The Price of Peace (2 page)

The lights dimmed as five 6-inch lasers reached for the threat. In empty space, nothing colored the laser light; it passed invisible to the naked eye.
Umboto
concentrated on her battle screens. Rays ranged around the target, but there was no sign of a hit. Damn!

The Patron's spin brought two new guns to bear. Using the misses, Guns modified their salvo pattern. Damn,
Umboto
missed the two broken guns. But wish in one hand and spit in the other ... see which one you get the most out of.

The target turned red as a single gun nipped it just as the salvo ended. "Got a piece of '
em
," Guns shouted with glee.

The
Patton
lurched. "Sorry, ma'am," the helmswoman answered before her captain said anything.

"Do your best,"
Umboto
said, hoping Gun's fire solution
hadn"t
been hashed again. "XO, tell me something nice."

"Damage control reports they've got attitudinal control back. Helm, go to backup." "Yes, sir." There was a pause while the
Patton
did nothing . . . exactly the way it was supposed to. The XO and
Umboto
breathed a sigh of relief at the same moment. And
Umboto
went back to her main problem. One damaged pirate.

"Sensors, talk to me."

"Target is putting on spin. Only a few
RPMs
, though. Ranging us constantly." That told
Umboto
the bastard knew how to fight his ship, but probably didn't trust his crew and equipment to a standard battle stations twenty RPM—and was still very much spoiling for a fight.

"Sensors, time since last enemy salvo?"

"Coming up on ten seconds." "Helm,
zig
right."

Patton
slewed to the right even as the helmswoman repeated the order. No enemy fire came.

"Batteries are charged." Guns reported.

Sending out the next salvo meant committing the
Patton
to a steady course for five seconds. "Sensors?"

"Bandit is charged, ma'am."

So which one of us fires first? "Hold course steady,"
Umboto
said, while counting in her head one thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three. "
Zig
up."

As the
Patton
zoomed up, the hostile lasers cut through the empty space where she'd been.
Umboto
had outguessed the bandit.

"Guns, pattern B."

"On its way," he said as the lights dimmed.

Five rays stabbed out, reaching for the pirate. One of them connected. The last two guns walked right into the target, slicing it. "Good hits," Guns growled.

"Well done, Guns. Target their engines next salvo." "Won't get many prisoners," the XO whispered softly.

"Three ships have disappeared and not a crew member to tell the tale, XO. I don't want prisoners. Let the other pirates sweat what happened to this one. Sooner or later, the marines will dump someone in my brig. I'm in no rush." Lights dimmed again. The five lasers slashed through the pirate for a second, then where a ship had been was only an expanding cloud of glowing gas. In only a moment, that too was gone.

"Yes!" Izzy crowed at her first kill... and immediately went back to work. "Comm. any distress signals, pods squawking?"

"Quiet as a tomb, Captain."

Izzy leaned back in her seat. "Helm, belay the spin. Take us back to one gee. Damage

Control, report to the XO on anything needs fixing. And do an autopsy on that damn thruster. I want to know who, why, when, where and how it went bad."

"Yes, ma'am" came with a familiar sigh from damage control. Chips had been doing postmortems on too damn much of the
Patton’s
hardware and software. The ship was a jinx. She'd spent the war as a yard queen, tied up waiting for parts. Postwar, the other merchant converts had been refitted back into freighters. Not the
Patton
. Nobody wanted her.

Still, the Society of Humanity's Navy was now responsible for patrolling one hundred and fifty planets, not the forty-eight they'd had before the war. And what with war losses, there were even less ships to do the job. So cruisers like the
Patton
, that nobody wanted, were being given to people like
Umboto
, whom, if she was honest, nobody wanted. Girl, you should have asked for the gripe sheet on the
Patton
before you said you'd take her.

Then she shrugged. The choice was between early retirement and the
Patton
. For Izzy, that was no choice, even if the peace-becalmed Navy Department hadn't included the promotion to captain that the skipper of a cruiser deserved.

So the skipper of the good ship
Patton
... whose every officer was drawing pay for one rank less than his or her job deserved ... stood. "Stan, have division heads report to my day cabin in fifteen minutes. Let's critique this while it's still hot."

She headed for her cabin off the bridge, not turning back to acknowledge Stan's "Yes, ma'am." Only after the hatch closed behind her did she let out a yelp. "Hot damn, that was...

" What? Scary. Fun. All of the above and a lot more.

She'd outsmarted the bastard! She knew she had to be a better ship-handler than any jerk who didn't bother to shave in the morning.

Her knees began to shake. He could have gotten lucky.

Izzy shook her head. No way! Lord, that was good! She'd have to get these feelings out before the others reported. If Stan even half suspected how much she loved hanging it all out and winning, he'd get out and start walking for the nearest navy base—with most of the crew ambling along right behind him.

Tigers get people killed. How often had Captain Andy warned her during the war that she needed adult supervision? Well, now the tiger had the
conn
. She almost pitied poor Stan: providing the mature judgment for this command was going to be a hell of a job for the guy. A light blinked on her desk. Mail must have come in during the shoot. Personal mail was rare; her navy career left little room for attachments.
Izzy's
sister Lora rarely wrote, but her kid
Franny
was writing regularly, grateful to Izzy for paying her college tuition. There had to be a way out of the slums that didn't mean putting on a uniform. Izzy had begged Lora to emigrate; there were planets begging for women, even a woman with a kid. Lora refused to leave Mom, as if the old drunk noticed her kids. Enough of that.
Franny
was fun, working hard to get out, getting close to husband-high. Izzy wouldn't mind paying for a wedding, or even the penalty for an unlicensed conception. Kids were cute, so long as they were someone else's to take home.

Izzy tapped the mail button; her screen filled with a weeping Lora. "
Franny's
dead. I should have called. I should have kept closer tabs on her at school. But she was at school!"

Lora's image broke down. Izzy took a step back from the
vid
as if she'd been slugged in the gut. Navy people died; you knew the job was dangerous when you took it. But college kids? Lora controlled her wailing. "
Franny
loved gaming. We joked she was addicted, but I never thought... Izzy, there's this new drug going around. They say it makes VR real, that you forget there's a real world, that it makes every pleasure ten times better. She and her roommates hooked themselves up to a game and plugged themselves into a drug bottle."

Izzy slammed her fist down on her desk. "Not dehydration," the professional in her choked, the anger of foreknowledge almost overriding Lora's final sob.

"They died 'cause they never came out for a drink of water. Oh, God, if I'd only called. Just dropped by. I'd been meaning to. Honest, Sis, I'd been meaning to."

Izzy hit the close button. The pleading in her sister's eyes faded to blank as Izzy collapsed into her work chair. What was wrong? What was missing? How could
Franny
have done this? How could Lora have missed the signs? Izzy shivered; the world was crazy. She'd just risked her life to burn a pirate, and
Franny
had thrown her life away on a thrill.

Izzy sat slumped in her chair until the computer reminded her she had a meeting to run. Lora's message could wait for an answer. With a wrenching sigh that could not fill the void in her heart, Izzy went to do what duty demanded.

Lieutenant Terrence "Trouble"
Tordon
was troubled. He was not used to that. Trouble to his enemies. Trouble to his friends, even Trouble to himself, and regularly in trouble, he wasn't often troubled. Now, he sat at the captain's conference table a very troubled man. His back was as ramrod-straight as the world expected a marine's to be, his face a study in military blandness, but behind the exterior, his mind was spinning. What have I gotten myself and the platoon into ?

He'd worked with Izzy before. He knew she was a bit wild, but as a card-carrying member of the "Who Wants to Live Forever Club," Trouble expected no problems. The joke was that after twenty-five years with the defense brigades, Izzy asked for marines for the
Patton
because she didn't want to go anywhere without her security blanket. Since Trouble's choices were between a paltry exit bonus or taking a cut to second lieutenant and a platoon when what he wanted was a promotion to major and his own battalion, he'd jumped at the chance to staff six of the
Patton’s
secondary guns with his marine detachment.

After today's live fire exercise. Trouble wondered if he'd jumped right. The commander had bet her ship and their lives on some pretty crappy equipment, savvy moves, and a lot of luck. She'd won. Had she learned anything? Or would she be chasing the same thrill tomorrow? Trouble eyed her without staring.

She was strangely subdued. Still, her first question was a good one. "Chips, what's wrong with my ship?"

Lieutenant
Chippanda
Eifervald
shook her head. "I told you before, skipper, and I'll tell you again. There
ain't
nothing wrong with this tub that couldn't be fixed by parking it alongside a pier and combing every square inch of it. I bet we'd find seven or eight good subassemblies to put back in stock to help the spares crunch. The rest, we sell by the pound."

"Yeah, Chips, but if we do that, what'll I command?" "One hell of a beer bash," the exec offered.

The skipper took a deep breath. The stale, processed air was no different from what she'd breathed on a dozen stations. The gray walls around her could be any of a score of offices she'd worked out of or cubicles she'd lived in. But the proprietary twist to her lips told Trouble all there was to know. This air and that wall were her ship's. The skipper would give them up over her dead body. "Okay, crew, enough jokes. Start with the most important gear in your areas and make sure it'll work next time we need it. Guns, that means those six-inchers. Chips, that means maneuvering. Engineering"—Izzy glanced at Vu Van—"we got any problems?"

"If I had any failures, we would not be here to discuss them." The old Buddhist smiled, confident he could keep the plasma demons from eating his ship.

"Well, then, what did our little live-fire exercise tell us about the opposition?"

The XO shrugged. "There be pirates here, or was. They had a Unity cruiser that was a long way from the scrap heap. They may be bold and brassy against unarmed civilians, but they can't stand up to a fighting ship. That about sum it up, skipper?"

"In a nutshell," the skipper said with a scowl. "Let's go find ourselves another sucker." The
comm
link buzzed at her elbow. She tapped it. "Yes?"

"We've got an all-ships message from a businessman on Hurtford Comer. Says he's being threatened by bandits and requests the assistance of any ship in the vicinity."

"Who?"

"A Paul
Withwaterson
, licensed on Pitt's Hope to sell farming equipment and related gear. Sounds like a legitimate call."

"Yeah," scowled Chips, "but is he really facing bandits, or does he just want us to overawe some rubes that don't want to pay what he wants to charge?" Trouble nodded; businessmen and the Navy rarely saw eye to eye on the proper use of naval presence.

"Has he made a previous request for help?" the captain asked. While Communications checked its database, the exec called up the star map. Hurtford Corner was five jumps away.

"
Withwaterson
has never made a request for assistance from the Navy. This message is a week old,"
Comm
reported.

The skipper worried her lower lip. "Seven days to cross five jump points. No rush there." Each jump point had a buoy marking its place in space. Message traffic passed from buoy to buoy, but stayed in-system until the buoy jumped through just ahead of a ship, or until its message buffer filled and it dropped through the jump point to pass messages along to the next node. Ships could actually cover the distance between major planets faster than message traffic did between backwater systems.

"Not much of a dispersion." the XO noted. "The Hurtford Corner system is pretty isolated Doubt if any other ship has gotten this message. It could be a month or more before it gets to District HQ and we get orders."

"Yeah." Now the boss was grinning. "Trouble, could your animals use some
dirtside
exercise?"