The voices slowly percolated through her perception until they became noticeable. Moire rubbed her eyes, hoping whoever it was would go away. The transit to the sargasso wasn’t fun even with a second pilot, and she hadn’t been sleeping well, either. She should be trying to sleep now. Instead, she was sitting in her cramped office off of Raven’s bridge listening to two of her crew argue, because Alan was in her cabin and seeing him would be enough to start it all off again.
Her son was finally starting to tell her what Toren had done to him.
The argument was getting louder, and now she recognized Kilberton’s voice. Maybe she should see what the problem was. She hadn’t realized he even knew how to argue.
Opening the door, she caught his last few words. “...the captain will not like it!”
Yolanda Menehune was facing him, hands on her hips and dark brows furrowed over narrowed eyes.
“What won’t I like?” From their startled reactions, they hadn’t known she was in the office.
“It’s just some cargo,” Yolanda said, smiling weakly. “Nothin’ we want. But I can get real dos price for it. I just wanna take one of the scooters and...”
“She wants to sell morgatane,” Kilberton said, each word clipped and sharp. His dark face was austere and cold. Moire had never seen him this angry before.
She had to ask. “What’s morgatane?”
Kilberton’s entire body sagged in disbelief, while Yolanda blinked and struggled for words. “They din’ have it back then, eh?” she said finally. Both Kilberton and Yolanda knew about her lack of contemporary knowledge.
Moire shook her head. “Never heard of it. It’s a drug?”
“It is poison.” Kilberton’s lips were drawn back from his teeth.
“Yeah, like the rest of 'em aren’t,” Yolanda snapped. “It’s hard to make, see? Real sparse to the load.” She paused, looking at Moire’s face, and translated, “only few runners got it, right? You got that, you big mover.”
Kilberton folded his arms. “The other drugs can kill, it is true. This one always kills. If you take it you must take more, or you die. If you keep taking it, you die. In the station where I was born there was one who had it. The morgatane leaked when the police fought with him. Sixteen people died.”
Yolanda rubbed her chin, her eyes darting from side to side. “It’s bad, yeshure. You let me sell that other stuff, though. Thought it was OK.”
It was true Moire had carried on the established tradition that let Yolanda handle illegal cargo, especially now that they were doing salvage. It was quite profitable to the ship, but more importantly it kept up their cover as pirates and their contacts to the criminal underworld. Moire gazed at her cargo master, noticing the way she was playing with her kink-curled hair and other little signs that she was uncomfortable. Yolanda knew morgatane was dangerous, all right, and she had guessed Moire wouldn’t allow it if she knew.
“This may be more trouble than it’s worth,” Moire said. “We don’t need the money that badly. Besides, if it’s that hard to get it will be noticed if we sell it–especially when we can’t get more.”
“There are only two combines that deal in morgatane,” Kilberton said, nodding. “They fight wars. If they hear we have sold any, both will attack us.”
“Hey, how come you straight-up know so much about morgatane, hah?” Yolanda said, sticking out her jaw, eyes narrowed with suspicion.
He was silent for a moment, looking down at the deck. “My friend from childhood, he was the policeman who found the runner. He had been hunting him for a long time,” he said softly. He looked up again. “Slavers use it.”
Yolanda didn’t say anything. Her light brown face was getting red.
“No morgatane,” Moire said, and Yolanda just nodded. “Are we having money problems?”
“Nah, we’re good for now. Harvey’d better be there with the money from the sale when we get back to Kulvar, though. Better be there anyway. Tired of doing his work as well as mine. Took me a week to figure out how he kept the ship books.”
If Harvey Felden didn’t show up they would have a whole new set of worries. The old steward had left to get the money from a ship sale on Cullen, where Moire didn’t dare show up again. He’d left before the incident with Ennis. Moire rubbed her fingertips lightly over the pale, still-shiny scars on her palms. More unfinished business.
Gren Forrest’s distinctive clomping steps entering the bridge made her look up. The engineer had his long black hair back in a folded queue, indicating he was planning on working in an EVA suit. His shaggy brows went up in surprise when he saw her. “You’re up early,” he grunted.
“She’s up late,” Yolanda said sourly. “She never left.”
“What?!” All three of them, Gren, Kilberton, and Yolanda, turned to face her. Moire felt a sudden urge to back into her office and shut the door.
Gren peered at her. “You haven’t been looking good lately. Maybe Fortin should make sure everything’s healing OK.”
“Don’t wake her up just for that,” Moire objected as he headed for the wall comm. “She got shot up a lot worse than I did. I’m fine, really. I hardly notice it anymore.”
Gren hesitated, then sighed. “So which one are we starting with? The cargo hauler with the hull breach?”
Moire nodded, relieved. “You know where it is, right?” she asked Kilberton.
“In the cluster next to the ship we worked on last time,” he said, and moved to the realspace controls.
“You coming with us?” Gren asked Yolanda.
“Yeah, I’m comin’. Got some personal cargo space to fill,” she grumbled.
“Don’t leave just yet,” Moire said, going back to her office and rummaging through the datatab rack on the desk. Since Yolanda would be outside Raven’s network on the salvage ship, she wouldn’t be able to access any of the data there. Moire found the tab she wanted and went back to the bridge. “While you’re out there, see if you can find any of this.”
Yolanda slotted the tab in her hand-size datapad and quickly scanned it, starting to look interested despite her sulky expression. She loved searching the wrecked ships out in the sargasso. Moire hoped it would take her mind off the forbidden morgatane.
“OK. You got food fabrication equipment, water recyclers...? That’s for stations, not a ship crew. We’re salvaging plenty of supplies.”
“We’ll need the equipment on Sequoyah once we start living there. There’ll be more people, too.” There’d have to be, if they were going to defend the planet. A lot more people.
Yolanda nodded. “Makes sense. Now this other one. ‘Any and all weapons and explosives found.’ What’s that about? You think Toren is gonna come in shooting?”
“They will find out where we are eventually, and when they do they’ll want to take the planet from us.” Moire rubbed her face with her hands and walked back to her office, feeling a wave of tiredness wash over her. “Oh yeah, and make sure you find any guns before Alan does. He gets upset when I keep taking them away from him.” Just like any kid would with a shiny new toy. Once again she wondered why Toren had done such a thorough job of teaching him how to kill. Weren’t they afraid their created workers would turn on them? Of course, they had the control bracelets...
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
Moire turned sharply. Gren had followed her inside. He shut the door and stood in front of it, his arms folded across his chest.
“I’m tired.” She collapsed into the big chair. “Dammit, Gren, why can’t you be captain for a change? Everything I do just seems to get us in more trouble.”
His face showed no reaction. “It was the right choice at the time, and it’s still the right choice. Not only is the crew making three times the usual salary, we’ve got first claim on an Earthlike planet. Even with the good pay none of us would be able to afford to live on either of the other two they’ve discovered. You’re doing fine.”
Moire slouched in her chair, feeling uncomfortable. She needed to tell somebody, and if there was anybody on the ship she could trust, it was Gren. “I’m not focused on my job,” she said reluctantly. “You know how Alan...came about, right?” Gren nodded, looking serious. “When I first met up with him I knew somebody had done some awful things to him, but he wouldn’t talk about it. Now he’s telling me more. Two days ago he told me just enough for all the pieces to come together.” She took a deep breath. “Toren has this facility somewhere. They’re making more accelerated-growth kids, just like him, and I’m pretty sure they are using stolen genetic material from the NASA protective storage project to do it. Alan escaped, but the rest are still there and I keep...” she closed her eyes, swallowing around the tightness in her throat. “I keep thinking about them.”
She’d solved the problem of how to report the discovery of Sequoyah by essentially giving it to Raven’s crew, even if they still had to keep it from being taken by Toren. But she had an obligation to the other explorers too, to the children they never knew they had. She was the only one left who could help them.
“Where is it?” Gren was watching her closely, his face hard.
“I don’t know. I don’t think Alan can tell me. He didn’t even know what planets were when I met him.” Only eight years old and he’d never been anywhere else before he escaped the facility.
“We need more information,” Gren said, stabbing a finger at her. “Figure out how he got free. Then we can decide if there is anything we can do.”
It was tempting, so tempting... “We’re going to have enough to do defending Sequoyah,” Moire managed, finally. “I don’t see how we can do anything.”
Gren grunted. “If the others are like Alan, they can help us with that.”
That hadn’t occurred to her, but it made sense. “Good idea. I’ll see if Alan remembers anything useful.” She stood up, wavering a little until her balance steadied.
“First you are going to get some sleep,” Gren said, frowning. “If you don’t head for your cabin, now, I will wake up Fortin. I hope she gets well enough to start cooking again,” he grumped as he followed Moire out of the bridge. “Pico tries, but you can tell he’s never had anything that wasn’t processed to death.”
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