Ballistic (The Palladium Wars), стр. 47
“Welcome to Minotaur, Captain Decker,” he said. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Park, the CO of this ship.”
“Thank you, Commander. I’m sorry to have to drop such a mess into your lap. But we were in Rhodian space when we discovered the nature of our cargo, and I ordered my comms officer to contact the nearest Rhodian warship immediately. That happened to be you.”
“Chance has it in for me,” Dunstan said. She flashed a sympathetic smile.
“Quite a ship you have there,” he said. “It started out life as a Tanaka type two thirty-nine. I like what you’ve done with it. That’s a lot of expensive custom work. You must be doing well.”
“Zephyr is owned by a small consortium,” Decker said. “They thought the niche potential justified the investment. So far, we’ve been able to keep them happy.”
“Well, I’m afraid you won’t be making a profit on this run. The Rhodian Navy is confiscating the warhead you’ve been hauling. But you knew that would happen when you contacted us.”
Decker nodded.
“Sometimes you end up eating a week of operating costs. We will manage.”
“Not that I don’t applaud your adherence to interplanetary law in this instance, but I can’t imagine you were at all keen on letting us have such a close look at your ship. I must wonder why you turned that cargo over instead of just returning it. Or dumping it in deep space somewhere.”
“Because that’s not a load of inert iron ore or a pallet of stims we’re talking about,” she said. “It’s a thermonuclear warhead. I don’t deal in those. And I don’t want to be involved with anyone who does.”
“We’ve both been behind the stick for too long to play pretend, Captain. Your boat isn’t a standard courier. In fact, if I had to go to a shipyard and say, ‘Take this yacht and turn it into something that’s perfect for smuggling,’ I think it would look a lot like that. So forgive me some degree of skepticism. That’s one of the risks you take when you accept contracts that involve unregulated ship-to-ship cargo transfers in the middle of nowhere.”
Captain Decker smiled wryly.
“We take above-the-table business most of the time. High-value express delivery. Sometimes passengers. And sometimes we do discreet cargo hauls if the rate is good enough. But we don’t do weapons or munitions. Nobody’s getting hurt by a few crates of tax-free comtabs.”
“Like you said, that cargo you brought with you isn’t that. Looks like you need to improve your screening process. Something a little more reliable than the honor system.”
“My chief engineer and my pilot both scanned that container when it came on board. It came up clean. They used a Category Six security capsule for that warhead. I’ve never even seen one of those outside of a classified government environment.”
“So you got duped,” Dunstan said. “Happens to the most diligent sometimes. And you did the right thing. But that’s still a thermonuclear warhead. A weapon of mass destruction. Subject to strict interplanetary control treaties.”
He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest.
“I can’t just bring that nuke back to Rhodia and hand it over without comment. Fleet command is going to go ballistic over this. Just the knowledge that there are unaccounted nukes floating around on the black market is going to set a whole lot of people on edge. You will have to turn over every bit of data from your ship, because intelligence will want to take your records apart forensically.”
“We will hand over whatever they want,” Decker said.
“You need to pick your customers with more care, Captain Decker,” Dunstan said. “I imagine your consortium would be very unhappy if you lost your operating license. Or your ship. I’m the Rhodian Navy out here right now. If I decide to impound it, nobody is going to stop me.”
He was pleased to see a little bit of genuine distress poking through the cracks in Captain Decker’s cool composure. If he impounded Zephyr, her career would be over, and her crew would have a hard time getting hired on other ships.
“I know your kind,” he said. “Independent commercial skippers in fast little ships. You start taking shady contracts in between the legal work. Start thinking you’re hot shit because you got some contraband past a slow-ass customs boat or two. The real world isn’t like that, Captain. Sooner or later someone pulls one over on you. And then you end up on some third-rate orbital transfer station loading containers all day for a living, and you wonder how it all went sideways. If you’re lucky.”
“You can impound my ship,” Decker said after a moment of consideration. “That’s your right. The consortium would file suit and get her back. Probably. But they’d give her to someone else; you’re right about that.”
She shook her head and sighed.
“I got a little careless, and I messed up. I just figured we would get some good will for coming to you on our own accord. For making sure there isn’t a nuclear warhead out there going back to sender. Or floating around in space for some salvager to find.”
The shrug that followed was resigned and defiant in equal measure.
“I’ve loaded containers for a living before. It wasn’t such a bad life.”
Zephyr’s crew was an interesting bunch. The first officer was a veteran of the Pallas Brigade, and Dunstan knew in the first thirty seconds of their talk that nothing he could say would scare that man, someone who had fought Gretian Blackguards hand to hand in the tunnels of his home world. Bosca had reported that the only moment of friction during the boarding had happened when he had asked the Palladian to turn over his kukri. Pallas and Rhodia were staunch allies, and the