by Mike Moscoe
“First, I need to know what the pirates and slavers are doing and where they are doing it from. Ships do not operate without a base. I want to know where that base is. I think you do too. I believe we will find that base when we crack the files you are in possession of. You have not cracked them. I doubt a cruiser’s resources can. I place at your disposal an entire planet’s resources. In return, I promise full disclosure of what we find, when we find it. As soon as I know anything, you will.”
Izzy nodded. As much as she hated to admit it, her team had not cracked the slavers’ security lockdown. She could use some help there. But what would that help cost her? “Is that it?”
“No.” Mr. Nuu took the lead now. “I own the yard your ship is scheduled into. I can have you in dock two tomorrow morning. I can assign two, three times as many people as I am obliged to under my contract. I can make shops and spare parts available to you without reference to any piece of paper. If you want it and it’s on this planet, you can have it. In two months, I can give you the best six-month refit you could ask for.”
Izzy sat back in her seat. She knew how much her refit was funded for. Nuu was talking about four or five times more. “That’s going to cost.”
“Nothing compared to what I’m spending to find my son-in-law. Nothing compared to what it will cost me and mine if what I’m afraid of actually happens. Captain, until we get a full download from your files, all I have to go on is the twisting gut of a scared old man. But I’ve done business with these fellows. They scare me a lot more than an overrun on your cruiser.”
Izzy rubbed thoughtfully at the ridge of her nose. They wanted to help her crack files she wanted to read. They were willing to give her ship the overhaul it desperately needed. They were offering her a lot, all in the line of duty, none of it personal. Ha! Offering a captain to remake her baby into a ship that could really fight. Nothing personal. Right! She leaned forward and stared the toy man in the eyes. “You want my files. What else?”
“Two months from now, your ship will require a shakedown cruise. For that, you will probably be authorized to carry extra yard personnel. We want that shakedown cruise to be to the pirates’ planet, and those extra personnel to include the best drop troopers Wardhaven has.”
So there it was. “You want to fight a little war of your own, and you expect me to provide the transport:” Part of Izzy was horrified at the idea. But not all of her. It would be quite a fight. A real challenge. Maybe even fun.
“And cover,” the big man shot back, “if it comes to a ship action.”
Izzy chuckled at that. “God, and to think I dreamed all my life of an independent command.” She leaned back in her chair. “I can just see myself explaining this to the admiral.”
“I am confident we will not be asking you to do anything your superiors will not support…after the fact.”
“Always was easier to get forgiveness than permission,” Izzy muttered. How often had Andy chided her for doing just that? Still, you don’t fight a war if nobody shows up. “What if you can’t crack the files? What if you can’t locate the bastards’ base? What about my overhaul then?”
“Then I’ve bet you an overhaul for nothing,” Mr. Nuu put out his hand. His face was solemn, but his eyes twinkled. “But my gut tells me it’s a good bet.”
Izzy eyed the hand. The Patton would get her overhaul. Maybe she would haul some Wardhaven drop troops off to blow up something she and Trouble would love to see gone. If there was a downside to this, Izzy couldn’t spot it. Hell, the worst they could do is retire her, and they damn near did that last year. Why not? Izzy reached out to take the man’s hand.
“Sounds like a good bet to me. We’ll move Patton into dock tomorrow morning.” She turned to the toy man. “When do you want the files?”
“Tonight, if possible,” he said. “And the prisoners, too. They may give us a unique insight into the workings of the encryption.”
Izzy paused; the rim was not known for its compliance with the fine points of Society’s human rights legislation. Then again, she wasn’t sure slavers were human, and they didn’t have a lot of rights in her book. “If your Mr. Howdon is available, I believe he can move them out now.”
“He has been waiting.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Izzy stood. “Elie, you’ve got some really interesting friends. Chow sure beats the old 97th, but I’ve got some things to do. How about lunch in a few days?”
“I’d love it.”
“Anybody know the way back?”
“The elevator outside will take you back to the promenade just outside the Wharf Rat.” The toy man broke a smile.
“You’re a damn good spy,” Izzy told him.
“And you’re a damn good ship driver,” the spy paid her back.
“We’d all better be damn good at what we do if we’re going to pull this off.”
• • •
Izzy was no fool. The second she stepped aboard, she ordered copies made of the encrypted files. Her prisoners were quickly rousted out, but Special Agent Howdon had to wait until her copies were done before taking prisoners and data files off her hands.
Next morning, Izzy had a few quick words with Stan and her division heads, telling them to keep their eyes open and stay alert for surprises during this overhaul. Still, by 0900, the Patton was stripped of her ice armor and docked. By noon Izzy was up to her eyeballs in setting the scope, priorities, order, and timing of more task orders than she had ever hoped for. The yard personnel were not only enthusiastic, but knew what they were doing. They’d just done a refit on a County class cruiser; Izzy heard regular references to the Sheffield. They knew almost as much about what she wanted as she did. In a few cases, more.
“We’ve got a Westinghouse SG-180 central fire control system in the warehouse. Would you like it?”
“I’ll take it,” Izzy and Guns shouted in the same breath.
“It’s yours. Hardly any wear on it. Took it off the Sheffield when we put in a SG-195. Now then, the trash compactor and disposer. If we don’t rework the latch on that sucker, half your crew are gonna be breathing vacuum.”
Stan grinned. “What have you got?”
• • •
A week later, Izzy was just coming up for air after a long and productive meeting with the shipyard supervisor when her comm link buzzed. It was Elie, offering lunch dirtside.
“Sure you can’t come up here?”
“I can, but my boss wants to sit in on this one, and she’s four months pregnant. Definitely down-checked for space, and a bitch on that point, so don’t mention it in her presence, okay?”
“If you say so. What do we need to talk about with her?”
“Our mutual friend has information of mutual interest. More will have to wait.”
“Damn, I get you out of lecture mode, and now I can’t get a word out of you.”
“Yeah. Bring your marine friend.”
“Why?”
“I think he’s kind of cute. Our mutual friend likes him. I don’t know, just bring him. Eleven-thirty, at the ministry.”
“Will do. Out.” Izzy rubbed her hands together. All this and pay too. Her ship was being taken apart and put together the right way. And now they were shoving a hunting license in her hand she would have killed for. Life doesn’t get any better. “Trouble, put on your dancing shoes. We’re going dirtside.”
EIGHT
ELIE HAD A nice office at the ministry, a tad too neat for Izzy’s taste, maybe running a bit too much to old marble and plush carpets, but nice. “How’d you get these digs?”
“Unity tossed the previous owners out. We took over when they vacated the lease. Someday, I’ll have to do something about all the cold marble. Put in real workstations, not these old antiques. We get by.”
Elie showed them next door to an even bigger office, then through several more doors until they found themselves in a small lunchroom. There were plastic-wrapped sandwiches and bottles of soda on the table. “Nothing fancy today,” E
lie said, taking a seat. “We have work to do.”
A woman came in, just beginning to show her pregnancy. She talked rapidly with the big man whom Izzy identified only as the toy/spy guy. Mr. Nuu and a half dozen others filed in behind them. Nuu, the woman, and the spy took places at the table; others settled into chairs against the wall. The last two in carried armfuls of printed reports. They distributed them, then, lacking seats, just stood.
“This may take a while,” the pregnant woman said. “Rustle yourselves up some chairs.” In a moment, the two returned with mismatched chairs and settled in. The woman spoke a moment longer with the man Izzy still had no name for; then, scowling, she closed a folder and looked at Izzy.
“Excuse the informality, Captain. I’m Rita Nuu-Longknife. I once was a ship driver too—transports in the recent war. You’ve met my father, who’s footing the bill for updating that wreck you brought in. In my husband’s absence, I’ve been designated minister without portfolio. Which means I get all of the headaches and he’ll have the fun of answering to Parliament when he gets back.” Izzy caught the slight inflection on the “when.” Not if…when. As important as the Patton and the pirates were to Izzy, she suspected Rita had a higher priority. “My friend here”—apparently even Rita had no name for the spy guy—“has damn near closed the planet’s net down to get your files hacked. It appears that he has. Spill it.”
The large man nodded to a slim woman, who rose from her chair along the wall, plugged a large comm unit into the lunchroom table, and hit a button. The wall in front of Izzy came to life, and the briefing began. “I am Tru Seyd, chief of information warfare. I won’t bore you with the infinite amount of fun this cryptographic problem gave my team. It suffices to say that we started reading these files on Tuesday.”
“Tuesday,” Izzy interrupted. “Hold it. You promised me as soon as you knew anything, I’d know it. You kept me in the dark for forty-eight hours!” Work on the ship was going fine, but Izzy was still looking for the rub in this setup. She was a long way from trusting these folks enough to break orbit with a ship full of drop troops. As of this moment, her trust was zero.
“My call, Izzy.” Elie rested a restraining hand quickly on Izzy’s elbow. “The operative word was that she started reading the files on Tuesday. I saw the raw feed. They were getting maybe one word in four, and half of them were guesses. They only got a better handle late yesterday as they ran more and more of the files through their algorithm and modified it. Trust me, you had a lot more fun with your overhaul than I had with the first reads.”
Izzy pulled her elbow away from Elie’s hand. The professor had bought in with these folks. That vote was still out for Izzy. Damn it, where is Andy? “So, what did you get?”
“A fairly good handle on an ugly nest of snakes,” the briefing officer said slowly. “Some of our assumptions we’ve verified. The pirates have converted a small settlement on the planet Riddle into a going concern. They’ve established an orbital station to strip the captured ships and maintain their own. They’ve expanded the original settlement into the hinterlands with a very profitable cash crop, and are importing prefab the kind of urban infrastructure that will support rapid population growth.”
“How are they doing that?” Trouble had taken a large bite out of his sandwich. He chewed it thoughtfully.
“By cheating,” the unnamed one said.
Tru took back the story. “Earth, Sirius, the first colonized seven sisters have billions of warm bodies. Few are interested in leaving. Even fewer have any idea how to survive on a frontier planet. I think Alpha Centauri was the last one to try shipping unwanted mouths off-planet. So few survived being dumped in the wilderness that it was cheaper to just space the migrants out the station lock than ship them off to somewhere else to die.” Izzy nodded; her sister Lora wouldn’t even think of moving off-world.
“At one point,” the toy fancier chuckled, “Benjamin Franklin suggested the North Americans show their gratitude to their king for the forced colonists England was shipping them by shipping him rattlesnakes in return. My grandfather was so proud he could date our lineage back to the North America of that time. I never forgot that bit of history. Bottom line is that raw human flesh, even by the ton, does not a colony make. You need committed, dedicated, skilled workers, or you’re just building a graveyard.”
“It appears,” Tru continued, “that someone is robbing Peter to pay Paul. Stealing capable labor from one colony to rapidly grow another.”
Izzy felt a headache coming on. “This makes no sense. Why not just support the colonies that are growing? Why go to all the risk of ripping up one to force-grow another?”
The spy cleared his throat. “Tru may have oversimplified one aspect. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is a zero-sum game. No one benefits. However, if I own Peter and you own Paul, your robbing Peter and shipping it off to Paul means a gain for you. Riddle appears to belong to a certain set of financial interests who overstepped themselves before and during the war, and landed hard after it. Riddle is an effort by them to recoup their fortunes. By the way, did I mention that we in this room helped that group land hard? I doubt they hold any love for us.”
Izzy was definitely getting a headache. It lurked behind her eyes, drumming a sharp staccato right into her brain. All this talk of finances and people was the farthest thing from her world of show-me-a-target-and-I’ll-shoot-it. “So they’re stealing people. But people still need gear to build a planet. Stealing a couple dozen ships and their cargo do not a full-fledged urban infrastructure make. What am I missing?”
“Nothing…that we could recover from the cracked files. For that, we had to go looking elsewhere.” The man with no name grinned. “When you are trying to solve a large problem, it is well to have a lot of pieces to pull from. How do you take over a relatively worthless agricultural planet and turn it into a booming urban world in just a few months?”
Izzy shook her head. “Farming is no way to get rich.” She’d seen that in Joe Edris’s callused hands.
“Unless you can find a really good cash crop,” Trouble went on slowly. “Big cash crop.”
“Drugs,” Izzy said, and found it hard to breathe.
“On the money, first guess,” Tru snorted and took back over. “Earth and the seven sisters teem with over a hundred billion people. They’ve recently discovered a new drug. A neat one. It enhances pleasure and pain by several multiples. You get laid, it’s like no lay in history. You hurt, it’s agony like nothing you’ve ever felt. You take this drug into a virtual world and you can have everything you’ve ever wanted. Even better, you forget there’s anywhere else. No reality niggling you around the edges. You want to be King Arthur, Adolph Hitler, the great Khan, you are. Smart folks tube themselves for food, water, whatever. Stupid folks overdose and die of dehydration before they come up. Shit, this stuff is it.”
Franny wasn’t stupid, Izzy thought, cringing inside, just dumb.
“All this in four months?” Elie asked.
“No. It’s been a growing problem. Some folks in Unity felt it was a legitimate tool to balance the trade deficit between the rim and Earth.” The toy man showed no distaste for that policy. “Before the war it was a problem. During the war it grew, despite the supposed cutoff of trade. Since the peace, it’s skyrocketed. Makes you wonder if it’s under new management.”
“Makes you want to change its management,” Trouble snarled.
Izzy nodded, but kept a tight rein on herself. Don’t let ’em see it’s personal. “We’ve tried guns and they’re still there. Sounds like we need some kind of very combined arms campaign.” Izzy eyed the spy and Mr. Nuu. “What have you got in mind?”
“Putting them out of business,” Mr. Nuu said firmly, “before their unfair competition puts me out of business. The problem with bad money is that it forces out good. I can’t pay my people a living wage if I have to compete with a financial empire funded by drug money, piracy, and slave labor. Given a level playing field, I can take on anyone, but
not this way.”
“So we level the field,” Izzy agreed. And I’ll level them. “What do the nav charts and planetary survey look like for Riddle? I’m assuming this is my primary port visit during the Patton’s shakedown cruise.”
“Nav charts are ten years out of date. The planetary survey seems to have vanished in the confusion of the war.”
“All copies?” Izzy couldn’t believe that; every planet had a central archive of all data about human space. If they’d all been stripped, there were a lot of fingers in this cookie jar.
“Captain”—the spy’s eyes locked on hers—“it was a clerical error that promoted a reserve captain to admiral and damn near killed all life on this planet. There appear to be a lot of clerical errors going on. An underpaid temporary clerk is not a difficult person to bribe.” It sounded like he spoke from experience; Izzy didn’t push the point. She had other fish to fry.
“You don’t plan a strike on ten-year-old data. You mentioned a space station. Where is it? What’s its layout? What’s the damn planet look like? I don’t care how many jump troopers you’ve got and how tough they are, if we don’t drop them in the right place, they’re no good at all.”
The spy nodded. “Glad you see it my way. I’m sending a tramp freighter off to Riddle. Expect it should update most of the basics. That enough?”
“No!” Trouble snapped. “Not near enough. And I’m not sure what to tell your tramp to look for either, until I see it for myself. I assume we don’t have time to run a couple of surveys.”
“We cannot assume our cover will hold for more than one run,” the spy said.
“Could a Wardhaven military type join that freighter’s crew?” Trouble asked.
“Not a smart move,” Rita cut in. “Most of the rim’s professional soldiers know each other. Too likely a Wardhaven officer would run into someone he knows.”