Flagship (15 page)

Cole had three chairs set up facing his desk in his small office. He wished he had room for Sharon, but the room felt cramped when he was alone in it.

At the appointed hour, Jacovic turned the bridge over to Braxite, and then he, Christine Mboya, and Val made their way down to Cole's office. When they were all seated, Cole spoke.

"Sharon is monitoring this, but she won't be speaking unless we ask her a direct question. I've called you here because you are my three senior officers, and it's time to take our next step in this campaign. We've made the Republic and the Navy aware of us, made them overreact, and stolen some prisoners out from right under their noses. It's time to escalate, without, of course, meeting them head-on. I have some thoughts, but I'd like your input first. Has anyone any suggestions?"

"Sir," said Christine, "I'm not qualified to discuss strategy. You want Mr. Sokolov, or perhaps Jaxtaboxl."

"I know who I want," said Cole firmly.

"We've proven that we can free our own people from a guarded sanctuary on Malagori V," said Jacovic. "What if we were to start attacking the prisons and freeing the prisoners out near the borders of the Republic? By the time word reached the Navy and they reacted, we could be a thousand light-years away."

"Not bad," commented Val.

"I don't know," said Christine. "It seems to me that you'd be freeing a few political prisoners and dissenters, but mostly you'd be freeing a bunch of criminals and crazies."

"So what?" said Val. "They could cause a lot of disruption."

"But it would be the kind of disruption that would have the people hoping the Republic would catch them and incarcerate them again," said Christine. "And I don't think we want to do anything that would make the Republic appear in a favorable light, which they would if they recaptured the felons before they could do any damage to the locals."

"She's right," said Jacovic. "I concede it. I should have thought more carefully before I spoke."

"What about the military prisons?" asked Val.
"They
sure as hell figure to hate the Navy."

Cole shook his head. "I don't think so. The mere fact that they're in a military prison to begin with implies that they lack discipline, and the fact that they may resent the Navy doesn't mean they'll want to overthrow the Republic."

"What then?" asked Jacovic. "We can't get much closer to Deluros without being spotted and drawing the attention of the Navy."

"I have no problem going out in a blaze of glory and taking as many of the bastards with us as we can," said Val, "but even I admit that won't get the job done."

Cole smiled. "I
knew
if I just talked sense to you for a couple of years it'd make an impression sooner or later."

"Save your compliments," snorted Val. "You called us here. Yon waited for everyone to say we don't have a plan. Now why don't yon tell us yours, which you've obviously been sitting on all along?"

Cole looked at each of his three officers. "I think that there's no sense doing more of the same. We've threatened Susan Garcia and Egan Wilkie. We've freed some prisoners. It's time to do something completely unexpected."

All three leaned forward, trying to fathom what he had in mind.

"Governments thrive on propaganda," said Cole. "Usually they convince the media to collude with them in exchange for favorable treatment and status. And it almost always works." He paused. "But I don't think most governments, including this one, can withstand propaganda that is aimed against them, not from an exterior source, but from within."

"Sounds good in a lecture," said Val. "How does it work in practice?"

"I've been giving it some thought," began Cole.

"I'll bet you have," said Val with a grin.

"And I think I see a way that will put the Democracy's credibility in question, and quite possibly shatter it, without endangering any of us."

"And for your next trick, will you make Andromeda disappear?" asked Val.

Cole ignored her and looked at his Second Officer. "Christine, do you think you can find five abandoned worlds, all within the Republic, all farther out from Deluros than we are now?"

"Uninhabited worlds?" she repeated. "There are millions of them."

"I didn't say uninhabited," replied Cole. "I said
abandoned.
I want you to find five worlds that Man settled, built some structures on, and then left."

"Structures?" she repeated.

"Cities are good, but I'll consider anything that is clearly artificial."

"Does it matter what made them leave?" asked Jacovic. "It could be disease, war, diminishing natural resources, a natural disaster . . ."

"I don't care, as long as some structures remain," said Cole. He turned back to Christine. "Can you do it?"

"I don't know why not," she said. "In fact, if I can have Malcolm Briggs and perhaps Meloctin and Domak work around the clock in shifts, we can probably find a dozen or more worlds for you in a Standard day."

"Good," said Cole. "Start as soon as this meeting's over, and tell the other three that they're helping you. Have them check with me if there's any question about it." He looked at the Teroni. "You're suddenly smiling, Commander Jacovic."

"I think I see what you plan to do," replied Jacovic. "And I think it will work."

"I'm delighted to have the confidence of a leader with your experience."

"Well, I don't see it," said Val irritably. "Are we going to play guessing games, or are you going to confide in the rest of us?"

"Tell her, Commander," said Cole.

"If I have correctly deduced your plan, we are going to bomb a handful of abandoned worlds," said the Teroni. "We won't totally destroy them, because we'll want some of the structures to remain standing."

"Why?" asked Val, frowning.

"To
prove
these were inhabited worlds that we decimated," answered Jacovic.

"But they weren't," said Val.

Cole smiled. "I won't tell anyone if you won't."

Suddenly Val smacked her forehead with an open hand. "Of course!" she exclaimed. "We take credit for wiping out half a dozen planetary civilizations. Wilkie denies it. But we tell the media if they don't believe us, come and see for themselves—"

"—and when they come out, they see definite signs that a thriving civilization lived here prior to the attack!" concluded Christine.

"Right," said Cole. "Except that
we
don't take credit for it. We're just one ship, and we don't need the attention that will attract. We'll tell them that the Teroni Federation did it."

"They'll never believe it," said Val.

"Oh, I think they will," said Cole. "Especially if the one who reports it to them is a Teroni." He smiled and gestured toward Jacovic.

"Son of a bitch!" said Val. "Wilson Cole, you are one sneaky bastard!"

"Now, Secretary Wilkie will deny it, of course," continued Cole. "He may even convince most of the media that it's a ruse. But there's always some ambitious young reporter who will follow up on an interesting lead—and if no one does, then we'll broadcast the results of the carnage ourselves. Once we do that, you can be sure that private citizens will start checking out those worlds even if no one else does—and if it becomes Wilkie's word against that of a bunch of nonpolitical eyewitnesses who, unlike Wilkie, were
not
in charge of protecting all the people who lived on those worlds, who do you think the public will believe?"

"So who gets to blow these five worlds?" asked Val.

"We're just going to use one small ship," said Cole. "And we'll hit one every three or four days. If we hit them all at once, it's a single attack, and Wilkie can probably ride out the storm. But if we destroy one, and get word out that he couldn't protect the populace of that world, and while he's denying it, destroy another, and keep doing it . . . Well, I think it could snowball."

"And by the same token, I'll pick worlds that are hundreds, preferably thousands, of light-years from each other," said Christine enthusiastically. "As the Navy rushes to one to see what's happened, we'll be bombing another."

Cole turned to Jacovic. "You don't mind lending your face and voice to this enterprise?"

"I am no longer part of the Teroni Federation," he replied. "That does not mean I am a friend of the Republic."

"Any questions?" asked Cole.

Silence.

"All right. Christine, you might as well get started. Nothing gets done until you locate those worlds. This meeting is over."

The three officers filed out, and Cole leaned back on his chair as the door snapped shut.

"So what do you think?" he asked as Sharon's image appeared.

"I think you're going to drive Egan Wilkie crazy," she said. "You may even drive him from office. But we both know he'll be replaced by someone just like him. I don't see how this brings down the Republic."

"We don't want to bring it down," answered Cole. "We want to reform it. As many abuses as it's committed, it's still all that stands between Man and a frequently hostile galaxy."

"We're growing a strange crop of revolutionaries this year," she said.

"I'm not a revolutionary," he replied. "I served in this government's Navy my entire adult life. I don't want to
end
the Republic; I want to
fix
it."

"By attacking empty planets," she said with a smile.

"Why not?" he said, returning her smile. "I'd like there to be someone left alive after we win."

She stared at him thoughtfully. "You really do intend to win, don't you?"

"I wouldn't have left the Inner Frontier if I didn't," he answered.

Forli II was an oxygen world that had once been a small banking and trading center in the Wajima Sector. But as colonization spread in different directions, it was eventually abandoned, and it stood empty for almost three hundred years.

Five days after Cole announced his plan to his officers, Vladimir Sokolov bombed it, making sure to leave some of the ancient buildings standing.

And two days after that, Egan Wilkie explained to the populace at large via a galaxy-wide transmission that Forli II was a totally unpopulated world and no lives had been lost.

And a day after that, Jacovic—claiming that he was speaking from the flagship of the Fifth Teroni Fleet—explained to that same populace that Forli II was unpopulated
now,
and it was only the first world he planned to destroy.

Four days later, it was Buchanan IV. Wilkie denied, Jacovic bragged and promised more, and this time the media sent some people to see if there were any signs of civilization on that distant world.

Cole was feeling pretty good. He even allowed himself the luxury of both a beer and a dessert, and was sitting at his usual table in the mess hall with David Copperfield and the Platinum Duke, who seemed to have bonded simply because they were the only ones on the
Teddy R
without any duties.

"Those worlds are going to be tourist attractions after the Republic falls," the Duke was saying. "I'd love to have the gambling concessions on them."

"I thought you wanted to go back to Singapore Station," said Cole.

"That's my home," acknowledged the Duke. "But does that mean I can't have investments anywhere else?"

"Investments?" said Cole with a smile. "So you don't want a gift. You want to
lease
the gambling concessions?"

"Stop teasing me," said the Duke irritably. "You know perfectly well what I mean."

"Okay, they're yours," said Cole. "There's just one small obstacle we have to overcome."

"Oh?"

Cole nodded. "Overthrowing the Republic."

"That's all but done," said the Duke. "Wilkie can't survive something like this."

"Even if you're right, there'll be a next Wilkie, or someone just like him, and one after that, and one after that. I hope you didn't think this was going to be that easy."

"I have every confidence in you."

"And every hunger for five or six showplace worlds for tourists," said Cole dryly. He turned to David Copperfield. "You've been remarkably quiet, David."

"I'm thinking," said the little alien.

"Well, that's a step in the right direction," said Cole. "What are you thinking about?"

"I own a warehouse that seems to have slipped my mind until just now," said David. "And among other things, it possesses two paintings executed in the ancient way, with actual oils on canvas, by Bartholomew Miksis, the greatest artist of the twenty-sixth century AD, four hundred years before the dawn of the Galactic Era."

"And?" said Cole.

"As you know," continued David, "I have certain enemies on the Inner Frontier, evil men possessed of a totally unreasonable hatred of myself, and for that reason I have been loath to pass the word that some of these items, and especially the paintings, were available, since to purchase them the buyer would have to know where to deliver the money. I was thinking maybe I'll auction them here in the Republic, where my record is absolutely spotless."

"Why the hell don't you simply use an instantaneous transfer of money to a numbered account?" asked the Duke.

"I suspect our David has also annoyed his share of Inner Frontier bankers," said Cole with a smile.

"Absolutely not!" said David. He paused. "I have only offended relatively
few
of them—a mere handful."

"Then set up your account somewhere else," said the Duke.

"You don't understand the economics of the situation," said David.

"Let me take a guess," said Cole. "Since those paintings aren't legally yours, there's nothing to stop an unethical banker from keeping all the money—and you don't know any ethical bankers."

"Precisely," replied David. "Though of course the argument is based on a totally false premise: there are no laws on the Inner Frontier, and therefore nothing can be illegal—but bankers can be so unethical! Besides," he added, "I'm not a thief, I'm a fence—or I was, anyway. Which is to say that those paintings may or may not legally be stolen goods, depending on how they were obtained and whether they're in the Republic or the Frontier, but I didn't steal them. I simply bought them from the man who . . ." He paused, frowning. "From my source," he concluded lamely.

"That makes it all okay," said Cole, amused at the little alien's discomfiture.

"How did you two ever get together?" asked the Duke.

"We met during the
Teddy R's
brief fling at piracy," said Cole.

"We found out that we were old school chums, Steerforth and I," said David, "and we've been inseparable ever since."

The Duke looked to Cole for a quick contradiction, but the latter merely shrugged and said, "I suppose that's as good a story as any."

They spoke for a few more minutes. Then David and the Duke left to play whist, and a moment later Sharon's image appeared over the next table.

"Yeah, what is it?" asked Cole.

"Gentry."

"Gentry to you."

"That's the name of the cargo ship pilot we've been carrying."

"Okay," said Cole. "What about her?"

"She wants to speak to you."

"Put her through."

"In person," said Sharon. He frowned and she continued. "She's not a prisoner or an enemy, just someone who was piloting the wrong ship at the wrong time."

"You know what this is about, I presume?"

"Yes."

"And you approve?"

"I do."

"All right," said Cole. "Send her down."

"Thank you, Wilson."

He had just finished his beer when Gentry arrived.

"Have a seat," he said, gesturing to the chair opposite him.

"Thank you, Captain Cole," she said, walking over and seating herself.

"My Security Chief tells me you have something to say to me."

She nodded her head. "Yes," she replied. "I've spent quite a bit of time thinking, and speaking to Colonel Blacksmith . . ." She paused awkwardly. "I've been apolitical all my life, but I had no idea of the abuses the Navy had committed, both here and especially on the Inner and Outer Frontiers." Another pause. "Captain Cole, I want to join the
Teddy R."

"You're aware that we're presently engaged in a military action against the Republic?"

"Yes."

"And what the odds are against our succeeding?"

"I'm aware of them."

"We have a pilot," said Cole. "He hasn't eaten or slept in maybe ten years, and he's as much a part of the ship as the cannons or the bulkheads, so clearly we're not in the market for another pilot. What other skills can you bring to us?"

"I can speak seven alien languages that aren't programmed into the standard T-Pack," she replied. "For example, I can speak to your Tolobite crewman in his own tongue."

"You can speak Slick's language?" asked Cole. "It's all clicks and growls."

"Yes."

"I'm impressed," he said. "Where the hell did you ever pick it up?"

"I was stranded on his planet for three months some years ago." She paused again. "They're a remarkable race, aren't they? And I like your name for him."

"Slick? Well, his second skin—that's the way I think of his symbiote—just
looks
slick and oily. He says it's intelligent, but I've never seen any evidence of it."

"The symbiotes can only communicate with their Tolobite hosts, it's a fascinating relationship."

"Yeah, the symbiote can let Slick maneuver in the cold of space without air for four and five hours at a time. He does all our external repairs, though we haven't needed him lately." He stared at her. "All right, Gentry, you're a member of the crew, and you have run of the ship. I'll leave it to Jacovic to figure out what duties to assign you, until we come to a race that our T-Packs aren't programmed for."

"Thank you, sir."

"By the way, is Gentry your first name or your last?"

"These days it's my only name," she replied.

"Sounds like there's a story there," said Cole. "Perhaps someday you'll share it." He opened communications to the bridge. "This is Cole. From this moment on, Gentry is a member in good standing of the crew of the
Teddy R.
Val, when Jacovic shows up to replace you, have him decide what her duties will be. Sharon, permanently kill the force field around her cabin." He turned to Gentry. "Okay, you're set— or you will be once Commander Jacovic wakes up. The Officers' Lounge is off-limits to you—you wouldn't like it anyway—and unless you have business in the engine room it would be best to keep away from it. Other than that, you have run of the ship."

"Will I be required to wear a uniform, sir?" asked Gentry.

"Only if you want to," he replied. "All we have are Navy uniforms from four years ago, and that's the same Navy you've just agreed to go to war against."

"Then I'll wear my own clothes, sir."

"Fine," said Cole. Then: "I just thought of another skill you bring to the ship. Well, knowledge rather than skill, actually."

"What is it, sir?" she asked. "I'll be happy to help in any way I can."

"You've been piloting cargo ships inside the Republic for the past four years," said Cole, "while we've been on the Inner Frontier for that same period of time. Things must have changed here and there-socially, economically, politically. I want you to sit down with either Christine Mboya or Malcolm Briggs and help them update our computers, since they're four years out of date."

"I'll be happy to, sir," said Gentry, "if someone will point them out to me."

"Christine is the black woman who's never five feet away from her computer. Briggs is—"

"I'll
direct her," said Sharon's voice.

"Are either of them on duty right now?" asked Cole.

"No," said Sharon.

He turned to Gentry. "Okay, you might as well spend a few hours learning your way around the ship."

"Thank you, sir," said Gentry, getting up and heading toward tin doorway.

"One last thing," said Cole.

"Yes?"

"Sooner or later—probably sooner—you're going to run into a gorgeous redheaded giant with a foul mouth and a certain lack of ship board etiquette," said Cole. "Don't be put off by her. She's our Third Officer, and when the chips are down, there's no one you'd rather have on your side."

As if to emphasize what he had just said, Val's image suddenly appeared.

"Damn it, Cole!" she said. "I don't care what you say, I'm blowing up the next world! Why does that goddamned Russian get to have all the fun?"

The image vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

"Your Third Officer?" asked Gentry.

"You guessed," replied Cole with a smile.