Family Law 2: The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet

The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet

Mackey Chandler

Second Book of the Family Law Series

Cover design by Sarah A. Hoyt

Background built using Space Construction Kit © Tony Hayes AKA Bogwoppet www.my-art-gallery.co.uk  (2007)

Spaceships from renders by
http://www.most-digital-creations.com/
  © Adam Thwaites

• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  
• Chapter 13
  
• Chapter 14
  
• Chapter 15
  
• Chapter 16
  
• Chapter 17
  
• Chapter 18
  
• Chapter 19
  
• Chapter 20
  
• Chapter 21
  
• Chapter 22
  
• Chapter 23
  
• Chapter 24
  
• Chapter 25
  
• Chapter 26
  
• The Last Part – My other books and links
  

Chapter 1

It wasn't
like
Fargoers to be bureaucratic. They prided themselves on independence. So it seemed unlikely the United States of North America nor any other Earth power could pressure them not to sell military supplies to Derf. The Derf had
won
the recent war, so it wasn't a matter of whether to re-arm the defeated underdog and stirring up new hostilities.

Neither did the missiles Gordon wanted to buy hold any secrets for him.
He'd
originally been the one to sell Fargone the copies they reverse engineered to make them. Indeed he still had magazines over half full of the X head ship to ship missiles they'd copied, although it was true the Fargoers improved on the original missiles. Gordon's forces had been very frugal with the expensive missiles during the war. He simply wanted to replace the ones he'd used and alter the standard load out on the captured USNA ships. He really had no use for ground attack nukes. He hoped never to use
one
, much less need the half and half load out of ground attack and space weapons the North Americans favored.

Their fleet was going exploring for profit, not looking for trouble. Weapons were expensive and he'd have been happy not to waste money on them. But they were going
deep
. Deep as in potentially
years
away from Human or Derf society. So deep they had no idea what they would find and more to the point
who
. There wouldn't be any help out there and they best be able to take care of themselves. Man had already found two aboriginal races and two marginally technological societies close to home, The Derf and the Hinth had both been far enough along to take up space flight easily in a generation. It seemed likely sooner or later they'd find some advanced space-going species. How friendly or territorial they might be was impossible to guess. But he wanted to be prepared should they be so unfriendly they'd try to blow his dainty little butt off on sight.

In honesty he
was
irritated. Being over a half ton of irritated carnivore with four inch gut rippers on his middle arms, he could have been radiating intimidation. Instead his personality was such that he got quieter and less
visibly
agitated the more upset he got. When he got to the stage of statue-like immobility it would be a very good time to try to defuse the situation. He wasn't anywhere near that state, yet. To all appearances he might have been a tourist, relaxed and looking out the window with interest at the cluster of towers and skyscrapers that was the biggest city on Fargone. The planet was still mostly empty and this was the only city on it with tall buildings. The Fargoers seemed determined not to turn it into another Earth, rejecting almost ninety eight percent of the applicants for immigration.

His daughter Lee was even angrier. She was a loose cannon liable to say
anything
to the Fargone military commander they were preparing to meet. She was precocious, utterly fearless, an easy thing to be at her age, but it was a cunning, calculating fearlessness instead of the usual teen inability to imagine her own death. At fourteen she was scarily capable of imagining six different paths to
your
sudden death, all the while smiling pleasantly at you, as you were busily occupied making nice-nice and patting the sweet little Earth girl on the head.

 Indeed, Gordon had seen her track a young Derf intruder through the woods back on Gordon's clan territory. She had followed him through a falling dusk in dense forest and prepared to defend
Gordon
from the interloper. Half a metric ton of young six limbed aggressive carnivore, equipped with a 20mm carbine, the pushy young cub had given Gordon a hard time, challenging his clan's territory, until matters had almost come to a head. Lee had changed the balance of that angry confrontation by the simple expedient of loudly clicking the safety off her pistol from slightly behind the fellow in the quiet woods. Derf have excellent hearing. The 'Oh shit'  look on the kid's face was a precious memory Gordon held close.

Gordon was Derf too after all, in fact he had fifty years experience and a couple hundred kilograms on the kid. It never seemed to have occurred to Lee he might not
need
her help. He hadn't. He was holding a handgun hidden from the insolent cub. In fact he'd love to remind her – that although the entire Red Tree/Human war was precipitated by her treatment on Earth, almost all of it was fought without her direct help... thank you very much.

His own clan hadn't accepted his adoption of Lee without some controversy. But they
did
do the right thing in the end, even if it required a change of First Mother. At least it hadn't required removal by assassination to make new law that respected Lee's adaption, though it was a close thing.

The United States of North America had then very stupidly broken their treaty over disapproving of his adoption of Lee. One cranky old prejudiced judge had taken her into protective custody when they were visiting Earth. The Nation of Red Tree did not take kindly to having their children kidnapped. The three Mothers took Red Tree to war without hesitation, though it had been over a thousand years since they'd made war on anyone. The clan would have declared war on every nation and world of all three races for one of their own. It was a matter of principle.

Gordon looked down at his daughter with a smile. The snarling grin he got back was no less threatening for being on a fifty kilogram or so Human girl of fourteen years, who needed a few more years growth to push two meters, versus his own seven hundred kilos and four meter length.

"We really don't want to jump right in with an adversarial conversation," Gordon pleaded. "Let's stay calm, ask some questions and find out what the
real
problem is."

"Does this mean I shouldn't remind him that removal of obstructive officials by assassination is a perfectly normal procedure in Derf politics?"

"It might be well not to mention it
first
. And if you didn't jam your thumb under your holster flap while saying it, as you did just now, it would add an air of genteel sincerity."

"Why are we seeing someone from the Ministry of War?" Lee demanded. "This is just a commercial transaction and we're not asking credit. I saw the ridiculously huge ingots of silver in the hold. That's the basis of their currency and an absolute necessity for them to import since it is scarce in the Fargone system. So it's not like our kind of money isn't favored here."

Gordon broke into song..."And I don't care if the money's no good. Just take what you need and leave the rest. But they should never, have taken, the very best..."

"What's
that
?"

"A song about an old war in North America. Money offered in war time is often worthless."

"How can money be – entirely worthless?" Lee asked, scrunching her nose up.

"When it's paper certificates and they won't, or can't, redeem it in metal," Gordon explained.

"Oh, you'd be a fool to take them then. That's a bad contract and fraud, not bad money."

"Yes, but in the song he told the soldiers to take what they wanted, probably his food, because otherwise they'd probably just shoot him dead and steal it anyway."

"Why didn't you buy smaller bars that would be easier to handle?" Lee wondered. "You could count out smaller bars to pay the exact price of whatever deal we work out. I never imagined they made ingots so big they came with a big eye for the crane to hook into cast right on top."

"That's the cheapest way to buy silver. Those are ten thousand troy ounce ingots. Besides, I didn't
want
easy to handle. How would you go about stealing one of those?"

Lee tipped her head to acknowledge the truth of that. They'd hardly fit in your pocket. A new suspicion occurred to her. "Do you think they'll try to run up the price because they know we're rich?"

"No, if that was it, we'd still be meeting with the munitions manufacturer, or him and a Finance Minister. No, I'm afraid whatever the problem is, it is
political
in nature," he said, distastefully.

"You think they may regret selling you the three radiation enhanced weapons back in the war?"

"I doubt it, they haven't made any noises about buying back the two we haven't used."

"I'm stumped what they want then," she said, frustrated. "I'm just going to sit back, listen for awhile and try to hear
how
he sounds, as much as what he says."

"You are getting smarter about dealing with other Humans," he allowed, relieved somewhat. "Where is Clare?" he asked. The girl had been rescued at the same time Lee left Earth, and was the first Human near Lee's age that she had gotten to know well. They had been near inseparable while they tried to get everything ready for their voyage. He hadn't noticed her absence with everything else on his mind. Lee counted Clare a friend, although she seemed dominant over the older girl. Clare might be older but she'd been raised in a North American negative tax family in a rural area of northern Michigan, so she was much less experienced at everything than Lee, especially anything considered important off Earth.

"She's with your recruiting people, trying to find some department she'll fit in. You see what you can pry out of this fellow. You're more intimidating than me."

He wasn't so sure of that. The official meeting them would
know
Lee was here because she owned two thirds of the deep space explorer
High Hopes
, which was the lead vessel in their exploration fleet. She also owned the other DSE,
The Champion William
, their escort the heavy cruiser
Retribution
and a mixed bag of shuttles and fuel scoopers outright. All her's by inheritance or purchase. She had control of them despite being young, because she had assumed the semi-adulthood provided for in Derf law, which included property rights and the ability to form contracts, even if it wasn't the full mantle of adulthood that Earth law saw as all or nothing.

Lee seemed content to allow Gordon to continue raising her in her intermediate state, with partial rights and responsibilities. She might own the ships and speak to their broad use to explore, but nobody was going to accept her in command on the flight deck with her meager experience. Neither could she sit as a clan Mother yet and Lee didn't find either lack particularly confining. Gordon owned a third of the
High Hopes
and was in undisputed command of their little fleet.

The Mothers of Red Tree had decided to send the clan owned destroyer
Sharp Claws
along in exchange for shares in potential discoveries. It would carry six clan citizens who would be getting their first space experience, bringing their own shares home, as well as earning an equal share for each of the six paid to the clan, for the service of the ship.

The
High Hopes
was the only ship not a war capture. It was the original North American flagged ship, in which Gordon and Lee had gone exploring with Lee's parents. That search had ended in both triumph and tragedy. They'd discovered a class A world, which left them beyond simply rich, but her parents had died while surveying the new world, Providence.

The finder's fees and shares on a class A world where men could stand bare-faced meant they never had to worry about money for even extravagant living, but Lee being born to ship life, had tired of planets and planet bound people quickly. Rather than retire at ease on a planet she wished to continue the life of an explorer and felt there was even more need for bold exploration now. In her opinion the slowing spherical expansion of  human space risked running up against another star faring race, more aggressively exploring deep, leaving Humans and their associated species with a foreshortened frontier and the loss of a lot of prime real estate. She wanted to put her new wealth to work pushing back the frontier. Her recruits shared that vision and hoped to all come back filthy rich on their ship shares.