Home: Interstellar: Merchant Princess (9 page)

“That’s right,” John said. “You need to know exactly where something is going to be, and you just can’t know that exactly. Even if they tell you where they
plan
to be, no one can hit the mark exactly.”

“The sphere,” Meriel said. She wondered if she should have invited them back to Teddy’s to discuss nav with an expert.

“Right,” John said.

“Right,” Cookie repeated and hit the table for emphasis. Meriel wondered if he would fall from his chair.

John continued, “OK, even if you know where your partner is supposed to be and wait there for him, you will not actually know he is there until his EM broadcast appears on your scopes.”

“When they
wink-in
,” Meriel said.

“Right. EM travels at light speed, so you don’t see their signals until then. Let’s say your sphere is one
AU
, which is pretty good for a jump. That’s still hundreds of millions of miles. It takes nearly ten minutes before you can see the signal and still lots more time and energy to get there. It’s much easier to build a station on the high-traffic routes.”

The big blonde had been listening and tried to wedge her way into Cookie’s conversation. She poked him on the shoulder, and he turned around. “Say, so why do we still use AU anyway?” she asked. “Earth is eight light years away.”

“It’s just a convention, like meters and feet,” Cookie said.

The blonde swung a dainty shoe onto the table in a most undainty manner. “Sure, but we bring our feet with us; we don’t bring Earth with us.”

Cookie slammed his boot onto the table, dwarfing hers. “Your foot is different than mine, but we all agreed on what a foot of distance is, just like meters and AU,” he said, removed his boot from the table, and turned back to rejoin the conversation with John and Meriel.

The blonde tried to swing her foot off the table but leaned back too far and would have fallen over if not for the nearby muscle, who caught her chair. Meriel guessed that the blonde would either pass out or be the first to reach stage 7 on the party scale.

“What if they don’t broadcast their position?” Meriel said, and Cookie frowned.

John continued, “If they don’t broadcast when they wink-in, you’ll need to find them against the background of stars. A ship’s albedo is really small at one AU and it can take hours to compute contrasts and displacements. Hell, it’s really hard to find anything smaller than a moon at that distance, if you find it at all.”

“And it could jump away first…” Meriel said.

John caught Cookie’s frown, and they exchanged glances. “So what’s this about? The question isn’t academic, is it?”

“No, sorry. I’m trying to figure out how pirates attacked my ship when I was a kid. Pirates have the same problem you two are talking about.”

“Right, pirates gave up because it’s too hard to find the victim.”

“Everyone says it couldn’t happen, but it did,” Meriel said. “I just can’t figure out how or why.”

John dropped his casual smile and looked at her. “Are you sure that the meeting was not…intentional?”

Meriel clenched her jaw and balled her fists but restrained the urge to punch him in the face at the insinuation of a clandestine drug drop. She held her temper and glared at him instead. “Absolutely.”

Cookie leaned over the table. “Then someone sent you somewhere your pilot didn’t intend.” He looked coldly serious but then blinked twice slowly as if the last drink had just reached his brain. The blonde escalated to cocktail olives to get his attention again, but stage 7 impaired her aim. From the look on her companion’s face, violence was imminent, but Meriel could not leave just yet.

“They could not just follow you in,” John said. “It would take too long to find you. They’d need two spheres to put you there and keep you there.”

Cookie nodded slowly as if he had uncovered a priceless gem. “And lock your nav so you couldn’t jump away before they got to you.”

Meriel frowned and fiddled with the sim-chip on her necklace. “But you can’t lock nav, right?”

Cookie leaned back with a smile and said loudly, “Right. Nav is more secure than a hooker’s client list.” He laughed, but Meriel shook her head with disappointment.

The blonde turned to Cookie. “Who you calling a hooker, sailor?” she said with a jiggle and a teasing smile. Apparently, all of the
Rowley’s
crew had reached stage 7—looking for trouble—and Cookie was where they were looking. He opened his mouth to reply, but the big man sitting with the blonde stood up.

“Yeah, who you calling a hooker?” the big man said.

Cookie stood up with open arms and a generous smile on his face, but the big guy swung at him anyway. Cookie leaned back and deflected the punch, but the big man lost his balance and fell on the table, spilling all of their drinks. It looked like Cookie had knocked him down, and both crews stood and squared off for a yelling match complete with shaking fists and threatening postures. Alf Martin escalated to a pool cue, which started the punches. Meriel backed away and looked for the door but could not maneuver around the fighters.

She grabbed John’s sleeve. “I’ve got to get out of here, John. I can’t get caught in a fight,” she said, intentionally leaving out
again
.

“It’s just a bar fight. They’ll let us all go in a few hours.”

“My sheet is too long, and I’m marine-three,” she said. “If I hurt someone, even by accident, I’ll lose my ship. I’ll lose my kids, John.”

“We can just blame it all on Cookie.”

“I’m serious. I gotta get out of here.”

John nodded and led her to the back of the TarnGirl as the bartenders and bouncers rushed past them to form a cordon in front of the liquor inventory. They found a door behind the bar, and Meriel went outside to a service corridor. John tried to follow, but someone pulled him back and threw a punch. The door slammed closed before she could stop it and would not open from the outside. She leaned against the wall to wait for him, but when the police sirens wailed, she knew she had to leave.

***

On her way back to the
Tiger
, Meriel stopped at a party-planner’s office to arrange a party and cake for Harry’s twelfth birthday. She used an alias because of the court orders that kept the kids’ identities and whereabouts secret—even arranging a party could put the kids at risk and her legal cases in jeopardy. While giving instructions to the party planner, she dreamed about having all of the kids together again, something that had not happened since they left the
Princess
all those years ago.

She tried to call John and Cookie without response, so she returned to the blue-zone docks and the
Tiger
. Molly stood at the air lock talking to Lev from her cargo crew and hailed Meriel.

“Seems our crew is in jail,” Molly said. “How’d you avoid that?”

“I was arranging a party, ma’am.”

“Well, they’re not getting out by themselves. Better go get them, Chief. I’ve authorized you for bail, but call me if the damages exceed your allowance.”

“Shore patrol is Cookie’s job,” Meriel said to hide that she knew he’d been arrested with the others.

Molly smiled. “He’s detained as well.”

“OK,” Meriel said and looked at her link. The authorization surprised her; it was almost a blank check—limited in purpose but not in amount. Meriel turned to go, but Molly continued.

“Oh, and Meriel, someone found this in green-zone,” she said and handed Meriel a lapel ID button that read, “LSM Tiger/Cargo.” It had fallen off Meriel’s shirt when the tough grabbed her purse. Meriel desperately tried to guess how much Molly knew so she could spin a cover story, but Molly interrupted her thoughts. “Maybe you can find the owner and return it,” she said with a smile and turned to board the
Tiger
.

Meriel borrowed a cargo cart that could accommodate everyone on the ship, not just her crewmates who were in jail, and drove the short distance to red-zone and the police station.
She trusts me with the ship’s funds. If this is a test, then I need to pass it
.
How much does she know
? she wondered.

Security spiders idled by the entrance to red-zone; their crimson lights blinked to remind everyone that they were armed. No ID was required to enter so as to expedite representation and removal of the detainees.

She parked the cart next to the police station and went inside. The small waiting room was equipped with two wire benches, a video monitor on the wall, and a single opaque window opposite the entrance. No exits were visible other than the door, and she guessed that a hazmat crew could hose down the entire room and sterilize it without damaging anything—like some bachelor apartments she had nearly entered.

Meriel approached the opaque window. It appeared to be thick and most likely made of a ballistic ceramic that would fog at ionizing wavelengths. She held her bracelet link up to the window so it could scan her ID, after which the window cleared, and the desk sergeant appeared.

“Here for the
Tiger
crew,” she said.

Without raising his head, the desk sergeant looked up at her with an asymmetric squint. “Haven’t I seen you before?”

“Probably. Bail?”

His gaze returned to his monitor, but he pointed to a comm button on the wall. She ran her link near it.

“Damages?” Meriel asked. The officer nodded slightly and hit a button to display his console data on the window in front of her. Meriel synched the data again. When the data hit his screen, the officer hit a few keys.

“The Rowdy boys are here too,” he said absently, referring to the crew of the JJS
Rowley
.

Meriel turned away from the window and keyed her link. “Molly, they’ve got the
Rowley
crew. Can we take them?”

“Yes, but no damages,” Molly said. Meriel turned and synched her approval on the button.

The officer nodded. “Wait, please.”

After examination of the bench for fresh stains and vermin, Meriel sat down in front of the monitor.

In breaking news, elections on the Chosho colony on tau Cetu-4 have been in turmoil with the late inclusion of Fredric Allen on the Senate ballot. Allen’s candidacy is supported by the Archtrope of Calliope. His only legislation to date has been to extend the domes to include an exclusive self-governing colony for followers of the archtrope. His standing for election is seen as a referendum on the archtrope’s involvement…

Meriel half listened while she worked on her link. News was so sequential, so linear, and so dumbed-down that she needed something to do between the endless clichés and cultural tics. She composed another text to her hacker friend, Nick.

See if you can find anything on a colony named Haven or a station called LeHavre.

Haven
, she thought.
John. I didn’t thank him for helping me out
. She leaned back on the bench and imagined the two possible outcomes for her—prison or traction—if he had not intervened between her and the two stim addicts. He did not look like a fighter but seemed competent.
How many other non-lethal weapons does he carry?

One of the thugs had called her “Cruiser” when he had first confronted her. Was it really just an insult, or did he know she worked cargo? Her fatigues were hidden in her bag.
They might recognize me as a spacer by my walk or the proximity to the handholds or maybe just my nervousness on a station. But why cargo?

Meriel walked to the window and waved her link near the button. “Excuse me, Officer. Do you have a moment?”

The window clarified. “Is it business?”

“You betcha. You’ve seen thousands of people come by here, huh?” she said, and he nodded. “So, what do you think I’m rated for?”

The cop smiled. “Well a pretty young—”

“Way off. Start over.”

The desk sergeant shrugged. “Spacer, of course. Right handed. Study a lot. Marine training, maybe three or four. Let me see your hands.” Meriel showed her hands in front of the window. “Marine three. Got a rough past—no I don’t want to know. Shipside accident maybe with a torch.”

“I thought I covered that.”

“You still flinch. You’re bailing out friends, not just shipmates.” He smiled broadly. “Right. And you were with them.” Meriel opened her mouth, but he waved his hand. “No need to deny it.” He squinted. “Trouble sleeping. Boost—”

“OK, OK. I wasn’t looking for a CAT scan. Rating?”

“Hmmm. Not security. Nav? Communications?”

“Anything that would indicate cargo?”

He looked at her again and squinted. “Nope.”

“OK, thanks.”

“You still get insulted when they call you a cruiser?” he asked. “Don’t take it personally. Some guy called my wife a cruiser.”

“What happened to him?”

“Dunno really. Seems he kinda disappeared,” the desk sergeant said and fogged the window.