An Outer Routes Story — About 16 Years Before Silvania
~ I ~ A ship without papers can still find work. It just finds the worst work, at the worst ports, for the worst pay. Two years after Harrow, the Drizola had 340 credits in her account. She had a cargo bay full of nothing, and fuel for about nineteen days. The last job had paid in machine parts instead of money, and the parts had turned out to be junk. Tessik had used some of them anyway. She said she was not proud of it. Hessa came back from the dock office at Fennel Station with a cup of bad coffee and a name. "Tallis," she said. "What's Tallis?" Raskon said. "A farming moon. Two days from here. Four domes, twelve thousand people. They grow grain for the mining stations in this sector." She saw his face. "The domes are for the cold, not the air. The air is thin, but you can breathe it. The nights are long and freezing. They live under the domes and farm the valleys in between. The days are long too. Five days of sun, five days of dark. Their wheat’s bred for it. It grows in the light and sleeps through the cold." Hessa sat down across from him in the galley. "The blight hit their wheat this season. They lost seventy percent of the crop." "That's bad luck," Raskon said. "It isn't a job." "A broker named Vance Orrell bought up every drum of seed stock on the moon before the blight was announced. Four hundred and eighty drums. He's holding them in a port warehouse. Seed was forty credits a drum last year. This week, it's three hundred." Hessa drank her coffee. "In three days he ships the whole lot off-moon, to a buyer who'll pay four hundred. If the farmers don't plant by next month, they don't have a crop next year either." Raskon looked at her. "How do you know all this?" "The dock boss here owes me from Kesh," Hessa said. "And there's somebody on Tallis who wants to meet you. He says he can get us into the warehouse." "Who?" "A ferret named Corrin Hale," Hessa said. "He used to own it." ~ II ~ Corrin Hale was waiting in a bar near the Tallis port, at a table in the back. He was a ferret, long and narrow, with sable fur, a pale mask around his eyes and a cream throat. He was about thirty-five. His jacket had been expensive once. His hands never stopped moving. "Captain," he said. "Sit down. Do you want anything? You don't. That's fine. I'll talk." He talked for twenty minutes. He had been a grain trader on Tallis for eleven years. He'd owned a warehouse at the port and two trucks and contracts with all four domes. Then Vance Orrell had arrived. Orrell undercut Corrin's prices for a year, at a loss, until Corrin's contracts went to him. Then Orrell bought Corrin's debts from the bank and called them in. Then he took the warehouse. "The same warehouse," Corrin said. "The seed's sitting in my old building. I know every door, every code that hasn't been changed, and the night foreman, who still owes me money. Orrell's buyer sends a freighter in three days. Two days from now, at night, a freighter arrives a day early with a transfer order. The foreman checks the order, and it's a very good order. You load, you leave." "And then?" "And then you fly three hundred kilometers to the Dome Four farm field. The farmers' co-op buys the seed for forty a drum. The old price." Corrin spread his hands. "Four hundred and eighty drums at forty a drum is nineteen thousand two hundred credits. Cash. The co-op has been saving it since the blight. Orrell can't prove whose seed it is, and the co-op won't ask." Raskon had been watching Corrin while he talked. In twenty minutes, Corrin had not once asked what the crew wanted. He had not asked for a cut, and he had not said what he would get out of it. "What do you get?" Raskon said. Corrin's hands stopped moving for the first time. "I get to watch Orrell open the warehouse door in three days," he said. "That's all. That's what I want." "Orrell will know it was you." "Yes." "Then you can't stay on Tallis." "No," Corrin said. "I was hoping you'd have a bunk." Raskon looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked at Hessa, who shrugged. Then he looked back at Corrin. "I don't trust you," he said. "You shouldn't," Corrin said. "You just met me. I'd think less of you if you did." He finished his drink. "But you'll take the job." "Why?" "Because you have three hundred and forty credits," Corrin said, "and I have the codes." ~ III ~ The Drizola landed at Tallis port at hour twenty-two, two nights later. Ishva put her down on pad six, outside Corrin's old warehouse, and kept the engines warm. Corrin walked into the foreman's office with a transfer order. Tessik had made it. It had the right seals and the right buyer's name, and a freighter registry that did not exist. Corrin also brought a bottle of something the foreman liked. He sat down and started talking. Raskon watched through the office window. The foreman was a heavy human with tired eyes. At first he frowned at the order. Five minutes later, he was laughing. Ten minutes later, he waved Corrin toward the warehouse doors without looking up from his glass. "He's good," Keldan said quietly. "He's very good," Raskon said. "That's what worries me." Borrik and Hessa loaded. Each drum weighed sixty kilos. Borrik carried two at a time and Hessa carried three, and Borrik pretended not to notice. Zethik and Hollis ran the cargo lift. Raskon and Keldan counted. Sathe stayed aboard and kept the ramp clear. Four hundred and eighty drums. At the rate they were going, it would take three hours. At the end of the first hour, a young Iskret dock worker came in from the next warehouse. She asked the foreman if anyone needed a lift operator for the night shift. The foreman sent her in. She ran the second cargo lift for an hour and a half without being asked, faster than Zethik and Hollis together. Raskon noticed her, and then he was busy and forgot about her. ~ IV ~ The night guard was due at hour three. He came at hour one and fifty minutes. He was a human, about nineteen, in a uniform that was too big for him. He had a stunner on his belt, and he came through the side door from the street with a cup of tea in his hand. He looked at the drums. He looked at Borrik carrying two of them up the ramp. He looked at the freighter. "Hey," he said. "Nobody told me about a shipment tonight." Nobody answered him. For a moment, nobody moved. Zethik moved first. He was across the floor in three steps, with his knife already out. Hessa was faster. She dropped the drum she was carrying. It hit the floor with a boom that echoed through the warehouse. She caught Zethik by the wrist, the one with her cord on it, and pulled him back against her. His feet left the floor. "No," she said. "He's going to call security." "Then he calls security," Hessa said. She didn't let go. She bent her head down close to his ear and spoke low. Raskon was close enough to hear it anyway. "If you cut him, they'll hunt you," she said. "Not the ship. You. They'll put your face in every port in the sector. I didn't choose you to watch you hang." Zethik looked up at her. Slowly, he put the knife away. The guard had dropped his tea. He was standing very still with one hand near his stunner and his eyes on Hessa. Raskon walked across the floor and stopped two meters in front of him. He kept his hands where the guard could see them. "What's your name?" he said. "Pell," the guard said. "Pell, this is going to be a bad night for your boss," Raskon said. "It doesn't have to be a bad night for you. You walked in on more people than you could handle. Anybody would understand that. Put the stunner on the floor." Pell looked at Borrik. He looked at Hessa. He put the stunner on the floor. They tied him to a support post with two cargo straps. Hollis checked that the straps weren't too tight. Sathe brought him a fresh cup of tea from the ship, with a straw. Pell looked at the straw for a long moment and then drank the tea. "You're the strangest thieves I've ever heard of," he said. "We're new at this," Raskon said. He stood there for a moment and looked at the young guard tied to the post, scared and unhurt. He looked at Zethik, who was standing next to Hessa with his hands empty. Then he looked at the crew, who were all looking at him. Raskon decided right then that it was going to be this way. Every time. They finished loading at hour two and forty minutes. They left Pell with the rest of the pot of tea and his stunner on a shelf just out of reach. ~ V ~ The foreman figured it out as the Drizola lifted off. Port security launched a patrol craft four minutes later. Ishva did not try to outrun it. She took the Drizola down to two hundred meters and flew low over the farm country between the domes. She went through valleys and along a river, and the patrol craft lost them on its scanners in the ground clutter. It took her fifty minutes to cover three hundred kilometers. The Dome Four field was dark when they landed. Then forty farmers came out of the dark with handcarts and trucks. An old woman named Mara Teague led them. She paid nineteen thousand two hundred credits from a metal box into the Drizola's account, and then counted every drum as it came down the ramp. Corrin stood at the bottom of the ramp with her while the farmers loaded their trucks. They had known each other for eleven years. Mara had bought her first seed from him. "You won't get to see his face," she said. "When he opens the door." "No," Corrin said. "I thought about that on the flight over. I'll be two systems away." "I'll be there," Mara said. "I'll go down to the port that morning. I'll take a picture and send it to you." "Take two," Corrin said. "In case he blinks." She laughed and shook his hand. Then she went back to counting drums. Corrin stood there a minute longer and looked at the dark fields, where four domes glowed on the horizon. Raskon watched him from the top of the ramp. He thought Corrin was saying goodbye to something. He didn't ask what. At drum four hundred and seventy-nine, the drum was light. Borrik shook it. Something inside it said, "Ow." He pried off the lid. A young Iskret female unfolded herself from the inside, very slowly, with her tail wrapped around her knees. It was the lift operator from the warehouse. "Hello," she said. "I'm Riska. I'm a very good lift operator, as you saw. I can run loader rigs, cargo cranes and every kind of cargo lift made in this sector. I know the dock codes for six stations. I can read a cargo manifest in three languages. And I'm an accessory to the theft of four hundred and eighty drums of seed stock, so you can't really leave me here." Everyone looked at Raskon. "Why were you in a drum?" Raskon said. Riska's quick, cheerful look went away. For a moment she looked like what she was, which was nineteen and very tired. "My family came to Tallis when I was four," she said. "Iskret, from Cygnus Prime. Old family. When I was six, they promised me to the son of a merchant family in Dome Two, because we owed them money. The joining is in ten days." She looked at the floor of the drum. "I've met him three times. He's not cruel. He's just not anybody I would have picked. And I didn't get to pick." Nobody said anything. Zethik looked at the cord on his wrist. Sathe looked at Raskon. Keldan looked at Raskon too, and Raskon knew exactly what Keldan was thinking. "You know why you're going to say yes," Keldan said quietly. "I know," Raskon said. He looked at Riska for a long moment. "Can you cook?" he said. "No," Riska said. "Good," said Sathe. "I don't want anybody in my galley who thinks they can." ~ VI ~ That night, after they left Tallis, the crew sat in the galley. Eleven of them were crowded around a table built for eight. Nineteen thousand two hundred credits was more money than they had seen since Kesh. Everyone had an idea about what to do with it. "I carried more drums than anyone," Borrik said. "Bigger share." "I carried more than you," Hessa said. "You carried three at a time because you were showing off." "I carried three at a time because I could." "Corrin's only been aboard for two days," Zethik said. "Why does he get the same as us?" "Corrin got us into the warehouse," Keldan said. "Without Corrin, there's no job." "Without Ishva, the patrol catches us," Tessik said. "Without the ship, there's no anything. Shouldn't some of it go to the ship?" They argued for an hour. Then Raskon stood up. He took a grease pencil out of Tessik's tool belt and went to the galley wall, the one by the door, where everybody would see it every day. He wrote: 1. Take what you need. 2. Nobody gets hurt who didn't sign up for it. 3. Everyone gets a share. Then he turned around. "The ship takes two thousand for fuel and repairs," he said. "That's what we need. The rest gets split evenly. Everybody. The person who carried three drums at a time and the person who ran the lift. The person who's been aboard four years and the person who's been aboard two days." "And the guard?" Hollis said. "The guard is the second rule," Raskon said. He looked at Zethik when he said it. Zethik looked back, then down at the table. Hessa put her hand on his shoulder. "Why only three?" Corrin said. He was reading the wall with his head tilted. "Most crews I've heard of have a dozen." "Three is enough to remember," Raskon said. "A dozen is enough to argue about." Corrin smiled. It was the first time Raskon had seen him smile without wanting something. Riska raised her hand. "Do I get a share?" she said. "I was in a drum. That's still work." "You get dishes first," Sathe said. "For how long?" "I'll tell you when," Sathe said. Later, when the others had gone to their bunks, Keldan stayed in the galley. He stood in front of the wall and read the three rules twice. "The first one is going to cause trouble," he said. "'Take what you need.' Everybody needs a little more than they have." "I know." "And the second one. 'Nobody gets hurt who didn't sign up for it.' What about us? We signed up." "I know," Raskon said. "That one's for everybody else." Keldan nodded. "Just so you know it." "I know it." Keldan went to bed. Raskon stayed and looked at the wall a while longer. The rules were easy to write. Over the next sixteen years, he found out how hard they were to keep.
