XANDER BRINDLE
The Verne flew a brief delivery run to cloudy Dremen, fulfilling a Kett Shipping contract. A world known primarily for fog and fungus wasn’t high on any list of tourist spots in the Spiral Arm, but Xander liked being able to check off another planet in his “places visited” logbook.
Still, it just didn’t seem right to be flying anywhere without their compy. As he and Terry approached the cloud-wreathed world, Xander glanced at his partner in the copilot seat. “You got the controls under control?”
Terry gave him a wan smile. “I’m a fully qualified professional—and next trip we’ll have OK back good as new.”
“I wish they’d hurry up with the repairs,” Xander muttered.
“There was a lot of damage, and we want it done right.”
“I couldn’t agree more, but I feel at a loss without him here,” Xander said. One of the compy-repair techs on Earth had suggested that they simply purchase a newer model, which would be less expensive; Terry had stopped Xander from punching the oblivious tech in the face.
During the busywork flight to Dremen, he couldn’t stop thinking about how he’d grown up with OK, how his parents had taught him to fly spaceships with the compy at his side. He had been traveling with Terry for only the past two years, but he had been flying with OK for most of his life.
As the Verne entered Dremen orbital space, Terry used the comm to request an assigned landing area at the small, sleepy Dremen spaceport. “Kett Shipping vessel Verne bearing an assortment of notions, special-order foodstuffs, and a load of high-end medical supplies. On our way down.”
The delivery of boutique med supplies was the main reason for the Dremen run. Kett Shipping made occasional deliveries here, as needed, and while he and Terry waited for OK to be repaired, neither of them wanted to just loiter around. A medical contractor named Aldo Cerf had paid extravagantly to have Kett Shipping deliver the special-order medical supplies, no questions asked, and that crate alone made the entire flight profitable; the rest of the cargo was just gravy.
The Dremen route was normally flown by a curmudgeonly old pilot named Dando Yoder, but Xander and Terry volunteered for this one so Yoder could fill a conflicting but equally uninteresting run to Ikbir, another out-of-the-way colony planet.
As soon as they received clearance, Xander descended into the atmosphere. It was a bumpy ride, but nothing like when they had piloted through the nebula barrier to visit Fireheart Station. The bright grid lights below punched through the diffuse fog, placing a halo over the Dremen spaceport without making it look heavenly.
“Not much traffic,” Xander said. “Looks like we have our choice of landing areas.”
A stern voice on the comm admonished them. “Set your ship down in the designated space only. You’ll be met by local officials. Please transmit your full manifest for inspection.”
Terry complied while Xander muttered, “Did the documents mention that this is a planet of hardasses?”
“You’re the person who wanted to check this place off on the list.”
“I think one visit will be enough,” Xander said as he brought the Verne down in the correct landing area.
Terry activated his antigrav belt and leaned on Xander’s shoulder, instead of the usual support of OK. The two men emerged onto the ramp and blinked in the chill fog at a group of twenty uniformed men and women, all of whom looked angry.
A man at the front stepped forward, his face knotted in barely controlled fury. “Are you the only two crewmembers?”
Terry spoke up, sensing the tension. “Yes, sir, just the two of us from Kett Shipping. I’m Terry Handon, and this is Xander Brindle. We’ve brought this delivery—”
The officious man cut them off. “I’m Colony Leader Chaklen. We are impounding your ship and taking you into custody for bearing hazardous cargo.”
“What the hell?” Xander said, as the uniformed men and women intercepted them on the ramp. Another group moved aboard the ship without asking permission.
Both of them were dismayed and confused. Terry said, “They’re going to ransack the Verne!”
Colony Leader Chaklen gestured, and the escort team marched the two men away from the ship, with Terry holding on to Xander for balance.
“What’s all this about?” Xander said. “This is our first run to Dremen, and we brought only the requested supplies. The order is on file.”
“The requested supplies.” Chaklen shot him a look of pure venom. “This is Kett Shipping’s third delivery of medical products from Aldo Cerf. We weren’t able to intercept the first two shipments, and somebody has to pay for all the misery and death they’ve caused.” His voice broke. “But that’ll never make it right.”
Terry was alarmed. “But … we have all the proper documentation.”
“There’s always proper documentation,” Chaklen sneered. “That doesn’t do any good. Do you even know what’s in your cargo hold? What it does to the poor victims?”
Terry remained silent, and Xander shook his head. “No idea. We don’t read the messages or open the containers. That’s not allowed—”
Chaklen pressed. “Do you know where it comes from? Do you know who this Aldo Cerf is?”
Again, Xander could offer only a weak answer. “We’re a shipping company. We just carry cargo.”
“Really?” Chaklen said, leading them to a group of buildings on the edge of the spaceport. “So you could be carrying nuclear warheads or biological weapons, and that wouldn’t bother you?”
“I assure you, that’s not the case, sir,” Terry said.
“How do you know if you don’t ask questions?”
Xander didn’t have a snappy answer, or any answer at all.
The two of them were held in a cooling-off room for more than an hour, no windows, no communication. The walls were painted a sickly shade of pale green that seemed to induce anxiety.
“We’re just the delivery service! Next thing you know they’re going to punish us for slander in a letter we’re carrying. If we had OK, he could quote all the regulations, chapter and verse,” Xander said.
“We’ll just have to wing it.” Terry shook his head. “Maybe there’s some local loophole.”
Leader Chaklen finally opened the door and stood there regarding them in silence. His eyes were red. Finally, he said, “Your manifest checked out. We’ve isolated the medical supplies, then searched your other containers to verify that they matched what was on the lists, but I doubt anybody will touch the rest of your cargo.”
Terry said, “Mr. Chaklen, we honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. I couldn’t tell you how much previous business Kett Shipping has done with Aldo Cerf. It’s not our business to know all the details about our trading partners.”
Xander added, “We just deliver whatever we’re commissioned to carry.”
Chaklen turned about. “Follow me.”
They went in a grim and silent procession under gloomy skies to a medical center not far from the spaceport. Leader Chaklen was focused on his own problem, for which he apparently blamed Kett Shipping, with Xander and Terry as convenient scapegoats. Chaklen stopped outside one of the patient rooms. He didn’t look at the two young men but instead steeled himself before entering.
“Five people already died,” Chaklen said. “My wife survived … unfortunately.” He glanced over his shoulder with a razor-edged grimace. “Don’t even think of calling her one of the lucky ones.”
On the hospital bed lay a mass of suppurating flesh shaped like a human body—an oozing red mannequin of muscle tissue from which all the skin had been flayed. The staring eyes had no lids, but were bathed with mists of saline solution.
“She wanted to look beautiful,” Chaklen said. “Aldo Cerf sold a boutique skin-rejuvenation treatment, claiming it would remove wrinkles, erase all signs of aging. She paid a fortune for it, secretly. She didn’t want me to notice the crow’s-feet around her eyes, but I never noticed them anyway. And now look…” His voice hitched. “Through heroic efforts the doctors kept her alive when the other victims died.” He spun to glare at them. “And you’re delivering more of the stuff that did this?”
“We didn’t know,” Terry whispered. “The shipment said ‘medical supplies.’”
“Untested, unregulated—and deadly.” Chaklen was trembling with anger. “And that’s not all. Two other Dremen colonists suffering from terminal diseases purchased expensive and completely ineffective miracle cures, also from the same man. Those were delivered by an independent trader.”
“That’s awful,” Xander said, “but why don’t you file charges against Aldo Cerf? The Confederation will crack down—”
“No one can find him, and he claims to operate outside of Confederation jurisdiction. Oh, there was fine print every time, no guarantees, no acceptance of responsibility. Then who’s responsible?” He stared at Xander and Terry. “Who?”
“Sir, I assure you, we had no idea. We can bring this to the attention of Rlinda Kett herself. She’ll cut off all further dealings with this man.”
Chaklen seemed to deflate as he stared at the figure in the bed. He left the room after touching his lips, giving a silent goodbye kiss to the unrecognizable woman. Defeated, he spoke in a small voice. “You needed to know what damage that cargo caused. I just needed you to know.”
* * *
Without further consultation or argument, Xander and Terry were returned to the spaceport. The crates of “medical supplies” had been set in an isolated section of the paved landing area. Their other cargo crates, the foodstuffs and specialty notions, were all stacked by the loading ramp.
Chaklen said, “You’d best load that back aboard—there’s no market for it here. And the medical supplies … we won’t let those harm any other people.”
A security team backed away from the piled medical crates. Before Xander could ask what they intended to do with the shipment, a uniformed woman triggered a detonator, and a flash of directed-thermal explosives turned the crates into an incandescent bonfire. Within seconds, the deadly shipment collapsed into glowing ash.
“They’re letting us go?” Terry asked quietly.
“Don’t ask.” He hurried his partner aboard to prep for departure. Xander reloaded the other crates himself, since none of the people on Dremen seemed inclined to help. They both wanted to get away as quickly as possible, before Colony Leader Chaklen changed his mind.