Home: Interstellar: Merchant Princess (12 page)

Meriel woke from jump woozy but without the nightmares again. They had just come out of jump at one-g inertial on approach to Enterprise, and a few short jumps remained to synchronize the ship’s velocity with that of the local star system.

Enterprise dominated this sector of space as the hub for manufacturing and materials from the nearby systems and anchored the
Tiger’s
circuit. Everything one could think of for legal and moral entertainment lay inside. It was the only station her parents had regarded as “child safe.”

After inspecting their cargo, Meriel checked her link. She first read a text from John.

On duty. Sent nav program of
Princess
scenario to GRLs you provided on Lander and Enterprise. What happened at the party? Ping me.

For the first time in a week, Meriel had something. It was not exactly proof of innocence, but it was proof that the prevailing theory, the slander that the
Princess
had a planned rendezvous with another ship in deep space, was wrong. Sure, it was technical, but it might at least give Jeremy some time to appeal the forfeiture or open the bidding for Teddy.

After allowing a few extra minutes for synch with the communications beacon, she downloaded the latest news and messages passed from other ships and stations.

From Liz: Looking forward to seeing you on Etna…

From J. Bell Esq.: No progress. Send money.

I’ll bet he has that message programmed to send to every client, every day, automatically
, she thought.

From nz: sure. come by. loiter near g2440, and keep your link live. i’ll track you.

Green-zone. He’s moved
, she thought.
I wonder what trouble he’s avoiding now
.

From T:

Re: Ship status intractable.

M, contacted Jeremy and court on Enterprise. Something’s going on that’s much bigger than the ship. Someone has spread lots of money around quietly. Not giving up.

“Reply,” Meriel said to her link. “Have data indicating theory of intentional meeting is wrong. Transmitted nav program via Smith to illustrate. Please review. LU, M.”

Lots of merchant traffic jumped between Lander and Enterprise, which meant nearly real-time communication, allowing for light speed to the beacons, of course.

Meriel went to the mess to study, but she could not concentrate. She pulled up her link to check for new messages from the kids and noted that the
J. Edwards
was leaving early, and she’d not be able to meet with Tommy.

“Hey, Socket,” she said. “Can you aim a tight beam at Enterprise? I’ve got a friend outbound on the
Edwards
about now.”

“Sure,” Socket said over the link. “Jerri, can you spot them?” Meriel heard a muffled reply, and then the voice became louder. “Meriel, it’s on Secure E.”

Meriel switched channels and linked her visor to the console. In Meriel’s heads-up display, she saw Tommy sitting nav backup on the biggest bridge console she had ever seen.

“Ping,” Meriel said with a smile.

“Oh, hi, M,” Tommy said. “What’s up?”

“Bad news, Tommy. They want to take the
Princess
from us.”

“How come?” he asked, and Meriel explained the lawsuit and the settlement.

“You don’t want the money, huh,” he said. “You like the fantasy of getting us together again.”

“I want the
Princess
back, Tommy. I want what we had as kids.” Meriel looked away, and Tommy gave her a moment.

He sighed and softened his voice. “You can’t bring them back, M.”

“I coulda done something, Tommy. Maybe it would have been different. Maybe if I—”

“Hell, M. That’s fantasy. You were twelve; the rest of us were younger. You did what you could and more.”

“I just want the future our parents wanted for us. Is that such a fantasy?”

“The only fantasy is that you remember our childhood better than it really was. The foundation folks got involved because we looked so pathetic. And the
Princess
was a run-down wreck that your uncle kept patching up.”

Meriel was hurt. Sure, she’d taken many trips with Uncle Ed to the outfitters and recyclers scrounging for parts to fix the
Princess
, but until a few years ago, Meriel had thought all ships needed that kind of care. She pursed her lips. “You’re just saying that because your ship is so big and new and perfect. I know we didn’t have much money, but we were happy together, right? Or was that just a delusion too?”

“No. That was real. But kids adapt to anything, M. They’ve got happy kids on the mining asteroids who don’t know any different. Things sure picked up when Nick got us passes to the sims, though.” He sighed. “Did you tell Liz?”

“Not yet. I don’t want to just text her. I want a face-to-face. You’ll cross paths first. Can you tell her?”

“Uh, well…”

“What’s up, Tommy?”

“We’ve got history, M. She doesn’t want to see me. Maybe you can put in a word for me.”

“Jeez, you drama queens.”

“I know what you’re asking. Sure, fight for the
Princess
if you want. I don’t need the money, and it wouldn’t last long anyway. And the
Princess
might be my shot at chief of engineering before I’m sixty. But think about it, M. We’re not kids anymore. We can’t go back. If you take the money, we might set up a trust fund to use if one of us has problems.”

“I’ll think about it. Thanks, Tommy.”

They said their good-byes, and Meriel put her head in her hands.

Is Tommy right? Am I doing this just to recreate a childhood we never really had? I can’t believe that the
Princess
was a wreck like he says or that we were so pathetic. That would make us needy and powerless to change things, like those big-eyed kids in the cartoons
.

Meriel thought about what her life would be like if she just put her burden down, but hollowness in her gut caused her stomach to cramp. Crossing her arms, she leaned over and rocked to stop the empty feeling, a feeling that returned every time she thought about life without her sister and the kids from the
Princess
. The emptiness gradually subsided when she imagined Elizabeth and Tommy and Harry with her.

She stood and looked out the window at the approaching Enterprise Station, where the
Princess
languished.

She smiled.
Hope has returned
.

Meriel took a tram to green-zone to see Nickolai Zanek, avoiding security cameras along the way to protect his privacy. He’d been on the net his whole life, and if anyone could help her with her mom’s sim-chip, Nick could do it. He haunted station security and remained anonymous—and paranoid.

Nick was a year older than Meriel. He had been her first on-station friend long before the trouble on the
Princess.
Meriel and Tommy met Nick in a simulator where they teamed up. He was a master of the game and took pity on them. At the end of the game, Nick surprised them by rolling out in a wheelchair. “You don’t need legs for this,” he had said. After the kids were split up on different ships, Nick coded asynchronous games that they could play together from across the space lanes and stay in contact. He was shy and never talked about his childhood. Meriel never saw any evidence of his family, but somehow he had learned to love. Every Christmas, he had made electronic toys for her and Elizabeth, all of which were impounded as possible evidence after the attack on the
Princess
. Other than Teddy, Nick was the only person who had sent a message to Meriel after her parents had died. Other than her sister and Teddy, Nick was the only person she thought truly loved her.

When she entered the G2440 neighborhood, her link buzzed with a text message.

Across the street.

Across the street, she saw a door slightly ajar, knocked, and entered a dark hall. The door closed behind her, the lights came on, and Nick wheeled up with a big smile and open arms. They hugged a bit longer than Meriel expected: she had missed him more than she realized.

“How ya been, M?”

“Good, Nick,” she said. “I need your help.”

“Come,” he said and led her into a small room stocked with threadbare, old furniture suitable for a low-rent hacker, then offered her a beer from a cooler.

“I saw Teddy on Lander,” she said. “And Harry has a birthday party on Wolf next week. You’re invited, if you can make it.”

“You know that might be impossible given my travel restrictions,” he said.

Meriel nodded but remained silent.

“I found nothing about Haven or LeHavre,” Nick said. “The net is dark, but there’s a halo around those words together, like someone is scrubbing the net continuously.”

“A friend said that BioLuna may have a media blackout. He said that’s where the L5ers went.”

“Well, if it’s a blackout, it’s tight. And that means expensive.” He stopped, but Meriel did not fill the silence. “But that’s not what your visit is about, is it?” he asked.

She held up the chip. “It’s the sim-chip again. I think Mom tried to tell me something.”

“Can’t let it go, huh? Like what?”

She pursed her lips. “Not sure. Maybe something about the attack. I think the location of the attack was wrong. I think there’s something on Mom’s chip that will tell us.”

“We’ve tried, M. For years. Your chip is toast. I wouldn’t get your hopes up unless we have something new. Someone corrupted the data, intentionally I think. It’s just too precise, too surgical.”

“We’ve gotta try, Nick. We’ve only got fifteen days before I lose the
Princess
. And if I lose her, I lose everything.”

Nick looked down and let go of Meriel’s hand. “Not everything.”

Meriel took his hand again. “You know what I mean. My promise to my mom and to the kids. Without it, we’re nobodies.”

“You’ll never be a nobody.”

“Nick, please.”

He sighed. “M, I think someone tried to destroy the
Princess
with you on it. Your showing up was a mistake.”

“That’s what Teddy thinks, but she always had trust issues.”

“Yeah, she’s not much into randomness or the hand of God. Did you read her paper? The one on disappearances?”

“No,” Meriel said
.

“She pretty much proved that nav or system failures couldn’t explain all the ship disappearances. Something else is going on.”

“The bogeyman?”

“I’m serious, M.”

Meriel was not listening. “Teddy’s brainiac theories won’t save the
Princess
. Can you do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Can you get me a pass to the impound dock?”

Nick paused.

“I’m not wired,” Meriel said.

“I know. I trust you. The place is shielded anyway.”

“Then what is it?”

He furrowed his brow and looked at her. “Any security breach is regarded as terrorism.”

“The impound dock is low security.”

“It’s still security, M. They’ll put you in prison. Forever. Or space you.”

“You do it all the time.”

“I never put my body near enough to get caught.”

“You did once,” Meriel said.

***

Nick had breached security for her once, and she could never tell anyone. It was the one time he’d risked his anonymity, and he’d done it for her.

Just before the
Princess
attack, Nick had invited Meriel and Tommy Spurell to one of his caves of computer equipment, and she’d brought Elizabeth along. However, the setup did not impress Tommy.

“Sorry, pal,” Tommy had said. “I’ll bet you got more compute power here than the whole navy, but I couldn’t live like this. I need the stars.”

Nick had smiled. “Come with me,” he had said and led them to a service elevator. He hacked access using an ID from a card deck he carried, and they exited at the hydroponics sector. Then he produced a visitors ID badge for himself and borrowed some brown coveralls meant for agricultural workers for Meriel and her crewmates. They followed him through a small section of the huge expanse of vats and pipes while he lectured them about food processing. No one really wanted to know how the station recycled organics for food. Most people were content with the idyllic vids of pastures and barnyards with intact animals. Just as no one wanted to see how Earthers once made bacon, no one wanted to know how station agri made neu-bacon now, but Nick had a captive audience to whom he could explain it all.

Up another elevator and through a security bulkhead, they reached the upper level of white-zone, the most secure area on the entire station. In front of them stretched miles of arboretum and fresh-food farms, a sea of green that curved up around the torus with no horizon.
This must be what Earth looks like
, she had thought.

“Stay under the trees,” Nick had said. “We’ve got twenty minutes before the security drones pass by.” He wheeled over to a huge tree and held out his hand to invite her closer. “Touch,” he had said and took her hand to put it on the tree. The bark felt cold but alive. “This is a redwood. It’s over sixty years old and a hundred feet tall now.”

Tommy reached for a wild raspberry, but Nick shook his head.

“We can’t take anything out with us, including what’s in our stomachs,” Nick said. “It will show in the effluent monitors, and they’ll know we’ve been here.”

Off in the distance, through the trees, Meriel had noticed an expanse of green surrounding large buildings. “Is that wheat?”

“It’s grass, a lawn,” Nick said.

“Why? That’s not a crop.”

“People think it’s pretty. It’s the first thing that people seem to plant when they have land.”

“It’s like the African savanna on Earth,” Meriel said, and Nick looked back, as if seeing it for the first time.

Nick reconfigured his wheelchair, and the four of them lay on their backs in a circle with their heads in the center, watching the arc of the torus and stars above them through the trees.

“I stay here for this,” Nick said.

Tommy smiled and nodded. “And you’ve got the stars here too.”

That was Nick’s home, not the caves of computer equipment below, and if security learned about their visit, he’d lose it all. He had trusted them and didn’t need to say that they could never tell anybody what they saw there, ever: no vids, no stories, no nothing. He never had to mention that if security caught wind of what they had done, they would all get shipped to a child-labor colony—him first.

***

“You breached security once before,” Meriel said again, “for me.”

Nick smiled. “I admit nothing,” he said and frowned. “There was less at risk then.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice, M.”

“Don’t give me clichés. You know what I mean. It would break every promise I’ve made not to try.”

“Are you sure?”

“Can you get the data from the chip?”

He shook his head.

“Then I’ve got to try.”

Nick nodded. “OK, a pass, huh?” He took out his link and tapped some symbols. “You need an embedded-security ID to get into the
Princess
.” He moved the symbols on the link and leaned back in his chair. “But I can’t get you onto the security shuttle that gets you there.”

“Why not?”

“The bioscreening is too rigorous. We’d have to surgically modify you to pass security at the Enterprise shuttle dock.”

Meriel looked at him and raised her eyebrows.

“It’s that important?” he asked, and she nodded.

“No, M, I’m not gonna do that. I’ll figure out something,” he said while playing with his link. “I’ll drop something in a locker at the Greylight Station near red-zone, number forty-eight. It’ll be keyed to your thumb.”

“Can you get the schedule for the security rounds?”

He put three fingers to his temple. “Yes, I have a premonition that someone will call in sick today. Give me an hour or so. No less. You gonna visit me later?”

“Yup.”

“Head on over to red-zone, and I’ll send something.”

***

Dr. Ferrell pulled up the ship’s roster and noted that Meriel, like many of the crew, had signed out and was not expected back for hours. Carrying a journal and stylus for camouflage, he walked down the passageway of the
Tiger
while looking around at each turn to see if someone had followed him. After passing Meriel’s cabin, he went to the intersecting passageway to look around, and then retraced his steps to her door.

The door was locked with a standard spacer biolock and fingerprint reader. It was flimsy and no match for an uninvited, but determined, guest. Every spacer knew there was no real privacy on a ship, and locks were just reminders of the ethics of never entering without an invitation. But Ferrell ignored the courtesies, jiggled the handle hard, and the door popped opened. He entered and closed the door behind him.

Ferrell checked the cabinet and found Meriel’s meds with the schedule hologram on the side of the tube that indicated she was taking them daily. The desk and drawers held nothing unusual for a cargo chief. Turning to leave, Ferrell noticed the communications display on her desk and paused. An open session would allow him to see her activities, even if he could not read the files. The bioquery came up, and Ferrell held his link, which contained copies of Meriel’s retina and voice patterns, to the console and played them.

Meriel’s console displayed a table with a list of names: Elizabeth, Tommy, Sam, Anita, and Harry and rating qualifications displayed to the right of each. Bridge, nav, comm…
A training schedule?
he guessed.
So who are they
? He took a picture of the screen with his link. Another window appeared—messages from an Elizabeth, an Anita, and a Jeremy Bell. The last text asked for more money to pursue a legal case for the
Princess
and custody for some kids.
Her old ship? How could that be?
he wondered.
J. Bell—is that the lawyer mentioned in her confidential file
?

Ferrell checked a few more files, but they all had additional encryption. Afraid that he would leave a trail of his snooping, he closed the console and left Meriel’s cabin.

The doctor then went back to his cabin and synched his link to his console. He pulled up the list of names and compared them to a roster from the
Princess
, a roster that had been sealed by court order and one he should not legally have.

***

Meriel shopped for regulation-blue maintenance overalls and a utility belt based on information that Nick sent to her. She then went to the locker just outside red-zone to pick up the ID. Inside the locker, she also found a bag containing a small pistol and a burner link. A note displayed on the link read,

use the pistol to embed the id chip in your forearm. it will hurt. two id’s are on the chip. click it to toggle between maintenance (blue) and security (red). don’t confuse them, and don’t use the security option until you need to. once you come out, you can’t go back in. turnover is high in maintenance, and they are unlikely to care about a newbie. dock m22, zero-g, diagram included. no toilets. id chip will dissolve in situ after final exit.