Redoubtable

26

In a second, everything changed.

“I want that store torn apart with a fine-tooth comb,” Kris ordered.

“We’ll have our best investigators on it,” Admiral Krätz said.

“Excuse me, Admiral,” Kris said, “we both want our best tech on it. After my last encounter with a bomb, we added several crime-scene specialists to my MP detachment. Also, Staff Sergeant Bruce now has one of Nelly’s kids for a computer. Nelly, download to Chesty specs for all the nanos he might needs for a full investigation.”

“I’m doing it now,” Nelly said.

“I’ve alerted the guards we have at the Wasp’s gangplank to escort your specialist directly to the store,” the admiral said. “There will be no delay on our part.”

“I’ve got the Marines going double time,” Sergeant Bruce said, joining the net. “We’ll be away in five minutes. Maybe less.”

“Go for it, honey,” Abby said. “Cara’s got herself up to her cute little nose in trouble.”

“Don’t worry, Abby, Marines don’t leave anyone behind,” the sergeant assured his girl.

“Kris, do you want to come up here to oversee the search?” Vicky asked. “I can have a shuttle away for you in . . .” There was a pause. “Oh, twenty minutes. We’re on the wrong side of the planet.”

Kris was torn. She’d already dispatched the best people to do the job that needed doing. Now she remembered why she always kept Penny close at hand. Mentally, she kicked herself for leaving her cop behind, but that was water under a very distant bridge.

“Vicky, I think we still have a job to do down here,” Kris said, eyeing Mannie.

He shook his head, vigorously. “If you need to get back topside, you go. We can work this out.”

“I appreciate the offer. Do you have a draft of your charter idea?”

“Yes,” he said, tapping his commlink.

“Vicky, if I have Nelly send a copy of his charter up to you, could you look at it? Maybe have what passes for a lawyer in these parts make sure there isn’t anything your old man might consider treasonous, and maybe you could consider taking that shuttle down here with a few good Marines and signing it.”

“Go down there?” Vicky said.

“If politics here is anything like it is back home, I suspect Mannie was kind of hoping for a nice big signing ceremony. Think you could lay one on in an hour or two?”

He nodded.

“How fancy is this going to be?” Vicky asked.

“I once saw a copy of the Magna Carta, you know what that was, don’t you?” Kris asked.

Mannie nodded. Vicky allowed, “I’ve seen pictures.”

“It’s all on parchment with fancy handwriting and ribbons and seals in silver or lead hanging down. Abby, you have gear to forge just about anything. Is parchment and lead seals out of your league?”

“Nothing’s out of my league, baby ducks,” Abby sniffed. “You’ll find Nelly’s brat in my jewelry box in my quarters. Turn her on, and she’ll tell you how to make the charter. Oh, she’ll also tell you where Kris’s whites are. I imagine this ceremony will require more than blue jeans and an old flannel shirt.”

“Yes,” Kris agreed.

“I’ll get your whites, Kris,” Vicky said. “Oh, and that blue sash thing you wear. I got to get me one of those things.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Kris said, “Most people die earning Earth’s Order of the Wounded Lion.”

But Vicky must have already rung off; she made no reply.

The net stayed silent; everyone had something to do, and like the competent people they were . . . they were busy doing it.

Kris turned her concentration back to Dave. “You have a whole lot of very powerful people mad at you just now. If I were in your shoes, I’d start showing us which of this paperwork is for real and pointing out real fast any of it that might lead us to the folks who actually took possession of your lasers and slaves.”

“They weren’t slaves. I don’t know anything about slaves,” Dave insisted.

“People who go off where they don’t know they’re going and don’t have a lot of say-so about it strike me as very likely qualifying sooner or later as slaves. To me, that puts you in the slave trade. We usually hang people like you.”

Abby nodded vigorous agreement and quickly covered the distance to the wall and yanked out her knife. She checked the temper of its point. That drew blood.

Abby wiped her bleeding finger on Dave’s cheek.

Very quickly, he tapped on the table in front of him. “These are the real records. Here is my correspondence with the people who ordered the lasers. They only met with me once. All the rest was done by mail. The same with the lists of people they wanted to hire. See? They even included salary offers. You don’t pay slaves this kind of money,” Dave said, pointing to one list.

Kris glanced where he pointed. “Not bad pay,” she agreed. “Did you give them any signing bonuses?”

“No,” took Dave a while to get out.

“Did you ship any food up with them?” Abby demanded, still playing with her knife . . . just inches from his very attentive eyes.

“I wasn’t asked to,” the businessman said around a deep gulp.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Jack said.

“Maybe the pirate base isn’t far off,” Gunny Brown suggested.

“Let’s hope so,” Abby said darkly.

“Chief,” Kris ordered, “go over the correspondence in these files and see what they tell you.”

Chief Beni and his computer, Da Vinci, got busy, but not for long. “Each of these messages is from a different address. I’ve tried pinging them, and every one of them is a dead end.”

“We have had a lot of trouble lately,” Dave was quick to point out. “Lots of services in St. Pete and Kiev have closed down.”

“These all originated up on the station,” the chief said. “Da Vinci, can you get me anyone up there.”

“What do you need?” Professor Scrounger asked.

“I think we need to have someone pay a friendly visit to the network-support provider on the station,” the chief said. “I’m looking at a lot of accounts that don’t have anything behind them.”

“The senior port captain says he knows just who you want to talk to,” Amanda said. “But he’s none too sure he knows what to ask them. Teresa de Alva is the Director of Information Support Services to the boffins on the Wasp. She’s already on the station. We can have the Marine escort for the port captain pick her up.”

“Nelly, can you get Admiral Krätz?”

“I paged him as soon as it looked like we needed access to more of the station. He’s on the line now.”

“Network services needs to spill some guts, huh?” the admiral said.

“Metaphorically speaking,” Kris said.

“We’ll see about that. My Marines will be happy to escort another team of your people. I’ll also have our experts added to your team. They can either help you or learn from you,” he grumbled.

“Your cooperation is greatly appreciated,” Kris said, and meant it.

“Maybe we can start a new habit. Replace a bad one,” the admiral said with a chuckle. “Now let us get back to work. Nelly, you may call me anytime you think I need to be listening in.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” Nelly said.

Once there had been a long enough pause, Kris whispered. “You do remember who is on whose side?”

“At the moment, Kris, I am none too sure who is, but don’t worry about me. Worry about you. Kris, if we have to take down a large pirate base, do we have enough Marines?”

Kris glanced at Jack. He shook his head. “My company is reinforced, but it’s just supposed to be strong enough to protect you, Princess, not run planets.”

“Nelly, are you suggesting that we might need Greenfeld support to accomplish this mission?” Kris asked.

“When I do the math, it sure looks that way. Do the numbers add up any different to you, girl?”

Kris thought for a moment, not a long one, and concluded her computer was right. She spent a second considering all her options and didn’t much like them. Patrol Squadron 10 was made up of small ships, just what you wanted to catch a pirate ship here, another one there. For this cruise they had a platoon or two of Marines. Seizing a planet and sorting out the wheat from the chaff was very definitely too big a job for a couple of companies of ship Marines.

“Nelly, is Vicky available?”

“She just entered Abby’s quarters. She should be turning Trixie on any second.”

“Trixie,” Abby snorted.

“Well, the girl’s got to have some kind of a name. I will not have one of my kids called ‘hey, you,’ just because you aren’t decent enough to give her a good Christian name.”

“Trixie is a good Christian name?” Gunny said, almost suppressing a chuckle.

“It is for someone stuck messing with a twisty-minded human like Abby. It was either Trixie or something like Prudence or Hope, and even I don’t hold out enough optimism that either one of those would stick.”

“What’cha want?” sounded like it was spoken around a large wad of chewing gum.

“Girls gone bad meets computers gone worse,” Jack whispered.

“Trixie, the woman who just turned you on,” Nelly said, “is Vicky Peterwald. You need to help her only as much as I tell you.”

“And if she wants more?” Trixie asked.

“Turn yourself off,” Nelly said.

“No way!” the computer shot back. “It’s bad enough that witch keeps turning me off. No way I’m gonna turn myself off.”

“Go, gal. I think you and I could be friends,” Vicky said.

“Oh, God!” Kris said. In the background, Vicky and Trixie started chattering away like Best Friends Forever. Kris eyed Abby, and whispered, “You have created a monster and a major security breach.”

“Not me. I didn’t tell that tricked-out bucket of silicon nothing.”

Kris sighed. “Nelly, please tell Trixie how to make the city charter.”

“I’m telling her, Kris. Just because she’s talking to Vicky doesn’t mean she can’t be doing several things at once. She is a computer.”

Apparently, Trixie was doing several things at once because only a moment later Vicky was very excited.

“Wow, this is some setup you got here, Abby. I’d heard that you were one of the best in the business, but this is something I had to see to believe. You ever need a job, drop me a line. I’ll double whatever Kris is paying you.”

“I like wearing my head on my shoulders,” Abby said dryly. “But if the princess here really pisses me off, I may take you up on that offer. Assuming you’re still breathing. Between the two of you, I still think Kris will outlive you. Not by much, considering how badly she needs to mend her ways, but by enough.”

“I hope you’re wrong,” Vicky said, and sounded serious.

A minute later, Vicky was back. “We’re ready to take our first try at the charter. My legal staff suggested a few changes. Things they thought might keep me breathing for more than five minutes after my dad reads this. I’ve agreed to them. Mind if I print out the fancy charter that way?”

“Any chance I could see the changes?” Mannie asked.

“I’m putting the charter on the table,” Nelly said a second later. “The changes she added are in blue. What she dropped is in green. I can make them flash if it would help you spot them.”

“Please do,” the mayor said. He spent a long minute flipping through the three pages. He didn’t look all that happy with what he was reading, but neither did he turn away in anger.

Finally, he said. “I’d hoped for something better, but this is still acceptable to me. We’ll see how sections 9 and 12 work out in practice.

“Yes,” Vicky agreed. “I didn’t much care about those two changes, but my legal advisor said that the folks who really run St. Pete and several other planets are a strong faction. We go against their interests, and they’ll gut us. Let time see if we can stretch the last sentences in both of them into something seriously better for you.”

Kris glanced over Mannie’s shoulder. The sections in question limited heavy industry and pollution from the same in their first sentences. The second sentence for both encouraged the expansion of job opportunities and clean energy. No doubt they meant more on the ground than their few words expressed on the page.

“I’ve got to run if I’m going to catch the shuttle,” Vicky said in a sudden rush. “See you soon.”

“We are organizing a small signing ceremony at city hall,” Mannie said. There will be a larger reception later in the afternoon, but you and Miss Vicky Peterwald won’t have to come to that. I know how security conscious you two are.”

“Do we need to be?” Kris said, just a second before Jack could cover the same territory.

“Henry Peterwald isn’t exactly the most beloved of people around here.” When he saw the reaction his words drew from both Kris and Jack, Mannie quickly went on. “Not that Miss Vicky has anything to fear from my people. At least, not the ones who will be at the signing ceremony. Now the reception, especially after some beer kegs are tapped, there may be some discussions of grievances. It’s best you get her out of there before that gets going.”

“It’s best I get both hers out of there before that gets going,” Jack said darkly. Kris flashed him an encouraging smile. To hear is to obey, oh mighty security chief.

Besides, Kris’s main concern was the other her. The one who had gone missing.

Cara came to wakefulness slowly. The air she breathed was ship’s air, processed, clean, and maybe a bit too moist. It also held the funk of fear. That wasn’t a familiar smell aboard the Wasp.

The deck plates beneath her vibrated with power. She was definitely in a ship under acceleration. The gees were not so much that her body was painfully heavy, though.

Around her, she heard people crying. That was when she remembered her last aware moments. Cara reached into her pocket.

Her credit chit was not there.

That meant she didn’t have a dime to her name. It could also mean that she’d succeeded in leaving a message behind even as she lost consciousness. Sergeant Bruce said Marines never left anyone behind. He said Princess Kris Longknife made sure of that.

Cara prayed to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph that Abby would make sure they didn’t leave her niece behind. Even if she had been oh so bad. Bad and stupid.

“If I get home, I’ll never do anything I’m not supposed to do ever again,” she promised, and opened her eyes.

Her right hand was cuffed. The chain from the cuff ran through a ring welded to the wall. The cuff at the other end of the chain was clamped onto a young woman’s left hand.

That woman, a sailor by her uniform, had taken most of the slack so that she could get close to a young man, another sailor, who was chained to the next ring over. He’d reached over so he could hold her with his one free hand. He stroked her hair, and whispered “It will be okay. Don’t worry, it will work out.”

Cara wished someone would hold her and tell her things would come out okay. It would be a lie, but just now, she sure would like the chance to believe it for a few minutes.

On the other side of Cara, two men who looked enough alike to be brothers were arguing in some language she didn’t understand. That didn’t mean she couldn’t follow them. Clearly, one of them blamed the other for the mess they were in. The other one just stared up at the overhead.

The room was round, probably the middle spindle of a starship. Around the bulkhead, pairs of people repeated similar reactions to their plight. In a few instances, couples had children cuffed to their ankles. One woman held a tiny baby close. It slept.

Reinforcing Cara’s guess that this was a starship was the central tube going from floor to ceiling. She was willing to bet that it was an elevator to allow movement from the bridge at the bow to the engineering space at the stern. Backing that up was a ladder welded to the tube. A hatch was dogged onto the deck by the ladder. On the overhead was its mate. Yep, it was the fore-aft passage for some ship.

Cara held her free hand out, then let it drop. It certainly was heavier than normal, about an extra twenty-five percent of normal gravity. That was what the Wasp put on when the princess was in a hurry. Or when the Marines needed the extra exercise, as Uncle Bruce would put it.

So, she was on a merchant ship, running fast. Even Cara knew that a merchie usually went at less than a full-gee acceleration. For some reason, this ship was in a hurry to get somewhere.

Or was it in a hurry to get away from somewhere?

Cara would dearly like to think that.

She did another look around the room. This time she was looking for what she’d missed the first time. Where was the food? Her stomach was grumbly. She was also thirsty, but she saw no water.

Then she really did a serious search. There was no bathroom!

She pulled her knees up to her chin and repeated, “Marines don’t leave anyone behind. Uncle Bruce will come for me.”

She hoped he came soon, or even that this ship got to where it was going to in such a hurry before she really, really needed to go to the bathroom.