by Chris Bunch
The five Star Risk operatives looked up at the smoke curling from the building’s midsection.
M’chel Riss, her voice as empty as her prospects, said, “It’s over.”
There was no need or energy for argument or discussion.
TEN
“Does anybody see a way to break it off in Cerberus?” Chas Goodnight demanded harshly.
M’chel Riss shook her head.
“One — or rather five — against a gazillion … that only works in the holos.”
After that, there wasn’t much to say — or, rather, there was a great deal to say, but the Star Risk operatives, being soldiers, weren’t good with words or emotions.
Even Grok had learned human habits in that regard.
Jasmine gave each of them a thick envelope full of high-denomination bills, from her secret emergency fund.
They all made insincere promises to stay in touch.
Jasmine gave M’chel the alloy nameplate for her office, and Riss almost started crying.
Instead, she managed, “So, what now?”
Goodnight had seen the glisten in her eye, and added, hastily, a cheerful “We’ll just keep on keeping on.”
Then he spoiled it by adding a very tentative “I guess.”
With that, Star Risk, Ltd., was done.
ELEVEN
Of them all, Jasmine King and Grok had the least clear idea of what they wanted to do next.
King was, in spite of laudatory retraining efforts by M’chel Riss, still too much the bureaucrat, so she immediately rented a small suite of offices in a nondescript part of Trimalchio IV’s capital.
She privately thought that Freddie had made Cerberus’s job much easier with Star Risk’s high visibility — the flashy suite in the high-rise and the even flashier name.
Her new offices had a very small sign on the door, saying RESEARCH ASSOCIATES.
She invited Grok to share them with her.
“And what are we going to do?” he wanted to know.
“Make money,” she said.
“How, might I ask?”
Jasmine hesitated for a little, then said, “What’s the matter with what we were doing? Except with a much lower profile?”
Grok considered, then nodded his shaggy head.
“That is as good a way as any to pass the time, since I am not yet bored with this odd trade of mercenarying.”
Jasmine smiled, a little wanly.
“It won’t be as much fun as Star Risk was.”
“Perhaps not,” Grok said. “But the profit-sharing plan with just two of us is a great deal more favorable.”
And so they put the word out, thinking there was no reason the lead Star Risk had pioneered — to have no more than the absolute essentials eating up the normal payroll, and contract hiring as needs and jobs presented themselves — wouldn’t still work.
In about a week, Grok came in, beaming.
“I never thought I would have the human satisfaction of a mere job, working for someone else. But my horizons are continually expanding, and I think we have an excellent prospect here.”
He was right.
Two systems, longtime enemies for some absurd reason, had recently had changes of government. Both were authoritarian, which meant they needed to have a nice little war going so the citizens wouldn’t notice they were being robbed blind.
And so Quast and Folv declared war on each other, each claiming, naturally, to be the injured party.
“And both sides,” Grok continued, “are putting together their armies, which reduces the unemployment, and therefore the visible taxes, leaving the next generation to pay for all this nonsense.
“God, but I love people!”
The problem on both sides was that neither had much of a star fleet.
“So,” Grok concluded, “it should be a simple matter for us to start getting on the com to various people, and then to provide our clients, whichever they shall be, with ships and their crews.”
“Simple enough,” Jasmine mused. “But I have a bit of an idea.
“First of all, I’ve got to guess that every mere on their side of the galaxy is sending Quast and Folv the old resume, full of blood and thunder.”
“Probably,” Grok said. “But we can resort to telling the truth, can’t we?”
“Seems a little pedestrian,” Jasmine said. “Let me muse a trifle.”
She did, and within a day, had her inspiration.
“We’re going to become merchants of death,” she said.
“That doesn’t sound like much of an improvement,” Grok said. “Even if we ignore the basic suppliers like Thompson or Kerley, our old friends Cerberus can provide battleships by the kilometer.”
“But I,” Jasmine said, “can beat them all. For we have a secret weapon.”
“We do?” Grok asked. “Lying around this office? It’s so secret you haven’t told me about it.”
“That’s because I just thought of it,” King said. “We can have both sides as clients — and we, and any of our employees, won’t stand the slightest chance of getting killed.
“Now, I’ll give you the spiel, and then we’ll each get on the com to Quast and Folv. I’ll be Research Associates, and you can be, umm, Defense Contracting.
“I am bewildered,” Grok said.
“You won’t be for long,” King said.
Half a century before, there’d been a sudden fad for a new kind of warship. It was called an Assault Command & Control craft — ACC.
The older C&C ships, both in-atmosphere and -space, had been around forever. Their intent was to provide maximum communications and battle analysis for commanders, who could sit a bit away from the fray, coolly figure out what was going on in a battle, and come back with the appropriate response.
Of course, if the general or admiral was a clutter-brain, being able to see fourteen different projections of a battle did little good. But every military leader worth his gold braid had to have one or several of them.
The only problem a C&C ship had was if the foe was able to sneak or force its way within range. C&C craft were notoriously soft-skinned, underpowered, and lightly armed, since their entire hulls were full of electronics.
Few admirals really like being in the line of fire, let alone getting hit, so some genius came up with the ACC. It had a cruiser’s armament and defenses, and so there were many, many takers.
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to warships, and the ACCs weren’t quite “smart” enough to “outthink” the oppos in that their mere size couldn’t provide the electronics suite that a moonlet or even a converted liner could, plus they were dangerously vulnerable to anything bigger than a heavy destroyer.
In a very short time, the ACCs whose construction had made weapons’ designers and shipyards very wealthy sat in mothballs or hung uselessly in boneyards.
Jasmine, as part of her omnivorous reading, had noted a piece on the debacle of the ACCs, and routinely filed it.
But King never forgot anything, and when Quast and Folv started putting fleets together without much in the way of combat experience, her memory came alive.
Grok understood immediately, and growled his pleasure.
And so they set to work.
The initial spiel was King pretending to be a reporter for Janes — still quaintly called All the Galaxy’s Ships — contacting first Quast’s and then Folv’s military public relations departments.
That gave her the name of various admirals, especially those in or close to the purchasing department. She also found out the names of government members who’d served in what passed for the two worlds’ navies.
The pair next flipped a coin, and Grok made his choice. He contacted Folv’s J-4, Logistics, and using a voice synthesizer, pretended to be an electronics company, asking what classes of ACCs they had that might be in need of upgrade.
Told Folv had none, he pretended shock, and said he would have a colleague — also Grok, without his synthesiz
er — talk to them.
“After all,” he finished, “Quast has three of them. Not the most current, though, I’m afraid.”
When Grok II got through to the purchasers, they must have checked with their flag-bridged superiors, and were very interested in Assault Command & Control ships.
Grok just happened to have a couple, freshly refitted, available: the Giap and the Rentzel.
Interest grew, and Grok contacted the scrapyard where he’d found the pair of ships, and bought them on a per-kiloton price.
They were hastily towed to shipyards, painted, and given heavier-duty fuses and slightly more recent electronics.
Then it was Jasmine’s turn to deal with Quast, which, of course, had no ACCs — at least, not before King began her machinations. When she was done, they had three: the Marshall, Li Po, and Von Moltke, all three marginally more modern than the two Folv had bought.
When Grok’s turn came, Folv inquired worriedly as to how many ACC spacecraft it was “ideal” to have. Grok advised at least four.
That added the Hoffman, the Suleiman and the Mah-mud to the Folv fleet, after their parliament decided they didn’t want to do things by halves.
The Arslan and Giuscard were next bought by Quast.
A rather stricken Grok came to King.
“A disaster!” he proclaimed. “What?”
“I can’t find any more of those damned ships for sale!”
Jasmine worked her end of the galaxy, and also couldn’t find any.
“Oh well,” she consoled Grok. “All good things have an end. We made several kilos of credits. And, if it matters, nobody got killed.”
“True,” Grok said, then sadly shook his head.
“But as you have said, it wasn’t nearly as much fun as with Star Risk.”
TWELVE
M’chel Riss lay naked on the sands of her island, dreaming of money.
If she restrained her lower impulses to occasionally run amok in a high-fashion district, to attend theoretical physics conventions on distant worlds, and to take profligate lovers, her finances were more than sufficient to carry her for two full lifetimes.
Since she didn’t have much of a tendency toward gigolos, she was probably fairly safe with the other two.
But still …
Riss hadn’t been raised to be a flake, no matter how hard she tried to convince herself otherwise.
But she did feel a little hurt, like any good marine, at being driven from the field with her banner in tatters.
God damn Cerberus!
Lying in the sun, she thought dreamily of somehow, someway, making a one-woman assault on wherever their headquarters were, grenade between her teeth and a dagger in each hand.
And getting away with it.
That was, indeed, a rub or two.
She didn’t want to think about Star Risk and what had happened. Riss believed in enjoying the moment when it was good, and moving out at high port when it changed, and never looking back.
Star Risk had been a hell of a dream.
But it was over, she reminded herself.
She thought of getting up, going into her villa, and making herself a very tall, very cool drink.
But Riss didn’t drink much before midday, especially alone.
So she shut off her mind and concentrated on UV rays and skin cancer until the com blatted.
She grunted, grabbed the unit, made sure the visual was turned off, and answered it.
The grating voice was ex-Warrant Officer Naysmith. Not many former military sorts retired to Trimalchio, since the planet’s government-by-somnolence didn’t match the careerists’ requirements and budgets. But Naysmith, a master ex-armorer, had prospered; he was not only selling various weapons to the citizenry, but maintaining several police departments’ arsenals.
Plus, he also was the conduit for offworld “safaris,” and most anything else that had anything to do with guns or gunnery, while keeping his dealings strictly legal.
He’d customized several blasters of various types for Riss over the years, and they’d become as friendly as any hard-bitten warrant could become with an officer — even ex-.
“You know anything about music?”
“A little,” Riss said cautiously. In fact, she knew quite a lot. Her family had all been amateur musicians, and so she’d grown up surrounded by every kind of instrument from banjo to sitar to theremin.
She herself played guitar.
Badly, she freely admitted. But on a long deployment, any marine who managed to drag along anything capable of making sounds would be prized, if she didn’t make a pain out of herself by twanging away while others wanted to sleep or expecting special favors.
M’chel Riss’s big problem was that she prized vocal music for the lyrics, which always brought up the old joke about why a bunch of people were moving jerkily to music, with the explanation that they all liked music for the words.
“You ever hear,” the warrant went on, “of Lollypop and the Berserkers?”
“Gesundheit. Problem with your sinuses, chief?”
“Lollypop and the Berserkers, I said. They’re a pop music group. Lollypop is looking for a good bodyguard.”
M’chel knew she shouldn’t, but she thought an interview might at least be interesting, so she called the com number Naysmith gave her and was in touch with the group’s new managerial firm.
The meeting was set two days distant, which made Riss think that this Lollypop might be in earnest about wanting a bodyguard, and decided to up her price tag.
It was held in the management company’s — Music Associates, a nice nondescript name — offices, which were outside Trimalchio’s capital, set in a rolling estate carefully styled to look like an Old Earth plantation.
Riss was met by one Arn — no last name offered — one of the two heads of Music Associates, was told that hiring a bodyguard was only one item scheduled for today’s band meeting and that the group and its support people were “one big democracy,” and led into a large conference room packed with various people.
She was introduced to a pair of lawyers, the head of the sound crew, the head of the holo crew, the head gaffer, the publicity man, the group historian — she boggled slightly at that — the still photographer, who wanted to take her picture and had to be forcibly told no, the head of the fan club, the chief songwriter, the lead costumer, and the head of security, whose name was Folger.
She wondered what the group itself had to do except show up, hit a few notes off a lead sheet, and look spectacular.
The only other name that stuck belonged to the band’s one present member, a tall, handsome young man with long brown hair and haunted eyes, who played the distinctly archaic bass guitar. His name was Maln.
Again, no last name was offered. Riss couldn’t figure if she was supposed to know it, or if everyone in the room leaned slightly to the fugitive side.
Everyone looked at M’chel as if expecting her to start the meeting. She knew better, from countless staff meetings at which she’d been the junior party, than to begin things.
Besides, the real client hadn’t shown.
After a few minutes, which M’chel thought was deliberately calculated to build suspense, Lollypop entered.
She was young, but Riss noted that she had very old eyes that seemed to have seen everything and didn’t want to see much more. Lollypop was about M’chel’s height, had blond hair that couldn’t have possibly been made lighter, a thin build that, except for huge breasts, approached the skeletal.
“I’m Lollypop,” she said, curling a lip to illustrate her obvious superiority. “And you’re the woman who wants to be my bodyguard.”
“I don’t know about wants,” M’chel said easily. “I might possibly be interested in the job — you’re the one who’s supposedly looking for a bodyguard.”
Lollypop frowned, clearly not used to disagreement.
There was a snort — of amusement? — from Maln, and a wordless but displeased murmur from Arn.
“Why?” Riss persisted.
“Why else?” Lollypop said. “Someone wants to kill me.”
“Do you have any idea who?” M’chel asked.
Lollypop gave a dirty look at Folger as if it were his fault the culprit hadn’t been found.
“None at all,” she said. “If I did, I’d be screaming to the frigging police.”
She stared skeptically at M’chel.
“I’m not sure you’re my idea of a bodyguard.”
Riss didn’t ask what a bodyguard was supposed to look like, reached into the portfolio she was carrying, took out a one-page resume, and handed it to the singer.
Lollypop frowned at it, passing it to Arn, as if not happy or used to reading. The manager scanned it, and his eyes widened twice in surprise.
“Yes,” he said. “Your credentials are … more than adequate.”
Lollypop nodded, as if she agreed with the vetting.
“The first time,” she said, “someone pushed a speaker off the rack — we have our own sound, set up on a tower — and almost got me.”
“Could it have been an accident?” Riss asked.
“I thought like that at first,” Lollypop said. “But we have Mag-Clips to hold things down. And they were pried loose.”
“And there were scrapes on the tower deck,” Maln put in. “Somebody had to push it pretty hard to move it.”
Lollypop gave him a look that suggested his contribution was unwelcome.
“Then … back here on Trim … someone tried to run me down with a lifter when I was leaving a club.”
“Lollypop got its registry number,” Arn said. “We traced it, and the lifter was stolen.”
Riss nodded.
“That could mark a professional,” she said.
“That’s when I got scared,” Lollypop said. “The third time was just last week. Someone rigged a gas bomb — at least, there were fumes after a bang — at my front door.”
Riss glanced at Folger, who nodded slightly.
“Did you report this to the police?”
“I did,” Arn said. “They seemed to think it was some kind of publicity stunt.”
“Our latest log,” Maln put in, “we called Street Warrant. Maybe that gave somebody the idea.”
