The Dog From Hell: Book Four of the Star Risk Series

by Chris Bunch

  “Prone to high jinks,” Goodnight added.

  “Aren’t we all?” Rosewater-Jones beamed. “I think that I, too, was a high-spirited lass in my day. And I’m sure that none of the girls will step over the bounds of good, safe fun. Or I shall be unhappy with them.

  “Most unhappy.”

  Her smile swept the five Star Risk operatives.

  Riss noticed, with a chill, that the smile didn’t go above her lips, and her eyes were cold as ice.

  She decided there was a reason that a wide-open world like Porcellis was controlled by one person, and that person was someone who could dismiss the thugs of Cerberus as rascals.

  And then she thought they’d tried to alert the wrong person.

  They should have warned the girls.

  EIGHT

  Eight men, all prosperous-looking, sat around a long table. Four, including the chairman, were there in person, and the others were holo images, projected from various parts of the galaxy.

  All of them were experienced in long-range communications, so the various delays from their distant fellows was allowed for reflexively.

  They were the division heads of the enormous Cerberus Systems, plus the chairman and chairman emeritus.

  Cerberus was headquartered on Alegria IV, one of Alegria 87’s multiple worlds. Earth might have been the Alliance’s ceremonial home, but Alegria was one of the half dozen planets where the working bureaucracy was located.

  Alegria headquartered the Alliance military, plus Intelligence, which was why Cerberus had been sited there.

  Cerberus’s CEO was fairly young, in his forties. Since his hostile takeover, he had sent the sprawling security company into newer, more “activist” directions.

  Never known for its high ethics, Cerberus was now famed — or rather, notorious — for being willing to accept any assignment, provided the fee was high enough and any broken laws could either be ignored, taken care of sub rosa, or blamed on erring employees.

  Ral Tomkins prided himself on being self-made; a boast that was occasionally responded to, well out of Tomkins’s hearing, as “damned correct, since no one else’ll take credit for the little bugger.”

  His inheritance, close to a billion credits made in military scrap, was never alluded to.

  “Success,” Tomkins was fond of saying, “makes anything right.”

  Mostly, his fellow board members agreed with him. The company had a long tradition of skullduggery to support that belief.

  The chairman emeritus had taken over the firm more than fifty years earlier, when he’d used his retirement funds and contacts within Alliance Intelligence to build a small private investigation company into an industrial giant.

  He deliberately sat at the far end of the table from Tomkins. Eldad Yarb’ro’s face held the residue of a thousand covert operations, and as many sins.

  All of them, he was privately arrogant enough to boast, had been carefully concealed, as were those crimes he’d committed building Cerberus.

  There were those who, well out of Yarb’ro’s hearing, repeated the old quip that the company motto should be “Never been indicted,” although that wasn’t quite true. “Never been convicted of anything that couldn’t be settled, appealed, or buried” might have been closer.

  “I think,” one of the men said, “we can regard the Nahroo matter as closed. Miss Angress has accepted our offer, and will plead guilty, and the presiding trial officer has agreed the investigation will not be pursued to any higher level.

  “Our client is most pleased.”

  He picked up another fiche, touched its surface, read, and then frowned.

  “Another matter that, unfortunately, should be closed is the Porcellis affair. All of our efforts — either on behalf of the estranged members of the Rosewater-Jones family or in our own interests, which of course were never revealed to the family — have failed, and the candidates we had planned to further our interests are now in the hands of the originally intended party. I recommend that we distance ourselves from any further dealings with anyone and everyone in this regrettable case.

  “I so move it.”

  Tomkins said, “Seconded,” looked around the table, got nods. Cerberus sometimes gave the air of being democratically run. It was not, of course. All dissension was resolved before any meeting.

  “Carried,” he said. “Although I’m most displeased by the loss of valuable resources and personnel in the matter. Move on.”

  “No,” Yarb’ro said. “I don’t think the matter should be dismissed at all, although I certainly agree that we should have no dealings with either the family or the world.”

  “What, then, are you saying?” Tomkins said, voice chill. There was little fondness between the two men.

  “I’m referring to this miniscule organization that calls itself Star Risk that was our opponent in this matter. No more than five principals, yet again they’ve managed to cleverly bollix up the works,” Yarb’ro said. We have allowed them to do this time and again. This is absurd. Our reputation as a firm to be dealt with most carefully is potentially at stake.

  “We’ve always prided ourselves in dealing swiftly and finally with any competition, yet these beings have been allowed to continue in their financially and otherwise embarrassing ways. There is a complete fiche available on their activities on the agenda, and any of you are welcome to review it, although I think the summary at the top of the file is adequate.

  “I wish never to see their names again.”

  “And you propose?” came from one of Tomkins’s lackeys. “What? An End Certificate on them?”

  That was Cerberus’s code phrase for assassination.

  “I do not,” Yarb’ro said. “We have been, as I’ve said before, too quick to extend our responses to the limit, which is not only unnecessary, but expensive and potentially lays Cerberus open to legal action.

  “That is not necessary. I think that we should put full pressure on this firm, in all areas, to remove them from the field. I have an executive ready to coordinate this attempt, one of our more capable operatives named Nowotny. He has already been placed on standby.”

  Several of the men, or their images, nodded familiarity with the name.

  Tomkins touched sensors on his desk, scanned the screen that appeared. He looked up.

  “You are certainly right about this Star Risk, and we don’t need to waste time discussing how they should be dealt with. They may be no more than a gadfly, but even mites can be annoying, especially considering a future contract that promises quite incredible profits.

  “It is time, and past time, to deal with them conclusively.

  “I so order, and see no reason to waste our time with a vote.”

  NINE

  It started small.

  M’chel Riss had recently gotten fascinated with the ancient Earth martial art of salat. She thought she was doing well — as well as she ever allowed herself to think she was doing — and was surprised when her instructor, one Stiff Perr, told her he didn’t think she had a chance of advancing to a higher degree, and was dropping her from the class.

  She was hurt, then angry, then thought about whipping up on the man.

  From behind, knowing his skills.

  But she remembered he was a notoriously eccentric sort, shrugged, and forgot about it.

  The next hitch was an inquiry from Trimalchio IV’s Immigration Bureau, asking if Grok’s papers were in order.

  Jasmine sent an immediate response back saying of course they were, and why were they bothering him?

  No reply was received, and Star Risk considered it had merely been some officious bureaucrat they’d silenced, and so gave Grok a proper ration for being illegal, which he failed to find amusing.

  Nor did Jasmine, Grok’s closest friend, especially when she discovered Trimalchio’s Immigration was used for nothing other than polite extortion when a notorious and successful white-collar criminal sought asylum on the world.

  The next trouble was not amusing
for anyone. Alliance Credit, their longtime banker, told Jasmine that there had been unspecified complaints about Star Risk playing fast and loose with their credit, and “requested” that Star Risk take their banking elsewhere.

  No further explanations were offered.

  Jasmine, muttering under her breath, found a new banker.

  She also caught the next bomb. Their insurance company canceled all coverage, including the team’s personal medical plan, with only the bland explanation that “in these troubled times, we’re forced to consider all clients very carefully.”

  M’chel took King out for a drink or six. Jasmine complained plaintively, “I feel like I’ve been shot at and missed and shit at and hit.” M’chel couldn’t offer much beyond sympathy and another round.

  The firm picked up a quick and easy contract, helping a system find advisors to train their military.

  All that would be necessary was for Star Risk to hire reliable people — and, even in the flaky field of mercenarying, there were such — coordinate on a syllabus with the client world, and inspect the work done once or twice an E-year.

  Jobs like that, never bragged about in resumes or bars, paid the rent.

  Goodnight contacted Hal Maffer, a fairly reliable contractor, told him what they needed, and moved on to another project.

  Within the day, Maffer, sounding worried, was back on the com, saying that three of the four teams he contacted didn’t want to accept a contract with Star Risk, having heard the company wasn’t that reputable, and was getting a very nasty reputation for not paying its people when it should.

  Goodnight hit the roof, knowing well how many deadbeats worked in his field, and how desperate circumstances could become if Star Risk got the reputation of being a deadbeat.

  Maffer said he’d stand by.

  Goodnight started checking the rumor mill, and found that, indeed, someone was spreading the word that Star Risk had had a good rep, but they’d gone sadly downhill.

  Nobody knew where the slander had come from, nor who’d started it, but “everyone” had heard it.

  Goodnight managed to piece together a team for the contract, but it became necessary to post a bond. Since Star Risk’s banking was awry, that required some financial jiggling, almost enough to make the job not worth handling.

  Goodnight retired to a bar — any bar — fuming gently.

  Freddie was the next target.

  A rather nubile journoh showed up, claiming to be a freelancer interested in doing a major piece on Star Risk as an example of a reliable, moral mercenary outfit.

  M’chel tried telling von Baldur to get away from her — that journohs, any journohs, are always the pilot fish of disaster for soldiers.

  Von Baldur pooh-poohed her, saying that he was good with people, and could tell there was no malice in this woman. He gave her everything — including, Riss suspected, some exceedingly after-hours attention, and they parted as smiling friends.

  Two weeks later, it appeared the smile had been on the face of the tiger, as one of the biggest-selling tabs in the Alliance appeared with a screaming headline:

  DEADLY MERCENARY RING ACCUSED OF WAR CRIMES.

  And the drop:

  STAR RISK, LTD. NAMED IN CIVILIAN ATROCITIES.

  There was nothing to the story, except some wild rumors that had been floating around for years about never-to-be-named soldiers of fortune who were utterly guilty of some ugly crimes.

  Suddenly Star Risk was named as the guilty party, even though the firm hadn’t been in existence when at least five of those atrocities had been committed.

  “Wonderful,” Freddie muttered.

  “Indeed,” Riss said, trying not to gloat.

  “Come on,” she said. “I know the bar where Chas is hanging his hat these days.”

  She did hope the episode would slightly reduce Friedrich’s proud boasts about being an unerring Isaiah.

  “Cheer up,” she told the pair, after uniting them over alcohol. “It can only get better.”

  It didn’t. It got very much worse.

  Next was a tax audit. This, however, was no particularly big deal. Among the original settlers of Trimalchio IV had been several tax evaders, so the Revenue Division of the planet’s tiny government was small and ineffectual.

  But this, coupled with a “safety inspection” of Star Risk’s offices, was enough to drive Jasmine King to the bar.

  Grok came along, amiably, since he’d found a definite fondness for Earth cognac.

  The four were joined by Chas Goodnight, who announced that he’d picked up a tail, and, worse yet, that there were other lurkers outside the bar, clearly waiting for their assigned targets to leave.

  “It’s not that I’m doing anything nefarious, and if I can still pronounce that word I’m definitely not drinking enough gin,” Goodnight said. “But just the presence of a shadow is enough to inhibit my style.”

  He drank, then looked at his partners.

  “You know who’s behind all of this crap.”

  Before anyone else could answer, Grok said, most positively, “Cerberus Systems, of course.”

  There was not a shadow of disagreement or of other candidacy.

  “Just frigging wonderful,” Riss said. “They’ve got how many operatives — five thousand?”

  “Double that,” said King, who kept track of such things.

  “I don’t want to think about how many people subverted, how many ships, how many millions of credits,” Riss went on. “So what are we gonna do about it?”

  Silence, then Goodnight tried, “Hope they get tired of teaching us moral lessons?”

  Jasmine snorted disbelief.

  “All we can do,” she said, “is hang on until they run out of ideas and find someone else to screw.”

  “This is not a cheerful conversation,” von Baldur said. He signaled for another round.

  The next morning, his mood hadn’t improved, even seen through the lens of a hangover.

  He took M’chel into his office.

  “I think,” he said, “since you and I are original partners, that we had best be preparing for a doomsday plan, before someone gets killed.”

  “Like what?” Riss asked, knowing the answer full well.

  Von Baldur just looked at her.

  She nodded, went back to her office, began figuring.

  That night, while von Baldur and Riss were separately glooming over how far Star Risk might be forced to cut and run — and coming up with worst-case scenarios — an industrial accident occurred.

  In spite of statistical improbability, the antigravity generators that made the Star Risk building so architecturally stylish and improbable-looking failed momentarily. Worse, the backup and emergency generators cut out just on the forty-third floor for a few seconds.

  The building didn’t topple, but the forty-fourth floor dropped one story before the backups came on and lifted things to where they should have remained.

  Holos were already screaming about the catastrophe that had been predicted, which was why the tower had relatively few tenants. Star Risk considered the damage from a lifter hovering just off the building.

  “The offices are pretty well squashed,” Goodnight said. “Naturally, nobody’s talking sabotage yet.”

  “And probably they won’t,” King said. “Cerberus’s Industrial Section is a lot better than most arson/accident teams.”

  “What about our insurance?” Goodnight asked.

  “What insurance?” Jasmine King said. “We were canceled, remember? And I haven’t gotten an approval from the companies I’ve been getting quotes from.”

  “Wonderfuller and wonderfuller,” Riss said. “So what have we lost?”

  “Totally? Not all that much, really,” King said. “We’re backed up, twice, in offsite locations. We’ll come back up all right, but it’ll be the devil’s own time putting things in operating order.”

  “During which time, we won’t be getting any jobs,” Goodnight said. “I just hope the building
management’s coverage is nice and covered.”

  King nodded, didn’t answer.

  “Talking will not solve our problem,” Grok said, trying to sound cheery and undisturbed. “So let’s set to work.”

  Von Baldur looked at Riss. He didn’t need to say anything. What would happen if the next “accident” happened during working hours?

  Five versus ten thousand?

  They set to work.

  What came next should have been a joke, but no one considered it funny.

  Star Risk had been working almost around the clock, on rented furniture with rented computers.

  They were very proud of themselves that they’d almost put Humpty Dumpty together again, and figured they’d reopen for business in a week, no longer.

  Trimalchio IV’s Animal Cruelty Society showed up with a list of questions. Was this strange creature they called Grok really sentient? If not, was he there of his own free will? Did he need liberation? If so, what zoological gardens might accept him? Was he to be considered nonhostile to humans? If not, were there proper security precautions to prevent him from harming people? Had his custodians posted a proper bond to provide for any accidents or runnings-amok?

  Star Risk ignored them.

  But even ignoring further frayed tempers.

  “We’re being nibbled to death by ducks,” Goodnight growled.

  • • •

  The grand finale came next.

  It was a very slick deal, everyone at Star Risk agreed.

  Three aircraft, most likely small strike ships, attacked just after midnight on a weekend, when Trimalchio IV’s business section was almost empty.

  Two held, orbiting five hundred meters over Star Risk’s tower, and the third came in hot.

  It launched what was probably a five hundred kiloton conventional homing bomb, which hit the Star Risk suite through Chas Goodnight’s office window.

  The blast utterly destroyed the suite, and the shock sent the tower rocking on its foundations.

  The second ship came in, firing a dozen small incendiaries.

  If there had been anything left of Star Risk’s assets, they were destroyed in the fire. Firemen from a dozen companies responded, and the fire was out by an hour after dawn.