Flagship (4 page)

"Okay," said Cole, as Pampas lifted it in his massive arms, "take it back to the shuttle and we'll be on our way."

Pampas walked past him to the hatch, but Cole paid no attention to him. He was watching a crewman who was staring intently at him, his body tense, his fingers flexing nervously.

"It's him!" the crewman finally shouted.

The ship's captain turned to him questioningly.

"It's Wilson Cole!" he yelled.

"Don't do anything stupid, son," said Cole.

"You son of a bitch, we've been after you for four years!" said the crewman. He reached for his weapon. Val put a beam of solid light between his eyes before his fingers touched it.

Suddenly more weapons appeared. Val began cursing and firing, as did the Polonoi and the Mollute. Pampas dropped the computer and went for his weapon. Energy pulses and solid light bounced off Cole's body armor as he pulled his own burner and began firing.

It was a slaughter. One side had body armor, one didn't. In a matter of thirty seconds the crew of the Navy ship lay dead or dying on the deck. The Mollute was also dead, brought down by a shot to his unprotected head. Cole turned to see if Pampas, who had been standing behind him, was all right, and saw him kneeling next to the computer, which had been melted by a stray laser blast.

"Wonderful!" muttered Cole angrily. "Just wonderful!"

"Do you want to move any of the wounded to the
Teddy R,
sir?" asked the Polonoi.

Cole surveyed the carnage, and finally shook his head. "There are nine or ten still twitching. Our infirmary can't handle that many, and they're in a bad way."

"Shall we send the SOS, then?"

"No," said Cole. "If they save a single survivor, they'll know the
Teddy R
did this and they'll have the whole fucking Navy after us— and we're only three hours ahead of them. Let's get back to the shuttle."

"What about our dead comrade, sir?" asked the Polonoi, indicating the Mollute.

"Leave him," said Cole. "He's past caring, and we need to obliterate all trace of him."

They rode the shuttle in silence back to the
Teddy R.
Cole went directly to his office and poured himself a stiff drink, then contacted Jacovic, who was still on the bridge.

"Sir?" said the Teroni.

"Kill the Navy ship," said Cole. "Obliterate all trace of it. Sooner or later they'll figure out what happened to it, and maybe even who was responsible—but later is better."

"Yes, sir," said the Teroni.

A few minutes later Sharon entered his office.

"I heard what happened," she said.

He stared at her and made no answer.

"I'm glad you survived."

"Forty-three men didn't," he replied. "All for a piece of melted metal."

"The fortunes of war," said Sharon.

"We're supposed to be better than them," answered Cole grimly. "This was not the most auspicious beginning."

"Three more hours, sir," said the image of Domak, a warrior-caste Polonoi.

"Until what?" asked Cole, who was sitting alone in his office, watching a musical entertainment on a holoscreen.

"Until we're inside the Republic," answered Domak.

"There shouldn't be any welcoming committee, not if Mr. Briggs has picked the right approach route." He paused. "Let me know when we're actually in Republic territory."

"Yes, sir."

"Any word from Singapore Station?" said Cole.

"Yes, sir," said Domak. "The Navy ships surrounded it, and when there was no opposition, they simply docked and made use of the facilities."

"Make sure the Platinum Duke knows that, would you, please?"

"Yes, sir." Domak's image vanished.

Cole decided it was time to inspect the ship's battle readiness. Actually, the ship was always ready these days, but inactivity bored him, so he began making the rounds. First was the shuttle bay, containing the shuttlecraft that were named after four of Theodore Roosevelt's six children. (They were on their second
Archie
and
Quentin
and their third
Alice
, but somehow the original
Kermit
had survived.)

Next came the Gunnery Section, which was usually run by Bull Pampas, but he was sleeping, and the shift was being manned by Bujandi, a Pepon. The infirmary had no permanent patients—Cole considered overnight to be permanent on a warship—and had a full complement of supplies.

He then went down to the guts of the ship, where he queried Mustapha Odom, the Chief Engineer, about the vessel's readiness, then nodded sagely as he realized he didn't understand half of the technical answers Odom was supplying.

He stopped by the undersized Officers' Lounge, where he found six of his officers playing various card and board games.

And finally, when he couldn't avoid it any longer, he went up to the bridge. Over the years he'd come to loathe it. The formality bothered him, and the tendency of normal men and women to speak in sentence fragments the moment they set foot on the bridge bothered him even more. There was a sense among the crew that all important decisions had to be reached on the bridge, whereas in truth he was fully as capable of commanding the ship from his office, or his cabin, or his table in the mess hall. There was nothing that was said or seen on the bridge that couldn't be transmitted to any part of the ship, but still it retained its special aura. Of all his officers, only the dead Forrice had felt no obligation to remain on the bridge when he was the Officer on Deck. As the Molarian used to say with a wink of one of his four eyes, "There's nothing in the Code of Conduct that says
which
deck."

Cole stepped out of the airlift, turned right, and began approaching his destination.

"Captain on the bridge!" Christine Mboya called out, and she, the alien Domak, and Ensign Idena Mueller all stood and saluted.

Cole considered not returning their salutes, but he knew they'd remain at attention until he did, so he gave them a halfhearted salute. He further resisted the temptation to point out that Christine had left the verb out of her sentence.

"All this formality really isn't necessary," he complained for the hundredth time.

"It's regulation, sir," said Christine.

"It's a regulation created by the military machine that we're going to war with," he replied.

"It's also a sign of respect."

"It's also a way of letting the enemy know who to shoot first," he said wryly.

"I will remember that the next time we leave the ship together, sir," said Christine.

"Tell me something, Lieutenant Mboya," said Cole.

"Sir?"

"Did you ever lose an argument with a parent, a teacher, anybody?"

"Not that I can recall, sir," said Christine.

"Why am I not surprised?" He looked around the bridge. "Neat as a pin. I assume everything's in order?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then I won't keep you any longer." A quick smile. "We must visit again sometime."

A computer flashed off to his left.

"Just a moment, sir," said Domak. "We have a coded message coming in."

"From?" said Cole.

"It's from Mr. Lafferty, sir."

"On Piccoli III?"

"I don't think so, sir. It doesn't seem to be coming from that sector."

Cole frowned. "Anything to imply it's private?"

"No, sir."

"Okay, play it right here."

Lafferty's tan, wrinkled face appeared in the center of the bridge.

"Got a surprise for you, Mr. Cole," said the old man with a sly grin. "You're gonna like it."

"Well?" replied Cole after a moment.

"It's not a live transmission, sir," interjected Domak just before Lafferty's image began speaking again.

"I don't trust subspace transmissions," continued Lafferty. "I've been intercepting and reading the Navy's for years, so why shouldn't they be able to read mine? Anyway, we have to meet. You'll figure out where. I'll wait three days for you to show up. If you don't, I'll try to contact you once more, then assume you're dead and carry on myself."

Lafferty's face vanished.

"That's all?" asked Cole.

"That's the whole of it," said Domak.

"And based on that, I'm supposed to figure out where in this whole galaxy to meet him? Hell, the only time I've ever seen him face-to-face was on Piccoli, and the only other time I've ever been within light-years of him was when we were both defending Singapore Station last month."

"Maybe he means Piccoli III," suggested Idena Mueller.

Cole shook his head. "His transmission didn't come from there. And he said I'd figure it out; Piccoli doesn't take any figuring."

"He certainly can't want to meet at Singapore Station," said Christine. "We don't dare go back there this soon."

"Then what the hell location am I supposed to figure out?" said Cole, frowning.

"Had he mentioned some other world during your visit with him?"

"No," replied Cole. "We were together less than an hour. Mostly we were trying to arrange for me to get safely back to the Inner Frontier with the Navy hot on my tail."

"Then I'm afraid I can't help you, sir," she said. "Probably none of us can."

"I know," said Cole. "I'll just have to work it out myself."

He walked to the airlift and went back down to his office, where he sat, staring at a wall, for the next ten minutes.

"Sometimes it helps if you talk things out," said Sharon, her image flickering into existence.

"Don't you ever sleep?"

"You'd be the best judge of that," she replied. "I suppose it depends on how clumsy you were the night before."

"Fine," he said. "Get a good night's sleep tonight. I'll pester Rachel or some other svelte crew member half your age."

"No, I couldn't do that to Rachel," said Sharon. "She's young and impressionable. She's never seen a forty-five-year-old man trying to prove he's twenty-two. She could be giggling for years." She paused as a smile crossed Cole's face. "Besides, she's sleeping with Mr. Bellamy."

"She is?" he said. "How do you know?"

It was her turn to smile. "I'm the Chief of Security. I know everything that happens on this ship."

"All right—so what do you want?"

"I thought I'd help you," she replied. "Two heads are better than one."

"You were listening?"

"It's my job."

"Okay," he said. "Any suggestions?"

"No," answered Sharon. "But then, I've never met Lafferty. By the way, has he got a first name?"

"He never shared it with me, but I suppose he must," answered Cole. "It's probably on the registration of the ship he gave me."

"Could the hint be on the ship?"

"I sure as hell hope not. We left it and appropriated a little three-man Navy ship."

"We?" she repeated. "You and Lafferty?"

"No, me and that little alien friend of his. What the hell was his name? Oh, yes—Dozhin. I think he's still on Singapore Station."

"Do you want to contact him?"

Cole shook his head. "No. The Navy's there now. I don't want them to be able to trace the signal. Besides, I don't know what he could tell me. He's almost as big a coward as our friend David, but without David's virtues."

"David has virtues?"

"He has contacts. That qualifies in his business—and ours." He frowned. "The answer has to be with Dozhin. Lafferty knows he came out to the Frontier with me. Maybe he—" Cole froze for a moment. "Oh, shit! I've got it." He touched the spot on his desk that contacted Christine.

"Yes, sir?" she said.

"Tell Pilot to take us to Cicero VII as fast as he can."

"Do you know where it is?"

"I've no idea. Not too many parsecs from Piccoli III, I should think."

"Yes, sir."

Her image vanished, but Sharon's remained, her face an open question mark.

"Dozhin's home planet," said Cole. "He told me he left it when the Navy pacified it."

"Won't they still be there?"

He shook his head. "Lafferty wouldn't invite me there if they were."

"Let's hope you're right," she said. "And our pilot's name is Wxakgini."

"I can't pronounce it," said Cole. "He knows that."

"You should try, as a sign of respect."

"Every time I screw it up he winces. Just Pilot is better."

"That's why he never calls you 'sir.'"

"I can live with it."

"It's hard to imagine you were once the pride of the regular Navy," she said with a smile.

"I think pride is a bit of an overstatement," he said wryly. "They took two captaincies away from me."

"And gave them back eventually."

"No choice," said Cole. "They lost a lot of captains in the war."

"You know, you can be really annoying when you're being modest," she said.

"Okay, I'll brag to the crew about what you told me during an exceptionally interesting moment last night."

"Fine."

"You don't mind?"

"Not if you don't mind sleeping alone for the next six hundred years," she said, and her image vanished.

"Pilot?"

Wxakgini's image appeared, his head connected as always to the navigational computer by a series of tiny tubes, his body similarly connected to nutrient solutions.

"Yes?"

"What's our ETA on Cicero VII?"

"We'll be traversing the Glover Wormhole. Seventeen minutes to reach it, seventy-three minutes in transit, and approximately two hours at the other end."

"Once we're out of the wormhole, have whoever's the Officer on Deck make sure there are no Navy ships patrolling the Cicero system before you begin our approach."

"I will do so," said Wxakgini.

Cole broke the connection, felt restless, and went to the mess hall for some coffee and a sandwich. Val was just finishing a meal when he got there.

"I hear your friend Lafferty's got a surprise for us," she said when as he sat down two tables away.

"So he says."

"I also heard from Lieutenant Sokolov," she continued. "He's killed three ships since this started."

"Little ones, I hope."

"Have you got something against killing big ones?"

"In a ship the size of Sokolov's I do," said Cole. "He's too small to kill anything above a Class J without blowing its nuclear pile and killing everyone on board."

"That's the point of going to war," said Val, "to kill the other guys."

"You go to war to get the resolution you want to a particular problem. The more people you kill, the less likely the other side is to give in until you've all but annihilated them."

"So?"

He sighed deeply and stared at the Valkyrie, marveling as always at the combination of beauty and brutality. "You are the finest warrior I've ever seen, maybe the finest there's ever been. If I had a hundred like you I could conquer the galaxy." He paused. "I just wish somewhere along the way they'd given you a course in peacemaking or maybe ethics."

"I learned at a harder school," she replied.

"I know."

"The bars and whorehouses are filled with women who learned how to make accommodations," said Val. "I'm not one of them."

"I value you for what you are," Cole assured her. "I was just musing about what you might have been."

"I might have been a five-foot-tall hunchback with a prosthetic leg and steel teeth," she said.

"Point taken."

"So what do you thinks waiting for us on Cicero?" asked Val.

Cole shrugged. "We'll know soon enough."

Suddenly she smiled. "If it bites, I'll protect you."

"Fine," said Cole. "And if it kisses, I'll protect
it.
I've seen you wear out the androids in that brothel back on Singapore Station."

"I go there because they're the only ones I
can't
wear out," she replied with a laugh.

Cole and Val both experienced a sudden sense of disorientation.

"I guess we've entered the wormhole," he said.

"I guess," she replied, getting up from the table. "I'm going to grab two hours of sleep, just in case there's some fighting to do when we get there."

"We'll wake you if we need you."

Then she was gone, and Cole ordered his coffee and sandwich. They arrived, he took a bite of the mock hamburger, and made a face, wondering why after all these millennia soya products still tasted more like soybeans than all the things they were
supposed
to taste like.