Michael paused to look at each of the marines in turn. He was struck by the intensity on every face. He knew he did not have to ask the question but did anyway.
“So there you have it, guys. There’s nothing more I can say, so it’s up to you. Go to Al-Sufri or stay and see if we can’t drag this mission across the line.” He got to his feet. “I’ll let you talk it through. Give me a shout when you’ve decided.”
“No need, sir,” Mitchell said before Michael even started for the door. “Well, not for me, anyway. The sergeant says I talk too much anyway … ’
“No kidding,” Akuna muttered.
“… but I’m in.”
“What about the rest of you?” Michael asked. “You in too?”
One after another, heads nodded.
“Well, I guess that’s it,” Michael continued. “The mission’s back on. All we have to do is work out how we can do this.”
Shinoda broke the silence that followed. “Let me have first crack at it,” she said. “The way I see it, there’s one logistics problem-we need a ship and fast-and two tactical problems: We have to survive the Hammer defenses once we drop out of pinchspace, and then we have to get safely dirtside.”
“Money will solve the first problem,” Michael said.
“Hang on a second, sir,” Akuna said. “We’re talking merchant ships here, right?”
“Yes.”
“We can’t just waltz onboard and take over. Merships have lockouts on their controls. If the crewmen don’t want to drop into Hammer space, they sure as shit won’t let us.”
“Goddammit,” Michael said, trying not to let a sudden despondency show. In his enthusiasm, he had forgotten. “Of course they do, and I have no idea how we can get the command codes. But that problem can wait. Right now we need to start building a list of issues.”
“I’ll run the list,” Prodi offered.
“Thanks. Once we know what all the problems are, we can start working out how to solve them. Okay, who’s next?”
“So that’s it, guys,” Michael said. “Get some sleep. I’ll keep an eye on things.”
“Not so fast, sir,” Shinoda said. “Spassky and Akuna, take the perimeter.”
“You’re a hard woman,” Spassky grumbled.
Shinoda ignored her. “Mitchell, Prodi, you take over at … let me see, at six. Now move!”
The marines shuffled out, leaving Michael and Shinoda alone.
“I’ve found a ship broker, Pinczewski Associates,” Michael said. “They have plenty of ships for lease. That’s the good news. The bad is the cost. Ship leasing does not come cheap.”
“Can we get the money?”
“I’ve got some ideas,” Michael said after a moment’s thought, “but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’ve set up a meeting for ten this morning with Max Pinczewski. Let me see what he’s got to offer, and we’ll take it from there, okay?”
“All right, but we’ll need a cover story. One of Pinczewski’s people is bound to ask what we want the ship for.”
“Shit!” Michael swore. “Hadn’t thought about that.”
“I have,” Shinoda said with a smug grin. “Remember the consignment for the Live-in-Hope Mining Company? Fed border security bought that story, so I’m pretty sure our friends at Pinczewski Associates will too. We left the containers in one of the orbital bonded warehouses; it won’t be a problem to get them shifted. They are ours, after all.”
“And we have the necessary end-user certificates, so problem solved.”
“Only ten thousand to go,” Shinoda said. They both laughed.
“So, where is the Live-in-Hope Mining Company?”
“The Varakala Cluster.”
Michael winced. “Long way. That’ll be expensive. Still, we won’t worry about that just yet. And let me have a look … yes, that works.” He pulled up a chart of the space around the Hammer Worlds on the kitchen holovid screen. “A ship jumping from Scobie’s en route to the Varakala Cluster passes within 20 light-years of Commitment. Not as close as I’d like, but a ship suffering a major systems failure, say, here-” Michael’s finger stabbed at a point north of Brooks Reef. “-would have to try for Commitment.”
Michael paused to study the chart.
“Where,” he went on, “the Hammers will do their best to blow us all to hell the moment we dropped into normalspace. But that’s a problem for later.”
“Which we won’t worry about now, sir. You should get some sleep. We’ll head into town early. That’ll give us plenty of time to check out Mister Pinczewski’s place.”
“Sounds good,” Michael said. “I have to drop off an update for Admiral Moussawi as well. He needs to know what we’re planning.”
“That was easy,” Michael said, taking a sip of coffee. “I just hope the
“Easy?” Shinoda shook her head. “Thanks to the Hammers, Max Pinczewski has ships sitting on their asses doing fuck all, and we have the money. Of course it was easy.”
“Apart from the fact that we don’t have the money.”
“So what do we do?”
“Only thing I can think of is my father. He can get us the money.”
“That’d mean making a pinchcomm call to the Federated Worlds, which I don’t like the sound of,” Shinoda said. She looked anxious. “Scobie’s World is infested with State Security and DocSec agents. It’ll be risky.”
“No money, no mission, no choice,” Michael said, his tone blunt. “We have to, but not here in New Dublin. Somewhere quieter.”
“Then the sooner we do it, the better.”
“Not perfect,” Shinoda said, scanning the plaza at the heart of Charfield, a small town three hours by mobibot from New Dublin. It was a place no Hammer tourists ever came to; in theory, that meant DocSec didn’t either. Michael hoped the theory was right. “It will have to do. Now, any questions?”
Michael shook his head, mouth dry with nerves.
“Off you go, then, and if anything doesn’t look right, get out of there fast. You know where we are.”
“Got it.”
Taking a deep breath, Michael pulled his cap down, adjusted his gloves, and set off through the afternoon throng. Akuna followed 10 meters behind. Michael wondered how many of the locals he passed were security agents.
He found the telecom office without difficulty, a small building off the plaza. It was all but empty. Michael found himself a pinchcomm booth. He punched out the familiar digits and tried not to think about the obscene amount of money he was about to spend.
It took a lifetime to make the connection. The familiar voice of his father came as a shock when he answered.
“Andrew Helfort,” he said.
“No questions. Go secure. Use one-time code Blue-65-Kilo.”
“Blue-65-Kilo, going secure now.”
The voice in Michael’s ear turned to mush. Two seconds later his neuronics took over. The mush vanished. Michael put a simple acoustic vocoder to his face. It sealed off his mouth entirely. Then he jammed the vocoder into the mouthpiece on the handset. State Security would crack the encryption Michael was using, but they’d need at
