“What is your business on Legatus, Captain Rice?”
“I’m looking for cargo,” David explained calmly. “I was given a man to make contact with who I was told was looking for reliable carriers.”
“Not a lot of jumpships come to Legatus on spec, Captain,” the Customs Officer observed, making entries on his computer.
“It’s a favor to the man recommending it as much as anything else,” David lied smoothly. “He said it would be worth going this far out of my way.”
“I never tell a man how to run his business,” Shallot replied cheerfully. “Now, I can run a pass for just you, or any member of your crew you wish. What is your plan?”
“I’m planning on allowing my crew to take a day or two of shore leave while I track down my contact,” David told him. He slid a chip containing the data on his crew over. “If we can get passes for everyone to Interface Station, and myself and my First Officer down to the planet, that would be best.”
“Of course. You wish a pass for your Mage?” the youth asked, looking questioningly at David. “Those are quite expensive, and come with a large number of conditions.”
“I and Mr. Montgomery are aware of them,” the Captain replied firmly.
Shallot nodded wordlessly, hitting a command on his computer that beeped at him. The data transfer array over the chip tray starting blinking a progress light.
“Passes will be ready in a moment,” the young man told David, then blinked as he glanced at something on his personal computer. “We have a physical package for you,” he continued, sounding surprised. “Give me a moment.”
The Legatan returned a minute or so later with an archaic paper envelope, just as the chip tray beeped its completion. He pulled the tray from the writer and passed it and the letter to David.
“Each chip is marked with the name of the individual it’s a pass for,” he explained. “They will all allow access through the security gates here after a basic security scan. Only the ones for yourself and Miss Campbell will allow you aboard shuttles away from Interface Station, but we have most amenities aboard the station itself.” He glanced down at the letter in David’s hand. “I’m honestly not sure what the letter is for,” he admitted. “It arrived shortly before you docked.”
“Thank you Officer Shallot,” David told him. “I’ll be back shortly once I’ve turned the passes over to my crew.”
He shook hands with the Legatan and walked away, aware of the eerie eyes of the Augment guardian on him until he’d made it around the corner.
Curious and concerned, he juggled the tray carefully to allow him to open the envelope and remove the single sheet of paper inside it. The text was very short.
Captain Rice.
Meet me at the Silver Lion Restaurant at 19: 00 tonight. Come alone.
BR
It seemed he didn’t have to go hunting for Bryan Ricket after all.
#
Damien was in his lab, working on a course plan that would take them through about half of the Fringe worlds, hitting the five that the Captain had said they had to visit, when his armband computer chirped with an incoming call.
“Damien,” he answered absently, hitting the button while looking over the demographic data of yet another world that exported only food.
“It’s Singh. Want to get on station?” the ship’s senior pilot asked.
“I figured that wasn’t the best of plans,” the Mage observed.
“On your own, sure,” Singh agreed. “But you come with me, you’ll be perfectly safe! Plus, I have a meet for the guns, and I don’t trust this man – but I just bet he’s scared of Mages.”
“I can’t do anything on station, not without being thrown in jail,” Damien pointed out, but he was shutting down his workstation and digging out the station-pass the Captain had given him.
“You are allowed to act in self-defense,” Singh reminded him. “And I don’t expect a firefight anyway, it’s just business. Meet in the flight bay in ten?”
“Okay,” Damien replied, standing up and slowly shaking his head. The pilot did tend to run rough-shod over anyone who wasn’t entirely compliant with his plans.
He stepped out of his lab, swinging carefully from the magical gravity he maintained there into centrifugal pseudo-gravity Interface Station’s spin imparted to the rest of the ship. The normally zero-gravity keel had a series of panels that folded out to turn the large, cylindrical, corridor into a giant spiral staircase running down the middle of the ship.
Heading ‘down’ towards the flight bay at the stern of the ship, he ran into Kelly LaMonte coming ‘up’ from Engineering.
“Hi Damien,” she greeted him with a bright smile. “I was just coming up to find you. Can I steal you for that dinner station-side?”
Damien returned her smile, warmed as always by her greetings, but shook his head.
“Can’t – I’m heading up to the shuttle bay to meet Singh. We’re going shopping,” he finished dryly.
“Shopping?” she asked, turning around to walk with him towards the shuttle bay.
“The Captain asked Singh to line up some weapons,” Damien told her quietly, glancing around the ‘stairwell’ to be sure no one else was in hearing. LaMonte was at least an officer, but he wasn’t sure how far the Captain wanted the knowledge that they were bringing weapons aboard spread. “He apparently has a contact, and figures that having a Mage around in an UnArcana system should be respect-inducing.”
“Guess that makes sense,” Kelly said quietly. “Be careful, will you? I feel bad enough over what happened in Corinthian without you ending up in trouble again!”
“We’ll be fine,” Damien assured her. “Singh scares me a lot more than any Legatan arms smuggler is going to!”
The engineer smiled at him, slightly less brightly than when she’d arrived, and shook her head as they reached the access to the flight bay.
“Just come back, okay?” she asked. “You still owe me dinner!”
“I’ll remember that,” he promised, and headed into the flight bay. The cavernous expanse holding the Blue Jay’s shuttles echoed with his footsteps. All of the freighter’s small craft were locked carefully into their individual bays, secured against the gravity this part of the ship rarely felt outside of acceleration.
“Damien, over here!” Singh boomed. The dark-skinned and turbaned First Pilot was standing by a set of lockers that Damien had never noticed before, one of them open as Singh was taking objects out.
“Here,” the pilot continued as the younger man arrived, shoving a vest, belt, jacket and gun at him.
“What’s all this?” Damien asked.
“Model Twenty-Four Forty Hyper-Kevlar,” Singh began, pointing at the vest. “Absorbs most small arms fire, once or twice.” He passed over the gun. “Macy-Six – that’s Martian Armaments - Caseless 6 millimeter. Twenty rounds in the grip, fully automatic. Belt to hold the gun. Jacket to cover it.” The pilot eyed him for a moment. “Can you cover your medallion with that shirt?” he asked.
Wordlessly folding his collar over the gold coin declaring him a Mage and shrugging on the ballistic vest, Damien looked over the pilot. He was wearing the same vest, with the same sleek black pistol mounted under his shoulder he’d handed Damien. The young Mage copied the arrangement of the shoulder holster he’d mistaken for a belt, and then checked the slide and safety of the MA-C 6, carefully keeping the weapon aimed at the blank wall next to the lockers he now realized were the Blue Jay’s armory.
“Good, you do have a clue,” Singh said approvingly as Damien holstered the weapon. He went over the youth’s holster belt quickly, tightening and tucking it to fit under the jacket. “I know Navy Mages are pistol-certified, you?”
“I lived in the Sherwood countryside,” Damien told him. “There were still creatures in those woods that hadn’t worked out that humans were dangerous, so we had to go armed. That said,” he glanced down at the weapon nervously, “I haven’t fired a pistol since I started school, and I’ve never
fired a full automatic.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” Singh replied calmly. “If anything happens, well,” the big man shrugged, “you spray bullets in the bad guys’ direction to keep their heads down, and I’ll take care of any that don’t.”
#
The Silver Lion Restaurant’s entrance occupied the center of one side of a raised courtyard around a decorative pond. Five restaurants, all of which looked out of David Rice’s normal budgets, had clearly combined their water rations and financial budgets to build the water feature, which had lilies and fish he was sure had to be robotic. Between the pond, a dropped ceiling, and careful paintings of the walls, it was hard to tell you were on a space station.
At the far end of the pond, across a bridge that might actually have been wooden, a pair of silver-painted lions flanked an entrance covered by a deep red silk curtain. A dark-haired and -skinned woman in a black silk dress stood behind a podium next to the entrance, watching all prospective guests approach.
“Do you have a reservation, sir?” she asked, her voice smooth as silk. “We do not have tables for unexpected guests, I’m afraid.”
“I believe so,” he told her. “I am here to meet a Bryan Ricket.”
The woman nodded calmly, her fingers tapping out commands on a holo-screen that was being projected directly to her eyes by the podium.
“Captain Rice?” she asked after a moment, and David nodded. “Vice-Director Ricket is waiting.” She conjured a younger version of herself, in a matching black silk dress. “Saffron will lead you to him.”
Vice-Director was not a title that David had been expecting to hear associated with the man Carmichael had sent him to meet. He swallowed his questions and followed the young waitress into the restaurant.
Starship Captains were not poor men. David had personally signed for a credit note worth almost ten billion Martian Dollars when he purchased the Blue Jay, and had paid back every penny of it before rescuing Damien.
The restaurant behind the curtain was entirely outside of his experience. Each table was at a slightly different level, separated from the others by burbling artificial brooks and real, growing, trees. He’d seen something similar planet-side once, but to encounter this extravagant a use of space and water on a space station was a level of wealth beyond his experience.
The gorgeous waitress led him across two brooks and around one perfectly trimmed hedge to an archway formed of living trees. The table beyond was sized for six, but only held one man. Another man stood just beside the entrance, and stopped David as he entered the booth.
“Hold still, Captain Rice,” the man ordered. He slowly looked David up and down, reminding him vividly of the Augment in customs. Somehow, he was not surprised to see the tiny pin of a golden cog with a lightning bolt cut out of the middle on the man’s collar when he looked.
“He’s clear, Mr. Ricket,” the Augment reported.
“Apologies for the security, Captain Rice,” the man at the table said calmly. “Please, take a seat.”
Feel utterly out of his depth, David took the offered seat directly across from Ricket. The Vice-Director, whatever that was, was a slim man with a shaved head, clad in a plain gray business suit.
“I took the liberty of ordering for us all,” Ricket continued. “I suspect you have not encountered true Old Chinese cuisine in your travels?”
“I have heard of the country,” Rice admitted, “but I haven’t encountered the food, no.”
“You will be pleasantly surprised then,” Ricket said calmly. “Like I was, a few hours ago, when my fellows in System Security passed a report on from one of our sterling Gunship Commanders telling me that a jumpship Captain was in system, looking for me. Tell me, Captain Rice, why exactly are you here?”
The last sentence was delivered softly, gently, and so utterly flatly that David knew that the wrong answer would have the Augment behind him disposing of a body very quickly.
“I worked in Corinthian with an information broker named Carmichael,” David answered slowly, picking his words carefully. “We ran into some trouble with Protectorate authority, and in exchange for a warning to him, he suggested that I look you up. He said that you would be able to find us a cargo that was under Martian radar.”
“And Travis told you nothing of what I do, I take it?” Ricket asked.
“Nothing, sir,” David replied.
“Your honesty does you credit, Captain. What trouble did you encounter with our erstwhile Martian friends?”
Rice took a deep breath.
“One of my crewmen was arrested on charges I didn’t agree with,” he explained. “It looked like it wouldn’t be a fair trial, so we… liberated him.”
The conversation was interrupted at that point by the return of the waitress, who silently poured tea and wine for each man before stepping back out, making subtle eyes at the sharply carved physique of the cyborg guarding the table.
Ricket picked up his glass and offered a toast to Rice. “To loyalty to one’s subordinates, and to you Captain Rice. This was Mage Montgomery, I presume? I have heard… some of what occurred with him.”
David sipped his wine, trying to cover his surprise. From the other man’s smile, he suspected he failed.
“I think introductions are in order, Captain Rice,” Ricket continued. “I am the Vice-Director in charge of UnArcana Affairs for the Legatus Military Intelligence Directorate. I should say that, if your young Mage has achieved what some of our analysts think he has…” the Vice-Director shook his head. “You have the most valuable civilian ship in the Protectorate, Captain,” he said quietly. “To anyone, that is, who was not opposed to any but the most necessary use of magic.”
David couldn’t help himself from sighing in relief.
“Carmichael did not tell me that he was sending me to the Legatus government,” he replied. “I’m not sure he and I have the same idea of ‘under the radar.’”
“Oh, I believe you do, Captain,” Ricket told him with a smile. “LMID,” he pronounced it el-mid, “tries to keep a very low profile with Protectorate authorities. And you are in luck,” he continued, “in that I do need a jumpship, and your Blue Jay will fit my needs perfectly.”
“What do you need, Mr. Ricket?” David asked. The Legatan held up his hand, though, as the food arrived at just that moment. Bowls of rice, meat, and veggies covered in steaming sauces were laid out in front of each man, and a third place for the Augment.
Once the waitress had left without violently attacking anyone, the cyborg bodyguard joined David and Ricket wordlessly and dug in to the food himself.
“What is your personnel transport capacity, Captain?” Ricket asked as he dug into his food with the provided chopsticks.
“We can carry eighty or so comfortably,” David said carefully. The food was spicier than he expected, but extraordinarily good. “Depending on how comfortable they are crowding, we could easily double that.”
“Excellent. And you’re rated for three megatons of mass, correct?”
“We’re a Venice class, so yes. Three hundred cargo containers.”
“This won’t be cargo containers, Captain,” Ricket told him. “As it happens, a Crucifix-class gunship masses three hundred thousand tons unloaded, and is of a size that will fit inside your ships rotating ribs. I need four gunships, cadre crew of twenty per ship, and a thirty man security team transported from Legatus to the Mercedes system. Under the radar, as you say.”
“That’s a bit different from our usual cargo,” David said slowly, trying to buy himself time to think. “And riskier.”
“That’s why I think your ship is perfect,” the Legatan spy told him. “Also, the security team are Augments. I would recommend that you simply let any pirates board, and allow them to deal with the issue.
“We are also prepared to pay handsomely for this delivery,” Ricket continued. “Would five times your normal delivery fee be reasonable for the risk?”
David almost choked on his dumpling. He’d b
een hoping for a high risk-reward job to provide the seed capital they would need for a Fringe run. Twice his normal delivery fee, plus the existing reserves he had, would have done.
“I must insist keep the Augments the hell away from my Mage,” he tried to insist calmly.
“Of course,” the Legatan agreed. “That’s only sensible.”
“All right. We’ll do it.”
#
Where David’s appointment took him into the luxury of Interface Station’s wealthy sections, Damien and Singh’s took them into the dingy corridors of the Station’s cheaper warehousing section. When the Station had been built, a significant chunk of the outer arc had been left hollow. Standard ten-thousand cubic meter cargo containers had been brought in, welded into place, and turned into row upon row of dingy, cheap, warehousing space.
“Row seventeen, level K, box nine is where we’ll find our man,” Singh told Damien, leading the way to a rickety-looking elevator. It clanked and chugged its way up seven layers of the cargo containers and disgorged them onto a catwalk that looked only slightly safer.
“Is this place safe?” Damien asked, following Singh along the catwalk and looking for the haphazard mix of pre-fabricated signs and glorified graffiti that marked the various sections of the warehousing section.
“Not a chance,” Singh said cheerfully. “That’s why we’re carrying guns.”
Something about the cheerfully deadly Sikh pilot, however, got them through the sparse crowds and darkened catwalks without incident. They reached the box they’d been told to go to, and a youth with most of his hair shaved away, leaving a row of spikes down the center of his skull, popped the door open for them.
Two more spiked-hair youths, a man and a woman, were waiting inside with blocky but effective looking carbines.
“Leave the guns here,” the woman ordered in a hoarse voice. “Nobody sees the boss armed.”
Damien followed Singh’s lead in unslinging the shoulder holster and leaving it on the table the ganger pointed at.
Starship's Mage: Omnibus: (Starship's Mage Book 1) Page 17