Eight

 

The Shade Tree

“Three suits, prepped and ready,” Tim McNeal said.

“Good deal. Heard from the Captain yet?”

“Nothing, Sarge,” McNeal answered. “And I just called up to the Bridge and talked to Frye a minute ago. Not a peep.”

“Then we’re on,” Gomp said. “Adams, you ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Adams replied with a frown. “I’ve never been in a suit before, you know.”

“You’ll be fine,” Gomp assured her. “What about you, Mickie?”

Engineering Tech Michiyo “Mickie” Watanabe just grinned and shot Gomp a thumbs-up. She turned to her suit and began climbing in.

“Good deal. All we have to do,” Gomp reminded them, “is to get to the third-lower access port, get in, and attach that terminal to the main data feed cable for D Ring. Then, Kaelee, you do your thing. All clear?”

“Oh, jolly clear,” Adams said. She looked at the open lower half of the suit, grabbed the hanging rings above the free-standing, armored trousers, and hoisted herself in. “Bloody hell – this thing’s two sizes too large for me.”

“You’ll be fine. Suits are expensive – can’t custom fit everyone.”

Five minutes later, the docking port’s airlock hatch swung outward, and the three space-suited figures climbed out.

Relieved of the Shade Tree’s artificial gravity, the suits automatically activated magnetic pads in the boots, allowing the trio to cling to the upper hull of the privateer ship and look upward, upward, at the sleek, gleaming mass of the Halifax space-dock.

“OK, girls, hang onto the grab rings on my belt,” Gomp ordered through his short-range suit radio. “and release your mag-pads. We’re going for a little ride.”

After exchanging an uncertain look, Adams and Watanabe grabbed the polymer rings that dangled from Gomp’s space-suit belt and tapped the contacts to override their suit’s mag-pads. Their feet floated free of the hull.

“Hold on now.” Gomp released his own mag pads, sighted on the hull of the station above Pier Four, and fired his suit thrusters. He twisted and rolled in mid-flight, and arrived neatly at the station hull feet-first, tapping his mag-pads active just as his feet hit the metal.

“See?” he grinned inside his helmet. “Piece of cake.”

“Mother of God,” Kaelee Adams mumbled.

“Tsuppattenjya ne-yo” Mickie Watanabe agreed.

“Never mind that. Access port is,” Gomp glanced at the schematic display he’d taped to his suit’s left forearm, “about four hundred meters that-a-way. Activate your mag-pads, let’s get to walking.” He glanced away from the hull, looking “up” at the stars. “Don’t want to stay out here too long – these suits’ shielding is only good for an hour or two. No need to get a big radiation dose if we can help it.”

“Oh, lovely.”

“Shut up, Kaelee, and get moving.”

***

Baxter’s office

Philemon Baxter looked up from his desk in shock. “What did you say?”

Fox looked at his boss. “Captain Jean Barrett, Mr. Baxter. She’s waiting in the outer office.”

“Well,” Baxter mused, “This is a bit awkward. How’s she look?”

“Healthy as a horse.”

“Great.” Baxter rubbed his eyes and grimaced. “Show her in.”

It was to Baxter’s credit that he managed to smile as Captain Barrett, still in her shipboard fatigues, walked in. There was hardly a person in the galaxy he less wanted to see, with the possible exception of his ex-wife’s mother; still, he grinned broadly and extended his hand as though he was greeting a valued old friend. “Captain Barrett! So good to see you.”

“Baxter,” Barrett smiled nastily as she shook his hand.

“Captain. I didn’t expect to see you here; I thought the deal was for you to contact the Cape Fortune to arrange the transfer.”

“The Cape Fortune was here,” Jean Barrett pointed out, “at least until an hour ago, making it a tad difficult to contact from way out on the frontier.” She helped herself to a chair across from Baxter’s desk. “Besides – we had a little complication.”

“You did?”

Don’t give me that wide-eyed innocent look, you son of a bitch, Barrett thought, but she kept that to herself. “Yes, just a little one. We got it cleared up, but we’ve had some problems with our Signals suite that made it necessary to come here for repairs. So, I figured, why not come see you in person?”

Baxter looked uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be too comfortable, this close to a Navy base and all.”

“Oh,” Barrett smiled, “The Navy and I go way back. Fleet Admiral Gauss is an old friend of mine.”

“I see.”

“So,” Jean continued, her smile growing dark, “All I need from you, Philemon, is one thing.”

“What’s that?”

***

Outside

It took some searching to find the access port, faired as it was into the hull of the station. Mickie Watanabe finally noticed the hair-thin seam of the panel after ten minutes of walking back and forth.

“All right,” Gomp told her, “go ahead, try your gadget.”

Watanabe looked at the hatch and then tapped several contacts on a small black panel taped to the arm of her pressure suit.

“No luck,” she grunted.

“Try another code.”

More tapping. “Chikusho!”

“Got any more?”

“Let me try one more thing,” Watanabe answered. “I hope don’t trip any security monitors with this.” Her final option was a program that sent the panels’ controller a spinning list of codes, using a random-number generator to spin through a billion possible combinations in the space of about a minute. Forty-eight seconds later, the hatch slid open.

“Well,” Mickie Watanabe smiled down at the opening. “No alarms. No flashing lights. Looks like we’re golden.”

“Let’s get in. Data cables should be about ten meters in and to the right.”

The three climbed carefully in and made an unpleasant discovery; the station’s artificial gravity functioned, but there was no airlock; the access panel had released no blast of air. The maintenance spaces were not pressurized.

“Can you work in your suit, Kaelee?” Gomp wanted to know.

“I’ll have to, won’t I then?”

“Here’s the cable,” Watanabe called out. “And here’s a panel. You can plug your terminal in here.”

“Good.” Kaelee Adams came forward, pulling a miniature data terminal out of the cargo pocket of her suit. “This is it. Give me ten minutes, and I should have everything we need.”

Gomp stood, tapping his boot impatiently against the aluminum deck plate, watching the minutes tick by on the heads-up display inside his suit helmet. After eight and a half minutes:

“All right,” Kaelee said. “I’ve got what we wanted. The Easter egg is in.”

“Good. Let’s get back to the ship. Time for Part Two.”

***

Baxter’s Office

“Someone reported you to the Navy as a plague ship?”

“Damn right,” Barrett replied. “And I’m damned mad about it, I can tell you. They boarded us at Tarbos, went through the whole ship.”

“But they didn’t find your cargo?”

“We didn’t have it laying out on the deck. I’ve been doing this sort of thing for a while, you know.”

Baxter frowned. “Well, where was it that a Navy scanning crew couldn’t find it?”

“That,” Captain Barrett smiled, “would be telling. Besides, they were medics – they were looking for pathogens, not contraband.”

“I see.” Baxter drummed his fingers on his desk. “What do you want me to do?”

“Tell me where that cargo came from.”

“I can’t do that,” Baxter protested. “As you put it, Captain, that would be telling. I can’t reveal my sources any more than you can reveal your methods of smuggling.”

“I don’t much care for the term ‘smuggling,’ but I take your point.” Barrett grinned, nastily this time, and stood up. “In that case, I have something else for you.”

It wasn’t apparent from her slim build, especially not when she was wearing her baggy shipboard fatigues, but Jean Barrett was a woman of considerable strength. Throwing herself on the desk, she grabbed Baxter’s shirt and pulled him close, kissing him hard on the mouth. Baxter struggled for a moment, feeling Barrett’s tongue against his clenched teeth, before she let him go.

“See?” Barrett smiled at him, still laying across his desk. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Maybe I just find you irresistible, Philemon,” she told him. Her face changed, from a smile to a mask of anger. “Or, maybe it’s just a little pre-emptive payback; if I’ve got anything, you bastard, now you do too.”

“You’re insane!”

“I’m a pirate,” Barrett agreed, “thanks to you. I’m supposed to be insane. Best of luck, Baxter; I’ll see you around.” She spun on her heel and stalked from the office.

“Wait a minute! What about the goddamn cargo?”

Barrett stopped in the doorway, turned and smiled at Baxter. “What cargo?” she asked. “Are you implying that I have something that belongs to you? Do you have a copy of a bill of lading, or any other documentation of that cargo? I don’t recall having any cargo consignment from you or anyone else, Philemon,” she said as Baxter fumed. “I do have some odds and ends of materials from an abandoned ship we found out near the frontier, legally taken according to existing laws governing legitimate salvage. But I don’t have any cargo,” she smiled.

“You bitch,” was all Baxter could manage.

“A bit of advice, Philemon,” Barrett said, “deal straight with people, and people will deal straight with you. Although, I suspect you’ll have a hard time finding any ship captains that are willing to deal with you at all after this.”

With that, she spun on her heel and left.

***

The Shade Tree

Gomp pulled off his helmet, and then turned to help Kaelee Adams and Mickie Watanabe out of theirs. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Nothing like a bit of fresh air,” Mickie said.

“And that was nothing like a bit of fresh air,” Kaelee added.

Gomp looked at his wristband. “Almost fourteen; Captain should be back any minute.”

“The Captain is already back,” Jean Barrett announced as she walked into the narrow docking port compartment. “How did it go?”

“Just as we planned, Captain,” Gomp said. “Maintenance spaces aren’t pressurized, but we managed. Kaelee’s good at this stuff; only took her ten minutes. Mickie got us in with no trouble, too; all I had to do was stand around.”

“Good. Get that data on our system; I want to know where, when, how and to whom Baxter had that transfer set up. Most of all, I want to know how much whoever it is, is paying. We may just all get a bonus this trip. I want to leave port in two hours – get moving.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” the three crew members repeated as one, grinning widely at the prospect of money.

Barrett looked at Kaelee Adams. “You got the Easter egg in, did you?”

“I did, Captain,” Adams smirked. “Next time Baxter tries to make a hyperphone call, all of his confidential records, including all of his cross-border dealings, will be forwarded to the Confederate Bureau of Investigation office on the station. I expect he’ll be getting a visit from a couple of CBI agents about ten minutes after that.”

“And a nice long stay behind a force field in the detention facility down on the surface,” Gomp chuckled.

“I expect he’ll be on his hyperphone line trying to reach the Cape Fortune at any moment, too. Let that be a lesson to you all,” Barrett said. “Do unto others…”

“Before they can do unto you,” Gomp finished the sentence.

They all laughed.

 

 

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