by David Drake
"We understand you perfectly, madam," Franz Streseman said in a voice that could have struck sparks from steel. He started to get into the car.
"Just a minute, buddy," Platt snapped, thrusting her arm out in front of the young Grantholmer. If she'd done that to a local, she'd have been handed the limb back with the fingers missing, but she obviously figured it was safe to bully passengers from a luxury starship. They wouldn't make a scene.
Platt turned her attention to Wanda in the driver's seat. "What kind of weapons you got in there?" she demanded.
The deputy, a fat drunk named Boardman, with a billiard-ball scalp and dried vomit on his vest, watched the proceedings from behind an automatic shotgun. If he did start shooting, he was as likely to cut his superior in half as he was to do whatever passed for his intention, but that wouldn't help whoever else was around during the wild volley.
"Weapons?" Wanda said in open amazement. "Why, none. I'm just here to pick up a distressed passenger from my ship."
Platt bent to check the empty luggage spaces under the seats. Rental vehicles were built without frills like paneling and insulated bodies. This car obviously carried nothing but the Trident officer herself.
"Surely it's not illegal to be armed in Tidal, Marshal?" Ran asked.
Someone in a passing car jeered and threw a fruit skin at Platt. It slapped her pants leg. She didn't appear to notice. "Don't you be telling me what's against the law here, buddy!" she snarled. "We don't need Earthmen telling us what's what!"
She lowered her arm and backed away. Franz nodded curtly and climbed into the car. Ran followed, calling, "Our government will protest about this!"
"Fuck you outsiders!" Platt cried. "Just because some broad goes off for a good time with a couple local boys, you wanna make it a crime! Well, I'm not having you starting a shootout in my jurisdiction!"
Boardman, her deputy, belched. He'd been doing that regularly since Ran and Franz appeared to make their complaint. Tidal needed some sort of officialdom, however minor; the trouble was that in a society which prided itself so thoroughly on rugged individualism, the sort of folks willing to take municipal jobs were incapable of handling any job competently.
Wanda put the car in gear. It rode even more harshly than the taxi had. "What was that charade about?" she asked.
"Just that," Ran agreed. "A charade. If we didn't make a formal complaint like civilized people, they'd figure that we were going to behave like locals—and be ready for us when we did."
"They, in this case," Wanda said, "being a rancher named Humboldt who came here from Grantholm thirty years back. He's not in a big way of business, but he's got about a dozen hired hands at any given time."
Wanda looked like a nervous driver because her head and eyes were constantly in motion. Ran noticed that her hands and feet were steady on the controls, however, making only necessary corrections and those small ones. The car was headed back toward Longleat and the Empress.
"How do you know this?" Franz demanded. The front seat was wide enough for three slim people, but there was nothing for him to hold onto. The slick fabric cover had him sliding into one officer, then the other.
"She used Bridge to penetrate the municipal data banks," Ran explained. "It was long odds they'd cleared the business with their tame law, just to avoid accidents."
"Nope," said Wanda with a smile. "It was easier than that. The kidnappers called her father, the minister, and I back-traced the call to the Humboldt ranch. Then I checked the records office."
Ran grimaced. "How did Lin react?" he asked. "I suppose they want him to turn over all his data to get his daughter back."
"Probably," Wanda agreed, "but I didn't let the call through. Bridge'll keep noting a fault until somebody removes the block I put on."
She turned and leaned forward to be able to catch Ran's eyes. "This is going to be a real embarrassment if things don't work out," she added. "Though I don't suppose we'll have to worry about answering questions."
Ran nodded grimly.
Wanda pulled off the road as soon as she was beyond the slaughterhouses and their waste dumps, lethal pit-traps in the growing darkness. They continued cross-country at 30 kph, a moderate speed under any other circumstances.
The young Grantholmer's face was set in a hawklike expression in the instrument lights. "Where are we going?" he asked.
"Just out of the way," Ran explained. "We don't want too many people watching the rendezvous. Some of them might guess what was going on."
A great beast with wrinkled skin and tusks like shovels loomed up in the driving lights. Wanda wrenched the steering wheel hard, but the animal blatted and fled. The tuft of white hair on its tail wobbled like a flag in the beams' side-scatter.
"Ah—Franz?" Ran said. He barely avoided saying "boy" instead of using the youth's name. "You should maybe opt out of this one."
Streseman looked at him. "Of course not," he said crisply. "This is properly my affair, as a man, as a—as a lover, of course. You are the ones who are going beyond what could be expected of your duty."
"It's just possible Commander Kneale would feel that way," Wanda murmured. "He's not the sort to second-guess his people, though."
"What I mean, Franz . . ." Ran said. He rocked forward in his seat as Wanda braked to avoid a straggling line of cattle, their eyes flaring red in the headlights. "What I meant is, now that we know it's Grantholmers who've grabbed Oanh."
"You assumed that, surely?" the youth said coolly. "I've never claimed that all my fellow-countrymen are saints. We have thieves, have murderers; have kidnappers. All the more reason for me to wish to right this wrong."
"The people who did this," Ran continued deliberately, "are going to think of themselves as patriots. And so will a lot of people back on Grantholm if they learn about it."
Franz shrugged. "Stresemans have never been afraid to support the right," he said. "Even when it was unpopular." He was as matter-of-fact as if he'd been discussing the scarlet sunset.
Ran sighed. It must be nice to be so certain about right and wrong. "Were you able to find me a long gun?" he asked Wanda.
"Sorry," she said. "The armory only has pistols and submachine guns. But we'll be at close range, won't we?"
"Who knows?" Ran said. His palms were beginning to feel cold. Until now, he'd been too focused on each next step to worry. "Yeah, I suppose. Maybe a submachine gun, that'll be all right. But I'm no good with short guns."
"Your training was only with rifles?" Franz asked curiously. He seemed perfectly calm.
"There wasn't any training," Ran explained. "I'm from Bifrost. I was a hide hunter before I ran off on a tramp freighter."
He grimaced. "I hated it," he said. He laced his fingers together. "But at the margin of profit on a shagskin or even a sleen, I couldn't afford to miss. And with a rifle, I don't."
"I see," said the youth. He frowned. "How much farther do we drive, then?" he asked.
The sky began to flicker blue. Wanda stuck her head out her side window and craned her neck upward. "I think . . ." she said, "that we've arrived."
She stopped the car and took it out of gear. Even as she did so, Lifeboat 23 from the Empress of Earth coasted to a roaring halt beside the ground vehicle. The boat was only thirty meters long, but as it settled through the dusk it looked as huge as the starliner itself.
The sidehatch was open. Crewman First Class Babanguida stood in the hatchway, lighted by the glare of the magnetic motors reflecting from the grasses. He held a submachine gun in his right hand and, in his left, a rifle as long as those used on Bifrost to hunt the twelve-tonne shagskins.
"Our chariot awaits, gentlemen," said Wanda Holly as she unlatched her door. Then she added, "Boy, is there going to be hell to pay if we blow this one."
* * *
"Here," Wanda said as she handed a long, loose shirt to Franz Streseman. Mohacks, at the controls of the grounded lifeboat, and Babanguida already wore similar overgarments of shimmering fabric. "Put this on. Ran—"
She lifted another from the locker and tossed it to him.
"—here's one for you."
Ran took the shirt absently and laid it beside him. He was checking the sights—holographic, with a bead-in-ghost-ring backup—and mechanism of the rifle Babanguida had given him. It was semi-automatic, with a three-round magazine holding cartridges as long as his hand. The bore was about fifteen millimeters. There were no markings on the receiver and the cartridge headstamp, MN 93, didn't tell him a lot either.
"An insulating wrap?" Franz said doubtfully. "I'm not cold, and it's likely to tangle."
"That cost us a right good amount, sir," Babanguida said. "Thirty-two hundred creds for the gun, and fifty apiece for the shells. He only had twenty-three shells."
"It'll do," Ran muttered. "It isn't an army we're going up against."
"I told you not to buy arms locally," Wanda said sharply. "You're likely to have tipped off Humboldt and von Pohlitz."
Ran fumbled two chips from his pouch and set them on the deck beside him. "This ought to cover . . ." he said as he eased back the charging handle on the empty magazine.
The rifle was two meters long and weighed upwards of twenty kilograms. The complex muzzle brake would bring the recoil down to bearable levels, but the resulting backblast would rattle shingles for a block behind the shooter.
"Oh, I trust you for the money, sir," Babanguida said, though his black hand quickly covered the chips.
Ran snorted. "I don't trust I'll be alive come morning," he said.
The rifle felt good in Ran's hands. It felt just like the weapon he'd used for six years after his father died, to feed and clothe himself and his mother . . . until she died too, and the young hide hunter became a Cold Crewman on the unscheduled freighter Prester John.
"There's local and local, Ms. Holly," said Mohacks from the control chair. "We had some time—and the boat, since the Officer of the Deck had cleared us to take it out. So we looked up an old bastard in a lodge three hundred klicks up in the hills. When he feels like it, he guides folks as want to hunt land whales."
"He wouldn't give his mother the time of day," Babanguida added. "He's not gonna be calling around to see if anybody cares that a sailor bought a rifle."
"We figured," Mohacks said piously, "that if Mr. Colville felt comfortable with a cannon, then it was our job to get him a cannon."
"The reason we told my watch and left yours aboard the Empress," Ran said as he loaded the rifle's magazine, "is that Mohacks and Babanguida aren't going to check the regs before they make a move."
He grinned at his ratings. They grinned back.
"Of course," Ran added, "they probably think there's some money to be made out of this deal."
"I will of course see to it that those helping on this enterprise are properly compensated," Franz said stiffly.
Babanguida chuckled. "Don't you worry yourself, sir," he said. "We figure, when this is over, there's likely to be something laying around that the owners don't need."
"Mind," Mohacks added, "a suitable gratuity wouldn't be misplaced at the end of this—if you keep from getting your head blown off, sir."
"Streseman," Wanda said harshly, "get into your jacket. We'll be using passive infra-red goggles at the start. The insulating fabric will give us a lower thermal signature so that we'll be able to tell each other apart from the locals."
Ran quickly stood and pulled his own shirt over his white uniform. He didn't need the tic in Wanda's cheek or the unexpected sharpness of her tone to tell him that she was right on the edge. They all were, even the seemingly relaxed ratings.
"We don't have any information about the layout of the ranch," Ran said. "Calicheman doesn't have a government that keeps records like that. We've got the exact location the phone calls are coming from. With luck, that's spitting distance of where Oanh is being held. We don't know that."
He took a deep breath. The other four members of the team—not really his team, any more than the fingers belonged to the hand—watched him soberly. Each held a submachine gun and a pouch of extra magazines from the ship's arsenal.
"Mohacks stays with the boat," Ran continued. "The rest of us hit them fast and get out fast with the girl. Chances are they don't have weapons that'll penetrate a lifeboat's plating, but we don't know that for sure either. We've all got helmet links, but try to keep your mouth shut unless you've got something that needs to be said. Any last questions?"
"One thing," said Franz Streseman. He didn't look young any more. "You are all brave, and no doubt you have weapons training. I am the soldier here, however."
He surveyed his four older companions. "Shoot first, shoot to kill," he said coldly. "Don't threaten and don't hesitate. It may be that Oanh will be mistaken for an opponent. I myself may mistake her for an opponent."
Ran hadn't seen anything as bleak as the young Grantholmer's expression since he faced the Cold Crew in Taskerville.
"I say to you," Franz continued, "it is better that Oanh die than that she remain alive in the hands of these folk. I know them, I know their type. She is not human to them. We must not hesitate."
Wanda Holly licked her lips. "And on that cheerful note," she said, "I think it's time to go."
She glanced at the others, then added, "Good luck, fellows. We may all be crazy, but I'm damned glad I know people like you."
"Lift-off," said Mohacks as he engaged the controls. A fireball belched across the prairie. Grass had ignited in the flux of the magnetic motors thrusting the lifeboat up again at a flat angle.
* * *
"Three buildings," Mohacks announced as the terrain came up on his display. This was a lifeboat, not an attack vessel. There weren't any connections to export data from the pilot's console to those braced in the craft's cargo bay. "Looks like a barracks and a big garage across from the boss's house."
The lifeboat rocked and bucked, though 700 kph wasn't as bad in the tubular hull as it would have been in a conventional aircraft whose wingspan would lever turbulence into a hammering. The little vessel had an excellent passenger restraint system, but it wasn't equipped with the quick releases necessary for an assault force. Ran and his three companions wore their weapons slung tight to their chests while they gripped and pressed their boots against stanchions.
"Set us—"Ran began.
"I'm going to set us down in the middle, so the boat's between the barracks and the house," Mohacks continued calmly. "Hang on, I'm going to swing to bring the hatch facing the house."
"Babanguida, watch the barracks," Ran said. "You other two, in the house while I cover you."
Somebody had to do the former job, and Ran knew damned well that neither Wanda nor Franz would accept the order. Wanda was senior to him, and the kid was both a civilian and—as he'd pointed out—the only one of them who'd been trained for this sort of business.
The lifeboat banked hard and braked simultaneously. Ran's feet slipped from the seat stringer where he'd braced them. His legs flailed loose. Babanguida didn't try to grab his superior, knowing that if he did they'd both of them go bouncing around the cabin. Ran's hands clamped like welds to iron, the way they'd done a dozen times in the past when an unexpected shock threatened to fling him into sponge space for the cold remainder of eternity.
Mohacks slid the hatch open before the lifeboat grounded. The cabin filled with the motor roar that the hull insulation had damped to a rumble. Blue glare reflected like chained lightning, and the windblast pummeled those inside.
Ran used his last momentum to throw himself upright when the vessel grated to a halt beneath him. He unstrapped the long rifle and presented it, bracing his left palm on the side of the hatchway and resting the barrel on that outstretched thumb. Wanda, Franz, and Babanguida bolted past him.
The house was rambling and a single story, with four rooms in one portion and a fifth connected to the others by a covered dogtrot. A man looked out the door of the single room, silhouetted by the lamplight behind him.
Ran fired. Th
e muzzle brake of his weapon spewed red flames back to either side. His body rocked with the familiar recoil. He absorbed the thrust with his back muscles instead of fighting it with the bones of his shoulder.
The man Ran shot threw his arms up. The bullet was explosive, but it was meant to penetrate deep within creatures weighing scores of tonnes. The charge burst in the middle of the room, shattering the windows outward in a violet flash.
The lights in the room across the dogtrot went out. The window was a cool rectangle against the building's warm siding. Ran swung and fired again, aiming at the center of the glass.
This bullet also exploded well within the room. Its flash and the miniature shrapnel of the bullet jacket weren't dangerous, the way a bursting grenade would have been, but they must have distracted the kidnappers inside. Franz kicked through the door an instant after the crack! of the 15-mm bullet. His submachine gun lit the interior with ragged yellow flashes. There was no return fire.
Babanguida opened up at the lifeboat's bow, out of Ran's sight. A return bullet clanged off the vessel's sturdy plating, but only one of them, and distant screams proved that the rating wasn't wasting ammo.
The man Ran shot in the single room had slipped to his knees. He gripped the doorjamb with both hands. Wanda Holly pointed her weapon past him, then turned without shooting to follow Franz. The victim slumped further, then rolled supine, his hands clutching the dirt and his boots in the room in which he had died.
Red and yellow flashes quivered within the long end of the building. The local weapons used a propellant that burned deeper in the spectrum than those from the Empress's arsenal. A bullet ricocheted from the building and howled past Ran. It thumped into a cabin bulkhead.
The red flashes reflected from the third room over. Ran aimed at that sidewall, not the window, and blasted the last round in his magazine through what seemed to be some thin cast panelling.
His bolt locked open. Thumbing cartridges from his bandolier loops into the magazine, Ran sprinted toward the far end of the long wing.