Star Risk - 01 Star Risk, Ltd (24 page)

Baldur swung the pickup toward a bulkhead, gestured at King to shut down the IDkit. She obeyed, and Baldur turned the com to Goodnight.

"Good evening, brother," Chas said. "You don't sound happy."

"I'm not," Reg said. "And if you don't improve your work, I'm afraid you'll be drawing welfare quite shortly."

"Now, now," Chas said calmly. "Have faith in me."

"In you I have faith. In your friends� well, at one time I could have said I trusted their competency as well. But now�" Reg Goodnight let his voice trail off.

"We're very close to some very interesting developments," Goodnight lied. "Including that cruiser's new base."

"I hope so. Can you tell me where you've been for the last, what, E-month?"

Chas Goodnight shook his head.

"Not over an open com I can't."

"Well�" Reg said. "I'll keep Home Office happy as long as I can. But if you weren't my brother�"

"I could have been your aunt," Chas said.

"What? What the hell are you talking about? You're getting as weird as your friends."

"Now, Reg. Go have a glass of hot milk or something. Everything'll work out fine."

"It had better," Reg Goodnight said ominously, and blanked the com.

"I'm surely impressed by you," Spada said. "Star Risk seems to be able to do very creative thinking."

"You mean, we lie well," Jasmine King said.

"I'm polite about things like that."

"Don't bother," Chas Goodnight said. "If we don't get our thumbs out, I think we're in big trouble."

L.C. Doe left the Miner's Aid, starting for the Dew Drop Inn, determined to throw the toot of all time. Goddamned gutless bastards that were her self-appointed charge. Cut and run at the slightest setback.

Then she caught herself. She didn't go out into the belt very often, having most of her work here in Sheol. It was easy for her to growl at those clowns out there behind a rock drill with nothing but worries and bills, waiting for somebody to creep up and blow their shorts off.

All right, she thought. So much for sympathy. She'd better start coming up with a plan to keep the trickle of people fleeing the system from becoming a tidal flow.

And sitting over a bottle and a little jar wasn't the way to do it. She'd proven that to herself time and again, which was one reason she'd had to name herself L.C. Doe, back when her name was�

Hell, she'd almost forgotten it.

She turned back, to sit and brood in her tiny apartment over the Miner's Rest.

Brood, and puzzle at something that was niggling at the back of her mind, something she should have figured out some time ago.

Nothing came.

Oh well. Maybe one little shot of busthead in her tea might help.

No, it wouldn't.

Doe grinned at herself.

Evidently she'd never, ever learn.

She didn't notice the man who came out of the shadows behind her with a knife.

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FORTY-TWO � ^ � Redon Spada's attack ship hung just beyond the asteroid belt, waiting.

Lopez, his weapons officer, half watched the screen behind Spada showing Doe's rather impressive funeral.

It might have looked ridiculous�the archaic hearse was followed by a motley of vehicles, from lifters to ore carriers to actual wheeled vehicles. Beside the vehicles were men and women on foot. The procession was long, almost two kilometers, maudlin and raucous.

Baldur and the other execs of Star Risk could handle the formal mourning. Redon Spada rather thought Doe might appreciate a little blood on her casket before it went into the fires.

He had no idea at all where the raiders were now based, but had done a little target analysis, and found the majority of ship attacks had come in a certain sector of the belt.

With two wingmates, he'd had lifted from Sheol two days ago, and spent the previous "day" scattering sensors to the limits of the Pyrrhus-class ships' pickups.

Then all he had to do was wait.

And hope that he, and Star Risk, would be lucky.

For a change, they were.

A screen blipped, and a computer chuffed a printout.

Spada scanned it.

"Very sloppy," he said. "That's the same approach they used about six months ago. Four ships, N'yar built, exiting N-space, orbit projected� very fine."

He keyed his mike.

"All Star Risk elements� slave to me, and set target as indicated. You might as well get your head down as well. Estimated time to contact� two hours or so.

"Clear."

"You're sure," Baldur said disappointedly, staring at the IDkit holo.

"I'm sure," Goodnight said. Both of them still wore formal black, fresh from Doe's funeral. Neither had wanted to stay around for the drunken wake, especially given the likelihood of running into Reg Goodnight, and getting another readout. "You expected maybe Czar Catherine of all the Russias, or whatever system she supposedly ran amok in?"

"I was hopefully expecting her to look like a Foley System official named Tan Whitley," Baldur said. "Who is Foley's head of Offworld Development."

He sighed. "But life is never that simple for a struggling young entrepreneur."

King giggled, "Young?"

"At least in thought, my love. Now you go and pack."

"For what?" King said. "Deep space? A trek through a jungle?"

"More dangerous," Baldur said. "We are going to Glace after I report Major Progress to that hellhound Reg Goodnight, where we shall check into a very expensive hotel, assuming that benighted world has such an entity. You are to be my mask, playing the part of a mistress of an aged rou�while I do some snooping in my area of specialty."

"Which is?" Goodnight said. "I mean, besides being a dirty old man."

"Pah, sir," Baldur snorted. "Unlike some we might name, I remain a perfect gentleman. The area of which I speak is corruption, its most seductive reek, and those who flock around it."

The raiders had hit their first target by the time Spada and his wing closed on them.

Professionals, the Star Risk fliers gave no more than a passing glance to the screen showing the rubble where a small mining claim had been set. They saw no signs of a ship, figured the lucky miner had been off to Sheol to mourn Doe.

Spada had all four raiders on his screen, set a closing orbit.

"Right up their bums," he said. "They'll not be looking back, but, like good pirates, ahead for more loot, although it doesn't appear these gentlemen are wasting time looting on this run."

He waited, motionless, the only sound the ship's hum. After a few minutes, he opened his mike.

"All Star Risk elements. Plan is as follows. I'll launch on the forward ship, divert to the one to its left if I hit. Risk Five, take the far left raider; Six, the one to the right. Break contact if anybody hollers for help. Acknowledge by clicks, begin your own down-count, fire when you're in range. Com silence until the bangs stop banging. One, clear."

Two mike-clicks sounded from the other ships.

"Now, sir," Spada said, "if you'll give me a closing count on range."

"Yessir," his weapons officer said, his hands poised over launch sensors. "Time to contact� forty-seven seconds."

Again, silence.

"Engineer," Spada said, "I'll appreciate your close attention over the next few minutes, in case we have to go chasey."

"Rog, skipper."

"Seventeen seconds."

The only thing that existed for Spada was that blip onscreen. Unconsciously, he began deep, slow breathing, as if he were about to go to the mat with his enemies.

"Four� and three� and� they saw us!"

The four ships star-burst away.

"This is One," Spada said. "Keep your targets."

Then he forgot about the others, trying for his own launch.

The first raider was jinking wildly, its computer obviously setting random orbits.

"Well within range, sir," Lopez said.

"Launch one when you wish," Spada said. "Stay on guidance. I'll deal with his friend."

"On guidance, sir." The weapons officer put a missile helmet on. "Launching� now!"

The patrol ship shuddered as a missile fired. The weapons officer's eyes were closed. The front two fingers of each of his hands played on sensors controlling the guidance vents of the missile as it chased after the first raider.

Spada opened his screen's range, found the second raider.

He watched it for a moment, then tapped sensors quickly.

"Engineer� I'd like full drive," he said calmly.

"Full drive, sir."

Spada watched for an instant, added a proximity detector to the onscreen data. He gnawed at his lip�the other ship was pulling away from him, even at full power.

Again, Spada opened his screen's range. He saw a distant planetoid. He touched sensors, and lines ran back and forth to the planetoid and beyond.

A small smile came and went on Spada's face.

He changed orbits, opened another screen just on the raider.

Spada waited a few seconds, nodded in satisfaction without realizing it, made a small course correction.

"Closing� closing� impact!" the weapons officer said, and Spada noticed a flash on another screen.

"One down," the officer said, pulling his helmet off.

"Then get on this one," Spada said. "He'll disappear behind those two dumbbell-shaped chunks of rock, realize he's closing on that big asteroid there, which we're going to just skim, I hope, and change his orbit to"�he touched the keys, and a dotted red line appeared on screen�"to come out just there.

"I hope.

"On the off chance I'm right, I'd like to have a missile waiting for our friend. Your launch time is about�"

"Nine seconds, I figure."

"Close enough, mister. Launch on set and forget, just in case I'm wrong, and put on your little hat so we can have another option."

The control panel beeped.

"Target acquired," the weapons officer said.

"Time to launch?"

"Three seconds," the weapons officer said, then touched a sensor and the ship jerked a little. "On its way."

He put the helmet back on, changed the selector to another missile.

"Standing by on three for your command," he said.

Spada didn't answer, concentrating on his screens and instruments.

He was assuming that the asteroid they'd skim "over" had little if any gravity, not enough to pull them into an intersection orbit.

On the main screen, it looked as if they were about to smash into it.

A collision light blinked, and a gong started bonging.

"Goddamnit," Spada said, concentration momentarily broken, "shut that off!"

"Alarm off," the weapons officer said, proud of his tonelessness.

"I don't think we hit the�"

A screen flashed, went dark for a moment.

"Cancel that insecurity," Spada said.

He put up a real-time screen, saw the debris spinning away from a dying fireball.

"And that's that."

He spun the ship on its axis, went back the way they'd come.

"All Star Risk elements. Report."

"Star Risk One, this is Star Risk Five. Scratch one villain." The pilot's voice was excited, triumphant.

"This is One. Congrats. Transkootenay is buying tonight," Spada said.

"This is Six� got the skiddy little bastard!"

"All Star Risk elements. We did our paybacks for Elsie. Now, let's jump for home and appropriate adulation."

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FORTY-THREE � ^ � I think," Jasmine King said, as they rode the powered ramp down into Glace's main port, "I could live happily in the wilderness, or in a great city. It's the small towns that would drive me out of my mind from boredom."

"A metropolis like this one?" Baldur asked, a bit incredulously.

"Of course not," Jasmine said. "Nor like Sheol, either. I was thinking more like Trimalchio."

"Yes," Baldur said. "Trimalchio, indeed. As for your wilderness, pfah to Walden. Perhaps one day we shall make the grand score, and not have to journey about to pissant little worlds like this one."

"We'd be bored inside a month," Jasmine said.

"Probably true," Baldur agreed.

The two had made an outsystem jump on one of Transkootenay's courier ships, then transferred to a plush liner to return to Glace.

Behind high-piled, matching luggage recently bought, and carefully aged by Baldur to look like the property of well-traveled wealthy before they boarded the liner, Baldur examined the customs form with a proper amount of hauteur. Then, under "Purpose of Visit," wrote "Research," very neatly.

"Research?" the official asked.

"Yes," Baldur said. "I am preparing a small monograph on Primitive Human Settlements."

"You mean like Glace?"

Baldur sniffed. The official reddened, thought of searching all their luggage, decided he might get himself in trouble, and satisfied his anger with a hard-slammed visa stamp.

"And what did that accomplish?" Jasmine said, as Baldur waved for porters to carry their gear out to a waiting lim.

"Nothing, really," Baldur said. "Perhaps it was a residue from thinking about Trimalchio, and a nice Earth Bordeaux with, perhaps, a lobster diablo."

"Well, we shall have to see what we can do to satisfy your desires, won't we?" Jasmine purred, making sure she was in earshot of a porter, and snuggling ostentatiously close to Baldur.

He lifted an eyebrow.

"Are we getting a bit too much into our role? Remembering that one should never allow emotion to enter into one's job."

"The nice thing about going undercover," Jasmine said, "is that whatever one chooses to do to maintain your cover should be set aside and forgotten when the assignment is complete."

Baldur's eyebrows seemed fit to climb well into his receding hairline.

"Was that satisfactory?" Jasmine said.

"It was," Baldur said, "although the main course had certain bad memories for me."

The meal had consisted of fish roe on toast bits, freshwater crayfish, buttered small vegetables that could have been potatoes, a strange greenish vegetable that was alternately hot and sour, a salad of wild herbs, followed by a cheese course, and a dessert wine.