The Bright Black Sea (92 page)

Linnor looked every bit a CTC ship's captain, which
is to say she reeked of competent authority – even shipwrecked. She
was as tall as I, slim, with light hair and sharp features, pretty,
perhaps, but that was overlaid with years of authority and now, a
great deal of worry. She was, after all, a captain of a wrecked
ship – something I hope never to be. Still, even on this brief
acquaintance, I was certain she hadn't lost it through
carelessness.

'I'm sorry to hear of your misfortune, but I'm glad
we can be of assistance,' I assured her, and turning as Illy
approached with the eager dogs, added, 'And this is my purser,
Illan Lantra, and the hounds are Astro and Orbit. I'm afraid
they've the long established right to welcome all of our guests
onboard.'

'Illan,' she said with a nod and a cool smile, 'Astro
and Orbit,' she added with a polite pat on their heads.

They were their usual friendly selves, not that it
told me anything. They'd been pals with St Bleyth's D'Lay as
well.

A large and wide square-built first mate (from his
cap's badge) and a thin, wiry chief engineer – well, engineers
always look like engineers, and she looked like one without even
glancing at her badge – followed Linnor out and onto the
gangplank.

'My First, Pax Sol, and my chief engineer Ivay Chan,'
she said, introducing her shipmates, adding 'The rest of my crew
are in pods. We needed to conserve resources aboard the
longboat.'

'Aye. Welcome aboard Pax, Ivay,' I said as we shook
hands and exchanged a few words over the bounding dogs. 'Let's go
up to the office where we can discuss arrangements for moving the
rest of your crew onboard and stowing your boat,' I said with a
wave towards the access well.

As we reached the bridge deck, I introduced Molaye
and the gang, who still lingered around the access well, mostly out
of curiosity now. I'm sure my guests didn't miss Molaye's pirate
piece, but they affected not to notice. As I said, this was the
drifts, and they likely had far more experience in them than I. I
ushered them into the ship's office. The dogs joined us, but since
they were on their best behavior, I let them stay.

'I've had three cabins cleared for your use,' I said.
'I'd like to transfer your sleeping shipmates to our suspended
animation strongroom and secure your boat. If that's satisfactory
I'll set my crew to work, which should take us to meal time, where
I hope you'll join us.'

'Thank you. We don't wish to be in the way – I
realize how strangers can be disruptive – but I'd feel more
comfortable if we are able to travel awake to Carivon.'

'Of course. You're all welcome to travel awake, we're
only 14 days out of Carivon. We'll get along just fine. And I
should add that you're welcome to travel with us to Amdia as a
Guild courtesy as well, if you choose to.'

She nodded. 'Thank you. How we proceed from Carivon
will be determined by my owners.'

'Ah, yes,' I said. 'I'll have M'Ley to organize a
party to transfer your crew.'

She nodded to her shipmates, 'Pax and Ivay will
help.'

They rose and I stepped out into the passageway to
tell Molaye to get the off duty crew together and transfer the
sleeper-pods to the strongroom. As I stepped back in, I asked, 'Can
I offer you something to drink, Captain? I've some Mystwine, Ysent
or Ram Rock rum, or a cup of cha or kaf.

She closed her eyes for a second and said with a
sigh, 'Ram Rock rum sounds so tempting, but I think I'd better
settle for kaf.'

'kaf it is. We'll save the rum for after dinner.'

'I'd imagine you're curious to know how I arrived in
this orbit,' she said, watching me go about brewing the kaf.

'Yes, of course, though I imagine it's not a pleasant
topic. Really, if you'd rather wait and tell your story once and be
done with it, we can postpone it until after dinner.'

'That might be best,' she said. 'Still, I assure you
my crew and I did all we could to prevent the loss, and we were
able to abandon my ship in a position that its cargo can be
salvaged.'

'I've no doubts that you did everything that could be
done. A chartered trading company doesn't employ careless captains
or crews.'

'As to that, Captain, well, I'm in a rather delicate
position. I'm sure you ran a Guild register check on the
Azurete
and the Asterdonia CTC and you're aware of the
business we're in. So when I say my ship was homebound with a full
cargo, you can understand that keeping the fate of my ship a secret
for as long as possible is vital for the success and safety of the
salvage operation. I opted to sail for Carivon instead of several
closer drift stations to minimize the risk of word getting out
before the official salvage operation could be put into motion.

'Word will get out, of course. People will talk.
Hopefully whispers on Tradonia will take their time reaching the
drifts. But if word leaks on Carivon, any salvage operation could
become a great deal more difficult, and dangerous.'

'I understand your concern, and I'll see that no one
talks.'

'I also hope our presence onboard can be kept secret.
That would've been impossible if we'd arrived in a longboat.'

'You can count on us. We're all good Guild members.
We've never called on Carivon – we were planning just a quick
look-in to see if there were any odd boxes we could take along back
to Amdia – so our stay need only be as long as you require to
contact your owners and get your instructions,' I assured her as I
handed her a mug of kaf.

She nodded. 'I'm sorry to sound so demanding, but I
have my responsibilities to my owners.'

'Aye, owners,' I said, raising my mug of kaf in an
ironic salute.

I had, indeed, looked up the Asterdonia Chartered
Trading Company. It trades in precious metals – gold silver,
platinum, and the rare minerals needed for the creation of
D-matter. None of these are rare in absolute terms – the drifts
have more than enough to supply the Unity for the next few hundred
thousand years. Over half of the required supply of these metals
and minerals are supplied as a byproduct of mining other metals in
the drifts. The remaining balance, however, comes from the
relatively rare mineable rocks and finding those rocks is time
consuming and thus expensive. This, rather than absolute scarcity
makes them precious. A ship's cargo of refined gold, silver,
platinum and rare minerals would certainly attract a great deal of
freelance salvage operators once word gets out – as it will.

'Owners,' she said, 'May they keep their wits about
them. And speaking of wits, I trust you''ll allow me some leeway in
that department as well. I'm very grateful for anything you can do
for us. It's just that...I haven't come to terms with this disaster
just yet.'

'Yes, of course. If there's anything I can do, don't
be afraid to ask. I assure you, I feel your pain.'

She nodded. 'I should also say that I can't promise
you anything. Every decision will be made by my owners on
Tradonia.'

'We serve our owners.' I said.

'Have you been trading in the drifts for long?' she
asked to change the subject.

'Something like five years now. Five years too
long...' I began by sketching in our history and we soon drifted
into spaceer yarning unit Molaye appeared, minus her pirate piece,
at the office door.

'Passengers and boat are stowed and the personal
effects delivered to the cabins, Captain,' she said when I inquired
with a glance.

'Right,' I said, and glancing at my com link I added,
'Dinner will be in a little less than an hour, so I'll let M'Ley
show you to your cabin so you can settle in a'bit before
dinner.'

'Thank you, Captain,' Linnor said rising, 'I
appreciate all you've done.' And with a nod and a faint smile to
Molaye, left me with the sleeping dogs.

04

'I appreciate your patience, Captain Wilcrofter,'
began Linnor, with a nod to me.

'Wil will do fine,' I said.

She nodded with a faint smile and continued looking
about, 'I appreciate Captain Wil allowing me the opportunity to
tell our story once to everyone. It is, as you can imagine, a
painful memory for all of us,' she began. All but Lili and Myes,
who had the watch, had settled about the chairs and lounges of the
awning deck after our meal to hear her tale.

'The
Azurete
is a 110 meter 60 container cargo
liner designed for drift work – a reinforced hull, extended fuel
tanks and two enclosed boat hangars, one housing a skip fighter for
added protection. As I'm certain most of you know already, we
specialized in the transport of precious metals and rare minerals,
hence the skip fighter. Though in my 19 years as captain, we've
never had to actually use its weapons. Having it aboard has been
enough to keep us free of any would-be pirates. The
Azurete
's field of operation is the Kryver Reef. We call on
several dozen independent mining stations once a year. The reef is
massive, some 20 to 25 au in size and we spend nearly four months
within it collecting our cargoes – mostly in quarter boxes. We were
homebound for Tradonia with 196 quarter and half boxes, less than
half a day from the edge of the reef when our long range radar
picked up some remarkable activity amongst the rocks of the reef
bordering the passage we were threading.

'It appeared that something vast in the reef had
exploded, sending rocks and asteroids flying at hyper-speeds –
approaching that of an interstellar ship, and since this happened
in the dense reefs, these hyper-speed rocks were striking other
rocks, sending them flying outwards at random vectors as well, so
that we faced a massive hyper-speed storm of meteors coming at us
from odd angles and at such speeds that we could not hope to avoid
all of them.'

'A so called black dragon, event' said Lilm.

Linnor cast a glance towards Lilm. 'Yes, I've been
told that's the drifteer term for such an event. Are you familiar
with the phenomena?'

'I sailed the Canjar Drift in my youth – a very
strange quarter of the Nebula,' she replied. 'And likely the source
of many drifteer and spaceer legends. I've not actually seen a
black dragon in action, but we often sailed through the Mulbria
Reef along what was said to be an ancient black dragon passage – a
very clear and straight hole through a dense reef. And there are
many other such tracks throughout the Canjar.'

'And do you know what they are? Assuming they're not
actual dragons swimming through the rocks of the reef,' asked
Linnor with a faint smile.

'I don't know if you can assume they're not dragons
or some sort of inter-dimensional phenomena. You've just witnessed
one, so you know more about that than I,' replied Lilm sharply.

'Our radars didn't pick up any dragon.'

'Just so. Which is why they're called black dragons –
undetectable, not quite of this dimension. But if you prefer a less
colorful theory, it's that you've experienced a creasing of
space-time wrought by the gravitational stress lines of the Ninth
Star. If you consider the rocks of the reef to be specks of dust on
the surface of a sheet of paper, a sudden creasing of that paper
would send them flying in all directions, which seems to be the
event you're describing. You've witnessed one of the myths of the
Nebula,' Lilm said with a shrug, adding, 'And lived to tell about
it, which is remarkable. How did you manage?'

'Luck, and a specially built ship. We could not avoid
the effects of the, well, black dragon – it was too near and its
effects spread too rapidly for us to decel, turn and run. Within an
hour the passage we'd been following disappeared, leaving us no
choice but to try to make our way though the meteor storm.

'Since we were not traveling at great speed, avoiding
a normal meteor swarm would've been fairly routine, but with the
hyper-speeds and with the variety of vectors with which the meteors
were coming at us, it was impossible to avoid all of them and we
had to take several minor hits from the smaller rocks while dodging
or destroying the larger ones with our anti-meteor missiles. I had
the crew suit up and stationed all of them but myself and my chief
mates in our ship's longboat, turning that side away from the
onrushing rocks.

'Over the course of the next six hours we danced and
dodged and blasted rocks – but, as I said, not all of them. Only
the fact that the
Azurete
was built for drift work, allows
me to tell my tale. We were holed several times, including one
through the engine room and into the main engine. Our crew section
was also badly holed. Luckily they were small rocks and the main
engine was not in operation or we'd not be here. Eventually, we
reached the far side of the event and outer edge of the reef where
the immediate effects of the black dragon had passed.

'Free of immediate danger, we were able to take stock
of our situation. Both of the ship's boats were undamaged but the
Azurete
had only one balancing rocket operable and no
working environmental system. Getting the ship to the nearest
reasonable port, Carivon, on one balancing rocket would take over
twenty years so I decided to abandon the ship and make for Carivon
in the longboat where we could contact our owners and arrange a
salvage operation.

'One option was to abandon the
Azurete
,
buoyed, and trust that whenever a salvage operation was mounted –
which might take years to organize – they would be able to locate
the ship. Given the unsettled local conditions, I was leery of it
surviving in the open, so with a small moonlet in radar range and
reachable, I decided to land my ship on it instead. We spent
several days maneuvering the
Azurete
using the few remaining
steering rockets and the one balancing rocket to softly crash the
ship on this moonlet. It had enough of a gravity, something like
.02 gee to hold the ship until our return. I worked up a course for
the moonlet and keyed several buoys to respond only to a coded
signal, so it should be fairly easy for an authorized salvage
operation to locate.