Tanager's Fledglings (The Tanager Book 1) Read online

  Tanager’s Fledglings

  Cedar Sanderson

  Published by Stonycroft Publishing, an independent imprint.

  Copyright © Cedar Sanderson, 2017

  Cover art and layout by Cedar Sanderson, Cedarlili Art

  Thank you for buying an authorized copy of this book and supporting the author’s endeavors. Piracy and reproducing, scanning, or distributing any portion of this book without the author’s permission hurts the author’s ability to provide you with more quality reading material, and we appreciate your support greatly.

  Publisher’s Note: this is a fictional work. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s fevered imagination, and any resemblance to real places, persons, or events is strictly coincidental and should not be construed as reality intruding on fiction.

  This book is dedicated to:

  John “The Basset” Fear the Drool! and Molly “Babydog” for whom the original puppy was dreamed up.

  Acknowledgements:

  The author wants to acknowledge two people in particular, without whom this book would never have been completed. Amanda Fuesting and Kathleen Sanderson, thank you. Your encouragement at crucial moments kept me going at times I thought it would never get done.

  Chapter 1: Just a Pup

  Jem hefted the crate, ignoring the vehement hissing the Altarian lizard inside was emitting, and waited for the door to Peter’s warehouse to slide open. His gut was in a knot. This was not only his first trade expedition alone, but Peter was Walter’s brother.

  The door slid open, emitting a palpable cloud of scent and sound. Jem swallowed his gorge and stepped inside.

  “Shut the door! Were you born in a barn?” and that was Peter, irritated as always. “You’ll let out all the heat. Why should I pay to heat the whole station...?” He came around a rack of cages and stopped dead.

  “I have your lizard, sir.” Jem offered. He shifted awkwardly on his feet. Peter had an uncanny ability to make him feel like he were still a boy, with his voice breaking and all the grace of a wildebeest in a glass shop. The cage was heavy, but Peter’s gaze was heavier. Behind him, the door grumbled closed, but Peter’s focus didn’t waver.

  After an eternity, it seemed, Peter sighed. “Come on in, boy and tell me about it.” He pointed at a gap on the rack. “Set the damn thing there.”

  Jem followed him to the office, panting slightly in the hot, humid air of the Pet Emporium: Odd, Exotic & Rare! that Peter ran, providing the rarities of the galaxy to only the wealthiest clientele. It always smelled to Jem of animal droppings and bizarre creatures. When he was a boy, it had been the best place on the route to visit, where he could prowl the racks as long as he kept his fingers to himself, while Walter and Peter talked.

  In the office, Peter sat slowly on his old chair behind the desk. He swiveled around to face Jem. “Sit, sit...” he waved the young man to the other chair. Jem moved a box of freeze-dried mealworms and did as he was told.

  “So when did it happen?” the old man asked.

  “You knew?” Jem blurted, and then felt himself blush.

  “I knew he was ailing. And I knew he intended you to take over the ship when he was gone.”

  Jem nodded. There was a lump in his throat. He’d been with Walter for the last five trading seasons, and the old man had been the closest thing he had ever had to a father. He stammered, “Two... two stops ago. I did what he’d said to do, and then came straight here.”

  “You skipped a stop?”

  “He said...”

  “You did fine.” Peter fell quiet and studied him for a long moment. “So, what are your plans now?”

  Jem lifted his chin and took a deep breath. “I’d like to stay on his route.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yeah, I don’t need anyone, I can handle it all.” He frowned, then added, hesitantly, “this last season, I’ve done it all, really. The Tanager is a sweet set-up.”

  Peter nodded. “He was failing fast.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jem offered after a pause.

  “It was his time.” Peter passed a hand over his face, smoothing the wrinkled skin back into a friendly mask he wore for clients.

  “So, lad, what are you going to take a gamble on?”

  “What’s hot right now?”

  “Jewel lizards from Sirocco, but that’s not what you need. C’mon.” Peter grunted as he levered himself out of the chair and Jem stood, letting him go out first. Peter charged into the head-high racks of cages, muttering to himself. “Let’s see...”

  Jem would have liked to stop and look at the various creatures that were housed here, some in stasis, others alive and fascinating. But he knew if he didn’t keep up with Peter, he could get lost in here. Peter’s assistants, rumor had it, carried special location devices keyed to the station to help them find their way in and out of the ever-changing maze of racks. Peter came to a halt and bent over.

  “Ah, here we are!”

  Jem looked down. “What is that?”

  “‘That’ is the next big thing.” Peter proclaimed proudly. “I’m not talking it up to many traders yet, boy, but I want to give you a leg up.”

  Jem crouched down and took a closer look. The creature was in stasis, and it seemed to be a loose bundle of fur. He could see a snout, and paws, but everything else was covered in brown and white folds. He felt dubious that any rich kid would find it cute.

  “That there is a pure-blood Basset Hound.” Peter told him. “It’s a kind of dog. There’s only a few hundred left in the galaxy. They didn’t make the jump off old Earth real well.”

  “I’ve heard of dogs.” Jem admitted. “In old story books, but I never saw one. They used to be common?”

  “Yep, before we became a space-faring species. But when we lifted for the stars, they got left behind. Too little room, too few resources. Cats made the cut, dogs didn’t. Which means, young Jem, that mankind is primed for this old pet to come back in a big way.”

  “Well,” Jem scratched his head. “I suppose if they used to be such an everyday thing that they wrote books about them, you might be on to something. I’ll take him, if the price is right.”

  Peter bellowed with laughter. “You are a chip off the old block, all right.”

  Jem took the box off the shelf. “He told me I’m to run the route, and come see you.”

  “Yes, the will says no deviations, and you’ll be evaluated according to this run.” Peter’s face was serious, now. “As Walter’s heir, there’s no guarantee, you know.”

  “I know the Tanager didn’t belong to him, and that I’m not rightly the captain.” Jem squirmed. “I can earn that, I believe.” He didn’t want to leave the only happy home he’d ever known. The only home, really. “I’ll get it right. I promise, sir.”

  Peter pressed his lips together before speaking. “My brother was a hard man. There’s…” He stopped and looked almost sad, surprising Jem. Peter shook his head, as if dismissing something. “You’ll find out at the end of the route, boy. Now, let’s do paperwork.”

  Jem left a little later with the stasis box tucked under his arm and a small hover pallet of jewel lizards in tow behind him. The Basset Hound was not very big. He’d declined Peter’s invitation to stay to dinner and a night in a ‘real bed.’ He needed to get used to being on his own again. He’d been used to it before Walter, and even the seasons with the old man hadn’t been too bad. He’d let Jem stay to himself pretty much, as long as chores got done, and studying. Jem remembered how he had resented the studying, at first, and the old trader had to practically stand over him during lesson time. But that had changed, until Jem outstripped the lessons on boa
rd.

  Jem didn’t look back, so he didn’t see Peter standing in the corridor watching him out of sight. Peter didn’t know how old Jem was. No one did, he thought ruefully, not even Jem himself. Walter had shown up with the lad in tow perhaps ten seasons before, and he’d been a twig of a thing, looking as though he would break under the older men’s gaze. He’d hidden under the table, Peter remembered with a twist of his lips and a surge of pride. Wouldn’t know that now, to see his back walking away so strong and straight. He looked forward, not down. Peter sighed. With Walter gone, the lad was all he had left. Jem surely didn’t know he was also Peter’s heir. He wouldn’t take that well.

  “Ah…” Peter blew an exasperated puff of air out between pursed lips. “He’ll do well.”

  The dog had been all but a gift. It really was rare, but he’d no intention of the boy making his fortune with this one. No… Peter walked back into the heat and smell of his shop. No, the real thing was in the back room. He’d hold them until Jem returned, as he would in a season. Jem had no idea what was at stake this season. Walter’s idea was that if the boy failed, he’d not have the added burden of knowing what he’d lost. And if he failed, he would never know all the Tanager’s capabilities, and the connections of his trader’s web. One thing at a time, Peter knew. Too much and the young man might stop coming, might push his honor to the breaking point. He didn’t see Peter the way he’d seen Walter, as a friend. Give it time.

  As soon as Jem got back on the ship, he latched down the box on a steel rack, then inspected his cargo one more time before lift. This station had little to offer him, a specialties man, but Peter had been his first stop after Walter was gone. The real deals happened on Adressa, the next planetfall. The jewel lizards with their tiny precious metal harnesses would go over well there, as living jewelry.

  He called for a tug to get him safely away from the orbiting station’s busy traffic lanes, and once underway, leaned back and stretched. It felt good to be away from that place, crawling with people, who mostly seemed to want to talk to him. He knew that wasn’t accurate, but it felt like it. Out here in space it was quiet. He could hear himself think.

  Which reminded him to look up the dog. If he was going to sell the beast, he needed to know more about it. Research was fun, now that he had the data Walter had bought for him after that trip where he’d been out of things to read and so bored. The old trader had flipped the data crystal at him and grunted, “that should keep you happy a while.” A whole zetabyte of data... heaven. On a populous planet, of course, everyone had the ‘net. But out in deep space, he was truly all alone, except for this library that covered more than he could absorb. Some of the languages weren’t translatable to tradespeak, but there was still enough to keep him interested the rest of his life, he figured.

  The tug pilot interrupted his thoughts to bid him a cheerful farewell, to which Jem replied with the minimum of courtesy before setting the course for the week’s crawl to the hypernode. He wouldn’t be able to read all that way, of course... an alarm chimed, and he slid aside his personal data tablet to reach for the console. The Scarlet Tanager, like so many other freight haulers, was not pretty, nor well kept up. He’d looked up what her name meant, once, and laughed out loud at the idea of this ship being named for an elegant black and scarlet bird. The Tanager he knew so intimately was more dust and rust colored.

  The console yielded the information that a fuse had blown in life support, so he grabbed his toolkit with a sigh and headed down a deck, then into the bowels to see what had gone wrong. He was in the crawl space over the beeves, and the smell was overwhelming, which told him that a filter had been the cause of the blown fuse. Ignoring the plaintive lowing of the big meat animals, he pulled the filter and scraped it clean. Below him, they thudded gently into the walls of their big corral, and he decided he’d better toss them some hay cubes. Agitated beeves would lose weight and lower their value.

  He’d looked up pictures of them, too, what they had looked like before bioengineering, with their wicked horns and equally dangerous hooves. Now, they more resembled hairy slugs, with layers of fatty muscle sans bones that was in demand at fine restaurants on every planet. He rarely ate it, himself, using the replicator for his daily meals. The beeves were for profit, and he wished he could afford a large enough stasis field to contain them. Instead, they were yet another daily - twice daily, at least - chore to keep him active.

  It was hours before he got back to the bridge and his data tablet. He ate his replicated pork chop with potatoes and peas without looking at the food, while reading. Dogs, it turned out, had been considered man’s best friend at one time. They also, he read, needed a lot of training, exercise, and socialization. With consternation, he sat back and pondered what he had found. If he was going to get the best price for the diminutive canine, he was going to need to at least ‘housebreak’ it. And he had no idea how well it was socialized, it simply wouldn’t do to sell a puppy and have it bite someone. He was going to have to do that, too.

  He yawned widely enough to crack his jaw, and decided he would start first thing in the morning. Being around people had worn him thin. He went through his nightly ritual of checking the control console for any warnings, dialing the alarms up loud enough to wake him if something did go wrong, and opening the porthole shield to look out at the stars.

  Walter had always thought he was nuts, to do that, but Jem felt like it made it night time, to see the flecks of icy light in the sky. The planet he’d been born on had had a very clear atmosphere, and the stars had been one of his rare pleasures, looking up and knowing the only way to get out of his miserable existence was to get up there. Well, now he’d made it. He dialed the porthole closed again, and staggered to his bunk.

  Morning coffee, one of the first things he had mastered making onboard the ship, was now an automated process. As one of his hands-on lessons, he had built a rube goldberg apparatus that held ten pounds of coffee, and served out enough, ground, for his morning pot, which then brewed at the programmed time every morning. It didn’t save a lot of time, but it was awfully nice to wake up to. With his first cup in his belly, he ventured into the hold to get the stasis box. He stared at the small animal for a long time, before keying in the code.

  There was a hiss, and the stasis field clouded as it dissolved. When the dust cleared, there was a little sneeze, and then the puppy shook itself all over. Jem realized for the first time that most of the folds he had been looking at in confusion were enormous ears. Although the little creature did seem to be wearing a coat about four sizes too big for it. Now, it was looking back at him, sitting on its haunches with head cocked slightly to one side.

  Jem cleared his throat. Dogs weren’t supposed to be able to talk, but with bioengineering, you never knew, these days. “Hello?”

  He held out a hand, and the puppy extended a cautious nose to sniff his fingertips. After a moment of this, a little pink tongue curled out and licked him, startling Jem. The man patted the dog awkwardly, feeling the soft fur and tiny skull under it. How he supported those ears was a mystery. Jem stood up and started to leave the hold, hoping the dog would figure it out and follow him. He did... until he walked under Jem’s feet.

  There was a welter of legs, arms, and ears, a great noise of clattering, yelling, and yelping. When Jem had righted himself, picked up the rack he had knocked over, and located the puppy hiding out in the passageway, he was rather exasperated. The little dog rolled over on his belly and wiggled, whimpering a little. Jem sighed, and picked him up.

  Puppy licked his face, with enthusiasm. Jem marched back up to the bridge and set the puppy down while he started on his morning routine. Most of it was automated, but he had been taught to check it anyway. Walter’s voice came into his mind, an echo of a lesson from the past.

  “Better safe than sorry, kid. I ever tell you what a flying Dutchman is?”

  The board remained unchanged, as it should, and the puppy was wandering around, sniffing audibly. Jem watched
him for a second. The puppy sneezed, and the man thought it might be time to get the vacuum out. Modern ships might not have much dust on board, but this one needed weekly sweeping or it got out of control. The puppy walked back over to him, sat on its haunches, and lifted up his nose, opening his mouth and emitting a truly startling noise.

  He sounded like an alarm wailing, the surprised Jem mused. Puppy stopped as soon as the man picked him up, but kept up a continuous snuffling and whimpering. Jem headed for the galley, and his reader tablet, which he had left there with his coffee cup. It was breakfast time, anyway... he stopped dead in his tracks and looked down at the floppy dog. Of course, little guy was probably starving.

  It turned out the puppy liked eggs about as much as Jem did. Jem set a plate on the floor for him, and once he’d wolfed down his portion, the puppy proceeded to chase the plate around the floor, licking every last molecule of egg off of it. He did the same with Jem’s plate. Jem watched him, amused, until the puppy stopped suddenly and squatted.

  The man jumped up, “no!” he shouted, but it was too late. A yellow puddle was already forming. He groaned and went for the mop.

  “Darnit, you’re gonna be a lot of work, aren’t you?”

  The pup sat at his feet, wagging his tail so hard that his folds all wiggled. Jem sighed, picked him up, and carried him to the place where his pads were. “You go here, ok?”

  The baby dog snuffled the absorbent material and looked up again. Nothing was going to happen right now, it seemed. Jem picked him up and took him to the wire crate he’d prepared. “I got to go do chores, and you get to stay here.”

  The puppy licked his hand, and then whimpered as Jem left the galley area. Jem was amazed at how piteous and loud the little animal’s sounds were. He didn’t exactly rush through his chores, but he didn’t dilly dally with them, either. The beeves might not have hooves and horns any longer, but they were still big, dumb animals that you didn’t mess around with. The only other livestock he carried were the ten woolies. Their fleece was prized for natural fiber, and they represented, as two males and eight females, a big shot of genetic material into someone’s herd.