The Price of Peace (25 page)

"Cause it hurts me to hurt you. I mean, if you feel anything, you've got to feel with people. How she can do this and that at the same time? How you fellows can ... and ..."

Ruth looked close to tears.

He reached for her, held her at arm's length. "I tried not think of where I was or her. I thought of someone I'd rather be with." "Who?" came at him so fast he forgot to dodge.

"You." She had refused to meet his eyes. She'd been staring straight down. Now, what had been so quiet was stirring straight back at her. She looked up at him, a hint of her old smile on her face.

"I think I believe you."

"Guys, can I get something to wear?"

"Turn around. Let me get your back," Ruth ordered.

"We'll get you something at the bunkhouse," Tom answered distractedly.

"Trouble, you notice any defense blisters on the station?" Steve was typing away. "It was ordered as a standard T-3-a."

The marine closed his eyes, tried to remember the approach to the station. "Couple of bumps that didn't belong. Say five or six to a side. Probably four times that, all told." "Okay. Standard set of three Meteorology 6112 weather satellites, Global Positioning System had twenty-four Surveyor 2000+ satellites in low orbit, and there are four repeaters in high stationary orbit to keep the station and Richman City in contact. We bought them straight off the shelf from TRW, but there were suggestions of adding encoders to them before I got the boot," Steve answered. "Bet you didn't get past the firewall or crack the encryption."

"You can tell them that," Trouble growled. "I also didn't get anything on the ground layout." "Don't worry." Steve smiled. "Couple of us have been here almost from the get-go. I knew they were using the farms for a dumping ground for folks who knew too much and couldn't be trusted close to high-tech gear. I just never figured I'd end up here."

"Pass that along, Steve. If they drop teams on these farms, we could put together a good map of our target even if we can't get into the central map for this shit hole."

"Got it. Message is three K. Ruth, you should be able to send it to a couple dozen satellites. Where's your tractor?"

"In the shed. Tom knows where it is."

The two slipped out into the night, leaving Trouble alone with Ruth. "You okay?" he asked her.

"I'm fine. They need me. Can you imagine? They're trying to run a farm with a bunch of fools that never even held a hoe before they got here. Not just you poor volunteers, but the guards. They know how to crack a whip or thumb a controller button, but they don't know a thing about growing things."

"I remember career development trainers telling me anyone who can manage something can manage anything." Trouble snorted. "Like they pulled Izzy out of commanding defense brigades and gave her a ship. She is managing it okay."

"Well, these folks aren't. They'd never done a soil analysis. They were dumping processed sewage from the city's system and calling that soil preparation. I demanded a soil analysis kit. They had them in the warehouse, but nobody knew how to use one, so they just sat there taking up space. This soil is weak on iron, calcium, phosphates, and a dozen other nutrients. I told them to let me spray the fields, and I'll double the crop yield."

Trouble didn't tell her what she was growing. "You aren't wearing a collar." He fingered his own.

She gave him a look of wounded pride. "I'm no volunteer. I'm an employee. I get paid. Got a labor contract with a signature on it that almost looks like mine. In six years I can go home." Suddenly she got very serious. "That worries me, Trouble. These crooks think they'll have Hurtford Corner working just like this before my contract is up. Could they do that?"

Trouble thought about that while Ruth put sealant on him again, something to keep nasty microbes out and his blood in. "Farms can't afford to lose too many hands. Then there's the problem with the mining contracts. I wouldn't swear they couldn't, but I'll damn sure do what I can to see they don't."

A few moments later, she finished. "You better get some sleep," she suggested.

He stood. She was so close. He reached for her, brought her into his arms and kissed her, first tentatively, gently. Her response was fire on his lips. He let himself sink into the kiss, and the love beneath it. His lips were bleeding again, but it didn't matter. Ruth's kiss cleansed him of the foulness he'd struggled to swim against that night.

Maybe he could have had more. Maybe he should have. But he stank of Zylon sex. Ruth had only washed his back and chest. He broke from the kiss. "I'll try to get some sleep."

"What do you mean, you can't stabilize the plasma?" Izzy wasn't shouting. Not quite. "It's a software problem," Vu assured her. "There is nothing wrong with the engines." "But we don't leave the pier without stable plasma, do we, Lieutenant Commander?" "'No, Captain. We do not." The quiet man wilted under her heated gaze.

"Surely the
Patton
is not the first ship to stabilize plasma," she said, turning on the yard man. "Yes, ma'am. However, there are slight variations between systems. Software handles those problems. Humanity software and Unity software handled it differently."

"You worked on a Humanity cruiser before," she shot back.

"Yes, ma'am, but the chief engineer limited us to low-level maintenance." "Surely you made a backup of his operating system files."

"We did, ma'am."

"Then load it."

"I cannot recommend that. We suspect there may have been a bomb buried somewhere in that software. The ship vanished on its first jump."

"Oh, shit!" Such language was not expected of a captain. However, there was a limit to how much a captain could take. The crew better know their captain was way past that. At least, that's what Izzy told herself. She sat back in her chair, rubbed her eyes, took twenty or thirty deep breaths, then came back at the problem from another direction.

"The
Patton
is not the only ship in her class. Call the nearest Navy yard for a set of the standard software."

"We can't do that, ma'am."

Izzy shot to her feet. "And why not?"

The yard man gulped, then started his explanation slowly. "The power control system you brought in on the
Patton
was near failure. We reduced it to junk by the simple process of removing it. The system we installed is similar to that we found on the Sheffield; however, it had been modified by its crew outside the standard Navy configuration. We have a call in to Pitt's Hope, where the actual work was done. They are checking their records, but there was a war on, and people were more interested in operational warships than taking time to document how they got operational."

Izzy sat back down. "
Chjps
, is there anything more we can do to support engineering?" "No, ma'am. They've got three-quarters of my analysts and code writers."

"And Wardhaven has sent us up almost a hundred specialists to help," the yard man assured her. "We are doing all we can."

"You better, 'cause a marine's going to come charging in here any minute. And he won't take this nearly as nicely as I am."

"Yes, ma'am."

Trouble rejoined the living when a guard whacked him on the soles of his feet well before the sun was up. Tom tossed him a breechcloth, and he pulled it on. In the weak predawn light, he gobbled down a breakfast no different from supper. Still hungry, he joined a line of men at the end of the compound taking hoes from racks. He found himself next to Tom and Steve, or maybe they collected him like a stray puppy. Anyway, he ended up assigned to work with them.

"Is it like this every day?" Trouble asked, sweat dripping into his eyes after only five minutes of hoeing weeds.

"Is it like this every day?" Tom repeated to Steve. "You've been here longer than I have." "
Naw
." Steve nodded his head. "Some days it's a lot worse. I mean, it's not hailing. There's no hurricane blowing through. Hell, the guard stayed up all night playing poker and must have won. He just wants to find some shade to nap in, not take his losses out on us. Nope, guys, today is a good day."

"You leave me seeds for hope." Trouble scowled, and swatted at a bug only slightly smaller than a destroyer. "Do these things ever leave you alone?"

"Depends," Steve informed him. Picking an ugly green worm from one of the drug bushes, he smashed it on his left elbow and smeared the sickening fluids along his arm. "Stinks to high heaven, but the stuff that passes for insects don't like the smell either. The little beggars don't really benefit from sucking your blood. Well, maybe they like the salt. But the sores they make can get infected from the shit we're walking in. Smell or die. Which you want?"

Trouble plucked a ugly thing from the bush next to him and put it on his arm. "No, don't squash it. That's one we eat."

"Eat?"

"Not too many of them, or they'll tear your stomach apart. But a few."

"Eat it." Trouble studied the thing. It was darker than the first, and it left a trail of slime as it flowed up his arm.

"Breakfast, you remember that pause that didn't refresh?" Tom took over from Steve. "There's not enough in the two meals they feed us to keep us alive. If you don't live off the land, you don't live."

"Anybody try eating the plants?" Trouble put the slug in his mouth and swallowed it fast. He choked, but got it down.

"You don't want to go there. Chew the leaves, and they take away your hunger; then they take away your mind and your will to live. Don't touch the plants—and that's not just because the whip gets applied if they catch you. Don't start chewing leaf until you're ready to die." "Has anybody gotten out of here?" Trouble had to ask the question. Hopefully that message would get them out. Then again, a good marine always had a fallback position.

"I've been here for six months," Steve answered. "Never saw anybody leave any way but feet first. They bury us where they're going to put in a new field." He paused. "We're probably working somebody's grave today."

"Who are we? How did they get us? Slave labor is stupid. Paid workers are always more productive. History shows it." Trouble knew he was sounding like some ivory-tower professor, but damn it, it was true. "Some are the crews of the freighters captured by pirates. Can't exactly turn them loose to write home. Some are ex-Unity troopers who didn't read their new employment contract very well, though lots of them end up as guards. Some are street people they lifted off one of the developed planets like Earth, though they don't survive too long. Some are like Tom here, a manager who knew too much and is the whispered rumor that will keep others in line. Me, I knew I was working for some bad actors, but I figured I could get my money and run. What I didn't count on was a hostile takeover by an even worse bunch. The pirating, the slaving, all started after the war. We have some really bad hombres calling the shots now."

Trouble found another green bug and smeared it over his face and neck. It stank, but the insects did leave him alone. He kept on hoeing weeds. They were mostly Earth weeds, and they were growing . . . like weeds. "How'd you get here, Tom? Stan's worried sick about you."

"He always was too damn straight to make a living," Tom sighed. "Navy's probably best for him. Me, I got just far enough up the ladder to know too much, and not far enough to know what was really happening. Some senator got my name and thought I knew how corporations were running Unity during the war. Hell, we weren't running them." He paused, picked up a slug, and ate it. "I don't know. Maybe some people thought we were. Maybe they were. Hell, from where I sat, you couldn't tell. Maybe we did have more contacts across the battle lines than a general or admiral would want, but, damn it, the war wasn't going on forever. You have to position yourself for the next economic wave. That's all we were doing." "You look pretty well positioned." Trouble gave him a toothsome grin.

"Tell me about it. I was coming out here to run an agricultural implements line, production, distribution, sales and service. Our company was one of the thirteen that had a seat on the planetary governing council. It was a big promotion. So I left a week before my scheduled hearing appearance. Let them come out here and find me."

"Doubt they'd find you here." Steve laughed bitterly.

"Yeah, I walked off the ship to a welcoming committee of the other council members. First elevator I come to, I'm stuffed in it, drugged, and I wake up naked in the barracks."

"Quite a comedown" was all Trouble could think to say, punctuated with "God, it's hot." Steve eyed the sky. "Not even noon,
laddie
. Better get used to it."

Tom snorted. "Now let me talk to those senators and I'll have a story for them. You know, with this happening, I'm starting to think the worst rumors were right. Maybe we were running Unity."

"We'll just have to get you there" was Trouble's promise.

The guards herded them in maybe an hour before sunset. After they'd finished their slop, Tom took Trouble over to the dispensary, ostensibly to have cuts checked for infection.

As Ruth worked on his wounds, she reported on her day. "Every time I checked in with the GPS, I sent the message. Every satellite up there must have it in its buffer. How long will it take to get where it's going?"

"Your guess is as good as mine." Trouble shrugged, and winced as he shrugged right into Ruth's finger. "Depends on whether Steve knows as much about the inner workings of the surveyor system as the
comm
system at the station." Trouble stood in silence while Ruth finished tending to him. "How we going to get this thing back in Ms. de Sade's jewelry box?" "That depends on who gets called in tonight."