The Thirteenth Man (20 page)

“Okay, okay,” Chambers shouted. “Okay. What are you going to do with us?”

“That's better,” Drakwin said. “We're going to board you. We're interested in valuables, not ­people. If there's any resistance, you'll pay a heavy price in lives.”

T
he Headsman
had two small gunboats in a hangar bay below decks. Charlie and Drakwin joined Roacka there along with a selected group of spacers who knew how to fight in close quarters. Roacka had chosen to dress Drakwin and a few of his lieutenants in something similar to trampsie attire, loud, flamboyant, and colorful. “Can you swagger?” Roacka asked the Syndonese.

Drakwin rolled his eyes. “I'm Syndonese. What do you think?”

For the rest of them they'd dug up shipboard fatigues in as many different colors as possible, spotted them up with a splash of machine oil here and there, tore a few small holes in them, and sewed patches elsewhere. And for the finishing touch, none of them had shaved for the past three or four days. They made for a rather scruffy looking bunch.

Charlie would play the role of one of Drakwin's lieutenants, and since he might be recognized, he, like most of the boarding party, wore light combat armor, with a helmet and face shield that would hide all but mouth and chin. And as an intimidation tactic, just to ensure that no one on
Paradise
decided to play the hero, Charlie added to the boarding party four marines in heavy, powered combat armor, each carrying large-­caliber grav rifles.

It took Darmczek two hours to match
Paradise
's vector and close the distance between them to a few kilometers. They managed to cram the forty heavily armed members of the boarding party into the two boats without serious crowding.

Once on board
Paradise
they herded all passengers and crew into the main dining salon. Drakwin ordered Chambers to give Charlie a copy of the passenger manifest. He strutted back and forth in front of the crowd while the rest of the boarding party searched them carefully, taking jewelry and any kind of valuables they found; they had to keep up appearances.

The mercenaries guarding Arthur were Charlie's main concern, but as with all mercenaries, their primary loyalty lay with themselves, and when it became clear no one would be harmed as long as no one resisted, they surrendered their weapons peacefully. As they searched each passenger Charlie checked them off the passenger manifest, and, of course, when they were done one name remained.

Charlie and Drakwin played out a little drama they'd rehearsed. Charlie stuck the passenger manifest in front of Drakwin's nose. Charlie spoke Syndonese; Drakwin had carefully tutored him to ensure his accent was accurate.

“Captain,” he said, pointing to the one remaining name on the manifest. “This one ain't here.”

Drakwin looked at the list, narrowed his eyes dramatically, and turned to Chambers. “Where is this Philip Smithson? He isn't here with the rest of the passengers.”

Chambers sputtered. “He's . . . in his cabin.”

“And why is he not here? I told you all passengers and crew.”

“He's ill, and too weak to stand on his own.”

Drakwin pointed at Charlie. “Take my man here to his cabin.”

Charlie grabbed two of the armed spacers from
The Headsman
to accompany them, and followed Chambers, who led them to Philip Smithson. Chambers clearly had no idea that Smithson was actually Arthur.

Arthur wasn't ill, just drugged up so heavily he couldn't stand, couldn't even focus on anything, with a stream of drool running down his chin. To complete their little charade, Charlie turned to Chambers and tried to imitate a thick Syndonese accent. “This one, he looks familiar. Did I see him in the vids?”

Charlie keyed his helmet com and spoke for Chambers's benefit. “Captain, we got some sort of celebrity here. Not sure who, but somebody important, maybe worth money.”

Drakwin came to Arthur's cabin, took one look at Arthur, and like Charlie, spoke for Chambers's benefit. “I know him, some sort of duke's kid. We're taking him with us.”

“No,” Chambers said, lunging at Drakwin and grabbing at his arm. “You can't.”

One of the spacers put the muzzle of his handgun against the side of Chambers's head. “Yes,” Charlie said, “we can. We can do it with you dead, or we can do it with you alive.”

Chambers's shoulders slumped; he let go of Drakwin's arm and stepped away. The spacer didn't lower his gun. Drakwin took Chambers back to his crew.

With Arthur supported between the two spacers they got him aboard one of the gunboats. Charlie waited there with Arthur while Drakwin and the rest finished out the pretense of thieving pirates. He hated to do it, but they did need to keep up appearances.

Besides, he could use the money.

 

CHAPTER 20

COCONSPIRATORS

C
harlie didn't have a physician on staff yet, but he did have several experienced medics among his combat troops, a few of which were capable of doing almost as much as any physician, including some delicate surgeries. He asked one of them to give Arthur a thorough exam.

“He's just stoned,” the medic said, “though I'll add that he was close to an overdose. A little more and he might have died. He's also suffering from mild malnutrition, though not as bad as what we went through in the prison camps. I'm going to guess the malnutrition is just a side effect of loading him up so heavily on sedatives he doesn't really eat. It'll take a ­couple days to sweat the tranqs out of his system. Then we make sure he eats well and he'll be back to normal.”

Though Arthur was oblivious to any sound, Charlie quietly promised him he'd give Theode some payback for this.

As the medic predicted, Arthur wallowed in the drug-­induced haze for two more days, and even then it took another two before he had his wits fully about him again. Charlie found him in the officer's mess in
The Headsman
devouring a meal. “Was Theode responsible for Cesare's death?” Charlie asked as he sat down.

Arthur shook his head sadly. “I have my suspicions, but I can't prove anything. Cesare never fully recovered from the injuries he took in the Almsburg Palace, though he should have. But he wasn't dying, just seemed to have aged a lot, became a bit frailer, just slowly withered away. And then one morning he didn't get up.”

“Gaida?” Charlie asked.

“Ya, that's what I'm thinking.” Arthur stared blankly at the steam rising from a bowl of soup in front of him. “I missed it, Charlie, didn't see it coming. And then the morning father died, Farlight filled with mercenaries taking orders from Gaida, and she accused father's physician, Stallas, of murdering him at my orders. I think Gaida was fucking Stallas.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

Again Arthur shook his head. “From then on I was kept in a drugged-­out haze.”

Charlie felt a knot of cold anger form in his gut. “Let's take this before the rest of the Ten.”

Arthur grimaced and pushed the soup away. “Theode was an acknowledged and proper son of Cesare, legitimately in line to inherit the ducal seat. So the rest of the Ten consider this a squabble internal to House de Maris. By custom, they dared not intervene. That would set a precedent for others to intervene in their own internal issues.”

Charlie stood and shouted, “Damn it!” He slammed his fist down on the table. “Then why don't I just go strangle Twerp's scrawny little neck.”

“Because you're no longer of House de Maris. You are House de Lunis, and that would be outside intervention, which would force the other ducal houses to support Theode.”

“Fuck that bitch,” Charlie shouted and stormed across the room. He wanted to hit something, but then he had a sudden thought that helped a little. “But if you had the wherewithal to take the ducal seat back . . .”

Arthur finished the thought for him. “The other houses wouldn't intervene, not openly.”

Charlie grinned, and Arthur frowned, clearly not sure what to make of Charlie's attitude.

“S
yndonese pirates,” Theode screeched. “What do you mean, Syndonese pirates?”

The head of the mercenary team to which he'd entrusted Arthur shrugged. He was a large, ugly man, all hard edges both physically and emotionally. “He called himself Raul the Damned, said he was part of the Mexak League. Definitely Syndonese.”

“And you let him take Arthur?”

“We had no choice, ten of us against an entire crew. Some of them wore powered armor and carried assault weapons. And their ship was a Syndonese heavy cruiser.”

Theode trembled with rage. With a third of the de Maris old guard leaving his ser­vice, and the rest, at best, only reluctantly dutiful, he was becoming more and more dependent on these mercenaries to keep his officers in line. He tried to keep his voice down and failed miserably. “How did a scruffy bunch of pirates get their hands on a functional heavy cruiser?”

The large mercenary shrugged indifferently. “Probably mutinied, killed their senior officers, and took control of the ship.”

The man's lack of concern only fueled Theode's rage. “This is a disaster, an absolute disaster.”

“My dear,” Gaida said calmly, stepping between Theode and the large man. Theode suspected she was fucking him. “Calm down, my dear. I think this might not be as much of a disaster as you fear.”

“How do you mean?”

She took him by the arm and led him several paces away from the mercenaries, then spoke softly for his ears only. “I doubt Arthur will be treated terribly well by a bunch of pirates. And of course, any ransom demands they make will be . . . excessive, as far as we're concerned. So we'll have to negotiate, and such negotiations will undoubtedly take years, during which Arthur will probably suffer unthinkable deprivations.”

Theode's pulse slowed and his breathing calmed. “Thank you, mother,” he said, feeling much better. “Your insights are always so . . . thought provoking.” He leaned toward her and kissed her chastely on the cheek. “I do so value your advice.”

S
hortly after they returned to Luna, Drakwin escorted two other Syndonese into Charlie's office where Charlie and Roacka waited—­Charlie seated behind his desk, Roacka seated in a large, comfortable chair to one side. The two Syndonese were vastly different men: one short, balding, slightly overweight; the other medium height, but thin, with a face sculpted of sharply angled features. Drakwin indicated the short, balding one. “This is Sobak. He don't speak standard so good, so I may have to translate.”

Charlie stood, stepped around the desk, and extended a hand to Sobak, who eyed him warily. Charlie said in Syndonese, “We can speak in your language then, Mr. Sobak.”

“Just Sobak,” the man said, extending his hand, though still warily. “You speak Syndonese, eh?”

Charlie said, “I learned a bit before the last war, then had five years of lessons in a POW camp.”

Sobak grinned, though it had more the look of a grimace. Drakwin turned to the other Syndonese. “This is Thamaklus.”

Charlie extended his hand to Thamaklus, who glowered at him for a moment. The Syndonese reached over with his left hand and gripped his own right wrist, lifted his right arm to about waist high, then let it drop. It flopped down at his side and hung there limply. “It's dead,” he said in Syndonese.

Charlie lowered his hand and asked, “How?”

Thamaklus grinned as unpleasantly as Sobak. “Goutain's Security Force interrogated me for a ­couple of days, though I never did find out why, or what they wanted to know.”

“Has it been treated?”

“Who would look at it?”

Charlie turned to Roacka. “Have someone look at that arm. We have advanced medical facilities here; we may be able to do something about nerve damage like that.”

He asked Drakwin, “Are there other Syndonese here with untreated injuries?”

Drakwin looked carefully at Sobak and Thamaklus, then back to Charlie. “In Syndon it's not wise to complain.”

Every day Charlie learned a little more about life for the ordinary Syndonese. “Please bring them forward. They'll be treated, helped if possible.”

The three Syndonese all looked at one another suspiciously. Charlie continued, “Did you tell Sobak and Thamaklus why I wanted to see them?”

Drakwin raised one eyebrow. “Thought it best you tell them.”

Charlie turned to the two men. If they were as distrustful as they appeared, then this wouldn't work. “Drakwin tells me you have no more love for Goutain than I.”

The two shared a glance. Thamaklus said, “We try not to get involved. It ain't healthy.”

“What if you could make it unhealthy for those who make it unhealthy for you?”

The two men shared another glance, though they still looked at Charlie suspiciously. He continued, “What if I supplied you with arms—­explosives and light weaponry—­clothing, food, supplies, then dropped you back in Syndon at a place of your choosing? Would you know someone who might make use of such supplies against . . . a mutual enemy?”

A smile appeared slowly on Thamaklus's chiseled features. “We might know someone.”

“And could you enlist their aid without telling where you got such equipment, because my name can't come up in this.”

“No,” Thamaklus said. “We'd have to tell them something, but we'll just lie.”

“Good. No civilian targets,” Charlie said, “only military and the Security Force.”

Thamaklus rubbed his chin with his good hand. “We could work within those constraints.”

W
hile reviewing House de Lunis's accounts with Winston, Charlie noticed something odd. “Why am I borrowing from Rierma and Telka?”

Winston opened his hands in a gesture of defeat. “For one thing, you need the money, especially since you ordered the construction of six more hunter-­killers.”

“That was a mistake, huh?”

Winston shook his head. “No. If I'd thought it a mistake I'd have spoken up before now.”

“Then why not borrow from Sague and Aziz? I'm sure they'd give us a good line of credit.”

“That's a resource we may eventually tap, Your Grace. But right now your best defense is that everyone believes you destitute, so no one takes you as a serious threat. And I've been nurturing that impression purposefully. I make sure you're always arrears in payments, but not so much that they call the debt due. And while Rierma and Telka are friendly toward you, you can bet their accountants gossip like market wives, so the word gets around.”

“Good thinking . . . I think.”

Charlie couldn't sleep that night. His entire staff was working for room and board and minimal pay, as well as the crews on his ships, though that didn't bother him so much concerning the Two Thousand. They'd shared the chain together, and any one of them would give his life for another. But still!

He lay in bed unable to sleep for a while before finally deciding to wander down to the blind corridor once more. He threw on a robe, grabbed a comp tablet, and hit its power switch as he marched out of his room. A groggy-­eyed Ell sat up on the couch in the anteroom where she'd been sleeping.

“Go back to sleep,” Charlie said as he passed her.

She ignored him, got up, and followed him.

On the face of the tablet he brought up the three-­dimensional map of the interior of Starfall, though he knew that the blind corridor wouldn't be visible on it until he stepped into it. But when he did, when he took that step, the corridor didn't appear on the map.

He stopped in his tracks, turned, and stepped out of the corridor, then turned and walked back into it, and where before it would appear on the map whenever he stepped into it, now nothing. He repeated the process a dozen times, stepping into and out of the corridor. And still nothing.

Scratching his head, he wondered for a brief moment if he had imagined the whole thing, but shoved that thought aside. Its appearance on the map had been real, there was no doubt of that, but what had changed? Perplexed and frustrated, he returned to his rooms and dropped the comp tablet onto a dresser next to the ornate dagger Cesare had given him. He tossed the robe over a chair, hoping he'd get some sleep now, but knew he wouldn't.

C
harlie had to get Arthur out of Starfall. If Theode and Gaida took a lucky guess, or just decided to drop in to harass Charlie, rescuing Arthur could all be for naught. And thinking about it, he realized he had the perfect place to stash him away. So they departed Luna, and twelve days later—­standing on the bridge of
The Headsman
—­Charlie pointed to the redundant navigational console where he usually sat, and told Arthur to sit down. As Arthur did so, standing behind him and looking over his shoulder, Charlie asked the young officer seated next to him, “Can you give us an external visual?”

“Certainly, Your Grace. We're only about half a kilometer out so you should get a good view of the whole thing.”

On the screen in front of Arthur a massive cylindrical structure appeared, a kilometer in diameter and three hundred meters deep. “Andyne-­Borregga,” Arthur said, peering intently at the screen. “It's big.”

The Headsman
was moving cautiously at only a few meters per second toward one of the station's docks. “It has to be big to be self-­sufficient,” Charlie said.

“And my new home,” Arthur added.

Charlie had a busy schedule ahead of him: Andyne-­Borregga, Tachaann, Aagerbanne, and then the next meeting of the Ten on Turnlee. And while he'd taken passage from Starfall with Arthur on
The Headsman
, he dared not show a captured Syndonese warship at Turnlee, so
The Thirteenth Man
had accompanied them.

“Has Theode responded to the ransom demand yet?” Arthur asked.

Charlie had let Drakwin play the pirate captain to the hilt. They'd recorded a message from him demanding an outrageous sum for Arthur's ransom, an amount so high that no one would consider paying it. They delivered the message within a tenday of Arthur's kidnapping, with instructions that Theode could respond by an open broadcast in Cathan nearspace using an encryption key they provided. There followed a flurry of activity by de Maris warships along the Cathan-­Dumark run, then absolute silence for a tenday, and finally Theode's reply.

“He wanted to negotiate,” Charlie said. “We'll wait a ­couple of tendays, then Drakwin will respond with dramatic indignation and some threats on your life. He'll even up the ransom demand. We really don't want to negotiate your release, so we're going to draw this out as long as possible.”