Home: Interstellar: Merchant Princess (31 page)

“Granted, Sergeant.

“The nav system is installed, Meriel,” Molly said while removing her hard-suit. “Once the retrofits and Cookie’s reboot are complete, we’ll prepare for a shakedown run. You game to get into space again?”

Meriel held up her crutches. “I won’t be very good for a while, Molly, but thanks.”

“Meriel, I contacted the Pacific League, and they offered to support your claim for the
Princess
,” Molly said. “You can own her clear. And the kids will be free to choose when they are of age. The league has legal representation for you stationed at Enterprise. And don’t worry. Mr. Bell on Enterprise remains your counsel; he’s just in a nicer office.”

“What can I say, Molly? This is more than I hoped for.”

“I’m the grateful one, Meriel. I’m sleeping with my husband tonight and not a memory. No one else did that for me. And the rest are on their way.”

“Rest of what?”

“The kids.”

“When!”

“As soon as we can get the papers in place. They are in the hands of the troopers now. This likely includes their fosters.”

Meriel looked down and put her head in her hands.

Molly walked over to her. “They’re safe, M.”

Meriel looked up. “What about their training?”

“Funding is in place. The league is paying, but there are strings.”

“Uh, oh,” Meriel said.

“When you get the
Princess
back, the league wants a piece of your circuit.”

“They want me in the league?”

Molly nodded. “They want to set up a new route, a route here. It’s yours when you’re ready.”

“How big a piece are they asking for?” Meriel said, now skeptical of the league’s largess.

“Tiny. Seems when you put BioLuna on the defensive, they pulled the embargo on Haven. That’s huge for the league. They may be incapable of gratitude, but see this as a bounty, a reward for opening up a new route.”

“What about the new station?”

“Talk to John. The league will get the financing. It’s already begun.”

Meriel could not speak. The future her mother had hoped for was becoming reality.

“So, now, I think you can help us again. Richard and I have a bet about how you kids could communicate for so long without anyone knowing. Some encryption scheme?”

“All of our messages were over the public net in clear text,” Meriel said. “I don’t know how it works, really. Nick sent us some software on a dongle. He said it’s not encryption but obfuscation, like having your jigsaw puzzle mixed up with a billion other jigsaw puzzles of the same color.”

“How does it know which pieces to use?”

“That’s his magic.”

“Mil-tech?”

“They wish,” Meriel said.

***

“Your pack of dogs screwed up,” the nondescript man said on the laser tight beam to the yacht in orbit around Etna.

“They’re not my dogs.”

“You should have engaged me sooner,” the nondescript man said.

“Yes, Benedict, you are correct. I was assured it was under control—my mistake. This bodes ill for our other joint ventures. A moment, please.” The line went quiet.

“Sir?”

“Yes, I’m back. It’s time for you to end this problem of ours.”

“The news is already out, sir,” the nondescript man said. “Why risk more attention?”

“The fanatic is the face of this particular problem. We still have plausible deniability, and any connection to us is rumor and speculation. Anyway, it’s too late to stop this.”

“And the survivors?”

“That’s on him, too. As for our immediate problem, we placed delusions and antipsychotic medication on her record years ago for just this eventuality. We can spin any story we want as long as she’s not around to contradict us. But she is elusive.”

“They don’t sell tickets to Haven, sir,” the nondescript man said.

“I’ll find you a ride,” said Cecil Rhodes, the chairman of BioLuna.

The shuttle shook violently when it entered Haven’s atmosphere, and Meriel closed her eyes and gripped the armrests so hard that the veins in her hands protruded. The ride down to the surface bumped and jarred her like nothing she had ever experienced.

“Jeez,” she said. “Is your atmosphere made of rocks?”

“At this speed, yeah, pretty much,” John said calmly, pretending that the drink in his hand might actually end up in his mouth.

When they cleared the upper atmosphere and the flames outside her window dispersed, she looked out. The torus and odd protrusions of LeHavre got smaller, and the tan landscape on the surface of Haven changed to shades of green.

As the ride smoothed, Meriel stopped worrying about disintegrating on reentry and returned to worrying about other things she could do nothing about. She fidgeted with nervousness, having never been on a planet before, but even more nervous about seeing John’s kids. He had told her everything about them, and they’d had a video conference, but meeting in person would be different. John also had an extended family on Haven, and they might not be so welcoming.
It’s only a visit
, she told herself.

They left their seats, and Meriel could feel the increased gravity through her forearm crutches. The sunlight blinded her as she approached the elevator. Until this moment, Meriel and Elizabeth had never been outside a space vessel of some kind or on the surface of a natural body in space without a hard-suit.

As they walked to the portal, cheers caught her attention, and she looked outside to see a crowd of people, more people in one place than she had ever seen in her life, and she bit her lip and looked around nervously.

“Why are they here?” Meriel asked.
Are they all so happy to leave
?

“They’ve come to see you, M,” John said. Elizabeth smiled and took Meriel’s arm.

“Why?” Meriel asked, but John just smiled.

Meriel stepped outside the escalator, still awkward on her crutches. In the shade of the shuttle wing, she could see more clearly, and the huge blue sky opened up. In front of her lay a carpet of red flowers. She took another step, careful of the uneven ground, and looked up but the horizon curved down, not up like a station deck. Leaning forward to put the perspective right, she lost her balance. Automatically reaching for a handhold, which, on board, would be only a few inches away, she found none and fell, smacking her head hard on the carpet.

Elizabeth and John knelt. “Are you all right?” Elizabeth asked while John grabbed her arm to help her sit up.

Meriel did not answer. She looked up, disoriented by the riot of colors. The sun glared down at her through open space, a sky without a dome to hold the air in. New scents irritated her nose, but she could not scratch it. The crowd and insects and noise all pressed in on her. She started to hyperventilate and got dizzy. Her eyes glazed over, unblinking.

“M, what’s wrong?” John asked.

Meriel kept staring at the sky and gripped the hands of Elizabeth and John. “I don’t…feel safe.”
All those colorful blotches at the base of the big blue…dome. Oh my God, it’s the horizon. There’s no hull. I don’t have a suit…I can’t breathe…I don’t want this!
Meriel shook visibly, and the color drained from her face. All she could think about was her meds.

“John, what’s wrong?” Elizabeth asked.

“Meriel? She’s frightened, Liz. Meriel, here take my hand,” he said, but Meriel remained motionless, staring at the sky and breathing rapidly. “Hon, take my hand.” He took her face in his hands and moved her head until she looked at him. “Look at me. Listen, hon. Trust me. This is what your mother wanted for you. Come take this step with me.”

Meriel nodded slowly and, with the help of Elizabeth and John, got to her feet while keeping her eyes on John. She smiled, but from the corner of her eye, a balloon escaped the hand of a child and took her attention away. She glanced at the blue sky behind it.
That sky!
she thought.
“Oh God!” she said and could not breathe and collapsed into John’s arms.

***

Meriel awoke in a dimly lit room and looked around: two beds, clearly a room for little girls, with stuffed animals and drawings and clothing strewn everywhere. She had slept through the day and night unaware of her surroundings and without the familiar hiss of ventilation and low hum of a ship’s engines. Instead, a soft breeze fluttered the curtains at an open window.

Two little girls shared the room with Meriel. They were quiet as shadows. One of the shadows, John’s younger girl, Rebecca, sat on a chair next to the bed. She would sometimes play with a rag doll and regularly glance at Meriel. Alessandra, the bigger shadow, leaned against a dresser and watched intently through her good eye. Her other eye was covered with a patch that matched the bow in her hair.

When Meriel blinked, Rebecca dropped her toy and took Meriel’s hand.

“Hi, Merry.”

“Hi, sweetie,” Meriel said. “Oops! Excuse me, ‘Brucilla the Muscle’!” At the mention of her heroine, Becky sat up straight, beaming, and struck her fist across her chest in salute. “And this must be your partner, Galatia,” Meriel said, referring to Alessandra, or Sandy.

“Hi, Merry L.,” Sandy said.

“Hi, Sandy.” Meriel held out her hand to invite Sandy to come closer.

Becky would not be interrupted. “Last night, Maddie told us that you ‘saved Papa’s ass.’ Is that the gift you brought me?”

“Quiet, Bru. She’s still resting.”

“I am very sorry I couldn’t meet you at the dock,” Meriel said. “I wasn’t feeling well.”

“Daddy told the others after dinner that you saved his life,” Sandy said softly, holding Meriel’s hand like a baby bird in both of hers. “We’re real grateful. He said you saved all of them in that big ship up there. We saw it from our telescope. It was all beat up and dirty.” And even more softly but with a big smile, she added, “Daddy said you were a hero.”

“I don’t remember much,” Meriel said, “and none of that hero stuff. I’m just glad your daddy is home with you. Everything smells so different. Where am I? My God, is this Haven? Really?”

“Uh-huh! You’re here at our house,” Sandy said, “on our farm and in our room. You’ve been sleeping since yesterday. The shuttle left this morning, but Daddy says you can stay with us as long as we take care of you and don’t disturb you and—”

“We look after the pigs and the chickens and the goats, so we can be trusted, all right!” Becky said, tripping on her sister’s words, “and we helped foal a pony just last week, too, and Sandy…oops, she fell asleep again.”

The two girls whispered their leave and closed the door.

A few minutes later, the door opened slowly and a little face peeked in. Sandy walked over to the bedside and sat next to her. She put her hand over Meriel’s hand very gently and kissed her forehead as her mother used to do.

“Thank you, Merry L.,” Sandy said. “I don’t know what we’d do without Daddy. I know you’re really nice by the way he talks about you. He kind of just smiles a lot and hasn’t acted this way since Mommy…died. Mommy used to spend time with us. Well, I guess we’d just follow her around ’cause we were just little kids then. We don’t have many friends here. There are kids at the next farm, but it’s too far. Papa built us a school for the workers’ kids here, but it’s real little. Most of the people are older, and they’re always busy. We work, too, but it doesn’t seem as important as what they’re all doing. They don’t let us do much with Becky so young and me with only one good eye. The doc says I need to wait until my brain grows up a bit before they can fit me with a prosth…a fake. I can see as well with one eye as they can see with two, and I can shoot better than any of ’em, but maybe I can get a cool bionic one that can see heat or figure distance or something.” She looked up for a moment and raised her eyebrows. “Oh, or maybe one that looks like a tiger or glows red when I’m mad.”

Sandy took a breath and sighed. “Merry L, Becky and I talked it over, and we want you to stay with us; we didn’t ask Daddy yet, but we want you to stay anyway. So we want you to heal up real fine. Becky and I want so very much to be your friends.”

Meriel slept, and in the middle of her dream, she heard a tiny fairy say, “We’d like so very much to be your family.”

And she heard correctly.

***

General Subedei Khanag’s flagship was small and fast. Like his fleet, it was functional rather than comfortable. He sat in the command chair on the empty bridge, scrolling through holos of children working in the mines and organ recyclers. The stench of oil and sweat and urine in the Stim dens had not left his nose, nor had the sweet smell of the rotting food thrown into them. And the iron taste of blood in his torn mouth from the beatings had not left his tongue, because these were not the holos of children whose lives he had destroyed. These were his own memories of the Stim den on mining colony RF33, where his parents sold him for drugs.

He rubbed his forearm—tattoos covered the tracks of the needles and IVs that had delivered escape for a decade and death more than once. Between his prayers for more Stim, he had prayed for salvation, and the Archtrope of Calliope had answered his prayers. He had pulled Khanag away from the mines and shown him a different life, a life with a purpose—to carve out a utopia for the forsaken, like himself, and his son.

A high-priority message interrupted his thoughts, and a holo appeared on the bridge in front of him, a holo of a large man in silk robes who was lying on a couch with a bowl of grapes before him while a beautiful and scantily clad woman massaged his shoulders.

Khanag bowed his head. “Arrangements are final, your eminence,” he said. “All is in order.”

The archtrope waved the young woman away and leaned forward. “I am sorry for your loss, General.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“Your son was a good soldier and worthy in our flock,” the archtrope said. “She and the orphans will be his slaves in paradise.”

“After I am through with them.”

“Yes, your revenge is assured. We will have a service here—

“Thank you, your eminence.”

“—private, of course, discretion is still necessary considering our…upcoming ventures. Speaking of which, you have the technician?”

“Yes,” Khanag replied.

“Show me.”

Khanag snapped his fingers to a uniformed crewman. “Bring him,” he said, and the crewman disappeared. Khanag dipped his head again. “It will be just a moment, your eminence.”

“You’ve come far, Mouse,” the archtrope said.

Khanag shuddered to dispel the memory of his past that the use of his old street name resurrected.

“Yes, Prophet. But recent events have exposed what was hidden. The media is powerful. Do we still proceed?”

“Our friends own the media and will never publish an…unflattering article.”

Khanag nodded. “And what about the orphans?”

“Yes, exposure makes them expendable now. But they would be useful as converts. No?”

“Avatars would be more easily controlled.”

“But we have a new future to offer them. I want their souls, not their images.”

“Our guest arrives. We must be discreet,” Khanag said and waved his hand to defocus the hologram.

Khanag’s crewman entered holding the arm of a much smaller man and brought him in front of Khanag.

“Ah, there you are. I hope your accommodations are to your liking, Mr. Matsushita,” Khanag said.

“What about my family?” Warren Matsushita asked.

“Why, they are safe of course. Do not fret.”

“I want to talk to them,” Matsushita said.

“I’m sorry, Warren. May I call you Warren?” Khanag asked but continued without pause. “You know that is impossible to speak to your family right now. They’re on vacation, Warren, at our expense. A treat for them for your being so helpful. They’re perfectly safe. I will have a video sent to you. Now to business. You can fix our little prize now, yes?

“If you have the parts I asked for, yes I can fix it.”

“Wonderful,” Khanag said. “And the controller?”

“I don’t need it. I can operate it from the box itself.”

“Excellent,” Khanag said.

“And if I help you, the Archers will release my family?”

“Yes, of course, of course, not to worry,” Khanag said.

But Warren looked at Khanag’s cold eyes and did not believe him.

“The Haveners will not be able to fix it?” Khanag asked.

“No, they don’t have the parts or the technology to make the parts,” Matsushita said. He knew that without that edge he would be useless and disposable, like his family.

“Thank you, Warren,” Khanag said. “I must beg your leave now, but you will join me for dinner later, yes?” he asked and waved his hand to dismiss him without waiting for a reply. When the technician was out of sight, Khanag cleared the display, and the archtrope reappeared.

“He’ll do. Proceed,” the archtrope said.

“Yes, Prophet. Out.”

***

After Khanag signed off and the holo went dark, a man in a business suit stepped closer to the archtrope: Edward Siede, Editor in Chief of GNN, the Galactic News Network.