"...we have liftoff."

The cockpit rumbled. Dallas kept his eyes on the sky, dimly aware as the ship rose that the city skyline was disappearing. Lights on the surrounding consoles tried hard to distract him, but he kept looking up at the last star visible as the dark sky slowly converted to deep red with the rising sun.

Gareth was speaking to the A.I., he heard technical jargon, and the word ‘honey’ two or three times. So grateful he’s here, he thought to himself, and thanked the Divine that Gareth had signed on to help him. Dallas had had no idea that Gareth wouldn’t have let Dallas take the ship without sacrificing his own life first, or how many things Dallas would have had to know to successfully steal the thing and head into orbit. This would have been a steep learning curve indeed, and not a challenge that he could have adequately met!

He wondered, too, about how they might try to stop him; there were very few fighter ships on planet; since the Corporates had been driven back so soundly twenty years before, Pater had sunk the defensive resources into battle satellites in orbit to dissuade any approaching invaders, and an army of a hundred mechs on the ground, spread out in hidden underground bunkers too far apart to be destroyed by a single strike. Thus far it had worked; the Galatine had primarily been a symbol, the military standing guard and watching over but at sixty tonnes it was the biggest and most fearsome battlemech in the system, perhaps even the quadrant!

So being shot down by satellites or another mech’s long range missiles weren’t likely.

He was going into space.

Space…he’d used the word so many times growing up. He wondered if he’d miss home? How long it would take before he’d begin longing for the red dirt, the forests, the streets and familiar buildings, the…

Secunda.

No, he thought. No. You didn’t fall in love with Secunda. You fell in love with who you thought she was. Who you wanted her to be. It’s time to live in the real cosmos, Dallas. Where you’ll carve a name for yourself on the wall of the Galaxy, for all who’ll come after you to see.

Hm- he liked the sound of that…

Another star had appeared in the sky. Dallas focused on it. Soon, a hologram appeared in the middle of the cabin/cockpit: a blue-green circle of light around the new star, with a small line extending from it. “The Palefroi- Leopard-class starship transport” stated a set of words to its side, along with a series of scrolling, meaningless statistics beneath its name.

Dallas also saw there was a symbol on the side of the name of the ship- it was…

“A horse,” Dallas mumbled.

“Yes,” said Gareth softly. The horse’s head was white-furred with a white mane, looking to the right with a snarling expression on its face. “It may be an omen, Dallas. The steed that raises you to your destiny is similar to the one that raised you from childhood. But different as black from white, day from night, an angry storm from a calm summer breeze, a struggle from a life of ease…”

There was a quiet pause. The Galatine kept rumbling as the ‘star’ grew larger in the view-shield. “I never knew you for a poet, Gareth,” Dallas said.

“Every king, warrior, robber baron and business magnate needs a bard to sing of his deeds, Dallas.”

“Or a good PR firm.”

“Same thing.”

The ship in the distance had gotten closer, the word Palefroi in larder text hovering in the air.

“Are we docking with them?” Dallas asked, his head still resting back in the horizontal position.

“Yes,” Gareth said. “But when we get there, you will stand behind me and look arrogant and privileged, while I am going to play the good servant who wants what’s best for his master.”

“I’ll hardly need to act.”

“Sad, but true. The privileged part’ll get worn away pretty quick with the life we’re going to be leading for the next little while. And I certainly do want what’s best for you.”

“The oath?”

“That; plus, a good life for the master nearly always trickles down to his number-one servant.”

“You’re my only servant.”

“Don’t you forget it. Get ready; we’re about five minutes from docking. Gwen should be able to handle this. The hard part’ll be the captain.”

“How much’ll he charge us for passage?”

Gareth turned his head on his headrest and looked at Dallas. “Are you serious, boy? You didn’t bolt down term before you left dirt?”

“I didn’t know you had to.”

Gareth rolled his eyes back up to the ceiling. “The captain of the Does he know who you are? Not just your name, but your family?”

“Of course! Pater taught me to always be up-front and honest with my business dealings.”

You’ve got a whole choir of angels looking after you, boy. Without setting terms first, I guarantee the captain of the Palefroi let out a huge war whoop at the thought of a nobleman’s son getting onto his ship with a sixty-ton swordmech with no terms set beforehand. He’s going to take every last little green paper we have, and then maybe have a bouncer droid grab us by the ankles and shake us a few times to see if any coppers drop out.”

“And if I tell him he’s a liar and a cheat and I won’t pay?”

“Oh, no. You won’t do that. Then, he’ll flush us both out into space and have his whole crew vouch that we tried to take his ship from him.”

“But- but he can’t do that! That’s wrong!”

“So is stealing a sixty-ton mech and an ancestral laser sword from its rightful owner, Dallas. Lesson number one about life outside your family bubble: Everyone’s as dishonest as you. If the thought jumps into your head: ‘hey, if I was dishonest, I could get away with this by…’, then you need to assume the person you’re dealing with would do that same, awful thing. Because if the thought’s occurred to you, it’s occurred to them. And they have motivation to do terrible things.”

“LIke what? I’d never flush someone out into space!”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Spend a month hungry. Drinking dirty water. Stuck in space with no fuel, drifting, wondering if the ship you’re in will be a coffin that no one will ever find, save maybe scavengers a thousand years from now. Or worse, have someone threaten someone you love, like that little filly who must’ve broken your heart before you came here tonight. You’ll find you’re willing to do quite a number of things you’d never have considered to keep them safe, fed, alive for another day.”

Dallas thought of the story his father had told him, about what he’d done to the Corporates the day Dallas had been born. “And…you think the captain of this ship might have gone through that kind of pain in his life?”

“If he hadn’t, he would’ve stayed on his own world and built a life there. Even on the most developed core worlds, less than one-in-ten ever leave their home planets for any reason. Few than one-in-a-million ever do what we’re doing, which is leaving the system and probably the quadrant completely. And this captain and his crew are all in that one-in-a-million, for reasons you just better not ask about.”

“But what if-”

“Docking with orbital vessel in one-hundred seconds,” Gwen the A.I. said in her calm voice.

The ship outside had grown larger; it was the size of several of the biggest buildings in New Avalon put together, and Dallas was in awe of it. What looked like a small port had opened up in its underside, but as they drew closer Dallas could see it was actually large enough for the sixty-ton battlemech to fit in easily.

The comm bleeped in a high-low sound pattern Dallas hadn’t heard before. “What’s that?” he asked.

“That’s the Palefroi,” Gareth said, pushing a button on his armrest that rose his seat to an upright position. “That sound is a hailing signal; they want to talk to us. Gwen? Open the channel, but don’t let them hear anything Dallas Morgan says.”

“Yes, Mister Gareth, sir. Channel open.”

Gareth said, “This is the Galatine, of New Avalon, requesting permission to come aboard.”

Dallas heard a number of cheers in the background, which were quickly shushed by another voice. “Battlemech Galatine, you are very, very cleared for entry. Come on in! You’re just in time for a party we were throwing in your honor!”

“Well,” said Gareth, his brow furrowing and his voice trying to sound festive but wary, “that’s certainly wonderful news. But I’d like to ensure that terms are set before we enter. Otherwise, we might just have to turn around and head back.”

“Is…is this Dallas Morgan of the house of Morgan?”

“Negative, Palefroi. This is Gareth Lepruke. I am a commissioned Lieutenant in the armed forces of the House of Morgan, decorated with the Dark Horse Star from the battle of the Corporates invasion, pilot of the Galatine and acting guardian of Dallas Morgan. I say again, do you wish to discuss terms of transport, or do we turn around and return?”

The other side paused. Dallas thought he heard frantic whispering on the other side for a moment, which concluded with angry, mumbled ‘get outta that chair- move!’ Some rustling followed, concluded by a newer, gruffer voice. “Battlemech Galatine, this is Captain James Orkney of the Palefroi. We had an agreement that you would engage us for transport. We turned down several other jobs to take this one, and we expect you to honor your side of the agreement, or, ah…consequences will follow. Understand?”

“My sympathies, Captain. But we will not be entering your ship until a specific price and other terms are negotiated. And any sign of aggression will be met with twice as much force from us, as will any attempts to capture us with a tractor beam. You’ve looked up the Galatine, I’m certain, so you know her service record, weapons specs and what she’s capable of. Especially if we’re locked in the innards of your ship.”

There was a quiet pause on the other line. The party was clearly over.

“One-hundred-thousand SeeYous,” said the captain’s voice, “plus a room for each of you and meals with the crew. We drop you off at the next station on our way back to the core.”

“I think we’ll be giving you fifty SeeYous, paid in paper Texas Dollars- TeeDees we call’em in these parts of the rim. Mister Morgan and I will share the same room, our meals will be delivered to our door, and we and our battlemech, unchanged and undamaged, will be delivered to the first station we encounter once we pass the border of the core; according to my sources, if you’re going directly there, that should bring us to outpost Krishna in the Vishnu-4 system.”

“You’re killing me here, Lieutenant. The fuel alone’s gonna come to at least a good thirty SeeYous; once I pay my crew, that’s gonna come to another ten.”

“Then you’ll have the equivalent of another ten Conglomerate Units in untraceable paper currency to buy yourself a friend who cares. Fifty, or we turn around and head back. Unless you want to try and fight it out?”

“Gareth, are you sure about…”

Gareth held up his hand and glared at Dallas while shaking his head. A long minute passed while Gareth looked at the screen and waited.

Gareth tapped a button on the console, and a holotablet appeared hovering in the air above the console.

“This is the important part,” Gareth wrote with his finger on the tablet so Gareth could see. “They are deciding whether or not to accept or counter-offer.”

Dallas motioned for Gareth to pass the tablet to him. Gareth tapped a spot on it and dragged it through the air over to Dallas with his index finger. “But they are BIGGER than us!” Dallas wrote underneath and shoved it back to Gareth.

Gareth smiled “not big enough to have weapons. We have the advantage.”

As if on cue, the hailing frequency bleeped. “Fifty-five SeeYous,” the captain’s voice said, “I’ll need to buy myself a drink when this is all over.”

“Well, Captain, I must say you drive a hard bargain, but I’ll accept. Gwen? Send over the contract. Once Captain Orkney has signed it and it’s gone through the black, we will board and we can be friends again.”

“Yes, Mister Gareth, sir.” Gwen said primly.

“Galatine out,” Gareth said decisively. A descending set of three notes ended the conversation.

“That was amazing, Gareth!” Dallas said! “Where’d you learn to negotiate like that?”

“School, the army, your father. You pick things up in life, even if you’re sitting at a desk.”

“But how do we know he’s going to stick to the agreement? If I were him, I’d just…”

“Just what, Dallas?” Gareth was smiling.

“Well- if I had no morals…I’d kill the passengers and take all their money, and the mech they were traveling on.”

“Ah, that’s where the contract comes in. Once it’s signed, it goes out there, into the black, anytime any member of the crew wants a job, that contract’s going to pop up. And if it wasn’t fulfilled? Or worse, broken and people killed an stolen?”

“The gendarmes will come for them?”

“Oh, no. Our here? That’d be the least of their worries. Half the people we’ll meet have warrants out on them. No, worse. If they pull that kind of trick, not one of them will ever get a decent paying job out here in the black again. Even pirates won’t hire them, if they break a contract. So we are safe, you won’t be killed or, more likely, you would’ve been held for ransom and lost the Galatine forever, and…”

“Mister Gareth? The contract’s been signed and is out in the black. We are being welcomed aboard.”

“Thank you Gwen. Yes, Dallas. You’ve taken a new step. Now, you’re going to take another.”

“What’s that?”

“Gwen? Give full manual control to Dallas Morgan. He’s going to dock the Galatine, just like the y do at the end of every successful mission in the sim-games, correct, Dallas?”

“Yes, sir,” said Dallas, smiling and pushing the buttons on his armrest to raise him vertical and move him to the helm.

A different world, indeed…

----

To Be Continued...