107-1117 – Gashuumi – Tlianke/Hinterworlds

22 Erbe 1117: Gashuumi – Tlianke/Hinterworlds (1206 B527769-7 O:1104 923 Na M4 V M9 D)

We stayed in the bunk a bit longer than usual this morning. I still couldn’t believe how much better I felt; I should have looked into Rejuve therapy long ago.

Well, carefully, of course. In most of the Imperium–and pretty much everywhere around it–it was only tolerated at best. Anagathics to prevent aging were somehow fine, while a more advanced version that actually reversed aging was too much to allow.

The procedure was actually prohibited for landed nobles, in the Imperium anyway. The thought of having the same ruler forever was something that many people didn’t care for. It didn’t stop most nobles from passing their title down to their chosen child when they started getting older, then beginning the treatment. My grandfather had done that and transferred control to my father, and he would probably have done the same to me. If he had lived.

I pushed that thought away. It didn’t matter anyway. I had given that up. I was happier with the life I had, and if fate had given me a new chance at it, so be it.

—-

We went downstairs to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. Gashuumi is technically habitable, but the atmosphere is a bit too thin to breathe, and too much of what is there consists of spore clusters from the aquatic plant that is the planet’s primary bioform.

It’s an algae, basically. Well, more like a fungus. But it releases lightweight seeds or spores into the atmosphere. They float around until they land on a body of water and turn into more fungus. But ‘body of water’ includes the moisture in our lungs, which causes problems for us humaniti. And pretty much every other known species, for that matter. That is why there was no life on land here until the planet was colonized a few hundred years ago. Now, the fungus is harvested and used as the base organic input for fabricators in a dozen systems. But it makes living here difficult.

They pressurize their buildings to keep the seed clusters out–and to be able to breathe easily–but never got around to connecting them. Well, not many. Gashuumi is limited to what they can manufacture locally, and Tlianke apparently wasn’t very interested in improving the local industrial capacity. After all, better to keep them dependent on their distant rulers. So the only way to go anywhere was with a combo mask. This is only a minor inconvenience, but it was annoying enough to make me delay going out for a while.

We had breakfast–obviously fabricated but from a reasonably decent template–then I pulled up our cargo manifest and started making deals. Usually, Saahna spent her time on her own when we were on-planet, but she stayed at the table with me, pulling out her own comp and indicating that she was fine when I suggested that she could go off and do something else.

What had happened while I was out? I shrugged but was happy that she was there. I started dealing.

The first thing was to get rid of the cargoes we were carrying. I needed some credits to work with. I found a good market for most of it–the marble slabs we were carrying turned out to be very popular for some reason–so I put our cargo up for trade.

Even without it, we were doing pretty well. Maybe I should think about increasing the crew shares.

—-

Trading completed, for today anyway, I snapped my comp shut and turned to Saahna. “Well, that’s enough of that for now. What do you have for today?”

She looked at me over her own comp. “Spending some time with you? I really was worried, you know. I’m not letting you out of my sight for a while.”

Her expression was neutral, and I couldn’t read anything. I wasn’t sure if she was still angry or not. On the other hand, I was happy to be spending time with her.

“Where is the ship? Can we get to it?”

“As far as I know. Repairs are still underway, but no one ever said anything about our staying away.”

“Good. I need to go grab my downbag for the week. Then I need to find a place to work out of. Something with a better beer selection than here.”

She frowned. “You really need to expand your diet.”

“Hey, I just got a decade or so back. My liver is probably scared.”

She rolled her eyes but stood up. “Yeah, I guess even near-death won’t change you there. Let’s go.”

—-

We called for an air-cab and flew back to the Starport. As we did, I saw that my impression from the night before was correct; everything was very spread out and disconnected. Given the atmosphere, I wondered, why? Maybe the locals just really liked their privacy and didn’t want to make it easy for the neighbors to drop by?

If they had come here from Tlianke, I guess I could see that. Still, it was a bit weird.

At our landing pad, the Grayswandir was half-covered by scaffolding, and a pair of cranebots hovered overhead. A surprisingly large chunk of the hull was missing over Engineering, and the cargo crates that had yet to be picked up were stacked in neat piles around the edges of the pad. Several workers were around, but they just waved us onto the ship after identifying ourselves.

I took a quick look around. Upstairs looked like I remembered, though Gray told me that most of the air-raft bay had been replaced. Downstairs was different; most of the hull was missing above the cargo bay. I went on into Engineering.

“No, no! Don’t twist the cables like that! I don’t need anything arcing!” Jami was yelling at a pair of technicians doing something inside the Jump Drive housing. A few other workers were apparently just watching, but one of them gestured in our direction. Jami looked and, seeing me, ran over.

“Sorry, Captain,” she said, flashing her sloppy salute. “I didn’t expect to see you. You just got out of the med center! Are you OK?”

“I haven’t felt this good in years.”

“Great! I guess? So, what’s up?”

“Honestly? I’ve been wearing this same shipsuit for I don’t know how many days now. I need to toss these in the refresher and pick up something for the rest of the week.” I gestured towards the workers. “Everything going OK here?”

She frowned but nodded. “I’m not letting anyone do any work on my ship without me watching them anymore. I’m not letting someone sabotage us again.”

“‘Your ship?'”

“Hey! You may own it, but I’m the one keeping it flying. That makes it my ship too!”

“Fair enough. Just… make sure to take some time off too. I don’t need you getting burned out either.”

“You know me, Captain. I’m making sure to take time to… relax.” She let out a whistle, then waved at one of the workers, who looked surprised for a moment, then waved and blew her a kiss.

“Glad to see you’re taking care of yourself,” I said. “We’ll stop by our cabin to grab some things, then leave you to it.” I glanced at Saahna, waved, then headed for my cabin.

I tossed what I had been wearing into the fresher, then grabbed what I thought I would need for the rest of the week. After a moment’s thought, I also tossed in my body pistol and that notebook from the Solomani courier. Downbag filled, we headed out.

—-

Our next stop was a vehicle dealer. Given how spread out everything was, I didn’t want to depend on air-cabs for everything. And we needed a new air-raft anyway. I negotiated a bit and finally got us one. I got one with a cupola mount, though they wouldn’t sell us any weaponry to put in it.

OK, maybe I’m getting a bit paranoid. But someone did try to kill me.

It was more expensive than it should have been–low-tech worlds aren’t the best place to buy high-tech equipment–but I paid the upcharge. I wanted the Grayswandir fixed as best as possible.

Some systems have better local industrial capability than others. Sure, you can find how to make a fusion reactor or a grav-plate in any standard library dataset, but if you don’t have the machines to make the machines to make them, then all of them are just abstract ideas.

At some level, all systems need to be able to take care of themselves. So they only maintain what technology they can continue to support on their own.

Yeah, most of them get by a few technology levels higher than what the Scout Service has assigned to them–we Free Traders were bringing the more-advanced stuff into them as often as we could–but not everyone on every world could depend on what we could bring in.

You could usually find whatever you wanted at Starports and the surrounding city. Every system wished to present the best appearance to off-world visitors. But the further away from the Starport you got? The closer to the local technological support level you would find yourself.

And, even if you could find it, you would be paying a premium for things you couldn’t acquire locally.

That rejuve treatment Shelly and I had received? We had probably paid twice what we would have paid on a higher-tech-level planet.

Oh yes, it was available. Tlianke would have made sure that their agents on all of their controlled worlds had access to the best of everything. But, the resources they had used to heal us were things they could not replace locally. And anyone bringing replacements in would have to have brought them in over a lot of Jumps. So yeah, they were expensive.

I didn’t care. Shelly and I were both alive.

As I had been thinking, I had been flying our new air-raft about a hundred kilometers south to a city named Embala. While there was a small community around the Starport, Embala seemed to be the main “city” on the planet. We wound up at a hotel called the Open Hearth. After dropping our stuff off in our room, I went in search of a bar.

I found Parshan’s. It was a large place, with the tables spaced a bit too far apart to not be deliberate. We found a table, ordered some drinks and tama leaves, then waited until the human waiter had brought our order over and left. I then pulled out my remote, activated the scrambler program, and tossed it onto the table.

Saahna had been irritated for a while and finally spoke up. “Why the hells did you come all the way down here?”

“More people here? And we’re less accessible to people who are ‘just passing through?’ Maybe I’m a bit paranoid, but someone attacked us, and I don’t know who. Or why, really.”

She frowned. “The Solomani. Who were after the Stetons to silence them and anyone they may have talked to. Local security has figured that out. No matter what we think about the Tliakians, they have done everything they can to take care of us after it. Why are you still confused?”

I sighed. “I can’t help but feel that I’m missing something. But… I’m not good at this Shroud-and-Vibroblade stuff.”

“Then let it go.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

I sighed again. “If we had just accepted what was happening back on Girar, then the Stetons would have been on another ship. We would have been fine, but they, and everyone on whatever ship they had wound up on, would have been dead.”

“You don’t know that. We survived. Why assume that anyone else wouldn’t?”

“I don’t know! I just…” I paused. Why was this bothering me so much?

“I can’t help but feel as if I’m responsible. Somehow.”

She shook her head as she reached out and took my hand. “You aren’t! You did… everything you could to take care of the ship, the crew, and our reputation. Don’t blame yourself because something happened. Remember when we encountered the Pelekon?”

I thought. “Yeah. They issued a distress call to get us to pick up their passengers. Just so that when one of them got caught smuggling, we would take the blame, not them.”

“We recovered from that.”

“Yeah, we did.”

“So we can recover from this.” She squeezed my hand. “We can’t always win. You can’t always win. Yeah, this one is bad, but… we know to be more careful with our cargo now.”

There was a long silence, then I pulled my hand away and started tapping on my comm.

She frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Those ‘Hinterworlds Alliance’ people. We know they’re keeping tabs on us. And they’re the ones who got us that ‘Preferred Trade Partner’ status back on Tlianke, and that has apparently held up to a lot of scrutiny. Given how much TliSec has been looking at us. Anyway, they want to keep the Hinterworlds independent. They may be interested in knowing that the Solomani are operating openly out here.”

“Do you really think that will surprise them?”

“I don’t know. But we should at least try to get in touch with them. Let them know.” I paused. “And they may have some idea as to how we can save the Stetons.”

She leaned back. “So… you want to keep working with that Crime Lord you met on Boilingbrook.”

“I think that ‘Crime Lord’ is the cover. It was because I was working with him that Minister Trakon wound up on our ship in the first place. Which gave us the support of the Polity they formed. And I think his agents were the ones who got us ‘Preferred Status’ with Tlianke. Hells, if it hadn’t been for that, then Shelly and I would have been dead! So I feel like I owe them some intel.”

“Do you know how to get in touch with them?”

I slumped slightly. “Well… no. You would think they would have given us a way to get in touch with them, but…”

“Yeah, they want to be able to use us when they need a ship, but not when we need them.”

I tapped on my comm some more, then put it away. “OK, I just sent a request for ‘K’kree bedding material.’ Which is how they said they would contact us. So… let’s see if anyone responds.”

She was shaking her head. “This isn’t our problem. We need to worry about us, not what is going on around us.”

“I can’t do that.”

There was a long, awkward silence.

“I think… I think you learned what your father was trying to teach you, but not how to go about that.”

“Hey! Don’t bring my father into this! And what do you know about my family history anyway.”

She lowered her head. “OK. I researched what happened on Keystone. Not that I didn’t believe what you were telling me, but… I wanted a less biased view.”

“What?”

She waved a hand. “No, I believed you. And the official reports were obviously written in such a way to make your father out as the villain. ‘Interfering with Galactic Trade,’ they said.'”

“Yeah, I was there, remember?”

“All I’m saying is that I get it. When you were young, you were taught that the Imperium considers trade to be important, beyond even its own people, in probably the worst way possible. So, you decided to become a trader. A perfect one. To give the Imperium what they wanted. So you wouldn’t wind up like your father.”

I started to say something, but she raised a hand. “But you also learned the lesson he was trying to teach you. ‘Noblis Oblige.’ The fact that you had the power to do so obligated you to help those under you. And, ever since you took over as Captain, you’ve been trying to do… both.”

I wasn’t sure what she was trying to say.

“Look, I’ve…”

“Been making us what is probably one of the most successful Free Traders in the sector! And you’re trying to help whoever you can in every system we’ve visited. Even your pick-up of that datastick that started all this is because you wanted to be helpful. But… you can’t be both! That’s what the rest of us are trying to tell you! You can make us the most successful Free Trader ever, or you can help as many people out there that you can. But… you have to pick one!”

I closed my eyes. “We can make this work.”

“No. Trust me. I was a Recon Marine, remember? I know how this works. You can draw attention to yourself, or you can do your mission. Pick one.”

There was another awkward silence while I thought. What did I want?

Finally, I spoke. “Yeah. You’re right. Let me… think about this.” I paused. “And make sure to tell me what I need to hear. I… have to decide. But let me think about it.”

She frowned, obviously not happy with me agreeing with her. “Yeah, I will.”

“Thanks,” I said, ignoring her obvious discomfort. I tried to change the subject.

Oh, I remembered something I wanted you to look at. Have a look at this.” I dug in my pack, found the notebook, and then tossed it to her.

She frowned but picked it up, then flipped through it. “It looks like some kind of code. Where did you get this?”

“It was on that courier I helped salvage back at Gashuumi. Well, not actually. The pilot had tried to hide it. Not very well. That made it interesting, so I hung on to it.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“Yeah. Kinda.” I flicked my translation over to her.

“I’m not certain,” I said as she pulled out her comp and started looking. “But it looks like that courier was making a few stops that he didn’t want his superiors to know about. I’m not sure what to do with it; the recognition codes there are two decades old, so they must be useless by now. Like I said, just interesting.”

She was scrolling through my notes. “This is Solomani.”

“Yeah, it was a Solomani Courier. I told you that.”

She glared at me. “And it didn’t occur to you that maybe this is what got the Solomani annoyed at us?”

I shook my head. “No, because I’m pretty sure they didn’t know about this. Hells, their own pilot tried to hide it! They probably don’t know that this would have been there, much less think we have it.”

“Someone may have guessed that you had found it.”

“I’ve done nothing with it. And even if they somehow decided that I was the one who had it, as opposed to anyone else back in Gimisapun who was repairing that ship, or even Kona herself, the info in there is at least 20 years old; that courier apparently crashed during the Imperium’s annexation of Venad. If they still use the same contact codes and frequencies after that long, they wouldn’t have lasted long enough to be a problem today.”

She frowned. “What do you think this is?”

“A smuggler’s contact list. Systems, frequencies, and recognition codes. Our courier pilot was carrying contraband on the side. Not much, that courier wasn’t that big, but I’ll bet that they found a ton or two of ‘hidden’ storage when they were refitting it.

If they were smart, they changed their codes after that courier went missing. So it’s useless now. Just one of those weird things you find.” I tapped my comp to turn off the jammer and waved over the waiter. “It won’t affect us.”

“I hope so.” She seemed a bit reserved and continued to flip through the notebook as I ordered another round. I got some more tama leaves since it looked like we would be here for a while.

She flipped the scrambler back on after the waiter left. “One of the planets on this list is Mupikaa.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s our next stop.”

I shrugged. “I had published our course well before I knew what was in there.”

“Do you plan to do anything with it?”

“That notebook? Nothing. I was curious about what it was, and it turned out to be nothing. I’ll keep it as a souvenir. That’s it.”

She smirked. “To remember your ‘downport girl’ on Gimisapun?”

I rolled my eyes. “If I kept track of those, I’d need an entire cabin.”

She laughed. “More like a small drawer. I’ve seen how well you do.”

I leaned forward and took her hand. “Yeah, you have. And you’re still with me.”

She shook her head but put her other hand on mine. “Yeah, I must have been hit in the head too many times while in the Marines.”

—-

We wound up spending a good part of the afternoon at the bar. We then found someplace else for the evening, a place called Gazran’s Pit. I have no idea who Gazran was; he never showed up. There wasn’t a pit there either. But there were a lot of locals.

Most of them were wearing something besides the usual Tlianke jumpsuits and, when they found out that we were Travellers, they were more than happy to give us a booth. We had a few locals stop by, asking about our adventures, which I thought was strange. They weren’t that isolated here.

Still, I pinged the crew to let them know where we were. I wasn’t expecting anyone to show up, but Varan arrived a half-hour later.

“You made good time,” I said, shoving a beer towards him and waving for the waitress.

He shoved it back. “I’m good.” He placed his order with the waitress and turned back when she left.

“Shelly is still in the med-center.”

“Yeah, I know. I checked in with them earlier. She’ll be out tomorrow, and they’ll let us know when to pick her up.”

He shook his head. “This was my fault.”

“What?” I was confused. “You had nothing to do with the attack. Someone was after the Stetons, and we got caught by it. There wasn’t anything that any of us could have done. Hells, if I had given in to those idiots back on Girar, then they, and their cargo, would have been on another ship, and we would have been fine.”

He shook his head again and looked away. “No. It was me.”

“What? How do you get that?”

“If I hadn’t… If I…” He shook his head again and looked at me. “Yeah, I… took advantage of Shelly. She felt that all of us were ignoring her, and I… used that to get a chance to fuck her. Yeah, I get it. I’m an asshole. Call me on it.”

I started to say something, but he raised a hand. “If I hadn’t basically tricked her into spending time with me, then she would have been downstairs with us instead of trying to show off to the Ontology Media people. Which would have meant that none of you would have been exposed when she opened the iris to the air-raft dock.” He looked away again. “This was my fault.”

I was taken aback by his confession, even if he blamed himself for the wrong thing. “She would have been talking to Dradon and Trisk regardless because of her netcasting. And she would have eventually opened that iris anyway, to show them her rig.”

He sighed. “Yeah, I know. Still… If I hadn’t…”

“We can’t change the past. Though I’m sure the Ancients tried. Just… learn and go forward.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I will. I just wish… I could apologize again.”

“You can. We got lucky that way.”

“Yeah.”

There was a long, awkward silence. Finally, Varan stood up.

“I’m going to get a beer.”

I gestured around. “You just ordered one from our waitress…”

“I… I’ll see who our bartender is anyway. I’ll be right back.” He quickly left.

Saahna looked at me with a raised eyebrow. I shrugged in return. I had no idea.

—-

Saahna and I had spent a few minutes in an increasingly intimate conversation when Varan suddenly returned, along with Jami and someone I recognized as the worker from the Starport earlier. “Look who I found!”

Saahna and I quickly pulled apart as Jami gestured at her companion. “This is Volm. Volm Ketrick. He’s one of the techs here. We were out exploring bars when Varan called, and this is a way nicer place than where we were.”

I frowned. I didn’t like her bringing an outsider into a ship meeting. Not that this was. Not officially anyway. I’d just have to be careful what I said.

“Shelly is supposed to finish her treatment tomorrow and is scheduled to be released around 1400. You want to be there with us when she gets out?”

“Do you need me?”

“No. I know you’re busy. But she apparently doesn’t feel like she is part of the crew. It would be good if we were all there to welcome her back.”

“Well, of course then! Hells, I’ve been as worried about her as anyone else! I’m glad she got through… that. And you too, of course.”

“Hey, I’m glad to be here too. Trust me.”

“Just… spread some of that rejuve access around, OK? I had no idea you had access to that kind of tech.”

“Honestly, neither did I.” I turned to her companion, who was watching with obviously feigned interest. “I’m Derek Kodai, Captain and Owner of the Grayswandir. How are our repairs going?”

He seemed surprised at the attention. “Oh! Well, yeah… they’re going fine! We should be done in a day or two. Y’all had a mess on your hands, but…” He looked around conspiratorially and leaned forward. “We were told to give you priority service; they don’t like it when their Preferred Partners have to wait. So we’re on it.”

“Yeah, and he knows what I’ll do to him if he messes up,” said Jami. She smiled wickedly. “And what I’ll stop doing to him.” She turned and gave him a kiss.

He flushed red. “Yeah. That too.”

I still had no idea how our Preferred Trader status was still valid, but I wouldn’t argue about it either.

“So, why the hells are you way down here?” Jami asked, grabbing a beer from the waitbot. Varan took a sip of his, grimaced, then waved it back.

“More people, more opportunities. Not everyone who wants something moved advertises it on the local net.”

She shook her head. “Yeah, I know those. But Captain Barrikus at least tried to wait for a few Jumps before doing something ‘questionable’ again.”

I winced, mostly because I remembered that Volm was there. “We never did anything wrong,” I said. “We made a few questionable contacts, but we came out ahead on those. And didn’t break any rules.”

She frowned until I tilted my head towards Volm, now trying to look anywhere except at me. She started slightly, then nodded.

“Yeah, of course! I know you would never do anything actually illegal.” She emphasized that last word a bit too much while suddenly putting an arm around Volm, who looked surprised at the sudden intimacy.

Remind me to go over op-sec with Jami… I thought to myself.

—-

We spent the rest of the evening on random talk. Nothing seemed to have changed in the Imperium. Well, nothing that we could know about given the Jump delay. The Solomani were advancing into the Old Expanses. There was some concern that they would turn to the Hinterworlds next. I decided that announcing they were already here would be bad.

Beyond that, we didn’t talk much of anything important. Eventually, Jami and Volm left. Varan had returned to the bar where he was engrossed in a conversation with what seemed to be, based on their clothing, one of the locals.

I turned to Saahna. “Head back to the room?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go.”