Cherryh, CJ – Merchanters Luck
Cherryh, CJ – Merchanters Luck
C.J. Cherryh
Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter I
Their names were Sandor and Allison… Kreja and Reilly respectively. Reilly meant
something in the offices and bars of Viking Station: it meant the merchanters of
the great ship Dublin Again, based at Fargone, respectable haulers on a loop
that included all the circle of Union stars, Mariner and Russell’s, Esperance
and Paradise, Wyatt’s and Cyteen, Fargone and Voyager and back to Viking. It was
a Name among merchanters, and a power to be considered, wherever it went.
Kreja meant nothing at Viking, having flourished only at distant Pan-paris and
Esperance in its day: at Mariner, under an alias, it meant a bad debt, and the
same at Russell’s. The Kreja ship was currently named Lucy, and she was
supposedly based at Wyatt’s, which was as far away as possible and almost
farther away than reasonable for such a small and aged freighter, claiming to
run margin cargo for a Wyatt’s combine. Customs always searched her, though she
called here regularly. Small, star-capable ships on which the crew was not
related by blood, on which in fact there were only two haggard men, and one not
the same as at last docking… such ships were not comfortably received at station
docks, and received careful scrutiny.
Lucy was a freighter by statement, a long-hauler which ran smallish consignments
independent of its combine’s close direction, since the combine had no offices
on Viking. She was a passenger carrier when anyone would trust her—no one did,
though the display boards carried her offer. She took merchanter transfers if
she could get them.
That was how Sandor Kreja lost his crew at Viking, because the crew, one old and
limping sot who was paying work for his passage, found his own ship in port and
headed for it without a by-your-leave. The old man had only signed as far as
Viking; he had been left behind at Voyager for a stay in hospital, and he was
simply interested in catching his own ship again and rejoining his family: that
was the deal.
It made Sandor nervous, that departure, as all such departures did. The old man
had been more curious than most, had nosed about contrary to orders, had been
into everything—lied, with epic distortion, about where his Daisy had been, lied
about deals they had made and what they had done in the wars and what he had
done in dockside sleepovers, entertaining as it was. His departure left Sandor
solo on Lucy, which he had been before and had no wish to try more often than he
had to, running a freighter blind tired. But more, the old man left him with a
nagging worry that he might have turned up something, and that his considerable
talent for storytelling might spread tales in stationside bars that Lucy had
peculiarities. Viking had tightened up since Lucy’s last docking: warships had
pulled in and rumors surmised pirate trouble. They were nervous times; and a
little talk in the wrong places could get back to station offices. It might,
Sandor thought, be time to move on.
But he had conned his way onto the loading schedule, which meant they were going
to fill his tanks and he was going to get cargo if he could only subdue his
nervousness and keep from rousing suspicions this trip round. Forged papers
labeled him and Lucy as Wyatt’s Star Combine, which had a minor interest-bearing
account at Voyager and Viking, outside its territories, a fund meant for
emergency use if ever one of its ships should have to divert over from regular
WSC ports. It was his seventh call here on the same faked papers—in fact he
foresaw the time when the stamp sheets in the book would be filled and station
would have to renew his papers with the real thing, a threshold he had crossed
before, and which made life for a time much more secure… until some needed