I have something in the way of business. How soon can you get to the Outworlds Bar?" He sounded excited.
"Thirty minutes, Flex. I'm sitting in a pile of what use to be the port gyro. Now I know why they have electro-techs in the service. This stuff is too damned complex for a simple-minded ex-general. It's going to take me a while to get the damn thing back together."
"Right, Captain. As soon as you can, I think we have a possible job."
Piehl left the ship a half hour later and made the mistake of looking back. Poor old Goddard was a wreck. They bought her third hand three hard years earlier.
The old Gordon Carry-All's weren't that great to start with. There wasn't one square centimeter of surface unscarred, and the replacement plates made it look like a badly designed chess board. Two hundred and fifty meters long, she was shaped like a ugly torus; with a hundred meter cylindrical drive unit on one end, the old girl was bone ugly.
Piehl sighed. Nothing to be done about it.
He made his way through the hurly-burly of the port towards the Outworlds Bar. He and Flex used it as an unofficial office. When Piehl reached the bar, Flex was sitting slouched in one of the relaxors sipping spiced coffee.
Piehl noticed an old ex-Imperial marine crashed out on a bench in the back. He knew him; they had shared a mug from time to time. He was a good man come on hard times. The owner, an ex-legionnaire, was off somewhere on his own business.
Flex smiled. "Morning, sir. Coffee's fresh."
"Don't get up, “Ensign”. You shouldn't trouble yourself to get a cup for your captain," Piehl said sarcastically.
"Oh, good, sir. I'm feeling mellow this morning. Her grace, Lady Jane Esterlys was most solicitous of my health and well-being when she discovered I was put in prison by the nasty old Imperial Navy."
"Really? Now how did she find that out, Flight Major?" Piehl had a look of wry amusement on his face.
"Oh, I told her of course. However I forgot to tell her I got out three years ago, and somehow she got the impression I was only just released and that I must therefore be feeling the pangs of confinement. She was most kind and tender regarding my...well being," Flex sighed.
"Flex, you are without conscience. Why these women find you worth their time I will never know."
"Captain, begging your pardon, you really should pay more attention to the ladies. You've promoted and demoted me so many times during the past seven years I worry the lack of feminine contact is causing you cell damage."
Piehl chuckled and threw the bar rag at him. Flex ducked and easily picked it out of the air.
"Listen, Private Holtzman, we'd better forget the problems of the flesh and figure how we're going to pay the docking fees. You called me with what sounded like a possible contract."
Piehl took a seat in a relaxor and waited for Flex to tell him what was going on.
"Captain, would you be willing to take a contract beyond the frontier, in the Dark Worlds?"
"Damn, Flex, you know how I feel about that. We aren't set up for that kind of action. Those people are renegades. Try to remember we've no armament on the Goddard at all."
"Sure, Captain, sure. I know how you feel. I don't want to go anywhere near the rim."
Piehl worried when Flex agreed with him.
"Captain, I wouldn't give it a thought, except we've been offered 25,000 prime credits to escort an important personage out that way...and the use of an armed Gideon Class Merchant for the trip. They'll also put up credit to fill the holds with whatever we might want for trade when we get there."
" Did you say 25,000 prime credits!"
Great Gods, Piehl thought, we'd be out of debt with credits to spare. Oh! Oh! Here I go, one minute filled with resolve, the next a slavering enthusiast, ready for the lure. Piehl knew he should tell Flex to forget it, but those credits completely numbed his brain. So be reasonable, Aubrey, Piehl said to himself. You can listen, right? Can't hurt to listen. You don't have to do anything.
Flex smiled and said nothing. Piehl couldn't stand it.
"So, who would we have to take out there? Is it legal? No, strike that. Is it political?" Piehl learned a long time ago that political can get your days shortened a lot quicker than illegal. Finally he ran out of questions.
"Look, Captain, you don't want to go, it's okay. Something will turn up before Firstday."
"Huh? What's with Firstday?" he asked.
"Oh, that's when our credit runs out, and the docking fees are due."
"That soon? I thought we had more time."
"Nope, afraid not," Flex said with a doleful look. "They're going to stick us on Work List Zero."
The hook was firmly embedded. Piehl gave in to curiosity. "You'd better tell me about it." The Dark; bad dreams. Oh well, better than cleaning sewers beneath the Rockpile, as Central City was fondly called. Piehl was not happy.
"Okay," said Flex. "It's not a big deal, we fix up a nice space for the girl..."
"Girl!" Piehl groaned. "What girl? Not on a ship, Flex, you have got to quit drinking that five minum slop, it's turning your brain to mud."
Flex went on totally unmoved by Piehl's ranting. "The girl and her companions..."
"Companions! Great. What the hell, it gets dull on those long runs anyway."
Flex waited patiently for Piehl to run down then went on as though nothing had happened. "Well, there's always Central City's great cloaca, which I'm told an army of ten thousand couldn't clean in a year."
Piehl was still grumbling. "I always knew there was a lot of crap in this world."
Flex laughed. "Well if we don't get off the pot, so to speak, we're going to get to look at it up close."
Flex waited a moment. "Please listen, Captain. There's the girl, her companion, and an Imperial Sufic Warrior as guard. Her uncle is Viceroy of the Beyond The Rim Hegemony. She's being sent there to cool off after some foolishness she got up to with a captain in the Royal Standard. All we have to do is get her to her uncle, sell our goods, and cruise back to Regent with a week over at Joy to unwind."
Joy! Oooooo...No! Business, you idiot, don't start thinking about Joy. Bad things happen in the Dark Worlds, terminally bad.
"Wait a minute," Piehl held his hand. "Flex, you keep saying Imperial this and Royal that, just who are we talking about here? Who is this girl?"
"Oh, she's First Princess Iralane, daughter of his Royal Highness Karl Tellemann the Eighteenth. You remember him, sir, the fellow you were chatting with the other evening?"
No! Piehl felt it all now. Well and truly hooked
It's political, I knew it.
At that moment three figures in stealth cloaks appeared through the back door
