CHAPTER TWELVE

"Nice of you to come see us, Slade," said the leader of the men with their hair dyed blue.

"Hello, Blackledge," said Don Slade in a voice as cold as his expression. The tanker did not know why he had been called to the bridge. Likely it had something to do with the fact that the most recent Transit had been four hours ago, far too long for a normal computation.

It did not concern Slade to find that there were four other passengers on the bridge, along with the normal trio of crewmen. What Slade disliked was the fact that the four were Reuben Blackledge and three of his henchmen from Aylmer's Guards. That unit had been known for its members' blue hair and the abnormal brutality with which it conducted its affairs. Hammer had proscribed the Guards as soon as he thought he could spare their manpower. Individual soldiers had shaved or redyed their hair. The smart ones found passage off Friesland while the going was good. It was a bad sign that the outlaws were sporting their old color. It was worse that they lounged on the bridge as if they now owned it.

"Hey, hang loose, trooper," Blackledge said, tense to his own surprise when the tanker looked at him. All four of the outlaws had guns. The detector at the bridge hatchway had shown that Slade was unarmed . . . but no one with hands and a mind like Mad Dog Slade was really unarmed. "Look," Blackledge continued, "this isn't any hijacking or anything like that, is it?"

He looked around for support. His fellows nodded. They too had been shocked by the physical presence of the tank officer whom they had expected to overawe. The crewmen nodded also. Levine, the Captain, said, "These are hard times, Mister Slade. I have responsibilities, too, to do what's best for my crew and my backers."

"There's the matter of responsibility to your passengers, too, Levine," Slade said. He walked over to the bulb of the navigational display which was now dark and empty. It looked like a harmless motion, because Slade's back was to four of the Guards; but everyone on the bridge was now within reach of the tanker's arms. "There's three hundred of us who've paid to be hauled home on schedule and in order, right?"

"Happens the rest of us," said Blackledge, "want to change the schedule a little, Slade. Look—" his voice rose in nervous anger, though Blackledge was not a small man either— "it's fine for you, the fares pay the cost of Transit and the ship makes its profit off odds and sods of cargo it picks up on the way. But there's a lot of us aboard, your highness, people who spent their last sparkler to cheat the hangman one more time. You get off and transfer a fortune back into your pocket. But what d'ye think happens to most of us?"

Slade turned slowly to face the outlaw leader. Well, he'd never really believed he was meant to die in bed, for all his determination a month ago that he would go home and live as quietly as a shore-side mussel.

Blackledge's face was suffused. In that state it was marred by a scattering of white, hair-thin scars. "I don't suppose," said Slade in a reasonable voice, "that you called me here to see if I'd split my pay—" he had more than that, but less than the fortune in loot that Aylmer's Guards would have expected from someone with Slade's opportunities— "with everybody at our first landfall."

If Blackledge said they did intend such extortion, it was going to get tense. Slade doubted that these blue-haired clowns had the subtlety that would be needed to actually break Slade to their will; but he did not care to be around for them to practice on, either.

"Naw, we don't want your money," the outlaw said. Slade relaxed, and the outlaws relaxed. The ship's crewmen looked quizzical, but they did not realize how close they had been to a maelstrom of bodies and gunfire. Blackledge was trying to find an alternative to the bantering superiority with which he had opened the interview and to the frightened hostility into which his tones had degenerated. "We're all mercs, right? We don't rob each other."

Which was a lie, but one whose telling was an olive branch that Don Slade was willing to accept with a smile. "There's a lot of us, you see," the outlaw continued, "who didn't figure on Hammer getting holier than thou once he'd shot his way into the presidency. We figure we're owed something, and there's plenty of places out there just waiting to pay us."

Places like Tethys, Slade thought as he nodded false approval. Places that hadn't had an internal war since they were settled. Places whose emergency alert system was cob-webbed from disuse. The chances of this lot getting away with significant loot were slim, but Via! the damage they'd do before the locals mopped them up!

Via . . . . If Slade grabbed the submachine gun of the nearest outlaw, he could empty it into the control panel before they stopped him. "I don't know, though," the big man said as if he were considering. "Three hundred effectives won't give you much of a perimeter. I suppose everybody's pretty well agreed on this, though?"

Another man with scarcely a stubble to dye nodded furiously. It was Blackledge, however, who answered by saying, "This is just one ship of twenty-two, Slade. Isn't that right?"

"That's right," agreed Captain Levine with a bob of his head. "Ready and waiting. It's hard to make it on unscheduled loads, stony hard. I owe it to my backers to take a chance when it offers . . . ."

A chance to be slagged down with your rusty hull, the tanker thought. But he was accustomed to the ravening bite of powerguns, and to the short shrift they gave any but the most refractory armor. Levine did not have that experience; and the outlaws, who probably did understand, would not dwell aloud on the vulnerability of the chariots hauling them to fantasy loot.

But it meant that whether or not GAC 59 survived, the raids were going to occur. Good soldiers have to be willing to die, but suicidal men have little purpose in a well-run army. They just leave you with another damned slot to train for. "Sounds like you've thought things through pretty well," said Don Slade. "Now I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop, hey?"

"We want you to command us," said Blackledge. He vomited out the words with a forward thrust of his head. The outlaw's hair waved above his scarred, red face.

Slade was genuinely surprised for the first time since he stepped onto the bridge. He jerked away from the words.

"Look, I don't mean we'd make you God," Blackledge continued hastily. He gestured toward Slade with his left hand. "There's a Ship's Meeting, same as there's a Fleet Meeting. You won't have cop to do with that, it's us that plan things. But after we hit ground, well—" The outlaw frowned across the company of his fellows. "Look, we've heard of you, you're used to commanding things. Most of the other ships, they've got their own officers, they left as formed units. Us here don't. We're bits and pieces from twenty outfits, and nobody the rest'd listen to. We know we're headed for some heavy traffic, Slade. You're going the same place. If you're smart, you'll be willing to help steer for a triple share of the loot."

Slade began playing again with the navigation bulb. It gave him a look of aimless placidity. "Whatever happened to Aylmer?" he asked. "General Aylmer, I think he called himself, didn't he?"

One of Blackledge's companions began to snicker. Blackledge hushed him with a punch on the shoulder and a molten glare. "Aylmer thought he'd make a deal for himself that'd leave some people hanging," said the outlaw leader. "Some people got to know about that. I think they may've greased Aylmer before they bugged out themselves."

A stubble-haired outlaw broke the silence he had maintained until then. "It's the same thing you've been at," he said. His lips flicked saliva. "Only we don't have tanks, is all. And don't worry about what your buddies who stayed on Friesland with the cushy jobs might say. They knew about this. We kept it quiet as we could, but there's no way a deal this big could have been put together without their high and mightinesses learning, was there?"

"All right," said Don Slade. His skin felt as though he were being crushed by an avalanche of needles. But choose Life, even when Life has a gun-stock. "It won't work, because I don't think any of your lot have the discipline to make it work. But I'll give you as much leadership as you're ready to take."