Dragoons honor, p.2
Dragoon's Honor, page 2
“Why, then?” she asked.
Zakhar smiled. His love could be blunt when she wanted, though the level of personal abuse between those two had long since ended. The teasing, however…
“We need a break,” Javier said, leaning back and shrugging. “We’re halfway home at this point, give or take, and the crew has been going like hell. Plus, I want to see if these people could maintain the sort of isolated social environment that doesn’t turn turbid and ingrown, like most farm worlds cut off tend to.”
“Shangri-La?” Zakhar asked, just to snap Javier’s head back around again to face him.
And get his pupils to dilate while his brain caught up.
“In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree…” Zakhar quoted back at the man, an old joke he still owed Javier.
The Science Officer shivered once, reset, and nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “Shangri-La, or whatever it might need to be.”
“Whole sentences, please?” Afia perked up, getting growly herself.
Pixie Kodiak. Small size. Pure power when she got going. Climb you like a tree then knock you on your ass.
“A mythical utopia,” Zakhar filled her in. And the others. “Hidden in the Himalayan Mountains on Earth in the distant past, supposedly, where Buddhists could retreat to and hide when things got bad, down in the valleys or the lowlands. Before industrial technology, when you could climb up somewhere and hide.”
“Exactly,” Javier agreed. “Building a ship to escape might be a good thing, but it would have to be huge, if you wanted to use it to hold an entire civilization, however compact. Bloodlines, food, entertainment, et cetera.”
“And a generation ship would be even larger,” Bethany interjected. “There are records of some from the very early days of starflight, when jumps were short and not all that accurate. Folks still wanted to escape from whatever political, cultural, or economic crap they’d left behind them.”
“Kimmeria, all over again?” Djamila asked.
“We’re kinda out here conducting science,” Javier noted, pausing to look around at everyone. “There will be enough war in a generation for everybody to get their fill. I’m trying to find ways to save the future from that sort of stupid shit. Kimmeria was a bust, and it wasn’t. The concept was solid, but their super-advanced tech wasn’t even as good as what we have today. Plus, generation ship, so you have the founder/grandchild problem, as we watched unfold with them. But a traveling casino might make enough money, might draw in enough new blood, might do the things today that mean they could be in a position to go dark and turn left on some future date, riding things out for a decade without letting pirates or enemy warships know they were there.”
“Is war inevitable?” Suvi asked.
“You’ve read Dorn’s thesis in every version he’s sent me,” Javier said to her projection on the near wall. “And I’ve programmed you to understand those fifty-three million books. I can’t imagine a galaxy where somebody doesn’t get the bright idea to invade and subjugate some neighbor, in spite of having billions of stars and planets to pick from. Human nature, unfortunately. Other people will push back. You are the only veteran of the Great War I know, Suvi. Have we changed as a people?”
Zakhar watched her face fall, which still astounded him, considering that she was a program. All of those things had been programmed into her, and she used them intentionally to convey emotion and meaning at least as well as any organic being he knew.
“We have not,” Zakhar announced. “And I agree with Hetzel that bad things are coming. I’m not sure I agree that it will be worse than the one our great-grandparents dealt with, but I’m willing to be wrong. What does it gain us, to understand these things?”
He had locked eyes with Javier as he spoke, with the others falling silent.
“Behnam might need to build something even bigger than Shangdu,” Javier replied. “A warship station planetoid that either she and her kids can disappear on, or as a basis of a fleet of such things that could drive off any invasion force on the basis of mounting guns of frightening power, because they were ground-mounts, with cubic kilometers of rock on which to install equipment.”
Zakhar nodded.
At least they’d gotten Javier’s fears out in the open. Zakhar would be sixty soon. If the timing worked as Hetzel had laid it out, he would be elderly or maybe already dead by the time such a conflagration reached the Altai region.
After his time.
So it was incumbent upon him to make sure that those kids were prepared. Javier was the same way. Hell, this entire voyage was intended to find out more about places beyond the space than any of them had visited.
To connect a Silk Road from Altai in the far east to the oldest colonies in the far west.
Just in case a war came, and folks needed to know where refugees might flee to.
Or from.
Zakhar studied the faces around him with intensity. All seemed mollified for now, but some of that, he knew, was simply ignorance of the situation.
However, they were good at sailing into something strange and finding the safe way out again.
Look at what the Science Officer had managed, since he had first fast-talked his way into the crew of the old Storm Gauntlet.
“I also think a brief vacation from duty would be a lovely thing,” Zakhar announced.
The others nodded.
After all, how much trouble could you get into in a casino?
PART 4
Djamila studied her face in the mirror, looking at lines that hadn’t been there in the past. At hair coming in gray on the sides. Still mostly brown. Still buzzed short on the sides and faux-hawk on top for working in suits. Sixteen studs in the ears, nine and seven, though none anywhere else.
She’d enlisted at sixteen. Served ten years of active duty and could have stayed another twenty had she wanted, but she’d already been promoted to Leader-3 and there had only been one more rung up the ladder she could have gone, because the Neu Berne officer corps was exceedingly jealous of its rank and prerogatives.
And she’d been born on the wrong side of the tracks. Career enlisted, and nothing better, regardless of how good she was.
Now, she was forty, and looking at it in the mirror. Not old. Not even halfway, but no longer that bright-eyed child who had taken the oath, once upon a forever ago.
“You’re grumbling,” Zakhar mentioned from where he sat in his favorite chair and read.
Djamila blushed. Then blushed worse that she could blush in public.
She turned to one of the loves of her life and shrugged. Fought down a sigh, in spite of the utter privacy of anything said in here.
Even Suvi would honor that. They’d spoken at length on the topic.
“Javier got me to thinking,” she said, moving to the bed and sitting on the near edge.
After so many years alone, sleeping with any man, even this one, was still something that took her breath away. However, she was safe here.
Zakhar closed his tablet to set it in the side table, focusing that entire charisma on her in ways that almost knocked her over.
And then he didn’t speak. Didn’t question. Merely waited for her to continue.
“What do we do after this voyage?” she asked, noting that the we was even more complicated, because she had left Farouz back on Altai, where he was one of Behnam’s top bodyguards.
“What would please you?” he asked.
More breathtaking moments.
She could have opinions that other people would accept. Not like an enlisted trooper, however good she’d been. And she’d been among the very best.
“My mind keeps circling back to this casino Javier wants to find,” she said, looking inward but not sure which words were coming out. “Those people mostly don’t have to worry about violence and conflict in their lives, except at several removes.”
“Alien, isn’t it?” he asked, nailing her discomfort squarely.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Is that possible for us? Or will we forever be in the thick of things?”
“Depends on what you want,” Zakhar said, leaving it to her. “I took this job because Javier shouldn’t be in command of that many people, even with Suvi. And it let me do things that didn’t necessarily involve going to war with people. Or robbing them.”
“We still do,” she noted.
He shrugged.
“Of volition,” he accepted. “Because we make the galaxy a better place than we found it, in the process of stopping bad people. But yes, at some point we could retire. I can see Javier taking a job teaching at King’s College, then just puttering as he and Behnam grow old together. Would you prefer to retire to Altai when this is done? Or do I need to buy us a yacht and sail away?”
Djamila blinked, unable to process such a thing.
What did she want?
That was exactly the problem.
She had two amazing men, both madly in love with her and willing to share. A job that let her be the best combat trooper in the galaxy, at least as long as she could maintain her own standards.
And how long was that?
When would she have to admit that she had lost a step? That the total perfection of being that Javier still called the Ballerina of Death had finally passed her by?
She was still better than anybody on this ship. The Doctors St. Kitts, Emma and Rainier, saw to it that everyone exercised regularly, and Emma taught various close combat forms that supplemented what Djamila knew.
The men Javier called The Gunbunnies were among the best in the galaxy. She was still better.
For how much longer?
“I don’t know,” she admitted, able to do that here, with him.
Zakhar nodded.
“When you do, we will,” he said.
Simple as that.
She stood up and walked over to kiss him.
He would.
She could do anything, with Zakhar and Farouz supporting her.
And she would.
PART 5
Afia had returned to her cabin after talking to Javier and the others.
Something didn’t sit right, though. Gnawed on her ankle when she wasn’t looking.
“Suvi, got a minute?” she asked the room.
A screen lit up.
“What’s up?” Suvi asked.
Afia frequently flashed back to that moment when she’d watched this chick being born into this very ship. When Javier had put all the boards and things in and awakened a most terrible dragon, who had turned out to be a pretty cool babe.
“This casino ship thingee,” Afia said. “Javier thinks it is four to five centuries old, right?”
“I have various reports, with dates that don’t agree, but all of them start at least four hundred and twenty years ago, yes,” Suvi acknowledged.
“And you and your cousins were state of the art, Concord technology, when you were born, right?” Afia pressed. “When was that?”
“One hundred and twenty-seven years ago,” Suvi nodded. “March 19, 7426. A rainy Sunday on Bryce.”
“Thus, we do not think that such a ship would be nearly as automated as you?” Afia continued. “Because rebuilding things would require a lot of work?”
“Lots,” Suvi agreed. “Most of those old systems use a highly complex binary logic gate system. Our breakthrough was trinary logic, which made things impossibly faster and more sophisticated. Downside, we were expensive to build and maintain as warships. Necessary during the Great War, but most of us were shut down and dismantled afterwards. Me included, but Javier knew a guy that was able to get me merely decommissioned instead of lobotomized. And here I am.”
“So, ship,” Afia said, feeling her way through the logic. “Automated to all hell, like most ships, including our old Storm Gauntlet, but not really alive. Not smart.”
“Linear,” Suvi agreed. “You up to no good? More no good, I suppose I should say?”
“Casinos really run two kinds of games,” Afia nodded. “Purely games of chance that predate electronics, if you will. Cards, dice, whatever. In the way-old days, you’d have mechanical slot machines, where someone pulled a lever to start three wheels rolling, then the three would supposedly randomly stop, with payouts based on results.”
Suvi’s face did that thing where she looked up an entire library’s worth of data in between eye-blinks, then she was back.
“Wow, that’s old,” Suvi said. “One of the first uses of electronics was to make them all controlled by a central computerized system that could track results, patterns, and payouts from an armed room.”
“And, it made it really easy for the house to cheat,” Afia said, thinking back to some of the things she’d done as a kid, back in the Yukon Protectorate.
There were reasons she didn’t even visit Earth these days.
“You expecting the folks on Sovereign Nakhimov to be running a crooked game system?” Suvi asked.
Afia shrugged.
“Even an honest house usually has a ninety-seven-percent winning edge,” she replied. “Throw in entertainment money for food, drink, drugs, cabins, and docking space, and I could see it being immensely profitable. Honest or not. Mostly, I suspect, it would come down to the folks in charge. Is there any way for you to tell if they are or aren’t straight?”
Suvi blinked again. Like spending a few hours looking at books before she came back.
“If they had half a brain, they’d have scanners floating around that would look for folks trying to cheat,” Suvi said. “And I’m certain I’d show up if you maintained the kind of comm link that I normally do to one of my drones.”
“What if you pared yourself down a shard?” Afia asked. “Stripped out most things like you were going on vacation, and sat quietly, listening to the traffic around you, maybe with that same sort of basic keyboard and screen you used to do when we first met Javier?”
“We could probably build something,” Suvi agreed. “But I’m guessing that a ship with that much money aboard—that many rich folks—would have better security and firepower than a First-Rate Galleon could threaten. I would, if I was in charge.”
“True,” Afia agreed. “This is mostly for my peace of mind. Plus, I have no doubts that Djamila and Javier will board, so we’ve got folks that are way more dangerous than they look, if there is trouble, ya know?”
“Agreed,” Suvi said. “Let me spend tonight tinkering, and we’ll talk again in the morning.”
“Sounds good,” Afia agreed.
Javier might be up to no good, but he had a scholarly topic in mind. The Dragoon would be all military competence, however sneaky she might be running it.
They needed someone like Afia to think about crooked card tables and con games.
Good thing they had her along.
PART 6
Bethany had asked Suvi to pull the top twenty resources she had on Sovereign Nakhimov and similar concepts into her tablet, so that Bethany could do some research.
Finding the ship would be a bit difficult, mostly because anybody with half a brain would assume Excalibur was a pirate and a threat.
They’d be right about the first part and wrong on the second, but they might not stop to listen to reason.
Felt like time to sneak up politely.
Helped that a First-Rate Galleon was as much cargo hauler as warship. What would a casino need, in terms of resupply? Bethany doubted that Javier wanted to leave this entire vessel behind while he took a tourist group to visit.
They’d narrowed the number of planetary systems down tremendously, merely by finding an old reference to how fast the ship itself sailed through space. Jump a few times, then park close by to other systems, but not too close. Stay for a few months at said location, letting folks come and go, but only advertising locally.
If you were in the know, you could find them. If not, you didn’t.
That was it. There was an entire sub-culture of folks who followed the casino ship known as Sovereign Nakhimov, while generally hiding from the outer galaxy. That was what had caught Javier’s mind the first time. And why such a thing had bubbled up today, when he remembered that they had been around Kranieafim thirty-some years ago, only slowly migrating along some path unknown to anybody but the folks in charge.
How long would someone stay in charge of a ship like that? Modern medicine meant that Humans normally lived active lives for eighty to one hundred years, with another twenty or thirty slowly slowing down and breaking down. Something about the limits of human genetics that had stayed put.
She paused and spent an hour looking up early eugenics movements, in the era when starflight let folks escape from Earth. Some religions rejected such things. Others fully embraced them, to the extent that they intended to tinker with the human genome, but in places where nobody was looking. Or stopping them.
Very little data had survived across the intervening four millennia, so she made a note to circle back and ask Suvi to include it in later data quests, when they hit planets with libraries or books for sale.
What could you do without adult supervision? What flights of fancy became possible?
Not today’s problem.
She presumed that hiring would generally occur internally, with the occasional talent scout on the lookout for folks who might be recruited inwards. Specialist accountants. Business managers at other casinos. Security experts.
She also presumed a city of around a quarter million folks, based purely on volume, then pared that down to a manageable fifty thousand, once she looked at feeding that many people. It took a lot of greenhouses and krill farms to generate the correct amount of daily protein. Add in some imports of the high-end stuff for wealthy folks, mixed with things you could produce on station for a luxury of nowhere-else-in-the-galaxy labels.
