Analog SFF, January-February 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  She would make certain he never had work within the Alliance again.

  Her threats terrified him almost as much as the big payout attracted him. That was one reason he took so many lessons in botany. Another was that he usually avoided such large payouts. Usually, he found small items for people who had lost them.

  Lost was a loose term. Perhaps it was better to say he recovered items for people who did not have them. Why they didn't have those items wasn't his concern. Sometimes those items were legitimate heirlooms, truly lost or stolen. Sometimes the items were merely things that the client wanted and couldn't have, things that might, in the strictest sense of the word, belong to someone else.

  Yu's recovery policy was simple: He never asked the client for proof of ownership for an item he went after. He always assumed the client owned the item and somehow misplaced it. Such a defense had worked when he'd had a run-in with authorities, most of whom couldn't touch his clients—either because the clients had too much money, too much clout, or weren't Alliance members.

  This client, Magda Athenia, had both money and clout, and she had opted out of the Alliance decades ago. She claimed to be retired, but she kept her hand in a score of businesses.

  Yu had researched her before he had taken on the search. First, he wanted to know if she had the kind of money she claimed she had. She did. Then he wanted to know if she honored all agreements she entered into, even handshake deals. So far as he could tell, she did. Never once had a case been brought against her in any existing court for breach of contract. All employees, past and current, had nothing bad to say about her.

  He did not take the research much farther. Some of his colleagues—the ones who specialized in large payouts like this one—often tried to find out why the client wanted an item. Sometimes the client was a collector. Sometimes the client needed the item to enhance his business. And sometimes he wanted it to humiliate a rival.

  Yu didn't care why his clients wanted their items. To be truthful, his clients weren't that important to him. The importance—for him at least—was the hunt. If he were more of a collector himself, he would gather his own items. But he didn't have a permanent home, and he loved to travel light.

  So he used the clients as a way to keep himself fed, and as a way to keep himself active and searching. He got paid when and if he delivered.

  For the past twenty years, if he took a job, he delivered.

  He hadn't missed.

  Not once.

  It was that statistic that had brought Athenia to him in the first place. The high-end Recovery Men (and all but a few in this profession were male, for reasons he never fully understood) had a failure rate of about 50 percent. Some of that wasn't their fault. Sometimes they found themselves pursuing items that didn't exist. Even with the legend factor taken out of the equation, though, the high-end Recovery Men failed 25 percent of the time.

  Now, standing in this swamp, facing away from the flowering fidelia but still bathed in its light, he wondered why he had ever taken this case. It certainly wasn't for the money. He had known from the start that he might not get paid.

  It was the challenge, the near-impossibility of the idea.

  The hunt.

  At least one Recovery Man had failed before him. That made this particular hunt even more tempting.

  Yu took a deep breath, tasting chemicals. He hadn't failed yet. Even if he killed this flowering fidelia, he wouldn't fail.

  The very idea soothed him, calming his nerves.

  Then, before he had a chance to think, he whirled toward the flowering fidelia, steel blades flashing. With one quick movement, he slashed a circle in the colesis tree—a big circle that cut through the vine as well as a large section of the tree's interior.

  With one hand, he tipped the container upside down, dumping the dried, straight colesis into the murky water. With the other hand, he pried the circular cut off the standing colesis. As the first colesis hit the water, he moved the container, catching the twisted colesis, its vine, and the precious flowering fidelia.

  The light continued to pour from the flower.

  So far, it seemed, the vine and the fidelia didn't sense anything wrong.

  He slammed the lid on the container and shoved it into his travel pouch. Then he scurried out of the copse of trees.

  The Alliance might believe that the colesis weren't sentient, but he wasn't going to gamble his life on that fact. He ran through the swamp, hitting the summon button for the skimmer.

  He stopped a few kilometers away to make sure the container was stowed properly. When he was certain it was, he took out his scanner, checking for other colesis trees. There were, he remembered, half a dozen that stood alone between here and the swamp's entrance.

  He was going to do everything he could to avoid them.

  He was going to do everything he could to survive.

  * * * *

  The skimmer reached him twelve Earth hours after he had found the flowering fidelia. He was never so happy to see a machine in his entire life.

  The skimmer was long and flat—a costly rental that he never would have splurged for if it weren't for the fact that Athenia paid for all expenses promptly. The interior formed only when a passenger was on board. As he stepped inside, the once-flat top of the skimmer became a dome made of clear black material. He gave the skimmer verbal orders to find the quickest way back to Bosak City, where his own ship was.

  He went into the captain's quarters—a fancy name for the skimmer's only sleeping compartment—removed his clothes, and showered not once but five times, finally giving up when he realized the stench of the swamp probably wouldn't leave his nostrils until he physically left the area.

  Then, and only then, did he go back into the main cabin and open the travel pouch.

  The container still glowed with that bluish-purple light. As long as he saw that, he knew that the flower was still alive.

  He slumped in the pilot's chair. Relief filled him, even though he knew the journey wasn't done. He still had to get the flower to Athenia.

  The question was, when did he notify her? If he waited too long, the flower might die of its own accord. If he did so too soon, he might lose his one chance at success.

  What mattered most was timing.

  If he could find out where Athenia was staying and how far it was from Bosak, then he would know if he had time to make certain the flower lived.

  He couldn't make that determination on the skimmer. He might not even be able to make it on his ship. The Nebel had a good computer system, one that could tap into the systems of most ports, but he wasn't sure if it would work with Bosak's port.

  The place truly was as far away from the Earth Alliance as he liked to go.

  Since he could do nothing except wait, he closed his eyes. He needed the rest.

  He knew that leaving a planet with contraband material could be tricky. It could be even trickier when that contraband material was a living plant.

  He needed to be alert when he faced Bosak's version of space traffic control.

  The last thing he needed was yet another arrest.

  * * * *

  Hadad Yu had been arrested fifty-six times. Forty-nine of those arrests had been within the Earth Alliance and three of those forty-nine had been so serious he thought he was going to have to spend decades of his life in prison.

  But he'd managed to slip away each time. Most of the lesser charges he could talk his way out of. The seven times he'd been arrested outside the Alliance, he had used his clients—or his clients’ lawyers—to free him.

  But the three serious charges had taken a lot of smarts, a lot of bargaining, and in one instance, a case of bribery that was even more illegal than the crime he'd been charged with.

  As a young man, he'd looked on the arrests as part of the game.

  Now, though, he hated them—not just for the time they wasted, but for the luck he was using up. Some day, he knew, that luck would run out.

  He thought of all of this
as he sat on the bridge of the Nebel, waiting for permission to leave Bosak City. Each of the three ships ahead of him had received permission, only to be stopped just inside the dome. Inspectors boarded and hadn't emerged for at least two Earth hours.

  The Nebel was four times the size of those other ships. It was a cargo vessel that he had purchased five years ago with the proceeds of his last big job. It was a Gyonnese ship, which meant that it had a lot of wonderful equipment that was so unusual most Earth Alliance inspectors had never seen it, even though Gyonne was a long-time member of the Alliance.

  Yu hadn't followed all Alliance protocols either. The cargo bays probably weren't as clean as they should have been. If a ship went through standard Alliance decontamination procedures, then it also got a thorough inspection. He didn't want the interior of his ship on any port database.

  One of the things that had saved him in the past was that his ship didn't fit any known model. Inspectors didn't realize that the interior of the ship was larger than it appeared. Nor did most know how many separate environmental systems it had.

  So if an inspector tested the air for contaminants in, say, the bridge, he'd get a completely different reading than he would in one of the cargo bays.

  Usually, though, Yu didn't have such sensitive cargo. He had to keep the flowering fidelia near him. The plant needed all the atmosphere he could provide. He had it in a darkened room off the bridge itself, a room he kept as humid as possible, and he hoped that would be enough.

  So far, the fidelia still glowed. He hoped it would for another day when he could finally—safely—contact Athenia.

  Nebel, said an official voice. Prepare for interior scan.

  Yu let out a breath. He had already protected this deck from the scan by creating a shadow deck, one that would look good on most equipment in most ports. He hoped it would work here.

  Scans show you have living material near the bridge that is not on your manifest. Please explain.

  Yu cursed silently. He could try to tough it out or he could pull his only bargaining chip. He didn't have time to research Bosak law, so he didn't know how closely it was bound to Alliance protocol.

  If Bosak law followed Alliance protocol, he had no shot, not with the contaminants this ship had been exposed to.

  He waved his hand over the console. His movement had switched on his side of the communications array.

  "Space Traffic,” he said. “I have a special license that allows me to carry items not listed in the manifest. I am sending that license to you now."

  He passed his fingers over a different part of the console, then sighed. Either the port would reject the license outright or it would take time to examine it.

  The license claimed that he carried top-secret cargo that had already been screened by various government regulators. It was legitimate. It would hold up to examination.

  The problem was that the license had come from Athenia's company. Now he would have to notify her, whether he was ready to or not.

  The silence on the other end both encouraged and worried him. If they were going to board him, they would do so in the next few minutes.

  He sat very still, watching the monitors. Then the digitized voice returned.

  Your license is in order. Thank you for spending time in Bosak City. You are cleared to leave.

  He bowed his head, letting relief course through him. If he had been arrested this far out, he had very few options and even fewer bargaining chips. Athenia had been one of those chips, and he wouldn't have been able to use her twice.

  Then he straightened his spine, passed his hand over the console to initiate the take-off procedures, and let the ship do the rest.

  He had to contact Athenia before Bosak City did.

  He had to let her know that the flowering fidelia was on its way.

  * * * *

  Fortunately Athenia picked a rendezvous spot only an Earth day away from Bosak. She had been excited to hear that he finally found a flowering fidelia, excited enough to pay his current expenses and to promise him a bonus if the thing bloomed for longer than the expected week.

  Yu finally got some much-needed sleep. He sprawled on the large bed he had indulgently placed in the captain's cabin, secure in the knowledge that in a few hours the fidelia would no longer be his concern.

  But it felt as if he hadn't been asleep more than a few minutes when the ship woke him up. An image floated above the bed—the Nebel surrounded by a dozen ships, some above, some below, some to the sides—all of them blocking his way.

  "Is that a threat of something to come?” he asked the ship. “Or is that really happening?"

  "It's really happening,” the ship said. The seductiveness of the voice, which he had programmed for solo trips, suddenly seemed inappropriate.

  "Have they contacted us?” Yu sat up, rubbed his hand over his face. He felt bleary. How long had it been since he slept so deeply? A week? Two? A month?

  "No contact,” the ship said.

  Yu's stomach clenched. That wasn't good. He got out of bed and pulled on some clothes. “Can you show me a better image of the ships?"

  "This is how they appear,” the ship said.

  Yu wasn't sure what that meant. Was that how they appeared when the ship scanned them or was that how they appeared through the ship's various portholes?

  "I'd like to see the ships’ identification,” he said.

  "They have no markings."

  He was shaking now. The Nebel had no weapons, because he so often flew the large cargo ship solo. Instead, he had opted for great speed and all sorts of interior shadowing technology, which allowed one section to appear to be something it wasn't.

  "The shadowing technology is on, right?” he asked.

  "It is,” the ship said, “but we have not been scanned."

  No contact, no scan. His heart was pounding. “Have we been boarded?"

  The ship did not answer. His mouth went dry. He walked to the door of his cabin and waved his hand over the locks.

  They didn't open.

  "Ship,” he said again. “Am I the only one on board?"

  The image of the Nebel surrounded by a dozen ships vanished. A woman's face appeared in front of his door.

  She had vertical blue lines running from her forehead to her chin, making it seem as if her face had been taken apart in sections and put together badly.

  "You will be alone in a few moments, Hadad Yu,” she said. “We have let you know our presence as a courtesy. And we want to give you our thanks."

  "For what?” he asked, although he was afraid he knew.

  She didn't answer. Instead she smiled and the image vanished.

  He tried the door again. It didn't open.

  "Secure channel YuPrivate,” he said, giving one of the many codes he had programmed into the ship.

  "Yes?” The ship's seductive voice had vanished.

  "Open the goddamn door to my cabin,” he said.

  It slid open and he stepped into the corridor. The air had a slightly metallic odor that was unfamiliar—something the environmental systems hadn't yet cleaned out.

  "Am I the only one on the ship?” he asked.

  "Yes,” the ship said.

  He cursed. He thought of grabbing a weapon, but decided against it. There was no point. If the images he had seen were accurate, there were too many people surrounding his ship. A weapon would only make him seem desperate and might, in fact, put him in danger.

  Instead, he hurried through the empty corridor to the bridge.

  It was empty. A small black holo-emitter sat beneath the pilot's seat. The woman's image, looking almost real, filled the chair itself. She had to have sat there at some point to get such a clean image.

  She was shapely, her body stronger than most that spent a lot of time in space. She had muscular legs and powerful arms, visible through the ripped top she wore. The image smiled at him. The blue lines on her face were less disturbing when the rest of her body was attached.

  "Had
ad Yu,” she said. “The Black Fleet thanks you. While we will not return the flowering fidelia to you, we are forever in your debt."

  The Black Fleet.

  He had thought they were a myth, something made up to scare Recovery Men and other solo travelers. The stories were wide and varied, but they all boiled down to one fact:

  When a ship was filled with valuable cargo, it would find itself at the mercy of the Black Fleet. Sometimes the Black Fleet killed the occupants; sometimes it stole the ship.

  "You're in my debt?” he said to the holoimage.

  The woman smiled. The image had been programmed to respond to simple—and expected—queries.

  "We would not be here without your expertise. We have used that expertise many times without your knowledge. After a while, even we feel guilty at not paying for a service.” Her smile grew. “And now, thanks to you, we can afford to be magnanimous. So we honor that with a one-time debt, payable in anything except the return of the flowering fidelia."

  She touched a hand to her forehead, and the image winked out.

  He wanted to pick up the box and fling it across the bridge. But he knew better. The box could provide him with some answers. It also was the only proof he had of this debt. Not only that, he suspected the box had a way to contact the Fleet built-in.

  If the rumors about the Black Fleet were true, then the rumors about its attitude toward debts were true too. The Black Fleet honored all debts, considered them life debts, and as such they were quite valuable.

  He stared at the box. He supposed he could tap it for its secrets. Maybe the box itself provided him with the answers he needed—not just to the Black Fleet itself, but also how its members got on board his ship.

  But he wasn't going to examine the box now. Instead, he walked to the room beside the bridge.

  The door swished open to reveal complete darkness. The flowering fidelia's light had gone out. He wasn't sure what was worse: the idea that the flower had died or the idea that the Black Fleet had stolen it from him.

  "Lights up 10 percent,” he said.