The Doublecross Program: Book Three of the Star Risk Series

by Chris Bunch

  “No hard feelings?” he asked.

  “None,” Friedrich von Baldur said in a friendly tone.

  Hore nodded, went into the lock, and it cycled shut.

  “Maybe not for you,” Goodnight said. “But I’m looking forward to meeting him in a bar someday.”

  “Our blood requirements weren’t satisfied,” agreed Grok.

  “Oh, well,” von Baldur sighed. “At least they didn’t ask for their back pay.”

  “Screw them,” Riss said. “They’re gone. Now we’ve got to figure out how to doublecross the Shaoki that tried to doublecross us.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Jasmine King glowered at the approach to Technician Ells’s maintenance and supply compound. It was down a straight road with no hiding places on either side. The road was z’d with solid barricades to slow traffic. The razor wire fence around the dozen buildings was taut, well maintained.

  The pair of Khelat sentries were sharply turned out, and there was a manned and alert AA site just inside the gate to deal with any attacking lifters.

  Jasmine had walked around the compound looking for a weak point, and couldn’t find any.

  Why couldn’t Ells have instructed his guards to be a little more sloppy?

  She couldn’t stay here and hope Ells came out. A roving patrol swept the outside perimeter every two hours.

  She was far too tattered for that. King wanted a bath and a general cleanup.

  The hike into Rafar City had taken five days. She’d been lucky in finding a strip of maln plantations to move through, which gave her cover and water.

  In a shed, she’d found a worker’s coveralls, which, though stinky, were far less distinctive than her ship suit and were large enough to hide her combat harness under.

  King had been feeling a little clever by the time she wove her way around the city outskirts to Ells’s compound.

  And then the cards turned up zero-zero.

  Very well, she decided. She would have to choose Option B.

  Unfortunately, at the moment, she didn’t have one figured out.

  King muttered a few choice obscenities, feeling Riss would be proud of her for that, at least, and regretfully started away, into the city.

  At least she had more than enough money. She could buy almost anyone on the planet, outside the royal family.

  Maybe that was a clue to what she should be doing.

  Instinctively, she headed for the poor section. Working sorts were somewhat noisy, but they weren’t known as snitches.

  Three hours later, she had an idea, sparked by the business across from her.

  It was most prepossessing — a fairly large store, with not much of anything on the shelves.

  The sign outside read:

  BEYDOM & SONS — PHARMACEUTICALS AND BEAUTY SUPPLIES.

  Inside, there was one clerk, a pudgy, defeated-looking man in his fifties, staring at a computer screen.

  A possibility.

  She went in.

  “Mr. Beydom?”

  The man looked up.

  “I am he. Son, rather.”

  “I need some beauty supplies,” Jasmine said. She named a base makeup, and a skin cream that would darken her face and hands to match the Khelat complexions.

  “I can sell you one, but not the cream,” Beydom said. “We’re out of stock on that.”

  He looked around at the nearly bare shelves, was about to say something else, changed his mind.

  This was going as Jasmine had hoped.

  “May I speak frankly?”

  Beydom looked worried, then suddenly smiled.

  “Why not? What do I have to lose?”

  “I’ve been watching your store for several days now,” Jasmine lied.

  Now Beydom looked really worried.

  “I’m not from the police or anything like that,” King soothed.

  “No,” Beydom said. “And you’re an offworlder. Trying, I’d guess, to look like one of us.”

  King nodded.

  “I’m looking for two things,” she said. “First, a place where I can be, shall we say, incognito. Second, a place to invest in. You appear to be somewhat cash-short.”

  Beydom nodded.

  “My father left me — and my brothers — with this, and no more. My brothers had the brains to find other work. Managing a maln processing plant. I should have gone with them. But … well, I always fancied myself as someone who could help people…. And this district has only a few stores. I’m as much a doctor as most of these people have. So I stayed. Along with the old people and those who couldn’t afford to move.”

  King was mildly alarmed. She hadn’t expected this fast a reaction.

  “I have a great deal of ready cash, which I want to invest,” she said. She reached under her suit and dropped gold coins on the countertop.

  Beydom’s eyes widened. He picked up one coin, examined it.

  “Alliance credits,” he said softly.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you one of the mercenaries the king has brought in? I’ve seen them on the ‘casts.”

  “No,” Jasmine said.

  Beydom looked at her closely, realized she wasn’t going to volunteer anything more.

  “I can’t easily convert this to Khelat,” he said. “But there’s one advantage of living where I do. There are many people who deal in such things.”

  “Yes.”

  “How much are you willing to spend … and how can you trust me?” Beydom said. “I can’t see drawing up papers.”

  “You do not need to know how much I have…. And the fact you brought up the matter of trust suggests I can,” Jasmine said.

  She brought out more coins, laid them out.

  “I think you should close your shop now and buy the cream I need … as well as whatever else this store needs to be immediately profitable.”

  “I … I can do that.”

  “Now we shall see how far trust goes.”

  King sat down in a chair, smiled expectantly.

  Beydom gurgled, said he could take care of things and could he get her anything, and he’d be right back.

  He got a coat, went out of the shop hurriedly.

  King waited until he was out of sight, left the shop herself, and went down the street to an alley she’d decided on before she’d entered Beydom’s.

  First contact was always the hardest and most dangerous in intelligence work.

  She didn’t like things going as fast as they were; she was worried about what could go wrong.

  Not that she had that many options.

  King went in the alley and crouched behind a large trash bin, her heavy blaster ready. If Beydom came back with the police, or with anyone, the question of trust would be conclusively answered, although Beydom was unlikely to benefit from the solution.

  It took over an hour, and King’s palms were very moist when she spotted the man coming back. He carried a large bag and was nervously looking about, as if expecting the heavy hand of the law at any moment. He clearly did not have the makings of a criminal.

  Beydom ducked inside the store, then came back out, looking about for King, his expression worried.

  King let him worry for a few minutes, then came out into the street.

  Beydom looked massively relieved.

  “I was afraid that — ”

  “I told you I’m not from the police,” Jasmine said. “So I am now your silent — very silent — partner.”

  “I suppose so. What are your intentions?”

  “I am not going to tell you. If the police arrive — or if you decide to sell me out — there’ll be nothing they can beat out of you, is there? Besides, I have nothing but honorable intentions for the people of Khelat.”

  Beydom’s disbelief showed.

  “Now, I am going to turn myself into a Khelat,” King said.

  “I have everything you need,” Beydom said. “Including some clothes. Don’t look worried — I do better than most men. I used to shop for my wife … when I wa
s married.” His expression was massively forlorn. “You can wash and change upstairs. In my apartment.”

  • • •

  King made an acceptable Khelat. The clothes were a little flashy, but nothing that noticeable.

  Beydom offered to let her use rooms near his — he owned the entire building.

  But Jasmine wasn’t that trusting.

  She went out at dusk, checked half a dozen rooming houses, found one where the owner didn’t look as if she had the slightest curiosity about anything, and paid for a room by the week with Khelat coins.

  Now she was ready to start work.

  If the Khelat didn’t really have bandits in the hills or in the city, they were about to now.

  • • •

  Jasmine’s plans started with a large-scale map of Rafar City.

  She had Beydom make a list of what he needed to put the pharmacy into profits, and sent him shopping.

  King also included a few items of her own on the list, such as fuel for an emergency generator, red nitric acid, bleach, a salt substitute (potassium chloride), distilled water, a good filter, a battery charger, and salt. Harder to get were white gas and petroleum jelly.

  Beydom desperately wanted to ask what she wanted with the latter two, but realized she wasn’t about to tell him.

  Working upstairs from the pharmacy, in a very well-ventilated room, King put what she’d learned from Riss and Goodnight to work.

  Once a compound started hissing at her, but she quickly doused the budding explosion with a fire extinguisher.

  Easier were the timers, after Jasmine found, in the bowels of Beydom’s storeroom, old-fashioned mechanical timers, and some cheap electronic devices.

  Hardest of all were the detonators. King took a very big chance and made up nitroglycerin, managing not to blow her fingers, head, or the building away.

  She decided she didn’t want a career as a budding saboteur, but didn’t have much choice.

  • • •

  Over the following days, the store’s shelves started filling up…. And there were thronging customers.

  King insisted the retail price be no more than 5 percent above what Beydom paid for the goods.

  Normally, ghetto stores are vastly more expensive than ones in plusher parts of town, their proprietors figuring, generally correctly, their potential customers didn’t have the wherewithal to travel elsewhere to shop.

  And so, between the prices and Beydom’s rather sensible medical advice, business boomed.

  Now it was time for King’s own concerns to do a little booming of their own.

  • • •

  The first device, which she dubbed, having heard M’chel use the phrase, a “fiendish thingie,” was planted outside what Beydom had told her was a police interrogation center.

  Having no faith in her abilities, she used a bit more of what she’d made with the nitric acid and the fuel than the manual she’d memorized a year ago called for.

  When it went off, it blew most of the station’s façade away, and cheering prisoners escaped into the night.

  An hour later, a pawnshop exploded.

  Its owner’s crime, Beydom had told her, was being a little too cozy with the police. Or so his money changer had told him.

  Jasmine didn’t really care if the man was innocent or guilty. The shop’s main sin was being six blocks south of the first bomb.

  Seven more to go.

  Jasmine King hoped that Star Risk wasn’t asleep at the switch.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  M’chel Riss was glooming over a map of Khelat II’s Rafar City. She was looking for revenge for Jasmine’s death in general, and Dov’s murder in particular.

  She was trying to figure out a way to murder Prince Jer, Lanchester’s killer, but nothing came.

  Riss wanted to get him in a small room and thin-slice his guts, but was willing to settle for a nice, lethal air strike if that was all that presented itself. But she had no link to Jer, no way of following his travels.

  It was not a good day.

  It had started with von Baldur paying off the three remaining ships of Vian’s squadron. Mercenaries have some virtues, but taking serious casualties is not one of them. In their tiny world, a single death is magnified, and the loss of Vian, and two ships, had hit them hard.

  Von Baldur had decided — with no argument from the other three in Star Risk — that it was better to get rid of the soldiers rather than have them glooming around, ruining everyone’s morale.

  That was starting to leave Star Risk a little thin on the ground, after Hore’s attempted mutiny. They were left with scattered odds and sods, with hardly anyone to cover their back. With the Shaoki’s treachery in seducing Hore, that gave them a bit of an itchy feeling, about knife-size, between the shoulder blades.

  In spite of her brave words, Riss hadn’t figured out a way to double-cross the Shaoki, at least without it being a suicidal operation.

  She was still unsure of what to do about Prince Wahfer and his two coms. She assumed his wanting to get in touch wasn’t a case of lust, but couldn’t figure any other obvious motives. Riss, like any experienced mercenary, knew better than to get away from her soldiery, even to meet with Wahfer on some neutral world, and wasn’t about to commit at this stage of events. Mercenaries without swords around them tend to get assassinated, since a blaster bolt is a good deal cheaper than meeting the payroll.

  Her map blipped at her, and Riss forced herself out of her brood.

  Three red blots appeared on the map.

  “What are these?” M’chel asked a technician.

  “Uh …” The tech touched sensors. “Interesting. Somebody’s setting off bombs in Rafar City … and it’s not us.”

  Riss frowned. She didn’t have the foggiest, and wasn’t fond of anyone running a freelance operation.

  Another screen blorped at her.

  It was Friedrich.

  “We have an inbound,” he said, sounding happy. “Actually, half a dozen blips. Patrol ships, commanded by one Redon Spada.”

  Spada was not only one of the best pilots to ever be ignored by the Alliance, but someone who was known to make calf eyes at Riss.

  “He’s looking for a job,” Friedrich said. “And I think we just might have one for him.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Riss met Spada and his ships at the port.

  For some reason, there was a certain amount of tension between them. Riss cursed at herself, remembering the time she’d come home on leave from officers’ candidate school, fresh in her new uniform, cocky in newfound self-confidence, and had encountered her old school boyfriend. One look, one embrace, and she’d been reduced to the sappy adolescent she’d been before joining the Marines.

  But she’d never even kissed Spada, let alone anything better.

  If she felt absurd, Spada seemed even more ill at ease.

  “We are glad to see you,” she said.

  “Careful,” he said with a grin. “Saying things like that drives my contract price up.”

  • • •

  Grok and Goodnight were in space, off Khelat IX’s primary world, aboard Inchcape’s flagship, the Fletcher.

  The Fletcher lay doggo, all coms silent, and only life-essential machinery turned on.

  Two other DDs orbited nearby under equal silence.

  The Fletcher was positioned just “below” the standard jumping-off point into hyperspace the Khelat used to reach the closest Alliance worlds.

  Goodnight had learned the fine art of what he called lizarding while nothing was happening — to be awake, somewhat alert, but around him time simply flowed past, without notice.

  Like he was a reptile on a rock.

  For a time, anyway.

  He was just starting to realize how bored he was, and how much it bothered him, when the watch officer buzzed Inchcape. “We’ve got activity on-planet,” he reported.

  Inchcape went to the bridge, looked at screens. “We do indeed,” she decided. “Wake ‘em up.”
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  The general quarters siren screeched through the ship, and women and men came awake and, rubbing the eyes and yawning, went to their alert positions.

  “What do we have?” Grok asked.

  The watch officer said, “Four, no, six ships lifting off … big, suggest they’re transports … and half a dozen smaller ones — escorts I’d guess — jumping off in front of them.”

  The officer consulted a screen, touched sensors, frowned, tried again. He hit another sensor, and a third screen lit. “They should be assembling about … here.” He touched the screen.

  “They think,” Inchcape said. “Put all TA systems on seek around that point. And hook me up to the others.”

  She issued similar orders to the other destroyers. “I don’t see any reason,” she said, “for us to fardiddle around waiting to maybe get shot at.”

  “Against my religion,” Goodnight agreed.

  “Weapons, put me out about, oh, ten shipkillers, drifting them toward the IP so they’ll get there in about twenty minutes.”

  She touched her throat mike.

  “Inch Two, Three, did you monitor?”

  Two affirms came in.

  “You do the same. Hold the missiles in a orbit when they’re close.”

  She cut her mike. “Now we wait.”

  They did, for almost an hour.

  “Not very damned efficient, are those Khelat? They should’ve had them formed up and gone fifteen minutes ago.”

  “They’re in range of our birds,” the weapons officer reported.

  “Have our babies acquired them?”

  “That’s affirmative,” the officer said.

  “Let ‘em get a little closer,” Inchcape said. “It never hurts to put ‘em straight down the throat.”

  Goodnight was suddenly aware his lower lip was sweating.

  “Fine,” Inchcape said after a few moments, looking utterly calm. “Fire ‘em up.”

  The blue dots that were the missiles began moving.

  “On auto-home,” she ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the weapons officer reported.

  “See if you can’t get some good targeting on those incoming escorts,” Inchcape said. “It’d be nice to have some icing on the cake.”

  Seconds passed.