and I.
And the man, Zion Marit.
This is Gia Kennedy, out.
CHAPTER TWO
Just let this last one be as uneventful as all the rest.
Lil Cheng gripped the controls against the familiar bump of landing—a bad habit she’d never managed to break in thirty years of occasionally piloting a shuttle. Which was probably why they’d kicked her upstairs to skipper the freighter where she could do less damage.
The experience with the wreck had left her edgy. She’d spent two hours on the bridge afterward while Sky Selele queried CenCom. But the Central Computer back on Earth knew nothing about the alien ship or its fate. And it hadn’t been willing to speculate. “Is it worth the risk for us?” she’d asked. “A few baubles in exchange for our lives, if whoever slaughtered that ship comes hunting?” She failed to be reassured when CenCom refused to cancel their mission.
Carli Alvez had come up with what seemed the only solution under the circumstances. Anyone monitoring the area would expect to see one ship on their screens, not two.
So the trick was to hide the Ann Bonny as close to the wreck as possible without triggering any more of the defense systems that might still be operational. Now the two ships rode in uneasy tandem high over Ithaca 3-15d. But anything more than a casual scan would reveal the presence of the living ship in the shadow of the dead one.
Mosquito rocked as the mud under one metal pad gave way, then settled. The door slid open, and the ramp unrolled to the floor of the clearing. In the tangled branches of a clump of tall, spindly, gray trees, which looked like a group of gaunt old women embracing each other, a cacophony of sounds broke out. She saw no movement outside, except for the lazy whirr of a very large lead-colored insect that bumped against the shuttle’s side with mindless patience.
Dori Tsing slapped away the curious insect. “Look at the size of these things!”
Rain came pattering down through huge silver-gray leaves. The Commerce Agent hunched her shoulders and went down. Lil followed, limping. The hip joint stiffened if she sat too long. She’d be glad to get back to the advanced medical facilities on Earth and take care of it.
Gray, everywhere she looked. Even the mud had a gray cast to it. Perhaps it was only a trick of the light reflected from the heavy storm clouds above the clearing. She didn’t remember seeing a monochromatic planet before—and she’d seen plenty, though none quite as exotic as she’d once dreamed they’d be, years ago when she was just starting out. Now she didn’t want this last trip to be exciting, didn’t want any surprises at this late date.
There was something ominous about that wreck—
She couldn’t get it out of her mind. Had it been there the first time they came to this planet? Possibly—coming in along the plane of the ecliptic, they could easily have missed it on the other side of the world. They’d done some scouting, but they hadn’t been looking for anything else in orbit.
“Have the sonic stunner ready,” Dori said.
“These life forms are harmless.”
“Set the stunner anyway. You want to make it to retirement, don’t you?”
“Relax. This is our lucky spot, remember?”
On that first trip, the Ann Bonny, nursing damage received when she strayed into a dispersed but still dense molecular cloud their scanners had somehow not picked up, had been fortunate enough to find this small planet orbiting an aging G-type star. It hadn’t been on the charts. But obviously someone had known about it—to their cost. Who had they been? She thought back to all the alien races she’d met over the years, but couldn’t remember any of them having ships like that one. Nor had CenCom been able to identify it so far.
Lil glanced around the clearing. The scouting party on the first trip had reported only one large species, probably intelligent, but they’d seemed peaceful enough—unlikely candidates to destroy spaceships. And if they weren’t the alien ship’s attacker, could they be what was being defended? She found it strange that CenCom hadn’t ordered at least a delay in their mission while they gathered more data. It wasn’t like the computer to send them into possible jeopardy.
Where were the native creatures now, she wondered, shielding her eyes with one hand against the fine drizzle.
“Ugly mudball planet!” the Commerce Agent muttered.
The first time they were here, some of the crew had filled their pockets with the crude wooden beads the apparently friendly aliens had offered. Turned in for inspection as a routine precaution in Homeport, the things had been quickly forgotten. But then CenCom had changed the orders on their next run. Instead of the rare metals and drugs they usually traded in, it sent them back to gather artifacts. The Commerce Agent wasn’t the only member of the crew to be disgruntled; Lil’s own protests had been overridden. And CenCom never wasted time explaining its decisions.
“The sooner we load the junk, the sooner we can get offworld,” Lil said.
And go home to my little apartment in Geneva— She was dreaming of it at night now, the snowy mountain sloping up behind her, the lake a sapphire glitter at her feet, the Academy where she’d teach again. If only it proved to be that simple. Load up, find out what the natives wanted in return, get the Sagittans to approve the contract, and go home.
Only it rarely happened that way. The catch was the trade contract. Damned Sagittans, anyway. Life had been simpler before humans had broken out of the cocoon of the solar system and attracted their attention.
Perhaps the wreck had been a trader too.
When she’d been younger, she might have enjoyed a puzzle like this. Now it was just too much trouble. Instinct warned her that she should have defied CenCom and fled home empty-handed, and damn the repercussions.
Gia Kennedy, youngest member of the crew, hesitated at the bottom of the ramp. Remembering her own first trip, Lil smiled. There was something awe-inspiring about setting one’s foot for the first time on alien soil. Unfortunately, one grew accustomed to it very fast.
“No bad effects from yesterday, I hope?”
Gia shook her head. “I’m fine—hardly even a bruise.”
“Where the hell are the aliens?” Dori interrupted.
The Commerce Agent was moving under the skinny metal-colored trees, peering into the dim interiors of caves formed by high arching roots that twisted and braided themselves about each other. She reminded Lil of a bird picking its way distastefully over the mud. Gia followed Dori, and they stood together under a tree whose trailing, big-leaved branches, draped with strands of stringy gray moss, provided a curtain against the rain.
“Are you sure this is the right spot?” Dori pulled a small notebox from her pocket and turned it on.
Already Lil’s gold-striped tunic was soaked and clinging uncomfortably to her skin. She pulled it away from her ribs and grimaced at the fold of fat that met her fingers. Well, when she got home to Geneva, perhaps she’d feel inspired to do something about that too.
“Breaking the language shouldn’t take too long,” Gia said solemnly. “At first I’ll use the rec channel and take lots of samples. Then HANA and I’ll analyze and
