by Sharon Lee
“Murble drow drow!” Hevelin said, which was pretty talky for him. He looked over his shoulder at Slayn, then back to the screen, which wasn’t all that different now than it’d been an hour before, other than that Eylot’s other station—the big station—was about to go below horizon, taking its cloud of ardent and trigger-happy defenders with it.
“I’m sure!” Slayn said conversationally to Hevelin, on the theory that he wouldn’t fall asleep while actively talking. “Let’s take another look.”
The refresh didn’t bring up anything new: Eylot’s so-called defense forces were in a jumble of orbits, some nearly skimming the atmosphere at perigee, some as near circular as could be below Codrescu’s well-known path, some more clustered in vague orbits designed, he supposed, to defend the large station Eylot had spent decades building to replace the independent but guild-certified station Slayn sat in.
Codrescu, in theory, operated within a bubble of its own space—within that bubble it acted as traffic command and more, able to order ships and people out, and control the conditions in which those ships operated. Eylot’s contention that Codrescu was there “without proper planetary permission,” and thus had no right to control flight or people within those boundaries was the cause of the blockade…and the “mistake” that had seen a local space taxi collide with an Eylot-bound warship, with severe injuries to the pilot and three passengers on-board, was therefore Codrescu’s error.
There was also the fact of other local operators who had gone quiet, and—for all intents, missing. That gnawed at him—but there wasn’t any way to ask for a roll call without potentially endangering the very folks who he wanted to check up on.
The problem was, as far as Slayn was concerned, that the blockade of Codrescu was illegal, immoral, and dangerous. The threats to annex the station were bad enough, but ongoing legal wrangling taking place between the Eylot planetary authorities and all the lawyers, attorneys, PR agencies, and lobbyists the Guild could arrange for long-distance were all aimed at suppressing a stated goal of the natives: taking over the Guild office and forbidding pilots without “locally approved licenses” from operating anywhere in the system. They’d also thrown out, perhaps as a gambit, a request for the records of all the pilots who’d visited the station for the past seven Standards—claiming that the planet ought to be paid a fee for all the pilots who’d docked with or set foot on Codrescu in that period.
The icing on the donut, like his Aunt Chirly used to say, was the noisy interception—after launch!—of what was effectively an oversized unarmed delivery van. That had caused panic, among the station’s semi-commuting locals, and the resident population, not to mention the uproar from the witnessing pilots and traffic crew.
Made no difference to Eylot. In their view, they’d intercepted and forced to ground a dangerous threat to planetary security. That this dire threat to security had only been doing what it’d been doing every third day for the last couple dozen Standards—taking comestibles and other regular expendables up to the station, and returning with empties, bread cases, and other recyclables—was immaterial.
And now the ship-and-crew were impounded. The crew faced charges of security evasion, smuggling, and fomenting revolution.
And food delivery to Codrescu had stopped.
That was the threat, not the inept, comedy-revue blockade. If Eylot wanted Codrescu, all it had to do was starve ’em into submission.
Into surrender.
Looking at the display, Slayn muttered, recognizing Anlingdin Academy’s training shuttle by the familiar pink-and-purple flashing symbol meant to warn pilots that, of all the vehicles in near orbit, this one was the most likely to do something dangerous, to make an error of judgment. Except that, as far as he knew, there were no longer trainees manning it in pursuit of experience and licenses, but regular Eylot Air Defense Forces, watching Codrescu, the potential spot of alien contagion and invasion, that had only been peacefully orbiting the planet for two hundred-odd Standards.
Slayn shook his head when he saw the orbital elements attached to it. Another one of those twelve-orbits and down runs, he guessed, being sold to the dirtsiders as guarding against infection from space. On several of those orbits the shuttle would come close enough to set-off approach alarms, the while spying on people who weren’t doing anything but trying to figure out how to get out without risking cannon fire.
Cannon fire was also a possibility from the constantly changing run of strike-fighters flying up from the surface. They were certainly flying often enough to get their operations badges and duty ribbons, and Codrescu’s orbit was well within their day and a half operating schedule. All to protect against the station’s supposed danger as a forward operating base for someone unnamed.
Codrescu was hardly the place to launch an invasion from, not when even school children with mild-powered video and atmosphere-correcting lenses could image the open storage yards, not when—ah, he was raising his tension uselessly.
The grizzle-faced norbear suddenly removed his attention from the screen and headed toward the sealed hall door, waiting a cautious distance to the left as it slid open, revealing the silhouette of an armed guard in the outer office, and another man—Qaichi Bringo, himself—stepping through.
“Dinner’s here!”
True to his word, dinner was here, including a bundle of freshly stripped green leaves for the norbear—who respectfully took his meal and reclined against Peltzer’s sleeping foot to eat—and a sealed hotbox for Peltzer when he woke.
Slayn took his own meal, pleased to see that it was a pilot’s portion: sufficient, but not extravagant.
And that, of course, got him to worrying all over again.
“How’s the mood, out and about?” he asked Bringo, who had taken a seat at the smaller screens off to the left of Peltzer’s desk.
Bringo’s fingers moved: air fine food tight patience less.
“Got some mutters ’mong the docks of pulling free and gettin’ gone,” he amplified. “Givin’ the nix to that, as can. Food…”
Food. Slayn nodded. Given that most of the locals had a few week’s worth of stockpile here and there, and the station’s own backlog was good for a few days for the regulars—the issue was what would happen if one—or more!—of the ships at dock decided to run for it, dumping their passengers or redundant crew onto the station’s supply.
Slayn shook his head as he turned over the chances, hands running to the keypad. His fingers vicariously extended the troubles to eight days, sixteen, twenty-four…
Twenty-six…
If everything stayed as was, the only thing Eylot had to do, was wait twenty-six local days, and then just a little longer.
Slayn stared at the 3D again. They had seven major docks filled, three open. Close-in, he saw motion that were the hangers-on, the unofficial population of yard-runners, plegics, guesters, drifters, and the like, wholly dependent on the station, and not likely to move elsewhere. If they lost the big ships…
“Got numbers?” Bringo asked, hands forming query—and freezing in mid-sign.
“What?” demanded Slayn, following the other man’s stare up into the 3D.
Bringo’s fingers made the null-sign sometimes used for wait…
Ghost!
Slayn saw it in the same instant he took in Bringo’s sign, and slapped the comm key.
“Can you tell me what we’ve got at—”
“We see it, Guild,” Ops cut him off. “We see it. Looks an awful lot like a ghost to us. Been there a few minutes when we check back. We got nothin’ in the way of Jump-glare. Odd orbit, and main comp reminds there’s been an anomaly at those coords before. Something that came and went, apparently. I’m ordering the archive up to screens as soon as we get a good telescopic look at today’s edition. Likely, we don’t have Eylot’s secret weapon—”
“Avert on secret weapon!” Slayn shook his head, looking back to the 3D. The ghost was still there.
“Got that archive info,” Ops told him, and
here came the dates and times flowing nice and orderly down his work screen.
Yes, it looked like it was the same ghost. No Codrescu had never gotten a signal from it, and outside of one brief period there had been no other sightings. That didn’t comput in terms of orbital elements. So, it wasn’t an asteroid or a comet; not a lost probe or known survey unit. And if it had been orbiting ever since the last sighting, it wouldn’t be where it was now.
So that meant—what? It had gone away and come back again, whatever it—
“Feed for you, your number three,” Ops said quietly in his ear; “better make it priority with a screen!”
“Got it,” Slayn said before he touched the stud, sending the feed from the ops camera to the main screen.
He frowned and upped the magnification. There was some uncommon motion going on inside the nearby local craft swarm.
IDs were on the move, too. Goma Chang’s silhouette in short order was tagged as Strakin, Lefevbre’s Lounge, Odbert, and Illichin. Since Lefevbre’s Lounge was in fact permanently moored to the second oldest transfer port on the station, it looked like someone had spent a good bit of goodwill, or a good bit of cash, or both, arranging for all this sudden confusion.
Slayn raised the volume of the feed slightly, and turned to wake Peltzer. Bringo was already there, saying, “Sorry on this—there was a rumor Chang was going to try something, but I figured we all had time to eat…”
Now Beeslady held the torch as the trader, and more of mismatched set of manned orbiting objects you couldn’t find, with Beeslady, a rebuilt local scooter-taxi mated to an old EVA sleep-shelter, not massing even the radar-cone equivalent of a twenty-pod tradeship like Goma Chang.
“Codrescu Station, Goma Chang Exec here. We have filed our flight plan via hardcopy, via courier; please reference those plans before query.”
The now ordinary messages of warning and threat from the Eylot blockade, gave way to specific threats aimed at ships leaving, beginning to warn Goma Chang by name.
“Goma Chang,” Peltzer said, waking his own boards and microphone; “you are endangering the station with this; please return to berth. This is Guild Authority, you are endangering the whole station.”
Slayn snapped on his own mic. “Alert, full alert. Hatches and doors sealed and checked. Meteor shields to full collision power, and all outships in to berth as you please. Rollcall by touch as you arrive.”
The IDs on screen moved again, more or less in synch. Beeslady was briefly Odbert, Odbert was the lounge, the lounge became Goma Chang, and Beeslady was herself again, though briefly, before a startling maneuver in which it charged the accelerating Chang and switched ID yet again.
Both Chang and Beeslady were drawing well out of the basic bubble of Codrescu’s space and whatever small service the station’s meteor shields might offer.
“Codrescu, your request is noted; you’ll find our course filed in the material we’ve sent by courier. We’re rescuing our schedule, tell the Guild, but we’re taking with us the request for assistance. We are no longer Codrescu’s traffic. Goma Chang out.”
That last was so, Slayn could see it, and so could Peltzer and Bringo—and so could, apparently, Beeslady, which spent fuel like mad and traded back its own ID, letting the tradeship boost away at an impressive rate.
The image of Goma Chang went slightly off-color as her shields went full up—fine for energy weapons of many kinds—with the meteor shields no doubt thrown in for good measure…
“They going to make it, are they?”
Bringo stared at the busy screen, nodding, half-talking to himself as he did the math…
“Good pilot and navigator there—found the timing just right, and got some coverage from the yard crew. Make it a lot harder for anybody else to do again…”
Peltzer was watching the screen grimly—they were all watching, and they all saw a small orange fuzz from the direction of the closest of Eylot’s strike-fighters.
“They’ve launched something, hoping for a wildshot,” Peltzer said. “As near as I can see nothing closing in here, but there’s no telling that everything’s reflective. Can we get visuals on that shot swarm?” he asked ops. “Looks like us and the yards ought to be fine…”
Peltzer shook his head, and reached for the hotbox—pilot’s protocol: Eat while the action’s low. He patted his ankle, letting Hevelin know the spot was available for leaning, then flicked attention! off the end of his fingers.
“Your go, Arndy,” he said, stifling a yawn; “I’m on low.”
* * *
Bringo’d been quiet, watching the shot swarm, using the station’s computers as well as head-figuring. Arndy went back to the food calcs. They’d need to be—
“Ghost!” station ops snapped. “Weapons live; shields up.”
Slayn spun from his keypad. Bringo was on his feet; Peltzer was leaning forward in his chair, but not enough to disturb Hevelin, who had gone to sleep.
There it was on the 3D display, sitting well within Codrescu’s defenses—a silent, pod-carrying ship, orienting itself to—
Comm lit.
“Station Codrescu, independent tradeship Bechimo answering pilots in peril call. We are armed and up, please respond, are you there? Bechimo requesting live response, we are armed and up, Pilot Theo Waitley and crew await response.”
Slayn felt his mouth open, but Bringo beat him to it.
“The lady’s dangerous, hey? Someone best answer her quick!”
Hevelin was climbing Peltzer, bright and cheerful, happily insisting “Murble drow drow! Murble drow drow!”
“Mine,” Slayn said into his mic, “I’ll take the comm, now.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Codrescu Station
“Oh.”
Clarence took in his board, checked the mirror board, and whistled very softly.
“That was very smooth, Bechimo.”
“Orienting,” said Bechimo. “Collecting feed sources, applying noise filters, starting recording, screen one image enhancement. Thank you, Less Pilot.”
For her part, Theo muttered, “Weapons checks engaged.”
Other than the mere fact of arriving, Bechimo was doing his very best not to disturb the ether. Running lights were off; none of the usual active IDs were on, not the Cat, not the ship’s Guild numbers, not the simple mass-in-transit warnings, not the Tree-and-Dragon. There was some ship-side activity going on; it came to Theo as a a vibration through the soles of her solidly placed feet, and echoed in her head as a very slight change in balance.
“Establishing orbit,” Bechimo stated; “acquiring Eylot planetary images, seventeen point nine seven light minutes old.”
“Second Board, we’ve got full capacity and full run of arms available. Nothing tagged as target as yet. We’ll take voice feeds anytime now, Bechimo. You know we’re most interested in Codrescu, right? You’ll have the common frequencies on file, I’m sure, and I need to know about ships-in-grip and the like.”
“Pilot, I am analyzing…”
“Must be some live stuff, ship; the pilots wil help with the analysis. I’ll take Codrescu, give Clarence near orbit stuff. Now.”
The lines came live with chatter, mixed ’round several low level warnaways: “Due to dock congestion Codrescu Station requests all inbound ships file flight plans and wait for approval before setting intersecting course,” said one. Another—on the local frequencies—was simpler: “No shuttles to Eylot available at this time. No shuttles to Eylot available at this time. No shuttles…”
“Can you break out the sidebands?” Theo requested, “I particularly want to hear the oh-five through oh-nine lines.”
Clarence glanced at her, and she finger-flashed Local hailing and yard work.
Yard work was a catchall for anyone in nearby space who wasn’t interested in docking but was doing something—the usual was shifting cargo, inspecting a bad fitting, moving between ships and station in a runabout—but Theo expected that some might be acting as mini-couriers…
“We have had an extremely busy radar field, Pilot,” Joyita murmured from Screen Six. “There are a number of odd sidebands and some possible virtual phasing. I am not sure that it is of consequence or if it is even purposeful; the traffic around Eylot is considerable in comparison to the last time we were in this region.”
“Thank you, Joyita. Highest magnification on that video, can you? Feel free to tag ships you’ve got firm IDs on.”
Infobars blossomed on the screens, Codrescu in blue letters, ships docked or grappled to the station in white; yellow for the close-traffic and work-tugs; Eylot’s forces in red. There were…a lot of reds, and, seeming associated with the reds, greens…
“Green tags are for vessels associated with your academy, Pilot, so in these cases red and green are those I am automatically highlighting, with red first in targeting computations which differ from mere orbital element compilations on other objects. Pinks are known satellites. If I determine that any of the non-red forces and objects, ships or satellites, are in fact armed and at the command of Eylot active forces I will change those to red.”
Theo nodded, throat constricting.
“Yes, do that,” she said, accepting the fact that she might easily targeting former classmates or instructors.
Theo looked up at the screen, trying to see past the wash of red, to assess—
“Something’s not right!” she snapped. “I just saw IDs change!”
“Yes, Pilot,” Joyita murmured. “There is movement close by Codrescu. I believe that several vessels may be rearranging themselves.”
“These two,” he said, marking them in a kind of purple fog, “are mismatched entirely. The smaller is a local workcraft which is in the databases from a previous visit in-system. The small vessel is not in fact Goma Chang—the ship whose ID it carried until a few moments ago—but Beeslady. It is possible that Goma Chang is preparing a breakaway. We have acceleration of a nature usually prohibited close to station Codrescu.”
“ALERT!” Bechimo shouted. “Eylot ship Tredstone has fired weapons!”
Clarence’s comments were long and strong for all that they were barely audible. Theo punched up the volume on radio traffic, got confused noise, then Eylot yelling for ships to prepare for boarding or face weapons, and the station yelling about civilian, staff, and pilot endangerment and—