After an hour or so, one of the pilots came out of the shuttle and shouted to the others.
“Outbound. They’re outbound, the whole lot of them.” The others crowded closer.
“You’re sure?” Garson asked.
“Well, unless this stealth thing is creating a very weird false image that looks just like a lot of ships moving into formation toward the jump point.”
“Time to jump?”
“They’re hours from a safe radius for microjumping—then it’ll depend on whether they choose to microjump out to the jump point or not.” The pilot grinned. “But they’ll be out of nearscan range in a few minutes—behind the planet.”
“It occurs to me to wonder why they didn’t just incinerate this planet as they left,” the professor said.
“You have such cheerful ideas,” Garson said. “They know they have other allies down here?”
“Perhaps,” the professor said. “Though I don’t know how much they care about their allies. Are there resources here they still want, even though they think the weapons research stuff is all gone? Do they want this as a base later?”
“Once they’re gone, we can just fly back to the main base, can’t we?” asked Swearingen.
“If we built a wooden ship,” the professor said, “it’d be less detectable by conventional means, and we could sail it back—”
“Gussie, I am not going to indulge your taste for historical re-creation and try to build a sailing ship from these trees,” Swearingen said. “They aren’t even straight.”
“That’s exactly why we could do it. Look at them—they’re already shaped like keels and ribs and things. I’m sure Margiu thinks it’s a good idea . . .” The professor gave Margiu a wide grin; she found it hard to resist, but the thought of going out on the water in a homemade boat terrified her.
“Look at her,” someone said. “You’ve scared her, Gussie.”
“We have a perfectly good troop carrier,” Garson said. “We’d be crazy not to use it.”
“All right,” the professor said, with a deliberate pout, “but you’re taking all the fun out of this.”
“We’ll leave when they’re out of nearscan range and then go back to the main base,” Garson said. “We’ve done what we came for, and they may need us back there.”
“I don’t suppose you’d agree to stop by some tropical island for a little recreation . . . ?”
“This is as tropical as you get, professor. Enjoy it while you can,” Major Garson said.
“You’re no fun.” But he didn’t seem really annoyed. He wandered off to look at the grove of twisted trees.
“We’d better leave soon,” Garson said, “or he’ll decide to have us make spears and crossbows from those trees.”
“Nothing that simple,” said Swearingen. “He’ll go for trebuchets and ballistas and a couple of hang gliders.”
Chapter Two
Goonar Terakian looked at the newsfax and found it hard to breathe. Mutinies, markets collapsing in all directions . . . and all he’d wanted to do was work his way up to become a captain of one of the Terakian ships.
“We’re free traders,” he said, half to himself. “We’re unaligned.”
“Not exactly.” Basil Terakian-Junos slouched against the opposite bulkhead. “I don’t fancy running off to the NewTex Militia. Hazel says—”
“And that’s another thing,” Goonar said. “Hazel. We’re mixed up with her family, which doesn’t want to be mixed up with us.”
“What do we want out of all this?”
“Well, we don’t want a war, that’s for sure,” Goonar said. “We want a chance to make a living, same as anybody else.”
“Not the same . . . a good living. And wars sometimes prosper traders.”
“Well . . . yes. When they don’t kill them outright. Protection for our property. Opportunity. Economic stability, so we can depend on credit and currency.”
“ ‘Profits are highest in times of trouble,’ ” Basil quoted.
“Yes. But so are losses.”
“The question is, which side offers us the best deal?”
“The question is, how do we define the best deal?”
“It’s not our decision, Goonar. Our fathers—”
“Won’t have to live with the outcome. We will. I’m not going to stand by and see them ruin us.”
“Kaim is one of us—”
“Kaim is crazy. We both know that. Yeah, the mutineers are strong now, but they’re not the sort of people we want to do business with, not in the long run.”
“What about . . .” Basil hooked his thumb and gestured to the far wall.
“The Black Scratch? You’d try dealing with the Black Scratch?”
“Very cautiously, maybe.”
“Not me,” Goonar blew on his finger, expressively. “The tongs aren’t long enough.”
“If the Familias comes apart—”
“It won’t if we keep our heads.”
“We?”
“All the real people—the traders, shippers, ordinary people.”
It struck Goonar suddenly as ridiculous that he had described Terakian & Sons, Ltd., as “ordinary people” but he didn’t let that internal chuckle show in his face. Better if Basil didn’t think about that one too long.
“Right now,” he said, tapping the manifest display, “we have a cargo to worry about, customers to serve. Things won’t get better if we start playing doom-caller.”
“Spoken like someone who wants to be a captain,” said Basil, only half-joking.
“And you don’t?” Goonar cocked an eye at him. Their last recommendation had resulted in a solid profit; he and Basil had their bonuses, and he’d put his in the captain’s pool for the first time.
“I do, but—captains always have to think of the long term, and you know, cuz, that sometimes I’m a bit more focussed on the short.”
That was true, but this was the first time Basil had admitted it.
“I’d rather be your second and stay your partner: you steady me down, and I keep you from being stodgy.”
“I’m not stodgy,” Goonar said, trying to sound stodgy to hide the inner glow that came from Basil’s admission that they weren’t in competition for the next open captaincy.
“You would be,” Basil said, “if you didn’t have me kicking you every now and then. I told the Fathers two days ago.”
Which meant Goonar was up to number three, at least, in the pool, and sending in his bonus money had been even smarter than he thought. Captains had to have ship shares before selection; he had been saving for years for this, investing carefully.
“We’ll make a good team,” Goonar said, accepting Basil as formally as the Terakian family ever accepted anyone.
“We already do,” Basil said.
As they turned again to the manifest display, one of the clerks knocked on the door. “Goonar—there’s a message from the Fathers.”
“Thanks,” Goonar said. He took the sealed packet—two levels below the highest secrecy—and thumb-printed it until the seal peeled back. He stared at the first line, and felt his face flush. “Basil—!”
“What is it, your first ship?”
“You knew!”
“I didn’t . . . but Uncle did hint that something nice was coming to you, and did I want to ride your coattails, or strike out on my own.”
“It’s the Fortune.” Old Fortune, one of the real prizes of the Terakian & Sons fleet, had close to the ideal blend of cargo capacity and maneuverability, including an ample shuttle bay and two drone cargo shuttles. Goonar went on reading. “It’s Miro—he’s developed some neurological condition, and they don’t want to rotate captains through the ships in this political crisis—they want to keep people with crews they know, and routes they know . . .”
“Miro . . .” Basil said. “Did he ever rejuv?”