The leader draped the tie around his own neck and bent it into a clumsy knot. “There! See, I too am a Terran businessman! This is my trophy! Do each of you also take one!”
With whistles of agreement, the Khalians turned to tear at the civilians’ neckties. With cries of dismay, the men untied their decorations quickly.
“Thus shall you know me, if ever we meet again,” the big Khalian told Sales.
The Terran smiled, without mirth. “Shall I? Or shall we all burn, when you are done looting this ship?”
“Oh, we shall take the whole ship for our loot! But you have a launch, have you not? A ‘lifeboat,’ that is your term for it. Yes, we shall set you adrift in that, those of you who are not foolish enough to fight, and not skilled enough to die fighting.”
Sales reddened.
The Khalian showed his teeth in a grin. “Be glad, Sales. Your clumsiness has saved your life. No, I will let all of you go, alive, to carry word back to your fellow Terrans of me and my crew—that they may know not to dare ply the space about Khalia again, lest we fall upon them!”
“Indeed,” said Sales, with the closest he could come to scorn. “And how shall we tell them of you, when we do not know your name—you who are so good of heart as to let us live?”
His sarcasm was lost on the Khalian. “Good of heart? Why, that will be a most excellent name! Yes, tell them I am Goodheart, and that they shall know me by these brightly colored strips of cloth my crew and I shall wear! Tell them of Goodheart, that they may tremble in fear!”
“Goodheart,” Sales agreed, with a sour smile. “Goodheart, the pirate.”
“Goodheart!” the Khalian shrilled to his crew in his own language. “Do you hear? He has given me my name, the name which shall make Terrans tremble! From this time forth, I am Captain Goodheart!”
The crew’s approval was a chorus of whistles that fairly drilled through the Terrans’ brains.
The launch was jammed full, and the Khalians were none too gentle about pushing the passengers aboard. The women screamed in fright, and some of the men, too. Then Captain Goodheart snapped, “Stand clear!” and two of his Weasels stepped in, brandishing rifles. The crowd screamed and pressed back away from them, jamming up against one another.
Then, while the two crewmen held them back with their rifles, two others brought in an improvised stretcher with the captain’s unconscious form on it. They went out, then returned with the first officer, again unconscious. Lastly, they brought in the draped body of the dead navigator. They stepped out, and the passengers were silent, awed. Then the two guards backed away, and Sales stepped in.
He turned to face the big Khalian in the hatchway. “I thank you for your courtesy to my fallen countrymen.”
“I honor them,” the pirate answered. “They fought, willingly if not well.” Then his lips writhed back in a grin. “Remember me, Sales—and remember my kindness.”
He hit the pressure patch, and the hatch swung closed. “Oh, don’t worry,” Sales murmured. “I’ll remember you, all right.”
“You damn fool!” a passenger cried. “You damn near got us all killed back there!”
The crowd, given a scapegoat, suddenly turned into a mob, all shouting blame and accusation at Sales.
He whirled about and, in his best quarterdeck voice, bellowed, “Grab hold!”
Cries of incredulity answered him, but some of the civilians had been in the Fleet, and grabbed for the nearest seat-back or rack, yelling to others to do the same. Sales himself just barely managed to grab hold of a tie-ring before a giant kicked their ship like a football, and it shot out into space.
People screamed, and the ones who had ignored Sales slammed down against one another, then ran stumbling backward to be plastered against the aft bulkhead. Sales felt sorry for the ones on the bottom of the pile, but he knew someone had to direct this launch, or they’d be off course before they even began.
Assuming, of course, that the Weasels weren’t planning to use them for target practice.
He didn’t think they were, Sales thought, as he struggled fore through the press of bodies. The Weasels wouldn’t have wasted a good ship that way. Goodheart had already shown that he cared a lot about public opinion; he wasn’t about to shoot down helpless refugees.
He elbowed the last passenger aside, ignoring his angry shout, and pulled himself into the cockpit. Just then, the acceleration eased off, and he almost fell against the forward port, but caught himself in time, pushed himself back into the pilot’s chair, and pulled the shock webbing across his body almost by reflex. Then he reached out and turned on the board. Lights winked across its surface, and the big screen next to the port glowed into life. Sales slapped at patches, activating the sensors, but not the beacon.
The merchantman was already moving. Goodheart wasn’t wasting time—he was getting out, before Sales could call for help.
Passengers jammed the hatch behind him, and a man called out, “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing!”
“Calling for help,” Sales answered. But he kept his eyes glued to the screen as he turned on the log recorder, watching and noting coordinates until the merchantman suddenly blurred and winked out, into hyperspace. Then, finally, Sales reached out and turned on the beacon.
He turned around and said to the men jamming the opening, “Tell everyone to find seats, if they can, and see if there’s a doctor or a nurse to keep an eye on the captain and the first.”
One of the men turned away to carry the message, but another glared in outrage. “Who the hell put you in charge?”
“Yeah!” said the other man. “Who do you think you are, anyway?”
”Lohengrin Sales,” he answered. “Lieutenant Commander, Fleet Intelligence.”
“Sit down, Commander,” the admiral said, not looking up from his desk screen. Sales relaxed a little and took the straight chair in front of the desk. The walls were almost invisible in the murk left by the single pool of light on the admiral’s desk. The glow of the screen was brighter, though, and lit the man’s face from below, giving him a supernatural look. Good, Sales thought. It takes something supernatural to fight demons.
The admiral looked up. “You acquitted yourself admirably, Commander. It’s just lucky for those civilians that you happened to be on a mission to Terran HQ.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“But why did you have nothing but a blackjack, may I ask?”
“Spaceport security, sir. Civilians aren’t allowed to carry weapons aboard, and blackjacks don’t show up on screens—if they don’t have any metal parts.”
The admiral nodded. “We’ve sent your courier pack on to Terra with another messenger. It was lucky those pirates didn’t think to search you—diplomatic documents with Khalian seals would never have gotten past them.”
”They would have used them for kindling, sir. Now that that mission’s out of my hands, may I request reassignment?”
The admiral smiled. “To what, Commander?”
“To pirate extermination, sir,” Sales answered.
The admiral nodded. “Good idea. I was just about to assign you to track down Captain Goodheart, as it happens. And, by the way, you’re promoted—to full commander.”
There was discussion among the crew about the captain’s taking of a Terran name, of course.
“I could understand his giving the humans a name to call him by,” said Pralit, one of the CPOs, “but abandoning his family name, his clan name? How can this be good?”
“There is a way,” Xlitspee, a crewman, assured, if somewhat desperately. “There must be—for our captain is the bravest of we orphans of Khalia. “