XANDER BRINDLE
After the Voracious Curiosity flew away to track Elisa Enturi, Xander looked at Terry and rubbed his hands together. “Time for us to get down to business—you’ve got a preinheritance to collect.”
OK said, “I will assist in any manner possible.”
While Terry remained unsure, Xander elbowed him in the ribs. “You don’t even look happy about it.”
“I don’t know how to react. I’ve got you, we’ve got our ship, we have a satisfying life…”
“And now you’ll add a huge treasure to that. There’s nothing wrong with accepting the money. Maria wants you to have it.”
Terry was still uncertain. “She’s still alive, you know.”
“Then call it a gift—that’s even better. Donate it all to some humanitarian cause, if you like.” He couldn’t stop grinning. “But I’d prefer you kept a little bit, so we could pamper ourselves. Good food isn’t cheap.”
“I suppose it would go wasted, otherwise,” Terry admitted. “Let’s at least see what we’re dealing with.”
Maria Ulio had given them all the codes they needed to access her concrete stockpile—the tangible rainy-day wealth she kept sealed aboard one of the core hulks that comprised Ulio Station. The rest of Maria’s fortune was dispersed in various accounts throughout the Confederation, but all those access numbers were sealed in an encrypted file in the Ulio Central Offices. Transferring those would be their second priority.
Roamers rarely coveted vast wealth for its own sake—they were more interested in what they could do with it. The clans invested heavily, expanded their operations, attempted impossible schemes—and often failed, lost everything, then started all over again.
Xander wasn’t greedy, but he was so happy for his partner. What Terry really wanted was a medical procedure to restore the use of his legs; he never said as much aloud, but Xander would have been willing to pay every single credit of Maria Ulio’s fortune, plus every single microcredit in his own accounts, if that could happen. Terry had seen numerous specialists, and they claimed the nerve damage was irreversible. Trying not to get his hopes up, Terry did not press the issue. Still, Xander wondered whether a huge infusion of cash might change that opinion.…
Moving through the busy station, they bumped into several people Terry remembered from his days here: engineers heading off to a repair yard, and a crew of dismantlers who teased Terry, told him he should get a real job and come back to work with them. Terry seemed embarrassed. “I enjoyed working with you guys, but I’ll keep my new job.”
They laughed before moving along. “Oooh, the promotion’s gone to his head!”
With OK accompanying them and helping Terry, they worked their way through the connected ships toward the hub. When Maria had departed with one of the refurbished Solar Navy warliners at the heart of Ulio Station, the disruption had required structural remodeling of the clustered vessels, but the new hub was now a thriving complex. The decks of the remaining warliners had been remodeled, rented out as temporary lodgings or permanent apartments.
Even though Maria had flown off with one entire Ildiran ship, several decks in another warliner also belonged to her—restricted, sealed away, and hidden by various database tricks. The passwords were incredibly complex algorithms that only OK could remember, once Maria had provided them.
The three of them went from sealed doorway to sealed doorway, penetrating deeper as the compy activated the passwords and granted them passage. Through internal corridors, then to a private lift to another sealed chamber, and finally after seven layers of otherwise impenetrable security, they reached Maria Ulio’s secret central vault.
It was like something out of a legendary dragon’s treasure hoard: shelves and slots crammed with prisdiamonds, firegems, old-fashioned platinum blocks, even a half ton of concentrated saffron threads … anything that might serve as liquid wealth, no matter what financial or cultural crisis hit.
“Saffron?” Xander asked.
Terry just stared. “I don’t know what to say.”
“We could start hauling it out in suitcases,” Xander suggested. “Load up the Verne each time we make a trip here.”
“What are we going to do with all this?” Terry asked.
“Follow your Guiding Star. Whatever you want.”
Terry shook his head. “I don’t want to be foolish. A fortune like this changes all the rules of civilized behavior. We’re going to need to bring in your parents and Rlinda Kett for advice. They’ll know what to do.”
“And this is only a portion of Maria Ulio’s legacy,” OK pointed out. “Now that we know the stockpile exists, perhaps we should go to the Central Offices, and obtain the codes to all her diversified accounts and transfer them into Terry’s name.”
Xander walked among the shelves of priceless gems, precious metals, and the saffron. “Good idea. This’ll keep—it’s been here for years.”
Terry looked shell-shocked as they departed and sealed each level of security behind them. Xander knew it would be hard to keep a poker face when they reached the Central Offices.
* * *
Darwin Felliwell, currently serving a two-year term as Station Manager, had come to Ulio Station in the last year of old Maria’s tenure. He understood what made Ulio Station work: There were strict rules, and they were enforced by the traders, customers, and people who made this a thriving commercial hub. Everyone here swiftly punished pirates, thieves, and cheaters. Prices were vigorously haggled and set; services were provided, businesses started and failed. It was cutthroat. It was vibrant.
Xander, Terry, and OK went to the large control center that filled the entire command nucleus of the second decommissioned Ildiran warliner. Large admin screens displayed all incoming and outbound traffic, and complex grids showed available docking spaces scattered across the hodgepodge ships. Traders were not required to list full manifests of their goods, but if they wanted to sell anything, they attracted customers by featuring their items in the station database.
Xander had never met Darwin Felliwell in person, but the man knew Terry from his past service here. “Good to see you again, Mr. Handon.” He reached out to grasp Terry’s hand as the younger man drifted forward on his antigrav belt.
“We’re here to transfer some accounts,” Terry said. “Don’t worry, there won’t be any administrative changes.”
“Not until the next election, at least,” said Felliwell.
Xander said, “Maria Ulio handed over the keys to her accounts to this dear young man.”
Felliwell was surprised. “I thought Maria was long gone and took everything with her.”
“Oh, she took only a fraction of it,” Terry said. “And she gave me the passcodes to change the accounts over.”
Felliwell scratched his head, interested and disturbed. “And you’ve seen her in person? You have the passcodes?”
“When she departed, there was an agreement that a percentage of all station activity go into certain accounts, but that was all automated.” Terry accessed the database from a touchpad mounted on the wall. “Now she wants me to have that percentage.”
Felliwell watched all the passwords go through, saw Maria’s permissions and security questions answered, and then he stepped back, shaken and seemingly exhausted. “I don’t know that you understand just how much money that could be.”
“Oh, we understand,” Xander broke in. He couldn’t shake the image of that wall of prisdiamonds and firegems from his mind.
“And her other accounts?” Terry asked as OK pulled him forward to the screen. “She left them in the Ulio Central Offices. I have to access them from encrypted files in the main computer.”
Felliwell had to take a seat, even though the gravity was kept to a minimum. “Maybe you’d consider reinvesting in the station? It was Maria’s baby, after all.”
Thousands of complex codes filled the screen, waiting to be manipulated and reassigned. Xander was dizzy just to see all those hidden accounts.
“I’ll consider that,” Terry said. “We’ll consider a lot of options. This is all new to us.”
In the command nucleus, they watched the lights of flitting vessels that came in to dock, while others shot away. Bright stars surrounded them in all directions, but none of them were close. Ulio Station was like a sparkling archipelago, a destination for travelers coming from across the Spiral Arm.
One of the traffic controllers looked up from her screen and stared through the wide crystalline windowport. “What the hell is that?”
Xander saw a growing section of stars eclipsed as a billowing shadow cloud emerged, gushing smoke, darkness growing deeper and opening like an infinite doorway. Four enormous hexagonal black ships emerged, blunt cylinders sliding out from nowhere.
“By the Guiding Star!” Xander whispered.
All the computer systems in the Ulio Central Offices flickered. Several screens went blank, and others were engulfed in static. “Systems are failing!” someone cried.
Alongside the ebony cylinders a fleet of angular black warships gushed out—robot warships. Xander had seen images of them before, but these were bigger and more powerful than what he remembered.
More than fifty robot ships soared out of the dark nebula and began to attack the station.