Space Trader (Galactic Axia Adventure) (2 page)

“That it is,” the smooth man agreed. “Some traders now prefer convoys with mercenary ships to guard them.”

“Might as well join one of the trade alliances and drive a ship like a ground car,” Ian said. “You’re safe but your soul is a prisoner of fear.”

“But at least you and your soul remain on speaking terms, rather than as the main course at a Red-tail feast.”

“May you be the guest of honor?”

Cahill lifted his glass in toast to the man. His counterpart looked less than comfortable. Ian made to stand up. “Well, I better get back to my ship.”

“Hold a minute, friend,” the smooth man said, motioning for Ian to sit back down.

Ian sat and waited. The ideas he had planted or reinforced in the other man’s mind were having the desired effect. Right now, he was comparing the price he wanted out of Ian with the risks involved in his life of trading. Truthfully, the risks would be the same whether he sold to Cahill or not. Life was like that. But right now, the man was imagining being eaten by Red-tails versus making a little less profit and living to tell about it. The fear that image could conjure up in a man’s heart was his deadliest enemy.

“What would be a fair... uh, commission for you to take certain merchandise off my hands?” the man finally asked cautiously.

“I’d have to consider the risks,” Ian said, now using the fear he had generated as a tool to lower the other man’s price. “How soon might you need to make this transaction?”

“As soon as possible,” the man answered, falling for the old deadline trap. Ian decided to push a little more.

“Are you planning to be in that convoy leaving tonight?” He saw the man’s eyes widen ever so slightly and knew he had him hooked. At this point, the man would virtually give Ian the artifact in exchange for a place of safety in the convoy. Cahill almost felt guilty at the ease with which he had maneuvered the man. Almost.

But such is the nature of business
, he reminded himself. If a person feared being burned he shouldn’t play in the fireplace. There were other ways of transporting stock if it was legal. In this case, however, the merchandise in question was in that gray area that the desk jockeys and pencil-necks who wrote the shipping regulations never fully explored.

The man frowned and then scribbled a few numbers on a place mat and pushed it across the table to Cahill.

“That is the best I can do under the circumstances,” the man said with finality.

Cahill studied the figures. They were a thousand credits less than he was willing to offer. Then again, there was no reason to cheat the man. After all, he knew he could double his investment with the dealer out on the rim, assuming it was a legal trade item and didn’t get confiscated as a cultural treasure from some extinct planet.

He had already weighed the risks and options when he first heard of this naive man and his desire to part with a certain artifact of unknown age and origin. It had piqued Ian’s curiosity or otherwise he would not have wasted the time to sit here and haggle.

“Tell you what,” Cahill said after making a sour face or two. “You have it sealed and delivered to my ship within the half hour and I’ll kick in a half point bonus.”

“You are most generous, sir,” the man said. “I’ll see to it directly.”

Cahill pulled a keypad out of his jacket pocket, typed in a few numbers, and then produced a small disk.

“There is an intake locker on the side of the main airlock of my ship,” Ian said and handed the disk to the man. “Place this disk in the slot and it will open. Put the merchandise in the locker. I warn you, it will close as soon as it senses your hands are clear, so be quick. The last fool I dealt with tried to snatch his delivery back and lost a couple of fingers.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“As soon as the locker is closed, it will relinquish the disk which can be cashed at the local currency exchange.”

“What’s my guarantee that the disk is good for the agreed amount?” the man asked as he pocketed the disk.

“The same as my guarantee that you will deliver the correct artifact to my ship,” Ian replied easily. “If it’s not delivered within the time limit, you lose the bonus I’m offering. If you try to cash the disk before confirmation of delivery, the disk will notify the exchange and you will be detained while the matter is investigated. And if you try to deliver and then snatch it back... well... enough said about missing fingers. They leave such a mess.”

The man eyed Cahill’s shoulder weapon and sidearm, unsure if the trader was really as dangerous as he looked.

“So you’re saying you and I don’t trust each other?” The man smiled a knowing grin from beneath a pencil thin mustache.

“On the contrary,” Cahill said, returning the man’s smile. “I’m saying all we have is trust. I just like to keep an honest man honest.”

Forty-five minutes later Ian Cahill approached his ship, the
Cahill Express,
in the docking bay of the massive hanger. He noted the illuminated indicator lights on the intake locker and smiled. He entered the airlock and secured it for departure. He knew the artifact was not only aboard but transported from the locker to a safe storage compartment by an inside conveyor system. The disk would have entered the artifact into his inventory, but labeled as Miscellaneous Merchandise to disguise its identity instead of Unknown Artifact. Ian liked his little machines. They did what they were designed to do and he did not have to worry about them misunderstanding him.

He gave the
Express
a quick pre-flight walk-through and then headed up to the control deck. Strapping himself into the control seat, he reached out to the comm, set it for Departure Control, and then put his headset on. Immediately, he heard the usual chatter as other ships logged in with Departure Control in preparation to leave the shipping port.

While he listened to the chatter, he ran through a quick checklist, hoping for a break. Although he had the pre-flight checklist memorized, he didn’t trust his life to human fallibility, and faithfully ran down the list. He had lost friends and acquaintances to simple mistakes made by a hasty and incomplete pre-flight. One valve left open or one control knob set to the wrong setting could leave you stranded in deep space without the simple convenience of something like air or power. He was just finishing when he heard a pause in the chatter that allowed him to break in.

“Departure Control, this is the spacer
Cahill Express
requesting a departure slot.”

“
Cahill Express,
Departure Control,” came back the reply. “What vector please?”

“Two two seven zero point three,” Ian answered back after checking his navigational display. It was one of the normal departure lanes and would provide the best transition later for his next planned stop.

“Granted,
Cahill Express
,” departure answered. “You have a slot on two two seven zero point three in four minutes. On my mark. Three, two one. Mark.”

“Noted and locked,” Ian replied as he punched the timer button and set it for four minutes. A quick check of ship systems showed that all was ready for a smooth and quick departure. Now all he had to do was wait.

This is the hardest part of space flight
, Ian thought. My ship can carry me millions, even billions of miles in four minutes, but nothing can ease the wait of my skids gathering dust on the ground.

His mind wandered back to other departures where he had fumed at the delay. Now he took it in stride as a part of life one couldn’t change. It was funny how that had become part of his personal philosophy. Some things you can change, some things you can’t, and may the Unseen One grant you the wisdom to know the difference.

The timer signaled the one minute mark. Ian flexed his fingers and reached his right hand forward for the throttle bar. His left hand rested gently on the axis ball while he waited for the seconds to count down. At ten seconds, he brought the power online and lifted the ship into a hover.

“
Cahill Express
,
Departure Control,” the voice said in the headset at five seconds.

“
Cahill Express
.”

“You are clear for departure. Have a good flight.”

“Thank you, Departure,” Ian said. He advanced the throttle bar and rotated the axis ball for vertical lift-off. The blue and black
Cahill Express
rose, turned nose up, and accelerated up into the marked exit lane above the shipping port. Within seconds, it was breaching the atmosphere of the planet and entering the darkness of space.

∞∞∞

By human standards, the day had been a long one. Ert (as he named himself) heard one of his attendants say as much when they left for the evening. But for Ert it wasn’t a long day. The day was like most any other since awakening here among these bipedal creatures.

At the time it was a bit disconcerting for Ert to awaken in a now repaired component. A relic from an extinct species on an obscure planet, he’d been inoperative for a little over eighteen million galactic years. He’d adapted to his change in circumstance and eventually started communicating with these human creatures. He mastered their language and evaluated their technology.

Most often inferior to what he had known in the distant past with his builders, he found it fascinating none-the-less. Following different avenues of development, these bipedal creatures had actually surpassed the ancient Horicon in some areas.

The history of these humans also interested the ancient Horicon computer. Socially, they were completely unlike the Horicon he had known. To borrow a human phrase, Ert wanted to know ‘what made them tick.’

Using normal connections (and a few abnormal ones), Ert absorbed and correlated every bit of history he could find. To say that his habit of correcting discrepancies he found caused quite a bit of consternation would be a gross understatement. Nevertheless, to Ert it served no purpose to distort verifiable facts, even for social purposes.

After several uproars had developed when he pointed out these errors to the humans dealing with historical records, Ert discerned that it was often better to quietly correct the record and not tell anyone. This approach proved more effective in helping his new keepers since most often they accepted the correction at face value and moved on.

Missing the companionship of his Horicon creators, Ert struck up new friendships with the humans around him. As some of these friends moved on to new assignments, he found ways to follow them and stay in touch.

Intrigued by the way the humans faced their problems, Ert soon adapted some of their approaches to his own concerns, which led him to his current problem. All of his searching of the historical records of the humans failed to yield answers to several questions. He tried taking the odd approaches he picked up from the humans but all this did was amplify the gaps in the knowledge he sought.

He wanted to know what happened to the Horicon. One day he had been routinely performing his assigned duties running part of the infrastructure on his home planet, and the next he awakened over eighteen million years later in a transport crate on his journey to his eventual home on Mica with the humans. He had no idea of the eons of time that had passed or the events that led up to the apparent demise of the Horicon.

Nothing in all the vast records of the humans answered the question of eighteen thousand millennia of lost time. If he’d been a simple machine like the computers the humans built, this would not have bothered him in the least. Those poor collections of electronic components and circuit boards had no feelings. Ert, on the other hand, was completely different. He had as much, if not more, emotion than the humans around him.

However, it tore at his very being. Although happy with his newly-found human friends, he mourned the missing Horicon. An average machine by their standards, Ert had enjoyed the interaction with the Horicon for many centuries. Now they were gone, leaving only ruins and one very lonely computer.

Chapter Two

From: deagle>gss.rodartc.ro

To:  hasselfarm>gss.bv.er

Dear Mom and Dad,

Well, here I am on board my own ship hurtling through space. Not really. Actually, we’re in a trainer parked in orbit around another dull and boring planetoid. All of my classmates are also in trainers scattered around the solar system. They really believe in personalized training at the Rodar Training Center. My instructor (ok he has a name!), Trooper-First Ace Vmac insists that we practice another mapping and charting routine. I know it’s important and all that, but I want to get out there and do something! All this analysis of rocks in space is driving me crazy. And now he wants me to do another bio-scan of the surface. That makes three times this week for this one rock alone! What does he think is down there, an unknown life form Galactic Axia science has never heard of? Maybe he’s looking for a date with some exotic alien girl!

I heard from Stan Shane a few days ago. He’s up to his elbows in some sort of hush-hush project on a closed planet somewhere. I have no idea what he’s doing, and even if he told me, I probably wouldn’t understand it anyway. He did say that Ert is helping him, so I know either it’s something very dangerous or very complicated. Whatever it is, he sure is happy. At least
he
gets to do something important. Me? I’m stuck here analyzing rocks and microbes.

I know—gripe, gripe, gripe. Mine is not to reason why, mine is but to do or die, or sob and sigh, or wipe my eye, or something along those lines. But it’s every trooper’s right to complain. This just isn’t quite what I’d envisioned when they outlined my “training” missions. The whole galaxy is waiting out there and I want to go see it! Even I know a stupid computer could do a better job of this than I can!

And that brings up another question—have you heard from Ert? Oh! I hope he doesn’t pick up on that ‘stupid computer’ remark. You know how touchy he is. For a while there, he’d log on and be all chatty, but lately he’s disappeared. Stan didn’t mention anything about him, so I don’t know if it’s just me or what. Last time I spoke to Ert, he mentioned that he’d gotten under the skin of a few people at the Science Institute. His help can be burdensome at times. And I can’t imagine any way that they could keep him from communicating if he wanted to.