by Chris Bunch
“All Star Risk elements. Plan is as follows. I’ll launch on the forward ship, divert to the one to its left if I hit. Risk Five, take the far left raider; Six, the one to the right. Break contact if anybody hollers for help. Acknowledge by clicks, begin your own down-count, fire when you’re in range. Com silence until the bangs stop banging. One, clear.”
Two mike-clicks sounded from the other ships.
“Now, sir,” Spada said, “if you’ll give me a closing count on range.”
“Yessir,” his weapons officer said, his hands poised over launch sensors. “Time to contact … forty-seven seconds.”
Again, silence.
“Engineer,” Spada said, “I’ll appreciate your close attention over the next few minutes, in case we have to go chasey.”
“Rog, skipper.”
“Seventeen seconds.”
The only thing that existed for Spada was that blip onscreen. Unconsciously, he began deep, slow breathing, as if he were about to go to the mat with his enemies.
“Four … and three … and … they saw us!”
The four ships star-burst away.
“This is One,” Spada said. “Keep your targets.”
Then he forgot about the others, trying for his own launch.
The first raider was jinking wildly, its computer obviously setting random orbits.
“Well within range, sir,” Lopez said.
“Launch one when you wish,” Spada said. “Stay on guidance. I’ll deal with his friend.”
“On guidance, sir.” The weapons officer put a missile helmet on. “Launching … now!”
The patrol ship shuddered as a missile fired. The weapons officer’s eyes were closed. The front two fingers of each of his hands played on sensors controlling the guidance vents of the missile as it chased after the first raider.
Spada opened his screen’s range, found the second raider.
He watched it for a moment, then tapped sensors quickly.
“Engineer … I’d like full drive,” he said calmly.
“Full drive, sir.”
Spada watched for an instant, added a proximity detector to the onscreen data. He gnawed at his lip — the other ship was pulling away from him, even at full power.
Again, Spada opened his screen’s range. He saw a distant planetoid. He touched sensors, and lines ran back and forth to the planetoid and beyond.
A small smile came and went on Spada’s face.
He changed orbits, opened another screen just on the raider.
Spada waited a few seconds, nodded in satisfaction without realizing it, made a small course correction.
“Closing … closing … impact!” the weapons officer said, and Spada noticed a flash on another screen.
“One down,” the officer said, pulling his helmet off.
“Then get on this one,” Spada said. “He’ll disappear behind those two dumbbell-shaped chunks of rock, realize he’s closing on that big asteroid there, which we’re going to just skim, I hope, and change his orbit to” — he touched the keys, and a dotted red line appeared on screen — “to come out just there.”
“I hope.
“On the off chance I’m right, I’d like to have a missile waiting for our friend. Your launch time is about — ”
“Nine seconds, I figure.”
“Close enough, mister. Launch on set and forget, just in case I’m wrong, and put on your little hat so we can have another option.”
The control panel beeped.
“Target acquired,” the weapons officer said.
“Time to launch?”
“Three seconds,” the weapons officer said, then touched a sensor and the ship jerked a little. “On its way.”
He put the helmet back on, changed the selector to another missile.
“Standing by on three for your command,” he said.
Spada didn’t answer, concentrating on his screens and instruments.
He was assuming that the asteroid they’d skim “over” had little if any gravity, not enough to pull them into an intersection orbit.
On the main screen, it looked as if they were about to smash into it.
A collision light blinked, and a gong started bonging.
“Goddamnit,” Spada said, concentration momentarily broken, “shut that off!”
“Alarm off,” the weapons officer said, proud of his tonelessness.
“I don’t think we hit the — ”
A screen flashed, went dark for a moment.
“Cancel that insecurity,” Spada said.
He put up a real-time screen, saw the debris spinning away from a dying fireball.
“And that’s that.”
He spun the ship on its axis, went back the way they’d come.
“All Star Risk elements. Report.”
“Star Risk One, this is Star Risk Five. Scratch one villain.” The pilot’s voice was excited, triumphant.
“This is One. Congrats. Transkootenay is buying tonight,” Spada said.
“This is Six … got the skiddy little bastard!”
“All Star Risk elements. We did our paybacks for Elsie. Now, let’s jump for home and appropriate adulation.”
FORTY-THREE
“I think,” Jasmine King said, as they rode the powered ramp down into Glace’s main port, “I could live happily in the wilderness, or in a great city. It’s the small towns that would drive me out of my mind from boredom.”
“A metropolis like this one?” Baldur asked, a bit incredulously.
“Of course not,” Jasmine said. “Nor like Sheol, either. I was thinking more like Trimalchio.”
“Yes,” Baldur said. “Trimalchio, indeed. As for your wilderness, pfah to Waiden. Perhaps one day we shall make the grand score, and not have to journey about to pissant little worlds like this one.”
“We’d be bored inside a month,” Jasmine said.
“Probably true,” Baldur agreed.
The two had made an outsystem jump on one of Transkootenay’s courier ships, then transferred to a plush liner to return to Glace.
Behind high-piled, matching luggage recently bought, and carefully aged by Baldur to look like the property of well-traveled wealthy before they boarded the liner, Baldur examined the customs form with a proper amount of hauteur. Then, under “Purpose of Visit,” wrote “Research,” very neatly.
“Research?” the official asked.
“Yes,” Baldur said. “I am preparing a small monograph on Primitive Human Settlements.”
“You mean like Glace?”
Baldur sniffed. The official reddened, thought of searching all their luggage, decided he might get himself in trouble, and satisfied his anger with a hard-slammed visa stamp.
“And what did that accomplish?” Jasmine said, as Baldur waved for porters to carry their gear out to a waiting lim.
“Nothing, really,” Baldur said. “Perhaps it was a residue from thinking about Trimalchio, and a nice Earth Bordeaux with, perhaps, a lobster diablo.”
“Well, we shall have to see what we can do to satisfy your desires, won’t we?” Jasmine purred, making sure she was in earshot of a porter, and snuggling ostentatiously close to Baldur.
He lifted an eyebrow.
“Are we getting a bit too much into our role? Remembering that one should never allow emotion to enter into one’s job.”
“The nice thing about going undercover,” Jasmine said, “is that whatever one chooses to do to maintain your cover should be set aside and forgotten when the assignment is complete.”
Baldur’s eyebrows seemed fit to climb well into his receding hairline.
• • •
“Was that satisfactory?” Jasmine said.
“It was,” Baldur said, “although the main course had certain bad memories for me.”
The meal had consisted of fish roe on toast bits, freshwater crayfish, buttered small vegetables that could have been potatoes, a strange greenish vegetable that was alternately hot and sour, a salad of wild herbs
, followed by a cheese course, and a dessert wine.
He considered the penthouse suite they’d booked, and the lights of Glace below it, then his dinner companion, who was wearing the sheerest of negligees.
“In all respects,” he said, “starting with the company.”
“I thank you, sir,” Jasmine said, sipping her wine. “Apropos of nothing, one thing I appreciate about older men is they take their time.”
“We have to,” Baldur said. “There are certain physiological limitations that come on us in our declining years.”
“Still, it was nice that you didn’t attempt to ravage me the minute the porter left us alone.”
“Never be in a hurry unless you have to,” Baldur said. “But that is a predilection of youth.”
“Of course,” Jasmine said. “It goes by so quickly. But you must tell me why you have bad memories about the meal … and why you ordered what you did.”
He sighed. “I recollect when I was a young officer. Very young. And I had somehow cozened a woman out to dinner with me, and was prepared to spend my entire month’s wages on a dinner with her, in the hopes that romance would follow.
“So I was being in my most debonair mode, holding forth skillfully, keeping silent at the right moments.
“And as I was making some particularly brilliant point, I attempted to crack one of those crustaceans we were dining on.
“Since they were in butter sauce, they were a bit greasy, and my finger slipped.
“The creature went spinning through the air, and landed in the middle of an admiral’s dessert at a nearby table. It was a baked ice cream, and the langoustine did not improve its appearance any, nor did the streak of dessert across his impressive rows of medals help the admiral’s demeanor.
“I was so chagrined that, when I took the lady home, I declined her invitation to come in, returned to the base and drank myself into insensibility.”
Jasmine was giggling.
“Why I continue to order dishes like that is not so much their savor, but to attempt to banish the memory, so far without success.”
Jasmine leaned across the table, patted his hand.
“Poor Friedrich.”
“You may call me Freddie, if you choose, since everyone else does it behind my back,” Baldur said.
“One might think,” King said, “there might be more efficacious ways of destroying that memory.”
“You have one in mind?”
“I just might,” King murmured.
• • •
Friedrich von Baldur, immaculate in morning whites, with a very tiny but impressive medal rosette in his lapel, went whistling into Glace’s most disreputable tabloid holo, asked for the political editor.
The receptionist blinked, then remembered one of the journalists who sometimes reported on a political scandal, sent Baldur to Ric Knie’s office.
It was cluttered with printouts, terminals, reference screens, and rather lewd holographs.
“You wish?” Knie asked.
Baldur took out the picture of the raider leader who’d talked to Goodnight. “I’d like to know if you know who this person is.” Knie flickered, covered.
“In exchange for a name, would you be willing to tell me why you want it? Someone doesn’t usually come to our charming publication, known for its honesty and honorable ways, unless there’s a scandal attached, which of course we would be very interested in.”
“There could be,” Baldur said. “In the fullness of time.”
“You expect me to trust you?”
“Certainly,” Baldur said. “Because if you do not tell me, I shall be forced to inquire elsewhere, guaranteeing that your publication, and you yourself, will be somewhat out of touch when the story breaks.”
“When, not if,” Knie mused. “You have a deal, Mr. Dapper but Nameless.”
“I am sorry,” Baldur said. “It is just that at present my name would be meaningless to you.”
“The woman in this picture,” Knie said, “which looks mightily like an IDkit construct, is named Mar Trac. She is nicknamed ‘The Terrible.’ Currently she holds the portfolio of Minister of Development in the shadow cabinet of the party that’s out of power, and clamoring to get back at the public trough.”
“How very, very interesting,” Baldur said. “I think I must seek her out for an interview.”
FORTY-FOUR
Chas Goodnight glowered at the stack of microfiches, stared around the Boop’s conference room as if expecting a miracle.
“I hate paperwork,” he sniveled.
“And who does not?” Grok asked. “Don’t we all wish to be free spirits, moving as the wind takes us?”
“Have you been reading human poetry again?” Riss asked.
“As a matter of fact …” Grok said, a little sheepishly.
“If you’re gonna be vapid,” M’chel said, “come help me brood about where that goddamned cruiser is, which is the key to everything, as far as I’m concerned.”
“You know,” Goodnight said, having ignored the interchange, “there’s no reason we have to be sitting here on Mfir, is there? I can analyze all these goddamned contact reports my goddamned brother finally sent over anywhere in the galaxy to see if there’s any commonality that’ll give us a target, right?”
“You have a scheme?” Riss asked hopefully. “I could do with some action, too. Spada and his flyboys are the only ones out there tootling around looking for trouble.
“I could even use some playtime,” she went on. “Freddie and Jasmine are off being rich bitches on Glace, and we’re stuck here.
“And that stinking cruiser is still nowhere to be found.
“I don’t even have anybody to drink with after L. C. went and got herself murdered.”
“Howzabout we go mining?” Goodnight said.
“And what will that get us?” Grok said. “I assume that you are thinking about going out there and playing Q-ship, with Spada’s ships lurking in the wings. But the chance on us being the poor sods the raiders choose to hit is statistically nonexistent. Not to mention what troubles we’d be in if they did hit us if our ships happened to arrive a little late.”
“ ‘We’ is not an operative word,” Goodnight said. “I was thinking more along the lines of M’chel and I.”
“Leaving me to sit here opening the mail,” Grok said.
“I hope, Chas,” Riss said, “you aren’t having any impure thoughts about you and me out there all alone back of beyond.”
“No, no, no,” Goodnight said hastily. “You’ve slapped my paws enough. At least for the moment.”
“Do you have any specific idea on what we’d accomplish?” Riss asked.
“No less than what we’d get done around here,” Goodnight said. “And we’d sure as hell get a better idea for the field, wouldn’t we?”
“True,” Riss said.
“And I’ve always been lucky at finding trouble when I go looking for it,” Goodnight said.
“Both of you are intellectually stunted,” Grok said. “You, Chas, are just looking for an excuse to go out and get your adrenaline going. As are you, M’chel. From him, I’d expect such gloriosities. I thought better of you.”
Before Riss could come back, the com buzzed.
Riss went to the console. “Star Risk.”
Baldur’s face was onscreen.
“Scrambling 413,” he said. His image blurred.
Riss touched sensors.
“Scrambling 413,” she echoed, and Baldur’s face reappeared.
“I have an ID on Goodnight’s Murgatroyd,” he said, without preamble.
Goodnight came out of his chair, and was hanging over Riss’s shoulder.
“Good day, Chas,” Baldur said. He held up a picture.
“That’s her,” Goodnight said. “Ninety-five percent positive.”
“I did not think you made those sort of mistakes,” Baldur said, and told the three on Mfir about Mar Trac.
“I have a meeting set with her tomorrow,�
�� he went on. “I am pretending to be a possible contributor to her party’s campaign, which my sources say will be most expensive if they hope to take the current administration out in the next election.”
“If she … and her compatriots … are the brains behind the raiders,” Grok asked, “first, do you have any theories on what their plans are? And second, what are you planning to accomplish by this interview?”
“I am not sure if Trac’s party is involved, or if she is just developing a scheme of her own. I shall know more tomorrow. As to your second question, I think my plan is quite simple, having nothing more elaborate. I plan to tell her the truth about what I know, and see what happens after that.
“It might be compared to a child stirring an ants nest vigorously.”
“Ant?” Grok asked.
“An earth insect. Lives in colonies. Bites anyone who troubles it, en masse,” Baldur explained.
“Don’t forget your analogy tomorrow,” Riss warned.
“I am not,” Baldur said.
“Something I don’t understand,” M’chel asked. “Why did you go to a sensationalist holo? Or doesn’t Glace have anything better?”
“I picked the Scandal quite deliberately,” Baldur said. “First, politics is not their area of expertise. I do not want anyone digging about, trying to run ahead of me in this matter until I am ready. Second, they assume I am as venal as they are, so there should not be any of these worms inquiring about our activities on Mfir until matters grow a great deal hotter.”
“If you say so,” Riss said skeptically. “By the way, Goodnight has an idea.”
“Speak away, young Chas,” Baldur said.
“I want to buy a ship,” Goodnight said, “and go mining. Which means looking for trouble and contacts. I’ll take Riss with me.”
“Which accomplishes what?”
“It gets me … us … out in the field,” Goodnight said. “Second, there’s something niggling at me in these contact reports, and I can’t figure out what it is.”
“That is a most thin pair of ideas,” Baldur said.
“Maybe,” Goodnight said. “But it’ll make my brother think we’re out there kickin’ ass, or at least looking for ass to kick, and get him off my back.”