Rebel (16 page)

Cole waited for Wxakgini to maneuver the
Teddy R
next to the Navy ship. When the hatch on the shuttle bay was opposite the main hatch of the wounded vessel, it extended until the two met, then bonded and slid back both doors. He stepped through, ordered the smaller ship's hatch to seal, and then the
Teddy R
slowly pulled away.

Cole looked around the ship. There were four cabins, and he assumed the wounded crewmen were in their bunks. He walked to the command section—it was too small to call it a bridge. The control panel showed that the ship was being towed toward the Bassinger Wormhole, and he spent the next few minutes acquainting himself with controls, though they differed only in minor respects from any other class-K ship he'd been on. He found that its name was the
Polar Star,
and it had been commissioned thirty-one years ago.

He checked the weaponry, and quickly contacted the Octopus.

"Problems already?" asked the huge man. "I'd have sworn they were all sleeping tranquilly."

"No, no problems," said Cole. "But I see that they never fired a shot. I think it'll make a better story when I get back to base if I say we killed a ship or two. I don't want to get court-martialed for recklessly endangering Republic property
or
for cowardice in the face of enemy fire."

"So jettison some ammunition."

"No, I'm going to fire it into space. When they examine the ship, I want them to know the weapons have been fired, and recently. I just wanted to alert you and the other ships so you don't think the wounded crew has overpowered me and started shooting."

"All right," said the Octopus. "Give me about thirty seconds, and then fire away. Damn, you think of everything!"

"Well, when God shorts me in the hands department, I have to compensate with a little brainpower," answered Cole.

The Octopus emitted a huge peal of laughter. "I knew I liked you, Wilson Cole! Now fire your cannons, because we're going to dump you in the wormhole in about five minutes, and you don't want to be firing weapons in there the way those holes twist back into themselves."

Cole fired each of his cannons three or four times.

"That should do it," he said.

"Then we're going to take our leave of you," said the Octopus. "Your trajectory will put you in the wormhole in about three and a half minutes, and the ship's not so badly damaged that you won't be able to make adjustments if you have to."

"Thanks."

"Good luck! We'll see you back at Singapore Station."

Cole looked at the viewscreen. He'd never seen a wormhole. Theoretically no one had, though he had his suspicions about Wxakgini and other members of the Bdxeni race. But as he approached it, suddenly everything seemed to shimmer, and just as he entered it it looked like the entire universe was losing its structural integrity. Then he was inside it, everything seemed normal again, and the brighter stars were visible as if through a translucent veil of darkness.

He instructed the navigational computer to alert him just before they left the wormhole and entered normal space again, then went back to the cabins to check on the wounded crew.

They were pretty badly shot up, and he knew no one was going to grill him over tranquilizing them. He looked at them again and sighed. They were all so
young.
This one could be Rachel, that one could be Chadwick, this other could be Morales, the kid he'd lost during a pirate operation. Didn't they have even a single mature officer who knew his way around, who wouldn't blunder into a trap like the one the Octopus had laid for the
Polar Star
? But of course they didn't, or he wouldn't be standing here, in possession of a Navy ship and staring at the wounded bodies that used to run it.

He found the cargo area where the three dead crewmen were stashed, borrowed some blood from a sergeant to splash on his face and uniform, memorized the corpse's ID, and then jettisoned him into the wormhole. Maybe he could pass muster with his phony passport and ID and maybe he couldn't—but he'd never get through if they started counting bodies and realized the ship had left with a crew of nine and returned with ten.

He went back to the command area, inserted his Leslie Ainge ID on the duty roster and deleted the jettisoned crewman, then called up what the data banks had on the base at Chambon V. It was big, bigger than he'd thought, and security was tight—but he was going to be escorted to precisely where he wanted to be, well inside the security perimeter. He managed to find a holo of the base, but it was an architect's vision, not a finished product. He was sure the streets and buildings and walkways were exactly as depicted, but nothing was identified. He could pick out the enlisted men's barracks, and a large mess hall, and of course the landing fields and parade grounds, but there were another fifteen large buildings that seemed almost interchangeable. Since he couldn't know which structure he wanted, he concentrated on learning escape routes.

Finally the
Polar Star
was spit out of the wormhole and entered normal space, and within less than a minute it was surrounded by half a dozen Navy ships.

Suddenly the image of a naval officer popped up in front of him.

"What the hell happened here?" it demanded.

"We were ambushed on the Frontier," said Cole.

Dumb!
he thought.
I should be bandaged and covered with blood. Now they've got an extra half hour to study my face and see if my voiceprint matches anyone in their files—like Wilson Cole. I can't believe it; I'm out of the worm-hole thirty seconds and I've already blundered.

"Was it the
Theodore Roosevelt
?" asked the officer.

"I think so, yes."

"Where is the rest of the crew?"

"We took a lot of casualties, sir."
Did I call him "sir" before? I don't think so. Did he notice?
"Six wounded and in their bunks, two others dead."

"How about yourself? Any wounds?"

"Something cracked into my head," said Cole. "I'm pretty groggy. I'll be all—"

Cole fell to the floor.

Okay, now you can't study my face. It serves another purpose, too. If I'm unconscious, you have to tow the ship and I don't have to guide it to the right spot at the landing field.

He could hear the voices from the nearest ship.

"For three years he wasn't worth the effort to hunt him down. I think now maybe he is."

"What the hell does he want? He kept clear of us all this time, and suddenly it's like he's taunting us."

"That son of a bitch isn't going to get away with this! He may think he's safe out there on the Frontier, but we'll hunt him down like the goddamned mutineer that he is."

Cole spent the next few minutes listening to all the hideous things the Republic was going to do to the captain of the
Teddy R
when they finally caught up with him. Then they touched down, and he and the six survivors were rushed to the base hospital and taken to a series of linked emergency rooms.

Cole pretended to return to consciousness and soon found himself alone in a room with an aging medic who immediately began examining him.

"I'm not wounded," said Cole. "I just got my head banged up against a bulkhead when one of the pulse blasts hit."

"I'll be the judge of that, Sergeant," said the doctor, hooking him up to a number of machines.

"I want to get back to my quarters. A good night's sleep and I'm sure I'll be fine."

"Pulse, normal. Blood pressure, normal. Heart, normal. lungs, normal. No abrasions to the face or the skull. Coordination seems unhindered."

The doctor checked another dozen readings. Then, just as Cole was sure he was about to be dismissed, the medic frowned. "That's curious," he said.

"What is?"

"Your retina. It doesn't match any we have on record."

"I was just transferred here the day before we took off," said Cole, glad that the pulse machine was already disconnected.

"It's got to be in the computer somewhere," said the doctor. "What was your name again?"

"I'll give you my ID," said Cole. It gave him an excuse to get off the examining table and onto his feet as he reached into a pocket and pulled out his false identification.

The doctor held it up for the machine to scan.

"There's no record of you, Sergeant Ainge," he said, frowning. "I'd better call Security and let them figure this out."

"Here," said Cole. "This will explain everything."

He reached out to hand his passport to the medic, faked a spell of dizziness, and let it fall to the floor as the doctor reached out for it. The doctor leaned over to pick it up off the floor, and Cole brought the edge of his hand down hard on the back of the older man's neck. The doctor collapsed without a sound.

Cole knew he couldn't escape attention in his blood-spattered uniform. He made sure the doctor was still breathing, then removed his uniform, got into it, and let himself out into a corridor. It was empty for the moment, since the emergency teams were working on the six wounded crew members, and he walked in the opposite direction from which he had entered.

He knew he only had a few minutes before someone checked on him or the doctor awoke. It didn't make sense that there would be just one location for the information he wanted, not the way these bases were wired from end to end and attached to a master computer. He left the medical building, walked at a normal pace to the next building, saluted a pair of officers who passed him going the other direction, decided he had time to go another forty yards to the next building— if and when they began looking for him they'd of course start with the nearest building—and soon entered a complex, multileveled structure.

He walked through the lobby, saluted everyone he saw, acted as if he had every right to be there, and took an airlift up three levels. He stepped out, headed down an angular corridor, looked into the windows of each office he passed, and finally came to an empty one.

He tested the door, found that it was unlocked, entered, closed it behind him—he wanted to lock it, but didn't know the voice codes— and activated the computer.

It was password-protected. Christina had given him a crash course on getting around the protection, and he was sure she could have done it in seconds, but it took him long, agonizing minutes before he breached the computer's security. After that, it was easy enough to find the information he needed and begin changing it, because it was the same system the Republic had been using when the
Teddy R
was still a part of it rather than its number one enemy.

After a few minutes he hid his electronic footprints as Christina had taught him, deactivated the machine, walked back out into the corridor, and began making his way to the exit. It was going better than he'd anticipated. All he had to do was get to one of the hangars, commandeer a small one-man or two-man job, and take off before anyone knew what was happening.

He heard a commotion at the medical building and knew they'd found the medic he'd knocked out. He headed in the opposite direction, resisting the urge to break into a run and remembering to salute all the officers he passed. He knew that a base as large as this would have more than one hangar, and finally he turned a corner and saw one.

There were no Security personnel standing guard, which he found surprising and a little disconcerting. Still, the noise from the medical building was starting to spread and get a little closer, which meant they were looking for him, and
that
meant that he didn't have time to pick and choose. It would have to be this hangar, and whatever ship was inside it.

He walked to the entrance, took one look back to make sure no one was following him, and entered the building.

Suddenly a shrill siren went off. All the doors closed, locks slid into place, windows were covered by titanium panels, and a mechanical voice spoke out: "There is a virus infecting these premises. It is human, male, five feet nine inches tall, one hundred sixty-two pounds, unarmed. Assistance is called for."

"Shit!"
muttered Cole. "We didn't have systems like this five years ago!"

He knew he had a minute at most. He looked around, saw that the closest ship was a four-man vessel, raced over to it, climbed into it, activated the power, and checked for weaponry. He found it had only a Level 1 pulse cannon, which wasn't appreciably more powerful than a pulse pistol, though it has a far greater range.

He knew the door would be reinforced, so he swiveled the ship on its base, aimed the cannon at a wall that he hoped was not composed of anything with a tight molecular bonding, fired the weapon and gunned the accelerator at the same time, and hoped the wall had vanished in the quarter-second it was going to take him to reach it.

Cole half-expected to crash into the wall, but it was gone a microsecond before he reached it. He skimmed a few hundred feet above the planet's surface until he was well clear of the base, then shot up toward the stratosphere. He couldn't believe that he hadn't been shot down yet, but evidently no one had expected him either to be in the hangar or to fly out of it. The first few laser beams just barely missed him as he made it out of the stratosphere and could finally accelerate to light speeds without burning up from the friction of the atmosphere.

He knew that they'd expect him to head for the Inner Frontier, and he also knew he didn't have the speed to evade them, the defenses to survive their attack, or the firepower to hold them at bay. He aimed the ship deeper into the Republic, had the navigational computer produce a holo of the sector he was in, and looked for a likely place to land and acquire a less recognizable ship.

Serena II was the closest inhabited planet, but it was a thinly populated farming world. The next two oxygen planets were mining worlds. He needed something bigger, something where he could ditch this ship and obtain a new one—and where he could hide if he had to. He hit upon Piccoli III, a world with ninety-eight percent Standard gravity, a normal oxygen content, and a commercial center housing some three hundred thousand men and a few thousand aliens of various species, and laid in a course for it.

He was sure that the Navy was in hot pursuit, but at light speeds his instruments couldn't spot them and his viewscreens couldn't display them. He found the proper wormhole, entered it, and moments later emerged in the Piccoli system. He immediately headed to Piccoli III
,
and soon entered the atmosphere.

"Computer," he said, "where's the eject mechanism?"

"I am not equipped with an eject mechanism."

"Wonderful," muttered Cole. "Is there a parachute on this damned ship?"

"No."

"You have to have
some
safety feature," said Cole. "What is the crew supposed to do if you're disabled or shot down in a battle?"

"I possess four suits for deep-space usage, and four jet packs for use in atmospheres."

"Where are the jet packs?"

The ship directed him to the proper storage area. He removed one and put it on, then found a laser pistol in the small armory and bonded it to his right thigh.

"Can your sensors find an area that has no human habitation within ten miles of it?"

"There is a mountain range at 37 degrees 18 minutes 4 seconds north and—"

"That'll do," said Cole. "Enter the atmosphere, head toward it, and let me know when you're within sixty seconds of reaching it."

The ship was silent for almost three minutes. Then:
"I am now within sixty seconds of the mountain range."

"Open the hatch."

The hatch opened.

"I want you to crash into the mountains," said Cole.

"I cannot comply with that order. I am compelled to protect my own existence."

"That's a Priority R1 order."

"I will crash in 42 seconds."

Cole leaped out of the hatch. He was at about fifteen thousand feet, and he activated the jet pack. He stayed in the area long enough to see the ship crash into the side of a mountain, then headed in a southerly direction. He had no idea where the cities were, but he was sure that he'd come to some long before the jet pack's power ran out. He decided to cruise at a height of two hundred feet. He wasn't worried about being spotted by radar or sonar; he wanted to be close to the ground so if anyone started firing at him he'd have a chance to land safely before he was shot down.

It seemed to him that he'd been cruising half the day, though it had probably been no more an hour or so, when a city came into view. It wasn't much of a city, it couldn't have a population of more than forty thousand, but he knew that he had to land soon. The Navy would surely have traced him to Piccoli III and would have found the ship's wreckage by now. It might take them a while to realize there was no corpse, but in an hour or two they'd know, and then they'd come looking for him—and he didn't want to be this easy a target when that happened.

He spotted a farm that was growing large mutated tomatoes about a mile off to his right, and he banked and headed there. He saw a laborer walking through the field—the tomatoes were too delicate for a machine to harvest them—and he landed a few feet away, only to discover that the worker was a robot.

It stopped and stared at him, as if waiting for a command.

"Who's in charge here?" asked Cole, removing the jet pack.

"You must be more explicit, sir," replied the robot. "Are you referring to the farm, the city, the planet, the sector, or the Republic ?"

"The farm."

"The McDade Corporation, headquartered on Far London, sir."

"Let me try it a different way," said Cole. "Who gives you your orders?"

"Dozhin, sir."

"Dozhin," repeated Cole. "Man or alien?"

"He is not a Man, sir."

"And is he on the premises?"

"Yes."

"Then, to coin a phrase I've always wanted to use, take me to your leader."

"I do not understand your directive, sir," replied the robot. "I am alone. No one is leading me."

"Take me to Dozhin."

"Follow me, sir."

The robot set off at a fast walk, and Cole fell into step behind it. When they had gone almost half a mile they came to a small domed structure, about twenty feet on a side.

"In there, sir," said the robot, stepping aside.

"Why don't you go in first and tell him he has a visitor?" suggested Cole, stashing the jet pack under a bush.

"Robots are not permitted in Dozhin's personal quarters, sir," answered the robot.

"Okay, I'll take it from here," said Cole. "And thanks for your help . . . have you got a name?"

"I do not know, sir. Dozhin calls me HT23. Most humans call me Boy or Robot."

"Well, then, thank you, HT23."

"You are welcome, sir. May I return to my work now?"

"Yes."

The robot turned and headed back to the fields, and Cole approached the door to the structure. It sensed his presence, a holo camera came out of a wall, and Cole knew it was transmitting his image to the occupant of the little domed building.

"Come in," said a sibilant alien voice.

"Thank you," said Cole, entering the place. He found himself facing a tall, very slender, red-brown being, humanoid but never to be mistaken for human. Its eyes were horizontal slits, its nose so long it almost seemed prehensile, its mouth absolutely circular. Its skin was covered with a rust-colored fuzz that looked less like hair the closer Cole got to it. "My name is Leslie Ainge," he said. "My vehicle broke down, and I need some directions—or better still, transportation to the spaceport if you can provide it."

"I can provide it," said Dozhin. "But not to Leslie Ainge, who doesn't exist, at least not on Piccoli III."

"I can show you my ID and passport."

"I'm sure you can," answered the alien, "and I'm equally sure that they'll pass muster on all but two or three worlds out here, Captain Cole."

Suddenly Dozhin found himself looking down the barrel of Cole's burner.

"Put it away, Captain Cole," said Dozhin. "I have no animosity toward you and no love of the Republic."

"What makes you think I'm Cole?"

"I know from message transmissions that the Navy matched someone's DNA to the notorious Wilson Cole, and that he escaped from the Chambon system three hours ago. I know no ship has landed at our spaceport today. And I know you are a stranger to Piccoli III. What other conclusion can be drawn?" He stared at Cole. "Will you lower your weapon now, please?"

Cole bonded the laser pistol to his right thigh again. "All right," he said. "What now?"

"Now I offer you sanctuary for as long as you want it," said Dozhin. "I am here because the Republic decimated Cicero VII, which, though a human colony, was also my home world, since it is the world I was born on."

"I remember hearing about it back when I was serving in the Republic," said Cole. "They say it was pretty bad. You're lucky to be alive."

"I lost my parents, my wife, my children, and my home," replied Dozhin. "I could have done without such luck."

"I'm sorry to hear it," said Cole.

"I was sorry to experience it. That is why I will offer sanctuary to any enemy of the Republic."

"But you're working on a Republic world."

"My specialty is agriculture. They destroyed my fields. If I am to work, it must be on worlds where things still grow. They have provided me with this domicile. I am happy to share it with you."

"I appreciate the offer, but I can't stay on Piccoli. The ship I used to get here is no longer operative. I need to find a ship that can get me back to my own vessel, or at least to the Inner Frontier."

"That may be difficult," said Dozhin. "I know the Navy followed you to Piccoli III. Whatever you did with your ship to make them think you are dead, they will soon discover that there is no corpse—or if you thoughtfully provided them with one, it will not match your DNA. They will doubtless send teams down to the planet to search for you, and more importantly, they will be patrolling from orbit and will doubtless be under orders to shoot down any ship whose pilot, crew, or cargo is in any way questionable."

"And knowing the Navy, the mere act of leaving the planet makes a ship questionable," said Cole.

"So it is possible that I may take you to a ship, or a ship owner, or a ship renter," concluded Dozhin, "but it is every bit as likely that the Navy is already in position to shoot that ship down."

"I can't spend the rest of my life here," said Cole. "I'll take my chances once I find a ship."

"I don't think you realize the gravity of your situation," said Dozhin. "The rest of your life could very well be measured in hours, or even minutes, if you try to leave the planet in the face of the Navy's opposition."

"It's a chance I'll have to take. I've got to get back to my ship. I have vital information. I didn't have a chance to transmit it when I acquired it, and I don't dare try to send it from here. They'd intercept it, learn the scramble codes, and send the
Teddy R
and the rest of my fleet a phony message that would lead them into a trap."

"Did you say a fleet?" asked the alien.

"Yes."

"How many ships do you have under your command?"

Cole shrugged. "A little over four hundred."

"Four hundred?" repeated Dozhin. "That is very interesting."

Cole stared at him expectantly.

"I know a man—a human—who might be able to help. He might not. There's a huge reward on your head. He may decide to turn you in for it instead. But if he doesn't, he
might
be able to help."

"You don't sound too sure of him," said Cole.

"I am not. But you have very limited choices. You can take the chance of stealing a ship without being shot down, you can take the chance of hiding here and hoping the building-to-building search never reaches this farm—or you can take the chance of meeting a man who, if he is so inclined, is in a position to help you. What is your decision?"

"What do you think it is?" said Cole wryly. "Let's go men your friend."

"He is not my friend," replied Dozhin. "I do not like him." He paused thoughtfully. "In fact, I don't think anyone on Piccoli III does."
Great,
thought Cole.
I'll say this much for my luck: It's consistent.