The Leghk Sector
�Vern, we�re yellow-lining on two,� said Arella, her eyes catching the caution light on the basic display. Flight Lieutenant Arella Morse Newark was sitting in the chair at the center of the bridge. She and the flight crew were buttoned in tightly, but still jostling in the heavy turbulence. Arella gave Vern another nudge. �Too much drag on the starboard trim-line,� she said. Vern Rota looked down at his helm controls, taking half a second too long to do it.
�Right � I see it, okay,� he said, his voice shaky. The novice pilot made two adjustments and the warning light went dark. Arella shot a look to her primary pilot, a Veloxi insectoid named Grix. Grix caught the look and sent one back: He needs some work.
The Moor of Venice was laboring its way down from orbit, muscling through a storm feeding off the edge of a polar cold front. Vern was cutting a wide, choppy circle-to-port, bringing the caravel toward the surface of bleak world below. It wasn�t a choice place to land a starship � and the storm was a nightmare � but a deal was a deal. Besides, Arella reminded herself, all it took to put the bird on the ground was some skill, and Vern had plenty of skill � he just didn�t have much experience.
�Thanks for the assist,� Vern said, working doggedly at the rudder grip in the forward central part of the bridge. Arella said nothing, letting the new pilot do his work.
A long quarter-hour later, Moor eased into a bucking hover over a level patch of gravel. The ship stabilized and the landing gears deployed with a whine, settling into the barren, rocky soil of the fourth planet of Folia. The engine wells whirred to a halt and the computers rolled silently into their standard analysis-and-diagnostics package. The remaining sound was the shriek and howl of the driving wind and a disquieting creak as the hull adjusted to the pressure and relative warmth of the thin atmosphere.
Arella glanced again at the basic display. Hull intact. Engines functional. Life support nominal. Orbital buoy drone in orbit directly overhead.
�We�re set to meet them in twenty-nine hours,� said Arella, unbuckling her safety restraints and standing. �Bridge watch officers keep the shields warm. Ring me if the storm lifts.� The captain of the Interstel Superphotonic Starship The Moor of Venice, walked off the bridge.
Folia System
ISS The Moor of Venice
The starboard engine well was cool � seventeen degrees centigrade � and it had a functional, battleship-like feel. The slate gray, windowless bulkheads, antiseptic lighting and mechanical smells all contributed to the effect, as did the metal catwalk suspended above the long superphotonic engines.
The starboard well also served as a makeshift gymnasium. Dressed for a workout and soaked in sweat, Arella was running on a treadmill tucked away in a corner of the catwalk landing. A good run, she found, was the best way to tear apart a complex problem. On this particular run, she had enough problems to cover several kilometers.
For starters, The Moor of Venice was running with a minimal crew � at least for this kind of job. She had eight total, including two smallish engineering droids. And Vern was a problem. He was greener than the lettuce they showed in television commercials and for that, there was only one cure � time. Most of all, the job itself was dangerous. It wasn�t just dangerous like the rest of the work she was used to; the perils of deep space exploration were more like occupational hazards. This was a real roll of the dice. If they screwed this up, they probably wouldn�t walk away. But the payoff was huge � at least that was the plan.
The hatch opened behind Arella and she looked over her shoulder. Doctor Biss, a lithe, graceful Thrynn, had entered the well bay. �What�s new, Biss?� said Arella, keying the treadmill to wind down.
�The storm has intensified,� said Biss. The accentuated, hissing sound of her reptilian speech slipped like silk from between blade-sharp teeth. �We cannot deploy the local array.� Arella reached for her towel and wiped her face.
�No array, no forewarning,� said Arella. �I�m on a desert planet in the middle of a raging sandstorm and I can�t see more than ten meters from my ship � not with my eyes, not with my instruments.� She paused for a moment. �You don�t suppose they planned it this way.�
Biss said nothing, but her eyes narrowed in lusty suspicion.
Arella took the meaning: �Well, I suppose we�re going to have to give them what they want.�
Biss grinned, and flickered her tongue. "Did you ever imagine it could be otherwise?�
The shower water was hot, and Arella stood, running her head under the pressurized stream as the last of the shampoo ran off her body. She turned the water off and reached, again, for a towel. She stepped out of the shower and padded out into her main cabin.
Sleek black underwear and a worn gray tee-shirt later, Arella was standing in front of the small mirror next to her bunk, pulling her red-brown hair back into a bun. A few bobby pins after that, she scooped up the clicker from her bunk and keyed the stereo.
The digital display on the stereo showed the time, Arthenian prime meridian. Seventeen hours until the meeting.
On the bulkhead, opposite the titanium-shuttered windows, was an inset safe with two combination locks. Arella walked across the compact cabin and zeroed both locks. Then she spun the first lock clockwise, counterclockwise and back again, did the same for the second, and then pulled down on the handle, which clicked agreeably. She opened the door and pulled out a briefcase, which she set on a bench below the safe. Two more clicks and the briefcase opened, revealing a set of square, lusterless coins.
As the agreement went, The Moor�s crew would make the payment, a princely sum of four hundred thousand shyneum pennies in platinum florin. The coins, being thousands of years old, were out of circulation, impossible to trace and � uniquely stamped with a visage from Arla antiquity � demonstrably pure, all of which lent them premium value for the right sort of trader. The trader they were dealing with would � as the theory went � remand the goods in exchange for the florin. Arella closed the briefcase and locked it back in the safe.
She walked back to her bunk and lay down, clicker in hand. She keyed it to dim the lights and flipped through her music selection, settling on a run of blue ambia. Her mind drifted away on the narcotic, wandering sound and her last conscious thoughts were of the raging windstorm outside.
Like a haunted, regretful moaning.
�A lot of firepower,� said Vern. �We�re really pulling out the stops, here,� he said.
Arella, Grix, Vern, Biss, Ux, and the two droids � Nickel and Dime � were all in the cargo bay. So was Hal Jellico, an on-again off-again staff augment who had a solid history with the crew � and a talent for ground combat operations. The short crew was going through the pre-excursion checklist, trying to prevent any unfortunate oversights.
�Better heavy than sorry,� said Hal. He pulled four magazines from their pouches and laid them on the bench next to the rest of his equipment � reverb carbine, flashlight, batteries, breathing assist helmet, plate vest, positioning receiver, compass, survival rations, water, a thermal blanket and a host of other useful items.
�Why the megaphone?� said Vern. Arella smiled.
�Watch and learn, junior,� said Hal Jellico, operational artist. He picked up a clipboard. �Good enough. Let�s run down this checklist one more time. Spare batteries for the flashlights,� he said.
Biss and Arella said, �check.� Ux and Grix buzzed in the affirmative. Hal turned to Vern.
�One of mine is depleted,� said Vern. Nickel the droid buzzed off to get him a new one. Hal continued.
�Ammunition, reverberation bolt, mercury tumbler round: one hundred-twenty per.�
Everyone had been in place for several hours. The other side, as the agreement went, should have made its appearance hours earlier. Arella smacked the hatch to the break room, a kitchenette just abaft the bridge. The door slid open with some fuss, and she stepped in. The view out the arrow-slit window was of wind-driven sand that very nearly blocked the indifferent light from Folia, the G-class star that gave the system its name.
Arella poured herself a cup of hot, dark tea from the ring-stained pot and added three cubes of sugar. She stirred it, took a sip, then reached into the cramped refrigerator and grabbed two cans of sugar water. Closing the door with one foot, and kicking the hatch with the other, she walked out into the passage. A few more steps and she was on the bridge, where Grix was poring over the paltry readouts on his screen.
�Anything?� asked Arella. Grix buzzed a negative. She set the cans in front of him. He cracked one and slurped it down quickly, then opened the other for more languid consumption. After a minute, he flipped a switch on the translator box and spoke in Veloxi.
�Thanks,� came the translation. �Tasty.� He continued: �I have tried all the usual indicators, but I cannot deploy the array outside the hull. Not in these winds. The antennas will shear off instantly. Besides, the interference potential right now is large.� The implications for their planned meeting were obvious. �In these conditions, we will not get much advance warning of their arrival.� He sat and had a sip from the can of sweet water. The computer bleeped and Grix keyed the console in front of him. Arella perked up and looked at the screen.
�What�s this?� she asked. �The usual data dump from the planetary survey,� he said. �A few hours ago I set the computers to analyzing the standard readings we took from orbit.� Arella looked perplexed.
�Are we planning to mine here?�
�No. The more information, however, the better,� came the rote, colorless translation from the cheap translation matrix. The Veloxi vernacular � the Queen�s Veloxi, as it was known � was much more flamboyant in the original, and a high fidelity translation would�ve revealed gaudy flourishes of the dramatic and blunt force similes to dazzle the mind.
�Do you see anything?� he asked.
Arella looked. The terrain was much the same the world over. Dry, barren, rocky, rich in silicon and salts, and poor in almost everything else. Almost no water. No life. The air was fairly thin, mostly nitrogen, a host of trace gasses, and some, but not much oxygen. Nine percent. She shook her head. �The standard planetary blurb of a sandbox in space.�
Grix and Arella sat there, staring at the screen and sipping away. It was possible, neither wanted to admit aloud, that the other party wouldn�t show. Middle-of-nowhere swaps, like most illicit business, bred superstition and the smallest omen could send a trader running for cover. But these weren�t exactly traders, were they? They were well motivated.
Grix sat up.
�What?� said Arella.
The Veloxi called up another screen on his console. �I wonder what we will find if we compare those planetary averages to the local situation,� he said.
"Orbital-local? Won't the resolution be too poor?"
"Maybe not," said Grix.
Arella scrutinized the numbers for the local area � twenty kilometers square. She read, slowly setting her tea on the console as she went. �There�s no way that sampler-set of metal is naturally occurring. Not concentrated like that. Not on this dustball,� she said. The metallic mass was three hundred meters away on a northwesterly azimuth. �Titanium, aluminum, molybdenum? If that�s not a hull,� said Arella, her voice trailing off.
�They are here,� said Grix. Outside, the storm reached a crescendo. �They have been here all along,� he said.
Next: Chapter 2
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[Curio: Pay with Florin in Amsterdam...and in Nieuw Amsterdam]