Redline the Stars sq-5 Read online

  "Hardly," she agreed, "but tell me the department that can't use a bit of help now and then—Mr. Van Rycke's when cargo's being laded or shifted, the Engineering section during preventive maintenance, even the Steward and Medic once in a while depending on the press of their particular duties. About the only place I won't volunteer to serve is on the bridge. I'm as good as the next and probably better than most at basic astrogation, but that one is definitely best left to the experts."

  The smile she turned on them was winning. Rael was sure of getting the passage, but she was out for more than that. "I want to be part of the Solar Queen," she told them frankly, "if only for one voyage."

  "Why?" Miceal asked bluntly. "She won't match a Cofort ship, especially not the Roving Star, for comfort, and you can put credits down that we won't be calling at the Federation's most fashionable spaceports."

  The woman sighed. "You talk about our holdings as if we were a miniature Company. I assure you that is very much not the case. We have a few frills, aye, but we're Free Traders like the rest of our kind. We don't live soft.

  "My interest in your Queen stems from two sources.

  First, your former Cargo-apprentice, Mara Ingrain, is the best Cargo-Master we've ever had. She obviously had superb training, and, happy as she is on the Star, she speaks with nothing but pride and affection of her time as part of your crew. Second is the response of your apprentices and Mr. Weeks to the crisis of being framed as a plague ship.

  They proved they could think quickly and clearly and then make and carry through the desperate plan needed to clear you. Furthermore, at the end, the Queen not only came out of it all solvent with a relatively good contract but managed to avenge herself on her enemies as well. I think I could learn more serving with you for a voyage or two than I could in ten years bumming around the rim."

  The violet eyes studied him somberly. "I have no ulterior motive for this. You don't compete directly with my brother, and even if you did, Teague doesn't deal in back- alley work."

  "No one ever said that he did. Doctor Cofort," he responded quietly.

  She carefully closed her portfolio. "You have our offer. Take your time to talk it over, but please consider it well. It's generous since we are seriously interested in acquiring the ship, and you're not likely to better it, or equal it, either, in the foreseeable future."

  Van Rycke was silent for a moment. "That won't be necessary. We accept your brother's bid. — You'll want to inspect the Wrack?"

  "Of course, as will our Engineer when the crew gets here, as a formality in this case. You've been flying her, and none of you appears to be suicidal. — My request?"

  "The Queen will carry you, but if you want to work, it'll have to be as an unskilled temporary hand with no share in the ship's profits." They would have to check the rates.

  Only the huge transgalactics, most of those passenger liners, plying the inner-system starlanes, used unspecialized labor. Out here on the rim, no Captain could indulge in that luxury. Every crew member had his or her specific place

  and could usually back up at least one other shipmate as well.

  "That's all I had in mind, Mr. Van Rycke." She glanced at Jellico. "If it is agreeable to the Captain. Hiring a crew

  member goes beyond a Trade agreement. I'll have to honor his will."

  "It's agreeable, Doctor."

  "Excellent! Thank you, Captain Jellico."

  Rael came to her feet. "I won't be long. I'll pick up my things and have the formal contract drawn up. You can check it over, and we can seal it when I return."

  3

  Jan Van Rycke's head lowered. He had done all he could, the little he could. The senior members of the crew would appreciate that, but he knew the others had expected in their hearts that he would pull off some bit of magic for them. Damn it to all the hells, he had half expected that himself. . .

  Jellico looked at him. "Not bad at all," he announced with satisfaction. "We'd already made our original cost and expenses back, so this is clear profit. As nice a pot as the Queen's seen in many a long voyage."

  The tension melted from their comrades, and they crowded around the Cargo-Master to offer their own congratulations.

  "The only question now is what we're going to do with our new hand," Steen remarked.

  "No one has to worry about that," Tau responded. "I can put her to very good use. I've been doing, or trying to do, a study of interspecies/interracial transmission of viral and bacterial infections on the planetary, interplanetary, and interstellar levels. The inputting alone is a galactic chore.

  If all Rael Cofort does is take over that, it'll be worth it to me to ship her, and with a medical background she should be able to manipulate and interpret some of the data as well."

  "You do believe she's not setting us up for anything?"

  Rip pressed, voicing the nagging concern of most. They all had good reason to recall some of their recent passengers.

  "As sure as we can be," Van Rycke answered. "As Doctor Cofort pointed out, we're not of a class to compete regularly with her brother, and we don't even have a charter at the moment, much less anything he'd want to fight to get away from us, which he'd do openly anyway. He's certainly not going to enter into a Trade war over an intrasystem mail run like this one. Miceal will have to confirm Rael's credentials with him, but if she checks out there, we should be safe enough taking her aboard. It shouldn't prove a loss to us, even apart from whatever she can do on Craig's project. She's at least proven she's able to trade."

  "That she has." The Captain shook his head, as if in amazement. "Hard as titan one, though she looks as fragile as one of Loren's ghost lilies."

  Craig Tau chuckled. "The habitual errors of our kind! — Slight build is not the equivalent of either a weak body or incompetence in one's field. The fair Medic was born aboard a Free Trader. The wonder would be if she could not handle herself in the business, particularly in a situation where the blaster was in her hand."

  "True enough," Jellico agreed. He came to his feet. "I'll start programming the navputer for Canuche. Send our recruit to my cabin when she comes aboard."

  Rael Cofort squared her shoulders and knocked briskly on the entrance panel of the Captain's work cabin. She stepped inside a moment later upon receiving his permission to do so.

  Because she knew from Mara's descriptions what to expect, she gave no gasp of surprise, but her eyes glowed in appreciation at the sight of the montage of pictures covering all the walls, tri-dee images of some of the Federation's rarer and more dramatic fauna. They were of the highest professional and artistic quality, and the work of which they formed a visual record had earned Miceal Jellico a respected place among the ultrasystem's leading field xenobiologists.

  There should be more in here than merely representations of strange life forms. Eagerly she sought and found the one she wanted to see. Behind the Captain's desk, in a small, swinging cage, was one of the oddest creatures she had ever beheld, the only one of its kind she had encountered in the flesh. It looked like a lot of toad mixed with a little parrot, a bright blue feathered being with a neckless head and six legs, two of them clawed, arranged spider- fashion around its dumpy body.

  "Queex!" she exclaimed in delight and quickly stepped toward the hoobat. "You're wonderful!"

  Jellico stared at her. This was not the reaction Queex usually inspired. To every previous visitor and to the rest of the Queen's crew, his foundling was a frank horror.

  He stared again, this time at the hoobat himself. Instead of his customary greeting of siren shriek followed by a distressingly accurate and far-reaching spit, the creature was gripping the wire bars of the cage with his feet and drawing his claws across the metal strands, producing a soft, droning hum, which, if not quite a violin sonata, was the first distinctly musical sound any human being had

  heard him produce.

  Her face radiant with pleasure, Cofort reached a slender finger through the bars to gently rub the captive's head, an attention he received w
ith every indication of contentment.

  Suddenly, as if recollecting herself to her position and

  purpose, the woman stepped back, flushing hotly. "I'm sorry, Sir," she apologized. "Mara had spoken of him, and all the newstape coverage . . ."

  "An interesting beast," Jellico agreed gruffly. "You appear to get along with animals," he added in classic understatement as he eyed the still humming hoobat.

  "Aye, with nearly all subhuman-level biotics of reasonable intelligence. I like them, you see. They seem to realize that and respond to it. Plants grow well for me, too. I managed the hydro on the Roving Star and her predecessor for as long as I can remember."

  "That may prove to our advantage at some point."

  Jellico took her ID from her but did not insert it into the reader. "Your period of service will be from the present until the Queen is ready to leave Canuche of Halio, with the option to negotiate another run or a more permanent contract should either course seem desirable to both of us." Rael nodded. "Agreed." She smiled. "The gem market?"

  "Mr. Van Rycke would like to test your skills there, aye." "I'll be glad to put them to the Queen's service, though a certain amount of luck is always a strong component when buying jewels."

  "We recognize that fact as well, Doctor."

  The man looked thoughtfully at the disk in his hand, then glanced back up at her. "Sit down for a moment, Doctor Cofort."

  He remained silent until she had complied, then went on. "I've been in contact with your brother."

  "A reference check was a logical move on your part, especially after I admitted to breaching my contract with the Mermaid." She said no more, although his silence invited further comment.

  It was the Captain who continued. "Cofort reports that you're as good a general hand as is to be found in the starlanes and that your medical qualifications are impressive."

  "However?" she prompted, readily picking up the expected reservation in his tone. Teague would not have lied for her.

  "Cofort tells me that you don't respond well to the sight of suffering or major injustice."

  The woman's eyes brightened momentarily. "Neither

  does he." She was grave again in the next instant. "It is true that I've drawn him into a couple of confrontations he would as soon have avoided."

  "I can't afford to have the same thing happen to me or my crew," Jellico told her bluntly. "A Free Trader Captain, the Captain of any starship, is responsible not only for his vessel and cargo but for every living thing she carries. He can't always act as he would if he were an unencumbered individual. There're always going to be times when he has no option but to look the other way. That's true of your brother and even more so of us; we don't pack the same payload."

  "I am aware of that fact, Captain Jellico. Too aware of it.

  I had to satisfy myself with leaving the Mermaid and saving my own skin instead of properly challenging Slate's negligence."

  Her eyes dropped, and she bit down on her lip. "I hope someone does." She looked up again, her hatred open and strong. "Soon."

  "You can count on that if the crew's got as much reason to be dissatisfied as you said." He slid the ID into his recorder and pushed the button, officially sealing his new hand to the ship. That done, he returned it to her. "Welcome aboard, Doctor. Thorson should be waiting outside now to show you around. You'll have just enough time to see something of the Queen and stow your gear before we lift off."

  4

  Dane glanced at his timer. What was keeping the woman in there anyway? His own initial interview had taken only the few seconds necessary to process his ID. . .

  He glared at the door, angry with her and with himself because he recognized that his present ill will stemmed from his own uncertainty.

  Damn, he thought. He knew as well as the next that mixed crews were supposedly better on every count, but th6 Queen had managed just fine with only men since he had joined her company, and he was not anxious to see anything intrude that might cause trouble now. They faced enough of that from the outside without introducing it into their own company.

  It was no question of Rael Cofort's probable skill or lack of it that was bothering him. Certainly, it was not her gender. There had been an abnormally low percentage of women in his class at the Pool, but they had still comprised more than a third of the total. To a one, they had proven equal to the work and had pulled their part both individually and in the group projects assigned to them.

  He sighed to himself. The newcomer's capabilities hardly interested him at the moment. He was simply afraid of what she might do. He liked the SoJar Queen the way she was. He was settled, comfortable, and he did not relish the thought of any changes this potentially disruptive recruit might bring about.

  Recruit! Cofort had not even been invited to join the crew. She had bludgeoned her way in with that blasted charter.

  Memory rose to Thorson's mind, and his irritation ebbed. He had not been with the Queen so long that he could not remember his fears and feelings during his own first days aboard. This woman might be older and fully accredited in her specialty, but he did not believe she would be entirely immune to at least some of the same emotions that had made his initiation such a misery for him. He would be a proper bastard if he added to her trials with a show of causeless hostility.

  No, he told himself decisively, in all fairness and all humanity she would have to be given her chance, maybe several of them, but let her prove a source of trouble, let her even begin to try to destroy what they had here . . .

  The panel slid open, and Rael Cofort stepped into the corridor. She gave him a quick smile. "All set," she told him. "I'm now an official—"

  A shriek as loud and teeth-jarring as a civilian attack alert silenced her. Even out here they could hear Jellico slamming the bottom of the cage, setting it bouncing violently, but for once this usually sovereign remedy had no effect. The siren wail continued undiminished.

  Thorson winced. "I wonder how much of that the old man can take. Or Queex, for that matter. It's a wonder that jostling doesn't scramble his brains."

  The woman laughed. "Hardly! He loves it."

  "He'd have to be even odder than he looks to enjoy taking a beating."

  She looked at him strangely. "You haven't read up on hoobats?"

  "I'm afraid not. I've been too busy studying the finer points of cargo management," he responded, manfully keeping out of his voice the defensive note threatening to sharpen it. Alt used to make him feel like this, sometimes still did, with his superior air. He wondered if that was a characteristic of all extraordinarily fine-looking people who were also uncommonly intelligent. "You have, I suppose?"

  His companion failed to notice his discomfort. "Mara's description intrigued me, so I did a little research. They're rather fascinating little things. I can well understand why the Captain would want to adopt one, given his interest in X-Tee wildlife."

  "That's more than the rest of us can say," he remarked, his curiosity aroused almost despite himself. "How about sharing your findings?"

  She laughed. "Sure thing. — Hoobats come from Tabor and are quite rare even there, filling a very specific niche. They live only in certain canyons that are little less than wind tunnels and spend their entire lives clinging to stone projections or ledges or to wildly swaying branches, waiting for something falling within the appropriate size range to come within striking or luring distance. They don't have to eat often, and they hunt, of course, the way Queex did when he rounded up those poisonous pests for you.

  "The young are nurtured in free-hanging nests depending on slender branches to safeguard them from predators.

  Both parents feed them during their short period of dependency, but otherwise, hoobats are completely solitary creatures. That's why Queex can exist happily in isolation from his kind the way he does. As for the jarring, that's actually soothing, a flashback to his old life and to his time in the nest. In fact, a hoobat appears to require a certain amount

  of sharp movement
to remain healthy."

  Dane grinned. The image of Captain Jellico tenderly rocking an overage hoobat infant to rest was one worth cherishing in the heart if not to be openly shared—at least not in the skipper's hearing.

  "You didn't really believe he'd consciously abuse an animal or keep one in intolerable conditions, did you?"

  "No," he replied seriously after a brief pause, "I guess I didn't, or I wouldn't if I'd thought about it. I have read some of Jellico's papers, and all of them show too much liking and respect for his subjects to allow any mistreating of them."

  The man glanced at his timer. "Let's have a quick run- through of the Queen and drop off your gear. We'll soon have to be strapping down."

  "Good idea." She hefted her kit bag, which she had eased to the floor while they had been talking.

  Thorson eyed it sourly. It was the standard size and obviously of manageable weight but was easily three times as full as his had been when he had boarded the Solar Queen.

  Reason quelled his resentment. What else could he have expected? Rael Cofort was not some raw recruit out of Training Pool. She was a veteran of the starlanes who had literally been born in Trade and had hitherto lived and worked under conditions of considerable prosperity. She should have accumulated a few possessions. He, on the other hand, with no kin to back him, had come to his post with only his bare issue gear and the pathetically few extras he had been able to buy for himself to augment that.

  The Cargo-apprentice first led the way through the bridge area and pointed out the personal cabins of those working there. Then they descended the core ladder to the next deck, which housed the engine and drive controls, where Johan Stotz commanded and lived with his staff.

  The public cabins in which the hands and any passengers gathered during off-duty time were located below that. Here was the mess and galley, Frank Mura's chief domain, plus the small crew's cabin with its media readers and other equipment designed to help dispel the boredom of interstellar travel.