Rebel (13 page)

Cole declared a two-week moratorium on their undeclared war.

"As dense as the brass are, even
they
will figure out something's going on if they keep losing a ship or two every day" was his explanation.

The captured ship, which was named the
Shooting Star
, failed to yield any new secrets concerning the Republic or its weaponry, which wasn't all that surprising considering that the
Teddy R
had been a functioning ship in the Navy less than four years ago. Cole had Dan Moyer take command of it and select a crew. Slick, the Tolobite who, with his second-skin symbiote, could operate in the cold of space for hours at a time, gave the exterior a thorough inspection and made a few cosmetic repairs.

Cole didn't let the two weeks go to waste. By the end of the first week he'd recruited another twenty ships, mostly one- and two-man jobs, a few bigger ones, to his cause. Jacovic, Braxite, Jaxtaboxl, Domak, and the other aliens under his command sought out their own kind, and soon another twelve ships joined his small but growing fleet.

Braxite gathered a few other Molarians for a religious ritual that theoretically sent Forrice's soul on its way to the next level of existence—they had no word for Heaven—and Cole was allowed to attend. He had no idea what was being said—Braxite sat next to him and translated, but the concepts were as alien to him as the language but it had a mildly cathartic effect on him. At least, he felt he would finally be able to sleep through an entire night without dreaming of his friend's final few agonized minutes of life.

From time to time sightings of lone Republic ships would be reported, but Cole stuck to his timetable: no military action for two weeks, do nothing to alert the Republic to the fact that anything unusual was transpiring on the Inner Frontier. The
Teddy R
remained docked at Singapore Station.

David Copperfield seemed increasingly uneasy. The little alien had no taste for conflict of any kind, and yet it was obvious that conflict was precisely what Cole's fleet was preparing for.

"You don't have to stay on the ship, David," said Cole one morning when Copperfield was awkwardly trying to find out when Cole planned to go hunting for Republic ships again. "You can stay on Singapore Station. No one will hold it against you."

"My place is at your side," replied Copperfield adamantly. "And since it's obvious that you're not going to remain in port, I will go into battle with you." He paused. "It is a far better thing I do than I have ever done."

"Do you really believe that?" asked Cole.

"Not for a minute," admitted the little alien. "But just once in my life I wanted to say it."

"There's another saying worth considering," said Cole. "He who opts to run away will live to fight another day."

"It's like hiding from the dentist," said Copperfield, making a face. "Eventually you have to see him."

"Yeah, I suppose that's one way of looking at it."

"As long as I can't talk you out of it, perhaps I can make a suggestion."

"Shoot," said Cole.

"You are going to war with the Republic. The Teroni Federation is already at war with the Republic. Why don't you join forces?"

"Because the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend," replied Cole. "Besides, they've got over a million ships. I don't have much bargaining power if all I can bring them is another sixty or seventy. We'd just become a small unimportant unit in the Teroni Navy, and I don't believe in their cause any more than I believe in the Republic's. There are something like forty million dead on each side, and I'll bet half of the politicians and top brass don't remember or never knew just what it is they're fighting about."

Copperfield stared at him long and hard. "I had no idea you were this bitter, Steerforth."

"How would you like to be related to someone who lived on Braccio II?" responded Cole.

"The Navy has been pacifying worlds for a millennium."

"I realize that it's only a matter of degree, but there's still a difference between pacifying them and annihilating them." He paused, the muscles in his jaw tensing. "If you had vital information, information that could save thousands of lives, and you refused to give it to me, I would still never do to you what those bastards did to Four Eyes, and neither would my Teroni First Officer."

The little alien looked into Cole's eyes and decided it was time to change the subject.

"So how soon will we let the Navy know that we're the enemy?"

"They already know it. There's a ten-million-credit price on my head, remember?"

"I meant when will we let the Navy know that
we're
the ones who are attacking them?"

Cole shrugged. "I don't know. When we can withstand an attack by a couple of hundred ships, I suppose."

Copperfield relaxed visibly. "That might not be for a year or more."

"Anything's possible," said Cole noncommittally.

"Suddenly I feel better," said the little alien. "Come over to Duke's Place and I'll split a bottle of their best champagne with you."

"Yeah, why not?" said Cole. "I spend years cooped up in ships with claustrophobic rooms and seven-foot ceilings. Why the hell stay here when I don't have to?"

They took the tram to the station, and were on their way to Duke's Place when Rachel's image appeared alongside them.

"I'm sorry to bother you, sir," she said, "but you told me to keep you apprised of any Republic ships we could track within the boundaries of the Frontier."

"What have you got?" asked Cole.

"Twelve ships have recently shown up, six near the Quinellus Cluster, six more in the vicinity of Keepsake."

Cole nodded. "They're looking for their missing ships. They won't find the
Shooting Star
, of course, and my understanding is that Vladimir damned near vaporized the ship out by the cluster." He paused for a moment, considering the situation. "Keep tabs on them, Rachel; get Mr. Briggs or Lieutenant Domak to help if necessary, and alert Christine when she comes on duty. Inform Val, too. As long as they're just searching in space, fine—but if they land anywhere and become an indiscriminate punishment party, or they start taking captives for the kind of questioning they gave Four Eyes, I want to know about it instantly."

"Yes, sir," she said, saluting. Her image vanished a second later.

Cole turned to Copperfield. "You go ahead to Duke's. I've got something that I need to do."

"Are you going back to the ship?"

"Not just yet."

"I guess I'll see you later," said Copperfield as Cole began walking down a long metal corridor. Cole was back at the ship an hour later. Two robots accompanied him, carrying his purchases from the tram to the shuttle bay. He resisted the urge to either tip or thank them and went up to the bridge, where Rachel Marcos was still tracking the Republic ships.

"Anything going on?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No, sir."

"Keep me informed."

Sharon Blacksmith met him as he was going to his office. "I saw you bringing something aboard," she said. "What is it?"

"A little present for the Republic."

"Come on, Wilson," she said. "I'm the Chief of Security. If you don't tell me, I'll just open them up."

"If you tamper with them, they might explode."

"What the hell are they?" she demanded."

"They're mines."

"Like we used against the Republic? We've already got a bunch, don't we?"

"Yeah, but they're regulation Republic issue. I wanted some that are more than half a century old, and built by—what can I call them?—freelance bombmakers."

"Why?"

"The Republic's got a dozen ships looking for the
Shooting Star
and the one Vladimir took out in the Quinelllus Cluster. Hopefully they'll give up, turn around, and go home—but if they decide that something happened to those ships, that they're not merely lost or out of touch, they'll start questioning the locals, pretty much the way they questioned Four Eyes. Even if it's just one ship and we isolate it, we can't open fire on it. It'll almost certainly be in contact with ships that are out of range, and I'm not ready for the Republic to know what we're doing yet. So I'm going to pass these ancient mines out to some of our smaller ships, little one- and two-man jobs, and once we know that one of the Republic ships is causing trouble, we'll see to it that it hits one of these mines or vice versa. Then, when his comrades come along to learn what happened, all they'll find are the remains of a half-century-old mine, obviously left over from an earlier war . . . and no one will go home any the wiser." A tight little smile crossed his face. "That's the scenario, anyway."

"Who will you give them to?"

"I've got six of them," responded Cole. "I plan to give two apiece to Moyer, Bujandi, and one of Jacovic's Teronis."

"I'll contact them for you," she said.

"Good. The mines are so out-of-date that I'm going to have to show them how to activate the damned things."

The mines were placed aboard three small ships an hour later, and the ships promptly headed off, one toward Keepsake, two toward the Quinellus Cluster.

Cole checked with the personnel on the bridge every hour. The Navy ships had split up and were honeycombing the areas in question, but so far none of them had touched down. The situation was unchanged when he finally went to bed.

He was awakened three hours later by Christine, who informed him that a Republic ship had radioed Keepsake for landing coordinates.

"Which ship have we got over there?"

"Mr. Moyer's ship, sir."

"Patch me through to him."

"Yes, sir."

Moyer's face appeared over Cole's built-in dresser.

"Dan, one of the Republic ships is going to try to land on Keepsake. You know what to do?"

"Yes, sir," said Moyer. "You went over it with each of us."

"Okay. Good luck."

Cole broke the connection. "Give me a play-by-play," he said to Christine's image.

"Nothing yet, sir. The Republic ship—it's the
Johannesburg
—has been given its coordinates and is approaching Keepsake." Thirty seconds of silence followed. "Mr. Moyer just cut across the
Johannesburg
s path. The
Johannesburg
has altered course and is in pursuit. Mr. Moyer is banking further away from the planet."

"That's the ballgame," said Cole. "He used the maneuver to hide the fact that he dumped the mines. They're coded not to go after him."

"No change yet, sir.
There!"
she yelled. "The
Johannesburg
is gone!"

"Okay," said Cole. "Now for Step Two. Patch me through to Slade McNeil, Slade McBain, whatever the hell His name is—the guy who owns the big casino on Moritat."

"Moritat, sir?"

"That's the Tradertown on Keepsake."

"Yes, sir."

A moment later the image of a burly gray-haired man with a bushy mustache replaced Christine's image.

"Good evening, Slade," said Cole. "You saw what happened?"

"It's afternoon here, Captain, and yes, we did. Lit up the sky. Beautiful sight."

"If the Republic asks about it, you don't know what happened, your instruments recorded the explosion."

"How can we not know?" said the burly man.

"Tell them that there was a battle between a pair of warlords about fifty or sixty years ago. One of them dumped a batch of mines, and when the war was over, the winner cleaned most of them up. Over the years you lost three or four ships to rogue mines that hadn't been deactivated. You thought you'd gotten them all, but evidently you were mistaken."

"That's pretty far-fetched," said the man. "Are you sure they'll buy it?"

"They will, when they find fragments of the mine. I'm going to log off now, but stay connected, and Officer Mboya will give you a scramble code to alert us if they
don't
buy it and start harassing you."

"Will do."

"Christine," said Cole, "take it from here."

"Yes, sir," she replied.

As Cole lay back on his bunk, he brought forth the image of Forrice in his mind, and smiled.

"You'd have been proud of us today," he murmured as he began drifting off. "Using those ancient mines was worthy of
your
devious mind. The Navy will reconstruct what happened, and in the end the only thing they'll do is warn their people away from Keepsake until they make sure there are no more uncollected mines floating in the vicinity. Yeah, you'd have been pleased with it."

And for the first time in days, Cole slept like a baby.

Cole spent the next three days on Singapore Station, most of it at Duke's Place, recruiting men and ships for his growing fleet. By the end of the third day he had seventy-four ships under his command, which was quite impressive until he remembered that only half of them could hold more than three men, and even less than that could withstand the pulse of even a Level 2 thumper.

"I wish I could convince myself I was doing our cause any good, getting all these little pleasure ships lined up," he confided to Sharon and David Copperfield as they sat at the Duke's table.

"Then arm them, the way you're going to be arming the station," offered David Copperfield.

"We're not made of money, David," said Cole. "Every credit we've got has to go into protecting the station."

Copperfield was silent for a long moment. Finally he looked up. "It is entirely possible that I have some funds I haven't mentioned to you, my dear Steerforth."

"It doesn't seem entirely unlikely," agreed Cole.

"I shall donate five hundred thousand Maria Theresa dollars and five hundred thousand Far London pounds to the rearming of your fleet. Will that be of some help?"

"Thank you, David. What brought forth this unexpected attack of generosity?"

"If we lose the war, what good will the money do me?"

"You're the only member of your race any of us has ever seen," said Sharon. "You could simply say we were holding you captive and demanding ransom for your release."

Copperfield frowned. "You could have mentioned that before I offered the donation," he said petulantly.

"I won't hold you to it," said Cole, smiling.

"What are you grinning about?" demanded Sharon.

"He's grinning because he's read the immortal Charles, too, and he knows that David Copperfield would never renege on such a noble offer," said the little alien.

"It's your own fault for falling in love with Dickens," said Cole. "You could have chosen Dostoevski."

"No well-bred Englishman would read such a morbid Russian writer," said Copperfield with a sniff of contempt.

"Well, I thank you for your offer, and we'll put it to good use."

"Bloody well better," muttered Copperfield.

"You didn't get
that
from Dickens," said Cole.

"I
do
read other British writers, you know."

Suddenly there was a commotion from one of the tables. As he turned to see the cause of it, Cole saw Val's flaming red hair. A few seconds later the well-muscled body of a large man went flying through the air, landing with a bone-jarring
thud!
Val stayed in the area long enough to make sure he was still breathing, then walked over to the table, just as the Duke emerged from his office.

"What the hell's going on?" he demanded.

"You've got a cheater down there on the floor," said Val. She shook her head. "Can you imagine it, using a shiner against
me?"

"You're sure?"

She reached into a pocket, withdrew a tiny mirror, and tossed it to him. "If you're not going to shoot him, at least bar him from ever coming in here again."

The Duke examined the mirror. "I've seen smaller."

"And duller. I caught the light glinting off this one."

"I should have hired you as my manager the first time I saw you, twelve, thirteen years ago."

"What fun is that?" she said. "I come here to drink and gamble. I can break heads anywhere."

"Honest and to the point," said Cole. "Enjoy the rest of the evening, but be back at the ship by 0700 hours."

"We're finally going to go hunt down some Navy ships?" she asked.

He shook his head. "We're going to go a little further afield to do our recruiting. Not everyone on the Frontier comes to Singapore Station."

"0700?" she repeated.

"That's right."

"Then I'd better cash in my chips and get over to the Gomorrah while I've still got time."

"Be gentle with them," said Cole. "They're only steel and titanium, you know."

She laughed and headed off to the cashier.

"I used to say that if I had fifty of her I could conquer the galaxy," remarked Cole as he watched her walk away. "Looks like I'm going to have to do it with just one. Probably lowers the odds to even money."

"Did you really mean that—about 0700 hours?" asked Sharon.

"Yeah. I had Christine pass the word to the crew. The station's well has pretty much run dry, at least for the time being. We'll try again in a couple of weeks, when there's a new batch of potential recruits." He turned to the Duke. "You want to have your computer send Christine a list of locations where we're likely to find people with a grudge against the Republic?"

"Try anywhere on the Frontier," said the Duke.

"You know what I'm looking for: men with ships, men with crews, and men who hate the Republic enough that they'll join us without demanding any pay."

"You could pay a few if you had to," noted the Duke.

"If I pay one man, I have to pay every man in our fleet, and
that
is beyond our ability to do. Besides, any man you recommended that I pay would just have to give you a kickback, and we're already spending most of our money on the station's defenses."

"Wilson, you cut me to the quick."

"Do I really?"

The Duke shrugged. "Well, you would if everything you said wasn't true." He laughed heartily. "I'll have the list to Christine before you take off."

"Thanks," said Cole. He turned to David. "You can stay here if you'd prefer."

"Desert my old school chum?" said Copperfield. "Not even when he's been amusing himself at my expense. Besides, you're just on a recruiting mission. It's not as if you expect to get into a pitched battle."

"True enough," replied Cole. "And speaking of your expense, you might transfer some money here so they can start arming the smaller ships while we're off finding more small ships for you to spend your money on."

"Do you enjoy teasing me, Steerforth?"

"If I didn't, I wouldn't keep doing it," answered Cole.

"Well, at least you're honest about it," said Copperfield with a deep sigh.

They remained at the Duke's for another half hour, then made their way back to the ship.

Cole was awakened at 0705 hours and informed that all personnel were aboard the ship except for Val.

"It's just a recruiting mission," he said. "We're not waiting for her."

He shaved, took a Dryshower, got dressed, and was heading to the mess hall for some coffee when he bumped into Val, who was looking a bit disheveled.

"You're late," he said.

"I'd explain why, but you look silly when you blush," she said, continuing on her way to her cabin.

"Yeah, probably I do," he said when she was out of earshot. "And probably I would."

He got his coffee, decided not to go up to the bridge, and gave the order to release from the dock and take off for Freeport, a commercial center some two hundred light-years away. Wxakgini announced that the quickest route would be through the McAllister Wormhole, with an ETA of six hours and two minutes, as opposed to seventeen days at top speed through normal space.

The trip was uneventful, and they emerged half a light-year from the Beyer system, of which Freeport was the third planet. They began approaching it, and as they passed the fifth planet Briggs announced that a small private ship was being pursued by two Navy ships. It had been hit by a charge from a thumper—a pulse cannon—and was following an erratic course, as if some of its stabilizing gyros had been damaged.

"Has it got any chance at all?" asked Cole, arriving on the bridge from his office.

Briggs shook his head. "It's losing oxygen. Even if they get it moving at speed again, they've barely got enough oxygen to get out of the system. I don't think they can even make the wormhole. They'll certainly never come out the other end."

"Who's in Gunnery?" asked Cole.

"I'm not sure, sir," said Briggs.

Christine Mboya checked her computer. "Mr. Pampas, sir."

"Wake Val up, and tell her to go join Bull down in Gunnery," said Cole.

"Yes, sir."

"Is Jacovic awake?

"No, sir. His shift ended before we entered the wormhole."

"Wake him and have him come to the bridge."

"Yes, sir."

"Malcolm," said Cole, "what kind of weaponry are these Navy ships carrying?"

Briggs had his computer analyze the ships. "Level 3 or Level 4 thumpers, and Level 5 burners."

"Okay, we can handle the lasers, and the Level 3 thumpers. If they both come after us with Level 4 thumpers at once, we're in deep shit— so let's hope they don't have them." He studied the holoscreen for a moment. "I'm going to let you handle the defenses, Malcolm. I know we can aim our own weapons from the bridge, but Val and Bull can adjust faster down in Gunnery."

"Should we give them a warning, try to call them off?" asked Christine.

"They're not going to listen, so why let them know we're intervening? Is Val down there yet?"

"Just this moment," said Christine.

"Patch me through." He waited the few seconds for Christine to make the connection. "Val, Bull, we're going to get as close to these two Navy ships as we can. I don't want you firing until you're sure you can disable them. They probably have superior weaponry, so I want to make sure our first shots do the trick."

"Got it," said Val.

He nodded to Christine to break the transmission as Jacovic reached the bridge.

"Pilot, I assume you've been paying attention. Plot an intercept course and get us as close to those two ships as you can."

"We may not make it before they kill the ship that's escaping them," said Wxakgini.

"Not to worry," said Cole. "The second they realize this is the
Teddy R,
they're going to forget all about that other ship."

He half-expected to hear Forrice's voice saying "Hard to disagree with
that!
" and then hooting with alien laughter, but there was no response except silence.

Suddenly Cole shouted, "Pilot, belay that order! Keep your distance!"

The ship almost lurched to a halt and hung dead in space.

"Val?" said Cole as Jacovic joined them on the bridge.

"Yeah?" she said. "What the hell is going on?"

"They haven't spotted us yet," said Cole. "That means all they're concerned with is that little ship that's trying to escape."

"So?"

"So they won't have their screens and shields up. If you and Bull can each man a weapon and make the first shot count ..."

"Right," she said.

"Take your time and aim right, because you'll never get a second shot with their defenses down."

"Leave it to us," said Val.

"Malcolm," said Cole, "kill our defenses until Val and Bull take their first shots."

"Sir?"

"If either of those ships see a ship our size with screens up, even if they don't recognize that we're the
Teddy R,
they're going to raise their own defenses, just to be on the safe side."

"Defenses down, sir."

"What's keeping them?" asked Christine nervously.

"They're trying to lock on to a fast-moving target that is at the outer range of our cannons," replied Jacovic. "They know they only have one chance—and they have to fire simultaneously."

"Right," agreed Cole. "Wound or kill one ship before firing on the other and whatever we're shooting will just bounce off its shields."

Suddenly the viewscreen was filled with a burst of light, as one of the ships was blown into a million pieces. The other took a hit, veered crazily, and fired a wild shot at the
Teddy R.

The energy bursts from the
Teddy R'
s pulse cannons bounced harmlessly off the Navy ship's shields, but at the same time the laser cannon was probing the surface of the ship—and finally it found a weak point, the spot where the initial hit had occurred. A brief adjustment, and the next pulse from the thumper went directly into the spot the laser had pinpointed, and that was the end of the second ship.

"Textbook," said Jacovic approvingly.

"Pilot, we'd better get that ship they were chasing before it runs out of air," said Cole.

Wxakgini was silent for a moment as he and the navigational computer he was tied into analyzed the ship's trajectory, plotted its course, and made arrangements to intercept it in another two minutes.

It took them one hundred seventeen seconds to catch up with the ship. They radioed ahead that they were friends, that indeed they were the ship that had killed his two pursuers, but it made no response or acknowledgment of their signal.

"Either it can't answer or it doesn't trust us," said Christine.

"Or it's out of oxygen already," added Briggs.

"Let's find out," said Cole.

The
Teddy R
drew alongside the ship, matched velocities with it, and sent Slick, the Tolobite with the sentient second skin, out to secure the ship. Once that was done, they opened both hatches and Cole and Jacovic entered the smaller ship.

"Jesus, he's a mess!" said Cole, staring at the only occupant, a young man who was fully conscious but sprawled on the floor of his ship.