Ride the Star Winds (28 page)

The armored cars had yielded two useful heavy machine guns and a good supply of ammunition. Their crews, however, had removed the crystals from the laser cannon before abandoning the vehicles, must have taken these with them. This was annoying, but Grimes felt a grudging respect for the men. They were not altogether devoid of the soldierly virtues.

The night was quiet.

The sentries, with their powerful night glasses, maintained their vigil on the roof. The only thing that they reported was a fire of some kind in the city. Grimes went up to look, it did not seem to be a very big conflagration. He and Su Lin caught a late night TV news session on the playmaster and there was no mention of it. There was no further mention of the riot that they had seen earlier. And, they learned to their amusement, Colonel Bardon’s armored cars still had the Residence under siege. It would not be long, said the smug announcer, before the notorious pirate commodore was brought to justice.

Grimes turned in.

Su Lin turned in with him.

They knew, both of them, that no matter what the outcome would be they would not be enjoying much more time together. They had been thrown together by circumstances beyond their control—and other circumstances, inevitably, must soon send them on their separate ways.

They would enjoy what they had while they had it.

When Grimes awoke, in the early morning, Su Lin was no longer with him although her place in the bed was still warm. Had there been some kind of emergency? But had this been so he would have been called.

Then the lights came on as the girl entered the bedroom, bringing with her the tray with the steaming teapot, the cups, the sugar bowl and the lemon slices. They sipped the hot, fragrant drink in companionable silence, their naked bodies in close contact.

She said, at last, “You pirate chiefs do yourself well, don’t you?”

“Only when they have pirate molls like you to look after them . . . .”

There was a gentle tapping at the door.

Wong Lee came in. He looked at the couple in the bed with an odd combination of regret and approval; certainly there was no censoriousness.

“Your Excellency,” he said, “a body of troops approaches from the city.”

“Hover-tanks?” asked Grimes.

“No, Your Excellency. There are vehicles, but they seem to be personnel carriers.”

“See that all weapon posts are manned. Oh—and better get the galley staff to make plenty of tea and piles of sandwiches. We may have the chance to grab a bite before the shooting starts.”

“All that is already in hand, Your Excellency.”

“Good man!”

Grimes jumped out of the bed, ran through to the bathroom. He made a hasty toilet, despite the fact that he was joined there by Su Lin. He even found time to depilate, knowing that a scruffy, unshaven commanding officer does not inspire the same confidence as one who looks clean and bright and on top of the Universe. He dressed again in his Far Traveler Couriers uniform, with the pistol thrust under the red sash. Followed by the girl, who was clad in form-fitting black blouse and slacks, he went up to the lookout platform.

The sun was just up.

The column of personnel carriers, led by a command car, was still a long way off, approaching slowly along the winding road from the capital.

Raoul Sanchez came to him.

He said, “I’ve set up the two heavy MGs to cover the drive.”

“What makes you think they’ll use the drive, Raoul? Those are foot soldiers. They have almost the same freedom of movement over any sort of terrain as a hover-tank.”

“I had to put the guns
somewhere,
sir.”

“Sorry, Raoul. And, after all, guests usually try the front door first.”

He could see quite clearly now, with the aid of the powerful binoculars, the men sitting in the personnel carriers. They were wearing full battle armor. This would restrict their freedom of movement but would protect them from almost anything short of a direct hit by a heavy artillery shell. Too, a laser cannon would fry them inside their carapaces but Grimes didn’t have any laser cannon, only a few pistols.

He absentmindedly munched a ham sandwich that somebody had brought him. There wasn’t enough mustard.

“They’re stopping,” said Sanchez unnecessarily.

They were stopping, had stopped.

Two tall figures got down from the command car.

Bardon, decided Grimes. Bardon, and . . . ?

In spite of the all-concealing battle armor he knew that the other one was a woman by the way that she was moving.

So Estrelita O’Higgins was making political capital by being present at the kill.

Soldiers were disembarking from the troop carriers, forming up on the road. How many of them were there? Grimes swore under his breath. There must be at least five hundred of them. Five hundred well-armed (definitely), well-trained (possibly) professional soldiers against less than one-fifth that number of rank amateurs. Even Grimes was an amateur in this sort of warfare. The Residence was not a spaceship.

Somebody must still be in the command car, using a sonic projector.

“Surrender! Come out, all of you, with your hands raised! Show a white flag to surrender!”

There was a small flagstaff on the lookout platform; so far as Grimes knew it was rarely used. But the halyards were intact. He went to them, cleared them.

“A flag . . .” he muttered. “A flag . . .”

“Sir, surely not . . .” Sanchez sounded heartbroken. “You’re not showing the white flag, sir?”

“Who said anything about a
white
flag? I want something, anything, that’s as unlike a white flag as possible!”

“Here!” said Su Lin, thrusting a bundle of some black cloth at him. He took it from her and suddenly realized that she had removed her shirt.

But it would do.

The black flag—the black flag of piracy, Grimes’s enemies would say—rose jerkily to the masthead, stirring lazily in the light morning breeze.

Bardon put on a show.

Grimes watched it with grudging respect. There was more to the man than he had thought. He must have made a study of Australian history. Perhaps he had gotten the idea from Major Jackson’s report to him on his conversation with Grimes, when Grimes had said, “You’ve come to the wrong shop this time, Major Johnston . . .” The New South Wales Corps, with rattling drums and squealing fifes, had marched on Bligh’s Government House to place him under arrest. A drum and fife band preceded Bardon’s Bullies, playing some derisory tune that Grimes could not identify.

And those musicians were unarmed. Bardon was trading on Grimes’s decency, gambling that he would not open fire on the bandsmen.

Grimes at last recognized the tune.
Lillibullew.
It had never been one of his favorites. Nonetheless, he thought wryly, the bandsmen deserved to be shot for murdering it.

But how would it look, how would it look on TV screens throughout the planet—and, eventually, on Earth—when men whose only weapons were fifes and drums were mowed down by a man who had just hoisted, atop his castle, the black flag of piracy?

They were taking their time marching up the drive toward the main entrance of the Residence—the bandsmen in their colorful dress uniforms, Bardon behind them, with Estrelita O’Higgins striding, in step, beside him and, after them, the rank upon rank of robotlike troopers.

Down came the troopers, one, two, three . . .

And four, and five, and six, and . . .

Those drummers couldn’t keep a tune. The beat was ragged, becoming more so. Men were having trouble keeping in step. But was that arhythmic throbbing coming from ground level? It was not. It was surging down from the sky in ragged waves.

Whistles shrilled.

The approaching army halted. Men looked upwards. Weapons were deployed to sweep the sky—but not fired. There was a ship there. A civilian ship, not a warship. An
Epsilon
Class star tramp. It would not be the first time in history that neutral onlookers had been present at a battle, as sensation-hungry voyeurs.

The spaceship steadily lost altitude. Was she going to land? Did Captain Agatha Prinn intend to rescue her one-time Commodore?
Keep out of this, you silly bitch!
Grimes was thinking, was saying aloud.
Keep out of it! If you do land you’ll get shot up and Bardon’s story will be that you were caught in the crossfire . . .

But
Agatha’s Ark
was not landing. She hovered there, the cacophony of her inertial drive deafening. And was that a cargo hatch opening in her dull, pitted side? It was. Things were falling out, tumbling earthwards, bursting as they hit the ground. Bardon’s men stumbled through the stifling, white cloud, the machinery of their armor clogged by the fine particles. They looked like men caught in a sudden blizzard. Grimes was reminded of pictures he had seen of Napoleon’s Retreat from Moscow.

There was a lull in the bombardment.

Grimes, accompanied by Su Lin and a half-dozen of the Residence’s domestic staff, ran out over the flour-caked lawn and grabbed the dazed Bardon and Estrelita O’Higgins, hustled them inside the building. Sanchez, with another party, captured Bardon’s command car without firing a shot. In it was the TV equipment that would be covering the taking of the Residence.

It was covering, now, the ignominious defeat of Bardon’s Bullies.

Very shortly afterward other TV units in the city were covering the riots that immobilized the remainder of the Terran garrison and drove the members of Estrelita O’Higgins’s police into hiding. Those who were lucky.

Chapter 46

“I didn’t think of it myself,”
admitted Agatha Prinn. “It was my agent, actually, Mr. Dennison of Starr, Dunleavy and Bowkett . . .”

“Dennison,” said Su Lin, “is one of us. But go on, Captain Prinn.”

“Mr. Dennison’s idea was that I lift off as scheduled and then just sort of drift over the Residence, make a landing and snatch Grimes to safety. I said that I didn’t fancy landing on anybody’s lawn, no matter how big. I like to have something solid under my tail vanes when I set down. Why, I asked him, couldn’t I, sort of accidentally, drop something on Bardon’s boys? ‘But you don’t have any bombs,’ he told me. ‘You’re just a star tramp, not a warship. And, in any case, if you play any active part in a battle, no matter on whose side, you’ll be as big a pirate as your pal Grimes.’”

“ ‘I’ve a cargo of flour,’ I told him. ‘In bags. And, while it was being loaded, some ill-intentioned person planted an incendiary device in the middle of it. Luckily this will be discovered while I’m hovering over the Residence, to play my last respects to my old Commodore. So I will have to jettison cargo . . .’”

“Which you did,” said Grimes. “I’m eternally grateful to you.”

“Gratitude isn’t enough, Commodore. Who’s going to pay for the delay while I load a fresh cargo? Who’s going to pay for the cargo that’s been destroyed?”

“Lloyd’s of London,” Grimes told her. “I imagine that the jettison will come under the heading of General Average.”

“But as the owner of
Agatha’s Ark
I shall still be held liable for my share of the expense involved.”

“I’m sure that Rear Admiral Damien will see you right.”

“Eventually. But the tide runs very slowly through official channels.”

“Then, Agatha, would you accept a job on this world, a sinecure, for a very short time and at a
very
high salary? Terms to be negotiated.”

“What is it?” she asked suspiciously.

“I’m the ruler of this world until things get sorted out. A new president has to be elected and approved. Until it’s done I’m the only one with legal power. Liberia has no Examiner of Interstellar Masters and Mates. Yet. Do you want the post?”

“What’s the catch?”

“There’s no catch. All you have to do is supervise just one examination. Mine. As I read the law, a Liberian Master’s Certificate of Competency will be good anywhere in the Galaxy. My real Certificate, issued at Port Woomera, was suspended by that Court of Inquiry.

“So . . .”

“You’re an opportunistic bastard, Grimes,” she said.

“Too right,” he agreed smugly.

“So we have a farce of an examination, after which I issue a Certificate of Competency, autographed by myself. Are you sure that you wouldn’t like to sign it too, as Governor? And then, just to oblige you still further, I put young Sanchez on my books as Fourth Mate so he can start getting in Deep Space time for
his
certificates. Is there anything else?”

“At the moment, no. But if there is, I’ll let you know.”

“Do just that.” She grinned. “Well, Commodore, it was all an exciting break from the usual tramping routine, just as the privateering expedition was. But I have to get back to the spaceport to see what’s happening to the
Ark.
I have a strong suspicion that Lloyd’s surveyors will be sniffing around the hold, trying to find evidence of a fire. . . .”

“And will there be?” asked Grimes.

“Surely, Commodore, you would not expect me to defraud an insurance company?”

She finished her drink, got up and strode out of the Governor’s sitting room. (Its windows repaired, the Residence was habitable again.) Grimes and Su Lin watched her go.

Agatha Prinn, thought Grimes, was one of the women whom he would always remember with affection. Just as—he looked at her, lounging gracefully in her chair—Su Lin would be.

“What will you do now?” she asked suddenly.

“I . . . I was thinking of resigning. As soon as they can arrange a relief for me. Once I have a valid Certificate of Competency I can take over command of my ship again. But . . . I’m not so sure. Suppose I don’t resign. Suppose I stay here, as Governor . . .”

“If they let you.”

He ignored this.

“Being Governor’s Lady wouldn’t be a bad life for a woman, Su Lin. And I’d need somebody like you, who knows the planet better than I do.”

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “Genuinely sorry. But PAT will be reassigning me. Dennison is arranging for my passage off Liberia now. But cheer up. We’ll meet again some time. There’s bound to be some complicated mess somewhere that will take the two of us to clear up. And I could never settle down on one world for keeps, any more than you could.