"The Jack"

[Joe Manning 0]

Herman Maxwell was what he liked to call 'Mercenary Lite' (all the taste with none of the filling). As he regarded it, there were two types of mercenaries in Bull's Head. The Lite group were basically laborers and experts for hire, jobseekers in the cutthroat market of non-Federation society. They sought long-term jobs with employers who could promise steady pay for relatively safe work. Xorax employed its fair share of mercenaries for colonial security and for assistance with research. The bolder and more capable were among the crop typically selected for deep space missions, and for a truly dangerous excursion like Zoalus only the best were chosen. Maxwell had qualified for this command by virtue of his twelve years crewing and then leading deep space expeditions for the colony. Still, those expeditions were purely scientific, and his responsibilities seldom entailed more than administering planetary security for the scientists and keeping the day-to-day functions of a ship's crew in order. Danger was rare and light and Maxwell never actively sought it out; that more than anything is what defined 'Mercenary Lite' to him.

 

Zoalus being a different kind of mission, Dr. Phantos and the other administrators had sought a different kind of mercenary. The Vagrant mercenaries. The ones who lived on starships and drifted from one port to another picking up any lucrative short-term contracts available. The ones who actively sought out danger. The independents. The wildcards. The best. Companies turned to the vagrants when they wanted sensitive jobs done, 'off-the-record' types of jobs. Thus, such jobs paid the best despite typically being one-shot deals, and thus such jobs attracted the most skilled jobseekers. As such, the vagrants were turned to not only to perform dirty work that employers preferred to keep secret, but also truly dangerous work. Even the Guardians, somewhere in between Mercenary Lite and Vagrant, could not be trusted for such jobs.

 

But being independents, being wildcards, the vagrant mercenaries could not always be relied on for rational behavior the way a stable employee could. Had Maxwell been running the expedition, the fleet would not have reached Zoalus. The moment the raiders had been overcome, the hostages released, and the bomb disarmed, he would have scrapped the mission and ordered the fleet's return to the Hyades cluster. The presence of the raiders, their knowledge of the particulars of the expedition (thanks to Holstrum), and the unknown whereabouts of the Constellation class mothership would have presented too many dangerous factors for Maxwell to consider continuing the voyage to Zoalus and the month-long study. But the vagrants were running the mission, and they had felt that continuing the expedition was worth the risks. Of course ... had it not been for the vagrants, the raiders probably would not have been overcome, the hostages probably would not have been released, and the bomb probably would not have been disarmed. Verbistul would be on its way back to the Hyades cluster under enemy control ... and thus would not have reached Zoalus.

 

Maxwell brought this mixture of unease and gratitude onto the Bridge of the cramped and barely-holding-together Bird of Prey. Four more of Verbistul's crew, operatives in the distinctive white jump suits of Xorax colony, were trailing behind him looking around with obvious distaste. The vagrant Captain to whom many of Maxwell's crew may have owed their lives was standing beside the command chair reading his ODRI display and sipping at a cup. He looked up when the door opened and gave Maxwell a warm smile.

 

"Cap'n," he said with a nod. "Welcome aboard my ship. I know she ain't much to look at, but she gets the job done."

 

He'd noticed the unimpressed stares of the Verbistul crew, of course, even if he hadn't looked directly at them. Captain Manning was twice Maxwell's age, and he had all the appearances of someone even older -- not much to look at, in other words. Maxwell motioned to the four operatives. "Captain, the extra hands you requested ... in addition to the previous three. At this point, I will soon be facing a crew shortage of my own."

 

"Not to worry," Joe replied with his same reassuring smile. "My people will keep your people safe -- you have my guarantee -- and we shouldn't need any extra hands. It's just this business with the raiders and all, you understand. Y'all can get yourselves acquainted with the stations."

 

"Yes, the business with the raiders," Maxwell mused, folding his arms behind his back and nodding thoughtfully as his crewmen spread out. "Captain--"

 

"Call me Joe." Joe's smiled seemed to have somehow gotten warmer and wider. Maxwell wasn't sure how or why, but the smile simultaneously comforted and outraged him.

 

"Ah, yes ... Joe," he continued. "I have to say that I'm not entirely sold on the prudence of your actions. Just a day ago, my ship was under attack by this 'Capricorn.' Her crew held my people hostage and threatened to detonate our warp core. Rendering aid to them after they sustained damage in the process of said attack ... I'm not sure it wouldn't be better to just wipe ourselves clean of this whole affair."

 

Joe chuckled softly and looked back down at his ODRI, which he began to tap. Somehow Maxwell knew that this vagrant Captain's gaze was on every one of the Verbistul operatives looking over the Bridge stations. "Captain ... you don't mind if I call you Herman?"

 

"Please." Maxwell answered, clearing his throat.

 

"Herman ... if I didn't know better, I'd think you were suggestin' that I take hostile action against a disabled ship that's requesting emergency aid. No one is treating them like friends, mind you -- we're taking every precaution imaginable -- but to fire a kill shot on that ship ... or to take their crew to the sword?"

 

"That's not what I'm suggesting," Maxwell raised his hands defensively. "I'm not some callous barbarian." The irony of Maxwell arguing this point to a vagrant struck him hard. "But now that you've managed to convince the Lucky Hand to cease her assault, I think we could reasonably expect these raiders to be able to return to their home colony. The damage to their ship is not so extensive as to be critical. Why don't we simply turn the captives over to them and firmly instruct them to remove themselves from our company?"

 

"Gut feeling," Joe answered simply, taking another sip from the coffee. Maxwell had feared an answer of such little substance.

 

"Would you care to explain, Joe?"

 

"I don't think they're bad people," Joe answered with a shrug. He looked up from the ODRI. "A few of the ones who boarded your ship were bad, granted. Holstrum is bad; you can read it all over him. If I had my druthers, I'd keep them locked up until we can turn them over to Xorax colony; but you know we don't have the resources to support four extra bodies for a month. I've talked to all of them, though, and I've talked to Zaphod a lot -- most of the people on the Capricorn were not happy about the methods of the hijacking. They were participants, yes, but they weren't eager participants."

 

"That doesn't change what they did," Maxwell replied emphatically. "I agree with you about the necessity of releasing the captives, but delivering a group of our own people onto their ship to repair it to a state where it might renew its assault against us? To say nothing of the risk, should their previous attack on our fleet be so easily excused?"

 

Joe returned his attention to the ODRI. "This is Bull's Head, Herman, not the Federation. We don't deal in 'black and white' out here. Especially not in the Rimward Territories. Your enemy one day can be your friend the next, and if you don't open yourself up to that possibility, you'll find that the risk gets greater."

 

Maxwell was not pleased at the insinuation that he lacked proper experience in Bull's Head, but he let it pass. "What about the expedition? Every minute we spend dealing with these raiders is more time that your team on the surface is cut off from support. Zoalus should take priority."

 

"My people are more resourceful than you might think, Herman," Joe answered matter-of-factly. "They'll be fine. You know that the Capricorn has transporters, don't you?"

 

"How could I not?" Maxwell exclaimed, throwing his arms up. "That's how they forced themselves onto my ship."

 

"It's just one thing to keep in mind," Joe said with a chuckle, as if finding amusement in the fact that Maxwell's frustration was freely seething. "Right now, Herman, our only way of reaching the surface safely is by dropping a specially configured craft at high speed into the planet's oceans. It ain't pretty, it ain't safe, and it's sure to make for a logistical nightmare when we finally get a dig site set up. That's to say nothing of how difficult it may prove to bring the shuttles back up here. My team can make a site relatively secure, maybe even fish out a way to tame the defense drones. But ultimately, sending the shuttles back and forth using our ocean bubble method would severely limit both the amount of information we can gather in a month and our ability to extract the scientists from imminent danger."

 

Maxwell blinked in disbelief. "I don't understand. Are you indicating that your people are going to try to assume control of the Capricorn ... or are you suggesting that we convince these raiders to -let us- use their transporters?"

 

"I'm not suggesting anything at the moment," Joe answered with another shrug. "Just considering the vast multitude of possibilities that lie before us, as I am wont to do. Let's see how things unfold on the Capricorn first, shall we? Maybe these people will turn out to be amenable to some sort of exchange of services."

 

Maxwell narrowed his eyes. There was that feeling again, the one he couldn't shake when Holstrum was allowed to contact the Capricorn and arrange the turnover of the prisoners. What was it Holstrum had said? 'The Captain of Qob desires a truce, perhaps even cooperation.' That last statement had lingered unexplained. Joe, when asked, had pleaded ignorance with a mysterious grin. Had some deal been made between the raiders and the vagrants? How blurry the line between those two groups could so often become.

 

"Herman ... " Joe snapped Maxwell out of his reverie; he was looking directly into the Verbistul Captain's eyes, as if reading his thoughts. "Try not to worry so much. About your people or mine. I've been in this business for quite some time and I like to think I know what I'm doing. We're the hired help for a reason. Let us do things our way."

 

Maxwell simply nodded. Of course. Their way. The vagrants' way. The wildcard way. The reminder of the authority that Dr. Phantos had given these mercenaries was not lost on Maxwell. Nor was the fact that their previous dealings with the raiders were the reason that Verbistul was not in enemy hands. Obviously dismissed, he turned and left the Bridge with the same comfortingly, frustratingly, gratefully, infuriatingly resigned thought -- that he had no choice but to trust the judgment of these vagrants, and that the hired help could have been a whole lot worse.