The Terran Privateer (28 page)

The room they were in was apparently sufficiently shielded to prevent Annette from linking in to either the station’s network or her direct connection to
Tornado
. Nonetheless, her communicator at least gave her the time, which let her know that it was a little over forty minutes before the door to their comfortable holding area opened again.

Two Laians entered, clad in the red bandoliers that seemed to serve as regular working uniforms for the Crew, but with somewhat more gold embroidery. The lead, somewhat larger than the other—so female, as Annette understood Laian physiology—bowed to Annette and Ki!Tana.

“I am First Spear Podule,” she greeted Annette. “We are your escort to the hearing.”

“The hearing was put together that quickly?” Annette asked, somewhat surprised. The High Captain ran a space station that rivaled a small city. She would have expected it to take more than an hour to pull him free to organize a hearing.

Tornado
was a lot smaller, and she was pretty sure
she’d
need more than an hour to sort out a hearing for infractions by her unless…well, unless it was something extremely serious.

“The situation is unusual and of high priority,” Podule told her as she finished her thought. “It has been some time since a series of incidents of this scale and severity has occurred aboard Tortuga.”

The insectoid alien gestured for Annette to follow her and left. With no choice but to obey, Annette nodded to Ki!Tana and followed, the second Laian falling in behind her.

Annette’s sense of direction was good even in three-dimensional space, but as the Laians led her deeper into the central hub of the old shipyard, she quickly lost track of her location. The hub was laid out in in a series of concentric circular corridors that spiraled up and down to reach new levels. Rooms were presumably sandwiched between, but Annette only saw connecting corridors and stairwells.

Finally, well after they’d managed to get
Tornado
’s Captain completely lost, the latest gently curving corridor terminated at a massive security hatch, a heavy black metal blast door that likely protected either Tortuga’s bridge or a similar nerve center.

Their exit was about five meters before the hatch, a side door that slid aside to allow them access into a mid-sized conference room that, other than the chairs and the occupants, would have looked perfectly normal anywhere in Sol.

The tables had been set up in a rough U shape. The top of the table was already occupied by three Laians, one absolutely immense one in a bandolier that eschewed gold embroidery for simply
being
gold, clearly marking its wearer as the leader of the Laians, the High Captain of Tortuga.

Either the pickup, the trip up, or both, had clearly been very carefully timed. At the same moment as Podule led Annette into the room and gestured her to a chair that would fit her physiology, a Kanzi with pure dark blue fur was led in the other side of the conference room and placed in the seat exactly opposite Annette.

This was the first chance she’d had to study a living Kanzi, and she was almost disturbed by how humanlike the alien’s features were. Despite being barely a hundred and fifty centimeters tall and covered in blue fur, the being across from her was one of the most human-looking sapients she’d seen so far.

“Captain Annette Bond, Oath Keeper Waltan Cawl, you have left me with an aggravating dilemma,” the gold-clad Laian told them. “I am High Captain Ridotak, the leader of the Crew and the ruler of Tortuga. It has been many years since such a series of crimes has been committed on my station. What am I to do with you?”

“That
thing
murdered my Captain!” the Kanzi Oath Keeper—presumably a rank of some kind—bellowed, pointing at Annette. “Shot him in the head with her own hands.”

“Your Captain kidnapped my crew and
killed
one of my people,” Annette snapped back.

“A point of minor correction, Captain Bond,” Ridotak interjected calmly. “Your Lieutenant Mosi is now in the care of the Crew. Luckily, we appear to
have
a physiological profile on your species, and she is responding well to treatment. I am told she will live.”

That stopped Annette’s rant in its tracks and drew a sigh of relief. She hadn’t expected Mosi to live.

“Thank you,” she told Ridotak.

“You’re
treating their wounds
?” Cawl demanded. “Wounds acquired
attacking my people
?”

“Actually, no,” the High Captain replied mildly. “We are treating wounds acquired when one of your people attempted interspecies rape on a female who had been kidnapped by armed force aboard my station.”

That finally silenced Cawl.

“We have permitted that disgusting trade to continue on our station due to the high overlap between slave traders, smugglers, and pirates,” Ridotak continued. “Part of the deal, however, was that there would be
no
slave-taking on the station itself.”

He turned to Annette with a wide, expansive gesture of his closer claw.

“That said, Captain Bond, it is
also
the rule of this station that orders given by Crew are to be followed,” he reminded her. “You were ordered not to get involved, as we try to avoid this scale of violence. Your actions, while understandable, were a violation of the peace of this station. You will be required to pay a penalty of one million A!Tol Imperial Marks or an equivalent amount in trade or alternative currency before you will be allowed to recommence trade on Tortuga.

“Do you understand, Captain Bond of
Tornado
?”

Annette swallowed hard. That was actually
more
than was currently in
Tornado
’s accounts, even with her own funds included. Once they sold the remaining prizes and cargo, though, they could cover that and still probably fund their upgrades.

“Yes, High Captain Ridotak,” she told him. “Will my agent be permitted to continue selling my cargo to help us raise the funds?”

“Yes,” Ridotak replied with a tossing gesture with his arm. “But wait before you make plans, Captain Bond. I am not yet done with you.”

Cawl clearly wasn’t sure what to make of this. Annette suspected that the punishment was severe enough that he probably
did
think it was enough, but he was also furious that his Captain and crewmates were dead.

“Sir, wait one moment,” one of the other Laians suddenly said, just as Ridotak was turning back to Cawl. He slid what appeared to be a flimsy across the table, suggesting that the High Captain didn’t have a communicator with him.

Something in Ridotak’s manner changed. Annette wasn’t entirely sure, but she’d guess from his gestures that the High Captain had been more amused than anything else up to this point. Now his upper claws snapped together and then rested on the table in front of him as he leveled his gaze on Waltan Cawl.

“Did you think that I was stupid, Oath Keeper Waltan Cawl?” he demanded. “Did you think we were blind in our own station? Crawling fools you could befuddle with one claw and betray with the other?”

Something
had happened, and it was
not
to the Kanzi’s benefit. He also clearly knew exactly what Ridotak was talking about, and quivered back in his chair.

“Since you have been blocked from communicating since you arrived here, it falls to me to explain the result of your attack on Captain Bond’s people,” the High Captain continued. “None of the humans or the other races serving Bond were injured. Your entire team of slavers was killed.

“But not,” Ridotak noted, the mandibles on his jaw started to click rapidly as they trembled with rage, “before you killed one of
my
people. Do you know the penalty for the murder of Crew, Oath Keeper Cawl?”

“I didn’t kill them!” Cawl snapped, but if his body language was as human as his appearance, his half-bowed position and trembling frame suggested that he was utterly terrified. “Mercy!” he whimpered after a moment.

“Your Captain broke a longstanding Crew decree,” the High Captain told him. “The punishment for that alone would have been legendary, but now? Now you will be an
example
, Oath Keeper Cawl!”

Ridotak rose to his feet, all four arms in front of him as the two-and-a-half-meter tall insectoid stretched the full length of his carapace. The old Laian was
huge
; only Ondu’s bodyguards and Ki!Tana had been larger among the aliens Annette had met.

“Your ship,
Faces of God
, and all associated accounts will be seized,” he mandated. “The personal accounts of Captain Ikwal and Oath Keeper Cawl will be seized. All crew from the
Faces of God
have sixty-six hours to leave Tortuga or will be sold to whatever
other
slaver scum are left on my station.

“The only
mercy
I am prepared to offer is that
you
will be spared to suffer under the same order,” he concluded. “I hope you have friends who value you enough to buy you a ticket home, Waltan Cawl.”

The Kanzi was now melted into his chair, barely swallowing what would have been hyperventilating sobs in a human—and didn’t look much different on a Kanzi.

“Captain Bond,” Ridotak addressed Annette again. “As the victim of the violation of our degree,
Faces of God
and one half of the confiscated accounts will be turned over to you as compensation, less the one-million-mark penalty for your own violations of our orders.

“Money does not wash away blood in my experience,” he noted, “but I must ask you to promise that this suffices as punishment for your purposes and you will not pursue further action against Ikwal’s crew except in immediate self-defense.”

Annette paused in shock.
That
hadn’t been expected. If they planned to deduct the fine from the seized accounts, the accounts would likely still make a noticeable contribution to her little squadron’s needs.

“Yes,” she finally agreed. “I accept this as sufficient punishment and will pursue no further action.”

“Good,” Ridotak said briskly. “We must talk in private, Captain. This hearing is dismissed!”

The massive Laian moved slowly and carefully but with the momentum of a falling mountain. Annette’s escorts chivvied her to her feet and gestured for her to come with them as they followed the High Captain.

Cawl’s escorts were having a
much
harder time mobilizing him.

#

Ridotak’s path took him out the other side of the meeting room, past a second set of security hatches presumably leading to the same place as the first, and down another gently curving and sloping corridor to a set of offices tucked away from the main bustle.

At the door to what looked like the largest office, Annette’s escort waved off and Annette stepped through to find herself alone with the unquestioned ruler of the largest pirate port in her arm of the galaxy.

“This was not done for your benefit, Captain Bond,” Ridotak noted. “Please, have a seat.” He gestured to a quartet of chairs organized around a table. Two were clearly designed for Laians, but the other two looked to have been swapped out for ones suitable for a human-sized biped.

The room itself looked surprisingly plebeian. The walls were a soft gray tone, the furniture in black metal. A massive desk with what looked like half a dozen adjustable screens filled a good third of the office, but the chairs looked comfortable even to Annette.

“You just handed me a ship—that I know nothing about, admittedly—and a currently undetermined amount of money,” she replied. “If it wasn’t done for my benefit, I have still benefited.”

“The Crew generally allows the public areas of the station to sort out their own affairs unless they interfere with ours,” Ridotak explained. “Corpses in the street are not uncommon. People sell themselves into slavery or various lesser forms of indentured servitude every day. There is no other recourse for the desperate here but death.”

“This doesn’t bother you?” Annette asked.

“It did once,” he admitted. “But the Crew are a small force in a large universe, Captain, adrift because no one helped us. Those of the lost and desperate who come to us with value, we recruit. The rest must choose their own paths. We of all beings are not qualified to guide them.”

Fatalistic and stupid as the philosophy sounded to Annette, she could see how that, combined with the Crew being utterly without nation as she understood it, allowed Tortuga to function as it did.

“You did all of this just to tell people not to cause you trouble?” she asked.

“Yes,” he confirmed. He tossed a flimsy across the table to her. “I believe that should be readable for you,” he told her. “I am uncertain of the reliability of the translation software the A!Tol had nineteen months ago.”

Annette glanced it over. It was a summary of the accounts seized, the amount deeded to her, the deduction for the fine, and the—significant—remainder deposited to her flotilla account.