by A. D. Bloom
That's where he met Pooch...inside the dome, after the airshow and the part where they shook hands with people. Burn talked a lot about 'duty' and even 'opportunity'. Maybe Pooch was there for that part and he just didn't remember seeing her until later. Her name wasn't Pooch then. He said, "You came up to talk to me and Burn right before we left."
"That's right."
She didn't look much like the same girl. "You had hair then – lots of it. And you lost weight." He didn't want to say that her eyes had looked altogether different. He didn't want to tell her that the first time they'd met, her eyes showed some kind of light, some kind of goodness that that he couldn't help but hate her for. It was partly because a woman who shone like that wouldn't ever come near a convict like him and it was partly because despite being an asshole to her, she was still buying what he and Burn were selling.
"I asked Jordo," she said, "I walked up and asked J. 'Jordo' Colt, hotshot fighter pilot, if he thought I could do what he did – if I could fly an F-151 Bitzer. And you told me I could."
Jordo said, "And then you asked me what I would do. I remember that part. You asked me what I would do if I were you."
"And you looked around at my dried-up, little dust bowl of a dome town and you said, 'It's dangerous out there, but here, you're just dying slow'. That's what you said." Pooch was one of the ones that signed up with Burn before they left Tranq 5 that night – one of the first fifty. "I signed up and look what it got me, Jordo. You didn't tell me the real deal. You didn't tell me how many would die. You didn't tell me how I would wake up screaming five times a night or how when I did sleep, my dreams would be haunted and filled with the faces of my lost pilots. You didn't tell me about the pulse-pinch that kills your brain slow and the... the... the rage... the fucking rage – goddammit, it's always there. It's like a hunger you can't feed. No matter what, it gnaws..."
"Burn told you the F-151's pulse-pinch would mess you up; you didn't care," Jordo said. "Now you're a brain-shake zoomie. You got drain bamage just like me." In that moment when he made a joke and she laughed, the hate was almost gone from her eyes. It would come back quick, but in that moment of undeniable commonality, it was gone because neither of them was alone in their hell.
It looked as if that was too much for Pooch to bear. She swelled up in the eyes, but then quickly stuffed it all back down before it got out of control. She swallowed and stared pure hatred at Jordo. "Two-hundred and twenty-three dead pilots," she said. " Two-hundred and twenty-three," as if the Hellcats' casualties were his fault somehow. "We graduated from that flight school and left for the Sirius Line with three-hundred pilots. Only seventy-seven came back."
"75% casualties," Jordo said.
"You and Burn...you never said anything about that."
It wasn't his bloody fault she signed up. He tried to string the words together to tell her that, but he couldn't and then, the anger in him suddenly rose out of the marrow of his bones and grew until, in only a few heartbeats, it coursed through his veins, burning under his skin. Through the static fuzzing his brain, he could still note how none of this sudden anger made logical sense. He knew it was the hyper-aggression. It was a symptom of his own battered and shaken brain and what the F-151's inertial negation system had done to it. But knowing that didn't help. Not when he still remembered what she'd said to him in Hardway's brig and how much it had stung.
"75% casualties. Yeah," he said. "That's almost how bad the Lancers bled. You want some sympathy, Pooch...you need a shoulder to cry on? Talk to me when the Hellcats hit 88% casualties. Won't be long now, I bet. Not with a squadron leader like you it won't."
He was glad she couldn't reach him through the bars because she lost control after that.
Chapter Eight
Hardway, Taipan, the four, thin-skinned carriers, and the breaching ships all hung a low, dayside orbit around the now familiar ice moon of the Groomsbridge system's innermost gas giant, hiding in the glare while the fighters patrolled.
Ram Devlin was on his way to Taipan to negotiate the imprisoned pilots' release and he needed to go alone. As the Air Group Commander and ship's union rep, Asa Biko had insisted on going, but he didn't understand the true nature of the situation and Ram couldn't risk explaining it to him on the bridge.
Biko went on as if he thought Ram was flying over to Taipan to function as some kind of legal defense for the two pilots Matilda Witt had seized. He didn't know this had nothing to do with discipline or orders, regulations or contracts. It was all about leverage. Ram wasn't on his way to Taipan to represent anyone in any kind of drum-head trial. He was flying there to make a deal.
"You fly the longboat," Cozen told Biko. "But Mr. Devlin goes to Matilda alone. She responds better to one-on-one negotiation." He turned to Ram. "And you, Mr. Devlin. I presume there's no need to remind you of whom you're dealing with. In any negotiation with Matilda Witt, you will almost certainly lose."
"Is that the best advice you've got for me?"
"My best advice is to decide exactly how much you're willing to lose right now and stick to it."
Biko flew the longboat out over the first of the four box carriers lined-up between Hardway and Taipan. As they looked down at all the Bitzers packed into its open bays, he asked Ram what the hell Cozen had meant by his last comment.
"He meant Witt's going to let the pilots go," Ram said, "but she'll have a price."
"A price? What the hell do we have that she wants? She's already more powerful than Harry Cozen."
"You can never have enough power," Ram said. Those words came out more naturally than he thought they would, and in the reflection off the canopy, Ram saw Biko glance at him and narrow his eyes a millimeter as if he wasn't sure whether or not what Ram had said had been the result of his imagining what went on Matilda Witt's mind or if he'd been speaking for himself.
Taipan's bay doors opened to let them in and then closed behind the longboat so quickly that they nearly caught the stern. Ram stood up in Taipan's lead-blanket gravity and unstrapped the holstered Honma & Voss. He handed the x-ray laser to Biko. "I have a feeling they're not letting me on-board with a sidearm today."
The Staas Guards waited on the other side of the airlock – four of them this time. One of them was the squad leader that Ram had trapped in Hardway's airlock. He grinned at Ram and said, "She's waiting for you."
They showed him into Witt's office near the bridge. And then, she made him wait.
Twenty minutes later, the hatch opened behind him and when Witt saw him at the porthole, looking out at the box carriers and Hardway, she said, "There are a dozen masterpieces in this compartment, Mr. Devlin. Why are you staring out there?"
"Your collection is in here, Ms. Witt, but out there is what you don't have yet. Out there is what you want."
She closed the hatch behind her and spun the wheel before turning and straightening her business suit with a smile. "Drink, Mr. Devlin?" He hesitated. "Worried the Squidies might surprise us and you'll need to be sober?" She said it like it was a dreary detail. "We've got loads of clearzine ampules." They had plenty of the anti-inebriate on Hardway, too, and it would have your head clear fast, but Ram hated the way it gave you a full-on hangover for the 15 seconds it took to work its magic. "You look like you could use a drink," she said.
"Yes."
"Very good." She nodded at her crystal and mirror bar. "If you don't mind."
As Ram went to the bar and chipped at the block of ice with a pick and short, murderous stabs, Matilda Witt stood at the edge of his vision and watched him. "What I don't understand, Mr. Devlin, is why you look so morose. You come to me looking like a man on his way to an execution."
Immediately after he poured Witt's drink, the surface went nearly opaque with tiny waves – vibrations from the counter-surveillance gear that Matilda Witt had just switched-on. He handed the drink to her, and she said, "Don't look so sad; this is what you wanted."
Ram visibly balked as he poured his own drink. "You can't possibly believe
I want to see my pilots exec-"
"No," she said. "Of course not. You want to make a deal. You're here for negotiations... negotiations for what you really want, Mr. Devlin."
"What do I want?"
"Justice." She spoke the word with a mannered gravitas that bordered on mockery. "Ram Devlin wants justice," she said.
"I don't understand," he lied.
"You want Harry Cozen to pay for the deaths he's directly caused and you know he's too big for a little person like you to threaten. You know only one of his peers can bring him down – a big person like me."
"You're a big person... and I'm..."
"You're little people, Mr. Devlin. And I'm big people. Harry is big people, too. If you prefer a more classical view, then think of mortals and Olympian gods. A mortal doesn't simply attack a god. He needs another god to help him do anything like that and even if he succeeds, do you know how rare it is that gods actually die? You'll never get the justice you want without me behind you," she said. "But I'm a kind Olympian. I'm making it easy for you. Because I know that for a good man like yourself, betrayal is never easy. Even betraying a man like Harry is a very difficult thing. But... For you, I have removed much of the pain from the equation. You can tell yourself that you gave Harry Cozen up not only to see justice done for the miners he killed aboard the junk Mohegan, but to save two pilots' lives – lives that I know you rightly consider your responsibility. So... Please, Mr. Devlin, I urge you to save your pilot. And mine. Make no mistake, I will have both of them shot if you don't give me what I want."
"How, exactly did you convince the Board of Directors to give you Cozen's flight school and his squadrons?"
"Blackmail," she admitted. "And a good presentation. That always helps."
Decide exactly how much you're willing to lose before you go in. That's what Harry Cozen had told him. And Ram already had. He spent a few seconds looking into the stone eyes of the 2-meter-tall, Olmec head before he nodded at Witt and then sat on the couch next to her.
She suddenly stood up. "What happened on Moriah? You were there the first day – the very first engagement of the war. On the asteroid Moriah. With Harry."
"That's right."
"You crashed on an uncharted Jupiter Trojan after you found an alien vessel there. How did Cozen know about that rock? How did he know he'd find an alien ship there? Just lucky?"
Ram said, "The Squidies used an unknown, soft-kill weapon on one of our junks... Mohegan. We assumed Cozen extrapolated her most probable return course from her flight data like we did and went to investigate."
She said, "No. He knew to look for the Squidies there. I'll tell you how. He was in contact with them. You and Harry Cozen killed alien diplomats sent to Moriah to meet him and negotiate a treaty. It was Harry Cozen's murderous sabotage and not the Squidies that killed the ten miners aboard the junk Mohegan. But you know that. That's why you're here."
"Can you prove any of that?" Ram couldn't.
Matilda Witt looked down at him and half-chuckled and shook her head. "Oh, my dear Mr. Devlin... Ram. Sometimes you're so... adorably naïve. Men like Cozen do not leave proof behind." She smiled in the most patronizing manner. "But the lack of it won't stand in the way. Harry Cozen has plenty of enemies – more than you can imagine – more perhaps than any man on earth. He's a Staas Company Vice President and we'll deal with him ourselves."
"Deal with him how?"
"The Board of Directors will take control of all his operations, privateer and otherwise and redistribute them. They'll take Hardway from him, for example, and give it to me. I'll give Hardway to you, of course. There will be no trial or public disgrace for Harry. He'll simply die of boredom on Earth for a few months and then, have an accident."
Ram had practiced hiding the involuntary muscle responses across the face and body that can transmit emotion to an experienced observer. He decided he wasn't as good at being inscrutable as he thought. Or maybe Witt was just too good at reading him.
"Why do you look pale? Did you think there would be a trial that embarrasses everyone? This is what you wanted, isn't it? Justice?"
Matilda Witt didn't care about justice and Ram knew it. Neither did the rest of Cozen's enemies at Staas. Like Witt, they were all angling to get a piece of the military contracting wing that Cozen had built for Staas Company, currently, the most important business on Earth.
"What do you say, Ram? Justice for Harry Cozen?"
"Justice isn't your motive, Ms. Witt. To be blunt, you're only in it for the money. Or the power."
She smiled in the most completely relaxed manner as if there was no longer any need to pretend. "Both," she said. "But you, Mr. Devlin, should think of me as a means to an end, a means to achieve justice and maybe, just maybe achieve peace."
"Excuse me?"
"You heard the word. I can't tell you any more than that, but lines of communication have been opened. The enemy is not what the world thinks they are... Peace between us and the Squidies is actually possible. That should be good news to a man who helped start a war."
Ram didn't even know that anyone could communicate with the Squidies. "What do you mean 'lines of communication have been opened'?"
"Negotiations," she said.
"Peace negotiations?" Ram's shock was genuine. "Who knows about this?"
"The negotiations are informal, of course, but... Well, I believe that this war, like most wars on Earth, is an extended negotiation determining the post-war landscape. The Squidies believe that, too. They believe it to the degree that they're willing to talk about peace even as they meet us in battle. The chance for peace exists. But like us, they have demands, Mr. Devlin. One of them is Harry Cozen." She said it with a smile. "The Squidies positively hate Harry. But... Staas Company's Board of Directors feel differently. They'll never give him up unless they have to. Unless, for instance, if I have a recording of Harry's confession about how he started this war. If they heard that, then they might be willing to give the Squidies what they want and we could have peace. As I said, peace is possible. Justice, too."
Ram held his face as still as the Olmec stone head in the corner and wondered what else the aliens would want. Then, he nodded very slowly. "Good," she said. "You're saving many lives, Ram. And Hardway's crew will be far safer under your command than it was under Harry's."
Now was a good time to ask. "Please send J. Jordo Colt to my longboat. And the other pilot, the Hellcat squadron leader...Lt. Hannah...Pooch. You don't need them. I do."
Witt stared into his eyes for half-a-second, obviously evaluating whether or not he could be trusted. "I should keep them," she said, "to make sure you honor our deal."
"About Harry Cozen," he said. "Exactly what do you want me to do?"
"I want you to bring him a present for me," she said. "And then, I want you to reminisce about old times."
"You want me to plant a surveillance device and get him to talk about what happened on the first day of the war?"
"And relevant events preceding that day."
It was Ram's turn to laugh. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to trivialize this. It's just that it seems... beneath you. Both of you, actually."
"You're quite right. Planting surveillance devices is beneath me. That's what little people are for." She smiled with closed lips. "Voice recording may seem antiquated, but quantum-linked audio-gravure is one of the few recording mediums that simply cannot be faked. It would show immediately on analysis due to the properties of the medium."
"Harry Cozen won't want to talk about Moriah."
"He will," she insisted. "When you report to him like a loyal first officer and tell him all my suspicions, then I'm quite sure he'll talk about it."
*****
Matilda Witt's Staas Guards carried the Brancusi sculpture to the longboat. When the 239-year-old, bronze sculpture wasn't levitating over its pedestal, it weighed over 50 kilos in Taipan's .5 gees. Once the longboat left the command ship's gilded launch bay and its gravity, the sculpture weighed nothing at al
l. When it drifted off the deck, Ram let the almost two-meter-long, swooping metal curve float in midair behind the pilots' seats because it just looked right flying like that.
Biko said, "The bloody sculpture? That's what she gave you?"
"'Bird in Space' by Constantin Brancusi, 1926. Bronze. She said it's a present for Cozen."
"Balls to that. What about Jordo and Pooch?"
"I think she just wants to keep them locked up for a day."
"We need those pilots to fly," Biko said. "Soon."
Biko turned around in his seat five times to look at the Brancusi on the ride back to Hardway. Ram asked him if he liked it.
"Uh-huh."
"Good. You can help me carry it up to Harry Cozen's office after you land us in Bay One."
"Gotta get him to promote me to full Commander so you can't pull that bunk anymore."
"I'd still have seniority."
The breaching ship, Tipperary, had already flown to the front of the battlegroup. It also now looked as if Witt's box carriers were only landing fighters and not launching any. "We're on the move," Biko concluded. "A surprise trip down the Groomsbridge-Castor Transit. That's what I'm betting."
Ram nodded.
"Incoming longboat, this is Hardway." It was Dana. "Cozen wants to know if you have them."
"Negative, Hardway."
"Well, get in the barn. We're moving out. Taipan sent orders and Tipperary is already warming up to breach space."
"Copy that." Biko rotated the jets at the ends of the longboat's stub-wings, and with a single hard blast that pointed the nose up, he arrested the longboat right over Bay One. He dropped into the bay before Ram could get to the Brancusi. When they crossed the threshold into Hardway's .3 gees of artificial gravity, the 1.7-meter sculpture fell to the deck like a bronze tree limb.
It was slippery. The shape of it was just hard to grip. On the trip to Cozen's office, it began to slide out of his grasp every time he thought he had a good hold on it. Several crewmen offered to help him and Biko carry it, but he declined. He had no idea what Matilda Witt had done to the sculpture to turn it into a piece of surveillance gear. The less people that handled it the better.
