by Chris Bunch
“But I assume you made this com not to commiserate with me.”
“True,” Grok said. “I need a small favor.”
“For which you are prepared to indebt yourself?”
“I am,” Grok said. “But not myself to a great deal, although the client’s money is readily available.”
“What is it you need?”
“The after-action report, fairly recent, on what occurred to an Alliance planetary advisory team. It is classified.”
The other being held out his paws, palm up, a gesture learned from humans that he was somewhat proud of.
“Now, what do you and I care about classifications? What I have in mind for my fee, for performing such a simple task as going to the archives and pawing about, is a certain piece of what the humans called sculpture, which is their term for shaped and polished rock. It is fairly old, and is what is known as a fingering piece, by a human named Moore. But it is expensive.”
“I am not concerned about that,” Grok said. “I am well compensated for what I am doing.”
The other one growled in pleasure.
“Then we have, I think, what humans call a deal.”
• • •
“Have you ever done any suicide bombing before?” Technician Ells asked Riss.
“Once,” she answered. “I didn’t like it much.”
“Didn’t the cutout work?”
“It did. But still.”
No rational being likes killing himself, even if that “death” is merely experienced through a guidance helmet on an Remote Pilot Vehicle. But there’s still a shock. Alliance programmers found this out a very long time ago, and so the piloting helmet was equipped with an automatic cutoff for when the RPV was in its final target dive or when it was hit.
But it still “hurt,” and there were psychiatric casualty wards specializing in slow and gentle retrieval of “pilots’ souls.”
“I’ve done a little rewiring,” Ells went on. “You’ll have a sensor in your hand. When you hit it, you’ll be tossed back into the next RPV. Two clicks and you’ll be back aboard whatever ship you’re basing yourself from. All right?”
M’chel took a deep breath.
“All right. Load everything onto one of the destroyers, and let’s start the ball downhill.”
• • •
“I must say,” the prince, who wore old-fashioned eyeglasses, said, “one advantage of your mercenary service, General, is that you do not insist on delving into, and criticizing, the customs of my people.”
He smiled, ingratiatingly.
Friedrich looked blank.
The hidden bud in his ear had suddenly whispered into life. It was Goodnight’s voice:
“Riss, her two DDs, and three patrol ships are off.”
“Am I boring you, General?”
Von Baldur brought himself back.
“Of course not, Prince Jer,” he said. “I’m just putting your thoughts together with what I already know of your system.”
“These are not mere thoughts,” Jer said, “but well-proven principles of ruling.”
“Of course. Go on.”
“At one time, our cluster was peaceful, happy, until Shaoki embraced apostasy and fell easily into their present anarchic state. Naturally, like all disbelievers in the natural order of things, they insisted on looking for converts, which is why they support those dissidents we have hired you to suppress in the hills.
“Of course, what these bandits purport to believe — that they want a louder voice in our government — is not true, since they wish a complete change, and want to become Shaoki quislings when our government is toppled.
“But that shall never happen.”
Friedrich von Baldur looked into the prince’s glittering eyes. The gleam was not a reflection from his glasses.
“Of course not,” Friedrich agreed.
• • •
“Let’s give it a go,” Riss said, pulling on the pilot helmet on board Inchcape’s flagship, the Fletcher. Ells had added two com inputs, one linked to the bridge, the other to a link with Vian aboard his patrol ships.
There were two realities then, one a little ghostlike, from the nose of one missile “looking” at blank steel, the other Riss’s perspective aboard the ship.
“Launch me,” she said.
The door slid open and she was forced out into normal space. Just “below” was the Shaoki world of Irdis.
“Launch one,” a voice said. “Launch two … launch three …”
She “pushed,” and the missile drive sent her downward, on a preset homing on the city of Berfan. She had a chance to relax for a few minutes, which she didn’t like. There was no reason to feel claustrophobic, she reminded herself, since she was very much aware of reality and she was leaning back in a comfortable chair aboard the Fletcher.
She definitely didn’t like being a bomb, even though all logic told her she was full of ham hocks.
Riss touched a sensor, added an external mike aboard the missile to her audio display, heard the crackle of metal heating, then the hiss of atmosphere.
She keyed her helmet to a GPS, made sure the missile was still on target, then checked a prox detector, which told her she was about eighteen miles above the planetary surface.
Her hands, back aboard the Fletcher, overlaid the course the recon ship had taken years earlier.
She jumped as an alarm shrilled.
A voice in her ear told her she had been acquired on radar.
“I’d guess,” the Fletcher’s weapons officer said, “we’ll have an alpha-alpha launch in about…. We do have a launch.”
“Give me a slow count,” Riss said.
“Forty-seven … forty … thirty-two … I’d think about getting out of there … eighteen …” the voice said calmly.
“On my way.” M’chel hit her sensor, and suddenly she was in the second missile, behind the one she’d been piloting.
“Eight … five … four … three … impact!”
Just ahead of her, the Shaoki countermissile exploded, and there was nothing left of her first missile but an expanding ball of hot gas.
Riss concentrated on closing on the target.
“I want another count,” she said.
“Twenty seconds to impact … fifteen … ten … get out of there … five …”
Again, Riss “jumped” to the third missile that had been launched.
But it wasn’t necessary. The Shaoki battery that had attacked the first launch wasn’t responding. The second missile, set to echo the first’s course, had blasted through the impact cloud from the first, and Shaoki Target Acquisition hadn’t picked it up.
That missile smashed into the target building and set off a perfectly satisfactory explosion.
“Something was in there besides shredded wheat,” she muttered, and brought the third missile up into a low orbit over the city.
She scanned hastily for another target, saw a temptingly large building on the horizon, thought about it for a minute.
“Naah,” she growled. “With my luck it’d be an orphanage, not an army headquarters.”
She hit the self-detonate button and pulled out just before the third missile went off, and she was back aboard the Fletcher.
“Good going,” the weapons officer said.
“I went and said it very clear/I went and shouted in their ear,” Riss recited.
“One for Dov,” she said to herself, and went looking for the officers’ mess.
NINE
“I have been pondering this matter of the building you blew up on Irdis,” Grok said to Riss. It was a week after she’d returned from her raid.
“Which,” Jasmine put in, “turns out, I’ve found, through the miserable monitoring system the Khelat have, to have been the central secret police station for the planet.”
“There must be some people wanting to buy you a sufficiency of drunkenness for that,” Goodnight said. “Hell, I’d buy you a shot or two. A dead cop — especially a secret-t
ype cop — is a blessing of the gods.”
“And so speaks the forces of law and order,” Friedrich said.
Goodnight shrugged. “Speaking of which” — and he held out an evidence bag with two pistols in it — “here’s a couple of bangsticks picked up in local raids. Maybe we can figure something out to lead to the six bandits the Khelat are always chasing around.”
Von Baldur took them, examined them, and passed them to Jasmine.
“Perhaps the serial numbers might give us something?”
They were in the Star Risk suite in the Rafar Arms, surrounded by electronics and weaponry — a typical setting for the five. Piled around one com were copies of congratulatory messages from everyone from the king on down.
“We are all being ever so clever,” Riss said, “and ignoring the fact that Grok has a point…. At least I assume he does.”
“I do,” the alien said. “Having little to do with the target.”
He looked pompous, which is fairly hard for a fur-covered monster almost 2.5 meters tall who looks like he belongs on a homicidal rampage.
“I have been puzzled by the fact that there was only one — two, counting the failed attempt — recon of what should be considered an important division of Khelat’s enemy. I applied the standard Vance-Sapir-Whorf equations to the situation — ”
“Might I ask what they are?” Riss inquired.
“Briefly, they posit some analytical parameters to judge the behavior of a culture, working from the premise that language is not only a way of reporting experience, but also a way of defining experience.”
“Say again your last,” Goodnight said. “I don’t understand. Also, I don’t see how a set of equations bears on our young asses.”
“Ah, but it does, it does,” Grok said. “Consider this — the Khelat language is composed mostly of verbs in the imperfect form. So is Shaoki, by the way, since they come from a common root. You’ll have noticed this, since there’s a certain tendency for the Khelat to plan and schedule things most carelessly.”
“Hoboy, is it ever,” Riss said. “I was supposed to have a meet with Prince Barab this afternoon. He didn’t show, and I commed his office. His aide was surprised at my getting a little upset. Perhaps, the aide said, he meant tomorrow afternoon.”
“A good example,” Grok agreed. “Now, if we extend this into practice, it can also mean that an action contemplated for the future can easily slip into the past. In other words, something that is going to be done, unless reality introduces, can be taken as done.”
“Like recon jobs or raids,” Riss said. “The Khelat thought about doing something about that ugly chunk of real estate I ended up leveling, never quite got around to it, but somehow, magically, it was taken care of.”
“Exactly,” Grok said, growling in pleasure.
“My paws and whiskers,” von Baldur murmured. “That also means that if we send Force A out to take care of Situation B, and they report things are well flattened, they may or may not be telling the truth.”
“In fact,” Goodnight said, “from what we’ve seen, it means almost certainly not. So watch your flanks.”
“And truth itself becomes a variable,” King added. “Just as in subparticle physics.”
“I still don’t have a clue,” Goodnight said. “And am damned glad I don’t. Thank the god of evil bastards that I pray to that I also brought back, in addition to all these goddamned pilots wandering around wiggling their hands in the air, some headbangers.”
“Oh?” King said. “I didn’t catch that. Where did you bury their cost?”
“Ah-hah,” Goodnight gloated. “You see, even though you’re super with the figures, sometimes somebody can slither one past you.
“I’ll show you directly…. As soon as I get back from doing a little dirty all my very own that I picked up. You don’t get to have all the fun, M’chel.”
He put a computer fiche on the biggest screen in the room, and the other four studied it carefully.
“You can see,” Goodnight said, “I’ll need your help, Grok.”
“Given,” the alien rumbled. “But only if I get to go along.”
“I thought you’d say something like that.”
Von Baldur nodded slowly.
“Good, Chas. We do need a follow-up to M’chel’s little bit of nastiness. However … we are supposedly working to educate our Khelat brethren, correct?”
“Uh-oh.”
“Take at least a handful of them with you, leading from the front and all that. There’ll be a bonus for you. Do not, please, attempt to fool me by leaving them in the rear, and taking only a manifest with you.”
“But Friedrich. This is going to be deep-space work, which requires a bit of experience.”
“You never get experience without experience,” von Baldur said, a bit sententiously.
“I gotta?” Goodnight said mournfully.
“As you would put it, you gotta,” Friedrich said.
“You surely know how to ruin a good time.”
“One more thing,” von Baldur said. “Do try not to get killed.”
“I’ll do that little thing,” Goodnight said. “Death spoils fun even more than you do.”
TEN
The ship smelled mightily of used feet.
It wasn’t because of slobbery.
Goodnight’s mercenaries, in their earlier incarnation as regular soldiers, had been made familiar with soap. The Khelat were notoriously sanitary people.
The cause was stuffing far too many beings into a patrol ship intended to fit four or five fairly friendly people. Plus suits, plus gear, plus rations. Extra water was in an auxiliary pack bolted to each patrol ship’s skin.
Goodnight had forty-three raiders to choose from, and had chosen thirty. For his mission, he thought more than that would just get in the way.
In addition, there was Grok, his large tool kits, and ten Khelat.
They were officer cadets, which Goodnight found meant they were connected to the royal family in one way or another.
He didn’t like it, felt he was setting himself up, but didn’t have much of a choice, especially since Prince Barab had publicly proclaimed, without, fortunately, being specific, the Best and Brightest of Khelat were Fighting Back.
“They’d damned well better,” Goodnight said. “Costing us enough in fuel.”
No one bothered to remind him that he wasn’t picking up the bill.
Grok and Goodnight had spent two weeks in space deep inside the Shaoki sphere of control, alternating their watch with one or another of Vian’s patrol ships. They couldn’t assign the task out, because they had only an idea of what kind of target they were looking for … and a very vague one at that.
Unsurprisingly, Jasmine King found it for them, making an intercept of a propaganda ‘cast from the Shaoki worlds on the might and majesty of the Shaoki fleet.
She’d frame-by-framed the ‘cast and found an awesome shot of the Shaoki battle fleet, ready and waiting.
The holo shot had been awesome enough for her to triangulate the location of the fleet, hanging in space off the capital world of the Shaoki II system, Thur. She made the assumption that the fleet wouldn’t be kept in the boondocks but close at hand, for easy self-stroking by the Shaoki council.
Vian took out a patrol ship and found the fleet just where Jasmine had said it would be.
Goodnight was starting to get elaborate ideas, and decided the Shaoki fleet wasn’t a target — they didn’t have enough warships for a direct confrontation — but a tool.
Monitoring from the patrol ship found a lot of signals from the starships sent to a single location on Thur, below them.
That gave them a target.
And that put the raid in motion.
All Goodnight wanted was one lousy Shaoki ship to become his tool, a weapon.
The raiders went out, in their four ships, with a single destroyer stationed at the last jump point before entering the Shaoki sector, covering their back door and exit
.
The four patrol ships made the final jump, one at a time. Goodnight was assuming that none of the Shaoki electronic lookouts would be ready for something that gave the radar signature of a 2 cm ball bearing.
The McGee ships were very stealthy.
Goodnight was right — unless the Shaoki were stealthy in a very different way, and had set a trap.
Again, they waited, but only for a day or two, to verify their original observations, plus to confirm the general times when work craft came up from the planet.
That established, the four ships crept toward the rough globe formation that was the heavy Shaoki craft orbital station.
“We might as well suit up,” Goodnight ordered. “At least it’ll smell better.”
• • •
There were two blasters on Friedrich von Baldur’s desk that had been given him by Jasmine. They were current-issue Alliance, a little battered.
Von Baldur rechecked the serial number on the first against a list of numbers. No match. He did the same with the second pistol; found no match again.
He did the same with another list; found nothing.
Most interesting. Those two pistols had been taken from the corpses of “bandits” by Khelat soldiers. Yet their numbers weren’t on the list of pistols stolen or taken from the Khelat, nor on the list of weaponry brought in by the recent advisory team.
So where did they come from?
While Jasmine was pawing around, she’d also found something interesting in the government accounting office, made a copy.
Von Baldur thumbed through a printout, admiring the work.
It was very neat.
Somebody had been stealing the military blind.
Von Baldur, as an ex-supply officer and a most experienced thief, knew when and where to go looking.
There were some questions:
Was the thief or were the thieves part of the mercenary operation or was the thief or were the thieves Khelat?
