Can't Shoot Straight Gang Returns

by Blaze Ward

  “I would like to perhaps entertain the two of you in the near future,” Rob said, rising to depart. “After I have had a chance to talk to the Governor and see where we stand with him, as well as some of the other captains, if you know any you might recommend. We’re looking for naturally colorful characters that we can cast in minor roles and bit parts, as well as a few slots we’re hoping for find among whatever professional or semi-pro acting talent there is. Please let me know if you have any questions?”

  “I will,” Nakano replied in a crisp, formal accent.

  Rob finally placed the man’s language. He was speaking English with an Aquitaine accent, which was highly unlikely out here. Not impossible, but long, long odds.

  “You also aren’t from around here, Captain?” Rob tried to set his tone as inquisitive without prying. “Judging by your accent?”

  “Correct,” the man nodded. “I was born on Nahar, which is about as far from the long Salonnian border with Corynthe as you can get, long ways around the galactic rim rather beyond even space Corynthe claims on their most ambitious days. Why do you ask?”

  “Your accent is pure Aquitaine, sir,” Rob smiled. “That would actually help in our filming, as they would be one of our targets for distribution.”

  “Well, I speak Igbo at home, Segura,” Nakano replied. “As does about half of my crew. The other half, including Kozel here, are more local.”

  “Lucky for me then that we met thus, Sri,” Rob nodded back. “We’d like a colorful movie filled with interesting people. Hopefully we can make something work.”

  “Indeed,” Nakano grew formal. “Good day, then.”

  “See you soon,” Kozel smiled at him as well before he departed. It seemed more than just normally friendly.

  Rob left the rest of his beer on the bar and put an extra tip with it. Word about him would get around, as those two talked, and others asked Nakano what had just happened, so he wanted the bartenders and staff to have a good opinion of him, next time he came in here fishing.

  Things were already looking good, as long as he could convince a bunch of pirates to go do violence to complete strangers for money.

  He didn’t think it would be a difficult task, convincing them. But they were pirates.

  Anything might go.

  11

  “Where is everyone?” Rob asked as he entered the ship’s lounge.

  Dinner time usually meant that the room would be filled with the smells of food, but it was just Raef in here, wolfing down a bowl of udon and reading something on a smallscreen device.

  “Jorge happened,” she looked up and paused. “Got everyone rooms at a hotel in town and moved himself, Roxy, and Longbow over. You and Nigel have rooms as well, but neither of you were back yet to tell.”

  “You don’t want a room?” Rob asked, kind of knowing the answer already, but wanting to hear it from her directly.

  “I prefer my ship, Rob,” she replied flatly. “I’ll join you occasionally for meals and meetings, but I sleep better in my cabin, on my bed, listening to my ship’s sounds, with the temperature just the way I like it. Plus, I don’t trust pirates any further than I can throw them.”

  “So us gone is…?”

  “Almost my idea of paradise, as long as I can log into the local news and entertainment network, Handsome,” she did smile this time.

  “Okay, well I’ve started making contact with some local ships,” Rob smiled back at her. “Would you be the person to ask about reputations and all that?”

  “Probably,” Raef replied. “Not that I’m likely to know much, this far from home, but better than anyone else on the crew. Not sure who you could get an honest answer from among the locals. Who’s first?”

  “Wild Duck,” Rob answered. “A 3-ring mothership.”

  “Captained by Nakano,” she completed the sentence. “A little more high profile than most ships in this section of the galactic arm.”

  “That’s the man,” Rob agreed. “Said he had a retainer contract to hassle a Syndicate named Bergier, on behalf of some other Syndicate. I presume it’s another case of plausible deniability.”

  “Probably,” Raef nodded grimly. “What do you need to know?”

  “Anything and everything you can lay hands on, Raef,” Rob said. “At some point, if we make a movie, he’s on my list of people to cast. If we go beyond that into serious business, I’d like to be able to judge the military and political intelligence we get from him or the Governor against what you know. Won’t save us a double-cross, but might warn us what kind would be coming.”

  “It’s Corynthe, Handsome,” her face had turned sour. “They’re already calculating several steps past a triple-cross, more likely than not.”

  “Yeah, but I got Jorge on my side,” Rob laughed cruelly. “They’ll all be in for a surprise.”

  “You hope. That it?”

  She picked up her noodle bow expectantly, so Rob took a cue. She and Nigel were the quiet ones of the group. He could give her some peace.

  If everything worked the way Jorge had planned it, she would literally be in the middle of the craziness when the trouble started.

  12

  Finn noticed that Steafan had added a late meeting today, but left the details blank. Probably not a bad sign, since Steafan hadn’t barged in on other meetings to interrupt with some world-ending event.

  Still, it was later than he usually worked, so he sent Aoki a note and got an auto-reply.

  Huh. Must be girl’s night out or something and he’d forgotten.

  At least that meant he wouldn’t get in trouble for coming home too late for dinner.

  Steafan entered a few minutes later, with Aoki in tow.

  “Am I having an intervention?” he asked, only half joking.

  “Not yet,” Aoki smiled sweetly. “Anything you felt the need to confess?”

  “My wife’s almost as much of a goof as I am?” Finn tried to read her smile, but she was playing her cards close.

  “Almost,” she came around his desk and kissed him while Steafan took a chair.

  Aoki ended up on the couch, more or less splayed across it like she was expecting a fashion photographer to happen by. Weirder things had happened. Finn sat at his desk and waited for them to get to whatever they were up to.

  “So you asked about the thing that apparently happened with Jorge Royo a year ago in Salonnia,” Steafan began, pulling out several folders from a briefcase Finn had missed when the two entered.

  “And?” Finn asked.

  “It’s messy, boss,” Steafan said. “They were all set to make a movie, but got sidetracked because Longbow was supposed to be playing this massive concert. Fifty thousand sailors, give or take, were getting there and getting organized. Near as anybody can tell, the commodore of the naval base decided to defect, stealing the largest warship in the entire Salonnian Navy owned by any of the Syndicates and flying it to Lincolnshire, where he immediately claims asylum, turns State’s Evidence, and was given a new life, disappearing from history as near as we can tell into a new identity nobody has since cracked.”

  “Seriously?” Finn found himself leaned forward with his hands flat on his desk.

  “Like I said. Total, freaking mess,” Steafan shrugged. “Jorge and his friends did not end up getting their movie made, and pretty much disappeared back into everyday life until they show up here with a completely different movie script, this one even better than the last. One presumes that maybe the government of Lincolnshire paid them some sort of kill fee, but no banks or financiers would touch the place.”

  “Same players?” Finn asked.

  “Jorge Royo, Mrs. Jones, and Longbow, yes,” Steafan replied, checking his notes. “Salonnia’s not talking much. Even less than normal, so that’s about all we know without activating some of our sleepers for confirmation, but I don’t think this is that important. Those three have worked together for the better part of fifteen years, if Longbow did some of the soundtracks he mentioned. And before you ask,
no, I haven’t found copies of them yet. You may have to send a courier to Lincolnshire proper to buy them.”

  “Okay, so why have you finagled my wife into this meeting, Steafan?” Finn changed the topic.

  “She brought me, boss,” Steafan shrugged. “I’ll let her explain.”

  Finn knew his dear wife was up to no good by the way her eyes sparkled. And that soft, almost innocent sigh that escaped her lips. Fat chance he’d fall for such projected innocence. He’d been madly in love with this woman for the better part of thirty years. He knew her games.

  “Out with it,” Finn commanded, with about as much authority over the woman as she might allow him to have.

  “So there are a few songwriters in this town,” she smiled demurely. “Friends of friends of friends, sort of thing.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “And I might have asked around,” Aoki continued, circling her prey like a cat.

  “As one might,” Finn agreed.

  One did not press Aoki. Not successfully, anyway.

  “If they were to make a movie on Draconis, or in the area, one would presume that Longbow might need a full studio in the city proper to work,” Aoki continued. “There are a few, one of which is owned by a friend of a friend who is also a lyricist with a few local hits.”

  Finn grunted. Local music tended towards the purely electronic, as well as frequently airy and random.

  He had always wondered what would happen if he hooked a synthesizer up to a navigation computer and plotted a multi-stop course from here to Petron, and then routed the output into music. Popular music today might sound close to that. Just about the opposite of Levi Framingham’s music, any way you wanted to slice it, but it might be a carrot they could dangle in front of the guitarist.

  Like they were dangling the carrot in front of a governor right now?

  “And?” Finn finally asked, when he realized she had stopped talking and was just smiling at him.

  “So we don’t know what happened last year,” Steafan spoke up. “Maybe completely innocent. Maybe the world’s perfect scam. Maybe they were enlisted to help the man defect. Maybe they were just innocent hostages.”

  “I’m still not seeing the crisis that has you two sitting in my office playing word games,” Finn pressed a little harder now.

  “So perhaps,” Aoki took up the thread. “Just perhaps, we could arrange things to get Longbow isolated from the others if we offered up our help with soundtracks and maybe a second album. Someone might be able to get more useful information from the man, if the other two weren’t around. Or that lawyer. They seem to be the big fish, and Longbow something of an afterthought. An old friend you’d help out when he was down on his luck.”

  “You think we might buy some of his friendship?” Finn asked flatly.

  Hilariously, they both shrugged almost identically. Close enough that Finn laughed, and caused them both to blush.

  “Can’t hurt to ask, boss,” Steafan said. “There is money in the Arts budget this year we could move around. Plus, it would qualify as an investment, if an album comes out of it, so maybe income later. Maybe more if there’s a legitimate movie here, and not just a scam being run by that suit, Segora.”

  “What do we know about the kid?” Finn felt his face harden.

  “Nothing. Not without finding someone from Ramsey,” Steafan said. “Too far away, unless I dispatch a boat, which I haven’t done. You expect them to be here long enough that we could round trip a spy request? Probably six months, best guess.”

  “Send it anyway with the next ship making a run into Ramsey,” Finn decided. “If they’re on the beam, we’ll still be talking in six months. If it’s all a scam, he’ll probably have blown town by then, leaving the others here holding the bag.”

  “Do we find some preliminary financing that maybe gets the movie stuff in motion?” Steafan asked. “That anchors them to the ground pretty hard, especially if we do it in dribbles, rather than making that guy’s eyes light up with greed.”

  “Six months is more than enough time for someone to also make it to Petron to tell David what we’re up to,” Finn acknowledged. “And for him to come back with a squadron, wanting their cut. Plus all the back taxes we haven’t been sending in. Which is where the Arts budget comes from.”

  “Are we at a dead end?” Aoki asked.

  She wasn’t on the government payroll directly, but she and Steafan were still his two closest advisors. The only two he trusted not to leak to someone.

  “No, but keep an eye on who Segura and the others talk to among the Captains,” Finn said. “That will tell us a lot about how serious they are.”

  Steafan’s belly laugh sounded rather ominous.

  “Good news then,” the man said. “Wild Duck was just about the first person he talked to.”

  “Nakano?” Finn laughed. “Well, they were serious about local color. Do they know the man’s a Salonnian spy?”

  Steafan shrugged rather eloquently. Aoki’s was less so, but just as relevant.

  Too many unknowns. Was this all just a complicated, Salonnian plot to take him out? Wouldn’t take much to make enough Captains restive that they decided that maybe he needed to be replaced as Governor of 6940 Draconis.

  Bizarre way to do it, but it would certainly leave someone with white hands, afterwards.

  “Watch them like hawks,” Finn ordered the man. “Longbow, too, but approach him unofficially about your cousin the lyricist.”

  “My cousin?” Aoki asked.

  “Everyone in this system is your cousin, dear,” Finn smiled at her. “I learned that a long time ago.”

  She grinned back. Those contacts were what made her dangerous. But he could trust her.

  Because her head would be on the chopping block right along with his, if this was all a trap.

  13

  “So what do we know, kid?”

  Rob looked up as Jorge finally emerged from his bedroom, into the rest of the presidential suite he had been sharing with Roxy. Longbow had a smaller suite down the hall, and he and Nigel were down a few floors with the plebes.

  Not an entirely bad way to live, given the housing and entertainment budget the Service had come up with for this mission.

  “Just going over the plans for the set we’ll be building for act three of the movie,” Rob felt his face go sour. “Is anybody that stupid? Are we missing something important in the defenses? Is this really believable?”

  He gestured to the big, paper printout in front of him, done like blueprints for an Art Department to build. But it was, near as he could tell, a dead solid copy of the architectural as-builts of the place.

  Jorge wandered close, white, terrycloth robe tied loosely and a martini glass in one hand.

  Seriously, as far as Rob knew, the best way to torture the man wasn’t to withhold alcohol, so much as take away his martini glass and make him drink tequila or something.

  Jorge sipped now and made appreciative noises as he studied the map.

  “So you were in the navy kid, right?” Jorge glanced up at him. “Before all the rest of your life.”

  “I was,” Rob replied simply.

  Nigel hadn’t found any listening devices in his regular, thorough sweeps of the place, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  “So the Navy in every nation is a government operation, Handsome,” Jorge smiled. “With very strict acceptance criteria around hardware and facilities, because mistakes mean people get killed, and politicians get angry calls from relatives of the deceased.”

  “Yeah, that jibes with what I remember,” Rob said. “It’s been almost a decade.”

  “Right, but this is Salonnia who are playing the bad guys in act three,” Jorge circles the table to get a better view and get the morning sun out of his eyes. Well, noonday sun. Jorge didn’t do mornings, unless he was still up. “They aren’t a government. Instead, you have somewhere between eight and eleven criminal Syndicates in charge, depending on things. Some of them like each
other well enough to cooperate. Others would see the planet burn, just to take a rival down a notch. And we need realism here, rather than silly notions. That’s what sells this film to the audience.”

  “Right, but one gun station, off to one side of the base?” Handsome put his finger down on a single tower, located well away from the main part of the Secret Salonnian Naval Base. “That’s not enough.”

  “Oh, I agree with you one hundred percent, kid,” Jorge laughed. “But this is actually fairly standard for Salonnia, and based on a real place. Remember, this is a business operation, not a government. More guns means more expensive, so they did a cost/benefit analysis and calculated risk curves. There are two big guns in that tower, and that gives them just enough redundancy to check a box on a list. And it puts all those folks clear across the landing field from the big shots, so they can come and go in their fancy yachts without having to walk too far. Or in this case, ride, since we’re on the surface of an airless moon.”

  “And nobody would be able to attack this?” Rob stood and began to pace.

  Partly, he was playing for the galleries, assuming that someone was somehow listening, but partly this was out of inexperience on his part. And some level of disgust.

  An Aquitaine heavy cruiser with an escort of some sort could have just sailed right up to that base and probably pummeled it into the lunar dust. Or maybe stood well off and launched a wall of missiles at the place.

  Lincolnshire didn’t have any vessels with that sort of firepower. Even the ship he helped Jorge steal last year would have been outclassed, but that was all the little notes about gunships on the ground. Where Jorge’s finger landed now.

  “They would not, kid,” Jorge noted. “Because in addition to the guns, there’s normally a defensive squadron of fighters at a place like this. As for the script, we’ve added a raiding squadron. Pocket gunships with short-range jump that lets them sail for a week or so to hit someone and then either capture ships or blow things up and return. That’s the genesis of the script, that need for a team to disable the base before the cavalry rides in at the last minute and saves the day.”