Elizabeth Moon - Rules of Engagement

Lund felt that he had waked into a nightmare, and his mind refused to work at its normal speed. “Legal crew?”

“Waal . . . yes. We’re aware, you see, that you work for a corporation with obscene and unnatural views about moral issues. In our books, there’s things that just ain’t natural and normal, let alone right , and if you have people like that on board, then they’ll have to face justice.”

Lund glanced around; the faces on the bridge were tense and pale. He thumbed the com control to prevent his words going out in transmission. “Do any of you have the slightest idea who these crazies are? Or what they mean about natural and unnatural?”

The junior scan tech, Innis Seqalin, nodded. “I’ve heard a little about the Nutex Militia . . . for one thing, they think it’s wrong for women to be spacers, and for another, they don’t tolerate anything but what they call normal sex.”

Lund felt his stomach churn. If they didn’t allow women in space, what kind of sex did they think was normal? And why not allow women in space? “Is it . . . something religious?”

“Yes, sir. At least, they say it is.”

Lund felt even sicker. Religious nuts . . . he had gone to space to get away from them back on his home world. If these were the same sort . . . he had too many crew at risk.

“I’m warnin’ ya,” the pirate officer said. “Answer, or we’ll blow your holds . . .”

“All right,” Lund said, as much to gain time as anything. “I’ll send my people to the lifeboats—”

“We’ll see a crew list,” the man said, smiling unpleasantly. “Right now, afore you can doctor it up. If a lifeboat separates before we’ve approved the list, we’ll blow it.”

Lund’s mind raced into high gear. The crew list did not mention gender—and certainly not sexual preferences—so if he could just keep the medical records out of their hands . . .

“And the medical records,” the man said, “in case you got some of them so-called modern women that don’t have good women’s names.”

He could refuse, but then what? According to scan, he was facing weapons easily capable of blowing his ship. But they wouldn’t want to blow his ship . . . they would want the cargo, and perhaps the ship itself, intact.

“Personnel and medical records aren’t networked,” he said, thanking whatever gods were around, including those he didn’t believe in, for the fact that this was standard, and known to be standard.

“Ten minutes,” the pirate said, and clicked off.

Ten minutes. What doctoring could he do in ten minutes? And why hadn’t he denied the presence of women right away, so that he might have had a chance to pass them off as men? But the ship’s tiny medical staff had been listening, and Hansen gave him a call.

“I’m changing the genders, and stripping out all reference to gender-specific medications . . . six minutes for that. What else do you think?”

“Seqalin says they have some weird beliefs about sexual practice—but I don’t know which.”

“Umm. If they go to space in single-gender ships, maybe they have obligatory homosexuality in space? I could code everyone as male/male preference.”

“Yeah, but if we’re wrong . . . I don’t know.”

“And what about the children?”

Elias Madero , like most commercial ships, carried some of its crews’ children aboard. Children had been found well worth the extra work and worry, in terms of keeping a crew entertained and cooperative. Right now there were six, four under school age and two taking a work-study tour as junior apprentices.

“We put the kids in the core, where the scans are least likely to find them. Sedate the littles. If they just rob the ship and go on . . . the older ones can come back out and send a message. Got to clear out the nursery, though . . .”

“Do it,” Lund said. “But don’t code gender preference. Just leave it.” How was he going to hide the women? And what would happen to them if they were found?

Hazel Takeris, age sixteen, had found her first working trip to be as dull as her father had warned—but she wouldn’t have missed it for anything, certainly not another five terms at the Space Dependents Middle School on Oddlink Main Station. So she had willingly performed the routine chores allotted to the apprentices, reminding herself—when enthusiasm for washing dishes or scrubbing the deck flagged—that she could have been listening to Professor Hallas discourse on the history of a planet that lay—to Hazel’s mind—in the dim past of human history. A long way away, and very far back, and who really cared which millenium had produced which oddly named king or scientist.

When the alarm came, she was doing inventory of the galley stores, as ordered by the cook. She heard nothing of the ensuing discussion, because Cookie had told her to get back to work, and be sure her count was right. Thirty-eight three-kilo sacks of wheat flour. Six half-kilo boxes of sodium chloride salt, and four of a 50/50 mix of potassium and sodium chlorides. Eight—

“Haze—drop that and listen up.” Cookie’s face was an odd shade, the rich tan paled and splotchy. “Get four emergency ration kits, and go to Core 32. Hop it!”

“What—?” But apprentices didn’t ask questions, not when a crew member looked like that. Hazel grabbed four emergency kits, and as she went past Cookie dumped two more on top of them. She scurried as fast as she could through the corridors, turned into the drop to the Core, and met her dad, who was even paler than Cookie.

“Haze—gimme two of those—now go to 32. We’re going to lock you in. I put your suit in there already. Put it on, and wait. Be sure you wait long enough.”

She had grown up a spacer’s child; she could figure it out. “Raiders,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Yeah. Go on, now. You and Stinky will be awake; we’ve sedated the littles, and they’ll be in Core 57 and 62. Oh—and remember, it’s the Nutex Militia.”

Hazel fell down the drop, landing easily, feet first, on the pad. Thirty-two was clockwise four; she had known the geography of this ship from early childhood. Thirty-two’s hatch was open; she slid in, dumped her rations, pulled the hatch shut, and locked it from inside. Her suit stood slumped in one corner, along with a stack of extra oxygen tanks. She got herself into it, her fingers shaking, fumbling at the catches and seals.

She started to report herself secure, on suit com, and then didn’t—what if the raiders were already aboard? No one had told her when to expect boarding; no one had told her when to come out. Wait long enough? How long was that? How was she supposed to know?

In her suit, she could not quite lie down in the compartment, but she propped herself corner-to-corner, so that if she fell asleep, she would not fall and make a noise. She had the helmet open to ambient air—no sense in wasting suit air yet, and the helmet would snap shut automatically at any drop in pressure. She looked at her suit chrono, and marked the time. Wait long enough. She wished she knew how long.

She wished she and Stinky had been in the same compartment so they could talk. As the two apprentices, they had formed a natural alliance. Besides that, they liked each other’s parents, and had spent the voyage trying to maneuver her father and his mother into some kind of arrangement. So far the adults had been resistant, but she and Stinky hadn’t given up hope. Surely everyone felt the same urge to partner that she and Stinky felt . . . that’s how adults came together to have children, after all.

Locked in the empty compartment, it finally occurred to Hazel that the straightforward solution would have been for her and Stinky to partner, and leave the parents alone . . . but she wasn’t ready to partner anyone. Not yet. Later . . . she allowed herself a few delicious minutes of imagining what it would be like if Stinky were in the same compartment, without the pressure suits or the adult supervision. She had thoughts like that, even though she had chosen to take the treatment to delay puberty; she might look only ten or eleven, but she was sixteen for true.