"A little," he lied. "That's one piece. Now, it'd be real nice to know what's the cargo."
"I asked Moran. Got my chops slapped for doin' it."
"Hercules helps those who help themselves."
"You pray to your gods. I'll stick to Jack London. We decide to tippy-toe out th' lock, Moran sees the lock alarm go off, an' you an' me'll be out there till we figure a way to breathe space."
"The lock alarm's been disconnected for a week. I made sure at least one suit ain't leaky. I'll check another one right now."
"Well, well. First the bug, now the alarm. For a cook, you'd make a fair spy. All right. First watch. Moran sleeps like a corpse, long as you don't try to go in his compartment."
They went out the air lock as quietly as they could. Raschid winced at the air-hiss and the whine of the lock mechanism. Both of them pulled themselves out of the open lock, making sure the attractors on their boot soles had no chance to clang against the hull. Pitcairn aimed a line-thrower and fired, and the grapnel at the end of the line snagged through an X-beam.
They hand-over-handed their way across to the cargo hold and inside, then opened their faceplates, found pry-bars, and went to work.
"Bless m' clottin' sainted mother," Pitcairn swore after a while. "There's at least one somebody on Dusable ain't in no depression."
The cargo was entirely luxury goods. Exotic foods. Liquors. Wines. One case held jewelry.
"We been livin' on swill, an' all this was just across the way. I'm tryin' not to lose it, tear Moran's face off and order a hog-out. What next?"
"Interestin'," Raschid observed. "You note there ain't no customer ID on any of the packing lists. Just: As Per Instructions To Captain."
"Okay. I say again my last. What next?"
"I think... maybe a mutiny."
"That sets real easy. Then what do we do with all these goodies? Smugglers'll pay heavy credits for what's here."
"Maybe that's the option. Mutiny first, questions later."
The mutiny came off painlessly, to use the term broadly. Raschid had given explicit orders, so only four of the twelve conspirators were used-those Raschid thought would not go berserk.
Jarvis was easy. Cady, on bridge watch, waited until the captain got tired of wearing his gun-heavy uniform coat and hung it up. The next time Jarvis paced by, a bar of soap in a stocking was applied with some firmness to his medulla oblongata. He was carried to his cabin and, after the cabin was searched for more weapons and the sealed shipping instructions taken, locked in.
Moran took a bit more skill. One sailor, selected for her slenderness, draped herself on an overhead conduit running past Moran's compartment door. Moran was buzzed for his watch. He came out, and the sailor prayed and dropped.
The flurry before Moran pitched her the length of the corridor gave Raschid, Pitcairn, and T'Orsten time enough to rat-pack him. Eventually Moran was hammered into unconsciousness.
They knew he had to have weapons stashed in his compartment, so they locked him in a bare and disused room. The fresher worked, and they could slide meals through a narrow slit cut in the door's base.
Raschid fingered his split lip, then went for the engine spaces and D'veen. He carried Moran's gun as a completely empty threat. D'veen took no threatening whatever. All she asked was that when the mutineers were caught and tried, they would testify that she had put up a magnificent battle.
"We have no intentions of being in front of a court," Raschid said. "But if so, we'll save your ticket."
The mutineers held their council of war in the officers' wardroom—after Raschid and Pitcairn had made a careful selection of goodies for a victory feast. They allowed one half bottle of alk per sailor—and Raschid thought that was too much.
He was right, but Pitcairn had made sure that only she and the cook were the ones with guns. T'Orsten bellowed rage at being informed that he could not toss Moran out the lock. He could not orgy out on the luxury cargo. And he could not revenge himself on D'veen.
Raschid let him bellow, saw that T'Orsten wasn't letting steam but building for a berserker, and blindsided him. They tucked him away next to Moran and went back to the wardroom.
Raschid opened, read the sealed shipping instructions, lifted an eyebrow, and passed the sheets across to Pitcairn.
"I guess that settles what's next," she said. She was a little pale. "We look for some smugglers, dump the cargo and the ship, and do our damndest to vanish."
She quoted from the instructions: " 'Land bleat-bleah section, transmit blurt-blurt signal. Cargo will be offloaded by personnel bearing authorization personally signed by Tyrenne Yelad, duplicate signature below.'
"Just the whole goddamned system's MaxMoFo, is all. And we just took his toys away. Nice going."
There was something moving in the back of Raschid's mind. Yelad... Yelad...
"Workers of the Santana, haul ass! You have everything to lose including your chains," Pitcairn finished.
"No," Raschid said. "No," he went on. "I think we make delivery."
Ignoring the gape, he fielded a bottle and poured himself a celebratory drink. Things were going very well, indeed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Privy Council reacted in confused fury to the raid on the AM2 convoy. The crime against the Empire—their Empire—seemed an even greater felony because they had stolen it themselves. Add to that the tremendous cost in blood and credits, the enormous hopes they had placed on the many extra months the AM2 shipment would have provided, and, finally, the humiliation that a wild gang of pirates had bested Imperial forces.
Plots within plots were hinted at within the fabric of the raid. Were the Honjo themselves involved? No one knew. The Kraas suggested that perhaps they had not been too far off the mark when they made up the accusation of Honjo culpability in the conspiracy to kill them. The makeup of raiders was equally as puzzling. What were the Bhor doing so far from home? Malperin believed they were just mercenaries. Adding weight to her argument was that the human on-screen during the Bhor's terrorcast had been identified: Sten. Kyes's target earlier, who had been identified as that smaller man in civilian clothes at the conspirators' kriegsspiel. Ex-Mantis, and a longtime associate and probable friend of the man they had once believed dead: Fleet Marshal Ian Mahoney, the man who had plotted their assassination on Earth. As soon as Sten and Mahoney had been connected, most of the council members were sure that Mahoney was the man behind all their troubles.
They were careful in not stating their exact reasons—such as the very good possibility that Mahoney suspected them of slaying the Eternal Emperor. So they took a care when maligning him, especially in front of the newest member of their body, Colonel Poyndex.
If Poyndex wondered at the extreme paranoia of his new colleagues, he kept it to himself. He had joined them prepared to expand his influence to the fullest. With that in mind, he made no attempt to soothe their anger.
The privy council wanted heads—and they wanted them now.
Poyndex offered up all his skills in helping them to widen the continuing purge. A new and vastly greater list of suspects was devised. Hunters were sent to track them down and bring them to swift justice. Poyndex was careful that his signature rarely appeared on any of those orders, and when it did, it was always following everyone else's.
The purge was not setting well with the council's dwindling allies. Many of the victims had friends or relations in those crucial areas. Poyndex knew that could not be helped. He reasoned that the council would be satisfied long before they drowned in the very blood they were spilling—and he was doing his best to pad the list of suspects with beings of little importance to anyone.