Clancy held the device to his ear. “Well then, put him through.”
“Clancy, we’ve run out of time. An incoming ship has just reported that Liao is in place on St. Andre. Get ready for immediate takeoff—and I need all the Gs you can muster getting us back to the JumpShip. It may already be too late.”
17
REFUGEES, MILITARY ACTION DISRUPT SHIPPING—Correspondents throughout Prefecture V are reporting disruptions in both passenger and cargo runs as refugees flee the advancing House Liao forces, and JumpShips are appropriated for military use by both sides in the conflict.
Yet JumpShip and DropShip captains aren’t complaining. “If there’s an invasion coming to a planet and you’re the only way out, you can pretty much name your own fare,” says freighter DropShip captain Kristen Witchey. JumpShip captains have also reaped enormous profits. “I’ve been paid to bump other ships for military transports,” reports JumpShip captain Lance Lake. “I’ve been paid to wait at a jump point for a priority vessel. If you’re willing to take risks—hauling into a combat zone, or jumping into pirate points—the rewards are almost unlimited.”
Responding to charges that ship owners are profiteering from the war, Lake just shrugs. “Business is business,” he says. “If you can’t pay, nobody says you have to go.”
St. Michael Station, St. Michael
St. Andre system
Prefecture V, The Republic
17 December 3134
For Erik, it was four days of agony as the liner made its way from the jump point to St. Andre. Along the way, he could do little except read faxed battle reports—all of them bad.
The liner didn’t have the kind of facilities he would have needed to assume proper command of the SwordSworn forces on the planet. He did have limited ability to confer with Campaign Commander Justin Sortek and offer advice, but even Erik had to question its value, given his limited access to current intelligence.
Liao forces had appeared at the zenith jump point days earlier. Their DropShips immediately began high-G burns toward St. Andre. While SwordSworn forces had landed near the old Star League base on the polar continent of Ravensglade, House Liao had put down on the more populated desert continent of Georama and attacked the capital city of Jerome.
Fearing the attack was only a distraction, Sortek had been afraid to commit significant forces to the fight. The city fell in only two days. Now they were moving their forces to cut off ports of supply to Ravensglade. The freshly landed SwordSworn were short on fuel and food, having counted on the ready availability of local supply.
Erik’s pleas to the liner’s captain to shorten the trip, by increasing the acceleration beyond the standard one G, were ignored. In fact, only repeated insistence by Erik and other passengers kept him headed to the embattled planet at all. The captain was prepared to turn back, and still refused to land on the planet itself.
Instead, the passengers would be unloaded at a station on St. Michael, the planet’s only moon, and left to find their own transportation to the planet’s surface.
For Erik and Clayhatchee, at least, that shouldn’t be a problem. The SwordSworn had a shuttle available, and promised that it would be waiting.
St. Michael Station was little more than an outpost on the moon’s airless surface, with no more than a few thousand permanent inhabitants at the best of times. Now it was a ghost town, with most of the inhabitants having retreated to the greater security of the planet’s surface. The harbormaster at the little spaceport was one of the diehards who simply refused to leave.
He met the arriving passengers at the end of the airlock tunnel. He was a small man, round-faced, bearded, and balding on top. “Welcome to St. Michael,” he said, his hand out. “Ten-C-Bill landing fee from each of you, please.”
Erik looked around the terminal, which was deserted except for half a dozen cats stalking the corners, or napping on the empty waiting-room chairs—probably somebody’s solution to the rodent problems stations like this sometimes suffered. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Not kidding,” said the harbormaster. “Business is slow, and I have to pay my salary somehow. I’d hate to have to lay myself off.”
Erik stepped forward. The floors had strips of a sticky material that made it easier to walk in the reduced gravity. He pulled out his wallet, and produced a five-hundred-C-Bill note—enough to cover everyone. He kept his voice low. “I’m supposed to be meeting a SwordSworn shuttle. Are they here?”
He shook his head. “You’re the only arriving ship today, other than some suborbital hoppers. Helium-3 miners coming in from the boonies for supplies, you know.”
Erik sighed and looked at Clayhatchee.
Clayhatchee shrugged. “I’ll go see if I can get a call through to our headquarters, and find out what’s happening.” He headed off to find a vidphone booth.
“Look,” one of the passengers said, stepping forward. It was the businessman Erik had played poker with only a few days before. “We need to get down to the surface. Are there any shuttles running?”
The harbormaster shook his head. “All the scheduled service to the surface was through the spaceport in Jerome. When the capital fell, the shuttles stopped coming. There’s one on the pad out there that came in last week and needed minor repairs. But there’s no crew to fly it. The flight crew rotated home on another flight, and, obviously, they aren’t sending anybody to pick it up.”
The businessman’s eyes were wide with concern. “So what are we supposed to do?”
The harbormaster shrugged. “You could stay here. Lots of rooms here at fifty Cs per night. Or you could hope that there’s an unscheduled ship through. Or you could get back on that pretty liner of yours and leave. Me, I’d go for the last choice. Not much left here, not much chance of getting to St. Andre anytime soon, and, from what I hear, the ugly is just starting down there.”
The businessman scowled. “That ‘ugly’ is home for a lot of us, sir.”
The harbormaster shrugged. “What do I know? I’m from Tybalt myself. Do what you want to. I just know we’re tracking a bunch of incoming plasma flares that look like Liao reinforcements.”
Erik grimaced at this bit of news. Intelligence already had SwordSworn forces slightly outnumbered.
Clayhatchee returned, leaned in, and whispered to Erik. “Commander, our transport should be here within twenty minutes. They’re sending a landing craft for us. Plenty of room for all these people, if you want to be generous.”
He glanced at Elsa, standing among the assembled passengers in the terminal. She was talking with the would-be merc from the poker table, and he felt a little pang of jealousy. Damn it, why isn’t she back on the liner?
He turned his back to the group and whispered to Clayhatchee. “We’re not running a spaceline, Lieutenant, so I’d like to keep that quiet. Anyway, most of them are going to be from Georama. We’d be taking them into a combat zone, on the wrong side of the lines. Better they sit this one out here, or, better yet, on some other planet.”
“Yes sir.”
One by one, the passengers began to return to the ship, until finally about half of them were gone. The rest were determined to stick it out on St. Michael in hopes of getting home. He noticed the two businesspeople among those who stayed, but at some point, Elsa had disappeared. So had the merc, which ordinarily would have amused Erik. But he remembered the two of them talking, and looking a little too friendly.
Shake it off. You’ve got no claim, no prospects, and, ultimately, no interest. His heart, however, didn’t respond well to logic. At least she’s safe.