His head moved fractionally. “No…Too late…”
“No, Nate. We can—”
He clawed at her sleeve. “I’m dying. Listen to me…only got a minute—”
Jade looked up at the sound of a footfall. Fromberg stood over her.
“What are you doing here?”
“I thought you might require assistance.”
She shook her head and gestured to the door. “Wait outside, Lieutenant.”
“Shall I call for a med team?”
“No. Just leave.”
She waited until the door had slid shut behind Fromberg. “What is it, Nate?”
“My pocket,” he rasped.
Jade slid her hand past the bloodstains into the man’s breast pocket and pulled out a computer wafer.
Nate winced. “Take it.”
“But what—?”
Watford’s eyes glazed. “They…lie,” he gasped. “Don’t…want peace…”
“Who, Nate? Who doesn’t want peace?”
“Trap…The…the…Don’t bel-” His eyelids fluttered. His mouth worked, but no further words emerged. With a rattle of breath, he was gone.
Jade laid him down and rocked back on her haunches. She brushed the lids closed over the dulling orbs of Nate’s eyes. His skin was cool and clammy.
“Goodbye, Nate,” she whispered. “Travel well.”
The sight of death always affected her. She waited a minute to compose herself before leaving.
The guard had disappeared. Fromberg leaned stiffly against the corridor wall.
“You shouldn’t have come in,” she said.
Fromberg flushed. “I just thought—”
“This is an Intelligence matter. No concern of yours.”
Fromberg looked away. “How is he?”
“Dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Fromberg said. “Did you know him? It seemed like he recognized you.”
“Years ago. He was an old acquaintance.” Jade started down the hall. “Have the troopers retrieve his body.”
Freelancers lived, worked, and died alone. She’d studied the Intelligence files on Watford. He’d had no family; there’d be no one to claim his body. She had no idea what, if anything, he’d believed. No matter. She’d give him a proper burial in space, just as she’d done for the crew of Retribution, so many years before.
“Will do,” Fromberg said.
“I want these coordinates plus the ship’s velocity and trajectory sent to Lt. Commander Howells on Windward.” Howells could send out an investigative team to assess Watford’s ship properly and see if any additional information could be learned from it.
“Understood,” Fromberg said.
“Most importantly,” Jade said, holding up a finger for emphasis, “don’t say a word about this. Not to anyone. Not under any circumstances. Is that understood?”
“Aye, ma’am,” Fromberg said. “What about my ship’s log?”
“You responded to a distress call, found a damaged vessel with a dead pilot. That’s all. If there are any questions, direct them to me.”
Fromberg nodded. Just before they reached the docking link, Fromberg halted. “Did you notice his clothes, Commander?”
Jade stopped.
Fromberg continued: “They were never made on any world in the Hegemony, I’d stake my word on it. They were Gara’nesh!”
Jade stared at him. “You never saw that, Lieutenant. For your own sake, you never saw that.”
Fromberg blinked. Jade held his gaze a moment longer.
“N-no, Ma’am.”
“But since you did, remove it and destroy it before anyone else sees it. Cover him with something else.”
Jade turned and led the way back down the docking link.
A ball of slate-colored rock five thousand kilometers in diameter, the planetoid known as Covenant was a cold, airless, lifeless world—about half the size of Mars, more suited to be a moon than a planet. It orbited its primary, Gamma Hydra 4, a cool, orange-red K6, at a mean distance of 300 million kilometers. Such a world was unfit for either terraforming or colonization, and Covenant lacked the mineral deposits to make commercial exploitation viable.
Covenant had been a world without a purpose until being chosen for the peace negotiations. It lay in a disputed region of space jointly claimed by both the Terran Hegemony and the Gara’nesh Suzerainty. When the search for a location to stage negotiations had been enacted, Covenant’s very uselessness became attractive.
For the first time in its eons of existence, Covenant boasted life.
In her quarters on Hawking, Jade studied a scan readout that overlaid a computer-enhanced view of the system. Five days had passed since the encounter with Watford’s ship, and now Hawking coasted towards a rendezvous with the Third Fleet. The two dozen star frigates plus assorted auxiliaries lay on the outskirts of the system, directly in the scoutship’s path, interposed before Covenant. Well over a billion kilometers distant, a similarly sized Gara’nesh fleet occupied a corresponding position on the opposite side of the system.
The combined firepower was awesome.
Even the Battle of Felton 114, over a decade ago, had numbered only half as many ships. Since that unmitigated disaster, the skirmishes had been fought on a smaller scale. Only at Farhope, where a Terran fleet had scored an impressive victory in a defensive action five years ago, had the Hegemony been able to save face. Jade had been there, too.
Unwilling to risk another major defeat, and unable to maneuver the Gara’nesh into a position where a human fleet would have a decisive advantage, the military commanders of the Hegemony had settled for small encounters. Full-scale fleet actions happened only in history books and the dreaming minds of glory-starved admirals.
The result: stalemate. Another generation was reaching adulthood knowing only war.
Lt. Fromberg interrupted Jade’s musings. “Call coming through for you, ma’am. Second Admiral Vespage on board Remorseless.”
“Put her through.” Jade tugged her blue and white uniform tight and sat up straight. “Hello, Admiral.”
The middle-aged, austere features of Miriam Vespage replaced Fromberg. The wide-angle image allowed Jade to glimpse Remorseless’s bridge, so much larger and imposing than Hawking's. For a moment, she imagined that she was back on board Retribution, occupying the command seat…
No. She didn’t want to do that again.
So much had changed in eleven years. And she herself—from a nervous JG who’d almost committed career suicide, to being in command of sector intelligence.
“Commander Lafrey,” the copper-haired admiral said. “Welcome to Covenant.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“The negotiating team is already on the planet, as is Admiral Stalker. A shuttle is on standby; no larger ships are allowed to approach the planet.”
“I understand. Everybody’s nervous.”
Vespage’s brown eyes were serious. “Very nervous. I don’t need to remind you how important these negotiations are. The slightest mishap, and the truce could disintegrate. You can imagine the immediate repercussions.”
Jade had a vision of nearly fifty ships engaged in an orgy of destruction. “I can, Admiral.”
“Everyone in the fleet is counting on the negotiating team, Lafrey. Remember that.”
“I will, ma’am.”
The admiral’s compact lips tightened. “Good luck. Vespage out.”
“Lafrey out.”
Jade rubbed the corners of her eyes.
That's right. Make it feel like everything rests on my shoulders. No matter that I’ll be tripping over more admirals, political officers, and diplomatic corps than I can imagine.
She wondered why Vespage considered it worthwhile to call her personally. The role of Intelligence in the negotiations would be minimal. Her other function—the obvious one—would be as advisor, because of her knowledge of the Gara’nesh.
But that was the Navy’s way, to spread the blame in case anything went wrong.
That state of mind had burgeoned since Felton 114.
But Vespage? Miriam Vespage had an unblemished record, and a reputation for honesty and competence. Jade respected her.
To Jade’s amusement, the shuttle on standby turned out to be Vespage’s personal craft. Hawking rendezvoused with the shuttle just after Standard noon.
“Good luck, ma’am,” said Fromberg, as Jade prepared to disembark. “It was a pleasure having you aboard.”
“Thanks for a smooth trip, Lieutenant.” Jade shook his hand. “You’ll be glad not to have anyone looking over your shoulder.”
Fromberg opened his mouth to protest.
Jade forestalled him. “I know what you scout commanders are like. You value your independence.”
Fromberg relaxed and grinned. “We’ll be with the Third Fleet for a while, so I doubt we’ll see much freedom.”
“Anyway, smooth sailing. Don’t forget. Not a word.”
Fromberg’s grey eyes were puzzled. “I wish you’d tell me what’s going on, ma’am.”
Jade shook her head. “Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you. Stick to scouting, Lieutenant. It’s less hazardous.”
Jade strode down the docking link to the waiting shuttle and settled herself in the passenger compartment. A crewmember brought her few personal bags and stowed them before departing.
As the shuttle launched and sped towards Covenant, she smiled to herself. Imagine telling Fromberg to avoid hazardous duty, when she herself engaged in one of the potentially most dangerous occupations!
She activated the shuttle’s long-range scan and studied the visual images.
The conference center on Covenant, a strictly utilitarian affair of prefabricated buildings intended for temporary use only, nestled—if anything could be said to nestle in naked rock—at the base of sheer cliffs that soared to a height of five kilometers. The massive Greyling Formation on Greatmount was the only comparable formation that came to Jade’s mind.
Even to an untrained eye, one half of the complex comprised an obviously human design, while the other didn’t. The placement of the dividing line couldn’t be mistaken. Both sides utilized basic geometrical shapes, but in differing arrangements. The human side comprised a cluster of domes and cubes. That constructed by the Gara’nesh was of spheres and cylinders piled in a seemingly haphazard arrangement.
The shuttle banked, eased through an opening in one of the cubes, then settled onto a landing pad, joining an assembly of other craft. The hangar doors slid shut behind.
“I’ll see that your bags are transported to your quarters, ma’am,” the pilot said as Jade debarked.
Having been granted use of Admiral Vespage’s shuttle, Jade had half expected a welcoming committee—Rick Emmers at very least—to be waiting at the landing bay entrance. Instead, only a solitary figure loitered in the corridor, his back towards her. He wore the white and tan uniform of Military Information, with the two stripes of a lieutenant.
Her gaze lingered; something about the way he stood, hands clasped behind him, his shoulders a little too broad for his waist, seemed familiar. Then she looked past him and peered up and down the empty corridor.
Jade cleared her throat. “Lieutenant—”
The man turned. A broad grin split his face.
Her gut spasmed into a writhing torus even as her mind struggled to deal with the shock. Not now! Not here…!
She gasped. “Troy!”
“In the flesh.” Troy Kuchera crossed the space in a few large strides.
Just before he could reach her, wrap his arms around her, and tickle her forehead with his moustache as he used to do, she held out her arms, crossed in front of her chest, to keep him at bay.
He halted. “Jade?”
“What are you doing here?” she asked, keeping her voice flat.
“Not exactly the welcome I was hoping for,” he said, “but at least you didn’t tell me to take a long walk out of a short airlock.”
She lowered her arms. “What are you doing here?” she repeated slowly, conscious of the thudding of her heart.
Hazel eyes twinkled in a face too homely to be considered handsome. “I thought you might like a surprise, that’s all.”
“Consider me surprised.”
His happy expression faded. “You’re tense.”
She gritted her teeth. ”If this is some sort of a romantic fool’s errand—”
He drew himself to his full height. “I am here on the orders of Second Admiral Van-te-Hoft, my chief in Military Information. I thought you’d like to see a friendly face, that’s all. Sorry if I offended you.”
He swung away.
“Troy—”
He paused.
“The last I heard,” she said, “you’d been transferred from Windward to Earth.” It wasn’t much of an opening to be a peace offering. But what should she say? She hadn’t been prepared for this intrusion of the past into the present.
“You kept track of me?”
She felt the heat rising to her cheeks. “What happened?” Her gaze ran from Kuchera’s temples, where brown hair receded more than she remembered, along the clean-shaven arches of his cheeks, and stopped at the edge of his full moustache. The receding hairline made him appear older than his thirty-eight years—only two years more than herself—although the moustache countered the trend by giving a jaunty lift to his lips.
He grimaced. “It’s a long story.”
“Tell me later?”
He relaxed. “I’d be delighted.”
Jade gestured down the corridor, “I can’t linger. Admiral Stalker is waiting for me, and I have to make sure my aide has things under control.”
“Figures.” Kuchera smiled ruefully. “C’mon, I’ll show you the way.”
She’d studied the base layout, but she allowed Kuchera to lead. Jade walked at his side, her head level with his shoulder. After a few turns he stopped outside a door stamped with large red letters: Sector B: Authorized Personnel Only.
“This is as far as I go,” he said. “I’m relegated to sectors C and D, and not allowed into the Conference Center proper.”
Jade moved forward to be scanned. “Thanks for the abbreviated tour.”
“Dinner tonight?”
She frowned. “What’s the food like on this rock?”
“Pretty decent, actually. Seven?”
Jade nodded. “Should be OK. I’ll call you otherwise. You know—”
“I know,” Kuchera said. “Unless the admiral has other plans for you. I’ve heard that one before.”
The door slid apart and Jade stepped through.
Troy gave a courtly bow. “See you later. Upper level, sector D. You can’t miss it.”
The door cut them apart.
Covenant hummed with life and activity. Naval personnel of various ranks congested the brightly-lit corridors.
Staging a conference as important as peace negotiations was far from a simple activity, and involved most branches of the Navy. Not only were combat squadrons represented in the presence of Admiral Vespage and the Third Fleet, but Engineering, Technical Support, Intelligence, Information, Supply, and so on.
Jade’s mental map served her well, and Admiral Charles Stalker’s office proved easy to find. The door was open—a clear indication that he was expecting her—and Stalker himself reclined in his chair with his eyes closed, breathing slowly and easily. A healthy sixty-four, his light brown hair was already shot through with silver streaks at the temples. With his hair brushed back from an angular face, he seemed more suited to be a scientist than the Chief of Naval Intelligence. The full seven spectral stripes of a first admiral emblazoned over his left shoulder brightened the white of his uniform.
Jade coughed gently to advertise her presence.
Stalker opened his eyes and beckoned her into the unadorned office. “Glad to see you made it, Jade.”
“Thank you for indulging my leave, sir.” Jade settled into a vacant chair.
Stalker touched a sensorpad and the doo
r slid shut. “I was sorry to hear about your mother’s death. Unexpected, was it?”
Jade bit her lip. Her work for the impending conference and the encounter with Nate Watford had left her little time for grieving.
She said, “Mom hadn’t been feeling well for a while, but nobody anticipated quick changes. She wasn’t all that old—just short of a hundred and ten. But sometimes…things go wrong.”
“You were a late arrival to the family, eh?” Stalker said, obviously trying to lighten the conversation.
Jade smiled. “Very late. A last burst of enthusiasm.”
“Well, I’m happy to have you back in action,” he said, the briskness of his tone implying that social pleasantries were concluded. “Emmers has been coping fine in your absence. Have you read the briefings?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. The first negotiating session begins in the morning, so you haven’t missed anything.” He peered at her quizzically. “Sure you’re all right?”
Jade shook off the vision of the dead Nate Watford that had unexpectedly intruded into her thoughts. “I’m fine, sir. Really.”
‘You’ll meet the other members of the negotiating team tomorrow. Have you formed any preliminary impressions from Emmers’ reports?”
Jade frowned. “There appear to be the usual undercurrents, rumors, and whispers based on mutual suspicion. But there’s nothing solid that I can pin down.”
Stalker nodded. “I can trust you to keep a close eye on the situation.”
“I have several agents scattered through the fleet and here on Covenant. Emmers will be in charge of monitoring the comings and goings on Covenant. Cheshire Cat is assigned outsystem to track Gara’nesh movements.”
“Fine.”
“Is there—uh—anything in particular you had in mind, sir?” Jade asked, studying Stalker’s face.
She’d worked with Stalker long enough to know when the admiral was worried. Stalker didn’t let much bother him—a nervous nellie wouldn’t last long as chief of NI—but the subtle signs of concern were there for her to read.
“Two things.” Stalker massaged his square chin. “The supposed expert on the Gara’nesh is one Major Iverson. Blair Iverson.”
“I don’t know him. He wasn’t in my dossier.”
Wreaths of Empire Page 5
