The Rise of Earth (17 page)

“—boarded through the port ring,” Zombro said with a grin. “We met in the middle. I recall it was warm work, Captain Hashoone.”

“Warm work indeed,” Huff said, hitching up his right sleeve. “See this scar, the one starting below the elbow? One of yer marines gave me that, with a bayonet. Ruined a nice mermaid tattoo I'd had done on Ceres.”

“I have my own souvenirs from the encounter,” Zombro said, parting his hair above the ear. “See that scar? A centimeter to the left and I'd have been in a shroud. You did that, Captain Hashoone.”

“I did? Thought I was a better shot back then. But wait, Captain Zombro—look here.”

Huff opened his jacket and tugged at his shirt, sending buttons flying.

“See that burn mark? The one right above the heart? Breastplate kept the bolt from going through, but blistered me something fierce.”

Zombro peered at the rippled scar.

“Lucky thing, that,” he said, then turned partially around. “My right buttock? Entirely artificial. Blast damage as your crewers were retreating. Say, I hear they've imported genuine Earth brandy for tonight. How about a snifter before it's all gone to waste?”

“Capital idea,” Huff said, clapping Zombro on the back with his artificial hand. “Yeh don't mind, do yeh, Tyke?”

Tycho shook his head, though he would have been happy to hear more of the old combatants' war stories. But Huff and Zombro had already set course for the bar.

He looked around the banquet, feeling ill at ease, then caught sight of the rest of his family and hurried to join them. Diocletia and Carlo looked miserable, but Mavry was studying a waiter's tray of snacks appreciatively, and Yana had talked someone into fetching an orange jump-pop.

“Some party, huh, kid?” Mavry asked, popping a piece of fish into his mouth and gawking at the musicians. “Never seen a real live fiddler before, let alone four. Gotta hand it to the Cybeleans—they spent plenty on this shindy.”

“I'm surprised they don't just throw livres into the air,” Carlo muttered. “What a vulgar display.”

“Oh, it's definitely that,” Mavry said, looking for another waiter to ambush. “But most vulgar displays don't fill your belly.”

A burst of laughter came from the bar, lost to sight
behind a mob of privateers.

“At least Grandfather's having fun,” Yana said.

“Well, of course he is,” Mavry said, a bit wistfully. “This is like how it used to be—the pirate life, I mean.”

“Oh, please,” Diocletia said, eyes flashing. “I don't remember going to a lot of parties with the captains of the Earth warships that were trying to kill us. In fact, I don't remember a single one. Carlo's right—this a game played by the Cybeleans. To test us, and to amuse themselves. And I don't like it.”

Mavry had learned when it was wise to let a subject drop.

“And what table are you at, Tycho?” he asked brightly.

Tycho peered at his place card. “Six.”

“That's the kids' table,” said Yana, looking disgusted. “I'm there too. Carlo, on the other hand, is considered a grown-up.”

“Someone has to be,” Carlo said.

“Which means he gets to listen to old people rattle on about the past,” Mavry said. “Lucky Carlo.”

Heads had turned to the banquet hall's entrance. Tycho looked over, curious, and saw a beefy, florid man with a bald head and a long red mustache, standing in the middle of a circle of people that included Garibalda Marta Andrade.

“Who's that?” Tycho asked.

Diocletia's eyes narrowed. “Unless I'm mistaken, that is Captain Cromer of the
Nestor Leviathan
. They must have already exchanged the
Actaeon
's prize crew for the
Leviathans. We have to pay our respects.”

“We do?” Carlo asked.

“We most certainly do,” Diocletia said, walking that way. The rest of the Hashoones hurried after her, joining the circle around Cromer, who was standing next to a silver-haired man in a suit of navy-blue velvet and a crimson cloak.

“Your ordeal has been a source of dismay for us all, Captain Cromer,” Diocletia said after the introductions, bowing slightly. “It's a relief to see you safely returned to your countrymen.”

Cromer bowed his head in response.

“I beg you not to be too heavily burdened by today's misfortunes, Captain Hashoone,” he said. “If it hadn't been for your family's heroic action, my crewers and I might still be prisoners. Fortunately Captain Allamand here is a man of honor—he even remembered the banquet and insisted I take my formal clothes from the
Leviathan
before our departure.”

The Hashoones' eyes leaped to the man in the red cloak. He smiled.

“Any honorable captain would have done the same. Captain Jean-Christophe Allamand, of the
Gracieux
, at your service. I am humbled to meet such worthy adversaries.”

“Captain Allamand,” Diocletia said stiffly. “I'm—”

“Captain Hashoone, of the
Shadow Comet
, of course,” Allamand said, taking her outstretched hand and bowing low over it. “And this would be your first mate, Mr.
Malone, and Masters Carlo, Tycho, and Yana. It is a distinct pleasure to meet you all, at long last.”

Tycho murmured something he hoped was appropriate.

“I must thank you, Captain Hashoone, for your treatment of my prize crew. Mr. Haines kicked up quite a fuss, but he's always been a bit excitable. Still convinced he's in the navy, I'm afraid.”

“And I must thank you for the treatment of our own prize crew,” Diocletia said. “Mr. Richards told us of your kindness in offering parole.”

Allamand smiled. “It's an unpleasant business, this conflict we find ourselves in. But let the politicians hurl barbs and vitriol—there's no reason we cannot conduct ourselves in a more agreeable fashion.”

Tycho smiled back, but he was certain his expression looked fake. Just hours before, this regal-looking captain had stolen countless livres from the Jovian Union, an embarrassment that had been broadcast all over the solar system by now. Ships under his command had exchanged fire with ones commanded by the people he was now making small talk with, and crewers on both sides had died.

Now their conversation was polite and almost pleasant—and Tycho found he didn't like that any more than his mother and brother did.

“But where are my manners?” Allamand asked, turning and beckoning to someone behind him. “This is my daughter—Kate, as she insists on being called.”

Allamand ushered forward a slim young woman about the same age as Tycho and Yana, wearing a dress of deep burgundy with a silver necklace that set off her long neck and pale skin. She had a mop of black hair and dark eyes.

Kate Allamand smiled and curtsied to the Hashoones. Yana elbowed Tycho in the ribs and he bowed hastily, feeling himself flush.

Captain Allamand's daughter was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen.

T
he next few minutes of small talk barely registered with Tycho, who alternated sneaking looks at Kate Allamand with telling himself not to look at her at all. He tried to imagine that a few hours earlier she'd been on a starship he'd been pursuing. It seemed impossible. What if Carlo had caught the
Gracieux
and they'd fired on each other?

Soft chimes pealed out five times, prompting a privateer to bark that “someone's gettin' keelhauled—it
ain't 2230!” Then a waiter paused at the periphery of the Hashoones' group and asked everyone to take their seats.

Captain Allamand headed in one direction with Diocletia, Mavry, Carlo, and the other Jovian privateers, chatting amiably, while Tycho stumbled after Yana in search of table six, taking a last look over his shoulder at Allamand's daughter.

“What's wrong with you?” Yana hissed. “Have you been struck in the head? Or did you get into the grog?”

“What? Neither.”

“Well, quit acting like a spacesick dirtsider,” Yana said, eyes scanning the tables. “If we keep our ears open, maybe we can learn something we can use. Remember what Mom always says about cruises succeeding or failing because of what happens in port.”

“I remember,” Tycho said. “Do you remember any of that stuff they said about forks and soup?”

Yana scoffed as they reached table six. “I wasn't listening in the first place. Here's my place card.”

Tycho walked around to the other side of the table, where a snow-white card bore his name, written in the same elaborate script he'd encountered earlier. Their table held eight, and the other chairs were filling up with young people in formal clothes. Yana was already chatting with a young woman in a navy-blue and red dress when Tycho found his hand vanishing into the paw of a massive youth with a patchy beard and a luxuriant silk doublet. He was sitting to Tycho's left, his rich furs flung over the back of his chair.

The young man introduced himself as Thaddeus Sewickley and immediately began explaining his work as an apprentice analyst in his father's investment house here on Cybele. Tycho nodded and tried to keep up with the bewildering stream of terminology coming out of Sewickley's mouth, glancing repeatedly at the empty seat next to him.

Kate Allamand was standing a few steps behind Yana, nodding politely at something said by an old man with a walrus mustache who was holding her hand and patting it. Tycho glanced once more to his right, but that place card was turned slightly away from him, and he couldn't see what it said.

He looked around the room, murmuring assent to something Sewickley said. A rotund young man and a sharp-faced woman, both teenagers, were finishing a conversation and starting to walk in Tycho's direction.

Go away
, Tycho thought.
Go away go away go away.

Kate finally extracted her hand from the grip of the man with the walrus mustache. She glanced at a place card in her other hand as the two teenagers passed behind Tycho's table.

“I mean, have you ever seen a more favorable interest-rate environment?” asked Thaddeus Sewickley.

“Huh? No, never. Amazing!”

“That's what I say!” Sewickley exclaimed, and began to talk again. Tycho peered past him and saw the sharp-faced teenaged girl walking by herself. Kate was across the table, peeking over Yana's shoulder with her brows
knit. Waiters surrounded their table and began setting down salads festooned with nuts and fruits in unlikely colors.

“Excuse me,” a voice said in clipped tones behind Tycho. He turned and saw the rotund boy looking at him in puzzlement.

“I say, is this table seven?”

“Six!” Tycho all but crowed.

The boy gave him a curious look and headed back the way he'd come. Tycho turned back to Sewickley and spotted Kate behind the young Cybelean, hitching her dress up slightly as she walked his way.

“Oh, don't get up,” she said with a smile, and Tycho kicked himself mentally that getting up hadn't occurred to him.

And then she was in the empty seat right next to him. She smiled at him and started to say something, but Sewickley all but spun Tycho's shoulder around to tell him about debt ratios. When Tycho was able to turn back to Kate, she was deep in conversation with the young Cybelean woman next to her.

You're supposed to turn and talk to the other person after each course
, he reminded himself, and turned back to Sewickley, who was sopping up salad dressing with an entire dinner roll.

“So as I was saying, our ROI—that's return on investment, you know—for shipbuilding has been off the charts,” Sewickley said, accidentally spitting a chunk of half-chewed dinner roll onto his plate.

“Right, right,” Tycho said around a mouthful of salad. “Wait. Did you say shipbuilding?”

“I did,” Sewickley said, flinging the half-chewed piece of roll on the floor. “Cybele's been a center for shipbuilding for centuries, of course. But we can't keep up with the demand right now. Firms are doing work for local customers, for Earth, and for independents.”

“Independents like who?”

“Oh, mostly shipping firms with operations on multiple worlds. From their perspective this dispute is an annoyance more than anything else. They can fly whatever flag is convenient on a given run—and perfectly legally, too. Lots of them are reregistering ships as Cybelean, though—takes the guesswork out of it. But registrations isn't our business—too many lawyers, not enough fun.”

“How interesting. So building all these ships must take more facilities than are here on Cybele. Where else does this work happen?”

Sewickley eyed him. “I forgot your name. What is it you do again?”

“Tycho Hashoone. I'm a midshipman aboard the
Shadow Comet
, operating under a Jovian Union letter of marque.”

He risked a quick glance at Kate as he said this, but she gave no sign that she'd heard him.

“You're a pirate, then?” Sewickley asked.

“Privateer,” Tycho said icily.

“Right, of course. I forget there's a difference. Still,
given the situation, I'm not sure how much I should be telling you.”

Sewickley followed this remark with a nervous bark of laughter, then blew his nose in his napkin.

“Oh, ships under construction are no use to us as prizes,” said Tycho with a casual wave of his hand. “I'm curious because my family has shipbuilding interests of our own at Jupiter, and we've talked about expanding. If we can find the right partner, of course.”

“Ah. What was your question again?”

“I'm interested in the shipbuilding facilities you've invested in. You must visit them, right? To see how your livres are being spent?”

Sewickley shook his head.

“I get spacesick something awful. We just put up the livres and make connections between interested parties. All of that happens down here. Most of our construction facilities are in orbit, but there are plenty of asteroids within a day or so of here where your family could establish an operation.”

“I understand,” Tycho said, trying not to sound disappointed.

He glanced in the other direction as Sewickley tore into his salad. Kate Allamand was still talking with the Cybelean woman. Tycho admired Kate's delicate ear, graceful neck, and black curls, then forced himself to turn back to Sewickley.

“But what about the people?” he asked. “You know, the labor. Where do you get them?”

“Oh, you know, local contractors.”

“You mean crimps,” Tycho said sharply.

Sewickley shrugged, his face a mask of bland indifference. “Like I said, we just move the livres—and try to make our stack grow, of course. That's how it's been done on Cybele forever, you know. We've got nothing to mine except water, so we've always been traders and connectors. Fortunately, there's never been a better time to be in that business than right now.”

“That's apparent,” Tycho said, looking out over the lavish banquet hall—and then up at the ceiling, and the graceful curve of the spacedocks above.

“Still, shipbuilding . . . that's a tough business for a newcomer right now,” Sewickley said. “There are real shortages in both raw materials and labor, because of this one shipbuilding project we're not part of.”

Tycho leaned toward Sewickley.

“What project is that?”

Someone was tapping on a glass—a barrel-chested Cybelean noble three tables over, standing next to a rail-thin, frail-looking man with white hair. The noble tapped more insistently until the conversation level finally dropped.

Tycho fidgeted through the white-haired man's speech, and the one given in response by Earth's envoy to Cybele, and the one following that from the Jovian Union's envoy. The waiters were clearing the salads by the time he was able to lean back over to Sewickley.

“Sorry, I asked what shipbuilding project you meant,”
Tycho said. “You mentioned a big one that's taking up all the raw materials and labor.”

“I don't know what it is—wish I did. Then maybe Dad and I could get some of the action on it. Whoever the client is, though, they've got plenty of livres. And they don't want attention.”

Waiters reached over their shoulders to put down covered plates, then lifted the lids to reveal some concoction that appeared to be made up of fish and flowers and sticks. When Tycho looked up from poking at it, Sewickley had turned to address the person on the other side of him.

Oh,
now
he remembers his manners.

The arrival of the new course meant it was time for Tycho to switch conversational partners as well. His heart fluttered in his chest and his mouth felt dry. He lunged for his water glass, almost knocking it over, and forced himself to turn to the right, where Kate was smiling at him. Her irises were deep brown, nearly black, and startling against the bright whites of her eyes.

“So I understand you're a privateer, Master Hashoone?” she asked.

“Yes—a midshipman aboard the
Shadow Comet
, operating under letter of marque for the Jovian Union,” he said, wincing at how stilted and formal he sounded.

“And what do midshipmen do, exactly?”

“Whatever the captain tells us to, but I typically handle navigation and communications. But wait . . . aren't you part of your father's bridge crew?”

“Me?” Kate looked astonished, then faintly amused. “Oh no. I have a room aboard the
Gracieux
, but while my father's in space I stay here in our fondaco.”

“Oh,” Tycho said, trying to get his bearings. “So what do you do, then?”

“Homework, mostly,” Kate said, then nodded at the musicians. “And I practice the viola—though I'll never be good enough to be part of a real string quartet. I want to be an ambassador. Or a minister—preferably in the commerce ministry.”

She scowled, and Tycho thought to himself that somehow it made her look even more beautiful.

“Though I'll be lucky not to be married off as soon as I'm of age,” she said. “And then I'll never be allowed to do anything ever again.”

“Married off?”

Kate nodded, looking morose. “Girls like me don't have the same opportunities you do out in the colonies. My father brought me out here so I could see the solar system.”

It had been centuries since anyone in the Jovian Union had referred to their home moons as colonies, but Tycho decided to ignore that.

“So you've never left Earth before?” he asked.

Kate shook her head and smiled. “I'm sure I must sound very sheltered to you.”

“Of course not,” Tycho said, though he'd been thinking exactly that. “So now that you're out here, what do you think?”

Kate wrinkled her nose. “It's very strange not to be able to go outside. Or for there not to
be
an outside. I feel cooped up all the time. And . . . well, everything smells bad. No, not
bad
exactly. More like
stale
. My father says it's because the air's been recycled so many times.”

Tycho nodded, trying to wrap his head around the idea that air might smell different other places, that it wasn't simply air.

“It seems strange to me that you could open a door and just walk outside,” he said. “Where I come from, if that happened you'd be dead in less than a minute.”

“So you've never been to Earth? Or even Mars? Never stood under a sky?”

“No. I mean, in simulations, sure. But even with the best ones you know they're fake.”

“Oh, I wish you could see Earth. It's so beautiful. Maybe after all this is over.”

They smiled uncertainly at each other, then ate in silence. Tycho had to admit that the flowers and sticks were delicious.

“Do you do homework?” Kate asked. “I mean, you don't go to school. . . .”

“Oh, I do plenty of homework. Vesuvia's our instructor for most everything.”