The Price of Peace

by Mike Moscoe

  “We are quite competitive in both salary and benefits. We expect this unit to have a long run and are willing to make a lengthy commitment to its staff,” Tru finished, tossing the bait out. Now she waited.

  “We’re all on two-year contracts here, and you don’t walk out on our management,” an older man pointed out.

  “Two weeks’ notice is all it ever takes to terminate a contract,” a young optimist put in. From the shaking of heads around him, Tru saw few held his view.

  “I want to hire you right now. Tonight. Wardhaven will provide transport off-station tomorrow morning.” Tru tossed that card on the table. When frowns showed that had sunk in, she played her last card. “I will triple whatever salary you are presently receiving.” She handed an employment contract to the foreman, then started passing around copies to anyone in reach.

  “Right now?” the foreman said slowly.

  “I’ve worked on Wardhaven. Great place” came from someone around the server. “And at this pay. Wow.”

  “Right now!” Tru answered, glancing at her wrist unit. “I can give you thirty seconds to consider. I need the papers signed by then.”

  “It’s not as if we owe management anything. You saw the way they fired Borden last week. Anyone heard from him since they took him dirtside?”

  “Yeah, but do you really want to piss them off?”

  “For triple pay on Wardhaven with a ten-year contract, I’d piss off the devil himself.”

  “You got to get to Wardhaven to spend that money. Lady, how you gonna get us out of here without the boss man knowing?”

  “I have a ship docked at the moment. Accommodations are rather spartan, no better than those on a troopship, but the food is plentiful, and its next stop is Wardhaven.” Well, maybe not. Next stop after a bit of a space battle, but no need to worry the new recruits.

  “Troopship?” the shift foreman echoed.

  “I need signatures,” Tru emphasized. Around the server and station, pens were out, poised to sign, waiting for the first one to break the ice.

  The supervisor pulled out a pen and signed with a flourish. “Okay, boss. What do you want?”

  Tru docked her wrist unit with a workstation and brought up the map of the station. “Any security cameras between here and there?” She pointed to the assault teams’ compartment.

  “Three of them,” the supervisor said, calling up a different schematic. “However, since no one is in those corridors, we ought to power down the lights and save electricity. Right, Randy?”

  “Lights off.”

  Tru tapped her comm unit. “Friends, Goldilocks has the porridge warming. Breakfast time.”

  “On our way” was her answer.

  The woman from the window handed Tru her employment agreement. “I hope I can get some training. I want to be an analyst.”

  “Trust me, friend,” Tru assured her. The woman got over to the door and opened it just in time for the sergeant to lead a stampede through it, gunners followed by specialists and more gunners pulling up the rear. There was little consternation among Tru’s new hires. “Folks, we’ve got a little hostile takeover going on here. Consider yourselves the first people to benefit from picking the right side. Now, we need to open up some parts of this station, and close down others. You probably have a pretty good idea of what we have in mind. Enthusiastic improvisation will be duly noted and rewarded.”

  The supervisor attacked his keyboard. Without looking up, he asked Tru, “Those the only employment contracts you got? I know a dozen more folks that have been looking at vacancies and would come in quite handy for what you have in mind.”

  “I can print them out as fast as you can make the job offers,” Tru answered.

  “What do we do about that security office?” the sergeant asked over Tru’s shoulder.

  “I don’t think that will be any trouble,” the supervisor answered. “My station is showing a fire in there. That set off the fire extinguishing system, and in a moment, we’ll vent it to space.” He swung around in his chair, grinning. “I always hated those smug bastards in security.”

  • • •

  Izzy chuckled. It had turned into a race; could the ships finish offloading their containers before the station was fully pacified? It ended in a tie. That left her with an extra thirty minutes to get her task force ready for combat. As all hands set about that, Major Urimi called.

  “You all set?”

  “Getting there,” she answered. “And yourself?”

  “Not as far along as we’d hoped. The station is ours, lock, stock, and barrel, with a lot of enthusiastic help from Tru’s new contract employees. Still, there’s little on the station about the planet layout. Found an advertising video, but it’s three months out of date and doesn’t show us anything about the command and control setup dirtside. We’ve got the high ground, but still don’t know anything about the ground underneath us.”

  “You need to connect with Trouble and his brain trust.”

  “Right, but how? They’ve got no radios, and we can’t very well go invading every drug farm down there, asking if they’ve seen a marine lieutenant. We’re at a dead end again.”

  “They sent their only message up piggybacked on a GPS satellite. Any way you could send a message from a GPS?”

  Tru sidestepped into view. “GPS satellites send a continuous message. Stations react to those. They’re pretty dumb.”

  “When Trouble was a hostage dirtside, he sent me a help message using three fires in a triangle. Anything that basic you could use?”

  “What about Morse code?” came from Gunny just behind Urimi. Izzy didn’t need marines to fight three cruisers; Gunny and his crew wanted their lieutenant back. “Could you turn the GPS signal on and off to send a message in old Morse code?”

  “Does your guy know that old code?” Tru asked.

  Izzy shrugged. “I have ho idea. But if Gunny thinks it’s worth a try, why not? I’ve given up guessing what Trouble does and doesn’t know. Good luck finding him.”

  “Good luck to you, Commodore.” Urimi took back center screen. “We’re counting on you for a lift out of here.”

  “I won’t forget, Major.” Nor will I forget these damn pirates are probably carrying hostages like the last ones. How do I protect my own without murdering a lot of innocent people?

  “Ship’s ready for departure,” the ship’s lieutenant, standing in for the exec, informed her.

  “Stan, you and Junior ready?”

  “As ready as we’ll ever be, Commodore.”

  “Fine. Patton will take the lead. Conform to my movements. Watch, all hands to underway stations.”

  • • •

  There was only one way out of the garage for the tractor, so Ruth looked for another way. She was not about to parade herself down the middle of the compound for Zylon to shoot at like some cornered rat. “Trouble, how solid is that back wall?”

  The marine checked it. “Don’t see any supports.” She fired the tractor up, backed slowly to the wall, and began gently to push. The wall bulged agreeably.

  Trouble peeked through one of the cracked wall sections. “They’re about a hundred meters away. Near the clinic.”

  “Climb in, boy, we’re going for a ride in the country.” She loved the lopsided grin he gave her as he settled down beside her. She gunned the engine, slipped the tractor into gear, and the wall of the garage came tumbling down.

  The wrist unit squawked all kinds of shouts that boiled down to “Something’s happening,” but told nothing. Ruth slammed the rig into first and roared down the back alley, past the drug factory, heading for the fence. As Ruth and Trouble ducked shots, the tractor sideswiped a few buildings. Ruth didn’t care. Now in high gear, she aimed for the fence. Never had she wanted so much to be out among growing things.

  The fence went down with a crunch, and the tractor’s wheels spun a bit as they shot across mud. She intended to race halfway down the newly cut rows, then zig over into tall dope. That would let t
hem hit the outer fence unseen. Once they were past the lighted farm center, it was dark. She glanced at her GPS, counting on her own memory to tell her the coordinates of the fields.

  “Trouble, what’s wrong with the GPS?”

  “Did we take a hit?” He glanced down at the locator unit. “It’s working.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not supposed to be flashing on and off.”

  “It’s telling you where you are.”

  “Right.”

  “Drive,” he snapped. She did. Still, his eyes were locked on the small, dim numbers, as if he were trying to make something out of this unusual system failure.

  “You’ve never seen it go crazy like this?”

  “Never,” she answered.

  “There’s a pattern to it. One long blink, then six short blinks. I could be starting in the wrong place. No there’s breaks between some of the shorts. Dit, dit, dit, dit, pause, dit, dit, dash. No, a break before the dash. Hit. Hit?”

  “Hit. Hit what?”

  “It’s spelling out H, I, T, in Morse code. Ancient stuff.”

  “As old as the three fires in a triangle you used back on Hurtford Corner?”

  “Somebody wants something hit or…”

  They said it in unison. “Hi, T.”

  “The fleet’s here! Finally!” Trouble shouted.

  “What do we do?”

  “Tell ’em where we are.”

  “Once we’re out of here?” Ruth knew she should have made that a statement, not a question, but she already knew from the way Trouble was thumping the fuel cans that when the Navy asked a question, it expected an answer “soonest.”

  “They got to know which farm to land at, where the people are like Tom and Steve. We got to answer here…now.”

  There was a definite downside to falling in love with a marine. They did stupid things, and if you weren’t careful, you ended up cheering them along instead of doing the mature, adult thing like telling them to shut up while you drive.

  She slowed. Without a word, he tipped over a gas can, drenching the dead stalks on the ground. When one can was empty, he hollered, “Stop!” She did, left the tractor running, and got away from it quick. He doused the tractor, took a few steps back, and rummaged in the first aid kit for the lighter. She found herself grinning like a fool as he flicked it to life and tossed it at the tractor.

  “Run!” he shouted. She already was…heading for the tall dope. In the bright light of the burning tractor, it was easy to keep her footing. It was also easy to spot her. Shots rang out. Bullets slapped into the ground around her. Trouble caught up with her, tackled her, and slid her into the mud.

  “No use getting yourself killed just before the cavalry arrives. Let’s take it easy.”

  “How long will it take?” she whispered back.

  “Not long, I hope,” he said, taking in the running guards, rifles out, grinning like they’d got them all by themselves.

  • • •

  “What was that?” Gunny pointed at the screen.

  “Somebody’s had a fire,” Tru answered, dialing in on the spot for further analysis. “Automotive fire, gas, oil, rubber. Must have hit a tree.”

  “That fire’s got a tail.”

  “So?”

  “You’ve been sending Morse code on the GPS channel for half an hour. Now you got something unusual. Just a coincidence?”

  “Looks like that to me, Sarge.”

  “It’s in farm territory.”

  “Yes. We haven’t observed internal combustion technology anywhere else.”

  “Ma’am, tractors don’t drive fast enough to explode when they hit a tree.” The marine turned to Major Urimi. “Sir, with your permission, I’ll drop my platoon on that location.”

  “Could be nothing.” Urimi eyed the screen, neither persuaded nor opposed.

  “Yes, sir, then it could be what we’re looking for. Tomorrow morning, do you plan to scatter a brigade over farm territory looking for my lieutenant and a few civilians who might know what we’re after?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Maybe I could save you the trouble.”

  “Sir,” Tru interrupted. “That fire is over the horizon now. I could study it more next pass.”

  “If the lieutenant sent us that message, we aren’t the only ones seeing it. If we drop now, we can be there next orbit. Ninety minutes. If we drop next round, that’s three hours.”

  “Ms. Seyd,” Urimi ordered quickly, “pass the sergeant all the information we have about the locale of the fire. Sergeant, let me know as soon as possible what you find.”

  “Yes sir.” The sergeant saluted, then did an about-face. As he double-timed away, he growled into his comm link. “Boots and saddles, crew. Drop mission departs in ten minutes.”

  Tru shook her head. “You sure you want to send him? I think he enjoys that stuff.”

  Urimi smiled. “I wouldn’t let him go if he didn’t.”

  • • •

  “Shuttle four has departed from the station. It’s dropping into lower orbit or heading for a landing,” Sensors reported to Izzy. She hoped Gunny and the platoon had a good lead on Trouble. Right now the ground problem was Urimi’s. The space around Riddle had to stay in Navy hands, or the brigades wouldn’t be invading anything in the morning, no matter what Trouble and his friends might know.

  Three pirates wanted her space; she was headed for a fight. It shouldn’t be much of one. Two professionally commanded and crewed warships should make short order of three irregular ships, even if they had once been cruisers just as deadly as the Patton. Her crew fought for loyalty to the Society of Humanity. Those bandits fought for money. A mental image of Tru hiring the network services team flitted across Izzy’s mind’s eye. Could she just offer this bunch a better employment contract and buy out the fight? She shook her head sadly.

  The computer geeks might have no idea who they were working for. These guys were killers. They’d shot freighters out of space, lugged slaves from planet to planet. They were at the center of this cancer, its willing purveyors. These guys would fight, and if they surrendered, she would gladly hang them once their day in court was done.

  No, this would be done the old-fashioned way.

  So how do I get their hostages out alive? How do I separate those under a death sentence from the innocent? It was going to be one hell of a fight. Unless…“Comm, send to Junior. Stan, I got another batty idea. You up to a masquerade?”

  THIRTEEN

  THEY DRAGGED TROUBLE and Ruth back to the compound; Trouble expected rougher handling. He didn’t waste effort resisting. Everything he had—mind, flesh, soul—concentrated on keeping him and Ruth alive for the hour or two it would take a Fast Reaction Team to show up. So, he went limp and made them half carry, half drag him through the field, across the compound, and past the crowd of field hands and vat girls to the brightly lit common between the guards’ houses and the big house where Zylon waited.

  “Took you long enough,” she snapped. “Why’d you blow up the tractor?”

  “Didn’t blow it up.” Ruth shook off her two guards and stood free to face Zylon. “Injectors were shot. I told you we needed a real mechanic to go over it. The damn thing blew up in our face. If you’d given us decent equipment, this farm would not only be making money hand over fist, I’d be long gone and you’d never have found us.”

  “Sounds to me like a good reason to do it my way.” Zylon grinned. “But then, I always get my way, don’t I, boys?”

  That brought a series of snorts and laughs from the guards. Ruth shook her head. “You know this is stupid. Back on Hurtford Corner, my pa and the family bring in twice the crop with no whips, no beatings.”

  “Yeah, but where was the fun in it?” A voice from the guards cut her off.

  “Mordy?” Under all the mud, Ruth went even paler than the glaring white light made her.

  “Your ex?” Trouble asked.

  “Her ex.” A smirking man, little taller than Ruth, hardly more mu
scled, stepped out from among the guards. “Long time no see, Ruthie.”

  “Not long enough. So this is where you went.”

  “Lot more fun.”

  “Enough philosophy,” Zylon snapped. “Vahan, get the long knives. Who wants first go at the girl philosopher?”

  Two grinning guards stepped past Mordy, taking their shirts off. Trouble measured them, and didn’t like the odds. Both had the reach on him. Probably more muscle on them, mixed with fat. They took him in and swaggered into the square with confidence.

  “This will be a fair fight,” Zylon announced with a total lack of sincerity. “After the boys kill this piece of trouble, they get the girl. You won’t mind that, Mordy?” Ruth’s ex shook his head. “If they yield to him”—she sniffed at that dim prospect—“he gets to spend tonight in my bed, with a new set of pods. You’ll like that.” The smile she awarded Trouble would make a cobra flinch. He bowed in mock gratitude.

  “I believe you’re overdressed.” Zylon pointed, and a quick flick from a guard’s Bowie knife cut off Trouble’s breechcloth. Trouble had plans for it, not modesty, but protection. The guard kicked it into the crowd before he could wrap it around an arm.

  Ruth stripped off her shirt; her bare breasts glistened with sweat in the harsh light. Mordy cackled while the guards hooted their glee; the two across the square added leer to their broad grins. “Wrap this around your left arm,” she ordered, handing her shirt to Trouble.

  “Where’d you learn that?” Trouble was glad she had, but he didn’t expect that from a farm girl raised on a quiet planet like Hurtford Corner.

  “Mordy brought a few of his star-wandering vices with him. Saturday nights could get real exciting if he found some young kids dumb enough to take him up on his dares.”

  “Hey, that’s not part of the fight!” came from one of the two expectant thugs across the ring.

  The guard who’d cut off Trouble’s excuse for clothes reached for the shirt. Trouble batted his hand away. His Bowie knife came up. Trouble kicked him in the gut. He sailed back into the crowd of watchers.

  “No problem.” Zylon cut the fight off. “It’s not interfering with my view,” she leered. At that moment, Vahan returned with a polished wooden chest. His mistress removed one of the gleaming blades. Ceramic composite, it gleamed wicked in the light. When she turned it edge on, it disappeared.