It was Wu's turn to appear stunned. "How did you know?"
"Where is your father stationed?"
"Shiloh. He's training there with the Third Sirian Lancers in a joint operation."
"Shiloh's on my list."
Kai sat down hard and sank back into his chair. "This is even more monstrous than I would have imagined. The Cossacks make for Shiloh with Peter Davion at their head and your father kills them because he's been tipped off that they're coming."
Wu blanched. "Peter Davion is with them?"
Kai nodded. "His death would force Victor to attack the Capellan Confederation because it would be one of their units on a League world that killed Peter. And that's just what my uncle wants. And if the Cossacks did get back out, along with Peter, suddenly the Federated Commonwealth has proof that Sun-Tzu is staging Capellan troops on League worlds within striking distance of Federated Commonwealth holdings."
Larry Acuff shivered. "Why order the raiders to pull back?"
"So they won't kill Peter." Kai looked up at Wu. "You said your father is conducting training operations with the Third Sirian Lancers? Has he talked about them?"
"He said they're game troops, but as green as spring leaves. The Cossacks will destroy them."
"Which means that Peter Davion is leading a strike against a Free Worlds League planet." Kai's breath hissed in between his teeth. 'That, in turn, will cause Thomas Marik to declare war on the Federated Commonwealth, which is something Sun-Tzu would love to see."
"But Thomas can't do anything against the Federated Commonwealth because his son Joshua is with the doctors on New Avalon. He's a hostage." Keith combed his fingers back through his light brown hair. "A man can't take an action that might get his child killed."
"I could not," Wu said in a whisper.
"Sometimes a man has to." As the other men in the room looked at Kai, a lump caught in his throat like a fishbone. He pulled out the holograph and slid it across the table. Keith caught it before it could fall to the carpeted floor, then held it for Wu and Larry to see.
Larry pointed at the woman in the picture. "That's Dr. Lear, right? She was on Alyina."
Kai nodded. "That's my son with her. Tormano has them both. He said I'd never see them again if I do anything to oppose him."
Fuh Teng hung his head. "But to do nothing means a war erupts."
"I know." Kai felt helpless, but he forced the feeling away and sat forward in his chair. "We have to stop this idiocy before millions of people are killed. If doing that means ... it just has to be done."
"Do as my father suggests, Kai." Wu pointed to the visiphone on the side table. "Send a message to Victor through ComStar. Have him recall his brother."
"Can't, for two reasons. The first is that Victor can't send troops into the Free Worlds League without triggering the war we're trying to avert. In fact, if Victor knew about the Harloc Raiders being on Shiloh, he might just send his own forces there to destroy them. The second reason we can't have Victor recall Peter is because Peter would go in just to spite his brother. My Uncle Tormano has Peter absolutely full of himself. That's why we're going to have to stop him."
"What do we do?" Keith set the picture of Deirdre and David back on the desk. "Tell us and it's done."
Kai thought for a second, then looked at his companions one by one before speaking. "This plan is probably full of holes, but I think it could work. Fuh Teng, you'll use the visiphone to call up every fighter Cenotaph has under contract. We'll need them ready to move because we're going to send a force after Peter. But this has to be kept quiet. Give them no details, just tell them I need their help."
He looked over at Wu Deng Tang. "Look, you don't need any part of this, but if you want to help you could get people here in Cathay to start spreading rumors. All kinds—about my being very, very depressed and in seclusion or my being manic and out celebrating insanely. The wilder the better. Tormano is going to be watching me and I want his information network flooded with so many reports and rumors that he won't be able to sort the wheat from the chaff."
"I owe you my son's life. I'll do what I can to safeguard yours."
"Thank you." Kai turned to Larry. "Larry, you'll have to get us the supplies the folks Fuh Teng brings in will need. Include you and me in that mix."
"You going to be driving Yen-lo-wang?"
"Can't. Tormano or one of his people would notice it missing." Kai cracked a wry smile. "Kallon Industries won't mind me doing an extended field test with that Penetrator. Order stuff in odd lots, duplicate purchase orders, buy from small distributors. It will have to be here in one day, so stay local."
"You got it, boss."
"Good." Kai looked down for a moment, trying to impose order on the chaos in his mind. "Tormano will be watching the Zhangshi and the other ships we use. I'll arrange for alternate transport, then I'll help Fuh Teng bring people in."
Keith set the computer keyboard on top of the monitor. "That leaves me. You want me to use my incredible computer skills to find your son for you?"
"Yeah, Keith, I do, but that's your second priority." Kai glanced down at the holograph, then looked up again. "You're going to have to provide cover for this whole operation through the computers. There can be no records of our purchases after they're delivered. People who will be gone must appear to have all the normal computer traffic coming in and going from their homes. We need bills and bar tabs and clothing orders and anything else you can think of dumped into the computer pool so Tormano's people will think they're still tracking us.
"My uncle is a man who prides himself on being both intelligent and subtle. He will listen to an eyewitness sighting, but he will believe in a credit card bill for a meal or a pilfered telecom statement that says I was here making calls. His people will be watching all those things anyway, so we have to satisfy him."
Keith nodded slowly. "You know, this is going to be a full time job until you're gone, because I'll be making up new things and erasing old things. Won't be until after you leave that I can start looking for your son."
Kai's guts twisted around at those words. "Yes, and I know that puts him at risk. My uncle's given me no other choice, really, because if Tormano can use the boy successfully against me here and now, he'll keep him. This time Tormano demands my inactivity. What do I do next time when he demands I act?"
"I'd make sure there isn't a next time." Keith picked up the holograph. "Uncle or no, he threatens my kid, I'd stamp paid on his account."
"I agree, but I can't do that until I know David's safe." Kai stood up. "And we can't make sure he's safe until we've stopped this war."
* * *
Duke Ryan Steiner smiled as Sven Newmark made his report. "You're certain, Sven?"
"Yes, my lord. We can find no trace of Peter Davion on Solaris. That fact, coupled with Mandrinn Liao's report, would seem to indicate that Peter is no longer a problem." The Rasalhague expatriot offered Ryan his hand. "Congratulations, sir, I think we may have turned the corner."
Ryan rose from behind his desk and pumped Sven's arm heartily. "You may be correct, Mr. Newmark." The duke allowed himself a low chuckle as he gathered his hands at the small of his back and walked to the window. Looking out toward Cathay and the Black Hills, he saw uneven, fire-blackened crenelations crowning The Sun and The Sword tower. "Two birds killed with one stone there, and now Peter has been thrown to the wolves. Victor is quickly losing his supporters."
"There is no doubt, my lord, that the legitimacy of his claim to the title is in question." Newmark sat down in a chair near Ryan's desk.
Ryan nodded, then smiled as he looked down into the street. "This squalid scene below me is indicative of how unsuited the Davions are to rule over the Lyran Commonwealth. Davions believe in symbols. You have a street full of decay and what do you do to improve it? You festoon it with these colored banners on the lamp posts. Not only does it do nothing to solve the problem, but silver, red, and scarlet is hardly an eye-catching combination of colors.
&
nbsp; "Steiners, on the other hand, have ever understood the problem of poverty and its solution. As I did in coming here and investing in rehabilitating this building. My presence in the quarter will encourage others to come in with improvements. We bring money to a community, and it creates jobs. Money makes more money, but the Lyran Commonwealth has suffered because of three decades of the Davions vampirizing our capital assets."
Ryan half-turned, presenting his profile to both Newmark and the window. "The Lyran Commonwealth will not be a banquet at which the Clans and Davions can sup. I will see to it. This I vow, on pain of death!"
* * *
Half a kilometer away, at an elevation approximately twenty meters above the point where Duke Ryan Steiner stood in his window, a gloved finger tightened on the trigger of the Loftgren 150. That tripped the sear, pulling it from the notch in the striker that held it back. Freed of resistance, the spring bunched behind the striker in the bolt assembly and pushed it forward. The striker, in turn, drove the firing pin forward and into the bottom of the cartridge in the breech.
The firing pin smashed into the cartridge right where the primer had been placed. Inside the primer a small anvil moved forward, compressing the primer explosive. As it had been designed to do, the chemical exploded, introducing fire into the propellant in the base of the cartridge. Less than .05 seconds had passed since the trigger had been squeezed.
The cartridge had been filled with 9.72 grams of high explosive propellant. It ignited very quickly and pressure built in the cartridge from the expansion of the burning propellant. As the pressure increased, the cartridge itself began to warp and the fire sought escape, The easiest route it could find came at the narrow end of the cartridge, which had been plugged with a bullet.
The pressure squirted the bullet free of the cartridge and pushed unburned propellant out after it into the gun's long throat. There, in the smooth-walled chamber, even more of the propellant had a chance to combust and the pressure increased proportionately. The bullet hurled forward into the barrel and for the first time since being freed from the cartridge, it met resistance.
The barrel the bullet entered had been milled to exacting specifications and was .254 millimeters smaller than the bullet itself. The six flat lands inside the barrel planed off the offending .254 millimeters of excess metal on the bullet. This left the bullet its original 1.27 centimeters in diameter only where it fitted against the six grooves scored in a tight spiral down the length of the barrel. These grooves imparted one full rotation of the bullet for every 17.78 centimeters of length, causing the bullet to spin very fast.
That spin would guarantee stable flight ballistics for the bullet. The bullet had been cast in a mold that provided it a boattail. The bullet's tail end tapered back so it was actually smaller in diameter than it was at its widest point. This made the bullet much more efficient at longer ranges by reducing the drag from the air through which it passed.
Behind the bullet the burning propellant continued to expand. Its fire would follow the bullet all the way up and out of the barrel. It would produce a muzzle flame of less than 15 centimeters. Much more than that would have been easy to detect in the dull gray Solaris sky. It would have also been a mark of an inefficient load in the cartridge because any flame that showed outside the barrel marked energy that had been unused in the act of sending the bullet toward its target.
The bullet left the rifle's muzzle a scant .075 seconds after the trigger had been squeezed. Its velocity as it moved into free flight came in at just under 868.68 meters per second. With the target only five hundred meters away, it would hit in under a second. The light from the muzzle flash would be enough to register in Duke Ryan's peripheral vision. The .61043-second flight time from muzzle to target would not permit him to even begin to evaluate that data.
As the bullet flew it lost velocity and started to lose in its fight with gravity. The rifle had been sighted in to take this into account. When the sight showed the target centered in the crosshairs, the muzzle actually aimed at a point 15.24 centimeters higher than that. At closer ranges that would have meant the rifle would shoot high, but because it had been sighted for a half a kilometer, it married aimpoint to bullet flight trajectory.
Bullet-proof glass is actually a misnomer. Glass, while it can be thickened, strengthened, and hardened, is like any other armor. It is subject to the laws of physics, which do not allow for the paradoxical existence of both an immovable object—the glass—and an irresistible force—the bullet. Bulletproof glass will stop or deflect many projectiles—at least the most common ones, which are the types the vast majority of assassins and terrorists and lone nuts might possess. Even so, a heavier than normal caliber will shatter it.
So will specialized ammunition.
When the sabot-loaded, armor-piercing round hit the glass, it transferred an incredible amount of kinetic energy to the glass itself. The glass, which is in reality a very slow-moving liquid, began to bulge inward. As the energy stressed its crystalline lattice, the glass began to give way. Microfractures began to spread through the glass at the point of impact, forming a cone that expanded in toward the room.
The microfractures might have been seen as a failure of the glass, but, in effect, they were just the glass doing its job. Creating the fractures bled off energy. While the glass gave way in a very small area, it managed to resist the rapidly spent bullet. The rest of the structure held and the 34.02 grams of lead flattened itself against the glass without penetrating it.
The tungsten sabot around which the bullet had been formed did not surrender as easily as its softly malleable lead sheath. The metal needle shed its metallic coat and punched through the microfractured portion of the glass. Barely 3.175 millimeters in diameter, it crossed the thirty-six centimeters between the window and Duke Ryan's head in .0007 seconds and, because of the uneven fracturing of the glass, had become slightly unstable in flight.
The needle's point hit Ryan just above his left ear. It penetrated the hair and flesh as if they were not there, then struck bone. As the bullet itself had done to the glass, the needle transferred much of its energy to the bone structure of Ryan's skull. The dome began to compress and would fracture because of the stresses. Unfortunately for Ryan, that fact would only be discovered upon autopsy.
The needle had twisted in flight, fishtailing slightly toward the back of his skull. This really made no material difference in results of the damage, but it did cause the entry wound to have a peculiar shape. This would confuse ballistics experts and forensic scientists and would create a microeconomy of authors and investigators who would continue to argue for decades about the number of shooters there had actually been. Though they would never uncover anything of substance in the matter, their speculations would hound and harry Sven Newmark to the point where the man would commit suicide.
At the point of impact, the skull's interior surface exploded. It filled the cranial cavity with bone fragments that ripped through Ryan's brain. The organic shrapnel destroyed cells and severed both synapses and blood vessels. The damage from bone splinters alone would have been enough to paralyze Ryan Steiner, akin to the effects of a massive stroke, and kill him were medical intervention not available.
The sabot pierced the brain and had turned enough that it moved sideways through the collection of neurons. The actual number of cells it destroyed was insignificant compared to the overall make-up of the brain. It quickly outstripped the bone shards in their flights and approached the far side of Ryan's skull.
What did the most damage, ultimately, was the Shockwave traveling behind the needle. It homogenized a cone-shaped segment of Ryan's brain, fatally disrupting all his bodily functions. It stopped all reasoning and destroyed sensory portions of his brain. It also tore apart the brain's circulatory system, rendering the body incapable of bringing to the brain the things it would need to repair itself.
The needle had spent all but a fraction of its energy when it hit the far side of the skull. It impacted almost bro
adside and blew out through Ryan's right ear. As it came out, so did a jet of blood and organic material that actually snapped Ryan's head back toward the window through which the shot had come. His body fell to the left and his head struck the window. He left enough of a smear on the window to fuel the speculation that, in fact, he had been shot from the right and below head level.
According to experts, that put the murder weapon in the hands of Sven Newmark. They decided he had been an agent placed in Duke Ryan's service by the Rasalhague underground. People pointed to the dissatisfaction among some of the Rasalhague community over Ryan's involvement in the attempted kidnapping of Prince Ragnar on Arc-Royal the year before. It was the flimsiest of motives, which made it that much stronger to conspiracy theorists. The fact that Arc-Royal belonged to Morgan Kell, and Morgan was a cousin to Victor Davion, all seemed to make sense in a twisted sort of way.
In the end, none of that would matter. In under two seconds from the time the assassin's finger stroked the trigger of his gun, Ryan Steiner, his plots, and all the secrets he knew lay dead in an expanding pool of blood on the floor of his office.
32
Solaris City, Solaris VII
Tamarind March, Federated Commonwealth
24 April 3056
The assassin backed away from the window and shucked his arm from the sling he had used to help steady the rifle. With a trace of regret he tossed the whole weapon onto the bed, then knelt at the foot of it and snaked a hand under the coverlet and between the mattress and box spring. There he felt a leather strap and pulled it free. With it came a shoulder holster and needle pistol with two reload blocks.
He had been told to wait for his control officers to return to the room after he had shot Ryan, which was a mistake. Despite the very slim chance of someone spotting and later identifying an Intelligence Secretariat agent on the scene, one of them should have stayed in the room with him. The assassin knew the ice-eyed man would never have left him alone, which also meant he'd be dead by now and the secret of who shot Ryan Steiner along with him.
Assumption of risk Page 31
