by Alex Stewart
“You’ve got your contract, John.” Her tone was casual, but I’d attended enough of my mother’s soirees to spot the steel beneath the pleasantries, a knack Remington clearly shared. “It’s not up for renegotiation.”
“And it doesn’t cover babysitting either,” the guilder replied, in equally casual tones.
“You won’t have to hold his hand, I can assure you.” Aunt Jenny took another sip of her whisky.
Remington looked thoughtful for a moment. “Tell you what I’ll do,” he said, as though it wasn’t precisely what he’d been willing to offer all along, “I’ll give him one run, out to Numarkut, see how he does. If it all works out, and he’s as good as you say, I’ll take him on, full Guild apprenticeship. If not, he’s on his own. Plenty of opportunities for a smart lad in a system like Numarkut.” Abruptly, he turned to me. “What do you say?”
“You’re on,” I heard my mouth reply, before my brain could catch up with it. If this went wrong, I’d be stranded beyond the borders of the Commonwealth, with only my wits to rely on, and no way home. If I even wanted to return: there certainly wasn’t much to come back to, beyond, possibly, Aunt Jenny’s guest room, and I wasn’t sure even she’d be that happy to see me again.
Remington nodded, appraisingly. “Outer docks, arm seven, bay three, twenty-two hundred tomorrow. Don’t hang around, because I won’t.” He rose, with a courteous inclination of his head to my seated aunt. “Smart lad you’ve got there, Jen. Not slow to grab an opportunity. One of us is doing well out of this.”
“We all are, John. It’s just a question of who’s doing best.”
Remington smiled, with what looked like genuine amusement. “I’m under no illusions on that score. I’ve known you too long.” Then he was gone, weaving his way casually through the slalom of tables.
“What did he mean by that?” I asked.
My aunt smiled, draining her glass and depositing it on the tabletop in front of her with a satisfied clunk. “He’s worked for me before. Contract haulage, that kind of thing.”
“Right.” I took a sip of my forgotten ale, finding that it had warmed up enough in the interim to be almost palatable. “And he’s so keen to be shifting dried rations for the Fleet Auxiliary, he’ll take on a new apprentice just because you ask.”
“Of course he won’t.” Aunt Jenny signaled for another drink. “He’s a Guilder. It’s all about what’s in it for him.”
“Which is?” I asked.
“Initially, just another hand. If he’s lucky, which he is in this case, an apprentice who’ll learn enough quickly enough to become a real asset. But the main thing is, he’ll think I owe him a favor.”
“And will you?” I asked.
Pity and amusement mingled on her face. “Of course not. But every time he gets a contract from the Auxiliary that pays a little over the odds from now on, he’ll think that’s the reason. Which means I can trim the margins a little more on the others without him noticing.” She thought for a moment. “For a while, at least.”
“Isn’t that a bit dishonest?” I asked, trying to sound less shocked and disapproving than I actually felt.
“Of course not.” The serving drone arrived again, and my aunt snagged her drink from its back before it had time to settle on the table between us. “It’s business. That’s just how things work.” She took a sip, and regarded me thoughtfully for a moment. “My real job’s where the ethically flexible stuff comes in.” She looked at me with a faint air of expectation.
"Your real job?" I asked, totally failing to grasp whatever it was she was driving at. Operational logistics seemed enough of a full-time job for anyone.
Aunt Jenny sighed, as though I'd somehow disappointed her. "For Naval Intelligence," she said.
I’d seen and read enough thrillers to have all the usual ideas about what secret agents were like, and my aunt definitely didn’t fit the mould. They were supposed to be debonair sophisticates living in luxurious apartments in the most glamorous of locales, not middle-aged middle-rankers in cramped maisonettes with dodgy gravitation, on the fringes of a dormitory suburb. I said as much, in appropriate tones of incredulity, and Aunt Jenny laughed so loudly that several heads turned in our direction.
“I’m afraid the reality’s a lot duller than the virts,” she said, sipping her drink to recover her composure. “I haven’t had a fight on a train roof in years.” I must still have been bearing a remarkable resemblance to one of the stuffed fish in Dad’s study, because she added, “kidding, Simon,” and kicked my ankle under the table.
Which didn’t really hurt; but somehow the very banality of the gesture made the whole thing suddenly real to me. Shrugging off my natural surprise I took another mouthful of ale, which was actually beginning to taste like a proper drink at last as it began to approach room temperature, and tried to get my head around the fact that everything I thought I knew about my aunt was completely wrong.
“Of course it isn’t,” she rejoined briskly, when I spoke the thought aloud. “I’m the same person you always knew. The only thing that’s different is my job.” She thought for a moment. “One of them, anyway.”
“But you don’t really work for the Fleet Auxiliary,” I persisted, “do you? That was a lie.”
“Who says?” She was enjoying this, I could tell, a faint half smile hovering over her face like mist rising from a dew-soaked lawn. “I’m one of the best logisticians we’ve got. Ask anyone.”
“But that’s just your cover story, right?” I asked. That was one of the commonest elements of espionage stories. Spies had identities and professions they assumed in order to gain access to the information they wanted. But surely the Commonwealth’s intelligence services would have no reason to infiltrate their own Navy’s logistics division—they were all on the same side. Or at least they were supposed to be.
“No, it’s my job,” Aunt Jenny explained, in much the same tone I remembered from her early attempts to teach me the alphabet. “I really am a lieutenant commander in the Fleet Auxiliary, and I put in long hours making sure the Navy has what it needs when and where it needs it.”
I could feel my forehead furrowing. “But—” I began.
Aunt Jenny cut me off with a gesture. “While I’m doing that, I’m also talking to merchants, shipping brokers, and Guilders about why they can’t get particular items to particular places without more time and money than I’m willing to give them. Conversations which might suggest, for instance, that my opposite numbers in the League are stockpiling supplies in certain systems, which implies in turn that some of their naval assets are likely to arrive there relatively soon. Information our own strategic planners might find interesting.”
“I see,” I said, finally beginning to feel some firm ground underfoot. “So you’re a real logistics officer, who just passes on snippets of intel from time to time.” I was quite proud of the abbreviation, which I’d picked up from some thriller or other, and which I felt showed some familiarity with the nuts and bolts of espionage.
“I do nothing of the kind,” Aunt Jenny snapped. “I’m a professional intelligence agent, who’s been in the field since before you were in diapers. More of which I changed, I might add, than your mother ever did.” That, at least, I had no trouble in believing. “I evaluate everything that comes in through my network, and my recommendations are listened to.”
I felt as if the floor was dropping away rapidly beneath me, although that might have been at least partially due to the fact that the ale I was drinking seemed less than keen on peaceful coexistence with the pies I’d had earlier. “But you just said your real job was logistics,” I protested feebly, feeling more out of my depth than ever.
“So it is,” my aunt said, before relenting in the face of my obvious confusion. She smiled, in a slightly condescending way. “They’re both my real job. Most people see one of them, a few the other. Me, I see it all mesh together. Couldn’t tell you where one ends and the other begins, these days.” She drained her glass, and signal
ed for another. “End of the day, I don’t see that it even matters. Shipping boots, or telling ’em where to march, it’s all serving the Commonwealth one way or another.”
“I suppose it is,” I said, still wondering why she’d decided to confide in her double life to me. The one thing I was already certain about was that I was probably not going to appreciate her reasons, whatever they were.
“Would you?” Without warning, she was looking me straight in the eye, the moment of introspection already over.
“Would I what?” I replied, playing for time. If she wanted what I suspected she did, she could damn well ask in so many words.
“Serve the Commonwealth.” Her gaze grew more intent. “Given the opportunity.”
“I was given the opportunity,” I said. “But I screwed it up.”
“Yes. You did.” My aunt nodded, thoughtfully. “For a principle. Bit worrying, that, but you might still do.”
“Do for what?” I asked, still determined to hear her say it.
“A small job for me. The other me, that is. Not the Naval Auxiliary officer.”
“You want me to be a spy?” I couldn’t help myself: the cool, slightly sardonic tone I’d adopted in my head came out of my mouth as something closer to an excited squeal.
The corner of Aunt Jenny’s mouth quirked, in what might have been a hastily suppressed smile. “You won’t be getting any exploding toothpaste, or a rifle disguised as a backscratcher, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said. “But apart from an over-active conscience, you seem to have most of the right skills.”
“Which are?” I asked, beginning to find the game of question and frustratingly partial answer more than mildly irritating, but with hindsight I suspect it was simply another test—or, perhaps, a tutorial, in the art of mining information in apparently negligible nuggets.
“You’re an opportunist.” I opened my mouth reflexively to protest, but found myself nodding in agreement. I wouldn’t have put it quite like that myself, but still . . . “You see an opening, and you can’t resist exploiting it. Like the weakness in the Academy’s block.”
“And?” I asked, perhaps a little more brusquely than I’d intended, uncomfortable with the reminder of my own folly. “You said skills. Plural.”
You made this, Aunt Jenny sent, indicating the sneakware still floating in our conjoined ‘spheres. A “hobby” that cracked some Navy grade defenses. Your sister tells me you have a knack for this kind of thing.
“You’ve spoken to Tinkie about me?” I asked, unable to conceal my surprise. “What did she say?”
“Nothing complimentary,” my aunt assured me, and I felt a kind of numb despair settle heavily into my stomach, where it sat awkwardly, elbowing its way in between the beer and the ill-advised pies. I’d already realized that any kind of reconciliation with my sister was at best unlikely, but having it confirmed so casually still hurt. “But she did confirm your suitability for this kind of work, in a roundabout sort of way.”
“Pleased to hear it,” I said, conscious of sounding anything but.
She said she’s seen you using this, Aunt Jenny continued, then grinned at me conspiratorially. “I didn’t ask when or where, but she didn’t seem all that surprised that you’d been able to crack the Academy. Has Anastasia been a bit careless about taking her work home?”
“You’re the security expert, you tell me,” I replied, and her grin widened fractionally.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what it was?” I asked, and she shook her head sadly.
“Now that’s disappointing, Simon. You just confirmed you’ve been somewhere else you shouldn’t have. Mistake like that could get you shot in the field.” She took a sip of her newly arrived drink. “If I really wanted to know what it was, I wouldn’t have to ask you, would I? I’d have found out a long time ago.”
“I suppose you would,” I said. “Anything else?”
“About what?” For the first time since our conversation began she seemed to be on the back foot, which surprised me a little—unless that was what I was supposed to think. It was beginning to dawn on me that from now on I wouldn’t be able to take anything anyone said to me at face value.
“Your little list,” I said. “Of things that made you think I’d be good at this.”
My aunt shrugged. “You’re stubborn. You found this place a lot quicker than I expected. That about covers it.”
So I’d been right. Her disappearance had been a test. I shrugged too, and finished my ale, with as much nonchalance as I could manage. “That was luck, more than anything.”
“So you’re lucky, too. Make the most of it, but don’t rely on it. Because the minute you do, it’ll bugger off.” She drained her own glass, and stood abruptly. “Come on. I’m starving. I’ll buy you a pie.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
In which I meet a father and daughter,
and make friends with one of them.
To my unspoken relief, Aunt Jenny didn’t come to the docking arm to see me off. Having her there would have felt too much like my arrival at the Academy, and those were memories I really didn’t want to relive. There was also the matter of my cover to consider: Remington thought she was getting rid of me as a favor to the family, and if he saw us apparently on good terms just before embarkation he was smart enough to suspect that there was something else going on we hadn’t told him about.
Which, of course, there was. Numarkut, our destination, was one of those rare stellar systems with rift connections to half a dozen others, rather than the mere one or two most stars possessed, which made it a thriving nexus for trade. Which, in turn, made it of great interest to Aunt Jenny, and whoever she reported to. Numarkut had direct links to worlds within both League and Commonwealth, joining each of them to the Rimward Way, a trading route running straight towards the heart of the Human Sphere through a bewildering variety of Federations, Confederations, Alliances, Hegemonies, Dominions, Demesnes, and, for all I knew, a few more Commonwealths and Leagues; not to mention any number of independent and nonaligned worlds, all with their own agendas. What made Numarkut of particular interest at the moment, however, was that one of its open rifts was the second one connecting to Rockhall, bypassing the choke point in the Sodallagain system. It went without saying that if my aunt’s counterparts in the League were getting intelligence from their agents on Rockhall, which they were as surely as trying to breathe vacuum was a bad idea, this was the route it was coming through.
“You don’t have to do much,” Aunt Jenny had told me, “just keep your eyes and ears open, particularly around any crews fresh through the rift from Rockhall.” A job I’d thought well within my capabilities.
“And if I hear anything of interest?” I’d asked. Waiting till we got back to Avalon, even if the Stacked Deck made a direct return run, which was by no means certain, would render any intelligence I managed to gather so out of date as to be useless.
“I’ve got an asset in one of the shipping agencies, with access to their riftcom. Anything urgent you can pass on to him.”
“Will do,” I agreed, trying not to sound too impressed. Though it was possible to send messages across interstellar distances by squirting pulses of modulated gravitons down the right rift and keeping your fingers crossed, it took almost as much energy as sending a ship through, and the kit required would fill a small cargo hold. Which was good news for the Commerce Guild, who kept a tight grip on most of the postal traffic in the Human Sphere, but not so much for everyone else, who had to pay through the nose to keep in touch with the neighboring systems. Only people who really needed to pass messages faster than the time it took for a starship to make its way to and from the rift points at both ends of the journey, and had money to burn besides, bothered to maintain a riftcom: which, in practice, meant the local Guildhalls, most interstellar governments (especially their Navies), and sufficiently prosperous businesses who absolutely had to keep tabs on what was going on els
ewhere in more or less real time—like, for instance, a cargo broker with offices on Numarkut and Avalon. “Who do I look for?”
“You don’t,” Aunt Jenny said. “He’ll find you.”
Which I supposed was fair enough. And which hadn’t stopped me from trawling the ‘sphere for any brokers which fit the bill the minute I was close enough to an open node, and immediately narrowing the possibilities down to a short list of half a dozen: there weren’t that many with offices in both systems (and a handful of others) big enough to maintain their own riftcom network.
I’d travelled around our home system enough to be familiar with both civilian passenger terminals and, on occasion, the rather more basic facilities the Navy used for personnel transfers, but the cargo docks were a new and bewildering experience for me. Arm 7 was full of docking bays, each hosting between three and a dozen starships, depending on their size: the far walls of the cavernous spaces bulged inwards, matching the curvature of the hulls intended to fit into them, and, for the first time, I really understood why most vessels were built to standardized templates. A freighter forced to wait for an unusually sized cradle to come free would hemorrhage time and money, both of which most skippers were perennially short of.
Between the bulging domes I could see innumerable stevedores and handling drones bustling about like flies on a wall, shifting pallets and cargo containers into and out of the wide doors giving access to the equatorial cargo hatches of the starships beyond, or scooting round the curve between walls and floor, where the gravity shifted direction by ninety degrees.
As I wove my way through the chaos towards the cradle broadcasting the ident code of the Stacked Deck, I narrowly missed being mown down by heavily laden trolleys so often I practically became used to it. A quick, and mildly vertigo-inducing, glance upwards was enough to confirm my guess that the ceiling was just as much a hive of activity as the floor around me, although such appellations were entirely subjective in this sort of environment.