In Fury Born

Alicia looked up from her wineglass and saw a tall, cadaverous man. He was well-dressed, despite his half-starved appearance, and his polished tones were well-suited to the background hum of the expensive restaurant. She eyed him for a moment, then sat back slightly and made a tiny gesture at the empty chair across from her. Yerensky slid into it, smiling politely. A waiter materialized at his elbow, and Alicia sipped her own wine, using the brief, low-voiced exchange between waiter and patron to evaluate her visitor.

Smooth as pond scum, isn't he? she commented, and felt Tisiphone's silent agreement. Not that they were surprised. They'd learned a great deal about Yerensky during the two weeks they'd spent angling for this meeting.

It had been far harder than Alicia had expected to find the precise shipper she sought. Not because there hadn't been offers in plenty, but because, to her intense chagrin, virtually all of them had been legitimate. She'd underestimated the pirates' effect on insurance rates, and under the circumstances, Star Ru

Unfortunately, she wasn't looking for an honest cargo, and she'd been forced to concoct an extraordinary range of excuses to avoid accepting one. More than once, she'd been reduced to letting the Fury enter a legitimate shipper's mind and get him to suggest a reason to decline his offer.

It had been maddening, especially after one of Megaira's and Tisiphone's forays through MaGuire's classified data base revealed that the Empire had provided the Jung Association with Alicia's retinal and genetic prints. They hadn't anticipated that when they concocted Captain Mainwaring, so they'd used her real patterns, and she'd almost fainted when she found out the authorities had both sets. If they happened to run a check against all new arrivals … .

That threat, at least, had been alleviated, if not nullified, by the simple expedient of sending Tisiphone back into the net to alter the prints for Star Ru

None of that had been calculated to soothe her nerves, but at least it looked as if they'd be able to clear out shortly. The Fury's careful mental probes had, at last, plucked one Anton Yerensky's name and face from the thoughts of a more honest merchant, and Mister Yerensky, it seemed, needed a cargo delivered to Ching-Hai in the Thierdahl System. Barely civilized and sparsely settled, Ching-Hai had very little to recommend it … except that it was only ten light-years from Dewent, and Dewent was barely six light-years from Wyvern. Better yet, what passed for the planetary authorities on Ching-Hai had a very cozy relationship with both Dewent and Wyvern.

Once Yerensky had been identified, it hadn't been hard to arrange casual contacts with two or three of his associates. With Tisiphone to plant a favorable impression of Captain Mainwaring in their minds, one of them was bound to mention her to him eventually, and for the first time, the skewed shipping conditions had worked in their favor. With so many fast ships being snapped up for legitimate cargoes, the supply of smugglers was ru

"You seem to be well-informed, Mister Yerensky," she said as the waiter departed with his order. "I am looking for a cargo-a small one, I'm afraid, but I assume you've already checked my capacity with the port master."

"Your vessel's capacity would suit me quite well, Captain, assuming we can come to terms."

"I see." Alicia refilled her wineglass and held it up to the light. "Exactly what sort of cubage are we talking about here, Mister Yerensky?"

"Oh, no more than two hundred cubic meters. A bit less, actually."

"I see," Alicia repeated. That really was a small shipment, less than half the available volume in Megaira's hold, which was already well-stocked with spares and replacement parts. "And where would you like it delivered?"

"Ah, that's a bit delicate, Captain," Yerensky said slowly, watching her from under lowered lids. "You see, I need it delivered to Ching-Hai." He paused for a moment, as if to let that sink in, before continuing. "I understand you have a Fleet-type cargo shuttle with rough field capability?"

Alicia lowered her wine and let her lips curl in a tiny smile.

"I do, indeed. May I assume your receiver will be … unable to collect his cargo at the regular port?"

"Precisely," Yerensky said politely, and his smile was just as small. "I see you have a fine appreciation for these matters, Captain."

"One tries, Mister Yerensky."

Alicia sipped more wine as the waiter returned with Yerensky's order and began sliding plates onto the table. There were a lot of them, and she wondered what sort of metabolism could handle that kind of intake and still look starved.

The waiter scurried off again, and Yerensky unfolded a snow-white napkin in his lap and reached for a fork.

"Given your appreciation, Captain, I must assume you realize you and your crew are-well, let us say, a rather unknown quantity."

"If you checked my port download, I'm sure you discovered that we're bonded with the Melville Sector governor," Alicia said, forbearing to mention just how surprised the Melville Sector governor would be to learn that.

"Well, yes, Captain, but MaGuire is scarcely an imperial planet, now is it? And there might be circumstances under which it would be inconvenient for a shipper to attempt to recover against your bond if something went awry."

In other words, Alicia observed silently to Tisiphone, a crook can't exactly report you to the cops for stealing his illegal cargo.

It is reassuring to find some things unchanged, the Fury returned, and Alicia nodded at Yerensky.

"I can understand that. Still, I assume you wouldn't have come to see me unless you felt these little problems could be resolved."

"A woman after my own heart, Captain," he said as he spread his salad dressing more evenly. "I'd thought in terms of a mutual expression of trust."

"Such as?"

"I think, perhaps, a front payment of twenty-five percent of the total shipping charges with the remainder placed in escrow here on MaGuire to be released when the cargo is delivered to my agent on Ching-Hai."

Alicia nodded thoughtfully, but her mind raced. That was a terrible idea. It would require reams of legal documents, and that meant retinal prints galore. But she couldn't exactly object on those grounds ….

"An interesting suggestion, but not the way I normally do business, Mister Yerensky. I can conceive of certain circumstances under which-purely without your knowledge, of course-an unscrupulous receiver might deny he'd ever received the goods, which could tie up the escrow account or even require litigation. Then, too, limited facility fields, you know, are often under-equipped. A completely honest difference of opinion might arise, and without proper instrumentation to examine the cargo, well-"

She shrugged with a helpless little smile, and a gleam of appreciation lit Yerensky's eyes.

"I see. May I assume you have a counter offer, Captain?"

"Indeed. I would suggest that you pay me half the freight charges up front, and that your receiver pay the other half immediately upon receipt and examination of his cargo. I sacrifice the security of the escrow account; you run a slightly greater risk with your front payment. That seems fair."

Yerensky munched thoughtfully on his salad for a few moments, then nodded. "I believe I could accept that arrangement, assuming we can settle the remainder of the terms to our mutual satisfaction."

"Oh, I'm certain we can, Mister Yerensky." Alicia smiled even more sweetly. "I'm a great believer in mutual satisfaction."

Alicia reclined in her command chair and chewed on a grape. She savored the sweet juice and pulp with sensual delight, and the back of her brain hummed with an odd duality as Megaira and Tisiphone shared her pleasure.

That's nice, the AI observed. Much sharper than your memories. Almost makes me wish I were a flesh-and-blood.

Not I, Tisiphone disagreed. Such moments are pleasant, yet what need have we for flesh and blood when we may share them with Alicia? And unlike her, we are not subject to the unpleasant aspects of such existence.

Voyeurs. Alicia swallowed and examined the bunch in her lap to select a fresh grape. "You ought to experience some of the downside-maybe a nice head cold, for instance-so you could appreciate the pleasures properly."

I have yet to observe that suffering truly makes pleasure sweeter, Little One. Bliss is not the mere absence of pain.

"Maybe." She popped the chosen grape into her mouth and turned her attention back to Megaira's sensors.

They'd left the dreary featurelessness of wormhole space an hour ago, decelerating steadily towards the heart of the Ching-Hai System, and the glory of the stars was even sweeter than the grapes. She drank it in, reveling in the reach and power of Megaira's senses, as Thierdahl's distant spark grew brighter. They were fifteen days-just over eleven days by their own clocks-out of MaGuire with their cargo of bootleg medical supplies, and she wondered again what they would discover when they reached their destination. So far, things had gone more smoothly than she had hoped.