Chapter Ten
Landing Pad Number Nine
Regent’s Airfield Number One
Cresthaller
“They don’t seriously expect us to ship those!”
Theo stared at Screen M, for Manifest, where land-trucks lumbered slowly through the edge growth, ignoring her suggestions for routing around the pits and piles clearly visible from Bechimo’s topmost camera.
They were on-port. A port without the active ability to refuel them. A port that was little more than an undersized commercial airport. A port so minor, on a planet so seldom visited, that Travasinon didn’t list it at all. The Guild Quick Guide did grant Cresthaller an entry, with the notation: No reason to call.
In fact, Theo thought, there wasn’t any reason to call—no trade, no traffic—nothing except a dispirited cluster of warehouses around three airstrips.
The airstrips looked to be in good repair, at least—they’d’ve been perfectly adequate for playing touch-and-go with the Star Kings she’d trained on.
Once Tower understood that it was a spaceship coming in and the offer of a flagger had been maladroit, at best, Bechimo had been directed to land in this overgrown area behind the warehouses, where rusted rails and the shattered remains of what once might have been a service road were apparent to the scans as they came in.
Theo had considered pulling up and away, but Bechimo located a good level spot where the tarmac was mostly in one piece, and down they were, pod-pick-up portside.
“Shall we inform them that their mission is futile?” Clarence asked. “Or will the pilot reject them from the dockside?” He moved a shoulder—Liaden body language signaling disdain. “If we dismiss them now, they may return to their naps more quickly.”
“I was hoping to have cargo and profit from this place…” Theo muttered, wondering what the devil Shan had been thinking to send them to this…this…pit!
“You, me, and Chimmy, too!” Clarence said, back in Terran. “No tellin’ what Shan wanted out of it, but I’m thinking a dead loss wasn’t on his mind. Not to say the trip’ll be a total waste—a little polishing and we’ll have us a drinking-tale about the time we tried to load four cans so rusty they came apart at lift! Come to think on it, we oughta have a beer or two right now, to be in the proper spirit for the link-ups!”
Despite herself, Theo laughed. Joyita, in Screen Six, looked worried.
“See, I don’t know how it is at the real ports,” she said earnestly. “Always been on quality routes, myself—and you’d best believe there’s no beer before loading when you fly with Rig Tranza! On the other hand, it turns out I’m related to a lot of pilots. I haven’t heard any of their stories yet; might be that pods come apart every trip out, or it’s counted a bust!”
Clarence’s his mouth quirked into a barely suppressed grin.
“The problem with pilots is they lie as good as they fly, absolutely. The best ones, why, they can fib their way through a bad Jump sequence as easy as they can explain how they happen to have a bottle of wine in a dry port.”
She snickered again, and shook her head.
“Well, let’s see who we can raise. Out-line, please, Joyita?”
“Yes, Pilot,” said the communications officer, glancing down at his hidden board.
A button lit on Theo’s board.
“Port link live, Pilot.”
“Bro Moddasin?” Theo said, trying for her mother’s tone of crisp and cool authority. “Are you on channel, Bro Moddasin?”
Shan’s information had been for Frader Transport Group, the last contact so long ago that there had been no contact name. Bro Moddasin had answered Bechimo’s general call for Frader Group, but whether he was the owner, the foreman, the shipping agent, or rented the office next door was unclear.
He’d sounded…almost horrified to hear that Tree-and-Dragon had purchased a contract from VenskyTrade to pick up four pods warehoused under seal and held by Frader Group.
For that, Theo couldn’t blame him. According to Shan’s information, the pods in question had been in Frader Group’s keeping for the last twenty-three years, Standard. Bro Moddasin could be forgiven for supposing that nobody would ever call for them. The reason that pods were stored surface-side instead of the usual orbital storage was that Cresthaller’s outport had been destroyed—by accident or sabotage didn’t matter—during the local war, which had ended nineteen years ago, Standard.
The note that had come with the Cresthaller file was sensible, handwritten in a beautiful script that she could now read, even if she’d hate to have to read it back to a stickler.
Theo, we purchased this contract more for the contact, and to keep our shipping ally in business, than for the contents. So, Pilot, if the materials are no longer at hand, simply reconnoiter, research the current market and retrieve recent commerce records while being pleasantly committal. If the situation is unstable, move on. Under no account must you jeopardize your ship for this.
The channel light remained dark. Theo sighed. For somebody who was even theoretically an official representative of a trading company, Bro Moddasin was hard to contact.
“Comments anyone?” Theo glanced at Screen Six, then to Clarence, but neither offered advice, until he hand-signed ten count?
Theo sighed, gently, her hands making the non-committal wave-like motion that was the hand-talk equivalent of a shrug.
“Pilot,” Bechimo said suddenly. “I have been observing the approaching vehicles. Factoring in tread mark depth, speed, bounce, and visible spring-loading, I have formed the theory that they are not in fact transporting pods loaded with the items the manifest provided. There are no active transponders, nor are there appropriate markings on the visible rigging. It appears that all four are controlled by individual drivers.”
“So, they’re what? Independent operators? Pirates?”
Her stomach clenched—tighter, as she saw Clarence’s fingers move on the board, rapidly setting up the action-pad for a fast lift. Since they weren’t on a proper hot pad, nor under control of a proper space-traffic system, they were already in a push-to-fly mode, despite the fact that there was some minor air traffic on and about the air-center.
“Pilot, I cannot make a firm determination on—”
“Tree-and-Dragon please, Tree-and-Dragon please!”
Clarence’s hands paused near the action-pad, a finger flip away from the low-level weapons. Joyita’s background wobbled slightly; firmed as he pressed his lips together disapprovingly.
Theo touched the comm button.
“This is Pilot Waitley. Go ahead, please.”
“Bro Moddasin here, Pilot. I meant to get to you sooner, but the ’rangemints with the haulers weren’t as…” There was a pause, and then what might have been a whisper away from the mic—“is true!”
“Sorry, Pilot,” Bro Moddasin continued, louder. “Our ’rangemints with the haulers weren’t as clear as I’d thought, so we had to bring in a back-up company. This…ummm…this side of the field ain’t really been used since the…well, anyhow, for a while, so the hauler’s breaking trail ’fore bringing in the shipment. Could be some hours, still—might even be tomorrow—but we’ll get those pods out there, never you worry.”
On screen one of the vehicles was backing up, giving way for another which seemed to be having a better time of it.
Inner calm, Theo told herself, mentally dancing a phrase of menfri’at. For good measure she added another two phrases, ending in a short, sharp hand move that could be read either as restrain or kill, depending on emphasis.
Alas, that last had been a little more in the world than she’d meant, as Clarence’s chuckle indicated, and she was glad that she was on radio and not live screen.
“Pilot? You were calling me.”
She looked to the topside camera view once again, shook her head.
“Frader Group, I hear you. I was going to question the integrity of the inbound items—so I’m glad to learn that these are not the pods we want. Please, a radio check in four hours and at that point I’ll reschedule our day to match incoming cargo. We’ll be engaged in maintenance that should occupy us until then.”
A pause, and a low off-mic snarl that sounded like “…ought to at least know if it’s safe by then!”
“I understand that you’ll be busy until just after our lunch hour, Pilot,” Bro Moddasin said, somewhat more loudly than necessary. “We’ll check with you then.”
“Transmission ended, Pilot,” Bechimo confirmed. Then, plaintively, “May we instruct them to use proper call-sign?”
Theo took a breath—and let it out, slowly. They didn’t get many spaceships here at Cresthaller, but Bechimo was correct—lack of the proper forms was just one more thing that put a pilot’s back up on this port. It was possible that Tower didn’t have the forms available to them.
Though she suspected they wouldn’t much care for receiving them.
She looked toward Clarence, hand-signing, Do this, please, as she turned her chair and came to her feet.
“Bechimo, if you will, in concert with Second Board, please compile an up-to-date list of proper codes, confirmations, and etiquette, both in file and hardcopy, for me to pass along to the Frader Group. You’ll find my notes from the academy an adequate start, and some of the information we received at Frenzel should be useful, too. Make copies as well for the tower; we’ll transmit them all as time permits, before lift-off.”
* * *
Theo sat at her station, absorbed, listening and, to some extent seeing, Clarence’s calm evaluation of pod serial number ending 57, which was the last of the four. They’d passed two of the first three, with one failing Bechimo’s electronic-link scan as well as getting bad marks from Clarence’s visual—he’d finally said, “Let’s mark this number as unacceptable and go from there, Theo. I think between the pair of us we’ve seen enough of this one. If they have something to repack cargo into we’d need to mark that that as a repack and get an extra surety—can’t say the problems are new. That’s the report from my end.”
Besides Bechimo’s technical turn down due to power supply issues and lock security concerns, that pod’s seals had looked bad, even over video, even to someone who’d spent as little time as possible in Practical Cargo Handling 302 back at Anlingdin Piloting Academy. While she’d done check-cargo on many of the trips with Rig Tranza, Primadonna’s courier lifts were dainty compared to Bechimo’s working multipod lifts. It was, Theo thought, a good thing they had Clarence.
“I predict the Less Pilot will accept the fourth pod,” Bechimo said. “It is very like the first and third, Pilot. The internals report themselves well, there’s no pressure difficulty evident, the scans show good integration of the shield and lock system. I am observing the Less Pilot’s hands-on techniques and analyzing them in consideration of producing a procedures manual more current than the one I was fitted with. It may be that, should a different Less Pilot be utilized at some point, the most useful techniques can be shared and repeated.”
This was good news in several ways—for one, Bechimo was showing a personal interest in on-going operations. Too, it meant that Clarence was regaining confidence enough to be able to teach, if need be—he was explaining himself to Bechimo and Theo as he worked.
“Forward lockpoint six,” he was saying, “shows signs of attachments, but like the other lockpoints onboard there’s no evidence of corrosion, misalignment, wear, or stress. My report shows this lockpoint acceptable. Also, I note that there’s no sign of extraneous color-coding—remind me to go over that in detail at another time, since that’s a sign that a pod may have been used for smuggling—and there’s a full and proper complement of static standard and polarized spectrum reflectors, again, with no indication of patterning.”
Clarence had a good hand with the camera, pointing it steadily where he was talking about and otherwise holding it still.
“Patterning—that’s where the reflectors can be used to mark a unit for a break-in—or sometimes it just shows that something’s been attached for a free ride.”
Joyita, in Screen Six, nodded gravely.
Theo echoed that to Clarence as, “Noted, and we’ll add that to crew consult next preflight.”
Bechimo had been doing an excellent job of switching external camera and sensor angles to follow Clarence’s tour; he walked with Bro Moddasin and one of his retainers, Moddasin a respectful shadow. The retainer was a nervous guard despite, or perhaps because of, the presence of the various transport drivers.
“So that pod you’re not taking,” Bro Moddasin suddenly spoke up, his voice low and deferential. “Sir. That’s gonta get us a black mark with Tree-and-Dragon, ain’t it?”
Clarence frowned at him. “Black mark? I don’t take your meaning there, Bro.”
“Well, what I mean tasay—we din’t keep the thing so it’ll take space, which we was trusted to do. Tree-and-Dragon sets a good deal by contracts—well, naturally! Sets a good deal, too, what I heard, on people keeping their things pretty.”
Clarence walked a couple steps in silence, then said slowly, “Well, now, here’s the thing, laddie: I ain’t Tree-and-Dragon. Pilot an’ ship’re contractors; pilot hired me, so I got nothing to say about Tree-and-Dragon’s internals. Pilot did let me know that the front office didn’t exactly think any of these pods might’ve survived. Thinking about it from that start, us bringing out three in pretty good shape might get ’em to thinking that Frader Group’s reliable to do bidness with.”
Bro Moddasin looked up, naked hope on his face.
“D’ya think they will?”
“Just as likely to think that than t’other,” Clarence said carefully. “But what’s it all to you, if you don’t mind my askin’?”
The other man snorted.
“You’ll’ve noticed we ain’t much used to star-traffic here. And you’ll’ve maybe noticed too that there ain’t no station up in orbit where these pods, say, coulda been held outta the weather, and transferred with a lot less sweat o’man.”
“Little bit of unpleasantness a few years back, wasn’t it?” Clarence asked.
“Damned bit of foolfire,” Bro Moddasin corrected hotly. “Only a brat, myself, but my bigsis was in it. Went up with a bunch of ’em to hold the station. Last we seen o’her, an’ my mother—well, that’s family stuff, no matter to you. But here’s Cresthaller-gov bringing in every ship they could snabble, by hook or by lie, and setting trading ships agin one another, all and every bit of it to secure their position, an’ what’ve we got at the end of it all and twenty years downwind, eh?”
He looked at Clarence meaningfully.
Clarence shrugged. “What d’you have, then?”
“Nothin’.” Bro Moddasin spat. “Zackly nothin’. There was ships usta stop here—them pods prove that! Well, there ain’t anymore! And there won’t be, ’til word gets out that the old gov is long out, and no such a thing’ll happen again. We need us a trade line that’ll take an interest in us, maybe go halfsies on a station—work in partnership, see? Ten, nine year ago, buncha fellas made a consortium, they called it. Started in at rebuldin’ up there…”
He shook his head.
“Short story shorter, what was left of the station was unstable, and ain’t none o’them come back to their families, neither.”
Theo listening to this, bit her lip. If what Bro Moddasin said was so, and the government had engaged in acts of, well, piracy, he was right to suppose that no ships would risk themselves here again.
“So, anyhow, if Tree-and-Dragon was to take an interest…” He sighed abruptly, and his shoulders lost their tension. “I’ll tell you what, we’re not gonna be able to stay on this ol’ ball o’mud much longer. We need too much stuff. Saw some of them science and news reports on the vid.”
They’d come ’round to the hatch, and Clarence stopped, Bro Moddasin at his side.
“It’ll take us some hours to get the pods on and balanced,” he said slowly. “If there’s a world packet, you might wanna transmit that to the ship. Those science lectures, too, if you might. The pilot does file reports, and we send on whatever we get from the port and interested others.”
“Do you?” Bro Moddasin stared. “Do you, by the brigger.” He grinned. “You’ll be getting transmissions from the Frader Group, and from Cresthaller Port Authority, too, before you lift.” The grin broke, and Bro Moddasin swallowed, hard. “Good day to you, Pilot. Sir.”
He turned, then and strode away toward the trucks, yelling, his guard at his back.
* * *
The Uncle consulted the readout over the medical unit—the same medical unit that had until recently been occupied by Win Ton yo’Vala—and felt…relief.
Perhaps it would be just, he thought, closing his eyes briefly, to admit even to intense relief.
In his relief, he sighed. The man he and Dulsey had transferred from the field ’doc into this much more sophisticated and adept unit had been very much more dead than alive. It would not have surprised him, just now, to find that, even with so much more support, that it had been easier for the patient to let life go, than renew his grip.
Such was the tyranny of Korval’s genes, that, no matter how painful, they would always choose for life.
In that, the Uncle owned, he was fortunate. For he had no wish at all to come before the delm of Korval, and admit that his had been the last hands on Daav yos’Phelium before his death.
He scrutinized the readings again, more coolly.
Daav yos’Phelium lived, yes. The unit had returned him to a level of stability that was considerably less than optimum. If there was no improvement…But there—what was the phrase?
Why borrow trouble, when one might have more than one wants, for free?