Starship: Mercenary (Starship, Book 3) Page 4

  “I don’t have any serfs.”

  “Then by all means let us call them honored subordinates,” said the Duke. “I shall be meeting one of them in another two hours.”

  “Let me guess,” said Cole. “David Copperfield?”

  “How did you know?”

  “He’s the only member of my ship besides Val who’s ever been here before,” answered Cole. “At least, I assumed he’d been here. I know none of the others have.”

  “Remarkable creature, isn’t he?” said the Platinum Duke. “And how he cherishes that Dickens collection of his!”

  “His appearance doesn’t bother you?” asked Cole. “I mean, a very strange-looking alien dressed up exactly like Pickwick or Sydney Carlton?”

  “What would you think of me if I criticized the way someone else looked?” said the Duke with a smile that displayed his platinum teeth. “By the way, have you any idea what he wants to see me about?”

  “To put himself right with me,” said Cole.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Cole. “Suffice it to say that the Theodore Roosevelt is now in the mercenary business. I’ve been told, as I’m sure David has, that you are the best source for determining who might need our services, what they are willing to pay, and whether they can be counted on to give us accurate information and to honor their financial commitments.”

  “Easily done,” said the Duke. “Ordinarily I would charge ten percent for my services, but because you are in the company of the remarkable Valkyrie, and especially because you are in the bad graces of Susan Garcia, who kept ordering me into harm’s way and saw to it that there are pieces of me all across the Teroni Federation, I will charge you only five percent. How does that strike you?”

  “It seems fair,” said Cole. “But there’s one more thing.”

  “Isn’t there always?” said the Duke. “Shall I guess?”

  “If it makes you happy.”

  “You don’t want to get in a situation where you’re overmatched,” suggested the Duke. “After all, you haven’t mentioned any support ships, any backup capabilities of any kind whatsoever.”

  “True,” agreed Cole. “But that’s a given. What I had in mind were some ethical considerations.”

  “Ethical considerations in a mercenary?” said the Duke, laughing. “Now, that’s a novel concept!”

  “I’m glad you’re so easily amused,” said Cole dryly. “We won’t provide military support for anyone dealing in drugs. We won’t supply military support for any action that will serve the purposes of the Teroni Federation. And we won’t provide military support for any action that will be detrimental to the Republic or its Navy. We may be on the run from them, but we spent our lives serving their cause and we won’t go to war with them.”

  “You’d feel differently if you were wearing some artificial limbs,” said the Duke.

  “Perhaps, but I’m not.”

  “All right,” said the Duke. “In point of fact, your ethical considerations probably don’t eliminate more than three or four percent of the people, planets, and interests that would be interested in your services.”

  “Fine,” said Cole. “Lay the best of them out for David when he shows up, and understand that he is not empowered to commit the Theodore Roosevelt to any action. Only I can do that. He’ll bring your various proposals to me, and I’ll make my decision. I’ll probably get back to you with some questions first.”

  “That is satisfactory,” said the Duke. “When David shows up tonight I will send him away and tell him to come back in another day or two. I know who are the likeliest to require your services, but I cannot possibly contact them all before David arrives.”

  “Fair enough,” said Cole. “I’m sure we’ll meet again. Val can stay if she wants, but I’m late for a dinner appointment.”

  “Oh? Where?”

  “Some place called the Fatted Calf.”

  “When you get there, a table in a private room will be waiting for you,” said the Duke. “There will be no bill for you or any member of your party.”

  “You own it?” asked Cole.

  “No.”

  “Then . . . ?”

  “I am not without friends on Singapore Station,” said the Platinum Duke with a modest smile. “I trust you are about to become one of them.”

  He extended his hand, and Cole took it. “Sounds good to me. I have a feeling we’re going to need all the friends we can get.”

  5

  The ship was repaired in five days.

  As his crew staggered in, Cole had a feeling that it would take more than five days to repair them.

  Forrice never said a word. He simply returned to the Teddy R with a big alien grin on his face, went off to his cabin, and slept for thirty hours. Braxite looked almost as happy and slept almost as long. Jacillios, the third Molarian on the ship, had clearly gone to the wrong place: he came back in a foul mood and didn’t sleep at all.

  Vladimir Sokolov, Bull Pampas, Malcolm Briggs, Luthor Chadwick, and the two newest human members of the team, James Nichols and Dan Moyer, hit every bar they could find, then hit them all again.

  Cole had no idea what Jaxtaboxl, the ship’s only Mollutei, did for fun, and he didn’t even want to think about how Lieutenant Domak, a warrior-caste Polonoi, blew off steam. He knew that Rachel Marcos, Idena Mueller, and some of the other human women had gone to see some plays—there was even an all-Shakespeare theater on the station —and had put together a list of restaurants and safe nightclubs based on the Duke’s recommendations. Bujandi, the ship’s only Pepon, was always talking about the savannahs and vistas on his home planet. He returned sullen and morose, and Cole had a feeling he’d gone looking for something green on Singapore Station and wasn’t exactly thrilled with the scenery he’d found.

  Val was one of the last to return. She was nursing a black eye, a split lip, heavily bandaged knuckles, a hangover, and a very contented smile.

  That left only Christine Mboya. He was surprised that she wasn’t in the vanguard of those returning to the ship, and began getting worried as more crew members returned and he’d had no word from her. He was about to send out a search party when she showed up, looking exactly as she’d looked when she left—well groomed, well manicured, totally poised. She explained that her hotel’s computer had crashed, and she’d spent the last two days helping them get it up and running again. Cole was about to voice his sympathy when he decided that fixing the computer was probably the most fun she could have had while on the station.

  As for Cole himself, he’d eaten his steak dinner and spent a romantic night in a suite with Sharon, but he simply wasn’t interested in gambling, drinking, black-market goods, and brothels, and he returned to the ship within two days, not to leave again. Sharon had beaten him back by almost half a day.

  He was idly wondering just how much rest and recuperation time the crew would need to get over their R-and-R on Singapore Station when David Copperfield’s image appeared.

  “I hope I’m not intruding, Steerforth,” said the alien. “But I’ve had two conferences with the Platinum Duke, and I think it’s time you and I discussed our options.”

  “Our options?” said Cole, arching an eyebrow.

  “Of course I meant your options,” said Copperfield hastily. “When would be a convenient time for you?”

  “You, Christine, and I are the only three people capable of carrying on a cogent conversation at this moment, and she’s busy running the ship, so now’s as good a time as any.”

  “Your office?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” said Cole. “I’d love to do it over lunch, but there’s no sense letting anyone overhear us until I’ve made up my mind.”

  “I’ll be there in five minutes,” said Copperfield. “I just have to gather my notes.”

  He broke the connection, and Sharon’s holographic image immediately popped into the office.

  “So I’m not fit to carry on a cogent conversation?” sh
e said.

  “Your job is snooping on them, not participating in them,” said Cole. “Or you could spy on everyone else and tell me how many crew members are puking our their guts.”

  “You have such a delicate way of expressing yourself,” said Sharon.

  “One of us was not into delicate expressions a couple of nights ago, or need I remind you?” said Cole.

  “That’s it. Good-bye forever.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I take back those flowers I bought you and give them to Rachel Marcos.”

  “I strongly advise you to reach for the flowers with your left hand. That way, after I cut it off you’ll still have your right hand to salute with.”

  “How thoughtful,” said Cole. “I think what I like best about you is that you’re always looking out for me.”

  “Especially when you’re sneaking up behind me,” said Sharon. “Dinner at 1800 hours?”

  “It’s a date.”

  “I’d better sign off. Here comes your schoolmate.”

  Her image vanished just as the door irised to let David Copperfield through.

  “How did you enjoy your shore leave, Steerforth?” asked Copperfield pleasantly.

  “Are you ever going to address me by my real name?”

  “Probably not,” replied the alien. “What difference does it make? We both know who I mean.”

  “We’d both know who I meant if I started calling you Hamlet, or maybe Raskolnikov.”

  “But you wouldn’t,” said Copperfield. “You’re too considerate of other people’s feelings.”

  “That could be viewed as a serious flaw in a starship captain,” noted Cole.

  “I really don’t know. The immortal Charles never dealt with starship captains.”

  “One of life’s tragedies,” said Cole. “Are we going to talk like this much more, or can we get down to business?”

  “Business, to be sure,” said Copperfield. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  “Pull up a chair,” said Cole. “But I don’t think you’ll find it very comfortable. I could send for one that will suit you better.”

  “Nonsense,” said Copperfield, sitting awkwardly on a chair and shifting his weight uncomfortably. “This is precisely the kind of chair we had in school.”

  “So what have you got for me?”

  “Even I would reject the two that pay the most,” said the alien. “Shall I even describe them for you?”

  “Don’t bother,” said Cole. “If you think they’re too dangerous, that’s good enough for me. I’ve experienced what you didn’t think was too dangerous.”

  Copperfield spent the next ten minutes going over the six other offers that the Platinum Duke had solicited. Cole rejected two of them because there was too much likelihood that the forces he would be up against could draw upon additional support from allies. A third put them too close to the Republic, and while he’d changed the ship’s registration papers and external insignia, it was still very clearly a Republic warship, and the Navy knew that there was only one Republic warship on the Inner Frontier. Theoretically the Navy couldn’t come after him as long as he stayed on the Frontier, but “hot pursuit” could be a very elastic term, and he decided not to chance it.

  That left two proposals. One required him to take back a city that had fallen under a local warlord’s rule, and that meant fighting on the ground, house to house, with a force of thirty. It was estimated there were some two hundred of the warlord’s soldiers there, and while he was sure his crew would have superior weapons and tactics, he couldn’t be certain that the warlord might not deploy even more men rather than lose the city.

  So it came down, rather easily, to Djamara II, an oxygen planet with considerable gold and silver deposits. There was no sentient native population. An independent mining company had laid claim to the mineral rights, and had begun mining the world some six years earlier. Eventually a regional warlord got wind of what they were digging out of the ground, and made a grab for it. The company was no newcomer to this sort of banditry. They’d hired a small militia, which had twice repelled the warlord’s attacks. But they took heavy losses during the second attack, and the company had decided that they would achieve victory more easily by hiring a starship than by fighting on the ground.

  “Why didn’t the warlord just poison the air and kill them all?” asked Cole. “It’s easy enough to do.”

  “This isn’t a war, Steerforth,” answered Copperfield. “His army has no more interest in mining gold and silver than the Teddy R’s crew does. He wants to steal what they have, or make some kind of deal whereby they’ll pay him a tribute to leave them alone. He does not want to put his elite warriors to work digging for minerals.”

  “Okay, that makes sense,” said Cole. “This is unfamiliar territory to us. We’ll learn, just as we learned piracy.” He paused. “What’s the bottom line here?”

  “They’ll pay four million credits, or two million Maria Theresa dollars, or fifteen percent of their annual production for two years if we’ll take this warlord and his army out once and for all.”

  Cole shook his head. “That’s your bottom line, David. Mine is: What’s the opposition. Who are we up against, how many ships has he got, and what kind of firepower has he got?”

  “Now we’re depending on the Platinum Duke’s sources,” answered David. “I told him you’d like this one the best, so he’s been finding out everything he can. As near as he has been able to tell, the Rock of Ages has six ships—”

  “Hold on a minute,” interrupted Cole. “The Rock of Ages?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And the Platinum Duke, and Cleopatra, and Joan of Arc, and the Hammerhead Shark. Doesn’t anybody use a real name around here?”

  “Welcome to the Inner Frontier,” said David Copperfield with a smile. “Since there are no laws, we’re free to be whatever we want to be—and that means we’re free to call ourselves whatever we want to call ourselves. Most people change names out here as often as you’d change ships or dwellings back in the Republic. I think it’s colorful.”

  “I think it’s ridiculous,” said Cole. He grimaced. “Okay, go on.”

  “The Rock had six ships four months ago. He might have added a seventh since then; nobody seems to know.”

  “That’s a lot of ships to go up against,” said Cole, frowning.

  “You won’t have to,” said Copperfield. “He’s keeping four worlds under his thumb. He doesn’t dare take ships away from them, or they might have some unpleasant surprises waiting for him when he comes back.”

  “So the most we’re likely to face is two ships . . .” mused Cole.

  “Three, if he’s added another.”

  “Can the Duke find out before I accept the job?”

  The alien shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s been trying for three days, and he hasn’t found out yet.”

  “That means two ships,” said Cole decisively. “If they’ve got a new one and the Platinum Duke, with all his sources, can’t find out, that means it’s in use somewhere, and isn’t likely to come to Djamara II until it gets a distress signal, at which point we’ve put one or both of the other ships out of commission.”

  “So you’re interested?” said Copperfield.

  “Yes, I’m interested,” replied Cole. “It’ll only be two-on-one, neither of them should be as powerful or well armed as the Teddy R, especially since we added the weaponry from Val’s old ship, and we’ll have the element of surprise on our side.” He paused. “And it’s nice to know we’re preventing a warlord from plundering a planet.”

  “Does that really matter to you?” asked Copperfield curiously.

  “It’s what we trained for, David,” answered Cole. “It’s the reason a lot of us joined the military.”

  “I thought it was because you were drafted.”

  “That’s another reason,” said Cole wryly. He paused thoughtfully, then spoke again. “Once we blow this bastard’s first two ships out of the sky, maybe we’ll
pay a visit to each of the other four worlds he’s holding captive. One ship apiece, it should be child’s play.”

  “You’d do that just because it’s the moral thing?”

  “Well, if each world we freed felt it incumbent upon themselves to pay us a thank-you fee, I wouldn’t try to discourage them.”

  “By God, Steerforth,” said David Copperfield enthusiastically, “now you’re thinking like a mercenary!”

  6

  It had been six days since Cole signed the papers that committed the Teddy R to the defense of Djamara II. The ship was not in orbit around the planet—he saw no sense advertising its presence—but was stationed out among the dozen moons of Djamara V. Christine, Briggs, and Domak, the three best hands at using both the computers and sensors, worked the red, white, and blue shifts, eight hours apiece, scanning the system, looking for signs of the Rock of Ages’ ships.

  Cole spent most of his time in his office and his cabin. There just wasn’t anything for him to do until the enemy’s ships showed up—and even once they did, anything that was happening on the bridge could be transmitted to him wherever he was.

  It was on the seventh day that a coded message came through from Singapore Station. Cole had it piped into his cabin.

  There was a moment of static, and then the Platinum Duke’s image appeared.

  “Hi,” said Cole. “No sign of him yet.”

  “Just as well,” said the Duke. “It gives you some time to plan.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this,” said Cole warily. “What’s up?”

  “Evidently there’s at least one turncoat on Djamara II,” said the Duke. “It’s hardly surprising, given the numbers, and given the plunder that’s at stake.”

  “You’re telling me that the Rock of Ages knows we’re here,” said Cole.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, he was going to know it sooner or later. We’ve lost the element of surprise, but I’ll still put the Teddy R up against whatever he’s got. The Navy scraps its warships, it doesn’t sell them to third parties. We’ll still have the edge in firepower.”