Two Space War Part 21

Later, as the excited and pleased middies took a break after their drill, Tung asked, "Sir, why do we fire at targets shaped like people? Why not Guldur, since that's what we are likely to face?"

"Ah, gra.s.shopper," replied the monk with a smile. "That's because anyone can kill a member of another species. That's easy. But inside the midbrain of most healthy members of most species is a hardwired resistance to killing your own kind. Animals with horns fight each other head-to-head in their territorial and mating battles, while they try to gut and gore any other species. Piranha, a breed of fish that is essentially teeth with fins attached, fight each other with flicks of the tail, but they will devour anything else that hits the water. Rattlesnakes will sink their fangs into anything and everything, except each other . . . and lawyers," he added with a blissful smile. "Any species that didn't have this resistance would soon be driven extinct by their own territorial and mating battles."

The mids.h.i.+pmen sat on the deck, leaning back against the railing and listening intently as the monk continued. They were sore from days of pistol practice. Their arm and shoulder muscles ached. Their hands were rubbed raw from the recoil of thousands of rounds of ammunition, and they were happy to take a break and exercise their ears and their minds for a change as their teacher leaned against the mainmast and continued. "In the twentieth century, mankind became aware of this resistance when research showed that the vast majority of soldiers in combat wouldn't fire their weapons at an exposed enemy, even to save their own lives.

"Now, my friends, the question you should ask yourself at this point is . . . what?" Then he waited, and the tension built as the mids.h.i.+pmen looked at each other.

"Well, sir," said Tung, frowning with concentration, "If it's so hard for humans to kill each other, how did we fill so many military cemeteries over the centuries?"

"Excellent, Mr. Tung! You win the big 'no prize' for today. Consider, gentlemen, that we weren't born with the ability to fly, yet we have this brain that permits us to overcome that limitation. And although we may have some innate difficulty in bringing ourselves to kill members of our own species, the entire evolution of military history has been a process of ever better mechanisms to enable us to kill. Groups, leaders, distance, all these things are effective and useful at enabling killing, but nothing beats training.

"Remember, you might have to shoot in an ambush, gunning down your enemy in cold blood before they even know you're there. Anyone can understand shooting to protect themselves. You give me five minutes and I'll make any sentient being in the galaxy mad enough to shoot me. The real question is, will they have that much time in a fight? The time to decide whether or not you can calmly gun down an enemy soldier, before they have a chance to kill you, is now, before the battle. Your life, and the lives of your comrades depend on it.

"Thus you must always practice on the most realistic simulator possible. A simulator of the thing that is hardest to kill. Perhaps we will face human pirates, or some species so similar to ourselves that our brain is tricked. We must prepare for these eventualities, but mostly it's the principle of the matter. Anyone can kill a member of another species, but only a well trained warrior can kill members of his own species in cold blood."

"But, sir, isn't that dangerous?" asked Aquinar. His monkey, sitting wide-eyed on his shoulder seemed to nod in agreement.

"Yes, it can be dangerous, but failing to prepare your warriors to kill in combat is far, far more dangerous. Ultimately the safeguard is discipline. Every warrior has two values pounded into his skull from the very earliest days. Violence, and discipline." The mids.h.i.+pmen nodded and many of the sailors were finding nearby tasks to complete so they could listen. The whole s.h.i.+p felt honored to have such a "learned cove" as their purser, and this was a subject that interested them greatly.

But not everyone could stop what they were doing and listen to the lecture. "Johanson, ya witless b.o.o.by!" shouted the bosun to one distracted sailor. "I swear you shall never s.h.i.+te a true seaman's t.u.r.d! If ya leave that stirrup like that the next person on it might fall through to their death. Now get back up there and finish the job. Then go up to the masthead and stay there and consider the magnitude of yer sin until I tell ya to come down!"

Not in the least distracted, the monk continued his cla.s.s. "Violence and discipline. First is violence. Violence is your duty. If you're not capable of violence at the moment of truth, then you are a failure and all the effort and energy expended to equip, train, and transport you was wasted. And you'll die like a dog. Worse than that, you will have failed those who are depending on you for their lives. But if you are capable of violence and you have no discipline, then we've created a monster, a danger, a threat to our civilization. Discipline is your honor.

"Violence and discipline. Duty and honor, in service to your country. Duty, honor, country. That is what makes a warrior, and discipline is the safeguard. We don't require the uniforms and the haircuts for fun. We do it because if you cannot submit your will to authority about little things like how you wear your hair, at least for a short period of time, like in basic training, then you can never truly be trusted to submit your will to authority in big things, like attacking the enemy and not committing atrocities. Most great warrior cultures used some kind of distinctive haircut as a symbol of separation and submission to authority." The warriors gathered around him, along with the monkeys on their shoulders, all nodded. This was good stuff. This was what warriors wanted to know about.

"Think about it. In the twentieth century, probably the single most violent century in human history, democracies like the United States sent millions of men to war. (I use the word democracy in its broad sense here, since the U.S. was actually a republic or a representative democracy.) In World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, throughout the century, they sent millions of men to distant lands. They gave those men weeks, months, years of practice at killing people. They were very good at killing. But when they came home those men were less likely to use that skill inappropriately, less likely to murder, than nonveterans of the same age and s.e.x. Those who were taught leaders.h.i.+p, logistics and maintenance came home and used those skills to build a nation. But those who were taught killing didn't use that skill. Why?"

He paused and scanned his audience, then nodded as he answered his own question, his voice echoing with authority. "Discipline. Discipline. Discipline. Discipline, gra.s.shoppers, is the safeguard. In this realm the captain has the power of life and death in the application of his discipline, and that keeps us alive. It also keeps our society safe from trained killers released into their midst.

"As I said, the other half of the equation is violence. Basic training is essentially a form of brainwas.h.i.+ng. You partic.i.p.ate willingly. You want and need the skills they are teaching, but it's still essentially brainwas.h.i.+ng. They own you day and night for months on end. The Stockholm Syndrome sets in, and you identify with your captors." Here the monk grinned slyly and wiggled his eyebrows with a clever point that seemed to go completely over his students' heads. He sighed, made a mental note to teach them later about the Stockholm Syndrome, and continued.

"You accept the discipline, and you also accept the violence. You know that there are people in this world who will hurt you, and your drill sergeant is at the top of the list." Another pause and some appreciative chuckles, this was a bit of humor that struck home. Every one of these warriors was a product of some form of basic training and this was a concept they could understand. "And you become convinced that violence is an acceptable response to those who will hurt you."

"That's one of the things that went wrong in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Children were exposed to violent visual imagery. A constant barrage of it in the form of movies, television, and worst of all, the violent video games. I think that most of you have been exposed to these on mid- or high-tech worlds. If not, then you may get a chance later.

"For the little ones this violence was real, and like soldiers in basic training it convinced them, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there were people in this world who would hurt them. Most of them just became fearful, but some of them also became convinced that violence was an acceptable response to a violent world. Most of those became bullies, but a few became murderers. This was done not to military personnel, with discipline, but to children." Petreckski's monkey, which had been sitting benevolently on the monk's shoulder, now began to look at his master with what seemed to be attentive horror.

"Many children were also bereft of discipline, just at the same time that combat simulators were developed; ever more realistic combat simulators in the form of 'games' became the primary pastime for many of them. You've all partic.i.p.ated in training on high-tech worlds, using combat simulators, and you know what they do for us. This was military-killing enabling, without the discipline, and given to children. The result was horror. All-time record juvenile ma.s.s murders. Events unprecedented in human history. Body counts each year eclipsing previous years. The amazing thing was that it took them so long to figure out what their toxic culture was doing to their children."

"Sir," said Ngobe, with wide eyes, "they didn't really provide combat simulators to kids, without any structure or adult discipline, did they? Why? Why would they do that?"

"Money, gra.s.shopper. Money. The same reason men once enslaved their fellow men and fought wars to keep doing it. The same reason men once fought to keep selling alcohol and tobacco to children. 'The love of money is the root of all evil,' " concluded the monk, suddenly looking old and tired.

"We know that real change began to happen in the early twenty-first century, when they began to release the brain scans showing the destructive, deadening effects of violent television and video games on the human brain. Once upon a time the doctors showed an X-ray of a smoker's lung next to a nonsmoker's lung, and from that point on the tobacco industry, with all their lies and lobbyists, started to be reined in. Next they showed the brain scans of a healthy brain, compared to that of a person exposed to high levels of TV and video games, and the effect was stunning. In the following decade the television and video game industry, and all their lies and lobbyists, were slowly but surely reined in. And our civilization took a step back from the brink of disaster.

"Technology provides a constant font of new innovations, each a potential blessing and a possible curse. Somehow the same basic lesson of caution and restraint has to be learned over and over again. Every time, those who would gain money at any cost lead the charge. Only afterwards do other, wiser heads clean up the shattered lives, families, and nations."

The monk reached up and gently rubbed his monkey behind the ears as he continued. "There is another path though. A path that our civilization has been blessed with for centuries, and that path is retroculture. That is why we study the cla.s.sics. d.i.c.kens, Dumas, and so very many others show us how to live in a retroculture. The secret is to draw from the past, the best of the past, accepting anything 'new' with great caution and suspicion. You don't have to accept the latest fas.h.i.+on, the latest gadget. The fool is the one who flocks to the latest fad, while the wise man taps into the roots of his history.

"All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost.

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost."

"We 'wander' the galaxy gentlemen, but we are not lost. Warriors like Broadax, Westminster, Valandil and our good captain are solid 'gold,' but they hardly glitter. We tap into the 'deep roots' of our civilization, and they are strong: the 'old that is strong,' strong enough to form the greatest civilization ever known to man, perhaps the greatest in the galaxy.

"But we know that we need two things to prosper: roots, and wings. And so we also study the great works of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the truly magnificent genre known popularly as 'science fiction' and 'fantasy' and they give us wings. Thucydides tells us that 'The state which separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools.' So, my friends, you must be warriors and scholars. You must exercise your minds and your bodies. And science fiction teaches us how to think. Not what to think, but how to think in the face of the unknown and unexpected. Most of those writers were only writing to make a living. They probably had no idea that they were writing timeless cla.s.sics that would be venerated in the centuries to come, not just by their own civilization, but by others as well.

"As one great man put it, 'Science fiction lets us play out our nightmares and dreams in the theater of the future before turning them into reality. . . . It inspires us and warns us: The future can be better, but be careful what you create.' And I might add that the readers of science fiction are best prepared to handle the future. Indeed, the influence of Earth's science fiction and fantasy has been so great that many cultures have learned English in order to read these works in their original format. Over the period of the last four centuries our language has become the lingua franca of trade and culture. Much as Greek culture conquered the Romans, so has our culture, and the 'all conquering English language,' as Churchill called it, conquered much of the galaxy.

"Murder mysteries, romances, westerns, contemporary novels . . . bah. Bah to them all. They were wood, hay and stubble, to be washed away by the tides of time and left far, far behind. But those who turned their minds to what might be, and how to deal with it, they were opening the door to the future. Taking the next major developmental step in our civilization, our species.

"When the Crash came, all books and essentially all writing was on the net. There was no such thing as printed books any more. We lost virtually all the literature of the late twenty-first and twenty-second centuries. The works of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century were printed on such poor paper that most of them decayed within a century or so. During the chaos of the Crash most of the few remaining collections were lost. The nineteenth-century works were published on better quality paper, so we have most of them, but we might have lost almost all of the twentieth century's works, with all that incredible cla.s.sic science fiction and fantasy, if not for the c.o.c.kett stash. It was carefully and very luckily preserved in the mountains of Wyoming, a land so deserted and desolate that even insects shun it." The monk smiled, thinking on the happy coincidence that preserved the books that meant so much to their civilization.

"Aye, sir," said Tung thoughtfully, "I wouldn't want to live in a world without Heinlein, or all the other great masters."

"Well said, Mister Tung, well said," replied the monk with a nod. "But we almost did lose it all. There were odds and ends of all genres preserved, but really only the c.o.c.kett stash remains as any major body. All we know is the name, 'Charles c.o.c.kett' written in each book. The funny thing is, we know less about Mr. c.o.c.kett than we do about Shakespeare or maybe even Homer. One sc.r.a.p of information says that c.o.c.kett had one child who went on to do great things, but another reputable source says he had thirteen 'half-witted' children. As usual, the truth probably lies somewhere in between these two extremes."

The two rangers, Josiah Westminster and Aubrey Valandil, were leaning against the railing listening to the monk, with a pack of dogs and puppies around them, taking a break from their dog training. Looking up at them Petreckski asked, "Josiah, do you have anything to add before we get these young gentlemen back to their training?"

"Well," drawled the ranger with a grin, "the whole situation can be summed up in a parable about a young marine." The extended audience now sat back with great pleasure. The usually laconic ranger was also a shameless storyteller. Everyone loved a good marine joke, and they all looked appreciatively at the few red jackets among them.

"O Lor'," said one old marine, " 'Ere we go again."

"There was this ranger on a vacation at the beach," Josiah began, scratching a wors.h.i.+pful dog behind the ears. "He was running a little low on cash when he saw a note on the bulletin board that said, 'Ocean Cruise: Five Dollars.'

" 'Ocean cruise, five dollars,' says the ranger, 'that's just mah speed.' The note said to go to room 222 in the hotel so he went up, walked in and said, 'Hey! Ah'm here for mah ocean cruise!'

" 'Bam!' someone smacked him on the head and took his wallet, and he woke up strapped to a log floating out in the ocean.

" 'This is so embarra.s.sing,' thought the ranger. 'All ah had to do was check at the front desk, conduct a proper recon and see what ah was getting mahself into.' Then he noticed that, strapped to a log right next to him, bobbing on the wave next to him, was a young marine! 'Waal,' he says to himself, 'Ah can't let this marine know this has got me down.' So he looks over at the marine and says, 'Hey buddy!'

"The marine says 'Wot?'

" 'Do you suppose they're gonna serve us any food on this here five-dollar ocean cruise we signed up for?'

"The marine looked up and said 'Well, they didn't last year.' "

The whole group laughed appreciatively, poking their marine friends in the ribs.

"The moral of the story," continued the ranger, "is simply this. Always conduct a proper recon, and if you had a hard time last year, dear Lord, let's not do it again! Mah friends, ah reckon we've conducted a recon of the route the high-tech worlds are headed down. We've seen their sick cultures, and we'll be d.a.m.ned if we ever take that ocean cruise again!"

"Sir," asked Mids.h.i.+pman Faisal, sensing that the break was ending and wanting to extend it, "one last question. Why do you call us 'gra.s.shopper.' "

For the first time the monk looked perplexed. "Because it has ever been so," he said with a frown, "now enough dawdling! Back to work." They groaned but Petreckski made the situation clear to them. "No sniveling, gentlemen. If we survive these next few weeks we will have years to educate you fully, but right now all that matters is preparing you for the battles that await us. And I will be d.a.m.ned if any of you die because I didn't take every available opportunity to prepare you, in sinew, smarts, and spirit."

The next day, the monkeys started showing up with bizarre, military haircuts, and across the endless seas they trained. Lieutenant Fielder trained the mids.h.i.+pmen on grenades. "Gentlemen, once his pin is pulled, Mister Grenade is not our friend." The captain trained the middies in navigation, and the lieutenants trained in sword and pistol. While the crew trained endlessly with rigging, sails, emergency drills, and fighting with cannons, bayonets, and rifles.

Broadax particularly delighted in torturing the crew during rifle and bayonet drill as she walked around in a short cloud of toxic cigar smoke: "When I tell ye to open fire, I expect ye ta shoot what's available, as long as it's available, until something else becomes available. An' if yer not shootin', ye should be loadin'. If yer not loadin', ye should be movin'. If yer not movin', someone's gonna cut yer stinkin' head off and put it on a stick!"

In many ways the s.h.i.+p was coming together quite nicely as they approached their destination, but Melville was aware of a certain tension among his officers. He didn't know its exact cause, but everyone else on the s.h.i.+p knew that it was set off by an incautious remark made by Lieutenant Fielder in the wardroom.

"She thinks she's a Weber!" Fielder had said as he slouched over his wine. "A mighty, beautiful, indestructible female warrior from a high-gee world who can lick any man through her superior strength and exotic martial arts training! Complete with the critter around her neck! Well, gentlemen, now you see that in the real world, a Weber is ugly, fat, bearded, and would be clobbered by any equally trained man from her home world."

A more indiscreet remark had seldom been uttered, since Broadax happened to have stepped back in and was standing behind him. For such a heavy person, she moved very lightly. Fielder had a brief intuition that something was very, very wrong, probably communicated by the wide-eyed looks of horror on his messmates' faces, just as Broadax cuffed him alongside the head, stunning him. Fielder's monkey flipped up to cling to a ceiling rafter as he fell. Broadax's monkey clung to her, its head deep in its thorax, making faint, confused moaning sounds. Broadax grabbed Fielder by the collar and flipped him around to face her. She drew herself up to her full height, which was hardly worth the effort, and shook him like a rat. Since she was so much shorter than her victim this lost some of its effect as his numbed feet and knees rattled on the deck.

"Aye," she replied, her cigar stub clenched tightly in her teeth, "ye look at me an' ye see no Weber. A real heavy worlder female is short and ugly by yer standards. An' aye a warrior from me own world would like as not defeat me every time in fair combat. But the warriors of the Dwarrowdelf seem t' like us well enough to 'get their brats on us. An' I don' see any of 'em around to defeat me at the moment. So jus' who's gonna prevent me from twisting ye into a ball and bouncing yer ugly body against the bulkheads!"

"Urk, urrk, urk," Fielder replied with all the dignity he could muster as Broadax dropped him and stormed out in a cloud of smoke. "Did . . . anyone," he gasped, "get the license number of that truck?"

In a small community such as a s.h.i.+p there are very few secrets. Only the captain remained unaware, for he didn't cultivate tale-tellers or snitches, and he had no interest in nurturing such creatures. As their captain sat in a solitary splendor and blissful ignorance, the rest of the s.h.i.+p waited with bated breath for the next act in this drama.

But nothing happened. In essence, Fielder was a rotter, an old fas.h.i.+oned unvarnished cad, and he was now well and truly afraid of Broadax. He had absolutely no intention of challenging her to a duel. Like all the Dwarrowdelf she was a terrible shot, so Fielder would happily gun her down with impunity if she challenged him and he got to choose weapons. But the old NCO was too much of a pragmatist to do that. If he challenged her, then she got to choose the weapons, and Fielder shuddered to think how that would turn out.

So a duel wasn't an option for either of them no matter how much they tormented each other. Fielder knew he was in the wrong and couldn't press charges, so he chose to act as though the event never happened. In the wardroom the two of them simply ignored each other. Fielder always sat with his back to a bulkhead, and everyone walked a'tiptoe 'round them. The tension was broken when they finally arrived at the Stolsh frontier world that was their destination.

They approached Pearl, gradually pa.s.sing through the deep blue of interstellar s.p.a.ce into the sunrise blue region where the system's star illuminated the immediate area. This was a water world, manifesting itself in Flatland as a large, aqua tinted ma.s.s with indistinct streaks of green land and white clouds.

Pearl's Pier protruded from the horizon as they sailed into this aqua-colored realm. As they approached it, the Pier grew into a white ma.s.s that was bigger than a s.h.i.+p, with cannon barrels protruding out in all directions. Pearl was a frontier world and their Pier was the equivalent of a frontier fort, suspended from the world below on multiple, Moss covered pilings.

A sailboat came in to circle their s.h.i.+p. The Stolsh crew consisted of handsome, tall, brown males and females, calling out to them happily, apparently amazed by their royals, studding sails and spritsail-topsail. The Stolsh sailed their slender, elaborately carved white craft, with its single yellowed sail, around the Fang. They were all naked except for short kilts, their females freely exposing an extra set of sharp, pointed b.r.e.a.s.t.s, placed down the ribcage like a dog's teats. All of them had webbed feet and hands, as well as faint blue gills under their chins.

The Ur-civilization that seeded so much of the galaxy made only minor modification to a basic stock. Human, Sylvan and Dwarrowdelf were minor variations for gravity differences. The Stolsh were a slightly greater variation, with the addition of gills and webbed hands and feet.

"Mr. Archer!"

"Sir!"

"You may commence the salute."

"Aye, sir!"

The forward cannon on the upper green side roared out the first of Fang's compliment, and the fort began its reply. They were close enough that the Pier's cloud of atmosphere had merged with Fang's, and the sound of their salutes rolled back and forth between them, nation extending its respect to nation in all courtesy.

In very short order Fang was tied up amidst a small orchard of masts. There was no Westerness or Sylvan consulate on this frontier world, so Melville immediately reported to the port admiral and pa.s.sed on his message: The Guldur were coming, like the host of Mordor on his tail.

The tall Stolsh admiral nodded sadly, breathing in deeply through his thin, aquiline nose. He looked like some tall, dignified, deeply tanned human except for the blue gills in his throat that pulsed faintly. "Welll," he began in his deep, resonant voice. "We haave expected this, loong and loong."

The typical, slow Stolsh accent always sounded to Melville like the woebegone complaints of some deeply depressed old man, but he knew that they were a fierce, proud race. "This muust be their western force," the admiral continued. "If the projections are riight, thaat means thaat Ambergris is proobably aalready besieged by the force cuutting northwest. Thaat would explain why the mail paacket waas late. We will mobilize, aand we caannoot thaank yoou enough for warning us. Loong will your claan be hoonoored heere. Where do yoou go noow?"

"We carry Sylvan crew members with us," replied Melville. "Ours is the first joint Westerness and Sylvan expedition. Our orders are to report to the nearest senior officer on Ambergris upon accomplis.h.i.+ng our mission or upon encountering serious trouble."

The Stolsh port admiral nodded gloomily, politely not asking what that mission was. "The neearest seenior Sylvan authoority is in chaarge of their expeditionary foorce at Aambergris, aand the nearest Westerness emba.s.sy is aalso there. The commander there is proobaably desperaate to waarn us. Yoou woould doo us a greaat boon to let them know thaat we aare waarned. I need every s.h.i.+p I haave right here."

"Aye, sir, I can do that. I guess I'm actually following my orders by moving in that direction. Technically the Guldur should respect the neutrality of our flag."

"Hooo, hooo, hooo!" laughed the old Stolsh admiral, leaning his head back and pulsing his gills. "Even if yoou weren't in one of their s.h.i.+ps, I doon't think they would let yoou go. If yoou go yoou might haave to break thruu their blockade."

"Aye, sir. My orders didn't antic.i.p.ate this kind of situation. I really don't have much option but to go to Ambergris, and frankly I'm honored to be of further a.s.sistance in your hour of need. But I'll need a ma.s.sive resupply, and fast."

"Aaye, yoou'll haave it. Aaye."

Fang was a busy, busy s.h.i.+p. Melville had been given carte blanche, and he worked constantly, using every ounce of authority and prestige granted to him by the port admiral to pry resources and maintenance crews from the dockyard facilities. The sailing master, carpenter and gunner worked closely with their captain in this endeavor, rummaging through the vast resources of the dockyard for anything that would or could be of value to their s.h.i.+p and its mission. Then they supervised their divisions and the Stolsh dockyard maties who would stow these supplies. Meanwhile Lady Elphinstone and her mates were given free run of the hospital to replenish their greatly depleted medical supplies.

Lieutenant Fielder, as first officer, stayed with the s.h.i.+p, working with great competence and zeal to supervise the loading and stowing of the vast quant.i.ty of supplies. Melville watched Fielder, and he saw an enigma, a paradox. His first officer was heavy, dark-faced, rude, and domineering, but never, ever inefficient or incompetent. Coming steadily on board were 12-pound shot, canister and grape; biscuit, beer, rum, salt beef, and salt pork; linear miles of various ropes and cordage; square miles of sailcloth; bosun's stores, carpenter's stores, and medical stores to include several casks of common rhubarb purgative.

Their water casks were currently coming aboard, rising up from the Pier and swayed into the hold with many a cry, as ancient as the sea, "All together now, handsomely there, d.a.m.n your eyes! Half an inch, half an inch, mate," and then vanis.h.i.+ng into the hatchway to be stowed below with m.u.f.fled but equally pa.s.sionate cries. Meanwhile, Gunny Von Rito was carefully stowing deadly little copper-ringed, wooden barrels of gunpowder and percussion caps, inert in two-s.p.a.ce but vital to survival on land.

Broadax was worn to a frazzle as she and her marines protected the crew and the s.h.i.+p from the ravaging hordes of Stolsh dockside idlers who would steal incoming supplies. Given half a chance, the Stolsh would also sneak on board. Sometimes these boarders would be Stolsh prost.i.tutes who would happily couple with anything faintly humanoid, and whose presence was constantly aided and abetted by sailors. Sometimes they were simple and blatant thieves who would sneak back off the s.h.i.+p with anything that wasn't nailed down. Often they were both. As old Hans put it, "They'll git ya comin' and goin'."

Their purser's first task was to clear customs.

"Doo yoou haave any boooks of licentioous oor lewd naature, any haallucinoogenic substaances, oor any laarge quaant.i.ties of aalcoohoolic beveraages intended foor resaale?" asked the customs inspector.

"No," replied Petreckski.

"Aare yoou suure?"

"Yes."

"Woold yoou like soome?"

Sigh.

The customs formalities satisfied, the purser's detail then gathered all available "trade goods." This consisted mostly of bizarre items they'd scrounged from the hold of the Guldur s.h.i.+p. These were taken to the ubiquitous bazaar that always waited just outside the Pier. Like every Westerness s.h.i.+p, the crew made a side income from trading. The Queen, the Admiralty, and the crew shared from whatever they earned from the goods transported in their hold. They'd lost their cargo with Kestrel and were starting over from scratch, trying to establish the bones of a grubstake with miscellaneous Guldur weapons and equipment.

Their sad a.s.sortment of trade goods barely rated them a spot in a side alley that was, as Broadax put it, "If'n not a dead end, it's at least mortally wounded." Their primary trade goods were kept in barrels, with sailors and marines sitting on them, guarding them from the teeming Stolshanity that swept around them. The bartering was carried out first by Petreckski, who set the initial rate for each item. (Guldur muskets seemed to bring a particularly good price.) Then that price was used as a basis for trade by the more experienced crew members.

Although he wasn't entrusted to barter, Corporal Kobbsven was a.s.signed by Lieutenant Broadax to be in charge of security. A duty which he accomplished primarily by looking huge and intimidating in his red jacket with a pistol tucked into his belt and the hilt of his huge two-handed sword sticking out over his shoulder.