If Punisher had been warned, Free Lunch might have an unusually difficult time fulfilling her contract.
The cruiser was likely to be a formidable obstacle. According to his reputation, Captain Dolph Ubikwe had a casual attitude toward UMCP protocol; but there was nothing casual about the way he carried out his orders.
If Darrin Scroyle couldn’t outmaneuver Punisher somehow, he wouldn’t be able to avoid a fight with the warship.
He wasn’t afraid of that. Still he intended to avoid it if he could. His contract with Hashi Lebwohl didn’t require him to be stupid.
Among mercenaries he was an old man. He had gray hair on his chest and head. He’d learned to forgive his paunch for being flabby. He let himself limp when his sciatica flared up; instinctively he distrusted the nerve implants which might have cured the ailment for him. By now he was old enough to know that nothing was ever simple.
That no longer bothered him. He and his ship had survived their uncompromising life for so long because he was relatively simple himself: he could concentrate on the complexities which affected him, and let the ones which didn’t go.
“How does it look?”
Alesha asked her question from the master’s bunk, where she lay waiting for him to finish what he was doing. Like him, she was naked. And like him, she was no longer young. Time made her once-proud breasts sag at the pull of Free Lunch’s internal spin. Her habitual seriousness had been twisted awry, so that her frown of concentration now resembled a crooked grin. She had less stamina than he remembered, and perhaps a bit less appetite.
Nevertheless she was precious to him. He loved the comfort of her soft skin, even though it was no longer as taut as she wished; loved the taste of her nipples, even though they no longer hardened so readily against his tongue. And he treasured her refusal to dismiss complexities which meant nothing to him.
She was Alesha Hardaway, his targ first; but she was also his first cousin. Mercenary ships were like that: often interbred. They took on outsiders rarely. Outsiders who shared the same code, the same commitment—outsiders who could be trusted—were hard to find. Most of Darrin’s crew had come from other mercenary vessels after time or violence, bad luck or bad judgment, had cost them the ability to fulfill their contracts. Alesha had been with him aboard Free Lunch from the beginning.
“About as we expected,” he answered. Like her question, his reply was easy, companionable. “According to Trumpet’s last signal, she’s crossed into Valdor’s system. Punisher has already gone after her. We’ll do the same as soon as I tell the bridge how I want it done.
“As for that other ship—the one coming in from Thanatos Minor—we haven’t seen her for twenty-four hours. I don’t know where she is. So I’m going to assume she’s there, too”—he tapped his schematic, although Alesha couldn’t see it from where she lay—“trying to get to Trumpet ahead of all of us.”
Alesha considered for a moment, then asked, “How do you want it done?”
He turned his back on the board so that he could look at her. She faced him on her belly, with her chin propped on her folded arms. Dimpled by time, her flanks curved toward the cleft between her legs.
“I guess I’ve known you too long,” he responded. “For some reason I’m sure that’s not the question you want to ask first.”
She gave him her twisted frown. “Am I that obvious?”
He pursed his mouth. “I wouldn’t have called it ‘obvious. I’ve just known you for a long time. As a general rule I do try to learn from experience.”
“All right, then.” Her gaze held his thoughtfully. “I wish you would tell me again why we’re doing this. It’s going to be dangerous.”
She may well have been the only person aboard who would have asked such a question. He hoped so. Nevertheless he had no trouble thinking of an answer.
“Because we’re being paid what the danger is worth.”
That was his code: the code. Get paid what the job was worth. Then do it. Or turn it down and forget about it. No second-guessing; no after-the-fact scruples; no self-pity; no cold feet. Get paid for the job and then do it. Otherwise life didn’t make much sense.
The alternative was vampirism: living off other people’s blood and sweat. If life didn’t make sense, he might as well have been an illegal. Or a cop.
Alesha didn’t think that way, however. She shared his commitments, but she was bedeviled by gray areas and complications.
“How can you be sure?” Her sober gaze held him. “The whole thing stinks of plots and counterplots. How can you know how much the danger is worth?”
He shrugged. “I can’t. But I’ll stand by my own decisions. I didn’t take the job blindly. And I like what we’re getting paid for it.”
She shook her head. “There are different kinds of blindness. Did Lebwohl tell you why he wants Trumpet killed?”
“You know he didn’t. He’s a client. I don’t expect him to tell me what his reasons are.”
“Then how—?”
“All right.” Darrin didn’t need to feign patience. If she hadn’t asked him such questions, he would have valued her less. And he wasn’t afraid to admit that the circumstances were complex. Only his commitment to his own actions needed to be kept simple. “Here’s how I see it.
“Trumpet is a UMCP ship.” While he explained, he resumed scratching through the hair on his chest. “She went to Thanatos Minor with a famous illegal in command and Com-Mine’s former deputy chief of Security for crew—presumably some kind of covert operation. Maybe she was sent to blow up Billingate? I don’t know. But I do know this. While she was there, the Bill managed to lose the contents of an ejection pod which was originally supposed to be delivered to the Amnion by Nick Succorso.
“Succorso met Thermopyle in a bar. During the fight before the planetoid blew, Succorso and the Amnion each lost a ship. But by that time Trumpet had considerably more than a crew of two. We know because we saw them go EVA—and come back. It sure looked like Captain’s Fancy got herself killed to keep them alive.
“After that Trumpet left just in time to escape being caught in the shock wave. But she didn’t head for human space, which was what any sane ship would have done. Instead eight or ten hours went by before she came back over—and when she did, it wasn’t from the direction of Thanatos Minor.
“In the meantime Min Donner had already sent out a reception committee to welcome her back. But she didn’t stop for it. In fact, none of us would have seen her at all if she hadn’t paused to flare that listening post. And then she turned straight for Massif-5, acting like a ship who wanted to have nothing to do with the UMCP—except for the fact that she left a nice, convenient homing signal behind her, and came here by careful stages, so she would be easy to follow.”
With mild vexation, Darrin noticed that he was making the skin of his chest raw. Scratching too hard. Alesha would have reminded him to stop if she hadn’t been concentrating on what he said. Frowning at his hand, he set it down on his thigh.
“At the same time another ship appeared out of forbidden space, burning as hard as she could straight from Thanatos Minor after trumpet.”
He spread his palms. “How smart do I have to be before I can guess what all that means?”
Alesha listened as if she were memorizing every word. “Tell me.”
He couldn’t suppress a smile. Sometimes he liked her so much that he wanted to laugh out loud. However, he didn’t hesitate to answer her seriously.
“Succorso had a cargo the Amnion want back. He promised it to them so they would let him live, but then he diverted it to Billingate. He and Thermopyle stole it from the Bill—they’ve got it with them now.
“Naturally they don’t want to hand it over to the cops. They want it for themselves. They’re illegals—they won’t do what the cops tell them unless someone holds a gun to their heads. At the same time they have no intention of facing an Amnion incursion on their own. For all they know, the ship after them is Calm Horizons. They wouldn’t sta
nd a chance against her, despite Trumpet’s fancy equipment. So they leave a trail for Punisher to follow. They’re trying to keep the cruiser between them and that other ship.
“Punisher wants their cargo. And of course she doesn’t want the Amnion to get it. But Hashi Lebwohl doesn’t trust a mere UMCP cruiser for a job like that. He doesn’t want the Amnion to get that cargo. He doesn’t want Succorso and Thermopyle to keep it. And maybe—just maybe—he wants to keep it away from Min Donner. Maybe he doesn’t like to think about what someone that pure will do with it. Whatever it is.
“So he hires us.”
“For insurance,” Alesha put in softly.
“Insurance.” Darrin nodded. “Exactly. He’s paying us to cover his ass.”
He paused for a moment to let her examine the implications, then went on, “In other words, I don’t think anyone is plotting against us. If Hash! Lebwohl is afraid of us because we ‘know too much’ about what happened on Thanatos Minor, he could have given Punisher orders to take us out. Captain Ubikwe would have done it—he was itching for the chance. As far as ED is concerned, anybody who uses Cleatus Fane for cover must be illegal.
“But Lebwohl didn’t do that. Instead he offered us a contract. He told us about that homing signal. And he gave us what looks like a pretty complete rundown on Trumpet’s capabilities. He isn’t worried about what we know or don’t know. He can trust us to keep it to ourselves. And there’s no other reason why he might want to get rid of us.
“What do you think?” he finished with a small smile. “Are we getting paid what the danger is worth?”
Alesha didn’t answer immediately. Instead she countered, “That brings me back to my original question. What are you going to tell the bridge? As long as we’re this far behind Trumpet and Punisher, we’ll never fulfill our contract. We need to get ahead of them somehow—or between them, if we can’t get ahead. But how can we do that? We don’t know where they’re going.”
However, Darrin had a counter of his own ready. “As long as we’re guessing, what do you suppose that cargo is?”
She lifted her shoulders. “I have no idea. I can’t think of anything the Amnion would value low enough to let Succorso steal it, and yet high enough to risk an act of war to get it back.”
He tightened his mouth so that he wouldn’t grin. “You’re worrying about reasons again. They’re just smoke—they confuse the issue.
“What do we know about the cargo itself?” Because he liked explaining himself to Alesha, he didn’t sound pedantic. “Succorso sent it toward Tranquil Hegemony in an ejection pod. What kind of cargo—what kind of treasure—fits in an ejection pod?
“Something physical, that’s obvious. It isn’t just data or secrets. And nothing raw or unprocessed. That wouldn’t be worth an incursion into human space.” As if it had a mind of its own, his hand rose to his chest. He pulled it down firmly. “Some kind of equipment? A device? I don’t think so. The Amnion can reproduce their own devices whenever they want—and they know we can’t. Human methods can’t replicate their technologies.”
Alesha seemed able to study his face, watch him think, for hours at a time. “What’s left?”
“Something organic,” he replied promptly. “Something living. Maybe even something that needs an ejection pod’s life support to survive.”
He could be sure of this because he was sure of himself.
“Like what?” she asked.
“That doesn’t matter.” He waved both hands to dismiss the question. “We don’t need to know. The point is that we can guess where Trumpet is headed.”
For a moment she frowned in confusion. Then her eyes widened, and she gave a sigh of recognition.
“Deaner Beckmann. The Lab. Because the cargo is organic.”
Proud of her—and secretly pleased with himself—Darrin nodded firmly.
“So we’re going to stop following this nice trail they’ve left us. Instead we’re going to choose our own point of insertion into Massif-5.” He turned back to his board and indicated a spot in the schematic, even though she couldn’t see it. “There. Which is about as risky a gap crossing as we can make and still plan on living through it.”
His crew and his ship had done such things before, when circumstances required it. He trusted them. Nevertheless he spent a moment reconsidering his decision while he explained it.
“That will put us—oh, roughly a million k on the other side of Beckmann’s swarm.” If she could find a flaw in what he meant to do, he wanted her to say so now. “By the time we set it up—change course and velocity, go into tach, resume tard, pull back around to the swarm—we can be pretty sure we won’t beat Trumpet But we’ll be hours ahead of Punisher.
“And we’ll be in position. We can use the swarm for cover while we hunt Trumpet. If we’re lucky, Punisher won’t even spot us there.”
Once again he put his back to the board, waiting for Alesha’s reaction.
“What about that other ship?” she asked.
He frowned thoughtfully. “That’s a problem. We can’t know where she is at this point. But here’s how I see it.
“If she knows about the Lab—if she can guess Trumpet is headed there—she isn’t Amnion. She’s a human ship working for them, maybe because she likes what they pay her.”
His mouth twisted ruefully. More than once he’d asked himself if he would accept a contract from the Amnion. Was his commitment to the code really as simple as he liked to believe? He didn’t know. All his life he’d avoided the question by making sure the situation never arose.
“That means several things,” he continued. “It means she doesn’t carry as much firepower as a warship. Trumpet might be able to survive an engagement. And it means she probably won’t attack while Trumpet is anywhere near the Lab. She won’t want to have Beckmann’s guns turned on her. Also she might not want him to know whose side she’s on.
“If she’s anywhere close enough to give us trouble, I think we’ll have time to figure out what we want to do about her.”
Alesha nodded as he finished, agreeing with him. Apparently she couldn’t-find any flaws. Slowly one of her rare smiles grew across her face.
“Have I ever told you that I think you’re good at this?”
Grinning, he drawled, “You’ve mentioned it from time to time. Not that I mind hearing it.” Then he let the way he felt about her make him grave. “I just hope you’re right. I’m not in the mood to do anything stupid. I like living too much.”
Without warning, her eyes turned moist. Blinking, she dropped her gaze. “I know how you feel.” At last she answered his earlier question. Are we getting paid what the danger is worth? “I’m growing old. That seems to make everything harder. I don’t want to lose you.”
Because he was the master of his vessel, responsible for her and all her people, he was tempted to say, Don’t worry, you won’t lose me. Whatever happens will happen to both of us. But he knew Alesha better than to offer her false comfort.
Instead he used his console intercom to talk to the bridge, give his orders. Then he went to bed.
He might not get another chance.
MIN
Bobbing and weaving down the corridor, Min Donner fought to remember her zero-g reflexes and cursed Dolph Ubikwe for summoning her from her cabin. It was craziness to be out here, working her way along the passages, when the klaxons might sound at any moment, warning her that she was about to be slammed to pulp on the ship’s steel.
She’d been station-bound too long. And when she traveled, she was usually aboard ships with internal spin. She’d grown accustomed to comfortable g; to weight as well as mass; to environments where her nerves and even her veins knew which way was up. Punisher’s version of freefall—punctuated by abrupt jolts, hull roar, and pressure whenever the cruiser shifted course—was making her sick.
Either that, or she’d become old without realizing it.
Punisher hadn’t been designed to run this way. She fought without g, of course: centr
ifugal inertia restricted her maneuverability. But for other duties she’d been built to use spin. There were too many people aboard, engaged in too many different activities. They could all move and work, sleep and recreate more effectively when they were anchored by their own weight.
But Captain Ubikwe had ordered the ship to secure for zero g so that she could catch up with Trumpet. Core displacement was distorting navigation across the gap. Each time Punisher resumed tard, she lost too much time reacquiring the gap scout’s homing signal. And the displacement was getting worse. With every passing hour, it became more and more likely that Free Lunch or—was it Soar?—would reach Trumpet first. If they knew or could guess where she was headed.
Punisher’s crew had been sailing under what were, in effect, battle conditions for the better part of twenty-four hours before the cruiser achieved insertion into the Massif-5 system.
And now she had no choice except to go on without g. For ships moving at Punisher’s speed, and Trumpet’s, Valdor Industrial’s system was a lethal maze of obstacles and hazards. The added burden of centrifugal inertia was too dangerous.
Without Trumpet’s homing signal to guide her, the encroaching ship from forbidden space may well have lost the trail a long way back. But Free Lunch might conceivably be ahead of Punisher. Min couldn’t begin to guess where the lies she’d been told ended. As far as she knew, it was perfectly possible that Hashi Lebwohl still controlled where Angus was headed, and had already passed that information to Free Lunch.
For that reason Punisher’s communications people were doing their best to break the code in which Warden Dios’ message for Nick Succorso had been embedded.
Maybe those code-strings don’t mean anything, Dolph had said. But if they do, I want to know it.
The cruiser urgently needed to understand what was going on.
In the meantime Punisher forged ahead Despite her far greater mass, the difficulties of reacquiring Trumpet’s signal, and the effects of a truly unfortunate insertion into the system, Captain Ubikwe’s command strove to keep up with the swift, agile gap scout.
Chaos and Order: The Gap Into Madness Page 35