Her Brother's Keeper - eARC (17 page)

Captain Blackwood must have taken a shine to Annie, Marcus thought, because she was being very helpful through the entire ordeal. She’d sat down with Ellie for an hour, over coffee and tea, explaining exactly what shipboard life was like, the risks, the realities, and what Annie would be in for. Marcus didn’t know what she said to her, exactly, but after they were done talking Ellie agreed. She broke down and cried, hugging Annie tightly, but she agreed to let her go.

And why not, Marcus thought to himself. He was only a couple years older than Annie was now when he’d enlisted in the Espatier Corps, and he’d been a hell of a lot less mature than his daughter was. At least this way he could keep an eye on her, and she’d be a very long way from Carlos and other teenage boys. Not that Carlos was a bad kid. He’d gone to the hearing to testify on Annie’s behalf. He’d stood up for her and beaten the shit out of a drugged-up adult. If Annie insisted on growing up and having a boyfriend, Carlos seemed like an alright kid.

Marcus was relieved, and Annie ecstatic, when the judge agreed to the proposal. She was to be released into the custody of Captain Catherine Blackwood for a period of not less than one local year. He reminded Annie that if, upon her return, the captain reported that she was not satisfied with her service, that she could be sent straight to juvenile detention. Annie said that she understood, the judge banged his gavel, and that was that.

So it was that shortly before he was supposed to leave New Austin, Marcus found himself outside of a courthouse in Aterrizaje with his wife, his daughter, his new captain, her XO, Wade, and his lawyer. It was enough to make a man’s head spin, but he was happy that it had all more or less worked out. Annie had loved Sparkles dearly, and losing the horse was devastating for her. Shipboard life, with the discipline and work that it entailed, would keep her from dwelling on the loss.

Annie approached her parents in tears nonetheless. “Thank you, Daddy,” she said, hugging each of her parents tightly. “Thank you, Mom.”

Ellie was crying too as she held her daughter. “You be careful, do you hear me?” She looked over at Marcus. “You bring my little girl home safely, Marcus. You bring her home to meet her sibling.”

“We’ll be home before you know it, baby,” Marcus said, even though they all knew that wasn’t true. “I’ll look after her.”

“Please don’t make me regret this,” Ellie said. “Please, Marcus. Look after our little girl.”

Captain Blackwood approached. “I hate to interrupt, but we do need to be going. Crewman Apprentice Winchester has a lot to learn and will be doing a lot of on the job training. I’ll keep her busy.” She looked Marcus’ wife in the eyes. “And I’ll keep her safe.”

Ellie nodded, wiping the tears from her cheeks. Annie stood up a little straighter and thanked the captain for her help.

“Don’t thank me yet, crewman,” Captain Blackwood said. “I promise you this will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.”

The resolute expression on Annie’s face made Marcus proud. “I won’t let you down…Captain,” she said.

Captain Blackwood nodded at Annie, then looked over at her executive officer. “Wolfram? She’s all yours.”

Nodding, the stern, Germanic spacer turned to face Annie. “Crewman, come with me. We’re heading directly back to the ship. We don’t have time for a proper orientation before liftoff. You’ll need to pay attention and learn fast.”

“Okay,” Annie said.

Wolfram leaned down so that he was eye to eye with Annie. “Crewman, when addressing an officer, you
will
address him by his title and call him sir. Am I making myself clear?”

Annie’s eyes were wide. “Y…yes sir!”

“Good,” Wolfram said. “This is not like the netcast shows, Crewman. The
Andromeda
is not staffed by a band of plucky misfits. Space is a harsh mistress, an alien environment unfit for human life. We survive there only through good order, discipline, and hard work. Failure to do your duty, and do it correctly, will get you and others killed.
Do you understand
?”

“Yes, sir!” Annie replied, standing up so straight she looked like she was going to break. Marcus remembered his first day in boot camp and tried not to laugh at his poor daughter.

“Good,” Wolfram said. “Now come with me.” He looked up at Captain Blackwood. “
Kapitänin
,” he said with a nod, and led Annie off to the rental van.

Captain Blackwood looked apologetically at Eleanor Winchester. “Wolfram can be tough, but he’s fair. He runs a tight ship. Annie’s in good hands. We’ll make a spacer out of her.”

Ellie looked thoughtful. “You know what? Maybe this is good. She’s out here drinking beer, getting into fights, and who knows what else. She thinks she’s all grown up now? Let her live by grown-up rules. She’ll appreciate how good she had it.”

Captain Blackwood nodded. “I need to be going myself. Mr. Winchester,” she said, looking at Marcus, “you can take the rest of the day off to spend with your wife. We’re in final preparations for our departure, but I don’t need you on the ship for that. Just make sure your people are all accounted for and in place well before our scheduled launch.”

“Yes ma’am,” Marcus said. As the captain left, and his lawyer excused herself, he turned to Wade. “Hell of a day, huh?”

Wade agreed. “It worked out. Too bad about the horse, though.”

“If I ever get my hands on the little bitch that did that to my daughter, I’m going to choke the life out of her. I’m glad Annie broke her face.”

“I’m gonna take off, Boss,” Wade said. “I’ll screen the others and let them know we’re on liberty until liftoff. Go spend some time with your wife.”

“You should go visit your sexbot,” Ellie said, a twinkle in her teary eye. “She probably misses you, all alone in that storage unit. You keep neglecting her and she’ll start cheating on you with the other appliances.”

Wade shook his head. “You know…”

Marcus laughed out loud. Ellie was sad, but she was tough. She’d get through this.

Chapter 14

The Privateer Ship
Andromeda

Capitol Starport, Aterrizaje

New Austin

Captain Catherine Blackwood steepled her fingers patiently as she reclined in her command chair. The entire crew was strapped in, either at their duty stations or in their racks. New Austin had made for a pleasant visit, but Catherine had business to attend to, and it was time she got underway. Her command screens showed her that everything was in order and that all systems were functioning as they should be. The ship rumbled quietly as the engines idled hot.

A window popped up on her screen. At the same time, a calm voice came over her headset. “
Andromeda
, this is traffic control. You are cleared for launch on your planned trajectory.”

“Roger that, control. Thank you,” Colin, who was up on the flight deck, replied. “
Andromeda
out.”

A klaxon sounded and red lights flashed. All boards were still green. Satisfied, Catherine tapped her headset. “Colin, take us up.”

“Roger that, Captain.”

The low rumble of the idling engines grew into a throaty roar. The vibration increased to a rattle as the ship was buffeted by the thrust reflecting off the landing pad. All at once, the roar reached its crescendo, and Catherine was pressed back into her seat as the
Andromeda
left the surface of New Austin. She kept a watchful eye on her screens, even though she had complete confidence in her pilot and wasn’t expecting trouble. Launch and landing were the two most dangerous parts of a ship’s flight. An accident or failure that would, in space, be an annoyance, could be catastrophic during atmospheric flight.

On another of her displays, Catherine watched the dusty surface of New Austin recede into the distance as the
Andromeda
rocketed toward the heavens on a plume of smoke and fire.
My God, I do love it so,
she thought to herself with a smile.

Spaceport control contacted the
Andromeda
one last time. “
Andromeda, spaceport control. You have left our airspace. You are go for throttle-up. Safe travels.”

Colin replied crisply, “Roger that, spaceport control, we are go for throttle-up. Thank you.
Andromeda
out.” He then announced over the intercom, “Stand by for throttle up. Three…two…one…mark.”

On Colin’s mark, he opened up the ship’s engines a little more. Most spaceports had altitude and thrust restrictions on inbound and outbound ships. An engine sufficient for interplanetary travel could be extremely destructive to ground infrastructure if not managed safely. Catherine was pressed deeper into her acceleration seat as the ship rocketed away from the surface at four gravities. She was unable to suppress the wide grin that appeared on her face. She loved this part, the launch, screaming into the heavens on a tin can spitting hellfire. It was a sensation the very first astronauts on Ancient Earth had experienced, and it bound spacers of every era together.

Stuck in her chair until the ship reached escape velocity, Catherine had little to do unless disaster struck. Her crew was competent and her ship was in good order, just as it should be. She thought it would be unprofessional of her to gush to her crew about how proud she was of them, and how much she loved watching them work, but she made her feelings known in subtler ways. Still, just to keep herself from daydreaming too much, Catherine pulled up their planned trajectory on one of her displays.

In ninety-six hours, they would rendezvous with an automated fueling station in high solar orbit. Getting from the surface into space consumed a lot of propellant, so much so that larger, capital-class ships were typically not capable of atmospheric flight. This limited their versatility and left them reliant on orbital infrastructure for support and maintenance, but it allowed for hull designs much larger than even the biggest of atmospheric ships.

Her reaction mass tankage topped off, the
Andromeda
would then boost along a trajectory that would take them to the Lone Star System’s third, and least used, transit point. It was there that her long journey would
really
begin.

I hope you’re still alive, Cecil.

* * *

I hate this part,
Marcus thought to himself. He’d spent plenty of time aboard ships while in the Espatiers, but he’d never been fond of getting shot into space on a thermonuclear blowtorch. Travel from civilized spaceports generally had an impressive safety record, but Marcus could never shake the feeling that the ship was going to rattle itself apart, leaving him to plummet to his death.

Annie, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying herself. “This is amazing!” she said over the intercom. The strain of the acceleration did nothing to dampen her enthusiasm. The eight newcomers to the
Andromeda
were each secured in their individual berths, which doubled as acceleration couches, but had an open channel with one another so they could chat. Wade remarked that it had been a long time since he’d done this, but seemed fine. Ken Tanaka had fallen asleep somehow. Devree Starlighter cried out with excitement as the
Andromeda
hit four gees; she found the whole thing as thrilling as Annie did. Benjamin Halifax grunted tersely and muttered the occasional obscenity. Jeremiah Hondo seemed perfectly at home under acceleration, and chatted with Wade. Randall Markgraf joined the conversation briefly, complaining of light-headedness, before blacking out.

The team had nothing else to do while the
Andromeda
was accelerating at more than one gee, and Annie was too much of a novice to be allowed to roam the ship while it was under high acceleration. At two gravities, Marcus recalled, you could get up and walk around. It was like carrying another man on your back. You just had to be careful about falling down. Many spacers wore shoes with arch supports, and swore by them.

At four gravities, though, it wasn’t safe to move about unaided. A fall that would result in only a bruised butt and ego under normal circumstances could break bones and burst blood vessels at four times the gravity that the human body was designed for. Falling any kind of a distance could kill a man as if he’d flung himself off of a building. Driving the point home, a small red light above the hatch to his berth informed Marcus that it was sealed. He couldn’t get out if he wanted to.

It’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic.
The kind of berth he found himself in was often derisively referred to as a
coffin,
but it was actually comparatively spacious. Marcus had enough room to stretch, move about some, and climb in and out without bumping his head. That in and of itself was a luxury he would have paid good money for on more than one long haul in a Concordiat Fleet troopship. “Hey kiddo,” he said, straining under his own weight. “How you holding up?”

“I’m okay!” Annie insisted, though she sounded a little less enthusiastic now.

It’s also a good thing there’s a relief tube in here, because I have to piss.
Being compressed under four times one’s normal weight tended to dramatically exacerbate a full bladder. “Good. I’ll be right back,” Marcus grunted to the group. “I gotta piss.”

“Good luck,” Wade said with a strained grin. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

“That’d be a hell of a thing,” Marcus mused. “All this planning and preparation, and I get incapacitated trying to take a leak.” Chuckling to himself, Marcus signed off of the group chat and strained to get the relief apparatus into place.

This is the first day,
he thought to himself, straining to urinate under his present, apparent weight of 332 kilograms.
What have you gotten yourself into?

Chapter 15

Zanzibar

Danzig-5012 Solar System

City of Freeport, Equatorial Region

Freeport wasn’t much of a city, but it was the only real city left on Zanzibar and the closest thing the desolate rock had to a capital. At its center was the lonely planet’s only functioning spaceport, and a town had sprung up around it in the aftermath of the war. Every few local weeks or so, Zak was permitted to take his assistant, Anna Kay, into town to gather supplies and do research.

At first, Aristotle Lang had sent one of his goons to act as an escort. Zak made it a point to appear too afraid to try to escape, and eventually the old warlord stopped worrying so much about him. These days, Zak was permitted to take Anna and roam Freeport at will. Lang still had spies everywhere, and he was forced to wear a tracking device that recorded everything he said and everywhere he went.

It didn’t work that well, though. Zanzibar’s satellite network was patchy and unreliable at best. There were times when the entire planetary network would go down, and it could be days before someone would get it running again. The device itself was old and had not been properly maintained. In any case, Zak had more initiative than Lang imagined he did, and he was good with electronics. He had long since been able to hack his electronic babysitter, and there were plenty of dead zones in the city where it would lose contact with its home station. Even Cecil didn’t know about this—it wasn’t that Zak didn’t trust him, it was just that Cecil sometimes had a hard time keeping his stupid mouth shut, especially when he was in bed with the woman that Lang had given him.

It’s better this way,
Zak thought to himself.
If I get caught, they probably won’t kill Cecil, since he didn’t know anything about it.

Freeport was a crowded, noisy, dirty, and dangerous city. It was a cluttered mess of poverty, crime, and advanced off-world technology. Those who survived the Maggots’ assault on the planet and its desolate aftermath were a hardy folk. “Native” Zanzibarans tended to be clannish, suspicious of off-worlders, fiercely loyal to their own, and tough. Their ways often seemed strange or even cruel to outsiders, but they were the descendants of the survivors of this world’s second apocalypse. As backward and sometimes barbaric as they seemed, Zak had a lot of respect for them. If you could survive on Zanzibar, you could probably survive anywhere.

The “natives” weren’t the only people on Zanzibar, however, especially in the notional city of Freeport. When he’d first arrived, Zak had been surprised by the amount of commerce and interstellar traffic coming and going through the system. With no planetary government and no official ties to the rest of inhabited space, Zanzibar had become a hub for illicit trade of every kind. A few pirates made the planet their home port. Traders and corporations used the system for illegal or unethical deals that needed to be kept off the books. Criminals, fugitives, refugees, and exiles also often made it their home. Zanzibar was hard to get to, but it seemed to Zak that for a lot of people, that was the planet’s best quality.

Freeport’s streets were narrow, crowded, and cluttered. Structures had been haphazardly thrown up wherever the builders fancied over the years, and there was little rhyme or reason to it. The nicest buildings tended to be the oldest—prewar relics that had survived the alien bombardment. The newer stuff was either imported prefabs or structures cobbled together with locally acquired supplies. Most of them were dirty and many looked unsafe.

The streets were often too narrow and too crowded with pedestrian traffic for ground cars. As Zak and Anna wove through the crowds, they had to dodge bicycles, electric scooters, and even the occasional rickshaw to avoid being run over. Vendors peddled goods from carts or small trucks, shouting at passersby for business or loudly haggling with customers. Small shops lined the streets, selling every imaginable product, including weapons, drugs, prostitutes, and even livestock. The air stank of trash, an inadequate waste management system, and animals.

I hate this place,
Zak thought to himself, not for the first time. Zanzibar’s quaint, third-world charm wore off quickly, especially when the food gave you diarrhea and you witnessed a group of local teenagers beat a man and steal everything he had, including his shoes. In many ways, Zanzibar’s tough conditions had brought out the worst in the people who lived here. Most seemed to carry a kill-or-be-killed, take-whatever-you-can attitude. Not unsurprising in people for whom day-to-day survival is an uncertain struggle, but still depressing.

As if Zak needed something else to be depressed about.
Focus
. The little program he’d written was about to start spoofing his tracking device, but it could only operate for so long before running the risk of the deception being detected. He had a limited window to get his real business in Freeport done. Anna would take care of the stuff he’d ostensibly set out to do, and hopefully that’d be enough to fool Lang’s spies.

Zak took a quick look around, then leaned over to his assistant. “It’s time, Anna. I’m going to split off here. Just do your shopping. Please be careful.”

“You’re the one who needs to be careful,” Anna retorted. “I can take care of myself. If Lang finds out what you are doing, he’ll have you flayed alive.”

Zak worried about his assistant. She was a dark-haired woman of Greek ancestry, hailing from the Concordiat colony of New Constantinople. She was a veritable encyclopedia of historical knowledge, and actually held doctorates from that colony’s prestigious University Byzantium. She didn’t talk about her family much, but he knew she came from a background of wealth and privilege…and she’d walked away from it all to go with him.

So Zak worried. They were unarmed, except for a few knives between them, and Freeport could be dangerous. A woman all alone in this trash heap could be subjected to worse things than just petty robberies and beatings. But Anna was Anna, with enough stubborn courage to dismiss Zak’s concerns as more pointless worrying (which, he had to admit, he was prone to).

“You’re not wrong,” he said glumly. “But you’re the only person on this damned planet I care about, so please be careful.”

“I appreciate your sentimentality,” she said, trying not to sound aloof (she always sounded aloof despite her best efforts), “but we cannot lose sight of our objective.”

She was right, of course. Zak nodded. “If I don’t make it to our meetup point, you know what to do. I need to get going. If I’m late they’ll get suspicious.”

“Go, then,” she said. “Mind yourself!”

“You know me.” Zak gave her a lopsided grin. “I’m always careful.”

Anna rolled her eyes, pulled her hood up over her head, and disappeared into the crowd.

* * *

Zak’s contact was waiting for him as expected. The man was dressed in typically shabby Zanzibaran garb. He looked as if he just walked out of the shantytown on the outskirts of Freeport. His face was concealed by a common respirator and dust goggles. Had the man not given Zak the expected signal, he never would’ve picked him out of the crowd.

The mysterious individual told Zak to follow him, but after that said nothing. He led Zak on a winding path to the outskirts of Freeport, through alleys, markets, slums, and crowded streets. The off-world historian didn’t blend in nearly as well as his guide, and Zak began to get nervous. It wasn’t good for foreigners to be in this part of Freeport. The shantytown was dangerous. There were people here that would kill a man for his shoes, and to their eyes the historian probably looked like a prime target: a rich off-worlder, out of his element.

As if sensing his concern, the guide paused and turned to Zak. “Do not worry,” he said, his voice sounding strangely mechanical. “You are safe with me. I am called Strelok.”

“Where are we going?” Zak asked nervously. “I was told not to come to this side of town.”

“That is because your
benefactor’s
men are not welcome here. They are rivals to the gang that controls the shantytown. They are less likely to have spies here. Anyone caught working with them is usually killed.”

That didn’t make Zak feel any better. He took a deep breath through his respirator. “I’ve been planted with a tracking device. I created a program to fool it, but I need to be careful.”

Strelok looked at a handheld device. “I see. It’s crude, nothing I can’t block. Will your program provide false location data, or will this leave a blank spot on your record? Will it draw attention? Can you take it off?”

“It falsifies my location data,” Zak said. “Shows me moving back and forth across the bazaar and market areas. It’s a compilation of previous visits to town, randomized and stitched together. If you can jam the signal it won’t show up as a lack of location information.” Zak rolled up his pant leg, showing a metal bracelet locket around his ankle. “I can’t get it off, though.”

Strelok said, “very well,” and double-checked the screen of his handheld. He seemed satisfied that the device was being neutralized. “Follow me.”

Zak nodded, and followed as his guide continued on. The shantytown was constructed of whatever materials could be found to build with. There were a few intact prewar buildings, and a few ruins of old buildings, but mostly it was row after row of cobbled-together shacks and hovels, where Zanzibar’s poor scraped a living off of an inhospitable planet. Improvised moisture condensers collected what little water there was from the air. Crude solar panels provided a modicum of electricity, which was necessary for survival. There was no wood to burn on Zanzibar, and the winters were terribly cold.

Beneath the crumbling ruin of a highway overpass stood a sturdy-looking prewar building. It had once been two stories, but the stop floor had been blasted away, leaving only part of a wall. The windows had heavy metal plates bolted over them, and the door appeared to be reinforced as well. Behind the building was the crude wall that surrounded Freeport and kept out those deemed not fit to live in the ramshackle city.

“What is this place?” Zak asked. Strelok didn’t answer. He rapped on the metal door three times and waited. A camera on the outside of the building was trained on him, and Zak had the uneasy feeling that someone was hiding nearby, pointing a weapon at his head. After a few agonizingly long moments, the door clunked metallically as it unlocked and swung open. The guide motioned for Zak to follow and disappeared into the darkness inside. Zak was hesitant to enter, but he could feel eyes on him. If he turned back now, he doubted he’d make it out of the shantytown in one piece. With nothing else to do, he steeled himself and followed his guide.

The building was dimly lit and dusty. There were multiple cots stacked against the walls, and what looked like stockpiled rations and provisions. It was some kind of safe house or hideout.

“Were you followed?”

Zak jumped a little at the voice from the darkness. Out of the shadows stepped a silver-haired woman with deep lines in her face. She had a boxy flechette gun leveled at Zak’s chest. He quickly raised his hands and tried to think of what to say. He had no idea if he’d been followed! He was a historian, not a spy!

Before the woman painted the walls with the contents of Zak’s torso, Strelok stepped in and addressed her. They both spoke Commerce English with the same odd accent, but did so almost in whispers. Zak couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. Some of the words he did overhear didn’t make sense, as if they were mixing languages. The woman had a dull gray synthetic plate on the side of her head, at her temple, but whatever had once been attached there was now gone.

After a few tense moments of heated but quiet discussion, the woman lowered her weapon and addressed Zak. “My comrade insists that you can be trusted, young man. He tells me this even though you are in the employ of Aristotle Lang. Tell me, then, how can we trust you?”

“I don’t work for Lang willingly,” Zak said defensively. “I’m a hostage.”

“Hostages don’t get to wander around Freeport unescorted.”

“I spent a lot of time convincing him I’m not a flight risk. Besides, Lang cares about my employer, whose family is very wealthy. He’s the real hostage. I just got swept up in the whole affair.”

“You do not belong on Zanzibar, young man. What is it you do here? Who is this employer?”

Zak removed his respirator and took a deep breath. The building was pressurized and had a functioning filter. “My name is Zak Mesa. I’m a historian. I spent years researching the pre- and postwar history of Zanzibar. Much was lost in the war, as I’m sure you know, especially regarding the native species that lived here millions of years ago. I published a dissertation covering several theories as to what happened, and my work slowly circulated through inhabited space. I was living on Columbia at the time. Out of nowhere, I’m contacted by a man named Cecil Blackwood. He tells me he’s basically a big deal on his homeworld of Avalon, he tells me that he wants to go on an expedition to Zanzibar, and he’s willing to pay me a lot of money to do it. I jumped on his offer. It sounded like an adventure, and it sure sounded better than the dead-end job I was doing there.”

“Why did this Cecil Blackwood want to come to Zanzibar?” the woman asked.

“Alien artifacts,” Zak said quietly. “Items from just about any alien species are worth a lot of money. But stuff from the ancient, native Zanzibari? It’s exceedingly rare in a market full of exceedingly rare things. They’re priceless.”

“So you came here, seeking treasure, to rob the tombs of the dead?”

Zak’s eyes sunk to the floor. “It sounds bad when you put it like that. But that’s why I’m here. I’ve heard that you folks can help me.”

“What is it you want from us? We do not traffic in alien relics.”

Strelok spoke up then. “He wishes to send a message off-world.”

“You could do that from the communications facility in Freeport,” the woman said suspiciously.

“Uh, no I
can’t
,” Zak replied. “If I tried, one of Aristotle Lang’s spies would see me, and he’d have me skinned or something. He may not have power in the shantytown, but he has spies and contacts all over the city proper.”