Ride the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

  “We had our doubts about your predecessor. He was a good man, but rather lacking in glamour. But you are a glamorous figure.”

  “Who? Me?”

  “Yes. The people will rally behind a famous pirate, a man who was a pirate for the very best of motives. . . .”

  “Mphm. Well, Su Lin, where do we go from here? What happens next?”

  “Bardon sends a detachment here to arrest you. That will be the signal for rioting to break out in the city, for risings on many of the big estates and plantations. . . .”

  “And if the detachment Bardon sends,” said Grimes, “is a really powerful one, with hovertanks and aircraft, we stand a very good chance of winding up very dead.”

  “Bardon and O’Higgins want you alive, so that you can stand trial for your crimes. And then they’ll crucify you. No, not literally. But you’ll be crucified, all right. Deported to Earth in disgrace together with a curt note from the President. ‘Please do not send us any more criminals as Governors.’ But, of course, they will have to arrest you first. . . .”

  Sanchez came up to the lookout point. Grimes handed him his night glasses and then, with Su Lin, went down to his quarters. He sent for Sergeant Martello. The big man soon made his appearance, escorted by two machine-pistol-toting chefs. He drew himself to stiff attention.

  “Commodore, sir!”

  “Sit down, Sergeant. And that’ll do the rest of you. Oh, Su Lin, will you organize tea for us? Good. . . .”

  “You sent for me, sir?” said Martello.

  “Obviously, I want your expert advice. I know, of course, what forces the good colonel has at his disposal on paper. What’s the situation in actual practice?”

  “If any hostile power from outside tried to invade this world, sir, they could take it with an armed space tug and a platoon of Boy Scouts. One of the things that sickened me was the way in which equipment has been allowed to deteriorate. I was in charge of the maintenance of armored vehicles at the barracks—and I made such a nuisance of myself trying to get people to do their jobs properly that I was shifted to the Residence Guard, just to get me out of the way. It’d take all of a week to get the hover-tanks in order for any sort of real action. The wheeled vehicles, the armored cars, are in slightly better nick, but they’re only lightly armed.”

  “Aircraft?” asked Grimes.

  “Flattery’s ship was damaged after that collision with yours. I don’t think that anybody has gotten around to starting repairs yet. There’s another dirigible but, the last I heard, all the helium cells were leaking badly. Three ex-Survey Service pinnaces, I suppose you’d call them. Inertial drive jobs. Light armament. Half a dozen little helicopters. . . .”

  And I’ve a pinnace of my own, thought Grimes. And a near-wreck of a helicopter. And, of course, Raoul’s little flitterbug. . . .

  He asked, “If you were Colonel Bardon, Sergeant, what would you do?”

  “Bardon,” said Martello, “has always liked making arrests in the middle of the night or in the small hours of the morning. The same applies to the civil—if you can call those bastards civil!—police. But they’ve been arresting people who weren’t expecting it. And they haven’t had to be rounded up from the nightspots to go on duty.

  “Believe me or don’t believe me as you please, Commodore, but I think that the attempted arrest will be in the morning—and not too early in the morning, either. The approach, I think, will be made by road. Bardon was involved in a minor crash once and he’s scared of flying. He’ll not be expecting any armed resistance except that from you, your pilot and, possibly, Miss Su Lin. . . .” He looked admiringly at the girl, who had just come in with a tea tray. “However did you organize all the Residence Chinks, miss, right under our noses? I can see by the way they’re handling their guns that they know how to use them.”

  She smiled coldly. “I suppose that I should thank you for the implied compliment, Sergeant. But in China, many, many years ago, there used to be a saying. Horseshoes are made from inferior iron—and soldiers from inferior men.”

  Amazingly Martello did not take offense. He laughed. “That certainly applies to Bardon and most of his officers!”

  But not to the enlisted men? wondered Grimes, but said nothing.

  He sipped his tea. So did the sergeant and Su Lin.

  He said, “Since it doesn’t seem that anything is going to happen tonight—what’s left of it—I’ll get my head down. You know where to find me if you want me.”

  He got from his chair, walked through to his bedroom.

  He heard Martello whisper to the girl. “He’s a cool customer, the Commodore. We could do with a few like him in the Army. . . .”

  Nonetheless he was a long time getting to sleep. He was hoping that Su Lin would join him. But she, he reproached himself, would be doing all the work while he caught up on his rest.

  Chapter 42

  Grimes should have given orders that the prisoners be thoroughly searched before they were locked in a storeroom. He was awakened, shortly before sunrise, by the unmistakable clatter of an inertial drive unit. His first thought was that Bardon had mounted an attack by air after all, especially as there was also the rattle of automatic fire. Snatching the borrowed Minetti from his bedside table, pausing briefly to throw a light robe about himself, he ran into his sitting room, stared out through the wide window. He could see people on the lawn, could see the muzzle flashes of the guns that they were firing upwards. The noise of the inertial drive diminished. So the pinnace—as he assumed that it was—had been driven away.

  He decided that it would be better if he stayed in one place rather than go running around, making inquiries. He collected his pipe and tobacco from the bedroom, went into his office and sat down behind the big desk. He had succeeded in establishing his personal smokescreen when Su Lin and Sanchez came in.

  He grinned at them.

  “So you repelled boarders,” he said.

  They did not grin back.

  “We failed,” said the girl, “to prevent the prisoners from escaping.”

  “They were only a liability,” said Grimes.

  “But they escaped in the pinnace,” Sanchez told him. “Our pinnace. Worse—before they left they made sure that the two helicopters will never fly again.”

  “Who let them out?” demanded Grimes. “Martello? I was a fool to have trusted him.”

  “Come in, Sergeant!” called Su Lin, turning to face the open door into the living room.

  Martello entered.

  “It was my fault, sir,” he admitted.

  “So you released your cobbers.”

  “No cobbers of mine, Commodore. But I should have remembered that Levine was a professional thief before he joined the Army. Yes—and after. Burglar Levine they call him. He used to boast that he could pick any lock ever made. . . .”

  “And now you tell me.” He turned to Su Lin. “Any of our people hurt?”

  “None badly. Two sentries knocked out, but they’re recovering.”

  “So it could have been worse.”

  “But our aircraft, sir! We don’t have any aircraft now!”

  “And so what, Raoul?” asked Grimes. “What could we do with them if they were still operational?”

  “They’d give us a chance to escape from here.”

  “All of us, Raoul? All the Residence staff? Cooks and gardeners and maids and scullions and . . . and . . . I’m surprised at you. What about the tradition that the captain should be the last to leave the sinking ship?”

  Sanchez flushed ashamedly.

  “It’s just that, even now, I can’t think of the refugees as being part of the revolution.”

  “But they are,” said Su Lin. “And they’ve far more to rebel about than you romantic Original Anarchists.”

  Grimes got to his feet.

  “Since I’m up,” he said, “I might as well stay up. I’d like breakfast, Su Lin, in half an hour’s time. But let me know if there’s any sign of an attack.”

  After t
he others left his quarters he went through to his bathroom.

  Chapter 43

  There was a uniform that he had brought with him in his luggage—his own uniform, that of a Far Traveler Couriers captain. If there was any fighting to be done he would prefer to do it properly attired. So he dressed himself in the slate-gray shorts, shirt and long socks, flicked a few specks of dust off his gold-braided shoulderboards. He contrived a belt from a dressing gown sash, thrust the borrowed automatic pistol into it. He walked into his sitting room just as Su Lin entered with a laden tray.

  “No morning paper?” he asked severely.

  She looked him up and down with amused approval. She said, “Something seems to have gone wrong with the delivery, Commodore.”

  “I wonder what?”

  He sat down to enjoy his meal. (The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast?) Su Lin sat down to talk to him, sipping coffee from her own cup.

  “All quiet,” she said. “Too quiet. The telephone’s dead. On the credit side, there’s no sign of any air activity. Back to the debit side—I’d have been expecting that there’d have been rioting in the city by now.”

  “How would we know if there was any rioting?”

  “There would be fires, explosions. All I can think of is that the various rebel factions are waiting to see which way the cat will jump. And there are so many rebel factions. The OAP and all the planetary organizations. The Texans, for example, would be quite happy to see the New Cantonese pulling the hot chestnuts out of the fire from them.”

  “And everybody would like to use me as a cat’s paw.”

  “We’re here with you, Grimes. Raoul, and all the New Cantonese, and even Sergeant Martello.”

  “I still can’t make him out.”

  “It’s simple. He just hates Bardon, is all. He had his rackets, as do all the Terran troops on Liberia. He was poaching on Bardon’s preserves. Bardon became the heavy colonel and put a stop to the sergeant’s little games. And then, when Bardon, during that telephone conversation, made it plain that he didn’t give a damn about the safety of his own people in the Residence, that was it.”

  “So all his other talk, about playing at pirates and the rest of it, was just so much bullshit.”

  “Mm. Maybe. Maybe not. . . .”

  Sanchez came in.

  He, too, was in his own version of uniform—the faded blue denims, the scarlet neckerchief.

  “Armored cars, Commodore,” he announced. “Approaching from the city.”

  “ETA?” asked Grimes.

  “Thirty minutes from now, sir.”

  “Good.” Grimes broke another crisp roll, buttered it and then thickly spread the exposed surfaces with marmalade. “Then I’ve time to finish my breakfast in comfort.”

  “But we could ambush the armored cars, sir. There’re low walls along the road as they approach the Residence.”

  “Captain Sanchez,” Grimes told him severely, “we cannot afford to break the law, such as it is. They must be seen to fire the first shot. Besides,” he went on, “our firearms won’t make much impression on their armor.”

  “We could get the officers,” said Raoul, “before they button up. And the kitchen staff has been making Molotov cocktails.”

  “Their intentions may be peaceful,” said Grimes. “Mind you, I shall be surprised if they are. But, until we know for certain. . . .” He bit into his roll. He did not, now, feel much like eating but he had to consider his reputation—Gutsy Grimes, the man who would not miss a meal even though the Universe were crumbling about his ears.

  “I’ll get back on top, sir,” said Sanchez at last. “I’ll let you know what develops.”

  “Do that, Raoul,” said Grimes through a mouthful of roll and marmalade.

  Eventually he got up, patted his lips with his table napkin, filled and lit his pipe. Accompanied by Su Lin he took the elevator up to the roof. They joined Sanchez on the lookout platform. Grimes took the proffered binoculars, looked at the advancing armored column. There were a half-dozen of the drab-painted six-wheeled vehicles. Their hatches were open; in each one stood the begoggled car commander. It was all very pretty and, thought Grimes, remarkably archaic. From a staff mounted on the leading car flew a large, white flag.

  So there was to be a parley first.

  Oh, well, thought Grimes, I might as well hear what the man wants to say.

  He went down to the portico, stopping off in his quarters to collect his cap. He glanced at himself briefly in the wardrobe mirror. In his rather shabby uniform, with his cap at a rakish angle, with that scarlet dressing gown sash into which the pistol was thrust, he looked like the pirate that many supposed him to be. Then, outside the main entrance, he was standing there, Su Lin and Sanchez beside him and behind him the Residence staff, all armed, their colorful liveries making them look like a smartly uniformed army.

  The leading car came to a halt about twenty meters from the portico. The officer climbed down from the turret. He was a man whom Grimes did not recognize. He was carrying, on a stick, another white flag, a small one.

  He came to attention before Grimes and then, it seemed, thought better of it. He fell into what could be described only as an insolent slouch.

  “You are John Grimes?” he asked.

  “I have that honor,” Grimes replied.

  “You are under arrest. I have to inform you that any resistance will make things all the worse for you and your people.”

  “You’ve come to the wrong shop this time, Major Johnston,” said Grimes.

  “My name is not Johnston,” said the major, obviously baffled by the historical allusion.

  “Maybe not. And this isn’t Sydney, New South Wales. And now, sir, I’m ordering you off my premises. And take your mechanized tin cans with you.”

  “Very well, sir. You have been warned.”

  The officer turned, marched back to his armored car. Grimes and the others retreated inside the Residence. The big, solid doors slammed shut but they could not keep out the sound of the highly amplified voice that was shouting, over and over again, “Come out! Come quietly! Come out, or I open fire!”

  This ceased when a marksman on the roof scored a hit on the sonic projector. Almost immediately there came the rattle of heavy machine-gun fire. The doors shuddered but held. Nothing came through them—but it could not be long before they were literally chewed away. The doors held—but windows shattered. “Down!” Martello was bawling in his sergeant’s voice. “Down!”

  People were dropping to the floor but none of them was a casualty.

  Yet.

  Grimes went up to the roof, found his way to the parapet that was little more than a low gutter rim. He crouched behind it, beside one of the chefs who was pouring automatic fire down on the cars. He tapped the man on the shoulder. “Hold your fire until it can do some good,” he admonished. “Ammunition doesn’t grow on trees. . . .” The man grinned at him cheerfully, inserted a fresh clip into his weapon and blazed away again. But if the defenders were the rankest amateurs the attackers were not much better. Had they continued to concentrate their fire on the main entrance they would have been through it in minutes. But they seemed to be playing at Red Indians attacking a wagon train, circling the Residence. And they were not using their laser cannon. That made sense, Grimes supposed. Lasers could start a disastrous fire and Estrelita O’Higgins had made it clear that she did not want the building too badly damaged. Meanwhile, these circling tactics ensured that nobody escaped. Perhaps the intention was to starve the defenders out.

  Then Bardon would have a long wait, thought Grimes wryly. The Residence’s larders were very well-stocked. There was a deep freeze that could almost have accommodated a herd of mastodons.

  It was a situation approaching stalemate—until one of the armored cars broke down. Martello’s tale of slovenly maintenance had been a true one. The defenders on the roof concentrated their fire on the stalled vehicle. There was a chance, just a chance, that a lucky bullet might find a chink in the a
rmor. Eventually the major decided that he had better do something about it. Three cars moved into position to shield the disabled one from the fire from the roof while a fourth one moved into position just in front of it. A tow . . . thought Grimes. A tow. . . . That meant that hatches would have to be opened so that somebody could climb out to fix the towing wires. Where were those Molotov cocktails that he had heard about?

  And somehow they were there, ready to hand, ten bottles with rag wicks, not yet ignited, filled with some clear fluid. An aroma more intoxicating than unpleasant was making itself known despite the reek of cordite. And Su Lin was there, her golden lighter in her hand. Grimes got recklessly to his feet, holding one of the bottles. “Light it!” he ordered the girl. She obeyed. The flame blowing back from the flaring wick scorched his arm as he threw.

  The missile fell well short, bursting spectacularly but harmlessly.

  “I should have played cricket when I was a boy,” remarked Grimes glumly. He raised his voice. “Are there any cricketers here? Any fast bowlers?”

  (If only the Residence staff were Indian and not Chinese . . .)

  “Cricket?” Martello’s rough voice was contemptuous. “Baseball was my game, Commodore. Still is. An’ I’m a pitcher, not a bowler . . . Gimme!”

  He snatched the bottle from Grimes’s hand, waited until Su Lin had ignited the wick, then threw. Neither range nor direction could have been bettered. He threw again, and again. From the armored cars there was screaming. At least one of the Molotov cocktails must have found an open hatch.

  He let fly with two more bottles.

  He was a good target standing there, too good a target. A burst of machine-gun fire caught him, threw him back onto the gentle slope of the roof. Crabwise, Grimes scrambled to him but there was nothing he could do. The entire front of the big man’s body was . . . shredded. Shredded and pulped. Even his face was gone.