Larry Niven - The Man-Kzin Wars 12

I went back to the spear again, promising myself that if I managed to get out of this alive I would never again take a contract of questionable legality. No smuggling, no mysterious cargoes, most certainly no brain-blank drugs, and absolutely no kzinti. I would sell Elektra if I had to, and work as a rockjack. I went back to sharpening with a vengeance, and was so concentrated on that and my dark thoughts that I didn't hear the airlock cycle. I was yanked back to awareness by a paralyzing kill scream and looked up in time to see a blur of orange fur. Hastily I grabbed up my other spear and ran to follow Bodyguard. I found myself staring into the open airlock and a pair of muscled security thugs with leveled mercy guns. Bodyguard was piled in a heap at the end of the airlock, unconscious. There was a woman there too, her face tense. I dropped my spear. I had no wish to endure another anesthetic headache. One guard covered me while the other shoved the woman into the garden dome, then pushed Bodyguard's unconscious body after her, a heavy and awkward burden even in the low gravity. They smirked and powered the lock door shut. They had come prepared for ambush.

The woman gave me a sardonic smile. "Captain Thurmond. I'd like to say I'm pleased to meet you again, but under the circumstances I'm not."

I looked at her blankly. "Do I know you?"

She came forward and offered me her hand. "I guess the drugs do work. Opal Stone."

I shook her hand, stunned. She wasn't the woman who was at the Constellation that night, but she could have been her sister. "But you…"

"…are on Jinx?" She laughed without humor.

"…are dead," I finished. I looked her up and down. She had the same build as the woman I'd met in the Constellation, and now that I noticed I could see that she moved the same way, but her face was completely different.

"Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated." She looked at Bodyguard's unconscious form and the humor left her voice. "Although they may turn out to be only slightly premature."

"You don't look…"

"Plastic surgery, thanks to your ship's autodoc, and the artistic skills of the best plastic surgeon in the Belt."

I sat down on a planter. "Explain please."

She sat down across from me. "I suppose there's no reason to keep it secret now. The escape to Jinx was faked. We took Dr. Helis of the Helis clinic on board. He worked my face through your autodoc. I came back here and went underground until I could get another ship."

Even I had heard of the Helis clinic and the man who ran it. He was merely the best 'doc-driver in the Belt. "But why?"

She laughed bitterly. "Why do you think? I sold out Reston. You don't expect to do that and live. He'd track me to the end of the universe to kill me, even from jail. Jinx is no obstacle to him. The only solution is to vanish."

"So what are you doing back here?"

"I'm the fox doubling back on her tracks. The hope was he'd believe I was dead, but if he didn't then Jinx would be a dead-end trail. I'm meant to be boarding Nakamura Lines for Wunderland right now with my new face and a hundred million stars in my beltcomp." She shrugged. "It didn't work out that way. Reston's a smart boy."

I looked at her critically. "I liked your old face better."

She smirked. "I don't imagine you'll have to put up with this one for long."

"And what about the blood in my airlock?"

"Leftovers from the operation, drained out of your 'doc. That was to make the Goldskins think you'd killed me."

"You framed me."

"Of course." She saw my expression and went on. "Oh, don't feel so bad about it. Without a body there's no case. You weren't going to prison."

"Says you."

"Hey, you volunteered for a brain blank. You knew you were getting in to something deep and you accepted that risk, for which I paid you well. You're a big boy. Act like one."

She had me there, but I was still angry and her attitude didn't help. I stalked off as well as one can stalk in two and a half percent gravity, and went and looked at the telescope. Plants don't interest me, and Bodyguard was asleep. I didn't want to look at her, so the scope was the default.

She came over after a while. "Look, I'm sorry I set you up. I had to do what I had to do."

"You didn't have to do it to me."

She smiled, and despite what I'd said her face was as beautiful as before. "You're a good pilot, you've got a good reputation, and Dr. Helis said you had the right kind of autodoc on board. I needed the best." I looked at her, met her eyes, and I could tell she was used to getting what she wanted by smiling.

I wasn't biting. I went back to looking through the scope. She tried again. "Look, do you want Reston Jameson to win?"

I looked at her. "Win what? Against the rockjacks?" I shrugged. "If I had to choose sides I'd choose the rockjacks, just because I side with independent operators in general. Only I don't have to choose sides. It isn't my war."

"Interesting you should use the phrase 'war.' That's exactly what it is, and like it or not it is your war."

I knew what she meant but I was still angry enough to make her drag it out of me. "No. It isn't."

"So how's business been lately?" She arched an eyebrow at me. "Booked right up with contracts?"

"Everyone knows the strike is hurting the economy. That doesn't make it my war."

"Oh no?" She smirked again. "And how many bidders do you think you're going to get for your services when Jameson gets a stranglehold on mining?"

"I can fly outsystem."

"Sure you can. And so can every other singleship pilot once Jameson tightens the screws. Eighty percent of the singleship market in Known Space is in the Belt, and ninety percent of that is in support of the rockjacks. You're all going to find the pickings pretty slim out of the colonies."

"So what's your point?"

"Reston Jameson plans on setting himself up as emperor, nothing less. He's going to break the rockjacks, and once he does that he's going to break the singleship pilots, and once he controls Earth's resource base and the means of transporting it, he's going to de facto rule Earth, and through Earth the colonies."

"That's insane. The UN won't allow it."

"They won't have any choice but to allow it. Earth is completely reliant on space resources, the UN can't afford to have the Belt cut off raw materials. Even if they had a choice they wouldn't act. He's already bought half the Security Council." I looked skeptical and she went on, her tone sharpening. "Who do you think planned this with him?"

"You?"

"Me. We've been putting this together for years, manipulating the market, forcing the rockjacks into a corner so they'd have to strike, and so we'd have an excuse to break them, with Belt government backing. I'm his financial wizard, he couldn't have done it without me."

"So why did you turn on him?"

She bit her lower lip and looked away. "At first it was just a game, at least it seemed that way." She laughed. "We were young, anything seemed possible but at the same time it all seemed so far away." She looked back to me. "Did you ever hear the story of the two soldiers who set out to become generals?"

I shook my head. "No."

"Each one made sure to compliment the other in his absence to their superiors, and slowly but surely they advanced ahead of their peers until they reached their goal. We were like that, we structured the social environment, set up our competition in the Consortium to fail, got ourselves senior positions, and then directorships. It worked better than I could ever have imagined."

Realization dawned. "You were lovers."

She nodded. "Yes, we were."

"So again, why…?"

"Because absolute power corrupts absolutely." She paused, and for the first time I saw real emotion in her controlled, beautiful features. "He doesn't love me anymore, he stopped loving me when he fell in love with power. He's lost it, lost any connection between the ends and the means."