Solomon Family Warriors II

by Robert H. Cherny

  Sam and Brownie had not been on the ground an hour before the ceremony started. Justine and a delegation from the satellite settlement rode in on horseback as soon as they were notified. The day was about as beautiful a day for an outdoor wedding as could be hoped for. As to the ceremony, they made it up as they went along, but in the end they were pronounced man and wife and kissed in front of everyone. As Greg said many times, little else mattered.

  Myra left to go shopping and to see if the plan to “steal” Greg’s ship had worked.

  In order to minimize the risk to the settlers from unstable cargoes in the atmosphere, the plan for the cargo ship was to unload and marshal the cargo in the decoy area on the asteroid. Then, after inventory was complete, they would ferry the materials going to the planet’s surface from there. Once the materials were properly sorted, repairs and refueling could be accomplished. Greg was passing over the decoy area when he observed significantly more ships parked on that asteroid than had been there when he left. He called Blondie and Katherine to report with an explanation.

  “We netted a few fish while you were gone,” Blondie giggled.

  “Blondie’s aim with her laser is better than mine,” Katherine smiled.

  “These guys keep coming in. They’d hear the beacon, and head right for the 86. Of course, six of what you think are ships are wood and fabric mock ups. Doug built them. We hauled them out here and assembled them,” Blondie said.

  “They see the ships, but their monitors don’t, and they get confused. While they’re trying to figure it out we sneak up behind them.” Katherine added.

  “We talk to them like Myra did, and when they shoot up one of the decoys we punch a hole in their ship at close range. Works every time.” Blondie said.

  “How many ships have you taken?” Greg asked.

  “Four.” Blondie answered.

  “How many pilots survived?”

  “None.” Katherine answered.

  Greg stared at the ships arrayed in front of him. “Four scouts, each equipped for a crew of two. We have all this hardware and no people to run it. It won’t do us much good to have gear we can’t use.”

  “What do you propose?” Blondie asked.

  “Flight school?” Katherine suggested.

  “I think so,” Greg replied. “We need to ask Justine how many of her people can be trained to pilot our new acquisitions.”

  “We should look at what our inventory is and determine what we need,” Avi suggested.

  “Let’s do this in order of arrival,” Greg suggested. “This ship is mine and I can crew it alone, but it is designed for two. Each of you has shuttle, but they won’t do us much good in a fight.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Avi said, “but clearly Katherine and Blondie would be better used in warships.”

  Greg thought out loud. “There is no way Sam and Brownie can maintain this fleet. They will need trained help. That will take time. Let’s hold off dealing with maintenance. Myra has her ship. We can leave Monique and Angelina together in the destroyer or split them. Properly staffed the destroyer holds nine. The cargo ship needs two and the 86 we captured needs two. Of the thirteen we need to properly staff those three ships, we have two. Helen is dealing with the tug. We have five damaged ships which, once repaired, will require ten crew. With the two of you, that leaves eight. To properly staff the ships we currently have in inventory, we need to train two dozen flight crew personnel.”

  “Tall order,” Avi said, “but not impossible. We start flight school on the ground, and then each of our existing pilots takes a student everywhere they go. It may take us a year or two, but we can do it. Justine had fifty adult women with her and a dozen or so teenagers who should learn quickly. Once they become adults, they get ships of their own.”

  “What about recruiting new settlers as they arrive?” Greg asked.

  “We don’t have time. We need to start now,” Avi said. “I’ll talk to Justine and get this moving.”

  Justine was nervous when Avi showed up unannounced. “Has one of my girls stepped out of line?”

  “Not hardly,” Avi said. “I am about to ask you to do something that may be difficult for you to do, but I can’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

  “Fire away.”

  “I need to train a couple dozen of your people to fly our warships.”

  “Is that it?”

  “I need to train another dozen to maintain our fleet.”

  “For your flight crews, would you like mother and daughter pairs?”

  The question caught Avi completely by surprise. “I never thought of that. I don’t know. It might work. It makes some sense. They certainly know and trust each other. I guess. I don’t see why not.”

  “How about sisters?”

  “What if one gets killed?”

  “Better they fly together. If one of a pair is killed, the survivor will be devastated. Better, if they die, for them to die together and not leave one half behind.”

  “Yes, I guess. If you think that’s a good idea.”

  “Avi, for all your combat experience, you are naïve. You and your friends have rescued us from a living hell. More than that, you have rescued us from death by starvation. We feared watching powerlessly as one by one our friends died in our midst. We are eternally in your debt. Learning to fly and fight is probably the greatest opportunity anyone has thought of for us to repay our debt. We are willing to work to earn our place on this glorious planet. We have ideas, let me show you one way we wanted to return your gift.”

  Justine led Avi out to a meadow where a dozen naked women were posing in front of a camera. Justine pointed and said, “Pornography is one of the most profitable businesses ever known. We are preparing a series of pornographic materials that look like the normal stuff you see everywhere, but are high quality lessons in the proper ways a man should treat a woman. By having naked women narrating and taking the parts of the men, men will watch. We hope that as they watch they will learn why what the Swordsmen teach in their male dominated culture is wrong. We hope that we can convert the men to understand the women’s revolution. Others have used pornography as propaganda before. This is not a new idea. Does this make sense to you?”

  “Part of it does, but I would think your women would object to being seen as sex objects.”

  “My dear Avi, most of us have been prostitutes our whole lives. I started when I was twelve. This is fun compared to some of the things we’ve had to do at the hands of our men.”

  At that moment two of the women who had been trying to hold an awkward pose fell into the grass amid gales of laughter.

  “This is something we know how to do. Sex has been our business for all of our adult lives. Any of the women who are capable will be thrilled to become pilots and service technicians, but for now, we will do this and make lots of money.”

  The community reaction after viewing one of Justine’s projects was mixed. While everyone recognized the need to support the economy, there were several who were uncomfortable with having the women used in this manner. Justine explained to them as she had explained to Avi why this was not as exploitative as it seemed. She carefully and gently explained what life had been like before and how being naked on a video shoot was simply not a big deal to any of these women. Only after Justine assured everyone that no one would be hurt, no one would be forced to do anything they did not want to do, no men would participate, and no children would be used, did the community agree to the export of the materials.

  One group who opposed the export of the materials did so for a different reason than the others. They argued that there was no sense in irritating a giant. By distributing the materials Justine and her group were producing they would so anger the Swordsmen that the attack would come sooner rather than later. They were putting themselves and the rest of the community at greater risk than they had by publishing Mark’s book. They finally agreed that the need for revenue was greater than the risk so the distribution of the materi
als was authorized by general vote of the population.

  Not wanting to wait for Myra to return, Avi set off in her P I ship with the latest load of materials for sale. Greg had finished “Pirate Interdiction II”. Mark had a second book done. The community’s entire creative energies when not spent farming or developing infrastructure were devoted to writing, producing, scoring and editing some of the most high class pornography any of them had ever seen. Those who had been skeptical in the beginning had been won over. Many of them were especially proud of the theme music and had prepared recordings to be sold separately.

  While energies were high and spirits soared, everyone knew that sooner or later, the Swordsmen would come for them, and the battle would be intense.

  HOMESTEAD - CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE SPACE FORCE BROUGHT an entire battle group to the pirate supply depot that had originally been a metals mine in response to the courier missile Myra had sent on their hurried departure after their raid. The Swordsmen who occupied it retreated as soon as they realized who was approaching. Even if they had been ready to tangle with the Federation, the battle group had them significantly out-gunned. The Federation Space Force Interstellar Logistics Command commandeered the depot and set up a garrisoned frontier trading post. Once having established the operation of the depot, the Federation sold it to a company owned by the brother of the Federation’s vice president.

  Greg’s P I ship materialized from hyper drive near Homestead’s decoy site on its own and politely identified itself while it waited for instructions.

  Homestead’s flight school turned out to be a brilliant move. Highly motivated, the women were excellent students. Within a year, all the ships were staffed. Sam and Brownie trained maintenance personnel who could fly as well as fix the ships. When the time came for the big battle they all knew was looming ahead, most of the maintenance personnel would take their places on their ships either as flight engineers or as fire control officers.

  Avi transferred all of Greg’s money to a banker who delighted in the fact that the money would be used to oppose the Swordsmen. She started incorporation proceedings to have Homestead incorporated under Federation commerce and banking rules. This would allow them to process financial transactions without having to go through the Rescue League. Not long after Avi’s return to Homestead from the Central System, Greg and Avi became the proud parents of a girl who they named Rachel. Rachel was as much at home in weightlessness as she was on the ground. Clearly her mother’s daughter, she was active, intelligent, and rambunctious with an eye for mischief. Even Blondie laughed when some of Rachel’s stunts were at her expense.

  The second edition of “Pirate Interdiction” earned enough money that Greg was able to reimburse the insurance company for his cargo ship and the title was quietly transferred. Before long, the titles to the two “missing” shuttles were also transferred. The shuttles legally became the property of their pilots and the Homestead Corporation.

  Scout ships continued to stumble into the system. Most of the scouts were independent pirates, freebooters or lightly armed free-lance explorers in search of a quick fortune. Some surrendered peacefully when challenged. Some needed convincing. Helen’s hand-to-hand combat training became an important part of the “recruitment” process. If Helen had ever doubted the wisdom of teaching everyone unarmed combat techniques, the success of the flight crews with boarding and capturing wayward ships dispelled any concerns she might have had. Thanks in part to Helen’s training, killing one of the intercepted pilots became a rare occurrence. Ships wandered into the system so frequently that capturing them became almost routine.

  One such confrontation involved one of Greg’s old enemies. Four crews in the earliest stages of their flight training were practicing attack formation maneuvers when a pirate destroyer appeared at the edge of the system and homed in on the cargo ship’s beacon.

  Greg was in his P I ship watching the exercise from the surface of a nearby asteroid. Avi was on Greg’s cargo ship with another group of students teaching them how to work in weightlessness. Greg recognized the ship’s transponder code and called Avi. “Take a look in Sector Twelve. Who do you think that is?”

  “I’d swear that’s Vladimir Andropov, but where’s the rest of his fleet?”

  “I thought the same thing. Shall we let Justine handle this?”

  “We should stay out of sight, but not too far away.”

  “Roger that!”

  The destroyer approached the small freighter and circled it with its weapons pods extended. The pilot clearly suspected a trap. He was right, of course, but it was already too late.

  A flight of four small scouts which included two 86’s appeared from behind a nearby asteroid and surrounded the destroyer. They did not activate their targeting radar. Under normal conditions, the destroyer probably could have taken the four scouts in an even battle, but a quick visual inspection revealed that the destroyer was heavily damaged.

  “Unknown vessel, you have entered a restricted system. You are ordered to stand down to be boarded.” Justine recited the legal protocol.

  “Brave talk for a woman in an 86,” a man’s voice replied. “Do you know who I am?”

  “You are an intruder in a restricted system. Under Federation guidelines, you are to stand down and accept representatives of the local security patrol to negotiate your surrender.”

  “I am not surrendering to a woman in a single 86.”

  “There are four of us. I am at your twelve, we have one at your three, your six and your nine. Would you care to continue this conversation or must we take you by force?” The four small ships extended their weapons pods. While opening fire could not legally be justified at this point, tensions had clearly escalated.

  “Justine,” Greg said. “Let me take it from here.” He moved his ship to where it could be detected and its transponders verified. “You have done this exactly correctly. Stay on position until I tell you otherwise.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Hello, Vladimir. It has been a long time.”

  “Gregor? I thought you were dead.” He pronounced it “Graig-or-r”.

  “I can’t imagine where you got that idea!”

  “I knew that message was bogus.” He laughed. “Davidson bought it hook line and sinker.” He laughed again and then coughed. “What about LaMarche?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Good riddance.”

  “Vladimir, let’s talk about the terms of your surrender.”

  “Gregor, what makes you think I am willing to surrender?”

  “You are in my missile range and I have my old P I ship.”

  “Gregor, in the old days you would have killed me already. Have you gone soft?”

  “Perhaps, but I am capable of killing you now.”

  “That is not necessary. What terms do you offer me for my surrender?”

  “You and your crew will be transported to the planet’s surface. Depending on your skills and abilities, you will probably be given a plot of land and some farm animals. You will be expected to operate this farm as if it is your own because it will be. You will be free to move about the planet as you wish, but you will not be able to leave the planet.”

  “What if I don’t want to farm?”

  “We will find something else productive for you to do.”

  “I have wounded on board. How will they be treated?”

  “They will be tended to as best we can with our limited facilities. It’s not as good as hospitals on Earth, but we do have doctors and they will do whatever they can for your crew.”

  “What about court trials and prisons?”

  “Vladimir, you and I know your history, but if you don’t tell anyone I won’t. As long as you are a contributing member of the community, no one will care who you are or what you did.”

  “You won’t turn me over to the Federation?”

  “No.”

  “My crew and myself, we will be safe?”

  “You will be s
afe from us. I cannot promise any of us will be safe from the Swordsmen. We have reason to believe that we will have to fight them.”

  “Are you expecting me and my crew to help you defend yourselves against the Swordsmen?”

  “Yes.”

  “You got rocks in your head? You plan to fight the Swordsmen?”

  “If they attack us.”

  “Gregor, we need to talk. We accept and surrender even if you got rocks in your head.”

  “Please dock with the cargo ship. When you enter the cargo ship, your weapons will be confiscated. Those of your crew needing immediate medical attention will be transported to the surface for treatment. The remainder will be allowed to return to your ship under guard to remove personal items. As soon as transport can be arranged, they will be transported to the surface for settlement. Your small weapons will be returned to you once you arrive at your final destination.”

  “Gregor, after my crew has left for the surface, I would like to remain behind on the cargo ship. We have much to discuss.”

  “Vladimir, we have another ship that is more comfortable. Once your crew has departed I will have one of the ships currently guarding you transport you to it.”

  “That would be acceptable.”

  Greg and Avi greeted Vladimir as he entered the air lock on Greg’s cargo ship. They were shocked by what they saw as he approached them.

  “Request permission to come aboard, sir.”

  Vladimir’s right arm was gone below the elbow. The bandages were stained with red. He had bandages along one leg and across his torso. An ugly burn mark stood out above his right ear.

  “Permission granted.”

  “You should have gone to the surface to see the doctors,” Avi exclaimed.