Star Risk - 03 The Doublecross Program (15 page)

"I hear you, boss. I'll check with the crew," Goodnight said. "See what's whuppin'."

"So here we are," Vian announced as the three patrol ships broke out of hyperspace. "And the planet below should be Khelat IV's third world."

Jasmine realized her palms were wet from worry that her awkward navigation wouldn't even be close.

"And what would have happened if something else was there?" she asked, knowing the answer.

"It depends," Vian said. "If it were a sun, we'd go up like a spider in a candle flame. Another planet, and we'd calculate where we were and where we went wrong. If we were in the middle of nothingness, without a clue, we might have to embarrass ourselves and jump back to where we came from. But you plotted well, King. Just as I thought you would.

"Now if you'll slide out of the way, I'll take it in-atmosphere and the shooting can start."

Jasmine unsnapped her safety belt, slid back into the supernumerary's seat. She was slightly proud of herself, and also surprised that Vian had turned out to be a patient instructor.

"Next time," Vian said over his shoulder, "you can take it in. And you can try a landing when we go back home."

"Maybe," Jasmine said. "That will be my third."

The other two had been in yachts, with Riss as instructor.

"All right," Vian said to the others on board. "We're going in."

The patrol ship shuddered as it bounced into the outer atmosphere. Its wings glowed a bit red.

On a nearby screen, she saw the other two ships flanking her.

The target, on the far side of the world, was a resort area favored by the Khelat royalty. It was what Riss called a "piss-off target" intended to get the Khelat princes grinding their teeth at being subjected to such inhumanities. Angry war leaders generally aren't thinking coherently.

Vian's three ships had deliberately come in on the "far side" of things. Vian didn't really believe the Khelat were so totally inept as to not "see" the raiders. Hopefully, they'd launch whatever AA missiles they had at long range, thinking the target was Rafar City, and miss, leaving the three mercenary ships open targets.

Vian, as he brought the ship down toward the surface, yoinked it at irregular intervals.

That should further shake up whatever Khelat defense forces there were.

Jasmine had chosen the target on Riss's recommendations. She'd noted the resort when Star Risk was still on the Khelat payroll, but wasn't sure just how much they had in the way of defenses.

Since the resort was a third- or fourth-choice vacation, she assumed the security would be fairly light.

Everyone was almost right.

Jasmine was concentrating on holding on to her stomach. Even though the antigravity was on, the world spinning below her, getting closer by the instant, was still unsettling.

"I don't like this," Vian muttered, keyed his mike. "All Risk elements, this is Control. This is getting too easy."

There were twin mike clicks back at him, acknowledging his �cast.

"The bastards should have started shooting," he said.

Vian's plan had been to bring the raiders straight down to about five thousand meters, flare out, streak for the capital like that was a target, then divert around Rafar City, which would be far too strongly defended, and fly over the deck along the shoreline to the resort.

They were at about ten thousand meters when a screen blipped.

"They've acquired us," Vian's weapons officer said. "Three, no, four sites."

There was a pause, silent except for the now-loud hiss of atmosphere against the ship's skin.

"We have a launch, sir. Six launches. All homing."

Vian growled, and the patrol ship's jinking became more furious.

"Closing�" the weapons officer reported. "Dumping chaff, firing countermissiles� three missiles fired� two acquired targets� closing�"

There were two bright flashes on a screen.

Jasmine took a deep breath.

She never saw the missile that exploded less than twenty meters away from the ship.

The craft bucked, rolled about its own axis, and spun down and down, toward the suddenly too-close planet.

Vian was fighting the controls, and the ship stabilized.

Khelat II's surface was veering up at them.

Jasmine King wanted to scream, but controlled herself.

The patrol ship was level, then spinning, still dropping, and Jasmine saw a flicker of land. Then there was nothing but water on-screen around them.

And then they hit.

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TWENTY-TWO � ^ � Riss had lost friends before in combat and accidents, but somehow Jasmine's loss hit her particularly hard.

Illogically her mind told her it was her fault�if she hadn't wanted vengeance for Dov Lanchester, Jasmine would still be alive.

She thought about some kind of memorial service, then realized she hadn't the foggiest idea of what Jasmine King believed or disbelieved in.

It was a greater shock to realize she knew just as little about the other Star Risk members. Other than their obvious vices and virtues, they kept to themselves.

It was a lonely life. By choice.

She put those gloomy thoughts away. All she wanted was out of this goddamned cluster, and solitude and quiet.

"Nonsense," von Baldur said briskly. "We are not going to limp away licking our wounds."

"No," Goodnight agreed. "We're going to tear an enormous strip or two off the Khelat."

Grok snorted agreement.

"I think we will all feel better if we go out and break something."

M'chel considered for an instant.

"We will," she agreed reluctantly. "A very big frigging strip."

"Well, then," Goodnight said. "Shall we commence to plotting?"

Another message, this one in a simple business code, came from Alliance Credit, this one just saying that the previous person who wanted to establish contact with M'chel Riss had sent another message, repeating the first.

Riss thought about it, still didn't know how to play the card with Prince Wahfer, so let it lie.

Besides, she was busy plotting blood and slaughter.

There was a war on, but the Khelat rulers hadn't found it necessary to call for night shifts.

The huge shipyard was still, with only necessary maintenance machinery running, and the occasional two-man patrol, more to keep out thieves than anything else.

Star Risk wanted no mistakes, so there were none of Hore's infantrymen, nor any Shaoki on the raid.

One of Vian's patrol ships slipped in-atmosphere. The ship grounded at the spaceport attached to the yard, amid rusting and wrecked ships, and the four Star Risk operatives moved out.

They looked more like an equipment-repair crew than saboteurs, laden with strange packs, welding gear, and computers.

They cut their way through the double layer of wire at the rear of the plant, easily avoiding the alarm sensors, then found an easily jimmied door and went inside.

The building stretched for almost ten kilometers, and appeared impregnable.

Chas Goodnight licked his lips.

***

Grok eyed a huge hull-plate rolling mill, saw its weak spot. He tucked one of the demolition packs he was carrying into the huge gears at one side.

When the charge went, it would not only shatter the gears, but badly dislocate the great rollers, as well.

Friedrich von Baldur decided he felt like a ten-year-old again, as he kicked in the door labeled precision MEASUREMENT DIVISION.

The shelves inside were stacked high with various gauges and calipers.

Friedrich went to work lustily with a large hammer he'd found, then set incendiary charges.

Riss struggled into a heat suit and sealed it.

Nearby roared two of the great smelters, kept running under robot control night and day. She opened one of the smelter doors, involuntarily jumped back as the flames reached out toward her.

Then she threw a boxful of floor sweepings into one smelter, then the next. Those contaminates should ruin this run, she thought.

Just to make sure, she put a small det charge on each of the doors' hinges.

Grok grumbled as he pushed the sliding door open, into the plant's central control room.

It hung from the roof of the yard building, all glass walls, looking down on the rows of machines and ships under construction.

He set to work, smashing here, cutting contacts there, zeroing out running computers over there.

Grok froze for an instant, seeing something move in a reflection in front of him. He whirled, and there was a watchman just outside the control room, a look of utter horror on his face, seeing the monster.

The man forgot about the blaster holstered at his hip.

Grok grabbed a table and hurled it through the glass at the man.

It hit him and he staggered back, over the metal railing outside the room, and fell 150 meters to the concrete below.

Grok went back to his destruction, thinking once, wistfully, how he wished Jasmine King were with him, to do a more thorough and subtle job.

Chas Goodnight sat at a computer terminal, tapping keys. He nodded satisfaction, looked out at the assembly floor.

Robot welders were moving, their torches glowing, as they set to work fastening themselves to each other and to the floor.

Damn, he thought. It does work. I never got a chance to try out my conditioning the Alliance gave me before.

Flame spurted here, and Goodnight decided it was time to be about his business.

Riss trotted down the corridor, between huge machines, sowing demo charges like a crazed planter.

She flung the last, and ran for the door they'd come in through.

The patrol ship was about five hundred meters up when flames gouted out the windows of the plant, and explosions shattered the assembly lines.

Von Baldur watched the screen with satisfaction.

"Well, a bit of revenge for our Jasmine," he said.

"Just a bit," Riss said coldly.

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TWENTY-THREE � ^ � Riss looked at the stack of papers, growled like Grok, in timbre if not in happiness.

How come, she wondered, the romances never show the hard-bitten warrior as being up to her nipples in paperwork?

And how long was it since she'd been in the field, footloose, carefree, and destructive? A lousy week. Seemed like forever.

There was less than she'd have if she were still in the Alliance Marines, but still�

An unadmitted but experienced bureaucrat, Riss started flipping through reports. She frowned, went back through them, got on the com to Hore's battalion.

Hore's XO showed up on screen.

"Why isn't there any report on how well your training has been going?"

"We've been busy," the man said, a bit snippily. "But things have been going well."

"We've been busy, too," M'chel said. "That's no excuse. Can I expect something this decade, perhaps?"

"We'll see," the man said, smiled a distinctly unpleasant grin, and cut off.

"Aren't we the snotty little mercenary," Riss murmured. "What did I do to piss him off?"

She picked up a report, then stopped. She thought a minute, then went back to the com, and put in a �cast to a Shaoki officer whose name she remembered.

Friedrich von Baldur got a com from the spaceport.

Someone named Miss Anya Davenport was at the spaceport, wanting pickup.

Von Baldur frowned. He knew no one by that�oh. Yes. That was the name of the lobbyist one of his contacts on Earth had recommended. She was supposedly expensive, but well worth the price.

But what the hell was she doing out here instead of hustling Omni Foods back wherever their corporate headquarters was?

A blank com answers no questions, so von Baldur grabbed the duty driver and headed for the spaceport.

"I do not understand what you are telling me," the Shaoki captain told Riss. "My brigade has not been having any training at all, ma'am. Unless being a stevedore is training."

"Explain, please," Riss said.

"Your Colonel Hore has had all available men putting an old arsenal back in service and transferring weaponry. Frankly, my soldiers are starting to grumble, saying they could have found jobs in a warehouse and gotten much better paid."

M'chel, even though she didn't know what anything meant, other than that Hore's troops were, at the very least, swinging the lead, was upstaged by Anya Davenport's arrival. Riss knew Davenport was another kind of mercenary, but she hoped to hell she wasn't beginning to look as hard as the woman.

She was tall, could stand to put on about another five kilos, had clearly had at least one face-lift, as well as augmentation to her breasts, and was, naturally but unnaturally, blond.

Davenport announced to the assembled and very curious crew, over before-dinner drinks, as if it were a natural part of a r�m�that she'd been runner-up in one or another Miss Galaxy contest, as well as mentioning various politicos and firms she'd pumped for.

It appeared to M'chel as if Friedrich were thoroughly smitten.

Chas could have been, having never encountered a lobbyist before, but von Baldur appeared to have gotten in line first.

At dinner, Davenport asked if there was any of this wonderful main tea about. Some was found and brewed.

Davenport tried it, smiling brightly, and only coughed twice.

"Very interesting," she said.

"You see," Grok announced. "There has to be someone besides myself liking it for it to be so successful."

"Fad freaks," Riss said, "never need a reason for liking something, other than other fad freaks do."

"I must say," Davenport said with a tinkling laugh, "it's as well you're not in Omni Foods' marketing division."

"That is the truth," Riss said, trying to sound friendly.

"Let me explain something," Davenport said, and the tinkle was gone.

"Omni Foods is divided, generally, into two divisions. The first is the Staples Market. This is rice, coffee, flour, and so forth. If your company is distributed by the Staples Division, or if your product is part of that network, you can relax, safe, comfortable, and very rich.