Solomon Family Warriors II

by Robert H. Cherny

  “Captain Bardwell?” Vladimir asked, ignoring her comment.

  “Yes,” Avi replied.

  He gently took her hand in his remaining hand and raised it to his lips.

  “Now, I am glad I surrendered,” he said softly. “I might have given your dear Gregor a good battle, and I might have beaten him with his novice assistants, but the both of you, this even I could not win. This way we all live. I have done the right thing for my crew.”

  Greg lead Vladimir to the galley. They ate silently. Vladimir ate as one who had been hungry for a long time.

  “Gregor, I am an old man. I have been a pirate since before you were born. I long for somewhere I can live my last years in peace. You tell me I have found that place, but I know better.”

  Greg started to speak, but Vladimir held up his hand to stop him.

  “The Swordsmen, they are looking for you. If they find you they will kill you. When they found my small fleet they attacked with a vengeance that far surpassed their skill. We escaped with only one ship. You are in grave danger, my former enemy. They will kill you, and all the people that know you. They are getting stronger. A few years ago they would never have attacked my destroyer. Two weeks ago they did. They almost killed us. I lost four ships and many men. We escaped but we are damaged and I am wounded. I fear my ship is a total loss. Greg, you are right to be afraid. Be very afraid, the Swordsmen are coming.”

  “Until they do, we will live in peace, but prepare for war,” Greg asserted.

  “We will prepare together.”

  Vladimir brought Greg and Avi up to speed on all the gossip from the pirates and the P I forces before joining his crew who had been transported to the planet. Vladimir’s crew settled not far from where Albert had built himself an impressive fortress. Vladimir was right about the condition of his ship. It was so badly damaged that Brownie could not repair it and cannibalized it for parts.

  Greg no longer flew the long supply runs to the Central System although he continued to fly the shorter ones to other outlying systems. He often turned the cargo ship over to Blondie who used it for flight training. On each trip she took a contingent of the new pilots and fledgling maintenance personnel. The stevedores were always thrilled to see the women. Occasionally one of the stevedores would defect and join them for the trip home. Refugees continued to pour in on each supply run. Monique and Angelina both married captured flight crew members who had stumbled into the system and recruited them to assist with crewing their cargo ship. The two couples were relieved of defensive patrol duty so they could run supplies with their cargo ship. With the former pirate cargo ship and Greg’s ship running full-time, they were able to keep their rapidly growing population supplied with luxury items as well as necessities. Once having proved that they held legal titles to their ships, no one questioned the irregularity of how Greg and company had acquired all that space going hardware.

  Greg wrote a new game from scratch called “Onward Valiant Soldiers” and refused to let anyone else see it. He wrote it with the P I ship’s computer and treated it as a personal secret. At the same time he was working on “Soldiers” he started a new game called “Planetoid Defender” which involved input from the captive flight crews as well as the newly trained flight crews and maintenance personnel. “Pirate Interdiction” was in its fourth release and he had long ago grown tired of it.

  Greg and Avi had a second daughter. They named her Wendy. Wendy was more deliberate in her actions where Rachel was impulsive, but she was no less intelligent and far more manipulative. There was no question that when Wendy wanted something done, she could get someone to do it for her. Not intentionally mean or greedy, she understood that people would do what she wanted if she merely found the right way to ask.

  Admiral Davidson and his aide were given substantial incentives to retire from the Space Force and run the former mining outpost, then supply depot built by the pirates, briefly occupied by the Swordsmen, then by the Federation and finally sold to a civilian conglomerate funded by an insurance company owned by the brother of the Federation’s vice president. The conglomerate built a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant adjacent to the depot and happily supplied any buyer who could demonstrate good credit or pay cash. The refueling facility was the depot’s cash cow. The depot was accepted as neutral territory. Free-lance explorers, merchant ships of all types, Space Force and Swordsman warships all stopped there and traded. Hostilities and rivalries were left behind at the system’s boundaries or the offenders were encapsulated in the brig and their ships confiscated. Sealed containers of freight could be transferred there for only a moderately outrageous handling fee. The depot grew and became the gateway to the wave of humanity settling on the planets found at the end of this small arm of the very big galaxy.

  The cost of hyper drives plummeted as demand grew. The reduced cost inspired more demand, and soon a huge wave of humanity spread out across one arm of the galaxy. As St. Louis had been the gateway to the American West, the depot became the gateway to outlying planets and systems. Travelers referred to the depot as ‘New St. Louis’, and the name stuck. Mail addressed to General Delivery care of New St. Louis could be picked up at the post office. The Homestead Corporation officially “moved” to a bank office at New St. Louis where tax laws were less stringent than in the Central System.

  Vladimir Andropov’s father had owned a gourmet meat packing plant on Earth until he sold it to pay off his gambling debts. Vladimir had kept the “secret” recipes. Vladimir and Stephanie Remington Schultz collaborated on the development and refinement of those recipes. They created new recipes that could be frozen and packaged as in-flight meals for space ship crews. The Space Force had done away with kitchen personnel on all but the largest ships and most crews relied on prepared frozen meals for the majority of their time in space. The production of flight rations reduced Homestead’s dependence on food from the Central System. As the production capabilities grew, they looked forward to selling the meals through the depot at New St. Louis. But first they would have to figure out how to bring the Federation health inspector to certify their processing facilities without compromising their secrecy. In the opinion of Homestead’s flight crews, the quality of the meals Vladimir and Stephanie produced far surpassed anything the Federation was producing. There was little question that once they were able to bring the meals to market, they would do well.

  Admiral Davidson was the perfect choice to manage what could have been a chaotic and dangerous frontier outpost. He ruled New St. Louis with an iron hand in a velvet glove. He oversaw a thriving refueling operation, a substantial free trade zone, a cargo marshaling and transfer operation as well as a small city of support personnel with all the services they required. He was the de-facto military commander for the area’s Space Force personnel and their attendant Marines. In a very real sense, New St. Louis was a kingdom and Admiral Davidson was its benevolent dictator. Many of his former enemies as well as his friends acknowledged the skill with which he chose what activities to regulate and which ones to leave alone. For example, recognizing that sex-for-sale was a part of port activities which could give him serious difficulties if he mishandled it, he quickly formed a team of business owners, workers, medical and law enforcement personnel whose responsibility was to ensure the workers and patrons were treated well and keep the enterprise adults only. His law enforcement personnel had been drawn from some of the best the Space Force had to offer. Where New St. Louis could have been a lawless frontier town, it was safer than most of the cities on Earth.

  Admiral Davidson had been in command of New St. Louis for two years when Federation Government Service Clerk Level 2 Jennie Augustine requested an immediate meeting with him. When pressed for an explanation, she stated that it was a private matter that the Admiral would need to deal with personally, and she would be violating confidentiality laws if she divulged any further details except directly to the Admiral. Jennie’s job was to examine the passenger manifests for incoming ships and determine i
f any of the passengers were fugitives from justice or known troublemakers of a variety of political persuasions. Fugitives and troublemakers could land at New St. Louis. They could not stay. Normal extradition procedures were so cumbersome that undesirables were routinely shipped out on the next outbound vessel that could be blackmailed into taking them.

  Admiral Davidson stood as Jennie was ushered into his office. “Please have a seat, Miss Augustine, can I get you some coffee or a soft drink?”

  She sat on the edge of the chair obviously ill at ease and glanced back and forth between the Admiral and his aide. “Um, no, sir, thank you, sir.”

  “There is nothing you can say to me that he can’t hear unless you have come to tell me he has done something inappropriate, and I will send him away.”

  “Um, no sir. It’s not about him, sir. It’s about you, sir.” She fidgeted in her chair. She held her hands on her knees and sat upright.

  Admiral Davidson’s eyebrows raised. “You have my undivided attention.”

  She handed him a print out. “Sir, these names appeared on the manifest for the passenger ship that recently entered the system. What first drew my attention to them was they listed this as their final destination. They listed you as their sponsor. I did a background check and discovered that they are your ex-wives. Sir, they are sharing a cabin. Sir, if I may be so bold, are you in any danger?”

  Most of the color had drained out of the admiral’s face. He closed his eyes. “No, but thank you for your concern. I don’t think I am in any physical danger. Psychologically, that might be a different matter entirely.” He paused. “It depends on what they want.”

  “Sir, is there anything I can do for you? I mean you have been great for the station, and I would hate to have anything unpleasant happen to you.”

  Admiral Davidson smiled. “No, thank you. You have no idea how much I appreciate your taking the time to warn me. I will be prepared for whatever these two interesting ladies have in mind for me. Thank you very much. Is there anything else you have to share with me?”

  “No sir, that was it.”

  “Well, then, thank you. I do appreciate your concern. You may go.”

  “You are most welcome sir. Call on me any time you need anything.”

  As soon as she was out the door, Admiral Davidson said to his aide, “See that she gets employee of the month.”

  “Consider it done, sir.”

  Within the hour after the passenger ship’s arrival at the port, two women showed up at Admiral Davidson’s outer office requesting to see him. Both Admiral Davidson and his aide had tracked their progress with the security cameras through customs as they hit the various checkpoints along their route to his office. They wasted no time coming to see him. By the time they reached his desk, the aide knew what both of them looked like and had determined from the purposefulness of their stride that they were focused on their mission and he should not delay their access to the admiral. He ushered them in immediately.

  Admiral Davidson rose to meet them. “Ellie Mae, Elvira, what a surprise.”

  Ellie Mae, the tall blond, looked him in the eye and said, “Now, Bunkie, don’t give me the surprise nonsense, you’ve had cameras on us since we stepped off the ship.”

  “Bunkie!” The aide exploded in laughter. “Bunkie?”

  “If you breathe a word I’ll shoot you myself!” He turned back to his ex-wife, “Please do not use that name in public again. It’s embarrassing.”

  The aide was doubled over in laughter. Tears ran down his face. “Sorry sir,” he stammered before he lost it again.

  Ellie Mae tried to push him out the door to the outer office, but he collapsed into a chair and would not move.

  Elvira shrugged and said, “So much for a dignified entrance. How are you? You look well. You look like you have been taking care of yourself.”

  “Yes, thank you. I see the voyage was not too difficult. Space travel can be stressful.”

  “Not bad,” Elvira answered. “Others had it worse.”

  “So, what brings you to this tiny corner of the galaxy?”

  “You do, my dear,” Ellie Mae answered.

  The aide stopped laughing.

  Admiral Davidson went pale. “How so?”

  “Elvira, tell him. It makes me angry, and I might say something I will regret,” Ellie Mae said.

  Elvira took a breath. “I think you realize that when we divorced you it wasn’t because we didn’t love you. We did.” Ellie Mae nodded her agreement. “You know it was because you were gone so much, and if we were to be in love with a man, we should at least be in love with one that was home more than you were.”

  “Fair enough,” he replied.

  “We both remarried and had children. I think we both did well in our choices and found caring loving men who were good to us.”

  “Yes, I had heard that,” he commented.

  “Our husbands converted to the Swordsman church. That’s where we met. We were at a Swordsman meeting when we started talking and discovered that we had both been married to you.”

  “How unusual for the two of you to run into each other,” the aide commented.

  “Not really,” Admiral Davidson explained. “I met them when I was on leave at home. Not at the same time of course. But my sister introduced me to both of them.”

  “That makes sense,” the aide said.

  “Have you heard from her?” Ellie Mae asked. “Last we heard she was headed off planet with her husband and their kids.”

  “They have a farm in Sector 28. They appear to be happy. She doesn’t write much,” Admiral Davidson replied.

  “So, back to us,” Elvira continued. “The boys converted and suddenly life around the house got real difficult. We became prisoners in our own houses. Two nice gentle guys turned into cave men. Sex became more like rape than like making love. We couldn’t go out without their permission. They controlled everything we did. They controlled the money. The only time we could talk that they weren’t listening was at the sisterhood meetings at church. They insisted on being present at our doctor visits to be sure that the doctor was not performing an abortion they did not know about. They only let us go shopping by ourselves because they had to work and otherwise we could not have dinner ready when they came home. One day at the supermarket a woman handed me a flier. The flier offered women who were being persecuted by their Swordsman husbands a free ride off planet. At first we thought it was a trap but eventually things got so desperate we decided to try it. In the middle of the night we sneaked out. The address on the flier was a children’s hospital at a university. We walked all night for three nights to get there. We hid in drainage culverts during the day and traveled in darkness.”

  Elvira paused and Ellie Mae said, “I’m glad I didn’t try that alone. I wouldn’t have made it. Elvira found us clean water to drink and plants we could eat. We had no money.”

  Elvira continued, “When we arrived at the hospital, there was a protest going on. A female police officer stopped us and asked us where we were going. We told her we were going to the hospital. She asked why. We told her my sister’s baby was in there, and her husband wanted the baby to die, and we were there to try and save the baby. I don’t think she believed a word of it, but she took us around the back and showed us where we could get into the hospital if we ran quickly. We thanked her, and we ran. We got in the hospital, and a guard stopped us. We asked for the person named on the flier. He nodded and pointed to a door. We went in the door, and there was a woman seated behind a desk. She told us to fill out a form like we were being admitted to the hospital. I was afraid they were going to lock us up in a prison, but I figured going back would be as bad.”

  Ellie Mae said, “You know, we kept talking about you. We both loved you, and if you’d been around more, we’d still be married. We agreed that it wouldn’t be fair for only one of us to go to you, and we decided we could live with sharing you, if that worked for you. Thinking about you was the only thing that kept us goi
ng.”

  Elvira continued, “The hospital people put us in a van with some other women. We drove a long time. I don’t know how long it was. The van had no windows we could see out of except for a tiny one over the driver’s shoulder. I think we slept most of the drive. When I awoke we were pulling on to a dirt road somewhere in the south. I could see palm trees, and the van rocked a lot. We drove for a while, and the door opened. We were ushered into an old horse barn, and the van left. While we were there an elderly woman told us that we were safe and to bed down in the stalls for the night. A couple of days later a truck pulled up to the barn with one of those big shipping containers. I only hoped that we weren’t going to be kidnapped by slavers. I hear that slavers are more active these days than ever. We climbed in with the sleeping bags they gave us and what little other clothes we had.”

  “When I think of how many people we trusted who could have turned on us, I am thankful we arrived here alive,” Ellie Mae said.

  “The container smuggled us to the moon. Once there, a Federation Space Force officer told us we had amnesty and could book one way passage to any of a dozen places where the Federation is establishing colonies, and the Federation would pay the fare. We checked the routes and found one that stopped here on the way. Once on the ship we convinced the captain to change our destination. He was happy to do so since he got to keep the difference in the fare. So, here we are. We are as you see us. We come to you with only the clothes on our backs hoping you will have room in your heart to let us stay.”

  Admiral Davidson smiled. “There was never a question in my mind. Of course you can stay. There are other questions to be answered like what are you going to do now that you are here. Everyone here has a job.”

  “We could run an underground railroad for women escaping the Swordsmen,” Elvira offered.

  “You might be able to do that, but it’s not the kind of job that pays money. I’ll send you over to Staffing Allocation Department in the morning. They will find you something. Being commander of the post does get me a few perks. You realize there are Swordsman agents and operatives here. You need to watch for them.”