Drifter's War (10 page)

Row Y was farthest from the terminal and therefore least expensive. Most of the ships in row Y were clapped-out tramp freighters, reentry-scarred tankers, and low-key private vessels.

The ship parked in Slot 78 appeared worst than most. She was, or had been, a Lorney Lifter. Pretty good hulls more than two hundred years before but long outmoded. She reminded Lando of
The Tinker's Damn,
his first ship and part of a happier past.

The jitney stopped and Della paid it off.

"They oughta pay
us
to ride in that thing," Cap complained, but was careful to keep his voice low.

"It does look a little beat," Lando admitted, "but you never know. In my old line of business it paid to understate the condition of your ship."

The main hatch slid open before Della could palm the lock. An elderly woman stood framed in the opening. She was rail-thin, had a slightly hooked nose, and thin critical lips. Her light blue pressure suit hung around her in folds.

"Well, it's about time. The authorities want you bad. The price went up. Double what I told you. Take it or leave it."

Della answered. "We'll take it."

The woman put her hands on skinny hips. "Good. I want cash."

Della shook her head. "We don't have cash. But we do have more than enough in credits. You can check. First Bank of Pylax."

The woman gave a snort of derision. "What if they freeze your assets?"

Lando stepped forward. He looked her in the eye. "Then you're shit out of luck."

There was silence for a moment as the woman looked Lando up and down. An unexpected smile lit up her face. The hardness disappeared. "I like this one. He's got a nose just like mine. Where the hell were you when I was young? Let's lift."

The lift-off took place without incident. After that it was a simple matter to clear the planet's gravity well and head for the vast asteroid belt that floated toward the edge of the system.

Like all asteroid belts this one was a dangerous place to go. Over time the gravitational pull exerted by the system's larger planets caused asteroids to collide. The collisions created even more asteroids, and so forth, in an endless cycle.

Still, the asteroids had valuable minerals to offer, so miners went in after them. Small companies mostly, but individuals too, hardy types who were willing to risk everything on the possibility of a really big find.

This asteroid belt was unique in that the miners had established a system of twenty-seven "gates," or points of entry, where conditions were fairly stable and beacons had been placed. The beacons allowed the miners to orient themselves as they went into the belt, and more than that, helped them to navigate once they were inside.

For years Cap had used business trips into the belt to search for his one-time liner
Star of Empire,
as though in finding her, he would find himself.

And that's how they'd stumbled over the alien drifter, a find more valuable than the
Star,
but one that was difficult to cash in.

It took four days to make the trip from Pylax to the belt, four days that, if not exactly pleasant, were made more bearable by their rather eccentric captain. She was a competent ship's master, a great cook, and one helluva storyteller.

Her name was Edna Edith Rogers, and she'd been in space for more than forty years, starting as an assistant power tech and working her way up to master.

A lot of interesting and sometimes funny things had happened during that forty years, and each one had been crafted into a well-told story.

It seemed that Captain Edna had been married to a wonderfully crazy man named Harry, had made and lost three different fortunes, and had accumulated a dozen college degrees, including ones in such wildly different subjects as law, xeno-biology, accounting, and home economics.

And so it was that Lando found himself eating freshly baked coffee cake, laughing at Captain Edna's stories, and worrying at the same time. They had escaped from Pylax but were far from free. Somehow, thanks to his troubles with the law and Cap's drunken chatter, their situation had gone from bad to worse.

What good is an alien drifter if you can't sell it? And if you did manage to sell it what about the attention that would generate?

These questions and many more went unanswered as the days passed and the belt approached. Under normal conditions they would have been extremely reluctant to provide the drifter's coordinates. In this case, however, they had very little choice. They planned to move the ship the moment that Captain Edna was gone. They'd already moved her once, and there was no reason to think they couldn't do it again. True, they had a tug the first time out, but they knew more about the ship now, and Lando felt sure that it would obey their commands.

The drifter was hidden just inside the edge of the belt a few hundred miles sunward of gate sixteen. Lando watched the asteroids as Captain Edna conned her ship past the gate and skimmed the edge of the belt. They were beautiful in their own way—ancient chunks of rock and metal, tumbling along, their roughly textured surfaces rotating through the sunlight.

Any other ship might've been in grave danger from the asteroids but not the drifter. It had spent hundreds, maybe even thousands of years inside the belt, all without so much as a scratch. So far as they knew anyway.

No, the ship had defenses against asteroids, and these became rather apparent as Captain Edna guided her vessel between the outermost roids and open space.

The control room was rather small, with barely enough room for Lando in the co-pilot's seat, and Della behind. Row upon row of indicator lights glowed green, amber, and red, and lit Edna's face from below.

In spite of her passengers' previous descriptions, the jobber was surprised by what she saw.

The drifter was long, longer than the largest liner that Edna had ever seen, and twice as big around. Not only that, but it was slightly luminescent, as if lit from within.

And where human ships would have surface installations like weapons blisters, antenna arrays, and solar panels, this one had large green blobs. They clung to the hull like clumps of fungi. As Edna watched she saw one of them detach itself and race outward to touch a nearby asteroid.

That's what it looked like anyway, but her passengers assured the jobber that the "touch" had force behind it, enough force to keep the asteroids away and create its own safety zone.

Then another blob shot forth, only this one came straight at her ship, and hit with a considerable amount of force. The ship rocked back and forth and some alarms went off.

Captain Edna looked worried. "Will it push us away?"

Lando shook his head. "No, it's checking us out. Watch what happens next."

Green light flooded the control room. It paused, slid the length of the ship, and disappeared.

Captain Edna looked at her readouts. There was nothing but snow. "That light came through solid durasteel!"

Lando smiled. "Scary, isn't it?"

Edna glanced at the screens again. "It sure is. But beautiful too. No wonder they want you. That thing's worth millions."

Lando checked the woman's expression, saw a sense of wonderment, and nodded his head. "Yes, millions or more. May I use your comset?"

"Sure, help yourself."

Lando touched some buttons. "This is Pik Lando. My companions and I wish to come aboard."

Captain Edna shook her head in amazement. "It speaks standard?"

Lando shrugged. "Understands it anyway. My guess is that it understands Finthian too, and any other language that can be translated into electronic form."

Both watched as a green blob separated itself from the ship, raced outward, and enclosed their ship. Green light filled the cabin. The drifter got bigger as the blob drew them inward. A voice came over the comset.

"Pik? Cap? You read me? This is Cy."

Captain Edna raised an eyebrow and looked at Lando.

"The fifth member of our crew," Lando explained. He touched a button. "Hi, Cy. How's it going?"

"Fairly well," the cyborg answered hesitantly, "but we need to talk. There could be a problem."

"We're on the way," Lando replied. "I'll see you in a few minutes. Lando out."

The drifter became larger and larger until it overflowed the screens. Then it was gone and they were inside the alien ship.

Captain Edna deployed the ship's landing jacks and there was a gentle bump as they touched down. The viewscreens were completely dark.

Lando stood and held out his hand. "Well, thanks for the ride. You're one helluva pilot, a great cook, and the finest storyteller this side of Sol."

Captain Edna's hand was dry and firm. "And you're the finest group of criminals I ever encountered!"

Lando and Della laughed. Edna's expression turned serious. "Tell me something."

"Yes?"

Captain Edna gestured toward the main lock. "What's next?"

Lando shrugged. "I don't know. Find a place to sell her I guess."

"Are you willing to sell her to the Il Ronnians?"

Lando and the others had already discussed that question. Of all the intelligent races man had encountered among the stars only the Il Ronn offered a serious threat. Not because they were more intelligent or more capable than the other races but because only they had the same driving ambition.

The Il Ronn had preceded man into space by thousands of years. But theirs was a cautious and methodical culture in which important decisions were reached through consensus. The result was an empire that expanded in a slow methodical manner.

In the meantime the human empire had grown in magnificent fits and starts. Periods of tremendous expansion had resulted in gains that would've taken the Il Ronnians hundreds or even thousands of years to achieve. All too often however these advances were lost through internal bickering, competition, or just plain laziness. The result was two empires of roughly equal power, each seeking to better the other, each skirting the precipice of war.

So, to give the Il Ronnians an artifact like the drifter would be to give them a technological edge that could destroy the empire. And while the empire had a lot of faults, it was better than slavery. They had all concurred.

Lando shook his head. "No, we'd destroy her first."

The jobber nodded. "Just as I thought. So that leaves the human empire. First place you go, they'll grab you, take the drifter, and dump you on some prison planet."

"True," Della responded, "but what can we do?"

Captain Edna looked at each of them in turn. "Tell me something. How much would it be worth to you if someone could cut you a deal, a
real
deal, one with guarantees, that allowed you to sell the drifter and walk away scot free?"

Lando looked at Della, then back again. "Ten percent."

Captain Edna's hand shot out. "I could probably get more, but ten percent of a few hundred million is a lot, especially for this old lady. You've got yourselves an agent! Give me a tape to that effect, plus your thumbprints on a standard salvage contract, and I'll go to work."

It took about fifteen minutes to make the tape and thumbprint the necessary document, Cap was more than a little resentful about their failure to consult him, but chose to let it go, knowing they could easily blame him for the whole situation.

Captain Edna saw them to the main hatch. "Can you communicate with Pylax?"

Lando shrugged. "Probably."

"Good. I have an electronic mailbox there. Give it a call one standard week from now."

Lando agreed, shook her hand, and followed the others through the lock. Sensing their presence the drifter flooded the bay with greenish light. By the time they cleared the area a green blob was forming around the ship. They watched as the ship seemed to snap out of existence. There was a pop of equalizing pressure and a loud exclamation as Cy squirted himself into the bay.

"The ship! Where did the ship go? Bring it back!"

Lando looked puzzled. "It took off. What's the problem?"

The deck seemed to shift beneath his feet. A familiar nausea entered his gut. A hyperspace shift! The drifter had gone FTL. But that couldn't be. Could it?

Lando looked at Cy. The others did likewise. The cyborg sagged to a lower altitude. "The problem? You want to know what the problem is? We're in hyperspace, that's what the problem is… and I don't have the faintest idea where we're going!"

8

The Il Ronnian Sand Sept trooper stood on a low wall. He was tall and his long spindly legs ended in cloven hooves. His skin was leathery and hairless where it showed around his uniform. Eons before its reddish hue had provided his ancestors with protective coloration on a world of red sand. The trooper's eyes were almost invisible within the shadow cast by a prominent supra-orbital ridge. He had long pointy ears and a tail with a triangular appendage on the end. It rose to shade his eyes from the sun.

Beyond the trooper, higher up on the opposite hillside, Wexel-15 could see another crew hard at work looting a museum. When younger the heavy had spent many happy rals in the museum staring at the perfectly preserved life-forms displayed there and wondering where they came from. Everyone knew that the Lords had occupied many worlds. But where were they? And what were they like?

The trooper saw that Wexel-15 was idle and frowned. His voice boomed through the translator that hung round his neck. "Hurry up, slave. I haven't got all day!"

Wexel-15 processed the alien's words and was just about to speak when the Il Ronnian drew his arm back and brought it forward with lightning speed. The whip was fifteen feet long. It made a loud cracking sound as it came down across Wexel-15's back. The pain was incredible, but outside of an involuntary grunt, he gave no sign of it. To do so would pleasure the Il Ronnian work master and this he refused to do.

Like all of his kind Wexel-15 had a blocky frame that was heavily layered with muscle. It rippled and bunched under the surface of his lavender skin. He wanted to grab the alien,

wanted to rip his arms off, but knew better than to try. Other members of his caste had attacked the Sand Sept troopers and their bodies hung upside down in the main square.