Chapter 1

The man was overly neat, Ross thought. Even in a worn envirosuit, the man seemed to exude excessive spit and polish. That suggested a military background to him, and that was one of the red flags they had agreed on before coming to Masaka.

"Mr. Carson, You seem to have some trouble finding work?" the man said with some condescension. "I heard you and your partner lost your ship."

"We lost the engineering pod to a debris strike at the rift," Ross related the official story. "Given her condition, our creditors declared her a derelict and paid someone to haul her in as such. We are now crewing for another operation."

"And that operation is looking for cargo?"

"Cargo, passengers, someone needing experienced salvage operators. Our new employer is not fussy."

"I see," the man let a sour look wash across his face. To this point he had been a real stone face, so Ross assumed that letting the expression be seen was intentional. "I usually deal with the owner or operator, not with their employees."

"I have been instructed to conduct all contract negotiations and I have a good deal of experience doing it. You will not meet my partners," Ross said, letting a low grumble roll across the back of his throat. That too was intentional. "You either have a need we can fill or you don't."

"Oh I have needs that I must fill," the man laughed. "Your ship doesn't appear to be in the registry though, and that means you cannot fulfill most of my needs."

"Most?"

"Well, there are needs, some of my clients have ... but we should perhaps move this conversation someplace more private if we're going to speak of those clients and their needs."

"That's it? That's the best you could do?" Pete asked incredulously.

"No," Ross responded sadly. "That's the closest I could come to getting us legal work. We're dipping our toes in a political controversy, but we'll have some support for our actions from those supporting our passengers."

"Passengers, you say," Dar asked. "and political? How?"

"Okay, here's the whole deal. We're going to Meier's World to pick up seven people. We'll be landing on the planet itself and transporting those people to the VulCor orbital transfer station there."

"That doesn't seem too outrageous," Pete observed.

"Its not, in and of itself," Ross agreed. "What makes it tricky is that we're picking these seven people up at a private field, not at one of the Meier's World ports. These are political refugees who are seeking asylum off-planet. To this point, the local government has done everything in their power to prevent them from leaving without declaring them criminals."

"Why not save themselves a lot of trouble then and just put them in prison?" Dar asked.

"Because these are members of one of the First Families – the original settlers of Meier's World and so part of their ruling class."

"So they are suffering from some sort of internal struggle within their own family?" Ship asked.

"So it would seem, and we are their deliverers."

"For which someone has agreed to remunerate us generously," Pete finished.

"The first families of Meier's World are known to be wealthy, but I don't think we are going to see the family coffers opened in gratitude for the small part we're about to play. We're one of a small army of agents involved in the effort, and not necessarily the one with the best position to make demands."

"So we are being used because we have surface to orbit capability and no registration number," Dar assumed out loud.

"Exactly," Ross agreed. "Now, here's the schedule as current plans have it..."

The Catamount settled through the initial confusion of orbital insertion without problems. The Sondag military guidance systems were designed to handle much more troubled insertions than this one, and the need for a fast drop with minimum exposure was what the ship had been designed for.

"We've got a lock on the landing beacon," Ship reported. "The frequency is far outside of the bands I'm finding other traffic on."

"That's good," Dar shifted his head to look at the display showing the two humans strapped into the two 'crew' seats in their freshly modified passenger cabin. The two men seemed to be calm enough. "Shedding altitude now," he announced, knowing they were listening. "Keep your claws in."

Ross and Pete both chuckled at the Sondag-ism from Dar, until the bottom dropped out and they began a sudden free fall. Getting that sort of feeling in a ship with the kind of sophisticated antigravity controls the Catamount had was impressive and scary. Both men moaned in their seats, but otherwise remained still.

'Good, ' Dar thought to himself. They had passed his first test. He might make warriors out of them yet.

The Catamount dropped through heavy cloud cover, headed for a small mountain range in the southeast corner of the continent visible below them in the view screen. An indicator blinked within it, indicating the source of the beacon.

"Anything on the screens?" Dar asked.

"Nothing," Ship answered. "Some activity very high up still, low orbital."

"All right, give me a ground sweep."

"Already done," Ship answered. "Surface vehicle traffic where you'd expect it, but nothing near our destination. We're not being tracked by anything I can pick up."

"Good, point me towards the emptiest spot you can find." An indicator lit instantly on Dar's own HUD field. Seeing it, Dar pulled the ship hard starboard and down, dropping further into the night below them, breaking through the high layer of clouds that had concealed them and into a layer of clear air between the cloud cover and the ground. With the clouds obscuring him from above and his lack of running lights hopefully aiding in concealing from below, he kept the hard starboard slide going until he'd covered several hundred miles. When it felt right, he pulled back up and into the clouds again, letting the Ship's nav systems keep them headed towards their again invisible target.

"That should be sufficient," Ship said as her sensors told her that Dar had relaxed within his restraints.

"It should, but you know me..."

"You won't let me have control back until we're on the ground, I know."

"Don't sound so depressed," Dar laughed. "You know you have full override authority in case of an emergency. Your electronic reflexes are way better than mine."

"But I'm predictable..." Ship groused.

"EI's just aren't random enough to be good at evasive piloting," Dar explained, and not for the first time during their relationship. "You, Ship, are amazing, but in this one way, you are ... limited in your creativity."

Ship was silent after the exchange. It had been the one thing the Sondag had not been able to build into their Electronic Intelligences. They had given them hope and fear and the ability to aspire and to dream, but they had not been able to give them that spark that made beings creative. Oh, they could synthesize with the best of them, and so in that way made excellent researchers, and scientists. When it came time to be random, or to make that leap of faith or intuition that went around logic if not against it, they were incapable. To Ship, it made no sense that it, having the ability to aspire, would choose something for which it knew it could not hope to achieve.

"We are within range of the landing zone," came Dar's voice over the ship's comm. "You can pick it up on the cabin's view screen if you'd like. We should be landing in a couple minutes."

"Thanks Dar," Ross answered. "Ship, seal the locks now."

"The bridge is sealed," came Ship's reply. "Its your show now."

The two men released their harnesses and rose, making sure the cabin was ready for their passengers, just as they had a half dozen times before they'd broken orbit. They both wore ship suits, modifications of those worn by the Sondag crew, with patches added here and there, particularly the Catamount shoulder patch, stolen right off the cover of the old heirloom Ross Carson had shown them the day they'd had their first conversation in drop bay two. Pete flicked the viewer on just in time to see the landing lights of the private field flicker on, a dull green glow that outlined an oval barely bigger than the Catamount itself.

"Looks like there's an outbuilding to the north," Pete called over the intercom. "Probably want to orient the passenger entryway that direction."

"Roger," came Dar's voice in response, and Pete and Ross saw the ships view start to rotate, even as they dropped so low that they could no longer see the entire area from above. A moment later, they felt a slight bump. "We're down," Dar called. "You're on."

"All right," Pete breathed, "Opening the passenger access." A hatch appeared in the side of the cabin, and irised open until an entry was visible. It was half a head taller than Ross and wide enough for Pete and Ross to walk through side-by-side if they'd wanted to.

"Extending the access ramp," Ross called from the other side of the hatch. A moment later a chime sounded. "Ramp extended and locked."

Pete walked down the ramp to stand at the bottom of it while Ross remained at the top. It took only a moment before a small group of people began moving rapidly towards them. Pete was counting heads and saw far more than seven individuals.

"Problem," he called over the ship suit's comm. "We've got more than seven people coming."

"I'm coming down," Ross said, moving even as he said it. He handed Pete one of the two stun guns they'd acquired for defense.

When the first of the people got to the bottom of the ramp and saw the two men with their weapons, he turned and shouted something to those behind him before turning back to the two men. "Why are you pointing weapons at us?" he asked.

"We were told to pick up seven people. I count at least three times that number." Pete answered.

"They are porters," the man said. "Were we supposed to carry our own bags?"

"I see rich people are no different in your part of space than they are in mine," came Dar's voice into their ears. The two men both stifled laughs.

"Sorry, but we have to be careful," Ross said. "Especially when we are all doing something we're not used to, eh?"

"Dar, open up the baggage bay," Pete called as the man nodded and held out his hand.

"We appreciate what you are doing for us here, our apologies if our lack of foresight caused you worry."

"No problem," Ross answered, reaching out with his own hand. "Welcome to the Catamount."

"I am Guyon Ewhes," the man said as they shook.

"Ross," Ross answered. "Seven only up the ramp, please. You're people will have to carry any personal items they aren't willing to put in the baggage bay themselves, sorry."

"We understand," the man nodded, and began directing those behind him. The shuffling of bags was minimal, with only a few bags coming up the ramps in the hands of the seven passengers.

Once the bags had been placed in the baggage bay, Ross gave the signal and Ship closed it. It took only a moment to get the passengers aboard and seated.

"All aboard," Pete signaled to Dar.

"All right," Dar responded over the ship's comm rather than through the suit so that the passengers heard him. "Lifting off. You've got about two minutes to get them seated and strapped in, and that goes for the two of you as well. After that, well, it could get bumpy."

"Roger," Ross answered. There followed a hurried but not rushed seating procedure as it was decided who would sit next to who in the various seat groupings. In the fully lit passenger cabin it was obvious that this was an older couple, a younger couple and three children, one of them a mere babe in a carrier. None of them seemed that familiar with the harnesses, and particularly panicked was the young mother of the baby, until Pete showed her how to fasten the carrier into a seat harness the proper way.

With everyone seated, Ross and Pete found their own seats and had no more than gotten themselves strapped in when Dar came over the intercom again.

"Prepare for rapid acceleration and high G maneuvers," the calm words seemed to belie their weight. "The inertial compensators may let some of this through."

No sooner were the words spoken than suddenly everyone felt themselves pushed hard into the backs of their seats. Their weight doubled and then they felt a sudden lurch to their left and a loss of gravity. The sickening feeling lasted only a second, but the sensations had gotten the baby crying, as well as the younger of the other two children, a little girl who Ross thought looked to be about five years old.

"Don't worry," Ross told everyone. "Dar is very good at what he does. If anyone can get us through safely, its him."

Fortunately, things settled down quickly, and before the passengers had much more time to register any discomfort, Dar was calling again over the intercom. "On approach vector to VulCor Orbital. Docking in ten minutes."

"Amazing," the older gentleman said. Ross and Pete silently agreed with him. They'd figured they had an experienced pilot, but this showed Dar to be something a bit more than that.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," Ship's voice came over the intercom, surprising Pete and Ross, who hadn't anticipated the EI communicating with the passengers. "While our pilot negotiates our docking with the VulCor station command, he wanted me to advise you of a few things. First, and most importantly: the Catamount just finished a serious engagement with unknown forces whose aim was to shoot us down. No orders to heave to were given; in fact no attempt at communication was attempted by the ships who met us."

"What!" The younger man cried.

"Someone knew where we were going and when?" the older man asked.

"It would appear so," Ship answered. "Were it not for our ability to deflect most of their weapons fire, and our pilots abilities at evasive maneuvering, we would surely have been destroyed in the air."

"So it was a trap all along," the younger man said bitterly. "Someone betrayed us."

"So it seems," the older woman said after a moment of silence. "The question is, how thorough is the betrayal? Can we still count on the offer of refuge that VulCor has extended?"

"Were any of our attackers able to follow us into orbit?" Peter asked.

"Negative," Ship answered. "We were met by atmospheric attack craft only, nothing spaceworthy."

"Then..." he began before hesitating. "Look ... I'm no expert on the local situation, but it seems to me that if VulCor was part of this, then there would have been ships waiting for us in low orbit too, not just these atmospheric fighters."

"I agree," Dar's voice came over the intercom. "The people handling the VulCor station's comm just told me essentially the same thing." The pilot's seemingly unflappable voice seemed to settle the older passengers at least, but it was only a moment later that he added. "Docking procedure initiated. We'll have a green light at the hatch in a couple of minutes."

"Young man, what do you think your chances of getting paid are?" The older gentleman asked Ross.

"We're not likely going to see the rest of our payment," Ross answered after a moment of thought. "What we were paid up front will cover our expenses, but that's about it."

"While I am in no position to reward your efforts now, I am a man who honors his debts. If our family manages to survive the current struggle, know that you have a claim on the house Ewhes when the time comes that you can safely claim it."

Ross and Pete shook hands again with the elder Ewhes as well as the son, who gave us his name finally.

"Rogues," he said. Pete's eyebrow went up and the man laughed. "I know, but its a family name, what can I say, except that I echo my fathers words. Our family is in your debt, and we repay our debts."

In the ready room later that evening, after the Catamount was safely out of the system and things put back in order, the four of them discussed the recent events.

"We did break even," Ross commented.

"And we have a potential future in with a first family of Meier's World." Pete added.

"But we still have no mission, no prospect of getting the Catamount registered legally, and no agent to find us work." Dar groaned.

"We did learn that we have a really hot pilot that we can count on," Ross said with some measure of awe in his voice.

"That we did," Pete agreed.

"I could have told you that," Ship said.

=

The VulCor station chief sat in his comfortable chair in his plush office and stared into the screen, looking at the ship which had just dropped off Guyon Ewhes and his family. The ship was different; alien in its construction, but not so different as to raise his hackles. What it had was a damned good pilot and a pretty good crew, to get those people safely to the station. He knew they were leaving here with no hopes of getting paid for their work, and it was not something he could get away with doing, even if he were of a mind to, which he was not. Still, he liked to see faithful service rewarded, and he'd received orders from his supervisors. He might not be able to pay them their fee, but there were things he could do. Better he wasn't the one making the decision though. He pushed a button on his desk.

"Yes sir," came the smooth voice at the other end.