My Life: An Ex-Quarterback's Adventures in the Galactic Empire (28 page)

“Why not?”

“Because our kvenningari are catching the Srihani disease. It is early yet, but any Aalori who looks can see it. This Aalora fears they will put our worlds into the fire with the Srihani.”

I felt empathy for this being, but could think of no way to express it without risk of being misunderstood. I asked him instead if there was anything he could think of doing.

“If one has the courage, one can run,” he replied.

“Run?”

“Yes. Some Aalori have run out into the galaxy past the furthest marches of the Outer Empire, past where the empire ever dreamed of going. Any fool can die bravely, with the banners of his house around him. It takes real courage to run. This Aalora does not have it.”

I couldn’t wait to get out of the Aalori area and run to find Ruoni. He was alone in his cabin, so I spilled out the Aalora’s story.

Ruoni was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “It’s true, you know, about Srihan. Rumors say that Carrillacki started it, I doubt it will ever be possible to know.”

I let out a whistle. “And that’s why the Fleet won’t touch the kvenningari, no matter what they do. They’re afraid of where first loyalties are.”

“Not exactly, Danny.” He looked pensive for a moment. “You know, it’s not really fair for him to call it the Srihani disease. I think that interstellar civilizations are inherently unstable.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I had a real education, Danny, not just the drill on which buttons to push when that passes for education in many places. Interstellar civilization didn’t begin with this empire, or even with Srihani, for that matter. Paleo-archaeology isn’t my field, but I can give you a simple version.” He stopped again, briefly. “Have you ever wondered why there are Srihani on so many worlds, including your own, which has never been part of the empire?”

“Of course.”

“The explorers wondered the same back when the empire was expanding. What they found was that there have been waves of expansion in the galaxy that have seeded myriads of planets with similar genetic stock. According to genome maps and artifacts that we have found, there have been a minimum of three and a maximum of ten such expansions. The most recent was a couple of hundred thousand years ago, the earliest hundreds of millions of years in the past. That’s why there is such variety among lower forms of life, which evolve independently after they arrive on a world. That’s why we find Srihani, or Aalori, or one of the other three civilized species throughout the galaxy that has been explored. That’s also why there is the occasional odd world where life-forms bear no resemblance to any others—some worlds have never been touched by the waves.”

It occurred to me that the last theory I saw on the origin of man, before I left Earth, claimed to trace everyone by mitochondrial DNA back to a single woman who lived a couple of hundred thousand years ago. “You’re sure of this theory?”

“Well, there are some holes in it. We have found some traces of the earlier waves, but not enough to prove the theory. Still, it’s almost impossible to prove the opposite, that Srihani, for example, completely evolved on any particular planet.

“Wait a minute. You’re saying that we, I mean Srihani, have been around for millions of years? I don’t believe that.”

“I didn’t say that. Srihani, or a close ancestor, were here two hundred thousand years ago. But before that, sixty-five million years ago, we have no idea what the beings were. They destroyed themselves too thoroughly. And, it was not a cosmic accident. How many planets, after all, can be struck by giant asteroids all at about the same time in the past? There are thousands of systems where such an event occurred about sixty-five million years ago. Think about it. What can make a star-faring civilization vanish so thoroughly that, across a whole spiral arm, we have to struggle to find artifacts? There may be some fatal flaw in civilizations that reach the stars that dooms us; I don’t know, but it’s not just the Srihani disease.”

Ruoni decided that he had forgotten to check something on his status boards and left abruptly. I guess he didn’t want to talk about this anymore.

I thought about the implications of what he had said. I had learned that dinosaurs ruled the Earth sixty-five million years ago and a giant asteroid wiped them out. What might have been standing where it hit that we know nothing about? And not just Earth. I thought about billions of beings on each of hundreds of thousands of worlds, all obliterated not once, but many times. I swallowed hard. It was frightening. I could believe that the Fleet left the kvenningari alone out of fear of what might come of the confrontation. However, while I’ve never been elected to anything (not even in grade school), I do know about leadership, especially leading groups of combative prima donnas. And I was sure that the Fleet’s approach—if you ignore the problem, it won’t really be a problem—was wrong, dead wrong. Of course, no one was asking me.

When I went back to the Aalori area, neither of us spoke of the Srihani disease again, whether from courage or cowardice I can’t tell. The repairs were done shortly thereafter, anyway. Then it was back into space to make some money.

W
ith a fast and powerful ship, it was possible to operate much closer to the Inner Empire, since planetary defenses and patrol ships were not an absolute deterrent. That meant more profitable and richer targets, since trade closer in was heavier. We stayed out of the Inner Empire itself, though. There were just too many concentrations of kvenningari and Imperial ships for it to be safe, nor was it necessary. As the Fleet dwindled and the kvenningari fought among themselves, more and more systems were exposed to freebooters each year.

However, in spite of taking six merchant ships in about five months, a phenomenal rate that established our reputations throughout much of the gray zone and the Outer Empire, it was a problem to keep the outfit running. Why should that be? After all, in taking six ships Franny never took any significant damage and we had all that loot to peddle. True, yet I felt chronically broke.

The officers’ conference I convened after we took that sixth ship was a good example of what made me feel that way. It was a small group: me, Jaenna, Ruoni, Cardoni, and Warrik, our chief engineer.

They had barely sat down before Cardoni opened with, “Captain Danny, before we get to the big items, please reserve some of the proceeds for fresh food. We need it.”

“Why?” I asked. “I thought the reprocessors on this ship were very efficient.”

“They are.” Cardoni pointed at the glass in front of me. “That water was pissed out by the crew this morning. That’s not the point. Reprocessor food lacks taste and texture. If I can’t put fresh food in the galley, the crew is likely to put me in the reprocessors.”

“I doubt that will improve the taste,” Ruoni said. Cardoni stiffened.

“Forget the taste,” Jaenna said. “They need to be alive to worry about the food. If we have extra funds, there are at least twenty shipsuits that are more patch than suit. And where I’d really like to spend some money would be on an upgrade to full armor.”

“Jaenna, you bring up full armor every time,” Cardoni said. “It’s not worth the expense.”

“It’s not?” she retorted. “You’re not the one who has to do the work to get one of these rejects we recruit to mesh with the Strike Force and then do it all over again with another one because the half-armor got burned through.”

“Can we stop arguing about luxuries?” asked Warrik. That turned everyone’s attention to him. “The hull plating fore of railgun two has eroded to the point where it needs replacing.”

Ruoni whistled. I just asked, “Eroded?”

Warrik stared at me. “Space isn’t a complete vacuum. Half a millennium without adequate maintenance, well …” He shrugged. “It’s at the point where the risk of a breach in battle, either beam or shot, goes up exponentially.”

“Oh, great.” That was my comment.

“Yes,” he said. “Also, one of the plasma bottles needs to be relined. And we need to do maintenance on the gravatic compensators because all those rapid vector changes burn them out faster than you think.”

“And how do you recommend we do all this?” I knew it wasn’t going to be as simple as popping the hood and pouring in a can of 10W40.

Warrik shrugged again. “In the past, we would take her to a Fleet depot. If they had supplies, of course.”

“That’s impossible now,” I said. “Yttengary again?” I looked around the room.

Warrik said, “They can do the work; I’m sure of that. The problem is that our ship was built as a Fleet cruiser. Many parts have unique designs, planned that way at the time to make it harder to mesh with kvenningari units if the captain changed first loyalty. Yttengary may be able to get them, but they will charge a premium.”

I groaned. “So will anyone else. Can you estimate the cost?”

“Done. It’s in the computer.”

“Wait,” Ruoni said. “We shouldn’t finalize allocations without considering our weaponry. The solid shot hoppers are at twenty-eight percent capacity. I’m not comfortable below forty percent. Number four railgun isn’t holding charge. It needs maintenance before it burns out. And we still need to replace two broadswords.” That was the archaic name for the top-of-the-line Imperial missiles Franny carried.

“Those damned broadswords are ridiculously expensive,” Cardoni put in.

No kidding, I thought. More expensive than slow horses and fast women put together. Every time we fired one, I watched it on the screen trailing red ink all the way to the target.

“The ship is designed for them,” Ruoni said.

“He’s right,” added Warrik. “When we refitted just before our engagement with you,” he indicated me, “the depot put in an inferior model—I’m sure someone got rich—and it caused trouble during the fight. They didn’t interface properly.”

That trouble might have been the reason the Flower had survived long enough for us to take the cruiser. Warrik had been a Fleet officer then and I had to think about the flip-flopping “we” and “you,” although it didn’t bother anyone else.

“The counter-missile racks are at seventy-three percent,” Ruoni continued as if the rest of the conversation wasn’t happening.

“All right!” I said sharply enough that they all looked up from their own displays. “I thank you for your analyses and I appreciate the concerns in each department. Just leave me your lists and estimates. I’ll match them up with the manifest of what we took and we’ll do the best we can at the station. Let the crew know that the crewshare will be the usual, even if we skimp a little elsewhere.” That was important. Freebooters became freebooters for many reasons, but the ones who stayed with it hoped to become obscenely rich and retire to some quiet world. I would have gladly foregone the captain’s share, but if I did that, my officers would have to follow suit and only Jaenna would have done it without second thoughts. My officers wanted to get rich too.

After they left, I held my head in my hands as I looked at the figures. Paying for even the necessities was going to eat up most of our cash flow, as it always seemed to do. The stations would want their money up front, of course. No one extended unsecured credit to a freebooter, who could, literally, vanish into space. Tetragrammaton had given Carvalho credit, but that was because they had the Flower there as a prize. When someone writes the definitive treatise on the economics of space piracy, I’ll have a few things to say to him. I was watching our account more closely than I had ever watched my checkbook on Earth. Hell, if I’d watched my checkbook that closely, I would still
be
on Earth. Franny didn’t need a captain. She needed a CPA.

I had good reason to be concerned about the economics. For all of Franny’s success in taking ships during our first few months, we were far from rich. Barely breaking even was closer to the mark. This wasn’t lost on the crew, who made their unease known subtly but definitely. I was able to keep a lid on it by pointing out that many of our expenses were due to the previous neglect of the ship and wouldn’t recur. The fact that neither I nor any of my senior officers was taking anything beyond standard shares helped. So did our burgeoning reputation as galactic bad news. The crew took pride in belonging to a feared ship. Regardless, I knew Franny needed to make a big score soon, or I would be facing more than occasional grumbling.