Last Ship Off Polaris-G: A Central Galactic Concordance Novella Read online

  Lizet’s jaw dropped. “We got those right after the court judgment came down. They were planning this for a whole year?”

  Anitra nodded. “Two years. The committee was started by forecasters who predicted a lot of this. Not the details, like the blight or the mysteriously malfing CGC comms satellites when the court case was registered, but that the settlement company would cheat and escalate, and the Pol-G government would tell them to suck flux, and the military would come, and the planet would probably be lost.” She rolled her eyes. “Not that they came out and said all that, though, because it would have influenced the chess pieces—that’s us mere mortals—and warped their precious forecasts.”

  Gavril’s finger tapped a beat on his chin. “We’ve got the right substrate for the parts printers. We could string habitat systems to any of the small holds to make group living quarters, but we wouldn’t have enough escape pods if things go wrong.” He made the display zoom in on the ship’s center. “We’d need a good environment engineer and a couple of extra experienced crew to run everything. The shipcomp’s AI can’t handle retro kludges.”

  Lizet raised her hand. “Uhm, sirs? Captains?”

  Anitra blinked, then laughed. “She’s definitely talking to you, Trader Captain Danilovich. I’m just, er, Supply Master and Logistics.”

  Gavril smiled briefly. “Yes, Navigator and Pilot-in-Training Asylkan?”

  “My maternal great grandparents are staying behind because they think the government won’t allow pets, even if they’re valuable.” She pushed her asymmetrical bangs behind one ear, revealing her elfin face. “Before the family settled on Pol-G, Great-Grandfather Maruk was a master environment engineer, and Great-Grandfather Sinjin designed flux engines. I think they’d come with us if you let them bring their cats and dogs.”

  Anitra didn’t need her empath talent to see Lizet’s worry and sadness. “How many cats and dogs?”

  Lizet dropped her gaze. “Eighteen, I think. Maybe twenty-six, if Chaos Seven had her kittens.”

  Anitra looked to Gavril, who put up his hands and shook his head. “Logistics is your star lane.”

  Anitra made a snap decision. “Ask them. Be honest about the risks, especially the escape pod problem. If they still want to come, they can bring their pets.” She pointed toward the percomp on Lizet’s arm. “If you trust them to keep a secret, ping them now. Otherwise, wait for the evac order.”

  Lizet’s broad smile, the first Anitra had seen from her, lit up her face with the promise of future beauty. “They live in the country. They don’t have anyone to tell.” She stepped away from the breakfast bar to send the message.

  Anitra shuddered as a sudden wave of exhaustion coursed through her. She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, Gavril was standing only centimeters in front of her, his face full of concern.

  “I’ll trade you,” he said. “You sleep for three hours. Lizet and I will call people we trust to be crew or cargo drivers. We’ll run errands for you in town. I’ll hit a chems shop for safe ramper drugs, because we’ll probably need them.”

  “It’s a lovely idea, but I’d sleep through any alarms, and I can’t afford the lost time.” Acid curdled her stomach. “I’ll eat more protein, and sleep later.”

  Gavril cradled her face with his warm hands. “You’re no good to us if you’re impaired.” He brushed a thumb along her cheekbone. “I have your door codes. I promise I’ll come back here and wake you myself by zero nine hundred.”

  He was right about exhaustion impairing her judgment. She cupped one of his hands with hers. “Okay.” She dropped her mental shields and sent him an empathic message of gratitude blended with respect. He sent her worry and determination, spiced with protective satisfaction.

  “Sleep.” He kissed her forehead, then let her go. “I’ll put the food away.”

  She’d made no close friends since landing on Pol-G, so she’d forgotten the bone-deep comfort of having someone looking out for her.

  She stumbled off to bed to do as she was told. Life would be coming at her with all blasters blazing soon enough.

  6

  * Frontier Planet “Polaris-Gamma” * GDAT 3233.056 *

  The countdown in the Diamantov’s navigation pod chimed four bell-like tones because Gavril liked the sound better than a nagging synthvoice telling him the time.

  Lizet’s voice came over the earwire. “Supply Master Helden’s ping says she’s inbound with cargo on a tread-mounted public transport.” Lizet was their acting comms officer until liftoff, when her navigator job would begin. “She sent sizes and estimated masses to your dataspace.”

  “She’s driving it?” Anitra’s many laudable talents did not include operating ground-based vehicles, especially those the size of a small city block. He feared for the few still-standing buildings along her route. From what he’d heard from the newstrends, yesterday’s riots had been vicious. He was very glad to be many kilometers from Aetheres.

  “I think she got the traffic control system to do it. She said her ETA is fifty-three minutes.”

  “Okay, notify the crew. And tell your elders to get the nursery habitat off Anitra’s bunk.”

  Lizet said she would and disconnected.

  He and Anitra would be sharing the captain’s quarters, such as they were. Since she’d waited until the last possible minute to leave for the ship, her fold-down padded bed had been given over in the interim to Chaos Seven and her new kittens. Gavril stayed in the incalloy-clad nav pod because it helped contain his troublesome, good-for-nothing talent that had nearly gotten him iced by Anitra.

  In the two days since the morning meeting in her apartment, he had worked hard to redeem himself by making the Diamantov as ready and resilient as he could. He’d also given some thought to how they could get maximum cash and trade value for the eclectic cargo she’d amassed.

  She’d made clever use of the repair dock’s incorrect “transportation warehouse” label to help clear abandoned vehicles out of the public transport routes. In the chaos of the evacuation, no one noticed the abandoned vehicles made an extra stop or two at Anitra’s hidey-holes, or that they were operated by a few of Gavril’s acquaintances and more of the Asylkan family’s friends, all of whom just happened to have commercial ship crew experience and wanted a guaranteed liftoff berth enough to take a chance on the freighter.

  Diamantov’s crew was as eclectic as her cargo, and acted more like freelance pirate clan than regulation anything, but Gavril thought they’d be able to launch at the end of the coordinated liftoff window. Lizet’s great-grandfathers had done amazing work with the environmental systems. They’d even built and populated a nascent aquaponics system to supplement the more conventional atmosphere exchangers, and were teaching the shipcomp’s AI what to monitor.

  Only the chaos-bedeviled comms system stubbornly refused all efforts to make it behave. As a last resort, Gavril had fitted the repair dock’s army of cleaning and maintenance bots with spools of comms fiber and ran them throughout the ship. The result was a primitive, local comms net that only worked with shipcomp earwires. It was one step up from cups and string, but better than nothing.

  He brought up the manifest of the final plunder… er, supplies coming in with Anitra. After he cataloged them, he tapped his ship earwire to ping Cargo Handler Elongo, who was also the crew’s medic by virtue of her fire-response-team training. “Incoming cargo has a used autodoc and related crates of chems. Find Engineer Vasak and figure out where we can hook it up. The closer to crew quarters, the better.”

  His percomp pinged him with a reminder to eat. He determinedly ignored the pressure of a thousand more important things as he pulled out one of the mealpacks he’d stowed in the nav pod. Good chems and short naps helped him stay alert, but they only worked if he ate like a biometal-enhanced, elite-forces Jumper on shore leave. He triggered the heater and shoveled the protein substitute and reconstituted vegetable lumps into his mouth as fast as he could chew and swallow. He promised himself
a real meal once the ship went transit.

  All across the planet, ships had been launching for the last four hours, including his trader ship, piloted by Lizet’s prodigy cousin and stuffed to the rafters with thirty-eight people. And because it was his personal ship, he allowed the passengers to take their pets, in defiance of the specific prohibition in the government’s evacuation order. According to the last ping, they’d cleared the atmosphere fifteen minutes ago.

  They and the hundreds of other ships skulked in the shadow of Pol-G or one of its three misshapen moons, waiting to make the mass move toward the system’s interstellar transit jump point. All they’d need were the intended destination codes—still the biggest secret on or off the planet—and the military blockade to fold in the face of so many unarmed ships full of innocent civilians fleeing an ecological disaster.

  An hour later found him on the loadmaster platform of the subterranean dock, supervising the bots and crew at the Diamantov’s biggest loading bay below. It was faster to use humans to offload Anitra’s battered bus for anything they could carry to the automated grav carts, and leave the heavy lifting to the mismatched load bots. Anitra had apparently been saving the best for last, because in addition to the autodoc, her cargo had a huge variety of printing substrates, enough cases of high-quality mealpacks to take them to the Andromeda Galaxy and back, and densely packed containers of refined rare-earth minerals that would net a small fortune in the right auction.

  Anitra waved at him as she headed into the monster airlock—so called because someone had painted the interior side to look like the gaping maw of a fantasy creature—to stow her one crate of personal belongings in their quarters. She’d looked tired, but in good spirits, and as usual, even though fully shielded, she radiated confidence. She’d smiled when she’d greeted him and teased him about his pirate-clan look, so maybe she was on her way to forgiving him. The hope of that lessened the weight of worry he’d been carrying.

  The chimes of the countdown timer sounded in his earwire and everyone else’s, reminding them they only had thirty more minutes to make the liftoff window for their side of the planet. The huge Diamantov needed to be in the midst of the herd, or it would stand out as an easy mark for frustrated military enforcers looking to make an example.

  Anitra returned unexpectedly soon, still carrying her crate. He was about to tease her about needing a guide, until he saw the stricken look on her face. He jumped off the platform and crossed to her quickly. “What’s wrong?”

  She set her crate down and tapped the government percomp on her arm, then pointed to her earwire. “Everyone needs to hear this.”

  Gavril spoke into his ship earwire. “Lizet, locate Anitra’s government band and sync it to the ship’s comms.”

  “Okay.” A long moment passed. “Done.”

  Anitra gestured in the percomp’s interface, then spoke out loud into her earwire. “You’re synced to the crew. Tell them what you told me.”

  “This is Planetary Law Enforcement Chief Kareem Ferrsi. I know you have a freighter full of valuable cargo that you intend to sell to benefit the refugees. We just discovered nearly six thousand people in Lo Kuro—that’s a new city on the southern continent—who were sent to a natural cave system above the city, instead of to the evacuation ships. The city’s managers and council told them a big ship would be coming for them, then looted everything and lifted off in the designated evacuation ships. They went offline, presumably to hide in the crowd. We already blinded all the orbiting satellites and comms, so we don’t know where they went.”

  Gavril liked to think of himself as a cynic, but the widespread conspiracy needed to pull off that callous twist took his breath away.

  “We sent our only troop transport for fifteen hundred of them. If your ship can’t take the rest, we’ll have to send already launched ships back for as many as we can. I can send my enforcers to offload your cargo to our PLE evac ships, but it has to be now.”

  The crew members he could see looked as stunned as he probably did.

  Anitra cleared her throat. “Give us fifteen minutes to confer and we’ll get back to you.”

  “Copy that.” Ferrsi signed off.

  Gavril pinged the crew. “All hands to the monster dock now.” The crew on the floor started heading into the ship.

  He touched Anitra’s arm to stop her. “This is your project. What do you want to do?”

  “Ah, hell, I don’t know.” She pushed escaped locks of hair out of her eyes. “I just dreamed up this crazy scheme. You and the others made it happen.”

  She looked so stressed that he wanted to hug her, but there wasn’t time. “Let’s see what the crew says.”

  Sixteen minutes later, Lizet connected Anitra’s call to Ferrsi and broadcast it to the crew.

  “We can take all forty-five hundred, but they’ll be sleeping on supply racks. It better be a short trip to wherever we’re going, because it’ll be a miserable, crowded, stinky ride. And dangerous. The ship and internal systems are untested in vacuum or transit space, and we don’t have escape pods or exosuits for anyone. Not enough freshers, either, and only one autodoc. One of our crew is pregnant with twins, and she and her cohab don’t like their chances on the Diamantov, so they’ll need a ride back with you and two launch berths elsewhere. That leaves us with a skeleton crew of fourteen. We’re slow as a slug in atmosphere, so we’ll have to go suborbital to get to the southern continent, which makes us visible. We’ll be late, too. Probably the last ship off the planet.”

  “We’ll tell the Lo Kuro people about their options and the risks, and get them organized. Some might choose to stay and take their chances, but probably not enough to make a difference. Ping me your location, and I’ll send every PLE flitter and ground vehicle I can spare for the cargo. Your hard work won’t go to waste.”

  “Will do.”

  “Thank you all,” said Ferrsi with sincerity. “And especially to you, Manager Helden. I’m glad we took Dammerk’s word over your boss’s that you belonged on the committee.” Ferrsi disconnected.

  As Anitra pulled out and unfolded her tablet, Gavril raised his voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “Sinjin, Maruk, Elongo, and Nzube, tag anything we need to keep for the ship. I’ll move the bus out of the way and open the dock’s big bay walls so the flitters can land. Lizet, get to the nav pod and monitor comms and airlocks. Take over the repair dock’s flying cameras and sync them to the shipcomp. Anitra will be on the loadmaster platform, creating new manifests for what’s going and what’s staying. I’ll direct the load bots. I’ll have to shuffle cargo so we don’t lift off like a drunken elephant, so stay out of the way if you can.”

  The crew moved purposefully to their tasks. Gavril scooped up Anitra’s crate of belongings. “I’ll take this to your bunk so you can get started. What was that bit about your boss?”

  She rolled her eyes. “He’s a politician,” she said, as if that explained everything. It probably did. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m good.” He frowned. “Oh, you mean my talent. The crew is calm, so I’m okay.” He blew out noisy breath. “Ask me again when we stack forty-five hundred pissed-off people onto repurposed cargo shelves and they realize we only have six freshers and no showers.”

  “I’ll help. Don’t tough it out and wait until you’re overwhelmed or in blowback.” She put her hand on his shoulder and massaged gently. “We need you.”

  7

  * Frontier Planet “Polaris-Gamma” * GDAT 3233.048 *

  Anitra hated to see the last of her horde winging its way into the hazy sky on the armored PLE flitter, but if she trusted anyone with her collection, it was solemn, intense Ferrsi. He’d arrived in person on the last PLE flitter, likely as much to assure himself the Diamantov was what she’d promised as to assure her he’d be an honest broker. He’d miraculously scrounged nineteen exosuits for the crew, and brought multiple crates of fresh fruits and vegetables, pre-blight grains, and cultured meats. He also brought a new volunteer crew mem
ber, his own daughter.

  Salma Youssef was as tall and dark-skinned as her father, with a much more genial exterior than her gruff parent and ten years of law enforcement experience on Concordance planets. Her personal crate of belongings contained one change of clothing and every kind of hand weapon imaginable. Anitra sensed she was also a minder of some sort, but didn’t have time to pursue it.

  Anitra stood with Gavril on the platform where he operated the ship dock’s console. Déjà vu flashed, a memory from that day two months ago when he’d played the dock’s systems like a symphony conductor, wearing the same blue jacket, and turquoise braids hanging down his back. Now he was making sure the dock systems were fully detached, and wiping all records of the Deset Diamantov from the dock’s comps. The less of a data trail, the better, if the greedy, vindictive settlement company ever sent retrievers after what they perceived as their property.

  Anitra’s new ship earwire sounded Lizet’s tone. “Uh, Captain? Supply Master? There’s a flitter inbound, ETA two minutes. Government comms ID. The pilot said she’s got some official named Minister Holtis Dalgono and seven cousins who are assigned to our ship.”

  Anitra frowned as she tapped her earwire. “That’s my boss. What’s he… Oh, frelling hell!” She glanced down at the wide-open dock doors, then looked at Gavril. “Remember my last three finds that got jacked? I went to the supply depot yesterday to wrap things up before the evac order came down. Dalgono came by in person to tell me about a cache of mealpacks that I could take to the ship. He said, ‘Too bad about the theft of the parts printers.’ He’s on the committee, so I figured he heard it from Ferrsi, but I just realized I didn’t have time to tell anyone.” She couldn’t stop herself from pacing. “I kept the ship’s location a secret from everyone, even Ferrsi, so I bet there’s a broadcast tracer in the mealpacks. That smarmy little twist wants my farkin’ ship!”