“Yes, Captain.” Her eyes were wide with surprise. “I just had Danraj run the crew through some ship-board fighting drills. We didn’t want to just assume that our new neighbors on the Zheng He were planning on playing nice.” She laughed. “Sorry to scare you like that. The filters have removed so much of the fumes – I don’t even smell it anymore.”
“Good idea.” Harry lowered his weapon. “Though I’m more worried about the fine business folk down on the planet. We had to shoot four of ‘em just to get back onto the lighter.”
“Shoot?” Carol raised an eyebrow. “How do the authorities feel about that?”
“They don’t spend much time in the 100’s,” Harry stated in a matter of fact tone. “The four we shot are feeding the crabs. We got attacked by a Chinese sniper when Tommy dragged us off to see the sights. We dumped him into a convenient volcano, which is used, by the way, on a regular basis by our new business partner.”
He sighed. “Let’s see, what else? There was a firefight just before our business meeting; Liam and his boys sorted that out as well.” Harry chuckled darkly. “The locals may suck at tactics, but they still make the wild west look like a quilting bee. It’s like gangland down there.”
“And I thought we had a busy morning.” Carol pointed to the scorch mark on the wall where a flash-bang had gone off. “Sounds like you had enough fun to last a lifetime.”
“Oh, it’s a blast all right. All they need are a few bouncy castles and they can start doing kids parties. Which reminds me,” Harry pointed to Carol’s wrist panel. “Page Doc Fredo to the infirmary. Bernie’s got an extra hole in him that we don’t think he had before leaving the ship. I’ve got enough trouble from the regulation number of holes he already has – no good can come of him having extras.”
Carol paged the doctor. “By the way, the linkage test was a success. They sent a loaded tender this morning, so we already have a little over sixty thousand cubic feet on board. We should be loaded and ready to ship out by midnight, shipboard time.” She grinned. “The Zheng He called, insisting that we notify them of any shuttle or tender activity. I haven’t acknowledged…”
“They might bump the chatter up a bit once the loading operation is in full swing,” Harry mused. “Coordinate with Kobrak’s people. Make sure we have a list of alternate frequencies that we can switch to if it starts getting in our way.” He suddenly looked around at the gathered shore party in surprise. “Any of you hungry?” he asked. “With all the shooting and being mistaken for gods and whatnot – I clean forgot to sample the local cuisine.”
He started for the lounge.
Tommy found Gelna at the windows with Mike, watching as a tender approached a loading probe. He walked over, grabbing a meal from the warmer on his way. Chicken again. Why do I always happen to get the chicken? This makes twenty eight bloody times I’ve had the chicken. He shoveled in a mouthful with grim determination.
“I’m glad to see you’ve come back in one piece,” Gelna grinned at him in the reflections of the window before turning back to the approaching vessel. “How did the birth week celebrations go?”
Funny. Tommy frowned out the window. Only a few hours ago, I thought twitting Kale would be the highlight of the visit. He took another bite, giving himself time to consider his response. “The first time, it was a surprisingly attractive female bank supervisor. He thought she was flirting with him.” He could see Mike’s gaze dart their way as they talked in Dheema. None o’ your bloody business, Dr. Willsen.
“Shut your ass!” Gelna burst out in English before laughing.
“The phrase is ‘Shut your mouth’,” Mike offered.
“Mouth… really?” Gelna grimaced at the physicist. “I think I might owe your wife an apology…”
Mike almost choked on his coffee.
“So what next?” Gelna prompted Tommy.
“Next was a guy on the sidewalk outside the bank. Kale was a little pissed. When the MoonSilver employee pinched him, I thought he might start shooting.”
“Whoa! Hold on.” Gelna turned and grasped Tommy’s arm so hard it actually hurt. “Did you say MoonSilver? They have a franchise down there? You mouse bastard, I haven’t been to a MoonSilver in years.”
“Rat bastard,” Mike risked offering another correction.
“You had MoonSilver on your home world?” Tommy imagined he could feel the impact of the loading probe as it slid into the tender’s drogue. A slight vibration ran throughout the ship as the highly-pressurized gas began flowing through the ship’s conduits.
“Did we have MoonSilver? It was on every corner. The only way you could find room to open a new franchise was if it was inside an existing MoonSilver. May the gods curse every orifice of the National Security Department. What possible threat could I be to U.S. interests? How could my presence on the surface of Khola pose any problems for them?”
Kale wandered over to the window with a handful of lamb chops. He held his hand out towards Tommy. How does he always find those? The warmer is supposed to present dishes at random. He took one, nodding his thanks. Kale kept his hand extended and, after a moment of hesitation, Gelna took one as well.
“You did good down there today – on the landing pad,” the mercenary said around a mouthful as he watched the loading process. “If it was just the captain on his own, he might not have made it through alive. You’ve got good instincts, and you know when to act on your own initiative, like you did at the bank.”
Tommy felt a shiver of fear. Does he just mean how I played the account manager or does he know about the backup account I created?
“You knew he was ripping us off for his own interests, you knew he didn’t want that cute little boss of his to find out and you squeezed him for everything he was worth. ‘Bernie Stanford – MBA’ had nothing to do with any of that.”
How the hell did he suss that out? Not a word of it was in English. Did he get all of that from the body language? He forced a smile as Carol walked over to the window to join them. If that was just a backup account, why am I so worried about someone finding out, now that the deal is done?
Carol’s wrist pad began to chime. She frowned down at it and sighed. “This is the third attempt to contact us in the last ten minutes.” She looked out the window at the Chinese ship. “We’ve just switched frequencies a few minutes ago and they’ve found it already. This is becoming a safety hazard, which might be what they had in mind after all.”
“So let’sh shut down their commzh.” Kale’s suggestion had to fight its way out around a mouthful of lamb.
“I’m in favor of the idea, but the captain won’t let me fire on them.” She gave Kale a tired grin.
“Don’t need to fire on them.” Mike looked over. “They use the same comms array as we do. Same systems we had during the fight around Mars.” He looked over at Carol. “Stands to reason –
they probably use the same comms software too, so it wouldn’t be hard to trigger the ‘Mother-in-Law’ interface.”
“Mother-in-Law?” Carol frowned. “Look, Dr. Willsen, I’m sure that this is making sense for you, but the rest of us are in the dark here. Would it be too much trouble for you to explain?”
Mike smiled. “The systems were designed by my cousin Mickey. She’s the family genius. We recruited her to break into the alien systems. She ended up creating a working model of their entire ship operating system before she adapted it to run our own ships.”
Kale rolled his eyes. “No offensh Doc, but every school kid learnzh about how your couzhin’s work gave ush a chanshe to beat the monkiezh.” He caught himself a bit too late and looked over at Gelna, giving him a mildly apologetic shrug as he went on chewing.
“Maybe, Mr. mint-jelly breath, but what they don’t learn about is the Mother-in-Law. Neither of us had in-laws when we gave it that name... Frankly, Keira’s mother is a delight…”
“There is going to be an explanation in this conversation somewhere?” Carol looked down at the wrist pad as another set of chimes
went off.
“Sorry. The MIL – which the military thought stood for Military Interdiction Latency was an avatar of Mickey. It started out life as the instruction manual. The user could simply activate the virtual Mickey and ask her questions. Because the system is based on quantum cores, it can support a pretty robust facsimile of her personality as well as her knowledge. We realized that it could be used to lock down the ship if we were boarded – kind of like a panic button on your car, just infinitely more annoying.”
“Annoying?” Carol silenced the pad.
“Yeah, she starts to give the wrong answers. She asks distracting questions, goes off on tangents, rants about ex-boyfriends. The most important thing the MIL does, though, is to countermand any corrections fed to the system by the operators. We can use it to kill any or all of their systems; shutting down communications should be a snap.”
“We can shut them down for a specific amount of time?” Carol was gazing out the window at the Chinese ship.
“Any length of time you want.”
“Give us twelve hours.”
“You mean you want me to go ahead and do it?” Mike turned a blank expression on the first officer. “You don’t need to get the captain’s o.k. on it?”
“I’ll talk to Harry,” she said. “You go set it up. I’ll meet you on the bridge.” She reached up to put a hand on Kale’s shoulder. “Good suggestion.” She walked away with a grin.
“I just wanted to fire on them,” Kale told the windows.
Twenty minutes later, Carol and Harry sat in their bridge chairs leaning forward as they listened to Mike’s explanation.
“So, when they ping us with a comms request, our pingback function will carry the activation code. That way, if they send someone over here, we can claim that our own systems were corrupted by a transmission from the surface and it got passed to their ship by the pings.” He typed a quick key combination and a young woman appeared on every screen in the bridge.
“This is a benign version that looks like the MIL, but nothing is actually affected.” Mike rotated his seat back so Tommy could get a look.
“Whoever invented high heels should be dragged out into the street and beaten to death with the damn things!” The young woman announced. “If I had a nickel for every time I twisted an ankle – well I probably wouldn’t be rich, but I could at least afford a decent lunch.”
“Amen sister!” Carol, the career officer, laughed.
“All you do is hit the ALT-TAB combo and it turns her on and off.”
“Miiike! You’re making me sound like a floozy!” the monitor declared.
“So, as you can see, she’s pretty interactive.” He turned the avatar off.
“Tommy, grab a seat and call Orbital Control.” Harry leaned back in his seat. “Tell them we’re leaving tonight – as soon as we’re loaded.” He looked back to Mike. “Dr. Willsen, the instant he’s done with OC, you activate the surprise for the Chinese. That way, they know we talked to the planet immediately before we passed on the ‘virus’.”
After a quick conversation with the surface, Tommy nodded at Mike.
The physicist quickly activated the MIL before pushing his chair back and dropping his hands onto his lap. “Done. The next time they…”
The chime cut him off. It sounded once through the bridge and then stopped.
“I’ll take that as a good sign.” Carol was gazing absently up at the racks and conduits that hung from the ceiling, listening for the rest of the chime. “The call request stopped as soon as they got the pingback. I’d say we managed to stick a sock in their mouths.”
The Ormen
Three hours travel from Cera
Caul walked onto the bridge, taking his place in the center. The messenger was standing by the windows. He looked more like a beggar than a retainer. So, Liev wants to take a confrontational stance. It seemed a foolish choice. The raid had been a success. What good could come of opposing me now? He couldn’t have any idea, yet, that I’m thinking of going to Khola. Still, the messenger was obviously poor. His clothing proclaimed him to be a man of no wealth. Liev would almost certainly have kept this man tied to some meaningless task aboard his ship. He would have been unable to win renown and wealth during the raid on Cera. This man was a natural volunteer to carry an insulting message.
He was here to die.
He was here for the weregeld that would restore the pitiable fortunes of his meager household.
As Caul met his eye, the man stepped toward him, his hand resting on the hilt of his dagger. He stopped very close – within striking distance. “My master, Liev Bliekr, wishes to know why we dawdle here like confused old fools when our next victim awaits?” His face was proud. This was a good death. It was being viewed on the bridge of every ship in the war band. It could not be stopped. He would not want it stopped.
Caul stepped forward, drawing his own dagger and plunging it through the man’s heart in one swift, practiced movement. His left hand reached across and sought the messenger’s right, holding it to the man’s hilt. The messenger gave him a barely perceptible nod of thanks.
The gesture said all that needed to be said. Caul was ensuring that this man died with a blade in his hand. He was showing respect to a brave man, disassociating his master’s words from the man himself. The weregeld would be paid, and it would be generous.
The whole war band saw the gesture.
Caul stood up, the bloody knife still in his hands. “In two days time, we will hold an Althing in the hold of my ship. There is unfinished business to discuss.” He turned and walked back towards his quarters.
The Völund
In transit to Cera
Tommy lay on a couch with his tablet propped up against his knees. He was in an alcove at the aft end of the crew lounge. He had been working on the translation in his cabin and the walls were starting to get to him. The alcoves were a popular destination for the crew. The frosted-glass panels separated three alcoves at both the aft and forward ends of the lounge.
Each held two couches, facing each other across a long frosted-glass coffee table. Sliding glass panels could close the alcoves to allow privacy, but Tommy had come here to escape the total isolation of his ten-by-ten cabin. He looked up to gaze out the floor-to-ceiling windows that graced the port side of this particular space. Distortion space is kind of like the Northern Lights.
“How’s the translation coming along?” Deirdre glided into the alcove and threw herself onto the opposite couch. She twisted over the armrest to root through one of the piles of books that lay scattered around the various spaces of the lounge.
“It’s going well enough.” Tommy smiled at his half-sister. She was the only person on the ship who could have interrupted him like this and get away with it. Well, perhaps she was one of two people…
“Oh, hi, Tommy!” Elise came through the door, a look of surprise on her face. “I was just looking for a book.”
“This should do.” Deirdre slid back off the armrest and dropped down onto the cushions. “All Quiet on the Western Front.”
“Deirdre!” Elise seemed even more surprised to see Tommy’s sister or, perhaps, more genuinely surprised. “Um, yeah… That sounds good.” She reached out and took the volume from Deirdre. “Well… Thanks!” She gave them both a smile that looked more like a grimace. She hefted the book, turned and scurried out of the room.
Deirdre sighed as she watched the young woman find a couch at the other end of the lounge. “She took my book. We have to sort this out. I can’t have her snatching every book I pick just to hide her true motive.”
“And what would that be?” He couldn’t help but smile at his little sister. It’s hard to remember how young she actually is; she usually sees things clearer than adults.
That certainly appeared to be the case now. She gave him a look that spoke of both pity and exasperation. “She fancies my big brother, silly obtuse creature that he is.”
Tommy felt a peculiar mix of elation and dread. Elise?
A couple of days ago, he would have reacted differently. He would have been delighted to hear that she was interested. He had spent the better part of the voyage out here obsessing about the lovely young woman, never daring to think she might be interested. But now?
“What led you to that conclusion?” he stammered, buying time to think. Why was this anything but good news?
“You don’t really think Elise Mattingly came in here looking for All Quiet on the Western Front, do you?”
Is that it? Am I comparing her intellect to my eleven-year-old sister and coming up short? He was certainly used to having brilliant women in his life. Jan had married his dad, and then, less than a year later, Deirdre had come along. By the time she was two, she was asking her brother a million questions. Now, at eleven, her insight was at least as keen as Tommy’s – in this case, clearer.
He shook his head. That’s not fair, he thought. Elise is no daftie. She’s got a science degree, which is certainly more difficult than my one year of ‘uni’ in Dublin. She just shipped out as her dad’s assistant to help her chances of getting into medical college. That struck a note for him. Her future lay somewhere in the states. She was going to take her bonus money and her experience and put herself through a medical degree. She would probably want to settle down in California.
Now that Tommy was out here, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go back. What would I do back on Earth? Do I want to spend years learning some profession so I can sit behind a desk and put up with a load of chuff from some dimwitted wanker? He stole a glance out to where the young woman sat ignoring her book as she looked out the windows. She does have the advantage of being the only available woman for thousands of light years.
He frowned, looking away as she shifted her position on the couch. Is that how I’m supposed to end up making a choice like that?
“You don’t have to marry her.” Deirdre seemed to be one step ahead of her brother again. “Just talk. You might enjoy that. I know she would.” She leaned forward across the coffee table. “This is a closely guarded secret,” she began in a stage whisper, “but ignoring a woman is not the best way to indicate interest!” She gave him a sweet smile before walking out into the lounge.
The Dark Defiance Page 8