The Doublecross Program: Book Three of the Star Risk Series

by Chris Bunch

  If they were Khelat, how high did the thievery go? Von Baldur wasn’t a damned fool, and if it went to the king, he wasn’t going to make a lot of noise.

  In fact, part of him wanted to link up with the thieves, in exchange for a good piece of the action.

  He decided he’d have Grok look into the matter when he finished tarting about with Goodnight.

  • • •

  “All right,” Goodnight said. “Move out.”

  Vian’s patrol ship hung in space, three kilometers from the hulking battle cruiser Goodnight had picked for a target. He’d chosen it because it was positioned sloppily in the globe formation, and he hoped carelessness in one thing meant they’d be slack in other areas.

  Also because it was one of the few surplus Alliance ships he was sure he could find in Jane’s, which gave him a fairly good blueprint of what lay inside.

  Vian cycled atmosphere back into the patrol ship’s tanks, killed the artificial gravity, and opened both locks.

  A bit of paper, forgotten on a bulkhead table, was whipped out into space with the last trace of air.

  Goodnight motioned, and Grok and his troops fed themselves out into space, immediately clipping on to one another as they exited.

  One soldier lagged behind.

  That figured, Goodnight thought. One of the two Khelat trainees with his team.

  He beckoned impatiently, and the soldier reluctantly clambered out of the lock, and, forgetting to clip on, started to float away.

  A soldier grabbed the man by his air cycler and clipped a lead on him. Fine, Goodnight thought. He can go into battle on a leash. We won’t tell anyone afterward, unless he really screws up.

  The Shaoki battle cruiser, big, graceful, old-fashioned, almost two kilometers long, was close.

  Goodnight passed a line to the others, and they spread out.

  “Behind” him, other raiders were debouching from the other four ships.

  All mikes were open. Goodnight had given orders that no one was to break silence except to give an alarm.

  He said, unconsciously whispering, “After me.”

  Steam boiled from low-power jets, and the ragged formation of roped men moved steadily toward the cruiser’s stern.

  Goodnight killed what little speed he’d amassed, and the raiders mostly touched down silently near the stern of the huge ship.

  Goodnight had planned for that, figuring the drive area of the ship would be the noisiest and the least likely to be listening to odd clangs on the skin.

  He pointed to five of his men, who deployed just below the cruiser’s top fins.

  In normal wartime, they would have found an entrance through a port or even through the drive, although that had always given Goodnight the kohlrobbies, figuring someone was about to light it off just when he was making his crawl. Although, if someone did, he certainly wouldn’t know about it.

  Instead, since Goodnight had no interest in capturing the cruiser, shaped charges were positioned in a rectangle, tied together with det cord, and a line was led off a few dozen meters to a hellbox.

  The mercenary demo specialist bowed, handed the box to Goodnight.

  Chas took off the two safeties, touched the sensor.

  The results were more than satisfactory.

  The charges went off as planned, tearing a rectangle out of the double ship’s skin and lifting it back like a sardine can’s lid.

  Air roared out into space, and water crystals became ice and curled into nothing.

  Goodnight wondered how many men and women he’d just killed, but didn’t have time for mawkishness.

  He leapt down, the cruiser’s artificial gravity still working, into a large hydraulic control space.

  Goodnight beckoned his warriors inside. They poured down and spread out.

  Except for one man, who huddled back against a bulkhead. It was the same Khelat that’d hesitated on the patrol ship.

  Goodnight clicked on an exterior speaker.

  “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” he chanted, and the men ran toward two ports.

  Except for that Khelat.

  “Move out, troop!” he shouted.

  The man whimpered, made no move.

  “The hell with you,” Goodnight shouted, never that calm in the best of times, let alone in an assault. “Damned coward!”

  He made for the port, letting his blast rifle down into firing position, but something made him turn.

  The Khelat was moving, pointing his own rifle at Goodnight.

  Goodnight didn’t bother talking, but blew a fist-sized hole in the man’s suit and chest.

  Then he went out, after his men.

  The cruiser’s automatic damage-control doors hadn’t worked, or weren’t turned on.

  The cruiser was entirely in a vacuum, and its skeleton crew had died, most without realizing it.

  They made their way through the ship, found no one living.

  In the control room, Grok had set down his tool chests and was considering the navigation area.

  “If I recollect,” he rumbled, holding out a power wrench, “the overrides should be in here. Now, Chas, if you’ll give a hand with these panel fasteners …”

  “We don’t have that kind of time,” Goodnight said, and sent four quick blaster bolts into the panel corners.

  It clanged free to the deck.

  “How terribly direct,” Grok said, peering inside.

  “Ah yes,” he said. “Here and here are the sensors to keep one from setting a course into the heart of his own sun. If you would do the honors, Mr. Goodnight?”

  Chas obeyed, his rifle flashing twice.

  “Now, if you care to set the course you’ve prepared …”

  Goodnight had prepared a fiche that should work on any Alliance nav computer, and went to a control couch and fired up the device, ever grateful the Alliance built its electronics for worst-case scenarios.

  Such as trying to operate in a vacuum with gauntlets.

  He fed the fiche into the proper slot. The computer beeped complainingly, and lights lit.

  Goodnight considered them, touched sensors.

  Slowly, the objecting lights went out as Goodnight corrected the fiche’s preset present position to match the cruiser’s actual location.

  “Hey, Skip,” one of the mercenaries sent. “Somebody’s trying to talk to us.”

  “Ignore them,” Goodnight said. “Loose lips sink ships and all that. They’ll worry more and shoot less — for awhile — if nobody’s talking back to them.”

  He turned back to the computer.

  “I think,” he muttered, “that’s about it. Power on, and to commence to traveling in … oh, five minutes.

  “Hokay, troopies,” he ‘cast. “Time to hit the bricks. Momma’s going home.”

  The thirty-nine women and men went, as ordered, to the center air lock, intended for mass debarkation.

  Goodnight touched controls, said, “It should be on its way,” and helped Grok with one of his toolboxes to the air lock and the others.

  A noncom made a head count.

  “Sir, we’re short one man,” he reported.

  “We took one casualty,” Chas said.

  The sergeant frowned, waited for an explanation, then realized one wasn’t coming.

  “Out of here,” Goodnight ordered, and the raiders went into the lock and cycled out into space.

  They’d returned to the patrol ships when the cruiser stirred, the nav program cut in, and it swung, pointing down toward Thur.

  Whatever the fleet had been transmitting to below on the planet was now ground zero for the cruiser, as it accelerated “downward” on secondary drive.

  Maybe the target would be a nice, fat command Center, filled with nice, fat commanders.

  “Now that should make quite a bang,” Goodnight said. “Dov two, baddies zero.”

  But he was preoccupied with thoughts of that dead Khelat, who broke under pressure but still had enough courage to try to murder Goodnight.

/>   For what? Being called a coward?

  Stranger and stranger, Goodnight thought.

  ELEVEN

  “And here you have it,” the alien told Grok. “Transmission under way, two items.”

  “Two?”

  “The after-action report from the Alliance Advisory Team to the Khelat Systems, as requested. And a page from the Boanerges Fine Arts catalog on Earth. They specialize in Moores.

  “I think you’ll be interested in the report…. There is certainly something strange about the death of the advisory team’s commanding officer.

  “And the price on the Moore I want is circled.”

  “How expensive is it?”

  “Now,” the being said, “why do you care? You’ll pass the price along to your client.”

  “Strong point,” Grok agreed.

  • • •

  “I think,” Friedrich von Baldur said, “it is time for us to prepare an Offensive against Shaoki.” He deliberately put capital letters in his voice.

  King Saleph looked nervous. Beside him, Prince Barab twitched a little in unconscious agreement with Saleph’s hesitation.

  “Do you think we’re ready?” the king said. “The Alliance advisors — the gods rest their souls — seemed to think we were at least a year distant from any significant attacks on Shaoki.”

  “As, no doubt,” von Baldur replied, “did the mercenaries we have replaced. Star Risk, unlike governments and firms that are first interested in building their bank account and secondarily in the needs of their client, believes in solving a problem as soon as possible. Therefore, we shall swing into action immediately.”

  • • •

  “And what’s this?” M’chel Riss asked as she yawned, very early, into the main Star Risk suite.

  “This” was an ornately wrapped package with Riss’s name on it.

  “A bomb?” she asked.

  “No,” Jasmine said. “We’ve swept it.”

  “And?”

  Neither of the other two responded.

  “Awright,” Riss snarled; tore the package open. It held a surprisingly tasteful bracelet, with gems worked in strange shapes. There was a note:

  Perhaps we might see each other again without the confines of duty.

  Wahfer

  “How nice,” Jasmine said.

  M’chel put it on. “I guess so,” she said. “I suppose it would be a good idea … professionally … to accept.”

  “Is he good-looking?”

  “That has nothing to do with it!” Riss snapped.

  She finally met Jasmine’s eyes, and the two of them broke into laughter.

  • • •

  The call did come, and M’chel accepted.

  The prince arrived in a long, dark lifter, with two bodyguards and a pilot.

  He asked if she wanted to eat “real Earth food,” and Riss declined, suppressing a shudder. She’d been trapped into real Earth food on too many worlds, always wondering why anyone bothered. The only people on Earth who ate well, as far as she could tell, were the French and the Chinese.

  She said she was curious about the Khelat diet. Wahfer took her to an ostentatiously expensive restaurant. Haute cuisine consisted of many, many dishes on small plates, surprisingly spicy, eaten with the fingers.

  Wahfer said it was customary to honor a guest by feeding him or her, and Riss, lying, said it was forbidden on her own worlds.

  Wahfer, as the first course arrived, accompanied by a spiced wine that M’chel just sipped at, asked what she thought of his worlds.

  “Why is it everyone here on Khelat always asks that question?” M’chel said.

  Wahfer thought.

  “I could be honest and say that it’s politeness to care about the opinion of visitors, but honestly, it’s because, I suspect, we are so far from the center of things that it really matters.”

  Riss nodded. That sounded honest, and she said that so far she found things interesting.

  “One question, though,” she said. “With all of the princes in your family, isn’t there a certain amount of … let me call it competition?”

  “Of course,” Wahfer said. “That is the way the universe is designed, is it not? Each man strives to succeed, and it is not enough just for your own success, but you must have an equal or better’s failure to compare it to.”

  “Ah,” Riss said.

  Two waiters changed their plates.

  “By happenstance,” she said, “did you have any dealings with the Alliance advisory team that was withdrawn?”

  There was just a moment of hesitation, then Wahfer said, “No, not really.”

  Riss caught that moment, filed it.

  The evening continued on an amiable note, if not, at least on Riss’s part, with any romance.

  Wahfer and one bodyguard escorted Riss to the Star Risk suite, and they were not invited in.

  So, she thought as she rinsed her mouth of the spiced wine’s taste with a shot of clean brandy, then poured herself a small decanter for a nightcap, Wahfer knows something was wrong with things.

  That could be a contact worth developing.

  TWELVE

  Jasmine King wandered through the shopping district. Part of her mind was looking for something; another part was giggling gently about the way the romances portrayed “going undercover.”

  Certainly, she thought. Easy. Not a problem. Except when everybody around is dark complected, or perhaps of Earth-Asian descent.

  And we’ll ignore what happens when you’re trying to look unobtrusive and all about you have tentacles….

  King slid through the crowded arcade streets, appearing to look at nothing, seeing everything.

  She went in a shop here, a shop there, found an example of what she was looking for in a store that sold everything from jewelry to rice.

  The item was in a corner, next to three or four exotically ugly statuettes. She was staring at a sealed case of Alliance-issue rations. Or so the packing stamp, with a serial number, had it.

  But another serial number had been stamped over on the case.

  She memorized both numbers as the shopkeeper approached.

  “Missy is homesick for Alliance food?”

  “Not particularly,” Jasmine said. “I’m just curious where this came from.”

  “I do not remember very clearly,” the shopkeeper started.

  King took a bill from her pocket, extended it toward the man.

  “Ah,” he said, but no more.

  King added a second bill.

  The man’s smile, lacking a few teeth, beamed.

  “I am happy to be of service to the beautiful woman,” he began.

  • • •

  The rations came from a warehouse with a camouflaged roof, sitting in a small valley about a kilometer outside Rafar City.

  There was a long line of battered or economy lifters, ground vehicles, and people on foot, and a cluster of soldiers at the entrance. The warehouse was surrounded by razor wire, and there were perimeter alerts.

  King sat in her lifter, about a half kilometer away, watching through binocs.

  A customer would approach, talk to a soldier. Money would change hands, and crated goods would be brought out.

  King was about to pull out and put in a full electronic surveillance when three military lifters flew low overhead, grounded at the rear of the warehouse, and soldiers started unloading crates and cases.

  They moved fast, faster than King had seen soldiers move on Khelat so far, and in minutes the lifters were empty and took off.

  King, feeling very naked without backup, followed at a good distance.

  • • •

  “I shall be happy to be of service,” Grok told Jasmine. “My smoking gun turns out to be not as smoky as I’d wished, and needs further work. I would like an excuse to get out in the open air and do some honest work.”

  “Like killing people?”

  “If the opportunity presents itself.”

  • • •

 
The lifter slid carefully down an alley, briefly onto a thoroughfare, then followed a freight-loading route. Grok, at the controls, went very low and very slow, without his lights, using an amplified-light headset to navigate.

  The area was dark and little strewn. There was only an occasional movement, and neither of the lifter’s occupants could tell if it was this world’s version of rats or people intent on their own errands.

  “This is the kind of district a man can get his head bashed in for him,” Chas Goodnight observed.

  “Or anyone else,” Grok said. “Jasmine is getting too bold in following strange lifters about.”

  “Or else she’s been doing better with the ol’ marksmanship training than I thought,” Goodnight said.

  “I think I’m going to set it down here,” Grok said. “That second warehouse she found is just around the corner, and I’ll bet there’s watchguards out.”

  “Shall I put the alarm on?” Grok said as he grounded the lifter.

  “Either that or we’re liable to come back to a stripper and have to hike home,” Goodnight said. “But put the remote on vibrate, hey? It’d bother my nerves if it went off in the middle of a lovely bit of sneakery.”

  Goodnight wore black light-absorbing coveralls, and Grok depended on his dark fur and nightmare appearance to keep him safe.

  Both beings wore weapons harnesses in the open. If they were stopped by anyone, they’d decided to shoot, rather than talk, their way out.

  They slid around a corner, saw the storage building they wanted.

  Goodnight, being the better second-story man, carefully checked the top of the razored fence.

  There was a sensor about every ten meters.

  Grok examined the nearest one closely. It was, surprisingly, clean and maintained. He rumbled in his throat.

  Goodnight was considering the guard shacks spaced at regular intervals around the building. He took out a tiny pair of binocs, set them to normal light, and swept the area.

  It was a bit brisk that night, a wind coming off the desert, and he saw no guards moving beyond the cozy security of the shacks.

  That was good. He considered the sensors atop the razor wire, and took a shorter from a belt pouch to “wire” around the alarm.

  Grok tapped him on the shoulder, shaking his head disapprovingly. Goodnight leaned closer. The alien’s breath smelled, interestingly enough, of flowers.