“What?” Michael said, unconvinced. “It’s that easy?”
“It is … well, once you’ve inputted the right authorization code, of course.”
“I knew there had to be a catch,” Michael said, the disappointment bitter.
Mallory stared at him. “Are you thinking of using this thing, sir?”
Michael nodded. “I was,” he said, “but without the authorization code, it’s just a big useless lump of ceramsteel.”
“It is, but in my day, tanks straight out of the factory,” Mallory said, looking around, “which this one almost certainly is, all had the same factory code.”
“Which was?”
“Ah, now let me see …” Michael felt as if he were about to explode. “I think it was ‘system’ … Yeah, it was.”
“‘System’?” Michael hissed. “The code is s-y-s-t-e-m? You got to be shitting me.”
“I am not, sir,” Mallory said a touch defensively.
“Well, there’s only one way to find out.”
“Let’s do it, sir.”
So they did, and Michael found out that no, Trooper Mallory was not shitting him. “Well I’ll be damned,” he whispered as the cramped crew compartment came alive in a coruscating display of colored status lights and holovid panels. “Is this thing armed?”
“Wait one,” Mallory said. Her fingers flew over one of the panels. “It is. It has full loads: 95-millimeter projectiles, machine gun rounds, missiles, decoys, smoke grenades, chaff dispensers, everything.”
“That’s standard operating procedure for heavy weapons systems being shipped into a combat zone,” Shinoda said. “It means they can go straight into action if needed.”
An evil smile crossed Michael’s face. “Well, things are looking up,” he said. He looked around. “Anyone fancy being a Hammer tank commander?”
Mallory had been dead right, Michael realized. Driving the Aqaba was simplicity itself. Once set to auto, the weapons systems pretty much took care of themselves once the target priorities had been set. “Let’s take five,” he said. “Somebody open a hatch; this place smells like a brothel.”
“You would know,” a voice said in a stage whisper, provoking an outbreak of laughter.
“Yeah, yeah,” Michael said.
Kleber pushed open the hatch; he peered out.
“Anything worth looking at?” Michael asked.
“Nothing.”
“Back to work then, folks. We’ll keep at it for another hour, then decide what to do with our newfound skills.”
“There’s too much we don’t know, sir,” Shinoda said. “You’ll have to go talk with the captain.”
Michael grimaced. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to.”
“I know. He won’t be happy; that’s for sure.”
“Maybe he will be if I give him what’s left on my card.”
“DocSec will come after him. You do know that?”
“I do.” Michael sighed. “Let me see what he says.” He slipped through Aqaba’s hatch and wriggled his way out from under the netting. He paused to make sure there were no patrol boats in sight, then adjusted his chromaflage cape and made his way to the bridge.
Captain Ho spun around in his chair when Michael appeared. The man did not look happy to see him. “Kraa damn it,” he snapped, “I thought I told you to stay put. The Hammers are like flies on shit out there. They have surveillance all over this river.”
“I know, and I’m sorry, but we need to talk. Besides, this cape is too good for any Hammer holovid.”
Ho’s eyes narrowed. “I thought there was something odd about you,” he said. “You’re not a Hammer, are you?”
For a moment Michael toyed with the idea of lying, then decided the truth might pay better dividends. In any case, Ho had them by the balls; for all Michael knew, he already had DocSec waiting for them on the wharf at Ahenkro Junction. “No,” Michael said. “I’m a Fed.”
“I knew it.” Ho paused. “See this?” he went on, pointing to a red button on the arm of his chair only a few centimeters from the tips of his fingers.
Michael nodded.
“That’s the hijack alarm. If I push it, it locks down. Unless I release it inside five seconds, the sky falls in on your head. You might kill me, but you won’t get to the button in time, I can guarantee that.”
Michael sighed. “Nobody’s going to kill anybody,” he said, “so spare me the threats. I’m here to talk to you, that’s all. If you can’t give me what I ask, we’ll go over the side where and when you tell us to, and you’ll never see us again.”
The tension was palpable, Captain Ho’s body radiating mistrust. “I can listen,” he said eventually, his finger not moving one millimeter. “What do you want?”
“One of my guys was a Hammer tanker, so this is what we thought we’d do …”
“Kraa!” Ho hissed through pursed lips when Michael had finished. “That’s a big ask.”
“It’s important. You must know that.”
“I was a planetary defense officer once.” Ho looked away. “I spent most of my time on oceangoing missile defense platforms, so I never saw combat against the NRA, though I knew plenty of people who did. Some were friends of mine. Quite a few of them are dead now …”
Michael’s spirits sank.
“… killed in action, so there’s no way I’d do anything to help the NRA …”
Michael’s spirits fell through the floor and kept on going.
“… but on the other hand, a lot more have been killed over the years by DocSec, so I don’t owe them any loyalty either, and I hate all that Word of Kraa bullshit. No, I owe all my loyalty to myself, not to anything or anybody else. Just me. This might be my home,” he said, waving a hand around the bridge, “but I don’t own the Merrioneth Star, and I don’t have any family here. Ten years ago my whore of a wife buggered off with a DocSec major, and my kids had the gumption to get the hell out of the Hammer Worlds the first chance they could.”
Michael had been biting his lip to keep from interrupting. Would the damn man cooperate or not? Ho seemed to have stopped, so Michael took his chance. “Does that mean you’ll help us?” he asked.
“Depends on how much you’ve got left on that card of yours.”
“A bit over fifteen grand. If you want it, it’s all yours.”
Another wave of the hand. “It’ll be the end of this, you know,” Ho said.
“Your call. But you need to make a decision soon. It won’t be long before we reach the Ahenkro Junction wharf.”
Ho nodded. “I know,” he said. The seconds dragged past before Ho spoke again. “One condition.”
“Name it.”
“I need to be on my way downriver before you make any move. If I’m alongside when the shit hits the fan, I’m dead meat.”
“How much lead time do you need?”
“An hour.”
“Okay, but it all depends on how the unloading works. Tell me how the Hammers do that.”
“Well, first …”
Wednesday, October 6, 2404, UD
Ahenkro Junction, Commitment
A series of gentle bumps told Michael that the Merrioneth Star finally had berthed. He had been going quietly mad waiting. They had fallen badly behind schedule, and Ho had not seen fit to tell them why.
Ho’s voice was crackled and tinny in the earpiece of Michael’s headset. “Sorry about the delay,” he said. “The convoy before us was attacked by the NRA.”
“We wondered what was happening. Did they have any luck?” Even as he spoke, Michael cursed his stupidity. Ho would know the captains in the convoy.
“Not if you were the poor buggers on the three barges they sank,” Ho said. If Michael’s insensitivity had bothered the man, he wasn’t letting it show. “You ready?”
“We are. Just let us know when the driver comes aboard.”
“Will do.”
Time crawled. Michael wondered why the Hammers were taking so long. A barge load of Aqabas was a sitting duck. He tried not to think what would happen if the Fed ground-attack landers came back.
“They’ve got the tarps off,” Ho said twenty long minutes later, “and now they’re putting the ramps in place, so stand by.”