CHAPTER 6
Portside Tube Station
Duty-Free Zone, Twenty Kilometers South of St. Augustine Spaceport
The Next Day
“You know, I’ve never actually taken the Tube before,” Captain Blackwood said. The train was finishing its acceleration and would soon settle in to its cruising speed. “I’ve always preferred to fly.” The Tube, as it was colloquially known, was a network of high speed-trains that crisscrossed the surface of Heinlein, connecting the major population hubs. The trains traveled in an elevated, sealed pipe, which was kept as close to a vacuum as could be reliably maintained. Suspended in a magnetic field, the trains zipped back and forth at a thousand kilometers per hour.
“I would have been happy to fly this time, Skipper,” Nickson replied, sitting next to her. Her arm was in a thin cast.
“As I said, it’s gotten too expensive. We need to maintain a budget. Our financial situation is not ideal.”
“I’ve been going over the financial records, and I see what you mean. Getting the ship repaired in the Llewellyn Freehold really set you back.”
Captain Blackwood scoffed at the mention of the Freehold. “The entire bloody planet is nothing but political cover for pirates. If you’re just passing through, and haven’t paid the right bribes to the right people, everything costs a fortune. And since they have some trade relations with the Orlov Combine, having us there posed a risk to them, and they charged us a daily security fee while we were planeted.”
“You had to pay them not to turn you over.”
“Exactly. The ship was due for the refit anyway, and after being so heavily damaged there was no sense in putting it off. When all was said and done, our profit margin was small, and a lot of that has been eaten up by berthing fees.”
Parking a ship at a spaceport was a significant expense. The Andromeda had been sitting for nearly two standard years, much of that waiting for the upgrades to be completed.
“Aside from me dragging my heels on getting the crew roster filled back out, the market has been slow. Mordechai has been analyzing the situation, and he thinks privateering is undergoing a market correction, as he calls it.”
“What does that mean?”
“Piracy is largely an economic problem, and the factors that make piracy profitable are changing, at least in this part of inhabited space. The Outer Colonies can’t really be considered the frontier anymore. There are fewer and fewer ports willing to harbor a ship that is at all suspicious, and fewer avenues for the selling of stolen property. The Concordiat having annexed Zanzibar means increased military activity out that way, too, and increased paranoia on the part of the Combine. They’re one of the biggest traffickers in illicit goods, but few pirates want to risk getting caught between them and the Concordiat fleet.”
“You know, Captain Ogleman was concerned about this before our last contract. He was convinced that Heinlein just wasn’t going to be a viable base of operations for privateer work in coming years.” Nickson looked down, for just a moment. “I think that may have been part of his reasoning for pursuing that cruiser.”
“Financial desperation has gotten many privateers in trouble over the years. Either way, Captain Ogleman may have been right.”
“What then? Are you considering a move?” Nickson didn’t have any family, and wasn’t particularly attached to his adopted home of Heinlein. Even still, one did not simply up and relocate to another planet. Making such a move was a massive logistical problem, and bore no small amount of risk.
“I don’t know. It may be necessary, in order to stay in business. In any case, there’s no sense in stressing over it now.”
“Hey, Skipper? There’s something else I wanted to ask you. Like I said, I went over the logs from your last time out. What happened with the Agamemnon?”
She was quiet for a moment. “Ah, yes. That.”
“I mean, finding a Second Federation vessel, completely intact, after it had been drifting out there for what, eight hundred years? It’s incredible.”
“It was too big for us to salvage, mind you. The damned thing was seven hundred meters long. We investigated, but found nothing useful. Did you review the logs and the video from that?”
“I did,” Nickson said, vividly recalling the helmet-cam footage of the ship’s bridge. Frozen gore was stuck to the walls and floor. Mangled bodies were strapped into chairs. “What in God’s name happened?”
“We still don’t know. I worked out a deal with my brother. I sold him the salvage rights for a pittance, accepting a percentage of the salvage profits instead of a big up-front fee. A fleet from my family’s business went out to Baker-3E871 and began the recovery process. They disassembled it, piece by piece, and brought it back to Avalon. We’ve yet to make any money off the salvage.”
“What? That ship is priceless!”
“Oh, it is, but there were…complications. I don’t know of this first hand, mind you, only what my brother told me in his correspondence. Several workers were killed in the salvage effort. The whole process was plagued with problems. When they finally got it back home, the government got involved. They declared it a matter of colonial security, and the whole thing has been shrouded in secrecy since. That ship had an AI, you see, a genuine, pre-Diaspora AI. Last I heard, they were attempting to reactivate it, to find out what happened to the crew, but I don’t know if they had any success.”
“Is your brother still involved?”
“He is, along with his partners from Zanzibar. My father saw to that. I don’t know what they’ll learn, if they ever get that AI operational, but I don’t expect it will be pleasant.”
Nickson thought again about the grisly discovery on the ancient derelict. He had no idea what could have done something like that. He’d heard stories, of course, old spacers’ tales of ghost ships, vanished crews, and other horrors to be found in the darkness of outer space. Until his own encounter with a mysterious lost fleet, he’d never put much stock in those tales, but now? He wasn’t superstitious, but he wasn’t ready to dismiss such things out of hand, either. “Anyway, I’ve been reading up on our client, Skipper,” he said, changing the subject. “He’s got what you’d call a checkered history.”
“Oh? Beyond being the ousted and exiled leader of a colony?”
“Yeah, beyond that. It took a while to find some of this stuff. I had to run a detailed search, and I had to try and weed out any less than truthful propaganda from either side, which there was plenty of. He himself has written several books, but I haven’t had time to read them.”
“Summarize it for me. I haven’t had time to go over everything I should have. This is all happening on short notice.”
“Zander Krycek was deposed in a coup about twenty standard years ago. He was still popular with a sizeable portion of the colonial population at the time of his ouster, and in order to avoid sparking a second civil war they allowed him to go into exile. Since then, the colony has been in a long downward slide, socially and economically, and the ruling Interim Government is struggling to maintain order.”
“I suppose that’s why they want him back,” the captain said.
“Maybe, but some people won’t be happy about it. He is still known, in the official Ithacan histories, as the Butcher of Sargusport. It seems that after months of trying to crack a royalist stronghold, the remote city of Sargusport, he destroyed it with a tactical nuclear weapon.”
“Royalist?”
“That’s what it says. I guess they were supporters of the king, whom our client had overthrown. That’s odd. You don’t see a lot of actual kings these days.”
“Mm. Go on.”
“Anyway, twenty thousand colonists died, and not just the militants. Noncombatants, children, the elderly, and the sick and wounded all died with the city.”
Nickson watched as his captain mulled that over. They were privateers and, yes, mercenaries, but that didn’t mean they were without conscience or morality. “What happened after that?”
“I hate to say it, but it worked. Destroying Sargusport, I mean. After that, the last remaining royalist holdouts came to the negotiating table, and a cease-fire was declared. It ended eight local years of war.”
“And they ousted him after that?”
“Yeah. The Interim Government, which is run by something called the Revolutionary Council, blamed President Krycek for the civilian deaths, but took credit for negotiating the armistice. They said he was a dangerous, reckless war criminal, and that too much power had been consolidated in his office. They voted to remove him from office, and dispensed with the office of the presidency altogether. Scapegoating him helped unify the colony somewhat, and the cease-fire held after his departure.”
“Yet it seems he still has allies there.”
“It makes sense. Apparently, he was quite popular before the coup. He even managed to negotiate a peace treaty with the native sentient species, a first in modern history. Why? Having second thoughts about this?”
“No. We need this contract, Nix. If I keep my crew planetside for much longer, I won’t have a crew. Besides that, there’s something larger at stake here. Mr. Krycek explained to me that this Interim Government, ruling council, whatever they call themselves, are planning on extending diplomatic relations with the Combine.”
“What? Why? Why would anyone do that?”
“When you get some time, you should read up on the Combine’s propaganda machine. To hear them tell it, Orlov is a wonderful, communitarian society free from corruption, inequality, poverty, and the petty squabbles of democratic politics. Instead of fighting amongst themselves, they say, everyone has a place, everyone contributes, and they’re working to make that Godforsaken rock they live on a paradise.”
Nickson was incredulous. “And people actually believe that?”
“Some people do. You’ll find pro-Combine agitators on almost every world. Some of this is organic, born of ignorance and wishful thinking, some of it is a deliberate influence effort on the Combine’s part. You’d be surprised at how well it works. Their methods are incredibly sophisticated.”
“I think securing that trade agreement with the Llewellyn Freehold, what, twenty years ago? I think that emboldened them.”
“I’m inclined to agree. They were willing to send a cruiser after me, all the way to Zanzibar, unusual for a supposedly isolationist hermit-state. They also had designs on Zanzibar itself, I suspect. I don’t think they would have been content with selling weapons to the local warlord.”
“I’ve gone over some of your logs from Zanzibar, Skipper. A previously unknown antecessor civilization, with intact artifacts left behind? If there was even a chance the Combine could secure alien technology, they wouldn’t hesitate to try to annex that planet.”
“Indeed. I suppose that’s why the Concordiat claimed it first.”
Nickson grinned. “Surely you don’t doubt their noble intentions, Skipper? They insist it’s just about humanitarian relief and peacekeeping.”
Captain Blackwood laughed. The train was speeding along at close to a thousand kilometers per hour now, across rolling, forested hills. The tube, constructed with many transparent sections, was elevated. It stood about twenty meters above the ground, and every so often a tree flashed past the window. “You know,” she said, still looking out the viewport, “this is actually rather pleasant.”
“Well, this is a first-class cabin, too, Skipper. If we were in the cheap seats, we wouldn’t have this little compartment to ourselves.”
“Even still. I come from Avalon, and technically I’m still Lady Blackwood of Aberdeen. My father sits on the ruling council, and he always insisted that mass transit is for peasants.” She chuckled. “It wouldn’t do for a man of his position to ride with the commoners.”
Nickson’s tablet started vibrating in his hand. He was receiving a message. Tapping the screen, the image of Mordechai Chang appeared.
“Cap’n, Mr. Armitage,” the purser said. “I apologize for bothering you, but you ought to see this.” His image disappeared as the screen went black for a moment. “This is a live netcast coming from our client. The media picked up on it.”
The screen now showed the face of Zander Krycek. He was sitting in what looked like a plush hotel room, and was in the middle of an address when the audio cut in: “…worse than that, the Council has been making overtures to the Orlov Combine. There are even reports that suggest they’re looking to consolidate their own power by signing a mutual defense agreement with the Combine.
“This cannot be allowed to happen. I accepted my exile because I thought it was for the best for my people and my homeworld. The colony had already been torn apart by revolution and civil war. I was a divisive figure, and I had hoped that with my departure, some semblance of normalcy would return to Ithaca. Clearly, that has not come to pass. I cannot, and will not, allow my homeworld to become a client state of the Combine. That is why I intend to return home; I’m going back to Ithaca.
“Unlike the cowards on the Council, who make deals in secret, I announce my intentions openly, and I am not afraid. Let them be put on notice: Everyone will know of their treachery, should they go through with this. To them I say this: It is not too late to change course. It is not too late to put your homeworld before your own petty self-interest. It is not too late to stop this madness. Work with me. Together, we can rebuild our government and our homeworld. We can set aside our past differences and work toward giving our people a brighter future, one where they are not cogs in some great, indifferent machine.
“If you’re unwilling to do this, if you’re unwilling to defend your home from foreign intervention, then you have no place on Ithaca. You have been warned.”
The netcast ended. Nickson looked up from his tablet at his captain; her face had gone a little paler.
“That colossal idiot,” she said, quietly.
Nickson just sighed. What have you gotten yourself into this time?