Free Starship: Mercenary (Starship, Book 3) by Mike Resnick Page B

armed with pulse torpedoes?”
    “I truly don’t know, my dear Steerforth,” said Copperfield. “I am merely relating an offer. We are opportunists. This is an opportunity. It is my job to report it, to put us together with opportunities. That does not mean you have to accept it.”
    “All right, David,” said Cole. “Let me think about it for a minute.”
    “I don’t like the sound of it,” said Forrice. “Every time we go in blind, we find we’re up against a much greater force than we anticipated.”
    “I’m with Forrice,” chimed in Sharon Blacksmith, who had been silent up to that point. “Besides, we need Val right here on the Teddy R. ”
    “We promised to help her get her ship back when she joined us, or to replace it with another one,” said Cole. “Besides, with a second ship we can take on bigger assignments that will hopefully pay a little better.”
    “Oh, come on, Wilson,” said Sharon irritably. “This guy will be coming in a one-man job, not a military ship. It won’t do us a bit of good.”
    “There’s an ancient saying from old Earth itself,” answered Cole. “‘Great oaks from tiny acorns grow.’”
    “What’s an oak, what’s an acorn, and what does that have to do with what I said?” Sharon demanded.
    “Did you ever go fishing?” asked Cole.
    “Are you going to answer me?”
    “I’m doing it right now. Did you ever go fishing?”
    “Yes. So what?”
    “What did you use for bait?”
    “I don’t know—worms, artificial flies, other things.”
    “What other things?”
    “Fish, mostly.”
    “You used a little fish to catch a big one, right?” said Cole. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do with the muscle’s ship.”
    “How?”
    He turned to the Valkyrie. “Tell her.”
    “What happens when the muscle doesn’t return or report in, when they can’t raise him on subspace radio?” said Val, and then answered her own question: “They send a bigger ship to see what happened. And when that one doesn’t return or answer any messages?” She matched Cole’s smile. “They can’t ignore it, so sooner or later they’re going to send the ship I want.”
    “And when they do,” continued Cole, “a ship that big is going to have star maps, computer codes, something , to tell us where Genghis Khan is headquartered.”
    “And then we attack him?” asked Christine.
    “Not in the Teddy R ,” said Cole. “But they don’t figure to to fire on their own ship.”
    “You know,” said Forrice, “between your deviousness and Val’s total lack of morality, we could end up owning the galaxy.”
    “Since we left the Republic nothing’s ever been quite as easy as it sounded,” said Cole. “Let’s settle for owning the million Far London pounds and another ship.”
    “I’ll drink to that,” said Val.

10
     
    Bannister was a class-G star with six planets. The second of them had an oxygen atmosphere. There were a few life-forms on the planet, none of them yet approaching sentience. But there were deposits of gold, platinum, and fissionable materials, so a mining industry had grown up, and because the planet was so well located and able to grow enough food to sustain itself, it gradually, over a period of two centuries, became a commercial center specializing in the gem trade.
    There were three continents, but only one city, which had grown from a ramshackle Tradertown to an almost-cosmopolitan metropolis of a third of a million men and another fifty thousand aliens. The tallest building—it was only seven stories, but land was not at a premium—housed the Apollo Cartel, and it was in the president’s office that Cole and Val found themselves, seated comfortably on plush chairs that floated a few inches above the ground and rocked them very gently.
    “You’re sure they’re due today?” Cole was saying.
    “It’s a he, not a they,” answered the president. “And this is the day of the week that he always shows up for what he calls his protection