Ildiko regarded my friend with admiration. "Are you a planetologist, Captain Bermudez?"
Mimo shook his head, smiling as he extracted a cigar from a gold case. "No, querida, but I have visited many strange places in the galaxy during the course of my checkered career, and it pleases me to study their natural history. There are often evolutionary parallels on the different worlds because creation tends to be economical."
Ivor came splashing over to us and the task force was complete. I told Ba-Karkar to carry on with his damage inspection. The rest of us moved a few dozen meters down the wedged-shaped black canyon onto the dry natural pavement, as firm and perfect as a newly laid asphalt parking lot. The rescue aircraft would find us without any trouble, and our ship was ideally sited for an ambush.
The little pirate captain had certainly earned his bonus. Even the broken landing gear was fortuitous, adding plausibility to the crash scene.
I began the briefing without any preamble.
"I've been reconsidering having Ivor remain here alone guarding the Qastt prisoners while the rest of us hit the Haluk installation. My objections are based on a worst-case scenario, and I'd like your input."
Everyone looked at me with professional blankness except poor Ivor, who probably thought I was about to impugn his abilities.
"Initially, based upon information that I got from Mimo, Ba-Karkar, and the pirate gunner Tisqatt, I thought that Taqtaq city was a dinky little place, and we could count on only a single overworked search-and-rescue team to hunt for us. But during our overflight I took a close look at the star-port. It was larger and more modern than I'd expected, and there were three search-type aircraft parked there. The Qastt call the ships tuqo. They were unmistakable, colored blaze-orange and with wide ski-type landing gear suitable for soft sand or gooey bitumen."
"Mierditas," Mimo swore. He lit his cigar with a wooden match.
I said, "My sentiments exactly. There's no real problem if the Qastt send more than one aircraft on the first reconnaissance, following our beacon. We can deal with two as though they were one."
"But not three," Zorik O'Toole said.
"No," I agreed evenly. "If three tuqo come, we're out of here and the mission is an abort. But I think the odds of that happening are small. Okay, back to my worst case: What worries me is the prospect of a second or even a third search team coming out later if it seems that the first one pranged in and disappeared. We'll try to set up the destruction legend with the help of one of the prisoners, of course. And we'll camouflage the privateer with filotarps and turn off the emergency beacon. But there's always a chance that the first team will have reported our exact position to base before landing. We'll try to question our prisoners about this, but we may not get any good answers." I turned to O'Toole. "Zorik, take a translator pendant along when you hit the aircraft. If it's possible to question any Qastt aboard about a position report, do it."
"Understood," he said.
"We'll do the same with the prisoners that we take inside the privateer. But if another search team comes out and zeroes in, we'll know for sure that this site is fucked. The second team will have to be taken prisoner and the second tuqo demolished in a plausible fashion. After that, the privateer will have to be moved stealthily to another hiding place by our little buccaneer bud, to preclude a third team coming out after the second—along with God knows what kind of a generalized flap."
O'Toole said, "We could neutralize that problem by moving the privateer to a new position immediately after securing the first tuqo and its team."
I said, "Ba-Karkar told me that his ship can take off easily enough with broken gear, but landing again could be dangerous. I don't want to risk it unless it's absolutely necessary. Unless this site is compromised." I smiled at Ivor Jenkins. "Now, Ivor is a good man and I have every confidence in him. But he doesn't have the experience to contend with the worst-case scenario I've just described. No one, working alone, could cope."
"I agree, Helly," the bodybuilder said humbly.
Zorik and Ildiko remained impassive. They knew I wasn't about to ask that either of them, combat-trained veterans, remain behind.
Mimo said, "You want me to stay with Ivor."
"Yes. Together, you could handle just about anything."
"Are you certain of that?" O'Toole murmured.
I said, "Ask Mimo."
My friend calmly puffed smoke as he stared up at the bizarre Stump Mountain. "You need have no doubt that Ivor and I would deal effectively with this hypothetical situation, Commander O'Toole."
"There is another option," Zorik said to me. "Under these new circumstances, it's one that might be superior to your original plan if you've got the—if you're willing to consider it."
Great. He didn't quite say that there was another option if I had the balls to make use of it.
I just smiled and said, "What?"
"Once you have a single tuqo in hand, force one of the Squeakers to call the other two units for backup. When they land, grab one additional ship and destroy the third. Forget about taking Qastt prisoners. Use 'em to propagate the destruction legend to Taqtaq Control, then waste 'em. Blow up the privateer. We don't need it for evac—we can call down Chispa's gig. This way, we have two aircraft for our raid instead of only one and a SWAT team of four, as originally planned. Ivor can guard the pirate and the aircraft while the rest of us make the ground assault."
I said, "You know that I promised Ba-Karkar we wouldn't harm innocent Qastt. They don't come any more innocent than search-and-rescue personnel. I also promised him he'd get his ship back after the operation."
Zorik O'Toole shrugged. "That was then, this is now. You can't see eliminating the Qastt, just leave 'em on the blacktop." Six hundred kilometers from nowhere. "Thanks for the suggestion, Zorik, but it's a no-go." "Suit yourself."
Mimo said to me, "There is another matter to consider. If I remain here, who will fly the Qastt aircraft?"
"I studied the schematics," I said. "The tuqo utilizes a primitive antigrav generator for lift, and a bank of small pivoting thrusters for propulsion. It's all manual, seat-of-the-pants flying. No computers, no really vital instrumentation except the fuel gauges and inertial compass. I can translate them."
Mimo grinned around his cigar. "You may actually be better off unencumbered with a feeble oidpedorrero like me on this raid of yours. Unless, of course, you get yourselves into a really hairy firefight."
The veteran smuggler's prowess with weaponry, both portable and shipborne, verged on the phenomenal—which is why I'd had no serious qualms about including him on the team in spite of his age.
I said, "I think I assessed the situation correctly when I assumed that this facility wouldn't be defended any more elaborately than the one on Cravat. It's logical that the Haluk and their Galapharma protectors will rely more on sophisticated intruder-detection equipment than defensive firepower. The worst they can expect here are Qastt snoopers, and from whatTisqatt said, the locals are scared stiff of the place. I'm betting that the facility will have a medium-splendacious perimeter alarm system with robosteered Kagi blasters or the equivalent, a few Mickey Mouse antiaircraft guns, and a security force that spends most of its time playing gin rummy."
"You may very well be right," said Zorik O'Toole. He did a brief take. "And if it works out differently, why, we'll just have to improvise."
Uneasy looks from Ildiko and Ivor. A flat stare from Mimo, who recognized the whiff of insubordination for what it was. From me: "If I get whacked, improvise all you like. Until then, I expect you to follow orders."
"Goes without saying," said O'Toole, meeting my gaze without flinching. "You're the chief and we're the grunts."
I'd been away from Zorik's type too long—not that we'd had that many hardasses like him in the ICS Enforcement Division, an outfit known for a certain lack of military formality. He was a man with no sense of humor, no inclination to accommodate human frailty, and no respect for a leader who failed to measure up to his dracon
ian ideal of competence. I had no doubt that Zorik O'Toole would be a stone whiz in a combat situation. It was just too damned bad that he knew about my past history...
"Okay." I flashed the inimitable Frost grin at one and all. "Does anyone want to comment on the plan revision? No? Right, let's move on to a quick review of the upcoming action and then get back to the ship and suit up. I'd like each of you to go over your part in the ambush of the Qastt rescue personnel. Be as detailed as possible. Zorik, why don't you start?"
Dagasatt night.
The temperature has dropped over twenty degrees. The sky overhead is surprisingly clear in spite of a foul ground haze, decorated with broken patches of Milky Way, meager stars, and the Haluk Cluster, which looks like a small luminescent fingerprint on black velvet. There are no animal or insect sounds; only a faint hissing and an occasional fairy tinkle from high on Stump Mountain as it steams, cools, and endures an occasional minuscule landslide.
Out of the west a bright light approaches, first silhouetting the pressure ridges, then blazing clearly in the sky. A sound of primitive reaction thrusters. The engine noise changes pitch momentarily as the aircraft descends to a lower altitude, skimming the tarmac, vectoring in on the presumed site of the crash. A laser spot lances out toward Stump Mountain, discovers the slightly tilted starship nestled among the roots. An ominous plume of smoke rises from the wreck. Its cargo-bay hatch gapes wide open. There are no signs of life.
The Qastt rescue craft lands a cautious kilometer away. It has a no-nonsense shape, like a squared-off loaf of human bread, and measures about ten meters in length. The landing gear consists of two broad skis. Projecting from the roof is a short pylon bearing a brilliant site-illumination lamp. The laser spot shines from a housing below the cockpit, which has a broad windshield through which several figures are visible. They remain in place as the engines throttle back to idle. A side hatch opens and a robot probe trundles down the ramp and speeds toward the derelict starship.
The robot is small, equipped with a multitude of sensors. It reassures the crew of the rescue craft that the starship's potentially hazardous subluminal engine is turned off. Aside from the smoke, which is of unknown origin and may not even emanate from the wreckage, there are no fumes and no poisonous or flammable vapors in evidence. No obvious onboard conflagration registers on the infrared sensors. The robot glides through the shallow pool of water and ascends the derelict's ramp. It enters the cargo bay and begins casting about for indications of survivors.
A figure shrouded in white robes lies beneath a tumble of blue, yellow, and red cargo pods. They are human-style containers, and the rescue crew judges that the crashed starship is one of the valiant band of Qastt corsairs that plies the void, preying upon the hated race of putrid boomers.
As the robot eye zeroes in on the pathetic body trapped beneath its heap of booty, there is a slight movement. No clear view is possible, but the sensors confirm that the person is alive.
The robot spins about, scanning for other survivors. It finds another robed shape lying just inside the small interior hatch that connects the cargo bay with the forward accommodations and the flight deck. This person lifts his head and speaks directly to the robot in a wavering squeal.
"Help us."
The voice of the rescue-team leader responds. "Help has arrived. How many people aboard?"
"Six," says the crash victim. Then he falls motionless.
A large pod blocks the robot's way and it can go no farther forward. It turns about and completes its scan of the cargo bay. Finding no other survivors, it exits the privateer and waits, oblivious to the shallow water.
The rescue aircraft has closed its hatch. The antigrav unit lifts it a dozen centimeters above the smooth asphalt and the thrusters scream thinly. It glides to the mouth of the small black canyon, only a stone's throw from the wreck, and once again descends, landing at the puddle's edge. This time the engines wind down to a full stop and there is a moment of silence. The laser spot has been turned off but the xenon site-illumination lamp mounted above the aircraft casts a clear white light on the scene.
Then the hatch reopens and four members of the rescue crew emerge, dressed in orange coveralls with a single ideograph written across the back, weighted down with gear. A single Qastt remains behind in the cockpit, bent over the flight console.
The small rescuers enter the privateer to begin their mission of mercy, speaking softly among themselves. They do not notice another figure that emerges from beneath a camouflaging filotarp among the dark chunks of detritus and flits over to the aircraft.
The figure is dressed in voluminous white Qastt garments. A tallish individual, it assumes a hesitant, slouching gait as it enters the rescue craft and moves forward. The pilot hears a noise, leaps up in surprise, recognizes that the newcomer is a member of the hated boomer race, and reaches for a weapon. She falls senseless as a dart from a stun-gun strikes her in the chest.
Back inside the cargo bay of the privateer, three of the rescue team are working to shift the containers from the half-buried victim. The plastic pods are surprisingly light. In fact, they appear to be empty. Meanwhile the fourth rescuer, who is a medic, squats to assess the injuries of the Qastt victim lying near the interior hatch.
The unconscious man rolls over, pulls a species of exotic pistol from beneath his robes and rams its muzzle into the neck of the flabbergasted medic.
"Silence! No movement or I shoot!"
The other three members of the team pause in their efforts, paralyzed by shock. Before they can react, a hideous xenoid rises from among the pods, shedding the robe that had concealed his monstrous size. He also holds a weapon, which he fires with lightning speed—zzztl zzzt! zzztl The rescuers crumple helplessly to the deck. "Why?" cries the Qastt with the gun in his throat. "Why?"
I slipped the Ivanov back into its holster and pushed out of the rumbled pile of empty pods. Mimo and Ildiko shoved aside the container that had blocked the inner hatch and came out of the forward compartment into the cargo bay.
"Nice job, Ba-Karkar," I said.
Ildiko seized the arms of the medic while Mimo relieved our Qastt accomplice of his uncharged Kagi pistol. Deftly, the former Zone Patrol officer manacled her captive's wrists, then clipped a translator pendant to his blaze-orange coverall. His angry chitters were decoded into a string of "untranslatables."
"Tell him the situation, Ba-Karkar," Ildiko commanded.
The pirate captain addressed his indignant compatriot. "You human prisoner. I human prisoner also, compelled to cooperate. Rest in holy silence. They not harm me. They not harm you either if you obey orders. You not obey, they shoot you like others."
"You kill agents of mercy!" the prisoner shrilled in my direction. "Untranslatable epithet boomer you!"
"They aren't dead," I said. "Only sleeping for a while."
I told Ildiko to take him outside. Ba-Karkar and I followed on her heels. Mimo was already snapping restraints on the wrists and ankles of the three unconscious Qastt. Hurrying down the ramp, we met Ivor, who had been concealed under a filotarp deeper inside the canyon.
"Shall I begin the unloading, Helly?" he asked.
I nodded. "Bring everything to the Qastt aircraft as fast as you can."
He opened the forward hatch and began hauling out the weapons and equipment we had previously unpacked from the pods.
Ildiko frog-marched the little medic to the tuqo while I followed with Ba-Karkar. The dazzling site lamp had been turned off and Zorik was coming down the ramp of the rescue craft with a Qastt body flung over his shoulder. He was no longer wearing his robe disguise.
"Had to take it down when it reached for a weapon," he remarked. "It didn't seem to be using the com. Probably waiting for a situation report from the others before calling into base."
"We'll check it out," I said. "Dump the snoozer with Mimo and then give Ivor a hand transferring gear. And kill that locator beacon inside the starship."
"Affirmatory," said Zorik O'Toole
.
Ildiko and I let Ba-Karkar precede us into the cockpit of the rescue aircraft. He fumbled about the console for a few moments. "Asahel, their communicator not in operation."
"Turn it on and see if anyone at Taqtaq is trying to talk to these people." I said to the captive: "Listen to me. The lives of your comrades depend on what you do within the next few minutes. If you obey me, none of you will be harmed. We will keep you prisoner for a short time and then let you go. Ba-Karkar, confirm this."
"He mean what he say. He putrid boomer but he not lie. What honorable name you have?"
"Gogatar," muttered the medic. "I qualified healer."
"Okay, Gogatar," I said. "This is what I want you to say to Taqtaq Ground Control."
I told him, and he performed the expected song and dance of defiance, whereupon Ba-Karkar, Ildiko, and I worked on him with both threats and reassurances. He capitulated in a shorter time than I would have expected. We sat him on the pilot's bench, still shackled.
"I'll control the transmitter," I said. "Speak the first phrase over and over. You won't know when the words are being broadcast, so it won't do you any good to attempt to speak a warning. Ready?"
Gogatar hung his small head. His emerald antenna-brushes had wilted into doleful dishmops. In a monotonous chirr he intoned: "Taqtaq Control, you hear me? Taqtaq Control, you hear me?"
I keyed him in, then listened for a response. It came immediately, and Ba-Karkar translated it: "We hear. Speak."
I forced the medic to say in halting phrases that his colleagues were dead and he was the only survivor. The searchers had found the crashed starship on a strange, cracked bitumen formation. They landed, and four of them reconnoitered and entered the starship in the usual manner. No sooner had they gone inside than the asphalt crust around the vessel began to heave and fracture. A cataclysmic eruption of tar surged up. The slab holding the starship tilted and the ship was engulfed.