Crown of Slaves

by David Weber

  Gideon was already turning away, sure that the rest of the immediate work was being done to the same degree of perfection.

  Indeed so. The three guards who'd accompanied Templeton and his people down the corridor from the shuttle docking bay to the security lounge were already immobilized. They'd been physically silenced too, which was quite unnecessary—but probably inevitable, given the ingrained fighting habits of the new converts. They weren't really accustomed to working with the advantages of the Masadans' high-tech gadgetry, such as the noise suppressor.

  In the case of two, the method of silencing—throats collapsed by hard-edged hand blows—would complete the task of killing them. As Templeton watched, the third had his neck snapped by a sudden and powerful movement by the new convert holding his head. Imre, that was, perhaps the strongest of the lot.

  Aside from Templeton's crew, there had been three other visitors to The Wages of Sin on the same shuttle who had also been brought by the guards to check in their personal weapons. They all died within seconds, never overcoming their shock at the sudden eruption of murderous action long enough to put up any resistance at all beyond raising their hands in futile protest. And, as with the guards and the attendant, the noise suppressor kept any auditory warning they might have issued from being able to carry to the shuttle docking bay where two of the space station's guards had remained.

  Gideon grunted—silently.

  Some of that grunt was due to his satisfaction at the success of this stage of his plans. He'd decided to take the risk of retrieving their weapons rather than attempt an immediate firefight in the docking bay. To some extent, that was simply to reduce the number of his immediate opponents. Primarily, however, it had been due to Gideon's calculation that the guards would have lost their initial edge of alertness after escorting a seemingly docile new group of visitors to the security lounge. They would have done this innumerable times by now, since possession of personal weapons was commonplace in this portion of the galaxy. Most of what problems they'd faced in the past would have come from visitors unfamiliar with the draconian security policies of the space station. But those would have protested immediately, while still in the docking bay. Templeton and his men had acted casually, as if they'd already been aware of the station's policy—which they had been, of course—and took it as a given.

  For the most part, however, Gideon's grunt was an expression of piety. He'd sometimes wondered why the Lord had saddled him with the often-thankless and always-exasperating task of welcoming the new converts into his flock. Now he was sure he was catching a glimpse of the Almighty's great design. On their own, he was fairly confident that his old Faithful could have managed this work. But . . . not so easily, nor so surely. Whatever else, the new converts were the sharpest of blades placed into his hands by Providence.

  Stash was already emerging from the weapons room, carrying several of the side arms they'd brought with them to The Wages of Sin. He spread them on the counter and turned back to retrieve more. Between him and his two comrades, all of the weapons which Templeton and his men had brought to the station were quickly back in their hands, along with others they'd found to arm the rest of the crew and serve them for spares if needed.

  Everyone was moving quickly, especially Jacob, who was already working at the security console on the counter next to the weapons check-in room. Gideon had stressed the importance of not leaving the white-noise scrambler running for any longer than absolutely necessary. Even the type of slackers who could normally be found working in low-wage security jobs would get suspicious if a "video malfunction" continued for long enough.

  But, within seconds, Jacob was smiling. He lifted his head and gave Gideon a firm nod. Then, confirming the news, turned off the noise suppressor.

  "All set. The scrambler's hooked into the security computer. It'll keep the scanners—audio and video both—looping back through the previous half hour's recordings. They're a lot of sinners, Solarians, but I will say their electronics are good."

  Gideon grunted his satisfaction. To any security guard in the station's central security room who glanced at the monitors covering this lounge, it would appear to be empty again—as if, the weapons having been checked, all the passengers had left and the guards had returned to their posts. Until and unless somebody noticed that the same security guards were still moving around in the docking bay, long after their shift ended, they should be fine. They still couldn't use weapons, of course, without setting off alarms all over the station.

  Stash was scowling a bit. As the former leader of the new converts—most dominant figure, more precisely—he tended to question Gideon more often than any of them.

  Stash gestured back at the still-open weapons room. "There's better stuff in there. A hand-tooled side-arm flechette gun—beautiful thing, don't want to think what it cost—three military-grade pulsers, and even a tri-barrel. Ha! What idiot would have brought that to a place like this? I guess he was thinking he might go on safari if he got bored. Add the head of a Giant Faro Dealer to his trophy collection."

  "No." Gideon growled the word, but managed not to snarl it. "I've made this clear before, Stash. We've still got a long way to go—we don't even know where she is—to find my sister. This vile place won't have the same extensive security scanners in the interior of the station, but they will have them. As it is, I'm gambling that we can carry these low-powered guns without being spotted, because some of the guards within are bound to be carrying similar weapons. They can't very well have alarms going off constantly, simply because guards are doing their duty. But there'd be no reason for military-grade or powerful weapons to be loose in the station, and I'm sure the scanners are set to detect those. Unless we had special registers indicating that these were authorized—and there's no way to get those codes—it'd be too much of a risk."

  He let it go at that, since Stash was clearly not going to press the issue. And, truth be told, Gideon wasn't very happy with the situation himself. He was quite sure that his sister's bodyguards had been given the codes necessary to register their military-grade weapons with the station's security scanners. Diplomatic strains or not, there was no way Erewhon would run the risk of having a Manticoran royal successfully attacked because her Manticoran bodyguards had been disarmed. In fact, Gideon was quite sure that security for The Wages of Sin had been beefed up all the way around. Somewhere in the station, there'd even be a heavy-weapons unit on standby.

  Templeton wasn't too concerned about a possible—probable, rather—heavy-weapons unit. They wouldn't be directly positioned to cover his sister, in any event. Princess Ruth was not making an official state visit following a carefully planned route. Since there would be no way to predict the movements of an empty-headed sinner at her play, the management of the station would not want to alarm all their other guests by having a highly visible armored unit trampling through the gaming areas in her wake. Instead, they'd simply have them on standby at some central location. Deadly enough, when they arrived—but if Templeton's project went as planned, they'd get there too late.

  That still left the problem of his sister's immediate bodyguards, and those were a matter of great concern. Leaving aside the fact that they were much better trained and motivated than a pleasure resort's security guards, they'd also have weapons considerably superior to the ones in the hands of Templeton and his men. Hand pulsers, to be sure, not heavier equipment. But military-grade sidearms, in the hands of elite soldiers, were nothing to sneer at.

  Templeton had even considered bringing chemical-powered weapons with him, instead of the puny personal use and sporting hand pulsers they'd brought. For all their primitive design, the right sort of chemical-powered guns could be far more lethal. But . . .

  Not possible. Such weapons were very rare, which was exactly why Templeton was well-nigh certain the station's internal scanners wouldn't pick them up, since they had no power source. But that would not have been true for the more extensive security devices in the docking bay. The guards
there would have been instantly suspicious to discover that so many men in the same party all had a burning passion for antique weaponry. As it was, Gideon had had to do a bit of explaining to account for the fact that most of his party were armed. Fortunately, the fact that he'd ordered over a third of his men to arrive unarmed had done the trick. That, and a vague reference to the ingrained frontier customs of their supposed planet of origin.

  Again, he congratulated himself for the shrewdness of his scheme. He'd calculated—correctly—that there would be enough hand weapons in the check-in room left by earlier passengers to arm the rest of his party. His scheme had been all the more shrewd, in that he'd been forced to improvise most of it the moment he discovered his sister was traveling to The Wages of Sin.

  But, ever mindful of the sin of pride, Gideon didn't dwell on the self-satisfaction. Nor did he overlook the fact that there'd been an element of carelessness on his part involved also. Given the foul nature of his sister, he should have known from the very beginning that the whore would fly to such a den of iniquity at the first opportunity, like a moth to a flame. So, if he'd done an excellent job of planning hastily, some of the hastiness itself had been the result of his own slackness.

  He broke off the rumination. Everyone in the party was armed now—many with an extra weapon—and they were ready to begin the next stage. His men had dragged the bodies and tossed them into the weapons check-in room. One of them had even found a cloth somewhere and was beginning to wipe up the blood which one of their victims had coughed onto the floor.

  "Don't bother," said Gideon. "By the time anyone else comes in here, it will all be a moot point."

  His cousin and chief lieutenant, Abraham Templeton, cocked an eye at him.

  "You've decided, then, to kill the guards still in the docking bay?"

  "Yes. You heard what that one guard told me, when I inquired casually. There's not another shuttle scheduled to arrive at that dock for hours."

  Abraham nodded. The gesture was as much one of respect as agreement. Gideon had planned for that, as well, deliberately taking a shuttle which would arrive at the tail end of the station's peak business hours for the day. That would most likely have them docking at one of the bays used only to handle overflow traffic—as, indeed, had proved true.

  "That's enough time for us to do the rest," Templeton continued, "as much of it as will set off all alarms, anyway. And it'd be safer to leave no one behind who might wander over here and set off a premature warning."

  Abraham nodded and gave the assembled team a quick inspection. His eyes lingered for a bit longer on the new converts. Although they were generally unaccustomed to more elaborate weaponry, the new converts were just as proficient with simple hand weapons as they were with unarmed combat.

  Stash returned Abraham's gaze with a lazy smile. "Be like butchering sheep."

  * * *

  Indeed, it was so. And Gideon felt his piety strengthened as a result. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, after all. And if it suited Him to provide Gideon with otherwise-flawed instruments for His work, Gideon Templeton was not a man to question God's will.

  Templeton had been very concerned himself, about this stage of the plan. Concerned enough, in fact, that he'd almost decided to follow Abraham's advice to leave the two remaining guards in the docking bay untouched. The problem, in a nutshell, was that they did not dare attack the guards while still in the bay. No matter how slack, not even low-paid security guards could be taken down by a direct assault without managing to set off at least some of the alarms. And since the white noise generator couldn't suppress actual weapons discharges, there would be the added risk of one of the guards managing to fire his pulser.

  Stash had assured Templeton that he could handle the problem through misdirection. Or—if Stash didn't match the physique of one of the guards well enough—one of the other new converts could do so.

  So it proved. Gideon was able to observe the events indirectly, using a tiny holobug set up by Jacob.

  The docking bay was attached to the security lounge by a short corridor. Unlike the bay or the lounge, there were no audio-video monitors set to cover that corridor. There would undoubtedly be energy sensors, but those were of no concern.

  Gideon found it hard not to suppress a sneer—and did suppress it, only because of his constant vigilance for the sin of pride. Heathen sinners could always be counted on to let avarice override caution. Had Godly men been in charge of security for The Wages of Sin, there would have been audio-video sensors everywhere—with keen-eyed Faithful to monitor them in the station's central security room. But the greedy management of the sinful place had naturally avoided the expense, and placed them only in critical areas.

  Gideon watched Stash, now dressed in a uniform taken from one of the dead security guards who had approximately his size and build, amble down the corridor. "Amble" was the right word, too. No old Faithful could have managed that slovenly shuffle—nor the equally slack manner in which Stash leaned around the corner where the corridor debouched into the docking bay and waved an arm at the two remaining security guards.

  The arm-wave, too, was perfect. It's done, boys. Shift's over—so let's get us a beer. All of it conveyed without Stash having to say a word—or give the two guards more than a glimpse of him.

  But . . . it was the glimpse they'd been expecting. Indeed, awaiting. So, within seconds, the two men appeared in the corridor, walking in the easy manner of sinners looking forward to their sins. Not "ambling," exactly—they were moving too quickly for that term to apply—but with nothing at all in the way of alertness or caution.

  Stash was facing away from them, down on one knee, apparently adjusting the fit of one of his boots. His face was obscured by the bill of the cap on his head. As the two security guards came alongside, one of them said something. A jest, apparently, judging from the grin on his face. Templeton couldn't hear the actual words, because the miniature transmitter Jacob had set up alongside the corridor's wall was not able to pick up audio signals.

  It didn't matter, anyway. Stash was moving again, and this time there was nothing either slovenly or shuffling about it. He came up like a tiger out of its crouch, striking once—twice—

  Then, quickly, finishing the work once the guards were on the floor. It was all over in a manner of seconds. And Gideon had heard not a sound coming around the bend of the corridor where he and the others waited in the security lounge.

  One of the new converts went to help Stash carry the two bodies into the security lounge. It was the work of a few more seconds to stuff them into the weapons room with the other corpses.

  Then, all was done except the final strike on the princess. Gideon's initial plans had worked to perfection. They departed the security lounge, filing down the corridor leading to the halls of the Devil's playground where the whore sister would surely be found.

  * * *

  First Lieutenant Ahmed Griggs was not a happy man. To put it mildly.

  Not because of anything to do with his own people, of course. He and Laura Hofschulte had chosen Sergeant Christina Bulanchik's squad from Griggs' own platoon for the detail for several reasons. The biggest one was Bulanchik herself, a long-service noncom who, like Griggs, held the Sphinx Cross. Several of the other members of her squad had been decorated for valor also, but that wasn't particularly uncommon in the Queen's Own Regiment. Almost all of its personnel were on at least their second term of enlistment in the Royal Manticoran Army (those who hadn't been cross-transferred from the Marines, as Griggs himself had been), and the Queen's Own was able to pick and choose only the very best. But Bulanchik had two other points in her favor. One was that she had always scored very high in public place training scenarios, and the other was that Ruth Winton liked her. It wasn't essential for a protectee to have a friendly personal relationship with one of her protectors, but it never hurt. Especially when it came to guarding Princess Ruth in such a crowded, busy, distracting, security nightmare of a place like The Wages of Sin.


  Since they'd entered the pleasure resort, a part of Griggs' mind had never stopped cursing. Some of those silent curses, needless to say, had been visited on the princess herself. But not many. No one expects a headstrong young woman to be sensible about security, after all, especially the people assigned to protect her.

  More of his curses were visited on the now-absent head of Anton Zilwicki. Haring off on a mysterious mission for a month, leaving his daughter and the princess to manage their own affairs!

  But . . . the lieutenant didn't curse Anton much more than he did the girls. He knew the man's reputation, and if Anton Zilwicki thought something was important enough for him to leave for a month, Griggs didn't really doubt it was true.

  No, most of the lieutenant's curses were visited on a man far distant from Erewhon: the Star Kingdom's Prime Minister, whose arrogant and stupid policies had so thoroughly alienated the people and government of Erewhon and made the princess' "informal" voyage to Erewhon necessary in the first place.

  The Queen had not, needless to say, explained her purpose in sending Princess Ruth to Lieutenant Griggs personally. But there'd been no need. Like all officers assigned to the Queen's Own, Griggs was quite well aware of the political situation in the Star Kingdom. In times past, when Manticore's foreign relations had been in the hands of Prime Minister Cromarty and people of his choosing, Queen Elizabeth herself might have made the trip to Erewhon—or, if not she, someone representing her officially. On such occasions, Lieutenant Griggs would have been able to take all the added security measures which were taken for granted during such elaborate events.

  Now, however . . .

  Griggs had no quarrel with the Erewhonese themselves. As soon as he informed them of the princess' proposed visit to The Wages of Sin, without even being asked, the Erewhonese had volunteered to waive the usual security rules and allow Griggs and his men to retain their sidearms. They'd also immediately informed him that they would beef up the station's normal security by assembling their special weapons unit and keeping it on standby.