Prophet of ConFree (The Prophet of ConFree) (20 page)

"Secure? Good. We are Captain Janyk Sears. What are its intentions, sir?" the captain asked.

"Intentions? We've killed most of the starjackers and we are detaining those that surrendered to us. We're sorry about the damage to your ship. But you get your cargo back and if your crew or passengers have any wounds, we'll be happy to look at them. We've accomplished our mission here. We have no further intentions."

"Our thanks, sir. Our ship's doctor is handling what injuries we do have. It is with the ConFree military?"

"That's correct. Please tell us what ship this is, and how the pirates boarded you."

"We're the Moon Maiden from Ardoth, on our way to Galgos in the Gassies with a valuable cargo of rare woods and other general cargo. The pirates were in a small yacht. They sent out an all-ships distress signal. We are required to stop for that. We did so, and they seized our rescue boat and boarded us. Then they disabled our ship's ID pulse and took us into stardrive. We don't know what the destination was. But something went wrong with our drive while in vac run red and we had to return to normal vac."

"We did that, Captain. Please ensure your stardrive is functional before launching. If there are further difficulties, we'll be pleased to assist you."

"It does not intend to confiscate our ship?"

"Not at all, Captain. ConFree doesn't do that."

"We were told ConFree military ships were patrolling the Gulf and they might confiscate our ship."

"You were told wrong. If we confiscate any ships they will be pirate ships or slaver ships, and those will be returned to the rightful owners – if the rightful owners are still alive."

"Well. We wish to thank it, sir. We are mighty grateful."

"We’re here to kill pirates – that's all. You have a good voyage, sir."

And that was our first action against pirates – the first of many.

Δ

"All right, Delta," Doggie said. "We want males of fighting age. Anyone you can find. Kill them if they're armed, otherwise detain." We were walking through hell in our A-suits. It had been a magnificent little town, built of marble and stone, sparkling in the sun. I had seen it from overhead before we hit it, and it looked like a resort for the super-rich, but it wasn't. It was a town built by slavers and pirates on an obscure Gulf frontier planet called Starhaven by an outfit called the Golden Gang, for themselves and their camp followers. Now it was glowing – nothing but ash and ruins and smouldering corpses. We had antimatted the place from low orbit and now we were poking through the scorched edges of town, looking for survivors.

"Quite a set-up, huh?" Ice asked.

"Yeah, they say it's been here for years. The message is there is no escape for slavers. If they build a nest, we eradicate the nest. Our combat vids are being integrated into ConFree's proprop message, that's what Doggie says. Echo recovered a lot of slaves – they were in a compound out of town. We're still counting them."

"This one's alive," Arie said, poking at what looked like a human-shaped chunk of charcoal. He was clearly a slaver – his weapon lay in the dirt by his side.

Ice shot the burnt man once in the head and he stopped moving. She didn't say a word. Neither did we.

"Come on, boys and girls, we've got to find some survivors we can use," the Professor said. "There's thousands of slavers here and surely some of them survived. This is wonderful! I can hardly wait to talk with them. Let's look over here." The Prof sometimes puzzled me. He was a little older than the rest of us and he was a perfect gentleman at all times and never seemed to get upset. Everybody liked him. He had been designated the squad info officer for our piracy mission and was very enthusiastic about it.

"There! There!" Scout said. "In that building with no roof – two of them. Let's see your hands! Now! Hands up or we fire! Get down on the ground! Now, you bastards!" Two sullen-looking young men showed their hands and dropped into the wreckage of the destroyed house.

"Man, these are slavers or I've never seen one," Doggie said. "Good work, guys."

Δ

It was always fun to see the Professor at work. It was amazing how he could get those subhumans talking. We would interrogate pirates on the
Wasp
in four little rooms we called the talk cubes. As we entered the room the pirate was seated in a chair with a flexible chain around his neck, tightly strapped to the wall behind him. It was always so tight the captive would have trouble breathing. Both hands were also chained tightly to a little table-like ledge that was part of the chair. This time it was one of the two young creeps we had recently captured.

"Oh, what a shame," the Prof said. "He's so young. Is that chain too tight, young man?" The captive gave a grim nod. The Prof touched a control on the chair ledge and the neck chain loosened. The captive took a deep breath, seemingly exhausted. He had dark hair and a narrow face with brownish skin. I didn't know what race he was.

"Are those hand chains too tight?" the Prof asked.

"Yes," the captive whispered.

"Well, then, we’ll loosen them," Prof smiled. They loosened up and the slaver was able to slightly raise his hands.

"Do you feel all right? You may call me Professor. Please tell me your name." Another big smile.

The captive hesitated, then replied. "William."

"Oh, my goodness," the Prof said, turning to me in distress. "He's lying to me."

I brushed my shockrod lightly to the captive's face and he screamed and slammed the back of his head against the wall trying to escape the surge of raw electricity from the shockrod. We had the good guy-bad guy routine all set, and I was the bad guy.

"You're sitting on a brainscan," I informed him. "If you lie to the Professor, you'll hurt his feelings. Don't do that again."

"Well," the Prof said. "We've started off on the wrong foot here, um – why don’t you tell me your real name."

"Gary. Gary Chernoval. Gang name Gaga. It's true."

"And so it is," Prof said, as he scanned the result on the datascreen on the wall above the captive:
NO DECEPTION INDICATED
.

"Gary, would you like some dox?"

Gary stared at the Prof in wonder, then replied. "Sure."

"Prophet, can you get us some dox?"

"Certainly." I brought in two cups and popped the top for the captive. He brought the brew carefully to his lips as the Prof loosened the chains enough to permit it.

"Now, Gary, here's what we’ll do," the Prof said. "I want to know all about your history with the Golden Gang, from the earliest days up to the present. I want to know names, dates, events, raids, places, strategy and tactics, sources of information, where your slaves go, communications methods, ships used and starjacked – in short, everything you know. We've got lots of time. If your information proves useful, if you cooperate fully, you will stay alive, and we may even release you. What do you say?"

"All right," he said. "I can do that."

"Just one thing. If you leave out anything important, I will find out about it. And some of the questions I will ask you are questions to which I already know the answers. Do you know what will happen to you if you attempt to deceive me?"'

Gaga shook his head no.

"Tell him," the Prof asked me.

"I'll cut off little pieces of you but keep you alive while I toast you with electricity," I said. "I'll cut off your ears. I'll cut off your fingers. I'll cut off your balls. I'll cut off your arms. I'll skin you alive until you beg for death. Then I’ll toss your body into the vac."

"I'd hate to see him do that to you," the Prof said. "You strike me as a good boy who has just gone astray. You've had bad companions. Let's talk. I have a long list of questions that need answers. Cooperate with me, and I promise you will not regret it. Would you like something to eat? Yes? Prophet, get us something to eat, and something for yourself as well. Gary is going to cooperate. There's no need to threaten him."

Δ

The interrogation of Gary Chernoval must have been going quite well because the Prof seemed fascinated with what this particular creep had to say. The rapport between them seemed so warm that I really had nothing to do in my bad guy role except to fetch dox on occasion. On the third day of the interrogation, I was starting to doze off when I became aware of a slight difference in the Professor's demeanor. It was so subtle that I was unsure what it was, but I could tell something had changed.

"So," Prof said. "Tell me about the Brothers in Blood. This was just before you moved to the Golden Gang, correct?"

"Yes sir. They operated from Drusweaven. That's in the Outmark border sector, an independent world. It was always a wild, lawless place and they welcomed anyone who had money to spend. So the Brothers set up shop there, kept it very secret and raided Gassies worlds for slaves, then sold 'em on Drusweaven. We were very successful."

"Gassies worlds, you say."

"Yes sir. We stuck pretty close to the border sector because nobody bothered us there. It was chaos by then. The System was long gone, and we were the only law and order, if you get what I mean, sir."

"Yes, I get it. Did you ever venture into the Outvac?"

"Um, well, on occasion we would hit a frontier world or two if we figured there was little chance of an immediate ConFree response. We didn't want to fool with ConFree, no sir, but some of those little frontier worlds were quite tempting."

"Hmm. What's the furthest you went into the Outvac?" I knew the Prof pretty well by then. He had his sleeves rolled partly up, and I noticed in surprise that the Prof's little arm hairs were rising up like the fur on a startled cat. The Professor was not even looking at the captive. What the hell?

"Oh, um, I guess Veda was the furthest we went," Gaga said. "Yeah, that was scary all right. But we did the raid and hightailed it out of there…" The Professor leaped to his feet and came down gasping with a gleaming boot knife that he slammed right into Gaga's left hand, pinning it to the table. The captive screamed as a fountain of blood squirted out of his hand and the neck chain slammed his head against the wall. The Prof continued grinding the knife into Gaga's hand, standing over the captive and glaring at him. The Prof's face was pale and twisted, and his eyes were gleaming with hatred.

"The name of the ship." He almost whispered it. "The name of the ship you used for cover, to get landing rights." A couple of troopers had opened the door, investigating the screams. I motioned them away, and they cautiously closed the door.

"It – it – it was the Ringgold," our prisoner gasped.

"The Ringgold! You
BASTARD!
And what did you do with your captives, you subhuman beast?
WHAT DID YOU DO WITH YOUR CAPTIVES? ANSWER
or I'll slice out your eyes!" The Prof yanked the knife from the captive's hand, spraying blood, and poised the bloody blade before the prisoner's eyes.

"I – I – we brought them to the – to Drusweaven." Gaga was terrified.

"Professor," I said. "Professor, please. Let's continue this later. Let me bandage his hand. He's losing blood. We can continue later. Come on." I guided the Prof out of the cube. He was shattered, his face twitching. Troopers were standing outside watching us. I took him into an empty cube and closed the door. He collapsed into a chair. He was crying, sobbing, his shoulders trembling.

"What is it, Professor?" I asked.

"The Ringgold," he choked. "The Ringgold. They took my little girl – my daughter! And he knows where she is. We must continue the interrogation!"

"We will, we will. But not now! You've got to calm down."

"He's got to know where she is! He's got to!"

Δ

We resumed the interrogation after the Prof composed himself. The medics had bandaged the slaver's hand. The Prof was glacially calm, his face a stony mask. Gaga was paralyzed with terror. We offered no more dox or kind words. Things were quite serious now.

"You will begin at the moment you first joined the Brothers in Blood," the Prof said, quietly, "and tell me everything. Continue until the end of the Veda raid and your return to Drusweaven. Then I'll have more questions for you. If at any time you attempt to deceive me, or leave anything out, or upset me in any way, I'll ask my assistant to start chopping off fingers or ears. All right – begin."

Gaga chattered away like a parrot and we recorded it all. Later Prof wrote up his report. It took him a full day. He let me read the report. It was a masterpiece. We discussed it in the lounge over dox.

"It’s a very impressive report," I said. "You left nothing out, and everything in it is important and detailed."

"Yes, I agree. I'll forward this to the Andrion Deep with a copy to Galactic Information and Gassies Operations. It will be labeled Immediate/Urgent. And that is justified, because this is the first mention of the Drusweaven System in relation to piracy or slavery. Before I joined the Legion, I researched the Ringgold raid extensively. Drusweaven never came up. I never even heard of the place before. Fleetcom bungled their reaction to the raid and never found the Ringgold. They failed to find the startrack at all."

"So Drusweaven could still be an active slaver base."