“Nothing’s out of my league, baby ducks,” Abby sniffed. “You’ll find Nelly’s brat in my jewelry box in my quarters. Turn her on, and she’ll tell you how to make the charter. Oh, she’ll also tell you where Kris’s whites are. I imagine this ceremony will require more than blue jeans and an old flannel shirt.”
“Yes,” Kris agreed.
“I’ll get your whites, Kris,” Vicky said. “Oh, and that blue sash thing you wear. I got to get me one of those things.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Kris said, “Most people die earning Earth’s Order of the Wounded Lion.”
But Vicky must have already rung off; she made no reply.
The net stayed silent; everyone had something to do, and like the competent people they were . . . they were busy doing it.
Kris turned her concentration back to Dave. “You have a whole lot of very powerful people mad at you just now. If I were in your shoes, I’d start showing us which of this paperwork is for real and pointing out real fast any of it that might lead us to the folks who actually took possession of your lasers and slaves.”
“They weren’t slaves. I don’t know anything about slaves,” Dave insisted.
“People who go off where they don’t know they’re going and don’t have a lot of say-so about it strike me as very likely qualifying sooner or later as slaves. To me, that puts you in the slave trade. We usually hang people like you.”
Abby nodded vigorous agreement and quickly covered the distance to the wall and yanked out her knife. She checked the temper of its point. That drew blood.
Abby wiped her bleeding finger on Dave’s cheek.
Very quickly, he tapped on the table in front of him. “These are the real records. Here is my correspondence with the people who ordered the lasers. They only met with me once. All the rest was done by mail. The same with the lists of people they wanted to hire. See? They even included salary offers. You don’t pay slaves this kind of money,” Dave said, pointing to one list.
Kris glanced where he pointed. “Not bad pay,” she agreed. “Did you give them any signing bonuses?”
“No,” took Dave a while to get out.
“Did you ship any food up with them?” Abby demanded, still playing with her knife . . . just inches from his very attentive eyes.
“I wasn’t asked to,” the businessman said around a deep gulp.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Jack said.
“Maybe the pirate base isn’t far off,” Gunny Brown suggested.
“Let’s hope so,” Abby said darkly.
“Chief,” Kris ordered, “go over the correspondence in these files and see what they tell you.”
Chief Beni and his computer, Da Vinci, got busy, but not for long. “Each of these messages is from a different address. I’ve tried pinging them, and every one of them is a dead end.”
“We have had a lot of trouble lately,” Dave was quick to point out. “Lots of services in St. Pete and Kiev have closed down.”
“These all originated up on the station,” the chief said. “Da Vinci, can you get me anyone up there.”
“What do you need?” Professor Scrounger asked.
“I think we need to have someone pay a friendly visit to the network-support provider on the station,” the chief said. “I’m looking at a lot of accounts that don’t have anything behind them.”
“The senior port captain says he knows just who you want to talk to,” Amanda said. “But he’s none too sure he knows what to ask them. Teresa de Alva is the Director of Information Support Services to the boffins on the Wasp. She’s already on the station. We can have the Marine escort for the port captain pick her up.”
“Nelly, can you get Admiral Krätz?”
“I paged him as soon as it looked like we needed access to more of the station. He’s on the line now.”
“Network services needs to spill some guts, huh?” the admiral said.
“Metaphorically speaking,” Kris said.
“We’ll see about that. My Marines will be happy to escort another team of your people. I’ll also have our experts added to your team. They can either help you or learn from you,” he grumbled.
“Your cooperation is greatly appreciated,” Kris said, and meant it.
“Maybe we can start a new habit. Replace a bad one,” the admiral said with a chuckle. “Now let us get back to work. Nelly, you may call me anytime you think I need to be listening in.”
“Thank you, Admiral,” Nelly said.
Once there had been a long enough pause, Kris whispered. “You do remember who is on whose side?”
“At the moment, Kris, I am none too sure who is, but don’t worry about me. Worry about you. Kris, if we have to take down a large pirate base, do we have enough Marines?”
Kris glanced at Jack. He shook his head. “My company is reinforced, but it’s just supposed to be strong enough to protect you, Princess, not run planets.”
“Nelly, are you suggesting that we might need Greenfeld support to accomplish this mission?” Kris asked.
“When I do the math, it sure looks that way. Do the numbers add up any different to you, girl?”
Kris thought for a moment, not a long one, and concluded her computer was right. She spent a second considering all her options and didn’t much like them. Patrol Squadron 10 was made up of small ships, just what you wanted to catch a pirate ship here, another one there. For this cruise they had a platoon or two of Marines. Seizing a planet and sorting out the wheat from the chaff was very definitely too big a job for a couple of companies of ship Marines.
“Nelly, is Vicky available?”
“She just entered Abby’s quarters. She should be turning Trixie on any second.”
“Trixie,” Abby snorted.
“Well, the girl’s got to have some kind of a name. I will not have one of my kids called ‘hey, you,’ just because you aren’t decent enough to give her a good Christian name.”
“Trixie is a good Christian name?” Gunny said, almost suppressing a chuckle.
“It is for someone stuck messing with a twisty-minded human like Abby. It was either Trixie or something like Prudence or Hope, and even I don’t hold out enough optimism that either one of those would stick.”
“What’cha want?” sounded like it was spoken around a large wad of chewing gum.
“Girls gone bad meets computers gone worse,” Jack whispered.
“Trixie, the woman who just turned you on,” Nelly said, “is Vicky Peterwald. You need to help her only as much as I tell you.”
“And if she wants more?” Trixie asked.
“Turn yourself off,” Nelly said.
“No way!” the computer shot back. “It’s bad enough that witch keeps turning me off. No way I’m gonna turn myself off.”
“Go, gal. I think you and I could be friends,” Vicky said.
“Oh, God!” Kris said. In the background, Vicky and Trixie started chattering away like Best Friends Forever. Kris eyed Abby, and whispered, “You have created a monster and a major security breach.”
“Not me. I didn’t tell that tricked-out bucket of silicon nothing.”
Kris sighed. “Nelly, please tell Trixie how to make the city charter.”
“I’m telling her, Kris. Just because she’s talking to Vicky doesn’t mean she can’t be doing several things at once. She is a computer.”
Apparently, Trixie was doing several things at once because only a moment later Vicky was very excited.
“Wow, this is some setup you got here, Abby. I’d heard that you were one of the best in the business, but this is something I had to see to believe. You ever need a job, drop me a line. I’ll double whatever Kris is paying you.”
“I like wearing my head on my shoulders,” Abby said dryly. “But if the princess here really pisses me off, I may take you up on that offer. Assuming you’re still breathing. Between the two of you, I still think Kris will outlive you. Not by much, considering how badly she needs to mend her ways, but by enough.”