Starship: Mercenary (Starship, Book 3) (6 page)

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Authors: Mike Resnick

BOOK: Starship: Mercenary (Starship, Book 3)
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“I’ll be there in five minutes,” said Copperfield. “I just have to gather my notes.”
He broke the connection, and Sharon’s holographic image immediately popped into the office.
“So I’m not fit to carry on a cogent conversation?” she said.
“Your job is snooping on them, not participating in them,” said Cole. “Or you could spy on everyone else and tell me how many crew members are puking our their guts.”
“You have such a delicate way of expressing yourself,” said Sharon.
“One of us was not into delicate expressions a couple of nights ago, or need I remind you?” said Cole.
“That’s it. Good-bye forever.”
“Then you won’t mind if I take back those flowers I bought you and give them to Rachel Marcos.”
“I strongly advise you to reach for the flowers with your left hand. That way, after I cut it off you’ll still have your right hand to salute with.”
“How thoughtful,” said Cole. “I think what I like best about you is that you’re always looking out for me.”
“Especially when you’re sneaking up behind me,” said Sharon. “Dinner at 1800 hours?”
“It’s a date.”
“I’d better sign off. Here comes your schoolmate.”
Her image vanished just as the door irised to let David Copperfield through.
“How did you enjoy your shore leave, Steerforth?” asked Copperfield pleasantly.
“Are you
ever
going to address me by my real name?”
“Probably not,” replied the alien. “What difference does it make? We both know who I mean.”
“We’d both know who I meant if I started calling you Hamlet, or maybe Raskolnikov.”
“But you wouldn’t,” said Copperfield. “You’re too considerate of other people’s feelings.”
“That could be viewed as a serious flaw in a starship captain,” noted Cole.
“I really don’t know. The immortal Charles never dealt with starship captains.”
“One of life’s tragedies,” said Cole. “Are we going to talk like this much more, or can we get down to business?”
“Business, to be sure,” said Copperfield. “Do you mind if I sit down?”
“Pull up a chair,” said Cole. “But I don’t think you’ll find it very comfortable. I could send for one that will suit you better.”
“Nonsense,” said Copperfield, sitting awkwardly on a chair and shifting his weight uncomfortably. “This is precisely the kind of chair we had in school.”
“So what have you got for me?”
“Even I would reject the two that pay the most,” said the alien. “Shall I even describe them for you?”
“Don’t bother,” said Cole. “If
you
think they’re too dangerous, that’s good enough for me. I’ve experienced what you
didn’t
think was too dangerous.”
Copperfield spent the next ten minutes going over the six other offers that the Platinum Duke had solicited. Cole rejected two of them because there was too much likelihood that the forces he would be up against could draw upon additional support from allies. A third put them too close to the Republic, and while he’d changed the ship’s registration papers and external insignia, it was still very clearly a Republic warship, and the Navy knew that there was only one Republic warship on the Inner Frontier. Theoretically the Navy couldn’t come after him as long as he stayed on the Frontier, but “hot pursuit” could be a very elastic term, and he decided not to chance it.
That left two proposals. One required him to take back a city that had fallen under a local warlord’s rule, and that meant fighting on the ground, house to house, with a force of thirty. It was estimated there were some two hundred of the warlord’s soldiers there, and while he was sure his crew would have superior weapons and tactics, he couldn’t be certain that the warlord might not deploy even more men rather than lose the city.
So it came down, rather easily, to Djamara II, an oxygen planet with considerable gold and silver deposits. There was no sentient native population. An independent mining company had laid claim to the mineral rights, and had begun mining the world some six years earlier. Eventually a regional warlord got wind of what they were digging out of the ground, and made a grab for it. The company was no newcomer to this sort of banditry. They’d hired a small militia, which had twice repelled the warlord’s attacks. But they took heavy losses during the second attack, and the company had decided that they would achieve victory more easily by hiring a starship than by fighting on the ground.
“Why didn’t the warlord just poison the air and kill them all?” asked Cole. “It’s easy enough to do.”
“This isn’t a war, Steerforth,” answered Copperfield. “His army has no more interest in mining gold and silver than the
Teddy R
’s crew does. He wants to steal what they have, or make some kind of deal whereby they’ll pay him a tribute to leave them alone. He does
not
want to put his elite warriors to work digging for minerals.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” said Cole. “This is unfamiliar territory to us. We’ll learn, just as we learned piracy.” He paused. “What’s the bottom line here?”
“They’ll pay four million credits, or two million Maria Theresa dollars, or fifteen percent of their annual production for two years if we’ll take this warlord and his army out once and for all.”
Cole shook his head. “That’s
your
bottom line, David. Mine is: What’s the opposition. Who are we up against, how many ships has he got, and what kind of firepower has he got?”
“Now we’re depending on the Platinum Duke’s sources,” answered David. “I told him you’d like this one the best, so he’s been finding out everything he can. As near as he has been able to tell, the Rock of Ages has six ships—”
“Hold on a minute,” interrupted Cole. “The Rock of Ages?”
“That’s right.”
“And the Platinum Duke, and Cleopatra, and Joan of Arc, and the Hammerhead Shark. Doesn’t
anybody
use a real name around here?”
“Welcome to the Inner Frontier,” said David Copperfield with a smile. “Since there are no laws, we’re free to be whatever we want to be—and that means we’re free to call ourselves whatever we want to call ourselves. Most people change names out here as often as you’d change ships or dwellings back in the Republic. I think it’s colorful.”
“I think it’s ridiculous,” said Cole. He grimaced. “Okay, go on.”
“The Rock had six ships four months ago. He might have added a seventh since then; nobody seems to know.”
“That’s a lot of ships to go up against,” said Cole, frowning.
“You won’t have to,” said Copperfield. “He’s keeping four worlds under his thumb. He doesn’t dare take ships away from them, or they might have some unpleasant surprises waiting for him when he comes back.”
“So the most we’re likely to face is two ships . . .” mused Cole.
“Three, if he’s added another.”
“Can the Duke find out before I accept the job?”
The alien shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s been trying for three days, and he hasn’t found out yet.”
“That means two ships,” said Cole decisively. “If they’ve got a new one and the Platinum Duke, with all his sources, can’t find out, that means it’s in use somewhere, and isn’t likely to come to Djamara II until it gets a distress signal, at which point we’ve put one or both of the other ships out of commission.”
“So you’re interested?” said Copperfield.
“Yes, I’m interested,” replied Cole. “It’ll only be two-on-one, neither of them should be as powerful or well armed as the
Teddy R
, especially since we added the weaponry from Val’s old ship, and we’ll have the element of surprise on our side.” He paused. “And it’s nice to know we’re preventing a warlord from plundering a planet.”
“Does that really matter to you?” asked Copperfield curiously.
“It’s what we trained for, David,” answered Cole. “It’s the reason a lot of us joined the military.”
“I thought it was because you were drafted.”
“That’s another reason,” said Cole wryly. He paused thoughtfully, then spoke again. “Once we blow this bastard’s first two ships out of the sky, maybe we’ll pay a visit to each of the other four worlds he’s holding captive. One ship apiece, it should be child’s play.”
“You’d do that just because it’s the moral thing?”
“Well, if each world we freed felt it incumbent upon themselves to pay us a thank-you fee, I wouldn’t try to discourage them.”
“By God, Steerforth,” said David Copperfield enthusiastically, “
now
you’re thinking like a mercenary!”
6
 
It had been six days since Cole signed the papers that committed the
Teddy R
to the defense of Djamara II. The ship was not in orbit around the planet—he saw no sense advertising its presence—but was stationed out among the dozen moons of Djamara V. Christine, Briggs, and Domak, the three best hands at using both the computers and sensors, worked the red, white, and blue shifts, eight hours apiece, scanning the system, looking for signs of the Rock of Ages’ ships.
Cole spent most of his time in his office and his cabin. There just wasn’t anything for him to do until the enemy’s ships showed up—and even once they did, anything that was happening on the bridge could be transmitted to him wherever he was.
It was on the seventh day that a coded message came through from Singapore Station. Cole had it piped into his cabin.
There was a moment of static, and then the Platinum Duke’s image appeared.
“Hi,” said Cole. “No sign of him yet.”
“Just as well,” said the Duke. “It gives you some time to plan.”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” said Cole warily. “What’s up?”
“Evidently there’s at least one turncoat on Djamara II,” said the Duke. “It’s hardly surprising, given the numbers, and given the plunder that’s at stake.”
“You’re telling me that the Rock of Ages knows we’re here,” said Cole.
“That’s right.”
“Well, he was going to know it sooner or later. We’ve lost the element of surprise, but I’ll still put the
Teddy R
up against whatever he’s got. The Navy scraps its warships, it doesn’t sell them to third parties. We’ll still have the edge in firepower.”
“I know it, you know it, and the Rock of Ages knows it. He’ll be there tomorrow.”
“He knows it and he’s still coming?” said Cole, frowning. “What am I missing here?”
“My sources tell me that he’s decided if he can’t have the mineral wealth of the planet, no one can. He’s got some exceptionally dirty bombs—I don’t know how many—and he’s issued an ultimatum: if the mining company doesn’t send you away by the time he gets there, he’ll fire the bombs at the planet. You may stop one or two, but I gather he’s pretty confident you can’t stop them all. It’s what in a less sophisticated age they used to call a punishment party.”
“Thanks for the information,” said Cole.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure,” said Cole. “This is going to require some thought.”
“I’m sorry it’s turning out this way,” said the Duke. “I didn’t mean to give you such a problem, certainly not on our very first collaboration.”
“It’s not your fault,” said Cole. “I suppose we could meet him in deep space and have it out there.”
The Duke made a face, which Cole hadn’t thought possible given the amount of platinum that composed it. “If there are informers in the mining company and on the planet, the Rock has to know he’s got some in his organization. I’m sure he won’t make a direct approach.”
“We’re only one ship. We can’t patrol everywhere.”
“We
could
tell the company that we’re canceling out,” offered the Duke.
Cole shook his head. “Word would get out tomorrow, and no one would ever hire us again.”
“We could suggest that they evacuate Djamara.”
“Same problem. They’re paying us to keep it open and free. If we can’t do it, who’ll do business with us in the future?”
“It’s a conundrum,” agreed the Duke. “If there is anything I can do from this end . . .”
“We’ll let you know,” said Cole, breaking the connection.
He called an immediate meeting of his senior officers. His office was too small for them to sit comfortably, so he assembled them in the mess hall and made it off-limits to everyone else until the meeting broke up.
Once they’d gathered there, he laid out the situation to them.
“Now,” he said when he’d finished filling them in, “what are the odds that we can spot him entering the system?”
“Djamara II is a third of a way around the sun,” said Christine. “If we stay here and he approaches from the far side of the sun, we’ll never spot him in time.”
“Okay, then,” said Cole, “what if we take up an orbit around Djamara II?”

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