(eng) Mike Resnick - Dead Enders 01 by The Fortress in Orion

Author:The Fortress in Orion [Orion, The Fortress in]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

17

The ship was twelve hours out of the Mitox system when Pretorius woke up from a nap, stopped by the galley for a few minutes, and then approached Pandora at her workstation.

“How’s it coming?” he asked.

“I’ve found seven supply ships that stop at the fortress every five to ten days,” she replied.

“Big ones?”

She nodded. “Quite large. Definitely big enough for our needs.”

“How many are between us and Petrus right now, and how many are on the far side?”

“Three on this side, two on the far side.”

Pretorius frowned. “That’s only five.”

“Two are docked at the fortress right now.”

“At the fortress? Not in some orbital hangar?”

“At the fortress,” said Pandora. “I assume their loads are so big that it would take a dozen shuttles to carry the stuff down, so the fortress seems to have four towers that serve as docks, maybe half a mile high, to accommodate them. One may be for military ships—and of course they’ll have an orbiting hangar for the really big troop transports—but at least three of the towers are for supply ships.”

“Better still,” said Pretorius. “That means we don’t have to find a covert way onto the planet and into the fortress. I didn’t like the thought of transferring to a shuttle. This solves the problem.”

“You still have the problem of how all eight of us are getting onto a supply ship.”

“Find out where the three cargo ships that are between us and Petrus are touching down on their regular routes, and we’ll work it out.”

“Give me another eight or nine hours.”

“Take twenty.”

She looked at him curiously. “Twenty?”

“Yeah,” he said “And get me blueprints of the ships.”

“That might be difficult.”

“They’re not combat ships or military of any kind. Some shipbuilder made them and had to file the plans somewhere.” He smiled at her. “Hell, find me one with an all-robot crew that you can control, and take twenty-one hours.”

“You’re all heart, Nate,” she said, and turned back to her computer.

“Oh . . . and hunt up a couple of worlds along the way where we can unload the pelts.”

“Actually there’s one coming up in about an hour,” she replied. “A single planet circling Pordeli, a class-G star. Seems to be a trading outpost. Hard to believe they haven’t seen these furs before.”

“Radio ahead, make sure someone on the planet buys pelts, and if they do, make an appointment and set us down there.”

She did so, got a positive reply, and they landed a little more than an hour later. Djibmet got off the ship, met the proprietor of the shop that dealt in such goods, got a pair of robots to help, and while they were making the trips carrying the pelts Pandora wiped all knowledge of the ship’s human crew from their memories.

They found another world five light-years away that bought the rest of the pelts. Djibmet offered to turn all the money over to Pretorius, but the latter shook his head.

“I can’t show myself or spend your currency anywhere within the Coalition,” he explained, “and by the time we get to where I can spend it, this currency’s no good.

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