Her Brother's Keeper Read online

  Fortunately for Catherine, patience was something she had in abundance. She sat quietly in her chair on the Andromeda’s command deck, studying the various displays available to her. She didn’t like using the heads-up display eyepieces that many preferred; they always seemed to give her headaches.

  On her main screen was a projection of two possible routes to Zanzibar, and she didn’t like either of them. Zanzibar wasn’t the farthest-flung rock that humanity clung to, but coming all the way from the Arthurian System it might as well have been. Catherine blinked hard for a moment; she’d been staring at her displays for far too long. There was nothing for it. Looking at the screen more intently wasn’t going to change the geometry of space-time. Even following the fastest route, it would take the Andromeda months to arrive at her destination. Unfortunately, the fastest route also meant going through some places that Catherine would rather avoid. Worse, that route was still the best option—the next-fastest route would add weeks to her transit time, and Catherine was in something of a hurry. Well, she thought, as much as one can be in a hurry when crossing interstellar distances.

  One of her screens displayed a warning: T-minus 120 seconds to thrust. A moment later a voice piped up on the intercom throughout the ship. It was Colin, the Andromeda’s junior pilot. “Standby for turnover. Sixty seconds.”

  Catherine smiled. Colin was young, only twenty-six standard years old, and full of youthful exuberance. He was always cheerful and was genuinely excited about his duties. The warning gave everyone on board who wasn’t strapped down time to grab onto something. A minute later, the Andromeda vibrated with the momentary firing of her maneuvering thrusters. In the blackness of space, the ship silently and gracefully flipped a hundred and eighty degrees, so that she was sailing tail-first toward her destination. “Turnover complete,” Colin announced. “Stand by for burn. One gravity, thirty seconds.”

  Right on the mark, the ship rumbled as her four primary magneto-inertial fusion rockets lit up, blue-white exhaust flares lancing out into the void. Catherine felt the weight returning to her body as the ship accelerated, leveling off at what was close enough to one standard gravity as to make no difference. The vibrating and rumbling of the hull stabilized as the ship settled into her burn.

  “One gravity,” Colin announced cheerfully. “Burn time is one hour. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

  The intercom fell silent and Catherine unbuckled her harness. Standing up on the command deck, she stretched and brushed the wrinkles out of her flight suit. “I have a meeting in Astrogation,” she announced to the two junior officers on deck. “Mister Azevedo, you have the ship. Herr von Spandau will take command once the meeting is over.”

  Luis Azevedo was another junior officer, and had been on board for less than a year. He hailed from Novo Brasil and had served in the merchant fleet there before being recruited onto the Andromeda. “Understood, Captain!” he said, standing up. He stepped across the command deck and stood by the captain’s chair. He wouldn’t sit until after Catherine had left, which was apparently tradition on Novo Brasil. There wasn’t really a whole lot for him to do anyway, even during a burn, other than to stand watch and monitor systems. Still, it was good experience for him, especially for when his captain ran emergency training drills on him.

  Catherine took one last look around the command deck. Luis stood with his hands folded behind his back next to her chair, his sage green flight suit crisp and presentable. There wasn’t any reason he had to sit in her chair when assuming command. All of her displays could be brought up at his station. It was simply a spacefaring tradition, one that went back centuries. The other junior officer, Nattaya Tantirangsi, stayed at her console and focused on her duties. The captain nodded at Azevedo, turned, and left the compartment.

  After a more rigorous stretching routine outside the hatch, where no one could see her, Catherine descended down one deck to Astrogation. A gruff voice with a thick Germanic accent announced, “Attention on deck!” when Catherine appeared in the compartment. It was Wolfram von Spandau, her First Officer and second-in-command of the Andromeda.

  “Wolfram, please,” she said, smiling. “Such formality is not necessary.”

  “Understood, Kapitänin,” he replied dutifully. Catherine knew full well he wasn’t going to change his ways. The stern spacer was a veteran of the Concordiat Defense Force and ran a very tight ship. The more relaxed atmosphere of a civilian privateer seemed to make him uncomfortable. Catherine had to force herself not giggle at him sometimes.

  There was no reason she had to come down to Astrogation for this meeting. There was no real reason they even had to have a “meeting” in the first place. The Andromeda was almost seventy meters long, big for a ship in her class, but she still made for cramped quarters. Catherine could have just as easily had this discussion with her officers over the ship’s network, but the captain liked to do things the old-fashioned way. She preferred face-to-face sit-downs with her officers and to talk in person. Some of her crew considered this habit an Avalonian quirk, and maybe it was. In any case, Astrogation had the new ultra-high-resolution holotank installed. That piece of equipment hadn’t been cheap, and Catherine was determined to get as much use out of it as she could.

  “Everyone relax,” Catherine said to her assembled officers, who were crowded onto the Astrogation Deck. “I need your input on this. First, I apologize for waiting so long to fully brief everyone on the mission we are currently undertaking. It was for security reasons, and to protect client confidentiality. Has everyone gone over the information I sent them?” The room nodded in agreement. “Good. As you’ve probably ascertained, our destination is not actually Columbia. Astrogation, show us the way.”

  Kel Morrow, the Andromeda’s third officer and chief astrogator, nodded. “Yes ma’am.” His fingers rapidly tapped at the controls for the holotank. The display started with a close-in 3D image of the ship, thrusting tail-first along a projected line of trajectory. The image zoomed outward, showing the trajectory from the jump point through which the Andromeda had entered the system to the one through which it would leave. “We’re forty-four hours from docking with this resupply station,” he said. The holotank portrayed a 3D image of an automated orbital platform from which the Andromeda would purchase reaction mass and supplies. “From there, we’ve got another hundred and eighteen hours until we translate to Lambert-1267. That’s where we have to make our choice of route.”

  “Explain,” the captain ordered. She knew the details, but she wanted to have things laid out plainly so her officers could offer useful input. She hadn’t gotten into the details of their destination in the briefing.

  “It’s very simple,” Morrow said. “Lambert-1267 has three known transit points, including the one through which we’ll be translating into the system.” The holotank projected an image of the Andromeda flashing through the transit point into the Lambert-1276 system, which consisted of only a red dwarf star. “One route will take us about four thousand hours to navigate, going through these systems.” The holographic display zoomed out even further, showing a three-dimensional map of the local section of the galaxy. Glowing lines delineated stars connected by naturally occurring transit points. The route the ship was to take was displayed in red, with an alternate in blue, connecting the dots of stars, threading through the quantum maze of space-time from their present location all the way to Zanzibar.

  Wolfram von Spandau and Kel Morrow had both known the ultimate destination. The rest of her officers had only been told that they were going to go pick up a VIP, her brother, from the Llewellyn Freehold. There were noticeable reactions from her crew when they realized the terminus of their route.

  Catherine raised an eyebrow. “Thoughts?”

  Chief Engineer Indira Nair, the Second Officer, was the first to speak up. “Captain, your brother is on Zanzibar? Why is he there?”

  “Another time, please. It’s something of a long story. Give me your assessment of the routes.”

  The e
ngineer looked back at the holotank, squinting a little. “These are the only two routes we can take?”

  “For all practical purposes,” Morrow said, “yes. We can vary either route through different systems, but none of those variations shortens the transit time. The routes chosen require the least amount of remass.”

  “Madarchod,” she cursed. “The red route takes us there by way of Orlov’s Star. I would rather not go through Combine space.”

  “Agreed,” grunted Wolfram. “Kapitänin, it would be better if we could avoid the Orlov Combine altogether.”

  “Indeed,” the captain agreed. “I think I speak for all of us when I say that none of us want to risk traversing their system. However, the alternate route is much further.”

  “The blue route adds another thousand hours of travel time to our journey,” Astrogator Morrow explained, “assuming no complications. There are a lot of empty systems along the blue route, and it takes us a lot further out of our way. That’s where the frontier was during the Second Interstellar War. There’s not much out there these days.”

  “I . . . see,” Indira admitted. She was a dark-skinned, dark-haired woman of Indian descent, with a razor-sharp mind and a blunt, upfront demeanor that Catherine found refreshing. “We will need to resupply. The ship was not designed for an unsupported patrol of that duration. We must be cautious.” She didn’t need to say what everyone was thinking. Running out of food, water, or reaction mass and being stranded in a remote star system was most spacers’ worst nightmare.

  “Precisely,” Catherine agreed. “I’ve run the numbers. We can make it on that route. But we’ve got a thin margin of error, thinner than I’m comfortable with, and it assumes successful resupply in places that we don’t have any up to date information on. This is a rescue mission. We’re somewhat pressed for time.”

  Wolfram spoke up again. “With careful planning and execution, we could take the longer route and make up some of the lost time. It would require maximum efficiency in our flight operations. There is more risk, yes, but surely that risk is no greater than going through Orlov’s Star? The Combine is as likely as not to simply confiscate our ship and imprison us all for being spies.”

  Catherine didn’t think it was as dire as that; independent courier ships traversed that system semi-regularly. There was experience behind her first officer’s words, however. The Orlov Combine was a paranoid, xenophobic, total surveillance state. Its militant collectivist government put on a big show about being open to trade, and in fact many independent systems traded with them to get raw materials at low prices. But a single independent ship, with most of its crew hailing from the colonies of the Interstellar Concordiat? It was risky. The Orlov Combine considered the Concordiat the great imperialist oppressor and the reason for all of the suffering and poverty in their own system.

  The Andromeda was a licensed privateer in Concordiat space, but was actually registered out of the small, independent colony of Heinlein. Theoretically, Catherine thought, there shouldn’t be any legal hassles so long as they made sure they did everything correctly (including the paying of bribes).

  Theoretically.

  Wolfram von Spandau frowned at the holotank for a moment before speaking. “Could we not go around Orlov’s Star?” Stepping forward, he tapped the holotank controls rapidly. The red route was altered, going several star systems out of its way to avoid Combine space.

  “That route is technically possible, but logistically not so much. Our route depends on us being able to resupply at Orlov’s Star. There aren’t enough resupply points along that route that would allow us to simply circumvent Combine space. By the time we get close to Orlov’s Star, we’ll need to resupply there or else we will not make it to Zanzibar.”

  “Agreed,” Indira Nair said. She studied the route for a moment, then sighed. “I hope you were paid up front, Captain.”

  “Uh, Cap’n, may I?” The question came from Mordecai Chang, the ship’s purser, bookkeeper, and quartermaster. Unlike the rest of her officers, he wasn’t present in person. His image appeared on a screen, as he was broadcasting from his workstation deep within the bowels of the ship. Catherine nodded at the screen, and Mordecai addressed the assembled officers. “Our contract with Blackwood & Associates stipulates that we are to find and recover one Cecil Ray Blackwood from the planet Zanzibar whether he is alive or dead.” The screen split, showing Mordecai’s image on one side and highlighted text from the contract on the other. “Our information is, obviously, months out of date, but he is being held for ransom. The client has paid half up front, given the distance we need to travel and the possibility that our subject may have expired long before we get there. The client agreed to a stipulation providing for a rather large emergency fund for the paying of ransoms, bribes, or otherwise greasing the proverbial wheels of commerce as necessary. If we get Mr. Blackwood home alive, we get not only the other half of the agreed payment but an additional twenty percent bonus, to be divided up equally amongst the crew, with the exception of the captain.”

  “This is personal for me. I don’t require a bonus for saving my brother,” Catherine stated.

  Mordecai continued, looking at something off-screen. “If Mr. Blackwood is dead, we lose the twenty percent bonus but are still paid the rest of our contract price. That’s unusual for a rescue mission, as is the amount they’re paying us. Cap’n, it’s none of my business, but I think it’d be more cost-effective for your father to just have another son.”

  Coming from anyone but her eccentric purser, that statement might have been insulting, but Mordecai was a wizard with money and tended to do a cost-benefit analysis on everything, almost compulsively. Catherine smiled lopsidedly. He was good enough at his job that she accommodated his severe social anxiety issues. “Aye, but we Avalonians are a clannish lot,” she said, laying on her accent. “It would’na do for a man in me father’s position to simply abandon his eldest son and heir.”

  “Understood, Cap’n,” Mordecai replied, though Catherine very much doubted that he did. He had been raised and educated remotely, by machines. He was brilliant, but had difficulty relating to people. He rarely came out of his workstation. “I’m not complaining, merely pointing out the obvious.” Such things were rarely obvious to anyone but Mordecai. “This endeavor is costing your father tens of millions of credits.”

  “Indeed,” the captain said with a slight nod, “and in this case we owe it to the client to make every effort to accomplish the task. As I said, this is personal for me, a matter of blood and honor. That said, I wouldn’t ask you all to go along with this if I thought it was going to get you killed. The mission will be risky, but it won’t be the craziest thing we’ve ever done. The payment for this one should be enough for us to get the reactor refurbished and the propulsion system overhauled, for starters.”

  Indira’s eyes lit up, though she maintained her reserve. “We’ll finally be able to get the reactor upgrades I’ve been asking for?”

  Catherine nodded with a slight smile.

  “Very good, then,” she said simply, actually smiling.

  Well, Catherine thought. That seems to have won them over. She knew her crew harbored unvoiced concerns that Catherine’s family was manipulating her into taking on a fool’s errand that could get them killed or leave them financially ruined. (Unvoiced by all but Wolfram; he had asked Catherine bluntly when she returned from her meeting with her father, like a good exec should.) Finding out just how lucrative this job could be seemed to have assuaged their concerns. But still, Catherine wondered. Mordecai isn’t wrong. It would be easier for Father to have another son. He’d have to marry again, and his new bride would likely be younger than me, but such things are hardly unheard of.

  Something about it bothered her. He had practically thrown the money at her, barely concerning himself with the details of her expenses and fees. This, coming from Augustus Blackwood, the notorious, penny-pinching tightwad who was even more obsessive-compulsive about managing his money than Mor
decai was. (There was an unflattering rumor that her father kept a large bin of hard currency somewhere, simply so he could swim in it. That one wasn’t true, so far as Catherine knew.) Catherine couldn’t put her finger on it, but something felt off about the whole thing. Her father had told her that Cecil had been on some kind of treasure hunt, but that he wasn’t sure on the specifics. He said that he’d warned Cecil that he was going to get himself killed. Why risk so much to go get him when there was a goodly chance he was already dead? Why go through all the trouble to track Catherine down? It would’ve been faster and likely less expensive to hire a different privateer, after all.

  Cecil, what are you doing out there? Collecting her thoughts, Catherine returned her attention to her assembled officers. “There is another, unfortunately pressing reason to take the shorter of the two routes. It offers more places to resupply, rearm, and recruit.”

  The crewmembers looked at each other. Wolfram was silent. He already knew the plan.

  “Recruit who, Captain?” Kel Morrow asked.

  Cargomaster Kimball, a diminutive man with curly hair and a goatee, was the ship’s fourth officer. “We have fifteen open berths right now,” he said, “but we’ll need to take on additional supplies if we’re going to have more bodies on board.” The Andromeda had something of an unusual interior layout for a ship in her class. She was designed around a small crew and, in the gravest extreme, could successfully be piloted for a time by a single crewmember. She carried a complement of sixteen at present, and that was enough for Catherine’s purposes. She had berthing for a up to thirty personnel plus the captain, which was large for a patrol ship. This design quirk allowed Catherine to carry extra passengers without the risks inherent in putting them into cold sleep.