David Sherman & Dan Cragg - [Starfist 14]

by Double Jeopardy (lit)

  Lance Corporal Schultz looked around, his gaze seeming to scan the square like radar, seeking out enemy shapes or movement. On his second sweep, his eyes stopped, fixing on a lunch counter with a sign announcing “Summerville’s Garden.” Each letter in the name was a different color; a dozen covered the spectrum from brilliant red to pale yellow; there were two greens, dusky blue, bright blue, a blue so dark it was almost black, and a lone pink. The apostrophe was inverted, point up, looking like nothing so much as a spot of blood about to drop.

  Schultz didn’t say anything, or point at the sign—he didn’t even grunt. He just stepped out on a beeline for Summerville’s Garden.

  “Hammer looks like he knows where he’s going,” Lance Corporal MacIlargie said. “Has he ever been here before?”

  Corporal Claypoole shook his head as he got out his personal comm. He tapped a query into it and looked at the reply for a long moment before saying wonderingly, “Who’d a thunk it? Hammer Schultz is a fructivore?”

  “A what?”

  “A fructivore. An animal that subsists on fruit.”

  “Hammer?”

  “This I gotta see.” Claypoole briskly followed Schultz’s rapidly receding back. MacIlargie yelped and scampered to catch up. Along the way, Claypoole explained, “Summerville’s Garden’s is an agricultural world that grows fruits of all kinds and exports them to the richer worlds.”

  “Whatever you say, honcho.” MacIlargie didn’t sound as if he really believed his fire team leader. “But that sign says ‘Garden,’ not ‘Gardens.’”

  Claypoole shrugged and picked up his pace.

  Inside they found Schultz sitting at a table set for three, his back to the wall, facing the entrance. A waitress was just finishing taking his order as the two arrived.

  “Same for them,” Schultz rumbled at her.

  “Three house specials, coming up,” the waitress said. Her eyes twinkled as she spun about to carry the order to the kitchen window.

  “What’s that?” Claypoole asked suspiciously. “What’s the house special?”

  “Yeah, what’s that?” MacIlargie echoed, but he made sure he was beyond Schultz’s easy reach before he did.

  “Fargo has gotten information that mining using slave labor is being conducted on Ishtar,” Commodore Borland said. “We require everything you have on Ishtar’s mining operations and the labor situation there.”

  “B-but,” Prime Minister Foxtable sputtered, “there isn’t any mining on Ishtar!”

  A couple of places to his right, the Minister of Mines and Resources nearly choked when he heard Borland’s words. He cleared his throat and kept his eyes on his plate so he didn’t see the way Sturgeon looked at him.

  “That’s not what we hear, sir,” Borland said. “Our mission is to investigate the situation and, if we find slave labor, to put an end to it.” He stared into Foxtable’s bewildered face, but the Prime Minister had nothing to say. “We also have reports that the slaves are aliens and are in active rebellion. Our mission is also to put down the rebellion.”

  The Minister of Security paled when he heard that. Borland turned to him.

  “Sir, do you have something to say on the matter?”

  “Who, me? No, no—no. I’ve heard nothing about slaves or a rebellion. Or mining, either,” he quickly added. “No, I do-don’t have anything to say.”

  “Rondow? Do you know something you haven’t told me?” Foxtable asked the Minister of Security.

  Minister of Security Rondow started at being addressed by Foxtable. Looking down at the empty plate in front of himself, he said, “Th-there’s nothing I haven’t t-told you, Prime Minister. You get my f-full report every morning. I n-never leave anyth-thing out.”

  Foxtable’s nostrils flared as he studied the Minister of Security, but he didn’t challenge the statement. Instead he looked from one end of the line of ministers to the other.

  “Can anybody shed any light on this matter?”

  The officers from the Grandar Bay attempted to make eye contact with the ministers. The Minister of Commerce looked baffled. The Minister of Transportation looked back at them blankly. The Minister of Space Operations blinked a few times but met the eyes that looked at him. The other ministers looked down or to the sides, anywhere but at the navy and Marine officers.

  When he could see that none of his ministers had anything to offer—or anything they were willing to admit to—Foxtable looked at Borland and Sturgeon and spread his hands apologetically.

  “All right, then,” Borland said. “We still require all the information you have on Ishtar: geology, geography, weather, and indigenous life forms. Also, we need to interview everybody who has been there.”

  Foxtable swallowed. “The data is easily enough done. But the few people who have actually been there … I’ll have to have a list made up. But some of the few who have been to Ishtar, well, some of them might have relocated to islands elsewhere on Opal.”

  “That’s no problem. We have suborbital craft that can get us anywhere on Opal in no more than two or three hours.”

  The waitress returned in less than fifteen minutes with a tray on which were three covered dishes. She deftly set one in front of each of the three Marines, tucked the tray under her arm, and upended the covers from the deep dishes.

  “Thank you,” Lance Corporal Schultz said. He plunged his fork into his dish’s contents, began eating, and sighed contentedly.

  Corporal Claypoole and Lance Corporal MacIlargie looked suspiciously at their dishes. Claypoole picked up his fork and experimentally poked at the colorful contents.

  “What is this mess?” he asked.

  Schultz masticated, swallowed, and growled, “Eat.” He forked more into his mouth.

  MacIlargie timorously slid his fork into the food and took a tentative bite. He chewed, blinked a few times, and took a bigger bite. Then he dug in with almost as much gusto as Schultz.

  Claypoole looked at his men, wondering if they were setting him up for some trick, and decided that MacIlargie wasn’t that good an actor. He took a bite.

  Summerville’s Gardens house special was something Claypoole and MacIlargie had never imagined, although it was quite obvious that Schultz had eaten—and liked—it sometime in the past. The dish, not quite deep enough to properly be called a bowl, held a multicolored arrangement of fruit, not all of which Claypoole could identify, and chunks of seared meat, all in a thickened sauce of what seemed to be mixed fruit and meat juices. Claypoole couldn’t identify the meat, either, but that might have been because of the mix of fruit flavors in which it was buried rather than because he hadn’t had it before.

  “Good,” he said around mouthfuls.

  “Got that right,” MacIlargie said through a mouthful of food.

  Schultz nodded, too busy eating to make any vocal noises.

  Just as they were finishing, Claypoole got a call on his comm. “Report back to the Dragons immediately.”

  “What was that?” Claypoole asked as the three headed back to the beach.

  “House special” was all Schultz said.

  “How many of them do you think will wind up in prison?” Commodore Borland asked when the officers were back on the Dragon that had brought them to Berrican. They’d gotten all the data Prime Minister Foxtable admitted to having on Ishtar, and what the Prime Minister swore was a complete list of everybody who had been to Ishtar, with their current locations.

  Brigadier Sturgeon snorted. “Could end up more than half of them.”

  Borland shook his head. “Fools. Don’t they realize how much trouble they could be in for deliberately withholding information from a Confederation expeditionary mission?”

  “Locals seldom do,” Sturgeon answered.

  Soon after, the last of the Marines on liberty reported back to the Dragons.

  Borland called for two suborbitals from the Grandar Bay. He divided the list of persons who had been on Ishtar among the officers, including Lieutenant Bass, and had Bass assign two enl
isted Marines to accompany each of them when they went to interview the people on their lists. After that, Sturgeon allowed first squad and the Dragon crews onshore liberty. Staff Sergeant Hyakowa would be in charge of the three Marines left at Berrican guarding the Dragons, and of the Marines on liberty.

  By mid-morning the next day, everyone on the master list had been interviewed. They all seemed more forthcoming than Prime Minister Foxtable and his cabinet had been. But they added nothing to what the Grandar Bay and Thirty-fourth FIST already knew.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ishtar was a third of an orbit ahead of Opal, far enough to justify jumping into Beam Space. Two and a half days out from Opal, the Grandar Bay made its first jump—to one light-year out of the system. Beam Space navigation wasn’t precise enough to allow for jumps of a few light-hours with anything close to accuracy; the generally accepted shortest distance for a reasonably accurate jump with a good navigator was three light-years. Commodore Borland was confident enough of his navigator that he was willing to go the shorter distance. His confidence was justified when the Grandar Bay returned to Space-3 only two days’ travel from Ishtar. Total transit time was just under five days, standard.

  The bad part was, anybody on Opal who wanted to alert the supposed slavers on Ishtar could have gotten a radio message to them a good four and a half days before the Grandar Bay reached orbit around the inner planet.

  “Sir, radar reports contacts in orbit,” the talker said into the hush of the bridge.

  Commodore Borland reached for his comm and tapped for Surveillance and Radar. “This is the Commodore. Tell me.”

  “Sir, McPherson. Three ships and at least one satellite in geo. No IFF. I have my best people working on identification of ship types.”

  “Notify me immediately. Good work.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Thank you, sir.” The Grandar Bay had only been out of Beam Space for a few minutes and already they’d spotted the ships in orbit around Ishtar. Excellent work.

  Borland tapped S and R off, and tapped for communications.

  “Captain Arden, sir.”

  “S and R reports three contacts in orbit, plus one geosync. Notify me instantly if they make contact. Do not attempt to initiate contact unless I give specific orders.”

  “Sir, notify you instantly if contact is attempted. Do not initiate contact without specific orders from you. Aye aye, sir.”

  “Borland out.”

  Captain Wilma Arden, running the communications division. A captain in a lieutenant commander’s billet. Borland refrained from shaking his head at the thought. She and Lieutenant Commander Gullkarl had the misfortune of having been in the chain of events that brought the attention of the Chief of Naval Operations to the possibility of Skinks on Maugham’s Station. A possibility that didn’t pan out, as it happened. They’d understood the vague report that had been unofficially passed on to them well enough to know that it implied hostile aliens, about whom they’d heard rumors. But it was evidence of the existence of aliens, which at the time was a closely guarded military secret, so secret that the Grandar Bay had been reported lost in Beam Space and Thirty-fourth FIST had been quarantined to prevent word from getting out. Arden and Gullkarl had been given their choice: life on the penal world Darkover or assignment to a starship lost in Beam Space. The two civilians in that chain of events weren’t given the choice. Gullkarl had been a fit into the Grandar Bay’s Orbital Weapons Division. But there was no proper place to assign a captain. So Borland had assigned Arden to temporarily replace the communications officer, a lieutenant commander, when the man was injured and unable to return to duty. The existence of the hostile Skinks was now public knowledge, but Arden and Gullkarl were stuck on the Grandar Bay under the no-transfer, no-release-from-active-duty orders for the starship.

  Still, a captain in a lieutenant commander’s billet. It offended Borland’s sense of propriety.

  But there was nothing he could do about it. Not now. Perhaps if, in the future, an amphibious task force was assembled around the Grandar Bay, he could reassign Arden to the Commodore’s staff. But not now. For now she was stuck in a billet two ranks below hers, one at which she wasn’t totally competent. She did a good enough job, though. She knew enough to pay attention to her subordinates who knew more than she did.

  Borland shoved thoughts of Arden and Gullkarl from his mind and looked at the main display. Ishtar was a small circle in its center. Too small and too distant to show the orbiting ships. All he could do was wait. Wait until the S and R division identified the ships, or until one of the orbiters attempted to contact the Grandar Bay.

  He turned to the officer of the deck. “My compliments to Brigadier Sturgeon, and an invitation for him to join me on the bridge.”

  The two flag officers stared at the display, which had barely changed in the quarter hour, standard, since Borland first looked at it after learning of the orbiting ships.

  “It’s a whole lot of we-don’t-know?” Sturgeon asked after a moment.

  “A whole lot,” Borland agreed. “And no way of knowing—yet.”

  They watched quietly for a while longer before a report came in from Surveillance and Radar.

  “Sir,” McPherson reported, “they are starships. One of them is a freighter, class unidentified, but estimated at one hundred thousand tons. One appears to be a Countess-class cruise starship.” He hesitated before adding, “The third is a Bomarc, model not yet identified.”

  “Thank you. Keep looking. Keep me informed.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Borland mused for a long moment. A Bomarc in orbit was unusual; it was the only starship designed to land on a planet’s surface. So why was it in orbit? The only reason he could think of was that the conditions on the surface had deteriorated too badly to risk the starship by landing it.

  After they’d watched for a few more minutes, Sturgeon asked, “We’re close enough to identify the types of starships in orbit. Shouldn’t they have detected us by now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yet they’ve made no attempt to make contact.”

  “That’s right.”

  Sturgeon looked thoughtful for a few seconds, then said, “With the Commodore’s permission, I’ll prepare boarding parties.”

  Borland nodded. “Bear in mind that we won’t be in position to launch boarding parties for approximately forty-five hours.”

  Sturgeon nodded in turn. “My Marines haven’t practiced orbital boarding in a few years. They’ll need every bit of time available to train for the mission.”

  “Stop complaining, people,” Sergeant Ratliff growled. “I know as well as you do what it was like when we boarded the Marquis de Rien. I was there, remember?”

  “Yeah, and we lost people,” Corporal Dean muttered. Ratliff shot him a look; he had thought Dean was over his fatalistic fear.

  “All right, gather round,” the first squad leader ordered. He looked at his men and slowly shook his head. “As I recall, only three of you, the fire team leaders, were in this squad when we boarded the smuggler’s starship. There are a couple of huge differences between that boarding and the boarding we might be making tomorrow. First, we know the Tweed Hull Breacher works—Corporal Doyle fixed that.”

  Lance Corporals Quick and Longfellow glanced at each other but cut their snickers short when Ratliff glared at them.

  “The other major difference is, then we had to chase a starship that was slingshotting around a star, close enough that we were all in danger of taking serious doses of hard radiation. This time we’ll be boarding a starship orbiting a planet, far enough out from the planet’s primary that there isn’t much radiation danger, not in the time we’ll be exposed.”

  “Are you saying this is going to be easy, Sergeant Ratliff?” Corporal Dornhofer asked.

  “A lot easier than boarding the Marquis de Rien was.”

  “Who’s waiting for us?” Dean asked.

  Ratliff shook his head. “We don’t know yet. For all we know, that Cou
ntess-class is filled with babes visiting Ishtar to work on their tans.”

  “Or there could be a battalion of Skinks,” Dean muttered.

  “Dorny, Pasquin,” Ratliff said through gritted teeth, “you done this before. Start showing the newer men what to do and how to do it. Dean, come with me.” He turned and stalked to a remote corner of the bay in which the Tweed Hull Breacher was being assembled for launch. He stood, arms folded across his chest, fuming, until he heard Dean’s footsteps stop behind him.

  Spinning around, he thrust his face into Dean’s and, barely refraining from yelling, demanded, “What the hell’s the matter with you, Corporal? Are you trying to scare the shit out of everybody? Get your shit together, and stop the negative comments!”

  Dean looked coldly at Ratliff, not at all abashed. “When we breach that hull, we don’t have any idea what’s going to be waiting for us. It’s a mistake to think that boarding a starship, any starship, in orbit isn’t hazardous.”

  “Nobody’s saying different, Dean. But you’re the only one saying it in a way that will unnecessarily scare people.”

  “People should be scared before a boarding.”

  “Scared enough to be sharp, but not scared enough to be paralyzed.”

  The two glared at each other for a long moment. Dean was the one who broke it. He dropped his head.

  “I’m sorry, Sergeant Ratliff. I’m scared. You know that.” He looked at his squad leader. “And there’s a lot of danger in boarding a starship. You know that, too.”

  “Yes I do. Now what say you help me get the junior men ready—without scaring the shit out of them.”

  Dean nodded. “Aye aye. Let’s do it.” He stepped to the side so Ratliff could pass and followed him back to where the other fire team leaders were showing the Tweed Hull Breacher to the rest of the squad.

  It was less than one day to orbit, and the starships orbiting Ishtar still hadn’t opened communications with the Grandar Bay. Borland was beginning to wonder if they were abandoned. What could have caused the watch crews to abandon their vessels? Or what could have killed or incapacitated them? The Surveillance and Radar division hadn’t detected any emissions from any of the starships that couldn’t more easily be accounted for by automatic systems than by directed action.