Sands of the Solar Empire (The Belmont Saga)

by Ren Garcia

  Taara put her hands down and walked into the Yardmaster’s office.

  There was a struggle from within.

  Somebody hit the floor with a crash.

  Stenstrom and A-Ram came in. Taara was dragging the Yardmaster’s unconscious body away from his chair. “Taara, was knocking this man out really necessary?”

  “Yes, Bel, it was. He’s fine—he’ll just have to live with the notion that he got knocked out by a girl is all. I’m certain that’s not a tidbit he’ll be sharing with his friends any time soon.”

  Stenstrom produced another pink Holystone and stuck it in Piro’s hand.

  They then scoured the Dry Dock, looking for anything they might have a use for. They found several crates of insta-meals which they loaded onto the Westminster, along with a few boxes of bottled water, four pressure suits with ten hours of air each, three portable generators, two Holo-terms, a Macon air condenser, a Havelock mag system, along with yards of cabling, and some hand-tooling, should it be needed.

  They then piled into the Westminster and A-Ram fired it up. The transport was rather bullet-shaped with a fairly spacious cargo area and pilot’s seat.

  A-Ram strapped himself into the pilot’s chair and pressed buttons on the organ-like panels in front of him. “Oh, after the sub-orbital and the Seeker’s dead helm, this is like flying a dream,” he raved as he pulled away from the dock.

  Taara was amazed. “How do you know how to do all of this stuff—got another MOLLY on you somewhere?”

  “No,” he laughed. “Lots and lots of un-logged time in the simulators. I’m up on all these old ships. I used to go in them every day, and escape out the front hatch when somebody came in. I would have gotten into loads of trouble if they caught me in there.”

  They had the foresight to pre-open the doors to Ripcar bay 5, and A-Ram carefully slid the Westminster in—it was a tight fit. They then donned their newly acquired pressure suits and went out. They hard docked the Westminster’s landing skids and bolted her down as tightly as they could. Taara, still using the MOLLY with abandon, ran a controller cable from the central node of the transport to a junction nearby. “This way,” she explained over the suit’s Com, “we’ll have control over the ship from the bridge and not have to have somebody actually in the Westminster doing the flying.” It took awhile, bumbling around in her pressure suit, but she finally got it set up. Taara also connected several power cables to the Westminster’s generators and shunted the power, allowing the Seeker to make use of it.

  Their tasks done, they gathered their booty from the Dry Dock and collected it in a cargo net. They then did a short space walk to the adjacent Ripcar bay where they manually entered.

  “Well,” Taara said getting out of her pressure suit, her short black hair a mess. “That Dry Dock was like a big old grocery store, wasn’t it? Look at all this stuff we just stole. This is great!”

  “We’re going to need to be getting out of here post haste. The pinkies should be wearing off on those two shortly,” Stenstrom said.

  “You’re just pissing people off left and right today, aren’t you, Bel?” she added.

  They returned to the bridge and set up two of the generators—it took awhile hoisting them up the empty lift shaft with ropes until Taara had the bright idea to cut the gravity in the area, allowing the heavy equipment to float up—that was some inspired stuff. The lights came on and the whole place seemed a tad cheerier. They also set up the Macon, and it began producing fresh, clean air.

  A-Ram took the helm, and Stenstrom ordered the Seeker backed out of the Dry Dock. The Westminster fired, and off they went.

  9 Stop the Seeker

  Aboard the Demophalon John, Lt. Gwendolyn walked through the small corridors of the ship and headed to her quarters. Her crew, though efficient and polite, gave her plenty of space as she prowled the halls. Nobody said anything to her as she passed by either; they sunk into the walls, trying to be quiet and unnoticed.

  Yesterday was St. Porter’s Day. She would have forgotten all together, but she heard several of her crew wishing each other well.

  Nobody gave her the “Happy Porter’s Day” greeting.

  Nobody wanted to get on her bad side or risk provoking the Grizzly Bear, the Snapping Turtle, the AngryMountain; that’s what they called her—she’d heard all the various names whispered in the mess and in the corridors.

  Her crew, in short, was quite terrified of Lt. Gwendolyn, Lady of Prentiss.

  Not only was she mean as a snake and pugnacious to boot, she had the connections in the Admiralty to really make things unpleasant for a poor junior officer or crewman—there were all sorts of rotten duties and crap postings just awaiting such an unfortunate soul.

  The closest thing she had to a friend was Morgan-Jeterix, the ship’s Hospitaler, and why not? Being a Hospitaler, Morgan was immune to the captain’s fits of temper and threats of detail or demotion. And, though the crew had never seen such a thing, Morgan-Jeterix could probably out-fight Lt. Gwendolyn if push came to shove—nobody could fight like a Hospitaler.

  Clearly, nobody really liked Lt. Gwendolyn much.

  She wondered why sometimes. Sure, she demanded a lot from her crew. Sure, she went by the book. Sure, she could have a hot temper, and sometimes she went off at the mouth, but many captains did, and they had the love of the crew. Why didn’t she? Why didn’t she have a friend aboard? Why did she eat her meals alone and spend all of her free time in her quarters?

  She opened the door to her small cabin and stepped in. She removed her hat and let her long, coffee-brown hair down out of its confining bun. She took off her gun belt and hung it from a peg, her family FEDULA, long and rapier-like, glinting in the soft light. Her feet were killing her; she pulled off her over-sized Falloon boots and took a seat. She’d had a long day.

  She looked around. Being the captain of a Tekel-class scout ship, her quarters were the largest on the ship, yet they were rather small, just big enough for a table, a bathroom and a small bed; still, they were quite luxurious compared to what everybody else got bunked-in together. She didn’t need a whole lot of room though. Her quarters were shockingly sterile and devoid of personal mementos and decorations.

  A cold room for a well-known cold person.

  She liked many of the ancient card games that were once played, and was quite good at them. She had several hand-made, hand-painted decks that were worth quite a bit of money. They were her most prized and sentimental possessions beyond her FEDULA, given to her by her grandfather.

  She knew by heart dozens of games, but, mostly, she played solitary ones. Nobody wanted to sit down and play a hand of cards with the Grizzly Bear.

  Might get eaten . . .

  She took out one of her decks and sat down at the table, shuffling the cards around. She dealt eight cards for herself, and eight for a person across the table who wasn’t there.

  Her lonely thoughts began to spin.

  Paymaster Stenstrom, Lord of Belmont . . . .

  She understood how the Paymaster felt. Her mission, on the orders of Admiral Derlith himself, will cost him his chair. He had rubbed the Admiralty the wrong way during his Appointment, and they were going to make him suffer for it. He wouldn’t be the first person they cheated out of a captain’s chair.

  Stenstrom, Lord of Belmont. That was a name she heard from time to time, growing up in the House of Prentiss. When her aunt, a thin, unsmiling woman, came for a visit, she would sit in the parlor and talk with venom about someone named Stenstrom, Lord of Belmont, and his mother—a woman whom her aunt hated above all others.

  The words her aunt spoke were ugly and cold, driven by a confined, animal-like fury, all directed at some woman from Tyrol and her son.

  And then, many times, her aunt called out for her in a callow voice: “Gwendolyn!”

  She didn’t want to go into her presence. She was frightened of her aunt, but was drawn, and couldn’t help herself.

  “Gwendolyn! Come here!” Sometimes she heard that vo
ice in her nightmares:

  Gwendolyn!!

  Many times, she was stopped half-way by her uncle, Derlith. “Come on, Gwen, let’s go outside and get some air,” or “Let’s put the gloves on and go a round or two—show me what you got.” Many times, her uncle saved her having to go before her aunt.

  Occasionally, he wasn’t there to help her, and she had to go in and see her aunt. She never remembered what happened after that—it was blacked out in her mind.

  So, there he was, Paymaster Stenstrom, a man with enemies all over the place. She wondered if he was aware of all the various people who hated him from afar.

  Gwendolyn didn’t hate him. As a girl, she had harbored a vague curiosity about the fellow: what he was like, how he looked, what he had done to deserve her aunt’s considerable scorn. She was certain he was only a year or two older than she was—he was just a little boy as her aunt spewed her venom—what could he possibly have done?

  No, she didn’t hate him at all . . . .

  But, she had her orders to take him into custody. Unlike the commander of a warbird like the Seeker, a scout-ship captain had to follow orders from the Admiralty. She had no choice.

  She was under orders, but that didn’t mean she had to like them.

  She had the whole thing pictured out in her head. After she’d accomplished her mission, she had planned to take Paymaster Stenstrom into a quiet cafeteria at Fleet—there was one in the western wing of the complex that she favored—sit him down at a quiet table, and explain. He would, no doubt, be rather surly, perhaps pouting and nostalgic. She imagined herself being unusually patient and accommodating, listening to Lord Belmont cry in his beer. Since he’d been personally sponsored by the great Captain Davage, then he must be of good quality; he had to be. She planned to stick up for him, to come charging to his rescue and offer him help. She’d read Davage’s report regarding Lord Stenstrom’s performance during the Kestral Affair. He did very well, very well indeed, so, apparently, he was cut from command cloth. Surely some ship out there in the whole of the Fleet could use such a fellow, and she planned to help him in any way she could.

  She wondered how her aunt would react to such a display—probably not well, though Gwendolyn frankly didn’t care what her aunt thought. She was no longer a frightened child, and this was none of her aunt’s business.

  She imagined herself with all sorts of questions, sitting there in the cafeteria with him. A drab cafeteria in the middle of Fleet could hardly been considered a romantic place, but, in her practical and undecorated mind, it might as well have been a garden full of roses. Just she and Paymaster Stenstrom, sitting with their trays, absorbed in discovering each other.

  Her questions were many. So, why a Paymaster? Why didn’t he simply join the Fleet? He wears a Hoban Royal Navy coat—so he must have some hankering for it, some longing. Why did he choose such an odd route?

  And, why the mask? Was he simply an eccentric lord from Belmont. Was he scarred, or was there some other reason for wearing it?

  Why?

  She wondered what he looked like without it—just like one of those cleverly wrapped presents she used to get on Nether Day, one that was obscured just enough to keep her from knowing what it was—to whet one’s appetite to get it unwrapped and find out what was underneath.

  Her fantasy continued. As the lunch went on, she had planned to tell him that she would do what she could to help him re-appoint to another ship. She wanted to make amends. And he would see reason and accept, warmly shaking her hand, and then she would get out her decks, push their trays aside, and they’d play cards. They’d play for hours, both of them laughing and talking with abandon, the cards going fnap . . . fnap on the tabletop.

  In her mind, she had Paymaster Stenstrom, Lord of Belmont—the man in the mask and the HRN coat—penciled in as a friend, perhaps more. Surely he, like her, was a misfit too.

  But then, of course, the Grizzly Bear struck.

  He annoyed her during their initial meeting—worse, he infuriated her.

  Yes, I can see that—heavyweight division.

  What a cruel thing to say—in front of her crew. Morgan laughed—everybody laughed. And, of course, she saw red and went off at the mouth. What had she expected from him—her mission was to remove him of his brand new command. The idyllic and fanciful lunch shared in the Fleet cafeteria that she had hoped for began to seem more and more impossible.

  Now, after her performance earlier, she’d committed herself to getting into a brawl with him, and all the good will she’d built up in her mind was temporarily forgotten. She had been furious. If she could have, she would have fought him right there and then. There’s that temper again, and the willingness to attempt bodily harm upon another.

  Getting into a fight with Paymaster Stenstrom, whether the man could properly defend himself or not—it hadn’t mattered to her. Maybe her crew was right to be afraid of her after all.

  * * * * *

  She was a Prentiss, a long-standing noble family from Zenon, their holdings not too terribly far from the ancestral Belmont holdings in the more southern city of Brynthia, if she wasn’t mistaken. Unlike other Zenon Girls, who tended to be quite petite, ladies from Prentiss were large in stature—not fat or overweight, just broad-shouldered, tall and dense. Gwendolyn had six sisters, all like her, but, of all of them, she was the biggest and probably had the most vile temper and the sharpest tongue. Her tongue, in fact, had knocked her right out of the prolific Zenon social scene that her sisters participated so readily in. Though not very old, she was already considered a spinster; most of the eligible lords, looking to find a lady, denounced Gwendolyn of Prentiss as not worth the trouble, and they conducted their search in less volatile pastures. Such fiery ladies were often known as “Black Widows” in League society. Vith ladies were often labeled Black Widows, and sometimes Barrows and Calverts, but almost never Zenons. Sometimes Black Widows were a commodity—interested gentlemen occasionally finding them alluring and irresistible, like hunting for a dangerous animal that could lash out and bite. Yet, in her case, her stature and undeniably volcanic nature kept the brave at bay.

  Fortunately for her, getting married wasn’t foremost on her mind. She wanted to educate herself and become something other than the trophy wife on display in a grand sitting room other Zenon Girls dreamed of being. She saw the League around her and wanted to participate, to make her mark and leave an impression. She went to school in Arden, earning an Ev degree as an engineer of stellar mechanics—the only Zenon Girl in her class. She did, in fact, have a solid head on her shoulders.

  She was also a favorite of one of her uncles on her mother’s side, Lord Derlith of Cone, an Admiral in the Stellar Fleet—the younger brother of the mean old aunt she and her sisters were so afraid of. He always thought Gwendolyn had a good head and a stout heart, top among her sisters, though she clearly needed to work on her manners and her social skills. Like most of the Cones, her uncle had the sort of domineering personality that put a stopper on her temper—squelched it before it could top off and really come to a boil. And he genuinely appeared to be fond of his niece. He was patient with her, guiding her throughout her formative years. As an outlet for her energy and to help teach her discipline and respect, he introduced her to contact sports, which wasn’t a pursuit proper Zenon Girls usually chose to indulge in, but Gwendolyn was certainly not a standard Zenon Girl. She took up boxing at first, and had an immediate talent for it. Her size and density were a big help. Soon, she began branching out—taking up wrestling and sambo as well. Such “vulgar” sports weren’t in big demand on Kana, so her uncle took her to Onaris every year to compete, and she won a number of tournaments there over time.

  He helped her gain admission to the Fleet and guided her quickly through the ranks, Gwendolyn eventually becoming the commanding officer of a scouting ship under his direct command, though engineering appeared to be her true calling. After guiding the Demophalon John for a few years, she should easily appoint as either the
engineer or captain for some Main Fleet Vessel. She’d heard that he did quite a lot for her behind the scenes, managing to push aside some of the less flattering notes that began bubbling up regarding her behavior: unruly, ill mannered, bad tempered … disliked by her crew.

  “Not to worry, Gwen,” he often told her. “Leave all that to me.”

  * * * * *

  After she had time to cool off and reflect, she once again found herself admiring this man whom most of the Admiralty wished to see fail—this upstart Paymaster from Tyrol who Free Booted his way onto the chair of a Main Fleet Vessel. Look what he’d accomplished. He had been able to get aboard an abandoned ship using a sub-orbital craft, and he had managed to get two total strangers to help him along the way, at great risk to themselves. She wondered if she could have done the same thing, if she could have gotten anyone to assist her in such a fashion. She rather doubted it.

  She looked at the cards across the table. “I’m sorry for today—I’d hoped to get off on a better footing. Friends?” she said hopefully.

  As she sat there waiting for the cards to answer, her Com chattered.

  “Com,” she said in her husky voice.

  “Com here, Captain. Message from Fleet, Admiral Derlith.”

  “Aye, Com, I’ll take it here.”

  She took a moment, straightened her hair, and accepted the message. On her Com screen, the stern, iron-haired image of Admiral Derlith appeared.

  “Evening, sir,” she said. “Well met.”

  The Admiral didn’t mince words. “Gwendolyn, there has been a change in plans regarding the Seeker.”

  The Admiral was always very informal with her. He was her uncle, after all.

  She was elated. “I see. We were at three hours, twenty-two minutes until our link-up with her, sir.”

  “The Seeker is no longer in orbit around Kana.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, Paymaster Stenstrom and his band of pirates are cutting a notorious swath across the face of the Fleet. Seems the good Paymaster took it upon himself to appropriate the tach-scout ship Westminster from Dry Dock 275, and is using her as a drive engine. Two hours ago, he broke orbit and is on a slow-speed course to Bazz by way of Onaris.”