Doomsday minus 532 Earth days.
Lania Dedrick walked up to the Arrow-class ship and read the name stenciled in Anglo letters on its flank: Lister’s Liberty. It stood tall on pillar-like legs, but she was tall too. Tall enough, at least, to reach up and drag her fingertips along the underside of one of its cargo pods. The hauler was a powerful working vessel, originally designed for a variety of heavy tasks in outer space. It wasn’t pretty, certainly not as sleek and streamlined as a sprint craft, but it was Gate-enabled and solidly constructed, and large enough to comfortably berth a crew of seven. This ship had been well cared for. In fact, it had been loved, and it had loved back. As she gently stroked its hull, she could sense its grief at the loss of its former captain.
Her cousin, Watch Commander Gael Dedrick, was waiting at the edge of the landing pad with two other men. One of them had been introduced to her as Mark Reznick, the person whose company managed the Dedrick family’s finances. He would be transferring the credits for this purchase out of Gael’s accounts. The other, Ethan Press, was the manager of Ares Dry Dock. Although she knew better than to say so in his presence, the anxiety pouring off this man was making her uncomfortable. She wasn’t sure whether he was desperate to sell them this ship or desperately hoping they wouldn’t buy it. Whichever it was, it was giving him an unpleasant odor.
Reluctantly, she broke off contact with the vessel and went to stand beside her cousin. “This one has a soul,” she told him. “I think it could like me.”
“Then we’ll take it,” he replied.
“You have a strange way of assessing a space craft, Commander,” Reznick remarked.
“It’s a first step. After all, if we’re going to be living aboard her, they’ll need to get along.”
Bemused, the banker shook his head.
“Before I take possession, however, she’ll need a retrofit. Upgrades all around. I trust there’s enough in my various accounts to cover that?”
“There will be,” Reznick assured him. When Dedrick gave him a narrow look, he continued, “I’m aware of your recent scrape with the authorities, Commander, and, trust me, this is all quite legal and aboveboard. I’ll get some firm quotations for the work you’re ordering and pick the best one. If there’s going to be a shortfall, we’ll wait until the end of the next dividend period before moving any credits around. Once the retrofit is completed to your satisfaction and you’re able to pay the bill in full, Mr. Press here will release the ship to you.”
“Can you estimate when that will be?”
“Not at the moment. Are you in a rush?”
Dedrick glanced at Lania. “I guess not.”
“As I said, I’ll have a better idea once I’ve collected a few quotations. In the meanwhile…”
As if on cue, Dedrick’s wristcomm buzzed. He consulted the display. “They want us back on the ship,” he told the others, adding with a freighted look at Reznick, “You’ll keep in touch.” It wasn’t a question.
“Of course, Commander. Your late uncle would have expected no less.”
Ares Dry Dock was an orbiting repair station for small and medium-sized craft. Shuttles and other personal vessels were tethered inside, on a broad central landing deck. Larger ships docked outside the station, where their pads could be sealed inside retractable hangars linked by umbilical walkways to the dry dock’s airlocks.
Lania waited until Press and Reznick had said their goodbyes and she and Gael were crossing the landing deck alone, headed toward the Marco Polo’s short-hopper. In a quiet voice, she asked him, “What happened to the captain of that ship you just bought?”
He replied, also quietly, “Nobody knows for sure. Three standard years ago, Lister’s Liberty returned to Mars on autonav, carrying the dead bodies of two crew members. The captain and two others were nowhere to be found.”
“Was there a search?”
“I’m sure there was. The captain was the grandson of a retired Fleet admiral who would have turned Earth space inside out looking for him. Meanwhile, the ship has sat in dry dock this whole time with the storage fees steadily mounting up. According to Mr. Reznick, that’s how I managed to get it for such a low price.”
Studying his expression, she felt compelled to ask, “But you think there may be a different reason?”
He shook off her question. “I think we’d better get back to the Marco Polo before Captain Takamura sends out a second shuttle to find us.”
—— «» ——
Takamura had been waiting for the short-hopper to return. As Dedrick and Lania emerged from the hatch, he stepped forward on the Marco Polo’s landing deck to greet them.
“Was your errand successful, Commander?”
“It was, sir. The ship was just as you described. Reznick and Ohr have their instructions, and they’ll be closing the deal as soon as possible.”
“Good. Peter Lister was an inveterate spacer and a dear friend of mine, and he loved that old boat. I had a feeling you would have the same chemistry with it.”
“It has a soul,” Lania piped up.
Takamura smiled at her. “I’m not surprised.” To Dedrick he said, “We’ve received a pair of messages from Daisy Hub, requesting our assistance.”
Gael frowned. “Are they under attack?”
“Only by Odysseus. Apparently, he decided to take me up on my offer of sanctuary and a new home world. The station manager is asking us to come and pick him up, since we’re mobile and therefore in a better position to find him one.”
“With respect, Captain, wouldn’t it make more sense for us to rendezvous with Odysseus’s ship somewhere between here and there?”
“Yes, but the wording of both messages was quite specific, and the tone of the second one was emphatic. Townsend is insisting that we come to him, so we’re setting course for Sector Five, soonest departure. I want to meet privately with you and Lania in half an hour. She forged a relationship with Odysseus during our earlier adventure and might be able to offer some insights regarding his behavior.”
“Aye, sir.”
Half an hour later, as ordered, Dedrick and his cousin reported to the captain’s office, located just off the bridge.
Takamura gestured to them to take the seats facing his across the desk. “This is a confidential briefing. Therefore, what I’m about to tell you does not leave this room.” Addressing Lania, he added, “Is that understood, young lady?”
“Yes, Captain.”
He uttered a satisfied syllable. “We are in a very precarious situation right now. When our logs were adjusted earlier, most references to Odysseus were deleted, including my offer of sanctuary and a new home world for his race. No one in Earth’s government or Fleet Control is aware of the true nature of our relationship with the Mitrades, and I was hoping that the status would remain quo, at least for a while. However, the urgent message from Daisy Hub seems to imply that he has created a problem on the station. If he has, we have no way of knowing what, if anything, Townsend might have been obliged to tell the Space Installation Authority, or what the Rangers on Observation Platform Zulu might have seen fit to report to their superiors.” He paused.
“Or what other passing ships might have noticed and then logged or reported independently,” Dedrick dropped into the silence.
“Precisely. We have no idea what will be waiting for us on Daisy Hub, and any attempt to discover it through channels could draw unwanted attention to us,” Takamura confirmed. “That is why I’ve decided to approach with caution.”
“So, this is going to be another stealth mission?”
“Of a sort, yes, Commander. I have requested that the Marco Polo be assigned to patrol Sector Five. It gives us the opportunity for some discreet reconnaissance before we commit to a direct course to the station.”
“Has Fleet Control responded to your request, sir?”
“Not yet, but they were apparently quite impressed with the outcome of our voyage to Kula’as, so I’m optimistic. Meanwhile, I have some questions for Lania.”
She had been sitting quietly beside her cousin, staring at her lap. Now she raised curious eyes to meet the captain’s gaze.
“I need to know about the special connection you made with Odysseus earlier. Who reached out first, you or the Mitradean?”
“I did. I sensed his anger and I talked to him about it. And I told him what he wanted to know about Humans.”
“What he wanted to know,” Takamura repeated. “That was why he demanded your presence on the bridge, I take it? So he could ask you questions about us?” She nodded in reply. “And what sort of questions were those, Lania?”
“Whether Humans keep their word, and how they feel about beings that are different than they are,” she replied with a shrug. “And how the Marco Polo defeated the Thryggian pirates.”
“Captain, are you thinking Lania might have—?”
“Right now, I’m just trying to narrow the field of possibilities, Mister Dedrick.” Returning his attention to Lania, he continued, “And what did you sense from Odysseus while you were giving him that information?”
She thought for a moment. “Different things. Mainly, I think he was surprised that we survived the battle with the pirates. He said lork must have been watching over us.”
“It’s true,” Dedrick remarked. “We did have luck on our side that day.”
“Not luck. I’m pretty sure his translator box said ‘lork’,” Lania corrected him.
“And when you answered his other questions?” Takamura persisted.
“He was very curious. Not in a suspicious way, though. In an interested way. He just kept wanting to know more about Humans. Like what it was like to be part of a family, and what we consider to be food. I couldn’t tell him much about Earth, because I’d never been there, but—”
“He asked about Earth?” demanded Dedrick, bolting to attention in his chair. “Did you show him where it was?”
“I didn’t have to. He knew it was the Human home world, and he’d already looked it up on the nav charts,” Lania replied.
Of course, Dedrick realized, the pilot would have had access to those.
He shared a worried look with his captain, suspecting what must be going through Takamura’s mind. The Mitrades exchanged navigation data telepathically whenever their paths crossed in space. Soon every Mitradean was going to know about Earth and where to find it; and if there had been a problem on Daisy Hub, some of them might just decide to show up on the High Council’s doorstep instead, demanding what had been promised to them. The kerfuffle that that would cause would make Dedrick’s recent skirmish with Earth’s legal system seem trivial by comparison.
The captain’s deskcomm chose that moment to emit a metallic bleat. Then a voice came through: “This is Brandt on the bridge, Captain. I’m sorry to interrupt, but you wanted to be notified immediately if we received anything from Fleet Control.”
“Transfer the message to my unit, Mister Brandt.”
“Aye, sir. You should have it now.”
Takamura stared at his screen for several seconds, then announced to his guests with evident satisfaction, “They’ve granted my request. The Marco Polo is ordered to patrol Sector Five until further notice. Now, let’s go find out what the devil is happening on Daisy Hub.”