Home: Interstellar: Merchant Princess (20 page)

His link beeped again, indicating it had located the source of the original query for the mil-tech hardware hours sooner than he expected—sooner meant closer. The query came from a small café on Wolf.

“How convenient.” He was also on Wolf, following a young woman who might have information he wanted. Within a few minutes, he found a surveillance vid near a café that showed a woman with a primitive laptop at a table. He zoomed the image and ran a biorecognition program within his private database. A familiar name returned within a few seconds.

“Well, well. Time we became better acquainted.”

He sent coded messages that spiked traffic between the UNE and BioLuna with the keywords
Isis
and
Haven
. On these channels,
Isis
was a code word for Meriel Hope, and those keywords in proximity to each other signaled danger. His instructions arrived a few minutes later and were clear.

He opened the drawer and took out two stunners of legal charge on Wolf; one he placed in a well-worn shoulder holster and the other in his sock. To the belt in the middle of his back, he attached a fleschette pistol, the weapon he had used to eliminate two incompetent security guards. As he stood up from the desk, a reflection of the nondescript man that Meriel had seen on Enterprise appeared in the mirror.

Back on board the
Tiger
, Meriel headed for her cabin to send a message to Jeremy regarding the settlement—or rather, the bribe—for the
Princess
. Her ten days would expire before they reached their next station, and he needed a reply. However, she had much more to tell him now and much more to worry about.

“Message to Jeremy Bell,” she said to her link. “Jeremy, decline settlement for
Princess
. Pursue appeal of forfeiture with information provided by Nick Zanek that should be in your possession by now.
Princess
cargo included military R and D xe…M446. A net search for any information about this triggered a surveillance bot. Believe we have the motive. Send.”

After sending the message, she searched for John and Cookie and found them in the mess hall.

“Cookie, if I wanted to find out what some mil-tech code signifies, how would I go about it?”

“Did you query the net?”

“Keep a secret?” Meriel asked, and they nodded. “I did a query on a subset of the code. It looks like it triggered a bot and zombied my computer.”

Cookie squinted. “Where’s the computer?”

“Dismantled,” she said and showed them the CPU and memory cube.

“Where’s the rest of it?”

“Being destructively recycled.”

Cookie frowned. “Tell me more.”

Meriel took a moment to prepare her thoughts. “The mil-tech code was listed on the cargo manifest on my chip, the one my mother gave me on the
Princess
.”

“Why didn’t you check it before?”

“I couldn’t read it. I needed a hacker to decode it.”
Which is close enough to the truth,
she thought.

“And?”

“It looks like the
Princess
might have been carrying mil-tech when the pirates hit us. I want to know if our cargo had something to do with it.”

“And you triggered a bot when you searched for information about the code?” Cookie asked, and Meriel nodded. He sneered. “So they want to know who’s inquiring. Did you learn anything before the bot took over?”

“They called it wide-field communication disruption with some kind of tunnel or something.”

John frowned. “Narrow-band tunneling?”

“Yeah, sounds about right.”

John stared at her and sighed. “When was the
Princess
attacked?”

“About ten years ago.”

“Do you have the ID number of the equipment?” John asked.

Meriel handed him her link with the list of XE items from Nick. John looked at the numbers and shook his head. “No need to query. I know what this is. It’s a global communication executive, or GCE.”

“A Blackout-Box,” Cookie said.

John nodded. “It will freeze communications on all bands, so an entire planet will go dark but allow a few encrypted channels.” He handed the link to Cookie. “Only line-of-sight lasers work when this is engaged.”

“How do you know?” Meriel asked.

“Mercenaries tried to use it to invade Haven.”

“The M88Ds are semiautonomous drones,” Cookie said as he scanned the list. “Antipersonnel, on channels allowed by the Blackout-Box. The M446s are communications.”

“How can this Blackout-Box be so important?” Meriel asked. “It’s just communications; it’s not like missiles or lasers.”

“Wars are lightning fast now,” Cookie said. “You can’t coordinate complex technologies and tactics with smoke signals. If you control communications, you can focus all your firepower to the right spot while your enemy is blind and deaf. They don’t even know you’re shooting at ’em until it’s too late. You also get to control the news feeds going out, so people may not even know you’ve invaded.” He scanned the rest of the list. “Others here are drone replicators, power supplies, and some parts too hard to produce using replicators.”

Meriel shook her head. “My mom and dad would not have carried this knowingly.”

“Certainly not knowing what would happen,” Cookie said.

“Why not use fully autonomous drones?”

“They don’t use them much anymore. They tend to bite their masters,” Cookie said.

Meriel leaned back and pursed her lips. “So, my ship was carrying military technology that pirates hijacked. And that cargo conveniently turned up in the hands of mercenaries invading Haven.”

“Seems like,” Cookie said.

“John, who funded the mercenary attack on Haven?” she asked.

“BioLuna, as far as we could tell.”

“Then BioLuna stole the mil-tech?” she asked.

“Or bought it from the thief,” Cookie said.

“If it was mil-tech and secret, how could BioLuna know?”

John reached over and took her hand. “Someone betrayed you, Meriel, just like Cookie said.”

Meriel jerked her hand away, stood up, and looked at him with wide eyes. “No one on the
Princess
could do that. We were all family.” She looked down, and her voice softened with doubt. “And they’re all dead.”

“Maybe someone escaped, Meriel.”

Meriel closed her eyes and shook her head. “No one escaped. Only the kids.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I’m sure,” she said.

“Then it was your client.”

Meriel rose to her feet but kept her face turned away. “OK, then,” she said and paced the room. “So, who was the client who put that box on our boat? And how can I find out?”

“Financial transactions should match the cargo,” John offered.

Meriel fiddled with the chip on her necklace.
One of the files might be the financials
, she thought
.

Cookie read her thoughts. “I’d advise you not to query that number again,” he said. “Let’s see. A military order would be required to move that machine out of R and D.”

“Military. Government,” John said. “Do you hear this? The UNE, the navy. They have the monopoly on the legal use of force.”

“Big force,” Cookie said. “Who else knows about this?”

“Only a very paranoid hacker,” Meriel said, withholding Nick’s name.

“I hope he’s paranoid enough,” Cookie said and rose to leave. “And you need to be more careful. I’m off to the gym, kids.”

Meriel pulled out her link to send a message before they reached the outbound communications beacon from Wolf.

She paused. “John, the judgment you got on Lander after the invasion. Who were the parties?”

“LGen versus BioLuna.”

She nodded and spoke to the link again. “Append message, Jeremy Bell. Jeremy: Mil R and D in
Princess
cargo was used for invasion of Haven colony. See lawsuit on Lander, LGen v. BioLuna. We may have the who as well as the why. Send.”

Meriel leaned back and looked up to see John waiting for her.

“Meriel, you’ve been kinda distant since…since the party.”

“Sorry, John. I’ve been busy trying to get the
Princess
back and keep my job.”

John pursed his lips. “I’m only trying to help, but the
Princess
registry says she was scrapped.”

Meriel sighed. “John, it would be nice if you believed me and took all this on faith. But then you’d be crazy or moonstruck and not worth a damn. So, let’s just leave this, OK?”

“I’ve been thinking that maybe we—”

“Look, John. I’ve got lots of baggage, and I don’t think your kids need that.”

“You think I’m looking for a nanny?”

“No, lucky for you,” she said with a smile and took his hand. “Give me time, John.”

***

Just down the passageway, Doc Ferrell received a text on his link.

From Kadvi:

Subject: New deadline for contraindication, 38h elapsed.

Between jumps, Meriel studied for her nav-3 rating in the mess with the IGB news feed droning in the background.

“Hey, Chief,” Jerri said as she and Socket entered the mess hall.

Meriel looked up and waved. Socket sat with Meriel while Jerri dialed the replicator for the latest fad in caffeine ingestion.

“Studying?” Socket asked.

“Nav-three,” Meriel said and popped up a holo of her current lesson.

“She’s going after your job, Jerri,” Socket said, but Jerri concentrated on the news feed.

“Surprising news from tau Ceti-3. Seiyei Station has invited immigrants from Ceres and Sol asteroids to populate a newly constructed habitation for medical research…”

Jerri waved her arms. “That’s BS!”

“IGB says they were invited, dearie,” Socket said.

Jerri brought their drinks to the table and sat. “There’s no way they would invite anybody, especially from Sol. They built that habitat for themselves.”

“No news of a coup,” Socket said.

“Right. The winners write the news,” Jerri said and looked at her drink. “Crap, I need something stronger.”

Meriel wondered if there was more than one Blackout-Box when the captain’s voice came on the PA system. “Attention all hands and passengers. Captain Richard Vingel speaking. All first timers on Etna, report to the forward mess hall for orientation. Crew and passengers both. No exceptions. If you don’t attend, you will not be allowed to leave the
Tiger
.”

“We’ve heard this lecture before. See ya, Chief,” Socket said and turned to leave with Jerri. Before Jerri left the mess, she turned and said, “Say, Doc Ferrell is looking for you.”

Crap
. “Thanks, Jerri.” Meriel collected her study materials and moved to the galley as the mess got more and more crowded. She’d still be able to hear the captain from there, and when Ferrell joined the crowd to look around, she ducked down behind the counter to avoid his notice.

“Check your links,” the captain said. “A waiver of liability should appear, and you must confirm the waiver, or we cannot let you disembark. Understood?”

Heads nodded.

“OK then. How many of you have heard about Etna?”

A few raised their hands.

“Whatever you’ve heard, it’s much worse. Murder and suicide rates are off the scale compared with other habitats. They don’t publish them anymore.”

“It’s because of the lack of light,” a passenger said.

“Sure. It’s in the middle of a dust cloud. But I don’t care why,” the captain said. “They have different laws there. The morality is…more flexible just to get people to work there. Hedonism and drugs are pretty much all legal as long as it’s consensual, and lack of consent is hard to prove. Everything you can imagine is there, simulators, androids, and the real thing.” He looked around the room. “Advertisements began as soon as the bots registered your destination. Temptations will start as soon as you hit the docks, mostly with free samples…of everything.”

The captain paused and scanned the room. “OK. The rules. One: no one under eighteen will be allowed off the boat, even with parents.”

“Hey, they’re our kids,” one man said. “You can’t hold them.”

“Read your ticket,” the captain replied. “Leaving the ship is evidence of parental incompetence, and the
Tiger
takes legal custody. Two: green-zone is dangerous and off-limits for
Tiger
crew. Got that, Hope? Ferrell?”

“Aye, sir,” Ferrell said, looking around for Meriel.

“Passengers, green-zone is at your own risk,” the captain continued. “Three: black-zone is off-limits to anyone on board.”

“We’re not crew,” another passenger interrupted. “We don’t follow the rules for crew.”

“These are rules for everyone,” the captain said. “Read your ticket next time. If you return from black-zone alive, do not expect to get back aboard the
Tiger
. Got that?”

Heads nodded.

“Four: legal counsel is on you for anything and everything. We’re under no obligation to save you from yourselves if anything happens to you on station. Understood?”

Again, heads bobbed.

“All that’s in the waiver,” the captain said. “Personal advice now: I’d advise you all to stay on board. There’s not much you can get here except scars on your soul. Some of the residents like it here—avoid them. Who’s getting off here for work?”

One young man raised his hand.

“Son, stay a moment. The rest of you are dismissed. Make sure to consent to the waiver if you plan to leave.”

The crowd dispersed, and Ferrell left with a backward glance. Meriel returned to the mess to study. A few tables away, the captain talked to the young man who had raised his hand.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Elliot. Elliot Goodwin,” the young man said.

“Your folks know you’re here?”

“Ain’t got none, sir. Recycled on Ceres.”

“Any other family?”

“None, sir.”

“Are you going to work on station or in the mines?”

“Mines, sir,” Elliot said.

The captain nodded. “I know the pay is good, son, but you might reconsider. Life is real different here. Tours of duty are short, but miners tend to spend all their money on station and never save enough to leave, and they die here. Here’s my offer: free passage to the next station if you change your mind and cancel your contract. I’ll recommend you to stationside on Ross. Got that?” the captain said, and Elliot nodded. “It may not be much to start. You work hard, and things will come. They still believe in merit and hard work on Ross. You can build a life there, not like on Etna. It’s a good deal, son. My word means something there. But once you set foot on Etna Station, the offer goes away. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Elliot said.

Captain Vingel clapped the young man on the shoulder and left.

Elliot stayed at the table and stared at the wall.

That could be anyone of the kids if they lost their ship
—
if they angered the wrong captain or crew chief, or the routes went stale
, Meriel thought.
That could be me soon if I get caught for any one of my regular infractions.

“Excuse me, Elliot,” she said, interrupting his thoughts.

“Sure, ma’am,” he said.

Meriel smiled, not realizing that she qualified to be a “ma’am” just yet. “Call me Meriel. I think I overheard the captain offer you a recommendation to a post on Ross Station. You’re not a born spacer?”

“No…Ms. Meriel.”

“Out here, a captain’s recommendation is as rare as…well, it’s just damn rare. If I were you, I’d take it.”

“I got nothing, Ms. Meriel. Lost everything with my folks. Ceres was…not good for us,” he said, staring at his clenched fists in his lap.

Meriel just nodded.

“The colony spotted me fare out here. I think just to get rid of me. I still owe ’em.”

“Take the captain’s offer, Elliot. I’ve been to Ross, and it’s nice enough.”

Elliot nodded, gave Meriel a weak smile, and walked away.

Her link buzzed with a text from Lev:

Ferrell is here looking for you.

Meriel quickly packed up her stuff and left to look for a place to hide until the jump.