Voyage Across the Stars

by David Drake

  The young man grimaced in embarrassment and disappeared behind the closed door again.

  “Lucas Doormann,” Tadziki explained in a low voice. “He’s son of Doormann Trading’s president—that’s Karel Doormann—but he’s not a bad kid. He’s trying to help, anyway, when his father would sooner slit all our throats.”

  “Didn’t have balls enough to volunteer to come along, though,” Warson said, again without emotional loading.

  “Via, Toll, would you want him?” Tadziki demanded. “He maybe knows not to stand at the small end of a gun.”

  Warson shrugged. “Different question,” he said.

  The phone rang. Tadziki winced. “Toll,” he said, “how about you play adjutant for half an hour and I take Slade here over the Swift? Right?”

  Warson’s smile was as blocky as ice crumpling across a river in spring. He reached for the handset. “You bet,” he said. “Does that mean I get all the rake-off from suppliers, too?”

  Tadziki hooked a finger to lead Ned out of the office. “Try anything funny,” he growled, “and you’ll save the Pancahtans the trouble of shooting you.”

  Warson laughed as he picked up the phone. Ned heard him say, “Pancahte Expedition, the Lord Almighty speaking.”

  The adjutant paused outside the office and looked up at the vessel in the frames. She was small as starships went, but her forty meters of length made her look enormous by comparison with the fusion-powered tanks Ned had learned to operate and deploy on Friesland.

  “What do you know about this operation, kid?” Tadziki asked.

  “I know,” Ned said carefully, “that I prefer to be called Slade, or Ned, or dickhead . . . sir.”

  Tadziki raised an eyebrow. “Touchy, are we?” he asked.

  Ned smiled. “Nope. When I get to be somebody, maybe I’ll get touchy, too. But since it was you I was talking to, I thought I’d mention it.”

  “Yeah, don’t say anything to Toll Warson that he’s likely to take wrong,” Tadziki agreed. “Do you know about him?”

  Ned shook his head.

  “Well, this is just a story,” Tadziki said. “A rumor. You know, stories get twisted a lot in the telling.”

  “. . . could’ve been an officer,” sang the joggers as they rounded the nose of the vessel. They moved at a modest pace, but one that would carry them seven or eight kilometers in an hour if they kept it up. The Racontid ran splay-legged, like a wolverine on its hind legs.

  “But I was just too smart . . .”

  “Seems Toll and his brother Deke had a problem with a battalion commander on Stanway a few years back,” Tadziki said.

  “They stripped away my rank tabs . . .”

  “One night the CO pushed the switch to close up his command car—”

  “When they saw me walk and fart!”

  “—and the fusion bottle vented into the vehicle’s interior,” Tadziki said. He cleared his throat. “Toll and Deke turned out to have deserted a few hours before, hopping two separate freighters off-planet. Some people suggested there might have been a connection.”

  He nodded to the boarding bridge to the hatch amidships. “Let’s go aboard.”

  They walked in single file, the adjutant leading. Power cables and high-pressure lines snaked up the bridge and into the ship, narrowing the track.

  “He looks like the kind who’d play hardball,” Ned said with deliberate calm, “Toll Warson does. But that’s what I’d expect from people who’d—respond to Lissea Doormann’s offer.”

  Tadziki laughed harshly as he ducked to enter the vessel. He would have cleared the transom anyway, unlike Ned who was taller by fifteen centimeters. “You don’t know the half of it, Slade,” he said. “The battalion commander was their own brother. Half-brother.”

  The inner face of the airlock projected a meter into the vessel. Tadziki gestured around the vessel’s main bay, crowded now by workmen in protective gear operating welders and less identifiable tools. “Welcome to the Swift, trooper,” the adjutant said. “If you decide to go through with your application, and if you’re picked, she’ll be your home for the next long while.”

  Tadziki looked at Ned. “Maybe the rest of your life.”

  “It’ll do,” Ned said. “Anyway, it’s roomier than a tank.”

  The bay was filled with bunks stacked two-high on either side of a central aisle. The pairs were set with a respectable space open between them, because they gimballed in three axes to act as acceleration couches. That meant there was no storage within the bay except for the narrow drawer beneath each mattress.

  There were two navigation consoles forward, still part of the open bay. Astern were two partitioned cubicles and, against the heavy bulkhead separating the bay from the engine compartment, an alcove holding a commode. Workmen were installing a folding door to screen the commode.

  “That was my idea,” Tadziki explained with a glance toward the alcove. “Lissea said she didn’t need special favors. I told her she might think she was just one of the guys, but things were going to be tense enough without her dropping her trousers in front of everybody on a regular basis.”

  Ned nodded to show he was listening while he scanned the confusion to count places. There were sixteen bunks, plus the pair of navigation couches and the private cubicles for— presumably—the captain and adjutant. It was possible but very unlikely that there were bunks in the engine compartment as well.

  “Twenty places,” Tadziki said in confirmation. “Six of them for ship’s crew—sailors. A few of the others can double in brass. I can.”

  He looked sharply at Ned. “I gather from the curriculum in your ID you know something about ships yourself?”

  Ned shrugged. “I’ve had a course in basic navigation,” he agreed. “In a pinch, I’d be better than punching in coordinates blind, I suppose. And fusion bottles are pretty much the same, tanks or starships.”

  The saw began to shriek again as a workman shortened the mounting stanchion of the pair of bunks which had to clear the airlock’s encroachment. The sound was painful. Despite the tool’s suction hood, chips of hot steel sprayed about the bay.

  Ned backed out onto the boarding bridge a moment before the adjutant gestured him to do so. When the workman shut the saw down, Ned said, “I was at home in Slade House on Tethys when Captain Doormann’s message came. That’s all I know about the expedition—that Lissea Doormann’s preparing to visit the Lost Colony of Pancahte with a picked crew.”

  “And,” Tadziki said, nodding but smiling slightly as well, “that she invited Captain Donald Slade to accompany her.”

  “She could do worse than take Uncle Don,” Ned said crisply. “She could do worse than take me, too.”

  An air-wrench began to pound within the Swift’s bay. Tadziki motioned Ned to follow him back down the boarding bridge, sauntering this time.

  “Telaria’s pretty much a family concern,” the adjutant explained. “The Doormann family. There’s a planetary assembly here at Landfall City, but the real decisions get made at the Doormann estate just outside the town proper.”

  He nodded vaguely northward.

  “Okay,” Ned said to show that he understood the situation—as he certainly did. Many of the less populous (and not necessarily less advanced) human worlds were run by a family or a tight-knit oligarchy. On Tethys, the Slade family had been preeminent since the planet was settled centuries before.

  “Twenty-odd years ago, there was a flash meeting of the Doormann Trading board while the president, Grey Doormann, was on a junket off-system on Dell,” Tadziki said. “Grey’s half-brother Karel replaced him as president. The genetic access codes to Doormann Trading facilities and data banks were reset to deny Grey entry.”

  The joggers had finished their exercise and were straggling toward the two-story prefab beside the office building. None of the men were less than ten years older than Ned. They moved with the heavy grace of male lions.

  “Okay,” Ned repeated. Power was a commodity always in short supply
. The events Tadziki had described were thoroughly civilized. On some worlds, a similar transfer would have been conducted by hirelings like Toll Warson and Don Slade, late of Hammer’s Slammers.

  The adjutant paused at the base of the boarding bridge and looked out across the dockyard. A mobile crane squealed as its boom lowered a drive motor into place. A dirigible carried a slingload of hull plates slowly across the sky to a freighter being constructed at the opposite end of the complex. The thrum of nacelle-mounted props provided a bass line to the yard’s higher-pitched activities.

  “Karel didn’t know Grey’s wife had just borne a daughter, though,” Tadziki said. “They left the baby on Dell to be raised by a couple there they trusted. The parents came back and lived in a private bungalow here on the Doormann estate, as quiet as church mice.”

  “Lissea Doormann was the daughter?” Ned said, again to show that he followed.

  “You bet,” Tadziki agreed. “She had the genes, and there wasn’t a specific block on her code . . . so six months ago, she waltzed into the middle of a board meeting to demand a seat and control of her branch of the family’s stock. Grey had left Karel with a proxy when he went dicking off to Dell. Lissea claimed to revoke it as assignee of her father’s interest.”

  He shook his head and smiled. “I’d have liked to been at that meeting,” he added.

  Ned frowned. “Weren’t there human guards?” he asked.

  “Close to a thousand of them,” the adjutant said. “I’ve seen base camps in war zones that weren’t near as well defended as the Doormann estate. But she was a Doormann, an unarmed woman. The guards didn’t realize just who she was, but they curst well knew that if she was a family member, she could have them flayed if they were uppity enough to lay a hand on her.”

  Ned grinned and looked back at the Swift. “The prodigal daughter returns,” he murmured. “It sure proves the expedition’s leader has guts.”

  While the commercial liner that brought him to Telaria landed, Ned had watched the displays. The hectares of open area north of Landfall City proper (strip development surrounded it on all sides) must be the Doormann estate rather than a large public park as he’d assumed. There was a tall central spire and scores of smaller buildings scattered over the grounds.

  “Oh, she’s got guts, all right,” Tadziki said. “Brains, too. Lissea’s foster father had her trained as an electronics engineer, and she’s a good one. I doubt there was ever anything Lissea really cared about besides booting her uncle out of the presidency, but she’s an asset to the expedition as an engineer, believe me.”

  “Why an expedition to Pancahte?” Ned prompted.

  “The short answer,” Tadziki said, “is that seventy years ago one Lendell Doormann embezzled a large sum from Doormann Trading and fled, it’s rumored, to Pancahte. Now, what Karel might have done if he’d had Lissea alone is one thing, but at a board meeting where everybody present was her relative as well as his, well they weren’t going to just call in the guards. So Karel came up with a compromise.”

  Ned pursed his lips. “Lissea recovers the missing assets from Pancahte, in exchange for which, Karel doesn’t challenge her right to vote her father’s stock.”

  “When she returns,” Tadziki agreed. “Which Karel doesn’t think she’s going to do.” He gave Ned a rock-hard smile. Ned was suddenly aware that Tadziki deserved to be adjutant of a force comprised of men like Toll Warson. “Me,” Tadziki said, “I’m betting on the lady. I’m betting my life.”

  A limousine drove through the dockyard gates. Men in blue uniforms on three-wheelers escorted the car before and behind. The guards carried iridium-barreled powerguns like those of President Hammer’s forces on Nieuw Friesland.

  Ned thought of the veterans of Hammer’s mercenary regiment whom he’d met, men and women whose scars were as often behind their eyes as on their skin. Veterans like Don Slade.

  The guards looked like puppies.

  The limousine drew up in front of the office. A big man jumped from one side of the vehicle and strode quickly around the back toward the other door. He wore a holstered pistol and battledress which blurred chameleonlike to match its surroundings.

  “Herne Lordling,” Tadziki murmured. He walked toward the office with Ned a half-step behind. “Who—whatever he likes to think—reports to the captain the same as does every other member of the crew.”

  The limousine’s other door opened from the inside before Lordling reached it. A slim dark woman got out and started directly for the office. Lordling fell into step, but there was no suggestion that the woman would have waited if he had lagged behind.

  “Time to introduce you to Captain Lissea Doormann,” Tadziki said. He smiled. “Ned.”

  Lucas Doormann stood in the doorway to the inner office, saying, “Lissea, I’m glad to—”

  Toll Warson had a broad grin on his face. He held the telephone handset out at arm’s length. The gabble from whoever was at the other end of line was an insectile chirping.

  “Toll, where’s Tad—” Lissea Doormann said before she turned in response to the gesture of Warson’s free hand. Herne Lordling bumped into her, then jumped back and was blocked by Ned Slade’s forearm—outstretched instinctively to keep the big ex-colonel from crushing Tadziki against the door-jamb.

  “Sorry, s—,” Ned began.

  Lordling cocked his fist. He was as tall as Ned and bulkier; not in the least soft, but no man of fifty was likely to be in the shape Ned was no matter how he pushed his body.

  On the other hand, Lordling carried a gun.

  Tadziki laid his palm across Lordling’s knuckles. “Do you have business in my office, Herne?” he asked coolly. “Because I do, and brawling isn’t part of it.”

  “Lucas, I’m terribly sorry,” Lissea said with at least a pretense of sincerity. Up close, she had a sparkling hardness that belied her slight build.

  She pressed Lucas’ right hand in both of her own, then spun to take in the situation in the outer doorway. “Herne, will you stop pretending you’re my shadow. Tadziki, where have you been? Herne says the arsenal’s trying to fob us off with over-aged powergun ammunition!”

  “The invoice is for lots manufactured within the past three years, Captain,” Tadziki said. “Well within usage parameters.”

  “That’s not what’s set aside for us in the arsenal,” Lordling snapped.

  “I don’t have any control over the arsenal’s procedures, Herne,” the adjutant said with a politeness so icy it burned. “I do have control over what we receive aboard the Swift per invoice, and I assure you that I will continue doing my job in that respect. As no doubt you will have opportunities to do your job after we’re under way.”

  Toll Warson chuckled. If there could have been any sound more offensive than Tadziki’s tone, Warson’s laughter was it. Ned noticed that Warson had dropped the telephone and was holding instead a paperweight, a kilogram lump of meteoritic iron which his callused palm nearly swallowed.

  “Stop this,” Lissea said crisply. “Toll, you’re not needed here. Herne, neither are you. Tadziki, I’ll expect you to double-check the ammunition before it comes aboard.”

  The adjutant nodded. “Yes ma’am,” he said, gesturing toward Ned with a cupped hand as he spoke. “I was just showing the Swift to a potential recruit for the expedition here.”

  “Blood, Tadziki!” said Herne Lordling. Neither he nor Watson seemed in any hurry to leave the office. He looked at Ned and added, “The Pancahte Expedition’s by invitation only, kid. Go back home till you grow up.”

  “My name’s Slade,” Ned said in a voice as thin and clear as a glass razor. “I came in response to the courier Captain Doormann sent to Tethys.”

  His eyes were on Lordling, but the older man was a mass rather than a person. If the mass shifted significantly, if the hands moved or the legs, Ned would strike first for the throat and then—

  “You’re Don Slade?” Lordling said in amazement.

  “His uncle didn’t choose to accept t
he invitation,” Tadziki interjected smoothly. “Ensign Slade here did. He’s a graduate of the Frisian Military Academy and he’s served with the planetary forces in pacification work.”

  “The Pancahte Expedition isn’t for just anybody, Slade,” Lucas Doormann said. The young noble wasn’t actively hostile, but he was glad to find someone in the gathering whom he could patronize safely the way he could most of the civilians of his acquaintance.

  Lissea looked at her cousin. “He isn’t just anybody,” she said. “He’s Don Slade’s nephew.”

  “I’m Edward Slade,” Ned said, more sharply than he’d intended.

  Lissea eyed Ned with the cold speculation of a shopper choosing one mango from a tray of forty. He stood at attention. Nobody spoke for a moment.

  She grimaced and glanced over at her adjutant. “We’ve filled nineteen, haven’t we, Tadziki?”

  “Yessir, but—”

  Lissea’s focus hadn’t left Ned when she asked for affirmation of what she knew already. “Sorry, Master Slade,” she said. “We’ll keep your name on the list if you like, but I can’t hold out much—”

  “As a matter of fact, Captain,” Tadziki said, “I want to talk to you about the ship’s internal layout. I don’t think I should have a private compartment—or a single bunk.”

  “How many tankers do you have in the troops you’ve signed on, ma’am?” Ned asked. His eyes were front and level, focused on a strand that wind had lifted from Lissea’s near skullcap of short black hair.

  “We don’t have any tanks either, Slade,” Lissea said in puzzlement at the pointless question.

  “And your enemies, ma’am?” Ned said. “You’re sure they don’t have tanks?”

  Toll Warson chuckled again, softly this time. “Nice shot, kid,” he murmured.

  “We don’t know a great deal about conditions on Pancahte,” Lissea Doormann said coolly. A smile touched her lips, slight, but the first sign of good humor Ned had seen her express. The stress on a young woman welding together men like these would be greater than that of anything Ned could imagine attempting.