“I know,” David conceded the warning. “But it’s worth testing. We have a second ship now, so using Red Falcon to test routes we then have Peregrine take is useful. Plus, well…Falcon and I are a bit of a target these days.”
Carmichael chuckled.
“And has that worked out any better for the current collection than it did for the last bunch?” he asked.
“Not really,” David said. “But I’m getting sick of losing people and having to kill people. I’m a merchant captain, damn it, not a soldier.”
The broker’s chuckle turned to a sigh.
“And so, you come to me,” he murmured. “I figured there was more going on than just needing a sales broker.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” David told him. “I need a sales broker and you’re the only one I know here—and I owe you for the mess I got you stuck in last time.”
Carmichael ran his finger down the numbers on his side of the screen, then flipped them over to their side.
“I’ll need a six-percent cut of the final price,” he said. “This includes your purchase price, so I’ll be targeting at least a five-percent profit on everything after my cut for you. That will probably be average,” he warned, “with some products taking a loss and some getting higher.
“Sound reasonable?”
“That does,” David confirmed. He could probably argue the broker down…but he did owe Carmichael. Plus, MISS had paid for three-quarters of the cargo, and they weren’t charging him interest.
“As for other business…what do you need?” Carmichael asked, rising from his desk to study the closed blinds.
“What do you know about Azure Legacy?” David asked.
“Mikhail Azure’s revenge,” the broker replied instantly. “The organization created by his will to try and kill whoever killed him and put his syndicate back together. They’ve been quiet in this region—Blue Star was never strong here—but I’m hearing some ugly rumors of what they’ve been up to.”
“I killed Mikhail Azure,” David told him flatly. “They’re the ones coming after me these days, and they’ve killed a lot of good people along the way.”
Carmichael remained facing the closed windows.
“You have my sympathy, Captain, but I’m not sure how I can assist you. Like the Blue Star Syndicate before them, the Legacy isn’t active in Corinthian, and my reach only goes so far outside this star system.”
“What do you know about the law firm of Armstrong, Lee and Howard?” David asked.
The broker froze.
“Fuck me,” he said quietly. “Armstrong, Lee and Howard are a collection of lawyers who work for boutique clients and don’t blink at breaking laws, tax codes, or anything else they think will make the clients happy.
“They are exactly the type of pricks who’d take on Mikhail Azure as a client—and demand he left their star system alone as part of the payment.”
“That’s roughly my understanding of what happened, yes,” David confirmed. “Armstrong, Lee and Howard are Azure Legacy. The beating heart at the core of it, if nothing else.
“You know them. You guessed.”
Carmichael sighed.
“Not until you started asking questions about the Legacy and I wondered why you were here,” he admitted. “The pieces added up pretty quickly at that point.”
“You have channels?” David asked.
“Of course I have channels,” Carmichael snapped. He finally turned back to face them, glancing over at the impassively quiet Soprano sitting next to David.
He clearly understood the implicit threat of even having a Mage in the room.
“I’m not going to help you fight a vendetta in my home system, Captain Rice,” he finally said. “I don’t like ALH, but you don’t have the sanction or the firepower to deal with them, understand me?”
“I don’t want you to help me fight them,” David told the other man.
“I need you to set up a meeting with them,” he continued. “I want to sit down with the lawyers behind this mess and talk peace.
“Sooner or later, even they have to admit the killing has to stop.”
Carmichael sighed and nodded.
“Okay,” he admitted slowly. “A meet, huh? I can organize that. But if you fuck me again…” He held up a warning finger.
“I guarantee you, Mr. Carmichael, we will not start a fight at the meet,” David told him.
He had his plans for the Legacy’s final fate, but attacking anyone at this meeting wasn’t among them. He wasn’t so sure about the Legacy themselves…but that was the risk he had to take.
34
“Red Falcon, this is Peregrine; how’s your feathers?”
Kelly chuckled as Jenna Campbell’s voice echoed over the bridge radio.
“Good to see you, Peregrine. Our feathers are a bit ruffled and grumpy, but we’re still here,” she told Campbell. “Yourselves?”
“Sailing with the Skipper, I’d forgot what smooth flying was like,” the older woman replied. “I’m presuming, from the note I got, that things haven’t been as clear for you.”
“That’s the understatement of the century or so,” Kelly told her. “I think Captain Rice wants to brief you in person. What’s your ETA?”
They were close enough that only a few seconds were passing between responses, so they couldn’t be too far away.
“Peregrine will make dock in about two hours,” Campbell told her. “Entertainingly, we’re carrying cargo for Bistro Manufacturing again. I’m guessing the old man is experimenting with different materials—this time, it’s three million tons of Erewhon pine.
“Which, I’ll have you note, is blue and does not have anything resembling needles or even leaves,” the new-fledged Captain concluded.
“I saw what Sandoval Prime calls trees,” Kelly replied. “They’re orange. And their sap is a contact poison for humans.”
“Oh, the worlds we find,” Campbell agreed. “I’ll set up docking clearances to bring us in beside Red Falcon. Looking forward to see you all.”
“Likewise, Captain Campbell,” the younger woman replied. “I have an entire list of ‘dear gods, how do I executive-officer this man?’ questions for you!”
“I’m not surprised in the slightest. We’ll talk when I get there. You and Maria and I can go for drinks—if your voyage was anything like what I suspect it was, you both need them!”
The eggbeater-esque shape of Peregrine nudged into her dock slowly and carefully, her ribs still spinning to provide gravity in her crew decks. Kelly watched the big twelve-million-ton ship dock, then turned her attention to her original task of keeping an eye on the traffic around the Spindle.
Even with Red Falcon and Peregrine, the station was quieter than it had been when they’d visited with Blue Jay. There were one other jump freighter and a selection of smaller ships, some of which might have jump matrices.
Most of what shipping she could see was in-system ships, however. They drifted around orbit or moved cargo from the sky to the ground. The system only had the one inhabited planet, and humanity hadn’t moved out much from Corinthian itself.
A lot of people and cargo moved from the Spindle to the planet, though, and that was enough to require tight traffic control. Kelly was sure the people running that just adored the trio of Martian destroyers in high orbit and their fifty-thousand-kilometer safety bubbles.
The system was still trying to lure a Navy base out there, as she understood, so they’d put up with it. A permanent picket like the one Hand Stealey had ordered installed was an advantage for their argument.
Right now, Kelly was just glad to see the white pyramids of the destroyers. The Legacy seemed to operate on the theory of not pissing where they lived, which would help protect Falcon’s crew while they were in Corinthian, but a battalion of Marines and a trio of warships were reassuring regardless.
“Ma’am, the Captain and Ship’s Mage have returned aboard,” the security guard at the docking tube told her.
�
��Thanks, Corporal,” she replied. “Secure the tube for now; that’s everyone aboard. Captain Campbell will be on her way shortly, so keep an eye out for her.”
“Understood, ma’am.”
David drifted into the bridge several minutes later. He was limping slightly, the governors on his leg clearly activated after a long day of pretending he wasn’t injured.
“Peregrine made it in?” he asked.
“Docked right next door,” Kelly confirmed. “Campbell sent over the cargo list. Biggest chunk is a load for Bistro Manufacturing—pine from Erewhon to go with the oak we delivered from Sherwood last time.”
David chuckled, shaking his head.
“Given the scale Bistro works on, I’d be stunned if they have any of that left,” he pointed out. “They make something like thirty percent of all furniture sold on Corinthian. Even a few million tons of wood disappear in the face of that kind of demand.”
“You found our contact?” Kelly asked.
“I did,” he confirmed. He looked around, but the bridge was empty except for the two of them.
“Carmichael’s going to work on selling our cargo for us, and he knows ALH,” he continued. “He didn’t know they were the Legacy, but he wasn’t surprised in the slightest. He’s going to try and set up a meeting.”
Kelly shook her head.
“That seems risky, boss. These guys are specifically after you.”
“I’m relatively confident the lawyers aren’t going to pull a gun in the meeting and blow my head off,” David told her. “Have someone shoot me before or after? Sure. Shoot me themselves?
“I doubt they’re the type. We’ll move with an escort, and we’ll wire ourselves into the Navy and Marines. I’ll be careful, I promise.”
Command, it seemed, agreed with Jenna Campbell. It was hard for Kelly to put her finger on why, but there was a new air of confidence and self-assuredness around Red Falcon’s old XO. Campbell was still the stocky, heavily built woman she’d always been, but now she carried herself like a Captain.
She joined the meeting of Falcon’s senior officers without hesitation, taking a seat directly opposite Captain Rice.
“I’m the only one here because nobody else on Peregrine knows who you lot actually work for,” she said without preamble. “I’m not sure how much help we can be while keeping that screen in place, but whatever I can manage, I will.
“It’s not like we’re even heavily armed,” she half-complained.
“Hell, I know I’m missing our antimatter missiles about now,” Jeeves noted. “Any way for us to resupply those, Skipper?”
“Outside of a major naval base, no,” Rice replied. “There’d be too many questions as to why a random civilian ship was buying antimatter weapons.”
“We’re allowed one hundred, but it’s not like the Navy is going to give us more,” Kelly added. “We’d need to be at a Navy base that’s also got enough of an MISS presence to pull weight and get the missiles.
“That limits us to…well, Tau Ceti or Sol,” she concluded.
“Not quite that bad…but close,” her Captain allowed. “Jenna, we’ve managed to identify who the core lawyers behind Azure Legacy are. They’re here in Corinthian, out of the way of all of Blue Star’s operations.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Campbell asked.
“We see if they’re willing to talk peace. They’ve lost a lot of resources coming after us. Sooner or later, it has to stop being cost-effective to keep coming.
“I’ve retained Carmichael to make the first contact,” he continued. “He’ll set up a meet in neutral space; we’ll go to talk to them with all of the guards and toys we can think of.
“Our major playing chip here is the location of Azure Gauntlet,” the Captain noted. “That’s a trap, but they don’t know that and it makes pretty tempting bait.”
“So, you’re going to try and negotiate peace using a trap as your peace offering?” Campbell replied. “I’m sure that’s going to go over well.”
“In the short run, they don’t know it’s a trap,” Rice reminded her. “In the long run…”
He shook his head.
“In the long run, it is their task to preserve Mikhail Azure’s legacy, and I have every intention of seeing that legacy burnt to the ground. We work for Mars, and Mars will not permit the Blue Star Syndicate to be rebuilt.
“But even if we didn’t, they started this damn war, people. I intend to finish it—and if that means I’m lying to the people who are trying to kill us all, I am entirely okay with that.”
“You realize that the meeting is probably going to be a trap of theirs?” Skavar pointed out after a few seconds of silence.
“Quite possibly,” Rice agreed. “Kelly?”
“The plan is go in with an escort and leave with an escort,” she laid out. “Captain Rice’s wrist-comp is linked to Red Falcon by an encrypted frequency-hopping channel. We will be relaying that continuous to the Navy picket.
“If anything goes wrong, Ivan, we’ll want your people to move in immediately—but you’ll have Marines and heavy fire support within a few minutes.”
“And you stuck a tracker in me, which gives us a further backup plan,” Rice pointed out. “Plus, Maria and Kelly both know where the fake Gauntlet location is. We’ve got a few layers of fallbacks here, people.
“But the risk exists, yes. And we’re going to take it. Because—understand me, people—we are going to bring these bastards down.”
35
David left Red Falcon accompanied, once again, by what felt like a small army. Ivan Skavar led the way, and a full dozen of his security people ran a perimeter around them.
Corinthian had quite strict weapon laws, so they weren’t carrying battle carbines and penetrator rifles today. Stunguns were the order of the day, though David was certain that Skavar’s people were at the least carrying arguably illegal sidearms.
David was carrying one himself, after all.
Carmichael met them at the elevator terminal with a trio of low-slung dark-blue SUVs. The ubiquitous Fords wouldn’t have looked out of place on any planet in the Protectorate, even though these particular vehicles lived on a space station.
“I booked a conference room at the Hollister Grand Hotel,” he told David as the Captain and his guards got into the second vehicle. “You’re meeting the middle partner of Armstrong, Lee and Howard, Ms. Sarah Vandella-Howard. She might look pretty, but don’t be fooled. The list of disbarred lawyers on this planet is littered with people who got on her wrong side—and there’s at least a few who ended up in graveyards.”
Carmichael shook his head.
“Not least Mr. Richard Howard, the original Howard of Armstrong, Lee and Howard, and her second husband,” he noted. “Vandella-Howard is sharper than you think, and if you underestimate her, you will get cut. Step carefully, Captain Rice. I’m not sure you realize how dark the waters you’ve stepped into are.”
“They dragged me into these waters; I didn’t choose to be here,” David pointed out. “They started a war.”
“Mikhail Azure started this fucking war,” Carmichael told him. “This is just a bunch of lawyers who don’t let anything get in the way of their contracts. That’s…almost worse in a lot of ways.”
“They’ve got enough mercenaries and troublemakers on retainer that I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them,” David replied. “Unless they’ve insisted on it, you don’t need to be in the meeting, Carmichael.
“You’re probably better off as far away as possible.”
“You can say that again,” Carmichael muttered. “Don’t worry, Captain Rice; I’m going to be very visibly on the opposite side of the station, negotiating with a potential buyer for your cargo.
“Driver! Stop here,” he ordered.
The SUV came to a halt and Carmichael smiled.
“The drivers are my people,” he noted. “They’ll take care of you. Good luck!”
The Hollister Grand Hotel definitely lived up t
o the name. Despite having visited the Spindle several times, David had never actually been to Spire City, the largest urban area in the space station and its effective capital.
It said a lot about the scale of the Spindle that Spire City was home to roughly three hundred thousand people and took up roughly a tenth of the available surface area inside the Spindle. It was a small city by surface standards but absolutely immense by the standard of “we built a city inside a space station.”
The Hollister was one of several hotels on a carefully arranged street on the edge of the downtown area, all of them structures that seemed to tower in the Spindle. Tall buildings in a centripetal gravity environment were a risk. Tidal forces stressed the building, and pseudogravity reduced as you grew closer to the center of spin.
But, if you were determined enough, you could build yourself a set of thirty-story hotels. Four broad, tall, hotels that looked like they belonged in a surface resort district marked the Dock-ward frontier of downtown, and the broadest and grandest was the Hollister.
Uniformed valets waited for the vehicles, stepping forward as David’s convoy arrived. The drivers waved them off.
“We’re on call,” the man driving David’s SUV told him. “Ping us via your comp when you’re done.”
He smiled grimly.
“Ping us three times in succession if you’re having trouble, and we’ll ignore traffic laws on the way. Be careful, Captain Rice.”
David nodded his thanks and stepped out of the vehicle, his people emerging and closing in around him.
“Let’s go,” he told Skavar.
Quite intentionally, Skavar was the next-most senior officer from Red Falcon with him. If worse came to worst, his ship would have LaMonte, Soprano, Jeeves and Kellers left to run it as they came after him.
Mage-Provocateur (Starship's Mage: Red Falcon Book 2) Page 22