The Bright Black Sea (87 page)

Rafe, Kie and Botts crafted a new log, a new history,
and shoved the real one into yet another data black hole. Botts,
being a machine itself, made the job far easier and far more
thorough than even Rafe could've done alone.The new log was a
scrambled history of the
Lost Star
and a short nondescript
account of a voyage from Azminn to Aticor, after which there was
one voyage to Boscone, escaping the reef just ahead of Despar's
first attack and a long passage up the Azar Rift in search of less
dangerous trading conditions. A bland story, but close enough to
reality that I hoped everyone could keep it straight, even when not
strictly sober.

Still, I fretted and paced as I waited for the port
official to arrive, which she did, several hours after the
quarantine boat.

I met her on the landing stage with Molaye, Astro and
Orbit.

Welcome aboard,' I said walking forward, as she swung
out of the airlock at the end of gangplank.

'Thank you, Captain. Sorry to keep you waiting. We're
rather shorthanded these days,' she said, shaking my hand while
Molaye kept the hounds in check. 'Batta Ty,' she added.

'No matter. I'm Nives Wilcrofter, my first mate, Bry
M'Ley, and the hounds, Astro and Orbit. Sorry, they insist on
greeting all our guests,' I said, adding, 'My first time here, but
my chief engineer tells me she's never seen it so busy. Refugees
like ourselves from the troubles down Despar and Boscone way?'

''Some. But most are here for our Founding Festival.
Everyone from every rock within five aus visit Plyra during the
festival. It's a two week party and we're only two days into it.
Hope you're not in a hurry since not much gets done during the
festival,' she said as we drifted up the access well to the ship's
office.

'Actually that sounds rather inviting. We can use a
bit of a party – its been a long, dreary passage, and I don't
suppose a few days more will make any difference in how my owner
feels...'

'I gather from your initial report you've sailed from
Boscone.'

'Aye. We originally hail from Azminn, but the trade
slump sent us to Aticor and the drifts,' I said, 'It's been an
experience. I'll have some tales to tell in my old age, if I reach
that port.'

'I see you arrived hollow,' she said as I showed her
into the ship's office.

'Yes. Except for a quarter box of trade goods. Cha or
something stronger?' I asked.

'Cha will be welcomed, I am on duty,' she
replied.

'Right. It's been a long and quite unprofitable
voyage, I'm afraid. I'm not looking forward to hearing from my
owners,' I said, as I went about fixing two mugs of cha.

'I gather you ran into trouble down Boscone way.'

'Aye, though I've been catching up with the news
since we arrived, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. We
must've got out before the real fighting started. Still, it's a big
change from circling Azminn twice a year. We never had to run from
privateers in the Azminn trade.'

'I can imagine,' she prompted. 'Welcome to the
drifts.'

'Ah, the drifts, they're even more... Well
interesting than I'd been lead to expect,' I said and launched our
new history. 'We're a Calissant owned tramp, you see. And rather
than lay us up, our owner sent us to the Aticor system to look for
work. There, we were leased to a LaTrina ship operator, Dyzran Tan
& Co. and dispatched to the Boscone Reef with a mixed
cargo.

'Arriving in the Reef, we had a radio packet waiting
for us, ordering us to off load and get clear without delay. It
seems Tan had gotten word of the trouble brewing and wanted us
clear of Boscone without waiting for a cargo. So we offloaded our
cargo, and sailed. On clearing the reef we crossed orbits with two
Despar commandeered drifteer tramps turned privateer. They ordered
us to surrender. I declined since I could outrun them, and did, but
it left us heading away from Aticor. The chase used more fuel than
I had budgeted, so I hadn't enough left to make the course
correction needed to make LaTrina. So, with the whole of the
Despar-Boscone drifts likely caught up in the conflict, I decided
to sail for Plyra instead. We were hailed by a couple of other
privateers as we made our way through Despar claimed space, but we
had enough velocity to ignore them and make a long, uneventful
passage up the rift.

'I've not been captain long, but long enough to know
that my survival will not be welcomed news on LaTrina. We'll have
been missing for almost half a year, so I wouldn't be surprised if
we're already owned by the insurance company. It might help if you
could tell me that your warehouses are bulging with boxes for the
Amdia system.'

'I won't say they're bulging, but we've seen a jump
of boxes coming our way because of the Despar war, so you may be in
luck. But don't expect to get any onboard until after the festival
ends.'

'A prospect for cargo and a two week holiday – I
don't think I'll complain. I'll leave that to my owners.'

We talked some more about trade and Plyra and the
festival, before we got down to work. We went over the rules and
customs of Plyra and were assigned a buoy after I'd paid our harbor
fee.

An hour later we saw the port official off and even
as we edged our way to our assigned buoy in the busy space around
Plyra, Rafe, Kie and Botts were engaging a private com channel to
send the encoded radio packets needed to establish our new
identity. Plus, they set up a shadow cyber-bot owner on LaTrina to
give the impression that we were in communication with our
fictional charter party should anyone doubt our story and have the
ability to snoop..

03

Molaye swung into my office. 'Ready, Captain?'

I looked up. My tall, willowy first mate, dressed in
a form fitting black uniform with a short jacket with her big
pirate piece darter on her hip, stood in the doorway grinning.

Though Molaye had been first mate for a little over
four months, she was already looking the part. Not in any obvious
way. The ship's wheel symbol on the badge on her cap had a circle
around it, indicating a chief mate, but it was more in attitude.
She was more grown up and more unguarded in her rather cocky air of
competence.

The first mate's job aboard ship is basically every
job aboard ship. Not that they have to do every job, they just have
to know what's to be done and see that it is. Aboard the
Starry
Shore
it's a pretty cushy job, as I well know, since everyone
does their job properly without being pushed. Still, one has to
know every job to know that. Molaye tackles any task competitively
– with her full attention and abundant energy – and mastered the
mate's shipboard position with ease. Shore business on Plyra would
be her first lessons in the other half of the position's
duties.

In addition to mastering the first mate's job, she
also mastered the pirate piece on her hip as well. Rafe, in his
distant youth, seems to have been a bit more dashing than he is
these days and is still an old hand with darters. Under his
tutelage, Molaye had, with constant practice in no. 4 hold, become
competent enough, that, in Rafe's opinion, she could wear it
downside. Openly wearing a darter spoke to drifters in a way that
tended to invite an exchange of (mostly) non-lethal darts. You
needed be very good to wear one if you didn't like waking up with
pounding headaches. She likely was good enough, but I was having
none of that today.

'Lose the pirate piece, First,' I said.

Her eyes narrowed, ever so slightly, and she stood a
little straighter. 'Why? Rafe says I'm good enough.'

I could've gone on about just following my
Neb-blasted orders, but she knows that. So I said, 'Because we're
going out on ship's business and we're a mild mannered, Unity
Standard, Neb-blasted Guild certified tramp freighter, down on its
luck, cap in hand, seeking cargo, any cargo – not some drifteer
pirate on a holiday. That's why. It's all about image.'

'But we're still in the drifts. Everyone carries a
darter.'

'Carry your sissy, if you can find a pocket were it
won't show and can still get at it,' I said, twirling my finger and
pointing to the door.

Her eyes narrowed a little further, but she turned
around and slowly headed for the door. At the door she paused, and
turned towards me with a bright smile and said, 'Sorry, Wil. I
wasn't thinking.' before dashing out to collect her sissy.

That's my First. A rather unnervingly quick
learner.

Molaye piloted us – Riv, Lilm, Myes, Bar, Say and
myself – across the busy near space to the
bottle blown
asteroid of Plyra. Plyra is a hollow, 5x15 kilometers cylindrical
asteroid formed by being completely melted and , with carefully
designed explosive charges, blown and rotated to form a hollow
cylinder. Its outer surface was largely free of buildings since it
rotates to create a centrifugal pseudo gravity for its interior
inhabitants.

Plyra's boat harbor is an off-shore, spider-like
space station whose long legs are lined with docking airlocks for
small boats. Molaye carefully maneuvered the gig through the press
of boats to our assigned lock amongst the many legs, and aligning
our hatch to the airlock, gently nudged us in.

I turned to everyone before I cracked open the hatch,
though I looked straight at Molaye. 'Right. Are we in
character?'

She smiled. 'Oh, yes, Captain Wilcrofter. You're just
a poor Captain Crofter sort of character who's had your fill of the
lawless drifts and desperately wants to get back to the safety and
routine of the Unity's planetary trade.'

I'd settle for that. 'Yes, I've my character down
pat. But do you know yours?'

'I'm a bright, though inexperienced first mate, who
finds the drifts rather exciting...' she replied brightly.

'We're not really acting, are we?'

Her smile widened. 'No.'

'Right. The rest of you, look around, get a feel for
things, but remember – I'm looking at you Riv – this is just a
scouting expedition, not shore leave.'

'Aye, skipper. Scouting it is. We'll have a full
report on all the dives by the time you're ready to lift.'

A quick jump via a shuttle pod took us across to the
entry lock, located at the center of the asteroid's nearest end. We
felt the shuttle skid a little as it touched down the rotating
surface, which created the asteroid's .2 gee gravity.

A lift carried us down to the Promenade, a
kilometer-wide park that runs along the top of a large metro
complex. Plyra was like a moon crater community – hot and lushly
green, until you looked up to find yourself looking down on the
promenade and out over the whole interior as it wrapped around the
inside of the asteroid. A bit disconcerting. The avenues under the
wide spreading trees were crowded – youths lopping along, kids
hopping about, their parents strolling sedately along, everyone
stopping in small crowds at gayly decorated booths, temporary food
carts, cafes, and entertainments. It all seemed all very civilized
and carefree. No doubt wilder celebrations could be found
elsewhere, if you cared to look, or you could just follow Riv,
who'd find 'em without a chart.

Plyra had two cities, one at each end of the
asteroid, Metro and Resi. Metro was the more commercial one,
similar in many ways to the massive reef of buildings that form the
crater rim between CraterPort and CraterCity on Lontria. It rose in
terraces to the kilometer wide promenade and circled the inner
circumference of the asteroid as one massive building riddled with
long multi-story malls and lush atriums.

We strolled out to the edge of the Promenade and
looked out over the ten kilometers of farmland, parks, and ponds
that wrapped around the asteroid’s interior surface, lit by four
large, bright, plasma globes set in the crosshairs of four support
columns. The greenness of the Plyra was, like the crater
communities, designed not only to feed the inhabitants, but to keep
the atmosphere as passively fresh as possible. At the far end we
could see Resi, Plyra's residential city.

Since this was a scouting expedition, I was allowing
only four hours to look around, so we took an express lift down to
the spaceers' row section of the Metro – on the 741st level. (They
counted them down from the Promenade.) It was a deep, rather low,
dim-lit section of the city, half a dozen blocks long. The few
cross streets leading to the green interior bought in a little
light from the distant interior, but for the most part it was just
a two story, 15 meter wide corridor, the spaceer's row section lit
mostly by gaudy signs, with the business offices on either end,
hardly lit at all. All the offices were dark and closed on account
of the festival.

Molaye and I pushed on to find the Master's Club,
which was located amongst the shipping offices rather than the
spaceers' row proper. It was crowded with owners, agents, captains
and mates and reminded me of the Tenth Star on Calissant. Captain
Miccall used to take me around to the Tenth Star Tavern, just off
Star Gate Boulevard – though only after I became his first mate.
Anyone could – in theory – wander into the Tenth Star, but unless
they had a star, or a wheel with a circle on their cap badge (and
the first mates were only tolerated when accompanied by their
captains) I doubt many stayed for a second drink. The dark glares
would've driven even the stoutest hearted drinkers to more friendly
environs. For, you see the Tenth Star operated as the private club
of the Calissant tramp ship owners, the place where they spent
their days doing business over drinks – which often amounted to
stabbing each other in the back at every opportunity with greatest
affability.

Still the festival air had infused the Master's Club.
We found a slot at the bar, and within minutes Molaye had struck up
a conversation with the CTC ship captain next to her and we jumped
into the flow of shipping and trade gossip intermixed with spaceer
reminiscence, factual and fictional. Molaye and I were soon
spinning the yarns of our close call with Despar privateers and our
hard luck with our distant owners with other captains, owners and
agents. They said I was lucky to escape Boscone even hollow, for if
we had surrendered, we would've ended up pressed into service as a
Despar privateer, or dead. They held out hope for a decent cargo to
Baidora, the main drift-trade world in the Amdia system – but only
after the festival was over. All in all, things looked hopeful.
Assuming, of course, St Bleyth wasn't on to us.