All for All, page 28
part #3 of Cast Adrift Series
He keyed the terminal to log into the local datanet and download an updated precis for the system, then removed the detection tools from the cabinet and started to search the ship. The Pashtali had been everywhere, including some of the smaller cargo compartments; he scowled as he noted how they'd torn open a couple of shipping crates, then left the debris on the deck for him and his wife to tidy up. He waved the scanner over the cargo, breathing a sigh of relief once he was sure the searchers hadn't hidden any bugs within the crate, then continued the search. Sarah would check his work, just to be sure. He hoped the Pashtali hadn't come up with anything new. His instructors had told him that surveillance technology advanced all the time, racing against counter-surveillance technology. If there was a bug in the ship his sensors couldn't detect, they were in deep shit.
They wouldn't waste something like that on us, he thought, coldly. If they suspected us, they could have taken us off the ship at once and dissected her at leisure.
"Clean," Sarah said, when they'd finished. "You want to go for dinner, or to sell our crap?"
"Better sell first," Thomas said. Independent freighter crews needed to sell their wares as quickly as possible, if only to build up a surplus of local currency. The Pashtali might notice if they didn't and start asking why. "You get us a place. I'll arrange shipment."
"Aye, Captain," Sarah said.
Thomas checked the precis, noted all the careful evasions written into the official download, then changed into a basic shipsuit before leaving the ship and stepping onto the orbital station. The air stank of hundreds of different races, all jammed together; he took deep breaths, forcing his body to grow used to it. It wouldn't do to show his discomfort in front of potential clients. There were no customs facilities on the far side of the airlock, nothing to keep him from taking whatever he liked off the ship. That wasn't uncommon. He suspected the Pashtali monitored the online sales network, to ensure nothing illicit was being traded, as well as inspecting anything that went down to the surface. Reading between the lines, the enclaves below were restive. It felt like Theta Sigma before the war.
Serve the bastards right, he thought, although he knew an uprising would be futile unless the rebels seized control of the high orbitals. The foreign warships were unlikely to intervene in what was so clearly an internal matter. They might care a great deal about the orbital installations, and the crossroads, but the planet's surface wasn't any of their concern. The Pashtali had clear title. But what will happen if all hell does break loose?
The sense he was sitting on a powder keg just waiting to explode grew stronger as he made his way into the market hall. It was a truly immense compartment, large enough for hundreds of intelligent beings from dozens of different races to meet and mingle, but instead of a melting pod the crowds were gathered in clumps. Violence hung in the air, as if gangs were just waiting for the signal before they drew their weapons and started slaughtering each other. There were no police in evidence, not even the customs officers who'd searched his ship. Thomas was silently relieved that Sarah had remained on the ship, even though she'd be pissed when he returned. If something happened to him, she could get James Bond back to friendly territory and report home.
He kept one hand near his pistol as he made his way to the merchant office. The guards on the hatch - Vulteks, carrying enough weaponry to fight a small war - eyed him suspiciously, then checked his ID before stepping aside and allowing him to proceed. Thomas walked through the hatch and blinked in surprise, almost coming to a halt as he spied the alien behind the deck. An Alphan? It was vanishingly rare, these days, to see an Alphan outside their own territory. Thomas had the disconcerting sense the ground was shifting under his feet. What was an Alphan doing here?
They're not all snobbish bastards who'd prefer to sit in squalor than make an effort to clear up the mess, he reminded himself. Some of them are actually quite reasonable, in moderation.
"I greet you," the Alphan said. "I am Driscoll of Tarn."
"I greet you." Thomas bent himself into the Posture of Respect. It had been years since he'd had to do it, back when Earth had been an Alphan possession, but his body still remembered. "I wish to conduct business."
"Of course," Driscoll said. The Alphan managed an expression that might just have been an attempt at a human smile, if the watcher used his imagination. "I have already downloaded and accessed your manifest. I believe I can sell most of your goods within two days."
And does that mean you have buyers who can be lined up in short order, Thomas asked himself, or do you intend to sell the goods to yourself and then sell them onwards at a considerable mark-up?
He leaned forward. "We would be honoured by your assistance," he said. Alphans liked having their rears kissed, metaphorically if not literally. "It has been a long flight and we are desperate for a rest."
"I can advance you a suitable sum, if you wish," Driscoll said. He made a show of inspecting his datapad, although Thomas was entirely sure he already had the contents memorised. "The exchange rate of local currency to GalCreds is not good and growing worse, I am afraid, but if I pay you the advance in local currency you can use it straight away."
Thomas leaned forward. "The exchange rate is normally very stable," he said, taking advantage of the opening. "Why is it growing worse?"
Driscoll showed little expression, but Thomas knew his people well enough to read the worry. "The situation is currently in flux," he said. "There are too many warships in the system for comfort, with a serious possibility of the system becoming neutral ground or a war zone. If the former, the local currency will have to be disconnected from the Pashtali currency; if the latter, money may mean very little unless it is converted into GalCreds."
"At a truly ruinous rate of exchange," Thomas commented. "I heard the war was getting worse."
"The interstellar shipping lanes are growing dangerous," Driscoll agreed. "The Pashtali are no longer capable of protecting commercial ships through their territory. They appear to have lost at least a dozen convoys, perhaps more. The other powers are making a bid to provide the protection themselves, which will undermine Pashtali control ..."
Thomas nodded, concealing his impatience. He already knew all that, at least in general terms, but Driscoll might know something he didn't. It was quite possible he was an information broker, on the sly, or even an intelligence agent keeping his people appraised of what was going on outside their territory. Or both. Information brokers often had close ties to intelligence services, even if they didn't work for them directly. Thomas had done the job himself as a younger man.
"I heard the humans intend to strike at the core of the enemy empire," he said, when Driscoll paused. "Is that true?"
"It's a possibility," Driscoll agreed. "You are human yourself. Does the war not concern you?"
"Only as a trader," Thomas lied. It wasn't uncommon for independent traders to have no loyalties at all, beyond their ship and crew. The Vulteks outside probably had no more loyalty to the Pashtali than Thomas himself. "I would like to see a human victory, but I wouldn't risk my ship for it."
"No doubt," Driscoll agreed. "It is difficult to sort truth from fiction. The Pashtali have beaten the human fleet - they say - but the humans insist their fleet survived and the fact they carried out a very public attack on a transit system is proof they are telling the truth. Or so galactic opinion believes. There are rumours the human race is coming here, or going there, or just trying to pour on the pressure in hopes of getting the Pashtali to crack."
"But you don't know," Thomas said. "Which systems are safe, for us?"
"Life isn't safe," Driscoll told him.
Thomas tried to hide his surprise. The Alphans were incredibly cautious, by human standards. Their forefathers might have built a vast empire, with blood and treasure and a certain amount of good luck, but the current crop was incredibly cautious, unwilling to take the risks their forefathers had considered perfectly acceptable. They minimised risk as much as possible, over-engineering their ships and technology to make it as hard as possible for something to go wrong. Their homes, even the poorest, were so comfortable and safe they put even the richest mansions on Earth in the shade. And yet, this Alphan accepted the risks that came with living? It was odd.
"I can sell you an updated starchart," Driscoll added. "But the information will be outdated very quickly."
"If it isn't already," Thomas said. He leaned forward. "How much of an advance will you offer us?"
"Ten thousand local credits," Driscoll said. "To be taken out of the sale of your goods."
Thomas blinked. That was a small fortune. Or was it? If the local currency was sinking so rapidly, the sum might soon be worthless. It might not even be enough to buy a mug of coffee!
"Shit," he said. "Too much currency leaving?"
"As fast as it can go," Driscoll agreed. "Shall we start haggling?"
"Yeah," Thomas agreed, slowly. They'd have to signal Earth - and the fleet - as quickly as possible. "Let's haggle."
Chapter Thirty
P-16, Pashtali Space
"Shit," Marquez said. "Mines!"
Roger glanced at her. "They mined the crossroads?"
"The space around the crossroads," Marquez said. "Clumps of self-powered mines, ready to make their way onto the crossroads on command."
Roger cursed under his breath. There was little point, normally, in mining a crossroads unless it was a bottleneck. It was incredibly wasteful to scatter mines over such a vast area of space when it was statistically unlikely the incoming ships would interpenetrate with the mines or simply materialise close enough to the minefield for the mines to kill them before their point defence blew the mines into dust. The Pashtali hadn't quite taken the risk - the mines were no threat to anyone right now - but they could be guided onto the crossroads at any moment. He frowned, stroking his chin as a thought occurred to him. The space beyond the minefield appeared to be empty, but there could be a small fleet of cloaked ships - or even a handful of powered-down missile pods - lurking in the vastness of interplanetary space.
"Keep us as stealthed as possible," he ordered. If he was any judge, the Pashtali would have strewn sensor platforms around the crossroads as well. "We don't want to draw attention."
"Yes, sir," Marquez said. "They don't seem to have noticed us."
"No," Roger agreed. "But that could change."
He keyed his terminal and brought up the starchart. P-16 sat on a direct line from P-23 to P-1, the enemy homeworld. Anyone who wanted to batter their way into the very heart of enemy space practically had to go through P-16, unless they wanted to go a long way out of their way or risk travelling through unstable regions of multispace. They'd intercepted messages carrying rumours, suggestions the human fleet intended to capitalise on its victory at P-23 by attacking P-1 itself. The Pashtali probably wouldn't believe the tales - the human fleet wasn't strong enough to tangle with the homeworld's defences - but they couldn't afford to entirely discount them either. He supposed that explained the minefield. A few hours of warning would give the defenders more than enough time to move the mines onto the crossroads and bring up mobile units in support.
And given how rough multispace is around this system, he mused, they can be fairly sure we won't be dropping in behind them.
Sweat beaded on his back as they inched off the crossroads and into interplanetary space. The passive sensors picked up nothing, beyond warning beacons surrounding the minefields. He wondered, suddenly, if the minefield was nothing more than smoke and mirrors. The mines were too small to spot with optical sensors and bringing up active sensors would paint a giant target on their hulls, forcing the tiny squadron to turn and run instead of completing the mission. He toyed with his terminal, trying to determine possible angles of approach to the primary planet, but drew a blank. They simply didn't know enough for their conclusions to be anything more than guesswork.
There have to be limits to how many minefields they can scatter around, he mused, as they kept going. The odds of us hitting a mine are vanishingly low.
He kept his face under tight control. He'd been a spacer long enough to understand, at a very primal level, just how tiny his entire squadron was on an interplanetary scale. The odds of them passing within a few hundred kilometres of a mine were still very low. No one, not even the Pashtali, could emplace enough mines to guarantee a hit. And yet, he felt as if he was taking one hell of a risk. They were blind. The first warning they'd get of a mine was hitting it. He would almost have been happier if the enemy were shooting at them.
"No contacts, beyond the beacons," Marquez said. "I think we're safe."
"Keep your eyes open," Roger ordered. "We'll pause once we're past the outer shell."
Or where we think the outer shell is, his thoughts added. There's no way to be sure we're clear of the minefields unless we bring up the active sensors and that will get us killed.
He sighed inwardly and concentrated on the live feed from the passive sensors. P-16 was surprisingly active, with hundreds of drive signatures boiling around the planets and asteroids, but almost all of the signatures appeared to be Pashtali. There were only a handful that seemed to belong to other alien races, all so far from the planet that he suspected they'd been ordered to keep their distance. The planet itself was surrounded by dozens of drive signatures, flying in such a tight formation he was sure they were yet another convoy. His lips twisted. They'd had to give the last two convoys they'd encountered a wide berth after noting their escorts were alert and ready for trouble. It would be satisfying as hell to strike a convoy so deep in enemy space. If the stories about other powers were actually true ...
Marquez looked up. "I think we're clear of the minefields now," she said. "We're certainly clear of the beacons."
Roger nodded. Legally, the Pashtali were supposed to inform passing ships about the minefield so they could keep their distance. It made a certain amount of sense if the minefield was emplaced on a bottleneck, although - like a number of other interstellar protocols - it was often honoured in the breach rather than the observance. Practically speaking, he suspected it didn't matter. The beacons didn't provide any precise data that could be used for minesweeping. They just warned ships to stay clear or else.
"Shape our course towards the planet," he ordered. "And keep us well clear of the shipping lanes."
"Such as they are," Marquez said. "The system is a little more organised than most, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Roger said. "And it gives us a lot of targeting opportunities."
His lips twisted. Earth's asteroid belt was a teeming mass of mining ships, legal habitats, semi-legal habitats and a decentralised government that resisted instruction from both Earth and Alphan Prime with as much determination as it could muster. There were only a handful of core mining stations and losing them, while painful, wouldn't be enough to bring Earth's industries to a grinding halt. The cloudscoops were bigger targets, and very noticeable against the gas giants, but Earth's spacers and miners had long-since perfected the art of skimming the gas giants atmospheres for fuel. Here ... he rolled his eyes at just how centralised the system truly was. There were four asteroid smelting complexes and at least thirty cloudscoop, all easy to spot even with passive sensors. Taking even one of them out would do untold harm to the system's industrial base.
And we can slip a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile into range very easily, he thought. It would never have worked on Earth, but here ... We might be able to do them a hell of a lot of damage for very little risk.
"Signal the squadron," he ordered. "We'll proceed to the planet. The rest of the squadron is to split up and approach the mining platforms, then attempt to destroy them at" - he glanced at his display - "1700."
"Aye, sir," Marquez said. "That should be more than enough time to get everyone into position."
Unless we get detected ahead of time, Roger thought. The planet and the mining platforms were both surrounded by active sensors, sweeping space constantly for threats. The cloaked ships would be fine, in theory, as long as they kept their distance, but ... one minor mishap would reveal their presence. Splitting up the squadron raises the risks of detection ...
"Get some rest," he ordered. They had fifteen hours to wait. More than enough time, he hoped, for the alpha crews to catch some sleep and a shower, then return to their stations before the shit hit the fan. "I'll see you at 1500."
"Aye, sir." Marquez didn't sound happy, but she understood. "You get some rest too, sir."
Roger nodded and made his way into his makeshift cabin. It still felt weird, as though he was camping in a very alien environment, but he was too tired to notice or care. There was no point in trying to remodel the ship, beyond the very basics. The analysts had already gone through the captured vessels with a fine-toothed comb, learnt everything that could be leant and cleared them for service. Roger knew the entire squadron was rated as expendable. There was no point in wasting resources making the ships comfortable when they were all going to be destroyed, sooner rather than later.
He shook his head, crawled into his sleeping bag and closed his eyes. Sleep didn't come easy. He knew the odds of detection were very low, and would remain low until they reached their target, but it didn't feel that way. He felt like a fly crawling across a stained-glass window, all too visible to eyes below. And yet ... he took a breath and forced himself to sleep. The alarm rang seconds later. He had to check his terminal to be sure he'd actually slept for nine hours.
Fuck, he thought numbly, as he took a quick shower. The Pashtali seemed to enjoy showers as much as their human enemies, although their showers produced warm mist instead of streams of water. If we ever do this again, we need to arrange for better facilities for the ship.
He finished showering, changed into fresh clothes and nibbled on a ration bar as he made his way back to the bridge. The sheer alienness of the ship surrounded him as the corridor tilted upwards, reminding him of an anthill rather than a starship ... he wondered, idly, if it was whimsy or an attempt to make the crew feel at home. The latter seemed rather more likely, although it was impossible to be sure. There were quite a few Galactic races who wove their notion of whimsy into their starship designs.
