Planet of trechery, p.5
Planet Of Trechery, page 5
They waited alone together in the front hall of the police station. "I don't think we'll get to see each other much for a while," Jules said. I'll need something to tide me over."
They kissed passionately for several minutes until they smelled the sickly sweet aroma of tirascaline--and within seconds they were lying unconscious on the floor.
They awoke in prison in separate cells, but their time of imprisonment was short. The Empire believed in giving traitors a speedy trial, and in making as big a spectacle of it as possible to deter others from the same path. The case against Ernst and Florence Brecht was clear-cut, and the imperial prosecutor finished in one day.
Jules insisted on defending both himself and his wife. He made no attempt to deny the facts, and his closing statement was basically an arrogant diatribe on why he should be a duke, and why the Emperor should be dismissed as an old fogey who was no longer competent to tun a galaxy, and who should be ignored. It was neither apologetic nor conciliatory, and helped settle any doubts about the verdict.
The Brechts were found guilty of treason. While every treason verdict carried an automatic death penalty with it, clemency was granted because of the Brechts' consideration of their prisoners, and their sentence was commuted to life exile on Gastonia.
Although outwardly they acted stunned, inwardly the d'Alemberts were much relieved. Taking over an entire world had been the easy part of their assignment; the hard part lay ahead of them on the cold, forbidding exile world of Gastonia.
Chapter 4
The Paradise
Pias and Yvette Bavol faced a somewhat different problem how to work their way into the pirates' base without being obvious about their intentions. It was a problem that Pias attacked with his usual good humor.
"How does an ordinary honest citizen become a pirate?" he mused aloud as he and Yvette were discussing their strategy. "It would be gauche to run an ad: 'Situation wanted: pirate. Formerly free-lance, now seeks association with others. Good shot, good tighter, no piloting experience. Prefers administrative position."'
"You never know," his wife laughed. "You might get some interesting offers." She cleared her throat and grew serious again. "But they must get new recruits from somewhere. We could make the rounds of the spaceport bars and underground hangouts until we hit some contacts."
Pias made a face. "I had my fill of those places when I was hunting Rowe Carnety. Three years of low dives can build up a toxic reaction. There has to be another way." He paused and smiled at his wife. "Besides, my love, you should know by now that that's not really my style. I prefer something with flash and elegance. Let the mountain come to Mohammed; I'll be more valuable to them if they have to seek me out."
"I don't think they're that desperate for manpower; there are plenty of cheap blasterbats for hire on any planet in the Galaxy. The only people they seek out are their victims."
Pias snapped his fingers and pointed at her triumphantly. "Then that's what I shall be. I'll make myself such a great target they won't be able to resist me."
"You can't be serious."
"Why not? It worked for us before, didn't it? We smashed Ling's gang after they captured the ship we were on."
"We were very lucky," Yvette reminded him. "We almost didn't make it out alive."
"That's because we stumbled into the situation accidentally. This time we'll be planning the program in advance, so we can take the variables into account."
"But our job is to infiltrate the pirates, to join their organization and destroy it from the inside. You can't do that if you're a victim."
"With my boyish charm, I'm sure I can reason the situation out with them."
"Your 'boyish charm' didn't work on Ling-and I'd like to see you reason with anyone after you've been chucked out an airlock with no spacesuit."
"Mere details," Pias said with an expansive gesture. "They can be worked out more conclusively once the broader plan is decided."
Though she loved her husband very much, Yvette would be the first to say that there were times he vexed her considerably. One of those times was now. She was still more used to working with her brother, and Jules had always preferred the direct approach. Search and destroy had been his motto; on the few occasions when they'd been forced to let the opposition find them, such as on Algonia during the Banion case, Jules was always much happier after the waiting was over and he could go into action. With Pias, she suspected, this was all much more of a great game; he seemed to enjoy the setting up of ruses as much for their own sake as for their ultimate end.
Still, she could hardly fault his performance. Even though he didn't have the family tradition in the Service that the d'Alemberts had, Yvette knew he was dedicated to their job. And she had to admit, his methods got results. She had doubted him before in their last mission, on Purity, but he had succeeded there, where her more direct attempts could not.
Yvette sighed. She would go along with his plans, if only to keep a check on some of his more extravagant ideas. But she still wished he were less unorthodox.
Pias's plan was to offer the pirates a target so irresistible that they would have to make a try for it. "Pirates go for money," he reasoned. "We'll have to offer them one of the richest ships in the Galaxy to guarantee their attack."
"Money alone isn't enough," Yvette countered. "Some of the richest people in the Empire travel on the big liners all the time without worrying about safety."
Pias thought that over. "Liners don't have a high enough concentration of wealth," he decided. "You have a few rich people and a lot more ordinary ones who are traveling on business or who have saved up for years for a luxury vacation. A big liner is a hard target, because it takes more manpower to overrun it--and for the small percentage of really rich people, it's not worth the effort.
"From what I've heard of pirates, they prefer either a cargo ship with a load of freight that can be resold at high profit margins or else the smaller private or chartered ships with enough people to hold for ransom."
"I know," Yvette exclaimed. "We can start a cargo company, specializing in rare and expensive merchandise, risky loads that other companies refuse to handle. That should offer a tempting package for pirates."
Pias thought the matter over, then shook his head. "No, not good enough. For one thing, how likely is it that we would form such a company? Neither you nor I can pilot a spacecraft, and there isn't enough time to learn if we want to crack this case before the Princess's coronation. Nor is it very likely that the nonflying owners of such a company would waste their time flying on every one of their flights-and if we're not along, we don't get a chance to meet the pirates.
"Besides," he added with a grin, "it's not flashy enough. It gives the pirates no incentive to deal with us directly." Yvette's patience with her husband was momentarily pushed beyond the exasperation point. "Then what is flashy enough for you, your majesty?"
Seeing that he'd upset her, Pias backed off a bit from his assumed stance of grandeur. "Actually, I was thinking in terms of a gambling ship. If there's one thing I do know, it's that."
Yvette's irritation dissipated as she considered the idea. Pias had spent three years posing as an easy-going professional gambler while he sought revenge on Rowe Carnery, the man who'd murdered his former fiancee. It was a role perfectly suited to Pias's eccentric temperament-and one that added to the aura of mystery about him that Yvette had found so fascinating at the time.
Pias watched her reaction and saw that she was calming down, so he proceeded to outline his ideas. "Not just an ordinary gambling ship, either; if we want to attract the top money to act as pirate bait, we'll have to give them something worth coming to. The most glamorous space going casino ever conceived, an interstellar vessel overflowing with decadence and luxuries."
Some of Pias's enthusiasm was now beginning to rub off on Yvette-as he'd been sure it would. "An exclusive pleasure palace," she said, eyes beginning to glow as the idea caught fire within her mind. "The more exclusive we make it, the more people will be clamoring to get in-and the more select our clientele. Admission by invitation only, with a basic two thousand ruble fee at the door."
"Fifty ruble minimum bets," Pias went on. "And a strict house policy of no credit. Everything will be on a cash basis which will ensure our having plenty of rubles to lure the pirates."
"We'll bill ourselves as being a hundred percent safe, completely pirate-proof. Not only will that help our image with potential customers, but it will be a gauntlet in the pirates' faces. If we keep shouting loud enough about how impossible it is for them to take us, their own egos will eventually make them come to us."
"Is it possible to be completely safe?" Pias wondered. "And would we really want to be even if it were?"
"Yes to both. As long as the pirates don't simply blast our ship out of the skies-which would hardly be profitable for them--I can find us a crew to repel any possible boarding party. And if we want them to deal with us as equals, and take us into their plans, they have to respect us first. By beating them at their own game, they'll have to come to terms with us."
Such was the genesis of the Paradise, the most lavish vessel of its kind ever conceived and built in the history of the Empire.
It was not meant to compete with the large luxury liners; those were intended to impress their passengers with their size and stateliness. Even drawing upon the fortunes of the d'Alembert family and the Circus of the Galaxy, the Bavols could not have afforded such a space going behemoth. The Paradise would be a smaller, but no less impressive, spaceship.
The competition they would face ranged from dreadful to very good indeed. Gambling ships had begun to grow popular thirty years earlier, their popularity coinciding with the rise of a moral movement on many worlds against the "sin" of gambling. The antibetters, as they were called, persuaded many planetary and local governments to forbid gambling-a maneuver which produced an effect directly counter to what the reformers had wanted. People who'd previously had only a mild interest in gambling suddenly became obsessed; the lure of the forbidden was as strong as ever in the human spirit.
The antibetters petitioned the Emperor to ban gambling throughout the Empire, but Stanley Ten would have none of that. He was, by that time, fifteen years into his reign and well aware of the limits of any power. A government that tried to forbid basic human drives would quickly lose all sympathy; trying to enforce unenforceable laws only made it laughable. The need to test one's luck at games of chance was as old as humanity, and would never be eradicated. The Emperor chose instead to take no position, and that was that. The antibetters had no power to persuade him to do anything.
As a result, while gambling was illegal on many planets within the Empire, it was not illegal in interstellar space, the region between the star systems where only Imperial law was in effect. Gamblers and entrepreneurs were quick to take advantage of this loophole, and the concept of the gambling ship-a spaceship traveling between the stars for the sole purpose of providing its customers with a legal casino-was born.
Most gambling ships catered to citizens of ordinary means and were tawdry affairs-small vessels with unpainted walls, holding perhaps twenty-five to fifty guests, with meager living and dining accommodations. The more a customer was willing to pay, the better his chances of finding something aesthetically pleasing.
The best of the gambling ships to date held upwards of a hundred guests at a level of comfort equivalent to that of a good hotel, and cost a thousand rubles for a one-week "cruise."
No one had built anything more extravagant because there didn't seem to be a market for it; the very rich gambler could always afford to go to Vesa to indulge his hobby. In that self-styled "Playground of the Galaxy" he could find luxury and indulgence to suit the most decadent tastes.
Pias and Yvette, of course, did not care whether there was a long-term market for such a gambling ship or not; they were not in this as a profit-making venture. For the few months they needed their operation to work, they could create a market. People would try anything at first if it was hard to get and promised them something original. All they'd have to do was build a mystique, and the rest would take care of itself.
They would have preferred to build the Paradise from scratch, their own design from beginning to end-but that would have taken six months just by itself, and they couldn't spare the time. Instead, they bought an older gambling ship that was still in good condition, brought it into a spacedock and had it completely refitted, inside and out. They had work crews operating around the clock to get the job completed as quickly as possible, and still it took more than a month before the Paradise was ready for its maiden voyage. Money was no object; the Bavols threw rubles around like confetti. But when they were done, not even the Paradise's former skipper would have recognized her.
From the outside, the Paradise looked like an electronic genius's Christmas tree ornament. It was onion-shaped, and its silvery hull was polished so that it reflected like an enormous funhouse mirror. Few people ever saw the hull itself, though, for virtually the entire outer surface of the vessel was covered with a myriad of flashing laser light displays of all colors. So dazzling was its appearance that, in the depths of space, it was visible to the naked eye almost a million kilometers away. "Any pirate who can't find that," Pias remarked, "is no threat to anybody."
Inside, too, the Bavols had been equally innovative. The ship had originally been designed with 107 passenger cabins of reasonably comfortable size, but the SOTE agents decided that cramped quarters were not the image they wanted to project to their luxury-minded customers. The amount of space within the ship was obviously limited by the external hull, but they could create the illusion of vast spaces inside. Forty of the passenger cabins were ripped out, and the rest expanded proportionately to give a roomier feel. Many walls were torn out of the public sections of the ship as well. In place of the three smaller dining rooms, Pias had them all combined into one magnificent banquet hall. The smaller gambling rooms were also consolidated into larger casinos, giving even those people who were not gambling at the moment a chance to mingle with the crowd and sample the vicarious excitement. Pias left only three of the original small gambling rooms untouched; they would serve to host the special high-stakes card games that were an invariable feature of such cruises.
In the exact center of the ship, instead of more casino room, Pias had the walls ripped out to construct a two-story tall entrance hall. In the middle of the floor stood a fountain in which a larger-than-life sized gold statue of a woman wore a gown of raindrop filaments; water trickled down the individual wires that composed the gown, producing a shimmering effect in the ever-changing light that illuminated the fountain. The entire room served no purpose but to create the appearance of lavish waste space; and since interstellar vessels were notoriously economical in that regard, it could only create an impression of extravagance in the customers' minds.
Yvette had charge of the actual decorating within the ship, and decided on a style she called "early precious." All the colors were pastels, leaning heavily on cupid pink. There were no bare walls anywhere; the interior surfaces of both the public areas and the passengers' cabins had all been wallpapered, then covered over with thick velvet curtains looped over elaborate gold wall sconces. The effect was to soften the hard lines of naked bulkheads and again preserve the illusion of open spaces.
The chairs and lounges were all of real wood, with pink flocked velvet upholstery; the gambling tables were all covered with pink tablecloths, and large crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling in the casinos. The thick plush carpeting was pure white, with small touches of red scattered lightly throughout. In the corners of the room, tall potted plants covered with red, pink and white blossoms reached upward toward the ceiling.
Pias and Yvette had had a long talk about the services the Paradise should provide its patrons. Elegant casinos and gourmet food were not enough; if the Paradise was to project the image of a rich people's playground, there would have to be "special services" available, too. The morality was not appealing to either of them-both had been raised in stern, straitlaced cultures-but they knew that their own feelings did not matter in this issue. Excessive prudery would detract from their vessel's image and ruin all they had worked so hard to build. For the sake of the Empire, they would have to put aside their own personal prejudices.
The task of procuring the more exotic supplies fell to Yvette, since she would be the official "hostess" of the ship. The liquor was the easiest to obtain; nearly all of it could be bought through legal channels except for a few specialty items which had to be smuggled off planets that discouraged the export of native substances. As for the paid companions, she spent almost two weeks scouting talent, finally selecting ten beautiful young women and agreeing to pay them on a salary-plus-commission basis; to be on the safe side, she also hired five handsome men for any of the women guests who felt inclined to use the ship's special services. The drugs were the hardest of all to track down, but Yvette had enough previous experience to ask the right questions in the right places and was able to pick up a variety of illegal substances to suit the tastes of the very rich and the very bored.
While Yvette was rounding up her supplies, Pias had the job of attracting customers to this unique enterprise. During the three years he had spent as "Pias Nav," a professional gambler, he had learned the customs of the gambling world from top to bottom. The richest customers, he knew, did not always frequent the most expensive clubs; certain spots were more popular than others for the type of clientele he was striving for.
Pias and Yvette had chosen the Paradise's cruise route very carefully. It would travel the quadrangle between the planets Egon, Bromberg, Hsoli and Kuragana. All four planets were prosperous, all had thriving illegal gambling operations because gambling had been officially forbidden there--and all four lay within the most heavily infested area of pirate activity in this sector of the Galaxy.
