“We have to tell Fleet,” Goonar said, when they came out of FTL flight into the Corrigan system. The few days in FTL had been uneventful, just the way he liked it. “It’s the only way to clear the family of the charges that will be levelled against us.”
Basil rolled his eyes. “I can just imagine what they’ll say—we’ll be held up for months while they investigate us down to the rivets.”
“We don’t have rivets,” Goonar said. “You know that.”
“You know what I mean,” Basil said. “Down to the monomolecular seals, if you want to get technical about it. Not that we have anything to hide . . .”
“Not other than illicit foreign nationals, a hijacked security team, and a very unhappy Benignity search team,” Goonar said. “Aside from that, we’re as clean as ever.”
Basil looked down.
“Aren’t we?”
“Well . . . there might be a little sort of private stock here and there . . .”
“Enough. We’re going to turn ourselves in at the first opportunity, and explain, as best we can, how we got into this mess.”
Goonar sent a message about the situation at Falletta. The Fleet picket, now three ships in this system, tightbeamed them.
“What kind of Benignity ship?”
“A diplomatic mission, they said. I never actually saw the ship—we were docked on the other side of the Station. But my scans didn’t show live weaponry on it.”
“Did you get any data on the captain?”
“I got a video,” Goonar said. “We record incoming communications in full, and I copied it to deep storage, just in case.”
“They threatened you? The Benignity or the Station?”
“Some Benignity officer was in the Stationmaster’s command center, and he threatened us. Told us we’d never leave the system alive if we didn’t let him search the ship. I figured he wanted a way to snatch a Familias-registered independent to go spying in.”
“But he let you go in the end?”
“Yes . . . not too happily, but he did. The Station’s own Security team was aboard—”
“Why?”
“Well, before I realized what was up, they’d requested a routine search of one of our auto-shuttles, and I’d agreed, of course.”
“Of course. Well, we’ll want that copy of the transmission—we’d prefer to get it in person, not squirted—”
“So would I,” Goonar said. “Who knows what’s lurking out here?”
“Nothing right now,” the captain said. “But just in case.”
At Corrigan Station, Goonar handed over the data cube to the uniformed officer who waited in the loading area. The security team from Falletta had come with him; they were all to be interviewed. Basil, luckily, wasn’t on the list that Fleet wanted to speak with.
The Fleet interviewer asked Goonar to tell what happened, and leaned back to listen. “It all started,” Goonar said, “when my cargomaster, my cousin Basil, told me he’d moved the ship up in the departure queue. I asked him why, and he didn’t say at first. We were on our way back to the ship, after a night on the town, and I had been looking forward to a late morning the next day.”
“A night on the town?”
“Theater. Basil’s been after me, the last few voyages, to loosen up . . . he thinks I’m too morose. My wife and children died, you see, a few years ago; he keeps trying to fix me up with beautiful women.”
“Ah . . .” the interviewer’s face took on a sympathetic expression that Goonar trusted about as much as he expected the interviewer to trust his own.
“He cares about me,” Goonar said. “We grew up together, after all; we’ve been partners for ten years now. His daughter’s my goddaughter; he had been my children’s godfather. But he doesn’t understand . . . I don’t want another wife and family. I had the best, and lost them. Why should I risk so much again, for different people, and lose them again?”
“It’s a hard life, alone,” the interviewer murmured.
“Not really.” Goonar leaned back and scratched his head. “I’m good at what I do. I’m earning a comfortable living. I have a position in our family. I don’t need a wife.” But he might need Bethya, his body told him. He didn’t want to think about that.
“So, your cousin had been trying to get you to loosen up, and you hadn’t enjoyed it—” the interviewer prompted.
“Well, I had, actually. I like theater, especially music dramas, as much as anyone. It had been fun, but I was sleepy, and wanted to spend another night downside, in the hotel. Basil insisted we had to get back to the ship. When we were in the shuttle, on the way, he told me he’d picked up a cargo, a theatrical troupe.”
The interviewer’s eyelids twitched, then his face returned to its schooled neutrality. “Is this what you told the authorities on Falletta?”
“No, of course not.” Goonar puffed out his cheeks. “It was like this: Basil had us in the departure queue, with certified cargo. If I raised a stink, we could be stuck there for months, and I had time-critical cargo for here, among other places, with a hefty penalty for late delivery. If we hadn’t been in the queue, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but we were. I could cheerfully have killed Basil, but that wouldn’t have done any good.”
“So you knowingly accepted illicit cargo, including passengers . . .”
“You could put it that way. Meanwhile, the Benignity pressured the local government into delaying upshuttle flights, and departures from the Station. They said something about stolen property or fugitives—they didn’t specify which, or what. I noticed that a lot of ships had left the Station as soon as the Benignity diplomatic mission arrived in the system—and they shouldn’t have known anything about it until it arrived at the Station, unless the Stationmaster let them know. And he’s a Conselline . . . and so were the ships that left, all under sept flags. I didn’t know what was going on, but it didn’t look like an ordinary search for stolen property to me. I’m not that green; I know when something’s gone missing across borders—what usually happens is their police contact our police.”
“So what’s the real story?”
“I don’t know it all. I told the actors’ troupe leader that I didn’t want to know anything—they could tell their story to you, and I’d report it as soon as we arrived in a safe place.”
“Er . . . how much of this does the Falletta security team know?”
“Nothing of our cargo,” Goonar said. “It was my judgment that the fewer people who knew about whatever it was, the better.”
“I see,” the interviewer said. “And when are you going to deliver the fugitives—if they are fugitives?”
“Whenever you say. At any rate, I’m not leaving here with them.”
“Oh, but you are,” the officer said. “At least, that’ll be my first recommendation. Whatever they have that the Benignity wants so badly, we don’t want it rattling around out here. We have enough problems already. What’s your next scheduled stop?”
“Trinidad, then Zenebra, then Castle Rock . . .”
“Fine. You keep them until Castle Rock, and deliver them to Fleet HQ.”
“I can’t do that!” Goonar didn’t have to feign dismay. “We don’t—Terakian doesn’t—run errands for Fleet. We’re neutral.”
“Nobody’s neutral now.” The man leaned forward. “Listen, Captain—if you were really neutral you’d have left these people there. If you didn’t care who won the next war, you wouldn’t have defied the Benignity. You’re not neutraclass="underline" you’re honest. There’s a difference. I’m trusting you, here. I think, as you do, that whatever the Benignity wants that badly must be of benefit to our side, and I’m trusting you to get it to Fleet HQ, because I don’t think anyone else could do it better.”
“But—if they really believe whatever it is got away, then they have to think it’s on our ship. We’ll be marked—”
“There is a way around that, more or less. They can certainly think you offloaded whatever it was at this point. You can debark the Falletta security team here, for instance. As long as they don’t know about the others—”