by Chris Bunch
“I was going to say not a chance, that SysGov wouldn’t be thrilled at having to deal with these warty-ass miners. But …” He thought again. “No. I don’t think they’re that sneaky. Or bright, come to think.”
“There’s no sign, from any of the reports, that, say, the baddies are using the same kind of spaceships, or wear the same kind of suits or use the same kind of guns,” Chas persisted, “like they might be Spec Ops types?
“I’m asking, because I used to do shit like that for the Alliance, and I assume the Foley System has some covert sorts of their own.”
“I don’t think so,” Reg said. “But I’ll ship over the raw data on all of the bandit encounters, if you want, and you can go through them. You’d have a better eye for that kind of detail than I would.”
“Last question,” Chas said. “Who’s Transkootenay’s contact in SysGov?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I’m grasping at straws,” Chas said.
“It’s a woman,” Reg said. “Good exec. In her fifties. Not a diplomat, but an administrator. Her name’s Tan Whitley, and she’s head of Offworld Development, on Glace.”
“Thanks.”
Reg looked at his brother carefully.
“Chas, are you going to stay with this Star Risk?”
It was Goodnight’s turn to think.
“For the moment, I think so,” he said. “At least while your ass is in a crack. After that …” He shrugged.
“Back to my wild, carefree life of crime, riches and beautiful women. Especially if something better gets offered.”
• • •
“Check me on this for what we should be trying to figure out first,” Baldur told Riss and King.
“First, what is our villains’ intelligence network like? We know they have something, since they are able to pick their striking points accurately. Second, are they running any double agents here on Sheol, or on any of the outstations? Third, what is their Signal Intelligence? Fourth, and quite possibly this should be first, what are their ultimate goals?
“Finally, where is their goddamned base?
“Did I miss anything?”
The two women considered.
“For the moment,” Riss said, “I think that covers it.”
“So then, we shall begin by attempting to provide our miners … gad, but I am starting to talk like that paternalistic Reg Goodnight. Our miners, indeed. Anyway, we must start providing security for them, which hopefully will also provide openings to begin striking back.
“One other thing I just arrived at. When our Chas returns to the ship, I think I shall sequester him. Very few people, other than his brother, and a scattering of others, know his face.
“I think we should keep it that way. We may need to send a ferret down a rat hole, and I would prefer our ferret be as suspicion free as possible.
“How, where, and when we might do that, I do not have a clue at the moment.”
“But it’s not a bad idea,” Riss said.
“I doubt if Chas will like being mewed up,” King said. “But better a bitter bester than a blown, broken, battered bester. Right?”
“It’s settled,” Riss said. “You are a robot. Nobody human could have made it through that last sentence without breaking her tongue.”
Baldur looked slightly shocked, until King started giggling.
FIFTEEN
M’chel considered the snifter, took it from its gimbal mounting, lifted the stopper, and sniffed.
No. It didn’t smell right, which meant it wouldn’t taste good, either.
But she still couldn’t sleep.
She decided to force a daydream that’d make her doze off, and curled up in one of Boop-Boop-A-Doop’s plush captain’s chairs, and thought about the ship.
The admiral who’d had it converted to his rather luxurious tastes didn’t deserve forced retirement, she thought, and yawned. More like keelhauling.
At least from the perspective of the Alliance taxpayers who’d inadvertently funded this barge.
If there was extravagance left off, she didn’t know what it was, from the gold fixtures in all of the freshers, to the jet-tub, covered against spillage if, gods forbid, the Boop ever went weightless, to the tapestry-like wall coverings.
Even the control rooms — two, fore and aft — were luxurious. The ship was a little shy on weaponry, having only four chainguns in blisters and a single missile station. But that was all right, she thought.
The whole universe didn’t have to pack a gun.
Name me a place you’ve been where one didn’t come in handy, her mind challenged.
She hmphed that away, and considered who, if she were rich enough to run this beast as her very own, she’d share it with.
Her list of potential lovers ran out very quickly.
For some reason, she didn’t like the idea of navigating it around the galaxy solo.
Face it, Riss. You’re getting lonely.
Fine. So, since this is your goddamned daydream, who in your past would you mind playing bunkie with?
She ran back a year, didn’t come up with anybody who fit her standards.
Damn, woman. You’ve been too long with inadequate loving. Perhaps you ought to —
The blast broke her thoughts, and she was on her feet, headed for the forward control room. Whatever it was, it’d been close enough to rock the ship on its landing skids.
She keyed a screen, swept the area, found where the blast had gone off.
Not far outside the yard, somewhere very damned close to Transkootenay’s headquarters here on Sheol.
Riss ran for her cabin, slid into a coverall, lifted her always-ready combat harness from a hook on a bulkhead, had it on, picked up the blaster under her bed, and was headed for the lock, fingers automatically loading the weapon.
She was the first, but Goodnight, Baldur, Grok, and then King showed up shortly.
All of them except King were armed, and they went out the lock and down the ramp toward the scream of sirens and the roar of flames.
One of Transkootenay’s buildings had exploded, and fire cascaded upward.
Baldur saw Reg Goodnight, gazing aghast at the flames, grabbed him by the shoulder.
“What happened?”
“Don’t know,” Goodnight said. “But that’s … that was … the mine claim center. Gone. All gone.”
He was about to say more, then saw a helmeted policeman, carrying a long tube.
“What is it?” he called.
The cop started to ignore the question, then realized who had asked it.
“Some kind of rocket launcher, sir.”
“Let me see it,” Baldur said.
“Do what he says,” Reg said, as the cop hesitated, then passed it over.
“Recognize this?” Baldur asked the others.
“Sure,” Riss said. “Used ones like it myself. Standard-issue Alliance bunker buster. 90mm, shaped charge. Makes a good-size hole in anything.
“If it’s got white phosphorus back of the warhead,” she went on, “it’ll also raise a fire.
“Like this one.”
“Was anyone hurt?” Jasmine King asked.
“We can’t find the watchman,” the policeman said. “Other than that, no.”
“A nice, clean little shot,” Chas Goodnight murmured.
“Indeed,” Baldur said. “Destroying all records of who owns what piece of real estate, and who is permitted to work that claim. It was a good choice of target, guaranteed to make any miner in the system suddenly realize he has nothing in the way of anything to hold him here.”
He motioned the others away from Reg Goodnight and the cop.
“And I think we can now posit what our opponents’ final goal is: to close down Transkootenay’s operation, and drive every miner out of the system, I would assume, so that these unknowns can then move in.”
“High-graders one, heroes zero,” Grok said. “We should think about evening that count as soon as possible.”
&
nbsp; SIXTEEN
It was weekend in Sheol, and the bars were just warming up to a nice, loose rhythm.
No one was quite sober, no one was totally drunk when the eighteen ships dove in-atmosphere, coming straight down on the city.
They flared a few hundred meters above Sheol into four perfect fingers-four formation, with two other ships on high cover, and came over the city just above the rooftops.
Miners and citizens screamed, dove for cover, even a few prayed, all sure their doom was here, that the raiders were now directly attacking what passed for civilization.
Friedrich von Baldur stood outside the Boop-Boop-A-Doop, beaming proudly.
His belt com came to life.
“And how was that?”
Baldur keyed his mike.
“Very fine, Mr. Spada. Very fine, indeed. You’ve trained your crews well. Now you can bring it on home for a drink.”
“Fine for the others,” Spada’s voice came back. “Ask M’chel for me if this armpit’s got anything interesting in the way of teas.
“Come to think, ask her if she wants to go have it with me. She can have alk if she wants.
“Spada, clear.”
As the ships climbed and came back into a classic Immelman, cut from secondary drive to antigrav, and, skids extending, settled in for a landing near the Boop-Boop-A-Doop, Sheol realized it was not going to be carpet bombed and strafed.
“Sonnovabitch,” a miner, drunker earlier than most, managed as he gathered Baldur into an embrace:
“We got us a space force!”
• • •
The pilots and the two other members of each ship’s crew were quartered in a hotel Transkootenay owned.
They were allowed out into the streets, since none of them knew anything specific they could leak.
While they unwound from the series of jumps they’d made to reach the Foley System, Grok and a group of electronics techs went to work.
Each ship had a black box installed. None of the techs knew what the boxes were intended to do, and only Grok tested them to make sure they were operational.
The boxes had started life as Search and Recovery locator beacons, intended to ‘cast screams for help when a ship was in trouble. Grok recircuited them so they still ‘cast on demand. But instead of a plea for rescue, they broadcast various electronic signatures. These signatures could be varied, from those of mining ships to yachts to merchant vessels to Alliance warships. All of the signatures were quite “real,” having been stripped from the current Jane’s.
Riss had tea with Redon Spada, and a very quiet time it was.
• • •
“This here’s Johnny Behan,” L. C. Doe said to M’chel with some distaste. The man was stocky, with a trimmed beard and hair. There were four others behind him. “He doesn’t drink, at least not to amount to much. And when he does, like these other parygons of virchoo, his mouth doesn’t flap.
“I’ve used them for delicate work for Miner’s Aid. They’ve volunteered to help, without knowing what they’re volunteering for, just like you asked.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Riss said, “thanks for your faith. Now you’re going to go drinking, on Star Risk’s tab. And then you’re going to have a nice, quiet, invisible vacation on Glace.
“No risk, no pain, with pay.”
• • •
Miners on Sheol were a little surprised when a nice, quiet rock-shifter named Behan started barhopping. He still didn’t drink alk, but he frequently took hits from an inhaler, which evidently was enough to put him in low orbit. Other miners asked for a taste, and were refused. Nobody got that offended, figuring Behan was just beginning his career as an inebriate, and didn’t know all the rules yet.
He said he’d had it, right up to his pooper-pump, with these goddamned illegitimate high-graders, who liked to do it with their own mothers.
So what if they’d blown up the claims office? He knew where his claim was, richer than Jesus or Croesus, depending on how fried he was at any given moment.
And he, and some friends, were going back to work their rocks, go back to getting rich, and anybody who got in their way would have only himself to blame.
• • •
The news vids announced that Star Risk’s patrol ships were off on a training flight to Welf, the system’s innermost, mostly uninhabited world, for some shakedown drills.
Then, Star Risk spokesman M’chel Riss announced, they’d begin aggressive patrolling in the belt.
• • •
Johnny Behan’s ship, followed by four others in raggedy formation, lifted off Sheol, and vanished into hyperspace.
But they didn’t jump for the asteroid belt.
Instead, they linked up with the Boop-Boop-A-Doop and Spada’s patrol ships, “high” above the system’s plane. Their ships were left in a parking orbit around a dead planetoid, and a fuming Baldur shuttled them on to their promised vacation at one of Glace’s more secluded, if expensive, island resorts to keep them out of the way while the trap hopefully developed.
“I should never have admitted that I know how to fly,” he grumbled to Riss. “You and Grok will be out having the best of times, while I am driving a bus.”
“What’s my excuse for missing getting killed?” Goodnight asked, equally unhappy.
“Why, you’re busy trying to get in my pants,” Jasmine King drawled, then laughed as Goodnight’s ears turned a little pink.
The two “lucky” ones boarded Spada’s lead ship, which made things a bit crowded as they disappeared into N-space.
• • •
M’chel couldn’t figure out why Redon Spada had ended up as de facto commander of the pilots so readily. He was most unprepossessing, in spite of his medals, and spent most of his time running up plots on a computer, tsking, and sending them to oblivion.
The rest of his time was spent writing, or rather sketching what looked like abstracts in a notebook; and making calf’s eyes at Riss.
It was only mildly annoying, so she paid no attention.
What was a bit worse, and she determined she’d have to rearrange some fliers’ dental work when they returned to Sheol, was the bawdy speculation on the Talk Between Ships coded network com as to what Spada and Riss were doing, especially with that great furry monster aboard.
Everyone ignored Spada’s weapons officer and engineer, for the sake of scatology.
Spada ignored the jibes as well, until just before they jumped out into normal space near the asteroids. Then he ordered com silence until they made contact.
His ship, and four others, all with their “spoofers,” which Grok had named the mysterious black boxes, turned on, went into a rough formation, and, on secondary drive, set an orbit toward the first asteroid claimed by Behan.
“The virtue of these Pyrrhus-boats,” Spada lectured, “is that they were meant to outgun most ships, outrun the others, and sense anything way beyond quote normal end quote detectors.”
Then his voice turned gloomy. “That, of course, was in their day. Which was awhile back. Which is why the Alliance dumped them out here on the edges of lost for scrap metal prices.
“You might want to suit up. You don’t have to put your helmets on, but keep them handy.
“Events might start happening fairly quickly.”
M’chel helped Grok into his huge, custom-built spacesuit. Spada joined in. In the cramped cockpit of the combat ship, she suddenly thought the tableau looked like one of the pornographic friezes she’d seen on some planet somewhere, and was struck by uncontrollable giggling, rendering her useless.
She refused to explain to either Grok or Spada.
• • •
“I think,” Spada said suddenly, dropping his pencil, “it’s best we put on our helmets. I’ve just picked up a stray signal from that dead asteroid, aimed as far as I can tell in the general direction of nowhere.”
His voice never got excited, but his helmet was on, faceplate sealed, while he touched an inship alarm sensor, and o
pened his mike on the TBS channel.
“Eighty-three,” he said then, through the intercom. “Not that that means anything. I just told the others to spring about when I called a number, any number … ah, yes, there they are. Down ‘below’ the elliptic.”
One screen, that had been showing little except a few asteroidal blips, suddenly flashed, and ten objects, trailing rainbow tails, indicating size and speed, appeared.
“Dopplering straight on toward us, like we’re innocent miners,” Spada said, again switched channels. “Decoys … stand by … stand by … I shall have you roasted, Dinsmore … Break!”
At his command, the five decoys went to full drive, the ship commanded by the to-be-unfortunate Dinsmore a bit in front, arcing “around,” and straight into the oncoming ships.
Simultaneously, the other thirteen Star Risk ships, in three fighting formations, came out of N-space, and came after the raiders.
Spada’s voice was calm, but M’chel saw a sheen of sweat through his faceplate.
Not that Riss was a picture of calmness. It was very seldom in her combat career that she’d had to just sit and watch, without a gun or a knife or a weapons sight to occupy her attention.
Grok seemed perfectly calm, although Riss didn’t know how she would tell if he was excited or disturbed, watching several screens.
“We have a launch, skipper,” Spada’s weapons officer, Lopez, said, also completely controlled. “Three inbound. All acquired.”
“Stand by,” Spada ordered. “We’ll take them out, then I want a counterlaunch right after, before they have time to figure out they missed.
“I hope. On my command … Launch!”
The ship lurched a little as countermissiles spat from tubes. There were other missiles incoming from the raiders, and other patrol ships’ missiles were going after them.
Screens showed little flashes, then nothingness where the incoming missiles had been.
“Main launch … Fire!”
This time, the jolt was a little larger as ship killers, almost an eighth as long as the patrol ships, flashed out.
M’chel heard a bleep in her suit speaker, then three others.
“All missiles have acquired targets … homing,” Lopez reported.