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Chapter Twenty-two
Alicia took another swallow and decided she'd been wrong; Ching-Hai did have one redeeming feature.
She rolled the chill bottle across her forehead and savored the rich, clean taste of the beer. Monsieur Labin's offices boasted what passed for air-conditioning on Ching-Hai, but the temperature was still seven degrees higher than the one Megarea maintained aboard ship. No doubt the climate helped explain the locals' excellent breweries.
The old-fashioned office door rattled, and she straightened in her chair, lowering the bottle as Gustav Labin, Yerensky's Ching-Hai agent, stepped through it. Unlike Alicia's, his round, bland face was dry, but he didn't even crack a smile as she wiped a fresh drop of sweat from her nose. Not because he lacked the normal Ching-Haian's amusement at off-worlders' want of heat tolerance, but because he was afraid of her. Indeed, he regarded her with a certain fixed dread, as if she were a warhead which might choose to. detonate any time. He'd been looking at her that way ever since he arrived to find her sitting amid the ruins of the botched hijacking. Tisiphone had needed only a single handshake to confirm that Labin had known nothing of his (now deceased) partner's intentions ... and that "Captain Mainwaring's reputation as a dangerous woman had been made forever.
Now he lowered himself into his chair and cleared a nervous throat.
"I've completed the manifest verification, Captain. It checks perfectly, as—" he hastened to add "—I was certain it would." He drew a credit transfer chip from a drawer. "The balance of your payment, Captain."
"Thank you, monsieur. It's been a pleasure." Alicia kept her face straight, but it was hard. Those poor, half-assed hijackers had been totally beyond their depth. Killing, even in self-defense and even of scum like that, never sat easily with her afterward, yet Labin's near terror amused her. If he ever saw a regular Cadre assault he'd die on the spot.
"And the universe would be a better place for it," Tisiphone observed. "This man is a worm, Little One."
"Now, now. He's all of that, but he's also our ticket to Dewent ... whenever he gets around to mentioning it"
The Fury sniffed, but it was her probe which had discovered Labin's shipment. Given its nature and the stature Alicia enjoyed in his eyes, they hadn't even had to "push" him into seeing her as the perfect carrier.
"Ah, yes. A pleasure for me, as well, Captain. And allow me to apologize once more. I assure you neither Anton nor I ever suspected my colleague might attempt to attack you."
"I never thought otherwise," Alicia murmured, and he managed a smile.
"I'm glad. And, of course, impressed. Indeed, Captain, I have another small consignment, one which must be delivered to Dewent, and your, um, demonstrated expertise could be very much a plus to me. It's quite a valuable cargo, and I've been concerned over its security. Concerned enough," he leaned forward a bit, "to pay top credit to a reliable carrier."
"I see." Alicia sipped more beer, then shook her head. "It sounds to me like you think your 'concern' could end in more shooting, monsieur, and I prefer not to carry cargoes I know are going to attract hijacks."
"I understand entirely, and I may be worrying over nothing. Certainly I have no solid evidence of any danger. I merely prefer to be safe rather than sorry, and I'm willing to invest a bit in security. I thought, perhaps, an increase of fifteen percent over your fee to Anton might be appropriate?" "My fee to Mister Yerensky didn't include combat expenses," Alicia pointed out, "and shuttle missiles are hard to come by out here. I expect replacing expenditures to cut into my profit margin on this trip."
"Twenty percent, then?"
"I don't know... ." Alicia allowed her voice to trail off. Thanks to Tisiphone, she knew Labin was willing to go to thirty or even thirty-five percent to secure her services, and while she wasn't particularly interested in ru
"Twenty-five," Labin offered.
"Make it thirty," she said. Labin winced but nodded, and she smiled. "In that case, if I may use your com?" She reached for the terminal, and Labin sat back as she entered a code. A moment later, the screen lit with Ruth Ta
"Yes, Captain?" Megarea asked in Ta
"We've got a new charter, Ruth. We'll be headed to Dewent for Monsieur Labin. Ready to crunch a few numbers?"
"Of course, Captain."
"Good." Alicia turned the terminal to face Labin and leaned back. "If you'll be good enough to settle the details with my purser, monsieur?"
-=0=-***-=0=
"I do not like this cargo," Tisiphone groused. "I'm not crazy about it myself," Alicia replied, frowning at the chessboard. She and Megarea had taught the Fury the game, and Alicia and Tisiphone were surprisingly well-matched, though it took both of them together just to lose to the AI.
"None of us are," Megarea put in, "but we needed one going to Dewent"
"Exactly." Alicia nodded and started to reach for a knight.
"Wouldn't do that, Alley," Megarea whispered. "Her bishop'll—"
"Will you two cease that?!"
"Cease what, Tis?" Megarea asked i
"You know very well what. Or did you truly think you could think so softly I would not hear you?"
"It wath worth a try," Lieutenant Chisholm said from a speaker. "And only a nathty, thuthpithous perthon would have been lithening, anyway."
"No one except one who knows you, you mean."
Alicia bit her lip against a giggle, but she didn't quite dare take advantage of Megarea's kibitzing now. So she moved her knight, instead, and sighed as Tisiphone's bishop lashed out and captured her king's rook.
"Check," the Fury said smugly.
"You really are a nasty person. If I was virtuous enough not to listen to Megarea, you could've reciprocated by leaving my poor rook alone."
"Nonsense. You yourself call this a "war game," and one does not surrender an honorably gained advantage in war, Little One. Nor, I suppose," the mental voice grew more thoughtful, "even a dishonorably gained advantage."
"Absolutely," Alicia said sweetly, and captured the bishop with her other knight ... simultaneously forking Tisiphone's king and queen. It exposed her own queen's bishop, but that was fine with her. The only square to which Tisiphone could move her king was one Knight's move from her queen. "Check yourself."
"By golly, I didn't even notice that one!" Megarea observed in a tone of artful i
"Hmph! And Odysseus was a credulous fool. Yet we have wandered from my earlier point, Little One. Advantage or no, I dislike this cargo of ours."
"I know," Alicia sighed, and she did know. Anton Yerensky's cargo to Ching-Hai had been illegal but essentially beneficial; Gustav Labin's cargo to Dewent was also pharmaceutical, but that was the sole similarity. "Dreamy White" was harmless enough to its users, aside from a hundred percent rate of addiction, but it was hideously expensive ... and even more hideously obtained. It was an endorphin derivative, and while it could be produced in the lab, there were far cheaper ways. Most Dreamy White was harvested from the brains of human beings, with consequences for the "donor" which ranged from massive retardation and motor control loss to death.
"We should not have taken it," the Fury said grimly.
"Aren't you the one who told me anything we do in pursuit of vengeance is acceptable?" Alicia's voice was sharper than intended—because, she knew, Tisiphone was simply saying what all of them felt—yet she could taste the other's surprise as her own words were thrown back at her.
"Perhaps. Yet you were the one who argued for "justice,"" Tisiphone shot back gamely. "How can this be just?"
"I don't know that it is," Alicia said more slowly, "but I also don't see that we have any choice. And it's certainly the kind of cargo that'll get us in with the people we need to infiltrate."
The Fury's silence was an unhappy acceptance, and Alicia wondered if Tisiphone was as aware as she of the irony of their positions. She, who believed passionately in justice, had compromised her principles in the pursuit of her prey, leaving it to the Fury, who spoke only of vengeance, to question the morality of their gruesome cargo.
"Perhaps," Tisiphone repeated at last. "Yet perhaps there is something after all to this concept of law, as well. Man had turned his hand to evils enough when my sisters and I were one, but all of them pale beside those he has the tools to wreak today, and not even my vengeance can undo an evil once committed. So perhaps this justice, these "rules" of yours, are more important than once I thought."
Alicia sat still, eyes widening to hear the Fury admit even a part of her argument, but she felt a tugging at her right hand. She relinquished control and watched it reach out to advance a rook.
"Guard yourself, Little One! You may have slowed my attack, but you have not stopped it."
Alicia smiled and bent over the board once more, yet there was a chill in her heart, for she knew Tisiphone referred to far more than a chess game.
-=0=-***-=0=-
Dewent was a much nicer planet than Ching-Hai, Alicia thought. In part, that was because it was much wetter, a world of archipelagoes and island continents, and cooler, but it was also closer to civilized. Not a great deal closer, perhaps, yet no one had attempted to rob or kill her, and that was a definite improvement.
Unlike Ching-Hai, Dewent had a customs service, but it was concerned only with insuring that the local government got its cut on outgoing cargoes, and Alicia had set the cargo shuttle neatly down at Dewent's main spaceport unmolested by anything so crass as an inspection. The Bengal had grounded beside her like a garishly-painted shadow or a pointed hint that politeness would be wise, but it stayed sealed. Alicia had been at some pains to maintain an open com link to it, chattering away with "Jeff Okahara," its ostensible pilot and "Star Ru