Implacable: Vicky Peterwald, #5

by Mike Shepherd

  Vicky knew that her father had used some dumb metal to make a boat. He'd had Hank give it to Kris Longknife. It lasted just long enough to get her up a swollen river before it turned to droplets like mercury. Just when she desperately needed a boat she no longer had one.

  Whoever produced that metal was not in her side of the Empire. Maybe after she took Greenfeld, she'd find the lab. Or maybe it had been done by a Bowlingame whom she had killed fighting her way to the capital.

  Those things happened.

  "It might help," Maggie went on, "if you would pay Alex Longknife for the use of his patents," was more than snide.

  "Thank you, Margaret. You are getting close to being turned off for an hour or two."

  "While I may not be able to do much right now, if you can land a few Marines on that station, you will need me later."

  "No doubt," Vicky sighed, hating to admit that the nasty Maggie had again won the argument. For a computer that said she would never develop the attitude her mom had, Maggie was sure showing all kinds of attitude.

  The station before them was a standard medium-sized affair. A large cylinder spun in space. Ten rows of piers swung around the outer hull. Each row provided three piers with docking space for sixty ships. At the far end of the station were yards for building or repairing ships. There were twelve docks for everything from small space runabouts to four docks that could handle full-sized liners or battleships.

  Oryol was not a major Navy base, but it could support a decent sized fleet.

  What should have been a bustling port was a ghost ship rolling silent in space.

  It was also a very tough nut to crack.

  All thirty of those waiting piers spun around the station, nearly impossible to catch.

  Usually, when a ship docked at a pier, it caught a hook at the end of the pier as it swung by. Once hooked, the station automatically reeled the ship in and locked it down to the pier. This circular rotation transferred into the ship a decent case of ‘down.’ The ‘down’ that humans born of Earth still required.

  However, today, no hooks were out. No piers had live docking beacons. There was no way for Vicky's ships to land here. Without a pier to dock to, her crews would soon start puking up their toenails. They needed some sense of gravity.

  Clearly, whoever was running Oryol wanted Vicky to go away and leave them alone.

  Fat chance of that!

  "General Pemberton, could you dispatch a small force to both ends of the station?"

  "Of course, Your Grace."

  Two longboats, each loaded with some forty Marines in fully armored space suits, headed for either end of the station. Those were a lot easier to approach. They stayed stationary, only twisting around slowly as the station rotated. There, at each end, were ports that could take in supplies and other large loads.

  Of course, whoever was running this show was not going to make this easy. There were no approach beacons active at either end. Worse, the manual activation handles for the smaller personnel air locks had been disabled and the handles removed.

  "They really don't want us in there, do they?" Vicky remarked to General Pemberton.

  "Nope."

  "Can we fabricate the necessary replacement parts?" Vicky asked.

  "Yes, but something tells me that we don't want to. At least, not until we've had a chance to examine the air locks from the inside."

  "I take it you went prepared to breach the station?" Vicky said.

  "Yes, Your Grace."

  Two more longboats approached the ends of the station. These quickly opened to space and a long, thick hose was towed by Sailors from its open rear hatch. Even as they moved it, the hose expanded into a long, wide cylinder. It was quickly attached to the outer hull of the station covering the access airlock. A dozen Sailors approached the cylinder, then locked themselves in.

  "What are they up to?" Vicky asked.

  "At least one of them is a welder. There will soon be a new pair of holes in the station. The cylinder is long enough to provide them with an airlock. Half a dozen Marines are now headed for the airlock. They'll wait in it until there's access to the station, then cycle themselves into the inner space. Once we've got a hole, it's just a quick bit of hand-over-hand to get themselves inside. While the Sailors examine the inside of the air locks, the Marines will take a quick look around. See if there's anybody home, and if there isn’t, they will check for booby traps."

  Vicky nodded and waited for the professionals to do what they did best. Keep the boom where we wanted it, not where they wanted it.

  A few long minutes later, one team announced they were in.

  "We've got a normal atmosphere. No toxic gases. Even the temperature is comfortable."

  "Does that mean there are still people aboard?" Vicky asked.

  "Who knows. Major, get teams in there. Start going over the station. My stomach is not enjoying this zero gravity."

  "Understood, sir. I'll dispatch the third team to the station's command and control center. I've got the first two teams assigned to policing up the area around the new entrances."

  Mannie chose that moment to bounce off the hatch combing and shove himself off from the bulkhead. He was getting better at navigating around a ship in zero gravity. This time he got close enough to Vicky that she could grab him as he went by.

  Somehow, he managed to use her catching him to turn it into a hug and a light kiss.

  "Do you do that to all the girls that help you around in zero gee?" Vicky asked.

  "Only the pretty ones," Mannie shot back. "So, what are you up to today? Blown anything up yet?"

  "Nope, we're just doing the usual stuff burglars do when they're breaking and entering. You know, making sure the owner's security system is off and not loaded with explosives."

  Mannie scrunched his face up in thought. "My security system back home isn't backed up with any explosives," he noted.

  "Yes, but that's because you're a bleeding-heart liberal."

  Mannie eyed the screen. "And if there are booby traps rigged on the station?"

  "I'll have some bleeding-heart conservative Marines really pissed with me," Vicky admitted.

  "Oh?" Mannie said, eyeing Vicky, "my wife tells me that you don't want Marines pissed with you."

  "Smart woman," Vicky said.

  "I think so. Smart and beautiful. Oh, and gracious."

  "If you two will hold off on your comedy routine for a moment," General Pemberton said, "I'd like to make a report."

  "Report, General," Vicky said, going full Grand Duchess and admiral on him.

  "We're in. There are no physical traps around the docking bay. We're looking at manual activation for the air locks."

  "Can you let Maggie access the system and its software?" Vicky asked.

  "We'd very much like to. We're plugging into the access port."

  "I am in the system," Maggie said. "Please wait one."

  "Polite computer you got there," Mannie said.

  "Not when she's dealing with me," Vicky sniffed.

  Maggie said nothing. Clearly, she was busy.

  "The mechanical system appears to be untouched," Maggie announced, "however, there is an undocumented bit of code that has no installation date on it. I'm running it. Oh, that was nasty."

  "A problem, Maggie?" Vicky asked.

  "Yes. That code would have opened both doors of the air lock if either one of them was opened. Just installing a new handle on the outside access panel and pulling it up would not have been a good idea."

  "I understand," Vicky said.

  Beside her, General Pemberton was advising his teams of this little surprise.

  "I am removing this code now," Maggie said. "Let me test it again. Oh, these people really are nasty."

  "Yes, Maggie?"

  "They had some sleeping code that was only activated when I removed that line of code. I've got it out of the instruction set now. Let's see if it goes any better."

  Vicky held her breath.

  "Nice. It
worked that time," Maggie said.

  "Can we open the lock and bring in the longboat?" General Pemberton asked.

  "I would suggest bringing only one in at a time," Maggie said. "I think I have caught all their surprises, but they are persistent little shits."

  Mannie raised his eyebrows at Vicky. Apparently, Maggie had either extended her study of humanity beyond textbooks to fiction, or she was listening to Sailors and Marines. Vicky might have to address that later.

  Then again, having a computer that cursed might be fun. Nelly never cursed.

  While this was going on, one of the airlocks had been cycled open with no ill effects. One longboat slowly entered the bay. Once it was stopped against the blocks and locked down, the airlock cycled again.

  Again, nothing undesirable happened.

  With the inner doors now open, guides moved the longboat from the lock to a docking cradle. This put the longboat farther from the center of the station. The crew now had about one-sixth of a gee. That was enough to let the Marines move with purpose as they dismounted and headed off to check the station for surprises in general and get the docking gear working at the piers in particular.

  A second pair of longboats followed the first. These two had Sailors aboard, ready to begin the process of bringing the station back to life.

  More longboats arrived with Marines and station operators. Everyone hoped they could dock the task force before lunch. However, after an explosive device was found in the reactor room, the search became more thorough and cautious.

  Maggie spent a lot of time checking systems for viruses or left-behind bombs that had been inserted into the software.

  Lunch was light when it was served, and supper was delayed in the hope that it could be served under some gravity.

  Finally, at 2100 hours, the Otter caught the hook and was pulled into dock. After another thorough check to make sure there were no delayed surprises waiting for them, the other destroyers, then the light cruisers, and finally the Sachsen and Victorious were allowed to come alongside the pier.

  Everyone breathed a sigh of relief . . . and supper was served at 2200 hours. Late, but heartily enjoyed.

  With her task force securely alongside the pier, Vicky turned her attention to the planet below.

  However, Mannie pointed out that she was up past her bedtime and hauled her off to their quarters, much to the relief of the late-night watch standers.

  8

  The next morning, Vicky made sure to coordinate her breakfast with General Pemberton.

  He had an update for her.

  "We found five more explosives. One was in the main computer room and another at a switching station. We kind of expected those and were looking for them. The other three are a different matter. They were just attached to closed hatches that when opened would blast shrapnel in your face. That's just rude if you ask me. Anyway, our combat engineers are going through the station inch by inch, checking everything. We've also had your computer go over any stand-alone systems we've stumbled across."

  "Maggie, you've been active."

  "Well, you were asleep. I enjoyed the break. Good thing General Pemberton brought me in. They left all sorts of nasty bombs in the software. Some of those stand-alone systems could cause as much trouble as the airlock bugs they planted."

  "Thank you, Maggie."

  "You are welcome."

  "Have we heard anything from the planet below?" Vicky asked the general.

  "Nope, not a word. I will note that both of the ferries are dirtside, so we won't be using any of them to drop down to pay the local red shirts a visit."

  "Is this turning into more than you expected?" Vicky asked.

  "It still isn't more than we can handle. We've got enough ship longboats that we can land a pretty serious force when you decide to go in."

  "Like maybe at zero-two-hundred hours with a bit of a thunderstorm in the area?" she queried.

  "I wouldn't mind the oh-dark-early, but you might want to ask the bosun mates about flying around thunderheads."

  "I said thunderstorms in the area, not in the flight path, General. I may not be able to fly one of those longboats, but I know how to stay alive in one."

  "Glad you learned that, Your Grace."

  Vicky finished her breakfast and went hunting for Captain Blue. More out of a habit of keeping him around rather than any expectation she'd need him, she'd brought him and his team along. There was no reason to have them sitting on their ditty boxes back on Dresden.

  Who knows? They might come in handy.

  She found the captain in a small compartment aft of the bridge.

  "You having much luck getting data off the Oryol net?" she asked him.

  "None worth talking about," he answered. "The only commlinks in use are in the hinterland. Farmers talking to farmers and the like. There's a lot of griping about the Red Coats confiscating crops and squatters that have fled out into the countryside. Somebody has run the economy pretty much into the ground."

  "What about the comm net in the cities?" Vicky asked.

  Captain Blue shrugged. "Both Kromy and Bonki only use fiber optic cable and we can't get diddly-squat off that."

  "We need to fly some drones down there. Maybe we can find a place to jack into the net," Vicky said.

  Thus, a few minutes later, she was discussing with the skipper of the Victorious about laying on a longboat pass. A dozen medium duration drones were loaded aboard two of the longboats, and the crafts launched.

  They made a high pass, never dipping below sixty thousand feet. One scattered its drones to the north covering larger towns as well as Kromy. The second one covered the towns near Bonki along the equator.

  No search radar was active. If the planet had any anti-air capability, it had broken down long ago and not been repaired.

  The drones began their sweeps, cruising along at forty to fifty thousand feet. They found little to look at. Here and there a tractor worked a field. Trucks were a rarity on the roads. There was almost no traffic along the major highways between towns. The highspeed rail tracks stayed empty hour after hour.

  This planet was not open for business.

  The drones slipped closer to the centers of Kromy and Bonki. Bonki seemed almost normal, though the major fabricators showed little activity. Kromy was another matter. The drones spotted cars, but they were all parked. What few people that were out and about seemed furtive and hurried as they went from place to place.

  Vicky shook her head.

  Mannie looked over her shoulder. "If I'd brought an economist, I think he'd be telling us that this economy was totally locked in irons."

  "Locked in irons?"

  "An old term, going back to sailing ship days. They depended on the wind and occasionally, through poor seamanship or damn bad luck, they'd be halfway through a tack and they'd lose the wind. The ship would be dead in the water and unable to catch enough wind to get underway again. Here we seem to have a totally closed down economy."

  "How do you close down a modern, planet-wide economy?" Vicky asked.

  "You close down the transportation net," he answered.

  "Captain Blue, how's it coming with hacking into the comm net?"

  "I haven't started. I was waiting to see if we faced any anti-air."

  "It looks pretty benign," Vicky said.

  "I'll run one of the carrier drones over Bonki and see if it draws any fire. If it doesn't, I'll try the capital, Kromy, next. If nothing happens, we'll have the carriers launch smaller drones."

  For an hour, they waited while nothing happened. Then they risked dropping to twenty thousand feet and overflying the cities. They spotted more people in small groups of two or three hastening from one building to another. It definitely looked like they wanted to avoid any attention.

  Another hour dragged on with nothing they could call a net node spotted. Once this place had been prosperous. It had managed to install a full cable backbone and connect everyone living in the urban areas to fast communications.


  That, of course, made it nearly impossible to break in.

  "I think I've got something here," Captain Blue said finally, glee just edging into this voice.

  "What?" Vicky asked, maybe a bit sharply. This waiting was killing her.

  "There, six or seven partially built houses," the captain said, stabbing at the screen with his forefinger. "There are also some incomplete apartments the next couple of streets over. If they got to the wiring stage, we may have a weak point."

  The smaller drones made a beeline for them and dispersed their own swarm of tiny bots, both flying in the air and rolling along the ground. Still, the going was slow. They left the bots under a chief's supervision and went to lunch.

  Most of the meal was spent marveling at how easy a bustling planet could be turned into a shambling zombie.

  "And not be able to toss off the virus that has them so sick," Mannie said, then changed his thoughts. "Whoever is running this place has to know we're up here."

  "Do they?" Vicky asked. "This place is pretty buttoned up. We found no signal traffic between here and dirtside. It looks more like they closed up shop when they closed out their trade and just locked up the station."

  "Yeah," Mannie agreed. Then softly whispered, "Was I the only one who spotted the burned out houses?"

  Vicky and Captain Blue nodded that they had.

  "Any idea why they burned?"

  After a long silence Vicky replied, "None of my ideas are nice."

  "But I thought these people submitted to the Security Consultants," Mannie said. "If they didn't fight, why would houses have been burned? Maybe it's just . . .."

  "I love you, sweetheart," Vicky said, "but sometimes you are too soft hearted to see just how evil men can be. People submit to avoid trouble. Then matters get worse. Much worse, only you're already flat on your back and in no position to do much of anything."

  "You think that is what we're going to find down there?" Mannie asked.

  "After lunch, Captain," Vicky said, "please have a drone or two examine the center of town. I think that is where we will find the redcoats."

  "You afraid of what we'll find?" the captain asked.

  "Absolute power corrupts absolutely," Vicky said, then sighed, "Since I was a little girl, I've wondered what the difference was between absolute power and absolute evil. So far, I haven't really found a difference. Have you?"