“By asphyxiation?” asked Damien.
“No.” Grimes made a stabbing gesture. “Used as a dagger.”
“A poisoned dagger at that. Tell me, what arms do you carry aboard this ship?”
“A Minetti projectile pistol. Two hand lasers. That’s all.”
“And that’s all that there will be. Sister Sue is not a warship.”
“But, now, commanded by a Survey Service Reserve officer and with two other Survey Service officers on board.”
“Agreed. But you must be wondering, Grimes, just what all this is about.”
“Too right, sir.”
“You’ve been to El Dorado, haven’t you? You know the sort of people who live there. The filthy rich. You may have noticed that no matter how rich such people are they always want to be richer. And, too, there’s the lust for power. Your old friend Drongo Kane is in many ways a typical El Doradan, although he was granted citizenship only recently. Before he became an El Doradan he attempted to take over an entire planet, Morrowvia. You were able to shove a spanner into his works. He tried again, on the same world, some years later. Again you were on hand, as master of the Baroness d’Estang’s spaceyacht. The Baroness, an El Doradan, was well aware of Kane’s criminality. Nonetheless she married him . . .”
“I think that she rather regrets it now.”
“Does she? Oh, she got you out of a nasty mess on New Venusberg rather against her ever-loving husband’s wishes, but that doesn’t mean that a marriage dissolution is imminent.
“Well, we have learned that he has interested his El Doradan fellow citizens in another scheme of his, an ambitious one although not involving territorial acquisition. As you may know, El Dorado now has a navy . . .”
“One ship,” said Grimes. “An auxiliary cruiser, usually employed as a cruise liner, with Commodore Baron Kane as the captain.”
“Correct. But El Dorado, through Kane, has been chartering sundry obsolescent tonnage and not so obsolescent weaponry.”
“And upon whom is El Dorado going to declare war?”
“Nobody. But, as you know, there are always brushfire wars going on somewhere in the galaxy. Recently the Duchy of Waldegren put down a breakaway attempt by one of its colonies. The Shaara Galactic Hive has done the same, more than once. In such cases the rebel colonists have been outgunned and easily beaten. But suppose such rebels had been able to employ a mercenary navy?”
“Mercenaries like to be paid,” said Grimes. “Mercenaries with warships expect much higher pay than do, say, infantrymen.”
“Agreed. Now, just suppose that you’re the king or president or whatever of some world that’s decided to break away from whichever empire it’s supposed to belong. Your imperial masters take action against you. Your trade routes are raided, your merchant ships destroyed or captured. And then somebody presents himself at your palace, cap in hand, offering his services. At a price. It’s a price that you can’t afford to pay, especially since the salesman makes it quite clear that he’s not interested in the paper money that’s being churned out by your printing presses. But he makes a proposition. He offers his services free. Free to you, that is. All that you have to do is to issue Letters of Marque to his ships, which then become privateers. As such they raid the imperial trade routes, capturing rather than destroying. Your own navy, such as it is, is then free to deal with the imperial navy while the privateers make their fortunes harrying the merchantmen.”
“Mphm.”
“Now I’m demoting you, Grimes. You’re no longer this rebel king or prince or duke. You’re just the owner-master of a scruffy star tramp, delivering a cargo to El Dorado and not knowing where the next cargo is coming from. Or going to. You know people on El Dorado. You know Kane. He knows you. It may surprise you to learn that he has quite a high opinion of you. Or a low opinion. He’s been heard to say, ‘They call me a pirate—but that bloody Grimes could give me points and a beating if he really set his mind to it!’” He laughed. “And he could be right!”
“I’m flattered,” said Grimes, making it plain that he was not.
“I thought that you would be,” said Damien. “And I don’t mind telling you that Kane’s opinion of yourself coincides with mine.”
“Thank you. Sir.” Grimes scowled even more heavily. “So the idea is that I join Kane’s ragamuffin navy and then, somehow, switch sides.”
“More or less, although I don’t visualize any overt side switching. Hopefully you will contrive an incident, do something that will give us, the Federation Survey Service, an excuse to clamp down on the privateers. As you are aware, no doubt, the dividing line between privateer and pirate has always been a very thin one. You will, as instructed, break that line. You should be able to do so without any loss of life or injuries on either side, without, even, any serious damage to property—but you will commit an act of piracy. A suitable vessel to become the victim of your depredations has already been selected. She will, of course, carry a PCO who will, of course, be in telepathic touch with your Mr. Mayhew.”
“Very ingenious, sir,” said Grimes without enthusiasm. “And I suppose that I shall be secretly under Survey Service orders, as will be Mr. Venner and Mr. Mayhew. But what about the rest of my crew? Two refugees from an old men’s home. University professors and glorified garage hands for engineers. I can’t see any of them taking kindly to a career of piracy.”
“Privateering, Grimes, privateering. And you’d be surprised—or would you?—at what people will do when the money is big enough. And they’ll think that there’s no risk involved, that it will just be a matter of capturing unarmed vessels.”
“When a state of war exists, sir, merchant vessels are usually defensively armed.”
“You needn’t tell your people that.”
“The real spacemen will know without my telling them. And Billy Williams, my chief officer, was in the Dog Star Line—and they have always made a practice of arming their ships when they’re running through trouble zones.”
“So much the better. It will mean that you’ll have three reasonably competent gunnery officers aboard Sister Sue—yourself, Williams and Venner.”
“You’re forgetting one thing, sir.”
“And what’s that, Grimes?”
“I have a conscience. I don’t mind hiring myself out as a mercenary but I like to be able to approve of my employers.”
“Until this mess has been cleaned up, Grimes, we, the Federation Survey Service, are your real employers.”
“There have been times, Admiral Damien, when I have not approved of the Survey Service.”
“You do not surprise me. Many times I strongly suspected that. Nonetheless, you have never approved of Kane. This will be your chance to pay off old scores.”
And that, thought Grimes, was one quite good reason for accepting the assignment. Another reason was the prospect of making an honest, or a dishonest, profit. And—although he would never admit this to Damien—the Survey Service had been his life for so long that the prospect of returning to it, even as only a temporary reservist, was almost like coming home.
Chapter 16
ALTHOUGH THE DISCHARGE of Sister Sue’s inward cargo had been only two days’ work, with no overtime involved, there was a delay of over a week before her loading for El Dorado could be started. Grimes took advantage of this respite to fly to Alice Springs to visit his parents. Williams could be trusted to look after things during the captain’s absence and Damien had raised no objections. (Grimes wondered if legally the Rear Admiral could have done so but deemed it polite to ask his permission before leaving Port Woomera.)
The city of Alice Springs had changed little since Grimes’ last time there. There were, he thought as the dirigible made its approach from the south and he looked out and down through the promenade deck windows, a few more white domes in the residential districts, an increase of the market garden acreage, vividly green in the desert, crisscrossed by shining irrigation canals. There seemed to have been a proliferation of t
he grey yet scintillant solar power collection screens.
His father and mother were waiting for him in the lounge at the base of the mooring mast. His maternal parent had changed very little; she was still tall and straight and slim, still with gleaming auburn hair that owed little to artifice. But his father had aged, more so than had been apparent in the small screen of the telephone when Grimes had called from Port Woomera. He, too, was tall but stooped and his abundant hair was white. His face was heavily lined. Yet the old boy, thought Grimes, looked prosperous enough. His historical romances must be paying him well.
They boarded the family electric runabout and drove to the Grimes home on the outskirts of the city, Matilda Grimes at the controls while the two men sat and talked in the back. His parents, Grimes discovered, had moved to a much larger house, one surrounded by a lush, sprinkler-fed garden. When the car stopped, a housebot of the latest model emerged to handle the baggage and contrived somehow to register disapproval of the single, small, battered case brought by the guest. Another uppity robot, thought Grimes, but said nothing.
Finally the three humans disposed themselves in the comfortably furnished sitting room, sipping the fragrant tea that Mrs. Grimes had made personally. “There are some things,” she said, “that robots just can’t do properly.” Her son agreed with her.
Afternoon tea gave way to pre-dinner drinks as the colors of the garden, seen through the wide picture window, dimmed and darkened in the fast gathering twilight. But not every plant faded into near invisibility. Grimes was pleased to see that the Mudooran sparkle bush that, as little more than a seedling, he had brought to his parents as a gift had not only survived but flourished, was now a small tree decorated with starlike blossoms, softly self-luminous, multicolored.
His mother saw what he was looking at.
She said, “We have always loved that bush, John. We’ve told ourselves that as it survived in what, to it, is an alien environment so you would survive. And, like it, you have not only survived but done well. A captain and a shipowner.” She frowned slightly. “But I still wish that you could have become a captain in the Survey Service.”
Grimes laughed. “So you still think that your illustrious ancestor . . .”
“And yours!” she snapped.
“. . . would not have approved of my career. You’d have liked to have seen me become Admiral Lord Grimes, just as he became Admiral Lord Hornblower. But unless I emigrate to the Empire of Waverley I’ll never become a lord. Not that I can imagine King James elevating me to the peerage.”
“But John was a captain in the Survey Service,” said the elder Grimes.
“At times,” his wife told him, “you display an appalling ignorance of naval matters, inexcusable in one who is not only an historical novelist but who prides himself on the thoroughness of his research. John was captain of a Serpent Class courier—but his actual rank was only lieutenant. He was captain of bigger ships—first as a lieutenant commander, then as commander. But he never wore the four gold rings on his sleeve.”
George Whitley Grimes laughed. “Anybody who is in command is a captain, no matter what he does or does not wear. What do you say, John?”
“I’m a captain,” said Grimes. “I’m called that.”
“But a merchant captain,” said his mother. “It’s only a courtesy title. And the uniform you wear is only company’s livery.”
“But my company,” Grimes told her. “Far Traveler Couriers. And what Survey Service captain owns the ship that he commands or wears uniform trimmings of his own design?”
“But you still aren’t a Survey Service captain,” said his mother stubbornly.
But I am, my dearest Matilda, he thought. I’m Captain John Grimes, Federation Survey Service Reserve. It’s a pity that I can’t tell you.
***
Later during his stay Grimes talked with his father about the old-time privateers, trying to draw upon the old man’s fund of historical knowledge.
“Perhaps the most famous, or notorious,” said the author, “was Captain Kidd, although most people think that he was a pirate. He was tried as such, found guilty and hanged. For murder as well as piracy. During a heated altercation with his gunner, one William Moore, he broke that officer’s skull with a wooden bucket.”
“I murdered William Moore as I sailed,” sang Grimes tunelessly.
“I murdered William Moore as I sailed,
I knocked him on the head
Till he bled the scuppers red
And I heaved him with the lead
As I sailed . . .”
“So you know something of the story,” said Grimes’ father.
“Yes. But carry on, George.”
“Kidd was commissioned as a privateer. He was authorized both to seize French vessels—at that time England was at war with France, a very common state of affairs—and to hunt down pirates. It was alleged that he joined forces with these same pirates and accumulated a huge treasure, which, to this day, has not been found . . .”
“If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em,” said Grimes.
“Not a very moral attitude, young man. But it seems possible, probable even, that Kidd was framed. There were some very dirty politics involved. The Governor of New York, then a British colony, had his reasons for wishing Kidd silenced. Permanently.”
“Mphm,” grunted Grimes. What dirty politics would he be getting mixed up in, he wondered.
“And then,” his father continued, “there was the literary buccaneer, Dampier. He was one of the first Europeans to reach Australia. He made his landings on the west coast and was impressed neither by the country nor its inhabitants. He actually started his seafaring career as a pirate but somehow acquired a veneer of respectability. He was actually appointed by the British Admiralty to command one of their ships on a voyage of exploration. After that he sailed as a privateer, making two voyages. On the second one he hit it rich . . .”
“So there was money in privateering,” said Grimes.
“Of course. Why else should a group of merchants buy a ship and fit her out and man her as what was, in effect, a privately owned man-o’-war? But the days of the privateer, on Earth’s seas, were finished by the Second Hague Conference in 1907, Old Reckoning. Then it was ruled that a warship must be a unit of a national navy.”
“You’ve been swotting this up,” accused Grimes.
“As a matter of fact, I have. I’m working on an ‘If Of History’ novel. About the Australian War of Independence, which started with the Massacre at Glenrowan, when the Kelly Gang slaughtered all the police aboard the special train. In actual history, of course, the special train was not derailed—the Glenrowan schoolteacher, Curnow, flagged it down before it got to the torn-up track—and it was the Kelly Gang that was wiped out . . .”
“I know, I know. And Ned Kelly is supposed to have been a freedom fighter. But he was a bushranger, not a privateer.”
“Let me finish, John. Among the characters in my novel is a millionaire American shipowner who’s very anti-British. And he has two of his ships fitted out as privateers to harry Pommy merchantmen.”
“Cor stone my Aunt Fanny up a gum tree!” exclaimed Grimes. “The things you come up with! I’d just hate to be a character in one of your books!”
“I still think that the Australian War of Independence was a possibility,” said the writer. “And, back in 1880, privateering was still legal. Anyhow, I got interested in the subject and carried on with more research. As far as I can gather, the 1907 Hague Conference ruling still holds good—but possibly only insofar as the Federated Worlds are concerned. It could be argued that any planet not in the Interstellar Federation can make its own rules. On the other hand, I have learned that the Federation’s Interstellar Navigation Regulations are observed by just about everybody.”
“I could have told you that,” said Grimes. “They’re taken as a model by all spacefaring races. But, getting back to the subject of privateering, there have been astronautical precedents. The no
torious Black Bart, for example. He—like Captain Kidd—is widely regarded as having been a pirate. But he always maintained that he was a privateer. His planetary base was within the sphere of influence of the Duchy of Waldegren. The Duchy tolerated him, as long as he paid the taxes. They tolerated and, at times, used him. They weren’t very fussy about whom they employed—they still aren’t—any more than Black Bart was fussy about who employed him.”
“Why all this interest in privateering, John?” asked his father.
“Oh, well, I guess that it’s an interesting topic.”
“You aren’t thinking of going privateering?” asked the old man sharply.
“Who? Me?” countered Grimes.
“I wouldn’t put it past you. But if you do, don’t let your mother know. It’s bad enough that you never got to be a four-ring captain in the Survey Service, but if you become a privateer she’d tell you never to darken her door again.”
And what if I became both? Grimes asked himself.
But he said nothing.
Chapter 17
GRIMES RETURNED TO PORT WOOMERA; Billy Williams had telephoned to say that Rear Admiral Damien required his presence aboard Sister Sue. Grimes’ father overheard some of the conversation.
He asked, a little suspiciously, “Why should an admiral be wanting you, John? You’re a civilian shipmaster, aren’t you?”
Grimes thought hard and fast, then said, “At the moment the ship is berthed in the Survey Service area of the spaceport. I will have to shift her to one of the commercial berths to load my outward cargo.” (He probably would have to do just that but it would not be for a few days yet.)
He made his booking. His parents came to the airport to see him off.
“Look after yourself, John,” his mother told him. “And try not to make it so long between visits.”
“I’ll try,” he promised.
“And try to stay inside the law,” said his father.
Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III Page 56