Galaxy's End: Book One by LeRoy Clary (popular ebook readers txt) 📗

because of lack of solid information. What I can tell you is that I’ve been worrying about the future of you and Bill for some time.”

“Worrying?”

“Allow me to pontificate. I’m certain you do not know much of what follows but listen anyhow. The two of you are now young adults. Fifteen? Perhaps a year either way. Your schemes grow bolder by the day, the arena tickets for example. You were already attracting attention from the Roma authorities and I suspect that within a year you would have been sent to prison for a petty crime, something you were guilty of doing. I’ve tried to gently steer you away from some of the more reckless adventures of your recent imaginations, but we three have been together for about ten years, and I see you want more from your lives than mere existence. I have lofty expectations for both of you.”

He was right and we both knew it. But that was not the answer to the question I’d tried to ask. I said, “But are we doing the right thing? The three of us, I mean. Coming on this ship and agreeing to join Captain Stone on her ship?”

Bert sighed and answered softly, “For the first time in years, I’m excited for you. I’m also impressed that you have not tried to manipulate the captain with your mind. Such disciplined control is impressive. I believe it also demonstrates a measure of trust you give to few others.”

There were no words to reply. Bert had said it all.

 

 

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

 

Captain Stone

 

Captain Stone decided to pay a visit to Fang when she left Bill in the dining room to consider their recent conversation about his future. However, first, she had a few things to consider. Bill was quiet and the dining room was a good place to plan her next move.

Fang had vaguely mentioned something about him not being the only one on the ship to have seen the wanted posting concerning her, or a similar statement. She wanted that clarified. She also wanted to attempt to catch him in a lie. Or not. With Fang, her intentions could change with the upcoming talk.

He was a bounty-hunter and probably a part-time detective on the side. There were not enough escapees to make it pay a livable wage, and travel between stars is anything but cheap. That meant there had to be more to him than she knew.

Fang probably traced people who tried disappearing into society, along with the money or property of others, which usually meant a spouse running away with a new life-partner. Skill in finding those individuals could pay him well. Most of those types of assignments offered a percentage of the value returned. However, not well enough to buy passage on a starship often, as seemed to be the case with him.

If he was on the other side of a narrow line of legality, just over the far side, and she on the other, their work was not all that different. She tried to make her ship appear honest and for the most part, her dealings were. She supplied a service in transporting items from one world to another. The rules of individual planets didn’t dictate her cargo. More than once, she’d been called a smuggler.

Importing certain items were always against local laws. There had been a planet settled by humans where all farming had to be done with draft animals. It was part of their religion and required. Contract in hand, Stone had arrived with five tractors—and located the farmer who wished to buy them. It had nearly caused a civil war. She was banned from returning.

They would have arrested and tried her if the ship hadn’t made an emergency liftoff. Banning her was the most they could do.

The fact that one or both worlds might object to her cargo was of little concern. In simplistic terms, her ship transported cargo from here to there. What petty laws, rules, and regulations that existed on each world were not her concern. If she was paid upfront, she did her best to arrive with the containers and their contents on time.

There were items she knew were not allowed on some worlds, but that was their choice. What was inside the containers, or if the descriptions on the bills of lading matched the contents or not, were not her concern. They were the province of others. She had a hard and fast rule, the same as most traders. A container was never opened on her ship.

That was the golden rule of traders. They took the information listed on the manifests as fact. The cargo was sealed.

That way, the ship, and the crew always had plausible deniability. They had been lied to about the contents of cargo pods listed on the manifest. More than once, she’d faced an official and plaintively said, “The invoice was to ship a crate. The shipper placed the list of contents on the container in the proper manner and we are an honest company that does not open containers, nor do we help ourselves to what we find in them. Our cargo hold is sealed before lift-off and your people removed that intact seal when we landed. Now, how can we possibly be held responsible for what was shipped?”

On a ship the size of the Guardia, a hundred crates could be hidden behind a false wall or similar—and had been. People had been likewise been transported. Not a lot, but a few that paid well. Stone didn’t care what they’d done if nothing happened on her ship. They were also secured in a locked hold, complete with food, water, and toilet facilities. Smuggling was second nature to traders since the dawn of time on the oldest planets in the galaxy.

No sense in taking unnecessary chances, which brought her back to