tugs was operating at well below optimum thrust, and the autopilot hadn't gotten the correction factor precisely right.

  "Bridge, give me a ground link," said Captain Kanawa, continuing to stand beside his console. His left hand switched the display from figures to a visual of the terminal, but he didn't bother to look at it.

  "Empress to Terminal Control," Kanawa continued after a pause.

  "Terminal Control," said a colorless voice. Because Kanawa was using the general pickup, the response came through the bridge speakers unless he chose to switch it through a lockout channel to his ears only.

  "Advise me as to the status of the starliner Brasil," Kanawa said. He stood rigidly upright, with his wrists crossed behind his back. "Over."

  Mainland Terminal swelled on the visual displays. At higher magnification, patches of jungle could be glimpsed through the mist over the lowlands.

  "The Brasil is seven hours and thirty-two minutes overdue," Terminal Control replied without emphasis.

  "Control," Kanawa ordered. "Switch me to a human operator. Over."

  The Empress trembled as the magnetic motors increased their braking thrust and the pulses reached a harmonic with the starliner's hull. The First Officer's fingers dipped, but this time the autopilot had erased the problem before Seligly could react to it.

  The speakers crackled, then burped as though someone had tapped a microphone. "Empress, this is supervisor Vogt," said a voice with normal human intonations. "What can I help you with? Over."

  "Ground, what's the situation with the Brasil?" Kanawa said. "You must have had some reports about her. Over."

  "Not a word, Empress," the terminal supervisor said. "We thought you might know something yourself. Over."

  "And why did you think such a bloody stupid thing as that?" shouted Captain Kanawa. "Empress of Earth, out!"

  All those on the Empress's bridge kept their eyes focused on their instruments. A rating swallowed a sneeze to keep from calling attention to herself. Her eyes bulged.

  Kanawa switched his console back to an alphanumeric display of thrust, fuel, and force vectors. It was the first time any of his bridge crew had seen the captain openly lose his temper.

  * * *

  "Know where you're going, Ran?" Wanda Holly asked from behind him on the noisy platform.

  "You bet," Ran said, turning. "But I haven't a clue to how I'm going to get there. I figured there'd be signs up in the station."

  The remaining contingent of Third Class passengers were marching down the rear ramp of the Empress into a huge shed whose sidewalk stood only a meter and a half high to permit the sluggish breeze to flow through. The emigrants looked around curiously, nervously. Some of them fanned themselves with their shirtfronts.

  "If it's this hot in the highlands," Ran added, "what's it like down where the settlements are?"

  "Muggy," Wanda said. "Not really hotter, but you can get used to anything if you have to. They'll have to," she added, nodding toward the emigrants.

  First Watch was responsible for off-loading this time. The task was deemed simple enough that Kneale hadn't drafted in personnel from other watches.

  "They don't seem to mind when they get off the ship here," she mused, as much to herself as to Ran. "But in a lot of ways, Biscay might be an easier place to live, once you settle in."

  Wanda shrugged, as though losing a weight. "Where is it you want to go, then?" she asked.

  "Taskerville," Ran said. "I'm not sure the place even exists anymore."

  "Oh, it exists, all right," Wanda said. She pursed her lips. "By way of Kilmarny," she said, "but it's on the Hunter's Hill line, and that's down at this—"she pointed and began walking "—end of the platform."

  Diesel-electric monorails passed with a hiss and the rattling of valves. Most of them were only two or three cars together, garishly painted but scraped and battered in appearance. The roof of the lead car invariably mounted a machine gun on a Scarff ring.

  Some of the rough-clothed men and women on the platform carried guns of their own, powerful rifles or even plasma weapons. Ran glanced at them and frowned.

  "It's for the wildlife," Wanda commented. "The Long Troubles ended when the Prophet Elias was hanged."

  Ran nodded. "I didn't know what . . ." he said.

  Wanda stopped at a two-car train whose engines chittered at idle. A metal sign above on the platform's overhang said Hunter's Hill, though corrosion had eaten away all but the first letter of Hill. Six people were aboard the train already. They sat in sullen apathy. Each guarded a bale of goods purchased or picked up at the port.

  Wanda thumbed toward the sign. "They figure on Hobilo that you either know where you're going or you don't. Either way, it's no concern to anybody else. Unless you're a load of oil."

  The monorail tracks dipped over one another leaving the terminal, but there seemed to be no common lines. Ran's index finger caressed the reader on his belt

  A man detached himself from a refreshment kiosk and walked toward the cab of the train. He glanced at the Trident officers but didn't s
peak.

  "That'll be the driver," Wanda said. She cleared her throat. "Do you want some company, Ran?" she added.

  "Yeah, I think maybe I would," Ran said. "But it must be out of your way?"

  A train accelerated out of the station with a squeal and clatter that devoured all conversation. Wanda Holly stepped to the cab and thrust a credit chip into the reader there. The driver watched without expression as he revved his engines up to operating load.

  "Taskerville," Wanda said. The AI in the device debited her chip by the amount of the fere. "There isn't much difference in where you are on Hobilo, except for Crater Creek, where the city's domed and environmentally controlled. I wouldn't mind seeing Taskerville."

  Ran paid his fere and followed Wanda into the lead car. The driver didn't bother to let them settle on the hard plastic bench before he threw his shift lever into drive and the train lurched forward.

  A small freighter screamed skyward on its own motors and those of a pair of tugs, making the monorail sway as it plunged off the plateau toward the misty forests below.

  "Why Taskerville?" Wanda said. When Ran didn't answer, she went on, "If you don't mind my asking?"

  Ran cleared his mind of an image of guns winking in a swamp, while muzzle blasts splashed the water beneath them. "Sorry Wanda," he said. "Because my Dad was here."

  Forest closed in as a green shadow. The driver extended a cutter from the bow of the lead car. Almost at once the sharp-edged loop began to slap at tendrils which had grown toward the line since the train made its inward run.

  "During the Troubles?" Wanda asked.

  "The end of them," Ran agreed. "It was three more months before they caught the Prophet, but Dad always said they'd broken the back of the Troubles at Taskerville."

  He licked his lips. "He was one of the mercenaries hired by the corporations. I once asked him what he'd gotten out of—being a mercenary. And he said, 'A lot of things to think about, Ran.' Later, I found the chips his helmet had recorded during, during Taskerville. And I thought I'd . . . see the place myself."

  "Your father's dead?" Wanda asked gently.

  "Oh, yes," Ran said. "Nothing left of him but bones and maybe a few memories."

  "No maybe there, friend," Wanda Holly murmured so softly that her lips scarcely seemed to move.

  Something the size and shape of a dirty gray blanket hung from a tree just off the cleared line. It rotated as the monorail passed. One of the passengers on the rear car fired her rifle at the creature without evident effect.

  Ran Colville's mind filled with bloody memories of sights his eyes had never seen.

  * * *

  "You can drive, you know," Oanh said as she pulled the aircar in a tight bank around a stand of conifers whose peaks reached many meters above the vehicle's present altitude. Oanh spoke harshly, and she showed a hard hand on the controls. They were traveling through the close vegetation at 40 kph.

  "I've never driven one like this model myself," Franz said precisely. "You're doing better than I could."

  He was half lying, but he didn't want a fight, and anyway, Oanh was in full control of the aircar. She was driving uncomfortably fast and cutting too close to obstacles, but those were deliberate ploys to get him to object—and thus put himself in the wrong.

  They blasted down a boggy creek. Bands of denser mist flicked past the windscreen of the open car.

  The danger was that in trying to make Franz react, Oanh would drive the vehicle into a tree or down the throat of a giant carnivore.

  A dozen quadrupeds weighing between one and three tonnes apiece browsed among the reeds. They lurched up on their hind legs as the car overflew them. Each male had a coiled resonator on the end of his beaked snout. They hooted in mournful surprise.

  Franz twisted in his seat to look back at the herbivores. "The guidechip said that you had to get much farther from the terminal to see herds like that," he said. "I guess it was wrong."

  "Well, that's not surprising," Oanh said, her eyes straight ahead and her hands clamped like claws on the controls. "Everybody's wrong except you, aren't they?"

  "Oanh, set her down and let's talk," Franz said.

  "I don't want to set down!" Oanh shouted. She turned to glare at her passenger. "And there's nothing to talk about anyway, since you've made up your mind!"

  "Love—"

  An air plant lowered a trailer from a high branch, angling for an open space in which its fluorescent bloom would be visible to the nectar-drinkers that fertilized it. The car slammed into the flower with a jolt and a splotch of sticky pollen that looked like a bomb-burst on the bow and windscreen.

  The tendril, freed of the flower whose weight it supported, sprang up. A coil of it snagged the barrel of the rifle Franz held upright beside his seat.

  "Hey!" the youth bellowed. He managed to grab the weapon before the plant pulled it away.

  Oanh gave a cry of despair and backed off the throttle. The aircar wobbled downward. They were headed toward a bed of spiky vegetation whose leaves slanted up at forty-five degrees to channel water to reservoirs in the stubby trunks.

  Franz started to say something. He decided not to. Oanh advanced the throttle again, adjusted the fan attitude to bring the car to a hover, and landed them ably in a patch of lace-leafed plants shaded by the branches of tall trees. The same tendril that grabbed the gun had snatched Oanh's cap off and raised a red welt across her forehead.

  Franz nestled the rifle back into its butt-clamp. The weapon was part of the rental vehicle's equipment, like the radio beacon, flares, and emergency rations.

  Oanh shut off the motors and slumped on her controls. Franz put his arm around the girl's shoulders and kissed her cheek because he couldn't reach her mouth. She twisted to return the kiss. Her lips were wet with tears, and she continued to sob.

  A pair of small creatures fluttered and chased one another through the branches above the vehicle. Occasionally a flash of vivid yellow would show through the foliage. Bits of bark pattered down.

  Oanh drew back. "You say you have to go," she said, enunciating carefully. "But you don't. We'll be diverting from Grantholm because of the war, so they can't take you off the ship. And you say you hate the war!"

  "The war is stupid and it's unnecessary," Franz said. "I knew that before I even met you. But I'm a Streseman, love, and I—have to go."

  "There's no have to," she pleaded. "Individuals have to make decisions for themselves. Otherwise there'll be more blood and more death and everybody loses!"

  The contradiction between Oanh's words and her determination to decide for Franz raised a touch of rueful humor in the boy's mind, but the expression didn't reach his lips. She was right, he supposed. And he was right, saying that he had to do his duty, because Stresemans did their duty at whatever the cost.

  The whole system was rotten, but Franz Streseman turning his back on ten generations of family tradition wasn't going to change it for the better.

  "I'm sorry," he said. He leaned toward her. For a moment, Oanh drew further away before she met his kiss. She began to cry again.

  An animal whuffed close by. Franz sat bolt upright. He couldn't see the beast, but it was large enough that he could feel its footsteps on the thin soil. He freed the rifle from its boot and chambered a round.

  Oanh wiped her face with her sleeve and switched the fan motors back on. The blades pinged through stems which had sprung into their circuit when the motors cut off. She swung the car steeply upward. A little forward angle would have smoothed the wobbly liftoff, but that would have taken them closer to the source of the noise while they were still at low altitude.

  The creature walked into the clearing on four legs. It had a barrel-shaped body with a small head and a meter-long spike on either shoulder. One of its eyes rotated separately to follow the aircar without a great deal of interest. Ignoring the soft vegetation underfoot, the creature lifted up on its hind legs and began stripping tree branches of their bark and prickly foliage.

  Franz l
aughed in relief. "Well, I guess it could've stepped on us," he said, "so I won't say it's harmless. The damned thing scared me out of a year's growth."

  "Are there more of them?" Oanh asked. She held the aircar in a hover, even with the herbivore's raised head. "It must weigh five tonnes."

  "At least," the boy agreed.

  He held the rifle gingerly, now that he didn't need it anymore. The weapon was of an unfamiliar design. Franz wasn't sure how best to empty the chamber, and he was afraid to put it back in its clamp with only the safety catch to prevent it from firing in event of a shock.

  They were both glad the creature had changed the subject, because they knew the discussion wasn't going anywhere.

  "The guideb—"Franz said.

  The creature that burst out of the shadowed undergrowth was bipedal and ten meters from nostrils to tailtip. It had the lithe ranginess of a bullwhip. As the herbivore tried to settle and turn, the attacker caught it with long, clawed forelimbs and slammed fanged jaws dosed on the victim's throat.

  "Back!" Franz screamed as he pointed his rifle over the side of the car and leaned into it. Oanh had already slammed her throttle against the stops, transforming the vehicle's hover into a staggering climb.

  The animals below shrieked like steam whistles as they rolled together across the forest floor. The carnivore kept clearof its victim's defensive spikes, but the shock of hitting even soggy ground beneath the tonnes of scaly body should have been devastating. A sapling twenty centimeters in diameter shattered when the creatures slammed against it.

  Franz took a deep breath and relaxed, swinging the rifle's muzzle upward again.

  "You didn't shoot," Oanh said. They were hovering again, a hundred meters in the air. The battle went on below through wrappings of mist roiled by the aircar's fans.

  Franz looked at his weapon. He still didn't know how to clear the chamber. "There wasn't any need," he said. "If I'd had to, I would have shot."

  Oanh was staring at him. It made him uncomfortable, though she no longer seemed angry. "Well," Franz said, "we're getting our money's worth of sightseeing, aren't we?"