Contraband From Otherspace

X

The boffins were reluctant to release Freedom, but Grimes was insistent, explaining that disguise of Faraway Quest, no matter how good, might well be not good enough. A small, inconspicuous but betraying feature of her outward appearance could lead to her immediate destruction. "Then what about the crew, Commodore?" asked one of the scientists. "Surely those tailed beings will soon realize that the ship is not manned by the original rebels."

"Not necessarily," Grimes told the man. "In fact, I think it’s quite unlikely. Even among human beings all members of a different race tend to look alike. And when it comes to members of two entirely different species…"

"I’m reasonably expert," added Sonya, "but even I find it hard until I’ve had time to observe carefully the beings with whom I’m dealing."

"But there’s so much that we could learn from the ship!" protested the scientist.

"Mr. Wales," Grimes said to the Rim Runners' Superintending Engineer, "how much do you think there is to be learned from the derelict?"

"Not a damn thing, Commodore. But if we disguise one of our own ships, and succeed in blowing her into whatever cosmic alternative universe she came from, there’s far too much that could be learned from us. As far as shipbuilding is concerned, we’re practically a century ahead."

"Good enough. Well, gentlemen?"

"I suggest, Commodore, that we bring your Freedom’s armament up to scratch," said Admiral Hennessey, but the way that he said it made it more of an order than a suggestion.

Grimes turned to face the Admiral, the Flag Officer Commanding the Naval Force of the Confederacy. Bleak stare clashed with bleak stare, almost audibly. As an officer of the Reserve, Grimes considered himself a better spaceman than his superior, and was inclined to resent the intrusion of the Regular Navy into what he was already regarding as his own show.

He replied firmly, "No, sir. That could well give the game away."

He was hurt when Sonya took the Admiral’s side—but, after all, she was regular Navy herself, although Federation and not Confederacy. She said, "But what about the lead sheathing, John? What about the sphere of anti-matter?"

Grimes was not beaten. "Mr. Wales has already made a valid point. He thinks that it would be imprudent to make the aliens a present of a century’s progress in astronautical engineering. It would be equally imprudent to make them a present of a century’s progress in weaponry."

"You have a point there, Grimes," admitted the Admiral. "But I do not feel happy in allowing my personnel to ship in a vessel on a hazardous mission without the utmost protection that I can afford them."

"Apart from the Marines, sir, my personnel rather than yours. Practically every officer will be a reservist."

The Admiral glared at the Commodore. He growled, "Frankly, if it were not for the pressure brought to bear by our Big Brothers of the Federation, I should insist on commissioning a battle squadron." He smiled coldly in Sonya’s direction. "But the Terran Admiralty seems to trust Commander Verrill—or Mrs. Grimes—and have given her on-the-spot powers that would be more fitting to a holder of Flag Officer’s rank. And my own instructions from Government House are to afford her every assistance."

He made a ritual of selecting a long, black cigar from the case that he took from an inside pocket of his uniform, lit it, filled the already foul air of the derelict’s control room with wreathing eddies of acrid blue smoke. He said in a voice that equaled in acridity the fumes that carried it, "Very well, Commodore. You’re having your own way. Or your wife is having her own way; she has persuaded the Federation that you are to be in full command. (But will you be, I wonder…) May I, as your Admiral, presume to inquire just what are your intentions, assuming that the nuclear device that you have commandeered from my arsenal does blow you into the right continuum?"

"We shall play by ear, sir."

The Admiral seemed to be emulating the weapon that he had just mentioned, but he did not quite reach critical mass. "Play by ear!" he bellowed at last, when coherent speech was at last possible. "Play by ear! Damn it all, sir, that’s the sort of fatuous remark one might expect from a Snotty making his first training cruise, but not from an allegedly responsible officer."

"Admiral Hennessey," Sonya’s voice was as cold as his had been. "This is not a punitive expedition. This is not a well organized attack by naval forces. This is an Intelligence operation. We do not know what we are up against. We are trying to find out." Her voice softened slightly. "I admit that the Commodore expressed himself in a rather un-spacemanlike manner, but playing by ear is what we shall do. How shall I put it? We shall poke a stick into the ants' nest and see what comes out…"

"We shall hoist the banner of the Confederacy to the masthead and see who salutes," somebody said in one of those carrying whispers. The Admiral, the Commodore and Sonya Verrill turned to glare at the man. Then Sonya laughed. "That’s one way of putting it. Only it won’t be the black and gold of the Confederacy—it’ll be the black and silver of the Jolly Roger. A little judicious piracy—or privateering. Will Rim Worlds Letters of Marque be valid wherever we’re going, Admiral?"

That officer managed a rather sour chuckle. "I think I get the drift of your intentions, Commander. I hate to have to admit it—but I wish that I were coming with you." He transferred his attention to Grimes. "So, Commodore, I think that I shall be justified in at least repairing or renewing the weapons that were damaged or destroyed by the blast—as long as I don’t fit anything beyond the technology of the builders of this ship."

"Please do that, sir."

"I shall. But what about small arms for your officers and the Marines?"

Grimes pondered the question. There had been no pistols of any kind aboard the derelict when he had boarded her. It could be argued that this was a detail that did not much matter—should the ship be boarded and seized herself there would be both the lead sheathing and the sphere of anti-matter that would make it obvious to the boarding party that she had been… elsewhere. Assuming, that is, that the last survivors of her crew did not trigger the explosive charge that would shatter the neutronium shell and destroy the magnets, thus bringing the sphere of anti-iron into contact with the normal matter surrounding it. Then there would be nobody to talk about what had been found.

But Freedom—as a pirate or a privateer—would be sending boarding parties to other ships. There was the possibility that she might have to run before superior forces, unexpectedly appearing, leaving such a boarding party to its fate. Grimes most sincerely hoped that he would never have to make such a decision. And if the boarding party possessed obviously alien hand weapons the tailed beings would be, putting it very mildly, suspicious.

"No hand weapons," he said at last, reluctantly. "But I hope that we shall be able to capture a few, and that we shall be able to duplicate them in the ship’s workshop. Meanwhile, I’d like your Marines to be experts in unarmed combat—both suited and unsuited."

"And expert knife fighters," added Sonya.

"Boarding axes and cutlasses," contributed the Admiral, not without relish.

"Yes, sir," agreed Grimes. "Boarding axes and cutlasses."

"I suggest, Commodore," said Hennessey, "that you do a course at the Personal Combat Center at Lorn Base."

"I don’t think there will be time, sir," said Grimes hopefully.

"There will be, Commodore. The lead sheathing and the anti-matter sphere cannot be installed in five minutes. And there are weapons to be repaired and renewed."

"There will be time," said Sonya.

Grimes sighed. He had been in one or two minor actions in his youth, but they had been so… impersonal. It was the enemy ship that you were out to get, and the fact that a large proportion of her crew was liable to die with her was something that you glossed over. You did not see the dreadful damage that your missiles and beams did to the fragile flesh and blood mechanisms that were human beings. Or if you did see it—a hard frozen corpse is not the same as one still warm, still pumping blood from severed arteries, still twitching in a ghastly semblance to life.

"There will be time, Commodore," repeated the Admiral.

"There will be time," repeated Sonya.

"And what about you, Mrs. Grimes?" asked Hennessey unkindly.

"You forget, sir, that in my branch of the Federation’s service we are taught how to kill or maim with whatever is to hand any and every life form with which we may come into contact."

"Then I will arrange for the Commodore’s course," Hennessey told her.

It was, for Grimes, a grueling three weeks. He was fit enough, but he was not as hard as he might have been. Even wearing protective armor he emerged from every bout with the Sergeant Instructor badly bruised and battered. And he did not like knives, although he attained fair skill with them as a throwing weapon. He disliked cutlasses even more. And the boarding axes, with their pike heads, he detested.

And then, quite suddenly, it came to him. The Instructor had given him a bad time, as usual, and had then called a break. Grimes stood there, sagging in his armor, using the shaft of his axe as a staff upon which to lean. He was aching and he was itching inside his protective clothing, and his copious perspiration was making every abrasion on his skin smart painfully.

Without warning the Instructor kicked Grimes' support away with a booted foot and then, as the Commodore sprawled on the hard ground, raised his own axe for the simulated kill. Although a red haze clouded his vision, Grimes rolled out of the path of the descending blade, heard the blunted edge thud into the dirt a fraction of an inch from his helmeted head. He was on his feet then, moving with an agility that he had never dreamed that he possessed, he was on his feet, crouching and his pike head thrusting viciously at the Instructor’s crotch. The man squealed as the blow connected; even the heavy cod piece could not save him from severe pain. He squealed, but brought his own axe around in a sweeping, deadly arc. Grimes parried, blade edge to shaft, to such good effect that the lethal head of the other’s weapon was broken off, clattering to the ground many feet away. He parried and followed through, his blade clanging on the Instructor’s shoulder armor. Yet another blow, this time to the man’s broad back, and he was down like a felled ox.

Slowly the red haze cleared from the commodore’s vision as he stood there. Slowly he lowered his axe, and as he did so he realized that the Instructor had rolled over, was lying there, laughing up at him, was saying, "Easy, sir. Easy. You’re not supposed to kill me, sir. Or to ruin my matrimonial prospects."

"I’m sorry, Sergeant," Grimes said stiffly. "But that was a dirty trick you played."

"It was meant to be dirty, sir. Never trust nobody—that’s Lesson One."

"And Lesson Two, Sergeant?"

"You’ve learned that too, sir. You gotta hate. You officers are all the same—you don’t really hate the poor cows at the other end of the trajectory when you press a firing button. But in this sort of fighting you gotta hate."

"I think I see, Sergeant," said Grimes.

But he was not sorry when he was able to return to his real business—to see Freedom (or Destroyer) readied for her expedition into the Unknown.