The Fleet Book 2: Counter Attack

by David Drake (ed)

  Which was exactly what the Khalia wouldn’t expect, Diego told himself. Or Jurgen, either, for that matter. When they expect the best, give ‘em low tech. Diego didn’t quite remember who had said that, but it stuck in his mind. This was going to be as low as it came.

  The jeweler returned mumbling something that Diego didn’t quite catch and handed over an antique-style watch. Playing the part of mental deficient, Bach took the valuable item and stuffed it into his pocket along with the note and the rest of the money, slurred a goodbye and left.

  A second trip to a hobby shop was similar. Here the, robovendor didn’t even bother with a telltale scan as it delivered up the goods. Satisfied, he headed back to the union quarters where he underwent another change back into the Tobishi Lines engineer. It was sixteen hundred hours. Exactly right. Diego went to the union dining hall as soon as his hair had dried.

  Ari, first navigator on the Lodestone, was already seated in front of a large plate of muffins and cake. Diego felt a wave of relief. He had remembered that Ari came from a planet that adhered to a different eating schedule than the one he had been raised with and always insisted on a late afternoon meal. Which was probably why he was overweight. After helping himself to a cup of coffee he slipped into the seat across from Ari, who was busily wolfing down a large piece of chocolate cake.

  “You gotta try this cake,” Ari said immediately. “Black Forest cake, they call it. Traditional here. Made with cherries soaked in brandy and chocolate.”

  Diego smiled politely and shook his head. The sweetness of the cake would only make the fear on his tongue taste worse. “I actually came to ask you a couple of questions,” he started. “Like, when the FTL Drive commits, it signals before the safeties are acknowledged, right?”

  Ari regarded him carefully and nodded. “And it’s a nice bright green light, too. Funny about that. The Khalia use blue, I heard. I wonder if that’s physical or cultural. You know anything about, it?” A slow smile spread over his broad face as Diego shook his head. “Mr. Bach, if that is your name, good luck. I think.”

  Frantically Diego considered everything he had done in the past weeks. He hadn’t thought he’d broken cover, had never let himself get into a compromising situation even on Lodestone and hadn’t talked to anyone. Even Ari. Especially Ari. Stunned, he said neither thank you nor goodbye before leaving his full coffee cup on the table and bolting.

  Back in the comforting solitude of his cubby, Diego began systematically pulling apart the back of the watch. The task was far more difficult than he had originally imagined since his hands were trembling ever so slightly. Suppose he gave himself away tonight? Not that it would matter, he thought. He still wasn’t convinced that he was really going to tryout this idiot gambler’s scheme.

  Besides, it was one thing to think about killing Jurgen, once a fellow officer who deserved at least the consideration of a clean choice. When he was only twelve his father had told him of an ancient custom of Earth, where a dishonored officer was locked in a room with a pistol and a bottle. He at least had the chance to restore his integrity in the eyes of his peers. Jurgen wasn’t going to get even that much chance.

  Beyond it, the whole plan was filthy, ugly. To blow anyone apart—Jurgen or a slave or even a Khalian functionary—was not in the confines of proper combat.

  And then Diego knew that that had all been dreams and stories and school, where everything was neat and clean and all decisions came out in little boxes labeled “right” and “wrong.” If Jurgen hadn’t put him in this position, if Jurgen had been a proper Intelligence agent instead of a traitor, he wouldn’t have to make such a decision, take such a risk. Anger at Jurgen boiled over and Diego hissed his sudden fury like a snake ready to strike.

  The back of the watch carne off, revealing a single-chip attached to a micro battery and mostly empty space, which was exactly what Diego had hoped. The hobby store package contained several old-fashioned collector’s item dueling pistols, complete with shot and powder. Funny that they would sell things like that on the open market, forgetting just how dangerous such toys could be. Just because there were more accurate and effective weapons in existence didn’t mean that a dueling pistol or its powder was no longer deadly. Only that people didn’t think of it that way any more.

  The hobby shop had also supplied an “eye” that responded to different wavelengths of light. The directions were somewhat garbled and it took Diego a bit of time to figure out how to set the thing on wide-band blue. He hoped Ari had given him the right information, and the thought of Ari brought the fear taste back to overlay the anger.

  Taking a deep breath to steady his hands, Diego pried the chip of blue stone from the face of the watch and set the eye behind the hole it left. He connected the low-grade telltale to the battery and filled the rest of the space with black powder.

  It was already past dinner when Diego got the watch back together. The thing looked perfect. Better than that, no scan or telltale would notice it. From the outside it was an ostentatious piece of frippery, and on the inside nothing was geared to reading anything so primitive as a powder explosion. He let out a deep breath, not realizing he had held it so long, and leaned back against the wall. Tension flowed out of his muscles and he closed his eyes and let the stress of the fine work go for just a moment. Then Diego wrapped the watch back with the other jewelry and negotiables Jurgen had demanded and changed himself back into the rateri addict of the night before.

  This time it was late as he traversed the city. He was not the only addict out on the streets. In varicolored costumes the rateri lovers wandered under soft yellow streetlights. They were bleached out, bleached and black with no color except when they passed under some unconfined shard of light bled by the weary lamps. Enchanted by the flamboyant dress and sparkling chatter, it took Diego several blocks to realize that rateri club members were the only people he saw in the street. The more respectable middle class were all locked away behind their thick doors and lace curtains now. The street belonged to the rateri, which meant it belonged to the Khalia. Diego kept that firmly in mind as he made his way to the Tandeleistrasse, and to a particularly old and weathered door under the sign of the snake.

  The club looked different this night. This time he noticed how worn the carpet was near the entrance and that there were burn marks on the polished table. The costumes were still lovely from a distance, the feathers and glittering jewels and filmy silks appearing rich and inviting. Only tonight Diego found himself noticing that the feathers were old and wilted, the jewels cheap glass and glitter paper, the silks and satins the cheapest synthetics and poorly sewn. It was gaiety painted over weariness. His mother the admiral would have called it “tawdry,” and for once Diego had to agree with her.

  He chose a table and sat, careful not to touch any surfaces with his bare flesh. One thing he didn’t want was another rateri dream. One had been rather too much for a lifetime. He didn’t know if he could resist two.

  Luckily Jurgen appeared before he even had time to look around. Maybe the traitor had been there all along, waiting, lurking in the crowd.

  “I wasn’t sure you would come.” This Jurgen was the rateri addict of the night, supreme, confident, at ease.

  Diego lay his package on the table and said nothing while the other unwrapped it. He was pleased to see that Jurgen seemed particularly pleased with the watch, even tried it on. “For later,” Jurgen said as he replaced it. “It would make them wonder.”

  “Talk about wondering,” Diego said, trying to stay as calm as the addict beside him. “I was wondering if you really were going with the Khalian ship the way Zoe thought. Or if it was just a rumor.”

  Jurgen’s eyes flashed. “Why?”

  Diego shrugged. “Zoe was insistent. I was curious. Forget I asked. Just give me my medal and we’ll call it even.”

  Jurgen placed the gold St. Barbara medal on the polished wood. Using a handkerchief, D
iego picked it up while carefully avoiding any direct contact.

  “My, my, we are suspicious.”

  Diego only smiled, all innocence. “You never know what’s lying around in a place like this, spilled on the table maybe. You can’t be too careful.”

  As he rose to leave he felt a single restraining hand on his forearm. “I am going,” Jurgen informed him. “Invited to report directly to the Khalian commander.”

  Diego couldn’t decide which was worse, the fact that Jurgen was doing it or the pride that so clearly illuminated the other’s face. He jerked his arm away from Jurgen’s hand. The touch was burning contamination. The, door and the cool night air weren’t close enough.

  By the time he reached the union hall he had managed to calm down enough to transmit directly to the Fleet sector duty ship, a destroyer named Bolivar. He caressed the medal wrapped in handkerchief in his pocket. There was something almost mystically right. Of course it was Bolivar. The Fuentes family had always been on the right hand of the Liberator.

  The communication itself was a balm, using the proper, safe forms with something of real significance to report. It wasn’t until he had washed and lay down in the dark that he realized exactly what he had done.

  He had taken the gamble, the risk. In giving Jurgen the watch he had made a unilateral decision to execute an individual, someone he had known and, in another time and place, might have even respected. That knowledge, even coupled with the fact that he believed in the decision he had made, contorted his stomach and cramped his lungs. For the first time in his life, Diego Bach didn’t know whether he was going to be sick or cry.

  * * *

  Strange how the Intelligence Complex at Port felt so much like home. Even Sein’s debriefing had been more laudatory than anything else, but Diego was glad it was over.

  “Well, after fingering that pirate ship you could have pretty much your own choice of orders,” Sein had told him. “I still can’t get over how you managed to blast their controls just enough to slow them down so that Bolivar could get them.”

  “Too bad the Khalia blew the ship before we could really take it,” he had replied. “I’d love to know exactly how they’re made.”

  Sein, the stone-faced sub director of counterintelligence, smiled for what Diego thought had to be the first time in recorded history. “You aren’t the only one. So, what’ll it be? I know you wanted the Fast Attack Wing. Not that I won’t be sorry to lose you, but you deserve anything I can get you. That’s a promise.”

  Diego hesitated, not because he didn’t know what he wanted, but because he was surprised to realize it. Suddenly all his careful career plans, his parents’ neat flow charts of his future, took on the grim grey lifelessness the rateri had made him fear. Efrichen had been important, he had done something that really counted there. And he had been truly alive, even when it hurt. Shocked only because it was true, Diego heard himself say, “I indicated that earlier, before I had the experience on Efrichen. I think I’d like to remain in Intelligence, sir. That is, if you think you could use me.”

  Then Sein did a really unheard-of thing: He actually chuckled. “Ensign, I’d give my left band to have five more just like you. Welcome aboard.”

  His parents weren’t going to be pleased about this choice.

  He didn’t care. He was pleased. In fact, he was elated.

  “Go get yourself a beer;” Sein had said then. “Unless you plan to stop by and get the snake removed first.”

  Diego shook his head vehemently. “I’m keeping it, sir. Unless there’s some regulation against it?” And he knew there wasn’t, that there was a place for the violet serpent, the signature of Efrichen.

  Sein had only shaken his head. “You won’t be the first.”

  It was over two months later when the final stages of the Recovery of Bethesda were under way. Smythe and Meier had become almost friends. Not that the Admiral ever completely forgot that Neuton Smythe was a publicly appointed spy for the Alliance Council.

  Tonight they’d both worked late and the corridors glowed red. Port was tense because all that was left to be done was wait for battle reports. Half a bottle of fine Michigan wine had helped Smythe and Meier to relax; the carafe sat, between them on the desk. Smythe tapped idly on the console, looking troubled. Meier waited patiently for him to speak.

  “Expanding as quickly as you have, a few bad apples were bound to slip in,” the investigator began.

  “What do you mean by that?” the Admiral of the White snapped, even though he had tried to keep his tone neutral. For him defending The Fleet was a reflex.

  Smythe took a deep breath before continuing. “I’d rather show you. It’s a report from one of the planetary levies, just arrived this morning.”

  “Levies, huh. Never did like amateurs.”

  “Better reserve judgment until you’ve seen the report,” Smythe cautioned. “Some of those levies are pretty damn tough.”

  Meier said nothing, carefully filling both glasses.

  When he had almost finished calling up the report, Smythe added enigmatically, “This rather supports my theory that some of the Khalia’s ploys are too sophisticated for their culture.”

  “Like that drug business on Efrichen,” Meier quickly agreed, glad to leave an awkward subject.

  “Yes . . .” Smythe murmured as the images formed on the screen.

  “NOW IT GETS tight,” George said, “We’re shielded, but they can spot us if they know where to look.” He glanced up. “I need a break. Whose turn to pilot?”

  “Mine,” Quiti said.

  “Never mind, Cutie,” George said. “It’s a man’s job.”

  “Listen, I’m qualified!” she snapped. “I’ve had the same training you had! I’ll take my turn.”

  But Ivan came up behind, his big-gloved hand sliding across her posterior as if coincidentally. “Soft like a woman,” he murmured. Then: “I’ve got it, George.” Just as if he was talking only about the piloting.

  Quiti masked her outrage. Even here on the mission, they were treating her with the contempt they deemed due a woman! She had smoldered under it throughout training and her tour of duty at Port Tau Ceti, clinging to the hope that it would be different on an actual mission. Now she was on it, and nothing had changed. She might as well have been a housemaid.

  “Hey, make me up a sandwich, will you honey?” Ivan said without looking at her. “I forgot to eat.”

  The worst of it was, he wasn’t even conscious of the insult. None of them were. They all took it for granted that she was along for tokenism, if not pure decoration. They did not abuse her, or force their attentions on her openly; they simply did not take her seriously.

  There was no point in aggravating anyone right now; their mission was dangerous enough without that. She opened the supply chest and made a sandwich—actually two slabs of hardtack, as it was called, of complementary flavors. Any one slab contained all the nutrients a human being needed, but was too bland for interest.

  She handed Ivan the sandwich. “Thanks, Cutie,” he said absentmindedly, his eyes on the planet ahead. The shield made its outline vague, but made the outline of the scout ship even less clear to any observer on the planet.

  “The name is Quiti,” she reminded him. “Kwee-tee.”

  “Sure thing, Cutie.”

  She gave up. He wasn’t even listening to her. Well, it was no worse than being called “monkey,” as some of her training mates had, because of her planet of origin. The truth was that the human species was beginning a new radiation, with subspecies forming in a necessary adaptation to the extremes of their host planets. In the three thousand years since colonization had begun, some changes had been engineered genetically, and some had been by mutation and drastic natural selection, so that evolution had leaped. Somehow all that other people noticed about her particular subspecies was its supposed simian characteristic
, rather than its mental one. But her kind could still interbreed with the others, which meant it was definitely human, and no one could tell by looking at Quiti now that she was not identical to the “standard” variant of Earth. That, perhaps, was part of the problem—the men here saw her as a sex object, just because she was young and full-fleshed.

  Morosely, she watched the growing planet of Formut. It was the most Earthlike of the bodies in this primitive system. Its only distinction was that it was the closest habitable planet to the neighboring system that contained the human colony of Bethesda, which the Fleet hoped to recover soon. It had two Khalian batteries that could inflict devastating losses on any passing convoy. It was the Fleet’s intent to make a diversionary thrust, a decoy gesture, through this system, to distract the Khalia from the main thrust elsewhere. That would be useless if the batteries wiped out the token force at the outset.

  Therefore those batteries had to be taken out. This could not be done from space without doing irreparable harm to the planet, and since the natives were not the enemy, that was out. But they could be tackled from behind, as it were, by a surprise attack from the ground. That was the present mission: two five-man ships were to infiltrate the planet and take out those batteries. Then the ships would report and wait for the Fleet to pick them up in a week, as they lacked the power to escape the planet’s gravity well.

  It seemed simple enough—and it was, if all went well. Each ship had small arms and one plasma weapon. Because this was technically a hostile planet, there were no reloading cartridges; it was essential that the enemy not be able to take over the weapon and use it against the infiltrating party. The three shots of its initial loading should suffice; if not, it would probably be too late.