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executrix1
“As it happens,” said Blake, who didn’t believe in coincidences, told his old friend, “We’re headed that way anyhow. Of course, we can help you. It should be a cake run.” He didn’t believe that either (and the actual cake came as a bonus), but thought that a relatively simple rescue mission could help build cohesion for his new crew.
2
“They won’t be looking terribly hard for you,” Vila said. “All you did was kill a trooper, and, well, who doesn’t want to?”
Gan did not find this reassuring, but Blake said, “On a more positive note, it will be a good test of our teleport skills, and your limiter won’t be a problem. You’ll make contact, step outside, hand him a bracelet, and we’ll whisk you away. Zen, main screen, please. Here he is. I’m sure you’ll recognize him. Then just say, ‘We never got weather like this on Canvella.’ No one pays a bit of notice when the pub bore talks about the weather, and you needn’t worry that you’ll run into someone actually from Canvella because it doesn’t exist.”
As the image bloomed on-screen, Gan and Vila exchanged a glance. The last time they saw a mustache like that, it was on a vizscreen and there was no other adornment between it and the sock garters.
Gan wasn’t sure precisely why Blake was so insistent on going to MondRiche. It seemed a nice enough place, and Blake said that he wasn’t planning on blowing anything up. He hoped that things would go according to plan, although he knew already that they frequently didn’t.
Cally sulked, thinking that as the most experienced guerilla the mission should have been hers, but on the Liberator even a few extra weeks counted as seniority.
3
Rebecca, who knew Avalon from Pilates class, felt a naughty thrill about contacting her youthful rebel friend to bring the team’s newly hired coach to MondRiche. Rupert wouldn’t find out about it at all, or at least until it was a fait accompli. If—once—he did, he would be horrified to hear that his beloved team had rendered aid and comfort to rebels. Rupert had—or at least said he had—shagged Servalan That Time. He never let anyone hear the end of it, failing to understand that that was not the distinction either qualitative or quantitative that he believed it to be.
Avalon, miffed at being approached in connection with anything as trivial as sport (and a no-hoper team at that) passed the assignment along to Blake.
4
The strobing lights, blaring sonoskape, and the watery moire finish of the metallic walls were giving Gan a headache. He hated people who didn’t stand their round, so he had the wafer-thin, supercilious waiter bring a couple of slender glass tubes filled with glowing green beverages over to the table. The Treasure Room was certainly good for it, although Gan couldn’t help comparing the cost of a couple of cocktails to the price of a winter overcoat at home.
Soon, he was not alone. The subject of weather on Canvella was exhausted. Gan slugged down the drink, grimaced, surreptitiously flashed five fingers to show Ted how long to wait, and then left the bar. Ted looked around, sipped his tube, and thought, philosophically, that at least it wasn’t warm beer or hot brown water. When he went outside, no one followed him, or even took particular notice.
“My luggage, such as it is, got shipped from Kazza to MondRiche ahead of me,” Ted said. “So all you got is me.” Me and my baggage, he thought. “You don’t look much like your Wanted poster, Mr. Blake,” Ted said. “I don’t guess they make ‘em flattering, though.”
“No, no, I’m Gan—Olag Gan. You’ll meet Blake soon enough—in seconds, in fact,” Gan said, snapping a bracelet onto Ted’s wrist.
5
“Couldn’t sleep either?”
“Thing of it is, Lieutenant Avon…”
“I’m an independent contractor.”
“Huh. Well, I just got to ask myself, what am I doing? I’m going halfway across the galaxy to take a job getting people to be better at playing a game that I don’t even know half the rules of.”
“I shouldn’t worry if I were you. Blake knows sod-all about overthrowing the Federation, and yet here we all are.”
“Not the same thing, though.”
“Certainly not. Quite a lot of money is at stake in professional sport, so those in power take it far more seriously than simple matters of life and death.”
6
“I thought you’d be proud of me!” Sam Obisanya shouted into the CommSet. “Isn’t that what you taught us, to stand up for justice? It’s unjust as all hell for MondRiche AFC be sponsored by an environmental criminal that produces Blood Monopasium. And if protesting is all right with the owner—and we’ve got another sponsor already, so she hasn’t lost even a single credit--why shouldn’t it be all right with you?”
“I am proud of you! I’m not worried about the club giving you the sack—you’re their best player, after all” (this was something of an exaggeration) “But the Federation doesn’t give a lot of scope even for peaceful protests. Just ask anyone in the Freedom Party. That is, if there were enough of us still alive to assemble a quorum.” The comm link was shut down. Sam was disappointed. His correspondent was glad that the problem would be solved soon, although he thought it prudent not only to leave the explanation for a while but to delegate it.
7
“I snuck into the kitchen and made these,” Ted said, handing Blake a cardboard box. Blake opened it curiously.
“Biscuits!” he said, then more cautiously, “Are they biscuits?”
“Yeah, that’s what you’d call them. The computer said where the kitchen was, and where I could get some cardboard for the boxes. Sorry, though, it’s kinda Biscuits With the Boss, I didn’t feel comfortable about taking enough stuff to make enough for the whole crew.”
Blake laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a way that made Ted trust him even more than before.
“You’ve met the whole crew already!”
“Big ol’ ship like this, I figured you’d have ‘em stacked up inside and some hanging off the outside bits.”
“Given the Federation’s penchant for killing or enslaving the families of its enemies, rebellion is surprisingly unpopular.”
“Thing of it is, Roj,” (Blake flinched a little, then noted indulgently that grading didn’t mean much in minor Outer Planets like Kazza) “people look at death all wrong. Not that I’m not afraid of it and yet strangely attracted to it just like every regular screwed-up person. But sooner or later there’s going to be a hard stop. Could be something afterward or not, but anyway not the same. That’s what gives the definition to the amorphous and squishy stuff. The Federation is what it is because the folks with the big bombs and the big guns didn’t think it mattered what they turned themselves into, if they could just tell themselves that they won. And the ones that don’t have the power, didn’t think it matters what they do to other people, because they’re squashed in the middle so all the atrocities are someone else’s fault. And the ones at the bottom, well, you know what they say: unless you’re the lead sled dog, the view never changes. Which is why you gotta open up the mind’s eye and not just the eyeball-stuck-in-the-skull eye.”
“I don’t believe there is any sort of afterlife,” Blake said. “But it’s bad enough being frightened of what might become of my crew, and knowing that I’m constantly putting them at risk, when I don’t know if I can win at all or what victory would look like. The Federation doesn’t like anyone to think about history, of course, but you can learn about it if you really try. It’s not an inspiring picture. I can’t say that there was ever a lost golden age, of freedom and justice, that we can return to.”
“Technology changes, and that changes things. Think of what Martin Luther did with just a piece of paper and a thumbtack, and you’ve got Tariel cells.”
Blake, who was not sure which of two bad choices he preferred, but would probably opt for opiates as the religion of the masses rather than vice versa, said nothing.
“Doesn’t matter how much baby-sitting you did,” Ted said. “Once you have a kid of your own, there you are, with this tiny human that’s easy to drop and you gotta mold it into a good person but first not let it drink the drain cleaner. Except you don’t know how. But you have to go forward, even not knowing, because you’re never gonna know until after you did it. And maybe some day you’re gonna have a different ship, and a different crew, and you’re not gonna know how to fight each battle until you do it. But you’re already trying to make the world better, even though probably nobody’s grateful and nobody’s helpful, so you’re way ahead of most people. I mean, in a football match, somebody’s gotta win, somebody’s gotta lose…”
“No, actually, the match might be a draw,” Blake said.
“Yeah? But even the ones that don’t win, they could play their best or play their worst. And on or off the field…”
“Pitch.”
“They could be rotten people, which frankly is easier, or they could be the best people they could be.”
8
Gan watched Ted show him quite a few imjs of his son Henry. He noticed that most of the imjs had been cropped, but there was a woman in the background of some of them. When Ted registered those peripheral images, he changed his grip on the imjframe, either covering up Michelle’s face, or stroking it with his finger.
Gan didn’t have any imjs of Zoraja that he could show in exchange. The Justice Machine offered him some crime scene photos as a keepsake, and sometimes he thought he should have taken it up on the offer.
9
Gan and Vila watched the football match on the main screen with avid interest. (Blake, a rugger bugger, didn’t think it was worth sacrificing a sleep shift.) Ted leaned forward on the white leather couch, trying to figure out what was going on. Cally thought that football rather resembled Ka’va’quii, although without enough Crisis Events to make it really interesting. Avon bustled past, demonstrating that he had far more important things to do than hobnob with hoi polloi.
“There goes our resident genius, Ted,” Vila said. “Avon, I don’t suppose you could explain the offside rule?”
“Of course,” Avon said, and did so, succinctly, accurately, in a way that did not greatly enlighten his audience, and then rushed off again.
Later on, when Ted met Roy Kent, he thought he had already been inoculated against Brunet Grunting, although in the polysyllabic version.
10
Avon put a plate of biscuits, elaborately iced in a folkloric design, next to his box of pink-sugar-sprinkled shortbread fingers. There were two left in the box, and he absent-mindedly ate one of them.
“Well?” Avon said, tightening the fold of his arms.
“That’s not a question. These taste like they’re from a shop,” Vila said, brushing biscuit crumbs off his tunic.
“Naturally,” Avon said. “I used the most sophisticated gelatinized starches and food flavorants and colorings, even if I had to synthesize them myself.”
“So that’s why everybody likes those other ones better.”
11
After
a flurry of handshakes and hugs, Gan dropped Ted off at a pub with a commitment to Ye Olde Earthe decoration as comprehensive (or perhaps compulsive) as the previous bar had been to Art XXXI. He wondered if the waggling bottoms and chants of “Soggy bottom…soggy bottom…soggy bottom Paul!” were aspects of some sort of fertility rite. Mae gave Gan what he could only call the Glad Eye and hinted broadly that he would find an intimate welcome the next time he was in town.
Gan returned to the Liberator, and gave the teleport bracelet last used by Ted a fond pat as he put it back in the rack. “Nice bloke,” Gan said. “I’ll miss him.”
“Me an’ all,” Vila said. “I’ll never forget what Ted used to say: ‘There’s no I in Team, but there’s a Kerr in Wanker.’”
“No he didn’t,” Avon said.
“All right, he didn’t, but he might have done. If he was someone else.” Vila was not entirely sorry to see Ted go. The peak of their friendship had come when Ted lost 114,702 credits to Vila playing Reumillian Klebschnock. “Education’s expensive,” Vila had said smugly after instructing Ted in the rules and refinements of that noble game.
The trough of their friendship came when Vila generously offered to teach Ted how to play darts, with a small wager just to make things interesting.
“Before I fetch my insulin pen, shall I lay in a course?” Jenna asked.
“Oh, we’re staying around, remaining in stationary orbit, for a few days at least,” Blake said. “There’s the other part of the mission to complete.”
Everyone looked at him, although without much hope of an explanation, which was lucky as they didn’t get one.
12
The entire crew gathered around the Main Screen to watch Ted’s first press conference. It did not go particularly well, especially when Trent Crimm (of The Sycophant) was asking the questions. Vila threw a handful of popcorn in the general direction of Main Screen. “I’d call him Ted Crimmo, but who’d think he had a high Intelligence Rating?”
“Is the mysterious other part of the mission fetching Lasso back again after they ride him out of town on a rail?” Avon asked.
“Certainly not. I think Ted will do very well for himself on MondRiche, once he gets his feet under him,” Blake said. “I have a lot of faith in him.”
13
“Where’s Blake?” Jenna asked, as she took over at the teleport from Cally.
“Downplanet, but I don’t know precisely where. He called in a few minutes ago, said to ask everyone to
assemble on the flight deck at 0400 hours, and he’ll be back before then.”
Blake, grinning broadly, teleported back at 0345 hours. “I think you will find this a particularly interesting match,” Blake told the group assembled in front of the Main Screen. “Even though it is just football. Cally, I know this is your shift, but I’ll take over at the teleport.”
From the spectators’ point of view (both on the ship and at the stadium) it started out like a reasonably ordinary match. From Ted’s point of view, it was a glimpse into the mouth of Hell. As the panic closed in on him, Ted had to escape from the pitch. He stumbled off at a clumsy run, unable to care what anybody thought of him.
Nathan wanted to think over this peculiar event, so he could turn it to his advantage. But his focus was pulled by something much weirder. Sam, seeming to float away from his opponents, reached the ball at mid-field and kicked in a near-miraculous goal. Then he dipped into a pouch pinned into his uniform, put on a bracelet, and vanished into thin air, moments before a squad of troopers plodded onto the pitch to arrest him.
The crowd, already cheering, rose and burst into a chorale of “what the fuck?” The match came to an abrupt end. Nathan tugged at the sleeve of Trent Crimm (of the Sycophant) but could not get his attention. Crimm already had the Interplanetary Soccer Federation on his comm to ask for a rules opinion before they even knew that their advice was needed on scoring a match called on account of Rapture.
Later on, Nathan tried to collect the reward for calling in the tip, but Space Commander Enneberg, who had already trousered it, said that since no criminals had been apprehended, no reward was going to be paid out, and anyway patriotic Federation citizens ought to be proud to suppress dissent without expectation of reward.
14
“Let me introduce you to Sam Obisanya, formerly of MondRiche AFC,” Blake said. He turned to Sam, who was staring rapturously at the alien technology of the Liberator’s flight deck. (He was far more accustomed to planet-hoppers like the ones MondRiche used to get to away matches.) “You’re Hal’s son, aren’t you?” Blake asked. “You look just like him, when we first met. When he contacted me a few weeks ago, he didn’t say, but it was obvious that whoever he wanted us to transport was very important to him.”
“Well, I go by my mum’s name when I’m footballing,” Sam said. “’Mellanby’ isn’t all that popular in Federation spaces. I can’t believe you’re Roj Blake. My mum used to tell me stories about you, the old days in the Freedom Party.”
“That’s how she sent you off to sleep, eh?”
“I can hardly remember her,” Sam said sadly. “And she died when my little pest of a sister was just a few months old.”
Blake touched his arm sympathetically.
“We’ll need that course now, Jenna,” Blake said. “Standard by Four. I daresay we can be on Sarran in a day or two.”
15
After dinner, Jenna commandeered the assignment of showing Sam one of the guest cabins. “The sonoshower is en suite,” Jenna said. Here’s the remote for the ambience adjustments. This is the comms link. Spare blankets in the wardrobe. Well, I’ll say goodnight now—unless you want me to stay.”
“I’d love that!” Sam said. “I love older women!”
Nice one, mate, she thought. You’ve just cock-blocked yourself. But considering that he was perfect: young, handsome, brave, fit, intelligent, charming, getting more perfect by the minute, and going to disappear almost immediately before he could become a nuisance, she decided not to be insulted.
16
“Come with us, Gan,” Blake said. “You started off this mission, you can finish it.”
Blake, Gan, and Sam arrived at the beach on the Gulf of Sarran, to be welcomed by Blake’s old Freedom Party comrade and his family.
“I think that went really well,” Gan said when he returned. “His family was awfully happy to see him. Mind you, the pretty black girl nearly knocked him down when she ran over to give him a hug. He said she was his kid sister. Jenna, he has another sister—blonde, looks a bit like you, but she was a bit more restrained in her welcome. Sam’s father evidently isn’t the demonstrative sort, but obviously he was more than glad for young Sam to be home safe, and more than grateful to Blake.”
“Heartwarming,” Jenna said sourly. But the next time the tape on the “Believe” sign dried up and fell off, she fetched a spirit level and stuck it back on straight.
“As it happens,” said Blake, who didn’t believe in coincidences, told his old friend, “We’re headed that way anyhow. Of course, we can help you. It should be a cake run.” He didn’t believe that either (and the actual cake came as a bonus), but thought that a relatively simple rescue mission could help build cohesion for his new crew.
2
“They won’t be looking terribly hard for you,” Vila said. “All you did was kill a trooper, and, well, who doesn’t want to?”
Gan did not find this reassuring, but Blake said, “On a more positive note, it will be a good test of our teleport skills, and your limiter won’t be a problem. You’ll make contact, step outside, hand him a bracelet, and we’ll whisk you away. Zen, main screen, please. Here he is. I’m sure you’ll recognize him. Then just say, ‘We never got weather like this on Canvella.’ No one pays a bit of notice when the pub bore talks about the weather, and you needn’t worry that you’ll run into someone actually from Canvella because it doesn’t exist.”
As the image bloomed on-screen, Gan and Vila exchanged a glance. The last time they saw a mustache like that, it was on a vizscreen and there was no other adornment between it and the sock garters.
Gan wasn’t sure precisely why Blake was so insistent on going to MondRiche. It seemed a nice enough place, and Blake said that he wasn’t planning on blowing anything up. He hoped that things would go according to plan, although he knew already that they frequently didn’t.
Cally sulked, thinking that as the most experienced guerilla the mission should have been hers, but on the Liberator even a few extra weeks counted as seniority.
3
Rebecca, who knew Avalon from Pilates class, felt a naughty thrill about contacting her youthful rebel friend to bring the team’s newly hired coach to MondRiche. Rupert wouldn’t find out about it at all, or at least until it was a fait accompli. If—once—he did, he would be horrified to hear that his beloved team had rendered aid and comfort to rebels. Rupert had—or at least said he had—shagged Servalan That Time. He never let anyone hear the end of it, failing to understand that that was not the distinction either qualitative or quantitative that he believed it to be.
Avalon, miffed at being approached in connection with anything as trivial as sport (and a no-hoper team at that) passed the assignment along to Blake.
4
The strobing lights, blaring sonoskape, and the watery moire finish of the metallic walls were giving Gan a headache. He hated people who didn’t stand their round, so he had the wafer-thin, supercilious waiter bring a couple of slender glass tubes filled with glowing green beverages over to the table. The Treasure Room was certainly good for it, although Gan couldn’t help comparing the cost of a couple of cocktails to the price of a winter overcoat at home.
Soon, he was not alone. The subject of weather on Canvella was exhausted. Gan slugged down the drink, grimaced, surreptitiously flashed five fingers to show Ted how long to wait, and then left the bar. Ted looked around, sipped his tube, and thought, philosophically, that at least it wasn’t warm beer or hot brown water. When he went outside, no one followed him, or even took particular notice.
“My luggage, such as it is, got shipped from Kazza to MondRiche ahead of me,” Ted said. “So all you got is me.” Me and my baggage, he thought. “You don’t look much like your Wanted poster, Mr. Blake,” Ted said. “I don’t guess they make ‘em flattering, though.”
“No, no, I’m Gan—Olag Gan. You’ll meet Blake soon enough—in seconds, in fact,” Gan said, snapping a bracelet onto Ted’s wrist.
5
“Couldn’t sleep either?”
“Thing of it is, Lieutenant Avon…”
“I’m an independent contractor.”
“Huh. Well, I just got to ask myself, what am I doing? I’m going halfway across the galaxy to take a job getting people to be better at playing a game that I don’t even know half the rules of.”
“I shouldn’t worry if I were you. Blake knows sod-all about overthrowing the Federation, and yet here we all are.”
“Not the same thing, though.”
“Certainly not. Quite a lot of money is at stake in professional sport, so those in power take it far more seriously than simple matters of life and death.”
6
“I thought you’d be proud of me!” Sam Obisanya shouted into the CommSet. “Isn’t that what you taught us, to stand up for justice? It’s unjust as all hell for MondRiche AFC be sponsored by an environmental criminal that produces Blood Monopasium. And if protesting is all right with the owner—and we’ve got another sponsor already, so she hasn’t lost even a single credit--why shouldn’t it be all right with you?”
“I am proud of you! I’m not worried about the club giving you the sack—you’re their best player, after all” (this was something of an exaggeration) “But the Federation doesn’t give a lot of scope even for peaceful protests. Just ask anyone in the Freedom Party. That is, if there were enough of us still alive to assemble a quorum.” The comm link was shut down. Sam was disappointed. His correspondent was glad that the problem would be solved soon, although he thought it prudent not only to leave the explanation for a while but to delegate it.
7
“I snuck into the kitchen and made these,” Ted said, handing Blake a cardboard box. Blake opened it curiously.
“Biscuits!” he said, then more cautiously, “Are they biscuits?”
“Yeah, that’s what you’d call them. The computer said where the kitchen was, and where I could get some cardboard for the boxes. Sorry, though, it’s kinda Biscuits With the Boss, I didn’t feel comfortable about taking enough stuff to make enough for the whole crew.”
Blake laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a way that made Ted trust him even more than before.
“You’ve met the whole crew already!”
“Big ol’ ship like this, I figured you’d have ‘em stacked up inside and some hanging off the outside bits.”
“Given the Federation’s penchant for killing or enslaving the families of its enemies, rebellion is surprisingly unpopular.”
“Thing of it is, Roj,” (Blake flinched a little, then noted indulgently that grading didn’t mean much in minor Outer Planets like Kazza) “people look at death all wrong. Not that I’m not afraid of it and yet strangely attracted to it just like every regular screwed-up person. But sooner or later there’s going to be a hard stop. Could be something afterward or not, but anyway not the same. That’s what gives the definition to the amorphous and squishy stuff. The Federation is what it is because the folks with the big bombs and the big guns didn’t think it mattered what they turned themselves into, if they could just tell themselves that they won. And the ones that don’t have the power, didn’t think it matters what they do to other people, because they’re squashed in the middle so all the atrocities are someone else’s fault. And the ones at the bottom, well, you know what they say: unless you’re the lead sled dog, the view never changes. Which is why you gotta open up the mind’s eye and not just the eyeball-stuck-in-the-skull eye.”
“I don’t believe there is any sort of afterlife,” Blake said. “But it’s bad enough being frightened of what might become of my crew, and knowing that I’m constantly putting them at risk, when I don’t know if I can win at all or what victory would look like. The Federation doesn’t like anyone to think about history, of course, but you can learn about it if you really try. It’s not an inspiring picture. I can’t say that there was ever a lost golden age, of freedom and justice, that we can return to.”
“Technology changes, and that changes things. Think of what Martin Luther did with just a piece of paper and a thumbtack, and you’ve got Tariel cells.”
Blake, who was not sure which of two bad choices he preferred, but would probably opt for opiates as the religion of the masses rather than vice versa, said nothing.
“Doesn’t matter how much baby-sitting you did,” Ted said. “Once you have a kid of your own, there you are, with this tiny human that’s easy to drop and you gotta mold it into a good person but first not let it drink the drain cleaner. Except you don’t know how. But you have to go forward, even not knowing, because you’re never gonna know until after you did it. And maybe some day you’re gonna have a different ship, and a different crew, and you’re not gonna know how to fight each battle until you do it. But you’re already trying to make the world better, even though probably nobody’s grateful and nobody’s helpful, so you’re way ahead of most people. I mean, in a football match, somebody’s gotta win, somebody’s gotta lose…”
“No, actually, the match might be a draw,” Blake said.
“Yeah? But even the ones that don’t win, they could play their best or play their worst. And on or off the field…”
“Pitch.”
“They could be rotten people, which frankly is easier, or they could be the best people they could be.”
8
Gan watched Ted show him quite a few imjs of his son Henry. He noticed that most of the imjs had been cropped, but there was a woman in the background of some of them. When Ted registered those peripheral images, he changed his grip on the imjframe, either covering up Michelle’s face, or stroking it with his finger.
Gan didn’t have any imjs of Zoraja that he could show in exchange. The Justice Machine offered him some crime scene photos as a keepsake, and sometimes he thought he should have taken it up on the offer.
9
Gan and Vila watched the football match on the main screen with avid interest. (Blake, a rugger bugger, didn’t think it was worth sacrificing a sleep shift.) Ted leaned forward on the white leather couch, trying to figure out what was going on. Cally thought that football rather resembled Ka’va’quii, although without enough Crisis Events to make it really interesting. Avon bustled past, demonstrating that he had far more important things to do than hobnob with hoi polloi.
“There goes our resident genius, Ted,” Vila said. “Avon, I don’t suppose you could explain the offside rule?”
“Of course,” Avon said, and did so, succinctly, accurately, in a way that did not greatly enlighten his audience, and then rushed off again.
Later on, when Ted met Roy Kent, he thought he had already been inoculated against Brunet Grunting, although in the polysyllabic version.
10
Avon put a plate of biscuits, elaborately iced in a folkloric design, next to his box of pink-sugar-sprinkled shortbread fingers. There were two left in the box, and he absent-mindedly ate one of them.
“Well?” Avon said, tightening the fold of his arms.
“That’s not a question. These taste like they’re from a shop,” Vila said, brushing biscuit crumbs off his tunic.
“Naturally,” Avon said. “I used the most sophisticated gelatinized starches and food flavorants and colorings, even if I had to synthesize them myself.”
“So that’s why everybody likes those other ones better.”
11
After
a flurry of handshakes and hugs, Gan dropped Ted off at a pub with a commitment to Ye Olde Earthe decoration as comprehensive (or perhaps compulsive) as the previous bar had been to Art XXXI. He wondered if the waggling bottoms and chants of “Soggy bottom…soggy bottom…soggy bottom Paul!” were aspects of some sort of fertility rite. Mae gave Gan what he could only call the Glad Eye and hinted broadly that he would find an intimate welcome the next time he was in town.
Gan returned to the Liberator, and gave the teleport bracelet last used by Ted a fond pat as he put it back in the rack. “Nice bloke,” Gan said. “I’ll miss him.”
“Me an’ all,” Vila said. “I’ll never forget what Ted used to say: ‘There’s no I in Team, but there’s a Kerr in Wanker.’”
“No he didn’t,” Avon said.
“All right, he didn’t, but he might have done. If he was someone else.” Vila was not entirely sorry to see Ted go. The peak of their friendship had come when Ted lost 114,702 credits to Vila playing Reumillian Klebschnock. “Education’s expensive,” Vila had said smugly after instructing Ted in the rules and refinements of that noble game.
The trough of their friendship came when Vila generously offered to teach Ted how to play darts, with a small wager just to make things interesting.
“Before I fetch my insulin pen, shall I lay in a course?” Jenna asked.
“Oh, we’re staying around, remaining in stationary orbit, for a few days at least,” Blake said. “There’s the other part of the mission to complete.”
Everyone looked at him, although without much hope of an explanation, which was lucky as they didn’t get one.
12
The entire crew gathered around the Main Screen to watch Ted’s first press conference. It did not go particularly well, especially when Trent Crimm (of The Sycophant) was asking the questions. Vila threw a handful of popcorn in the general direction of Main Screen. “I’d call him Ted Crimmo, but who’d think he had a high Intelligence Rating?”
“Is the mysterious other part of the mission fetching Lasso back again after they ride him out of town on a rail?” Avon asked.
“Certainly not. I think Ted will do very well for himself on MondRiche, once he gets his feet under him,” Blake said. “I have a lot of faith in him.”
13
“Where’s Blake?” Jenna asked, as she took over at the teleport from Cally.
“Downplanet, but I don’t know precisely where. He called in a few minutes ago, said to ask everyone to
assemble on the flight deck at 0400 hours, and he’ll be back before then.”
Blake, grinning broadly, teleported back at 0345 hours. “I think you will find this a particularly interesting match,” Blake told the group assembled in front of the Main Screen. “Even though it is just football. Cally, I know this is your shift, but I’ll take over at the teleport.”
From the spectators’ point of view (both on the ship and at the stadium) it started out like a reasonably ordinary match. From Ted’s point of view, it was a glimpse into the mouth of Hell. As the panic closed in on him, Ted had to escape from the pitch. He stumbled off at a clumsy run, unable to care what anybody thought of him.
Nathan wanted to think over this peculiar event, so he could turn it to his advantage. But his focus was pulled by something much weirder. Sam, seeming to float away from his opponents, reached the ball at mid-field and kicked in a near-miraculous goal. Then he dipped into a pouch pinned into his uniform, put on a bracelet, and vanished into thin air, moments before a squad of troopers plodded onto the pitch to arrest him.
The crowd, already cheering, rose and burst into a chorale of “what the fuck?” The match came to an abrupt end. Nathan tugged at the sleeve of Trent Crimm (of the Sycophant) but could not get his attention. Crimm already had the Interplanetary Soccer Federation on his comm to ask for a rules opinion before they even knew that their advice was needed on scoring a match called on account of Rapture.
Later on, Nathan tried to collect the reward for calling in the tip, but Space Commander Enneberg, who had already trousered it, said that since no criminals had been apprehended, no reward was going to be paid out, and anyway patriotic Federation citizens ought to be proud to suppress dissent without expectation of reward.
14
“Let me introduce you to Sam Obisanya, formerly of MondRiche AFC,” Blake said. He turned to Sam, who was staring rapturously at the alien technology of the Liberator’s flight deck. (He was far more accustomed to planet-hoppers like the ones MondRiche used to get to away matches.) “You’re Hal’s son, aren’t you?” Blake asked. “You look just like him, when we first met. When he contacted me a few weeks ago, he didn’t say, but it was obvious that whoever he wanted us to transport was very important to him.”
“Well, I go by my mum’s name when I’m footballing,” Sam said. “’Mellanby’ isn’t all that popular in Federation spaces. I can’t believe you’re Roj Blake. My mum used to tell me stories about you, the old days in the Freedom Party.”
“That’s how she sent you off to sleep, eh?”
“I can hardly remember her,” Sam said sadly. “And she died when my little pest of a sister was just a few months old.”
Blake touched his arm sympathetically.
“We’ll need that course now, Jenna,” Blake said. “Standard by Four. I daresay we can be on Sarran in a day or two.”
15
After dinner, Jenna commandeered the assignment of showing Sam one of the guest cabins. “The sonoshower is en suite,” Jenna said. Here’s the remote for the ambience adjustments. This is the comms link. Spare blankets in the wardrobe. Well, I’ll say goodnight now—unless you want me to stay.”
“I’d love that!” Sam said. “I love older women!”
Nice one, mate, she thought. You’ve just cock-blocked yourself. But considering that he was perfect: young, handsome, brave, fit, intelligent, charming, getting more perfect by the minute, and going to disappear almost immediately before he could become a nuisance, she decided not to be insulted.
16
“Come with us, Gan,” Blake said. “You started off this mission, you can finish it.”
Blake, Gan, and Sam arrived at the beach on the Gulf of Sarran, to be welcomed by Blake’s old Freedom Party comrade and his family.
“I think that went really well,” Gan said when he returned. “His family was awfully happy to see him. Mind you, the pretty black girl nearly knocked him down when she ran over to give him a hug. He said she was his kid sister. Jenna, he has another sister—blonde, looks a bit like you, but she was a bit more restrained in her welcome. Sam’s father evidently isn’t the demonstrative sort, but obviously he was more than glad for young Sam to be home safe, and more than grateful to Blake.”
“Heartwarming,” Jenna said sourly. But the next time the tape on the “Believe” sign dried up and fell off, she fetched a spirit level and stuck it back on straight.
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Date: 2023-06-03 02:59 am (UTC)This made me laugh ^_^
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Date: 2023-06-03 09:56 am (UTC)Dies
I love it!
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Date: 2023-06-06 04:59 pm (UTC)'Ships That Pass in the Night
https://archiveofourown.org/works/529048