Shooting the Rift - eARC (8 page)

“No, it’s my job,” Aunt Jenny explained, in much the same tone I remembered from her early attempts to teach me the alphabet. “I really am a lieutenant commander in the Fleet Auxiliary, and I put in long hours making sure the Navy has what it needs when and where it needs it.”

I could feel my forehead furrowing. “But—” I began.

Aunt Jenny cut me off with a gesture. “While I’m doing that, I’m also talking to merchants, shipping brokers, and Guilders about why they can’t get particular items to particular places without more time and money than I’m willing to give them. Conversations which might suggest, for instance, that my opposite numbers in the League are stockpiling supplies in certain systems, which implies in turn that some of their naval assets are likely to arrive there relatively soon. Information our own strategic planners might find interesting.”

“I see,” I said, finally beginning to feel some firm ground underfoot. “So you’re a real logistics officer, who just passes on snippets of intel from time to time.” I was quite proud of the abbreviation, which I’d picked up from some thriller or other, and which I felt showed some familiarity with the nuts and bolts of espionage.

“I do nothing of the kind,” Aunt Jenny snapped. “I’m a professional intelligence agent, who’s been in the field since before you were in diapers. More of which I changed, I might add, than your mother ever did.” That, at least, I had no trouble in believing. “I evaluate everything that comes in through my network, and my recommendations are listened to.”

I felt as if the floor was dropping away rapidly beneath me, although that might have been at least partially due to the fact that the ale I was drinking seemed less than keen on peaceful coexistence with the pies I’d had earlier. “But you just said your real job was logistics,” I protested feebly, feeling more out of my depth than ever.

“So it is,” my aunt said, before relenting in the face of my obvious confusion. She smiled, in a slightly condescending way. “They’re both my real job. Most people see one of them, a few the other. Me, I see it all mesh together. Couldn’t tell you where one ends and the other begins, these days.” She drained her glass, and signaled for another. “End of the day, I don’t see that it even matters. Shipping boots, or telling ’em where to march, it’s all serving the Commonwealth one way or another.”

“I suppose it is,” I said, still wondering why she’d decided to confide in her double life to me. The one thing I was already certain about was that I was probably not going to appreciate her reasons, whatever they were.

“Would you?” Without warning, she was looking me straight in the eye, the moment of introspection already over.

“Would I what?” I replied, playing for time. If she wanted what I suspected she did, she could damn well ask in so many words.

“Serve the Commonwealth.” Her gaze grew more intent. “Given the opportunity.”

“I was given the opportunity,” I said. “But I screwed it up.”

“Yes. You did.” My aunt nodded, thoughtfully. “For a principle. Bit worrying, that, but you might still do.”

“Do for what?” I asked, still determined to hear her say it.

“A small job for me. The other me, that is. Not the Naval Auxiliary officer.”

“You want me to be a spy?” I couldn’t help myself: the cool, slightly sardonic tone I’d adopted in my head came out of my mouth as something closer to an excited squeal.

The corner of Aunt Jenny’s mouth quirked, in what might have been a hastily suppressed smile. “You won’t be getting any exploding toothpaste, or a rifle disguised as a backscratcher, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said. “But apart from an over-active conscience, you seem to have most of the right skills.”

“Which are?” I asked, beginning to find the game of question and frustratingly partial answer more than mildly irritating, but with hindsight I suspect it was simply another test—or, perhaps, a tutorial, in the art of mining information in apparently negligible nuggets.

“You’re an opportunist.” I opened my mouth reflexively to protest, but found myself nodding in agreement. I wouldn’t have put it quite like that myself, but still . . . “You see an opening, and you can’t resist exploiting it. Like the weakness in the Academy’s block.”

“And?” I asked, perhaps a little more brusquely than I’d intended, uncomfortable with the reminder of my own folly. “You said skills. Plural.”

You made this,
Aunt Jenny sent, indicating the sneakware still floating in our conjoined ‘spheres.
A “hobby” that cracked some Navy grade defenses. Your sister tells me you have a knack for this kind of thing.

“You’ve spoken to Tinkie about me?” I asked, unable to conceal my surprise. “What did she say?”

“Nothing complimentary,” my aunt assured me, and I felt a kind of numb despair settle heavily into my stomach, where it sat awkwardly, elbowing its way in between the beer and the ill-advised pies. I’d already realized that any kind of reconciliation with my sister was at best unlikely, but having it confirmed so casually still hurt. “But she did confirm your suitability for this kind of work, in a roundabout sort of way.”

“Pleased to hear it,” I said, conscious of sounding anything but.

She said she’s seen you using this
, Aunt Jenny continued, then grinned at me conspiratorially. “I didn’t ask when or where, but she didn’t seem all that surprised that you’d been able to crack the Academy. Has Anastasia been a bit careless about taking her work home?”

“You’re the security expert, you tell me,” I replied, and her grin widened fractionally.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what it was?” I asked, and she shook her head sadly.

“Now that’s disappointing, Simon. You just confirmed you’ve been somewhere else you shouldn’t have. Mistake like that could get you shot in the field.” She took a sip of her newly arrived drink. “If I really wanted to know what it was, I wouldn’t have to ask you, would I? I’d have found out a long time ago.”

“I suppose you would,” I said. “Anything else?”

“About what?” For the first time since our conversation began she seemed to be on the back foot, which surprised me a little—unless that was what I was supposed to think. It was beginning to dawn on me that from now on I wouldn’t be able to take anything anyone said to me at face value.

“Your little list,” I said. “Of things that made you think I’d be good at this.”

My aunt shrugged. “You’re stubborn. You found this place a lot quicker than I expected. That about covers it.”

So I’d been right. Her disappearance had been a test. I shrugged too, and finished my ale, with as much nonchalance as I could manage. “That was luck, more than anything.”

“So you’re lucky, too. Make the most of it, but don’t rely on it. Because the minute you do, it’ll bugger off.” She drained her own glass, and stood abruptly. “Come on. I’m starving. I’ll buy you a pie.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

In which I meet a father and daughter,

and make friends with one of them.

To my unspoken relief, Aunt Jenny didn’t come to the docking arm to see me off. Having her there would have felt too much like my arrival at the Academy, and those were memories I really didn’t want to relive. There was also the matter of my cover to consider: Remington thought she was getting rid of me as a favor to the family, and if he saw us apparently on good terms just before embarkation he was smart enough to suspect that there was something else going on we hadn’t told him about.

Which, of course, there was. Numarkut, our destination, was one of those rare stellar systems with rift connections to half a dozen others, rather than the mere one or two most stars possessed, which made it a thriving nexus for trade. Which, in turn, made it of great interest to Aunt Jenny, and whoever she reported to. Numarkut had direct links to worlds within both League and Commonwealth, joining each of them to the Rimward Way, a trading route running straight towards the heart of the Human Sphere through a bewildering variety of Federations, Confederations, Alliances, Hegemonies, Dominions, Demesnes, and, for all I knew, a few more Commonwealths and Leagues; not to mention any number of independent and nonaligned worlds, all with their own agendas. What made Numarkut of particular interest at the moment, however, was that one of its open rifts was the second one connecting to Rockhall, bypassing the choke point in the Sodallagain system. It went without saying that if my aunt’s counterparts in the League were getting intelligence from their agents on Rockhall, which they were as surely as trying to breathe vacuum was a bad idea, this was the route it was coming through.

“You don’t have to do much,” Aunt Jenny had told me, “just keep your eyes and ears open, particularly around any crews fresh through the rift from Rockhall.” A job I’d thought well within my capabilities.

“And if I hear anything of interest?” I’d asked. Waiting till we got back to Avalon, even if the
Stacked Deck
made a direct return run, which was by no means certain, would render any intelligence I managed to gather so out of date as to be useless.

“I’ve got an asset in one of the shipping agencies, with access to their riftcom. Anything urgent you can pass on to him.”

“Will do,” I agreed, trying not to sound too impressed. Though it was possible to send messages across interstellar distances by squirting pulses of modulated gravitons down the right rift and keeping your fingers crossed, it took almost as much energy as sending a ship through, and the kit required would fill a small cargo hold. Which was good news for the Commerce Guild, who kept a tight grip on most of the postal traffic in the Human Sphere, but not so much for everyone else, who had to pay through the nose to keep in touch with the neighboring systems. Only people who really needed to pass messages faster than the time it took for a starship to make its way to and from the rift points at both ends of the journey, and had money to burn besides, bothered to maintain a riftcom: which, in practice, meant the local Guildhalls, most interstellar governments (especially their Navies), and sufficiently prosperous businesses who absolutely had to keep tabs on what was going on elsewhere in more or less real time—like, for instance, a cargo broker with offices on Numarkut and Avalon. “Who do I look for?”

“You don’t,” Aunt Jenny said. “He’ll find you.”

Which I supposed was fair enough. And which hadn’t stopped me from trawling the ‘sphere for any brokers which fit the bill the minute I was close enough to an open node, and immediately narrowing the possibilities down to a short list of half a dozen: there weren’t that many with offices in both systems (and a handful of others) big enough to maintain their own riftcom network.

I’d travelled around our home system enough to be familiar with both civilian passenger terminals and, on occasion, the rather more basic facilities the Navy used for personnel transfers, but the cargo docks were a new and bewildering experience for me. Arm 7 was full of docking bays, each hosting between three and a dozen starships, depending on their size: the far walls of the cavernous spaces bulged inwards, matching the curvature of the hulls intended to fit into them, and, for the first time, I really understood why most vessels were built to standardized templates. A freighter forced to wait for an unusually sized cradle to come free would hemorrhage time and money, both of which most skippers were perennially short of.

Between the bulging domes I could see innumerable stevedores and handling drones bustling about like flies on a wall, shifting pallets and cargo containers into and out of the wide doors giving access to the equatorial cargo hatches of the starships beyond, or scooting round the curve between walls and floor, where the gravity shifted direction by ninety degrees.

As I wove my way through the chaos towards the cradle broadcasting the ident code of the
Stacked Deck
, I narrowly missed being mown down by heavily laden trolleys so often I practically became used to it. A quick, and mildly vertigo-inducing, glance upwards was enough to confirm my guess that the ceiling was just as much a hive of activity as the floor around me, although such appellations were entirely subjective in this sort of environment.

I slowed my pace a little as I drew nearer the towering hemisphere into which my new home was nestled, although, of course, I could see nothing of the ship itself—nor would there have been anything particularly interesting about it if I’d been able to. All starships looked pretty much alike, metal spheres completely featureless apart from the outlines of their external hatches, with only their sizes varying. Of course you could tell a lot from the number of hatches, and where they were placed, but you’d have to be a pretty obsessive ship-spotter (or a Navy brat like me) to do so, even if you could get close enough to the hull to take a look.

As I approached the nearest hatch, I found my ‘sphere beginning to clutter with data blurts, mostly to, from, and between the steady procession of drones entering the vessel with stacked pallets, or scooting back out again unladen. The nexus of all the activity seemed to be a heavyset man in disheveled coveralls, sporting a Guild patch on one sleeve, and a rough circle of cleaner cloth on the other where a similar badge had been recently ripped away. I sent a brief ident, and he looked across at me just long enough to scowl.

“What do you want?” he snapped, even though the packet I’d just sent had contained all my personal details.

“I’m Simon Forrester,” I said, refusing to rise to it. “Captain Remington’s expecting me.” If anything, the scowl intensified. “This is the
Stacked Deck
?” I added, although the ident still being broadcast in the background left no room for doubt about that.

“It is now.” If anything, the question seemed to make matters worse, and the fellow glared at me with undisguised loathing. He jerked a head in the direction of the open hatch. “If he’s expecting you, you’d better find the
captain
.” The last word contained enough venom to fell an ox. “Some of us have work to do.”

“Thanks,” I said. One of us could be civil, at least. Leaving him to vent his anger on the uncomplaining drones, I made my way across the threshold of the hatch, and found myself, for the first time in my life, standing on the deck of a starship.

“Hi.” I turned, startled. Lost for a moment in the realization of my life’s ambition, and trying to orientate myself in the cavernous space of the cargo hold, I’d failed to notice I wasn’t alone. My interlocutor smiled at me in a guardedly friendly fashion. “You’re going to get squished if you stand there,” she added.

“Squished. Right,” I said, pirouetting out of the way of a drone cradling something large, heavy, and wrapped in a tarp. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Her smile spread. “You’re a pretty good mover.”

“I’ve done some athletics,” I said, conscious as I spoke that it was a lame thing to say.

“I’ll bet you have.” She was about my own age, quite pretty in a gamine sort of way, and dressed in the same kind of coverall as the fellow outside. In her case, though, there was a crew patch on her left sleeve instead of a patch of bare cloth, newer and cleaner than the rest of the garment: a fanned quintet of cards, with
Stacked Deck
overlaid on what looked to my inexpert eye like an unbeatable hand. (At least in the games I was familiar with—I’d no doubt there were far more variations than I’d ever heard of played out among the stars.) The girl looked me up and down in the appraising fashion I’d long grown used to, but with an easy friendliness that made a welcome and refreshing change. Then she stuck out a hand. “Clio Rennau.”

“Simon Forrester.” I bowed formally, and began to raise her hand to my lips, as Avalonian etiquette demanded on first meeting a lady. Clio laughed, seized mine in a surprisingly firm grip, and pumped it energetically for a couple of seconds.

“Just a handshake will do.” She regarded me from under her fringe. “You’re a fast one. I can see I’ll have to keep an eye on you.”

“My apologies.” I felt a warm flush of embarrassment rising up my neck. “No offense was intended, I can assure you.”

“Just teasing, Si.” She flashed me another smile. “That was just what people do around here when they meet someone new, right?”

“Right.” I nodded, relieved not to have offended her. “I can see I’ve a lot to learn.”

“You’ll get used to it. Another solar system, another set of customs to get your head around. That’s the advantage of being in the Guild, of course. Everyone adjusts to us instead. Saves a lot of time.”

“I suppose so,” I said, feeling even more out of my depth than ever.

“Good.” Her demeanor became suddenly businesslike, and she nodded at my baggage. “Is that all your kit?”

“Yes,” I said. Two carryalls and a rucksack. Not much to pack an entire life into. But Clio was nodding approvingly.

“Just the essentials, then. You’re off to a good start.” The grin surfaced again for a moment. “You won’t believe how much some dirtwalkers think they can bring aboard.”

“Dirtwalkers?” I asked, and a flicker of embarrassment passed across her face.

“Planet dwellers. It’s just an expression. Not disparaging.” She paused for a second, tact and candor at war in her features. “Not very, anyway. And besides, you’re not one, are you? Not any more.”

“I hope not,” I said, finding to my vague surprise that it was true. “But Captain Remington said I had to make it to Numarkut before he’d make up his mind about taking me on.” I hesitated a second, then decided I might as well ask. “That is the right thing to call him, right? But the guy outside was a real grouch about it.”

“I’ll bet he was,” Clio said, with a sympathetic smile. “But don’t mind Dad. He’s just still pissed about losing the ship to John.”

“What?” I felt as though someone had just switched the gravity in a different direction. “You used to own the
Stacked Deck
?”

“No, Dad used to own the
Sleepy Jean
.” She began to lead the way through a labyrinth of cargo containers, exchanging brief greetings with the handful of people we met along the way. A couple were clearly part of the crew, sporting the same hand of cards patch as my self-appointed guide, but how many of the others were among my new shipmates, or just dock workers aboard to help supervise the stowage, I had no idea. “New skipper, new name. It’s a Guild thing.”

“Right.” I hesitated for a moment, before curiosity won out over tact. “What happened?”

Clio shrugged. “Long story. Short version: John paid off some people we owed, and took over the ship as collateral. Good deal for everyone, except Dad’s too pig-headed to see it.” She led the way up a flight of stairs to a catwalk near the ceiling of the hold, on which my boot soles echoed loudly enough to be heard even above the clamor of the cargo being stowed beneath us. From up here it was easy to see the layout, which, conventionally enough, was a blunt-ended wedge, an eighth the circumference of the vessel: I had no doubt that there were seven more holds identical to it completing the circle. The blank wall at the end, towards which we were now walking, would be one side of an octagon, giving access to the slightly smaller holds above and below, and, higher and lower than them, the crew quarters and utility areas containing the ship’s propulsion and life support systems. A large cargo elevator would run between the hold levels, but, glancing down and through the massive open doors, I could just see the platform on the lower tier, locked down, while the handling drones flitted directly up and down the shaft.

“It must have been hard on you both, though,” I said. “Losing your ship like that.”

Clio shrugged again. “Ships change hands all the time,” she said. “He’ll get her back, or take on a new one—just got to wait for the right opportunity.” Which all sounded astonishingly casual to me, but then Guilders were different: something I supposed I’d get used to in time.

“What did your mother think about it?” I asked, more for something to say than anything else, and Clio glanced back at me, looking surprised.

“All for it. Who did you think we owed?”

“I see.” At least I thought I did. “And I thought my parents didn’t get along too well.”

“They get along great,” Clio said, a faint frost entering her voice. “But a deal’s a deal. Can’t renege on a contract, whoever it’s with.” So at least one of my preconceptions about Guilders seemed to be true.

“Do you see much of her?” I asked, conscious of skirting a conversational minefield. I was acutely aware that I was going to be spending a lot of time aboard the
Stacked Deck
, at least if things went as well as I hoped, and I needed to be making friends among her crew. At least Clio seemed to be making allowances for my naivety, although I’d clearly got off on the wrong foot with her dad.

“Whenever we’re in the same system.” Clio led the way through a doorway at the end of the catwalk, and I found myself in a stairwell, between the inner and outer walls of the central octagon. As she started to climb a few steps ahead of me, I found myself appreciating the view rather more than I suppose I ought to have done. “We’ll find you some quarters, then you can officially report to the skipper.”