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The Outer Routes, Episode 4: The Rules
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ShamanSquirrel
ShamanSquirrel's Gallery (397)

The Outer Routes, Episode 5: Debts
outer_routes_ep05_debts.doc
Keywords male 1311434, female 1193314, squirrel 33489, alien 26219, jackal 12744, sci-fi 5074, ai assisted 2926, iskret 20, hadruni 3, space piracy 1
Debts

An Outer Routes Story — About 15 Years Before Silvania

~ I ~
Brannock was a free port, which meant nobody there checked papers. It was the best port the Drizola could use. It was also the best port everyone else without papers could use, and some of those ships were bigger than hers.
When they docked, a long gray ship was sitting at the next berth. It had no name on its hull. Corrin looked at it for a while through the dock window.
"That's a Varro ship," he said.
"Who's Varro?" Riska said.
"The Varro Syndicate," Corrin said. "Smuggling, protection, loans. Forty ships, maybe more. Nobody knows exactly. They own half the free ports on the outer routes, and the other half owe them money." He turned away from the window. "We sell our cargo, we buy our fuel, and we leave. We don't talk to anyone off that ship."
They sold their cargo. They bought their fuel. Hollis went to the market for medical supplies with a list and a bag.
He didn't come back.
At hour nine, a message came to the Drizola's comm. It was short and very polite.
Captain. We have your medic, Hollis Grant. He is unharmed. He owes the Varro Syndicate a considerable sum, and we would like to discuss it with you. Please come to the Lantern tea house on the third level at hour twelve. Come alone, or not, as you like. — O. Sallow.
Raskon read it twice. Then he read it out loud to the crew.
"He's been with us five years," Sathe said. "He never said."
"No," Raskon said. "He never did."
~ II ~
They brought Hollis back to the ship at hour eleven, which nobody expected. Two Syndicate enforcers, a large human male and a tiger furfolk, walked him to the bottom of the ramp. They waited at the bottom while Hollis walked up.
"They let me come to tell you myself," Hollis said. "So you'd understand. They'll take me back after."
He sat down at the galley table. He looked older than he had that morning. He put his hands flat on the table and looked at them while he talked.
"Thirteen years ago, I was a ship's doctor on a Varro freighter," he said. "It was a good job. They paid well, and I didn't ask what we carried. Then we put in at a mining colony called Dunmore Seven. There was a fever outbreak. Three hundred people sick and the colony's clinic had nothing."
He stopped for a moment.
"We had forty cases of antiviral in the hold. Smuggled. It was worth ninety thousand credits to a buyer two systems over. I took the cases off the ship at night and gave them to the colony clinic. Then I ran."
"How many lived?" Tessik said.
"Two hundred and ninety-one," Hollis said.
Nobody said anything for a while.
"Ninety thousand credits," Hollis said. "With interest, it's a hundred and forty thousand now. I hid for a long time. Corvel was the last place. I thought nobody would ever look for me there." He looked up at Raskon. "Then you showed up and I thought, a ship that moves around. Nobody looks for a ship. I was wrong about that, too."
"Why didn't you tell us?"
"Because you'd have done this," Hollis said. "Sat around a table and argued about it." He stood up. "It's my debt, Captain. I'm going back out there. You go sell another cargo and forget I came aboard."
"Sit down," Raskon said.
"Captain—"
"Sit down, Hollis," Keldan said.
Hollis sat down.
~ III ~
They argued anyway, because Hollis was right about that.
"It's a hundred and forty thousand credits," Zethik said. "We've never seen a tenth of that. It isn't our debt."
"Thirteen years ago, it wasn't anyone's debt," Hessa said. "It was medicine."
"I'm not saying he shouldn't have done it. I'm saying it isn't ours."
Raskon got up and went to the wall by the galley door. The three rules were still there in grease pencil. Riska had traced over them twice when they started to fade.
He put his finger on the third one.
"'Everyone gets a share,'" he said. "When we wrote this, we were talking about money. But a share is a share. If Hollis gets a share of what we make, he gets a share of what we carry. And this is what he's carrying."
"That's not what the rule means," Zethik said.
"It is now," Raskon said. "I wrote it."
Borrik laughed. After a moment, so did Corrin. Zethik didn't, but he didn't argue anymore either.
At hour twelve, Raskon went to the Lantern tea house. He took Corrin, because Corrin was the best talker after him, and Borrik, because he needed someone intimidating.
O. Sallow was a jackal. He was thin and neat, with gold-tan fur, a black saddle across his back and shoulders, and a pair of small round glasses. He had a pot of tea and a ledger on the table in front of him. He stood up when they came in and shook Raskon's hand.
"Captain Raskon," he said. "Oren Sallow. I keep accounts for the Syndicate. Please sit. The tea here is very good."
He poured three cups. He did not offer one to Borrik, who did not fit in the chairs.
"Mister Grant owes one hundred and forty-two thousand, six hundred credits," Sallow said. He did not look at the ledger. "I imagine you can't pay that."
"No," Raskon said.
"I imagined not." Sallow sipped his tea. "I would much prefer to be paid than to make an example of Mister Grant. Examples are expensive. Payment is not. So I will offer you a trade."
"I'm listening."
"Three weeks ago, a crew called the Hask brothers stole a cargo of ours at Merrow Station," Sallow said. "Twelve drive cores. Unregistered. The Hasks are holding the cores in a rented hold on the station and plan to auction them in four days. We have sent two crews to recover them. Both failed. Eleven of our people were hurt, two of them badly." He set down his cup. "Recover the cores and deliver them here, and Mister Grant's account is closed."
"What else is in it?" Raskon said.
Sallow raised an eyebrow. "I don't follow."
"You said recover the cores. Is that all? Or do you want the Hasks hurt too?"
Sallow looked at him over his glasses for a long moment.
"It would be useful," he said, "if the Hask brothers understood afterward that stealing from us was unwise."
"Then find someone else for the brothers," Raskon said. "We take the cores. Nobody gets hurt. That's how we work."
Corrin went very still beside him. Borrik shifted his weight.
Sallow picked up his tea again. He drank it slowly. Then he smiled, a thin, polite smile.
"The cores, then," he said. "Only the cores. Four days, Captain."
~ IV ~
Sallow kept Hollis. That was part of the trade. He would stay at Brannock, in a room over the tea house, until the cores came back. Sallow promised he would be fed and left alone. Raskon believed the first part.
Zethik found Raskon on the bridge an hour after they left Brannock. He stood in the doorway for a while before he said anything.
"I meant what I said," he said. "It isn't our debt."
"I know you meant it."
"So why are we doing it?"
Raskon turned his chair around. "If it was you in that room over the tea house," he said, "and some old debt from before you came aboard, would you want us to argue about whose debt it was?"
Zethik didn't answer.
"I'd come for you too," Raskon said. "I'd come for any of you. That's the third rule. It cuts both ways."
Zethik looked at the cord on his wrist. He turned it once, indicating he was pondering.
"Hessa said you'd say that," he said.
"Hessa watches."
"She said I should say thank you instead of arguing." Zethik pushed off the doorframe. "I'm not going to. But she said I should." He went back down the corridor.
Raskon sat there for a minute. Then he turned his chair back around, and decided that had been a thank-you.
Merrow Station was twenty hours away. Raskon used the rest of the time to plan.
The Hask brothers had six crew and a rented hold in the station's cargo ring. Their hold was guarded day and night. Two Syndicate crews had tried to break in, one through the front and one through the side, and had walked straight into the guards.
"So we don't break in," Raskon said. "We're not good at breaking in. We're good at talking and at docks."
Riska was the one who saw it. She had the station's public cargo listings up on the galley screen, the way she did at every port. She knew dock systems the way Raskon knew charts.
"Merrow runs an automated cargo ring," she said. "Every hold sits on a track. When a ship buys cargo, the system moves the container from the hold to the buyer's berth on the track. Nobody carries anything. It's all codes."
"So do we have to buy the cores?" Corrin said.
"No. The Hasks are auctioning them. They'll sell to whoever pays most, and they'll release the container to that ship's berth." Riska looked up. "But the release code goes through the dock office. The dock office checks the berth number. If somebody changed the berth number after the code went through—"
"Then the station would move the container to the wrong ship," Raskon said.
"Our ship," Riska said. "The station does it for us. Nobody goes near the hold."
"Can you change a berth number?"
"I know the dock codes for six stations," Riska said. "Merrow is one of them. I worked there for a month when I was fifteen."
Keldan looked at her. Then at Raskon.
"She's been aboard a year," he said. "And she just planned our job."
"I know," Raskon said. "Don't tell her. She'll want a bigger share."
"I can hear you," Riska said.
~ V ~
The Hask auction was held on the second night, in a bar on the cargo ring. Corrin went as a buyer. He wore his best jacket, the one that had been expensive once, and he called himself a broker from Tallis. Nobody at the auction had heard of Tallis. Corrin said that was because Tallis was very exclusive.
There were four other buyers. Corrin bid against all of them. He bid with money the crew did not have, and he bid carefully. He stayed in second place until the last round, then dropped out with a sad shrug. He let a mining company's agent win at one hundred and ten thousand.
"You didn't win," Zethik said on the comm.
"I wasn't trying to win," Corrin said. "I was trying to watch where they send the release code."
The mining agent paid. The Hasks sent the release code to the dock office. The code said berth fourteen, where the mining company's ship was waiting.
Riska was in the dock office. She was wearing station coveralls Hessa had bought off a cargo worker for forty credits. The office had three clerks and a lot of paperwork, and nobody looked twice at a young Iskret with a handheld. She sat at an empty terminal for four minutes.
When the code reached the cargo ring, it said berth nine.
The Drizola was at berth nine.
At hour two, the station's cargo track began to hum. The Hask container slid out of its hold, past the two guards standing at the door, and along the track toward the berths. The guards watched it go. As far as they knew, it had been sold.
It took the container eleven minutes to reach berth nine. Borrik and Hessa had the cargo doors open. They moved the twelve drive cores into the hold in nine minutes. Each core weighed two hundred kilos. Hessa carried three, and Borrik didn't argue.
Ishva undocked at hour two and twenty-five minutes. She took the Drizola out of Merrow on a perfectly ordinary departure, with a perfectly ordinary flight plan, at a perfectly ordinary speed.
By the time the mining company's agent was shouting in the dock office, they were four hours away.
"The mining company’s agent paid a hundred and ten thousand for nothing," Zethik said. He sounded pleased.
"He paid a hundred and ten thousand for unregistered drive cores at a pirate auction," Corrin said. "He signed up for it."
Nobody had been hurt. Nobody had even been close.
~ VI ~
Sallow was waiting at the bottom of the ramp at Brannock when they came back. He had his ledger. He had two Syndicate cargo handlers with him, and Hollis.
The handlers unloaded the cores, with the help of Borrik and Hessa. Sallow checked each one against a list. When he was done, he wrote something in his ledger and closed it.
"Mister Grant's account is closed," he said. "With interest." He nodded to Hollis. "You are free to go, Mister Grant. I do hope you won't take anything else of ours."
Hollis walked up the ramp without looking back. Sathe met him at the top with a bowl of soup.
"Four days," Sallow said to Raskon. "You did it in two. Two of our crews tried for three weeks. Eleven people hurt. You did it from the dock office, and nobody on Merrow even knows it was you." He looked at Raskon over his glasses. "That was very elegant work, Captain."
"Thank you."
"I mean it as a compliment. But I also mean it as information." Sallow tucked the ledger under his arm. "Varro reads my reports. Varro asked me today for the name of your ship, and for your name."
Raskon didn't answer.
"Varro likes people who are good at things," Sallow said. "Varro finds them useful. We'll be in touch, Captain."
He went back down the dock toward the long gray ship. The two handlers followed him.
Keldan had been standing at the top of the ramp. He came down and stood next to Raskon. They watched the Syndicate ship for a long time.
"You did it too well," Keldan said.
"I know."
"They'll come back."
"I know," Raskon said.
"No," Keldan said. "You think you know. They'll come back when you're tired, or short of money, or when somebody aboard needs something. They'll come back when you can't say no." He turned to go back up the ramp. "That's how they work. Like companies."
Raskon stood on the dock a while longer. Behind him, in the galley, he could hear Hollis laughing at something Borrik had said. It was the first time in five years he had heard Hollis laugh.
It had been worth it. He was sure of that.
He was less sure about what it would cost.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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At the free port of Brannock, the Varro Syndicate’s enforcers take Hollis. After five years aboard, the crew finally learns why their medic was hiding alone on a dead station. Thirteen years earlier, he stole forty cases of the Syndicate’s smuggled antiviral and gave them to a colony dying of fever. With interest, he now owes 142,600 credits. Zethik says it isn’t the crew’s debt. Raskon points at the third rule on the galley wall and says a share is a share. Oren Sallow, the Syndicate’s polite jackal accountant, offers a trade: take back twelve drive cores a rival crew stole, and Hollis goes free. What does a debt cost once it’s paid?
Keywords
male 1,311,434, female 1,193,314, squirrel 33,489, alien 26,219, jackal 12,744, sci-fi 5,074, ai assisted 2,926, iskret 20, hadruni 3, space piracy 1
Details
Type: Writing - Document
Published: 22 hrs, 6 mins ago
Rating: General
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emilyrichard32
emilyrichard32
17 hrs, 20 mins ago
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This was so warm and charming in the most elegant, quietly tense way. The crew banter landed perfectly  Riska calmly naming six dock codes and then I can hear you followed by Don't tell her She'll want a bigger share," was exactly the right comic beat inside a clean heist. But the ending is what's going to stay with me: Keldan's They'll come back when you can't say no That's how they work. Like companies with Hollis laughing in the galley behind them for the first time in five years, and that last line about being less sure what it would cost. I'm an artist, would love to sketch that moment. Discord: the_emily_john

 
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