Four in the Way
The Borderlands
An untamed place of little law lying in the direction of the galactic core from Earth, it had been designated five hundred years earlier by a treaty between the Imperium and the Layeb Instrumentality, the two great powers of the Orion Arm, as a buffer zone, separating the Layeb from Earth and most of the region once belonging to the old Republic of Earth. That territory stood between the theocratic reptiles and the other major races of known space, the Delph, the Viridians and the Tatar. No ships of either government of any type were allowed in the Borderlands, and no new colonies could be established. Those that were already there were independent and neutral by interstellar law.
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Four
in
the
Way
by
Jeff Deischer
a westerntainment publication
FOUR IN THE WAY
published by Westerntainment
Denver, Colorado, USA
Westerntainment.blogspot.com
westerntainment@gmail.com
“Love at First Smell” copyright 2017 Jeff Deischer
“Treasure Hunt” copyright 2017 Jeff Deischer
“This Planet Under New Management” copyright 2017 Jeff Deischer
No part of this publication may be reprinted without permission, except for purposes of review or scholarly discussion. All rights reserved.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to:
The Fulton Street Irregulars: David Webb, Ric Croxton, and Andra Stan for their valuable feedback;
The creators of various science fiction – TV, books, games, especially but not limited to FARSCAPE, Traveller, Starships & Spacemen, Dungeons and Dragons, Worlds Beyond;
And my parents, for their support.
FOUR IN THE WAY
Love at First Smell
Treasure Hunt
This Planet Under
New Management
Love at First Smell
Noomi Bloodgood, Indri Mindsinger and Rastheln’iq, who was also known as Wormwood, sat around the table in the conference room on the uppermost deck of the Vishnu, an experimental ship that had been lost on its maiden voyage fourteen hundred years earlier in Earth’s early years of deep space exploration. The sole survivor of its crew, Joe Tull, was absent from the meeting, because, unlike the others, he was not a wanted criminal. The trio had escaped while on their way to the Imperium’s most secret prison, Purgatory, and had since searched for ways to eke out an income while staying out of the path of the Templars, an interstellar mercenary organization. They worked for many people, corporations and even governments.
“For the first time,” said Indri, a gray-skinned being who was completely hairless slightly and larger than the average human male, “we will have the opportunity to part ways and pursue our own goals, after we conclude our deal on Calu Ecu.” This was a dry, nutrient-poor world that lay along the boundary of the Imperium and the Borderlands, a lawless region of space some one hundred parsecs from Earth, designated by interstellar treaty as a neutral zone between the two great powers in known space, the Imperium and the Instrumentality. In simplistic terms, if Rigel lay at 4 on a clock with Earth at its center, the Borderlands lay between 12 and 2. Deneb, the closest major system claimed by the Layeb race of the Instrumentality and called Macorab by them, lay beyond this wild region of space.
“My needs are few,” said Rastheln’iq, a Vir plant man. He wore a coarse gown that allowed the passage of air and light through it. Over this he wore a floor-length vest of a darker hue that held many pockets. Its intricate pattern hid most of these. “I plan to set up a laboratory here in the Borderlands.”
Indri Mindsinger involuntarily shuddered. Wormwood had been sentenced to Purgatory after being convicted of inhumane experiments on sentient species, including Indri’s own, the Delph, who were descended from sea mammals. He could just imagine the types of experiments the Viridian scientist had in mind.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” said Noomi, who stood five feet tall and was covered in fine fur. She was a Tatar, a hybrid breed. Her garb consisted of a number of leather straps that concealed her more delicate features, and wrapped around both her arms and legs. At her breastbone reposed a large serrated-edged dagger. “Even if the Tatar didn’t run the Imperium, my people would never accept me back because I disgraced myself and was court-martialed by the Templars. I have no place to go. One place is as good as another for now.” She did not add that the Tatar were gregarious, and she preferred the company of others to solitude, so that the girl was in no hurry to strike out on her own. She had formed bonds with each of her crewmates. Indri was like an older brother to her, Rattlesnake, as she called Rastheln’iq, a teacher. Joe … she hadn’t yet figured out her relationship to Joe, but she liked him. The pair shared common interests.
“For my own part,” said the Delphite priest, “I need time to build a new resistance movement.” Indri had been convicted of acts of terror against the Imperium, as a member of a group devoted to getting their home planet and its colony worlds out of the fascist Imperium. The Delph were known for the friendliness and kindness, and many of them did not like their race participating in the Imperium’s brutal ways. “That will require money and contacts. Our profit at Calu Ecu will not be enough to finance what I have in mind. So I plan to stay on the Vishnu for the foreseeable future. A base of operations outside of the reach of the Imperium would suit my needs –”
“What about the Templars?” asked Noomi. They were known to have a presence in the Borderlands.
Before the Delph could respond, a short, compact human male with dark, unruly hair burst into the conference room.
“Bad news,” announced Tully, as former ensign of the Republic of Earth stellar navy Joe Tull was called. “Our cargo is full of space weevils! It’s ruined!”
Of course, there was no such things as space weevils, but Tully, who had lived fourteen hundred years earlier, was not yet conversant in all the terms in use in the Imperium, which used Lingua Galactica. When calamity had befallen the Vishnu on its maiden voyage, the resourceful Earthman had placed himself in cryonic suspension. This had saved his life as he’d hoped – but turned him into a Rip van Winkle, a man out of time.
“Tawlls,” Rastheln’iq pronounced a few minutes later when he observed the cargo of grain the Vishnu was hauling to Calu Ecu for sale. Both Indri and Noomi knew what these creatures were, and though Tully was unfamiliar with the term, he had seen them. His thoughts went to the farmers on Meyer’s World, who had sold them the grain.
“
Those damn’ sodbusters!” snarled the Earthman. “They sold us rotten grain!”
“It’s unlikely they knew about the tawlls,” said Indri Mindsinger. “We inspected the grain ourselves and found nothing amiss.”
“Probably, the eggs were present but had not yet hatched on Meyer’s World,” explained Rastheln’iq as he sifted through the grain with a thin green hand, studying the tiny, multi-legged insects there. Meyer’s World was a subsistence colony founded by Johann Meyer, who was something of a crackpot. He was also nothing more than an amateur botanist and his colony had never prospered as he’d dreamed. Its members got by, and little more. It was not considered a trade world, but the crew of the Vishnu had happened upon it at just the right time – harvest; and found a short surplus of grain they thought they could sell for a profit at Calu Ecu, upon which certain plants were hard to grow due to its aridity and soil. Only narrow strips of land near shallow seas supported vegetation of any usefulness. Wood being in short supply, its buildings were made of stone, and the residents of Calu Ecu were known in the region as artisan stone workers; Calu Ecu in fact meant “stone cutters”. The four members of the Vishnu’s crew had planned to trade at some other planet with the stone artwork they planned to acquire, which they could sell for cash elsewhere. Now that plan was ruined, and they were back to where they were before Meyer’s World – minus the money they’d spent there, every spare stellar in their group operating fund.
“It looks like we won’t be splitting up any time soon,” Noomi Bloodgood observed ruefully.
The Borderlands, being legally-designated neutral space, had no capital. But if did possess one, that world might have been Freeport, which lay some four parsecs in the direction the Vishnu had been headed when it had come upon Meyer’s World. With no other prospects, the four crewmembers decided to find out what opportunities Freeport had to offer.
It was the most important world in this ward – a collection of star systems bound together by commerce or culture or defense – named the Gordian Knot, of slightly more importance than the planet Commerce, mainly due to the system’s resources, possessing a planet that had an abundance of water. A gas giant was present, and Freeport quickly became a popular world, so popular, in fact, that the Templars built one of their Traveller Way Stations in the system. Always manned, these gave aid to those in need of help of a wide variety of types, from protection from bandits to ship repairs to re-supplying a craft in an emergency. Freeport was industrialized and a much wider variety of items was going to be available on the planet than at Commerce, which was a barter world. It was for rubes who hadn’t equipped themselves well enough before entering the Borderlands and those looking for something unique or personal. The planet was an ignorant tourist’s paradise, with its authentic native trinkets. A semi-formal government was in place on Freeport, which enforced rather lax laws. Freeport could be a dangerous place for one who did not know what he was doing.
Freeport was in a way the terminus of one of the main routes for those entering the Borderlands, for Tarxix, the port that was the jumping off point, lay just on the other side of the boundary in the Xuan Wu (“Black Tortoise”) Marches. Here, the Imperium lay three parsecs away. This somewhat helped explain Perga, better known as the prison planet Purgatory six parsecs vaguely in the direction of Earth from Freeport: It did not lie deep within the Borderlands, only two parsecs over the boundary, and voyages to it were much less likely to be detected by other parties. Still, it was a mystery why the Imperium would break the treaty over a prison planet, when there were hundreds of suitable worlds within that entity itself. It was puzzle, one that could not be solved with information available to the three escaped prisoners.
Tully, Noomi Bloodgood and Indri Mindsinger went planetside while Rastheln’iq stayed aboard the Vishnu. This surprised the Delphite priest, for he expected the plant man to want to bask in the sunlight of a new world – it was spring on Freeport. The Vir explained, when questioned, that he would be along shortly, perhaps the following day; he had work to do. And so, the three others left him to it, and Rastheln’iq instructed Pal, the boisterous robot that helped operate the ship’s mechanical systems, to meet him in the machine shop on deck 6.
The planet was uninhabited when found by explorers, and so started as a single city, Freeport. Civilization grew up around it over the centuries. Much of the surface was still wild and uninhabited. A lot of it was frontier settled by pioneers and malcontents. The world retained a strong independent streak that was reflected in its name. The spaceport Freeport lent its name to the planet, and then the system, which was officially a string of letters and numbers as it was catalogued in the library of the Society of Stellar Cartographers, a civilian organization that went back to the early days of Earth’s F.T.L. space exploration when small crews on caravels braved the depths of space in search of knowledge, wealth or fame.
The city outside the spaceport was an industrial one that manufactured goods. Freeport was the first real industrialized world they visited – civilized. A lot of opportunities waited, both in what could be purchased, and also in employment.
Indri Mindsinger and Noomi Bloodgood seemed natural companions, being, in many respects the most “normal” of the four crewmen of the Vishnu. While Tully, who had gone in search of a gaming house, was incorrigible, Rastheln’iq seemed unfathomable and inhuman. Not that those two did not have their good qualities and the Delph and the Tatar their faults. In the months the four had been together, they had developed a bond between them did not exist between any other two – except, perhaps, between Tully and the robot Pal. The Delphite priest speculated that this was because the robot did not make moral judgments about the Earthman’s self-serving behavior.
While the group’s operating fund was depleted, each individual still possessed varying amounts of money. With theirs, Indri and Noomi shopped for things they could not obtain on other planets they’d visited.
A large screen overlooked a central plaza outside the spaceport, which was of the highest quality. Only military bases had better. This broadcast news and entertainment in equal amounts, in short snippets that did not tax shoppers’ attention too much. Few would stop because they were engrossed in a particular story.
One story that appeared on the big screen got the attention of the two escaped prisoners: Their picture appeared with a large “10,000 stellar reward” emblazoned under the 3V image. Both Noomi and Indri recognized the scene: It had been taken from the security vid they’d turned over to Commerce authorities to receive the reward for capturing members of the Red Shift gang two months earlier.
Tully had found the gaming house he sought. He had collected a goodly sum at Halo, an asteroid mining operation near Commerce, by gambling, although not through entirely ethical means – he cheated when he couldn’t win fairly. Not that he wasn’t a good card player, but no one wins all the time. Tully was as good a cheater as he was a card sharp, so had not gotten caught – except by Indri, who sensed the foul play through psychomancy, rather than by normal means of observation.
The standard procedure that had been agreed upon was that the ship’s operating fund functioned as a fifth member of the crew: Whatever profit they turned, as a group, one fifth of it went into the fund. Likewise, one fifth of what any of them made individually also went into the fund, though the other shipmates received no portion of this. This is how the Earthman still had a stake with which to gamble on Freeport.
Tully found an open game and joined in. Hours passed as he played. Finally, it was down to him and one other sentient, an Orzagy named Count Blashko. Blashko was a suave looking fellow, a smooth operator who was charming and knew it. He impressed the rubes around the table but not Tully. The count from Orzag was dressed in black, a loose blouse and equally loose trousers that hid his frame. A silvery chain with ornate detailing hung about his neck. He had arrived with a cloak draped about his shoulders, but this was removed for play. As he studied him – the Earthman studied all his opponents, looking for
weaknesses and tells – Tully decided that Blashko was probably older than he looked, and used cosmetics or some thirty-eighth century miracle drug to maintain his youthful appearance.
The human grinned wolfishly as he moved in for the kill. Blashko was running out of money – he carried a quantity of mikorn crystals, which was as good as cash on any civilized planet in the Imperium, the crystals being the basis of modern computing. Mikorn formed in large flat crystals which were natural data storers. They required very little refinement to be made ready for use. This made them practically priceless. A crystal half the size of a thumb was worth more than two hundred stellars, the currency of the Imperium. Two hundred stellars was the weekly pay of non comms in the Imperium navy.
Blashko was down to his last few crystals.
The Count was not a bad player, but neither was he a great one. Though he possessed an implacable demeanor, he bluffed too much. He had no tells that gave away his deception. But there was a pattern to his bluffing that the human detected; there were certain cards that signaled a bluff in general. He was bluffing now.
Tully moved in for the kill.
He pushed enough crystals into the pot to bankrupt Blashko.
Seeing this, the Count said, “I seem to be short of mikorn. I am willing to offer Cyat.”
Scowling, Tully asked, “What’s cyat?”
“Cyat is a jewel unlike any other, almost priceless. Cyat cost me a great deal of money to obtain.”
“All right, I accept. Now let’s see this Cyat.”