Chapter 36

Within ten minutes after entering the Felicia, Thandi was thanking whatever gods there might be for the fact that Ruth was with her. Without her, the stealthy attack would have turned almost instantly into a straight-up boarding assault—with no possible end except the destruction of the ship. Thandi was still quite sure she could have defeated Templeton's gang—even had she been alone, much less with the Amazons at her side. But so what? The religious maniacs would have simply blown up the Felicia once they realized they were overmatched.

The problem was simple, and one which Thandi should probably have foreseen. Lieutenant Commander Watanapongse had, after all. Granted, Watanapongse had a lot more experience dealing with slavers than Thandi did. Marines simply weren't called for when dealing with slavers, except under rare circumstances. Slaver crews were too small to put up any significant resistance, once they were overtaken by a military vessel. So, they usually surrendered outright.

Although . . . that depended on the identity of the arresting vessel. The navies of most civilized powers subscribed to the theory that the slave trade constituted an offense against humanity. The Solarian League had certainly taken that position for centuries, and had pursued an official policy directed toward its eventual eradication for just as long. The Solarian approach was based on an entire network of interlocking bilateral treaty agreements with its independent neighbors, coupled with bureaucratic fiat within its own territory or that under the jurisdiction of the OFS. Since it would have been extremely difficult to get a significant number of independent systems (especially those already keeping an uneasy eye on Frontier Security) to agree to allow the SLN to police their space on any pretext, the treaties in question were negotiated on a basis which granted the SLN authority to intercept slavers flagged to the independent systems only outside the smaller nations' territorial space. And although League law equated slavery with piracy for its own citizens, which made it theoretically punishable by death, the fact was that the Solarian League had never executed a single slaver whose ship had been seized under one of the treaties. Solarian nationals had—on rare occasions—been sent to prison, sometimes for quite lengthy sentences. But the League as a whole was too "enlightened" to actually impose the death penalty, even in relatively extreme cases.

In the case of those who were not Solarian nationals, the options were even more limited. The ships themselves were impounded and destroyed, but since the other parties to many of the treaties didn't equate the two crimes in the same fashion (officially, at least), the most the League could often do was return "alleged" slavers to their systems of origin for trial.

Over the years, however, slavers had discovered that there were some exceptions to that nice, safe arrangement. Specifically, there were the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven. Manticore's implacable hostility to the genetic slave trade had been a part of the Star Kingdom's foreign policy ever since the days of King Roger II, whose youthful infatuation with the Liberal Party of the day had left its mark in several ways even after he assumed the throne. The original Republic of Haven had been just as disgusted by the practice, and even the People's Republic, for all its myriad faults, had retained that disgust and a hostility which fully matched that of Manticore. In fact, the one solemn interstellar accord to which both star nations were signatories and which had remained in effect throughout all of the tension and even outright hostilities between them was the Cherwell Convention.

The provisions of the Cherwell Convention were quite simple. All signatories to it endorsed the equation of slavery with piracy . . . and prescribed the same punishment for both. It was the most stringent of all of the League's anti-slavery treaties, and, unlike any of the others, it was multilateral, not bilateral. All of its signatories agreed that the naval forces of any of its signatories had the right to stop, search, and confiscate merchant vessels transporting slaves while sailing under the protection of their flags. And, even more importantly, that they had the right to try the crews of those confiscated vessels for piracy.

Despite the official provisions of the Cherwell Convention, the rigor with which it was enforced in practice varied widely from one star nation to the next, even among those who had officially signed onto it. Both the Manticorans and the Havenites were ruthless about it, and the death penalty was often applied immediately to slavers caught in the act. Even if the slavers were not executed, they were invariably sentenced to much longer prison terms than was the Solarian norm.

By and large, the Andermani Empire tended to follow the same policies. On the other hand, the Silesian Confederacy's treatment of captured slavers and pirates was a sour joke in the starways. The Confederacy had signed the Cherwell Convention only under the threat of Manticoran military action during the reign of Queen Adrienne, and as often as not, the criminals were released almost immediately by a corrupt governor.

The Solarian League's practice varied a great deal, depending primarily on the specific unit which made the arrest. More precisely, on the political connections which that unit had with one or another of the various power blocs in the League. Some captains, those who were effectively in Mesa's political pocket, were as notorious as Silesians for releasing captured slavers. Others—Rozsak being one of them, especially since his assignment to work with Governor Barregos in Maya Sector—enforced the available penalties with as much harshness as possible.

At one time, the standard response of slavers about to be overhauled was to jettison their "cargo" into space and then try to use the absence of slaves as proof of their innocence. In order to put a stop to that practice, the star nations who had signed the Cherwell Convention had adopted the "equipment clause" first proposed by Roger II. In effect, the equipment clause stated that any ship equipped as a slaver was a slaver, whether she happened to have a "cargo" aboard at the moment or not.

Many of the Cherwell Convention signatories, including the Andermani Empire, simply seized the ship and sent its crew to prison when exercising the equipment clause in the absence of actual slaves. The Star Kingdom and the Republic, however, had adopted the official position that a slaver crew found without a living cargo would be immediately tried for mass murder and, if convicted, executed by the same method: ejection from an airlock without benefit of space suit. Death by decompression was . . . pretty horrible.

Nor was it possible to conceal the fact that a ship was a slaver. That was what the "equipment clause" was all about, because the nature of her "cargo" was such that any slaver had to be designed differently from a normal cargo hauler or legitimate passenger vessel. The old shackles and chains of the slave trade on Earth in pre-Diaspora days might no longer be needed, but the design of the ships themselves, with their multitude of security measures to forestall any slave revolt, was simply impossible to disguise.

That was true even leaving aside the peculiar design whereby hundreds—sometimes thousands—of unwilling human beings could be ejected into space. It would be impossible for a small slaver crew to physically manhandle thousands of people into airlocks. So, the ships were designed to flood the slave living compartments with powerful (but not lethal) gases, forcing the slaves into large cargo holds where the big bays could be opened to space.

That design was somewhat obsolete, now, at least anywhere near Manticoran or Havenite space. Too many Manticoran and Havenite captains had started the quiet practice of immediately executing any slavers found aboard a ship equipped for that kind of mass murder—whether the "cargo" was still alive or not. The official rules be damned. Even the occasional Solarian captain in those regions, barred from such direct and forceful action by his own government's policies, had adopted the policy of handing the crews of such ships over to the closest Manty or Havenite captain. After all, both the Star Kingdom and the Republic were treaty partners, weren't they? What happened to criminals after being duly delivered into the custody of one of the local governments was hardly the arresting captain's business, was it?

And, besides, the method of execution was such poetic justice.

As it happened, the Felicia did have the design which enabled the crew to jettison its cargo. That much was obvious to Thandi within five minutes. There could be no other explanation for the number of large cargo holds they passed through after entering the ship. Empty cargo holds, with very wide bays—and with no passageways connecting to them wide enough to move large items of cargo.

Clearly enough, Princess Ruth understood the purpose of the peculiar design. Her thin face was tight with anger.

"We'll fix that," she muttered. A moment later, moving with the sureness of an expert, she had the panel removed from the nearest instrument console and had her own mini-computer plugged into it. Ignoring Thandi's hiss of warning, Ruth's fingers started working the keyboard.

Shortly thereafter, the princess unplugged her unit. She didn't bother replacing the panel.

"Those won't work any longer. The bastards can't jettison anybody. And I disconnected the controls to the gas units, while I was at it." She glanced at Thandi's skinsuit. "The gas wouldn't bother us, of course, but if the slavers released it—"

She didn't need to finish the thought. Wincing, Thandi nodded. The gases used to drive slaves into the jettison holds were only technically "nonlethal." More precisely, they were nonlethal so long as the victim could move away into cleaner air. Trapped in compartments with no way to escape, most of the victims would die eventually. And die horribly, too, in an even worse manner than being jettisoned into space. Slavers themselves wouldn't voluntarily kill anyone that way, because they'd have to clean up the multitude of corpses—not to mention vomit and other excreta left behind. But in these circumstances, if Templeton's gang got desperate enough, they might do it as part of their suicide pact.

"Can you disconnect whatever setup they've got to blow the ship?"

Ruth shook her head. "Not from here. I'm willing to bet that they've jury-rigged their own, independent system to do the job. Most slavers aren't real big on suicide, you know, so I doubt Felicia came equipped with a scuttling charge. If Templeton's thugs did rig their own system, it's certainly a stand-alone I can't access. And even if Felicia did have one already in place, getting to it from the outside would be virtually impossible. In a number of ways, slavers are built more like warships than cargo ships. That's especially true with their electronics. The ship control, security, and environmental systems are kept separate, instead of all being connected to a central computer. It's less efficient—much less—but it also gives you a lot more in the way of safety and internal security."

One of the Amazons shook her head. "Why here? On a slaver, I mean. They don't have large crews—it'd cut into their profits. It must be awkward as hell having to operate that way."

"You're forgetting the nature of the 'cargo,' " Thandi said with a frown. "Material objects don't resist their handlers with anything more than inertia. Livestock, not much more than that. But when you're trying to haul unwilling human beings somewhere, you've got the added problem of a 'cargo' that might revolt."

The Amazon still seemed a little puzzled, and the princess smiled crookedly at her.

"You're making a common mistake. Yana, isn't it? Most people think of Manpower slaves in terms of the types which are most notorious—sex objects, or heavy labor and combat types. But the truth is that modern slavery has to fit a modern economy. Even on a hellhole like Congo, most of the labor is highly mechanized. And computerized. Sure, the slaves designed for that work have been given a minimal education, and one which carefully steers clear of training them in any of the underlying principles. Still and all . . ."

Ruth pursed her lips. "You've all met Web Du Havel, I think—or know who he is, at least. He's a J-line, which is Manpower's most popular, uh, 'product.' Low-level technical workers, what you might call 'sub-engineers.' " The princess nodded at the panel she'd just been working on. "You think a man like that—some of them, anyway—would have any real problem figuring out how to crack into a ship's central control unit? Sure, they'd probably set off alarms doing it—that's really where all my extra training pays off—but so what? When people are desperate, they're not going to worry about the fine points. If nothing else, once they gained access to the central computer they could probably make sure the slaver crew went to Hell with them."

Yana's frown had been deepening as Ruth talked. "Damnation, Princess. If that's how it's set up, how do we disconnect the charge without taking the bridge, first?"

"We don't," Ruth said grimly. "And now that I've seen the setup, I'm pretty sure that is how they've done it. So." She gave Thandi an uncertain look. "Can we still manage it, Lieutenant?"

The Solarian officer gazed at her for a moment, then gave her a grin. Well, a widening of teeth, anyway. It was more like a shark's grin than a human's. That was all the answer she gave. All she needed to, really.

A moment later, Thandi and Ruth were moving down yet another passage, the Amazons in their wake.

Less than five minutes after leaving the bridge, Berry found herself ushered through a heavy—and heavily locked—entry hatch. "Ushered," in the sense that Ezekiel and the slaver crewman stepped back once the hatch was unlocked and slightly opened, and urgently motioned her to pass through it. Both of them seemed very nervous, and both of them had pulsers in their hands pointed in the direction of the hatch. To all intents and purposes, they looked like men ordering a sacrificial victim into a chamber full of demons.

Seeing no alternative, Berry pulled the hatch open a bit more and stooped through the opening. She had to stoop, because the hatch was unusually low. Obviously enough, it had been specifically designed to make it impossible for more than one human being at a time to pass through it—and then, not without some difficulty.

As soon as she passed through, the hatch was slammed shut behind her. An instant later, she heard the locks closing.

But she really wasn't paying much attention to what was behind her. She was far more concerned, at the moment, with what surrounded her.

She was in a smallish compartment, not more than five meters in any dimension. Which was crowded, at the moment. Eight men and five women, all of them armed with jury-rigged bludgeons—very primitive; torn strips of clothing weighted down with something—and all of them looking as if they were ready to tear her limb from limb.

Hurriedly, she tried to think of something to say to forestall her imminent destruction. But the effort proved needless. Not more than two seconds after she entered the chamber, one of the women gasped and exclaimed:

"It's the Princess! Herself!"

This was no time for complicated explanations. Berry drew herself up in as dignified a pose as her ridiculous skin-tight clothing permitted. She tried to put the same dignity—what a laugh!—into her voice.

"Yes. It is I."

Victor was getting desperate. Not at whether he could keep stringing along the Masadans—he was now quite confident of doing that, for at least another hour—but at how he was going to explain it all to Kevin Usher afterward.

Assuming he survived, of course.

Well, boss, then I broke another of your rules and made an already too-elaborate scheme still more elaborate by swearing to them that you were part of the conspiracy to overthrow Pritchart. But were hamstrung because you couldn't trust your own security people any longer and that—of course—is why you told me, when I got sent to Erewhon, to keep an eye out for the possibility of hiring Masadans. "Best wet work men in the galaxy," you said to me. "Look how they almost managed to nail that bitch Elizabeth and did manage to nail her tame Prime Minister." 

Sure, they swallowed it. What do you expect? It wasn't even their vanity, just . . .  

Dammit, boss, they're CRAZY. They really BELIEVE human affairs are all guided by deep and dark conspiracies. They see two dogs sniffing each other, they see Satan at work. So why shouldn't they believe in a deep and dark conspiracy which—just maybe, and with their backs to the wall—might save their own hides?  

Gloomily, he could foresee Usher's sarcasm and ridicule. Still more gloomily, he tried to figure out how to respond to the next question.

"Yes, that makes sense," allowed Hosea Kubler. The leader of the surviving Masadans rubbed his chin. "But let's leave aside, for the moment, the manner in which we'd penetrate President Pritchart's security. First things first. How do you propose to get us free of this situation? As you said yourself, the Mesans won't be enthusiastic about providing us with asylum on Congo."

"To say the least," snorted Victor. "But that's only because they don't want the heat coming down on them. They'd be perfectly happy—delighted, in fact—to let Congo be used as the route through which to pass along an assassination team against Pritchart."

"Why?"

Victor took a deep breath. The way a man will, about to dive off a cliff into what he hopes is deep water.

"Well . . ." He put on his most ferocious glower. (Which, he had been told, was quite ferocious. And so it seemed, judging from the reaction of the Masadans around him.)

"I'll have to relax security a bit, here. I warn you, though—the slightest lapse on your part . . ."

The Masadans actually shrank back a little. It was all very odd. Victor had glowered at himself in the mirror, quite often, when he was displeased with his own lapses. But he'd never—alas—noticed himself shrinking back.

"Pritchart's a traitor, but she does have a few principles left. Theisman, now—the admiral who led the rebellion and is the real power today in Haven—his treachery has no bottom. The swine has agreed secretly to form an alliance with Mesa. Turn the whole Republic of Haven into a fertile new territory for Manpower slavery and exploitation. It was when my leader Kevin Usher made that discovery that he realized we could wait no longer—"

I'll never hear the end of this. "Wonderboy" was bad enough. Once Kevin finds out—maybe I could lie—no, not a chance, Ginny'll weasel it out of me, she always does—  

The thought of Ginny's sarcasm almost made him shudder. Still, he pressed on fearlessly. Not much else to do, really, once a man has taken the plunge and he's sailing through the air.

God, I hope that water's deep. Really deep.  

"—set himself up like a Pharaoh of old, with Manpower's bribes filling his coffers. He'll make Nero look like a saint. Whatever's left of Haven's moral fiber will be gone within a few years, the whole population given over to idleness and debauchery. The Revolution has to be saved before—"

Working their way through the passages wasn't as bad as Thandi had feared. On this, at least, Watanapongse had been wrong. The simple logic of the slaver ship's semi-obsolescent mass jettisoning design precluded complex internal passageways. The slavers couldn't afford to have slaves being driven to their death by poison gases die along the way from simply becoming lost.

So, the passage layout was simple and straightforward. Nor was there any doubt where the slaves themselves were kept. Every corridor was lined with hatches which obviously opened into the slave quarters.

The problem was opening them.

More precisely, the problem was that Thandi had no choice but to do so. She'd have preferred—this had been the plan all along—to bypass the slave quarters altogether. From a purely military standpoint, the slaves would just get in the way. Better to leave them locked down and release them after it was all over. Even then, Thandi hadn't looked forward to handling the chaos which was sure to result.

But now—

"You're sure you can't open it?" Thandi glared at the hatch at the end of one of the passages. That hatch, clearly enough, did not lead to one of the slave chambers. It would, instead, allow them to penetrate closer to the areas of the ship restricted to the crew; and, eventually, to the bridge.

Ruth joined Thandi in glaring at the recalcitrant hatch.

"Can't," she grunted sourly. "There is no electronic control for that hatch, Lieutenant. It must have a purely manual mechanism for opening it—and the mechanism is on the other side."

Ruth's technical expertise didn't extend to metallurgy, and unlike Thandi, she was no Marine. But even she could tell that the hatch was made of battle steel. It would have taken forever to burn through that thing, even if they'd had the proper equipment. Which they didn't.

"This is taking paranoia to new limits," she growled. "Not even warships have purely manual hatches."

Thandi was almost grinding her own teeth, but she snorted in bitter amusement.

"Warships don't worry much about mutiny, Your Highness. Not enough, that's for sure, to do something like this."

"You're right." Ruth shook her head in disgust and closed her mini-computer. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant. But there's nothing for it. I don't think we've got any choice except to go through the slave quarters."

Ruth swiveled on her haunches and studied a hatch a few meters down the corridor. That one, unlike the one she and Thandi were squatting before, was of a standard design. Not very heavily built, for one thing. And, more important, with the tell-tale instrument panel not far away which would provide her with access to the locks.

"Weird design," she murmured. "But it all makes sense, in a way. At least, if you can think like a sociopath. They aren't worried about slaves breaking into most of the ship, after all. What can they do"—she nodded toward the manual hatch—"assuming they can't get access to the passages leading to the ship's control areas?"

She glanced up at the ceiling and spotted the vents immediately. "If the slaves do succeed in breaking out, they just get gassed and jettisoned. A big loss of profit, sure, but they really can't threaten the ship itself."

Thandi looked at her watch. "We've already used up an hour and half, most of it spent wandering these passages trying to find one that gives us access to the bridge. We can't delay any longer." She scowled at the hatch leading to the slave quarters. "As you say, 'nothing for it.' We'll have to go through the slave quarters, however much that delays us."

She sighed heavily. "I hadn't counted on this. And who's to say we won't face the same problem there?" She poked a stiff finger at the offending hatch. "Why wouldn't all the hatches leading to the bridge have the same manual-only design?"

Ruth shook her head. "That's possible, but . . . I'd be surprised. Keep in mind that these passages—and the hatches that lead to them from the control areas—are used very rarely. Except for emergencies, probably only twice each voyage. Once to load the 'cargo,' and once to unload it. Whereas the hatches—probably just one hatch—leading directly to the slave quarters would be used by the crew every day. Manual-only hatches are a real pain in the ass. It wouldn't be that hard to make a single electronically controlled hatch pretty much fool-proof."

She glanced down, with great satisfaction, at the mini-computer in her hands. "Fool-proof from slaves, at least. Who can't possibly afford the kind of equipment a princess can—and you don't want to know how loud and long my father howled when I told him what I wanted for my birthday. This thing is worth more than its weight in gold. Uh, considerably more."

Thandi was puzzled. "Why would the crew need regular access to the slave quarters? Once they're locked down—oh."

Ruth's faced was pinched and hostile. "Yeah. 'Oh.' You're dealing with the scum of the universe here, Lieutenant. It's one of the perks of being part of a slaver crew. All the sex you want—any way you want it, with anybody."

Angrily, she rose and stalked over to the other hatch. The Amazons, despite being much larger and more muscular women, gave way before her instantly. The expression on the princess' face was truly savage.

Ruth had the panel open and began working on her computer again. "Well, not exactly," she muttered. "They'd have no interest in most of the slaves. But a large shipment is bound to have some of the pleasure lines included. They'd be kept in a special quarters not far from the entry hatch."

Thandi squatted down next to her. "How do you know so much about it?" she asked.

Ruth kept working. "I hate slavery. Always have. Imbibed it from my mother's milk, probably. She was a slave too, you know. Not exactly the same kind as Manpower's, but close enough. And the two things I always study a lot are the things I love and the things I hate."

The quick fingers paused at the keyboard. "That's odd . . ."

She looked up at Thandi. "I was going to disconnect all the surveillance equipment in the slave quarters. More precisely, set the records to just keep recycling on a two-hour interval so we'd be able to move through there without anyone on the bridge knowing we've arrived. But—"

She looked back down at her computer. "The slaves must have already gotten loose. All the surveillance equipment in the slave quarters appears to be have been smashed."

Thandi pursed her lips. "That'll make our life easier in one respect—but it also means it'll be chaos in there. Damn."

"Well, it's all done except the last, then. It's your call." Ruth tapped one of the keys lightly. "Once I punch in this last command, the hatch opens and we're in the middle of them. A madhouse, probably, even if Manpower hadn't packed this ship with twice the number of slaves they'd normally be hauling."

Thandi didn't hesitate. "Do it."

The hatch slid aside. Thandi was through it in a combat crouch. Not wanting to inflict mayhem on panicky slaves, to be sure, but still prepared to do it if necessary. Time was running out for Victor and Berry.

She stayed in the crouch, for several seconds. But that was simply due to surprise.

"Welcome," said the smiling man who greeted her. He was wearing the very utilitarian garb provided for slaves in transport. Nothing much more than a jumpsuit with no pockets, and cheap sandals on his feet. A dozen other men and women were crammed into the same small chamber. Most of them were perched on the chamber's four cots, which were stacked two deep on either side. They must have been forced to share the beds.

Thandi stared. She was almost gaping. All of the slaves were smiling. And not one of them seemed even surprised—much less panicked.

"Greetings," he repeated. "The Princess told us you'd be coming. Let me take you to her."