Star Risk - 04 The Dog From Hell (21 page)

"Not me, Mr."

"Of course, of course," Goodnight soothed. "But I'm sure you know of some that do this reporting for the odd favor or shekel."

Jorkens tried to hold a poker face. All this was, of course, completely foreign to him.

Goodnight held up a hand.

"I don't want to know who they are, or even who you think they are. But I'd like you to make sure any of these sorts you know about hear of certain things that I'll tell you about."

"Such as?"

"Such as the presence of some interesting people in the Alsaoud System."

"I don't understand," Jorkens said.

"You don't have to," Goodnight said. "I just want the word to get around."

Jorkens, thinking of the money and not seeing any immediate harm, agreed. Star Risk didn't give a damn about what intelligence Flyver had or didn't have, but knew anything that looked hot would instantly go to Cerberus.

Then the team built a pirate for Nowotny's consumption, to act as a stalking horse and hopefully attract Cerberus's attention.

They named him Lapied. Von Baldur said he thought they were getting a little too cute for their own good, but Jasmine said Nowotny didn't have a great grasp of foreign languages, particularly obsolescent ones. Grok agreed, adding that Nowotny thought the world of his own intellect, and was fairly humorless, so their minor jape was very safe.

Lapied it was.

He was an ex-officer in the Alliance military, under his real name, never to be revealed, who'd been thrown out of the service for crimes he never committed, and had sworn an oath of eternal vengeance.

"My word," Goodnight said. "Aren't we getting romantic?"

"And what's the matter with that?" Riss asked.

"Nothing, I guess."

Lapied had a sleek black ship of his own, a former Alliance cruiser, manned by Alliance and other dissolute renegades. Lapied had never been caught, because one of his practices, when he moved into a new system, was to develop a skein of informers and agents on that system's capital worlds.

Here on Alsaoud, he'd further allied himself with members of the People.

"Isn't that a bit raw?" Riss asked.

"Aren't the People actually tied in with every would-be raider that drifts into Alsaoud?" von Baldur asked. "And would they not get in bed with our Lapied if he happened to exist?"

"Well� yes," M'chel admitted.

"Then life may be a bit uncomfortable for them. Besides, if our scheme plays out the way we want it, they will be in cahoots with certain big-time pirates�namely, ourselves."

Lapied's existence went out, in whispers.

Grok tried to bug Cerberus's headquarters to track events, using a model spaceship, which he crashed gently into the building's roof, very close to an airvent.

It transmitted junk sound for a few hours, then went suddenly dead.

"They have," Grok reported, "an active antibugging program. Cerberus usually does."

"Or else," Goodnight said, "you didn't check your batteries when you stuck 'em in."

Grok curled a lip, which he'd learned denoted human scorn. The gesture was awesome, baring one side of the alien's very large fangs, but looked as if he was about to eat the face of whoever he was showing his new expression to.

But even without a bug Star Risk was rapidly assured that Nowotny had gotten the word on Lapied:

The drivers who'd been given the phony information were rewarded, and their controls asked them for anything more they could uncover about Lapied the Dashing Freebooter; and, uglier, the holos started running negative items about what the People were, thought and did.

There were even a few incidents against them, but they didn't amount to much, since the People stayed armed and were hair-triggered.

Van Baldur made sure that Ganmore heard of these incidents; and so, in the Maron Region, word grew that it was time to make a few examples of these Alsaoud swine, and no one needed to be overly particular about guilty parties.

"I just hope," Riss said, "that nobody innocent happens to get killed because of our puppeteering."

"In this world," Goodnight said piously, "the innocent must suffer with the guilty."

M'chel thought of spitting in his eye, but didn't bother, since Goodnight was irrevocably Goodnight.

Then Star Risk's own agents started hearing about a particularly valuable and large shipment coming into the system:

A cargo of exotic alloys, suitable for various purposes from jewel mounting to star drive internal controls.

Just what someone who'd pirated a ship of micro-manipulators would almost certainly be interested in acquiring.

"Oh, yes, we are most certainly interested," von Baldur said with a sneer.

"Just how dumb does Nowotny think we are?"

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THIRTY-NINE � ^ � Cerberus laid an excellent trap.

First was the cargo ship carrying the supposed alloy riches.

It actually was a robot carrier of recent design. Instead of cargo, Nowotny put three limited-yield nuclear devices aboard.

A little investigation that any competent pirate could be counted upon to make would provide the information that the ship was to follow a widely used astrogation track, using the navpoint just outside the Alsaoud System, then would jump into the system, and make a final jump just off Khazia.

Nowotny didn't figure it would get that far, but had a bomb squad brought in from Cerberus's headquarters just in case the hijackers slipped a beat and the cargo actually reached its destination and needed a little disarming, so his petard wouldn't do any hoisting.

Two days before the cargo ship was scheduled, Nowotny had a huge hulk positioned near the out-system navpoint. Purportedly, it was a wreck that had had a drive explosion years ago, and had conveniently drifted to its present position.

Actually, the wreck was a gutted junker from an out-system boneyard.

It had been lifted into space and jumped to its position by tugs. Three patrol ships waited in the shell of the wreck.

One held the operation's commander.

Nowotny's plan was not oriented toward surrender or prisoners.

This was intended to be a nasty object lesson to Lapied and Alsaoud's pirates.

Just in case they showed up in strength, there were also two light destroyers held in n-space, linked via a subspace transceiver to the Cerberus officer in one of the p-boats.

Cerberus laid an excellent trap.

But Star Risk laid a better one.

Two weeks before the cargo ship was due, Freddie von Baldur and Ganmore went recruiting to some of the People's raiders, who politely dubbed themselves privateers, naturally claiming to attack outsiders only for the greater good of their race.

Von Baldur's pitch was simple: "I won't pretend there's great prizes to be seized. In fact, you'll be out your operating expenses.

"But I'll give you a chance to kill some Alsaoud� and to hopefully shortstop any antiraider campaign before it gets any strength."

The People were a little puzzled by such unexpected honesty, and became most agreeable. Von Baldur got four large vessels�one a light cruiser, the others small frigates�and three close-range attack ships.

He positioned them in place about a light-second from the navpoint four days before the cargo ship was due, and told them if they gave away their position with com chatter or any other unnecessary noise, he'd sic Grok on them. Tales of the alien's thin-slicing of some local rowdies hadn't been lessened in the telling.

These ships were "hidden" behind an ELINT program Grok had written.

To any sensors other than pure visual, these ships would appear as no more than a scattering of small meteors, in an orbit between stars.

Von Baldur wasn't particularly worried about encountering anyone out in nothingness with a telescope or sailing through space navigating with the Mark I Eyeball.

The day before the scheduled arrival of the "cargo ship," Star Risk took their yacht and the McMahon out.

Then there was nothing to do but wait.

On schedule, the "cargo ship" appeared out of n-space. Before it could make its jump onto the Alsaoud System, as Cerberus had predicted, it was attacked.

But Cerberus hadn't expected anything the size of a light cruiser.

The alert went off in the ships hidden in the hulk, and they shot out to the attack.

Before they got within range, the People's cruiser very accurately blew off a missile near the cargo ship's drive mechanism, leaving it spinning in an aimless orbit.

As Cerberus's p-boats closed, the People's frigates, attack boats, and the McMahon jumped into normal space, and acquired the p-boats.

They disappeared in a flurry of targeting missiles and explosions.

The leader of the expedition had a moment to scream for help to Cerberus's ships waiting in hyper-space.

The scream was never answered.

The officers and crews of those two light destroyers might have worked for Cerberus, but they were mercenaries on salary. And mercenaries are traditionally loath to take on suicide missions, leaving that for the idealists and volunteers.

"And now we board," the captain of the People's cruiser exulted.

"That's a big negative," Goodnight drawled from the com board of the McMahon. "First we look up the lady's skirt."

That was Grok and King's department, aboard the yacht. Half a dozen modified missiles went out, and closed with the "cargo ship." Very high speed cameras and other sensors went into action.

Grok sent a remote piloted vehicle piggybacking on a missile to the "cargo ship," brought it down on the ship's skin, and trundled it across to an airlock.

The RPV extended a claw, and began fiddling with the airlock control the lock iris opens.

The RPV entered�and two of the three nukes that Nowotny's technicians had installed went off.

The various missiles continued recording as the robot ship blew itself to flinders.

"As we thought," Goodnight 'cast with satisfaction. "It was a trap all the way around. All units�mission complete, all commanders take command and return your ships to their bases. We owe you one."

Grok and Jasmine paid little attention, busy analyzing what their surveillance missiles had gotten.

When Star Risk rendezvoused aboard the McMahon, Grok reported.

"As far as any sensor told us, the boobytraps aboard the false cargo ship weren't triggered by any specific command, but almost certainly set off by the attempt to enter."

"They wrote off their crew?" Goodnight asked in some amazement. "Cold-blooded bassids. Might as well be working for the Alliance."

"Odd that you should mention that," King said, and told Chas that the ship was a robot.

"Well, aren't we taking no chances," Riss said.

"That isn't the most interesting thing," Jasmine said. "Unlike most of the other hardware we get out here in nowhere, Janes lists the robot as a relatively new design, currently in production for the Alliance battle fleet."

"Oh, dear," M'chel said. "Cerberus has some interesting contacts."

"Or worse," von Baldur said.

None of them wanted to discuss one of the probabilities that occurred.

Walter Nowotny was livid�and scared. His trap had not only snapped shut emptily, but expensively.

Ral Tomkins would not be pleased.

And Nowotny knew Tomkins tended to strike fast and viciously when he was displeased.

Nowotny determined to strike back before Tomkins had a chance to consider and prepare disciplinary measures.

He was a well-trained Cerberus executive, which meant, among other things, that he had the company's reflexes ingrained at cellular level.

One of them was to respond to any challenge or any threat instantly, with the heaviest tools available.

This meant, after the failure of his trap, that he had to take care of the Maron Region and any notion these refugee People had of independence.

One of the many advantages Cerberus had was keeping a small cruiser squadron on near-instant response.

Nowotny knew of this squadron, and had the rank to summon it.

The squadron arrived off the Alsaoud System within ten days, and Nowotny met and briefed it.

The orders were simple:

A small, inviting merchant ship was to precede the five cruisers into the Maron Region.

Any hostile attempts on the merchantman was to be met with heavy response, first on any attacking ship, then with a raid on whatever asteroid the attempt came from.

No surrender would be accepted.

The squadron commander was told that Nowotny wanted the utmost severity applied in this "object lesson."

That officer knew well what that meant, and verbal orders were given to all hands to give no quarter.

There were only two things wrong with Nowotny's response: first, that any automatic response to a challenge should be considered of questionable value; and second, that Nowotny didn't know Star Risk was on the other side of the equation.

Jasmine and Grok had told von Baldur what Nowotny's response would be, and so the Maron Region was ready.

Von Baldur had noted Nowotny's love affair with decoys, and thought he might repeat himself.

He had raiding captains among the People who thought he was a tactical genius after he'd magically scented Nowotny's first attempt against them, and had been most interested when he "just happened" to discuss his plans for great plunder, raiding into the Alsaoud System once they'd been humiliated a bit.

So when he asked for a dozen or so smaller vessels for standby, they'd been eager to provide them. He got twenty-five.

When one of them reported a fat, happy merchant ship wiggling its sexy bottom through their asteroids, there was no hesitation to send a couple of these light raiders against it, and have the others ready.

But not to take on the merchant ship.

They were to go after whatever came behind it.

Nowotny's five cruisers popped out of n-space, summoned by the merchantman's screams for help.

And they were swarmed before they knew what was happening.

One cruiser for each five voracious raiders�