Stories of the Confederated Star Systems (21 page)

"Five for the grub line, pardner," Captain Denise replied in nearly the same accent.

"You from 'bout these parts, Ma'am?" the man asked, looking at her suspiciously.

"New Pecos, out Dry Gulch way," she replied and received a huge grin from the man.

"Thought so. This way, Ma'am," he said and led them to a table. He handed out menus, but Captain Denise shook her head. "Five Big John steaks, with the fixn's. Rare for me."

Olaf nodded and said, "Me too."

"Medium," Will said without looking up.

"Medium rare," Jeremiah said with a grin.

"What does that mean?" Silver asked, looking around the table.

"First timer," Captain Denise told the waiter with a grin, and then turned to Silver. "It's how the beef is cooked. Rare is cooked the least, well done is cooked the most, but for you I'd recommend medium. Ordering well done has been known to get a body thrown out of this place, and rare--rare in here is damn near raw."

Silver looked at her out of the corner of his eye, then said, "Medium," to the waiter.

The waiter nodded. "And to drink?" he asked, looking back to the captain.

"Beer?" she asked, looking around the table. At the unanimous nods from her crew, she said, "Five Stony Mountains."

"That'll do. Be up in a jiffy," the waiter said and hurried way toward the back.

"Are you really from this planet, Ma'am?" Silver asked, looking at his captain with more than a little suspicion.

"Yep. Born and raised on a ranch near Dry Gulch. I learned to hate cattle, horses, and cats at an early age. That's why I'm in space instead of married to some ranch hand back home." She smiled and shrugged as Silver considered that bit of information.

The beer was delivered within moments, and Silver took a small experimental sip. “Beer” was a generic term for brews of varying quality and composition throughout the Confederacy. No two planets had the same biology, so no two brews tasted the same. This brew was better than most, and tasted like it had a lot more alcohol than was legal on New Kashmir.

"Stony Mountain is a brewery in the Stony Mountain range of New Pecos. They produce enough beer for the local demand, but not much of it leaves the planet. The local demand is pretty high," Captain Denise said with a laugh. "Beef and this beer are about the only things I miss about home."

The steaks arrived just moments later and all conversation was suspended as they ate. Silver found the beef to be a remarkable change from what he thought of as meat. Terran beef didn't thrive on many planets other than Terra. New Kashmir didn't have any at all. Meat there was mostly from goats or sheep. Or pigs. Pigs had been taken to every planet that humans had colonized, and thrived wherever humans could live. Silver had always thought there was something poetic about that.

"Well?" Captain Denise asked and he looked up from his plate.

"I like it. I've never tasted anything like this before, but I definitely do like it." Sterling took another bite and chewed thoughtfully.

"Part of that is how the meat’s cooked. They use a special wood to precook the meat groundside, then flash-freeze it and bring it up here. You can't have an open fire on a space station, so it's heated back up in an electric grill with more wood chips for just a touch more smoke after you order."

Silver said, "You know an awful lot about this place, Ma'am."

She grinned. "Worked my way though Spacer College grilling beef groundside," she replied with another laugh. "There was a time when I couldn't stand the smell of this place, but now it's one of the things I miss the most."

"Maybe you can clarify this for me then, if you would, Captain," Sterling said, looking at Captain Denise with his head tilted to the side. When she nodded her assent, he continued. "Why did we bring in embryos if beef cattle do so well here?"

"Mutation," she answered. "The cattle do well, and can eat the local flora, but it causes a change in them. After three generations they are born sterile. The embryos are from Terra or New Argentina, and are replacement stock for the infertile heifers. That's what the females are called. The embryos are selected to be mostly female. One bull to a hundred heifers keeps the line going."

They finished their meal in silence. The meat was accompanied by cornbread, beans, and something called “spuds” that had absolutely no relationship to Terran potatoes. Captain Denise finished first, sitting back and sipping her beer while her crew cleaned their plates. When all of them were sitting back with their beers, she addressed the group.

"This was a good trip. Silver has proven himself a capable navigator and is flexible enough to be permanently granted partnership. Dissent?" She looked around at the three older members of her crew. When no one said anything, she looked at Silver. "You've been on probation, Silver. If you hadn't proven adaptable enough we would have left you here. Since you did, you are entitled to ten percent of the profit, minus your cost. That leaves you with just five hundred and fifty-six credits. Next trip should be better."

Silver raised his eyebrows as he looked at her. "You'd have abandoned me here?"

"Yep. The
Jolly Jane
is too small a ship to have a crewman who doesn't fit in. It wouldn't have been too bad for you. Your papers are sufficient to get you a place on another freighter, and you wouldn't have been totally broke. I still would have paid you your share."

"It beats what you had back on Hobson's, doesn't it?" Olaf asked and Silver had to nod.

"It does indeed. So what's next, Captain?"

Captain Denise smiled serenely. "We'll be taking a shipment of beef to some small outpost. We make this trip twice a year, bringing in something small and taking beef out. We're just big enough to haul a profitable mass to out of the way places where the big freighters don't want to go."

They returned to the ship to find a message packet waiting for them. Captain Denise opened it and smiled. "Contract to deliver thirty-six metric tons of beef to Fredrick's Station in orbit around planet Germanicus in the Von Habsburg System. Contact the Arvantan Beef Cartel rep for acceptance. Germanicus, huh? Silver, go look it up. Start plotting a course and look for anything unusual about the planet that we should know. I'll contact Arvantan and accept the shipment."

"Yes, Ma'am," Silver snapped and sat at his navigation station to review the charts. Germanicus was the fifth planet of the Von Habsburg system, and was only a six parsec trip. That was four light years closer than Hobson's Planet and his old life. The planet was a lifeless, rocky body with no atmosphere. Fredrick's Station was the orbital shipping port for the automated mines that extracted the abundant minerals from Germanicus' crust. Orbital and planetary population was listed as nine hundred and sixty-three. He paused and considered that for a moment.
Why ship in thirty-six tons of beef for less than a thousand people?
Something about that seemed wrong to him. He shrugged and plotted the course. It was the captain's business what they took where.

The intercom at his elbow crackled to life and Olaf's voice said, "Silver, finish the plot later. The shipment's coming up the dock and we need you to help load."

"On my way," Sterling answered, pushed the button to lock in the course, and then headed aft.

Loading the ship was far more complex than the unloading process had been. Jeremiah was like a gnat, flitting about to check the balance and plan the next container's position. It took six grueling hours to make the load secure for acceleration before Captain Denise and the Arvantan rep were satisfied and the hatch was sealed.

Captain Denise was no less wrung out by the process than anyone else, but she announced, "I'm cooking," and vanished into the galley. Soon interesting aromas started everyone salivating, and not long after that she shouted, "Come an' get it!"

Everyone hurried to the table and found round patties of fried compressed meat and round bread rolls. The usual condiments for “burgers” were present as well, and Silver almost sighed in disappointment. He had thought, just for a moment, that it was going to be beef again.

Everyone else was grabbing their plates and making their hamburgers hurriedly, and he joined in, though with little of the enthusiasm that the others were showing. That changed with his first bite.

A new flavor that he'd never dreamed of flooded his taste buds and he hardly breathed as he finished the burger. "What is this?" he asked as he reached for a second burger.

"Real beef hamburger, like they originally served on Terra. I always get as much as the freezer will hold when we put in here. There are some steaks as well. I told you: this is the only place where we can afford to get beef. I, therefore, being the kind, wonderful captain that I am, get as much as I can. It doesn't last long, though. Damn freezer is too small." She grinned at his expression. "You're hooked. I can tell."

"Yes, Ma'am!" Silver replied with a grin. He then used his mouth for the far more important function of devouring his meal.

T
HE TRIP TO GERMANICUS WAS ROUTINE
. Once the ship was in hyperspace there was nothing to do but wait until it came out. Changing course in hyperspace was considered a "Bad Thing" and was done only in the direst of emergencies, because if that happened there was no way to get back on course and no way to tell where you were going to come out. Several planets had been found in that manner early on in the era of stellar exploration, but more often than not the ships were lost without a trace. Tragically, there were recorded incidents where later ships had emerged too close to a star and had been unable to avoid it. Their radio messages were required listening in the Navy for all bridge officers and enlisted ratings.

They had been in hyper for fourteen days when the emergence alarm sounded. "Prepare to transition to normal space," the captain announced and everyone took their seats. "Olaf, drop us out of hyper," she commanded and Olaf deactivated the hyper drive. The transition was as smooth as could be asked for, and they began plotting an intercept course for Fredrick's Station as soon as they had a position fix.

They had been in normal space for just a few moments when a radio message crackled from the speakers. "-eat, we are under attack. Raider identity unknown. The ship is painted black. No transponder. All ships avoid Fredrick's Station unless you are armed. If armed, please come immediately." There was a pause, and then the message began again. "All ships! All ships! All ships! This is Fredrick's Station Control. We are under attack. Repeat, we are under attack. Raider identity unknown. The ship is painted black. No transponder. All ships avoid Fredrick's Station unless you are armed. If armed, please come immediately."

"Nav, get us a course out of here!" Captain Denise ordered.

"Nearest inhabited star system is Duquesne, Ma'am," Silver announced. "Course takes us toward Von Habsburg. Next is system is Westin. Course of six-five-eight by three-six-six."

"Plot for Westin," she ordered. "Prepare to change course." She pressed a stud on her console and the canned acceleration warning that Silver had first heard echoed through the hull.

"Captain, may I have coms for a moment?" Silver asked when he finished laying in the course.

"Done. Why?" she asked.

"Disinformation, Ma'am. Just a little disinformation," he replied as he typed commands into his console, then keyed in a broad-band transmission. "Attention Fredrick's Station and all ships. This is the CSS
Kiev
, in-system bound at point three 'C' on a vector of three-six-two by four-seven-three." He keyed in a sequence of numbers on the console that tagged a false transponder signal onto the transmission. "Fredrick's Station Control, feed us your sensor data on the intruder so we know who to shoot."

"What the hell are you
doing?"
the captain asked.

"You knew I was in the Navy, Ma'am," Silver replied without turning. "You should have asked where. One of my posts was as Communications Officer for the
Kiev
, and I remember a few tricks as well as her transponder codes. In just over an hour that message and tag are going to hit Germanicus. It's just a hunch, but I bet that raider is going to haul ass out of here at his maximum acceleration as soon as he receives that transponder signal."

"What is the
Kiev
?" Olaf asked.

"Heavy cruiser. Sixty thousand tons of whup-ass in a seven hundred meter hull," Silver replied with a grin. "My last cruise was a search and destroy mission against raiders in the Tibet systems. Six ships destroyed, admiral's award for the crew, and a presidential commendation for the captain."

"Hold course," Captain Denise said with an answering grin. "Keep updating your course correction to Westin, but we'll wait to see what happens when the message is received."

Two hours later the radio message changed. "CSS
Kiev
, this is Fredrick's Station Control. Sensor data will follow this communication. The raider has broken off and is fleeing on course three-six-zero by five-seven-nine." The squeal of compressed data followed and Silver captured and decoded it immediately.

"Raider is," he said, pausing as he scanned the information, "a little bitty thing. She’s only sixteen thousand tons? That can't be a warship of any kind. Maybe it's an armed freighter, but it's not any configuration that the databanks on Fredrick's Station can identify."

"Watch that 'little bitty' crap, Silver," Captain Denise snarled. "We're only about twenty thousand tons."

"We're not raiding anyone, Ma'am," he said with an apologetic grin. Turning back to his console he keyed his microphone. "Fredrick's Station, this is
Kiev
. We are altering course to intercept the raider. If we can overtake them before they go into hyper they will be destroyed." He again tagged the message with the
Kiev's
transponder code and sat back.

"You don't think they'll notice that we haven't altered course?" Olaf asked, turning in his seat to look at Silver.

"Their course is almost directly away from us. I doubt the real
Kiev
could catch them, but it'd be close. Orders, Ma'am?"