though no case the d’Alemberts and Bavols worked on could be called ordinary.
But this one was special, and all four knew it. For the first time they would be walking
into a trap designed specifically for them; they would need courage, strength, and not a
little luck to escape this particular menace.
Chapter 3 The Trail To C
Captain Paul Fortier of Naval Intelligence hadn’t allowed himself the luxury of a six-month
vacation after the attack against Earth on Coronation Day. He’d been offered a long
vacation and an important assignment at Luna Base, but he’d asked that they be
postponed. He’d been in the middle of a long-standing assignment, to destroy the pirate
network, when the emergency to the Empire occurred. Even though he’d dealt
spectacularly with the invasion, he considered his work incomplete. The pirates had been
dispersed and their major operations disbanded, but there were still loose ends to be
wrapped up. He was the person with the most intimate knowledge of the pirates’ opera-
tions, having worked undercover in their organization for several years, and so he was
the logical choice to supervise the mopping up. The Imperial Navy, proud of his dedica-
tion, agreed to give him the opportunity.
Under the name “Rocheville,” Fortier had worked his way up to being one of pirate leader
Shen Tzu’s chief lieutenants. As such, he had detailed information about many of the
people the pirates dealt with on the local level, planet to planet; and much of what he
didn’t know was supplied by the pirates’ own records when their base was captured.
Now he was set on tracking down those intermediaries, making sure they’d be put away
where they couldn’t hurt society again.
The pirate network had been widespread, and Fortier’s job was vast. He could not do it
all himself. Instead, he was put in charge of a task force, with five other officers of Naval
Intelligence working under him. The group worked in cooperation with planetary police
forces, and Fortier coordinated the joint effort. He chafed at this; he had joined Naval
Intelligence because he enjoyed the adventure of work in the field, and he hated being
stuck behind a desk. He therefore took every opportunity to get out and do some of the
actual work himself.
When the pirates had been smashed, their contacts, realizing that they would now be
wanted by the law, tried to vanish into the regular criminal underground that existed on
nearly every civilized planet. Some were more successful at this than others. Many of
them had been legitimate businessmen except for their dealings with the pirates, and
weren’t familiar with the criminal networks. They were picked up almost immediately. The
tougher ones were those with previous criminal records, with long experience at hiding
from the authorities. These required dogged determination to track down-a quality that
was fortunately not lacking in Fortier and his people.
It was in a dimly lit, foul-smelling bar on the planet Lateesta that a major breakthrough
occurred. Fortier and his police contact, Detective Nikopolous, had staked out the
underworld hangout on a tip that Fortier’s fugitive, a man named Guitirrez, would be there
that evening. They waited a while and, as predicted, Guitirrez entered the bar and sat
down alone at one of the battered tables. He looked as though he might be waiting for
someone; he kept glancing at the door and checking the time. In view of this behavior,
Fortier and Nikopolous decided not to arrest Guitirrez immediately; he might inadvertently
lead them to bigger fish in his scummy pond.
Their hunch paid off. Forty-five minutes later, a woman joined Guitirrez at his table. She
was Junoesque, in her early fifties, with graying hair, and a hard expression on her face.
Neither Fortier nor Nikopolous had ever seen her before, but Fortier made sure to snap
several pictures of her with his tiny hidden camera.
The meeting broke up after a few minutes. Guitirrez sat nursing his drink while the
woman got up and left the bar. Fortier left his associate to tend to the routine task of
arresting Guitirrez; he was much more interested in tailing this mysterious woman to find
out more about her. She might be just a routine friend of Guitirrez, having no connection
to any illegal activities-but Fortier was not one to give up on a lead until it was proved to
be false.
The woman walked briskly to the nearest tubeway station; Fortier was hard pressed to
keep pace with her and not make himself conspicuous at the same time. He just
managed to catch the same turbotrain, staying as far away from her in the car as
possible and making sure to avoid eye contact. She sat calmly as the turbotrain rode
through several stations, and Fortier was able to rely on his peripheral vision to let him
know when she made any moves.
She got off the tubeway where it connected to the monoliner station and went
immediately into the ladies’ restroom. Fortier cursed his luck and used his personal
minicom to call for a female assistant as backup. The monoliner station security had a
woman officer to him within three minutes, and he sent her in to check the restroom. The
woman he’d been tailing was not there.
This particular lavatory had two entrances, one from the station and one from the street.
The woman had obviously gone out the second door and given him the slip. She could be
anywhere by now.
Dejected at his failure, Fortier returned to police headquarters, where Guitirrez was
being held for interrogation. Although it didn’t take much effort to get Guitirrez to admit
his part in the piracy, he insisted he knew nothing about the woman he’d met in the bar.
He’d been told to call a certain number whenever he was in trouble. He’d done so on
several previous occasions and had been given instructions on how to hide out safely. On
this last occasion, the person at the other end had told him to wait in this bar for a
woman who’d give him further orders. The woman had come as promised and told him a
ticket offplanet in the name of Martinez was waiting for him at the spaceport. He’d been
arrested before he could leave the bar and pick up the ticket. That was all he claimed to
know about the matter.
The police did what they could to verify the man’s story. There was indeed a starship
ticket at the spaceport reserved in the name of Martinez; it would have taken the fugitive
halfway across the Empire and might have helped him elude capture for a considerable
time. The vidiphone number had been assigned to a name that turned out to be fictitious,
and there was no way to trace it to anyone. The police even gave Guitirrez a shot of
detrazine, the strongest legal truth serum known, but his story remained the same.
Fortier decided to concentrate on the woman who’d met Guitirrez in the bar. She was
obviously a connection to higher, more important channels. He passed the photos around
within the detective division, but no one could ever recall having seen her before. Copies
of the pictures were made and circulated to all police personnel on Lateesta.
Descriptions were sent to all spaceport security people to prevent the woman from
leaving the planet, although Fortier was convinced he was locking the barn door after the
rustling. In the meantime, he locked himself away in an office, spread the photos across
the top of the empty desk, and studied them himself to pry loose any pertinent infor-
mation he could.
After staring hopelessly at the pictures for a while, his eye noticed a detail it had missed
before. It was very tiny, and he ordered the photos enlarged to see it more clearly. The
enlargements showed the mysterious woman wearing around her neck a thin gold chain
that held a small integrated circuit chip dangling from its center.
In the past few months since the near disaster on Coronation Day, NI and SOTE had
buried most of their interservice rivalry. A great deal of information was now flowing
between the two organizations, and one of the items SOTE strongly stressed to Naval
Intelligence was that there was a well-organized conspiracy trying to topple the Stanley
dynasty. One of its recognition symbols was a necklace just like the one this mysterious
lady was wearing. Ever since the attack on Earth it was known that the pirates had been
somehow involved with this conspiracy but this development led to new, and perhaps
unexpected, connections. It was certainly worth checking further.
Even as he was congratulating himself on spotting that tiny detail, Fortier received his
second big break on the case. A call arrived for him from none other than the
Superintendent of Police for Lateesta. “I just had a chance to look at the photos you
circulated, and I must say I was shocked to see her here in a cheap bar associating with