The Princess & The Privateer

by Peter Rhodan

  She mentioned it to Corinne the next day when the older woman noticed the bags under Gizel’s eyes and taxed her about it. Corinne smiled and nodded understandingly and offered her sedatives if she had trouble sleeping again. The next night after she had finished her guard shift duty Karvon called on her in her cabin, which was unusual. He stood just inside the door, clearly hesitant about whatever it was he wanted to say or how to say it.

  “Have I done something wrong?” she finally asked in trepidation.

  “No. No, I, um, Corinne spoke to me about your problem sleeping last night and I realized that you have never been in combat before, let alone ever killed anyone. It is not easy for sensitive people to simply take another person’s life, even scum like those pirates. You did well in the circumstances, surprisingly well. If I had realized there were three of the pirates guarding the prisoners I would never have sent you there. I came to apologize for putting you in harm’s way unnecessarily, Your Highness.”

  This was the first time he had ever addressed her with such formality and she was a little nonplussed.

  “I thought my job was to free the hostages.” she said at last, a little confused.

  “Well yes, but I would not have assigned you to that task if I had realized there were that many armored and armed guards.”

  She cocked her head sideways studying him.

  “Why not. I may be young, but I can shoot as well as anyone aboard. Did you see the holes I put in the first two, right where the weak part at the neck was? Both of them!” She pointed out, her voice carrying a certain enthusiasm she could not disguise.

  It had all happened too fast for her to get scared, it was only afterward that she had developed the shakes, which thankfully her armor had kept hidden from the others, but Karvon did not need to know that.

  “Yes. You did exceptionally well, but as captain, I should not have put you in that position. You may not be just any old Princess but you are still very young and not properly trained, so it was rash and foolhardy of me, as everyone who hears of it will take great pains to point out.”

  He genuinely looked upset.

  “Well I didn’t even get a scratch on the armor and the weapons those losers had probably would not have penetrated it even if they’d had a week to shoot at me,” she retorted, deliberately trying to be flippant.

  Karvon shook his head but she could see the glimmer of a smile, despite him trying to maintain a serious expression.

  “Possibly an exaggeration but it is beside the point. They could very well have had something that was capable of penetrating your armor, that is the point, or they could have started shooting up the prisoners. I did not carry out a proper assessment of the target before sending you off unprepared.”

  Gizel smiled to herself. He was genuinely upset over sending her into combat, interesting.

  “Well if nothing else it will stand me in good stead when I get out of the Naval Academy. I doubt there will be many Midshipmen with boarding experience or at least non-maverick ones. You know what I mean.” She smiled at him.

  He looked down at her with a strange expression on his face and for a brief moment, she thought he was going to reach out and touch her. The mere thought of this sent a tingle down her spine and set her pulses racing, but then he stiffened and said brusquely. “Well no, I doubt there will be at that. Anyway, you appear none the worse for the experience apart from the trouble you had sleeping, but that could just be a reaction to the adrenalin high you felt during the combat. See how you go this evening and don’t hesitate to talk to Corinne if you have any more problems. Okay?”

  This last sounded more like an order than a query, so she nodded.

  “Yes, Karvon. If I have any problems I promise to talk to Corinne.”

  “Good. Once we get these people offloaded we will see about getting you home. I have an idea about that.”

  He then turned and left without giving her a chance to ask what his idea was. She decided she didn’t like him as much when he adopted the brusque authoritarian mode. The scent of the deodorant he used lingered long after he had left her cabin and the way her heart was racing at the moment, she doubted she would be able to get much sleep tonight either.

  The Medio authorities were ecstatic at the demise of the pirate. They were getting a lot of flak from the larger states surrounding them whose ships had been lost. They dispatched one of their frigates to take possession of the wreck and a rather ancient-looking orbital tug was consigned to tow it in soon after. They accepted Karvon’s salvage claim on the wreck as well as paying him the fee agreed upon beforehand.

  As a show of thanks, the released prisoners put on a party for the crew of the Kormorant that they all attended except for Gizel. After some heated discussion, she pointed out that it would be foolhardy for her to attend. The chances of her being recognized were far too great, so she took the ship watch, which enabled all the others to attend.

  A week later the ex-pirate ship was towed in and then sold for scrap at auction almost immediately. Karvon snickered when he told her that bit. When she queried him he said that often as not, the local government was in cahoots with a pirate like the one they had defeated. Certain ships would get hit and others wouldn’t. The captured ships would provide a source of cheap commodities for the planet with the pirates taking the higher value and therefore much more identifiable items elsewhere. The captured ships would be stripped of anything of value before being given a new identity and sold well away from the area they were captured in.

  Eventually, the payment for the pirate ship was received and the Kormorant was reloaded with supplies and headed back to civilization. They also carried four of the ex-prisoners as paying passengers, so they took pains to make no Imperial references. Gizel was passed off as the daughter of an ex-Royal marine Karvon had been friendly with while still in the Royal Navy. There was no hiding his Brython accent and Gizel did her best to copy some of his verbal mannerisms. Surprisingly well it seemed, as none of the passengers seemed to twig to her not being a fellow Brython.

  She took pains to avoid too many personal questions, maintaining a distant manner most of the time to avoid any close questioning. Questions about the ship’s armament were brushed off or disguised by admitting they had good screens that allowed them to beat up a two-bit pirate like the one that had captured their passengers. They very successfully gave the impression the ship often operated in the shadows carrying dubious cargoes for dangerous underworld-type people and other similar activities. Thankfully the passengers didn’t press too hard for more information, especially when Lothar was around. He spent the whole trip acting very much in the standard trivid movie trope of your typical Iskander Secret Police bully boy, saying little, looming threateningly, and when he did open his mouth it sounded very harsh!

  Gizel found herself highly entertained by the whole performance and enjoyed the restrictions of having strangers aboard far more than she had anticipated. Even Karvon seemed to get in on the act by portraying himself as a younger son from some noble family who had been kicked out of the navy for some undisclosed but dastardly deed. After his expulsion, he had gone on to make a career for himself on the dubious underbelly of the space lanes.

  What was even more amazing was that despite the passengers all being experienced spacers none of them picked up on the fact that the cargo bay was much smaller than it should have been. Admittedly it wasn’t obvious without measuring the space out precisely, both inside and outside, but it was still interesting to Gizel. It confirmed the observation that she had heard before that people tend to see what they expect to see. With the strangers aboard, she couldn’t find out more about the ship or the crew easily though, which was a downer.

  Chapter 11

  Covert operations

  By the time they entered Brython space the trip was getting tedious. They passed through the Horus system without stopping this time and made for deeper into Brython space. The next port of call was a major Brython trading station orbiting the
planet Caledon. It was home to the second-largest population in the Brython Kingdom, which explained the large forts in the Horus system to some extent. Caledon was a vibrant colony, its populace ranked as equals to those of Brython itself. The planet had representatives in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. More importantly, the Kimerian Empire maintained an Embassy at the planet’s capital Nuglazgo.

  The passengers disembarked without any trouble and promised not to mention anything about the Kormorant’s activities to the authorities. Not that it would matter as all the spies aboard would be putting in reports to their respective bosses as soon as the passengers had departed. After some debate, it was decided they would attempt some form of clandestine approach to someone on the Embassy staff. It was hard to know whom they could trust, but the Imperial Security people would be where they looked first.

  Four days after making orbit, Karvon, Lothar, Krevis, and Gizel sat in a coffee shop down the street from the Embassy watching the front gates of the compound. Like a lot of the Embassies scattered around the galaxy, it had a high wall surrounding the block it was on. The large gates, which were currently open, were framed by two old-fashioned, upright style, guards’ boxes, which only added to the old-world appearance. Two guards in full dress Kimerian Imperial guard uniforms were standing in front of the guard boxes and their presence reinforced this ceremonious appearance. Their casual walk-bys of the edifice had shown that the guard box architecture was purely for show, just as Karvon had predicted. On the inside of the gates there were real up-to-date electronic security fixtures manned by many more guards through which everyone had to pass.

  The Embassy building was a large four-story brick and concrete structure that looked to date back a couple of centuries from the turreted architectural style. The rows of narrow shuttered windows made it look more like a prison or some sort of dormitory to Gizel, who disliked the place on sight. They took turns observing the building night and day to get a handle on the routine and to see who lived on-premises and who did not. In the event, only two of the men slept off-site, while all of the female staff lived within the Embassy complex. The first of the men they had zeroed in on was one of the senior guards. He stayed in a large unit in one of the more expensive residential high-rises on the banks of the river that wound through the city. Why he did this they could not determine, nor could they identify how he could afford to live there, which led to all sorts of semi-humorous suggestions as to what he did to earn the extra money. It also meant he was too suspect to use as a contact point.

  The other staff member who slept off-site was the Military Attaché, surprisingly. He was only a Lieutenant, if a bit old for his rank. According to the crew his sleeping off-premises was a significant security breach, and they informed Gizel of this departure from protocol. It appeared that he had developed a relationship with a local woman and he stayed at her house every evening. Gizel would have been happier dealing with the Cultural Attaché if she had a choice, but beggars can’t be choosers. The Cultural Attaché almost certainly would have been appointed from within Imperial Security ranks, but the fact the amorous Lieutenant seemed to sleep off-site every night was too good an opportunity to miss.

  It was difficult to make plans when they had no real idea who could be trusted. They had decided the best option for the safe return of the Princess was for Gizel to meet her brother somewhere. Even this idea was proving challenging, as they needed to find a location they could be sure no one would be expecting to see them. This would entail sending sensitive information to the head of Imperial Security so he could coordinate the rendezvous. His daughter and the Princess had been best friends for many years, and Lena had even been with Gizel at the time of the ill-fated kidnapping. His position also meant he had easy access to Gizel and her family and could quite easily have made her disappear at any time if he had so desired. The Baron had been a close confidant of her fathers for many years, and she knew he trusted him implicitly. Taking all this into consideration Baron Travgar had been placed on their “safe to deal with list”.

  Therefore, what they intended to achieve here was to pass on the name of the suggested system and the date for said meeting. They needed to allow enough time for the Prince’s ship to reach the selected system, since they already knew where the battlecruiser was this didn’t prove too difficult. It was not a perfect plan. If anything, it was overly obtuse, but Karvon insisted on doing it as quietly as possible. As her brother appeared to be alive and well it was likely Gizel would be just as safe aboard his ship. No one voiced the obvious flaw with this arrangement, that the bad guy could be her brother or someone in her brother’s employ. That just seemed too baroque and bizarre to even be considered.

  “We make contact tonight,” Karvon announced quietly.

  The others nodded.

  “Krevis will disable the security system the man is sure to have in place. Lothar and Andreas will be fully kitted out as overwatch, and you and I get to beard the dragon in his den.”

  He smiled at Gizel, with what she fondly thought of as his devil may care smile. She frequently became so infatuated when he smiled at her that way that she would have agreed to anything he said. Unfortunately, he had failed to take advantage of her delirium so far, which she found very frustrating. She hadn’t given up hope though and had consciously made attempts to place herself in situations where he had the opportunity to make advances on her whenever she could.

  “Anyone got any objections?” Karvon asked.

  “Piece of cake,” Krevis said dismissively.

  “Perhaps. But we take no chances.” Lothar commented.

  “Good. Tonight it is,” Karvon said, finished the discussion.

  The woman’s house was a quite large, single-story building, not all that old. It had a ground vehicle garage with a VTOL pad on its roof, and a very nice entertainment area at the back, which edged the fair-sized pool. The five of them moved quietly up to the front of the house an hour after the last light was extinguished.

  The external security system was a Kimerian one, presumably installed by an Embassy tech, which meant that it took Krevis all of ten minutes to disable. He then picked the electronic door lock by dismantling the whole locking mechanism almost silently in near darkness, much to Gizel’s amazement. He did something to the wiring of the door mechanism then ran some Trojan software from a tablet he connected. After a seeming eternity, he disconnected the tablet and waved Karvon inside. Karvon eased into the house and carefully studied the rooms with his night vision visor down. Gizel followed him in as he moved forward.

  He indicated an opening to his left and they quietly moved through the archway into a hall with three doors leading off it on the left and an opening to the right further along. Gizel realized the opening to the right connected back to the kitchen, which had been visible on that side of the house from the entry door. Karvon carefully tried the first door and it swung open, thankfully without too much noise. He stuck his head in but quickly reversed and motioned to continue down the hall. He carefully opened the next door, which promptly squeaked. They both stopped dead and listened intently for a minute or so but there appeared to be no reaction to the noise. He stuck his head around the door without causing it to move any further then pulled back and shook his head negatively.

  They continued their slow, silent shuffle down the hall to the last door. This was slightly ajar and he eased it open a little further. He moved carefully into the room and signaled for Gizel to follow. Before she could take more than one step a voice boomed loudly in the room.

  “Put up your hands and make no sudden moves!”

  Karvon laughed in the darkness.

  “I doubt your weapon would have much effect,” he said.

  He was near the switch on the wall that he guessed was for the lights and he flicked them on to reveal a dark-haired man in his late twenties or early thirties aiming a standard Kimerian Navy issue blast pistol at Karvon. Beside him was a terrified-looking blonde woman hiding under t
he sheet.

  The man seemed startled by the appearance of two figures in full assault armor, but he kept pointing the gun.

  “Maybe, but it will wake the neighbors and bring the police.”

  “That’s true. But we have no intention of hurting you, your lady friend, or the two children in the next room.” Karvon offered.

  As neither of them was pointing their weapons anywhere near the couple, Gizel thought Karvon was making a good point.

  “Then why are you here?” the man said suspiciously.

  Before they could respond a young girl’s voice called out.

  “What’s going on mummy?”

  Karvon nodded at the woman who took the hint.

  “Nothing honey. You and Karole stay in bed please and go back to sleep. You have school tomorrow don’t forget.”

  “Yes, mum,” the voice said sounding disappointed.

  “Lounge room,” Karvon said and motioned Gizel back.

  She turned and led him through the kitchen back to the lounge room. Karvon followed but kept an eye on the man who got out of bed and trailed after them, still pointing the gun. As he followed them into the room he noticed Krevis at the door and the wreckage of the lock.

  “What the fuck!” he said harshly trying not to yell and further disturb the children.

  “Sorry,” Krevis said. “I’ll stay until the shops open and you can get it fixed.” He offered.

  The man appeared to be about to explode at this but something about Krevis’ tone sank in and he managed to keep control of himself after a moment.

  “What the hell is going on here and who are you people?”

  Karvon nodded at Gizel.

  “This lady needs to talk to you, but she can’t while you are waving that gun around.”

  He looked at Gizel then back to Karvon.