Pandora’s Crew
Page 39
“Naw, the Lucy Bug got out with the news,” George said, sitting in his cabin wearing a worn shipsuit and a headset. “So now I’m mining green tar with no buyers.” George ran his mining bots by interface. That worked, but it was a lot of labor for George. He spent hours in the control helmet, hours that he really ought to spend in the gym to keep his bones from getting more fragile.
“What’s the Lucy Bug?”
“Green tar freighter, comes in every quarter. Saw the Corgis coming in, dumped her whole load of green, and got out of here, dumping plasma like it was free. Must have been doing two and a half standard gravities when they hit the Finch route.”
“Corgis?”
“Damn Cordoba dogs, come in here saying they are going to set up a corporate government. The Drakes may be assholes, but they mostly leave us be. The Corgis are attaching corporate fees to every damn thing.”
“Well, I don’t want them yapping after me,” Danny told the miner. “I’d just as soon get out of here without them ever knowing I was here. Would you know how I might manage that?”
George looked at Danny with a crafty gleam in his eye. “I could probably help you with that, but why should I give you my secrets?”
“Because we’re going to buy a bunch of your green tar and we’ll pay good money.”
“What use is money to me?” George asked. “ ‘Specially now, with the Corgis insystem likely to seize any money I show up with.”
∞ ∞ ∞
Tanya Cordoba-Davis wasn’t pleased to be referred to as a Corgi. She didn’t like dogs in general, and the Corgi was a breed of stumpy-looking, hideously yapping things. But more than that was the attitude toward the Cordoba Combine that the name represented. She realized that the Cordobas were not universally loved even in Cordoba space and put it down to the standard resentment of the have-nots for the haves. But this attitude wasn’t just fear and resentment. It was contempt.
Tanya looked over at Chuck Givens and saw her own feelings reflected in his face, along with an answering disrespect for George Benson, and was glad they weren’t cut into the transmission loop. Petra just looked embarrassed, and Jimmy seemed amused more than anything. She glanced over at Fred Markum; he was not paying any attention to the conversation. He was running some sim on the rear D sail.
Goldgok entered the discussion then, and Tanya went back to listening.
“What do you know about Skull System?” George was asking.
“Not that much, and what I do know isn’t good,” Danny said.
“It’s not that bad,” George said. “They’ve always dealt fairly enough with me. Good prices.”
Tanya wasn’t all that surprised. She knew that the pirates and smugglers of the Skull System had to have contact in civilized space, and even that they had connections into the Drake and Cordoba militaries.
“I take it you know a jump route to the Skull System.”
“I might. I might. It’ll cost you though,” George said. “But it’ll sure enough get you out of the Corgis’ way.”
“And find myself in a wolf’s jaws instead?”
“I already said they ain’t that bad,” George said. “Besides, I haven’t agreed to tell you how to get there yet. What have you got to trade?”
“We have a device that we can perhaps modify to help with your mining,” Goldgok said.
Location: Benson Station
Standard Date: 12 05 631
George Benson stretched in his new flex suit as he watched the Pandora slip away at barely half a standard gravity. He was safe enough out here because the Corgis didn’t know he was here. And even if they did, they didn’t know the jumps to reach him.
George was feeling pretty good. He’d talked himself into a new flexsuit and the refurbishment of his old one as well as the fancy mining bot that feller came up with.
In exchange, all he had to give them was the route from the Alenbie outsystem to Skull System and a load of green tar. It was a route in his private rutters, one that neither the Drakes nor the Corgis knew about.
George did tell them about the security. That the Skull System pirates kept a picket force at the far end of one of the longer jumps in the route. And he gave them some recognition codes that he was pretty sure would get them safe passage.
Chapter 27
The Cybrant System main lines are designed to survive, first and last. They are born and bred to stay alive at any cost. They are not immoral, but amoral, and if they have any moral code at all, it’s their own. Personally developed and generally not tied to the morality of their culture anymore than as necessary camouflage. They kill easily and without remorse. Combined with their improved reflexes and situational awareness, they are more effective killers than any group of humans in history.
However, this does not make them all monsters. Some of them are, indeed. And when a Cybrant main line goes bad they are the worst monsters you can imagine. But many are perfectly nice people and safe to be around. Safer than a deeply caring person who has self control issues. Just don’t give them a reason to think of you as a threat and you’ll be fine.
From a lecture on the Cybrant main lines, delivered by Doctor Rosita Schmitz-Davis, Standard year 700
Location: Gray Route, Big Dark
Standard Date: 12 10 631
Jenny was tied into the ship net from the lounge as the Pandora came out of jump. The image of the cutter ten light seconds out came into Jenny’s mind and up on the main lounge screen at the same time. And the captain was sending a message the moment they came out of jump.
“Why don’t we use lasers to attack ships?” Jenny asked Fred.
“Spread and power,” Fred told her. “Lasers do spread some and over a few light seconds, even a powerful laser will spread so much that it will have little impact on a ship’s hull. But a grain of sand is a grain of sand, and if it’s traveling fast, well . . . force is mass times acceleration. A piece of sand hitting a hull at half the speed of light has a force at contact of close to its mass. Say half a gram at one-half light squared . . . figure about ten kilotons of explosive force when it hits. It’s less than that, really, but still a whole lot of bang. And it doesn’t spread until it hits the ship, or at least until it hits the ship’s wings.”
“We could have come through with attack lasers firing, but though we might have hurt them some, it probably wouldn’t be enough to matter, at least not at this distance,” Eddy said.
Jenny nodded. “Thanks, Fred.” She ignored Eddy, as she usually did when he was acting all snooty.
Twenty light seconds later, the cutter’s transmission arrived.
“Halt and ident— Okay, we have your recognition codes. You’re the Pandora? What persuaded old George to give you the codes? Fuck! The Cordobas hit Alenbie and Franklin?” A short pause, maybe fifteen seconds. “Here’s the skipper.”
“Pandora, this is Commander Teage of the Black Pearl. Welcome to the end of nowhere.”
Teage was a dark-haired man with a scar going from his right eye to the point of his chin. Considering the advanced state of plastic surgery, the presence of that scar was a statement. Captain Danny, for instance, didn’t have anything like it, though he had been cut rather often in his youth. On the other hand, the man’s smile was friendly enough, under the circumstances.
Captain Danny sent, “It’s all in the data we gave you. So if you don’t mind, let’s let it wait until we’re close enough for a reasonable conversation.”
Eight hours later
Pandora got directions to the next jump on the route and exchanged data with the Black Pearl. The jump route would take ten more days, and they would be met by at least one more cutter along the way. There were apparently more routes in and out of Skull System than anyone suspected.
Location: Gray Space, Skull Station, Roger’s World Orbit
Standard Date: 12 20 631
“Yo ho ho! Welcome, Pandora,” came over the comm. The woman on the screen was wearing a real tricorn hat, with a waving skull and cros
sbones flag behind her on the screen. “What booty have ye brought us?”
This is getting old fast, Danny thought. “No booty. Just trade goods.”
The smile dropped a watt or two in intensity. “You don’t find our motif amusing, Captain?”
“Frankly, it’s a bit too studied, and way too over the top.”
“Well, perhaps, but we enjoy it. What brings you to the domains of Jolly Roger Avery?”
“Roger Avery?”
“My great grandfather. He found this place some seventy years ago. He was an open, friendly sort, and had picked up the nickname Jolly Roger. He claimed he was descended from the famous pirate Henry ‘Long Ben’ Avery, and figured that meant his system should be the Skull and Crossbones system.” She hooked a thumb at the virtual flag flying behind her on the screen. “The family has kept up the tradition. We’re open, easy-going sorts around here, Captain Gold, but don’t mistake our enjoyment of life as license. We can be as hard as a Cybrant main line when we need to be.”
Danny suppressed an urge to smile at that, but he apparently didn’t suppress it hard enough.
The pirate lass lifted an eyebrow, then gave him a hard look. “Are you one of those?”
“It’s all right, lass,” Danny said with his most piratical leer. “I’m mostly retired.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Captain. My name is Sylvia Avery. We either inspect your hold or you pay a fee. Which will it be?”
“What’s the fee?”
She named a figure in Cordoba credits and they got down to bargaining. Goldgok was brought in and they eventually settled on a high, but not unreasonable, fee. The new missiles were hidden, but even hidden things can be found. Pirates and smugglers are the folks most likely to know where to look. It was safer just to pay the fee and have the pirates think they had some especially valuable cargo.
∞ ∞ ∞
For the next week they traded goods, and learned about the other ships in system. Which included the Brass Hind, now officially renamed the Brass Ass, and still commanded by Captain Rosalyn Victoria Flatt.
Location: Skull Station Trading Floor
Standard Date: 12 22 631
The only Parthian on the trading floor wasn’t exactly mobbed, but he wasn’t avoided. Goldgok could have sold the Pan empty in the first hour and at a good profit, but that wasn’t its goal. Aside from the green tar, Goldgok wasn’t interested in selling. Well, it did sell the filter cloth and a few odds and ends, but the equipment they bought in Franklin was for Parthia.
Here in Skull System, they had shieldgold production facilities. That was why there was always a market for green tar. Goldgok wanted as much of the precious material as it could get. He got it for a good price, too. Shieldgold wasn’t just for wing controllers, though that was a good part of its use. It also worked as guides for any device where you needed to block or focus a magnetic field. Even molecular printers used small amounts of it to press molecules together while building up circuits.
They bought some heavy equipment, but mostly they would be carrying near their mass limit in shieldgold back to Parthia, to an economic effect not that different from the arrival of a Spanish treasure fleet in Madrid in the sixteenth century, old calendar.
Location: Pirate’s Den Bar, Skull Station
Standard Date: 12 28 631
Fred Markum was a bit too bleary from the rum and thon juice. He didn’t have Danny’s constitution, so he was seeing pink Parthians, but he was enjoying the Skull System and feeling quite piratical.
“Back off, you pansies. I’m Loly Torgo off the Brass Ass,” said a spacer loudly as she entered the bar.
Fred looked up and saw that she looked quite pirate like. She had dark coppery skin and just a hint of slant to her eyes, but she was next to two meters tall and bulky.
Gradually what she said worked through the haze of alcohol and thon juice, and Fred started laughing. “Brass Arse is right. The Pan suckered you pukes into flying into round shot.”
“Who the fuck are you and what the fuck do you know about it?” If Fred was loaded, Loly was overloaded.
Fred, on the other hand, was shorter than average and slight . . . but he wasn’t in any hurry to back down in front of anyone. Especially not with the amount of local rum and thon he had in him. “It was a jump out of Morland, and you were so busy chasing a fat grainer you didn’t pay any attention to the Pandora.”
Fred didn’t know it, but Loly was on the Brass Ass at the time, and remembered the incident well. It led to the attempted mutiny against Captain Rosalyn, the one her lover died in. The Pandora caused the Ass to limp into Donnybrook for repairs.
Since then, they’d recovered quite a lot. The Brass Ass had a new set of wings and took a dozen prizes, and by now the captain had a reputation to give anyone pause. Captain Roz was a scary bitch and her crew took pride in that fact.
So rather than questioning Fred about it, Loly turned and punched him in the mouth.
Thon juice doesn’t slow the reflexes. It speeds them. Unfortunately, Fred wasn’t expecting an attack, and didn’t quite manage to duck out of the way.
But he piled in, and by the time the bouncers got there, both he and Loly were battered and bloody.
∞ ∞ ∞
Danny arrived at the cells at the same time as Rosalyn Flatt. He looked around and saw several people. There was a cute girl in a semi-flex, the sort that were becoming more and more common. It had a captain’s four gold rings painted onto the suit sleeves. Pretty girl, Danny noticed with interest. She was small, with a heart-shaped face, and had a small mouth covered with bright red lipstick.
But there was the clerk at the desk that he had to deal with first. “I’m here for Fred—”
“I want Loly out of there, now,” the little woman interrupted in a breathy voice.
Danny stopped and looked at her. He came in just ahead of her, but he shrugged and waved her to the desk.
She sniffed disdainfully and Danny felt the hairs on the back of his neck try to stand up straight. This woman was dangerous, and wasn’t trying to hide it. And that meant she was either incredibly stupid . . . or far gone into delusion. Especially with the cultural norms of Skull System, being wantonly insulting to people you didn’t know was risky.
The clerk was immediately deferential to the little woman, and her hulking subordinate was quickly brought out.
Then, while Danny was arranging for Fred’s release, she proceeded to describe in a high and excited, breathy voice what she was going to do to Loly when she got her back to the ship. Danny didn’t doubt that the little woman would carry out her threats, and it was clear that Loly was wishing she was still in the cells.
At that point, Fred was brought out and Loly blurted, “That’s him!” She pointed at Fred. “The crewman off the Pandora.”
“The what?”
“That damn little freighter off Morland.”
Suddenly Danny was watching as the woman stared first at Fred, then at him.
“You like interfering, don’t you, pretty boy?” the little woman with the captain’s rings said in a voice that dripped ice chips, but still managed a winsome quality.
Danny bowed, never taking his eyes off the woman. “Danny Gold, captain of the Pandora. And you are?”
“Your death, Captain, your death.” Then she giggled.
Danny looked at her for a moment, then quite deliberately turned his back on her. Fred was looking more than a little under the weather, and Danny kept one eye on the mirrored counter. It was a distorted image, but he could see Captain Crazy in it.
Location: Pandora, off Skull Station
Standard Date: 12 28 631
“Everyone needs to be careful.” Danny held up a bread stick like a baton. The crew, including Jenny and the younger girls, was assembled for dinner at his orders. “The captain of the Brass Ass is Rosalyn Flatt, and she is even crazier than she seems. Pan and Sally have been searching the records, and the artificial brain that runs the station here isn’t
happy with the crew of the Brass Ass in general and with the captain in particular.”
Pan gave them a list of incidents.
“Fine, Captain. But what’s that to us?” Chuck Givens poured spaghetti sauce over his noodles. “It’s not like she’s the only pirate on station here.”
“No, but back a ways we ran into her, and she apparently holds a grudge. If I could, I’d order everyone to stay on the Pan. As it is, when anyone leaves the ship, I want . . .” Danny pointed as he finished. “. . . me, Sara, or Eddy going along.”
Givens looked resentful and opened his mouth, but Tanya beat him to the punch. “I have the reflex mods, Captain.”
“But do you have the sociopath mods?” Danny asked, holding up his bread stick again.
“Sociopath mods, Cap?” Hirum was always after more dirt on Cybrants. He was also looking better. He’d gained weight from John’s cooking and was clean shaven now.
“That’s what I call the mods that the Cybrant main lines get,” Danny acknowledged, with a nod to the old grouch. “They’re designed to make it easier for us to kill, to get rid of that working up to taking a human life. To eliminate, or at least limit, sympathy for our enemies.” He gave Hirum a hard look. “They don’t make me want to kill people, Hirum, but they do make it easier for me to do it and then sleep like a baby afterward.”
“Actually, yes, I do, Captain,” Tanya said. “They didn’t call them that in the prospectus they sent my parents, but yes. The ‘enhanced self-defense suite’ is included in my mods.”
Now everyone was staring at Tanya. She shrugged and said, “Hey, I didn’t put it there any more than the captain did. Blame our parents.”
Gunny Dugan grinned at her. “It’s not blame. It’s being next to a conscienceless killer.”
“Do we scare you, Jimmy?” asked Sara, grinning.
“Just enough to be titillating.” Jimmy grinned back.
“Well, in that case, come up and see me sometime.” Sara half rose and leaned toward Jimmy, showing quite a bit of cleavage.