Mercenary (26 page)

“Natural causes,” she reassured me. “He was old, and time has passed since you knew him. He treasured your manuscript and kept all your secrets till the end of his life. I assure you the material is safe with us.”

“As safe as your key is with me,” I said. I remained shaken; I knew people did die of natural causes, but I felt this loss with a special poignancy. Mason had known Helse and me together; now another intangible link to her had been broken. This agent of QYV had touched me with her masked finger of steel.

“Precisely,” she said. “Do you care to exchange?”

“No. If you went to that much trouble to fetch the manuscript, it should remain with you. It has served its purpose.” For in truth I valued my single tangible token of Helse more than my own narration of my experience as a refugee, and I would not allow this cynical organization to use my own words, literally, to deprive me of that token.

“Suppose we arrange for it to be delivered to your family, after your own demise?”

Hard ball indeed! What would relatives of mine think of that history? But only my sisters survived with me, and they already understood the realities of refugee existence. QYV had no leverage there. “Good enough. I will make a similar allocation of the key.”

Reba shot me a glance of wry appreciation, as if I had made a telling shot. “We need the key now.”

“It has waited thirteen years. It can wait another.”

“Not readily. We must recover it as soon as possible.”

It seemed QYV wanted the key more than I wanted anything from QYV. “I fail to see the urgency.”

“Our hireling at Chiron informed you of the manner in which we use an unbreakable code to convey private messages.”

“She did. The key I possess has a magnetic pattern containing the key to an important message. But what message could be so important, after so long a delay?”

“The problem with the closed encryption technique is that the decoding pattern must be physically transmitted to the recipient before the message can be read.”

“Yes. So you need my key. But—”

“That problem would be solved if a public encryption key could be used. Then no one could intercept the decryption key, in the manner you have done, and the transmission of secret material would be enormously facilitated. We have been able to function hitherto by courier; now we must reduce our dependency on that system.”

“I can see why,” I agreed. “You must lose a lot of messages among the pirates.” And, of course, I was now cleaning out the pirates—and intercepting couriers.

“Yes. They cannot decrypt the messages, but they can deny them to us. We take stern action when we discover the culprits, but a better system is needed.”

Stern action—an understatement! “But with a public encryption key, anyone could read your messages.”

“No. Anyone could encrypt messages to us; only we could decrypt them.”

“I don't understand how that would work.”

“You don't need to. All you need to know is that over the centuries, no system of public keys has survived; all have been broken and become useless. But at last one isolated genius has developed the truly unbreakable public key. And the secret of that key—”

“Is contained in the key I carry!” I exclaimed. “This is precious! But you could go back to your genius for another copy.”

“No. He spent fifteen years developing it, encrypted it, started it on its way to us—and died. He left no comprehensible notes. For the past decade our experts have labored to duplicate his feat, without success. It is truly unbreakable. Your key is it—the secret of the century.”

“An unbreakable open code,” I repeated. “With that, this problem would never have happened.”

“Exactly. We have suffered too much already and exhausted our other avenues. We must have that code. The health of Jupiter requires it.”

I shrugged. “Maybe so. But I have no abiding passion for the Colossus. I am a mercenary, denied citizenship. Jupiter turned my bubble away, costing the lives of my mother and companions—and my fiancée, who carried your key. There is an irony! I owe Jupiter my service but not my devotion. The key is mine.”

“We offer citizenship,” she said quickly.

“Too late. I no longer need it. When my family and I passed inside the orbit of Amalthea and met a Navy ship and our refugee-bubble was towed back out to space—that was when we needed acceptance. You cannot restore what indifferent Jupiter took from me.”

“We can perhaps restore part of it,” Reba said.

“Some way you have gone about it! Trying to kill me and throw the key out into space—”

"Where our instruments would have intercepted it promptly. But that was the action of my predecessor.

If you will only allow me to offer you—"

“Bring me back my love, and the key is yours,” I said bitterly. Oh, Helse! Oh, my love!

“We can provide you another woman you could love.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “I have had access to some good ones but have not loved them.”

“I am aware of that. Nevertheless, I will show you another part of my power.” She opened her purse and brought out a single picture and held it up to me.

I froze. “Helse!”

“Megan.”

I remembered. “The girl who so resembled Helse! Mason's niece!”

“Megan resembles Helse in few respects,” she said. “At a young age, she looked very similar to the way Helse did when you knew her. But Megan is older, and Saxon, and her intellect dwarfs Helse's.”

I felt pain in my hand and discovered that my fist was clenched so tight that my fingers were being crushed. The person who spoke ill of Helse—!

I forced myself to relax, so as not to be prey to this tough woman. “Helse was—nice.”

“Certainly she was. She was a lovely girl, despite her background. It in no way diminishes her to say that Megan is a more lovely woman than Helse ever could have been. Your love for Helse was a product of your situation. Even while it existed, you loved your sister Spirit more. You would love Megan more.”

She was persuasive, not so much by her words as by her attitude. Reba Ward was totally convinced.

She had researched me in depth and knew my nature, and evidently she knew this woman Megan's nature, too. And—I had been attracted to Megan, when I was with Helse, seeing her picture in the dome on savage Io. A single glimpse of heaven, there on the hell-planet! It was more than coincidence of appearance; it was that a good man had helped us both in our time of dire need, and helped our refugee-bubble, and I bore him a phenomenal debt of gratitude that his death prevented me from repaying, and Megan was of his blood, his niece. If I could love any woman other than Helse, it would be Megan, though I knew next to nothing about her.

“We can give you Megan,” Reba said.

For a moment temptation almost overwhelmed me. Love—restored! It might be possible! But then I knew that this was not the way I could accept it. Not as the cynical handout of a ruthless secret organization. How would they give me this woman? By blackmailing her with some closetal skeleton in her family? I would not take her that way!

Reba saw my temptation and my rejection. “That offer remains open,” she said. “Be assured that no dishonor can stain this woman; she cannot be forced. What we offer you is, in fact, the means to win her honorably.” She brought out a piece of paper. “Contact me at this designation, Europa, when you change your mind.”

Numbly, I took the paper. I was not at all sure I would not change my mind.

We released the courier boy to Reba Ward and transported them back to Europa. Then we chased down two more pirate vessels, bringing our total to fifty. Then my new orders came: promotion to Captain and command of the Task Force destined to eradicate piracy from the Belt.

The publicity suggested this was a merit assignment, because of my superlative record in the Juclip mission, but I knew it was the action of Reba. Once again, QYV had shown me its power.

But I still possessed the key.

The pretext was dramatic: Trouble had erupted in the Belt, that zone of planetoids that existed between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. Theoretically the Belt was an independent, disorganized conglomeration of settlements, analogous to the widely scattered islands of Earth's giant Pacific Ocean; actually they were the meddling ground for the interests of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and scattered lesser powers. A good deal of interplanetary spying went on there, and several major battles of the Second System War had occurred there. These days the planetary spheres of influence overlapped in the Belt with uneasy tolerance.

The greatest officially unrecognized complication in the Belt was the rampant piracy there. The pirates owed no allegiance to any planet but seemed to have obscure but potent ties to several planets. Perhaps bribery was involved; such information is difficult to come by, for an obvious reason. At any rate, the pirates were a force to be reckoned with in that region of space, and they, too, were tacitly tolerated.

But now the pirates had overstepped their bounds, as they had in the Juclip. They had moved in force on the Marianas, a protectorate of Jupiter, taking over a whole cluster of bubbles and planetoids. The settlers there spoke English, and many of them possessed Jupiter citizenship. Angry protests followed, but the pirates claimed the territory was historically theirs. Centuries ago it had indeed been overrun by pirates; they had preyed on passing Jupiter ships, so in due course Jupiter had sent down a warship, rousted them out, and settled the section itself. It really wasn't so much; today it was mostly agricultural, taking advantage of the more intense sunlight of the inner system, so that smaller focusing lenses were more necessary there than at Jupiter. Probably it cost Jupiter more to maintain the colony than the colony returned in benefits, but once Jupiter had Made an Issue, it had to maintain a presence there. This was the way of planetary powers.

Incursions had occurred before, of greater or lesser severity. Saturn's moon, Titan, embarking on a program of expansion that included several other moons and a segment of Saturn itself, had precipitated Jupiter's entry into the Second System War by sending a carrier fleet to bomb Hidalgo; the drones had devastated Jupiter's Belt-based fleet. When that war ended, Jupiter had defeated and occupied Titan, and the two were now firm allies. But this was only one historic example of the effect episodes in the Belt (Hidalgo, as a planetoid, was considered part of the Belt, though it ranged widely) had on System politics, and helped explain why Jupiter was especially sensitive to incursions against its Belt properties.

It was our public assignment to rid the Jupiter-aligned territory in the Belt of pirates. Privately, I was advised in no uncertain terms that Jupiter wanted to make an example of these criminals, so that no similar episode would occur in the foreseeable future. First the Juclip abduction, now this; the Colossus was annoyed. This was supposed to seem like a routine cleanup mission, nothing special, which was one reason they were assigning a captain instead of an admiral. But in actuality it was a demonstration of imperial will and power, which was why they were providing me with a full fleet.

I would have been more impressed with the rationale had it not been for two things: First, I knew this had been arranged by QYV; second, no self-respecting admiral would embark on a mission against mere pirates. This was work suitable for the riffraff of officers and units. In short, me and my unit. If I got myself killed and my fleet humiliated, they would have a suitable pretext to send an admiral of proper Saxon stock, with an overwhelming fleet.

That was all right. I had wanted this mission, and I would accomplish it. My objection to pirates was not a matter of appearance or politics; I owed the institution of piracy for the destruction of my family and fiancée, and now was my chance.

So we were supposed to punish the pirates as well as clean them out of Jupiter territory. This I intended to do. Unfortunately, the pirates were ready for us. Somehow they had known that Jupiter would make only a token effort, initially, and they were set to turn it into another splendid embarrassment to the Colossus of the System. What they planned to do when Jupiter's anger intensified was unclear; presumably then they would decamp, leaving Jupiter with nothing to step on. That would add insult to injury. Oh, the flies enjoyed plaguing the tiger!

At the moment the pirates were massing most of their available hardware at the Marianas base, which was more than I had in my fleet. Thus they had a triple advantage: superiority of force, the convenience of short supply lines, and the fact that somehow we had to drive them off without hurting the Jupiter settlers they held hostage. No wonder this was no task for an admiral!

I discussed it with my staff. Our decision was simple: We would surprise the pirates by attacking at their weakest point, well around the Belt. Once we had established a solid base in the Belt—a so-called beachhead—we could move on the Marianas pirates at our convenience. If they remained concentrated at the Jupiter base, we would continue to attack elsewhere, expanding our territory. Since I intended to eliminate all pirates, not just some of them, this was a feasible strategy for me. By the time the original-target pirates were brought to bay, they might be at a disadvantage. In fact, with proper deployment, we might compel them to desert the Jupiter base, so we would not have to risk damaging it.

In any event, the pirates would not return to their old ways after we departed the Belt, for there would be none left. In this sense my strategy was like that of the Mongols of Earth's medieval period, who simply exterminated all potential troublemakers. That system had worked very well; there had been little internal dissent in the territories of their conquests. Not that I endorse bloodshed as the solution to political problems; this is just an analogy.

My task force was impressive: one battleship, one carrier, two cruisers, six destroyers, fifteen escort ships, and a number of service boats and patrol craft. True, the Sawfish was neither the largest nor the most modern of battleships; she was hardly larger than a modern cruiser, massing 40,000 tons and being 650 feet long and 100 in the beam. She could make 2.8 gee, and carried nine sixteen-inch guns and a commensurate number of laser cannon. Her crew was two thousand. In her day she had been considered a member of the finest class of battleship in the system, but that had been twenty-five years ago, and modern capital ships dwarfed her in mass, firepower, and acceleration. But Commander Phist assured me that she was a good vessel, soundly constructed, maneuverable, and versatile. “There were no lemons in this class,” he said. “By the time we get her revamped, she'll be fit for service.”

Having seen what he could do in this line, I was reassured. The fact was, a battleship was normally commanded by a rear admiral, and a task force by a vice admiral; my present rank of captain barely qualified me to command this expedition. QYV must have pulled very hard on the string to install me here. But if I succeeded in my mission, I would soon become the first Hispanic admiral in the Jupiter Navy. So I could not complain if my battleship was small and old, and my cruisers minimal; it was the best I could expect.

The carrier, the Hempstone Crater , was, of course, no giant of her type. Carriers, in the ancient days of Earth ocean ships, tended to be named after islands and bays—at least they were in the particular navy from which the Jupiter Navy claimed theoretical descent—so Jupiter's carriers followed in such suit as they were able. The Hempstone Crater , I think, is on Charon, Pluto's moon, about as distant and inhospitable a body as exists in the Solar System; there may be a scientific study mission there but not much else on any regular basis. HC , as we called her, was an escort carrier, much smaller than the contemporary ones. This, more than anything else, is useful to place our mission in perspective: a modern carrier is about 1,000 feet long, displacing some 80,000 tons (that is, if one were to set it into an ocean on Planet Earth, it would squeeze aside that weight in water; actually the calculations are now based on more refined data, but the archaic terminology remains), accelerating at 3.5 gee, carrying 100 drones, and with a crew of 5,000. The HC , in contrast, was 500 feet long, displaced 10,000 tons, accelerated at 1.9 gee, carried 28 drones, and had a crew of 800; that is, an eighth the mass and a quarter the payload and half the gees of the modern one. That was how serious the Navy was about cleaning out the pirates of the Belt. QYV had fetched me a minimal mission.

“We know what they're doing,” Repro said heartily. “They're sending the troublesome riffraff off on an impossible mission. They believe we will never return.”

“Of course,” Phist agreed. “We were supposed to flub the prior Juclip mission; instead, we became heroes. They think we were lucky, but now they have upped the ante.”

“They?” Spirit asked.

“The powers-that-be of the Jupiter Navy,” Phist clarified. “The ones who are uncomfortable with ripples in the grand old order. It embarrasses them to have a ragtag outfit officered by a scapegoat, a delayed-stress-syndrome derelict, an addict, a whistle blower, a black female file clerk, and a couple of Hispanic refugees, to have such a collection make good. It is not the Navy Way.”

“They just can't believe there is any real competence in our unit,” Repro agreed, looking more satisfied than ever before, for his dream unit was coming true. “That is the beauty of it. If they suspected our potential, they would instantly yank the rug out.”

“That they would,” Phist agreed somberly.

“Nevertheless,” Emerald put in, “we're going to have to scramble on this one. We aren't facing inferior forces this time. No one has been able to make a permanent dent in the piracy of the Belt before.”

“No one's really tried,” Mondy said. “The pirates are into a number of endeavors that cause politicians to hesitate.”

I shrugged. I had this mission and a fine unit; I was not going to hesitate. My whole prior career had been in preparation for this. Already I had arranged to promote Phist, the longest in grade, to full commander, O5, and would see to the others as feasible. We would succeed.

Phist did his usual with the equipment specs, upgrading the battleship to 3.2 gee and the lesser ships to more. He saw to special weapons. It was amazing that the powers-that-be in the Navy did not realize the transformation that was occurring in our combat capacity; apparently, the bureaucracy chose not to comprehend the kind of logistics competence Phist possessed.

Task forces are not formed and launched on a dime, however. It was eight months before we set off for the Belt, and that in itself was a miracle of logistical organization. Work was still being done as we launched, but we were glad to be on our way at last.

I have said I can match every body in the Solar System to the continents and islands of prediaspora Earth. The notable exception is the Belt. The so-called asteroids (they really are not small stars, they are fragments of planetary matter) can be matched with the old Pacific islands, and the planetoid Hidalgo aligns nicely with Hawaii, as does Chiron with Cyprus. But I don't believe the old Earth islands ever had as savage a concatenation of evils and corruption as did the Belt. There were countless pirate vessels, roughly organized into several major bands—the Bands of the Belt. Each band had a specialty of crime and a territory, generally, though not perfectly, honored by the others. The most powerful bands were like six nations. I knew that the pirates of the Juclip were only limping rabble compared to those of the Belt. Criminals who lacked the strength or courage to go for the big time skulked around the various planets, preying on helpless craft such as the refugee-bubbles; those with real ambition went to the Belt.

Such was the power of the Belt pirates that most legitimate planetary trading fleets paid toll to guarantee safe passage. It was cheaper than going to war. So the pirate kingdoms flourished, and in their lee, the rabble-pirates of the other regions survived. I had always known that taking out the Juclip pirates was only tokenism; they would regenerate the moment the Navy mission ended, unless the real pirate bastion in the Belt was eliminated too.

We took our time traveling, picking our spot. We could have reached the nearest section of the Belt in two weeks, but instead we elected to go a quarter of the way around to intersect it at the zone of the Carolines.

The Carolines were the least of the major pirate bands. Their biggest ship was an ancient cruiser, and that had been refitted as a printing shop and warehouse. The Carolines were specialists in pornography and illicit publication, and they handled the best. I had seen some of it as an enlisted man, and it was eye-popping; Juana had required me to burn it, because she said it degraded women. Perhaps she was correct, but I was male enough to enjoy it no matter whom it degraded. The illicit sexual feelies were also wholesaled by the Carolines; the Hidden Flower had merely retailed the transsex line of those, putting her own brand name on them. That was how Spirit had reached me with the EMPTY HAND message.

I did not have a consuming passion against the Carolines; in fact, I felt that pornography was relatively harmless as a vice, and that its suppression was a manifestation of the abridgment of free expression. But pirates were pirates, and Mondy had pinpointed this band as the weakest militarily, and Emerald had decided to start with it so as to test our mettle in true combat without undue risk. I concurred. I was not expert in either Intelligence or Strategy, which was why I had followed Repro's script to acquire personnel who were. A commander is only as good as his staff and his men, and he has to honor his staff's informed judgments. A good commander is to some extent a figurehead, a focal point for the expertise of his unit. So I set out to destroy the power of the Carolines (by that I mean the pirates thereof), a decision viewed with a certain regret on my part, and a certain righteous glee on my secretary's part.

Emerald was neutral about the social implication; she didn't care about pornography one way or the other. She viewed this purely as a strategic and tactical exercise, and it was her intent to give us the cleanest possible victory with minimum loss. She explained the essence to us with pride, for this was her moment.