The Rise of Earth (4 page)

Yana waved dismissively, wincing when the motion sent a bolt of pain down her arm.

“I'm fine. It's a bad burn is all. A session of tissue regeneration on Callisto should restore full mobility.”

Carlo turned from his station to listen. The
Comet
had evaded the Ice Wolves' cruiser, reached her long-range tanks, and was speeding away from her near-disastrous
encounter with the
Lampos
. Mavry was in the fire room, running diagnostics on the damage inflicted by the Saturnian cruiser's cannons during her getaway.

“And are you fit to resume duty?” Diocletia asked.

“Of course I am,” Yana said, then dissolved into a coughing fit. She held her breath, trying to force her body to obey her.

“Good,” Diocletia said. “Now, I countermanded your order to fire on the
Lampos
because—”

“Perhaps we should discuss this in the cuddy,” Yana said.

“We'll discuss it here.”

“And if I don't want to discuss it here?”

“You'll discuss it where the captain of the ship tells you to. Yana,
think
. When I agree a conversation should be held in private,
that's
when you should worry. We're discussing this on the quarterdeck because your brothers need to hear it, too. Now sit down.”

Yana settled into her chair, working her arm into the sling Leffingwell had given her.

“You started a firefight on the
Lampos
before Tycho told you about the inbound cruiser,” Diocletia said. “That means you saw something. What was it?”

“Beards. The crewers aboard the
Lampos
had shaved off their beards—the lower halves of their faces were still pale. They were Ice Wolves. They stalled for time while the cruiser came to intercept us, and tried to trap our boarding party so we couldn't disengage.”

“Arrr, the caravel was bait, an' the cruiser were the hook,” Huff growled.

“And they almost landed us,” Tycho said.

“Almost,” Diocletia said. “You had your eyes open and kept your head fighting your way clear. We lost three Comets, but we could have lost everything.”

“And then you let the
Lampos
go,” Yana said, coughing again.

Mavry emerged from the aft passageway leading to the fire room, wiping his hands on his jumpsuit.

“Gosh, kid,” he said. “You look terrible.”

“Nice to see you too, Dad.”

“Our first priority was to get to safety,” Diocletia said. “We don't have the firepower to slug it out with a cruiser. And remember, we're missing the dozen hands we sent off as Mr. Richards's prize crew. If that cruiser had been carrying pinnaces, we'd be space dust now.”

“Which is what that caravel should be,” Yana said. “Then the next Saturnian captain would think twice about helping the Ice Wolves.”

“And you're sure the captain of the
Lampos
was helping them willingly? Did you inspect the bridge? What if the Ice Wolves captured the
Lampos
and forced her crew to cooperate?”

Yana looked away unhappily.

“We're not pirates, Yana,” her mother said. “And we're not in the vengeance business. You were right that there were Ice Wolves on that ship. But if you'd been
wrong about the rest, you could have been hanged.”

The thought hung over the quarterdeck for a moment.

“Arrr, every pirate's life ends with the carbine or the gibbet,” Huff said.

“Like Mom just said, we're not pirates, Grandfather—we're privateers,” Tycho said.

Diocletia nodded. “And remember, there are powerful people who would like to put us out of business, not just on Earth but also on Ganymede. Any mistake we make helps them make their case.”

“Can we not talk about gibbets and carbines?” Carlo asked. “Personally, I'm planning to die in bed, at a very old age.”

“Me too,” Mavry said. “Preferably after overindulging on plum duff and some good Ganymedan brandy.”

“There's summat to what yeh say, Mavry my lad,” Huff said. “'Tis a tad less heroic, but p'raps an excess of grog ain't a bad alternative to the hangman.”

Tycho found his sister drinking a jump-pop in the cuddy.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

Tycho rolled his eyes. “Sorry to offend you. I just wanted to see if you're okay.”

“I'm fine. Just been a busy day.”

“How's the shoulder?” he asked, sitting across from her.

“It hurts,” Yana said, coughing again. “Mr. Leffingwell explained it to me—the laser superheated the water in
the tissue around the point of impact. Cooked it, basically.”

“Yuck, boiled sister. And what about the rest of you?”

Yana's fingers explored her puffy face.

“I'll live. Broken nose and a mild concussion. Mr. Leffingwell says the swelling is from decompression, and it'll go down in a couple of days. The annoying thing is this stupid cough—bits of ice irritated the respiratory passages. Anyway, it could have been a lot worse.”

“Thank God it wasn't,” Tycho said, reaching over to squeeze her hand. Yana squeezed back.

“Still, it was bad enough. Grigsby had to carry me out of the
Lampos
like a little kid. And you heard Mom—she didn't agree with anything I did back there. Now I'll get written up in the Log.”

The captaincy of the
Comet
had been handed down from one Hashoone to the next for as long as the ship had existed. Diocletia had taken over from Huff fifteen years earlier, and one day she would name either Tycho, Yana, or Carlo to succeed her. She watched every decision her children made, recording their successes and failures in a protected part of the Log.

“Mom didn't seem mad,” Tycho said. “It was more like she was afraid.”

“Mom's never been afraid in her life.”

“You know better than that.”

Yana waved that away, then grimaced. “What would you have done back there, Tyke?”

Tycho's teeth worried at his lip.

“It's weird these days,” he said. “There are all these
rumors about Earth warships conducting operations in the asteroid belt. And nobody can figure out what's happening with the Ice Wolves—”

“I can help you with that part—they just tried to kill us.”

“I know, but before that we hadn't run across them in months. After the Battle of Saturn they had a perfect chance to put pressure on us, and squeeze us between them and Earth, but they mostly haven't.”

“All very interesting, but I didn't have time to convene a meeting of the Diplomatic Corps. I had to do something. So I did. And it was the right thing.”

“I didn't say it wasn't.”

“No, but you were thinking it. I could tell.” Yana sighed and shook her head. “I guess if Mom thinks I was wrong and you think I was wrong, it doesn't matter what I think.”

Tycho cocked his head at his sister, curious.

“Oh, don't play dumb,” Yana said. “You're the one who found the
Iris
cache, and Carlo's the self-proclaimed best pilot in the Jovian Union. Which leaves me, the bad pirate daughter. The one who's always wrong and never listens.”

“You're being way too hard on yourself,” Tycho said. “Well, except for the never listens part.”

Yana winced at the pain in her shoulder. “Whatever. As soon as Mom picks one of you to be the new captain, I'm getting my own ship.”

Tycho shook his head.

“You know that's impossible. The Jovian Union won't allow it, and family tradition—”

“I don't care about either of those things anymore. There's no way I'm spending the rest of my life forgotten on Callisto, Tyke. I'd rather die than live as a nobody.”

T
he Jovian cruiser
Sparrowhawk
lurked above Callisto, bristling with weapons and surrounded by pinnaces. A hard-eyed lieutenant ordered the
Comet
to hold her position for half an hour while he pored over the frigate's recent navigational records. The sound of fifes and horns bounced up the ladderwells to the quarterdeck, accompanying spacer songs that sounded more enthusiastic than melodic. Free of their duties, the
Comets were turning the last hours of the cruise into a shindy.

“What's the holdup?” Carlo demanded, peering down at the
Comet
's unoccupied docking cradle. “They already checked our flight logs at Ganymede.”

Tycho gazed out at space beyond the viewports. Ferries were gathered around the docking cradle, their running lights blinking red and green, waiting for the privateer to muster out her crewers. Below, on the cracked beige surface of Callisto, a cluster of tunnels and domes marked Port Town, the moon's largest settlement.

“Lot of ships out there,” Huff growled. “Bet some of 'em are Jovian Defense Force, lookin' for spacers to press.”

“You're probably right,” Diocletia said. “Yana, Tycho, write up exemptions for our crewers. The Defense Force will need to approve them, but they'll still make a press gang think twice about taking one of our people.”

“And what if some of our crewers want to serve?” Tycho asked.

Huff snorted. “No self-respectin' Comet would run from a privateer to a military ship. Spit-an'-polish uniforms and gettin' told what to do all day? Arrrrr. That's why press gangs carry truncheons—can't win the argument without 'em.”

“I can't believe some of the old hulks they're recommissioning,” Mavry said, peering at his terminal. “That pocket cruiser we saw back at High Port was a
modified Ocelot-class. Where'd the Defense Force get her, a museum? And remember those two corvettes at 617 Patroclus? Converted coasters, by the look of them.”

Diocletia nodded. “Remember the last time there was all this saber rattling, right before Yana and Tycho were born? If a hull would hold air, the Defense Force claimed it and painted a name and number on the side.”

“Which means they'll pay good livres for any ship we can bring in as a prize,” Yana said.

“Hope that includes the cargo hauler we captured a couple of weeks back—the one Mr. Richards brought in,” Mavry said. “Though the prize paperwork for her hasn't been filed with the admiralty court yet. That should have been taken care of when the prize crew reached Ganymede.”

“Mr. Richards wouldn't overlook something like that,” Diocletia said.

“Maybe the Defense Force seized the hauler—like they've tried to do with the
Hydra
,” Yana said, her voice muffled and strange because of her still-swollen nose.

Tycho followed his sister's eyes to the deadly-looking pirate ship moored in her docking cradle. The
Hydra
had once belonged to Thoadbone Mox, the unrepentant pirate who'd betrayed the Hashoones and his fellow Jupiter pirates at the Battle of 624 Hektor. The Hashoones had captured the
Hydra
from Mox four years earlier, though Huff had let the pirate go for reasons he'd never made clear to anyone's satisfaction.

It had been a grave mistake—Mox had signed on
with the Ice Wolves, and nearly destroyed the
Comet
at the Battle of Saturn. The Ice Wolves had expelled Mox from their ranks for disobeying orders, and no one had heard from him since, but Tycho was grimly certain he was still out there somewhere.

“At this point I almost wish the Defense Force
would
seize the
Hydra
,” Diocletia said with a sigh. “Better that than paying docking fees for a ship we can't touch.”

“Incoming transmission,” Vesuvia said.

“Finally,” Mavry said.

“You may proceed,
Shadow Comet
,” said the lieutenant. “
Sparrowhawk
out.”

The Comets belowdecks let up a ragged cheer as Carlo grabbed the yoke and brought the privateer down to her docking cradle for the first time in five months. It took an hour for Yana and Tycho to muster out the hands, issuing their exemptions and warning them to beware of press gangs. But then the last crewer hoisted his chest and passed through the port airlock to a waiting ferry, and the
Comet
was empty of all but her bridge crew.

The Hashoones gathered their own gear and climbed down the aft ladderwell to the gig. Carlo unlatched the little craft from its socket in the
Comet
's belly and let it plummet down Callisto's weak gravity well, fast enough to make Tycho's stomach turn flips.

“Easy on the sticks,” Diocletia complained. “We're not shooting the Kirkwood Gap here.”

“Sorry, Mom,” Carlo said with a grin, easing up on the controls and tapping the gig's retro rockets as it
settled on the landing pad, so gently that Tycho barely felt the bump.

“Show-off,” Yana muttered, and Carlo offered her a mocking bow.

The Hashoones tramped down the corridor to Port Town's transportation hub, where their grav-sled was waiting in its stall for the brief trip to Darklands. Tycho was so busy debating the legality of press gangs with Yana that he didn't notice Mavry had come to a halt and collided with him.

Grigsby was standing in the corridor, his duffel bag at his feet and a grimmer-than-usual expression on his face. Behind him stood a knot of morose-looking spacers, hats in their hands. Tycho recognized them as the Comets who had been sent aboard the captured cargo hauler weeks earlier.

“I don't suppose you're here to welcome us home,” Diocletia said.

Richards stepped forward, eyes downcast. “'Fraid not, Captain. It's my duty to tell yeh we lost the prize, ma'am.”

Tycho and Yana traded looks. The cargo hauler had been flying Earth's flag, and while she wasn't the stuff fortunes were made of, she'd been worth enough to make the
Comet
's last cruise a moderately successful one. Without her . . .

“Lost the prize?” Diocletia asked. “How did this happen, Mr. Richards?”

“She was recaptured, ma'am. A rescue ship from
Earth intercepted us a day out of 153 Hilda. Frigate by the name of the
Gros-yoo
.”

“Gesundheit,” Yana said, earning a stern look from her mother.

“We couldn't outrun her, Captain,” Richards said. “Not much in the solar system could. She took back the prize and her captain made us give our parole. Then he hailed a liner heading for Jupiter and put us on it.”

“An Earth captain paroled you?” Diocletia asked.

Tycho understood his mother's surprise. Earth regarded privateering as thinly disguised piracy. Many captains in His Majesty's navy would have taken the
Comet
's prize crew prisoner. But this one had allowed the Comets to return to Jupiter.

“I was surprised meself,” Richards said. “We thought we was bound for the brig, but this captain was a right decent cove, Earthman though he was. He turned us loose, and the
Gros-yoo
took the prize back to the asteroid belt.”

“I've never heard of an HMS
Gros-yoo
,” Mavry said. “Are you sure you're pronouncing that correctly, Mr. Richards?”

“Maybe not, but it's summat like that. 'Cept the
Gros-yoo
ain't no navy ship, sir. She's a privateer, she is. Carryin' a letter of marque from Earth.”

“That's impossible,” Huff said. “Earth ain't issued letters of marque since the Third Trans-Jovian War.”

“Seen the papers meself, Captain Huff. Weren't forgeries, neither—I know a Port Town special when I see
one. These had a holo-seal and everything.”

“We believe you, Mr. Richards,” Diocletia said. “And you have my thanks for making your report in person. That was no enviable duty.”

Richards ducked his chin gratefully as Diocletia turned to the other Hashoones.

“Let's get back to Darklands,” she said. “Sounds like there's a lot to discuss.”