In 2402 a survey craft found long veins of minerals smeared like a diseased rainbow through the ordinary metal ores, their
chemistry a curious mixture of sulphurs, alumina, and silicas. A planetside board meeting deemed that the particular concentration
of crystalline strata was valuable enough to warrant an extraction operation; and the miners and their heavy digging machinery
began chewing shafts into the interior in 2408. Industrial stations followed, refining and processing the ores on site. Population
began to creep upwards, caverns were expanded, biospheres started. By 2450 the central cavern was five kilometres long and
four wide, Idria’s rotation was increased to give it a half-standard gravity on the floor. There were ninety thousand people
living in it by then, forming a community which was self-sufficient in most areas. It was declared independent, and earned
a seat in the system assembly. But it was a company town, the company being Lassen Interstellar.
Lassen was into mining, and shipping, and finance, and starship components, and military systems, amongst other endeavours.
It was a typical New Californian outfit, a product of innumerable mergers and takeovers; a linear extension of its old Earth
predecessors which had thrived on America’s western seaboard. Its management worshipped the super-capitalist ethic, expanding
aggressively, milking governments for development contracts, pressuring the assembly for ever more convenient tax breaks,
spreading subsidiaries across the Confederation, shafting the opposition at every opportunity.
There were thousands of companies like it based on New California. Corporate tigers whose spoils elevated the standard of
living right across the system. The nature of their competition was fierce and confrontational. The Confederation assembly
had passed several censure motions on their dubious exports, and held inquiries into individual supply contracts. New California’s
level of technology was high, its military products were in great demand. Companies were indifferent to the use they would
ultimately be put to: once the buyer was identified, the pitch made, the finance organized, nothing would be allowed to stop
the sale. Not the Government Export Licence office, and certainly not the meddlesome Confederation inspectors. With this in
mind, shipping could be a problem, especially the trickier contracts to star systems operating unreasonable embargoes. Captains
who took on those contracts could expect high rewards. And the challenge always attracted a certain type of individual.
The
Lady Macbeth
was resting on a docking cradle in one of the thirty-odd industrial stations coasting in a loose orbit around Idria. Both
of her circular cargo hold doors on the forward hull were open, each showing a metallic cave of bracing struts coiled by power
and data cables, load clamps, and environmental regulation interface sockets; all of it wrapped in tarnished gold foil and
badly illuminated to boot. The docking bay was a seventy-five-metre crater of carb-otanium and composite, ribbed by various
conduits and pipes. Spotlights around the curving walls shone stark white beams on the starship’s leaden hull, compensating
for the pallid slivers of sunlight falling on the station while it was in Idria’s penumbra. Several storage frames stood around
the rim of the bay, looking much like scaffold towers left over from the station’s construction. Each of them was equipped
with a long quadruple-jointed waldo arm to load and unload cargo from ships. The arms were operated from a console inside
small transparent bubbles protruding from the carbotanium surface like polished barnacles.
Joshua Calvert hung on a grab hoop inside the cargo supervisor’s compartment, his face centimetres from the curving radiation-shielded
glass, watching the waldo arm raising another cargo-pod out of its storage frame. The pods were two metres long, pressurized
cylinders with slightly domed ends; a thick white silicon-composite shell protected them from the wider temperature shifts
encountered in space. They were stamped with Lassen’s geometric eagle logo, and line after line of red stencil lettering.
According to the code they were high-density magnetic-compression coils for tokamaks. And ninety per cent of the pods did
indeed contain what they said; the other ten per cent held smaller, more compact coils which produced an even stronger magnetic
field, suitable for antimatter confinement.
The waldo arm lowered the pod into
Lady Mac
’s hold, and a set of load clamps closed around it. Joshua felt a considerable twinge of apprehension. Inside the New Californ-ian
system the coils were a legitimate cargo, no matter the misleading coding. In interstellar space their legality was extremely
ambiguous, although a decent lawyer should be able to quash any charges. And in the Puerto de Santa Maria system where he
was going they spelt deep shit in capital letters ten metres high.
Sarha Mitcham’s hand tightened around his. “Do we really need this?” she asked in a murmur. She had left her padded skullcap
off in the transparent hemisphere, letting her short hazel hair wave around lethargically in free fall. Her lips were drawn
together in concern.
“ ’Fraid so.” He tickled her palm with a finger, a private signal they often used on board
Lady Mac
. Sarha was a spirited lover, they had spent long hours experimenting in his cabin’s cage; but this time it didn’t break her
mood.
It wasn’t that the
Lady Macbeth
didn’t make money: in the eight months since Roland Frampton’s first charter they had landed seven cargoes and one passenger
group, some bacteriology specialists on their way to join an ecology review team on Northway. But
Lady Macbeth
also consumed money at a colossal rate: there was fuel and consumables each time they docked; an endless list of component
spares, there wasn’t a flight which went by without some kind of burn-out or a mandatory time-expiry replacement; the crew’s
wages had to be met; and then there were spaceport charges and customs and immigration fees. Joshua hadn’t quite realized
the sheer expense involved in operating the
Lady Macbeth
. Somehow Marcus Calvert had glossed over that part. Profits were slim verging on non-existent, and he couldn’t afford to
bump his rates up any higher, he wouldn’t land a single charter. He’d made more money while he was scavenging.
So now he knew the truth behind the captains’ talk in Harkey’s Bar, and its countless equivalents across the Confederation.
Like him they all said how well they were doing, how they only kept flying for the life it offered rather than financial necessity.
Lies, all of it a magnificent, artistic construct of lies. Banks sat back and made money, everyone else worked for a living.
“There’s no shame in it,” Hasan Rawand had told him a fortnight ago. “Everyone’s in the same grind. Hell, Joshua, you’re a
lot better off than most of us. You haven’t got a mortgage to pay off.”
Hasan Rawand was the captain of the
Dechal
, an independent trader smaller than the
Lady Mac
. He was in his mid-seventies, and he’d been flying for fifty years, the last fifteen as an owner-captain.
“The real money isn’t in cargo charters,” he explained. “Not for people like us. That’s just makework to tide us over. The
big lines have got all the really profitable routes tied up. They operate vacuum-sealed cartels the likes of you and I aren’t
going to break in.”
They were drinking in a club in the dormitory section of an industrial station orbiting Baydon, a two-kilometre alithium wheel
spinning to produce a two-thirds standard gravity around the rim. Joshua leant against the bar, and watched the planet’s nightside
sliding past the huge window. Sparkles of light from cities and towns sketched strange curves across the darkness.
“Where is the money, then?” Joshua asked. He’d been drinking for three solid hours, long enough to sluice enough alcohol past
his enhanced organs and into his brain, giving the universe a snug aura.
“Flights which use that fancy fourth drive tube the
Lady Mac
’s fitted out with.”
“Forget it, I’m not that anxious to make money.”
“All right, OK,” Hasan Rawand gestured extravagantly, beer slopping over his glass, drops falling in a slight curve. “I’m
just saying that’s the nature of it: combat and sanctions busting. That kind of thing is what the independents like you and
me were put in this galaxy for. Everybody makes one of those trips every now and then. Some of us, like me, more often than
most. That’s what keeps the hull intact, and the radiation outside the baffles.”
“You make a lot of runs?” Joshua asked, staring into his glass morosely.
“Some. Not a lot. That’s where us owner-captains’ bad-boy reputation comes from. People think we do it all the time. We don’t.
But they don’t hear about that, about the mundane flights we make for fifty weeks a year. They only hear about us when we
get caught, and the news agencies blitz the networks with the arrest. We’re the perpetual victims of bad publicity. We should
sue.”
“But you don’t get caught?”
“Haven’t yet. There’s a method I use, virtually foolproof, but it needs two ships.”
“Ah.” Joshua must have been drunker than he realized, because the next thing he heard himself saying was: “Tell me more.”
And now two weeks later he was starting to regret listening. Although, he had to admit, it damn near was foolproof. Those
two weeks had been spent in furious preparation. In a way, he supposed having Hasan Rawand consider him for any kind of partner
was an oblique compliment, since only the very best captains could hope to pull it off. And the ultimate risk wasn’t his,
not this run. He was the junior partner. But still, twenty per cent wasn’t to be sneered at, not when it came to a straight
eight hundred thousand fuseodollars, half in advance.
The last pod of magnetic coils was secured in the
Lady Mac
’s cargo hold. Sarha Mitcham let out a soft, rueful sigh as the waldo arm folded down on its cradle. This flight worried her,
but she had agreed, along with the rest of the crew when Joshua explained what it entailed. And their money situation was
becoming uncomfortably shaky. Even the fleks of MF-band albums the crew always hawked around ports to the bootleg distributors
were fetching minimal prices. A lot of her private stock was getting obsolete, official company distribution was catching
up on her. Here on Idria she had actually bought more albums than she’d sold. At least New California was a hot system for
MF culture, she ought to be able to sell the fresh recordings for another six months yet, especially on the kind of backworld
ports
Lady Macbeth
flew to.
The money would go into the crew’s pooled account so they could finance their own cargo in a couple of months’ time. It was
their one bright dream, which made the mundane tolerable. Norfolk was reaching conjunction soon, a cargo of Tears would make
some real profit for them if they owned it rather than simply carried it for someone else. And then just maybe they wouldn’t
have to do this kind of flight again for a long time.
“All loaded, and not a scratch on your hull,” the woman operating the waldo arm said cheerfully.
Joshua looked back over his shoulder and smiled at her. She was slender, and a bit tall for his taste, but her one-piece uniform
showed a nice collection of curves below its emerald fabric. “Yeah, good work, thanks.” He datavised her console, loading
in his personal code to confirm the cargo had been transferred on board the
Lady Mac
.
She checked the data, and handed him his manifest flek. “
Bon voyage
, Captain.”
Joshua and Sarha glided out of the compartment, negotiating the maze of narrow corridors down to the telescoping airlock tube
that linked the
Lady Mac
’s life-support capsules to the station.
The waldo operator waited for a minute after they left, then closed her eyes.
The cargo pods are all loaded.
Lady Macbeth
is scheduled to disengage from the station in eighteen minutes.
Thank you,
Oenone
replied.
Tranquillity’s senses perceived the gravitational disturbance caused by the wormhole terminus opening in a designated emergence
zone a hundred and fifteen thousand kilometres away from the habitat itself. Against Mirchusko’s mud-yellow immensity the
terminus was a neutral two-dimensional disk. Yet observing it through an optical sensor on one of the strategic-defence platforms
ringing the zone, Tranquillity received an inordinately powerful intimation of
depth
.
Ilex
flew out of the wormhole. A voidhawk with a hull that was more grey than the usual blue. It slipped smoothly away from the
rapidly shrinking terminus, yawing gracefully as it orientated itself.
Ilex
, Confederation Navy ship ALV-90100, requesting approach and docking permission,
it said formally.
Granted,
Tranquillity replied.
The voidhawk accelerated in towards the habitat, building up to three gees almost immediately.
You’re very welcome,
Tranquillity said.
I don’t get many voidhawks visiting me.
Thank you. Though this is not a privilege I was expecting. Up until three days ago we were assigned to fleet patrol duties
in the Ellas sector. Now we’ve been switched to diplomatic courier duty. My captain, Auster, is experiencing a mild notion
of displeasure, he says we didn’t sign on to be used as a taxi service.
Oh, this sounds interesting.
I believe the circumstances are exceptional. And in connection with this, my captain has another request. He asks that Ione
Saldana receive a special envoy from First Admiral Samual Aleksandrovich: one Captain May-nard Khanna.
You have come directly from Avon to bring this captain?
Yes.
The Lord of Ruin is honoured to accept the Admiral’s envoy, and she invites Captain Auster and his crew to dinner this evening.