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intended for speed, speed, speed. As a vessel legally registered to handle
charter and consignment jobs, it always had some specific legal mission of its
own, although nobody was particularly fooled about its true purpose.
The smugglers' defense was a variation on the shell game; several ships like
the
Runner would take off from various ports on seemingly legitimate missions at
roughly the same time. Each would head for a different place, but only one or
possibly two would actually pick up transfer loads of contraband.
Consistently stopping and boarding the wrong ones could prove embarrassing for
the interhex au-thorities, who were in many ways privateers not much
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dif-ferent from the crooks they chased except that they'd chosen a lesser
return in exchange for doing things the le-gal way.
Several large waterproof containers had been taken aboard by the
Runner from what appeared to be a small and seedy trawler, although it was
hard to say just what the other ship really looked like in the nearly total
darkness in which it was done. It was now the
Runner's job to get those containers to another ordinary and familiar coastal
vessel that would take a detour at some secluded part of the coast and
transfer them once more to small boats to go into shore and from there to a
distribution point.
Mavra Chang was fascinated by the process. Once they were under way under full
steam, she went over to Zitz, the friendly mate who'd always liked to chat,
and commented, "I don't see how you manage it."
"Eh? What?"
"Linking up with a specific small boat in open ocean, in either direction. I
don't see how you can find her unless she sits there like a sitting duck
waiting for you, and I'm sure she doesn't."
"You're right," the Zhonzhorpian admitted. "It's actually quite simple. No
state secret except for the specifics of ev-ery operation. Before we set out,
we get a very fine cus-tomized grid of the entire hex.
Thousands of tiny little squares. The rendezvous ship is a scheduled carrier;
we know its route in advance, and we know in which of a range of squares along
its route the pickup will be made. She doesn't stop, not even, you'll notice,
for the transfer. We just find her and match her course and speed."
"It was impressive and quick," Mavra admitted. "Then we proceed to our
destination hex, which has an-other hex map, another customized grid, and
another series of scheduled local carriers. We plot them at all times. Once
I'm there, I determine where the best one is located, head for it, and reverse
the process.
Unlike the pickup, I will al-ways have a choice of two or three ships, and
even they won't know which one of them will receive the goods from us, so
there can't be any leaks ahead of time. Similarly, there were several ships
similar to this one, any one of which might have picked up the cargo from the
first vessel.
They didn't know it would be us, and it might not have been. If anything went
wrong, if someone else got there ahead of us, or if they were being shadowed,
they would al-ter their course slightly from the grid and we wouldn't have
seen her."
"I see," she commented. "Very slick."
"There are so many spies and agencies out there that it's impossible to keep
them from infiltrating one ship or an-other on the two ends," Zitz told her.
"What is possible is, since not even the captain knows if he's the one until
he passes the pickup point, we control access to the goods. They pick up;
they transfer to one of a number of similar vessels. What does the spy report
when he, she, or it finally makes port? And most of the next ports are nontech
hexes, too, by design.
My crew stays with me, so I know them all. Our rendezvous ship even now does
not know it will be the one, so there's no rumors or leaks from its crew.
When we do the transfer, same rules applying, they will take it on and proceed
immediately to a point offshore in a nontech or semitech hex and transfer it
again, being met by crews who pick the position themselves, then proceed into
port on schedule. By the time anyone aboard can get the word out, the cargo
and pickup people are long gone. As soon as I make the transfer, I destroy the
grid maps. My counterparts will eventually intersect the pickup freighter back
there, by the way, see that there is no coded sign that anything is to be
picked up, and proceed on as if they had picked up something anyway."
"So this is your point of maximum vulnerability," she noted. "You have the
cargo and maps aboard."
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"True, but for all of that we have ways of dropping the cargo even under
pursuit. The captain only needs to re-member one grid position and the code
number of the grid map no matter where along the route we might be forced to
drop it.
We would not then bring it in, but once he trans-ferred the grid location and
grid code upon making port, someone else eventually would."
"Sounds almost foolproof."
"It's very good," he admitted. "I think it might not be improved upon. It is,
however, still a risky business, partic-ularly in high-tech water hexes like
Kzuco. We try and stay out of them as much as possible, but it's not possible
on this run. That makes the money much better, but the risks are far greater.
That's why we're running the short side of Kzuco along the Awbri coast.
Awbri's nontech, not the best vantage point, and once we're across the border
into Dlubine, we're back in semitech and safer. From that point we can remain
in non- and semitech water hexes. I
do worry about Dlubine, but not as much as here."
"Dlubine has local conditions that create problems?"
"Several. For one thing, it's crawling with patrols, sand-wiched between a
high-tech land and a high-tech water hex and with a lot of islands with small
harbors and hidden coves. Also, in Dlubine it's easier to run by day than by
night. You'll see what I mean the first night we're there. The water's lit up
like a high-tech city, making it easy to spot you. Easier by day, yes, but
murder on us."
"Huh?"
"You can almost make soup with the water, it's that warm, and the air
temperature in the middle of the day is close to lethal for many life-forms. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]