The Bright Black Sea (32 page)

I was kept surprisingly busy making the rounds of the
anchorage and ashore, both on business and for pleasure. I called
on Tat to see if there were any prospects for a cargo anytime soon.
There were none. I explored the show rooms of exporters lining up
products for purchasing on the ship's account which could be traded
at a good profit in the Aticor or Amdia systems. I hadn't a budget
yet, nor a destination, so I was just window shopping. I called at
the Guild Trading Post to see what they had for cha and picked up
several cases of premium cha leaves, for trade and my own use. Good
cha is in demand anywhere in the Nebula, and by buying or trading
via the Guild Trading Post allows you to get very good prices on
very rare cha leaf purchased and traded by spaceers star systems
away.

I also called on friends in half a dozen ships, and
had several fellow pilots and first mates, including Kan, over for
a meal and a bit of a party. I was also invited to Captain Seni
Shir's send off party as the new captain of the
Comet King
.
Once everyone knew I was bound for the drifts, I was regaled with
all their old spaceer yarns about their days sailing the drifts –
it seems to be a requirement of being a tramp ship captain. Most of
their yarns fell into the old spaceer claimed category, though they
seemed authentic enough when they told them. I don't believe I hid
my leeriness for drift work very well, since they seemed to relish
telling me about all their brushes with ruthless miners, possible
pirates and iffy cargoes. As I toasted Seni, I rather envied her.
It's tough to make a profit these days, and the beach would never
be too far away. But she wasn't headed for the Neb-blasted
drifts.

This morning I found myself lounging, hands in
trouser pockets, in the large and loud buggy garage under the grand
stand watching Molaye and Riv make their final checks of our crater
buggy, the “Lucky Star”. There were a dozen such lanes, lined with
bays filled with enough buggies to keep the races going one after
the other a'round the clock. The bays were divided by half walls
where driver and crew worked on their machine as gaggles of
swaggering spaceers milled about in the alley between the bays
exchanging brags, boasts and banter with the rival teams.

Molaye, tall, willowy, very much a moon-born lady in
her space suit, minus the helmet, was slowly walking around her
buggy checking everything. Riv was underneath, making a final check
of the power cables and Myes was leaning against the other half
wall, keeping the curious at bay with a fierce scowl. Our buggy was
a standard four seat recreational unit – egg shaped driver's
compartment set in a web of tubular framing which'd been stripped
down to just a frame, four wide wheels with motors in their hubs
mounted and the driver's compartment. The compartment was
pressurized, but drivers still wore spacesuits on the chance it was
ruptured during the race.

I'd been slipped the word that Molaye would be
getting
lucky
today so it was safe to put credits on her.
I'm not a gambler – though I was assured this wasn't actually
gambling – but I did put a modest amount on her winning, mostly as
a token of confidence. She was still four tiers below Az and would
need this win to advance to the next tier, and two wins each in the
remaining tiers to race against him. Though Min had yet to set a
definite sailing date, I expected it within the next month, so she
had to get
lucky
often, but not too often, in order to
advance and still make wagering on her a payday.

Glancing up at the clock I saw we'd less than two
minutes before the spectators would have to leave for the stands to
view our race, so I pushed myself off the wall I was holding up and
wished Lucky Laye good luck.

Then, as I turned for the exits I felt a sudden sharp
chill streak down my spine. I gave a start and a shiver. I think.
I'm not certain of the precise order of events, I may've swung
around on account of that knifing chill, or I may've already
started turning, but in any event, I started, shivered, and turned,
noting a slim figure in a black uniform brush past me. There was
something in that confused instant that made me watch her as she
sauntered towards the clearsteel exit doors ten meters away. Or
rather, her reflection in those doors. My eyes were drawn to her
face, darkly reflected, and our eyes seemed to meet and hold for a
long second in the dark reflection. She may've even smiled, and I
shivered again. She pushed though the doors and disappeared into
the crowd beyond them. I found my heart pounding as if I'd seen a
ghost.

The whole incident lasted all of six seconds, and on
the surface, so trivial it should be beneath recording. And yet
there was that sudden chill and that twist of fear in my gut when I
saw that slim figure in black – and a dark sense of Deja vu, with
flashes of blue lightning.

She was only a spaceer in a black uniform. Black is
the most common uniform color and slim spacers hardly rare. So why
the chill? Why the feeling she was watching me in reflection in the
door? And why the smile, if she had indeed smiled? And why couldn't
I shake the feeling a plasma dart was our connection? I stood stock
still chasing these thoughts around in my head, until the buzzer
rang to clear the garage and I absently headed for the doors in the
press of the crowd.

Outside, she was nowhere to be seen, so I joined my
shipmates in the crowded stands that overlooked the rugged, airless
crater-track beyond the clearsteel wall harshly lit in the
unfiltered light of Azminn. The race course wove its way through
the crater, in and around rocky outcrops, narrow rifts and steep
hills. Crater buggy racing in low gee, at least as practiced by
spaceers, seems to be a free for all, involving a great deal of
bumping, crashing, tumbling and flying buggies. Knowing nothing
about the sport and still preoccupied with my eerie encounter, I
could still see Molaye made several
mistakes
, taking turns
too wide, and getting knocked about, and yet, right at the finish,
she got one
lucky
bounce off a shallow outcropping rock that
sent her buggy flying into the leader, knocking him aside and
allowing her to come a buggy's length ahead at the finish line,
Lucky Laye lucking out again. We cheered, went back down to
congratulate Lucky Laye and the crew and on to collect our
winnings. With the win, Molaye would be moving up a division, so
she had the rest of the day off. However she and the crew still
needed to put the buggy back, more or less together again, so those
of us with nothing else to do, left them to their work. I signaled
Kan to come and take the few of us staying on the ship, back.

Once aboard ship, I slipped into the medic bay to do
a med-scan for some peace of mind. I was thinking of a toxic dart,
though we spaceers undergo immune system augmentation procedures to
make visits to other worlds relatively safe, health-wise. That
procedure should make it very difficult to poison a spaceer.
Should, being the operative word. No toxins showed on the scan.
Then I used my com link to do a full spectrum scan for any radio
tracking tags I might have picked up – and didn't find any either.
The sharp chill seemed more psychological than physical.

Still, I decided I had to trust my intuition and
operate on the assumption the spaceer I saw was one of the
system pilots
from the Azure Night, possibly our yacht club
assassin. Though I was going mostly on intuition, there was a
logical reason as well. To pick me out of the thousands of spaceers
who enter and leave PortCity each day and track me would be a
hopeless task for anything less than a large organization. However,
if she was indeed a spaceer, she'd likely know my crew had a racing
buggy and she could assume that I'd show up at the track sooner or
later. So I could be found – and may have been. I was also one of
the most likely people to lead them to their real target, Min, so
the encounter, if not just in my imagination, made sense. And yet,
I didn't see how she could follow me without some sort of radio
tracer, which I'd not found. Was there another way? Rafe might
know, but I dared not ask him without Min's approval.

In the end, I called Min and briefly told her of the
incident, in my best
Last Striker
danger be damned style.
She took it seriously, and warned me again to be on my guard. I
assured her, I was being my old cautious self. We left it at that.
Nothing more could be done. Vynnia and Tenry had been with her when
I was at the races, so they weren't at risk for being tagged, this
time.

01

The eeriness had evaporated by the time I awoke the
next day, leaving only a vague sense of unease. Unease was nothing
new, and no plans needed to be changed. I was, however, restless
and weary of both the vague threats and all the little details that
seem to fill so much of my time so I decided to take a holiday off
ship and alone. The buggy racing crew had the long boat, so I
signaled Kan, packed a generous picnic lunch from the bistro, and
told Lili, who had the watch, that I'd be gone all day. I'd Kan
drop me off at the landing field we'd used the other day to go to
The Met and took the levatrain to the crater with the lake and pine
forests.

I left the platform with a surging crowd of bounding
children and their already harried parents. Beyond the broad strand
of food stands, dance halls and gaming casinos, was a wide sand
beach, already crowded. I didn't linger – I wanted solitude, so I
struck out for the paths around the rocky shore of the placid lake
and soon found the touch of nature I needed amongst the pines. I
spent the day hiking up and down the hills and around the lake,
stopping once to strip and swim in a sandy cove. Low gravity
swimming is different than on a planet, the action of the water and
waves are exaggerated and seemingly in slow motion. After swimming,
I'd rested in the warm sunlight and had lunch. I'll admit to
playing games to see if I was being followed, but found nothing to
alarm me. I had the trails mostly to myself as this was a work day
on Lontria. The sun was below the crater wall by the time I arrived
back at the pale beach, now largely deserted in the deepening
gloom, though the bright-lit establishments along the strand were
in full swing with music and crowds. I hurried through them, and
caught the next levatrain back to the landing field crater. By the
time Kan arrived, I was feeling stiff, tired, and sore.

Vynnia and Tenry were waiting in ambush when I
arrived, so I waved them into my office, slid the panel closed and
settling on to a chair with a sigh, stretched out my aching
legs.

'Hard day, Skipper?' asked Tenry.

'I may have overdone my hiking a wee bit. Still I
made it all the way around that lake we passed the other day.'

'Two or three kilometers?' he asked innocently.

'I believe it was twenty, not counting all the ins
and outs, ups and downs,' I replied, too tired to take offense.
'Sorry I didn't see you last night or this morning. I needed some
time alone. Did Min have anything interesting to say?' They were
visiting with Min while the rest of us were at the track.

'We'd a long visit. I don't know if you've had a
chance to check your messages, but she's decided it's pointless to
wait and you should be prepared to depart as soon as the new
missiles are on board.'

I sat up straighter – likely a response to
yesterday's encounter. 'Suits me. It's costing credits every day we
stay with little prospect of a cargo. Even Rafe is discouraged. Did
she say where she's sending us?'

'LaTrina, Aticor. It's the main hub for Aticor's
trade with the drifts. She thinks it offers the best chance of
finding work quickly. She sent along the shipping intelligence
she's gathered to go over at your leisure,' replied Vynnia,
watching me closely, 'And with that decision, Captain, I believe
Ten and I need to make something clear.'

'Yes... Launch at will.' It'd be no surprise, I was
sure. Wish I knew what I was going to say.

'Talley has been trying to get Ten and I to agree to
stay with the ship. We've not agreed to that...'

'Ah, yes, we're in a bit of a drift aren't we?'

Vynnia nodded curtly. 'Yes, we are. We signed on with
the idea that's we'd be able to look after Talley. You're aware of
her ideas concerning the nature of her parents' death, and her
desire to solve the mysteries surrounding it, so you can understand
our concern. She's old enough to be on her own, but if she's right,
I believe she'll need our help. She may've told you how Ten and I
feel about what happened to her parents. Nothing to be done about
that now, but we won't fail their daughter, whether she wants us
along or not. So you see, Captain, if she does not sail, we'll stay
and attempt to travel with her. With the sailing date now only a
week away, we wanted to make certain our situation and our
intentions clear. We'd not want to leave you in the lurch.'

'Well, Vyn, I never believed Min could convince you
to stay. And while I want to keep you both onboard, if Min doesn't
join us, I'd want you at her side. The problem is, she's made it
clear to all of us, that she doesn't want company, and plans to
avoid it for the same reason she doesn't want to sail with
us...'

'Which is? She's been vague about that.'

'She feels she's a target and anyone close could be
in the line of fire. Which is exactly why I'd like to see you
travel with her – if she can't be convinced to sail with us...'
That may have come out a little awkward. Tenry grinned.

I looked to Tenry and Vynnia. 'However, are we in
agreement that her best course is to sail aboard the
Lost
Star
?'