by Chris Bunch
"And if they are ogling m' boobs, that's fine, too. They'll never notice…"
And her hand moved under the tray slung around her neck, came out with a smallish, large-barreled projectile weapon.
"… this. Guaranteed I can put two of these slugs .between somebody's eyes at fifteen meters. For less lethal response…"
Again, her hand went under the tray, came out with a squat cylinder.
"… blindspray. Give you convulsions for half an hour, vomiting for an hour, can't see squat for two hours."
"That's if somebody tries to get friendly?"
"Other than you," Maev said. "Or somebody really, really rich." She took off her tray.
"Now, I need a drink. This security operation is sweaty work."
"Already made for you, m'love," Njangu said. "Over on the sideboard."
It wasn't financially convenient, but Njangu had kept the lease on the apartment across the bay from Camp Mahan, on the outskirts of D-Cumbre's capital of Leggett, as a convenient way of getting away from uniforms when the military made him want to howl at the moons.
"Pity about poor Jasith," Maev said.
"What? I haven't heard squat."
Maev told him about the near revolt by the officers of Mellusin Mining.
"So she's out, sulking like a fiend."
"Uh-oh," Njangu said inadvertently, thinking of Darod Montagna.
"What?"
"Nothing," Njangu said hastily.
"You're holding back."
"I surely am."
"How terribly interesting," Darod Montagna said. "Poor Miss Mellusin, forced to stay home and count all her money and not go play with us."
"Dammit," Monique Lir told her XO, "I hope you're going to be a good girl."
"I'm going to be a very good girl," Darod said in her most sultry voice. "I'm going to be the best girl that man's ever seen."
"Uh-oh," Lir said.
Finally Stage One—planning; Stage Two—logistics and personnel; and Stage Three, operations, were finished. There were almost 150 men and women picked, all volunteers, including a few civilians who'd managed to penetrate the fairly tight security screen Dant Angara had imposed after all.
They filed into Big Bertha and found their assigned compartments. The old soldiers made old jokes that hadn't been that funny the first time around, the new women and men wondered why they had tight lumps in their guts instead of pride.
Garvin Jaansma kissed Jasith Mellusin.
"You better come back," she said fiercely, then looked away.
"I'll go with what she said," Angara said. "But with an addition. Bring me back something, Garvin." There was a flash of desperation in his eyes. "Dammit, we can't keep on as we have, not knowing anything!"
"I'll come back," Garvin promised. "With the hot skinny, boss."
He saluted Angara, kissed Jasith again, and went up Big Bertha's ramp. It slid shut, and a speaker blat-ted: "All personnel. All personnel on ramps. Clear ramps for takeoff. Clear ramps for takeoff. Three minute warning. Clear ramps."
"Come on," Angara said, taking Jasith's arm.
She followed him back into the terminal, went to a window.
The ground trembled, and Big Bertha's antigravs lifted her clear of the ground. Her secondary drive cut in, and the behemoth crawled upward, became graceful, and vanished into the stratosphere and space.
Jasith stood there, watching emptiness for a long time.
Chapter 4
N-Space
Njangu and Garvin had given themselves more tactical options than just hiding in plain sight if—or, more realistically, when—problems developed.
"I am getting very damned tired of being ambushed every time we come out of hyperspace," Yoshitaro had said, looking pointedly at the three aksai pilots. "Which is why I'm going to use your young asses as bait… or anyway, some kind of warning system. I just hope you won't slow down and get dead bringing us the word."
The aksai was the prime fighting ship of the Musth during the war with Cumbre. Now, with peace looming on all sides and trade flourishing with Man, the aksai were being built for the Force, somewhat modified for human pilotage. It was a flying wing, C-shaped, about twenty-five meters from horn to horn, with one, two, or three fighting compartments, capsules, mounted on the concave forward edge of the wing, weapons either encapsulated or just hung below the wing. It was impossibly fast and, as Ben Dill said, "harder to fly than a whore on roller skates."
Jacqueline Boursier, the self-described "shit-hot pilot," tried to put together a fund to hire an athletic prostitute, buy some old-fashioned roller skates, and lock Ben Dill in a gymnasium with her to see what happened. She had no takers.
In-atmosphere, the aksai would stall handily and snaproll into the ground if flying speed wasn't kept up, and transitioning between the standard antigravity lift system to secondary and then stardrives took a most delicate touch.
Out-atmosphere, its instant acceleration and speed were as likely to stuff its pilot into something unpleasantly solid as punt her to the fringes of the system before reaction time could take over.
But those who could fly the ships invariably fell in love with them. They were possibly the most acrobatic craft ever built, with the possible exception of Dawn-age propeller ships.
The procedure Garvin and Njangu had come up with to keep from being mousetrapped was complicat-edly simple: Big Bertha would set a hyperspace jump to the desired navigational point. However, the navigational instruments were set with a pause feature, rather than the usual, automatic reemergence into N-Space.
Hanging in something beyond nothingness, the mother ship would launch an aksai. The aksai would enter real space and make a preliminary recon for bad guys, surprises, or flower-tossing maidens. It would pass the word back to Big Bertha, which could take appropriate measures.
If the system was hostile, the ship would wait as long as she could for the aksai to rejoin her. If the mother ship had to flee, the aksai was to make a hyperspace jump, to a predetermined nav point, and Mayday in all directions, hoping for rescue before the air ran out.
But this was an option none of the three aksai pilots believed would ever happen.
After all, they were all shit-hot, not just Boursier…
The inship annunciator burped sedately. The synth-voice Garvin hadn't gotten around to replacing, which, unfortunately, 'cast into all compartments, announced
"Aksai section… aksai section… ready pilot, report to the bridge."
The man, woman, and alien cut for high card, and Alikhan obeyed the summons, round ears cocked in excitement.
The bridge of Big Bertha was as unusual as the rest of the bulbous starship: a self-contained pod at the "top" of the cargo/passenger spaces, with the forward edge, monitors looking like ports, protruding from the hull a bit. Flanking the large bridge area were communication and navigation compartments and, at the rear of the pod, a secondary command center with observation ports looking "down" into the hull's huge cargo spaces.
It would make, Garvin thought, a dandy place for a circus master to crack the whip from. Or possibly, if they kicked out a few of the windows, some sort of high-wire or other flier act.
Alikhan got his briefing, and went along a sealed catwalk through an airlock to the "top" of the ship, where three of the state-of-the-ten-year-old-art Nana boats and the four aksai hung, like so many bats in a huge barn.
He wedged himself rear legs first into the aksai's pod on his belly, then closed the clear canopy. He turned power on, checked controls, touched sensors, read the displays on his canopy as the main and secondary drives came alive, then announced he was ready to launch.
"This is Command," Garvin told him. "Your coordinates and flight pattern have been fed into your computer. Launch at will."
A hatch above him slid back, and a steel arm lifted the aksai clear of Big Bertha. Alikhan watched readouts blink on his canopy, trying to convince himself that the blur of N-Space around him wasn't vaguely nauseating, certainly not for
a combat-experienced Musth.
Gravity spun, vanished, and he was beyond the ship's grav field. Alikhan considered what Garvin had told him about the system he was to enter—three worlds, settled over two hundred E-years ago, no data on government, military, peacefulness. It'd been chosen for the first system to enter because it was distant from the nav points "close" to Larix and Kura, and hence, Garvin assumed, hadn't been slandered by Re-druth, and, hopefully, wouldn't be that hostile to an intruder.
Alikhan touched a sensor, and the aksai dropped out of hyperspace, the swirl around him becoming stars and not-too-distant planets. He went at full drive toward the second- planet, reportedly the first colonized, searching all common bands for 'casts.
Within an E-hour, he sent a com back into hyperspace to Big Bertha: no hostiles. Safe to enter. Request assistance, nonemergency.
The big ship obeyed, and the two patrol craft, Chaka in command of the flight, were launched, shot toward the homing signal on Alikhan's aksai. Behind them came Big Bertha.
Dill was riding shotgun on one of the patrol ships.
"What's the problem, little friend?" he asked on a standard voice channel as the two ships closed.
"Your data, to use a phrase of yours, sucketh goats, whatever a goat is."
A louder signal boomed from Big Bertha: "Scout One, this is Command. Give details. Over." Garvin didn't sound thrilled at the relaxed com procedure.
"Command, Scout One," Alikhan 'cast. "Details are: There is nothing here, and it appears there never was. No cities, no buildings, no humans. Over."
And so it was. None of the three planets that were supposedly colonized, all within the habitability range, showed any sign of settlement or abandonment.
"This makes no goddamned sense," Njangu snarled. "Howinhell could the Confederation punt some people out with their little shovels and picks and tents…
I assume they did that, unless this whole goddamned scheme was some bureaucrat's fiddle to steal something large… and then not check on them, not follow up, not send the occasional goddamned checkup team… for two hundred goddamned years?"
Garvin shook his head.
"It makes me goddamned wonder," Njangu raved on, "just how much of our goddamned Empire was a goddamned phony. Maybe the whole goddamned thing was some kind of a shadow play."
"That makes little sense," Danfin Froude said mildly.
"Then give me some explanation that does. God-damit!"
Froude held his palms up, helplessly.
" 'Kay," Garvin decided. "Forget it. We'll pull the recon elements back and try again.
"I don't like this," he finished. "I don't like things that don't have explanations."
Froude looked at him.
"In another life, you could have been a scientist."
"The hell," Garvin said. "In another life, I'm going to be a frigging boulder on a beach somewhere, with nothing to do but watch pretty naked women and slowly turn into sand.
"Get ready for another jump."
Garvin had made one major break with naval tradition. The Big Bertha had a club, but it was for all ranks, not just officers. Njangu had agreed with this, since both of them found a noncommissioned officers' club far livelier than anything for upper ranks.
As to the old military policy that these restrictions gave rankers a place to relax and discuss their problems without being around the enlisted sorts, Garvin's answer was short and sweet: "Let those who want to play footsie or whine do it in their own compartments."
He'd found a corner with a beer, and was still wondering about that colony that evidently never had been, when he saw Darod Montagna, mug in hand.
"Greetings, boss," she said. "Are you in deep thought, or can I join you?"
"Grab a chair," Garvin said. "Njangu should be here in a mo, so obviously it's not deep."
She sat, sipped at her beer.
"Thanks for letting me go on this little detail."
"So far, no thanks… or blame… needed," he said.
They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes. Garvin realized he didn't feel any particular need to be entertaining or even companionable, somewhat like the peacefulness he felt around Njangu.
He saw his XO enter the rather crowded compartment, make his way toward them.
"I guess I better scoot," Darod said. "Deep, dark secrets and all that."
She got up, just as Big Bertha twitched a little, making another jump, and fell into his lap.
"Bastard!" she swore, picking herself up. "I'll never get used to going out of N-Space."
Garvin just smiled, thinking how she felt rather nice against him.
"Who does?" Njangu said, taking her seat. "And I'm gonna rip a strip off our damned watch officer, who's supposed to notify us before we hippety-hop in or out of the wild black yonder out yonder."
"Oh… maybe I should have said something," Montagna said. "The PA system's down… one of the techs is trying to get rid of that old lady in the system."
As she spoke, the overhead speaker crackled into life: "Time to next jump… three ship-hours." It was still the weird synthesized voice they were all growing to hate.
"I love technology," Njangu said. "Let's take an ax to the system and put in voice tubes like the first starships had. Or uniformed messengers. Or signal flags."
"Good night, sirs," Darod said, and left. Njangu watched her leave.
"Not hard on the eyes at all," he said.
"Not at all," Garvin said, pretending casual notice.
"Did she have anything in particular to talk about… being nosy?"
"Other'n what a nosy sort you are," Garvin said, "nothing much."
"Careful, Garvin," Njangu said.
"Careful about what?"
Njangu waited a moment. "Careful that you don't spill your beer in your lap. Sir."
"Mother Mary on a bender," Garvin said softly, staring into the screen.
"Yeh," Njangu said. "Evidently somebody didn't have any qualms about going nuke."
The planet below it, like the twin moons that were supposed to be fortified, was nothing but desolation. A counter roared radioactivity at them.
"Any 'casts?" Garvin asked the com officer.
"There's a lot of clutter from the craters, sir," the man reported. "We've blanked all that come from obvious bomb sources… and there's nothing left. We thought for a minute we were getting some sort of code from one of the moons, but it's pure random noise.
"Nothing else, sir."
Njangu scratched his chin.
"The whole goddamned system gone," he mused. "The book said it had a population of five billion."
He shuddered a little. "Guess there's things worse than Empire, huh?"
"Maybe," Garvin said. "Unless the Confederation was the one who decided to break policy first. Watch officer!"
"Sir!"
"Take us the hell out of here. Next possibility."
"I've got a question," Maev asked.
"I've got an answer," Njangu said, yawning. "Your head is very comfortable on my chest, by the bye."
"I got that notion," Stiofan said, "that you and Gar-vin had the idea, at one time, of deserting, the first time you hit a world where there'd be some kind of main chance."
"Ah, but that was in the sinful days of our yout'," he said. "Before we became aware of the stellar virtues of serving the Confederation forever and ever or at least until somebody shoots our asses off."
"I don't suppose this whole thing"—and she made a circle in the semidarkness with her hand—"is some elaborate con to get you two to somewhere profitable, at which point you'll exit stage left."
"I'll be a son," Njangu said, sitting up abruptly. "You know, I never even thought of that possibility. What a dummy."
Maev also sat up.
"I'm afraid," she said. "You actually sound like you were telling the truth. If I can't tell…"
"I was telling the truth," Yoshitaro said with an injured tone. "I hardly ever lie, and never ever to the woman wot I adore."
" 'Kay," Maev said briskly. "But assuming you're not lying… which is a big assumption… let's say we run across somewhere like a nice Eden in our travels, where there's connable marks left and right, and nobody has ever heard of a truth scan. What then?"
"What an interestin' possibility," Njangu said. "Naah. Anything like that would've been kicked over in the early days after the Confederation did whatever it did to itself. All those wonderful little sheepies would be shorn bare by now.
"Besides," and he sounded serious, "even if we found such a hog heaven, I've got to assume that there's wolves out there in the darkness, to really screw my analogy up. So we'd sit there makin' credits up the yinger, and sooner or later, probably sooner, given my luck, some baddies with lotsandlots of guns would swoop.
"No, Maev my love, I'm afeared you've cast your lot with an honest dullard. At least for the moment."
"What, the lot, or the dullard?" she asked.
"Probably both. Now, if you'd be good enough to hand me that knotted cord again, I might find the energy for one more round before my engine runs out, since it's evidently the raw, nekkid trut', honesty, and loyalty of a Confeddie ossifer is wot powers me to new heights."
The next system was still inhabited.
Dill brought his aksai out of hyperspace, and his sensors were already buzzing. His briefing had said there were supposed to be four inhabited worlds in this system, called in the star catalogs R897Q33, with an archaic designation of 2345554, and a system name of Carroll.
Three… no, five ships were homing on him, two of them sweeping the com bands for a frequency this unknown ship would be on.
He obliged them by opening on the standard Confederation emergency frequency:
"Unknown ships, unknown ships, this is the Scoutship, uh, Dill," as he realized nobody ever got around to naming any of the aksai, and he wasn't interested in being One, Two, or Three.
Another com beeped, announcing the arrival of a patrol boat from Big Bertha, then Boursier in another aksai.
"Scoutship Dill, this is the destroyer Lopat," came a return com. "Be advised you have entered into Confederation space."
Dill's eyes widened, and he broadcast a second message to Big Bertha.
