My Life: An Ex-Quarterback's Adventures in the Galactic Empire (36 page)

The important point was that none of the key officers left. That was the vote of confidence without which the continued survival of a freebooter was mere luck. Our activity did cause attrition through casualties, a cost of doing business, you might say. I never became completely callous to individual losses, but I did learn to think of the ship and crew as a whole rather than dwelling too much on the individuals. Again, thankfully, none of our casualties came from our officers, and especially not Jaenna, who recovered nicely from the wound she received on Calldlamm.

During this period, there was no further mention of Jaenna returning to Kaaran. More precisely, Jaenna never mentioned the subject and I tried to avoid thinking about it. There was no pressing need because, regardless of her social background, she seemed well suited to the life we were leading. Of course, that way of thinking may have only been my convenient rationalization for prolonging our relationship.

With the ship running smoothly, I finally had a chance to learn my job. Not to say that I learned how a starship really works or even how to fly it. I could have spent most of my lifespan studying and not learned enough for that. But that wasn’t essential for the captain. The captain’s job was to make the critical judgment calls. His officers and crew, if they were good, and mine were, took care of the rest. Looking back at some of my earlier choices in the fight for Franny and on Calldlamm, it was a miracle that any of us were alive. Despite this, there had been little, if any, dissent. It seemed that unless Srihani were ready for an open break, betrayal or rebellion, they were obedient to authority. Sometimes, I could detect approval or disapproval of a decision, but there would never be an open question once I had taken a position. As soon as I realized this, I was happy to get all the decision-making practice I could swatting merchanters.

We were also gaining notoriety in the stations of the Outer Empire. It was easy to slip into some establishment that favored the free flow of intoxicants and hear an amusing ballad about what we had done to Aalaza. Probably, it was that incident, more than any other, that earned us a place in the folklore of the Outer Empire. All our other actions were built around it and embroidered into one continuous story. Those whose first loyalty was to kvenningari would flinch at the songs, which just made them more popular among the freebooters. When our crew was on the premises, well, things sometimes got out of hand. The body count became inflated and found its way into a new stanza. It was a good thing I never read my press clippings.

If they were good months for us, they were calamitous for the empire, for reasons totally unrelated to our activity. Either Aalaza had had only part of the facts, or had been telling only part of the truth, when he told us of Jerem’s fate. The emperor had indeed been suckered and betrayed at Albane, and then defeated in a series of battles running across the Outer Empire. He had, ultimately, surrendered to Carrillacki ships.

He had not, however, become a Carrillacki puppet as Aalaza had claimed, but had died by his own hand after the surrender. His death created a peculiar situation for the empire, one that had its roots in the troubles of the Imperial line over the past several centuries. Regular crops of assassinations and battles for control of the emperor, following the destruction of Srihan, had greatly reduced the number of possible pretenders to the throne. Jerem had been a powerful planetary governor prior to becoming emperor, one of the few, according to Jaenna, whose power exceeded that of her father. The only reason that he had been accepted as emperor was that, at the time, he was the only survivor of the Imperial line.

The Great Kvenningari had been unhappy with the choice, but had been unwilling to destroy the fiction of an independent emperor. When Jerem had moved to make it a reality, and to reassert the old Imperial prerogatives, the kvenningari had moved against him, even at the cost of sending their units into action against the Fleet. The fact of that battle sent tremors through the empire that no amount of denial could completely calm.

The Carrillacki and their accomplices had wanted a puppet, not a corpse. Jerem had only one son, and he had disappeared during the fighting leaving no suitable candidate for the throne. The kvenningari set about finding candidates by means of gene maps—a clever high tech successor to the family tree. This created about a dozen candidates with some level of military support, but the kvenningari could not come to a consensus, or even develop enough support for one to push the others aside. The Fleet sat on its hands and the empire began to dissolve. In the midst of this, Jonthar a Jerem turned up. He had a reputation as a libertine, but he set about rallying the Fleet as best he could, setting it on a collision course with the kvenningari. The way things were going, I figured that we would be able to raid into the Inner Empire within a year.

It was against this backdrop that Franny docked at Tetragrammaton and I learned that the station manager had an urgent message for me. We traded regularly at Tetragrammaton Station, so that it was a logical place for a message to reach me. Despite past history, the association wasn’t as odd as it seemed. Tetragrammaton was a good station, very busy with connections everywhere. On our side, we were dependable when it came to bringing in loot, so they weren’t much bothered that I had once absconded with the Flower. Carvalho would have been bothered, no question about it, but no one had heard of the Flying Whore for months. Possibly, he had changed bases. Possibly, he had caught a missile. Regardless, I liked Tetragrammaton. Walk down the corridors of Tetragrammaton Station wearing Franny’s insignia and heads turned. It was like being a football star all over again.

The station manager at Tetragrammaton was named Loraan. In appearance, he was the antithesis of Dremmon of Graudoc. Loraan worked from an office not much bigger than a ship’s cabin. The floor was standard deck, the furnishings would have been at home in any modest office. Loraan himself was of compact build, and well along into middle age. The one jarring aspect to his appearance was his bright green goatee. I assume he dyed it to match the dominant color in his tunics. The ascetic appearance could be deceiving. Loraan maintained a full range of sybaritic delights on the station, all of which he was happy to offer to his friends.

Loraan had also been in charge of Tetragrammaton back when I heisted the Flower. Whenever the subject came up, he expressed great amusement over it. I had few illusions about his feelings. Loraan was a true friend, as long as you were winning. On this visit, he was all business right from the start. I had barely seated myself when he delivered his message.

After I heard it, “Carrillacki?” was all I was ultimately able to eke out.

“Interesting, isn’t it?” he asked, fingering the green hair at his chin. “Carrillacki and Tomarillio to be exact, but there is no question of who the senior partner is.”

I sat back, staring at the ceiling. Loraan had just made me an offer, or more precisely, Carrillacki had made the offer using Loraan as the middleman. Simply put, they were proposing to raise a force of five freebooters to bolster a combined fleet of theirs. The target had been left unstated, but I assumed that it had to be a world with heavy defenses.

“Loraan, you have heard, I’m sure, about the last offer I received from Carrillacki?”

“Of course.” He grinned. “However, I have already made the offer to the other four captains, so they are real, and they are all interested. One of them is Tomao, whose reputation I’m certain you know. I can also tell you that they are willing to follow your orders and to have you negotiate the terms for all of them with Carrillacki.”

“There was nothing about that in the proposal,” I pointed out.

“That is correct,” he replied. “But consider the situation, Danny. Five freebooters, acting independently, are unlikely to reach any agreement, much less to be an effective force. Now, I will receive a commission for arranging this and that depends on finding five captains who will reach an agreement with Carrillacki and perform as required. I decided that you should command. If it costs Carrillacki a little more than they had planned, that’s not my problem.”

“Does Carrillacki know that you are including me in the deal?”

“Certainly.”

“And they don’t care?”

Loraan looked at me as though I’d gone nuts. “Carrillacki will deal with anyone when it suits them. You should know that.”

Maybe I did. “What makes you so sure I will be interested?” I asked.

That’s when he laughed. “You’ve already done what most freebooters would dream of doing. Taking an Imperial ship, becoming rich, tweaking Carrillacki in the Inner Empire. What will you do next? Retire? Be realistic, this is a good planet! Such opportunities are rare. Go listen to the Carrillacki, Danny. You’re old enough to know how to watch your back. Go listen to him. You’ll take the offer.”

And earn Loraan his fat commission.

I went. It was obvious that Loraan had planned the entire meeting for a time when he guessed Franny would dock. It impressed me that he would go to so much trouble to ensure my participation. I felt relatively safe about attending since the Outer Empire stations needed the freebooters more than they did the kvenningari, but I still took Angel and ten of Jaenna’s troopers along for company. Loraan had set aside a comfortable duplex compartment for the event. There was an inner meeting room and a much larger outer lounge. The other four captains were there when I arrived and each of them had brought a sizable bodyguard. There was Tomao of the Avenging Sword, just as Loraan had claimed. He was a wizened old Srihani reputed to have more scar tissue than normal skin. Tomao had been fighting in the Outer Empire for longer than any other active freebooter, and was much feared and respected. I saw Demril a Staron, often called “the lucky.” Demril’s ship, Cursed Wonder, had once tangled with a Fleet cruiser in the gray zone. Demril had blown the Imperial and made it back to his base with a prize in spite of having lost three-quarters of his crew on a ship so smashed that it was pronounced unflyable by the dock chief who inspected it. The other two captains were Ginyera of Bloodthirsty and Pinyarar of Skulls, both young captains, each with a reputation for aggressiveness.

The Carrillacki arrived soon after I did, also with a bodyguard, and there was trouble immediately. The Carrillacki wanted his guards with him during the meeting, but wanted ours to wait outside. Ultimately, we compromised. All the guards waited out in the lounge area, while we worked in the meeting room. The Carrillacki waited until all of us had taken seats, then he stood up. Maybe he was trying to emphasize that he was in charge. Maybe he was just compensating for being short. The gesture was wasted.

“You may call me Tarnand a Gesilar,” he said. Then he waited. When he realized that no one was going to thank him for permission to use his name, he continued. “I’m here to propose a contract between your ships and Carrillacki. The contract is for a single action, during which you will fight as I assign, although you will not receive direct commands during the action. Are you agreeable?”

“We might be,” Tomao said, “if we like the details.”

“I cannot give you any details unless you agree,” was the Carrillacki reply.

It was going to be a very cold day in hell before I gave Carrillacki a blank check. “No details, no agreement,” I said. “Any freebooters you get on those terms won’t be worth having, so don’t think you can just walk out and find another group.”

Tarnand didn’t walk out. Instead, he began to bargain intensely over how much he would tell us before we would commit ourselves. My estimate of his ability rose as I saw how hard it was to make headway against him without having the disagreement reach the point of rupture. He knew what he was doing. On our side, the bargaining was limited to Tomao and myself. Demril was known for his bravery and his ability to extract the most from his ship. Political maneuvering wasn’t his strength. Ginyera and Pinyarar seemed to accept their junior status without comment. Eventually, we agreed that Tarnand would give us a general outline of the operation, without details of location or other forces. On that basis, we would commit to join the operation, as long as a suitable price could be agreed on after we heard the details. It was a strange bargain, something like the proverbial perfect compromise: nobody was really happy with the agreement, but everyone could live with it. At least, it seemed that way at the time.