Trading in Danger (27 page)

“What are we going to do with ’em?” Lee asked, gesturing.

A good question. She wasn’t about to put those bodies in with food in the cooler and freezer, but they couldn’t be left here.

“Space ’em,” she said. “We don’t have storage. I’ll document identity, and then we’ll put ’em in the escape hatch and open it.” The thought of kneeling beside them with the recorder, documenting prints and ID implants and so on sickened her, but it had to be done. She deserved to do it, after that surge of glee.

“All of them?” Lee asked, looking at Gary’s body.

“No,” Ky said, shaking herself out of that. “Of course not Gary… we’ll find room in the freezer for him. But the others. Get a small dolly from Alene, but don’t let her come up here and see this. When you’ve dumped them, ask Mitt what he wants to use to clean the mess. I’ve got to get it off me—” She paused. No, better do the ID first, while she was still dirty. She went back to the galley, washed her hands and face, put on gloves from beneath the sink, and looked up the protocols for “Death in Transit, Accidental, Victim, Certifying identity of” in the Code, which was the closest category she could find.

Then, when she had the information safely coded, she helped push the dolly down the corridor, helped pile the three bodies in the emergency access against the outside, pushed the controls to open the outer lock.

She felt better when the corpses were safely out in space, where they could do her no harm. Slightly better. She had Mitt shut off the showers to the passengers so that she could shower long enough to get really clean and run her uniform through the ’fresher. And still the shock, the grief she had no time to deal with hovered somewhere in the near distance, waiting to pounce when her attention wavered.

She would not let it waver.

Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation had shifted to a more familiar civilian style of corporate organization; clients seemed reassured to find out that MMAC had a business-suited CEO and CFO instead of a commander in uniform. So did the many civilian employees who kept MMAC’s central office working smoothly. Its city offices, two floors of the Sugareen Tower West, reflected the profitability of the business, from the polished marble paneling to the hand-woven Ismarin rugs and the leather-upholstered furniture. Pictures on the wall of the reception area were originals, exotic game animals and wilderness scenes, suggesting adventure without hinting at violence. All scenes of soldiers in uniform, or combat machinery, were elsewhere in the private offices of executives or in the conference rooms.

The current CEO, despite his elegant suiting, had been one of the four field commanders until five years before, when Old John Mackensee himself picked him for what they called “taking point with the clients.” Three years at a regional support headquarters, with TDY to the city offices, where the civvie staff got used to the quiet, almost cherubic redhead. A year as understudy to Stammie Virsh, who was as craggy as a storycube general.

And now Arlen Becker had the watch, and one of his operations had disappeared when the Sabine ansibles went down. Old John had been on the horn within an hour; Old John missed nothing.

“I don’t have to tell you we didn’t do it,” he’d said.

“Tessan has a good record,” Old John had said. “But ISC is going to be all over us when they figure out who’s there.”

“We could volunteer that,” Arlen said.

“Breach of confidentiality,” Old John said.

So Arlen sat on it, carrying on the day-to-day work of the corporation, which kept him busy even when there wasn’t a crisis. MMAC owned more than military matériel, and employed more than mercs. He was expecting the call that finally came from ISC, though not the rank of the individual who showed up in person in his outer office, demanding to see him.

“She says she’s a special adviser to the chairman of the ISC board,” his secretary murmured into his implant.

“What do we have to clear?” Arlen asked.

“You have that regional sales conference.” Boring, and he was just there to put pressure on the vice presidents.

“I won’t go—they can gossip among themselves. What else?”

The list flashed on the implant visual. Nothing that couldn’t be shifted a few hours…

“Send her in.” Arlen glanced around his office—immaculate as always—and set the perimeter safeties. ISC was rumored to employ assassins, but only as a last resort. He didn’t think they’d try one for a first contact, but no reason to be stupidly complacent.

ISC’s special adviser to the chairman was a short, dark-haired woman with a silver streak over the crown of her head. She wore a slightly crinkled dusty rose linen dress, shoes he recognized as stylish and expensive, and carried an old-fashioned ladies’ briefcase in tooled and beaded leather, a pattern of cabbage roses in soft pinks against maroon leather. Rings glittered on her hands; her earrings looked like natural emeralds; they matched her eyes. Her glance around his office missed nothing, he was sure.

He came around his desk, and she offered her hand; he shook it. Small, but firm and cool. She had the calluses of someone who had used a small firearm on a regular basis for a long time.

“Perhaps you’d like to sit here?” he asked, waving her to the cluster of chairs and low couch near a coffee table.

“First, I’d like a straight answer to one question,” she said, not moving. It was absurd; she barely came up to his chest, and yet he had the feeling that he was the schoolboy and she was the teacher.

“Certainly,” he said, inclining his head.

“Were you hired to blow up the communications and financial ansibles in Sabine system?”

“No,” Arlen said. “No one asked us to, and if they had we would not have taken the contract.”

“Did you blow them up by accident?”

“To my knowledge, we did not blow them up at all,” Arlen said. “And that’s two questions.”

“So it is,” she said, and moved to the seating area. She chose the seat Arlen would have chosen in her position, and set her briefcase on the low table. As she reached for the clasps, she said, “Why don’t you sit down, General? This is going to take a while.”

He was almost amused at her effrontery; he sat down anyway, and said, “I’m not a general anymore, you know.”

“Oh, but you are,” she said. She opened the briefcase flat; one side held a compact portable miniansible; the other a rack of data cubes. “Generals don’t quit being generals when they put on business suits. You commanded the third in the Wallensee affair, the Jerai border war, and the defense of Caris. Quite able as field commander though I have to wonder why you didn’t make use of your amphibious capabilities on Jerai… On paper it looks like you could have flanked the enemy…”

He could feel his neck getting hot; this would not do. In his mildest voice, he said, “Are you a military historian, ma’am?”

“Good heavens, no. A military analyst. Quite different function. No one in their right mind would let me near students.”

Despite himself, he was intrigued. “You know my background, ma’am—what’s yours?”

“Backwater world, nasty little cultural conflict. My side won or I wouldn’t be here.”

“You… were involved?”

“Community defense,” she said. Her eyes twinkled suddenly; her smile was wickedly pleased. “Come now, General, you didn’t think ISC would send someone to talk to you who
wasn’t
a combat veteran, did you?”

“You?” He could not get past the fact that she was a plump little middle-aged woman in a crinkled linen dress and fashionable shoes. A pink dress, for the gods’ sake.

Her brows rose. “I’m sorry, General, to upset your stereotypes of military women, but on my homeworld, we’re all short and if we aren’t starved we put meat on our bones. True, I was only in the local militia for three years, but I can assure you I have been shot at and returned fire. My boss felt you deserved to have someone listen to you who understood your problems.”

“I… see.” He shook his head slightly. “I’m sorry—I just—”

“You come from a world where the average height is almost twenty centimeters taller than the average on my world,” she said briskly. “I understand that. Now—I am recording—” She did not ask permission, he noted, and he doubted that the office’s security systems were interfering with the recorder. “You say that you weren’t hired to blow the ansibles, and you have no information suggesting that your force blew them—is that correct?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Excellent. Care to tell me why you didn’t inform ISC of that at once when you heard the ansibles were blown, and you knew you had a force insystem?”

“Client confidentiality,” he said.

“Right,” she said. “So—when did you find out?”

“The… relay ship, outside the system, reported losing contact. That was”—he queried his implant—”Thirteen forty-two hours, UTC, on Central 346. The relay ship was on a two-hour schedule, though. We heard from other sources that the actual time of ansible loss was…”

“Twelve oh-two hours. Yes. You have documentation of the relay ship’s notification?”

“Yes, but—”

“We may need to see it later. Now—this was not a full-scale operation, is that right?”

“Right. Advisory, with a five thousand man support team.”

“John Calvin Tessan your onsite commander?”

“Er… yes.” How did she know that?

“Your organization, and your field commanders, all have acceptable ratings with ISC,” she said. “And I presume you wish to keep that rating…”

“Yes, of course.”

“We’re going to have to ask you to post a bond, I’m afraid,” she said in a tone that carried no regret whatsoever. “Even though you have an acceptable rating, even though we have no evidence yet that your personnel were responsible, they are onsite with weapons capable of taking out two ansibles.”

“A bond?”

“It’s an unusual situation, you see.” She paused, rubbed the tip of one carefully polished pink fingernail along the edge of her briefcase. “It’s been six years since anyone last intentionally destroyed an ISC ansible. Political group on Neumann’s, you may recall. We dealt with them.”

ISC had invaded the system—as they had invaded systems before where someone destroyed their ansibles—and that political group no longer existed.

“Although we had considered the possibility we now face, in previous adverse events the military force at hand was the one which intentionally destroyed ansibles. That’s a simple situation. If in fact Mackensee is not responsible here, either by accident or design, as you have stated, then we are faced with something we had considered in theory but not faced in practice. Policy, written in advance of experience, requires that we obtain a bond from you, to be returned upon proof that your personnel were not responsible.”

“What kind of bond?” Arlen asked warily.

“The usual. Monetary, or a lien on equipment.” She smiled, the kind of feral smile that Arlen knew very well from his own people. “Not quite ruinous, but serious.”

“What kind of proof of our noninvolvement will you require, and who will adjudicate this?”

“It is not the practice of the ISC to seek or submit to the judgment of civil courts, as I believe you already know,” she said. “We will determine that involvement or noninvolvement on the basis of evidence collected by our own personnel. On the other hand, since we are apolitical except with respect to the communications business, we have no motive for finding one way or the other.”

“You’re apolitical,” Arlen said, spreading his hands on his knees. “I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s quite true,” she said. “We do not care who is the government anywhere; we are not concerned with the crime rate, the state of the planetary environment, or any of the other things which motivate other corporations to interfere in local politics. Thus we need no lobbyists, no political backing. We have one focus: maintaining our interstellar monopoly. No one else can do what we do, and even if they could, we wouldn’t let them.” She ticked off these points with those delicate pink fingertips.

“But surely—”

She shook her head before he could get that thought out. “We haven’t diversified. That is our strength, that others would find weakness. We do one thing well—superbly, in fact—and we protect our market. Since that market is not limited to any one planet, it is in no government’s interest to interfere. Some of them are too stupid to realize that, but we educate them.” She smiled again.

“All right, you’re apolitical. And you want us to post a bond. With whom?”

“You have a choice, since Mackensee hasn’t had a prior incident with us. We will discount the amount if you choose to place it with us, or you may choose the full amount placed in escrow at Simmons & Teague.”

“And the amount?”

“Twenty million, which I believe is in the range of your contract amount with Secundus.”

How the devil did she know that? Curiosity almost swamped outrage.

“There’s another thing,” she said. “There’s a civilian ship captain in the Sabine system of some interest to us.”

“Oh?” Curiosity gained ground; outrage subsided. If ISC wanted something, he might have wiggle room on the bond issue.

“I understand from your literature and your history that you do not usually interfere much with neutral shipping, but clearly this operation has not been ordinary. If you could explain what procedures are likely to have been followed, and the likelihood of this individual being unharmed, it would be much appreciated.”

By whom? he wondered. Did the CEO of ISC have an errant grandchild on the scene or something? “Who is it?” he asked.

“Vatta Transport, Ltd., out of Slotter Key. Their chief financial officer’s daughter was on her first voyage as commander, and was reported in Sabine system just before the ansibles went down. Any information you receive or could provide—”

Vatta Transport, Ltd. He didn’t have to look that name up. Vatta had a star rating with their offplanet suppliers. They weren’t the cheapest, but they were reliable: their on-time delivery rate was above 97 percent.

“I don’t know anything now,” he said, spreading his hands again. “We’ve heard nothing since the ansibles went down. But I can say that our policy is always to disrupt neutral shipping as little as possible. Of course we recognize Vatta Transport as a legitimate shipping company and would have no reason to cause harm.” If a young, inexperienced captain hadn’t done something stupid, that is. He hoped very much that Mackensee hadn’t killed off the daughter of the CFO of a company they needed, but he knew it was possible. “With the ansibles being blown, the onsite commander might have chosen to check out every ship in the system—board them, choose one for a courier, and intern the others.” He hoped the Vatta ship had been chosen for courier, in which case it would show up in a few days, in range of an ansible, and they’d have some hard data.

“If you hear—”

“I will let you know. Should I contact you and Vatta, or just you?”

“Either is fine. Now, about that bond…”

From her tone, no wiggle room there at all. And whatever profit they’d thought they’d have out of their employer, posting that large a bond would knock it back to a bad idea and a contract they should never have signed. That
he
should never have signed. “I have to get Sig to sign off on this, you know,” he said. “Let me just contact him…” Though of course he would agree. No one could afford to have the ISC as an enemy.

Undoing the damage the mutineers had done proved more difficult than Ky had hoped. She dared not trust any of the passengers to help. Some of them might still want to mutiny, no matter what they said. She had no specialist with expertise in reconfirming an AI’s original command set.

“It’s an old system, though,” Beeah Chok said.

“Don’t I know it.” Ky stared at the panel she’d just pulled. “But that doesn’t make it better.”

“It might. Do you have the system manual anywhere but in the system?”

“I had one in my implant.” If the mercenaries had returned it… but they hadn’t. “And there may be one in the command console.” Ky clambered up. “I suppose you want me to look.”