The Winter War

by Niall Teasdale

  Truelove looked more nervous than Winter did. ‘The press have got wind of it. The site detail is reporting cameras and reporters outside the building.’

  Winter nodded. Truelove had never really seen her look nervous now she thought about it. It was always as though the woman thought she could survive anything. Or that she did not care whether she survived. ‘It can’t be helped.’

  ‘But the meeting was supposed to be a secret.’

  ‘Yes. Equally, several of the Representatives I’ll be briefing are, frankly, not trustworthy, and they are publicity hounds. If they’re meeting with Winter they want the world to know.’

  ‘You think that’s how the news got out?’

  ‘I’m sure that the source could be tracked back to a Representative’s office if we chose to look for it.’

  Truelove frowned at her. ‘That’s rather evasive.’

  Winter smiled. Her hand slipped into her grey jacket and she took out a memory card. ‘Take this. If I don’t tell you otherwise, in two days I want you to plug it into a secure terminal and then leave the room. It’s encrypted, but you don’t want to know what’s on it anyway.’

  Taking the red plastic rectangle, Truelove turned it in her fingers and then slipped it into her bra. ‘You’re talking as though something is going to happen.’

  ‘I’m quite sure something is going to happen, Elaine. Currently I’m not sure what it is. There hasn’t been the time to… properly evaluate the possibilities. Whatever happens, I trust you to do the right thing.’

  The car came to a stop and four of the guards filed out onto the concourse in front of the Administration’s main office building in Yorkbridge, a huge, towering Plascrete edifice. Winter was going to the very top.

  Truelove started to follow, but Winter put a hand on her arm. ‘You’re staying here. You go straight back to the office. Put the Agency in full lockdown. When I’ve told them what I’m going to tell them, we’re going to clean house.’ She stepped out of the car, the three remaining men moving in behind her, and started toward the doorway.

  Truelove reached for the door, pausing as Winter halted and looked back at her. The unassuming blonde spy mistress smiled, and then her head exploded. Blood sprayed out in a cone to her right, and the body stood there for what seemed like minutes before beginning to fall. Truelove’s hand closed convulsively around the door handle. She could not understand, or react to, what she was seeing, even as the first of the guards began to move, spinning and sighting around with his rifle, looking for a shooter.

  The sound, a sharp crack, arrived a couple of seconds later, echoing between the buildings and soon overwhelmed by the screams. Some part of Truelove’s brain, which was functioning despite her shock, registered the fact that the weapon had to be around a thousand metres away.

  She yanked the door closed. ‘Drive!’

  The car pulled away, tyres screaming. She had been given an order. It was the last order Winter, this Winter, was ever going to give, and Elaine Truelove was going to make damn sure it was carried out.

  Odanari.

  Justine stretched. Ella watched her stretch and licked her lips. Aneka rolled her eyes.

  ‘What?’ Ella asked, trying her best to look innocent.

  ‘Let the woman have a day off,’ Aneka said, grinning.

  Justine, lying out on a lounger in the solarium wearing a small, but not minute, pair of bikini briefs, smiled. ‘I don’t mind, Aneka. I’d prefer that we were all relaxed, and Ella is clearly quite relaxed.’

  ‘Uh-huh. She goes off sex when she’s nervous. It’s not often, but it happens.’

  ‘Negral,’ Ella said. ‘Before we met the AIs anyway, and Old Earth after Yrimtan… I needed it then, but I didn’t exactly want it.’

  Aneka shrugged. ‘I still think a day off would be good. Read a book or something.’

  Ella sighed and lay back on her own lounger. She was not wearing a stitch. ‘You’re probably right. It’ll be better when we start again. And I have got a load of data to read through. It’ll keep my mind busy.’

  That was, of course, the main problem with being in such an isolated location: boredom. Aneka was reading trashy sci-fi novels, though Kushiel’s Dart was turning out to be simultaneously less trashy, less sci-fi, and more likely to have her suggesting that they could abstain the following day. Ella was reading files from Aggy’s archives; it was a little weird, but the girl actually enjoyed reading historical research material. What Justine did to keep herself busy Aneka was not sure. The woman did seem happy to indulge Ella’s urges, but Aneka was starting to feel as though the redhead was taking advantage.

  ‘That sounds like a good idea,’ Aneka agreed, ‘but don’t you ever read fiction?’

  Ella laughed. ‘You remember our discussion about modern popular literature, don’t you? If you want me to stop harassing Justine then the last thing I should do is read that.’

  ‘I really don’t mind,’ Justine protested. ‘I’ve had much worse assignments than the two of you, believe me. There was…’ She stopped. ‘I shouldn’t really discuss them.’

  ‘Go on,’ Ella said, leaning forward. ‘It’s not like we’re going to tell anyone.’

  ‘Well…’ Justine sat up, leaning toward Ella and developing a conspiratorial grin. ‘Stephen Teldarian was here for a few days…’

  ‘He knows where this place is?’ Aneka asked, her brow furrowing a little.

  ‘No,’ Justine replied. ‘He doesn’t even know the planet he was on. Most people arrive here with no idea where they are.’

  ‘Then how come we were told?’

  Justine shrugged. ‘You’d have to ask Winter.’

  ‘She’s not here,’ Ella said. ‘Tell me about Teldarian.’

  Justine grinned. ‘He was charming and skilled, of course. Given his reputation that was to be expected. It was just that he seemed to consider it a foregone conclusion that I would sleep with him. I felt more like a fixture, one of the household appliances he was employing for a purpose, than a woman.’

  ‘He wasn’t like that with me,’ Aneka said, feeling an odd compulsion to defend the man.

  ‘You’re lucky. I think he could be quite a nice man if he were more attentive. Socially. Physically he was most attentive, but mentally… Anyway, Senator Elroy was here for five days once. There was some assassin after him. It took him four days to get around to asking me, even though he kept looking at me like I was a sex android, and then I’d have got more out of my vibrator.’

  ‘He opened up a bit to Aneka,’ Ella said. ‘About Old Earth history.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Justine said. ‘As I recall, Teldarian considers that one of his two hobbies. Perhaps that’s why he liked Aneka so much.’

  ‘His other hobby being?’ Aneka asked.

  ‘I’d have thought that was obvious. Sex.’

  ‘I think that’s more of a vocation for him.’ Aneka grinned. ‘Same with Ella.’

  ‘Hey!’ Ella squeaked. Then she shrugged and added, ‘Well, no, you might be right.’

  FSA Headquarters, Yorkbridge, 10.8.527 FSC.

  Truelove lifted her head as the door of the office opened. Two men in combat uniforms, with helmets and carbines, stepped through and took up positions on either side of the door. They were followed by a short man, slim, greying at the temples, with watery, grey eyes. His dark grey suit was pressed within an inch of its life. Two more men followed him into the room, dressed and equipped just like the first two, but they walked around him, taking up positions beside the locked inner door.

  ‘Agent Elaine Truelove,’ the man said, ‘I am Administrator Marcus Dowler and I’ve been assigned as interim head of the Federal Security Agency.’

  ‘You have authority from…?’

  Dowler held out a memory card. ‘My authorisation.’

  Taking the card, Truelove slid it into her console. There was a slight pause and then the screen lit up with a Federal Certificate of Authority. The marker at the bottom declared it genuine. ‘This checks out
, Sir.’ Truelove looked up at him as she handed him back the card. How in Vashma’s name had this man been assigned to run the Agency? He was a pencil-pusher, a politician.

  Dowler nodded. ‘Until further notice, Miss Truelove, you will be on administrative leave.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You will be escorted from the building immediately.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Sir…’

  ‘That’s an order, Agent.’

  Truelove’s eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Am I under arrest, Sir?’

  ‘Not at this time…’

  ‘Then I am required under Federal Law to secure my terminal prior to leaving. I assume that you will not be requiring me to shirk my responsibilities?’

  For a second she thought he was going to stop her, but he nodded. ‘Be quick about it.’

  She palmed the chip Winter had given her and, under the guise of closing any files she might have open, slipped it into one of the slots. Then she locked her terminal and got up from her chair. She did not know what was going on, but she had a very bad feeling about it.

  Yorkbridge Mid-town.

  Janna frowned as the apartment door opened and Sharissa stepped through, a metaphorical black cloud hanging over her head. The blonde did not look in the least bit happy. Janna decided that putting a smile on and making light of things would be a good start, though she did not expect it to work.

  ‘You’re home early, love,’ she said. ‘Must be my lucky day.’

  Somewhat to Janna’s surprise, the reply was, ‘It is. I’m going to have a couple of drinks and then we’re going to fuck until I can’t remember my name.’

  Worried now, Janna got up and went to the bar. Pouring two healthy glasses of shinishee, she passed one across to Sharissa. ‘Can you talk about it?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ Sharissa sank the glass in one pull and held it out for seconds. ‘Some of it is going to be all over the news, so I guess I can tell you that. They’ve appointed some pencil neck from the Administration as temporary head of the Agency. The first thing he did was kick Elaine Truelove out of the building. Then he apparently locked himself in Winter’s office. And then about an hour later various other orders came out. Anyone close to Winter has been sent home on garden leave.’

  ‘Are you under investigation or something? The woman was assassinated! What are they investigating?’

  ‘No official investigation has been started that anyone’s aware of, but this feels wrong.’

  Janna frowned. ‘What about Ella, and Aneka? Are they safe?’

  ‘Well, I can’t warn them if they aren’t. Winter put them somewhere no one directly associated with the Agency knows about. Her own, private, safe house. I don’t even know which world they’re on. Hopefully that means they won’t be tracked down.’ She smiled, though it looked forced. ‘I don’t even know whether there’s any danger to them.’

  ‘What if this new man revokes the gag order on Aneka?’

  Sharissa grimaced. ‘There were good reasons for that. It wasn’t just Winter’s whim.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘No buts. Get your butt into the bedroom and change into one of your costumes. I want a dance, then a lap dance, and then you’ll do whatever I damn well tell you to do until I’m not thinking about this anymore.’

  Janna threw back her own drink and then started for the bedroom door. She had learned a long time ago that sometimes actions were more important than words.

  Elsewhere, 11.8.527 FSC.

  Tachyons exist in a superluminal state their entire lives. They are particles which naturally travel faster than the speed of light, thus violating a lot of cherished laws of physics, and therefore considered impossible until the discovery of gravity-control technology. The ability to manipulate gravitons, and the Higgs field, to manipulate the apparent mass of objects brought with it the ability to slow down and detect tachyons, but the equipment to do so was originally large and very clumsy, and it managed to detect one particle in several thousand passing through it. Improved technology made for more accurate detection of higher-velocity particles using progressively smaller equipment.

  One such high-tech detector, massing around thirty tonnes, hung in orbit around a world smothered in icy oceans, covered by a thin, if technically breathable, atmosphere. It sat waiting for particles carrying the kind of phase modulation it had been created to detect, and when such a particle stream impinged upon its detection field it interpreted the signal, applied the complex error correction codes used in such lossy communication, and then retransmitted the result toward the surface of the planet using more conventional means.

  The message was received by complex computer systems which had already noticed that traffic coming into the tachyon relay had been becoming sparser for days. The message resulted in a flurry of activity and the transmission of a number of messages back up to the satellite for transmission out of the system.

  There was a lot to be done. There were decisions to be made and there were people to protect. Someone had declared war and this was no time for delay, but Sleep Brings Renewal to All Things was an AI and she needed information before she could determine the best course of action.

  FSA Headquarters.

  Dowler had been working on the encryption surrounding Winter’s private data files for a day. Not personally, of course; he was not a cryptographer. He had brought a dedicated code-cracking computer with him for the job, one which was not connected to the network. If anyone asked, it was an isolated laptop because the data he was reading was for his eyes only, but the real reason was that he had not been given keys to the files and he needed what was in them.

  He had been assured that any encryption system could be broken, given time. The computer he was using was something special. He had never seen anything quite so responsive to commands and there was no doubt it was working far faster than any general purpose device would have, but it was still not coming up with anything.

  The problem was time. He was not entirely sure how much he had. He knew that there were already people at work trying to replace the old Winter with a new, permanent assignment to the role, and he very much needed to get the information he was looking for before that happened. Elroy, in particular, had been unhappy about the appointment of a civilian to the FSA leadership. Dowler had suggested that Elroy be removed from the equation, but his masters had not wanted any additional attention. One assassination was enough.

  The computer bleeped to draw his attention to the screen. One file had been cracked and was being displayed for him. He frowned and then took a phone from his pocket, dialling from memory and then waiting for the signal from the other end stating that the connection was secure.

  ‘Odanari. There’s a safe house there. It may be nothing, but… Yes, I’ll forward the coordinates.’ He listened for a second, nodded, and closed the connection. Then he went back to waiting for the computer to decrypt more files.

  Yorkbridge Mid-town.

  ‘Request for access,’ the apartment’s computer announced. ‘The individual has identified herself as an FSA agent.’

  Truelove frowned. ‘Mute sound,’ she said, and the news channel she had been watching went silent. ‘Approve the request and open the door when they get here.’ She got to her feet and headed for her small bedroom. She had not bothered getting dressed that morning for the simple reason that she had no plans to leave her home.

  Emerging from the room in a short, Nusilk wrap she found a tall woman with short, black hair and narrow features set in a rounded face standing just inside the door of the apartment. She was wearing a grey business suit with a sheer blouse, which reminded Truelove of Winter. The clear, blue eyes held the same kind of ageless quality her old boss had had too.

  ‘Hello,’ Truelove said, ‘can I help you?’

  ‘Yes, Elaine, you can,’ the woman said, ‘but what I’m going to ask you for is unofficial, and potentially dangerous. I want you to know that you can decline. Just say the word at any time and I’ll leave.�
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  ‘I… don’t understand. Who are you? The computer said you had Agency identification.’

  ‘Yes… I am, how to put this… I am Winter’s backup plan. I am here to gather information in order to decide the best course of action. Someone is doing something which is a threat to the Federation. They have, essentially, declared war on us, the people who protect that Federation. I need to know who they are.’

  Truelove’s frown grew deeper. ‘You’d better sit down.’ She pointed to the couches in front of the silent screen and the woman crossed to one, sitting so that she could face the one directly opposite the video wall.

  ‘I’m not sure what I can do to help you,’ Truelove said once she was seated. ‘I’m on administrative leave. I’ve no access…’

  ‘Who’s running the Agency?’

  ‘A stiff-neck named Dowler.’

  ‘Marcus Dowler?’

  ‘That’s him. You know him?’

  ‘Of him.’

  ‘Well, as best as I can tell, he’s running some sort of investigation into Winter. I know he sent a lot of people home on the day he started. All the people Winter trusted, starting with me.’

  ‘I see. Elaine, I think it’s best if I stay away from you for a few days. There may be news regarding Winter in the next few days and it may well look very bad. I need to know… Did you trust her?’

  ‘Yes,’ Truelove replied without a thought.

  ‘Very well. Remember that and I may come to ask for your help again.’

  ‘Again? I didn’t really tell you anything.’

  ‘Yes, you did.’ The woman rose to her feet and started for the door.

  ‘I don’t even know what to call you.’

  The woman paused in the doorway. ‘I’m Justine,’ she said, and then she was gone.

  Odanari.

  Justine walked out of the front door of the house, heading for the object that had fallen onto the landing strip a few minutes earlier. The dead drops were done from courier ships that made regular runs between New Earth and Odanari. They launched re-entry vehicles from high orbit on the way in, and those small missiles did their level best to avoid giving away their eventual landing site as they wound their way to the island. Thus far no one had ever tracked one; she knew since they were equipped with sensors to detect tracking of various forms.