Mercenary (10 page)

We walked out into the hall system that linked the various offices, and on to the officers' recreation section. “Do you play pool?” Lieutenant Repro asked.

“Yes, sir. Not well.” I had learned all the available games; it was necessary for proper integration into the system.

“I will show you how to play well.”

“Yes, sir. Am I permitted to play in the officer's room?”

“You are if I say so.” He brought me to a pool table, and we took cues. “The monitors are unable to pick up sounds well in this vicinity,” he murmured as he racked the balls. “Just keep your voice low and don't gesture expressively or react overtly.”

“Yes, sir.” I wasn't certain whether he was paranoid about being spied on, or whether there was justice to it. I can read much of a person's nature, but human nature is largely subjective. Probably there was both paranoia and justice.

“You hate all pirates because of what some did to your family?” he asked, not looking at me as he made his shot.

“Yes. I swore an oath to extirpate piracy from the system.”

“But first you must recover your sister from the pirates.”

“Yes.”

“Suppose you discover that certain powers in the Jupiter hierarchy don't want the pirates extirpated?”

“I will find a way.” I realized that he did have some notion why the Navy traded with pirates.

“First you must place yourself in a position to take direct action against the pirates. Then you must have an organization that is capable of doing the job.”

“I will find a way, sir.”

“I have amused myself by formulating in my mind the elements and personnel of a unit that would be capable of doing any job required of it, despite the opposition of the hierarchy. This unit could be turned to the extirpation of pirates.”

“An imaginary unit, sir?”

“Part of my ambition is to make this unit become real.”

“But the Navy would not let you assume such a command, sir,” I said, perhaps undiplomatically.

“True. I can not assemble it myself. But an officer with the right credentials could.”

“Who is that, sir?”

“That officer does not exist at present. I confess this is a weakness in my scheme.”

“Then how—?”

“It will be necessary to bring him into existence.”

I was silent, not following his logic.

“But first things first,” he said abruptly. “The pirate trade with military bases is tolerated because there is graft. Therefore, any direct action against the pirates must be organized in secret. Once we locate the ship on which your sister is hostage, it will be necessary to provoke a conflict with that ship, so that it may be captured without affront to the powers that do not wish to disturb pirate ships.”

“You can plan such a mission, sir?” This was obviously the right man to talk to!

“I? No. For that we require a good S-2 officer, for the necessary intelligence, and a strategist for the actual mission.”

“Just to capture one ship, sir?”

“To capture it without the loss of your sister's life, and without disturbing the Naval status quo. Both are vital.”

“I see, sir.” This was becoming more complex than I had thought, but of course I hadn't thought it through. Sixteen is not the most thoughtful age.

“I will get on it, Hubris. You continue your training. Chance may put you in the position you need to accomplish your mission.”

“Chance, sir?”

“We'll call it that.” He smiled. “Patience, Hubris. A program of significance may be inaugurating here.”

“Yes, sir.” I did not quite realize or believe it then, but he had spoken absolute truth.

Lieutenant Repro was as good as his word. He was an addict, but he was competent. It is an error to suppose an addict is necessarily an inferior person. This one was a driven person.

In two weeks I had the name and location of the ship that handled EMPTY HAND: the Hidden Flower

, now drifting in the inner Juclip. It was one of the more disciplined pirate vessels, having originally fled one of the Uranus navies and retaining a fair percentage of military personnel.

That was definitely the ship I had left Spirit on! My premonition of eventual victory grew.

When I completed my raider training and made E4, early in the next year when I was just seventeen, I went on for further training in related areas: infiltration, use of nonstandard weapons, disguises, small-ship piloting, practical emergency medicine, and similar. I was in continuous training, and I liked it. I wanted to be skilled at everything I might possibly need. The continuing availability of EMPTY HAND chips assured me that my sister remained functional.

I made E5, sergeant, at age nineteen, and was put in charge of my own highly trained raider squad. I was ready for action, but there was no action to be had because the pirates were behaving themselves reasonably well in local space, molesting only refugees and incidental stragglers, and it was Naval policy (facilitated by graft) not to make waves. I was helpless.

Then I received a cryptic message. It was a spacegram from Jupiter: Do you have it? It was signed “Q,”

with no return address or other identification.

I pondered that. Why should an obscure nineteen-year-old sergeant in the Jupiter Navy receive a message from Jupiter? As far as I knew, no one on the Colossus planet knew me. Of course, my enlistment record would be available there, but it was undistinguished. I had spent virtually all my time training for a mission that might never be scheduled. Could the spacegram be an error? That hardly seemed likely; it would have required specific information to locate my name and assignment. I was not a name to be read by mistake in an address directory.

What of that signature? Why was it merely an initial? This anonymity prevented me from responding, even to ask for clarification. Did the sender assume I would recognize him from that single mysterious initial? Why?

I pondered, and suddenly it came to me. I did know of someone whose name started with a Q, and I did have something that person wanted. The name was QYV, pronounced Kife, and the thing was the key that my fiancée Helse had carried. I now wore it on the chain with my dog tags, bound lengthwise so that it wasn't obvious. It was always with me: my sole physical memento of my lost love.

This had to be QYV, who had finally tracked down his lost key to me. That could not have been any easy job, for most of the people his courier Helse had encountered were dead. Certainly the pirates who had been responsible for her demise were dead; I had seen to that. Technically I had killed her—but only technically. She had died in our defensive action against attacking pirates. The memory still hurt; it would always hurt. But four years is a long time to a teenage youth, and I was now able to face the truth without more than an internal flinch.

I had no knowledge what lock that key might fit; I valued it solely because it had been Helse's. I was not about to give it up. If QYV wanted it, he would have to come and get it.

My feelings about QYV were balanced. I was sure he was a pirate, an illegal operator, probably a smuggler. I knew that his name was respected and feared throughout the pirate realm; no one dared cross QYV. I had sworn to extirpate all piracy, but I wasn't sure that oath included QYV because QYV

had made it possible for Helse to travel to Jupiter as his courier for the key. That key had enabled me to meet and love her. It was true that I had also lost her, but QYV had not been responsible for that, and certainly had not approved it. QYV protected his couriers. He might be a criminal, but he had done no direct harm to me.

Now he was searching for his lost key and probably also for revenge against those who had balked his courier. I had the key, but I also craved revenge. To that extent, our purposes aligned. However, I knew the enemy of my enemy was not necessarily my friend, and I wanted no contact with QYV. Certainly I would not give up the key.

So my answer to this cryptic message was no problem: I ignored it. But I knew that it had to be merely a preliminary signal; I would be hearing more from QYV.

I did. I received an anonymous vid-call. The screen showed only the letter Q. “Do you?” a nondescript voice asked.

“Show me your power,” I replied, and hung up.

A week later new orders came through for me. I was to report for space duty to the destroyer Hammerhead . Its mission was to capture an errant pirate ship, and it turned out that the ship was the Hidden Flower . The very ship I wanted.

In my mail, the last one before I transferred to the ship, I received a sealed note. Inside was a square of paper bearing the single letter Q.

QYV had shown me his power, indeed! How had he known of the thing I most wanted: the chance to rescue my sister Spirit? But still there was no deal, no demand for the key. This was only a demonstration, not the negotiation. But it was doubly impressive, for it also showed the potency of QYV's graft. I no longer considered Lieutenant Repro to be paranoid about pirate influence in the Navy; that influence was real.

I bid farewell to Juana; our two-year tenure as roommates was over. “There is another sergeant I can room with,” she said bravely through her tears, so I wouldn't worry.

“Make him happy, Juana,” I said. “We shall meet again.”

“Yes, we shall,” she agreed determinedly. There was theoretically no love between us, but I was aware that she had not entirely kept faith, and I myself was moved more than casually by the sudden separation.

Juana was a good woman, and her supportive presence had done much to alleviate my own heartbreak over Helse. We had always known separation would come; enlisted personnel could not marry. Well, they could come close; E4's could be reassigned as units, and E5's could even have a child, using a counteragent to block the universal contraceptive. But that child would be a ward of the Navy and could be taken away at the convenience of the Navy. True marriage and family status, Navy-style, was reserved for officers. Juana could not join me on this hazardous mission, nor would I have wanted her to.

Her skills were wrong, and so was her temperament; she was no adventurer. So it was circumstance rather than desire or regulations that separated us. Perhaps this was just as well; it would have been too easy to stay with her for life. Certainly she could attract another roommate; she could attract a hundred!

She had been beautiful at age sixteen; at nineteen she was ravishing.

“And if you want to, when you use the ship's Tail,” she murmured, “you may pretend it's me.” Then she kissed me one final time, and I realized it was no joke. It would be uncomfortable sex on the ship after two years of Juana. Not because she was anything really special in this particular way, but because I did indeed care for her.

This mission had been arranged by QYV, I knew. But there had to be an official pretext. There had been several deaths from contaminated drugs, and the Hidden Flower had been implicated. It was probably a put-up job, but pirate ships had little recourse to legalities. It was to be a surgical strike, without fanfare; we were to capture this vessel undamaged and turn its personnel over to the proper Navy authorities. Except for one civilian hostage aboard it...

I met the captain of the Hammerhead and his crew; they would pilot my crew to the rendezvous with the target vessel. I do not name these people here because they are peripheral to my narration.

We boarded and accelerated toward the Hidden Flower .

Of course, this was not a straight line; there are few straight lines when traveling in space, contrary to popular illusion. It was a closing spiral as we moved from our position in the skew-ecliptic of the outer moons of Jupiter to the true ecliptic of the inner moons. Acceleration provided our pseudo-gravity, and it was not confined to single gee. We moved rapidly in toward the colossus planet, though, of course, we would never arrive there. As we neared the detection range of our prey, we set our snare.

It would of course have been virtually impossible to close on the pirate ship unobserved. All pirates were alert for Navy vessels and quickly took evasive action. We had more drive power and could have run the Hidden Flower down and holed her with a single shot, but destruction was not our purpose. We also could have haled her and demanded surrender, but she would have fled or fought or destroyed all her records and contraband before yielding to us. Those records were vital, theoretically. So we used a subterfuge.

We became a virtual derelict. We turned off our drive and drifted in orbit in the approximate path of the pirate. The Hidden Flower , like most pirates, was a scavenger; she took anything she could use from any ship she could disable. The EMPTY HAND trade was only part of her activity, not enough by itself to sustain her. She would not pass up a choice morsel like this.

We were a very special derelict. We had a double hull. The outer one was of the standard thickness and strength; the inner one was much stronger and was largely self-sealing.

We drifted for several days, Earth time. Little of significance has occurred on Earth in five centuries, but its time retains its hold on us, as do its several languages and cultures. Man never truly left Earth; he merely expanded Earth into the Solar System. At any rate, this delay was necessary to abate any suspicion on the part of the target ship.

In that time, we occupied ourselves in whatever manner we selected. Some played dominoes, either the spot-matching type or the physical collapsing-structures type. Some took on the lone girl representing the EM Tail in shifts, trying vainly to wear her out; she must have been nympho. Some viewed feelies. There was, ironically, one chip of the EMPTY HAND brand, the best of the lot; one of my men mentioned his regret at having to take out this particular ship. Some practiced their various combat proficiencies: barehand, sword, club, garrote, and so on. We were all proficient in several martial arts, but true expertise took many years to develop, so competitive practice was always welcome. Because of my talent and intensive training, I was one of the better practitioners, but my ability suffered when matched against the proficiency of strangers whose natures I did not yet know. So mostly I rested and exercised and reviewed raiding strategy in my mind. And got to know my men.