The Price of Peace (28 page)

And now she had a place to settle Joe
Edris
; the spy sent up a civic action team: a hotshot manager from
Nuu's
shop, a lawyer and three guys who swore they could manage a city's full range of services, water, sewer, transportation. Izzy hoped she wouldn't have to count on just three people to run a city. That was one of many things she didn't know.

The days were full of meetings, the nights full of ghosts. She was tired, and getting cranky. "
Comm
for you, Captain."

"Yes," Izzy answered, trying to use her voice as a calming influence on whoever it was bringing her a new problem.

"So, my tiger's got herself a ship and a ground task force for her next fine show."

"Captain Anderson."
Izzy's
voice lit up. Her old commander from the 97th's timing was lousy, but what the heck.

"How's it going, Izzy?"

"Could be better. Has been worse."

"Hasn't it, though?"

"You picked a hell of a time to show up, sir."

"As usual, I have little control over my time. I hear from
Elie
that this won't be your first shoot." Izzy sighed. "No."

"Got a few seconds we can talk?" "Not really."

"I'm on the station. Got a table reserved for us at the Wharf Rat."

Izzy scanned the confusion around her. "Stan, can you take over for an hour?" "No trouble, Captain."

"Okay, Andy, you got one hour of your tiger's time." "I think you need it."

Izzy found Andy in a quiet corner of the lounge. He put down his well-worn volume of Shakespeare as he stood to greet her. "What's it been, three, four months?" He smiled. "Seems longer." Izzy found her throat going dry on her. She slid into the booth across from Andy.

"I took the liberty of ordering steaks with all the trimmings ... and water. You're headed out, aren't you?"

"As soon as we're loaded." Izzy found that one an easy answer. "I wish you'd been here when I first showed up. Had a hell of a time deciding to trust this bunch."

"Things can get a bit weird when enemies become allies almost overnight. I've enjoyed working with them."

"Now that's something I've done a lot of, lately, once we got this mission on. Sure wished you'd been at that batch of meetings. This tiger was having second thoughts. Was I just running off to do something, or was this something that needed doing?"

"But my tiger was thinking." Andy smiled. "Woman you may just grow up some day.'"

"I feel like a million years old. Andy, I knew in my head that being Navy, we killed people. But twenty-plus years of peace, I guess I never really knew it."

"It was in your head, but not your heart,'" Andy offered.

"Yeah. Then the war hit and we were too busy staying one step ahead of dead to worry. Now, this universe is crazy and I don't know who's trying to kill me and who I should be killing."

"And you wish I'd tell you." Andy's smile was warm and fatherly. Izzy had never known her father.

"Silly of me. You don't know any more than I do."

"Of the evil lurking out there, maybe I do. It is out there, and it has to be stopped. Who must die to stop it? Ah, Izzy, that is the quandary we all live with. For most, it is purely philosophical. But you wear the uniform. You have the power to stop it. You can kill it... and you can kill others, too."

Izzy let that sink into her slowly. "So I'm headed out to meet that evil with a full gunnery kit and three brigades of
Wardhaven's
best." At that she could not help but laugh. "Eight months ago, I was trying to kill them. Now, I'm praying they are as good as advertised."

Andy nodded. "Peace has given us a very strange world. Enemies become friends, friends become unknowns, and legitimate targets become . .."

Izzy swallowed hard. "I fall asleep exhausted, but somewhere in the middle of the night, they show up. People I'll never know, that I had no quarrel with ... and that I killed."

Andy sighed. "Forty years I put in the Navy. Never harmed a fly. Then comes last year. Lord God, the slaughter of good men and women, ours and theirs."

"But that was a fair fight, Andy. We knew what we were heading into. So did the Unity troops. These folks, women, men, kids, had no beef with me. No chance. No chance at all. I just killed them."
Izzy's
eyes were rimming. In a moment she'd be crying. She looked away from Andy. Where are the damn steaks? Andy said nothing. His silence was a vacuum, pulling words out of her.

"You told me tigers got people killed. You warned me I was too damn trigger-happy. You told me, and I laughed and went right on. I didn't want to be bothered by prisoners. I wanted the pirates wondering what happened to their raider. I had it all thought out. All thought out. Except for what might be in their brig. Damn!" Now Izzy was crying. She never cried. You didn't cry in the slums. You didn't cry in the Navy. You didn't cry for yourself or for your dead. Andy handed her a small box of tissues. She took a handful. "You came prepared."

"I've used enough of them, the last six months." "You!"

Andy thumped his book. "I've read Will's plays and sonnets since I was a boy. I think I only began to understand them this year. Maybe I only began to understand the pain that's behind them now, after I've ... commanded death and fled from it in all its myriad faces. The dead and the might-have-
beens
that would have given them longer life haunt my
wakings
and
sleepings
. Izzy, we are not alone, and"—Andy opened the book at random—"and we are not the first. Prince Hal gave his God full credit for victory at Agincourt, not because he was a saint, but because it liberated him from the responsibility for the slaughter. You have a god, Izzy?"

"There's no god in the slums. Just devils to hide from."

"
Elie's
been a good person to talk to. College professors don't think the way Navy does. Softer or something."

"I always told you she was soft in the head." Izzy tried to laugh; Andy smiled.

"You probably figure I'm going soft between the ears, too, but I found myself a padre to talk to. Old, retired trooper from
Wardhaven's
army. Someone I didn't have to explain how a place shakes when a shell goes off next door to you. In your buddy's hole, but, thank God, not yours."

"Think I should talk to him?"

"She's
dirtside
, and you're headed out again. What you
gonna
do if you get pirates shooting at you?"

Izzy leaned back in the booth and rested her eyes on the fake wooden timbers. "I don't let them kill my people. I'm not putting any of the
joes
in any more danger than I have to." The words came out so sure, so absolute. That part was rock solid in her heart. "Beyond that, Andy, I will try to take prisoners."

"How hard?"

"I wish I knew." "Good hunting."

Twelve

IZZY GOT LITTLE rest on the voyage out. If she wasn't on the bridge, she was at the CP established in the pod of containers just outside the
midships
radial 90 hatch. Majors Murphy and Erwin rode the
Patton
. Tran was with Stan on the Junior. Command relationships were cordial, if somewhat cool.
Izzy's
chief of staff, Major
Urimi
, had designed an operations order with gaping holes in it. "We'll fill these in as we go along. If not, maybe we don't go." He smiled encouragement to both Izzy and the majors.
Urimi
did a great balancing act.

Tru
Seyd
took time away from planning her assault on the station's data stream to develop and test a network between all the brigades' officers and troopers. As soon as Izzy knew something, it would be passed to everyone. First tests were a disaster. Every squad leader did not need to know everything Izzy knew.
Urimi
, the brigade commanders, and
Tru
worked out a decision tree for the network to keep it from bogging down at every turn.

Now that Riddle was in sight, the intelligence crew was hard at it. "About what we were led to expect. System layout has no surprises. Riddle has very little radio traffic.

We're mapping it as best we can from this distance,"
Tru
reported.

Izzy's
chief of staff began filling in the blanks on his operations plan. "Only one major urban area. I expect that is where we will land. I'll keep an open mind about that until we hear from your man Trouble."

"Good idea," Izzy agreed. "Dealing with minds that go in for piracy, slavery, and drugs, don't bet their center of gravity is where you'd put it."

"We will need more data,"
Urimi
said.

"Shit, look how tall that stuff is," Steve marveled as they pulled up the first field fully grown under Ruth's management. The stalks were taller than Trouble, the leaves broad and a pale green that almost seemed transparent. They worked their way down the rows, pulling each stalk, then stripping it of leaves. Those went into bags dragging behind them. The stalks were left to dry in the field, rotting to feed the next crop.

From one viewpoint, the thugs ought to be glad. Ruth had come through with a damn fine crop. On the other hand, would Zylon see it in her best interest to keep a professional farmer like Ruth happy, or was she now excess baggage to be tossed to the dogs? If Trouble worried about that, Ruth must be half crazy. Still, when he saw her testing the field next to the one he was working, she moved with her usual self-possession and purpose. Maybe there wasn't a problem.

"It'll be fun bringing that one down a peg or three," Trouble heard one guard mutter to another while eyeing Ruth at work.

"Depends on what the boss girl says," the one beside him answered, then cracked a whip. Zylon had come out to look the work over. She eyed the field hands, then glanced at Ruth and her tractor. Trouble wasn't close enough to catch her expression. Zylon couldn't be that stupid. Then again, those who used piracy and slaves had already shown a certain lack of grasp for human motivation. Damn, where is that invasion fleet?

Damn, this isn't telling us a hell of a lot. Izzy studied the information decorating the walls of her command post. It was thin. Maps of the planet had too many question marks. The general layout of the station was updated with blisters and pods of unknown origin and use. A lot of unknowns. Too many?

"Don't worry."
Tru
must have taken up mind reading along with tea leaves and electron bits. "Once we're docked, we'll hitch into their net and access all kinds of maps, blueprints, guides. That'll fill in the blanks fast enough for you to pass it along to the assault troops." "Trouble didn't have much luck cracking their firewall and encryption," Izzy reminded her.
Tru's
enthusiasm was unfazed. "I have access to the latest published tools, their backdoor accesses, keys, and plenty of computing power to crack them. If I can't get through their firewall, Major Erwin has loaned me a squad to drill a hole in a bulkhead and plug me into the other side of the damn firewall. One way or another, I'll hand you this station on a platter." Izzy hoped
Tru
was as good as she claimed. Taking this station apart piece by piece would not only slow them down but tip their hand big time.
Izzy's
legal staff warned her that the sooner this task force started shooting, the sooner someone would show up with a court order to shut them down. This task force was a combined operation of the weirdest sort, from cruisers to techies, from troopers to lawyers.

"Captain, Sensors here. A ship just jumped into the system." Damn! Izzy groaned. "Which jump and what kind of ship?"

"Beta jump. We don't have a good fix on the ship, but its jump pulse was medium power. Say a large freighter."

"Or a light cruiser," Izzy sighed.

Major
Urimi
tapped a screen; it changed to a
sim
of the Riddle system. Izzy rapidly explained the problem. "We're two days out from the station. Beta jump is usually a four-day cruise in at one gee. So, if there are no more surprises, this shouldn't be a problem. However, our line of retreat is starting to look a bit threatened."
Urimi
rubbed his chin, deep in thought. "Our margin for error is getting thinner and thinner." "Did you actually think it would get better as we went along?" Izzy tried to laugh, but it came out more like a growl.

"One could hope. I'll keep you up to date on what we find about our target. Do you want to return to your bridge?"

Six hours later, Izzy had made a lot more calls to keep
Urimi
up to date than he had made to her. The planet refused to give up its secrets. Izzy now had three unknown ships in-system. "They all came through the Beta jump, and they're about an hour apart," Sensors informed her. "All we've got on them is an engine signature."

"Let me guess. Daring class." Izzy sighed. "You got it. skipper."

"What are they, cheaper by the dozen?" Stan chimed in on tight beam from the bridge of the Junior.

"I swear," Izzy growled, "when this is over, I'm
gonna
look up somebody in warship disposal sales and hang '
em
."'

"First we got to get this over," Stan reminded her. "Can we put on extra acceleration?"
Urimi
asked.

"No benefit, Major, we're decelerating," Izzy answered. "So we wait," her chief of staff concluded.

"And make sure
Tru
has all her tools laid out and ready to go as soon as we dock."

It took three days to harvest Ruth's first crop, three hot days of yanking, ripping, and tearing. Rough work on the back and hands. Trouble had splinters and blisters to show for it. Tom had a gash in his foot. After supper, Trouble helped his friend hobble to the clinic. Actually, he just wanted to see Ruth. Her smile made the trip and the pain almost worth it. She cleaned out Tom's foot, then treated it. Seeming to understand he was extra, Tom limped off. That left Trouble tongue-tied, hunting for something to say to Ruth. Trying to figure out what he really wanted to say.

How do you tell a woman you admire her? That you appreciate her cool approach to tough situations, that you like being around her. It was easy to tell a man that... or another marine. It was a job. You did it. Well done.

The words didn't quite match what he felt for Ruth. "Crop's good. Best I've ever seen," he ended up saying.

"Damn right it is. If these idiots knew anything about farming, they'd have done more than just toss a seed on the ground. But then, if you're dumb enough to grow dope, you've already shown you're not too smart."

"You figured out what we're growing."

"Yeah. We grew pharmaceutical feed stocks back on Hurtford Corner. 'Course, no company would buy a crop from uncertified fields and farming methods. Drugs are the only things it could be. How much longer we
gonna
be here?"

That was a slap that brought the marine up short. "I don't know. I'd thought they'd be here already. Then again, I'm -one too sure what day it is."

"Me neither."

'"I want you out of here, Ruth. They're changing you. Making you rougher. I don't want them changing you."

"I always thought a man wanted to change his woman." "I liked you just the way you were the first time I saw you."

"Drugged and hogtied. That's a man for you." She slugged him in the arm. Gently, hardly more than a rub. He wanted to roll over like a puppy and have her rub him all over.

You know what I mean—the woman who took over caring for those who needed help. Who stood up to the slaver when no one else would. Who had him begging out of her for fungus. That's quite a woman."

"I had to. I couldn't let a guy like you take all the risks. A girl's got her pride."

"I'm a marine." Trouble shot back the usual answer. "I'm supposed to take chances."

She took his face in her hands, held his eyes so he had to look deep into hers. "And here I thought it was just for me." "It was."

There was a rap at the door. "
Tordon
. Ruth, you in there?" "Kick," Trouble whispered. "Yes," he answered.

"Get out here. Both of you."

Trouble led the way, keeping Ruth behind him. Opening the door, he preceded her down the steps of the clinic. "You want me?" he asked.

"Ms. Plovdic wants both of you. Ruth here's been little miss queen bee long enough. You've just been a lot of trouble. A guy came over from one of the other farms. Wanted to see our crop. He also shared a little idea of his for something special tonight. Plovdic loved it, thought it might be fun. Couple of guards here would like a go at Ruthie. To make it more

fun, you get to fight them naked, with knives. They kill you, they get her. They yield, Zylon gets you, or what they leave of you. What do you think of that?" he grunted. "Follow me."

Trouble didn't waste breath answering Kick's question. Like a good slave, he'd bowed his head, knowing what was coming even before the head guard got to the punch line. A slave had to accept it, do what he was told. The guards had beaten that into the field hands with casual whips and senseless brutality. Trouble shambled after Kick, not even letting the indrawn hiss of fear in Ruth's breath change the facade he wore for the guard.

"Hurry up," Kick growled, and he reached back to slap Trouble. Kick was so confident he controlled the beaten and starved field hands that he, like so many of the other guards, had taken to leaving his pod controllers in his pockets.

The marine broke Kick's neck before he could scream, much less reach for his controller. The crack of the bones sent a shiver through Trouble, a quake that shattered the passive, take-it person who had been a slave. With a feral grin, he turned to Ruth. "I didn't really like that idea. Did you?"

"Wasn't on my short list of things to do tonight. Now what do we do?"'

Trouble glanced around. Nobody in sight. "Back to the clinic. I want to see what he's got." They spent a precious minute going through Kick's pockets. Trouble stripped off his wrist unit and his shirt; the pants were ruined when Kick's bowels let go. "Not much to show for a

life of crime," the marine judged as he stuffed everything from the dead man's pockets into a first aid pouch. "You know any good places to disappear?"

"Girls at the vats have a few places they lay low from the guards. You can get away with it once in a while."

"Think they'll tell on us?"

"It ought to take the guards a while to realize we've hid and ask them, don't you think?" "Worth a try." Trouble stashed the body under a tarp behind machinery away from the clinic. He followed Ruth through a maze of buildings before she edged into a warehouse through splits in its corrugated metal wall. The dirt floor was covered three to five deep with stacks of hundred-liter drums.

"Some are full. Most empty," Ruth whispered. "Follow me."

Trouble helped her scale the stack; then they crawled along the top until they came to a dip. Nine barrels were missing, giving them a place to hole up out of sight. There was even a tarp and some rags. A place to rest. To hide. Maybe to cry yourself to sleep when the terrors outside were worse than any nightmare that had disturbed a woman's sleep. A place to rest before going back to the horror. Trouble settled in with Ruth beside him.

Her fingers were soft on his neck. He turned to her as she whispered in his ear, "Let's have a look at your collar."

Zylon Plovdic didn't like to be kept waiting, especially when she had a man present she wanted to impress. She had never been a patient woman. Patience was for people whose time was worthless. Zylon counted every moment of her life like gold.

"Where is Kick? How long does it take to find one worthless field hand and a ninny of a woman in love with her tractor?" Ruth really frosted Zylon, prancing around like she was the queen of green, using a few bits of know-how to lord it over all of them. She probably thought she could do a better job of running this farm than Zylon. Well, tonight she'd learn.

"Sounds like my ex-wife,"
Mordy
snickered. "Loved her tractor more than me. That's why I left her."

Zylon would show Ruth. A couple of the boys swore they could work that little mud analyzer just as well as tractor girl. Tomorrow, they'd show her and
Mordy
. And they wouldn't ride around all day with their noses stuck up in the air. Yes, it was time Ruth learned how you really ran a farm.