The Recovery Man's Bargain Read online

  Usually, though, Yu didn’t have such sensitive cargo. He had to keep the flowering fidelia near him. The plant needed all the atmosphere he could provide. He had it in a darkened room off the bridge itself, a room he kept as humid as possible, and he hoped that would be enough.

  So far, the fidelia still glowed. He hoped it would for another day when he could finally—safely—contact Athenia.

  Nebel, said an official voice. Prepare for interior scan.

  Yu let out a breath. He had already protected this deck from the scan by creating a shadow deck, one that would look good on most equipment in most ports. He hoped it would work here.

  Scans show you have living material near the bridge that is not on your manifest. Please explain.

  Yu cursed silently. He could try to tough it out or he could pull his only bargaining chip. He didn’t have time to research Bosak law, so he didn’t know how closely it was bound to Alliance protocol.

  If Bosak law followed Alliance protocol, he had no shot, not with the contaminants this ship had been exposed to.

  He waved his hand over the console. His movement had switched on his side of the communications array.

  “Space Traffic,” he said. “I have a special license which allows me to carry items not listed in the manifest. I am sending that license to you now.”

  He passed his fingers over a different part of the console, then sighed. Either the port would reject the license outright or it would take time to examine it.

  The license claimed that he carried top secret cargo that had already been screened by various government regulators. It was legitimate. It would hold up to examination.

  The problem was that the license had come from Athenia’s company. Now he would have to notify her, whether he was ready to or not.

  The silence on the other end both encouraged and worried him. If they were going to board him, they would do so in the next few minutes.

  He sat very still, watching the monitors. Then the digitized voice returned.

  Your license is in order. Thank you for spending time in Bosak City. You are cleared to leave.

  He bowed his head, letting relief course through him. If he had been arrested this far out, he had very few options and even fewer bargaining chips. Athenia had been one of those chips, and he wouldn’t have been able to use her twice.

  Then he straightened his spine, passed his hand over the console to initiate the take-off procedures, and let the ship do the rest.

  He had to contact Athenia before Bosak City did.

  He had to let her know that the flowering fidelia was on its way.

  ***

  Fortunately Athenia picked a rendezvous spot only an Earth day away from Bosak. She had been excited to hear that he finally found a flowering fidelia, excited enough to pay his current expenses and to promise him a bonus if the thing bloomed for longer than the expected week.

  Yu finally got some much needed sleep. He sprawled on the large bed he had indulgently placed in the captain’s cabin, secure in the knowledge that in a few hours the fidelia would no longer be his concern.

  But it felt as if he hadn’t been asleep more than a few minutes when the ship woke him up. An image floated above the bed—the Nebel surrounded by a dozen ships, some above, some below, some to the sides—all of them blocking his way.

  “Is that a threat of something to come?” he asked the ship. “Or is that really happening?”

  “It’s really happening,” the ship said. The seductiveness of the voice, which he had programmed for solo trips, suddenly seemed inappropriate.

  “Have they contacted us?” Yu sat up, rubbed his hand over his face. He felt bleary. How long had it been since he slept so deeply? A week? Two? A month?

  “No contact,” the ship said.

  Yu’s stomach clenched. That wasn’t good. He got out of bed and pulled on some clothes. “Can you show me a better image of the ships?”

  “This is how they appear,” the ship said.

  Yu wasn’t sure what that meant. Was that how they appeared when the ship scanned them or was that how they appeared through the ship’s various portholes?

  “I’d like to see the ships’ identification,” he said.

  “They have no markings.”

  He was shaking now. The Nebel had no weapons, because he so often flew the large cargo ship solo. Instead, he had opted for great speed and all sorts of interior shadowing technology, which allowed one section to appear to be something it wasn’t.

  “The shadowing technology is on, right?” he asked.

  “It is,” the ship said, “but we have not been scanned.”

  No contact, no scan. His heart was pounding. “Have we been boarded?”

  The ship did not answer. His mouth went dry. He walked to the door of his cabin and waved his hand over the locks.

  They didn’t open.

  “Ship,” he said again. “Am I the only one on board?”

  The image of the Nebel surrounded by a dozen ships vanished. A woman’s face appeared in front of his door.

  She had vertical blue lines running from her forehead to her chin, making it seem as if her face had been taken apart in sections and put together badly.

  “You will be alone in a few moments, Hadad Yu,” she said. “We have let you know our presence as a courtesy. And we want to give you our thanks.”

  “For what?” he asked, although he was afraid he knew.

  She didn’t answer. Instead she smiled and the image vanished.

  He tried the door again. It didn’t open.

  “Secure channel YuPrivate,” he said, giving one of the many codes he had programmed into the ship.

  “Yes?” The ship’s seductive voice had vanished.

  “Open the goddamn door to my cabin,” he said.

  It slid open and he stepped into the corridor. The air had a slightly metallic odor that was unfamiliar—something the environmental systems hadn’t yet cleaned out.

  “Am I the only one on the ship?” he asked.

  “Yes,” the ship said.

  He cursed. He thought of grabbing a weapon, but decided against it. There was no point. If the images he had seen were accurate, there were too many people surrounding his ship. A weapon would only make him seem desperate and might, in fact, put him in danger.

  Instead, he hurried through the empty corridor to the bridge.

  It was empty. A small black holo-emitter sat beneath the pilot’s seat. The woman’s image, looking almost real, filled the chair itself. She had to have sat there at some point to get such a clean image.

  She was shapely, her body stronger than most that spent a lot of time in space. She had muscular legs and powerful arms, visible through the ripped top she wore. The image smiled at him. The blue lines on her face were less disturbing when the rest of her body was attached.

  “Hadad Yu,” she said. “The Black Fleet thanks you. While we will not return the flowering fidelia to you, we are forever in your debt.”

  The Black Fleet.

  He had thought they were a myth, something made up to scare Recovery Men and other solo travelers. The stories were wide and varied, but they all boiled down to one fact:

  When a ship was filled with valuable cargo, it would find itself at the mercy of the Black Fleet. Sometimes the Black Fleet killed the occupants; sometimes it stole the ship.

  “You’re in my debt?” he said to the holoimage.

  The woman smiled. The image had been programmed to respond to simple—and expected—queries.

  “We would not be here without your expertise. We have used that expertise many times without your knowledge. After a while, even we feel guilty at not paying for a service.” Her smile grew. “And now, thanks to you, we can afford to be magnanimous. So we honor that with a one-time debt, payable in anything except the return of the flowering fidelia.”

  She touched a hand to her forehead, and the image winked out.

  He wanted to pick up the box and fling it across the brid
ge. But he knew better. The box could provide him with some answers. It also was the only proof he had of this debt. Not only that, he suspected the box had a way to contact the Fleet built-in.

  If the rumors about the Black Fleet were true, then the rumors about its attitude toward debts were true too. The Black Fleet honored all debts, considered them life debts, and as such they were quite valuable.

  He stared at the box. He supposed he could tap it for its secrets. Maybe the box itself provided him with the answers he needed—not just to the Black Fleet itself, but also how its members got on board his ship.

  But he wasn’t going to examine the box now. Instead, he walked to the room beside the bridge.

  The door swished open to reveal complete darkness. The flowering fidelia’s light had gone out. He wasn’t sure what was worse: the idea that the flower had died or the idea that the Black Fleet had stolen it from him.

  “Lights up ten percent,” he said.

  They came up slowly, revealing an empty room.

  The container, with the fidelia inside, was gone.

  He nodded. Then blinked at an unaccustomed moistness in his eyes.

  “Ship,” he said. “How long has the fidelia been gone?”

  “Two hours,” the ship said.

  “What about the Fleet surrounding us?”

  “It was here for thirty minutes.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “You left no such instructions,” the ship said.

  He opened his mouth to argue, then paused. While it was true he had left no instructions to wake him during that nap, it wasn’t true that the ship had no instructions about waking him.

  It was supposed to wake him whenever a ship was in the vicinity, or if someone or something was trying to communicate with him.

  The ship certainly should have awakened him if someone tried to board.

  “Can you show me what the intruders did after they entered?” he asked.

  “Certainly.” The ship displayed the same image that it had when it had awakened him—all of the ships surrounding the Nebel. Then it showed him the face of the woman. He suspected, if he hadn’t waved it off, he would have watched her reappear in his chair as well.

  They tampered with his systems. Now he had to figure out if they had tampered before or after they boarded.

  “May I see what happened after they left?” he asked.

  “They have not left,” the ship said.

  His stomach clenched. All of the messages suggested that they had left. Everything they had done suggested they were long gone.

  He walked to the nearest porthole and looked out. He saw no ship. He went to the next porthole. No ship.

  They had tampered with his systems. His ship still believed it was surrounded.

  He needed to get around whatever blocks they had put into his shipboard computer. He tried a different question, one the Black Fleet probably wouldn’t think of.

  “Is there some kind of trail that suggests that ships have left the vicinity?”

  “Yes,” the ship said. “More than a dozen ships have departed this area in the last 24 Earth hours.”

  A dozen ships, like the ones on the screen.

  “When did they leave?” he asked.

  “I cannot tell from the trails, but they should thin within twelve hours. They have not.”

  “Can we follow them?”

  “You have programmed in a rendezvous point and time. If you wish to make the scheduled point and time, then we cannot follow.”

  He didn’t want to see Athenia. “Even if the ships are close?”

  “They are not close. I can track the trails past this solar system. To chase them would mean you would miss any possibility at the rendezvous.”

  “Can we find them if we follow?” Yu wasn’t sure what he would do if he caught up, but he was contemplating an attempt.

  “I do not know.”

  “Did the ships leave at the same time?”

  “Judging by the trails, they did.”

  “And head in the same direction?”

  “Yes,” the ship said.

  “Can you make a map of these trails for me and plot a possible trajectory based on their directions?”

  “Yes.”

  “Save that for me,” he said. “I might need it.”

  ***

  He looked at the maps themselves, then at the images of the ships. If the images were accurate, he would have had no chance of going up against them even if he had weapons. Every one of those ships could destroy his.

  They got the better of him and he knew it.

  So he headed to the rendezvous point. Athenia was the only chance he had. Her employees were scattered all over the known universe. She might be able to get someone to chase those ships and capture them before the bloom on the flowering fidelia died.

  ***

  “They offered me the flower at twenty times the price of my payments to you.” Athenia stood in front of a wall with clear panels showing the blackness of space. She was a large woman with flowing silver hair. She wore a matching silver gown and silver rings on every finger. Silver dots outlined her eyes, accenting her dark skin.

  Yu felt lost. He stood on a platform seven steps down from her. He could just barely see his own reflection in the clear panels. His eyes seemed larger than usual, his lips caught in a grimace. An illusion of the light made his curly black hair seemed streaked with gray. He looked older than he had just a few hours before.

  Maybe he was older. Decades older.

  He had lost the fidelia, and he knew it. The leader of the Black Fleet had tapped into his equipment and opened the ship’s locks from the inside. Only one person had come on board, imprisoning him in his room, reprogramming the ship’s computer, and taking the fidelia.

  “Did you take the offer?” he asked Athenia.

  “The idiots didn’t know the flower could die if mishandled. They had no idea that there is a time limit on the bloom. They want payment up front, and they’re too far from here to meet within the seven-day window.” Athenia stopped pacing, her skirts swirling around her. “So, no, I didn’t pay them. And I’m not going to pay you.”

  He had known that was coming. “I’m sorry. I had no idea they were monitoring my transmissions. It seems that they knew what I was searching for.”

  “They knew what I was searching for,” Athenia said. “The moment you contacted me, they were alerted. They had plenty of time to plan their little heist.”

  “I can go after them. I can find them—”

  “And we still miss the window,” Athenia said.

  Yu’s palms were sweating. He resisted the urge to wipe them on his pants. “There may be more flowering fidelias in that swamp. If I found one, I can find others.”

  She crossed her arms and looked down at him. “You forget our agreement. You had one fidelia. You lost it. You will not work for me again. Nor will you work for any friend or acquaintance of mine. I’ve already sent word through the various networks that you are inept. You should have planned for something like this.”

  You should have warned me that the Black Fleet knew you were after the fidelia, he thought, but didn’t say. Instead, he said, “I’m trying to make this right.”

  “No, you’re not. Had you done that, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Now I’m out three years and more money than I care to think about.”

  “You haven’t paid me any fees,” he said.

  “For which I am grateful. But you will repay your expenses.”

  He felt cold. He couldn’t afford that. “Our agreement stipulates that I get to keep those expenses.”

  “Provided you made a valid search for the fidelia. I have no evidence of such a search.”

  “I found a flowering fidelia,” he said. “I notified you of that.”

  “I have no proof that such notification is accurate. For all I know, you were trying to justify those inflated bills you sent me every quarter.”

  “I didn’t inflate
the bills,” he said. “And I didn’t lie about the fidelia. I have holoimages of the plant. I can prove to you that I had it.”

  “But can you prove to me that you didn’t already sell it to someone else? Maybe that’s how the Black Fleet got it. They paid you double what I offered and are now offering it back to me at a much higher price.”

  A flush rose in his face. “I’m not that kind of man.”

  “No,” she said. “You don’t call yourself a thief. You call yourself a Recovery Man. You don’t steal. You recover.”

  That flush was so deep he felt like he was burning up from the inside out. “That’s right. I recover things. I’m a professional. All of my interactions are professional. I trained with botanists so I wouldn’t hurt the fidelia when I recovered it. That’s the sign of a professional. Another sign of a professional is that I make agreements and I keep to them. I work for other people, not for myself. I do not steal. I trust that the people I work for truly need personal items recovered.”

  “In other words, you’re not the thief,” she said. “I am.”

  Yes. That’s exactly it. You’re the thief. I’m the one who works for you and asks no questions.

  “No,” he said. “All I’m trying to say is that I work in good faith. I do the very best I can.”

  “And thieves don’t? It seems to me that the Black Fleet was quite prepared and very professional. They certainly got the better of you.”

  And you, he thought. Especially if it was your transmissions they were monitoring.

  “Let me set this right,” he said. “I’ll get you a new fidelia and I’ll recover the one from the Black Fleet. Think of what you could learn from a flowering fidelia past its bloom and one in the middle of blooming.”

  She glared at him. “I needed the blooming fidelia. You could not get that for me, so you’re fired. On your way out, you will receive an exact accounting of the amount you owe me. I want the money within six Earth months, or I will add straight financial theft to the bulletin I sent out about you. At that point, I also will press charges through the Earth Alliance. You will be a wanted man.”