Boros’ agent at Bezaire would not have been happy to find the contents of that container, since she had a contract to supply the cube players and the entertainment cubes supposedly filling the rest of Hold 5.
Elias Madero came out of FTL flight, retranslating to normal space, to traverse the real-space distance between two jump points in the same system, colloquially known as Twobits. This shortcut had been marked “questionable” on standard charts for years, because the presence of two jump points in the same system was believed, on theoretical grounds, to lead to spatial instability of the jump points. If the insertion point shifted, an inbound ship might find itself emerging too close to a large mass, with no time to maneuver clear. But the nearest greenlined route meant three more jump point calculations, and added eleven days to the Corian-Bezaire passage. Since jump point temporal coordinates were fuzzy anyway, many commercial haulers used shortcuts to ensure that they met contractual delivery dates . . . while filing flight plans that were all greenlined.
This crew had made the traverse before, many times, without incident. The jump points had not shifted in the past fifty years, while the possibility that they might kept the system uncrowded.
On this trip, system insertion went as smoothly as usual, and the Elias transferred to insystem drive without a hitch.
“That’s done, then,” Captain Lund said to his navigator, clapping a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Four days, and we’ll be out of here again. I’m going to bed.” Custom and regulation both required that a captain be on the bridge during jump point insertions; Lund had been up three shifts running because of a minor engineering problem.
His navigation officer, a transfer from Sorias Madero, a sister ship, nodded. “I have the course laid, sir. By my calculations, ninety-seven point two hours.”
“Very good.”
Captain Lund, balding and stocky, waited until he was in his cabin to take off his jacket and kick off his shoes. He hung the jacket up neatly, set his shoes side by side, laid his trousers, neatly folded, over the back of his chair, with his shirt over them. This was his last cycle . . . when he reached Corian again, he would retire at last. Helen . . . his grandchildren . . . the neat little house set high on a slope above the valley . . . he drifted into sleep, a smile on his face.
The sharp yelp of the emergency alarm woke him. He touched the comunit above his bunk.
“Captain here—what is it?”
“Raiders, sir.”
He sat up, ducking automatically from the overhanging cabinets. “I’m on my way.”
Raiders? What kind of raiders would hang around a route where almost no ships went? No ships, really—he’d never found any indication that others used this two-jump transit.
Had they been tailed through FTL? He’d heard rumors that Fleet was developing some kind of scan that worked in FTL. The Benignity? Certainly not Aethar’s World, and they were across Familias space anyway.
From the bridge, the situation was clear. Two of them, their weapons systems lighting up the scan board with red threats. On the com screen, a hard-faced man in a uniform he didn’t recognize was speaking in accented Standard—an accent he hadn’t heard before, with the words pulled out twice as long.
“You surrender your ship, and we’ll let the crew off in your lifeboats—”
Captain Lund almost choked. What good would lifeboats be, in a lifeless system that no one visited because of the paired jump points?
“Wheah’s yoah captain? I wanna talk to him.”
Lund stepped up to the comunit, and nodded to his exec, who stepped back.
“This is Captain Lund. Who are you and what do you think you’re doing?”
“Takin’ yoah ship, sir.” The man favored him with a tight grin that did not look at all friendly. “In the name of sacred liberty, and the Nutex Militia. We apologize for any . . . ah . . . inconvenience.”
“You’re pirates!” Lund said. “You have no right—”
“Them’s harsh words, sir. We don’t like disrespect for our beliefs, sir. Let me put it this way—we have the weapons to blow your ship away, and we’re offerin’ you a chance to save your crews’ lives. Some of ’em, anyway. If you surrender your ship, and allow us to board without resistance, we will swear not to kill any of your legal crew.”
Lund felt that he had waked into a nightmare, and his mind refused to work at its normal speed. “Legal crew?”
“Waal . . . yes. We’re aware, you see, that you work for a corporation with obscene and unnatural views about moral issues. In our books, there’s things that just ain’t natural and normal, let alone right, and if you have people like that on board, then they’ll have to face justice.”
Lund glanced around; the faces on the bridge were tense and pale. He thumbed the com control to prevent his words going out in transmission. “Do any of you have the slightest idea who these crazies are? Or what they mean about natural and unnatural?”
The junior scan tech, Innis Seqalin, nodded. “I’ve heard a little about the Nutex Militia . . . for one thing, they think it’s wrong for women to be spacers, and for another, they don’t tolerate anything but what they call normal sex.”
Lund felt his stomach churn. If they didn’t allow women in space, what kind of sex did they think was normal? And why not allow women in space? “Is it . . . something religious?”
“Yes, sir. At least, they say it is.”
Lund felt even sicker. Religious nuts . . . he had gone to space to get away from them back on his home world. If these were the same sort . . . he had too many crew at risk.
“I’m warnin’ ya,” the pirate officer said. “Answer, or we’ll blow your holds . . .”
“All right,” Lund said, as much to gain time as anything. “I’ll send my people to the lifeboats—”
“We’ll see a crew list,” the man said, smiling unpleasantly. “Right now, afore you can doctor it up. If a lifeboat separates before we’ve approved the list, we’ll blow it.”
Lund’s mind raced into high gear. The crew list did not mention gender—and certainly not sexual preferences—so if he could just keep the medical records out of their hands . . .
“And the medical records,” the man said, “in case you got some of them so-called modern women that don’t have good women’s names.”
He could refuse, but then what? According to scan, he was facing weapons easily capable of blowing his ship. But they wouldn’t want to blow his ship . . . they would want the cargo, and perhaps the ship itself, intact.
“Personnel and medical records aren’t networked,” he said, thanking whatever gods were around, including those he didn’t believe in, for the fact that this was standard, and known to be standard.
“Ten minutes,” the pirate said, and clicked off.
Ten minutes. What doctoring could he do in ten minutes? And why hadn’t he denied the presence of women right away, so that he might have had a chance to pass them off as men? But the ship’s tiny medical staff had been listening, and Hansen gave him a call.
“I’m changing the genders, and stripping out all reference to gender-specific medications . . . six minutes for that. What else do you think?”