ELIE HAD A nice office at the ministry, a tad too neat for Izzy’s taste, maybe running a bit too much to old marble and plush carpets, but nice. “How’d you get these digs?”
“Unity tossed the previous owners out. We took over when they vacated the lease. Someday, I’ll have to do something about all the cold marble. Put in real workstations, not these old antiques. We get by.”
Elie showed them next door to an even bigger office, then through several more doors until they found themselves in a small lunchroom. There were plastic-wrapped sandwiches and bottles of soda on the table. “Nothing fancy today,” Elie said, taking a seat. “We have work to do.”
A woman came in, just beginning to show her pregnancy. She talked rapidly with the big man whom Izzy identified only as the toy/spy guy. Mr. Nuu and a half dozen others filed in behind them. Nuu, the woman, and the spy took places at the table; others settled into chairs against the wall. The last two in carried armfuls of printed reports. They distributed them, then, lacking seats, just stood.
“This may take a while,” the pregnant woman said. “Rustle yourselves up some chairs.” In a moment, the two returned with mismatched chairs and settled in. The woman spoke a moment longer with the man Izzy still had no name for; then, scowling, she closed a folder and looked at Izzy.
“Excuse the informality, Captain. I’m Rita Nuu-Longknife. I once was a ship driver too—transports in the recent war. You’ve met my father, who’s footing the bill for updating that wreck you brought in. In my husband’s absence, I’ve been designated minister without portfolio. Which means I get all of the headaches and he’ll have the fun of answering to Parliament when he gets back.” Izzy caught the slight inflection on the “when.” Not if…when. As important as the Patton and the pirates were to Izzy, she suspected Rita had a higher priority. “My friend here”—apparently even Rita had no name for the spy guy—“has damn near closed the planet’s net down to get your files hacked. It appears that he has. Spill it.”
The large man nodded to a slim woman, who rose from her chair along the wall, plugged a large comm unit into the lunchroom table, and hit a button. The wall in front of Izzy came to life, and the briefing began. “I am Tru Seyd, chief of information warfare. I won’t bore you with the infinite amount of fun this cryptographic problem gave my team. It suffices to say that we started reading these files on Tuesday.”
“Tuesday,” Izzy interrupted. “Hold it. You promised me as soon as you knew anything, I’d know it. You kept me in the dark for forty-eight hours!” Work on the ship was going fine, but Izzy was still looking for the rub in this setup. She was a long way from trusting these folks enough to break orbit with a ship full of drop troops. As of this moment, her trust was zero.
“My call, Izzy.” Elie rested a restraining hand quickly on Izzy’s elbow. “The operative word was that she started reading the files on Tuesday. I saw the raw feed. They were getting maybe one word in four, and half of them were guesses. They only got a better handle late yesterday as they ran more and more of the files through their algorithm and modified it. Trust me, you had a lot more fun with your overhaul than I had with the first reads.”
Izzy pulled her elbow away from Elie’s hand. The professor had bought in with these folks. That vote was still out for Izzy. Damn it, where is Andy? “So, what did you get?”
“A fairly good handle on an ugly nest of snakes,” the briefing officer said slowly. “Some of our assumptions we’ve verified. The pirates have converted a small settlement on the planet Riddle into a going concern. They’ve established an orbital station to strip the captured ships and maintain their own. They’ve expanded the original settlement into the hinterlands with a very profitable cash crop, and are importing prefab the kind of urban infrastructure that will support rapid population growth.”
“How are they doing that?” Trouble had taken a large bite out of his sandwich. He chewed it thoughtfully.
“By cheating,” the unnamed one said.
Tru took back the story. “Earth, Sirius, the first colonized seven sisters have billions of warm bodies. Few are interested in leaving. Even fewer have any idea how to survive on a frontier planet. I think Alpha Centauri was the last one to try shipping unwanted mouths off-planet. So few survived being dumped in the wilderness that it was cheaper to just space the migrants out the station lock than ship them off to somewhere else to die.” Izzy nodded; her sister Lora wouldn’t even think of moving off-world.
“At one point,” the toy fancier chuckled, “Benjamin Franklin suggested the North Americans show their gratitude to their king for the forced colonists England was shipping them by shipping him rattlesnakes in return. My grandfather was so proud he could date our lineage back to the North America of that time. I never forgot that bit of history. Bottom line is that raw human flesh, even by the ton, does not a colony make. You need committed, dedicated, skilled workers, or you’re just building a graveyard.”
“It appears,” Tru continued, “that someone is robbing Peter to pay Paul. Stealing capable labor from one colony to rapidly grow another.”
Izzy felt a headache coming on. “This makes no sense. Why not just support the colonies that are growing? Why go to all the risk of ripping up one to force-grow another?”
The spy cleared his throat. “Tru may have oversimplified one aspect. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is a zero-sum game. No one benefits. However, if I own Peter and you own Paul, your robbing Peter and shipping it off to Paul means a gain for you. Riddle appears to belong to a certain set of financial interests who overstepped themselves before and during the war, and landed hard after it. Riddle is an effort by them to recoup their fortunes. By the way, did I mention that we in this room helped that group land hard? I doubt they hold any love for us.”
Izzy was definitely getting a headache. It lurked behind her eyes, drumming a sharp staccato right into her brain. All this talk of finances and people was the farthest thing from her world of show-me-a-target-and-I’ll-shoot-it. “So they’re stealing people. But people still need gear to build a planet. Stealing a couple dozen ships and their cargo do not a full-fledged urban infrastructure make. What am I missing?”
“Nothing…that we could recover from the cracked files. For that, we had to go looking elsewhere.” The man with no name grinned. “When you are trying to solve a large problem, it is well to have a lot of pieces to pull from. How do you take over a relatively worthless agricultural planet and turn it into a booming urban world in just a few months?”
Izzy shook her head. “Farming is no way to get rich.” She’d seen that in Joe Edris’s callused hands.
“Unless you can find a really good cash crop,” Trouble went on slowly. “Big cash crop.”
“Drugs,” Izzy said, and found it hard to breathe.
“On the money, first guess,” Tru snorted and took back over. “Earth and the seven sisters teem with over a hundred billion people. They’ve recently discovered a new drug. A neat one. It enhances pleasure and pain by several multiples. You get laid, it’s like no lay in history. You hurt, it’s agony like nothing you’ve ever felt. You take this drug into a virtual world and you can have everything you’ve ever wanted. Even better, you forget there’s anywhere else. No reality niggling you around the edges. You want to be King Arthur, Adolph Hitler, the great Khan, you are. Smart folks tube themselves for food, water, whatever. Stupid folks overdose and die of dehydration before they come up. Shit, this stuff is it.”
Franny wasn’t stupid, Izzy thought, cringing inside, just dumb.
“All this in four months?” Elie asked.
“No. It’s been a growing problem. Some folks in Unity felt it was a legitimate tool to balance the trade deficit between the rim and Earth.” The toy man showed no distaste for that policy. “Before the war it was a problem. During the war it grew, despite the supposed cutoff of trade. Since the peace, it’s skyrocketed. Makes you wonder if it’s under new management.”
“Makes you want to change its management,” Trouble snarled.
Izzy nodded, but kept a tight rein on herself. Don’t let ’em see it’s personal. “We’ve tried guns and they’re still there. Sounds like we need some kind of very combined arms campaign.” Izzy eyed the spy and Mr. Nuu. “What have you got in mind?”
“Putting them out of business,” Mr. Nuu said firmly, “before their unfair competition puts me out of business. The problem with bad money is that it forces out good. I can’t pay my people a living wage if I have to compete with a financial empire funded by drug money, piracy, and slave labor. Given a level playing field, I can take on anyone, but not this way.”
“So we level the field,” Izzy agreed. And I’ll level them. “What do the nav charts and planetary survey look like for Riddle? I’m assuming this is my primary port visit during the Patton’s shakedown cruise.”
“Nav charts are ten years out of date. The planetary survey seems to have vanished in the confusion of the war.”
“All copies?” Izzy couldn’t believe that; every planet had a central archive of all data about human space. If they’d all been stripped, there were a lot of fingers in this cookie jar.
“Captain”—the spy’s eyes locked on hers—“it was a clerical error that promoted a reserve captain to admiral and damn near killed all life on this planet. There appear to be a lot of clerical errors going on. An underpaid temporary clerk is not a difficult person to bribe.” It sounded like he spoke from experience; Izzy didn’t push the point. She had other fish to fry.
“You don’t plan a strike on ten-year-old data. You mentioned a space station. Where is it? What’s its layout? What’s the damn planet look like? I don’t care how many jump troopers you’ve got and how tough they are, if we don’t drop them in the right place, they’re no good at all.”
The spy nodded. “Glad you see it my way. I’m sending a tramp freighter off to Riddle. Expect it should update most of the basics. That enough?”
“No!” Trouble snapped. “Not near enough. And I’m not sure what to tell your tramp to look for either, until I see it for myself. I assume we don’t have time to run a couple of surveys.”
“We cannot assume our cover will hold for more than one run,” the spy said.
“Could a Wardhaven military type join that freighter’s crew?” Trouble asked.
“Not a smart move,” Rita cut in. “Most of the rim’s professional soldiers know each other. Too likely a Wardhaven officer would run into someone he knows.”
Izzy wanted these bastards, but did she have the right to risk a good man? “Trouble, aren’t you about due for some leave?”
The marine let one of his lopsided grins consume his face. “I’ve never been out on the rim before this cruise. I may have exchanged shots with some of your troopers in the recent unpleasantness, but I’ve spent no time face to face.”
“We get one shot at the right data to put together a full-scale, planetwide assault and take over,” Izzy continued. “If my lieutenant here doesn’t like the data he gets on the run in to the planet, he can make sure they get it right on the run out. This is no time for an unsupervised survey.” Bless you for volunteering, Trouble.
The spy’s chuckle was ugly. “Drawn-out hostile takeovers are such a bitch. We must be quick, before anybody can file a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission.”
Rita waved at two of the men who’d been sitting along the wall. “For your one ground-pounder, I’ll trade you two. Major Tran of the Second Guard Brigade, and Lieutenant Sweetson, his intelligence officer. They’ll show your lieutenant what data we have on Riddle and see what we need and how to get it. When does your freighter leave, sir?”
“Freighter’s not coming near here. We’ll intercept it with a fast packet that had better be out of here in three days.”
“No trouble.” The marine stood, edging toward the two officers. “We can plan our recon quickly. What kind of sensors can I use?” Tru handed him a reader, already active.
“I think we’re done,” Rita concluded. “You’ll excuse us. Sir, I’ve got a few ideas I’d like you to run down.” She and the spy headed for the door.
Izzy stood; Franny would get one hell of a tombstone. “Pass your data to the Patton. I’ll have my officers comb through it. See what we make of it.”
Elie stayed seated. “Izzy, can I have a word with you?”
Izzy rubbed her hands together. “Professor, I got a hell of a complex exercise to plan. Why don’t you walk me to the car?”
“Here.” The ex-professor’s word was hard, like a vacuum, and just as empty and cold.
“Is there a problem?” Izzy froze; did Elie know about Franny? Izzy had a fight to plan. Would Elie take it away from her? The woman’s eyes were hard, bitter cold.
“The pirates and the slavers share the same base.” Elie spoke slowly, measuring each of her words. “That was the first bit of data we cracked.”
“So?” Izzy said. Elie was back in lecture mode. Izzy swallowed her impatience and let her ramble.
“They also share the same ships.”
“Right,” Izzy sighed. “That sounds logical.” For a moment longer the captain of the Patton stood there, waiting. Then the meaning hit home. Suddenly her knees no longer supported her; she collapsed back into the chair. Air was hard to come by. With a convulsive gulp, she gasped breath back into her lungs. On the third try, words finally slipped from her.
“Pirates also pick up slaves?”
“We have reports of ships making orbit on Riddle with a captured freighter in tow, and both crew and slaves locked in the same hold.”
Across the room, Trouble excused himself from the Guard officers and stepped quickly around the table to kneel beside her. “You all right, skipper?”
“So any particular pirate,” Izzy whispered, “at any particular time may have aboard not only its own crew but also slaves and captured crew.”
“Yes, Izzy.”
“They’ve lost one recently.” Izzy tried to keep the words in. They tumbled out by themselves.
“The Reprisal failed to make Riddle at its appointed time, five days after you encountered a pirate.”
“And destroyed it. No quarters asked, none given.” Izzy finished the thought for Elie.
“Yes.”
Now even the conversation between Rita and the spy had come to a halt. The spy’s eyes locked on Izzy and held her until she looked up. “They play a nasty game,” he said. “Sometimes we must make it just as nasty for them.”
Izzy swallowed hard again. “Yes,” she agreed. With a flick of her hand, or maybe just a tremble, she gave them leave to go. The room emptied quickly. Only Trouble and Elie remained.
“You had no way of knowing, skipper. We didn’t run into the kidnapping routine until after we burned the pirate.”
“If we’d interrogated prisoners, we might have found out sooner.”
“Yes, Izzy,” the other woman answered. “I’ve read your report. It’s already been endorsed up the chain of command. No one faults your decision.”
“Nobody knows how many innocent passengers were on my burned pirate, do they?”
“No one in the Navy,” Elie answered.
“But you do.” Izzy got back a slight nod. “How many?”
“Possibly as few as one hundred sixty-seven. Could be over two hundred.”
The headache struck with lightning force, shooting through both sides of her brain, threatening to tear her skull from her shoulders. Izzy slowly massaged her burning temples. “Two hundred,” she whispered.
“Maybe less,” Elie assured her. “They don’t keep very good records.”
Izzy snorted. No, the pirates wouldn’t keep good records. And whatever records the Reprisal had on board were gone to hell with it. Gone to hell with two hundred innocent people whose only mistake was to be captured, enslaved, and hauled into space by people too greedy to pass up a slow freighter.
“Skipper, it wasn’t your fault,” the marine assured her.
“Trouble, I’m the skipper. I called that shot.”
“But you didn’t know.”
“If.” Izzy spoke the word, but couldn’t sort out, among the jumble in her mind, what she wanted to tag onto the word. There were so many might-have-beens. “I got to get back to the ship. Yard supervisor is due at sixteen hundred.”
“I’ll go back with you,” Trouble offered.
“No, you’ve got your job cut out here. Work with these folks as long as you need. We’ve got to take Riddle down, all the way and fast. No need for more collateral damage.” The words were so clean.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The ministry has a driver. I’ll have her take you back to the port. Did you bring your own gig down?”
Izzy nodded; Elie left. For several long minutes, Izzy sat, Trouble still kneeling beside her. Then a cheerful woman in a brown jumpsuit stuck her head in the door. “Somebody here need a run out to the spaceport?”
“Yes,” Izzy said and followed her out. The woman chattered during the drive about traffic congestion and new construction. “Wardhaven’s really growing, now that the war’s over.” Izzy managed grunts in the appropriate places. The woman’s words were a fine thread, holding Izzy to this place and time, distracting her as the battle with the pirate replayed over and over in her mind. What could I have done different?
Those bastards were blowing up ships, enslaving honest folks, and feeding poison to good kids like Franny. They had to die before they killed again. But in killing them, Izzy had killed kids like Ruth. Franny, Ruth, and the face of the captain she’d vaporized ran together in her mind. What should I have done different?
Izzy had no idea…and a dozen screaming alternatives.
The gig was waiting for her. It taxied out even as she settled into her seat. The copilot had to remind her twice to put on her seat belt before she heard her. Thank God there were only two shuttles ahead of them; takeoff was hardly delayed. Then Izzy found herself wanting something to slow them down, to keep her away from her ship. Stan and the rest would be reading the report, duties allowing. They had to go over the documents; the next fight might depend on one of them spotting some fact or item that eluded the rest. And none of them would miss what Izzy had managed to overlook through the entire meeting. Elie had spotted the connection right off. For Izzy, it had to be pointed out. Her nose had to be pulled down hard and rubbed in it.
“How could I have missed the implication?”
What else have I missed with my “go for it” attitude? How many times had Andy and other COs warned her? Take a second to look past the surface. Oh, but the surface was so attractive. You could see it; you could shoot it. A pirate is a pirate and deserves no mercy. Life was so easy that way.
The gig docked above the Patton; it was an easy drop down to her own quarterdeck. The supervisor was waiting for her, shaking his head. “I’ve got two or three hulks tied up alongside that are in better shape than this scow. Lady, you sure I couldn’t swap you one of them?”
“If you could have one of ’em fully gunned, armored, and rigged in seven weeks, I might take you up on the offer.”
He shook his head. “It was the push to convert these tubs in ninety days that got this ship in this mess. But”—his eyes lit up—“if you got five, six months to spare, it’s a deal.”
“We break orbit in seven weeks.”
“Then I guess I better get folks busy ripping out two of your main busses. Connectors are way below specs. Half are fused, the rest trip out if you look at them hard.”
“How long?”
“Mr. Nuu said you sail in seven weeks, you sail in seven weeks. Just means I get a few more crews turned loose for you. No problem, ma’am. When Ernie makes a promise, nobody wants to be the one who makes him break it.”
“You like your boss.”
“One of the best, Captain. Now, I’d best be going.”
Izzy spent the rest of the afternoon reviewing the reports on the overhaul, then dove into more reports. She was way behind in her paperwork. What else was new? It kept her mind off something she couldn’t do anything about. She ordered up a sandwich rather than face her officers in the wardroom. How many of them had found time to review the report on the pirates?
As the mess tech was leaving, Stan stuck his head in her cabin door. “Skipper, you got a second?”
Izzy glanced up from a report, about to take a bite out of a meat loaf sandwich. “Problem, XO?”
“Not sure.”
Izzy swallowed and put the sandwich down untouched. “Come in.” Usually, she’d have headed for “her” chair around the coffee table. Usually, she liked to keep things informal. This time she waved him to a chair across the desk from her. Today she wanted to keep the desk between herself and…
“I’ve been reading that report the folks dirtside did up on the slave files we gave them. I can’t make out one thing in it.”
“What?” Izzy asked. She’d gotten the briefing; she had yet to read the actual report.
“It seems to me the pirates and the slavers are operating out of the same hole. Maybe I missed something, or haven’t come across it yet. Are they one and the same?” Izzy nodded. “So a ship may be a pirate one cruise, a slaver the next.”
“No.” Izzy took a deep breath. “They can be both in the same cruise.”
Stan settled back in his chair and gnawed on that bit of data for a long moment. “That’s why the skunk I chased had guns ready to burn me.” Again Izzy nodded.
“I did see where they were missing a ship a week after we burned that pirate,” the XO said slowly. “I didn’t find anywhere in the report where they might have listed an expected cargo.”
“It’s in there.” Izzy wasn’t going to beat around the bush with her own exec. “The Reprisal had picked up slaves before we ran into her. Maybe two hundred.”
“Oh, God,” Stan whispered. Izzy said nothing. The XO moved to the edge of his seat. “You’ve been very quiet since you came back up. You’re blaming yourself.”
“I made a snap decision to take no prisoners. I killed ’em.”
Stan’s head nodded slowly. “So how do you feel about me bringing back a ship full of prisoners?”
“You did it right.” There, she’d said it. “I screwed up, and you did it the way I should have.” Damn, this wasn’t the way a captain talked to her exec. But, Christ, she’d blown it. Who could she talk to?
“I disagree with you, Captain,” he shot back before she could finish the thought.
“Disagree?”
“We had two different situations. My skunk knew it was in deep shit the second it spotted me. They had plenty of time to sweat. To think about my guns. I had time to peel their hide, and their soul. Yes, I took some risks with your ship, but not a hell of a lot. I didn’t have the disadvantages you had.”
Izzy blinked several times, trying to keep her face a solid mask, trying to figure out where Stan was going. “And what did you see as the disadvantages of my situation?”
“We had to wait until the bastard made the first move. And he had to make it, not us. By that time, we were up close and personal. There’s not a lot of time to think when you’re dodging six-inch lasers. Given an hour or four like mine had, yours might have had a change of heart. But we were swapping broadsides as fast as we could charge the guns. When we winged him, all I could think was ‘Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Do we go for prisoners and maybe get clobbered while we’re offering them a chance, or do we just blow them to hell and worry later?’”
“Guess I’m doing the worry latering.” Izzy tried to smile.
“Yeah. It was a hell of a call I was glad someone else had to make.” Stan shook his head.
“Yeah, hell of a call. Two hundred people blown to bits before they even had a chance to scream.”
Stan let out a noisy sigh. “Yeah, I’ve been seeing that for the last hour. I just wondered if I was seeing it right. Big report. Hard to string all the important facts together.”
“Sorry, Stan, I asked for the raw feed. In another day or so I expect to get a more refined read.”
“I need to read the raw. Don’t want some chair-bound analyst to simplify some critical item out of the read just so he can shorten a sentence and make it read easier.”
Izzy stared at the sandwich. There was nothing in the Book about execs giving captains absolution, but that was what she was feeling. “We did the best we could, didn’t we?”
“Yes, skipper, we did the best damn job we could, considering the cards we had to play.”
“Thanks, Stan, I appreciate the visit.” Izzy reached again for her sandwich. “Let’s do a better job next time.”
“That’s what life’s about, ma’am, learning to do a better job next time out. See you at breakfast.”
“I’ll be there.”
• • •
Trouble was glad the skipper had her color back next morning at breakfast. The unanimous consensus in the wardroom was that it would have been good to bring the Reprisal in, lock, stock, crew and slaves. Still, at the time, dodging lasers, it felt mighty good to see the source of their doom go boom. Next time, they’d work something out to disable the skunk. Still, you didn’t save many lives after you were reduced to atoms.
Trouble had a rough outline of his recon; he briefed the division heads on it. They offered changes. Guns had several suggestions, and Igor came up with a few spare sensors to add to the tramp freighter’s pod. Trouble ran the suggestions by his Wardhaven counterparts, who had done their own briefing and had a few changes of their own. By the third day, Trouble had a consensus plan, a damn good pod, and a handful of disks from Tru, the spy’s info warrior.
“This one ought to get you through their firewall,” she assured him. “If it doesn’t, pop this into one of the computers dockside. All we want to know is what works. I’ll take care of the rest once I’m in-system.”
“You’re coming with the assault teams?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world. It’ll be my first crack at info war, realtime. And I get to put drug bosses and pirates out of business. What more could a girl ask for?”
“All I’m asking for is a round trip, at the moment.”
The recon pod was a round cylinder one meter across and three long that had been rigged to plug right into the tramp’s hull. Power in and feedback came out from a central shaft running through the plug. Everything was passive. “We’ll have to get our topography from stereo photos. Anybody got a computer system still able to process those?” Tru asked.
That drew shrugs all around. “We always use radar topo,” Lieutenant Sweetson answered.
“Well, buddy, we are not doing anything active. Not if you want your boy wonder back. Start hunting for obsolete tech if you need to know how high a ridge is on Riddle before you fly into it.” They had a lot of delightful conversations along that line before Trouble’s fast packet shoved off. Leaving the Wardhaven officers behind with a long list of things to find, steal, or otherwise acquire, Trouble wasn’t sure who had the toughest assignment. The Loki was waiting, tied up to the tiniest station Trouble had ever seen, orbiting a gorgeous planet called Jacob’s Folly. While the specialists on the packet installed the plug, Trouble met Captain Hood. Gazing down through the viewport, both of them watched the pod being maneuvered into place, then latched down. Its outer skin meshed perfectly into the rough, worn hide of the tramp starship.
The Loki’s skipper was just as rough, a paunchy wreck of a man; his stoop-shouldered and trembling frame left the marine wondering how the fellow managed a ship. “Glad to have you aboard. We’ve been shorthanded since we left Sirius. Fewer people aboard, the fewer you got to worry about trusting.” The body might be a disaster, but the blue eyes were as piercing as any officer Trouble had had the luck to ship with.
“Where’s the crew?” Trouble asked.
“Dirtside, enjoying a few hours leave. Didn’t want anyone looking over our shoulder.” Trouble handed over his papers; Hood glanced at them. “So Jerigelski tossed you off the Salome’s Favors. Never did like the guy. Welcome aboard, Mr. T. We’ll get you bedded down.”
The room was larger than Trouble expected, but then marines didn’t have a union to set minimum personal space like the civilian spacers demanded. He plugged a battered and obsolete entertainment unit Tru had given him, three times the size of a modern e-unit, into the wall socket. He played with it for a second. The external deceit quickly vanished as the wall display switched from a grainy picture of a waterfall to a full-range sensor readout. The top of the e-unit now had as many reaction buttons as an admiral’s battle-board. There was even a keypad for word entry to back up the audio. Trouble had spent the ride out getting familiar with it. He was three jumps away from making it tell him more about a bunch of bastards than they wanted him to know. Fine.
• • •
“Captain, there’s a civilian on the quarterdeck. Says he has to see you.”
Three and a half weeks into this refit, Izzy was beginning to entertain hope. Matters between the Patton and the yard were going far better than she had any right to expect. With a sigh, Izzy figured she was about due for something to go wrong.
“This civilian have a name?” she asked. With everybody busy, they must have a raw trainee standing the watch.
“He won’t give it to me,” came the plaintive response.
“Visual on quarterdeck,” Izzy snapped. A picture of the Patton’s quarterdeck, an elevator gaping in the background replaced the report she’d been mulling over. “Zoom to upper center,” she ordered, not believing her eyes. Hm! If he didn’t want his name in the log, she’d go along. “Provide the civilian with an escort to my day cabin,” she ordered. She wiped her screen, made sure she had nothing she didn’t want visible, then met her guest at the bridge hatch.
“Thank you for seeing me.”
“Joe Edris, what the hell are you doing here? You’re a long way from Hurtford Corner.”
“Yes, and so is my daughter, I fear.”
Izzy took the time to get Joe settled in a chair across the coffee table from her, then ordered coffee and sandwiches.
“Thanks, I’m starved. I made this trip on a shoestring.”
“How did you make it at all?” Izzy asked incredulously.
“Mr. Withwaterson, you remember him, finally gave up and called in a ship to pick him up. Turns out an ATF agent has a certain call on ships for official transportation. Using nothing more than the ID card you issued, I wrangled myself aboard his ship headed back to Pitt’s Hope. From there to here. I imagine when somebody audits their bills I’ll be in a hell of a mess, but that can wait. My daughter can’t.”
“Damned if I know. For the first ten days after you left, everything was wonderful. My wife even forgave me. Then one morning we woke up to find more than fifty people gone. Some maybe went voluntarily, but Ruth didn’t. It was a slap at us. Show us we couldn’t protect our own. I heard a sonic boom from a shuttle late that night. Seemed strange. Stranger when it left before dawn. Come morning, Ruth’s room was empty. A Miss Uzeg, city manager’s new girl friend and granddaughter to one of the new elders, was gone too. They slapped us in the face with a club. I was the only one on Hurtford Corner that had any chance of getting here. They all, city elders, station elders, my wife, want your help.”
“You didn’t message?”
“Withwaterson’s ship was due that day. I figured I could get here as fast as any message. Besides, Izzy, I want to get my hands on the people who did this. Can you help me?”
“As it turns out, yes. I and a lot of other people are already doing all we can. As soon as the Patton’s out of the yard, it heads for the planet where your daughter probably is. Lieutenant Tordon is already out there, doing a predrop recon. We’re going to take those slavers apart.”
“I hope he doesn’t run into Ruth. That could be a mess.”
“Damn, let me see if I can get a message out to him.” Izzy hit her comm link. “Get me Elie Miller.”
Quickly Izzy explained the problem to Elie. It took a long five minutes to connect the call with the still unnamed spy. He listened, shaking his head before Izzy was half done. “That is something we cannot do. They should be at Riddle already. Any message will get there too late. Your lieutenant will have to tough this one out on his own. Mr. Edris, I am very sorry about your daughter. My analysts had a strong hunch that several of the hard-hit planets would be in for further attention. Hurtford Corner is rich in mineral resources. They want you, and they’ve just let you know they will not let a minor setback take you off their hit list.”
“That’s what I figured, too. Izzy, you got a berth aboard for an ATF agent?”
Izzy always had room for a good man. “I’ll see what I can do.” Well, Trouble, you’re deep in it again. Take care, boy.