“Hey Damien, Kellers is inviting everyone up to the Rib A bar,” his girlfriend told him. “He apparently has some special liquor he had saved up for if he ever came back to Amber.”
“Is it poisonous?” Damien asked dryly. Given Kellers’ apparent enthusiasm for his homeworld, he wasn’t sure anything the Chief Engineer had saved up for this occasion would be safe to drink.
“Well, it’s from Amber, so I’m not sure it’s safe, but he seems determined to drink it,” the younger engineer told him.
“We can finish this later,” Jenna told him over the intercom. “From the sounds of it, I should check up on Kellers myself. Amber liquor is harder than hard, to put it mildly.”
Saving and dismissing the data with a swipe of his hand, Damien turned to Kelly and smiled.
“It looks like you’ve found a hidden override on our ship protocols,” he told her. “My time is yours, my dear, what’s the plan?”
#
Agreeing to share Kellers’ Amber Fire Liqueur ranked as one of David’s worst decisions in recent years. It had seemed fine at the time, but the next morning his pounding headache happily reminded him that Amber Fire Liqueur was illegal in a good half of the Protectorate.
The bridge of the Blue Jay was quiet. Jenna was at her station, watching the sensors and maneuvering controls, but the only words they’d exchanged so far today had been grunts and a vague mention of ‘Kellers’ liqueur.’
“Heads up sir,” Jenna told him, her voice quiet. “Incoming contact – she’s on an unpowered orbit, but she’ll pass within a million klicks of us in about an hour.”
“Show me,” David ordered, also pitching his voice low to avoid making both of their headaches worse.
Jenna swiped a command on her console, and a view from one of the Blue Jay’s many exterior cameras appeared on the main screen, and then zoomed in.
A few billion times magnification later and it was clear the contact was the boxy hundred meter length of an Amber Defense Co-operative corvette.
“Looks like she saw us,” his executive officer told him. “Incoming video channel.”
He nodded to her and she threw the image on the main screen, replacing the grainy image of the ship.
The image was of a small but neatly organized bridge, similar in many ways to Blue Jay’s own, with four working consoles arranged in three dimensions around a command chair. A man with silver hair and a young face was strapped into the center command chair against the ship’s microgravity.
“This is Commander Antonov of the Amber Defense Co-operative corvette Williamson,” he said calmly. “Please identify yourself and transmit your cargo manifest.
“Note that if we are forced to pursue you, you or your heirs will be required to compensate the ADC for fuel and munitions expended.”
David tapped a few commands on the control screen built into his command chair, transmitted the Blue Jay’s registry and manifest information before opening a video channel back to the Williamson.
“Commander Antonov, this is Captain David Rice of the Blue Jay,” he told the Amberite. “We are bound in-system to pick up a cargo in preparation for a Fringe shipping run. Our pylons are currently empty, though we do have an in-system fuelling vessel we may sell in-system.”
Seconds ticked by as the transmission shot across the intervening empty space, and then Antonov nodded in response.
“I appreciate your prompt response, Captain,” he told David. “You are clear through to Heinlein Station. Be aware that there are fees for being assigned an entry vector, docking, fuelling and access to Heinlein Station that will need to be paid promptly upon arrival.”
“I appreciate the heads up, Commander,” David replied. “This is our first time in the Amber system.”
“Well, then let me be the first to welcome you to the only truly free system in the Protectorate,” Antonov replied with a broad smile. “Enjoy your time in Amber, Captain. I am sure you will find all you need in terms of cargo.”
The transmission ended and the screen defaulted back to showing the small warship continuing along its long, fuel-conserving, orbit around the system’s sun.
“Is there anything we’re not going to be charged for in this system?” Jenna asked after a long moment.
“Based off Kellers’ reaction to coming home, no.”
#
Leaving Jenna to dock the ship – Heinlein Station had a well-designed central hub that remained stationary while the outer wheel spun to provide gravity, rendering docking straightforward – Rice headed towards the shuttle bay to meet Kellers for their sojourn onto the station.
He found the engineer in the corner of the shuttle bay that had once contained a handful of armored lockers, and now contained row upon row of neatly strapped down cases and crates containing enough guns and body armor to arm and protect every member of the Blue Jay’s crew.
Rice stopped in surprise when he did spot the engineer, though. Normally, he saw Kellers either in a suit when the senior officers of the ship had to meet clients, or wearing a set of coveralls covered in enough muck to be as dark as his skin.
Today the black-skinned man was wearing a pair of camouflage fatigue pants and a black tank top that clearly emphasized the sharp-cut muscles of a man who worked with his hands and heavy, dangerous, equipment every day.
The sparse outfit did absolutely nothing to conceal the holster strapped to Kellers’ hip containing a Martian Armaments Caseless Six Millimeter automatic – and even less to conceal the stungun carbine in a quick release strap over his torso.
“Are we expecting a war?” David asked finally, standing at the edge of the new armory area and eyeing his Chief Engineer warily.
“We’re in Amber space,” Kellers replied. “It’s considered rude to go unarmed – and only slightly less rude to use lethal force first.” He gestured towards the solitary bench in the middle of the crates of weapons, where he’d laid out a similar set of harness and weapons for Rice.
“Is everyone going to be armed?”
“Yes,” the Amber native said flatly. “Most Amber children begin firearms training between six and eight years old and regularly carry an automatic like this from the age of ten.”
That took David a moment to process. Protectorate gun laws were up to the judgment of the individual planets, but generally boiled down to ‘you can get a permit for that if you have a reason for it.’ The thought of everyone going armed all the time on a planet without immediately dangerous wildlife was strange to him.
Nonetheless, he was wise enough to listen to a native guide and started strapping on the harness.
“What about the Hunters? They’re a kind of police, right?”
“Sanctioned Hunters aren’t police,” James told him. “They’re the folk charged with bringing in people who refuse to voluntarily appear in front of a court, or charged with Protectorate crimes. Since they’re basically bounty hunters, though, your right to self-defense still applies.
“It is,” he continued after a moment, “considered rude to use lethal force against Hunters – and is likely to result in them delivering you to the Judicial Co-op’s courts in pieces.”
“Wonderful,” David replied dryly, double checking the quick release strap on the stungun. “And this contact of yours? Is he going to sell us to these ‘Hunters’?”
“Keiko owes me,” his engineer replied. “We went to school together, and she’s already agreed to the meet. She runs a shipping company now, so she should be able to get us what we need.”
David nodded and re-strapped the stungun to his torso. Two magazines of the stunguns SmartDarts and four of the clips for the MAC6 went on the harness as well, and then Kellers carefully checked his gear.
“I’m not as good a shot as Narveer was,” Kellers said quietly. “I’d really prefer to avoid trouble, boss.”
“You and me both,” David told him. “This is Amber, though. How likely is that?”
Kellers shrugged.
“Even if we had
n’t pissed off the Protectorate, the Blue Star Syndicate has a bounty on us,” he admitted. “Those Sanctioned Hunters aren’t averse to collecting un-sanctioned bounties.”
“And we’re in the system responsible for building almost every pirate ship in existence,” David Rice said wryly. “Why did I think this was a good plan?”
“You didn’t,” Kellers replied. “None of us did. It was just the least bad plan.”
#
The access to the station from the Blue Jay was close to the shuttle bay. The two officers, both experienced in zero-gravity maneuvering, made it there as the docking connections completed and a personnel tube extended from Heinlein Station locked onto the airlock.
“We’re all connected up, sir,” Jenna reported over David’s wrist personal computer. “You don’t want to know what regular docking cost us.”
“Tell me,” he ordered. He winced at the figure she told him in response. It was roughly twice what he’d expect to pay at a MidWorld orbital station. “Understood Jenna. Keep the lights on; we should only be on station for five or six hours this time.”
“I’m guessing no shore leave?” she asked.
“If anyone wants to pay the entry fee themselves, they’re welcome to,” David replied. “No more than twenty percent of the crew at once, no more than eight hours at a time. Everyone stays in contact with the ship at all times, stays armed, and moves in pairs.”
Kellers looked almost offended as Jenna acknowledged and sign off. “Boss, for all my bitching, Amber is a civilized world. No one is going to get rolled in a back corridor. It would be bad for business.”
“I’m worried because it’s a civilized world,” David admitted, opening the airlock and breathing in the air of Heinlein Station for the first time. “A lot of people want us dead, and the Protectorate wants to arrest us all.”
His Chief Engineer didn’t reply, and David led the way down the tube. It connected to a circular corridor that could have belonged on any station in any system, with signs directing disembarking spacers to the left.
At the end of the corridor, though, warning signs advised that the next area had ‘thaumaturgically induced gravity.’ Most stations that David had been on didn’t bother with the expense of having Mages set up and maintain the runes necessary to create an artificial gravity zone – the weekly renewals ended up costing a lot of money.
The two spacers carefully oriented themselves according to the sign, and then ‘dropped’ onto the floor as they entered the main processing area of Heinlein Station.
The floor was, as promised, covered in the swirling silver markings of artificial gravity runes. The walls were plain steel, stretching up to the roof of the double-height compartment. Along each side of the compartment, half-height windowed cubicles marked the offices where spacers would meet with the officers of Heinlein Station. At the far end of the room, to make sure no one entered the station without paying all the correct tolls and fees, four men in matte black body armor carried assault rifles and grim expressions.
In contrast to the implicit threat at the other end of the hallway, a perky redhead in jeans and a blue tank top was waiting at the entrance for them. Her bright smile almost distracted David from the rocket pistol she wore strapped to her hip.
“Welcome to Heinlein Station, gentlemen,” she greeted them. “Your docking fees are paid up, but you’ll need to discuss station access fees and visitor’s insurance with one of our Intake Specialists.” She checked her wrist PC quickly, and then gestured towards one of the cubicles. “Specialist Wan is available in office five. Please speak with her so we can get you into Heinlein as soon as possible.”
Wan was a dark-skinned tiny woman with an unusually pronounced epicanthic fold for a child of the twenty-sixth century. As they entered, she waved them to the seats in front of her desk.
“Welcome to Heinlein Station,” she repeated the girl outside. “Which of our station’s many services are you intending to make use of while you’re aboard? Passes to the station are separate for each external quadrant.”
David glanced at James, and gestured for the engineer to answer the question.
“We’re meeting someone in Quadrant Gamma,” Kellers told the woman. “We will also need access to the Promenade in Quadrant Beta. Several members of our crew will also be coming aboard who will need Promenade access for shore leave, so we will want a group rate for that.”
Wan nodded calmly. “You have a crew of eighty, correct?” David nodded. “I will give you the group rate for forty Quadrant Beta passes. If your crew use more, all individuals will be refunded the difference for the higher group rate – if you use less, your ship will be billed for the difference. Acceptable?”
With a quick glance at Kellers, who nodded, David agreed.
Wan touched a command, and both of their wrist PCs blinked receipt of a message.
“Your passes are loaded to your PCs,” she explained. “If you are found by Heinlein Security aboard station without having paid for access and oxygen, you will be required to pay for the unauthorized use at a punitive damages rate. If you cannot pay, you will be required to work off your debt.
“We strongly recommend that you purchase Amber Medical Co-operative and Amber Judicial Co-operative temporary insurance,” she continued. “Without these, you will have minimal access to the Co-operatives’ medical or judicial services.”
“I have standing memberships in both,” Kellers told her, tapping his PC to a reader on her desk. “Have Captain Rice added as my temporary auxiliary.”
“Ah, a Citizen,” she said approvingly, glancing at the profile that the engineer had transferred to her screen. “Of course. The requests have been sent,” she finished after a moment. “Is there anything else I can set up for you?”
“Not at the moment,” David confirmed. “If we wish to travel to the surface, do we need to discuss that with you?”
“We are only concerned that the Heinlein Station Corporation is properly reimbursed for use of our facilities and oxygen,” she told him calmly. “You can book transport to the surface or any of the shipyards with any available in-system transport companies.”
Thanking Specialist Wan, David and James headed to the back of the room, where the grim-faced Heinlein Station Security soldiers waved them through with the slightest hints of smiles.
Outside the processing area, only a single pathway was marked out with gravity runes, leading towards the set of elevators that accessed the outer rim with its centrifugal gravity.
“What’s the rest of the core?” David asked Kellers, noting that there were doors and corridors leading away, most sealed with a three letter symbol – ADC.
“The Spire is the main dock for the Amber Defense Co-operative as well as civilians,” James told him. “They keep the munitions for their corvettes here, under tight lock and key. As an ADC member, I approve of their security,” he added dryly.
“I thought you’d left Amber years ago?” David asked in response to that.
“I did,” James confirmed. “But on Amber, you’re not a true Citizen unless you contribute to the three Co-operatives – Medical, Judicial, and Defense. Officially, there’s no benefits for being a Citizen beyond those of being a member of the Co-ops – but it opens a lot of doors I didn’t want to see closed if I ever came home.”
The elevators were clearly marked where each one led, so the two men clambered into one for Quadrant Gamma. There were none of the warning signs that most worlds would have, but the lack of gravity and belts on the seats made the need to strap in obvious.
A few minutes of dizzying acceleration and twisting later, the pod settled into the outer ring. Feeling somewhat motion-sick, David unstrapped himself and stumbled out into the upper access way of Heinlein Station’s Quadrant Gamma.
The central corridor of the Quadrant was an immense, six storied, gallery. They stood on the top level and looked down a thirty meter drop to the bottom of the gallery. Each level was marked by advertisements and signs.
People bustled around, all of them dressed in bright colors and carrying various varieties of personal weaponry.
David had seen busier stations in his life, but it wasn’t quite what he’d been expecting of Amber, the notorious semi-outlaw of the galaxy. He glanced over at Kellers, and the muscular black man grinned at him, clearly enjoying his discomfiture.
“Amber was built to an ideal, Captain,” he said quietly. “You and I don’t really agree with that ideal – and for all that I left, I probably agree with it more than a Mars native like yourself – but enough people do that this world is a Mecca for them. They come here to be free from the bureaucracy of the other Protectorate worlds.” His smile faded. “Many get squished in the gears, exploited, or just lost, but that is the darker side of the dream they come here to find. Come on,” he concluded. “Keiko is on level one. We need to get downstairs.”
#
The omnipresent nature of weapons on Heinlein Station threw David’s fine-tuned paranoia for a loop. Everywhere he looked, everybody was openly carrying a weapon. It made it difficult to identify what might qualify as a threat – especially as no one around him was reacting as if this was particularly unusual.
The culture shock was enough that he missed the actual threat until it was almost too late. The six men and two women converging on him and Kellers were dressed the same as everyone else, other than that each wore a long black cloak closed at the neck with a golden insignia of some kind.
When eight people wearing a pseudo-uniform start closing in on you, it’s generally time to get out of the way. David had been following James through the station up to this point, as the other man had a clue where they were going and David didn’t.
Now he grabbed his engineer’s shoulder and began to duck away through the crowd.
The response from the cloaked pursuers was instant. The two in the direction that David dodged produced weapons from underneath the cloaks – larger ones than the usual sidearms being worn around them.
Starship's Mage: Omnibus: (Starship's Mage Book 1) Page 24