To Honor You Call Us (38 page)

“Detail, ready your weapons.”  The shooters raised their rifles to their shoulders and worked the charging handles, each mechanism stripping a 7.62 x 51 mm round from the rifle’s box magazine and pushing it into the chamber.  “Aim.”  Fifteen index fingers moved from ready positions alongside the trigger guards, pushed the safety mechanisms forward into the fire position, and came to rest lightly on the triggers.  Fifteen men aimed, three shooters for each condemned man, each framing the tiny bead at the top of his weapon’s front sight in the round aperture of the rear and then aligning both with the center of a condemned man’s chest.  Unbidden, a line from a centuries old film, he could not remember the name, came to Max’s mind—a line shouted by a condemned man to his own firing squad:  “Shoot straight you bastards, don’t make a mess of it.”  Don’t make a mess of it, indeed.  He took a shuddering breath.  “Fire.” 

Max clearly heard fifteen separate weapons discharges, notwithstanding his hearing protection filters.  The echo seemed to hang in the air for an eternal instant, lasting less than a second, after which all five men, with five separate thumps, fell to the deck like puppets with their strings cut.

“Safe your arms and shoulder.”  The men returned their weapons to safe and shouldered them, making the range “cold” once more and allowing Doctor Sahin to step into the target area and check the prisoners.

Which he did.  It took less than a minute for him to examine all five men.  He stood and formally addressed Max, his voice sounding hollow and distant to ears still stunned by the firing of fifteen rifles at the same time in a confined space.  “Captain, I have examined the prisoners and certify to you that they are all dead.”

“Very well.  Let the record reflect and let all those assembled witness that sentence was carried out and that the condemned were pronounced dead at” he looked at the time display on his percom, “06:04 hours, on 30 January 2315.  Ten HUT.”  All came to attention.  “Dismissed.”  From start to finish, it had taken four minutes.  The living filed out of the room, leaving the dead where they fell, sightless eyes still open, three tiny and nearly bloodless holes clustered within a hand’s breadth on each chest, the smell of powder mingling with the sour scent of two men’s evacuated bowels.

In a few minutes, corpsmen from the Casualty Station would come to take the bodies away to cold storage in the ship’s morgue, eventual cremation at a station or on board a hospital ship, and—if someone wished to claim the remains—a long, slow trip for their ashes on a low-priority transport back to their home worlds.  Until then, though, they lay silent and alone, their bodies now empty of whatever had driven them to live and love and eat and breathe and strive and struggle and, in the end, to betray their own people and suffer death as a result. 

Later, sensing that there had been no movement and no living occupant in the compartment for more than four minutes, the computer turned off the lights, plunging the room into total darkness. 

Chapter
18

02:27Z Hours (11:18 Local Time) 2 February 2315

Doctor Sahin shaded his eyes from the unaccustomed glare of the sun, well, of
a
sun at any rate, as he stepped out of “his” microfreighter onto the landing pad.  He took a deep breath, his first of unprocessed air in more than two years, expecting to scent the exotic aroma of a strange, new world.  Instead, all he could smell was the burned rock aroma of thermal concrete scorched by landings from the big passenger shuttles that were the bulk of the spaceport’s traffic.  The exotic strange new world scent would come later, he supposed. 

In less than two minutes, a ground vehicle came across the spaceport’s vast distances to the pad.  A bored, dirty driver scanned the doctor’s credit chip, debited his account, lowered a tow coupling, inserted it into the socket on the freighter’s front landing gear assembly, and gestured for Sahin and his pilot, Able Spacer Fahad, to climb aboard.  He put the vehicle into drive and headed toward a hangar, towing the freighter slowly behind, clearing the pad for the next ship. 

After a short drive with the silent, sullen driver at the wheel, the microfreighter was situated in the hangar with about a dozen ships of roughly similar size.  A spaceport official then appeared and handed Sahin a padcomp presenting him with several forms for his electronic signature, certifying that the ship did not have hazardous cargo, had been inspected within the past year, he would pay all hangar charges promptly, he understood that he should remove any valuable property from the freighter and deposit it in the spaceport’s vault or in one of the high-security cargo hangars provided at a reasonable charge, the Spaceport Authority disclaimed responsibility for all thefts, and he would not attempt to taxi the freighter out of the hangar himself. 

Finally, Sahin and Fahad, each carrying a nondescript overnight bag, got into one of a pair of smaller ground vehicles parked near the door to the hangar and closed the door.  There was no steering wheel.  Instead, there were twenty buttons on the dashboard, labeled:  Incoming Travelers, Departing Travelers, Freight Terminal, Customs, Ground Transport to City, Air Passenger Terminal, and Hangar 1 through Hangar 14.  Max hit the button for Incoming Travelers.  The vehicle quickly took them, undoubtedly following an electronic track in the pavement, to a building marked in several languages “Incoming Travelers.”  Entering the large building, they got into a fast-moving line and came to a desk behind which sat a pleasant man wearing the tan and medium brown robes that most of the natives, plus the doctor and Fahad, were wearing.  He was of apparently Arabic descent, as were most of the inhabitants of this world, in his middle fifties, with a short, neatly-trimmed beard and sharp, intelligent brown eyes.  Eyes that the doctor could easily see belonged to a very perceptive man.

He turned to the doctor and said in Standard:  “ID cube please.”

Sahin produced his cube and handed it to the man, who placed it in his reader.  The cube was, of course, an excellent forgery manufactured by the crack Intelligence Section on Admiral Hornmeyer’s flagship.  As the Navy had access to the same equipment that the Union Identification Service used to make the real cubes, naval forgeries were indistinguishable from the real thing.  In conformity with the standard intelligence procedure of making the lies as close to the truth as possible, most of the information contained on the cube was correct, save that there was no evidence that Sahin was a Naval Officer.

“Ibrahim Sahin.  Occupation: physician and independent trader.  Born:  Tubek.  My sympathies to you, sir.  Citizenship:  Terran Union.  Large number of entry visas for various worlds in the Free Corridor and elsewhere, short visits, perfectly ordinary for a trader. 
Provisional
masters’ license, small craft only.  You might want to work on those piloting scores, Doctor, they are too low to allow you to fly anything solo in our space.  Trader’s Licenses and Interstellar Commerce Permits from several jurisdictions.  Comprehensive Medical License from the Interspecies Coalition for the Licensure of Health Care Providers.  A
very
difficult credential to obtain.  Most impressive.  Additional credentials in natural science, interest in reptiles.  What is the purpose of your visit, Doctor?”

“Business.  Purchasing victuals for various freighters owned by a concern related to my family enterprises.  Purchases to be transported on my
Shetland
microfreighter now in Hangar Three.”

“Length of stay?”

“Short.  Anywhere from a day or two to two weeks at most.”

The immigration official, a Lieutenant Colonel according to the discrete insignia worn as a broach on his robe, gave the doctor a hard look.  He was an experienced and senior officer in his world’s Immigration and Customs service, and also had unacknowledged connections with its Intelligence establishment, all of which meant that he was a man of unusual perceptiveness.  Every formal indication and every rule said this doctor was what he said he was and should be admitted, but something was telling the colonel otherwise.  He had a great deal of discretion, but not enough to detain or to refuse a visa to a man with Doctor Sahin’s credentials when he did not have a shred of any specific and identifiable justification for suspecting him. 

“Everything seems to be in order.  Welcome, Doctor Sahin.  Enjoy your stay on Rashid IV.  The doctor stepped aside for Fahad to complete the same process. 

After he was finished with Fahad and both men had moved on, the Lieutenant Colonel entered a series of apparently random characters into his work station, resulting in his screen displaying a menu that was nowhere on any official site map.  He filled in some of the blanks, copied the ID information from the doctor’s and Fahad’s ID cubes which his work station had stored, and advised people in high places that both men should be watched.  Carefully.

Still in the Arriving Travelers building, Sahin and Fahad went to an open area labeled Device Compatibility.  There they found about two dozen booths, each with a table containing a compact array of electronic equipment, a computer display, and a credit chip reader.  Both men took out their flipcoms, distant descendants of the “smart phone,” used by virtually all humans on all but the most resolutely non-technological worlds, and set them on top of an analyzer pad, of which there were four at each table.  After a few moments, the computer screen split itself into two columns, one column for each flipcom, containing identical text.  “Welcome to the Galactic Telephone and Telecommunications (GT&T) Device and Communication Service Compatibility Analyzer, a service of GT&T Interspecies Enterprises, a GalactiComm Corporation.  Copyright 2314.  All Rights Reserved. 

Device:  Nokia/Sprint Uhura 1966 Ultra

Universal Band, No Metaspacial Capability

This device is compatible with local network.

Note:  Your voice/data plans do not include communications on this planet.

Options:  To purchase unlimited local voice/data and access to JIVDCS for fourteen days (note:  your pre-existing plan will be charged for all JIVDCS communications)—212.14 Union Credits, 1058 Rashid Dinars, 87 Romanovan Sesterces ; To purchase 400 minutes of voice and 250 SIDU of data—89.79 Union Credits (other currencies not accepted for this plan).

Please insert credit chip in slot and make selection: (a) unlimited voice/data, (b) 400 minutes, (c) no purchase at this time.”

The doctor inserted his credit chip and selected (a) for both phones.  “Please input personal identification number.”  He punched in the six digit code.  “Your account will be debited 414.28 Union Credits, plus a 2.85 Union Credit Transaction and Convenience Fee.  Do you agree?  Press A for yes and B for no.”  He pressed A. “Thank you.  Your account has been debited in the agreed upon amount.  This debit will be reflected on your next statement as a charge from ‘GT&T Enterprises, Comm. Rashid IV.’  Thank you for your patronage.  Please retrieve your flipcom(s).  Have a nice day.  Goodbye.”

“There, Fahad, our phones are enabled on this planet now,” he leaned and whispered into the pilot’s ear, “but, assume that every word you say is being recorded.”

“
Der Fiend hört mit.
”  The Enemy is listening—a maxim famously imprinted on every field radio issued by the German Army in World War II. 

“Indeed.  Now, one more stop and we will be ready to leave.”

“Good, this bag is getting heavy.”

The two men went around a corner and came to a rather ornate and impressively decorated area of the building, at the entrance of which hung a large sign reading:  Currency Exchanges and Banking.  Inside the area were several booths labeled with the names of numerous banks, both local and interstellar.  Sahin and Fahad walked up to one of the largest, that for The Royal Standard Chartered Bank of Rashid IV.  There was no line.  The two sat down at a desk in front of a handsome young man with dark skin, black hair, an aquiline nose, and dark eyes. 

“Welcome to Royal Standard Chartered Bank,” he said, pleasantly.  My name is Abdul Hamani.  How may I be of service today?” 

“I need to purchase some currency,” answered Sahin.

“What kind of currency will you be purchasing?”

“I will be needing Rashid Dinars, 1000 Dinar notes.”

“Very good.  And, what will be the purchase medium.”

“This.”  The doctor gestured to Spacer Fahad, who unzipped his overnight bag and produced one of the twenty kilogram gold bricks taken from the
Loch Linnhe
.  The man’s eyes widened ever so minutely before he resumed his mask of bland amiability.

He opened a drawer and pulled out a small, gray box with an even smaller gray screen, placed it on top of the gold brick and pressed a button.  He read from the screen and typed some numbers into his computer terminal.  “Gold, twenty kilograms.  Point nine, nine, nine, nine, fine.  At the current rate of exchange, we will purchase at 808,325 Dinars.”

The doctor smiled.  “That, young man, is
yesterday’s
rate.”  He pulled out his flipcom, opened it with a flip of his wrist, and touched a few keys.  “At the current rate on the Rashid Central Commodities Exchange, and allowing your establishment the standard two point five percent discount/handling fee, the buy price would be 816,052 Dinars.  But, given that this is an unusually large amount of gold to be used in a straightforward currency exchange transaction, and given that the market is unusually volatile given the present war, I would be willing to accept a price of 815,000 on the understanding that I may have need to exchange gold for currency at some point in the future, at which time I will expect to receive the full current rate of exchange, minus, of course, the bank’s two point five percent handling fee.”