Take The Star Road (The Maxwell Saga) (38 page)

Steve accepted the bag. "Thanks. Looks like I'm accumulating quite an arsenal!"

The man grinned as he glanced at the table. "These are Chronos 89's, the full-size version of the compact models on the table there. You've got two of each now. Whoever equipped them had good judgment in weapons - not that it'll help them now."

Lin took the two pistols from the man carrying them. "It's good to have multiple weapons of the same model," she said seriously as she checked that they'd been unloaded, then set them with the others on the table. "You can carry one, and have a second in reserve. Remember, if you have to use one to defend yourself, even legally, the police will confiscate the weapon for several months as evidence. You need to have another immediately available to take its place."

"Lin's right," Pak agreed. He glanced over to where two of his team were spraying a chemical foam on the walls and floors, then wiping it off. "That'll remove all traces of blood, DNA and other evidence. We'll patch the hole in the wall made by Lin's shot after sanitizing it. The filler will dry to match the color around it, so it won't be detectable except on close examination."

"You seem to have thought of everything. What about the clerk?"

"She'll be given the antidote to the flitterbug dart as we leave, and recover within five minutes. She'll have a slight headache, but be unaware of what caused her to black out. She'll remember nothing."

Pak turned towards another man as he approached, carrying a dozen small objects in his right hand. He held it out, palm uppermost. "I've recovered all the flitterbugs," he reported, "including those from the bedroom upstairs."

"Good."

Steve examined the flitterbugs curiously. He'd heard of them before, but never seen one. They resembled small metallic winged creatures, the size of a bumblebee. Vid lenses on their 'heads' were set above twin tubes firing miniaturized narcotic-bearing darts.

"What about the dart in the clerk's neck?" he asked. "Won't that have to be removed?"

"No. It dissolves in the body, leaving no trace."

"And the guy who got one in the eye?"

The man shrugged. "That's a bad place to take one. He may lose the use of that eye. Of course, that's unlikely to worry him for very much longer." He and his boss sniggered.

"Considering they planned something nasty for me, I can't really feel any qualms about what they're facing right now," Steve agreed.

Lin took the cloth bag from Steve, dropped into it the wallets and gold
taels
carried by the two men in the foyer, then returned it. "There's over twenty thousand in cash in there now, plus a bit more than that in gold, and probably a similar amount in prepaid credit chips. You must be worth a lot to someone if he splashed out that much on a team to capture you."

"I'm glad he lost his investment! What next?"

Pak glanced through the windows at a large van pulling up outside, followed by a second. "We'll take these men with us. That's the van we took from them, plus our own. We've already loaded their watchman and the two in their van. We'll head back to base with both vehicles, and administer the antidote to the flitterbug neurotoxin once we've got everyone securely locked up."

He nodded to Lin. "The Red Pole says that Lin should stay with you tonight, to provide any security that may be necessary. We'll leave another couple of people outside, with another vehicle, to keep an eye on things; but after taking out this team, I don't believe you'll have any more problems in the short term."

"That makes sense. Please thank the Red Pole very much for me."

"I'll do that."

Steve and Lin watched as the team carried the bodies out on their stretchers, loaded them into the vans, climbed in themselves, and drove off slowly and carefully. A member of the team spray-injected an antidote into the clerk's neck before hurrying out, last to leave the building.

Lin tugged at Steve's arm. "Come on. We should be out of sight before the clerk wakes up." She helped him gather up the pistols and the bag, and they walked over to the elevator.

"Do you have a chair in your room for me?" she asked as the car ascended.

"Yes, but there's also a second bed you're welcome to use. The bathroom's got a hot tub, shower and all the trimmings, complete with towels and toiletries for two. There are vending machines for drinks and snacks down the corridor."

"Oh, good! This'll be much more comfortable than a normal surveillance or protection job! I'll secure your door against unwanted visitors, then we can relax."

Chapter 25: June 29th, 2838 GSC, late evening

Steve bought drinks and snacks for both of them from the vending machines, then they went to his room. Lin took three wedges from her capacious bag and hammered them into the top, side and bottom openings on the inside of his door, explaining that any of them would sound an alarm if disturbed, and make opening the door a much slower process. She took a chair and jammed its back beneath the door handle to make it even more difficult for anyone to enter, then headed for the bathroom. "That hot tub is calling my name!" she informed him cheerfully.

While Lin soaked luxuriously, audible moans and purrs of satisfaction coming through the bathroom door as jets of water massaged her, Steve recovered his clothes from where they'd been tossed by the two men who'd searched his room. He folded them, put them back where they belonged, then went out onto the balcony. Peering down, he could see a small runabout parked on the street, which he assumed contained the watchers from the Dragon Tong's security team. He sighed. He might have made a pact with the devil, so to speak, to protect himself over the jade knife, but he had to admit it had been indispensable tonight. He reached into his pocket and took out the white jade disk, looking at it quizzically, turning it over in his hand. It was strange to think that something so small could be so important.

A thought came to him, and he nodded in swift decision. It would take him a decade or more to earn Commonwealth citizenship, qualify for a commission, and get promoted out of the most junior officer ranks to where he could actually do something useful. He'd probably need a similar period to resolve the situation concerning the jade knife. However, if he got all that right, he'd be well positioned to do some serious damage to pirates from time to time. He would use the jade disk, and his budding relationship with the Dragon Tong, to gather information about piracy to aid his revenge. They'd killed his surrogate father, so in his honor he'd take as many pirates as possible out of circulation.

He cast his mind back to his final year at the orphanage. How strange to think he'd left school only two years before! It seemed a lifetime ago... They'd studied Kipling's poetry that year. What was that poem again - the monument to their dead Lieutenant, built in blood by the riflemen of the First Shikaris? His brow furrowed as he wracked his brains. It was 'The Grave Of The Hundred Head'... a
samadh!
That was it! He'd build a virtual
samadh
of dead pirates to Vince's memory. No memorial of stone or steel could possibly be as fitting. His face set in grim determination at the thought.

Steve looked out over the bright lights of Virginia City. It would be his residence for the next few months, and Vesta would be his base for the next year and a half, until he completed Small Craft School... but neither the city nor the planet was his home. He'd left Earth behind, so that wasn't home any more, either.

He lifted his eyes skyward, to where a few pinpoints of unimaginably distant brightness glittered in the light-polluted sky above the city.
That
was where he felt at home now... out there among the stars.
That's
where he belonged.

"I'll be back out there just as soon as I can, Vince," he whispered softly to himself, picturing the Bosun in his mind's eye in the last moments of his life, breathing quickly, shallowly, dying in the chair from which he'd orchestrated the successful recapture of their ship. "I'm glad they dropped your body into Vesta's star - gave you a spacer's funeral, rather than buried you to rot on a planet somewhere. You belong out there, forever part of a star. I'll do my best to honor your memory, and live up to everything you taught me and expected of me. If it's given to us to meet again one day, I hope you'll be proud of me."

He returned the white disk to his pocket, grinning wryly at his whimsy in talking to himself. It would certainly have amused Vince if he'd heard!

First things first. I've got a lot to learn before I return to the stars... and the rest of my life to apply it, and to make Vince proud.

He turned and walked back into his room, closing the sliding door behind him and drawing the curtains.

Appendix

The Grave of the Hundred Head

by Rudyard Kipling

There's a widow in sleepy Chester

Who weeps for her only son;

There's a grave on the Pabeng River,

A grave that the Burmans shun,

And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri

Who tells how the work was done.

A Snider squibbed in the jungle,

Somebody laughed and fled,

And the men of the First Shikaris

Picked up their Subaltern dead,

With a big blue mark in his forehead

And the back blown out of his head.

Subadar Prag Tewarri,

Jemadar Hira Lal,

Took command of the party,

Twenty rifles in all,

Marched them down to the river

As the day was beginning to fall.

They buried the boy by the river,

A blanket over his face--

They wept for their dead Lieutenant,

The men of an alien race--

They made a
samadh
in his honor,

A mark for his resting-place.

For they swore by the Holy Water,

They swore by the salt they ate,

That the soul of Lieutenant Eshmitt Sahib

Should go to his God in state;

With fifty file of Burman

To open him Heaven's gate.

The men of the First Shikaris

Marched till the break of day,

Till they came to the rebel village,

The village of Pabengmay--

A
jingal
covered the clearing,

Calthrops hampered the way.

Subadar Prag Tewarri,

Bidding them load with ball,

Halted a dozen rifles

Under the village wall;

Sent out a flanking-party

With Jemadar Hira Lal.

The men of the First Shikaris

Shouted and smote and slew,

Turning the grinning
jingal

On to the howling crew.

The Jemadar's flanking-party

Butchered the folk who flew.

Long was the morn of slaughter,

Long was the list of slain,

Five score heads were taken,

Five score heads and twain;

And the men of the First Shikaris

Went back to their grave again,

Each man bearing a basket

Red as his palms that day,

Red as the blazing village--

The village of Pabengmay,

And the
"drip-drip-drip"
from the baskets

Reddened the grass by the way.

They made a pile of their trophies

High as a tall man's chin,

Head upon head distorted,

Set in a sightless grin,

Anger and pain and terror

Stamped on the smoke-scorched skin.

Subadar Prag Tewarri

Put the head of the Boh

On the top of the mound of triumph,

The head of his son below,

With the sword and the peacock-banner

That the world might behold and know.

Thus the
samadh
was perfect,

Thus was the lesson plain

Of the wrath of the First Shikaris--

The price of a white man slain;

And the men of the First Shikaris

Went back into camp again.

Then a silence came to the river,

A hush fell over the shore,

And Bohs that were brave departed,

And Sniders squibbed no more;

For the Burmans said

That a
kullah
's head