The Price of Peace (17 page)

Trouble filled her silence with his lopsided grin. "Then again, maybe not. We've got almost two hundred billion people on file, from Earth to Pitt's Hope. But some of the frontier nets don't follow standard protocols. I'm not sure I'd find you on the net. If he's some place like here, or in transit, or ..."

"Or just doesn't want to be found."

"Yes." They left City Hall with that word echoing in Ruth's head. The marine had a few more teams to visit. Words got kind of few and far between. Ruth was lost in questions. Why hadn't
Morty
come back? Did she want him back? What was wrong with her? As a wife? As a woman?

"Why'd you become a marine?" tumbled out of Ruth's mouth before she even thought of the words.

"I was born a marine. Raised by the Corps. Never thought of being anything else. Don't

know how to be anything else." The words came at Ruth like automatic weapon fire. Trouble didn't even look at her; his eyes stayed locked straight ahead. A moment passed into silence before he posed his own question. Now his voice was little more than a whisper. "Why'd you become a farmer?"

"I was born one. Raised one. You know the rest." "Yes."

"You married?"

"God, no. No woman deserves a marine for a husband. No kid rates a marine father." "That's strange, coming from you." He had her attention. She really couldn't understand the puzzle this man had become.

"I grew up waiting for my old man to come home. The five-month cruise that took nine months. Getting to the new post just in time for him to ship out. Always wondering when he'd come home. If he'd come home." The marine's eyes squinted, seeing beyond the street ahead and into some past only he knew. "No, ma'am, the Corps is a great place to live, but you never want to visit. You going to divorce
Mordy
?"

So quickly, the marine changed the subject. "I don't know. We don't divorce out on the stations."

"No divorce?"

"Out there, we're a farm, a family, and I guess we're a couple last. How do you split up a farm? How do you take care of the kids? Folks don't stay single very long. Take the Henderson place. He came from off-world. He and Maggie couldn't seem to get along. He chased after a gal, brought her home. She got on with the hired man. When they come to the dances, nobody knows who's going to be dancing with whom, but the kids are being raised and the farm is making it. That's what matters."

That brought Trouble to a halt. "Remember what I said this morning, about me understanding farming and you not understanding marines?"

"Yes."

"Forget it. I don't think either one of us will ever understand the other's world." "So how come my pa came from off-world and he and Ma get along fine?"

"I don't know." "Me neither."

Trouble's
comm
link beeped; he lifted his hand to his mouth. "Trouble here."

"Skipper wants you back topside. We need to insert a fire team to help the civilians chasing around the hills."

"When?"

"Captain's gig is on its way down to get you."

"I'll get out to the runway as soon as I can hitch a ride." "Out."

"Out," Trouble repeated. *

"Inn laid on a feast for us tonight." a forlorn Ruth reminded him.

"Guess I'll have to take a rain check. Wonder who's headed out to the port." "Maybe we can borrow a rig. I could drive it back."

"You don't mind running me around?" "No."

An hour later, Ruth watched the gig rocket back to orbit. Fate had brought another off-
worlder
into her life, and was rushing him out of her life much quicker this time. Probably just as well. Still, the marine was a lot more interesting than
Mordy
had ever been. Much more complex, too. In love with the Corps, and hating it at the same time. She wondered if he knew that. Probably not. The marine seemed to understand her and
Mordy
better than she did. Why did you need to stand back to understand what you had to live close up? She put the truck in gear; now, how would she put her life in gear?

Seven

IT WAS NOT a good picture that greeted Trouble back aboard the
Patton
. "Whoever those bastards are down there, they got more tech support than they deserve," Igor summed up his sensor feed. "We've set the locals up for two ambushes, and the bad guys sidestepped both of them. They've got to have heart monitors, not as good as ours, but they got them." "So, Lieutenant, take them down," the skipper ordered.

"No trouble, ma'am." Trouble snapped, then studied the board to make sure he was right. "We drop a fire team outfitted with scout suits and
spoofers
ahead of them, go in fast, and put them down. What do we do with them?"

"I want prisoners to chat with. These folks are way too smart for dumb thugs. Who sent '
em
to school? I want answers to my questions. I want to take these guys with us when we leave." The skipper pulled at her ear. "How am I going to do that?"

Stan hardly let her finish the sentence. "Skipper, I had our legal clerk look into what the local folks call their laws. Turns out Hurtford Corner doesn't have much law. Most crime is handled informally, and not the way they did it this morning.

"However, Joe told us our bad guys have been using rockets to break down doors. A few hours ago, one of them tossed a surface-to-air missile at our Condor. Missed, but got me thinking. Maybe HC has no laws restricting access to weapons. Society's Law Code doesn't require a sovereign planet to have any such laws, but it does demand and require that the importation of such weapons be in accordance with its code. Whoever imported that SAM did not pay the taxes." There was a general chuckle at this. Stan went on.

"So, what we need is an agent of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Administration. It so happens our personnel clerk is authorized to swear in anyone who might volunteer for such an appointment, not to exceed one year. Joe, you interested in being the lieutenant's cop?" "Would I have to go off-world?"

"Nope," Stan answered. "Just file an affidavit and cover everything else from your farm. As soon as you arrest them, you can turn them over to our custody for transport to a marshal." Joe
Edris
scratched the bridge of his nose. "Sounds like something I'd like to do. So, now we catch them."

"Piece of cake," Trouble assured him. "I had a sergeant tell me that once."

"The parasail almost flies itself," the Jump Master assured the newest ATF agent in human space. "We've picked a five-meter hole in the forest canopy for you, logged its GPS coordinates in your suit and it'll swing you right down into the target hole. If you think you're headed for a tree landing, just control the sail the usual way." The Jump Master was very confident.

"He's never made a jump before," Trouble informed him.

"Oh." The assurance was replaced by a visible gulp. "Well, sir, if it looks like you're headed for a tree, you probably aren't, so you just let the system land you."

"What else do I need to know?" Joe asked Trouble.

"The scout suit is pretty sophisticated. I've reprogrammed it to respond like the body armor you used in the
LornaDo
army."

"Thanks. Bet I haven't forgotten a thing in the last twenty-five years."

Trouble let the man have the laugh he deserved. "I've set most of it for auto anyway. Cooling will keep the surface of the suit at ambient temperature. To night vision, you'll look just like the next tree. Don't worry when these hoppers drop off." Trouble thumbed the bumps that speckled the armored suit. "They've got the jammers for the heart monitor. They feed off the chemical heat sink." The look in Joe's eyes told Trouble the man hadn't understood a word. "You'll see, once we get down there."

Joe shook his head as the tech settled the helmet on him. "And I thought qualifying on the M-6 was all this job took."

"Your drop is behind the rest of us. You stay low, and all you'll have to do is read '
em
their rights."

"Right."

There was something beautiful about a plan clicking into place. In zero gee, Trouble's marines glided rather than marched to their places in the drop shuttle. Still, the scrape of armor, the creak of weapons on harness, the snap as men and women strapped themselves in brought a rush to Trouble. Good troopers, doing what they did best. You had to love it. Liberty Launch Four was the only one on the
Patton
rigged for a combat drop. As soon as Trouble reported them rigged for drop, the pilot dropped out of orbit, then went to
aerospike
, cruising well south of the target at thirty thousand meters. The suits would take care of breathing. They went out the drop ports by the numbers, falling in a pattern through the freezing evening air.

Right on time, the
parasails
streamed and deployed. While Trouble, Joe, and four of the marines glided north as planned, three other troopers spiraled straight down.

So much for GPS guidance.

At least their chutes opened. The miss-drops tried to redirect their sails in flight, but the programming was not something you did while dangling from silk and cord. They reported as soon as they were on the ground. "Hoof it for town," Trouble ordered, reminding himself it wasn't their fault.

"Slight change of plans, Joe. You keep to my right hand." "Piece of cake, right, marine?"

"Ever had a slice of cake out of field rations?"

The drop zone was awfully small. The tight spiral the parasail flew was almost enough to make a fresh trooper dizzy, and Trouble was only one night away from a lousy night's sleep. Free of his chute, he started closing the target. "Got to make a few changes," he advised his teams as he went. Blue and red teams were where they belonged—to the north and south of the target. Green team had fallen out of the sky early. He and Joe would have to be the cork in the bottle all by themselves. He revised his fire lanes and approach tracks to reflect that, sent it, and got acknowledgments from all hands. Fifty meters to his right, Joe moved parallel to his approach.

"What was that?" came as a half squeak. Trouble checked Joe's area. There were two echoes there. "Your first hopper just launched. They bleed off heat. When I activate them, they'll jam every sensor the bad guys got."

"There went another one. Okay. How close do you want me?"

Trouble would have preferred to have three marines even with him. "Fall back another twenty meters. You've got the right fire lane. I got the left."

"Piece of taffy."

Trouble didn't mind the job getting tougher to chew. He just didn't want his teams breaking their teeth on rocks.

The bad guys were coming up a canyon, moving rapidly on foot. Blue and red teams were covering them along the ridges to both sides. Joe and Trouble would meet them head-on. "We're coming up on a thousand meters. Sensors figures their rigs to be good for that range. Stand by to launch all ready hoppers." Trouble quickly jogged the distance from a tree to a rock. The targets suddenly quit moving. "Launch hoppers. I'm activating."

His armor had been slowly charging hoppers, shedding one at a time as his own body heat overloaded the cooling system struggling to keep his suit indistinguishable from the background. Now it topped off a dozen and sent them bouncing away from him in all directions. A flick of his wrist activated not only his but all those of the five other marines closing on the target. Trouble wondered what it looked like to be on sensory overload, and grinned.

"We got something ahead of us," Polly shouted. "What?" Havelock demanded.

"Five, six, oh my God! I don't know. A couple ah hundred. You tell me."

Polly shoved the electromagnetic heart searcher at his boss. Havelock glanced at it and scowled. "They got to be spoofing us. They couldn't have gotten an army up ahead of us." "You can't jam one of these things. Westinghouse guarantees '
em
."

"Right, and sleepy bullets never killed anybody. Okay, everybody. There's something ahead of us. We know what's behind us. Head uphill to the right. We'll drop over into the next valley and see how things are. Donny, your team takes the lead."

"Why us? We're due for a rest. Shit, man, we've been moving all day. Can't we take a break?"

"Sure, if you want to wake up facing some old lady whose husband you killed. Me, I'm moving."

Twenty tired guys started moving upslope. "Where's this instant army?" Donny asked.

"Polly's magic spells
ain't
working at the moment. Toss a few rocket grenades out there and see what happens."

"Oh, shit" came in a many-part harmony, but there were several pops as grenades arched out before and behind them.

"Head down, Joe. Incoming." Trouble slipped behind the largest tree trunk available. Body armor was nice. Not getting hit was nicer.

"Humph" came from Joe. "Didn't dodge that one very good." "You hurt?"

"Nope. Good stuff you got here." It was good stuff, but a sensor scan Joe's way showed a hot spot.

"Joe, your armor's not cooling like it should. I got you on infrared." "Bad?"

"Not too. You come in about squirrel size." "Thanks."

While they'd talked, the intentions of the target had become clear. "Okay, crew, they're moving uphill toward red team. Blue, you follow. Red, you hold in place. I'll close on their flank. Select nonlethal. Open fire when you got a good shot."

Trouble switched his M-6A3 to its backup magazine. The needle tips of those rounds were pumped full of sleepy drugs.
Phyzer
-Colt guaranteed each bullet. If it killed its target, they would write a very apologetic letter to his next of kin. A target was swinging uphill, getting closer to Joe than Trouble wanted. Going to ground, he laser-pinged him for range, set up a solid sight picture, and squeezed the trigger. The target dropped as the firing computer assessed three hits.

Trouble rolled to the left as return fire laced his position. "They got backtrack radar," he shouted, to warn his own crew, and to get Igor busy jamming it.

Coming up behind a rock, Trouble scanned the firefight. While the bad guy's heart scanner was definitely out of business, Trouble's system interrogated the scene every ten or eleven milliseconds, while the hoppers were pausing. Eight of the targets were officially down. Trouble did a scan for electronic activity. Three were hot. He picked one, put him to sleep, and rolled again.

Next check of the fight showed no fight. The last three went down before he could get one of them in his sights. "Red one, blue two, hold your lines. Rest, close with and disarm the targets. Switch to live ammunition." At that range, he would not risk one of his marines.

"When do I get to read them their rights?" Joe asked. "Got me, but don't they have to be awake?" "Your guess is as good as mine. They just swore me in. I didn't even get a new employee handbook." The shared laugh didn't take any of the edge off Trouble's caution as he worked his way toward the sleeping beauties.

Somebody scrounged up a helicopter that had been brought on-world by the mining exploration concern. Six hauls brought twenty sleeping toughs, five marines, one ATF agent, and a dozen witnesses out of the hills. Trouble was careful to assign the witnesses and the accused to separate lifts. By midnight, he had all twenty in the lockup and was ready to call it a night. Liberty Launch Four had recovered to orbit, so it looked like he could spend another wonderful night on Hurtford Corner. The inn even had his room waiting for him. Figuring Ruth had called it a night by now, he grabbed a quick snack and hit the sack. Tomorrow they could celebrate.

Big Al put his feet up on the coffee table and relaxed into the comfort of a massage chair. Zylon prowled the room, glanced out windows, checked for watchers, and gauged her best escape route. "Relax," Big Al assured her. "Henri is well paid. We are well provided for. We can gather our wits and our strength."

Zylon settled on the edge of the couch across from her superior-for-the-moment. "Can we really go off-planet with our tail between our legs?"

"I said gather our strength and wits, not sulk away." "We can't let these people think they've beat us." "And we won't." Big Al closed his eyes and seemed to relax into the gently flexing chair. "When the time is right, we will reeducate these fools to the facts of life. For the moment, the time is wrong. Let them have their day. It won't last long."

"Just so long as we have something to show when we go off-planet."

"You'll have plenty to take with you when we leave." That was the first time Big Al had made such a promise to Zylon. For the first time today, she smiled.

Ruth was delighted to come down to the inn's public room and find Trouble eating breakfast with her pa. "Didn't you guys have something to do?"

"Did it," Pa answered around waffles. "We now have twenty more prisoners under lock and key, fully booked on capital charges of committing a felony with explosives illegally transported through interstellar commerce. I even read them their rights last night as they were waking up."

"Pa?"

"Daughter, I am the sole officer of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Administration in thirty light-years. At least for the next year, I am. I've arrested them and will shortly officially turn them over to Captain
Umboto
as the only local representative of the Society of Humanity with access to transportation, to get those bastards off our planet and deposited for trial wherever the nearest Society court is."