Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers

by Helena Puumala

  That was true, too. The thought gave Mikal his first sliver of hope since he and Xoraya had disembarked—had been disembarked—from the ship. Gorsh’s stronghold may have been a cesspool of negativity, but being so, it also would be a nest of vipers, where the vipers were as wont to sting one another as to turn on outsiders. As a Federation Peace Officer, he was trained to use his enemies’ weaknesses against them; there would be plenty of opportunity to do that in this place, and on the property around it.

  Xoraya, it seemed, had followed his thoughts, in spite of having to dodge the dubious clots of darkness in the aura surrounding them.

  “Yes, Mikal, it’s no the time to begin to despair,” she communicated, infusing her thought with real cheer. “We haven’t even begun to work, and we’ve yet to link up with Xanthus, and the boy, Murra. Admittedly, keeping one’s spirits up in this atmosphere is not easy; if one more of those psychic clots brushes my astral face, I think that I’m going to howl.”

  “Better start howling, then,” Mikal encouraged her in the lightest mental tone that he could manage. “I do think that the things are deliberately aiming at our visages. But, no matter, I don’t think that they can truly harm us, only drive us crazy like a cloud of non-biting mosquitoes!

  “Look, they didn’t like my metaphor! They’re backing off!”

  They were. That drew a tinkle of laughter from Xoraya, and it seemed that this disturbed the murk further. It drew away from the pair of astral beings, leaving them to move inside a bubble of almost-clean atmosphere, which was an unexpected delight. This delight seemed to disconcert the negativity further; the two astral forms stared at one another in pleasant bemusement. Had they actually won a first, tiny battle against their opponents, so quickly and easily? As soon as the idea occurred to them, together they banished it as premature.

  “Let’s take pleasure in the clearer psychic aura,” Xoraya thought at Mikal, “but let’s not read too much into it. I trust that those who we are working against have lots of tricks left.”

  “I agree, wholeheartedly,” Mikal concurred. “Caution must be our watchword. I just hope that we’re being taken to where we can make contact with your Life-Mate and Kati’s young friend.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “The way Darla directed us to travel is not the most direct route,” Lank commented as he studied the charts the ship’s mechanical brain had constructed from the information he had transferred into it from the first Spacebird’s computer.

  Ciela was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat beside him, watching everything that he did with avid interest.

  “Is that good or bad?” she asked.

  “Just necessary, I think,” Lank replied. “Darla and Zeke were trying to avoid being traced, since they wanted to keep their source a secret, so, naturally, they would have done a bit of zigging and zagging, and roundabout dragging. They were successful at keeping the planet of the crystals a secret; in the end the criminals who wanted to take over their business attacked them to try to squeeze the world’s location from Zeke. He wouldn’t cooperate with them, though, and they ended up killing him. Darla said that she was just lucky that they were a bunch of idiot misogynists who couldn’t believe that she as a woman could possibly know Zeke’s secrets, so they didn’t try to wring them out of her.”

  Ciela shuddered.

  “But I bet they weren’t very nice to her,” she said softly. “I bet that she went through hell before she got away from them.”

  “I think that you’ve got that right,” agreed Lank. “She didn’t say much about that—didn’t speak of it at all except to mention that she had been lucky to have been left alive. But her husband did say that she had been in a very fragile mental and emotional state when she arrived on Space Station Qupar, and started working for his father’s business.”

  “Well, I’m glad that she found a man who appreciated her,” Ciela said.

  “She did. Jens certainly appreciated her, and so did his whole family. Darla’s a bright woman—all of us could see that. And luckily for us, under the circumstances, she had a bone to pick with the Space Lanes criminals, so when she heard that we were going after some big ones, she wanted to help, and gave us all this info.”

  “Don’t forget that we have to be alert for any signs that the syndicate that was after Zeke and Darla left a marker of some kind along the early portion of the route, in case someone, like us, for example, does try to follow their line of breadcrumbs to the prize,” said Kati, having heard a part of their conversation on entering the bridge.

  Ciela raised an eyebrow at her, and grinned.

  “A line of breadcrumbs!” she said. “Sometimes, Kati, you talk silly!”

  “Get used to it,” Lank advised her. “She likes to act and talk silly quite often. Especially when the pressure’s on, I think. And Kati, I plan to have our sensors sweeping for anything that might serve as a marker. Which doesn’t mean that we’ll find it; it’s a big, empty space out there, with all kinds of debris scattered about.”

  Kati sighed. Lank was right on all counts. She was feeling stressed out. Not the least because avoiding the marker that may have been set a decade and a half ago to catch them, might well be impossible. And that was only the first hurdle that they were facing. They would also have to do some successful trading on a world which had not seen Free Traders in a long time. The people they were to trade with might be feeling abandoned, and not in the best mindset to resume business, especially since this particular bunch of Free Traders could not promise that they’d come back for a return visit. And once that issue had been dealt with.... Kati sighed again. However, there was no sense in conjuring up trouble before it arose. Like always before, she would just have to take things one at a time, and try to work out a way to deal with problems as she faced them.

  But oh, she missed Mikal, and his steadying presence! And, unfortunately, she had had no more luck in contacting him or Xoraya than she had in getting in touch with Murra! Had Gorsh managed to make Xanthus Hsiss transport them through time, already, or was something else blocking her psychic efforts? Llon claimed that there was a block, and he seemed to have knowledge above and beyond any available through the usual channels.

  So many things seemed to be out of her control at the moment. And yet she was supposed to be protecting the youngsters in her care: Lank and Ciela. Llon was helping, of course, but he had left her to be the one in charge. Everything lay on her shoulders—but this was not a productive path to take her thoughts down.

  It was better to crack a joke, or several—if she could think of any.

  “Before you drag more cute stuff out of your pre-abduction memory,” subvocalized The Monk inside her mind, “may I make a suggestion?”

  “Why not?” Kati subvocalized back, with a mental shrug. “You will, anyway, with or without my permission.”

  “Don’t try to rile me, woman,” came the response. At least the rapscallion was not calling her a “girl”, this time. “What I want to suggest is that you and I do a bit of psychic space-sweeping after the first few jogs into normal space during this convoluted foray into the Wilderness portion of the galaxy. If a pinger has been planted to catch our passage, it most likely is waiting for us where we can’t help but come into its reach, and that would be where we come out of transition. Not that we can prevent it relaying its message, but your young pilot may be able to evade it on the way back by altering the ship’s route.”

  Kati relayed the Granda’s notion to Lank, asking him if the idea would be helpful.

  “It may be,” Lank answered slowly, clearly turning it over in his mind. “It all depends on the technology of the marker. When we were at the Jax Emporium and you were hawking the lace crystal knife, I asked a few questions about signalling devices that could be left along the space lanes, to mark them, and to pass on information. It turns out that there are scads of different types available, from the simple buoys which are used on the main routes of the Space Trade Lanes, to some pretty amazingly complicated stu
ff.”

  “Granda used the term ‘pinger’,” Kati explained. “Does it mean anything to you?”

  “That pretty lady who was so eager to talk to you, Lank, mentioned the word ‘pinger’,” Ciela threw in. “It did sound like she knew what she was talking about, besides wanting to impress, you.”

  Ciela turned her eyes on Kati, grinning conspiratorially.

  “Ciela, she was a saleswoman,” Lank objected. “She was trying to make a sale. She would have been batting her eyelashes at me, even if I had had a giant wart on my nose. But she did know her stuff, and I was trying to get information.”

  “So what did she say about ‘pingers’?” Kati asked, smiling at both teenagers.

  “A pinger is dormant locator which is usually left somewhere that doesn’t get much traffic, to register the passage of either a particular vessel, or any vessel at all, which travels through its sensor area,” Lank answered. “When it detects a target ship, it sends a ping to a mother transmitter, which may be way far away. They’re usually used for counting traffic, but pirates sometimes set them to let them know when a particularly desirable target ship enters some area or another.

  “That’s about all the saleslady had to say about them. Besides the fact that once a pinger has been set, it can keep working for a very long time, if no-one gathers it up or deactivates it.”

  “The syndicate couldn’t have set a pinger to respond to our ship in particular,” Kati mused, “since they had no idea that we’d be along, or in what vessel we would come when we did.”

  “Yeah.” Ciela sounded relieved. “That means that we ought to be able to make this trip safely, even if the crooks, who went after Zeke and Darla, are still after the crystals.”

  “Not so fast, Ciela,” Lank said. “There are always more things to consider. Never assume anything, without first thinking through everything you possibly can. Mikal would have insisted on it.”

  “You’ve got that right, Lank,” Kati agreed, wishing that Mikal had been present to insist on it. “The crooks did get hold of Darla and Zeke; do not forget that. And my rascally node wants to tell me something more from its vast storehouse of outside-the-law experience, so if you’ll excuse me for a second....”

  She turned her attention inward.

  “I would think that in this case it’s a question of location, location, location,” subvocalized The Monk. “The syndicate ship or ships must have succeeded in following Zeke and Darla far enough along their convoluted path, that they knew that the only vessel to transition in or out at a particular set of spatial coordinates would have been theirs. That’s where they dropped their pinger, and that’s where they intercepted them on their way back from the Wilderness space. And that’s what they’re going to try with us; count on it. This time they’re not going to make the mistake of underestimating the women either—the fact that we’re here is proof enough that Darla had Zeke’s knowledge, even if she sat on it for fifteen odd years.”

  “And we won’t know where that’ll be unless we can find the pinger?” Kati asked.

  “You’ve got it. Unless Darla’s information included the co-ordinates at which the pirates attacked her and Zeke on their return journey.”

  “We can look. Or Lank can. Although we know nothing about how Darla made her way to Qupar, or what happened to the ship that Zeke owned. And who knows, even if we could ask her, if her memory would be intact on the topic?”

  “I wouldn’t suggest getting hold of her and asking,” The Monk responded, his lined face grim. “I know how pirates like that deal with women. She wasn’t kidding when she said that she was lucky to get away alive.”

  “Ouch. I get it. We will be careful.”

  “What is it, Kati?”

  Lank had apparently been following the play of emotions on Kati’s face. He looked worried.

  “Disturbing information,” Kati said. “The Monk just told me that the crooks will be certain to try to repeat what they did with Zeke and Darla, with us. If the data Darla gave you includes the location where the pirates ambushed Zeke’s ship we’ll be able to circumvent them, but otherwise we’ll have to find the pinger. If we don’t, we’ll likely run into an ambush on our way back from the planet of the crystals, and this time the nasty characters are not likely to underestimate the women on board the vessel.”

  She sighed.

  “Our little enterprise has taken on some ominous tones, I’m afraid.”

  “I’ll do a careful check of everything Darla gave me,” Lank said thoughtfully. “Although I think that her info was all about how to get to the source planet from the Fringe area coordinates towards which we’re heading right now. But she may have dropped a hint in there, somewhere—like I said, I’ll comb through it before we head out.

  “If that doesn’t work, do you think that you and your bad boy can hope to locate the pinger? Because if you can, we can always alter our route a bit on the way back, enough to avoid troublesome locations.”

  “I really don’t know for sure,” Kati replied.

  She did not like the notion that their safety depended on her and the Granda’s ESP talents. On their ability to find a tiny electronic device in space, no less; a needle in a haystack was child’s play in comparison.

  The door to the bridge opened and Llon stepped in.

  “I got dinner on the table,” he said. “The casserole’s cooked, and I made a salad to go with it. If you folks can put the vessel on auto for a spell, maybe we can all eat together.”

  “Oh dear, I forgot about supper,” Kati said with genuine chagrin. “I came here to tell our pilot and the pilot-in-training that supper was almost ready, and then I got side-tracked!”

  “No matter,” Llon said, smiling. “I’m perfectly competent in the galley. And I suspect that we have lots to discuss over the salad and the casserole.”

  *****

  “It appears that now is the time to face up to the first hurdle of our little side enterprise,” Kati said after she had passed around the delicious-looking salad, and had filled her own bowl.

  She was addressing herself to Llon, who was listening intently even as he forked up greens into his mouth.

  “We know that the Space pirates who wanted to take over Zeke and Darla’s business attacked them along their trading route, boarded their ship, and insisting that Zeke give them the location of, and directions to, the planet which was the source of lace crystal and amber salt crystals. According to Darla, Zeke refused to divulge the information, and had, presumably, erased it out of the ship brain as soon as he realized that they were under attack. He did not give in even under torture, is my understanding, and he insisted to the criminals that Darla knew nothing, that he had not shared important information with the woman he was travelling with.”

  “It would not have been hard to convince that type of brute of her ignorance,” growled the Granda inside her head. “With a few blatant exceptions, for them women are bed fodder, and childbearing machines. They don’t tell them secrets.”

  “It seems that Lank’s thoughts and those of the Granda’s have been following similar paths when it comes to what that story means to us, following as we are, Darla and Zeke’s trail to the source of the crystals. Lank was asking the sales people at the Jax Emporium about markers that can be dropped into space to relay messages to their owners at a distance, and The Monk warned me about what he called ‘a pinger’, a marker that could alert its owner to the passage of a particular ship, or any ship at a particular location. The Monk is of the opinion that a pinger alerted the Space pirates to Zeke and Darla’s passage along their route to the planet of the crystals. The pirates, therefore, were able to lie in wait at that particular place on the Free Traders’ route, and attack them on their way back.

  “The Granda figures that either the pinger is still there, or it has been replaced by another one which will alert the criminals the moment someone—meaning us—uses the route again.”

  “The assumption being, I presume, that very few shi
ps other than ones retracing Zeke and Darla’s path, would be traversing that particular area,” Llon commented.

  “That’s just it,” Lank said. “I’ve been studying the route Darla’s information traces out, for some time now. It’s pretty unique. She and Zeke navigated their way into the Wilderness in a roundabout way, using transition points that are rarely used by ships either from the Fringes or the Federation. The pirates intent on stealing their business must have noted that during their attempts to follow them, and decided to use their secretiveness to advantage. My guess is that they salted a transition area early on in the journey, but one that they knew was not used by many, if any, others. Once the pinger sent them the message that a ship had transitioned, all they had to do was set up an ambush and wait for the vessel to come back into normal space on its return journey. Then they attacked, got the whole load of crystal, plus, they expected to get Zeke’s information on how to get more of the same. Only Zeke refused to cooperate, to the extent of dying in the process.”

  “Why would he have done that?” Ciela asked. “Was lace crystal and the amber salt crystals worth so much to him that he was willing to die for them? Is anything worth that?”

  “I very much doubt that it was the crystals that motivated him,” Llon said quietly. “The Free Traders are generally very honourable people—you met Mose and Hana, Ciela, didn’t you?”

  Ciela nodded, looking thoughtful.

  “The Free Traders know that the criminals of the Space Trade Lanes keep an eye on their doings, and are keen to force their way into any trade which shows promise of fast profit. The pirates forcing their way in are usually not in any way good for the worlds they invade, and the Free Traders do not want to be responsible for having their trading partners turned, even temporarily, into client planets for exploiters. Therefore they try to keep their sources of unusually profitable goods a secret, especially when those sources are in the parts of the galaxy where the arm of the Star Federation Law cannot reach.