“Bastards,” Mac Duibhshíthe hissed.
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” Rhine said. “It doesn’t get any better from here. Bandit Bravo was from TCNI Batch Twenty-Four-Fifty-One-F. Four of those units were bought into service by the Tau Ceti System Fleet. The other four were also purchased by the MSF.
“I would caution against taking this as definite proof,” he continued. “Our identification certainties on this are only about seventy-five percent. However…”
“Commander?” Damien asked.
“We are quite certain that the Míngliàng Security Flotilla carried out this attack,” Rhine said bluntly. “You’ll see why as we go to the interior cameras.”
The wall screen shifted to showing the central access way along the Mistletoe Solstice’s keel. The big containment doors lacked the sequential breaches Damien had seen them with, and the interior lighting was still working.
Space-suited crew members were positioning themselves on the walls to absorb recoil and preparing to fight when the center of the big door blew in.
The defenders had clearly expected this, and none of them were in the blast path. They opened fire, spraying the breach with bullets and mini-rockets. More bullets answered them, and a pair of riot blast shields emerged in the middle of the hole.
The shields absorbed most of the defenders fire as the attackers pushed their way in, and grenades shot over the shields, the lack of gravity carrying them on deadly-straight trajectories before they exploded.
It was over in under a minute. One of the blast shields was shattered, the man behind it killed by repeated gunshots. Three more of the attackers were sprawled at the foot of the breach, and a man in a uniformed space-suit jetted through the hole, giving instructions with sharp hand gestures.
As the smoke and debris began to clear, Damien got a solid look at the officer in the space-suit. He recognized the pattern and insignia immediately, and as the invaders progressed down the hall he got a good look at the rest.
All of them were in the black and blue colors and insignia of the Míngliàng Security Flotilla.
#
Rhine’s team had put together a clean progression of events, switching from camera to camera as the MSF troopers advanced through the ship. Nuru Afolayan’s stand at the simulacrum chamber was even more effective than Damien had thought from the debris, almost annihilating the entire first boarding party.
A second team, unfortunately, hadn’t been far behind. They brought up heavy weapons, and the young Ship’s Mage fell to grenades launched from halfway down the ship. From there, the augmented boarding team took no chances. Each breach opened in a containment door was followed by a salvo of grenades. The stand at the bridge door lasted moments – but still claimed several boarders as the bridge defenders had the only heavy weapons aboard the ship.
Storming the bridge ended in a fury of fire that left only Captain Afolayan alive – and clearly only because the boarders were aiming to keep him alive. The captain’s wounds weren’t even bound before he was cuffed and tied to his chair.
The same uniformed officer who had led the first boarding party now started interrogating the captain. He cut sections of Afolayan’s suit with a large knife, slowly working his way up as he clearly didn’t get what he wanted.
Behind them, suited MSF troopers were ransacking the offices and opening up the black box containment compartment. One of them jetted out from the captain’s office carrying a mid-sized navy blue carrying case triumphantly.
Just as the trooper was presenting the case to his officer, the video froze.
“The backup black box was a direct copy of the main black box,” Commander Rhine explained. “As soon as the main box was removed, its records stopped. According to its records, life support was still functional and there were still twenty-five crewmembers alive on the rotator ribs.
“At some point after the black box was removed, the computer systems were used to purge all atmosphere from the ship, and were then destroyed. Anyone left aboard only had whatever emergency oxygen was available to them, which ran out long before we arrived.”
“What’s that case?” Damien asked, gesturing towards the carrying case held by the trooper frozen on the screen. “By this point they’d already detached a cargo worth tens of millions.”
Mac Duibhshíthe coughed.
“I can answer that question,” the young Patrol Lieutenant told him, coughing again to clear his throat as he tried not to look at the screen with the scattered bodies. “We don’t publicize it much, but the upper atmosphere of Antonius’ gas giant has the perfect conditions to create naturally occurring silicon-carbon nano-filaments – the kind normally synthesized for use in high-powered computer cores.”
Damien caught Jakab whistling and glanced over at the Mage-Captain.
“Those filaments are insanely difficult to produce,” Jakab told him. “The Duke’s core uses just over a kilometer’s worth of them to run at a level few civilian ships need or want. That kilometer of filaments costs as much as one of her engines.”
“A case that size probably held three or four five hundred meter spools,” Mac Duibhshíthe admitted. “It would have represented as much as ten percent of the value of the Mistletoe Solstice’s cargo, and only someone involved in either the Antonius mining operations or security from Míngliàng or Sherwood would know to look for it.
“Míngliàng troops, Míngliàng ships, Míngliàng knowledge,” he continued, his voice harsh. “But Sherwood deaths and innocent blood. This is an act of war.”
“And unfortunately,” Damien said quietly, “I have no choice but to bring it back to Governor McLaughlin.”
“Unfortunately?!” Mac Duibhshíthe demanded. “Sherwood has a right to know about this!”
“I agree,” the Hand said calmly. “But you do not have a right to go to war. It is the Protectorate’s job to resolve this. My job. Which means that I would rather bring all of this to Governor Wong and demand answers and justice from him.
“But we have an obligation to inform the families, and I need to know what Commander Renzetti has learned,” he continued. “So yes, we will be returning to Sherwood and you will have your chance to pass all of this on to the Governor. But realize, Lieutenant, that I will not permit a war.”
He turned away from the rebellious looking Sherwood officer to Jakab.
“Mage-Captain, how long until we can be back in Sherwood?”
“We should have all of the bodies off of Mistletoe Solstice in a couple of hours,” the captain replied. “All of my Mages are rested and we’re only three jumps from Sherwood. I can have us back inside of an hour once we’re on our way. Say four hours?”
“Should still be before Renzetti returns,” Damien agreed. “Make it so, Captain.”
He turned to his own staff.
“Amiri, Christoffsen, meet me in my office in twenty minutes,” he ordered. “We’ll need to go over this and make some plans.”
Not least among them how to stop Sherwood from launching a war he was worried might well be justified.
#
They were close enough to the hulk of the Mistletoe Solstice that Damien could see it through the transparent titanium of his office’s massive window. The ship was illuminated by the lights of the shuttles hovering around it, or it would have been invisible against the void with no lights and no nearby star to reflect off the hull.
Dead spaceships had a certain eerie finality to them. Only the presence of humans and a supply of power gave the metal and machinery life, and in the absence of either only metal remained. His practiced eye could pick out where along the keel the simulacrum chamber where Nuru Afolayan had died trying to save her ship was, and he shivered as he remembered a few days of his own that could have ended just as permanently.
“My lord,” Christoffsen greeted him.
He turned to find that both of his subordinates had snuck in while he was distracted, but Amiri had simply grabbed a chair and waited for him to stop staring at the d
ead.
“We failed them,” he said simply. “The entire purpose of the Protectorate is so that people like Captain Afolayan don’t get killed doing their goddamn jobs.”
“There was nothing you could have done,” Amiri pointed out. “We got involved as soon as we knew there was a problem. Unless we’d swamped every jump zone between Sherwood and Míngliàng with Navy warships, there’s nothing more we could have done.”
“And it should be pointed out that these pirates took on a Sherwood frigate, one of the most powerful warships in the possession of a regional militia, as I understand,” Christoffsen added. “Had we, say, stationed a destroyer at every jump zone, all we might have accomplished would have been to add Navy dead to the tally.”
“The timing to all of this is suspicious as hell,” Damien pointed out. “We arrive in Míngliàng, and Admiral Phan shows up the next day having dueled with a Sherwood frigate? We head to Sherwood, and we get jumped by Míngliàng destroyers? While we’re in Sherwood, there’s an attack that allows us to definitely identify the MSF?
“It’s all too neat, and I don’t trust it,” the Hand told his aide, finally putting the itchy feeling between his shoulder blades into words. “I am half-convinced that someone is fucking with us.”
That silenced the other two for a long moment, but then Amiri started shaking her head.
“I can see why, but the timing is impossible,” she replied. “If they had a fleet of cloaked couriers – which would require dozens of Mages as I understand hiding a ship is not-quite-impossible – and had a frigate standing by to jump Phan on command, and were prepared to sacrifice two destroyers to bait the trap… maybe. But that’s a lot of stretching, Damien.”
“I know,” he admitted. “I feel paranoid, but the sheer amount of coincidence, the degree to which something starts to aggravate the situation for one side or another as soon as we show up… I feel like there’s a target painted on my back.”
“Other than the bomber on Sherwood, no one is coming after us directly,” Christoffsen told him. “If anything… no, that makes no sense.”
“What is it, Professor?” Damien asked.
The ex-Governor sighed, shaking his head.
“I defer to Julia on how possible the level of communication is,” he noted. “But if someone was playing a game here, we’d be irrelevant. Their only concern with us would be keeping us checking down rabbit holes while they get ready to kick over the whole mountain.”
“It makes no sense,” the Hand admitted. “Who benefits from a civil war between Sherwood and Míngliàng? There’s no one else even in position to mine in Antonius. It’s not even like we’d permit a war to last very long. They’d get a bunch of people killed, and then we’d bring in a cruiser squadron and maybe a battleship or two and force a ceasefire.”
“It would tie up Protectorate resources, both political and military, for years,” Christoffsen replied. “That might be the goal, but… I agree. I don’t see anyone making money or gaining resources or power by kicking off this war.”
“Even if there is no third party, I think there is at least one rogue faction involved,” Damien told his people. “The attempt on Commodore McLaughlin’s life suggests that she’s not involved to me, and I don’t see the Governor doing an end run around her.
“However, I also do not honestly see Governor Wong engaging in this scale of murder and piracy,” he continued. “It’s entirely possible I’ve misread everyone involved and they’re all lying to me.
“Regardless, I think we’ve let this situation degrade enough. It’s time for Alaura’s first step.”
Both of his aides had worked with Hand Alaura Stealey – Christoffsen on several specific missions, and Amiri as a forward agent. They knew her ‘three step’ process to dealing with issues: stop the fighting, resolve the dispute, and punish the guilty.
“I intend to restrict the Patrol to Sherwood,” Damien continued. “That… is going to be one hell of an argument, but I believe I can make it stick without having to babysit them. I then intend to do the same with the MSF, and we are going to sit on Admiral Phan and her people.
“I’m also going to order all shipments into and out of Antonius held until Admiral Medici gets here with enough hulls for us to start running convoys under Protectorate authority.
“We’re going to lock the players I know about down, and if there’s a third party out there, let’s starve them of targets – and then see if they want to dance with the goddamn Martian Navy!”
Chapter 23
“I’m afraid I don’t have much for you, Commodore,” Inspector Accord told Grace as he took the seat in front of her desk. Her steward had laid steaming cups of coffee out for her and her guest and then slipped out of her flagship office.
Thankfully, she’d mostly lived aboard the Robin Hood and hadn’t lost too much of value in the destruction of her apartment on Sherwood Prime. A few small things that hurt – including, ironically, the only physical photo she had of herself and Damien Montgomery – but otherwise nothing she couldn’t replace.
“Tell me what you have then, Inspector,” she told Accord, leaning back in her chair and watching the spare, graying, man across from her. “Because right now, I don’t have anything other than ‘someone tried to murder me’.”
The Inspector nodded and tried the coffee. He took a larger, appreciative swallow after the first sip, then put it back down and looked her in the eye.
“All I’ve done so far is eliminate possibilities,” he told her. “I can tell you this: the explosives on your apartment were not placed by a Patrol spacecraft. I’ve reviewed camera footage, weight records, and every other piece of data your people could provide me of every Patrol flight that came close enough. None of them dropped off the missiles or got close enough to lay the explosive.”
Accord sighed.
“Unfortunately, I can also confirm that the missile pod was Patrol,” he continued. “It originally belonged to Sherwood System Security and was shipped to the Patrol along with the heavy weapons for the Patrol’s boarding squads. It was noted by the Patrol as an error, and on Patrol records was shipped back. SSS got the note about the error, but never received the return.”
Grace nodded slowly.
“With the training scheme for the Phase Two ships, it could have gone astray anytime in the last six months,” she observed. That gave them far too large a period to try and track a single box coming in or out of the Defender Yards.
Accord coughed. “Sorry, I should have been clearer. The pod was shipped with the weapons and armor for the Robin Hood’s boarding teams. Two years ago.”
If she hadn’t been sitting Grace would have had to sit down. Two years ago? The trap someone had used as part of an assassination attempt on her had been stolen before she’d been Commodore – back when she’d been the senior Ship’s Mage on one of their initial destroyers.
“It wasn’t stolen to kill me, then,” she murmured.
“No. I suspect, and I have people running the analysis to be certain, that we’ll find more equipment and weaponry that went missing in similar ways,” Accord admitted. “Someone used your resources to assemble an arsenal of tools to make the Patrol look responsible for their crimes. Which makes me very concerned about the other task you’ve set me.”
Grace nodded, quietly checking the security on her office. Her wrist computer had a few toys most of them didn’t come with, and happily confirmed it detected no bugs or cameras.
“And have you found anything on that?” she asked.
“The only detailed imagery we have is of the engagement with Admiral Phan,” he noted. “The vessel in that imagery is running a lot of ECM and is at long missile range. I,” Accord sighed again, “am forced to agree with the assessment of Montgomery’s people – it is most likely one of our ships, but I couldn’t say which one.”
“How, Inspector?” she replied. “We have full records of where our ships have been and what they’ve done. I can buy that they could hi
de missile expenditures in their authorized live fire training, but these attacks are light years away from where they’re supposed to be.”
“I am not aware of whether it’s technically possible,” the Inspector replied, “but I ran an analysis. If we assume that our black box records are compromised, we can only trust reports of our ships’ locations from third parties. May I?” he gestured to the console on her desk.
She gave him a ‘go ahead’ gesture and he slotted a data chip into the reader. The wall screen lit up, and he started manipulating it from the console.
A star chart, centered on Sherwood, appeared on the screen. Three gold icons with text labels flashed – Sherwood, Antonius and Míngliàng. A scattering of green icons appeared, followed by a much smaller scattering of red icons. Each had a date and a ship name attached, in text slightly too small for Grace to read.
“The green icons are reports of our ships,” he noted. “The red are the locations and times of the attacks on Míngliàng ships as provided by Hand Montgomery’s people. The details of the analysis are on the chip, but the short version is that yes, our ships could have carried out every one of those attacks.”
Grace felt as if someone had punched her in the gut. She’d suspected and feared that she’d been betrayed, but his words were confirmation she’d hoped to never hear.
“Any particular ships?” the Commodore commanding the Sherwood Interstellar Patrol ground out, her heart cold and her voice flat.
“There is no attack that couldn’t have been carried out by at least two different ships,” Accord said flatly. “Worse, no one ship could have launched all of the attacks. Sadly, Commodore, the only thing I can tell with certainty is that the Maid Marian and Robin Hood weren’t involved, as neither of those ships has left the system.”
That was far worse than she’d feared. Potentially three of her five ships were compromised? Compromised so completely that both their crews and computers were lying to her and their comrades.
“It can’t be this bad,” she whispered.
Voice of Mars (Starship's Mage Book 3) Page 16
