Mercenary (24 page)

For those who demonstrate extenuating circumstance there will be variable terms at hard labor."

He laughed. “You're crazy, spic! You ain't taking us in!”

I believe I speak dispassionately: He had sealed his fate with those words. It is not that I am intolerant of the colloquialisms; Emerald and I had in the time of our marriage exchanged words like spic and nig as ironic endearments. It was that this pirate evinced open contempt for us and had announced his intention not to cooperate with the law. Now the status of the Jupiter Navy was in question. Discrimination might be covertly tolerated in the Service; no non-Saxon ever made admiral. But this was public insult to a ranking Naval officer, and defiance of a legitimate Naval thrust. Jupiter was watching, literally, via my re-broadcast. Billy had talked himself and his ship into deep trouble.

“I am obliged to advise you,” I said formally, “that if you have not professed surrender under the terms defined, by the expiration of this hour's grace period, and do not do so upon my re-challenge, I shall order my torpedoes launched. I strongly recommend that you reconsider. Surrender, and you will be treated fairly, now and at your trial.”

“Stuff it up your drive-jet, immigrant!” he snapped. He went on to describe my supposed racial and cultural status in unkind detail, concluding with some rather imaginative sexual preferences involving mutilated animals. I listened impassively, and we rebroadcast it all. At last he shut off transmission, and we relaxed. His foul mouth had damned him in Jupiter's eyes. Even the Bleeding Heart faction would not rise to this one's defense.

Emerald glanced up at me from her seat before her own vision screen. Her eyes virtually glowed with the joy of battle. “I think we have our example, sir.” She had planned for this: to make a public example of the first pirate, so that the remaining pirates would heed. She was probably correct; it was a language pirates should understand. But it was more than that. For her it was the beginning of her vindication as a strategist. She had the training, aptitude, and motivation to be the best, and now she was at last implementing her ambition. For me it was the beginning of the execution of a vow. For others—

We waited out the hour, pacing the pirate, the two destroyers keeping the Caprine Isle targeted. We were in no danger; Mondy had researched the armament of all the local pirate ships and assured us they had no cannon capable of penetrating our guard. We were a military vessel; they were civilian. This is somewhat like the distinction between a fourteen-year-old girl and a hardened gladiator in full battle dress. Only through avoidance or trickery could she hope to prevail, and it was an anemic hope. In a David and Goliath situation; the smart money is generally on Goliath.

Of course it would be trickery. Mondy had even advised me what type it would be. Emerald had planned our strategy accordingly.

We heard singing elsewhere in the ship. This was theoretically bad form in a battle alert, but song was part of us.

The hour expired. I signaled the Caprine Isle again, on the common channel, and resumed our live broadcast to Leda. “The moment of decision is at hand,” I said, enunciating clearly. “We shall have your surrender within one minute, or we shall launch our torpedoes.”

Billy came on. He looked nervous. “We surrender,” he said. “Hold your fire!”

I glanced at Mondy, then at Emerald. Both nodded, concurring with my own diagnosis. The pirate was lying.

“Very well,” I said. “We are sending a tug to pick up your officers. When they are in custody, we shall provide replacement officers to guide your ship to our base. Instruct your crew accordingly, and be ready to board the tug in five minutes.”

“Yeah, sure,” Billy said ungraciously.

The tug accelerated toward the Caprine Isle . Tugs were small, squat ships with enormous propulsion, capable of moving far larger vessels. They were useful for minor chores like this. This particular tug was special, however; it went unmanned, controlled by a pilot aboard the Copperhead . It also contained some rather special equipment. My staff had planned for this moment carefully.

The tug docked at the Caprine Isle . I gave them five minutes, then spoke again on the radio. “Have your officers boarded?” I inquired.

A pirate technician answered. “Yes, sir. They're all there, and the tug's sealed. You can call it in.”

“I must advise you of one other thing,” I said. “Aboard that tug is a general-purpose detonator. Its range is limited to the interior of the tug, but it is controlled from this ship. The detonator field is harmless to living personnel, but it will set off any explosive aboard. Have you loaded any explosives aboard the tug?”

“No, sir, of course not,” the technician said. “Just our officers.”

“Then you will not object if we activate the detonator.”

The technician swallowed but tried to bluff through. “It's okay, sir.”

“You are sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

I turned to our remote-control technician. “Detonate.”

He touched the button.

The pirate ship exploded. It flew apart, its air puffing out through the suddenly gaping hole in its side.

Pieces of it radiated out into space to disappear in the distance. Some passed close to the Copperhead shrapnel, but our magnetic shield deflected them.

We all watched silently. Mondy had predicted they would plant a powerful bomb on the tug, in an attempt to get it adjacent to our cruiser and blow a hole in our hull. He even knew what type of bomb.

We had been ready, and had turned the pirates' treachery against them. We had dealt honestly with them, and had even advised them of the detonator; had they honored their agreement to surrender, they would not have been hurt. It was all on holo-tape, transmitted live to Leda for all to see. I was sure the major news programs of Jupiter would carry suitable excerpts. We had made our demonstration.

But even so, my mouth tasted of something like ashes. There had been, according to our information, seventy-two people aboard that ship. Now all of them were dead. The responsibility was mine.

“Captain off the bridge.” I heard the announcement and realized that I had indeed left the bridge. I did not feel well, but it was not a malaise of the body. I retreated to my cabin and fell into my hammock and closed my eyes, but the bursting ship remained in my mind's eye. Seventy-two living people—and I had killed them. I had thought I was prepared for this, but the reality showed me that I had deceived myself.

What I had done as a refugee I had done in desperation and paid a hideous price; this time I had done it deliberately, with no threat to myself. Now I was truly a mass murderer!

I became aware of a presence. A hand was on my shoulder. I knew immediately the touch of my sister Spirit. I reached up and caught her four-fingered hand in mine, finding special solace in it. I brought it to my face and kissed it and found it wet—wet from my tears.

She came down to the hammock and embraced me, hugging my head to her bosom in the manner of a mother, and I cried into her comfort. I had not realized how vulnerable I was, or how strong she was, or how much I needed her, until this moment. She understood what I felt, for she shared my heredity, my culture, and my experience. She, too, had seen our parents die; she, too, had lost our friends to pirates.

She had lost her little finger to a pirate and taken her vengeance. Spirit was my true strength; without her I had been adrift, and only the promise of her return had motivated me, and only her presence at my side truly sustained me. I loved her as no brother ever loved a sister, and she loved me. That was the love I had to have. To me, women were merely women, some more important than others; I could take them or leave them, as I had done with Juana and with Emerald. To Spirit, men were merely men, and she did with them what she found necessary. Love was not truly a part of that. Our truest love was for each other.

After a time we talked, the words sparse, the meaning deep. “I never killed before like that,” I said.

“It was their bomb, their deceit,” she pointed out.

“But I knew of it!”

“You suspected . And you warned them.”

True. Now the justification of my act became more convincing. The pirates had set up their own demise.

Like a person who strikes at another and scores on himself instead. I had known—or suspected—but I had honored the rules of the situation. I had given fair warning.

“They intended that bomb for us,” she said.

They had indeed! Had we not anticipated their treachery, it would have been our blood sprayed into space.

I still felt the blood on my hands. But now I could handle it.

“Are you better now?” Spirit asked gently.

“Vital signs stable,” I agreed.

“Now you hold me.”

It was indeed my turn. I sat up straight and held her head to my chest and enclosed her in my arms while she cried. She felt the same pain I did. But she was stronger than I. She always had been, even as a child of twelve.

In due course we went to see the other officers of the staff, for the shock had hit all of us. It is no gentle thing, to be blooded, even though the signs may be subtle. We did not see Mondy and Emerald for two days.

We left one of our escort ships to conduct salvage operations from the largest fragment and proceeded to our next rendezvous. We had a job to do, and it had only begun.

The second pirate ship bolted the moment we hailed her. We fired one torpedo and rendered her into another derelict. Again we suffered reaction, for again we had killed, and this time we had done it directly. But our pain was not as bad as before; already we were getting hardened. So were our crews; they had played no direct part in the destruction, but they supported it, and they felt its impact. Lieutenant Commander Repro, as Morale Officer—some of us wore more than one hat, as is standard practice in the Navy—had his hands full. Oddly, his addiction seemed to fade in this period; he was better able to handle this reality than were the rest of us.

I don't want to make our following campaign seem less than it was, but repetition fatigues me, and most of it is in the official record, anyway. We were in space on the Juclip cleanup mission for almost a year, for though at first the ships were easy to catch, the pirates soon learned to take evasive measures long before we came near, and it took time to run them down. Some vacated the Juclip entirely. I will proceed to the high points.

The third ship we hailed surrendered honestly. We took her over and sent her to Leda in good order, and the event made the news; there was no question about fair treatment being rendered. Of course, the pirate officers were executed after being convicted. The fourth yielded similarly. The fifth tried to bolt; we disabled her with a suppressor torpedo and boarded her with our pugil team and took her over but did not advertise how we had done it, lest others take warning. In this manner we eliminated forty-seven pirate ships, and it was becoming so routine it was almost dull.

No pirate had a chance against us; we could blast any of them out of space, from well beyond their return-fire range. In space, of course, a missile could proceed indefinitely until captured by some planetary body, so there was technically no such thing as a limited range, but accuracy was certainly limited, and beyond certain parameters, any missile could be balked or avoided. A laser cannon generally could not penetrate the hull of a spaceship, but it could heat and detonate an explosive missile if the range was great enough to provide time to track it with precision and lock on. Our lasers were far more potent and accurate than those of any converted civilian ship, for our power source and computer specialization was greater. Our eight-inch shells were fired at twice the velocity a pirate could muster. Our big shells were also far more heavily armored than theirs, so they were in effect largely invulnerable to premature laser detonation. Our torpedoes were slower but also more massive and better armored, and they were fired from much closer in, so the effect was similar. A pirate could fire at one of our destroyers, of course, but the fact was, a single destroyer was more than a match for the average pirate vessel. Virtually laserproof and swift enough to dodge any shell large enough to damage it, a destroyer was—a thing that destroyed.

We were, as the ancient saying went, shooting fish in a barrel. Phist had seen to that, by providing us with the best equipment the Navy had to offer. With that hardware, we were supreme. I blessed the day my sister had gone out to bring him in, for I also liked the man personally. Phist was, as I mentioned before, conservative, honest, and competent; the very model of a modern Naval officer, who should have been an admiral by now if only the Navy had valued his sterling qualities.

The news of our campaign was now making the headlines of the Jupiter news services. The civilians, secure in their great atmospheric city-bubbles, loved the vicarious adventure of cops and robbers, and kept running score of our “kills” as if this were one big game. I became the hero of the hour: the token Hispanic officer making good in the free society of Jupiter. Little note was taken of the fact that I had never been granted Jupiter citizenship, so remained a Callisto national-in-exile, a mercenary fighter. In the Navy this made no difference, but the moment I left the Navy I would revert to resident alien status. I had to make good in the Navy, and so did most of my Hispanic troops; we had nowhere else to go.

So it went, as I said, for forty-seven ships; but the forty-eighth was special. It was the Purple Mountain

, taken over by mutiny fifteen years back, preying on refugee-bubbles and unwary pleasure craft in the normal manner. She had no armament to speak of, and it was surprising that she had survived this long without being taken over by another pirate. “There's something odd about this one,” Mondy muttered.

“We'd better take it intact—and carefully.”

No problem about taking it; the Purple Mountain surrendered instantly when challenged. There were no tricks or booby traps; the news had long since spread that we were alert to such things, and this tended to discourage them—as we had intended. The complication came in this case when we processed the crew. They were the usual motley bunch of cutthroats, the scum of space—except for one, the cabin boy.