by Mike Resnick
“Makes no difference.”
He withdrew his burner.
“Point it at me.”
He did as she said.
“Now fire it.”
He frowned. “I don’t know what this is about, but I’m no good at playing games.”
“All right,” she said, holding out her hand. “May I see it for a moment?”
He passed it over to her.
She switched off the safety and pointed it at him. “This is why you blundered,” she said, pressing the firing mechanism.
Nothing happened.
“What the hell’s going on here?” he said, frowning.
“I disabled all your weapons while you were speaking to Felix,” she said. “And I could have done it to the aliens’ weapons last night if you’d had the foresight to invite me along.”
“You can do that without knowing the nature of their weapons?”
“I can negate just about any weapon except a projectile one—an old-fashioned bullet gun—within fifty meters.”
“Son of a bitch!” he said. “You never told me that!”
“You never asked.”
“One question: would it have disabled our weapons too?”
She nodded her head. “The trick is for there to be more of you than of them . . . but in a little building like this, with no ship in the area, there didn’t figure to be many of them. And once all the weapons were disabled, all you had to do was send in Felix with that remarkable artificial body of his.”
“You were right,” he admitted. “I won’t leave you behind again.”
“Okay,” she said. “I just wanted you to know that you weren’t making use of all your assets.”
“No hard feelings?” he asked.
She reached forward and shook his hand. “None.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ve got another task for you.”
“What is it?”
“Proto is never going to learn Kabori in time to pass for one by the time we get to Petrus. Find out what races don’t draw any attention in the Orion constellation, see what they speak, and see what languages he knows. He’s got a remarkable ability, but it’s going to be hard enough to hide him from security systems without having him give himself away the moment he opens his mouth.”
She nodded her head. “I’ll start researching it here, and when I’ve narrowed it down to the likeliest races, I’ll have the ship’s computer produce life-sized holograms so he can study their physiques and modes of dress. Then it’ll just be a matter of which language, if any, he’s comfortable with.”
Pretorius grimaced. “Don’t say ‘if any,’” he said wryly. “He’s supposed to be an asset, not a liability.” He paused. “It’s amazing that his race didn’t rule the whole damned galaxy before security systems became this sophisticated.”
“I asked him about that a few days ago,” said Pandora.
“And?”
She smiled. “They only developed light speeds about two centuries ago.”
“Yeah, that’d explain it,” said Pretorius, returning her smile. “Damned good for the rest of us.”
They went to the primitive kitchen, where they were joined by the other team members, ate a minimal meal—none of them cared for Torqual food, and that was all there was—and then continued their inventory.
“Not much worth appropriating except the pelts,” announced Circe after another hour. “The poor Torqual couldn’t have led much of life, living all alone here in these primitive surroundings.”
“So what’s our next move?” asked Snake.
“I think the closer we get to Petrus, the more we’re going to be stopped, probably boarded, certainly questioned,” said Pretorius. “If that happens enough—and for all I know, once is enough—we’re incarcerated at best and killed at worst. So I think we’ll stop doing it in small jumps and go straight to the Petrus system.”
“In our ship?” said Ortega. “It’ll never work.”
Pretorius shook his head. “Definitely not in our ship. We need to transfer one last time.”
“Just what kind of ship do you plan to approach Petrus in?” asked Snake.
“Something large,” answered Pretorius.
She frowned. “Like a battleship?”
He chuckled. “They’d blow it to pieces.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“Outside of one of Michkag’s military ships, what ship is most likely to approach and land on Petrus without raising any eyebrows—not that the Kabori have any—and without incredibly detailed security inspections?”
“Oh, shit!” said Snake. “We’re going to stow away on a supply ship!”
“Not just any ship,” said Pretorius. “It’s got to be one that definitely supplies the fortress.”
“How many ships do that?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, “but our information back at headquarters is that the fortress has a standing army of close to ten thousand, and since most of them aren’t native to Petrus IV, they import most of their food, as well as their weaponry and ammo.”
“Okay,” said Snake. “Which ships go there?”
“We don’t know yet,” said Pretorius. He turned to Pandora. “But someone is going to find out for us, isn’t she?”
“I can probably track the larger ones,” she replied.
“We need to know their routes as well,” continued Pretorius. “We’ve got to choose the best place to create a diversion while we’re sneaking aboard, and we don’t want to be stuck on it for more than a week.”
“I’ll get on it as soon as we’re back on the ship,” said Pandora.
“You might as well start now,” said Pretorius. “There’s nothing for you to do here.” Suddenly he smiled. “Besides, the food’ll be better on the ship.” He turned to Djibmet. “I know we’ve packed a couple of uniforms for you and Michkag, but I want you to check daily newscasts and make sure that it hasn’t changed, that he hasn’t given himself four or five more medals, that he hasn’t put on or lost a lot of weight.”
“I will do so,” agreed Djibmet.
“Michkag, you monitor those broadcasts as well,” continued Pretorius. “I know you’ve been schooled in all his gestures and speech patterns, but make sure he hasn’t picked up any new ones or that he hasn’t fallen in love with some new expression since Djibmet left the Coalition.”
Michkag nodded his acquiescence. “It will be a pleasure to finally have something to do.”
“Something important,” confirmed Djibmet. “This, after all, is what you were created for.”
“Circe,” said Pretorius, “I know you’re feeling like a fifth wheel, but we’re getting near the point where your talents are going to be essential. If any Kabori becomes even the least bit suspicious of our Michkag, we’ve got to know that before he can act on his suspicions.”
“I know,” replied Circe.
“Okay,” said Pretorius. “Anyone who wants to return to the ship is free to do so. But we’ve been confined to ships for so long, we can take an extra day here to just stretch and relax. It’s up to each of you.”
Snake, who had no problem with close quarters, elected to go back to the ship and indulge in some human food. The rest of them remained, not in the trading post but in the immediate vicinity of it, walking, exercising, and just relishing having the room to move freely.
It was during twilight of their second day on the planet that Pretorius, who had moved a chair out past the front door, heard an ear-shattering bellow that startled him into immobility for a few seconds. When he finally stood up, he found himself confronting one of the gold-pelted creatures, six-legged, perhaps eight feet at the shoulder, sporting a quartet of long, razor-sharp horns.
He immediately pulled out his screecher, set it on half-power, and fired point-blank. The creature jumped as if electrified, emitted one last, shaky bellow, and raced off.
“What happened?” asked Circe, rounding the corner of the building just in time to see the beast ru
nning away.
“One of the creatures they come here to hunt,” replied Pretorius, returning his screecher to full power and holstering it.
“Why didn’t you kill the damned thing?” asked Ortega, joining them.
“Why bother?” responded Pretorius. “We have enough pelts. Besides, who the hell wants to skin one of those? I gave him a hell of a blast of sound. He won’t be back.” He looked at the setting sun. “I think we’d all better get back to the ship. He won’t be back, but I can’t speak for his brothers and sisters, and I don’t think any of us want to run into them in the dark. Felix, hunt up Proto and the Kabori and tell them.”
Ortega nodded and headed off to find them.
“You know,” said Circe, “it occurs to me that we’d better sell the pelts quickly and spend the money quickly as well. I don’t imagine Men are free to walk around Petrus, let alone spend money there.”
“We’re not going to need it before we get there,” said Pretorius.
“Then why even take the pelts we have with us?” she persisted.
“Because we may need the money to get back to the Democracy once we’re done here.”
“I’m glad someone thinks we’re going to be going home at the end of this.”
17
The ship was twelve hours out of the Mitox system when Pretorius woke up from a nap, stopped by the galley for a few minutes, and then approached Pandora at her workstation.
“How’s it coming?” he asked.
“I’ve found seven supply ships that stop at the fortress every five to ten days,” she replied.
“Big ones?”
She nodded. “Quite large. Definitely big enough for our needs.”
“How many are between us and Petrus right now, and how many are on the far side?”
“Three on this side, two on the far side.”
Pretorius frowned. “That’s only five.”
“Two are docked at the fortress right now.”
“At the fortress? Not in some orbital hangar?”
“At the fortress,” said Pandora. “I assume their loads are so big that it would take a dozen shuttles to carry the stuff down, so the fortress seems to have four towers that serve as docks, maybe half a mile high, to accommodate them. One may be for military ships—and of course they’ll have an orbiting hangar for the really big troop transports—but at least three of the towers are for supply ships.”
“Better still,” said Pretorius. “That means we don’t have to find a covert way onto the planet and into the fortress. I didn’t like the thought of transferring to a shuttle. This solves the problem.”
“You still have the problem of how all eight of us are getting onto a supply ship.”
“Find out where the three cargo ships that are between us and Petrus are touching down on their regular routes, and we’ll work it out.”
“Give me another eight or nine hours.”
“Take twenty.”
She looked at him curiously. “Twenty?”
“Yeah,” he said “And get me blueprints of the ships.”
“That might be difficult.”
“They’re not combat ships or military of any kind. Some shipbuilder made them and had to file the plans somewhere.” He smiled at her. “Hell, find me one with an all-robot crew that you can control, and take twenty-one hours.”
“You’re all heart, Nate,” she said, and turned back to her computer.
“Oh . . . and hunt up a couple of worlds along the way where we can unload the pelts.”
“Actually there’s one coming up in about an hour,” she replied. “A single planet circling Pordeli, a class-G star. Seems to be a trading outpost. Hard to believe they haven’t seen these furs before.”
“Radio ahead, make sure someone on the planet buys pelts, and if they do, make an appointment and set us down there.”
She did so, got a positive reply, and they landed a little more than an hour later. Djibmet got off the ship, met the proprietor of the shop that dealt in such goods, got a pair of robots to help, and while they were making the trips carrying the pelts Pandora wiped all knowledge of the ship’s human crew from their memories.
They found another world five light-years away that bought the rest of the pelts. Djibmet offered to turn all the money over to Pretorius, but the latter shook his head.
“I can’t show myself or spend your currency anywhere within the Coalition,” he explained, “and by the time we get to where I can spend it, this currency’s no good. So you hang onto it. You’re the only one who can spend it where it’ll be accepted.”
Pretorius then declared that all the preliminaries were over and it was time for the main event: reaching and entering the fortress.
“So what do we do once we’re inside it?” asked Snake, as she and Ortega joined Pretorius at Pandora’s station on the bridge.
“Wait for Michkag to arrive,” said Pretorius.
“Just like that?” she said sardonically.
“Come on, Snake. You’ve been on enough missions to know.”
“Tell me—us—anyway,” she replied. “Maybe someone can make a suggestion.”
Pretorius shrugged. “Okay. We sneak in, we find a secure room, we find a way to monitor what’s going on, we capture their Michkag and replace him with our Michkag, we escape with him if we can or kill him if we can’t, and then we make a beeline for home.”
“Sounds simple when you put it that way,” said Ortega.
“You think so?” said Snake derisively. “How are we going to sneak into the fortress past armed guards that are there to make sure nothing gets unloaded except the goods they ordered? If we’re in a room that’s so secure their security system can’t penetrate it, how is Toni going to monitor them without telltale emanations from her machines?”
“Toni?” said Ortega, puzzled.
“That’s Toni,” said Snake, pointing. “Nathan calls her Pandora, but her name is Toni.”
“I didn’t know.”
“That’s the least of things you don’t know,” continued Snake.
“How are we going to kidnap the best-protected Kabori in the whole damned Coalition—and if we pull that off, how do we escape the planet with him in tow?”
“You sound like you want to quit,” said Circe.
“No,” said Snake. “But if we pull it off, I sure as hell want a raise and a bonus.”
That broke the tension and brought general laughter.
“I assume you are doping out all these problems?” said Circe.
“That’s what they pay me for,” answered Pretorius.
Snake chuckled. “They only pay if you survive.”
“Our friend Nathan has survived a hell of a lot,” noted Circe. Ortega turned to Pretorius. “What was it like on Benedaris IV?” he asked.
“Where’s that?” said Snake.
“Our stalwart leader’s last assignment,” said Pandora without looking up from her keyboard. “The record is absolutely fascinating.”
“Oh?” said Ortega. “What was his mission?”
“I have no idea,” answered Pandora. “It’s still classified.”
“Then what’s so fascinating about it?”
Pandora smiled. “He was given a posthumous Medal of Valor—and then they brought him back to life.”
“You were really dead?” asked Ortega.
“They say I was, for maybe a couple of minutes,” answered Pretorius. “I don’t remember a damned thing.”
“Just as well,” said Snake. “Who wants to spend the rest of their life remembering hell and stocking up on burn lotion?”
“Thanks for that vote of confidence,” said Pretorius dryly.
“We’re all going there,” said Snake. “Well, all of us except maybe Proto.” She turned to him. “Hey, Proto—you ever kill anyone?”
“No” was the answer.
“Cheer up,” said Ortega. “You’ll have plenty of opportunity on Petrus IV.”
“Please do not joke about this,�
�� said Djibmet. “After all, these are my people.”
“We’re only talking about killing the bad ones,” said Snake.
“They are not bad, only misled,” answered Djibmet. “That is why our Michkag will make a difference.” He paused and looked at each of them in turn. “I have read and viewed some of your history. You have had many tyrants—Caligula, Adolf Hitler, Conrad Bland. Once they were gone, was it necessary to perform genocide on their followers, or were they incorporated back into a civilized society?”
“Point taken,” said Pretorius. “And we’ll take your concerns into consideration from this point forward.” He looked at each of his crew. “There will be no more joking or making light of the more repugnant things we may have to do to accomplish this mission. Is that understood?”
There was a unanimous nodding of heads, even from Proto, who in actuality had no head of his own to nod but understood and mimicked the gesture.
They fell silent then. Snake and Circe went off to the galley to eat, Proto joined Djibmet and Michkag in their connected cabins for more lessons in the language, Ortega went off to take a nap, and Pretorius, as he did in almost every spare moment, concentrated on all the problems that Snake had outlined.
Finally, after a few hours of relative silence, Pandora got up, stretched, and announced that she had pinpointed the ship they wanted.
“You’re sure?” asked Pretorius.
“It fits your criteria, and it’ll be the easiest to approach,” she answered.
“Okay, tell me about it.”
“I can’t pronounce its name—doubtless Michkag or Djibmet can—but it translates as the Wayfarer. It’s the second-largest of the three ships between here and Petrus, but it has three advantages over the others.”
“What are they?” asked Pretorius.
“First, it’s due to land on Nortiqua II six days from now, and we’re only four days away. Second, it’s to unload all its cargo at the fortress nine days after that, and from what I can tell, that puts us on Petrus two days ahead of Michkag, maybe three.”
“I see the trace of a smile,” he said. “What are you holding back?”
“The third advantage.”
“I’m all ears.”