The Bright Black Sea (31 page)

'What do you think, Captain? A 33zx with almost all
the pieces ...' Molaye said, hands on hips, taking it all in after
we'd spend half an hour peering and poking around and in it.. 'Just
needs a little shop work...'

'They seem to have salvaged a few hull fitting, which
might be hard to replace. And, well bending the hull so that all of
it is pointing in the same direction would take a better equipped
hangar than I anticipate owning...' I said, trying to talk myself
out of it.

'Have & Kin straighten it out. There's enough of
the original left to keep it authentic even if they have to print
out replacements for the missing fittings...' suggested Molaye
brightly.

'Well it's the best price I've ever seen,' I had to
admit. 'I wonder what they'd charge to get it straightened...'

'Do you think you might buy it, Captain? We could
store it in no. 4 hold and work on it the whole voyage. Why, I bet
Riv and Lilm could cut and straighten it out and we'd have it
operational – if not quite authentic – by the time we reach the
Aticor or Amdia.'

Fortunately, Vyn, in the buggy, pulled up in a cloud
of dust, because I was tempted, even though the boat's price and
estimated bill to get it all pointing in one direction would likely
wipe out a wide swath of my savings...

'I thought I'd better get over here to chaperone you
two. You sound like you're having way too much fun to be just
window shopping for rocket boats,' she said.

I may have blushed, but I managed a laugh, 'You can't
have too much fun, Vyn. And you don't find a Crimson Comet 33zx
just laying about in any old salvage yard every day. It's a find
well worth getting a little carried away,' I explained, pointing
out our prize. 'They only produced seven thousand of them and only
for several decades – it's quite rare.'

She glance at the wreck and back to us. 'I'll grant
you that it looks quite rare, but you seem to have a strange
affinity for rockets in pieces...'

'Oh, don't mind her Skipper, she just doesn't
understand,' laughed Molaye.

'Maybe I don't, but I'm getting hungry and I see it's
time to meet the gang in the cafeteria,' I said, tearing my eyes
off of the (pieces of) the Crimson Comet. 'We'll have to think on
this Molaye. It's been here a thousand years by the look of it,
but... Still, it might pay to see what type of downpayment would
hold it until we could actually afford it,'

'That's the spirit, Captain. We'll be rich enough
trading in the drifts that we'll be able to pick it up in a couple
of years with pocket change,' replied Molaye brightly.

'Right. But why settle for this when we'll be so rich
we could afford the one on the sales lot...' I added, 'which is in
one piece.'

The rest of the crew was already in the cafeteria.
They'd also had a successful morning, having found the exact make
and model Tenry had at the top of his list in good condition. I
remembered to asked Vynnia how her search had gone, only to get a
short, 'I've marked four prime quality drones that we could
refurbish on board at a good price'.

'Good work, First.' I knew my budget, but no point
being discouraging.

After we lunched, we divided into three groups –
Vynnia and I tagged along with Tenry on his treasure hunt. Riv,
Lilm and Myes went prospering for spare parts even though I told
them the budget wouldn't allow it, and Molaye accompanied Kie and
our tech crew back to the wreck to extract the various components
they'd selected. I'd high hopes that Tenry would turn up some old
contraband which we could use to fill the budget gap, but that
proved unfounded. In hind sight it's clear we were up against two
thousand years of transmitted wisdom on where smuggled goods are
hidden, so the likelihood of finding hidden contraband in the
wrecks was likely nil. Nevertheless, the afternoon was not wasted –
I learned where and where not to hide things in ships, should I
ever have things needing hiding. And it was fun.

Before we left, Molaye and I talked to Nat about the
Crimson Comet 33zx. A downpayment was doable, but to get it
structurally straight and have the missing components replaced
pushed the price so close enough to an operational 33zx that we
decided to give it a miss for the time being. Who knows what we'll
find in the years ahead?

It was evening before we arrived back at the ship
with our new weapon control system. I postponed purchasing the
drones, and passed on all but a few pump parts that the engineers
swore they were very short of. And now, tired and sore from a day
spent in a space suit, I hear my hammock calling, so I'll
close.

The day after our excursion to & Kin's, I ordered
Rafe, Kie, Lili and Tenry to get the missile control system
installed and tested. They moaned, groaned and argued that we'd no
need to install it now, since we'd have plenty of time on the long
voyage when we'd be looking for things to keep us busy. Good thing
Vynnia wasn't around. Not only would she've been scandalized by
their protest, but at my command style which allowed it. Their
moaning and groaning was no real challenge, and I wanted the job
done, so I told them that if they'd prefer to be unemployed, I'd
see to it. I felt we couldn't afford to pass up any opportunity,
however slight, to land a paying cargo. The A-level protection
seemed unlikely to make any difference in Sanre-tay, but having
nearly exhausted our credit reserves for it, I'd no intention of
missing even the slightest chance it might help. It took them only
two days to refurbish and test the various components, install them
in the sensor pods and on the bridge and test the system, and the
gang worked well together, if only to get it done and back to the
party.

I slipped ashore that evening to spend some time on
Lontria and was relieved that Leafa's gossip included no mention of
Tallith Min. It wasn't proof, but given all the ties she had with
the
Lost Star
, via Min & Co, not hearing anything about
her in Leafa's stream of ship, trade and Lontria gossip was a
comfort.

The following day Vynnia, Tenry, Illynta and I took
the gig down to Lontria to meet Min in Metrolontria's long rift
canyon urban complex to be authorized to access the
Lost
Star's
new Unity Charter Central Bank account. We took the gig
down to the small landing field of a bedroom community much like
Bramble Vale. As is the case everywhere on Lontria, the crater was
lush with foliage helping to keep the atmosphere fresh and
breathable. The next two craters were farming ones with terraced
fields climbing the hills followed by a recreation crater that
featured a large, island studded, lake below the rugged, pine
covered crater walls. Spider-like low-grav boats skimmed the lake's
surface and holiday resorts lined its near shore. And two more
farming craters before we entering the rift canyon of The Met
itself.

The canyon was perhaps ten kilometers wide at this
point, surrounded by kilometer high canyon walls lined with
garden-terraced buildings, residences, offices and shops.A carpet
of forests, parks, ornamental lakes and market gardens ran down the
center of the canyon between the terraced buildings. Every dozen
kilometers, there was a wall of buildings across the rift built up
to the dome, designed to seal the section from the next to limit
any dome failure.

I was struck by a very palatable sense of age about
the Met. Though clean and bustling, many of its buildings looked
very aged worn. This section had been in place for almost 10,000
years and though renewed, never changed. There are tens of
thousands of cities on hundreds of planets far older than
Metrolontria, but on planets, cities can be remade countless times.
Moon cities are different. They are carefully designed to maintain
a very narrowly defined environment in a harsh, airless world, so
their essential structures and patterns can be rebuilt but not
greatly altered without it disrupting the essential environmental
patterns that maintain life under the domes. The Met's streets and
buildings, farms, parks and forests have always been more or less
as they are today. And though the actual structures may've been
renewed a hundred times, it's always to the same pattern and that
pattern seems to have worn a subtle groove into the fabric of
reality by five hundred generations of living within the
pattern.

The buildings all boast high ceilings and tall,
clearsteel exterior walls with open views to the canyon, helping
create a sense of openness and space in these enclosed cities.
Without weather, the low, the public facilities scattered along the
canyon floor are as open to the environment as security allowed.
Cafes and restaurants, markets and shops, gyms and sports
facilities rarely have roofs. Though the fabric dome overhead was
self-sealing, fliers are not allowed. People travel by velowalks
and levatrains with goods delivered by light wheeled vehicles.

We met Min in the CreditBox Department of the UCCB
office. After exchanging greetings, we found the Security Section
where each of us was scanned and our bio-metrics registered to
allow access to the UCCB CreditBox to issue CreditTokens, the
universally accepted currency in the Nine Star Nebula. I thought
having five of us with access was a bit unnerving. I trusted them
all, but I had to wonder why Min felt all five of us needed access.
I rather hoped I'd be the only one who'd need to access it.

The UCCB CreditTokens issued by a CreditBox is
manufactured, monitored and verified in real time by the
Directorate of Sentient Machines, ensuring that each token and
associated credit transfer is authentic. This system, and indeed
the whole inner workings of the Unity Charter Central Bank, is run
on devices designed and monitored by sentient machines using
technology which involves instant, quantum communication between
the devices and tokens anywhere in the Nebula – a technology that
even after 10,000 years of research remains a mystery to humans.
(The same technology can be used as communications, but with few
special exceptions, the Unity sticks with radio communications
rather than relying on the Directorate of Sentient Machines whose
advanced technology keeps people who believe that the machines are
feverishly plotting their return to ravish their wives and
daughters awake at nights.)

After finishing this business, we lunched in an
outdoor restaurant on a terrace with a panoramic view of the rift
city, its extreme edges now vague in the hot, humid afternoon
atmosphere, and spent an hour walking along lakes and through
shaded groves with flocks of birds talking, until Min, with a long
ride home, called it a day. We parted at the levatrain station and
went our separate ways.

The CreditBox unit was brought up and installed in my
office the following day.

Spaceers are a restless breed. Given idle time,
they'll fill it with rivalry, racing and wagers – be it rocket
boards, ship's boats, fliers, and in this case, crater buggies.
Crater buggies are broad-wheeled vehicles used on the airless
surface of moons for transport and recreation. They're also raced
on every moon in the nebula. Why crater buggies came to be the
rivalry, racing and wager vehicle of choice, I can't say, but a
series of challenge races quickly grew to an anchorage wide mania.
Spaceers were snapping up every available buggy and virtually took
over the Starline Raceway for their races. With so many idle ships
and spaceers, the races were staged around the clock and quickly
organized into tiers of skill levels from beginner to pro.

At Captain Miccall's memorial dinner, Captain Artha
Villiant of the
Starsilver
, had boasted that her chief
engineer, Az Binric, was a pro buggy racer on his home moon and was
cleaning up in these races. She advised us to put our credits on
him. Not being a sporting fellow, I hadn't paid any attention, at
the time.

That evening I discovered that we'd our own champion
crater buggy racer. I knew Molaye had grown up on Yendora and that
she was into racing – rocket boards, I seem to recall, but she'd
never mentioned – to me, anyway – that she'd been the junior
circuit's champion buggy racer of Yarsaan, Yendora's major city for
three years running. She'd abandoned crater buggies as soon as she
was old enough to fly rocket boards and had not looked back –
rocket boards being so much faster, and more “exciting” (i.e.
dangerous). But with the
Starsilver
's boast being bandied
about the ship, she mentioned this to Riv and Rafe who quickly
formed a syndicate and talked her (rather easily, I suspect, by the
sparkle in her eyes) into piloting the ship's new crater buggy. I'd
not forgotten Molaye's parents' warning, but I was solemnly assured
crater buggy racing was as safe as low gravity walking (
I was
racing crater buggies when I was 10, after all,
Molaye
explained with a sweet smile.), so I found myself reluctantly
giving it my blessing, warning Riv and Rafe not to push Molaye too
hard, and handed over my credits for my share in the syndicate. I
was warned, in turn, to keep Molaye's junior championship to myself
– you see, this was a credit making venture, and they didn't want
word getting out that we'd a ringer in the race.

Molaye is now driving in two races a day, with
syndicate members filling in for her whenever she's scheduled to
stand watch. In order to keep favorable odds on her, the syndicate
needed to keep her true skills under wraps, yet still move her into
position to challenge Az Binric before we sailed. To do this,
Molaye had to lose badly and win just as badly by making her wins
look like lucky breaks, which, I gather, requires a great deal of
skill. She was that skillful, and in only five days she was known
as “Lucky Laye” amongst the buggy racing set and advanced one level
and needing only one more win to advance to the next. I wasn't
surprised. Having closely observed her piloting, I knew she had an
instinctive feel for machines, just as her father said, be it an
old tramp, a rocket boat or a crater buggy.