Chapter 6
“Half a loaf is better than none.”
Proverb
Location: Canova Station One, Canova System
Standard Date: 05 23 632
Back from the conquest of Fort 1, Jenny Starchild felt a wrench as she left the lock of the Arachne and entered the transfer tube to Canova Station One. Half her brain was left behind on the ship.
Jenny was a cyborg, part human and part ship, but the farther she got from the ship, the longer the lag time between the brain in her body and the brain in the ship. So, as she left the ship, Arachne shut down the link between them. It was like walking away from her leg, even though it didn’t hurt.
Jenny didn’t have a metal plate in her head or lasers sticking out of her arms. Nothing like that. Nothing that showed. To all outward appearances, she was a perfectly normal thirteen-year-old girl. And that was exactly what she was . . . until she was caught in a firefight on Skull Station.
To save her from life as an invalid, Doctor Gerhard Schmitz used his brand new ship controller brain to restore her control of her body. And in the process, made her part of the artificial brain ship Arachne. Or made Arachne part of Jenny. It was hard to tell which.
But now, leaving the ship was leaving a part of herself.
John Gabriel walked beside her, looking worried. Well, there was a lot to be worried about. “I’m fine, John,” Jenny told her adoptive father. “It’s weird, but I can deal with it. After all, I didn’t have Arachne for most of my life.”
That was true. Well, except for the fine part. What she actually felt was half blind and crippled. But she didn’t want John to worry.
Jenny looked ahead and saw, waiting just past the lock to the main station, three people. Stareska, Starsiijkegk and Barbra Billingsley Canova. The two Parthian breeders adopted into her clan, and the elder human breeder who was about to join it.
Barbra looked much better, and Jenny realized that Barbra must have been living in poverty when they first spoke. Now she was made up and wearing a wig. She looked forty years younger than the pre-gene-mod eighty she’d looked earlier. Since she was actually one hundred fifteen, it could be said that she looked marvelous.
Jenny looked at Stareska and Starsiijkegk. They were standing steady enough, but their eyestalks were darting about, and their mouth-hands were scrunched up in discomfort. Jenny sniffed. The Parthian breeder scent was almost entirely missing from the station. Instead, the scent here was of old oil and a hint of mold, adding to the worn feel of Canova Station One.
Using her implants, Jenny called up a greeting in Parthian to the two young breeders, and then said, “Hello, Mrs. Canova. How are we going to handle the name?”
Barbra smiled. “Well, I thought of dropping the ‘Ca’ and making it Starnova. But it’s important to keep the Canova for political reasons, so I suggest we just add in the full ‘Starchild’ with a hyphen and lose the Billingsley altogether. Barbra Starchild-Canova. And you become Jenny Starchild-Canova. For the rest of the clan, we can use just the ‘Star’ ”
Maybe the smell wasn’t the only reason that Stareska and Starsiijkegk had their mouth-hands scrunched up. Jenny knew that the Parthians were as status conscious in their way as humans were. It just expressed differently. Giving two of the human breeders the full Starchild but not the Parthian breeders would almost have to be taken as a denigration of the Parthians. Jenny never said ‘bugs’ even in her own head. “Perhaps it would be better to have all of us, human and Parthian, alike. Have ‘Starchild-Canova’ for human usage and ‘Star’ for Parthian usage. So, on human documents it would be Eska Starchild-Canova and for Parthian it would be StarBarbra or StarJenny?”
Now it was Barbra’s turn to scrunch up her mouth. But by then Jenny was at the lock and she shook the old woman’s hand, then put her arms out so that Stareska and Starsiijkegk could wrap their mouth-hands around her forearms. This was a greeting reserved for breeders from the same clan, not something well known among humans. But Jenny was a girl who studied.
✽✽✽
Arachne felt even more bereft by Jenny’s exit than the girl did. It was as if her heart and will had walked out the lock, leaving her with nothing but gray, drab duty. Still, she felt connected with her crew through their interfaces, and went about her necessary tasks.
Location: Arachne, docked at Canova Station One, Canova System
Standard Date: 05 23 632
Tanya Cordoba-Davis felt the change in the ship system. It was a shock. In the moment the influence vanished, she became aware of just how much Jenny affected the ship net. She sent instructions, ordering checks of wing spars and fusion drives. Anything to distract from the grayness.
“Arachne, call the Pandora and see if she can—” Tanya stopped. How could she say “breathe some life back into you” without making the Arachne feel even worse? They were going to have to learn to deal with this. Jenny was going to have duties on the planet Canova Three, and even when she was left on the station, the Arachne was going to have to go out into the Canova system to scout jumps and guard against incursions by the Drakes or—more likely—the Jackson-Cordobas. Possibly even Tanya’s own family, the Cordoba-Davises, backing up the Jackson-Cordobas.
Arachne was their only warship.
Using her implants, she called the station and requested a link to Jenny Starchild. But the expert system couldn’t locate her. Expert systems lacked the abilities of a neural net artificial brain like the Pandora, Sally or the Arachne, and while they could gather data, they couldn’t learn. It was a distinction that Tanya only started to understand after she met Pan.
She called the Pandora and learned that this wasn’t a problem of the expert system, save for the fact that the expert system was subject to human oversight.
“I have traced the ‘mix up,’ ” Pan said over the intership com. “And there is a problem. A system supervisor removed the Jenny Starchild listing without installing the Jenny Canova listing because the kothkoke has not been performed and is only recently added to Canova law. What should have happened was the changeover be delayed until the kothkoke was performed, shifting Jenny’s billing status from visiting spacer to citizen/stakeholder of the Canova system. For this error to have happened, the human supervisor of the expert system had to override the automatics.”
“Sabotage?”
“That is debatable. Dumb insolence is closer. It can be argued that it was simply an error caused by the confusion in status, combined with the reasonable concern over who is going to pay for the bandwidth usage. The full link between Jenny and the Arachne could be a major strain on the stations communication systems.”
“So who is the dumb, insolent bastard I need to have a talk with?” Tanya asked.
“I would rather not say,” Pan sent. “The process I used to access the information is not legal under Canova law.”
“So what do we do?”
“For now, file a complaint and send a message to Barbara Canova informing her of the problem.”
They did that, then went on to other work. The conquest of a system, even if mostly bloodless, still involves a lot of organizational issues. Rosita Stuard was in her element, meeting with Allen Jackson-Cordoba and the rest of the board of the C.S.G.C. Canova System Government Corporation. The managers of the former government weren’t happy with the situation, but they knew where the balance of power was. At least for the moment. Like the people managing the station net, they were “officially” cooperating.
Finally, Tanya got the paperwork out of the way, and using thrusters only, pulled Arachne away from the station.
Location: Meeting Room 14C, Canova Station One
“Come in,” Rosita Stuard said. “Mrs. Canova, you know Justice Brian Doherty, the chief justice, I believe. Jenny, Stareska, Starsiijkegk, this is Justice Doherty. He will be observing the kothkoke.”
Jenny looked at the older man. Without thinking about it, she reached out for Arachne to find out how old he was and got back nothing. Not Arachne, not the station net, nothing.
Left to her own devices, she guessed. He wasn’t as old as Barbra, and he could afford to miss some meals. But he was old. He was also looking at Barbra with an expression of resentment and something else. She didn’t have Arachne’s suite of sensors to help, but it seemed like he might be ashamed.
“Barbra.” Justice Doherty’s voice was a squeaky tenor. He turned to Jenny and started to smile as he said, “Miss Starchild.” Then he lost his smile as he looked at Stareska and Starsiijkegk. He nodded, but didn’t speak.
“The proper protocol is to greet them with the phrase . . .” Jenny used her internals to control the voder that she put on for this visit, “ ‘Kase Stareska’ and ‘Kasi Starsiijkegk.’ ” Then, going back to her own voice, “But since you don’t have a voder, ‘Breeder Stareska’ and ‘Breeder Starsiijkegk’ is acceptable.”
Now he wasn’t smiling at Jenny, but he nodded again and said, “Breeder Stareska,” nod, “Breeder Starsiijkegk.”
No, he wasn’t happy with the Parthian part in the change of government.
Barbra said, “Jenny, you are going to have to talk me through the ceremony. Please make it clear to my fellow breeders, Breeder Stareska and Breeder Starsiijkegk, that I will get a voder as soon as I can.”
Jenny looked over at Barbra and saw that she was smiling . . . and overdoing her friendly deference to the breeders who were about to become her senior breeders. In a clan your rank was determined by when you joined the clan, not by age, something that, by the way she was acting, Barbra was suddenly a lot more willing to accept.
Stareska lifted her mid arms in a gesture of acceptance that, to untutored human eyes, looked like she was getting ready to attack, and said in passable English, “That is quite all right, Kase Barbra. We know that human voice boxes are not as flexible as ours. Please know that we are happy to have you in our clan.”
Justice Doherty snorted quietly, but not quietly enough considering Parthian senses and Jenny’s augmented sensory analysis. Four eyestalks and Jenny’s human eyes focused on him, and Barbra laughed.
“He thinks you’re after my lands.”
“Well, of course we are,” Starsiijkegk agreed. “But also your wisdom. We are a new clan and need the wisdom of elder breeders, especially since we will be living on a new world of which, of all of us, you are the most familiar.”
They held the ceremony almost entirely in Parthian, but translated it into English for the records. And modified it, because this was only the second clan to have non-Parthians. It, unlike any other kothkoke, allowed for the individual joining the clan to keep some of its personal property. How much was specified in the marriage contract. In this case, most of the Canova property would go to Clan Starchild-Canova, but a small farm on the surface, as well as her clothing and personal possessions, would remain Barbra’s.
The structure of the kothkoke seemed to relieve Justice Doherty a little.
“You see, Brian,” Rosita said, “the Parthians are willing enough to accept our peculiarities as long as we don’t insist that they must engage in perversities like personal property.”
“They’re leaving me more personal property than you did, Brian,” Barbra pointed out.
“The clan takes care of its own,” Stareska said. “We don’t understand why humans feel the need for personal property, but since they need it, we will provide it for clan members.”
After that, they discussed the clan laws that would be internal to the Starchild-Canova clan, and how it differed from the laws of other clans on Parthia, and how new Parthian and mixed clans on Canova might be expected to rule themselves.
Over the next weeks, the reorganization of the Canova government was discussed and compromises were reached. The basic corporate structure would be kept. That was almost a requirement in Cordoba space. But ownership of that corporation would, in large part, return to Barbra Starchild-Canova and her new family, the Starchild clan.
Location: Warchief, in orbit around Canova II
Standard Date: 06 28 632
Arachne cheated, Warchief thought darkly in its artificial neurons. A smaller and less flexible brain than Pandora or Sally, it still possessed massive knowledge of the shape and structure of space. Arachne cheated. How else could she have found those jumps?
Warchief didn’t want to complain to Janis. Janis was its owner, so it loved Janis. It respected Pandora, who was a larger ship brain and it liked Sally well enough. She was good at paperwork. But . . . Arachne cheated. She should not have been able to find those jumps.
Warchief’s musings were interrupted when Connor opened a link and started asking about the fluctuations in the dorsal C wing. “Sorry, Connor. I was trying to see if I could sense more space by adjusting the wing shape.”
“That’s good, Chief, but be careful. We don’t want to strain the rotors.” Rotors were the spinning disks that acted to intermittently allow the electromagnetic field into the guide channels by adjusting their spin. They could vary the angle of the wings. Because their function was to limit and distort magnetic fields, they couldn’t use magnetic bearings, so they were one of the parts of a wing ship that wore out with use and they wore out faster if you changed their velocity in non-consistent ways.
Grumpily, Warchief went back to the standard fluctuation. It examined the data and saw something, felt something. There was a flat spot, way too small to be a jump, but like a jump. It sent the gestalt to Pandora. Warchief wasn’t going to send it to the snooty spider.
“Yes, Chief,” Pandora sent back, “that does look like a micro jump.”
Then Janis interrupted. “Ready to go, Chief?”
And they were off. Warchief and the crew adjusted wing strength and flap rates, spilled a bit of plasma into the wings and the .4 standard G climbed to .8. Then the converted freighter started the slow climb out of Canova II orbit, toward the jump to Ferguson.
Janis used her link to call the Pan. “Danny, how are your passengers doing?”
“Well enough, Janis,” Danny sent. The Pan was almost full with six Parthian crew, Trader Goldgok, Hirum, Joan Danvers, one of Tanya’s crew to handle the shield missiles, and two new humans, both from one of the former Cordoba ships. Merchant spacers didn’t have a lot of loyalty to the Drakes or Cordobas. They were loyal to their present ship, to the extent they were loyal to anyone. And these spacers were more used to Parthians than most. As passengers, they had Rosita Stuard, ambassador plenipotentiary from both Canova and Parthia to wherever they happened to be, Gerhard Schmitz, who was going back to the Skull System to oversee the development of the Skull System cybernetics and brain development, Sara Electrum, who was going to report back to her parents and through them to Cybrant, and Eddy, the king of Franklin, who was seeking allies to retake the Franklin system from the Cordobas. Not to mention two ambassadors from Canova, who were going to Skull and the Drakes respectively, looking for alliances.
Danny was unused to such a full ship, and Janis was tweeting him a bit over it. Returning the favor, he asked “How’s Warchief doing?”
Janis laughed. “Arachne cheated. Wait one. Pan, are you getting this?”
Suddenly Pan’s wings were fluctuating, and Danny noticed that there was a mini jump not too far off their course. It was too small for Pan, as loaded with cargo as she was but the Chief might be able to manage it if he timed it well and folded his wings just right.
“Go for it, Janis,” Danny sent, and a few seconds later the Warchief vanished. Pan watched for a reappearance, but it didn’t happen.
Two hours later, on approach to Canova System Jump 232
Pan called Danny. “We just got a laser comm from Warchief. They are two light hours north of the planetary plane. And not that near any jumps. Janis plans to circle around and head back through the mini jump Warchief found, and suggests we go on. She’ll pour on the Gs and catch up.”
Danny agreed, and fifteen minutes later the Pan took the next jump on the Ferguson chain.
Location: Three-quarters of the way to Ferguson
Five days later
The Warchief jumped five minutes after Pan did, and the two ships resumed formation.
Location: Ferguson Outsystem
Standard Date: 07 06 632
“What’s it look like, Pan?” Danny asked curiously.
“Seven ships in system, Captain,” Pan reported. “One is flying the ID of a Cordoba Gentry-Class courier, and one is the Fortune Find.”
“I’m torn,” Danny said. “I’d like to find out what’s going on, but I want to avoid a scrap with the Cordoba armed forces.”
Rosita Stuart broke into the conversation. “Go on in, Captain. We are all Cordoba stockholders. It’s just a courier. We’re bigger than they are, and we have at least nominal diplomatic status from both Parthia and Canova. What are they going to do?”
Location: Cordoba Courier Master Hamilton, Ferguson orbit
“Skipper, we have a pair of ships just out of jump.”
“IDs?”
“Shit, Skipper. It’s the Pandora and the Warchief, coming in just as open as you please.”
“Well, don’t piss them off, Tammy. All we know about the Pandora are rumors, but we know for a fact that the Chief is out of Skull and heavily armed.”
“Yes, sir.” Tammy grinned at her skipper. Some officers were by-the-book prigs, but the skipper was an easy-going sort. The Cordoba Courier Service was nominally part of the Spaceforce, but in reality their main task was carrying the mail for great houses and grand stockholders. So, in practice, they fell somewhere between a Spaceforce vessel and a mail service vessel. They were good at getting around fast, not at fighting. The Master Hamilton could do five Gs when his crew was in accell beds and running him through their interfaces. She sent out a howdy as the skipper ordered the crew to accell stations just in case.
What came back a couple of seconds later was a request for the Stockholder Relations Officer. That was the XO on a ship this small. For the next several hours, as the Pan and the Chief traveled the two hundred fifty thousand kilometers from the last jump to Ferguson orbit, they discussed the military and political situation in the sector. Admiral Chin was still in charge in Franklin last they heard, but the Drakes were pulling back from Parise, apparently in a move to retake Franklin. Which, according to the Drake family, was now directly owned by the royal family, since all the Franklin royalty were dead.
Location: Pandora
Eddy drummed his fingers on the duraplast tabletop, now graced with a Parthian Kiisilk cloth of checkered sielke and zash. The cloth let Eddy’s fingers drum their complex pattern without making a sound, “I shouldn’t be surprised.” He looked over at Danny. “Realpolitik is raising its ugly head. I’m not at all sure that Cousin Ferdinand is going to be happy to see me alive.”
“You might be surprised,” Danny said and sipped his salsik. It was a brownish yellow drink that the new Parthian ship’s cook served him. It tasted of coffee and cinnamon, with a hint of vanilla. “Your family was moderately popular, and I suspect that Admiral Chin and his Franklin System Corporate Government aren’t ingratiating themselves with the people of Franklin. Besides, the Frankliners probably prefer to have a local governing them. That means less of their gross system product goes to the Drakes or some Cordoba great family.”
“Which is why Eddy may be right.” Rosita took a bite of vat chicken in a parsley and garlic sauce, then a sip of azure wine and continued. “The Drakes might want that extra income. In fact, if things are going as they seem to be, they might need it desperately.”
“In any case,” Eddy said, “I think the time when staying in the shadows will keep me safe is past.”
“We’re in Cordoba space, Eddy.” Rosita waved the three pronged, gold-plated fork around, indicating the surrounding space.
“I know that.” Eddy nodded instead of pouting, which surprised Danny a bit. The kid was growing up fast.
“But that might be a good thing. If I announce my status as a non-corpse now, in Cordoba space, it becomes something that Cousin Ferdinand can’t suppress. Also, it discredits Chin by making it clear that his snatch and grab wasn’t as successful as he claimed. Anything I can do to discredit him will help.”
Danny considered, and wished Tanya Cordoba-Davis was here. He remembered that Chin was Spaceforce, not Great Family. The Cordobas were probably less than completely happy about his actions. Yet they couldn’t afford to offend the Spaceforce by failing to back him. Not unless it became apparent that he was bungling things militarily. And Eddy appearing in Cordoba Space to complain about the unjustified attack on his peaceful home system might be just the excuse that the Cordoba great families needed to step on Chin.
Or it might not be.
Danny simply didn’t know enough about the inner workings of the Cordoba great families to be sure. “Rosita, what do you think?”
“I think I wish we could talk this over with Tanya Cordoba-Davis. I’m familiar with Cordoba politics, but from several social ranks below Tanya. And while Eddy is actually of higher social rank than Tanya, he’s from the Drakes, not the Cordobas.”
Which was close enough to what Danny was thinking. He took another sip of his salsik, then looked at Eddy. Grown-up or bratty teen, it was Eddy’s airtank, so Eddy’s choice. “It’s up to you, Eddy.”
“Then we announce my name and rank when we send the passenger list to the station and the Ferguson system government.”
Ferguson Station One
Standard Date: 07 07 632
The expert system pinged insistently as Tricia Gattis tried to get a last gulp of coffee. “What’s so bleeping important, you unsalted collection of chips?” She reached out and punched the accept key and the virtual screen came to life, displaying an image of His Royal Highness Edward Allen Golden Drake Franklin, King of Franklin System in Exile, Drake Space, Currently Occupied by Cordoba Fleet Units. “What the bleeping scorched circuits am I supposed to do about this?”
What the expert system gave back was a set of protocols to be extended to a visiting head of state from Drake space. Tricia got on the comm to her boss, and it migrated from there. All the way up to the Chief Operating Officer of the Ferguson Governance Corporation.
✽✽✽
CEO John Zeek looked at the situation, got on the comm, and called the Pandora. “Captain, just once could you visit our system without bringing a potential disaster with you?”
“Tanya and her people weren’t actually disasters. The Drakes never came this way at all.” Danny grinned at him.
“So you bring us a Drake royal in exile? What am I supposed to do now?”
“Whatever you choose. We aren’t dropping him here. We will be leaving full documentation that he is who he claims and a complete genescan that your medics can check.”
Then Sara Electrum got on the comm and chatted with Zeek. And while Goldgok bought and sold, Eddy, representing Franklin System, Rosita, representing the Parthians, Sara, semi-officially representing the Cybrants, and Janis Tecumseh, representing the Skull System, attended a state dinner. Which was broadcast all over the system and Eddy was interviewed by the local news service, announcing his alliance and mutual recognition with the Skull System, Parthia, and Canova.
The Ferguson System Governance Corporation didn’t join the alliance, but very politely wished them well. And privately hoped that whatever hell landed on Canova and Parthia would bypass them.