Conorado laughed. He had almost blurted out what he was really thinking: that he couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather take a tour of the ship with than Jennifer Lenfen. But he would never embarrass a woman like Jennifer. Instead he said, “I have nothing else on my schedule for tomorrow that can’t be moved to another day. I’ll wear my utilities.”
Conorado whistled softly as he walked back to his stateroom. This trip to perdition—or whatever fate awaited him back on Earth—was not turning out to be half as bad as he’d anticipated.
A car was waiting about a hundred meters up the alley.
“Who are you?” the man asked as he shoved Marta along.
“My name is Conorado and I am the wife of a Confederation Marine officer,” she answered. “And who are you?”
“Ah?” the man responded. “That is excellent! Excellent!” He pushed her toward the car but did not give his own name. The foul stink of the vehicle’s internal combustion engine brought tears to Marta’s eyes and she began to cough. The driver shoved open the rear door from inside. From the main street behind them several men appeared, running, weapons drawn.
“Halt or we shoot!” one yelled in Norse.
“You shoot, I kill the woman! She is the wife of a Confederation Marine officer,” the big man yelled back. Holding Marta firmly by the hair, he twisted her around so the policemen could see her face before he roughly shoved her into the back of the car. He slid in beside her. Looking out the back window, Marta saw the police hesitate for a moment and then run quickly back out into the main street. The driver gunned the engine, and they were off down the alleyway before the doors were fully closed.
“Did you get him?” the driver asked as she guided the vehicle out of the alley into another main thoroughfare and directly into a heavy stream of traffic. Despite the squealing of brakes and desperate maneuvering of the other drivers, she weaved in and out of the traffic expertly. She saw an opening and raced for it, pressing her passengers into the backseat as the car accelerated.
“I got him, but he wasn’t alone. There were people with him.”
“Goddamnit, Bengt! Did they recognize you?”
“No. I wore the mask.”
“Who’s the woman?”
It was clear to Marta that he’d not planned to take a hostage after whatever it was he’d done. He just snatched the first vulnerable person he’d seen on the street. “I am Marta Conorado, wife of Captain Lewis Conorado, Confederation Marine Corps!” she shouted over the roar of the car’s laboring engine. “It’s just my luck,” she added in Norse, “to be kidnapped by a couple of morons who can’t even pull off a—a—job without fucking it up!”
“Oh?” the man called Bengt responded as he shoved the gun into her ribs and fired.
Jennifer Lenfen was surprised so many of the passengers showed up for her tour of the Cambria. All five of the grim men who’d boarded at Siluria were there, as well as Jamison Franks and several of his staff, including James Palmita, who never took his eyes off her. None of the others seemed to notice or care, so it was with a sense of relief that she went to stand beside Lew Conorado when he finally showed up.
“Gentlemen,” she began, “welcome to the bridge of the starship Cambria. I am going to introduce you to the crew on duty up here and explain how the bridge of a starship operates. Then we will tour the ship. Along the way you’ll meet other members of our crew. Please get to know them. Every one of us is dedicated to serving you while you are a passenger on this vessel.”
“You can ‘serve’ me anytime, baby,” Palmita muttered.
The five miners seemed particularly interested as Jennifer explained the workings of the bridge. She was surprised at how intelligent their questions were and gratified by the interest they expressed when she explained her own responsibilities. She had no way to know, but one of the miners, who introduced himself as Epher Gospel, actually knew quite a bit about starship navigation, and another, Lordsday Sabbath, was, like Jennifer, a computer systems engineer.
“Miss,” one of the miners said, “we had the obligatory emergency evacuation orientation when we came aboard, but would it be possible to see one of the lifecraft on our tour today?”
Jennifer was caught off guard by the question. “Well, yes, sir, we can, we can, but you know, spaceway regulations only require that passengers be briefed on a ship’s evacuation plan. The crew is responsible for the lifecraft, and it is not necessary that you even see one for us to get you inside in the most unlikely event—I assure you—that they are needed. Even if we were holed many times for whatever the cause, the Cambria has a self-sealing system that can immediately—”
“Yes, miss, I understand that, but just curious. I would just like to peek inside a lifecraft.” Several of his companions nodded their agreement.
“Yeah, Jenny,” Palmita added with a grin, “let’s you and me climb inside one of those things and make a breakaway.”
Jennifer studiously ignored Palmita. The grin quickly faded from his face at the glare Conorado gave him.
“Gentlemen,” she addressed the miners, “certainly we’ll take a look inside one of our lifecraft. Now, are we ready to board shuttles and visit the first of the Cambria’s five cargo modules? They are all full of the ore we loaded on Siluria, over one million metric tons of it, destined for the refineries of Luna. We will conclude the tour at the propulsion plant. All told, it will take us about five hours to make the circuit.” She clapped her hands eagerly. “Is everyone ready?” she asked. Conorado smiled. She was acting just like an activity director on a cruise ship, inviting everyone to a game of shuffleboard.
“Lead on, Miss Lenfen, and damned be he who cries, ‘Hold, enough!’ ” Jamison Franks III said with a dramatic flourish and a bow.
Palmita laughed. “I got up real early this morning, just for you, Jenny.”
Colonel Ramadan unglued his eyes and looked at the time: 0315 hours! “Goddamn,” he muttered as he punched the comm unit. “Ramadan here.”
“Sir, Ensign Joannides, staff duty officer, naval district HQ. Sorry to wake you up, but top priority message from New Oslo, a relay from the embassy. You’ll need your visuals.”
Ramadan punched a button and the ensign’s image appeared on his screen. “Who’s it from, Ensign?”
Ensign Joannides hesitated a moment. “Well, it’s the chief of the New Oslo police department, sir. Looks like one of your dependents has been, er, kidnapped.”
“Put him on.”
The image of a middle-aged man appeared on the tiny screen beside Ramadan’s bed. “Agder Vest, here, Colonel, chief of the New Oslo police department. I apologize for waking you at dis hour, sir.” Vest’s prematurely gray hair was closely cropped, as was the moustache that graced his upper lip. He had the face of a man who had spent much time out of doors, and a chin that jutted forward, projecting the image of a man familiar with the exercise of authority.
“What’s up, Chief?”
“May I show you a picture one of my men took just a few hours ago?” A picture of a woman, blurry at first but quickly resolving into the unmistakable image of Marta Conorado, filled the screen.
“That is Marta Conorado, the wife of one of my company commanders. Is she all right?” Ramadan asked.
“As far as ve know right now, yes, Colonel. But I have the unfortunate duty to report to you, sir, dat she has evidently been kidnapped. Iss eder her husband or family available?”
“Her husband’s on deployment right now, Chief, and their kids are also in the service. What can I do to help?”
“Can you come to New Oslo, den?”
“I’ll be there as quickly as a flight can be arranged. Chief, I have to talk to the navy now.”
“Ve vill be waiting. I vill gif you a full briefing when you get here. But for right now, a man committed a murder here and took Mrs. Conorado as his hostage. Ve vill get her back, Colonel, and thank you.”
The face of Ensign Joannides immediately replaced Chief Vest’s image. “Ensign,
patch me through to the admiral.”
Joannides hesitated. “Right now, sir?” he asked.
So typical of the squids, Ramadan thought: wake up a Marine anytime, but the navy brass needed its sleep. “Yes, Ensign, right goddamned now. Oh, Ensign, one more thing. Find out which medical clinic Mrs. Conorado used. I’ll need both her health and dental records.”
Whatever Bengt had shot into Marta, it was not fatal. She slumped in her seat, totally paralyzed and half comatose. She was aware of the movements of the landcar as it sped along, and she could hear her captors talking, but the words made no sense to her. Gradually, feeling began to creep back into her extremities, and at the same time her head began to clear. From the way the car bounced and jerked, they had to be traveling over an unimproved road, but she could not sit upright and look out the window because her hands and feet were securely tied. She began to cough spasmodically.
“Ah, the Marine wife is back with us!” Bengt exclaimed. “You are very lucky, madam, that I did not fire the wrong chamber into you back there. Otherwise—poof! No more hostage!”
“Wh-Where are we?” Marta managed to croak.
“Well, we are far, far from New Oslo, and thanks to my dear Kiruna, we have successfully eluded the police. We are taking you to a safe place, from which we will make a successful escape to a hideaway in the southern hemisphere. You will not accompany us, unfortunately.”
“Kill her now and get it over with,” Kiruna said from the driver’s module. She turned and looked at Marta. Her skin was very white and she had strikingly blue eyes. Her closely cropped hair was so pale it looked white in the dim light—night was coming on—and it framed a sharp face with high cheekbones and a small mouth.
“Not yet, my dear. We may still need this beautiful lady.” Bengt stroked Marta’s hair. That brought a snarl from the driver. Bengt quickly removed his hand.
Marta calculated. It had been a good two hours before sunset when she left the restaurant. She had checked her watch. They’d been driving at a rapid pace, and at a hundred kilometers an hour average speed, that would put them some distance from the city. But what direction? She tried to call up in her memory a map of the surrounding terrain. Her ears popped. North! They had to have driven north, which would put them deep into the Thorvald Mountains! Some of the peaks were over three thousand meters high, she recalled, and except for a few resort villages, the range was largely uninhabited. The slopes of the mountains were also heavily forested. The pair must have some kind of aircraft hidden away somewhere they were going to use to escape.
At last the car came to a stop. Bengt got out and with one arm pulled Marta bodily outside. It was snowing and it was cold. As he dragged her out of the car, her expensive new coat snagged on something and ripped. Her head banged against the door frame and then she was lying in snow half a meter deep. Bengt began dragging her still-bound body through the snow. Marta realized she wasn’t dressed to escape in such weather. Cold snow packed itself between her neck and the collar of her coat as Bengt dragged her along. He dragged her up some steps, they paused, a door opened, and he threw her inside an unheated room. Bengt slammed the door behind them and began fiddling with the unit’s power console.
As Marta lay there, sensation and full consciousness gradually returned and she began taking stock of her surroundings. The room was bare except for a few chairs and closets or storage compartments built into its walls. The floor was of wood and the walls were paneled in wood, giving the room a rustic look. Marta assumed it was a hunting lodge of some sort.
The door banged open, allowing a swirl of ice cold air into the cabin. Kiruna stomped in, cursing.
“Is the car well-hidden?”
Kiruna only snorted. “You should have left the power on,” she told Bengt as she took off her parka.
“I told you, I wanted the place to look deserted while we were away. It’ll only take a few minutes to warm it up.”
“The snow is falling very hard now and there is a wind. Our tracks are almost covered, and with the car in the shed, it will be impossible for anyone to spot us.”
“Good,” Bengt replied. He took off his parka and threw it into one of the chairs. He opened a closet, and a small wet bar emerged from its recesses. “Let us refresh ourselves,” he said.
Marta was able to follow most of their conversation. Bengt and Kiruna toasted one another and then embraced and kissed long and passionately. Kiruna glanced at Marta over Bengt’s shoulder. “Kill her now,” she said, nodding at Marta.
“Not quite yet, my dear. We may still need her.”
“Well,” Marta replied from where she lay on the floor, “since you’re going to kill me anyway, would you mind telling me what it is you did? And how about at least untying my legs and letting me sit up instead of keeping me on the floor like this?”
Bengt shrugged, untangled himself from Kiruna’s embrace and bent over Marta. “There was this businessman, a baron of the fishing industries, who someone wanted out of the way. Kiruna and I take care of such matters.” He produced a knife and cut the bonds about her feet, lifted her up and set her into a chair. “It was just your very bad luck you were in the wrong place and that my target was not alone, as he was supposed to be.”
Marta’s hands had been tied in front of her. She braced herself on the arms of her chair, tensed her abdomen and kicked Bengt in the groin. He staggered back with an “Ooof!” then stepped in quickly between her legs and, holding her still bound arms with one hand, jabbed the blade of the knife into her left nostril and sliced it open. He stepped back quickly, breathing hard. “I like a feisty woman,” he said in English. Marta was too stunned to resist further as Bengt retied her feet. “You are too good to waste,” Bengt said in English, “so before you die, I am going to put you to good use. And, Mrs. Marine, give me any more trouble and you will die most slowly, I promise.”
“What did you say? What did you say?” Kiruna shouted.
“I told her that tomorrow we will kill her,” Bengt lied.
Blood dribbled down across Marta’s mouth and dripped from her chin. Despite the burning pain and humiliation, she realized Kiruna could not understand English and that Bengt didn’t want her to know what he had just said. Even in her pain and desperation, Marta Conorado realized that fact might somehow be used to her advantage.
The Cambria’s cargo holds were a fascinating place, cavernous even when filled to capacity. The cargo bulkheads loomed over the tourists, who filed gingerly along the narrow companionways between them, dwarfed and awed by their size and the knowledge that thousands of tons of raw ore sat poised behind the thin steel bulkheads. From inside the compartments came an occasional rumble as tons of ore shifted position in the artificial gravity, adding a deep bass to the constant creaks and pop and ping as the metal adjusted to changes in the ship’s attitude and temperature. The Cambria’s gyroscopic and ventilating systems worked quite well, but no system yet devised could possibly maintain a uniform temperature throughout such a vast expanse as the ship’s cargo holds.
The tourists all wore water-repellent gear to protect them from the constant drizzle and the occasional actual rainfall that formed from condensation up high near the “roofs” of the bays. “The environment is a lot drier in the propulsion unit aft,” Jennifer told her guests, “so please bear with the weather until we get there. Over here,” she turned to one of the miners, “is one of our lifecraft. Would you like to look inside?”
Conorado and one of the miners followed Jennifer inside. She was explaining the operation of the unit to them when someone outside asked a question. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back,” she said.
There were thirteen lifecraft onboard the Cambria. Each had a capacity of ten people. That provided emergency escape vehicles for the ship’s crew, a full load of passengers, plus two additional craft for insurance against breakdowns and damage to any of the other craft. While none of the craft had Beamspace capability, each could support its passengers for months and each was equipped
with several hyperspace drones that could be dispatched to report its location to rescuers or other ships under way. The immutable law of the spaceways, as on the high seas of Earth in the days of maritime navigation, was that any ship learning another was in distress had to go to its aid.
As Conorado admired the interior of the lifecraft, he did not notice the miner placing a small, buttonlike object on the pilot’s console.
“Hope we never have to use these,” Conorado said to the miner.
The miner smiled. “I am sure we won’t,” he said. Within the hour the small object, which contained a highly corrosive substance, would completely and quietly destroy the craft’s controls. He carried enough of the devices to cripple the remaining twelve vehicles. By the time the tour was over there would be no escape from the doomed starship.
Suddenly, from somewhere outside, there came the sound of raised and angry voices. Conorado glanced at the miner, who shrugged. Then he recognized Jennifer’s voice, although he couldn’t make out what she was saying. She cried out in pain. Conorado flung himself through the lifecraft’s portal into the companionway. In the dim light he could not see any of the other passengers.
“Conflict! There is human conflict in the ship!” Minerva bellowed. “There is conflict in sector . . .” Conorado did not pay any attention to the rest of the warning. He ran toward the noise of scuffling and heavy breathing coming from an inspection station just down the companionway, in the forward direction of the ship. Inside the recess, Palmita, one hand caressing Jennifer’s buttocks, had her against the bulkhead and was pressing his lips tightly against her cheek. Conorado hit him on the side of his head with the full force of his fist.
Dazed but not down, Palmita released Jennifer and staggered into the companionway. Freed from Palmita’s grasp, Jennifer slumped against the bulkhead. Conorado stepped in and braced her. “Lew,” she gasped, “that—that bastard!” At that point Palmita danced in and drove his fist hard into Conorado’s left kidney. Holding on to Jennifer, Conorado sank to his knees, wracked by pain so intense he thought he’d vomit.
Starfist: Kingdom's Swords Page 17
