Family Law 2: The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet (37 page)

Prosperity looked shocked. "You're setting yourself up to take the blame!"

"Sure, but I've seen it done in line of command problems and it
works
. Besides, people have to forgive children all sorts of things they won't let go with other adults, or they'd kill the little monsters and end the race. I can't see how Badgers can be any different. In fact any race that actually raise their kids must be that way. Maybe if we find somebody that lays eggs and walks away from them it won't hold true. But I'm not holding my breath on that one."

"I've heard the phrase, 'Kids say the damndest things," but you aren't a kid anymore. I think you grew up fast and you are not only functionally adult but
calculating
," he accused Lee.

"It's
darndest
, a much milder euphemism and I thank you, but I'd like to milk it as long as I can. So keep it to yourself. OK?"

Prosperity slowly got the strangest grin and nodded. "OK, I can keep a secret," he promised.

* * *

The door was unlocked and the Bill in the dispatcher's office was on com when they walked in. Dauntless just slowed a little and made a gesture at the opposite door leading out on the station corridors. The Bill made an obvious shooing gesture, palm down and fingers sweeping away from him toward the door, so they kept going, no formal entry or showing of documents required. There wasn't any other ship at this dock. The other two docking collars locked and vacant, but Bob had never seen such a casual attitude to entering a station. They didn't record their names or take a palm print or a DNA sample. But Dauntless didn't seem surprised.

The lighting in the corridor outside was lower again. It seemed a street in width and went both ways following the perimeter of the station. A cart went by, automated Bob assumed, because it had no clear windshield just a flat metal front. There was a walkway along the inside edge, protected by heavy bollards a vehicle couldn't fit through even if its guidance failed. Dauntless looked both ways and crossed without hurrying.

Another cart went by, this one reinforcing his opinion of the first. It had an open section with four odd benches in front, a Bill driving one handed and a stack of bags under a net on the flat rear deck.

"Have you been here before?" Bob wondered.

"No, but I looked at the station map and directory in the ship. Didn't anybody mention you could look one up?"

"Sorry, I guess it was one of those 'everybody knows' sort of things," Bob said.

"Yes!" Dauntless agreed. "We make that error too. That doesn't make it right, but it's scary how much our races think alike. We even make the same sort of mistakes. We turn right at this next intersection and it leads to center of the station where there are offices and businesses."

Right was the only way you could turn. To the left was a wall and Bob assumed vacuum fairly close somewhere beyond. The corridor was slightly narrower, but still wide enough for two carts to pass. They were going slower though he noticed.

"There is a place ahead where the businesses start that serves food for Badgers and Sasquatch. We'll be ready to stop walking awhile by then. How about if I get something to eat and you can have something out of your, uh... luggage there."

"It's called a fanny pack."

A group of Bill pedestrians came down the sidewalk toward them. Dauntless stepped behind Bob and  the Bills bunched up to two wide to get past. They were talking in their own language, which didn't sound like Trade very much. When they got near there was a sudden silence as they saw Bob, then even louder excited speech, but they sped up and seemed anxious to get past.

"Do you speak Bill?" Bob asked Dauntless.

"Not very well," I got – "That's one of them!" – and then they started babbling too fast for me."

"They didn't stop and ask for my autograph," Bob said.

"Will I ever know English?" Dauntless asked, reading his hand comp and glancing up on occasion as he walked along.

"Not all of it I can guarantee you. An autograph isn't such a complicated idea. How much can they have to say about them?"

"We have an auto-search program now on the chunk of English web you gave us. I'm past autograph and reading about 'celebrity' now. They have to ask your ship and talk back and forth when it's something we don't have yet. And they still refuse some," he said accusingly.

"I hope it's cross referenced with jackass," Bob grumbled.

"And yet, they have 'fans'," Dauntless noted, ignoring the clearly unhappy addendum.

"Look up the root of fan, Bob suggested.

"Fascinating," Dauntless finally said and closed his pad.

"That's a safe word," Bob allowed.

Dauntless got the pad back out and searched. "Dear sweet little screaming gods on fire..." he muttered, holding the pad straight armed away from him.

"That's a different usage," Bob figured out. "I meant it's a safe neutral sort of expression. Sometimes people reply with things that are neither approving or disapproving. It lets you take it how you will."

He thought about it a little bit, Dauntless silent too.

"Southern ladies will say, "Well Bless Their Heart"," he elaborated, "which
sounds
very affirmative, but their custom is against directly saying anything bad. That's the sort of expression you could have real difficulty with. You just have to know the culture. And the sweeter they say, "Well Bless Their Heart", the more you can be sure they are damning that person to the deepest depths of Hell."

"I like how you switch voices when you tell a story."

"I wasn't sure you got that fine of a nuance."

"Well, you change your face too. It's very helpful."

"That was interesting, seeing Bills walk on all eight limbs. I've seen some video of it, but it isn't the same as being there. I assume they have different gaits, like a horse?"

Dauntless sighed and pulled his pad out again. "They have to ask for more material on that too," he told Bob. "It may be a few minutes back and forth."

"It's all timing," Bob explained. "You don't just walk faster and faster. You change how you move and how your feet hit the ground."

"You or a horse?" Dauntless asked confused.

"Both. A horse walks, trots, canters and gallops. I walk and jog and run. Some people would add sprinting too. The progression of gaits as you speed up is similar, even if a horse has more legs.

"I've never seen one of you do anything but walk. Show me, would you please?"

"I'll jog ahead a little and run back," Bob volunteered. "Not far."

He jogged about forty meters at an easy pace, turned back to Dauntless and sprinted.

"I felt...intimidated frankly, with you coming at me like that. You run with your head up. I think you get both feet off the ground at the same time too. It's different and unnerving. How long can you keep running like that?" he asked.

"Me? Not far at all. I'm out of shape. I used to be able to run
hours
, not much off that pace. I could do ten kilometers, with a pack about four times as big as this one and a weapon. I was younger and training constantly to maintain the ability."

Dauntless looked like he was going to say something and instead checked his pad.

"I had to make sure I understood a meter and a kilometer. You should know, I don't think
any
of our races here can run like that."

"These Bills look like they could move pretty fast with all those legs."

"Yes, but not so far."

"On Earth, before spaceflight, before written history or any serious technology at all, humans were cursorial hunters. They would hunt with weapons as simple as a sharp stick. Out on a vast plain they'd pick out an animal and ran toward it. The animal would run off faster than a man can run. Trouble was it could only run a hundred or two hundred meters. The man would just keep running. When he got too close again the animal would flee, but it didn't really have time to recover. Each time it ran it would recover a little less. The man could run all day if he needed to. It might be the third time or the fiftieth, but eventually the animal couldn't run. It might collapse trying and the fellow with the pointy stick would catch up and he had his supper," Bob said, making a spear stabbing motion at the deck.

Dauntless was quiet for several minutes.

"What are you thinking?" Bob finally asked. "You have that pensive look you get when thinking."

"I'm thinking about your story and my name," he replied. "If I look it up I bet you have a lot of words for Dauntless."

"Oh sure, synonyms we call them. A similar word I think I'd like to use is relentless. It has a grim, merciless sound to it," Bob said with a smile.

Dauntless shuddered. "I don't think the Biters know what they are dealing with and I'm not going to be the one to tell them. They are hunters, obligate carnivores, but their normal style of hunting was to lie in wait and sprint out to catch their prey. Their mentality is very different. If they don't catch it they just gave up and wait for another chance. It fits how they war, doing raids and getting aggressive sporadically. I wonder if they can possibly picture how a species who hunted as you say, by relentlessly running down their prey, will conduct war?"

Bob didn't want to comment on that. Dauntless seemed to have had a sudden epiphany of where this could all lead. It horrified him enough Bob didn't think he needed to make it worse. Better to keep his mouth shut and give Dauntless time to adjust to what he'd envisioned.

Chapter 18

The
Sharp Claws
was ahead of the station in about the same orbit, but not far enough to put them over the gas giant's horizon from the
Roadrunner,
which was
in a similar position but trailing. They canted her from the line of travel enough to be able to steer their radar from covering their orbital plane to sending an occasional pulse to the polar regions of the giant. Since they had to wait for the echo each look over the poles it cut a ten second window out of their primary watch. They switched back and forth between the poles, taking a look every two minutes.

The missile crews kept one team on a tube at all times, the off crew on four minute call. The greaser and peashooter teams were alternately on call. It was a hard schedule to keep up with a small crew. The bridge radar watch was no easier. The concentration needed demanding and constant attention.

"And if something does come around Big Bertha here, What are we going to do about it?"

"Big Bertha?" Frost asked, askance of Lord Byron his XO.

"Yes, well, the Trade language doesn't have a name for her, just a catalog designation. It's one of the largest gas giants anyone has seen. Certainly the biggest gas giant I've ever seen myself, so it seemed to beg the dignity of a real name. Someone referred to it as Big Berth and the words do seem to fall off the tongue well together. If it displeases you we can use something else."

"Indeed no, but you should enter it in the log and credit the name if someone remembers who originally coined it."

"I'll do that," Lord Byron said, pleased. "And inquire who named it. A Human I'm guessing. But what do we
do
if a Biter ship comes around the planet headed for the station and the
Dart
? We can't just blow them away for being Biters, as much as the idea is starting have immediate appeal."

"I imagine if we just speak with them we'll soon have reason to do whatever we want," Fussy assured him. "In fact from what I'm seeing of their personalities, the more pleasant we are, the faster it will infuriate them and cause them to say something stupid."

"Ah...I am reminded why you are in command," Lord Byron allowed smiling. "You are devious and I say that as your student, with the greatest admiration."

* * *

"The Badgers have a target if you'd like to do a demo for them," Prosperity offered.

"Ice like we discussed?" Gordon asked.

"Yes, they'd like you to go out by the smaller gas giant and orbit it retrograde. Then they will designated a ice chunk orbiting by activating a transmitter on it. They want to see you acquire it as a target and engage it as it passes."

"You want to go or should we send the
Retribution
?" Thor asked Gordon.

"We've been sitting at dock too long. Let's go do it ourselves. Prosperity, why don't you ask Talker and Trader if they'd like to ride out with us? Maybe they'd like to see our operations first hand."

"I'd imagine they'll jump at it. But do you really want to reveal that much to them?" Thor asked.

"Consider it a sales presentation. Perhaps we'll demo some other systems for them."

"You scare me when you smile like that," Prosperity admitted.

* * *

"Is that a bar?" Bob asked, unable to read the sign. "It looks like a bar."

"It is, but it caters to Bills, mostly local labor. I suggest we go to the third one down. The station map tagged it as serving all races and having food items for travelers too. The name of the place translates pretty close to 'All ashore' so I'd say they want the spacer trade."

"Your Trade language sounds like these terms come from wet navy. Did you have ships that went on your oceans?"

"Every one of our races have had ocean going vessels and still do."

"Do any of you have submarines?"

Dauntless checked his pad and frowned. "We did, but the only sort we have now are for research and underwater mining. We had military submarines only in a very narrow time frame. By the time we could build them we were very close to having a world government."

"We had them that could stay down for months, well before we put men in space," Bob said.

"Then life support tech must have been easy for you," Dauntless immediately surmised.

"Indeed it was and we set up sealed habitats and experimented with them long before we set foot on other planets in our star system. So we had some confidence they wouldn't fail."

"That just sounds sensible to me. I wouldn't trust my life to an untested environment."

"I'm feel like that's what I'm doing now," Bob intimated.