Pandora’s Crew

by Gorg Huff

  She took back the rest of the weapon and reassembled it, minus the capacitor. Then she returned the weapon to the spacer. She handed the capacitor to Jimmy Dugan. This was roughly the equivalent of giving someone an old pre-space rifle after carefully—and publicly—removing the firing pin.

  Tanya went down the line, repeating the process. Three more unused caps. Finally, discoloration. The weapon was clean and well maintained, but had clearly seen use. Tanya smiled at the short, stocky private in front of her.

  In the squad of ten spacers, there was one functioning SC24 at the end of the inspection.

  “Would you like to explain this, Chief Weber?” Commander Cordoba-Davis pointed at the capacitors that Jimmy was still carrying.

  “It’s an honor guard, Grand Stockholder.” The chief was gritting his teeth.

  “I know it’s an honor guard, Chief. That’s fairly obvious. But this is supposed to be a Hero-class warship of Cordoba Trading, isn’t it? Tasked with the interdiction of pirates in the Parise Quadrant, where we can expect to be running up against Drake Combine privateers. It is not a glori . . .” Tanya paused. A horrible thought just occurred to her. It was possible that Mom had been playing tricks again. “What are your orders in regard to me, Chief?”

  “Orders, ma’am?” The chief was clearly confused. “Why, to show you every courtesy.”

  Tanya closed her eyes and counted to ten. After all the work she had done to make her rank real, rather than a perk of her privileged birth. Every courtesy. Code for “give the pampered aristocratic brat whatever they want so the Spaceforce’s budget doesn’t get cut.” She should have expected it. But she hadn’t. She’d done too much work, tried too hard.

  Many major stockholders’ children attended the Academy. But it was a separate academy within the Academy. One that focused less on astrogation than on Cordoba politics. One where the graduating rank was a function of the power of one’s family. By that ranking system, she would have graduated the academy as a captain and would have been an admiral for the last five years.

  That wasn’t the Academy Tanya attended.

  At least, not the only one. She took astrogation as well as business law. Jump charting math as well as economics. And she graduated with a compromise rank. Higher than the ensign that her middle of the class ranking in space ship tactics would have provided, but lower than her family’s position within the stockholder ranks would have entitled her to.

  She lobbied for ensign. Her parents lobbied for captain. She was made a lieutenant, which was actually quite a victory. She was assigned to a real ship, given real duties, and Command Gunnery Sergeant Jimmy Dugan to teach her how to do them. In the last fifteen years she had served on five ships. Always, in spite of her best efforts, promoted a bit before she was ready. Always . . . until now. She used Jimmy as her guide. Got him to write a fitness report for every fitness report received through channels and finally, according to Jimmy and her last captain, managed to catch up with her meteoric rise.

  Now this.

  She was being treated as a grand stockholder. Not as a captain. Because these people were told she was a grand stockholder, not a captain. Their future captain. Tanya gritted her teeth. “Is the captain on board?” The chief petty officer should be aware of the orders placing her in command.

  “Yes, Grand Stockholder.” Chief Weber hesitated. “Captain Iminate is very busy with matters of ship’s business. I’m sure I can provide you with whatever you need.”

  Tanya doubted it. She really did. By tradition, the outgoing captain should have been here to meet her. It was fairly clear now that this little inspection was meant to delay her, which it had done admirably. She wasn’t officially in command until she read her orders aloud to the present commander of the ship and relieved her of command. It was always easier to get decisions reversed before they became official.

  This was beginning to look less like Mother’s interference and more like Spaceforce politics. Tanya pursed her lips, thinking. At a guess, Commander Iminate was on the comm right now, calling in every favor she could find to get the orders changed.

  Tanya looked at Jimmy. He nodded about a half a millimeter. It was time for the gloves to come off.

  “Chief Weber, you can stay right here while I go to the bridge. That is what you can do for me.” Tanya started for the lifts.

  Weber stepped in her way. “I’m sorry, Stockholder. But Captain Iminate orders no civilians on the bridge.”

  Tanya was in dress whites. Hardly civilian clothes. She narrowed her eyes, looked directly at Weber. “Chief Petty Officer, my orders from Admiral Cartwright are to take command of this vessel. Now, you can move aside, or be moved aside.” Admiral Cartwright was the head of the Cordoba Spaceforce personnel section, and her father’s second cousin.

  It was clear from the confused expression on Weber’s face that he had no idea what was going on. Jimmy caught his eye and he moved aside.

  Tanya and Jimmy took the lift. Jimmy was still carrying nine out of ten of the capacitors from the honor guard.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  As Tanya reached the bridge, Commander Iminate was busy explaining to Admiral Frankin why putting a spoiled stockholder who wanted to play spacer in command was not a good idea. “Admiral, we run anti-piracy patrols. Real pirates, who fire real weapons.”

  “Then you might want to have weapons that work.” Commander Tanya Cordoba-Davis held out her hand and Gunny Dugan placed one of the capacitors in it. “The SC24s of the honor guard you sent were shiny and new. The capacitors without a trace of discoloration.”

  Commander Iminate’s face turned even redder than her anger had made it. She was a tall, thin, red-headed woman. But most of Tanya’s attention was on Admiral Frankin’s image on the bridge’s main screen. There was a bitter twist to his lips that said he knew he couldn’t stop her from taking command, but he wasn’t happy about it. Tanya was pretty good at reading expressions, and Frankin was making no effort at all to hide his displeasure, or who it was directed at.

  Only about half-conscious that she was doing so, Tanya stopped and came to something close to parade rest. She kept her eyes on the screen, not on Commander Iminate.

  “Who gave you permission to enter my bridge?” Iminate demanded.

  “Admiral Cartwright.” Tanya handed the cap back to Jimmy and pulled out her orders from the admiralty. As tradition dictated, they were printed orders. An electronic version was already in the computers, both here and on the Spaceforce station. But it didn’t become official until she read the orders. Tanya decided to take Iminate’s demand for who had given her permission to be here as a request to read her orders. “By order of . . .”

  By the time Tanya read the brief note, Iminate’s face had gone from red to white, making her freckles both more prominent and less attractive. Tanya was stretching the rules a bit by reading the orders like that, and Admiral Frankin’s expression—as well as Iminate’s—suggested that they weren’t going to let her forget it. But by now Tanya was pretty sure that there was nothing she could have said that would have gotten things off on the right foot.

  “Very well, Commander Cordoba-Davis.” Admiral Frankin pointedly didn’t give her the courtesy “captain” that was due an officer in command of a spaceship. “Meet Commander Iminate, my new S4. You can check with her for all your supply needs.”

  Location: Cordoba Space, CSFS Indiana Jones, off Parise Fleet Headquarters Station, Parise System

  Standard Date: 09 28 630

  Tanya used her interface to sink into the augmented reality of the shipnet. The familiar mechanical feel of the ship’s computer was comforting. As she moved through the hatches and past the panels, the net informed her of the last recorded maintenance check. And, at least according to the computer, it was all in order. The Jonesy was a new ship, just five years from the yards at New Argentina. Which didn’t make her much different from the fifteen-year-old James Bond where Tanya served as the exec for the last two years.

  Her exec,
Lieutenant Commander Eric Chin, was a plodder. That much was obvious. A member of the extended Chin family and almost five years ahead of her in the academy, Chin was just starting his ten year stint as a lieutenant commander. Not incompetent by any means, but not inspired either. Chin did his job conscientiously. He was a fan of Commander Iminate and not a fan of grand stockholders who used their status to get rank, then presumed to command real spacers. That attitude was shared by most of the crew. Tanya passed through another hatch and again the computer reported maintenance on the mechanism within the last six months.

  Conversation died as she entered the bridge. She examined the readouts both visually and through the net. It was a habit she developed on her first tour out of the academy and acted as a check on the instruments and the main computer. “What’s the word on our request for a shakedown flight, Mr. Givens?”

  Lieutenant Charles Givens, the officer of the watch, was another Iminate adherent. “Fleet Command says they will get back to us. But the ship is just back from a patrol of the Carson chain.”

  Carson was fifteen days from Parise along the fastest route, and they spent a month and a half patrolling the route in both directions, in company with the Harriet Tubman. The fleet practice was to keep a big chunk of the fleet in Parise to respond in force to any major incursion.

  It seemed to Tanya to be a somewhat wasteful policy. It limited the patrol ships available. It wasn’t like the Drakes wanted a war, but pirates were a real threat, not to mention the smuggling that was growing ever more endemic.

  It seemed that both governments’ control over commerce in the Pamplona Sector was slipping away and there was nothing anyone could do about it. She considered the reports of the battle off the Morland outsystem jump. That was some clever tactics on the part of the free trader. What was it? The Pandora. She wondered what had happened to it.

  Location: Pandora, Drake Space, Smoking Badger

  Standard Date: 10 15 630

  Checkgok went over the reports as Pandora made her way insystem. The suit bot was finished with Robert’s flexsuit and working on a new one for Hirum. There were four more artificial brains repaired by Doctor Schmitz, two for ship’s boats, one for a drone and one for a chemical separation unit.

  All the brains, repaired or not, were hidden away in a safe that was, in turn, hidden in a corner of the ship that looked like a waste disposal unit. They would bring even higher prices in Drake space than in Cordoba space, but they were illegal to sell here. Possession of them was not a crime, but possession of a bunch of them not in use was considered evidence of intent to sell, and that was illegal.

  Checkgok killed the display and locked the file.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The SMOG offices at Smoking Badger were plush in an understated way. Natural fiber deep carpets covered the floors, the walls were coated in woods from planets light years away. Everything was tasteful. And Danny was convinced that if they stole the Pan from him, they would do it in the most elegant manner possible.

  He was ushered into the presence of a loan officer who apologized for the unfortunate confusion back on Casa Verde Station. Very quickly, the money was transferred to the bank and confirmation of the transfer and the right codes were provided. Danny was clear of added interest and late fees for the next six standard months.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  When Danny got back to Pandora, he went to the bridge to find Rosita Stuard sitting in her preferred seat, the comm station. She turned toward him as he stepped through the hatch. “At some point, we’re going to need to hire a soldier, preferably someone Spaceforce,” she told him. “Sooner would be better than later, because it’s going to take some time to work out an effective usage doctrine. None of us have the skills.”

  Danny paused for a moment, then continued toward his seat. “I agree. But even before that, we need a political strategy. I’m frankly a little shocked at how well Gerhard is doing on the design for the shield missile brain. And even more surprised by the body Hirum and Robert came up with for the thing.”

  The body was an array of micro fusion plants for energy, and hydrogen tankage both for thrust and for plasma to fill the sails. There was a robot to spin out the superconducting cable. And the whole thing was wrapped in a Faraday cage with a set of magnetic grapples to give the ship’s wings greater purchase to fling the missile faster.

  “Captain, I don’t like the Drakes. They have been rude and offensive ever since we hit Drake space. And they don’t respect the rights of—” She stopped. “I know that the Cordoba stockholders can be arrogant, but there is a difference.”

  “Perhaps.” Danny let his lips twitch into a smile. “But it’s not nearly enough to make me want to turn such a destabilizing weapon system over to them. No. If the Cordobas win, they will stamp out the small traders just as quick as the Drakes. And they will clamp down on artificials just as fast as the Drakes. Not to mention what will happen to Checkgok and his people. ‘Bug-eyed monsters’ will be the threat de jure, once the Drakes are gone.”

  “So you want to give it to the Drakes?”

  “By preference, Professora, I wish no one had ever thought of it. Now that we have, we need to introduce it in a way that won’t mean victory for either side.”

  “Give it to the gray lanes?” she asked.

  “Which gray lanes?” Danny threw a map of the Pamplona sector on the screen and highlighted the various gray lanes as he spoke. “Concordia Station is out for Concordia Station and doesn’t care about Donnybrook, who doesn’t care about . . . you get the idea.” He shook his head and cleared the screen. “If I could, I’d give it to the old Solar Federation.”

  Rosita snorted. “You think they were any better? They alternated between totalitarianism and revolution until they were trashed by their own colonies.”

  “I agree. But, putting aside giving them to the Cordoba Combine, what do you recommend?”

  “I don’t know . . . yet.”

  Location: Drake Space, Smoking Badger

  Standard Date: 10 21 630

  Danny walked into the galley, grabbed a chair and set it by Checkgok’s nest. “Where to next, Checkgok?”

  “I think it is time to return to Parthia.” Checkgok’s left eyestalk focused on Danny while its right continued to scan the reports it was reading on the small screen next to its nest. Danny didn’t take offense. He knew by now that was just how Parthians were put together. Natural born multi-taskers.

  “I have several routes ready. There’s no direct way to Parthia, but there are three chains that could put us there. The shortest has very few systems on it, the longest has almost a dozen systems.”

  After some discussion and consultation of his own database of goods, Checkgok went with the middle one. They would stop in one more Drake system, then take a gray route to a Cordoba chain, then from there to Ferguson, and pick up the Canova chain, which would take them to Parthia.

  Location: Cordoba Space, Parise Fleet Headquarters

  Standard Date: 10 25 630

  Tanya took her seat in the briefing room, wondering what was going on. There was a weedy little man with Admiral Frankin. His suit was one of the older model flexsuits and it had seen better days.

  Frankin looked around the room through steely blue eyes in a sculpted face, and everyone settled. He waved at the weedy little man. “This is Pierre Fabrice Duprey. Pierre is the merchant on a Jackson-Cordoba trade ship, the Bonaventura. There is a gray route from Drake space to the Parise-Ferguson route.”

  No one even pretended surprise. Tanya could have given him the real space area where the gray route intersected the Parise-Ferguson route, though she didn’t know the location of the gray jump.

  Admiral Frankin met the silence with a tight little smile. “Fortunately, Monsieur Duprey is also a patriot.”

  Tanya wondered how much Monsieur Duprey’s patriotism cost the Cordoba Combine, but the admiral was still talking.

  “When he learned that the Drakes had the jumps of the gray route, he cam
e to us.”

  All thought of levity left Tanya at that point. Frankin waved at the briefing room screen and used his interface to bring up a jump map, with coordinate dumps to the augmented reality system of all the officers. It was a five-jump string, and Tanya could already see where to set the blocking force. Just beyond the first jump out from Cordoba space there was a longish jump, eight light months with a gap of almost two light minutes to the next jump in the string. Tanya ran their optimal course back and did some quick calculations.

  The Drakes would come out in range of their sensors and a little over twenty hours travel away. It would be a tough fight. The Drake admiral was a man called Huffington, a sparkplug of a man, known as an advocate of a more aggressive stance. He was political and didn’t have a lot of combat experience, but from Tanya’s reading of the reports on the man that was likely to make him more aggressive, not less. He had an augmented squadron in his area. Three Dragons and six Falcons, plus a half dozen of the Deer class custom cutters. Equivalent to the Nobles of the Cordoba Combine, the Deer class were the workhorse of the respective space forces. The cop on the beat, backed up by the heavier main battle ships. The Deer had three ranks of four wings, like a freighter, but the wings were larger and the ships smaller.

  On the other hand, the Deer were not all that likely to be involved in the upcoming fight. Their presence just meant that Huffington could bring his whole main battle force. So, three Dragons and six Falcons to face two Demigods and four Heros. Those aren’t good odds. Tanya was trying to come up with the support ships needed when Admiral Frankin announced his brainchild.

  “Our intelligence is firm that Huffington will need some weeks to gather his forces, but he will be coming as quickly as he can. That limits our window. When I first heard of this I held the reserve back from deployment, so our forces will be concentrated soon. We can get in place before he gets here, but we don’t have time to bring up reinforcements. Not even from Carson. I’ve sent dispatches to New Argentina, but it will be months before they can get back to us. Huffington will expect us here.” The place Tanya decided was their best defensive position lit up. “But we will be here.” The other end of that section lit up. The exit of the preceding jump as the Drakes would be travelling.