The Vastalimi Gambit (16 page)

What did that mean? Jo wondered. “Abandon all hope . . .”?

Formentara said, “I guess the owners figure if it disappears in the Chomolungma, it won’t be that much of a loss.”

“How much did you pay for our passage again, Rags?” Jo asked.

Cutter shook his head. “Enough so we could probably buy that ship, tear it down, and rebuild it.”

“And for that much, what do we get?”

“The pilot has taken that ship into the Void and come out more than a score of times.”

“Great. So he’s overdue to not come out?”

He held up one hand in Jo’s direction. “He’s what’s available. You are a volunteer, remember.”

It was just the seven of them: Rags, Formentara, Gunny, Gramps, Singh, Em, and herself—they’d left the unit back on Far Bundaloh with Lieutenant Atkins in charge. Atkins was an old hand and should have no trouble making sure the harvest was finished before he packed it up and went home.

Cutter said, “I believe I’ll go visit the fresher. I don’t want to die with a full bladder.”

He wandered off.

As they stared at the vessel via the orbit port’s viewscreen, Singh leaned over to Jo. “Pardon, sah, but I have heard the colonel referred to by the name ‘Rags’ several times. Does this have some special meaning I should know?”

Jo grinned. “Gramps tells the story better. All those decades of practice.”

Singh looked at Gramps. “Sah?”

The older man smiled. “Ah, yes, the warnom. I wasn’t there, you understand, but I have it from somebody who was.

“It was during the Nchi Uprising, on Earth. The colonel was a buck sergeant leading a DGF squad.

“Nchi was one of those short-lived countries on the African continent, used to be Kenya, Uganda, one of those near Lake Victoria. You were a mapmaker in that part of the world back then, you could always be assured of a steady income, the names and borders changed so frequently.

“Um. Anyway, the local warlord started slaughtering the residents, and it slopped over into the country next door. Cutter’s DGF—Detached Guerrilla Forces—unit was relatively close, stationed on Comoros, an island in the channel between Mozambique and Madagascar, and somebody decided it was a good idea for the GU to stick its nose into the situation.

“They figured a couple of platoons of the galaxy’s finest waving their hardware would scare the warlord enough so he’d stop shooting.

“Surprise, surprise, they were wrong. Guy was apparently crazy, and he threw everything he had at them. The end was never in question—the Galactic Union Army is never outgunned, certainly not by some pissant thug in the backwoods; however, there was a communications snafu, and Cutter’s squad was cut off from the rest of his platoon and surrounded by a goodly chunk of the warlord’s army. Dozen rifle toters against maybe a hundred Nchians, armed with everything from assault rifles to vehicle-mounted machine guns and mortars.

“Cutter called Support for a salvo of smart missiles, but somebody dropped the ball on that, and they were getting the crap shot out of them.

“They were in a town that recycled and refabbed a lot of clothes for export, cotton, hemp, natural fibers, like that. Cutter led his squad past one of the garment-recycling factories toward what looked like a thin spot in the enemy’s lines.

“They were almost there when somebody in Missile Support finally woke up and sent a spray of rockets in their general direction. The rockets did clear out a nice gap in the line, but one of them strayed and hit the recycling plant, blew it to kingdom come.

“There were apparently tons of old clothes waiting for the refabber slung in all directions, and a big smoldering clump of them fell right on top of Cutter and buried him.

“When the action cleared enough to see, Cutter had vanished.

“The enemy troops on the ground were closing in, and the GU squad was still looking, but they couldn’t find their sergeant.

“Now, what you need to know is, these Nchians were a superstitious bunch. They had a legend regarding mythical ancient creatures of the forest they called the Matambaa. According to the stories, these creatures were immortal, manlike, shaggy, covered with moss and whatnot, and if one of them caught you, you’d get dragged straight to their version of Hell to be tortured for all eternity.

“So Cutter, buried under a two-meter pile of shredded, still-burning fabrics, dug his way out, more pissed off than scared, cursing up a storm.

“Just as he cleared the pile, all wrapped up in smoking shirts and sheets and the like, beating at them with his hands to try and put out the remaining bits still on fire, the half dozen Nchians running point arrived.

“They saw him. One of them yelled, ‘Matambaa! Matambaa!’ and the six hit the brakes, spun around, and hauled ass.

“Cutter’s squad was near enough to catch the action, they saw the fleeing soldiers screaming in terror as Cutter appeared.

“As it turned out, in the Nchian language, ‘matambaa’ means ‘rags.’”

Singh grinned. “Ah. That’s a good one.”

“Might not be true,” Gunny said. “But you never let truth stand in the way of a great story . . .”

They looked at the ship hanging there in space.

“Ten to one in our favor,” Formentara said.

“We’ve gone places where the odds were worse,” Jo said.

“Gravity always wins in the end,” Em said.

_ _ _ _ _ _

The pilot who met them at the transfer lock was a raffish-looking man of maybe thirty. He was average height, had longish hair, and was well built under a thin, white, long-sleeved shirt. Over that he wore a sleeveless vest, with dark silk pants tucked into ship-soft jump boots, and he had a pistol slung low on his right hip. The holster looked like leather, or a pretty good imitation of it, a warm and dark brown, and there was a strap near the muzzle that looped around his leg just above the knee.

He glanced at Em, and if seeing a Vastalimi board his ship bothered him, Gunny couldn’t tell it.

Gunny looked at the holster. Come on. Guy must think he’s some kind of fast-draw expert, strapped down that way.

The weapon puzzled her. The butt looked to be some kind of dark wood, inset into a bright blue frame. Was that metal? The piece had a kind of stretched-open S-shaped shiny rod jutting out a couple of centimeters from a rounded section above the butt. External hammer. The trigger guard, trigger, and that back piece all appeared to be the same kind of bright blue material. The rest of it was covered by the holster.

“Interesting weapon,” she said.

“You must be ‘Gunny,’” he said. “I am Mão Unico, at your service. Here, have a look.”

The gun appeared in his hand almost as if by magic, and Gunny resisted the sudden urge to draw her own weapon. Too late . . .

She revised her opinion. He
was
fast.

He twirled the sidearm around in his grip and extended it to her butt first.

She didn’t know what it was, but she could see it was either a real antique or a good copy of a cowperson weapon, right out of a prespace historical drama.

“A revolver,” she said. It was heavy, probably twice the weight of her own pistol.

He grinned, showing nice teeth. “Good. Almost nobody gets that much.”

“It’s steel. How did they achieve that color? Anodizing?”

Unico said, “Not anodizing, it predates that. It depends on the polish beforehand. The polish, and different metals, give you various shades. The metal is put into an oven and heated, with the color coming from a fuel mix of charcoal—that’s partially burned wood—and types of animal bone. It’s not just decorative, but also helps protect the metal from further oxidation. This particular weapon also predates stainless steel, so it needed a coating to slow rust.”

“Really? Predates stainless?”

“Yes. It is a Colt Pocket Model percussion revolver, .31 caliber—that’s just under 8mm. The octagonal barrel is four inches—about ten centimeters—long. Made in NorAm circa 1849.

“Not the original finish, of course, I redo it myself every couple of years. I could plate it with a modern protectant, but that would be cheating.”

“In 1849? That’s old-style dating from what, three hundred years before spaceflight?”

“Close enough.”

“What kind of ammunition does it use?”

“Originally, it was a deflagrating chemical propellant called black powder. Predates smokeless gunpowder. I could make the original, but it’s messy and creates a lot of smoke on ignition, so I use a substitute called Pyrodex.”

“Look at her, she’s like a child in a candy kiosk,” Gramps said.

“Hush, old man. Go on.”

Unico said, “Each of the chambers in the cylinder—there are five of them—is like a miniature cannon. While the weapon is assembled, you measure the proper amount of propellant into each chamber, muzzle pointed skyward. Then you push a lead ball down on top of that—I don’t use lead, of course, but a malleable stacked ceramic that approximates the density and weight. There’s a little rod under the barrel there, see, a lever that lines up with the chamber. That forces the ball tightly against the propellant. Once that is done, you put a dab of grease on top, to prevent accidental chain-firing and to oil the rifling. The final steps are percussion caps, which can be put on via this slot.”

He pointed.

“Here let me show you how it breaks down for cleaning.”

She handed the weapon back to him. He did something with a control on the side, and the barrel came away. He removed the cylinder and showed it to her. “See, each of the chambers has a small copper nipple on the back, just there, and the nipples each have a tiny hole bored through it. A cap—that’s the little copper thing, there—fits over the nipple.

“To fire the weapon, the hammer is cocked, which rotates a loaded chamber underneath it. When the hammer strikes the cap, it ignites, sending a spark through the nipple into the chamber, where the Pyrodex ignites and blows the ball down the barrel.”

“Hard enough to do damage?”

“Kill you as dead as the best dart gun made. Velocity somewhere approaching three hundred meters a second. Sights are rudimentary, but it is as accurate as many combat sidearms out to fifty meters.”

Gunny shook her head. She’d seen and handled smokeless-powder weapons, there were still plenty of those around, but never anything this old. “God, that’s—that’s
archaic
! How long does it take to reload that cylinder?”

“A few minutes. The second-fastest way is to carry a spare already loaded. It can be replaced in a few seconds.”

Gunny was still amazed. “Ah can’t believe anybody carries something like this! Five shots? Ten, if you are lucky? What if you run into more enemies than that?”

“Well, there’s this . . .”

He came up with his other hand holding a 6mm dart pistol he must have hidden under his vest. “Faster than a reload is a second gun.”

Em whickered. “Two guns? Devious lot, you humans.”

“That is the absolute truth,” Jo said.

“Maybe later you can shoot it,” Unico said to Gunny. “I have a range in the cargo bay.”

“I’d like that,” she said. “Assuming we live that long.”

When she returned to the cart, Wink Doctor was slumped, keeping, literally, a low profile.

“These are the most uncomfortable seats I can dredge up from recent memory.”

“Not built for humans,” she said. “The designer probably never expected one would use it. If it makes you feel better, I don’t find it comfortable, either.”

“So, what’s what?”

“I was not able to see much directly. I connected to our borrowed com’s search function and determined that the dwelling at this address is listed as belonging to someone named
Frow
masc. A background search on him says that he is an importer of offworld electronic components used in trash-compacting control systems.”

He nodded. They had not found their own coms, nor their earbuds, but the dead Vastalimi had a couple of coms they weren’t using.

“My. That sounds . . . exciting.”

“On the face of it, it is rather dull; however, there are reports, unverified, that
Frow
masc’s company might be importing things other than common electronic parts, including certain recreational chemicals that are illegal here.”

“Ah. The man who came to check on a kidnapping and who caused a warehouse to be blown up is a criminal? Imagine that.”

“We should move this vehicle to another location.”

She waved her hand over the control panel. The cart’s engine came online. “We need to park somewhere we can see the dwelling’s entrance but far enough away from here so we won’t be noticed by the same set of neighbors.”

“Another surveillance.”

“Yes. Either Frow will go somewhere, or somebody will come to visit him, and we will have another trail to follow.”

“Works for me. Was there any reason this guy might be responsible for the illness?”

“Nothing apparent. Save that he was involved in our capture and covering up the deaths connected to it, and we are investigating the cause of the illness. That appears to be more than coincidence.”

“Yeah, I’d have to say it seems as if somebody doesn’t want us to go down that path.”

The day had been sunny but a bit cooler, so they didn’t have to find any shade to park in, but there were heavy gray clouds in the distance and moving in their direction. Rain coming, Kay knew, and with some lightning. This was good for them—The People did not mind rain all that much, but it would cut down on those who’d be out and about, so it might be safe to stay in one spot longer.

If a neighbor approached and asked why they were parked there, Kay would offer that the cart had malfunctioned, and that they were waiting for a repairperson to arrive.

Wink would be a brow-raiser, of course. Locals might be used to seeing a cart in need of repair now and then, but one with a human in it? Not so much.

Still, there was a trail here, and short of backing off and calling in her sister, Kay could not see another way to stay on it.

They would just have to see how it went. With luck, it wouldn’t take too long for something useful to happen.

They were still in motion, looking for a spot to stop the cart, when Wink said, “Hello?”

“What?”

“We got company.”

Kay glanced at the rearview camera’s feed. Indeed, a vehicle, larger than theirs, had arrived at the Frow dwelling.

“Never a dull moment,” Wink said. “He must have called somebody.”

The new arrival was pointed in their direction. Kay pulled to the side of the street and stopped a couple of blocks away.

A pair of males they had not seen before alighted from the vehicle, a gray, six-passenger fan-wheeler. Such carts rolled where there were roads, and if water travel was necessary, could retract the wheels in favor of repeller fans. Kay hoped that wouldn’t happen since their cart did not have that capability.

The two males went to the dwelling, out of sight.

A minute later, they returned, with, presumably, the one she had identified as the dwelling’s owner,
Frow
masc.

Such an assumption could be wrong, of course. That he was staying in the house did not necessarily mean he was the owner of record; however, that was not as important as seeing what he did.

“Crouch,” she said.

The gray cart rolled past them. She allowed it to get a block or so ahead, then pulled out to follow them.

There were tricks to following prey that might be looking over its shoulder for pursuit. The first was not to let them see or hear or smell you. The second was, if you had to get close enough so you might be spotted, to present a nonthreatening image. Crouching to look smaller, appearing to be uninterested in the prey and about other business, turning away. One could also trail on a parallel, or sometimes in front. A good hunter learned about her prey and did things to avoid spooking it.

Tracking one of The People in a vehicle presented some problems more difficult than hunting a grasseater on the flats for one’s next meal. In a city with other vehicles, smell was useless, one had to be a sight hunter, so parallel tracking was difficult. The vehicle could turn, and if you couldn’t see it, it might be too late to recover once you noticed.

The same thing could happen if you were too far behind or too far ahead. There were rules for operating carts, and while one could break those, there would be times when traffic flow would impede the ability to maintain visual contact with the prey.

One had to be far enough away not to draw notice but close enough to stay with them.

After a few minutes, Kay realized they were heading toward the northern edge of the city. They had passed through the warehouse district and were approaching the Mountain Road, a four-lane street that led northwest to the Gray Mountains. They were less mountains than gentle, rolling hills, but the highest natural point within a hundred kilometers. Traffic flow was moderate, which gave Kay enough cover, but they needed to be alert so as not to miss the gray cart exiting when it did.

There were a lot of gray carts, Kay realized. She had not noticed such a thing before.

“Looks like we are going for a ride in the country,” Wink said.

“Indeed.”

“How are we on fuel?”

“The cell is three-quarters of capacity. The meter says we can travel for six hundred kilometers.”

“Hope they aren’t going any farther than that.”

“Unlikely on this road. There is an intersection ahead. The western turn leads to the Inland Sea, only fifty kilometers away. The eastern turn winds to the hills, and they are but thirty klicks from here. They could be going along the coast or past the hills, but this is not the ideal route—there are better paths.”

“Maybe they are trying to see if anybody is following them.”

“Possible, but who would be?”

“Us?”

“Were I them, I would not think so. We were kidnapped and managed to escape. In their fur, I would assume we had gone to ground, or to the authorities. They will probably have some way of knowing the latter—word would get out if the
Sena
were hunting kidnappers, and that won’t have happened. In their place, I wouldn’t think that we would circle around behind them.”

“Maybe they are smarter than you,” Wink said. He smiled.

“I doubt that. Were they, they would not have taken us as they did. They would have fed us enough information to keep us busy and unsuspicious. They showed their fangs too soon. This was not a smart move.”

“Well, they didn’t expect us to get away; if we hadn’t, we’d be dead now.”

“But that we are not means their revelations were a mistake.”

“Good point.” He chuckled.

“Something funny?”

“An old Terran joke. In the entertainment vids, heroes are often captured by villains, and the villains, being overconfident, often make that same error—they tell the captured hero things they don’t expect him to be able to use since they plan to kill him. But he escapes and has the information to use against them.”

“And . . .”

“The joke is that the first rule in the School of Villain Training is that you never tell the hero anything; you just kill him and be done with it.”

“That would be smart. Criminals, however, seldom seem to be such, at least in my limited experience.”

“Let’s hope these people continue that.”

_ _ _ _ _ _

“I am showing all couch fields green,” Unico said. “Can I get confirmations, please?”

“Green,” Cutter said.

This was followed by a chorus of like responses from the others.

“We are good to go,” Unico said. “Stand by for the jump. Me, I customarily take a deep breath about now, just for luck. In three . . . two . . . one . . .”

Cutter felt that familiar ripple effect as the ship went into warp, as if a cold wave had passed through his body . . .

After a moment, he heard somebody exhale.

“Well, we’re still here,” Formentara said.

“Thus far,” Em allowed.

“Fems and males, we have achieved entry into the Super Subquantum Transit. You are free to move around the ship; however, please keep your safety field lit while you are in your seat as we here in the pilot’s chair do, in the event of unforeseen turbulence.”

“What is he talking about?” Singh asked.

Gunny shrugged. “Got me.”

Gramps said, “It’s terrible how the young people today have no sense of history. Our pilot is offering the traditional instructions given by airship pilots to passengers in prespaceflight times.”

“Sure, you know that ’cause you were
there
,” Gunny said.

“Experience is the best teacher, Chocolatte.”

“Uh-huh. I bet if we cut you in half, we’d find rings, just like a tree.”

“Only on the part that gets hard as wood,” Gramps said. He smiled.

Gunny shook her head and laughed.

Point to Gramps, Jo thought.

Unico was only a few meters away at the ship’s controls. He stood, stretched, and ambled back to where the others were also starting to move.

Singh said, “What happens now?”

“All things going well, we cruise along for the next 71.5 hours, then line up for our exit back into n-space. Should put us within spitting distance of Vast. We dock, you catch a dropper down into the gravity well, and I see if I can find some more passengers who want the thrill of a lifetime.”

“You aren’t worried about the odds?” Singh asked. “I mean, if you have made scores of such transits and the chances are one in ten that you won’t come out during one, doesn’t that make you nervous?”

“Nah, not really. I think the odds clock resets with every jump.”

Gramps chuckled.

“What’s funny, ancient one?”

He regarded Gunny. “Back in the airship days on Terra, there was a period in which political terrorists would sometimes blow up passenger craft. Somebody would sneak a bomb into a piece of luggage or somesuch and it would go off, destroying the vessel.

“So a frequent traveler, who was worried about this possibility, asked the ticketing agent about this. What, he wondered, were the odds of his getting onto a craft with a bomb on it?

“‘Oh,’ the agent said, ‘very low. Maybe one in a hundred thousand.’

“The traveler thought about that for a moment, then said, ‘Well, I fly a lot and those don’t seem like good numbers.’

“So the agent said, ‘Okay, here’s what you do. Next time you travel, bring a bomb with you in your luggage. Chances of your getting onto a plane with
two
bombs on it are a couple million to one . . .’”

The humans laughed.

Em said, “I don’t understand the humor.”

Gramps said, “It goes to the inaccuracy of statistics. Statistics say a man with one foot on a hot stove and the other on a block of ice is, on average, comfortable.”

“This also makes no sense.”

Jo said, “You know the one about the young fem Vastalimi who breaks her leg, catches on fire, and falls into an abyss when she tries to trip her brother?”

Em grinned. “Yes. That one is funny.”

“Ever tell it to a human?”

Em thought about that for a few seconds. “Ah. I see what you mean. Humans do have a strange sense of humor.”

“There you go,” Jo said.

_ _ _ _ _ _

The ship had a small gym and a couple of treadmills. Gramps was on one, Gunny on the other. Though he was mostly a desk jockey these days, he did try to keep fit.

He shook his head.

“What?” Gunny said.

“Just thinking about technology.”

“About the time when your mama invented the wheel?”

“That goes without saying, Chocolatte, but a little closer to home than that.”

“Such as?”

“Consider how we live. We came from primordial slime, spontaneously achieving life, and within a billion years, give or take, we evolved into complex beings who came up with science and machineries that allowed us to climb into boxes and zip across the galaxy. Moving through places where no human could live for more than a few seconds unprotected, to stand on worlds beyond our wildest imagination even a few hundred years ago.”

“Civilization, old man. Is that the slowest speed the treadmill has?”

“I’m in no hurry. Burn the same number of calories over distance if you walk or run.”

“But you have so little time left.”

He shook his head. “You think we are civilized in any meaningful way?”

Off her look, he continued: “I mean, we have the high-tech toys, the ships, the hardware, the ability to make seven-league boots seem like nothing, but look around. What do we do for a living? You and I? We fly to new worlds, we dig in, we unship our weapons, and we spend a lot of time killing our fellow creatures, humans and others.”

Gunny blinked. “So?”

“So for me, the mark of a civilized species would be they don’t destroy each other in wholesale numbers. They would, you know, figure out along the way that sentient life is rare, precious, and whenever possible, they’d find a way to spare it. Our tools have outstripped our ethics. Instead of figuring out ways to lift ourselves to the next level, we have just come up with better ways to kill each other.”

She shook her head. “Ah’ll be damned. A philosopher. Ah’d never have thought it. What brought this on?”

He shrugged. “Always been there.”

“And yet, here you sit, having just left god-awful Far Bundaloh where we punched holes in the opposition, on our way to Vast to help Wink and Kay, ready to punch holes in anybody there who gets in the way.”