Mercenary (12 page)

“I comprehend the ploy. Any other orders, Sergeant?” he inquired ironically.

“Just keep alert, sir. This is no sure thing, because those pirates are primed for action. Turn the suppressor on again when my corporal tells you to. Mistiming could be fatal, for they will surely use their destruct system when they realize they are being outmaneuvered.” I turned to my second-in-command, who had been waiting silently behind me. “When you observe their raiding party clear their ship, take them down without warning, with your stunner beams. Then turn on the suppressor—before they can activate their destruct system—and come in after me, in the Hidden Flower . Fast. The rest as before.”

My corporal nodded. He knew what to do and how to do it. I had confidence in him, and now he had confidence in me.

I took five men and returned to the lock. It was chancy doing this, for the pirates might wonder why we were going back and forth. But they were waiting for the suppressor to stop, so probably thought we were just ferrying our captives out. They had sacrificed six men to lull us; the rest would wait for us to bumble inefficiently into their trap. We entered, then crowded into equipment-storage alcoves and waited. After a minute, the suppressor went off; the captain was following orders.

Almost immediately there was activity in the pirate ship. The lights did not come on; they were too canny for that. But we heard the faint noises of the supplementary airlock being used; their raiding party was sneaking out, and their communications officer was surely getting in touch with ours to deliver the ultimatum. Other men were coming toward us, armed with power weapons that we supposedly believed were inoperative. A man using a knife against a laser pistol would live or die according to the state of that pistol! But we were similarly armed and warned, and they did not know this. This was our counter-countertrap.

I heard a man come into the access passage, followed by others. They did not speak, but I knew they were perplexed. Where were we? We waited, unmoving.

When discovery was incipient, I fired my stunner at the nearest. He went limp without a sound, for I had taken him in the throat. We had to keep them silent, to avoid giving alarm before my corporal's party took out the external raiders. My men followed suit. In a moment we had stunned five pirates.

That took care of eleven, here. I judged that a dozen more would be out with the raiding party. That should leave only about seven in the ship, one of which was Spirit. The odds were now just about even.

We waited, and the suppressor came back on. The corporal had scored! We put away our inoperative power weapons and moved on toward the pirate control room. The remaining pirates should be disorganized now, caught by the restoration of the suppressor; we could put them away relatively efficiently.

It wasn't quite that simple. The pirates, aware that something was wrong, were now playing the same game we were. My men spread out, delving like deadly snakes for their hiding prey. I dropped silently down the center tunnel to the control area. The ships were spinning end-over-end, Navy-fashion, so the centrifugal gee was greatest at the extremes. I touched the ladder lightly with alternate hands, controlling my fall and pushing myself away from the wall, since such a fall seems curved. I reached the floor and paused, listening.

There was someone near. My suit was designed for completely silent life support; his was not; therefore, it was not one of my men. I pictured him in my mind, getting his position clear; then I moved in and ran my metal needle into his main oxygen tube.

Now he was in trouble, for I had holed his tube between the tank and the regulatory valve. Oxygen hissed into his suit under unrestrained pressure, bypassing the valve. The outer puncture sealed itself, but not the tube; he was inflating uncomfortably. He had no recourse but to remove his helmet to relieve that pressure, and then I caught his head and jammed my armored finger at a buried nerve 'complex under the ear, and he was unconscious. I left him on the floor and moved on.

I entered the control room. It was empty. Since the suppressor made all the electrical controls inoperative, including the self-destruct system, it was pointless for them to man it. I moved on to the captain's office and paused again. There was only one entrance to the office, and it would be dangerous to use that.

Again the image of a steel ball striking another came to my mind: Open that door and trigger a devastating reaction. Captain Brinker was no shrinking violet, though she was the true hidden flower. I needed another way.

Quickly I removed my suit. There was air here; the suits were in case the ship got holed, or its stalled life-support system was insufficient. There was air at the moment, and I would use it.

I set up the empty suit before the office door. Then I stood to the side and extended a hand to draw the entry panel aside.

Something thunked into the suit. It fell over. I waited. I knew Captain Brinker could not afford to leave the suit there long; it would serve as a signal of her presence.

I heard her come out. She wore no suit, either, knowing it interfered with nocturnal combat.

I could have knifed her, but I wanted her alive. I went after her bare-handed, launching myself in a tackle.

She heard me and moved. I sideswiped her, managing to catch hold of one bare arm. I yanked on it, getting her off-balance, and swept at her ankles with my foot, using a judo takedown. I had not seen her body in the blackness, but my glancing touch had provided me with a suggestion of amazing femininity.

She jumped and swung at me with her free hand. By the way she moved, I knew there was a knife in it.

I caught that hand, clasping it with my fingers, squeezing it, seeking leverage on the knife. We fell together to the floor, torso to torso, and I confirmed that she was not only naked but voluptuous. How had she concealed her sex so effectively?

Then I felt the fingers of her hand and realized that her little finger was missing. “Spirit!” I whispered.

She froze. “Hope,” she responded after a moment.

“I got your message. EMPTY HAND. Where's Brinker?”

The cold metal of the blade of a knife touched my neck. Suddenly I knew where Captain Brinker was.

I was trained in combat, but so was Brinker. She had reflexes no other person could match, and iron nerve. She had the drop on me with the knife; I knew I could not escape it. I had her ship by this time, but she had me. She had sprung yet another trap, using my sister to put me off-guard. What a callous ploy that was: Spirit, believing I was a pirate raider from a rival ship, could have killed me, or I her.

Captain Brinker, the bloodless female pirate, didn't care; either way, she had her chance.

I held Spirit, savoring her presence after four years, though I had not rescued her yet. “What is your offer, Captain?”

“Life for life,” she said. “Yours for mine.”

“Agreed.” And the knife withdrew. I kissed Spirit, then disengaged and got to my feet. “You can take your lifeboat out, as I did before.”

“Yes. I know you are a man of honor, Hubris.”

Honor. Lieutenant Repro had lectured me on it, and increasingly I accepted his definition. Truth can be a liar, when incomplete; honor is more than integrity. Honor obliged me to follow through on the spirit of the agreement as well as the letter. There would be no treachery, no loophole.

“Spirit,” I said. “Go get dressed, then stay clear while we deal.”

Spirit moved away in the dark, and Captain Brinker did not protest. Brinker knew that Spirit had been forfeited as a hostage the moment she was used to decoy me.

“What other deal?” Brinker asked.

“A secret for a secret. Yours for Kife's.”

“Agreed.” She paused momentarily, knowing that I protected the secret of her sex by not even naming it.

“Kife offered a Naval vessel for a key you wear. He set up the trap; I was to deliver the key. I do not know what the key is for.”

“He honored his bargain with you,” I said. “He betrayed me, but I caught on. How can I reach him?”

“Communications were anonymous. I was to mail the key to Box Q, New Wash, USJ, 20013.”

“Company,” Spirit murmured, returning.

“We're done here,” I said. I raised my voice. “Navy in charge here. Is the ship secure?”

“Secure, Sergeant,” one of my men agreed from the control room. He was the one Spirit had heard.

“Losses?”

“One, inside. No report from outside.”

“Go check. Tell the captain I am releasing the pirate lifeboat; let it go without molestation. Turn off the suppressor when satisfied that all is secure.”

“Right.” He moved off.

“I'll lead; you follow, Spirit,” I said. I set out for the Hidden Flower 's lifeboat, Captain Brinker behind me, Spirit following her.

One of my men guarded the lifeboat access. “Hubris here,” I told him in the dark. “I have made a deal. I am releasing this pirate to the lifeboat.”

My man moved aside, not questioning this. Captain Brinker entered the lifeboat. “Perhaps we shall deal again, Hubris,” she said.

“Perhaps,” I agreed noncommittally.

She closed the hatch. She would not be able to take off until the suppressor field stopped, but she was aware of that. The key element of our deal was that the lifeboat would not be fired on as it departed.

Then I found Spirit's hand in the dark and drew her in to me. We embraced and kissed again like long-lost lovers. She was my closest kin and best friend; now my life had shape.

As I held her, noting her newly strange adult body so like that of my older sister, Faith, and yet reminiscent of the twelve-year-old child I had left, I knew there would be complications to negotiate. I would have to persuade the Navy captain to make no protest over my handling of either the traitor or the pirate captain. But a successful mission would make his record, too, look better. He could spare himself embarrassment by going along, and I rather thought he would. Spirit was a more complicated problem. I wanted her with me, now and always, but she was a civilian.

A civilian? She had had four years experience aboard a pirate ship! She surely knew more about handling a spacecraft than any ordinary person did.

“You are going to join the Navy,” I informed her.

“Of course,” she agreed, as if there had never been any question. Perhaps this was true; she had always had a clear notion where she was going, though she generally had not shared her insights with others.

Then the power returned. The lights came on, and we had to separate slightly. The lifeboat took off.

Things were busy after that.

True to my deal with Sergeant Smith, who was now back up to E6, I put in for Officer's Training School and was accepted. I had thought Basic Training was bad; this was worse. But I struggled through for several months while my sister Spirit breezed through Basic. I emerged an ensign, Ol, the lowest form of officer, and she became a private. I continued my training, and so did she, and when I was twenty and she seventeen, she, too, went in for officer's training. In due course I was a lieutenant j.g., O2, and she was an ensign. One tends to think of the distaff as weaker, or at least gentler, but Spirit seemed to get through the rigors of training and qualifications, Tail and all, with less difficulty than I had.

Now Lieutenant Repro presented me with the next stage of his ambition. “You must achieve your own command,” he told me. “You must gather within it the most capable officers available, so as to make it the best unit in the Navy. But you must not let the upper echelons realize how good it is, or they will destroy it.”

I smiled. “I'm only a junior-grade lieutenant,” I reminded him. “It will be decades, if ever, before I command anything—and at such time as I do, I'll be more interested in wiping out pirates than in forming the perfect concealed showcase unit.”

“Not so, Hubris,” he said. “You are a man of destiny. Your talent is the understanding of people. You will be a leader. You will indeed go after the pirates—once you have your position.”

That interested me. “I have sworn to extirpate piracy from the System,” I said. “If your ambition aligns with that, I'm with you.”

“To abolish the illicit drug trade, it is necessary first to abolish piracy,” he said. “That is part of my ambition.”

I gazed at him. He was an addict, of what particular drug I felt it was not my business to know, but it continued to devastate him. He had grown more gaunt in the past three years. I had to believe him; he wanted the drug trade stopped. But if it stopped, his own supply would be cut off. His motive remained too complex for me to fathom.

“Your first target is Lieutenant Commander Phist,” he said. “Draw him into your orbit. He is the best logistics officer in the Navy.”

“How can an O2 lieutenant draw in an O4 commander?”

“You won't stay O2 forever,” Repro said. "But he will remain O4 forever, just as I will remain O3

forever. You must find a way to snag him before he resigns from the Navy."

I was now in charge of a maintenance platoon, doing routine inspections of Navy equipment. It was a standby operation, and I had time on my hands. I got to work researching Lieutenant Commander Phist.

Gerald Phist was thirty-five years old. He had been a rising logistics officer, highly competent, with an impressive number of citations for excellence. It had been his job to oversee the Navy's acquisition of supplies and equipment, and he had done that well.

Then he had blown the whistle on a billion-dollar cost overrun that was bilking the Navy of hard-pressed resources and reducing combat efficiency. But in so doing he had stepped on the toes of certain profiteering commercial interests. Strings had been pulled, and instead of being rewarded for service to the Navy and, indeed, to Jupiter herself, Phist had been passed over for promotion, removed from his position, and assigned to irrelevant duties. His Navy career was essentially over, because he had done his job too well. He was described as a pleasant, handsome, conscientious, and extraordinarily capable man of conservative philosophy and absolutely honest; but these qualities, it seemed, counted for nothing in this situation.

Lieutenant Repro was right. There was the smell of something rotten in the Navy, and Commander Phist was the kind of officer I wanted at my side when the going got tough. But how could I, a lowly Hispanic lieutenant, keep Phist in the Navy, let alone bring him to me? What miracle did Repro require of me?

I discussed it with Spirit. As a surviving sibling of a devastated family, she was permitted to serve in my unit; the Navy did have some slight conscience about such things. At seventeen she was a lovely young woman, with luxuriant dark hair and a classic figure. Her face was not as striking as Faith's had been, partly because of the faint scar tissue from a mishap we had had as refugees with a rocket motor, and her left little finger was a stub; but Spirit remained a woman of considerable esthetic appeal. Her mind, too, was laser swift; she was more intelligent than I, and more incisive. She also had more nerve, though It seldom showed overtly.

“I will fetch him for you,” she said.

Again I looked at her. My talent has this limitation: It loses effect when my own emotions are involved. I could not read my sister. But I knew she was capable of things I would hesitate to speculate about.

“How?” I asked.

She merely smiled. “Just give me a little time, Hope.”

Spirit had always been able to bluff me out, the only person who could do so. She was, in a subtle sense, my strength. She would reveal her design to me in her own fashion and time. “I don't know whether there's any real meaning in Lieutenant Repro's ambition,“ I said. ”He has worked out a slate of ideal officers as an intellectual exercise, not necessarily during his lucid periods. It may be no more than a pipe dream.”

“It's a good dream,” she said.

Weeks passed in the normal routine, and the dream faded into the background. In the Navy one must live with delays; they are part of the bureaucratic fabric, without which it would doubtless fall apart.

Every so often I dropped in on Sergeant Smith, who was still training recruits; he always grinned as he saluted me. I represented a victory for him; he had decided I was officer material, and he had been vindicated. He was doing the same with other selected recruits, steering them right. I was gratified to have come through for him. Yet so far my life as an officer was no more progressive than it had been as an enlisted man. Military life, if the truth must be told, is not nearly as dramatic as the recruiting posters pretend. Of course, it might be different during a war.

Then I got another vid call from Q. “What price?” the blank screen asked.

“I asked you to show me your power,” I said angrily. “You showed me your treachery!” I had not followed up on the Box Q lead I had from Brinker, wary of another trap; better that QYV did not know what information I had. When he was satisfied that I could not locate him, then I would follow up. I had time, and my position on QYV was no longer neutral.

“Never trust a pirate,” the Q voice said. “Sell it.”

“I don't do business with your ilk!”

“Do not force my hand, Hubris. There is more than you know.”

“It is an empty hand!” I snapped, and disconnected.

A week later new orders came down: I was to command a platoon in a company of a battalion that had been placed on alert status. This meant space duty, possibly extended. It would separate me from Spirit.

I had little doubt that QYV had shown me his power again. I was angry, but I had no choice; I had to go where assigned.

My platoon was infantry, somewhat surly about being commanded by a Navy officer instead of an Army sergeant. It was a conflict that had smoldered for centuries, ever since the various military services of Earthly nations had merged with the exodus to space. Because ships were essential in space, the Navy dominated; the Army had been reduced to enlisted status. The several other military branches—Air Force, Marines, National Guard, and such—had simply faded out. One might have supposed that time would have eased the internecine rivalries, but that had not been the case.

This would be no pleasant tour. All three platoons were holding GI parties—that is, pointless and savage scouring of their barracks—as I arrived, preparatory for an inspection. I had never liked inspections; most of them were merely makework, unpleasant exercises that irritated the men. My assumption of command at this moment was unfortunate; my men would forever associate me with it. I had to do something in a hurry to modify that association, or turn it to my advantage.

The sergeant in charge snapped to attention as I entered the barracks area. The men did not; they were on work detail. “Sir, Sergeant Fuller reporting.”

“At ease,” I said. “I am Lieutenant Hubris, your new commander.” I looked about, noting that a good half of the men were dusky in the Hispanic manner. Deliberately, I removed my hat and jacket and handed them to the sergeant, symbolically stripping myself of my rank. “What chicken shit is this?” I inquired loudly in Spanish.

My judgment was correct; half the laboring men paused and looked up, startled. The sergeant evidently did not speak Spanish, but he knew something was up. “You wish to talk to the men, sir?” he inquired respectfully.

“I do not see any men,” I continued in Spanish. “I see a bunch of scrubwomen. Did they enlist for this?” I was rolling up my sleeves.

Baffled, the sergeant did not reply. Some of the men were stifling grins. This was a good show!

“Well, might as well do my part in this foolishness,” I said. I picked up a brush, found a spot, and got down on my knees to scrub.

“Sir!” the sergeant protested.

“Hi, soldier, what's your name?” I asked the man next to me.

“Rodriguez, sir,” he said, bemused.

“Hope, here. From Halfcal, the hard way. You?”

“Dominant Republic,” he said, smiling. “Same planet.”

“We're neighbors!” I exclaimed. “We share sunshine.”

“Yes, sir. But you—an officer?”

“First refugee, then migrant, then enlisted, then officer. Each in its turn. I don't know which is worst.” I looked down at my brush. “This isn't so bad. Last time I was on this detail, I used a toothbrush. The sergeant seemed to think that was more effective.” There was a general chuckle; they knew about toothbrushes, and about sergeants.

“Sir,” the sergeant said worriedly. “Commander Hastings—”

“Ooops! Have to put on the monkey suit,” I said. “Forgive me, neighbor; it's guard-duty time.” I scrambled up and dived into my jacket and hat.

“ Loco! ” someone muttered admiringly.

When the martinet arrived, I was pretty much in order. The sergeant looked as if he had swallowed a scrub brush, and the men were scrubbing savagely. I had soap spots on my knees.

Lieutenant Commander Hastings glanced at the scene. “You seem to have a knack for discipline, Hubris,” he remarked.

“They're good men, sir,” I said, straight-faced, in English.

Someone coughed.

This platoon was mine.

Next day the Cannon Dust weighed anchor and cast off from her mooring at the pier. Since the pier was a rotating cylinder, this sent the ship moving away from Leda at approximately thirty-two feet per second.

When she had suitable separation, she oriented and cut in her main drive. Naval vessels seldom bothered with gravity shields; those were too slow.

Perhaps I should mention one technical aspect: The Navy uses the most effective mode of propulsion, which is the CT drive. CT, of course, stands for contra-terrene matter, which might be described as the mirror image of normal matter. CT atoms have negatively charged nuclei surrounded by positrons, so their charges are opposite to those of normal matter. When CT encounters normal matter, the result is total conversion to energy, the most potent explosion known. I am not a physicist so can't go into detail, but in general the drive consists of a magnetic chamber in which a rod of CT encounters a rod of normal matter, at a controlled rate, with the resulting energy directed to the rear of the ship. In short, one savagely powerful propulsive jet. The CT is fashioned in isolated space laboratories in which gravity shielding is employed to generate controlled black-hole conditions that allow manipulation of fundamental matter in a manner not possible otherwise. Blocks of CT substance are handled and stored magnetically, so that they never touch normal matter until the proper time. Only small amounts of CT fuel are kept on any given ship, to militate against unfortunate accidents, but a small amount of CT goes far. The power of the acceleration of a given ship is determined not by limitation of the fuel but by the capacity of the ship to withstand the rigors of high gee. I trust this makes this aspect clear; the average man prefers not to think too much about CT.

This was the comfortable part of the voyage. We accelerated at gee for almost a full day, to almost two million miles per hour. Of course, this was a largely misleading figure in space. What it meant was that in just under two days at this velocity we could travel one Astronomical Unit; that is, the distance from the sun to the planet Earth. Our Earthly heritage remains with us in a number of incidental and archaic ways, but actually the AU is a fairly useful measurement for Solar System distances. Jupiter is just over five AU

from the sun, and Saturn nine and a half, and Uranus nineteen. That did not mean that we could travel to Saturn in nine days, assuming we wanted to; Saturn was not aligned with Jupiter at the moment, so we would have to cross a fair secant to reach it. But it provides a notion of the scale.

As it turned out, it was no planet we traveled to. When Commander Hastings briefed the officers on our mission, it turned out to be the planetoid Chiron. Chiron is a tiny body about 150 miles in diameter, orbiting elliptically between Saturn and Uranus; in due course it intersects the orbits of each. It was colonized by both major planets and has had a savage history, as the representatives of each planet tried to assume full control. Violence was flaring again, and we were going there as part of a temporary United Planets peacekeeping force. This was supposed to be a routine operation, no actual combat, but in that volatile region, we had to be prepared for anything.

We traveled for a week in free-fall before spinning the ship for the remaining part of the month. Cmdr.

Hastings believed that it was good discipline to endure the rigors of null gee. Cmdr. Hastings was a polished nugget of chicken manure; all agreed on that. We had frequent free-fall drills. We were, as I put it in Spanish (never in English!), the Chicken Express. By the time we went into deceleration, my men were ready for the kill, and Commander Hastings was the leading candidate for the chicken ax. I kept them in line largely because of my talent and my Hispanic identity; I spotted the potential troublemakers early and persuaded them to keep the lid on. It was effective; I was, I discovered, an excellent leader of men. I was an officer and they were enlisted men, but we came to understand each other well enough and we had mutual respect. I made things as easy for them as I could; I could not do much, but I knew they appreciated the effort.