Hidden Empire (9 page)
“Aww, are you trying to hurt my feelings? Maybe you’d better make your excuses to this lady here.” The General put a hand
on Rlinda’s shoulders. “You stole one of her ships and killed her crew. Did you ask those people if they recognized
your
authority?”
“We were acquiring needed resources,” Sorengaard said. “You call us pirates, and yet the Big Hansa Goose has imposed tariffs
and trade restrictions on anything the Roamers import and export. You people simply wrap your thievery in political nicety.”
Lanyan’s lips formed a grim line. “Then let’s put an end to any further nicety.” Out here on the fringes of the Hansa, the
General had the authority to use whatever methods he deemed necessary. “Some of your corsairs saw fit to take their own lives
during capture. I can’t argue with that. Now I will pronounce my own sentence upon the rest of you. First, you have been caught
red-handed in the act of piracy. Moreover, the evidence clearly shows you are guilty of murdering the captain and crew of
the
Great Expectations
, and probably other ships as well.”
He gestured toward the access airlock hatches at the far end of the cargo bay. Those chambers were used for space combat troops,
after suiting up and engaging their personnel weapons, to exit from the battleship and proceed to zero-G combat exercises.
“Your punishment is death, swift and sure, with no malice and as painless as I can reasonably make it.”
Though the sentence made her heart heavy, Rlinda was not surprised. The corsairs didn’t even argue, simply glared at General
Lanyan.
“Because the rest of you have made the mistake of following Rand Sorengaard, he will be the one to dispense your sentence.
Each of you, one by one, into the airlock. Sorengaard, you will eject them into space.”
“I will
not.”
The pirate leader raised his lantern jaw. “Torture me as much as you will, but I refuse to be your pawn.”
One of the corsairs spoke up. “Do it, Rand. I’d rather have you push the button than one of these filthy Eddies.” The other
pirates muttered agreement. Three spat on the deck, trying to hit Lanyan but missing by at least a foot.
One man broke away from the line and moved toward the airlock hatches. “Don’t let them gloat, Rand. This is the only choice
they’ll let us have.”
The pirate leader looked at his captured crewmen and seemed to see what he expected to find in their expressions. Then he
turned back to the General. “This is no victory for you.”
The first man went to the hatch, but Rlinda couldn’t decide whether he was the bravest of them all, or if he felt it might
be worse watching the others die before him. A uniformed soldier opened the airlock hatch, gesturing inside as if he were
a formal maître d’.
“We could do two or three at once, General,” said a lieutenant.
“No,” both Lanyan and Rand Sorengaard answered in unison.
“Flung out into space…,” the first man muttered, but his voice did not quiver with fear. “I guess that’s the closest a Roamer
will get to going home.”
“Go find your Guiding Star,” Sorengaard said.
The soldier sealed the hatch shut and Rlinda turned away, not wanting to look through the windowplate. Though she hated what
these pirates had done to her ship, her innocent crew, she could not watch the air being drained away. Explosive decompression
would cause the man’s soft tissues to burst before his lungs and his blood began to boil and freeze at the same time.
Rand Sorengaard muttered a prayer or a farewell under his breath and then hammered the release button without hesitating.
The first of the captured corsairs was gone.
Cold and horrified at the brutal justice, Rlinda spoke quietly to Lanyan, who stood at attention as if he did not want to
be disturbed. “You’ve made your point, General. Is that not sufficient?”
“No, it is not, madam. The sentence is just, and you know it.” He watched as the second pirate was manhandled into the airlock
and the hatch sealed behind him. “Space is vast, and lawlessness can grow unmanageable if left unchecked. My mission is to
respond with sufficient vehemence to provide a credible deterrent.”
He looked at the colorful, exotic clothing the corsairs wore and stared out at the viewscreens. In space, the mismatched and
weirdly modified pirate ships hung together, manufactured to the Roamers’ own strange specifications. His teeth pressed together,
as if he didn’t want the insulting words to come out of his mouth. “Damned Roachers!”
After all the corsairs had been similarly executed, General Lanyan himself ejected Rand Sorengaard from an airlock hatch,
then turned to his Remora pilots standing in the Juggernaut launching bays.
“One more step to go, men. Scout the vicinity and gather all the frozen bodies. Bring them back inside so we can incinerate
them properly.” He looked over at Rlinda Kett. “We’re in close proximity to a shipping lane here. No sense in leaving navigation
hazards.”
R
iding the lemony-tan clouds of Golgen, the Roamer skymine left a wide wake as it scooped up misty resources. The harvester
complex—a sprawling cluster of reactor chambers, gathering funnels, storage tanks, and separable living quarters—was similar
to hundreds of other skymines run by the nomadic Roamers above gas-giant planets across the Spiral Arm.
The extended clans operated on the fringe of the Hanseatic League, aloof and independent. Families captained their own skymines
or operated resource stations in the detritus of planets no one else wanted.
Roamer skymines harvested vast amounts of hydrogen from gas planets, giant reservoirs of resources accessible for the taking.
They ran millions of gaseous tons through ekti reactors using an old Ildiran process. Through catalysts and convoluted magnetic
fields, the reactors converted ultrapure hydrogen into an exotic allotrope of hydrogen.
Ekti
.
Ildiran stardrives, the only known means of faster-than-light travel, depended on ekti as their power source. Huge amounts
of hydrogen were needed to create even minimal quantities of the elusive substance. Because of their close family ties and
their willingness to operate on the edge, Roamers were able to provide ekti more cheaply and reliably than any other source.
The dispersed clans had successfully exploited the commercial niche.
More successfully, in fact, than anyone in the Hansa realized.
After Jess Tamblyn’s cargo escort docked with the Blue Sky Mine, the hatches were locked down, airlocks connected, bolts secured.
The cargo escort was little more than a spiderlike frame of engines and a captain’s bubble; when the framework was fastened
to the skymine’s storage tanks, Jess could pilot containers of condensed ekti to distribution centers. Even performing a trivial
job like this, he always did his best, going beyond what was expected of him, setting a good example.
When all the indicator lights glowed green, he formally requested permission to come aboard his brother’s skymine. The Roamer
workers teased Jess until he entered a set of override commands and stepped aboard anyway. He shrugged back his hood, patted
down his many pockets, then gave a shake of his shaggy brown hair. “So, if you recognized me, where’s the red carpet?”
One of the production engineers, a gruff middle-aged man from the Burr family, gave a good-natured curse. “Shizz, you’ve been
promoted to cargo driver, I see! Does that mean you’ve had a fight with your father?”
Jess flashed a rakish smile. “I can’t let my brother get into all the disagreements with my family.” He was handsome, blue-eyed,
with a vibrant personality that made him appear energetic and relaxed at the same time. “Besides, somebody competent has to
take the load to the distribution ships. Can you think of a better pilot?”
The Burr engineer waved a dismissive hand. “You’re just shuttling ekti to the Big Goose. They wouldn’t know a good pilot from
a blind farmer.”
The deprecating reference to the Hansa came from the original albatrosslike configuration of the early Terran trading ships—meant
to look like eagles, but shaped more like fat geese. The name of the Hansa Chairman who had tried to make the gypsy colonists
sign the Hansa Charter, Bertram Goswell, had added further inspiration. Roamers found the term to be suitably insulting.
Jess shrugged. “No matter. I like to find excuses to see my brother, make sure he’s not making too many mistakes.” He didn’t
say out loud that he also seized upon any legitimate reason to escape the stern scrutiny of his father. Old Bram Tamblyn layered
heavy pressures and responsibilities upon Jess, now that his older brother was no longer welcome as a member of the clan.
The young man held on to those expectations as an anchor and never put his own wishes forward, even if old Bram rarely noticed.
As the cumbersome facility cruised along through Golgen’s clouds, workers tended the ekti reactor controls, checked the distribution
pipes, and lubricated mechanical systems that needed constant maintenance. Jess walked through the cargo bay, listening to
the comforting hisses and hums, the industrial music made by all skymines. He loved being here. Blue Sky always seemed to
be cleaner and more polished than any other skymine. Jess’s brother, Ross, was immensely proud of what he had accomplished
here.
Jess trudged down the corridor, needing no help in finding the captain’s deck. Even on the workshift, Roamers wore colorful,
many-layered outfits composed of scarves, billowing sleeves, hoods, and hats. Every tunic, vest, and set of trousers was adorned
with frills of pockets and pouches, clips, chains, and hooks for storing a thousand gadgets, testing devices, or hand weapons.
The clips kept tools in place and readily at hand, even in the low-gravity environments where Roamers spent a great deal of
their time.
“How long you staying, Jess?” asked a shift supervisor who came forward through the bulkhead from his office chamber.
“Less than a day. We’ve got a supply run and a quota to meet. Obligations, you know.”
The supervisor nodded. “We’ll tune up your cargo escort and link all the struts to the ekti tank.”
“Is Ross outside on the deck sightseeing again?”
“No. I think the chief’s in the navigation bubble.”
“What’s he worried about hitting in this big open sky?” Shaking his head, Jess scrambled up the interdeck ladder until he
found the navigation bubble. Though Ross had forever turned his back on the family water industry on Plumas, Jess always felt
welcome here on his older brother’s facility.
Placing his hands on his hips, he stared at the back of Ross’s head. His brother was intent on the controls, peering into
the clouds of the planet’s incomprehensibly vast and open sky. Vaporous convection currents rose up and tumbled down as the
skymine continued along its random path. An asterisk symbol had been painted above the navigation panel. It was the Guiding
Star, which the Roamers believed directed the paths of their lives.
“Afraid of crashing into an angry concentration of nitrogen? Or do you just like sitting in the captain’s chair and driving
this big hulk nowhere?”
Ross spun, and his face lit up in a smile. “Jess! I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Decided to save you the wages of a cargo hauler.” He came forward to embrace Ross. “Help you pay off that big debt—just another
part of my responsibility as your little brother.”
Ross indicated the sensor panels. “For your information, there’s an art and a skill to piloting a skymine. I still have to
adjust course, raise or lower the ship. A good captain always watches for dense concentrations of gases.”
The skymine trailed a squidlike network of probes; the kilometers-long threads drifted in the clouds, picking up data and
helping Ross decide where to go. Golgen’s atmospheric gases were rich with just the right mix of elements and catalysts for
the Ildiran reactors to produce ekti. Also, the gas giant was close to star-trading lanes, which allowed for easy distribution
of the fuel. After years of hard work, Ross was close to making a profit from his operation, despite their father’s constant
pessimism.
“I presume you’ve brought gossip?” Ross paused and added ironically, “And of course, a sincere apology from Dad begging me
to come home?”
Jess laughed. “If I’d brought that, I’d be here with a full Roamer celebration fleet such as the Spiral Arm has never seen.”
Ross gave him a bittersweet laugh. “One of us is still off course from the Guiding Star. Let’s go up on deck. I want to be
out in the fresh air.”
They climbed through hatches, took a lift, and finally passed through a set of wind doors to a broad observation deck. The
deck could be surrounded by an atmosphere field, but for now it was open to the sky itself. Ross frequently took the Blue
Sky Mine down to an equilibrium level where the clouds were thick enough to be breathable and Golgen’s atmosphere was warmed
by internal thermal sources.
Jess drew a deep breath of the alien air. “This isn’t something I get to do every day.”
“I do,” Ross said.
The Blue Sky Mine, like all Roamer-designed factories, was composed of three main segments: the intake/feed tanks, the processing
reactors and exhaust funnels, and the ekti storage spheres. As the skymine plowed through the atmosphere, open nozzles sucked
in raw gases and delivered them through processing machinery. After passing through the catalytic reactors, the rare hydrogen
allotrope was siphoned off, while the waste gases spilled back out from the hot stacks.
