“Thank you, Dimitri,” Wilson said. “The Institute’s views will be brought before the War Cabinet. For now, we are planning a conventional assault against Hell’s Gateway. Anna?”
“Manufacture of Moscow-class ships is accelerating,” she said. “Now that we’re mass-producing all the hull sections and components on the Big15 it takes about a fortnight to assemble one from scratch. The process is a lot more modular than it was even with the scoutships. Currently we have twelve of them operational, but that’s due to change rapidly. Our ninth assembly platform is now complete; sections for platforms ten through fifteen are being fabricated, and should be functional within another month. Linking the platforms directly to Kerensk via wormhole has been a real boon as far as construction is concerned. We’ve trodden on Chairwoman Gall’s toes in the process, but she’s been diplomatic enough to keep quiet; she realizes that High Angel can’t insist on a monopoly in these times. Besides, most of the docking station crews are still dormitoried here.”
“How many ships can we send against Hell’s Gateway?” Patricia asked.
“By the end of this week: fifteen. If we wait another week, there will be twenty-two. If you wait a further week, we should have commissioned over forty, and after that we’ll be churning out forty-five every fortnight.”
“How many do you need for a successful strike, one that closes Hell’s Gateway?”
“We estimate a minimum of twenty,” Mac said. “They have a formidable presence in that star system. Hell’s Gateway is only a part of it. There are all the generators for the wormholes leading to the Lost23, which are still transferring a colossal amount of equipment to the Commonwealth. During the invasion, we estimate they deployed over forty-five thousand ships against us. If they’re planning a second invasion, we must assume that at least that many are currently stationed there. Probably a lot more.”
“Twenty of our ships against forty thousand?” Patricia said. She sounded worried.
“We won’t be engaging them the way we did above the Lost23,” Wilson said. “The Moscow-class will stand off and launch their Douvoir missiles from the edge of the Hell’s Gateway star system. No slower-than-light ships will ever reach them.”
“Twenty ships?” Patricia said.
“Minimum,” Mac said.
“Fair enough, another week is acceptable.”
“It must be longer,” Dimitri said. “You cannot throw everything we have at them, there has to be a reserve. The Primes will retaliate.”
Patricia gave him a fractious glance.
“Dimitri is correct,” Rafael said. “This has to be balanced correctly. Much as I hate to say it, we have to take the prospect of failure into account. As I am responsible for defending the remaining Commonwealth planets I must ask for some ships to be assigned to protective duties.”
“Wilson?” Daniel asked.
“I agree, it is the prudent course. I know people are impatient for us to retaliate, but this is not something we should lay open to political expediency. The guerrilla warfare is progressing well. We can take the opportunity to increase the number of troops on the Lost23 while we carry on building ships. We know that strategy is working well, intensifying it should keep the Primes preoccupied.”
“How long?” Patricia asked.
“A fortnight,” Anna told her. “That will give us twenty ships to cover each duty. That should be enough.”
“All right, I’ll take that to the President.”
Oscar remained in his seat as the others said their good-byes and left the office. Trepidation was making his stomach churn, a sensation far worse than any of the aftereffects of freefall exposure. He didn’t like the idea of lying to Wilson just to cover his own ass, not with something this serious. But Wilson certainly had to be told, and he’d probably figure out who else was involved.
Mac and Anna were the last to leave. Oscar caught her giving Wilson a quick little shrug before the door closed.
“Drink?” Wilson asked.
“Yeah, thanks. Whiskey, with some ice, no water.”
Wilson gave him a slightly surprised look, but walked across the white office to the spherical drinks cabinet. “Well, you’ve certainly got me curious. An official and private meeting.”
“We have a problem,” Oscar said.
Wilson gave a distant grin as he poured the whiskey into a crystal tumbler.
“Houston.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Sorry, go on.”
Oscar accepted the drink, despising himself for needing liquid courage. “A little while ago I was approached by someone who was suspicious about various aspects of the Second Chance mission.”
“You, too, huh?”
“They talked to you?” Oscar found that incredible.
“Let’s just say there’s a lot of politics going on around here. What did this someone want from you?”
“It’s easier if I show you. Here.” He told his e-butler to access the log recordings directly from the secure navy database. The portal on Wilson’s desk projected the recording from the shuttle as it started its journey to the Watchtower.
“See the main dish?” Oscar asked as he froze the image. “Someone was signaling to the Prime homeworld.”
“Son of a bitch.” Wilson dropped into his chair, staring at the picture that filled half of his office. “Are you sure?”
“We both know the dish shouldn’t be deployed at this stage in the mission. I did some rough alignment calculations, and that’s the direction it’s pointing.”
“Son of a bitch. Who the hell was it?”
“I don’t know. Our records are quite comprehensive, but whoever ordered the dish to deploy was clearly circumventing our management programs. This is about the only proof we’ve got it ever happened.”
“I don’t understand: a traitor? Why? What possible motive could there be?”
“There’s a lot of fairly wild theories floating around in the unisphere,” Oscar said carefully. “We never did understand why the barrier came down as soon as we arrived. And I think we can be pretty certain now what glitched our communications with Bose and Verbeke.”
“Someone in the crew,” Wilson whispered in shock. “But I picked them all … we picked them. You and I.”
“Yeah,” Oscar said miserably.
“Christ.” Wilson was still staring at the picture of the dish as if it were some kind of physical threat. “This doesn’t make any sense. Nobody benefits from a war. In any case nobody knew what was inside the barrier.”
“The Silfen probably did.”
“No. Not them. I don’t believe that.” He turned to Oscar, eyes narrowing.
“Who asked you to look into this?”
Oscar held his gaze. “The Guardians of Selfhood. Someone I used to know was the contact.”
“Fuck, Oscar! Those bastards tried to destroy the Second Chance.”
Oscar nodded at the picture. “They might have had good reason.”
“The Starflyer alien they believe in? You can’t be serious.”
“Maybe I’m not,” Oscar said warily. “I don’t know. But somebody on board was acting against us in the most terrifying way imaginable. We’re fighting a war because of that flight, a war we might lose, and all that entails for us as a species. As you said: Where’s the motive? It’s not political.”
“No, you’re right, it’s not. There has to be some kind of outside influence. Whoever did this is betraying us as a species. Son of a bitch, that’s just so hard to accept.”
“I know.”
“Have you told the Guardians about this yet?”
“No, of course not. Look, I’ll make this easy for you; I’ll resign.”
“Like hell! We need to find out what the fuck is going on, and do it fast. We’re about to send our fleet to Hell’s Gateway; and God help us if that goes wrong.”
“You don’t think …”
“Somebody betrayed us before while we were flying the Second Chance. If they’re still a
round, they can do it again, and probably will.”
“Goddamn, I hadn’t thought of that. What do you want to do?”
“Get help. Paula Myo knows everything there is to know about the Guardians. I’ll consult with her.”
Mellanie broke her promise. They didn’t check into a swanky LA hotel; instead she found a cheap three-room apartment just behind Venice Beach. The building was old and worn down, its ground floor given over to small ultra-bargain stores selling T-shirts, handmade jewelry, secondhand domestic bots, powerskates, and sportswear, each of them blaring out tinny music late into the night. The windows on the two floors above had wooden shutters and rows of ancient air-conditioning radiators that whistled and hissed in the sun’s glare.
The apartment next door to theirs was taken by a couple who fought every time their shifts brought them home together; upstairs a hooker who sneaked her clients up the fire escape gave them their hour’s worth of non-TSI entertainment at high volume.
In their own rooms the water supply was erratic. The fridge was stuck on its coldest setting, freezing anything they put inside. Furnishings dated back fifty years. And the purple-painted floorboards creaked badly.
The building’s landlord was only too pleased to take cash. There was no accessible record that they were living there.
Strangely, for an environment that was so unruly, Dudley was at his most relaxed since they hooked up. When she got back from her visits to the Michelangelo studio offices she’d often find him cooking elaborate meals, or sitting outside the building with a beer watching the theater of street life going past. She suspected the fact that Morton was unreachable two hundred light-years away had a lot to do with his newfound contentment.
The evening after Mellanie received the recording of Randtown’s destruction, she slipped into a simple T-shirt dress and walked down to the beach. She carried her sneakers in one hand as she walked along the sand, heading for the Santa Monica pier.
When her virtual hand activated the onetime address, Adam Elvin responded at once. “I haven’t been able to find any trace of the three lawyers from Bromley, Waterford, and Granku,” she told him. “They certainly haven’t contacted their families. The monitor programs my friend installed would have detected that.”
“Don’t be too harsh on yourself, it’s a big Commonwealth out there,” Adam said. “The whole episode proves that the Starflyer funded Bose’s observation. We don’t need to take it any further.”
“But they must have some kind of connection to Baron. I want to find it.”
“We appreciate that, but Baron is more relevant to you than us.”
“I thought you wanted in on the Starflyer’s agents and their network. Does it matter where and who?”
“Ultimately, no.”
“Well then.”
She sauntered past one of the areas marked out with volleyball courts. Overhead lights on tall masts had been switched on, casting a yellow illumination on the two games being played. One of the guys called out to her, begging her to join their team. She smiled back regretfully.
“We still can’t help you with that,” Adam said.
“Okay, how about this: my friend Morton has made contact with an alien that has Dudley Bose’s memories, the ones from his time on the Second Chance.”
“Holy shit, are you serious?”
“Very.”
“Can you get us access?”
“Not directly, no. The SI won’t help me get them off Elan, and I don’t know how to get back to Ozzie’s asteroid on my own. I don’t suppose you have a working wormhole generator?”
“No, sorry.”
“Didn’t think so. If you have any questions for Bose, I’ll be happy to pass them on.”
“I’ll get on to Johansson right away. Does the navy know about this?”
“Not yet. I asked Morty to keep this private. So far, it is.”
“You’re doing a fantastic job, Mellanie.”
“It doesn’t seem to be getting me very far. I feel like a sitting duck waiting for Baron’s people to take a shot at me.”
“I’m sure we can bring this all together before that happens. Have you talked to Myo recently?”
“No. I don’t have any information I can use to bargain with; apart from Morty, and that’s got to be illegal. I’ve been busy trying to trace the lawyers, and doing gigs for Michelangelo. Speaking of which, do you have any inside knowledge about the rich building their lifeboats, especially the Sheldons?”
“Only the rumors in the unisphere. They say the cheapest ticket will cost you a billion Earth dollars. You thinking of leaving us, Mellanie?”
A billion dollars? Christ, does Paul Cramley really think I’m worth that much? The idea was extraordinarily flattering. “Not yet,” she said. “I still want to help.”
“We appreciate it. Three more Starflyer agents you should be aware of: Isabella Halgarth, and her parents Victor and Bernadette. If you see any of them coming, duck.”
“Thanks. How do you know?”
“Bradley has been looking into the shotgun which claimed Doi was a Starflyer agent. It wasn’t one of ours. Isabella helped put it together. She’s now dropped out of sight, which is a sure sign she’s going to become more active. We’ve established small teams to observe her parents; if they spot anything that’ll help with your problems I’ll let you know immediately.”
“I appreciate that. I get … I feel lonely a lot of the time.”
“I probably understand that more than most. I’ve been living this paranoid nonlife for decades now.”
“How do you cope?”
“Not very well, I suppose; that’s the easy answer. I used to believe in what I was doing, I had a real crusade going for my ideals. These days, events have just swept me along. I’m like you, Mellanie, I’m waiting for it all to resolve. If it’s any comfort, I don’t think it will take much longer now.”
“I hope you’re right. Good night, Adam.”
“It’s almost dawn for me. Which is a shame, the night here is quite beautiful.”
Mellanie signed off with a light touch of regret. She wondered where he was that was so beautiful. Talking to Adam always made her feel less isolated. They’d never met, and probably never would, but discussing the business helped her confidence no end. He was a professional, doing what he did out of commitment and belief; he approved of her efforts, offering snippets of advice. It added up to a weird kind of friendship, but in a bizarre way she trusted him a lot more than anyone else in her life right now.
Up ahead the gaudy multicolored illuminations of the Santa Monica pier stretched out over the water as the sky darkened behind it. She gave the fun-fair rides a brief longing glance before turning around and wandering back over the sands. Dudley would start getting agitated if she was away for much longer.
Venice Beach was where LA’s offworld contract workers lived and hung out. Even though it didn’t have the wealth prevalent in the rest of Los Angeles, it was safe, providing she kept to the public spaces. Some of the clubs along the beachfront were coming alive now that the sun had fallen behind the ocean, music and holographic projections seeping out from their doorways. One little part of her mind wished she was coming home to someone like Adam Elvin. Not that she needed a man, any man. But Adam would be a lot less hard work than Dudley with his insecurities and paranoia and jealousies. Adam, she imagined, would be a lot calmer and reassuring; someone she could talk to about all her problems with the Starflyer and worrying about being exposed. He’d have answers and solutions, strategies for coping.
Dudley was sitting on the stone steps outside their apartment building. He smiled as he caught sight of her, and hurried over. “I’ve been doing some research,” he said eagerly.
“That’s good,” Mellanie replied automatically. The swirling projectors issuing out of the stores’ logo holograms sent worms of pink and amber light wriggling over his face. She frowned. “Dudley, is that a new OCtattoo?”
He grinned and stroked his ear.
“Yeah. One of the parlors down by the beach etched it in for me.”
She stroked the red and gold swirls with her fingers, her inserts and programs examining the organic circuitry. The OCtattoo was a very cheap sense booster with added TSI functions, expanding his cybersphere interface with a whole range of customization software. There were no buried assets or encrypted code in the management routines. His skin was already turning red around the elaborate spirals, an infection that was the sure sign of an unprofessional application.
“Was it a verified brand? Did you see the license before it was applied?”
“Mellanie! You’re my girl, not my mother. I’ve had enough OCtattoos in my time to know what I’m doing.”
“Okay.” She headed up the stairs. “What have you been researching?”
“Spaceships.” He smiled with all the pride of a schoolkid about to hand in homework that was guaranteed to get an A-grade.
“What kind?” she asked.
He opened the apartment door and gestured her inside, but not before making a furtive glance along the empty landing. “Augusta has several orbital factories for electronics and exotic micro-gee materials. They have spaceplanes and more importantly: inter-orbit tugs.”
“Yes?”
“I looked up the specs and did some calculations. It felt good using my astronomy background for something practical. If we hired one of the inter-orbit tugs, and filled the reaction mass tanks, and carried no cargo except ourselves, it could take us to the Regulus system’s outer gas giant.”
“And why would we want to go there?” she asked. The couple next door was shouting at each other again. Thankfully, it was silent upstairs.
“That has to be where Ozzie Isaac’s asteroid habitat is,” Dudley said. “An asteroid that size is extremely unusual. Trust me, it is far more likely to be a small moon.”
She almost launched into her usual chastisement, but leaving him alone to work on some new obsession would actually reduce the amount of time she spent worrying about what he was up to. So instead she said: “I don’t know …” her voice cautious.
The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle Page 157
