Tor looked excited. “That’s not a problem, sir. Actually, this is great! My hobby is ancient weapons. I’ll bet we can improvise some nasty surprises. What can you give me, sir?”
I grinned. I remembered my own fire-eating days. “I can put an unarmed rim tramp under your orders,” I replied, “and I can give you all of your marines, and authority to have weapons made when possible. But Major, you’re going to be pretty much on your own.” I shrugged. “Hopefully, we’ll be ready to fight within a few weeks of Jonas’ invasion, but I can’t guarantee that, of course.”
He nodded excitedly. “We know we’ll need an active resistance movement on Haven, but how many other planets do you think we’ll need to cover?”
I sighed. “I wish I could tell you. There are thirty-one inhabited systems in the sector, but Jonas has limited resources. If I were you, I’d start with Haven, and then perhaps set up operations commanded by one of your subordinates on Gamma, if necessary. I’m told that Gamma and four other systems are the economic engine of the sector. I’d expect them to be Jonas’ secondary targets.”
“Thank you, sir!” he crowed. “We’ll keep him so busy he won’t have time to think about you and the Viceroy!”
I nodded. “I hope so. However, please bear in mind that you’ll be dealing mostly with civilians, both as fighters and as hostages. This won’t be a picnic, Wil. You may have to watch some pretty nasty reprisals take place, and you may have to deal with double agents, criminals, and a lot of other slime. By the time this is over, you’ll be praying to any god that’ll listen for some disciplined marines.”
Tor grinned. “I can handle it, sir. If I run into trouble, I’ll just ask myself, ‘What would Kedron do?’”
I answered his grin. “I hope not. Mostly, Kedron would run!”
A few more pleasantries, and Tor was off, excited as a kid. I hoped I’d be seeing him again.
My next problem was finding someone to command the asteroid boat base. I’d need someone with an understanding of the capabilities of the boats, and the skill and patience to handle the undisciplined pilots. On the advice of Jabeth Rawl and Toms Tindarr, I settled on the supervisor of the orbital smelting station on Delta. He was a tough, grizzled, whipcord-thin old man who was an ex-asteroid miner himself. Most of the miners claimed to dislike him intensely, but they obeyed him without question. I didn’t like him much, but he and Cord hit it off right away. Like him or not, I had confidence that he would be able to run the station, and the intelligence to use it effectively when the time came.
I never did really establish a headquarters on Haven. When Valkyrie arrived, I moved aboard her in orbit. For such planet-bound activities as were necessary, I shuttled to a small office in the viceregal palace. For the most part, I tried to stay off that frozen mudball.
I was walking from the palace’s landing pad to the palace itself when I saw the flash and heard the sharp crack of molecules ionized by a blaster. I instinctively dropped to the ground. After seventeen years in the marines, I was very familiar with the sound of a near miss. I rolled toward cover as the Viceroy’s guards opened fire.
All but one of the guards scurried off in pursuit of the assassin. The one who remained crouched over me, his laser tracking back and forth above my head. There could, after all, be more than one shooter. After a long moment, he said, “When I say go, Admiral, run for the palace; it’s closer than the shuttle . . . Go!”
I levered myself to my feet and pounded across the pad toward the ornate door, puffing and cursing. It seemed to take days to cover the few yards, my back prickling from the anticipated blaster bolt. Finally, I reached the door and dove through it. I squirmed around so that I could see out the plas of the door, but I remained prone on the floor.
There was a flurry of blaster and laser fire near a small hut at the edge of the landing pad, then silence. Finally, my protector rose and walked casually to the door. I rose to greet him.
“We got him, Admiral. One of our guys is wounded slightly, but otherwise everything’s all right.”
“Any idea who he was?”
The man shrugged. “No, sir. I expect Inspector Tomys will find out. We frown on people trying to kill the Viceroy’s guests, here!" He looked very angry; outraged at the very idea that someone would attempt an assassination at the palace.
Tomys arrived at a pounding run. “You’re really all right, Admiral?”
I assured him that I was unharmed, and he relaxed visibly. “Good, good.” Then he resumed briskly, “Well then, Admiral, I have some work to do, but I see no sense in delaying you any further. I’ll let you know what I learn.”
It was an obvious dismissal. After a few more courtesies, I continued on to my office cubby. It didn’t work. When I found myself reading the same passage for the fourth time and realized that I still had no idea what it said, I gave up and fidgeted, waiting to hear from Tomys.
It was several hours later that I was summoned to Cord’s office. Tomys lounged in a chair across from Cord’s desk.
“Well, Admiral,” Cord began with a sardonic grin, “Few of us are privileged to know our exact worth. Yours seems to be ten thousand crowns!”
I glanced at Tomys. “I thought you had all of Jonas’ MI people under control.”
He nodded. “We do.The shooter wasn’t Military Intelligence. Oh, we’ve identified him, all right. He was a professional killer named Ven Dorgo.” He frowned. “I’m not all upset that dear old Ven is dead, but I sure wish I’d been able to talk with him a bit.”
Cord looked exasperated. “Damn it, Ralf, the guards tried! But when one of them was wounded, they couldn’t take any more chances. I won’t criticize people for doing their jobs effectively!”
Tomys held up his hands in surrender. “I understand, sir, and I don’t blame the guards for killing him. But I’d dearly love to know who gave him that ten thousand. It wasn’t one of Jonas’ regular agents – they’re either in custody or under surveillance. That means that Jonas either has some deep-cover agents we don’t know about, or close contacts in the underworld."
“I’d vote for the underworld contacts,” I put in. “I don’t think Jonas is intelligent enough or cares enough to have set up deep cover agents.”
Tomys shrugged. “Well, somebody is willing to put up ten thousand for your head, Admiral. While we try to figure out who’s involved and what they’re up to, I’d suggest you begin taking precautions.”
Cord nodded in agreement. “Yes. I think you’d better have a bodyguard, Admiral.”
I cursed. “No! Look, sir, how about if I start carrying a weapon? I really don’t want to be stumbling over gunmen!”
Cord shook his head. “Sorry, Admiral. Somebody wants you dead, and is willing to pay handsomely to have that happen. I need you too badly to let you get killed because of foolish pride.”
“How about a compromise?” I asked desperately. “You can put an escort or bodyguard on me when I’m down here, if you insist. But if I start running around with a bodyguard aboard Valkyrie, the crew’s going to start thinking I don’t trust them. Until now, I’ve managed to get cheerful enthusiasm from them, and it’s brought us a real chance of beating Jonas. However, if people can’t talk to me without being frisked by a guard, that cheerful, friendly enthusiasm will turn to surly compliance. We need our people motivated to use their imaginations. I can’t endanger that, no matter how much risk there is.”
Cord looked thoughtful. “I understand, Admiral. And I agree that your approachable style has had a lot to do with our accomplishments so far.”
“All right,” he concluded, “I won't require you to have a bodyguard on board your ship, if you'll agree to go armed when aboard. When you’re grounded, though, you will have the best man that Ralf can give you as a bodyguard. Once the news that they’ve tried to kill you gets out, I’m sure that our people will understand.”
I sighed. It was obviously the best deal I was going to get, and I finally agreed.
When I returned to Valkyrie
, I was amazed at the crew’s reaction to news of the attempted assassination. They were furious! People I barely remembered went out of their way to find an excuse to talk to me, to assure themselves that I was all right and express approval of the needler now slung from my waist.
Most amazing of all was Suli. Her anger was monumental. I suspected that the shooter was lucky to have been killed by the guards. If he’d fallen into her hands . . . I’d never have suspected her of such feeling for me. It almost made me hope . . .
At any rate, Jonas’ plan seemed to have backfired. Valkyrie’s crew was more motivated than ever, and their grim determination to prevail over the man they were now calling “Backshooter Jonas” spread to everyone else.
Wil Tor came through immediately. Two days after our initial talk, he accosted me in Valkyrie’s galley.“Sir, I think we’re going to need secure communications,” he began.
I nodded. “So do I, but I doubt we can get them with the Fleet monitoring equipment available to Jonas.”
He shook his head. “No, sir, I think we can do it. We can use something called the radio spectrum for communication! See,” he continued excitedly, “They used the low radio frequencies a lot, pre-empire. I’m talking about only a few kilocycles per second. It’s just that better fidelity could be attained farther up the electromagnetic spectrum, so they stopped using the old radio frequencies over a thousand years ago. Moreover, of course, Ultra coms don’t use radio at all. I doubt if anyone but a few scientists even scan the radio spectrum any more. We might be able to communicate right under Jonas’ nose!”
I was starting to get excited, too. “You may be onto something. But, aren’t there limitations? I mean, there must be a reason we don’t use them anymore.”
He shrugged. “Well, I think they’re line-of-sight, for one thing. And they may need more powerful transmitters. Sheol, sir, I don't know; but I’ll bet you could find out!” He grinned maliciously.
I grimaced. “Have I ever told you how much I hate smartasses? All right, I’ll look into it. I hope you’re right. Secure communications would be a big help.”
I wasted no time checking with the experts — except that there were no experts on low-frequency radio as a communications medium. Most of the scientists dismissed the idea out of hand, but Cord found a ‘brilliant young man’ brilliant enough to admit that he didn’t know, but wanted to find out. Cord put him in charge of a team and gave him a week to find out if it were possible at all, and to design the transmitters and receivers if it were.
He was back in three days. He’d taken my suggestion that the low frequencies had been used for communication in the past, and done his homework before starting hands-on research. Of course, he’d had almost immediate results. Most of the three days, he claimed, were used in designing transmitting and receiving equipment. He called our new frequencies “Amplitude Modulated,” and it turned out that there were drawbacks to them. For one thing, the signal was strictly line-of-sight. For another, it degraded badly over distance. However, none of this was a serious enough handicap to change our plans to use them. He had designed combination receiver/signal amplifier/transmitters that we would strew all over Haven City and the surrounding areas. He assured Cord that the equipment could be manufactured in large numbers in a matter of two or three weeks.
He was as good as his word, and less than a month later, I was able to issue several hundred of the transceivers to Wil. Wil’s people even had receivers implanted in their heads, on the mastoid bone, so that only they could hear transmissions, and transmitters that clamped to their throats, so they could transmit subvocally. The tramps and boats were also equipped with more powerful versions. Every building in Haven City more than two stories tall now had small boxes containing the receiver/amplifier/transmitters mounted on them. Every tower within two hundred kilometers, no matter what its original purpose, became a communications transmission tower as well. We classified all of it top secret, of course.
Wil wasn’t done. The floodgates had been opened, and Wil seemed to want to make versions of every early weapon he’d ever read about. Finally, I foisted him off on Cord's ‘brilliant young man.’ He and Wil seemed to be kindred spirits, and within minutes they were buried in esoteric methods of slaughter. I hoped they’d come up with some useful gadgets before Jonas arrived.
I wasn’t surprised when Cord summoned me to his office. I’d been a frequent visitor. Cord began by asking me for a status report. When I finished summarizing our progress, he merely sat, thoughtful, for a moment. Then he dropped his bombshell.
“I think it’s time to make the announcement, Admiral. Nothing can be gained from further delay. I want you to make sure that all ships in orbit tune in, and broadcast the activities ship-wide. You will also make rim tramps available to deliver copies of the tapes to every other inhabited planet in the sector, together with my orders for planet-wide broadcast. That includes Thaeron! Do whatever it takes to smuggle a copy to the Thaeron system. Arrange for its broadcast there, if possible. If that’s not possible, try to arrange for mass copying and underground distribution. After the ceremonies, the Emperor recorded a personal message to the people of the rim worlds; I want to make sure that it is seen by every man, woman and child on the rim.”
Cord commandeered all the civilian channels for three hours. Repeated announcements asked all citizens of Haven to tune in.
Since I had a pretty good idea what was going to happen, I watched the proceedings in a local bar in Haven City. I divided my time between the broadcast and observation of my fellow customers.
The broadcast started with Cord simply sitting at an empty desk. “My fellow Rimworlders,” he began, “A few weeks ago, we were honored by a personal visit from His Imperial Majesty, Eron XXIV himself. This historic occasion was the first time in history that an Emperor has visited the Rim Sector.”
“Unfortunately, due to the unsettled conditions caused by the treasonous activities of some military personnel on Thaeron, His Imperial Highness was forced to visit in secret. However, despite dangers that prevented a state visit, His Majesty insisted on making a visit to his loyal subjects of the rim worlds. The rest of this broadcast will deal with the Emperor’s visit, and an important announcement by His Imperial Majesty that affects every man, woman and child on the rim worlds.”
The tapes opened with the welcoming ceremonies on Haven, and the presentation of the new yacht to the emperor. After a tour of the yacht escorted by vid cameras, the imperial party adjourned to the viceregal palace. The patrons of the bar were rapt with attention. At least six bystanders shushed a drunk who began to complain loudly.
The coverage resumed in the palace’s Receiving Room, with the Emperor enthroned on one end, resplendent in ceremonial robes. Obviously playing to the vid cameras, the Emperor unrolled a stiff parchment and began reading. Unsurprisingly, Cord had been telling the truth. Despite the florid, concealing language, by listening carefully I could understand the meaning of the proclamation. The rim would remain attached to the Empire in name only. Aside from a nominal fealty, the rim would have no responsibilities to the Empire, and the Empire would have no responsibility for the rim.
The Emperor spent several minutes reading the ornate parchment aloud. Finally, he laid it carefully aside. Then, looking directly into the cameras, the Emperor began removing his ceremonial robes. Beneath them, he wore a plain business suit. Laying aside the robes, he removed the huge crown of state, and donned a simple gold circlet.
This was unheard-of behavior for an Emperor in public. However, he wasn’t finished. Handing the crown to an aide, he stepped down from the dais, and stood behind a simple lectern.
He began speaking. “The ceremonial robes have been laid aside. The crown of state has been removed. With those removals, I no longer speak to you for the Empire. I speak to you as your Emperor, Eron XXIV, and I speak without the imperial ‘we’, because I wish to speak personally and directly to each of you. I have asked Viceroy Cord to make sure that everyone on th
e rim worlds sees this tape; but I also ask that it not be circulated off the rim. This is just between us.
“You have heard me announce a bold and unprecedented experiment in government,” he began. “The rim worlds were chosen for this experiment because, among all the sectors of the Empire, the rim worlds are unique. For years, I have admired you from afar. The rim is our frontier. The people who came out here, and their descendants, are special. Cowards don’t move to a frontier. They stay on their comfortable inner worlds and read exaggerated accounts of your exploits. The weak, those that come to the frontier, don’t survive. Nor do the stupid. The challenges of frontier life kill them. No, the people of the rim are the brave, the bold, the strong, and the intelligent. You are the hope of the Empire and of mankind.
"The Empire faces unprecedented challenges in the years to come. The people of the rim are best equipped to meet those challenges. I and the rest of the Empire will be looking to you, your children, and their children to help us survive those challenges. This is why Sander Cord was appointed Viceroy of the Rim Worlds.
“Viceroy Cord has my complete confidence. He has led the rim words effectively and loyally, and is well suited to lead them to meet the challenges of the future. I ask that you honor him with the same loyalty and devotion with which you have served me, and my father before me.”
The image of the Emperor faded out, to be replaced by that of Cord. “My people,” he began, “One of those challenges that the Emperor mentioned stands before us already.
“Many of you,” he continued, “are aware of the mutiny now taking place on Thaeron. For those of you that aren’t aware of it, a Fleet Rear Admiral has found out about the emperor’s bold experiment, and thinks that he can take advantage of it to seize the rim and turn it into his personal kingdom.
“Unfortunately, he controls a rather large flotilla of warships. This firepower raises him from a petty plotter to a real threat to the rim. It is this firepower that forced the Emperor . . . Our Emperor! . . . to sneak into and out of his own domain in secret!” He looked scandalized, and it was a moment before he could resume speaking.
The Emperor's Conspiracy Page 15
