by Chris Bunch
Star Risk also decided it was time to escalate, and, determined to no longer mess around with minor depredations.
THIRTY-SIX
One of the things that got escalated was Star Risk’s expenses.
For their next strike against Cerberus, they needed some heavier guns, and they didn’t have the right ones handy.
Redon Spada did. He found a pair of patrol boat owner-skippers — old acquaintances who were proud of taking any job that wasn’t suicidal, charging an arm and a leg, doing the work perfectly, and not talking about it later, which was most important in the still-undeclared war against Cerberus.
It took two days for Spada to track down the p-boats, another day for them to hire a transport that would jump the short-range combat ships to the vicinity of the Alsaoud System.
Spada, with the yacht, met the two patrol ships, escorted them to the moonlet, linked them to the larger McMahon, and ordered them to wait.
The mercenary pilots shrugged.
They were getting paid, quite lavishly, and so they didn’t mind a little leisure. As long as it didn’t last too long. It didn’t.
Less than five ship-days later, Star Risk went into motion.
Target: the Alliance liner Normandie.
They’d debated hard whether this was either one of the more intelligent or one of the dumber changes they’d thought of, and tentatively decided it was good.
But if things went wrong, and they killed a shipload of innocents — or, worse yet from their point of view, were hit by either the Normandie’s own weaponry or that damned escort ship from the Alsaoud System …
M’chel decided she didn’t want to contemplate what would happen if things went that badly wrong, which would inevitably mean the Alliance would show up to Rectify the Matter, which would mean those hanging judges and the rest.
At least the Normandie, being under Alliance registry, followed a fairly precise schedule, so at least their pirating could begin on some kind of a plan.
Star Risk would mount its attack inside the Alsaoud System, just where the liner would make its first jump from the common navpoint — and where the escort ship should meet it.
The escort was waiting where it was supposed to be, so von Baldur left a small spy satellite, and held his ships not far distant, on the edges of the Maron Region.
Then they waited some more.
M’chel had never been a good waiter, she realized. But there was a difference between being in a nice safe dirt bunker, or even in a nicely armored track vehicle, and sitting in a goddamned spaceship floating in the midst of nowhere.
She pushed away the memory of how she used to go mildly berserk in a troopship, waiting for a landing force to assemble, making life most difficult for her underlings.
Now, there was no one to drive mad, and so she stewed gently until the satellite beeped softly.
All ships jumped to the coordinates of their satellite.
The two p-boats, having gotten an exact description of the Alsaoud escort and having everything short of the blueprints from Janes, were first into action.
One small missile blew its drive mechanism apart, a second was command-steered to the ship’s nose, and destroyed its C&C systems.
The escort ship whirled in emptiness, gently whining for help on the only coms left to it.
That had taken about thirty seconds, and had only cost one casualty, an electronics tech who’d been worrying over a hiccuping part of the ship’s command and control network.
Star Risk then went after the Normandie.
They knew exactly where the twin missile launchers on the liner were, and the p-boats and the McMahon drifted missiles in. One blew near the stern, and the Normandie’s star drive went down, leaving it helpless to escape into n-space.
The yacht was broadcasting on all freqs that the Normandie should not, must not, fight back or call for help, or else be prepared for total destruction.
If the liner had been able to get a signal out, and there’d been any sign of a rescue force, there would actually be no alternative other than to break off the action and flee.
And if the Normandie opened fire from either of its two batteries, the pirates would also have to flee.
Star Risk wasn’t prepared to face mass slaughter.
Half of piracy is bluff, anyway. However, being mercenaries, and having a certain reputation for lethality to hold up in their “community,” they hadn’t told the patrol boats of the reality of this secondary plan, merely saying that in the event of an emergency the p-boats were to follow Star Risk’s orders exactly.
The p-boat skippers and their crews shrugged, and said they’d do as they were told.
Two missiles from the McMahon closed on the Normandie, and exploded less than three ships’ length from the liner, exactly positioned off the twin missile stations, neatly scrambling the hardy state of the art command circuitry.
Then, with previously taped threats of blood, thunder, and dismemberment roaring on the com, Star Risk boarded.
Surprisingly, the passenger spaces weren’t as chaotic as they’d been on the Fowler. Goodnight was thinking what damage one crazed fat woman could do, when he saw someone come out of a cabin, holding a small blaster.
He shouted a warning. Riss went flat as a bolt clanged off a bulkhead, and he fired back, aiming for the idiot’s leg.
Goodnight missed a little, hit the bravado-crazed man messily in the intestines, and heard him scream, gurgle, and die.
“Goddamn that stupid glory-happy son of a bitch and his medal-sucking mother,” he swore to no one in particular.
But he was running toward the bridge, as were the others. Grok, as planned, took a position just between crew and passenger countries, a blast rifle cuddled in his arms.
But none of the passengers, looking at the unpleasantness that had been one of their fellows a few seconds earlier, felt inclined to fight back.
They were herded back into their cabins while Grok set a course for the Maron Region. Von Baldur called the other ships in to take a close orbit around the liner, while Goodnight and Riss found the ship’s purser and had all of the safes opened and looted.
M’chel found that she couldn’t stop thinking about that poor, dead, grandiose idiot.
She decided that she was getting old.
• • •
While taking the Normandie certainly was spectacular enough, the profit came from the looting.
Neither the Ganmore family nor any of the other middlemen in the People would offer anything for the Normandie, since it was entirely too much of a standout.
Its small cargo of luxuries, its own storerooms of delights for the passengers, and the passengers’ loot made the endeavor highly profitable, though.
But the passengers were a problem.
“In the old days, we could have sold them as vassals, or slaves,” Goodnight said. But he said it quietly. He’d been a bit subdued since killing the passenger.
Not enough for anyone except Star Risk to notice, but he was subdued.
Advisor Ganmore sold them a small transport, and they crammed the passengers and crew of the Normandie aboard, sent Riss aboard the yacht and Spada to take the liner a couple of jumps back toward the Alliance, and then set it adrift with alarm bells and whistles going off for rescue.
Then they paid the two patrol boats off, who were exactly as expensive as they’d promised, and sent them on their way.
Star Risk waited until M’chel and Spada came back, then decided to linger on for a bit in the Maron Region, waiting to see if anyone had pinned them to the crime and planning what their next move would be.
At least out in the asteroids, among the People, they wouldn’t have to spend quite as much time watching their backs, although Friedich maintained that having the luxury of the Excelsior Hotel was worth the fear.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Grok got in the habit of meeting Advisor Ganmore for drinks now and again, late of an evening. Generally, Jasmine came with him.
&n
bsp; The big alien was proud of having adopted a garb that let him fit in with the People, including a belt knife.
Of course, he was more certain he fit in than anyone else, but no one was likely to tell anyone his size that he was smoking hop.
One night, the three went to a new place, perhaps prompted by Grok saying the tavern they usually met in was entirely too quiet and stodgy, and he was interested in something more representative of what he called the People’s “cultural heritage.”
Ganmore shrugged and took them to a larger, rowdier joint.
They found a table, both Grok and Jasmine picking one that allowed them to have their backs to a wall, and ordered drinks.
Ganmore eyed half a dozen young men who were as loud as a small regiment at a nearby table, as they suddenly broke into a song that seemed to be about the right of the People to go back to their home worlds and take what had been theirs by force. Ganmore shook his head.
“Of course, they never consider that we took it from someone else once, even if it was slugs and grubs.”
“I think someone should stand up for the slugs’ and grubs’ homeland,” Jasmine said. Ganmore laughed wryly.
“Is that possible — I mean, to take back what you call your home worlds, not standing up for slugs and grubs?” Grok asked seriously.
“Of course not,” Ganmore said. “It almost never happens that someone turns their back on the present to chase history, and succeeds.
“So those who sing — and believe — the old songs, or worse yet make pilgrimages to the old worlds, and give themselves a title for doing this, or talk about the palaces they were driven out of, are, in the long run, fools — sentimental, sometimes admirable fools, but fools nonetheless.
“The Alsaoud System, for better or worse, is ours now.”
“There appear to be those who disagree,” Grok said.
“And there are those here … I would imagine like those,” Ganmore nodded at the other table, “who think we should accelerate the taking of Alsaoud. By force, if necessary.
“But that’s absurd. For one thing, we’re outnumbered at present.
“But we have history on our side.
“Their government is about as piskewey as it is possible to get. I doubt it can stand by itself forever.
“Not to mention the People are outbreeding them. Not this generation, nor the next, nor the one after that, but Alsaoud will be ultimately ours.”
“I notice that the People seem to welcome anyone who will favor them,” Jasmine said. “This doesn’t always win friends, if outsiders see you’re welcoming criminals and pirates.”
She had the grace to blush a little.
“Like ourselves,” she admitted.
“No,” Ganmore agreed. “It does not. But it is entirely too easy for a person, or a culture, to think that he who helps me is my friend, and to blazes with what others think. History will tend to resolve things like that … in favor of the survivors.”
“Even if you believe in inevitable historical processes — and I can think of a few men on ancient Earth who did as well,” Grok said, “and were proven wrong — there could well be those on Alsaoud, today, who would be willing to put a great deal of effort and expense into maintaining the status quo.”
That was as close as Grok thought he should come to referring to Cerberus to an outsider. Besides, he was fishing to see if Ganmore knew of them.
Ganmore shrugged.
“Outsiders? Out to feather their own? I have enough faith in my people to think that we shall prevail, in spite of the dislike the Alliance and others have for the People.”
One of the young men at the other table noted Jasmine, who was a great deal prettier than any woman of the People, and made a rude gesture.
Ganmore and the others pretended not to notice.
“What we shall do is take all the support we can get — especially from nonhumans,” Ganmore said, “who obviously have no interest in this system. In time, as we conquer, the Alliance will grudgingly accept us.
“It has not survived as long as it has for refusing to accept change or new blood.”
So, as far as Grok and Jasmine could tell, the People had no knowledge of Cerberus, and certainly no idea of what they intended in their grand scheme.
After a final drink, Ganmore made his farewells and left.
Grok and Jasmine were about to follow when one of the young men made a rather too-loud comment about foreign whores.
Grok grunted.
“My muscles are stiff.”
He got up.
Jasmine put a hand on his arm.
“Ignore them. They’ve been drinking.”
“So have I.”
He went to the other table. The man who’d made the comment about Jasmine was grinning, perhaps waiting to see how foolish Grok would be to start trouble with six armed men, and what he would say.
This was a miscalculation.
Grok didn’t need to swap insults before he fought.
His paw shot out in a backhanded slap against the man’s chest, and the sound of the man’s ribs cracking was very loud.
Instantly, the tavern was silent.
One man came to his feet as the insulter collapsed backward, burbling blood.
Others started up, and Grok kicked the heavy table into their faces.
The second man jumped clear of the tumble and drew his knife.
“Ho, ho, ho,” Grok growled as he pulled his own, oversized blade.
The second man had been in a few fights. He held his knife low, blade parallel with the ground, in his right, his left extended a bit further out as a block.
He kept moving, almost dancing, circling to Grok’s right, blade weaving.
Grok held his huge knife rather carelessly in his left paw — his species was ambidextrous — and stood still, only turning to face the man.
The man was confident, seeing Grok making almost every mistake known, starting with too big a knife — a basic beginner’s error.
He darted in, slashed, and learned that Grok’s fur may have felt silky, but it was fairly decent armor.
The cut didn’t do anything more than slice a few hairs away.
The man recovered quickly, started back to his guard stance.
But not quickly enough as Grok moved.
He not only was about twice the size of a human, but moved with a bit more than twice the speed.
Before the man could jump back, Grok’s curved knife flashed out across the other’s left, open hand.
It cut neatly through the palm, and fingers spun away and blood sprayed.
The man had an instant to mourn his crippling, then Grok turned his knife in midstroke, without recovering, and struck again, higher, stepping inside the man’s guard.
The great knife took the man below the nose, and rather surgically severed the top half of his head.
The man was dead, and didn’t know it.
He spun twice, gorily, and dropped.
The other People were up now, but frozen.
“Anyone else?” Grok asked gently.
No one answered, no one moved, noticing that Grok had drawn his heavy blaster, held it ready.
Jasmine, just now getting to her feet, had a rather slender, long-barreled blaster of her own that had come from nowhere.
The tavern held in a death-hush as the two Star Risk operatives backed out the door.
They trotted away, not waiting to see who boiled out the door after them.
“Well,” Jasmine said, “there’s another place we can’t go back to.”
“Why not?” Grok asked. “We won, didn’t we?”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Star Risk crept, rather nervously, back onto Khazia. They had detected no signs that Nowotny and Cerberus and the Powers Wot Be were specifically after them, but from a distance, who knew for certain?
But their suite at the Excelsior was empty, immaculate and unmonitored, even if the hotel management was a bit nervous about getting paid, given Star Risk�
�s long absence.
But bills were paid current, and champagne was sent up, a little guiltily, and all were happy, floating, as M’chel said, “on a large, pink cloud.”
Next were two steps:
Finding a new target to pirate; and beginning a little counterespionaging against Cerberus.
This second job took priority, and was the hardest, since all of them were known to Nowotny. And unless the scar-faced goon was playing things a lot closer than von Baldur thought, Cerberus still didn’t know that they had regrouped, let alone that they were in the Alsaoud System.
They knew they’d be discovered sooner rather than later and there’d be hell to pay, but tried very hard to keep it later rather than sooner.
They probably shouldn’t have assassinated Held, since that would be the ultimate giveaway, but what was done was done.
Goodnight summoned Jorkens, the lifter driver, and told him they had decided to put him on the payroll full-time, and asked what he made a week.
Jorkens gave Chas a figure which was, of course, inflated, which, of course, Goodnight knew.
Goodnight offered the man twice that, which made Jorkens nervous, as it was intended to do.
Nervous, but in a position where he couldn’t refuse the job.
Nor would he — Goodnight hoped — kill the golden goose by selling them out.
Not that selling out would be that easy, since the only real secret Star Risk had was its identity, which was kept well concealed.
Ostentatiously scattered around the suite were various documents, cards, letterheads, false letters and so forth that Jasmine had spent time churning out. All of them were headed or addressed to that hoary phony, Research Associates, and nothing suggested Star Risk.
Goodnight wanted one simple thing from Jorkens.
“I know that President Flyver, long may he wave, needs to keep track of — hem-hem — dangerous aliens.”
Jorkens nodded, and got more nervous. Anything involving internal security normally makes most citizens of most worlds shaky, since treason is such a handy tool for politicians to use against anyone.
