The Fortress in Orion Read online

  She frowned. “Why? The only thing you’re going to spend money on is fuel, if we even need any.”

  “Some of you will pick up information in the local bars or drug dens or”—he glanced at Ortega’s head—“barber shops, always assuming they’ll work on a Man. But I have a feeling a bank officer might be better wired into a government that’s still a thousand light-years from here, and the easiest way to find out is to have a chat with him or her or it. And the easiest way to do that is to deposit a million credits or the equivalent now, and then visit the bank to see if we want to deposit any more.”

  Snake stared at him. “Damn! You’re even more devious as I am!”

  He smiled. “I have to be. I can’t hide in a file drawer for five hours.”

  “All right,” she said, heading off to another workstation. Suddenly she stopped and turned back. “How about half a million, just in case?”

  “A million.”

  “But—”

  “Snake, if we need more, we’ll get it,” said Pretorius. “Stealing money is easy. Winning wars is difficult.”

  She seemed about to argue, decided that it wouldn’t do any good, shrugged, and went to the station.

  “Is there anything I should be doing?” asked Proto.

  “I was just coming to that,” answered Pretorius. He turned to Djibmet. “We are going to need your expertise here.”

  “What do you want me to do?” asked the Kabori.

  “Just watch.” Pretorius turned back to Proto. “I want you to appear as a Kabori. Not Michkag and not Djibmet. If you’ve seen one in a military uniform, so much the better, but we can always bring up holos of that later.”

  “All right,” said Proto. “When?”

  “Now.”

  And as quickly as Pretorius uttered the word, Proto seemed to vanish, to be replaced by a Kabori soldier.

  Pretorius turned to Djibmet. “Well?”

  “The uniform was out of date even when I was still in the Coalition,” answered the Kabori, “but physically he almost looks the part.”

  “Almost?”

  “His eyes are brown. Ours are black.”

  No sooner had he voiced the observation than Proto’s eyes became black.

  “The right number of digits on his hands, and his feet are covered by boots,” said Djibmet. “The ears are moving correctly. Walk toward me.”

  Proto approached him.

  “Yes,” said Djibmet. “Quite good.”

  “If you saw him right now for the first time, would you have any suspicion at all that he wasn’t a Kabori?” asked Pretorius.

  “No, none.”

  “All right. Your job for the next three days, when you’re not working with Michkag, is to teach him a few simple sentences in your language, especially anything he might need at customs or if he’s being questioned by the military.”

  “I’m not very good at languages,” said Proto, who was once again in his familiar human guise.

  “How are you at dying?” asked Pretorius.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “This isn’t a war game,” said Pretorius. “It’s the real thing. You’d better be good at one or the other, because I don’t think you have a third choice.”

  The team kept busy for the next two days, and when Pandora announced that she’d finally created and certified ID chips and passports, Pretorius increased the ship’s speed, and a few hours later they landed at a small spaceport on Brastos III, a dull gray world that mined gold, platinum, and a few exotic fissionable materials. Most of the mining was done by machines, and the population of the world was something less than a thousand, most of which lived in its sole Tradertown, which consisted of a hotel, a pair of restaurants, a general store, a bank, and an assay office.

  It turned out that the ship really did need fuel, and Pretorius, after deciding that the two Kabori should remain on the ship, left Ortega and Pandora to see to the refueling and pay for it and the landing fees. He had Proto, who’d been working on his language, assume the appearance of a Kabori, though without a military uniform, and had him accompany Pretorius, Snake, and Circe to the bank, which looked solid and unimaginative.

  “Snake,” said Pretorius just before they entered, “your only function here is to prove that you started that account and then politely explain that I’m your advisor and I’d like to speak to the president, or some other officer, though I doubt that something this small has more than one or two officers. Circe, just nudge me when you sense that someone’s lying.”

  She nodded, and they walked into the bank. Like the outside, it was far more functional than eye-pleasing. There was one teller of a race they hadn’t seen before. Proto received less attention than the three Men, and Snake asked to see the president. A well-dressed Tretoni female emerged from a back room and studied the four of them with narrow reptilian eyes.

  “This is my advisor,” said Snake, “and he wishes to discuss doing some business with you.”

  The Tretoni turned to Pretorius. “How may I help you?” she said in Terran.

  “It’s a private matter,” replied Pretorius, “but if we can discuss it in your office, it could prove very lucrative to your bank.”

  “Certainly.”

  “This is my wife,” he said, indicating Circe, “and this is my partner.” He indicated Proto. “May they join us?”

  “But of course,” she replied, leading them to a small office while Snake remained behind. Once there she turned to Proto and said something in Kabori.

  He paused for a moment, then responded.

  She frowned and said something else.

  “She suspects,” whispered Circe. “Let’s leave!”

  “My partner is still recovering from a brutal incarceration by the Democracy,” said Pretorius promptly. “Please address your questions to me.”

  “Your partner has never spoken a word of Kabori in his life,” replied the Tretoni.

  Pretorius promptly pulled a small laser pistol out of his pocket and put a hole between her narrow eyes. She fell to the floor without a sound.

  “Did you have to kill her?” demanded Circe.

  “You don’t think she’d have let us walk out of here without sounding an alarm, do you?” He turned to Proto. “You flunked your first test. You’d better not flunk another. Now give me a hand stuffing her body in that closet.”

  Once the corpse was hidden Pretorius considered his options for a moment. “She spoke Terran to us, didn’t she?”

  “Yes,” said Circe.

  “All right,” he said. “Proto, take her shape. You’ll walk Circe and I back to the front of the bank, where we’ll join Snake.”

  “What about—?” began Proto.

  “I’m not done yet,” continued Pretorius. “You’ll explain that our Kabori companion is actually a Coalition auditor and will be in your office for the next few hours, and is not to be disturbed. Then Circe will offer to show you our ship and perhaps give you a keepsake for your kindness, since you can’t return to your office anyway, and we’ll all leave together. And with any luck, we’ll be off the planet before anyone goes looking into the office.”

  “It’s worth a try,” agreed Proto.

  “What about the security cameras?”

  He shook his head. “No sense trying to destroy them now. Not only will the tellers start screaming for the authorities, but they already captured our images coming in, and we haven’t got time to find out where they transmitted them to.” He paused. “I wish we had time to pin the killing on a teller. The cops might just do it anyway, since nothing was stolen. Anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

  They went out to the main area of the bank, Proto mimicked the Tretoni’s voice and speech patterns, not perfectly but well enough not to arouse any suspicions on the part of the tellers, and a moment later they were on their way back to the ship.

  “Shit!” growled Snake. “That’s a million credits we’ll never see again.”

  It took another hour for P
andora to return, but they were carefully monitoring all broadcasts and reports, and the body hadn’t yet been discovered by the time they were out of the system.

  They were still congratulating themselves on their narrow escape a day later when Pandora picked up a news item and flashed it on the holographic screen. It was the image of Snake, Pretorius, Circe, and Proto in his true form, all entering the bank, and a voice that the computer translated into Terran announced that these four beings were wanted for robbery and murder.

  “Damn!” muttered Pretorius. “I forgot that Proto’s image wouldn’t fool the camera. Now they know what we’re traveling with.”

  13

  The entire team was assembled on the bridge, considering their options.

  “We’re probably going to have to steal another ship,” said Pretorius. “They have to know which one took off after the killing.”

  “And they’ve got three phony IDs on file,” added Pandora. She turned to Proto. “Did they get yours, too?”

  In his human guise, Proto shook his head. “No, no one asked for one.”

  “Figures,” said Pandora. “Visiting Kabori on a world that probably doesn’t see a dozen Kabori a year. Okay, then, three more IDs.”

  “We’d probably better not set down on another world until we reach Petrus, either,” added Circe.

  Pretorius turned to her. “Why not?”

  “They’ll know we’re traveling with him,” she said, indicating Proto. “And you can’t fool their security systems.”

  Pretorius shook his head. “What that means is that he can’t leave the ship, not that we can’t.”

  “They have holos of three of us,” she persisted.

  “Then we’ll use makeup, or wigs, or whatever it takes to change our appearance, plus new IDs, of course.”

  “That’ll work,” said Snake.

  “I can’t help wondering, though,” continued Circe. “If we blew it on a little backwater world like that one, what are our chances when we get to Petrus.”

  Pretorius resisted the urge to point out that they were never very good and instead said, “Not much worse than before. If we can find a way to sneak Proto past a security system, I’d say they’re exactly the same as before.”

  “I admire your optimism,” said Snake dubiously.

  “No one said that it would be easy,” responded Pretorius. “Just that it’s possible.” He turned to Proto. “I want you to keep learning the Kabori language, on the assumption that we will find a way to get you past a security system. Djibmet, keep working with him.”

  “I will,” answered Djibmet. “And Michkag has learned everything I have to teach him. We’ll keep going over it, but until we get there and see if anything’s changed, he’s as ready as I can make him.”

  “Okay. I just hope he doesn’t get stage fright.”

  “I am Michkag,” said the clone with a certain arrogance. “Nothing frightens me.”

  “Very good,” said Pretorius.

  “Thank you,” said the clone. He paused for a moment. “I will not thank you or extend any small courtesies to any of you in the future. I must totally become Michkag if this is to work.”

  “I approve,” said Pretorius.

  “Well,” said Pandora, “we have enough food and water to complete the mission and make it back home before we run out . . . but of course, that means nothing if we change ships again.”

  “We’ll just have to find a way to transfer the food, water, and perhaps the fuel as well,” said Pretorius. “Now, as for a ship, we’re within the Coalition’s territory, so that makes being approached by another pirate highly unlikely. That means we’re going to have to land where there are other ships and appropriate one.”

  “I think they call that a spaceport,” said Snake sardonically.

  “Sometimes,” agreed Pretorius. “But sometimes it’s an agricultural world, where the farms are so vast that each landowner—I hesitate to call them farmers in the traditional sense—has a small landing field area for his own ships. And of course, there are probably half a dozen shipbuilding worlds between here and Petrus.”

  “They’ll have more security than we can handle,” said Ortega.

  “Probably,” agreed Pretorius. “I’m just pointing out that we have more options than spaceports. And of course, if we can get to a larger world, one with orbiting hangars, that makes our job even easier.” He turned to Pandora. “See what you can do about new IDs, and then start checking out likely ports where we can dump this ship and borrow a new one.”

  “You know,” said Circe thoughtfully, “maybe we don’t have to borrow one at all.”

  “Oh?”

  “We’ve got the equivalent of a few million credits. We could just buy one and have it registered to Felix’s or Pandora’s ID, or one of our new ones.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” said Pretorius. “We ought to pick up something this size for well under a million. Then instead of hoping no one finds this ship, backtracks to Brastos III and anywhere else we may have been spotted, and figures out where we’re headed, we transfer everything to the new, legit ship and crash this one into some uninhabited and uninhabitable world or moon.” He paused, then smiled at Snake in amusement. “Don’t look so downtrodden. You were never going to keep the money anyway.”

  “All right,” said Pandora. “Just about every world that does any commerce at all will have ships for sale, either new or used. I’ll start checking them out once I finish with the IDs, and hopefully I can find one that’s properly small and off the beaten track.”

  “Okay,” said Pretorius. “Any questions or observations?”

  Nobody spoke up.

  “Then go about your duties if you have any and grab some rest if you haven’t. I’d suggest that you help Pandora, but no one can work those little machines but her.”

  The meeting broke up, and Pretorius walked over to the galley to grab a snack and a container of what passed for coffee. The galley responded instantly to his request, his artificial eggs tasted real and were cooked properly, and his faux coffee was indistinguishable from the equally faux coffee he’d become addicted to back on Deluros VIII.

  Ortega soon joined him. “Hope you don’t mind a little company,” he said, “but the simple truth is that I can’t stand to watch our Kabori eat, and I’m afraid to even think of what Proto eats.”

  Pretorius chuckled. “And they thought provincialism would end when we left the solar system.”

  “What is that you’re drinking?” asked Ortega.

  “Beats me. I pretend it’s coffee, and then it doesn’t taste quite so terrible.”

  “Yeah, I do pretty much the same with all the food on this ship.”

  Pretorius sat at a table, and Ortega joined him. They ate in silence for a few minutes, and finally Ortega spoke up.

  “Just what are the odds of our pulling this off, do you think?”

  “If everything goes smoothly, and as planned, there shouldn’t be much of a problem,” answered Pretorius.

  “You ever had a mission where everything went smoothly and as planned?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “I thought not,” said Ortega. “Why not just have a goddamned all-out war and be done with it?”

  “Why sacrifice tens of millions when they can sacrifice us?” replied Pretorius with a smile. “Besides, we’ve been having an all-out war, and after twenty-three years it’s a stalemate.”

  “You’re ruining my digestion,” complained Ortega.

  “Blame it on the food and don’t worry about the mission,” said Pretorius.

  “I know: worrying won’t help.”

  “You got it.”

  They finished eating, and since there are no days or nights aboard a small ship in space, Ortega went off to sleep, while Pretorius returned to the bridge to see how Pandora was doing on crafting new IDs.

  “Got one,” she said. “I’ll have the other two in two or three hours. But let’s not blow these. As we get close to the cente
r of things, it’s going to be harder to come up with IDs and passports that’ll clear customs, let alone get us to wherever we’re going on Petrus IV.”

  “While you’re at it, get three or four for Proto, one as each of the more populous races in the Coalition.”

  “Whatever ID we give him, and however he appears, the security cameras and scanners will know his real appearance.”

  “Do it anyway,” said Pretorius.

  “You have something in mind?”

  “Nothing spectacular. But if we can craft an alien dummy to fit over him until we’re past security, then he can shed it and take on the appearance.”

  “You think a dummy can get past security on a world like Petrus IV?” she said dubiously.

  “Not with what we know now,” answered Pretorius. “But we have a month to learn. Besides, it’ll only take you a few hours, and we’ve got the time to spare.”

  “Okay, but I’ll need Proto to show me what he’ll look like in each identity.”

  “Where is he?”

  She checked another tiny computer. “Asleep.”

  “When he wakes up, have him impersonate the races, take your holographs or whatever you need, and work from that.”

  “We can’t capture his image directly. I’ll have to describe it in detail and have the computer come up with as close a set of approximations as possible.” She stared at him for a long moment.

  “Even if this works, can you trust him to carry out a believable impersonation?”

  “He’s been doing it all his life. Have you ever run into another member of his race?”

  “No.”

  “What are the odds that he’s the only one?”

  She smiled. “Okay, so we’ve probably all been fooled by him or his brethren.”

  “It’s clearly a survival trait,” said Pretorius. “The fact that he’s still alive means he’s mastered it.”

  “Point taken,” she replied.

  “Okay, I won’t bother you any further. Get to work on the IDs.”

  “Right,” she said, turning back to the largest of her computers.

  Pretorius decided to take a nap. When he was younger he was too restless to relax when on a mission, but years of experience had taught him that once the mission reached a certain point there would be no relaxing until it was over, no matter how many hours or days or even weeks that it took, and he knew he had to grab his sleep while he could.