The Kassa Gambit (12 page)

“It’s bad, Commodore. Perhaps twenty percent casualties.” Ten thousand individual deaths, reduced to a statistic. “But there’s nothing left standing—or moving—on the planet. They hit the infrastructure hard.”

The commodore knew better than Prudence what that would mean for her own world.

“Who? Who did it?”

Prudence bit her lip. “I don’t know.” In a way it was true. “Nobody saw anything but bombs.” Unless Prudence was demoting herself to the status of nobody, that wasn’t true at all. “All I can give you are rumors and speculation, Commodore.” Lies piled on top of lies. If deceit had mass, her ship would be dangerously overloaded.

“Then give them, Captain.”

If she told them what she had seen, if she gave them details that could only have come from the wreck, then Altair Fleet would find out. And if there were a conspiracy here, then they would come after her. Kyle’s last-minute rescue would be wasted.

Prudence said as much as she dared. “If something comes through the node, and it doesn’t speak Terran standard … start shooting.”

Silence on the other end. Prudence kept talking. “That’s just what I heard, Commodore. Nothing was taken; no one claimed sovereignty. They showed up, dropped bombs, and went away. For apparently no purpose that anybody can understand.”

Another pause. Then the commodore responded. “I’ve asked my staff some questions about you. They assure me you do not play practical jokes. Nonetheless, I am going to ask you, under oath, to repeat that.”

Prudence exhaled in relief. The commodore had given her a way out, an excuse to shut up.

“Not under oath, Commodore. If you want me to go on record, then all I can tell you are the facts. Kassa is in shambles, and no one knows who or why.”

The commodore surprised her by swearing. “Bullshit.
Someone
knows why.”

“Then they didn’t choose to share it with me, Commodore. May I respectfully suggest you take whatever measures you can to protect yourself.”

“How many were there? What kind of ships did they attack with? How can we organize a defense without knowing any of this?” The voice was angry, almost petulant. Prudence couldn’t blame her, but it wasn’t her fault.

“All I can tell you is they didn’t land. They just dropped bombs—a lot of bombs. For several days. Kassa had virtually no defenses—only one patrol boat, and I honestly don’t know if it was even armed.”

“You can’t tell me what I need to know—but you can spread rumors of aliens.” Bitterness overwhelmed the commodore’s voice.

“I’m sorry, Commodore. But you can go and see for yourself. I’m sure Kassa would appreciate any assistance you can spare.”

The appeal to humanity took the wind out of the commodore’s sails. When the voice answered, it was apologetic. “Understood, Captain. We’ll dispatch a rescue mission immediately. Can you tell us what they need most?”

“Yes,” Prudence said with relief, “I can. Prepare for a datadump.” She pushed the button that logged her in to Bruneis’s public network, and queued the transfer. Everything else would be automatic. The machines would talk now, without deceit or emotion, sparing Prudence and the commodore their artless fencing.

If only someone would invent a machine that lied for you.

“Pru?” Garcia on the intercom. “Did we exit the node yet?” The transition was undetectable by any sense human beings possessed. Short of looking out a window and noticing that the stars were points of white light instead of spectral streaks.

“We did, and as you may have noticed, we’re still alive.”

“For now.”

She sighed. “We’re on flyby to Carnor. From there it’s one more hop to Altair, where we can cash in this voucher.”

“Assuming Altair still exists.” Garcia had been rattled for days. This was an uncomfortable experience for her. She’d seen him bet his life savings without a twitch, a dozen times.

“They didn’t come through here, Garcia. So we have to be ahead of them.”

The two of them had spent many hours poring over the local node-charts. A peculiar kind of map, it laid out all the popular nodes in terms of connections and travel times. The result bore no resemblance to the physical location of the stars. The star Prudence had been born around was actually visible from Altair, a bright neighbor in the spiral arm, even though it was more than a hundred hops away. Bruneis, on the other hand, was deep in the heart of the galaxy, where the stars were old and the planets were chock full of heavy metals. The nodes didn’t care about linear distance, and after their first few hops, people stopped caring, too. A gulf of a hundred light-years was as impassable as a million. But a node was three to seven days, no matter how much space it covered. And no matter how fast your ship was.

“We’re taking the shortest route to Altair,” she repeated, a conversation days old now. She knew what came next.

“Unless they know a node we don’t.” Garcia lived by special exemptions, outs, and tricks. He always assumed other people did too.

It was extremely unlikely. Nodes were not particularly hard to find, with the right equipment. And a sophisticated planet like Altair would have swept their solar system out to a distance of billions of kilometers.

She had pointed all of this out to Garcia, but he refused to be comforted by reason and logic. Instead he’d combined drinking and praying. At least it left him conscious, unlike Melvin.

But consciousness meant more burdens, and the future demanded to be answered. Once they got to Altair, what next? Should they flee as far from Kassa as possible? Or join the resistance, enlist in Fleet, offer their strength to the war effort? The age-old dilemma, flight or fight. Each of her crew would have to make their own decision. Except for Jorgun. She would have to make one for both of them.

Running would be easy. The voucher would fill her hold with trade goods and fuel. And Prudence had spent her life leaving places.

But not to escape. She had been lured outward by a quest of her own choosing, not driven by fear. Other than that first good-bye. The distinction was important to her. She would not be defined by her first act as an adult. She would make her own life, without regard to what had been made for her. She would not run out of habit.

But neither could she sign her life away to the oxymoronic military mind. If she wanted to fight, she would have to find her own way.

Bruneis spaceport staff were not the only ones hovering over their comm stations. Within minutes of entering Altair system, her console lit up. Altair Traffic Control, of course, demanding that she confirm her identity and assigning her a docking bay. That much she expected. Jorgun knew what buttons to push in response, so she let him do it.

But he had barely acknowledged Control’s message before she had a half-dozen other calls. Independent freighter captains, some of them friends, some of them strangers, and all of them competitors.

She took a call from the
Starfarer
. Captain Welsing had bought her a dozen shots of forty-year-old Scotch one night, sitting in a high-class bar and trying to get her drunk. She’d poured most of them into a container in her purse while he wasn’t looking, but pretended to get falling-down hammered, just to see what he was up to. She was quite flattered to discover he was just trying to seduce her. He wasn’t seeking trade tips or pricing information, just sex.

She’d said no, of course. He wasn’t really her type. Loud and blustery, living the free-trader stereotype to the hilt. It probably worked on civvies.

Later, Garcia had thanked her for the fine liquor, even though it was in a plastic squeeze-bottle. He wasn’t the type to stand on ceremony. She doubted he could tell the difference between the expensive stuff and the cheap hooch he normally drank, but she let him pretend. Probably the most flavorful component in this case was that the booze was free. That was something Garcia always appreciated.

“Captain Welsing. How can I help you?”

The comm beeped, but no one answered. It was an automated call. As she was reaching out to cut it off and select another one, a voice broke in.

“Prudence? Is that you?” Welsing sounded distracted. There were some odd rustling sounds in the background, and then a female voice, raised in complaint.

“Shut up, darling, this is business.” Welsing had muffled the mike, probably covering it with his hand, but Prudence could still hear. “She’s not another girl. She’s a
starship captain
. Totally different!”

Welsing hadn’t thought that when he was emptying credit sticks for her. But then, Welsing’s definition of “girl” was remarkably plastic.

“Prudence, my sweet. How nice of you to call.”

“You called me, Welsing. At least, your ship did.”

“Right, right. I programmed it to contact anybody on my short list. Prudence, something’s up. Something big. Altair Fleet went into high alert yesterday. They’re canceling shore leaves, putting ships on active duty, and being real pricks about dockside inspections.”

Just as she started thinking how nice it was that he had called to warn her, he went on.

“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“Now why do you think I would, Welsing?” She tried not to sound too exasperated. It was his nature, after all.

“Because you left out of here to Carnor, about two weeks ago. And whatever spooked Fleet came here from Carnor, on a patrol boat named the
Launceston
.”

Damn. She’d passed through Altair with her shipment of threshing machines, now rusting in an abandoned Kassan wheat field. Since she had to log a flight plan with Fleet, her destination would be a matter of record. Fleet felt it was a public service to keep track of the free-traders, and to let everyone know what they were up to. Everyone but the free-traders probably appreciated it.

She was intending to broad-beam her news, anyway. No point in not telling Welsing. She sighed, not because she didn’t enjoy talking to Welsing, but because she hated telling this story. “Wels, you better send the girl out.”

“No can do, Pru, it’s her room. Hang on a second.” Screeching, the sound of something soft being thrown as violently as possible, and then the slam of a door.

Welsing came back on the line. “Okay, Pru, I’m standing in a hotel hallway with no pants on, but I’m alone. Spill.” His voice started out aggravated, but by the end of his first sentence he had returned to his smoothest charm.

“Maybe later would be a better time?” she said, unable to resist teasing him.

“Nonsense. Now that I’ve been reminded of your stunning beauty, how could I possibly settle for that doxy? Just your voice is more sensuous than a dozen Vegas showgirls stark naked in a vat of butter.”

She had to make a face at that. Jorgun laughed at her, although he couldn’t hear what Welsing had said. Jorgun had his own headset on, and was watching something on his console. Probably the last few weeks of cartoons.

Normally he wouldn’t notice anything outside of his cartoons. The atmosphere of tension must be getting to him, too.

“Real butter, Pru, not the synthetic stuff.” Welsing was filling the silence. If she let him go on, he’d start describing the showgirls. “Vegas” wasn’t a real place, just a slang term for high-class glitz and glamour, but she had no doubt his mind was full of very concrete images.

“It’s not nice, Wels. But there’s profit, if you’re fearless. Kassa colony was bombed into the Stone Age. Thousands dead, no machinery, and winter coming on. They need stuff, a lot of stuff. I have a list.”

The inevitable response. Swearing, then the question. “Earth-fire! By who?”

“Nobody knows.” The lie got harder every time she repeated it. “But … Fleet has plenty of reason to be on alert.”

Welsing was a blowhard, but he wasn’t stupid. “Why did you say ‘fearless,’ Pru?”

“If nobody knows why they came, nobody knows if they’ll come back. I don’t want you blaming me when a war-fleet drops out of the sky on your pizza delivery.”

“Damn, Pru. Damn.”

“Put me through to a data channel. I’ll transmit the list. And Wels … don’t keep this a secret. Tell everyone on your list. The long list. This is a humanitarian crisis, not a monopoly-profit opportunity.”

She thought of something else that might be more motivational.

“There’ll be plenty of profit for everyone. Especially if you’re willing to take future-payment vouchers.” Anybody who had the cash to lend could make a profit both on delivery and interest. Welsing was the kind of guy who always seemed to have a lot of cash.

“You don’t want a window?” He was asking if she wanted him to sit on the information until she had time to cut a few deals.

“No, Wels. I don’t think I’m going back there. It was…” It was too much to ask of Jorgun. “I’ve seen enough.” It was too much to ask of her. Kyle might still be there, with his damnable papers and smoky black eyes. “I’m not giving you a window, either. I’ve got a dozen calls to answer, and I’ll be handing out the list to everyone.” The comm station had kept adding them while she had been talking to Welsing.

“Understood, Pru. I’ll spread it around too. Humanitarian, like you said. Um, hate to chat and run, but I need to get some pants on. There’s a bellboy at the end of the hall now, and he doesn’t look amused.”

Probably he just wanted to fill his hold with the prime cargos before the local vendors raised the prices. Welsing wasn’t the kind of guy who worried about bellboys.

“Fair enough, Wels. Although I regret this comm was only audio.”

“Honey, you have the taste to appreciate the unadorned human form. Not like these prudes on Altair. But call me later, we’ll do something naked.”

“Prudence out,” she answered, rolling her eyes at his salaciousness. Constant repetition tended to rob it of effectiveness.

“Welsing out,” and he was gone.

Sighing, she pushed another button at random.

EIGHT

Home

Kyle walked into his empty apartment and shut the door. Nothing greeted him, not even the apartment’s computer. He’d programmed it to not announce his comings and goings.

Almost two weeks in the presence of the insufferably pompous Rassinger had flayed his patience to the bone. But he had learned things. He was certain, now, that Rassinger had expected to find the alien wreck. He was pretty sure that Rassinger had
not
expected to find Kyle.