Rich Man's War (25 page)

Vanessa shook her head. “Okay. Sorry. Still kicking, I guess. But I suppose you must know how to keep your mouth shut. All that time in the limelight and you didn’t say or do anything stupid, so that’s gotta count for something…” Her voice trailed off. Tanner waited.

“You’ve seen
Argent
before, only she used to be called
Aphrodite
. We recovered her a little less than a year after Casey’s crew grabbed her.”

Tanner sat up in his seat, staring at her. “She’s—
we’ve
got the
Aphrodite
? I thought she disappeared from that haven Casey’s guys used! Why’s the government keeping that a secret?”

“Hey, I’m an operator, not a policy-maker. Couldn’t
tell you why for sure. Still, if we admitted we recovered her, we’d have to admit to how and where. The pressure would be on to follow up, but the Navy wasn’t ready to go after the pirate haven. As to why we didn’t say something to the Union Fleet or anyone who did have the muscle? Hell if I know. Maybe the info did get shared, and you and I don’t know it. But the other reason is that Archangel wanted to keep that ship. If we admitted we had our hands on it, we’d have to give it back to NorthStar.”

“She’s that important to keep? Why?”

“Because she can fight her way out of a planetary invasion, like she just did. She looks pretty on the outside—maybe not as pretty as she was when she was called
Aphrodite
, but she’s still got the look—but on the inside, she’s built like a destroyer, Tanner. A lot of the liners are. NorthStar builds them like that to dodge the Union’s armament limits. If there’s a war, they can put their liners and some of their other ships in for a re-fit and within a couple months they’ll have three times as many warships. Lai Wa does it, too.”

Tanner’s gaze seemed to dart around the cabin as his mind processed the implications. “Aren’t there inspectors and approvals and… How can they get away with that?”

“Holding the big boys accountable would be inconvenient for everyone. The stocks would all take hits, which would cost a lot of people money beyond NorthStar and Lai Wa themselves. The Union and system governments would have to take actions to correct it all, and that would cost money and probably embarrass important people. I have to assume Archangel isn’t the only system that knows what’s going on, but it’s like I said about how we covered up having
Aphrodite
in the first place.” She gave a shrug, not of indifference but weariness. “It turns out if everyone thinks you’re indispensable, you can get away with all kinds of things. If everyone pretends nothing is wrong, then nobody has to do anything about it.”

“That’s insane!”

“You’ve never seen anyone turn a blind eye to a bully?”

“But they…” Tanner searched for the words, but closed his mouth. Vanessa hardly needed to offer up other examples. If anything, he wondered if she knew how well she’d made her point. “So Archangel just added
Aphrodite
to the Navy without putting her on the books?”

“Not the regular
Navy, no. Probably under the Intelligence Service. I don’t know how much of a re-fit she’s been through, but like I said, she’s a lot tougher than she looks. A plain old knife might not be the best weapon you can carry, but it can make a pretty big difference if nobody knows you have it. And with arms limits the way they are, every single warship can make a difference.”

She watched Tanner as the wheels spun in his head. “Obviously that’s a little higher than Delta clearance,” she noted. “I could get into serious trouble for sharing all that, but… well, like I said. You seem to know how to keep your mouth shut.”

“Yeah, but why tell me? We were talking about…?” The answer came to him. “What does that ship have to do with you and me?”

“You asked how NorthStar gets away with fitting out ships like that. Part of the reason is
that it’s not easy to get hard evidence.” She hesitated, staring off through the canopy. “And you asked why I would envy you. It’s not you. It’s what you did, and what I didn’t do in the same situation.

“I was on
Aphrodite
when she got hit. I was undercover as part of her bridge crew. There wasn’t a chance for me to get away when the pirates took the ship, but when they separated us out so Casey could give his recruitment speech, I thought… I thought I couldn’t do any good for the passengers. Not on my own. But I figured I could follow the pirates and find out how they operated, so I took the offer and joined up.” She paused again. Tanner saw no tears on her face, nor did her voice crack. Her emotions showed just the same.

“I’ve been an operative for twenty years. I’m one of the best agents I know. I’ve lost count of all the gunfights and tough scrapes and…” She swallowed. “You were a non-rate navy crewman floating in space with a crowbar and a roll of tape, and you saved
everyone
. I held to my cover and let them die.”

Tanner kept his mouth shut. He watched and listened, waiting for her to speak again.

“I let those bastards space
Aphrodite’s
passengers and told myself I couldn’t do anything about it, and told myself I’d make them pay later. And I did. I made them pay. I hurt them as much as I could and I moved on.” Her jaw set firmly as she looked back at him. “That worked fine until I saw you on the news.”

Unsure of what else he could say, Tanner said, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“I’m sorry you went through that.”

“Huh. Yeah. Me, too. But mostly I’m sorry I didn’t have it in me to do what you did. I’m better trained. I have more experience. I should’ve…” The words failed her. She shook her head. “I
could’ve
done what you did. I could’ve at least
tried
.”

“Are you sure about that?” Tanner asked, and then held up his hands when he saw her glare. “Look, I’m not questioning your ability, I just… do you think you had the opportunity? You said you were with the crew. I was on my own. They didn’t know I was there.”

“I could’ve slipped away.”

“You just said you couldn’t.”

“Yeah, but I could’ve tried harder and found a way—“

“You could’ve died with no one to know any better, too,” interrupted Tanner. “And you’re only second-guessing yourself now because you’re on the other side of it. Vanessa, I thought I was committing
suicide
. You know that, right? No. You don’t,” he said as he noted her expression. “They edit that part out of the interviews because it’s not inspiring. Look, I figured it was better to go down fighting rather than hang around on what was left of
St. Jude
until my air ran out. I got lucky. I got insanely lucky along the way. In your shoes, I’d probably have done the same exact damn thing you did. If I’d been that smart in the first place. The last person in the world who’s ever gonna second-guess you for what you did is me.”

Her f
rustration didn’t go away, but Tanner saw his words sink in. “I think you made your own luck,” she muttered.

“
And you didn’t? Obviously, you got away. You said you made them pay, too. What happened?”

“I’m the one who stole
Aphrodite
from them as soon as they got it back to their little hidey-planet,” she answered. “Me and one other gal I got to help me. Couple of the other pirates, too, but they weren’t exactly reliable travel buddies. Didn’t make the whole trip.” She looked him in the eye again. His amazed expression seemed to make her feel a bit better, so she added to it. “You actually saw
Aphrodite
when we first got her into Archangel space—which took almost a year.
St. Jude
landed on her a bunch of times because somebody was working on some sort of obnoxious training qualifications. I presume that was you, knowing what I’ve read. And your stupid gunner’s mate tried to hit on me during the boarding.”

Tanner blinked. “Wow. What are the odds?”

“I asked myself the same question when you walked into the consulate on Scheherazade. The galaxy can be a small place sometimes.”

“I’m glad you were there,” said Tanner. “You saved my life. You saved all our lives. Like the XO said, we wouldn’t have made it without you.”

Vanessa looked down at her holocom screens. She didn’t speak right away. “You might not have been there in the first place without me,” she said, and then called up another screen. “Told you things I shouldn’t have already,” she then muttered to herself, “not like this will make it any worse.”

“What do you mean?”

“My last assignment was… I had a source inside NorthStar. A very good source. I caught wind of this whole invasion with just enough time to drop everything I was doing and haul ass for Scheherazade to warn the consulate before the invading force got there.”

“So you’re why we got tha
t warning?”

“Yep. Made it to the consulate with all of about five minutes to spare, from the sound of things.”

“That sounds about right,” Tanner mused.

“I didn’t think I’d make it at all.”

“So you knew about the invasion?” he asked. “You knew they contracted with NorthStar for those assault carriers and stuff?”

“I knew more than that
.” She held up the holocom Tanner grabbed during the battle. “This is the sort of model that NorthStar’s covert security and espionage teams use. It’s not an actual NorthStar model because they wouldn’t want it traced back to them, but it fits all their standards.” She dropped it in her lap again.

Tanner’s brow furrowed. “So those were NorthStar guys. Murtada wanted them to hit the consulate? Why? That never made any sense to begin with.”

“It doesn’t. Turn your question around the other way. Murtada doesn’t have anything to gain by kidnapping a whole consulate staff. NorthStar does, though, as long as someone else does it for them.

“It wasn’t about the consulate staff them
selves,” explained Vanessa. “They’d be more pawns in the game, but it’s just another drop in the bucket. One more bit of harassment from NorthStar when the order of the day for them is to screw with us at every turn. One more problem on our hands. They’re doing all they can to make our lives difficult all over the Union. A hostage crisis would be one more example to the rest of the Union of how nobody can take care of themselves without corporate help.”

“
Harassment?”

“Yeah.”

“Bullshit.”

“Watch these guys as long as I have,” Vanessa suggested. “Ask anyone who’s watched them as long as I have. They’ll believe it, too.”

“Doesn’t that make it too easy?” Tanner asked.

Vanessa turned to look at him. Her face slowly betrayed a grin. “
Wow, you are bright, aren’t you?”

He frowned. “Okay?”

Vanessa considered it and let out a breath. “I think they wanted to see if we’d find out.” She turned from her holo screen to look at him. “I had a good source inside the company. An amazing source. I think they floated this op just to see if Archangel would find out and react. It got to me kind of late in the process… I don’t think they had any idea they were compromised so high up. I didn’t have a lot of time to think much. It came down to either jumping on the information immediately or just sending the info up the chain, which would’ve taken weeks. And if I didn’t jump on my own, the op would’ve happened. People probably would’ve died.”

“Like on
Aphrodite
.”

“Yeah. So I pulled my source, sent copies of everything I had to Archangel with another agent, and hauled ass for
Scheherazade,” she nodded soberly. “I’m not gonna let another
Aphrodite
happen to me ever again.”

“Can’t blame you there,” Tanner shrugged.
“But why now? Why would they do this now?”

“
To make sure their house is in order. I think they plan on making a bigger play somewhere down the line. Something big and something soon. And they wanted to make sure they’re moving from a secure base first. But don’t ask me what the next move is, ‘cause I don’t know.”

That sounded reasonable enough.
“Is this gonna cause trouble, though? Pulling your source and all?”

Vanessa grinne
d a little bit. “Yes. For them.” Then she tossed him a wink. “Sorry. Think I’ve shared enough sensitive info for one confessional. You’ll have to wait for the rest to go public.”

“
Fair enough. I’m surprised you shared so much already.”

“Listen, Tanner, that ‘aw shucks’ act you put on for the interviews is a winner for the media and the crowds, and maybe you actually believe it yourself, but don’t try it with me,” Vanessa smirked. “I saw you out there in front of that consulate. I was right there with you the whole time. And I know who you
tangled with on
Vengeance
, and now you ask me all this?” She shook her head. “You’re a player, Tanner, whether you want to admit it yourself or not.”

He scowled. “I’m
just another crewman.”

“The people who run for office aren’t the ones who make the world go ‘round.
Voters like to see a clean suit. People who make things happen have to get dirty. You make things happen.”