Hunting Party

by Elizabeth Moon

  “You have a wicked mind,” Cecelia said.

  “I know. But it makes sense. You told me that Bunny has some rare and valuable animals that are practically pets. What if they’re being hunted? We’ll go armed, and expect trouble: it’s the only sensible way.”

  “Armed?”

  “Of course. Lepescu is dangerous, and he’s not alone. We don’t know what those youngsters have gotten into, and we have to be able to get them and ourselves out.” Even as she said it, she knew they couldn’t possibly do this alone. It was stupid. Militarily, it was suicide. A flitter held eight easily, ten if cramped—could they squeeze in some muscle on the way out? No—she could not command any of Bunny’s staff, and she wouldn’t trust them anyway. She ached for her lost crew, for Oblo and Petris who would have stood behind her in anything. Except the trial, her mind reminded her. She argued back to her memory: They would have, but I wouldn’t put them through it.

  She shook herself physically, as well as mentally, and signed off with Sirkin, giving the few final orders. She would have to do this alone, because there was no other way. At least she could prepare Cecelia for what they might face.

  “Rifles,” she said. “At a minimum, and if you can use a bow—”

  “Of course,” Cecelia said, still looking shocked. “But why—”

  “It’s quieter.” Heris had pulled out her notepad again, and was figuring on it. Supplies: they’d have to assume they couldn’t use Bandon, so they’d need food, medical supplies, ammunition for the weapons she intended to take, protective gear, whatever communications and electronic gear she could lay her hands on—she looked at the wall chronometer—in half a standard hour. They’d need to leave before the day’s hunt gathered. It was crazy. They should tell Bunny; they should use his staff for this.

  “Should we take something larger than a standard flitter?” Cecelia asked.

  “Hmm? What else?” Heris computed cubage and mass on her notepad and entered the total. They would have to change from hunting clothes, too, or take along something more suitable and change en route.

  “A supply flitter, I was thinking. We could take more supplies, and if one of them is injured . . .”

  “Good idea. Will they sign one out to you?”

  Cecelia looked affronted. “I’ve been a family friend for years—of course they will. Michaels will be glad someone’s checking on the young people.”

  “Fine. Then get this list”—Heris handed it to her—“loaded as soon as you can. I’ll pack my kit, and what else we need.”

  “The weapons.” Cecelia scowled.

  “Yes. The weapons.” The weapons were going to be a problem, any way she went at it. Personal weapons were common enough, but Cecelia, as a dedicated fox hunter, had brought none with her, and Heris’s own small handgun would not be enough.

  That morning the green hunt gathered at Stone Lodge, so the house staff at the Main House seemed less rushed. The housekeeper’s eyebrows went up slightly when Heris mentioned weapons, but the brief explanation that Lady Cecelia wanted to find her nephew brought them back down, as if Lady Cecelia could be expected to take after her relatives with firepower.

  “Senedor and Clio have a shop here during the season,” the housekeeper said, mentioning a firm of weapons dealers as famous in their way as the great fashion houses. “I imagine they would have anything Lady Cecelia might want.”

  “Thank you,” Heris said; once she’d heard the name, she remembered seeing the S&C logo outside one of the little stone buildings that made up the commercial row: saddlers, bootmakers, tailors and bloodstock agents.

  Senedor & Clio’s local representative welcomed her with a wink and a smile. “Lady Cecelia, eh? What’s she doing now, deciding to turn elphoose hunter? You’re her captain. . . . You look like regular military.”

  “I was.” Heris did not elaborate. She had thought of a good story on the way over. “Look—I’m buying two lots—they’ll need separate accounting. Lady Cecelia’s yacht is woefully undergunned; the crew’s arms are pitiful.” In fact, the crew had no weapons at all. “I finally convinced her that in some of the places she wants to travel, she needs to arm the crew with something more advanced than muzzle-loaders from the family museum.”

  The man chuckled. “A lot of these aristocrats are like that—they don’t expect to need real protection.”

  “And most of them probably don’t,” Heris conceded. “The ones who make a safe round from hunting here to deep-sea fishing on Fandro and back to court for the season . . . but you know Lady Cecelia isn’t like that.” The man nodded. “So . . . I’m going to do my job and see that she isn’t hijacked somewhere.”

  “Umm. We don’t carry many of that sort of thing down here,” he said. “But let’s see . . . here.” The holo catalog showed something that looked like the landing troops’ rifles and submachine guns. Exactly what Heris had been hoping for. “These are made by Zechard, who as you know supply the fleet marines. Ours, of course, go through additional testing from the factory. We have a gross of each model up at Home Station, and we could deliver anything up to that quantity direct to Lady Cecelia’s yacht. The Sweet Delight, isn’t it?”

  Heris wondered if Lepescu knew that somewhere on Home Station were a gross each of military-quality rifles and the stubby-barrelled weapons which had been called OOZ for time out of mind. Heris remembered that one instructor at the Academy had said they were supposed to be 007’s, but through a computer glitch they’d been renamed. The landing force’s gory jest was that they were called OOZ because that’s what they made of anyone foolish enough to get in the way. And how many were on the other Stations? She did not ask, but smiled ruefully at the salesman instead. “That would cause problems,” she said. “At least now. You’ve probably heard that we’ve a standing watch aboard—?”

  “Yes—that’s why I thought—”

  She shook her head at him. “The Stationmaster was none too pleased about that; Lady Cecelia is sure he will not like having that crew armed with modern weapons. Of course they’re harmless—it’s only a handful, and most of them don’t yet know how to use these—” She tapped the holo catalog and the image shivered. “But she said to gather the weapons here and transport them under her personal seal and responsibility when we leave. She is concerned as well that such weapons look too . . .” Heris’s lips pursed and she gave the salesman a look of complicity. “Too real. You know—it would ruin her decorating scheme or something. I wondered if you had a small number of those which could be customized to look more like hunting weapons.”

  The man’s eyes brightened. “Ah . . . yes. Here.” The catalog image flicked to something with a stock of burnished wood instead of extruded carbon-fiber/alloy and a civilian-style sighting system and computer socket. “It’s the same, exactly, but with add-on about two hundred grams heavier. It does cost more. . . .”

  “Perfect,” said Heris firmly. “Twenty of the rifles, and five subs. . . .” The OOZ had been prettified with wood and inlay, but less successfully. They would pass, however, for the weapon many explorers carried on pioneer worlds.

  “I don’t have that many set up,” the man said. At her frown, he added quickly, “But it doesn’t take long. The hunt’s away today, and my techs are both free. A few hours only. . . .”

  They didn’t have a few hours. “How many do you have ready?” Heris asked. “I wanted to show milady what they would look like.”

  “If brasilwood and corriwood are acceptable, I’ve got a couple of beauties already made up.” He vanished behind a mesh grill and returned with two of the rifles and a single submachine gun. The rifle stocks had the curly green and blue grain of brasilwood, probably from a plantation on this very planet; the OOZ’s wood decoration was in the pale yellow and gray grain of Devian corriwood. Heris ran her fingers over both; the rifles felt silky and the sub a bit tacky, giving a grip that would always hold no matter what. She picked up each weapon to check its balance.

  “You’ll want to fire them,�
� the man said with certainty. “Our range is back here—”

  “Just a moment,” Heris said. “This is not all, remember? On Lady Cecelia’s personal account, not the yacht account, I will need to select personal weapons for her.” She paged through the catalog, and allowed the salesman to lead her toward the items she already knew she wanted. Light hunting rifles with day-and-night optics, IR range finding, and computer links for special purposes, a narrow-beam optical weapon that could also be used to operate ship controls, personal protective gear. . . . The salesman seemed to consider it natural that she ordered for herself as well, but she dared not put vests and helmets for the young people on the list.

  Then it was done, and he led her through another mesh grill to the indoor firing range without waiting for her opinion. She forced herself to follow with no sign of hurry. Surely Cecelia wouldn’t get the flitter loaded in the time limit she’d given her. And despite her need to hurry her training held—you could not trust a weapon you had not personally tested.

  When all the weapons had checked out, as she had been sure they would, she came back to the main showroom and glanced around. “I’ll contact you when Lady Cecelia approves the choice of wood for the stocks, and I’m hoping to convince her to buy appropriate armor for the crew as well. We’ll be using these in the next few days; I’ll need ammunition. . . .”

  “Here,” he said, stacking boxes of clips. “And I presume a weaponscart?”

  Heris nodded, glad that she would not have to pay for this. Cecelia’s credit cube went into the reader, and the assembled weaponry stacked neatly into a covered cache on a cart that looked like a miniature flitter and hummed at her.

  “Palm-print it,” the man said. Heris laid her palm on the membrane set in one side of the thing’s bow, and it bleeped. “It won’t open the cache to anyone else,” he said. “It’ll follow you; if you want it to stay somewhere, palm-print and say, ‘stay.’ But I’d keep it with you; if it’s stolen someone could break in. Local law says those weapons are your responsibility now.”

  “Thank you,” said Heris, and retrieved Cecelia’s cube. She hadn’t even looked at the total; it was like going into Fleet refitting.

  * * *

  On the way back to the flitter bays, Heris’s mind caught up with her again. What she was about to do, with Lady Cecelia and a supply flitter, was exactly what Admiral Lepescu had demanded that she do with her crew and ship . . . what she had refused to do, in fact. Why was she so willing now to charge into an obvious trap? If she wouldn’t risk a crew of professionals, why would she risk one rich old lady? And what did that say about her loyalty to her employer?

  If she tried this, and failed, Lepescu would have beaten her twice—he would have made her play his game, something she couldn’t avoid as a military officer. . . . But now she had options.

  If she could think of them. If she had time. If she could convince her employer who was even more stubborn, if less vicious, than Admiral Lepescu.

  Of course, she could try another end play and tell Bunny herself. Let Lady Cecelia fire her, if that’s what it came to. That’s what she’d done last time, and it hadn’t worked. . . . She did not have to make the same mistake twice.

  This time, if what she suspected was true, Lepescu was in the trap—not her. She could win, using her own strategy, and prove she’d been right.

  But she had to convince Cecelia.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “This is the island we’re on,” Petris said, outlining it on the chart. They had survived their first night on the island; Ronnie felt much better, and ignored the dull pain in his head. He had kept that first ration bar down, and another this morning; he was sure he was over his concussion. “About eight kilometers by five,” Petris went on, “but most of it’s narrower. Relief’s about two hundred meters—this hill’s given as two-twenty. It’s steeper on the west, but nowhere difficult, except for this little ravine here—” He pointed. “Now—the cover is mixed: open forest, on these slopes, and down near the water scrub undergrowth. It’s full of trails as a kid’s playground in some park—”

  “That’s what it was,” Bubbles said. “I told you; we all camped over here. My cousins, too. About—oh—five years ago was the last time I remember. We’d stay here while the grown-ups were on Bandon. We’d sail over in little boats. My father thought it up—it was out of some old books from England on Old Earth. Kids went camping on an island—”

  “Yes, well, this isn’t camping.” Petris dismissed her memories abruptly. Oblo spoke up.

  “Do you remember seeing anything that indicated someone else used the island that way?”

  “No.” Bubbles wrinkled her nose. “No—in fact, we always had to clear the trails every year. I wanted to have someone do it, but my father insisted we ‘have the fun’ as he put it.”

  “So this kind of hunting was either somewhere else, or not going on then,” Oblo pointed out. “It would be interesting to know when it started, if your father hired someone new, who could have set it up. It would take connections—someone who knew likely clients—”

  Bubbles frowned. “I’m trying to think. Daddy mentioned he’d hired a new outrange supervisor when Vittorio Zelztin retired, but I don’t remember what he said. It didn’t seem important.”

  “Not as important as staying alive,” Petris said. “And we need to break this up and get moving. Let me finish the briefing.” He waited until Ronnie wanted to ask why, then went on, sure of their attention. “They introduce new prey when they have confirmed killing all but two of the old ones. Those are the preeves, the previous survivors. That’s how we know some of the things we do, and that’s where our few weapons come from. New prey’s given two days free, then hunting resumes. They supply basic rations every four days at a single site on the west side of the island, during a non-hunting period. They hunt no more than fourteen Standard hours a day. The problem is, we’re not sure which fourteen hours. Sometimes they do a split shift. If we don’t keep a constant watch, they’re over here before we know it.

  “What the preeves told us is that the first week they hunt only in daylight. That weeds out the really stupid and incapable, they think. Then they start night-hunting. They have dark gear; we don’t. If they hunt all night, they’ll leave us alone the following day, but they usually hunt only half a night shift. From sundown to midnight, or midnight to sunrise, say. We’ve been here a couple weeks, so they’re night-hunting almost every night. Last night they didn’t—I expect they were waiting to see if you were followed.”

  “If they have Barstow sensors, why don’t they just find us and wipe us out?” asked George.

  “They don’t use Barstows,” Petris said. “Again, that’s not ‘sporting’ in their books. The preeves say if someone eludes them the full month, they’ll use a Barstow to find and capture him—but that almost never happens.”

  “But if they know we’re here—and they want to eliminate witnesses—won’t they use Barstows sooner this time?”

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that. They might. And if they do, we’re out of luck. We can’t build a shelter that will shield us from Barstow scans and escape notice in flyovers. The island’s not deep enough, and the woods aren’t thick enough.”

  “That other flyover,” Raffa said. “That could’ve been a rescue attempt, but we weren’t there.” Ronnie had missed the flyover, but they’d told him about the flitter that came, hovered above the wreck, and then departed.

  “They’d only want to rescue us if they could do it before we made contact with the prey,” Bubbles said. Looking at her now, Ronnie could hardly believe that was her name. None of the fluffhead left, none at all. “They’ll think—if we meet them—the secret’s out. Either they have to kill us all, and fake an accident somehow, or they have to escape. And even if they do escape, there’s the evidence. . . .”

  “So the only logical thing for them to do is add our names to the list and go on.” Raffa shivered. “I don’t like this. Yet—if they kill us
, there’ll be the evidence then, too. When someone comes to look.”

  “Unless they try to capture you four,” Petris said. “And then kill you in some way that can be explained. They might well try a chemical weapon. Knock you unconscious, take you up in a flitter—even your own—and drop you into the rocks. If we’re all dead and gone—or if they can create that accident on another island—it might well pass. Ordinarily, the preeves say, they don’t use chemicals, but now they might.”

  Ronnie lifted his head. Had he really heard something, or . . . Petris was alert too. Something—but he couldn’t define it. “Flitter,” said Oblo. “I’ll see about it.”

  “We make a plan every day,” Petris said, as if nothing had happened. “You have to . . . else it’s just running and waiting to be killed. That’s what happens to most. Or they make a plan, and run the same one every day. That won’t work either. The only hope is to make the hunters work . . . get back at them.”

  “Attack them?” George asked. “You do have more men, don’t you? How many hunters are there?”

  “More, but not more firepower. Not more resources. We can’t attack in force, but we do feint. We scare them sometimes. They like that, the preeves tell us; I hate to give them the satisfaction, but it does make them slow down and be careful. As for how many, it seems to vary. I’m sure we’re not seeing the same ones each day; if it’s anything like big game hunting, there’s a larger party of hunters over on Bandon, and they take turns. I’d like to kill them but so far we haven’t.”

  “Has anyone ever?” Raffa asked.

  “So I hear,” Petris said. “But you don’t know how much to believe. The preeves they send with us are not exactly reliable. They’ve been known to turn a group that was doing too well. We found a locator on Sid, for instance.”