Mercenary (23 page)

Mondy nodded, pleased. He was doing very well in our unit.

One other matter I should mention here. We were adding considerable personnel during this expansion phase, and I left most of the details to my Adjutant, as is normal. But officers and key enlisted personnel I interviewed myself, to be quite sure they were what we wanted. In the Navy a commander's powers of choice are limited; some higher and somewhat erratic power directs the movements of personnel. That was one reason we had to use marriage to fetch our most vital members; it bypassed the red tape without betraying the nature of the larger plan. But the commander can do quite a bit to encourage particular people to remain or to move on, and this I did, whichever way was called for. Most were all right, for they knew of me and my unit and wanted to join; many were Hispanic, but others were ambitious Saxons or minority factions, highly motivated. We promised fair treatment and no-fault advancement for those with merit and loyalty, regardless of background, and it seemed this was unusual in the contemporary Jupiter Navy. So now we were getting skilled personnel without going after them, apart from the marriage acquisitions.

Spirit surprised me one day by bringing in a civilian clerk. The Navy did employ a number of civilians, because they were cheaper for mundane purposes such as kitchen police and janitor service and clerking, and often better suited for these jobs. It made little sense for the Navy to draft qualified personnel, run them through expensive training and conditioning, grant them generous medical and retirement benefits, then put them to work scraping dirty pots. Also, the job requirements for specialized noncombat positions are beyond what is normally available in the military system, especially when sophisticated computerized equipment is involved. For these positions civilian specialists must be hired, theoretically temporary until qualified Navy personnel are assigned; actually, they tend to be more permanent than most Navy assignments, since they are not subject to whimsical rotation. The local commander can hire and fire directly, without significant interference from above. Thus he has greater control, and often the truly key personnel in a unit are almost invisible civilians, known in the trade as technical mercenaries, hired out by civilian companies. This process was so advanced at this time that unit commanders sometimes vied competitively for desirable civilians. The rates of pay were fixed by Navy regulations, but there were off-the-record inducements. Some civilian employees lived quite royally, with government meals and the pick of enlisted (and sometimes commissioned) roommates of the opposite sex. For centuries it had been said that a master sergeant had things as good as anyone in the Service; today it was the choice civilian mercenary. As a military mercenary myself, I was quick to appreciate the situation. But in fairness I must also say that most civilian employees were simply that: hirelings with no job security and not a great deal of respect.

This one was a woman in her forties, slender and serious. “Isobel is a resident alien,” Spirit said. “She migrated from Titania as a child and lost her papers.”

“I know how that is,” I said. “It took over a year for my lost papers to be replaced, and then only because I joined the Navy—and even then my age slipped by them.”

“She's a skilled military-computer operator, and conversant with navigation in space. But she does not want any security clearance.”

I looked more carefully at the applicant. She had shoulder-length brown-red hair and color-matched painted fingernails. Her eyes were deep gray. Her face was poker, giving nothing away, and she had no body mannerisms to signal her thoughts. I could not read her, yet she was oddly familiar. “We can use her qualifications,” I said, “but the position we need her for requires a clearance, or personal assurance by the commander. Does she have good references?”

“No,” Spirit said.

I glanced at her, annoyed. And paused, for Spirit was virtually quivering with excitement. Something was afoot.

I looked again at Isobel. “Speak to me,” I said.

“As you wish, sir,” Isobel said.

Then it struck me. “Captain Brinker of the Hidden Flower —in drag!”

She grimaced. “It is the only way to conceal my identity. A necessary evil.” She glanced with distaste at her nails.

I had made a deal with Brinker, sparing her life in exchange for mine, and preserving the secret of her sex in exchange for information about QYV. The deal had been honored by both parties. She had spent her adult life as a male; how ironic that she now had to hide by reverting to her true nature.

But hiring her in my unit?—I really did not want any further association with this pirate. Yet my sister had brought her.

I returned to Spirit. “You know this woman a good deal better than I do. Do you speak for her?”

“I don't like her,” Spirit said. “But she treated me fairly and kept my secret, and she is the most competent fighting woman I know. If she will serve you, you can't afford to turn her down. I gave her my word not to betray her to the authorities.”

“That word shall be honored, of course,” I agreed. “But she is a pirate!”

“ Was,” Spirit said. I saw that despite her personal distance from Brinker, she did want the woman to be hired.

I turned to Brinker. “My friends died because of you.”

“I lost my ship because of you,” she said evenly. “It happens, in war.”

So she viewed piracy as a state of war. Well, perhaps it was. It was true that I had done her about as much damage as she had me; several of her officers had been executed. It was also true that I had recovered my sister, who probably would not have survived on another pirate's ship.

“With your qualifications,” I said, “you can hire out elsewhere. Why come to me, the one who knows your secret?”

“I can't return to space without protection. I am confined to low-grade clerical tasks and subject to the whims of men.”

The whims of men. Yes, women had little sexual privacy in the Navy, and civilian employees could have difficulty retaining their positions if they differed too obviously from Naval norms. If she wanted to be inconspicuous, she had to go along. “Are you homosexual?” I asked. Even today, some people distinguish between homosexuality and lesbianism, but they are the same: sexual preference for one's own sex.

“No. I don't like sex at all.”

I glanced again at Spirit, who nodded. In this manner I had the answer to a question I had not been able to ask before: whether Spirit had been subjected to same-sex sex. I knew Spirit could handle anything she had to, but the information gratified me. I had feared what I might have left her to, among pirates.

But now this woman wanted not only employment, but also protection: from the attentions of men, and from revelation of her history. And she wanted to get out of the clerking trade. She wanted a lot, and I could not see my way clear to giving this pirate any of it. I would much prefer to put her on trial for her past.

But Spirit spoke for her. I had to hedge.

“Bring Repro,” I said to my sister.

Spirit made a military turn and departed, leaving me alone with Isobel Brinker. “The things you want can be arranged, if I choose,” I said carefully. “You could be assigned a male roommate whose sexual interest matches yours. You can be assigned compatible work. Your past can be private, with certain exceptions. Lieutenant Commander Repro is our unit psychologist and our S-5. He and my other key officers would have to know.”

“Your word governs them?”

“Yes.”

“Then do as you will.”

“You know I have sworn to extirpate piracy from the face of the system.”

“I have no loyalty to piracy. It was a necessary expedient.”

“You would serve in this cause?”

“Yes.”

Spirit returned with Repro; he must have been close at hand. I outlined the situation briefly to him. “What is your advice?”

He considered. “She was not on my list, because I did not know of her. She belongs on it. Hire her.”

“But she is a pirate!” I protested again, dismayed by his ready acceptance.

“Sir, you swore to eliminate piracy. You can do that by conversion as readily as killing. You must be ready to accept those who genuinely reform, otherwise you are no better than Mondy was.”

“Mondy?”

“He has killed as many as you have, in much the same manner, and now cannot escape his conscience.”

Conversion—it did make sense. Why had I never been able to see it before? Because I was overly obsessed with vengeance. I did not need to consult with my other officers; I knew they would agree with Repro. Captain Brinker, former pirate, was not really the issue; my attitude was.

“It seems I have been overruled by my staff,” I said. I turned to Spirit. “Hire her.”

Brinker and I both knew the commitments implied.

Brinker would not attempt to kill or harm me and would serve in whatever capacity assigned with complete loyalty and effectiveness. I would protect her from certain types of exposure. Objectively I knew it was a good deal for both of us; she could return to space action in no other way, and she could do our unit a lot of good, for she was highly competent. Still, there was a bad taste.

Repro was right; it did work out. Brinker served me better than I could have anticipated. My unit even gave her a song: “Who's Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot?”, which concludes, “I don't need no man.” Brinker sang it with a certain pride.

Time passed. In due course we sought and got another inclement assignment: the elimination of the pirates of the Juclip. My sister Spirit, my S-l Adjutant, had been keeping her eye out for this opportunity, and Mondy had advised her when it was coming; when it arrived, we pounced.

The pirates had been getting bolder. It seemed the flow of illicit refugees from the Hispanic planet-moons had ebbed, and the ships that normally preyed on them had had to turn to other areas in order to sustain themselves. I state this dispassionately, but, of course, that is illusion; Hispanic refugees are very much my people. But I had been powerless, hitherto, to strike back at the pirates; I had to remain in military channels or lose my position. Now, however, the pirates had taken to raiding pleasure craft, including some wealthy yachts; a prominent debutante had been kidnapped, raped, and ransomed. That finally got the attention of the Jupiter governments. The authorities had chosen to ignore the increasing raids on agricultural bubbles, and, of course, refused to acknowledge the brutal decimation of refugees. “Hell, they're doing us a favor!” one high government official was reported to have remarked about that aspect of pirate activity. I smoldered; there were bigots in high places, and I hated them in much the way I hated the pirates, for they were almost equally responsible for the murder of refugees such as my father. But the rich girl had been beautiful and purest Saxon and well connected, her family vested with enormous wealth; she made excellent news copy, and her family was a major contributor to the party in power in North Jupiter. So the word went out: Do something about the local pirates. Teach them a lesson. And we were ready. We had spent three years preparing our battalion.

I had four hundred Hispanics in my unit. When I announced our intentions to go out after the pirates, they raised a cheer that shook the ship. Most of them had had at least peripheral experience with the pirates; many of them had scores to settle as savage as mine. It was for this I had forged my fighting force, and for this these Hispanics had flocked to my banner. But the non-Hispanics were, for different reasons, as eager for action. They wanted the glory and promotion attendant on success, and many of them sincerely believed that piracy was evil.

Lieutenant Commander Phist, our S-4 Logistics officer, now had the authority to requisition the best equipment, thanks to this pressing mission, and he knew exactly what that was. Logistics can be the lifeblood of a mission, and now it showed.

As a commander I was entitled to a cruiser, but there was considerable leeway in the definition of that designation. The Copperhead was a reconditioned ship, originally commissioned in the year 2600—by a nice coincidence, the year I was born—and renovated in 2625. There was a general prejudice against reconditioned ships, as though they were damaged goods, but that was foolish. The fact was that an old ship was a proven ship, and renovation in no way damaged its reliability or performance. Phist assured me of this, and I soon saw that he was speaking from extremely solid information. The Copperhead had been assigned to me, a Hispanic officer, because as an old ship she was considered to be inferior, but she was in fact an excellent fighting vessel. We had then had to go through the inconvenience of the renovation, which had forced our unit to occupy other ships on a temporary basis, no fun; that was part of the covert harassment the Navy dealt to our ilk.

Under Phist's supervision, she became a better ship. She was rated at 3.2 gee acceleration for twenty-four hours, which was plenty of power for a ship of her class, but Phist requisitioned seemingly minor modifications that increased her actual performance to 3.7 gee. That's more significant than it might seem; it meant she could outrun most other cruisers, and in a battle situation that was important. She mounted nine eight-inch guns and twelve five-inch laser cannon, as was standard, but it turned out there was a difference in guns, too. Phist got them replaced by more accurate, higher-muzzle-velocity guns; these required better-trained crews, but we were quite ready to provide them. Now we could outshoot most cruisers, too. I was quick enough to appreciate the advantage; I had not before realized that it was possible to change the specs on things like acceleration and big guns. I was learning. Phist might well have saved the ship and all our lives from some future destruction, and he had done it through only quiet paperwork.

We also acquired three escort ships, each only half our length and one-sixth our mass of 17,000 tons, and two destroyers, smaller yet but faster. Spirit finagled that, finding authorization in an obscure naval directive about battle theaters. We were going out to do battle with pirates, and the Juclip was our theater, so we qualified. Phist made certain they were good vessels—he knew more about military specifications than I had dreamed there was to be known—and he conspired with Emerald to get sophisticated torpedoes for the destroyers. Mondy's information was that most of the pirates had devices to foil the guidance systems of standard Navy torpedoes; these were proof against that. And, of course, we had half a dozen tugs.

I should mention the song the group gave Lieutenant Commander Phist, as it certainly fitted him: “Old King Cole.” In the song, King Cole calls for all manner of personnel, who have all manner of equipment, but generally settle for beer. It was funny, but “King Cole” Phist was also able to requisition the finest quality beer for the “fighting infantry.”

As fleets went, what we had was minor, but it was enough to do the job. If I failed, I would be through, perhaps dead, for those pirates were no gentle creatures. But if I succeeded, I would rate another promotion—and I needed that, for this time it would be to Captain, O6, and mean command of a larger force, with attendant upgrading of many of my personnel. I wanted that power to pursue my personal mission properly: extirpation of all piracy in the Solar System.

We moved out. We had been drilling for this for some time, with our pugil stick and space-raider training; we were ready. We knew there was danger and that there would be bloodshed; this would be our blooding as a true fighting unit.

Mondy had done his homework, cooperating with Repro; he had the current information on the location of every private vessel known to the Jupiter Navy. That was only a fraction of the total, of course, but a large fraction. Many of the others would be part-time pirates, or pirates of opportunity: legitimate vessels preying on what they could get away with, whatever happened to be in their paths. My older sister Faith had been taken by such a ship, a merchanter whose men were simply on the prowl for sex. Merchant ships don't handle sex the way the Navy does, forthrightly, and so they have problems with it. The refugee-bubbles were considered fair game for sex by any males in the vicinity.

Faith—I had not thought about her much. Spirit was really my closest sibling, the one I cared about.

Faith, my senior by three years, had always been somewhat aloof, too mature and too pretty, and her humiliation too savage. It was as if she had died, in my mind; psychologically I could no more bring her back than I could my parents. I believed she was alive but did not act on it. I can't justify this attitude, for surely I loved my big sister; I merely say that is the way it was. I hoped she was well, somewhere out of space; perhaps she had managed to marry a merchant captain and settle on Jupiter before her beauty faded.

Our strategy was simple: We plotted a route to intercept the nearest pirate vessel on our chart, and proceeded at gee. We could accelerate at more than triple that, of course, but sustained multiple-gee is uncomfortable and wasteful of CT fuel; we saved that for direct pursuit when the time came.

Perhaps I should qualify that. Theoretically it is just as efficient to reach a given velocity at two-gee acceleration as at one gee, if the drive is geared for it. There is, after all, no significant friction in space. At the velocities normally used for travel between moons or planets, loss of efficiency owing to relativistic factors is too small to be noted. So we could accelerate for half a day at two gee, instead of for one day at one gee, and use the same fuel. But what would be the point? We would not arrive soon enough to justify the awful burden of sustained double weight, since acceleration is only part of the trip, with inertial drifting being the major part. Only if it was urgent to travel faster would we use more than one gee. If we sustained high-gee to cut our total travel time, that would use more fuel, which we might need later.

Actually, distances within the Juclip are such that a few hours of gee suffice for any travel needed, and our plotted route to the nearest pirate ships cut that down in some cases to mere minutes. We had no problem there. Accordingly I am skipping most reference to periods of acceleration and free-fall. We spun ship while coasting, so we had gee at hull diameter most of the time, keeping our men in shape. We also continued exercises and drills; it was our intent to capture ships whenever feasible, not depending on the pirates' choice of surrender or flight. We did not want to depend on the pirates for anything.

We also worked hard to enhance the spirit of unity. Every day, sometimes every shift, we sang our songs, and when we were singing there were no ranks, either enlisted or officer; we were all worthwhile people in our own rights. Elsewhere in the Navy this singing was ridiculed, but now there were more petitions to transfer in than we could accommodate, and very few transferred out. I can't say the songs were responsible, but I am sure they helped. We had the feeling of togetherness, of family.

It had taken some time for the group to complete the selection of songs, but in most cases they were apt, and a person could indeed be judged by his song. Emerald, the strategist, had “The Rising of the Moon,”

a ballad of organization and battle; Mondy, locked in his prison of the soul, had “Peat Bog Soldiers,”

deriving from inmates of a concentration camp in an ancient war; Sergeant Smith had “Stout Hearted Men,” since he was deeply involved in the often-difficult training exercises. My secretary, Sergeant Moreno, whom I always think of as Juana, had “Early One Morning,” a song of a maiden mourning the lover who has deserted her; I have never been quite certain I comprehend the relevance. Perhaps I simply do not wish to. And my sister Spirit—hers was “I Know Where I'm Going,” whose key line seems to be “I know who I love, but the dear knows who I'll marry.” That implies that she did not marry the one she would have liked to, but I know that she never had an interest in any man other than Commander Phist, her husband. Yet the group agreed that this song fitted her, and she agreed. It continues to perplex me.

We zeroed in on our first target: the Caprine Isle . The pirate ships generally retained their prepirate designations, since theoretically they were law-abiding traders; this led to anomalous nomenclature. This one was notorious for gunrunning to guerrilla groups on the Hispanic moons. The pirates had no special sympathy for revolution; they merely went for money, and it seemed weapons brought excellent money.

Caprine Isle was also a prime suspect in the abduction case that had triggered this mission. We expected her to be tough, to try to fight or flee, and we expected to make an example of her. In fact, we were primed for it; I intended to give the destruct order personally. Many people are naturally squeamish about killing, and that is a thing I understand and respect, but when it came to pirates I was ready to do it. The image of my father, cut down treacherously by a pirate sword, was before me; the red of his brutally spilled blood threatened to blot out all else, as I viewed the pirate vessel on the screen.

Vengeance was to be mine, and I reveled in it.

We matched velocities and course with the Caprine Isle , and set our destroyers before and after her, torpedoes ready. She could not escape; in fact, she made no attempt to flee. Perhaps she assumed this was a routine challenge, a harmless posturing to demonstrate that the Jupiter Navy still controlled this place of space. We would quickly disabuse her of that!

We radioed her, and I sent a beam to HQ at Leda, putting the complete proceedings on irretrievable record. The Navy wanted to show that it was taking firm action; I would oblige. Repro, as Public Relations officer, had suggested this aspect. Mondy endorsed it for a different reason: He wanted there to be no possible recrimination against us when we did what we expected to do, should public reaction be adverse. We were not playing with rubber knives this time.

Our operator made contact with hers, establishing the identities of both ships. Then I spoke directly to the Caprine's captain, who was indeed a goatlike man, bearded and shaggy, named Billy. Billy the Kid.

Pirates tended to use professional pseudonyms, for obvious reason, and seemed to prefer the names of animals. There was a certain crude art to this, showing some humor, but probably the roots were deeper.

Migrant laborers had identifying songs; probably the pirates needed similar marks of distinction in an undistinguished profession.

“Billy, we are cleaning up the Juclip,” I announced. “You have one hour to consult your crew and surrender your ship and personnel to us for impoundment and trial according to Jupiter law.”

“Yeah, spic?” he demanded in the screen. “What if I don't?”

“Then we shall give you final warning and blast you out of space.” I hit the sound broadcast cutoff so that the cheer that rose from my eavesdropping men was not transmitted. They got an almost sexual thrill from speaking this way directly to a real, live pirate. It was the feel of vengeance. We wanted to blast that ship! But we didn't want to appear bloodthirsty.

Billy considered. He knew we had the firepower to do it. No doubt he now regretted addressing me by epithet. “What if I do?”

“My men will board you, disarm the ship, confine your personnel, and pilot the Caprine Isle to the Navy base at Leda where you will be interned and put on trial for piracy.”

“But that's death!”

“For those found guilty in court,” I agreed. "You will, of course, be adequately represented by counsel.