To Do or Die (A Jump Universe Novel) Read online

  “Trouble?” Ray said, quizzically.

  “Yes, sir. I got the nickname ’cause I was always trouble to the enemy. Usually trouble to my superiors, and, in general, all-around trouble, or so my friends say. Even I’ve come to admit to myself, at this hardening-of-the-artery age, that I’m just plain trouble. So Trouble it is.”

  “I see,” Ray said, glancing around at the trouble that had arrived before Trouble. “Well, I’m glad to have you with us. Will you kindly join me in my limo?”

  “Gunny, prepare to mount up the troops. Captain, ah, Mary, I’ve kind of forgotten your last name?”

  “You proposed to me, and you didn’t even get my last name?” Mary growled through a smile.

  “Well, you had all that cool entrenching stuff and mine-laying gear. It did kind of distract me. And oh, about that marriage proposal. I’ve kind of gotten really married to this wonderful farm girl. We’ll have to do lunch sometime. You’ll love Ruth.”

  “I’d love to meet her, too,” Ray said.

  “Captain Trouble, I’m Mary Rodrigo,” Mary provided to get them back on track.

  “Yes, Captain Rodrigo, where do you intend to deploy your troops?”

  “I intended to put one rig of guards fore and aft of the limo. I didn’t give any thought to whether or not I’d be first or second in line.

  “My Marine drivers have gotten to know the lay of the land here. If you don’t mind, I’ll lead out and provide the rear guard.”

  “Then I will have my troops closest to the limo, Captain.”

  “Very well. Gunny, mount up the troops as soon as we get Colonel Longknife safely in his ride.”

  That didn’t take long. Soon they were headed out of the port, with a load of thugs trailing behind them.

  “Head for the embassy, right, sir?” Mary said, as the convoy approached the first turn from the port.

  “No,” Ray said, eyeing his computer assistant. “It seems that President Milassi has just invited me to tea. I think I’d better see the big man first.”

  “I know the way,” the driver said. Mary got busy telling her two rigs’ worth of guards about the change. Trouble did the same.

  Twenty minutes later, they pulled into a large circle in front of a white house with tall colonnades. It reminded Mary of something she’s seen on the educational channel.

  She held the door open for the colonel, and he stepped from the limo to be greeted by the great man himself.

  With a hearty handshake and a smile that looked like it might be worth two cents, the planet’s dictator took Ray off to some meeting, leaving his honor guards, both Explorer Corps and Marine Corps, to cool their heels.

  The goons in the two following SUVs got out and made themselves comfortable, laughing and telling jokes with the guards from the president-for-life’s inner circle.

  Mary had heard that the so-called president-for-life was up for reelection. Politics must be an interesting pastime. What it said and what it meant didn’t seem to connect very well.

  She joined Trouble where he stood with his Marines, stationed around the vehicles with their M-6s at parade rest. “You think those ‘police’ are going to cause us any trouble?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. The local word on the street is that the difference between street toughs and cops is only a question of what they’re wearing at the moment. How good are your crew at holding on to their tempers?”

  “Some better than others. Maybe I better do a walk around.”

  “Please do.”

  Mary checked in with Du. He was sporting the gold bar of a second lieutenant, but his street origins were always there, close to the surface.

  “Get a load of those duds,” he said as Mary joined him. “They’re trying to bad-mouth us into something.”

  “They doing a good job of it?” Mary asked.

  “I’ve heard five-year-olds trash-talk better than these guys. You want maybe we give them a lesson?”

  “No,” Mary said. “Odds are that they’re looking for an excuse to take a swing at you. Word from the local Marines is that these guys are just street thugs jumped up and put in uniforms.”

  “That don’t sound good for this place.”

  “Yeah. They got problems. I don’t know if Ray is here to do something about them or if he’s just passing through. If he gives us the word, fists are free. You and your folks can have some fun. Right now, we hold it tight.”

  “Got the word, old lady, hold it high and tight. Wait until we get the word to go out and play with these babies. We can do that.”

  “Then pass the word.”

  “On my way, boss gal,” he said, and threw her a kind of salute.

  “By the way, Du. The only reason we’ve still got our guns is because we got reserve commissions. I’d suggest that we start acting like we were still Marines.”

  “Mary, we didn’t act like candy-ass dudes when we were Marines. You know, we killed stuff. We didn’t salute stuff.”

  “We better clean up our act, Du. They don’t want us to kill nobody, but they do want us to look smart.”

  “You’re no fun, old lady.”

  “Old Lady Captain, to you today.”

  Du snapped to attention and threw Mary a smart salute. “Yes, ma’am. I will get on it right away, ma’am.”

  He did a by-the-book about-face and marched off to talk to his former street kids.

  Mary had a quick talk with one of her old miner friends who wore three stripes, and he marched off to carry The Word to that half of the detail.

  Even after all this time, Mary’s command was still split down the middle. Half were like Mary, asteroid miners who’d kept their noses clean while they built up seniority in the union, only to get their downsizing pink slip and their draft notice in the same pay envelope. The other half were street kids who woke up, stoned and hung over, to discover they’d signed themselves into the Corps.

  Even those who couldn’t write their name or anything else.

  How this mismatched bunch had made it through the war and into the peace with their skins still in one piece was either a God’s honest miracle or a violation of the laws of probability.

  Mary wasn’t sure which she’d credit with her still breathing.

  At the moment, the captain was coming up on her elbow. “You got a problem?” he asked.

  “None at all, Captain. My folks may not be into spit and polish, but then, we aren’t actually a military unit at the moment.”

  “You sure saved my neck, and a lot of others like me, back on that rock. We’re here with Captain Izzy Umboto from the old unit. She’s got a ship now. The Patton.”

  “I guess that makes her happy,” Mary said. “I’m with Captain Mattim Abeeb, skipper of the Second Chance. At least that’s what they’re calling her now. She was the Sheffield back in the war.”

  “Sheffield, wasn’t she the one that almost rocked Wardhaven?”

  “That was our orders. I heard them straight from the mouth of some shit-for-brains admiral. Whitebred was his name. After things calmed down, and we didn’t rock nobody, they hauled him off in cuffs. Nicest perp walk I ever did see.”

  “You’ll have to tell me about it over a beer. Excuse me. I’ve got a call coming in.”

  The Marine officer stepped away from Mary, but she could still hear him.

  Suddenly, all color drained from his face.

  “What?” came out loud and clear. Even Du turned to see what was up.

  The captain exchanged a few more words. Most sounded like questions, but Mary couldn’t follow them word for word. He looked intently at the local thugs-for-cops as he got answers.

  Trouble’s face was deadly grim when he rung off and walked back to Mary.

  “Trouble?” she asked.

  “Some police thugs just beat up my wife.”

  “Huh,” Mary said. She’d heard the words, but she found she couldn’t really believe them. And if she did believe them, then there was a whole lot of trouble headed for someone.


  And while her uniform might be gray today, not blue and red, she and her crew would not leave all the bloody knuckles to them with the gold buttons.

  Face a cold, angry mask, the Marine expanded on his few words. “I just got a call from my Gunny. Some thugs in police uniforms cut off my wife at a filling station and beat the crap out of her. He and his returned the favor, but she’s in bad shape, possibly concussed. They’re rushing her to the embassy’s sick bay.”

  “You want to take off?” Mary asked, expecting she knew the answer but making the offer nonetheless.

  “No. No, here is my station, and here I stay. I just hope the president doesn’t bend your colonel’s ear too long.”

  “He ain’t my colonel, though I think he is the minister of exploration in the Wardhaven government. Mostly his wife handles the job. He does a lot of gallivanting. We just got back from a sour jump. It’s a long story. We’ll need a couple of beers for that one.”

  The look on Trouble’s face was pure pain. Mary had seen people torn between a hard duty and their heart’s desire. Here was a man caught between them. A real hard rock and a really hard place.

  It might have gotten worse, but the double doors of the mansion flew open and the colonel marched out. He made a beeline for his limo. Sergeants for both the blue and red and the grays shouted orders and doors opened and people recovered their places.

  Only when the doors were closed and the cars moving did the colonel let loose with a string of epithets that would have made a DI blush. “That . . . That . . . shit for brains had the gall to tell me that I better keep a tight hand on my people. My people, as if anyone that isn’t one of his poor beat-up and cowed citizens belongs to me.

  “Who does he think he is and who does he think I am?” Ray exploded.

  “The guy who killed President Urm,” Mary said softly. “Colonel, I think you need to ask the Marine sitting next to you what just happened to his wife. I think that political shit was giving you the second warning of the day.”

  “Second warning, Captain?” he said, turning to Trouble.

  “Just a moment, sir. Mary, tell the drivers to step on it. The embassy and fast.”

  “The word’s out,” Mary said a second later. “Du’s in the lead car. He likes fast.”

  “Thank you, Mary. Sorry, sir. While you were in there being warned, I got word that a bunch of local police thugs caught my wife alone and beat her up badly.”

  “Good God, man, how badly?”

  “Not as badly as it could have been. My wife has a larger job than her official one. We’ll talk about that later, but she was going out farther and farther, taking the measure of this hell, and I asked my Gunnery Sergeant if he’d mind taking a drive in the country kind of where Ruth was going, if you catch my drift.”

  “I catch it, and I’d do the same myself.”

  “So when she pushed the panic button on the new armored corset I gave her yesterday, they were less than five minutes out. Still, in those five minutes, Milassi’s thugs beat her up pretty badly.”

  The colonel leaned back in his seat, his face going to stone. “Is the underside of this place as bad as I’ve heard?”

  “Sir, from the looks of it, I’d say it’s worse.”

  “I’m beginning to get that impression. We’ve got a Senate investigation team headed this way.”

  “Word is that most of the team is more interested in burying what the others find,” the Marine officer said.

  “Yes, that’s the story I got. It seems to me that we’re going to have to do some digging ourselves. What say you that we get all this shit out in the open so no one, no matter how big their shovels, can bury it.”

  Which left Mary wondering exactly what was the job of a security team on an exploration ship when it came to digging up the muck on a bloodthirsty, vicious dictator.

  No doubt, she’d find out soon enough.

  SEVENTEEN

  RAY WATCHED THE hubbub going on around him as he arrived at the embassy. This must be what it’s like to have a new queen bee arrive at the hive and make the old pecking order obsolete.

  He’d hated such shows when he was a junior officer and didn’t like them any better now that he was an elephant himself.

  At least as soon as the limo stopped, he’d been able to dismiss the Marine captain to race to the side of his wife.

  Meanwhile, the ambassador had come to shake his hand and promise the help of his embassy in anything he needed during his stay.

  “How long will you be with us, Colonel?” had been far too early a question. It was as if the ambassador found Ray just another of his many problems to rush out the door as quickly as possible.

  Ray did notice a tall blonde holding back, hardly in the shadow of the ambassador. She was the embassy’s first political officer, if Ray had caught the title right.

  Was she the real power in the place? He’d have to find out, and find out fast.

  He’d come to attend a meeting. He was rapidly growing his agenda, and little of it had to do with meeting some zeds from Earth’s Senate.

  Correction, it was now the Senate for the entire Society of Humanity. At least it would be soon. That Senate was supposed to grow with representatives from 150 planets. They’d join a much-reduced number from Earth and her first fifty colonies.

  But the new kids weren’t there yet.

  Things were changing. And, no doubt, there would be those eager to see that they stayed the same.

  Ray intended to toss a few rocks into their machinery of sameness.

  Assuming he could.

  Back with the 2nd Guard Brigade, he issued an order, and things happened. Now that he wore civilian clothes to work . . . not so much.

  He waited while the falderal died down. The ambassador left, insisting he was a very busy man and had things to do.

  He failed to mention what any of those things might be.

  Finally, Ray found himself alone with the first political officer.

  “I didn’t get your name,” he said.

  “I’m Becky Graven. Will you walk with me?”

  Without waiting for a reply, she headed for the door. He followed. He followed her down a hall, then down a flight of stairs into what must be the basement.

  Along another hallway, uncarpeted and with bare cinder-block walls, she led him to a large room, spartan to the maximum.

  Still, without a word spoken, a man stood and went over Ray with a device that looked like something between a lint brush and a remote control.

  Wordlessly, the man signaled Ray to remove his jacket. When Ray handed it over, he took it to another device that might have once been a clothespress, but now had a lot more bells and whistles attached. Quickly, he ran the coat through it.

  “I got it, ma’am. We can talk now.”

  “Check it out,” the Foreign Service Officer ordered. “I want to know if they’re still using the old design, or if they’ve got something new.

  “Will do, Becky.”

  “I take it that you’re not with the Foreign Service,” Ray said.

  “Actually, I am. The spooks have to have someone to report to. I just happen to be her. I’m sure the idea of a woman running the intelligence and counterintel operations against his bullyboys has Milassi bent totally out of shape. Now, please step into my web, said the spider to the fly.”

  And Ray was invited into a utilitarian room with a raised floor and lowered ceiling. Its walls were merely cinder blocks. They looked rather roughly put together.

  Becky pointed him at a comfortable chair as she took one across from him. “Yes, we built it ourselves, Colonel. We’ve done what we can to remove the bugs from the walls, floors, ceilings, and whatever else in our new embassy. Still, this place leaks like a sieve. We know this room is clean because we put every damn brick in it ourselves. And yes, I helped mix the mortar and laid a few bricks.”

  “What I just went through. Are you telling me that I was bugged?”

  “Very likely while you
were in Milassi’s own office.”

  “That bastard!”

  “Certifiably. Murderous bastard most definitely. Our problem is to make sure that president-for-life is not at all that long a job for him.”

  “With or without killing him?” Ray asked.

  “Spoken like a soldier. I’m in a more peaceful line of business. If we have our way, he will get to run off with all his girlfriends and his ill-gotten gain to someplace pleasant and live to a ripe old age.”

  “Any chance the next government will recover some of that loot?”

  “That is up to the succeeding government,” the FSO said evenly.

  “So, tell me, what can I do to make sure all that happens?”

  “I was told you were just a visiting fireman. We should wine you, dine you, and see that you were sent home quickly and happily to your expectant wife.”

  Ray winced. “So I’ve already been ratted out, huh?”

  “I have express orders from the Prime Minister of Wardhaven to get you home as quickly as possible, or he’s going to have your wife and your father-in-law raising hell.”

  “So, assuming I can keep them off your back, I ask again. What can I do to help? I understand the wife of the Marine skipper was beat up today. What happened?”

  “I made a mistake,” the Foreign Service Officer said, folding her hands in her lap. “She had a good cover. As a matter of fact, a real cover. By right of some dimwit back at BuFinance, warships have been ordered to load themselves down with hydroponic gardens. She’s the contract farmer for the Society of Humanity cruiser Patton now in orbit. She needs to expand her tanks and is down here looking for cheap gear. She and I thought that such an actual requirement could be used to cover some snooping.”

  Here, the FSO paused to frown at her hands. “What you have to understand is that just about none of us can get very far from our tails here in Savannah. What that translates to is that we can read the official news accounts and attend the official government briefings and parties.”

  “I get the picture,” Ray said. “You’re kept in a fishbowl. A very small fishbowl, and you get only what they chose to drop into the bowl.”

  “Exactly. Ruth was the first chance we had to have someone out and about, talking with the locals and eyeballing reality more than three blocks from this building.”