The Price of Peace

by Mike Moscoe

  Izzy leaned back in the booth and rested her eyes on the fake wooden timbers. “I don’t let them kill my people. I’m not putting any of the joes in any more danger than I have to.” The words came out so sure, so absolute. That part was rock solid in her heart. “Beyond that, Andy, I will try to take prisoners.”

  “How hard?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Good hunting.”

  TWELVE

  IZZY GOT LITTLE rest on the voyage out. If she wasn’t on the bridge, she was at the CP established in the pod of containers just outside the midships radial 90 hatch. Majors Murphy and Erwin rode the Patton. Tran was with Stan on the Junior. Command relationships were cordial, if somewhat cool. Izzy’s chief of staff, Major Urimi, had designed an operations order with gaping holes in it. “We’ll fill these in as we go along. If not, maybe we don’t go.” He smiled encouragement to both Izzy and the majors. Urimi did a great balancing act.

  Tru Seyd took time away from planning her assault on the station’s data stream to develop and test a network between all the brigades’ officers and troopers. As soon as Izzy knew something, it would be passed to everyone. First tests were a disaster. Every squad leader did not need to know everything Izzy knew. Urimi, the brigade commanders, and Tru worked out a decision tree for the network to keep it from bogging down at every turn.

  Now that Riddle was in sight, the intelligence crew was hard at it. “About what we were led to expect. System layout has no surprises. Riddle has very little radio traffic. We’re mapping it as best we can from this distance,” Tru reported.

  Izzy’s chief of staff began filling in the blanks on his operations plan. “Only one major urban area. I expect that is where we will land. I’ll keep an open mind about that until we hear from your man Trouble.”

  “Good idea,” Izzy agreed. “Dealing with minds that go in for piracy, slavery, and drugs, don’t bet their center of gravity is where you’d put it.”

  “We will need more data,” Urimi said.

  • • •

  “Shit, look how tall that stuff is,” Steve marveled as they pulled up the first field fully grown under Ruth’s management. The stalks were taller than Trouble, the leaves broad and a pale green that almost seemed transparent. They worked their way down the rows, pulling each stalk, then stripping it of leaves. Those went into bags dragging behind them. The stalks were left to dry in the field, rotting to feed the next crop.

  From one viewpoint, the thugs ought to be glad. Ruth had come through with a damn fine crop. On the other hand, would Zylon see it in her best interest to keep a professional farmer like Ruth happy, or was she now excess baggage to be tossed to the dogs? If Trouble worried about that, Ruth must be half crazy. Still, when he saw her testing the field next to the one he was working, she moved with her usual self-possession and purpose. Maybe there wasn’t a problem.

  “It’ll be fun bringing that one down a peg or three,” Trouble heard one guard mutter to another while eyeing Ruth at work.

  “Depends on what the boss girl says,” the one beside him answered, then cracked a whip. Zylon had come out to look the work over. She eyed the field hands, then glanced at Ruth and her tractor. Trouble wasn’t close enough to catch her expression. Zylon couldn’t be that stupid. Then again, those who used piracy and slaves had already shown a certain lack of grasp for human motivation. Damn, where is that invasion fleet?

  • • •

  Damn, this isn’t telling us a hell of a lot. Izzy studied the information decorating the walls of her command post. It was thin. Maps of the planet had too many question marks. The general layout of the station was updated with blisters and pods of unknown origin and use. A lot of unknowns. Too many?

  “Don’t worry.” Tru must have taken up mind reading along with tea leaves and electron bits. “Once we’re docked, we’ll hitch into their net and access all kinds of maps, blueprints, guides. That’ll fill in the blanks fast enough for you to pass it along to the assault troops.”

  “Trouble didn’t have much luck cracking their firewall and encryption,” Izzy reminded her.

  Tru’s enthusiasm was unfazed. “I have access to the latest published tools, their backdoor accesses, keys, and plenty of computing power to crack them. If I can’t get through their firewall, Major Erwin has loaned me a squad to drill a hole in a bulkhead and plug me into the other side of the damn firewall. One way or another, I’ll hand you this station on a platter.”

  Izzy hoped Tru was as good as she claimed. Taking this station apart piece by piece would not only slow them down but tip their hand big time. Izzy’s legal staff warned her that the sooner this task force started shooting, the sooner someone would show up with a court order to shut them down. This task force was a combined operation of the weirdest sort, from cruisers to techies, from troopers to lawyers.

  “Captain, Sensors here. A ship just jumped into the system.”

  Damn! Izzy groaned. “Which jump and what kind of ship?”

  “Beta jump. We don’t have a good fix on the ship, but its jump pulse was medium power. Say a large freighter.”

  “Or a light cruiser,” Izzy sighed.

  Major Urimi tapped a screen; it changed to a sim of the Riddle system. Izzy rapidly explained the problem. “We’re two days out from the station. Beta jump is usually a four-day cruise in at one gee. So, if there are no more surprises, this shouldn’t be a problem. However, our line of retreat is starting to look a bit threatened.”

  Urimi rubbed his chin, deep in thought. “Our margin for error is getting thinner and thinner.”

  “Did you actually think it would get better as we went along?” Izzy tried to laugh, but it came out more like a growl.

  “One could hope. I’ll keep you up to date on what we find about our target. Do you want to return to your bridge?”

  Six hours later, Izzy had made a lot more calls to keep Urimi up to date than he had made to her. The planet refused to give up its secrets. Izzy now had three unknown ships in-system.

  “They all came through the Beta jump, and they’re about an hour apart,” Sensors informed her. “All we’ve got on them is an engine signature.”

  “Let me guess. Daring class.” Izzy sighed.

  “You got it, skipper.”

  “What are they, cheaper by the dozen?” Stan chimed in on tight beam from the bridge of the Junior.

  “I swear,” Izzy growled, “when this is over, I’m gonna look up somebody in warship disposal sales and hang ’em.”

  “First we got to get this over,” Stan reminded her.

  “Can we put on extra acceleration?” Urimi asked.

  “No benefit, Major, we’re decelerating,” Izzy answered.

  “So we wait,” her chief of staff concluded.

  “And make sure Tru has all her tools laid out and ready to go as soon as we dock.”

  • • •

  It took three days to harvest Ruth’s first crop, three hot days of yanking, ripping, and tearing. Rough work on the back and hands. Trouble had splinters and blisters to show for it. Tom had a gash in his foot. After supper, Trouble helped his friend hobble to the clinic. Actually, he just wanted to see Ruth. Her smile made the trip and the pain almost worth it. She cleaned out Tom’s foot, then treated it. Seeming to understand he was extra, Tom limped off. That left Trouble tongue-tied, hunting for something to say to Ruth. Trying to figure out what he really wanted to say.

  How do you tell a woman you admire her? That you appreciate her cool approach to tough situations, that you like being around her. It was easy to tell a man that…or another marine. It was a job. You did it. Well done.

  The words didn’t quite match what he felt for Ruth.

  “Crop’s good. Best I’ve ever seen,” he ended up saying.

  “Damn right it is. If these idiots knew anything about farming, they’d have done more than just toss a seed on the ground. But then, if you’re dumb enough to grow dope, you’ve already shown you’re not too smart.”


  “You figured out what we’re growing.”

  “Yeah. We grew pharmaceutical feed stocks back on Hurtford Corner. ’Course, no company would buy a crop from uncertified fields and farming methods. Drugs are the only things it could be. How much longer we gonna be here?”

  That was a slap that brought the marine up short. “I don’t know. I’d thought they’d be here already. Then again, I’m none too sure what day it is.”

  “Me neither.”

  “I want you out of here, Ruth. They’re changing you. Making you rougher. I don’t want them changing you.”

  “I always thought a man wanted to change his woman.”

  “I liked you just the way you were the first time I saw you.”

  “Drugged and hogtied. That’s a man for you.” She slugged him in the arm. Gently, hardly more than a rub. He wanted to roll over like a puppy and have her rub him all over.

  “You know what I mean—the woman who took over caring for those who needed help. Who stood up to the slaver when no one else would. Who had him begging out of her hand for fungus. That’s quite a woman.”

  “I had to. I couldn’t let a guy like you take all the risks. A girl’s got her pride.”

  “I’m a marine.” Trouble shot back the usual answer. “I’m supposed to take chances.”

  She took his face in her hands, held his eyes so he had to look deep into hers. “And here I thought it was just for me.”

  “It was.”

  There was a rap at the door. “Tordon, Ruth, you in there?”

  “Kick,” Trouble whispered. “Yes,” he answered.

  “Get out here. Both of you.”

  Trouble led the way, keeping Ruth behind him. Opening the door, he preceded her down the steps of the clinic. “You want me?” he asked.

  “Ms. Plovdic wants both of you. Ruth here’s been little miss queen bee long enough. You’ve just been a lot of trouble. A guy came over from one of the other farms. Wanted to see our crop. He also shared a little idea of his for something special tonight. Plovdic loved it, thought it might be fun. Couple of guards here would like a go at Ruthie. To make it more fun, you get to fight them naked, with knives. They kill you, they get her. They yield, Zylon gets you, or what they leave of you. What do you think of that?” he grunted. “Follow me.”

  Trouble didn’t waste breath answering Kick’s question. Like a good slave, he’d bowed his head, knowing what was coming even before the head guard got to the punch line. A slave had to accept it, do what he was told. The guards had beaten that into the field hands with casual whips and senseless brutality. Trouble shambled after Kick, not even letting the indrawn hiss of fear in Ruth’s breath change the facade he wore for the guard.

  “Hurry up,” Kick growled, and he reached back to slap Trouble. Kick was so confident he controlled the beaten and starved field hands that he, like so many of the other guards, had taken to leaving his pod controllers in his pockets.

  The marine broke Kick’s neck before he could scream, much less reach for his controller. The crack of the bones sent a shiver through Trouble, a quake that shattered the passive, take-it person who had been a slave. With a feral grin, he turned to Ruth. “I didn’t really like that idea. Did you?”

  “Wasn’t on my short list of things to do tonight. Now what do we do?”

  Trouble glanced around. Nobody in sight. “Back to the clinic. I want to see what he’s got.”

  They spent a precious minute going through Kick’s pockets. Trouble stripped off his wrist unit and his shirt; the pants were ruined when Kick’s bowels let go. “Not much to show for a life of crime,” the marine judged as he stuffed everything from the dead man’s pockets into a first aid pouch. “You know any good places to disappear?”

  “Girls at the vats have a few places they lay low from the guards. You can get away with it once in a while.”

  “Think they’ll tell on us?”

  “It ought to take the guards a while to realize we’ve hid and ask them, don’t you think?”

  “Worth a try.” Trouble stashed the body under a tarp behind machinery away from the clinic. He followed Ruth through a maze of buildings before she edged into a warehouse through splits in its corrugated metal wall. The dirt floor was covered three to five deep with stacks of hundred-liter drums.

  “Some are full. Most empty,” Ruth whispered. “Follow me.”

  Trouble helped her scale the stack; then they crawled along the top until they came to a dip. Nine barrels were missing, giving them a place to hole up out of sight. There was even a tarp and some rags. A place to rest. To hide. Maybe to cry yourself to sleep when the terrors outside were worse than any nightmare that had disturbed a woman’s sleep. A place to rest before going back to the horror. Trouble settled in with Ruth beside him.

  Her fingers were soft on his neck. He turned to her as she whispered in his ear, “Let’s have a look at your collar.”

  • • •

  Zylon Plovdic didn’t like to be kept waiting, especially when she had a man present she wanted to impress. She had never been a patient woman. Patience was for people whose time was worthless. Zylon counted every moment of her life like gold.

  “Where is Kick? How long does it take to find one worthless field hand and a ninny of a woman in love with her tractor?” Ruth really frosted Zylon, prancing around like she was the queen of green, using a few bits of know-how to lord it over all of them. She probably thought she could do a better job of running this farm than Zylon. Well, tonight she’d learn.

  “Sounds like my ex-wife,” Mordy snickered. “Loved her tractor more than me. That’s why I left her.”

  Zylon would show Ruth. A couple of the boys swore they could work that little mud analyzer just as well as tractor girl. Tomorrow, they’d show her and Mordy. And they wouldn’t ride around all day with their noses stuck up in the air. Yes, it was time Ruth learned how you really ran a farm.

  “Damn it! Hicks, Bascom, go find those little shits and bring them to me. Now!” Zylon relished the look of fear on the two men’s faces as they jumped at her words, grabbed three others, and hustled off to do her bidding.

  • • •

  “Damn it!” Tru hated to be reduced to vulgarities. At the moment, that was all she had. “The Great Wall 4630s have five generally available back doors,” she muttered so the majors hovering over her shoulder could know something of her problem, “and two that even the production crew didn’t know about. All seven have been locked out on this installation. Every one! Nobody closes all the work-arounds. You have to leave an opening in case everything blows up.”

  “One might suspect these people of being paranoid,” Urimi muttered. “Or that they didn’t want people doing unto them what they’d done unto others.”

  “Sounds like it, sir.”

  “How’s our cracker doing?” came from the comm unit, in the all too familiar voice of the ship’s captain.

  “Not so good. Firewall doesn’t seem to have any of the usual holes. We’re ready to go to plan B.”

  “Figures. I got the station folks wanting to start unloading. Can she be ready to offload in five minutes?”

  Tru stood, a soldier at her elbow, loaded with most of her gear, ready to run her up to the first cargo container. “Go,” Urimi ordered, and the soldier took off at the double. Tru galloped with him, breaking into a sweat, which she detested, and wondering why she’d volunteered for this in the first place.

  • • •

  Ruth ran her fingers lovingly over Trouble’s throat. She wanted to hug him, kiss him, have him make love to her. What she did was yank at the pods on the thin plastic cord around his neck. No surprise; they didn’t move. “Try cutting them off,” Trouble said, pulling out the knife they had taken from Kick.

  Working the blade between Trouble’s vulnerable throat and the cord, Ruth tried. The knife refused to even dent the thin strap. “There’s got to be some way to get at these pods,” she finally gasped in exasperation.

  “Look it ov
er. Batteries or damaged parts have to be replaced,” Trouble suggested.

  To Ruth’s eyes, the pod was smooth metal or plastic. In the fading light, she saw no seam in the casing’s surface. She ran her fingernail over the pod. Something snagged. Trouble handed her a lighter Kick had no further use for. She didn’t want to risk fire, for fear either of it being seen or of burning Trouble. She flicked it on. Yes, there was a small indent, neither for a blade nor Phillips head screwdriver, but for an L-shape. She went back to the knife. Like her father’s, it had plenty of blades to choose from. Where Pa’s had a Phillips head, this one had one L-shaped. She applied it to Trouble’s pod and turned the screwdriver clockwise. Nothing. Counterclockwise didn’t work either. She put her hand between the pod and Trouble’s neck, leaned with all her weight and slowly twisted it clockwise.

  It moved.

  She kept the pressure up, slowly turning the knife in her hand. It slipped once. Trouble stifled a cry of pain as the blade cut into him, but urged her back to work. She tried going light on the pressure, but the blade lost its grip. Weighing heavy on her man’s neck, she turned it again and again and again. Finally, it got easier. She paused for a moment’s rest; a crack showed down the middle of the pod.

  “It’s coming apart,” she whispered. And went back to work. A long minute later, half of the pod fell into her hand. “It’s got three batteries in there. I’m gonna pull them out.”

  “Nothing beats a try but a failure, my mom used to say,” the marine answered, and clenched his jaw for a shot of pain. None came. The batteries dropped into Ruth’s hand with no sign of a farewell jolt to Trouble.

  “There are some chips and stuff in here. Should I do anything to them?”

  “Probably the receiver for the controller’s signals. Use the knife to mess them up.”

  She did. Then she attacked the second pod. It didn’t come apart any easier, but now she knew what to do. Ruth just had the batteries in hand and was attacking the rest of the pod’s circuitry when the door to the warehouse slid open noisily.

  “Check it out,” a rough voice ordered. Flashlight beams worked along the ceiling and through the cracks between the barrels. Someone climbed up the stack and played a beam along the tops of the barrels. “Nothing here. I told you they’d be heading for the fence.”