069-1117 – Jumpspace

12 Salas 1117: Jumpspace

This morning was pretty quiet. I went upstairs and checked on the passengers, and everyone seemed to be fine. Well, Director Morn and Mr. Lorentz stayed in their cabins, so I didn’t see either of them. Shelly told me that Lorentz hadn’t even come out for breakfast. Mr. Gains was engrossed in an intense conversation with Dr. Korvusar while Ms. Chelis and Ms. Drakson were sitting at the aft display. I stopped by all of them long enough to be polite, then returned to Shelly.

“Crew meeting at around 1400?” I asked.

“Should be fine,” she said nodding. “It was a bit rough getting everyone on board yesterday but today is pretty quiet.”

“Well… let’s hope so. See you at 1400.”

I headed back down to the crew deck and to my cabin. It was empty. Saahna hadn’t really said anything to me this morning when we woke up and had left the cabin as soon as she could. She said she was going up to the bridge to run simulations. I thought about checking in on her then decided to let it be. She would tell me what I had done wrong this time at some point.

I shook my head at that. Her moods had always annoyed me but… for some reason, this one didn’t. I thought about Kona for a while. I barely knew her, but she had had a more significant effect on me than anyone I had known for a long time. I didn’t understand that. But, for some reason, Saahna’s moods were bothering me a lot less than they had before.

What had happened to me?

I pinged the crew and told them about the meeting at 1400, then pulled out my comp and spent the next few hours catching up on net-vids.

—-

When I finally left my cabin, Jami, Varan, and Carma were already there. I went to the dispenser and grabbed a beer, then pinged everyone again.

“So, what’s up?” I asked as I dropped into a chair.

Jami frowned. “Shouldn’t we… wait for everyone else?”

I shrugged and twisted open the beer. “Unless there’s a problem that they need to know about?”

“No! No. Everything is good in the back. Just…” she looked around. “Shouldn’t we wait for the others?”

Now what? I thought. “OK, we’ll hold a few.”

Varan had been looking at me with a raised eyebrow but shrugged. Carma hadn’t looked up from her comp.

I was about to ping the crew again when the iris overhead opened, and Saahna descended, followed by Shelly. I wondered why Saahna had been upstairs and if there were any problems. Do ‘rex came in from the bridge and leaned against the bulkhead next to it.

I waved in greeting and waited until everyone had grabbed something from the dispenser and found a place to sit. When everyone was settled, I turned to Saahna.

“Something going on upstairs I need to worry about?”

“Just checking on passenger Lorentz. He won’t come out of his cabin and, given our history, I wanted to make sure he wasn’t up to anything. So I borrowed Jami to get him out.”

Jami winced slightly. “Yeah… That’s why I wanted to wait. Saahna asked me to tell him we needed to do some maintenance on his life support to give us an excuse to go through his cabin.”

I turned back to Saahna. “You know, you could have talked to me before doing something like that.”

“Like you talk to us before you do anything? It was a bit of a surprise to suddenly learn that our Captain had left the starport and flown to a random asteroid elsewhere. You could have let us know you were going somewhere.”

What the hells? I thought. “Um… We’ve never had any rules on what we can do while on down-time. Hells, Jami was off-asteroid most of the week too. Why does it matter where I was?”

I could see her becoming angry. “Something is unlikely to go wrong in Engineering while everything is powered down on the pad. On-planet is where we might want the Captain for something…”

“…then it can probably be resolved by comm. And if not, I was back well before lift anyway. We got our credits, we got our cargo, we got our passengers, what else is there?”

Her anger turned into a glare. “If you had maybe actually talked to the people you were letting on board, then maybe we wouldn’t be having problems. Again. But no, you had to go hang out with your whore.”

I had to take a few seconds before replying. “One. That is way out of line. Two. Even if I was with a whore, which I wasn’t , it isn’t any of your business. You don’t want me to care about who you’re with while on-planet, why should you care who I’m with.”

Her voice became tight. “I don’t get us involved in local politics.”

“You also don’t make us 6 million credits, free and clear. Do that, and maybe I’ll listen to your complaint about my personal time.” I was far angrier than I should have been.

She stood up, hesitated, and then sat down again. “I checked Lorentz’ cabin,” she said, in a neutral voice.

I replied the same way. “And?”

“He’s… got a piece of luggage in there. It was locked, but…” she shrugged. “Anyway, he’s got a few million Credits. Physical bills.” She paused. “And way more than 6 million, if that matters.”

I thought about a retort, then held it back. “He’s a passenger. What he is doing is none of our business.”

I could see her struggling not to say something herself. “You were the one who asked me to check up on him.”

“Check up on what you could find before we left Gimisapun. Once we get to Tlianke, he’ll be gone, and it won’t be any of our concern anymore.”

She openly glared at that. “I’m trying to take care of the safety of this ship! Which is more than you seem to be wanting to do!”

I waited several long seconds before answering that. “I did nothing to endanger the Grayswandir,” I said, finally. “Why the hells do you think Lorentz has anything to do with Kona and me salvaging that Solomani courier?”

“Kona?” Her tone turned almost mocking. “Not ‘Captain Rainis?'”

I sighed openly. “You know, for someone who has constantly berated me when I get annoyed at you for spending a week with someone else, you sure the hells are getting way too bent out of shape about this.”

She glanced around, then looked back at me. “OK, we’ll talk about this. Privately. Later.” She pulled out her comp and started looking at something.

Varan stepped in. “Did you… not realize how much you disrupted the status quo on Gimisapun?”

I shook my head. “‘Disrupted the status quo?’ What the hells are you talking about?”

“What did you know about their political system?”

“Technically none, since technically they have no population. In reality, they’re an oligarchy. The people in charge are the ship Captains, of which there are maybe around a thousand. Everyone else is either the crew on one of those ships, or ‘transients’ like most of our passengers or us. It seems to be relatively stable. And they have a greater reliance on cybernetics and cyonics than you would pick up from the library data, but that didn’t seem to affect us much.”

“You need to pay more attention. Gimisapun isn’t run by shipowners. It’s run by around 80 ‘Admirals.’ Yeah, there are probably a thousand or more ships in the system, but anyone who gets their own ship usually got it with the help of the ship they were on, which puts them subordinate to the Captain who helped them achieve that.”

“You broke that paradigm. Captain Rainis got a ship without a Captain helping her. Well, you did, but you aren’t in-system and have already left. So she ‘s not just a Captain; she’s also an Admiral since she owns a ship without owing anything to an existing Captain. That hasn’t happened in a long time.”

I thought back to my time with Kona. “She never mentioned anything like that to me.”

He nodded. “We made enemies there. Not the average locals; they think our reputation is great. But the people in power? Not so much.”

I sighed, getting what he was saying. “And now one of their administrators has fled the system, with us, after possibly stealing a large number of Credits.”

“Yeah. Which is going to make it difficult for us if we ever go back there again.”

“Fine, I’ll add it to the list.”

“We never had these kinds of problems before.”

“Yeah, I know. We’re collecting our share of problems we didn’t have before.”

There was silence for a moment. Finally, Jami coughed.

“Um… If I did something wrong…”

I waved a dismissal. “If you had asked I would probably have approved it too. We do a sensor sweep on personal cargo when it comes in to make sure it isn’t radioactive or explosive, but no reason not to be careful. The Gortors only got their robot on board because we don’t scan people.” I frowned. “Or live cargo.”

“Director Morn’s cargo?” asked Varan. “Saahna and I looked at it; whatever is in there isn’t getting out without help from the outside. And we’ve got Gray monitoring the bay. Anyone who isn’t one of us goes in there, we’ll know immediately.”

“Good.” I turned to Shelly. “So… any problems with Lorentz? Or anyone else for that matter?”

She shook her head. “Dr. Korvusar actually helped distract him by saying she had thought something was wrong with the life support as well and offered to check him to make sure he hadn’t been affected.”

“I wish you hadn’t involved her.”

“We didn’t! She just came over and started talking to him.”

I nodded slowly. “Dr. Korvusar has a lot of secrets.” I glanced at Saahna. She was still facing her comp, but I could see that she wasn’t actually looking at it. “You did close the case back up, right.”

She had followed my gaze but looked back. “Oh! Yes! Of course. And… Don’t worry; none of this will be on my live-net.”

“Yeah… good.” I was looking at Saahna again.

Varan spoke up. “So… are we done?”

“For now, anyway. We’ll get together again later.”

I heard but didn’t watch as the others got up and started heading for various exits. When the lounge was cleared, Saahna looked up.

“You didn’t have to end the meeting early for me.”

“Maybe I have different priorities. But I need to know; what the hells is going on? We’ve hit rough patches before, but… why the hells is everyone on me this time? Especially you?”

She stood up. “Not here.” She walked to my cabin, keyed the code, then stopped as the door opened, looking at me. I sighed and followed her inside.

Once there, she started pacing. “Did you ever wonder why Captain Anna never spent that much time with us?”

“She was the Captain?”

“And now you are.”

“And?”

“You really think you can be in charge and be friends at the same time? What happens when you have to do something that isn’t in our best interest?”

“I’ve made us a few hells of credits this past week. How is that not in our best interest?”

“When what you do to get those credits opens us up to passengers who are… problematic?”

“Yeah? Fine. We’ll ditch them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we don’t need passengers anymore!” I thought for a moment. A few things had been bothering me lately, a few things that hadn’t made sense. I hadn’t thought about it too much, but Saahna’s words had brought them back.

“I mean we don’t need passengers! Hells, I think they’re costing us credits!” I paused, thinking. “I know Captain Anna always put us forward as a passenger ship, but I’m not sure why.” I paused again. Did I want to betray something about someone who had been my mentor for so long?

Even if I hadn’t intended to, Saahna caught something in that. “What do you mean?”

I hesitated, wondering what I should say. But, this was Saahna I was talking to. “I think she was making worse deals than she could. Deliberately. I’m not sure why but… I know we could have been doing better for a long time.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. For a year or two, I’d been finding trade offers and sending them on to her, only to have her turn them down. Then, when we got to the next planet, I pulled up data showing my deals would have worked. She got angry sometimes when I did but kept rejecting them. After a while, I stopped.” I paused again. “One of the reasons I bought the Grayswandir was because I knew I could make enough to keep it flying.”

She paused herself at that. “What does that have to do with passengers?” She asked finally.

“I think she just liked running a passenger ship, so she kept it so that we had to take them to keep ourselves in the black. Or… maybe she thought that if we were getting too much, we would leave. I’m not sure.”

“But… we could survive without passengers?”

“Survive?” I laughed. “If we expanded cargo we’d be making way more than even the 10k we get for a High Passage. I have no idea why we’re leaving those Credits on the table.”

Her expression had turned more serious. “But… we don’t need passengers?”

I actually laughed. “Wait until you see your share this month, then ask that.”

“So why do we have them?”

“Because… Captain Anna wanted them?”

“Then drop them. We don’t need the security risk. Or the hassle.”

“Got it.” I paused. “But all of you aren’t mad at me because we have problematic passengers. What is this really about?”

She looked away. “You weren’t on Gimisapun.”

“Don’t give me that. I was. I had no problems and, as near as I can tell, no one else did either. Some of them even seem to have enjoyed the attention. So what the hells is bothering you? You’re jealous because I was with Kona? Fine! Now you know how I feel sometimes.”

“Did you love her?”

I paused, thinking. Did I? Finally, I shook my head. “No. I don’t think so, but I needed someone. I needed to be a hero. To feel that I was doing something for someone instead of causing them problems. And she gave me that.” I paused again. “I like to think we both came out ahead.”

“So you aren’t likely to be going back to her?”

“What? No. Well…” I allowed myself a smile. “Maybe, if we ever go back through again.”

She looked away. “Really?”

“Oh, come on! We’re heading rimward. I’m not turning around because I had a good time in that one system that one time. By the time we come back through here, it could be a year or more. Who knows, we may all be speaking Solomani by then.”

“Not funny.”

“So… what’s wrong?”

She continued looking away. “I’m afraid we’re making ourselves a target. That you’re making us a target. And yourself most of all.”

“Huh?” What she was talking about?

“You may know trade. Hells, I know you know trade. But… you aren’t as diplomatic as you may think.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

She finally looked back at me. “You learned trading from Captain Anna, right?”

“Yeah, it’s why I stayed here for so long. She was better at it than anyone I’ve ever met.”

“But you just said that she didn’t make the best trades; that we could have been doing so much better than we did.”

“She wasn’t. There were plenty of times we could have made big scores that she ignored.”

“Did you point those out to her?”

“For a while. When she kept ignoring them, I finally gave up.”

“Did she ever say why she was ignoring them?”

What was she getting at? “No. Well, just that she didn’t think they were as good of a deal as I thought.”

“Was that it?”

I thought. “Every now and then she had some kind of specific objection; certain cargoes she didn’t want us to carry. But usually, she just didn’t think the deal was right.”

“Maybe she wasn’t telling you everything she knew then. Had to keep some secrets to herself, after all.”

“Oh, come on! I think the deals we’ve been making since leaving Venad show that I know what I’m doing!”

“But is that the best idea?”

“What?”

She sighed. “Look. I do love you, no matter what you may think.” She held up her hand as I started to say something. “And don’t start in on that right now.”

“She was trying to keep us with a low profile. We could have been making more credits–a lot more–but that would have attracted attention to us. Hells, we know how things are. Yeah, we’re stuck on a ship for a week at a time, but those times we’re on-planet? We spend more in that week than the average Imperial sophont gets to live on for two or three months! And that’s our downtime!”

I smiled. “That’s why we’re Travellers.”

“Yes, fine. But there’s no reason to be greedy.” She leaned forward. “You’re getting greedy!”

I was taken aback. Was she right?

“Look… I’ve got a ship to pay for.”

“How much is that?”

“Somewhere over half a megaCred every month. Plus fuel and life support. I didn’t have a down payment. That’s what we have to make, at a minimum. Even with the subsidy Minister Trakon is giving us.”

“Are you concerned about making it?”

“No. Don’t worry; we’re good. And all of us, not just the ship. Is that what you are worried about?”

She shook her head. “What’s our profit so far this month? Ignore that salvage you got from that Solomani courier. What would we have made, right now, without it?”

I thought, doing the math as fast as I could. “After expenses, we’ve already cleared about two megaCreds for Salas. That’s about 300 kCreds for each of us. And we’ll probably double that when we hit Tlianke.”

“And that isn’t enough?”

“What if there’s a bad month!” I almost shouted. “We could hit a bad patch for who knows how long! Hells, there’s a civil war going on! What do we do then! All of you can go elsewhere, but I have a ship to keep!”

She stepped forward, standing in front of me. “This is our ship.”

“The financing is in my name. I’m the one who’ll be on the hook for it.”

“And you don’t trust us to support you?”

“Do you?”

“Of course! The better question is if you really want to support us!”

“What the hells are you talking about! I apologized about that rutting datastick, which I know I told you about anyway! I didn’t know about Minister Trakon until he came on board! I didn’t know Gortor was an assassin until he tried to kill me! I didn’t know about any of this shit until I stepped in it! Why do you keep blaming me for it!”

“Because you don’t realize what you do affects other people!”

“I have always put this ship, and its crew, over everything else,” I said, my jaw clenched. “If this is about me spending time with Kona…”

“What? No!” She shook her head. “This is about making us stand out! We made credits on Fugitak. Fugitak! And then we picked up that dammed datastick there. Do you think the two were unrelated?”

The sudden shift confused me. “What?”

She sighed. “Look, I’m your security officer. You, well, Captain Anna, hired me for that knowledge. And I know that attracting too much attention to yourself is a great way to make yourself a target. That was true when I was in Recon, and it’s also true now.”

“We’re a Free Trader, not a Mercenary crew. What do we need to keep a low profile for?”

“What happens when we land on a planet that knows our reputation? They know we make deals that are really good for ourselves. What if they decide they don’t want to deal with us?”

I smiled. “That’s when it gets fun. You just have to convince them that they really do want to deal with you. Because you can get them that good deal too!”

She just looked at me.

“OK!” I said. “FIne. I’ll try not to make us rich then.”

“That wasn’t… fine. Just try not to be so obvious about it. I don’t think we would have gotten Lorentz as a passenger if you hadn’t made a name for yourself, and in a way that changed the status quo. Just like Kupakii; a lot of their people will remember our connection to the political changes there. Make all the credits you want, just be careful!”

I got what she was saying, but it weirdly echoed what Dr. Korvusar had said.

“Are we really being that disruptive?”

“Apparently.”

I turned and looked away, staring at the far wall. Was this… was this why Dr. Korvusar’s computers had directed her to us?

“What?”

“Dr. Korvusar may be right.”

“What?” she repeated, this time confused instead of irritated.

“Don’t you see?” I turned back to face her. “She said she was with us because she thinks that we can somehow affect what will happen after the war. Well her computer models said that. And now… well, you just said that we’ve made significant impacts on two different planets! Are you… is that it?”

Her eyes narrowed as she thought. “She might have just told us that after I killed Sir Gortor.”

I shook my head, remembering something else. “When Minister Trakon was saying goodbye on Kupakii, he said she was an ‘agent.’ I assumed he meant a Naval Intelligence Agent, which was pretty much apparent at that point. But… what if she is an actual Agent?”

She raised an eyebrow and slowly shook her head at that. “An Imperial Agent? No. Impossible. There are only a few dozen of those, at most, in the entire Imperium. Why in all the hells would one of them be on our ship? We’re just…”

“A Free Trader, yeah. One which, as you just said, now has political influence in two separate systems. Plus the personal gratitude of a high-ranked political official of a larger polity; one which will gain more influence in the sector as the Imperium’s influence wanes.”

She started to give a reply, then stopped and looked away. After a few seconds, she looked back.

“Was she… Is she right?”

I was feeling a cold pit in my own stomach. “All of this was planned. From the moment we… I picked up that datastick. She… knew! We were given a test. And… we passed.”

“Maybe.. that wasn’t a test we should have studied for.” She paused in thought for another moment. “She must have known something about us.”

“Or those computer models.”

“Yeah.” She stopped and looked away. There was a very long, awkward pause. “What does she know about us?”

“Too much.”

“How?”

“I don’t know!” I paused, thinking, then looked away.

“She… does know a lot about my past.”

“What?” I heard the anger rising in her voice.

I raised a hand. “Look, that was long in the past. I… don’t want to talk about it.”

“Does it affect us now?”

“No!” I exclaimed. Then I thought. “Well… I don’t know. It was… what I grew up with. What I experienced. Did it affect how I… think? Maybe… maybe that’s what directed her to us.”

“What is it?” I heard the anger in her voice.

I hesitated. “I just have to ask one thing from you.”

“What?”

“Don’t tell the rest of the crew about this.”

She took a step forward. “What the hells have you done!”

My own anger finally came out. “The hells? No! You have a problem? Talk to my mother! Or my father. Except… oh yeah! He’s dead. Good luck!”

My intensity caused her to take a step back. “What!”

“You really want to know?”

She glared at me, levelly. “What have you been hiding?”

“Nothing that has anything to do with us.”

“Try me.”

I sighed and looked up at the ceiling. One of the light panels was a bit off from the others. I needed to tell Jami about that. Or the next maintenance crew. Whoever.

Finally, I looked back at Saahna, still angry but waiting for me to say something. “I’m from Keystone. Up in the Glimmerdrift.”

“And?”

“My family… ran the place.”

Her brow furrowed then she suddenly looked up in surprise. “Wait… you’re a Count!”

I shook my head. “My mother is a Countess. I’m… not anything. Not anymore. That’s… kinda the problem.”

She paused at that, thinking. “What are you… what?”

“Keystone is an Agricultural world. Totally optimized for providing food. We probably fed a dozen planets besides us.”

“I know how the Imperial mega-economy works. And?”

“Being an agricultural world meant that we had to basically import everything that wasn’t food from somewhere else. Technology, clothing, furniture… everything!”

“Yeah, just like every other planet in the Imperium. And?”

I sighed. I really didn’t want to talk about this. “Yeah, we were the local nobility. Keystone isn’t quite part of the Imperium and isn’t quite a client state, but we answered to it anyway. More specifically, we answered to Tukera.”

“Well, our inhabitants were starting to get angry. They could only buy anything, anything, from Tukera. But only from them. And Tukera knew that and charged accordingly. Our people… started getting unhappy.”

“Anyway, my father… supported them. He announced that he would cancel our exclusivity contract with Tukera. Anyone would be free to trade with us.”

I had seen Saahna’s expression changing as I spoke. “What happened?” she asked quietly. I could tell she already knew the answer.

I shrugged. “What you think. An Imperial Marine squadron dropped in to ‘suppress a rebellion.’ They rounded up everyone who approved of the change to the contract and executed them.”

There were unwanted tears in my eyes. “They offered my father a chance to change his mind. To tell everyone that the good of the Imperium was more important than the good of an individual planet. He… said no.”

Saahna looked away. “I… didn’t know.”

I kept talking. “They executed him the next day. Firing squad. For treason. My mother became Countess and immediately pledged that we were loyal Imperial citizens. Even sent our own security forces out to arrest the people we had been supporting a few days ago. It… didn’t leave a good taste in my mouth.”

“Tukera. That’s… Margaret’s.”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you were an Imperial Marine?” I turned to her, face hardening. “What could I say? ‘Hey, my father was one of the people you killed?’ I’m sure that would have been a great conversation starter!”

“I was never at Keystone.”

“I know.”

There was a long silence.

“I didn’t know,” she said finally. “What happened?”

“My mother shielded me.” I shrugged. “Said I had no idea as to what my father was doing. That we were all Imperial citizens. Pseudo-citizens. They left us alone as long as we agreed to our megacorporate state status. She… agreed.” I paused. “I get it. If she hadn’t, then all of us would have died. She did… what she had to do.”

“What did you do?”

As soon as I turned 18, I started hanging around the starport, looking for ships looking for crew. As soon as I found one, I signed on. I would do whatever they wanted as long as they got me off the planet.” I paused again. “I don’t think they knew who I was. I never even said goodbye to my mother.”

“The Phantasmal Hope?”

“The Alabaster,” I said, shaking my head. “It was a Sub Merchant. I sorted cargo for them for about two years before I happened to run across Captain Anna in a bar. She… hired me on the spot. I’ve never looked back.”

Both of us were silent for a long time. Saahna was the first to speak.

“I guess… I guess I can see it.”

“Dr. Korvusar told me she knew about my past. She told me, ‘I think your father made the right decision.’ I’m not sure what that means.”

“Maybe… maybe that’s why she thinks you will make the right decisions in the future?”

I shook my head. “Then she’s wrong. The Imperium will always protect its trade. Why do you think I’m a Free Trader? If that is what the Imperium wants, then that is what I will give them! And if you are unhappy with us’ attracting too much attention’? Well.., the Imperium apparently likes that!”

“Would your father have liked that?”

It was my turn to look away again. “I’m a Free Trader. We don’t limit who we sell to; we’ll sell to anyone. We aren’t tied to any one megacorp. We’re independent. I think… I don’t think he would object.”

There was a pause, then I felt her hand on my arm.

“I’m… Sorry, Derek. I wish… I wish you had told me this before.”

“It wasn’t your problem. You said you never had an op up in the Glimmerdrift and… that was all I needed to know.”

She tugged on my arm, turning me around, then fully hugged me.

“Derek, I want to be here for you. I… You should have told me.”

I returned the hug. “Just… don’t tell anyone else. OK?”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want them thinking they’re working for Imperial nobility? Or feeling sorry for me?”

“They won’t. I won’t.”

“Good.” I pulled her a bit closer. “I don’t want to lose you. Or everyone else. Help me get through all of this.”

She hugged me a bit tighter as well. “I will.”