The Rise of Earth (11 page)

“It's hard on the ones what ain't named captain—I know that,” he said. “But the ship is the family, an' that's more important. Every Hashoone has accepted that rule, for centuries. But yer mother . . . yer mother decided it didn't apply to her and Mavry. Everythin' I'd done, they was determined to undo. I thought a big score like what Mox had brought us . . . well, I thought it would make 'em reconsider. I thought it would remind 'em what we could do together, as a family.”

“But Mom still wouldn't have become captain.”

“No. It's nothin' against yer mother, lad, but Carina had earned the chair. Yer mother an' Mavry would 'ave had a place on the quarterdeck till yer aunt's children came up the ladder. An' then we'd 'ave found somethin' for them, like we always have. Water Authority, Callisto Minerals, one of the guild halls—somethin' easy, with plenty of livres.”

Tycho nodded, but he was thinking of the Hashoone cousins who worked at those places, and the resentment on their faces during privateering discussions at Darklands. Of his mother saying how she and his father had refused to accept spending the rest of their lives as dirtsiders. Of Yana insisting she'd rather die than live as a nobody.

And how would Tycho feel to know the captain's chair would never be his, and he would be replaced by one of his siblings' children?

“But I still don't understand why Oshima would agree to help Earth,” he said.

“Neither did any of us, for a while. Oshima was on hard times herself, boy. She'd gone missin'—at first rumor had it she was dead, an' then that she'd caught a sentence. If so, it weren't no Jovian jailer what put her in irons—nobody who did time on 1172 Aeneas saw her there. Always figured Earth had her locked up on Vesta or even Mars. Yeh ask me, that's when she turned traitor—they broke her while she was in the brig.”

“You told me Oshima sold her ship after the battle.
Sold her ship and retired to the outback on Io.”

Huff nodded. “Nobody saw her for a few years after she hightailed it out of the asteroids—the survivors looked, believed me. By the time she turned up on Io, I figured 'twas better to let her rot, out there alone with what she'd done. She's still there, so I s'pose the others felt the same.”

“But I've seen where she lives. It sure didn't look like she was rich.”

“It wouldn't. Oshima could squeeze a coin till it bled. Kept her ship near cold as space, air scrubbers dialed to the minimum so everythin' stank, short commons throughout a cruise. Still, I don't think she did it for the money.”

“Then why?” Tycho asked.

“Revenge. She was desperate. Just out of prison, no luck huntin' prizes, an' more an' more trouble findin' able spacers who'd sign her endless articles. She hated the rest of us for it. Hated us for stealin' her crews an' for swindlin' her, though that last was only in her mind. If she had to hang up her musketoons, this was a way to take us all down with her.”

“She hated all of you enough to plot against the Jovian Union?”

“Oshima weren't no patriot,” Huff growled. “She ain't never believed in any country or cause 'cept her own. An' neither has Mox.”

His voice rose, the flesh of his cheek darkening.

“Answer me this, boy: If she was innocent, why didn't she install the program that was supposed to protect us?”

“Grandfather—”

“Why didn't she do that?” Huff demanded through clenched teeth, as a chorus of alarmed beeps rose from inside the tank. “How'd she know, if she didn't know it was booby-trapped? If she wasn't in on the plot?”

“Grandfather, please. I didn't believe her. Not then and not now.”

“That's better.”

Tycho waited until the beeping had subsided and the angry color had faded from his grandfather's cheek.

“Forget Oshima for a minute,” he said tentatively, trying to keep straight in his head what he had learned and what he still had to ask. “So it was Mox who told you about the Securitat, and why they wanted to stop the convoy?”

Huff nodded, his living eye closed.

“Got the full story from them spooks meself, though. Fool though I was, no way I was signin' on to somethin' on just Thoadbone's say-so. The Securitat's dirty business weren't new to us, Tyke. A pirate could profit from it, provided he was careful. They tole me 'bout the convoy, an' the jammers, an' their plan to protect us against 'em. An' I agreed to recruit more pirates for the ambush—pirates what wouldn't listen to Oshima or Mox.”

Tycho hesitated.

“Who did you meet with? From the Securitat?”

Huff grunted and looked away. “Don't remember his name. An' it don't matter. All them spies use fake names anyway.”

Tycho nodded. DeWise had told Tycho that wasn't his real name, without the least bit of shame.

“And the Securitat gave you the software to give to the rest of the pirates?”

“No. Got it from Mox. Vesuvia looked it over six ways from Sunday an' concluded there weren't anythin' wrong with it. She's a paranoid ol' bag of circuits, yeh know that. So then Mox an' I passed the programs on to the rest of 'em. I didn't know we were flyin' into a trap. A trap what killed Thane D'Artagn an' Stearns Cody. Habadon Alkasis. Helga von Stegl. An' . . . an' . . .”

Huff's eye shut and he swallowed convulsively. Beads of sweat had appeared on his brow.

“And the Gibraltars,” Tycho said gently. “Cassius and Sims.”

“An' them. Tyke, could yeh . . . would yeh fetch me that cloth?”

Tycho picked a rag off the desk. It was damp and cool. Huff lifted his head and water sloshed inside the tank.

“Let me do it, Grandfather,” Tycho said, wiping the sweat from Huff's forehead. The old pirate's eye closed and he exhaled gratefully.

“Thankee, lad. That's better. Yeh met Simsie once, when yeh were naught but a babe. Did yeh know that?”

“No. I didn't.”

“Had no use for his father, but Simsie was a good
lad,” Huff said quietly. “Would 'ave made yer aunt a fine first mate. That was my hope, yeh know—Carrie in the captain's chair, Simsie as first mate, an' yer father flyin'.”

“And what about Mom?”

“Sensors and navigation. Wish I could 'ave seen that crew come together—I might 'ave asked yer aunt to let me stay on an' run the commo board, just to be a part of it. An' it would 'ave worked, yeh know, if everythin' hadn't gone so wrong. If we'd had a little more time, it would 'ave worked. I know it would 'ave.”

Eight bells rang out, signaling the end of the afternoon watch. Tycho tried to imagine his aunt in the captain's chair, turning to bark orders at the children she would have had with Sims, the ones who'd never had a chance to be born. What would he and Yana and Carlo be doing now, if that had happened? He might never have left Jupiter's moons. Perhaps he and his siblings would be working in one of the family businesses in Port Town, arguing about whose turn it was to drive the grav-sled back to Darklands and dreaming of the next time they might get to go somewhere as exotic as Ganymede.

“The thought of that spy in your aunt's cabin . . . ,” Huff muttered.

“I meant to ask you,” Tycho said hastily, hoping to steer his grandfather away from that unhappy topic. “What would have made Aunt Carina such a good captain?”

“Arrr. Brilliant strategist, cool under fire. But most of all, she was sure of herself. That's what yer mother's
always struggled with—she's learned to keep it hidden, is all. Once Carrie made a decision, she never doubted it—an' she made everyone around her believe in it too. That belief can make or break a starship crew, once things start to go wrong.”

Tycho crossed his arms over his chest. Sometimes he felt like he'd doubted every decision he'd ever made on the quarterdeck.

Huff saw his reaction and smiled.

“Go easy on yerself, lad. Yer still young, still learnin'. Far as I know, yer mother ain't ready to pick a captain yet.”

“What if it was your choice, Grandfather? Who would you pick?”

Huff's living eye widened. “Arrr. Yeh sure yeh want me to answer that, lad?”

Tycho nodded.

Huff looked away, his yellowed teeth working at his lip, and Tycho suddenly regretted his question. His grandfather wasn't the captain anymore, and it was wrong to ask him to play that role, even here in his cabin.

He opened his mouth to apologize, but before he could get the words out, Huff turned to look at him.

“I'd pick yer sister. Reminds me of yer aunt at that age, Yana does—always arguin', even when she knows it ain't no good idea. Looks like her, too—sometimes I get them mixed up in my mind, an' have to recall me heading agin. But yer mother will never do that. Dio would be too worried Yana's temper would get her killed. Her an'
everyone else. An' she might be right about that.”

“If Mom won't pick Yana, who then?”

“I'd bet on you,” Huff said, and Tycho felt his heartbeat accelerate. “Yer brother's the easy choice, but Carlo ain't got no head for people. He can give orders, but he don't listen to the people he's givin' 'em to. A leader has to do both. Yeh can learn how to fly, Tyke, but Carlo ain't gonna learn how to lead—if he could, he'd 'ave done it already. An' yer mother knows it.”

Tycho looked away, trying to calm himself.

“The chair could be yours, Tyke,” Huff said. “Most important thing is yeh learn to trust yerself—which is the hardest thing for any captain. Yeh have to trust yerself that yeh know what's right, and that when it matters yeh'll do the right thing.”

A
s the
Comet
followed the main spacelane that led to 65 Cybele, she passed pinwheeling lumps of beige, gray, and reddish rock, dodged slabs of tumbling black debris, and flew through loose clouds of stones and dust, the remnants of asteroids blasted to pieces in ancient collisions.

It was the third day of the voyage, and alertness had eroded into boredom, as it tended to do on an uneventful cruise. Tycho and his siblings sniped and snapped at each
other on the quarterdeck, drawing Diocletia's ire, while everyone vented their frustration at Vesuvia, whose programming at least allowed her to remain unperturbed. Nor was the
Comet
a happy ship belowdecks—the morning watch began with Grigsby bellowing about scurvy malingerers and plenty of room in the brig.

Grigsby was midrant when Vass ascended the ladderwell to the quarterdeck at impressive speed, looking pale and shocked.

“The language belowdecks . . . it's like being inside a cell on 1172 Aeneas,” he muttered.

“In my day, Minister, there weren't no difference 'tween the two,” Huff said with a grin. He had finally returned to his regular routine on the quarterdeck the night before, though he and Diocletia were limiting themselves to the absolute minimum of conversation.

Vass gave the old pirate a wary nod and took his now-customary position on the other side of the ladderwell.

“Don't forget to strap in, Mr. Vass,” Diocletia said.

“Oh, I thought I'd forgo that blasted contraption today, Captain. I'm quite proud of my space legs by now, if I do say so myself.”

“As you like. And how is Mr. Haines this morning?”

“More talkative. I bribed him with some coffee and asked Mr. Speirdyke to season his crowdy with cinnamon sugar.”

“Hmm—that might've worked on me too,” Mavry said.

“No thanks,” Carlo said. “Spooning sugar's about the extent of Speirdyke's skills, and his coffee's always burned. If we make a few livres on this cruise, how about we pick a cook for some reason besides he's missing a limb?”

“And what would Mr. Speirdyke do after that?” Diocletia asked. “His family's served ours since Anna Barbara Hashoone was captain, and he lost his leg manning a gun to protect this ship from harm. Should we abandon him—a one-legged spacer—to beg for alms in Port Town?”

Carlo raised his hands placatingly. “I just wanted better coffee!”

“Then why don't you learn to make it?” Yana asked.

“If you've touched the coffeepot five times in your whole life I'm the emperor of Earth,” Tycho said.

“That's enough,” Diocletia said. “Yana, step up your scans. Tycho, get up on the comm board. If everything's on schedule, we should run across our freighter convoy within a half hour or so. But there's a lot of ship traffic in these parts, not all of it friendly. So eyes peeled.”

“Never thought I'd see the barky reduced to shepherdin' a flock of tea wagons,” grumbled Huff, his forearm cannon whining in agitation.

“You've made your feelings on this subject clear, Dad,” Diocletia said without turning. “But that's the mission, so let's see that it's done properly. Your starship, Carlo.”

The convoy soon appeared on Yana's scopes: a trio
of bulk freighters and a massive dromond, with seven smaller hoys interspersed among the bigger ships.

“And I've got two frigates—one at point, the other trailing,” she said.

“That would be the
Izabella
and the
Berserker
,” Diocletia said.

“Min Theo's ship?” asked Huff, brightening.

“Morgan Theo's in the captain's chair now,” Mavry said. “Min retired to Ganymede about six months ago.”

“Arrr, I hadn't heard,” Huff rumbled, then added mournfully: “Now why'd ol' Min go an' do a thing like that?”

“Vesuvia, display colors,” Carlo said. “Tyke, get Captains Andrade and Theo on the comm.”

Tycho entered the command to raise the
Comet
's communications mast from its housing atop the ship and began transmitting her identity to the convoy ahead.

“Channel established,” Tycho said. “The comm's yours, Carlo. Wait—incoming transmission.”

“Nice to see you,
Comet
,” said the smooth, cultured voice of Garibalda Marta Andrade, the veteran privateer commanding not only the
Izabella
but also the Jovian privateers assigned to the Cybeles. “Be advised this has been a hot zone. The
Berserker
will protect our port flank. Take the trailing position and mind the hoys and the dromond.”

“It's Carlo Hashoone, Captain Andrade. The
Comet
's faster than the
Berserker
. I'd suggest the reverse formation.”

Tycho saw Diocletia and Mavry exchange a glance, but neither said anything.

“We've been running these lanes for three weeks and have a sensor profile of every rock and snowball along the route,” Andrade said. “On this run we need you at trailing.”

“Understood,” Carlo said sullenly.

Tycho eyed the main screen and the line of crosses that marked the location of the Jovian convoy. After a few minutes the ships became visible through the viewports, a cluster of bright lights in motion against the seemingly fixed stars. Closer still, and those bright lights took on shape and definition, becoming the bulbs of long-range tanks, their starships tucked beneath them. Their ion engines were a blinding blue.

“That dromond's throwing ions halfway back to Jupiter—careful of her engine wash,” Yana said, inclining her chin at the giant freighter in the center of the convoy. A quintet of massive fuel tanks cradled the ship's vast bulk.

“Don't tell me how to do my job, Yana,” Carlo said.

He reduced speed and guided the
Comet
into position at the tail of the column, behind the last three hoys—needle-nosed freighters about twice the length of the privateer. The
Comet
's bulky long-range tanks robbed her of her speed and grace, but Carlo still guided her with an expert hand, maneuvering the frigate with practiced ease that bordered on nonchalance. Tycho knew if he'd been flying the
Comet
, he'd have wound up goosing the
engines repeatedly, wasting fuel while he struggled to properly align her with the rest of the convoy.

“We're in position,
Izabella
,” Carlo said.

“Nicely flown,
Comet
,” Andrade said. “We're just shy of the first buoys—and it's three hours to port after that. Don't let those hoys creep up on the dromond—their pilots have been flying with heavy feet.”

Scanners identified the three hoys as the
Marcus
, the
Camden
, and the
Hambrook
. Tycho couldn't blame their pilots for riding the throttle too hard—the massive dromond maneuvered like an artificial asteroid, barreling ponderously through space in whatever direction she'd been pointed.

“Locking in course,” Carlo said. “Keep your sensors on active scan, Yana. Particularly the port array.”

“Don't tell me how to do my job, Carlo,” Yana said, smiling innocently at Diocletia's warning look.

Curious, Tycho called up the dromond's sensor profile: She was the
Nestor Leviathan
, little more than a bridge and engines separated by half a kilometer of cargo holds. He wondered how much the cargo she was carrying was worth. Hundreds of millions of livres? Billions? Whatever the amount, it was enough money to throw legendary shindies for at least a decade.

“You ever capture a ship that big, Grandfather?” Tycho asked Huff.

“Arrr, yeh read my mind, lad. Tough prize to take—yeh'd need yer own fleet of tugs, an' in my day a ship that big carried gangs of roughnecks to repel boarders.
Answer's not to take her as a prize at all—with a beast that big, yer in it for the ransom, not the condemnation.”

Tycho glanced at his screen.

“I'm picking up pings from the buoys. They're thirty thousand klicks ahead.”

“Roger that,” Carlo said, easing his control yoke slightly to the right. “Heading looks almost perfect . . . there. We're in the pipe. Next stop, Cybele.”

“Wait, Huff,” Mavry objected. “Didn't Ursula Hashoone take a dromond as a prize in the Themistians?”

Huff tapped at his chrome temple, frowning.

“A dromond? Don't believe so, no.”

Diocletia turned in her chair.

“That's the way I heard it too. The ship Ursula took was called the
Capistrano—
she wasn't a dromond?”

“Arrr, lemme think. No, the
Capistrano
was a converted Lophelia-class bulk hauler. Dromond-
sized
, p'raps, but a different configuration—basically a cylinder covered with magnetic grapples for attachin' deep-space containers. She could carry sixty or seventy of 'em when fully loaded. Made loadin' an' offloadin' a snap, but meant she was a ridiculous-lookin' scow. Father always said a fully loaded Lophelia looked like a pine cone.”

“What's a pine cone?” Yana asked.

Huff shrugged.

“Some kind of mountain, I s'pose. Like a volcano. They got cones, don't they?”

“A pine cone is a—” Vesuvia interjected.

“What kinda mountain it is ain't the point, yeh useless compendium of trivia,” Huff growled. “See, takin' the
Capistrano
weren't Ursula's goal. She sent in two boardin' parties. First one headed for the bridge, but that was just a feint—second boardin' party were the important one. They stormed the supercargo's control room an' performed an emergency decouplin' of all the magnetic grapples.”

“Oh my,” Vass said.

Huff chuckled. “Would 'ave liked to see that one meself—sixty-odd containers firin' their release jets an' hurtlin' off into deep space in every direction. Ursula pulled the boardin' parties, an' they let the
Capistrano
go while they started huntin' down the containers. They say some of them are still out there—Father plotted their probable courses an' programmed Vesuvia to sing out whenever the
Comet
was within two million klicks or so of one. Ain't that right, Vesuvia?”

“Your account contains a number of inaccuracies,” the
Comet
's artificial intelligence said. “Fifty-six containers were deployed in all. Twenty-one were recovered by three generations of captains of the
Shadow Comet
, the last one hundred nineteen years ago. Sixteen containers were recovered by Earth merchant vessels or their agents. Pirates and other unaffiliated vessels are believed to have recovered twelve. Four were either destroyed during recovery operations, impacted celestial bodies, or incinerated on close approach to the sun. Three have
yet to be recovered. The nearest one is currently an estimated twenty-four billion kilometers from our current position, bearing two hundred eleven degrees.”

“Unless you want to extend this cruise by a year or so, I think we'll let that one go,” Carlo said.

“Prolly best,” Huff said. “The problem was that Ursula didn't get the
Capistrano
's manifest. So nobody huntin' them containers knew what was in 'em. Father said on one cruise Ursula intercepted a container filled with high-density computer cores, an' made a fortune fencin' 'em on Ceres. Next cruise, she took the
Comet
out halfway to Uranus an' reeled in a container full of tubs of freezer-burned synthetic butter.”

Tycho joined in the laughter on the quarterdeck. Even Vass grinned.

“An' that particular trick never worked agin. The shipwright what made Lophelias locked the supercargoes out of the emergency decoupling procedure, but insurers was so spooked, it became too expensive to fly 'em. They cut up the last Lophelia for scrap above Mars when I was a middie.”

“Master Hashoone?” asked Vass, peering over Tycho's shoulder. “What's that red light?”

Tycho gaped at his console in horror.

“Priority signal from the
Izabella
,” he told the quarterdeck. “Patching it through.”

“Repeat, we have sensor contact at three hundred and ten degrees,” Andrade said.

“That's outside our current scanning cone,” Yana said. “Can't see a thing out here. Wait, I've got it now. Looks like three—no, make it four bogeys.”

“Sensor profile?” Carlo asked.

“That's a negative,” Yana said. “We're out of range and in the back of the line.
Izabella
will have them painted while I'm still collating position data.”

“Understood. Pass on whatever you've got as soon as you get it.”

“Aye-aye. They're coming hot, I can tell you that. Too hot to be attached to tanks.”

“Vesuvia, stand by to detach on my order,” said Carlo.

“Acknowledged.”

Tycho listened to the chatter on the convoy's shared communication channel, trying to pick out anything useful to pass on to his brother. The freighter pilots were frantic, screeching about bandits and arguing about defensive formations.