STRANGLEHOLD
a Captain Hesperus Adventure
Blaze O’Glory
Copyright Blaze O’Glory 2012
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
Thanks to Captain Hesperus, Ali, Cim, ClymAngus, George, and everyone on the Oolite BB
aegidian.org/bb/
Stranglehold is based on the universe of Oolite by Giles Williams, Elite by Ian Bell and David Braben, and draws on numerous contributions by the Oolite community.
Based on a likely story.
Captain Hesperus, a grey furry feline from Orrira, took another heaving gulp of the stale atmosphere. The air on board the Dubious Profit was sour and warm, ripe and rancid, and oxygen levels were critically low. The scanner blurred and swam in front of him as he struggled to pinpoint the powerful warship that was hunting him down. It was, he reflected bitterly, all Rus’s fault.
*
“It’s your own fault, Hesperus,” said Rus, the Dubious Profit’s engineer, when the problems with the atmospheric reprocessors first began. He glowered at his captain across the narrow, stained table that dominated the merchant vessel’s cramped messroom. “You’re a shifty, penny-pinching shyster with a cavalier attitude towards proper procedures, and you’re more concerned with your own pockets than you are with the welfare of your crew. I didn’t think it was possible for you to surprise me any more, let alone shock me, but this – this really is something special, even by your low standards.”
“It is a simple, straightforward business deal,” said Hesperus. “All parties gain. This is the fundamental basis …”
“Fundamental basis, my eye,” shouted Rus. “It’s wrong, Hesperus. Do you even know the meaning of the word?” Cords stood out on the engineer’s thick, blue-scaled neck: he thrust his head down, jabbing the stubby horn on the end of his nose forward. “It’s exploitation, pure and simple.”
Captain Hesperus was master and commander of the Dubious Profit, a battered Python-class cargo hauler of uncertain provenance and vintage. Like all merchant captains, he was a keen student of the body languages displayed by the myriad species and cultures that made up the Co-operative. A tic here, a twitch there: a cocked ear, inflated sac or arched antenna could be worth percentage points on any trade. Rus’s body language, thought Hesperus, was more basic than most – and with a limited vocabulary, all negative. The engineer came originally from Inera, a rich, heavily industrialised and technically sophisticated world, whose blue lizardlike inhabitants were noted for their aggressive trading strategies and enthusiastic pursuit of profit. Hesperus regarded them, on the whole, as a talented and admirably acquisitive people. Rus, though, did not fit the general profile of his species. Although skilled as an engineer – his ability to keep the Dubious Profit running made him an indispensable member of the crew – he displayed a baffling cynicism regarding the cut and thrust of trade. Deals and counter-deals, wrestling profit from the hands of another, the wild dance of opportunity that was to Hesperus the heartbeat of civilisation – Rus affected disdain for it all. Except, Hesperus thought sourly, when it came to extracting his own shares from the Dubious Profit’s voyages.
“Sploition, yes, the fat reptile talks a true!” A voice squeaked out from a ventilation grille tucked just below the ceiling of the Dubious Profit’s compact mess. “We are sploited, we demand!”
Rus, whose head had jerked somewhat at the phrase fat reptile, rose to his feet. “I am going,” he said, “to oversee the running of the ship’s engines. This is my job, for which I earn a wage.” He spoke slowly, aiming the words at the grille. “You,” he said, stabbing a finger at Hesperus, “sort this out. It’s not hard to do.” He strode from the room, bulling his way past Stepan, the ship’s Erbitian navigator.
“Hey, um, Captain,” Stepan said, sidling through the doorway and scratching at his matted chest-fur, “is there something wrong with the air? There’s like this funny smell …”
“Yes, Stepan,” said Hesperus, “there is something wrong. The atmospheric reprocessors—” he peered up at the grille through slitted eyes “—the atmospheric reprocessors are on strike.”
There was a chittering noise from behind the grille, a hint of something small and scuttling. “Strike, yes, we strike, down tools! No more air, we pay less rent!”
A second voice butted in. “No, foolish! Fat reptile say money move toward us, say Hespus pay rent to us.”
There were a series of dry clicks and rattles. “No, you foolish! I to talk, you to listen …” The voice ended in a sharp whistle, followed by a prolonged bout of clattering punctuated with shrill epithets of a coarsely anatomical nature.
Hesperus pawed at his face, tugging on his whiskers. Why, why could Rus not keep his pronged snout out of other people’s business? Several months ago Hesperus had found himself in a dead-end system, short of two crew and with an onboard environmental system that teetered constantly on the verge of total failure. He was required by Co-operative law to carry a minimum crew compliment; by necessity to maintain life support on board the Dubious Profit; and by nature to achieve these ends at minimal cost. It had been his good fortune to discover two small crustacean lifeforms, of limited means and lacking, perhaps, in mental acuity; it had been a masterstroke to entice them aboard the Profit and to convince them to set up quarters inside the environmental system itself, where they could provide it with the constant care and maintenance it required.
A masterstroke indeed: the environmental system was a simple onboard loop ecology, recycling atmosphere and waste via a hydroponic air-plant that scrubbed out CO2 and provided the ship with oxygen, algal proteins and clean water. It was not hugely efficient, but it was cost-free and very, very basic. The two crustaceans had proved themselves more than capable, even going so far as to express delight with their new “farm”. They pruned and tended to the air-plant, kept the filters clean and free from obstructions, and only ate a moderate amount of protein, topped up with galley refuse and occasional sproutings of the air-plant itself. It was an ideal situation, a perfect situation, until Rus ruined it by telling the two atmospheric reprocessors (as they were listed on the ship’s articles) that not only were they entitled to receive a wage, they also didn’t have to pay for their room and board.
This last objection Hesperus really couldn’t understand. He had levied a nominal charge only, far below any normal passenger rate and with practically no margin at all; moreover, he would only have actually presented them with their bill if they had ever shown a desire to leave the ship. Rus, however, had spoken on the subject at length, and at some volume, and now the two atmospheric reprocessors were refusing to operate the air-plant, demanding a renegotiation of their contract. Their timing was acute: the Dubious Profit had recently departed the Eronona system bearing a cargo for which Hesperus lacked proper paperwork. Consequently, the ship would attract unwelcome attention from Co-operative law enforcement at any main system station in the regional volume. Time – and distance – would take care of that, eventually, so the Dubious Profit had just embarked upon what was intended to be a series of long-range witchspace jumps, where they would avoid the spacelanes, skim fresh fuel from the stellar winds and carefully recycle their supplies: but without an operational air-plant, Hesperus and his crew might well expire before the fickle interest of the authorities died away.
Hesperus drew a deep breath, tasting the unpleasant taint already in the air. He hoisted up the corners of his mouth, and cocked his head towards the grille. “Gentlemen,” he said.
There was no answer: just the sound of struggle from behind the bulkhead, mixed with rasps
and high-pitched curses. Hesperus closed his eyes, his lips moving silently; then he strode forward and banged his hand against the wall. “Gentlemen!”
The noises ceased abruptly. Two pairs of cerulean blue dots, minutely faceted, peeked down from the shadows. “Hespus! You come to talk us money?”
“Gentlemen,” said Hesperus, smiling up at the grille. “Let me ask you a question. What is money?”
The blue dots bounced up and down in agitation. “Money we want!”
“Well, yes, naturally – but for what purpose? What is money actually for?”
There was a scrabbling from behind the bulkhead, and the dots blinked slowly, slightly out of sequence.
Hesperus paced back and forth, one hand raised. “Money is merely a token – a symbol, if you will. We exchange these symbols with each other in an effort to gain things which we want. It is the things we want which are important, not the actual money. Money itself is – is merely desire, frozen in time. By spending the money, we thaw out that desire, unleash its potential upon the universe, and win for ourselves those things we truly seek.”
The blue dots gazed down at him, rapt.
“So, gentlemen, reason tells us that only foolish people want money; the wise look instead to gain those things to which they actually aspire, to which mere money can only ever be a passport.” Hesperus clasped both hands behind his back, and rocked on the balls of his feet.
There was a long silence. The blue dots swivelled back and forth. “The fat reptile said Hespus would talk.”
“But he talks a true: money-stuff is cold and hard.”
“Some is not: some has bright pictures!”
“Foolish!”
Hesperus rapped his knuckles on the bulkhead. “Gentlemen; gentlemen, please! Let us return to basics. Let us identify those things which you actually want. You like food, for instance?”
A chorused reply: “Yes! Food we like!”
“And warmth, and comfort, and security?”
“Yes, yes! These we like!”
“And are you not warm, comfortable, secure and well-fed, here aboard my ship?”
“Ye–es …”
“Then you have no need of money! You are free from its tyrannical grasp! Oh fortunate people, you are satisfied in all your desires. Truly you must be the two happiest individuals in all of Creation; I envy your contentment.”
Two pairs of blue dots danced back and forth; two multilegged forms capered behind the grille. “We have what we want?”
“Undoubtedly,” said Hesperus, nodding.
There was a long string of hisses, chitters, clicks and squeaks. Hesperus maintained a fixed smile, eyes wide.
“We go now; we talk your talk between us. Decide later.”
“Take all the time you need, gentlemen,” said Hesperus. “If I am not mistaken, the cook has put some fresh scraps in the galley recycler; that will give you something to chew on, while you think things over.”