Prophet of ConFree (The Prophet of ConFree)

by Marshall S. Thomas

  "Yes. We sure don't need this."

  "No. But when they show up, we've got to be ready."

  "My skin crawls just thinking about them," Dragon said.

  "When you're ready to discuss this in depth, call me. We need ideas. Potential solutions."

  "Tenners. I'm on it. I'll let you know."

  "God bless you, Dragon."

  "You too." And he got up and left.

  Δ

  Piracy patrol was not exactly what I was expecting. We were on the Confederate Ship Wasp, one of four cruisers from the battlestar CS Andrion Deep. A Fleetcom expeditionary battlestar is designed to impose vac superiority and effective operational control over an entire star sector. A star cruiser is designed to impose vac superiority and effective operational control over an entire star system and all planets. In our case, "effective operational control" meant cleansing whatever sector we were in of pirates. This was done by cruising through the Gulf while launching hundreds of star probes that would filter through all star traffic looking for unauthorized craft. When they spotted something, we would go into stardrive and react. Sometimes it would not be slavers but sometimes it would.

  The Wasp was luxurious duty to us after Basic and Planet Hell. Those Fleetcom guys really had it aced. Three meals a day, snacks and dox whenever you wanted it, unbelievably comfortable bunks, lounges, recreational and educational material, whatever you wanted. Of course, Doggie kept us busy with calisthenics, working out in the gym, blasting away on the firing range, and endless hours in the holo chambers, working on breaching entry hatches, forcible entry, cleansing corridors, imposing control over a hostile crew, keeping slaves and hostages alive through the battle and, finally, exploiting any surviving slavers for hot information.

  We seldom saw the Andrion Deep. The Wasp and the other three cruisers were all on piracy patrol and widely separated in the Gulf. I never knew where we were – I had no particular need to know. But I knew we were somewhere in the Gulf, either within the claimed vac of one of the major slave states, or out in the deep, wild reaches of the uncontrolled Gulf frontier. Either way, we were subject to attack from anyone else who was out there and stupid enough to try to attack a Fleetcom cruiser.

  There were 250 of us Legion troopers on the Wasp, five squads per CAT – Combat Assault Team – and five CATs in Company 2 of the Ship. This one company was part of the 14th Regiment of the Ninth Legion. The 14th was the Condor Regiment and the Ninth was the Outvac's End. Both were famous historical units that had done great deeds and suffered high casualties for the people of ConFree. Plenty of ghost troopers were watching over us as we carried on their traditions. I wore those colors on my fatigues and I was damned proud of them.

  Δ

  "Attention unidentified starfreighter! You are in violation of galactic shipping regulations and are to be boarded for inspection of your travel and cargo documentation. Unlock your entry hatches! If you resist boarding, you will be boarded forcibly. Warning! Any attempt to eject any passengers or cargo into the vac will be grounds for summary execution. Attention! If you fail to respond to this message, we will presume you are hostile, and we will board you forcibly and seize control of your ship. Attention unidentified starfreighter! Reply to this message immediately or suffer the consequences!"

  One of our probes had spotted the freighter while underway in stardrive. The probe had followed its startrack and penetrated the ship's antimat exhaust, forcing it to exit stardrive. It was a brilliant new technique that our psycho scientists had come up with – and Fleetcom was using it heavily in the piracy patrols.

  The ship was now in normal vac, although temporarily disabled. And the Wasp was now within easy range of the target. We approached it in two assault tugs, designed to close with an enemy ship and seize it. I was in one with Delta and Squad Comet was in the other. The freighter was huge, a titanic conical freight carrier covered with starline shipping containers. The pirates had evidently seized the ship and captured the crew. It was a huge prize for them, worth billions of credits.

  We were all in black armor and blood red faceplates, crowded into the assault portal, poised around the access hatch on one wall, waiting for the word, nine Legion soldiers brimming with adrenalin, bristling with weapons and antennae, twitching with anticipation. Wasps, I thought, just like a swarm of black wasps, closing in on their prey.

  "It's going to be a hot entry. They're not answering, the hatches are locked. Stand back, detonation now."

  A sharp explosion rocked the portal. Our hatch snapped open. Doggie jumped in, vanishing immediately in a plume of greasy dust and firing. We all followed. I landed on the deck in a blinding cloud of dust that vanished immediately as Honey adjusted the view. Doggie and Saka were in front of me. I fired auto xmin over their heads, just to clear the road. We were in the entry portal, with smoking metal parts littering the deck. We advanced into a wide corridor. Honey ID'd several hostiles in armor further into the ship. Then she registered a whole squad of friendlies in armor – Comet, breaking into the ship on the other side.

  "Attention all! This is the ConFree Legion! Stay where you are and do not move! Secure and lock all doors! Attention starjackers! We will kill everyone in armor! Strip off your armor now and put down your weapons! Surrender now and you will not be harmed, but treated in accordance with galactic law. Resist us and die! Repeat, resist and die!"

  "Eight hostiles in armor," Honey informed me. They glowed red on the tacmap.

  "Deck Five," Doggie said. "All right, let's kill some pirates."

  Δ

  "All right, Five, prep tacstar," Doggie said. Smiley was poised behind his Manlink, one knee on the deck, the weapon aimed up ahead. The starjackers were not very imaginative. They had allowed themselves to be trapped between Comet and us. All eight of them were holed up ahead, down a corridor, barricaded inside a cargo hold in armor, wielding SG's.

  "Last chance, subs!" Doggie said. "Surrender or die! You've got five fracs. Comet, we're doing a tacstar." We weren't expecting them to surrender. They knew damned well the only galactic law in these parts was the ConFree Legion.

  Five fracs later Doggie gave the word. "Fire." Smiley fired and a blinding flash and titanic bang and a punishing pressure wave hit me in my armored chest.

  "Deadman!" A cloud of sparkling ash filled the corridor.

  "Stupid bastards." The tacstar had disintegrated them all, along with a goodly portion of the interior of the ship.

  "Some of them have surrendered, Delta," the Comet squad leader announced. "Those that didn't have armor." His squad led in some starjackers they had tracked down in the rest of the ship, considerably the worse for wear, dazed and lost and dirty, hands cuffed behind them.

  "Good," Doggie said. "We need them for intel. They're all yours, Comet. Get them into the tug."

  "We’ve got the freighter captain here, sir," Scout said. An ageing, white-haired mortal stood beside him, suffering from a few cuts and bruises, bleeding through a rough bandage he had wrapped around one hand.

  Doggie snapped open his faceplate. "Captain, your ship is now secure," he said.

  "Secure? Good. We are Captain Janyk Sears. What are its intentions, sir?" the captain asked.

  "Intentions? We've killed most of the starjackers and we are detaining those that surrendered to us. We're sorry about the damage to your ship. But you get your cargo back and if your crew or passengers have any wounds, we'll be happy to look at them. We've accomplished our mission here. We have no further intentions."

  "Our thanks, sir. Our ship's doctor is handling what injuries we do have. It is with the ConFree military?"

  "That's correct. Please tell us what ship this is, and how the pirates boarded you."

  "We're the Moon Maiden from Ardoth, on our way to Galgos in the Gassies with a valuable cargo of rare woods and other general cargo. The pirates were in a small yacht. They sent out an all-ships distress signal. We are required to stop for that. We did so, and they seized our rescue boat and boarded us. Then they di
sabled our ship's ID pulse and took us into stardrive. We don't know what the destination was. But something went wrong with our drive while in vac run red and we had to return to normal vac."

  "We did that, Captain. Please ensure your stardrive is functional before launching. If there are further difficulties, we'll be pleased to assist you."

  "It does not intend to confiscate our ship?"

  "Not at all, Captain. ConFree doesn't do that."

  "We were told ConFree military ships were patrolling the Gulf and they might confiscate our ship."

  "You were told wrong. If we confiscate any ships they will be pirate ships or slaver ships, and those will be returned to the rightful owners – if the rightful owners are still alive."

  "Well. We wish to thank it, sir. We are mighty grateful."

  "We’re here to kill pirates – that's all. You have a good voyage, sir."

  And that was our first action against pirates – the first of many.

  Δ

  "All right, Delta," Doggie said. "We want males of fighting age. Anyone you can find. Kill them if they're armed, otherwise detain." We were walking through hell in our A-suits. It had been a magnificent little town, built of marble and stone, sparkling in the sun. I had seen it from overhead before we hit it, and it looked like a resort for the super-rich, but it wasn't. It was a town built by slavers and pirates on an obscure Gulf frontier planet called Starhaven by an outfit called the Golden Gang, for themselves and their camp followers. Now it was glowing – nothing but ash and ruins and smouldering corpses. We had antimatted the place from low orbit and now we were poking through the scorched edges of town, looking for survivors.

  "Quite a set-up, huh?" Ice asked.

  "Yeah, they say it's been here for years. The message is there is no escape for slavers. If they build a nest, we eradicate the nest. Our combat vids are being integrated into ConFree's proprop message, that's what Doggie says. Echo recovered a lot of slaves – they were in a compound out of town. We're still counting them."

  "This one's alive," Arie said, poking at what looked like a human-shaped chunk of charcoal. He was clearly a slaver – his weapon lay in the dirt by his side.

  Ice shot the burnt man once in the head and he stopped moving. She didn't say a word. Neither did we.

  "Come on, boys and girls, we've got to find some survivors we can use," the Professor said. "There's thousands of slavers here and surely some of them survived. This is wonderful! I can hardly wait to talk with them. Let's look over here." The Prof sometimes puzzled me. He was a little older than the rest of us and he was a perfect gentleman at all times and never seemed to get upset. Everybody liked him. He had been designated the squad info officer for our piracy mission and was very enthusiastic about it.

  "There! There!" Scout said. "In that building with no roof – two of them. Let's see your hands! Now! Hands up or we fire! Get down on the ground! Now, you bastards!" Two sullen-looking young men showed their hands and dropped into the wreckage of the destroyed house.

  "Man, these are slavers or I've never seen one," Doggie said. "Good work, guys."

  Δ

  It was always fun to see the Professor at work. It was amazing how he could get those subhumans talking. We would interrogate pirates on the Wasp in four little rooms we called the talk cubes. As we entered the room the pirate was seated in a chair with a flexible chain around his neck, tightly strapped to the wall behind him. It was always so tight the captive would have trouble breathing. Both hands were also chained tightly to a little table-like ledge that was part of the chair. This time it was one of the two young creeps we had recently captured.

  "Oh, what a shame," the Prof said. "He's so young. Is that chain too tight, young man?" The captive gave a grim nod. The Prof touched a control on the chair ledge and the neck chain loosened. The captive took a deep breath, seemingly exhausted. He had dark hair and a narrow face with brownish skin. I didn't know what race he was.

  "Are those hand chains too tight?" the Prof asked.

  "Yes," the captive whispered.

  "Well, then, we’ll loosen them," Prof smiled. They loosened up and the slaver was able to slightly raise his hands.

  "Do you feel all right? You may call me Professor. Please tell me your name." Another big smile.

  The captive hesitated, then replied. "William."

  "Oh, my goodness," the Prof said, turning to me in distress. "He's lying to me."

  I brushed my shockrod lightly to the captive's face and he screamed and slammed the back of his head against the wall trying to escape the surge of raw electricity from the shockrod. We had the good guy-bad guy routine all set, and I was the bad guy.

  "You're sitting on a brainscan," I informed him. "If you lie to the Professor, you'll hurt his feelings. Don't do that again."

  "Well," the Prof said. "We've started off on the wrong foot here, um – why don’t you tell me your real name."

  "Gary. Gary Chernoval. Gang name Gaga. It's true."

  "And so it is," Prof said, as he scanned the result on the datascreen on the wall above the captive: NO DECEPTION INDICATED.

  "Gary, would you like some dox?"

  Gary stared at the Prof in wonder, then replied. "Sure."

  "Prophet, can you get us some dox?"

  "Certainly." I brought in two cups and popped the top for the captive. He brought the brew carefully to his lips as the Prof loosened the chains enough to permit it.

  "Now, Gary, here's what we’ll do," the Prof said. "I want to know all about your history with the Golden Gang, from the earliest days up to the present. I want to know names, dates, events, raids, places, strategy and tactics, sources of information, where your slaves go, communications methods, ships used and starjacked – in short, everything you know. We've got lots of time. If your information proves useful, if you cooperate fully, you will stay alive, and we may even release you. What do you say?"

  "All right," he said. "I can do that."

  "Just one thing. If you leave out anything important, I will find out about it. And some of the questions I will ask you are questions to which I already know the answers. Do you know what will happen to you if you attempt to deceive me?"'

  Gaga shook his head no.

  "Tell him," the Prof asked me.

  "I'll cut off little pieces of you but keep you alive while I toast you with electricity," I said. "I'll cut off your ears. I'll cut off your fingers. I'll cut off your balls. I'll cut off your arms. I'll skin you alive until you beg for death. Then I’ll toss your body into the vac."

  "I'd hate to see him do that to you," the Prof said. "You strike me as a good boy who has just gone astray. You've had bad companions. Let's talk. I have a long list of questions that need answers. Cooperate with me, and I promise you will not regret it. Would you like something to eat? Yes? Prophet, get us something to eat, and something for yourself as well. Gary is going to cooperate. There's no need to threaten him."

  Δ

  The interrogation of Gary Chernoval must have been going quite well because the Prof seemed fascinated with what this particular creep had to say. The rapport between them seemed so warm that I really had nothing to do in my bad guy role except to fetch dox on occasion. On the third day of the interrogation, I was starting to doze off when I became aware of a slight difference in the Professor's demeanor. It was so subtle that I was unsure what it was, but I could tell something had changed.

  "So," Prof said. "Tell me about the Brothers in Blood. This was just before you moved to the Golden Gang, correct?"

  "Yes sir. They operated from Drusweaven. That's in the Outmark border sector, an independent world. It was always a wild, lawless place and they welcomed anyone who had money to spend. So the Brothers set up shop there, kept it very secret and raided Gassies worlds for slaves, then sold 'em on Drusweaven. We were very successful."

  "Gassies worlds, you say."

  "Yes sir. We stuck pretty close to the border sector because nobody bothered us there. It was chaos by then. T
he System was long gone, and we were the only law and order, if you get what I mean, sir."

  "Yes, I get it. Did you ever venture into the Outvac?"

  "Um, well, on occasion we would hit a frontier world or two if we figured there was little chance of an immediate ConFree response. We didn't want to fool with ConFree, no sir, but some of those little frontier worlds were quite tempting."

  "Hmm. What's the furthest you went into the Outvac?" I knew the Prof pretty well by then. He had his sleeves rolled partly up, and I noticed in surprise that the Prof's little arm hairs were rising up like the fur on a startled cat. The Professor was not even looking at the captive. What the hell?

  "Oh, um, I guess Veda was the furthest we went," Gaga said. "Yeah, that was scary all right. But we did the raid and hightailed it out of there…" The Professor leaped to his feet and came down gasping with a gleaming boot knife that he slammed right into Gaga's left hand, pinning it to the table. The captive screamed as a fountain of blood squirted out of his hand and the neck chain slammed his head against the wall. The Prof continued grinding the knife into Gaga's hand, standing over the captive and glaring at him. The Prof's face was pale and twisted, and his eyes were gleaming with hatred.

  "The name of the ship." He almost whispered it. "The name of the ship you used for cover, to get landing rights." A couple of troopers had opened the door, investigating the screams. I motioned them away, and they cautiously closed the door.

  "It – it – it was the Ringgold," our prisoner gasped.

  "The Ringgold! You BASTARD! And what did you do with your captives, you subhuman beast? WHAT DID YOU DO WITH YOUR CAPTIVES? ANSWER or I'll slice out your eyes!" The Prof yanked the knife from the captive's hand, spraying blood, and poised the bloody blade before the prisoner's eyes.

  "I – I – we brought them to the – to Drusweaven." Gaga was terrified.

  "Professor," I said. "Professor, please. Let's continue this later. Let me bandage his hand. He's losing blood. We can continue later. Come on." I guided the Prof out of the cube. He was shattered, his face twitching. Troopers were standing outside watching us. I took him into an empty cube and closed the door. He collapsed into a chair. He was crying, sobbing, his shoulders trembling.