Knight's Move

by Nuttall, Christopher

  Ultimate objective of attackers; unknown.

  “Both conclusions cannot possibly be accurate,” Glen pointed out. “Unless you’re proposing that there’s a joint operation that wants ... that wants what? What do they get out of this?”

  “That I don’t know,” Cynthia admitted. “All it seems to have done is raise tensions between the colonies and the Federation – and slaughter vast numbers of aliens. But if that is the point ...”

  Glen looked up at the star chart, thoughtfully. Who benefited from causing a war between the Bottleneck Republic and the Federation? The Bottleneck Republic might lose; there might be tensions, but there was no need to actually spark off a war. And the Federation might come apart at the seams if it had to go to war against fellow humans. What would that do to the political tensions within the Federation Senate?

  The Dragons? They’d benefit – and there were endless suspicions that their warlords might have stashed away more war material than the treaty permitted them. What if one of them was behind the whole scheme? Get the Federation fighting a civil war, which would rapidly turn savage given how many problems had been swept under the carpet during the Draconic War, then quietly rebuild their military and then retake their empire. Would the human race drop everything a second time to fight the Dragons? Or would humanity be so ground down by fighting each other that the Dragons would overwhelm whatever was left of humanity before the fleet could be rebuilt?

  “If this is true,” he said, after outlining his suspicions, “we have to convince the Governor not to press matters any further.”

  “I don't think she has a choice,” Cynthia pointed out. “How would the Dragons have obtained Colonial Militia starships?”

  Glen rubbed his forehead, angrily. That was the stumbling block, wasn't it? The starships that had carried out the attack had belonged to the Colonial Militia. There was no doubt of that, which meant that a faction within the militia had to be involved with the raiders. It was unlikely that an entire squadron of starfighters could go missing without command involvement, let alone a small squadron of starships. Things had gone missing in the Federation – there were all sorts of jokes about how senior officers used deployments to account for pieces of equipment that had gone missing – but how did someone lose an entire squadron of ships?

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Every piece of evidence seems to point towards a crazy joint operation carried out by both the Federation and the Colonial Militia. It makes no sense at all.”

  He stared down at his hands, feeling helpless. What were the raiders doing – and what was their ultimate objective? If Sandy knew by now, she wouldn't be able to tell them until the raiders resurfaced, which ran the risk of her detection. And then ... Glen knew precisely what would happen to a spy caught within the raider ranks. She’d be begging for death by the time they’d finished with her.

  “It doesn't,” Cynthia agreed. “But that normally means we’re just missing the key piece of the puzzle.”

  Glen nodded and reached for the datapad. What were they missing? Who benefited from the whole affair? No one, apart from the Dragons. Or was he missing something right in front of his eyes?

  “Get them to follow the money,” he said, finally. If there was one thing Theodore had taught him, it was that whoever paid the piper called the tune. The raiders themselves might be mercenaries, but their backers would set the ultimate objectives. “I want to know who bought the ships.”

  “The Colonial Militia,” Cynthia said, puzzled. “They bought them legally ...”

  “Yes, but where did they get the money?” Glen asked. “Where did it come from?”

  He put the datapad down on the desk, then rubbed his eyes. “The storm is making it hard to send messages,” he said. “Get some rest, then try and send the messages during the next duty shift. It’s still a week until we reach Primus Omega, so you can keep working on the problem until then. After that ... we’ll just have to see what the investigators turn up.”

  “If they turn up anything,” Cynthia said. “The money might have come from the colonies ... without a more precise source.”

  “Maybe,” Glen said. For once, he found himself wishing that he had paid more attention to his brother’s lessons on creative accountancy. Given enough ingenuity, quite a few funds could be hidden and no one would notice, not without taking the books apart and going through every single line. “But that is indeed the question. Where did the money come from?”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The next two weeks passed smoothly, suspiciously so. Sandy largely split her time between Extreme’s bridge and her cabin, where she slept and dreamed of tactical problems. Her new commander was determined to ensure that she knew her job, which seemed to include giving her large numbers of tactical exercises to carry out. Sandy could have done most of them when she’d been a raw cadet, but she did her best to pretend to be working towards mastery. If nothing else, it gave her plenty of time to monitor the local environment.

  And it was astonishing just how much she could pick up by watching carefully and saying nothing. The raiders had gathered twenty-one warships, all ex-TFN; they would need to be met by a fleet of equal or greater strength to be defeated. Even though they were clearly unwilling to pick fights unless the odds were definitely in their favour, Sandy couldn't help wondering how long it would be before they started going after much bigger targets. She tried to convince herself that Xenophon was a once-off, a target of opportunity aided and abetted by access to codes from Fairfax, but it didn’t work. Whatever the raiders and their mysterious backers had in mind was far more than just alien slaughter. They could have taken out all of the camps in the Fairfax Cluster by now, if that had been their sole objective.

  She watched, and listened, and recorded everything in a hidden subsection within the computer network. One ship interested her; it resembled a battlecruiser, but close inspection revealed that either it was in very poor condition or it wasn’t a warship at all. It seemed to come and go without reference to the remainder of the fleet, suggesting ... what? She didn't have any way to find out directly, but cross-checking the timing with command conferences between the senior officers told her that one was held after the mystery semi-battlecruiser had come and gone. It didn't take long, after that, to realise that the ship belonged to whoever was backing the raiders. If she hadn't already known it, the ship’s presence proved the involvement of serious money.

  The more she thought about it, the more she wondered if the source of the funds lay squarely within the Federation. There were few organisations within the Bottleneck Republic that could have funded the squadron, certainly without being noticed. It would be an expenditure of billions of credits a year, more than any planet could meet while maintaining its other obligations. Was it possible, she asked herself, that factions within the Federation were quietly taking action against the aliens – or against the Colonies? Having the colonies blamed for the raiders might serve as justification for ... what? War? Invasion? Or even a political blockade?

  But we’d be delighted if the Federation cut contact with us, she thought, choosing to ignore the fact that she was still a TFN officer. It would be painful, but we’d survive.

  She pushed the thought aside as her new supervisor came strolling over to her console. “I have a new tactical exercise for you,” he said. He dropped a chip into her lap, then smirked at her as she picked it up. “I need at least four possible attack plans by the end of the shift.”

  Bastard, Sandy thought. She’d had to deal with dozens of officers in the TFN who’d thought that the colonies had nothing to teach them and none of those assholes had had half the superiority complex this one officer showed. There were no personnel files on Extreme, but she would have bet good money that he'd been dismissed from the TFN after offending one too many officers or crew. She slotted the datachip into her console and ignored him until he stalked off to bother another crewman, then made a one-fingered gesture at his back. The datachip opened up in fro
nt of her, revealing a tactical chart. It was a very odd star system – and strangely familiar.

  It struck her in a moment of horrified realisation. Bottleneck! It couldn't be anywhere else. There was a giant orbital base in the system, a single inhabited world ... and nothing else, apart from a small handful of monitoring satellites. They’d carefully scrubbed out the data about how dangerous the system could be when approached through hyperspace, but if they came through the Bottleneck that wouldn't be so much of a problem. And yet ... they’d have to be out of their minds if they thought they could just hit the system and run. The raider squadron wasn't the First Strike Fleet. There was enough firepower based at Bottleneck to wipe the entire squadron out a hundred times over.

  Fleet carriers, superdreadnaughts, even a handful of escorts, she thought, savagely. They wouldn't even find it so easy to run, not in a system fizzing with hyperspace energy spikes. They’d be roundly fucked ...

  She shook her head in disbelief. The tactical outline didn't mention the Federation Navy warships, merely noted that the base might – might – have some starfighters devoted to its defence. Those bases were tough customers, Sandy knew; they were tougher than the orbital battlestation that had defended Xenophon ... and that battlestation had only been taken out by treachery. Even without the starships that were supposed to defend it, the battlestation alone might pose a match for the entire raider squadron.

  But she wasn't supposed to know that, she realised. She wasn't even supposed to be able to identify the system.

  They’d carefully scrubbed out almost everything that might serve as a clue, she decided, as she worked her way through the information on the chip. They wanted attack plans, but at the same time they didn't want her to know the exact target ... or the crew might mutiny, if they thought they were going to fly to their deaths. And yet, the whole exercise seemed pointless. Even if the starships were gone, the raider squadron was still going to take hideous punishment ...

  They might have a second freighter lined up to ram the base, she thought. But after what happened to Xenophon no one would let it close enough to ram without taking every possible precaution first. Or do they have access codes from Earth too? But even Admiral Porter would hesitate after Xenophon, no matter what the codes ordered ...

  She closed her eyes for a long second, then worked out a handful of attack plans, based on what the chip told her. They would work, she knew, if the chip had told the full story. But she knew better than that ... it just didn't make sense. If they'd wanted to kill their own crewmen, they could just decompress the ships. She honestly couldn’t see how else they might gain from the whole affair ...

  Unless they want the ships destroyed publicly, she added, in the privacy of her own mind. Do they want to give the TFN credit for destroying them?

  She saved her work to the chip, then returned to quietly monitoring the computer network through her console. As long as she didn't try to alter any of the core files, she’d discovered, the computer network ignored her. But it was difficult to see what was related to what ...

  “What the hell were you thinking?” The XO demanded, loudly. Sandy glanced over and saw that he was berating the helmsman, who seemed to have little experience with light cruisers or indeed anything larger than a starfighter. “If that had been real, we would have crashed into that motherfucking asteroid!”

  He must have sent a command through his implants, for the helmsman started to scream in pain. Sandy watched with a kind of horrified fascination as he scratched and clawed at his collar, which remained immobile. It had to be directly simulating his pain nerves, she knew; it was the most economical form of torture human ingenuity had been able to devise. If it had been an interrogation, the helmsman would have been spewing out his secrets within seconds. Instead ...

  She looked at the XO’s face and had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting. The XO couldn't be the helmsman’s friend – they had to maintain a distance – but it was clear that the bastard enjoyed tormenting his subordinate. Maybe he had screwed up, but still ... Sandy looked away as the helmsman collapsed to the deck, pleading for mercy in a voice that was cracked and broken. The XO kicked him in the side, then ordered him to leave the bridge and recover before returning for his next shift.

  Sandy sighed, then returned to her console. Almost immediately, she saw something different. The local processors hadn't monitored the XO’s implants – or the transmission they had to have sent – but they had triggered the collar. If she was right, and she prayed silently that she was, the collars were activated by the computer network. And that meant that they could be neutralised. All she would have to do was jam or destroy the network completely.

  Which would be dangerous, if we were in open space, she thought. But ...

  She was still contemplating possibilities when her shift came to an end. The XO took the chip and motioned to the hatch, ordering her to leave. It was sloppy – on a TFN ship an officer couldn’t leave his or her post without special permission – but they were at rest, orbiting the nameless asteroid. Sandy didn't bother to argue; instead, she just grabbed her jacket and walked off the bridge. Her cabin bunk suddenly seemed very welcoming.

  “Attention, all crew,” the Captain’s voice said, suddenly. It echoed through the starship’s hull. “We will be departing in five hours; I say again, we will be departing in five hours. All crew are required to be onboard one hour prior to departure. Failure to report will result in severe punishment.”

  And they’re not joking, Sandy thought, remembering the helmsman’s contorted face. Poor bastard.

  She shuddered. He’d been in agony, so much agony that he would have done anything just to make it stop. It reminded her of slaves they’d liberated during the war, slaves the Dragons had believed to be important enough to try to brainwash. They’d either become vegetables or they'd become cringingly eager to please their alien masters. The same technique was used along the Rim for creating pleasure slaves. It was thoroughly illegal, which didn't stop it from happening wherever law and order was weak. There were even rumours of secret pleasure slaves being conditioned on Earth as courtesans for the rich and powerful.

  Her fingers touched the collar at her neck. If she was caught, she would be tortured to death ...

  ***

  Primus Omega had never been a heavily-settled world, according to the files. It’s local ecosystem had fought back more effectively than most against the influx of flora and fauna from Earth, ensuring that the first group of human settlers had had to work hard to clear the ground for their crops. The war had put an end to most settlement activities, ensuring that the few survivors didn't really complain when they were evacuated after the world had been liberated. Only a handful of humans remained on the planet, all not entirely sane after a year of isolation.

  They should have turned this place into a penal colony, Glen thought, as he looked around the settlement. It was decomposing rapidly, the wooden buildings collapsing as the local ecology exacted its revenge. Only a handful of building seemed remotely intact, all held together by spit and baling wire. It isn't as if the planet is really habitable.

  He kept his face expressionless as the Marines searched the settlement, finally locating three older men, two middle-aged women and a handful of children. One of them was still a baby, born after the colony had been evacuated, but the others would have been alive when the Colonial Militia had left the planet. Glen couldn’t help wondering why they’d decided to leave the children on the hostile world; it wasn't as if they could make such decisions for themselves. But the colonies had always taken a more relaxed view of life and parental authority than Earth.

  The adults looked half-crazed, apart from one of the women, who just seemed broken by life and kept her eyes on the ground. Glen wondered, briefly, what horrors they’d had to endure; few of the tales of spacer stranded on alien worlds ended well. The kids looked almost feral, even the two girls who looked old enough to have had some proper education before the evacuation. One o
f the girls had a nasty scar on her face, one of the boys looked to have broken his nose and not received any proper medical treatment. But there would be none available on the abandoned world.

  Once, years ago, he’d watched Robinson Crusoe in Space, an entertainment flick about a spacer who crash-landed on a deserted planet and ended up building a small settlement for himself. Years afterwards, he’d watched it again at Luna Academy, where the survivalist tutor had pointed out, piece by piece, the many inaccuracies in the flick. Crusoe had been hellishly lucky not to die when he started eating the planet’s native fruit, he’d pointed out, and a whole army of settlers (even with the help of the planet’s native race) couldn’t have hoped to produce as many buildings as Crusoe himself. The original book, which he’d looked up during one of the handful of free moments he’d had at the Academy, hadn’t been much more realistic.