Battle Cruiser Read Free

how these things worked out. There would have been an investigation afterward, and if some prosecutor could argue successfully that the smuggler had been performing an innocent emergency landing due to a systems failure, I’d have been in trouble. I might not have been court-martialed, but my career would have been at an end.
    So, I asked myself as we slid through space and prepared to search the floating vessel in low orbit—would I have done it?
    Yes, I admitted to myself, I might have fired in an attempt to disable her engines. That could have resulted in the destruction of the spacecraft.
    Why fire? Because I was a Sparhawk. My House had been famous for producing stern leaders with harsh tempers for centuries.

-2-
     
    Most people think of space as being infinite, and I suppose that in the abstract, it is. But when one is hunched inside a cramped ship with engines that strain and shudder whenever thrust is applied, space seems finite indeed.
    Searching the smuggler’s ship was one of the tightest squeezes I’d ever endured. There were pockets where a man could stand if he hunched, but they were few and far between. Every centimeter of space was crammed with goods.
    Despite the crowding, the smuggler’s ship appeared to be well-maintained. Every system was operating with perfect efficiency. It did nothing for my mood to see the relative wealth of the other side.
    The worst part was I couldn’t find anything on the contraband list aboard her. I wanted to cite the pilot for smuggling—but I couldn’t.
    He stood with his arms crossed as Rumbold and I inspected his vessel, worming our way over packages from the forward cockpit to the frozen confines of the aft hold. It was in the depths of the hold where I finally found something interesting.
    “What are these?” I asked, holding up a silver tube with a screw-cap and a temperature readout on the side.
    “That’s an embryonic storage unit,” he said. “That’s someone’s child, unaltered.”
    I stared at the tube in surprise.
    “Why would you be carrying something medical?” I asked.
    He snorted. The pilot’s name was Edvar-something, and he hadn’t been the most gracious smuggler I’d ever met.
    “That’s how they do it out in the rocks,” he said. “You can’t conceive normally. There aren’t a lot of eligible mates running around for most spacers. Some get the urge, and they buy a premade like these.”
    I opened a large carton. There were dozens of them. Silver tubes with rounded ends and readouts on the side.
    “Frozen…” I said thoughtfully. “I’ll have to open one to check your story.”
    The man looked at me balefully. “That will ruin my stock. These aren’t cheap and many of them are special orders.”
    “All the same, I can’t simply take your word for it.”
    “Can’t you just check my manifest?” he demanded. “They’re all listed and cataloged.”
    I shook my head. “Such things can be easily doctored.”
    Edvar groaned and shook his head. “Do it in the hold, then. Just open one, and do it where it’s cold enough to keep the contents from melting. Open it delicately, all right? And reseal it as if it were your own kid you were exposing to space.”
    Eyeing him, I frowned. I didn’t like the idea of endangering someone’s future child—but it couldn’t be helped. The man had no company listed—no one he was working with. There wasn’t anyone I could call and ask for confirmation. He was an independent operator, something that was rare on Earth, but common on the fringe of the system.
    “All right,” I said. Taking the tube into the hold while Rumbold kept his eye on the man, I carefully unscrewed the top.
    I don’t know what I expected to find inside. A vial of white powder, perhaps. Or maybe instant death as a bomb went off in my face.
    But I discovered nothing so dramatic. The tube was a tiny, monitored environment. The embryo inside floated in a tube of frozen yellow liquid.
    I photographed it, ran a quick