The Terran Privateer (29 page)

“Realize that, as Captain, the accounts for your flotilla are extensions of your personal account,” Ridotak observed. “If you are wondering, that sum would be enough for you, at least, to purchase a mansion in a quieter Core system, stock it with food custom-made to your biology, and live like a queen for the rest of your life.”

“But not enough for my entire crew to do so,” Annette guessed.

“No. Your loyalty to your crew does you credit, Captain Bond, as does your alliance with Ki!Tana. But tell me, are you not tempted? To just…walk away from the impossible course your oaths have set you upon?”

“I do not yet believe the course is impossible,” she replied firmly. Her doubts were a private thing, better studied in the dark of her own office, not this softly gray space controlled by this strange sapient. “Even if it was, I swore an oath, High Captain.”

“Ah,” he breathed. “So, it is not merely Ki!Tana’s influence. You
are
this stubborn.”

“Ki!Tana’s influence?” Annette asked. “She did say she knew you. Worked for you.”

“Do you have any idea, Captain Bond, what kind of trickster demon you have bound to yourself?” Ridotak asked. “The Ki!Tol are wise and knowledgeable, but realize that they are all, to a being, utterly insane.”

The Ki!Tol? Annette had assumed that Ki!Tana was a name, but it was starting to sound like the Ki! part meant something
else
. Something she was going to have to ask the alien about.

“She has been of great help to us,” she said carefully.

“As she was once of great help to me,” the High Captain agreed. “Understand that however old you think your friend is, she is older. Understand that whatever you think she is at all, you are wrong. It is not my place to share her story. Ask her, if you must know it.”

“A trickster demon, though?” Annette asked.

“Ki!Tana will never lie to you,” Ridotak told her. “She will never do more than present options—honest ones. She will never mislead you or deceive you or fail to answer a direction question; these are not things the A!Tol have in them.

“But her advice has layers within layers, Captain Bond. Those the Ki!Tol attach themselves to are never meant for ordinary things. If you stand with her, you will end a criminal, a king, or a corpse.”

“It seems she delivered both of the first two for you,” Annette pointed out, and Ridotak’s mandibles clicked rapidly in chittering laughter.

“Age and fine food will arrange for the latter more quickly than anyone not familiar with my race would guess,” he noted. “If you accept that your life will never be calm, then stay with Ki!Tana, Captain. It may well kill you, but it will not be
boring
.”

He gestured toward the door, a clear dismissal, but Annette stopped, eyeing him.

“Sir, one final request, if you will permit,” she said.

“From one of Ki!Tana’s students to another, I can at least listen,” he allowed.

“I understand that the Crew have repair docks and technology unrivaled by any in this sector of space. I want to buy that tech and pay for what I fear may be the only reliable docks on this station to install it.”

Ridotak lurched to standing, looming over Annette with every kilo of his impressive bulk in silence for a long moment.

“You have courage, honor, and fight for your crew when they need you. I would be proud to have you as a Captain of mine,” he told her. “I will put you in touch with our Dockmaster. Be warned, however,” he concluded with that chittering laugh, “if you wish to buy
our
systems, Captain Bond, you will probably be selling that ship I just gave you back to us.”

James and Kurzman were sitting outside the ship when the Captain returned. Theoretically, James had assigned himself command of the guard detachment—currently
inside
the ship, with plasma rifles—but once he’d got Captain Bond’s update, he’d relaxed significantly.

Instead, he and his boyfriend were sitting on lawn chairs, drinking beer and watching the aliens go by.

Those aliens didn’t need to know that James’s beer was non-alcoholic and there was a plasma rifle under his chair.

The Captain and Ki!Tana arrived together, via a floating hover platform driven by a four-armed Tosumi in Crew red. He stopped, letting them off, and then whizzed away again without a word.

Ki!Tana’s skin had gone pure black and James was on his feet immediately. He’d
never
seen the A!Tol that color.

“Are you all right?” he demanded.

“I need rest,” the alien replied. “That’s all.” She paused, one support tentacle half-buckling under her. “I would not object to assistance,” she admitted.

The Captain was already there, but James joined her immediately, the two of them slipping under Ki!Tana’s manipulator tentacles to help support her. He realized, as the leathery limbs settled onto his shoulders, that it was actually the first time he’d
touched
the A!Tol.

The unconscious part of his mind had expected the squid-like alien to be wet, slimy and cold. Instead, her tentacles were warm and leathery as he grabbed hold to support her. She was also
huge
and a lot denser than he’d have guessed.

“Thank you,” she told them. This close, it was a lot easier to hear her
actual
speech, a mix of sibilant vowels, harsh consonants and beak-snapping clicks normally blocked by his translator earbuds.

“I’ve got the outside,” Kurzman told them, and James gave his boyfriend a grateful smile. “Get her in.”

Slowly and carefully, they eased the big alien through the cruiser to her quarters.

“Are you going to be all right?” James asked, hitting the panel to open the door.

“Yes,” Ki!Tana told them. “Today was a bad day and I pushed too hard. I need rest, but I will be fine.”

“If this is a recurring condition, I need to know,” the Captain told her. “Especially if there’s something we can do.”

The tiniest flecks of red appeared in the black of her skin for the moment as Ki!Tana turned her gaze on Captain Bond.

“We need to talk on several things, Captain Bond,” she finally said. “But not tonight. Soon.”

The alien carefully lurched into her quarters and James looked over at the Captain. She met his gaze levelly, then quirked her lips in a half-smile.

“You and Pat didn’t need to wait up for me,” she told him. “I sent you an update.”

“We saw,” he acknowledged. “But…I wasn’t going to believe it until I saw you with my own eyes. You’re all right?”

“I am,” she confirmed. “So is Mosi. I checked in on her before we left; she’s responding well to their treatments. And while the price was very nearly higher than I’d be prepared to pay, we also have an appointment with the Laian Dockmaster in the morning.”

He knew she wasn’t talking about money. The appointment with the Laian Dockmaster would cost them money—a lot of it, as he understood it—but the
price
of the appointment had nearly been the lives of their crew.

“So, don’t plan on spending any of the ship’s money until that deal is closed, huh?” James noted consideringly.

“I’m not even planning on spending
my
money,” Bond said dryly. “Why?”

“I want some bloody power armor,” the British officer said flatly. “This morning would have been preferable; tomorrow will have to do.”

Without power armor, he was forced to resort to massive overkill to stand a chance, a stance that was dangerous aboard a space station and offended his own sense of elegance.

“I can see your point.” The Captain sighed. “We should be able to afford it when everything settles, but the ship upgrades have to come first.”

“I get that,” he admitted. “But we’re looking at being at an ugly disadvantage if we ever have to board an A!Tol warship—not to mention landing parties when we return to Earth.” He sighed. “I’ll pool funds with the Troop Captains; we’ll see if we can afford it ourselves.”

“If you do, we
will
repay you,” Bond assured him. “Either from sales or from our next operations.”

“If the Laians charge what I think they will, the next operation is going to need to be impressive,” the Major pointed out. “And after the last one,
impressive
may get harder.”

“Believe me,” his Captain said fervently, “I know.”

#

Their Rekiki did have power armor, which meant that two of Tellaki’s troopers were assigned to Annette’s escorts the next day. Wellesley didn’t, however, remove Sergeant Lin or her human companion from the escort, which left
Tornado
’s Captain feeling like she was leading a small army through Tortuga’s corridors.

Ki!Tana’s absence helped reduce the impact, as the two Rekiki, while larger than humans, didn’t match the A!Tol female’s massive bulk. After her poor state last night, Annette hadn’t been surprised when the alien didn’t respond to being pinged for the meeting, and had coopted Kurzman to act as her “informed backup”.

The two humans might not know as much about what counted as top-tier weapons and shields in the galaxy as they’d
like
, but they had a pretty solid idea of the numbers they wanted for
Tornado
. If the Laians could offer improvements from there, great. If not, they were reasonably sure the Crew could still get them what they wanted.

With two crocodile-centaurs in full powered armor, if only armed with battle rifles instead of the standard plasma weapons, their path through the station was unsurprisingly smooth. Crowds parted, the roving parties of ships’ crews dodged aside, and Annette was
certain
she saw at least one slaver outright
panic
when the sapient saw humans coming, turning his people and his shackled “cargo” around in the opposite direction as quickly as they could.

No one was trying to sell them anything, either. It was a far quieter trip through Tortuga than she’d had before, and it wasn’t just due to the power armor.

“Did I
miss
something?” she muttered into the channel. “Did I accidentally install spikes and skulls on my uniform last night and not notice?”

“Respect on Tortuga only truly comes in one flavor, Captain,” one of the Rekiki replied after a moment. “You
destroyed
Captain Ikwal and his crew—by the fire of your soldiers and your own words in the High Captain’s court. That you killed him with your own hand only adds to the legend already spreading about the new Terran privateer.”

“So, they’re afraid,” she said grimly. “The slavers seem to think I’m about to go shoot them in the head and steal their slaves.”

The soldier paused. “Would you like me to?”

“Like? Yes,” she admitted. “But the Crew wants to continue in their apathy and I continue to need the Crew. So, not today.”

The armored centaur glanced at where the slaver was chivvying his pathetic victims back out of sight.

“Pity.”

#

When they reached the connection from the closed-in shipyards that served as Tortuga’s public markets to the main hub of the original repair ship, Annette had to leave the bodyguards behind. The only people with power armor and guns allowed in the Crew spaces were the Crew themselves.

She was met, however, by a trio of armed Laians, who escorted her and her executive officer through the confusing, hive-like structure of the hub to the Dockmaster’s office on the opposite side of the station. They stopped upon reaching the door, gave her a silent, strange, four-arms-crossed-across-the-carapace salute, then allowed them into the office.

Stepping into the room, Annette stopped in surprise, causing Kurzman to have to dodge briskly sideways to avoid running into her. The Dockmaster’s office was a large room with the door in the middle of its inner wall—and the outer wall entirely consumed with a massive window over the three yard slips of the station that the Crew’s Dockmaster controlled.

Like the yard slip available to rent to most customers, two of these had been subdivided from yards designed to handle capital ships to yards designed to handle multiple cruiser-sized vessels. Many of those slips were full, though there didn’t seem to be any active work going on. There were more of the red-painted cruisers sitting in dock than it had looked like from the outside—another fifteen at least.

Anyone who tangled with Tortuga was going to find
that
fleet an unpleasant surprise—assuming the Crew could man them. She didn’t know how many Laians were aboard Tortuga, but forty cruiser-sized vessels would require a
lot
of personnel.

“Welcome to my office, Captain Bond,” said a small Laian, the tiniest of their adults she’d seen yet at barely a hundred and sixty centimeters tall, with a carapace that shimmered a pearlescent blue hue she hadn’t seen before. The combination suggested to Annette that the Dockmaster was actually the first
female
Laian she’d seen yet—outside of power armor, anyway.

“I am Dockmaster Orentel of the Crew of
Builder of Sorrows
,” she greeted Annette. “Please, come in, come in. I have seats for you and Commander Kurzman, but if you wish to enjoy the view, you are welcome to stand by the window. Most of my guests do.”

Annette inclined her head to the tiny alien with her glittering carapace, and walked over to the window. The initial shock past, she now looked past the yards, “up” to the massive gas giant Tortuga orbited.

“
Builder of Sorrows
?” she asked.

“Surely you do not think we were always called Tortuga?” Orentel asked. “It is an A!Tol word for ‘insect hive.’ While we have adopted it as our own, it was hardly complimentary when given.”

Of course, the A!Tol word for insect hive was actually the mouthful of beak snaps the humans had decided not to use.

“
Builder of Sorrows
is a nicer name,” Annette agreed, “if a sad one.”

“We are exiles, Captain Bond, children of a Navy flotilla scattered to the interstellar winds,” the Dockmaster said quietly. “We have little to our culture, I fear, but sadness. We know the path you walk, Captain, that of a privateer without a world.”

“I intend to retake my world,” Annette said fiercely.

“Your intention is not in doubt,” the Laian agreed. “You are here because my High Captain sees the mirror of our sorrows in your future, Captain Bond. And because Ki!Tana brought you, and my High Captain owes her still. And because when the Kanzi attacked your people, they broke a longstanding decree of our High Captains. Showing you favor makes a point.”

That brought a wince, for multiple reasons. Annette didn’t
want
her people to end up like the Laian Crew, an exiled remnant whose continued survival was utterly reliant on criminal activity. It also wasn’t pleasant to be reminded that they were largely helping her to make a point to anyone who would be tempted to follow Ikwal’s example in defying their orders.

“Somehow, I imagine none of that means you are doing work for free,” Annette replied dryly.

“Of course not,” Orentel confirmed. “That would be entirely inappropriate for a marketplace such as that which Tortuga has become.” She gestured with a pincer, and Annette saw that the Laian now held four small ivory sticks in her pincers—some form of data-manipulation tool, she guessed.

A hologram appeared in the middle of the large office, showing
Tornado
in more detail than even Annette had seen her since they’d finished recommissioning her into United Earth Space Force service.

“Your ship, Captain Bond,” the Laian said as the wands in her pincers flickered. “I ran the data you provided us through our modeling programs and collated our own cruisers’ close scans. Compressed-matter armor—built into the hull, not an upgrade. The tubes, oversized, designed for cruder missiles than you’re using. The proton beams, stolen. Same with the shield generator. The lasers, surprisingly efficient, though with inherent limits as a weapon system. The defense suite,
extremely
impressive given your apparent tech limits. Intelligent to include; too many lesser powers rely on the shield.”

Each section flashed red as Orentel spoke.

“No one in this sector has developed compressed-matter armor,” she noted. “The Core Powers regard it as one of their advantages over the outer empires. Your people discovered it?”

“An accident while building exotic-matter emitters for hyperdrive arrays,” Annette admitted.

“That is how
everyone
discovers it,” the Dockmaster replied. “Your hull is solid. The ship design is useful for the sort of upgrade you want. It appears that we can even physically relocate the crew quarters and command sections if needed?”