The Stones of Silence_Cochrane's Company_Book One

by Peter Grant

  In a house a couple of hundred meters up the hill from the restaurant, three men watched the display screens on their consoles, looking through the ‘eyes’ of the ‘insects’ in the dining-room. They were on tenterhooks in case something went wrong, and breathed sighs of relief as first one, then the second flitterbug reported that they were safely inside. Their signals traveled through the vent bricks to the listening ‘moths’ outside. They, in turn, relayed them to the ‘insects’ that were in line-of-sight to the treetops over the wall. They passed on the signal through the ‘dishes’ formed by their wings, to other ‘moths’ who relayed it through more of their kind up the hill. There were eleven links in the chain before it reached the house, each with multiple redundant elements in case a flitterbug should malfunction or be detected.

  “All right,” the leader said with a sigh. “We’re in. They’ve already swept the place, so they’ve no reason to do so again. If there’s any sign that they’re going to, shut down the flitterbugs at once so they don’t detect their microphones. They’ll stay down until they get a signal from the bugs outside.”

  One of his team objected, “But what if they draw the curtains? The bugs outside won’t be able to look inside, to show us when it’s safe to resume listening.”

  “Then we won’t resume listening. It’ll be too dangerous. If they get even the faintest idea people like us are on the planet, we may not leave here alive.”

  “And if they find a bug that’s shut down?”

  “By then we’ll have withdrawn all those in the chain leading here. We can dump everything where it’ll never be found, and go back to pretending to be businessmen. You can bet your boots they’ll search every visitor to the city, and maybe have the cops interrogate us too – they own the law here, after all. Still, if there’s no evidence to connect us to the bugs, we should be OK.”

  “I wish you’d said ‘will’ instead of ‘should’, boss,” the other team member commented.

  “Why would I lie to you like that? Have I ever?”

  “No – but now would be a comforting time to start!”

  A dozen couples and a few single men, most elderly, a few only middle-aged, came to the restaurant that night. They arrived in private vehicles, which were whisked away to a secure parking lot by men smartly dressed in black suits. Each new arrival brought one or two men with them, dressed similarly, with bulges at their hips or beneath their shoulders. Inside, their guards peeled off to a room set aside for them, offering the same excellent food that their employers would receive – but no alcoholic beverages. Guards needed to be sober on duty, no matter what.

  The new arrivals were ushered ceremoniously into the dining-room, and seated at six tables placed in a circle. A sumptuous five-course meal was served, waiters flitting back and forth between the kitchen and the diners, watched with unblinking eyes by the guards on duty. A different wine accompanied each course. Some of the ladies imbibed freely, but none of the men. They sipped abstemiously at their glasses.

  The meal over, and the chef congratulated (to his relief) on the excellence of his cooking, the couples adjourned to an adjacent lounge for coffee and liqueurs while the dining-room was cleared. A set of curved tables was brought in, forming a large circle when assembled. They were covered with tablecloths, and chairs were set around the circle, with coffee cups and glasses of water at each place. When all was ready, the men filtered back into the room, while their wives settled down to talk among themselves. The galaxy might have evolved toward equality of the sexes, but that did not apply here.

  When everyone was seated, the oldest man present rose to his feet. “I thank you all for coming here this night. We have sad news to hear, and options to consider. I declare this meeting of the Brotherhood open, and I call upon Agim Nushi to take the chair.”

  Hidden inside the valances, the two flitterbugs faithfully transmitted every word.

  A middle-aged man, thick-set and muscular stood as the older sat down. He began without preamble, “Brothers, Kostandin and his team reached Skraill. Their initial reports indicated that they had identified Frank Haldane. A local man, with whom we had contact some years ago, agreed to help them kidnap him for interrogation. Since that report, we have heard nothing from the team at all. Their next scheduled report is now sixty days overdue. I fear we must consider them lost.”

  A rustle of disquiet ran around the table, but he held up his hand for silence. “That is not all. We sent Vasil to Constanta to investigate several issues. In his first three reports, he told us that Eufala Corporation and Hawkwood Corporation are effectively one and the same. Eufala has a contract with the New Orkney Enterprise to provide security in the Mycenae system. We already knew that Eufala was probably responsible for the theft of the Callanish repair ship Colomb, used by the consortium there, and of two fast freighters ordered by that consortium from a shipyard in Goheung. All three ships were exchanged for others at Medusa, which are now in the possession of Eufala. The company has four patrol craft and a depot ship at Mycenae. We presume one of those patrol craft destroyed our ship some months ago.

  “Vasil informed us that a certain Captain Cochrane, from the New Orkney Cluster, is the driving force behind Eufala and Hawkwood. Of greater concern is that he appears to have found powerful allies. A Captain Lu of the Qianjin Fleet visited him at Constanta some months ago, and spent time aboard his ships in orbit. We checked her name against Qianjin’s published Fleet Register. She is listed as a senior officer in their Intelligence Department.”

  “Qianjin?” one of his audience exploded. “But that –”

  “Yes, Skender. We all know who is based on Qianjin. Nominally, the planet’s military forces are distinct from the Dragon Tong, but in practice, we cannot be sure how distinct they truly are. Captain Lu was not there by accident. We know Cochrane captured some of our robotic prospectors, and Vasil reported that he took at least one prisoner from our missing ship.” Another rustle of dismay ran around the table. “If there was one, there may have been more. Cochrane was probably able to give Lu information that the Dragon Tong would value. We must presume they reciprocated by telling him at least some of what they know about us.”

  “How do we know he took a prisoner?” another demanded angrily.

  “Because of this.” The speaker pulled a printed picture from his pocket and passed it down the table to the questioner. “Please pass it around. That is a picture of a terminal displaying an official death report for a patient at a Constanta long-term care facility. Vasil had been able to persuade a nurse to provide a picture of him. He reported that it was, unmistakably, Pavli Selimaj, the First Mate of our missing ship Puka. As you see, he was not listed under that name on the facility’s list of occupants. He was reported to be in a vegetative state, very similar to that caused by our interrogation drugs. Vasil was going to try to give him the final mercy, assisted by Besnik and Gentius. It appears that they failed, and were captured or killed.”

  “How do we know that?”

  “Because Vasil took with him a fourth team member, a young woman who was still under training. All four were staying at separate hotels, of course, for greater security. Shpresa waited in a nearby street to serve as a relay point for communications. She heard shots from around the nursing home, but was not close enough to see what happened. When Vasil failed to make contact, she checked his hotel. His room had been let to someone else. The same had occurred with Besnik and Gentius. She was intelligent enough to search for recent deaths at the long-term care facility, and found that record. She then left Constanta and made her way back here. That means either none of the three was taken alive, or, if they were, Eufala’s interrogators did not suspect that there was a fourth member. If they had asked about her, they would have identified her, and made sure she did not escape. She was extremely fortunate.”

  “She was,” another man said. “We owe her much for bringing us this information. Without it, we might have been left in the dark for several months yet – months in which
our enemies might damage us even more than they have already. May I suggest that she be commended?”

  “Thank you for suggesting that, Perparim. I have already seen to it. We shall need more like her, now that two of our best teams have been eliminated.” He looked around the table. “I fear that is not the worst news I have for you tonight, brothers. Some months ago – the news has only just reached us – it seems that a delegation from Qianjin approached the leadership of our parent family, asking about our activities in several asteroid belts.” There was a hiss of indrawn air. “Yes, brothers; they went to those who disdained us. The Bregija clan told the delegation enough to identify some of us, and stated that we were acting on our own, without their approval and outside their aegis. I therefore presume Qianjin will feel free to act against us, if they think it necessary, because they will assume that our parent family will not help us.”

  There was a stunned silence in the room.

  “Will they help us, if it comes to that?” an older man asked at last.

  The speaker shrugged. “I think there will be voices raised in our support. Blood calls to blood, after all. Whether there will be enough voices to bring the whole clan in on our side, I cannot say.”

  “We should not count on it.” The speaker was the old man who’d opened proceedings. His hands and arms trembled as he pushed himself erect. “I request the floor, Agim.”

  The younger man bowed. “The floor is yours, Patriarch.” He sat down.

  The old man looked around at his colleagues. Every eye was fixed on him in rapt attention. He began, “When I conceived the Fatherland Project, forty years ago, I pointed out that all three of the great criminal enterprises in the galaxy – the Dragon Tong, the Nuevo Cartel, and the Cosa Nostra – had their own planetary bases. These provided them with security and an extradition-proof sanctuary, from which they could plan, launch and guide their enterprises. All of them also have allied governments and planets, which offer them bases from which to operate in different regions. All have achieved greatness by taking great care to ensure that these foundations of their interplanetary operations are always secure.

  “I told the Bregija clan that we needed to do the same; that unless and until we did, we could not hope to be as prosperous and respected – yes, and as feared – as the Three. I pointed out that our forefathers had grown to be giants on Earth, operating in almost every nation on the planet. I said how disappointed they would be that we, their descendants, had failed to live up to their example; but they would not listen. They laughed at me. They laughed!” His voice trembled with fury. “They said I was a hopeless romantic, longing for greatness that had long since passed us by.”

  He breathed heavily for a moment. “That was when I led some of you, and some who are no longer with us, to break away. We dedicated our lives and our fortunes to the Fatherland Project. We determined that we would make a home for ourselves where we could be secure, in control of our own destinies, and defy the rest of the galaxy if need be. From that base, we would expand our interests and our influence until we, too, achieved greatness, and honored our forefathers with our success.

  “We have worked hard, these past forty years. It took many years of scrimping and saving to build our war chest, to learn the ways of asteroid prospecting, to develop the technology that is built into our robots, and to learn how best to deploy them and gather their harvest. We had to seek out the most productive fields, and sneak past the defenses of those who guard them, to steal away with the best they had to offer. Building our own refinery ship and learning how to operate it were very great challenges, and very expensive. It is only in the past few years that all these strands have come together at last, and we have begun to achieve success.

  “Now our success is threatened. We need much more money than we have already raised, if our Fatherland is to become a reality. You all know the need, and how we plan to meet it – but if our enemies unite against us, that may become impossible. Even if it does not, it may be so long delayed that it will not happen in our lifetimes.”

  He drew himself up. “I know I do not have long left to live, but I have dared to hope that you, my sons in flesh and spirit, will take the reins from my hands and drive the Fatherland Project onward to fulfilment. Now, I see fear in you. I see hesitation. I see doubts. To your fear, to your hesitation, to your doubts, I say simply this: remember our forefathers! They rose to greatness on Earth. They were feared by nations around the globe. They were respected by other criminals. They are all looking down at us now, and they command us: Do not take counsel of your fears! Remember us, and all we achieved! Do thou likewise!”

  His audience applauded, their faces flushed with renewed enthusiasm. The old man looked around, nodding. The spirit was still there. It had merely burned down to embers for a while, needing only to be fanned into flame again and given new fuel – fuel that would burn hot enough to warm their hearts with pride, and sear their enemies’ hearts with terror.

  He held up his hand, waited for silence, then said softly, “That is why I gathered you. That is why I led you for so many years. That is why I selected Agim to take over when I grew too old. He now directs all our efforts toward our goal.” He looked toward his chosen successor. “Agim, do not dishonor my life, or my death, by wavering. Redouble your efforts! Do not let your enemies strike fear into you. Instead, strike fear into them! Hit back at them! Show them that for every blow they direct against us, we shall return it ten times harder!”

  Agim sprang to his feet. “Patriarch, again you inspire us with your example! Again, you show us the way with your wise counsel. Where do you suggest we strike?”

  “Where they have hurt us most – in the Mycenae system. We have lost a ship there, and its crew; so, in answer, destroy all their ships, and all their crews! Make them pay so high a price for daring to challenge us that they will never dare do so again!”

  Agim nodded slowly, looking around the table. “Brothers, only a few of you have seen our forces, and our refinery ship that they protect. That is because we base them at a deserted star with no inhabitable planets, to keep them secret. Nevertheless, those of you who have visited them know we have come far.” Four heads nodded around the table. “Among other ships, we now have a division of four destroyers, all older vessels modernized with new systems and weapons. Even one of them has more missiles than all Eufala’s patrol craft put together! Two of them should be more than enough to wipe out their flotilla to the last vessel and the last man. What say you, brothers?”

  Every man around the table raised his hand in assent.

  “Very well. We shall send word to our forces. It will probably take them a month to six weeks to prepare; then, we strike! I shall go with them.”

  The old man raised his voice. “Agim, you are brave. It is one of the reasons I selected you to succeed me. Even so, I counsel against your going. You are our leader now. You must manage all our activities, not just one. Your absence for so long may cause disruption. If one of us should be there to represent the Brotherhood, let another be selected for that task.”

  Agim hesitated, then nodded slowly. “I yield to your wisdom, Patriarch.” He looked around the table. “Does any other Brother wish to represent us, and lead our forces into combat with our enemies?”

  “Let me go,” the old man said. An instant chorus of opposition burst out, but he held up his hand. “I am old, and I am dying. Give me one last chance to strike a blow for our cause!”

  “But what if your health fails you, Patriarch? It is a long journey.”

  A shrug. “I will die soon, no matter what happens. I would rather die as a man, fighting for our Fatherland, than in bed, surrounded by the wailing of women!”

  Agim bowed his head. “So be it, Patriarch. We could not ask for a finer representative.”

  In the house on the hill, the three men watched and listened with growing concern. One glanced at their leader. “We’ve got to get word back to Qianjin right away! What if Captain Lu is visiting Mycen
ae again when they attack? She might be killed!”

  “We can’t. From this backwater planet, we need at least two or three connecting spacecraft to reach Qianjin. That’ll take five or six weeks. By then, these bastards will be ready to hit Mycenae. We can’t warn them in time.”

  “So, what are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to record the rest of this meeting, then pack up everything and get out of here. I’ll have lunch at that restaurant tomorrow, and find a way to pick up those flitterbugs from the valances. That’ll make sure no-one finds them, and wonders how long they’ve been there and how much they heard. We’ll keep things low-key, as if we’re the businessmen we claim to be. We won’t do anything that might arouse suspicion. In two days’ time, you’ll catch the weekly ferry to Capida, from where you can get scheduled service to bigger planets en route to Qianjin. The most important thing is to get this recording back to base. Even if the Captain doesn’t make it, the Admiral will want to know who killed her, so we can hit back.”

  “And what are you and David going to do?”

  “We’re going to go into business here, just like our cover story suggests. We’ll keep an eye on things. Tell the Admiral where to find our dead drop. If anything happens to us, his people will know where to look for our reports up to that time. Tell him we’ll need a lot more people and resources to watch these people properly – probably a complete second team, to operate independently of us. This is turning into a bigger job than anyone figured.”

  “It sure is! Have you ever heard about this ‘Fatherland Project’? It’s new to me.”

  “Me too. I reckon we’ll have to put it at the top of our list of things to investigate.”