The Mercenaries

by Bill Baldwin

  "Localizer and glideslope captured," Tissaurd advised.

  "Imperial K5054, contact Levantine Tower one two six five five," the Controller directed.

  "Good day from Imperial K5054, and thanks for the help," Brim responded.

  Moments later Tissaurd was on the blower: "All hands to landing stations. All hands to landing stations." From aft, a siren howled, accompanied by the sound of running feet. Odd bumps and rumbles throughout the bridge spoke of cvceese' mugs and personal gear being stowed in all sorts of unapproved nooks and crannies.

  "COMM frequency redirected," Tissaurd announced.

  Brim confirmed her on the panel. "Thanks, Number One," he replied. "Imperial K5054 checking in at two thousand on final for two seven left approach."

  "Imperial K5054: Tower Levantine clears for two seven left landing approach; wind zero nine zero at fifteen, gusts to forty-five."

  The genius of Starfury's designer Mark Valerian always shone like a star during landings. The ship was steady as a rock, in nearly any kind of weather—and today's could only be classed as perfect. The spoilers deployed automatically at fifteen hundred irals without the slightest rumble or pitch change. At the helm, one could feel a slight sinking sensation when the speed brakes deployed, but unless you were actually at the controls, it was nearly impossible to notice.

  Brim glanced over at Beyazh, who was staring at the back of Tissaurd's head as if the two were alone on the bridge. Grinning, he concentrated on landing the starship. There was a lot of residual thrust from the six big Admiralty A876 gravity generators, so he normally flew right at reference velocity during descents (instead of adding a little speed for windage, as was the practice), unless of course mere were heavy gusts or the possibility of sheer. But if there was too much speed, Valerian's new design wouldn't come to hover at standard elevation; she would simply float on and on and on.

  With the ruby landing vector beacon steady in the Hyper-screens, he ignored his urge to flare and kept coming down with the gravs at idle until her gravity gradient kissed the whitecaps and launched great cascades of spray soaring past the side Hyperscreens. These diminished to a broad rolling wake as they bled off energy and Brim blipped the gravity brakes, sending successions of great spray clouds forward that deluged the Hyperscreens as the big ship thundered to a smooth halt with her pontoons hovering precisely twenty-five irals above the three contoured "feet" she pushed in the surface of the bay. Through the overhead Hyperscreens, Brim could see an Imperial flag soaring to the apex of the high KA'PPA tower, followed by a brilliant white ensign emblazoned by Starfury's crest. Clearly, Barbousse was back on the job!

  "My congratulations," Beyazh said in an awed voice. "A most perfect landing."

  "All in a day's work for this Helmsman," Tissaurd remarked with her sunny grin. "Isn't it, Skipper?"

  "Thanks, Number One," Brim said half in embarrassment, but her compliment made him proud as a schoolboy.

  Suddenly the voice of Surface Control demanded his attention. "Imperial K5054, intersect one seven right without delay; control buoy six five after you cross, then cleared to Levantine G-pool four sixty-seven. Follow pilot boat ninety-one at boreal river entrance."

  "Imperial K5054 crossing one seven right for pilot boat ninety-one," Brim acknowledged, taking up a direct course for an antiquated little watercraft that appeared at the mouth of the river. Abruptly, however, the Gorn-Hoff reappeared from starboard with all flags flying. She was on a collision course with Starfury—and moving much too fast to be in a harbor.

  "Our Leaguer friends again," Beyazh commented with the same taunting look on his face. "It seems as if this time they really mean to cut you off." He spoke as if he were waiting to see what Brim would do about it. "There is always a long wait for pilot boats this time of day in Magor," he added pointedly.

  "I see," Brim growled, deliberating only a few clicks before deciding on a course of action—one that matched Starfury's motto, "Go Boldly!" It was clear that the Leaguers had no conception of Starfury's post-landing capabilities; it was also high time someone put a stop to their foolish antics before they did something dangerous. "I'll have military energy to gravs two, three, four, and six, Strana'," he ordered. "Number One: sound the collision alarm to starboard."

  "Military to gravs two, three, four, and six," the Bear acknowledged from a display on his console. Her voice was all but drowned out by of sirens sounding through the ship.

  "Stand by for collision, starboard side, frame seven fifty-five," Tissaurd announced on the blower. "Stand by for collision, starboard side. All hands close airtight doors forward of frame seven fifty-five."

  The cruiser was closing very rapidly now and throwing a huge wake that rose high enough to hide the aft portion of her hull. Without a doubt, the Leaguers intended that Starfury would slacken speed or give way, thus relinquishing the pilot boat. The imperials would then be forced to wait at the entrance to the Levantine—in clear view of the whole harbor as well as the Fluvannian Fleet—until such time as the next pilot became available.

  "If you speed up, you will maintain your right-of-way," Beyazh urged, his voice more of a challenge than a comment. "He'll eventually have to give way." Then he chuckled. "Of course, if he does get ahead of you, you will then be an overtaking vessel—and he will perpetually have the right-of-way."

  Brim nodded wordlessly, judging distance between the two ships and giving Starfury's crew time to reach their collision stations, just in case.

  "Will you really permit him to accomplish this indignity?" Beyazh demanded in a bantering voice. "The pilot boat is assigned to you after all."

  For Brim, it was almost as if he were back in Carescria as a youth flying the incredibly dangerous ore barges of the region and racing to be first at the weighing stations. He had quickly discovered that a fractional load delivered first at the receiving station was worth a lot more than a full load delivered later. So he'd learned to come back with the holds only partially full on those early runs—it gave him critical reserve maneuverability, acceleration, and—most important—braking energy he needed to win the post-landing "races" that helped bring him to the attention of the Imperial Helmsman's Academy so many years ago. He smiled as he watched the Gorn-Hoff. Whoever was running that ship had never spent much time in Carescria. She was unquestionably moving at her maximum surface speed with no reserve whatsoever.

  Abruptly, Brim moved both damper rays forward until they passed from amethyst through to greenish yellow. A sudden growl rose to a crescendo from the pontoons and Starfury drove forward in a tremendous burst of speed, throwing prodigious cascades of green water and spray backward into the harbor. Easily drawing ahead of the lumbering Leaguer ship, she first smashed it broadside with a tremendous wave that had begun to curl off below her bows, then drowned it from stem to stern in the tremendous backward deluge from her oversize gravs. Moments later Brim hauled back on the power and applied his gravity brakes, watching in the stern viewers as the Leaguer emerged from the cloud of spray, skewed almost sideways. A great wash shot sideways from her steering engines, but the ship was too far out of control for that. She spun end around three complete revolutions, snapping her KA'PPA tower in a great burst of sparks, and came to a stop canting heavily to starboard with her bow ignominiously dragging the surface.

  "Dispatch a signal to the Leaguers," he ordered in a matter-of-fact voice.

  "Ready, Captain," a startled COMM rating answered from a display.

  "Can we be of assistance?" Brim dictated.

  After a moment of silence, the rating cocked his head to one side. "That's all, Captain?" he asked.

  Brim smiled. "It'll do for now."

  The signal went unanswered.

  * * *

  At the entrance to the canal, Brim looked down over Starfury's nose at the little pilot boat in admiration. A real floating boat. He couldn't help wondering what it must be like to look up from a wildly tossing wooden deck to see thirty thousand milstons of starship suspended twenty-five
irals above three great, thrashing imprints in the water little more than a hundred irals distant. The noise alone would be dumbfounding. Yet there they were, two men in the yellow slickers common to seafarers everywhere: one was at the controls, the other signaling with flags using the most basic expressions known in the galaxy. Probably, Brim considered, with only a few basic commands to communicate, it was a lot more pragmatic to rely on flags than try to match the thousands of known COMM protocols.

  As he carefully followed the little boat into Magor's vast system of canals, he got his first close-up look at the city proper. Fleets of ferries, both floating and levitating, darted to and fro among lumbering starfreighters, some larger than Starfury. And dodging catlike through all of the disarray, veritable squadrons of fragile-looking sky-caiques took off and landed at all angles with open decks burdened by cargo bound for riotously colored, tented bazaars that topped the age-blackened stone walls of the canal. To port—past at least half a dozen ranks of gravity pools occupied by merchant ships of every size and description—rose the low hill on which the crowded old city was built. Most common among the structures visible through the whitish mist that Beyazh described as "sea haze" were dome-capped buildings of all sizes and heights, many topped by long, elaborately decorated spikes. The lofty cupolas were overlaid in a profusion of materials, ranging from burnished gold and silver to clay tiles—some of the latter magnificently decorated. Interspersed among the domes were slim towers, many reaching hundreds of irals above the other structures. Here and there between stolid-looking stone walls, trees pushed themselves into the light, dwarfed and stunted by years of struggling with the city for essential room to grow. Whiffets of smoke streamed from chimneys as well as the interstices between domes that must have been streets. In a way, its ancient vigor reminded him of the famed starport of Atalanta, half a galaxy away. But where Atalanta—in appearance—was clearly an outpost of Greyffin IV's Empire, Magor looked foreign to Brim in every respect.

  * * *

  Within the metacycle, Starfury was moored on a gravity pool whose outer perimeter was constructed of stones so badly weather-blackened they reminded Brim of Gimmas Haefdon. Below, a score of thundering repulsion/levitation units dated from at least three centuries in the past. After a moment of consideration, he leaned over the console and directed Tissaurd to order additional levitation energy from Starfury's own gravity units—just in case the ancient units failed. However, he was nearly five cycles too late. Tissaurd had been bothered by the same thing and had already issued me orders on her own. For a moment their eyes met and she smiled, providing Brim with a most bothersome feeling of... well... deficiency. As if something important were missing from his life—something like Tissaurd herself. Taking a deep breath, he attempted to dismiss the strange mood, but perversely, it refused to withdraw.

  "You look pensive, Skipper,'' Tissaurd said with an enigmatic sort of presentiment on her face. "Is everything all right?"

  Brim looked her in the eye, almost embarrassed by his thoughts, which were at that moment decidedly unprofessional. "Fine," he declared absently. "Just a little tired. You'll be in charge while I pay the Empire's respects at the palace," he said, the words stiff and ceremonious in his own ears.

  "Give my regards to His Nibs, the Magnificent," she said with a little laugh. "I'll try to keep things in one piece here until you return."

  Brim made a deep theatrical bow in parody of Beyazh, then strode off aft toward the companionway with a deep frown set on his brow. No time to worry about his own feelings. He had a lot of important things to take care of right now.

  * * *

  Changed into parade dress with a Captain's ceremonial pyrosaber at his left side. Brim stepped off the end of an antique-looking brow into warm, late-afternoon sunlight. He was as ready as Barbousse could make him for his audience with Mustafa IX Eyren, Nabob of Fluvanna. Beneath a stiff, peaked military cap, he wore a Fleet Blue tunic whose narrow lapels were embellished by the single diamond insignia of an Imperial Commander. It was further decorated by a full-dress silver belt, gold buttons, and a gold aiguillette draped over his right shoulder. His white jodhpurs were adorned by two broad blue stripes that ran from his hips into the tops of his riding boots. Hampered by devilish white gloves (that he normally found impossible to draw on without losing his temper at least three times) he felt—as he always did in parade dress—like a doorman for some great, overstuffed hotel. He much preferred the simpler Fleet Cloak that, as ceremony would have it, now draped over his left shoulder like a great, empty sack.

  Out in the parking area two gleaming limousine skimmers hovered just off the age-crazed pavement. One, a sleek limousine of contemporary design and manufacture, displayed the Imperial crest of Greyffin IV. Two figures waited beside this elegant vehicle, a green-clad chauffeur and a lanky individual dressed in the dark gray livery of the Imperial Foreign Service. The other conveyance, a great, top-hampered phaeton of astonishing antiquity—as well as unequivocally perfect maintenance—flew a large Fluvannian national flag from its angular starboard bow. Crimson-uniformed footmen stood rigidly at attention on either side of its open passenger door as if waiting for the Nabob himself. Grinning to himself, Brim wondered who looked the more ridiculous, the footmen or himself.

  At that moment Beyazh stepped from the brow, accompanied by Tissaurd. "Welcome to my little Universe, Captain Brim," he rumbled, "I see that your embassy has acted with its accustomed efficiency, so I shall not offer a lift to the palace. Besides," he added under his breath with a wink at Tissaurd, "I am certain they will want to brief you on the latest concerning the bloody idiot Pasha Radiman Korfuzzier."

  "Who?" Brim asked.

  "Hmm," Beyazh mused. "If you don't already know, perhaps it would be better that you find out from your own people.''

  "I don't understand," Brim protested with a frown.

  "You will, Commander," Beyazh said. Winking at Tissaurd, he started off for the antique limousine, followed by two of Starfury's ratings and the unruly shuffle of traveling cases that accompanied him on his arrival at Starfury's boarding chamber. "I shall join you later. Brim, during your audience with Mustafa Eyren," he called over his shoulder.

  Tissaurd turned to reenter the brow. "I don't know anything about it, Skipper," she said. "Honest."

  Brim chuckled. "I believe you, Number One," he replied as she started up the moving stairs.

  Moments later the Foreign Service man was at his side. A tall, slim man with narrow face, balding head, and intelligent, piercing eyes, he had the serious anonymous demeanor of a lifetime government executive. "Commander Brim," he said, extending his hand—and a holobadge with his picture. "The name's Saltash, George Saltash. Welcome to 'Hospitable Magor,' as the tourist brochures put it." His face broke into a lopsided grin. "We watched your landing out on the bay," he said. "Glad to see Nergol Triannic's bloody minions get what they deserved."

  "It appears as if Leaguers try to play rough around here," Brim observed, relieved at once that the man didn't sound like a CIGA. "They certainly wouldn't get away with that sort of bilge at any of the other major space ports," he added as they walked across the pavement toward the Imperial limousine. "And through the whole thing, our friend Beyazh was doing everything he could to make me take a more aggressive role. Interesting sort of chap,"

  "Interesting chap, indeed," Saltash observed, watching the ancient Fluvannian skimmer lurch out of the parking lot. "Seems to know everything we know, at just about the same time we learn it."

  "Hmm," Brim pondered momentarily. "He mentioned a Pasha Radiman Korfuzzier. Called him a bloody idiot, or something."

  Saltash chuckled grimly. " Well, there you are," he said. "I'm here personally to tell you about that same bloody idiot—which he certainly is." He nodded to the chauffeur and climbed in, motioning Brim to follow. "And the reason I'm here is because the information about Korfuzzier is so sensitive they didn't want to beam it to your ship outside intelligence channels. So much for encryption."
>
  Brim followed the man through the opening, gripping the clumsy pyrosaber so he wouldn't trip himself. "Pretty serious stuff, eh?" he asked as the heavy door closed silently behind him.

  Saltash nodded emphatically. "The League's trying to jump in here with both feet," he said, tapping on the window that separated the passenger compartment from the driver. "To the palace, Reynolds."

  "Aye, Mr. Saltash," the chauffeur replied. Effortlessly, the heavy skimmer lifted and accelerated through a narrow alleyway between mountainous stacks of packing boxes, scattering furry little animals right and left as it gained momentum. After about a thousand irals, this opened onto a somewhat wider thoroughfare that ran between a canyon of squalid—clearly ancient—goods houses, some crumbling from their very antiquity, others relatively new.

  "Somehow, I am far from surprised to hear about the Leaguers," Brim chuckled. "I can't imagine they wouldn't want to wield a lot of influence here, considering that nearly one hundred percent of our Drive crystals now come from this dominion."

  "Indeed," Saltash agreed, almost offhandedly. "But there is a good deal more to it than that. You see, Triannic's friends have decided to annex the whole dominion, and are even now in the midst of their final plans...." As he spoke, the chauffeur veered smoothly left into a cross street, then headed out across a wide bridge whose side lanes were clogged by a riotous confusion of tents in which merchants seemed to be offering every sort of merchandise recognized in the known Universe.

  The bridge, at least, was one Brim recognized from the air, and he was able to get his bearings as the limousine weaved and dodged through the clamorous traffic. Once back over land, the crowded avenue veered to starboard and continued directly for the center of a colossal, dome-topped building.

  While the chauffeur fought his way along the teeming thoroughfare, Saltash provided Brim with information received only that morning, courtesy of the same Sodeskayan Intelligence services that had time and time again proven to be nearly infallible. According to the Bears, Pasha Radiman Korfuzzier, an unintelligent and rather hotheaded brother of the Fluvannian Grand Potentate, had been carrying on an affair with a beautiful woman who, unknown to him, was a clandestine agent of the League. By clever manipulation, she had made Korfuzzier insanely jealous of the League's own Ambassador—who, himself, was ignorant of the plot. The agent had been given permission from Tarrott to "sacrifice" the Ambassador by having him publicly murdered by her royal lover—thus precipitating a carefully orchestrated campaign of denunciation against the Fluvannian government that would culminate in a "provoked" League invasion and takeover.