Star Risk - 03 The Doublecross Program (4 page)

"Unless you're used to being invaded by transports," M'chel suggested.

"Princes� and a king," Chas murmured, still considering the social system. "How bizarre."

Rafar City was laid out in broad avenues, as if a highway engineer was its main architect.

The buildings were spotless, and high-rise buildings dotted the city.

The Rafar Arms Hotel, rather than being a tower, was a sprawl of low buildings that mimicked the higher buildings around it, set in vast gardens.

Riss, although having no objections after years of bunkers and barracks, had once wondered why Friedrich insisted on luxury hotels whenever possible.

"Other than you obviously like it," she had added.

Friedrich had said something pompous about expecting his surroundings to match his capabilities.

Jasmine had added, "besides, it makes the client, stunned by all the extravagance, hold still for the outrageous fees we charge."

Waiting in the main lobby of the hotel were von Baldur, King, and an expensively khaki-uniformed man with a finger-line mustache. His epaulettes carried a ring of six stars. Riss didn't know what rank that made him�the highest the Alliance went was four, and that was for the Commander of the Forces.

Friedrich introduced him as Prince Barab, Minister of Defense.

The man blinked at Grok, then bowed to the others.

"You have honored me, and my worlds, by taking the time to consider yourself with our small problems. I welcome you to the Khelat Worlds."

"And we are equally honored," Riss said smoothly, "that you consider us worthy."

The man smiled as if he really meant it.

"Your leader, General von Baldur, has presented your capabilities, and I am much impressed."

Riss noted that von Baldur had given himself a promotion, most likely to keep pace with Six-Star Barab.

She also noticed that Barab didn't speak in the local language, but in Alliance lingua franca.

"Unfortunately," Barab went on, sighing deeply, "such a decision can only be made by his Most Royal Highness, the King. And unfortunately, he is in his spring quarters."

"What might those be?" Grok said. "If I'm not asking an unseemly question."

"Each year," Barab said, "His Highness and certain specially honored members of the Royal Family go deep into the wastelands to remind themselves of our roots and to ensure humility."

"Ah," Grok said.

Chas Goodnight had a bit of trouble keeping a straight face.

"You mean you go camping� when you don't have to?"

"Now, now," von Baldur said smoothly. "Each culture has its own practices."

"Thank you, Friedrich, for your understanding," Barab said. He frowned.

"But I spoke hastily. Our situation seems to be worsening by the day.

"Perhaps we should seize the horn of expediency and allow you the great privilege of visiting his Royal Highness, when he may choose to discuss this matter."

"We would be delighted," Friedrich said.

"Give us a chance to wash and change," Riss said, "and we'll be ready within the hour."

"Good, good." Barab took von Baldur by the sleeve, drew him aside.

"But I assume you'll wish to leave that alien behind� Although I mean no discrimination."

"Of course you do not," Friedrich said. "But I must add that without his unique capabilities our fees will almost certainly increase radically."

"By how much?" Barab asked, a worried note in his voice. "I have already notified the king of your quotes."

"But that was with my fully integrated team present," von Baldur said. "Without Grok, we'll have to go onto the open market� I, quite frankly, can't think of anyone I've heard of with his qualifications."

Riss had overheard this, as had the other members of the team, all of whom pretended sudden deafness.

"I would guess� probably double," von Baldur said.

Riss noted that Barab wanted desperately to ask just what Grok brought to the operation, but wasn't forceful enough.

"Very well," he said, still worried. "These are unusual times, and we must all allow for this, mustn't we?"

Friedrich smiled at him.

Riss thought the smile was very much like the ones she'd seen of Earth tigers, closing in for the kill.

It took them less than half an hour to clean up and change. All of them now wore dark green outfits that closely resembled uniforms, and Grok had his weapons belt on.

Prince Barab's personal lifter was a sleek Rolls-Bell, just what a prince should appear in. It was fitted with every plush item imaginable, from real wood paneling to leather upholstery to a concealed bar.

But being a military vehicle, it was also equipped with a chaingun, accessed through a moon roof, and had blast-proof glass.

And it was painted in camouflage.

"Now this," Goodnight drawled, "would be just the thing to putt around Trimalchio in."

Barab looked at him.

"Do you have that great a problem with terrorists?"

Chas shook his head, stopped himself from asking "Do you?"

Barab ordered the pilot to divert over a military post to show them the systems' mailed fist.

Riss observed closely.

New barracks. State-of-the-art Alliance lifters. Modern patrol ships and a couple of destroyers, also current-supply Alliance. Huge hangars.

But the barracks already needed paint, and the lifters and other ships looked very short of maintenance and were arrayed in a haphazard style on the base's three fields.

M'chel was not impressed.

Friedrich, however, made nice on the unit below, and Barab beamed.

"Hoo," Goodnight breathed to Riss as the lifter settled down into the king's camp. "We wuz doing it wrong back when we wuz sojer boys and girls."

The tents were solid sided and fitted with bulges that looked like auxiliary power for temperature control units.

There was a heavy scatter of lifters, but all of them were luxury items.

The camp was aswarm with servants carrying things here, there, and the only ones doing anything resembling work.

Such, evidently, was one of the privileges royalty gave you. Goodnight decided he might have liked bivouacking in the army if someone had made an arrangement like that for him.

Riss noted armed men trotting toward the lifter as it landed and saw they were very smartly dressed, and, from their precision movements, well trained.

She corrected the "trained" to "drilled," as the soldiers, clearly bodyguards, jumped back in dismay when they saw Grok and fumbled about, while their officers bayed orders that made no sense.

All of the Star Risk people stood quite still until the guards were sorted out and brought back under control. They knew the dangers of an incompetent with a gun, and there appeared to be almost two dozen of them about.

The operatives were taken into the largest tent, told to wait for a moment until the king was ready to be honored with their presence, and offered refreshments.

None of them wanted alcohol. Drink and duty seldom mixed.

"So you think you can help me?" King Saleph asked, in the Alliance diplomatic tongue.

Goodnight was watching him with great interest, this being the first king he'd ever come upon.

Saleph had moon-pool eyes that looked to Riss like those of a penned predator, driven mad by his cage.

He was very thin, and the smile on his long face kept vanishing, as if slipping off, to be hastily put back on.

"I know we can, Your Highness," Friedrich said firmly.

"But your prices," Saleph almost whined. He kept eyeing Grok, as if afraid the hulking alien might eat him.

"Cheap, if we are able to end this war, aren't we?"

The king squirmed. "You're not the only foreign soldiers in our employ who've promised the same thing� without results."

"One of the first tasks we'll undertake," von Baldur said, "is to evaluate your other, uh, advisors, and make appropriate recommendations."

The king brightened, as if the thought of a war among mercenaries was quite attractive.

"Also, we propose to carry the battle to the enemy as soon as possible," von Baldur said in ringing tones.

Riss decided Freddie should always walk point for them, since nobody else would be able to think of such horseshit, let alone talk about it convincingly.

"That is good," the King said, an edge of excitement in his voice.

"We can begin immediately," von Baldur said.

"To have Khelat at peace," King Saleph said dreamily. "Something my father and my father's father were unable to accomplish.

"Peace� and utter obliteration for those damned Shaoki!"

The hilltop was about the only relief in a sea of green.

King Saleph had insisted that someone from Star Risk must see the new root of the Khelat riches, and why the war was being fought.

As Lanchester had said, it was main.

M'chel Riss had agreed to be the Star Risk representative. Her escort was a Prince Wahfer, who looked like all self-respecting warrior-type princes should: tall, well muscled, curly hair with a thin mustache, wearing combat fatigues, a pistol, and an elaborately worked dagger.

He wore three rings, two too many to Riss's sometimes puritanical thinking, and an old-fashioned be-jeweled watch on one wrist.

Wahfer had piloted his own lifter, without even a bodyguard, and they'd flown for about an hour east before setting down in this plantation.

The bush grew about two meters high and wide. Its leaf was broad and dark green.

The bushes stretched in neat rows to the horizon. Below were mobile irrigation pumps and automated weeders.

A tiny lifter with some sort of supervisor darted here and there, from pumps to robots, but there was nothing else to be seen.

"Quite impressive," Riss said.

"Yes." Wahfer walked to the edge of the hilltop and plucked one leaf.

"This, dried and crumbled, will sell in the Alliance for about half a credit."

Riss tried to do the math about what the plantation was worth, failed, looked impressed.

"As far as I know," Wahfer said, "with the exception of tea, coffee, and certain illegal drugs, main provides the most credits per kilo of any natural substance. Main will make Khelat very, very rich. Once this damned war is over and Shaoki is put in its proper place."

"Which is?" M'chel asked.

"Their inhabitable worlds, for the most part, have more surface water than ours. Proper use of the land will mean creating plantations even vaster than the ones here."

He frowned.

"You don't look happy about that," M'chel said.

"Truthfully, I am not," he said. "Not that I am one of those absurd peace seekers. I think, like you do, war should be fought for its own rewards, a testing of a man� and woman's� bravery and a system's resolve."

Riss didn't argue with him.

"How long would this plantation have been here?" she asked, deliberately changing the subject.

"Oh, five or six years," Wahfer said.

"And before that?"

The Prince shrugged. "Some sort of farming land. Probably there would have been a village or two or three for the farmers to live on. But since all land belongs to the king, when His Majesty determined the proper purpose for this property, the people would have been relocated."

"To where?" M'chel asked.

Wahfer shrugged. "To a city� to another plot of earth� It matters not, now, does it?"

"Exactly as you'll do to the Shaoki?"

Wahfer smiled, a killer's smile.

"When the war is finished, I doubt if there shall be that many of them to relocate."

"Since we have not had time to check for eavesdroppers," von Baldur said, and nodded to Grok.

They were back in the suite at the Rafar Arms Hotel.

Grok turned on a random-noise generator and went back to sit down.

"So," von Baldur said. "This is an initial briefing, since we have not handled a contract this large yet, and want to ensure we play our cards correctly. What are our goals?"

"To be considerably richer than before," Goodnight said.

"Of course," von Baldur said. "And the steps thereto?"

"We'll need to get whatever prime intelligence the Khelat have on our enemies," Jasmine said. Friedrich nodded.

"First on the Shaoki," Riss said. "But certainly on how much of a myth or threat these bandits in the hills actually are."

Again, a nod.

"I think we need to assess the troopies on our side," Goodnight said. "I wonder if any of them are any good, and if not, let's fire the bastards and steal the money for ourselves� and for the people we're going to need to hire."

"Correct," von Baldur said.

"One other thing," Riss said. "We should be figuring out some nice, spectacular things that'll knock the socks they don't seem to wear off our clients."

"An excellent thought," Friedrich said. "That will unquestionably make a demand for increased funding or expenses more palatable. With all that established," he continued, "then it shall be time to launch an offensive or two against the Shaoki. Maybe that will be enough to produce peace."

"Maybe," Grok said skeptically. "But this is very close to a civil war in this cluster, and civil wars among you humans, I've read, generally aren't over until things escalate to total butchery."

"They can do that," von Baldur said indifferently, "after we're paid and gone. I have little interest in genocide."

"It pays so shittily," Goodnight said.

Riss smiled slightly.

"And one other goal, just to keep things open and aboveboard, for me at least, is finding out who was responsible for Lanchester's death, and getting his ass on toast."

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SEVEN � ^ � There were almost six hundred of them, in full dress uniform of their commander's design, in rigid rows.

"Your men parade well," M'chel Riss told the CO, Joch Rohm, yet another man who rated himself a general. In the Alliance, command of half a thousand men might get someone a colonelcy. But this was mercenarying.

"Thank you, uh�" Rohm looked for rank tabs on Riss's deliberately blank dark green coveralls.