The Bright Black Sea (94 page)

And there was Molaye. We'd established a very
comfortable working relationship. She runs the ship like a good
first mate, and I let her. All I expect is that, on the rare
occasion, when I need to give an order, she obeys it without
getting all tall and narrow eyed, should she not care for it.
Dealing with Molaye is like dealing with a lorelion that you've
raised from a kitten – there's always a remote possibility that
things might not go as you expect them to go. And given her new and
passionate affection for Captain Linnor, I was rather leery of
pushing my tame lorelion too hard. Molaye is not afraid, well, of
just about anything, so leaving the ship to follow Linnor would not
be out of the question. And I really didn't want her going off with
Linnor – I wanted to give her command of the
Starry Shore
in
a few years...

Finally there's Min. As I said, I've not heard from
her since Despar and going off into the drifts undercover means I'm
not likely to be hearing from her anytime soon. So in one sense, I
was free to do as I pleased. However, since the Asterdonia's
charter was a certified offer, it will be on the ship's record when
Min eventually reviews my performance. I'd have to explain why I
passed on a fortune to sail, hollow to Baidora to collect the
crumbs of cargoes that did little more than pay the bills. I wasn't
looking forward to that.

The bottom line, however, was that my name was listed
as Captain and the decision and its consequences were mine, and
mine alone. So I consulted Botts.

'What do you advise?' I asked it, after inviting it
to my office to go over the situation. 'What are our chances of
getting the gold off the
Azurete
and home to Tradonia?'

'I'm flattered you're consulting with me, sir. But
I've not been programmed to make that type of evaluation. It is
outside of my operating parameters.'

'Right,' I said, giving it a look. 'So why don't you
tell me what Viletre Viseor would've done instead.'

'Oh, he'd haven taken the charter in a heartbeat,'
Botts, replied, eyes bright, 'The only question would've been where
he'd have gone with it after he had it on board. He was a keen
businessman, sir.'

It is hard for the featureless face of Botts to leer
sarcastically, but it did so anyway.

'Which is exactly why I'm asking you for your advice.
You spent several centuries serving that keen businessman and have
all that experience filed away in your memory. So tell me how he
would've calculated the odds?'

'Well, first I would imagine that he would count on
having a two week lead over any other contenders, which should be
enough to get the job done if all goes as planned. Secondly, he
would've noted that the section of the drifts outward from Amdia is
relatively poor and thinly populated, so that the initial response
from the drifts would likely be weak – small ships and few of them
at that – at least for the first weeks, if not months. So even if
things did not work out as planned, he could have easily fought his
way through any lurking drift hawks, if necessary.'

'Using your fire control skills to do so?'

'Aye. And the
Viseor Entrada
's extensive
anti-meteor armory.'

'Right.Would those fire control skills of yours still
be at my service, should I take this charter?'

'Of course, sir.'

'And what is your opinion of our anti-meteor armory,
given you appreciation of our probable opposition?' Which was the
heart of the matter. I'd seen Botts fight our ship –but if things
didn't go as planned, we'd likely have to do more than hold off a
ship or two for a hour or two. However, we did carry a full and
varied array of missiles in our missile magazine – I didn't sail
the drifts without the best these days.

'The
Viseor Entrada
had a larger and more
extensive anti-meteor armory, since it sailed the deep drifts on a
regular basis. It did not, however have a skip fighter. So, given
our likely scale opposition, should the operation be kept under
three or four months in duration, I'd say our anti-meteor
protection, with the skip fighter, would be adequate to deal with
anything we might encounter on the Kryver coast.'

'And if it took longer?'

'When faced with overwhelming force, "Villain" Viseor
always found it best to slip quietly away. With the vast Kryver
Reef close at hand, I would think a backdoor could be found to slip
quietly away...'

I sighed. 'Do you have any use for gold, Botts?'

'Why, no?'

'So your advice is free of any selfish motives on
your part?'

'As a class 8 machine, I have no selfish motives
whatsoever, Sir. I am designed to serve my owner, or in this case,
my captain. And to answer your question, my answers have been based
solely on my past experience and my appreciation for the situation
at hand.'

'You do have a self-preservation program, Botts?'

'Yes sir. With limits, of course. The welfare of my
employers is always my priority.'

'Does the prospect of salvaging the
Azurete
's
gold set off any little alarms in your self-preservation
program?'

'No sir.' Botts replied, adding with its little
twitch of a shrug, 'I'm sorry, Sir.'

I sighed again. There was no avoiding the Kryver Reef
now.

Soon after Botts left, Molaye swung into my office
and perched herself on the chair before my desk. 'I think we should
take the charter, Captain,' she said. 'It would mean a lot to
Captain Linnor.'

'Right,' I said, and leaning forward, called the
charter to the desk top. 'Should we ask for a share or two more of
the salvage? Can you think of any other modifications we should
hold out for?'

She gave me as squinty-eyed look and said, 'I don't
think so...'

'Have you read it over?'

'Not all of it...' she said, watching me closely.

'No? Oh well, what the Neb, why not?' I said, and
placed my palm on the document's authorizing box. 'There. We're
going. Happy?'

Her eyes wide with surprise. 'Just like that?'

'Aye. Just like that. Of course, I read the whole
contract,' I added, giving her a hard look.

She ignored the hard look. 'Why, Captain, what's
gotten into you? What happened to my ol'Captain Crofter? What
happened to good old cautious... Captain Litang? (The last in a
conspiratorial whisper.) I assured Fey that I'd bring you around,
but what will I say now? I didn't have to do a thing,' she said,
rattling on, adding. 'The drifts have changed you.'

'No they haven't,' I replied. 'I simply didn't have a
choice. I couldn't face our owner after passing up half a century's
profit to return hollow to Baidora and our marginal trade – as much
as I'd like to.'

Molaye shook her head. 'No, that's not it. You could
be growing cha by the time Min looks over the books. No, you've
changed.'

'Well, I hope so. I've been wearing a star badge for
more than half a decade now.'

'It's more than that. It's the drifteer in you coming
out.'

'Drifteer or not, it's the Captain in me that's
telling you that the next time you care to advise me on a charter,
read the Neb-blasted thing before you do.'

She gave me a wide smile. 'I'll add that to my notes,
Captain. Thanks!' and with a sketchy salute, hopped off her perch
and was out the door to break the news to Captain Linnor. Fey.

Captain Linnor, Pax and Ivay accompanied us back to
oversee the
Azurete
's side of the operation while the rest
of the crew was sent on to Tradonia. Linnor leased two orbital
lighters to take off the cargo in case we couldn't reach the
Azurete
's position and purchased two small cargo-handling
robots to facilitate shuttling the boxes between the ships in the
likely event that her ship's cargo cranes were inoperable. We
stowed lighters in the main hold and the cargo robots in the no. 4
hold and sailed for the Kryver Reef.

Without any official duties, the
Azurete
crew
spent a great deal of their time rebuilding the robots and
designing and building extended fuel tanks for the lighters.

04

Sixty-one days later Linnor, Molaye and I were
standing on the bridge studying the composite sensor image of the
Kryver Reef coast on a forward viewpanel. For the last several
weeks, it had been a slowly growing fist of blackness against the
cold light of the glowing, gaseous nebula. Now, laying a quarter of
an astronomical unit off its coast, its dense reefs blacked out
half the glowing sky, its edge sharply etched against the cold glow
of the nebula. The holographic composite image, however, showed
much more.

'Blast,' said Linnor, staring at that display.

'Indeed,' I said, though I wasn't quite as dismayed
as Linnor. As I may've mentioned, I'm no more superstitious than
any other spaceer, but I'd have felt very nervous if all we had to
do was run down to the
Azurete
and take off its boxes. You
have to pay for luck, and I felt I had a lot on my tab already for
the luck I've enjoyed to date, so I'd have been very leery of the
bill if it had been that easy. Not that I was happy with what I was
looking at, but I clearly wasn't going to have to worry about
paying for a golden asteroid with luck. At least, not yet.

What we were looking at was not a total surprise. The
long range sensors had foreshadowed the phenomena, but the full
sensor array created an impressively daunting display of the Kryver
coast where the
Azurete
was wrecked. It showed that the
black dragons had been far from idle during the five months since
the
Azurete
was wrecked. They had carved several new, long,
deep gashes in the edge of the thick reef, sending a thick plume of
asteroids and meteors flying outwards from the reef. The larger of
these rocks showed up on the display in a rainbow of colors that
indicated their varying vectors and velocities – tens of thousands
of them, hinting of the millions of smaller ones still undetected.
The coast of the reef where the
Azurete
's 200 km sized
moonlet had been, was no longer recognizable – and the moonlet, if
it wasn't smashed to pieces, lay somewhere lost in the heart of the
dense plum of debris.

'We're going to need to get a lot closer in order to
make contact with the automatic beacons on my ship,' remarked
Linnor, since the colliding rocks and dust were generating a great
deal of electro-magnetic static.

'I'll send the drones in,' I said.

'We've the field to ourselves at the moment, but that
won't last. I understand your caution, but you're being well
compensated for taking some risks. I suggest we push deeper into
the plume without delay. The sooner we get the cargo off, the less
risks you'll run with the drift hawks,' replied Linnor, without
glancing at me.

Molaye did, however. She knew me too well.

'True. But we're essential to your success, and the
ship not specially built for this type of work, so we need to
minimize our risks. I'll certainly bring her in closer, but only
after the drones survey the plume and locate your ship to give us
an idea of the threat level from the small meteors we're not
seeing,' I replied.

'You can't avoid taking some risk in this sort of
venture.'

'Reasonable ones,' I replied, and added to keep the
peace, 'However we won't know what reasonable is until we locate
your ship and chart a course to it. So let's get started – we
haven't time to waste,' I replied, with forced cheerfulness – and
optimism. I'd no intention of risking my ship on a desperate plan.
Assuming we could locate the
Azurete
, I'd rather have the
cargo brought out in either the
Azurete
itself, if it could
be lifted, or by the lighters we'd brought with us for that
purpose. Both would take time – months – so that we'd likely be
facing drift hawks before we had all the gold in our holds. I was
inclined to face the drift hawks rather than the dangers of the
black dragons and meteors in part because the drift hawks were, at
the moment, just a theoretical threat. And I had Botts, and
hopefully a skip fighter as well.

05

The drones raised the
Azurete
's auto-beacons
on the third day, very close to its charted position on the former
coast of the reef – deep within the plume. We had strung the drones
into a line ahead just to maintain radio contact with the lead
one.

'The lead drone should reach your ship in two days
and we can see what condition it's in,' I said to Linnor, who was
studying the chart in my office. 'We'll survey the local conditions
and see what the prospects are for taking the ship in.'

'I think, Captain, in the name of expediency, I'll
take our longboat in. It'll save a lot of time since I'll need to
inspect the interior condition of my ship in any event. If
everything is as I left it, I'd like to get the ship lifted and on
its way out, since I doubt you'd consider a rendezvous where it
lies now,' she said watching me closely.

'I understand your eagerness, but with the limited
data we have at present, you'd be running significant risks. And,
well, there's no point speculating how we'll need to tackle the
project until we have the data in hand.'

She shook her head. 'The sooner we recover my cargo,
the less chance we'll have of losing it – and our lives – to the
drift hawks. Every day counts.'

I wasn't going to change her mind. 'Right. So to
expedite matters, would you mind if I tagged along. I'd like a
firsthand look myself,' I said, adding, 'I'm certain we can quickly
agree on a plan, once we both have full knowledge of the
situation.'

She hesitated a second. 'Of course, Captain. You'd be
welcome to tag along, but it might be an extended visit. I'll
certainly try to lift my ship off the rock and get it on its way
out. And if that's the case, we'll stay onboard to pilot and defend
it, which means you'll need to have a boat sent in to fetch
you.'