by Chris Bunch
By that time, the first wave had made Immelmann turns and were coming back on the field. This time, they came lower and strafed with their chainguns and dropped time-delay bombs.
The second wave did the same on the industrial plant, and the two waves lifted for space.
“Not too bad,” Goodnight said. “Somebody’s got a bit of a char on their beards, and we’ve got no casualties at all.”
“Let’s just hope my kiddies don’t think this is the way it always works,” Spada said soberly.
• • •
If they had, they learned better when Goodnight hit Berfan.
Napoleon, when about to promote one of his generals to field marshal, listened to a litany of the man’s victories, then asked querulously, “Yes, yes. But is he lucky?”
And luck plays a greater part on the battlefield than generals are willing to admit.
Chas Goodnight was, normally, lucky.
Except when he wasn’t.
There was no way the Shaoki could have known his intents, since he had his minifleet set its course for jumps by the standard nav guides, plus or minus a few coordinates.
This time, when Sword and Fletcher came out of N-space, just off Berfan, they came out almost in the middle of a Shaoki formation, all destroyers or heavy corvettes.
Worse, the commander was alert and instantly gave the alarm and the order to attack.
At least Goodnight’s patrol boats were manned and ready.
Goodnight ordered them dropped from their umbilical cords and to counterattack. The ten obeyed, and had only their maneuverability to help them.
The fight lasted only seconds.
Some of the missiles launched by the Shaoki were almost as big as the Pyrrhus-class boats. But the viciousness of the mercenary counterattack made the Shaoki formation jump back, and reform.
Spada ordered the patrol boats to jump to the already assigned rendezvous point. They obeyed, leaving one damaged Shaoki destroyer … and the smoking waste of five patrol boats.
• • •
“We have problems,” Redon Spada said into the ‘tween-ship com from the Sword.
“Tell me about it,” Goodnight said, from the bridge of the Fletcher.
“No, I mean problems. Mutiny-type problems.”
“Son of a bitch,” Goodnight said slowly and distinctly. “Keep ‘em off the bridge, and we’re on the way.”
He turned to Inchcape. “Keep a tracer on Sword in case these idiots take over and try to haul ass. If any of the p-boats do anything strange, such as hostile strange, feel free to hit ‘em hard.”
He hit the com to the small passenger space. The Fletcher was at General Quarters, so his bodyguards were still suited, waiting for whatever developed.
“Turn out to the starboard lock,” Goodnight ordered. “We’re going visiting.”
• • •
They rode a small, skeletal ship’s boat to the Sword. Goodnight went from man to man, giving brief instructions. Not that there were many orders to give, since he had no idea what sort of mutiny he was about to confront.
They braked the boat outside the transport’s air lock, slipped through, securing the far side of the lock as they did. They went up the passage toward the control room at the double, blasters at port arms.
Goodnight heard the uproar well before he reached the control room. It was hard to believe that a handful of men and women could make so much noise.
Goodnight bellowed for order, got none, then drew his blaster. Aiming at a point he hoped didn’t have vital circuitry behind it, he sent a bolt slamming up. Nothing stopped running, so it was evidently a safe shot.
There was a stunned silence.
“So what’s the problem?” Goodnight asked in a mild tone of voice.
There was a yammer, then a woman wearing a sweat-stained flight suit pushed toward him.
It was L’hommage Curtis.
“We want out,” she said bluntly.
“Out of what?”
“Out of our contracts,” she said. “We didn’t bargain to go up against battleships.”
Goodnight didn’t bother correcting her.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” he said. “Your contract says once you take on a mission, you carry it out. When we get back to Khelat III, you can all resign. But not here, not now. That’s not how the world works.”
“That’s how it’s going to work,” Curtis said firmly.
“Once more,” Goodnight said. “We’re fighting a war. People get killed in war. Go back to your boats and make them ready for a jump.”
Curtis looked stubborn.
“You all agree,” Goodnight said, relaxing back against the bulkhead, his blaster still in hand.
There was a hubbub of general agreement.
“Tsk,” Goodnight said, and his blaster blurred up and he blew off the top half of Curtis’s head.
As her body collapsed, blood spraying across her fellow mutineers, there was a gape of silence.
“Now,” Goodnight said, still sounding unbothered, “we’ll try it again. Get back to your ships, link up with Sword, then report back here as we make the jump to Irdis.”
This time, he didn’t lower his pistol.
The fliers, most of whom had never seen blood up close and personal, stared at Curtis’s unlovely corpse, sagged in surrender, and shuffled past him.
One flier started to say something, and two bodyguards lifted their blasters. He clamped his mouth shut and went with the others.
Goodnight went to the control room door, rapped.
“Open up,” he said. “The excitement’s over.”
The port irised open. Spada, blaster in hand, and two crewmen, also armed, stood there.
“Have a couple of people dump the carrion out an air lock,” Goodnight said, indicating Curtis’s body with a gloved thumb.
• • •
The crew of the transport, and even Redon Spada, looked at Chas Goodnight a little strangely after Curtis’s execution.
It didn’t bother him. He was used to it, after being one of the Alliance’s assassins. Besides, most of his concern was wondering what might be waiting for them off Irdis.
• • •
The answer was, not much.
The five surviving Pyrrhus boats were unlinked from the Sword while it was still in N-space.
Four of them exited hyperdrive, and, a moment later, Redon Spada’s boat and the Fletcher came into normal space just behind them.
The ex-mutineers had been told they’d be given targets on the spot, and for none of them to “get cute,” as Chas put it, or else either Spada’s craft or the Fletcher would happily missile them from the rear.
No one tried to disobey.
The targets were there, right in front of them: Two Shaoki orbital satellites, with a horde of light escorts and merchantmen orbiting about them.
“One pass,” Spada ordered. “One target per missile. Fire what you have at anything you want, and come on back.”
The p-boats obeyed, flashing at near light speed through the enemy.
Both orbital fortresses, and Goodnight couldn’t tell how many ships, took hits.
The logical targets should have been the merchantmen, but Goodnight knew most of the demoralized p-boat crewmen and -women went for the escorts as being their personal enemies.
Missiles hit, exploded, and Shaoki ships blipped out of existence.
The orbital satellites were a gout of oxygen-fed flames for an instant, then boiling smoke.
The p-boats flashed back into N-space, where the Sword was waiting.
“I think,” Goodnight commed to Spada, “the king’s beard is now a fiery mess. Let’s go on home.”
FORTY-ONE
The royals were having what they called a gymkhana.
Riss wondered where they found the time to play, if the king was intent on battle.
Grok looked up the word, and desperately wanted to attend. “They compete on four-legged Earth creatures, which I’ve n
ever seen.”
“You don’t want to,” Riss said. “All they’re good for is to shit and look pretty.”
“Some say that describes humans, as well,” Grok said.
He was terribly disappointed on the day, when he discovered this was a modern gymkhana using small lifters instead of animals.
Grok watched the various princes convolute around a course, whooping at each other, snorted, and went back to his computers.
Riss hung on, for some unknown reason.
She was brooding over the events, wishing she was in a lifter with half a dozen crew-served blasters, making a strafing run, when Prince Wahfer skidded to a halt in front of where she sat and asked her out for a drink and dinner later, having something important to discuss.
She turned him down, a little too sharply, she realized, seeing the rather hurt look on his face.
M’chel Riss was wondering if she was starting to get a little bigoted, something she’d never accused herself of in her most inquisitorial moments.
It was all because of Dov Lanchester, she thought.
She hoped.
Riss decided it was time to clear up that particular matter, and then see if she still was being a racist.
• • •
Friedrich von Baldur was staring into a com screen, listening to a scrambled dressing-down from his lobbyist, Anya Davenport.
“I don’t know about this entire contract with you,” she continued, and there was not a bit of friendliness in her voice. “I’ve had to make explanation after explanation to Omni Foods, and now, when you’re back with the Khelat — thanks for making it difficult to track you down — we’ve had a complete halt to maln shipments. Not good, von Baldur. Not good at all.”
Friedrich couldn’t tell her that the king himself was responsible — all nonessential commercial shipping had been suspended, and transports seized, to provide support for the upcoming invasion.
“I am going to wait until I calm down, make some apologies to some people who I told your Star Risk was reliable, and then think, very seriously, about whether I can continue this contract and keep my good name!”
• • •
The prince was well guarded, especially at night.
Too well, as Riss had discovered when she was casing his quarters a bit ago.
Guards formed up and marched around his manor, relieving each other at two-hour intervals.
It was a simple matter to slide into the rear of the formation, dressed as a Khelat private, and drop out at a suitable place.
M’chel kept the uniform on as she went over two walls, avoiding one alarm and spoofing the second with a standard transmitter.
The Prince liked to sleep with a window open, which made things all the easier. M’chel made sure he was sleeping alone, took the panic button from his bedside, and pulled up a comfortable chair.
The sudden glow from a tiny light woke Prince Jer. He struggled up, eyes wide, fumbling for the alarm.
Riss held it up.
“Don’t bother.”
“You! You’re — ”
“An old friend of General Dov Lanchester, who you murdered,” Riss said.
“I did not! I did no such thing! Those are all lies!”
“Lower your voice,” M’chel ordered. “Or I’ll have to kill you sooner rather than later.”
“But … but that was fortunes of war,” Jer sputtered.
“Call this the same, then,” Riss said. She unsnapped the fighting knife at her waist.
Jer swung his legs out of the bed.
“Don’t I get a chance to defend myself?”
“In court?” Riss asked, and laughed harshly.
“Then with a blade of my own.”
He motioned to a wall where several knives and ceremonial daggers hung.
“Now, that might be interesting,” Riss said, standing up.
Jer licked his lips, stood, turned toward the wall, reached for a near-sword.
Riss shot him in the back with a very small, very silent pistol she’d concealed in her palm.
Jer sagged, fell on his back.
Riss walked over, looked down at the complete surprise that had frozen his face, made sure he was dead.
He was.
Riss took a small Shaoki flag from a pocket, dropped it beside the body.
That would be the alibi.
She next thought about the Khelat and the Shaoki.
Did she now hate them, in the singular and the collective, a little less for being double-dealing bastards?
She did not.
Riss decided there were some folks the gods just didn’t want anyone liking, which is why these two people inhabited worlds light-years from anyone civilized.
That was enough for her.
She put away her gun and knife and went back out as silently as she’d come.
FORTY-TWO
The Khelat fleet assembled.
Ships, sometimes singly, sometimes in small fleets, flashed into being off Khelat II.
King Saleph and Prince Barab were in martial ecstasy, and Khelat holo-casts were filled with footage of the ships, floating in vacuum, to solemn music.
The king dedicated the coming battle to the memory of Prince Jer, foully murdered by Shaoki assassins.
“I’ve decided the Shaoki don’t have a spy in place,” Chas Goodnight said. “They don’t need one. The Khelat are posting their intentions on billboards.”
“How badly?” Riss inquired.
“They’ve got a cluster of escorts, including a couple of ancient cruisers, off Shaoki VI/III, Grok told me,” Goodnight said. “Shitfire, this is like the old, old, olden days. Twouldn’t surprise me if old Saleph thought about sending an invite to single combat if there’d been another king to take him up on the offer.”
Goodnight didn’t sound disturbed. His two battalions of shock troops had arrived, been tested in maneuver, and were pronounced acceptable by Chas.
Riss, wondering if she would always be a sucker, assigned herself to the Khelat lifter regiment that she’d ridden with in the battle on Hastati, instead of “in the rear, with the gear, the sergeant major, and the beer.”
At least, she thought, she’d have a place to uncork her helmet. The poor damned crunchies’d be stuck in their suits until VI/III was captured…. Or until they were taken out of battle to the hospital or morgue.
She decided not to dwell on that.
War was killing, and that was her trade.
Self-chosen.
• • •
Shaoki VI wasn’t an unusual system. There were five planets orbiting a dim sun. None of them had much of an atmosphere and were small, so that even their heavy metals didn’t give the worlds much in the way of gravity.
Nothing had ever evolved in the system, like most in the universe, until the Khelat/Shaoki arrived.
The Shaoki got to the minerals first, exploiting them for their own use, then limited export.
If Shaoki VI hadn’t been nestled in a nook surrounded by the settled Shaoki systems, it would have been peaceably hammered into rock, the rock cycled into raw minerals, until the system eventually vanished into the hammer mills.
But it was, and it wasn’t.
It would, however, make a decent base for spacecraft, and could be easily leveled into landing fields.
Decent for starcraft, rotten for troops, who’d be confined to their ships, whatever housing could be brought in, or their suits.
Why its third world had been garrisoned, first by the Shaoki, then by their hirelings, the heavy lifter unit the Malleus Maulers, was chance, the typical Shaoki strategic stupidity, or the knowledge the Khelat were coming.
Why, on the other hand, King Saleph hadn’t chosen another arena for his Grand Offensive when he heard III was reinforced was another mystery.
Regardless, after a suitable passage of time, the assembled fleet jumped, in widely spaced increments, into the Shaoki System.
• • •
Riss got three separate messages
that Prince Wahfer wanted to talk to her — “and it’s not what you would think” — but didn’t answer them, being busy with her own affairs.
• • •
Von Baldur, aboard the Pride of Khelat, jumped with the lead elements, escorted by Inchcape and twelve of her destroyers.
On the third jump, they entered the Shaoki VI system just as the shit hit the fan.
The Shaoki, perhaps at the Maulers’ behest, had moved three orbital fortresses into position in a self-defending triangular formation, in a close orbit to III. Of course, there was now no doubt at all that the invasion was expected.
The fortresses had been observed by one of the Khelat cruisers on recon, whose captain had not reported their arrival. Friedrich wondered what had been passing through the woman’s mind, but when he inquired he was told the king had already had her shot.
The fortresses were guarded by two dozen destroyers, and the landings were blocked.
Khelat ships swarmed to the attack, were drawn into range of the heavy missiles and supercaliber blasters of the fortresses, and smashed.
The Khelat, seemingly stymied, pulled back to the limits of the system, but were still occasionally hit by probing long-range missiles on by-the-grace-of-God missions.
• • •
“For the love of Henriette,” Friedrich muttered. He was scanning King Saleph’s plan for the attack on the Shaoki forts and ships. “Has this man no imagination?”
Redon Spada, Grok, and Inchcape were on the bridge of the Pride.
“It’s not very creative,” Spada agreed.
“We can do better than that,” Inchcape said. “Let’s get a plan together, get the king’s approval, and — ”
“We shall not trouble the king,” von Baldur said, sounding regal. “We shall just deal with the situation.”
Von Baldur’s own scheme was very simple, if hazardous.
“Not good,” Grok opined. “But not a frontal assault, either. Better than the royal scheme, at any rate. It even stands a fair chance of working.
“So I’ll go now to put my own operation in motion.”
• • •
Redon Spada pushed a couple of p-boats out toward the fortresses to check an idea all his very own.
The idea turned out to be correct.
The missiles from the Shaoki fortresses were not only cruising for targets, but they were seeding small spy satellites as they went, all in the direction of the main fleet.
