The Captain of the free trader 'Amortized Expense' was having a fairly good day – even month – so far. Just a few weeks ago, he'd chance-met another trader at Planet Acid, as the system was called in the trader slang of the region, and made a very, very good deal. Two megacredits worth of highly illegal augments became his property back then, and he sought to distribute them at some world nearby that had a large population just yearning to have all their troubles melt away in a self-administered haze of bliss. The implants were self-burrowing, so there wasn't even any problem if the purchasers had no medical augmentation facilities on hand. Just slap it against the side of your head, bear with the brief pain, and thereafter enjoy a lifetime of happiness. They, he and his first mate, even tested one of these things on the ship's officially designated contraband tester – and boy, did his morale improve since! He highly expected making something to the order of ten megacreds in profit on these. Maybe eleven. Right now, he was taking it slow, chasing down a gas giant in the Caldos system on his way thought, to refuel and evaluate the likelihood of good business to be done here, based on transmissions analysis of their recent news.
His daydreaming came to an end when the proximity and radiation hazard alarms blared simultaneously, throwing him from his seat. Scrambling back up, he grabbed the helm to veer away from danger to his port side. The bridge crew rushed to fill their positions.
"Jump exit in direct proximity!" announced his first officer. "We're clear!"
"Get me on the comm to that bloody pirate!"
ooo
"Who the hell was that guy?" asked Kaarin, after the profanity-laden message had ended. The free trader – with their transponder off, of course – veered away from their location, but keeping a course for the gigantic super-Jovian ahead.
"I don't know, but they sounded very angry," quipped Arthur.
"Unless I miss my guess," said Yosef, "we don't have any control over where exactly we emerge in a star system, or any way to detect someone being in the way, thus their anger seems misplaced. Am I wrong?"
"Nope," Kaarin said.
"Well then I will pray that his soul finds peace from the perils of wrath."
"You do that. We're in. Pity about being detected so early, but I guess we don't actually have control over everything. Arthur, get me a course to skim the giant's atmosphere, then to swing around to the main world in the inner system. We'll play it stealthy for now, transponder off, just like that cretin. If discovered, we claim to have forgotten to turn it on. Get it?"
"Got it."
"Of course, Captain."
"Then let's roll."
ooo
Lieutenant Griddle hated his job. He wanted to be a pilot, but he got stuck manning this imported sensor station in high orbit. He spent two weeks up top, then three weeks on the ground. It was highly paid, sure, but it was also boring as all hell. Most of it was staring at superfreighters come in loaded with foodstuffs and leave with various industrial goods the planet produced. Half of them never even went through Mycian-controlled space. That would change, he expected, but the eventual victory of the Mycian Empire could be long in coming – the Childkillers and the Barbarians were considerable foes, for all their lack of proper civilization.
Today, the skies were relatively clear. No big ships coming or going, just a handful of smallfry, like that free trader, 'Amortized Expense' according to its transponder. He lazily turned the baleful gaze of his active sensors in their direction, expecting to find absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, and maybe then die of boredom. Getting roughly what he expected, he was just about to stop a detailed investigation and resume regular sweeps of the sky, when he found that he'd almost missed something that wasn't quite routine: radio chatter reflections. He investigated – activating sensor buoys on the same ecliptic plane as the incoming ship.
Luckily, the transmission wasn't encoded, though it was degraded, the buoy not being exactly the intended recipient:
"...T FOLLOWING US YOU ASS-MUNCHING, FLA... … ASSHOLE OF THE... IN... ….LIVESTOCK... ...FUCK YOU!"
Now this was interesting.
Griddle switched between buoys until he found the vector where the messages were traveling on, then easily found the opposite one, catching some replies too:
"...eep telling you, idiot, we're not following you! Hey, hey, you talk to him!" a man's voice said.
Another man spoke after a brief pause. "What my colleague is trying to say that we're merely going in the same direction, and far be it for us to mean you any harm. It's all a coincidence that we both chose to have the same ideas about refueling and sheer poor luck that we nearly came in on top of you. We just want to get to Caldos, that is all."
What was so damn strange about it was that he was seeing only one ship. Yet, there were obviously two sides to this conversation. A contradiction – but Lieutenant Griddle knew the answer to this puzzle. He grinned ear-to-ear, happy to have some entertainment at long last.
"Smugglers," he said to himself, and activated the high priority comm.
ooo
"Thanks, Yosef. I really owe you one," said Kaarin. "That complete moron nearly blew our cover. Can you believe it?"
"Never underestimate the stupidity of others, chief," said Arthur.
"Is that one of your secret service mottos?"
"No comment."
Kaarin rolled his eyes. "Of course not."
He was just about to relax properly, when Arthur spoke up.
"We're getting hailed," he said.
"If it's that damn trader again, I swear to Yosef's God-"
"Don't do—"
"-that I'm going to drop this charade and open fire on that son of a whore!"
"It's not them. It's from groundside."
"Crap."
"Not unexpected."
"No. Yosef, take the comm."
"If you insist, Captain, but do understand and recall what I said. I will not lie on your behalf, nor anyone else's."
"You're still the best speaker we have."
"In terms of deception, I am sure that Arthur has no equal on board."
"Transmission on speakers, gents," Arthur said, and pressed a button.
"Attention unidentified vessel, bearing..." the speaker paused, then read a bunch of numbers. "This is the Mycian Imperial Space Customs Service. Identify yourself!"
"Em-aye-ess-see-ess, my apologies. Turning on the transponder now," said the priest.
"Free Trader 'Luxantus', your transponder is now on," said the man on the other side of the transmission. "State your business in the Mycian Empire."
"We have no business in the Mycian Empire. We're headed for the Western Commonwealth."
"Free Trader 'Luxantus', you are in Mycian space. You will submit to a customs inspection. Power down your engines."
"We have no business with the Mycians. We're not headed for the Mycian Empire."
"You are in Mycian space. The inspection is not optional. Power down your engines, or we will use force to achieve compliance."
Yosef pressed the mute button.
"What do we do now?"
"They've not buying your story," opined Arthur. "They have a system defense boat heading towards us."
"Buy us time!" Kaarin instructed. "Tell them we need to slow down or we'll be a space hazard, headed directly for the planet."
"Em-aye-ess-see-ess, we need to slow down more before we can power down our engines."
There was a pause on the other end.
"Our calculations show your present course not to be dangerous to the planet, or other traffic. Power down your engines, now."
Yosef muted the exchange again.
Kaarin dragged a palm across his face. "The dumb, stubborn bastards. Okay, accept the damn inspection. Arthur, how much before intercept?"
"Twenty minutes at current vectors."
"Engi, power down the engines," he transmitted to the aft of the ship. "Put us in a drift. Don't power down anything else."
"Yes, sir!"
"Arthur, do you have disguise kits anywhere?"
"I might have."
"Good. You have twenty minutes to make us look as little as ourselves as you possibly can. Go!"
ooo
The Mycian SDB, number three of nine, lazily matched velocities with the supposed Free Trader 'Luxantus'. Being just barely not a smallcraft, it proceeded towards direct docking, rather than launch the smallcraft it didn't have. Private Timeo waited in anxious anticipation. This was his first real deployment, and he hoped against his better judgment that this vessel turned out to be some kind of smuggler or better yet, a pirate. That would lead to action, adventure – maybe a promotion! – and plenty of hot chicks interested in a mighty spaceman bloodied in pitched battle in outer space, when he came back for shore leave.
"Alright, boys, we're beginning docking procedures, line up in an orderly fashion," said the Sergeant.
They did as they were instructed and trained, the four of them, including the Sarge. The airlock before them began to cycle. Timeo gripped his slug rifle tighter. It took ages, from his perspective, and when it finally opened, it revealed a somewhat plump woman – though you'd never guess it just from her hard-etched face – in a vacc suit with the helmet off.
"Imperial Mycian customs inspection," said the Sarge, waving a well-used plastpaper warrant in the woman's face.
"Um. Yes. Please come in. Sirs," stammered she, trying to read the sheet before it was snatched away. The Sergeant plowed past her, clearly having identified her as no threat. Timeo didn't see any weapons on her, either, though looks could be deceiving, as was drilled into him repeatedly during his training.
"Gro, check the engineering section. Freen, with me on the bridge. Timeo, check the staterooms."
"Sir, yes, sir!" loyally recited Timeo and started with the nearest chamber.
It was spartan, barely furnished at all beyond the essential necessities. He poked into the cabinet, under the mattress, checked the dirty laundry pile. There was a computer here, but it was protected with a password, so he let it be. Overall, nothing interesting.
The next one was even less thought-provoking. It looked good as new, as though nobody had lived here in a week, since last clean-up. The trash bin included several plastic trays left after the space rations have been eaten out of them, and that was pretty much the extent of the habitation. Timeo dutifully checked over all the likely places where smugglers were supposed to hide their contraband, and to his dismay, found nothing.
The third stateroom was, well, disorderly to the extreme. It reminded him of his brother Lemm, who was never in any sort of armed forces, and didn't get any sort of discipline out of it. His room was always a horrid mess and their mother always got on Timeo's case to make his brother clean it up, because her admonishments could not produce effects. There were dirty clothes everywhere, the trash had overflown with rubbish of various sorts... was that a rat? An actual rat on a spaceship? Timeo found more offenses against cleanliness – the sheets on the bed that had probably been made last year, were obviously never changed. A pile of reading and watching material was strewn about the room, in a significant part adult entertainment the likes of which were routinely confiscated from the barracks whenever an inspection rolled by. The only thing lacking was somebody having shat on the floor. Timeo's rifling through the room certainly improved on the amount of order he had found. Sickened, he left for the final stateroom, wishing he didn't need to have his helmet off for olfactory inspection.
Gro was interrogating two of the crewmen just outside.
"Don't bother talking to him, he's mute. And dumb," said an older man, scruffy-looking, with obvious cybernetic modifications on the side of his face. It creeped Timeo out – the man must have had half his skull replaced with augments. He was standing next to a bent and dessicated person, clearly ancient, dressed in a brown sack-like robe, supporting himself on a medical cane.
"Isn't that deaf-and-dumb, not mute and dumb?" Gro inquired.
"Uh, yeah. I meant to say that. Deaf-and-dumb, but kind-hearted!" he patted the gramps on the back, nearly toppling him over.
Timeo went into the fourth and final stateroom. This one was more used than the two clean ones, and liberally strewn with books – philosophy, religion, psychology, politics, the works. There was a large suitcase with some clothes, which Timeo searched. He flipped through the books to see if they didn't have any hidden guns in them, not bothering to read past their titles. He had to admit that he preferred the disorderly bastard's taste in literature.
Overall, he was disappointed. Nothing he found was even remotely illegal. Slightly sullen, he made his way to the bridge.
The Sarge was interrogating the woman, who appeared to be the Captain of this boat, while Freen was checking out the bridge for hidden compartments.
"So you're saying that you're carrying nothing, and going to the Commonwealth to pick up whatever you can there, for trade elsewhere. This about the story you want to tell me?"
"Um. Yes, sir. That's it. Sir." How that woman came to be the commander of this vessel escaped Timeo's imagination – he just couldn't believe it, just from under a minute of looking at this nervous, stammering, asocial wreck of a human being.
"A likely story... Timeo, what's the word?"
"Clean, sir! Uh, I mean, so to speak. There's no contraband in the staterooms, sir."
"Go help Gro, then. Now, you, missy, need to explain to me just how you are trying to turn a profit on..."
Timeo saluted and marched over to engineering. "Gro! Hey, Gro, I'm to help you out."
Silence met him.
"Gro? The hell are you hiding? This is no time for games. I'll report you if this is another one of your practical jokes, damn you."
Timeo looked left. He looked right. Nobody. There was just the power plant, the M-Drive installation, a computer terminal.
"Guess he must be checking the cargo bay..." Private Timeo said to himself, whereupon something heavy landed on his shoulders.
He reacted instinctively, grabbing whatever it was on his back, trying to flip it forward, but even as he did, something white and smelly covered his mouth and eyes.
Timeo inhaled and was lost to the world.
ooo
The SDB Captain was annoyed at this routine inspection. In his books, anyone who submitted to a search certainly wasn't worth searching, but you couldn't just call off the whole thing, because people would learn to submit and wait for the trouble to go away. So they had to actually go down and rifle through some spacers' belongings and open up sealed crates. He and his pilot waited for the customs marines to finish up their look-through. The valve behind them opened.
"Done already, Sarge? What took you so long?" he asked without turning around.
The Sergeant didn't answer. Well, that was mighty uncharacteristic of him, he frowned at the display, and turned around to glare at the marine for being surly. The Sergeant had his helmet on – probably forgot to turn on the sound amplification.
"Sarge!" the Captain said loudly. "Turn on your sound, dammit!"
Wait a moment – this wasn't the Sarge, it was someone else in his vacc suit! His hand went to his sidearm, but the stranger's hand was faster – and pierced the Captain's larynx, as a hot knife pierces soft butter. The Captain's world suddenly narrowed to a point, as he struggled with the blade embedded in his neck, having gone through his helmet. All he could see was the hilt sticking out in front.
The pilot screamed something the Captain couldn't quite make out, then screamed in pain. Through the haze of agony and rapidly dwindling bloody supply to the brain, he realized that before he died, he needed to do something. Something important.
Steeling his will, he flipped himself over and grabbed the side of the pilot's chair. His vision was nearly gone – but there it was, the object of his singular desire. The emergency signal broadcast button. The Captain reached for it, grabbed the cover and tore it off. With the last ounce of strength, he raised his hand to press down...
...and was yanked back.
"Naughty, naughty!" said a man's voice.
The Captain gave in to despair and lost consciousness.
ooo
"Well, this is a fine mess," Kaarin said, wiping the sweat off his brow.
"Was this truly necessary?" asked Yosef, kneeling down at the body of the pilot. Kaarin had shot him in the chest just a moment ago and the hole still smouldered. "Deo Patre nostro, nostrae potentiam ad generationem, team providentiam flectit providimus..." he intoned in a language so long dead that it had been that way before the Solomani reached for the stars.
"Us or them... Father," the Captain begrudgingly accepted the diplomat's other function.
"This one is still alive," said Arthur, indicating the SDB's Captain, whom he had stuck with his monoknife. "But he won't be for much longer."
"Then get him to a cryoberth – they probably have a few in the back. This one too. They are dead less than a minute. Under four minutes, they can probably be saved."
Yosef did not need to be told twice. Enlisting Arthur's help, they transported first the unconscious and bleeding-out Captain, then the dead helmsman.
"Engi!" Kaarin called. Sai Marte appeared shortly, busy removing the excess padding from her vacc suit. "Find me this boat's comm logs, and give your best attempt at making me a soundboard of their common chatter. I need to convey a routine inspection success to traffic control, or customs, or whoever. You have half an hour, before they start getting suspicious, I figure. Get to it."
"Yes, sir!" the woman moved past Kaarin and began operating the SDB's Captain's console.
Kaarin himself went over to check up on the men. They were just closing the second low-berth, having deposited the two corpses or near-corpses.
"Is it true that the Imperium has the power to bring people back from the dead, Captain?" asked Yosef.
"Sort of," shrugged Kaarin. "I wouldn't want to go through the experience. But yeah, suppose you've got your brain intact, and you haven't been dead for too long while out of the freezer, and you happen to be somewhere with the correct technological level and no prohibition on reanimation, and you've got two years' salary saved up... it might work. It's far from perfect. You hear horror stories about people waking up completely different than they were before they had their encounter with the reaper, or being obviously damaged in the mind, or becoming vegetables even though the body is returned to life."
"Man attempting to play God seldom works out well," Yosef nodded. "What's the plan?"
"Bullshit our way in, essentially. I have Sai on the computer, making me a soundboard to use against the customs control."
"Not much of a plan."
"It's what we've got. Help me get the unconscious ones to the berths too. Can't have them waking up on us. Then we can get started on the bullshit part."
The two nodded assent and followed him to continue their grim labours.
ooo
"Customs control, this is 'Chalice'. No contraband. We're returning to our patrol," said the voice of the frozen Captain.
"Wonderful. You deserve a raise, Engi."
"If you say so, sir."
"SDB 'Chalice, this is customs control, did you find out why the 'Luxantus' wasn't showing up on our sensors?" asked the other side of communications seconds later.
"Damn. They weren't supposed to ask that! Arthur, what do I choose?" Kaarin asked advice of the most deceitful of his crew.
"This one," the agent pointed at a button. Kaarin pressed it, before the pause got too long.
"Damn sunspots," said the soundboard.
"What the hell? Sunspots? You've got be kidding me. I can't really make them out at this range with you so close. Can you see them on your sensors?"
"Affirmative, control. No suspicious activity."
"Uh... Ugh. That's it, I'm advancing the scheduled check-up of those systems, because sun spots shouldn't affect them the way they did here. Customs control, out."
One moment, there was tense silence, then everyone cheered in their own way – Kaarin with an enthusiastic "Hell yeah!", Arthur with a wry smile, Yosef with a religious gesture and a prayer and Sai with incomprehension of what her fellow primates were doing.
"Engi, get this ship set with an autopilot set to resume whatever they were doing before they got called in to deal with us," Kaarin said, not wasting time. "We're going to the Western Commonwealth, just like we planned. They'll notice the deception eventually, but we want that to be as late as possible. Hell, if we can be that lucky, deal with everything here, leave, and only then have them wise up to the ruse."
"That would be very, very lucky for us," opined Yosef. Sai got to work on the computer, programming a delayed flight path for the SDB.
"That would be about time then – get some at long last," said Kaarin. "Our karma banks should be full to overflowing."
ooo
"Are you certain, Lieutenant?" said the holographic projection of High Admiral Imma Shurt. She was her usual self – middle-aged, but expertly made-up that one might mistake her for a woman half her years, and fit into a uniform that belied the idea of a uniform, in being carefully tailored for maximum visual effect while technically fitting into the solution space that the specifications required. The hologram wasn't very advanced, but neither Griddle nor the Admiral had access to anything better.
"Completely sure, ma'am," he said. "The other party in the comm logs I sent is not Captain Edding."
The High Admiral looked skeptical. "What makes you so sure?" The lack of trust, the suspicion that she showed to him and others really grated after a while. They were all in the same service to the crown, and without fail loyal subjects of the Emperor. But she always treated her fellow officers as if they were possible traitors.
"Admiral, I know the man. We've known each other for five years, since before I began my service in the space force. From that perspective, the conversation 'we' had just minutes ago is so anomalous as to be completely unbelievable."
"Why?"
Griddle proceeded to explain: "Captain Edding is a precise, dutiful man. I have sent him my full appraisal of the suspiciousness of the 'Luxantus', and stressed that he check especially how is it that we could not see the offending vessel on our sensors. I thought they were a smuggler, but this method of evading attention is new to me. The putative Edding who contacted me after their inspection was done mentioned nothing about the primary aspect of the mission, instead declaring that they've found no contraband. When I pressed him on that, he simply stated that the reason for this oddity were sunspots."
"Is there any sunspot activity?"
"No, ma'am. There hasn't been for two years now. That's what I found odd. He sometimes used the 'sunspots' explanation as a joke when I asked him a difficult question, but he'd only once, to my recollection, used that reply in seriousness. And his reply to my incredulity was just brushing me off that he could see the vessel on their sensors and that there was nothing suspicious about the situation. I realized then that I wasn't talking to my friend, but to a recording."
"So you think, what, exactly, happened out there?"
"I think Captain Edding is dead, and so is his crew. I'm not sure how the 'Luxantus' managed that, but I don't see any alternative explanations as to how this situation might have otherwise arisen. I've checked the timing – the inspection took a little too much time, based on previous ones, and there are weird, unnatural pauses in the communication after it, despite lack of a substantial lightspeed delay between us. I am requesting orders on what to do with this situation, Admiral, ma'am."
The High Admiral pursed her lips, looking away from him. This was another feature of their penultimate authority in space – her inability to make snap judgments. She thought deeply about just about every decision. Though the thought was semi-treasonous, Griddle considered just about anyone else to be better for the job than this woman. He would have made a better High Admiral than she was ever likely to.
"I'm not sure I agree with your assessment, Lieutenant," she finally spoke. "I'm authorizing you to deal with the situation as you see fit. High Admiral out."
Griddle very carefully hung up the call, making extremely sure it was off before applying both palms to his ears, in a Mycian gesture of frustration. Well, the High Admiral did have one particular feature that was arguably a good one – she could, and did, delegate.
Steeling himself, Lieutenant Griddle of the Mycian Space Force turned his comm on encrypted broadcast to all units. He was going to prove that he was due a promotion – perhaps not to the very top, where only the high nobility and their spouses had access, but somewhere higher and more important than customs.
"Attention, this is Lieutenant Griddle of Customs Control. Per delegation from the High Admiral, all units converge on the 'Luxantus', as located by its transponder signal. Repeat – attention..."
ooo
"I'm picking up a lot of comm chatter just now," Arthur said from the computer room. "It looks like a broadcast."
"What doe it say?"
"It's encrypted. Early type, I think, but it'll take at least a few hours to crack even that."
"What's your guess, then? What's happening with the boat we released?"
"It's heading along the pre-programmed course as planned. And, ah, here we go."
"I'm not going to like what you've just discovered, am I?" Kaarin grimaced to his console.
"Nope! Every SDB we detected going in, aside from ours, is now on an intercept vector with us."
"Crap! So much for that luck. Can we make it to Commonwealth space before they reach us?"
"Highly unlikely, Captain. They're pulling six gees, most of them. Can't outrun them."
Kaarin flipped the intercom to broadcast. "Listen up, we've been made, or it sure looks like it. We're inside the jump limit, and probably won't make it in time to get across the space borders. We're going to have to pull out. No chances of winning against so many. Buckle up. We're heading back to Tyr."
"You didn't tell them that reversing course is only marginally safer," Arthur said.
"They don't need to know that. Sai probably realizes, and Yosef is non-technical."
"Sure."
Kaarin ignored Arthur and pressed the intercom again. "Ready for five-gee turn in three, two, one!"
The ship did a violent about-face, sustaining extremely uncomfortable gravity for but a few moments, but they were enough – oriented towards the outside of the hundred-diameter limit, they now needed only to fight their way through their own accumulated momentum.
ooo
Upon the raised seat on the luxuriously large bridge sat a man of obvious Solomani descent, subtly different from the mixed breeds of Vilani and Solomani that followed in the wake of the Solomani expansion into the Ziru Sirka. For all his advanced age visible by his gray hair, he was handsome, in a hawkish kind of way. Confidence and smugness radiated from him, command was obviously as natural as walking to him. His many cybernetic augmentations, however, very far from obvious, only routinely detectable with advanced scanning technology.
"Admiral, we've crossed the one-week mark," said the navigator. "We should be coming out of jumpspace any minute now."
"Good," replied the self-styled Lord Admiral Peter the First. "How is crew readiness?"
"The second shift is awake and at their stations, sir. We will wake the first if there is need for this, given the situation in the system upon arrival."
"Excellent. I don't foresee trouble. According to the dispatches, the Mycian government is ready to ally themselves with me, in return for seizing control over their quaint little planet."
"Are we actually going to go through with that? Keep our word?" asked the comms officer. She had other duties also, in part this – questioning his decisions, lest his bridge become an echo chamber.
"I always keep my word, Isis," said the Lord Admiral. "You should all know this by now. My word is not given lightly, and is my bond. So long as they fulfill their end of the bargain, I see no reason – absolutely no reason – to betray them." He didn't explain to them the basis of his reasoning, which was grounded in the study of old Solomani pre-stellar warlords, especially the Borjigin dynasty of the largest continent – there was no need to. They knew their jobs, he knew himself. That was all that was needed.
The viewscreens on the walls and ceiling of the bridge turned black, from their bright blue.
"Jump exit!" announced the navigator. "Sensor analysis of stellar class confirms this is Caldos. We've arrived, sir."
The Lord Admiral grinned. "We are in business."