The Price of Peace (23 page)

"Always looking for new business," the skipper replied heartily, taking the hand and shaking it firmly. The five walkers arrived. They came to a halt, surrounding the
Loki’s
four men like crows on a fresh battlefield. From the far end of the conveyor, a half dozen men in gray coveralls were jogging toward them now. Trouble blinked as sweat ran into his eyes; the odds were bad and getting worse. He popped the disk; with no place to dump it, he slipped it into his back pocket.

"We wonder what business you may have taken on."

"Nothing that's eaten into your business," Hood assured him. "Could I have all your people up here for a few minutes?"

"Sure, sure, no problem." Hood tapped his
comm
link. In a moment, captain and crew stood loose, waiting. About the same time, the station reinforcements arrived. Shock sticks were visible now; the two in the blue jumpsuits opened their bags and tossed automatic pistols to the other three spacers.

Hammerman
glanced around the armed circle, smiling. "Now I believe we can hold a productive conversation. You," he said, pointing at Trouble. "What's your name?" "
Tordon
," Trouble answered.

"When did you come aboard the
Loki
?" "At Jacob's Folly."

"Ever been in the service?"

"Yeah. A marine before I got beached in the drawdown after we kicked you guys' butts. You want to hire someone who knows how to use a weapon, I'm your man." He grinned. "Sorry, Captain Hood, I appreciated the job, but if these guys want to use me in my real line of work, I'll have to take the job offer."

"Ah, yes, the force restructuring." The suit smiled, then shook it off. "Sorry, Lieutenant, but we have a witness who saw you very active recently on Hurtford Corner. Our organization feels you owe us a debt, and we always collect what is owed us."

A shock stick came up hard against Trouble's kidney. In agony, he folded to the deck. Somebody kicked him, though he hardly felt it over the first hit. A shock stick to the neck drove vision from his eyes. He tried to ball himself up, make the pain somehow smaller. "Captain Hood, I am detaining you and your crew. Will you walk with me, or be carried like this poor fellow?"

"We're coming," "Whatever you say," and similar sounds came from the rest of the crew. None too gently, Trouble was kicked and rolled until he flopped onto the conveyor. The pain ate at him. He could fight it no more, and let himself sink into the many-colored darkness that beckoned.

Trouble came to under a glaring lamp. He was strapped to a chair. The brown suit and two big guys with shock sticks eyed him like hungry birds examining a worm. "Morning," Trouble croaked.

"It is still afternoon, Mr.
Tordon
. Time moves slowly when you are in my company. Why are you here, Lieutenant?"

"I needed a job. Hood offered me one. I took it." That was his cover story. Trouble saw no reason to change it. He doubted anything would make him change it up to and including death. Always wondered how I'd handle this, a distant part of him was muttering. Now he'd find out.

When he awoke the second time, the taste of blood filled his mouth. They'd tried both the new and old-fashioned tools available to modern torturers. He didn't recall telling them anything. The suit had taken his coat off sometime during the last session. He sat in a chair, facing the marine.

"Trouble. That is what they call you, isn't it?"

It hurt to move his lips; the marine nodded.

"Trouble, we hate to use up some of the paying customers' product, but for you, we're
gonna
. Forest here is going to give you a shot of the pure stuff. Then we're going to work you over again. We'd like your professional opinion. Does it really make the pain five times worse? Ten times? You be the judge."

A needle pricked his right shoulder. Trouble's racing heart counted off a long minute. Then they slapped him. Lightning shot through him; he could feel the pain in every nerve ending of his cheek. The next blow was to his stomach. The agony enveloped his entire body. He wanted to faint. He had to black out. The sheer pain should be enough.

It wasn't.

A very long time later, he resurfaced. His entire body screamed in newfound agony. It took him a moment to remember why. Right. The beating. During it, he'd forgotten who he was. Now he knew himself again, but the long beating was a distantly remembered thing. The aches left in his body reminded him. Oh, they reminded him.

"Want some more?" The suit's tie was now off, sleeves rolled up. With an effort, Trouble froze his body, neither showing nor denying the desire for another session. How much longer before this kills me?

"We almost lost you, Trouble. I don't know whether you have a bad heart, or just the drug and all." The suit switched his chair around and rested his arms on the tall back, his chin in his hands. "I've been thinking. I can keep this up until it kills you. You won't enjoy it, but what the hell. It won't hurt me.'" He waited, let the silence lengthen. Trouble refused to fill it; it hurt too much to move his lips. He kind of enjoyed the momentary rest. I can listen as long as he can talk.

The suit finally shook his head. "Why do I suspect that you are not going to tell me what I want?" He stood, pulled Trouble's disk from his pocket, and flipped it absently. "Just your being here told me a lot. Somebody is interested in us and wants to know more. You could be just freelancing, after that first taste of us. Maybe so. Are you just one man?"

A wave of nausea swept over Trouble. He leaned over, tried to empty his gut. Nothing came. "I guess it doesn't matter. You and the rest of the crew of the good ship
Loki
are just going to disappear. No one will know how or why. We'll keep our eyes open for anyone coming after you. Make them disappear, too. This doesn't have to go on forever, just long enough for us to get what we want and go legit. All we need is time, and your being here, marine, has bought us some of that time."

The suit collected his coat and tie. At the door he paused. "Besides, waste not, want not. You're worth money to me, mister. At least for a while. I figure you'll last six, maybe nine months. Work is work. Enjoy."

The suit left. One big guy collected their gear; the other headed for the door. "Hey, guards, move this one to the farm. We'll make it easy on you."

The equipment fellow placed his shock stick at the base of Trouble's skull and held it there. As he screamed, the marine's world sank into many shades of black.

Trouble came to very slowly the next time. He was bouncing around, in a truck maybe, on a rough road. Each jostle sent waves of red and yellow pain shooting through him. He groaned.

"It's okay, T," Ken's voice softly assured him.

He lay on a truck bed. The rest of the
Loki’s
crew was with him. No, not everyone. "Where's the captain?" Just asking made his lips crack, his mouth fill with fresh blood.

"Bad heart," Ken said.

"Why wouldn't he tell them something?" Hub whined. Anything."

"Do you think that would have gotten us anywhere?" Ken not back. "We knew we were dealing with crazies when we took the job. Damn, I just wish I'd skipped after the last pay- off. You mess with drug bosses, and you
gotta
expect weird."

Hub just whimpered. Apparently Hood had been smart to tell them nothing. The truck was sealed, leaving no way to look out. Trouble saw no benefit to struggling at the moment. If he or the captain had cracked under interrogation, he wouldn't be going off to wherever they were headed. Hell at least I'm riding this time. Trouble let himself drift. Despite every cell in his body aching, maybe he could sleep. It had to be better than being awake.

Ten

IZZY WAS BEGINNING to enjoy these meetings between her division heads and the yard foreman overseeing the overhaul work. Even a veteran meeting-hater could enjoy ones where everything went smoothly and everyone liked what was happening and who was doing it. Yes, I can take meetings like these more often.

Except then, the work wouldn't get done. "So, Engineering, any problems?"

If Buddha could be bothered, that was the look on Vu's face as he leaned forward in his chair. "Regretfully, yes."

Quickly, the chief engineer went over the basic problem with all the cruisers converted from prewar merchant ships. The ships had two fusion reactors—the original ship's and a second one, which was a slightly modified version of a surface-based power plant. On planets, the reactors were installed in groups of four. The Navy had quickly discovered that power production from a single unit tended occasionally, for only nanoseconds, to be unstable. No matter how brief the instabilities, they tended to create very spectacular explosions. "As we told you, Captain, both I and Mr. Oberstein believed we had a way around it."

"We also converted cargo ships during the last war," the yard man said, taking up the report. "Out on the rim, our power needs were smaller, so our converts had three small reactors to your one big one. However, it appeared to me that the real problem was in the installation and calibration." Izzy wished they'd get to the point. She and Guns had agreed that it would be great if they could draw on both reactors for whatever they needed—more guns, more speed, more

whatever. As it was, the original reactor was limited to propulsion and maintaining the fusion containment fields. Weapons and general ship's services took some spectacular power hits in the normal course of business. "I take it that your ideas aren't working out," she cut them off.

"It appears that the new software will not do what we had hoped." Vu agreed. "So we fall back on the original software," Izzy concluded.

Mr. Oberstein cleared his throat. "Unfortunately, the new hardware will not work with the old software configuration."

"Can we reinstall the old hardware?" Izzy asked hopefully.

"No, ma'am." Vu answered. "The old equipment was close to failure as it was. I am afraid just the act of removing it reduced it to scrap."

Izzy drummed her fingers on the table, then forced herself to immobility. "Gentlemen, I agree we have a problem. How did you solve this with that other cruiser, the Sheffield?'

"The chief engineer of the
Second Chance
refused to let us do anything but medium-level maintenance. He liked the configuration he had," Oberstein assured her.

"Chips, can you help these people with their software?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You, Oberstein, if you need anything, let me know. The
Patton’s
going nowhere without its engines. You are now the critical path. I don't want to tell Trouble when he gets back here that we've got to delay going after the girl he's sweet on and who is somebody's slave just because your upgrade turned into a downgrade. Understood?"

"Yes,
ma'am"s
came quickly from around the table.

"I sure as hell don't want to tell a marine that he's got to sit on his hands cause the Navy can't get off theirs. All right, folks, let's get back to work." Izzy sent them on their way. It would be another week before Trouble got back. He'd have two weeks to convert his recon into a full assault plan. As soon as he found out Ruth was down there, she'd probably have to weld his boots to the deck to keep him from immediately charging off after her. She'd about had to get the welding arc out to keep Joe under control. No, the
Patton
had to be ready to lift on time. It had to be.

The truck screeched to a halt. The locked plastic hood covering its bed was flung open, turning oppressive hot darkness into sweltering heat under a muddy gray sky. "Okay, out of the truck," shouted the shorter of two guards who looked to be in a lousy mood. The erstwhile crew of the
Loki
struggled on unsteady legs to follow orders. Ken helped Trouble. He stood in a muddy compound with prefab barracks to his right and a rough collection of workshops, barns, and other buildings to his left. Behind him, five or six freshly painted houses formed a small court next to the one road out.

Ahead of Trouble, separated from him by a chain-link fence, were endless fields planted with row upon row of bushy vegetation. Scattered clumps of men were bent over, hoeing around plants ranging from small as twigs to chest-high. Others harvested several rows as tall as themselves.

"Take a good look. That's what you're here for. Now, over to the sheds with you." A whip of rawhide got their attention. It flicked across Hub's back; the poor man cringed. For a second, Trouble feared Hub would just collapse in place, but he managed to move with the rest toward the pointed-out shed. Legions of insects, most of them species unknown to Trouble, joined them in the trudge; the slaves swatted more than they walked. The whip cracked, hustling them on.

In the steaming shadows of the shed, the smell of raw plastic and hot metal replaced the stench of raw sewage and standing water. A man greeted them with a half-toothless smile and handfuls of animal control pods. "Some of you may recognize these goodies. Some people put them around folks' waists where they can get your attention in a lot of different ways, from stomachaches to knocking you out. We figure we got your attention." He stepped forward and slipped two around Ken's neck, tightened a thin collar, then reached for Trouble. "You feel a tingle, listen real good. Cause you won't feel nothing next. You'll be dead."

Trouble gulped as two pods nestled down beside his spine. "Understood," he said.

"All you better understand," the short man snapped his whip. "You make us any trouble, there's plenty more where you came from. Work and you live. Become a problem, and we'll solve you real quick."

Once everyone was
necklaced
, their next stop was a barracks. Tiers of green plastic bunks, three high, stretched in rows on both sides of an aisle. There were no mattresses, no blankets, no cloth of any kind. Muddy plastic bunks stood on muddy brown floors. The windows were open; insects were everywhere.

"Can we have bug netting, or something?" Ken asked.

"Don't worry nothing about the bugs. They don't carry nothing that can kill you. Just make sure your bug bites don't get infected from the muck." The taller guard looked them over. "Some of you look like you tripped over your own feet a lot. Check with the medic once she comes in off the fields. An open sore can make you too sick to work. No work, no food. You don't want to miss one of our delicious meals." Both guards laughed at that, then left.

"Hey, we got showers!" Hub shouted from the back of the barracks. Trouble knew Unity prefabs had a latrine in the rear. The crew crowded around the entrance to the latrine as Hub turned on the water. It came out weak and brown. He twisted the hot water handle as far as it would go and stuck his hand under the resulting trickle. "Cold."

"Cold!" Ken started for the water stream.

"Not cold, puke warm," Hub answered. He washed his hands in the lazy flow, then shook them. "Dirtier than when I started."

They returned to the open bay and collapsed into bunks. "Wonder how long the work day is?" Hub asked the torrid air.

"I suspect we better enjoy this rest," Trouble muttered. "I doubt we get much time off." "What made you such a bloody optimist?" Hub whined. "Maybe it won't be so bad. I mean, we
ain't
slaves. We
ain't
prisoners. We
ain't
been convicted of nothing."

Trouble lay back on the plastic bunk, leaving it to someone else to set Hub straight. Nobody did. Like a good soldier, Trouble took the opportunity to take a nap.

"Hey, if you new guys want something to eat, you better get out here quick," came from a nearly naked man standing in the doorway of the barracks, a bowl in one hand, a biscuit in the other. Quickly the
Loki’s
crew emptied the barracks; with his muscles cramped and screaming, Trouble hobbled up to the end of the line. Slowly, the line moved to where a stack of bowls waited. A dispenser on the side of the barracks sloshed a thin gruel into the bowl, and a biscuit dropped from the box next to it. One per customer.

"You're new guys." A big hulk of a man confronted the eight from the
Loki
. "You
ain't
hungry.
Gimme
your biscuits."

Hub was about to hand his over. Trouble gave his bowl and bread to Ken. "Hold these for a moment. There must be one of these in every crowd." He turned to the big guy. "Sorry, but they didn't feed us at all where we came from."

"No work, no eat," the guy growled. He stuffed his biscuit in his mouth, followed it with the last of his gruel, then flung the bowl hard at Trouble's head. The marine bent to the left, and the heavy dish flew past him. He sidestepped to the right as the big jerk charged; Trouble gave him enough gentle encouragement to send him sprawling into a muddy puddle. Seeing no point in prolonging the fight, Trouble stepped in with a blow to the man's spine, then a chop to his neck. The jerk went limp with a groan. Since his nose was out of the water, Trouble left him where he fell, retrieved his meal, and started eating it slowly.

"Thanks," Ken said. Even Hub muttered something. "Oh-oh, you're in trouble now, slick."

Trouble looked at the speaker. A scarecrow of a man. he pointed toward the good housing at the other end of the compound. A woman stood on the balcony of the largest house, dressed in something slinky, more appropriate for a ball than the end of the work day. She said something to the man next to her. He nodded and left.

"Who's she?"

"The boss woman. New gal, just been here a couple of days. She figures she owns us, body and soul," another man in a breechcloth answered. This one was more filled out and carried himself like he still wore a three-piece suit. He set his bowl into the washer and turned to Trouble. "I'm Tom Gabon."

"Know your brother," the marine said, offering his hand. "Stan? You Navy?" The guy's eyes lit up.

"Not at the moment." The marine shrugged. "They call me Trouble."

"Looks like you've been in a lot of it. You better have someone take care of those open wounds. Our new medic should be done eating by now. I'll show you the dispensary."

"Stan said you were due to testify for something. Then you left." Is this the man who knew too much?

"Yeah, who wants to talk to a Senate hearing when you have a job offer too good to be true?" Tom glanced around. "Didn't quite work out like I expected."

Tom led Trouble to the clinic, such as it was, among the work sheds. The door was ajar. "Is the doctor in?" Tom called softly.

"No doctor in sight, but the witch has got her cauldron boiling," came a familiar voice. "Ruth," Trouble breathed.

The door flew open. "Trouble! What are you doing here?"

"Trying not to track mud into your hospital." He gave her one of his crooked smiles. It hurt. "Better you don't drip blood all over the place." She pulled him into her aid station, grabbed a wad of cotton, dabbed alcohol on it, and started working over his face.

"I saw you on the station," Trouble said, trying not to wince. "Did you see me?"

"Yeah, but I didn't show it. They catch you because of me?" Ruth turned pale under the mud that seemed to cake everyone.

"No. Someone else from Hurtford. A woman."

"Zylon. That bitch. I saw her on the ship out to here. A lot of people wanted to talk to her back home, but she got away and took about forty of us with her, just to make her point. Whatever that is. She even bragged to us before their ship picked us up. Damn, that woman's crazy." Ruth glanced out the door. "She's also our new boss."

"I thought the woman on the balcony looked familiar."

"Yeah." Ruth started working down from his face. He opened his jumpsuit. "Trouble, who beat you up this time?"

"Some of the best. Got anything to help?"

"Nothing for the aches. The guards have their own painkillers, though I sew them up after their nightly brawls."

"How do we get out of here?" The raw whisper of the words that had been clawing to get out of his throat escaped him.

"You don't." Ruth tapped his control pods. "That neck-ace is ceramic composite. Nothing here is going to cut it. You wander beyond the planted area, and you're dead."

"There are things out there big and nasty," Tom added. When they bring the bodies back, they've been chewed and clawed up something horrible."

"I didn't think we could eat the local stuff, or it eat us," Ruth said.

"Most of it, we can't," Tom answered. "But that doesn't keep some of them from trying." "How do we get off a message?" Trouble tossed out the fallback option.

"We can't do that either," Ruth answered.

Tom nodded in agreement. "Guards have the only radios, and they're very short-ranged. One of the guys in my work group was the network manager who laid this whole planet out. They used fiber optics for everything. Kept radios to the minimum."

Trouble scowled. "Explains why this planet was so silent when I tried listening to it. There's got to be some spare transmitters besides the guards. Tractors, trucks?"

"My tractor has a GPS receiver, but no transmitter. There are no trucks on the compound." "Zylon has spare wrist systems," Tom added after a pause. "She didn't like the way a silver one looked with her red ensemble last night. She switched to gold. There must have been a dozen units, made up to look like jewelry."