by Chris Bunch
Von Baldur grunted, got to his feet.
“You are right, of course. I shall stop brooding.”
“Damned well better,” Jasmine said.
Von Baldur left, and Jasmine nursed the rest of his brandy. At last, she decided it was time to consult with M’chel
• • •
“I think,” Riss said, the next evening before dinner, when the team assembled for its customary drink, “it’s time that we do something drastic.”
“Such as?” von Baldur said. He appeared a little more chipper than he had the previous night.
“I could call it going out and setting an example. But I’ll be honest. We’re getting a little stale and need a morale boost.”
“I could do with a breather from all this talking,” Goodnight admitted.
“And a chance for real blood,” Grok seconded.
Riss held a hand out to Jasmine.
“Well,” King said, “it just so happens I have just found an interesting target. I think.”
SIXTEEN
Once the land had been arid desert, with villages and scrub grazing led here and there.
But then the workers had come. First, artesian wells were driven, and the villagers praised the princes and king of Khelat for improving their lot.
But the hosannas didn’t last for long, and the villagers, their scant belongings, and livestock, were driven off the land, relocated to an equally dry district half a world away.
The villages were put to the torch, then pumps were installed atop the wells and ditches and pipeline run. Here and there, prefabricated maintenance sheds were put together.
The land was plowed, disked, and irrigated, then main cuttings planted and fertilized.
They grew quickly into mature bushes, and harvesters were brought in for festive summer camps.
The main leaves were dried, baled, then, in sealed containers, they went offworld, toward the great warehouse and shipping planets.
The land was quiet, except for the gentle rustling of occasional winds, and the gurgle of the automatic irrigators.
A few wild creatures came out of the wastelands, but found the land too foreign for anything other than hunting expeditions and water.
Just before dawn one day, the air shuddered with the whine of starships’ secondary drive. Three destroyers plummeted down, swept over the huge plantation, and none of their detection apparati found life.
Four patrol ships flashed over the fields, then slowed, making a slow check.
Again, nothing.
Coms were sent into space, and the next arrivals were two huge transports, which settled down for a landing, crushing fields of maln.
Air locks irised open, and landing ramps slid down. Lightly armed troops ran out. Half of them were mercenaries from Hore’s battalion, the other half Shaoki trainees.
There appeared no need, but a pair of crew-served blasters were set up at the bow and stern of each transport, and two batteries of air-to-ground missiles unloaded and made ready.
The troops, once they realized they were unopposed, behaved as if the raid was a holiday. Men with sledges ran down the rows, smashing the heads of the irrigation pumps or putting small charges at their base. Small explosions cracked here and there, as other cracklings of flame came as the maintenance sheds were fired. Necklace charges were laid around the pipelines, cross-connected, and set off.
Water sprayed here and there, formed pools.
The soldiers ran back to the transports, chivvied by their noncoms, boarded, and the ships lifted off.
Once all the men and women were safe aboard, Vian’s patrol ships, modified with external sprayers such as crop dusters used, came back.
Clouds of bitter-smelling defoliants hissed out, set-tied down on the main plants. Almost instantly, they curled, withered.
Alarms gonged on the bridges of the destroyers, now hanging five miles overhead.
“I have them,” a weapons officer reported. “Six … no, seven patrol ships incoming. ID’d as Khelat.”
“Vian Zero, this is Inchcape,” the destroyer leader commed.
“Vian. Go,” came from the leader of the patrol ship formation.
“Do you have the unfriendlies?”
“On-screen. For a long time.”
Von Baldur, beside Inchcape, took the mike.
“This is Star Risk Zed,” he said. “Do you need help?”
“Negative.”
“Bounce them, then,” von Baldur said. His voice was harsh.
Vian’s ships came down, at speed, in a head-on attack at the Khelat.
Three of the onrushing Khelats flinched aside, and air-to-air missiles smashed them.
The other, braver, four, held courses.
Two were exploded before they reached Vian’s formation. The other two flashed past, their missiles fired too late, or acquired early and spoofed into destruction.
Two Star Risk patrol ships spun, then, at full drive, went after the surviving pair.
At full emergency, the Khelat tried to flee.
Neither of them survived for longer than a minute.
Von Baldur swung a pickup back on the destroyed main plantation, smiled tightly.
Jasmine unstrapped herself from the auxiliary seat behind the pilot’s seat, stood.
She saw the smile on Friedrich’s face.
“Feel better now?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “Yes, I do, as a matter of fact.”
Over the next five days, ten main plantations on various planets were also put to the torch.
SEVENTEEN
Even Grok’s eyes got tired after a day of plumbing microcircuitry.
He decided to go for a walk, and perhaps a meal. There were cooks aplenty in Star Risk’s quarter, but he felt cussedly independent, strapping on his blaster and a couple of grenade pouches before he went out into the madding throng.
Even the open corridors of his own building weren’t enough, and so he went out into the open air and the curving sidewalks. Here and there separate businesses had sprung up, generally of hasty and shoddy construction.
The Shaoki goggled at the huge alien and got out of his way as quickly as possible. Grok paid no attention, growling happily as he strolled.
He paused a moment to read the menu of one small café, and the proprietor was instantly outside, beaming a beckoning smile, no doubt anticipating how much he imagined Grok could eat.
“Welcome, welcome, welcome,” he said. “Please come in and try my humble fare.”
Grok considered, then held out his palms in a why-not gesture.
The man escorted him to a table and a seat, which creaked alarmingly but held.
“You are one of the beings who have come to help us win our war,” the man said.
“I am one of the beings who’ve come to help you with certain technical matters,” Grok advised, politically. “The Shaoki need no training in bravery.”
“With your help, I know we shall conquer! I have seen the holos!”
“Which you believe.”
“Of course,” the man said, a trace indignantly. “They wouldn’t be allowed to print them if they weren’t true, would they?”
Grok made an agreeable noise.
“Let me ask you something,” he said. “If Shaoki wins, what will be the advantage to you? Personally, I mean.”
The man was taken aback.
“Why … the riches we take from the Khelat. And … and maybe, with the increase in the worlds that will be Shaoki, it will be as the government says, with every man a prince.”
Grok suppressed amusement at just how quickly Friedrich’s phrase had been co-opted by the Shaoki Council.
“I can see it clear,” the restaurant owner said dreamily. “I’ll have not just one restaurant, but many, scattered through the Khelat worlds, and I shall never have to enter a kitchen or dining room — no offense, sir, and I do not mean to insult the wares I offer — unless I wish.
“All my employees, except, of course, for the head
cooks, will be Khelat, and I can pay them a hundredth of what I must pay here on Irdis.
“Or, perhaps, if they are condemned labor, which I think all of the Khelat who serve in their armed forces should be, not pay them anything but allow them to keep their tips, since I am a kindly man, and give them transportation back to their barracks each night.”
“Do you think that will make them peaceable, willing to stand behind a Shaoki occupation?”
“Of course,” the man said. “For haven’t we been told of the evils of the Khelat princes and king? Besides, if they do object, there is always prison or worse.”
Grok grunted. “Ah,” he muttered. “The voice of democracy in action.”
EIGHTEEN
There was a com for M’chel from the spaceport.
A courier from Alliance Credit, their bank on Trimalchio IV had arrived with an emergency message for her.
“From whom?”
“Uh … I’m not supposed to tell you, but deliver it personally.”
Riss gave the courier instructions to their complex, disconnected.
“I don’t suppose,” she told Friedrich, “this is about my overdraft. It isn’t that big.”
“And for you only,” von Baldur said. “Curiouser and curiouser.”
The courier was little more than a teenager, and Riss wondered why young people kept getting younger every year.
The message was on a fiche, keyed to her print only.
“The man who gave us this asked if we could stamp it like that,” he explained. “I … I mean, we, the bank, didn’t think you’d object.”
M’chel nodded, excused herself into another room.
First she ran the package through a portable sniffer, detected no sign of any conventional explosives. Nor did a fluoroscope show anything unpleasantly resembling a potential bang.
She carefully opened the small package using none of the easy-open tabs, although it wasn’t likely the package contained a bomb, since Alliance Credit had sealed it.
It was a standard fiche.
Riss fed it into a com, touched the play sensor, still ready to dive for cover if it hissed or ticked like proper bombs were supposed to do.
A man appeared in midair.
It was Khelat Prince Wahfer in ceremonial robes.
“Uh … Colonel Riss … M’chel … I’m sending this to you the only way I can think of, since Alliance Credit is how we were paying Star Risk. There’s been a frightful misunderstanding, and no one can understand why you left us so precipitately.
“Since I thought — think — of you as a friend, I’m trying to reach you, to ask you if we can meet … perhaps on some neutral world … and discuss our misunderstanding.
“This message has been approved by His Most Royal Highness.
“There is a private com number I’ve attached to this, and there’ll be a machine or myself there to answer it all the time.
“I’m sure this matter can be resolved to our mutual advantage.”
“Right,” M’chel snarled. “How dumb do you think I am?”
Then she thought for a minute. “Maybe I am that dumb, after all. But not quite yet,” she muttered to herself.
Her smile was not pleasant.
• • •
Riss took the com to von Baldur, who played it through twice.
“Very interesting,” he mused. “What is a double-doublecross?”
“Just what I thought might be needed down the road,” M’chel said.
“Yes, indeed,” Friedrich said. “We might, indeed, need the good prince in the fullness of time. Now, allow me to return to my musing about a certain Khelat world that I was worried about, when we were in their employ, as being woefully underdefended.”
NINETEEN
The world was named Hastati, and was the eighth world orbiting around a vast, dying red star, part of the Shaoki-Khelat-occupied cluster.
It was sparsely settled and almost completely undefended, with its single moon ungarrisoned, nor had any orbital fortresses been hung around it. There were two battalions of the local planetary guard, originally customs guards, with only three patrol ships capable of out-atmosphere work.
Hastati had some mineral deposits, including one that when added to an iron compound produced steel with an amazingly high Rockwell rating. Even better, the mineral, while molten, was fairly easy to work.
Its second claim was that it purported to be the original world the settlers of the cluster had landed on.
Von Baldur doubted that — almost no one would be desperate to settle a world just barely habitable, with only two continents and those in the far northern and southern hemispheres, especially around a sun that might go pfft at any time.
But both the Khelat and Shaoki believed the myth.
Friedrich had Jasmine do a little basic research, discovered that no one was sure what system was first colonized, let alone what specific world. But Hastati was regarded as vaguely sacred, which was another reason it hadn’t been fortified. Neither side thought the other would dare.
For von Baldur, Hastati’s ultimate importance was that it could offer a nice base to attack a “neighboring” system…. If you had a rather grandish fleet for the operation.
He didn’t when Star Risk was working for the Khelat, nor now.
But Hastati offered possibilities….
The council was suitably horrified when he proposed an invasion of Hastati with no bombardment from space.
But they acceded.
Von Baldur and Goodnight, with his battle-analysis mind on full less-than-bester tilt, crept into Hastati’s system, made quick decisions, returned to Irdis, and sent in the troops.
A dozen large transports escorted by Star Risk’s destroyers and patrol craft, which had been piggybacked into the system to save the crews for combat instead of wearing them out in their cramped quarters, hit Hastati.
The Shaoki troops, again, were leavened with Hore’s mercenaries.
Riss had made sure that all of the meres were drilled: “Kill only those you have to,” and, in turn, passed the antislaughter policy along to the Shaoki troops, who seemed a trifle disappointed.
The capital held for two days, the Shrine of First Arrival for one more, then Hastati fell.
The thousand or so Khelat soldiers were taken to hastily constructed prisoner of war cages.
Grok reported a transmission from the shrine, which was allowed to go out. Von Baldur didn’t bother having it decoded, since it would obviously be a scream for help.
He then clamped down with blanket jamming on all Khelat wavelengths. Only one constant transmission was permitted: a visual of a FREE KHELAT banner that Jasmine had designed, flying over the Shrine of First Arrival.
“That oughta ass them nigh onto tears,” Goodnight said. “Keep ‘em from thinking too clearly.”
“Not,” Riss said, “that they’ve been guilty of that so far.”
They waited for the counterattack.
It took two weeks in the coming, and by then the Shaoki on the ground were dining on their fingernails. Star Risk, wondering what was taking the Khelat so long, wasn’t in much better shape.
But a snitch satellite, planted on the fringes of the system, eventually sounded, and Star Risk’s second stage was implemented, as Khelat ships blipped into real space from hyperdrive.
The Shaoki and Hore’s mercenaries boarded the waiting transports and lifted off. They used the moon for a mask, jumped for N-space and eventually home.
The Khelat closed in on the desecrated, conquered, and occupied world.
“Interesting,” Goodnight said. “Not as big a fleet as we’d expected.”
Star Risk, less King back on Irdis, were in the command center of Inchcape’s destroyer. They and the other mercenary ships, plus a carefully selected group of Shaoki’s best warships.
“More interesting,” Grok said. “The transmissions my techs have intercepted are from normal line units, not the Khelat assault divisions you would’ve thought to have b
een committed to a major battle.”
“And where are they?” Riss wondered.
“Dunno,” Goodnight said. “But let’s take what we got while we got ‘em.”
“Patience,” von Baldur said. “I think Inchcape can best determine when she’s ready to grab them by the throat.”
“Madam,” Inchcape said to her com officer. “Make a signal to all ships…. Set ordered synchronization to this ship.”
“We’re within range,” she said. “Now, let them get a few millimeters closer…. Goddamit!”
One of the Shaoki cruisers had launched a volley of missiles.
“Oh, well,” she said, nodding to von Baldur. “We always forget about first-timers and amateurs. You may start the battle, if you wish, Miss.”
“This is Star Risk Control,” Friedrich said into a throat mike. “All units, all units. You may fire when ready.”
He grinned bashfully.
“I always wanted to say that, from when I was a child.”
“You forgot to say ‘Gridley,’” Goodnight suggested.
Grok looked at him in astonishment.
“You know where the saying came from?”
“Probably the only thing I remember about history,” Goodnight said. “I saw it in a holo once, about old-timey water ships.”
Inchcape was paying no attention, listening to her weapons officer report targets acquired, being tracked, and missiles launched.
The Khelat had no idea that there were warships off Hastati on full alert until the first missile flashed on the screen of a Khelat destroyer, less than a second before impact. The destroyer’s entire nose section vanished in a flare, then the rest of the ship blew up.
On one of Inchcape’s screens, blips flared, vanished. Each was a Khelat warship, and its crew, dying.
Riss doubted if, in spite of orders, many of the Khelat had put on the bulky, clumsy suits.
“Prepare to jump on my synch,” Inchcape said.
“Four … three … two … now!”
The Shaoki fleet made a one-second in-out into N-space, reappeared “above” the ecliptic and the Khelat ships.
Riss fancied she saw the lead elements shaking their heads back and forth, like hounds who’ve lost the scent.
