by A. D. Bloom
"At least three reactor engineers saw us come in here."
"Privacy first, Mr. Devlin. Discretion comes second. As long as they don't go telling Matilda Witt we're having secret conferences she can't hear, then there's no problems with a few raised eyebrows from Terrazzi's greensuits."
First things first. "Dana Sellis is right," Ram said. "She's right about how the Squidies infiltrated the battlegroup. I believe the pattern of Taipan's fighter patrols was crafted to appear tight, but to create a single, moving gap the aliens exploited to get through the defenses and board us."
Harry Cozen said, "Well, of course Sellis is bloody right. Matilda Witt served me up to the Squidies. I don't know how she managed to make her bloody diplomatic contacts, but I imagine there's more to the story of her survival behind enemy lines than any of us know."
"She told me 'lines of communication' had been opened."
"What?! And you didn't tell me until now? Good god, Devlin. You could have bloody..." Cozen appeared enraged, but Ram could tell he was faking it. His face wasn't red enough. No veins throbbed at his temples. Cozen already knew about Witt's contact with the enemy.
"She said that peace with the Squidies is possible. They're negotiating. But the aliens want you, Mr. Cozen. The Squidies want you in particular. They want you dead. Why? Tell me why. What happened before Moriah, before the first day of the war. What haven't you told me?"
For a moment after Ram asked the question, Cozen almost looked as if he doubted himself. Ram tried to see the wheels turning in Cozen's head, but all he saw behind the old man's eyes was a flashing glint like broken glass. "Almost a year ago, when you and I went to Moriah, the Squidies we found there thought we'd come to meet with them...to sign the peace treaty they'd offered."
"A peace treaty?" Ram's eyes widened with thoughts of all the dead in a war that could have been averted. "They offered a peace treaty? And you turned it down?"
Cozen snorted and shook his head. "They offered us a treaty like the ones given to the Native Americans. That's no peace Humanity can live with. And we don't have to. I made a choice. We made a choice. We chose war. That choice gave us the advantage of surprise and we leveraged that advantage to capture one of their ships with all its technology intact. We captured alien maps of a thousand, interstellar transit points."
The truth of Moriah was worse than Ram had imagined. "We killed their diplomats."
"You, Mr. Devlin, had the honor of killing their ambassador with a makeshift sword." It was more of a pig-sticker. "They know you, too. And your sidearm. You're on an alien spec ops hit-list as well." Cozen grinned. "That's quite a distinction." Suddenly, it was like the ship's artificial gravity began to malfunction; Ram felt himself pulled towards one bulkhead and then another. "You're swaying, Mr. Devlin. And you've turned pale. Perhaps you should sit down."
His mouth tasted like metal. It felt as if the gravity got stronger and as his ass hit the deck, Cozen spoke to him from the end of a long, dim-edged tunnel that seemed longer every second until Cozen was gone and all Ram could hear in the dark was the abstracted gravel and growl of the man's voice like he'd been locked in a pitch black cage with a beast.
When Ram came to full consciousness again a few seconds later, he tried to speak, but there were too many things to say at once. "We... the whole war... it's our..."
"No, Mr. Devlin, no. The entire war is not our fault, no matter how much you wish to blame yourself for it. The aliens' opening offers in our negotiations were unacceptable. They started this war by offering to be our imperial masters. Never forget that."
Ram wanted out of that suffocating box.
Cozen said, "If Matilda Witt is conducting negotiations with the Squidies between raids, then it may even be quasi-legal if she has the right friends inside UN intelligence. That's probably where she got hold of the exo-linguistics daemon she's no doubt using. That's where I got it."
"She said the whole war is a negotiation. She said that's what the Squidies think, too."
"She's right," Cozen said grimly. "This war is a bloody negotiation determining the fates of our two species and which of them will be dominant. I assure you, Mr. Devlin, any peace negotiated between our two species at this point would be the worst kind possible for mankind due to the simple fact that our alien neighbors possess more advanced technologies than we do. They are sufficiently more advanced that it ensures any currently negotiated peace would undoubtedly be an exploitative one. If we do not wish to be an India to their British Empire, then now is not the time for peace."
"But..."
"And neither is it a time for truth. I know that pains you, Mr. Devlin, but allow me to remind you that if rumors of any of this were to reach the global public, then the damage to the war effort would be significant and potentially irreparable."
Ram nodded before he felt his head moving.
"Matilda Witt must be stopped," Cozen said. "She must be removed from this equation."
Ram itched all over. He ran both his hands over his face. "I'm going to need to bring Dana in on this. She won't give up trying to prove what she discovered. She knows she's right about how the Squidies got through the defenses and she won't drop it."
Cozen shook his head. "Confine Dana Sellis to quarters and cut her off from the ship's network so she can't even memo me about this. She has a role to play in all this, but I must assume I'm under surveillance. I don't want to have to refute Ms. Sellis's compelling arguments so many times that I actually cause Matilda Witt to suspect my apparent disbelief is both purposeful and feigned. If Matilda suspects she's being plotted against, then we'll lose the element of surprise and the opportunity to seize initiative."
Ram said, "You seem quite sure she's listening."
Cozen almost laughed. "Mr. Devlin, you make me proud. First, you place a listening device in my office and then, you imply that I'm paranoid for suspecting I've been bugged."
Ram willed his face to remain inscrutable as Cozen studied it. He couldn't tell if he was doing a good job, but the muscles in his face felt slack as a snoozing drunkard's.
"Hmmm... Very good, Mr. Devlin. I can't discern from your visage whether or not you knew you were placing a listening device in my office. But, of course, I know you were perfectly aware of what you were doing." Cozen reached into another pocket and withdrew his matchbox computer. He gestured through a few brief menus, and before Ram could ask him what he'd meant, the audio recording began to play. It was from less than two hours ago and it was Ram's own voice: "I left the bloody sculpture in there and got the hell out. I thought I could do it, but I can't. I thought I could use her to take down Cozen and I was wrong. And those two pilots are going to die now and the war is going to go on because I can't do this – because I can't set him up..." He stopped the playback with a wave of his hand.
Ram didn't expect to feel the relief that washed over him. "You bugged my quarters," he said.
"Actually, I bugged you before you went to see Witt. The nano-scale, q-link surveillance device was still on your person and still active when you confessed all to Asa Biko."
Ram wished he hadn't forfeited his right to be indignant. "Is it still active now?"
"It's dead. It broke down to its constituent elements shortly after I made that recording."
Ram didn't believe him.
"Matilda Witt offered you Hardway," Cozen said.
"You don't need to be concerned."
"I'm not," Cozen said. "You already made your choice on the first day of the war. You made it again today. He advanced the recording and played back the part of the conversation where Ram and Biko agreed they would kill Cozen after the war, and not before its end. "I'm touched," Cozen said as he stopped the playback. "Such kind words..."
"If I don't give Matilda Witt a conversation in which you admit to slaughtering a delegation of alien diplomats and/or confess to murdering ten miners aboard the junk Mohegan, then she will shoot two pilots just to spite me. How am I going to get them back?"
Now,
it was Cozen's face that appeared devoid of expression. Ram suddenly feared that the eminently practical Harry Cozen was prepared to simply call the pair of pilots a loss and move on. "This isn't like losing them in combat," Ram cautioned him. "This is different. No matter how our fighter pilots mix with the rest of this ship, they're part of Hardway and if we stand by and let Witt shoot them, if we don't get them back," Ram cautioned him, "then this crew will never forgive us."
Cozen nodded. "Of course," he said, as if saving those pilots had always been part of his plan. "Of course we're going to bloody get them back."
"How?"
"You and I are going to give Matilda Witt exactly what she asked for."
Chapter Twelve
Taipan's brig wasn't in a high-traffic area of the ship. Every time Jordo and Pooch heard boot heels in the passageway outside, her face got even more grim. He said, "You look like you're expecting the firing squad."
"I am. If you think Matilda Witt is bluffing, you've got a surprise coming."
After hours of pacing near the front of the cell and watching the hatch like there were Squidies on the other side, she finally sat on the bunk. Through her exosuit Jordo could see the muscles in her arms and legs twitch.
"Been a long time without any excitement," he said. Pooch clenched her fists just like Dirty did. "That's going to make the joints in your fingers ache, you know."
She showed him how well two of her fingers still worked.
"Might not mean much now, but I'm sorry I did that recruiting tour," he said. "I mean it. I'm sorry I went to Tranq 5 and got you into this."
"What?" Her face screwed up in disbelief as if, previous to that moment, she couldn't have imagined the level of offense he'd suddenly delivered with that statement. "Fuck you, J. 'Jordo' Colt."
"What? Why? You said..."
"Don't you bloody take this away from me!"
"Take wha-"
"I know why the fuck I signed on and it wasn't any rose-scented pile of recruiting bullshit you and Burn served up. I told you. I signed on for 36 months in an exo-atmospheric fighter because I want to kill Squidies. I want to win this war. Don't you bloody pretend you suckered me into this and that I didn't volunteer. Don't you dare make me into your victim."
'Victim' and 'volunteer'. Those were the words Snooze had used so long ago when convincing Jordo that he was a volunteer and not a victim for willingly believing all the ridiculous lies his recruiters sold him.
"Why did you disobey orders before, Pooch?"
"What?"
"When me and the Lancers dove in and violated orders, why did you go with us when you knew what Matilda Witt would do to you?" She didn't say anything to that, but Jordo knew the answer to his question. "77 out of 300," he said. "That's how many of you are left from the 300 pilots in the first, official flight school class. Less now, maybe."
"So?"
"So you were right before," Jordo said. "You were right when you said those casualties are too high. They're too high for us or you or any squadron."
"You saying we can't take it?" Pooch never let up. Maybe it was her shook-up brain. Maybe she simply couldn't tell who her friends were.
"I'm not saying you can't take it. I'm saying the Hellcats already bled like that. The Lancers did, too. But that doesn't mean the new pilots should have to. It shouldn't be like that."
Pooch shook her head. She looked like she wanted to laugh but couldn't. "Great. Let me know when you're in command and calling the shots."
The heel strikes fell on the deck outside the hatch again, and when he heard them, the adrenaline shot through him with a chill. There were a lot of them – far more than had come down to the brig in the time Jordo and Pooch had languished there.
The wheel spun, and the hatch opened. The guards behind it grinned. "Turn around," the high-voiced squad leader said as he and six of his goons stepped into the brig.
They put Jordo and Pooch in wrist and ankle restraints. Witt's guards blindfolded them, too, and Jordo couldn't tell for sure where they were being led. As they shuffled through Taipan's passageways, Jordo wished he'd paid more attention to the turns and the number of steps on the way in. Then, he'd know if he was right and Witt's guards were actually leading them out the way they came in.
They stepped into an airlock and paused in front of an external hatch. Jordo knew it was an airlock. He felt the cold air coming off the hatch in front of him. The terrible notion suddenly crossed his mind that Pooch might have been right and he'd been in denial all along about Matilda Witt's willingness to execute them. These moments with the cold draft on his face might well be his last. He'd experienced that feeling before, but he'd always been able to do something then. Now, he felt helpless. Going quietly like this felt all wrong. It wasn't how he wanted to go. That wasn't who he wanted to be in his last moments.
Blindfolded and restrained, he found the closest, mouth-breather with his ears. He bent his knees the couple of degrees he'd need to turn and propel himself to strike, but the guards saw it coming. Jordo got a fist low in his back, over his kidney. The pain took his legs out from under him.
He fell forward, but where the cold hatch had been a moment ago, now, there was nothing. He landed hard on the deck just before Pooch fell on top of him and rolled off to the side.
The deck wasn't Taipan's. And the air was warmer. "Next time, psychos," the squad leader said. Jordo heard the airlock close. He and Pooch had fallen face-first into a longboat. Hands pulled the blindfold from his eyes, and Jordo saw Asa Biko's round face.
They were aboard one of Hardway's longboats in Taipan's gilded bay. Biko removed the restraints from Jordo's hands and immediately moved to the pilot's seat. As Jordo took off the ankle restraints himself, Hardway's AGC disengaged the boat from the lock. "Untie her, too." He turned the craft on its maneuvering jets to point the nose of the longboat at the open bay doors. Biko said, "I'm not waiting for clearance. I'm flying this boat outta here before Matilda Witt changes her mind."
"I won't complain," Jordo said. He untied Pooch's hands and took the co-pilot's seat a quarter-second before Biko hit the thrust.
*****
Harry Cozen sat back in the command chair. "Three hours to the Groomsbridge-Castor Transit, Mr. Devlin." From the way he said it, Ram would've thought it was going to be three, mundane hours of munitions checks and ammo loading – three hours of business as usual for pre-battle Hardway. It was easy for Cozen to pretend all was normal; his job was to stay on the bridge and make audible appearances in front of the Brancusi sculpture in his singed office a few times an hour to make sure Matilda Witt didn't think anything was amiss.
Ram didn't have it so easy. With Cozen pretending oblivion, it was up to Ram to figure out how to take power away from Matilda Witt before she did any more damage.
"Biko's longboat is returning from Taipan," Bergano said. The AT controller's display showed Taipan like a floating castle-keep the size of a grapefruit. The longboat leaving its bay was the size of a broken toothpick. "Incoming longboat, this is Hardway AT..."
Biko told him what they all wanted to know: "Hardway longboat coming in for landing in Bay One. I have two passengers on board."
Matilda Witt had released the pilots. That meant she believed the performance he and Cozen had delivered in front of her listening device and she believed Ram had kept up his end of the bargain. "I don't know why she changed her mind," Cozen said for the benefit of all ears on the bridge, "but... all's well that ends well, eh, Mr. Devlin?" Ram half-expected him to wink.
"Yes, Mr. Cozen." Nothing was over yet. Matilda Witt taking the bait was just beginning.
"Go meet Mr. Biko and the pilots in Bay One," Cozen told Ram. "Help him sort out the arrangements for the additional fighters that will be launching from Hardway for this operation."
Those arrangements had already been made and Cozen knew that. He reached into the thigh pocket of his black jump suit and withdrew a small, cloth-covered box. He tossed it to Ram and even before it had left Cozen's
hand, Ram recognized it. Ram caught the suite of counter-surveillance noisemakers and put the box in his pocket before anyone could ask what was inside.
*****
Jordo didn't know which officer he should speak to when planning a mutiny. As XO, Ram Devlin was the natural choice, but anything involving pilots was the Air Group Commander's domain. He tried to find Asa Biko first.
He called up to the bridge, and oddly enough, Harry Cozen himself told Jordo that Biko was in the primary bays supervising mounting of torpedoes on the Bitzers. The redsuits in the bays said Biko was in engineering. The reactor engineers said he was in the forward launch bays. In the forward bays Jordo received a handwritten note from Lt. Bergano with nothing on it but a compartment number and a signature he couldn't read. It might have said Harry Cozen; Jordo couldn't tell. The compartment was down in officer country, in the sub-tower where the lingering smell of the Squidies made his nose burn.
The compartment number was Ram Devlin's. Jordo tried to pound on the XO's hatch like he had a pair. Devlin opened it and looked over Jordo's shoulders and around the passageway outside. "What."
"I'm looking for the AGC."
"Why would you look for him here?"
Jordo held up the scrap of paper with the XO's compartment number and the illegible signature on it. Devlin took it from him and scrutinized it for a few seconds before he opened the hatch all the way and stepped aside. "Well," he said, "You'd better come in."
