“Looks like an official announcement of the Anarchate,” Matt said, his tone tense.
George tuned into his suit’s external sound pickup as the translated Belizel statement began, wondering why Matt had been tense ever since their arrival inside the station.
“Citizens of the Anarchate,” sounded words right after the image of a galaxy
crossed by a lightning bolt, “We advise merchants and travelers to avoid visiting the minor galactic sector known as the Orion Arm, a small stretch of stars lying between our two prime arms of Perseus and Carina-Sagittarius. Combat Command has reported a higher incidence of pirate attacks on commercial shipping and entertainment locations such as our wonderful Omega casino.” The Spelidon rat who spoke was dressed in a blue and yellow uniform that bore the sigil of Combat Command. “Of course our Nova battleglobes are tending to this disruption, which will be resolved within the next quarter-cycle. Feel free to contact relatives and business associates over the galactic tachnet to assure yourselves that all is peaceful and profitable within the Anarchate.”
The wallscreen image disappeared to be replaced by UV, infrared and yellow light advertising images that glowed side by side in order to appeal to the vision ranges of different species.
George blinked to call Matt’s face into focus on his left faceplate quadrant.
“Does that refer to your actions on Halcyon,
at Omega, and at the naval shipyard?”
“Probably.”
Matt’s face matched his tense tone. “While the history of the Anarchate has had episodes of local rebellion, they have been rare. Very rare. Seems the work of me, Mata Hari and BattleMind has caused Combat Command to spit out this reassurance propaganda.”
“And you, Matt? What is worrying you?”
His combat partner’s face grimaced. “I prefer being in places where word of our actions is unknown. That is one reason our stops have been moving away from Orion, into star clusters and sectors most humans have never visited. I try to be unpredictable.”
George thought that was a smart tactic within their simple strategy of Hit And Run
at Anarchate targets listed on the molecular memory crystal that Matt had stolen from the Intelligence base. Great thing that, to have a list of your enemy’s bases, fleets, globeship assignments, ID codes, names of local commanders, intelligence on harvester and resource pirate starships, and fuel supply locations. That was how they’d come to be here, at Galifray’s Commerce Station. No one, including him and Suzanne, had known where they were headed until they’d entered Translation. So why was Matt acting worried?
“Unpredictable is good. But everyone needs food and fuel. So aren’t we, to use a phrase, hiding in plain sight?”
“Yes, George, hiding in plain sight is often good. Until word of one’s behavior becomes known while you are visiting. The office of Trans-Galactic is just ahead, on the right,” Matt said, shifting to angle across the crowd of aliens. “Let’s pay off this merchant and leave here ASAP,” his friend said, using another archaic term that George had never heard.
The wide open arch that gave entry to the offices of Trans-Galactic
offered access to a front line of cubicles where minor customers could sit, use the computer interface to order something, pay for it, and leave, never having occupied the time of the well-paid organic staff. That staff occupied low-walled office spaces to the left, with a distant rear wall to mark the separation between the working organics and the few elite managers who observed the front room business using one way vision windows.
As Matt headed for an organic-occupied sidewall office, with
a gesture to George to bring the cask of platinum Standards, he let his suit exoskeleton walk him along after Matt while he used the helmet’s built-in telescopic lenses to examine the faces or bodies of every organic now present in the high-ceilinged room. Leaving aside the alien version of potted plants and captive pets, he counted forty-six aliens of various species sitting, hanging, standing and otherwise going about business, usually doing one-on-one business with other weird-looking customers. That made twenty-tree staff people dealing with twenty-three clients. His left quadrant showed a three dee graphic display of every level of Commerce Station and the docked starships, while the right quadrant showed his suit’s weapons status and sensory feeds that monitored station communications, local alien chatter and his mind-link with Mata Hari. His central faceplate he kept clear except for the telescopic monocle that had moved in front of his right eye. It allowed him to track the skin tattoos, ear movements, spine ruffles, chemical signatures, pheromones and repetitive movement patterns of every alien now present in the office.
“Hello,” Matt said to a Loglan alien who resembled an
oversized crab. It squatted below a water mister as its front manipulators tapped on several datapads. “I am Merchant James Howard Robinson, currently in the employ of Clan Merimand of the Brokeet Autonomous Homeworld. I and my friend are here to render payment for the fuel and supplies which we ordered for our starship, ID tag
Riches
, Order Zi Beta 414. Will you accept our payment?”
Two antenna eyes of the Loglan swiveled up from the data
pads to examine Matt even as George continued his telescopic examination of the people in the room. “Of course, Merchant James Howard Robinson.” It tapped briefly on one datapad. “Our Supply Tube is adjacent to your starship. It will transfer the supplies upon payment receipt. Your currency will be in platinum Standards, I believe?” the alien said in a clicking speech that their comlinks automatically translated into English.
“Yes.” Matt gestured to George. “Here is the cask containing our payment. There are
14,329 Standards inside. That is the payment amount your SupplyBot told us to provide.”
The blue-spotted crab alien increased the motion of its mouth palps. “Yes, our SupplyBot said that. But the price did not include the cost of personal service by myself. That will require an additional 427 S
tandards for the processing of—”
“No!” said Matt harshly as George put the open cask on the side of the alien’s workdesk, then turned his attention to the three elite work spaces at the rear of the office. “We pay what was stated. Or we leave. Now. Accept or lose our business.”
George smiled as Matt exhibited Negotiation Strategy Beta Sigma 14, a lesson he’d learned in his first month on the job at Omega. Though his lesson had not been accompanied by neurowhip reinforcement, it had made sense when dealing with unknown lifeforms who, like everyone, preferred to be paid the most for the least product or service. In his view of the back office, the body language of the six organic staffers working nearby looked normal.
“Accepted,” said the Loglan crab, its translated voice managing to sound peeved. “There. The Supply Tube has connected with your starship and is even now delivering the supplies to your botsleds. The fuel is transiting via a cryogenic tube to your fuel bunker. Satisfied?”
George saw the right side of his faceplate fill with the image of Mata Hari as she acknowledged the supplies were being inspection scanned as they boarded and she expected the loading to end in five minims. A short time indeed.
“Satisfied,” Matt said over his suit’s external speaker. “And if you wish me to recommend the services of Trans-Galactic to my species conglomerates, then you had best—
”
At the back of the office,
George saw a Meligun bear exit the private office suite, wait in an access hall for a Spelidon rat who now scurried up, its black whiskers held tensely. The pink eyes of the Meligun peered closely at them, long enough for him to read the clan tattoo on the bear’s nose. And to read its stance of alarm as black fur slicked down close to its skin. The bear turned away and re-entered its private office, with the Spelidon following behind.
Damn!
He wondered briefly what he should do, then with a PET thought-image he unlinked from Matt’s CPU and activated his suit’s pulse-Doppler radar unit so as to penetrate the opaque window that faced toward the front office. In less than a second George saw the dark outline of the four-armed Meligun and two-armed Spelidon as the Meligun waved its upper arm pair, then reached down to touch its workdesk with a waist arm. Clearly it was aiming to communicate privately, by a touch link, or it would simply have spoken aloud to the room’s talkcomp. His memory took him back to Omega, to a memory of a former Owner. It was enough. He acted.
Two
of his helmet pressor beams swept the forty-six aliens lying between him and the Meligun’s office, knocking the aliens off their pads, paws, feet or tentacles, while a precise tractor beam hit the opaque window of the Meligun bear, pulled it out of its frame, then latched onto the Meligun and pulled the struggling alien to him in a mid-air float that put no strain on his suit’s power sources.
“Hey!” said Matt over comlink. “What the heck are you—
”
“Security override Delta four three,” George said
over the tachlink, passing his thought image of ‘Agressor identified’ to the red cloud of Mata Hari even as he brought his two shoulder pulse-cannons to life, with one aiming toward the elite offices and one to his rear, toward the open archway that led to the bustling Central Aisle. Thinking fast, he imaged an exit plan that involved cutting a hole in the office’s ceiling and then rising four more levels with Matt and the Meligun bear, who now hit his suit, then squealed as George held its upper arms with his suit’s powerful strength. His exit plan showed they avoided concentrations of people, following an unused cargo transport tube up to the upper skin of the globular station. From there they could speed directly to starship
Mata Hari
using their own suit resources. “Okay with you, Matt?”
“Yes,” said the Vigilante as he aimed his
own shoulder lasers upward and cut a two meter wide circle in the hard plastic of the office ceiling. The round plate clattered down. “Tell me the reason for your Security alert as we get the heck out of here.”
George
told a suit microbot to inject the struggling Meligun bear with a sleep agent, then rose on his boot Nullgravs to follow Matt. They left behind the squalling of angry and confused aliens who had begun to direct threats and complaints at their disruption of the commerce day. He and Matt slanted over to intersect the bulk cargo transport tube that rose up to the station’s top skin.
“The tattoo of this Meligun,” he told Matt even as he felt the same mind question from Mata Hari. “On its nose. It is identical to the clan tattoo that I saw on Owner Zik tho-mesk on Omega. It’s the
alien you ID’d as owning the contract of your Helen. I saw it often as Zik watched Helen run the baccarat table. This Meligun was reaching for its desk comlink to tell someone about us. Which is why I tractor grabbed it.”
In
George’s faceplate Matt looked angry. “Damn! You’re right. It must have already heard about our destruction of the casino. The outer appearance of my combat suit, and my face, are the only distinctive things about me that it would know.”
“So I would guess,” George said as they rose rapidly up the cargo tube. “Which is why I thought capturing the Meligun would serve two purposes. Use him as a shield against offensive fire, and interrogate him over what he and other merchants know from the escaped Owners. Oh, and we need a vacsuit for this bear.”
“Noted,” Matt said tersely. “Mata Hari, ask Suzanne to help you with a software worm that will track down every image of me and George that shows in the station’s computer. And send us a Defense sled to the station’s top skin. I prefer getting home faster than our Repulsor blocks can move us.”
George smiled inwardly, pleased to hear Matt include Suzanne in their escape plan. Something he should have thought of. Well, maybe he could help. “And Mata Hari,” he interrupted with a polite mental nudge to Matt, “please take a read on the naval starships of the two conglomerates that run this system. They are Bootice and—”
“Melikark,” Matt interrupted with a sound of disgust. “A co-owner of the casino. I knew that from my Protector time on Omega. Should have objected when BattleMind named this system as our refuel point and the InfoPak ID’d it as under the control of those two conglomerates. Guess Halicene has been on my mind too much of late.”
George said nothing. He felt thankful he’d recognized a trouble situation before he and Matt could be trapped inside the station, or be surrounded by armed starships. While he knew
Mata Hari
could defeat any Anarchate or conglomerate starship, or small naval force, still, he preferred to be the wolf running after the prey, rather than the reverse. His years as Repair supervisor at Omega casino had taught him the value of looking ahead, anticipating, then being quick with a problem fix even before an Owner complained about it. Was one reason he’d risen in rank over longer-serving aliens. Hoping he had not committed any errors in acting unilaterally with the alert, George used PET thought-imagery to have his left quadrant faceplate display the entire star system, rather than just what lay within a hundred kilometers.
Their AI partner filled his
left quadrant with dot icons that were colored to indicate ship and planetary status. The inner three worlds were burned up Mercury analogues, while the single gas giant outer planet showed only a fuel extraction station just above the top of the atmosphere. But one-third of the way around Galifray’s orbit loomed twenty-two red dots that represented the combat starships of Bootice and Melikark conglomerates. Every ship was boosting in their direction, with a few in the lead due to more powerful fusion pulse spacedrives. At two-tenths lightspeed the fleet would be here within an hour. Adjacent to the station hung the fourteen blue dots of merchant ships, ten orange dots of automated Supply Tubes and six yellow dots of passenger and courier starships. While the merchant ships mounted some directed energy domes for basic defense against commerce raiders, none them were activated even though a station-wide alarm had gone off shortly after Matt began using his shoulder cannons to cut their way through station walls and conduits. Clearly they were ID’d as ‘bad people’ and their starship would shortly be hounded by verbal demands for damage repayment.