Timothy Zahn - Star Song and Other Stories

"It's Andrula Chen."

She turned hard, arrogant eyes on me. "Second cousin of the Chen-Mellis family."

I stared at her, my blood seeming to freeze in my heart. "Oh, my God," I whispered.

"Captain Smith?" Peter asked, his voice low. "What does she mean?"

With an effort, I turned away from her gaze. "Chen-Mellis is one of the Ten Families," I said, the words coming out with difficulty. "The people who effectively rule Earth and most of the Expansion."

"I prefer to think of it as one of the Six Families, actually,"

Kulasawa—Chen, rather—put in. "The other four survive solely at our pleasure."

"You told us there were other groups looking for the Freedom's Peace," Rhonda said, her voice low. "The other families?"

"You don't think I would have picked the Sergei Rock to hide from some bumbling academics, do you?" Chen retorted. "Members of the Hauptmann and Gates-Verazzano families have been sniffing along my trail for the past two months."

She gave Peter a brittle smile. "They want your engines, too," she added. "And can assure you that Chen-Mellis will cut you a better deal than they will."

Peter shook his head. "We will deal with none of you."

"I'd love to see you try to persuade the Hauptmann family of that." Chen looked back at me. "Well, Smith? Cooperation and a share of the profits, or lofty ideals and a few years of your life in prison?"

"So now it's a share of the profits, too?" Suzenne murmured.

"Shut up, or I'll add your lives on the downside of the ledger," Chen snarled.

"Well, Smith, what's it to be? Shall we say your freedom and, say, five million neumarks?"

I should have been tempted. After five years of scrimping every pfennig I got to put toward my debt, I should really have been tempted. But to my own amazement, I discovered that I wasn't. Maybe it was the condescension inherent in the offer, the casual assumption that I had my price just like everyone else she'd ever met. Or maybe it was the presence of Jimmy, sitting on Rhonda's other side now, who'd already resisted the pressure and made the right decision.

Or maybe it was the fact that I'd suddenly had an idea of how we might be able to get out of this. If I played my cards right...

I looked Chen straight in the eye. "Forget it," I told her. "And if you're thinking about upping the ante, save your breath. You're on your own here, lady.

None of us are going to help you."

Her face had frosted over again at my refusal. Now, though, the ice cracked into a small but malicious smile. "Perhaps none of you three will," she said. "But you're not the only one who knows how to get us back to civilization. And I suspect First Officer Hobson will be more easily convinced of the realities of this situation."

Keeping her eyes on us, she began backing toward the throne and King Peter's public address system. Mentally, I crossed my fingers...

And then, abruptly, she stopped. "No," she said. "No, I see your game, Smith.

You're hoping that anyone using the PA system except His Royal Highness will make the local secret police suspicious." She waved the gun toward the throne.

"On the other hand, you're his captain, aren't you? What could be more natural than for you to call him to the Palace?"

I didn't move. "And how much were you planning to offer me for this service?"

"I wouldn't dream of insulting you that way again," she assured me, her voice not quite covering up the soft click as she shifted her gun to its three-needle setting. "So let's make it simple. You call Hobson, and Blankenship gets to live."

I felt my throat tighten. "You wouldn't dare."

"I've already said I don't need either her or Ms. Enderly," Chen reminded me. "In a pinch, I could probably do without the king, too."

I took a deep breath, exhaled it noisily, and got to my feet. "Don't do it, Jake," Rhonda pleaded. "She's bluffing—even the Chen-Mellis family couldn't get her off a murder charge."

"The Chen-Mellis family can do anything when the rewards are big enough,"

Chen said shortly.

"It's not worth the risk," I told Rhonda, reaching down to briefly squeeze her hand. "Besides, even if I don't, Bilko will be here eventually anyway."

The throne was more comfortable than it looked, with silky-soft cushions fitted to the stone. The controls on the left armrest were simple and straightforward: one basic on/off switch, one that determined whether or not the audio was accompanied by a visual, and five switches determining which section or sections of the colony would receive the broadcast. I set the latter group for full coverage, set the mode for audio only—this at Chen's insistence—and we were ready. "No tricks," she warned, stepping back well out of range of any desperate flying leaps I might have been contemplating. "Bear in mind this gun has a clip of just over two hundred fifty needles, and that I don't mind spending a few of them if I have to."

I cleared my throat and touched the "on" switch. "Attention; attention," I called. "First Officer Will Hobson of the Sergei Rock, this is your captain speaking. We're having a little party over here at the Palace you seem to have forgotten about. Greet the other cardsharps for me and hustle it over here, all right? Thank you; that is all."

I switched off the PA and stepped down from the throne. "Happy?" I asked Chen sourly.

"What was that nonsense about a party and cardsharps?" she demanded, her face dark with suspicion.

"It's a private joke," I said briefly, striding past her and dropping onto the couch next to Rhonda.

"Make it a public joke," Chen ordered.

I could feel Rhonda's eyes on me, and could only hope she wasn't frowning too hard at this private joke she'd never heard of. "It goes back to a time on Bandolera when I got him into some trouble," I said. "I called him while he was in the middle of a game and told him to get back to the transport. He was winning big, and said he wouldn't be back until he'd finished the round. He turned off his phone; so I tracked down the numbers of the other players and started calling them and telling them to please send Bilko home."

"I imagine he was immensely pleased by that," Chen said.

"I don't think he ever lived it down," I said. "At least, not with that bunch.

The point is the reference means he's to get his rear over here now, and not just whenever he finishes the current round or has won enough money or whenever."

Chen lifted the gun warningly. "He'd better."

"He will," I sighed, mentally crossing my fingers a little harder.

Peter cleared his throat. "I'm curious, Miss Chen," he said. "When you spoke earlier of changing the shape of Expansion space travel with our engine design, I naturally assumed a certain degree of exaggeration. Now that we know your true affiliation, do I now assume you were speaking literally?"

"Quite literally, Your Highness," Chen told him. "In ten years, the Chen-Mellis family is going to completely dominate intrasystem space travel. We're going to create super tankers, mining ships like no one's seen since the Jovian Habitats went down, passenger liners ten times bigger than the Swan of Tuonela—"

"And warships?" Rhonda asked quietly.

Chen didn't even flinch. "Of course we're going to need to defend our interests," she said. "I don't anticipate any actual warfare, though."

"Of course not," I said sarcastically. "Subtle threats and economic pressure bring the same results without making so much of a mess, don't they?"

Chen shrugged. "You learn slow, Smith. But you do learn."

"Possibly faster than you do," I said. "Has it occurred to you that there may be a limit to how big a ship the flapblacks are going to be able to carry?"

"Of course it has," she said. "That's another reason why I want to try to bring the colony back with me. If they can carry the Freedom's Peace, then the sky is very literally the limit."