Starship: Mercenary (Starship, Book 3)

by Resnick, Mike

  “You never told her to fight against the Theodore Roosevelt,” said the Duke.

  “You don’t understand her,” said Cole. “She grew up an outlaw. In a society that rewards guts and strength, she reached the top of a profession that most women don’t even enter and in which most men don’t live to see thirty. There’s not a member of the Teddy R that isn’t indebted to her one way or another. We’ll fight her, even kill her, if we have to, but I’m not happy about it.”

  “You sound like you were grooming her for great things,” said Jacovic.

  “She was capable of them,” answered Cole. “I was just trying to smooth off the rough edges and point her in the right direction.”

  “And now we will have to kill her,” said the Teroni.

  “If we’re lucky,” said Cole. “She’s about the least killable person I ever saw.”

  They fell silent for a moment. Then Cole noticed Forrice and Mustapha Odom entering the casino. He waved to them, and they made their way through the crowd.

  “Have a seat,” said the Duke. “The drinks are on the house. I trust you bear good tidings.”

  “Well, tidings, anyway,” said Forrice.

  “What’s the bottom line?” asked Cole.

  “To borrow a human expression,” said the Molarian, “we’re sitting ducks.”

  “No!” exclaimed the Duke angrily. “I’ve got more than one hundred and fifty thumper and burner cannons positioned around the station.”

  “They’re all Level 2s,” said Odom.

  “What the hell does that mean?” demanded the Duke.

  “It means the pulse cannon fire dissipates after fifteen thousand miles, and the laser is weak enough that about eighty-five percent of the ships on the Frontier can deflect it. All they have to do is park their fleet twenty thousand miles out and start firing.”

  “So much for weaponry,” said Cole. “What about the station’s defenses?”

  “Its shields and deflectors can ward off anything up to Level 4,” replied Odom. “But I’ve asked around, and Csonti’s got at least nine ships with Level 4 thumpers or burners.”

  “How long would it take to upgrade?”

  “Two weeks for defense, just a day or two for offense,” answered Odom. “However, the expense to cover the whole station at one time would break him.”

  “But what’s here now is in working order?” asked Cole.

  “The cannons and shields we tested are.”

  “It all works,” said the Duke. “I have everything tested every Standard month.”

  “Okay,” said Cole. “Thank you, Mr. Odom.” He looked at the Molarian. “Have you got anything to add, Four Eyes?”

  “Just that Singapore Station can’t possibly defend itself against Csonti’s fleet. The only question is whether the Teddy R can take them all on, and that depends, to a great extent, on the nature of their weaponry.”

  “It’s not a viable alternative,” put in Jacovic.

  “It might be,” said Forrice. “If they don’t have anything above Level 5 . . .”

  “Oh, the Theodore Roosevelt might survive, though I doubt it,” said Jacovic. “But unless Csonti is such a totally inept commander that he keeps his ships in a tight formation so we can confront them all at once, half of them can be attacking the station while the rest are holding the Theodore Roosevelt at bay in a firefight.”

  “He’s right,” said Cole. “The station can’t defend itself or harm Csonti’s fleet, and even if the Teddy R is powerful enough to take on all of Csonti’s ships at one, which is a highly dubious proposition, we can’t fight him and defend the station at the same time.”

  “So we’re beaten before we begin?” asked the Duke.

  “I didn’t say that,” answered Cole. “It just means we’re going to have to come up with a strategy that plays to our strengths instead of one that fails to mask the station’s weaknesses.”

  “Spare me the jargon and tell me what we’re going to do,” said the Duke.

  Cole almost looked amused. “I’m good, but I’m not that good. If I’d come up with a strategy already, I would have told you about it.”

  “But they’re coming in just three days!” said the Duke. “And your experts just told us that the station is virtually indefensible in this situation.”

  “No,” said Cole. “They said it can’t be defended by conventional means, and they’re right. We’re not giving up; we just need to come up with a different means of accomplishing our goal.”

  “You don’t surrender just because the numbers are against you,” added Jacovic. “That is where skill, intelligence, experience, and innovation come in.”

  “Right,” said Forrice. “Since coming to the Inner Frontier the Teddy R has probably won more battles by avoiding direct confrontation than by engaging in it.”

  “Well, it sounds good, anyway,” said the Duke, suddenly relaxed. “All right, gentlemen, I’ve had my two minutes of panic. I’ll be fine now. Just tell me what I can do to help, and I’m at your service.”

  “I appreciate that,” said Cole. “And as soon as we’ve hit upon a course of action, we’ll let you know how you can help.” He paused for a moment. “Mr. Odom?”

  “Yes?”

  “If we divert all the station’s power into its defenses—shields, screens, deflectors, whatever the hell it’s got—can we strengthen them enough to buy us some time?”

  Odom shook his head. “There’s no shortage of power on the station, sir,” he replied. “There’s simply no way to strengthen what’s here, rather than replacing it.” He looked at the Platinum Duke. “You shouldn’t have stinted on your defenses.”

  “We never anticipated a major attack,” answered the Duke. “We installed our shields to protect us from cosmic garbage, and out-of-control ships, and the occasional attack by a single bandit or pirate ship.”

  “Stupid,” said Odom. “Any military dreadnought could vaporize Singapore Station in ten seconds.”

  “They never come this far into the Inner Frontier.”

  “Neither do Navy warships with battle-hardened crews, but I notice you’ve got one defending you. You have to anticipate the worst that can happen, multiply it by a factor of three, and then hope you’re lucky.”

  “I think he gets the point, Mr. Odom,” said Cole.

  “Pity he didn’t get it a few years sooner,” said Odom, getting to his feet. “I’ll be back at the ship when you need me.”

  He walked off as the Duke said, “Doesn’t he mean if we need him?”

  “I think he meant what he said,” offered Forrice.

  “I want you to go back to the ship too, Four Eyes,” said Cole. “Run a number of simulations, and see if there’s any offensive or defensive formation that will give us an advantage over a fleet of thirty-five ships. You know what kind of weaponry the Red Sphinx carries. Stipulate that Csonti’s got at least four or five ships that are even better armed.”

  “I don’t think any computer is smart enough to come up with a winning formation,” said Forrice.

  “I know, but we have to go through all of the possibilities.”

  “May I add something?” said Jacovic.

  “Be my guest.”

  “If the computer actually does come up with an advantageous formation, then add the defense of Singapore Station into the equation.”

  “We’re not going to get that far,” said Forrice.

  “But if God drops everything else and you do,” said Cole, “then add a further stipulation that they’re trying to destroy the station and we’re trying to defend it.”

  “Will do,” said the Molarian, getting up and heading to the door with his surprisingly graceful spinning gait.

  “He’s going to come up empty,” said the Duke.

  “Probably,” replied Cole. “Would you rather he sat here and drank your liquor?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Look,” said Cole. “We’re not giving up and we’re not running away, but we have a very lim
ited number of options, so we’re going to have to explore each of them in the next day.”

  “And if you don’t find any?”

  “We’ll improvise. But I have to know what we’re doing within the next fifteen hours, twenty at the outside.”

  “Why?” asked the Duke, curious. “Not that I don’t want you to decide on a strategy. But Csonti won’t be here for at least two more days.”

  “You’ve got about sixty thousand permanent residents and probably at least that many visitors and transients on an inadequately defended station that’s about to come under attack,” explained Cole. “If we don’t come up with some plan that looks like it’s got a pretty good chance of victory—or even if we do—we’re almost certainly going to have to evacuate the station.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” admitted the Duke.

  “To quote my First Officer, if they stay here they’re sitting ducks.”

  “Yes, I suppose they need at least one Standard day to get away from here,” agreed the Duke. “Seriously, do you think there’s any likelihood at all of coming up with a viable plan?”

  Cole shrugged. “You never know. Sometimes they come from the least likely sources.”

  As it turned out, the solution was right in front of him.

  29

  Cole took a brief nap in his hotel room, then returned to the Teddy R, where he sought out Forrice, who was sitting at the main computer console on the bridge.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “About what you’d expect,” answered the Molarian. “The machine has rejected”—he looked at a number on the holoscreen—“just over four thousand formations.”

  “I assume it hasn’t approved any?”

  “If it had approved even one, I wouldn’t still be sitting here,” said Forrice.

  “Tell it to stop.”

  “I might as well,” said Forrice. “If it hasn’t come up with an acceptable formation yet, it’s not going to.”

  “I’m amazed that it can come up with four thousand for just five ships.”

  “They don’t differ all that much,” said Forrice, getting to his feet.

  “Where are you going?” said Cole.

  “Probably to the mess hall, or maybe I’ll make one last trip to my favorite location on the station.”

  “Later,” said Cole. “You’re not done yet.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said to stop trying to come up with formations. I want you to spend another hour or two seeing what the results are if we attack and disable Csonti right at the outset.”

  “I will if you want, but Csonti’s not our biggest problem, and you know it.”

  “He’s got the biggest ship, or so I’m told,” responded Cole. “As for Val, of course she’s our most formidable antagonist, but you can’t program intangibles into the computer. Or can you?”

  “Not really,” answered the Molarian. “Once I program them in, they become tangible, they have limits, and they don’t change.”

  “So find out what happens if we attack Csonti before he’s within range of the station.”

  Forrice shrugged an alien shrug. “You’re the boss.”

  Jacovic’s image suddenly appeared on the bridge.

  “Ah, there you are, Captain Cole!” he said. “I’ve been looking for you at your hotel and the casino.”

  “What’s up?”

  “It probably won’t help, but I have found another Teroni on the station, and convinced him to fight on our side.”

  “What kind of ship has he got?”

  “Class-QH,” said Jacovic. “It’s not much, but he’s got a Level 3 laser cannon. He might be able to take out one or two of Csonti’s smaller ships.”

  “We’ll take all the help we can get,” said Cole. “I’ll talk to him later. Where is he docked?”

  “Dock M, port 483,” answered Jacovic.

  “Hell, that’s out in the next county,” complained Cole. Suddenly he froze.

  “Are you all right, Captain?” said Jacovic after a few seconds. “Commander Forrice, is the Captain ill?”

  Forrice got up and spun over to where Cole was standing.

  “Son of a bitch!” said Cole so suddenly that the Molarian inadvertently spun back, startled. “I’m an idiot! It was staring me right in the face! Hell, I even discussed it with you two and the Duke, and I still didn’t see it!”

  Jacovic was silent for a moment. “Of course!” he shouted at last. “It was when I mentioned the ship’s location, wasn’t it?”

  “You got it,” said Cole, trying to control his excitement.

  “I don’t have it,” said Forrice. “What are you two talking about?”

  “Think about it, Four Eyes! What did Jacovic just tell me about his friend’s ship?”

  “That it’s got a Level 3 burner.”

  “After that.”

  “After that?” repeated Forrice, frowning. “Nothing.”

  “He told me it’s in port 483 of M Dock.”

  “So?”

  “So why wasn’t it in port 1?”

  “Because another ship was already there, obviously.”

  “Or port 200?”

  Suddenly a huge smile spread across the Molarian’s face. “I see!”

  “We already know we have to evacuate well over one hundred thousand Men and aliens,” said Cole. “How many of them have ships?”

  “I’ll tell you in twenty seconds,” said Forrice, uttering a pair of coded commands to the computer. “It’s checking with the station’s traffic computer.” Another five seconds. “There are 17,304 ships currently docked at Singapore Station.”

  “I’d say that’ll improve the odds a little, wouldn’t you?” asked Cole with a smile.

  “They won’t all have weapons, and not all the ships with weapons will fight to defend the station,” said Forrice.

  “I don’t need them all. But remember, sixty thousand Men and aliens live here. They’ve got a vested interest in defending the place.”

  “It makes sense,” conceded Forrice.

  “Thank you, Jacovic,” said Cole. “If you hadn’t found this Teroni with the ship, all three of us could have overlooked this until it was too late. Are you in the casino now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m coming over. I want you to hunt up the Platinum Duke. A contained environment like Singapore Station must have a holographic public address system. Tell him I want to use it as soon as I get there.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Captain,” said Jacovic, and his image vanished.

  “I think you can stop playing with your computer now,” said Cole to Forrice. “Come back to the station with me.”

  “Happy to,” said the Molarian.

  “I’ll drop you off at your whorehouse on the way.”

  “The whorehouse can wait,” said Forrice. “I want to be there when you address the . . . what should I call them? The populace.”

  “Call them the station’s navy,” replied Cole. “That’s what I want them to become. Now let’s go.”

  They took the airlift down to the main hatch in the shuttle bay, then rode a slidewalk a quarter mile to a monorail station. The single car picked them up and transported them the rest of the way.

  “How could I have made this trip past hundreds of ships on Dock J every day and not figured it out?” said Cole. “I mean, Dock J, for God’s sake! If there are five hundred ports per dock, and J is the tenth letter . . . Hell, how could I have missed them?”

  “They’re not warships, and they haven’t declared for one side or the other,” said Forrice. “We all just naturally thought of them as civilians.”

  “Probably most of them will choose to stay civilians,” acknowledged Cole. “But with this many to start with, I’ve got to be able to recruit a couple of hundred, which is more than we need.” He smiled again. “I think Csonti is going to have a little surprise waiting for him when he shows up.”

  “Preferably half a light-year or so before he get
s here,” replied the Molarian. “No sense letting him get within firing range.”

  “Let’s recruit our forces first,” said Cole, as the car dropped them off at the end of the dock. “Then we’ll worry about how to deploy them.”

  They got on the slidewalk that took them to the center of the station, then transferred to another that brought them to the front door of the casino. They entered, and found the Platinum Duke waiting for them at his table.

  “Everything’s ready for you,” he said. “Where do you want to speak from?”

  “Any place that’s convenient.”

  “How about my private office?”

  “I thought this table was your private office,” said Cole with a smile.

  “This table is my public office,” said the Duke. “Follow me.”

  “You might as well wait here,” said Cole to Forrice. “This shouldn’t take long.”

  The Duke led Cole to the back of the casino, waited for a door to iris and let them pass through, then walked down a short corridor to a large, elegant office at the end of it. The office door scanned the Duke’s one natural retina, analyzed the molecular structure of the platinum that composed most of his body, and allowed him and his guest to pass through.

  “All the Teroni told me was that you needed to address the whole station,” said the Duke, trying to restrain his excitement. “You must have a plan worked out, right?”

  “I have a plan thought out,” said Cole. “What I’m doing now is working out the details.”

  “Can you tell me what it is?”

  “We’re each donating the things we’re best suited to donate. Stick around and listen.” He paused. “Where do I stand?”

  “Anywhere you want. The holo cameras will key on your body heat and the motion sensors will follow you if you feel like walking around while you’re speaking.”

  “It’s not going to be that long a speech.”

  “Give me just a minute to program the cameras.”

  The Duke gave half a dozen commands to the computer that controlled all his office equipment including the cameras, then nodded to Cole. “It’ll start when you do.”

  “Residents of Singapore Station, and visitors as well, I have an important message for you,” said Cole. “I’m going to give you a few seconds to end your conversations and concentrate on what I’m about to say.” He paused, counted to fifteen, and spoke again. “Most of you are unaware of it, but a fleet of thirty-five to forty ships, led by the warlord known as Csonti, is on its way here to destroy Singapore Station. They are not expected to reach us for at least thirty-five Standard hours. Those of you who wish to evacuate the station will have more than a full Standard day to do so. But there is an alternative, one I hope many of you will consider.”