The Thirteenth Man (17 page)

Santieff landed with about thirty men. They were a rough lot, the kind of spacers that busted up bars and whorehouses. Charlie guessed they'd been carefully selected for such qualities. “Come, come, Your Grace. We must have a banquet. We are your wonderful guests, truly magnanimous guests, and you must entertain us properly. Good food and good drink, and perhaps girls. Do you have girls?”

“None for you.”

“Oh, Your Grace. You must adopt the spirit of your guests. His Excellency personally asked me to pay my respects to the new duke. And you must pay your respects to me.”

Charlie had few options, so he spoke carefully. “The ducal council will not be pleased that you forced yourself upon me.”

Santieff's eyes hardened. “Have we used force, Your Grace?”

Charlie realized the admiral might not be the fool he pretended to be.

Santieff continued. “And is it improper for His Excellency to pay his respects to you through me?”

So far Santieff had not threatened or harmed anyone, and without something overtly inappropriate, the other dukes would shrug it off. Apparently, Santieff understood that. Charlie could only hope the asshole just wanted to harass them for a few days, then leave, just as the supposed customs officials had done when they left Turnlee.

Unable to turn them away, he had no choice but let them into his home. But with Santieff and his thugs wandering about, Charlie went back to carrying a plast knife in one boot and a palm gun hidden beneath his tunic. The twins decided that at least one of them would always shadow him, and as an added precaution, they started sleeping in the anteroom to his bedroom.

The Syndonese wanted food and drink and women. Janice and Sally shrugged, said money was money and they both needed the work, though Nano assured Charlie he'd keep an eye on them. Charlie gave Stan Fourhands permission to pick any Syndonese pockets he could, then he raided the medical stores for sedatives, turned them over to Danya, and told her to be ready to spike the Syndonese drinks if anything happened.

For two days the situation remained reasonably stable, though Santieff kept bringing down more men from his ship each hour until it was obvious nothing remained aboard her but a skeleton crew. At that point they were
entertaining
close to a hundred and fifty Syndonese spacers, who were keeping Starfall's processing stills running at full capacity, and it occurred to Charlie he might be able to turn the situation to his advantage. He called a little council of war with Roacka, the twins, and Winston.

“There's nothing but a skeleton crew up there now,” he said. “And I'd love to take possession of that heavy cruiser.”

He turned to Winston. “Tell Danya it's time to spike their drinks. I want Santieff and every crewman he's brought down here unconscious.”

He told Roacka, “Start working on a plan to take over that ship. Assume it's badly undermanned.”

To Add and Ell he said, “Once Danya's got them knocked out, sweep the place carefully, and if you find any that aren't unconscious, make them that way. I want every one of them bound and gagged before they wake up, and let's pile them all into one room where we can keep an eye on them. And separate Santieff from the rest.”

With the help of the servants and the Syndonese refugees it was done quickly. Then Charlie gathered Roacka, Winston, Paul, Add, Ell, and the trampsies for a little tactical conference. “Our problem is that warship in orbit up there. She's probably only got a skeleton crew, but they can still bomb the hell out of us, and we don't have anything to fight back with, though we do have Santieff and most of his crew as hostages. But we'll be better off if we can figure out a way to board her and take control of her.”

Roacka hooked a thumb at Add and Ell. “Me and the girls are thinking we can take their boat up, try to bluff our way aboard, then storm the place.”

“Frankie,” Janice said. “Frankie, Frankie, Frankie, ain't you learned nothing yet? You listen to old General Janice here. Roacka and the girls just need a diversion, and that's where Sally and me come in. Give us about a hour to get those boys in a partying mood, and while we're fucking their brains out, Roacka and the girls here can sneak on board and finish 'em off.”

Paul blushed.

“H
ey ensign.” At the sound of the old NCO's voice, the young Syndonese officer roused from sleep. “The shuttle's approaching, and you gotta see this.”

He'd been dozing at the captain's console. He knew he shouldn't do that in front of the men, but then again there were only ten of them left on board, and absolutely nothing happening. “Channel three, ensign.”

He put channel three on one of his screens, saw an image of two young women there. Both were quite attractive, and showing a lot of cleavage and leg. One of them asked, “You the man in charge up there?”

Well, at the moment, he was the ranking officer. But as to being in charge, how much was the ship's most junior officer ever in charge? “Yes, I'm the ranking officer.”

“Okay, captain. Yer admiral says he's feeling real bad they're having all the fun down there, and you boys ain't getting to share none of it. So he sent me and Sally here, along with a case of some good booze, as a little present for you guys.”

“I'm sorry. It's against regulations. I can't allow you on board without a specific order from Admiral Santieff.”

“Lighten up, ensign,” the old NCO said.

“You too tense,” the second girl said, wiggling her breasts at him. “I can make you un-­tense, real quick like.”

He said to the NCO, “But we should confirm this with the admiral.”

One of the girls said, “His admiralship is out cold, nursing one nasty hangover.”

The old NCO said, “Listen, ensign. You heard yourself how drunk he was last night, and he ain't gonna appreciate you waking him up to get his permission for this.”

“But captain,” the first girl said. “It was yer admiral what sent us. I mean, what's a ­couple of working girls like me and Sally gonna do, take over yer ship from big strong guys like you?”

C
harlie looked over Stan Fourhands's shoulder as he stared intently at the readout on the Syndonese screen. “I got access to basic systems, Frankie: life support, medical, drive control, power plant, gravity, navigation. But these military systems are tough. Take me maybe another tenday to hack ring one access to get to weapons, and I don't know about ring zero.”

“Don't even try,” Charlie told him. “Any mistakes and you could lock the whole system up permanently. The code traps get nastier the deeper you get, and I don't want to take any chances. It's simpler if Sague just flushes the entire operating system and installs a new one.”

Charlie leaned back and scanned the bridge of the Syndonese ship. He had a real warship, his first, and acquired rather cheaply.

Charlie didn't dare let any of the Syndonese back on their ship; he had no way of knowing what kind of verbal codes they might be able to activate, or what they might trigger directly through their implants. And in any case, her brig wasn't large enough to hold a hundred and fifty prisoners, and being a warship she didn't really have a hold. But she was stocked with an amazing supply of steel manacles and chain. So in small groups they'd transferred the Syndonese to
Goldisbest
's hold. Charlie had tried to not feel any satisfaction as they cuffed them in hand and leg irons and locked them to
the chain
. Charlie gave clear orders that the prisoners were to be fed properly and treated in as humane a fashion as possible.

Charlie had agonized over his choices. He didn't have it in him to simply execute one hundred and fifty men, but then if he released them they'd be trained crew that Goutain could eventually use against him. One of the Syndonese refugees pointed out that it didn't matter; Goutain would just have them executed anyway. To get confirmation of that Charlie went to see Santieff in
Goldisbest
's hold. Santieff was outraged. “You have dishonored yourself with this treatment of your most magnanimous guests. You cannot—­”

“Shut up,” Charlie said. “I've decided you're right. I'm going to release you.”

Santieff smiled his most smarmy smile. “I'm glad you understand that you must capitulate to Syndonese superiority. And because you have seen your error, I will, perhaps, execute only half of your household. And I'll only have you whipped, not executed.”

“Yes,” Charlie said. “I'm going to return you to Goutain, all of you . . . cuffed in irons without your ship.”

Santieff's smile disappeared, his jaw dropped, and his eyes widened. And in a ship's hold filled with one hundred and fifty prisoners, the sound of a pin drop would have been deafening. During the next two days more than three quarters of them asked to defect and enter Charlie's ser­vice. He refused them all. They didn't know it, but Nano was going to drop them in small groups on the nearest Syndonese world, with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They'd have to survive on their own.
Sachanee
and her crew would disappear without a trace, and Charlie and everyone in the de Lunis household would simply deny having ever seen them. It was not unheard of that a ship went out with all hands somewhere in deep space, never to be heard from again.

A few days later, a small liner down-­transited at the edge of Lunan nearspace. Seventy of the Two Thousand plus twenty of Cesare's household had chartered it for passage to Luna. So Charlie now had a minimal crew to man
Sachanee
, and he decided to abandon Starfall for the time being. The palace Cesare had given him was grand but indefensible.

 

CHAPTER 17

THE FOOL RELENTS

C
harlie obsessed constantly about the blind corridor. Tomorrow they'd evacuate Starfall, with Nano and his crew and the Syndonese prisoners in
Goldisbest
, Charlie and his household and the members of the Two Thousand in
Sachanee
. Nano would head for the Republic to dump the prisoners, then return to Tachaann with the girls. Charlie would head for Istanna to effect modifications to
Sachanee
and to rendezvous with Roger, Seth, and Darmczek. By rights, Charlie should be getting a good night's sleep before departing, and he had tried, only to toss and turn thinking constantly of Cesare's blind corridor. With the Syndonese spacers trussed up and confined, the twins had stopped shadowing Charlie so closely, though one of them always slept in the anteroom to his bedroom. So it was the middle of the night, and he was down there by himself with a computer tablet for a companion.

He'd already run his hands over every inch of the corridor: walls, floor, ceiling; he'd had to commandeer a small grav lift to get to the ceiling. There were no other visual distortion fields, only the one in the wall at the end of the short corridor, and there were only a few indentations hidden there, and only one of those might be interpreted by touch as a mating interface for a cyberkey, and not one of the three keys he'd been given fit it, no matter how hard he tried. The corridor and the wall had to be related to the cyberkeys in some way. They had to be!

Charlie must have stepped in and out of the corridor a hundred times, watching the screen on the computer tablet, watching the corridor disappear and reappear on the facility map, watching and learning nothing. In another hour everyone would be up and getting ready to depart, and Charlie hadn't slept a wink. He'd be dead on his feet, and he'd have accomplished nothing. On the screen of the computer tablet he expanded the view of the facility map to include all of Starfall, and staring at it he stepped in and out of the blind corridor. The expanded view showed too little detail for him to actually resolve anything of significance, but he could see the little red blotch of the corridor boundaries wink on and off as he stepped in and out of the corridor. It was maddening. What was Cesare trying to tell him?

Finally, out of sheer exasperation he sat down on the floor of the blind corridor with the computer tablet in his lap and stared at the screen. He stared at it for a long time, had actually started to drift off to sleep, had even crossed into that dreamlike state where he wasn't actually asleep, wasn't actually dreaming, but wasn't truly awake either. He could picture the facility map in his mind's eye, the red blotch of the corridor, the blues and greens of the rest of the map, a small amount of red elsewhere here and there. He concentrated on the red, looked at it carefully, realized that there wasn't red
elsewhere here and there
. There was only the corridor in which he sat, and one small red dot; all the rest mapped out in blues and greens.

He snapped awake and looked at the tablet in his lap. He jumped to his feet and jammed his finger onto the other red dot to zoom in on it. At the highest magnification it appeared as a small, cubical recess in the back wall of the security center. He stepped out of the corridor, and the little red cubical recess disappeared along with the corridor. He ran for the security center.

Ordinarily the security center would be under the command of the head of his personal guard, but since he had no personal guard it was under the command of no one, though he had explored it carefully. It was a large control center not unlike the bridge of a warship, though not as cramped and space conscious. From it the entire Sol system could be monitored, not just Starfall itself. If he hadn't been such an impoverished duke, there'd be large defensive batteries on Luna's surface and big weapons platforms in orbit around her. He'd have a ­couple of warships of his own on hand, and if he ever needed to defend himself and his estate and household from interlopers, it would all be coordinated from the security center. Charlie stood in the middle of it all for a moment, looking down at the tablet in his hands and trying to get oriented. The small cubical recess was no longer visible on the facility map, but he'd memorized its position: in the far wall, behind the security commander's station.

Charlie stepped behind the station and looked at the wall carefully. Waist high, where the cubical recess should be, it was blank and featureless. He pressed his fingertips against it, ran them carefully along the surface: no visual distortion field, but there was a faint pattern embossed there, so faint it wasn't visible to the eye. His fingertips told him it was there, and as he traced it out he realized it was in the shape of a hand, pressed flat against the wall. So he carefully pressed his own hand into the faint indentation.

The security commander's station came to life, and from a speaker the computer said, “Lock sequence initiated.” A section of the wall slid aside revealing the small cubical recess. Inside he could see the mating interfaces for three cyberkeys, one of which glowed a faint green. The computer said, “Insert primary key.” There really was no choice to make since only one of the three keys would mate with the interface that glowed. Charlie snapped it in place.

The glow there disappeared, and a blue glow appeared around one of the other two interfaces. The computer said, “Insert secondary key.”

Again, only one of the two remaining keys mated. The blue glow disappeared and a red glow appeared around the last interface. “Insert tertiary key.”

Charlie did so, the red glow disappeared, the recess closed abruptly, and the computer said, “Insert overlord key.”

“What?” Charlie demanded. “There's only three keys, you goddamned pile of circuits. What the hell is an overlord key?”

The computer didn't answer, and try as he might he couldn't reopen the recess.

Overlord key—­it had to be the little dagger.
Or maybe not
. He retrieved it from a pocket, removed it from its sheath, and examined it carefully. Ell had declared it useless as a weapon, with a steel blade of poor quality. Winston had said the jewels were just colored glass, pretty, but worthless. Charlie examined each of the stones carefully, and none were loose. He tried to turn or twist each one, in case it was some sort of latch that might reveal a hidden purpose to the blade. He tried to separate the blade from the handle, decided not to pull on it too hard in case he damaged it. Nothing!

He resheathed the dagger, returned it to the pocket, then sat down at the commander's station. He brought up Starfall's operating system, spent the next hour exploring it, and found that nothing had changed. He returned to the blind corridor; nothing had changed there. He stared at the facility map on the tablet; nothing had changed anywhere.

Dejected after coming so close, he went up to his rooms and prepared to leave Starfall.

C
harlie chose an indirect route for transition to Istanna. He didn't want to have to identify himself to anyone: the Duke de Lunis commanding a Syndonese warship would raise eyebrows. Sague was enormously helpful, said it would only be a matter of days to make a few key modifications to certain instrumentation, then flush and reinstall
Sachanee
's operating system, followed by tests to ensure that it was functioning properly. They also scrubbed
Sachanee
's identity codes and Charlie rechristened her
The Headsman
. And Sague had been able to round up more than three hundred of the Two Thousand, so they could fully crew all Charlie's ships.

Sague took him on a tour of the orbital shipyard where they were laying the hulls for two of the new hunter-­killers. The ships were sleek, but small and cramped, and heavily overpowered so they could move fast when necessary. They stood in the yardmaster's office, looking through a window at the two hulls below them.

“Captain Darmczek expressed some reservations about such ships,” Sague said in his precisely worded, clipped manner.

He was hinting at something, and Charlie knew exactly what. Still looking through the window at the hulls he said, “I'll bet he said they're a complete waste of money, and used considerable profanity while saying so.” Sague grimaced as Charlie looked his way. “And I'm guessing you share his reservations?”

Sague frowned apologetically. “Not fully, Your Grace.”

“I suppose you'd have me build traditional warships.”

“There would be less risk in that, Your Grace.”

“And how many traditional warships can I afford to build, Mr. Sague?”

“Two, perhaps three, Your Grace.”

“And how would I fund such ships?”

Sague spoke hesitantly. “You would have to divest yourself of most of your other holdings.”

“Exactly! And the cost of building these?” Charlie waved a hand at the two small hulls.

“A tenth that of one of the larger classes of warship.”

“Precisely. And I can crew one with fifty men. And the operating expenses will also be a tenth that of a larger ship. And all one of these ships has to do is put a single transition torpedo in the gut of a larger ship to kill it.” Charlie too had his doubts about such small, under-­gunned, under-­defended warships, but he wasn't going to let Sague know that.

“I'm sure Your Grace knows best. Do you wish me to build more of them?”

“No—­I'm not completely crazy,” he said with a smile. “These are an experiment, so let's see how they work first. After a little experience with them I wouldn't be surprised if we learned a few things and modified the design.”

“Since stealth appears to be a key aspect of the design, Your Grace, I did take the liberty of making some modifications to your initial specification. For instance, we're modifying the control system and drive to allow slow transition velocities. It should be possible to reduce velocity to only a few lights before down-­transition, minimizing your transition flare and your visibility to your enemy. Certainly, such a small flare, even if noticed, might not be taken to be a dangerous warship.”

“Good thinking. I'm open to pretty much anything that helps us take out the Syndonese.”

“Exactly, Your Grace. And speaking of which, the Borreggan situation is proceeding nicely.”

Charlie had detailed the next step carefully with Sague. Any serious action he took against Goutain in the coming months would have to be covert, and for that he needed a base of operations unconnected with Starfall, the de Lunis properties, or the independent states. Sague had come up with the idea of Andyne, a large station in solar orbit around the Borreggan primary. It had been a commercial venture based on the assumption that the Realm and the independent states would expand in that direction, and there would then be a need for a station en route that could provide supplies and repairs for commercial shipping. But the expansion hadn't occurred, the commercial venture went bust, and Andyne's owners mothballed her a few decades ago to cut their losses.

Back then Sague had considered purchasing the station so he'd sent one of his agents to review its condition and assets carefully, but had decided against the purchase, seeing no way to recoup his expenses. But when Charlie started talking about a covert base of operations, Sague had recommended Andyne. So two months earlier Charlie had purchased the station for a hundredth of what it had originally cost to build, with the transaction brokered by one of Sague's lieutenants, and Charlie's connection hidden in layer after layer of corporate ownership. Since then Sague had been sending out ­people and supplies to reactivate the station. Aziz, through Hart & Delorm, had supplied armaments, both for the station's defenses, and for supplies and repairs for warships that couldn't contract for such in normal ports-­of-­call. In another month it would be fully operational as a station, and in another three as a fully functional shipyard. Though, as both Sague and Aziz were wont to remind Charlie, the cost of such an operation was stretching his financial resources to the limit. To which he replied, “What good is the money if we're not alive or free to spend it?”

Roger, Seth, and Darmczek were already on Toellan getting armaments fitted to Charlie's personal ship and the converted freighter. When Charlie caught up with them he was pleased to learn that, while the freighter would require a ­couple more months of work, his personal ship was nearing completion. It looked old and outdated, both inside and out, but was, in fact, filled with the most advanced and up-­to-­date systems, and Aziz had given it some serious teeth, turning it into the equivalent of a midsized destroyer. When she was finished Charlie christened her
The Thirteenth Man
. He ordered Darmczek to command
The Headsman
and take it to Andyne-­Borregga, while he took
The Thirteenth Man
to the meeting of the Ten.

C
harlie's return to Turnlee wasn't much different from his exit three months earlier. Syndonese disguised as customs officials boarded
The Thirteenth Man
under the pretense of a standard customs inspection. They didn't look closely at anything, merely harassed Charlie and his crew for a few hours before allowing them to proceed. However, in Almsburg he was given a suite of rooms that, while not the grandest, were still acceptable. Someone had helped Lucius understand that none of the Ten would appreciate seeing one of their peers treated inappropriately.

While Charlie's servants were unpacking he sent a page with a note to Delilah requesting an audience. It was time for him to do some serious apologizing. The page returned in short order, the note unopened. “She refused to accept it, Your Grace.” He sent the page back, and again the page returned with the note unopened.

He used a different page the third time, and told him to say the note was from Dieter. The page returned with a note from Delilah. It had one word on it, a simple
No
.