Tyson looked over to the image of his assistant floating in the air just outside the window. “Paris, could you leave us for a moment, please?”
“Of course, sir.” She faded away. Naturally, she hadn’t actually gone anywhere, and would continue to see and hear everything that happened in the penthouse office, but it would make Elsa more comfortable.
Tyson gently grabbed Elsa by the elbow and locked with her eyes. “You did marvelously. They heard exactly what they needed to hear, and took your competence and integrity as a given. That’s never assured at this level of play.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. I also have one other question before you go. What can you tell me about the people who engineered the bacteria?”
“Well, nothing. I have no idea who they are. I’m not even ready to say it was engineered as a bioweapon without more evidence. That’s not how science works.”
“Extrapolate. Give me an educated guess. Let’s try this another way. How many people in your field could have uncovered the tampering? Not realize something was weird, but actually find fingerprints of the programming?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t be modest. The woman who demanded the attention of a transtellar CEO on the sidewalk isn’t modest.”
“Fine, a few dozen, probably.”
“And how many people could have done the programming?”
“The same few dozen.”
“At how many labs?”
Elsa started to nod along. “Maybe ten universities on Earth have the necessary equipment and experience. A few military black labs I know nothing about. Maybe another half dozen out in the colonies.”
“And the heads of these programs. How many of them did you study under, or go to school with? Work with once you graduated?”
“A lot of them. Maybe even most.”
It was Tyson’s turn to lean on the desk. “I’ve heard enough. You’re working directly for me, now. You’ll continue with your other duties, but you’re going to start making discreet inquiries among your colleagues about these bacteria and try to narrow down the point of origin. Can you do that?”
“I don’t have any idea. I’m a scientist, I’m not trained for espionage.”
“That’s no problem at all, because this is counter-espionage. Totally different thing. You’ll start tomorrow, first thing. But tonight, I want you to go home and rest. Or go home and get drunk. Whatever your coping mechanism of choice happens to be.”
“Am I really getting a raise?”
“Yes.”
“A fifty-percent raise?” Elsa asked hopefully.
“Thirty. You had your chance. Come on, I’ll walk you out.”
“Thanks, but I think I can find the way.”
“There’s still guns in the elevator.”
“Right.”
TEN
As the meeting stretched into its third hour with no relief from the endless droning of Grendel’s governor in sight, Susan’s eyes threatened to go cross. A half-drunk pot of square dog took up space on the mess hall table among a flotilla of half-nibbled sandwiches. If she had to spend another five minutes sealed off in the compartment listening to Honshu’s prattling, she would either scream or start shooting.
“… which is not to say that our sensors or telescopes are nearly as sensitive as those on a military vessel, but my astronomers nonetheless have assured me that they detected three distinct gamma bursts consistent with fusion plant detonations in the vicinity of the Red Line. So I have to ask again, Captain, what was the source of those explosions? Who were you engaged with? Corsairs? The Xre, heaven forbid?”
Susan stretched her arms across the table like a cat, trying to keep them from cramping up after the aggressive pace she’d set during her endurance swim a few hours earlier. “Margo. May I call you Margo?”
“Of course, Susan.”
“Great. Here’s what I’ve learned from the last one hundred and eighty-three minutes locked in this room with you. You have a nearly limitless capacity for rephrasing the same question and presenting it in new ways. But what you haven’t deduced yet is I have a finite number of responses. Indeed, only one response. Which is ‘I can neither confirm nor deny the specifics of our mission.’ We could’ve saved each other a lot of time if I’d just recorded that sentence and let you replay it whenever you stopped talking long enough to take a breath.”
Honshu’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think I care for your tone, Susan. I’d remind you that I’m the ranking official in this system and I must insist on your respect.”
“You are the ranking civilian official in this system. I do not dispute that, and I’m glad, even eager to be of whatever help to your efforts here that I can, so long as it’s within my authority to do so. And believe it or not, I do recognize the challenging position I’m putting you in, here. I’m sorry for that, but I’m the ranking military officer on station, and I can’t break operational security on just your say-so. This is a military matter, and I couldn’t tell you jack shit even if I wanted to. When Fleet Com gives you clearance, then I’ll be only too happy to open the logs to you. But until that happens, you’ll just have to wait.”
Honshu slapped her hands down on the table and shot to her feet. “It’s my duty to defend the lives of every man, woman, and child on Grendel’s surface and in orbit, Captain.”
Susan remained seated, but her voice inched up and her tone sharpened. “Oh, my apologies, Governor. I was running under the impression that was why I was here with my giant warship. What with the hundreds of megatons of nukes in our silos and all, I must have gotten confused.” She took off her top cover and handed it up to the fuming woman. “Here, do you want to make the transfer of command official right now? Otherwise, you’ve wasted a trip, and you’re officially wasting my time.”
Honshu spun around to face Nesbit. “Javier, you’re her corporate liaison, surely you can talk some sense into our friends here?”
Nesbit adjusted his shirt collar. “That’s an uphill battle at the best of times, Margo, but I’m afraid in this case, Captain Kamala is in the right. I haven’t seen the communications between herself and Fleet Com, but if she’s been placed under orders to preserve OpSec, then there’s nothing either of us can say to get her or the rest of her crew to spill the beans. She would face a court-martial if she did.”
“Well, then how about you? You’re a civilian and not bound by the UCMJ. What have you seen?”
“I am a civilian. But as a CL, I’m at even less liberty to talk about what I see during my time onboard than Captain Kamala is. I’m under a strict nondisclosure agreement to keep nearly everything I see and hear during my tour confidential. If I tell you anything, my career would be over and I’d be facing incredibly steep civil penalties. It’s the only way to ensure enough trust between a crew and their CL to make this … challenging relationship work.” Nesbit shook his head mournfully. “I’m sorry, Margo, but I can’t help you, either.”
The awkward silence that followed was broken by the sound of a spinning hatch lock. The door swung inward to reveal the drawn face of Ensign Mattu.
“Excuse me for a moment,” Susan said, not caring what anyone thought of it as she pushed away from the table and walked to the hatch and greeted her drone integration officer.
“Sorry to interrupt, mum.”
“Oh, believe me, you aren’t interrupting anything,” Susan reassured her. “What’s up, Scopes?”
“We’ve had a hit. Platform Twenty-three made a positive contact. Twenty-four was close enough for a tentative overlap confirmation.”
“Another armed drone?”
“No, mum. The whole bean burrito. It matches the emissions of the Xre ship we engaged two weeks ago, right down to the IR signature. The bastards aren’t even bothering to run EM silent. It’s like they wanted to be found.”
“Where are they?”
“Forty-thousand klicks outside the Red Line on a bearing of one-five-seven-seven.”
“Battle stations. Blow a bubble for zero-zero fifty kiloklicks from Bandit One. Flood the tubes and warm up the cat toys. And don’t turn the governor into soup.”
Susan clapped the younger woman on the shoulder. “That’s it, Scopes. Go on. I won’t be long.”
Mattu nodded. “Mum.”
Susan smiled warmly as Mattu receded down the hallway, then steeled herself once more and closed the hatch, despite the fact she’d be opening it again in approximately sixty seconds. Some habits weren’t meant to be broken.
She turned back to the mess hall and the trio of foreign dignitaries taking up space on her deck. “Well, as much as I’d love to say I hate cutting this meeting short, it really should’ve been cut ‘short’ two hours ago. We’ve all got better things to do, and we all have…” Susan feigned looking at a nonexistent wristwatch. “… five minutes to start doing them.”
“You can’t be serious,” Honshu objected. “You have no authority.”
“Lady,” Susan finally snapped, “you’re on my ship. Here, in this place, the Ansari is all of creation, and I am her maker. My voice is the word of God. The cranky, Old Testament God who dabbled in smiting. And that voice just said you have four minutes and forty-seven seconds to exit the premises.”
“For what?!”
“Training drill.”
“You expect us to believe you had a training exercise scheduled for this very moment that you forgot about? Don’t be absurd.”
“Slipped my mind.” Susan spun the wheel open and let the hatch swing inward. “Your shuttle is refueled and standing by for launch. In your own time, Governor.”
Honshu gathered herself up and stalked toward the hatch with her paired attendants in her wake. “I’ll be sending a report about this meeting to my supervising vice president. It will be sternly worded.”
“That is truly a terrifying prospect, Margo. I don’t know how I’ll sleep at night with that hanging over my head.”
Susan and Nesbit escorted them back to the boat bay and watched Honshu walk the short distance down the gangway until she disappeared inside her shuttle and the hatch buttoned up. The small craft cut loose from the docking tube in the silence of vacuum.
“Thank you, Javier,” Susan said quietly.
“For what?”
“Backing me up in there.”
“I told the truth, Captain, nothing more or less. She was out of line, even if I sympathized with her position.”
“Still. Thank you.”
“We’re not conducting a drill, are we?”
Susan shook her head. “Nope.”
Two jets of steam erupted from reaction control thrusters on the nose and gently pushed the shuttle backward out of the bay and into open space. As soon as it was clear and the doors began to close, Susan spun about and headed for the lift that would take her to the CIC.
“What’s our status, XO?” she asked Miguel through her internal com.
“Mattu just arrived and relayed your orders, mum. Charts is plotting our bubble now. Guns says she’s ready to overkill something.”
“Good. Take us to battle stations. Tell Charts to blow our bubble the millisecond the governor’s shuttle is clear of our gooey zone. I’m on my way up.”
Susan reached the bridge less than a minute later with Nesbit in tow. The marine guard, whose face was no longer blue, saluted and opened the hatch, forgoing the formality of granting her permission to enter.
“Captain on deck! CL on deck!”
“At ease.” Susan swept into her chair. “Where are we at?”
“The governor’s shuttle is twelve seconds from minimum safe distance,” Broadchurch reported.
“Bandit One status unchanged. Looks like they’re waiting for us,” Mattu said.
“All weapons charged and loaded. CiWS is hot. Decoys and AMMs charged in their tubes,” Warner barked a little too eagerly.
Susan looked to each member of her bridge shift in turn, taking a moment to consider their expressions. There was the anxiety everyone felt before combat, even the captain herself. But, lurking just below the apprehension was a hunger, an eagerness, even excitement. They were predators, after all. Patiently waiting at the center of a web spanning hundreds of millions of kilometers, ready to pounce. Their prey had become entangled once, only to slip free of the trap. And that just wouldn’t do.
Scared as they were, everyone present was thirsty for the rematch.
“Governor Honshu’s shuttle has reached minimum safe, mum,” Broadchurch announced. “We’re clear for maneuvering. Beta and Gamma rings queued up and ready.”
“Send the navigation alert, then blow our bubble.”
“Yes’m.”
“Lieutenant Warner.” Susan leaned forward in her chair just a hair. “Don’t be too itchy on that trigger finger.”
“Just put some cream on it before my shift, mum.”
“Uh-huh. Charts, if you please, blow me.”
Broadchurch smirked. “As you wish, mum.” They twisted a virtual icon, and Susan’s jaw started to hurt in the old familiar way. This time, honestly, she didn’t even mind.
If my jaw must hurt, let it be because I’ve tired it chewing on their bones, she thought with venom. Or is it their shells?
The tiny universe the Ansari created for itself popped before she could even finish the thought as they reemerged into the real cosmos almost thirteen AU from where they’d just been. The Xre ship had taken up position on the far side of the system from Grendel this time, so their drone data at the moment the bubble burst was a hundred and six minutes behind. Anything could have happened during the interim. Susan’s stomach did backflips while she stared intently at Ensign Mattu as she rushed to collect updated sensor data.
“Bandit One reacquired. They haven’t budged an inch. Wait one…” Everyone turned to face the Drone Integration Station. “They’re on the move. Drive plume just lit off and they’re changing their bearing to match our position. Heading for the Red Line.”
“Have they deployed drones?”
“Nothing on the scopes, mum. If they’re present, the Xre have them running passive.”
Susan rubbed the side of her jaw where the ache from the bubble lingered. They’d been here for the better part of two hours. It would be criminally incompetent not to have used at least some of that time getting recon platforms in place, and whoever was skippering the other boat had already proven themselves to be anything but.
“Well, it would be rude to keep them waiting. Helm, all ahead full. Reciprocal bearing to Bandit One.”
“Helm, all ahead full, reciprocal bearing to Bandit One,” Miguel echoed just below a shout.
“All ahead full, reciprocal bearing, aye!” Broadchurch completed the cycle. At the Ansari’s aft, an array of five radially mounted fusion rockets lit off simultaneously and throttled up from idle to their full capacity in less than a second. The ship’s artificial gravity adjusted automatically to compensate for the sudden acceleration so that the crew never felt more than the preprogrammed eight-tenths gravity, but it wasn’t instantaneous. For just a moment, Susan felt her ship pushing against the soles of her feet like a spurned beast.
At her fingertips was more combined combat capability and firepower than all but the most powerful nations of Earth at the turn of the last century. Her home could bring entire star systems to heel by itself if she so ordered it. And it was on the move, doing what it had been built to do, charging toward the enemy it had been designed to fight.
Despite the tension on the bridge, it made her smile.
>
“Aspect change!” Mattu shouted. “Bandit One’s acceleration just spiked. Gamma emissions indicate a full emergency military burn. Repeat, full emergency burn.”
That raised eyebrows. Susan looked up at Miguel’s face hovering as it always did just over her shoulder. Concern traced in lines across his forehead, but somehow managed not to reach his eyes.
Both human and Xre technology were close to evenly matched. Of course, if it had been otherwise at the moment of their intersection, one would have lost quickly and definitively to the other. Both species moved about the galaxy at FTL speeds using equivalent Alcubierre drive systems. And both moved about in normal space using antimatter/fusion hybrid rockets that under normal circumstances used small quantities of antiprotons as a catalyst to trigger a fusion reaction burning traditional deuterium or helium-3 fuels.
But, under extreme circumstances, a captain had the option to bypass the fusion reaction and move to direct matter/antimatter annihilation in their rocket plume by dumping raw antimatter into the reaction chamber. This provided half again as much thrust by converting nearly the entire volume of reactant mass directly into high-energy gamma radiation and allowed for higher acceleration rates than any fusion process. It was analogous to fighter jets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and their afterburners. However, it also chewed through precious antimatter reserves at a simply scandalous rate, and bathed a ship’s vital components aft of the rad shielding in corrosive amounts of hard radiation, to say nothing of the inevitable seepage into the habitable compartments.
There was a reason it was called an emergency burn.
“Someone’s in an awful big hurry,” Miguel mused.
“Did we agree to a second date I’m not aware of?” Susan asked.
“Must have. Glad I shaved today.”
“You shave every day.”
“Not talking about my face, mum.”
Susan looked up and smacked him on the shoulder. “A time like this and you’re putting that image in my head? Seriously?”
In the Black Page 11
