The New Space Opera 2 (46 page)

“I know that now,” Warthog said. “And that's dropped us both into a vat of trouble. You stowed away aboard ship under false pretenses. That's a mortal offense. They're going to toss you out of an airlock.”

“Why? I didn't pretend to be this James Crowder! I never said a thing! You just took me! And I had no intention of trying to stow away. Just let me go and I'll walk back down the hill and never look back.”

“I doubt you'll be walking anywhere, unless other humans have abilities James never possessed. We're back aboard the main ship and already a billion klees out in space, and getting farther from your world every second.”

“No fair! Take me back!”

“Now we can hardly do that, can we? No, human, unless we decide to throw you into vacuum, you're coming with us. No other choice.”

“You'd kill me, even though it was
your
mistake? This is your fault, not mine!”

“You'll no doubt be pleased to know that the First Mate agrees with you,” Warthog said. “He blames me for the blunder. James was my best mate on board and I should've been able to see that you weren't him. But I'll be flayed if one of you ugly monsters doesn't look just like another. In any case, he has a notion that will save your life, keep me from losing rank and share, and prevent him from having to act officially. Here's our story, and I suggest you go along with it: I never made a mistake. I intended to pick you up and take you with us all along. Now that I've made Fourth Rate, I have the option of hiring a personal aide, and that's exactly what I've done. And since James and I were so close, of course he recommended I take on another human, a friend of his who desperately wanted to go to space, just like he did ten years ago. That's why you showed up there at the rendezvous.”

“But what about James?” Danny said. “What if he doesn't support your story?”

“Don't be daft, human. We'll never see him again, because he never made the rendezvous. Who knows why? He's probably drunk or in jail. He was always a fighter, James was. But we'll never be back this way again, because the First Mate is as mad as I've ever seen him and has had quite enough of this place. He's declared Earth, its system, and the entire district off-limits from now on.”

That's how Danny Wells became a somewhat less-than-official member of the
Merry Prankster
's crew. As Mister Orep's personal aide—that was the warthog alien's name—he worked much too hard for far too little pay. He cleaned Orep's room, did his laundry, ran his errands, and performed any other task his master could imagine. And, because Orep claimed to come from a race with a great tradition of public generosity, Danny was often lent out to other members of the crew to provide similar services for them. For the first five years of his life aboard the raider, Danny was miserable.

There were a few compensations. The late Mister Crowder had introduced many of the
Prankster
's crew to the game of poker. As the only other human ever to serve on board, Danny was allowed (expected in fact) to take over Crowder's regular game. It turned out Danny had a gift for poker and began to sock away some decent money. And the space pirate's medical technology was leaps and bounds more advanced than anything Earth physicians had developed. Being among pirates, Danny might die of violence. It was even likely. But failing that, he would ever and always continue to be roughly twenty years old—in body, if not strictly in chronology.

Danny's generally wretched existence didn't improve until the day they'd overtaken an unarmed merchant ship that turned out to be a Hroo Colonial Battleship in disguise. The Hroo marines boarded the pirate vessel, and all hands, including Danny, had to fight for their lives. He'd picked up a cutlass, whose dead owner had no further use for it, and acquitted himself well enough to impress First Mate Baradu, who'd immediately thereafter promoted Danny to his personal prize crew. Orep didn't mind losing his aide, since he'd been killed in that day's bloody action.

Danny continued to distinguish himself in the years that followed, and slowly worked his way up the ranks.

 

Now, more than forty years since he'd first come aboard the
Merry Prankster
, quite against his will at the time, Danny was exquisitely aware of the danger he was in. Two of the mob that had crowded into his spacious First
Mate's cabin were members of his own prize crew, and he detected no love or loyalty in their eyes.

“This isn't a mutiny,” Credogue repeated. “We're a peaceful assembly of your friends and fellow crewmembers, who've come to reason with you.”

“Hardly peaceful,” Danny said, “when you've got Kyal trussed up and lying on my floor.” He didn't want to provoke them, but he was angry and growing angrier. How dare they burst in on him like this! He was the best combat officer in the
Prankster
's long and colorful history and he'd made each of them rich a hundred times over! He noticed that his anyweapon was just out of reach, lying on the sideboard in its default shape of a simple compact pistol-grip handle, with no actual pistol attached. Attempting to pick it up would most certainly provoke the violence he was trying to avoid at the moment.

“That was an unfortunate but necessary precaution,” Credogue said. “Kyal's affection for you is obvious. She'd fight to her death to protect your rights, as she perceived them. We felt it prudent to bind her in this way, to save her from her own worst instincts.”

“I'm going to kill you, Credogue, as soon as I'm free,” Kyal said from her place at their feet.

“See what I mean?” Credogue said. “She can't be reasoned with. We hope you'll turn out to be more receptive.”

“What's your proposal?” Danny said.

“It should be obvious enough. You were a valiant and resourceful combat leader, serving under my father. Every one of us respects and admires you. But you're human, and no raiding ship of the Outer Rings Confederacy has ever been skippered by a human. It may seem odd, given our profession, but pirates are conservative by nature. We're beholden to long and carefully established tradition, and don't respond well to sudden changes. Simply put, we aren't willing to serve under you.”

“And yet this isn't a mutiny,” Danny said, knowing that his human sarcasm would be lost on most of them.

“Exactly so,” Credogue continued. “In the past, many senior officers of this ship and others have retired with honor, taking their accumulated shares and living to spend it in peace and comfort. Even you only ascended to First Rank because Mister Baradu finally retired. Some might say it's an officer's duty to retire at some point, to make way for other crew to advance. Otherwise, we'd constantly have to kill our own to move up in the ranks, and what an unstable system that would be! Mister Wells,
you've amassed a considerable fortune during your years among us. So has your aide. We propose that you take it and go home, with our blessing. We've spoken among ourselves and agreed that you should even be allowed to take your boarding yacht, as a bonus in honor of your long years of service.”

“See, boss?” Kempee the Vraal said. “It weren't never no mutiny. This here's a retirement party.” Kempee loosened the pistol in his holster, to punctuate his remarks. “So, what do you say?”

 

Two months later, the
Merry Prankster
surfaced on the far edges of Earth's system and remained in place just long enough to spit the
Raptor's Egg
out of its starboard boat dock. Then it turned, fired up its main engines, and began immediate outward accelerations for its next dive into underspace. Danny and Kyal were alone aboard the
Egg
.

“You didn't have to come into forced exile with me,” Danny said, not for the first time.

“Of course I did,” Kyal said. “They weren't going to let me remain on board, not after you so publicly promoted me to First Rank. The new First Mate would have had to constantly watch his back, always worried I was about to stick my dagger into it. Besides, I wouldn't stay with them if I could. Traitorous scum.”

“They would've dropped you in your own system. It was a lot closer than Earth.”

“What did that one author of yours say? ‘You can't go home again?' In my case, it's literally true. The Sendarians don't take kindly to pirates. I wouldn't have found a welcome there. No, sir, for better or worse, my fate is entwined with yours.”

Kyal set their course for Earth at an easy twenty-four g's, explaining that they'd best proceed modestly when they could, since there would never again be a repair dock for the
Raptor's Egg
, or any of its systems. At that acceleration, they'd be more than three weeks getting there, traveling entirely through upperspace, since the yacht had no diving capability. The
Egg
was roomy enough, without an entire boarding crew to accommodate. On the trip out aboard the
Prankster
, they'd had plenty of time to refit it with a separate sleeping cabin for each of them. They'd also installed a more sophisticated automatic sick bay than such a boat normally carried, with ample supplies and programs for both human and Sendarian physiology.

“Better load all weapons,” Danny said.

“Why?” Kyal said. “The
Prankster
's already well out of range, and they'd have had us outgunned anyway. They'd have blown us to atoms, after our first shot.” The pirates had let Danny keep the
Egg
's weapons, knowing that the small integrator cannons it carried were no match for the larger ship's guns and shields. Even so, they'd made sure that all guns were unloaded and powered down, before handing the boat over to them.

“I wasn't thinking about the
Prankster
. I was thinking about Earth defenses. I've been gone for nearly fifty years. Back then the space race was only beginning, but by now they'll likely have bases even this far out. Let's be prepared, just in case they don't recognize us as friendly.”

“And just in case they have loot worth taking?”

“No, Kyal, I think I'm done with the pirate life. We're both young and rich enough. Maybe Credogue—may he rot in one of his seven thousand hells—was right in that one particular at least. Maybe it is time to consider a new line of work.”

“What do you have in mind?” she said.

“Nothing yet. But we have a long trip inward to think about it. In the meantime let's start monitoring communications and see if we can get a handle on what might be waiting for us. There's a good chance, even all these years later, that our spacefaring technology is still quite a ways more advanced than anything they can do. Maybe we can make an honest living just by selling what we have?”

“You'd sell the
Raptor's Egg
?” She didn't quite gasp her astonishment.

“No. Never. Just the right to study it. Maybe. We'll see. Now, if you'll take the first watch, I'm tired. I think I'll steal a few hours' nap. I haven't slept well in the past two months, always wondering if Credogue and his cutthroats might decide to change their minds and save themselves the trouble of taking us this far outside of civilized space.”

“I think Credogue had no choice but to let us go,” Kyal said. “I think most of the crew were still fond enough of us that they wouldn't have accepted anything less. Credogue's going to have his tanglers full controlling that mob. Some might have respected him, but, unlike his father, no one's ever loved him. My bet is that he'll suffer an unfortunate accident the first time they see action against another ship.”

“Wouldn't that be nice?”

For days, they accelerated inward, toward the primary. All the while, the
Egg
peered far ahead, scouting their way. It watched and listened, tirelessly gathering and sorting information.

“I don't understand this,” Danny said, on their twelfth day in transit.
“There's nothing. No ships. No bases. I can't find a bloody thing in space, outside of a few odds and ends in low Earth orbit.”

“What did you expect?”

“Lots of stuff. We were in a space race! First we were going to put a city on the moon and then spread out to fill the planets. But somehow, for no reason I can find, they just stopped. And look at these broadcasts. If these are at all up to date, then none of what they'd always promised ever happened. No jet packs. No flying cars. It's a good decade past the year 2000, according to their calendar, but where did the future go?”

“We can make jet packs for them,” Kyal said, trying to calm him. “It's sort of a primitive device, but I suppose we could fabricate a few, if you want.”

“That's not the point,” Danny said. “It's not what we could make for them, it's about what they didn't become. It's like the entire history of Earth after I left was one giant broken promise.”

Danny slept a lot during the remainder of their inbound journey, his frustration and depression growing each day. New information continued to pour in, but it always disappointed him. Kyal, by contrast, studied the data with considerably more enthusiasm than he showed. She spent her days studying every aspect of her new home and trying to imagine what role she might play in it.

“What are you reading?” Danny said one day, wiping the sleep out of his eyes. He hadn't bothered to dress.

“I'm not sure,” she said. “Some sort of text accompanied by static illustrations. But I think I may have discovered some of those amazing advancements you've been searching for. Look at this. Each major population center is guarded by one or more humans with incredible powers. See how this man can fly unaided. And he's orders of magnitude stronger than the greatest Sendarian warrior, even one of us in a full battle exoskeleton. These city guardians seem to be engaged in constant battles with other enhanced beings who're determined to destroy your world and everything in it. No wonder Earth has had trouble advancing out into space. These struggles have to be quite a distraction.”