“Yes, ma’am.” She heard him begin relaying her orders to the others as the comm ended.
Another trio of explosions, these staggered, and the building vibrated again. “They’re getting closer,” Gladkoff said.
Jessica couldn’t be sure if his fear was feigned or real, but either way, she had no time for it. “Then don’t slow us down,” she told him. “Governor, which way is the exit?”
Jessica stuck by Villipova—keeping one hand on her pulse rifle—as they moved down a side hallway toward a narrow, windowed door. She heard Gladkoff’s footsteps behind her, and kept enough of an eye on him to make sure he wasn’t trying to ambush her. Neither of these people was her friend, but somehow an Ellis Systems salesman felt far more threatening than a murderous dictator.
Clarke and Brancova were out in the alley behind the building, along with two bulky, nondescript colonists Jessica took for Villipova’s people. They swept toward the governor, who nodded to them, and Jessica turned to her infantry as Gladkoff leaned against the back wall of the building, breathing hard.
“Status,” she said.
“We make fifteen attackers,” Clarke said. “Bristol has sent the platoon to divide and disarm them.”
Jessica nodded. Her people didn’t know the city like the locals, but neither were the locals used to dealing with soldiers trained in multiple methods of ground warfare. She was putting her money on Bristol. “Keep your eyes on the governor,” Jessica told them. “We’re here to—”
Brancova abruptly leveled her pulse rifle at one end of the alley. “That’s far enough!” she shouted. Jessica turned, her own rifle up, to confront three people, two tall and thin and one much smaller, standing fifty meters off. The tall pair were wearing bright colors, clean and dust-free as if they worked in an office. The third wore the drab brown of a surface scavenger, covered in dust. They were all armed, but their weapons were small and short-range. Effective enough if you got hit, but at this distance, they would have to be either very good or very lucky to get a kill shot.
Where were the long-range launchers?
“Drop your weapons,” she told them. “We’re leaving.”
Two of them looked at each other, hesitant, and began to bend over, as if to put their weapons on the ground; but the scavenger—short, stocky, stubborn-looking—kept a snub-nosed weapon on the crowd. “You’ve got nowhere to go,” the scavenger said. “The port is closed. We’ve—”
A shot came from behind Jessica, and the colonist dropped in a bright, incendiary flash. The other two started, lifting their weapons again; Jessica flung herself against the wall as they fired. She had been right; they were terrible shots.
“Who the fuck did that?” she shouted; but she had a guess. Sure enough, there stood Gladkoff, a lightweight but long-range hand weapon in his hand. He was glaring at her, defensive.
“Are you a complete fucking idiot?” she shouted. They moved down the alley around the corner and kept running, Jessica keeping her eyes on Villipova and her guards, who appeared to know where they were going. “You really think you’re going to blast your way out of a coup attempt? You really are just a salesman, aren’t you?”
“They were going to kill us!” he yelled back, managing to sound genuinely outraged. “I came here to help these people, not die in a fucking alley!”
Now, she decided, was not the time to point out how much he’d just jeopardized his own goal. “Listen,” she said to him, “your job is to sell these people some fucking shaggy dog story about making their lives better. Mine is to keep them from fucking killing each other. You do your job, and I’ll do mine, deal?”
Ahead of them, Villipova’s guards pulled her through another door. “Go after them!” Jessica ordered her infantry. Gladkoff, apparently craving safety in numbers, ran ahead of her to join them. Jessica commed Bristol again. “What’s the status of those launchers?” she asked.
“We’ve got two of them, ma’am,” he told her. “No casualties. Still looking for the—”
She heard it before it hit, in that split second before the impact when everything around her slowed to a near stop and she felt certain that she’d reach the doorway in time, get through, close the door behind her, and have the entire back wall of the building between her and the blast. But it was less than a second, and the grenade fell, and the wall next to her flew to pieces, and she didn’t even have the time to throw her hand in front of her to keep the red Yakutsk dust out of her eyes.
Chapter 18
Galileo
Greg caught up with Herrod and Ilyana, leaving Elena a step behind him, and tried to reconcile this woman with the person Jessica had described in her report.
This was not the rude, disinterested observer recalled by Shimada’s Borissova friends. Neither was she a studied, subtle PSI spy. This woman was staring at everything, wide-eyed and palpably delighted, endlessly fascinated by her surroundings. Her fingers skimmed the smooth, clean wall, her palm sometimes flattening against it, and she kept looking up at the daylit ceiling. “It’s very consistent, your lighting,” she said approvingly.
“It’s easy,” Greg told her, “over a fairly small space.”
When they skirted the edge of the atrium, Ilyana stopped, staring at the greenery. The view was not spectacular—there was very little on this end beyond coniferous hedges and some low-growing herbs—but she gawked as if it reminded her of something. This time it was Herrod who filled her in.
“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” he said. Herrod’s voice was very nearly friendly, and Greg wondered what that meant. “For someone like me, who’s lived most of his life on a planet, it’s a real refuge out here.”
She smiled and looked at the old man. “Do you miss it, then? Living on a planet?”
Something crossed Herrod’s face. Greg did not know him well enough to identify it. “I think we all miss home, wherever that is,” he said, with surprising gentleness.
Ilyana stared at him as if he had revealed a profound truth, and then moved on.
Emily had asked about sending Ilyana’s guard to the infirmary. “Not yet,” Greg had said. “Send them to my office, and I’ll find some diplomatic words to explain it to her.” He had been thinking of ways to keep from offending the flinty Ilyana of Jessica’s report. Watching this woman gape at the corridors of his ship like an enthusiastic tourist, he thought he could assign an armored battalion to follow her around, and she would find it delightful.
Drug addiction, he knew, could cause personality changes; but he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard of anyone becoming friendlier before.
Elena said nothing during the walk to his office, but he knew how closely she was watching Ilyana. Elena was a mechanic by trade, but he didn’t think her year away from the Corps had lessened her instinctive watchfulness. She, like Greg, tended to be far more suspicious of people she liked than those she disliked. He thought she liked Ilyana quite a bit.
Once in his office, Ilyana’s body language shifted. She was no longer the rubbernecking visitor, but a PSI official, sober and focused. Perhaps this was what they had seen on Borissova. Perhaps, during that earlier mission, Ilyana had simply not had the opportunity to relax.
“May I project over the desk?” she asked, and Greg nodded. Elena leaned against the wall; Greg and Herrod took the chairs.
Ilyana touched her comm, and a schematic of the Fourth Sector appeared in the air. There were seventeen highlighted points, scattered in random positions. Without checking the map’s legend, Greg knew what they were.
“These are the Fourth Sector colonial catastrophes that you have confirmed are due to deliberate hardware sabotage by Ellis Systems,” she began.
And wasn’t it interesting that she had that little bit of intel?
“Here are similar catastrophes documented over the last year.”
Another set of highlighted points appeared, most of them clustered. Greg did a quick count: sixty-five. They had missed some. They had missed most.
“These,” Ily
ana continued, “are situations where we believe the colony either repaired the issue before it could cause damage, or caught the problem early enough to mitigate the harm.”
Another scattering of lights. Too many. How had they missed so many? But that was not Ilyana’s point. Greg leaned forward, reaching toward the image. Slowly he rotated it, looking at it from multiple angles, but his suspicion didn’t change.
“Do you see the pattern?” Ilyana asked.
Greg studied the lights. There was a significance there that had nothing to do with location. “Galileo,” he said, “highlight the colonies that have provided the bulk of the exports for the Fourth Sector.”
The image changed again, and all of the most recent victims flared to brightness: Govi. San Sandover. Yakutsk.
“That’s not all of them, though,” Elena pointed out. “They haven’t touched Tonoku, and they ship more hardwood than any colony in the galaxy.”
Greg had a theory about that. “Nobody in the Fifth Sector ships hardwood,” he said, looking back to Ilyana.
There was a pause before she responded, as something flickered in her expression; and then she gave him a blank smile. “Exactly, Captain. The economic contributions of these particular colonies are direct competitors of colonies in the Fifth Sector.”
He had seen it. He had known it, but the scope of the attack was far greater than anything he had imagined. Elena swore, and looked down at Herrod. “They’re helping them,” she accused. “Ellis is helping Olam and the others with their great hegemony project.”
Which was only a rumor, of course, one that Greg had been hearing his entire career. The Fifth Sector was the wealthiest, most stable sector in the occupied galaxy, and that included the First Sector, home to Earth. Many Fifth Sector colonies openly advocated the idea that it was past time for humanity to release their sentimental attachment to Earth and place the seat of their centralized government in a location that befitted its importance. That such a change would cement the Fifth Sector’s economic dominance was, of course, only coincidental.
It seemed that not only were the rumors true, but the Fifth Sector was well on its way to implementing a plan.
But Herrod played the skeptic. “That’s a big assumption, Chief,” he said.
“Bullshit,” she said, pushing herself off the wall. “We all know it’s Ellis taking these colonies down. If they’re selecting the ones that benefit the Fifth Sector, they’re doing it for a reason. And you know what it is.”
“I’m sorry,” Ilyana interrupted politely. “Do you have further intelligence on this issue, Admiral Herrod?”
“That’s Admiral, retired,” he told her dryly. “I’m not looped in to intelligence anymore.”
Elena threw up her hands and glared at Greg. “Are you going to let him get away with this?”
Dammit. She wasn’t wrong, but she’d never had any sense of subtlety. “Admiral,” he asked, “where did we stand with Ellis when you retired?”
Greg had his doubts about Herrod’s retirement. That it was true on paper he had verified. And he was aware that even within Shadow Ops, Herrod had never been the most powerful operator, and he was not sure Herrod had always been an enemy. He thought there was a good chance the admiral had been ousted because he was pushing an agenda too many of the others did not want to follow. Either that, or they thought he could learn more this way.
But Greg had no doubt he was still connected.
“Our last direct interaction with Ellis,” Herrod told him, “was over Canberra, a year and a half ago. Accusation and denial, most of which you saw. Afterward? PSI showed them evidence; they said the situation was down to people who had left the company years earlier. They claim errors, spin the public relations machine, and everybody moves on.”
“So you’re saying their propaganda machine is better than ours,” Greg concluded.
Elena scoffed; Herrod ignored her; Greg counted his blessings. “I’m saying people have more motivation to believe them than us,” the admiral said. “Especially here. The Fourth Sector has been historically stable, if not as wealthy as the Fifth. Ellis has been a big part of that stability.”
“So has Yakutsk,” Elena pointed out. “If they’re out of play—that opens up a big opportunity for Ellis, doesn’t it?”
“Without their exports, though, nobody here has the money,” Greg reminded her. “They could do some buying, but it wouldn’t be sustainable. They’d only buy enough to build their own infrastructure back up, and they’d still be decades paying off loans.” He looked at Ilyana. “Is this all you’ve got?”
“I have documentation,” she said, “of some of the failures you could not prove.”
“So what do we do with all of this data?”
Blink. “I’m sorry, Captain. I do not understand the question.”
He took a breath, remembering Elena’s look outside the door. “Captain Bayandi sent you with this information. What was his reason?”
Another pause, and she smiled again. He was beginning to find her smile disturbing. “I cannot speak to Bayandi’s reasons, Captain. He is generally quite logical, but I do not always understand. In this case, though, he did have a message to go along with this information, which is that it is too late.”
It was Greg who broke the silence. “Too late for what?”
Ilyana’s blank look lasted longer this time. “To stop them, of course.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Herrod tense. “Stop them from doing what?”
She shrugged. “Whatever it is they are planning.” His face must have changed, because she added, “Even Captain Bayandi is not psychic, Captain Foster. It is clear that Ellis has been working toward something for a long time. What that is, we cannot say. But I am here to tell you that your efforts on Yakutsk are irrelevant. What will happen will happen, and what we must do is prepare a response.”
Elena had sobered. “Are you saying they want us to go to war?” she asked.
“We are already at war,” Ilyana said comfortably.
Just then there was a familiar sound: a two-tone alert and a shift in the ship’s lighting. Greg got to his feet, Elena grew still, and Herrod pushed himself out of the chair from what must have been sheer habit. Before Greg could ask Galileo what was happening, his comm chimed, and the words Lieutenant Samaras hung in the air before him.
“Did you trigger this alert, Lieutenant?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.” Samaras was a nervous stammerer, especially under pressure. This time his words were clear, but the waver in his voice was unmistakable. The man was afraid. “Sir, there’s been an incident.”
Greg glanced at Ilyana. She should have been disoriented, on this ship she didn’t know, with these people she had only met a few minutes earlier. Instead she was watching her display, that same gentle smile on her face. She expected this, he realized. “What’s happened?”
“Sir, it’s—we’ve lost contact with the First Sector, sir.”
Lost contact. What the hell does that mean? “What,” he asked, feeling foolish, “all of it?”
“Yes, sir,” Samaras said. “We’re getting nothing from there at all. No comms, no stream, nothing. And everything we send in—it goes nowhere, sir. Bounces right off like they’re not even there.”
“Is it just us?”
“No, sir. The stream chatter—you can listen for yourself, sir. It’s everyone. Sectors Two through Six. Athena Relay isn’t responding to anyone, not even with basic telemetry. Nobody can get through to the First Sector, sir. It’s like they’ve just disappeared.”
Part II
Chapter 19
Yakutsk
“There’s a fucking fortune in that wreck.”
“Yeah, and there’s also a few hundred assholes still shooting at each other out there. How badly do you want the money?”
Dallas sat at a table in the corner, alone, listening to the others talk about the wrecked freighter shuttle. In many ways, it was the same conversation every time: This is the
wreck that’ll do it. This is the one that’ll make us rich. Dallas had been scavenging more than twenty years—long enough to be certain that none of the scavengers in this pub were likely ever to save anything beyond weekend retsina money.
“I saw that shuttle when it came into port. Forty tonner, easy, and armored. The nice armor, not the cheap stuff.”
“It’s the cheap stuff now they’ve shot it down.”
The last remark was followed by a ripple of laughter, and Dallas frowned, annoyed. People weren’t respectful anymore. Martine hadn’t been gone two days. Jamyung hadn’t been gone twelve hours. Dallas was aware of taking their deaths more personally than the usual random accident or political purge that took people Dallas knew; but today, there was not enough liquor to make it worth sitting and listening to this gang. The drink on the table had been Jamyung’s favorite; Dallas thought of the dead trader, drained the glass, and stood to leave.
“Oh, come on, Dallas.” Friederich had known Dallas for years, and almost always used that knowledge without kindness. “Lighten up. Jamyung was an asshole. You said so yourself more than once.”
“Yep.” Dallas tossed hard currency on the table; might as well leave a good tip before leaving early. “But Martine wasn’t.”
Friederich had the grace to look vaguely ashamed before he turned back to the others and began joking again. Dallas turned and left the pub.
It was late afternoon, the businesses along the main road beginning to pack up their merchandise in preparation for closing. When Dallas thought about it, there was no good reason for Smolensk to adhere to a twenty-four-hour cycle, or any specific cycle at all: night and day had no real meaning here. Dallas had been taught that humanity had evolved to function best under Earth’s solar rhythms, and that the domes had been constructed to mimic the night and day of the colonists’ ancestral home. But Dallas had never been much for sleep, and shops closing for the artificially enforced night was an irritant. And after the last two days, Dallas was feeling particularly resentful of meaningless irritants.
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