by Mike Moscoe
Izzy wanted these bastards, but did she have the right to risk a good man? “Trouble, aren’t you about due for some leave?”
The marine let one of his lopsided grins consume his face. “I’ve never been out on the rim before this cruise. I may have exchanged shots with some of your troopers in the recent unpleasantness, but I’ve spent no time face to face.”
“We get one shot at the right data to put together a full-scale, planetwide assault and take over,” Izzy continued. “If my lieutenant here doesn’t like the data he gets on the run in to the planet, he can make sure they get it right on the run out. This is no time for an unsupervised survey.” Bless you for volunteering, Trouble.
The spy’s chuckle was ugly. “Drawn-out hostile takeovers are such a bitch. We must be quick, before anybody can file a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission.”
Rita waved at two of the men who’d been sitting along the wall. “For your one ground-pounder, I’ll trade you two. Major Tran of the Second Guard Brigade, and Lieutenant Sweetson, his intelligence officer. They’ll show your lieutenant what data we have on Riddle and see what we need and how to get it. When does your freighter leave, sir?”
“Freighter’s not coming near here. We’ll intercept it with a fast packet that had better be out of here in three days.”
“No trouble.” The marine stood, edging toward the two officers. “We can plan our recon quickly. What kind of sensors can I use?” Tru handed him a reader, already active.
“I think we’re done,” Rita concluded. “You’ll excuse us. Sir, I’ve got a few ideas I’d like you to run down.” She and the spy headed for the door.
Izzy stood; Franny would get one hell of a tombstone. “Pass your data to the Patton. I’ll have my officers comb through it. See what we make of it.”
Elie stayed seated. “Izzy, can I have a word with you?”
Izzy rubbed her hands together. “Professor, I got a hell of a complex exercise to plan. Why don’t you walk me to the car?”
“Here.” The ex-professor’s word was hard, like a vacuum, and just as empty and cold.
“Is there a problem?” Izzy froze; did Elie know about Franny? Izzy had a fight to plan. Would Elie take it away from her? The woman’s eyes were hard, bitter cold.
“The pirates and the slavers share the same base.” Elie spoke slowly, measuring each of her words. “That was the first bit of data we cracked.”
“So?” Izzy said. Elie was back in lecture mode. Izzy swallowed her impatience and let her ramble.
“They also share the same ships.”
“Right,” Izzy sighed. “That sounds logical.” For a moment longer the captain of the Patton stood there, waiting. Then the meaning hit home. Suddenly her knees no longer supported her; she collapsed back into the chair. Air was hard to come by. With a convulsive gulp, she gasped breath back into her lungs. On the third try, words finally slipped from her.
“Pirates also pick up slaves?”
“We have reports of ships making orbit on Riddle with a captured freighter in tow, and both crew and slaves locked in the same hold.”
Across the room, Trouble excused himself from the Guard officers and stepped quickly around the table to kneel beside her. “You all right, skipper?”
“So any particular pirate,” Izzy whispered, “at any particular time may have aboard not only its own crew but also slaves and captured crew.”
“Yes, Izzy.”
“They’ve lost one recently.” Izzy tried to keep the words in. They tumbled out by themselves.
“The Reprisal failed to make Riddle at its appointed time, five days after you encountered a pirate.”
“And destroyed it. No quarters asked, none given.” Izzy finished the thought for Elie.
“Yes.”
Now even the conversation between Rita and the spy had come to a halt. The spy’s eyes locked on Izzy and held her until she looked up. “They play a nasty game,” he said. “Sometimes we must make it just as nasty for them.”
Izzy swallowed hard again. “Yes,” she agreed. With a flick of her hand, or maybe just a tremble, she gave them leave to go. The room emptied quickly. Only Trouble and Elie remained.
“You had no way of knowing, skipper. We didn’t run into the kidnapping routine until after we burned the pirate.”
“If we’d interrogated prisoners, we might have found out sooner.”
“Yes, Izzy,” the other woman answered. “I’ve read your report. It’s already been endorsed up the chain of command. No one faults your decision.”
“Nobody knows how many innocent passengers were on my burned pirate, do they?”
“No one in the Navy,” Elie answered.
“But you do.” Izzy got back a slight nod. “How many?”
“Possibly as few as one hundred sixty-seven. Could be over two hundred.”
The headache struck with lightning force, shooting through both sides of her brain, threatening to tear her skull from her shoulders. Izzy slowly massaged her burning temples. “Two hundred,” she whispered.
“Maybe less,” Elie assured her. “They don’t keep very good records.”
Izzy snorted. No, the pirates wouldn’t keep good records. And whatever records the Reprisal had on board were gone to hell with it. Gone to hell with two hundred innocent people whose only mistake was to be captured, enslaved, and hauled into space by people too greedy to pass up a slow freighter.
“Skipper, it wasn’t your fault,” the marine assured her.
“Trouble, I’m the skipper. I called that shot.”
“But you didn’t know.”
“If.” Izzy spoke the word, but couldn’t sort out, among the jumble in her mind, what she wanted to tag onto the word. There were so many might-have-beens. “I got to get back to the ship. Yard supervisor is due at sixteen hundred.”
“I’ll go back with you,” Trouble offered.
“No, you’ve got your job cut out here. Work with these folks as long as you need. We’ve got to take Riddle down, all the way and fast. No need for more collateral damage.” The words were so clean.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The ministry has a driver. I’ll have her take you back to the port. Did you bring your own gig down?”
Izzy nodded; Elie left. For several long minutes, Izzy sat, Trouble still kneeling beside her. Then a cheerful woman in a brown jumpsuit stuck her head in the door. “Somebody here need a run out to the spaceport?”
“Yes,” Izzy said and followed her out. The woman chattered during the drive about traffic congestion and new construction. “Wardhaven’s really growing, now that the war’s over.” Izzy managed grunts in the appropriate places. The woman’s words were a fine thread, holding Izzy to this place and time, distracting her as the battle with the pirate replayed over and over in her mind. What could I have done different?
Those bastards were blowing up ships, enslaving honest folks, and feeding poison to good kids like Franny. They had to die before they killed again. But in killing them, Izzy had killed kids like Ruth. Franny, Ruth, and the face of the captain she’d vaporized ran together in her mind. What should I have done different?
Izzy had no idea…and a dozen screaming alternatives.
The gig was waiting for her. It taxied out even as she settled into her seat. The copilot had to remind her twice to put on her seat belt before she heard her. Thank God there were only two shuttles ahead of them; takeoff was hardly delayed. Then Izzy found herself wanting something to slow them down, to keep her away from her ship. Stan and the rest would be reading the report, duties allowing. They had to go over the documents; the next fight might depend on one of them spotting some fact or item that eluded the rest. And none of them would miss what Izzy had managed to overlook through the entire meeting. Elie had spotted the connection right off. For Izzy, it had to be pointed out. Her nose had to be pulled down hard and rubbed in it.
“How could I have missed the implication?”
What els
e have I missed with my “go for it” attitude? How many times had Andy and other COs warned her? Take a second to look past the surface. Oh, but the surface was so attractive. You could see it; you could shoot it. A pirate is a pirate and deserves no mercy. Life was so easy that way.
The gig docked above the Patton; it was an easy drop down to her own quarterdeck. The supervisor was waiting for her, shaking his head. “I’ve got two or three hulks tied up alongside that are in better shape than this scow. Lady, you sure I couldn’t swap you one of them?”
“If you could have one of ’em fully gunned, armored, and rigged in seven weeks, I might take you up on the offer.”
He shook his head. “It was the push to convert these tubs in ninety days that got this ship in this mess. But”—his eyes lit up—“if you got five, six months to spare, it’s a deal.”
“We break orbit in seven weeks.”
“Then I guess I better get folks busy ripping out two of your main busses. Connectors are way below specs. Half are fused, the rest trip out if you look at them hard.”
“How long?”
“Mr. Nuu said you sail in seven weeks, you sail in seven weeks. Just means I get a few more crews turned loose for you. No problem, ma’am. When Ernie makes a promise, nobody wants to be the one who makes him break it.”
“You like your boss.”
“One of the best, Captain. Now, I’d best be going.”
Izzy spent the rest of the afternoon reviewing the reports on the overhaul, then dove into more reports. She was way behind in her paperwork. What else was new? It kept her mind off something she couldn’t do anything about. She ordered up a sandwich rather than face her officers in the wardroom. How many of them had found time to review the report on the pirates?
As the mess tech was leaving, Stan stuck his head in her cabin door. “Skipper, you got a second?”
Izzy glanced up from a report, about to take a bite out of a meat loaf sandwich. “Problem, XO?”
“Not sure.”
Izzy swallowed and put the sandwich down untouched. “Come in.” Usually, she’d have headed for “her” chair around the coffee table. Usually, she liked to keep things informal. This time she waved him to a chair across the desk from her. Today she wanted to keep the desk between herself and…
“I’ve been reading that report the folks dirtside did up on the slave files we gave them. I can’t make out one thing in it.”
“What?” Izzy asked. She’d gotten the briefing; she had yet to read the actual report.
“It seems to me the pirates and the slavers are operating out of the same hole. Maybe I missed something, or haven’t come across it yet. Are they one and the same?” Izzy nodded. “So a ship may be a pirate one cruise, a slaver the next.”
“No.” Izzy took a deep breath. “They can be both in the same cruise.”
Stan settled back in his chair and gnawed on that bit of data for a long moment. “That’s why the skunk I chased had guns ready to burn me.” Again Izzy nodded.
“I did see where they were missing a ship a week after we burned that pirate,” the XO said slowly. “I didn’t find anywhere in the report where they might have listed an expected cargo.”
“It’s in there.” Izzy wasn’t going to beat around the bush with her own exec. “The Reprisal had picked up slaves before we ran into her. Maybe two hundred.”
“Oh, God,” Stan whispered. Izzy said nothing. The XO moved to the edge of his seat. “You’ve been very quiet since you came back up. You’re blaming yourself.”
“I made a snap decision to take no prisoners. I killed ’em.”
Stan’s head nodded slowly. “So how do you feel about me bringing back a ship full of prisoners?”
“You did it right.” There, she’d said it. “I screwed up, and you did it the way I should have.” Damn, this wasn’t the way a captain talked to her exec. But, Christ, she’d blown it. Who could she talk to?
“I disagree with you, Captain,” he shot back before she could finish the thought.
“Disagree?”
“We had two different situations. My skunk knew it was in deep shit the second it spotted me. They had plenty of time to sweat. To think about my guns. I had time to peel their hide, and their soul. Yes, I took some risks with your ship, but not a hell of a lot. I didn’t have the disadvantages you had.”
Izzy blinked several times, trying to keep her face a solid mask, trying to figure out where Stan was going. “And what did you see as the disadvantages of my situation?”
“We had to wait until the bastard made the first move. And he had to make it, not us. By that time, we were up close and personal. There’s not a lot of time to think when you’re dodging six-inch lasers. Given an hour or four like mine had, yours might have had a change of heart. But we were swapping broadsides as fast as we could charge the guns. When we winged him, all I could think was ‘Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Do we go for prisoners and maybe get clobbered while we’re offering them a chance, or do we just blow them to hell and worry later?’”
“Guess I’m doing the worry latering.” Izzy tried to smile.
“Yeah. It was a hell of a call I was glad someone else had to make.” Stan shook his head.
“Yeah, hell of a call. Two hundred people blown to bits before they even had a chance to scream.”
Stan let out a noisy sigh. “Yeah, I’ve been seeing that for the last hour. I just wondered if I was seeing it right. Big report. Hard to string all the important facts together.”
“Sorry, Stan, I asked for the raw feed. In another day or so I expect to get a more refined read.”
“I need to read the raw. Don’t want some chair-bound analyst to simplify some critical item out of the read just so he can shorten a sentence and make it read easier.”
Izzy stared at the sandwich. There was nothing in the Book about execs giving captains absolution, but that was what she was feeling. “We did the best we could, didn’t we?”
“Yes, skipper, we did the best damn job we could, considering the cards we had to play.”
“Thanks, Stan, I appreciate the visit.” Izzy reached again for her sandwich. “Let’s do a better job next time.”
“That’s what life’s about, ma’am, learning to do a better job next time out. See you at breakfast.”
“I’ll be there.”
• • •
Trouble was glad the skipper had her color back next morning at breakfast. The unanimous consensus in the wardroom was that it would have been good to bring the Reprisal in, lock, stock, crew and slaves. Still, at the time, dodging lasers, it felt mighty good to see the source of their doom go boom. Next time, they’d work something out to disable the skunk. Still, you didn’t save many lives after you were reduced to atoms.
Trouble had a rough outline of his recon; he briefed the division heads on it. They offered changes. Guns had several suggestions, and Igor came up with a few spare sensors to add to the tramp freighter’s pod. Trouble ran the suggestions by his Wardhaven counterparts, who had done their own briefing and had a few changes of their own. By the third day, Trouble had a consensus plan, a damn good pod, and a handful of disks from Tru, the spy’s info warrior.
“This one ought to get you through their firewall,” she assured him. “If it doesn’t, pop this into one of the computers dockside. All we want to know is what works. I’ll take care of the rest once I’m in-system.”
“You’re coming with the assault teams?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world. It’ll be my first crack at info war, realtime. And I get to put drug bosses and pirates out of business. What more could a girl ask for?”
“All I’m asking for is a round trip, at the moment.”
The recon pod was a round cylinder one meter across and three long that had been rigged to plug right into the tramp’s hull. Power in and feedback came out from a central shaft running through the plug. Everything was passive. “We’ll have to get our topography from stereo photos. Anybody got a computer
system still able to process those?” Tru asked.
That drew shrugs all around. “We always use radar topo,” Lieutenant Sweetson answered.
“Well, buddy, we are not doing anything active. Not if you want your boy wonder back. Start hunting for obsolete tech if you need to know how high a ridge is on Riddle before you fly into it.” They had a lot of delightful conversations along that line before Trouble’s fast packet shoved off. Leaving the Wardhaven officers behind with a long list of things to find, steal, or otherwise acquire, Trouble wasn’t sure who had the toughest assignment. The Loki was waiting, tied up to the tiniest station Trouble had ever seen, orbiting a gorgeous planet called Jacob’s Folly. While the specialists on the packet installed the plug, Trouble met Captain Hood. Gazing down through the viewport, both of them watched the pod being maneuvered into place, then latched down. Its outer skin meshed perfectly into the rough, worn hide of the tramp starship.
The Loki’s skipper was just as rough, a paunchy wreck of a man; his stoop-shouldered and trembling frame left the marine wondering how the fellow managed a ship. “Glad to have you aboard. We’ve been shorthanded since we left Sirius. Fewer people aboard, the fewer you got to worry about trusting.” The body might be a disaster, but the blue eyes were as piercing as any officer Trouble had had the luck to ship with.
“Where’s the crew?” Trouble asked.
“Dirtside, enjoying a few hours leave. Didn’t want anyone looking over our shoulder.” Trouble handed over his papers; Hood glanced at them. “So Jerigelski tossed you off the Salome’s Favors. Never did like the guy. Welcome aboard, Mr. T. We’ll get you bedded down.”
The room was larger than Trouble expected, but then marines didn’t have a union to set minimum personal space like the civilian spacers demanded. He plugged a battered and obsolete entertainment unit Tru had given him, three times the size of a modern e-unit, into the wall socket. He played with it for a second. The external deceit quickly vanished as the wall display switched from a grainy picture of a waterfall to a full-range sensor readout. The top of the e-unit now had as many reaction buttons as an admiral’s battle-board. There was even a keypad for word entry to back up the audio. Trouble had spent the ride out getting familiar with it. He was three jumps away from making it tell him more about a bunch of bastards than they wanted him to know. Fine.