The Price of Peace

by Mike Moscoe

  “Hicks and his boys are covering the fence. We check all the buildings. So check them.”

  When they left, they didn’t shut the door.

  “Think they’ll be back?” Ruth asked.

  “I’d figured to hide here until early tomorrow, then run.” Trouble produced Kick’s wrist unit. “We can monitor their chatter to decide when to move. Now, at least, they can’t zap me silly.”

  Ruth gave him a hug. “If we can get to my tractor, we can get out of here fast.”

  • • •

  Zylon was unhappy and getting unhappier. This was not supposed to happen to a senior farm manager, definitely not when she was entertaining company. She was the boss. People did what she ordered. When she wanted results, they produced them.

  “Vahan, get me the serial numbers on that Tordon’s control units. Then rig a controller to them. Let’s see how well he can hide when he’s screaming.” She smiled at Mordy.

  Vahan ran to do her bidding; he was back in less than five minutes. Zylon tapped her comm unit. “I’m about to send a wake-up call to Mr. Tordon’s neck pods. Listen up for the scream.”

  “Why didn’t we do that in the first place?” she heard on net. She recognized the voice. He’d look great naked in a knife fight; for now, she pushed Tordon’s button.

  There was no answering scream.

  “That’s impossible,” Vahan breathed.

  “Did Kick have a pod repair kit?” Zylon asked on net.

  “I think so” came from several sources.

  “Okay, we do this the old-fashioned way. I know these people slough off on me. Where do they hide when there’s work to be done?” Zylon snapped.

  “We got the field hands in sight every minute of the day,” Vahan whined. “They slough off, they get a taste of the whip.”

  “Sometimes, the gals at the vats seem hard to find,” a guard said slowly. “You go hunting and you don’t find her ’til next day. Ask girls, and they say she’s over there. Girls yonder say, no, somewhere else.” He shrugged. “Maybe they do hide.”

  “Bring me the vat girls.”

  That didn’t take long at all. Zylon took their measure; none met her eyes. No back talk here. “Where do you girls hide when you want to duck work? Or a guard?”

  There was a general shake of the head and a mumbled “We don’t do that.” Why didn’t Zylon believe that? She grabbed one who stood a little straighter than the others. “Where do you hide?”

  The answer was slow in coming. Zylon reached for a guard’s dagger. “We don’t,” the woman answered quickly. “You dodge work, you get beat and lose a meal. We all work.”

  That was the official line. Stupid answer. Zylon slit the woman’s throat, reaching for a second woman even as the first collapsed. “Where do you hide? Where are the two runners?”

  “The warehouse, ma’am. Sometimes, some of the girls hide among the barrels. Deep among them. I never done it.”

  Zylon sent the woman sprawling. “I knew one of you girls would remember.” She tapped her comm unit. “Search the warehouse. Take the barrels down one at a time if you have to. They’re in there.”

  • • •

  Izzy had her hands full. The station manager was demanding she unload. “We got three more coming in right behind you.” As if she wasn’t all too aware of them. She wanted to offload…the first couple dozen containers, the ones that put the hackers in contact with the station’s hull. However, as more containers were shifted to the station, the sleek and glistening lines of a cruiser would become all too visible. Izzy had hoped the confident cracker’s plan A would open the station up for a friendly takeover. Now it was plan B. Plan C involved shooting the station up or running like hell. Which one, tiger?

  Not time to decide yet. Still, breathing down her neck were three Daring class cruisers. With a trio to work over, Sensors had caught enough leaks to get a clear picture of them this time. No way to tell if they were carrying slaves or captured crews. There was no question they were still gunned.

  Stan ambled over from his own command; the Junior was docked next to the Patton. With luck, the two loads of containers would provide a good excuse for slow unloading. If not, a couple of the winching systems would have to develop the flu. “How long we got?” was Stan’s greeting as he crossed the bridge hatch.

  “Six hours, maybe a tad more.” Izzy waved him to a side screen where she was planning her space battle. “Can’t afford a head-on pass. That would put them between us and the station with us doing a slow turnaround to get back. No, we swing around Riddle and cross their paths as they come into orbit. That ought to give us thirty to forty-five minutes of shooting before they can get a bead on the station.”

  “Why, thank you, Commodore,” Urimi said as he entered the bridge and the conversation simultaneously.

  “How’s Tru doing?”

  “Her container, with the rest of Erwin’s best nutcrackers, are now in contact with the station hull, as close as any container gets. They should be forcing an entry to the station in about five minutes.”

  “Well, Major, here’s the schedule she’s got to meet. To handle the three incoming cruisers, Stan and I got to back away from this station in five hours. To do that, we got to offload all of our containers by then. I figure in about two hours, we’ll have offloaded enough containers that the little fan dance we’ve been doing with them won’t work any longer, and my cruiser’s fine lines will be bare-ass naked to the lusty eyes of station security. If we don’t have the station the easy way in two hours, Erwin’s First will have to take it the hard way.”

  “That was my estimate too.” Urimi tapped his comm link. “Tell Goldilocks she’s got ninety minutes to heat up that porridge.” He eyed Izzy’s board. “That what you plan to do for fun?”

  “Can’t have three pirates interfering with you ground-pounders’ fun and games. How’s the assault planning coming?”

  “You know more about those pirates than I do about that damn planet. Never heard of an urban area so silent on the electromagnetic spectrum. We figured out where the power plant is. A few factories, too. Beyond that, I can’t even guess where the comm hub is.”

  Izzy had reviewed the planet data an hour ago. Beyond separating agricultural and urban, they were pretty much in the dark. Was a tall building full of apartments or pirate offices? Was that a country club or the city hall? With no microwave intercepts, it was impossible to tell.

  “We need Trouble and the guys he’s found,” Izzy said.

  • • •

  Trouble knew they were in trouble when he heard the shouting. The men were being whipped out of their barracks and driven over to the warehouse. He and Ruth had heard the women being trooped off to Zylon a few minutes earlier and decided it was time to make a move…just in time. Under the cover of the shouting and carrying on as barrels were knocked over, shoved aside, and pushed around, he fueled the tractor and lifted two spare gas cans into its cab.

  “Why doesn’t Zylon use the comm link to issue orders?” Trouble muttered. He was learning a lot more from the yelling and shouting than he was from the captured link.

  “I don’t think these people are real comfortable with their gear,” Ruth whispered back. “Look at them. Trying to grow stuff by tossing a bunch of seeds on the ground. Running around whipping you guys. That’s no way to run a profitable farm. Now most of those ex-Unity draftees are bawling orders at the top of their lungs and using the comm links for chattering. Trouble, these people are stupid.”

  “But the last three I saw were toting guns. Let’s put them down as stupid, but dangerous.”

  “So, when do we get out of here?” Ruth asked.

  That was the question: how to time their dash? “The more time they spend knocking around the warehouse,” Trouble whispered, “the more tired they’ll be chasing us when we bolt. Maybe they’ll work themselves to exhaustion and we can tiptoe out of here when everyone’s dead asleep.”

  “You ever seen a tractor tiptoe?”

&n
bsp; “No.”

  “Well, I’ve done everything else with one. Why not tiptoe it? I guess we wait.”

  “I think so.”

  Ruth snuggled up close to him, huddled down, out of sight. It would be nice to come home to her every night for a snuggle like this. Maybe not like this. He could skip the smell of gasoline, the hounds out for their blood. Still, the feel of her flesh against his. Yes, she would be nice to come home to.

  If a marine had a home.

  • • •

  “Damn it, there’s not supposed to be cabling here,” Tru snorted as she eyed the results of the first drill probe through the station’s hull. With nothing better to rely on, they were using the standard design prints. Clearly, this was no standard design. “Try again, twenty centimeters to the right.”

  The corporal started drilling, while the private patched the station’s hull. Next visual showed an open compartment; a full spectrum analysis revealed no activity of any sort. The cable that had spoofed them the first time was a water pipe.

  It took them the better part of fifteen minutes to establish themselves in the compartment and determine the next compartment over had a cable run and was not under observation. They cut a big hole in the wall and moved over.

  “Place stinks,” the private muttered.

  “It’s a paint locker, Joe,” the corporal informed him…and Tru. “None too smart to run fiber optics through a fire hazard.” That was the first dumb move Tru had found these puppies in. Nice to know they aren’t perfect.

  They might as well have been, for all the good it did Tru. Skelly, her technician, jacked Tru into the fiber-optic run, then grinned as she finished. “It’s all yours, boss.”

  Tru returned the grin as she went to work…and scowled as she hit a concrete wall. “It’s encrypted. Every damn package is encrypted like it’s a bleeding bank.”

  “How bad?” Skelly asked.

  “Give me a minute.” Tru suspected she already knew the answer, but she had to prove it to herself. As she thought, these folks didn’t do anything in halfway measures. “They’re using the latest bank encryption. Two-fifty-six bit encryption with a double key.” With sinking heart, she tried the code the developer swore would let anyone in. It had been disabled.

  “Damn. Don’t these guys trust anyone?”

  “Would you, if you were the bloody bastards doing unto everyone else?” the sergeant reminded her.

  “No.”

  “We got to report something.” Skelly reminded Tru of practical matters. Tru searched for public nodes. There had to be a map of the station that wasn’t encrypted. She found one, transmitted it back to the command post.

  “Got anything without all these blanks?” was her thank-you. The map showed public corridors, rest rooms and restaurants, and not much more.

  “This whole station is encrypted like a rock,” she answered.

  “Well, in one hour, we start taking this rock apart, one atom at a time. Let us know if you’ve got any suggestions in the meantime.”

  Tru didn’t like failing. Failed relationships were one thing. Failed hacks were another. Given three weeks, she could crack this encryption system. They didn’t have three weeks, and the bad guys would probably change codes in the meantime. “Damn, these guys are good.”

  “Too bad we don’t have them working for us, instead of her,” the private whispered to the corporal, loud enough for Tru to hear. The sergeant scowled at the private, and he shrank back to his place. Tru wondered if any of the folks causing her so much trouble had ever worked for her. She’d lost a few people recently to better job offers farther out on the rim. Unusual, since normally Wardhaven paid a lot better than the rim.

  Whom had she lost lately? Kim. Fred. Did any of them have pet codes? She tried a few of her office favorites. Nothing.

  Damn! Of course these codes were tough; they were designed to be tough. It took time to crack them, and by then, you changed the code. Tru stared at the ceiling; she wasn’t getting anywhere. What do you do when your nose is hard up against a wall you can’t get through? Go over it. She’d tried. Go around it. She’d tried. She’d tried everything in her bag of tricks, and it wasn’t working. “Damn, these guys are good.”

  “You said that before,” Skelly reminded her.

  Her unit beeped. She’d been running a search on the system, hunting for anything she could read. Her pet computer proudly pointed to a file on some maintenance unit. With nothing better to do, she opened it.

  “What is it?” Tru asked.

  “Some repair tech has his own layout of the station,” the corporal opined.

  “What’s it show?” the sergeant asked.

  “Air flow, I think,” Skelly tossed in as she pointed at the layout. “Though why would these sections be venting to space?”

  “Firefighting. That’s what this is,” Tru crowed. “This guy doesn’t want to be fighting a fire with no blueprints because somebody changed the codes. I like this guy.” She passed it along to the command post.

  “Got anything that shows the locations of automatic weapons?” was her thank-you. “Few folks we let out on the station report lots of surveillance cameras and something extra. Things that look like remote machine guns. Sure would like to have something on them before we start shooting up the place.”

  “Why do I not think we’ll find that in an unencrypted file?” Skelly laughed. While the others enjoyed his joke, Tru studied the map, letting her fingers rove the layout. “We know where the power plant is. That accounts for one venting to space. There are two others. Yep, both are using Halon-3000. That means computers. I bet one is security, the other data central.”

  “Assault teams will be happy to hear that, but which one?”

  Tru grinned; the original map showed, among other things, the personnel office. One of the two unknowns was close to the power station. The other was close to personnel. “I think I know where the Admin Division is,” she chortled.

  “So what?” the private tossed her off.

  “So, Sergeant, get the assault team ready. I’ll want the entire specialist team to follow me in five minutes. If you don’t hear from me by then, come in shooting there.” She stabbed her preferred site. There were no locked doors between here and there. None except the one that mattered. Tru stripped off her armored space suit, retrieved a scarf from her kit bag while she printed out a dozen of the right forms, and headed for the door.

  “What are you doing?” There, was actually worry in the sergeant’s question.

  “Following the private’s orders.” She curtsied, and closed the door behind her.

  • • •

  Trouble was having trouble staying awake; maybe it was the gas fumes. Certainly it had been a long day. The racket from the warehouse was down to a dull roar. Then the comm link finally contributed something worthwhile.

  “We found their hideout,” said a man.

  “You sure?” That was pure Zylon.

  “There was a tarp hid among the barrels.”

  “What makes you think they were there?”

  “We found two halves of pain pods. They took them apart.”

  “But they’re not there anymore.” That was pure Zylon venom.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Bring all the field hands and vat girls back to our end of the compound. Then start them walking for the other end. Tell them the one that spots those two runners gets food, real food, for the next month. If none of them raise a holler, I’ll use the pods every night for the next month. You make sure they listen good. Nobody’s escaped a farm. I’m not gonna be the first.”

  “Ruth.” Trouble gently shook the sleeping form beside him. She came awake with a start. “Honey, it’s time we start moving.”

  “You say the nicest things to me, dear.”

  • • •

  Tru’s humor didn’t last much past the first turn. If her guess was wrong, she was headed for security goons. Unlike the fabled dilemma of the tiger and the woman, Tru was making
her own call. Besides, if I guessed wrong, I’ll just keep on walking.

  Unfortunately, the other potential location for the computer center was several locked bulkheads away. Keeping one eye on the corridor and the other on her wrist unit, she navigated herself to…a familiar glass window, complete with buzzer to call for attention. She buzzed.

  “May I help you?” a young woman asked. She wore a bored look and a tee-shirt from the latest band craze. Swing shifts if I ever saw one.

  Tru smiled. “Yes. I’m recruiting for network specialist vacancies on Wardhaven. I wonder if I might talk to your boss.”

  That brought the music lover up short. Tru was betting there wasn’t a standard operating procedure for personnel raiders. The length of the wait while the young woman sorted out Tru’s request was long enough to start her worrying.

  “Karin, can you handle this?” the woman finally said.

  “Hey, we’re working as hard as we can to get the D server back up. Give us another hour.”

  “No, K, it’s not about the network.”

  “What is it?”

  “I think she wants to offer some of us a job.”

  “Who?”

  “Who?” the band follower asked.

  “I’ve got quite a few vacancies to fill,” Tru said in her most suggestive voice. “May I come in?”

  “I don’t know.” The woman worried her lower lip, but the door was buzzing. Tru opened it and walked right in. The center had over a dozen people in it, half gathered around one large unit with its cover off and boards scattered around it, and the rest around a system showing a black screen and code. Yep, server’s down. And I had nothing to do with it.

  “What d’ya want?” came from a short man in a green checkered shirt and a tie that screamed it didn’t match. Since he was the only one not in a tee-shirt, Tru took him for the shift supervisor.

  “I’m Trudy Seyd, IT manager for a large corporate entity on Wardhaven. I need to staff up a major new unit.”

  “How’d she get in here?” came from someone around the dead server. Tru ignored the question.