Anthony, Piers - Tyrant 2 - Mercenary

by Anthony, Piers

  In due course I arrived at the pirate cruiser. It was elaborate inside but not in the manner of a fighting ship. It was a gambling den with lush carpets and fancy lounges and games of chance of many kinds. It wouldn't be much use in battle, especially not against a competent Navy cruiser. The Solomons were not in as strong a position as it had seemed.

  And my staff wanted me to surrender.

  I was conducted to the gambler's office. "Parley?" Straight repeated.

  I came immediately to the point. "My staff advises me that I must bargain with you on terms of surrender."

  He smiled. "Captain, you pulled a very nice maneuver there with the drones. But we are hardly ready to surrender."

  "Not you. Us."

  An eyebrow elevated. "You—to me?"

  "We're low on fuel and ammunition. You have blocked off our resupply ship. The Fiji fleet is approaching. We prefer to surrender to you, rather than be starved out by them. All we ask is safe passage for our ships through your line so they can return to Jupiter without losses."

  He shook his head. "Surely you don't expect me to accept that at face value."

  I grimaced. "I hardly accept it myself. But I trust my staff, and my staff informs me that this is the best way out of an untenable situation. If we do further battle, the Fijis will wipe out our remnants, and that would not be good for either of our fleets."

  "True. But we could separate without fighting. I never sought this battle."

  "If we could trust each other," I said. "My staff evidently feels we can't."

  Straight shook his head. "There is little honor among pirates. If I lost power, the Solomons would quickly fragment, until some other leader arose, probably after a good deal of violence. And I would lose power if I made a suspicious deal with the Jupiter Navy. I can't retreat; the wolves I face in the Belt are worse than those of the Navy."

  "My staff probably understands that." I made a gesture of impotence. "So it seems I must surrender. It is not of my choosing or liking. It means the end of my career, and the abrogation of my oath." I spoke bitterly; how could my staff do this to me?

  Straight nodded. "I understand that. I think I would have preferred to finish our battle. You realize we would have to take hostages: you and your leading officers."

  "Yes. And ransom us back to Jupiter."

  "We could use the leverage of the hostages to force complete surrender of your ships."

  "Would such honor as you have permit that?"

  It was his turn to grimace. "No. I am regarded as a fool in some quarters. I am a businessman, and my business depends on the validity of my word. Otherwise my wealthy clients would desert me."

  "So it is feasible for us to surrender to you, rather than to another band. I would have preferred some other course."

  He looked at the ceiling. "I remember courting Flush. She was the most beautiful wench in the Belt in those days. I raided her dome and carried her away and raped her that night. Oh, how she fought! I bear the scars of her nails and teeth yet." He showed his forearm where indeed there were scars.

  I looked at him, startled. What had this to do with the subject of surrender?

  "My aunt, who never liked me, gave her a blade," he continued. "But when Flush had it at my throat, she did not use it. And so she was mine, in the pirate fashion, and I have trusted her with my life ever since."

  "She had the knife, but surrendered to you," I said, not certain I had made the correct connection. He was definitely telling me something important, but I could not yet fathom what.

  "And her clan joined mine when they saw she was mine, and they have been loyal throughout. I never raped her again, never had to. Of course, we put out word that she fought me for two years, in the bedroom, until she was gravid with Rue, but that was a matter of protocol, so there was no dishonor on her clan."

  "You seem like a happy family," I said, somewhat taken aback. This was not the sort of news one gave an enemy.

  "As such things go. We honor the tradition."

  I shook my head. "No offense intended, but that tradition is foreign to me."

  "It is best to understand your enemy." He shrugged. "Give me a little time to ponder your offer. Roulette will entertain you in the interim."

  "I don't gamble," I said.

  "You are gambling now."

  Touché! He smiled as he touched a button on his desk. In a moment his daughter appeared. She wore a bright red blouse and dark red skirt. The combination reminded me of fresh blood and old blood. Yet she was as strikingly beautiful as ever, and though I condemned my masculine foolishness, I knew I wanted her. "Entertain our guest for a while," Straight told her.

  Roulette fired a glance of anger at me but indicated the door. I followed her out, my emotions mixed. Again, Straight was putting me with his daughter, again against her will. But to what point? He no longer needed to dangle such bait or to evoke my interest in her to protect his situation. There could be no future in our relationship. The situation had already given Straight victory.

  She led me to a game room. It was filled with gambling machines of every type. Some were old-fashioned pinballs, a staple for centuries, in which a ball rolled and bounced around in a chamber, causing ascending numeric scores. Others were the historical one-armed bandits, whose windows showed simple designs of fruits and objects; the correct combination resulted in a payoff of coins. Still others were electronic video games, with all manner of trick devices of animation and challenge. We took one that showed two space fleets about to engage in battle. Roulette took one fleet, I the other. The fleets charged each other, under our control, and the dexterity and strategy of the players determined their success.

  Sad to say, Roulette tromped me. "You must have been practicing this!" I protested.

  "Haven't you?" she asked acerbically.

  That stopped me. I was a Naval fleet commander; couldn't I manage my mock fleet adequately? Yet I was here to surrender; perhaps that was answer enough. "The truth is, I am not expert in tactics," I said. "It is my position to command the officers who are expert, so that we form an efficient team. I'm really a figurehead,"

  She gazed at me with mixed surprise and contempt. "My father's no figurehead! He is our team. He directs the battle. He supervises everything. And he has trained me to do it, too."

  Now I was surprised. "You can direct a fleet in battle—a real fleet, not just a game fleet?"

  "I was directing our fleet when our drones met yours." She grimaced. "You decimated us. Who directed that ploy?"

  "Her name is Lieutenant Commander Emerald Sheller. She—"

  "She?"

  "Yes. She is our strategist, my former wife."

  "You use women in positions of power?"

  "Of course. We go by qualification and competence, not sex."

  "Not sex? But you cast her aside when you tired of her."

  "No. The situation separated us. We remain friends."

  Something changed in her. "I'd like to meet her."

  "You will. Your father will surely select her as a hostage."

  "A hostage." She considered a moment, then turned on me a look of absolute fury as sudden and inexplicable as the one she had made the last time we met. I could read emotions but not always the causes of them. "God, I should kill you now!"

  Anyone would have been surprised by this. She was sincere. She did not strike me as emotionally unbalanced, though she was certainly volatile. She believed she had reason to hate me.

  So I inquired, as I usually do. "Why?"

  She strode off without answer. I followed, covertly admiring her figure and her movements. Intellectually I knew it was ridiculous to desire this fiery creature, eleven years my junior, but intellect was not the motivating force. Straight met us at his office door. "I have decided," he said. "We shall not accept your surrender."

  "You insist on fighting? It is pointless while the Fijis—"

  "As is flight; they would merely pursue, knowing us to be in a weakened state because of the decimation
of our drones. It is necessary to deal with the Fijis firmly." His lips twitched, and I knew he was thinking of the manner he dealt with all things. "Firm" could mean anything from an admonition to destruction in space. "So we shall surrender to you."

  "What?"

  "You lack fuel and ammunition, but your supply ship is bringing those. We lack ammunition and food; we were not able to supply our fleet on short notice for an extended campaign. Feed us, and we'll surrender."

  "No food?" I asked, bemused.

  "I'll send my daughter with you as the first hostage. You may select others in due course. Just so long as we get it done before the Fijis arrive."

  "But—why?"

  "You have honor," Straight said. "We can trust you not to murder us. That's a good deal more than we can say for the Fijis."

  "But you wouldn't have to face them if—"

  "If we had your surrender? No, as I explained, we cannot retreat, and we don't have enough power at the moment to defeat them. We might get the supplies we need from you, but we could not use your hardware against them; your surrender is basically a device for safe conduct, not a commitment to fight a battle for a pirate band. But if the authority is yours, you will fight them, and we may be able to save our skins."

  "I—I'll have to consult my staff," I said.

  "By all means. Our boat will take you and Rue back now. But I'm sure your staff already knows."

  I had never felt this stupid before. "They knew?"

  "That's why they sent you. They knew I would not yield to any demand for surrender, so they reversed it, forcing my hand. They didn't tell you, because it had to be an honest offer; I can tell the difference. They outplayed me, just as they outplayed my daughter on the drone encounter. You must have one hell of a team, and one hell of a psychologist among them."

  I looked at Roulette. "You knew!" I said, almost accusingly. "That's why you were so angry!"

  "I guessed," she said grimly. "I can read signals, too, and I know my father. He'd never let surrender interfere with his larger plans." She shrugged beautifully. "Well, come on, Captain; the damned thing's done and I'm hoist."

  And so the surrender was arranged, and a mind-bendingly beautiful girl came into my power.

  Chapter 10 — RAPE

  Rue behaved like a confined jaguar on the trip back. She remained hostile but seemed to accept her fate. I did not try to talk to her, though I was highly conscious of her presence. Yet again I wondered: Why had her father put her into my hands? He had to be aware of the effect she had on me, for he was a shrewd judge of character and she was a figure to dazzle any man. The Solomons had not had to surrender; that had come entirely too readily, though I knew it was genuine. The Fiji threat had been only a pretext to justify an action I now realized Straight had contemplated from the outset. It was almost as if he were collaborating with my staff to unify our forces. But his daughter was irrelevant to that.

  We connected with the Sawfish. My sister met us just inside the lock. For a moment the two women studied each other, Roulette's gaze flicking down to Spirit's four-fingered left hand. I knew she was thinking of what I had told her about Spirit's experience with pirates, and the vengeance she had taken against them. And, before a word was spoken, Roulette's attitude modified subtly. She might hate me, but she did not hate Spirit.

  "This is Roulette—our hostage for the Solomons' surrender," I said somewhat lamely.

  Spirit didn't even seem surprised. "I recognized the figure. I'll see her to a cabin."

  "You knew," I said.

  "We thought it likely," she agreed. "We showed Straight our power, and he responded."

  "The game is not over yet," Roulette said.

  I nodded ruefully—which term may be appropriate in more than one sense. I had served as an ignorant messenger between two maneuvering forces. My staff had sent a message of surrender, and Straight had responded with his daughter as hostage. Move and countermove, neither what it seemed. I felt like a pawn in the middle of the board, watching while one side proffered the sacrifice of a knight and the other countered with the sacrifice of a bishop. The true significance lay not in what was done but in what was declined.

  "Arrange for rendezvous with our supply ship and for transfer of food to the Solomons fleet," I said. "Establish liaison for working out the fine print of the surrender. And quickly; the Fijis—"

  "I can help," Roulette said. "I know the personnel to contact in our fleet, and what they need."

  There was one reason Straight had sent her! Her cooperation would greatly facilitate the process.

  Spirit glanced at her appraisingly. "You have practical training?"

  "I'm my father's S-3." S-3 is the Operations section, vital.

  "At your age?"

  Rue smiled. "Pirates aren't subject to Naval regulations. I've been an officer since birth. It's a family corporation."

  "We shall test you." Spirit took Rue away with her. I watched them go. I remained amazed at recent developments. I was a virtual spectator of a game of strategy I could not quite comprehend. I saw that Spirit and Roulette understood it, though. I wish I could present what follows in this narrative as a brilliant and successful ploy on my part, but really it wasn't. I was merely a pawn in the guise of a king. Or perhaps I was the king—but in chess, the king is the most restricted and protected of pieces, though he is the focus of the game. My sole power was in the judgment of people and the delegation of power to them. Now they were using that power.

  I went to the bridge to discover what was going on in space. The Fiji fleet was bearing down, heedless of the Navy-Solomons negotiations; we were not going to be able to rendezvous with our supply ship, organize our supervision of the Solomons, and establish our pincushion defense on the planetoid before the new enemy arrived.

  "We'll vacate the base," Emerald said. "The supplies are more important."

  "But we can't set up for battle in space in time," I protested. "The Fijis are in formation, while we're caught in maneuvers."

  "Bad luck for us," she said with a smile.

  "There's something you're not telling me," I accused her.

  She turned a wide-eyed mock-innocent gaze on me. "Why, sir! Don't you trust me? Has any part of me ever been secret from you? I am but the rising moon; you are the sun."

  I was annoyed but played along. "Just see that my trust is not misplaced. You supposedly subordinate officers have been very free with my command and career recently."

  "We only want what's best for you, sir," she said contritely.

  We vacated the planetoid, though I could see that in our haste we had to sacrifice some equipment and precious ammunition that had been in transfer between anchored ships. Reloading in a vacuum is not a rapid thing, because of the limitation of airlocks. Much better to establish temporary pressurized tents on the base. Already the Fijis were gaining booty!

  Meanwhile Spirit and Roulette handled the ongoing negotiations with the Solomons. Rue was as good as her word; she knew every officer of their fleet by name, and when she spoke, they jumped. Spirit simply named the ship she wanted to contact, and Rue did the rest.

  "This is Roulette, hostage aboard the Navy flagship," she said to the screen as we addressed one ship. "They have food for us, and time is short. Get me Cap'n Snake-eyes on the double." The pirate ship captain appeared in seconds. "Snake-eyes, clear a channel through our fleet for the Navy supply ship, and detach a tug to pick up their pod as they pass. What your ship needs has already been allocated. Then stand by for further orders from this ship. Commander Spirit Hubris will contact you, and you will obey her implicitly."

  "Yes, sir," Snake-eyes agreed nervously.

  "And relieve Seven-up of command of your forward battery. If that trigger-happy bastard fires one shot during this maneuver, my father will fire a shot at you."

  Evidently that threat had meaning, for Snake-eyes blanched.

  So it went. Spirit turned her head to look at me behind Rue's head, nodding affirmatively. The pirate wench was t
esting out competent.

  Then Rue herself turned her head and shot me another glare of hate. I turned away, ashamed of myself for not being able to face her down. She was doing the job her father had dictated; none of this was for my pleasure.

  What was it about her that so unmanned me? She was a striking figure of a woman, true—but so were others I had known, if to lesser degrees. Mere physical appearance was not overwhelmingly important to me. She was young; but again, I could have youth in the Officers' Tail anytime I felt the inclination, and generally I preferred to associate with women my own age. She was fiery, but so was Emerald; there was no longer much novelty in that. "Forbidden fruit, sir."

  I jumped. I was in the passage, and Juana was coming up behind me, evidently on some mission for another officer. She was my secretary but had become common property in this crisis. "What?"

  "She's a pirate wench, sir. You're a Navy officer. You always did prefer forbidden fruit. You know you can't have her, so you want her. It's perfectly natural."

  She was surely correct. I was having difficulty perceiving such things for myself because my own emotion was involved, nullifying much of my objectivity. As I gazed at Juana, the melody of her song passed through my mind. O don't deceive me, O never leave me, how could you use a poor maiden so? A lovely and sad refrain, of love no longer requited. Juana had a roommate but only to avoid the Tail; she had formed no close attachment since I deserted her by becoming an officer. She knew about the desire for the forbidden.

  I glanced about. We were alone for the moment. "Anybody looking?"

  "No, sir. We're all pretty busy now."

  I grabbed her and kissed her. Juana wasn't even surprised; she knew me of old. She clung to me, showing more passion than she ever had when we were roommates. She remained a marvelous person. I remembered how she had taken me in hand, so to speak, during the drug episode. She did not love sex, but perhaps she loved me.