Starship: Mercenary (Starship, Book 3) Read online

  Some of them dragged the unconscious Morrison to an exit, while others prodded the terrified dealer with their weapons until he, too, went to the exit.

  “They’re going to kill both of them,” said Sharon when Cole and Val had reached the table.

  “Probably,” agreed the Duke. “After all, this is the Frontier. There will be no fast-talking lawyers getting them off on technicalities.”

  “That’s very much like justice,” said David Copperfield. “Certainly Skullcracker Morrison would have killed the Valkyrie if he could have.”

  “He never had a chance,” said Cole.

  “You weren’t worried?”

  “I’ve seen her in action.”

  “Enough chatter,” said Val. “Let’s get down to business.”

  She put the bills on the table and began dividing them. When they were done she handed her half over to Cole. “A little over six hundred thousand,” she announced. “That’s not bad for a one-minute workout.”

  “You are an exceptional woman!” enthused the Duke. “They could have kept that scam going for weeks, and certainly I wasn’t about to challenge Skullcracker Morrison. How can I ever thank you?”

  “Seriously?” said Val.

  “Absolutely,” answered the Duke. “I’m too old and have too many artificial parts to give you a courtly bow of sincerity, but try to imagine it.”

  “Fine,” said Val. “Get me my own ship.”

  9

  “It’s simple enough,” explained David Copperfield when the senior officers met aboard the Teddy R. “It should take a week, two at the most, and we’ll have a million Far London pounds.”

  “How much is that in real money?” asked Forrice.

  “About two million Republic credits, or just under half a million Maria Theresa dollars, give or take,” said Copperfield. “And, if Olivia Twist works it right, there’s every possibility that she’ll wind up with her own ship.”

  “Why not humor me and call me Val?” she said.

  “My dear woman, you’ve had eleven different names just in the time I’ve known you,” answered Copperfield. “Why don’t you humor an old man and let me call you the name that pleases me the most?”

  “Save it, David,” said Val. “You’re probably not old, you’re certainly not a man, and that name was used just once, by Cole not by me, solely to gain entrance to your office.”

  “Details, details,” replied Copperfield.

  “Cut to the chase,” said Cole. “What exactly are we being paid to do?”

  “The Apollo Cartel exports all the gemstones that are extracted from any world within twenty light-years of Bannister II,” said Copperfield. He sighed deeply. “I could have told them not to locate there.”

  “Why not?” asked Forrice.

  “Because it’s right in the middle of the territory controlled by a very minor warlord who has taken the name of Genghis Khan, who controls Bannister and its neighboring systems with an iron hand. He was there five years ahead of them, so it can hardly be a surprise that he’s causing them problems.”

  “Is he human?” asked Cole.

  “With a name like Genghis Khan he’d have to be,” said Christine.

  “Don’t bet on it,” said Cole. “Out here they change names the way you and I change clothes.”

  “But his name—” she began.

  “Is David human?” interrupted Cole.

  “I’m human where it counts,” said Copperfield with dignity.

  “Fine,” said Cole. “Just don’t point to where it counts.” Then: “So is Genghis Khan a Man?”

  “To tell the truth, I have absolutely no idea what race he belongs to,” said Copperfield. “I don’t know anyone who’s ever seen him.”

  “All right,” said Cole. “Someone or something called Genghis Khan thinks he owns the Bannister system, and the Apollo Cartel wants him gone. That explains why they want the Teddy R. But how does it get Val her ship?”

  “Khan sends a representative once a week to collect what I think you would call protection money,” said Copperfield. “This representative travels without any enforcers or bodyguards, because no one in the system, or indeed anywhere in the sector, dares to stand up to Genghis Khan.” He shot Val a smile. “He doesn’t get to Bannister by flapping his arms.”

  “Too easy,” said Cole. “No one’s going to pay us a million pounds to kill a lone man, especially if it’s not Genghis Khan himself.”

  “Of course not,” said Copperfield. “I was answering your question about replacing dear Olivia’s late lamented vessel. That is where she’ll get her ship, if she’s so inclined. As for earning the million pounds, that will require the elimination of Genghis Khan and his followers—or should I call them his horde?—as a threat to the Apollo Cartel.”

  “How many ships has he got and where are they located?” asked Cole.

  “I don’t know,” said Copperfield with an eloquent shrug.

  “Ask the Platinum Duke,” said Cole.

  “He’s just a middleman,” replied Copperfield. “The commission is being offered by the Cartel, which I gather has never even seen the self-styled Emperor Khan, let alone his headquarters.”

  “David,” said Cole, “how do I know this isn’t another assignment that sound easy until we learn that the enemy’s got twenty ships all armed with pulse torpedoes?”

  “I truly don’t know, my dear Steerforth,” said Copperfield. “I am merely relating an offer. We are opportunists. This is an opportunity. It is my job to report it, to put us together with opportunities. That does not mean you have to accept it.”

  “All right, David,” said Cole. “Let me think about it for a minute.”

  “I don’t like the sound of it,” said Forrice. “Every time we go in blind, we find we’re up against a much greater force than we anticipated.”

  “I’m with Forrice,” chimed in Sharon Blacksmith, who had been silent up to that point. “Besides, we need Val right here on the Teddy R.”

  “We promised to help her get her ship back when she joined us, or to replace it with another one,” said Cole. “Besides, with a second ship we can take on bigger assignments that will hopefully pay a little better.”

  “Oh, come on, Wilson,” said Sharon irritably. “This guy will be coming in a one-man job, not a military ship. It won’t do us a bit of good.”

  “There’s an ancient saying from old Earth itself,” answered Cole. “‘Great oaks from tiny acorns grow.’”

  “What’s an oak, what’s an acorn, and what does that have to do with what I said?” Sharon demanded.

  “Did you ever go fishing?” asked Cole.

  “Are you going to answer me?”

  “I’m doing it right now. Did you ever go fishing?”

  “Yes. So what?”

  “What did you use for bait?”

  “I don’t know—worms, artificial flies, other things.”

  “What other things?”

  “Fish, mostly.”

  “You used a little fish to catch a big one, right?” said Cole. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do with the muscle’s ship.”

  “How?”

  He turned to the Valkyrie. “Tell her.”

  “What happens when the muscle doesn’t return or report in, when they can’t raise him on subspace radio?” said Val, and then answered her own question: “They send a bigger ship to see what happened. And when that one doesn’t return or answer any messages?” She matched Cole’s smile. “They can’t ignore it, so sooner or later they’re going to send the ship I want.”

  “And when they do,” continued Cole, “a ship that big is going to have star maps, computer codes, something, to tell us where Genghis Khan is headquartered.”

  “And then we attack him?” asked Christine.

  “Not in the Teddy R,” said Cole. “But they don’t figure to to fire on their own ship.”

  “You know,” said Forrice, “between your deviousness and Val’s total lack of morality, we could end
up owning the galaxy.”

  “Since we left the Republic nothing’s ever been quite as easy as it sounded,” said Cole. “Let’s settle for owning the million Far London pounds and another ship.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” said Val.

  10

  Bannister was a class-G star with six planets. The second of them had an oxygen atmosphere. There were a few life-forms on the planet, none of them yet approaching sentience. But there were deposits of gold, platinum, and fissionable materials, so a mining industry had grown up, and because the planet was so well located and able to grow enough food to sustain itself, it gradually, over a period of two centuries, became a commercial center specializing in the gem trade.

  There were three continents, but only one city, which had grown from a ramshackle Tradertown to an almost-cosmopolitan metropolis of a third of a million men and another fifty thousand aliens. The tallest building—it was only seven stories, but land was not at a premium—housed the Apollo Cartel, and it was in the president’s office that Cole and Val found themselves, seated comfortably on plush chairs that floated a few inches above the ground and rocked them very gently.

  “You’re sure they’re due today?” Cole was saying.

  “It’s a he, not a they,” answered the president. “And this is the day of the week that he always shows up for what he calls his protection money.”

  “And he always comes here, not to the comptroller’s office?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Does he just walk in,” continued Cole, “or does he register somewhere? Does someone announce him?”

  The president shook his head. “There was some difficulty with one of our security guards last year. Since then I’ve instructed everyone to let him pass through unhindered, since he’s going to reach this office one way or another.”

  “And he parks his ship in your private spaceport—the one where we landed our shuttle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it always the same man?”

  The president nodded. “For the past year, anyway.”

  “Okay,” said Cole. “We’ll take it from here—unless you have anything further to add?”

  “Just make sure that whatever you do works,” said the president. “I hate to think of what Khan will do to this entire planet if you fail.” He got to his feet and walked to the door while Cole’s and Val’s chairs swiveled in the air to face him. “Does she speak?” he asked, indicating Val.

  Suddenly there was a burner in Val’s hand. “With this,” she said.

  The president made a hasty exit.

  “You’ve been watching too many bad holos,” remarked Cole as she bonded the laser pistol to her hip again.

  “They made two about me during my pirate days,” she replied. “I said that in one of them. Never said it in real life, so I thought I’d say it now and make it legitimate.” She paused. “How do you want to handle it?”

  “We’ll play it by ear.”

  “Why not just kill him the second he enters?” she said. “It’s not as if we’re going to let him contact Khan.”

  “He’s been making his pickups with no problem for over a year now,” said Cole. “Maybe it’s softened him up a little. Maybe he likes being alive.”

  She shook her head. “It’s a waste of time. You don’t send weaklings out on a job like this.”

  “We have a little time to waste,” said Cole.

  She shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

  “I’m the Captain,” he corrected her.

  “Same thing.” She glanced at some cabinets. “Do you suppose they keep any drinkin’ stuff in here?”

  “Forget it. I want you sober.”

  “I could drink you under the table and still be sober,” said Val.

  “I suppose you could,” agreed Cole. “But don’t drink anyway.”

  She stared at him. “What’s the real reason?”

  “I don’t want to put him on the defensive the second he walks into the office,” said Cole. “In a minute or two you’re going to leave here and set up shop in that empty office across the corridor. Once he gets mad enough, you’re going to have about three seconds to burst in here and disarm him. I want to be saved, not avenged, and I want to make sure your reaction time is what it should be.”

  “All right,” she said. “No booze. I’ll save you for your Security Chief. But when we’re done, if any executive on this floor has got a bottle of Cygnian cognac, I plan to appropriate it.”

  “That seems fair enough,” said Cole. “I don’t imagine Khan will be paying Bannister II a second visit before tomorrow.”

  “Sir,” said a disembodied female voice. “He has entered the building.”

  “Thanks,” said Cole. He tossed a tiny earphone to Val. “Okay, get going and listen in on this. You’ll know when I want you.”

  She caught the earphone, nodded, and walked out into the corridor while Cole moved to the chair behind the president’s desk.

  A little more than a minute later a tall, burly man entered the office.

  “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

  “What does the sign on the door say?” responded Cole.

  “So they’ve got a new president?” he said. “Did the one you’re replacing tell you about our arrangement?”

  “Why don’t you tell me, just so I’m absolutely clear about it,” said Cole.

  “It’s nice and simple. Genghis Khan and his organization provides protection for your operation for twenty-five thousand Far London pounds a week. In cash.”

  “Twenty-five thousand?” repeated Cole.

  “Right.” The man frowned. “Didn’t he tell you?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Well?”

  “It’s not enough,” said Cole.

  The man frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “Twenty-five thousand. It’s not enough.”

  “Are you crazy?” demanded the man.

  “No, I’m just a businessman,” said Cole. “I think we’ll make it fifty thousand.”

  “You want to pay us fifty thousand pounds a week?”

  Cole shook his head. “No.”

  “Then what—?”

  “I want you to pay us fifty thousand pounds a week for the privilege of protecting us.”

  “You’re crazy!” bellowed the man.

  “You’re welcome to think so,” said Cole easily.

  “You’ve got thirty seconds to come up with my money!”

  “Val,” said Cole without raising his voice, “I believe that’s your signal.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” demanded the man as the door irised to let the Valkyrie pass through it.

  He heard her enter, spun around to face her, and reached for his burner, but she was too fast for him. Her left hand shot out, grabbing his wrist, and a moment later even Cole could hear it crack from across the room.

  He howled in rage and anguish and took a swing at her with his other hand. She ducked, stepped in, and gave him two quick karate chops, one to the throat, one to the groin. He collapsed, gasping for air, and before he could get back on his feet she had disarmed him.

  “You can’t get away with this!” he roared.

  “I think we just did,” said Cole pleasantly.

  “I’ll be back,” he promised. “And I’ll have enough men with me to handle you and this she-devil.”

  “You mean if we let you live and return to your ship, you’ll come back in force?”

  “You bet your ass! You haven’t seen the last of me!”

  “If you really mean that, we’d be pretty foolish to let you live, wouldn’t we?” said Cole.

  Suddenly the man’s demeanor changed. He took one look at Val and began backing away. “You can’t kill me!” he said desperately. “This is murder!”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that just what you threatened to do to us?”

  “We can deal!”

  “I was hoping you’d say that,”
said Cole. “Just tell me where Kahn is and what codes will get us past his defenses, and we’ll let you live. I won’t let you go until I know the information is valid, but once it proves out, you’ll be released.”

  “I can’t tell you!” said the man. “He’ll kill me!”

  “And we’ll kill you if you don’t,” said Cole. “Maybe you should consider who’s closer to you at the moment.”

  The man, panic in his eyes, made a sudden break for the door, but Val was too quick for him. A quick, crunching kick to his knee sent him sprawling and moaning to the floor, and an instant later he passed out from the pain.

  “He’s going to have a limp for a long time,” noted Cole.

  “No he’s not,” said Val, aiming her burner at him. “He’s going to be dead in ten seconds.”

  “No!” said Cole.

  “Damn it, Wilson!” she said. “If the positions were reversed he’d sure as hell kill us.”

  “If we have to kill him, we will,” said Cole. “We don’t have to.”

  “Look,” she said, “I know everyone else on the Teddy R is Navy, and I’m just a pirate who latched on to you, but you’re letting this Good Guy/Bad Guy stuff color your judgment. He’s an enemy. He wants to kill us. If he was a soldier in the Teroni Federation, what would the Republic’s Navy do to him?”

  “Kill him if we had to, and take him prisoner if we didn’t.”

  “Maybe you think killing an unconscious man is a sin?” she said. “Fine. Step aside and let me take the sin unto myself. Hell, it can keep all my other sins company.”

  “It’s not a sin,” said Cole. “It’s just not necessary.”

  She glared at him. “A son of a bitch like this holds a grudge, especially when he spends the rest of his life with a new wrist and an artificial leg. One of these years you and your Security Chief are going to have a kid, and this is just the kind of bastard who’ll bide his time and someday slit the kid’s throat.”

  “Spare me your predictions,” said Cole. “He lives until I say otherwise. That’s an order.”

  She shrugged and sighed deeply. “You’re the Captain.”

  “I’m glad you remembered,” said Cole. “They’ve got to have a hospital around here somewhere. It’s too big a city not to. Get an ambulance to take him there, then have Bull come down on a shuttle and stand guard. Once they patch him up, no one but the doctor goes into his room, and he doesn’t send or receive any messages. Then, once he’s taken care of, hide his ship. I’ll have Apollo’s president use his influence to erase any record of it landing at the spaceport. By nightfall I want every trace of this thug’s presence eradicated.” He paused for a moment. “Change that. I want Domak watching him, not Bull.”