[Buchreihe] David Weber - Honor Harrington

Cauldron of Ghosts

Das erste Snippet von Cauldron of Ghosts - dem dritten Buch um die Abenteuer von Cachat und Zilwicki - ist da! Toni Weisskopf (die Chefin von Baen) hat es in ihrer Conference in Baen's Bar eingestellt ... und es sind die ersten 3! (In Worten: DREI!) Kapitel

Aber um Euch nicht länger schmoren zu lassen ...

Zitat von Toni Weisskopf, via Toni's Table in Baen's Bar

Never let it be said I don't love you guys. *snippet sound*

CAULDRON OF GHOSTS

by

David Weber & Eric Flint

Chapter 1

"So now what?" asked Yana Tretiakovna. She leaned back in her comfortable armchair, her arms crossed over her chest, and bestowed an impressive glower upon Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat. The first of whom was perched on a seat as he scrutinized a comp screen; the other of whom was slouched in an armchair and looking almost as disgruntled as Yana.
"I don't know," said Cachat, almost muttering the words. "I've been trying to get an answer to that very question from"-his finger pointed to the ceiling-"unnamable but no doubt exalted figures on high."
Taken literally, the gesture might have led to the conclusion that the hard-bitten atheist Victor Cachat had suddenly become a believer, since there was nothing beyond the ceiling other than the heavens. The large suite the three people were sharing was on the top floor of a former luxury hotel in Haven's capital that had been been sequestered for its own purposes decades earlier by the Legislaturalist secret police. After the revolution-the most recent one, that is-the new regime had tried but failed to find the rightful owners, since they'd all died or vanished. So, not knowing what else to do, they'd turned it into a combination safe house and luxury resort for guests of the government.
Clearly, though, Cachat was oblivious to the irony involved. Still half-muttering with disgust, he went on. "So far, I might as well have been putting the question to a streetlight. Except a lamp post would at least shed some light."
Anton's mouth quirked wryly. "I'm pretty sure the question you should be asking is 'where,' not 'what.'" He pointed to something on the screen.. "See that?"
Ennui was shoved aside by interest, as Victor and Yana both rose from their chairs and came over to look at the screen.
"And what the hell is that?" demanded Tretiakovna. "It looks like scrambled eggs on steroids."
"It's an astrogational display showing traffic to and from the planet," said Cachat. "And that exhausts my knowledge of the matter. I can't really interpret it."
Yana stared at the screen again. The ex-Scrag looked rather alarmed..
"Do you mean to tell me that this is how orbital controllers guide spacecraft to a supposedly-ha, ha, I'm dying of laughter here-safe orbit or landing? If so, I'm never flying again. Not even a kite."
"Relax, Yana," said Anton. "They don't use this sort of condensed display at all-leaving aside the fact that all orbital routes are selected and monitored by computers. No, I slapped this together just to see if my guess was right, which is that traffic is being shifted around to allow for some sudden and unscheduled departures."
He pointed to... this and that and the other, all of which looked like nothing much of anything to his two companions. "Think of these as boltholes, if you will."
Victor and Yana looked at each other, then down at Anton.
"So who's bolting?" asked Yana.
Zilwicki heaved his massive shoulders. For someone built along normal human rather than dwarf lord lines, that would have been a shrug.
"How should I know?" he said. "Victor will have to find out from his unnamable but no doubt exalted figures on high."
Yana said something in a Slavic-sounding language that was almost certainly unprintable. Victor, a bit of a prude when it came to coarse language, kept his response to: "Well, hell." And a second or two later: "Hell's bells."
****
Luckily for the dispositions of Cachat and Tretiakovna, relief from uncertainty came a few minutes later, in the persons of Kevin Usher and Wilhelm Trajan. Usher was the head of the Federal Investigation Agency, Haven's top domestic police force; Trajan, the head of the Republic's foreign intelligence agency, the Federal Intelligence Service.
Yana let them into the room, in response to the buzzer. As soon as they entered, Cachat rose to his feet.
"Kevin," he said, in a neutral tone. Then, nodding to Trajan: "Boss.."
"Not anymore," said Wilhelm. He glanced around, spotted an empty chair, and slid into it. Once seated, he molded himself into the chair's contours, as someone does who is finally able to relax after a long period of tension.
"You're being reassigned to the foreign office," he elaborated. "No longer part of the FIS."
He did not seem dismayed at losing the services of the man whom knowledgeable people, including himself, thought to be Haven's most brilliantly capable intelligence agent. When President Pritchard had notified him of her decision to transfer Cachat, Wilhelm's reaction had been: You mean I can go back to running a spy outfit, instead of being a lion tamer?
Usher took a seat some distance away from Trajan. "It's one hell of a promotion, Victor. If you, ah, look at it in the right light."
Victor gave him a dark look. "Under very dim lighting, you mean."
Kevin's expression, in response, was exasperated. "Oh, for God's sake, Victor! No, I don't mean using night goggles. I mean bright-really, really, really bright-floodlights. Your days of creeping around in the shadows are over. Over-with a bang and a boom. O-V-E-R."
Trajan's tone was milder. "Be realistic, Victor. Your exploits in launching Torch almost blew your cover completely as it was. They left it pretty tattered. Now, after Mesa? You-and Anton, and Yana"-he nodded in their direction-"just brought back the biggest intelligence coup in galactic history for... oh, hell, who knows how many centuries? Do you really think there's any chance you can stay in your old line of work? Even using nanotech facial and body transformations won't help you, since they don't disguise DNA. Sure, that'd probably be enough for a modest, barely-known sort of spy. But you? Anybody who thinks you might be coming their way will have DNA swabs taken of anybody who might remotely be you."
"StateSec destroyed all my DNA records except theirs the day I graduated from the Academy," said Victor. "Those are still closely guarded and I've been very careful not to scatter my DNA traces about." His tone of voice was perhaps a bit peevish.
"True enough," said Anton. "You won't find Special Office Cachat carelessly discarding a cup after he's taken a drink from it, I will grant you that. But come on, Victor-you know the realities perfectly well. As long as you were obscure and nobody was looking for your DNA, those precautions were probably good enough. But today?"
"Exactly," said Trajan. He nodded toward the window overlooking Nouveau Paris. "Word's already leaked out to the press. Within a couple of days-a week, at the outside-your name and likeness will be known to every person on Haven above the age of five and with any interest at all in the news. As well as-more to the point-every intelligence service in the galaxy, each and every one of which will be trying to get their hands on your DNA traces. Sooner or later, at least some of them are bound to succeed. So give it up. And don't bother arguing with me or Kevin about it, either. President Pritchart made the decision. If you want it overturned, you'll have to figure out a way to get her out of office."
Usher wiped his face with a large hand. "Wilhelm, he gets enough ideas on his own without you making suggestions.
Trajan looked startled. "What? I wasn't-" Then, looked alarmed. "Officer Cachat..."
"I wasn't planning to organize a coup d'état," Victor said sarcastically. "I am a patriot, you know. Besides, I don't blame the president for the decision."
The dark look came back. "Clearly, she was misled by evil advisers."
Anton started laughing softly. "Ganny warned you, Victor. It'll be your turn now for the video treatment! I'd have some sympathy except I don't recall you ever showing any for me because my cover got blown."
Zilwicki looked over at Tretiakovna. "What's your guess, Yana? Ganny thought the news services would go for either 'Cachat, Slaver's Bane' or 'Black Victor'."
"'Black Victor,'" she replied instantly. "Give Cachat his due, he isn't prone to histrionics. 'Slaver's Bane' is just too... too... not Victor.. Besides, look at him."
Cachat's expression was now very dark indeed.
"'Black Victor,' it is," announced Zilwicki. "Victor, you need to buy some new clothes. All leather, neck to ankles. Black leather, it goes without saying."
For a moment, it looked as if Cachat might explode. At the very least, spout some heavy duty profanity. But...
He didn't. Anton wasn't surprised. Victor's deeds were so flamboyant that it was easy to forget that the man behind them was not flamboyant at all. In fact, he was rather modest-and extraordinarily self-disciplined.
So, all that finally came out, in a very even and flat tone of voice, was: "Where am I being assigned, then? I'll warn you, if it's someplace that has an active cocktail circuit, I won't be any good at it. I don't drink much. Ever."
"S'true," said Yana. "He's boring, boring, boring. Well, except when he's overturning regimes and stuff like that." She actually giggled, something Anton had never heard her do before. "Cocktail circuit! Diplomatic small talk! I can see it already!"
Victor now looked long-suffering. For his part, Usher looked exasperated again.
"We are not morons," he said. "Victor, you-and you and you"-his forefinger swiveled like a turret gun, coming to bear on Anton and Yana-"are all going to Manticore. Tomorrow, so get packed."
Anton had been planning to get to Manticore anyway, and as soon as possible. He hadn't seen his lover Cathy Montaigne in more than a year. He hadn't yet come up with a way to do so that the many and manifold powers-that-be were likely to approve, though, and now it had been unexpectedly dropped in his lap.
He saw Victor glance at him and smile. There was real warmth in that smile, too, something you didn't often get from the man. Not for the first time, Anton was struck by the unlikely friendship that had grown up between he and the Havenite agent. Unlikely-yet all the stronger, perhaps, because of that very fact.
There were people in the world whom Anton liked more than he did Victor. But there were very, very few whom he trusted as much.
"And in what capacity am I going?" he asked Usher. "Somehow, even with all this new-found cordiality, I doubt that I've been assigned to Haven's foreign service."
Usher gave him a grin. "By all accounts-I was on Old Earth, remember, when the Manpower Incident went down-no star system in its right mind would assign you to its diplomatic corps."
"Yes, I remember."
It was hardly something Anton would forget. Nothing official had ever been said, and to this day Victor refused to cross any t's and dot any i's. Nonetheless, Anton was quite certain that Kevin Usher had engineered the entire episode. He'd stayed in the background, letting Cachat and the Audubon Ballroom do the rough work, but his had been the guiding hand.
Zilwicki's daughter Helen-no, all three of his children, since he'd adopted Berry and Lars afterward-were still alive because of Victor and Kevin. It was a reminder, if he needed one, that just because he didn't share someone's ideology didn't mean they didn't take it seriously themselves. Haven's political ideals were not Anton's-well, some of them were-but it had been those ideals that had shielded his family.
Suddenly, he was in a very good mood. The information he and Victor had brought back from Mesa had not only ended the galaxy's longest and most savagely fought war, and turned two bitter enemies into allies. Uneasy and hesitant allies, perhaps, but allies nonetheless. That information had also turned a friendship right side up. All the wariness and reservations he'd had to maintain about Victor Cachat were now draining away. Rapidly, too.
Something in Victor's expression made it clear that he understood that also. But all he said was: "True enough. I may be a problem child for the diplomatically-inclined, but Anton gives them nightmares."
"You still haven't answered my question, Kevin," said Anton.
Usher shrugged. "How the hell should I know? All I was told by Eloise was to round up all three of you-and Herlander Simões, of course-and take you to Manticore. Victor, you're not exactly reassigned to the foreign service." He gave Trajan a reproving glance. "Wilhelm was overstating things a bit. For one thing, Leslie Montreau was in the room along with Tom Theisman when Eloise made the decision to yank you out of the FIS. She nodded quite vigorously when Tom said that maybe she didn't want-his words, not mine-'that lunatic bull in a china shop' in her department."
"What's a china shop?" asked Yana.
"It's an antique phrase," Anton explained. "'China' was a name for a fancy kind of what they called... porcelain, if I remember right."
"Lot of help that is. So what's porcelain?"
"Stuff that Victor could turn into splinters easily."
"Lot of help that is too. Victor can turn almost anything into splinters."
Victor waved them down impatiently. "So to whom am I assigned, then?"
Usher scratched his scalp. "Well... no one, really. Eloise just thinks having you on Manticore will be essential to firming up the new alliance."
"Why? Anton knows as much as I do-and he's Manticoran to begin with.."
Usher was starting to look exasperated again. Zilwicki interjected himself into the discussion.
"That's sort of the whole point, Victor. I'm a known quantity, in the Star Kingdom. I've even had a personal audience with the empress. You, on the other hand, are a complete unknown. Well, almost. I think Duchess Harrington has a good sense of you. But no one else does, in Manticore."
Cachat was staring at him, obviously in complete incomprehension. It was odd, the way such a supremely capable man could be so oblivious to his own stature. That was a feature of Victor that Anton found simultaneously attractive and rather scary. In the right (or wrong) circumstances, people with little in the way of egos-more precisely, little concern for their egos-could do...
Pretty much anything.
"Just take my word for it, will you? They'll want to see you, and talk to you, before they'll settle down with any information you bring to them."
"What he said." Usher rose from his chair. "Oh seven hundred, tomorrow morning. Be down in the lobby, packed and ready to go."
Trajan rose also, and went to the door. "Have a nice trip," was what he said. What he meant, of course, was "have a nice long trip." And there seemed to be a little spring in his step, as if a great weight had finally been lifted from his shoulders.

Chapter 2

"Well, it would have been nice if they'd given us another week or so to complete our preparations, but I guess you can't expect too much from slavers." Colonel Nancy Anderson tapped her bottom teeth a few times with a thumbnail, in an unconscious mannerism that her subordinates had labeled grief-unto-others.
The "others" not being them, however, they were not perturbed by the gesture. Anderson was something of a martinet compared to most officers in Beowulf's Biological Survey Corps, but that wasn't saying much. The BSC was an intensely disciplined organization, but that was scarcely evident to those more familiar with other military services. Despite the innocuous sounding name, the BSC was a military outfit-one of the galaxy's elite special forces, in fact-but it had precious little time for the spit-and-polish formality so near and dear to conventional military minds. The BSC was quite capable of performing military theatre with the best of them; when it came to doing its actual job, however, its personnel were much more of the roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-on-with-it suasion.
"How do you want to handle it, Nancy?" asked her XO, Commander Loren Damewood. He was lounging back in a seat at one of the com stations, studying the data on the screen more intently than his relaxed posture and lazy tone of voice would indicate. "Their transponder's showing one of the flagged Jessyk Line codes. They've used it before-though maybe not this particular ship-when they did business here."
Colonel Anderson understood his point. Slavers didn't randomly show up at stations whose control was unknown to them. And just to make sure nothing had changed since they or another ship in their company last showed up, they'd use seemingly-innocuous transponder codes. Knocking at the door, as it were, with a special rhythm.
"They've got a cargo on board, then."
Damewood nodded. "And that's a two million ton ship, according to the sensors, so it's probably a pretty big one."
That precluded the simple and straightforward measure of disintegrating the oncoming slaver ship with Parmley Station's disguised but very powerful grasers once it got close enough. "Cargo" was a euphemism, dealing with slavers. The term meant human beings, alive and... certainly not well, given the realities of their situation, but still very far from dead.
"Plan C?" suggested a third officer in the command station. That was Ayibongwinkosi Kabweza, the commander of the Torch army's assault troops aboard Parmley Station.
Colonel Anderson took a moment to consider the question. She had no previous experience working with Torch military units and wanted to be sure she didn't handle the issue improperly.
The Biological Survey Corps had asked the government of Torch to provide them with a battalion for service on Parmley Station once it became clear that their plans for the station simply needed more forces that the BSC itself could provide. For all its wealth and power, Beowulf was still a one-star system and a member of the Solarian League. While the Beowulf System Defense Force was unusually large and powerful for a League member system, thanks to the existence of the Beowulf Terminus of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction, it had never needed-or maintained-a large army. Instead, it had concentrated on maintaining one whose quality was excellent, and its modest size had allowed it to be picky about the personnel it recruited and then equip them with the very best. Given the heightened political tensions of recent years, Beowulf had increased its military spending considerably, but the priority was to fully modernize its naval forces first. At least for the time being, Beowulf's available ground and marine forces remained sparse..
They'd made the request for assistance from Torch a little reluctantly. The training, methods and tactics of Torch's army units had been shaped by Thandi Palane and were based on those of the Solarian Marines, which were in many respects quite different from those of Beowulf's military, especially the BSC. Not only that, but the Royal Torch Army was still very much a work in progress, feeling its way towards its own sense of identity and organic traditions.
With no real experience to go on, it was hard to assess how well the two forces would work together. To make things still trickier, like many newly-formed units, Torch's assault troops were likely to have a chip on their shoulder when dealing with forces that had been long-established. They would detect patronizing attitudes in every careless or misspoken phrase.
If Colonel Anderson chose to employ Plan C, it would be Lt. Colonel Kabweza and her soldiers who would carry it out. Plan C had the nickname among her BSC agents of Plan Biggest Hammer Around. If the Torch battalion she commanded shared any of the traditions and attitudes of Solarian Marines-which they were bound to, since both Palane and Kabweza came out of that military force-they would apply ferocious shock tactics in a boarding operation. The Beowulfan military, like that of Manticore, was highly skeptical of the Solarian Navy's reputation, especially that of Battle Fleet. Not so, however, of the Solarian Marines. Unlike Battle Fleet officers and crews, who could easily go through an entire career without seeing any combat at all, the Marines were a real fighting force.
It was tempting. Slaver crews, no matter how vigilant and well-armed, had no more chance of resisting a full-bore close assault by Torch units trained to Solarian Marine standards than vigilant and toothy mice had of resisting bobcats. There wasn't even much chance that the cargo would get harmed, so swiftly and savagely would the attack be driven through.
Still, there was some chance. All it would take would be for one of the slaver ship's officers on the bridge to trigger the slave evacuation procedures. The cargo would be forced out of their compartments by poison gas and expelled into vacuum. There would be no logic to doing so, since under the circumstances there was no way the slaver crew could pretend they hadn't been carrying slaves. Some of the corpses would even be drifting in sight of the Station. But the slavers might figure that they were doomed anyway-not without some reason, being honest-and choose to commit an act of mass murder as a twisted form of reprisal. God knew the slave trade attracted enough sadists and sociopaths! Indeed, one might say that those were two of the trade's more essential qualities.
But even if no harm came to the cargo, there was no chance that Torch assault troops would leave any of the crew alive. Their tactics, like those of Solarian Marines, would lean entirely toward eliminate the threat, not taking prisoners. Not to mention that the majority of Torch's assault troops had once been slaves themselves, and somewhere around one-third were former members of the Audubon Ballroom. Their hatred for slavers would be personal and deep. No matter how well disciplined they were, their tendency would always be to give no quarter.
Anderson shook her head. "No, Ayi, I don't think so. This will be our first operation since we transformed Parmley Station into a fortress. If possible, I want to get some intelligence out of it."
The skepticism on the lieutenant colonel's face was obvious, but Kabweza didn't say anything. However prickly they might be in some respects, Torch assault troops had been trained by Thandi Palane. Unlike some Beowulfan units, they would not be inclined to debate orders they disagreed with.
"We'll try Plan F," said Anderson. "We may as well find out now just how effective our new counter-sensor techniques are." Seeing the expression on Kabweza's face, Anderson smiled and said: "Oh, fine, Ayi. If it'll make you happy, we'll use your people as backup instead of Loren's usual crew.."
She cocked an eye at Damewood. "If that's all right with you, XO."
"Huh." Damewood gave Kabweza a look from lowered brows. "A small number, Ayi. And nobody trigger-happy."
"None of my people are 'trigger-happy,'" said the lieutenant colonel. "We just don't suffer from the BSC's habitual slackness when it comes to smiting evil-doers."
That got a laugh from everyone on the bridge. Kabweza waved her hand in what might have been called a conciliatory gesture. "I'll head up the section myself, just to keep you from getting nervous."
The ship's captain and executive officer bestowed upon her the sort of look naval officers might give to a lieutenant commander who'd just announced she was going to assign some perfunctory duty to herself instead of an ensign.
"I need the exercise," Kabweza issued by way of explanation.
That elicited another laugh. The lieutenant colonel looked to be as much out of shape as a lioness hunting on the savannah. She wasn't nearly as big as Thandi Palane, but she'd passed through the same rigorous regimen in the Solarian Marines.
"It's true," she insisted.
Damewood rose from his chair. Unfolded from his seat, it might be better to say. The XO seemed to have a skeleton with considerably more bones than any member of the human species had a right to. There were rumors that he was the product of dark experiments done in complete violation of Beowulf's code of biological ethics.
No one really believed the rumors. Still, they never quite died away.
"I'll get my gear." He glanced at a different com screen which showed another ship already docked to the station. "How about the Hali Sowle? They could make a useful diversion if Ganny's willing to stick her neck out a little itsy-bitsy teeny tiny bit."
"I heard that, smart-ass." Elfride Margarete Butre-the "Ganny" in question-was slouched in a seat next to the bridge's entrance in a manner that seemed even more boneless than the one Damewood had assumed. In her defense, despite looking like a woman in her late thirties or early forties, she was at least a century older than the XO.
The matriarch of the clan that had once owned Parmley Station rose to her feet and planted hands on her hips. "Just what did you have in mind, Loren?" she demanded. She was rather formidable-looking, despite being less than one hundred and fifty centimeters tall. "Exactly in mind, I'm talking about. None of your damn BSC hand-waving bullshit."
Damewood smiled. "Nothing fancy, Ganny. It'd just be nice to have you pulling away from the station right as this new ship is arriving and cursing a blue streak on an open frequency. You could even directly warn the incoming people that they're about to be fleeced by the greediest and most unscrupulous bastards this side of Betelgeuse."
He paused, his eyebrows rising as if he'd been struck by a sudden thought. "You do know how to curse, don't you?"
Her reply put to rest any doubts he might have had-or anyone this side of Betelgeuse, for that matter.
****
"Will you listen to this?" Ondøej Montoya, the Ramathibodi's com officer was grinning widely. "This kind of talent shouldn't be hidden under a bushel."
He pushed a button and the transmission he'd been receiving was broadcast into the bridge.
The ship's captain frowned slightly. She found Montoya's habit of using archaic references rather annoying. What the hell was a bushel? But the frown faded quickly enough, as she listened to the broadcast. Before long, she was grinning herself.
"-une vraie salope! And as for you, dickless, I wouldn't wish you on a Melbourne humpmonkey! Although you'd probably do okay with my second cousin Odom-that's short for Sodom; his family dropped the 's' after his third conviction for fumbled rape, on account of he'd become an embarrassment to them-when he gets out of prison in maybe fifty or sixty years. I'll make sure to tell him to look you up although I doubt you'll still be alive by then, the way you swindle people."
Captain Tsang chuckled. "What's she so riled up about?"
Montoya shrugged. "Hard to tell, exactly. Near as I can make out, she thinks they overcharged her for everything and didn't give her anywhere near a fair price for her own goods."
Marième Tsang studied the image of the ship slowly receding from the huge bulk of Parmley Station. "She doesn't look to be carrying our sort of cargo, although you never know. What's the name of that ship?"
"The Hali Sowle." The com officer shook his head. "I couldn't find her registered in our data banks. But..." He shrugged again.
That didn't mean anything. Vessels plying the slave trade-even those which weren't carrying slaves themselves-did their best to stay off registries. From the look of the ship, she was just a tramp freighter who'd probably arrived at the Station more by accident than design. But as Captain Tsang had said, it was impossible to be sure without examining the vessel's interior.
Captain Tsang wasn't too worried about being swindled herself. Parmley Station was a known if unofficial transit hub for the slave trade, and the Ramathibodi was not a tramp. She was owned-not formally, of course-by the Jessyk Combine, one of Manpower's many subsidiaries. The people running Parmley would no doubt drive a hard bargain, but they'd keep it within limits or run the risk of losing most of their business over time.
Which brought to mind...
"Who is running Parmley these days, Ondøej? We haven't come through here in... what's it been now? Two T-years?"
"More like two and a half." Montoya worked at the console for a moment, pulling up another screen and scanning it for a few seconds. "According to this, the station is currently held by Orion Transit Enterprises. It says here that that's a subsidiary of an outfit based in Sheba's Junction named Andalaman Exports. For whatever any of that's worth."
"Not much," grunted Tsang. Sheba's Junction was hundreds of light years away, almost on the other side of human-occupied space. She didn't know anything about the system beyond the name, and the only reason she knew that was because it was unusual.
By now, the Hali Sowle had moved far enough away from Parmley Station to no longer pose a traffic hazard.
"Get us a docking approach, Lt. Montoya," Tsang ordered, shifting for the moment into formalities.
"Yes, Ma'am," replied Montoya. One of the things the captain liked about the ship's com officer, despite some of his annoying habits, was the fact that he didn't abuse the slackness that characterized relations between officers and crew members on a slave ship.
The inevitable slackness, given the self-indulgence of slaver ship companies that was one of the perks of the business. "Running a tight ship" was simply impossible, under those circumstances. All a captain could aim for was to maintain the necessary competence at the work itself.
Montoya was competent. So was the Ramathibodi's pilot. Docking would take at least half an hour and Tsang wasn't needed for any of it. So, she slouched back in the seat at her command station and pulled up her financial records. Studying them-basking in them, rather; gloating over them-was her favorite form of relaxation.

Chapter 3

Loren Damewood finished keying in the sequence he was using from his specialized software. Through his fingertips, he could feel the vibration of the locks opening. The sensations were very slight, of course, since he was wearing a skinsuit and gauntlets. If he'd been inside the ship instead of in the vacuum outside, that would have made an audible noise. Not a loud one, so it wouldn't be noticed by anyone aboard the Ramathibodi unless they were standing nearby. That was unlikely, though. Damewood had deliberately picked a cargo bay personnel hatch, and cargo bays tended to be big, empty, boring spaces unfrequented by crew people unless there was actual cargo to be transferred. And the only sort of "cargo" which would be transshipped at someplace like Parmley Station was highly unlikely to come from a standard bay like this one.
Still, he was miffed. There shouldn't have been any noise, if proper maintenance had been done.
But he wasn't surprised. "Proper maintenance" and "slave ship" were not terms that went together very often. There wasn't much difference between the sort of people who served on the crews of pirate ships and those who worked on slavers. A few pirate captains managed to maintain tight discipline on their ship, but most didn't even try. Neither did slaver captains.
And there was a bright side. Cruddy maintenance usually went along with cruddy security, at least for anything except critical systems.
The hatch that he and his companions were gathered around began to slide open. Damewood's program wasn't doing that directly. If it had, telltales would be showing on the bridge that someone was almost certain to spot.. Instead, his specialized software had insinuated itself into the ship's own operating programs. The Ramathibodi was opening that hatch itself, with the added modification that it was doing so without triggering any telltales or alarms.
"In we go," he murmured. To himself only, of course-all coms were silenced.
He didn't lead the way into the ship. That would have been silly, with Ayibongwinkosi Kabweza and her people present. He was the tech expert in charge of disabling security, not one of the assault troop gorillas.
The lieutenant colonel slipped through the hatch as soon as it had opened far enough to make that possible. The three members of her section had finished passing through before the hatch had time to fully open.
Loren waited until the hatch finished moving before he entered the airlock behind them. "Trigger-happy gorillas," he murmured. To himself only, of course.
Once they were in the airlock, they had to wait while Damewood's program cycled it through the process. It had been a vacuum when they entered; by the time they exited, the atmosphere would match that of the ship.
****
In Parmley Station's number one cargo bay, Nancy Anderson and two members of her team faced the captain of the Ramathibodi. She'd brought five members of her own crew to the parley.
The cargo bay was a big one for a station which had not originally been intended as a freight transfer point. Designed to accommodate the sometimes large equipment items required by a space-going amusement park, it was slightly over thirty meters in its longest dimension. The slavers had advanced a third of the way in before coming to a stop. They were now separated from the BSC trio by a distance of about seven meters.
"What's your pleasure?" Anderson asked. "Full trans-shipment, partial-or are you just looking for supplies and R&R?"
"What R&R?" That came from one of the slaver crewmen standing a little behind Captain Tsang. It was a sarcastic remark, not a question.
"This is the biggest amusement park within fifty light-years." Nancy's lips twisted into a little smile. "Even if most of the rides don't work."
"Shut up, Grosvenor," said the Ramathibodi's captain. To Anderson she said: "Partial trans-shipment. We've got more labor techs than we can sell, where we're going. May as well drop them off here."
The fact that the Ramathibodi only wanted a partial transshipment set the tactical parameters of the situation. If they'd been looking for a full trans-shipment, the BSC team could have simply waited until all the slaves were off the ship before launching their attack. Instead, it would be more complicated.
Anderson nodded. "Anything you want to pick up?"
"Pleasure units, if you have any. Those are always easy to sell. Heavy labor units, too."
"Heavy labor units, we've got. Pleasure units..." She paused, before smiling nastily. "That depends on what you're willing to pay."
"I'd want to see 'em first."
"Well, sure." Anderson gestured toward the heavy battle steel box attached to one of the compartment's bulkheads by a maglock. "But why don't we start with the labor tech transaction?"
Tsang shrugged. "Whatever suits you."
Anderson wanted to give Loren Damewood and Ayibongwinkosi Kabweza as much time as possible to get into position and prepare their attack. The dickering and exchanges needed to complete the first transaction should provide them with plenty.
She and the Ramathibodi's captain moved forward to stand beside the steel box. For obvious reasons, the sort of electronic transfers that were the normal method of paying for goods and services were unsuitable for the slave trade, except in very secure locations like Mesa itself. Instead, recourse was made to more ancient forms of payment, involving the modern equivalent of cash transfers.
Such transfers were sometimes needed in perfectly legitimate businesses, so a well-developed and secure method for conducting them had been worked out centuries earlier. The method relied on the use of credit chips issued by one or another recognized major bank, usually though not always a bank headquartered on Old Earth itself.
Anderson keyed in the combination to unlock the battle steel box, and its lid slid smoothly upward. Inside were a large number of credit chips, issued by the Banco de Madrid of Old Earth. Each of those chips was a wafer of molecular circuitry embedded inside a matrix of virtually indestructible plastic. That wafer contained a bank validation code, a numerical value, and a security key whose security was probably better protected than the Solarian League Navy's central computer command codes. Any attempt to change the value programmed into it when it was originally issued would trigger the security code and turn it into a useless, fused lump. Those chips were recognized as legal tender anywhere in the explored galaxy, but there was no way for anyone to track where they'd gone, or-best of all from the slavers' perspective-whose hands they'd passed through, since the day they'd been issued by the Banco de Madrid.
Captain Tsang leaned over far enough to examine the chips, but she didn't touch them. In fact, she was careful to keep her hands well away from the box. Any attempt to take the chips before the transaction was complete would result in a missing hand or two.
She took out a small portable device and aimed it in the direction of the chips, still being careful not to let either her hand or the unit come any nearer to the box than was necessary for the immediate purpose. She spent a few moments studying the readout; not long, just enough to verify that the chips were legitimate and that there were enough of them to cover any transactions they'd be carrying out that day.
That done, she turned to one of her subordinates and said, "Start bringing 'em out."
She then glanced around, looking for the needed exit from the compartment.
Anderson pointed to a hatch just to her left. "We'll file them through there."
As each slave passed through the hatch, Tsang's hand unit would record the amount owed until enough was reached to remove one of the chips from the box. There shouldn't be any dickering needed, not for labor techs.
Just to be on the safe side, though, she said: "We'll want standard Verge price."
"Not a problem," said Anderson, nodding.
Tsang took a couple of steps back from the box. The damn things made her nervous, even though she'd never heard of one malfunctioning.
That done, she relaxed. This looked to be a simple, straightforward matter, now that the preliminaries were done.
****
Trigger-happy gorillas or not, once they were inside the ship the small unit of assault troops waited for Loren to bring out more of his specialized equipment and scan the area.
"That way," he said softly. His pointing finger steered the section down the corridor branching off to the right.
The progress that followed was odd. The four assault troops moved forward quickly, leapfrogging down the corridor, one person providing cover while the others took more advanced positions. Meanwhile, in the rear-sometimes quite far to the rear-Damewood came up much more slowly. He wasn't precisely "moseying along," but an uncharitable observer might have used the term anyway.
Neither Kabweza nor any of her subordinates would have done so, however. Indeed, the thought never crossed their minds. The XO had a reputation for being something of a wizard with his sensor gear. That ability could make a world of difference to the outcome of their mission. Torch assault troops might be the modern analog of Viking berserks, but analogy was not identity. More than three thousand years of civilization had elapsed, after all, since the legendary Ragnarr Loðbrók led his longships across the North Sea to plunder France and the British Isles.
"Two hatches up, on the left," Loren said. "That'll let us into the slave quarters through a storage compartment. It's unoccupied."
****
It also turned out to be very full, almost to the point of being impassable without hauling supplies into the corridor, which would have been too time-consuming.
Not quite. It helped that the battle armor worn by the assault troops made it quite easy to crush whatever cartons, containers and cans needed to be crushed to clear a path.
One of those containers, as it happened, contained some sort of bright purple fruit juice. So it was on a garish note that they emerged into the slave quarters, as if they had camouflaged themselves to blend into a psychedelic landscape.
The compartment they entered was packed almost as full of people as the one they were exiting had been packed with supplies and equipment. The people were plastered against the walls, staring at them with wide-eyed alarm.
Kabweza had been expecting that, so she'd had Sergeant Supakrit X lead the way. As soon as he entered the slave quarters the sergeant opened the faceplate of his armor and stuck his tongue out.
Supakrit X was an escaped slave. His tongue displayed the genetic marker used by Manpower to identify their products. The marker was unique and difficult to duplicate-impossible, really, if it was examined at close quarters.
Which his marker was, almost immediately. A small young female slave came up to him, quite fearlessly, and pried his mouth further open with her fingers. Supakrit, who was much bigger than she was, leaned over to help her in the project. She gave the marker on his tongue a short but intense examination and then stepped back.
"It's real," she announced. "But they're not Ballroom, I'm pretty sure."
Supakrit straightened up and grinned. "Bunch of maniacs. No, girl, we're from the Royal Torch Army." He hooked a thumb at Commander Damewood. "We're working with the Biological Survey Corps."
Hearing that, one of the older male slaves grinned even more widely than the sergeant. Very few slaves had yet heard of the new former slaves' planet of Torch. But some slaves knew the truth-some of it, anyway-about the BSC. Apparently he was one.
The young woman was scowling, however. "Don't call me 'girl.'"
Kabweza moved forward. "Give us a name, then."
"Takahashi Ayako. You can call me Ayako."
The fact that she had a full name and was willing to use it publicly was significant. Manpower did not give names to its slaves. They were raised with the last three or four digits of their slave number serving the purpose. Over time, though, slaves managed to create a society of their own, with adoptive parents who took most youngsters into their shelter. Manpower's managers tolerated the practice, because it served their own purposes. It was simpler and cheaper to have slaves raise the youngsters who came out of the breeding vats instead of Manpower having to do it directly.
But while they tolerated the custom of slave families-and even made an effort not to break them up if possible-they did not tolerate the slaves doing so openly. A first name could be used publicly, including one chosen by the slave herself. After all, even animal pets had names. But a slave who used the surname of their parents in public was considered to be a borderline rebel and was likely to be punished.
Apparently, Ayako was such a borderline rebel-or someone acute enough to have realized almost instantly that Manpower's authority was about to be abrogated.
Despite the Japanese name and the placement of the surname first, Takahashi didn't look the least bit Oriental. Her eyes were hazel, her hair was a sort of redbrick color, and her skin was several shades darker than that of most people from East Asia.
But that wasn't atypical of human beings two thousand years after the diaspora from Earth began-even leaving aside the way Manpower's gengineers scrambled genetic lineages for their own purposes. One of Kabweza's trainers when she'd been in a Solarian Marines boot camp had been named Bjørn Haraldsson, despite to all outward appearances being of purely African descent.
"Are you here to free us?" asked the man who'd grinned in response to Supakrit X's announcement.
"Yes. But for the moment, we need you to just stay put," said Kabweza. After a very brief pause, she added: "Except for one of you who should come with us. That'll speed up the introduction."
"Me," Takahashi said immediately. "I know everybody. It's because I'm so friendly"-she gave Supakrit a sharp glance-"except when people call me 'girl.' Well, and other stuff."
She was an attractive young woman. She'd probably drawn the unwelcome attention of some of the slaver crew if there hadn't been enough pleasure slaves aboard.
Judging from the skeptical expressions on the faces of several of the slaves in the compartment, Takahashi's claim to superb friendliness was not universally shared. But if nothing else, the woman wasn't shy. That ought to be enough. Heavily-armed and very dangerous-looking people who arrive to free people from bondage don't really need much in the way of a friendly introduction, after all.
"Come with us, then." Ayibongwinkosi moved toward the hatch at the opposite end of the compartment. "The rest of you, like I said, just relax. This will all be over pretty soon."
****
Kabweza's progress was slow. Not only was the compartment packed with people, but the same armor that had made it so easy to plow through containers required her to move carefully here. It would be easy to crush flesh and even break bones without hardly noticing.
Once at the hatch, she waited for Damewood to come up. Loren fiddled with his equipment for a few seconds. What exactly was he doing? Ayibongwinkosi didn't know and wasn't about to ask.
Click. The sound of the locks drawing back was quite audible.
"Slobs," muttered Damewood.
The likelihood that the slight sound had alerted anyone on the other side of the hatch was low. Still, Kabweza passed through the hatch by rolling and coming to a crouch, her flechette gun covering the area.
Clear. Still in a crouch, she swiveled the other way.
The corridor was clear there also.
She gestured, waving the rest forward.
Takahashi was the last one to emerge. "Which way to the crew quarters?" the lieutenant colonel asked her softly. "Do you know?"
Ayako nodded and pointed in the direction Kabweza had first covered.. "That way."
"Are you sure?"
The young woman got a pinched look on her face. "Yes," she said curtly. "I'm sure."
Ayibongwinkosi didn't inquire further. She nodded to Supakrit X and he took point.

Ankündigung

[Buchreihe] David Weber - Honor Harrington

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