Queen of the Pirates (14 page)

Jessica snorted to herself. And perhaps she could teach the horse to sing.

Chapter XVIII

Date of the Republic October 13, 393 Sarmarsh System

Jessica had adjourned to the small conference room with Daneel Ishikura and three of her guards, his minders, for the show. Most of her officers were on duty on the bridge right now, getting a first–hand view of the engineering feat they had just accomplished. Or, were about to accomplish.

More of Keller’s
Legend
.

Daneel Ishikura had turned out to be even bigger in person that she had expected. Two meters tall and V–shaped across the chest, tapering down to a narrow waist. He had cleaned up well, though, dressed in pants and a long shirt that would not stand out on the street in
Ladeaux
, accessorized with just enough gold, in the form of a small bracer and a necklace and such to still look like a pirate at second glance.

They were done with the evacuation now, having gone through all the exhausting effort necessary to pack up seventy–eight people, the survivors of a once much–larger staff, and get them aboard
Auberon,
under guard, fed, and quartered away.

She and the man relaxed as the display screen lit up, small talk out of the way. They were alone, except for the marines keeping close watch at the door, but that was normal when dealing with a high–value prisoner. Even admiral Wachturm had a discrete minder when he was allowed out of his quarters. Jessica didn’t expect Ishikura to do anything stupid or suicidal at this point.

“So you really are going to make a production out of this?” she heard him say quietly.

Jessica smiled at the man. “Far more than just a production, Ishikura. This is an
Event
. You’ll see shortly.”

On the screen, the moon designated
Alpha
was centered. Engineering had converted all of their asteroid missile’s angular momentum that they could dampen to spin, so the planet appeared to move counter–clockwise on the screen, slowly but visibly, as the smaller rock approached. It left a slightly queasy feel, as though you were flying on a ship that lost one of its gyros.

Words suddenly appeared on the screen, overlaying the image.
Adventures In The Land Of The Giant People.

Jessica heard the pirate next to her repeat them quietly, confused.

“What’s all that about?” he asked.

“It’s a tradition on this ship, Mister Ishikura,” she replied. “I have an engineering department with aspirations to high art. This is a stage production to them. They treat it as such.”

“I have a hard time with that name, Keller,” he said back to her. “Mister Ishikura is my father, a small–scale butcher in a middle–class neighborhood on the edge of the city of Corynthe.”

“City?” she asked, equally confused for once.

“
Corynthe
is the kingdom,
Petron
is the planet, Corynthe is also the capital city.”

“Ah,” Jessica said. “And what would you prefer?”

“Until recently,” he said, “I was known as
Warlock
when flying. Before I was a governor.” He paused for a moment. “My mother still calls me Daneel.”

“Very well,
Warlock
,” she said with a light smile. Pilots were pilots. “Now, quiet, so you don’t miss the show.”

Moirrey’s pixie voice filled the room. It was like jasmine on a summer day.

“Good afternoon, children. Today on
Adventures In The Land Of The Giant People
, we have two rocks. They’s bigguns, too. Lots o’other rocks as well, all dancing pretty–like to Newton’s First Symphony, but we really only cares abouts two.”

She fell silent for a few moments before her voice returned, with an extra edge added.

“Can you see the pretty spins, boys an’ girls? It’s what a bullet sees when you shoots it at a grapefruit, only slower, and spinning the wrong way. A pretty, pretty, little, sad grapefruit, all blotchy brown and orange. It looks up and thinks to itself:
Here now, what’s going on? Who are you?
”

Ishikura,
Warlock
, turned to say something, but Jessica put up her hand and stopped him without looking over. This was too good to miss.

When she felt him subside back into silence, Jessica put her hand back down. For a moment, it landed on the back of his wrist. She glanced down and twitched it back, out of contact, willing her blush not to show.

Moirrey’s voice took on a deeper note, an ominous tone as she switched roles back and forth. “Who? Me? Just a little rock, passing through a great bigs neighborhood. I got lonely over there and decided to see what it was like around the big gasball.”

“Oy, well, ya can’t do that. I was already here, ya know. Go find somewhere else to hang out.”

“I can’t do that, little grapefruit. I gots me a really good shove to come over here and I’m like a pig on ice right now. I mean, I kinda hafts to go that way. I’m really sorry you ended up in the way, but they’s not a lot I can do. Gots ta tell you, though, it’s like falling down an elevator shaft, looking at you like this. I’m feeling a might twisted up. And, oh, hey, you really can’t get out of the way?”

“No, you lummox, I was here first. Have you gots insurance for all the boom yer gonna do when you hits me?”

“Sorry. Nobody told me it was gonna be this kind of party.”

“Well shear off then. Now. Oh, shits. OhMyGodIcantgetoutoftheway!!!!!!! SKAAAAAAA–WWWWWWIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The spinning image of
Alpha
was suddenly replaced by a shot from
Auberon
’s bow, well away and off the ecliptic plane. The asteroid fell into the moon with a graceful plunge, like a knife skewering an apple, or a diver entering a pool.

The energy released looked quaint, until the scale of ripples racing away from the impact wound became apparent. A small volcano of mud and hot stone squelched up, like the splash from dropping a big rock in a pond.

“An’ that, children, concludes today’s lesson in planetary billiards. Ya hits ‘em dead center and they go boom. If’n yer engineers was less competent, they’da hits off–center and looked like amateurs. Unlessin’ of course, you needed a right proper amount of English on that shot to draw for the eight ball. Never play billiards for money with an engineer.”

The screen went dark. Jessica could imagine the crew’s giggles around the ship.

She felt the weight of
Warlock
’s gaze as he turned to look at her, silent for several seconds.

She glanced over, one eyebrow raised.

“And if we had decided to be dead–enders down there, you’d have still done that?”

Jessica felt her a frown form, allowed it. “
Warlock
,” she replied, “
Lincolnshire
will be upset with me that I didn’t do exactly that to you and your people. With luck,
Corynthe
won’t feel the same way.”

“And you?” he asked.

“I would have found it a waste of potential. Yours, and the other seventy–seven survivors. At least now you can do something useful with the rest of your lives.”

He paused to study her face. Whatever it was he sought, he apparently found.

“I note that there was an Imperial corvette in orbit when all this started,” he began, dangling the rest of the sentence off into limbo.

Jessica cocked her head and raised an eyebrow at him by way of reply.

“What happened to the ambassador?”

Jessica considered the man before her. Not just another pirate, it seemed.

“I found no ambassador, W
arlock
,” she began. “However, admiral Wachturm is currently a guest aboard this ship while we investigate to make sure his activities are commensurate with a neutral vessel in this situation. He’s being kept in splendid isolation until then.”

“He’s an
Imperial
, Keller.”

“The rules are far more complicated than that,
Warlock
,” she replied tartly. “We do not always fight, especially in places like this. Without rules, we are no better than the pirates we fight.”

He recoiled as if slapped.

“We have rules,
Aquitaine
,” he said in a quiet, hot whisper.

Jessica gave him the kind look she remembered her mother giving her when she was young and had said something utterly banal and stupid.

He started to say something else and subsided.

“Perhaps,” he continued, more subdued, “when we arrive at
Corynthe
, I will be able to show you some of the better places and sights. It would be nice to give you a better opinion of my home.”

“Perhaps,
Warlock
,” she said as she rose and started towards the door. She turned halfway there and faced him.

“There is one person I might introduce you to,” she focused her gaze on him, a cat staring down at a suddenly–awakened vole. “Before I left
Ramsey
, we had the honor of meeting a gentleman named Tanis Bedrosian. I was so impressed with the man that I brought him with me as well. After disarming all of his goons at gunpoint, you understand.”

“I am familiar with the feeling, madam,” he said with a frosty tartness of his own as his face fell into a snarl. “He is not, however, any friend of mine. I will refrain from spitting on your deck at the mention of his name, purely out of hospitality.”

“Indeed?” she replied. “Perhaps he will feel the same way.”

Jessica turned and continued to the door. His words brought her up short, but she did not turn back.

“Are you ever off duty, Keller?”

She paused to consider her response. There was at least one honest thing she could say today. “No.”

Chapter XIX

Date of the Republic October 14, 393 Outbound from Sarmarsh System

Auberon, like every vessel in the
Republic of Aquitaine
Navy, had a small holding block for prisoners, attached to the marine barracks to make it easy. It was rarely used, as locking someone in a cabin and disabling the door worked equally well.

The holding block had a more sinister purpose.

Four cells made up the block, on the sides of a hallway, facing each other, with an interrogation room on the end, facing the guard room. The design ensured a maximum amount of psychological discomfort for people put there.

Jessica had rarely come down here. The marines ran a very tight ship, tighter than most, and crew discipline issues had dropped off quickly when the former command centurion, Augustine Kwok, had departed.

Today
Navin the Black
had met her personally, along with two of his marines. She recognized Tawfeek from their adventures on
Ramsey
.

She nodded at the giant man as she entered. He held a clipboard in one hand that seemed to be as much a part of his uniform as his sidearm.

“How is our prisoner shaping up, gentlemen?” she asked.

Navin smiled down at her. It was a very evil smile, on a giant of a man. “Given their history together, I felt it would be useful to designate Tawfeek as bad cop,” he said, his voice a surprisingly smooth tenor coming out of such a huge frame. “Arlo has been playing the role of good cop. We have not, as yet, turned the screws on the man, there being no real rush to get anything out of him except compliance.”

“Very good,” Jessica replied, engaging all of them with her smile. “That’s ready to change. Arlo, what do we know?”

The man looked the part of a street thug, big and burly, but Jessica knew from his files that he was extremely intelligent and a voracious reader. He was marked to become a dragoon of his own soon, on a smaller vessel, perhaps with his next promotion.

“Well, sir,” he said, all spit and polish. “Take a typical punk from the streets and give him a taste of money and power, and you get a bully. This one thinks he’s pretty smart also, but he was a big fish in a small pond on
Ramsey
. Folks in my old neighborhood would have eaten him alive.”

“I see,” she said. “What are his signature weaknesses?”

“Vanity and a desire to demonstrate a pseudo–intellectual superiority, sir.”

“Pseudo?”

“Sir,” Arlo replied, “I’d compare him to a box of rocks, but the rocks would be insulted by the comparison.”

“I see. And what will my gender do to the equation?”

“Haven’t brought it up with him much, but I would expect a superiority complex. You got the drop on him, but he thinks that it was luck, not planning. Obviously, a dumb–ass.”

“Very nice, Arlo,” she smiled up at the trooper. “Will it be better to interview him across the barrier field in his cell, or get him into the interrogation room across a table?”

She watched the marine consider the options carefully. His mouth twisted to one side as he thought.

“Best guess, commander,” he said finally, “the interrogation room plays to his ego and loosens him up. Depending on how intense you plan to get, he might get stupid and try to do something physical. Normally, I would suggest Tawfeek or the dragoon be in the room, just in case, but it might be more embarrassing to let you hand him his ass by yourself. Your call.”

Jessica studied the three men. Obviously, her training sessions with the fighting robot were better known with the crew, at least the marines, than she had expected, although none of them studied
Valse d’Glaive
, as far as she knew.

Not yet, anyway.

“Arlo,” she said after a moment of thought, “you bring him to the room. Tawfeek, you stay handy outside if I need help. Navin, you monitor everything, please.”

The men nodded at her and began to move. She stepped out of sight with Navin and Tawfeek as Arlo went down the long hallway. When he returned, she headed down.

The door to the interrogation room opened as she approached. “Tawfeek, you wait here,” she said in a hard voice. Bad cop was probably the best way to play a punk like Bedrosian.

“Aye, sir,” the marine replied, stationing himself directly across from the door, right in the other man’s line of sight, as she entered.