Authorization to orbit under the name Coralie went smoothly, with his lie about a damaged transponder readily accepted; he was used to lying to traffic controllers, after all, as he’d done it every time he’d flown to Earth from Maclairn. Now the most pressing need was to get the false name into Fleet’s files.
Because privately-owned starships were rare and there wasn’t much local shipping either, Centauri had no civilian spaceport; Terry had to land the shuttle in the designated area of Fleet’s. It brought back memories; he had set down at this port often during his time as a lieutenant. Coming in, he circled above the familiar buildings that surrounded the vast field and could almost imagine that he’d crossed the gulf of years and become a hot young pilot again, eager to prove himself worthy of commanding an explorer mission. What would he have thought then, he wondered, if the precognition with which he was occasionally gifted had hinted at how differently his life would turn out?
He took Gwen down to the surface with him, much as he’d have preferred to show Alison her first new world. She would need to choose tools for maintaining Estel herself. Moreover, she could keep an eye on the shuttle while he went into the city, whereas Alison knew nothing about ships or spaceports; he would have hated to leave it untended. Fate had again proved helpful, Terry realized, when it forced him to add Gwen to his crew.
He had his own tablet computer with him, the one he’d used on Ciencia, which Alison had managed to hide after his arrest to prevent its being seized. Far more powerful than a phone and equipped with a variety of sophisticated hacking tools, it was a state-of-the-art machine that would serve his needs on any planet he visited. He and Gwen went into a civilian-owned café with a good view of the landing area and, holding his breath, he logged on to Fleet’s database through the backdoor he remembered.
He hadn’t much time, Terry knew; security could trace his location if his presence in the system was detected. But since he was connected through a router in an area under Fleet’s authority, there wouldn’t be an immediate alarm, as there would if he were in the city. After a quick search to make sure that the name Coralie was in fact not already in use, he created a new record, saving a copy of the newly-assigned ID on his tablet for use on the new transponder he hoped to get cash to buy. It was impossible to identify an owner since he had no access to ID files; that was something else he’d have to pay a professional forger to provide—plus a record of his having chartered the ship in case his right to possession of it was ever questioned.
As he logged off and took notice of his surroundings, he became aware that Gwen was staring at him in admiration. “I knew you were good,” she said. “But so fast—”
“You have to be fast if you don’t want to get caught. And in a public place like this, you have to make sure to stay inconspicuous.” Looking around, he saw that the room was full of Fleet officers and that for a moment he’d forgotten that he wasn’t dressed like them as he had been in the past when in their company. He suspected that civilian ship crews weren’t seen frequently at this port.
Sometimes the best way to be inconspicuous was to attract notice. Rising, he went up to the nearest group of lieutenants and said, “Excuse me, but we’re just off Coralie and we haven’t landed here before. Can you tell me where to find transport into the city?” He already knew, having gone into the city often on leave; but the question would establish him as an innocent transient.
After accepting a lieutenant’s friendly directions with thanks, he left Gwen to watch the shuttle—a natural enough role for a young member of a free trader’s crew—and boarded the bus. His most difficult test was beginning, Terry thought nervously. He had never met any underworld people apart from the pirates who had once captured him, and he wasn’t sure he could present himself convincingly as an outlaw. But ordinary free traders did not seek out ID forgers, so he would have to give it a try.
The first thing to be done was to sell the platinum he’d brought with him. He deliberately chose an establishment in the worst part of the city, a part he found easily from having avoided it in the past. Although the sale of platinum ingots was legal in Centauri, there were bound to be dealers who had sidelines, and information about their contacts was what he needed.
His own ID was legitimate; it had been forged by the Elders, who had agents at League headquarters. When swiped, his implanted chip revealed him to be Terry Steward, worldless, and a fully-licensed star pilot. “Captain Steward of Coralie,” he added.
The man who greeted him frowned. “Never heard of it,” he said gruffly.
“Well,” said Terry, “today it’s Coralie, and you don’t need to know what it was in my last port.”
“No, I guess I don’t.” The dealer looked at him with new respect. “I’ll just weigh these ingots, if you don’t mind.”
“I mind if you’re planning to do it in the back room.”
“Then you’d better come along and watch.” The man headed for a door behind the counter.
Unhesitatingly, Terry followed. It could, of course, be a trap, but that was a chance he would have to take. His telepathic sensitivity told him that if this man was a thief, he was an honest one; and dealers would not stay in business long if they robbed customers of whom they knew nothing.
As the ingots were being weighed, he said casually, “I wonder—I’ve got a problem, you see. I left my last port in something of a hurry, and then found I had a stowaway.” The closer he could stick to the truth, the better; the telepathy would work both ways, for most people had unconscious sensing ability. “Anyway, I’ve taken this person into my crew, but her ID shows her citizenship and I don’t want it known where we came from. Do you suppose there’s any way I could get that fixed?”
“Not by me, there isn’t.”
“No, of course not. But you know the city, and I don’t, so I thought—”
“I hear things, naturally,” said the man slowly.
“Perhaps,” Terry ventured, “you’ve made a mistake in the weight of that last ingot; it may not be quite as heavy as the others.”
“My scale’s accurate. But you might want to think twice about selling all your platinum. Some businesses prefer metal over credits.” Shoving some of the ingots back across the table, he added, “If your stowaway needs outfitting, look up Zach’s Emporium.”
“Thanks,” Terry said. “I’ll do that.” The dealer would hardly make such a suggestion out of interest in a crewwoman’s clothes, he realized; and since the man had refused not only the offered bribe but the potential profit on a larger purchase, he was undoubtedly expecting a substantial cut from the ID forger.
He consulted his phone for the address of Zach’s and made his way there. Surprisingly, the building was in a respectable area; it was one of the better prefab ones clustered around the city’s central ring of steel-framed structures. Inside he found a store that carried top-quality gear. Seeing a chance to kill two birds with one stone, he began picking out a duffel and clothes for Gwen.
“Need help?” asked the sole clerk in sight, a big man who looked more as if he belonged in a construction crew.
Terry repeated his remarks about a stowaway. “She can’t even buy her own clothes without worldless ID status,” he said pointedly. “She doesn’t dare draw on her homeworld account; the police have a watch on it.”
As he had suspected, the word “ID” was the trigger, and his mention of police reinforced it. “I think we may have some more suitable merchandise in another part of the store,” the clerk said. Again, Terry was ushered into a back room.
The older dark-skinned man at the desk there smiled pleasantly, but behind the smile Terry sensed something else—not malevolence or even intent to cheat, but nevertheless alarming. This wasn’t a matter of telepathy, he realized. It was more like precognition, although normally there was no way to distinguish between the two. He had experienced precognition rarely, and then only in connection with potential trouble. Still, it didn’t seem likely that the police would pay enough to an
informer to be worth the risk of turning in a customer merely for soliciting a criminal act.
“I’m Zach,” the man said, “and I believe you must be Captain Steward.”
“Then I guess you’ve heard what I need done. Actually I could do it myself, because I’ve had quite bit of experience with databases; but I don’t have the—facilities.”
“That’s interesting. If you’re looking to rent ansible access, you’re in the wrong place. I charge by the job.”
“How much?” Terry realized unhappily that if Zach knew his name, he had also been told how many platinum ingots he was carrying.
“It depends. Citizenship status, that’s one thing. Names, biomarkers, are something else.”
“Nothing like that. Just citizenship and some licenses for three people. And I need an owner ID for my ship—a dummy not linked to anyone’s chip.”
Zach named a figure considerably higher than the available funds; Terry named one considerably lower. After lengthy bargaining they came to an agreement. “But it’ll be more if I find they’re wanted,” the forger warned. “If you’re not prepared for that, now’s the time to back out.”
Sure, Terry thought. If they were wanted for something serious there might be a bounty for which he would have to compensate; Zach didn’t know yet that they’d come from a colony that couldn’t be contacted. “No problem,” he said. “You won’t find anything out of line except that they may be officially dead by now.”
God, what if they were marked dead later, wiping out the status he was buying for them? If they’d come from any colony but Ciencia that would be a real danger. Ciencia’s isolation laws, however, were so strict that it might not send death notices to League Headquarters at all. He could only hope that if it did, there had been no delay.
Drawing a deep breath, he handed over the agreed-upon platinum ingots and the ID numbers of the crew and the soon-to-be-purchased transponder. “Okay,” said Zach. “I don’t let anyone watch me work, so Henson will show you where to wait.”
The clerk from the store reappeared and as instructed, Terry headed for the door across the room. He didn’t have time to feel the blow from behind that knocked him unconscious.
~ 13 ~
When Terry came to himself it took a while to grasp the fact that he was really in darkness, not just suffering from concussion, and that although he was lying flat, the ceiling was only a short distance above his head. With a sudden rush of panic he realized that he was in a box-shaped space that must be hidden beneath the store’s floor. Reaching out, he could feel that the walls surrounding him were mere rough-hewn rock. There wasn’t enough light to make out the composition of the top, but the general effect suggested a coffin. Perhaps, he thought in horror, it was his coffin.
The air in such a confined space couldn’t last much longer. He remembered the cave on Maclairn where he and Kathryn had almost suffocated—that had been much larger, and high enough to stand up in. He had stayed alive there only because of the mind training that enabled him to lower his metabolism by slowing his heart rate and avoiding all motion, even speech. Resolutely he shifted into that state, wondering how long it would take to die.
But he wasn’t dying. Air was coming from somewhere; the space was ventilated. He could hear the whir of the fan. They didn’t intend to kill him, then, at least not yet. For some inexplicable reason they wanted to keep him captive in a place impossible to find.
Why? he wondered in despair. He had already given Zach most of his platinum; they hadn’t needed to knock him out to get it. They wouldn’t have feared that he might report them to the police in any case, not when they knew his crew’s identity and could be expected to take revenge.
His crew—oh, my God, Terry thought. Gwen would be frantic when he didn’t return. She would inform Estel by comm, of course; then Alison and Jon would be frantic, too, and if he never came, what would become of them? Gwen couldn’t fly the shuttle; they would be stranded and would eventually have to call the authorities for help. The cargo would be confiscated, and if the ID changes hadn’t gone through, they couldn’t acquire credits even for food. . . .
There was no way he could escape from a hole like this, Terry realized. He knew better than to beat uselessly against the stone walls; ventilated it might be, but not to the extent that he could afford to expend energy. There had to be some kind of opening in the top through which he had been lowered, but it would be locked or barricaded, invisible from above. That such a cage existed meant that Zach had trapped people before, perhaps repeatedly. What could he gain from it?
The obvious answer burst into Terry’s mind. Ransom. A free trader captain with platinum to spend would be presumed to have cargo, it didn’t much matter what kind. Zach surely had friends in the smuggling business. He knew that Estel—under the name Coralie—was in orbit, and he knew by whom it was crewed. All he had to do was contact Gwen and demand payment in exchange for her captain’s life.
What would Gwen do? She had no money and the starship didn’t have another shuttle for Jon to bring down, so they couldn’t comply; Zach would have to send some other pilot. . . .
An even more horrifying possibility struck him, searing his heart. Why would they even ask the crew? Perhaps they’d assume the ship was armed, as in fact it was; but Jon didn’t know how to use the laser cannon and in fact none of them had been trained to use sidearms. When Zach and his men discovered that, they could take whatever they wanted. They could take the whole ship. They could take Estel, and even if they didn’t kill him afterward, he would never see it again.
That was a worse prospect to contemplate than the likelihood of his death.
If they took the ship, would they keep the crew aboard? Probably not; it would be obvious that they lacked enough experience with starships to be useful. Nor would Zach arrange transport back to the surface for them, where they could report the theft to the authorities. He would kill them. He would have no reason not to.
Alison—oh God, Alison . . . how, Terry wondered, had he ever imagined it was okay to take her and the others into danger? With remorse, he became aware that he had rushed blindly into dealings of which he knew nothing, putting his fanatic devotion to the course fate had set for him ahead of everything else that mattered. He’d been willing—was still willing—to die for it, but he was not willing for harm to come to Alison. Or to Jon, or to Gwen, whom he scarcely knew. He had not seriously feared that any of them would die soon.
Or that he would lose Estel. His possession of it had seemed too good to be true, and evidently it had been. There had simply been a short interval—less than two weeks—when he’d believed he could travel between the stars forever.
In agony, Terry struggled to manage his physiological reactions. He’d been trained to control his body’s response to stress; that was how Maclairnans preserved their health. It really made no difference now, since no escape was possible, but instinctively he felt that to give up would violate the pledge he’d made. Even in the Ciencian prison he had not given up. Recalling the tiny cell that had felt unendurable, it seemed huge compared to a rock-walled box where he could not even sit erect. The walls pressed in on him, making him want to scream despite his certainty that no scream would be heard, let alone heeded, from above. How long? he wondered. How long before he cracked and lost all vestige of self-control?
Time passed. He longed to retreat into sleep but despite his usual command of unconscious functions, sleep wouldn’t come. Eventually his mind grew hazy, only to be startled into alertness by nightmares. It would be better, he thought, if he were in pain—he knew how to turn off physical suffering, and the mind-pattern required for that would free him from thinking. When he felt that he could not bear awareness one moment longer, he bit down hard on his tongue and focused on suppressing the resulting anguish.
One thing kept nagging at his thoughts, something plainly incongruous. He had not sensed any evil in Zach. There had been the feeling of premonition that had proved all too accurate, but
the man himself had seemed straightforward—without scruples with regard to breaking the law, but not violent, not cruel, and not even lacking in integrity. Usually, Terry reflected, what he perceived by telepathy was reliable. He couldn’t pick up private thoughts, but ever since learning of his psi gift he had been capable of judging people’s feelings. How could he not have known that Zach intended to harm him?
He found himself wishing they would hurry up and get it over with.
Surely they would have learned by now that they had no need to demand ransom. Since keeping him alive was no longer serving any purpose, they would come back and shoot him. Or would they? No, Terry realized, his horror mounting. They wouldn’t go to the trouble of shooting him; they would simply turn off the ventilator. He‘d imagined many ways his life might end during the twenty years since he’d joined Fleet, but being buried alive was not one of them. He hoped that he would not die insane.
When, after a long while, he heard sounds above, he did not at first believe they were real. Then, suddenly, the top of the box was thrown off and the sudden glare of light nearly blinded him. As if from a distance he heard Zach say, “Come on up; I’ll give you a hand. If you’d called for backup the police would be here by now.”
~ 14 ~
Uncomprehending, Terry sat up, stretching his cramped limbs and adjusting to the light. After a few moments he took the hand extended to him and climbed out of the box. He did not speak; there didn’t seem to be any words strong enough.
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 53