by Chris Bunch
“It’s good that you got away from Cumbre in time, Yohns. Although I’ll give you a suggestion. When we move against Cumbre, next year or the year after, of course you’ll want to accompany the Protector.
“He’ll reward you, after the fall, making you possibly the head of his government there. That’s well and good, if your ambition is limited.
“But if it were offered to me, I’d find an excuse to refuse. The real prize, Yohns, will be however much of the Confederation the Protector can carve off. Maybe a little … maybe a lot. Maybe as far as Centrum itself. Take and hold Centrum, and how many systems will come a-begging for protection?” Celidon smiled. “That’s where the real power will lie, power beyond anyone’s dreams.
“And there’s no reason the Protector won’t succeed. He comes from a very long-lived line.”
• • •
Njangu’s country estate sat on the edge of a man-made lake, about two hours’ flight from Agur. It was quite a compound, with formal gardens, pools, stables, and all the rest that a rich country squire could want.
Njangu hated it.
He was city, through and through, and still had to stop himself from grabbing for a gun when a night bird sang unexpectedly, in spite of his time on jungle patrols with I&R.
Nevertheless, he went to his estate as often as he could, and was seen pacing, dictating into recorders, making notes, preparing reports for the Protector. He made sure he left those notes about, so whichever servants were in Redruth’s pay — he assumed all — could read them and testify as to his loyalty and hard work.
Njangu was starting to feel agent paranoia, with every hand against him, and never anyone to relax around. He recognized his twitch, thought he’d gotten soft since he’d been with the Legion, actually having friends he could be honest with for the first time in his life.
To relieve it, he played harnhuns with Goons Alpha and Beta, always as the quarry, which kept him not only in shape, but maintained his cunning as well.
And it was during one harnhuns game that he found a solution to his greatest problem.
Njangu had taken ten minutes lead before his bodyguards came after him, and tried a new escape. He ran to a creek, splashed down it, trying to stay on rocks, until it ended in the lake. He waded out, then swam parallel with the shore, away from the compound, toward the edges of the estate.
He came out of the water, across the gravel beach, and planned to move in a wide circle back toward the compound. If he made it without being caught, he would have won. Currently his record was one in three.
He was moving slowly through brush when he heard the snap of a gun safety. Njangu froze, saw a man wearing a camo suit come from behind a bush, blaster leveled.
“Stay still.”
Njangu obeyed. Two other men came out from his flanks, and three from behind him.
“Identify yourself!”
“Leiter Ab Yohns,” Njangu said. “And what are you doing on my estate?”
“You are not on your grounds, if you are Leiter Yohns, but on those belonging to Leiter Appledore,” the man who’d stopped him said. “Show identification.”
“I have none.” Njangu wore only one-piece drab overalls, with a small hydration system on his back. He felt hands move over his back, between his legs, around his stomach, kept from reflexively killing the searcher or pitching him overhead into the first man with a gun.
“Nothing,” the man said. The first man frowned.
“STILL!” someone shouted. The first man started to turn, and a blaster bolt slammed into the ground next to him. Clearly a professional, his fingers opened, and his gun dropped. Njangu heard the thud of other weapons falling.
A gun barrel came from behind a tree, and Njangu recognized a bit of Alpha’s face.
“Identities?” Alpha snarled.
“Leiter Appledore’s security element,” the man said. “You … whoever you are … are on his property.”
Beta slid out of the brush, a gun in his hand.
Njangu almost started laughing. Beta went to the first man, searched him, found ID.
“They’re who they say they are,” he said. Alpha came out of cover, putting his pistol away.
“I assume this is really Leiter Yohns?” the first man asked.
“You assume right,” Beta said.
“My apologies, sir,” the man said, voice thin. Njangu assumed that meant Yohns outranked Appledore in the hierarchy. “But you set off our perimeter alarms, sir, and we responded as ordered.”
Njangu saw barely hidden fear on the faces of Appledore’s men, realized he could probably have them sent to the undersea mines or whatever other hellhole he wished.
“Don’t apologize for doing your job,” he said. “Go ahead and pick up your guns.”
“Thank you, sir,” and the others chorused their thanks.
“One question, though. You said perimeter security, and I didn’t see anything.”
All of them, including Alpha and Beta, showed amusement.
“Here, sir,” and Appledore’s man took Njangu to what looked like a boulder. Njangu couldn’t tell it wasn’t real until he examined it closely.
“Ah,” he said. “Thanks. You can tell Leiter Appledore from me that he has most alert men. I won’t have to worry about ever being attacked by social misfits from this side of my estate.”
The men thanked him again, and hastily trotted away.
“We have those gimmicks, too?” Njangu said.
“Certainly, sir.”
“Show me some of them.”
Alpha showed Yoshitaro other rocks, false dead logs, and such.
“Interesting,” he said. “I assume they’re self-powered, and transmit by radio? Heat- and motion-sensitive?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“Active or passive?”
“Completely passive in their base setting, sir, so you could walk past them with a sensor and not get a readout until they begin reporting. The only way they can be spotted is visually, although maybe they put out enough power you could get them with an infrared from close enough. Plus they can be remotely modified by the operator to lie doggo if there’s sensors around, just like it can be set to go off for two men, and ignore three or one.”
“Sophisticated little sucker,” Njangu said. “Are these standard … I mean, are you issued a certain number of logs, rocks, stumps per estate?”
“We have several varieties of cases we can put the guard units into. The units themselves are pretty standard, but a technician can modify them for whatever sensing security wants, then make up the exterior depending on what camouflage is required. We keep a dozen or so on hand, since weather’s hard on them.”
“Interesting indeed.”
• • •
The perimeter alarms, built for custom modification, yielded easily to exploration. It took no more than two hours for Njangu to finish eyeballing the guts of the one he’d gotten from a storeroom and sketch out what was what. The components were linked by simple universal plugs, so it took little additional time to remove the transmitter chip and slide one of Njangu’s specials in, a minimum of cursing and bending required.
The chips had been built by technicians on D-Cumbre, who’d carefully scanned the electronic records of the first intrusion Cumbre had made into Larix’s space, examining all frequencies in use. They set their chips to use frequencies close, but not too close, to those common wavelengths. The chips would accept input from any standard recorder via a tiny cord. Njangu kept several recorders handy, using them to dictate his notes into.
The hard part for Yoshitaro was wrangling the power converter from the vid he’d smashed into the circuit as a booster. Now, finished, wanting a drink, he hoped he’d done it right, hoped he’d just built himself a neat little transmitter.
The next day, he went for a stroll, telling his bodyguards he wanted to be alone. He wanted to find as many of the perimeter alarms as he could, see if there were any holes in the perimeter that he could spot.
Since the alarms were passive, no one should notice his device wouldn’t broadcast squat even if a dinosaur wandered past.
The only time the transmitter would be noticeable is when its antenna was strung, and then Yoshitaro would be very close, with a gun ready.
Njangu spent the rest of the day writing a signal with what he felt was the most essential data, including the confirmation of Froude’s theory about the Confederation. II Section’s cryptanalysts had decided on an archaic book cipher. They’d given him four, all based on religious books common throughout the worlds of man. Njangu had found, in the same library he’d done his research, a copy of the Q’Ran, standard translation. The agreed code began with sura VI.
Message ready, he shot it back and forth between his recorders, slow to fast, again and again, until it was no more than five seconds long.
The next day, he took the tape out to the device, quickly strung wire from trees into an exotic antenna as he’d been taught, plugged in the recorder, and blurted the message into space.
Ab Yohns, nee Njangu Yoshitaro, superspy, was back in business.
All he needed next was to figure a way to receive messages. But, with his confidence restored, he figured that would come with time.
That night, to reward himself, he had sparkling wine with his four companions and let the evening deteriorate into a disgustingly sensual, but extremely interesting marathon that didn’t end until well after dawn.
• • •
Yoshitaro spent the next three days waiting to see if there were any signs of alarm or detection vehicles responding to his com. There was nothing, or nothing he discovered.
He returned to Agur and his duties, again traveling across Larix, trying to see and evaluate everything.
His second stop was with the Protector’s Own, the elite palace guard. He pretended interest in their motivation, what sort of background they came from, whether he thought they could be subverted by one of the infamous social misfits.
They fell, largely, into two categories: dedicated fanatics, whose life would be fulfilled if they had a chance to take a blaster bolt in the guts for Redruth; and a scattering of people pretending zealotry with a cool eye for the main chance and staying close to the center of power.
Those people he was very interested in, for obvious reasons, and tried to figure out what trigger he could use to make them his, without being betrayed to Celidon, wanting to be sure his eventual spiel wouldn’t be something that’d be prize testimony at his trial for treason.
Njangu was heading back to his lims, where his bodyguards waited, when a very striking, redheaded officer, wearing the tabs of a hundred-group-Leiter, came up.
“Leiter Yohns?” Her smile was knowing.
“Yes?” Njangu smiled politely, admiring her, trying to figure out why the alarm bells in his mind were shrilling so loudly.
“Do you remember me?”
“No, I …” Njangu stopped. He suddenly did.
“I’m Maev,” the redhead said. “I thought I recognized you, back when you were inspecting the Guard this morning.
“You and I were recruits, and were screwing, back when Leiter Celidon seized the ship we were on, the Malvern, headed for Cumbre.
“Back then, your name was Njangu Yoshisomething or other, wasn’t it? How the hell did you ever get here?”
CHAPTER
9
Kura/Kura Four
A port opened in the side of the Cumbrian Kelly-class destroyer, and a small dart, not much bigger than a man, spat out, speeding “down” toward Kura Four.
“Lousy, lousy recon,” Dill said, standing behind the Parnell’s skipper, Mil Liskeard.
“Yes,” agreed Alikhan. “There should be files from spies, many satellite photos.”
“Not to mention a couple of sneaks on the ground checking things out before the combat team gets inserted,” Garvin added.
“Would you three morons get the hell off my bridge?” Liskeard growled. “It was almost better when you were second-guessing my piloting on the way in.”
“Not me,” Garvin said. “I know my limitations.”
“Interesting thought,” Dill said. “Let me know when you discover any of mine.”
“Shall we obey our orders,” Alikhan said. “And you can open a file on your faults that I shall happily dictate. A very large file.”
“Good idea,” the weapons tech at the control station behind Liskeard grunted. “Sirs. And let me fly this goddamned bird in without getting my ass shot off.”
• • •
The Parnell, one of the first four destroyers built on Cumbre, was a compromise between what the force needed, what the Force wanted, and what could be built in a hurry. Essentially, the class used the existing templates of a standard planetary patrol craft, but enlarged the ship in all dimensions. It had a crew of twenty, four Goddard antiship missiles in pods under the ship’s “chin,” a pair of chaingun turrets, and four Shadow antimissile stations.
The shipyards of Cumbre, newly modernized and expanded after the Musth War, could each roll out one of these destroyers in a month, and the internals could be added in another month. Larger ships weren’t possible at the moment: Any building work increases exponentially in cost, complexity, and material, not arithmetically.
No one knew how fast Larix/Kura were building ships, nor how large they were, but everyone assumed the worst, which, in war, is the safest way to think.
• • •
“You wish?” Ben Dill said politely to the Musth.
“To inquire as to why you are being stupid.”
“Just my normal procedure.”
“You are a pilot,” Alikhan said. “Yet you have volunteered to play ground-worm. That does not make sense.”
“Because,” Dill said, “like I told Garvin, back on Cumbre, I’m bored waiting for trouble to come to me.”
“I see. That is stupid, indeed,” Alikhan said. “But no more stupid than my joining the Force. Why did you not ask me if I wanted to be stupider than I already am?”
“To be real honest,” Ben said thoughtfully, “I didn’t even think about it. But even if I had, I don’t think I would’ve grabbed you.
“What happens if we get spotted down there on Kura? Don’t you think somebody would go completely apeshit if they saw this big brown furry mother trotting through their jungle?”
“Apeshit is not a term I’m familiar with,” Alikhan said. “I can infer its meaning, though. Nor am I of the female gender and capable of giving birth. But would that surprise be any greater than seeing ten humans, dripping weapons, dressed in a strange manner, wandering around looking for things to destroy?”
“Mmmh,” Dill said. “Strong point, which I don’t wanna consider. I’m sorry, Alikhan, that I didn’t give you a chance to get killed. But try this one. You’re going to be the insert pilot with the velv, right? Since you’re not that bad a pilot, second only to me, that’ll make sure there’ll be somebody with his shit firmed up who’ll be around to extract us when we start hollering for help.”
“I shall never understand the human fascination with excrement,” Alikhan said. “I accept your apology. And I shall be there to pick you and the others up.
“No matter when, where, or what.”
• • •
Two shifts later, as the I&R raiders tried to convince themselves they were comfortable living on the laps of the Parnell’s crew, and that they were nerveless commandos unworried about this near-blind mission, the drone’s tech swaggered into the small cargo compartment they’d taken over.
“Mil Jaansma,” she said. “Admire large head, sir. Admire very large head.”
“The drone’s back?”
“Not only back, but nobody sniffed nahthing,” she said. “Admire large head.”
> “Okay, crew,” Garvin said. “Set up the holo, so we can figure out where we want to start tickling them.”
• • •
Kura Four had been picked because prewar intelligence suggested that was the most heavily populated of the worlds in the system, although none of the four habitable planets would have to worry about population pressure for a millennium or so.
The drone had initially made eight passes, pole to pole, out-atmosphere, on a mapping run. The runs were repeated at night, using infrared sensors as well as amplified light.
The team watched the projection of Kura Four, a holograph about a meter in diameter, spin in front of them.
“Eleven main cities,” Monique Lir said.
“Twelve,” Froude corrected. “There’s another light-smear down near the south pole.”
“Bring each of those areas up one at a time,” Garvin said.
“Yessir,” the technician said, and the holo closed in on one area, then another.
“That one’s NG,” Dill said. “Looks like it’s built on the only patch of open ground on the planet.”
“Bust that one out, too,” Lir said. “Right on that peninsula — no running room there, either, when things start blowing up.”
“What about that one?”
“Possible.”
Three others areas were considered possibles, and those four studied.
“That one,” Garvin decided, blinking tired eyes. “That city’s about the biggest on the planet. Maybe, what, a million?”
“Maybe a bit more,” Froude said. “In fact, probably. I ran close-up scans on all the possible targets. That one’s got a good complement of landing fields, warehousing, what looks to me like military depots, so you can project the population probably a bit higher than a mill.”
“Sitting right there where these two rivers run together,” Jaansma said. “Then the valley widens, with the sea, what, fifty kilometers below? Mountains back of the city, which’ll give us good hiding places.”
“What’s the plan, boss?” Lir said.
“I think,” Garvin said slowly, “if we come in back here, letting that ridgeline mask us, then hump over here … we hit this dam. Blow the shit out of it, hope there’s enough of a shock to take out this other, bigger dam further downstream.
