Space Deputy

by Jenny Schwartz

  “Hence, Levanter.”

  “Hence, Levanter,” he agreed. “A dismal place with an abysmal quality of life. The bandits live better, and they’re struggling for existence in the Badstars.”

  “I imagine Elder Jakob and his inner circle live better than the rest.”

  Harry rewarded her insight with a pat on her knee, one she barely felt, given her lifesuit. “Elder Jakob will spin Max a sob story. Or he’ll claim that none of their shuttles are working, but that we can leave the Yardbird with them for collection later.”

  “He couldn’t possibly think Max is that gullible.”

  “At a certain point, egomaniacs in Elder Jakob’s position begin to believe that they can have anything they want.”

  Waiting out Elder Jakob’s games was tedious. Nothing happened for hours. Thelma chatted on an encrypted band with Lon. She was almost to the point of suggesting that they use the Yardbird’s shuttle to unload the supplies themselves—although commonsense told her that doing so only opened up the opportunity for Elder Jakob to snaffle the shuttle, Max not having jurisdiction on the planet—when the Rapture with its load of new Pilgrims arrived in orbit.

  “Now, we’ll see action,” Harry said.

  “We were waiting on the Rapture? Why?”

  Harry concentrated on the Yardbird, tucking it close to the old trampship, but remaining within the Lonesome’s protective shadow. “Max didn’t discuss his plan with me, but Captain Jones indicated he wanted to ship out from Levanter as soon as possible. If some of his crew feel the same…”

  “They can take our place on the Yardbird.” Thelma nodded. “That’s good of Max. He’s not leaving them stranded at the Pilgrim colony.”

  Harry chuckled. “Plus it saves us time and a detour.”

  “Huh?”

  “If Max shovels Wild Blaster Bill across to the Yardbird with the former crew of the Rapture, then they can detour to the Deadstar Diner and drop the old sinner off there where Darlene and his spaceship await him. We, meantime, can use the Lonesome’s full speed to return to Zephyr and free Lon of his noxious bandit prisoners.”

  Chapter 8

  Harry’s guess was spot on. There was a bit of wrangling and complaining from Elder Jakob, but Max stood firm. If the Pilgrims’ supplies weren’t unloaded from the Yardbird by the Pilgrims in the next eight hours, then the Yardbird would leave with them.

  Captain Jones and his team were even more abrupt. They accepted Max’s offer to work their passage back to Zephyr and departed the trampship Rapture three hours after entering orbit around Levanter.

  The logistics of transporting them was interesting. Three of the Rapture’s crew had become Pilgrims on the journey out to Levanter. That left a dozen people needing retrieval from the trampship since, by Patriarch Yusef’s orders, they weren’t allowed transport to the Yardbird via the Rapture’s shuttle.

  So Thelma piloted the Yardbird’s shuttle back to the Lonesome.

  Harry stayed aboard the Yardbird as a potent deterrent to anyone considering hijacking it in the name of the Pilgrim cause.

  Following Lon’s directions, she docked the shuttle at the cargo hold deck, rather than the entrance to the living quarters.

  Wild Blaster Bill waited there, suited up for space travel. “Thankin’ yer kindly, miss. I’ll be taking over, now.”

  Thelma didn’t quibble at being called “miss” rather than “deputy” nor at the eager way the old spacer brushed past her. He was on his way to freedom.

  The hatch closed behind him. “Welcome home, Thelma,” Lon said.

  She retracted her helmet. “Lon, it is so good to be back.”

  “I bet.” Max walked around a corner.

  The cargo hold was all straight lines and angles. It made Thelma curious. In travelling to and from the Yardbird in the borrowed shuttle, she’d had her first view of the Lonesome, and it was unique to her knowledge. The external body of the spaceship was spherical.

  “How’s Elder Jakob behaving?” she asked. “Harry predicted he’d try to acquire the Yardbird.”

  Max rubbed a hand over his buzz cut. “He’s given up on that. Instead, he’s suggesting that us taking the yacht back to Zephyr is more trouble than it’s worth. He’ll allow us to junk it here.”

  Her hands froze on the lifesuit’s release buttons. The man’s gall astonished her. In effect, he wanted them to gift him the small spaceship.

  “Isn’t that kind of him?” Lon prompted.

  She laughed and resumed the procedure for extricating herself from the lifesuit. She had a moisture wicking shirt and shorts on beneath it. “Oh yeah. Completely selfless.”

  Max extended a hand, helping her balance as she peeled off the suit. A robot trundled forward and took the lifesuit from her.

  “Where’s the nearest bathroom?” There were priorities in life, and normal bathroom facilities were high on that list.

  “This way.” Somehow, Max still held her hand. They walked down a short aisle formed by a bulkhead on one side and a wall of crates on the other, before he pointed out the head. Then he went left and she went right.

  When she re-emerged, she tracked his route, and found that it led past three cells with the bandits distributed inside them.

  “They can’t see or hear you,” Lon said. “One-way glass.”

  She slowed her pace and studied their prisoners. From her paperwork, she knew who they were: a mix of humans, two urselves and a saurelle. The urselves hadn’t felt safe enough to hibernate. They were awake and playing some sort of card game. “They don’t look evil. Well, maybe the captain.” He was a scruffy and tense individual, and the six other men in the cell with him stayed clear.

  “Bad choices, worse attitude. Things escalate and rather than deal with the consequences, they run,” Max said. “And end up in the Badstars.”

  “On the subject of bad choices…” Lon began.

  “Go up, take a shower, eat,” Max said to Thelma.

  She couldn’t look at Lon—or rather, everywhere she looked was Lon, which made glaring meaningfully at him difficult—so she stared narrowly at her boss. “What does he mean about bad choices?”

  “Lon’s detected a shuttle launch from Levanter. We suspect the Pilgrims are going to attempt to board the Yardbird now that the cutter is uncrewed.”

  “But Harry is there. You told them that, right?”

  He grabbed her elbow and walked her to the ladder. “I told them, but Elder Jakob thinks I’m bluffing, that I won’t authorize a mech to attack the Pilgrims in defense of the ship.”

  “But what they’re attempting, boarding without authorization, is piracy.” She climbed as she talked. Moving felt effortless after hours in the lifesuit. The only thing that bothered her was that Max was right: she did need a shower. She was a bit whiffy, and since he was climbing behind her, he’d smell her sweat. Ew.

  Lon answered her objection as they reached the main deck. “Elder Jakob will claim that his people are merely collecting the supplies Max said they could have. Then it’ll occur to them that rather than transfer the supplies to the shuttle, how easy it would be to simply land the Yardbird on the planet—with the yacht in tow. They’d gain two spaceships for the price of a little daring.”

  “Theft,” Max growled.

  “Harry won’t allow it,” Thelma said confidently.

  “No, but Elder Jakob needs a reality check. His followers might treat him like a god, but he’s not above the Federation’s laws.” He nudged her in the direction of her cabin. “Shower, eat, and you’ll see.”

  Infuriating. But she hurried off for a quick shower before grabbing a garbanzo bean salad and a coffee and taking both to the bridge. On other ships, eating there would have been a huge no-no, but the Lonesome was different. With Lon running things, the bridge was extraneous. Max sat there so that his background looked appropriately important for his communications with Levanter, not because Lon needed any assistance in piloting the spaceship.

  “The Rapture crew are aboard the
Yardbird’s shuttle and en route for the cutter. They’ll beat the Pilgrims’ shuttle to it.” Lon chortled. “Elder Jakob missed even the narrow window for shenanigans that he thought he had.”

  Max agreed. “Captain Jones is mad at how things worked out on the journey here and at the Pilgrims’ attempt to charge the Rapture crew a planetary entrance fee to stretch their legs on land and wait for a flight back out.”

  “Starlane robbery,” Thelma murmured. Levanter sounded as crooked as any bandit base. Such a fee out here, where there was nowhere else to land, was nothing short of extortion.

  “Yes. The Pilgrim cargo handlers arriving at the Yardbird will get a hot reception if they try anything,” Max said. “And not from Harry.”

  The shuttle from Levanter reached the Yardbird, locked with its cargo hold, and, according to a transmission from Harry, two men disembarked and began loading supplies with assistance from the Rapture crew. It wasn’t that the ex-trampship crew wanted to help the Pilgrims, but that they wanted to leave. Within the hour, the shuttle was flying back down to the planet with its first load. A couple of hours after it landed, the excitement began.

  Lon recalled Thelma from where she was stretched out on the sofa in the lounge.

  She’d intended to rest for a few minutes. The nap had caught her unawares. “I know I’m slothing,” she began, rubbing her eyes. She’d been returning her empty bowl and mug to the kitchen when the sofa simply lured her in. She’d dropped onto it and fallen asleep.

  The AI ignored her excuses. “You don’t want to miss the fun.”

  “Where?”

  “The bridge.”

  Of course. She ducked into her room to spritz her face with mint-scented water to aid alertness before joining Max on the bridge.

  He sent her back out. “Comb your hair. Do it up tight or something. You need to look like a Galactic Justice graduate.”

  Her blush was deep and hot, almost painful. In her weeks aboard the Lonesome, she’d come to think of them as friends. Now, here was Max reminding her that he was her boss—and reprimanding her.

  In her cabin, she studied her image in the mirror. She wore a light gray utility suit that was only slightly rumpled from her nap. Her hair was messy. She hadn’t tied it back. She did so now, winding it into a knot. She slapped on make-up, going for severe professionalism with a nude-toned lipstick. The biggest change wasn’t her hair or make-up, but her stance. Instead of relaxing with friends, her spine was rigid and her shoulders straight. She marched back to the bridge.

  “Good,” Max said briefly.

  Lon coughed. An AI didn’t need to cough. This was a statement cough, one along the lines of “Max, my friend, you’re making a mistake”. Or perhaps, “Thelma, honey, don’t sulk. You were in the wrong.”

  She hadn’t considered how in accepting accommodation aboard the Lonesome she’d blurred the line between work and home. They were on a mission. She was on duty. Unless the sheriff told her to relax, that she had downtime, she ought to present herself properly.

  Damn. I am at fault.

  She sat precisely in the navigator’s chair and studied the screens in front of her and Max. At least embarrassment had cured her post-lifesuit tiredness.

  “Lon can monitor events on the surface of Levanter.”

  “And a few feet beneath it,” the AI interjected.

  Max kept going. “The shuttle has returned from the Yardbird to Levanter, but there’s been no attempt to unload it. It seems likely that Elder Jakob is about to give us our chance. Harry, are you ready?”

  “The video’s playing.”

  Thelma didn’t have to ask what video. Lon popped up footage of Harry in his emotionless and motionless mech mode standing guard alone in the cargo hold of the Yardbird. About a quarter of the supplies stolen from the Rapture were gone.

  Another screen showed a shuttle on the ground at the edge of a small city. On Serene, the cluster of buildings would barely have rated the title of town. The colony on Levanter was struggling. Lon had provided her with as much background data as he’d been able to gather. It seemed that the majority of Pilgrims existed at subsistence level; sustained, no doubt, by their belief in the imminent End of Days that was the cornerstone of Elder Jakob’s preaching.

  However, in the center of a compound was a substantially grander building, one that Lon’s scans had registered as possessing bunkers. This was Elder Jakob’s headquarters. The compound was also the source of the communication signals to the Lonesome. Evidently, Elder Jakob kept tight control over communications to and from Levanter.

  Just how tight, illegally tight, Thelma had still to learn.

  “Elder Jakob dislikes women in authority,” Max said. “Be brusque, even officious. You’re going to issue him, or whichever of his subordinates takes the call, an out-of-service notice for the Rapture.”

  “I’ve just sent the paperwork to your comms unit,” Lon said.

  “The Rapture is not spaceworthy,” Max said. “It was capable of limping to Levanter, which is why we left it to do so. But it cannot be allowed to leave Levanter without fixing its main engine. It’s currently running on its secondary engine. They must also repair the hull damage caused by the bandits, and completely flush the trampship’s water retrieval system. The results from testing what is growing in the pipes is gross.” His lips curled in disgust beneath the shadow of his Western hat.

  Belatedly, Thelma took in the significance of his wearing it. When the hat was on, he was the sheriff and engaging in official duties, unless he was in a lifesuit or a similar situation where wearing a hat was impossible.

  She needed a similar symbol of her on duty status. Maybe Max was right and twisting her hair tight could be part of it. No softness. She had a job to do.

  Her mouth firmed as she finished scanning Lon’s summary of the comprehensive report as to the Rapture’s spaceworthiness, or lack thereof. “All right. Lon, can you connect me to their control tower, please?”

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Max jerk his chin down in a nod of approval.

  “What now?” A man’s image appeared on the screen in front of Thelma. He had fleshy pouches under his brown eyes and the scruffy brown beard he sported failed to hide his double chin. He looked as unhealthy as the faint wheeze in his voice suggested.

  Thelma didn’t care about his health. She took instant exception to his rudeness. “This is Deputy Thelma Bach, aboard the Lonesome, who am I speaking with?” She didn’t wait for his answer. Lon had flashed the name up at the bottom of the screen. “Patriarch Sodi, your personal identification photo appears years out of date.” Out of sight of the camera, she gave Lon a thumbs-up for the information he was feeding her.

  Her insult hadn’t been subtle, and Patriarch Sodi’s eyes glared his rage.

  “Jakob Canute—”

  “He is Elder Jakob to you, woman,” Sodi growled.

  Thelma pinched her mouth together. One of the student administrators at the Galactic Justice academy had done so when she found students particularly tiresome.

  It seemed to annoy Sodi as much as it had tested Thelma’s patience. His eyes bulged.

  She allowed herself a moment of satisfaction. “As I was saying. Elder Jakob Canute is the owner of record for the trampship, the Rapture, that recently arrived in orbit around Levanter after sustaining damage during a bandit attack. Patriarch Sodi, you are listed as one of Jakob—my apologies—Elder Jakob Canute’s authorized representatives, so I will lodge the defect notice for the Rapture with you.”

  “Defect notice?”

  “I am sending it through now.” Or Lon is, she added to herself, watching the little symbol for active transmission flash at the bottom of the screen. “The Rapture is not spaceworthy. The full report is attached to the out-of-service notice which I have just served you, as Elder Jakob Canute’s representative. The Rapture may not leave orbit around Levanter unless to land on the planet, or under tow by another, spaceworthy vessel. Essential repairs include fixing the trampsh
ip’s main engine, repairing damage to the hull, and a complete flush of the trampship’s water retrieval system, which is frankly revolting.

  At that point she glanced across at Max and found him grinning at her. She momentarily lost her train of thought, but covered it by frowning deeply.

  Patriarch Sodi scowled back. “This is outrageous, and if not a fabrication by your sheriff, who is a man without honor, then a problem caused by the bandits whom you failed to capture before they attacked our Pilgrimage ship. You owe us damages.”

  The nerve of the man! She gawked at the screen.

  A well-manicured male hand gripped Sodi’s shoulder and moved him aside. Elder Jakob, himself, slid into the vacated seat. “Deputy Bach, I wish to speak with Sheriff Smith, immediately.”

  “I’m here,” Max answered for himself.

  The bridge camera’s field of vision widened to include both Thelma and Max, the image showing in a corner of Thelma’s screen. She carefully kept her attention directed forward, and tried her best to maintain a neutral expression, no matter what Max might say.

  “Sheriff Smith.” Unlike Sodi, Elder Jakob was clean shaven, his narrow face handsome in a conventional, overly groomed manner, and his eyes clear with good health. “I am glad to speak with you directly. I’ve just been made aware of a problem with our shuttle. I’m afraid we’re unable to recover the remainder of our supplies from the Yardbird until repairs are made. As your deputy pointed out regarding the Rapture, it would be illegal as well as immoral to risk anyone launching in the shuttle until it is spaceworthy.”

  “How long will repairs take you?” Captain Jones growled.

  Thelma blinked. She hadn’t realized that Lon had linked the temporary captain of the Yardbird into the conversation. Then she queried the link history. It wasn’t Lon, but Patriarch Sodi, who’d added Captain Jones to the conversation.