The Scoundrel Worlds: Book Two of the Star Risk Series

by Chris Bunch

  “I really won’t be able to tell you much,” Givoi said. “I was just a lowly member … what they called a believer.”

  “Sit down,” M’chel said, in a friendly voice, indicating one of the two chairs in the room. Givoi obeyed.

  “Why did you become a member of the Masked Ones?” Grok asked, truly curious.

  Givoi was silent for a time, then reluctantly said, “I’ve always been a patriot, believing in my system, but that men are weak, and should be ruled by a stronger man.”

  “Who, for the Masked Ones, would be …?” Riss asked.

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t told that sort of thing. None of us on my level were. Orders came from the Council, and we never saw any of them or heard from them directly, either. Orders came to our cell leaders.”

  “Could the Council have been one man … or woman?”

  “No,” Givoi said. He stopped himself, thought. “Well, I can’t say for certain, but I can’t believe that.”

  “But you don’t know,” Riss said. “So you joined the Masked Ones just out of your ideals?”

  She stared straight into Givoi’s eyes. He started to answer, then stopped.

  “No,” he said, looking down. “Or, rather, that was just one of my reasons.”

  Riss waited.

  “When you’re a nobody … like I was … I guess, like I am, you want to have some kind of power. I wasn’t anything but a clerk in a big grocery, and so, when a friend of mine started talking about the Masked Ones, well, that was something that called out to me.

  “To have a secret, to know that you, and your friends, can be out there, on the streets, actually trying to change things, trying to make a better society … that was like nothing else I’d felt.”

  “You weren’t married, or with a partner?” Grok asked.

  Givoi shook his head. “I’ve never had the time for women.”

  “Tell me about the structure of the Masked Ones.”

  Givoi needed frequent prodding, but talked. The Masked Ones were organized into operating cells. Some of these cells had a common headquarters, but the members of one cell wouldn’t know someone from another cell except by face.

  “They said it was good for our morale to get together, just before an operation, so we wouldn’t feel alone. They were right.”

  Members would get instructions about the next operation at these meetings, or directly by com in the event of a sudden crisis. They would be told what to do, and the extent of violence they were permitted.

  “After a year,” Givoi said proudly, “they trusted me with a gun. Although,” and his voice showed disappointment, “I was never ordered to use it. But I carried it on half a dozen of our operations, in the event of an emergency.”

  “You always backed the Universalists,” Riss said.

  “Almost always.”

  “You said you were patriotic. But why would you support the Universalists, since Premier Ladier always talked about peace, and now he’s been proven to be in league with Torguth.”

  “That’s a lie! The media made all that up!”

  “Calm down,” M’chel said. “What goals did you Masked Ones have? You couldn’t think that your whole lives would be spent beating people up.”

  “Of course not,” Givoi said. “Eventually, we were told, we’d have a chance to reach real power. We weren’t told exactly how that’d happen. I thought maybe we’d bore from within, take over the Universalists, and then seize the government. But …”

  “But what?” Riss asked.

  “It just seemed to go on, always the same, for the five years I was a member. I got arrested twice, and that cost me my job, and I lived on the dole, plus what my cell leader would give me to help with my expenses.

  “Then an aunt of mine died, and left me this store, and an apartment down the street, and I thought maybe it was time for me to leave Tuletia anyway. Really, I can’t tell you what you seem to be looking for.”

  “What about the names of your cell leader, anybody else who might know more than you do?” Riss asked.

  “I couldn’t betray them! That’d be …” Givoi broke off, staring at Grok. “What are you doing?”

  The alien had taken a kit from his pouch, and took out a airspray syringe, an ampoule, a rubber tie-off, and a sterile towel in a package. He spread the towel out and clicked the ampoule into the syringe.

  “This,” Grok said, “is something that’ll help you talk to us.”

  “No,” Givoi said, shaking his head from side to side. “No. I can’t stand injections.”

  “You aren’t going to be consulted.”

  “You can’t make me take truth serum!”

  “Actually,” Riss said, feeling a little unclean, “this isn’t truth serum. I’m not sure there is anything like that. You might call this babble juice. You’ll just talk about the closest secrets you’ve got. If one of them happens to be that you used to sleep with your mother … well, that’ll come out. Then I’ll be prodding you to talk about certain things. Eventually, we’ll find out what we need to know.”

  “You don’t happen to have a weak heart, do you?” Grok asked. “Or a tendency to nervousness that might lead to a breakdown?”

  Givoi looked about wildly for an exit, but there was none.

  “Now,” Riss said, in her most soothing voice, “if you’ll just roll up your sleeve …”

  “No! No! I can’t!” Givoi’s voice was rising in pitch. “I remember someone. Someone big. Someone important.”

  “Ah?”

  “His name is Juda Abiezer, and he started as a believer, just like me. But he was good, always ready for a brawl, and he was made a cell leader, and then an overleader.”

  “How do you know all this?” Riss asked. “I thought you didn’t know anything about your leaders.”

  “I don’t … I didn’t,” Givoi said. “But Abiezer was always ready to talk to us believers, and even buy us a glass of wine every now and then, and never behaved like he was better than us. He was a real leader, somebody who was in the trenches, but you always knew he was in charge, and we’d follow him anywhere.

  “He was … is … the bravest of us all. A big man, with a scarred face that some damned anarchist gave him. But it never slowed him down. He’s big. He knows the leaders. He could help you with what you want to know, things I don’t.”

  “Why are you willing to betray him to us?”

  “Because … because he’s just barely a Masked One now. He got as tired as some of the rest of us of just beating up people carrying signs, or firebombing some store for some reason we never got told about, and wanted us to start moving on Parliament, to start either getting deputies on our side, or else neutralizing them.

  “The Council, I heard, reprimanded him two or three times, but he wouldn’t shut up. I think they were afraid of him. And so one day he vanished. We were told that he was sent on a special mission, to where his talents would be turned loose.

  “He was sent to the Belfort System, to break up the damned Torguth supporters, traitors and secret agents. He now heads a more or less aboveground organization he’s calling the Patriot League. I’ve seen things on the holos about the Patriot League, and seen him. That’s where he is now.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  “I assume,” Grok said, “that we should be considering a visit to the Belfort Worlds, to interview this Abiezer.”

  “I don’t think we’ll get much from interplanetary com,” Riss said. “Not to mention I’d bet that anything going to the Belfort Worlds has an automatic bug on it, setting off alarms when it comes to hearing things like ‘Masked Ones,’ ‘Torguth,’ ‘Council,’ and things like that.”

  “I, for one,” Friedrich said, “would welcome a chance to visit the Belfort Worlds, especially since nothing in particular appears to be happening here on Montrois.”

  “I, also,” King said. “It would give us a chance to determine whose propaganda is the most dishonest — Torguth saying its poor immigrants are being massacred, or Da
mpier’s saying the other way around.”

  “So we’re going to jaunt on out to the Belfort Worlds, find thisyere Juda Abiezer, who’ll be more than willing to sing about the Masked Ones, when M’chel blinks her beautiful greens at him,” Chas Goodnight said. “Right.”

  “It does sound a bit unlikely,” Jasmine King said.

  “So let us consider the options,” Grok said. “We can kidnap and beat what we want out of him.”

  “The beating is not a problem,” von Baldur said. “The kidnapping of someone running a paramilitary order sticks in my craw a bit. It might prove a little difficult.”

  “Or, dare I say the words, frigging impossible?” Goodnight said.

  “We could go to him, and ask him to help us.”

  “Even more damned unlikely,” Goodnight said. “First, he’s some sort of muckety with the Masked Ones. Assuming L’Pellerin is their head, and assuming that he’s the double agent who’s trying to sell Dampier — or the Belfort Worlds, at the very least — down the river, that won’t sit well, by which I mean believably, with Abiezer. Dreams tend to die hard, particularly for a fanatic.”

  “Friendly persuasion doesn’t sound like it would work,” von Baldur agreed.

  Riss had been listening, shaking her head sadly. “And I thought I worked with a pack of scoundrels,” she said. “You four ought to start teaching church school.”

  “Obviously, you have an idea,” von Baldur said.

  “Obviously, I do,” Riss said. “I remember reading an old book once, talking about the problems early medicine had, and one of the worst was treating a patient with what they were sick with in the first place. For instance, if you banged your head up, and had internal bleeding, they’d bleed you more. Or they might give you a vaccine that, in theory, was a minor version of whatever disease was killing you.”

  “Quite barbaric,” Grok agreed.

  “That’s me,” Riss said. “A true barbarian. Jasmine, how fast do you think a couple of cargo containers could be schlepped here from your friend Asamya?”

  “Depends on what you need,” Jasmine said. “If it’s nothing out of the ordinary, and we pay for a rush, maybe an E-week, on the outside.”

  M’chel explained her plan. King looked at her in a bit of shock, Grok nodding in agreement and von Baldur stroking his chin, thinking.

  “I shall be damned,” Goodnight said. “I didn’t think you were capable of that kind of scumbucketry.”

  “Hey,” Riss said. “When you go to do a job, you do a job.”

  FORTY-NINE

  “Has the jury reached a verdict?”

  “We have, Your Grace.”

  “Hyla Adrianopole, please stand.”

  “How do you find the defendant, Hyla Adrianopole, of the first charge, of premeditated murder?”

  “Not guilty, Your Grace.”

  The other not-guilties weren’t heard as the courtroom went into pandemonium.

  • • •

  “I don’t like this at all,” Reynard grumbled.

  “Why not?” von Baldur asked. “I did not think you cared much about this Adrianopole one way or another.”

  “I don’t,” Reynard said. “But now, with her free, the Pacifist won’t be running the letters between her and Ladier, which I was counting on to give me the edge in the election.

  “Now, nothing. Poof. I had an aide check. Bernt Shiprite has evidently used the letters as blackmail to get back in the good graces of the Universalists. There are currently no plans for them to appear anywhere. Damnation!”

  Von Baldur smiled sympathetically, made his excuses, and blanked the com. He immediately dialed another number. “Fra Diavolo, please.”

  The secretary recognized him.

  “One moment.”

  Diavolo’s face appeared onscreen.

  “Yes, Mr. von Baldur?”

  “How would you like some interesting material for your pamphlets?”

  • • •

  “What is this Unwritten Law that the media says is the real reason Adrianopole was acquitted?” Grok asked.

  “Generally,” M’chel Riss said, “it’s the right of a husband or lover to murder his partner if he catches her in bed with somebody else. Males only need apply. It seems to be different here on Montrois.”

  “How barbaric. There should never be laws beyond the law,” Grok said. He reached across the dinner table, speared another soya steak, and inhaled it. Goodnight, chewing on his second, very bloody chunk of real meat, winced.

  “I don’t know,” Riss said. “It’s nice to find a place somewhere where women get a few extra licks.”

  Grok rumbled. “That settles it,” he said. “I have not been certain of my intents on your proposed visitation of the Belfort Worlds, due to my extreme recognizability, if there is such a word.”

  “There is now,” King said.

  “I shall now leave Jasmine here to man the fort. I shall go to Belfort with you other three, and remain low, as I think the saying is. In the event of any excitement, I shall be delighted to participate.

  “I feel confused, and there is nothing like a bit of bloodshed to clear the air.”

  FIFTY

  It was easy to see why the Belfort Worlds were so high on the Interplanetary Lust List: there were four inhabitable planets. One was perfect for mining light minerals; two others, for heavy.

  The second planet from the sun was the closest to E-normal, and the most heavily settled, with a population of about forty million. There were only a handful of cities, the biggest, the space-seaport of Lavre, with a population of about a million. The rest of the people were in scattered hamlets, farming in the old-fashioned style of people living in villages and going out to their holdings to work.

  The four Star Risk operatives had taken their own yacht to Belfort II, Goodnight having suggested they might need to get out of town fast, and wouldn’t want to be dependent on passenger manifests and such time-consuming nonsense.

  Von Baldur watched the screens as the pilots brought the ship in on an old-fashioned braking orbit, which gave them a chance to look at this world.

  “Nice,” he said. “It looks most peaceful.”

  “Very agrarian,” Grok agreed.

  “I would go insane here within a week,” von Baldur said.

  “Now, Friedrich,” Riss said. “You’re putting down the virtues of long walks in the dusk, quiet fishing on a stream, perhaps a game of ball on the village green.”

  “I would rot,” von Baldur said flatly. “Or kill myself just to find something interesting.”

  “Enough piff-paff,” Goodnight said. “We should be discussing how we’re going to find Juda Abiezer.”

  “Something tells me,” Riss said, “he won’t be difficult to find if he’s masquerading under the name of the Patriot League.”

  He wasn’t.

  • • •

  They had their ship parked on the far side of the field, next to the cargo ship from Asamya, and told the crew to take some time off but listen for their recall beeper.

  Von Baldur, Grok, and Goodnight waited while Riss hired a lifter and flew out into Lavre.

  Goodnight wanted to come along, for security, but M’chel withered him with a glare and suggested there was never a time when a Marine needed back cover from a goddamned soldier, no matter how modified. She grudgingly agreed to keep an open com link between the ship and the lifter.

  A river ran through the city, which had been laid out in a comfortable sprawl, with broad avenues like Montrois. Business districts were built in cells, with residential areas between them.

  “What a charming, bucolic little burg,” Goodnight said over the com. “Hey. There’s a cop. Go ask him.”

  That officer claimed not to know anything. Riss went on.

  “I should’ve known better,” Goodnight said. ‘Of course he wouldn’t know. Did you note the slight drool from one side of his mouth?”

  “Shut up, Chas,” M’chel said. “I’m trying to fly … ah-hah. I’ll
try this pair of coppers.”

  She waved their lifter down, went over, and came back a few moments later, grinning. “Pay dirt,” she said. “The driver is a member, and told me I ought to join, to keep Belfort Dampierian if I valued my life and those of my children. She grimaced. “What is it about these thugs? Every woman is assumed to be a baby factory?”

  • • •

  Juda Abiezer’s nose had been broken and reconstructed so many times that the surgeons on the last break evidently decided to leave his face matching the city’s sprawl. One eyebrow drooped a little, and a scar ran straight up the middle of his veined forehead to disappear in his shaggy hairline. The man looked in his late forties, going on sixty. He was heavily built, and moved carefully and walked with a limp. Evidently Givoi hadn’t been exaggerating when he said Abiezer was always ready for a brawl.

  Riss hid a grin, remembering what one of her hand-to-hand combat instructors had told her years ago, when she admired somebody else on the committee who looked equally broken up.

  “Wrong, young lieutenant. The guy you ought to respect is the one who gave him those scars.”

  The Patriot League might not have had any signs, but it had been easy to pick out — a low brick building painted with Dampier’s national colors that had paired sentries walking around it. There was open land on three sides of the building, which made it easy to defend. The parked lifters were all commercial, fitted with seats, except one, which was a lim about fifteen years old.

  The male secretary was less interested in Riss’s false ID and her equally false explanation of why she was here, claiming to be a political writer from another system, than in her neckline.

  She was searched, ineffectually. The secretary and a summoned matron-looking woman didn’t find any of Riss’s small arsenal, nor the two microphones she had hidden.

  Juda Abiezer fawned over her, saying that he was delighted that his cause had attracted attention on other worlds, and so on and so forth.

  At least his office was huge, big enough for Riss to get completely airborne and kick Abiezer’s testicles up around his earlobes if he got cute. But while Abiezer leered, he stayed on the other side of his immense steel desk, big enough to land a starship on.