Starfist - 14 - Double Jeopardy

by Dan Cragg

  “All right, all right, Beimat,” Foxtable said, again patting the air. “You’re partly right about what’s happening—that Commodore Borland is interviewing each of you independently. But that’s not because he suspects any of you of wrongdoing, no, not at all. Someone else is violating Confederation law in a way that involves the navy, and he’s looking for assistance from the four of you to find out who.”

  Sawder snorted. “Right. ‘Interviewing’ each of us in such a manner that we can’t communicate among ourselves until we’ve all been questioned. That sure sounds to me like none of us are under suspicion!” His voice dripped sarcasm. “Isn’t that right, Relv?”

  Arma looked at the holstered hand blaster at the hip of one of the sailors. “You know, Beimat, I’d feel complimented if the Confederation military thought I had cloned those blasters of theirs and was manufacturing them. And I’d be a rich man if I was.” He looked at Sawder and shook his head. “I have no idea what they’re looking for, but whatever it is, I didn’t do it.” He looked back at Foxtable. “As long as we’re waiting, I’d like another dessert.”

  After interviewing the last of the four, Commodore Borland asked Chief Ault what he thought.

  “Well, sir,” Ault said, measuring his words, “that weapons man, Arma, is hiding something for sure, but I don’t think it has anything to do with Ishtar. Acalli’s shipyard can’t do anything more than repair starships well enough to make it to the nearest Class-A yard, so I rule him out as being involved, at least in the beginning. I’ve got to say, though, he stands to profit hugely if he’s given any kind of backing to the operation. Sawder throws out so much garbage in his overstated outrage that I can only say he bears watching. On the surface of it, Boja seems the most likely to be involved. But he seems too involved in his own operations here on Opal. My sources tell me he’s got everything tied up in that arctic field his geologists recently discovered, and he’s liable to go bust if it doesn’t pan out as big as he hopes. I couldn’t help but notice that not one of them said anything useful.”

  Lieutenant (jg) Flynn raised an eyebrow at Ault’s mention of “my sources,” but he’d been in the navy long enough to know that chief petty officers often have ways of finding things out that officers aren’t privy to.

  Borland turned to Flynn to ask his opinion, but Ault said, “One more thing, sir.” He got out his comp and referred to it. “That distant cousin of Security Minister Rondow, the Chief of Police? He really is remotely related, third or fourth cousin several times removed, something like that. But he’s married to Rondow’s sister-in-law.” He looked at Borland. “That man stinks, sir. And you’ll note, his ministry is responsible for keeping tabs on every starship that enters the system.”

  “Thank you, Chief. Very good thinking—and your sources are to be commended. Now, Mr. Flynn, what do you think?”

  “Sir, I didn’t see anything about Arma to make me suspect him, I think he’s in the clear—even if he is hiding something, the way the Chief thinks he is. But I’d really like to get a look at Boja’s books. Now that’s a man who bears looking at. According to my sources”—he nodded at Ault—“he’s been suspected of illegal trafficking on several occasions, but nobody has tried very hard to prove or disprove the allegations. Sawder’s bluster strikes me as an attempt to cover something, probably illegal. And if anybody outside the government is able to subvert the space security system, it’s him. As for Acalli, I’m in agreement with the Chief.” He smiled. “And I agree that Rondow stinks.”

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” Borland said. “Now I think it’s time we thanked Prime Minister Foxtable for his assistance.” He grinned the kind of grin the captain of a warship might have when his starship is about to deliver the coup de grâce to an enemy. “And see what happens when we let him think we learned a great deal more than we did.” He stood and led the way to the conference room where the luncheon had been held.

  * * *

  Prime Minister Foxtable was waiting for them. Servants started bringing in food as soon as they entered the room. Having already eaten, Foxtable contented himself with tea.

  Borland began as tea was being poured. “Well, sir, I must compliment Opal on its industrial and business leaders. That fine group of gentlemen was most cooperative, and provided us with a great deal of information that I’m sure will quickly lead to the identification of the parties responsible for the illegal activities on Ishtar.”

  “Really? That’s wonderful news,” Foxtable said with evident relief. “Especially in light of the fact that one of my ministers seems to have vanished off the face of Opal. And a retired minister is likewise absent.”

  “Avaruus and Shouhou?” Borland asked.

  Foxtable grimaced and nodded. “The current Minister of Space Operations, and the retired Minister of Commercial Enterprise, yes.”

  Borland looked thoughtfully into a distance that only he could see. After a moment, he said, “That certainly suggests that there is more illegality here than simply Sharp Edge initiating hostilities with Confederation Marines.”

  “I’m afraid it does, Commodore.” He snorted a rueful laugh. “I don’t believe any of the permit fees or royalties from those mines has been paid into Opal’s treasury. If that is indeed the case, I suspect that there are considerable violations of Opal law, as well as of Confederation law.”

  “Mr. Prime Minister, I and my legal people will do everything in our power to work with you to investigate the matter and bring the guilty to justice.”

  “You can do that? I mean, the navy has that kind of jurisdiction here? Remember, Opal is an independent world.”

  “On violations of Confederation law and matters of security? Absolutely. On longer-settled worlds, even independent ones, the Confederation often has a stronger presence, and the Ministry of Justice has resident agents who would conduct such arrests. Similarly, on worlds with a Confederation military presence, one could expect the resident military to make the arrests. But on worlds such as Opal, where the Confederation doesn’t have a strong presence or a military garrison, visiting navy starships do have that jurisdiction where there are demonstrable violations of Confederation law or potential security threats. And there seems to be several such violations here, as well as a possible threat.” Borland smiled the smile of a righteous man about to deal harshly with evildoers.

  Borland, Flynn, and Ault dug into their meals with gusto. Prime Minister Foxtable looked like he wished he hadn’t joined Relv Arma in that second dessert.

  While Commodore Borland and Lieutenant (jg) Flynn rode one Dragon back to the waiting Essays, Chief Ault took the other one to Berrican’s police center, where the prisoners from the starships were being held until a better secure location could be found. Chief of Police Madlow greeted him with something less than warmth, and showed him the cells into which the prisoners were crowded.

  “We can’t hold them here for long; you’ll have to get them off world soon,” Madlow insisted. “This is unhygienic. If one of them is sick, I could have an epidemic on my hands.”

  Ault looked at the cells. “They’ve got more space here than they did in the Grandar Bay’s brig,” he said blandly. “Of course, Confederation Navy starships have strongly enforced stringent cleanliness standards. I guess if the sanitation of your jail leaves something to be desired, you might have a problem.”

  Madlow was deeply offended by Ault’s remark but held in his anger. Ault was confident that, for a while at least, the prisoners were secure.

  Back on the Grandar Bay, the three discussed their trip to Opal. They agreed on one major point that they hadn’t previously voiced: The Grandar Bay didn’t have the necessary resources to conduct the kind of in-depth investigation needed to learn who was behind the operations on Ishtar. Commodore Borland composed a message to send to the Chief of Naval Operations on Earth via drone. The message requested that the Attorney General send an investigative team to Opal and find out on whose behalf Galactic Enterprises, Ltd. was operating.

&nbs
p; CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Look alive, people,” Lieutenant Bass said on the platoon all-hands circuit. Again, third platoon had been dropped off five kilometers from its objective, Mining Camp No. 57, so the Sharp Edge people there wouldn’t have advance notice of their approach. Not that the five-klick walk on their approach to Mining Camp No. 15 had helped any. The terrain the platoon was moving though was similar to where they’d previously been ambushed. But the lava flow here was older and broken into smaller chunks so that more vegetation grew on it, sometimes enough to completely block Bass’s view of the flankers. He didn’t know if the Sharp Edge mercenaries had learned their lesson about firing on Marines, but he wasn’t about to bet they had. He’d encountered beaten forces in the past that kept going as though they were winning.

  Sounds like Marines, he thought. But Marines never suffer such lopsided losses.

  Corporal Dornhofer’s first fire team, first squad, had the point. Corporal Dean’s third fire team, first squad, had the platoon’s left flank, and Corporal Doyle’s third fire team, second squad, held the right flank.

  “I think he can handle it, and it’s time his men got the experience,” Bass had said when Staff Sergeant Hyakowa looked like he was going to question Bass’s choice of Doyle to lead the flankers.

  Hyakowa had let it go at that.

  Damn! Bass wished he understood what had caused the Hammer to freeze the way he had. Did extended combat, always being in the most exposed position, finally catch up with him? That was why most commanders routinely rotated the Marines in the most exposed positions, so that stress wouldn’t build up until it incapacitated them.

  But Schultz wanted to be in the most exposed position; he was supposed to be immune to that kind of stress. Had it finally made a casualty of him?

  Corporal Doyle was very nervous on the flank, but nervousness was his normal state in any situation that might result in combat. He did his best to hide his nervousness and fear, the way Sergeant Kerr kept telling him. “Pay attention to your men,” Kerr always said. “They look to you and take their clues from how you act. If you come across as confident, they feel confident. If you look like you’re scared shitless, you better believe they are, too. When Marines are scared shitless, they make mistakes, and mistakes kill Marines.”

  So Doyle hid his nervousness as best he could. He used his light-gatherer screen when he looked into shadowy areas and his magnifier when he looked into the middle and far distance. He didn’t bother with his infra, because the heat radiating from the ground would give false readings everywhere and mask the heat signatures of actual people. He took frequent sips of water and sucked on a pebble to keep his mouth and throat lubricated, so that when he spoke to his men, as he often did, his voice wouldn’t come out as a croak. He moved slowly and deliberately so he wouldn’t trip or wander off in a wrong direction; that helped him look to his men as if he knew what he was doing, and they imitated him. He looked all around constantly, out of fear of someone sneaking up or lying in ambush, which his men understood as being alert, so they were alert as well. He frequently checked where he was relative to the main body of the platoon, and where his men were, redirecting them if they were out of place, because he didn’t want to become lost and be alone, which his men understood as lessons on maintaining proper contact, and they did the same. He kept his ears turned up all the way so he could hear any sound that might indicate an enemy was creeping up on him or lying in wait.

  So it was that Corporal Doyle, doing his best to hide his fear and nervousness from his men, was the first to hear the distant sounds of combat.

  “Two, Two One,” he radioed much more formally than was necessary.

  “What do you have, Doyle,” Kerr came back.

  “Gunfire up ahead.”

  “Hold where you are. I’m joining you,” Kerr told him, then made sure Lieutenant Bass knew. Bass halted the platoon, and Kerr trotted the hundred and fifty meters to where Doyle and his men waited, on the far side of a nearby low ridge of broken lava. The ridge wasn’t high enough to hide the flankers from the main body, but the vegetation on it hid the flankers from easy view.

  “Where?” Kerr asked as he reached Doyle and knelt next to him.

  Doyle pointed. Kerr swiveled his head side to side, listening with one ear and then the other.

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Turn up your ears.”

  Kerr made the adjustment to his helmet’s audio pickups and listened again. This time he heard what Doyle did, and in the direction the fire team leader had pointed. He called up his HUD map, and oriented it in the direction of the distant firefight.

  “Six, Two,” Kerr radioed. “It sounds like a firefight at our objective.”

  “Stand by,” Bass ordered. No other Marine unit was supposed to be in this area, so who was fighting? “Get a string-of-pearls view of the objective,” he told Lance Corporal Groth.

  Groth got out his UPUD Mark II and called up the signal from the string of observation satellites orbiting high above. In seconds, he had real-time imaging of the objective and handed the device to Bass.

  “Can’t you get better resolution on this thing?” Bass asked after peering at the image.

  “I can ask, sir.”

  “Do it.” Bass waited impatiently while Groth talked to the Grandar Bay’s Surveillance and Radar section.

  “Sir, that’s the best resolution we can get on the UPUD, but the Grandar Bay’s SRAs are taking a look with their equipment. They’ll tell us what they see.”

  In a couple of minutes the word came down: People they tentatively identified as Fuzzies were attacking Mining Camp No. 57, third platoon’s objective. It looked to the SRAs in orbit like the Fuzzies were winning.

  Bass took the UPUD’s comm from Groth. “This is Lima Three Actual. Say again your last,” he demanded.

  “Lima Three Actual,” a gruff voice said, “we can’t tell positively, but it looks like Fuzzies are attacking Mining Camp Number Fifty-seven. Whoever the attackers are, it looks from here like they’re winning, like they’re about to overrun the camp.”

  “That you, Chief?”

  “Yeah, this is Nome. That you, Charlie?”

  “That’s me. Listen, Chief, I gotta check with my boss, but I’ve got something I want you to do, so don’t go away.”

  “I’ll wait for you, Charlie.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Bass murmured as he handed the comm back to Groth. “Tell them to hang on. I might have something else for them. And get me the Skipper.” He toggled on his all-hands circuit.

  “Listen up, people. Got some real-time intelligence from the eyes in the sky. Someone, possibly Fuzzies, has our objective under attack. Stand by for new orders.” He toggled his helmet comm off as Groth handed him the comm.

  “I’ve got Company, sir.”

  “Lima Three Actual,” Bass said into the comm.

  “Lima Three Actual, Lima Six. Stand by for Lima Six Actual.”

  “Roger,” Bass said.

  “Three Actual, this is Six Actual,” Captain Conorado’s voice said. “What do you have, Charlie?” Bass told him what he’d just learned from the Grandar Bay, and Conorado asked, “What’s your recommendation?”

  “Sir, I want the eyes in the sky to clear the path for us, and us to pick up our pace, get to our objective as quickly as possible.”

  “What will you do when you get there?”

  “That depends on the situation.”

  “Give me the situation at the objective before you take action.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Lima Six Actual out.”

  “Get me the Grandar Bay again,” Bass told Groth. In a few seconds, he was talking to Chief Nome again.

  “Chief, I’ve got to move fast. Can your people keep a path cleared for me, let me know if I’m walking into anything?”

  “Piece of cake, Charlie. I’ve got one of my best people on duty. I think you know the other one, a second-class by the name of Hummfree.”
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br />   Bass thought for a second. “Used to be on the Fairfax County, when it took my platoon to Society 437?”

  “The very one.”

  “Good man, Hummfree. I know he can clear for us.”

  “He’s off duty now, but I’ll get Auperson in here, too. You liked the support he gave you on Kingdom.”

  “Thanks, Chief. I know I can count on you and your people. Let me know as soon as they’ve cleared the way for us.”

  “Will do. Golf Bravo out.”

  Bass handed the comm back to Groth and toggled his all-hands back on. “Everybody, listen up. Change of plans. We’re going to move out at speed. The Grandar Bay’s best SRAs are going to lead us, so there’s no sweat that we’ll run into an ambush. We won’t do anything at the objective until I get the go-ahead from the Skipper. Right now we’ll continue as we were until I say to pick it up. And don’t nobody complain about the pace; we only have three more klicks to go.”

  The landscape around Mining Camp No. 57 was desolate. The vegetation had been cleared and the ripples in the ground filled in with tailings from the mine. By the time third platoon reached it, the firefight was over and the last of the imprisoned Fuzzies were disappearing into the thin woods a kilometer and a half to the north. Even at that distance the Marines could see that most of the Fuzzies seemed sluggish, although several of them were armed and looked alert. The only movement visible through the broken fence surrounding the camp was debris wafting in air currents, and occasional dust devils spinning. All of the cages visible appeared to be vacant. The Marines moved into a defensive position several hundred meters from the fence, with most of them facing the camp.

  Lieutenant Bass reported what he saw to Captain Conorado.

  “All right, Charlie, check it out,” Conorado said. “But be careful, and stay out of the mine shaft—we know that the Fuzzies booby-trap the tunnels. I’ll ask the Grandar Bay to track the northbound Fuzzies.”

  “Roger,” Bass said. “We’ll be careful, and we’ll stay out of the mine shaft.” I lost a good Marine to a booby trap in a tunnel on Haulover, he thought. That’s not an experience I want to repeat.