Victory Conditions (21 page)

“It’s not,” David said. “You saw that message. Captain’s aboard, captain’s orders take precedence.”

“Never mind that,” Buford said. “We found the weapons.”

“What weapons?”

“Well, they look like weapons. The ones in the storycubes. There’s one of those big long things with power warning stickers all over it. The mounts at this end of the ship are empty, but at the back—”

“Where’s Bubba?”

“I’m here, Uncle Gerry. I went lookin’ for more weapons and found racks of these long tube things, and some holes to put them in—I’ll bet they’re missiles.”

“Don’t touch those,” Gerry said. Lozar saw the look that passed from Buford to Bubba.

“Er…Uncle Gerry…we kind of already did, sort of.”

“What did you do?”

“Well…we thought if they were missiles, then they ought to be in the missile tubes where we could fire ’em. And Buford sort of thought he’d see if the missile control station was active—”

“And?”

“It wanted some kind of ID,” Buford said. “So I input my station ID, and that did it.”

“Boys, you don’t even know how to aim the things—”

“It’s easy, Uncle Gerry,” Bubba said. “There’s this screen with little ship icons and crosshairs and everything, just like a game.”

Lozar’s mind clicked on again. “These men—you are their uncle?”

Gerry grunted. “My sister’s boy, Buford Claiborne. My brother’s boy, Bubba…well, his real name’s Beauregard Eustis, but we call him Bubba.”

“And his real name’s Gee-yorgy-ih Ham-eel-car D—”

“Shut your mouth, Buford,” Gerry said. “You can’t even pronounce it right yourself.”

“All of you shut up,” David said. “I gotta figure out where we’re goin’ and where we want to go. And if we can talk to anybody…”

“This is the communications board, isn’t it?” Bubba asked. “I’ll bet I can make it work…” He leaned over the seat and poked at the controls. “Dang, it wants another number.”

“Just make one up,” Buford said. “It won’t know the difference.”

Bubba tapped at the board. “Yup. Here it comes…Uncle Gerry, should I put it on speaker?”

“Might as well,” Gerry said.

“—hear this? Can you hear this? Ship that was in Dock Thirty, can you hear—?”

Bubba leaned closer, both hands splayed out on the console for balance. “I can hear…who’s this?”

A burst of static, then: “Take your fat finger off the TRANSMIT, you idiot!”

“There’s no need to be rude,” Bubba said, and took one hand off the console. To the others, he said, “How’m I supposed to know which is the TRANSMIT button?”

“Who am I talking to? Who’s in charge?” demanded the voice.

Before Bubba could reply, David fumbled on the armrest of the captain’s chair. A microphone rose from the back of the chair and curved around to his mouth. “This is Dave Watson, Rigger One on Frame Six. We got all the dots burned out.”

“Where’s the Miznarii spy? Isn’t he on your ship?”

Lozar froze as four pairs of eyes stared at him. “I’m not—” he started to say, but his voice faltered.

David said, “Lozar’s not a spy. He’s just an idiot. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

The voice still sounded angry. “You just say that because—”

“I say that because I know him; he’s our friend. Come on, we got him drunker’n spit last night, and had to listen to the whole story of how his second daughter landed the son of somebody important in their congregation, and how this meant his wife wouldn’t have to suck up to someone else’s wife, and all the way back to the girl he didn’t marry because her father thought he wasn’t good enough. And he was hungover this morning…you can’t fake that, not that green look around the mouth and the red eyes. And since we’ve been on the ship he’s been just…an idiot. He thought the datadots were harmless messages to other Miznarii.”

“Messages to someone, and not harmless,” the voice said. “We want you to put him in confinement and come back here so we can take him in for interrogation.”

Lozar hunched in his chair. He could imagine all too well what that would be like.

David looked at him, and then at Gerry, and then over at Buford and Bubba. “You’d be usin’ what kind of interrogation?”

“Whatever it took. Hell, the Mizzie deserves a mindwipe and a scutter implant, for what he did…”

Again glances passed back and forth. David cleared his throat. “Well, you know, there’s a problem.”

“What problem? I can tell you how to link the ship to the station traffic control computer; it’ll bring it in. Just don’t let that Mizzie touch any controls.”

“See, the thing is,” David said slowly, “the ship thinks I’m the captain.”

“You?” the voice said. “You aren’t a captain!”

“I am now,” David said. “Seems the ship just wanted a license number to hand the controls over to me, and my Rigger One license did the trick. And Buford and Bubba here, they’ve activated the weapons controls and communications, and Gerry’s got shields, and old Lozar’s on drives, so the thing is…I don’t think this ship’s gonna just roll over for any traffic control computer.”

“But you have to make it—you can’t bring it in by yourself; you don’t know how.”

“I don’t want to bring it in,” David said.

“You’re one of
them
?” The voice rose to a shriek.

“Don’t be stupid,” David said. “I’m not one of those damned pirates or whatever, and I sure ain’t a Miznarii. But we have invaders in the system, and I have a warship and a crew and some weapons—”

“You have
weapons
?”

“And if the bad guys think this ship is empty, maybe they’ll come close enough we can blow their heads off.”

“You…that’s insane.”

Gerry nodded vigorously from his seat, but with a grin on his face. David’s grin was even wider.

“Hey, Thirty!” That was a new voice. “This is Seventeen—you gonna go fight?”

“Is that you, Allen?” Buford asked.

“Yeah, it’s me. We got sealed in—you too? Beth and me, Ruta and Ferris, and Simram—he’s a Mizzie but he’s people, whatever they say on the station. Would you believe the ship took my license and made me captain! We got a forward beam, too: what’ve you got?”

“Stern beam, at least one, and some missiles.”

“I’ve got a whole slew of mines,” another voice chimed in. “Hemry here, in Eleven. But I’m not the captain. Lee got here first.”

A gravelly voice broke in. “John, let your captain do the talking; I need you down there figuring out how to launch those damn things. Hey, David, how’s it goin’? George is here and we’ve got Durgin, Burrell, and Fletcher with us. It’s like a Swords meeting.”

“Be quiet!”
That was the station again. “None of you are going anywhere; none of you know how to—”

“We’re wastin’ time,” yet another voice said. Precise, a different accent than the others. “Jody here, on Ten. Bill’s here with me; we’ve got Kristine, the Schwartzes, and the Bonds.
Swords of the Spaceways!
”

“James on Nine; Rachel’s here of course, and the Kerchevals and Godwin. Swords forever!”

“Underwood on Twenty-two. I never thought I’d get to be a spaceship captain for real! May and Nazarian are with me. Have we got the whole club?
En garde, mes amis!
”

“Twenty-eight, Hise here. I’m not sure how to run this thing but it took my number.”

“Of course you can, Tom. Let me take over communications…Gorlison seems to be our pet Mizzie, and we’ve got Smith, Susan, Esther, and Clough from the club and a few others.” Lozar recognized Jan’s voice.

“Will you all shut up and
listen
!” The station again. Lozar watched David and Gerry just laugh. It was the Stationmaster himself now; they shouldn’t be laughing.

“Latner here with Twenty-six. We have Richerson and the Zrubeks from the club. No, wait, Julia’s here too. And Madeleine. Swords forever!”

“Mostly the Swords of the Spaceways club,” David said. “I guess that figures. All the ships undocked?”

“No, Seventeen,” Lee said. “But only eight have our people on ’em. The rest are still docked, but three more have sealed up, and there’s no communication with them yet. Must not’ve reached the bridge. Say…is it true the Mizzie on your ship is the one who put the dots in?”

“He says so,” David said. “But he didn’t know what they were.”

“Station wants him bad,” Lee said.

Lozar hunched lower in his seat, watching David.

“They can’t have him,” David said. “He’s not the brightest egg in the carton, but I’m not turning any friend of mine over to be mindwiped and forcibly implanted, no matter how stupid he is. It wasn’t his fault; he was duped.”

“Can we get video with this thing?” Allen asked. “I want to see this bozo.”

“Come on, Lozar, nobody’s going to hurt you,” David said. On shaky legs, Lozar made his way around the central display tank to the communications console.

“I’ve seen you before,” Allen said, when Lozar came into vid pickup range. Lozar barely remembered the balding redhead. Behind him, a thin woman with curly blond hair leaned for a look.

“Oh—
I
know you,” she said. “Isn’t your wife, Jari, on the Corridor Four children’s activities committee? And isn’t Mir your younger daughter? Our Meg is a friend of hers.”

“That settles it,” Allen said with a laugh. “We can’t let anyone do anything to Lozar. Meg would have a fit.”

Lozar remembered the blond woman and her redheaded daughter. “Please,” he said. “Take care of my wife, my daughters—”

“Can’t do that,” Allen said. “We’re in the same situation you are…all aboard the one-way express.”

“Oh, Allen, don’t be that way.” The blond woman nudged him, then smiled into the vid pickup. “Lozar, don’t worry. Even if we don’t make it back, Meg won’t let anything happen to your daughter.”

“But if people hate Miznarii…because of me…”

“Don’t worry about it. They won’t take it out on her. Meg won’t let them. And most people aren’t like that anyway.”

“She may not ever marry—”

“Is she pretty?” Buford put in. “
I’d
marry her if I get back alive—”

“Buford!” Gerry said. He sounded shocked.

Lozar
was
shocked. His daughter marry an unbeliever? He hardly listened to the banter that passed back and forth among captains Watson, Hartman, Martindale, Fawcett, Underwood, Sikes, Latner, and Hise, except to note that they kept making references to the long-running serial
Swords of the Spaceways.

“We really ought to have some kind of plan,” Gerry said suddenly. “Those things are a lot closer.”

“Ram ’em,” David said. “That always works in the vid cubes. Lozar! Give us full speed ahead or whatever that is…straight at ’em.”

Lozar looked at the controls, none of which said anything like “full speed ahead.” He prodded one sliding bar tentatively. On the screen in front of him, colored bars climbed up a set of lines, both with scales he couldn’t read. He nudged the bar farther. It stopped. On one side was a red button with OVERRIDE engraved in the top and a warning notice beside it: OVERRIDING AUTOMATED ACCELERATION LIMITS IS NOT RECOMMENDED. REQUIRES CAPTAIN’S AUTHORIZATION.

“It won’t let me make it faster unless you say it’s all right,” Lozar said.

David touched a control. “Try it now.”

Lozar pushed the red button, which lit up from inside; a metallic voice said, “Warning. Max acceleration approved. Warning. Take hold.”

“What are they thinking?” Major Douglas said. He knew from experience that if he’d been in the CCC he would not have had as good a view of scan—everything was angled for the admiral’s convenience—and besides, he could comment to Hugh Pritang without distracting Admiral Vatta. The scan data on two of the rigger-crewed ships showed them accelerating rapidly straight toward two of the pirate ships. “That’s a stupid course; they’re dead meat—”

“They’re not trained, Moray Command says,” Hugh said. “I don’t know why they didn’t go back and let someone with expertise take over…”

“Look, there goes another one—” This time on a different course, apparently trying for another one of the attacker groups. “And those—” That for a group moving together, away from the combat zone toward the jump point.

“Uncrewed. Command thinks they’re controlled by the pirates, due to some kind of sabotage—” Hugh paused to acknowledge Ky’s order to microjump into attack position on the raiders.

“Too bad the riggers didn’t just blow
them
up.”

“They seem to have a suicide wish. Like something out of an entertainment vid.”

“Maybe they’re Romantics, like Teddy,” Lee put in. Douglas looked at the pilot sharply, but Hugh shook his head. Nothing would convert Lee to full military courtesy.

“Riggers? I wouldn’t think so,” Hugh said. “I’ve met a lot of that sort and they’re usually solid, sensible—well, except when drinking. But they do watch a lot of commercial entertainment, and if that’s all they know about tactics—”