Democracy's Right

Chapter Twenty-Three

“It’s the flicker drive node, My Lady,” Accrington said. “I’m afraid that it has finally given up the ghost.”

Lady Hannelore Ellicott-Chatham scowled. The Misfit was one of three freighters, her own personal property, that she’d assigned to the mining project at Tyler’s Star. Unfortunately, the ship was also older than she was and on its last legs. The only reason it had been so cheap was because the owner had thought he was selling it for scrap.

“So the freighter cannot jump outside the system,” Hannelore said, carefully. She had a fairly comprehensive education in mining technology — her mother and father had taught her never to depend on outsiders to run crucial family businesses — but she couldn’t have put a flicker drive together even if someone had given her the parts and detailed instructions. “Can we still use it inside the system?”

“Oh, sure,” Accrington assured her. “The hull is as sound as it was when we bought it” — Hannelore snorted; that hadn’t been very sound — “and there’s nothing wrong with the life support. It’s just the flicker drive.”

“Very well,” Hannelore said, straightening up. “Put the ship on internal system duties until it finally gives up the ghost or we can scrape up the funds to have the flicker drive repaired.”

“It would probably be cheaper in the long run to buy a whole new ship,” her chief engineer said, as he wiped his hands on a grubby towel. “The older ship isn’t going to last forever.”

Hannelore contemplated the loss of the Misfit as she strode through the freighter’s cramped passageways and out into the asteroid habitat she’d converted into a base of operations. Calling it a habitat was a bit of a stretch, but she didn’t care about rocky walls, dodgy life support and unidentified smells in the atmosphere. It was her home and would remain her home until she returned to Earth in triumph, or finally gave up and joined the Moochers, the army of disinherited heirs who lurked at the edge of the Thousand Families, more than commoners but less than aristocrats. She couldn’t imagine a worse fate and her natural optimism kept her going, yet it seemed as if the universe itself was conspiring against her. All her hopes and dreams seemed to be on the verge of failure.

Tyler’s Star had been judged worthless when the Imperial Navy’s survey service had passed through the red dwarf system, pausing long enough to catalogue the small handful of asteroids and the single small gas giant before moving on to more prosperous systems. Hannelore — searching for a place to try to build a fortune — had other ideas. The system had two great advantages; it had no local population and a suitable source of power, the star itself. And, if the economic predictions for Sector 117 bore out, a person who just happened to control a cloudscoop and an asteroid mining facility would be in a position to carve out a niche for herself. Hannelore wanted that very much.

She’d been the product of an arranged marriage between two families, both small families who had dreams of merging and becoming a greater one. They’d ordered two of their youngsters to marry and produce a heir, but their dreams had shattered long before Hannelore had reached her majority. Powerful factions within both families, fearing that they would be disinherited in favour of the newcomer, had torn the alliance apart, leaving Hannelore adrift. Her parents might have been divorced, yet they’d always been kind to her, but that kindness had limits. Hannelore was that unfortunate person who could not be denied a place in the family, but was also an embarrassment, a reminder of plans that had simply never come to fruition. She had grown up among the Thousand Families and rapidly learned to hate most of the younger members, both the ones who pretended sympathy for her isolation and the ones who acted as if she was tainted, as if what had happened to her was a deadly disease that could rub off on them. Hannelore had sought an escape and found one, more or less by accident. It had required almost all of her trust fund from her family, but she’d gone ahead with it anyway. A successful mining project would give her the leverage to rejoin her family on her terms, or allow her the independence she had always craved.

The thought made her smile bitterly, for both her parents had been adamantly opposed to their daughter taking her inheritance — such as it was — and heading nearly six months from Earth, in the company of common-born miners and engineers. The miners were hardly suitable companions for a young girl, her mother had twittered, while her father had warned of the dangers of a pirate raid taking her alive. If she was lucky, the family would have to pay a hefty ransom; if she were unlucky, she would suffer a fate worse than death. And, so far, the worst that had happened was a steady decline in her assets and financial trouble on the galactic market.

Her concept had seemed brilliant, at first. The asteroid miners worked for the Thousand Families, often paid low wages that allowed their superiors to fix the prices of asteroid ore. Hannelore had calculated that if she established a completely independent mining colony, she could charge whatever prices she liked, including undercutting all of her competitors. The Roosevelt Family would not be amused — she had been careful not to allow them any stake in her enterprise — yet what could they do about it? They couldn’t crush her through their network of patronage, for that would bring the wrath of every other family down on their heads. The Thousand Families couldn’t afford to turn on one another, or the commoners would see the infighting and start getting ideas.

She smiled again, a more relaxed smile, wondering what her mother would say if she saw her daughter now. Hannelore wore a grimy shipsuit, her blonde hair cut back into a short mop surrounding her head… and she looked as if she hadn’t had a bath in weeks. She hadn’t, come to think of it, water was rationed on the platform until they finished melting down asteroid ice and inserting it into the system. Hannelore had no intention of abusing her position; she could never have explained it to her mother, but she liked the engineers and miners she worked with more than she liked her friends back home. At least the miners weren’t plotting her social death every time they looked at her.

The asteroid’s control centre barely rated the name. Her engineers had rigged up a fusion reactor, a handful of consoles and a display they’d pulled out of a freighter that they’d actually had to scrap, after using it as living quarters for the first few weeks. The thought was galling; if she’d had full access to the family funds, she could have provided much better equipment and they wouldn’t be risking their lives every time they used some of the older gear. Once she got the whole complex up and running, once she started funnelling supplies to various worlds… then she would be in a position to claim her rightful place.

“We’re going to have to cut back in 445-67,” Jackson said. He was a burly miner, exactly the sort of person her mother had warned her about. He would have been handsome, at least o her eye, if he hadn’t used an illegal genetic re-profiling system at some point and wound up looking like a biological experiment gone horrendously wrong. Hannelore had wondered — she had never dared ask — just what he’d had in mind. It looked as if he’d gone three rounds with an angry crocodile-analogue and the creature had won. “The mining team have filled all their baskets.”

Hannelore nodded, sourly. “At least we can send the Misfit to pick up their load,” she said, studying the display and calculating times in her head. She hadn’t even thought about distances in normal space until she had come to Tyler’s Star. The flicker drive normally made every location in the system only a few seconds away, but only her freighters carried FTL drives. The mining ships were confined to normal space. “And then transfer it over to another ship or even one of the storage asteroids.”

She scowled as she looked at the storage asteroid. They’d attempted to turn a rocky-iron asteroid into a genuine habitat, but the survey had missed impurities in the metal and the asteroid had burst when they’d tried to expand it. It made a source of raw materials and a storage point, yet it was a dark reminder of her failure. Her first of many failures.

“Of course, My Lady,” Jackson said. Unlike most of the other miners, Hannelore had never been able to get him to abandon formality. “We can…”

He broke off as an alarm sounded on one of the displays. “My Lady,” he said, as he twisted the console around so she could see the icons, “there is an unidentified ship within the system.”

Hannelore bit down a very unladylike word. No one was supposed to visit Tyler’s Star. There was nothing in the system to attract visitors, not even the Imperial Navy or pirates. There was nothing in the system worth stealing, at least not yet. Hannelore had intended to invest in some defensive satellites when she had the mining complex up and running, but the funds were too limited to invest now. Besides, covering an entire system was a nightmare. It was simply impossible without thousands of platforms.

“Can you identify it?”

“Not with this gear, My Lady,” Jackson said. He had a past that remained shrouded in mystery, but he clearly knew his way around a tactical console. There were times when she wondered if he was a deserter from the Imperial Navy. “The ship isn’t transmitting any IFF signals and these systems aren’t good enough to pick up much more information.”

Hannelore rubbed her forehead, cursing her luck. The Imperial Navy wouldn’t have bothered to sneak around her system, which meant that the intruders almost certainly had to be pirates. If they were just from the black colonies, trying to remain undetected, they wouldn’t have come so close to her complex. Hell, why would they even bother to come close to the star when there were thousands of light years of interstellar space to use as a meeting point, without any risk of detection? No reason came to her tired mind.

“Hail them,” she ordered. If they knew that they’d been spotted, perhaps they would flicker out and withdraw. Pirates weren’t known for bravery, if only because the Imperial Navy executed them upon capture. “Ask them what their business is and how we may assist.”

“Yes, My Lady,” Jackson said. He turned to his own console and spoke rapidly, pushing as much confidence into his voice as he could. Hannelore had been tempted to speak herself, but letting the pirates know that there was at least one woman in the complex wouldn’t have been such a great idea. They might have gotten a few ideas. “I don’t think they’re listening.”

Hannelore nodded. The unknown ship was still arcing towards her complex, ignoring the message and the outlying mining ships. Whoever was in charge had probably surveyed her complex under cloak and deduced that the centre — her command asteroid — was the only valuable point in the system. The miners would have to surrender or die in the vacuum of space when their air ran out… if the pirates didn’t just blow the asteroid and leave them to die.

“Sound the alert,” she ordered, and then changed her mind. There was nothing they could do to deter the pirate ship from attacking, if they intended to attack. “Belay that; warn section leaders, but don’t sound a general alert.”

If Jackson disagreed with her logic, he didn’t show it. “Yes, My Lady,” he said, and started to work at his console. Hannelore envied him dreadfully suddenly; if she had something to do, she wouldn’t have had to stare at the incoming icon and worry about what its crew might have in mind. She understood, suddenly, what her father had meant when he had talked about the loneliness of command. She was responsible for the seventy-two miners and engineers she had hired and transported to Tyler’s Star, promising them wealth, reward and patronage — if only they succeeded. And, by doing so, she had brought them here to die.

Jackson looked up suddenly. “My Lady,” he said, “we are receiving a transmission.”

Hannelore braced herself. There would be no hiding the fact that she was a woman now, or the fact that there were other women on the platform. “Put it through,” she ordered. “Let’s hear what they have to say.”

A face appeared in front of her. The image was massive, as if the sender was focusing the camera directly on his face, rather than allowing her a chance to see his bridge. The man had long blonde hair — longer than her hair — and a beard that seemed to defy any hope of organising it properly. The effect seemed to create the impression of a dashing rogue, although it was partly spoiled by the fact she could see every motion on the face. If the speaker frowned, or twitched, she would see it.

“Lady Ellicott-Chatham,” the speaker said. Hannelore’s lips twitched. Technically, she was Lady Hannelore, for there was no Ellicott-Chatham Family. The failure of the planned merger and her parents’ separation had seen to that. Indeed, someone of a legalistic bent could make a convincing case that she shouldn’t even be considered a Lady at all. “I am Captain Jason Cordova, representing the Popular Front for the Reform of the Empire.”

“That’s a bit of a mouthful,” Hannelore said, before she could stop herself. There was something about the speaker, Captain Cordova, that seemed to encourage informality. If nothing else, it certainly suggested that he didn’t have looting, raping and pillaging in mind. “I have never heard of the Popular Front.”

“The whole universe will know of us soon,” Cordova promised. His booming voice carried with it unlimited confidence, the kind of confidence that only nature’s aristocrats possessed. Some of the family brats Hannelore had known had it, but it was rare outside the Thousand Families, at least from what she’d seen. Her lips twitched again. She hadn’t seen that much of the galaxy outside the Thousand Families. “I’m afraid that I’m going to have to ask you to surrender your facilities.”

Hannelore felt a sudden hot wave of anger flowing through her, but she clamped down on it mercilessly. There was no point in getting angry, not now. She didn’t quite dare. “You’re talking about wrecking the livelihood of nearly a hundred people,” she said, the strongest argument she dared use. “If you destroy the platforms…”

“We have no intention of destroying the platforms,” Cordova said. “We just wish to remove you and your crew from them for a short period of time, until the war is over.” His voice hardened. “I’m afraid I cannot give you a choice in the matter.”

Hannelore keyed the switch and looked over at Jackson. “Can we resist?”

His shrug was very droll. “We don’t have anything to resist with,” he pointed out. “If we say no, they’ll either open fire or send in their troops to take us prisoner.”

“Very well,” Hannelore said, reopening the channel. There was no point in asking for guarantees, although even she had heard of Cordova’s reputation. He didn’t have anything like the reputation some pirates had. “We will transfer over to your ship and then seal the platforms.”

An hour later, she found herself breathing in clean air as she stepped onboard the Random Numbers. Not all of her crew had been keen to surrender, but spacers couldn’t allow themselves any delusions about reality and reality was that Cordova had the firepower to make any objections pointless and futile. Hannelore had considered trying to sneak away, using only gas thrusters in hopes of avoiding their radar, yet she’d ended up dismissing the idea. It simply wouldn’t have worked.

“Welcome aboard,” Cordova said. On the screen, he’d been remarkable; in person, he was striking, even stunning. His smile was so bright that it seemed to light up his entire face. It was easy to see why his crew both loved and followed him, even into exile and certain sentence of death if they were caught. “I have taken the liberty of preparing quarters suitable for one of your exalted rank and station.”

“Thank you, but I would prefer to bunk with my crew,” Hannelore said. She had long ago lost the modesty that a young girl in the High City on Earth was required to develop — or at least pretend to develop. “I wish to make sure that they are not mistreated.”

“No one will be mistreated,” Cordova assured her. His smile grew wider. “And perhaps you would join me for evening dinner. There is much that you can tell me about Earth.”

Hannelore blinked in confusion. Why would Cordova want to know about Earth?

“I would be honoured,” she lied. It was quite possible that Cordova wanted to take her to bed instead. It wouldn’t be that uncomfortable — it wasn’t as if she were a virgin, or that he was unattractive — but it would have felt like she was betraying her crew. “And then you can tell me all about the Popular Front.”

Her father had told her, once, to learn everything she could. Knowledge was power, he’d told her, and power was always worth having. If she was to be Cordova’s guest — or prisoner — she might as well learn what he had to tell her, and how he intended to justify himself to the universe.

And besides, it might be fun.

“I would be delighted,” Cordova said. “Shall we say my quarters, at nine?”