by David Drake
He broke past Red Ike, gliding toward the port offices and the light glowing from his room on the upper floor.
Red Ike didn't turn around, but Jolober thought he could feel the alien watching him nonetheless.
Even so, all Jolober cared about now was bed and a chance to reassure Vicki that everything was all right.
The alley between the office building and the Blue Parrot next door wasn't directly illuminated, but enough light spilled from the street to show Jolober the stairs.
He didn't see the two men waiting there until a third had closed the mouth of the alley behind him. Indonesian music began to blare from the China Doll.
Music on the exterior's a violation, thought the part of Jolober's mind that ran Paradise Port, but reflexes from his years as a combat officer noted the man behind him held a metal bar and that knives gleamed in the hands of the two by the stairs.
It made a hell of a fast trip back from the nightmare memories that had ruled Jolober's brain since he wakened.
Jolober's left stump urged the throttle as his torso shifted toward the alley mouth. The electronics reacted instantly but the mechanical links took a moment. Fans spun up, plenum chamber collapsed into a nozzle—
The attackers moved in on Jolober like the three wedges of a drill chuck. His chair launched him into the one with the club, a meter off the ground and rising with a hundred and eighty kilos of mass behind the impact.
At the last instant the attacker tried to duck away instead of swinging at Jolober, but he misjudged the speed of his intended victim. The center of the chair's frame, between the skirt and the saddle, batted the attacker's head toward the wall, dragging the fellow's body with it.
Jolober had a clear path to the street. The pair of knifemen thought he was headed that way and sprinted in a desperate attempt to catch a victim who moved faster than unaided humans could run.
They were in midstride, thinking of failure rather than defense, when Jolober pogoed at the alley mouth and came back at them like a cannonball.
But bigger and heavier.
One attacker stabbed at Jolober's chest and skidded the point on the battery compartment instead when the chair hopped. The frame slammed knife and man into the concrete wall from which they ricochetted to the ground, separate and equally motionless.
The third man ran away.
“Get ‘em, boys!” Jolober bellowed as if he were launching his battalion instead of just himself in pursuit. The running man glanced over his shoulder and collided with the metal staircase. The noise was loud and unpleasant, even in comparison to the oriental music blaring from the China Doll.
Jolober bounced, cut his fan speed, and flared his output nozzle into a plenum chamber again. The chair twitched, then settled into ground effect.
Jolober's mind told him that he was seeing with a clarity and richness of color he couldn't have equalled by daylight, but he knew that if he really focused on an object it would blur into shadow. It was just his brain's way of letting him know that he was still alive.
Alive like he hadn't been in years.
Crooking his ring finger Jolober said, “I need a pickup on three men in the alley between us and the Blue Parrot.”
“Three men in the alley between HQ and the Blue Parrot,” the artificial intelligence paraphrased.
“They'll need a medic.” One might need burial. “And I want them sweated under a psycomp—who sent ‘em after me, the works.”
Light flooded the alley as a team of patrolmen arrived. The point man extended a surface-luminescent area light powered from a backpack. The shadows thrown by the meter-diameter convexity were soft, but the illumination was the blaze of noon compared to that of moments before.
“Chief!” swallowed Stecher. “You all right? Chief!” He wasn't part of the team Central vectored to the alley, but word of mouth had brought him to the scene of the incident.
Jolober throttled up, clamped his skirts, and boosted himself to the fourth step where everyone could see him. The man who'd run into the stairs moaned as the sidedraft spat grit from the treads into his face.
“No problem,” Jolober said. No problem they wouldn't be able to cure in a week or two. “I doubt these three know any more than that they got a call from outside Port to, ah, handle me … but get what they have, maybe we can cross-reference with some outgoing traffic.”
From the China Doll; or just maybe from the Blue Parrot, where Ike fled when the shooting started. But probably not. Three thugs, nondescripts from off-planet who could've been working for any establishment in Paradise Port except the China Doll.
“Sir—” came Stecher's voice.
“It'll keep, Sergeant,” Jolober interrupted. “Just now I've got a heavy date with a bed.”
Vicki greeted him with a smile so bright that both of them could pretend there were no tears beneath it. The air was steamy with the bath she'd drawn for him.
He used to prefer showers, back when he'd had feet on which to stand. He could remember dancing on Quitly's Planet as the afternoon monsoon battered the gun carriages his platoon was guarding and washed the soap from his body.
But he didn't have Vicki then, either.
“Yeah,” he said, hugging the Doll. “Good idea, a bath.”
Instead of heading for the bathroom, he slid his chair to the cabinet within arm's reach of the bed and cut his fans. Bending over, he unlatched the battery compartment—the knifepoint hadn't even penetrated the casing—and removed the powerpack.
“I can—” Vicki offered hesitantly.
“S'okay, dearest,” Jolober replied as he slid a fresh pack from the cabinet into place. His stump touched the throttle, spinning the fans to prove that he had good contact, then lifted the original pack into the cabinet and its charging harness.
“Just gave ‘ern a workout tonight and don't want t’ be down on power tomorrow,” he explained as he straightened. Vicki could have handled the weight of the batteries, he realized, though his mind kept telling him it was ludicrous to imagine the little woman shifting thirty-kilo packages with ease.
But she wasn't a woman.
“I worry when it's so dangerous,” she said as she walked with him to the bathroom, their arms around one another's waist.
“Look, for Paradise Port, it was dangerous,” Jolober said in a light appearance of candor as he handed Vicki his garments. “Compared to downtown in any capital city I've seen, it was pretty mild.”
He lowered himself into the water, using the bars laid over the tub like a horizontal ladder. Vicki began to knead the great muscles of his shoulders, and Lord! but it felt good to relax after so long ….
“I'd miss you,” she said.
“Not unless I went away,” Jolober answered, leaning forward so that her fingers could work down his spine while the water lapped at them. “Which isn't going to happen any time soon.”
He paused. The water's warmth unlocked more than his body. “Look,” he said quietly, his chin touching the surface of the bath and his eyes still closed. “Red Ike's had it. He knows it, I know it. But I'm in a position to make things either easy or hard, and he knows that, too. We'll come to terms, he and I. And you're the—”
“Urgent from the gate,” said Jolober's mastoid implant.
He crooked his finger, raising his head. “Put him through,” he said.
Her through. “Sir,” said Feldman's attenuated voice, “a courier's just landed with two men. They say they've got an oral message from Colonel Hammer, and they want me to alert you that they're coming. Over.”
“I'll open the front door,” Jolober said, lifting himself abruptly from the water, careful not to miskey the implant while his hands performed other tasks.
He wouldn't rouse the human staff. No need and if the message came by courier, it wasn't intended for other ears.
“Ah, sir,” Feldman added unexpectedly. “One of them insists on keeping his sidearms. Over.”
“Then he can insist on staying outside my perimeter!” Jolober s
narled. Vicki had laid a towel on the saddle before he mounted and was now using another to silently dry his body. “You can detach two guards to escort ‘em if they need their hands held, but nobody brings powerguns into Paradise Port.”
“Roger, I'll tell them,” Feldman agreed doubtfully. “Over and out.”
“I have a fresh uniform out,” said Vicki, stepping back so that Jolober could follow her into the bedroom, where the air was drier.
“That's three, today,” Jolober said, grinning. “Well, I've done a lot more than I've managed any three other days.
“Via,” he added more seriously. “It's more headway than I've made since they appointed me commandant.”
Vicki smiled, but her eyes were so tired mat Jolober's body trembled in response. His flesh remembered how much he had already been through today and yearned for the sleep to which the hot bath had disposed it.
Jolober lifted himself on his hands so that Vicki could raise and cinch his trousers. He could do it himself, but he was in a hurry, and … besides, just as she'd said, Vicki was a part of him in a real way.
“Cheer up, love,” he said as he closed his tunic. “It isn't done yet, but it's sure getting that way.”
“Good-bye, Horace,” the Doll said as she kissed him.
“Keep the bed warm,” Jolober called as he slid toward the door and the inner staircase. His head was tumbling with memories and images. For a change, they were all pleasant ones.
The port offices were easily identified at night because they weren't garishly illuminated like every other building in Paradise Port. Jolober had a small staff, and he didn't choose to waste it at desks. Outside of ordinary business hours, Central's artificial intelligence handled everything—by putting nonemergency requests on hold till morning, and by vectoring a uniformed patrol to the real business.
Anybody who insisted on personal service could get it by hammering at the Patrol entrance on the west side, opposite Jolober's private staircase. A patrolman would find the noisemaker a personal holding cell for the remainder of the night.
The front entrance was built like a vault door, not so much to prevent intrusion as to keep drunks from destroying the panel for reasons they'd be unable to remember sober. Jolober palmed the release for the separate bolting systems and had just begun to swing the door open in invitation when the two men in khaki uniforms, neither of them tall, strode up to the building.
“Blood and Martyrs!” Jolober said as he continued to back, not entirely because the door required it.
“You run a tight base here, Commandant,” said Colonel Alois Hammer as he stepped into the waiting room. “Do you know my aide, Major Steuben?”
“By reputation only,” said Jolober, nodding to Joachim Steuben with the formal correctness which that reputation enjoined. “Ah—with a little more information, I might have relaxed the prohibition on weapons.”
Steuben closed the door behind them, moving the heavy panel with a control which belied the boyish delicacy of his face and frame. “If the colonel's satisfied with his security,” Joachim said mildly, “then of course I am, too.”
The eyes above his smile would willingly have watched Jolober drawn and quartered.
“You've had some problems with troops of mine today,” said Hammer, seating himself on one of the chairs and rising again, almost as quickly as if he had continued to walk. His eyes touched Jolober and moved on in short hops that covered everything in the room like an animal checking a new environment.
“Only reported problems occurred,” said Jolober, keeping the promise he'd made earlier in the day. He lighted the hologram projection tank on the counter to let it warm up. “There was an incident a few hours ago, yes.”
The promise didn't matter to Tad Hoffritz, not after the shootings; but it mattered more than life to Horace Jolober that he keep the bargains he'd made.
“According to Captain van Zuyle's report,” Hammer said as his eyes flickered over furniture and recesses dim under the partial lighting, “you're of the opinion the boy was set up.”
“What you do with a gun,” said Joachim Steuben softly from the door against which he leaned, “is your own responsibility.”
“As Joachim says,” Hammer went on with a nod and no facial expression, “that doesn't affect how we'll deal with Captain Hoffritz when he's released from local custody. But it does affect how we act to prevent recurrences, doesn't it?”
“Load the file Ike One into the downstairs holo,” said Jolober to Central.
He looked at Hammer, paused till their eyes met. “Sure, he was set up, just like half a dozen others in the past three months—only they were money assessments, no real problem.
“And the data prove,” Jolober continued coolly, claiming what his data suggested but could not prove, “that it's going to get a lot worse than what happened tonight if Red Ike and his Dolls aren't shipped out fast.”
The holotank sprang to life in a three-dimensional cross-hatching of orange lines. As abruptly, the lines shrank into words and columns of figures. “Red Ike and his Dolls— they were all his openly, then—first show up on Sparrow-home a little over five years standard ago, according to Bonding Authority records. Then—”
Jolober pointed toward the figures. Colonel Hammer put his smaller, equally firm, hand over the commandant's and said, “Wait. Just give me your assessment.”
“Dolls have been imported as recreational support in seven conflicts,” said Jolober as calmly as if his mind had not just shifted gears. He'd been a good combat commander for the same reason, for dealing with the situation that occurred rather than the one he'd planned for. “There's been rear-echelon trouble each time, and the riot on Ketelby caused the Bonding Authority to order the disbandment of a battalion of Guardforce O'Higgins.”
“There was trouble over a woman,” said Steuben unemotionally, reeling out the data he gathered because he was Hammer's adjutant as well as his bodyguard. “A fight between a ranger and an artilleryman led to a riot in which half the nearest town was burned.”
“Not a woman,” corrected Jolober. “A Doll.”
He tapped the surface of the holotank. “It's all here, downloaded from Bonding Authority archives. You just have to see what's happening so you know the questions to ask.”
“You can get me a line to the capital?” Hammer asked as if he were discussing the weather. “I was in a hurry, and I didn't bring along my usual commo.”
Jolober lifted the visiplate folded into the surface of the counter beside the tank and rotated it toward Hammer.
“I've always preferred nonhumans for recreation areas,” Hammer said idly as his finger played over the plate's keypad. “Oh, the troops complain, but I've never seen that hurt combat efficiency. Whereas real women gave all sorts of problems.”
“And real men,” said Joachim Steuben, with a deadpan expression that could have meant anything.
The visiplate beeped. “Main Switch,” said a voice, tart but not sleepy. “Go ahead.”
“You have my authorization code,” Hammer said to the human operator on the other end of the connection. From Jolober's flat angle to the plate, he couldn't make out the operator's features—only that he sat in a brightly illuminated white cubicle. “Patch me through to the chairman of the Facilities Inspection Committee.”
“Senator Dieter?” said the operator, professionally able to keep the question short of being amazement.
“If he's the chairman,” Hammer said. The words had the angry undertone of a dynamite fuse burning.
“Yessir, she is,” replied the operator with studied neutrality. “One moment please.”
“I've been dealing with her chief aide,” said Jolober in a hasty whisper. “Guy named Higgey. His pager's loaded—”
“Got you a long ways, didn't it, Commandant?” Hammer said with a gun-turret click of his head toward Jolober.
“Your pardon, sir,” said Jolober, bracing reflexively to attention. He wasn't Hammer's subordinate, but they both served the same
ideal—getting the job done. The ball was in Hammer's court just now, and he'd ask for support if he thought he needed it.
From across the waiting room, Joachim Steuben smiled at Jolober. That one had the same ideal, perhaps; but his terms of reference were something else again.
“The senator isn't at any of her registered work stations,” the operator reported coolly.
“Son,” said Hammer, leaning toward the visiplate, “you have a unique opportunity to lose the war for Placida. All you have to do is not get me through to the chairman.”
“Yes, Colonel Hammer,” the operator replied with an aplomb that made it clear why he held the job he did. “I've processed your authorization, and I'm running ft through again on War Emergency Ord—”
The last syllable was clipped. The bright rectangle of screen dimmed gray. Jolober slid his chair in a short arc so that he could see the visiplate clearly past Hammer's shoulder.
“What is it?” demanded the woman in the dim light beyond. She was stocky, middle-aged, and rather attractive because of the force of personality she radiated even sleepless in a dressing gown.
“This is Colonel Alois Hammer,” Hammer said. “Are you recording?”
“On this circuit?” the senator replied with a frosty smile. “Of course I am. So are at least three other agencies, whether I will or no.”
Hammer blinked, startled to find himself on the wrong end of a silly question for a change.
“Senator,” he went on without the hectoring edge that had been present since his arrival. “A contractor engaged by your government to provide services at Paradise Port has been causing problems. One of the Legere's down, in critical, and I'm short a company commander over the same incident.”
“You've reported to the port commandant?” Senator Dieter said, her eyes unblinking as they passed over Jolober.
“The commandant reported to me because your staff stonewalled him,” Hammer said flatly while Jolober felt his skin grow cold, even the tips of the toes he no longer had. “I want the contractor, a nonhuman called Red Ike, offplanet in seventy-two hours with all his chattels. That specifically includes his Dolls. We'll work—”
