Counterweight (24 page)

Freya stood, looking over to Rick and winking.

“See,” Thorstein continued, “you start by insulting my mum
and I give you a good thumping, friendly like, and then you say you’d rather
die than bring dishonor to your house.” He waved a hand at his captain’s knife.
“The when she slices your nose off, you relent and tell us a little bit. Then
she takes an ear or an eyelid – she’s good at lidding a man – and you sing like
a little bird.”

The Dactari pursed his lips for a moment. “I’m not seeing
the advantage.”

“The advantage is we give you a quick death and shove you
out the airlock,” Thorstein explained patiently. “Now, we’ll probably just dump
you off at some trading outpost like so much used goods.”

“Look,” the Dactari began in a patient voice, “I don’t want
to meddle in how you do your job but I’m not sure
your
plan offers a
suitable incentive. If it comes down to being used goods or frozen space
debris, I’ll take the first option every time.” He tilted his head, putting on
his best
reasonable advice
tone. “You’re not going to get many takers on
that whole mutilated frozen space junk offer.”

The engineer laughed. “I like this guy; can we keep him?”

Freya ignored the question. “Where are all those ships
headed?”

“Chaco Benthic,” the Dactari replied. “The Qötsvi
Conglomerate is losing control of the city and some high-speed, low-drag
company officer thought a legion of mercs would calm things down.”

“Are they joining forces with anyone else when they get
there?” Definitely an important question, since this force
might not
get
there.

“Not that I know of, but then the senior staff forgot to
consult with me this time.” He shook his head in mock wonder. “How you can plan
an operation without the advice of a secondary adjunct maintenance technician
is beyond me.”

“A little old to be a SAM-tech, aren’t you?” Thorstein
seemed faintly embarrassed for the captive. Most low-ranking maintenance
technicians were children. There was no such thing as child labor laws in the
Republic and schools hadn’t been heard of in thousands of years.

When a child was old enough to sit in a training pod, they
learned a trade and started work. Poor children, more often than not, opted for
the free military training and went to work in the fleet. Their smaller stature
allowed the Republic to save space on ships. Maintenance access passages were
tiny and some were only accessible by children.

It was a practice the Human/Midgaard Alliance chose not to
emulate.

“I started with the fleet a little too early,” the Dactari
answered with a fatalistic shrug.

His brain hadn’t been ready. The pod session that made him a
SAM-tech had left his young brain unable to receive new imprints.  

“Captain,” Erik’s voice filled the room. “Enemy fleet’s
jumping away.”

Freya looked up at Thorstein, not really seeing him as she
responded. “As soon as we’re alone again, take us to the fuel dump.” She looked
back down at the prisoner. “Sounds like your ride’s leaving. What should we do
with you?”

“Well,” he began cautiously, “I believe there was mention of
leaving me somewhere where the locals have a liberal attitude…”

“I mean until then,” she cut him off. “A scout ship doesn’t
have a brig.”

“Shove him into the escape trunk?” Rick suggested.

“So,” Thorstein interjected, “you want to put our prisoner
in something that has the word
escape
as part of its name?”

Freya grinned. “He didn’t say we’d let him keep his suit.”

“Oh, come now,” the prisoner exclaimed, “where the hells
would I get to? I’d be back to the floating space junk option.”

“Or you’d climb around outside the hull and sabotage us,”
Thorstein growled.

“Oh, yes.” The captive nodded. “With me still aboard and an
angry Midgaard crew lining up to slice off mementos. I can see it now.” He
adopted a friendly tone. “No, please – go right ahead and carve away. What does
a male need nipples for anyway?”

Freya nodded. “Escape trunk. No suit. We’ll hand him off
when we reach Thoeptir.” She turned and stepped into the forward airlock to
reach the crew quarters. “And remember to feed and water him,” she called out
as the door slid shut.

Insurgent
by Proxy

Tsekoh, Capital of Chaco Benthic

T
he
plaza was nearly empty. It was shift change at the local magister’s station.
Few wanted to hang around in front of a station at the best of times but, when
it had two shifts worth of company lawmen inside, only the very wealthy or the
very reckless would spend any time in the medium-sized square.

That should have made it easier for the Stoners to find
their target but the place really was empty. It was possible the Human had
managed to get out of the area already but his signal had been no more than a
few hundred feet away from Graadt.

It was almost too good to be true but he couldn’t afford to
ignore the chance to apprehend his enemy. Everyone made mistakes and that was
how the Human agent would eventually be found.

A few dozen magisters loitered around the front of the
station, casting evil glances at Graadt and his two cronies. They looked as
though they’d love any reason to draw their weapons.

Sooner or later, Graadt was sure, they’d overcome their
reluctance. The sooner they could nab their target, the greater the chance
they’d be gone before one of the company lawmen tried to kill them.

Their hostility had blinded the Stoner to his own instincts
and his eyes grew wide. “Godsdammit,” he activated his comms. “Get out of
here,” he yelled to his friends, “right now!”

He turned, face cold with rage. What had been bothering him
weren’t the angry lawmen; it was the fact that a skilled operator had opened a
shield-breaching comms link from right in front of the skulking idiots.

It was a trap.

He hadn’t gone three steps when the bomb went off.

Pupeteering

Tsekoh, Capital of Chaco Benthic

A
t
a shrine of the dead on the far side of the plaza, the cowled priest staggered
back to his feet, brushing debris from his dark red robes. He showed the
requisite amount of alarm and fear in his manner, stumbling backwards into the
recesses of the bizarrely cheerful shrine.

The Dactari were a fatalistic species in some respects, Cal
thought as he ditched the robe and pushed his way out into the warren of
alleyways behind the shrine.

They viewed life as a duty, especially those who served in
the military, and death, for them, was seen as something of a release from the
constant crushing burden of service to the greater good. Kind of like a
permanent vacation.

Frankly, Cal would rather take what enjoyment he could while
he was still alive and, from the sound of weapons fire behind him, he had
accomplished one more bit of fun.

From the point of view of the loitering magisters, the three
Stoners had shown up in front of their station and then the damned place had
exploded. Using typical Dactari math, they’d put two and two together and got
five.

He couldn’t help but smile. The enemy of his enemy might not
quite be his friend but he was sure as hell too busy at the moment to chase
Humans.

Paying
Court

Thoeptir, Capital of Veithfar

R
ick
took his hand away from his forearm and inspected the results. The textiles
used in his clothing were incredible. Where the heat of his hand had raised the
local temperature, the fibres of the tunic had altered their charge, attracting
one another rather than repelling.

There was a visible print showing where his hand had rested.
The threads had become thinner – less insulating – where the higher skin
temperature was detected.

Though Thorstein’s explanation of the theory behind the
cloth was simple enough, Rick knew the engineering required to put it into
practice must have been incredibly difficult. He looked up as the door opened
and Freya led the rest of the crew into his room.

“Whoa!” She glanced down and chuckled. “You still need to
calibrate that outfit.”

Rick followed her gaze and felt his ears getting hot. The
fabric compressed itself in direct proportion to body temperature and the pants
were semi-transparent in the groin region. He knew she’d seen him naked, using
the shower cubicle on the
Brisbane,
but it didn’t count, not after a few
days in distortion. It was almost as if gender ceased to exist when you were
shifting space in a scout ship.

Here on the surface of Veithfar, he was a man again and she
was
definitely
a woman.

The crew chuckled at his predicament, giving him a friendly
ribbing as she walked over to stand beside him, reaching up to lightly grasp
the side of his collar. She held it for a few seconds and Rick suddenly felt it
growing snugger.

“There,” she said. “Take a look.” She turned her gaze away
slightly. “Mirror.”

A life-sized projection appeared, partially obscured by
Erik.

“No offense, Erik, but you’re not really my type, so – if
you could get your hand off my butt…” Rick grinned at the weapons officer.

He couldn’t help but notice how the fabric handled light.
The musculature of his upper body looked more defined than usual and the
transparency problem was now history, but… “It’s a little snug – in places –
don’t you think?”

“No more so than on those women you noticed during the ride
to the Ancestress’ hall,” Freya pointed out with amusement. “Should a man be
less honest about his body than a woman?”

“We’re a direct people,” Thorstein explained. “We say what
we think and we don’t hide what we are.” He slapped his belly. Some women look
at this and see a glutton,” he offered cheerfully, “and some see a love of good
food and ale. I married one of the latter and she has similar credentials.”

“Remember that when you meet the Ancestress,” Freya advised.
“Be direct with her. Show respect but don’t grovel. You’re one of us, after
all, so I don’t want you bringing dishonor to the
Brisbane.
”

Rick was sure his clothes were reacting to the sudden,
all-over flush of warmth he felt at her including him as a crewmember. For
someone raised as an outsider, the completeness of their acceptance was
overwhelming.

But he
was
still different. “One of you as much as a
Human can be, I suppose,” he muttered.

She squinted at him in surprise. “D’you know how to tell a
Human from a Midgaard?”

“No,” he admitted.

A smile. “Neither do we.” She moved to stand in front of him
gesturing at herself. “I’m roughly five percent Human,” she said, “descended
from one of the first Humans to take a Midgaard as her mate a century and a
half ago.”

She grinned. “And you’re about to meet her.”

Rick felt a tingle at the back of his neck. He’d been paying
no attention to the pre-cognitive part of his mind. In the same way that he
used to hold it back with his old friend, Barry, he didn’t want to hold that
advantage over his new friends.

As a result, he was far more surprised at the sudden shift
in perspective. He’d grown up thinking of Midgaard and Humans as completely
separate species. The few Midgaard on the
Canal
didn’t intermarry for
the obvious reason. They lived for thousands of years, while Humans were lucky
to live a century.

Evidently, the vaccine had changed all that. The plague had
been caused by researchers trying to replicate Midgaard longevity in Humans and
it had forced the use of an imperfect vaccine. Ninety-eight percent of
recipients received immunity and long life. Two percent of the population,
however, had physiology that mutated the bacterial phase of the vaccination,
unleashing it as the plague.

The few million Humans of the fleet had been put through the
wringer and the vast majority were now indistinguishable from their Midgaard
allies. The rest were long dead, including the
Canal’s
original,
mutinous crew, though her descendants lived aboard her still.

“The Ancestress is a Human?”

“Erin Shelby,” Freya said proudly. “An open-handed giver of
treasure and the Lord of three worlds.”

Rick looked out the window to where a row of small black
ships floated above an expanse of picturesque thatched roofs. “That’s the
Pandora…”

Freya nodded. “She brought the vaccination here from an
Earth that was nearly dead.” Her voice dropped to a reverent whisper. “She
helped make our species equal – in more ways than one.”

“And she still travels in the same little cricket she
brought from Earth,” Thorstein said warmly. “There’ve been a couple thousand of
them sent out here since and not a single one has ever fallen into Dactari
hands.”

“If you ship out on a Hussar class vessel,” Erik explained,
“you win, run or explode. Giving the enemy a Hussar would mean the resumption
of full-scale war.”

 “It’s the tandem-lensed pitch-drive,” Thorstein added.
“Some fifteen-year-old girl on Earth came up with it. She’d been given the
vaccine in the early days of the plague when they were still taking folks back
to Petit Tortue Island for safety. She showed an aptitude for science, so they
put her in a pod and made her a theoretical physicist. She repaid the favor by
coming up with pitch-lensing.”

“The Dactari haven’t been able to produce anything like it,”
Erik said. “They’re scared dungless of the things ‘cause we can dance rings
around them in combat.”

“Let’s get moving,” Freya cut in. “We’d best get this over
with.”

She headed out the still-open door and led them down the
stone-walled corridor. A small door on the right opened onto the side of the
raised dais of the main hall and she led them across it, past a throne.