by J. L. Doty
Arthur finished the thought for him. “The other houses wouldn’t intervene, not openly.”
Charlie grinned, and Arthur frowned, clearly not sure what to make of Charlie’s attitude.
“Syndonese pirates,” Theode screeched. “What do you mean, Syndonese pirates?”
The head of the mercenary team to which he’d entrusted Arthur shrugged. He was a large, ugly man, all hard edges both physically and emotionally. “He called himself Raul the Damned, said he was part of the Mexak League. Definitely Syndonese.”
“And you let him take Arthur?”
“We had no choice, ten of us against an entire crew. Some of them wore powered armor and carried assault weapons. And their ship was a Syndonese heavy cruiser.”
Theode trembled with rage. With a third of the de Maris old guard leaving his service, and the rest, at best, only reluctantly dutiful, he was becoming more and more dependent on these mercenaries to keep his officers in line. He tried to keep his voice down and failed miserably. “How did a scruffy bunch of pirates get their hands on a functional heavy cruiser?”
The large mercenary shrugged indifferently. “Probably mutinied, killed their senior officers, and took control of the ship.”
The man’s lack of concern only fueled Theode’s rage. “This is a disaster, an absolute disaster.”
“My dear,” Gaida said calmly, stepping between Theode and the large man. Theode suspected she was fucking him. “Calm down, my dear. I think this might not be as much of a disaster as you fear.”
“How do you mean?”
She took him by the arm and led him several paces away from the mercenaries, then spoke softly for his ears only. “I doubt Arthur will be treated terribly well by a bunch of pirates. And of course, any ransom demands they make will be . . . excessive, as far as we’re concerned. So we’ll have to negotiate, and such negotiations will undoubtedly take years, during which Arthur will probably suffer unthinkable deprivations.”
Theode’s pulse slowed and his breathing calmed. “Thank you, mother,” he said, feeling much better. “Your insights are always so . . . thought provoking.” He leaned toward her and kissed her chastely on the cheek. “I do so value your advice.”
Shortly after they returned to Luna, Drakwin escorted two other Syndonese into Charlie’s office where Charlie and Roacka waited—Charlie seated behind his desk, Roacka seated in a large, comfortable chair to one side. The two Syndonese were vastly different men: one short, balding, slightly overweight; the other medium height, but thin, with a face sculpted of sharply angled features. Drakwin indicated the short, balding one. “This is Sobak. He don’t speak standard so good, so I may have to translate.”
Charlie stood, stepped around the desk, and extended a hand to Sobak, who eyed him warily. Charlie said in Syndonese, “We can speak in your language then, Mr. Sobak.”
“Just Sobak,” the man said, extending his hand, though still warily. “You speak Syndonese, eh?”
Charlie said, “I learned a bit before the last war, then had five years of lessons in a POW camp.”
Sobak grinned, though it had more the look of a grimace. Drakwin turned to the other Syndonese. “This is Thamaklus.”
Charlie extended his hand to Thamaklus, who glowered at him for a moment. The Syndonese reached over with his left hand and gripped his own right wrist, lifted his right arm to about waist high, then let it drop. It flopped down at his side and hung there limply. “It’s dead,” he said in Syndonese.
Charlie lowered his hand and asked, “How?”
Thamaklus grinned as unpleasantly as Sobak. “Goutain’s Security Force interrogated me for a couple of days, though I never did find out why, or what they wanted to know.”
“Has it been treated?”
“Who would look at it?”
Charlie turned to Roacka. “Have someone look at that arm. We have advanced medical facilities here; we may be able to do something about nerve damage like that.”
He asked Drakwin, “Are there other Syndonese here with untreated injuries?”
Drakwin looked carefully at Sobak and Thamaklus, then back to Charlie. “In Syndon it’s not wise to complain.”
Every day Charlie learned a little more about life for the ordinary Syndonese. “Please bring them forward. They’ll be treated, helped if possible.”
The three Syndonese all looked at one another suspiciously. Charlie continued, “Did you tell Sobak and Thamaklus why I wanted to see them?”
Drakwin raised one eyebrow. “Thought it best you tell them.”
Charlie turned to the two men. If they were as distrustful as they appeared, then this wouldn’t work. “Drakwin tells me you have no more love for Goutain than I.”
The two shared a glance. Thamaklus said, “We try not to get involved. It ain’t healthy.”
“What if you could make it unhealthy for those who make it unhealthy for you?”
The two men shared another glance, though they still looked at Charlie suspiciously. He continued, “What if I supplied you with arms—explosives and light weaponry—clothing, food, supplies, then dropped you back in Syndon at a place of your choosing? Would you know someone who might make use of such supplies against . . . a mutual enemy?”
A smile appeared slowly on Thamaklus’s chiseled features. “We might know someone.”
“And could you enlist their aid without telling where you got such equipment, because my name can’t come up in this.”
“No,” Thamaklus said. “We’d have to tell them something, but we’ll just lie.”
“Good. No civilian targets,” Charlie said, “only military and the Security Force.”
Thamaklus rubbed his chin with his good hand. “We could work within those constraints.”
While reviewing House de Lunis’s accounts with Winston, Charlie noticed something odd. “Why am I borrowing from Rierma and Telka?”
Winston opened his hands in a gesture of defeat. “For one thing, you need the money, especially since you ordered the construction of six more hunter-killers.”
“That was a mistake, huh?”
Winston shook his head. “No. If I’d thought it a mistake I’d have spoken up before now.”
“Then why not borrow from Sague and Aziz? I’m sure they’d give us a good line of credit.”
“That’s a resource we may eventually tap, Your Grace. But right now your best defense is that everyone believes you destitute, so no one takes you as a serious threat. And I’ve been nurturing that impression purposefully. I make sure you’re always arrears in payments, but not so much that they call the debt due. And while Rierma and Telka are friendly toward you, you can bet their accountants gossip like market wives, so the word gets around.”
“Good thinking . . . I think.”
Charlie couldn’t sleep that night. His entire staff was working for room and board and minimal pay, as well as the crews on his ships, though that didn’t bother him so much concerning the Two Thousand. They’d shared the chain together, and any one of them would give his life for another. But still!
He lay in bed unable to sleep for a while before finally deciding to wander down to the blind corridor once more. He threw on a robe, grabbed a comp tablet, and hit its power switch as he marched out of his room. A groggy-eyed Ell sat up on the couch in the anteroom where she’d been sleeping.
“Go back to sleep,” Charlie said as he passed her.
She ignored him, got up, and followed him.
On the face of the tablet he brought up the three-dimensional map of the interior of Starfall, though he knew that the blind corridor wouldn’t be visible on it until he stepped into it. But when he did, when he took that step, the corridor didn’t appear on the map.
He stopped in his tracks, turned, and stepped out of the corridor, then turned and walked back into it, and where before it wo
uld appear on the map whenever he stepped into it, now nothing. He repeated the process a dozen times, stepping into and out of the corridor. And still nothing.
Scratching his head, he wondered for a brief moment if he had imagined the whole thing, but shoved that thought aside. Its appearance on the map had been real, there was no doubt of that, but what had changed? Perplexed and frustrated, he returned to his rooms and dropped the comp tablet onto a dresser next to the ornate dagger Cesare had given him. He tossed the robe over a chair, hoping he’d get some sleep now, but knew he wouldn’t.
Charlie had to get Arthur out of Starfall. If Theode and Gaida took a lucky guess, or just decided to drop in to harass Charlie, rescuing Arthur could all be for naught. And thinking about it, he realized he had the perfect place to stash him away. So they departed Luna, and twelve days later—standing on the bridge of The Headsman—Charlie pointed to the redundant navigational console where he usually sat, and told Arthur to sit down. As Arthur did so, standing behind him and looking over his shoulder, Charlie asked the young officer seated next to him, “Can you give us an external visual?”
“Certainly, Your Grace. We’re only about half a kilometer out so you should get a good view of the whole thing.”
On the screen in front of Arthur a massive cylindrical structure appeared, a kilometer in diameter and three hundred meters deep. “Andyne-Borregga,” Arthur said, peering intently at the screen. “It’s big.”
The Headsman was moving cautiously at only a few meters per second toward one of the station’s docks. “It has to be big to be self-sufficient,” Charlie said.
“And my new home,” Arthur added.
Charlie had a busy schedule ahead of him: Andyne-Borregga, Tachaann, Aagerbanne, and then the next meeting of the Ten on Turnlee. And while he’d taken passage from Starfall with Arthur on The Headsman, he dared not show a captured Syndonese warship at Turnlee, so The Thirteenth Man had accompanied them.
“Has Theode responded to the ransom demand yet?” Arthur asked.
Charlie had let Drakwin play the pirate captain to the hilt. They’d recorded a message from him demanding an outrageous sum for Arthur’s ransom, an amount so high that no one would consider paying it. They delivered the message within a tenday of Arthur’s kidnapping, with instructions that Theode could respond by an open broadcast in Cathan nearspace using an encryption key they provided. There followed a flurry of activity by de Maris warships along the Cathan-Dumark run, then absolute silence for a tenday, and finally Theode’s reply.
“He wanted to negotiate,” Charlie said. “We’ll wait a couple of tendays, then Drakwin will respond with dramatic indignation and some threats on your life. He’ll even up the ransom demand. We really don’t want to negotiate your release, so we’re going to draw this out as long as possible.”
Still standing behind Arthur, who appeared almost entranced by the image of the space station on the screen, Charlie nodded toward Andyne-Borregga. “No one really knows about this yet, and by the time they do, it had better be able to defend itself.”
Charlie had explained to Arthur how he’d acquired the station. “It’s isolated, few people have ever heard of it, and those who have don’t remember it. The Borreggan system isn’t even on most charts. Right now it’s defenseless, but we’re installing some defensive batteries and active shielding on the outer structure, and when I can dig up the funding I’m going to install a couple of big orbital weapons platforms in defensive positions. And I need someone to run the whole thing. Can you do it? At least until you get the de Maris ducal seat back.”
Arthur grinned. “Turn one of your headaches over to me, huh?”
“Yes. Sague needs to get back to his operations on Istanna, and I need you to take his place, manage the operations here.”
The Headsman eased carefully into one of Andyne-Borregga’s air docks. Once she cleared the docking bay doors they closed ponderously, the dock crew brought gravity in the dock slowly up to one-tenth standard, and the ship settled onto its landing struts. Large ships like The Headsman couldn’t support themselves in full gravity without a constant power feed to her internal gravity generators. One-tenth standard was a nice compromise, permitting the ship to shut down its systems completely, and allowing maintenance personnel to work in the comfort of a gravity well. It was certainly preferable to working in zero-G in vacuum suits in orbit.
Once the bay doors were sealed they brought the dock’s internal air pressure up to standard. Darmczek and his crew would spend a good hour securing the ship’s systems, though since Darmczek hadn’t scheduled maintenance for The Headsman, they’d leave her power plant on a trickle so it could be restarted in short order. Charlie and Arthur were free to go.
A long gantry extended about ten meters above the dock’s floor and mated to the ship’s main personnel hatch. The twins and Sague waited for Charlie and Arthur there. “Your Grace,” Sague said, bowing carefully to Charlie. He turned to Arthur, bowed again, and said, “Your Grace.”
Arthur paled. “I’m not the Duke de Maris, Mr. Sague. The honorific isn’t appropriate.”
Sague winced uncomfortably. “But you’re the rightful heir to the de Maris ducal seat . . .” He glanced at Charlie.
Charlie smiled and didn’t say anything.
“Come,” Sague said abruptly. “Please, I have a tour prepared for you, as well as a complete briefing.”
Only about one percent of Andyne-Borregga’s systems were fully operational, which surprised Charlie. But Sague told him, “However, we’ve verified and tested more than half her systems, and they can be fully operational in a matter of hours. But we’re so understaffed at the moment there’s no need to bring them all up. Right now we’re focused on testing and verifying status of the rest, and identifying those that need repair or maintenance. And from what we’ve seen so far, there aren’t too many systems that require repair, so if they’re not critical, we flag them for later review and ignore them for the time being. For the rest, we perform any needed maintenance as part of the testing and verification, then shut them down until needed.”
Charlie didn’t want a large staff at Starfall, so with few exceptions, as refugees of various kinds arrived, he sent them on to Andyne-Borregga. Sague had a little over three thousand people working on the station at the moment—when fully supplied it could easily accommodate a couple million—and he estimated that with the manpower on hand Arthur could complete testing of existing systems in under a month. But equipment for the new defensive batteries and surface shielding had already begun to arrive from Aziz, and Arthur pointed out that installation would be a real construction project, not merely testing and maintenance. He and Sague both agreed that, with the exception of any remaining critical systems, they’d focus work on the new defensive installations.
Arthur and Sague jumped into the minutiae of the work, carefully discussing the details of manpower and resource scheduling. Charlie had no aptitude for such detail, so he wandered down to check out some of the work crews. He saw one group using a grav lifter to muscle a heavy piece of equipment into place. He moved on and stopped at a window looking out over one of the station’s zero-G vacuum docks. As a group unloaded equipment from a small merchantman, someone behind him said, “Commander? That you?”
Charlie turned to find a slightly overweight chief petty officer facing him, a man with whom he’d shared the chain. Charlie smiled, and the man frowned as he suddenly realized what he’d said. “Sorry, Your Grace,” he said. “I forgot, didn’t mean to call you commander, just—”
“No,” Charlie said, sticking out his hand. “For you and anyone else who shared the chain with me, it’ll always be just commander.”
The man smiled, began shaking Charlie’s hand with ridiculous vigor, and shouted over his shoulder, “Hey guys, Commander Cass is here. It’s the commander.”
In a matter of second
s a dozen men surrounded him, shaking his hand and slapping him on the back. He couldn’t remember any of their names, but he knew their faces without any hesitation. “We was just gonna break for lunch,” the chief said. “Wanna join us, Commander?”
They led him to a small cafeteria where they all got trays of simple food. Apparently, word spread quickly and in short order the cafeteria filled with a couple hundred men from the chain. They laughed, joked, ate; Charlie even got into a short dice game with a few of them, lost all the cash he had on hand. It was Sague who interrupted the fun. “My apologies, Your Grace, but it’s time to go.”
It took Charlie more than an hour to give every single one of them a good handshake and a slap on the back. And when they finally did leave, his hand was a swollen, bruised wreck.
He wouldn’t have traded that for anything.
As he and Sague and the twins walked to The Headsman’s dock, Sague said, “I believe your next stop is Tachaann, is it not, Your Grace?”
“Yes it is.”
“Then Istanna is not far out of your way. It would be advantageous to everyone if you could make a short stop there. There is an important personage there who wishes to meet you.”
Sague refused to be more specific than that, and though Charlie trusted the man, it set his curiosity afire.
“May I introduce Mr. Cahntu,” Sague said, “chairman of the Istannan Planetary Council?”
Sestimar Cahntu was an ordinary looking man, average height, a little overweight, late middle age, graying hair, simple business suit. He bowed deeply. “Your Grace, it’s a pleasure.” Like Sague he spoke in the sharp, clipped Istannan accent.
“The pleasure is mine,” Charlie said. “You honor me, Chairman Cahntu.”
Sague poured them drinks of some fiery Istannan whiskey and directed them to a couple of comfortable chairs in his office. Since the meeting was at Cahntu’s request, Charlie let him set the pace, though it was aggravating to have to waste his time discussing local Istannan politics. Eventually, Cahntu said, “I suppose you’re wondering why I requested this meeting, Your Grace.”