STARLINER by David Drake

A public telephone, armored like a tank, stood a few meters away. Ran retrieved his credit chip from the taximeter, ran to the phone, and punched TRIDENT on the keypad. The response was strikingly fast.

“Bridge,” announced the Empress’s AI through the flat-plate speaker.

“Emergency,” Ran said. “Deck officer. Over.”

The speaker rattled. “Holly, over,” it said tensely.

“Wanda, a Trident passenger has got a problem,” Ran explained, “and we’re going to solve it.”

Ran made a series of curt statements and requests. One thing he didn’t say, because he didn’t want it on record, and because he didn’t know how Franz Streseman, distraught at his elbow now, would react.

Ran hadn’t recognized the actual kidnappers. But he was quite certain that the face glaring from the back of the kidnap vehicle was that of Gerd von Pohlitz.

* * *

Wanda Holly was alone in the rental car. Ran waved her over to the front of Tidal’s Municipal Building, a one-story structure with rammed-earth walls and a littered areaway. Twilight and neon from nearby establishments helped disguise the building’s aura of filth.

“You got to understand,” said the Town Marshal, a woman named Platt with gray hair in unattractive curls, “that just because a couple outsiders say there’s a crime, that don’t make it a crime.”

“We understand you perfectly, madam,” Franz Streseman said in a voice that could have struck sparks from steel. He started to get into the car.

“Just a minute, buddy,” Platt snapped, thrusting her arm out in front of the young Grantholmer. If she’d done that to a local, she’d have been handed the limb back with the fingers missing, but she obviously figured it was safe to bully passengers from a luxury starship. They wouldn’t make a scene.

Platt turned her attention to Wanda in the driver’s seat. “What kind of weapons you got in there?” she demanded.

The deputy, a fat drunk named Boardman, with a billiard-ball scalp and dried vomit on his vest, watched the proceedings from behind an automatic shotgun. If he did start shooting, he was as likely to cut his superior in half as he was to do whatever passed for his intention, but that wouldn’t help whoever else was around during the wild volley.

“Weapons?” Wanda said in open amazement. “Why, none. I’m just here to pick up a distressed passenger from my ship.”

Platt bent to check the empty luggage spaces under the seats. Rental vehicles were built without frills like paneling and insulated bodies. This car obviously carried nothing but the Trident officer herself.

“Surely it’s not illegal to be armed in Tidal, Marshal?” Ran asked.

Someone in a passing car jeered and threw a fruit skin at Platt. It slapped her pants leg. She didn’t appear to notice. “Don’t you be telling me what’s against the law here, buddy!” she snarled. “We don’t need Earthmen telling us what’s what!”

She lowered her arm and backed away. Franz nodded curtly and climbed into the car. Ran followed, calling, “Our government will protest about this!”

“Fuck you outsiders!” Platt cried. “Just because some broad goes off for a good time with a couple local boys, you wanna make it a crime! Well, I’m not having you starting a shootout in my jurisdiction!”

Boardman, her deputy, belched. He’d been doing that regularly since Ran and Franz appeared to make their complaint. Tidal needed some sort of officialdom, however minor; the trouble was that in a society which prided itself so thoroughly on rugged individualism, the sort of folks willing to take municipal jobs were incapable of handling any job competently.

Wanda put the car in gear. It rode even more harshly than the taxi had. “What was that charade about?” she asked.

“Just that,” Ran agreed. “A charade. If we didn’t make a formal complaint like civilized people, they’d figure that we were going to behave like locals—and be ready for us when we did.”

“They, in this case,” Wanda said, “being a rancher named Humboldt who came here from Grantholm thirty years back. He’s not in a big way of business, but he’s got about a dozen hired hands at any given time.”

Wanda looked like a nervous driver because her head and eyes were constantly in motion. Ran noticed that her hands and feet were steady on the controls, however, making only necessary corrections and those small ones. The car was headed back toward Longleat and the Empress.

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