Last Ship Off Polaris-G: A Central Galactic Concordance Novella

by Carol Van Natta

  He was pleased to discover engineering finally had the correct specifications for printing the parts needed to repair the reserve flux drive. The error hadn’t been his doing, but he’d been happy to take advantage of it. Little pebbles in a pond sometimes had much bigger ripples.

  Six-point-three standard hours later, Ivar stood in front of Bassilon’s virtual viewport, watching the swirling gases of the giant planet in all their blue and gold glory. The colors reminded him of his youth, sailing the warm seas of his coastal home, and dreaming of the stars. It had taken much longer than he’d imagined to get there.

  He sent a query to the nav pod to which he already knew the answer, but needed it on the record. “How long since object geotagging has been done in this region of space?”

  The navigator on duty pinged a quick reply. “Fifty-seven years.”

  “Sorry to make your life boring, but use active scans and make the geotagging a priority. We don’t want any surprises because we didn’t follow regulations. If you split the work with Takala’s nav staff, it’ll go faster.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ivar set a reminder for himself to check on their progress in an hour. The task was tedious, and the crew believed Bassilon wouldn’t be seeing any action, so they might slack off and hope he wouldn’t notice.

  If his necessarily convoluted plan actually worked, they’d see more action than they’d know what to do with.

  He certainly hoped so.

  9

  * Frontier Planet “Polaris-Gamma” * GDAT 3233.049 *

  Gavril abhorred violence, but he’d make an exception for the Lo Kuro city leaders if he ever got his hands on them. Before Ferrsi’s enforcers left with the first group of refugees, they’d done their best to get the rest organized and waiting under hastily erected tents, but loading resentful adults and terrified children was a lot slower than sending load bots with crates to their assigned holds. The Diamantov didn’t have jump seats for four thousand people, so they needed to be strapped in on the makeshift sleeping racks for liftoff.

  Gavril wanted to barricade himself in the incalloy-reinforced engine pod, but if Youssef and Anitra could stand the pressure of so many minds, then so could he. No more taking the easy way out to avoid using his talent.

  The modified airsled that he’d made into a loadmaster’s floating platform helped him keep steady streams of people moving into the lifts and climbing the stairs and ladders. He and the crew used colored tape and cleaning bots to lead people to their assigned berths.

  With only nine hundred people left to load, his talent felt a flare of angry colors somewhere outside the ship, toward the south. Sounds of shouting and scuffling ensued, implying more people were getting involved. Loading progress stopped as everyone turned back to look.

  Youssef, stunner in hand, took off through the monster airlock, followed closely by a bellowing Basheer. “Make a hole!” People hastily stepped out of his way.

  Anitra, who was standing below him on the cargo floor, cataloging and tagging personal goods crates, swore. “We don’t have time for this.”

  Gavril grounded his platform next to her and held out his hand. “Get on. Let’s see if we can help.”

  She took his hand and stepped up. He raised the platform and exited the ship into the bright, hot afternoon sunshine. He gritted his teeth against the assault of ugly emotions, but kept his talent above them, not getting lost in the seething threads. His eyes told him five or six people were swinging fists, but his talent said at least a dozen more were itching for a fight.

  He moved closer to Anitra. “Tell me what to do.”

  She shook her head. “What happened after the restaurant was my fault. I pushed you before you were ready.”

  “Fine, we can share the blame and guilt later. Let’s do it right this time.” He took her hand in his. “Tell me what to do.”

  She gave him a searching glance, then nodded. “Fear and anger can fuel determination to do something. Nudge them with that. I’ll give them the illusion of a sliding slope. Pump calm at anyone you can.” She squeezed his hand. “Follow my talent with yours, and I’ll show you.”

  Her shields dropped, and he felt her talent arrow toward the brawlers. He dropped his containment and went after her.

  The two blood-red coils of anger that were the center of the conflict tried to snare his attention, but he avoided their threads and spread himself higher and wider. He felt Anitra’s empath talent as pulses that brushed the threads and shifted them subtly toward orange and brown. He knew how to do that, so he took over that job, though it had no effect on the red-hot center.

  He felt the wave of consternation from them all when Anitra’s illusion hit. He took advantage of it to push more threads away from the red and into the ochre greens of action and purpose. His eyes kept wanting to flutter shut, but he forced them open, to use what his vision told him as well as his talent. Not all that different from handling multiple systems while piloting a ship.

  The would-be brawlers were distracted and stumbling by the time Basheer and Youssef separated the primary combatants. A short, wide man with a snarl on his face took a wild swing at Youssef, who ducked it and deftly used the man’s momentum and a well-timed trip to send him to his hands and knees in the dirt. She had the man’s hands zip-tied behind him before he drew his next breath. Basheer pulled the other man away into a controlling neck hold, talking to him in soothing tones.

  Several of the nearby people still staggered around, as if chemmed, then slowly straightened up and looked at the ground suspiciously.

  Gavril felt Anitra withdraw her empath talent, and he hung on to the sensation, as if he was hanging on to her sleeve, as she reeled them both in. His talent didn’t want to go, but he made it cooperate. He still tanked at containment, but at least he wasn’t caught in the morass this time.

  He wiped the sweat off his brow with his sleeve, then focused on Anitra beside him. He realized he was still holding her hand.

  She smiled. “Damn fine work, Captain.”

  He lifted their joined hands and kissed the back of hers. “We make a good team.”

  “Yes.” Inexplicably, sadness flared in her before her shields shut him out. “Let’s get back to our jobs so we can launch.”

  Thirty minutes later, he left the crew to finish loading the last group of refugees, including the two bloodied combatants, so he could get back to the engine pod for system checks.

  Taking off would be clumsy. Lo Kuro didn’t have an airpad big enough for a freighter, so they’d landed in a charred field of crop stubble. To speed loading, they’d landed horizontally to allow easy access to the monster airlock, but they’d have to burn more system fuel on the side jets to get the ship vertical for liftoff. The holds and lifts were on gimbals and would adjust, but the engine and nav pods were fixed. He touched his ship earwire. “Lizet, I’m at the engine pod door. Please power the grav compensator.”

  “Okay. Done.”

  He’d positioned himself so the local gravity pulled his feet to the floor. He stood up and shook his head to get his inner ear adjusted to the change. He walked around to the pilot’s seat he’d rigged for himself and webbed in as he activated the wire in his skulljack and connected to the ship’s systems.

  “Privet, Kapitan Danilovich.” The ship’s AI greeted him in Russian because it had amused Lizet to feed it language modules in her spare time. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that, despite his family name, he’d grown up speaking Hungarian, and had no one left to speak it with since his mother died twenty years ago and left him her trader ship.

  He skimmed through the data streams, gratified to find few anomalies and no red flags. He felt the monster airlock close, and double-checked the others to ensure they read as closed. The crew would manually check them, anyway, just to be sure. Nothing ruined a good trip like explosive decompression from an improperly sealed airlock.

  He would have liked to top off the system drive fuel, and save flux for the interstellar trans
it run, but the ship had such poor atmosphere aerodynamics that they’d need the flux assist to brute-force it up and into orbit.

  “Monster lock sealed.” All the crew heard the cargo handler’s announcement, and the others that followed for the rest of the airlocks. They hadn’t had time to key individual earwires to individual people, so all the crew heard all the chatter, unless they temporarily muted the earwire.

  “Passenger status?” he asked.

  “They’re in the holds, but not in their berths yet.” Youssef sounded exasperated. “Maybe you could say something.”

  He turned on the wired sound system they’d cobbled together, so his voice boomed throughout the ship. “This is Captain Danilovich. This is not a farkin’ pleasure cruise. You have three standard minutes to get into your assigned berths. Unless you want to find out the hard way if our one and only autodoc works, strap yourselves in now.”

  “That did it.” Youssef chuckled. “You definitely have a way with words.”

  “A gift from my mother. Grav compensators are operating in the engine pod, so you and Anitra take care at the door.”

  Ten minutes later, he ordered the crew to their liftoff stations.

  “On my way,” said Anitra. “I gave my bunk to the mother cat for liftoff.”

  “Sorry,” said Lizet.

  “It’s fine,” replied Anitra. “I can sleep in the engine pod’s jump seat, if I have to. The pets will be good for the children.”

  Gavril smiled. He’d seen her pet all the dogs and cats Lizet’s elders had brought on board, so he thought the pets would be good for her, too. He’d felt her worry and sense of being overwhelmed when she’d unshielded. He wanted to tell her he greatly admired the remarkable accomplishments she’d pulled off in the midst of rampant chaos. He didn’t want the whole crew to hear it, though. Their relationship was complicated enough without making a tri-D entertainment out of it.

  “Powering system drives.” The engines responded smoothly, filling the engine pod with their familiar vibrations. He didn’t hear Youssef or Anitra enter the pod, but they both confirmed they were webbed in when he did the final crew check. Once Lizet verified the field outside was clear, he fluxed the system drives, and had the ship’s AI announce a countdown throughout the ship for crew and passengers alike as he confirmed his pilot’s seat web was secure.

  The ride through Polaris-Gamma’s atmosphere rivaled land-based thrill rides. Vaguely rectangular ships the size of a high-rise office building with token wings did not make for graceful air travel, and gravity compensators could only handle so much. Twelve bone-jarring minutes later, they cleared thermopause and passed low-orbit distance. The extra incalloy helped keep the hull temperature to well within tolerance, though the added weight cost them flux fuel for the liftoff.

  “Lizet, send a narrow-beam greeting to the control ship and ask them where the hell we’re going.” He understood the reasons for the secrecy, but they couldn’t wait any longer. As it was, they were a large, lumbering target for the blockade’s military frigates. He knew one or two tricks that might get them past. The element of surprise was long gone, but if the universe loved him...

  “Uh, Captain? This is kind of weird.”

  The universe hated him. “What’s weird?”

  “When I sent the beam, I also pinged the CGC comms satellite for navigation chart updates, as usual. We just pulled them yesterday, so there shouldn’t be any, but we just got an update. They say there’s a second jump point in the system, out past Polaris-Zeta.” She made an unintelligible sound. “It didn’t used to be there. I, uh, memorized the coordinates for as many systems as I could find within transit distance. It wasn’t there before.”

  Gavril smiled. How very like precocious Lizet to have used her enviable minder talent for perfect recall to memorize half a galaxy’s worth of transit point coordinates.

  “Might be a trap,” suggested Youssef. “Lure us all out to beyond the system’s gas giant, so they can corral us and keep us from leaving.”

  “Too convoluted for Space Division,” said Sinjin, Lizet’s great-grandfather, the interstellar engine designer. “They’d never mess with the nav charts. It could get them killed.”

  “The settlement company rat-bastards would do it, but they’d have to convince the military.” That was Basheer, who’d worked for Lizet’s merchant family and followed them to the frontier.

  “They might only have to convince the Citizen Protection Service,” said Anitra. “The CPS has agents on any military ship of size.”

  “Huh?” asked Lizet, echoing Gavril’s own confusion. “Why would the CPS care?”

  “Because,” replied Anitra, “Polaris-Gamma repeatedly told the CPS to suck flux. No clinics, no minder-testing centers, no representatives, no Jumper bases, no remands of fugitives, not even of minders.” Her voice sounded tired. “Pol-G is a bad influence. Might inspire other frontier planets to do the same.”

  “That’s what my father says, too,” chimed in Youssef.

  Gavril stretched his shoulders, trying to loosen the tension. “Lizet, find out what’s happening with the rest of our fleet. We’re on the planet’s dark side from the blockade for the moment, but not for long.” The active pings against the Diamantov’s abundant sensors felt like echoes, not recent.

  “When I sent the cryptogon key Chief Ferrsi gave us, we got a message,” said Lizet.

  “Share it with the crew,” ordered Gavril. “We’re late to the party.”

  Ferrsi’s distinctive, precise diction sounded in his earwire. “If you haven’t already done so since this morning, update your nav charts from the CGC, then check for a second jump point, past Polaris-Zeta. Two-thirds of our ships are headed for it. The rest decided to take their chances at the known jump point. If you have any weapons, don’t shoot at the blockade unless you have no choice. Your assigned destination is Sivari Intalo, a frontier planet eight transit days from here. They’ve agreed to act as a clearinghouse for your passengers. Good luck to you all.”

  Youssef spoke up. “My father believes the new jump point is legit, or he’d have said something.”

  “All in favor,” said Gavril, “of not getting our asses shot off at the main blockade, say ‘aye.’” A full chorus of “ayes” from the crew resounded in his ear. “Lizet, plot a high-and-wide arc over the system’s elliptic. We’ll take a curving shot at that jump point and use a gravity assist from the gas giant’s big fat moon, to avoid any traffic in the more conventional approach.”

  Minutes later, he used his connection to the ship to send the commands for a smooth and steady acceleration on Lizet’s nav solution. He was deeply gratified that all their hard work had transformed the Diamantov into their best shot for finding a new home.

  At some point in the last few days, or maybe even before that, he’d come to think of himself as one of the team. He liked the feeling of being a part of something. He’d used his solo trader career to protect himself from getting hurt through his empath talent, and told himself he was a loner, but he’d been hiding. Cowering, really. Letting the fear of his talent and the fear of rejection keep him on the outside, only occasionally stepping in from the cold when loneliness got too much to bear. Two years ago, Anitra had offered the promise of something better, but he’d been too stubborn to realize it.

  Even though he’d stupidly ruined his chances with her, it had been an easy decision to pilot the Diamantov to benefit her people. In a way, his people, too. He’d become interwoven with their emotional presence, even if he only personally knew the crew.

  He sent a bit of his talent out to the nearest crew members, to check that they were all right. Skittish, brilliant Lizet was scared, but even more exhilarated. Youssef felt almost bored, but with an undercurrent of blended wariness and anticipation that he’d noticed in law enforcers, the kind her father had in spades.

  He lingered the longest on the oasis of nothingness that was Anitra, wishing for once he could connect his empath talent with hers. They’d done it br
iefly, after quelling the would-be brawl in Lo Kuro, and he wanted to explore that again with her. Even more than he wanted her in his bed, he wanted that connection.

  He unwebbed himself from the pilot seat and got to his feet, stretching the tension out of his back. He set the holo console the way he liked it, with visual representations of their progress and the planets they’d pass, then walked around the engine core to the jump seats.

  Youssef was already striding through the open engine pod doorway. “There ought to be a law that all engine pods must have freshers.” She raised her voice in the corridor. “Damn vibrations tickle my bladder.”

  He turned to share his amusement with Anitra, but she was fast asleep in her jump seat. He crouched beside her and checked that her webbing was secure. Usually in sleep, she just looked relaxed, but faint bruising under her eyes hinted at deep exhaustion. He smoothed her hair back off her face, taking comfort in the warmth of her skin and the surprising softness of her wavy hair.

  She’d made everything they’d accomplished possible, but he doubted she’d see it that way. She probably thought it was simply the right thing to do, not realizing that most people would have given it up as impossible from the start. Her true gift was sharing her vision, inspiring people to do whatever it took to make it real. He wished he knew what she wanted for herself, because he’d like to be the one to give it to her.

  He snorted to himself as he stood. First, they had to make it past the blockade.

  10

  * Interstellar Transit Point Near Polaris-Zeta: Freighter “Deset Diamantov” * GDAT 3233.049 *