Morgan's Return (2 page)

The man's lips quirked. "I thought you came across military. Is that why you have all the armaments?"

"I feel more comfortable with weaponry. I've seen too many run-ins with pirates in my time." And wasn't that the truth. The fellow continued to try to stare him down. Ravindra managed a tight smile. After all, he'd told the truth, he was just a tourist.

"You have the funds for your docking fees? I expect you realize we don't accept Coromandel currency, and we don't have a commercial treaty with your planet, so bank credits won't be accepted."

"We have Coalition credits," Ravindra said. From Morgan's account. It was a risk, but she said her accounts should be where she'd left them.

"The account's in my name," Morgan said. "I'll put the transfer in as soon as we're docked."

The commander's eyes narrowed.

"If there's a problem, we have hard currency," Ravindra said. "Gold, jewels. I intend to sell some at the first opportunity." And now let's see how honest you are.

The commander eyed Morgan. "You have the funds?"

"That's right. I'm ex-Coalition star fleet," she said.

"You're with a Coromandel admiral?"

She chuckled. "You know what they say? Join the Star Fleet and see the planets? Well, I did. We met when I was on leave a year or two ago. He offered me a job when I got out. And it really isn't any of your business."

To his credit, the man laughed. "If the docking fees fall through, you won't be going anywhere. But I guess you know that."

The other three troopers, still anonymous behind their helmets, joined their leader, their armored footfalls loud in the confines of the ship. He gestured the troopers to the airlock. "You run a tight ship… Admiral. Enjoy your stay on Iniciara."

He stepped back into the airlock. Morgan slapped a hand on the hatch release.

Ravindra turned to Morgan, and raised his eyebrows. She would understand.

She shook her head. "No surveillance. They checked the holds and all the cabins. I wish I knew what they were really looking for." She let out a breath. "We still have to get through Customs."

"Would they recognize you for what you are?"

"A Supertech? No. They linked to my implant, of course, but the other piece of hardware in my head is hidden unless I want to advertise."

"Well, then. We have nothing to hide. We really are just tourists." Ravindra used his
sanvad
to contact Davaskar. "Take her in, Captain."

Chapter 2  

M
organ settled into the engineer's seat on the bridge. Captain Davaskar and first officer, Lieutenant Jirra, sat at their stations, a little tenser than usual. She fought the urge to take over, and pilot the ship in herself. That would be stupid. Davaskar and Jirra were more than competent. Besides, the station's docking systems had taken over, guiding
Curlew
toward the allocated bay. Up close, the structure's curved wall looked almost flat, the surface illuminated by the flashing beacon lights. The patrol visit still bothered her, although she wasn't sure why. Ravindra was right; at the end of the day, they were just a bunch of tourists from a far-flung location. She'd just have to hope that nobody went checking on Coromandel for an Admiral Ravindra.

Curlew
had reached the bay tunnel, sliding between the walls. An access ramp waited on the dock, ready to attach over the ship's external hatch. Proximity klaxons buzzed as the locking arms extended to hold the hull securely in place.

"Shut down all drives," Davaskar said.

Morgan let Jirra flip the switches. The clang reverberating through the hull heralded the ramp attaching. She took a deep breath. This was almost as bad as arriving on Ravindra's flagship,
Vidhvansaka
, when she didn't know anything about the aliens who had rescued her and Jones, and their disabled ship, the original
Curlew
. It might have been preferable if she hadn't used her own identity, but it was the easiest way to access funds. After she disappeared, Makasa would have had an alert put in place if anyone tried to access her account, but she could disable that, divert most of the funds to a new account and reapply the alert. Just as well she wasn't the sort to do anything
really
illegal. She could have cleaned out a bank.

She was on her feet as soon as the harness had retracted into the seat. Time to get moving.

Ravindra and Prasad waited for her at the access ramp. They looked so different wearing dark brown contact lenses, especially Ravindra. Still, even without those hawkish amber eyes, he'd draw attention. The patrol commander had got it in one; he oozed military and authority.

"Let's go."

She walked through the enclosed ramp into the station proper, along a passage which widened out into an entrance hall, where a barrier across the middle screened new arrivals. Morgan checked the signs. Those with a local id, and wearing a cranial implant, could pass through the leftmost gate. Locals without implants queued at the next gate, and foreign arrivals all went through a checkpoint on the right. Morgan motioned to the others and joined the rightmost line.

"Hardly a welcoming committee," Prasad said.

He was right. She counted ten… no, eleven armed troopers cradling rifles, all hovering around the slow-moving queues. There must have been twenty people in front of her, and the officials at the desk seemed to be taking their time to process each person. Several were led away on the other side of the barrier. Her stomach churned.
Steady, Morgan
. Getting processed on
Vidhvansaka
was much worse than this.

"They seem to have an awful lot of foreign arrivals." Ravindra exchanged a stare with one of the guards ambling past them, his weapon cradled in one arm. Like the others, the man wore armor, but the face plate was open.

As their turn approached, Morgan enhanced her hearing to eavesdrop on the man being processed. Short in stature, dark haired, he looked well-fed and well-dressed, but his shoulders slumped when the hard-faced woman at the desk pushed a data stick back at him. "This is open ended. We don't accept open-ended arrivals from Solvaria."

"It's a business meeting, a negotiation. I don't know how long I'll need." The despair in his tone was obvious.

Morgan would have bet the woman rolled her eyes at this point, her voice oozing long-suffering boredom. "We don't accept open-ended arrivals. Either you book a return or you leave now."

The visitor straightened up, jutting out his chin. "Fine. I'll book a return."

The woman gestured at a guard, who escorted the fellow away, while Morgan connected her implant to the station's data network. Solvaria. A list of items appeared in her mind. First things first: where was it, and what did it look like? The graphic displayed the usual cloud-covered sphere, a typical inhabited planet with a mass a little less than standard. Solvaria had been settled since before the Cyber Wars. Now, the weather patterns were changing. Storms had become more frequent and more severe, water levels were rising, and people were trying to leave. She flicked past rising unemployment rates, food shortages and riots, and looked for references to Solvaria in the local press. It seemed Solvarian arrivals were not popular.

"They're blocking arrivals from a planet called Solvaria," she told Prasad and Ravindra in Manesai. "It's in the nearest system to this one. Ocean levels are beginning to rise, society's collapsing, and people want to get out."

"I guess they would," Prasad said.

"Well, it seems they're not welcome. You should see all the comments panning these people because they don't use much tech. Ignorant, back-world, no-good, loafers. And they're the polite ones." Morgan jerked her eyebrows. "The news is full of reports of illegal immigration. I'll bet that's what that tramp freighter was about."

"Makes sense. It explains why they stopped us, too," Ravindra said.

"Next." The hard-faced woman gazed at them, one eyebrow arched, 'don't keep me waiting' etched onto her features.

As they stepped up to the desk, Morgan sensed the scanner check her implant, and wished once again that she could have pretended to be somebody else. But this was easier until she'd had a chance to hack their systems. Ravindra and Prasad handed over the ID sticks she'd created for them. Calm. She had to stay calm. This woman would have been trained to notice nervousness. She wouldn't get any from Prasad and Ravindra. The two of them might have been ordering drinks from a bar, not trying to slip past a planet's border control.

"You seem very busy," Prasad said, smiling at her.

The woman grunted, examining the data on the sticks. "A lot less busy than it has been." She locked gazes with Morgan, her blue eyes narrowed. "I see you were questioned about docking fees?"

Morgan pressed down the bubbling irritation. She hated officious little, jumped-up, petty bureaucrats. "I'll do the transfer as soon as we're through. I notice you have a line of booths over there."

"Humph." The woman looked away. Morgan was almost ashamed of her delight at the small triumph. The official couldn't hold her gaze, even with the contacts in place.

"Well, you've been warned about not making the payment." Smirking, the clerk thrust the IDs back at the two men and opened the exit gate. "Enjoy your stay."

Oh, that would go down well with Ravindra. The furrow between those black eyebrows attested to his reaction. "So far so good," Morgan said, lightly holding his arm. "Give me your ID stick. I'll go and organize the transfer."

Clutching Ravindra's ID stick, Morgan eased into the chair in the middle booth. A multi-dim transfer would cost a normal person, but not her. Using the data ports in her artificial eyes, she connected to the booth's input port and waited, watching the data packets fly between the logic gates like orchestrated lightning bolts. The booths were busy; two contained people transacting business, but not something she could use. Morgan wiled away the minutes, looking up a dress catalog with the human part of her mind, until someone entered the booth next to hers. She intercepted the data transmission, with its attendant security codes. Good enough to get her through to the multi-dim transmitter.

Once before she had done a job for Makasa which required her to use a false identity. She'd stored the data on her implant for 'just in case'. 'Just in case' had arrived. She sent off a batch of transactions: create a new account in the name of Marion Sefton, remove the alert from her account, transfer funds to the new account, replace the alert. Her account had held a sizable amount of credit before she disappeared and it would have attracted interest. Even so, she left the balance in credit, toying briefly with the notion of diverting funds from somewhere else to top up the amount. No. That would be stealing. She wouldn't stoop to that, yet. They had assets they could sell, and her funds would take them a long way. Next, she created an account for Ravindra. When they sold their assets, the funds would go to him.

The responses came through for each transaction, then she lodged the docking fees with the station authorities. And now it was time for Morgan Selwood to disappear. Using her Supertech skills, she changed the name and history on her ordinary human implant to Marion Sefton.

Sucking in a huge breath, she rose casually to her feet and walked out of the booth. Once they left this port, she'd change the ship's name from
Curlew
to Ravindra's chosen name —
Vulsaur
, the flying beast tattooed on his shoulder.

Ravindra and Prasad had strolled on, looking in the windows in the station shops. She caught up with them outside a souvenir shop, where they were picking through the guide books.

Ravindra looked up from the viewer and smiled as he took the ID back from her outstretched hand. "What now?"

"Now we go and sell some jewelry." Iniciaran credits would be accepted on any Coalition planet.

"This way to the transfer shuttle." Prasad nodded his head at the overhead sign.

A short walk brought them to a station, where they waited, with five other people, for the service to arrive. The doors hissed open as the automated voice announced the stop. The carriage wasn't crowded, but none of them bothered to sit, hanging on to the side rails instead. The two men gazed around them, interested in everything, their eyes moving to the people, then the advertizing strips. Neither of them would have missed a thing. One young man smirked and had a quiet conversation with his companion, his eyes on the back of Ravindra's head. Morgan eavesdropped.

"Look at that. He's got a ponytail. What a ponce."

"Yeah, so has the other one. Wonder if they're a coupla naffs?"

Naffs. That was a new one. She found a definition in a language database, and choked down the laugh. She remembered trying to explain homosexuals to Ravindra. The idea of him and Prasad… Words failed her. She chuckled.

Ravindra raised his eyebrows at her.

"Nothing. Really." She rubbed a hand over her mouth to hide the smile.

The transit carriage slowed to a halt. A slightly tinny, mechanical voice announced, "
This is the shuttle service. Passengers requiring transport to Neo Space Port should make their way to the departure gate immediately.
"