by Chris Bunch
“That’s … odd,” Friedrich said.
“Certainly is,” Goodnight said. He bowed to Grok.
“Your cue, sirrah.”
“Chas brought me in,” the alien said, “because these journalists were sending their reports back into Alliance territory coded.”
“That’s very strange,” Riss said. “Never heard of that, although maybe, if there’s a couple-three fighting for the same story … which there doesn’t seem to be.”
“No,” Grok agreed. “Even more unusual is that the code they are using — which I haven’t broken as yet — is a three/five/three, sprinkled with two-character groups.”
Jasmine’s eyes went wide. “That’s the pattern Cerberus Systems likes.”
“Indeed it is,” Grok said. “And I can add that Cerberus, during the time that I was with them, frequently used journalists for their cover IDs.”
“So why is Cerberus lurking around Khelat?” M’chel said.
“I do not know,” von Baldur said. “But always assuming Cerberus is never up to any good, especially as far as we are concerned, I think we should have them chased back where they came from.”
“I can take care of that,” Riss said. “Prince Wahfer wants to talk to me in the worst way. Which means he wants something. And a favor for a favor … hmmm. As long as I don’t have to go to bed with the bastard.”
“If you will take care of these reporters,” Friedrich said, “preferably without us having to show our faces, I shall do some inquiring with our pet lobbyist and ask who on Earth — or in the Alliance — has the curiosity bug.”
• • •
The dining place Wahfer chose was quiet, romantic, but most of all, secluded.
Riss wondered if Wahfer had a jealous wife, who was more closly connected to King Saleph than the Prince.
Or maybe wives.
She knew little of the social customs of the Khelat, hadn’t particularly wanted to learn.
Riss told Wahfer about the journalists.
He said they were easily taken care of, and would be deported tomorrow. They would never know that Star Risk was behind their being declared persona non grata.
She was not to worry — and he actually used the hoary phrase — her pretty little head about it.
Riss hid her wince, and asked how she could return the favor.
Wahfer grew kittenish. Riss couldn’t look under the tablecloth to see if he was digging his toe into the carpet.
“I was not particularly pleased,” he obliqued, “with the way the most recent battle was conducted, in spite of our success.”
“The old saw has it, ‘One more victory like that and I am undone.’”
“Then you — which means Star Risk — agree.”
“We think,” Riss said, “the campaign might have been conducted a bit more subtly.”
Wahfer smiled at Riss’s careful words.
“What I wanted — want — was to ask, in a very casual sense, how attached Star Risk is to King Saleph.”
“He pays our bills,” Riss said.
“Suppose a client happened along that offered you a better deal?”
“Star Risk,” M’chel lied, “tends to keep its word. But we also have a reputation for keeping all options open. This is, after all, a very tough universe.”
“It is, is it not,” Wahfer agreed. “Perhaps, in the weeks to come, I might have an interesting proposition for your team. I would appreciate your silence — to anyone except your fellows — until I come to you with something definite.”
And he changed the subject.
He also made only a token pass at her, when he returned her to her barracks, which surprised Riss.
The next morning, she reported fully to the others.
Von Baldur clicked his tongue severally and thoughtfully against the roof of his mouth. How very, very interesting,” he said. “I would suspect Prince Wahfer of ambition.
“Jasmine, could you do a bit of research, and find out how often — and how violently — Khelat changes its rulers?”
“I shall,” King said.
“I would suggest,” Friedrich went on, “keeping in mind Machiavelli’s caution about a mercenary ever straying from his swords, that each of us start practicing extreme caution.
“Further, I was finally able to make contact — gads, but that is an intolerable verb — with Anya Davenport, to inquire about Cerberus’s presence. She knew nothing, at great length, and was terribly astonished at Cerberus’s presence.
“As I said, watch your backs.”
FORTY-SIX
“Well,” Redon Spada said to M’chel Riss, “if you don’t have anything better to do than wait around to get killed, you want to go adventuring with me?”
“How romantic,” Riss said.
“It is,” Spada agreed. “Or will be, rather. Moonlight on the waters … raiders from the deep … tiny islands lapped by waves.”
“Translate, please.”
“I have discovered,” Spada said, “Irdis has a lot of little tiny islands, and lots — so to speak — of war plants.”
“So?”
“So they send a lot of stuff by sea to the bigger spaceports.”
“So again?”
“While they’ve got AA up the wazoo,” Spada said, “how much you wanna bet they’ve never even thought about what’s under their oceans?”
“Which is?”
“Me … and some other p-boats. Starships make great submarines.”
“Ah,” Riss said, thinking about the state of the world. She hadn’t really determined on what unit she’d be with for the coming invasion of Irdis, and didn’t much care about making herself useful on Khelat.
She realized she was still recovering from the nightmare of Shaoki VI/III. But Riss being Riss, she never considered throwing her com in the nearest body of water and disappearing somewhere nonmartial for a few weeks.
“Raiding?”
“Sure,” Spada said. “It’s got to be safer than tarting around the approaches to Irdis. Who knows from submarine raiders?”
And so M’chel Riss went raiding with Redon Spada.
It almost got her killed.
• • •
The sea wasn’t Earth green, but not far distant, and the swells rolled three thousand meters below them.
“These reaches don’t have many islands to break up the wave heights,” Spada’s navigator — weapons officer said. “Which is why we chose this area.”
Spada nodded.
“A good place to make entry,” he said, and touched his throat mike.
“Take ‘em in,” he said.
The two Pyrrhus-class starships obediently dove, Spada’s ship in front.
Riss, even though she knew better, braced as the ocean rushed up toward them.
Spada braked slightly, keeping his speed below Mach numbers. These waters should be deserted, but who wanted to take a chance?
His ship hit, and there was only a slight jolt. Then they were underwater.
Spada checked a screen that showed the other two ships flanking him, then cut his speed to less than 100 kph.
M’chel was wondering why she’d forgotten about her fairly recently developed sense of claustrophobia.
“Now we turn south and east,” Spada said. He nodded at the navigator — weapons officer, and a large-scale chart appeared on the center screen.
“Here’s the port city of Lafan, with manufacturing plants all to hell and gone behind it. Goodies … everything from unfinished ship hulls from a big casting yard to missile tubes gets shipped to Berfan, then finished up, and shipped offworld to designated systems,” Spada said.
“How official briefing you sound,” Riss said.
“I do, don’t I?” Spada said, catching himself. “What we propose to do is hang off Lafan until we spot a convoy, or a target of opportunity, anyway, and then count us some coup.”
“Coo?” Riss puzzled.
“Spelt C-O-U-P,” the navigator said. “Old Earth custom.
One tribe made points by whacking a member of another tribe with a stick, preferably when that other person had a lance or something.”
“I assume,” M’chel said dryly, “we can dispense with following primitive customs that precisely.”
The three ships moved closer to the city, keeping close watch on the screens. Nothing moved on the oceans.
“Clean, clean, clean,” Spada chortled.
At his signal, the three ships grounded, very deep, more than five hundred meters down.
“Now we wait for targets.”
• • •
Riss volunteered to take the predawn watch, what Spada was calling the “dog watch.”
She found out that was an old water-sailing term, and instantly started aye-ayeing and telling Spada how the deck was, how everyone’s timbers were shivering, and other nauticalisms she made up.
Before she relieved the navigator on watch, she had him show her all the little toys of the control board.
One particularly fascinated her: a small rocket that could be put in a particular orbit and then used as a silent, nearly undetectable observer in many different wavelengths, including normal visual.
It seemed to her that rocket might be interesting underwater.
Once everyone was asleep, she dimmed the lights of the control board and launched the rocket upward.
A storm was raging on the surface, and she let the rocket drift, wearing the observer’s helmet.
This was better than any holo, any projected experience she’d known, and she let the rocket be carried by the tidal current toward shore, then submerged it and sent it hissing back to its proper position, just above where the p-boat lay, many meters below.
Waves washed over the tiny projectile, and she fiddled with the control panel, found a microphone control, and let the winds whirl into her earphones.
She sent the rocket arcing out of the water and into the face of waves. If there were any Shaoki ships out there, she thought they’d be concerned with their own survival, not some strange fish leaping about.
Sometimes she let the rocket ride a wave, near the crest, where foam boiled.
She decided if this contract paid off properly, she would need one of these rockets on her island, much better, in the stormy season, than a windsurfer.
For the first time she could remember, she actually regretted being relieved at the watch’s end.
Two ship days later, the engineer, standing his watch, reported contact.
• • •
With a minimum of communications, Spada brought his three starships close to the surface.
His engineer, muttering, was fussing with the filters on one screen.
Radar already showed three large blips.
The screen burped and showed, in real time, three tankers, each about two hundred meters long. They were strange-looking, twin-hulled catamarans whose decks overhung their cargo tanks between their hulls.
Spada searched, found nothing else on the water. High above, almost invisible against the cloud cover, were two ships, possibly escort against the tankers being hit from space.
“Wonder what they’re lugging?” the navigator said.
“Shush,” Spada said. “I’m figgerin’.”
He touched keys, then got on his throat mike.
“Spada elements,” he cast. “Transmitting firing solution. Fire two missiles each in five minutes.”
There were mike clicks of acknowledgment.
On time, Spada nodded at the weapons. “As they used to say, you may launch when ready, on the time tick.”
“Yessir.”
Five minutes ended.
The weapons officer touched a sensor, and Riss felt a slight jolt, then another, as two missiles slid out of firing tubes, floated, not under drive, toward the surface.
The weapons officer put on a gunnery helmet.
“Firing,” he said.
On a screen, the two blips of the missiles went vertical, shot upward.
The gunnery program muttered to itself as the missiles, not caring whether they were fired in space, air, or water, focused on their targets.
The tankers never had a chance.
Six missiles closed on them.
Two struck the lead ship at once, which mushroomed into flame and black smoke. A third missile, seeing nothing much but destruction to impact on around the first tanker, shifted its aim to the second ship, blew its bow off.
The ship veered, out of control, almost ramming the third tanker, just as two more missiles slammed into it.
It, too, exploded.
“Now,” Spada said, viewing the shambles with evident satisfaction, “where did number six missile get off to?”
The helmeted figure of the weapons officer shook its head.
“Number two target’s probably for it,” Spada said. “Having no bow and all. But put another one out there, just to mak’ siccar.”
“Yessir.”
The seventh missile struck the last tanker just aft of a five-story island that must be the bridge.
Obediently, the tanker blew itself apart.
“Hell of a way to make a living,” Spada said, his voice somber. “Riding those matchboxes.
“Let’s go deep. I don’t want to find out what those aircraft are for.”
• • •
They hugged the bottom for a day, with remote sensors above them.
Riss didn’t dare play games with her rocket now; instead tried to concentrate on the new globular mathematics text she’d brought along.
But the sounds in the p-boat were off-putting, neither the hum of deep space nor the silence of inaction.
They came to the surface at twilight, and saw, in the distance, lights.
Spada ordered the patrol boat to speed, and, with its fellows, sent his ship skating around, far faster, to the front of a two-ship convoy.
Both of them were medium-sized merchantmen.
Overhead flew some sort of escort aircraft, and, surprisingly, two very small ships.
“They learn fast, don’t they?” Spada said, and launched a pair of missiles.
Both struck home, as did follow-up strikes from the other two ships, and the p-boats went deep again.
Spada, having seen lifeboats launched, was fairly cheerful.
But Riss kept thinking about those escort vessels, if that was what they were.
• • •
She managed to get Spada alone that night, although there was no clue, this deep in the ocean, as to the hour.
“About those two little ships,” she said.
“Maybe escorts?” Spada nodded.
“Suppose they’re not particularly fast learners around Lafan,” she said. “Any more than the Shaoki have showed themselves so far.”
“Awright,” Spada said amiably. “I’ll make that assumption. Where does it get us?”
“Maybe,” Riss said cautiously, “that they’ve had problems with sea raiders before and already have an SOP figured out.”
“What? Pirates?”
“Call them what you will.”
Spada started to make a joke, saw M’chel was serious, and thought for a moment.
“Given that,” he said, “that would mean that we’d better not think we’re in killer’s heaven for very much longer.”
“That was my thought.”
“Tell you what,” Spada said. “We’ll hit them again, tomorrow or the next, and if they’re showing any signs of being ready for us, we’ll get out of here. This was, after all, just supposed to be a little rest and relaxation for you.”
• • •
Two days later, Riss’s fears were realized.
And then some.
Half a dozen large merchantmen set out from Lafan.
Spada planned a nice, conventional approach, straight down the throat at them.
He and the other two p-boats maneuvered into attack position, crept toward the oncoming ships. He was about to bring his ship to the surface and prepare for firing when a superfi
cial overhead sweep saw three ships in the air, dancing close attendance on the convoy.
“I’d guess destroyers,” he said, lips pursed. “So we’ll launch from deeper, just in case they’ve got magnetic anomaly detectors or sonobouys or like that. But between you and me, Riss, I think maybe we should’ve gotten some hat last night.”
He thought some more.
“No. Wrong way in. They’ll be expecting something from in front, since we done that before.
“Navigator, put me around behind these bastards, and let the other two know we’re going in from the rear.”
Riss didn’t know enough about ships to be afraid, but she saw the expression on the navigator-weapons officer, and then figured out that if Spada was going in behind the convoy, that would put the patrol ship in shallow water, which meant less hiding room, and with the shore closing off half of their possible escape routes.
But no one said anything, and there was the hum of the drive for over an hour.
“We’re looking up their butts, sir,” the navigator reported.
“Come up on them … say, about ten klicks faster than the convoy,” Spada ordered. “And have the weapons ready for launch. We’ll hit ‘em and get out. One launch, no time to police up the wounded.
“Pass the word.”
• • •
They crept up on the convoy.
The four of them aboard the patrol boat spoke in whispers, as if the Shaoki ahead of them could hear.
When the three starships were in position, Spada waited for almost ten minutes.
But nothing happened.
“Make your firing calculations,” he ordered, even though those had been done, and were being redone every few seconds.
“I wish,” he said, “this was a submarine, with one of those periscopes. I’d like to see what’s going on up on those ships, like gun crews and such.”
But blips and interpreted images remained as they were.
“Ready to fire,” the weapons officer reported.
But Spada seemed reluctant to make the launch.
“All right,” he said finally. “Launch two.”
His other ships obeyed, as well.
“Fire them.”
As the missiles started toward the surface, nav-weapons jerked.
