Voyage Across the Stars (51 page)

The Bonding Authority was the lubricant that made the interstellar trade in mercenary companies work. The Authority guaranteed the table of organization and equipment of mercenary units to the parties who wished to hire them, and guaranteed to the mercenaries that they would be paid per contract.

For the Bonding Authority to function efficiently, it needed something as close as possible to real-time communications across the galaxy. The communications station on Paixhans’ Node acted as a transceiver serving the Authority and, at considerable fees, the needs of other users.

“Well,” said Ned, “I won’t tell you your ancestors were wrong.”

Their path would take them within arm’s length of a Nodal. It swayed gently to a rhythm beyond human comprehension. The creature’s upper portions swelled slightly from a pinched waist. Bubble-like vacuoles as well as chips of solid color were visible beneath the translucent skin. The axial core had a pale yellow tinge.

“Via!” Boxall swore. “Don’t touch it or you might set it off.”

“They’ve got to be as bright as tractor enamel before they’re really ready to burst,” Ned said. He angled well away from the Nodal nonetheless. “That’s what the pilotry data says.”

“The pilotry data isn’t going to be dissolved from inside if a spore lands on it,” Boxall said. He laughed sharply. “Come to think, I guess it might. But it wouldn’t care the way I do.”

They were nearing the station. It was a hemisphere over a hundred meters in diameter. Antennas of complex shape festooned the dome and were planted in farms some distance away.

“I hear,” Boxall said after a moment, “that you might know something about the guy who mans the station. Gresham?”

Ned nodded, though he wasn’t sure how visible the action was beneath his suit. “I made something of a study of it,” he said. “Of him.”

There was a lot of information on Friesland, in the Slammers’ archives. Uncle Don had never said anything about it, except that he’d seen the prettiest sunset of his life once on Taprobane.

“Gresham worked for the Bonding Authority,” Ned said. “He was a field agent, new to the job. He talked too much. At least that was what prisoners said later.”

“He was bribed?” Boxall asked.

“No, he just talked. While he was inventorying mercs hired by the Congressional side on Taprobane, he let out that while there was supposed to have been a battalion of Slammers’ tanks landed in the capital to support the Presidential party and secure the spaceport, it was really only two infantry companies.”

The external speaker distorted Boxall’s whistle. “So the Congressional party took the spaceport,” he said.

“Nope,” Ned Slade said coldly. He’d watched images of the battle, mostly recovered from the helmet recorders of dead troopers. “But they sure-hell tried. And it wasn’t cheap to stop them, even for the survivors.”

They’d reached the dome. Close up, the structure loomed over them. Water condensing on the curved sides dripped down in sheets of gelatinous fungus—orange and saffron and a hundred shades of brown.

The light above the airlock blinked from red to green. Boxall pressed the latch button.

“Afterwards,” Ned said, “there were discussions between the regiment—”

“Colonel Hammer?”

Ned nodded. “Colonel Hammer. And the Bonding Authority. Everybody knew what Gresham had done, but all the evidence was secondhand. Handing Gresham over to the Slammers for execution would compromise the Authority’s prestige and neutrality. That was what the higher echelons felt, at any rate.”

The airlock door slid abruptly into the side of the dome. The chamber within was a meter square. The walls were glassy and faceted internally.

“What they did,” Ned said, “the Authority did, was to offer Gresham a contract. So long as he worked for the Authority, his life was safe. Not even Hammer’s Slammers were willing to murder an Authority employee.”

The door slammed home with the enthusiasm of a guillo tine’s blade. Ned’s visor went opaque for protection. Infrared light bathed the men from all six surfaces of the chamber. Ned bumped his companion as they both turned slowly, sure that the light cleansed every crevice of their suits.

“And then they transferred Gresham here, to Paixhans’ Node,” Ned said. “For as long as he lived. Seventeen years so far.”

His visor cleared. An instant later, the lock’s inner door shot open. Ned and his companion stepped into the foyer where empty suits stood or lay on the concrete floor. The air was muggy.

They stripped off their own suits and followed the sound of voices down a hall to a large room with equipment built to waist level around all the walls. Surfaces above the electronic consoles were of a gleaming white material that cleaned itself.

Most of the
Swift’
s
complement stood and looked with neither comprehension nor particular interest at the equipment surrounding them. The Warson brothers squatted before a console. They weren’t touching the access plate in the front, but they were
pointedly
not touching the access plate. The fragments Ned heard of their low-voiced discussion were surprisingly technical.

“Look, Master Gresham,” Lissea said in the tone of someone forced to argue with a senile relative, “that’s between you and your employers. We’re perfectly willing to pay you—we’ll pay you in rations, if that’s what you’d like. But—”

“It wouldn’t do any good,” said the man to whom she spoke. He hunched in the room’s sole chair, a black structure which appeared to have been scooped from an egg. Its flat base quivered nervously at the floor, like a drop of water on a sea of mercury.

Gresham was sallow. His bones stuck out, and there were sores on his elbows and wrists.

“Master Gresham,” Tadziki said calmly. “We can’t afford to offend the Bonding Authority. All we’re asking from you is information on the Sole Solution.”

“On Alliance and Affray, you mean,” Gresham said. As he spoke, Ned noticed that the man’s teeth were black stumps. “On the Twin Planets.”

Gresham grinned with something approaching animation. “But you don’t know that. Yet. I’ll tell you everything you want to know. But you have to stop whoever’s stealing my food.”

“We’ll give you food!” Lissea repeated.

“It won’t help!” Gresham cried. He tried to get up from the chair, but he couldn’t summon the strength. He began to cry. Through the blubbering, he mumbled, “I have to eat the fungus. The rations dispenser drops a meal for me. And they steal it! They steal it! I have to eat what I gather outside or I’d die.”

In a tiny voice he added, “I want to die. I can tell you anything about anything in the galaxy. But I want to die.”

“Well, that could be arranged,” said Josie Paetz.

Yazov gripped his nephew’s jaw between his thumb and forefinger. “Don’t speak like that!” he said. “He’s a Bonding Authority employee. If he wants to die, then he can kill himself!”

Yazov released Paetz as though he was flinging away a bloody bandage. The younger man was white-faced. He swallowed before he holstered the pistol which he’d thrust into his uncle’s belly.

“Who steals the food?” Lissea asked. She seemed to have swept frustration out of her mind. “Not the Nodals, surely.”

“Who else is there?” Herne Lordling asked.

“I don’t know,” Gresham said. “I’ll show you, though. It’s almost time.”

Gresham snuffled loudly to clear his nose. He seemed almost oblivious of the presence of other human beings. Resupply ships would arrive on an annual, or at most, a semiannual schedule. The number of other vessels which touched down on Paixhans’ Node must be very small.

“Time for what?” Coyne asked. Everybody ignored him.

Gresham got up from his chair and stepped to the hallway door. He walked like an old man, his head down and his legs shuffling forward mechanically. Though he couldn’t have been much over fifty years old, deficiencies caused by a diet of local produce had aged and weakened him. He was lucky to be alive.

Or perhaps not.

Across the foyer from the control room was a chamber one meter by ten, with a high ceiling. The long wall facing the foyer was of a gleaming, glassy material like that which lined the airlock. There was a niche at waist height in the center of it.

“A Type Seven-Six Hundred Rations Dispenser,” Tadziki said approvingly. “Or maybe a Seven-Eight Hundred—it’s a matter of storage capacity, and I can’t be sure how deep the room is. It’s a bulletproof design. Trust the Authority to buy the best.”

“What
is
it?” Ingried said peevishly.

“When somebody’s alone in a station like this,” the adju tant explained, “you don’t want to leave all the rations under his control. People get funny. A dispenser like this provides his meals one at a time, so that he doesn’t decide to make a bonfire of a six-months’ supply when he’s having a bad time one night.”

“This poor bastard’s had a bad time longer ’n that,” somebody muttered.

A chime sounded softly in the bowels of the mechanism. A sealed carton about thirty by thirty by ten centimeters in size dropped into the niche. Gresham reached out as if to take it.

“As if,” because after seventeen years he certainly knew it was going to vanish again, as it did.

“
Via! Bloody hell! Blood and martyrs!”
across the semicircle of mercenaries standing behind Gresham. He turned, looking almost pleased.

“Stop that happening,” he said, “and I’ll help you. I’ll
save
you; I know how. You can’t give me my freedom, but let me eat food again.”

Lissea looked at Tadziki. He pursed his lips and said, “There’s the question of your employer’s intention in this matter—”

“No,” Gresham said. He fumbled carefully in a breast pocket of his coveralls and brought out a folded sheet of hard copy between two fingers. He handed it to Tadziki.

Tadziki opened the document. “‘Inspection of the Type Seven-Six Hundred dispenser by manufacturer’s representatives indicates the unit is in proper working order,’” he said/read aloud. “‘This office will not authorize further off-site repair expenditures. If station personnel desire, they may procure local support and charge back costs within Guidelines Bee Three three-nine-four to Bee Four ought-ought-seven inclusive.’”

Gresham began to cry again. “Sixteen years ago they sent that,” he said. “They don’t care if I starve so long as they can
say
they stood up to Colonel Hammer!”

“Seventeen years seems a pretty long time,” Lissea said doubtfully.

“It’s that much longer than some eighty poor bastards got on Taprobane,” Deke Warson said in a voice that could mill corn. Ned wasn’t the only member of the company who knew why Gresham had been exiled to this planet-sized dungeon.

“Which brings up the other question,” the adjutant went on. “I think we can presume the problem with the food—whatever—isn’t the Authority’s doing, though it doesn’t appear to bother them a great deal. I suspect that—President now, isn’t it?—Hammer might still be displeased by meddling with what he considers his business.”

Lissea looked puzzled. “Surely that’s no concern of ours, is it?” she asked.

The Boxall brothers had been talking in low tones ever since the meal container vanished. Now Louis looked up and said, “If it’s a choice of the Bonding Authority or Colonel Hammer wanting my hide, I guess I’d choose Hammer. But believe me, Gene and me aren’t going to fix this if Hammer
is
involved.”

“You can fix it?” Tadziki said sharply.

“We might be able to do some good,” Eugene said in the tone of someone making a promise with everything but the form of the words.

“But not if it pisses off Hammer,” Louis repeated. “Sure, it’s a big universe, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.”

“I think I can clear things,” Ned said. His hands were trembling, but he kept his voice steady.

“You, Slade?” Herne Lordling sneered. “You’re going to use your vast influence as a reserve ensign to bring President Hammer around?”

“Herne!” Lissea said.

“Slade?” said Gresham. “You’re
Slade?”

“You’re thinking of Uncle Don,” Ned said to Gresham. He looked at Lordling. “I don’t have any influence with President Hammer,” he said. “I saw him once on a reviewing stand, that’s all. But my uncle commanded the regiment’s initial force on Taprobane.”

“You’re Slade,” Gresham whispered. He reached toward Ned but his hand paused a centimeter away, shaking violently.

Ned gripped Gresham’s hand. “I’ll need to send a real-time message to Nieuw Friesland.”

His eyes focused on Lissea. “I’ll pay for it personally,” he added.

She shook her head. “It’s an expedition expense,” she said.

Gresham began to giggle hysterically. Ned had to hold the older man to keep him from falling.

At last Gresham got control of himself again. “I’ve been here for seventeen years,” he said. “They pay me well—there’s a hardship allowance. And there’s nothing for me to buy.
I’ll
pay for the cursed message!”

They walked back into the control room. Ned and Tadziki supported Gresham; Ned thought of offering to carry the man but decided it might be an insult.

Gresham unlocked a keyboard. A holographic screen sprang to life above the console. He typed in his access code, summoned a directory for Nieuw Friesland, and added an ad dress to the transmission. He seemed both expert and much stronger while he worked.

He lurched out of the chair. “There,” he said to Ned. “Go ahead. When you’re done, hit send.”

Ned sat down, paused, and began by typing his serial number. He heard his fellows whispering behind him. The two men who’d come from the ship most recently hushed as others filled them in on events in the dome.

Letters of gray light formed in the hologram field:

“How do you walk with balls that big, kid?” Toll Warson asked in a friendly tone.

Ned tried to get up from the chair. The first time, his legs failed to support him and he fell back.