Pulsar Race (Starship’s Mage #9.5) - Glynn Stewart Page 0,7

limits lay…and Ivan Halloway knew he had no physical courage.

“I can just walk away,” he whispered.

“That is no longer acceptable,” Aquila snapped. “This is my offer, Mage Halloway: my people will insert a ship into the Pulsar Race. Once they contact you, you will disable Captain Charpentier and hold his ship on course until they board.

“You will be safely dropped off anywhere you wish, so long as you never speak of what happened. One hundred and ten thousand dollars and your life, Mage Halloway.”

Ivan swallowed. He couldn’t see a way out of this.

“Two conditions,” he finally managed to force out against his fear.

“Conditions, Mage Halloway?”

“Yes,” Ivan said, quailing under Aquila’s eyes. “Charpentier’s debts are cleared. All of them. You take his ship, but he owes no one anything. I get the feeling you can do that.”

“It is certainly possible,” Aquila admitted, his sharp gaze still burning into Ivan. “And your second?”

“Karl lives,” Ivan stated firmly. “I’ll help you steal his ship, but my friend doesn’t get hurt.”

Even if he was left with nothing but the clothes on his back, Karl Charpentier was a brilliant pilot, engineer and starship commander. His skills and history were known—he could find new work that paid well enough to keep his son taken care of.

The car was very silent as Aquila continued to study Ivan, his gaze burning into the ex-navy man’s eyes.

“Very well,” the crime boss conceded. “I will clear Charpentier’s debts once Restoya is seized. He will suffer no injuries he does not bring upon himself. Sufficient, Mage Halloway?”

Ivan didn’t get the impression he was going to get much more out of Aquila, so he nodded meekly.

“Jester, bring us around to our friend’s building,” Aquila ordered. “Singer, give him the money once he’s on his way.

“We’re done here.”

4

Xanth was a solidly prosperous MidWorld System, which meant that the inhabited planet had six midsize orbital stations. Other systems had larger or more complicated stations, but Xanth had gone for single-ring spoke-and-wheel designs. Ships docked at a center spire that remained motionless, and then people took transit pods out to the rotating rings with their half-gravity of centripetal pseudogravity.

Charpentier was waiting for Ivan when he got off the shuttle, the sandy-haired man looking utterly at home in the microgravity of the docking bay.

“That’s all you’re bringing?” he asked as he saw the small bag Ivan was carrying with him.

“I’m not staying on your ship long-term, Karl,” Ivan replied, shaking his head at his friend. He had no idea how he was going to tell Charpentier that there was no way he was keeping the ship. Either way, though, he’d never planned on staying aboard Restoya for long.

“And I guess the Navy taught you to pack light,” Charpentier conceded. “Come on; I want to get to one of the observation decks. I want you to see my baby before we fly on her!”

Ivan chuckled.

“And here I thought I was going to have to ask,” he told his friend. “I’ll see the simulacrum, but it’s not quite the same.”

While the one-hundredth-scale silver model at the heart of any jump-ship was the starship in several critically important senses, it was also only one color and didn’t give you any sense of scale.

“I’ve already made a reservation for lunch. Come on.”

Ivan followed his friend through the busy station, dodging around people who were clearly much less used to microgravity. There was a path where the ground was inlaid with gravity runes, but it was roped off and only available to members of assorted clubs.

If Ivan was planning on becoming a pilot long-term, he’d get that membership, but his plan was still to return to Serendipity. He was surprised, though, that Charpentier didn’t have one.

“You don’t have a Captains’ Club membership or something?” he asked his friend as they reached the edge of the receiving bay.

“I did,” Charpentier said. “Wasn’t essential, though, so I let it lapse. Every expense I can cut helps pay for Lyle’s school. So far, so good.”

“Isn’t school paid for by the Xanth government?” Ivan asked. They’d certainly gone to a system-run school.

“Penny wanted him in a good school, so he ended up at Pleathers,” Charpentier said. “That’s where his friends are, his soccer team is…I can’t pull him out and send him to a regular school after he’s been there for five years.”

Ivan whistled silently.

Pleathers Academy was probably not the most expensive or prestigious school on the planet, but it was definitely up there. Unless he misremembered, the current system governor had graduated from Pleathers.

It