Privateers

by Ben Bova

  “The only surprise,” the major concluded, “was that an unscheduled shuttle from Caracas arrived at the main landing dock some fifteen minutes before our own spacecraft rendezvoused there.”

  Malik’s face, tiny in the upper right quarter of the small display screen, scowled suspiciously. “An unscheduled shuttle from Caracas?”

  “It posed no problem, sir,” the major continued. “Our craft merely docked at the alternate collar and disembarked our troops as planned. The shuttle is still docked there; since our operational plan called for a complete sealing off of the station, I have not permitted it to leave.”

  Malik nodded curtly. “Who sent this shuttle? Who was aboard it?”

  “Apparently the ship belongs to Astro Manufacturing Corporation. I do not have a list of the passengers yet, but I presume they were Astro employees.”

  “I want the names of the passengers. I will be coming up to Nueva Venezuela within the hour. Have the list ready for me when I arrive.”

  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

  “And Dan Randolph? Where is he?”

  “He is safely locked in a holding cell. He was asleep when my men arrested him.”

  “Asleep?” A smile crept across Malik’s face. “How poetic.”

  “Sir?” Ostrovsky asked. “May I ask about the other mission? The one dealing with the pirates?”

  Ostrovsky had wanted to command that mission, of course. There was always more prestige to combat. But it would have meant long hours of zero gravity and he was thankful when Malik chose another officer for the job.

  “Completely successful,” Malik replied, his smile broadening. “The pirates have been eliminated, every last one of them.”

  The captain-pilot nodded, satisfied, and gave his copilot the thumbs-up sign. There would be promotions in the offing, they both knew.

  “A very successful operation, sir,” Ostrovsky congratulated his superior. “Your plan has worked to perfection.”

  “It will not be perfection,” Malik replied, “until the capitalist Randolph is swinging from the end of a rope.”

  Ostrovsky permitted himself a small grin. “Well, sir, we have him for you. The rest is up to the prosecutors and the courts.”

  “Unless,” Malik mused, “he is shot while trying to escape.”

  Chapter THIRTY-FOUR

  Dan Randolph sat slumped against the wire mesh wall of his makeshift prison cell. A glance at his wristwatch told him that it had been three hours since the Russians had rousted him from his bunk. He had not seen another human being since the soldiers had locked him into this cage.

  Malik will be here, Dan told himself. He’ll come up here himself to make sure that they’ve got me. He’ll want to tend to the final details in person.

  Dan nodded, certain of what he was going to do. Just let him get within arm’s reach, that’s all I ask. That smiling sonofabitch won’t live to see me executed. I’ll kill him with my bare hands.

  He smiled. And waited.

  Vasily Malik was not smiling. He felt anger smoldering in his guts as he scanned the list of passengers from the Astro Corporation shuttle. Forty-eight names, nearly half of them Japanese. All of them Astro employees, except for one: M. Hernandez.

  Maria de la Luz Hernandez, he knew. Lucita.

  He was seated at one end of the horseshoe-shaped desk that dominated the space station’s flight control center. All the controllers’ chairs were empty, their display screens blank. No traffic was coming or going. Nueva Venezuela was sealed off from the rest of the world. The factory orbiting nearby was also shut down. No one allowed in or out. According to Malik’s plan, as approved by the Council of Ministers, the Soviet space forces would have to occupy and search all the other Third World space facilities in their legally empowered drive to root out the space pirates. Within the week, the space stations of India, Polynesia, Africa and the Pan-Arab coalition would all be under Soviet command. Only Japan and China would remain to rival the Soviet Union, and sooner or later they would be driven out of space also.

  But at the moment, the vision of Soviet domination was far from Malik’s mind.

  He tapped the display screen in front of him. “Who is this Hernandez person?”

  Major Ostrovsky, standing at Malik’s right, risked a small shrug. “I don’t know, sir. There is no listing of his status. Apparently he is not an employee of the capitalists.”

  “He?” Malik snapped. “Do you know for certain that Hernandez is a male?”

  “No, sir, I don’t. I can find out for you, of course, within a minute or two.”

  Glowering, Malik said, “Bring Hernandez here, whoever he or she is.”

  Ostrovsky started to turn toward the shavetail lieutenant standing at ramrod attention behind him.

  “Better yet,” Malik said, pushing himself up from the undersized plastic desk chair, “I will go to the reception area where those new arrivals are being held.”

  “Yessir,” said Ostrovsky. As Malik headed for the hatch that led out to the corridor, the major asked, “What should we do about the American, Randolph, sir?”

  Malik gave him a look of malicious pleasure, the kind of look a boy might get when he traps a butterfly and pins it, still fluttering, to a tabletop. “Randolph? Leave him where he is. I have seen the television pictures. You have the right man. Let him stew in his own sweat for a while longer.”

  With the major two paces behind him, matching stride for stride, and the lieutenant three paces farther back, Malik made his way along the corridor that ran the length of the station’s outermost wheel toward the reception area. To the eye, the corridor sloped upward continuously, but it felt perfectly flat as they walked along it. Doors on either side of the pastel-colored walls led to offices or living quarters, Malik knew. Occasionally the corridor opened up into a lounge area, a small automated fast-food dispensary or an intimate little bistro. All empty now, quiet, as the visitors and crew of Nueva Venezuela had been ordered to their quarters. Capitalist luxuries, Malik told himself. Once we take over these stations for good, we’ll run them for the benefit of the workers, not for the profit of the moneygrubbers.

  Still, a small voice inside his head observed wryly, the moneygrubbers produce a much better style of luxuries. Once the people’s servants get their hands on these facilities, the quality of the food and drink will suffer.

  Malik shook his head, as if to drive such thoughts from his mind. There were always places where important men could get the luxuries they desired.

  When they reached the double doors that opened into the lounge area, Malik stopped and peered through the glass window set into one of them. He thought he recognized the son of Randolph’s friend, the industrialist Yamagata, among the couple of dozen Japanese sitting around the plush sofas and chairs of the lounge. Good! He will make a useful bargaining chip. The process of bringing Japan to heel can begin immediately, perhaps.

  But then he saw Lucita, standing by the long curving window, looking out wistfully at the Earth. It is her. Malik’s heart felt encased in ice. She’s come here to be with him, probably to warn him against me. He could feel the cold fury racing through him, spreading along every nerve and blood vessel like an invasion of demons.

  Turning to Major Ostrovsky, he said coldly, “The woman by the window. That is Hernandez. Bring her out here to me.”

  Something in Malik’s voice frightened the major. He saluted and motioned the lieutenant to come with him. Malik paced away from the doors, wondering why he should feel such rage. She had betrayed him. She had flown to the American. Had he expected anything else? Had he expected her to be loyal to him, to stand by his side, even to love him? And he realized that even though he had never expected Lucita to behave in such a manner, that was exactly what he had wanted. He wanted her loyalty, her love.

  My God, he thought. Do I really love her? Have I let my guard down so much that she can make me furious with jealousy? The answer was obvious.

  Ostrovsky’s soft “Sir?” made him turn
again.

  Lucita stood before him, the major on one side of her, the young lieutenant on the other. She looked so small, so helpless, standing there between them like a prisoner.

  “I didn’t expect to find you here,” Malik said. His voice sounded tight, almost choked, even in his own ears.

  Lucita said nothing, merely stared at him. He tried to determine what was in her eyes. It was not fear, he could see. Nor supplication. Anger. She was burning with suppressed anger, just as furious with Malik as he was with her.

  He reached out and grasped her by the arm. Leading her away from the two officers, he walked slowly back down the long sloping corridor in the direction from which he had come. Lucita came along with him, not willingly, but not resisting him, either.

  “You came to warn Randolph, didn’t you?” Malik said.

  “I came too late,” replied Lucita.

  For an instant he wanted to tell her that she herself had sprung the trap on Randolph, that it was her fault he was now under arrest. But he could not bring himself to say the words.

  “How quiet everything is,” Lucita said. “It’s as if the whole station has died.”

  “I only have sixty men to control the entire station,” Malik said. “More will be sent, but for the time being we must keep everyone in their quarters.”

  “When I was here before, after visiting Kosmograd, this place was so alive, so busy and bustling,” Lucita said. “I remember that it shocked me. I was bringing Teresa’s body home …”

  Malik felt his jaws clench.

  “… and it shocked me that all these people seemed so busy and happy. Now-it’s dead.”

  “Only for a short while.”

  She shook her head. “No. Once you put your hand on something, Vasily, it dies. You are an agent of death. I don’t think you mean to be, but you are, just the same.”

  “That’s very unfair!” he snapped.

  She smiled wanly. “But true.”

  It made no sense. This was supposed to be victory, yet he felt no triumph. He heard himself say:

  “You came here to see Randolph. I will take you to him. You will be the first to visit him in his imprisonment. And the last.”

  Without waiting for her to reply, Malik took Lucita by the wrist and led her off toward the storage area where Dan Randolph was locked in a cage. Major Ostrovsky and his lieutenant hurried to follow them.

  Nobuhiko paced the length of the lounge, feeling the utter frustration of an energetic young man who has been forced into idleness. There must be something I can do, he told himself over and again. Something.

  Each time he reached the wall at one end of the lounge, he eyed the Russian soldiers standing by the doors. Two of them at each end, armed with stubby machine pistols that fired flesh-ripping flechette darts.

  With an impatient snorting sigh, Nobo turned away and began pacing again. He was stopped by another Japanese, a wiry, short man with a thick mane of iron-gray hair. He wore an ordinary business suit of dark blue. His tie was decorated with the flying heron symbol of the Yamagatas.

  “Yamagata-san,” he said, bowing slightly to the son of the family’s head.

  Nobo returned a curt nod.

  “Forgive my clumsy lack of manners for greeting you so informally,” said the man in low, swift Japanese, “but I thought it best not to be obvious to the barbarian soldiers.”

  “You are … ?”

  “Isoru! At your service, Yamagata-san.”

  Pacing the lounge in a more leisurely manner now, with Isoru at his side, Nobo asked, “Are you a member of my family, or an employee of Astro Manufacturing?”

  “I am both,” the older man replied. “Your father arranged for my team to become employees of the American, so that we could be close to you and protect you from assassination.”

  “Ahh!” Comprehension began to dawn on Nobuhiko.

  “My team and I have been at your side for many weeks. My orders were to remain invisible, so that you would not know who we were, or why we were here.”

  “My father feared for my life.”

  “Most truly.”

  “Now I understand. You have done well, Isoru.”

  The man hissed with pleasure.

  “How many men do you have?”

  “Ten, including myself. Eight men and two women.”

  “Women?” Nobuhiko felt startled.

  Isoru shrugged. “The times have changed. But they obey orders, and they have a certain surprise value.”

  “Are they all here?”

  “They are all in this room, Yamagata-san, awaiting your orders.”

  “Can they disarm the soldiers swiftly and silently, without allowing them to fire a shot?”

  “Easily.”

  “I don’t want the soldiers killed,” Nobo said. “They must be taken prisoner.”

  Isoru nodded. “It can be done.”

  Nobo hesitated only a fraction of a moment. He had no clear idea of what to do after disarming the soldiers, but he knew that nothing else could be done until they had been disarmed.

  “Very well,” he said. “Do so.”

  Isoru bowed again; only the smallest and least noticeable of bows. His face was as impassive as a rock wall. He walked away from Nobo as casually as a man would after a harmless friendly conversation. Nobuhiko resumed his pacing, but now he watched to see what his father’s appointed guardians were going to do.

  Though he watched intently, he could see nothing. Isoru gave no obvious signal to anyone else. The man merely strolled off to one of the long observation windows and seemed to stare out at the Earth. The minutes ticked off slowly. Nobo grew tired of pacing and went to the window where Isoru stood, his hands clasped behind his back. But. as if he had eyes in the back of his head, Isoru turned away as Nobo approached and moved off toward one end of the lounge.

  Briefly, Nobo debated following him. But it was clear that the man did not want Nobo near him. Then he noticed that a good-looking young Japanese woman was chatting and smiling with the pair of Russian soldiers guarding the door at that end of the lounge. Turning toward the other end, Nobo could see no Japanese within twenty paces of the two soldiers there.

  Isoru was still walking slowly down the room. He unclasped his hands and flexed his fingers slightly.

  The slim young woman smiling up at the two burly Russian soldiers suddenly struck one of them on the point of his chin with her cupped hand, and drove her other hand blurringly fast into the solar plexus of the other. If Nobo had blinked, he would have missed it. A thud, a choked grunt, and the two soldiers were collapsing to the carpeted floor, their guns slipping from their numbed hands.

  Swinging toward the other end of the lounge, Nobo saw the two soldiers there slumping to the floor, a pair of wiry Japanese young men crouching over them.

  As calmly as a man strolling through a garden, Isoru came to Nobo, made a bow that almost put his forehead on the carpeting and said, “Yamagata-san, the task you ordered has been done.”

  Nobo looked around the lounge. It was easy now to pick out his bodyguards; ten Japanese men and women, lithe and lean, standing at rigid attention. The others, Japanese and Westerners, were open-mouthed with surprise.

  “You have done well,” Nobo said, loudly enough for all his people to hear. Ten hisses of pleasure scintillated through the lounge.

  Lucita was walking beside Malik through the long narrow corridor of a storage area. Wire mesh screens rose from curving floor to ceiling, where bare fluorescent tubes lit the passageway. Strange crates and boxes were stacked behind the screens, neatly and carefully, their flanks bearing stenciled legends in Spanish and English. It felt chilly here, the kind of cold that Lucita imagined she would feel in a mortuary.

  Malik had a pistol buckled to his hip, Lucita realized. The flap of the holster was unfastened. She could see the dead black butt of the gun, ugly and menacing.

  Behind her, the two officers matched them stride for stride. They both were armed, too. A sudden fear rose in Lucita’s
chest; she could feel its electrical currents burning inside her.

  “Vasily,” she said in English, hoping that the other two could not understand, “you’re going to murder him, aren’t you?”

  Malik did not alter his stride, did not turn his head to meet her gaze. “My orders are to bring him to Moscow for trial. They want the whole world to see that pirates will be brought to justice-and then hanged.”

  “But you’re not going to let that happen, are you?” Lucita had to hurry to keep pace with Malik. He seemed to be walking faster as he got closer to Dan’s cell, eager to reach the American. “You intend to kill him yourself.”

  Still staring straight ahead, Malik replied, “It would not be such a tragedy if he were shot while trying to escape.”

  “But you can’t do that!”

  Now he slowed slightly and turned his head toward her. “Why can’t I?”

  Lucita stammered, “Your orders … your superiors … they would be angry with you.”

  Malik’s lips curled into a humorless smile. “What difference would that make to you? Tell me why you don’t want me to shoot him. The real reason.”

  “It would be wrong. …”

  “The real reason,” Malik repeated.

  Lucita knew that the time for evasion and pretense was over. “I don’t want him to be killed,” she said. “I love him.”

  Malik’s smile turned cold. “All the more reason.”

  “If you kill him,” Lucita said, “you might as well kill me too.”

  “Now you’re speaking like a romantic child.”

  She reached out and grabbed at his sleeve, forcing him to stop. The two officers behind them stopped also, and even drifted back away from them a few paces.

  “I mean it,” Lucita said firmly. “If you kill him, you kill me also. You remember what Teresa did to herself. I can do that, too.”

  He stared at her, and Lucita could see in his ice-blue eyes the same cold, probing calculations that she had seen in her father.

  “You wouldn’t… .”

  “I would rather damn my soul to hell forever than live with a man who had murdered my love.”