Battlestations

by S. M. Stirling

  He almost seemed jealous. Hell, he weighed a ton and was a different species. Still, I had to ask. Maybe white hair was her lover and this hulk decided to play the jealous type.

  “Can you tell me where you were today between 1700 and 1900 hours?”

  “Of course”—I think the Squam actually smiled—“I was with my children, we spent the entire time by the pool. There were dozens of neighbors there that I spoke to. Such outings with their father are vital to the younger ones’ development. I am totally dedicated to my mate and our hatchlings.”

  “I see. Well, thank you for your cooperation. It’s late and I think that pretty much covers it.”

  “Fine. Shall we go back down?”

  I wondered if a minute had gone by when he wasn’t lying.

  After Hass had taken me down and shown me out, I stopped back at the concierge’s desk. He was reading one of those sleaze mags, the kind that came with the disposable vibrator gloves for three credits ninety-five.

  “You get everything?” he asked.

  “Were you here around 1800 last night?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you see Agnes bring in the Squam kids?”

  “Like I see you here now, pal.”

  “Did she usually come out here or did she go up to her room after she finished?”

  “She always came through here.”

  “Did she yesterday?”

  “Yeah. Mrs. Hass got home late. It was nearly 1900 when Agnes left. She ran outta here in a big hurry.”

  “Thanks.”

  I lit a cigarette and walked over to the caf. It was almost 0100 now and the place was empty. I called in to HQ and got Cal at the desk to punch up a list of the employees at the Violet Eight Handi-Mart. Only one was named Elizabeth. With any luck she hadn’t gone out.

  The com rang five or six times before someone picked up on audio.

  “Yes?” a bleary voice said.

  “Ms. Taeder? I’m sorry to bother you so late, but it’s police business.”

  That seemed to get some respect. She turned the visual on. A small woman with big collarbones stared back at me. Her kinky brown hair was dragged back all the way. It made her look like a greyhound. Behind her was a hole of a room, just a foldaway bed, a small video, a commode, a dry-shower, and a dresser. She looked like any checkout girl, only a little more so.

  “What is it?”

  “My name is Bailan. I’m investigating the disappearance of a woman named Agnes Wunderlei. I understand she did all her shopping at your Handi-Mart.”

  She looked surprised and worried. “I hope she’s all right.”

  “She’s just gone missing,” I said. “We’ll find her.” That was me. Bailan of the Space Scouts. We find anything. “Can you tell me anything about her?”

  “Umm . . .”

  “Anything at all.”

  She worried her lower lip for a couple of seconds. Then something clicked. “She wasn’t a domestic.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She blushed. “Off the record?”

  “It depends. Try me.”

  “Well, you know, we give sort of a rebate to servants so they’ll do their shopping with us. One credit back for every ten of their employers’ money they spend with us. It’s good for business.”

  She looked at me like she expected me to call the fraud squad right there.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Well, the first time we gave her the money, she just stood there stupid.”

  “And after that?”

  “Oh, she took it, but more to fit in than for the money.”

  “I see. So what do you make of that?”

  “She acted like she was rich. Rich and well educated.”

  “How so?”

  “We get all kinds down here. Herfets and Emry off Five. But especially Squams. Lots of different languages. Hell, I wear my translator all day.”

  “Sure.”

  “Well,” she said, narrowing her eyes, “every time Agnes would come in, it seemed as if she was listening to them. Like she understood.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “She never wore a translator, but every time somebody would make a joke, she’d smile like she understood.”

  “Anything else?”

  She shrugged. Her shoulders were bony and overworked. “Noth . . . Well . . . No. Forget it.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll think it’s stupid.”

  “Tell me.”

  “She knitted.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, I saw what she was working on a couple of times when she was waiting at the register. It was junk.”

  “People have different tastes,” I said.

  “That’s not what I mean. My mom used to knit. What Agnes was working on wasn’t anything, just knots. Just one long web of knots.”

  It was nearly 0200 when I got back to my room. I grabbed a cup of rehydrated coffee from one of the machines down the hall and gulped it back. I stripped down and went for a shower. As the caffeine and the cold water started to splash together, I considered the options.

  If Hass had caused Agnes’s disappearance, the theft of the jewels was a good way of diverting suspicion. It was attractive, but it proved nothing. It was also, I had a hunch, not true. Then again, this Agnes might very well have boosted the jewels.

  There was another possibility, and I would have to start giving it some thought.

  I toweled off and walked back to my room. I grabbed the com and dialed headquarters.

  “Police Headquarters, Carroll here . . . Jesus! Bailan, where you been?”

  “I’ve been on Violet Eight since I called you. What’s up?”

  “All hell’s broken loose up here. You got a priority/Umbra message—I think it’s from Security—burning up the hard disk. Omera’s got a copy, too,” he added. We went way back.

  “Great.” It was just like Kenvich to go tattling. “I’m at my place now. Can you mail it, Cal?”

  I saw him reach for the terminal off-screen. “Sure.”

  “Anything else?”

  My terminal powered up automatically as the message came through. “You bet your ass,” Cal said. “Some Squam Indie named Hass called Alliance Relations about you. Said you’d been rousting his family.”

  “They always do.”

  “Yeah, but they usually don’t turn up dead a couple of hours later.”

  “What?!”

  “The call came in a few minutes ago. Some maintenance guy found Hass clogging up the drain in one of the pools they got set up down there. Security stepped in right away—we’re out of it.”

  “How did he get it?”

  “Somebody emptied a needler into him close-up. Very messy.”

  I pulled on my pants and checked to see my blaster was charged. “Hey, did the blonde ever come back to Violet 7.135.2807?”

  “No.”

  “Thanks, Cal. I’ll take it from here.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t be stupid, Bailan. Kenvich is already gunning for your ass. Says you’ve been exceeding your authority—been screaming about security risks. Don’t make it any worse. Hit the sack and let the chief sort it out tomorrow.”

  I looked over at my rack. It was calling to me.

  “Talk to you later, pal.” I hung up and pulled open the memo with the mouse.

  It wasn’t from Security. It was from Fleet Intelligence. After quoting the regs at me for two pages, they finally cut to the chase. Hass and his wife were Squam agents. In fact, the Squam agents aboard the Hawking. Hubby collected data from various moles and sleaze-bags while wifey transmitted from the Squam ship she was a techie on. Very neat.

  The thing was, Counterintelligence fed them almost everything they were getting. In a weird way, this kept everybody happy. The Squam government trusted us more because Fleet would confirm what they already knew to be the “truth.” In turn, they trusted us more and so were more cooperative—essential if we were all going to elimi
nate the Ichtons.

  I didn’t read the cease and desist part of the letter—I headed for the lifts instead. As the elevator dropped I tried to figure out other ways for the pieces to fit together, but they kept coming up the same way.

  I was sweating again when the door finally slid open on Violet Eight. I stepped into the passageway. A Squam with a needler in his fist walked toward me. I was going for my gun when somebody killed the lights.

  The blaster coughed twice in my fist. His head and upper body broke apart with a flash as the plasma took him. I saw him twitch before it went black again. The deck shook as the big lizard hit hard. A hatchway hissed open close to where I stood and I heard more claws on the decking.

  I dropped onto the wet deck and rolled. A heartbeat, then the whine of a needler spray ripped the air.

  What sounded like hundreds of ceramic toothpicks zinged and ricocheted down the passage. The hair on the back of my neck stood up as the air whistled and tore over my head. I wanted to slip down between the slick grating, but all I could do was hold on.

  One of them went into my calf. Maybe more than one. That was the way with needlers: it started to hurt only a few minutes after you’d been hit, unless they hit you somewhere important. Then it didn’t hurt at all.

  More scratching. Closer this time. I was in trouble. My blaster would light the passage—and meep like a torch. Needlers had no flash. I heard their labored, reptilian breathing as they came down the hall. There were two, maybe three of them in all. I held my breath. They came on slowly, listening and sniffing.

  I reached up, groping for a door or anything. We were all out of luck. They were only a meter away when I opened up.

  I fired as fast as I could, shooting and shooting. They screamed and twisted and I kept firing, lighting the place up like a Dore illustration. A few droplets of the plasma spattered back onto me. I scrambled back on the steamy floor, wiping myself as best I could.

  Every alarm in the place went off. I checked my blaster and looked back. There had been only two of them after all. Molten heaps bubbled where they had been. I looked away, staggered against one of the sickly violet walls, and lurched off toward Viv’s.

  I found a vidcom and called in. Carroll said they’d meet me there.

  Her door was open. Back in her T-shirt again, she had almost finished packing. Three big plastic crates stood where the bed had been. The rest was bare.

  Her hand was wrapped around the butt of a needler, a strip of cloth in between so she wouldn’t leave prints. She knew who it was, but she didn’t look at me right away. When she did it didn’t mean anything much. She just lifted the mean little pistol a little and slid along the deck toward me, her lips tight-set.

  But I had my blaster out myself. We looked at each other across our guns. Maybe she knew me, I hadn’t any idea from her expression.

  I said, “You killed them, huh?”

  She shook her head a little. “Just Hass. He did Paolo.”

  “So that was his name.”

  “Yes. He worked for Counterintelligence. He was Hass’s case agent.”

  Kenvich was going to go strategic.

  “Put the gun down,” I told her. “You’re through with it.”

  She lowered it a little. She hadn’t seemed to notice the blaster I was pushing through the air in her general direction. I lowered that, too.

  “Why did you cap Hass?”

  She looked up at me. “He got panicked after you went to his place. He came down here, convinced you were going to uncover the whole thing. He was going to blow it.”

  “He was renting you the information before passing it on to the wife.”

  “Right.”

  “And you sold it to the highest bidder via Paolo.”

  She nodded a little. “Most of the time our buyers would get the Fleet movements before the orders were even posted.”

  Profiteering. It was an old scam with a new twist. The merchants would come in and spread rumors that the Fleet was on the way and as the panic began to spread, they could buy up everything that wasn’t nailed down at rock-bottom prices before moving on. Needless to say, it also compromised mission security with the enemy.

  “You fed the info to Paolo . . .”

  “But we couldn’t be sure if Intelligence was onto him,” she said.

  The penny dropped. “The knitting.”

  “Just old-fashioned Morse code,” she said. “I knew it would take a long time, but I couldn’t risk being seen with him.”

  “The grain they found in his clothes. What was that about?”

  “He had a transmitter set up in a container of long-storage grain on Twenty deck.”

  She didn’t seem to mind telling me. It was almost all there.

  “Why the elaborate setup?” I said. “What went wrong?”

  “Two weeks ago, Paolo sends me a message. Says he wants more money.”

  “So pay him.”

  “I did. Three days later he says it’s not enough. Says he’s going to turn me in to Intelligence and take a big fat promotion unless he gets a lot more.”

  “So you told Hass Paolo was Intelligence. Hass sends over the hard-boys and it’s Adios, Paolo.”

  She didn’t say anything after that. She just stood there, looking small.

  “Who was it set me up?” I said finally. “You or Hass?”

  She looked at my blood-soaked pants. She lowered the needler and took a step toward me.

  I brought my blaster up.

  “You’re a bad horse, Viv. I’m not betting on you anymore.”

  I made a broad, disappointed gesture and moved a little closer. She backed up. I should have taken the chance when she gave it to me.

  “So what’s the plan now? Change apartments and find a new supplier?”

  “Sure.”

  She said it like I’d asked her to go on a Ferris wheel. “Tell me,” I said, “was it worth it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The money.”

  She looked at me like I was stupid. Maybe I was.

  “Are you kidding?” She laughed. “Since Hass rolled over, I’ve cleared over 1.3 million credits. Tax-free and in the clear.”

  I didn’t like what her definition of “in the clear” was. “The merchants pay pretty well.”

  “I would say the most valuable commodity going is knowledge, wouldn’t you say?”

  “ ‘Grace is given of God,” I said, “but knowledge is bought in the market.’ ”

  “Dickens?”

  I shook my head.

  “Whatever. The point is, there’s plenty of cash to go around. It’s evident from tonight’s fiasco that I need someone who can handle it when things go bad. Why don’t you join me?”

  I looked at her for the last time, really. There were a lot of things she might have said, that I maybe would have fallen for, but that wasn’t one of them.

  She saw it in my eyes.

  Viv jerked up the needler and squeezed the trigger at me. She did it without moving a muscle of her face.

  Nothing happened. It puzzled her in a vague, month-before-last way. She turned the gun around, still careful about the cloth wrapper around the grip, and peered into the muzzle. She shook it and then remembered I was there. I hadn’t moved. I didn’t have to, now.

  “It’s on full auto, but that yellow telltale means the clip is empty,” I explained. “You left them all back in Hass.”

  She moved to go and I raised the blaster. The motion shifted my balance and the wounded leg almost gave way. A pain rose and my vision closed to only a narrow hole. I fought back and found myself nauseous, but leaning against the wall. Viv had moved a few steps, whether to help me or grab the blaster was a good question. She looked toward the door and took a few steps. The question in her expression was clear. I wasn’t sure myself. Part of me knew I could simply let myself fall and no one could say I hadn’t tried and passed out. The pool of blood at my foot was all the excuse I needed.

  Two images fought each other
in my mind. One was the memory of her soft body so desirous in my arms. The other was the cold, motionless slab of flesh in the morgue up on Green that had been her partner. For a long time neither of us moved.

  When I heard the sound of the security overrides on the door and Cal telling the rookies to stay alert as he opened it, I knew what I decided no longer mattered. He’d read the report I’d filed after the fight in the hallway and figured out where, even wounded, I had to be going. Good police work. Though sometimes too efficient backup can be a pain.

  I let go and let myself slide slowly down the wall as Cal came through. Viv gave me a look that hinted she somehow felt betrayed. It really didn’t matter, but I was just too hot and too tired to care. Letting Viv go now would simply have delayed things. Hass had been right about one thing. There was nowhere to run on a battlestation.

  STERN CHASE

  A Royal Navy adage is that a “stern chase is the longest one.” There is also an old army saying, “Hurry up and wait.” Perhaps the most draining part of any modern battle is that generally everyone is bored most of the time. Hours of mind-dulling tedium are interspersed with minutes, even seconds, of furious combat. Spacemen would arm, prepare, and then warp for hours to drop back and engage the Ichtons in a few minutes of carefully planned combat. Those lucky enough to survive then fled back to the relative safety of the main fleet or, farther back, to the Hawking itself.

  In that sense the Hawking had proved a success in its appointed mission. The battlestation had more than proved itself capable of supporting large forces at an unimaginable distance from their home base. Further, it now had provided both a base and safe port serving a large fleet under combat conditions for almost three years.

  To those Fleet personnel serving on the Battlestation Stephen Hawking, this record was a matter of pride. Unfortunately there was little time for satisfaction as a constant stream of broken men and ships returned and had to be made ready to return to the battle. This continuing grind of unbroken crises had to begin taking its toll. Fatigue alone became a major factor in Anton Brand’s calculations. Also of concern to the Hawking’s commander was the tenuous morale of the allied races.