Michael nodded. No other response seemed necessary.
Phelps gave Michael’s face a searching look and then he smiled, liking what he saw. “My men will arrive at your ship by noon tomorrow. They will take delivery of the merchandise and give you payment. The cargo that you will transport on my behalf will be delivered the next day at the same time.” He paused. “Any questions?”
“Where is this merchandise to be transported? And how am I to be paid?”
“The coordinates will be given to you when you receive the shipment. You will be paid from the profits of the voyage. Ten percent.”
Michael sipped his glass of water. “Twenty,” he said.
Phelps made a rude sound. “Twelve. Don’t think that you are the only resource available to me. Twelve is two percent above the going rate. Take it or leave it.”
Michal nodded. “Then I’ll take it,” he said. “I’m looking forward to the voyage.”
They were attacked as soon as they left the compound.
“Where is everybody?” Gloriosa asked. She said it with a grim smile while unslinging her rifle. The square was almost empty. Faded curtains were pulled down over the stalls. One last merchant gave them a worried look, then hurried away.
“Let me see,” Anson said. A swarm of microbots, the size of large flies, covered their route plus at least three city blocks on either side. Anson consulted his interface, receiving aerial views from the swarm. “Incoming,” he said. “From the left. Fourteen of them…no, sixteen.”
“Weapons?” Curly asked.
“Knives, mostly. A few guns.”
“Think they’ll negotiate?”
Anson laughed softly.
“Shall we run?” Marissa asked.
“I think it’s better to show them what we can do,” Michael said. “It will prevent misunderstandings later.”
“Fine by me,” Curly said. Marissa smiled happily.
They spread out across the square but maintained line of sight on the street that the attackers were coming in by. Anson and Michael stood in the center, seemingly undefended. A few seconds later, the first ragged, dirty gang member set foot in the square. He saw them, gave a wolfish smile and stepped to the side. A few seconds later, all sixteen stood gathered together.
Michael shook his head. What morons. Clustered together in a group, the ones on the inside would not be able to bring their weapons to bear. Also, they now made one nice, tight target instead of sixteen smaller ones. Not that it mattered in this case. Michael’s enhanced vision could see the microbot swarm circling closer. None of their assailants saw them, or if they did, they thought them to be simple insects.
“You’re new at this, aren’t you?” Michael said.
A few of the men frowned. One stepped forward. “Come with us,” he said. “Or we will kill you. Do not try to resist. You are outnumbered.”
Interesting. A bit more than an assassination attempt, then. That was unexpected. “I don’t think so,” Michael said.
The man shrugged. “All the same to us. We are paid either way.”
The front of the man’s head exploded as the first microbot ignited. He crumbled to the ground, his brain exposed, blood spurting from the wound with each heartbeat. He twitched a few times and lay still.
The rest of them stared, first at the dead man, then at Michael and Anson. “Go away,” Michael said.
They looked at each other. A few swallowed nervously. A few more shuffled their feet. “How did you do that?” one of them said.
“The only thing you need to know is that every one of you is going to be dead ten seconds from now unless you turn around and walk away.”
One of them shrugged, turned and walked off. One-by-one, the rest followed.
“Now, let’s see where they go,” Anson said.
Chapter 25
The microbots followed them, looking like any other swarm of insects on a hot, sunny day. They walked to a large house a few blocks away, similar to Jeremiah Phelps’ and were admitted. A few minutes later, they left, dragging their shoulders, looking aggrieved. “Think they got paid?” Anson asked.
Michael, looking at the screen, shrugged. “Phelps has rivals,” he said.
“Not our business.”
“This is not a high-tech planet. See if you can get a couple of bots inside.”
Anson nodded. The swarm flew upward, where a square building with a central courtyard much like Jeremiah Phelps’ could be seen in its entirety. The swarm flowed down into the courtyard, found an open door, flew inside and separated. They ignored the women cooking loaves of bread in the kitchen and the rather plump woman having sex with a scrawny guard in what appeared to be a master bedroom. The two men sitting in a ground floor office that looked out on the courtyard held more interest.
“Idiots,” one of them said. “I’m plagued by idiots.” He was fat and bearded, wearing silk robes and ornate rings on almost every finger.
“When you hire idiots, my Lord, you should not be surprised when they do idiotic things.” This man was lean, also bearded and wearing somewhat less ostentatious robes. He wore only one ring on his right hand.
“Focus in on the ring,” Michael said.
Anson looked at him but did what he was told. The ring had a large cabochon ruby in a gold setting. “A poison ring,” Michael said.
Anson frowned at the image on the screen. “How do you know that?”
“See the way the light shines through the ruby? It’s hollow, and there are tiny hinges in the setting. It’s designed to open.”
“That is low-tech,” Anson said.
“Not a pleasant world. I’ll be happy to be gone.”
Anson looked glumly at the screen. “We’re well outside the Empire. Our next destination is not likely to be better.”
“True.” Jeremiah Phelps no doubt regarded himself as a business man and this fat fuck, whoever he was, no doubt thought of himself as the same. Still, Michael didn’t like the way they did business. They could take this guy out without any trouble at all but there were most likely a hundred others just like him. Would a little retributive justice discourage the rest of them, or merely unite the opposition? No way to tell. “Keep the bots in place,” he said. “Maybe we’ll learn more.”
In the end, they didn’t. The fat man did little with the rest of his evening other than smoke a pipe of something other than tobacco, which seemed to make him sleepy, eat a large dinner and go to bed early. A very young, scantily clad woman slept at the foot of his very large bed but he paid her no attention, either that night or the next morning when she helped him into his bath, washed him then helped him dress. He didn’t touch her and barely acknowledged her presence.
Michael, the crew and the marines stayed in the ship. At noon, three battered but functional trucks arrived. The trucks contained nearly two hundred wooden crates, which Jeremiah Phelps’ men proceeded to load into the cargo hold. The headman’s name was Roland Kern. He wore military fatigues and carried a clipboard and a gun under his arm. He kept a sharp eye on his men, though the reason for this was unclear. The crates were too big to steal and there wasn’t anything else to take. Once the crates were piled in a corner of the hold, Kern held the clipboard out to Michael. “Sign here,” he said. It was a simple acknowledgement of receipt, on thin plastic. Michael signed, Kern ripped off a copy and handed it to Michael, along with another sheet containing a set of coordinates. “Your destination,” he said. His face grew thoughtful as he examined Michael’s crew. “Hope you don’t have any trouble.”
“Should we expect any?”
Kern grinned and gave a tiny, amused snort. “Always expect trouble. That way, you won’t be surprised.”
Good advice. “We’ll keep it in mind,” Michael said. “What are we supposed to do after we deliver the cargo?”
“Wait until you receive payment, then come back. You’ll be paid your share once you return.”
“What’s to stop us from taking all of it? We could just disappear.”
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“Nothing right away.” Kern shrugged. “Phelps will complain and the superiors in your organization won’t be happy with you. They’re not people I would want to cross.”
Michael smiled. “Tell me,” he said, “you know a fat guy who lives in a large house a few blocks away?”
“The one who tried to ambush you after you left the house? Resham Kirk.” Kern gave him a questioning look. “What about him?”
“You know about that?”
“We expected something like it. We were watching.”
“Why didn’t you warn us?”
“If you couldn’t deal with Kirk’s band of misfits, you aren’t somebody worth doing business with.”
Michael nodded. “And always be ready for trouble, right?”
Kern nodded. “Exactly.” He grinned coldly. “Have a nice trip.”
They waited until Gallilee faded to a faint, blue ball behind them before examining the cargo. Most of the crates held various high tech products: single-circuit motherboards, quantum computer chips, small general purpose mechs with limited AI capacity, and gauss rifles. The majority of the rest held biologics from the Empire, anti-agathics and augmentation nannites. Seven crates emitted carbon dioxide. Scans revealed what appeared to be human bodies under stasis helmets. Their chests slowly rose and fell on the scans but otherwise, they appeared unmoving.
“Get them out,” Michael ordered.
Two loading mechs popped the tops off the crates and removed the bodies. They were all apparently teenagers, physically perfect, all of them beautiful, four female, three male. They twitched now and then as dreams trickled into their brains from the helmets that kept them immobile. Feeding tubes attached to canisters of a high protein liquid sludge led down their throats into their stomachs.
“Crude but effective,” Anson said.
“How long could they live this way?” Rosanna asked.
“Until the food ran out, and then at least another couple of weeks.”
“More than enough time to get to market,” Michael said.
The mechs unhinged the helmets from their heads and gently pulled the feeding tubes.
“Somebody should stay with them until they wake up,” Michael said.
“Glory and I will be happy to,” Frankie said.
“It shouldn’t be long,” Anson said.
It wasn’t. They were placed on cots in a large all purpose room and within an hour, they began to shudder and shake their heads. Suddenly, one girl sat up, looked wildly around and screamed. Within seconds, all of them were awake.
It took only a few minutes to explain the situation. The rest of the crew came in and the freed captives listened with wide, bewildered eyes while Frankie, Michael and Anson talked. “Now,” Michael said, “who are you?”
“My name is Joanna Granger,” the brunette said. “I don’t know any of them,” she waved a hand at the other captives.
All were natives of Gallilee-3. All had been engaged in perfectly innocent activities—walking to or from school, working at food stalls, hunting in the dessert, plowing a field—when they were overpowered by groups of men, their mouths covered by cloths soaked with a medicinal smelling substance; their heads had swirled, their vision grew blurry and they remembered nothing else before waking up on the London. All of them came from provinces distant from Gallilee city.
“Is this really a starship?” Joanna Granger said.
“It really is,” Rosanna said.
Joanna Granger looked unconvinced. “I’ve never seen one.”
One of the boys, husky, with deep black hair and blue eyes, perhaps a little older than the rest, said, “What’s going to happen to us, now?”
“An excellent question,” Michael said. He smiled. “Let’s discuss it.”
Chapter 26
It looked like most of the worlds that humanity chose to live on, blue and green with some white clouds swirling in lazy patterns, but to Michael’s imagination, it loomed in space like a malignant toad. He grimaced at the image on the screen.
“That’s it, huh?” Curly said.
Jeremy and Lynette appeared resolute, even eager as they stared at it, slowly enlarging in their vision as the ship grew nearer.
“According to our data, it’s called Dunbar-7. It was settled nearly four thousand years ago, but it’s more than seventy light-years beyond the borders of the Second Empire. There has been no official contact with the Dunbar system and nothing is known regarding its current status.”
Joanna Granger and her six companions stood at Michael’s side. They looked frightened but determined. “Are you ready?” Michael asked.
They all nodded. “Yeah,” Joanna said.
Michael had a lot of doubts about this plan but if it worked, it would help them get the information that the Empire needed. He sighed. “Very well.”
Anson attached the helmets to each of their heads and pressed a button. A few deep breaths later, all seven were asleep. Rosanna inserted the feeding tubes. They placed each sleeping body back in its crate and closed it.
“I hope this works out,” Frankie said.
“Me, too,” Michael said.
The London had been given more attention than most ships upon arrival in orbit above Port Dunbar. It was larger than most, for one thing. Its lines were unusual. They were directed into a parking orbit above the principal continent and a naval Captain arrived to inspect, but after examining the cargo and the small number of crew, the Captain stamped their authorization papers and assigned them a docking slip.
The Captain, Michael noted, was a very large man who moved with careful precision, as if he could easily cause damage if he moved impulsively or forgot to be careful. Michael had seen many such men in his military career. He was one himself.
Dunbar-7 turned out to be a trading center, a hub of commerce for a remnant of the First Empire that called itself, simply, the Imperium. The designation worried Michael. The Imperium, as if it were the one and only imperium, as if no other organization was entitled to the name. Dunbar was a crowded, sophisticated world. Not good, Michael thought. Not good at all. The Imperium comprised over fifty planets and a hundred orbiting habitats and was expanding in every direction. Their tech was not quite up to the level of the Second Empire but their soldiers were well trained, their ships well built, their intentions never stated, but the gist of it was clear. The web was filled with the news of worlds that had been contacted, worlds that had joined, worlds that had chosen to resist the glorious legions of the Emperor. The fate of these latter worlds was never mentioned.
“Bad,” Anson said.
Glumly, Michael nodded.
Considering the nature of their cargo, they were not surprised to find that slavery was a time-honored institution in the Imperium. The Imperium believed in the supremacy of mankind over all other races and they believed that superior humans had a natural right to do what they wished with inferior humans, though the definition of ‘inferior’ tended to be defined rather loosely. It was the type of system that had once been common to pre-industrial humanity but had been thought eradicated many thousands of years before.
And yet here it was, once again revived.
Embarrassing and depressing, how often the ‘peculiar institution’ returned. Every branch of humanity had it, somewhere back in time, every single one; and once eradicated, slavery, with minor variations, kept popping back up, like a mutating plague.
Upon landing, Michael, following his instructions, transmitted a message to three different merchants, all of whom arrived a few hours later. One took possession of the pharmaceuticals, a second received the tech. The third took the crates containing the seven unconscious bodies. The recipient was a small, officious man with a balding head and a harassed expression, who insisted upon opening all seven crates and inspecting their contents before conceding that everything was as it should be.
“Sign here,” he said.
Michael signed. “What’s going to happen to them, if you don’t mind my aski
ng?”
“What do you think? They’ll be auctioned.”
Michael blinked. “Is this auction public?”
“Absolutely. Next Odinsday. Best show in town.” The little man handed Michael a receipt. “You’ll get your cut after the sale.”
The crates were loaded onto a truck and driven off.
“Let’s hope this works,” Anson said.
The Imperial Exhibition Center squatted near the planetary government complex in the center of the tourist district, surrounded by numerous theaters, museums, a renowned aquarium, art galleries and many excellent restaurants. The Exhibition Center was an enormous U-shaped building, divided up into large, brightly lit rooms with high, vaulted ceilings.
Prior to the auction, prospective buyers were encouraged to inspect the merchandise. The inspections took place in five different rooms, all nearly 10,000 square meters in size. Each individual, corporation or organization with property for sale was given space to set up their own booth with a central display area and room for prospective buyers to comfortably wander through.
As a child, Michael had once attended a cattle auction at a county fair. This wasn’t too different. The milling crowds were the same; the booths, the banners, the buzz of voices were all familiar. Across the aisle, Michael saw a middle-aged man standing in front of one small booth with two children on the stage, looking frightened. “Twins,” he said, “a boy and a girl. They’ll make an excellent matched pair.”
A plump woman with teased blonde hair sounded doubtful. “What would I do with them?”
The man blinked in surprise. “Madame, that is for you to decide. Have them cook or clean the house. Let them tend the gardens. They can model your clothes or tend you in the bath.” He smiled. “Or cater to any of your other needs.”
She smiled back. “Yes, yes, I understand all that, but they’re a little too small to work in the garden and I already have people to do everything else. I don’t need more.”
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