Milk Run (Smuggler's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1)

  This book and parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by the United States of America copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual persons, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

  Visit us on the web at: www.solarclipper.com

  Copyright © 2016 by Nathan Lowell

  Cover Art J. Daniel Sawyer

  Cover art by Artistic Whispers

  First Printing: August, 2016

  Books in the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper Series

  Trader Tales

  Quarter Share

  Half Share

  Full Share

  Double Share

  Captain’s Share

  Owner’s Share

  Seeker's Tales

  In Ashes Born

  To Fire Called *

  By Darkness Forged *

  Smuggler's Tales

  Milk Run

  Suicide Run *

  Home Run *

  Shaman Tales

  South Coast

  Cape Grace *

  Fantasy by Nathan Lowell

  Ravenwood

  Zypheria’s Call

  The Hermit of Lammas Wood

  * Forthcoming

  To my friend, Kay Persichitte.

  She guided me from the sidelines,

  inspired me by her example,

  and asked the questions that brought me here.

  Chapter 1

  Port Newmar: 2363, May-25

  Natalya Regyri watched the teacup topple from her hand and crash to the floor. It felt like slow motion. Something captured by a high-speed camera for her later perusal in forensic dissection. Shards of white and red skittered across the smooth wooden planks as the tea splashed and stained them. Droplets of tea fell into the pool of blood. The man’s eyes stared, flat and unresponsive as it spread beneath his head.

  “Natalya, what happ—” Zoya’s voice cut off with a quick, harsh, indrawn breath.

  “He fell,” Natalya said, her voice faint, barely a whisper. “I touched him and he fell.”

  Margaret Newmar appeared at Natalya’s elbow as if risen from between the planks of her studio. “What have you done?” Margaret’s voice echoed in Natalya’s ears.

  “I broke your cup.”

  Margaret snorted a disbelieving laugh. She grasped Natalya’s upper arm and pulled her back from the fluids expanding across the floor. “Not the cup, dear girl.” Shouldering her way in front of Natalya, she reached down and placed two of her ancient fingers against the side of Purvis’s neck. She waited only a moment before pulling her hand back. Not really long enough to tell, was it? She glanced up at Zoya. “Get her out of here. Wait outside.” Her voice came sharp. Used to giving commands. Used to being obeyed.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Zoya said and took Natalya’s wrist. “Come on, Nats.” She tugged and Natalya felt herself being led, a balloon on a string bouncing across the floor.

  “I broke her cup.”

  Zoya extended her arm to take her friend’s shoulders and pushed her along.

  Outside the tai chi studio, night cloaked the campus. The revelry of graduation had faded, the graduates themselves off to begin their new adventures. Natalya and Zoya should have been among them, but when Margaret Newmar—founding family Margaret Newmar, Sifu Margaret Newmar—singled you out to have one last cup of tea, you went. Natalya went. Zoya went.

  They’d found the honor had extended to a wider family of Newmar associates and students. Senior captains, sharp-faced women with hard eyes. Solid men with flat bellies and cold faces. Students like Andrew Purvis. Purvis the Pervert. The one man no woman ever wanted to be stuck in a room alone with.

  The one man sprawled now on the smooth, wooden planks of the tai chi studio, a pool of blood spreading under his head, his eyes staring—the shattered remains of Margaret Newmar’s antique bone china teacup strewn beside him. The one man who’d been alone with Natalya in the tiny galley at the rear of the studio.

  “What happened, Nats?” Zoya’s face floated in the darkness, a pale moon suspended above her dress blacks, her eyes dark as the night.

  “I touched him. I didn’t even push him. I wanted to get to the sink and he stood in the way.” Natalya’s voice felt like it came from someone else. She couldn’t speak on her own. Someone else must have been talking.

  “You touched him,” Zoya repeated.

  “A hand on his chest to keep him from grabbing me.”

  Zoya shook her head. “How did he fall?”

  “I touched him. He just fell backward.”

  The door opened. Margaret Newmar stood silhouetted in the light for a moment before stepping out to join them. Her silk dress glowed yellow in the starlight, her back stiff, her face a mask. “Is your ship ready to go?”

  Natalya shook her head once to try to make sense of the words. “My ship?”

  “The Peregrine? Is it ready to go?”

  The non sequitur made Natalya’s head spin. “Yes, but what about—”

  “His name isn’t Purvis. He’s not a student.”

  “Of course he’s a student. He was in my Orbital Mechanics class.” Natalya glanced at Zoya for confirmation.

  Ms. Newmar shook her head. “That was his cover. His name was Michael Gavin.”

  “His cover?”

  “He was undercover. Trade Investigation Commission.”

  Zoya’s eyes went wide. “He’s TIC?”

  “Was TIC,” Newmar said with emphasis on the first word. She looked at Natalya. “And you killed him.”

  “But I just touched him. He fell down.” Natalya shook her head. “I couldn’t have killed him. I couldn’t.”

  Margaret’s expression shifted to something unreadable. Her lips pressed into a line and the shadows around her eyes deepened. “Between you and me and Ms. Usoko here, I don’t think you did. I have no idea what happened in that room.” She shook her head slowly from side to side. “Unfortunately, one of those senior captains in there was his boss. As far as he’s concerned, Gavin couldn’t have killed himself and you were the only one with him.” Her sigh was barely audible over the quiet whispering of the night wind in the leaves above them.

  “But I didn’t.”

  “But you did file a grievance against him,” Margaret said.

  Natalya’s stomach turned cold. “Yes. Second year. He was—”

  Sifu Newmar held up one graceful hand, a white bird fluttering in the night. “I know what he was. You have a motive. You have an opportunity. You’re trained in three different forms of unarmed combat.” She paused to sigh again and smile sadly. “You’re the best fighter we’ve graduated in half a century.”

  “But I don’t want to be a fighter. It’s just an exercise.”

  “I know. You’re also one of the best engineers we’ve graduated in decades, but that’s all moot right now, my dear.” She paused and her face tightened again. “You killed an undercover TIC agent with his boss in the next room. What do you think will happen?”

  The night seemed to spin around her. Her head felt like somebody had pulled her brain out of her ears and replaced it with wet clay. She couldn’t think. She could barely breathe.

  “Is your ship ready to go?” Margaret repeated.

  Natalya struggled for a breath. “I just
need to get my grav-trunk and get aboard. I planned on leaving tomorrow.”

  Margaret looked at Zoya. “What did you see tonight?”

  Zoya shook her head. “Not a thing.”

  Their hostess’s smile looked a bit thin. “Work on that answer.”

  Zoya’s eyes grew wider still. “You think I’m responsible somehow?”

  Margaret shook her head. “I don’t think either of you is responsible. What I think doesn’t matter.” She nodded at the door. “They’re going to go sub-orbital in about two more minutes. If I were you, I’d be burning for the Burleson limit right now.”

  Natalya tried to speak but couldn’t get her mouth to move.

  Zoya took a half step forward. “But where could we go? If we dock anywhere ...” She shrugged. “They’re not going to just let us walk away.”

  “Where’s your tablet?” Margaret asked.

  Zoya pulled it out of the holster, the pale light of the screen casting her face in a blue-white glow.

  Margaret’s fingers flashed on her own device and Zoya’s machine bipped. “File for anywhere. Someplace in Ciroda, maybe. I just sent you the coordinates you need to get to and your contact’s name. Don’t tell anybody where you’re going. It’s out of TIC jurisdiction but don’t linger.”

  Zoya looked at her screen. “Wait, you mean me, too?”

  Margaret gave a tired chuckle. “Unless you want to spend the next ten stanyers trying to explain why your roommate killed an undercover TIC agent.”

  Natalya heard a man’s voice raised inside the studio and Margaret glanced over her shoulder.

  “I can give you about half a stan. Maybe.”

  Natalya’s face felt hot and her head didn’t seem to want to stay solidly on her shoulders. The night kept zooming around her.

  The scream of a shuttle coming in for a nighttime landing at the campus spaceport cut across the sky.

  “There’s your ride. They’ll turn that bird around and you need to be on it when it leaves.”

  Zoya stashed her tablet and nodded. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Margaret shook her head. “I’m not doing you any favors, but at least you’ll not spend the rest of your lives in prison.”

  “But I didn’t do it.” Natalya’s voice sounded like a whisper to her own ears.

  Ms. Newmar patted her shoulder. “You know it and I know it, but this is TIC. They’re not going to rest until somebody pays. Right now, that somebody looks a lot like you.” She leaned in close to Natalya’s face. “There’s nothing you can do here except sacrifice yourself on their altar of hubris. You and Ms. Usoko here get on that shuttle, take your ship, and disappear fast.”

  Zoya took Natalya’s arm and gave a little tug. “Come on, Nats. She’s right. We have to be on that shuttle.”

  Natalya let herself be towed and stumbled along the darkened path. “I didn’t do it.”

  Zoya sighed. “I know, Nats. I know.”

  Chapter 2

  Port Newmar: 2363, May-25

  They squeaked onto the shuttle just before the doors closed, still wearing their dress blacks and earning grins from the cadet crew. A sour-faced second mate shot them an angry glance and a pair of astrogation rankers glanced back from the front of the cabin as they buckled in.

  “Why are we doing this?” Natalya asked, leaning into Zoya to speak over the noise of the engines and the rumbling of the tires on the tarmac.

  Zoya glanced around before answering. “There’s nothing keeping us here, is there? Let’s talk about it when we get aboard.”

  “But I didn’t do anything.”

  Zoya patted Natalya’s forearm where it rested on the seat divider. “Later, Nats.”

  The shuttle turned onto the runway and immediately kicked in the afterburners. The low roar cut out any conversation as the acceleration pressed them back into the padded seats.

  Natalya sighed and gazed out at the academy campus rushing past the port. She’d arrived with such hope. Her head still felt stuffed with wet clay but her thoughts began to cut channels in it. She’d done nothing wrong. Purvis or Gavin or whatever his name was couldn’t be dead. He’d just fallen down. She had barely touched him before he collapsed. People didn’t die from that.

  Did they?

  Why run when she’d done nothing wrong? Shouldn’t she stay and exonerate herself?

  She thought of Margaret Newmar’s face. The sadness and certainty she’d seen there. Was it possible TIC would actually charge her with murder?

  The bottom dropped out of her world as the ship tilted skyward, shoving her farther back into the seat as they climbed out of the atmosphere while the ship seemed to slow the higher they climbed. In what seemed only moments, she saw the horizon curve from a flat line to the gently arching limb of the planet. The sky, already dark, turned crystalline when the stars no longer flickered through air and became hard-edged jewels. The shuttle raced around the planet, into the light from the primary, and back into darkness again, always climbing to catch the orbital.

  Natalya’s thoughts seemed to freeze in her head. Or perhaps they just ran in circles. The image of her cup falling, falling, falling to shatter on the floor. The flat expression on the man’s face. The slow spread of blood and the splash of tea. Margaret Newmar’s harsh commands. Her insistence that she run.

  The suspicion grew that Margaret Newmar knew more than she’d ever said. That the universe that Natalya had grown up believing in was not the one that actually existed. That the evening behind them might be more significant than she suspected. Fear wrapped her gut in cold coils.

  “You think they’ll let us leave?” Natalya asked, leaning her head close to Zoya’s.

  Zoya glanced at her. “Depends on whether they know where to look. How soon can we get undocked?”

  Natalya shook her head. “We’ll need to file a flight plan but once it’s on file, they’ll let us go. The Peregrine is small enough that we won’t need a tug or anything.”

  “So? A few ticks?”

  Natalya pondered, her thoughts still slowed and barely tracking. “Yeah. Something like that. Ciroda, she said?”

  “Margaret? Yeah. Ciroda. You know anybody in Ciroda?”

  “Maybe.” Natalya shook her head. “I don’t know. Not offhand.”

  Zoya patted Natalya’s forearm again. “One step at a time.”

  The sour-faced second mate cast them another impatient look, his brow furrowed in a scowl.

  Natalya pushed herself back into her seat as if to hold herself down. As if the seatbelt wasn’t keeping her from floating away. What was his problem? Could he smell the blood? She glanced down at her blacks, a bit wilted from a long day that had started so well with a graduation ceremony on the parade ground and ended … where? She closed her eyes and took a deep breath through her nose, pressing it out slowly through her mouth. She called on her discipline to focus on the imaginary candle in her mind. One flame danced in the dark. She focused on breathing. In. Out. The flame was her life. It burned alone in the dark. In. Out. Her mind grabbed the image and held it. Her training carried her into the place where only the flame mattered. Where other thoughts slipped into the background. Not gone. Waiting to re-emerge. For now, her mind stilled. Her breathing smoothed out. The cold coils in her belly relaxed their hold and warmth filled her body as the heat of the flame filled her mind.

  The thump of landing gear locking into the orbital’s shuttle bay vibrated in the background of her being. She released the flame, allowing it to fade away before opening her eyes. When she looked, the shuttle seemed clearer than it had when she’d entered. Her hands operated on their own, releasing the seatbelt from long practice.

  Zoya looked at her. “Are you all right?”

  A laugh struggled against her teeth.

  “Sorry. Bad question.” Zoya patted her arm.

  The shuttle crew came back through the cabin and opened the passenger door. The second mate bundled himself off the ship as soon as the crewman cleared the hatch. The two astrogators
stared at Natalya and Zoya. Rank order meant they had to wait for the two new third mates to leave the shuttle.

  Zoya nodded at the hatch. “Go ahead. We’re gonna need a tick to get our trunks off.”

  The taller of the two nodded a thank-you and bumped his seatmate on the shoulder. They hustled down the center aisle while a shuttle crewman released the latches that held the trunks at the back of the cabin. With a friendly nod, he stepped back to let them pass.

  “Safe voyage. Sars.” He grinned.

  Natalya knew him. A third-year. She’d seen him on campus but couldn’t remember his name.

  Zoya nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Mallory. Good luck with your classes.”

  Natalya nodded and tried to smile. She didn’t trust her voice. She held the memory of her flame, the peace of meditation against the sea of outside influence. The control handle responded to her fingers and the grav-trunk lifted off the deck. She followed Zoya off the ship and into the hurly-burly of the Port Newmar orbital.

  Chapter 3

  Newmar Orbital: 2363, May-25

  Zoya paused in the passage between the shuttle bay and the small craft docks. Most of the foot traffic had gone off toward the main docks or the lifts into the orbital proper. She looked at Natalya. “You hanging in?”

  “I still feel like this is a nightmare. I’m going to wake up in my rack in the dorm and it’ll be graduation day.”

  Zoya’s sympathetic grin felt good. “Yeah. I’m there. How soon before they lock down the orbital, d’ya think?”

  Natalya looked around, taking stock. She blinked her eyes several times and stretched her neck. “Nope. Still here.” She returned Zoya’s gaze. “Won’t be long now, but we’re almost at the ship. If we can get out of the docking bay, we’ll be free.” She sighed. “Still doesn’t feel right.”

  Zoya set off down the passage again. “I know. Not to me either, but Margaret Newmar hasn’t gotten to be nine hundred stanyers old by being stupid about the CPJCT.”