Take The Star Road (The Maxwell Saga) Read online

  "When you put it like that... I guess you're right." Steve still felt a little sick to his stomach, but he also felt obscurely comforted.

  As Louie finished applying a bandage, another van pulled up, its gel-filled tires rumbling gently over the steel surface, electric motor whining softly. Six men climbed out, all short and stocky like their attackers, and - also like them, now that Steve had time to notice - all visibly of Far Eastern or Asian extraction. Five began loading the still-motionless attackers and their weapons into the cleaning van on the far side of the passageway. The sixth came over to Louie.

  "Our profound apologies that we were not aware of these men's presence until your call, Mr. Brackmann. We should have found out about them earlier, in time to prevent this." His voice was formal, even stilted, his words carefully enunciated. Steve thought to himself, Sounds like Galactic Standard English isn't his first language.

  "It's my fault, not yours," Louie reassured him. "These guys tried to strong-arm me into a protection racket earlier today. I should have called you right away, but I figured they were bluffing and told 'em to get lost. I didn't realize the Lotus Tong was serious."

  "They identified themselves as Lotus?"

  "Yeah. The boss - he ran for it along with his surviving man, up that alley there - he told me earlier that the Lotus Tong was expanding into the orbital trade from its base on the planet."

  "I see. We shall... discuss this... with the Lotus Tong this very day. They must be reminded not to entertain ambitions above their proper station, which is the gutter. One or more of these men will tell us where to go, and whom to seek." The speaker's voice was quiet, but something in the slow, silky smoothness of his tone made Steve shiver involuntarily, threatening to restart the tremors in his legs.

  The man noticed, and turned, looking at him. "This one helped you?"

  "Yeah. This is Steve Maxwell. He works for me part-time, cleaning up at weekends. I'd just let him out and was about to lock up when they jumped me. He put down three of them, and I stopped the other one."

  "For one who is unarmed to stand with you against six armed attackers shows either great foolishness, or great courage. Which is it, young man?" There was a glimmer of humor in the man's voice.

  Steve couldn't help grinning shakily as he replied, "Probably foolishness, Sir. That's the closest I've ever come to being killed. If I never get that close again, it'll suit me fine! Luckily, I'm nidan, second dan, in karate, and I've been in a few full-contact, no-holds-barred, multi-partner kumite and matches."

  "Ah! That explains your survival, and Mr. Brackmann's. You have earned the gratitude of the Dragon Tong for helping him. We value our association with him, and you did our job for us in protecting him. We shall be in touch shortly to reward your assistance."

  "That won't be necessary, Sir. I just did what was put in front of me to do."

  "Rewarding good and faithful service is always necessary. This reward will be all the sweeter because we shall make the Lotus Tong pay it, which is only just, after all." He transferred his gaze to the saloon-keeper. "The Lotus Tong also owes you compensation for this incident, Mr. Brackmann. We shall see to it that they pay."

  "Thanks."

  They watched as the new arrivals drove both vans down the passage and around a corner. Louie sighed as they disappeared from sight. "Those four won't bother anyone ever again. Take my advice. Never, ever get crosswise with the Dragon Tong. There's no future in it!"

  "I believe you, Sir. The way that man spoke... it sent a shiver down my spine."

  "He's likely the most dangerous person you've ever met. He's the Red Pole, or leader of enforcers, of the local branch of the Tong on this Terminal. Not a man to mess with. Anyway, Steve, I owe you. I know you want a spacer apprentice berth, and I'll do all I can to help you find one, but until then, you're on the full-time payroll here."

  Steve couldn't hold back a fervent grin of relief. "Thanks, Mr. Brackmann. I've been living hand-to-mouth for almost six months. It'll be great to earn enough to eat more regularly!"

  Louie led the way back into the saloon, and walked around behind the bar. He took a blank credit chip from a drawer, inserted it into a socket in the till, and tapped a series of instructions before removing it and handing it to Steve. "I've put two thousand neodollars on this. Use it to pay Doc Lima, then buy some decent shirts, trousers and shoes, the sort of thing you can wear while working the front of the house here - you know my standards. No more kitchen or busboy duties for you! Buy yourself a good meal with the last of the money. I don't want to see any change."

  "Will do, Sir. Thank you very much."

  "Come in tonight at eighteen. You won't be able to do too much until that arm's healed up, but we'll find something to keep you busy." He opened the high-value liquor cabinet. "If you feel like I do right now, you could use a drink. Ever learned to appreciate good Scotch?"

  "Er... I don't know, Sir. I never had any before."

  "Then I won't waste it on you yet. Scotch is an acquired taste - you'll appreciate it more as you grow older. There's a brandy-and-orange liqueur here that's not bad at all, and better suited to younger taste-buds." He poured a healthy measure from a dark brown bottle into a glass, slid it across the bar, then half-filled a second glass with Scotch. "A good belt helps to settle the nerves after something like that."

  Steve took a cautious sip. His eyes widened as the rich liqueur slid smoothly over his tongue and down his throat, warming everything in passing. "Gee, this is good!"

  "At five hundred neodollars a bottle, it had damn well better be good!" Louie took a generous mouthful from his own glass, and shuddered slightly as he swallowed it. "Aah! That hit the spot!" He took a sealed whisky bottle from the cabinet and placed it on the bar. "That's Doc Lima's favorite tipple. Tell him it's from me, to apologize for waking him so early. I'll call him as soon as you leave, so he'll be expecting you."

  "Will do, Sir."

  "OK, Steve. Drink up, then be off with you. I'll see you tonight."

  Chapter 2: January 22nd, 2837 GSC

  As he locked the store-room behind him, Steve couldn't help worrying. I haven't screwed up like this before - at least, not with Louie, he thought nervously to himself. What's he going to do? I've seen him lose his temper with other people over incompetence or stupidity - and I guess this qualifies! He hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. There was only one way to find out. Pointless dithering would only delay the inevitable, and might make it worse.

  Louie looked up from his number-crunching as Steve approached. "Well?"

  "I'm sorry, Boss. It's my fault." Steve handed Louie an electronic clipboard. "Those two missing twenty-packs of ribeye steaks weren't missing after all. I issued them to the kitchen earlier this week, but forgot to log them in the system. Turns out they used them over the next five days. They drew two more packs just now, which is when we figured it out."

  Louie's face flushed with annoyance as he glanced at the stock data. "You've cost me money, boy! You've spent two hours looking for those 'lost' steaks - hours I paid you for - only to tell me it was your fault in the first place. That being the case, I'm going to dock you two hours' pay."

  Steve hung his head. "I can't complain, Boss. I asked for it."

  Louie held his gaze for a moment, then relaxed slightly. "Well, you owned up like a man and didn't try to hide it, which is a lot better than I've seen others do! Learn from this, Steve. Always keep track of your income and expenses, assets and liabilities, be they personal or business. Don't be a miser grasping after every penny, but be watchful. That way you'll have advance warning of problems before they rear up and club you over the head. That's why I'm still making money after forty-plus years in this line of work, while a lot of others have gone bust. I watch my bottom line like a hawk!

  "Take those missing steaks. They're not vat-grown synthetic slop from some orbital factory; they're grass-fed Earth beef. I had to pay ten times their Earthside price to bring them up from the planet and ship them all the w
ay out here. That's why we have to charge so high for them, and why not many customers can afford them. Forty of them add up to a couple of evenings' profit at the bar - not something I can afford to lose. That's why I had you searching high and low for them."

  "I hear you, Boss."

  "All right, we'll leave it at that. I'll have you work the register behind the bar tonight - hey, wait a minute!"

  A merchant spacer pushed open the batwing doors and paused, looking around. Louie's face brightened in a smile of recognition as he saw him. The man wore a white polo-neck jumper beneath a black double-breasted uniform jacket with four rows of twin brass buttons. His left sleeve bore crossed anchors inside a full laurel circle, embroidered in fine gold wire rather than thread. He was short and stocky, his chest, shoulders and arms broad and muscular. Close-cropped gray hair surmounted a blocky face, with intense, very dark eyes that looked like they could bore through a man without even trying.

  "Follow my lead, Steve," Louie muttered. "If we're lucky, this man's your ticket out of here." He stood up from the table near the bar where he'd been sitting, and raised his voice. "Hey, Vince! Long time no see, buddy! Where've you been hiding?"

  Vince walked over and shook Louie's proffered hand. "Oh, criss-crossing the stars as usual. You know what a tramp freighter's schedule is like." He looked the tall, burly saloonkeeper up and down, noting without comment the fading bruises and bandaged cut on his face. The flashy waistcoat topped a matching bow-tie on a white shirt above pearl-gray trousers and black shoes. His hair...

  "Damn, Louie, what's that stuff in your hair? You smell like a bordello!"

  "That's where I got it!" They shared a quiet chuckle. "I want you to meet Steve Maxwell here. He saved my life a week back. Steve, this is Bosun Vince Cardle of the freighter Sebastian Cabot out of the Lancastrian Commonwealth. He's an old friend."

  Vince held out his hand. "I guess I owe you my thanks, youngster. Louie and I do good business together whenever I come through this part of the settled galaxy. I'd hate anything to happen to my income stream!"

  As Steve shook his hand, Louie said, "We need your advice, and maybe your help if you can see your way clear to it. Care to step into my office so we can talk privately?"

  "Sure, as long as I get to take a drink in with me."

  Louie beckoned a waiter hovering nearby. "My usual, and - what was it you liked, Vince? Aultfeldy single malt?" The spacer nodded. "Double Aultfeldy, straight, in one of my personal glasses. What about you, Steve?"

  "A beer, please, Boss. The house draft will be fine."

  "A literstein of the house draft for Steve. Put 'em on my tab and bring 'em to my office."

  "Yes, Sir!" The waiter spun on his heel and headed for the bar.

  "That's quite a memory you've got there," the visitor observed as Louie picked up his notepad and the clipboard, and led the way to a door set into one wall. "It's been almost a year since we last saw each other."

  "Yeah, about that long. You were here to pick up that emergency nanotube shipment for Samos, after the cable of one of their two Planetary Elevators got hit by a cargo shuttle." Louie smiled as he ushered the visitor into his private sanctum. "I remember the hurrying and scurrying to get that shipment ready. The orbital plant worked triple shifts for four weeks. A bunch of spacers got temporary jobs there - well paid, too. They spent a lot of it right here! It was a good time to own a saloon in Entertainment Alley. I made more profit in those four weeks than in three months of regular trade."

  The spacer nodded as they sat down in comfortable chairs around a small round conference table. "When you're one-and-a-half million clicks away from the planet, what else is there to do with your money but spend it on food, booze and warm, willing company? You've got 'em all! Problem was, a lot of those workers didn't know their brass from their oboe when it came to producing nanotubes. The defect rate in that shipment was about twenty times normal. I can tell you, Samos was pissed! They had to set up their own quality control line in a hold aboard our ship, unrolling and checking every nanotube strand before winding it back onto its reel, braiding the strands into yarn, then sending it down to be spliced into the damaged cable. That added weeks to the repair time. They had to keep us on station at full charter rates until they finished the job, plus pay for the rest of our cargo to be transshipped to other freighters for delivery because we were stuck there."

  Louie grimaced. "Easy money for you, but lousy for them."

  "You can say that again! Of course, our charter rates were the least of their worries. For six months before we got there, and then another eight weeks until they finished the repair, they only had one Elevator still operational. That halved their low-cost orbital cargo capacity. Any traffic that couldn't get aboard the working Elevator had to go up or down on cargo shuttles at much higher freight rates. A lot of their orbital businesses couldn't afford that, so they shut down until the other elevator was back in service. It cost them billions!"

  The waiter entered with a tray bearing a highball glass for Louie, a beer for Steve, and a cut-crystal whisky glass containing an amber liquid, that he placed carefully on a coaster on the table in front of the visitor. The Bosun fumbled in his pocket and laid a coin on the tray. "Here you are, son. I know the drink's on the house, but you get a tip anyway, for bringing it."

  The waiter's eyebrows rose in astonished pleasure. "Thank you, Sir!"

  Louie asked, "Hungry?"

  "I sure am! Been eating spacer rations too long. What's good?"

  "Everything! You know my standards."

  "D'you still serve good steak here?"

  Louie snorted. "The best in orbit! We bring up our steaks from the planet, where they're grown the old-fashioned way - on the hoof! You brought some business with you, I presume?"

  "Of course - and I guarantee you'll like it."

  "Then this is on the house. Prime rib suit you, with all the trimmings?"

  "You bet!"

  Louie turned to the waiter. "Tell the cook I want him to give this order special attention. I want the best prime rib in the house, cut thick and large. How do you like it, Vince?"

  "Medium rare and lean, thanks."

  "Medium rare and lean, with everything on the side: gravy, onions, mushrooms, baked potato, salad, the works. Tell him it's for a friend of mine. Charge it to the house account. Steve, you eaten yet?"

  "Not since breakfast, Boss."

  "You must be hungry, then - and I bet you've never had meat this good in orbit. May as well feed you too." Louie turned back to the waiter. "Make it two orders like that, and bring me a small shrimp salad."

  "Yessir!" The waiter scurried out, closing the door behind him.

  "Thanks, Boss," Steve said gratefully, knowing that Louie's generosity was his way of letting him know he'd forgiven him for the screw-up over the missing steaks.

  "No prime rib for you, Louie?" Vince asked, surprised.

  "Not this early. We'll be open till three, four tomorrow morning. I'll eat supper at about midnight." He picked up his drink and took a sip. "You spoiled him with that tip, Vince. Five Lancastrian Commonwealth credits are worth a lot of Earth neodollars nowadays. That's the equivalent of half a day's salary for him."

  The spacer grimaced. "Don't know how you can keep your head above water, having to accept play money that's got nothing backing it at all."

  "Visitors like you pay in hard currency, which helps, and the business I do on the side makes up for the rest. Speaking of that, what did you bring with you?"

  Vince grinned. "It's gonna cost you. I picked up some really lovely sunstars at Toscana. I brought one with me as a sample."

  He reached into an inside jacket pocket, took out a gemstone and placed it in Louie's palm. Its gleaming translucent surface rippled with highlights of warm sunglow yellow and rich tangerine. The saloon-keeper couldn't disguise the sudden glitter in his eyes.

  "Oh, yeah! This is great! Take a look, Steve." He handed him the stone. "They're hard to find at the best of times, an
d I don't think I've ever seen one this good. How many did you bring, Vince, and how big are they?"

  "Twenty-seven, ranging from ten to thirty carats. That one's seventeen."

  Louie blinked as Steve returned the stone to the visitor. "Bloody hell! They must have cost you a small fortune!"

  "They weren't cheap, but I got lucky at Sidra." Vince dropped it into his pocket. "Taught a wannabe gambler not to draw to an inside straight."

  Louie chuckled. "Ain't it amazing how many people still make that mistake? You always seem to have good luck at the poker table, but it's honest luck. I've never known you to cheat."

  "Never had to - and it's skill, not luck."

  "That's what Doc Lima always says!" They shared another laugh. "If you're still here tomorrow night, he'll be in for our weekly poker game. He'll be glad to see you again. Anyway, you were saying you won a bundle. I thought Sidra shekels weren't convertible off-planet?"

  "They're not, so I used them to buy platinum before we left. You know Sidra platinum gets an odd purplish sheen when it's polished?"

  The saloonkeeper nodded. "Yeah, I've seen it. Some sort of native impurity, I guess - there's nothing else quite like it in the settled galaxy. Looks real pretty."

  "That's right. Anyway, our next stop was Toscana. I found a jeweler there who really wanted to get his hands on that Sidra platinum, and had too many sunstars in stock. We haggled a bit, and I threw in a few other things I had, and came away with these. I decided to hold on to them until we reached Earth, 'cause I knew you'd have a market for them."

  "I sure do! They're worth more than I have on hand in hard currency right now, so if you're willing, I'll pay a third in Lancastrian Commonwealth credits and the rest in gold, plus a few emeralds and rubies from South America. They're old stones, the good stuff, not the cheap crap they're scraping out of worked-out mines these days. That suit you?"