Her Brother's Keeper Page 7

  The Andromeda approached New Austin at a comparatively high relative velocity. Tail first, she sailed into a low orbit, descending into the upper reaches of the planet’s atmosphere. Her thermally shielded tail section heated up as she skimmed the atmosphere, bleeding off velocity and using far less propellant to decelerate than she would have otherwise. A single orbital rotation was enough to slow her to descent speed. The trajectory plotted by the flight computer had the ship begin her descent far above Aterrizaje, the colonial capital and home to the planet’s largest spaceport.

  Guided by spaceport traffic control, her systems synced with those on the ground to prevent a collision with other ships, the Andromeda descended through New Austin’s atmosphere. Riding on her engines in a spectacular plume of smoke and fire, she gracefully slowed to almost a hover a few hundred meters over her designated landing pad. Sturdy landing jacks extended from the thick wingroots of her four large airfoils. The heavy ship set down on the landing pad amidst the roar of her engines and the smoke created by her exhaust. The landing gear hydraulics compressed as engine power was cut, and the stout craft curtsied politely as she settled onto terra firma. The ship’s engines were locked out and the landing pad’s service tower automatically aligned itself with the now-open ventral cargo bay. It adjusted itself to the correct height and length as it craned outward, like some kind of massive mechanical snake, and coupled with the cargo bay.

  Inside, the Andromeda’s crew was quickly but carefully running through their postflight checklists and procedures. Even experienced spacers tended to move awkwardly after a months-long journey, most of which was spent in freefall, but the crew hustled as best they could. The captain had announced that they’d be dirtside for several local weeks, and that this was the last chance they’d get to stretch their legs and have some fun before the long haul to Zanzibar. The sooner the crew finished their assigned tasks, the sooner they could be out blowing their accumulated pay in the bars and brothels that had inevitably sprung up around every port since mankind had first taken to the sea, thousands of years before.

  Catherine’s officers and crew were busily making sure everything that she’d wanted done was seen to. Food stores were ordered from local suppliers, planetside maintenance was scheduled, and a refill for the ship’s huge reaction mass tank was ordered. The liberty rotation had already been planned. The Andromeda was docked at a major spaceport with professional security, so there was little need for a standard watch rotation. Most of her crew would be heading out to have some fun.

  Catherine had a lot of business to attend to during their stay, so she allowed herself the luxury of a few minutes to herself while she could. In the confines of her tiny cabin (the only such on the ship—being the captain had its privileges), she stripped out of her flight suit and entered her extremely cramped personal bathing unit, enjoying a gloriously long, hot shower. It felt good to be on a planet, with real gravity, the way human beings were meant to.

  Stepping out of her bathing unit, she dried herself off with an utterly decadent fluffy towel, made of genuine, organic Egyptian cotton. She brushed her long, dark hair out thoroughly before rubbing the last of her body lotion onto her skin. The recycled air and artificial environment of the ship dried her skin out terribly. She would have to remember to stock up on her lotions and various other indulgences while she had the chance.

  Catherine’s wardrobe locker didn’t have a lot of clothing in it. She had more flight suits than she did normal clothes. In her travels over the years, she had been to countless colony worlds, and each had its own fashions. What’s more, different areas, subcultures, and cities often had their own unique styles as well. For a well-traveled spacer, it was nearly impossible to blend in with the locals in most. There simply wasn’t enough space on the average ship for a large enough collection of clothes. As such, many spacers simply wore their crew uniforms when out and about.

  Catherine was tired of her sage green flight suits, though, and found a nondescript pair of slacks and a purple, collared blouse to wear. From what she’d read about New Austin, this wouldn’t draw any odd looks from the locals. Their style of dress wasn’t particularly interesting or much different from hers. There was an old joke across civilized space that if a person walks in dressed like a hick but acting like he owned the place, he was a spacer. The origins of the saying and of the pejorative “hick” were a mystery, but in Catherine’s experience it was mostly true.

  For this reason, she normally didn’t worry about appealing to the local aesthetic sensibilities. Around spaceports, it was simply expected and accepted that there would be people from other places, bringing with them different cultures, languages, and modes of dress. But given the nature of her present mission, Catherine felt the need to keep a low profile. Swaggering around Aterrizaje in her flight suit and leather flight jacket wasn’t how one kept a low profile.

  An electronic chirp told her someone was at the door just as she finished pulling on her boots. “It’s open,” she said, standing up and smoothing her blouse.

  “Kapitänin,” Wolfram von Spandau said, with a polite nod.

  Her security officer, Mazer Broadbent, simply said, “Skipper.”

  Catherine smiled at her two dour officers as she punched a code into a small secure storage locker. “Mazer, what are the local regulations regarding the carrying of weapons?”

  “Legal so long as you’re on peaceable business,” the broad-shouldered security man said. “The city has an ordinance against carrying weapons while intoxicated. The spaceport frowns on the open carrying of arms on its property. It draws attention.”

  “Very well,” Catherine said. From the locker she picked the smaller of the two weapons there, a compact pulse laser with an abbreviated grip. It wasn’t particularly powerful, but it was easy to conceal. The holster for it attached to her belt, just behind her right hip, and kept the butt of the weapon up high and tight against her side. A slight bulge was visible under her purple blouse, but after Catherine threw on a light jacket it disappeared completely.

  Satisfied, the captain turned to her men. “Alright then. I don’t know about you gentlemen, but they raise cattle on New Austin and I intend to have myself a steak.” Catherine’s officers fell in behind her as she made her way down to the cargo bay and out into the spaceport itself. Planning was best done over a hearty meal.

  Capitol Starport, as it was known, was a sprawling complex a dozen kilometers outside of the city of Aterrizaje. In addition to long runways for spaceplanes and traditional aircraft, it boasted twenty landing pads, several of which were rated for some of the heaviest ships and the highest exhaust velocities. Railways carried ore and materials from distant refineries, and automated passenger trains brought travelers to and from the city. Aterrizaje was very near New Austin’s equator, improving launch ballistics. Routine shuttle traffic from the Starport offered service to a space dock in geostationary orbit thirty-five thousand kilometers above it, allowing planetary access for very large and other nonatomospheric ships.

  Despite having a small population, New Austin was growing. It was the last Concordiat colony along the Andromeda’s planned route, but the system enjoyed multiple transit points to other stars and was strategically located along popular trade routes. This was one of the reasons for the colony’s founding; before the Second Interstellar War, the planet was home to only a few thousand prospectors, and was little more than an outpost. As the hostile aliens pushed deeper and deeper into Concordiat space, a desperate program of rapid colonization, decentralization, and strategic positioning was undertaken. The Concordiat very nearly lost the war and it was feared that even Earth itself would fall to the alien onslaught. The human race was determined to spread out as far and wide as possible as a bulwark against extinction.

  The tide of the war turned. The aliens, Maggots as they were colloquially known, were frighteningly advanced but few in number. They were believed to be the last dwindling remnants of an ancient and once-mighty empire. As Concordi
at and allied forces began to counter their tactics and push back, the aliens proved unable to adapt. It was believed that they didn’t have thousands of years of vicious warfare in their recent racial memory, the way humans did. Whatever the reason, when humanity regrouped, the Concordiat and its allies put together the largest space armada in human history. They rolled through Maggot systems with a genocidal vengeance, destroying every enclave of the aliens that was found.

  With the war won and the Maggots believed to be extinct, the Concordiat Contingency Colonization Initiative was defunded. New Austin had been supplied with a generous amount of starter infrastructure, and had been spared the horrors and destruction of the war. Without the C3I in place, though, its population and output expanded only slowly, at a natural pace. A century after the war, the growing colony was making peaceful, lucrative use of its strategic location along the interstellar trade lanes. In another two or three generations it would have the population and economic base to qualify for full Concordiat membership.

  Catherine and her two crewmen found themselves in one of the starport’s many restaurants. They were noticeably more expensive than what you’d find in town, but it saved a trip to the city and back. This particular establishment was called Buffalo Bill’s Roadhouse and Steakery. Catherine didn’t know who Buffalo Bill was, and she doubted that “steakery” was actually a word, but her cut of real beef was grilled to perfection and she attacked it greedily. Meals like this were a rare treat for spacers; typical rations, even if they claimed to be beef, rarely tasted like it. It seemed to Catherine that no matter whether the package claimed it was beef, chicken, pork, or something else, the ration meat always tasted the same and smelled like cat food.

  The décor of the Steakery was modeled after stereotypical, romanticized notions of the ancient American West. The tables, floors, and walls all looked like they were made of wood. Spools of rope, horseshoes, and other equestrian accessories hung on the walls, as did more than one pair of steer horns. The staff wore denim blue jeans, wide-brimmed hats, and spoke with a typical New Austin drawl that was as much a product of the colony’s marketing efforts as it was normal linguistic evolution. Being a higher-priced establishment, the Steakery used human servers and chefs, instead of automating it all for efficiency. Twangy acoustic guitar music played over the sound system as the three spacers finished their meals and their table was cleared.

  Catherine laid her tablet on the table and looked over at her security officer. “Mazer, this is your area of expertise. What would you say is the preferred way to go about recruiting the sort of people we need? Shall we contact the local security companies?”

  Mazer Broadbent took a long swig from the mug of dark beer in front of him. “I wouldn’t say so, Skipper. I’ve checked out the local companies. They’re small-timers; security guards, bodyguards, things like that. A lot of them employ former military, but not necessarily the caliber of person we’re looking for. Also, these companies may not be prepared to support an operation like this contractually. In my opinion, our best bet is to recruit the same way we’d recruit crewmembers: post ads on the local network and interview prospects that reply. I uploaded an ad to that effect once we got close enough to New Austin to connect to its network.”

  “Very good,” the captain said. “Any replies as of yet?”

  “Several, Skipper,” Mazer answered. “I’ll begin the vetting process after this meeting.”

  The XO spoke up. “Perhaps it would be advisable to take the initiative, check the local job boards, and contact those prospects who might be qualified. We are pressed for time.”

  “Indeed we are, Wolfram,” Catherine agreed. “Very well. Mazer, get someone to help you with the vetting if you need it. See about purchasing the necessary small arms, ammunition, and personal equipment for our team. We’re trying to plan for unknown contingencies, so do the best you can with what we do know. Just stay within the budget.” She sipped her wine and turned to her XO. “Wolfram, contact spaceport services and oversee a rapid refurbishment of the impact energy absorbers and thermal shielding. Get the radiators serviced and the remass tanks refilled. Pull crew off of liberty to assist if need be. I also want the ship cleaned, spotless, nose to tail, before we lift off.”

  “Understood, Kapitänin. I have already assigned a cleaning rotation. I will inspect the ship well in advance of our departure.”

  Catherine nodded, trying not to smile at the image of her exec conducting a white glove inspection of the Andromeda. “Excellent. I’ll see to the recharging of the ship’s magazines with whatever ordnance I can get my hands on. I’m not taking any chances on this one. Also, there is a courier ship in the system preparing to leave, and it’s headed out toward Zanzibar. I’m going to upload a message to it and send word to Cecil’s captors that we’re coming to negotiate. The message will get there weeks before we do. Hopefully he’s still alive.” Catherine sipped her wine again, the concern obvious on her face. No word had been received from the people holding her brother for months.

  There was no way to transmit messages through the naturally occurring transit corridors that connected stars. While in a star system, messages could be sent at the speed of light. Across interstellar distances, the only practical way to deliver messages was to upload them to a ship. Courier ships were therefore common across inhabited space. These stripped-down, high-speed vessels were designed specifically for receiving and rapidly delivering information. They had a minimal crew, powerful engines, and huge reaction mass tanks.

  Couriers were so fundamental to interstellar communication that the ships themselves were afforded something akin to diplomatic immunity. Interfering with a courier ship, regardless of what colony it hailed from, was outlawed by custom and treaty, backed up by the threat of force from most spacefaring societies. Even oppressive regimes like the Orlov Combine generally left the couriers alone, as they themselves relied on them for communications and trade.

  After a moment, Catherine’s tone lightened. She smiled at her crewmen. “I think that’s everything, then. For God’s sake, both of you, try to get some R and R while we’re here. I for one am going shopping. I know you’re both married to the Andromeda, but you’re not cheating on her if you take a couple of days for yourselves. Go to a brothel or a nightclub and find yourselves some companionship. You both need it.”

  Mazer Broadbent cracked a smile. Wolfram von Spandau only grunted and complained about the weak local beer. Catherine couldn’t help herself this time; she giggled.

  Chapter 6

  Zanzibar

  Danzig-5012 Solar System

  Equatorial Region

  I hate this place.

  Cecil Blackwood thought this to himself, the same as he did every day when he first woke up. It was worse when he’d been dreaming that he was back home on Avalon, and that his ill-fated expedition to Zanzibar had all been a bad dream. There was nothing worse than waking up to discover it was the other way around. He sat up in bed and swung his feet over the side, moving slowly so as not to wake up Bianca. On the stand next to his bed were a bottle and a small cup. As he did every morning, he poured himself a large shot of the ghastly local booze and knocked it back in one gulp. It tasted like some kind of cleaning solvent and burned all the way down, but the alcohol helped him hang on. It kept him sane.

  Yeah, that’s it. It keeps me sane.

  Standing up, Cecil poured himself a cup of coffee from the machine in his room. Like the booze, the coffee was strong and coarse, but it, too, helped him get through the day. Cup in hand and naked as the day he was born, he stood in front of the large bay window, sipped his coffee, and studied the dusty, desolate street four stories below him. The local sun, Danzig, was low in the sky, bathing the town in its characteristic pale orange light. The locals were already out and about, milling through the streets, doing whatever it was these people did every day. Even after a year on Zanzibar, Cecil still wasn’t sure. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he’d cared.

&n
bsp; The dusty town below him was called Lang’s Burg. That wasn’t its original name. If the town even had a name, it had been forgotten. Much about Zanzibar had been forgotten, Cecil mused. So much so, that if he’d have known the awful truth about this place, he’d have stayed home.

  Before the Second Interstellar War, Zanzibar had been a remote, but thriving, independent colony. The planet itself was a lifeless rock; even its core had long since cooled. There were no plate tectonics on Zanzibar, no seismic activity of any kind. Once, the planet had been volcanically active. Once, they said, it had oceans. At one point this world had been alive. It had supported life. Now the only life on Zanzibar was what mankind brought with it.

  The funny thing was, planetary scientists and geologists still couldn’t figure out what had happened, what had killed Zanzibar. There were numerous theories and none of them could be proven. What was known was that about four million years before humanity set foot on the planet, something happened that had scoured it barren. Now, the air was thin and unbelievably dry. The oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere was nominally breathable to people, but the atmospheric pressure was so low that it was like being high up in the mountains. Some stout locals had adapted to the thin air, but off-worlders like Cecil relied on respirators. They also filtered out the Zanzibaran dust, which in many areas was so fine you could put it in a cup and swirl it around like water. It played hell with the respiratory system, too. Cecil imagined he had a rock of dirt in his lungs at this point.