An Honorable Defense Book 1 Crisis of Empire

by David : Thomas, T Thomas Drake

  “Please, sit. All of you.”

  They filled the circle. The Satyrs’ short shins and long metacarpals, like a horse’s or a goat’s, made their legs work the wrong way for a Human chair. They weren’t, however, about to pass up the honor of being treated like real people. They sat precariously on their narrow shanks and tapped the floor lightly with their splayed hooves for balance. Koskiusko’s Marines laid their rifles quietly on the parquet floor. The Ghibli just squatted on the left side of the desk and drooled.

  On Follard’s blotter, carefully placed in the center, was a cordless black box with one red burton, covered by a locking bar, the Elsewhere switch. The bar could be unlocked with a seven-notch security key, the only copy of which was in Follard’s pocket.

  He moved the black box to one side without comment.

  “Now, Mistress Koskiusko, tell me . . .”

  “Yes, Inspector?”

  “How did you manage to convert a platoon of Central Fleet Marines to your cause? Under Captain Thwaite’s nose, as it were.”

  The two sergeants exchanged uneasy glances but held their peace.

  “They are not Captain Thwaite’s men to command,” she replied primly. “They were fresh landed at the port from the destroyer Thermopylae. They know me from duty on Gemini and agreed to help.”

  Follard looked at the men. “This is true? You had business on Palaccio, but not with your liaison office?”

  “We were on—ah—shore leave, Sir.”

  “Do you doubt me, Inspector?” Koskiusko demanded icily.

  “It’s my business to doubt everyone, my dear. I’d prefer my Service were not charged with complicity in the theft of Central Fleet property and kidnapping of Central Fleet personnel. You’ve met Captain Thwaite, no doubt?”

  “I have.”

  “Then you understand my concern.” Follard made his most charming smile.

  Mora Koskiusko smiled in return, and the temperature in the room lifted.

  “What about those three captured soldiers?” Firkin asked.

  “The mindscan should take about an hour. They have no choice but to let us know all they know.”

  The intercom on his desk buzzed.

  “Yes?”

  “A Captain Thwaite to see you, Sir. He says it’s official and urgent.”

  Follard shot a glance at Koskiusko and her Marines. She glanced back demurely.

  “Send him up.”

  The captain came through the door at double time with his head down, as if walking into a stiff breeze. He rounded on Follard’s desk then stopped, surprised at seeing a full house, complete with Ghiblis. He looked from one to another, then his eyes focused on the Marines and Mora Koskiusko.

  “So there you are! Young lady, I ought to have you spanked. The Admiral has been burning my butt for the last week over your disappearance. You sneak down planetside, commandeer the gig from an active-duty vessel, plus a squad of assault troops, fly all over hell’s half-acre, and then you leave them in a public square. To come hobnob with police agents and aliens. When your father—”

  “Captain?” Follard interposed. “You didn’t come here just to report a missing ship’s boat, did you?”

  “Eh? No, not at all. Or not till I came over and saw where she’d parked it. I had an—ah—a report that you’ve taken prisoner someone I want to see.”

  Follard took out a pen and fiddled with some notepaper. “Name of prisoner?”

  “Bertingas, Taddeuz. Formerly of the Cluster Communications Department. He was the deputy director, I believe.”

  Halan put down the pen. “No such prisoner here.”

  “Oh, then, perhaps I’m—”

  “Misinformed? That’s a possibility. Where did you hear this incredible story? And why do you say ‘formerly’?”

  “Well, I thought certainly if he had been charged with some crime . . .”

  “No charges have been preferred against the counselor.”

  “Then do you know where he is?”

  “Why, he’s here, resting. This morning he was rescued after an ordeal on the Uplands, attendant upon an aircar crash. My Service was of some help in the rescue, as were your Marines—operating under the directions of Mistress Koskiusko.”

  He nodded at Mora.

  She nodded back.

  Thwaite eyed them both.

  “May I ask why you are so eager,” Follard continued, “to see the counselor?”

  “We have had an interruption in our normal interforce channels. Possibly natural causes. More likely sabotage. Whatever. I wanted to access the Cluster’s communications facilities.”

  “So you came to interview a supposed prisoner about this? Why not deal with the director, Selwin Praise, himself?”

  “That’s a matter of—um—security.”

  “You don’t trust Praise?”

  Thwaite eyed them all: Firkin, the Ghiblis, the Satyrs, his own Marines, Mora.

  “Speak freely,” Halan urged. “Here if anywhere.”

  “I don’t know whom to trust anymore. The traders, the holders, the puppets from Central Center. At least Bertingas is—well—”

  “Too naive to be anything but loyal?” Follard offered.

  “You put it nicely.”

  “Why else do you think we worked so hard to get him out of the woods? Now, you suggest your own comm channels are down by sabotage. What reason do you have to suspect it?”

  “The last message we received—fragmentary—from Base Gemini implied they were going under attack by an unknown force. We’ve heard nothing for thirty-six hours and, until Thermopylae rounded this planet, had no patrol vessel to send on recon. Then somebody made off with the captain’s gig.” Here he glared again at Mora.

  She had gone white from shock.

  “And Daddy?” she said. “Don’t you have any—?”

  “The piece of coded report we picked up indicated an englobement by more warships than, frankly, I thought were spaceborne within three cluster diameters. If that’s true, there may no longer be a Base Gemini to reconnoiter.”

  Halan Follard watched the captain more than the girl’s reaction. Thwaite was taking pleasure in scaring her.

  “But I have to—” Mora started to say, then faltered.

  Into this lapse, Follard’s lab attendant knocked twice on the door and admitted herself.

  “Inspector? We have results from the prisoners. If you’d care to take them.”

  “Display them here,” he said, gesturing to the large screen hung against the back wall, between two preoccupied cupids. “The condensed form, please. Just the results.”

  The technician nodded and turned to leave, bumping into Tad Bertingas, who was coming through the door.

  Aside from a few scratches and broken fingernails, the counselor was looking as sunny and urbane as always. Instead of his usually immaculate clothing he wore a field uniform, sans rank or insignia, borrowed from Follard. It fit well enough, except for three tuck-rolls at each cuff.

  “H’lo everybody.” He smiled and waved to them all.

  “Tad!” Mora had found her voice. She jumped up, ran over, and put her arms about his neck. It took Follard a second to decide that this wasn’t an over-enthusiastic greeting, but a huddling for protection.

  “I’m glad to see you, too,” Bertingas said.

  “It’s not that, Tad. Gemini’s been attacked. Maybe wiped out.”

  “My goodness!”

  “By many ships. A lot of ships. A whole fleet of them. A fleet such as we—”

  “Oh, no!” Bertingas said. “Omigod. Are you thinking it’s . . . What Choora Maas told us . . . about . . .”

  “Hai-ken-maru.” The voice was mammoth, slow, slurred, frozen. The screen lit up with a race, one of the captured soldiers. He had slack, liver-colored lips and vacant blue eyes, swimming with tears. As they all watched, a hand come into focus with a gauze pad and blotted the eyes.

  “What was your assignment?” asked a muffled voice, offscreen. It spoke with a singso
ng, metronome beat designed to insinuate itself into the mindscan pulses. S’cur-i-ty.

  “Where was your assign-ment?”

  “Aitch. Cue.”

  “Aitch-cue? Where is H-Q?”

  “Hai-ken Maru’s is-land.”

  “Why were you up-country?”

  “To dis-rupt their comm lines.”

  “Yet you failed to do that.”

  “We went to find the trai-tor.”

  “Went to kill the trai-tor?”

  “Find him, too val-val-u—”

  “Who then is this trai-tor?”

  “Braid-cuff cub.”

  “Why is he a trai-tor?”

  “He knows the se-cret.”

  “What is the se-cret?”

  “No one tells the se-cret.”

  “What is the se-cret?”

  The lab tech broke in. “There’s more of this, Inspector, but it goes in circles. You’ve heard the best of the most lively one. These boys are, on the whole, unaware. About twenty percent, I’d say.”

  “Thank you,” Follard said. “Close them down.”

  He turned to Bertingas, who stood with Mora, staring at the screen.

  “You might have tried harder to save that officer,” Follard told him. “We would have had the best chance of getting something useful from him.”

  “Sorry. He also had the best chance of taking me out.”

  “So what’s the secret, Tad?”

  “That the Haiken Maru are using their island fortress, Batavia, to arm merchant vessels. Getting themselves a big fleet, fast, for a good price. Makes them a military power, equal in size, if not in skills or battleworthiness, to anything the Central Fleet or Cluster Commands can float. Choora Maas told us all of this, about ten days ago, but I didn’t know exactly who to warn. It looks like I waited too long . . . I’m sorry, Mora.”

  “Who is Choora Maas?” Follard asked.

  “One of my alien contacts, a Cernian, recommended as a source of recruits for this security force we’re building to protect the Cluster’s communications system.”

  “Recommended by whom?”

  “Selwin Praise.”

  “Then perhaps you had reason to hesitate?”

  “Perhaps. Still, if I’d told you, or Thwaite here—”

  “How do you know he’s loyal?” Mora interrupted, and Follard let her.

  “Well, I don’t. But . . .”

  Koskiusko turned to Thwaite and bored in on him.

  “What have you done, Captain, in particular, just lately, to keep Aurora Cluster loyal to the Pact? And what are you prepared to do?”

  “Why, with what forces I have,” he stammered, “which are one medium-size destroyer of uncertain battle readiness, back from extended patrol, two more that are currently out of contact, a ship’s gig, and a brace of Marines who are given to deserting their duty roster—why, I’m not sure just what I can do.”

  Bertingas was watching the captain closely. “Of course you know, Terrel. There’s something we all can do—”

  “Inspector!” the comm box on Follard’s desk interrupted. “One of the prisoners just expired. The other two are dying fast, and—”

  “Not now with that!”

  “Yes now! The dead one is transmitting, somehow, on about four frequencies we can read and maybe a lot more we . . . Perimeter watch informs me they’re tracking a low-flying aircar, without transponder, that will not answer our challenge. What shall I—?”

  Before she could finish, Follard had made a swooping dive for the surface of his desk. One hand retrieved the anonymous black box, the other fished in his trousers pocket for the key to the locking bar. As he came up with it, they all could hear, through the room’s tall windows, the falling whine of a pair of ducted airfans. Halan Follard flipped back the bar and jabbed down on the red button.

  A hollow whump filled his ears—louder than he’d supposed it would be, heard from inside a collapse field.

  Chapter 17

  Taddeuz Bertingas: DESPERATE PLOY

  Anyone who had ever traveled off planet knew the feeling immediately: the null moment. When a body’s physical dimensions passed a certain lower limit during an inversion collapse, electrochemical responses in the central nervous system ceased. For the duration of an interstellar jump—which had been measured, once, but the findings were contested—the body was clinically dead, as it was at the instant of a sneeze.

  Bertingas knew the feeling, although only in the context of a web couch on shipboard. He had never jumped standing up, and never inside a building. The result was he fell on his ass. And got the breath knocked out of him when Mora Koskiusko landed on his stomach.

  Kona Tatsu headquarters shook and swayed around them as the floor and walls found new equilibrium. A sifting of plaster dust from the ceiling drifted into Bertingas’ face. In one corner of Halan Follard’s office, a chiseled garland and the angel that held it crashed to the floor. The wallscreen, where the Haiken Maru soldier had appeared during mindscan, split and released a crackle of pent-up energy.

  The Ghibli, clearly distressed, roared and snapped over its shoulder at the sound.

  “What was that?” Bertingas asked. “An earthquake?”

  Patty Firkin sat up on the floor where she, too, had fallen. “We jumped, by God, we jumped!” she said.

  “Where to?”

  “Not far,” Follard replied, from behind the desk. “About fifteen kilometers up the valley. That’s all.”

  “And why?” Bertingas said.

  He rolled Mora off him but kept an arm around her, for support and protection.

  “I’m afraid that’s a classified—” Follard began.

  “Crippled Kali!” Bertingas shouted at his friend. “We’ve left a hole about ninety meters wide in the middle of downtown Meyerbeer. Even Regis Sallee could figure out how it was done. So spare me the long form and explain the why, okay?”

  “That last report, from our perimeter watch, indicated an unidentified aircar closing on the building. Our threat analysts predict that’s the most likely way to insert an atomic device through this building’s defenses.”

  “Did it go off?”

  “No, I got to the switch that activates a mass inverter inside—”

  The double doors to the room slammed open and three aides, armed with repulsors, crowded the opening.

  “Is everyone all right in here, Sir?” the lead one asked Follard.

  “No injuries, small damage. Deal with it later.”

  “Very good, Sir.”

  “Did it go off?” Bertingas repeated, this time to the Kona Tatsu attendants.

  They just stared at him.

  “The bomb in Meyerbeer. The one aimed at us. Let’s find out if there’s still a city back there—and a Cluster Government.”

  The three heads swung toward Follard.

  “Do it—discreetly. Launch our prepared cover story for the disappearance of this building.”

  The trio nodded and withdrew.

  “You have a cover story?” Bertingas asked, skeptical. “I wonder if I’d believe it. Something about a rogue space warp, no doubt. By the way, were you expecting company?”

  “On your behalf,” Follard said. “It’s the pattern. Wherever you go, Tad, assassins seem to follow.”

  “I know—‘the traitor.’ But traitor to what? I have—Mora and I had—the secret of Haiken Maru’s bogus battle fleet. That doesn’t make me a traitor—not to the Haiken Maru. And not to the Pact, either.” He shot a look at Terrel Thwaite.

  “Just before we jumped,” Follard said, “you were making a point about taking action. ‘Something we all can do.’ What is that?”

  “Well . . .” Tad searched his memory. “If there’s one common thread in this whole affair, it’s the Haiken Maru. Elidor, their Trader General, tried to suborn me. Remember that day I crashed in the lake at the Palace? He was trying to kill me when I refused to cooperate—I’m sure of that. Then, too, the Haiken Maru have a heavy investment in Arachne Clust
er. Their presence is as deeply rooted there as it is here in Aurora.”

  “So, you’re saying they’re in league with Spile?” Mora asked eagerly.

  Tad paused, then shook his head. “Not unless it’s a diversion. Spile has ambitions, certainly, but he’s too unstable to take—and hold—the High Seat. Elidor is pushing for his own Chairman, Villem Borking, to be voted the Secretariat.”

  “Or given it in default after Spile starts a civil war,” Follard said.

  “And ends it how?” Bertingas asked.

  “He’s started well enough,” Thwaite observed, “with a classic surprise tactic and support from a fleet of tricked-out merchant vessels. In the long run, however, Spile can’t win an open battle against the combined forces of the Cluster Commands and Central Fleet. Eventually, he’ll lose.”

  “After getting how far?” Bertingas asked. “Look at how much damage he’s done in the englobement on Gemini. He’ll go as far as the Haiken Maru want him to.

  “Unless?” Follard prompted.

  “Unless we intervene. Now. Choke off this third military force at its source.”

  “I can’t go on the offensive against Arachne!” Thwaite cried. “That would start the civil war Elidor wants.”

  “Not against Arachne. The real traitors here are Elidor and the Haiken Maru. I say bring the hammer down on Batavia. Stop their yards from converting any more ships.”

  Thwaite squinted at him.

  “That’s a bit ambitious, isn’t it? We’d need more firepower than I can command at this moment.”

  “We can call on Dindyma and his forces in Cluster Command,” Bertingas pointed out. “They have ships.”

  “Some. Not very good . . .”

  Firkin was nodding thoughtfully.

  “We need a coordinated plan of attack,” she said, “details on the island’s defenses, and a better feeling for the logistics. Haiken Maru have done well to place their headquarters half a world away, with the only close dropfields under their complete control.”

  “So take them out from orbit!”

  “Same problem, then—no ships.”