Voyage Across the Stars (25 page)

There were three huge starships down and a number of intra-system ferries and tenders. One of the latter had landed recently enough that steam was venting from its hull as the thrusters cooled. The cargo bay was still closed, but a handful of passengers had disembarked. Humans were always fringe cargo, save for the occasional new settlement—and, more often, the transport of a mercenary regiment.

Nothing like that here. Most of the passengers were entering a large air car in Krueger colors. They seemed to be a honeymoon couple and their servants, returned now with subdued expressions. Slade had never thought that the uncertainties of a long journey were a good way to begin married life; but then, he had never been married.

There was one man apart from the Krueger party. He was talking to the driver of a utility van outside the port office as Slade approached. Though the man’s back was to the tanker, Slade could hear him saying, “ . . . to Slade House?”

“Much in the way of luggage, then?” the driver asked.

“Pardon me, master,” said Don Slade as he stepped almost between the two men, “but I couldn’t help
—Blood and Martyrs!”

“Came to look for you, my man,” said Danny Pritchard with a slow, tight grin.

The driver was blinking from one ex-soldier to the other. Pritchard touched Slade’s jaw to silence him and said to the driver, “A standard cubic-meter case is all. In the office. And an extra—”

“Thirty libra,” Slade said, cued without either partner’s conscious awareness of the question.

“—if you fetch it to the truck yourself.”

The driver shrugged. He took the scribbled claim check and sauntered into the building.

“Been back long?” Pritchard asked as the two men sized each other up.

Danny looked a little more gray than Slade had remembered him. Fit, though, the Lord knew. Slade’s exercises had not included walking. He was sure that even the kilometer he had just strolled through the Port village had raised blisters on his right sole and heel. “I don’t think so,” he said aloud. “Say, did you have anything to do with that?”

“With how you left Terzia, you mean?” Pritchard asked.

“No, I—oh, never mind,” the tanker replied. “There’s other things to worry about now, I guess.”

His friend frowned and nodded his head. “Look,” said Pritchard, “how much do you know about what’s going on here the last while? Anything?”

“Is my brother dead?” Slade asked.

Pritchard nodded.

“Yeah,” Slade muttered, aloud but to the part of his mind which believed in Hell. “Well,” he continued, “I guess I’m not color-blind.” He nodded toward a Port official in full Dyson livery, calling orders to a gang of laborers. “I suppose there’s some things to straighten out back at the House, too.”

“Don, I don’t know how bad it is,” said Danny Pritchard. “But it seemed like I ought to take a look. With the Colonel’s blessing.”

“I’m not asking anybody in to fight my fights,” Slade said sharply.

“And I’m not offering to,” Pritchard snapped back. “I’d have thought you’d seen enough with the Slammers to know that blowing people away’s a curst poor way to settle things anyway—unless you figure to get them all. How many people do you think you and I can kill, Don?”

“Via, I’m sorry,” the big man said. He chuckled. Clasping his comrade on the shoulder very lightly, he went on. “You know the only thing I was ever fit for was line command. Got any bright ideas, staff mogul?”

“Yeah,” said Pritchard. “Got the idea that you lie low for a couple days instead of barging right into things. The Council’s going to meet at Slade House, you know?”

“Are they now?” said the tanker. He squeezed the knuckles of his right hand between his lips. “Look,” he went on, “have your driver drop me at one of the processing plants on the way. Number Six, that’s the oldest one and it’s close to the House. Nobody ever went hungry if he stopped by one of our plants when
I
was a kid.”

“All righty!” called the driver as he wheeled out a plain, rectangular case. “Luggage it is.”

Slade and Pritchard moved to either side to help shift the case to the end-bars to which it would be strapped. “You fellows figured out where you’re going yet?”

Don Slade laughed. “In the short term, at least,” he said. His muscles bunched as he slid the heavy case into position. “In the short term.”

The steel door of the food-processing plant was not only unlocked but ajar. “Hello the house!” Slade called as he swung the door fully open. He waited outside for a further moment. The air car had already disappeared into the eastern sky. The sea sounded a dense background, loud without being obtrusive. The gasp of the pumps within the long, concrete building was by contrast relatively mild.

“Hello there,” Slade called again as he stepped inside. He closed the door behind him.

There was a door to the right which would lead to living quarters for the crew during their month-long tours. Beside it was a bright alcove glassed off from the rest of the pump room, the foreman’s office. The multiple vision blocks within flashed their images to one another with no human to watch them. Tubing and crates moving beneath the tubing on conveyors covered the long, left-hand wall. There was a slideway leading from the office to the bright splotch which was the open, seaward end of the building.

As Slade watched, a blur grew against the brightness. It accelerated toward him. When the blur slowed to a brutally-sudden stop, it took on shape: a slide bucket holding a hard-looking man in faded Slade coveralls. The rocket gun he rested on his right thigh happened to be aimed squarely at the intruder’s chest.

“And just what might
your
business be, buddy?” the man asked Slade. He was not young, but his voice quivered as little as did the gun he held.

“My name’s, Don Holt,” Slade said with only a moment’s hesitation to remember it. “I was hoping you might have some work for me.” The fact that the foreman was leaving the office empty to check the lines implied the crew was short, but Slade would have said the same thing in any case.

The man in Slade livery snorted. “I’m the foreman, my name’s Pretorius,” he said. “And I guess that means you’re looking for a meal. Well, I guess we can find you that, sure.” He swung his legs out of the bucket and stepped toward Slade. His weapon was now aimed at the roof.

The tanker frowned. “Guess I could use some food, sure,” he said. “But I haven’t forgot how to catch that for myself, either. I said, I’m looking for work.”

“Are you?” said Pretorius without inflexion. “You’d be from around here, then?”

“Been a while, though,” said Slade in elliptical agreement. “When I was a kid, I thought all mercenaries got rich. I spent the past twenty years proving I was wrong and a curst fool.” He smiled in near humor, then touched his left earlobe. It was a half centimeter shorter than the right one which had not been fried by a powergun.

Pretorius dipped his gun momentarily, like the neck of a bird bending to drink. He arrested the motion before it was an actual threat, but there was no particular warmth in his voice as he said, “Is that a fact? Then I’d think you’d have found work at the Port, boyo. And just maybe you did, hey? And they sent you here to see what you could learn.”

“Could be I got an offer,” Slade said. “Could be I didn’t like the color of suit they were going to have me wear, too. Look, if I’m unwelcome here, I’ll just walk on out. My daddy ran a catcher boat from South Three until a knife-jaw got him. I guess I can find some kin down that way if a strong back don’t interest you.” He turned away from Pretorius and the gun.

“Blazes, man,” the foreman called. “Don’t leave me short-handed as I am.”

Slade looked back at the foreman. Pretorius was holding out his weapon by the balance. “Here,” the older man went on. “You know how to use one of these?”

Slade frowned. “Guess I can learn,” he said.

Powerguns would have been useless against the sub-surface life forms that were the bane of processing plants. Instead the crews used short-barreled rocket guns like this one. They fired low-velocity missiles which were unaffected by the media through which they lanced toward their targets. The bursting charge was much bulkier than a powergun wafer liberating comparable energy; but the charges went off in their targets, not on the surface of the sea.

“Come on, then,” the foreman said. He pointed to the second slide-bucket. “We’ve got a ten-meter wriggler giving fits on section two. Isn’t big enough to take a nip out of the line, but it keeps tripping the alarm. Come on—you want to learn, I’ll teach you.”

And what have we got here?” asked the leader of the men who strolled toward Danny Pritchard as the air car took off again.

Pritchard looked them up and down with a lack of expression which was itself significant. All but one of the four men wore belt knives. The leader instead toyed with a nunchaku, a pair of short flails chained together at the slim ends. None of them wore guns, which had been for decades proscribed on the Council Islands of Tethys save for certain jobs and locations. That scarcely made Danny safe at this moment.

The men were among those who had been lounging against the shading wall of the courtyard when Pritchard arrived. There were a score of others in various liveries present, but no one seemed to pay any attention to what was going on. The leader of the men moving in on the visitor wore Slade Blue defaced with a crimson stripe down either leg. The other three were Dyson retainers in full scarlet.

“Friend of the family,” Danny Pritchard called cheerfully. He sidled away from his luggage so that it did not block him if he had to jump back suddenly. Hidden at the small of the ex-soldier’s back was a glass-barreled powergun. He would use it if he had to—but the illegal weapon’s single charge would still leave three opponents. “I’m here to visit the Widow Slade, at her request. You’re of the House?”

The man with the nunchaku flipped his weapon out toward Pritchard’s trunk. The lid clacked as the further baton touched it. “Can’t have any contraband coming in here,” the man said. “Think we’ll check it right here.”

“What the
hell’s
going on here?” demanded a voice shrill with tension.

Men who had been covertly watching as the visitor was baited now glanced up in open surprise. The four men who had approached Pritchard now fanned away as if Hammer’s man could be safely ignored if they were willing to leave him alone. Not the smartest possible assumption; but they were not pros, only bullies, and not the cleverest bullies Danny Pritchard had met in his career either.

The man who had shouted from the House doorway was young and thin. Pritchard had seen a cube of Marilee—as she was—Dorcas. The youth’s features were a near double for those of the woman twenty years before.

It was an open question how Teddy had expected to stop the trouble if his righteous indignation were not enough. The fat old man a step behind him and to the right had a notion of his own, however. The old man’s gun-hand was hidden within his loose-fitting jacket.

“Checking for contraband, Master Teddy,” said the man with the nunchaku. The weapon twitched in his hand like the tail of a cat which lay otherwise motionless.

“Durotige,” said the old man behind Edward Slade, “get your butt out of here. Out of the yard.
Now
.”

“You don’t scare me, Blegan!” snarled Durotige.

“Good,” said the old man, oblivious to his presumptive master. “Because you’ll try something if I don’t scare you, Durotige.”

“Time’ll come, old man,” said Durotige. His words were bluster, however—as Blegan’s had not been. The man in crimson over blue spun on his heel and marched toward the gate. Its hinges were rusty but they squealed open when Durotige tugged with the fear of death behind him. The trio who had supported him drifted away as well, though they pointedly did not walk toward the gate.

Edward Slade joined the visitor. The young man glanced angrily about the yard at the liverymen who had not intervened in the trouble. They were now insouciantly directed on their own affairs again. “Sir, I apologize for the boors you’ve met in my House,”Teddy said. Someone chuckled from behind a car at the words. “Leave the trunk. I’ll have Housemen bring it in.”

“No problem,” said Danny Pritchard as he swung the gear handle from one corner of the trunk. He began spinning the handle with an ease that belied the trunk’s weight. Coon Blegan had grimaced when his master spoke of leaving the trunk. The old servant knew as Pritchard did himself that if left unguarded, the luggage would surely be ransacked.

Wheels lowered from the four corners, jacking the trunk up by smooth degrees. Powered units were simpler while they worked; but they stopped working when your traps were off-loaded into a swamp, or somebody turned a valve that flooded the cargo bay with nascent chlorine. Most mercs got along, as Pritchard did, with muscle-powered come-alongs for their hold baggage.

This time the trunk held clothing along with a submachine gun, three spare barrels, a thousand rounds of ammunition, and a suit of body armor. Pritchard had not been going to leave it in the courtyard if the only alternative had been to lift the full hundred and eighty kilos on his back.

The one-time officer extended the lever into a T-handled tow bar. “Shall we?” he suggested to the others.

But as Danny followed Blegan and young Slade, he swept his eyes around the courtyard. It was filled with men and equipment and arrogance. Pritchard had been a staff officer for a decade and Hammer’s heir apparent for over a year. It was still easy to recall the days when he had been only a blower captain himself. The days in which Danny Pritchard’s decisions involved no more than how to kill the most men in the shortest time.

“And with one shot he kills it!” said Pretorius to the men who shared the dinner table with him and Slade. “Bam! Right into the gill chamber.”

Chesson and Leaf, the other two members of the crew, smiled. The men maintained the filter lines; programmed the extrusion circuits depending on what the filters were bringing in; and more than occasionally disposed of the larger forms of sea-life when the rhythm and scent of the filters drew beasts to the station.