The Complete Aliens Omnibus, Volume 6 Read online

  She stepped toward the hatch.

  “Where are you going?” he snapped.

  She looked back without actually turning back. “You know where I’m going. You just informed me that you’ll be denying the crew their salaries for this voyage. That legally obligates me to inform them immediately, while we’re still in the vicinity of a transport option. You know the regulations better than I do, so don’t act so shocked.”

  Even she was amazed to be talking to him this way, and almost tried to snatch back her words. Or at least her inflections.

  Pangborn’s square jaw tightened. He made a painfully fake grin.

  “Go ahead,” he dared. “Inform away.”

  * * *

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “Dustin and me, and Roscoe, Pete, Maxwell, Nitro, Noreen, Cathy, and Zimmer.”

  “That’s… two-thirds the deck crew.”

  “That’s right. And a couple of others are thinking about leaving. We’ll take your shit, but not for no pay.”

  The confrontation wasn’t entirely unexpected. Pangborn gave them his best poker glare, but there was little that hadn’t already been given away. “You’re leaving me high and dry in the middle of a voyage? Hanging here in space with a ship full of children? What kind of worms are you? We’re months out.”

  “We’re transferring over to the Virginia. We have clearance by automatic boarding pass. They’ve got the bunk space.”

  “Who authorized that?”

  “It’s an automatic authorization according to the Space Rescue Clause.”

  “Did you talk to Nick Alley? Does he know you’re jumping my ship?”

  “We got an automatic clearance,” Luke said again. “He knows that maritime law requires him to take on anyone without a criminal record who wants transport for… what’s that called?” He turned to Dustin.

  “Irreconcilable differences. Just like a divorce.”

  Luke nodded. “We’re all done with you, man.”

  “We’re paying for our passage,” Dustin firmly said. “Their passenger system sent us ticket confirmation. We’re going home.”

  “Better life,” Luke said. “Less you.”

  “What am I supposed to do hanging here in space with less than half a crew?”

  “We don’t care.”

  Dustin appeared more reasonable, if not more sympathetic. “You can hover here until you can have more crew shipped out to take over. Or you can turn back to Cargo City.”

  “You realize that loses the income from the shipment.”

  “Yeah, we realize.”

  “Maybe you can find more suckers to hire,” Luke said, “until we spread the word about you.”

  Pangborn met their betrayal with icy disdain. “You disloyal irritants. You’ll never get a space-time letter out of me.”

  Luke’s anger burned to the surface. “You don’t have the right to deny us our space-time credit!”

  “A crew in mutiny?”

  “It’s not a mutiny,” Dustin said. “That’s an unfair characterization.”

  “How about this characterization? A stinking, disloyal muscle-flexing by low-class proletarians. Sue me.”

  Luke took one step forward, but Dustin stopped him. “We will.”

  Pangborn leaned forward. “And you’ll get your paychecks when you can beat them out of me.”

  When Dana entered, having heard the last several sentences of this conversation, her appearance stopped Luke from trying to do just what the captain dared him to do.

  “Okay, thanks, you two, we’ll take it from here,” she said.

  “We’re leaving,” Dustin said. “Our gear’s already transferred.”

  “I know.” She made a quick motion for them to leave. “You’re cleared to off-board. The Virginia’s leaving. You’d better shuttle over right now. You’ve only got about four minutes.”

  She offered her hand, which they both took in a businesslike and regretful way. In a moment, she was alone with the captain.

  “A significant portion of the operational crew is gone,” she said. “The Virginia will be bearing off in eight minutes. I’ll do whatever you want, but there are only a couple of choices.”

  “I appreciate that you stayed,” he forced himself to say.

  She made a verbal shrug. “Doesn’t change anything. Do you want to heave to and wait for relief crew, or do you want to turn back to Cargo City?”

  “I haven’t decided. They just hit me with this.”

  She set herself for the harder questions. “How do you prefer to handle the cadets?”

  “They’re not ‘cadets.’ They’re just stinking-rich stowaways.”

  Pangborn spoke with a dangerously measured tone. He had a temper, she knew, but she had never seen him lose it. His temper manifested itself in other ways.

  “They’re not stinking rich and you know it,” she challenged. “Most of their parents are average people with average jobs. These kids earned scholarships and sponsorships. They deserve—”

  “Freeloaders. The law has conditions about non-paid, non-paying personnel. I have discretionary power.”

  “Well, I’m not sure how you could possibly use it,” she told him. “The situation is what it is. If it’s just you and me running the whole ship with a diminished crew, all we can do is take them back to Cargo City. It’s still the closest outpost, other than Duarte Station, and you’ll get your hide sued off and your license suspended if you drop them there with those lone-wolf rapists.”

  She paused, hoping a moment of silence would help. It didn’t, but his lack of response proved to her that he was past the initial anger and was thinking hard, changing course, analyzing his options. The prospect was bizarre— completing a major leg of a voyage without a trained crew.

  She changed her tone. “Look, Tom… they’re good kids. I know you don’t like them, but they’re super-smart, and they’ve learned a lot about the ship’s systems. I’m sure if we ask nicely, they’ll help out till we get back to Cargo City.”

  But the captain had stopped listening. Dana recognized the posture. He was slightly turned away from her, so she couldn’t see his face, but saw the wedge of his jawline as he gazed upward thoughtfully, freeing his mind of the plans they’d assumed were set, weighing his options, cooking up alternatives, using his imagination. He had a good imagination. She’d seen him come up with creative solutions before, though truthfully she didn’t see any different possibilities now. Without an experienced crew, the ship wouldn’t be able to function.

  Dana knew Pangborn to be an excellent technical com-mander, but not hampered by truth or loyalty. She had accepted that because she knew it going in, and had adjusted. She never expected loyalty, and she checked whatever he told her. He could be creatively flexible, and she could shift gears quickly. They had found a middle ground that worked.

  But now she was nervous.

  Pangborn touched the controls for the exterior visuals. Two screens fritzed briefly, then settled on the view of a beautiful mural floating past, shockingly close to the cameras. Dana was amazed to see not the Virginia, but the ironclad Monitor sailing past the Umiak. The famous mural of the Battle of Hampton Roads, known throughout the space fleet.

  Together they watched as the final moorings retracted and the Virginia was free to go on her way. Though seeming to move very slowly, the Virginia bore off from the Umiak and in less than sixty seconds she seemed to be suddenly very far away. The aspect of her retreat was disturbing.

  “I hate this part of a rendezvous,” she said quietly. “It’s like being left behind.”

  She was snapped back to reality when Thomas Pangborn drew a long breath through his nose and sighed it back out.

  Then he turned to her, with a completely new musing on his face.

  “Who says I don’t like them?”

  * * *

  “We have a problem.”

  Captain Pangborn was businesslike and calm, but Ned detected the slightest tension in the captain’s shoulders and
a stiffness in his legs, and his face was dusky. If the captain had been one of the rams on the farm, these signals would’ve indicated meeting a threat.

  Ned watched him carefully as he spoke to the assembled cadets around the salon table. Lunch was over, and Spiderlegs was collecting the leftovers, but all the cadets had been told to sit still and not help.

  They were the only people in the salon. Even Mr. Nielsen was missing. All the ship’s crew had been tacitly ushered out. Only Dana remained, standing over to the port side, opposite the captain, making like a hole in the wall.

  “I’ve had to let several members of the crew go,” Pangborn forthrightly said. “I can’t pay them. I got stiffed by your travel agency. These things happen, just not usually in the middle of a charter. The shortest route is to take you back to Cargo City where you boarded. For me, this means no pay for the load we just took on, because I’ll fail to complete delivery to Zone Emerald. For you, it means no certificates, no scholarships, and no Emerald University.”

  He took a pause for effect, and it worked. Mary clapped her fingers to her lips in surprise. Chris fell back in the chair and made a terrible moan of surprise and grief.

  “No way!” Dan drawled. “No way… no way…”

  Pearl grinned her gappy grin and uttered, “H’heh! No university.”

  Pangborn cast her an annoyed glare and moved on. “For those of you with parents who can afford the exorbitant cost of passage, it’s still probably another thirty months till there’s another charter out to Zone Emerald. You’ll lose your jump on everybody else your age. After another year or two, you won’t be prodigies anymore. You’ll just be smart adults, and there are plenty of those. They don’t impress anybody. You’ll have lost your time to glow.”

  He paused again to observe the puddles of teenager melting around the table. Leigh’s head was completely down in her arms. Dan was making shooting motions at his own head with his hand in the shape of a gun. Robin simply gazed, wide-eyed, but more in empathy for the others than for herself and Ned. They had come just for the ride.

  When the agony had been maximized, Captain Pangborn began talking again.

  “But there’s another option. We can help each other. We all have the same goal: get to Zone Emerald. We can make a deal.”

  “What deal?” Dan asked, pausing in mid-fire.

  Pangborn pulled his hands out of his pockets, put them on end of the salon table, and leaned forward as if to be intimate and confidential with them. “You—all of you— be my crew. I’ll give you full credit, titles as members of the crew, not cadets, official space-time letters when we’re done, and proof that you were trusted with a valuable ship and its cargo. That looks good on any resume. Instead of a fake, sterile fantasy, you get to do the real thing. You won’t waste your time being treated like a bunch of prissies, where we just pretend you’re important. You really will be important. Working your own passages is a time-honored tradition. We’ll make a couple of pickups and deliveries, and I’ll have you at Zone Emerald in six weeks. Maybe less, if we get lucky.”

  Adam, sitting there with no plate in front of him, was the first to speak up. “I want a mate’s position.”

  Everyone else flinched at his rapid reaction. He had digested everything faster than the rest.

  Pangborn straightened and folded his arms, and looked at Adam with a nod of respect. “Okay, Sparky. You know what you’re worth. That’s good. You can be second mate. You’ve got the brains. We’ll see if you have the maturity.”

  He held Adam’s unflinching gaze for a few seconds longer than necessary, then turned again to face the entire complement.

  “Is it a deal?” he asked. “Will you be my crew?”

  The teens exchanged tentative glances, each hoping another would make the decision. They ultimately ended up mostly focused on Adam, since he had displayed himself as willing to match the captain dare for dare. They were waiting for him to speak.

  Ned, at the end of the row beside his sister, parted his lips to speak.

  “We’ll do it,” Adam abruptly said, stealing anyone else’s chance even to ask a question. If he hadn’t been elected the leader, he had elected himself.

  Was that so bad? Ned wondered. How many good leaders in history had simply stepped up?

  He relaxed back a bit. At least they had a plan that satisfied everyone’s goals. The captain had tangled with a difficult situation and conjured up a course of action that worked for everyone. That deserved respect.

  “I’ll inform Mr. Nielsen that your formal lessons will be suspended and his capacity as education officer will change to some other assignment. Of course, if you have any questions that don’t affect your duties, you can still address them to him. Dana and I will work up a station bill, probably pairing most of you with what’s left of our crew. We’ll decide whether two watches or three will serve better, and you’ll be assigned. You’ll find that things will go pretty much as normal once we get into a regular routine. All right, cadets… dismissed.”

  Half-stunned, the teens rose slowly, and then more quickly. Soon they were filing out, anxious to get away, to think, to talk among themselves and digest the situation. Ned saw fear in some eyes, intrigue in others, resilience in a few. Too bad he didn’t have a mirror to see what was in his own.

  He was the last through the hatchway into the galley, where some of them would help Spiderlegs secure the galley. He lagged slightly behind, half expecting the captain to call him back to “finish” the bell.

  But he made it over the coaming intact.

  As the teenagers clogged up the companionway, Ned was forced to pause as the line backed up. Behind him, in the salon, the captain was alone with Dana in their cloud of unease.

  He alone heard the comment from their captain to his obligated mate.

  “Let’s see if our little pests have the stomach for some real adventure.”

  Ned lingered, shamefully curious, and chided himself for hearing as Dana followed the captain toward the aft hatch.

  Dana’s question to the captain sent a shiver up Ned’s spine.

  “What… pickups and deliveries?”

  12

  Adam Bay came into Ned’s periphery so slowly that Ned almost didn’t notice. Only when the other boy crouched at his side, then slipped down to sit on the salon’s deck near him did Ned really register the presence. People had been coming and going from the two salon hatches all afternoon. Ned had left only once, to use the head. This was his seemingly perpetual assignment. Or curse.

  “Ned Menzie… Bellmaster,” Adam began dramatically. “If only the duty were as glorious as the title.”

  Still polishing the bell through half the afternoon, nauseated by the cloying odor of polish, Ned blinked his burning eyes and coughed. “Where’s everyone else?”

  “Working. He’s got us at posts all over the ship. He floats around like the lord of manor, putting us on positions and giving us the hour’s goals, then moving on. Dana comes around and checks on the operation. She looks nervous. She doesn’t like having us at these important stations. What if something goes wrong? What if we push the wrong button? What if our remarkable skills are being wasted on some unfamiliar—”

  “Is there a point you’d like to make at all?” Ned interrupted, mindlessly buffing.

  Adam bent his knees and rested his arms on them, and looked at him with a frank glare. “How long are you going to put up with this?”

  “As long as it takes.” He continued to buff the bell housing with the tenth chamois cloth he’d wrecked. “I’m not being hurt any.”

  “He’s not out to hurt you. He’s out to break you.”

  “There’s nothing to be broken. All things end in time.”

  “He thinks there is. He took a dislike to you from the start. He doesn’t think you deserve to be here.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Huh!” Adam made a mirthless laugh. “How charmingly self-effacing.”

  “That’s me. Whatever it means.”


  Lowering his voice to an ominous tone, Adam warned, “You know what he’ll do.”

  “What?” Ned snapped.

  “If he can’t get to you by holding you down, he’ll get to you by holding your sister down.”

  This hit a nerve. Ned paused and glanced at the other boy. “Oh, he wouldn’t.”

  “Of course! Denial. Always constructive.” Adam leaned back and flexed his shoulders, gazing contemplatively at the salon lights. “Have you really convinced yourself there’s anything Pangborn thinks he can’t do out here in the cathedral of space? It’s our word against his. So all you have to ask is… what do you think he’ll do to her? What ugly, filthy, bone-breaking duty is there aboard a ship like this? What sort of job would ruin those perfect lily-white hands of hers? Shrink that happy spirit? What kind of torment can a man like Pangborn conjure up? I agree with you—it’s worth waiting for. I’d sort of like to know myself.” Appearing casual and contemplative, Adam rearranged his legs. “Don’t you think he’s perfectly named? Pangborn… Pang… born… Thomas Scott Pangborn… just enough simplicity to be striking, with a sting of uniqueness. You can be sure no one else in history has ever or will ever have that name.”

  “Can’t be sure of that at all,” Ned droned, pressing his thumbnail into the fin of a mermaid and pretending there was something to dig out.

  Adam looked at the gleaming bell and the mermaids’ fins and scales, the sinuous ladies’ hands and their long locks of bronze hair, cast in perfect swirls, and their frozen faces. “Do you really think you can actually get it clean enough to satisfy him?”

  “Haven’t you something to do?”

  “I’m the second mate. I’m doing my job. Supervising the common crew.”

  “What else has he got you doing?”

  “I’ve been at the helm. Supervising Leigh’s astromapping and monitoring the navigational system.”

  “Lots of supervising, then. Sounds like a good job for you.”

  Adam paused, and frowned. “Is that a dig?”

  Ned just sighed. “Not intentionally.” And he kept working.

  “Yes,” Adam continued to muse, “I’d be worried about your little backyard bird if I were you. After all, we’re out here in deep space, nobody to look after us, a captain who may or may not be an evil genius, with or without a moral guide rail… we really don’t know, do we? And your sister is such a fetching little temptation—”