Mercenary (41 page)

The Sawfish , facing back in order to decelerate, braked all the way to a halt, then proceeded back toward the ford. “What are you doing?” I demanded of Spirit, the first member of my staff I located.

“Attacking the enemy, sir,” she said. “Now we have successfully re-formed; we can meet them face-to-face. What do you say to that?”

“I say I'll pulverize you!” I said as King Bela. “You're just as bad off here as you would have been at the Danube, and tired from a six-day flight, and shorter of supplies than ever.”

“So you'll commit all your forces to wipe us out,” she said.

“Of course. I'm certainly not going to back off now.”

“Well, may the best fighting force win,” she said.

She was up to something. But the Mongol course still seemed foolhardy to me. If they wanted to fight with their back to the river, they could have done that at the Danube. Here, if they won the battle, they would have nothing to exploit, for this was an uninhabited region. By the time they reached and crossed the Danube, the Hungarians could organize another effective defense. But the Mongols were unlikely to win, trying to fight out from the cramped formation necessitated by the bottleneck of the ford.

But I kept my silence. Evidently Emerald and my staff knew something I didn't. Whatever it was, I hoped the Marianas didn't know it, either.

The Sawfish crossed the Sajo and emerged from the ford. There, ranged in full battle order before us, was the entire Marianas fleet: a battleship; two small carriers; and ten destroyers, buttressed by numerous escort ships. They were poised, waiting for us to get clear of the river, so that we could not conveniently retreat again. This time they intended to be sure of us.

Our lesser vessels spread out around us. Our own carrier, the Hempstone Crater , was beside us, protected by the big guns of the battleship. But against the plainly superior force of the Marianas, what use was this?

The gap between us closed. The guns of the Sawfish fired; the unequal battle was on. The enemy ships advanced, eager to finish this campaign. They certainly seemed to be unstoppable. We could put up a decent fight but could not win. There just was not time enough to get all our ships through the ford and into play before the first ones were overwhelmed.

Then from our right appeared another fleet of ships. Peripheral dust around the River Sajo had concealed their approach, but now they were too close to hide. “What's that?” I demanded, alarmed.

“That's Emerald,” Spirit informed me blithely.

“But she's here on the Sawfish !”

“No. The Rising Moon transferred to the Inverness last night—she's a nocturnal person, you know—and led two-thirds of our force to the other ford.”

“What other ford?”

“The one our scouts located when we crossed the Sajo the first time. It's a subtle passage, and it seems the Marianas don't know about it.”

“Don't know about it!” I exclaimed. “Are they fools?”

She shrugged. “Dear brother, you're King Bela. Did you know about it?”

“No, but—”

“Did you even think of the possibility?”

“I had other things on my mind!”

“The prosecution rests.”

“Is that what happened at the real battle of Mohi Heath?”

“You got it. Bela's soldiers panicked, finding themselves attacked on flank and rear. The Mongols left the Hungarians an avenue of escape, and mowed them down in pursuit. In three days, about two-thirds of them were killed. It was one of the Mongols' most convincing victories.”

I shook my head. “Next time someone else can play the role of the enemy commander! I don't like losing battles.”

Roulette came up beside me. “Oh, I don't know. I can think of one a couple of nights ago—”

“Bitch,” I told her. I had learned the hard way how much she liked that sort of appellation. But there, as in the space battle, my retreat was over.

It was indeed a massacre. The discipline of the pirate fleet dissolved, and it was each ship for itself. I saw the wisdom of the Mongol strategy: Had the enemy been completely surrounded, the ships would have fought with the courage of desperation. But since they had a route to flee, they turned and fled, and our faster ships had no trouble running them down singly.

We did not destroy their ships unless we had to. We closed on the best prizes and forced their individual surrender and took them over for our fleet. Those that refused to surrender were infiltrated by our commandoes, using the technique we had drilled on and that I had used to fight Sergeant (then Corporal) Heller. Now this preparation paid off. We took some losses, of course; these are inevitable in battle. But these were offset by much greater gains.

Roulette and I amused ourselves by transferring to the carrier and piloting a pair of drones. This was really an adventurous minimal-risk pursuit, since we never left the carrier. Each of us was ensconced in a framework of remote controls, the headsets feeding the drones' perceptions directly to our eyes and ears, our hands and feet operating the electronic directives. Both of us had had our prior practice in dronesmanship, of course, but never in a genuine battle situation. Our assignment now was to scout out the location and defenses of particular fleeing enemy ships, so that our destroyers could zero in on them efficiently. Efficiency was the watchword; we wanted to nullify as many of these ships as possible before they reached the Danube. Thus all trained hands were pressed into service, ours included, so that the drones would operate in shifts.

It was easy to get into the feel of it. The moment my drone was launched by the ship's catapult, its lenses became my eyes and its code signals my ears. It was almost as if I had sprouted a jet and a cannon and was flying in space—or riding a fine, fast horse across a plain. It was an exhilarating experience; though I was bound to my machinery, I felt free in space.

Beside me was Drone number 18, the one my eighteen-year-old bride had chosen. Though she was conversant with the mechanism, she had not before handled a Navy drone, so I would keep her in sight and advise her when she needed it. It seemed as if we were radioing each other in space, but the mechanism was simpler than that: Our natural voices carried readily across the two-foot distance separating our control sets. Soon we were singing in space, “...takes a worried man...”, “...make your garden fair...”, making a kind of harmony where none belonged, exactly as was the case with our marriage.

It would be nice if I could claim we accomplished some heroic, or at least significant, deed. But we did not; we were simply small elements in the massive salvage effort made by our fleet. We spotted a handsome corvette and covered it with our guns until one of our destroyers approached and forced its surrender. What was perhaps more significant, as I view it in retrospect, was our conversation while we waited for the destroyer to arrive.

“Hope?”

She seldom called me that! “Yes, Rue?”

“We have defeated the Marianas and soon will free your Jupiter base. Your mission to the Belt is accomplished. There will be no further need for the alliance between your fleet and the Solomons.”

Now I grasped her concern. “And no further need of our marriage,” I finished.

“Yes.”

I sighed. “It was never my intent to hold you against your will, Rue. You have always been free to return to your father.”

“A man is a singing wynd.”

“But I do not take any marriage lightly,” I said, nettled at the implication. “Many pirate and military marriages may be mainly matters of mutual convenience, and certainly ours has been, but I think you make an excellent S-3 officer and a fair wife. I don't want to lose you, Rue; I want the marriage to continue.”

I half-expected an expletive of negation in response, but she was silent a moment. Then: “But you must return to Jupiter.”

“I will take you with me, if you want to go,” I said. “As a ranking officer I have certain privileges, among them the right to appoint whom I please to positions within my command, and to marry whom I please, in or out of the Navy. You are technically a civilian, but as long as you remain married to an officer of the Jupiter Navy, you will have status in the Navy. I remain ready to take you on a tour to Jupiter.”

“You are not dumping me the moment my use to you is over?”

“That is not my way, Rue. I have made and broken a liaison and a marriage in the Service—but only for solid, mutually agreed reason. You are welcome to check with Juana and Emerald.”

“The Used Maiden still loves you.”

“So her song says. But does she say I wronged her?”

Rue sighed. “No. She speaks no evil of you.”

“It's not a casual matter with me. I married you for the alliance with your father, but my commitment is not limited to the alliance. Not unless you wish it to be.”

Again there was a pause. “What of Helse?”

“I did not promise you love. Your body delights me, but—”

“She's, dead, Hope!”

“Yes. But I love her.”

“What of Megan?”

“What do you know of Megan?”

“You called to her, just before you raped me.”

“It was a vision. I do not know her.”

“But she will be the next woman you love.”

I was silent, and the conversation terminated there. It would be nice if all conversations led neatly to significant conclusions, but few do. Our lives are not so neatly organized. But I believe this interchange marked another turning point in our relationship. Roulette was coming to terms with my nature.

We wrapped up the drone mission, and our fleet wrapped up the capture of the enemy ships. Some Marianas did escape—the fastest ships—but the enemy losses were about seventy percent, as it had been with the Hungarians in the thirteenth century A.D. of Earth. The pirates, who had not heeded history, had indeed repeated it.

Roulette found pretexts to be with Emerald as much as possible. Her purpose was plainly positive: She was highly impressed with the strategic victories we had had, and wanted to learn at the feet of the master (mistress). Emerald was gruffly flattered; she liked having a disciple, especially one who was a subsequent wife of mine. Perhaps not all of what they discussed was military.

I found myself associating more with Mondy, who was busy interrogating new prisoners, seeking information on the remaining pirate forces. Since he could not necessarily trust what they told him, he had me interview the key ones. I informed him who was lying and who was telling the truth, and that enabled him to assemble reliable data. This was important, as Emerald's strategy was based on the nature of the enemy as defined by her husband. Mondy had informed her that the Marianas' chief was prone to go for the big play, eager to capture quality slaves; he would be conservative until he believed he had the advantage, then sweep in for the kill. Exactly as he had done. Her ploy of Mongol retreat would not have worked against the more canny Straight. But this routine work required several days, and by the time it was done, we had crossed the Danube and laid siege to the Marianas' home base.

At this point I had better dissolve what remains of the historical analogy. This was not medieval Europe, and not the twentieth-century Pacific; it was twenty-seventh-century space, with aspects unique to itself.

In this day, winning a battle was not the whole story; it was the necessary prerequisite to the proper completion of our mission. Now we had to ascertain what damage the pirates had done to the Jupiter base and get that base functioning properly again. That could take some time.

Mondy, chronically paranoid about enemy activity, urged me not to go personally to the freed Jupiter base until his men had checked it out carefully. Ordinarily I would have heeded his caution, but events prevented. Another pirate band, the Society, whose business was fencing pirated goods to reputable markets, was approaching with three carriers. I knew we would be far better off if we secured our main base before engaging the Society band. For one thing, we had many thousands of prisoners that we needed to park under guard, and the base had facilities for this that our ships lacked. There also should be substantial supplies there, to restore our fleet vitality. So I had to rush it, against Mondy's better judgment.

We sent in pacification troops in the guise of a liberation force. They were welcomed as saviors by the base personnel. Spirit ran rosters of names through her computer section, checking them against those of the base's original complement of officers. They checked. Apparently, the base personnel had been treated with temperance by the occupying pirates—at least until the outcome of the campaign was known. Mondy remained suspicious but had to admit it seemed all right.

“Look,” I told him. “If I go there, and nothing happens, then we'll know it's all right. I can serve as a lightning rod; I'm the mission figurehead. We only have a couple of days to settle this before we have to meet the Society; this is the only way to do it in time.”

“Take adequate guards,” he said grudgingly.

“An openly armed force is no good,” I pointed out. “I must seem satisfied, relaxed, unsuspecting.” The truth was, I was sure it was all right. The pirates knew they had no future at the base and could only invite retaliation if they pulled any tricks at this point. "I'll go there on recreation liberty with my beautiful bride.

But I'll bring my routine bodyguard."

“Not enough,” he objected. “At least take Brinker and Shrapnel. They know the pirate ways.”

That made sense. Brinker, in a dress, looked innocent enough, and once Shrapnel had sworn allegiance to The Ravished, he had proved to be extremely useful. He did indeed know the ways and faces of the local pirates. In addition, a picked squad of sharpshooters was assigned to keep an eye on us at all times, just in case. But we planned to act as if we believed we were mostly unobserved.

The physical premises were impressive. Several good-sized devices were anchored to the planetoid, much as they were on the moon Leda, and indeed this complex was on a similar scale. One reason the pirates had not killed the regular personnel was that it would have been impossible for them to maintain it themselves; they had to rely on the trained base personnel, both military and civilian. They had, of course, confined the base commander and his officers but had otherwise been satisfied with benign enslavement of the working personnel. Ships had been looted and supplies rifled, of course, and the base was in a state of general disrepair. Most of the young women had been raped; in fact, they had been converted as a class to a gigantic Tail for the pleasure of the pirates. But military women know how to handle rape; it is part of their training; these ones survived their months of captivity—actually, it had been just about a year—with only a trace of the trauma experienced by civilian women. Mainly, they were angry, very angry. The men, conversely, had been denied sex; the pirates hadn't wanted any others impinging on their assumed prerogatives. That was the first thing the Base personnel asked for when we took over: resumption of legitimate sexual activity. Roulette, as Operations officer, arranged for that with the mischievous malice of a pirate: She assigned the captive pirate women to Tail duty for the initial rush.