The Iron Maiden (13 page)

“If I am not careful, I could get to like you,” she murmured as they lay embraced. They had been married for three and a half years, and their delight in each other was still growing. They were now of the same rank, though he had seniority.

“Of course I tolerate you for the sake of your brother, Dear,” he said, reversing their original relationship and facetiously invoking her nickname. But the fact was that Hope had put Gerald back to work in his specialty, and Gerald delighted in that; he did indeed support Hope independently of Spirit's encouragement.

“What, nothing else, Old King Cole?” she asked teasingly.

“Well, you are more convenient than the Tail.”

“I had better be!” She wrapped herself around him, making him react. She had been able to take or leave sex before, but with him she enjoyed it, and knew that he did too.

Lt. Mondy, nicknamed the Peat Bog Soldier because his mind was a concentration camp, had done his intelligence homework, and had the current information on the location of every private vessel known to the Jupiter Navy. Thus Spirit did know exactly where she and the unit were going, and what they would find there.

Thus, in due course, they zeroed in on the pirate ship The Caprine Isle, notorious for gun-running to guerrilla groups on the Hispanic moons. It was the prime suspect in the abduction of the Saxon heiress that had triggered this mission. Now they would see just how well Spirit's organization and Gerald's equipment worked in real combat.

The pirate ship's captain was, of course, Billy the Kid, as bearded and shaggy as any randy buck. When Hope got him on the video, he rejected the demand to surrender in explicitly vulgar language. That was rebroadcast to the Jupiter news media, surely making a fine impression on the civilians. However, he was given an hour in which to surrender, so that it was clear that the Navy was not being unduly hasty. At the end of that hour, Billy the Kid did surrender, but it was a ruse. He tried to destroy the Navy cruiser by treachery, but got his own ship blown up instead. Lt. Mondy had anticipated the ploy exactly, and arranged to counter it before the engagement was made. Thus seventy two bad men were suddenly dead, in much the way the refugees of the bubble had died.

So the Navy had won, and the pirates had been literally destroyed. Hope played the scene through perfectly, and it made headlines on Jupiter; he was entering the beginning of his planetary fame. But Spirit knew her brother, and intercepted him as he retired to his cabin. He was alone because Emerald, the Rising Moon, had left him to marry Mondy, but he needed someone. He was not at heart a creature of cold killing, and he would suffer a severe reaction.

She found him in his hammock, sobbing. She touched him on the shoulder, and he reached up and caught her four-fingered hand in his, finding ironic solace in her familiar deformity. He brought it to his face and kissed it. She came down to the hammock and embraced him, hugging his head to her bosom in the manner of a mother, and he cried into her comfort. She understood what he felt, for she shared his heredity, his culture, and his experience. She, too, had seen their parents die; she, too, had lost her friends to pirates. And she loved him. Now he needed that love.

After a time they talked. “I never killed before like that,” he said.

“It was their bomb, their deceit.”

“But I knew of it!”

“You suspected. And you warned the pirates.”

He nodded. The justification of his act became more convincing to him. The pirates had set up their own demise in the manner of a person who strikes at another and scores on himself instead.

“Are you better now?” Spirit asked gently.

“Vital signs stable,” he agreed.

She smiled wanly. “Now you hold me.”

He laughed with bitter understanding. He sat up straight and held her head to his chest and enclosed her in his arms while she cried. She felt the same pain, but had had to tend to him before letting go herself. It had always been that way between them.

Then they went out and saw to the other officers of the unit, who were suffering similarly in their own ways. They had been blooded. They had trained diligently for it, but it just wasn't the same. Mondy was particularly hard hit; he had suffered a nervous breakdown from guilt over the killing he had done in a prior military action, and Emerald, one tough woman in her own right, was discovering the softer side of herself that her husband had to have. Fortunately they had several days to recuperate, as the ship oriented on the next target.

Gerald suffered too, but handled it better. He had been blooded not by killing, but by being betrayed, and learned how to endure in adversity. Spirit had maintained emotional neutrality in public, but had some crying left to do, and he was there for her for that. “Do you know,” he murmured, “I have heard you called the Iron Maiden, because you are always so tough in handling personnel matters and in implementing your brother's directives. They say you don't yield, you chip around the edges.”

She lifted her four fingered hand. “Yes, part of me has broken off,” she agreed. She touched the scars on her wet face. “And I must have gotten scraped by a passing meteor.”

“But they don't know you as I do.” He kissed her. “Soft inside.”

“Molten.”

“When you are passionate.” He paused, looking intently at her. “Spirit, I was lost, until you came into my life.”

“Now you have your career back.”

“That, too.” He kissed her again.

*

The second pirate ship bolted the moment they hailed her. They fired one torpedo and rendered her into another derelict. Again they suffered reaction, for again they had killed, and this time they had done it directly. But their pain was not as bad as before; already they were getting hardened.

By the time they tackled the third ship, the news had evidently gotten around, and it surrendered. Its officers were put on trial and later executed, but its personnel were treated more leniently, and some were retrained for useful work.

The full mission took almost a year, and took out some fifty pirate ships. It did indeed make Hope and the unit famous, as well as extirpating piracy form the Juclip. Hope's original mission had been fulfilled, his vengeance against the pirates complete.

But there was a complication: on one of the last pirate ships was a QYV courier. Helse had been a courier, and it had indirectly brought her love and death. This was a fifteen year old boy named Donald Beams who was somewhat cocky, thinking himself protected, until Hope had a private interview with him. When they rejoined the other staff members, it was evident that the boy's assurance had been severely shaken.

“Treat Donald as a hostage,” Hope told Spirit. She took charge of him, knowing Hope had made progress. QYV would want whatever the courier carried, and would have to deal with Hope to get it.

For the first time he had the sinister power at a disadvantage.

“Ready an escort ship,” Hope told Sergeant Smith. “Program it for Europa.” He intended to go there to brace Kife directly. Fortunately Mondy persuaded him to send an emissary instead, with a hint that Hope might be in QYV's power.

In due course the man returned, bringing QYV's envoy: a middle aged woman, heavyset with iron gray hair and weird trifocal contact lenses. Her name was Reba Ward, and she was nominally a Jupiter government research assistant for a minor USJ congressional committee.

Hope met privately with her. They talked for some time. When they emerged, it was Hope who was shaken, to Spirit's astonishment. What could that dull woman have told him?

Hope gave Reba Ward the hostage boy, and she returned to Europa. As far as most observers could see, nothing of significance had occurred. The two must have talked and come to no agreement. But Spirit knew better. The woman had had a profound effect on Hope, and it had nothing to do with sex or fear.

When they were alone, Hope hold her: “Kife is a Jupiter organization with no reasonable limits other than convenience. She asked me what I wanted, and I told her promotion to Captain, and a fleet to go after the nest of pirates in the Belt. And she agreed.”

“Kife has that power?” Spirit asked, amazed.

“So it seems. They are restrained only by expediency and their desire to stay out of the news.”

“But you did not give her Helse's key?”

“Not yet.”

“What in the universe could she offer you to match your memory of Helse?”

“Megan.”

“Who?”

“Megan is the one other woman I could love. But we have not yet made that deal.”

Spirit feared that her brother was suffering an incipient siege of madness. But she decided to wait and see whether any part of what he claimed the QYV woman had promised came to pass.

In two more weeks they wrapped up the last of the Juclip pirates. And Hope received a promotion to O6 and command of a mission to go after the pirates of the asteroid Belt. The agent of QYV had shown her power.

*

The task force was impressive: one battleship, one carrier, two cruisers, six destroyers, fifteen escort ships, and a number of service boats and patrol craft. Hope would have eight months to shape it up for the mission, which was his most challenging one yet.

Gerald was thrown into his most busy time, checking and upgrading the fleet. He had hardly gotten started before he received his own promotion to full Commander, O5. The block against his promotion had been lifted! Spirit suspected it was because this mission was highly newsworthy, and reporters might inquire why its logistics officer was below standard rank for such a fleet position. Still, it was a gratifying breakthrough, and she could see how pleased he was. He maintained his composure in public, but that night he could not get enough of her. “This is your doing, in some devious way,” he said.

“My brother's doing, maybe.”

“Same thing. You have transformed my life.”

“We merely enabled you to get what you deserved.”

“I love you, Spirit.”

“I love you, Gerald.”

It was an exhilarating truth. But it made her uneasy. “What if my brother makes the deal with Kife?” She had shared as much of the information Hope had given her as was allowed, including this part. “Suppose they give him Jupiter citizenship and the chance to go after Megan, the woman he could love? If he goes to Jupiter, I shall go with him.”

“And our relationship will end,” he agreed.

“Our marriage. Our association. But not our love.”

“Not our love.” He shrugged. “We knew it when we signed. Navy marriages exist no longer than Navy service. If it happens, I know you have the courage to do what you have to do, and so do I.”

Spirit found herself crying--from the mere possibility of their breakup. “My brother believes he can love only two women he might marry. Is it possible that I am the same? I can't conceive of loving any other man as I love you.”

“If you do, I am sure he will be worthy.”

“Not more worthy than you.”

He shrugged again. “All is relative. Can we get off this subject?”

“How the hell did we ever get on it? Is it your turn to make love to me, or mine to make love to you?”

“I have lost track.”

“Then we had both better do it.”

They almost attacked each other, and it was very good. But the premonition of destruction was on them, a cloud looming on a distant horizon.

When the fleet was ready, it sailed to the Belt and tackled the several major pirate bands there. Emerald was eager to test her mettle in open battle between fleets, something they had not had occasion to do before. She was a scholar of ancient warfare, and fancied that the early principles of deployment and surprise would still obtain.

“The operative concept is Kadesh,” she said. “The Egyptians met and defeated the Hittites in the vicinity of the town of Kadesh in 1299 B.C.”

“Now wait, Rising Moon!” Gerald protested, using her song-nickname. The applicable words were “For the pikes must be together with the rising of the moon.” The pikes of the infantry as it massed for the coordinated attack. Emerald's moon was certainly rising. “Those were marching land armies; this is space! There's hardly a parallel!”

“You worried about your hardware, King Cole?” she inquired with a glance at his trousers. “I'm trying to protect it for you.”

As it turned out, Emerald had a good battle plan, but unanticipated events interfered, such as enemy reinforcements. They wound up in a messy pitched ship-to-ship battle, and Emerald transferred to a smaller ship to participate more directly. Hope, the idiot, went with her, while Spirit remained on the lead battleship. “Stay out of mischief!” Spirit called after them, knowing they wouldn't. They had the delusion that direct combat was honorable.

The battle was joined--and in the course of it Spirit had to watch helplessly as the ship the others were on, the Discovered Check, got incapacitated by a lucky enemy shot, and grappled, and boarded. But she knew the officers there were competent; they would reverse the case with the pirates. Soon enough they did; they used a light grenade to blind the pirates and mopped them up.

Meanwhile the larger battle was falling into place, and in due course won. Emerald's strategy had been sound; her only real mistakes were in putting herself and other officers at unnecessary risk, and in not allowing for the random breaks of combat.

But there was an unpleasant aftermath: notifying the families of the personnel lost in battle. Hope, as Commander, did it competently enough, sending careful messages, but it hurt him. Spirit joined him again as he slept, and held his hand when he woke screaming, and kissed him and mothered him until he stabilized.

“You are my strength,” he told her gratefully. She merely nodded; she was as strong as she had to be for him, but it was mostly a façade he would have seen through instantly, had he not been her brother. She took no joy in battle; she merely did what she had to do, and hurt in private, thankful for Gerald's understanding embrace.

But the next engagement was hard upon them. Hope took Isobel Brinker to a neutral zone Belt tavern station to reconnoiter, and there encountered a highly significant figure: Straight, the pirate leader of the Solomons, engaged in organized gambling. And the pirate's wife Flush, and startlingly beautiful eighteen year old daughter Roulette. Hope danced with her, and was instantly smitten. The others learned about this at the staff meeting he called immediately after.