by Jay Allan
He turned back toward the gauges, not particularly caring for where his line of thought was leading him. Almost full. He’d done seven refuelings now, and he started to get a strange, almost nostalgic feeling about this being the last. The shuttle had been a faithful companion, following him on the longest journey attempted in a fighter. He felt a pang of guilt for casting it off, cynically condemning it to destruction at the hands of the enemy. He knew it was silly. The ship was an inanimate object, and even the AI that had directed it so perfectly to follow him was nothing but data.
You’re losing it, Raptor. You’re one step away from stark raving mad.
He watched the monitors as the fuel and air storage topped off. It was time.
He went through the cumbersome process he’d followed the other six times, reminding himself every half minute or so to be careful. He was tired, and he wasn’t entirely sure exactly what to call his emotional state. He didn’t jump right to crazy, but he wasn’t sure he was as coldly focused as he wanted to be either.
He tapped his positioning jets, moving his fighter gently away from the shuttle with its great robot arm. There was fuel left on the vessel, and air too, something he suspected he’d remember if he found himself drifting and suffocating later. But where he was going, the cumbersome shuttle couldn’t follow. The time had come to bid his companion farewell.
He reached down and tapped the comm unit, activating his direct laser link to the shuttle. “Activate navigation plan omega-zero.” His voice was grim, and despite his efforts to drive off the bizarre emotions he was feeling, he couldn’t quite banish the thought he was sending a friend to die.
“Omega-zero operative.” The AI’s voice was cool, professional, without a hint of the resentment Stockton had illogically half-expected to hear. “Farewell, Lieutenant Stockton. Good luck to you, Raptor.”
The last part hit him hard, totally unexpected. Again, his rational mind knew it was just a bit of programming Fritz or one of her people had added. He was sure it was intended in the best possible way, but in his current state of mind, he found it upsetting.
He watched on his screen as the shuttle moved slowly away, operating one or two percent thrust until it was well clear of Stockton’s fighter.
“Goodbye, my friend,” he said softly, as the small blue dot moved farther away. He paused for a few seconds, taking a deep breath. Then he reached down and grabbed the throttle, easing it back slowly, kicking in his own thrust just a bit. He had a significant course change to make, but he wanted to be farther from the shuttle before he risked too much thrust. He had no idea how quickly the enemy would find his small tanker, but he knew they’d never get a chance to search it and discover the purpose it had served. The shuttle’s AI, the string of bits and bytes he’d come so close to calling friend, had one more duty to perform. It was to evade pursuit as long as possible, lead the enemy forces away from Stockton the best it could. But it would not allow itself to be captured. Its final duty would be to destroy itself, taking with it any evidence that another Confederation vessel was loose in the system.
He waited as long as he could. Then he checked the stealth unit and confirmed it was operating at one hundred percent power before he pulled back on the throttle and accelerated at 4g toward the transwarp link.
Toward the fleet, I hope…
Chapter Thirty-Two
FSS Victoire
Turas System
In the System Oort Cloud
Union Year 212 (308 AC)
Ricard Lille sat in the shuttle, twitching around in his seat, trying to perform the apparently impossible task of getting comfortable. The trip to the front had been a nightmare, one hideous form of barebones military transit after another. He’d suffered all manners of inconvenience and indignities on his past missions…pain, hunger, misery. But as often as not, he’d traveled in civilian circles, and usually luxurious ones. He was accustomed to danger, and he had iron control over his fear, but he found as he got older, he lacked his youthful tolerance for bad food and dismal accommodations.
There was no choice, of course. His cover was as a military attaché, an officer attached to Sector Nine as a forward scout for the eventual pacification of the conquered worlds. It was a reasonable identity, and he thought the Sector Nine connection was a nice touch. No one would expect an operative of the Union’s infamous intelligence operation spying on the admiral to admit a Sector Nine connection of any kind, and they certainly wouldn’t expect an assassin to do it. D’Alvert wouldn’t trust him, of course, but he wouldn’t particularly suspect him either. And that was good enough.
Lille had never met Admiral D’Alvert formally, but the two had been in the same room more than once. He didn’t think the admiral would recognize him, but regardless, he had far too high a profile to risk being ID’d, so he’d gone to the New Face facility before he left Montmirail. The process was simple and quick…and easily reversible. His eyes were now lighter blue, his facial bones altered, his auburn hair changed to the reddish dirty blond so common on Bretaine, the home world of the identity he had adopted.
He didn’t expect D’Alvert or any of his people to check him out too carefully. Sector Nine liaisons were deployed all across the front line, and advance teams had already landed on several of the border planets that had been seized. But just in case they did take more than a cursory look, he’d done his homework. There was no DNA scan of Ricard Lille in any Union database, of course, standard practice for high level Sector Nine operatives. But his genetic data was there now, under the name Gregoire Suchet. Lille’s own Bellegeusan heritage was a near match for a resident of nearby Bretaine, close enough to fool all but the most intensive of scans. If it appeared any of D’Alvert’s people were too concerned with checking him out, he could let them do it, even allow them to “secretly” get a sample of his DNA from a cup or a fork. He’d always found that something close to the truth was the easiest lie to sell.
“Check your harnesses. We’re making our final approach to Victoire.” The voice on the intercom was cold, professional. Like most of the Union, the military operated under a harsh system of discipline, but Lille had to admit that the services managed an admirable level of efficiency.
He looked across the confines of the shuttle, at the row of soldiers sitting quietly. They were FRs, replacements, he supposed, for Victoire’s combat losses. The troopers had been silent during the entire trip from the transport, not a word spoken, even among themselves.
He admired whoever had come up with the idea of an army of tightly-controlled, manufactured clone soldiers, and he appreciated the utility of the whole system, but the FRs made his skin crawl. They were human, of course, even if they were produced in laboratories, but the conditioning and training programs they went through left them seeming almost alien. Lille was merciless, a cold-blooded assassin who had taken down more than his share of enemies of the state, but even he had trouble with the icy ruthlessness applied to the FRs, the savage punishments…and the routine termination of old soldiers once their usefulness had come to an end. Such practices were practically designed to cause rebellion in almost any armed force that ever existed…save for one created and conditioned from birth to acceptance and obedience.
He leaned back and closed his eyes, breathing deeply, regularly. For all his travel, the dozens of missions he’d completed across the Union—and all the way to the Alliance—he’d never managed to shake the last twinges of his spacesickness. He was okay on large vessels like the transport, most of the time at least, but small craft like the shuttle still gave his stomach flops.
He felt the thrusters slowing the ship down and, a moment later, a lurch forward. Then nothing. He pushed back against the urge to retch at the sudden stop, sucking in another breath to calm his stomach. We’re down.
He reached up and unhooked his harness, pulling the straps out of the way as he stood up. The shuttle was full of others, all standing up, moving toward the back as the large hatch dropped open, revealing Victoire’s
landing bay. All except for the FRs. The soldiers unhooked their harnesses, but they stayed frozen in place, remaining in their seats while everyone else on the shuttle filed out.
Lille was the first through the hatch, his bogus colonel’s rank sufficient to create deference from the mostly junior officers lining up behind him. His head moved back and forth, panning his gaze across the immensity of Victoire’s great landing bay. It was only one of three, he knew, the others just as massive. The Union flagship was a vast ship of war, unmatched by any save its twin, Gloire…and the four vessels of the Confederation’s Repulse class. Three, he reminded himself. Indefatigable had been reported destroyed at Santis.
Lille was always uncomfortable on military vessels, perhaps because he’d come so close to a career in the navy. He’d had no intention of living the kind of life led by most citizens. Politics was the dream pursuit in the Union of course, the one that promised a life of power and luxury as the rewards for success. But the young Lille had possessed neither the education nor the temperament to make that work, and the navy had seemed like his best alternative. A bizarre sequence of events that led to his employment by Sector Nine instead. The spy agency did not take applications from would be operatives, it sought out the people it wanted. Lille had caught the eye of an agent impressed by his moral…ambivalency. After that, his cold willingness to kill had taken him the rest of the way. He hadn’t been back home since, though he had heard a few years back that his father had died…in the same squalor in which he’d lived. Sixty-two years old—not bad for a member of the Union’s working class, but far from acceptable to a man with Lille’s ambitions.
He walked across the expanse of the bay, toward the pair of lifts that led up to the heart of the ship. Halfway there, a pair of FRs challenged him.
“Sir, if you please, Admiral D’Alvert sent us to escort you to his office.” It was the first words he’d heard from one of the foot soldiers on this trip.
“Very well, Major,” he said, his eyes darting to the rank insignia on the man’s collar. There was a resemblance between the officer and the non-com standing silently at his side, as there was throughout the Foudre Rouge forces. They were all clones, of course, but there were over a hundred DNA lines used in their quickening, producing a heavy family resemblance rather than a corps of identical soldiers.
“Your bags will be taken to your quarters for you, sir.”
And searched along the way no doubt…
Lille just nodded curtly, with all the arrogance the FR officer would expect from a colonel attached to Sector Nine. They could tear apart his bags all day, and they wouldn’t find anything save mundane personal items…and a few things he’d planted to give them the impression he wanted them to have.
“That will be fine, Major.”
The officer nodded curtly, and he turned around, leading Lille toward the lift.
Lille followed without another word. Everything seemed to be going just the way he wanted it, and in a few minutes he’d know for sure. Hugo D’Alvert was an accomplished military officer, and a skilled politician, but Lille was sure he could read the man, or at least get a hint if the admiral had more than the normal level of suspicion. His job wasn’t to stand out here, it was to blend in…and to wait. D’Alvert was still useful. He had duties left to perform, a war to win. And Lille wouldn’t move, not until all of that was done.
* * *
“Enter.” D’Alvert snapped out the command to the AI. He’d called for Renault, and he was impatient to see her. The aide was the closest thing he had to a confidante. Beyond the fact that he genuinely liked and respected her, at least as much as he did anyone, she was perfectly positioned, close enough to him that her best chances at advancement rested in his coattails and not in treachery.
Sabine Renault stepped into the room, her uniform crisply pressed, as always. His chief aide was a fastidious woman, one who tended toward the cold and emotionless. He understood her, at least he thought he did—like him, she had risen from the gutter to a position of some authority. No doubt her sights were set quite a bit higher, and if she remained trustworthy, he had every intention of taking her with him when he made his bid for power.
“Sit, Captain Renault.” D’Alvert had a plush office, just down the hall from Victoire’s flag bridge. It was large by any standards, but by those of spaceship design it was palatial. He sat behind a large desk with two chairs lined up on the other side. There was a large sofa and a round conference table off to the side, and the wall opposite the desk was covered by a large display, now black.
“Thank you, sir.” Renault walked up to one of the guest chairs and sat down, her posture nearly as rigid seated as it had been standing. “Did you speak with the Sector Nine liaison?”
“Yes.” D’Alvert’s voice was disapproving. “He droned on for quite some time about the ways he and his teams would smoke out elements of resistance on the occupied worlds. It was a look into how the sausage is made that I didn’t find terribly interesting.” He paused. “Still, he’s from Sector Nine, so we must be careful. We’ve got enough political officers in this fleet spying on us already, without having Sector Nine operatives who aren’t who they say they are.” He gestured toward Renault. “Have him checked out. Thoroughly. And, if it’s possible, get a DNA sample…but please, be discrete. We don’t need trouble from Sector Nine.”
“Understood, sir. I will see to it immediately.”
“Very well.” D’Alvert leaned back in his chair. “Still no word from the supply convoy?”
“No, Admiral. Per your orders, I dispatched a squadron of escorts to trace a line back toward Varus to find out what happened.” She paused, an uncertain look on her face. “Of course, if the problem is farther back along that line, it could be two weeks or more before they return.”
“If they return, Captain. If something more than Admiral Lund’s incompetence delayed that convoy, we have to give serious thought to what it could be. Is it possible a significant Confederation force has eluded us? That there are enemy ships operating in our rear?” D’Alvert found the whole idea hard to swallow. He’d had top-notch intelligence on the Confederation fleet before the war began, and he had a pretty good idea where all their ships were. But that didn’t change the fact that his entire offensive was at a halt waiting for supplies.
“I suppose we must consider that possibility, sir, though I will admit, I have no idea how it’s possible. The only known Confederation battleship unaccounted for is Dauntless, and our most recent intelligence reports suggest that she is badly damaged from her engagement with the Alliance flagship and still at Archellia under repair.”
“How old is our last report from Archellia?”
“It is…” She paused. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t have that information with me.”
D’Alvert felt a flash of anger, but it quickly subsided. Renault was an extremely competent officer, but when she wasn’t prepared on something she just admitted it, directly and clearly. No miserable attempts at excuses or prevarication. He found it extremely refreshing. “Have it checked, Captain. I want to know exactly when we received that last update.” He pushed a button on the small comm unit, spinning it toward her.
Renault tapped the control and leaned over the microphone. “Lieutenant Rivers, I want you to review the intelligence reports immediately. I need to know when we received the last flash update from Archellia.”
“Yes, Captain. At once.”
“I’m in the admiral’s office. Contact me here as soon as you have it.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Renault looked up at D’Alvert. “I’m sorry, sir. I should have…”
“You can’t have every scrap of data in your head, Captain.” He found his own word strangely amusing. Whatever he’d become, he was still self-aware enough to know how differently he’d have reacted with someone else.
“Thank you, sir.”
“I must make a decision, Captain. Do I press on and engage the Confeds now, while they’re
still disordered and demoralized? Or do I wait until we’re able to resupply?” He shook his head, an angry scowl coming over his face. “Damned Lund. Everything was set. The fleet would be refit and ready to go if that fool had gotten here on time. We’d be destroying the Confed fleet even now.”
“Our supply situation is not critical, Admiral.” Renault paused. “It’s of concern, of course, but we should have enough fuel and ordnance to sustain one more battle.”
D’Alvert took a breath, looking back across the table at his aide. “Cutting it so close ramps up the risk considerably. I believe we’re on the verge of victory, but what if that fool Winston is able to extricate his force again, trading space—and worlds—for time? We would be one system deeper into enemy space, and then the logistical situation would be critical to say the least.”
“Everything you say is true, sir, but with all due respect, I don’t believe that’s the only consideration. The enemy is disordered, shaken. The longer we wait, the more time they have to prepare. They do have reserve forces, and our reliance on the caution of their Senate in committing these last resources is well conceived, but far from foolproof. Our entire war plan is based on speed, on leveraging the surprise and mobility Supply One allows us.”
“Everything you say is true, Captain. And perhaps waiting is more dangerous than proceeding without resupply. I just don’t know.” D’Alvert rarely allowed anyone to see his indecision, but he was conflicted. The last thing he could do was allow his admirals to see him uncertain. Too many of them harbored their own ambitions, and he didn’t doubt more than one imagined stepping over him to achieve their own position and power. Renault was the closest thing he had to someone he truly trusted.
“It seems we must take a risk either way, sir. Only you can determine our course.”
“But if it were your decision, Captain, you would advance? Immediately?”
