Armor (13 page)

He meant me, of course. When Borglyn was silent about that, the warden stepped back.

They call him Major of the city then stepped forward in his regal best. Gold trimmed his green robes. He carried a solid platinum hoop over a “shoulder.”

The Major was Lyndrill tough. He threatened Borglyn’s ship. He threatened his men. He threatened his “seeds.” Lastly, he threatened himself.

Borglyn stood there awhile in the ensuing tense silence, watching the Lyndrill. Then he took one step toward the throng and pointed a thick finger at the end of a thicker arm directly at the Major and said: “Go away.”

And they went away. Every one of them. They didn’t even have to think about it.

An hour later, in orbit, I stepped into the ‘fresher. Two hours later, now out of orbit, I stepped out. Except for a couple of spots, I was no longer gray. I was pink, actually, like a pinched baby, but still better than gray.

Borglyn called me into the captain’s stateroom after I had eaten. He was surprisingly courteous, asking me all about myself and commiserating about my prison time. I spent well over an hour inventing a past. It became a lot of fun and, toward the end, terribly convincing as I got into the role. Throughout, Borglyn said little, merely nodding and agreeing or even chuckling at some instant escapade from my youth.

And then, after all my lies and all my talk and all the work involved, he leaned back in his chair at last and said, with a sickening smile: “Well, Jack, I’m glad you got that off your chest. Now, do you want a job?”

So he had known all along he had known that I was Jack Crow.

III

When Borglyn first gave me the deal, I thought he had lost it.

The fear, the constant pressure, has gotten to him, I thought.

His thinking is out.

I was about half right.

There was a lot of pressure involved. And a hell of a lot of fear too, for a man with his imagination. Never mind the mass murder of the officers, actually stealing the Coyote afterwards meant mutiny, the all-time favorite crime of the military mind. They do special things to mutineers.

“Not that I won’t actually be ordered in for a trial, of course. The lucky arresting officer, meaning the captain of whichever ship might nab me, was given quite specific instructions to bring me into Militar.”

He paused and lit a cigarette, looking like a photographic smear on a 3D plate, little white dart.

“I’ll never see Militar, though. On the way I’ll have an accident. You want to hear about it? I know of one that took four days.”

I told him I didn’t want to hear about it.

“Just as well,” he said, puffing. “Just as well.”

He drifted off for a bit, staring and puffing. No doubt remembering details of the four day goof. But he handled it well, I thought. Damn well. Not an inch of trembling. Long smooth deep breaths. In fact, he showed no sign at all of being aware of his position in about the deepest hole there was. It was impressive, the way he sat there smoking.

“So,” he continued after a while, “to the problem.” He swiveled around in his seat, leaned across the captain’s desk and stared into my eyes. “The problem is fuel. We are just about out.”

“Uh oh,” I said.

He stared harder at me, his eyebrows raised.

“Uh oh? The man says ‘Uh oh’? I describe what is quite possibly the most tenuous situation in the galaxy and that is all he has to say? Well, I suppose the prospect of a particularly nasty death at the hands of some lucky crew is nothing to the great and famous Jack Crow. The fact that I am being actively sought by every ship in Fleet, most of which have forgotten the damned Antwar in their eagerness to slice me apart, should be of at least passing interest, even to a man who moves stars. . . how did you so cleverly put it? . . . ‘Move stars the hell outta the way. ‘ Even to such a superman, my situation should rate just a little goddamn more than uh oh. Care to try again?”

I said nothing, wincing, in fact, at that quotation. I had said something like it at the time. But I was pretty well frayed at the edges and it infuriated me that that was the only thing I said that the Presswave people thought to broadcast. Show business.

“Nothing to add, eh?” continued Borglyn. “Very well. I suppose it was too much to ask to have you actually impressed with the gravity of the situation as it stands. So allow me, if you will, to try to bring it on home to you.

“I’m being hunted. I don’t like it. I’m also running out of fuel and therefore running room. I don’t like that. I will have fuel, Mr. Crow. I will obtain it. And, unless you wish me to rip you limb from limb and then stuff you bodily through an access tube, you will help me obtain it. Is that pretty clear so far?”

I nodded. It was clear all right.

“How nice. We’re communicating. Now, as to the ‘how’ of it; The only Cangren Power Cell available to one in my position is at some Fleet Scientific Colony which are, as you may know, completely self-sufficient fuel wise. My intention is to travel to one of these places, the remotest location available, for obvious reasons, and make Connection.

“Normally, of course, I could neither beg nor borrow such fuel for a mutinous craft. And the possibility that I could simply take what I want from a fully self-contained Project Complex is essentially nonexistent. As soon as I appeared overhead, they would simply button up the complex and that would be that. I doubt that even a fully loaded Coyote could pierce their defenses without totally annihilating the Can inside.

“So what to do? I will trick them, of course. Or, rather, you will trick them. You, Jack Crow, will make yourself known to the members of the Project. You will use your rather romantic notoriety to ingratiate yourself into the complex itself. And at the proper moment, you will render it defenseless from the inside. Is that clear, Mr. Crow? Are we still communicating?”

“Yeah.”

“Wonderful. Now what, you might ask, is in it for you? What indeed, besides a grateful lack of excruciating pain, is your prize? Simple. I have an eight man Sledcraft waiting for me in a safe place. If you do as I say, exactly as I say, you may have it. It will be yours, Mr. Crow, to wander about with as you will. There will also be an appropriate amount of credits logged into its banks directly from the treasury of this ship. I’ve checked the banks aboard, and it’s quite a hefty sum. And if I can’t make use of it, there’s no reason why you should not.

“So, there is the proposition, famous and great Jack Crow.

What shall it be?”

He was kidding, of course. Who really needs to choose between being rich and being dead? Between being anything and being dead?

“I’ve given your proposal considerable thought,” I began.

“Good, good,” he replied, nodding.

“And I’ve decided to join your little team.”

“I’m so glad.”

“Here’s to the partnership,” I said, lifting my brandy glass high.

“Oh, we can do better than that,” he said with an uneasy smile.

More quickly than I would have thought possible, he was up out of his seat and around to my side of the desk. He held the flask in one hand. With an elaborate flourish he filled my glass to the brim. Then beckoning me to rise, he touched his glass to mine and gestured for me to toss it off in one gulp.

I took a deep breath, placed it to my lips and drank. It burned in my throat and in my mouth and after a few seconds, in my stomach as well. But I was determined to give as good as I got. I closed my eyes to cap the streaming tears and continued to swallow.

And then I couldn’t anymore. I couldn’t drink, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe. My throat was clamped tight by a monstrous rockhewn vise that deflated my windpipe in an instant. In the next instant I was rising slowly into the air where I ‘simply hung. I opened bulging eyes and stared at the dead eyes of Borglyn.

He held me there at eye level to him with the grip of a single hand about my throat. A single hand. And there was no trembling, no effort involved that I could see. No hurry to put me down again. He simply stood there peering darkly into my eyes and hanging me with the force from a single limb.

Hanging me

Years later, he let me slowly down. But he kept his paw about my windpipe.

“This is how easy it is for me to kill. It is this simple.

Even for you. Remember this. Fear this.”

He stared for a little while longer. Then he let go. A crewman appeared from somewhere and led me to my cabin. I didn’t see him for three days. I was glad.

I stayed in my cabin as much as possible during the trip to Sanction. The crew made me nervous.

It’s not that I really feared them. There was no obvious reason for that. They simply made me nervous.

They were scared, for one thing. Mutineers, after all, every one of them. No way to ever go home again. No future

to speak of in the conventional sense. And totally dependent on Borglyn. And I got the definite impression that he hadn’t let most of them in on his plans. As the days became weeks and on and on, the eagerness to know began to get to them.

What they did, of course, was to compete in their efforts to appear unconcerned. Gruff voices, too loud laughter, elaborate guises of disinterest, all eventually gave way to collective jeering at anyone showing the slightest trace of uneasiness. And then the jeering became rougher and the frustration now had an outlet: aggressive peer judgment.

They were getting ugly.

So I stayed in my cabin all the time except at meals. When I ate, I sat at the far end of the mess and appeared deaf to the too boisterous horseplay and the accompanying sounds of battered bodies smacking face down onto the bulkheads. No matter what, I never took sides, never hinted awareness, even when the Amazon Drive tech bounced the little third-class sparks across the table and into the chair beside me

It had to happen though, eventually. I had known it would. I guess I had hoped Borglyn had put me off-limits. At last, somebody just had to know who the stranger was. “Who are you, anyway?”

It was the Amazon. She was sitting at the far side of the mess quaffing down the daily liquor supply with her cronies and generally showing how untouched she was by the grimness of a bad situation which could only get worse. I ignored her.

“Hey, you, at the end there. I’m talking to you.”

What I wanted to do, was slide the plate into the chute right then and just walk out. But there was too much left to make it seem natural. And to appear to be running. . . . That would have been asking for it.

So I was stuck. Nothing to do but play it out slow, stalling all the way.

I ignored her again.

She stood up then, after a little mumbled urging from her mates, and came over to take it up personal. She sat down on the table less than an arm’s length from my food. “I’m talking to you.”

I looked up at her. Drivetechs have to be big. During combat fire control procedures, they have to be able to lift whole modular assemblies out of the grid and replace them the same way all within seconds. This one was about a head taller than me, weighing probably a third again more. I counted that and I counted her mood and I counted the strong possibility that she would feel like she had to show off a little with the others watching. I even counted her looks. It came up: all bad.

I continued to meet her gaze with a blank look.

“Who are you?” she wanted to know.

I appeared to think about it, said, “Nobody,” and went back to eating.

I had hoped to sound innocuous enough that it would stick.

But the audience at the far end wasn’t having any.

They laughed. Not at me, but, daimnitall, with me. At her.

I felt her tense uncomfortably beside me.

“Well, I can see that,” she continued. “But what’s your name. What are you doing here?”

I looked at her again, blankly as before. I shrugged. “Just along for the ride.”

A loud guffaw from the far end. “I don’t think he wants to tell you, Twala,” somebody called. There was more laughter. That did it. I stood up, faced her.

“Maybe you ought to talk to Borglyn,” I suggested as calmly and reasonably as I could.

But she was having none of that. Bullies worry about their public posture too much.

“I’m asking you, not him,” she replied harshly.

I looked deep into her eyes and saw nothing there but anticipation and I remembered something somebody had once told me a long time ago. “Bullies don’t want to fight you. They don’t want to fight at all. They simply want to beat you up.”

“I can’t hear you,” she said when I hesitated. Then she took a long stout finger and prodded me in the right lung with it. “Speak up.”

“All right. I’m Jack Crow. Now move your finger while you still can. Now.”

She moved it, eyes wide at the sound of my name. There was a long, heavy pause while they took that in. I dropped my plate into the chute and walked out. Whew.

I went to Borglyn.

“Yes,” he said distantly, regarding the ash of his cigarette.

“I did hear something about it.”

“And?”

“And it seems there is considerable interest. Seems Twala and her crowd have some doubt as to your having leveled with them. They’re afraid you didn’t.”

“And?”

“They wanted my confirmation.”

“Well, I hope you gave it to them.”

“Why, no. As a matter of fact, I said nothing at all.”

Dammit.

“Look, Borglyn, I’m not part of your crew. I’m not one of them and I want no part of them. Play your morale games with somebody else. Leave me out of it. Give me my meals in my room.”

“Sorry,” was all that he would say.

I slammed out there in a fury.

I don’t like being used. I don’t like having my name, no matter how ridiculous it may become, being used. I didn’t like Borglyn, or his ship or his crew or his problems. And I had no desire to make it easier for him

But that’s just what I was going to have to do. Not enough, for his purposes, to just confirm that it really was me. No. Much better to have to make me prove it, to make me do the Jack Crow Pirate bit, really drive the message home that Borglyn isn’t just wandering aimlessly. That he has big plans using big people. Give the crew a little faith.