The Price of Peace Read Free Page B

smiled, confident he could keep the plasma demons from eating his ship.
    "Well, then, what did our little live-fire exercise tell us about the opposition?"
    The XO shrugged. "There be pirates here, or was. They had a Unity cruiser that was a long way from the scrap heap. They may be bold and brassy against unarmed civilians, but they can't stand up to a fighting ship. That about sum it up, skipper?"
    "In a nutshell," the skipper said with a scowl. "Let's go find ourselves another sucker." The comm link buzzed at her elbow. She tapped it. "Yes?"
    "We've got an all-ships message from a businessman on Hurtford Comer. Says he's being threatened by bandits and requests the assistance of any ship in the vicinity."
    "Who?"
    "A Paul Withwaterson , licensed on Pitt's Hope to sell farming equipment and related gear. Sounds like a legitimate call."
    "Yeah," scowled Chips, "but is he really facing bandits, or does he just want us to overawe some rubes that don't want to pay what he wants to charge?" Trouble nodded; businessmen and the Navy rarely saw eye to eye on the proper use of naval presence.
    "Has he made a previous request for help?" the captain asked. While Communications checked its database, the exec called up the star map. Hurtford Corner was five jumps away.
    " Withwaterson has never made a request for assistance from the Navy. This message is a week old," Comm reported.
    The skipper worried her lower lip. "Seven days to cross five jump points. No rush there." Each jump point had a buoy marking its place in space. Message traffic passed from buoy to buoy, but stayed in-system until the buoy jumped through just ahead of a ship, or until its message buffer filled and it dropped through the jump point to pass messages along to the next node. Ships could actually cover the distance between major planets faster than message traffic did between backwater systems.
    "Not much of a dispersion." the XO noted. "The Hurtford Corner system is pretty isolated Doubt if any other ship has gotten this message. It could be a month or more before it gets to District HQ and we get orders."
    "Yeah." Now the boss was grinning. "Trouble, could your animals use some dirtside exercise?"
    There was only one answer to that. "Marines always love getting their boots muddy ma'am," he said with innocent relish. The skipper gave him a wink.
    "XO, lay in a course for Hurtford Corner. One and a quarter gees, if you will."
    Tom Gabon stood before the full-length mirror. He adjusted his tie a smidgen. This might be the frontier, the rim of human space, but a businessman still needed to make a good first impression. This was the big promotion he'd been looking for. As senior vice president for Z&G on Riddle, he would not only manage their planetwide facilities and construction projects, but would also be one of the thirteen who sat on the planet's council. This sure as hell beat testifying at a senate hearing.
    Besides, what could he have told them? Sure, corporations kept their lines of communication open across the battle lines of the last war. Information was money. Just because Unity and Earth couldn't talk civil to each other didn't mean business had to stop. And maybe he had heard his board of directors brag that he could turn Unity's President Urm off and on like a light switch, but hey, anyone listening with one ear in the right bars during the war knew that.
    All right, maybe I do know more than a lot, but that just means I know when to keep my mouth shut and listen more than a lot of them. Tom grinned; that's how he'd found out about this opportunity. Keeping his mouth shut, and listening.
    Tom glanced at his wrist unit. The station's elevators had been lifting passengers out of the Goethe for a half hour. It was time he made his appearance. As expected, four men were waiting for him as he exited the pier elevator.
    "Mr. Gabon," a blue suit said with a smile. "We have a shuttle holding to take you down to Riddle. We can just make the meeting. Everyone