by David Weber
"Alicia wishes to strike now, Ferhat Ben Belkassem." The inspector stiffened and sweat popped on his forehead at the strange timber of Alicia's voice. "She believes, and rightly, that we must strike our foes now, while we know where we may find them. Yet you counsel otherwise. Why?"
Ben Belkassem licked his lips. He'd told Alicia the truth; he couldn't quite accept that she'd been possessed by a creature from mythology, but he knew it wasn't Alicia speaking. Whoever-whatever-had entered her life, he was face to face with it at last, unable even to pretend it didn't exist, and terror chipped away at his veneer of sophistication, revealing the primitive behind it to his own inner eye.
"Because-because it isn't enough... Tisiphone," he made himself say. "At the very least, we need outside confirmation of the ships they have from witnesses no one can sweep under the rug because they're 'crazy.' That would lend at least partial credence to the rest of what Alicia-to what the two of you have just told me. And we have to hurt them worse than you can, destroy more of their ships and shatter the raiding force so badly they'll need months to reorganize while we go to work from the other end."
"Well and good, Ferhat Ben Belkassem," that dispassionate, infinitely cold ghost of Alicia's contralto replied. "Yet we have but our good Megaira. You yourself have said we dare not seek aid from the Franconia Sector, and no other can reach hither before our enemies depart their present rendezvous."
"I know." He drew a deep breath and stared into Alicia's eyes, seeing her own will and mind within them, behind that other's words. "But what if I could tell you where to find a naval force that could go toe to toe with the 'pirates'? One that doesn't have a thing to do with the Fleet? And one that's right here, already in the sector?"
"There is such a force?" the icy voice sharpened, and Alicia's eyes widened as he nodded.
"There is. You were going to drop me off at Mirabile-why not take me to Ringbolt, instead?"
Chapter Sixty
The battleship Audacious hung in geosynchronous orbit above the heat-glass scar of Raphael, and Simon Monkoto paced her bridge. His eyes no longer burned with hate; they were as hard as his face, filled with a bitter determination cold enough to freeze the marrow of a star.
He knew his people were growing restive as they waited for him to find a way to take the offensive, but none of them had complained. Professional warriors all, they accepted that warriors often died, yet they also knew this wasn't just about Arlen. It was about the civilians who had died with Arlen, as well. About the murder of a city and the radioactive filth the warhead had blasted into Ringbolt's atmosphere. Mercenaries tended to be loyal first and foremost to their own, but they understood justice... and vengeance. That was why the other outfits had responded in such strength.
He paused by the master plot, studying the light codes. Meaningless to the untrained eye, they told Monkoto everything at a glance.
The Ringbolt System was alive with ships. Most were small-cruisers or lighter-but they included a solid core of heavy hitters. The Falcons, Westfeldt's Wolves, Captain Tarbaneau and her Assassins.... He couldn't have picked a more battle-hardened group, yet they, like his own Maniacs, expected the great Simon Monkoto to Do Something. They owed him, and they wanted the people who'd done this thing, but there was a limit to how long they could sit here losing money. Unless the El Grecan government agreed to put them on the payroll, they'd have to start pulling out soon, and -
A soft buzz drew his eyes to the gravitic plot. He stepped closer, then stiffened as the preposterous nature of the incoming Fasset signature penetrated. Whatever it was, it was moving faster than a destroyer, yet its drive mass was greater than a battleship's!
More buzzers began to sound as other eyes and brains made the same observation. Additional sensors sprang alive, battle boards blinked green and amber eyes that turned quickly to red, and Simon Monkoto smiled.
That was an Imperial Fleet drive, but the ships that murdered Raphael had been Empire-built, as well.
***
"You don't think you could've come in just a bit more discreetly?" Ben Belkassem asked politely from the chair Alicia had installed beside her own on Megaira's bridge. "They're probably in hair-trigger mode, you know."
"We don't have time to be inconspicuous," Alicia said absently. She wore her headset this time, and readiness signals purred to her from her weapon systems. She didn't want to use them, but if she had to....
"Howell won't stay at the rendezvous more than another three weeks," she continued, "and it's a two-week trip from here even if we could make it a straight shot-which we can't. We have to come in on a Wyvern-based vector, or they'll know we're not Alexsov the instant they pick us up. That gives us less than two days' leeway, and I'm not going to lose them now."
"But-"
"Either your friend Monkoto helps us, or he doesn't," she said flatly. "Either way, I'm going to be at AR-12359/J within the next nineteen standard days." She looked at him, and that same, strange hunger flickered in her eyes. "Tisiphone, Megaira, and I aren't going to miss our shot. Not now."
He closed his mouth. Ferhat Ben Belkassem didn't frighten easily, yet there were times Alicia DeVries terrified him. Not because she threatened him, but because of the determination that burned in her like fiery ice. People had called her mad, and he'd disagreed; now he was no longer certain. She wouldn't stop-couldn't stop-and he wondered how much of that sprang from Tisiphone, whatever Tisiphone truly was, and how much from herself.
***
Audacious rendezvoused with the other capital ships of the mercenary fleet barely half a million kilometers out from Ringbolt, for it was obvious the bogey was far faster and more maneuverable than they were. So far it had shown no sign of hostility, but Monkoto spread "his" ships-tight enough to concentrate their fire, dispersed enough to intercept any effort to get by them-and readiness reports murmured in his link to Audacious's cyber-synth.
He returned his attention to the bogey with a sort of awe. Whatever it was, it was pouring on an incredible deceleration. It was well inside the primary's Powell limit, but it was decelerating at over thirteen hundred gravities-which, if it kept it up, would bring it to a halt, motionless with regard to Audacious, just over five thousand kilometers short of his flagship. If its intentions were hostile, that was suicide range, and -
The light cruiser Serpent finally got close enough for a visual, and Monkoto gawked as CIC shunted it to his display. A freighter? Impossible!
But a freighter the image before him was, and a freighter it remained-a slightly battered, totally unremarkable freighter... with more drive power than a battleship.
***
"We're coming into com range, Ferhat. Want me to hail them?" Megaira asked eagerly through a wall speaker, and Ben Belkassem heard Alicia's soft chuckle beside him.
Megaira liked the inspector, and Ben Belkassem was bemused by how much he liked her in return-and how much he enjoyed her bawdy, wicked sense of humor. She'd even built herself a "Megaira face," a svelte, stunning redhead, so she could flirt via com screen while her sickbay remotes worked on his arm, and he knew she simply ached to use that face (and figure) on a new audience. Whatever else happened, he would never again think of AIs in quite the same way.
"Have you identified Audacious?" he asked.
"Yup. Just as big and nasty as you said, but I could spot her half my drive nodes and still run her into the ground."
"Be nice," Alicia said, and Megaira sniffed.
"Never mind, Megaira," Ben Belkassem grinned. "Go on and call them."
"Sure thing," she said, and he twitched his uniform straight for the pickup. His own baggage remained somewhere on Wyvern, but Alicia and Megaira had outfitted him in "Star Runner's" midnight blue, and he had to admit he liked the way it made him look.
***
"Admiral, the bogey identifies itself as the private ship Star Runner," Monkoto's com officer announced. "They're asking for you by name."
Monkoto scratched his nose. Odder and odder, he thought
with his first real smile since the Ringbolt Raid, but that "private ship" business had to be a fiction. Whatever that thing might look like, it was no freighter.
"Route it to my station," he said, and leaned back as a lovely young woman in dark blue and silver appeared on his screen. He eyed her high-piled, Titian hair admiringly while he waited out the transmission lag, then her own eyes sharpened and looked back at him.
"Admiral Monkoto?" she inquired in a musical contralto, and he nodded. There was another lengthy delay while his nod sped to her screen, then she said, "I have someone here who wishes to speak to you, Sir," and disappeared, replaced by a small, hook-nosed man in a sling and the same blue uniform.
"Hello, Simon," the newcomer said, not waiting for Monkoto to respond. "Sorry to drop in on you without warning, but we need to talk."
***
Ben Belkassem watched Alicia from the corner of his eye as they stepped out of the personnel tube onto Monkoto's flagship.
Something was happening inside her, something that was burning holes in the Alicia DeVries he'd first met, and it was getting worse. Right after leaving Wyvern, hours had passed between flashes of that something else, but the intervals were growing shorter. It wasn't Tisiphone-he was positive of that now-and that made it worse. It was as if Alicia herself were burning out before his eyes. He could almost feel her... slipping away. Yet she had herself under control just now, and that was enough. It had to be.
"It's been a long time, Ferhat," a mellow tenor said, and Simon Monkoto held out his hand in greeting.
"Not that long," Ben Belkassem disagreed, returning the mercenary's clasp with a toothy grin.
"And this must be Captain Mainwaring," Monkoto said, and Alicia smiled tightly without confirming his assumption. He didn't notice; his eyes were locked on Ben Belkassem, and his humor had vanished.
"You said you have some information for me?"
"I do-or, rather, Captain Mainwaring does."
"What-?" Monkoto began eagerly, then chopped himself off. "Forgive me. My colleagues are waiting in the main briefing room, and they should hear this along with me. If you'll join us, Captain?"
Alicia nodded and followed the tall, broad-shouldered mercenary into a lift. She watched his face as the elevator rose, seeing the pinched nostrils, the deep-etched furrow between the eyes, and she didn't need Tisiphone to feel his hunger calling to her own, sharp-edged and jagged.
The lift doors opened, and Monkoto ushered them into a briefing room.
"Captain Mainwaring, Mister Ben Belkassem, allow me to introduce my colleagues," he said, and worked his way down the table, starting with Admiral Yussuf Westfeldt, a stocky, gray-haired man. Commodore Tadeoshi Falconi was as tall as Monkoto but thin, with quick, assertive movements; Captain Esther Tarbaneau was a slender, black-skinned woman with a very still face and startlingly gentle eyes; and Commodore Matthew O'Kane was a younger version of Monkoto-not surprisingly: he'd begun his career with the Maniacs.
Between them, Alicia knew, these people controlled over seventy ships of war, including two battleships, nine battlecruisers, and seven heavy cruisers, and no regular navy could have matched their experience. They looked back at her with hooded eyes, and she wondered what they made of her.
Monkoto finished the introductions and took a seat at the center of the long table, across from her and Ben Belkassem. The outsized view screen at her back was focused on Megaira's freighter disguise, and she tried not to wipe her palms on her trousers as she faced people who fought for pay and remembered the million-credit reward the Empire had offered for her.
"I've dealt with Mister Ben Belkassem before," Monkoto informed his fellows, "and I trust him implicitly. Certain conditions of confidentiality apply, but he represents a... major galactic power."
The others nodded and regarded the inspector with renewed curiosity, wondering which branch of the imperial bureaucracy he worked for, as Monkoto gestured for him to take over.
"Thank you, Admiral Monkoto," he said, returning the searching gazes steadily, "but under the circumstances, I feel I ought to put all my cards on the table. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ferhat Ben Belkassem, and I am a senior inspector with Operations Branch of the Imperial Ministry of Justice."
Breath hissed in along Monkoto's side of the table. O Branch agents never revealed their identities unless they were up to their necks in fecal matter and sinking fast, but at least he'd guaranteed their attention.
"I realize that may be a bit of a shock," he continued calmly, "but I'm afraid there are more to come. I know why you're here-and I know where you can find the pirates." A ripple ran through his audience. "To be more precise, my associate does."
Eyes swiveled back to Alicia, hot and hungry and no longer hooded, and she made herself sit straight and still under their weight.
"How?" Monkoto demanded. "How did you find them?"
"I'm afraid I can't reveal that, Sir," Alicia replied carefully. "I have... a source I must protect, but my information is solid."
"I would certainly like to believe that, Captain Mainwaring," Esther Tarbaneau said in a soft soprano, "but you must realize how critical your credibility is, even with Inspector Ben Belkassem to vouch for you. How is it that a single merchant skipper could locate them when the Empire, El Greco, and the Jung Association have all failed?"
"Captain Mainwaring is more than she seems, Captain Tarbaneau," Ben Belkassem put in.
"Indeed?" Tarbaneau arched politely skeptical eyebrows, and Alicia sighed. She'd known all along it would come to this.
Cut the holo, Megaira.
Are you sure, Alley? the AI asked anxiously. I don't like the thought of doing that with you over there all alone.
I'm not "all alone," and we don't have a choice. Do it.
There was no response, but she didn't need one. Every eye jerked to the view screen in a single, harsh gasp, and most of the mercenaries hunched convulsively forward-O'Kane actually jerked to his feet-as the "freighter" vanished. The lean wickedness of an imperial alpha-synth could not be mistaken, even with splotches of titanium marring its immaculate hull.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Ben Belkassem said quietly, "allow me to introduce Captain Alicia DeVries, Imperial Cadre." Eyes whipped back to her, and he nodded. "I assure you, Captain DeVries's... instability has been grossly exaggerated. We've been working together for the past several weeks," he added, which was true enough, though Alicia hadn't known it at the time.
The mercenaries sank back in their chairs, eyes narrowed, and he hid a smile as he watched them leap to the conclusion he'd intended. Alicia really did have a marvelous cover-even if no one had set it up on purpose.
***
"So," Monkoto said forty minutes later, drumming his fingers on the conference table while he stared at a holographic star map. AR-12359/J burned a sullen crimson at its heart, and a computer screen at his elbow glowed with all the data Alicia had been able to supply on the "pirates' " strength. "We know where they are; the problem is what we do with them."
He pinched the bridge of his nose as he met his colleagues' eyes, then turned to Alicia, smiling grimly as he recognized the questions in her eyes.
"Neither you nor the Inspector are Fleet officers, Captain, but that's what we do for a living, and I'm afraid this-" he gestured at the star map "-is a classic nasty fleet problem."
"Why?" Impatience burned in Alicia's blood once more, yet Monkoto's obvious professionalism-and matching hunger-kept it out of her voice.
"Put most simply, they're in n-space and they'll see us coming. Ships run blind in wormhole space, but their gravitics will pick us up long before we arrive, at which point they'll simply run on an acutely divergent vector. By the time we can kill our velocity and go in pursuit, they'll be long gone."
Alicia stared at the admiral, stunned by how calmly he'd said it, then jerked around to glare at Ben Belkassem. He'd been so glib about "getting help"-had he known how hopeless it was?!
"The classic solution is a converging e
nvelopement," Monkoto went on, "with someone coming in at high velocity on almost any possible escape vector, but that also requires an overwhelming numerical advantage. We-" he waved at his fellows "-can probably take these bastards head on, though that Capella-class'll make things tight, but not if we spread out to envelope them."
Alicia dropped her eyes to the star map, fingers curving into talons under the table edge as she glared at the crimson star.
"We could call in the Empies for more ships," O'Kane suggested.
"Somehow I don't think so," Monkoto murmured, watching Ben Belkassem's face. "If we could, you wouldn't be talking to us, would you, Ferhat?"
"No," Ben Belkassem said unhappily. "We have reason to believe there's a leak-a very, very high-level leak-from Soissons."
"Well, isn't that a fine crock of shit," Westfeldt muttered softly.
