The Price of Peace

by Mike Moscoe

  Right on time, the parasails streamed and deployed. While Trouble, Joe, and four of the marines glided north as planned, three other troopers spiraled straight down.

  So much for GPS guidance.

  At least their chutes opened. The miss-drops tried to redirect their sails in flight, but the programming was not something you did while dangling from silk and cord. They reported as soon as they were on the ground. “Hoof it for town,” Trouble ordered, reminding himself it wasn’t their fault.

  “Slight change of plans, Joe. You keep to my right hand.”

  “Piece of cake, right, marine?”

  “Ever had a slice of cake out of field rations?”

  The drop zone was awfully small. The tight spiral the parasail flew was almost enough to make a fresh trooper dizzy, and Trouble was only one night away from a lousy night’s sleep. Free of his chute, he started closing the target. “Got to make a few changes,” he advised his teams as he went. Blue and red teams were where they belonged—to the north and south of the target. Green team had fallen out of the sky early. He and Joe would have to be the cork in the bottle all by themselves. He revised his fire lanes and approach tracks to reflect that, sent it, and got acknowledgments from all hands. Fifty meters to his right, Joe moved parallel to his approach.

  “What was that?” came as a half squeak. Trouble checked Joe’s area. There were two echoes there. “Your first hopper just launched. They bleed off heat. When I activate them, they’ll jam every sensor the bad guys got.”

  “There went another one. Okay. How close do you want me?”

  Trouble would have preferred to have three marines even with him. “Fall back another twenty meters. You’ve got the right fire lane. I got the left.”

  “Piece of taffy.”

  Trouble didn’t mind the job getting tougher to chew. He just didn’t want his teams breaking their teeth on rocks.

  The bad guys were coming up a canyon, moving rapidly on foot. Blue and red teams were covering them along the ridges to both sides. Joe and Trouble would meet them head-on. “We’re coming up on a thousand meters. Sensors figures their rigs to be good for that range. Stand by to launch all ready hoppers.” Trouble quickly jogged the distance from a tree to a rock. The targets suddenly quit moving. “Launch hoppers. I’m activating.”

  His armor had been slowly charging hoppers, shedding one at a time as his own body heat overloaded the cooling system struggling to keep his suit indistinguishable from the background. Now it topped off a dozen and sent them bouncing away from him in all directions. A flick of his wrist activated not only his but all those of the five other marines closing on the target. Trouble wondered what it looked like to be on sensory overload, and grinned.

  • • •

  “We got something ahead of us,” Polly shouted.

  “What?” Havelock demanded.

  “Five, six, oh my God! I don’t know. A couple ah hundred. You tell me.”

  Polly shoved the electromagnetic heart searcher at his boss. Havelock glanced at it and scowled. “They got to be spoofing us. They couldn’t have gotten an army up ahead of us.”

  “You can’t jam one of these things. Westinghouse guarantees ’em.”

  “Right, and sleepy bullets never killed anybody. Okay, everybody. There’s something ahead of us. We know what’s behind us. Head uphill to the right. We’ll drop over into the next valley and see how things are. Donny, your team takes the lead.”

  “Why us? We’re due for a rest. Shit, man, we’ve been moving all day. Can’t we take a break?”

  “Sure, if you want to wake up facing some old lady whose husband you killed. Me, I’m moving.”

  Twenty tired guys started moving upslope.

  “Where’s this instant army?” Donny asked.

  “Polly’s magic spells ain’t working at the moment. Toss a few rocket grenades out there and see what happens.”

  “Oh, shit” came in a many-part harmony, but there were several pops as grenades arched out before and behind them.

  • • •

  “Head down, Joe. Incoming.” Trouble slipped behind the largest tree trunk available. Body armor was nice. Not getting hit was nicer.

  “Humph” came from Joe. “Didn’t dodge that one very good.”

  “You hurt?”

  “Nope. Good stuff you got here.” It was good stuff, but a sensor scan Joe’s way showed a hot spot.

  “Joe, your armor’s not cooling like it should. I got you on infrared.”

  “Bad?”

  “Not too. You come in about squirrel size.”

  “Thanks.”

  While they’d talked, the intentions of the target had become clear. “Okay, crew, they’re moving uphill toward red team. Blue, you follow. Red, you hold in place. I’ll close on their flank. Select nonlethal. Open fire when you got a good shot.”

  Trouble switched his M-6A3 to its backup magazine. The needle tips of those rounds were pumped full of sleepy drugs. Phyzer-Colt guaranteed each bullet. If it killed its target, they would write a very apologetic letter to his next of kin. A target was swinging uphill, getting closer to Joe than Trouble wanted. Going to ground, he laser-pinged him for range, set up a solid sight picture, and squeezed the trigger. The target dropped as the firing computer assessed three hits.

  Trouble rolled to the left as return fire laced his position. “They got backtrack radar,” he shouted, to warn his own crew, and to get Igor busy jamming it.

  Coming up behind a rock, Trouble scanned the firefight. While the bad guy’s heart scanner was definitely out of business, Trouble’s system interrogated the scene every ten or eleven milliseconds, while the hoppers were pausing. Eight of the targets were officially down. Trouble did a scan for electronic activity. Three were hot. He picked one, put him to sleep, and rolled again.

  Next check of the fight showed no fight. The last three went down before he could get one of them in his sights. “Red one, blue two, hold your lines. Rest, close with and disarm the targets. Switch to live ammunition.” At that range, he would not risk one of his marines.

  “When do I get to read them their rights?” Joe asked.

  “Got me, but don’t they have to be awake?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. They just swore me in. I didn’t even get a new employee handbook.” The shared laugh didn’t take any of the edge off Trouble’s caution as he worked his way toward the sleeping beauties.

  • • •

  Somebody scrounged up a helicopter that had been brought on-world by the mining exploration concern. Six hauls brought twenty sleeping toughs, five marines, one ATF agent, and a dozen witnesses out of the hills. Trouble was careful to assign the witnesses and the accused to separate lifts. By midnight, he had all twenty in the lockup and was ready to call it a night. Liberty Launch Four had recovered to orbit, so it looked like he could spend another wonderful night on Hurtford Corner. The inn even had his room waiting for him. Figuring Ruth had called it a night by now, he grabbed a quick snack and hit the sack. Tomorrow they could celebrate.

  • • •

  Big Al put his feet up on the coffee table and relaxed into the comfort of a massage chair. Zylon prowled the room, glanced out windows, checked for watchers, and gauged her best escape route. “Relax,” Big Al assured her. “Henri is well paid. We are well provided for. We can gather our wits and our strength.”

  Zylon settled on the edge of the couch across from her superior-for-the-moment. “Can we really go off-planet with our tail between our legs?”

  “I said gather our strength and wits, not sulk away.”

  “We can’t let these people think they’ve beat us.”

  “And we won’t.” Big Al closed his eyes and seemed to relax into the gently flexing chair. “When the time is right, we will reeducate these fools to the facts of life. For the moment, the time is wrong. Let them have their day. It won’t last long.”

  “Just so long as we have something to show when we go off-planet.”


  “You’ll have plenty to take with you when we leave.”

  That was the first time Big Al had made such a promise to Zylon. For the first time today, she smiled.

  • • •

  Ruth was delighted to come down to the inn’s public room and find Trouble eating breakfast with her pa. “Didn’t you guys have something to do?”

  “Did it,” Pa answered around waffles. “We now have twenty more prisoners under lock and key, fully booked on capital charges of committing a felony with explosives illegally transported through interstellar commerce. I even read them their rights last night as they were waking up.”

  “Pa?”

  “Daughter, I am the sole officer of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Administration in thirty light-years. At least for the next year, I am. I’ve arrested them and will shortly officially turn them over to Captain Umboto as the only local representative of the Society of Humanity with access to transportation, to get those bastards off our planet and deposited for trial wherever the nearest Society court is.”

  “You’re going, Pa?”

  “Not on your life. I’ve filed affidavits for both me and several of the survivors. If the court wants more touchie-feelie stuff, they can bring themselves here to talk to us. No, the Patton will get these SOBs out of our life, and Hurtford Corner will be saved from letting them go free after what they did or having to come up with some legal excuse for hanging them. I think this is the best way to handle our problem.”

  “I do too,” Mikhail Shezgo said from the door. “Can I join you for breakfast?”

  So Ruth listened over pancakes to her pa and Trouble’s account of last night. “Lord, when you folks decide to do something, it does happen fast,” she sighed when it was over.

  “We like it that way,” Trouble said. “Now, I think I can take a day off.”

  His communicator buzzed.

  “Trouble here.”

  “Umboto here. How fast can you get your prisoners up here and collect all those affidavits?”

  “Affidavits were done last night. Prisoners are ready to move as soon as the locals provide us with paperwork.”

  “What kind of paperwork?”

  Shezgo leaned over. “A list of their names with my signature on one side of the bottom and one of your people’s signature on the other. We try to keep the paperwork light.” That got a laugh. “Why?”

  “We got orders for a yard overhaul. Looks like somebody hollered uncle even before my last long list of deficiencies hit their in-box.”

  “Full refit! We may actually spend some time at High Columbia.”

  “No such luck. Just a two-month reduced availability, and it looks like it went to the lowest bidder. A Wardhaven yard.”

  “But they were Unity?”

  “Yeah, and I understood we shot up their space docks pretty good in the last battle of the war. Maybe we didn’t do as good a job as we thought. Hope so. Anyway, orders say to get under way for Wardhaven soonest. The sooner I can get this collection of accidents waiting to happen into a yard, the happier I’m gonna be. If I send all the launches down before noon, think you could have everyone ready to lift before dark?”

  “Probably sooner, from our end,” Shezgo offered helpfully.

  This was all happening too fast. Ruth wanted more time. Time to figure out who this tall collection of “Trouble” was. Time to decide if being a farmer was all she wanted to be, or was just all she thought she knew how to be. Time she didn’t have.

  Trouble put his fork down. “Damn” came softly, but there was nothing hesitant when he spoke. “I’ll have the prisoners up on the first launch. Gunny should have the troops saddled up and ready for the next one.” He turned to the city manager. “I’m gonna need that chopper of yours to collect three of my guys who missed their drop zone last night.”

  “It’s yours.”

  “Skipper, how much fresh fruits and vegetables has Supply got waiting?”

  There was a pause before Izzy answered that one. “Couple thousand pounds. Say, two shuttles worth. Headed for Wardhaven; I’m not so hungry for fresh greens, but they’re bought and paid for. Mount ’em up, Lieutenant. Move ’em out.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Trouble tapped his comm link off, then gave Ruth a shrug. “So much for a day off.”

  “There are days like this on the farm, too,” she sighed.

  • • •

  Two weeks later, Izzy was having one of those days. On her viewer was a long and convoluted report from the network team explaining why they still had not broken the encryption lock on the slavers’ files. The lieutenant had taken yet another opportunity to explain to her why the Navy needed to update its own encryption system. Since a ship’s captain could hardly replace a Navywide system with an off-the-shelf commercial product, she just scanned that part of the report. The bottom line was that Trouble could have saved himself a lot of agony and let the slaver erase the files. She wasn’t about to tell the marine that. She endorsed the report with a terse “Keep working” and went on to the next report. She didn’t like that one either.

  The initial contact with the yard had not gone well. To her preliminary list of priorities had come back a very delayed report requesting clarifications, delays or flat-out remarks that the requested work was not part of the contract. Izzy was seriously considering having Chips in his next report just list the few major subassemblies on the Patton that might be applied toward the spare parts shortage and have Stan start planning that beer bust he wanted to throw on the Patton’s scrapping.

  “Naw, not yet.”

  “Skipper, we’ve got the dock manager on the comm,” the XO reported. There was a certain something missing in his tone. Enthusiasm, surprise. Izzy headed for the bridge.

  “What have we got, Stan?”

  “Spacedock’s not ready to receive us.”

  “When will it be?” she asked the man on screen.

  “The war damage was greater than we expected. Number five dock will need several more weeks before it’s ready to take you. Even then, the shops will be under repair.” The dock manager didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered by handing Izzy this bad news. She wondered how low his Unity party number was. Hey, guy, we won the war. You lost it. Remember?

  “So, what about docks one through four?”

  “They’re, er, already under contract.”

  That was not what Izzy wanted to hear. She took in a deep breath, readying herself for a major blast. Beside her, the XO was making calming signs with his right hand. Izzy let out her breath. Half of it. “You have a contract for us, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but work isn’t supposed to start for another month.”

  “Month! Our orders were to report here immediately.” Now Stan was flipping rapidly through their message traffic. In a moment, their orders appeared on Izzy’s own screen. Yep, they were supposed to report immediately. Then again, they didn’t say anything about when the work would start. So far, she hadn’t gotten a copy of the contract between the Navy and the yard. The man on screen was waving something.

  “It says right here. Work will begin no sooner than the fifth of next month. You’re early.”

  “You’ll pardon me. Could I have a copy of that?”

  “Of course, ma’am.” That was the first helpful word she’d heard so far. The contract started appearing on her and Stan’s boards simultaneously.

  “Date’s right,” Stan agreed.

  “Now that you’re here, we might be able to get some work started early,” the yard manager offered. Maybe the fellow could be helpful.

  “You got a pier we can tie up alongside? Get housekeeping support from?”

  The man glanced off screen. “Pier eight is between docks three and four and close to the shops. That would be a good one for you.”

  “We’ll take it. Light off its beacon. I have the conn. Helm, lock on to pier eight’s beacon.” The docking went smoothly after that. That was about all that did.

  Housekeeping support along pi
erside was supposed to include electricity, water, sewer, and air. Gravity came for free as the station spun around its axis. At least the Patton got one gee gravity. The electricity was the wrong voltage, the water was brown, the sewer hookup didn’t, and the only air came from the open locks. With all the other mismatches, Izzy wasn’t so sure she wanted those locks open.

  The rest of the day, and a big part of the next, was taken up correcting those problems. The yard personnel were always so apologetic. “Sorry, we thought that was what you wanted.” “Oh, we didn’t realize our unit didn’t have a universal adapter.” “Guess the war damage wasn’t as repaired as we thought.” “Are you sure you need that? Our specs on your class showed you needing class C support.” And, since the Patton never had fully conformed to the Navy’s standard configuration for its class, not all were the yard’s mistakes.

  Izzy was starting to feel sorry for the yard folks when the quarterdeck hailed her. “Ma’am, we’ve got some security folks here from Wardhaven. They say they’re here for our prisoners.”

  “Like hell they get my prisoners. Tell them to get lost.”

  “I’ve tried, ma’am, but they won’t leave until they talk to you.”

  “Send them to my day cabin. OOD, you’ve got the bridge. Stan, you and that legal clerk of yours had better report to my day cabin, too. Since when does Wardhaven have a marshal or anyone else authorized to take my prisoners?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, find out.”

  • • •

  Izzy still didn’t have an answer to her question fifteen minutes later as she sat at the head of her conference table, Stan to her right, a yeoman to her left still frantically going through his law reader. For her own sense of security, Trouble sat next to Stan, and two of his marines stood at parade rest beside the hatch to the bridge. At the foot of the table, Special Agent for the Wardhaven Bureau of Investigations Howdon sat flanked by two more agents and a prosecutor.

  “Captain,” Howdon had begun, “we are prepared to give you receipts for your prisoners and for copies of all evidentiary data files that you have in your possession.”