War of Alien Aggression 5 Cozen's War (18 page)

*****

He'd been planning to have someone from
Hardway
pick him up at the top of the gravity well. While he looked out the portholes at the skeletal frame where construction was beginning on the new twin cities, in high orbit above him, he sent a text-only message to
Hardway
over the UN's network. He told them he'd be finding his own way back.
 

Now, the only trick would be to get his hands on a small craft with a transponder that didn't mind being ripped out. Sales and rentals left records. Smugglers for hire don't usually take kindly to Staas Privateer Commodores and he couldn't exactly commandeer anything. The whole point of this secrecy was that Staas wouldn't know. That only left him one option. He'd never even
tried
to steal anything before, let alone a longboat or a skiff.
 

Ram smelled her perfume before he saw her reflected in the porthole, squared off to him even in that circular frame. It was the blond woman from the Staas Executive Compound at the spaceport. She smiled at him like a predator. "I have a needle gun, Mr. Devlin. Please don't move. The darts are quite toxic and although I'm more than willing to kill you, I'd rather not have to fabricate and plant evidence of your involvement in industrial espionage against Staas Company to justify your murder. You're a hero, after all. It would be a waste."

Outside the porthole, longboats streaked away from the pads. None of them could see the little gun she held under her breasts, under the lip of the porthole. None of the people walking past in the passageway or the three-way ITC behind them could see it either.

"I know you," he said.

The next words she spoke, he'd heard spoken before "Do you know how rare it is that gods actually
die
, Mr. Devlin?" They were the same words Matilda Witt had used once.
 

"Are you her?"

"I am." She smiled again. "But I'm twenty years younger and I don't envision myself as an Olympian like my predecessor.
Smile
at me, Mr. Devlin. Appear as if you
like
me. You do like me, don't you? We are friends, aren't we? Wait too long to answer and I'll worry about your allegiances. You don't want that."
 

"We're friends," he said. "I didn't report anything to anyone."

"You'll forgive me for asking." She swapped her arm through his and pressed herself up against him. She put her head on his shoulder and said, "If I suspect you're going to betray us, I'll kill you in a heartbeat."

*****

Her longboat was stolen. She hadn't been too concerned about hiding it. She'd used a tiny plasma cutter to melt her way into the panel at the base of the pilots' control console at the front of the longboat so she could get to the transponder. It floated around the cabin with melted pieces of panel.

Blasting out of Parnell Station without a transponder had been more than a little hair-raising. This cloned, younger Matilda could fly. Threading a longboat through the traffic coming into and departing a station like Parnell without anyone's clearance was a feat in itself. Doing it and getting away in the shadow of a fat-hulled Staas Company hauler heading to Deimos was bloody brilliant.

She looked pleased with herself when she managed to drop out of the hauler's cover and head for Sagan, traveling well outside the lanes. That completed her escape from Parnell without a trace. After that, the longboat was just a javelin lost out in the black. It would be a miracle if someone saw them between there and Sagan Station.

"When we get closer," he said. "I'm going to have to call for some junks to escort us in. We don't have any transponder now and it would be a pity if some QF-111 drones thought we were a lost Squidy warhead and chewed us up."

She said, "I'll install a new one in a minute or two. I want to make sure I do it somewhere quiet. This is still a little crowded for my tastes."

"What about the rendezvous?"

"The what?" She really looked like she didn't know. "Oh. The note. Yes. I gave you a name, a time and some coordinates halfway to Sagan, didn't I..." She smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

Another voice rose from behind him. It was high and there wasn't a lick of gravel to it, but somehow, the familiar gravitas was still there, still recognizable. "That was my idea, Mr. Devlin." The boy looked to be eight, maybe nine. He was even skinnier than Ram thought he'd be. His eyes glinted like broken glass. "It was a precaution. A decoy."

Ram said, "I should have known there was more than one of you."

"Just me for now," little Harry said.

Ram looked to the woman piloting and she answered his question before he asked. "Considering the illegality of human cloning and the fact that the risk of being caught goes up with the number of us, we're only allowed one. Those are the rules of our little club."

There's big people and little people
, the last Matilda Witt had said. Only little people die. She and Harry had made sure they'd live on. "I don't understand," he said. "What do you need
me
for. Why did you even risk contacting me if you have to remain hidden? Why tell me
any
of this..."

Nine-year-old Harry Cozen said, "You'd bloody figure it out sooner or later, I think."

"Harry!" She furrowed her brow at him before she turned back to Ram. "We need somewhere safe, Mr. Devlin. Harry has enemies. And they found him. He's on the run."

"But
Hardway
is a warship. Why would I even consider taking you aboard
Hardway
?"

"For your information, I'm a Staas Company Intelligence officer of exceptionally high rank and if I told you about the skill-sets I possess, then you'd lose two nights of sleep thinking about what I used them for and the acts I've committed. I'm quite useful. I can be useful to you. I'm Harry's bodyguard for now. He's in danger of assassination."

"And Earth is boring," Harry said.

"No.
Hardway
is no place fo-"

"Then, you'll be framed as an industrial spy." The words came out of the boy's mouth just the same way the old man would have said it. "And then, after
we're
dead because you didn't help us, someone else will kill you. Maybe even young Mickey Wells. I would hope it would be her.
That
would be ironic. Although that might take a few years."

Ram turned to Witt. "What is he saying?"

"I'm saying there's another Mickey Wells." The boy smiled with a simplicity old man Cozen had lost. "Yes. I made an unauthorized clone. There's another Mickey now. If you're nice to us, then perhaps you can meet her." The boy laughed. "Once she learns to talk, that is... Right now, she mostly just bangs objects onto surfaces and drools."

Witt said, "We expect her interests to widen as time passes. Don't worry, she's quite safely hidden. We're the only ones that know she even exists.

And now, Ram thought, if you're telling me the truth, then she's your hostage. She's the real leverage you've always got over me. You know I might try to beat the frame-job, but I'd never risk losing Mickey Wells again. Not after what I owe her and how she died the first time.

As Ram finished his train of thought, the boy Cozen nodded at him as if he'd been listening. "We're coming with you," he said. "But not aboard
Hardway
. You got promoted to Commodore, Devlin. You'll command multiple ships now. We're getting close to Sagan. Maybe close enough that you can zoom in and see her from here.

The boy slid himself between the pilots' consoles so he could reach up and touch the cockpit canopy. Using his fingers he boxed out the tight constellation that was Saga Station on the canopy and then spread the imaginary corners of the box apart wide. He did it again and again until the image of the floating city that was Sagan Station appeared, grainy with combined radar/LiDAR imaging. "Where is she..." Harry panned across the shipyards that spread out around the city's two skylines like a skirt.

Ram made out
Hardway
docked there. She'd be under repair for another two months at least, probably more. The yards were mostly full of new warships under construction and the armored teardrop hulls of the new Privateer fleet had already gotten their skins. "There she is," Witt said, pointing at a familiar Staas hull nestled between hulking transports.

Harry said, "
I
wanted
to find it"
 

"Well, you were too slow, weren't you," Witt told the boy. "Look, Mr. Devlin." She pointed at it and zoomed in further until the armored hull of that ship was as big as his head. "She's docked not far from the carrier."

"That's
Taipan
."
 

Witt said, "It was in Matilda's will that you should have it, actually. She couldn't leave it to me for obvious reasons. The art collection will remain aboard, but it's mine. And you, Mr. Devlin, now have a private ship in addition to
Hardway
. This vessel is yours. You own her. I had her flown here from Deimos. She's got a new crew recruited from Harry's old ship,
Arbitrage,
so you know they can keep their bloody mouths shut."
 

The boy said, "It's entirely up to you, of course, but we've talked about this and may we suggest you promote Dana Sellis to Commander and ask her to sit in
Taipan's
chair. She'd be quite good at it. We both like her."

Ram had to ask. "Do you know everything that
old
Harry Cozen knew?"

"Of course I do," the boy said. "I know everything Harry Cozen knew. Almost. He kept a journal until the hour he died. The only part of Harry Cozen's life I
don't
know about is what happened on that absurdly large vessel that appeared after we killed all the Squidies. His journal ceased before entering that ship. Was there, indeed, a representative of the Ortani Imperium inside? Some kind of regional overseer? That's what
he
thought he'd find inside, pulling the Squidies' strings. Was he right? It's the whole reason he started a war. Was he right?" It was like listening to a child talk about his father.
 

"Yes," Ram said. "He was right about that. There was a representative of the Ortani Imperium inside."

"Did we get the job the Squidies had? What happened? Tell me, Mr. Devlin.
Tell me.
I need to know.
What
happened
?"
 

"There was a giant ball of hot gas at the center of that 119km-wide ship..."

"Yes?"

"It was a life form," Ram said. The boy's eyes had gone wide like he was hearing a bedtime story.
So far
, it had been the truth. "The entity called itself Thrall. It was an emissary of the Ortani Imperium, a trans-galactic empire. It used telepathy in an exceptionally violent sort of way, and it killed you. It killed you before any negotiations started. It killed Harry Cozen and it threatened that the Ortani Imperium would kill us all for what we'd done to the Squidies."

The boy's eyes narrowed. "And what did you do then?"

"I killed it with the single, remaining gravity bomb."

A storm cloud passed over young Harry's face. "That's not what was supposed to happen. Did it
really
threaten to take revenge for what we'd done? Is that really what happened?" He stabbed at Ram with the sharpness of his gaze. "Is that the
truth
?"
 

Witt stroked the boy's hair then. "Of course it is, Harry. Mr. Devlin wouldn't lie to you. Mr. Devlin is our friend."

The child looked serious as a heart attack then. He said, "Mr. Devlin, They'll be coming. They'll be coming in force. But we're not alone. There are other species who would resist the Ortani with us." Even a boy could recognize the surprise on Ram's face. "Oh, yes...there's oodles of things
old
Harry didn't tell you. But I know. If you're very nice to me and don't treat to me like a child, then maybe I'll tell you some of them. Maybe," he said.
 

Nature or nurture, Ram wondered. It didn't matter. He needed what the boy Cozen knew. He had to take him and the cloned Witt, too.

*****

On Sagan Station, in one of the the Privateer officers' clubs, Ram told Dana she'd be commanding
Taipan
. He didn't mention anything about the two passengers who would remain on board. It wasn't the time and it wasn't a safe place to talk about things like that. You can never assume it's safe to talk.
 

Dana Sellis knew that. When she sneaked to the quarters they'd given him at Sagan in the middle of the night, she brought a cloth-covered wooden box with her. It had belonged to Cozen and she knew how useful the devices inside could be.