Patriot’s Stand mda-9

by Mike Moscoe

  When she backpedaled to the wall, three guys were down in front of Chato. That heavy pack was doing a job. But now there were ten attackers in front of them. “Do it right this time, you guys, so I won’t need to get no more,” someone ordered.

  The knife guy came at Grace, slow, crouching low. The club guy was using his weapon more to poke at Jobe. The one Grace had almost given a new belly button was back, only now he held a trash can lid ahead of him.

  Six went for Chato.

  He knocked two down, but the third, a big guy, got a hand on the pack and started a tug-of-war. Distracted, the Navajo missed the guy who hit him low, knocking him down. In a flash, two thugs were kicking him.

  “Help Chato!” Grace shouted, taking a swipe at the arm of the guy with the trash can lid. He yelped and got in the way of the club guy, but the knife got a good slice of Grace’s right arm.

  She switched the comb to her left hand—not as good but not bleeding—and realized there were even more attackers. Two of them held Jobe’s arms while two more slugged him. Four were kicking Chato, while a fifth raised the pack high and made ready to slam it down on the Navajo’s head.

  The guy with the knife had a wicked twist to his lips where other people had smiles. “You and me, girlie, are going to have fun,” he said, stepping in with two more right behind him.

  Out of the night came a cry. “Spirits of Wind and Fire to me!”

  “For Scotland and St. Andrew!” mingled with it.

  Suddenly there was only the knife guy in front of Grace. “Huh,” he said, turning around to check on the gang that was no longer there. Grace lunged, putting six inches of steel spike into his gut. She twisted it as he screamed, then pulled back as he dropped his knife to clutch at himself.

  She turned to aid Jobe, but he was slamming together the two guys who had failed to notice that things had changed and were still holding tight to his arms. Their heads hit with the sound of ripe melons smashing, and Jobe turned with Grace to help Chato.

  The Navajo was still down, but there were four others on the ground with him, one with a chest caved in by the pack. The big fellow holding the pack was doubled over, the fist of a white-haired man deep in his gut. The attacker went down as the pale man chopped expertly at his neck.

  A man in a skirt was helping Chato up. No, that was a kilt, complete with sporran. What had they fallen into?

  “Thank you, whoever you are,” Grace said, offering her hand, then pulling it back when she realized it was covered with her own blood. “Sorry about that,” she said.

  “Only sorry we were not here soon enough to save you such bloodletting,” the man said, hustling them around a corner and out of sight of the carnage. A bright liquor store sign cut the darkness, showing Grace the man’s white eyebrows, white hair and pink eyes—an albino. “I am Benjork Lone Cat, and this is my associate, Danny O’Bannon, at your service.”

  “Aye, you kin say that again.” The kilted man laughed around a brogue that would be thick even on Alkalurops.

  “I don’t know what would have happened if you had been a few seconds later in arriving,” Jobe said, shouldering his pack.

  “We would hae missed out on some good fun,” Danny said.

  “We had better look at your arm, ma’am,” Benjork said.

  “Grace. Grace O’Malley,” Grace said as she offered her bleeding arm. The man produced a first-aid kit from a pouch in the back of his belt, cleaned her wound, and applied a bandage.

  “Thank you very much, Mr…” Grace struggled with his name.

  “Most everyone not crazy calls him Ben,” Danny provided.

  “Crazy?” Jobe said.

  “I was born a Nova Cat,” the albino said, as if that explained everything.

  “That’s not as bad as the new ones prancing about, Spirit Cats, but he’s still a bit daft, if you know my meaning,” Danny said, also as if that explained everything.

  Grace concluded further explanations would add nothing.

  “Where are you headed?” Danny asked

  “We took rooms at the Hilltop Refuge,” Grace told them.

  Danny snorted. “You have rooms at the Hilltop Recycler, you just got beat up two ways to Thursday, and you’re going back there? That’s good. That’s very good. I don’t know what you’re lugging in that sack, man, but you can as well just start dropping little bits of it along the street here. You’ll have about as much left tomorrow as you will if you go back there.”

  “What?” Grace said. “The truck driver who brought us back from the Roughrider post today suggested the Hillman’s Last Stand. Should we have gone there?”

  “They are run by the same gang,” the albino said quietly. “With the HPG down, I imagine it is much harder for off-worlders to find out about conditions where they are going. Danny, cut them some slack.”

  “If I do, someone else will cut them their throats.”

  “So we should find other lodgings for tonight,” Jobe said.

  “If you want to be alive tomorrow,” Danny answered.

  “What would you suggest?” Grace asked.

  “A less boisterous part of town,” Ben said, “that benefits from offering the likes of Danny and me lodging in return for our walking their streets at night.” He pointed in the opposite direction. Grace found her bandage a good fit, and the three found the advice equally good, so they let the albino lead the way.

  “The gangs have about learned to stay off our turf. A pity—we hae to go elsewhere for sport or this nut will take off on one of his dream things,” Danny said, ambling with them.

  “Dream things?” Chato said.

  “You mentioned you were at the Roughriders’ camp. Were you looking for a job with them?” Ben said, changing the topic.

  Grace thought a moment, then told their rescuers, “I’m a miner from Alkalurops. At the spaceport they mistook us for recruits and drove us out to their camp. We corrected that error, and a major showed us around. I want mercs to train our militia. He wanted a standard defense contract. We parted company.”

  “Your error would be self-evident if you thought it through,” Ben said. “You mine every day. You learn to trust your machine, your instincts, your coworkers. You know what you can depend on when matters take an unexpected turn. In battle you can depend on two things: that matters will always take unexpected turns and that you can depend only on the man or woman next to you who has been there, training day and night, for as long as you care to remember. A militia’s a waste of air.”

  “That’s what the Major said,” Grace snapped. “But it’s our home we’re fighting for. Not cash, not plunder. Those are our neighbors and our livelihood. We will fight for them.”

  “Your eyes say you have fought, and recently. Was it with militia? Did it go well?” Ben asked.

  “No,” Grace said. “We didn’t know how to fight. You can’t expect us to know everything the first day on the job.”

  “And how many lived to see a second day on that job?”

  Grace could feel her face getting as red as her hair. She struggled with anger, both at Ben for being so hardheaded when his point was made, and at herself and her people for being caught so unprepared. “No one expected the HPG to go down,” she said, then turned to Danny and changed the subject herself. “You were formerly a Highlander?” She left the real question hanging.

  “Aye, as you can see. No one expected the HPG to go down. A lot o’ us mercenaries were on the beach.”

  “But now they’re hiring anyone who walks off a DropShip. What unit hired you and him?” she said, nodding at Ben.

  “She got us there, Ben, me good man. No one wants to see the front or back of the two of us. You have any problem employees in your mining business?”

  Grace nodded. “A few.”

  “Well, you’re looking at two great mercs that no one wants to rehire. Isn’t she, Ben?”

  “The Roughriders give you a cost proposal?” Ben asked.

  Grace produced it, and they paused under a worki
ng light while he examined it. “On the high side, but for a fully supported independent command maybe not too high in today’s busy market.”

  “Can you suggest anyone not busy?” Grace asked.

  “Roughriders are plenty busy,” Danny said. “Remember that gig they got on Nusakan, the one with the gag rule that required them to take their armored DropShip out of storage?”

  “I remember it,” Ben said.

  “Nusakan was the planet that guy was from, what’s-his-name, that was offering to defend us,” Jobe said.

  “Alfred Santorini,” Grace provided.

  “And those raiders sure had a DropShip,” Jobe said.

  Ben whirled on him. “I am a mercenary. I have my honor. You give me a contract to defend your planet, I will defend it with my life. You contract for me to attack your enemy, I will pursue that contract to forty percent casualties. I am a fighting man. I am not a thief. None of us are.”

  Grace put out an arm to Jobe, pushing him gently away from the albino, who now showed red in the poor lighting. “I don’t think we need to pursue this further, Jobe.”

  “Yes, definitely. No offense intended,” said the big man.

  “But you’re always saying, Ben, that the times are a-changing,” Danny said, elbowing his buddy.

  “Honor never changes,” Ben spat back.

  “Is this the place?” Chato said, pointing with his open hand to a sign proclaimingAUNTIE VIRGINIA ’S PLACE,ROOMS CHEAP , though most of the neon letters were long dead.

  “Tell Auntie we sent you,” Danny said. “If I were you, I’d wait until there was plenty of daylight to go back to the Refuge for me kits.”

  “We will,” Grace said. “Good night, and thanks again.”

  Auntie had a large room to rent to the three of them, and breakfast was included in the rate. The next morning over cereal and juice, Grace talked to Auntie’s granddaughter, Niki. She had just gotten her driver’s license, might be able to get the car for the day, and claimed to know where all the merc camps were.

  “They get drunk or otherwise delayed, and miss the last ride back. It’s either pay some townie or wait for an MP to collect them, and I’m a lot cheaper than a month’s pay and restriction. I’ve been doing this for the last two years.”

  “I thought you just got your license,” Jobe said.

  “And?” the teenager said, batting long lashes.

  “The mercs don’t give you any problems?” Grace asked. Around here, subjects seemed to need regular changing. Worse than a squalling baby, she thought.

  “My brother used to practice hand-to-hand on me before he went to the Twenty-first Centauri. No drunk merc’s gonna give me any trouble.”

  “We need to pick up our gear at the Hilltop,” Grace said.

  “I’ll go with you. I know the clerks; they live around here.” That told Grace she’d slept in the right part of town.

  At the Hilltop, Niki took Grace by the elbow and headed straight for the desk with Jobe and Chato right behind. “Timmy, I’ll be collecting this lady’s kit. Hers and the two guys with her.”

  “Whaddaya mean?” a freckled-faced kid Niki’s age answered.

  “They’re staying with Auntie now. Give me their duffels.”

  “They paid for two nights.”

  “We’re not asking for our money back,” Jobe said. “We’re asking for our kits.”

  Niki got right in Timmy’s face. “You heard the man. Now give.”

  Sullenly, the kid produced the two duffels. They returned to the old four-door Niki was driving.

  Chato frowned. “They’d already emptied our rooms.”

  “Probably rerented ’em when you didn’t get back from supper,” Niki said. “Happens a lot, I’m told.”

  “And the police?” Chato asked.

  “If somebody decides to join one of the more fly-by-night merc outfits on a sudden whim, who’s to keep track? As Ben likes to say, ‘The times, they are a-changing.’”

  “Speaking of change,” Grace said, “we need to stop at the port to check on some cargo. Could you drive by there on the way out?”

  “No problemo—I know the way like the back of Ma’s hand,” Niki said as she pulled into traffic. But the stop at the port turned into a major problemo. Grace presented her ID and Wilson’s smart card and asked to have the proceeds of the cargo’s sale added to it.

  “No can do, lady. The cargo ain’t sold yet because I don’t have a Certificate of Ownership.”

  Grace gave the man her best mine owner frown and repeated, “Certificate of Ownership.”

  “Listen, lady, I don’t make up the rules, and I didn’t crash the HPG. With it down, I can’t call hither and yon to verify who owns what. Somebody smarter than me came up with this Certificate of Ownership. You got one—no problems. You don’t got one—I’ve got to wait until one comes back on some DropShip. Didn’t nobody tell you?”

  “No,” Grace muttered and asked to see a sample certificate. The date on the form was only nine months old. Maybe the requirement had reached Alkalurops, maybe it hadn’t. Anyway, no one had told Wilson, and his cargo didn’t come with a certificate attached for Grace.

  “So you won’t sell the cargo without a certificate.”

  “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. But the market’s soft as a baby’s heinie, and nothing’s moving today.”

  “So how long until I can get some stones credited to me?”

  “Three months. Could be a year. Depends on ship traffic.”

  When Grace got back to the car and settled in, she quickly brought the guys up to date on their new problem. “Santorini?” Chato asked.

  “Maybe. Or maybe just new rules we didn’t know about.”

  “My bet’s on Santorini,” Jobe said.

  Grace sighed. “But we need money.”

  “You have anything else to sell?” Niki piped up.

  Grace pulled a loose diamond from her pocket. “Some gems.”

  “Then you need a jeweler,” the girl said. “And I know just the guy. You’ll love him.” Ten minutes later Grace was ushered into a small shop with solid steel shutters on its front windows.

  “Abe Goldman, Grace and her off-world friends are staying at Auntie’s,” Niki said by way of introduction.

  “Always glad to be of service to travelers,” a small man with wisps of gray hair and long delicate fingers said, with a smile that might or might not have any value.

  Grace pulled the diamond from her pocket. The man produced a jeweler’s eyepiece and studied it. “Lovely, fine color, well cut. I wish you had brought this to me a few years ago,” he said, handing it back to Grace.

  “A few years ago?”

  “The collapse of the HPG has not been kind to markets. With taxes up, fewer people are buying jewelry. When we jewelers could talk to one another, we might invest on one hard-hit planet and sell on another more prosperous. Now such investments are more a gamble. If you need the money, I could probably afford to buy a few fine diamonds such as these from you, but I could not give you anywhere near the price they deserve.”

  Grace reflected a moment. Was this just an opening gambit? Certainly the jeweler’s observations were supported by recent events. She signaled to Jobe. He opened his pack and carefully held up a golden pendant to the light, letting the diamonds on it sparkle. Then he set it on the table before the jeweler. Next he produced a silver bracelet banded in turquoise. The old man’s eyes grew wide, and his nostrils flared. If Abe had been forcing a poker face before, his control slipped as he reached almost reverently first for the silver item, then the gold. Each was examined in a silence broken only by sudden small intakes of breath.

  “My word. You see these so rarely. The art of old Terra has been lost. What passes for it is all machine made. This is real,” he said, glancing up at Jobe, then at Chato. “Hand-worked silver and turquoise, made the way the natives of North America did it. Gold and diamonds made the way only the native Africans worked them. You have kept to the ancient ways,” he finis
hed.

  “Our grandmothers still teach their granddaughters,” Chato said, “and the young bucks still listen to their uncles.”

  “You have more,” Abe said, gesturing at the pack.

  “Yes.”

  The old man frowned and gazed at the ceiling, his eyes lost elsewhere. Then he shook his head and handed back the pieces. “I could not afford to buy one-tenth of what you carry. Another day and I would have mortgaged my inventory—my soul—to make them mine. Now?” He shrugged. “Space on JumpShips is commandeered without warning. Shipments go missing in transit, and you do not find out about it for months. I could not accept the risk.”

  “Might others share it with you?” Grace asked.

  “There are some, but few would value the treasure they held in their hands. I could arrange a meeting between you and three, maybe four of us. Still, I doubt we could afford to take half of what you carry.”

  Grace considered the situation for a long moment. If they kept carrying it around, sooner or later a big enough bunch of muggers would catch them, and a crazy Cat and a Highlander might not be around. “Would you please inventory our jewelry, Mr. Goldman? If it would not be too much trouble, we would like to leave it in your care. You can keep it safer than we can carrying it around, and it would help you to find a market for it.”

  “Yes, it would,” the man agreed, and produced a scanner. As Jobe withdrew each item from the pack, the jeweler scanned it, made a picture, and estimated a value. Grace excused herself to the rest room, unstitched about half the diamonds in her clothing, and added them to the inventory.

  When Chato produced the loose jade, turquoise and emeralds, the jeweler sighed. “Your gem cutters are exquisite in their fashioning. Why did these never come on the market before?”

  “They are family possessions, passed down for generations. Now our lives depend upon them. Stones and minerals can easily be replaced. The life of a daughter or son cannot.”

  The jeweler nodded his agreement.

  It was past noon when he handed each of them a certified copy of the inventory in his care. Niki had watched the business with wide eyes. Grace glanced at her two friends, got nods, and turned back to the jeweler. “We need to change the inventory slightly. Niki, would you like to pick something?”