Riddle pursed his lips, then said, "I have looked at our research budget. Tomlins diverted a huge amount of money to no particular project I can find, but the money is gone nonetheless. It must have been graft that went into his pocket because I can't find where it benefitted the economy. He certainly did not introduce costly innovations such as those you desire, Programmer General."
"Are you saying that he stole it? Donal thought of himself as an honest man, but if this is true, he could have been siphoning off vast amounts for two decades, considering it his due. The Programmer General is well paid, but he might have thought he should be better paid."
Even as he considered this theft on Tomlins' part, Weir doubted that. Donal Tomlins might waste the money on frivolous research, but he would never steal it. Still, finding the mysterious money sink Riddle mentioned would be useful when he needed to tap into that flow for his own projects. He made a note for a full audit to be conducted. In the years he had been Chief Operations Officer, he had never caught even a whiff of impropriety and he had prosecuted dozens who had tried. That Donal had gotten away with it was proof positive that the control algorithm was the most powerful element in the Blarney Stone. He needed more time to break it and install his own CA, along with artificial intelligence routines Donal had rejected out of hand. Only human decisions, not electronic ones. Weir scoffed at that. He needed help keeping everything running, and he suspected Donal had, also even if he hadn't admitted it. That might explain where the funds Riddle had mentioned went. Ineptness. Overwork.
If Riddle wasn't using the accusation to gain more power, public accusations against Tomlins had to be handled carefully since he had been built up into a national hero.
"In any event, another trade mission to Far Kingdom would be useful," Riddle said. "Establish that you are in charge now, not Tomlins. Cement the trade and Burran prospers."
"We are dependent on trade with Far Kingdom and other worlds, not only for armaments and medicines but also luxury goods, more than I would like." Weir slumped into himself. Interstellar trade wasn't crucial for Ballymore, but it was essential to maintaining the level of comfort Burrans had come to expect. The first time a newser mentioned "potato famine," as if that meant anything to this world, his power would be gone.
"There is no reason not to trade our surplus for resources other planets have in abundance. We are caught up in a thriving trade economy."
"I'll bring this up in the cabinet meeting. Do you think Justine Clarkson is capable of dealing with such trade matters? Her grasp of economics is weak. She is barely dealing with short-term economic projections."
"Her recommendations for punitively taxing trade from Uller is dangerous and could drive them into a firmer alliance with Eire, especially if the two sign a free trade agreement. But these are matters for the Programmer General." Riddle smiled winningly.
Weir made another note. He hadn't heard of any free trade treaty being negotiated between Burran's rivals. Anything that brought ages old adversaries closer together was not good for his country or his ambitions.
"And defense ought to be the province for the Commander in Chief Armed Forces, is that it?"
"You have learned how to use─and delegate─power well, Programmer General." Again Riddle smiled. This time he looked feral.
"Very well," Weir said, coming to a conclusion. "Full command of the military is yours, but budget and additional expenditures have to be approved by this office. Don't make me regret turning over such wide-ranging power to you, Aaron."
Riddle recoiled, reacting as Weir had expected. This was the first time he had addressed him by his given name.
"Thank you, Goram. Your confidence in me is not misplaced." Riddle bowed slightly, executed an about face and marched from the room.
Weir waited for the door to close before letting out an angry curse, wondering if he had done the right thing granting so much power. Then he donned his control helmet and felt the rush of a thousand thousand thousand demands on him, how to program, how to allocate, projections to be made for the day and year, how to run a country with nibblings of civil unrest throughout. He settled down. The troops were Riddle's concern now. Breaking the control algorithm and replacing it with code of his own devising mattered more. Once that was done, he could institute a decent AI program to take the burden of so much personal decision making off his shoulders.
He did it all himself because he didn't trust others, no matter that Riddle's jibe had struck deeply. He hoped relegating power to Riddle wasn't a mistake. If it was, he would remedy it once the AI went into the Blarney Stone. Riddle would find himself replaced by a subroutine.
Time pressed down on him to succeed. He closed his eyes and let the waves of data flow through his brain until he whimpered like a whipped puppy. How had Tomlins endured this for so long?
Chapter Sixteen
"The last of the external sensors blacked out, sir." Bridget Sullivan shifted uneasily in the captain's chair, her haptic-gloved hands moving rapidly through the layers of virtual controls in her HUD almost as quickly as she blinked to activate different sensors and systems. She sank back, shook her head and dislodged the control helmet that connected her with the ship's computer. After putting it into its cradle, she stripped off the thin haptic gloves and said with a note of panic in her voice, "The destroyers have to be moving in on us, and we can't see them."
"Stay calm," Donal said softly. He wanted the new captain to remain in command and not surrender so easily. She was the best of the bridge crew who had survived, but panic now would spread like nuclear fire throughout the skeleton crew. That guaranteed the Babylonian ships would laser them into cosmic dust.
"Maintaining, sir. Sorry."
"Is there any way to scrape that gunk off our hull? For even a few minutes?"
"I've never seen anything like it, sir. The swarm coated us, spread and then thickened until it is as hard as 304 stainless steel. It has to be specially fabricated to block the entire electromagnetic spectrum. No signal out or in through it."
"If we fire our laser cannon trying to burn it off, the ships would take that as an attack."
"The turrets can't mechanically aim down that low, sir, as a safety measure to keep from drilling a hole in our own hull should a crew die or the aiming electronics goes out during combat."
"I should have known that," Donal said.
"Can we simply light the engines and get out of the immediate area?" Cletus came up with Leanne trailing close behind him. "It's dangerous but letting the Babylonians blow us out of space is worse."
"They think we are pirates." Leanne stood immediately behind the captain's chair, looking over the HUD as Sullivan flipped from layer to layer, getting a fuller picture of their dilemma but making no effort to change the status quo. "We do not respond to their hail, and no markings are visible on the hull."
"I can plot a trajectory away from the ships, but that will be dangerous for all of us. Hitting one of the ships is a small probability, but the greater is being identified as a fleeing pirate ship."
"Jet us a ways off, Captain."
Donal turned from Sullivan and motioned to Cletus. Leanne remained close enough to overhear but not intrude. His mind raced, and every scheme he came up with lacked much chance of working. Why hadn't he discovered this swarm in the reports of High Guard research expenses? It must have been disguised in some other apportionment.
"Do you know anything about this weapon, Cletus?" His son shook his head. Cletus had only been Commander in Chief Armed Forces for a few months, not enough time to ferret out every dark secret that his predecessor might have held closely.
"Nothing," Cletus said. His son glanced toward Leanne, who spoke up immediately.
"Our only chance is to destroy the nanobots and the blanket they've laid down blinding the sensors." Leanne wore an intense expression that gave Donal an inkling of hope. She was not the kind to surrender easily and had schooled in dealing with such unknown battle problems. "The exoskeletons have be
en repaired. Cletus and I are trained in the use. We can use handheld laser welders to evaporate the swarm."
"Why welders? Why not the weapons on the exos?" Cletus turned to his father. "Whatever we do has to be done fast."
"The Shillelagh is helpless. Trying to fire through the swam over the laser cannons might doom us." If Donal had suggested a course of development for the swarm, blinding the enemy ship was useful but causing a backfire from a turret would be more useful. Let the enemy ship destroy itself if it did not surrender.
"The ship is under way, 10 percent nominal power," Sullivan said. "I don't know where we're going since the position after we Dropped hadn't been calculated."
"Keep a low acceleration." Donal motioned to his son and Leanne to get out onto the hull and do what they could. "Run a foptic cable through the airlock so you can stay in contact as you work. And be careful. The swarm will coat the exos, too."
"Yes, sir." Cletus and his Far Kingdom shadow left the bridge. Donal sank to a chair behind Sullivan and put on the auxiliary helmet. It was worse than he expected. Circuit after circuit went dead. The swarm worked its way over their sensors─then edged down into the ship along the optical and electronic conduits. Given enough time, the Shillelagh would be a powerless, cold ghost ship.
"The external connector for the fiber optics lead is covered with what looks like black slime." Cletus reached out to wipe it away. Leanne stopped him.
"If it gets on the exo, you'll be blinded, too. It is designed to spread on whatever surface it touches."
"Is the welding laser going to work, then?" Cletus hefted the tool as if it massed out no more than a screwdriver. The exo gave him strength enough to move mountains, yet the encroaching swarm threatened to render him as helpless as the dreadnought.
"The swarm is expanding, moving toward us." Leanne floated to a spot beside Cletus in the airlock and lifted her laser welder. She passed her hand over the top, took off the safety and then began to trigger short blasts parallel to the hull.
Cletus saw her technique and duplicated it. As he got a feel for the welder, he moved the beam lower until it washed just along the hull. The black slime evaporated like dew in the morning sun. Emboldened, he stepped out, magnetically attached himself to the hull and widened the beam into a fan shape. This worked less well than a tighter beam. He played with it until he scoured the greatest area effectively.
"Work toward the midships sensors."
The equator of the ship was festooned with sensors of every variety necessary for navigation in StringSpace and regular spacetime. Cleaning off even a few of those instruments gave a chance for contacting the Babylonian ships and convincing them they weren't pirates. Cletus worked methodically toward the equator while Leanne went the other direction, sidling toward the Shillelagh's prow to blast clean a few of the laser turrets.
Cletus found himself working without thinking, his body automatically responding to the thick layer coating the hull. His mind drifted away, back to Ballymore and the loss of his family. He saw no way that his mother and sisters survived the horrific battle that had erupted when the warbots set down in the middle of the military post. He replayed the fight in his head, how the initial attack had been successful but increasingly deadly as the Low Guard responded. He tried not to think of the soldiers he and Leanne had killed─those were his brothers and sisters, the citizens he had been sworn to defend. If the warbots had been successful, only a few soldiers might have died, but the resistance had hardened, and by the time the tanks rolled into the compound, the body count had climbed to unacceptable levels.
Those deaths included his family. How this had happened and who was responsible tore at him. Without doubt, Aaron Riddle had a hand in the coup for the soldiers to have been coordinated so well. The animosity between them had grown intolerable after Cletus was sworn in as Commander in Chief Armed Forces when Riddle had expected the appointment. Cletus was sorry that he hadn't replaced Riddle immediately with another officer, but the idea of a palace revolt had never occurred to him. He smiled wryly. It had never occurred to his father, either.
Weir and Riddle. Who else? There had to be many more responsible for the overthrow of the government. Cletus had heard his father and Bella discussing the control algorithm and how it had been enmeshed so completely in the master computer that anyone hacking in would find it impossible to take control of the country. Weir had his expertise as Chief Operations Officer but never had Cletus thought it matched Bella's. It certainly fell far short of his father's skill linking his brain into the neural net that kept the lifeblood of Burran flowing.
He swept away more of the swarm. Every place the intense coherent light beam touched the black coating, only a shiny hull was left behind. He sometimes carelessly aimed too low and burned away part of the dreadnought's hull. It was thick, and such minor damage meant nothing if he freed the sensors and once more allowed the Shillelagh to function properly.
"How're you doing?" The loud crackle in his helmet almost obscured Leanne's words.
"I'll be around the circumference before you get more than a couple of the turrets cleaned."
"Is that a bet?"
Cletus stopped working for a moment when he heard the tone in her voice.
"What's the bet? What does the loser forfeit?"
"It is possible for a bet where we both win. If you and I were to─"
Leanne's signal died abruptly. Cletus tried to spin about, but with magnetic latching, he only twisted his knees. Wincing, he unlocked one foot, turned and secured it. He repeated the order with his other foot to face Leanne. She was fifty meters away and peering straight away from the ship. Cletus started to radio her again, then switched to a narrow band lasercom.
"How'd the gunboats get so close?" He began shuffling toward her. Continuing to scrub the sensors made more sense. Get equipment back online and Sullivan and the crew could defend the ship better. But Cletus hardly considered that.
Leanne was in danger.
Not a kilometer above her the Babylonian ship spun slowly to get into position to match airlocks.
"Can you use the welder as a weapon?" Cletus moved faster. A tiny pop in his ears alerted him to Leanne using a microburst transmission. He switched modes and let the comlink decipher the burst for him. "Don't do it! You can't board!"
He knew it took a few seconds for his warning to encode and return via microburst. This was almost foolproof communication, and the Babylonians couldn't successfully intercept it.
"They don't see me. You, either," Leanne sent. "We can board them. They must think we're a derelict."
"Don't go without me. That's an order." Cletus doubted she would obey, but it surprised him that she continued to sweep away the swarm blocking the turrets, even when the gunboat pulled closer. Magnetic grapples drew it closer to the dreadnought.
"I've told the captain not to fire. That would completely destroy the Babylonian. We can board and seize it."
"Where's the other ship?" Cletus reached Leanne's side and looked around. All he saw was the bulk of the gunboat coming ever closer on its magnetic lines. "We can't take both of them ourselves."
"Why not? You're afraid. That means you think we won't succeed. Surprise is our best weapon until we clean off the Shillelagh."
Cletus reached out and magnetically locked with the other exo. The gunboat almost touched the Shillelagh's hull when they cut loose, twisted about and landed feet down on the hull. Cletus got a better view of his own ship from here. The entire expanse of the swarm stretched beyond his short horizon, dark and ugly. The nanos continued to spread. For such a growth it had to be leeching material from the ship's hull.
"The Babylonians will infect their own ship if they brush."
Even as the possibility left his lips, the two ships kissed gently, then rebounded. The gunboat corrected slightly and once more touched airlocks. A slender docking tube stretched out and then the ships drifted apart a few meters. He pointed with his welding laser. Leanne already understood the
best way for the pair of them to take the gunboat. As the docking tube billowed slightly with internal pressure, Cletus raked his welder along its middle. The sudden gust into space turned to feathery, frozen tendrils of moisture and atmosphere. When the first rush of air passed, he slid through the hole to face a startled woman in what might have been an exo. Her dented exoskeleton showed no sign of recent maintenance.
He swung the laser welder about and cut through her legs. New air joined that from the docking tube in a mad rush to exhaust into space. From behind him, Leanne fired her anti-personnel laser to cut off the antenna.
They moved forward together as a unit, each knowing what had to be and how to support the other. Cletus accepted that some of this coordination came from the exos being electronically joined, but the majority of the fighting was done by the occupants and trusting to their partner.
"Six," Leanne said. "How many have you taken out?"
"That many. The last two weren't in exos or spacesuits. We breach the hatch onto the bridge and the ship is ours."
He powered up his left arm, grabbed the locking mechanism and pulled. With the exo augmenting his strength, he ripped away the hatch. Air rushed toward him, but not in the tempest he expected. That meant others in the crew had repaired the leak in the docking tube or had closed their airlock.
"I get nothing but readings for auto repair units. The only survivors are on the bridge."
Cletus had discovered this himself as he stepped into the ship's small cockpit. A woman with captain's insignia and a man who looked like a weasel both fired laserifles into his chest. The exo's armor deflected the blast, giving him time to jump to one side out of the line of fire. The exoskeleton gave him both strength and speed to raise his left hand and fire the laser mounted there before they could react.
"Good shooting," Leanne said. "You got both of them."
Darklight Pirates Page 18
