by Chris Bunch
‘Wolfe?’
Joshua snorted, coughed. ‘What?’
‘I - just wanted to know if you were awake,’ Chesney whispered. ‘Sometimes my - my snoring bothers people.’
‘Not me,’ Wolfe said, in a carefully sleep-filled voice. ‘I can sleep through the crack of doom.’
‘Good,’ Chesney said. ‘Goodnight again.’
Wolfe knew he wasn’t sleeping, but listening.
Finally Wolfe’s mind, drunken monkey that it was, gave him what he’d been looking for on Merrett Chesney. There’d been three separate tabloid sensations. First a war hero, a special operations veteran of many close-fought engagements, was accused of murdering his wife and her lover.
Then a second scandal broke. The hero had been keeping a terrible secret. His real name wasn’t Chesney, but . . . Wolfe’s mind sought for the name but couldn’t bring it up. A rich youth, parents near the top of their planet’s social set. The boy had been unhappy, but seemed to settle down once he was placed in a military school. During one summer leave, there’d been an explosion at the family’s mansion, an explosion that was at first blamed on a faulty power grid. Further investigation had found the blast came from a land mine stolen from a military depot that’d somehow been set off in the kouse.
Wolfe tried to remember how many had been killed. He couldn’t, but he was sure the family had been obliterated, except for the son, who’d been out with a girl that night. But he had refused to name her, refused to soil her reputation. There’d been a trial, but the jury couldn’t quite convict him of murder in the first degree, and it settled on a secondary charge. The boy would have served five E-years or so before he was released and disappeared.
That had been the end of that until that highly decorated Federation Navy commander, Merrett Chesney, had been accused of murder. Investigation revealed he’d fraudulently enlisted at the beginning of the war. He’d been a model sailor, quickly commissioned and volunteered for special operations, although there’d been whispers he wasn’t averse to enriching himself if it didn’t interfere with his duties.
Chesney had married well during the war and, as soon as the Al’ar vanished, set to work spending his wife’s inheritance. When the money began to run out, both developed wandering eyes. Then the wife and one of her lovers had been murdered - beaten to death, as Wolfe remembered.
The third sensation was after Chesney was convicted. Before the penalty phase of the trial was completed, he’d escaped, with the connivance of at least one fellow officer. That officer’s body had been found next to a hangar where a patrol ship had been kept, a ship that was now missing.
No one had much time to look for Chesney: The postwar interregnum was swirling chaos. Everyone assumed he’d fled to the Outlaw Worlds and hopefully met a deserved fate.
Nice choice of partners, Wolfe, Joshua thought wryly. Maybe I should have stayed on Ak-Mechat Vll.
‘Do not move,’ the voice said.
Joshua stopped in midstep, let his boot ease to the ground.
The woman came out of the brush. Her clothes were worn but clean, her face dirt-streaked, although that might’ve been an attempt at camouflage. She held an old sporting rifle ready, and Joshua noted it was very clean.
He’d sensed someone ahead for about five minutes, just after they’d struck the path they were following. ‘Freedom,’ he said.
‘Or death,’ the woman answered, but the gun stayed leveled.
‘We have what you’ve bought,’ Chesney said, moving a hand toward the case he was lugging, freezing when the gun barrel was focused on the middle of his chest.
‘Put down the rifle, and unfasten your gun belts,’ the woman ordered.
They obeyed. A man came from the other side of the path and picked up their weapons.
‘Are they carrying any communications gear?’
The man patted them down hastily, eyes meeting Wolfe’s nervously, then looking away. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘But in that case . . .’
‘Don’t open it,’ the woman and Chesney said in near unison. Wolfe grinned, and a smile almost made it to the woman’s lips.
The man shrank back as if it were a tarafny.
‘You,’ the woman said, indicating Wolfe with her gun barrel. ‘Carry it. You go first.’
Joshua picked up the case, slung the strap over his shoulder, and started off.
Ten minutes later, the woman pushed aside brush, and they went up a narrow, skillfully camouflaged side track. The ground had been planted with a tough grass that didn’t show bootprints.
They came to a creek about five feet wide and crossed it on the flattened chunk of alloy that served as a bridge. There was a sentry on the other side, young, alert. He looked at Wolfe and Chesney with an expression somewhere between hostility and awe.
They entered the camp. There was a rocky cliff, with a protruding rock shelf that covered the entrance to a low cave that went back for almost fifty feet. There were at least twenty men and women in the camp. A man came out of the cave. ‘You can call me Andros.’
Joshua’s lips quirked. ‘I’m tempted to introduce myself as Homme. But I’m John Taylor. This is - Archibald Tuesday.’ Chesney frowned for a minute, then recovered.
‘Good,’ Andros said. ‘No one needs real names until the war is over.’
‘Sometimes not even then,’ Wolfe said.
‘True. But we do not plan on taking our planet in the direction of Messieurs Dzhugashvili and Ulyanov.’
Chesney was puzzled, not understanding what Wolfe and Andros were talking about. The woman had a faint smile on her face.
‘I assume that is what we are paying so dearly for?’ Andros indicated the case.
‘It is.’
‘Very, very good. Now the tide will be on the turning.’
It was just after dark. The rebels had prepared a meal while Chesney and Wolfe washed at the creek. For guerrillas, Chesney said, they ate like gourmets. Fish wrapped and baked in an aromatic leaf, three kinds of unknown vegetables, a meat that tasted like pork dipped in a fiery sauce, then fruit. They drank a cool herbal tea. Their plates and utensils were military-issue plas.
Joshua and Chesney sat just outside the cave mouth with Andros and the woman who’d been introduced as Esperansa. Their guns and packs had been returned and now lay beside them. The other rebels were farther back in the cave, talking quietly over the remains of their meal. There were around forty now, about half of the band, Andros said. The others were out on patrols or staked out on ambushes on the other side of the ridge. ‘By rights,’ Andros said, ‘we should have had a roaring fire and a feast. But infrared detectors have taken the romance out of being a guerrilla.’
‘Never mind,’ Wolfe said. ‘Neither of us believe in parties when we’re working.’ He looked around the cave.
‘Something I’m curious about. You’re not planning on assembling the - device here, are you?’
Esperansa laughed aloud. ‘No, Mister Taylor. Not here. But I shall not tell you where I’ll work.’
‘Don’t want to know,’ Joshua said amiably. ‘The only thing I’d like to know is the recipe for that pig we just ate.’
‘Pig?’ Andros looked puzzled. ‘Oh. You mean the baked tarafny?’
Chesney sat suddenly upright, eyes wide.
‘We think it’s quite fair. The tarafny tries to eat us,’ Andros said, pretending not to notice Chesney’s dismay, ‘so we eat it first.’
‘Never mind about the recipe,’ Joshua said. ‘I don’t think, assuming the tarafny is the same charmer we encountered on the trail, it’d be very practical to keep a cageful aboard a starship. Now, perhaps we should talk business?’
Andros poured himself another glass of tea. ‘Certainly.’ He turned. ‘El-Vah,’ he called. ‘Would you bring me that brown envelope that’s in my bedroll?’
A young man came out of the cave carrying the fat envelope. He was armed with a pistol. He gave Wolfe and Chesney a cold look and sat down a few feet to the side.
�
�Let me ask something first,’ Andros said. ‘You two are quite a team. When the Inspectorate sprung their trap, we were just outside the village. We saw your ship and knew you were doomed. But you escaped their missiles and came back through their midst, showing your contempt for the swine. I’ve never seen or heard of such piloting, such skill. Our cause would be greatly helped if we had an attack craft such as yours, with you two piloting it. We could strike real terror in the pigs we’ve sworn to destroy.’
‘How much?’ Chesney asked flatly. ‘I come expensive, especially since there’d be only one of me, which makes it easier for them to pick a target. And my friend here isn’t cheap, either. I won’t tell you who he really is, but he was a high-ranking commando officer during the Al’ar War, and has great skills fighting on the land as well as in the air.’
‘Ah?’ Andros considered Wolfe. ‘We could certainly use a master tactician, someone to train our recruits, perhaps lead us in raids until our own officers gain greater experience.’
‘Is anyone planning on asking me if I’m interested?’ Wolfe asked.
‘I don’t know if you would be,’ Andros said. ‘For I must tell you what we’re paying for that package you brought from Bulnes practically bankrupts our treasury here on Osirio. You would have to wait for payment until our coffers are replenished from Bulnes, or from some of our out-system supporters. Not that we would be ungenerous. We would pay what we could now, and give ten times that once the Inspectorate has fallen.’
‘I’ve got other commitments,’ Joshua said. ‘Sorry.’
‘I don’t have anything in the fire right now,’ Chesney said. ‘But one thing a freelancer can’t do is fight on the if-come. People have a tendency to forget about what they owe once they’ve won. Wasn’t it Machiavelli who suggested a lord who actually paid his mercenaries any other way than by the sword was a damned fool?’
‘I understand,’ Andros said. ‘And I am sorry we could not afford your further services. So here are the credits we were able to raise.’ He held out the envelope.
‘Able to raise?’ Chesney said, disbelief becoming anger.
Andros shook his head. ‘It would have been so much simpler if you’d been interested in joining us,’ he said, reaching behind him. ‘As it is, I’m truly sorry . . .’
Joshua’s small hideout gun snapped from his sleeve and he shot Andros in the face. The man rolled on his side, his half-drawn pistol falling into the dirt.
El-Vah drew his pistol. Wolfe shot him in the chest. The boy made a surprised sound in his throat and tumbled backward.
Wolfe heard shouts from the cave as Esperansa brought up her rifle, fumbling with the safety. Two blasters crashed simultaneously and she fell forward onto her face.
Blast rifle up, Wolfe sent a burst into the cave. He tossed Chesney his gun belt, stuffed the brown envelope into his shirt, and shouldered his pack.
‘To the trail,’ he snapped. ‘Back the way we came. Stay just ahead of me.’
Chesney nodded, buckling his gun belt on, hefting his pack. ‘What about the case?’
‘Leave it. They almost paid for it.’
Somebody shot at them, and the bolt smashed into the ground nearby. Wolfe sent another burst at random and started running, pistol belt slung over his shoulder.
The sentry in the middle of the path looked bewildered. ‘What is happening? What -’
Chesney shot him in the head. He spasmed, throwing his rifle high overhead, fell back into the creek. They went over the bridge, and Wolfe kicked the length of alIoy down into the water on top of the sentry’s body.
He caught up to Chesney. ‘We walk like hell for a count of one hundred,’ he ordered. ‘Then you keep walking for another hundred count, and go off into the brush and wait for me.’
‘What’re you going to do?’
‘Double back, ambush them, then join you. For pity’s sake, don’t shoot somebody coming up the path whistling. It’ll be me.’
‘Right.’
‘Especially since I still have the envelope with the money.’
‘Let’s go,’ Chesney said. ‘I can hear them coming.’
They went on. It was just light enough to dimly follow the path. Wolfe counted carefully, calmly: ninety-eight . . . ninety-nine . . . one hundred.
He ducked to the side, and Chesney kept moving.
Wolfe felt out, felt them coming. But he didn’t need the Lumina. He saw figures in the dimness, pelting up the trail. He stepped out and fired a long burst.
There were screams, wild shots. Another burst followed the first, then Wolfe went uphill once more. Damn, but I wish I had some grenades, he thought with the part of his mind that wasn’t counting.
At fifty, he stopped, frowning. He thought for a brief moment, then turned off the path.
Chesney lay prone, pistol pointing back down the path, ready to fire. He shrieked involuntarily as a hand came down on his shoulder, and Wolfe crouched beside him.
‘God, god, gods,’ he almost sobbed. ‘Don’t do that, man. My heart’s not up to that. Why didn’t you -’
‘Wasn’t sure there might not be a mistake,’ Wolfe said.
‘I heard you shooting them up,’ Chesney said, voice nervous. ‘Did you get them all?’
‘Nope. I’m not that efficient a killer.’
‘So what’s next? Are we going to have to keep running?’
‘We are - but I’ve got a way to slow them down, or anyway give them somebody else to worry about.’ He dug into his pack. ‘I brought these along in case we needed a diversion,’ he explained, holding up two spacesuit emergency flares. He took the end cap from one, inverted it, and put it on the other end.
‘Wolfe, everybody on the goddamned planet’ll see that!’
‘Hope so,’ Joshua said, and slammed his hand against the cap. White fire hissed upward nearly a thousand feet, and blossomed into a series of red-green-red-green flashes.
Joshua sent another one after the first. Chesney was still utterly bewildered.
‘Now we turn left,’ Wolfe said. ‘We’ll move parallel with the ridge crest until dawn. Then we’ll turn uphill again, and cross into our own valley. Up and at ’em, soldier.’
Minutes after they started moving, they heard the whine of gravlighters and saw lights in the sky.
‘Down, and hope the Inspectorate’s shitty with peoplesniffers, ’ Joshua ordered.
Explosions boomed, and the ground shuddered around them.
‘Good,’ Joshua said. ‘Bomb that old jungle. Always do it the easy way.’
There were high screams from the sky, and a pair of scoutships dove down. Fire blossomed from their bellies, and rockets slammed into the mountain.
‘They’ll keep that up all night, if I know my amateurs,’ Wolfe said, ‘then land troops on top of the mountain and sweep down. When - if the Inspectorate discovers the cave, they’ll have something to keep them busy, and they won’t be looking for us.’
Just before dawn they heard gunfire and explosions. ‘They found them,’ Chesney said.
‘Maybe,’ Wolfe said. ‘Or maybe they’re shooting up each other or a really offensive tree.’
‘I hope they get the bastards.’
‘Why? They did something stupid,’ Wolfe said, ‘and it seems to me they’ve already paid for it.’
‘I don’t like people who try to kill me.’
‘An understandable emotion. I frequently share it.’
Chesney was staggering by the time the sun came up. Joshua found an impenetrable thicket, and they pushed their way into it. Chesney went immediately to sleep, not offering to stand guard.
Wolfe let his senses float out but felt nothing. He calmed himself, breathing steadily, and let his body relax while his mind watched.
Around midday, Chesney grunted and woke up. He saw Wolfe sitting cross-legged, counting money. ‘How much do we have?’ he asked.
‘A little less than half a million,’ Joshua said. ‘Again, it appears real.’ He shook his head. ‘They should’ve bar
gained instead of going for the guns. Two-thirds isn’t bad soldier’s pay.’
Chesney nodded agreement. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Lord knows I’ve taken less and not cried all night. But why the hell can’t people stay honest?’
Wolfe looked at him without replying.
Chesney had the grace to turn away.
They moved slowly, quietly, following the mountain crest, until almost midnight, then they holed up until just before dawn. Aircraft constantly passed overhead, scoutships, lighters, gravsleds. But none slowed, so Wolfe paid no mind.
They crossed the few open spaces at a trot, listening carefully first. ‘We’re making a big circle,’ Wolfe explained. ‘We’ll have one more night in the open, then make the Resolute not long after first light.’
‘Oh Lord, a consummation devoutly to be made,’ Chesney misquoted fervently. ‘I never knew I could smell so bad. I’m going to live in the fresher until further notice. Is that what it’s like being a soldier?’
‘Nope,’ Wolfe said. ‘It’s when you don’t know you stink and don’t care either that you start soldiering.’
That night, when Chesney slept, Wolfe slid over beside him. He picked up Chesney’s pistol and pushed its bell mouth firmly down into the ground they lay on. He wiped the dirt from the outside of the barrel, and set it back down near the pilot’s hand.
Chesney touched controls on the tiny box and waited.
Brown water roiled, and the Resolute surfaced. Its secondary drive hummed, pushing it close to the bank. Its lock door opened, and the gangway slid out. Wolfe started down the bank.
‘Joshua.’
Wolfe stopped.
‘Turn around, Wolfe. I don’t like being a back-shooter unless I have to.’
Joshua obeyed.
Chesney had his pistol aimed in both hands at Wolfe’s chest. ‘I really don’t think three-quarters of a mill is enough for two people,’ he said, and his voice gloated as it had when he told Trevor he was wrong. ‘And I don’t think I’ll be sharing it with our mutual friend, either.’