Rebel (15 page)

The Octopus ushered Cole into the small office two levels below Duke's Place.

"So he works right here on Singapore Station?" said Cole.

"Why not?" replied the Octopus. "You see any police around?"

"No," said Cole. "I also don't see a master forger."

"He'll be here. He knows I'm bringing you."

As if on cue, the door opened and a strange-looking alien entered the office. He was about five feet tall and so stocky he literally waddled, though Cole had a feeling he wasn't carrying an ounce of fat. His fingers were as long and thin as his body was short and stout. His mouth was clearly not shaped for human languages, and indeed he wore a T-pack—a translator mechanism—around his neck. His nostrils were two slits in the middle of his face, his ears were bell shaped and capable of independent motion—but his most outstanding features were his eyes: bright red, and fully two inches in diameter.

"Picasso, say hello to Wilson Cole."

"Your reputation precedes you, Captain Cole," said the alien, his translated voice coming out in a flat, emotionless, mechanical monotone.

"Yours doesn't extend much beyond this room," said Cole, "which I imagine is an advantage in your line of work."

"I have recognition and acclaim among those who require my services," said Picasso. "That will have to suffice. We cannot all be as famous as my namesake."

"I gave him his name," said the Octopus with a touch of pride. "No one except another member of his race can pronounce his real one."

"What can I do for you, Captain Cole?" asked Picasso.

"I need two passports and two IDs. My face is on wanted posters all the hell over the Republic, so when you run a holo, add a beard and mustache. I'll start growing them today."

"Forget that. It's too obvious. We'll begin by temporarily changing your eye color. I'll give you some pills that will take most of the color out of your skin and add more wrinkles than you can imagine to your face. The effect will vanish two days after you stop taking the pills. And since we're aging your skin by twenty or thirty years, we'll dye your hair gray as well."

"Are there any side effects from the pills?" asked Cole. "I'm going to need all my senses, and I may have to move fast."

"None at all," said Picasso. "I shall also need certain data."

"Shoot."

"To begin with, height, weight, age, scars, any previous broken bones that will show up on a scan."

"No problem," replied Cole. "What about dental records?"

"Yes, I was coming to that," said Picasso.

Cole spent the next fifteen minutes giving the alien what he wanted. He then allowed Picasso to take a skin scraping so that his DNA would agree with the reading on his passport.

"Name three worlds within the Republic that you have visited, either in your capacity as an officer or even as a tourist."

"Deluros VIII, Pollux IV, and Goldenrod."

"I'll have your passport show them as your three most recent ports of call," said Picasso.

"Just a minute," said Cole. "There's no naval base on Pollux. Change it to Spica VI."

"All right," said the alien, making a note.

"When will they be ready?" asked Cole.

"Two days," replied Picasso. "And I must take your holo for your ID before you leave—in a military uniform, of course, but preferably of a lower rank than captain or commander."

Cole shook his head. "I'll be back later for that."

"It will only take a few seconds."

"I know. I'll be back." He paused. "Are we done now?"

"Yes."

"I'll see you in a couple of hours."

Cole walked out the door, accompanied by the Octopus.

"Let me make an educated guess," said the Octopus. "You're going back to your ship."

"That's right."

"And you're going to get into your naval uniform."

"Wrong," said Cole.

"Wrong?" said the Octopus, surprised.

"I'm going to borrow someone else's uniform."

"Oh, of course," said the Octopus. "You don't want to be identified as a captain. It would be too easy for them to find out that you were a doppelganger."

Cole smiled. "You're quick on the uptake."

"Well, I
am
a devious criminal kingpin," said the Octopus.

"The trick," continued Cole, "is to find one of the smaller ships. It would strain credulity for me to be the only survivor of a crew of thirty, and to be able to bring the ship back to port on my own."

"Strain it?" laughed the Octopus. "It would shatter it into a million pieces."

"I figure a six-man job, eight at the most. And we'll have to find some way to kill or capture the crew without harming the ship too badly."

"You can't capture them and then have them take you to their base, you know. Being the only survivor is one thing; being the only passenger is another."

"I don't really want to show up with five or six corpses," said Cole. "They'll spend all their time debriefing me. I'd much rather land with six or seven men in need of immediate medical attention."

"There are a
lot
of naval bases, even on the outskirts of the Republic," said the Octopus. "Are you sure you can find your way back to the right one?"

"I was an officer in that goddamned Navy for my entire adult life," said Cole. "And the Republic doesn't waste new ships on the Frontier. Whatever ship we capture, I'll be able to read its log and its directives, and if it's small enough I should even be able to pilot it alone."

"You could take one or two of your men with you, just to be on the safe side," suggested the Octopus.

"No," said Cole. "There would be more chance of making a mistake once we landed. There'd be three times the likelihood that one of us would be spotted, and of course there's a chance that we'd tell contradictory accounts during isolated debriefings." He shook his head. "No, there are just too many things that could go wrong."

"When you said earlier that I was going to help you, I assume you mean you want me to help you disable the ship and capture the crew?"

"Right." Suddenly Cole smiled. "I hope you weren't thinking I wanted you to come along. I don't think any amount of work by Picasso can get you in the front door of the Republic."

"It depends on where the door is. I'm not as notorious as you are— at least, not within the Republic."

"You just take care of the ship, and I'll handle the rest," said Cole. "I'd have the
Teddy R
take care of it ourselves, but there's every likelihood they'll get off an SOS or two, and I don't want them identifying us. That's the one thing that
could
get a few hundred ships out here in a hurry—the chance of capturing or killing the
Teddy R.
Let them report any other ship and it only enhances my story when I bring a crippled ship and a wounded crew back to port."

"Sounds good. But I've still got a question."

"Go ahead."

"Let's assume that everything goes the way you want, we disable the ship, we shoot up the crew but leave most of them alive, you enter the naval base unchallenged, you even get the information you need." The Octopus paused. "How are you going to get back out here?"

"I'll have to assess the situation when I'm ready to leave."

"I thought commanding officers were always supposed to have an exit strategy."

"I've got three or four," answered Cole. "I won't know which is the likeliest to succeed until after I'm there."

They reached the trams, and Cole took one out to the
Teddy R.
He decided that Luthor Chadwick was approximately his size, and sought out the young man, who was watching a holo in his cabin.

"Sir?" said Chadwick.

"I need a favor, Luthor," sand Cole.

"What can I do for you, sir?"

"You can loan me one of your old sergeant's uniforms from when you were stationed on Timos III."

"My sergeant's uniform?" repeated Chadwick, frowning.

"You've still got it, don't you?"

"Yes, sir. But . . ."

"I probably won't be returning it," said Cole as Chadwick went to a compartment and pulled it out. "Let me know how much I owe you."

"Nothing, sir," said Chadwick. "I was never going to wear it again."

"Then thanks," said Cole, taking the outfit from him. "Much appreciated."

Cole left the puzzled young man and went to his own cabin. He was about to change into the uniform to make sure it fit when Sharon Blacksmith entered the room.

"I take it we no longer believe in knocking," said Cole.

"All right, Wilson, cut the bullshit and tell me what's going on."

Cole sighed. "What the hell, I'm not going to be able to keep it from you much longer anyway. I'll soon be masquerading as a noncommissioned officer in the Republic's Navy."

"Where?"

"On a small ship that we will briefly incapacitate and use for our purposes."

"Who is 'we'?"

"Us. Our side in this conflict."

"You're going to pose as a member of the military and sneak into the Republic," she said accusingly.

"I'm not
sneaking
in," he corrected her. "I'm walking in bold as brass."

"Maybe you'd better tell me the whole thing," said Sharon.

He laid out his plan to her, half-surprised that she let him finish without yelling at him.

"Damn it, Wilson," she said when he was through, "how many times do you have to be reminded: the Captain doesn't leave his ship in enemy territory—and it doesn't get much more inimical than a Navy base."

"I have to go," he said. "There's no one else who knows what to look for, or what codes to use to access it. Four Eyes knew, but he's dead. Jacovic's never set foot in the Republic. Val was a pirate for the past dozen years before she joined us. Christine isn't cut out for this kind of work, and you know it. That takes care of my senior officers. Who do you recommend?"

"Send Malcolm or Luthor, or anyone else. We can't spare you."

"Rubbish. Jacovic has ten times the credentials I do. He was a Fleet Commander, for Christ's sake."

"This crew didn't leave their lives in the Republic behind and become outlaws for Jacovic," she replied. "We did it for
you."

"I appreciate the sentiment, but there's no one else qualified to do this," insisted Cole. "I was a senior officer for fifteen years. I know the codes, I know the protocol, I know how to behave in the restricted areas, and once I gain access to the proper program I know how I want to change it. Look me in the eye and tell me that anyone on this or any other ship in our fleet has a better chance of success."

Sharon was silent for a long moment. Finally she spoke. "I've never asked before, but how old are you?"

"What's that got to do with anything?" he answered.

"That
old?"

"I'm forty-one," he said begrudgingly.

"Don't you think you're getting a little long in the tooth for this kind of cloak-and-dagger shit?"

"The problem with twenty-two-year-old bodies," said Cole, "is that they come equipped with twenty-two-year-old brains. If any of them could do this, I'd let them."

"I don't believe that for a second, and neither do you." She stared at him. "But none of them
can
do it, can they?"

"No."

"Damn it," said Sharon. "Why couldn't I have fallen in love with Briggs or one of the others who never leave the ship except to drink and gamble?"

"Probably for the same reason I don't love someone as young and blonde and innocent as Rachel," said Cole with a smile. "We both have lousy taste."

"You just damned well better come back in one piece."

"Back is easy," he said. "One piece is a little harder." Suddenly he noticed tears rolling down her cheeks. "Hey, that was a joke."

"There's nothing funny about what you're doing, you stupid old man."

"Let's hope the Navy feels the same way."

He began taking off his tunic.

She laughed through her tears. "You really have to work on your timing, Wilson."

"I'm getting into Chadwick's uniform," he said. "I've got to pose for some holos in it for my passport disk and ID cube."

"Right now?"

He reached out and wiped a tear off her cheek.

"Oh, hell, I suppose it can wait another hour."

It was three days later when word came through. Cole, whose medication and dye job had added twenty-five years to his appearance, was having lunch with Sharon and David Copperfield in the mess hall when Rachel Marcos contacted him.

"Sir," she said, "the Octopus reports a sighting."

"Can you patch me through to him?"

"Yes, sir."

An instant later the image of the Octopus appeared before him.

"What've you got?" asked Cole.

"It looks like just what we've been waiting for," replied the Octopus. "A nine-man class-K ship, on a solo patrol. As far as we can tell there's not another Navy ship within a parsec."

"Sounds good," said Cole. "Where is it?"

"Out past New Bolivia. I don't know how long it will stay there, or where it's going next, so we'd better move fast."

"I'll have to check with our pilot to see how quickly we can get there."

"We're heading there even as I speak to you," said the Octopus. "Our pilot recommends the Bonetta Wormhole."

"I'll pass the word."

"If we get there first, I'm not going to wait for you," continued the Octopus. "I'm taking six ships with me, and calling in two from the general vicinity of New Ecuador, which is a light-year beyond New Bolivia. No sense letting this ship get away just because you're a few minutes late."

"Just remember: I want most of them alive, and I want the ship to be able to limp back to port."

"I know," said the Octopus. "Wormhole's coming up. It'll kill the transmission in another—"

The signal went dead as the wormhole swallowed up the Octopus's ship.

Cole took the airlift to the bridge and walked over to where Wxakgini hung suspended in his harness, attached to the navigational computer by long metallic tendrils that ran from the machine to his skull.

"Pilot, we've got to get to New Bolivia," announced Cole. "I'm told the Bonetta Wormhole is the quickest way."

"If it hasn't moved," replied Wxakgini. "It's very unstable. I'll have to check it out." There was a momentary silence. "It seems fine today. We'll use it."

"Transit time to New Bolivia?"

"Three hours and eleven minutes."

"Fine. Let's go."

"Sir," said Christina, "it will take an hour or more for all the crew to get back to the ship."

"We'll go without them. The Octopus is handling the shooting. All the
Teddy R
is doing is delivering me."

The ship took off for the wormhole, and Cole summoned Jacovic and Val to his office.

"I'm sure you're both aware of what's happening," he began.

"The freak spotted a Navy ship flying solo," said Val.

"Tactful as always," said Cole dryly. "We'll be entering a wormhole in a couple of minutes, and will emerge in or near the New Bolivia system in about three hours. The Octopus will already be there, along with seven or eight more ships. They should already have incapacitated the ship and done pretty much the same to the crew by the time we arrive."

Cole paused. "You both have some inkling of my plan. Jacovic, you're going to be in command of the
Teddy R
until such time as I return. Val, don't contradict him in front of the crew, even if he's wrong about something. And when he gives you an order, no arguing and no backtalk. You can get away with it with me because I've got a special relationship with the crew; most of them gave up everything they had back in the Republic to come to the Frontier with me. Jacovic is a newcomer, so don't tease him and don't hassle him; it will look like insubordination, not humor." He stared at her. "I mean it."

"I'm an officer aboard the
Teddy R,"
said Val in hurt tones. "I know my duty."

This is a hell of time to show the first tender emotion I've ever seen from you,
thought Cole. "All right," he said aloud. "Jacovic, you might as well start getting used to being the Captain. I'm turning over command to you as of this second."

The Teroni saluted. "I think I'll go to the bridge," he said. "I know we have eight other ships taking all the risk, but I want to make sure we can back them up if we have to." He paused. "Have you any objection to that, sir?"

"You're in charge," said Cole. "Who am I to challenge my captain's decisions?"

Jacovic left the office as Val surpressed a chuckle.

"What's so funny?" asked Cole.

"'Who am I to challenge my captain's decisions?'" she repeated with a smile. "As I understand it, that's exactly how you got to be Captain in the first place—by challenging your captain's decisions."

"This is what I was talking about, Val. I don't mind this kind of banter at all, but don't use it with Jacovic. He's a newcomer, and he's a member of a race that every one of us was trained to fight against. He's going to need all the support he can get."

"I know," she said.

"Fine. Now I've got to get Sharon down here."

"One last roll in the hay?" said Val. "I approve."

"You've got a single-track mind," said Cole. "She's got my passport, my ID, and my biography. And Val?"

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings."

"That's what captains are for," she said, leaving the office.

Sharon arrived a few minutes later with his new identity.

He was Leslie Ainge, he was a sergeant, his home world was Roanoke II, and he was sixty-three years old. He was unmarried, he'd seen action in the Battle of Verona, he'd been decorated for bravery and busted for drunkenness. By the time he'd committed all the details to memory he felt that he could stand up under normal scrutiny, perhaps even a bit more.

He stayed in his office another hour, to give the bridge personnel time to get used to the fact that Jacovic was in command, then went down to the mess hall for a sandwich.

He pulled up an entertainment holo and watched it until Rachel contacted him and told him that they had emerged from the wormhole.

"What's the situation?" he asked.

"The . . . Mr. . . . the Octopus wants to speak to you."

"Fine. Put him through."

The Octopus's image suddenly appeared opposite Cole. "Are you ready to go to work?"

"That's what I'm here for," replied Cole. "How did it go?"

"Crew of nine. Three dead, six wounded, none fatally, but we borrowed some blood from the corpses and drenched the living with it. They look pretty awful."

"And the ship?"

"No way it will ever go light speeds again, but we can tow it to the Bassinger Wormhole, and that will let it off half a light-year from its base on Chambon V."

"How long will it take?" asked Cole.

"To get it to Chambon? Maybe two hours, using the wormhole."

"Will the wounded make it?"

"They're not that badly shot up," answered the Octopus. "And we can tranquilize them, or even put them out cold until you arrive."

Cole shook his head. "No. The medics would spot it in two seconds, and the last thing I need is to be pulled in for questioning. With a little luck I'll be out of debriefing before the patients are out of surgery, and I can lose myself on the base."

"One good thing," said the Octopus. "From what we can tell, there are close to thirty thousand men and aliens stationed at Chambon V. You just might sneak through. I was worried that with such a small ship and crew it might be the kind of minor-league outpost where everyone knows everyone else."

"Okay," said Cole. "I'm going to instruct my pilot to approach the ship. Just before we get there, find some way to knock out the survivors without killing them."

"We'll just lower their oxygen," said the Octopus. "They don't have that much as it is." A pause. "Why do you want them unconscious?"

"If they see me entering the ship, at least one of them's going to remember it long enough to mention it to the debriefers. Better to have them wake up after I've got the ship moving and have taken control; they're wounded, they're groggy, they're a bit oxygen-deprived; they'll see a guy in a Republic uniform, and then they should go back to worrying about their own injuries."

"And you're sure that'll work?" asked the Octopus dubiously.

"It has to," said Cole. "The only alternative is to kill them."

The
Teddy R
reached the wounded Navy ship a few minutes later, and Cole prepared to transfer to the ship.

"One last thing," he said.

"What is it?" asked the Octopus.

"We need a code word, a recognition signal," replied Cole. "Assuming I live through this, I'm almost certainly going to have to steal a Navy ship, or at least a ship registered in the Republic, and I don't want you blowing me out of the sky when I'm trying to get home."

"So pick a code word."

"Four Eyes," said Cole.

"Somehow I'm not surprised," said the Octopus. "Okay, by the time I get back to Singapore Station, every ship in our fleet will know it."

"Thanks," said Cole. "Here's hoping I don't need it."

And it was almost as if the cynical God of Overconfident Spacemen grinned and said:
Well, you can hope.