by Terry Mixon
Brad smiled.
“Believe me, Dr. Jenkins, if you hire ‘the cheapest rent-a-thugs you can,’ we’ll be back in this conference room in three months…and a lot more people will have died.”
She glared at him silently for several long seconds, then nodded.
“I see your point, Commodore. I will pass on a recording of this meeting to the Council. You meet the requirements as well as I can see, but the final decision is theirs.”
“Of course, Doctor.” Brad bowed his head slightly. “Factor Parisi can provide you or the Council with our fee schedule. You might not see the difference between types of ‘rent-a-thug,’ Doctor, but enough people do that the fee schedule is quite inflexible.”
Jenkins, thankfully, was looking at Brad instead of Parisi and missed the Factor’s long blink of despair. Even the Platinum fee schedule was negotiable, especially when you were hiring six destroyers and combat platoons.
Unless, of course, you called a senior mercenary officer a rent-a-thug to his face.
Brad was going to take the contract. He was going to help the government and people of Venus and stop the pirates, to save lives as much as anything else.
But if they wanted to insult him, they would pay extra for the privilege.
Chapter Five
They’d returned to Io and were in the process of moving back aboard Oath of Vengeance when Parisi finally got in touch again. Brad checked his wrist-comp as it chimed, then waved one of the spacers nearby over to him.
“Sabina, can you grab this for me and drop it off at my quarters?” he asked the tech. “Hopefully, this call means we’ve got work!”
The Slavic woman saluted briskly and took the box of bedding that Brad was hauling.
“Will the XO need help setting up your quarters?” she asked.
“That’s what we’ve got a steward team for,” Brad replied with a chuckle. “She’s got it in hand; I’m just helping with the lifting.”
The tech disappeared deeper into the ship as Brad stepped out of the flow of traffic and accepted the call.
“Madrid,” he answered. “Apologies for the delay; we’re transferring back aboard our ships.”
“No one told you if you had a contract yet, did they?” Parisi asked. “Seems a bit premature.”
“Some contracts are rushes,” he replied. “Even if this Venus one falls through, it’s hardly valueless to have my crews back aboard. What if someone attacks Io?”
The Factor’s derisive snort told him what she thought of that possibility. Brad wasn’t so sure himself, but then, he knew how powerful the Cadre’s “Independence Militia” front had grown. He was grimly certain that, unless Fleet had reinforced more than he knew about, the Cadre now had the force to at least take control of Jupiter’s orbital space.
“Well, if that scenario takes place, we’ll have to find someone else to defend us,” she told him. “Like, oh, Fleet. Because you, Commodore, should be on your way to Venus.”
“They agreed to the contract?”
“At full Platinum daily rates and combat premiums,” she agreed. “I was planning on being at least somewhat flexible and arguing with you over it, but they didn’t even blink.”
“You wouldn’t have had to argue hard,” Brad admitted. “Even if Jenkins is an ass, there’s at least a couple of million people on Venus who aren’t.”
“They must be more desperate then she let on,” he continued with a shake of his head. “They didn’t even counteroffer?”
The time delay for a roundtrip communication between Venus and Jupiter was long. When everything lined up perfectly, it was over an hour. The current point in Venus’s year meant that it was even worse, with the planet not quite on the opposite side of the sun.
Even so, he’d assumed part of the delay had been the need for back-and-forth negotiations.
“I think the Council argued over our position for at least five or six hours before agreeing,” Parisi told him. “I’m guessing someone there made all of our arguments for us—and yes. I think the situation is worse than they’ve told Jenkins. They didn’t even tell us as much as they’d told her.”
“It still makes no sense to me,” Brad said. “This is a Commonwealth problem. Where’s Fleet?”
“I don’t know,” she agreed. “It should be Fleet. That’s not really our problem, though, Commodore, is it?”
“True enough.” Commodore Madrid didn’t necessarily care why Venus was hiring him instead of turning to Fleet. Brad Madrid, however, was also a sworn agent of the Commonwealth Intelligence Agency—and wearing that hat, it definitely was his problem.
“What’s our timeline?” he asked instead, making sure he was wearing the right mental hat for this conversation.
“They want you on station in twenty-one days,” Parisi told him. “They’re paying travel rates for that long—but if you’re late, they start deducting percentage points off the whole contract.”
“We won’t be late,” Brad replied. “Thank you, Factor. We’ll be under way in about twenty-four hours. If you can pull all the Guild files on Venus, New Venice, and the last round with the Wreckers, I’d appreciate it.
“Any intel we have on the current situation would be worth its weight in gold, but I don’t think we have much.”
“You know as much as I do, I think,” she admitted. “I’ll get you everything we’ve got, Commodore. The Guild’s cut on this pays my salary for a few years.”
“Yeah, but you don’t have destroyers to maintain,” Brad said with a chuckle. “They’re a tad more expensive than apartments.”
Even with the move back aboard ship ongoing, it took Brad less than twenty minutes to get his Captains and platoon Majors on a videoconference link from Oath of Vengeance’s main briefing room.
“We have a contract, people,” he told them. “The Governing Council of New Venice is bringing us in to help deal with a piracy and smuggling problem. They’ve had a major upsurge in piracy in the last six months.”
He grimaced.
“And before any of you ask the question I asked, we’re not entirely sure why Fleet isn’t intervening. The New Venetian representative we spoke to had been fed a line about Fleet being ‘too busy,’ but that doesn’t add up.”
He’d be digging into that from his other sources as soon as this briefing was over. Something was rotten in the state of Venus.
“Our task, at least initially, is a customs blockade,” he told them. “We’ll move in above New Venice itself and maintain a security perimeter with the shuttles. No one is allowed to leave the planet without allowing our teams aboard to inspect their cargo.
“Once we’ve got that pattern established, I intend to move at least two of our destroyers out to play watchdog over the more-vulnerable shipping routes. If we get enough support from New Venice, we may be able to move most of our ships out to do that.
“Regardless, we will keep a minimum of one ship at New Venice itself to back up the boarding parties. Civilians and potential smugglers will likely be much more cooperative with an actual warship looming in the background.”
“A blockade seems weird,” Captain El-Hashem noted. “If the government of Venus is bringing us in, aren’t we just backing up their customs patrols?”
“It’s complicated,” Brad replied. He’d wondered that himself, but the Guild files on Venus had answered his question. “While the official Governor of Venus is on the Governing Council of New Venice, the truth appears to be that his authority is nominal at best. There are six groupings of aerostat cities that each send a Senator to Earth, and, well, they’re all functionally independent of each other.
“Even with the cluster around New Venice, the individual aerostat cities act as city-states. There are planetwide agencies for traffic management and such, but they’re more like cooperative endeavors than true government offices.”
“So, New Venice doesn’t actually have the authority to impose a customs lockdown,” Laurent added. “I was posted there for a while and
it’s a headache—the Governor is elected by the populace of the whole planet and officially has the authority to do everything a Governor normally can.
“In practice, he runs the intercity agencies and interacts with the Commonwealth. The cities manage their own affairs—including customs.”
“So, while the Governor had the official authority to impose a customs lockdown, he doesn’t have the actual power,” Brad finished for her. “Traditionally, when that level of force has been needed, the Governor has called in Fleet. This time, New Venice is hiring us.
“We’re covered on paper, but we’re going to get pushback. Some will be legitimate. Some will be covering for people attempting to smuggle stolen goods off-world.
“Given that the theft of those goods involved the presumed deaths of over a thousand people, my patience with the legitimate gripers is limited,” he concluded. “We’ll do our damn job, understand me?”
Nods rippled around the table and video screens.
“Saburo, I’ve pulled you the Guild training files on customs inspections. I want every one of our troopers to be able to do a customs inspection blindfolded by the time we arrive at Venus.”
“How long will that be?” the Colonel asked.
“We have three weeks,” Brad told him. “How long it will take us depends on how much fuel I’m willing to burn—and there are both refueling facilities in New Venice and bonuses for getting into position early.”
He grinned.
“We’re going to push it in two weeks, a direct burn-flip-burn. My calculations say we’ll make it to Venus with just over ten percent of our fuel left.”
“And if someone jumps us along the way?” Andre asked.
“Then we’ll get to Venus nearly dry on fuel and short some munitions,” Brad said brightly. “We could use the workout. We’ve got good ships and good crews, but outside of Bound by Law and Oath of Vengeance, they haven’t worked together.
“We’ll need to fix that.”
With his senior officers onboard and his course to Venus being double-checked and validated by the actual navigators in his crews, Brad made his way down to Oath of Vengeance’s engineering spaces.
Mike Randall, his chief engineer, was many things. Talented, intelligent, brave…but also obnoxious, disrespectful, arrogant…
He was currently bossing around the team of techs responsible for managing the destroyer’s power core. Currently, the fusion plant was off-line and Oath was running on station power, but the feed-line diagram next to the main control center was lighting up to show fuel lines starting to fill.
“Should I come back later?” Brad asked as he peeked over a railing at the diagram and his chief engineer.
“Nah, we’re just in feed-line mode,” Randall replied. “It’ll be at least twenty or thirty minutes before we even start running He-3 into the core. What can I do for you, boss?”
Oath of Vengeance was rare among destroyers in using helium-3 fusion for her main core. Most used basic hydrogen fusion—a cheaper and more readily available fuel source, but not as powerful. Fleet reserved He-3 for its bigger ships: cruisers, drone carriers and battleships.
One of the reasons for Fleet restricting operations in the outer systems right now was a Cadre attack that had destroyed their main helium-3 refueling base. They were rebuilding, but for the moment, nothing heavier than a destroyer went much past Jupiter.
Frustrating to everyone was that the Cadre had at least one cruiser and drone carrier and was fueling them somehow. Brad’s information on how was unpleasant: he’d learned that they’d funded research into an entire new line of small-scale refining. There was no way Fleet could locate the Cadre’s refueling bases.
“We’re heading to Venus,” Brad told his chief engineer. “Going to be any problems with fuel?”
“Not a chance,” Randall said firmly. “We’ll run the Bounds dry a week before Oath comes up short. The Warriors will be in the middle.”
He shook his head.
“Those birds can out-accelerate us, but they can’t outlast us,” he said proudly.
“Good. So, you’ll have some free time on the trip, then?” Brad asked with faked innocence.
“I know that voice, boss,” Randall replied. “What do you need?”
“We’re going to Venus and we’re hunting wreckers,” Brad reminded him. “Most of our shuttle fleet is going to be tied up on customs duty, but I’m going to hold Oath’s shuttles back. I want them rigged up for atmospheric flight.”
His chief engineer stared at him for several long seconds.
“You’re serious.”
“The birds are rated for atmospheric flight; it just almost never comes up,” Brad said. “I want to be able to send Oath’s birds into atmosphere after pirates. There’s only so deep I can take destroyers.”
“If you want the birds to land on Earth and come back up, they don’t even require refits,” Randall told him. “The wings are retracted in normal ops, but they’re there. At full load, they can drop to a one-g surface and come back up. Easier the lower the gravity, of course.
“But Venus? Boss, the surface melts lead.”
“And our shuttles have heat-resistant ceramic coating,” Brad replied. “And you have twelve hours to get anything you need from Io. It has to be doable.”
“Reaching the surface is doable,” Randall confirmed. “With custom-built, specially-designed ships. I’m not sure I can refit our shuttles to do anything remotely like it. I might be able to get you a temporary refit that can get you down to the mountains, with a frigging blank check.”
“Done,” Brad said instantly, then grinned as his chief engineer realized he’d been played. “Please, Mike, I know we can’t get to the surface. But I don’t think our pirate friends can either. Give me shuttles than can reach the mountain mining tunnels and I’ll be happy—and it costs what it costs.
“So, make it happen.”
Chapter Six
It was apparently impossible to move a destroyer squadron through the Solar System without attracting attention. Brad’s previous fleet had been a “mere” four ships, two of them corvettes, and that had attracted some scrutiny.
Six destroyers attracted a lot more, and he ended up spending two hours clarifying his course and contract to traffic control for the Jupiter System. And then about the same talking to Fleet.
The sad reality of interplanetary travel, however, was that after spending five hours explaining where he was going with a fleet of warships, his little flotilla hadn’t yet left the space around Jupiter. Moons, rings, and space stations still glittered on his displays, and there was a near-infinite amount of radio chatter scattering across any wavelength and angle one cared to look at.
“We just got tagged with a tightbeam, Commodore,” Xan Wong, his communications officer, told him. “They hit us, interrogated us to confirm our ID, then pulsed a compressed data packet. Entire communication took under three seconds. I could probably trace it…but I don’t think anyone else could.
“Oh, I think we know who that was from,” Brad told the Chinese woman. “Check the package for the Agency tags I gave you.”
In the aftermath of their most recent clash with the Cadre, he’d used his Agency credentials to order a Commonwealth Fleet cruiser group to stand down. He’d lost a degree of secrecy doing so, but at least now his bridge crew knew about his other allegiances.
It made his life a lot easier in some ways.
“Bingo,” Wong replied. “I don’t have the decryption key, but it’s definitely Agency. I think your other employers have something to say.”
Brad snorted.
“They always do,” he admitted. “I’m surprised I’ve gone so long without hearing from them.”
Though, to be fair, he didn’t usually get radio messages from the Agency. Usually, his missions turned up in the form of Agent Kate Falcone unexpectedly showing up aboard his ship.
“I’ll go over it in my office,” he told Wong. “Michelle has the con. Let me
know if anyone else wants a two-hour briefing on just where I’m taking a hundred-thousand-odd tons of warships.”
“Will do, boss.”
Brad settled down into his office and checked the data package. There were three indicators in the metadata that he’d directed his com officer to look at…and seven more that told him which decryption key to use.
It took a good minute for the key to turn the packet into something useful. The video message started automatically, but all it showed was the rotating crossed sword and scroll of the Commonwealth Intelligence Agency.
“Agent, the authentication for this message is Whiskey Postal Auburn Seven Nine Five. Secondary confirm is ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’
“Please validate before continuing the message.”
The code went into a separate module that never touched his wrist-comp, let alone the destroyer’s computer system. It popped up the confirmation message, and Brad resumed the message.
No one without that module would have been able to validate that set of codes—but their purpose was more that no one without the counterpart to his module would have been able to send them. It confirmed that the sender had the authority to issue him orders.
“You are headed to Venus,” the recorded voice—a man, Brad thought—continued. “The situation there is graver than the local government may have told you. They are potentially facing a large-scale armed rebellion, but what there is of the planetary government has dismissed the evidence and rumors as posturing.
“Legitimately so, we would suspect in other times, but in the current environment, we have to wonder. There is no reason for Fleet to have refused to intervene, and yet that is exactly what they’ve done.
“Other Agents will investigate the Fleet connection, but we want you to look into the piracy issue the New Venetian Council has hired you for. While doing so, we want you to keep your eyes open for Cadre connections.”
