Star Risk - 04 The Dog From Hell (3 page)

"Passengers with last names beginning with E, T, A, O, I, N are instructed to report to their loading areas, and be prepared to have your tickets checked for auth� authenticity." The voice sounded very young.

Friedrich von Baldur was on his feet, slightly purple-faced, even though he had no idea what crime that announcement was intended to conceal or promote.

"Enough and more than enough!" he almost shouted, and stamped toward a woman in an official-looking uniform.

Money changed hands, and the girls were shepherded into a VIP lounge, where they were the only occupants.

"And, by the Lord who made us all," von Baldur growled, "no one�but no one�will leave this room until they call our ship."

Jasmine King immediately got on a com, trying to reach contacts to find out who'd been trying to crash them on the way into London.

M'chel Riss looked around the room, saw a sideboard with bottles on it, poured herself a drink, knocked it back, forced a smile, and said, through her teeth, "Well, well. What a brisk start for a day!

"I wonder what exciting excitement comes next?"

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FOUR � ^ � The liner was, of course, palatially huge.

It had been designed to look most secure, so the two engine pods were strut-mounted slightly below and behind the main capsule, which resembled an obese, rounded cylinder. In fact, the struts were subject to great stresses in hyperspace, and constantly required inspection and not infrequent replacement.

The design should have dictated that the ship would be used in deep and hyperspaces only. But no one actually thought those who could afford a cabin would stomach�literally�having to use shuttles, the potential of zero g's and transshipment. Instead, the liner required an inordinate number of ground-mounted antigravity generators to land on a world with the slightest amount of gravity.

There were stories, cheerfully propagated by Interstellar Cunard, that the liner�Imperial Victory�had passengers living aboard who'd given up any land-side holdings to cruise forever and ever around the Alliance worlds.

It had ten decks just for passengers, not including crew, engine, and service spaces. The Victory stretched for almost two kilometers, had wholly redundant power and life-support systems, featured every possible luxury and recreation from gambling halls to swimming pools to theaters to boutiques to exercise salons, could carry nine thousand passengers cosseted by at least five staffers each, crewed by� and the mind was numbed by statistics, regularly reeled off by attendants.

It also cost a baby mint for a ticket.

But that was of little concern to Star Risk, nor to St. Searles, nor to Lady Rosewater-Jones, who would be footing the bill.

Assuming the claims were true of St. Searles's pupils' parentage, the girls' families would have been unutterably shocked�shocked�if the fruit of various loins had been treated in any lesser fashion.

"Not least," Goodnight told von Baldur, "because this Rosewater-Bilgewater is willing to take all of these little sociopaths off their hands."

"Do not be so cynical," von Baldur answered. "Especially when in hearing range of the cash customers."

More money had changed hands, and Star Risk now controlled an entire passageway on one deck, with the operatives' and Alice Sims's suites at either end, to keep rein on their charges.

"Not," Riss said to Jasmine, "that I think that'll slow the girls down more than a nanobeat."

It didn't.

Since the wealthy have perfected the art of ennui, it was possible to be bored on the Victory. One way to relieve it was to get involved in one of the many pools the ship's staff ran, betting on the number of meals provided, fuel consumption, ships "seen" in a day's passage, and so forth.

Grok and Jasmine were initially interested, until they calculated that Cunard was taking a very sizable chunk out of the money wagered�enough to reduce the odds enough so as not to be worth considering.

One of the most popular pools, since it lasted for days, was guessing the exact time of arrival at the Victory's next port.

The first clue to the girls' involvement was when Sims tracked Jo, the gambler, and Arbra, her general companion, to the crew's quarters, which were off-limits to passengers, especially little girls.

Sims went to Goodnight and asked him what he thought was going on. No one bothered to think or say the word "might." They all knew better by now. "Your little chickadees are too young to be slamming some handsome steward�" he said, "I hope. So further investigation is warranted."

A bit of lurking, and then some raw physical intimidation, revealed the scheme:

Jo would bet on a certain time of arrival. This time would have been decided as within possibilities by her contact, a woman in the radar section. A second crewman was also bribed, who just happened to be assigned to astrogation.

That made it easy to minutely jiggle time out of hyperspace, time orbiting destination, and so forth.

Or, rather, it would have been easy.

Goodnight took his information to von Baldur, who put on his best suit and air of indignation and went to the captain.

"Although," he sighed after the "ring" had been broken up, "it is a bit of a pity that it would have been so imprudent for us to have involved ourselves in the conspiracy.

"There is good, solid money to be made in a scheme such as this. I predict a great future for young Jo."

"If," Riss said darkly, "someone doesn't murder her before she makes it to adolescence."

No one ever found out what the girls' next project was�but it must have been eminently profitable, since all eight of them were suddenly very flush, spending money on everything from cosmetics to candy, with never a credit transfer from any parent having been made.

Alice Sims was disconsolate, feeling that she was nothing but a failure.

Jasmine King, feeling sorry for the woman, arranged to put a bug in Erin's suite.

The playback depressed every adult even further:

ERIN: Everybody comf?

Chorus of various yesses.

ERIN: Has anybody thought about what we're going to do on Porcellis?

MEGAN: Get rich, of course. Richer than our parentos.

LITHIA: Of course, dummer. But how?

KEL: Take the old hide for everything.

ERIN: Stupido! That's a good way of killing the goose!

Chorus of agreement.

JO: No. We won't take advantage of Rosewater-Jones. At least until we figure out how things shake. Porcellis is a pleasure world. So they'll have gambling.

ERIN (Impatient): Of course. But that's not big enough to make all of us rich rich. And we're too young now to get away with much.

VON: Boys. They'll pay.

LITHIA: For what? Having us take our clothes off, like my cousin always wants me to do?

ARBRA: Eeeech! He's the one with all the pimples, right? He wanted me to show him the stables, right before last hols. Offered me five credits if I did. I told him to get kicked by a mule.

LITHIA: But you thought about it, didn't you?

ARBRA (Giggles): Of course. Wouldn't you� if he weren't so heinie-ugly?

LITHIA: Maybe. If it'd been fifty credits.

MEGAN: Eeech! Sex! And how much you want to bet that any boy on Porcellis that would pay to do dirty things to you would have pimples? (Primly) I'll bet any boy who's good-looking doesn't have to pay for it. Or else he'll want you to do all kinds of weird things that'll hurt and everything. And I don't want to think about some dirty, hairy, drooling old man.

ERIN: Megan's right. That idea doesn't go anywhere. Doing what boys want is liable to get you all kinds of ugly rots. My aunt told me.

LIS: I read that the only people who make any real money out of things like that are the ones who have girls working for them. And we're not old enough to get anybody to do that yet.

VON: And I don't want to work for anybody, ever.

More agreement.

MEGAN: Stealing. That's it. Jewels and things like that. And you know a richie like old lady Rosewater'll have rich friends with all kinds of goodies.

ERIN: But you have to have a fence after you steal them, so that's out until we know more about Porcellis.

KEL: Drugs. The holos say there's lots of credits in that.

VON: And guns. And bodies. And lots and lots of jail time if you get caught. No.

LIS: What about doing what these Star Risk people do? They don't seem to work very hard. And they get to carry all kinds of sharpy things like guns, and get to fly real fast without worrying about cops. And they're not bad. For old farts.

ERIN: But you got to have training to do what they do. Like experience in some kind of army, and I for one don't want to join anybody's army and get ordered around and eat shitty food and get told what to do by people who need to wear a patch to remind them of what their names are. That's ugly ugly. What we need to do is come up with some kind of new sin.

Mutters of agreement� various voices saying they don't have any ideas, then silence.

ERIN: Well, we've all got something to think about, anyway.

Jasmine turned off the recorder.

"Then they all started talking about who their favorite singer is, which I didn't figure any of you cared about."

Sims and the Star Risk operatives stared at each other.

Finally, M'chel said, "Old farts, hmm?"

There didn't seem to be anything else to say.

That "evening," the girls tried something new. After their seating for the third meal, they grouped in Erin's cabin, changed into their best, and set out, en masse and with speed, out of their passage into the recreation areas. Erin had called this a "bomb burst" tactic, figuring that Star Risk couldn't corral all of them, and at least a few would find something profitable to do.

She still wasn't aware of the bug in her suite.

The girls roared down the corridor and encountered Star Risk, Alice Sims, and a dozen stewards.

Shortly thereafter�in spite of struggles, storms, and wails�they were returned to their suites, and the doors locked�which should, Jasmine said, have been done on takeoff and left barred until they reached Porcellis.

Alice Sims was miserable.

Chas Goodnight offered her a drink and some comforting.

"I'll never make a good teacher," she groaned, knocking back her glass of guaranteed-from-France-on-Earth champagne.

"Probably not," Goodnight agreed, refilling her glass. "But you might do fine as a prison guard."

Sims drained that glass as well.

One thing led to another, and she found herself kissing him.

An hour later, she surveyed the bedroom of his suite, littered with their clothes.

"I have an excuse," she said. "It's been a long time for me."

"I don't bother to look for one," Goodnight said smugly, reaching for her.

It was morning, ship's time, when, looking rumpled but happy, Sims let herself out of Goodnight's suite and crept down the corridor toward her own cabin.

She heard a girlish giggle from behind her and whirled, not in time to see which door closed.

"This," she murmured, "isn't going to make my job much easier."

But, somehow, she didn't give much of a damn.

Two days after Goodnight and Sims's tryst, alarm bells shrilled.

"All passengers, all passengers, report to your cabins at once, and prepare for emergency procedures and moving to your lifeboat stations. All crewmen, to your emergency stations.

"Stand by for further orders.

"All deck officers go immediately to assigned secondary command posts.

"This is not a drill."

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FIVE � ^ � M'chel Riss was never that happy in any situation without an escape hatch, and that exactly fit the Imperial Victory. She never believed that any civilian ship as big as the Victory could conceivably have enough lifecraft, nor would they be within her reach in the event of a catastrophe.

So she always tried to make friends with the crew, in the vague thought that if disaster struck, she'd at least have somebody to talk to before the smashup.

Riss buttonholed one of the ship's officers and asked her what the hell was going on.

The woman leaned close, and said that they'd had a com�she didn't know from where or from whom�that there was a bomb aboard.

Since the woman looked rattled, M'chel put on a calm face, and said, "Probably just a hoax from some sick fool."

The officer looked slightly calmer as she bustled away.

M'chel wondered how many times she'd given some placid reassurance in her career shortly before the doors blew off. She set that thought aside and made for the other Star Risk operatives to give them the word.

Then she planned on a long, satisfying meal on her fingernails.

But no bangs banged, and the Victory popped out of hyperspace and made for the Alliance world of Cygnes IV.

Babbling comfort, it set down at a remote spaceport. Military and police swarmed aboard, and the passengers were shuttled to IV's capital. Every hotel and pension was filled to the brim while the Victory was toothcombed for explosives and such.

Von Baldur contacted St. Searles and told them why they were delayed, gave Rosewater-Jones's representative on Porcellis the same message, and found an exclusive girls' school to put his charges in for the estimated week that the Victory would be dry-docked for the search.

On the third day after their arrival, a pair of patrol craft�or so the media reported�made a quote daring raid end quote on the drydock, and scattered incendiaries along the length of the ship's hull.

The Victory burned merrily, and every emergency team on the planet swarmed the shipyard, worried that the ship's power plant would go up.

Von Baldur had other worries.

"The question I have," he told the other Star Risk people, "is whether or not I should allow myself to be paranoid and think this whole mess has anything to do with us.

"First a bomb scare�that is what I am calling it, since the last report said that no explosives had been found aboard the Victory, and no further communiqu�had been received from the bombers. Then a successful firebombing while the ship lies helpless.