by Peter Grant
Within seconds, the thirteen missiles in the pattern detonated. They formed a giant thermonuclear X in space, each fireball separated by enough distance to spread the letter’s arms over tens of thousands of kilometers. It was far enough ahead to offer no risk… but its message was unmistakable, and the Lieutenant knew it might be death to disregard it. He didn’t hesitate.
“All right, that’s our lot, right there. Helm, turn us around and take us home. Drive to full braking power. Communications, signal to System Control and all the other patrol craft that we’re returning to orbit. I’ll be damned if I commit suicide for what the company’s paying me! Send it on the general traffic channel, too. I want whoever’s out there to hear us, and know what we’re doing.”
His OpCen crew loudly, emphatically and profanely agreed with his sentiments as they shut down the ship’s weapon systems. As they saw the explosions in their Plot displays, and Tatoi’s message reached them, her sister ships also set course for Mavra orbit.
Jaguarundi had very emphatically closed the door.
HCS BOBCAT
“Contact, sir!” The Plot operator’s voice was jubilant. “She’s still at extreme radar range, but she’s right where the Navigator said she’d be. One large echo, followed by a cloud of small ones.”
“Well done, Navigator!” Mackenzie praised, as Frank exhaled in profound, heartfelt relief beside him. He’d harbored a secret fear that they might never pick up the dead hulk of the courier ship on their radar, and was already dreading what Commodore Cochrane might say to him.
“Helm, take direction from the Navigator,” Bobcat’s skipper continued. “I want us to match speeds with her, directly ahead of her hulk, then latch onto her with our tractor beam. Let’s tow the surviving piece of her hull upwards, clear of that cloud of wreckage. As soon as we can maneuver closer to her without being struck by fragments, we’ll send our small craft to inspect her. What they find will determine what we do next.”
It took several hours of slow, careful, delicate maneuvering before they’d hauled what remained of Szipnij clear of the debris field. One of Bobcat’s cutters was sent to inspect the wreckage, and Frank commandeered Mackenzie’s gig to do the same. He wanted to satisfy himself of her condition at first hand.
He had the pilot steer the small craft to within a hundred meters of the hulk. The aftermost fifth of the hull had almost completely disintegrated, leaving only a few steel stringers and torn frames. The gravitic drive compartment was open to space, the shattered remains of the drive visible inside. The aft cargo hold had been ripped open, and most of its contents had been blown out of the hull. They now formed part of the debris field, behind and beneath the wreck. However, the central and forward parts of the hull seemed to be intact. In particular, the forward hold doors had not been sprung by the impact. They were still closed, and there were no tears in the hull plating, meaning that whatever had been inside it was almost certainly still there.
Frank heaved another sigh of relief, and picked up a microphone. “Frank to Aidan. She’s intact enough for what we need. Signal Saul to rendezvous with us as arranged, and set course to meet him there. While we’re en route, send Commander Argyll’s special security team to investigate her hull and rescue any survivors. Over.”
Commander Mackenzie’s voice crackled over the speaker. “Got it, sir. We’ll commence towing as soon as your gig and the cutter are back aboard.”
RENDEZVOUS
It took almost a full day to slow Szipnij’s hulk from its residual velocity of one-fifth of light speed to a standstill. If they tried to do so too quickly, they found that the tractor beam would lose its grasp on the wreck, which would sail off ahead of them as they slowed. It took several attempts before they found the right balance between braking and grip.
As they crept up to the rendezvous, where Saul was waiting with his freighter, the special security team Tom Argyll had provided for this mission returned to Bobcat. Its leader reported to Frank and Commander Mackenzie in the latter’s command office.
“We’re going to need lots of body bags, sir,” he said wearily. “There were no survivors. Near as we can tell, half the crew went out the rear of the ship. They’re somewhere in the debris cloud. The bodies aboard her are in very bad shape, sir. I don’t think we should bring them aboard where the crew can see them..”
“All right,” Frank agreed. “We’ll clean up back at Constanta, and give them spacer’s funerals. What about the cargo hold?”
“It’s intact, sir. We managed to gain access through the interior door.” He deposited the pack he was carrying on the desk, opened it, reached inside, and retrieved a solid gold bar. He handed it to Frank. “I figured you might like to see this, sir.”
Frank hefted the heavy bar in his hands, grinning. “Oh, yes! This is what we came for!” He handed it to Commander Mackenzie, who was also smiling.
“What about her defensive systems?” the skipper asked.
“I’m no technician, sir, but she looks to have a lot more electronics on her bridge than our courier ships carry. If we get her hull back to Constanta, I reckon Warrant Officer Murray will be able to take them apart and tell us what she had.”
“We’d better clean it up properly first, or he won’t thank us.”
The team leader grimaced. “He won’t, sir. The bridge crew are still in there – what’s left of them.”
It took Saul another two days to clear out his freighter’s largest hold, using the cutters of all the frigates to help move its contents to other, smaller cargo compartments, and then load the wreck. Even with part of her hull destroyed, Szipnij still displaced well over twenty thousand tons, far too much for cutters to maneuver safely with their small cargo-handling tractor and pressor beams. The frigates had to move the wreck into position, half a kilometer clear of the stationary freighter. Its two cargo shuttles then took over, each able to lift up to five thousand tons underslung. Very slowly, very carefully, they eased the hulk closer, until the open hold’s own tractor and pressor beams could take up the strain. Twelve hours of nerve-wracking maneuvering later, her motion sometimes almost imperceptibly slow, the wreck was snugged down onto the floor of the hold. To keep her there as the freighter moved, Saul had technicians from the frigates assist his crew to move additional tractor and pressor beam units from smaller holds into the bigger compartment, pinning down the courier vessel with enough force to hold her in position.
At last, the job was done. Frank joined the frigate commanding officers and Saul for a celebratory cup of coffee in the freighter’s main passage, outside the hold. They looked through the corridor viewports at the devastated hulk, lying on its side, looking curiously forlorn.
“Sad to see a ship like that,” Commander Stroud said softly.
“That it is,” agreed Commander Beattie of HCS Caracal. “She may have been full of those Brotherhood bastards, but that’s still a hell of a way for a spacer to die.”
Frank shook his head. “Dead’s dead, I reckon. It’ll come to us all in the end. I’d prefer to go quietly and peacefully when my time comes, but in this line of business, that’s less likely than in some others. All right, people. We’re done here. Let’s head for Constanta, and report to the Commodore.”
Behind them, as the four ships hyper-jumped away, only a cloud of debris remained of Szipnij’s aft section. It was already widely dispersed as it headed out into deep space, still moving at one-fifth of the speed of light, never to be seen again by human eyes.
Among the fragments drifted what little was left of the desiccated body of Brotherhood Councilor Gjerg Hyka.
20
Peril
NEUE HELVETICA
“That’s him!”
The exclamation came from a tech seated at a console in a windowless office in downtown New Geneva. She swiveled in her chair to beckon a supervisor at the rear of the room. He hurried to her side, bending to examine an image on her screen.
“The facial recognition software just found a match, si
r. He came down from the space station last week. Surveillance vid caught him at the passport desk.”
“Well done! What name was he using?”
“Just a moment, sir…” The tech consulted a database. “Says here he was using a Tarakan passport in the name of Cahaya Kuzai.”
The supervisor shook his head. “The name matches the planet – they’re both of Malay origin – but his skin and features aren’t Malay at all. Check hotel reservations, cabs, and anything else he might have used or be using under that name. I’m going to make a call.”
“Yes, sir.”
She set to work as the supervisor returned to his desk, picked up a comm unit, and entered a code. “Sir? Facial recognition has a match. He’s using – or was using when he arrived – a Tarakan passport in the name of Cahaya Kuzai… We’re checking for links now, sir… Yes, sir, we’ll check those names as well, particularly places where he stayed or paid for services using them… Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
He replaced the handset, and hurried back to the tech with his notes. “Here. He used these two names last time he was on the planet. Check them against any places he’s used his new name, and check places he used the old names, to see whether his new name pops up there too.”
The tech frowned, but kept her face turned to her screen, so that her boss couldn’t see her displeasure. This would keep her busy through her lunch hour, and she was hungry – but he wouldn’t care about that. She said only, “Yes, sir.”
Two hours later, she sent a message to her boss listing a hotel, a vehicle rental agency, and two restaurants that had done business with ‘Cahaya Kuzai’ since his arrival. None of them had any records of transactions with the man’s earlier identities.
He’s being careful, the supervisor mused to himself as he forward the message to his boss. He’s making sure he doesn’t establish any patterns that can be easily traced. He doesn’t know we’ve got the latest face recognition software. Even his beard and mustache, and the pads he’s inserted inside his cheeks, and his sunglasses, aren’t enough to hide who he is. I wonder why they want to find him so urgently?
He shrugged. It was none of his business… but the level of interest the Gesellschaft had in this man didn’t bode well for his future health or happiness.
Pal Sejdiu waited in the interview room as the banker made his arrangements. At last he returned. “It’s all in order, Mr. Kuzai. We’ve sent the request to open the brokerage account, along with your token deposit of one thousand francs. As soon as they’ve set it up, we’ll contact you with the details. When your gold arrives, we’ll convert it to francs and make the necessary deposit.”
“Thank you,” Pal acknowledged as he stood. “It should be here any day now.”
He spent the rest of the afternoon consulting with the local agents for a Bismarck company that manufactured water filtration and purification systems. He gave them the chemical and impurities analyses of Ostrovy’s ocean water, and the agency ran them through their computers to produce a filtration profile. They assured him there would be no problem in manufacturing a containerized plant capable of providing abundant potable water for up to a hundred thousand people. It would be ready for collection within the time frame he’d specified. All that was required was a deposit of a million francs, the balance to be paid in three installments during manufacture and on delivery.
“I’ll have that within a couple of days,” he promised as he took his leave.
He headed back to his hotel, stopping at the exploration company’s office en route to assure them that the money to pay for the planet would be in the broker’s escrow account within days.
“I’m glad to hear it,” the local manager informed him with relief. “Remember, our exclusive offer to sell to you is only binding for another ten days. After that, if the money isn’t there, the planet will be thrown open again to all comers.”
“It’ll be there. My colleague, whom you met during our last visit, is traveling with it, to make sure it gets here on time.”
Pal was as careful as always in returning to his hotel. He scanned the streets and walkways, looking for anyone following him, but found no-one.
As he set out next morning to continue his work, a call reached an official of the Gesellschaft. “This is Hans-Jurgen Knappe, Herr Winckler.”
“What is it, Knappe?” Curt, blunt, a voice that brooked no nonsense.
“You said I had to report any new activity, sir. An account has just been opened in the name of Siedlung GmbH. It’s a newly-formed company, with no prior record of activity. The contact name is a Mr. Cahaya Kuzai.”
His listener’s eyes lit up. “Aha! That’s what we’ve been waiting for! You’ve done well, Knappe. As a reward, I’m deducting ten thousand from what you owe us. It’s only four hundred and sixty thousand francs now.”
“I… thank you, sir.” The broker’s voice was low, dispirited – music to the other man’s ears.
“Get me full details on how that account was opened, and which bank made the opening deposit. Keep up the good work, Knappe.”
The official ended the call, then placed another, this time to an executive at the highest levels of the Gesellschaft. He reported the conversation. “I suggest that means this ‘Cahaya Kuzai’, or whatever his real name may be, is ready to deposit the money to pay for his planet, sir. It hasn’t hit Vaterland’s account at Devizenbank, but they may be using a different account. I’m waiting for details of the bank that made the opening deposit – a token one of only a thousand francs. I’ll bet the gold will be converted through them.”
“You’re probably right. Good work, Schulz! Keep me informed – and put tight surveillance on Kuzai. If he so much as farts, I want a gas chromatograph readout and odor analysis on my desk five minutes later, understood?”
His subordinate sniggered. “Understood, sir.”
“Good. Line up a direct action team, too, the best we’ve got. We’ll snatch him as soon as we get word that the money’s here. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s going to transfer it to our account, not the broker’s.”
Five days later, Pal was growing more and more frustrated. At the very latest, Szipnij should have arrived three days ago. What was keeping her? Had Gjerg not made it clear to her skipper that time was of the essence? Fuming, he registered for alerts from Neue Helvetica’s System Control Center. The automated system would call him as soon as soon as the vessel’s name was mentioned.
He felt the familiar, unwelcome prickle at the back of his neck again as he took a cab back to his hotel. It felt like unfriendly eyes were watching him. He’d sensed it once or twice a day, several days in a row, but never spotted anything nearby that could be considered a threat. Nevertheless, he took the feeling seriously. It had saved him on a number of previous occasions. It might do so again. He kept a careful watch as he ate supper in the hotel’s restaurant, but saw nothing out of place.
He was woken from his sleep at four the following morning by a pinging alarm. It was his comm unit. Bleary-eyed, he stumbled out of bed, crossed to the desk, and read the message. It was an alert from the System Control Center.
Report from Mavra indicates SS Szipnij, a private-registry courier ship, was attacked by pirates at the system boundary upon departure for Neue Helvetica. Fate of ship unknown. Pirates could not be intercepted. Emergency alert passed to all planets to be on the lookout for this vessel and her crew. Details to follow.
Pal felt as if his veins had suddenly filled with ice water instead of blood. He stared at the screen, unable to believe his eyes. Szipnij pirated? How – and why now, and not on any previous occasion? There was only one explanation possible. Someone must have learned about her cargo! Was it one or more of the Big Three? Commodore Cochrane had warned that they were planning to act against the Brotherhood. They were certainly the most likely suspects.
For a moment, he wondered. Had he betrayed the secret of the gold shipment during his tryst with Jehona? He thought carefully, then shook his head. They had
never discussed from where the gold would be shipped, or aboard which vessel, or the route it would follow. He was positive he’d never mentioned Mavra at all during their time together. No, even if Cochrane had arranged to record their conversations, he could not have learned enough from them to intercept the shipment. He was obscurely comforted by that thought. If the Commodore could not have betrayed his trust like that, it meant his wife was likely to still be safe in Hawkwood’s hands.
He cudgeled his brain into action. His sense of being watched, perhaps followed, over the past few days… that made more sense now. If the Big Three were behind this, or the Gesellschaft – which, he reminded himself, was affiliated with one of the Big Three – then they would undoubtedly have professionals good enough to watch him without being detected. In fact, they had probably already traced him to this hotel. Had they been waiting for the gold to arrive, to force him to hand it over? That would be a logical backup plan, in case the attempt to pirate Szipnij failed. If so, the news of her loss would put him in mortal danger. They would no longer need to wait for her arrival in order to take him, and milk him of any and all information he possessed. What should he do?
As he mentally ran through his options, he threw on his clothes, then took a messenger bag from the cupboard. He packed it swiftly with a change of street clothing, a pair of dark gray utility coveralls, two changes of underwear and socks, toiletries and a makeup kit to maintain or alter his appearance, a six-pack of concentrated ration bars, a collapsible water-bottle that he filled from the bathroom tap, and a newly-acquired comm unit that was not registered in any of the names he’d used on Neue Helvetica to date. Its battery had been charged, but not installed, so it could not be tracked even passively at present.