Her Brother's Keeper - eARC (30 page)

Chapter 22

The Privateer Ship
Andromeda

Combine Space, Orlov’s Star System

When transiting between stars, an object’s velocity and momentum are not preserved. Ships that come through are left disoriented and vulnerable due to transit shock. The greatest difficulty in defending transit points is the constant expenditure of thrust required. The transit points themselves don’t orbit the stars they spawn from; their relative positions are dependent on the position of the stars in relation to one another and the strength of the quantum link between the two. They change their relative positions over time and are difficult to track.

As soon as the
Andromeda
appeared through the transit point, she was locked onto by a cluster of automated defense platforms. These weapons used a combination of huge solar sails and low-impulse ion thrusters to stay with the transit point and not be pulled into Orlov’s Star. They were small and low mass, but were bristling with missiles and directed energy weapons. When the ship’s communications systems came back online, the crew realized they were being hailed by the defense platforms.

A recorded message followed. The video was of a beautiful, pleasant-sounding woman. She had a flower in her hair, but wore a bland, gray jacket with a stand-up collar. Grafted to her temple was a small electronic device. She spoke Commerce English with an almost mechanical tone. “Welcome, travelers, to the People’s Combined Collective of Orlov’s Star. Whether our homeworld is your final destination or you’re just passing through, you will be pleased with our legendary hospitality. Your first stop will be the customs station, the coordinates of which are being sent with this message. We understand that space is a dangerous place. However, our system is safe and secure. As such, we require all visitors to keep their weapons powered down and offline for the duration of their stay in our system. All weapons and cargoes must be declared to the officials at the customs station and prepared for inspection. Please be advised,” the woman said, playfully wagging a finger at the camera, “that attempting to access our system network without authorization is strictly prohibited. Thank you, and have a lovely visit.”

Catherine grimaced at the recording through the pounding of her head from transit shock. “Well, they certainly seem pleasant.”

Wolfram von Spandau did not share her humor. (He almost never shared her humor.) “We must exercise the utmost caution,
Kapitänin
,” he said, turning his seat to face her. It was rare for both the captain and the XO to be on the command deck at the same time, but Catherine wanted her most experienced personnel on duty for this one. “I am sending their instructions to Astrogation and the Flight Deck, so that we may lay in a course and be underway. These customs officials may ask for exorbitant bribes. If we refuse to pay, they may confiscate the ship.”

Catherine’s eyes narrowed. “Like
hell
they will. You are correct, though, Wolfram.” She tapped one of her screens. A moment later, Mordecai Chang, the ship’s purser, appeared on her display. The screen split, and Cargomaster Kimball appeared as well.

“Cap’n,” Chang said politely. It was obvious he wasn’t feeling well either.

“Captain,” Kimball acknowledged.

Catherine sipped some water from her drinking tube and addressed her men. “Gentlemen, this is it. We’ve been given our marching orders from these defense platforms, and we’ll be underway shortly. We need to tread very carefully here. They’ll want our cargo manifests as well as a weapons inventory. Give them the ones we’ve prepared for this circumstance. If they send an inspector over, Mr. Kimball, deal with them as best you can. You are authorized to pay out additional bribes if need be. Mordecai, make sure our books are inspection-ready, please.”

“Yes ma’am,” Mordecai said. He wasn’t going to show them the
real
books, of course. He had special sets of books and documentation for inspection purposes.

“When we get through customs, they’ll send us to one of their commercial space stations. We need to resupply there. Remass is the number one priority, followed by rations. I want everything we bring on board scanned and inspected for surveillance devices. No matter how long we’re docked with the station, the crew is not to leave the ship under any circumstances.”

“Understood, Captain,” both men said. Catherine signed off, and addressed the others on the
Andromeda
’s command deck. “This is it, people, the last hurdle before we reach Zanzibar. Let’s make this as smooth as possible and get the hell out of this system. Wolfram, is our course laid in?”

“Yes,
Kapitänin.
”

“Very well. Extend radiators, send our flight plan to the customs station, and initiate the burn.”

* * *

It was not a short journey from the transit point to the customs station. For twenty-five hours the
Andromeda
pressed on through the night, matching trajectory with the customs station in high solar orbit. Her sensors were tracking over a hundred ships in the system. Orlov had a large population for a colony, over a billion, and had an incredible amount of space infrastructure. The system’s most sunward gas giant, Artyom, had a dozen moons and an exceptionally dense asteroid ring, all rich in minerals and heavy metals. Orlov’s Star was, by far, the most populous system in its sector of space.

Orlov itself was an inhospitable world, but one incredibly rich in mineral resources, including the very rare elements needed to make transit drives. The planet supported no native life beyond the equivalents of lichens, mosses, plankton, and bacteria, but had an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere suitable for breathing. Orlov was extremely volcanically and seismically active. Massive volcanoes, deep rifts, and powerful quakes scarred its rocky surface. Most of the population lived near the poles, where slowly melting ice caps provided a source of water and fed large, freshwater seas.

Orlov had never been intended for permanent colonization. During the Middle Diaspora, it was a booming hub of mining and trade, but was home to relatively few permanent residents. Being so remote, the system was completely cut off from the rest of inhabited space during the Interregnum, and it was popularly believed that the stranded residents went mad during their centuries-long struggle for survival. The modern-day Orlov Combine was a tyrannical surveillance state unlike anything else in known space.

As the
Andromeda
approached, long-ranged telemetry gave the crew a good picture of the customs station. It was as bare and utilitarian as anything else the Combine built: A large drum, one hundred meters in diameter, slowly rotating to simulate gravity. Around this was a massive, spindly docking structure, with docking ports for a dozen ships, clusters of radiators, solar panels, and communications arrays. The habitat module spun in the external structure like a wheel in the fork of a bicycle.

Following directives broadcast from the station, the
Andromeda
opened the docking port on her nose and coupled with an open berth on the space station’s huge superstructure. The ship’s manipulator arm slid forward and clamped onto a load-bearing point, better stabilizing her as she equalized pressure with the station and prepared for inspection. Her crew moved to and fro in freefall, making final preparations for boarding by customs officials. The large stockpile of ground weapons that had been purchased for the ground team were hidden away, buried in several of the sealed containers in the cargo bay. The ship’s course logs were altered, showing her coming from Heinlein instead of New Austin, and stopping at the Llewellyn Freehold on her way to Zanzibar. None of these preparations meant the captain wouldn’t have to pay some hefty bribes to get through Combine space unmolested, but it would, hopefully, make the process easier.

The shipping manifests, flight plan, and cargo declarations were all checked electronically. Catherine remained strapped into her command chair, watching the various documents scroll across the screen as the customs computer scanned them line-by-line. No red flags had popped up yet, and so far the transit, docking, and customs taxes hadn’t been too expensive. She was beginning to hope that she’d actually make it through Combine space without being searched or having to shell out a huge bribe. They usually paid less attention to ships merely crossing their space than those who actually had business in the Orlov’s Star System.

Then an alarm chirped and the screen flashed red.
Damn it to bloody hell,
Catherine thought.
That’s what I get for wishful thinking.
The
Andromeda
’s falsified flight plan was flagged, though nothing in particular about it was. A baritone computerized voice told her, in Commerce English, that her ship had been randomly selected for inspection, and to stand by for boarding. The message then repeated in Classical French, Esperanto, Mandarin, and other languages before Catherine hit the mute button.
Random my pale Avalonian ass.

“This is the captain speaking,” she said, piping her message across the ship. “We are about to be boarded by Combine customs officers. You all know what to do. Remain calm, be cooperative, and if there are any issues at all, do
not
become confrontational. Let your officers know, and they’ll inform me. I’ll handle any discrepancies myself. That is all.”

A short while later Catherine, Wolfram, and Mazer Broadbent were all clinging to handholds in the uppermost docking bay, waiting to receive the Combine customs officers. Catherine could see the tension on her men’s faces. The worst-case scenario, in this particular case, was pretty bad. There were plenty of horror stories about the Combine security apparatus, and no one wanted to learn if they were true.

As it would turn out, the two bored-looking customs officers that drifted downward through the hatch were almost underwhelming. One had very pale skin and white hair, and his eyes darted around nervously. He clutched his tablet computer as if he were afraid one of the spacers would steal it. The other customs officer, despite the electronic monitor bolted to his skull, seemed more like a normal person. He greeted the crew pleasantly, introducing himself as Corbin-17741, and asked to be shown to the cargo hold.

Customs Officer Corbin clung to one of the handholds in the
Andromeda’
s cargo bay and let his flunky do all the work. The pale, nervous-looking man seemed comfortable enough in zero gravity. He launched himself from cargo pallet to cargo pallet, noting the manifest and tapping entries into his tablet. He asked for two random cargo containers to be opened for inspection, which Kimball’s team did without hesitation. There was nothing in them but the rations and supplies that were listed on the manifests, after all.

Pulling himself next to Catherine, Corbin thumbed his handheld with one hand while gripping a handle with the other. “Captain, you declared that your ship is armed?”

“I did,” Catherine said nonchalantly. “The frontier is dangerous. Pirates and the so-called fleets of petty, third-rate colonies, who may as well be pirates, prey on merchant ships frequently. We are often tasked to provide security for merchant ships traveling through this sector, and our presence alone has quieted things down.”

“I imagine so,” Corbin said, sounding unimpressed, and not looking up. “Your weapons systems are…”

“Two rotary missile launchers,” Catherine provided, “two heavy laser turrets, and one sixty-millimeter gauss weapon.”

“You’re not carrying any prohibited weapons, such as nuclear warheads, or other weapons of mass destruction?”

“Absolutely not,” Catherine insisted, and it was true. Outside of major fleet battles and orbital bombardment, nuclear warheads were more trouble than they were worth. “All of our warheads are conventional high-explosive/armor piercing, or high-explosive fragmentation.”

“Very well,” Corbin said, tapping the screen of his device and lowering it. “Everything seems to be in order here, assuming my subordinate doesn’t find anything improper.”

“I assure you he won’t,” Catherine said, doing her best to feign sincerity.
Is it really going to be this easy?
It was possible. More and more merchants and traders were braving Combine space every year in search of cheap materials to resell. Maybe the Combine authorities were more interested in business than graft?

“I’m sure,” Corbin agreed. “Now, there is one last thing we need to go over, and I have some forms you need to sign. Is there a someplace where we can discuss this in private?”

Bloody hell,
Catherine fumed.
Here it is. The part where he demands his bribe. Maybe he’ll be decent enough to pretend that it’s taxes or fees he’s collecting.
“Ah, yes,” she said, maintaining her composure. “My cargomaster’s office, right over there, is secure. Mr. Kimball?”

“Yes, Captain?” Kimball replied, clutching a handhold and looking daggers at the pale customs officer touching everything in his cargo bay.

“I’ll leave you to oversee this for a moment. Mr. Corbin and I are going to your office to sign some documents.”

Kimball looked over at the captain knowingly. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Right this way, please,” Catherine said, pushing off the wall and sailing toward Kimball’s small office.

Once inside, Corbin tapped the electronic device on the side of his head, then did something on his handheld. The tiny light on his skull-mount device went out. “I apologize for this, Captain. For the moment, we have our privacy.”

Can he do that?
Catherine wondered. It was possible, she surmised, that if you were high up enough in the Combine hierarchy that you could get away with turning off the camera for just a bit. She folded her arms across her chest, floating at an odd angle from the customs officer, and glared at him. All pretenses of politeness were gone. “Let’s not mince words, then,” she said. “What do I have to do to ensure my ship crosses Combine space without incident? We have no business here. We just want to cross your space and be on our way.”

Corbin smiled. “I see you know the way of the world. Truth be told, many in my position would demand money from you. We’re not exactly paid, you see, and foreign hard currency is accepted on the black market. Other, sleazier individuals may demand something more
intimate
from you.”