Mercenary

by Piers Anthony

  He was unimpressed. “You could have gotten most of that from Personnel records.”

  “Had I known your identity, sir,” I agreed.

  He nodded, acknowledging my point. I had been summoned suddenly to an office; I could not have known. “And why did Sergeant Scapegoat connect us?”

  “I have a private mission. You—” I concentrated, seeking to fathom this specific aspect of his nature. My talent is normally a general thing, a perception of fundamental biases, rather than a detailed itemization of traits. It did take time for me to understand a person properly, and this was sudden. Mostly, in the Navy, I had not bothered to use my talent on the soldiers around me; it really wasn’t worth it. I had used it on Juana, and on Sergeant Smith, once he caught my attention, but there was no more point in using it on everyone than in studying the complete Personnel files on everyone. It requires an effort to form an informed opinion, and the Navy does not leave a trainee much surplus energy. For routine life and work, it is often best simply to accept people at face value—particularly in a regimented system where deviance from the norm is not encouraged. “You need contact with someone who can apply instinctively the principles you have studied professionally. Such a contact would—would provide some meaning for your life, and you value meaning more than life.”

  “Purpose,” he said. “Purpose more than meaning, though the two may overlap.”

  “Purpose, sir,” I agreed.

  “I have measured out my life in chicken shit.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Shall we deal?”

  “Help me recover my sister, sir, and I’ll do anything you want, within reason and legality.”

  “What I want is reasonable and legal but too complex for you to fathom at the moment.”

  I concentrated on him again. There is nothing supernatural about my talent; I merely read people quite well. I can, to a large extent, discover their moods and natures from peripheral signals, but I cannot read minds. Intelligent interpretation, not telepathy, is my secret. Now I saw in this man the signals of an enormous ambition but not one to be expressed in simple things such as promotion or riches or romance. He craved power but not any ordinary or competitive type. Rather it was a kind of vindication he sought—vindication in his own eyes, by his own complex code. He sought, perhaps, to change the course of Man, in a devious fashion that only he himself could properly understand. This was a fascinating man! “Yes, sir,” I agreed. “But I will cooperate to the extent feasible.”

  “Your destiny may change,” he warned me.

  I was aware that he believed he was understating the case. I began to believe it myself. “I have not determined my destiny,” I said. “I only want to recover my sister. Then I must become an officer, to fulfill my commitment to Sergeant Smith, so I suppose that means a career in the Navy. I’m satisfied with that.”

  He lifted a ball. “Perhaps you are now,” he said. “This is me.” He indicated the ball he held. “This is you.” He indicated the far ball.

  “Yes, sir,” I said noncommittally.

  He released his ball. It swung down and struck the group, and my ball rebounded. The implication was clear enough. He intended to apply force to move me, according to his complex will, and I would have to react predictably. He was a strange yet well-meaning man, and his effort would have power, but as I watched the return swing of my ball and the thrust it imparted back to his ball, I knew that once he started me going, he would be subject to my force as much as I was now subject to his.

  “Yes, sir,” I repeated.

  The balls swung back and forth, acting and reacting and re-reacting and slowly declining, until at last the entire group was gently swinging. “And there is the Navy,” Lieutenant Repro said.

  What we did would have a subtle but definite effect on the entire system. That was a grandiose ambition of his, yet it seemed a credible one.

  “I think of these balls as a physical representation of honor,” he said.

  “Honor, sir?” I asked, surprised.

  “Do you know what honor is, Hubris?”

  “Integrity,” I said.

  He smiled. “I will educate you about honor. It is not integrity or truth. It is larger, a less straightforward concept. Honor has aspects of personal esteem, respect, dignity, and reputation, but it is more than these. Honor is an intangible concept, based more on appearance than reality, but its fundament is based on reality, and to a considerable extent it fashions its own reality. Civilization is a function of the honor of the human species. You must master the nuances of honor, to know personally what input will bring about what output.” He started the balls rebounding in a complex clicking pattern by releasing them sequentially.

  “What do I have to do with honor?” I asked. “It’s hard enough just getting through training.”

  He shook his head ruefully. “I can see my work is cut out for me.” But he was not upset by the challenge. “How can I help you recover your sister?”

  I explained about the need to check the list of pirate ships doing business with Chip Off the Old Block, especially the one that handled EMPTY HAND chips.

  “Yes, I have access to that list,” he agreed. “It is considered part of Publicity, because no other department wants to touch the touchy matter of Navy trade with pirate vessels. We do keep track, but we don’t advertise it, because then the question might arise why we don’t stamp out that trade.”

  “Why don’t we?” I asked.

  “That is an excellent question, to which I can proffer no adequate answer. Do you wish to stamp out piracy?”

  “Yes!” I said fervently.

  Abruptly he stood up, and I saw just how tall he was. “Private First Class Hubris, I have a temporary detail for you. Come with me.” This interview occurred before I was promoted to corporal; it is difficult to maintain a perfectly chronological narration when separate threads come together.

  I realized that he did not feel free to talk frankly with me here in the office. “Yes, sir.”

  We walked out into the hall system that linked the various offices, and on to the officers’ recreation section. “Do you play pool?” Lieutenant Repro asked.

  “Yes, sir. Not well.” I had learned all the available games; it was necessary for proper integration into the system.

  “I will show you how to play well.”

  “Yes, sir. Am I permitted to play in the officer’s room?”

  “You are if I say so.” He brought me to a pool table, and we took cues. “The monitors are unable to pick up sounds well in this vicinity,” he murmured as he racked the balls. “Just keep your voice low and don’t gesture expressively or react overtly.”

  “Yes, sir.” I wasn’t certain whether he was paranoid about being spied on, or whether there was justice to it. I can read much of a person’s nature, but human nature is largely subjective. Probably there was both paranoia and justice.

  “You hate all pirates because of what some did to your family?” he asked, not looking at me as he made his shot.

  “Yes. I swore an oath to extirpate piracy from the system.”

  “But first you must recover your sister from the pirates.”

  “Yes.”

  “Suppose you discover that certain powers in the Jupiter hierarchy don’t want the pirates extirpated?”

  “I will find a way.” I realized that he did have some notion why the Navy traded with pirates.

  “First you must place yourself in a position to take direct action against the pirates. Then you must have an organization that is capable of doing the job.”

  “I will find a way, sir.”

  “I have amused myself by formulating in my mind the elements and personnel of a unit that would be capable of doing any job required of it, despite the opposition of the hierarchy. This unit could be turned to the extirpation of pirates.”

  “An imaginary unit, sir?”

  “Part of my ambition is to make this unit become real.”

  “But the Nav
y would not let you assume such a command, sir,” I said, perhaps undiplomatically.

  “True. I can not assemble it myself. But an officer with the right credentials could.”

  “Who is that, sir?”

  “That officer does not exist at present. I confess this is a weakness in my scheme.”

  “Then how—?”

  “It will be necessary to bring him into existence.”

  I was silent, not following his logic.

  “But first things first,” he said abruptly. “The pirate trade with military bases is tolerated because there is graft. Therefore, any direct action against the pirates must be organized in secret. Once we locate the ship on which your sister is hostage, it will be necessary to provoke a conflict with that ship, so that it may be captured without affront to the powers that do not wish to disturb pirate ships.”

  “You can plan such a mission, sir?” This was obviously the right man to talk to!

  “I? No. For that we require a good S-2 officer, for the necessary intelligence, and a strategist for the actual mission.”

  “Just to capture one ship, sir?”

  “To capture it without the loss of your sister’s life, and without disturbing the Naval status quo. Both are vital.”

  “I see, sir.” This was becoming more complicated than I had thought, but of course I hadn’t thought it through. Sixteen is not the most thoughtful age.

  “I will get on it, Hubris. You continue your training. Chance may put you in the position you need to accomplish your mission.”

  “Chance, sir?”

  “We’ll call it that.” He smiled. “Patience, Hubris. A program of significance may be inaugurating here.”

  “Yes, sir.” I did not quite realize or believe it then, but he had spoken absolute truth.

  Lieutenant Repro was as good as his word. He was an addict, but he was competent. It is an error to suppose an addict is necessarily an inferior person. This one was a driven person.

  In two weeks I had the name and location of the ship that handled EMPTY HAND: the Hidden Flower, now drifting in the inner Juclip. It was one of the more disciplined pirate vessels, having originally fled one of the Uranus navies and retaining a fair percentage of military personnel.

  That was definitely the ship I had left Spirit on! My premonition of eventual victory grew.

  When I completed my raider training and made E4, early in the next year when I was just seventeen, I went on for further training in related areas: infiltration, use of nonstandard weapons, disguises, small-ship piloting, practical emergency medicine, and similar. I was in continuous training, and I liked it. I wanted to be skilled at everything I might possibly need. The continuing availability of EMPTY HAND chips assured me that my sister remained functional.

  I made E5, sergeant, at age nineteen, and was put in charge of my own highly trained raider squad. I was ready for action, but there was no action to be had because the pirates were behaving themselves reasonably well in local space, molesting only refugees and incidental stragglers, and it was Naval policy (facilitated by graft) not to make waves. I was helpless.

  Then I received a cryptic message. It was a spacegram from Jupiter: DO YOU HAVE IT? It was signed “Q,” with no return address or other identification.

  I pondered that. Why should an obscure nineteen-year-old sergeant in the Jupiter Navy receive a message from Jupiter? As far as I knew, no one on the Colossus planet knew me. Of course, my enlistment record would be available there, but it was undistinguished. I had spent virtually all my time training for a mission that might never be scheduled. Could the spacegram be an error? That hardly seemed likely; it would have required specific information to locate my name and assignment. I was not a name to be read by mistake in an address directory.

  What of that signature? Why was it merely an initial? This anonymity prevented me from responding, even to ask for clarification. Did the sender assume I would recognize him from that single mysterious initial? Why?

  I pondered, and suddenly it came to me. I did know of someone whose name started with a Q, and I did have something that person wanted. The name was QYV, pronounced Kife, and the thing was the key that my fiancée Helse had carried. I now wore it on the chain with my dog tags, bound lengthwise so that it wasn’t obvious. It was always with me: my sole physical memento of my lost love.

  This had to be QYV, who had finally tracked down his lost key to me. That could not have been any easy job, for most of the people his courier Helse had encountered were dead. Certainly the pirates who had been responsible for her demise were dead; I had seen to that. Technically I had killed her—but only technically. She had died in our defensive action against attacking pirates. The memory still hurt; it would always hurt. But four years is a long time to a teenage youth, and I was now able to face the truth without more than an internal flinch.

  I had no knowledge what lock that key might fit; I valued it solely because it had been Helse’s. I was not about to give it up. If QYV wanted it, he would have to come and get it.

  My feelings about QYV were balanced. I was sure he was a pirate, an illegal operator, probably a smuggler. I knew that his name was respected and feared throughout the pirate realm; no one dared cross QYV. I had sworn to extirpate all piracy, but I wasn’t sure that oath included QYV because QYV had made it possible for Helse to travel to Jupiter as his courier for the key. That key had enabled me to meet and love her. It was true that I had also lost her, but QYV had not been responsible for that, and certainly had not approved it. QYV protected his couriers. He might be a criminal, but he had done no direct harm to me.

  Now he was searching for his lost key and probably also for revenge against those who had balked his courier. I had the key, but I also craved revenge. To that extent, our purposes aligned. However, I knew the enemy of my enemy was not necessarily my friend, and I wanted no contact with QYV. Certainly I would not give up the key.

  So my answer to this cryptic message was no problem: I ignored it. But I knew that it had to be merely a preliminary signal; I would be hearing more from QYV.

  I did. I received an anonymous vid-call. The screen showed only the letter Q. “Do you?” a nondescript voice asked.

  “Show me your power,” I replied, and hung up.

  A week later new orders came through for me. I was to report for space duty to the destroyer Hammerhead. Its mission was to capture an errant pirate ship, and it turned out that the ship was the Hidden Flower. The very ship I wanted.

  In my mail, the last one before I transferred to the ship, I received a sealed note. Inside was a square of paper bearing the single letter Q.

  QYV had shown me his power, indeed! How had he known of the thing I most wanted: the chance to rescue my sister Spirit? But still there was no deal, no demand for the key. This was only a demonstration, not the negotiation. But it was doubly impressive, for it also showed the potency of QYV’s graft. I no longer considered Lieutenant Repro to be paranoid about pirate influence in the Navy; that influence was real.

  I bid farewell to Juana; our two-year tenure as roommates was over. “There is another sergeant I can room with,” she said bravely through her tears, so I wouldn’t worry.

  “Make him happy, Juana,” I said. “We shall meet again.”

  “Yes, we shall,” she agreed determinedly. There was theoretically no love between us, but I was aware that she had not entirely kept faith, and I myself was moved more than casually by the sudden separation. Juana was a good woman, and her supportive presence had done much to alleviate my own heartbreak over Helse. We had always known separation would come; enlisted personnel could not marry. Well, they could come close; E4’s could be reassigned as units, and E5’s could even have a child, using a counteragent to block the universal contraceptive. But that child would be a ward of the Navy and could be taken away at the convenience of the Navy. True marriage and family status, Navy-style, was reserved for officers. Juana could not join me on this hazardous mission, nor would I ha
ve wanted her to. Her skills were wrong, and so was her temperament; she was no adventurer. So it was circumstance rather than desire or regulations that separated us. Perhaps this was just as well; it would have been too easy to stay with her for life. Certainly she could attract another roommate; she could attract a hundred! She had been beautiful at age sixteen; at nineteen she was ravishing.

  “And if you want to, when you use the ship’s Tail,” she murmured, “you may pretend it’s me.” Then she kissed me one final time, and I realized it was no joke. It would be uncomfortable sex on the ship after two years of Juana. Not because she was anything really special in this particular way, but because I did indeed care for her.