There was an increase in the cabin lighting as the big ship’s hangar bay doors swung open to admit the small landing craft. After that, it was a series of bumps and grinding noises as the landing boat was secured to the deck, followed by the inevitable hissing roar as the blastship’s hangar bay was repressurized.
A light on the forward bulkhead turned green, followed by the pilot’s voice announcing that it was safe to disembark.
The blast ship’s rotation had been halted to bring the boat aboard. Thus, they were in microgravity. Mark and Lisa unsnapped their seat-belt-for-two and waited for Sampson and Takamatsu to lever themselves to the boat’s aft airlock. Sampson palmed the control that opened both doors simultaneously, something impossible to do had the sensors detected a pressure differential between the inside and outside. He then disappeared head first through the open lock, followed by Takamatsu.
Mark let Lisa go first. She deftly levered herself out of her seat with her arms, pivoted in place, then pulled herself hand over hand, using the seat backs as grips. He followed her, conscious that he wasn’t nearly as graceful – a fact he put down to both larger size and the presence of a Y-chromosome. When he reached the airlock, he jackknifed through it like a diver entering a sunken wreck, to find an oversize steel compartment beyond. Chicago’s landing bay was brightly lit by overhead flood lamps. Scattered around the bay were the blastship’s attack boats. A double line of Marines stood at attention, blast rifles at ‘present arms’ and boots hooked into the hexagonal deck grating, giving the illusion of gravity. An orange cord had been strung from a hook above the boat’s airlock to a similar hook over a nearby hatch. A clump of blastship officers awaited them just inside the hatch.
Mark followed the others along the guide line, halting to hover at its end where Chicago’s welcoming party waited. No one said anything until they were joined by the captain and the exec.
“Captain Harris?” a pert middle-aged woman in the uniform of a commander inquired.
“Yes.”
“Commander Butterfield, sir. Chicago’s exec. Captain Symes asked me to meet you.”
“Good of you to come, Commander. I fear we would have become lost in this big old beehive of yours.”
“It does take some getting used to, sir. If you will follow me, I’ll take you to the Officer’s Mess where the captain will join us. Oh, and we should have spin back on the ship in another ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Commander. Lead the way.”
With that, Commander Butterfield pulled herself along the guide rope until she reached the hatch. There she transferred to the ubiquitous guide rail attached to the overhead that ran the length of every corridor in the ship. The rail was used for locomotion when the ship was in microgravity, and the party from New Hope was soon strung out behind her like beads on a string as she swiftly moved through a seemingly endless sequence of corridors. Several of the blastship crewmen observed their passage, many attempting unsuccessfully to hide smirks as their visitors passed.
The expressions baffled Mark the first time he saw them. Then he realized what they were smirking about. Everyone aboard New Hope was already in disguise. Trailing the blastship’s executive officer were six completely hairless, monkey-like figures covered in black-and-yellow tiger stripes.
They must have looked damned incongruous against the blastship’s gray bulkheads as they imitated the monkeys they resembled, pulling themselves hand over hand along the guide rail.
#
“Captain Harris, ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce Captain Wellington Symes, commanding officer of TSN Chicago.”
They each shook hands in turn with Chicago’s commanding officer. By the time they had reached the mess hall, sufficient spin had been placed on the ship that they did not float off the deck. Mark Rykand estimated the pull at about one-tenth gee. It would be raised shortly to one-third gravity, the shipboard standard.
Symes was a bear of a man with a hulking look and a grim expression. Unlike most of the expedition’s officers, he had been a member of the Space Navy even before its recent massive expansion. His seniority and record had given him command of one of the half-dozen most powerful ships in the fleet. Prior to this command, he had skippered nothing larger than a frigate for the simple reason that prior to Sar-Say, the space navy had possessed nothing larger.
“Mrs. Rykand,” he said after being introduced to Lisa. He surprised everyone by leaning over and kissing her hand. The custom had seen a revival in the previous generation, although it was again dying out.
“Captain Symes, thank you for your kind welcome aboard this magnificent ship.”
“Think nothing of it. We didn’t get a chance for a pre-mission briefing back at Brinks Base. I thought it an excellent time to mix business with pleasure. Besides, I don’t think I have ever seen a more beautiful bald and striped woman in my entire life.”
Despite herself, Lisa blushed under the body paint.
Symes bounced a couple of times on the balls of his feet. “We seem to have enough gravity to begin. Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. You will find nameplates on the table. Several of my officers will be joining us shortly.
As predicted, a number of figures in formal black-and-silver showed up while stewards poured wine into tall, low-gravity glasses. Each new arrival was introduced, which in turn slowed conversation as the six visitors introduced themselves. Mark noted several officers, male and female, glancing surreptitiously in his direction. One small blonde wearing the bars of a Lieutenant seemed especially intrigued. He asked her if she liked his paint job.
“It’s… striking. Does it wash off?”
“Hopefully not,” he said. “After all, we might get rained on.”
“Do you mean that you are that color forever?”
“For a few months, anyway. About the time our hair starts growing out again, the dye will fade and we’ll get our old complexions back. At least, I hope we will.”
“Is it really worth it?” she asked, mirroring the conversation they’d had aboard New Hope when it had been announced they would have to shave off all of their hair. “I mean, do you think the aliens will be fooled?”
He shrugged. “Since we don’t know the Broan capability for gathering information about us, the powers-that-be decided to make it as difficult for them as possible. We were orange skinned with blue hair at the last system we visited. Now we have stripes and are hairless. We’re not trying to look like some other species. We just don’t want to look like ourselves.
“In this form of camouflage, we use rather outlandish color schemes in the hope that these will be what stick in the minds of any aliens we meet. Hopefully, when they describe us to their masters, they will tell them that we are bipeds, as are some 80% of the races in the Sovereignty, and that we have a very striking skin tones and no hair. What is important is that they not link us with the visit to Klys’kra’t. That way, they won’t be able to see the pattern to our actions.”
“What if they send along pictures with your descriptions?”
He shrugged. “Then someone is likely to notice that beneath the outlandish skin colors, we and the Vulcan traders have the same features.”
“Vulcan traders?”
“That was our last masquerade,” Mark replied.
The blonde lieutenant looked puzzled. After a moment’s hesitation, she asked, “And if one of the aliens asks you why you have painted yourself when their scans clearly indicate that you aren’t striped and that your skin is covered with hair follicles?”
“That’s easy. We’ll blame it all on fashion. After all, you ladies have been painting yourselves for thousands of years. Why can’t we men do the same?”
Dinner was served while the various officers divided into separate conversations with their neighbors. Mark noticed Lisa laughing at the joke of a handsome, and too young, ensign. Once he caught her eye as she looked across the table at him, and a nonverbal message passed between them. Lisa’s look said, “Serves you right for
talking to that blonde!” She then went back to laughing at the ensign’s jokes.
Eventually, dinner was done and the stewards had refilled their wine glasses. Captain Symes rose at the head of the table, raised his glass carefully so the wine would not slosh out, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, a toast.”
They each raised their glasses as carefully.
“To a successful mission!”
There followed a chorus of agreement and everyone drank before returning the glasses to the table clips that secured them. By common understanding, the toast marked the end of the social portion of the evening. From here on out, it would be all business.
#
As if on cue, a holocube dropped from the overhead and lit up to show a long-range view of Pastol.
Captain Symes stood and strode to stand beside the cube. “Let us begin the mission briefing. Captain Harris, do you have any preliminary words for us?”
“I’ll save them,” Harris replied. “Proceed.”
“Very well. Chicago deployed her long range sensors as soon as we came to a rest with respect to this system’s Oort Cloud. We have been monitoring the planet for a full day now and have largely confirmed what the Delta expedition discovered. Pastol appears to be a largely agricultural world, with relatively small cities and a lot of ocean traffic. However, we have one bit of new information to impart. We seem to be in luck. There is a starship in orbit.”
“Broan?” Harris asked, suddenly concerned.
“Everything in the Sovereignty must be presumed to be Broan, Captain. However, if you are asking whether it is a warship, we think not. It appears to be a bulk hauler. We surmise that it is here to take on a load of whatever it is they grow down there.”
“Amazing,” Seiichi Takamatsu muttered under his breath from two seats to Mark’s right. His words had been meant to be sotto voce, but they attracted Symes’s attention anyway.
“You have a comment, Specialist?”
Takamatsu shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The silence stretched until Seiichi cleared his throat. “Sorry, Captain. I was just remarking on what an amazing transportation system the stargate network is.”
“How so?”
“Well, sir, they’re cheap! So cheap, in fact, that the Broa can actually ship food across interstellar distances economically. They allow commerce between stars as easily as between continents.”
“If one doesn’t mind being ruled by the Broa.”
“True, there is that. However, stargates are machines. They don’t care how they are used. The fact that the Broa rule a million star systems is just another measure of the stargate’s efficiency. They could never have grown that large if they relied on the stardrive.”
“An interesting philosophical point, Specialist. However, this is neither the time nor the place,” Captain Symes said, obviously impatient with the interruption. “Shall we return to our mission briefing?”
“Sorry, sir.”
Symes turned to the image in the holocube. “This ship in orbit is a godsend. We will be able to introduce New Hope simultaneous with its departure, much reducing the chance they will note that you didn’t come through the stargate.”
“Any idea when it will depart orbit?” Captain Harris asked, obviously thinking about the difficulties of approaching the gate without being observed by another ship in the vicinity.
“No indication, I’m afraid. We know they have arrived within the last month. The economics of shipping here should be the same as they are at home. That bulk carrier is expensive to operate. Surely it won’t stay in orbit any longer than is required to load cargo.”
“And if it does stay in orbit?”
“If it is still there next week, we will go in as planned and pray no one is monitoring the gravity waves too carefully.”
The rest of the briefing was taken up with the minutia required for a successful mission. Upon reaching the planet, New Hope would stay in orbit. The four assigned to the ground party would take the ship’s boat down to the surface. In addition to being a Broan linguist, Bernie Sampson was a trained pilot.
Once on the ground, Mark would be team leader, essentially reprising Admiral Landon’s role during the mission to Klys’kra’t. He would be a trader from a far-distant world, out on a mission to open up new markets. Lisa would be his assistant. Sampson would be their personal pilot. Seiichi Takamari would play a visiting scholar, along on the expedition, but not part of it. He would express an interest in learning what knowledge the Ranta possessed that his own distant world did not.
Mark would make a show of sampling the local agricultural products and choose those he thought might be in high demand on the fictional world of Troje. He would then bargain aggressively for his chosen delicacies. New Hope carried several of the Vithian power units and other devices they had salvaged from Sar-Say’s wrecked ship. They would use these samples as trade goods, along with several human gadgets that had been designed to betray no hint of their origin. Eventually, when a deal was nearly concluded, the “scholar” would express interest in purchasing the local planetary database, stating that it would be too much trouble to extract only the parts that were different from the Trojans’ own database.
Master Trader Markel would publicly object to the expense, but then give in reluctantly and ask their hosts for a quote on what the scholar was asking. Whatever the price, he would scream that he was being robbed, haggle a bit, and then give in.
Following Mark’s recounting of the basic mission plan, Captain Symes requested a review of contingency planning. What would they do if the landing boat broke down when the ground party was on the surface? What if New Hope were unable to leave orbit? What if either the ground party or the ship were captured?
Under what circumstances would either Revenger or Allison come to rescue them? The crews of both were decked out in the same masquerade scheme as was New Hope’s crew. It would look funny to have creatures with different paint schemes, but identical bioscans, suddenly appear, claiming to be unrelated to the Vulcans.
After nearly two hours of going over contingencies, Captain Symes called a halt. “I think we’ve discussed everything that has occurred to us. The question is ‘what hasn’t occurred to us?’ Captain Harris, any final thoughts?”
“No, sir. We all seem to be just about talked out.”
“Very well. You have my permission to proceed on your mission. I recommend an early departure. You’ll want to be relatively close to the gate when that big bulk carrier jumps outbound.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
#
Chapter Thirty One
Pastol was large on the viewscreen as New Hope sat in a close parking orbit and waited for clearance from the Ranta to allow them to disembark. Like most terrestrial worlds, Pastol was a “big blue marble.” Its seas were more extensive than Earth’s and its continents correspondingly smaller. At 10,000 kilometers diameter, it was slightly smaller than Earth and a bit farther from its G5 primary, Etnarii. As a result, the local gravity was about 90% standard and the temperature colder. In addition to its sparkling blue seas, the planet possessed two oversize polar ice caps, one distinctly larger than the other, the result of a 30-degree axial tilt as it orbited its star.
The approach everyone worried about had been without incident, almost boring. They crept to within ten thousand kilometers of the stargate before powering down everything but essential life support, imitating a hole in space. Then they waited. As predicted, the bulk hauler departed Pastol orbit a few days later.
They watched the alien climb toward them for a week. When it reached the stargate, it disappeared. As close as they were, the resulting gravity wave rattled every dish and stowage compartment door in the ship. What had been a theoretical subject for most people became very real.
“Did you feel that?” dozens of crewmen asked simultaneously.
“Sure did,” came the myriad awed responses.
They had wasted no time. Powering up the normal space engines, they swept clo
se to the gate before sending the standard Broan arrival notice. The response came promptly once the radio signals were given time to cross the intervening gulf of vacuum.
“What ship and where from?” the terse message asked in Broan trade talk.
“Trading vessel New Hope out of Troje, Hass Vith, commanding. Owner, Master Trader Markel Sinth, aboard.”
Half an hour later, had come the demand, “What is your purpose here?”
“We are on a trade mission to open up new markets. We have heard of your delicacies and have come to taste them for ourselves. Request permission to approach the planet.”
Again the long wait, followed by, “Approach approved. Take up equatorial parking orbit at 12 kel and wait to be inspected.”
The voyage to Pastol had taken five days and had been utterly uneventful. At the end, they took up a parking orbit as directed and now waited for inspection.
“Ship coming up from the planet,” Emily Sopwell reported.
“Armed?” Captain Harris asked.
“Not obviously so. Small ship. About twice the size of our landing boat.”
“Probably local health inspection,” Bernie Sampson said over the intercom.
“All right. Communicator, announce that we are about to receive visitors. No speech other than Broan trade talk from here on out. All hidden spaces are to be locked down. All false doors to be closed as of now!”
“Yes, sir.”
The communicator made the announcement. Within a few minutes, various symbols began to appear on the main viewscreen in Broan script. They signified that all ingress and egress to the classified parts of the ship had been sealed. To the casual observer, the holds would appear stuffed with merchandise. In fact, the actual trade goods were only stacked two layers deep. What appeared to be additional goods behind them was actually a cleverly camouflaged bulkhead hiding the part of the ship where weapons and the stardrive generators were housed.
The ferry craft matched orbits efficiently, and was taken aboard through the hangar bay hatch. The hatch was sealed and the bay pressurized with air containing a touch of ozone. At the same time, a similar mixture was pumped throughout the ship.
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