by David Weber
"Very well, Citizen Lieutenant Commander," he said after an endless, thoughtful moment. "I understand from certain other messages in your download to me that you were also scheduled for a stop at Cerberus."
"Yes, Sir," Heathrow said when Chernock paused. "We went directly there from Shilo. I realize it was irregular to use a Navy courier for Cerberus, but the State Security courier who'd been supposed to report to Shilo was late, and Citizen Major General Thornegrave insisted on commandeer—er, assigning us to the duty."
"And from Cerberus you went to Clarke, and from Clarke you came directly here?"
"Yes, Sir. I can download a copy of our astro log, if you'd care to review it."
"That won't be necessary, Citizen Lieutenant Commander. I'm simply endeavoring to be certain I have your itinerary firmly fixed in my brain." The citizen general smiled thinly. "You see, the problem I'm having down here is that there should have been a message— an eyes-only, personal one—directed to me from Citizen Brigadier Tresca."
"From Citizen Brigadier Tresca?" Heathrow blinked again, then looked at Howard. She looked back helplessly and shook her head. But he hadn't really needed that, for his own memory of their (very) brief stop at Hades was quite clear.
"Sir, there was no message from Citizen Brigadier Tresca," he said. "We receipted only a single transmission from Camp Charon, and it was directed to Citizen Major General Thornegrave in Shilo."
"Are you positive about that? There couldn't have been some mistake in the routing?"
"I don't see how, Sir. It wasn't addressed specifically to Citizen Major General Thornegrave, just to 'Commanding Officer, State Security Headquarters Shilo Sector,' but the destination code was clear. That much I can pull up for your review if you wish."
"Please do so," Chernock said, and for the first time it actually sounded like a request.
"Make it so, Citizen Ensign," Heathrow said quietly, and Howard complied instantly. The record was part of the information she'd already pulled together at Heathrow's instruction, and they watched together as Chernock considered it on his own com screen.
"I see," he said after what seemed a very long time to read such a short string of letters. "There appears to have been some confusion here, Citizen Lieutenant Commander. Do you have any idea what this message concerned?"
"None, Sir," Heathrow said very firmly indeed. Even if he'd had any idea, admitting it would have been a very bad move. Regular Navy courier COs who waxed curious about secure StateSec communications tended to end up just plain waxed. "All I can tell you," he went on, trying not to sound cautious, "is that one of the messages in the Hades queue specifically requested a response. It's SOP for the courier to be informed whenever that's the case, Sir, in order to ensure that we don't hyper out before someone groundside reads all of his or her mail and realizes a response is necessary. We aren't normally informed which message requires an answer or what that answer's content or subject might be, of course, and never when the subject is classified. In this case, however, my assumption would be that, since the only message we received from Camp Charon was coded for delivery to Shilo, Citizen Major General Thornegrave must have requested the response."
"I see," Chernock repeated. He gazed unreadably out of the screen for several seconds, then nodded. "Very well, Citizen Commander. You've been most responsive. I believe that will be all... for the moment."
He added the final qualifier almost absently, as if the need to intimidate regular officers was so deeply ingrained it had become reflex, and Heathrow nodded.
"Of course, Sir. If I can help in any other way, please let me know."
"I will," Chernock assured him, and cut the circuit.
"My God," Justin Bouret said fervently from where he'd lurked outside the pickup's range. "I thought for a while they were going to come up here and demand to take the message banks apart!"
"Wouldn't have done them any good, and Citizen General Chernock knew it," Heathrow said in an oddly detached tone. He felt the tremors of relief tingling in his fingertips and toes and raised one hand to mop sweat from his forehead without even trying to conceal it from his subordinates. "Even if they did take the banks apart, they couldn't make any sense of them," the citizen lieutenant commander went on. "Unless they have either Shilo's authentication codes or a copy of StateSec GHQ's override software, that is."
"You know," Bouret said thoughtfully, "I'll bet that if they did have it, they would have been up here."
"Maybe." Heathrow tried to make his tone final enough to end the conversation before Bouret said something unfortunate, then shook himself and smiled at Howard. "You did well, Irene. Very well," he said, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder.
"Thank you, Sir," she said softly, looking at the deck. Then she raised her eyes to his and smiled suddenly. "And you did pretty well yourself, Sir!" she added daringly, and blushed dark crimson.
* * *
"Do you think they're telling the truth, Brig?" Citizen Major General Seth Chernock asked.
"I think... yes," Citizen Colonel Therret said after a moment. Chernock's eyes asked the silent question, and he shrugged. "Everything Heathrow said or offered can be checked from hard records, Sir—if not here and now, then certainly as soon as his other messages are unlocked for delivery." He shook his head. "I don't see him exposing himself that way if he were actually up to something. If he hadn't known it would all check out—which it wouldn't, unless he was telling us the truth—he would've made us dig it out of him rather than offering it before we could even ask."
"But that's impossible," Chernock said. "It was Dennis' move."
"Sir, I realize how important your chess games are, but—"
"You don't understand, Brigham. Or you're missing the point, at least. Dennis and I have been playing chess by mail for nine T-years. It was his move, he knew Heathrow's routing would bring him here, and he would never have passed up the opportunity to send it."
Therret kept his mouth shut. He had never understood the odd bond between Chernock and the brutish, self-indulgent Tresca. Obviously Tresca possessed both patrons and an excellent performance record, or he would never have been selected for a post as sensitive as Camp Charon's warden. But Therret had seen enough evidence to make some pretty accurate guesses about the sort of gross sensuality and permissiveness Tresca had extended to his Hades personnel. Nor did the citizen colonel doubt the rumors of prisoner abuse and mistreatment. And while Therret would shed no tears for enemies of the New Order, he considered that sort of behavior destructive of discipline.
None of that should have been tolerable to Seth Chernock. The citizen major general was an intensely self-disciplined man, and one of the few true intellectuals who had served State Security since the very beginning of the New Order. He'd been a sociology professor before the Harris Assassination, with a tenured position as assistant department head at Rousseau Planetary University in Nouveau Paris. As such, he'd needed all his self-discipline under the old regime to conceal his disaffection with the Legislaturalists and his disgust over their insistence on propping up the moldering remnants of capitalism and its unequal distribution of the fruits of society's productivity. Not only had the RPU faculty senate never realized his true feelings, but he'd also managed to conceal his membership in the Citizens' Rights Union from Internal Security. After the Harris Assassination, he'd emerged as one of the leading intellectual supporters of the Committee of Public Safety, although Therret suspected his enlistment in State Security represented a sense of disappointment with the Committee. Chernock obviously realized that Citizen Chairman Pierre was unwilling or (more probably) unable, in the middle of a war, to complete the sweeping program of change Chernock had endorsed. But his own zealous commitment to it had never wavered, and State Security was certainly the logical place for someone committed to preparing the groundwork for his grand plan.
Since joining StateSec Chernock had become even more disciplined... and much colder. Therret had known him for only six T-years, but he'd seen t
he change in him even over that time period. The citizen major general remained capable of astounding warmth and friendship, but it was as if he were rationing the ability to feel human emotions solely to those in his inner circle. As far as the rest of humanity was concerned, he had retreated behind the icy armor of his intellect and his commitment to the ends of the Revolution, deliberately making himself hard as the accepted price of achieving his goals.
All of that should have made Chernock loathe Tresca, who was certainly no intellectual, about as undisciplined as a man could be, and (as Therret felt certain Chernock recognized) far more committed to the cause of Dennis Tresca than that of the People. Yet the citizen major general had taken to the ex-noncom the first time they met. In fact, Chernock was one of the patrons who had gotten Tresca his current assignment, and he looked forward eagerly to the slow, stretched-out moves of their interstellar chess games. And crude as Tresca might be, he did play an extremely good game of chess, Therret admitted. But then, the citizen colonel had never thought there was anything wrong with Tresca's basic intelligence; Therret's problem was with how the citizen brigadier used it... or didn't.
"No," Chernock went on, rising to pace back and forth, "Dennis would have sent his move. But he didn't—not unless Heathrow and that hysterical citizen ensign are both lying, and as you just pointed out, that would be incredibly stupid of them when we could check their stories so easily. Hell, all we'd have to do is ask Dennis to verify their version of events in our next dispatch to him!"
The citizen general fell silent, hands clasped tightly behind him while he paced faster and harder. Therret watched him moving back and forth, back and forth, until he felt like a spectator at a tennis match. Finally he cleared his throat.
"So what are you saying, Sir?" he asked.
"I'm saying something is wrong on Hades," Chernock said flatly. His voice was decisive, and he turned to face Therret as if grateful to the citizen colonel for pushing him into stating his conclusion out loud.
"But what could be wrong, Sir?" Therret asked, honestly bewildered. "Heathrow was just there. Surely he would have known if anything hadn't been kosher!"
"Not necessarily," Chernock said in a more reluctant tone. "He would have known if anyone had attacked the planet from space and captured it, yes. I'm sure there would almost have had to be gaps in the orbital defenses, wreckage, any number of things to suggest combat, if that were the case. But if the attack didn't come from outside..."
His voice trailed off, and Therret blanched.
"Sir, are you suggesting the prisoners somehow—? But that's impossible, Sir!"
"I know. But so is the idea that Dennis didn't send me a chess move—or at least a reason for why he didn't send it. I'm telling you, Brigham; something had to happen to prevent that. And if it wasn't an external attack, then somehow the prisoners must actually have gotten to Camp Charon. And they must have done it successfully, too. If they'd attacked and been suppressed, Dennis—or his XO, if Dennis had been killed—would surely have reported it to the next competent authority on Heathrow's flight plan. And that competent authority would have been Danak HQ, which means me."
"Sir, you realize what you're saying here?" Therret said very carefully. "You're telling me, on the basis of a chess move that wasn't sent, that the inmates of the most escape-proof prison in the history of mankind have somehow overpowered their guards and taken possession of the planet."
"I know it sounds crazy," Chernock admitted. "But I also know it must have happened."
Therret looked at him for a small, endless eternity, then sighed.
"All right, Sir. I don't know if I agree with you—not yet, anyway— but I can't refute your reasoning based on anything we know at this moment. But assuming the prisoners have taken the planet, what do we do about it? Alert Nouveau Paris and the other Sector HQs?"
"No," Chernock said decisively. "We move on this ourselves, Brig. Immediately."
"Sir, we only have two or three of our own ships here in Danak right now. And if the prisoners have managed to take Styx, I think we have to assume they've also taken over the armories, the battle armor storage and vehicle parks... We'll need troops and additional firepower, not to mention a way to deal with the orbital defenses."
"Orbital defenses?" Chernock looked startled by the citizen colonel's last remark.
"Sir, it's a logical consequence of your basic assumption," Therret pointed out. "Assuming they've actually taken Styx, then they must have taken the central control room pretty much intact—and broken most of the security codes—because they were able to receive, read, and respond to the message traffic Heathrow delivered. That being the case, can we afford not to assume they have control of the orbital defenses, as well?"
"No. No, you're right," Chernock said, and grimaced sourly. "All right, we need a ground combat element—probably a good-sized one—and an escort capable of taking on the orbital defenses. Damn!" He slammed a fist down on his com unit. "That probably means we do have to send all the way back to the capital!"
"Not necessarily, Sir."
"What do you mean?" Chernock turned back to the citizen colonel, and Therret shrugged.
"I read a report on the Cerberus defenses a couple of months ago, Sir. It was generated by the NavInt Section after that disgrac—" He stopped himself as he remembered who had been responsible for the tardy response to another escape attempt to which he had been about to apply the adjective. "After that unfortunate business with Citizen Secretary Ransom and the Tepes," he went on after only the tiniest hesitation.
"And?" Chernock chose to ignore his chief of staff's self-correction.
"It pointed out that the system was much more vulnerable to external attack than anyone with InSec or, for that matter, with our own HQ staff had ever realized. Apparently there's some way to attack unmanned orbital weapons from long range and take them out without ever entering their own engagement envelope." He shrugged again. "I didn't understand it all—it was written from a naval perspective—but the conclusion, I believe, was that even a few battlecruisers could probably blow a way through the defenses. Our own ships here in Danak might not have enough firepower, but if we conscripted a few naval units, we could almost certainly shoot our way in if we had to."
"We could?" Chernock looked disturbed by the thought that Hades was so much more vulnerable than he'd assumed. Or perhaps he was disturbed by the notion that he might have to become the one responsible for blowing a hole in the defenses StateSec had always thought were impregnable... and use units of the distrusted regular Navy to do it. He frowned in silence for several long seconds, then sighed.
"All right. If that's what we have to do, then that's what we have to do. But it's going to take time to organize all this."
"It is that, Sir," Therret agreed grimly, then smiled crookedly. "On the other hand, we should have some time in hand. Hades isn't going anywhere!"
"No, but if they get their hands on a ship or two, the prisoners might," Chernock pointed out.
"Not very many of them," Therret countered respectfully. "It would have taken thousands of unarmed people to overrun the garrison. I'll grant they might grab off the odd ship arriving solo, but they'd need more life support than they could possibly have captured that way to get any significant percentage of the prison population off-world."
"And if they sent a courier to the Manties to request a relief convoy?"
"They may have done that, Sir," Therret conceded after a moment. "I don't know if the Manties are in a position to respond to a request like that after the hammering the Navy's finally given them, but it's certainly possible. In that case, though, I doubt very much that we have enough firepower in-sector to meet them in a stand-up fight. So either they'll have come and gone before we get there, or they'll be there and we'll have to avoid action, or they haven't come yet and we'll get in in front of them, or else they're not coming at all. That's a fifty-fifty chance of accomplishing something even if the prisoners did manage to get their hands on
some sort of courier, and if we send dispatches to GHQ, we can certainly get a relief force to Cerberus a hell of a lot quicker than the Manties could."
"Yes, and then we might as well post the system's coordinates on a Navy info site," Chernock sighed.
"We can't have it both ways, Sir," Therret said almost gently. "Either there's a serious problem, and we need Navy help to deal with it, or there isn't."
"I know. I know." Chernock frowned into the distance, then shrugged. "All right, Brig. Before we do anything else, check our force availability. We've certainly got the manpower to restore control of Camp Charon. I don't know if we've got enough intervention battalions ready to go, but I'm sure we can draft enough Marines from the Fleet base to do the job, especially with orbital fire support available as needed. What I'm not sure about is the availability of transport and/or naval escort shipping. I want a complete report on my desk within three hours. Can you do it that quickly?"
"Almost certainly, but this is coming at everyone cold, Sir. I'd estimate that it will take at least a standard week—probably a little longer—to get a troop movement organized on the scale we're projecting. And I have no idea at all how quickly the Navy can respond."
"Then I guess we're about to find out," Chernock said grimly.
Chapter Forty-Six
"Welcome to Flag Bridge, Citizen General," Citizen Commander Yang said pleasantly.
"Thank you, Citizen Commodore," Citizen Major General Thornegrave responded, as politely as if they both meant a word of it, and they smiled at one another.
"As I explained when I screened you, we're just coming up on our alpha translation, Sir," Yang went on. "We'll reenter n-space in—" she glanced at the date/time display "—eleven and a half minutes."
"Excellent, Citizen Commodore. And from there to Hades orbit?"
"We're making a fairly gentle translation, Sir." Yang smiled again, this time with genuine humor. "There's no need for what a crash translation does to people's nerves and stomachs, after all. That means we'll hit normal-space with a velocity of only about a thousand KPS, and we'll be about fourteen and a half light-minutes from Hades on a direct intercept course. Unfortunately from the prospect of a fast passage, however, the Longstops can only manage about two hundred and twenty gravities. That gives us a total flight time of almost exactly six hours, but the decel leg will be eight minutes—and about a hundred and fifteen thousand klicks—longer than the accel because of the velocity we'll take across the alpha wall with us."
