The Bright Black Sea (59 page)

I reached the edge of the field and since I was still
early, leaned up against the wall to watch the last sun set over
the sea as the sea birds whirled overhead and the waves tumbled
over the rocks far below until Captain deLin found me. We signaled
for a shuttle to take us to the transport hub at the land facing
edge of the island and boarded a pod that whisked us across the bay
to CityOne.

'They certainly built these tracks high enough,
though I don't see a lot of boats about.' I remarked as we raced
across the darkening waters for the low lights of CityOne. We had
to be fully fifty meters over the water.

'That's on account of our storms. We don't have any
real seasons, of course, but our polar regions are large and very
cold. Since the micro-suns have to be placed in a fairly close
orbit to circle the planet in something like a standard day, you
can make the micro-suns big and hot and end up with the tropics too
hot to live in or you can choose use smaller micro-suns so that the
tropics are livable, as they did here, but that leaves the poles
very cold. There are vast glaciers on either pole, and when the
cold polar air mixes with the warm air of the tropicals it creates
lots of vortexes that bring very strong storms roaring down to
CityOne. And with only a .5 gee standard gravity and deep seas, the
winds will raise massive waves. Twenty, thirty meter or more waves
are common. You'll notice even the large islands in the bay are
just bare rock, swept bare year in and year out by the storms. So
we have to keep our infrastructure out of the way of the storm
waves. Even with fifty meter towers, the rails are sometimes swept
by waves,' said deLint, adding, 'And we keep the bay full of
islands to break the seas up somewhat before the waves reach the
city.'

'Ah, so that's why the space port and the Strand
promenade are fifty meters above the beach as well,' I said. 'I
thought it very strange to have the Strand so high off the
beach.'

'Aye, and don't think it doesn't come in useful at
times...'

The ride was of only ten kilometers, so we were soon
slowing for our stop at the Strand Station.

CityOne is for the most part, a low built city, with
most buildings no more than four stories high and built of concrete
and clear steel. Only the offices, factories and godowns of the
major chartered trading companies rise high above the city.
Sprawling factories spread out from the outskirts of the city,
marking Zilantre as a drift world. You'll not find heavy industries
on the planets of the Unity Charter. We use moons for that. Nor
would you find the mines that dot Zilantre's livable tropics
either, since they are also relegated to the moons and the
drifts.

The Helm and Star Club is an establishment that
caters exclusively to ship owners, captains and first mates. deLin
had introduced me around several days ago, and we were stopping for
dinner and a few drinks. I don't spend my nights off the ship, so
I'd be going light on the drinks, but the cuisine – especially the
(real) meat raised on Zilantre – was well worth dining downside.
The synth-meat we can produce on board is not close to the real
planet raised item.

We pushed through the first tap room, a large, low
and noisy room filled with the chief mates off the ships in the
roadstead and their guests. I glanced about for Vynnia and Tenry,
but I (thankfully) didn't see them. Hopefully they'd stayed with
the rest of the gang and steered them to one of the quieter
establishments along the two kilometer stretch of the Strand
devoted to entertaining spaceers. deLin lead the way through the
crush of cheerful spaceers and out into the central courtyard,
following the low lit path to the back room, reserved for owners,
their captains and guests. CityOne buildings, residences and
business alike are built in hollow squares around enclosed
courtyards that provide shelter from the gales during the frequent
storms. Some share common walls, others stand alone, separated by
narrow alleys. This courtyard was dark in the twilight under
several old pines that grew in the yard, scenting the evening air
with their rich tangy green spice.

The senior room of the Helm and Star, the Star Room,
was where the owners and captains of the ships laying idle in the
roadstead gathered. It was an order of magnitude quieter and far
less merry. Their idle ships left them little to be jolly about. We
joined several of deLin's friends at their table – captains of
ships either owned by LinTin CTC or who often did business with the
firm. He introduced me to several captains I'd not met before and
we ordered our drinks to wait for the rest of the usual suspects to
arrive.

'I've a question,' I said to the table. 'I admit that
almost all I know about the drifts comes from fiction, vids and old
spaceer's tales, which, I suspect, exaggerate the dangers of the
drifts a bit, but I had the impression that there is always a
danger of being attacked by professional or occasional pirates in
the drifts. So what makes the present situation so dire that your
owners have laid their ships up instead of carrying on as
usual?'

'Well, I'm certain the tales you've heard are mostly
exaggerations.' began a grey haired captain by the name of Lively
Livton. The
Lively
tag being ironic. 'I'm a hundred and
fifty years old and have not had to beat off more than two dozen
such attacks in my career. So you see that piracy is not all that
common. What little there is of it, is mostly confined to small,
local transport ships, mine tenders, prospector rigs and such.
Those ships, more likely than not, are just creeping along, which
makes them easy to come up on. And , with little in the way of
defensive missiles, easy to capture as well. Larger ships, faster
ships like yours, running between distant points at higher
velocities and armed with hundreds of anti-meteor missiles are
mostly immune from pirates. In normal times, anyhow. Oh, there are
plenty of ships out in the deep drifts that'll turn pirate if it
looks to be a paying proposition, but well, there's a lot of drift,
and it doesn't usually pay to lay a'waiting for a likely ship to
attack which could be for months for some stations and the popular
planets and stations don't take kindly to the practice and can do
something about it, so run of the mill pirates don't keep us awake
at night worrying about 'em,' he said and paused to light his
gaspeleaf pipe.

'What's different about these days,' he continued,
'is that them Despar folks have mobilized every ship they can lay
their hands on and sent them out to act as commerce raiders – a
polite word for pirates. They've placed a couple of mobil missile
batteries in each ship's holds, staffed the ship with a couple of
their Navy folk to man these weapons and make certain things are
done Despar Navy style and sent them off to haunt the approaches of
the rifts and planets they have their eyes on. Now these ships are
better armed than your run of the reef pirate, and the planets or
stations they're haunting, are either under attack from Despar, or
desperately trying to avoid that fate, so they're not likely to
kick about pirates in the offing. You can sail to Vindare and sleep
like a baby the whole passage. It's hard for any pirate to locate
you in the drift, and build enough velocity to come alongside while
you're at cruising speed. But in your final approach to the Vindare
reef, when you're decelerating hard to make a known point in space,
you'd likely encounter several of their raiders a'waiting to fling
salvos of missiles at you and good luck with that. Despar may have
been jumping mining claims and ships on the sly for decades, but
now they're out for bigger game and hunting in packs. Rumor has it
they're attempting to capture the whole Boscone Reef itself with
half the Despar navy.'

'And that's not the half of it, Willie,' added
Captain Blackie Bright. 'The Neb-blasted problem is that we don't
know how this is going to play out. You can register your ship with
Despar and trade within the drift their Confederacy controls,
without too much danger. Despar's enemies are sending out
occasional raiders, but they're few and far between. They've their
hands full just trying to keep Despar's raiders out of their own
orbit. Or so Despar would have you believe. But truth be told, it's
far from certain that Despar is going to win this war. They've gone
and made a lot of enemies, big and little, rich and poor. And there
ain't a lot of trade coming out of the drifts these days, so that
eventually the war'll wind down once missiles, supplies, and
credits are exhausted. Despar needs to win before that happens or
they loose. And there are those boats you just brought in with
others on the way. They may well tip the balance against Despar.
And I'm wondering if they were all that smart jumping all those CTC
stations and attacking CTC ships.'

'Unless the companies decide it's cheaper to cut a
deal with Admiral Dre Rodine, the Confederacy's big leader,' piped
in Captain Maulie. 'In which case we'll all have Despar
tickets...'

'So, you see, it's simply too soon to know how it'll
turn out. And well, our owners are looking at decades of trading
ahead so they're reluctant to commit to any one side, afraid of
ending up on the losing side and finding themselves unwelcome in
this sector. It's tough enough trading without being branded a
former enemy. All in all, it seems prudent to sit this fracas out
and be ready to trade again when things settle down,' added Captain
Bright, 'If they do.'

'Ships are being laid up all over the Myzar beyond
the reefs under attack,' continued Captain Maulie. 'Not much going
in. They can fight only so long before they run out of missiles and
credits to buy them, even if they could find the ships to bring
them in. So it can't last for more than another six months or so
before it has to burn itself out. Either Despar wins or they have
to toss in their hand and settle – somehow. It'll be a Neb-bloody
mess. All I can say is that when things settle down, mate, they'll
find shipping rates will have gone up considerably. All we have to
do is to wait it out together...'

'Maulie's our sunny optimist,' said Blackie Bright,
adding, 'I'm thinking it could go on for years. Dre Rodine has a
reputation for being both bright and ruthless. He's no fool, and
wouldn't have started this if he didn't think he could finish it.'
Which brought several grim nods and 'Ayes' for the table.

'You ain't thinking of going in?' asked Lively,
looking sharply at me.

'Not a chance,' I quickly assured them. 'This is all
the drifts I need to see with or without a war. I'm taking the ship
to Aticor, hollow if need be, and soon. I've no interest in seeing
a drift war up close and personal.'

'It'll be hollow,' said deLin. 'With all the
troubles, our godowns here are empty and who knows when they'll
start filling up again. The drifts are vast and our companies have
operations all through them, so that our troubles can look pretty
small from our First Worlds' headquarters. The additional guard
boats may be the extent of their concern...'

'I figured as much, I'll gladly take her out hollow.
No offense, mates, but you're welcome to the drifts. It's the
planetary trade I know, and the planetary trade is where I intend
to stay.'

02

I left before things got too morose, which is
sometime after their third tall glass of Ram Rock Rum. I slipped
out into the cool night air, crossed the crowded Strand to the sea
side wall to clear my head of Ram Rock fumes and gathered my wits
about me. It was still early and the wide Strand was swarming with
idled spaceers off of the hundred ships in orbit. Groups of
spaceers – three to a dozen strong strolled by talking and laughing
loudly, spaceers arm in arm with their companion or joy house human
hurried past on their way to their rendezvous, and solitary figures
stalked by seeking a mate or their next port of call along the long
street. But I noted too a darker undercurrent amongst the flow of
brightly intoxicated spaceers – grim, hungry looking groups and
hunched figures that just drifted in the flow or haunted the dark
corners. This was the drifts, and only a minority of the spaceers,
those off CTC owned ships, were Guild members with Guild
unemployment credits. Most of the others would be drifteers and
unlikely to have any regular source of credits, or “money” (tokens
of credits that they use in the drifts) coming their way once
they'd been paid off and spent through their wages. Hopefully
they'd get by with borrowing from their more frugal mates but I'd
my doubts. I slipped my hand into my coat pocket just to make sure
my brand new darter was still there. It was. The armored jacket I
bought had a special inner pocket to hold darters and spare
clips.

In the drifts, the darter replaces the billyblade as
the spaceer's weapon of choice. As long as the darters are loaded
with non-lethal darts they're actually better than billyblades –
the victims, for the most part, wake up with only headaches instead
of bruised limbs and broken bones.

Since we were in the drifts, it made sense for those
of us who didn't own a darter – only Molaye, Kie Min and myself,
all the old hands had one tucked away in their space chests – to
acquire one. As soon as we were free of off loading our cargo,
Tenry took us down to an armorer shop off the Strand to pick some
out. Darters come in all manner of shapes, sizes and
configurations. The plasma darts themselves come in 1, 2, and 4 mm
calibers with 1mm's being non-lethal, 2mm having both non-lethal
and lethal charges and 4mm used for punching through spacesuits and
heavy armor – the pirate's weapon of choice, at least in the vids
and stories. The dart consists of a head, 1, 2, or 4mm in diameter
which may or may not have an armor piercing point. The head is a
super capacitor that's given its charge as it's launched. This head
is mounted on a 2 to 5 cm needle drive shaft that the darter's
impeller beam uses to drive and direct the dart in flight, This
shaft is surrounded by a soft wrap just to level it up with the
capacitor head and make for easy handling in the clip. The
capacitor is charged just prior to firing and driven along the
impeller beam to the target were it disintegrates and discharges a
burst of plasma that either disrupts the nervous system to stun or
knocks out the target up to several hours, or fries it, killing the
target.