Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex (5 page)

Zadim looked profoundly wounded.
“My dear Sirius, swindle is such a harsh word!” He appeared about to shed a tear,
then gave me a sideways look. “You say,
all
is forgiven?”

“Help me find Sarat, and it’ll be
like you never cheated me, not even once.”

“And you will run cargoes for me
again?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

Zadim took a deep breath. “It
will be like old times! I will send my little ferrets out among the weasels to
find your Republic ratman, and you will not have to pay me even a single credit
because we are family – again!”

“Distant relatives,” I said,
offering him a toast with my coffee cup.

Zadim smiled with delight. “Blood
is blood!” Maybe it was genuine, maybe it was part of his act, even threaded I
couldn’t tell. He leaned forward, “You remember the Oniedyn belly dancers? Hmm?
What a night!”

My head hurt just thinking of
that feast. “I remember. You disgracefully over-tipped the tall one, with the
big . . .” I gestured meaningfully.

He laughed. “Ha! I more than
tipped her, my friend. She became my third wife!”

* * * *

I left Zadim’s, hoping my new best friend
would discover Sarat’s location, and took the tube to the shipping district. It
was a huge square cavern adjoining the spaceport, lined with warehouses full of
cargo brought out by long haul transports from the Core Systems, the expanse of
space within two hundred and fifty light years of Earth containing mankind’s
largest colonies. Once offloaded, the cargo was carried by local freighters to
systems up to several hundred light years away. In the center of the cavern was
a cluster of modern buildings, where shipping companies were headquartered, and
a grand stone structure stood containing the Exchange. Every outpost and
settlement had an Exchange, although this was one of the largest outside Core
System space. The Exchanges were run by the Beneficial Society of Traders, the
organization to which all traders belonged and which underwrote every contract,
ensured every deal was honored and kept the wheels of interstellar commerce turning
– for a slice off the top.

The trading floor was filled with
people, gathered around dozens of free standing data nodes, small cylindrical stands
arranged in neat rows. Large rectangular displays lined each wall, constantly
scrolling through the list of open contracts, their destinations and completion
bonuses. I found a spare node, signed for payment on the cargoes I’d just
delivered, saw my digital-vault balance increase slightly, then started
skimming data dumps Hades City wanted sent to regional outposts. With ships
being the only way to get information from one system to another, data runs
were a monotonous staple of the trade. Whether it was news, entertainment,
statistics on everything from crop yields to hydrogen production, or simply a
message to a distant family member, someone wanted to transfer it somewhere. It
was dull subsistence work, but it paid the bills.

I searched for contracts under
twenty light years with a low threat rating. Taking contracts to high threat
systems paid well, but the risks were great and I wasn’t looking for a fight. I’d
marked six possible contracts when I spotted a familiar pair of beautiful dark
eyes looking my way. They belonged to a petite woman with an elfin face framed
by straight black shoulder length hair. While she appeared to be in her late
twenties, I knew she’d had gene work done, enough to shave a decade off with no
side effects. It wasn’t as radical as what I’d been through, but it was good
for civilian cosmetics.

Marie Dulon, captain of the
Heureux
, gave me a genuinely warm smile,
but the look in her eyes told me she was as surprised to see me as I was to see
her. For a moment, I wondered if that look meant she was with someone else and
having me on the scene was an unexpected problem. Only one way to find out. I
cancelled out of the data node, retrieved my skipper’s tag – a slender encoded
slip of metal which allowed me to enter into lawful, Society sponsored
contracts – and approached her.

“Hello, Marie. I thought you’d be
a hundred light years from here by now.”

We’d planned to meet up in a few
months, when our schedules crossed again. Neither of us had told the other they
were going to Hades City, me because I hadn’t planned to go there, but why was she
here?

“Hello Sirius,” she said in her
Gascon
accented voice. To my knowledge she’d never set foot
on Earth, let alone visited Bordeaux, but her family had stubbornly retained
their ancestral heritage. “If I didn’t know it was impossible for you to track
me through interstellar space, I’d think you were following me.”

“Would you be disappointed if I were?”

“No, but I’d want to steal your
technology so I could sell it to the highest bidder,” she replied playfully.

I hadn’t given it much thought,
but she was right. If anyone ever figured out how to see through a spacetime
distortion bubble, they’d become the richest human who ever lived. As far as we
knew, none of the Orion Arm Local Powers – our interstellar neighbors – had
that technology, perhaps not even the Tau Cetins, so the chance of mankind inventing
it in the next hundred thousand years was zero.

“If I had that technology, I’d
sell it myself.”

“Then I’d have to marry you, but
only because you were the richest man in the galaxy!”

“If I were the richest man in the
galaxy, I wouldn’t need to marry you. I’d just make you my concubine.”

“If you had that many credits,
I’d gladly settle for concubine.”

We exchanged a long look, for a
moment enjoying just being in each other’s company again, then I asked, “So
what are you doing here?”

“Looking for work,” she said
innocently, although the way she avoided my eyes told me she was lying through
her teeth. “And you?”

“The same, looking for work.” Now
we knew we were both lying. “What happened to those oxy runs you were doing out
to the Kazaris Belt?”

“The miners started haggling,
trying to drive the price down.”

“So you threatened to cut off
their oxygen supply if they didn’t pay up?”

She shrugged helplessly. “What’s
a girl to do?”

I glanced at her screen, seeing the
contracts she was considering. Data dumps, protein packs, fishing and mining
equipment, all going to the same place: a frozen hell hole I’d been to once
before and never wanted to return to. “Planning on doing some skiing?”

“No, just killing time.” She
switched off her screen and retrieved her skipper’s tag a little too quickly.

“Why do I get the feeling you’re
hiding something from me?”

She gave me a sultry look. “As if
I have anything you haven’t already seen.”

Marie always used sex like a
weapon, but I enjoyed her games so I didn’t care. “Seeing you naked and knowing
what you’re thinking are not the same thing.”

“No, but they’re close,” she said
and kissed me on the cheek. “Got to run, Sirius. I’ll see you soon.”

Not giving me a chance to ask
where she had to run to, she hurried out, giving me a wave at the exit before
vanishing. I stared after her a moment, smiling to myself, then realized I’d
forgotten to DNA lock her! Stalking my lover wasn’t what threading was meant to
be used for, but where Marie was concerned, I needed all the help I could get. Forgetting
to lock her made me realize how out of practice I was with the technological
wonder hidden throughout my body. On the chance she was a known criminal, I
checked the list of Humanity’s most wanted, but Marie wasn’t listed. I’d have
been surprised if she was. She’d cross the line if the reward was worth it, but
she was way too smart to get caught.

I recalled Lena’s warning about Marie
being my weakness and wondered if she’d been aware Marie was heading for Hades
City. Surely Lena would have told me if she’d known, so I figured her comments were
simply the result of the mind probe, not intel on Marie’s movements.

My sniffer scanned the data node she’d
been using, found dozens of DNA traces, although none of the female signatures were
Marie’s. She hadn’t worn gloves, so there should have been traces where she’d
touched the data node console, but there was nothing. Marie must have been
wearing skin seals to mask her DNA, which made no sense. Simply docking her
ship revealed her identity to the entire city.

I logged into her data node and scanned
the register of ships in port, but the
Heureux
wasn’t listed. Either she was on someone else’s ship or she was using a fake
registry – which was against Society rules. Marie smuggled a little – we all
did – but using a dummy registry in a port as big as Hades City was risky. She’d
need a good reason for taking such a risk, which for her would be nothing less
than a mountain of credits.

Wondering what she was up to, I took
the walkway back to the spaceport. As mole-ports go, Spaceport Hades was a busy
place: berths for hundreds of ships, all with pressure bridges connecting each
ship to the spaceport; six well equipped maintenance docks, one large enough to
take Core System super transports; and a secure zone set aside for the Earth
Navy’s exclusive use. There was nothing like it in human hands for five hundred
light years, although some of the Local Powers had heavily populated worlds
nearby, all of which were off limits to probationary mankind.

Near the
Lining’s
gate was a viewport overlooking the berth. I stopped to check
her paintwork, wondering if heat seeping through her shield had done any damage,
but she looked as clean as a whistle. The
Silver
Lining
was a Penguin class light freighter, small and fast, two and a
quarter times wider than she was long. Her leading edge was crescent shaped, giving
her the appearance of a flying wing, with two large maneuvering engines at the
tips and three magclamps, each with their own support gantries, between the
engines for towing vacuum-radiation-sealed cargo containers. The rectangular VRS
containers quadrupled her interior cargo capacity and gave us the option of
dumping cargo fast if we needed to run.

The two oversized engines were
complemented by a series of thrusters discreetly hidden around her hull, making
the
Silver Lining
one of the most
agile ships not in military service. When towing three full VRS containers, she
handled like an underpowered barge – sluggish and with terrible inertial drift.
Without them, she was as fast in flat space as a system racer. Beneath her skin
were the sixty spacetime distorters that generated the bubble for superluminal
flight, while a dozen gentle bulges hid the emitters for our mil-spec bleeder
shield. The single particle cannon mounted off center on top of her hull was
deceptively impressive. Apart from being one of the most ineffective weapons a
small ship could mount, it took forever to charge because its capacitor lost
more juice than it stored – which was why I’d fitted it. And it was dirt cheap.
Anyone scanning us from long range would see it charging up and assume the
energy bleed came from a beast of a weapon, making them think twice about
tackling us. That was the theory anyway. The
Lining
did have one real weapon hidden in a forward compartment,
but it was only detectable when the outer doors were opened – which they never were,
because the navy would impound her if they knew what she carried.

She stood on three landing struts,
with her large underside cargo door open forming a rectangular ramp down to the
rock floor. Two cargobots were unloading the hold while an eight-wheel flatbed
hauler backed up under one of the VRS containers. When in position, its
elevated platform rose to take the weight of the container, then Jase released the
hull and gantry magclamps.

I was about to turn away when I
noticed one of Izin’s hull crawlers creeping over the starboard engine housing
on an inspection tour. It was a six legged spider-like
bot
fitted with retractable arms and various sensors that enabled it to conduct
hull scans and perform emergency repairs. We’d been docked only a few hours and
Izin already had a full inspection cycle underway. He wasn’t wasting any time,
but he didn’t have much else to do. Most humans were wary of tamphs, so in
crowded ports he worked on the ship and stayed out of sight.

Izin was why the
Lining
was in such good shape. I’d get
the gear, often from the black market, and he made it work. Sometimes he tinkered
with it, improving the design. I could have patented some of his modifications
and sold them back to the original manufacturer – or the navy – but then
everyone would have what I had and where’s the profit in that?

I headed for the gate, which read
my DNA before letting me through into the pressure bridge. Jase was hurrying
towards me from the ship’s airlock, looking sharp in clothes that told me in a
day or two, I’d either be bailing him out of jail or finding him dead drunk and
broke in a back street. So I did the only responsible thing and had my sniffer DNA
lock him. At least he’d be easier to find this time.

“Skipper, I’ve heard of this
great place. You should come–”

“No, not tonight.”

“Hot and cold running women! Every
kind of drink you can imagine! Sixty four different games of chance and for a
few extra credits, psychedelics even Earth Navy hasn’t outlawed yet – only
because they were just invented!”