“My orders say Moscoe Confederation,” the admiral said.
“With all due respect,” MacRobert said, “the admiral might want to review this data cube.” He pulled it out and handed it over. The look Padhjan gave him was not quite a glare, but very close. MacRobert had been glared at many times before, by people of higher rank than Padhjan, and knew he presented the blank impenetrable expression of experience.
Padhjan put the cube into a reader. “Is it going to self-destruct and destroy my reader as well?”
“Not at all,” MacRobert said. “But the Rector wanted it hand-delivered after we entered FTL flight and before we arrived at this next jump transition.”
Padhjan read the text, mouth thinning as he read. “I’m not sure I like this, MacRobert.” It was the first time he hadn’t used MacRobert’s old rank. “I was specifically told, more than once, that I was to place myself under the command of Ky Vatta and Ky Vatta only. Now—”
“In war, people die,” MacRobert said. “She was certainly alive the last time the Rector spoke to her, shortly before we left Slotter Key—”
“You’re sure of that.”
“I saw her myself, on the screen. Ansible contact, responsive conversation—and I know her, so I know for sure that was Ky Vatta. If she has been killed before we get where we’re going—”
“You know where that is, do you?”
“I know that making ansible contact when we come out of jump will tell us. We have the code for her onboard ansible, and the codes for the Moscoe Confederation and Nexus governments.” And Stella Vatta, and the Mackensee home planet, though MacRobert didn’t think the admiral needed to know that.
“So—we could be diverted from Cascadia, go into a battle without these fancy new ansibles—”
“That’s right, Admiral.”
“That sounds really stupid to me.” Padhjan’s tone bordered on belligerence.
“It’s usually best to think of the Rector’s strategy as densely layered,” MacRobert said.
Padhjan opened his mouth to answer, then made an obvious change of direction. “And you understand it all?”
“I don’t try to understand it all,” MacRobert said with serene dishonesty. It was better for them all if Padhjan continued to see MacRobert as the simple errand boy of a scheming old woman.
“Fine,” Padhjan said. “We’ll all drop out at the next transition point and waste however much time it takes to retrieve a message. Does this transition jump even have a relay ansible in the same system?”
“The onboard unit can access both onboard and system ansible networks,” MacRobert said. Though most of the ships in the fleet had none, Grace had insisted that the flagship have one—over Padhjan’s objections.
Six hours later, the fleet dropped out of FTL space. MacRobert, with Admiral Padhjan glowering at his back, turned on the onboard ansible and called Slotter Key. As he expected, despite the local time there, Grace was at the console.
“Admiral Padhjan, MacRobert,” she said. “Ky’s in FTL on the way to Nexus, following Turek’s fleet. Estimates of his fleet size give over three hundred ships. She anticipates an attack on Nexus fairly quickly after his downjump, which should be no sooner than thirty-six standard hours from now, relative time—but could of course be later. You will go to Nexus System; she will command all allied forces. Nexus has formally requested alliance aid, and has the ID data for your ships.”
“I understand,” Padhjan said. He glanced over at the displays. “But it will take us a minimum of thirty standard hours to reach the charted Nexus jump point. Not much margin.”
Grace grinned at him, the wicked grin MacRobert knew so well. “Ah, but Turek doesn’t know you’re coming. We’ve told everyone you’re going to Cascadia. Pure nepotism—the Rector sending Spaceforce to the aid of her niece just to protect Vatta interests. There’s a good bit of noise about it in the media just now.”
“Oh…”
“Your margin, Admiral Padhjan, is his ignorance. Don’t waste it.” And she was gone, with Grace-like decisiveness.
“You could have told me sooner,” Padhjan said to MacRobert.
“I could. But of the two of you, I’d rather have you mad at me than her, even though you’re closer.”
Padhjan, for a wonder, chuckled at that. Then, with efficiency MacRobert admired, he gave the series of orders that shifted the fleet into assault formations, and they were back in FTL flight within two hours.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
I t’s not that hard to knock out an ansible platform,” Rafe said. “They’re big; they’re fragile; they can’t be jumped around like a ship. And Turek’s attacked ansibles before.”
“Not as easy to hit as a planet, though,” Gary said. “They do move some, and they’re easier to miss, at their size. A ship would have to get pretty close to just lob a rock at one and hope to hit it. We, on the other hand—”
Rafe had not, previously, paid much attention to the many ways someone in space could inflict severe damage on a planet. Nor had many in Nexus Defense, though it should have been their job. Now, with a vast volume of space to protect with minimal resources, the gaping holes in Nexus II’s ability to keep the planet from being hit by any of a number of weapons were all too obvious. He had convened a small dinner meeting of experts both inside and outside ISC. Dinner over, they were tackling the hard questions.
“It would take time…the planet’s orbit is predictable and it’s large enough, but it would take weeks to get one of the chunks of rocks up there to an interception.”
“Or months,” someone else said. “Depends how fast you want the attack to be…”
“Ten to the seven chunks big enough to cause catastrophic damage, at least, you said.” Rafe shook his head. “Nobody’s mapped them; there’s no way to know if someone strapped a space drive onto one of them a month ago—”
“That we do know,” said an astronomer with System Survey. “We have the scans; we know none of the big ones is on an intercept course right now.”
“What’s the fastest unconventional nasty thing they could do?”
The woman with the mane of frizzy pale hair spoke up. “Install FTL drives and a nav computer on several large-enough rocks, microjump them into atmosphere, and then turn on the drives again. The downjump would produce a massive electromagnetic pulse; the attempt to jump out would vaporize the rocks…it’s the combined-mass thing.”
“That could be done?” Rafe asked.
“Theoretically. Practically speaking, we don’t know the integrity of those rocks. Taking one through an upjump transition might convert it to pebbles right there.”
“So we may have rocks, but we definitely have a large fleet—I think we’ll stick to realities for the time being,” Rafe said. He looked at the holo display set up in the conference room. Depending on which vector Turek came in on, he should quickly see a large fleet, which he would know to be weaker than it looked. With any luck at all, he would not see those elements of the fleet that were not as weak as they had been. Five squadrons now operated on AI control, programs hastily adapted from those used on targeting drones. The sixth—the sixth was Rafe’s one hope for effective action by ISC ships. Still near obsolete, still mounted with older weapons, but with repairs and upgrades as complete as possible in the time they’d had since Boxtop. Nexus’ own fixed defenses, mounted on “rocks” in the outer system, were positioned primarily to guard the usual traffic lanes. Nexus’ insystem ship defenses now lingered close to Nexus I, the planet first settled and still mostly agricultural. It had a moon large enough to offer concealment without too great a gravity well.
If all went well—
“We’ve lost Number Four!”
Rafe had seen it almost that fast. Platform Four wasn’t transmitting. Three light-hours out from the planet—they wouldn’t find out what happened until then. “Warn the others. Double staffing on all positions. It was probably sabotage.”
Moments later Platform Three
reported in. Someone on regular assignment there had tried to cut off power, had been observed by backup crew. The other platforms reported similar acts of attempted sabotage—over the next hour, several from each. Four came back up, reported in, then went down again, only to come back.
“Redundancy is so useful,” Rafe said, trying for a tone he hoped would dispel the tension. “And no sign of Turek yet, but I’ll bet within a few hours—” The lights went out. As others exclaimed in various tones of alarm or surprise, Rafe dropped to the floor and crawled quickly to the nearest wall, setting his back against it. He stood cautiously. He could just see out the window; instead of the city center lights, he saw only the pulse of emergency beacons on the tops of buildings, their timing proving they were on backup power.
“Ser Dunbarger!”
“Rafe!”
Rafe did not answer. He pulled the hood of his personal armor out from under his collar and over his head, slipped on the goggles that let him see more than natural vision could, shrugged off his jacket and eased it silently to the floor, took off his shirt, then set his armor to black. He checked all his weapons and equipment, un-holstered his pistol, and loosened his knives in their sheaths. People near the table were holding each other, clustered, beginning to move toward the window. His security detail and Penny’s both had weapons out and were pulling on goggles like his. He could reassure them, or he could—what could he do?
Across the boulevard, lights came on in the Mercer Building, floor by floor, as emergency generators kicked in. Now light from the window was bright enough to see expressions as well as bodies. Far across the city, lights were still on; their glow lit the sky. Only the area around ISC’s headquarters was dark.
All at once he knew what the purpose of this dark patch was, besides alarming the populace. ISC’s headquarters, like every other building on the planet, could be watched from one of the satellites orbiting the planet, and for that reason had been built with confusion in mind and a very sophisticated stealth shield…from space, it did not look like what it was. But the stealthing required power. ISC had its own multi-redundant backup power system that should have switched on instantly, preserving their disguise as well as their connection to the ansible system. Yet here they were, in the middle of a big black patch, radiating in all the ways unstealthed buildings and machinery and transmissions did radiate—an ideal target, obvious to anyone who stripped the satellites of their data, even hours from now.
Someone here had to have done that. Someone in the building. ISC, even under Parmina, had not neglected its power security, and Rafe had insisted on daily checks of the system, checks he himself had overseen only the day before. Someone who had obtained codes to the satellites. Someone, moreover, who knew exactly when to do it, who knew—who must know—when Turek was entering the system.
Someone who had an ansible…one of the onboard ansibles.
“He’s in the building,” he said, from his position by the wall. The others turned to him. “And he has an ansible, and right now he’s busy telling Turek that the big black spot in the middle of the city is us. He could be anywhere in headquarters complex, and we have to find him.”
“Near the backups—” someone said.
“He could have turned those off hours ago,” Rafe said. “I would have, if I’d been doing this. But by all means, we need someone down there turning them back on. Penny, you must stay here, with Security. I’m the only one who knows what one of these things looks like; I have to go, and we need someone at the top able to answer the calls that will come in when power’s restored.”
“The satellite he’ll be wanting to work with isn’t geosynchronous,” Gary said. “It’ll be overhead in about twenty minutes.”
“Others could take the pictures,” Rafe said.
“Yes, but that’s the best for what Turek’ll want, and if we can get the shield back up before it gets a good picture—”
“Good, then you take charge of that. I’m going—Gary, as you find Security have them spread out and look for a box about this size—” He gestured, knowing that Gary’s goggles were giving him enough light to see the size he meant.
“You’re not going alone—”
“We don’t have time,” Rafe said. He was already on his way, knowing that only those with low-light goggles could see him as more than a shadow in shadows. “I have an idea.” He had seen the ansible, he realized. He had seen it on an equipment rack in a corridor…and he had seen it again, on an equipment rack tucked into the corner of a workroom. It had been positioned backside-out every time, and he’d seen an ISC logo and serial number plate, but—it was exactly the right size, just a little deeper than the rack, and a slightly darker gray than ISC standard. Yet no one noticed those details—he had not noticed those details.
He kicked off his shoes before he was halfway to the stairs, pulling out the padded, grippy footwear he had favored for adventures in his rogue days. Up here, no one else was in the corridor, but he heard voices from below, bewildered and worried voices. Which of the workshops had that been? Not on this side of the building, he was sure of that. He tried to think what else had been in that workshop, what distinguished it. When had he seen that ansible and its cart last?
The day the Secretary of Defense had died, when he had rushed through less familiar corridors. Someone—a man wearing a Technical Services blue overtunic—had hastily pushed it aside as Rafe had hurried past. Now Rafe queried his implant, but the remembered face found no match. ISC HQ had too many employees; he had not loaded a complete database. He could, however, find the place again. Left here, down a flight of stairs, pitch black without even a glimmer of light but for the ghostly imprint of feet and hands that had warmed the treads and handrail just enough for his goggles to register. Out the door, patched with handprints brighter than the footprints. Right along here, right again at a T-intersection…
Light flared around him; his goggles damped quickly. Someone had turned the emergency power on; the light was weaker than usual, from tiny bulbs in a line along the ceiling. Ahead, a scatter of objects in the corridor—something someone had stumbled over during a panicky run out of an office? No…as he came closer, Rafe saw that they were placed to cause a stumble, not as the result of one. Fallen boxes would not have landed with a glass full of spoons balanced on top of them. Beyond them—and a cross-corridor—was another similar barrier. Someone wanted to know if anyone came down that corridor in the dark.
Rafe pulled out his long-handled mirror and extended it past the corner—sure enough, similar barriers on the cross-corridor, but farther from the intersection. One door in either direction was open; light spilled out of one. The other was dark. Rafe’s skin tingled. Definitely not an innocent construction. He should call in, let his people know what he’d found…but whoever it was might hear. From the darker open door came the sound of a flushing toilet. Rafe pulled his mirror back, slid it into its pocket, and flattened himself against the wall, crouching behind one of the boxes with a glass on top.
Footsteps. A door closing. Footsteps approached in the cross-corridor, certainly headed for the other open door. Would whoever it was stop to check the corridor and his traps? But they continued without a pause; Rafe got a glimpse of an ordinary Technical Services tunic with the ISC logo on the back. He waited until the footsteps faded into that room, then stood. The quality of light changed as whoever it was almost closed that door.
He really should call in. Gary would be furious if he didn’t. But this was too much fun, and it had been too long.
Penny had her own weapon out; the specialists who’d been called in for the briefing backed up, eyes wide. “Just take your seats,” Penny said. “You’ll be safest in here with me. If Rafe is right and there’s someone in the building committing sabotage, we don’t want to get in the line of fire.”
“But—” one of them said.
“We’ll just wait,” Penny said. She had no special goggles, like her escorts, but with the slow return of emergency ligh
ting in buildings across the boulevard, she could see well enough. She didn’t tell them to be quiet—she didn’t care if they talked—but they just sat there as if frozen in place. One of her escorts went out, and came back with a set of goggles he handed to her. His weapon was out; she set hers down and put on the goggles. Now she could see the little pile of Rafe’s jacket and shirt by the wall.
Her skullphone pinged. She tongued it to internal only, and a tinny voice spoke. “All the auxiliary power’s down. We’re working on it. External security will go up first, but we should have emergency lighting in the next fifteen minutes. No need to answer.” She didn’t. It hadn’t been Rafe or Gary. Outside, she heard sirens in the distance.
When the lights came back, dimmer than usual, Penny removed the goggles and smiled down the table at the others. “Well, that was exciting,” she said. “I would offer something to settle your nerves but I suspect kitchen service isn’t back up yet.”
“Aren’t you scared, Sera Dunbarger?” asked the woman with the frizzy hair.
Penny shook her head. “Not after my other adventures,” she said. “Though I don’t recommend them as a preparation for a power outage.”
“But if there’s someone in the building—they could shoot us or blow us up or—”
“Or we could be hit by a rock someone sent this way weeks ago,” Penny said. “I don’t see any of that as reason to panic.”
“When can we leave?”
“When my brother gets back,” Penny said.
Rafe eased past the amateurish barriers that might have been an effective warning system if he’d been in the dark without goggles. His suit warning pinged. Some surveillance system had picked him up. It might be ISC’s internal system, which should be functional again. Or it might be something the traitor had set up. Rafe didn’t care. He was happy as he had not been happy since he first came back to Nexus.
Lightly, silently, he moved across the corridor and eased along the wall to that almost-closed door. Someone was in there—he didn’t hear more than one, even when he boosted the implant’s audio. The man—it was a man’s voice—was muttering to himself. “Come on, come on…stupid piece of garbage…”
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