Mercenary (25 page)

He had the mark of QYV on him. He was a courier. That, of course, was why he had been spared; no pirate dared interfere with a QYV courier. It seemed this ship had sacked a refugee-bubble, discovered this lad, and undertaken to deliver him to his destination, but he had not known where to go. So they had held him, pending communication with QYV, and in the interim no other pirate had bothered this ship.

QYV's protection had thus been extended to the Purple Mountain .

I interviewed the lad in a private cell with only my bodyguard Heller present. I started carefully, getting the feel of his nature. “What is your name?”

“Donald Beams, sir. Are you going to shoot me?”

He was trying to be facetious but was uncertain. He was about fifteen years old, which had been my age when I was a refugee. Now it seemed so young! “Have you murdered anyone?”

“No, sir!”

“Then you will not be shot. What does the term Kife mean to you?”

“That I can't be touched, sir.”

“You are no longer among pirates. This is the Jupiter Navy. We can touch you.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, unconvinced that his charm of immunity should thus be voided.

“Let me explain something to you,” I said. “When I was your age, I loved a girl. She was a courier, like you. I killed her and took her item.”

“Sir!” It was not the boy, but Sergeant Heller.

I glanced at him inquiringly.

“Sorry, sir,” he said, embarrassed. “I didn't know.”

“If you loved her—” the boy said, perplexed.

“Why did I kill her?” I finished his question. “It was not because she wasn't true to me; we were getting married. It was because pirates were raiding, and I had to kill everyone in the bubble to get them before they got us. She was in the bubble. Then I took the item because it was all of her I could keep. That was thirteen years ago, and I still have it.”

“But Kife—”

“Tried to take it back from me three or four times,” I said. “He failed.”

“I don't believe it!”

I nodded at Heller, giving the cue to speak.

Heller shook his head. “Believe it, kid. This guy ain't afraid of Kife. I was one of the three or four, and now I serve Commander Hubris.”

“You got the mark of Kife on you?”

Heller shook his head. “No. I wasn't a courier, I was a killer.”

Now the boy's certainty was shaken. “Whatcha going to do with me?”

“I am going to use you as a hostage against Kife. If he wants you, he will have to meet my terms.”

“But Kife don't deal with nobody on nobody else's terms!”

“If he refuses, I will take your item and add it to the one I have. I think Kife will prefer to deal.”

“Yes, sir.” Now Donald was distinctly uneasy.

“Tell me how you were supposed to make contact with Kife.”

He didn't know, but with careful questioning I learned that he did have an address in a dome on Europa to which he was not supposed to go. I smiled.

We rejoined my staff. “Treat Donald as a hostage,” I told Spirit. She took charge of him, knowing I had made progress.

“Ready an escort ship,” I told Sergeant Smith. “Program it for Europa.”

“Sir,” Heller protested. “You can't go there! It's obviously a trap!”

“What other person should I subject to such a risk?”

He gulped. “Me, sir.”

“You suppose you aren't marked for death by Kife now?”

He was scared and showed it, but he stood his ground. “If I am, then at least I have saved your life, sir, and repaid my debt. You've given me three good years. If you die, I'm washed up, anyway. And so is the battalion.”

Mondy arrived. “He's right, Commander. We can learn a lot, if we play this correctly. This may even be a setup: Kife's way of contacting you. Send the sergeant, with news of your hostage—and an empty jar of salve.”

“Salve!” I exclaimed, seeing it. “He will think I'm—!”

“Precisely, sir. Kife wants you to contact him this time. He believes you are ready to deal. He won't harm the envoy.”

QYV thought he had me in his power now—and just might find the tables turned. Mondy's sinister intellect had come through again.

Sergeant Heller went, nervous but proud. The ploy worked. Heller brought back QYV's envoy: a woman of about fifty with the aspect of a clerk. She requested a private interview.

We ran her through decontamination, nominally because we wanted no planetary diseases introduced to our fleet, but actually to assure ourselves she carried no weapons. She was clean, carrying only a purse with harmless routine items. “Unless she's better at hand-to-hand combat than she looks,” Mondy said,

“She poses no physical threat to you.”

“Just make sure she never gets close to our hostage,” I said. “That's the pretext for this meeting, and we both need that pretext.”

I met with the woman in a private chamber. She was neatly dressed, heavyset, with fashionable iron-gray hair and trifocal contact lenses that gave her eyes preternatural brightness. Her name was Reba Ward, and she was nominally a Jupiter government research assistant for a minor USJ congressional committee.

I wasted no time with introductions or explanations; she knew, or thought she knew, what we were here for. “You are empowered to deal?”

“I am.”

“I want information. You want your courier. We'll trade.”

She smiled, as I had expected. “Try another exchange.”

Uh-huh. “Be more specific.”

“I will trade a product for an item.”

“Try another exchange.”

She squinted at me, not understanding this balk. She thought I was desperate for the drug. “We can provide an unlimited quantity—”

“Of information?”

She shrugged. "Very well. First we shall discuss courier versus information. Then we shall discuss a second trade.

I shrugged, too. “You can meet my price on the courier, at least.”

Now she was really perplexed. “What information do you seek?”

“The nature of Kife.”

“Seek other information.”

That was really sensitive information! Of course, I had known that if Mondy couldn't run it down, it had to be exceptionally closely guarded. But it was against my nature to leave any potential threat uncomprehended, and QYV had made four savage attempts to take my key. Once I knew the nature of this enemy, I could consider how to nullify it. “That is the only information for which I will deal.”

“Then ask for something tangible instead.”

So I made an impossible demand, rhetorically. “Promotion to Captain, and a fleet to go after the nest of pirates in the Belt.” That was the so-called Asteroid Belt, where the most flagrant piracy in the System flourished. This Juclip mission had been only a warm-up, and it was almost done.

“Done.”

I was startled. “You can authorize that?”

“My employer can. Will you deliver the courier to me now, or do you prefer to wait for confirmation of your promotion and assignment? It will take two weeks to flow through channels.”

I had dealt with QYV before. He had honored his prior bargain on Chiron. It had been years before he tried again for the key, and I considered that sufficient. I did not appreciate his subsequent moves against me, but there had been no actual breach of faith, so it remained possible to deal. “You may take the courier with you.” Reba Ward was hard to read, but I was making progress and realized now that the courier was not important and probably carried no item. This had been merely a device to enable me to contact QYV. Reba had called my bluff on the promotion, and now I had at least to discuss the other matter. In this sense I had been outplayed.

“You know what we want,” she said. “We have what you want. I presume that the matter of the courier can be publicized among your officers while the other is completely private.”

It was time to end this. “The courier carries nothing, and I am not addicted. I will deal only for information, and the key will not leave my possession.”

She took stock, realizing that I could not be bluffing about the drug. She had been lured here for nothing.

“Then I shall provide the information.”

Just like that! “You are ready to promote an addict to O6 before answering a question about Kife, and now you give the information, anyway?”

“The promotion may be considered amends for past indiscretions. The key you have is more valuable than our secrecy. The information is the price of last resort.”

“That key was transported by the woman I loved,” I said. “I killed forty-five pirates and twenty-two children along with my fiancée, and the key is all I have left to show for it. How can you hope to return any part of my loss to me?”

“We did not properly understand the nature of your attachment before,” Reba said. “Once we did, we altered our approach.”

“By trying to kill or addict me?” I asked tersely.

“I can explain that—if we are engaged in negotiation for the possession of the key.”

“We are not.” Yet she had excited my curiosity considerably, and I was mindful of her remark about the promotion being an apology for those thrusts of the past. I really did want to know about QYV, for QYV had really been the source of my acquaintance with Helse, my love. If QYV was now ready to deal positively rather than negatively—well, I would see.

“I am assuming that we are. I must clarify that Kife is not a person; it is an organization. Individual technicians are assigned to cases as circumstances warrant. We are chronically overextended, so some accounts lapse until it is convenient or necessary to expedite them.”

An organization! That explained a lot! “You are saying that one person elects to negotiate for a lost key and another will try more violent persuasion?”

“Exactly. Your own account has been outstanding for thirteen years and has had several technicians. I assumed the account after the last effort malfunctioned.”

“After they canned the fool who botched my murder?”

She smiled briefly. "Just so. And when it seemed that the addiction ploy had failed or been countered.

Later it seemed that it had succeeded, but it was too late for that particular technician. I was prepared to follow up, but now it appears that the original judgment of failure was justified."

“So you, personally, had no hand in that?”

She nodded agreement, and I could tell it was true. I had already had my vengeance on the one who caused me mischief. “It will benefit me to succeed where others, have failed. I believe in positive measures and fair exchanges. I am pleased to have been able to bring you to dialogue. I believe we can deal.”

This woman continued to surprise me. “You are merely a technician—a low-ranking officer—taking over an old and difficult case, and you have the power to dictate my rank and assignment merely as a way to get my attention?”

“True. I believe you have noted our power before.”

“I had. But I thought you had reasonable limits.”

“We don't.”

“Then why don't you simply cut orders for me to be court-martialed on a trumped-up charge, condemned without appeal, executed, and the key stripped from my body?”

“We could do this,” she confessed. “But negative approaches have been counterproductive in your case in the past; you have been far more savvy in your defense than anticipated. We also dislike being obvious. We prefer to work with the current. That way, failure carries less consequence.”

“And if you fail now, some other technician will take your place—with some other approach?”

“I will not fail.”

And she believed that. I now appreciated this woman's motive for success. I knew QYV played hard ball; any organization that kept ruthless pirates in check had to be tougher than they were. She might have great power, but her own position was on the line. Success—or extinction.

“Kife is not, then, a pirate outfit,” I said.

“It is an agency of Jupiter,” she said. “Bear in mind that this is privileged information.”

“Agreed. But my staff must be advised. My officers know more than I do, and I depend on their expertise.”

“Your sister,” she said. “Commanders Mondy, Repro, Phist, and Sheller.”

She had done her homework! “And Sergeant Smith, who is filling in for Operations. And Juana.”

“Your de facto S-3 and your confidential secretary,” she added reluctantly. “I suppose if you cannot trust your former supervisors and mistresses, you have little certainty in life.”

“We checked you for physical armament. We should have checked for mental,” I remarked.

“Success is facilitated by information, as it seems you are aware. I don't suppose you care to advise me how you avoided addiction after using the hallucinogen?”

“Ask some other question.”

She sighed. “Very well. You may brief these personnel with appropriate cautions. But further information is yours alone.”

“Spirit.”

She sighed again. “We gave you back your sister. I am not certain that was not an error.”

“You used her as a lure to trap me. I took her back.”

“And the pirate we bribed. That was typical of our misjudgment of you. Very well; her, too, for this. No others.”

“No others,” I agreed. “You are very trusting of my word.”

“It is possible I know you better than anyone other than your sister does.”

“Oh? Show me your power.”

“In a moment. Will you deal on the key?” She had me halfway hooked. She was a dowdy, middle-aged female, but she was a gladiator. I knew now I had to play her very carefully, or I would find myself committed for more than I intended.

“I will consider it. I make no other commitment.”

“Here is part of my power: the empty hand is that of your father, whom you consumed.”

She had scored. Of all people living, only Spirit and I knew of our necessary cannibalism for survival.

Except—“You have seen the manuscript!”

She nodded. “I have it hostage, Hubris. Will you deal?”

“How could you even know of it, let alone acquire it?”

“Commander, I have traced all your contacts. The scientist to whom you sent it is dead. His family is not aware of its significance.”

The scientist on the terrible hellface of Io: Mason, the one who had befriended Helse and me! The news of his demise struck me like a blow of a pugil stick. “He—how—?”