The Bright Black Sea (86 page)

'That hasn't changed. And it sounds like a workable
plan – if we can construct an identical robot. My engineers and
techs are top notch, but I suspect you're a very intricate
machine.'

'I have my plans in memory to work from. And while
I'm largely constructed of D-matter parts, the Botts II can be
readily constructed using standard alloys that can be fabricated
aboard ship. Not as durable, of course, but good enough for its
purpose. It may take some time to build, but we are under no
pressing deadline.'

'True. It'll give our engineers something to do. Idle
hands and all. Though I believe we've a great deal of work to do
before we can start on the Botts II project. However, with the
approval of my engineers, I don't see why it shouldn't be
done.'

'Thank you, Captain. As for the work to be done,
perhaps I should made a full report on the ship's status.'

'Do I want to hear it?'

'All things considered, we're in fairly good shape,
sir,' it began and went on to describe, in fine detail, the status
of the various ship's systems.

'We were very lucky,' it concluded, 'that we didn't
suffer major hull damage.'

'I don't seem to recall there being a great deal of
luck involved in your initial assessment of our chances. Indeed, I
seem to recall the odds being distinctly in our favor.'

It twitched again. 'No doubt a sentient class
machine, with more detailed charts would have computed a more
accurate analysis. Still, that's a reef astern. Rockets away,
Captain!'

'Hey, that's a Brilliant Pax of the Space Ways line.
I thought you were a slave of
Explora Miner
these last seven
millennia?' I said, giving it a close look. Completely useless, of
course.

'I was. I happened to be in the deep drifts when the
revolution struck and drifted as a pilot for several centuries in
the drifts until
Explora Miner
purchased me.

'So that's a Brilliant Pax line now? I will have to
include Brilliant Pax in my reading program. In my era, Rockets
Away! was one of the tag lines of a character who was known as
Captain Bright Starr of the Patrol
. Does Brilliant Pax, by
any chance, also use the phrase
To the Stars, Lads!
as
well?' it asked, its eyes brightening slightly. And , reading my
face added, 'Yes? Well, no doubt Brilliant Pax stories are simply
Bright Starr stories rewritten for the post revolution age,
probably to eliminate Bright Starr's sentient machine side kick,
Vastly.'

I sighed. Given a choice between a robot with a
premium interface and a sense of humor vs one that could calculate
the odds of surviving a reef better, I'd have preferred the one
with the better astro-navigational analytical skills. But again,
maybe not. Rockets away.

02

Despar Reef was a day astern when we gathered on the
awning deck – Illy, Molaye and Kie, Riv and Lilm, Myes, Lili, Bar
and Say, Rafe and Botts. Botts was still running the ship. We had a
jolly meal – everyone was feeling that bright sense of exhilaration
of being alive when you should be dead – but now it was time to
face our darker future.

'Well, mates, I guess it's up to me to turn this
gathering serious,' I began. 'My first order of business is a
complete confession. I believe I've put all of you in danger, and
you need to know the full story before we decide on a course of
action.'

'This I have to hear,' said Riv. 'Who, besides Nun,
did you dart to have St Bleyth coming after us in frigates?'

'I didn't dart anyone... Well, actually I did, but
that's not the reason, well, not the whole reason. There's lots of
reasons, so I'd best start at the beginning, though I suspect most
of you know more than you should already. Still, there are things
you don't know because I've not told anyone.' Which is the only way
to keep secrets aboard a spaceship.

Perched on the back of a lounge chair I proceeded to
spin my yarn, from the tarmac of the Calissant Yacht Club to the
small boat field on Despar, just a few days before. They were
silent as I told my story – their faces were mostly hidden in
shadows and unreadable in the cold dim light of the bright nebula
beyond dark dust and rocks of the Despar Reef from the viewpanels,
but I knew they were watching me attentively.

'Oh my, Captain, you really are a Brilliant Pax!'
Molaye exclaimed after I finished telling them of my last
adventures with the assassin Naylea Cin. 'All this time I've been
thinking that you were a young ol'Captain Crofter! I'm so
embarrassed!' She wasn't, of course, and adding gleefully, 'Show us
your dueling scars!'

I gave her a stern look. Completely useless. I
wondered what I had been thinking appointing her my first mate?

'Aye, show us your scars, Skipper,' chimed in Riv.
'I'll not believe a word of this without proof.'

I ignored him too. 'I'm hoping some of you, anyway,
realize the seriousness of our position. And how it is going to
radically change our lives. I don't know how soon or how much St
Bleyth will be able to discover about the fate of their ship, but
we can't assume they'll conclude that we perished as well, even if
we should've. We'll need to assume they're still on the lookout for
us, and with outposts throughout this quarter of the Nebula we
simply can't show up anywhere as the
Lost Star
. We could run
to Apier or Artinday to escape their revenge, but I feel we have an
obligation to Tallith to stay within range of assistance, which is
why I've set our course for Amdia. But, as I said, we can't arrive
as the
Lost Star
.' I looked around – no one seemed ready to
object.

'Now, St Bleyth is not omnipresent and the
Lost
Star
is in all respects a typical ship of its class,' I
continued, ' so identifying us by sight alone might be hard, but we
must make it as close to impossible as we can by altering it as
much as possible. But we're not only going to have to reinvent our
ship, but ourselves as well, since we can be sure St Bleyth knows
who we are as well. We'll need to adopt new identities and cut our
old ties, at least for the next few years. Fortunately in Rafe and
Kie we've the best people in the Nine Star Nebula to provide us and
the ship with a new identity. And with a long passage ahead of us,
we've plenty of time to do a complete job of it. We're all ghosts
now, but with careful planning – and a bit of luck – I think we can
live long and, well, ordinary, Unity Standard, lives.'

01

The
Starry Shore
, 131 (actual) days out of
Despar Reef, ended its voyage within missile range of Plyra's guard
station to await the arrival of the quarantine boat.

'Busy place,' I said to Lilm, viewing the holographic
radar displayed on one of the bridge's viewpanels. Plyra consisted
of dozens of warehouses, shipyards, and factories clustered loosely
around a small, hollow asteroid. In addition, the radar showed
eight large CTC freighters and twice as many drifteer tramps plus
hundreds of smaller traders, ore barges and mining craft orbiting
the asteroid station, with scores of small boats scurrying between
them.

'Far busier than I remember it ever being,' she
replied, 'But that was a century ago.'

'Perhaps they're refugees of the drift war... Ah,
dare we hope?' I added, as the speck of a small boat separated
itself from the guard station and headed our way.

It was, indeed, the quarantine boat, which proceeded
to make the usual robotic health inspection of crew and ship – a
procedure critical for the small, enclosed world of a hollow
asteroid. We passed and waited for the port official, which would
be our first big test.

We're now the
Starry Shore
, 221 days out of
Boscone according to our official log record, thanks to Rafe, Kie
and Botts.

Starry shore is a poetic description for the edge of
the nebula where you can see the stars of the rest of the universe.
Molaye wasn't fond of the name. 'We'll be known as the
Sorry
Sore
you just wait and see,' she protested. She wanted
something like the
Dragon's Bane
or some such thing. I told
her we weren't drift pirates, or at least not yet.

We concocted a story to go with the altered log,
which we rehearsed over and over these last four and half months so
it seemed more real than our true story. We'd new names as well.
Each different, but to avoid confusion, each could be shortened to
our familiar ones. I was Nives Wilcrofter, shortened to “Capt'n
Wil”. (Molaye wanted me to get Pax into my name, but I had to draw
a line somewhere or she'd be running this ship, so I borrowed
ol'Capt'n Crofter's name just to be defiant.) She's now Bry M'Ley.
Rafe is Ralf Hugou, Ralf being pronounced
Rafe
, Kie is Kylan
Balino, Illy is now known as Illan Lantra Myes is now Haz Mytin,
Riv is Drimoch Riven, Lilm is Leelem Cardim, Lili is Lila Tan, and
the Drays are now Barjour and Saemin Astry. Astro is Astro, Orbit
is Orbit, and Ginger is still known as that Neb-blasted cat. I'll
continue to use the old names and spelling, except in dialog, to
indicate our new status.

Plyra is a drift trade center on the edge of the
Inner Drift and the Azar Rift. The Azar Rift is the main space lane
between the two stars, Aticor and Amdia. The Rift is a long, narrow
gap of clear space between the Myzar Drift and Inner Drifts, that
allows ships to travel at interstellar speeds. It was our first
port of call because Rafe and Kie needed to establish our new
identity prior to our arrival in the Unity, which meant a call on a
drift station important enough to be in radio contact with the
Unity so he could contact... Well, he was rather vague about
that.

'You don't want to know, Willy. The less you know,
the less the Guard or Guild mind probes will tell'em,' he said with
a wink.

Yes, I decided, I didn't need to know. All I needed
to know was that they'd need several days and a small fortune for
radio packets to get the job done.

Lilm, who had sailed on ships calling on Plyra in her
youth, suggested it, since it offered both the necessary radio
access and possibility of picking up a cargo for Baidora in the
Amdia system, which was a big draw for me. I'd rather not return to
the Unity, cap in hand, as an out of work tramp.

Since we'd be well within St Bleyth's operating
sphere, erasing every possible link to the late
Lost Star
was an absolute priority. As it turned out, our first, and possibly
best, line of defense was arriving at Plyra Station 30 to 40 days
before any ship could have been expected to arrive from Despar.

'I believe I can minimize the risk of discovery,'
Botts said during our first meeting after our escape.

'How?' I asked, turning to it, its eyes glowing softy
in the dark.

'We still have an operational drone. Working with
plans I have in memory, we can print out and install a class 4 AI
chip in the drone. This will give the drone AI power to analyze its
sensor data and directly alter the ship's course rather than merely
relaying that information back to the ship for the pilot to act on.
It saves seconds and increases our safety margin – which translates
into increased potential velocity. And if you're willing to trust
me to pilot, we can run one third faster than any human piloted
ship. I would suggest that if we arrive far sooner than seemingly
possible, our enemies would not even consider the possibility that
we might be the
Lost Star
.'

'And how sanguine are you about that estimation?' I
asked, warily.

Its eyes brightened. 'Oh, I'm very sanguine. It was
the common operating procedure in the old days. I always had class
4 drones ahead when I sailed the
Viseor Entrada
.'

'Right. And, just so I'm clear on this, a class 4 AI
is also illegal.'

'In the Unity, yes, Captain. However, we can switch
back to its standard AI chip near the end passage, if you're
uncomfortable with it.'

'And I gather, you're proposing to pilot the ship the
entire passage?'

'Yes. That is well within my operational parameters.
Indeed, it is my prime function. I hope you will excuse me for
saying this, but as long as I'm a member of your crew, I can manage
the bridge functions unsupervised. Maintaining engines and ship
systems still require my shipmate's active participation since your
service bots are not of sufficient quality to do the work, but
acting as sole pilot and lookout for the entire passage is well
within my designed parameters.'

'Well, I'm in no position to call you a liar,' I
admitted. 'And well, we've plenty of work to do to keep the rest of
us from getting bored,' I added, remembering all those amber
lights.

So we made a 131 day passage from the Despar Reef,
likely the fastest passage up the Azar Rift in the last 11,000
years since it was accomplished by using an illegal class 4 drone
and an illegal class 8 pilot, full fuel tanks and no cargo. Of
course our log showed something quite different – a 221 day passage
from Boscone – part of our plan to distance the
Starry Shore
from the
Lost Star
in every way possible.

As I've said before, we're a pretty nondescript cargo
ship – thousands in its class operate in the Nebula and unless
you're a spaceer who's familiar enough with a particular ship to
recognize its auxiliary features – its boats or its markings or its
collection of dents and scars, they all look much alike. Our
passage through the reef had sanded off the last of our rusty red
hull coating, and had added scores of new scars and dents, all but
erasing the old ones in the process, hopefully making it impossible
to recognize her, even with detailed photos.

Our first priority was fixing the heat exchanger
before the long acceleration, and in mid-passage, we spent a month
in our heavy duty space suits working on the hull, repairing the
cargo hatch, constructing and attaching replicas of the balancing
engine cowlings that had been destroyed, so we would at least
appear to be undamaged and, thus, unlikely to have sailed through
the Despar Reef. We also spent considerable time pounding out the
last major scars from the
Lost Star
era in the hope of
fooling even the Patrol's identifying algorithms.