Sidewinder Precision Pro

[Malacandra]

There’s one thing that will get everyone to drop their quarrels right away.

If you’ve ever even considered going into space, much less actually been there, you’ll know what I mean. Thargoids. It’s quite something to be going about your business in the middle of a dust-up and then see the trace appear on your scope, flashing red and green, and everyone, trader, escort, miner, pirate, smuggler, assassin or cop, suddenly stops whatever it was they were doing and takes up Bug-splatting at once.

It happened to me sooner than I liked – just a couple of hops out of Qudira, when I’d managed to score a couple of kills to settle my rookie nerves a little, but still while I was officially rated Harmless. There were just the two of us, me and another Sidewinder, escorting yet another of the nearly-broke Pythons that somehow keep the star trade open between them, and we were looking nervously at a much bigger group of ships, the usual mixed bag that might be an honest trader or might be anything but, and all of a sudden the scope goes wild and all of that other group are steering straight for this green flying saucer with their lasers lighting up the emptiness.

Unfortunately they didn’t have the proper training, and they didn’t know that if you hurt a Thargoid bad enough it start launching drones at you – it never runs away – so pretty soon we had the mother ship and four or five robot fighters on our hands, which is bad enough to begin with and worse if another saucer shows up.

Which was just what we got, moments after someone had just yelled to stop shooting the robots and take down the saucer, and then someone else bawled “Belay that! Another warship incoming! Shoot what you can!” because, of course, if you take down one mother ship then any other one nearby will take over the drones.

I didn’t like my first taste of Thargoids one bit. They have this nasty turret laser that means they don’t have to be aimed at you to shoot you, and the big ships are scary quick. The only thing you have going for you is the part about never running away, even when a smart combatant would be breaking off to let their shields recharge. That meant, when enough of us hit it hard enough all at once, it gave this weird yelp of random words just as it blew, and once we had both the warships destroyed the robots just hung there in space twirling aimlessly. GalCop are just as pleased to see them blown, even so, so I scored myself a cheesy kill and a small bounty.

If you want to know what kind of nonsense a Thargoid screeches when it blows, by the way, ask any library computer. Spacers log the choicer ones for everyone else’s amusement.

The thing is, I can understand space bugs being monsters, because that’s how they’re made. It’s humans’ inhumanity to each other that I can’t get my head around – especially when I’m the one that’s doing it.

I wandered over to see what the old freighter captain was up to, or at any rate near enough that he could shoo me away if he felt like it, and I’d understand if he did. He was a stocky kinda guy, not fat the way Fat Hannah was back on Qudira but way bulkier than any of my menfolks had been back on the farm and huge next to the singleship guys, who’re all young and fit. There was a little grey in his hair, not enough to make him really old, and a beard that he kept trimmed all round, and he was dressed for comfort rather than glamour.

“Hi,” I said. “Mind if I watch?”

He had a datapad in front of him and something sealed in a clear box, just a little gizmo the size of my top thumb joint, that was wired to a transceiver chip. “Sure,” he said, tapping away at the datapad. “You can listen too in a moment, if you like.”

“What’s that you’ve got?” I asked, peering at it cluelessly.

“An antique. It’s from the old Homeworld, if the dealer I got it off was telling the truth, which makes it… I don’t know how many centuries old. Memory chip. There’s music on it, once I get the decoder set up.”

I listened while the datapad started to play whatever was on the old chip, and it was like no music I ever heard. I don’t even know what it was being played on – I mean, apart from the datapad’s playback program, which is pretty smart. It started out solemn, not sad but dignified, and then just as I was getting to like the tune it broke off into something else altogether, something that started off kinda joyful and light-hearted and then seemed to get carried away with itself. But then just as that second tune was becoming what you’d call frantic, back came the first one, and it seemed to say “Calm down. Stop this. Don’t you remember where we began?” and it seemed to let the second tune, the frantic one, set the pace to begin with, but it took over, and said “Now at my speed,” and it took right over, sonorous and grand, and it seemed to tear my insides right out of me.

“Who in all the world made that up, and what was it?” I asked the old freighter captain.

He smiled. “I’ll never know. The best antiquarians I’ve found aren’t even sure of the alphabet on this thing. There’s just one word of speech they’ve found on the chip, sounds like ‘Tanhoyzer’, and no-one knows what that means either, or even if it’s anything to do with the music.”

I sat there in silence feeling the music let go of my soul at last. Eventually I said, “Why are people mean to each other?”

[Malacandra]

Sometimes you really believe humanity’s going to make it.

When we got hit by the Thargoids and for just a few minutes everyone human – or even just on good terms with humans – stopped what they were doing and all helped each other deal with the most inhuman menace in the galaxy, it seemed like there was an actual sense of hope that you could feel running right through that moment. And when the last of the Bugs went down, everyone sorted themselves out peacefully, the traders carried on in or out of the system and anyone who wasn’t there with honest intentions just took themselves out of the spacelanes, even if it was only just until next time.

That gave me a lift at the time, and when I took off with my next trader I wasn’t quite so on edge any more. I was lucky enough to get a few trips that were light on pirates and I managed to easy myself into the escort’s routine. It wasn’t always that way. Sometimes there’d be more than we could handle easily, and from time to time one of the escorts would go down, but I learned to accept that as part of the deal and to celebrate every trip where it wasn’t my turn in the barrel.

And I’m not quite sure how that led me to Diora station, awake long after sack time, and listening to antique music with a trader who could’ve had kids of his own that were older than mine.
He listened politely when I asked that question about people being mean to each other, and he didn’t answer straightaway. Instead he called over the bartender, a fresh-faced youngster in Party drab, and got him to fetch over a clean glass, which he dirtied with a couple of fingers of something honey-coloured he had in a crystal flask that looked like it cost high.

“Sip it,” he suggested. “It deserves respect.”

He wasn’t far off the mark on that, either, and you need to bear in mind I was already a veteran of many a spacer party. They’re the kind where you gargle it down pretty fast and take a sober pill either before or after you and your companion get jiggy, but you certainly take one before you ship out in the morning. But the stuff they sell there is usually aimed at kids who’ve grown up too fast and need to act older than they are, only their tastes haven’t matured as much as they like to think they have. This – well, it would have been rude to gag on it, but I figured he’d called it right.

“Thanks. Marilee, Get An Honest Job.”

“Commander Macrae, The Whisky and the Music,” he replied, giving the flask a pat to suggest where part of his ship’s name came from. “You’ve something on your mind, girl.”

And he seemed like the kind of old-timer you end up spilling your guts to whether you meant it or not, so I started doing exactly that, beginning with the disastrous run I’d been on just a short time ago, where only Terek and I survived and both of us rolled into a system we’d never been heading for. Macrae knew well enough what that meant:

“Failure. At least, that’s what you’ll have told yourself, no? And worse than failure – it’s a taboo, isn’t it? Never let your freighter get killed, no matter what?”

“Yes. Oh, yes,” I said, meaning it more than the words could say. “Otherwise, what are we even for?”

He topped up his own glass with a suspicion more of the whisky; I wasn’t ready yet. But I was ready to carry right on talking, and soon I’d got to the part where Terek ran out on me.

“So just when you need a bit of stability in your life, someone goes and yanks the rug from under you,” said Macrae, “an’ you feel you’re worse off than when you started. Is that the way of it?”

“I wish it was,” I said. “But I’m not done yet.”

So I told him the rest of it, and he gave me a look that I thought was more sympathetic than I deserved. He didn’t talk about what I’d just said, though. Instead he asked me a completely different question.

“Why do you do what you do – for a living, I mean?”

I shook my head. “I’m not always sure any more. I thought I knew.”

“Let’s phrase it another way, then,” Macrae suggested. “How would you have answered – when you thought you knew?”

“Ohhh,” I said, prevaricating over another sip of the whisky, “several reasons. To save lives. Because I’m good at it. To help make the galaxy a little bit better. Because I don’t know how to do anything else. Damn it, I was recruited as a kid, I had nothing else going for me, nothing and nowhere to go back to – and I’d shown an early talent for shooting things.”

“Up to now I’m not hearing anything to make me throw my hands up in horror. But has something changed?”

Another headshake. “That’s what I’m asking myself. It shouldn’t have – but I’m not feeling the part about saving lives or making the galaxy better. Which just leaves me killing people for money, because I’m good at it, because I don’t know how to do anything else.”

He finished his shot of whisky, giving it the time it deserved, then gave me a look. “Someone who’s good at killing people for money is, every once in a while, just the kind of help I need. I’ve a long trip coming, up to Ususor.” If you don’t have the Sector One map printed inside your eyelids, I should maybe mention that’s just about the far side of the sector – measured the short way, at least. “I’ll be needing an escort. It’s just as easy for me if I don’t have to find a new one every time.”

[Malacandra]

Security isn’t part of an escort’s life.

The nearest you get to security is when you see the chance of some guaranteed pay-days coming up. They usually go one at a time and no-one expects differently. You sign up today, maybe, with a clunker of a Python with a hundred tons of food, ores and cloth on board, and you hop over to another system a day away by Witchdrive and sign off. Your pay’s already banked so there’s nothing to be done except to spend some of it on R&R and wait for your next customer. Tomorrow, perhaps it’s a swanky Boa Clipper running a cargo contract from one side of the sector to the other, and it’s your turn to escort him for a Jump or two. The day after, another Python maybe, or even an Anaconda with most of a cluster’s valuables in its holds and a swarm of escorts all grinding along at what feels like five furlongs per fortnight. Whichever way, it’s pick-up labour for a day or so, and the next day you hope to find a new employer.

It’s rare enough for a Cobra to be hiring escorts in the first place, and rarer still for that to be a long-range mission. You can do the math for yourself. Even a stretched Cobra III might clear fourteen hundred credits on a full load of computers at the best possible mark-up; no-one’s going to make a habit of spending the thick half of that on a pair of hired guns. So when you get a job offer from a Cobra commander, you figure he’s making the money some other way, and any way you can think of, it’s not going to be making for a quiet life.

He might have a hold-full of drugs, which you can sometimes pick up dirt cheap especially if the local manufacturers are trying to get the evidence out of the system as soon as possible before the cops close in. There are places – you have to ask around, but they can be found – where you can sell them as dear as computers or the best entertainment sets you can imagine, and if you manage that the profits are huge. I’d never knowingly escort a drug-runner, because I’ve never forgotten what Agent Elus told me back after the excitement at Fat Hannah’s. On the other hand, escorts don’t always get told what their freighter is carrying…

He might be shipping bullion, which they tell me is worth a fortune if you’ve built your rep up to the point where planetary governments are prepared to hire you to deliver a sizeable chunk of their federal reserves to the far side of the sector. Rewards are high because the economies of two systems are closely tied to the delivery and their entire banking system might wobble badly if it doesn’t arrive.

Finally, there are people who need to get somewhere in a hurry, can’t afford to wait for the regular liners, and don’t have a ship of their own. Again, the higher they’re willing to pay, the more is hanging on their safe and prompt arrival. And if it comes to that, a trader who’s shipping bullion can perfectly well have a cabin or two set aside for executive transport into the bargain. The fuel’s already paid for, and the extra pay’s a very nice bonus.

All of these have the same thing in common: an excellent chance that someone will turn up to try to make a profit off your endeavours. High-value cargo draws pirates like flies to the southern end of a northbound bull, and desperate passengers usually have someone who’s keen to see to it that they don’t arrive on schedule. So the more escorts your trader can afford, the more likely it is that he does need them.

Of course I didn’t understand any of this back when I was starting out, though there were some lectures during training, which I did my best to keep up with. What you don’t grasp at that stage you gradually pick up as you become older and wiser. Or else you don’t learn to spot when a contract is likely to be hotter than a Viper’s drive, and you get surprised when the trouble starts.

So on the one hand I was more than eager to book myself in for a long trip and a series of pay-offs, and on the other I was burning with curiosity to know how Macrae was able to afford it. The most I was entitled to know, though, was how he stood with the law. He gave me a smile that I couldn’t quite be sure I was reading right.

“Here’s the offer,” he said. “I’ll undertake to stop at least once every forty-eight hours, and you’re rehired and repaid every time we launch at three hundred and seventy-five credits per launch. I may stop more often, the same deal, though it’s my call whether we have time for a layover. Don’t fash, I know your crew accommodation’s not so grand as mine and I’ll see you get enough time station-side. I’ll not sun-skim unless it’s an emergency.

“When we dock, your time’s your own until half an hour before launch, and you’ll be there promptly. But you’re cordially invited to dine at the captain’s table should you so wish – and mebbe that’ll give us time to talk over what bothers you.

“Now, how you dress aboard your Sidewinder’s your own affair, likewise in the spacers’ bar, but if you’re out in public you’ll wear a Macrae uniform. Get to the tailor’s first thing, they’ll run it up for you on my ticket. All agreed?”

And, just like that, he’d taken charge so naturally it never occurred to me to disagree. His datapad and mine chattered to each other for a moment, and my thumbprinted contract transferred to his at the same time as his uniform specs and credit for payment arrived on mine.

[Malacandra]

Other folks’ customs are always strange.

Where the strangeness mainly comes in is that you grow up thinking the way you did things in your house was the way everyone did them, everywhere, and this turns out not to be true even when you travel as short a distance as will take you to the spaceport, never mind another planet. Travel broadens the mind, they say.

The most commonplace things can be the weirdest to get used to. Top of the list would be how other people dress, and how they sit down to eat. We didn’t wear anything the least bit fancy on our farm, of course. Qudira makes cloth as well as food and liquor, and every once in a long while when the trader came around we’d get a new pair of pants and a shirt off his wagon, always with plenty of growing room and made more for warmth and long wear than comfort or looks. And that would be what we wore for a year or more, before we cast it off for someone younger or put it by until someone else needed it. There was at least one pair of pants we had that Grandpa wore when he was a youngster, and every one of the menfolks that came after him, in order of age; and you can believe that everything got mended until there was more patches than cloth, until all you could do was throw it in the rag-bag to go for patches or quilting on its own account.

We never went what you’d call real hungry, not on a farm, but we didn’t waste food, or eat anything fancy that could get sold or traded for something we needed. And I ain’t saying we ate like animals either, but we hadn’t much by way of eating irons and as long as no-one grossed anyone else out then nobody pointed fingers.

They schooled some of that out of us in training. There’s kind of a standard set of table manners and tableware that you’ll see on any GalCop station, and it’s understood that this will be polite enough for everyday use no matter who you set down with. It took a while for some of us to get to grips with it, especially when you figure some like me never had had their own knife and fork to themselves. We learned that some places they eat with fingers, some with sticks, some with a fork or a spoon or similar, and we learned how to manage every which way.

But back to clothes for a bit, ‘cos I about fell right down when I saw what the Macrae uniform looked like. I’d seen girls in skirts and so on, even tried one on myself one time, but you better believe no-one dresses like that on a singleship. I explained about the space pants before – well, they’re a necessity, believe me, and a skirt instead just would not work. Still, Macrae had said it was something to wear in front of folks, not at work or even in the spacers’ bar, so I guessed I could live with it.

The tailor quickly ran up a new skirt to my measurements. It fell in folds and was made of some kind of stiffish cloth with a fancy design in black and white strands worked across and down on a base that was mainly a kind of blue-green. I’d not seen that kind of pattern before. There was a plain white blouse and a short black jacket to go with it, as well as flat black shoes and - which made me blink – a sash and a hat of the same stuff as the skirt. They very kindly gave me a holo to show how it all went on, complete with animation for those who’d not been brought up to such fancy dress.

However, I had a captain’s table to dine at – and they’d mentioned this in training too, as something that wasn’t likely to come up but might; it was about as high an honour as a trader could offer his hired help, and though Macrae had spoken as though it was purely something I could take or leave as I chose, I didn’t think I ought to be too quick to turn it down. We’d had a quiet run up to Usralaat by way of Esgerean and Oresle, and when Macrae called a halt I was more than ready.

Besides, I was hoping to ask him something.

I wasn’t prepared, quite, for the surprise I got when I saw that the boss dressed just as fancy as the hired help. It was unusual for me to see a man in a skirt – but I was soon to learn that wasn’t the right word – and otherwise almost a copy of what I was wearing myself, although with an altogether more masculine cut to it and with some bits of silverware that mine didn’t have. He was waiting near the bar in the commanders’ lounge, but with a table set for two near at hand. I took one glance and realized I hadn’t a clue what half the metal and glass was for, and I about bolted then and there.

Macrae, though, gave me a smile and even a fractional bow, which was more formal manners than I was used to, and signed for one of the waiters to seat me before him. There was something slightly sparkling in a glass already waiting for me, and I couldn’t help smiling. “Bima water? Here?”

“Your registration gave Qudira as your homeworld,” said Macrae, “and Bima water makes a perfectly good aperitif when it’s suitably served. I hope it’s agreeable.”

“So do I,” I said, “but I’m hardly an authority. I used to get given the tiniest spoonful when Grandpa made a batch. I think that was to discourage me from sneaking a drop for myself.”

Macrae laughed, and gave the waiter a nod to start serving dinner.

[Malacandra]

Some kinds of weirdness are easier to deal with than others.

Nearly all escorts that I run across in the spacers’ bar, and nearly all the traders I sign up with, are human, and most of those that aren’t are close enough to count. Some are taller, shorter, funny coloured or maybe a bit bonier than you’re used to, but you get used to that easier than you might think. Even cats aren’t too strange, once you get used to the idea that they can walk upright, talk, and use tools and weapons. But every once in a while you run across something insectoid, or maybe something whose near ancestor was a for-real lobster, and then you have to be real careful about how you react, because some of them can be really touchy if you even look at them funny.

Wearing this strange formal outfit and sat across the table from a man wearing the men’s version of the same – including a rather larger sash draped over his shoulder, and an actual knife tucked into the top of one of his socks – was peculiar all right, but I was enjoying myself far too much to mind. It was very, very different from the kind of R&R I was used to, which tended to follow the same formula: Party wildly, drinking too much and laughing a lot, for a few hours, then have energetic sex with the lucky stranger of your choice, then crash out for six to eight hours and take a pill to sober up when you wake up if you didn’t do it before. Granted that usually defuses all the tensions of the day pretty effectively, but the change in routine was… welcome.

“You said something about the Homeworld the other night when I met you,” I asked him over the main course. “You said the music you were playing came from there, or so the dealer said. Was there ever a real Homeworld?”

“So they say,” Macrae said, “in which context, ‘they’ means ‘one or more people at random from the general population, who don’t necessarily know any better than you or I’, of course. Some folks give the notion more head-space than others. Mine, for instance, are firmly convinced of it – and that they’ve kept the dress and customs of our ancestors intact throughout the centuries.

“I’m from Gerete, by the way. We’re passing near the place on our way up to Ususor, but I’ll not be making a social call as we go.”

I looked up the system on my datapad. “Here we are. Gerete – several governments, not a unified world, but well up the tech tree.”

“Aye, as good as it gets for a balkanised world in this sector,” Macrae agreed. “We’d have a better police presence in the system if we’d all haul together, but there are other considerations apart from space police. We’ve a way of life and traditions to keep, and our parliament’s keener on keeping that than havering on about a world government.”

“If they ever actually get around to talking about it, that puts them a long way ahead of my planet, at any rate. Also, you know, even realizing that you live on a ‘planet’ or that there are any others anywhere.”

Macrae took a forkful of his Usralaatian ragout, and I took some of mine, before he answered. “Indeed. Places like Qudira are the reason why I do what I do.”

“Shipping valuable cargoes into places that badly need it? It’s the same with me, I guess. I’ll take what pays, but I want to think I’m making a difference too.”

He topped up both our drinks, which weren’t Bima water any more – a little touch of that, even skilfully blended by an expert barman, will last you a long while – but a local wine that had a little less kick than what they serve in the spacers’ bar while being altogether more enjoyable if you had something in mind beyond getting wrecked as soon as possible. “Only, you had begun to suggest that your confidence was feeling a little dented, maybe?”

“I’d have to say yes to that,” I said, sipping the wine as daintily as I could remember; the clothes seemed to warrant it. “Losing a freighter hurt – but if I’m to be selfish about it, that isn’t the whole problem by any means.”

There was a lengthy wait between the courses, which apparently went with fine dining and was punctuated with a small shot of some fruit spirit over crushed ice. I was, a little to my surprise, starting to feel it, while Macrae might as well have been drinking water to look at him. “Your young man running out on you?”

“Yes. That didn’t help. I was feeling like I needed a little stability for once. It doesn’t go with the job, of course. And I felt I’d gone a long way out on a limb by even admitting it – and to be honest, it’s not boys that I usually feel that way about anyway.”

Macrae nodded. “So that’s you feeling doubly vulnerable, then; which makes the slap twice as hard when it comes.”

“Yes. Poor me,” I said bitterly. “I’m sorry, I’m not being a good dinner companion, and you’ve really worked hard on treating me. Spacer girls don’t eat like this very often.”

Something made me giggle, and Macrae’s lift of the eyebrow seemed to say that I should go on, so I started telling a story I’d heard in the bar one time, about a rich older man who takes a young girl out for dinner, and she orders every expensive thing on the menu…

“until eventually he said to her, ‘My goodness, does your mother feed you like this?’, and she replied, ‘No, but then my mother’s not hoping to…’ ”

And then some instinct warned me to shut my mouth before I implied something very rude indeed about my host.

Macrae smiled. “Here comes the dessert now.”

[Malacandra]

Being wined and dined is wonderful.

If I’d been asked to describe my idea of a luxury dinner with a perfect host, I couldn’t even have imagined Macrae’s idea of dining at the Captain’s table. He put me completely at my ease over using the fancy silverware, he’d chosen the kind of dishes that weren’t too rich for an untutored spacer girl’s stomach but were exotic enough to be a real treat, he’d even hand-picked the wines and other liquor glass by glass to balance everything out perfectly, and right at the finish there was another shot – or “dram” as Macrae was calling it by now – of the glorious whisky he’d introduced me to a few nights before to go with the tiny plate of dainties that finished off the dessert.

By this time I was reluctant to kill the mood, but there were still things I guess I needed to talk out, and Macrae’s ear was the most sympathetic I’d ever encountered. I glossed over the business with Terek for the time being and moved on to my Maesin bar-girl –

“and what makes it worse, I guess, is that I didn’t even learn her name. Macrae, I’m not like that! What could I ever have been thinking of?”

He was giving his whisky the attention it deserved – which was a great deal, since by now he’d told me it was a good deal older than I was – but he was listening to me for all that, and only a slight burr in his voice that hadn’t been there three hours previously let me know he’d matched me maybe two drinks for one. “Lassie, people don’t always act according to the best they ken, and people who’re hurting are more inclined than most tae stumble. Ye were feeling that the universe had kicked ye in the teeth, so ye go lookin’ for someone else tae hand it on till.”

“I really wish I hadn’t, though,” I said, barely doing more than taste a drop of my whisky since I was feeling every single spoonful by now. “There’s this kind of – I don’t know what you’d call it exactly; ‘fan club’ doesn’t do it justice – maybe ‘support network’ is more the thing. Young women – older than me mostly, but still – looking to… I don’t know what’s stronger, whether they’re drawn to what they see as the glamour and the romance, or they just feel that we’ve got the most dangerous life in the galaxy and it won’t hurt them to give a doomed young spacer a pity-date.”

I didn’t say “date”, exactly, and for a moment I wondered if I’d either alarmed the other diners or shocked my gentlemanly host, but he didn’t so much as flicker. “And do you find that helps – having a guaranteed date in every port?” Which, by the way, he didn’t say “date” either, but he said the word easily and as if it were the most appropriate and useful way to say what needed to be said.

“I suppose it does, really. ‘Eat and drink, for tomorrow it may be your turn in the barrel,’ someone once told me. I’m always glad of the chance to wind down – and until recently, I’d have always said I was grateful for it, too.”

“Well, then. Suppose ye go back tae bein’ grateful and actin’ accordingly,” Macrae suggested. “Ye cannae turn back time nor undo a hurt once done – nor e’en be sure when next ye’ll be in Maesin system to make your apologies. Pay it forward if ye cannae pay it back; there’ll be nae want o’ chances, ye can be sure.”

I took a deep breath and let his words sink in, far kinder than I’d been feeling I deserved. “You’re a wise man, Commander Macrae, and thank you for an amazing dinner.”

“My pleasure. Should I escort you back to your stateroom?”

I laughed at his description of a spacers’ clean, comfortable but above all basic accommodation. “May I ask another favour first? I’d really like to hear that music again – do you have your music box along?”

“I do not,” he said, “but ye’re welcome tae come and hear it, if it’s no’ too late.”

At another time and place, that might have been my way of inviting a man to put the moves on me, but I had a clear sense that, for whatever reason, Macrae didn’t want to. Which was funny in a way, because by now I was feeling that I wouldn’t mind one bit if he did, although I’d drunk enough that I’d need to sober up if we were going to have any fun. At any rate, he didn’t so much as look as if he was going to try anything, instead just letting me into his quarters and showing me to a sofa. “Coffee? Brandy? Both?”

So I also got my first taste of another treat I’d never imagined back on Qudira – a glass of hot, sweet, brandy-laced coffee with a thick layer of cream floating on it. “Another Homeworld traditional, so they say. Ye can also make it with whisky, but I don’t have any along that I’d insult by pouring it into coffee. It’d be delectable, no doubt, but there are standards.”

Delectable was not a word I used much, but Macrae had the right of it and no mistake. He fiddled with the music box and his datapad, and soon the sweet music began to wash over me again. I was lost for words. The music seemed to make me happy and sad at the same time, if that makes any sense, and I shook my head gently in wonder. “Macrae? Does the music tell you stories?” I murmured.

“Ah. Something that unites humans on all worlds – stories in music, like pictures in a living fire,” he murmured, “and no two people see or hear the same. Mostly it says just the one thing, Marilee: what’s been lost and forgotten since we left our home?”

[Malacandra]

I don’t make a habit of waking up in strange beds.

That meant I gave a bit of a jump when I didn’t realize where I was for the first few seconds – in a bed that was a little more comfortable that what they have in the spacer cabins, although those aren’t too bad. You need to remember that what I grew up with was straw covered with ticking covered with a sheet that made no promise not to be scratchy, and even a spacer bed is a big step up from that.

As I say, I gave a bit of a jump while I tried to put last night’s events back in order, and guessed on thinking it over that Macrae and I probably had slept apart, and just slept at that. I’ve enough experience of waking up after an energetic bedtime that I can tell when nothing’s happened. Even so, I was well aware that I wasn’t wearing what I’d been wearing the previous night, and someone had stripped me down to my underwear – for which, again, you can probably guess the contrast with what I grew up with.

Well, no need to panic. What I was wearing wouldn’t pass in polite company even if it wouldn’t technically break most indecency laws, and I looked about in vain for my Macrae uniform before spotting a set of coveralls that looked about the right size for me. I slipped out of bed to put them on, aware of having a head that was a lot less thick than it had any right to be even if I could do with rehydrating…

- And there was a glass of water and a soluble rehydration pill on the bedside table.

Someone had plainly been the soul of consideration after I’d checked out of the previous night’s party. I could hear faint sounds of movement on the other side of the door, and guessed it was time to make myself known.

“Morning!” said Macrae, looking up from a hearty breakfast that told me he must have the constitution of a bull. “The maid said your uniform would be ready by…” he checked the time on his datapad… “about fifteen minutes from now, but I thought you’d appreciate something a little less grand to wear when you went and got your gear.”

I laughed. “You’ve heard of the ‘walk of shame’, then?”

“Aye. You walk halfway across the station still in last night’s party gear, and not a man or woman’s going to credit that nothing happened no matter the story you tell them. Mind you, I’ve seen plenty on the dawn patrol that clearly didn’t mind that much the night before.

“To business. We’re headed up to Tiraor today. I’ll be calling at any mines in the system but we’ll just be making the one jump – a twenty-three hour haul, and we don’t need to push ourselves any harder after the last one.”

I was just as glad. From Oresle up to Usralaat is a good thirty-six hours in Witchspace, with precious little to do or see and always the slight apprehension that the Thargoids could drop you out somewhere between the stars, when you’d be sunk whether they got you or not. A run that was going to be just over one standard day was a lot more to my liking. Even with an hour or two visiting the Astromines, that left plenty of time for a layover at Tiraor station. “Thanks, boss.”

“Well, enjoy it. We’ll have another slog the next time, ending up at Diedar – and don’t, for the love of all you hold dear, mention the civil war when you’re there. There will be an argument, and there will be a fight. Now, off with you once the maid’s been. We’re launching in forty-five minutes.”

I filed the advice about the civil war away for future reference and hurried off once my perfectly-laundered uniform arrived. The overalls avoided some of the hoots and jeers I might have got in spacer territory, but I still had a few not-too-polite enquiries as to what I’d been up to. In all fairness, at another time they might even have been right.

Dead on the dot, I was launching right behind The Whisky and the Music, and formating a half-kilometre behind and to his right. From as close in as that, it was easy to see the Cobra was packing a lot of firepower, which went a long way to explaining why Macrae was happy to cross the sector with a single Sidewinder for company.

Communist systems are usually heavily policed. Back in the earlies, so they say, pirates saw them as easy pickings. Then they learned that the collective is more than willing to put out a flood of ships that, individually, are just about good enough, and in droves, can take down almost anything up to and including a major Thargoid incursion. That meant we could probably look forward to a peaceful trip, if a little heavy on the traffic.

Of course, “probably” isn’t the same as a sure thing, which I should have known without being told, and which was reinforced when the commset passed on the radio traffic with the usual air of complete detachment: “That’s The Whisky and the Music, right on schedule. Leave no-one alive, or we don’t get paid.”

I just had time to clock the variety of ships on offer when Macrae hit the injectors and pulled out at a speed I couldn’t match. Some of the assassins could, though – a Fer-de-lance, an Asp and a couple of Cobra I’s. That left me looking at three of my own who were looking to join in the fun as soon as they could catch up, although it made my life a little easier that they were more interested in catching up than in doing anything about me.

Which meant I could reduce the odds against me slightly, provided I could still remember how to shoot.

[SteveKing]

M, this is a great tale of self discovery. Very different from MF's 'Derring Doo', Pdx's 'Space Romance', Dismb's 'Misadventures' or any of the others. None-the-less absorbing and entertaining for that.

Don't think that we are less eager for the next installment(s) for the lack of feedback - we're all right behind Marilee's journey as we are the others.

To purlion a quote - "write on commanders"

[Diziet Sma]

Don't think that we are less eager for the next installment(s) for the lack of feedback - we're all right behind Marilee's journey as we are the others.

Seconded. The times when I log in and find only a single new episode of Marilee's tale, I'm always slightly disappointed. Having three great writers all pouring out terrific work on a regular basis is unusual for this board.. we thank you all.

[spud42]

when you described the tartan i first thought of my families tartan ..



but i assume the McCrae was the one you were describing.....



good read and i concur with what Dizzy has writen

Seconded. The times when I log in and find only a single new episode of Marilee's tale, I'm always slightly disappointed. Having three great writers all pouring out terrific work on a regular basis is unusual for this board.. we thank you all.

[Malacandra]

when you described the tartan i first thought of my families tartan ..



but i assume the McCrae was the one you were describing.....

Spooky. I hadn't researched a specific tartan, but the McCrae is very close to what I was picturing. A few centuries away from home must have let the red strand get lost along with the spelling of the name changing...

Thank you for the compliments and on with the story!

If you’re shooting at my employer, don’t turn your back on me.

I had a pair of Mambas and a Krait scurrying after the rest of the hit squad as fast as they could hustle, which was about as fast as I could and nowhere near an Asp or a Cobra on injectors. All I had to do was slot in behind them and decide which one to pick on first. I locked on to the Krait and gave him a sustained-fire shot from twelve kilometres to see how fast he could dodge. As it turned out, he couldn’t dodge fast enough, though he had time enough to screech “You’re making some powerful enemies, Hired Escort!” before blowing.

That got the attention of the other two, at any rate, and they had some battle-savvy between them, the two of them breaking in opposite directions and converging on me at a wide angle. I was already breaking on my own account, though. I knew very well that my laser would overheat before I put another one down and I didn’t figure he would scare easily enough to be worthwhile.

I put Get An Honest Job through a series of tight turns to make it hard for them. They were good enough to get close and ping my shields a few times, which I didn’t like much, and I was left wishing for a rear laser mount and a little more speed. Still, no sense wishing. I heard another scream come over the commset, and it was an encouraging one: “I’m taking heavy fire from the Cobra! Help!” – but that didn’t help me right then.

Cool enough. I cut my speed, hard, and spun sharply, accelerating again as fast as my Sidewinder would wear it, sighting on one of the Mambas while trying not to give his wingman an easy shot. We were into a scrappy turning fight now, not the kind I like best but you take what you have and hope your reactions are better than the other guy’s. My beam lit him up good and hot before he managed to break, cursing something about “an easy job for an Adder with a pulse laser, they said…”. But I couldn’t take the time to get back on his tail while I had the other one sliding into position to let his own laser do the talking.

That, sadly, is how it goes in a two-to-one. If they’re smart enough and quick enough to pull away when the going is getting rough, their partner can usually buy them enough time to get their energy back and their laser cool, and then you have to start on them all over again. You can still win, but you have to be good enough to burn them in one shot and before they figure out which way to break. It was looking to me like I was better than either of these alone, but in for a long fight against the two of them.

Sometimes that’s good enough, as you’ve taken two or three of the goonies off your freighter, and sometimes it isn’t, depending on how much other bad stuff is going down. This time –

This time I was taken aback to see the Asp screaming towards me with his injectors at full aperture, which meant he went all the way from off the trace to in my face in just a handful of seconds. He was shedding more plasma than is really healthy for any ship, too. He just had time to yell “You’re making some powerful enemies, Macrae!” before a red beam stabbed out of the darkness behind him, and he blew.

Just behind the red beam was another ship injecting nearly as fast as the Asp; The Whisky and the Music, alive, well, and breathing fire and slaughter. That was more than enough for the Mambas. They had a pragmatic approach to dying on the job, and they both lit out for the edge of the galaxy as fast as they could get there.

So yes, long story short, this time my freighter had more speed, more firepower, and by the looks of it more know-how than I had, and the only thing that stopped Macrae from running down both the goonies, I guess, was that we’d hit the system at the end of a long-ish Witchjump and he didn’t want to waste any more fuel through his injectors. Or there may have been another reason: He wanted to keep a watch over his hired escort.

After all the excitement, a quiet tour of the system’s Astromines was an anti-climax. There was no need for me to dock. I had the pleasure of admiring one of the ugliest artificial structures in the galaxy and thanking whatever fates had left me spending my days trying not to get blown up, instead of being shut inside a tiny little ship on an endless crawl around the asteroid belt breaking rocks for someone to scoop and take away, or spending twelve to fourteen hours a day feeding a solar smelter.

All told I’d been in the cockpit for a little over twenty-six hours solid by the time we docked at Tiraor station, and I was in desperate need of a freshen-up even if I’d managed to nap in Witchjump. Macrae gave me a bare half an hour to present myself for dinner, but fortunately the fancy clothes went on a lot easier the second time around – and I was starting to like the look and feel of them, at that.

Dinner was less elaborate than before, but still polite and formal. I felt at ease enough to venture a comment, though.

“Some fancy shooting out there, boss,” I said, not too loudly in case he didn’t want it overheard.

“Practice tells,” he grinned. “And a Cobra III’s not a bad battle-wagon when you buy her some performance upgrades.”

“So I heard,” I said. “Which ones do you have?”

A wink: “All of them”.

[Malacandra]

If I don’t retire to a farm, I want a Cobra Mk III.

I had a fair idea what they were like from the one I saw – and had a ride in – when I was training, and from the write-ups that you read when you’re on a long Witchjump and you’ve slept all you’re going to. Otherwise, I’d seen them from a few kilometres away outside a Coriolis station, or as a smudge at fifteen k’s in my gunsight. I wasn’t the kind to hang around the docking bay ship-spotting when there was a spacer bar to get to and a pair of space pants to get out of, for whichever reason.

We’d had another of Macrae’s three-course dinners, but with less to drink and cooking that wasn’t quite as fancy, and after I’d wheedled a little he was kind enough to take me down to the bay and show me The Whisky and the Music, inside and out. She packed the usual four missiles and also a serious laser in all four mountings – Lance & Ferman LF90s, the best that money can buy.

“They say side lasers are wicked hard to hit anything with,” I said.

“They say right. So if you bother with them, you get lots and lots of practice. You can get software that’ll remap your control yoke in the different views, but it’s a mixed blessing – you’re pulling on the yoke, and your sight picture’s telling you one thing while your inner ear’s telling you another.”

His burr vanished completely when he was talking professionally, as you might say; but I was more interesting in giving the ship a good once-over than in listening to his verbal tics. Inside the crew cabin there were far more lights and buttons than I’d seen in the last Cobra III I’d taken a look around. “You’ll know the theory, of course,” he said. “Shield generators, energy replenishers, a whole bunch of aids for everything from navigation to target acquisition. I drew the line at a robot cat, though.”

Everyone hears the stories of the space trader who got himself sponsored to a shiny new Cobra III with a hundred credits to build a business empire on, and the ship lives up to the stories in this respect at least: there’s almost endless capacity for improvement built into the basic design, which is already fast and capacious compared to any other ship of remotely similar size. Sheer demand led some unsung genius to develop a cargo bay accessory that slots into place in a few hours, and just about every piece of fighting kit you can think of comes in a “Cobra III” version no matter what else it will or won’t fit.

Macrae did have a passenger cabin on Whisky, and I had a strong suspicion that there was an occupant, but that’s something you don’t ask your employer about. When you buy yourself a taxi trip to the stars for what might be a few thousand credits, you buy privacy, and not even a hired escort gets to question that. I wasn’t about to break protocol on that one even before Macrae invited me to sit in the pilot’s seat, which I accepted eagerly while trying not to look as though I had been wondering when he was going to ask.

It’s an entirely different experience from sitting in the seat of a Sidewinder. Macrae had forked out a few extra credits to get the seat re-upholstered and I could tell it must fit him like an expensive custom-made shoe. It was almost like a throne to me. They say that a Fer-de-lance’s flight deck is even more opulent, but I can hardly imagine how. The sense of sheer power –

“Like to take it out for a spin?” Macrae suggested. I looked at him to see if he was joking, but he was already on the commset to request launch clearance. “Let the automatics take care of you until you get the call to clear the docking corridor. Then make sure you’re pointing at plenty of empty space, and make your adjustments controlled and deliberate. Don’t worry, all the weapons are on safety.”

We emerged from the tunnel with Tiraor in mid-afternoon directly ahead of us. There was the usual crowd of traffic, an incoming trade convoy preparing to dock and a couple of People’s Police craft – Rays, not Vipers – making sure no-one was entertaining anti-revolutionary sentiments. (I joke, but only just. They have a special branch of space police just for that.)

“Bring the speed steadily up to one hundred twenty five and come about nice and steady for the Witchpoint. Just the bearing, that is. We’re not going so far out just now – we’ll stay in the station aegis and just spot some traffic for now. Okay, now ease her up to maximum… and give those policemen a friendly wave.”

The sense of sheer power was something I could feel, just as I’d guessed it would be. A Cobra III masses eight, maybe ten times what a Sidewinder does, but it can nearly match it in a fair race on either top speed or acceleration. So when I opened the throttle, I could absolutely sense the extra impulse through the soles of my feet and the seat of my pants, so to speak, and I glanced at the rear view to see the twin engine plumes flaring away behind far further and brighter than my Sidie’s little drive ever did.

“Some other time we’ll go and blast boulders,” said Macrae. “Not today. Bring us around, acquire the station, and we’ll request docking clearance. Then you can move over.”

Yes. It was probably best if Macrae docked. I eased out of the pilot’s seat into the co-pilot’s – the flight controls aren’t dualled – while remarking silently that modesty isn’t strictly compatible with a pleated skirt and micro-gravity. But I managed as best I could, and of course Macrae wasn’t so much as trying to sneak a peek.

[Malacandra]

You get used to keeping odd hours.

The one factor that no-one can do anything at all about is the length of time a Witchjump takes – which, spookily, is exactly as many hours as the square of the distance in light-years. Apparently this checks out to many decimal places, and no-one knows why given that both the standard hour and the standard year are completely arbitrary measurements based on how long it took the Homeworld to spin around once and go once around its sun. Sometimes you think that the universe was, after all, created by someone with a sense of humour.

This means that, give or take an hour or two, you don’t have much say in what time you pitch up at a Coriolis station. Your freighter has a fixed amount of time inbound from the Witchpoint, unless he wants to detour via a factory or a Rock Hermit or similar, so you can predict with fair accuracy how long your trip will take. This means, though, it can be any random time of local day when you dock. I’ve spoken as though we were always arriving just in time for an early evening freshen-up, some solid food, and then partying until station midnight and crashing out until dawn. Rather often it doesn’t work out that way, and you look to turn in at some odd hour and then get yourself up and about eight hours later to see who’s hiring – which someone generally is no matter what the hour on the clock.

This afternoon, for instance, I’d just got back from my Cobra flight with Macrae and he’d given me twelve hours until we needed to be off the station again. I didn’t expect to find anyone much in the spacers’ bar on my way through to my quarters – because the bar parties pretty much do run by local time, if only because that’s when the station girls get off whatever their daytime duties were – and I wasn’t especially looking, but I hadn’t allowed for the effect of the Macrae uniform.

“You’re in the wrong bar, lovie,” said a girl a little older than me, who was hanging out with a small bunch of cronies. She didn’t mean it nastily, though, so I just showed her my ident, at which she laughed.

“Sorry. You’re dressed a little fancy for a spacer, that’s all. I thought you must be new, or something.”

“No, that’s just my uniform,” I said, ordering a fruit juice for myself and suggesting she might like something. “What my employer wants me to wear in public.”

“Looks good on you, though. Very Lady-of-the-Something or other, like they have on Edzaon. Anyway, name’s Keturah, Haven’t You Forgotten Something? Pleased to meet you.”

“Marilee, Get An Honest Job. Just get here?”

“Hour or two ago. Wait, you said you have an actual employer? Permanent escort?”

That’s the dream ticket for most hired escorts – part of a team that tags around with one of the big freighters. Most of them prefer to hire and fire as they go, though, which meant I was sort of in-between.

“No, got a short-term contract though, just up to Ususor. One-way trip unless the boss decides different when he gets up there, but at least it’s a few days’ money, and the fancy clothes are just a fringe benefit.”

“Benefit from where I’m sitting, too,” said Keturah, and if that sounds a little blunt, well, spacers don’t waste much time when they’ll be blasting out in a matter of hours. She’d said quite plainly, “I like girls, you amongst them, and if you’ve a few hours to kill, why don’t we enjoy ourselves?”

I grinned. “They’re okay, but it’s nearly time I was getting out of them.”

“Alone or in company?” Keturah murmured, and the twinkle in my eye was answer enough.

Which is normally fine and dandy, and let’s not misunderstand each other here, Keturah was a treat in her clothes or out of them – a little taller than me, darker skin that may or may not have been coloured for her, the typical spacer’s build with just enough padding in the right places for those who like their girls to be girly – and she was more than eager for some private fun at the drop of a uniform hat. She liked me just half out of my uniform, which was the kind of uniform you can have all the fun you want while still wearing half of it, and I couldn’t have asked for someone with less inhibitions or more idea what to do –

And, for whatever reason, we got to the point where I had to say “Keturah honey, it’s not you, it’s me,” because however cleverly and patiently she was lighting my fuse, nothing was going bang.

Keturah had the good grace not to look hurt or disappointed, and I made the right noises about what she had been doing, which would probably have worked on any other girl and would definitely have worked on me ninety-nine times out of a hundred. I sighed and very carefully didn’t push her away, because no-one deserves that unless they’ve behaved very badly.

We cuddled instead, which was very nice, and Keturah at least was thoroughly relaxed and happy, at least physically. I guess being with someone who turns out not to be into it after all would dent your confidence a bit, though I’ve always been lucky that way. Anyway, it was nice to have a warm body to hold for a bit, while we chatted aimlessly about nothing in particular – the little trivia of an escort’s life, where we’d been, where we were going, the ships we liked to kid each other we’d own one day after we’d flown a thousand missions – and after a while I was feeling settled enough to doze off.

When my alarm went, Keturah wasn’t there and my Macrae uniform was looking rumpled. An express laundry could fix one of those, at least.

[Malacandra]

Someone did mention the civil war.

I’d taken Macrae at his word on the subject, and when we arrived at Diedar, which was a full forty hours from Tiraor, I was ready for a nice quiet hour or so in the bar before dinner. We’d managed to arrive at local sunset, after all, which meant the evening freshen-up and dinner were happening at the right time of day. And at least I wasn’t in uniform when the fight started.

Diedar’s had a civil war dragging on for years, with GalCop doing its level best to make sure that no-one is smuggling in weapons from off-world and not always succeeding. The odd ton of rifles and ammunition does a very good job of helping to keep the war going, and even though there’s supposed to be a single planetary government and votes for everyone, the northern and southern continents are still arguing over who should be heading it.

They both pay their taxes to GalCop, for what it’s worth in terms of keeping the in-system police presence good and high, and I hear they even try to each spend more than the other on it. But if that gives you the impression of a nice civilised squabble, think again. The best you can say is that they don’t have the ability to destroy each other’s cities wholesale. They have to do it the time-honoured way, by marching in an army overland and using old-fashioned torches and blasting powder.

It was tragic reading for me, looking at how much this place had over Qudira – a stronger economy, better government, and much more tech – and shaking my head at how they were wasting it. Not even money and democracy put together can buy happiness, apparently, but the folks where I came from would have died to give it a try.

Well, I kept all these thoughts to myself, for I was fast getting the impression that when Commander Macrae dropped a hint it was a good idea to listen, but there’s always some clot who didn’t get the memo or thinks it would be fun to see how much you can stir the waters without anyone actually coming to blows. The answer, as far as I could tell, comes to: not at all.

Someone said something they shouldn’t have said, someone said something back, before a minute was passed there was a full-scale row – because it turned out that some of the spacers waiting for jobs were Diedar locals, who only ply back and forth between the same few worlds in the one cluster, and as the law of Sod would have it there were some from both the continents – and in much less than two minutes the fists and boots were flying.

I’d just as soon have slipped out, if only I’d seen the trouble starting, but I wasn’t used to the speed at which things can boil over in a high-pressure setting, which meant I missed my chance. I don’t really have the height, weight and reach for that kind of set-to; I do my best fighting from fifteen kilometres away with a laser beam. But if you’ve even been a guest at that kind of party, you’ll know that there are some people who’ll just treat it as a free-for-all and clout whoever’s nearest, expecting that they’ll be doing the same and whoever manages to duck fastest, hit hardest, and be on their feet the longest, earns themselves bragging rights for the night.

The bar staff have seen this kind of thing often enough, in any Coriolis station but in Diedar more than most, and their approach to dealing with the trouble was simple and direct: Give everyone five minutes to blow off steam, make sure the glassware is locked away, and then turn the sprinklers on. As I understand it, a nice fine mist is the best option for fire control, but for dampening down an excess of high spirits, they have the “deluge” setting which also has the added bonus of being just warm enough for the water to remain liquid.

At that point they announced that the facilities were closed for twelve hours, which left everyone slinking off to their own quarters with that night’s party not even started, and me checking my face anxiously before I’d satisfied myself that there weren’t going to be any permanent marks.

Macrae favoured me with a tolerant look when I arrived, still looking slightly damp and chastened although I’d taken extra care to ensure that my uniform, at least, was in tip-top order. I’d a slight mouse under one eye and a definite swelling at the corner of my mouth, even though I’d ducked fast enough to keep it from catching me squarely in the teeth. Still, the aperitifs and the amuses-bouches were ready, which as well as allowing me to enlarge my vocabulary further introduced me to a number of interesting and unusual foodstuffs from all over the local cluster. You hear about the famous dishes like shrew cutlets and edible wolves, but there are thousands of other delicacies that don’t get mentioned in the guidebooks.

Do I need to mention that Macrae barely said a word about my dishevelled state? He murmured something about only being young once, then moved on to polite discussion about how I had enjoyed the run up from Tiraor and how I was feeling? I didn’t feel he needed to know about Keturah, who’d not only got up before I did but shipped out as well, or about the lack of bang I’d managed to get with her, and that left me mumbling non-committal things until the main course arrived.

I was hoping he would have something of his own to talk about, and it turned out that he did. Macrae’s not the kind of man to spend a formal dinner hunched over a datapad and neglecting his guest, but he had something to show me: a ship design like nothing I’d seen.

[Malacandra]

I decided I wasn’t so sure about the Cobra after all.

The ship itself was a joy to look at – long and narrow, although those are relative terms, but Macrae directed his datapad to show a Sidewinder to the same scale for comparison. It had what looked like atmosphere planes at the rear end and I asked the obvious question.

“Aye,” said Macrae, “it’s re-entry capable, like a Moray Star Boat, although not a submersible!”

I laughed. The Moray’s an incredible feat of engineering that started out as a sea craft that could take to the air, and then someone decided that since the pressure hull was already air-tight and there was plenty of room to squeeze in a ship’s drive, they might as well give it the capability to go off-planet. It also packs Witchdrive and a few tons of cargo space and is a true go-anywhere, do-anything kind of ship – but most species don’t need space-going submarines, and leave the orbit-to-ground tedium to transport shuttles.

“What sort of performance figures – or is that a trade secret?” I asked.

“Well, that’s what we call ‘commercial-in-confidence’,” said Macrae, “but if you’re not planning on spilling secrets to the competition, you might like to see these graphs.”

Again he got the datapad to graph the stats for the Sidewinder next to this mystery ship. I was impressed. It had the Sidie on toast for acceleration and top speed, could stay with it in a turn at anything above a crawl, regenerated energy faster and could pack a shield booster as well as…

“Wait. This thing’s got Witchdrive? It looks too small.”

“It is too small. It’s not intended for hyperspace.”

“But,” I tapped the datapad, “it’s talking here about injectors…?”

“And what could be more useful?” Macrae asked. “Most designers don’t bother with Quirium tankage for an in-system ship; fuel-injection came along well after Witchdrive, and it’s always been thought of as an afterthought – and a handy way to give the hyper-ships a performance edge. But there’s no technical reason not to design an escort vessel around Quirium tanks and no Witchdrive, and you can imagine the edge that’s likely to give.”

“I want one!” I said. “When can I trade in my Sidewinder?”

He gave a gentle laugh. “For now, I’m thinking it might be a little out of your price range. But if you’d like to give one a try… well, we might see what can be done. Here comes the plat principal now.”

We tucked into some game bird – it was large enough for two, and Macrae said it was traditional for the gentleman to carve – while I wondered whether he was serious about seeing what could be done. He hadn’t told me what the ship was called or who made it, or what his connection with it was, and I guessed I wasn’t likely to get answers if I asked. But Macrae didn’t intend to let the conversation lag.

“Not quite a genuine woodcock, but finding one of those can be a bit of a snipe hunt,” he said, “and the chef here has a sure touch. Don’t skimp on the braised vegetables, they’re delicious as well as good for you. By the way and with your leave, I’ve some thoughts concerning your troubles with your young man.”

I wasn’t sure Terek ever had been my young man, exactly, and I had some fresh relationship woes I might have gone into, but it was kind of Macrae to have been thinking of me and I asked what he meant.

“I think it’s that hired escort ethos that you’ve bought into,” Macrae said. “Of course you’re no’ a navy, nor even a regular unit of any other kind – just a society of freelancers. What’s your code of behaviour?”

“See that the freighter gets through, don’t get yourself killed, punish bad guys if you can…”

“And – stop me if I’m wrong – don’t get attached to anyone or anything that might take your mind off your job,” Macrae prompted.

“Yes. Seconds count in a fight, and if your mind is on someone or something else, you can get killed before you even realize it,” I said. “It’s all right to enjoy yourself while you’re off duty, but what happens on station stays on station.”

“Which, if I’m following all this correctly, means yon Terek was fixing to do you a favour. Ye daren’t start thinking about each other, for you need to be thinking about yourself and your freighter – not necessarily in that order. So he concluded this before you did, and scrammed out o’ there, not just for his sake but for yours.”

I shrugged. “Deal’s done now, isn’t it? I mean, I guess you’re right, but…” My voice tailed off inconclusively.

“Thing is,” said Macrae, “I’m no’ so sold on the idea that this escort ethos o’ yours is actually right. In my experience – which is by no means all-encompassing, but still – human beings lookin’ to stay alive for each other do at least as well as those just lookin’ out for themselves.”

“Well, in training,” I said, “they had facts and figures to back it up.”

“Which, no disrespect to your inborn smarts, ye’d have been ill-equipped to pick holes in,” Macrae pointed out. “Still, this is just my gut feelin’, if I’m honest, and it’d stand up better if I had some proper research to show you facts an’ figures from. And it disnae detract from my main point, which is that your young man, by the lights you both live by, was likely enough thinkin’ of your good when he left.”

We hadn’t been drinking very much yet, which left me wondering why Macrae’s burr was becoming more pronounced. I sighed. “Perhaps it’s just me… looking for somewhere to belong ever since my whole family died. Macrae… have you ever lost someone very close to you?”

He was silent for long enough that I wondered if I’d overstepped the mark. “Aye, lassie. I have indeed.”