The Thirteenth Man (16 page)

“Your Grace,” she said. “Do not enter our nearspace. It's much too dangerous. This annexation by your king, and occupation by Syndonese troops, has created considerable unrest. I myself am taking advantage of the present chaos to go into exile. However, before I do, you and I must meet, even if only briefly. I have something to give you.”

Charlie knew that Ethallan was an old and valued acquaintance of Cesare's, and while she wouldn't elaborate, he suspected that the
something
she had to give him came from his father.

Kierson came back on, gave them a set of coordinates for a rendezvous about two light-­years out from Aagerbanne, and a day later they met in deep space. Kierson escorted Charlie aboard Ethallan's yacht, which was, in fact, nothing less than a small destroyer with luxurious quarters for Ethallan and any guests she happened to be entertaining.

Ethallan was as tall as she was beautiful. They met alone in a sitting room and exchanged pleasantries, but the conversation quickly shifted to the present political situation. “They're raping my world,” she said. “They're raping my ­people, and they're raping our institutions and our customs.” She looked into Charlie's eyes with deep sadness, saw something there and flinched. “But then I'm speaking to someone who knows the Syndonese penchant for rape firsthand, aren't I? Five years in that prison camp, wasn't it?”

“I know something of the Syndonese, yes.”

She peered into his eyes carefully. “I see you don't need my pity. And I think the Syndonese should fear you.”

Charlie grinned. “Should they fear you as well?”

She returned his grin, but hers was hard and angry. “Yes, they should. And perhaps together we can make them fear us even more. They've consolidated their position on Aagerbanne, taken control of all port facilities, utilities, and infrastructure. But I believe they're finding it a bit more difficult than they had anticipated.”

Charlie said, “There are rumors you're receiving surreptitious help from certain allies.”

“I can't comment on that,” she said, “but whatever it might be, it's not enough.”

Charlie considered his words carefully, didn't want to offer any false hope. “Maybe I can help. I've recently learned I may have more resources at my disposal than I originally thought.”

“Anything you can do will be appreciated.”

“I need time,” he said. “Buy me time and I may be able to do something.”

Her eyes narrowed as she considered his words. “Don't forget that Nadama and Goutain would love to obtain some corroboration that we're receiving assistance from the independent states. If they do they'll use that as an excuse to extend their aggression beyond Aagerbanne. And if you help us and they learn of it . . .” She closed her eyes and shook her head, left it at that.

At her words, Charlie's thoughts raced. “You said
Nadama
, not
Lucius
.”

She nodded carefully. “Among the Syndonese we've captured we've noticed a few of them didn't have that atrocious Syndonese accent, though they did try to imitate it a bit. Under neural probe we learned they were really de Satarna regulars. Purportedly, they're here as advisors, but in fact they're playing a much more active role than that. Interestingly enough, we haven't captured anyone sworn directly to Lucius.”

“Nadama,” Charlie said. He'd suspected that Nadama had been complicit in Lucius and Goutain's scheming; Telka had even implied it when she'd refused to take orders from a de Satarna, pointing out Nadama's lack of surprise when Syndonese troops invaded the palace. But now it occurred to Charlie the Duke de Satarna might be end-­running the king. “I wonder if he's working directly with Goutain.”

“Probably, and I doubt Lucius is aware of it. Your king has never been terribly astute when it came to these little treacheries. But let's get to the reason I need to meet with you.” She turned to a small cabinet, opened it, withdrew a package, and handed it to Charlie, saying only, “From your father.”

Charlie questioned her, and like Sague and Aziz, approximately twenty years ago Cesare had asked her to give the package to
the de Lunis
. And like them he had told her it was of considerable value, but would not elaborate on the fact that, back then, there was no de Lunis.

“You're welcome on Luna, Your Ladyship,” Charlie offered.

She shook her head. “Trust me, Your Grace. I have my resources, and soon there may be war, and I must be close to my home world when that happens.”

Charlie understood that. “Please make sure I know how to reach you. Kierson can arrange the details with my chamberlain, Winston.”

She gave him a knowing smile. “I suspect, Your Grace, you and I'll end up on the same side in the coming conflict.”

“I think we already have.”

Charlie returned to
Goldisbest
, and again waited until he was alone in his cabin before opening the package Ethallan had given him. He was not surprised to find another cyberkey, with a third unique interface: three keys and somewhere three locks. Or perhaps, three keys to one lock, with all three of them required to open it. “Cesare,” he said to the empty room. “What are you trying to tell me?”

 

CHAPTER 16

GENERAL JANICE

I
t took twelve days to get back to Luna, and when Winston wasn't coaching him on the politics of the upcoming meeting of the Ten, Charlie had spent the time trying to think of some way to aid the Aagerbanni resistance. To do that he needed ships and financing, and while he was no longer destitute, he barely had enough to pay his meager staff, throw a few imperials Nano's way, and employ the spacers he'd need on the ship Sague was refitting for him. Perhaps he could use Hart & Delorm some way.

“Frankie.” Nano's voice blared from allship. “We got company. You better come up here.”

Only seconds ago they'd down-­transited at the edge of Lunan nearspace. Charlie made his way to
Goldisbest
's bridge without delay.

“They're in close orbit around Luna,” Nano said, seated at the captain's console. He waved a hand at an empty couch at the navigation console. Charlie sat down and strapped in. “Two ships, Frankie. They want us to identify ourselves. The smaller looks like a Syndonese, can't be heavily armed. We can take her. Bigger one looks like a tramp freighter.”

Charlie scanned the data on the nav console, agreed with Nano's assessment. Neither ship presented any serious danger to
Goldisbest
. “Identify us; tell them you're carrying the de Lunis, the rightful lord of this system, and that he orders them to stand off at a safe distance.”

Charlie couldn't hear the conversation between Nano and the unidentified ships, so he waited patiently. Then Nano said, “One of them says he knows you, wants to talk with you. On exterior channel three.”

Charlie's implants weren't keyed into the console so he pulled on a headset, switched to channel three, and picked up Roacka's voice in the middle of a sentence. “ . . .  know the lad well. Taught him everything he knows.”

Charlie said, “I think Paul, Add, and Ell would disagree with you on that.”

“Charlie, my boy! Damn, you got more lives than anyone I know. When you disappeared we thought you was dead again, then we heard you wasn't.”

“And I thought you might be dead. What are you doing with Syndonese?”

“Allies, lad. They hate Goutain even more than you and me.”

“And the freighter?”

“Old friends, lad. Old friends.”

They truly were old friends: thirty odd members of Cesare's staff, plus more than fifty from the surviving Two Thousand, all of whom had had enough of Twerp and the witch-­bitch. Roacka told him there would've been more, but the freighter couldn't carry them all. Roger and Seth were among them, his two closest comrades from the chain and the prison camps, and that was truly a glorious reunion. As for the Syndonese, which included the remnants of more than forty families, Charlie had a difficult time trusting any of them. “Don't worry, lad,” Roacka told him. “These ­people have been treated brutally by Goutain. Every one of them has lost close family to that son-­of-­a-­bitch, and what you see here are the survivors.”

After the palace attack, Roacka had gone into hiding. “Laid low, lad, stayed out of sight.”

Then he'd heard Charlie was still alive, saw this opportunity, stole the freighter to help transport them all, and they'd transited into Lunan nearspace almost two tendays ago. But with Starfall sealed up tight, and no one there to let them in, they'd been rationing supplies while orbiting Luna and waiting. They'd almost given up hope when
Goldisbest
transited into the system.

Starfall was suddenly alive as it had not been before. Winston took charge of the staff, screening them carefully to ensure there were no spies, assigning them duties similar to those they'd had in Farlight. Charlie found he had servants to help him dress and servants to help him bathe. He dismissed them all, told them to go back to Winston and find other duties. Starfall also had a real cook now; Danya was her name, a plump little woman who was apparently a real tyrant in the kitchen.

Charlie spoke individually with each of them: his new staff, his comrades from the prison camps, even the Syndonese, though he put that off until last. Roacka introduced him to their leader, Drakwin, quite tall, broad shouldered, though otherwise average in appearance. But the man had an intensity to his stare that made him un-­average. Later Charlie made some comment to Paul about it, and Paul said, “Yes. It's like the look in your eyes. I see it in the eyes of all of the Two Thousand. I see it in the eyes of men who've been prisoners for a long time.”

“Your Grace,” Drakwin said when they were introduced, speaking in a thick Syndonese accent. “It is kind of you to give us refuge.”

In Charlie's gut he didn't know if he could trust this man. “I haven't said I'll give you refuge yet. Tell me who you are.”

One of Drakwin's eyebrows lifted, and he nodded. “In the Republic I was a merchantman.”

Roacka said, “In the Republic a merchant ship has to be outfitted much like a light destroyer.”

Charlie asked, “Pirates?”

Drakwin grinned as he said, “Na, local customs officials. Goutain gives them a lot of authority, and they'll confiscate just about anything if you're not prepared to stop them. ”

“Locals are fairly independent, huh?”

“Ya,” Drakwin said, and his face hardened. “Goutain leaves it up to them to fund their own government, makes them pay levies and support the local garrison, which are all loyal to him. They steal from us, and he steals from them. They're really just thieves with a badge.”

“Got a family?”

Drakwin nodded, and Charlie saw that look in his eyes again. “Wife and two sons. Wife and the youngest are here with me. Don't know where the oldest is, lost him when they confiscated my ship. Don't know if he's alive or not.” The look on his face softened for a moment, and there was something familiar about him.

Charlie wondered if it might be possible to sew even more discontent in Goutain's citizens. “Any chance of a popular uprising, a rebellion?”

Drakwin curled his lower lip with distaste and shook his head. “Na, just small groups here and there, mainly the occasional riot when someone's farm or business is confiscated. After they took my ship, and my son, I sounded out some friends about doing something, but we had no weapons beyond a hunting rifle or two.”

“How do I know you're not a spy?”

“Put me under probe.”

“It's not pleasant. You'd volunteer for that?”

“I been through worse.”

Roacka said, “I vouch for him, lad.”

Again, Charlie thought he'd met the man somewhere before. “Okay, I'll give you and your ­people refuge, but I may make you earn it.”

“How so, Your Grace?”

“I don't know yet, but it'll hopefully be to Goutain's detriment.”

A predatory grin spread across Drakwin's face. “We cannot earn our refuge that way, Your Grace. To earn it we must perform some task or duty.”

“But that's what I'm asking of—­”

“No,” Drakwin said, “it doesn't count. Bringing down the tyrant will be a joy and a pleasure—­we'll do that for free.”

Charlie suddenly recalled a dim, shadowy booth in the corner of Momma Toofat's trampsie bar on Tachaann: Delilah seated with two men, one a Syndonese with a thick accent. The man had leaned forward into the light and asked, “He's the de Maris bastard?” And while his face had still been obscured in shadows, there was no doubt who that man had been. “It was you—­in the bar—­on Tachaann—­with Delilah—­wasn't it?”

“Yes, Your Grace. It was.”

“What were you doing with Delilah?”

Drakwin shrugged. “She was hiding with friends, I think on Finalsa. I was hiding in one of the refugee camps on Allison's Cluster.”

Roacka said, “That's where we met.”

Drakwin continued. “There's a whole underground of information passed around by those who'd like to see Goutain fall. She heard about me, contacted me through friends of friends of friends. We agreed to meet on Tachaann since it's a wide-­open port and Goutain really can't push its government around, neutral territory as it were. She was trying to organize some sort of underground resistance, but she couldn't supply arms and equipment. Goutain's thugs scooped her up the next morning. Why do you ask?”

Charlie tried to recall his last conversation with Delilah, standing in the hallway in Almsburg, the hurt in her eyes as he rejected her. All along she'd been trying to do something big and significant, while all he'd done was try to survive. “I think I've made an ass of myself.”

“Probably,” Roacka said, smiling.

Drakwin introduced Charlie to the other Syndonese families. Charlie questioned them carefully, delicately, and while none went into detail, each had a story of murdered loved ones. And then he met Madam Carallo, and her two children, both quite young. “My husband's a physician forced to serve that madman. I hope he's well.”

She saw the look on Charlie's face, and before he could speak she demanded, “You know something. Don't you?”

“I fear your husband is not well, madam. I owe him a great debt. It was he who helped me escape Goutain's captivity, though I fear he paid for that with his life. But he thought you were dead, all of you. He had heard something of rape and murder.”

She closed her eyes as tears trickled down her cheeks. “Oh, he must have heard about Tanya, our oldest daughter. We three escaped—­Tanya was not so lucky.” Suddenly she straightened her shoulders and the tears stopped. “But I have a daughter and a son left, and I intend that they will avenge their father and their sister.”

Charlie put a hand on her shoulder. “Allow your children to grow up happily, not obsessed with vengeance. Leave that to me. I think I might be good at it.”

T
he small freighter that Roacka had stolen was reasonably fit, had a sound hull, a good drive system, and a fairly new power plant—­it occurred to Charlie that someday he'd have to reimburse the merchant on Allison's Cluster. Roger felt that with a few modifications she could become a decent light destroyer, so Charlie gave him command of her with instructions to proceed to Istanna then Toellan; Sague could arrange for any infrastructure modifications, and Aziz would handle armaments and shielding through Hart & Delorm. As a skeleton crew, Roger took Seth, the fifty members of the Two Thousand
,
and all the Syndonese men. Once the two ships were complete—­and before returning to Starfall—­Roger, Seth, and Darmczek were going to swing by Traxis in a surreptitious attempt to locate any more of the Two Thousand.

With his present resources he couldn't accomplish much, maybe just hinder Nadama and Goutain, slow them down while he looked for more support, more allies. He also needed to keep them from expanding into the independent states where they could confiscate his properties. It wasn't any sort of a real plan, but that was the best he could come up with at the moment. He'd revise it later if he found that support.

Charlie's biggest problem was that he needed a fleet of real warships, not just a few converted freighters. Large warships were a costly matter, though; converting more than two or three freighters would stretch his resources to the limit, and that was nothing compared to the cost of actually laying hulls and building a true warship. He needed something cheaper, and for several tendays now he'd been toying with a new design: a smaller ship with minimal defensive capabilities, its only offensive capability a large store of transition torpedoes. Keep the ship small and maneuverable, give it an overpowered drive, minimal shielding, no defensive batteries, and construct all systems for minimal emissions and maximum stealth capability. Such a ship would depend upon speed and stealth for both offense and defense. “If this Sague fellow can make it,” Roger said after reviewing Charlie's specifications, “she'll be a nasty little killer, able to sneak up on her targets and hunt them down.” Roger's comments stuck, and when he departed for Istanna he carried the specifications for what they had come to call a
hunter-­killer
class warship.

In spare moments Charlie, with Stan Fourhands's help, tried to hack into Starfall's computer system. There were too many things that didn't add up about Starfall, including the blind corridor that didn't appear on the facility map unless Charlie stepped into it. And then there was the computer system itself. Charlie had tried to look into the programming that made the blind corridor appear on the facility map when he stepped into it. He'd been given the codes for ring zero access; there shouldn't be any deeper level of access than ring zero, and yet he'd been blocked from that programming. And as he experimented further he found his access blocked in certain specific ways.

And then there were the cyberkeys. He'd looked for mating interfaces in all the obvious places like the security center, and found nothing that matched. If he had to search every inch of Starfall—­floors, ceilings, and walls—­he'd be poking around in dark corners for years.

“What is it?” he asked Cesare's ghost. “What are you hiding?”

A
few days later a Syndonese heavy cruiser christened
Sachanee
down-­transited into Lunan nearspace. At the request of President Goutain, Admiral Santieff had come to pay his respects to the newly seated duke. Speaking to him via transition com Charlie thanked him, told him that he was unable to entertain him at this time, and that he'd let him know when he was able to receive guests.

“No, no, no, Your Grace,” Santieff said. He was a smarmy bastard, all smiles and teeth. “We will come now and be entertained. You do not understand. You are not Syndonese.”

A warship against Charlie, a handful of servants, and some Syndonese refugees—­no contest. They managed to get the Syndonese refugees disguised as servants before Santieff and his troops landed. Beyond that, Charlie could only grin and bear it.