Ad Astra (5 page)

“As First Officer?”

“As a deckhand. I worked my way up. All the way from the bottom. Captain Weskind believed in me.”

“She didn’t have multi-polar then?”

“No. At least, it hadn’t manifested itself.”

“So, you owe her…”

“Everything.”

Halley nodded slowly. “Does she know her ship is running drugs?” I didn’t say anything, taking refuge in silence for a moment. “Kilcannon, I can read cargo manifests and I know when they don’t make sense. I know what’s really in those cargo containers.”

I grimaced. “Technically, we’re not ‘running drugs.’”

“Technically. All you’ve got is the precursors used to make the drugs. Do you think that’s going to save your necks if you get inspected by peacekeepers?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked more exasperated than anyone I’d ever seen. “You’re going into Fagin Star System with an illegal cargo. If any privateers try to jump you, which has a very good chance of happening, you won’t be able to call for help because the peacekeepers will confiscate your ship once they check the cargo. Then they’d throw you in jail. At least the privateers might let you go if you take off in the lifeboat.”

“Look, Halley, you know the
Lady
broadcasts her condition to anyone looking. The engine output, the energy readings, the shield fluctuations, anyone who sees her is going to know she’s a tramp. And they’ll leave her alone because a tramp isn’t going to be carrying anything worth the trouble.”

Her eyes reflected disbelief now. “That’s your plan? To count on the poor condition of your ship to protect you?”

“We don’t have any other choice.” I clenched my fists, staring past her. “You said it. The
Lady
’s at the end of her rope. We need to make a decent profit on this haul. Enough to get a few repairs done. That’s all we need. Just that one break. Saints forgive me, I’m not proud of this. But it’s our only chance. The only chance left for the Lady and for her crew.”

Halley regarded me, her face hard. “And for Captain Weskind. What happens to her if she loses this ship?”

“I…she won’t.”

“There are places that would take her.”

“
It’d kill her
.” I calmed myself again. “The
Lady
’s her life. I’ll do what I have to do to save her.”

“
Anything
you have to?”

I sat silent again for a moment. “No. Only whatever Captain Weskind would approve of. Or…understand.” I closed my eyes, not wanting to look at Halley for a moment. “We had offers to run weapons into Fagin, you know. They would’ve paid better than the cargo I took.”

“But Captain Weskind wouldn’t have understood running weapons into a place where people are slaughtering each other.”

“No, she wouldn’t.” I opened my eyes and glared at Halley Keracides. “And she taught me there’s some cargos you don’t touch no matter what.”

“She must have been…she must be a fine Captain.”

“She is. Don’t tell anyone what I told you about her.”

“Captain Weskind? You forgot the magic word.”

“Please.”

“I promise.” She stood up and stared at me. But Halley Keracides didn’t say anything else and after a long moment she left the bridge to me and the blank displays.

#

“First Officer Kilcannon?” Able Spacer Siri stood there, still thin as a refugee but with her eyes clear. “I…I wanted to thank you.” Her eyes shifted and she spoke with almost desperate haste. “The dust would’ve killed me. Sure as hell. I was halfway there. I knew my only chance was to get away, on a ship where I couldn’t get any no matter what, but nobody’d take a duster. Except you. I got clear of it, thanks to you.”

I shook my head. “I just needed another spacer, Siri. Thank Captain Weskind. She’s the one who gave you a chance.”

Siri’s eyes shifted again. “Uh, yeah.”

“I’ll let the Captain know you’re grateful and you’re clean.”

“Uh, thanks.”

#

We finally broke out into normal space, high above the plane of Fagin system, looking down on a small area of space where human rationality had been in very short supply for too long. As Lady dove down toward the fourth planet in the system we listened to news reports and shook our heads over the latest atrocities.

Two inhabited worlds and a slew of lesser bodies with colonies on them left too much territory for the peacekeeper forces to cover. Watching the news reports, it quickly became clear that whenever the peacekeepers scrambled to halt an outbreak of fighting in one area the people in the places they’d left would immediately start raising hell. From our perspective, that was good. It meant the peacekeepers wouldn’t have any leisure time to wander about and investigate the small freighter coming in outside their normal patrol areas.

But everything wasn’t great. From our position above the plane of Fagin’s system, we could easily see all the ships operating below us closer to the plane. Two of them, one good-sized and one a bit smaller, showed up as freighters but were loitering not far from the area we’d pass through enroute the fourth planet.

“Privateers?” Halley asked me.

“Yeah. Sure to be. You know as well as I do that freighters hang around ports, waiting to off-load or on-load. They don’t hang around the middle of nothing.”

“Even with freighter engines they wouldn’t have trouble intercepting us. What are you going to do, Kilcannon?”

“Keep going, cross my fingers, and hope they either ignore us as not worth the trouble or something else happens to distract them.”

Halley Keracides just nodded and watched the read-outs for a while with me.

There’s a reason the old saying warns to be careful what you wish for. Less than a day later we were watching news reports of the latest mass slaughter by the good people of Fagin system. There was (or rather, had been) a colony on a moon of the fourth planet which was (or rather, had been) inhabited by a group most of the people on the fourth planet didn’t like for some reason. The peacekeepers protecting it had been drawn away and the fourth planet people had struck.

“Saints, what the hell’s the matter with them?” Chen asked, not bothering to hide his revulsion.

“I don’t think there’re any saints watching this system,” Halley Keracides answered.

I was watching something else. “There’s a ship heading out our way.” They followed my mark. “Looks to be an old freighter. A lot bigger than
Lady
, but a bit older, I think, from the readings we’re getting.”

Within another six hours we’d seen news reports confirming that the old freighter had come off of the moon where the colony had been wiped out. Nearly wiped out, that is. They’d gotten most of their kids and some of the adults onto that freighter. Its path to the peacekeepers or other safety in-system blocked by hostiles, the freighter had hauled mass out of the plane of the system in the hopes of getting away.

Our two loitering privateers started heading for it. They’d been well-positioned for an intercept and they’d catch the fleeing freighter. No question. About two days before the nearest peacekeeper ship could possibly arrive to protect the freighter. And just a few hours before we swept safely past on our way to that fourth planet.

“You’ve got your distraction, Kilcannon,” Halley Keracides stated in a very quiet voice.

“Go to hell.”

“What are you going to do?”

“There’s nothing we can do.
Lady
doesn’t carry weapons. She’s old, she’s tired and we can’t do a damn thing.”

Halley nodded, but she didn’t seem to be agreeing. “Maybe you ought to brief Captain Weskind.”

If I’d spotted even a trace of mockery on her face or in her voice I’d have sealed her in her quarters until we hit port, but there wasn’t any of that. “I should,” I agreed, and left to do that.

Captain Weskind sat and listened. She always sat while I talked, and after I’d finished I waited. But Captain Weskind didn’t recite her hopes about ‘one good run.’ She just sat there, her face flickering with rapid shifts in emotion, and after a while I excused myself and went back to the bridge, wondering if Captain Weskind had taken a turn for the worse, or if she could no longer say whatever else she might’ve wanted to say.

The two things nightmares have in common with space is that you can fall and never reach bottom, and everything happens in slow motion. The old freighter was running for all it was worth but the privateers were closing fairly easily, and because of the distances involved it was all taking days to play out. Yet I could read the end without any trouble. I’d been driving ships a long time and could handle relative motion by instinct. I didn’t even need to consult the maneuvering systems to know about where the privateers would catch the freighter.

Since the freighter had come out of the area of the fourth planet, the same area we were headed, and had run in our general direction, the privateers would catch it pretty damn close, as space goes, to where Lady would pass. They’d be busy killing the kids and looting the ship, of course, so they wouldn’t spare a glance at us.

We’d just have to watch it happening.

And Halley Keracides watched me. She didn’t say any more, she just watched me and the read-outs, where as the hours spun down prey ran and predators chased and the
Lady
got ever closer to both.

There’s always points of decision when you’re driving a ship. Given your mass and your engines you can tell how long you have to make up your mind before it’s too late to be able to do something. We were six hours from the place where the pursuit would end. Halley Keracides and I were the only ones on the bridge of the
Lady
. She stayed silent, but we were coming up on that point of decision soon and I finally had to say something. “Just one good run.”

Halley Keracides nodded. “And one more after that?”

“Yeah. That’s all
Lady
needs, right?”

“No. Not really. But you’ve got a clear shot at it.”

“At the fourth planet, you mean.”

“Yes. If that’s what counts.”

I kept my eyes on the displays. “And after we deliver our cargo we’ll have to find something in Fagin system that people will pay to have delivered to another system.”

“The people you deliver that stuff to will have something they want you to haul. Count on it. Whether you want to haul it is another question.”

“This is an honest ship. I swear.”

“Today, I’ll agree with you. Tomorrow, maybe not. What course do you want to steer, Kilcannon?”

“I know what course I won’t steer. But…damn. One or two runs…we could get them done and then drop that crap for legit cargo again.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s Captain Weskind think?”

I didn’t want to hear that question. But Halley Keracides looked and sounded sincere when she asked it, and I knew it was a question I ought to know the answer to. “I’ll brief her on our options.”

“So now you think you have options?”

“For a little while longer, yeah.”

Captain Weskind wasn’t awake but this was a critical time, and any Captain knows they’ll be awakened when necessity calls. I talked to her, laying out the situation again. I discussed options, I made a recommendation. I waited.

Captain Weskind sat there. Not a word, and too many changes coming too fast in her facial expressions for me to even try to read meaning. Feeling an ache inside, I prompted her. “This could be a good run. The one we’ve been waiting for.”

But she didn’t respond. And I knew I had my answer. Captain Weskind had given me that answer a long time ago, when I was new to the
Lady
and she was teaching me the ropes. Small players in the freighter trade sometimes had to take a flexible approach to rules and regulations. But she always told me there were some cargos you didn’t take on, some things you didn’t do. And some things you didn’t let happen if you could do anything about it.

Halley Keracides was still on the bridge. She looked a question at me, but said nothing. I did some calculations, then I adjusted our course a bit, sat back and waited.

“You’re going to come a lot closer to those privateers,” Halley observed.

“Yeah.” I called engineering. “Vox, I want you to rig the autos so they can best handle all engine functions, even emergency damage.”

“Can’t.”

I muttered a prayer to any saints watching. “You need to do your best.”

“Already did.”

“In a few hours I’m going to have you evacuate engineering and stand-by at -.”

“No.”

“Dammit, Vox, what’s the problem?”

“Saw the course change. Know what you’re gonna do. Go help them kids. Gonna need us here. We’re staying.”

For the Chief Engineer that amounted to a very lengthy speech. “Okay. But when I say you have to go I want you guys out of there as fast as possible. Understand?”

“Aye.”

Halley was watching me again. “What?” I demanded.

“Just wondering what you’re planning and what I can do.”

“I’m planning on using the two weapons available to the
Lady
.”

Her eyebrows rose. “I didn’t know you had even one weapon on the
Lady
.”

“People are clever, Ms. Keracides. We can turn all kinds of things into weapons. As for you, I’m going to have you and the others from the
Canopus
suit up and stand-by at the lifeboat.”

“Chen will insist on staying in engineering with your people.”

“Fine, the other five of you will go the lifeboat.”

“Why are we going to need the lifeboat? You’re not planning on putting us off while you somehow go into battle, are you?”

I took a deep breath. “No. We’re all going to need that lifeboat.”

Word spread through the crew. I waited for a mutiny that didn’t happen. I told everyone to suit up. Once the privateers figured out that
Lady
might be a threat they’d open fire. It wouldn’t take many hits by them for
Lady
to lose atmosphere.

I left Halley Keracides on the bridge for a few minutes while I went back to Captain Weskind’s cabin and got her into her own suit, then pressurized it. “I’ll be back, Captain. Just wait for me and don’t worry.”