An Honorable Defense Book 1 Crisis of Empire

by David : Thomas, T Thomas Drake

  Patty went for a pincers approach, splitting her brigades to bring one over the land bridge—which would surely be mined—the other on a low air attack. Feint, foil, and fight.

  The plasma projectors on the two flanks of the bridge cross-fired and wiped out a third of her attackers. The loss was just yellow and blue markers in the machine. But it would be flesh and blood—or whatever ichor the Cernians, Satyrs, and Ghiblis of her new army used for blood—when the real action came.

  “I didn’t know you could do that!” she protested, pointing at the crossed lines of fused nuclei in the tank. “The magnetic charges ought to cancel each other.”

  Halan Follard shrugged. “The Battle Tech should know. Control of the plasma stream within the projector is magnetic, certainly. Once it’s past the orifice, however, the stream is inertial. It’ll go where you point it.”

  “This is a waste of time,” Sax observed. The Surian shifted her coils.

  “How so?” Follard asked.

  “It’s almost certain they have a black-layer refraction screen over that installation by now. Even if your archives don’t note it.”

  “Cost a lot of money to raise one of those on a whole island,” Patty said. “Look at the screaming that went on when they did the Palace.”

  “What is the Haiken Maru except money?”

  “There’s an energy penalty, too,” Firkin said. “A lot of their power reserves would go into maintaining the field, and they have no nearby grid to tap.”

  “Money is energy in other form,” the Surian whispered. “Their published accounts over the past ten years show unexplained gaps. That money went somewhere. Perhaps into building and powering a dome.”

  Patty had no natural fear of snakes. At least she didn’t think she had. Yet even the most . . . animal . . . of the many aliens who associated themselves with the Pact worlds usually had some endearingly . . . Human . . . quality. It helped to focus on that quality, and remind yourself that sentience relates to mind, not to form. The Surians seemed to have no such qualities.

  Sax was, in form and manner, presence and mind, a cold-blooded reptile. She was a twelve-meter-long anaconda whose scales scraped and rattled on the floor tiles as she shifted her coils. Patty could not believe that flat, narrow head—which was mostly gaping mouth, jaw hinges, and eyepits—harbored a brainpan large enough for intelligence. Yet the wisdom and memory of the Surians was legendary. The characteristic that gripped Firkin most was the “autonomic weave”—that hypnotic, side-to-side waddle the Surians did with their heads as they focused first one eye, then the other, on any object of interest.

  It made Patty seasick.

  “We can add a dome to the simulation,” Follard agreed. “But how big do we make it? And where do we put it? Outside the old mechanical defenses? Inside, covering the core administration areas and the landing fields? Somewhere in between?”

  Sax seemed to consult her gods. The nictitating membrane closed slowly over the near eye, then flicked back.

  “Then place it beyond the outer walls,” she said.

  “Gee, thanks,” Firkin murmured under her breath.

  “Don’t mention it,” the snake replied coldly.

  Adding an energy dome to the simulation made any attack with the ground forces Patty had almost impossible. Recruits toting repulsors and portable plasmics over unfamiliar ground, backed by limited air support, were barely competent against fixed emplacements in the hands of a 110-point Binet-rated AID. Giving that AID control of a blackout screen that could also block any metallic intrusion fixed the odds against her.

  “Increase the spectrum response,” Sax told the AID. “Take it up into the ultraviolet and down into the infrared. There is no point in limiting ourselves to mere Human senses.”

  “No, none at all,” Patty said sarcastically. There went her IR snoops and her field data wipers.

  As she began again with the gloves, Halan asked the Surian: “Have you collated the reports on the Haiken Maru’s weapons production at the island?”

  “We have rumors only,” Sax corrected him.

  “Well, then, the rumors?”

  “They have made up their losses since the Battle of Gemini.”

  “That’s bad.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Firkin’s puppet brigades fell left and right to a sonic resonator. She removed her hands from the controls. Before she could speak, two Cernians came into the room unannounced.

  “We have it, the purloined intelligence.”

  “From the disindentured recruits?” Sax asked.

  “Yes, one of the automechs brought her right hand over with her.” The Cernian waved an articulated glove, like those that controlled the battle simulation.

  “Plug it into the AID.”

  The alien did so, and the holo image deep in the tank reformulated. As it rebuilt, Firkin noted subtle differences: new angles to some of the battlements, realignment of pieces in the weapon systems, and a new perimeter to the refraction screen. It cut across some of the outflung redoubts in the wall but kept most of the island within its circumference. So the dome was a real part of the defenses, not just hypothetical.

  Firkin sighed.

  “What are the specs on that dome?” Sax asked.

  The Cernian consulted with the AID. “It extends farther down into the infrared and up into the ultraviolet than this system has ever encountered.”

  “Can we hit them with microwaves?” Follard asked.

  After a pause: “No. There’s a patch across the likely wavelengths.”

  “I don’t suppose we could hit them with short wave radio?” Patty suggested. “Send in six or seven hours of old speeches from the Secretariat? Bore them to death?”

  “Very funny,” Follard said. “All right, let’s try it again.”

  * * *

  Regis Sallee shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Deirdre rarely invited him to pass time with her anymore, not in any setting, and never in her boudoir. The evening boded ill.

  “It’s the most amazing communication I’ve received since we arrived,” she was saying. “From that pompous old fraud—doubly so.”

  “What fraud is that, m’dear?”

  “Pollonius Dindyma.”

  “Dindy—?”

  “You remember. He runs the local military establishment. Cluster, not Central. Technically, I suppose, he’s our general, while the others are merely their own.”

  “I see,” Regis nodded vaguely—to conceal that he already knew the contents of the General’s letter. Damn him! Dindyma would sink them all with his foolish garbles and speculations. “What did he have to say, m’dear?”

  “That ‘per your instruction’—which is mine, presumably—he’s preparing for defense against a threatened uprising. He makes reference to the late attack upon the Central Fleet’s base. That attack seems to have rattled the old fellow pretty badly, although I take it that in normal circumstances there’s no love lost between the two branches of the service.”

  “I should say not.”

  “The curious thing is his choice of words—an ‘uprising.’ ” She picked up a brush and began working through her hair. “I thought we had definitely established that the Gemini affair was a clash with that madman Spile. Strictly between him and Central Center. Not our affair at all.”

  “Dindyma may be feeling useless. An old warhorse, you know. Has to stamp and gnash the bit when he hears trumpets far afield.”

  “Hmmm. Do you think so?”

  “I stake my life on it. He’s become senile. Perhaps you should consider replacing him.”

  “That’s odd, Regis, because he certainly was not merely ‘gnashing the bit.’ He’s got a particular enemy in mind. Not Spile, and not some generalized saboteurs nor rebel forces nor terrorist malcontents. He believes our enemy is the Haiken Maru! And here is where the syntax becomes strange, because he does not merely insist they are our enemies, but that I believe them to be our enemies and want him to prepare defenses agai
nst them.”

  “What did I tell you, m’dear? Senile. Wires all crossed up.”

  “Perhaps. That thought did occur to me, at first. On reflection, I believe Dindyma may have pinpointed just that facet in the local political medley that will focus disloyalty to the Pact. Underneath their placid, apolitical, trade-and-trinkets exterior, the H.M. are ambitious and aggressive. Elidor is not an Aurora man, and clearly not Center. He’s loyal in ways and to causes I can’t fathom. If Dindyma has seen through him, that’s brilliant deduction, especially for the military mind.”

  Damn, damn, damn the man!

  “Do you think so, Deirdre? Seems muddled to me. I know you argue with Elidor in council . . .”

  “I never argue.” The hairbrush stopped in mid-stroke.

  “Well then, fail to reach agreement.”

  “Always.” She started brushing again.

  “That doesn’t mean he harbors treachery.”

  “Valence Elidor breathes treason.”

  “Well, perhaps. Certainly that doesn’t mean he would engage in military adventures. Bad for trade. Bad for trinkets.”

  “Unless he can win.”

  “Win what, my dear? And how? He could buy guns, arm the peasants, and even lead them in stumbling circles for a month or two, I suppose. Yet, when it was all over, even if he had bloodied us badly, he would still be just a merchant. The Cluster Governor would still be appointed by Central Center. And the Fleet would crush him to powder. End of story.”

  “Is it so simple, Regis?”

  “Of course, m’dear. He knows enough to leave politics to the people who understand them. We can leave trade to the people who don’t know anything better.”

  Deirdre gave him an uneasy look in the mirror, then turned her attention to her hair again.

  “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

  * * *

  “Al-loy . . . al . . . loy . . . Loy-al . . .”

  Click-click.

  “Reality . . .uh-ty . . . Loyal-ty . . .”

  Click-click.

  “Impact . . .uh-pact . . .thuh Pact.”

  Gina Rinaldi stared into the two-to-one editing tank with absolute attention. She was watching Deirdre Sallee’s face and lips—or a holographic image of them—as the governor spoke these word fragments.

  “Haiken Maru . . . Maru . . .”

  With one hand on a trackball and the other on a pitch bender, she darkened the pixels across Sallee’s eyes and simultaneously raised the frequency on that final syllable by a half-tone. The AID controlling the editing suite’s functions absorbed these commands and redubbed them into the master imaging file. The result was an apparent squint and a note of stress, passing for distress, as the governor said the name of the trading combine.

  Experts would be able to detect Gina’s fakery—if they were ever called upon to testify. By which time it would be too late, probably. The mass audience would see and would believe.

  She lifted a hand from the ball and rubbed between her eyes. Working clandestinely, in the dead of night like this, was straining her. She could feel the cells of her body burning at an advanced rate. Part of it was concentrating on the tank and the words, and at the same time trying to listen outside—for the Block’s janitors, for any late-staying Department staff, for the new Director’s spies. If she were discovered, and her work correctly interpreted, it would mean more than the failure of this project.

  They would probably make her disappear.

  She shrugged the tension out of her shoulders, bent her head over Tad’s handwritten notes to work out the next phrases in the speech.

  “Vile treason beyond any . . .”

  Now, “vile” she could reshape from “while.” Although the lip movements would take some digital surgery, the sounds were easy. But where, in the combined catalog, could she find “treason”? Start with “reason” and add a dental to it? That would work.

  Gina set the AID to hunting up her candidate phonemes while she went to work on the governor’s lower lips. This was going to take a long time.

  * * *

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “I know, I know.”

  Tad held her close, wrapping her in the darkness.

  “But I can help you,” she said.

  “You can get killed—”

  “Alongside you!”

  “Hush now. Yes, alongside me. Always.”

  “You’ll be in the same danger.”

  “That’s different somehow. It’s a danger I’ve created.”

  “I helped. It’s my war, too. Right from the start. And you’ve got no way of knowing, Counselor, whether those first shots—back in your apartment—were fired at you or me.”

  “Your father wants you back in Gemini. He needs you.”

  “He needs to know his little girl is safe. I’m not his ‘little girl’ anymore—”

  “I know that.” Soft laughter in the darkness.

  “—and nowhere is safe.”

  “All right. You tell him what you want.”

  “I know how to handle admirals.”

  “And bureaucrats.”

  His arms went tight again.

  * * *

  The aircar lifted into the night from one of Meyerbeer’s smaller parks. For so big a machine, its ducted fans were almost silent, coming and going. Selwin Praise settled into the plush leather, smoothing it idly with his hand. No sign of water damage. It must have been replaced, like most of the coachwork, after Bertingas had smashed this car through the trees and into the lake at the Palace.

  “Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?” He gestured at the open bar, the half-empty glass near Elidor’s hand.

  “Take what you want.”

  “And be damned to me?”

  “I might be tempted to put something in your glass besides alcohol. Rid us all—”

  “Oh, really? You wanted a meeting to poison me? I should have guessed when you suggested an evening ride. This vehicle has seen a lot of service recently.”

  “Don’t be smart-mouth with me.”

  “Don’t you be threatening with me, Elidor.”

  “What possessed you to put Bertingas up to recruiting an alien army?”

  “You know about that, do you?”

  “We’ve had him followed, of course.”

  “He’s a puppy,” Praise said. “Totally naive.”

  “He’s a dangerous man. Resourceful. Intelligent. Physically brave. And now suspicious of us.”

  “If he’s suspicious, you have to take some credit for making him so. Your people haven’t just been following him; they’ve been trying to take him out. Clumsily. Several times. Not that I would disapprove of your success along those lines—if you had any. However, I deplore the pattern you’ve been spinning for him. Now, you can save us all a lot of time and trouble if you’d tell me where he is.”

  “You don’t know?”

  Praise closed his eyes and counted ten. He only got to three. “No, Valence, you’ve finally run him to earth.”

  “We’ve lost him.”

  “Worse and worse.”

  “Not necessarily. You are in control of this army he’s created, aren’t you? Disband it. Cut off its funding. Close the bases.”

  “That will take time. My control is at the level of the paperwork, the authorizations—not at the day-to-day, operating level.”

  “Damn!”

  “I still don’t see why you think this is such a problem,” Praise said. “We’re talking about a bunch of scaly wigglers and green-skinned morons. They’re not even citizens. And they’re led by a bureaucratic pencil pusher whose only tactical training is what he may have read in a book. They’ll shoot at each other and sow confusion among the Cluster’s forces.”

  Elidor just looked at him from under heavy brows.

  “Well, I think it’s a stroke of genius,” Praise went on, “to create a diversionary force within the framework of government and to finance it with cash that costs us nothing . . . Because tha
t government will soon be in a position to honor nothing, including its own checks.”

  The Trader General’s stare never broke.

  “They’re barely mechanized,” Praise insisted. “They will never stand up against experienced Human troops.”

  More stony silence.

  “They’re a police force, for Cybele’s sake!”

  “That ‘bureaucratic pencil pusher,’ ” Valence began slowly, “overcame a squad of armed men using nothing more than a stick and a string. He’s got help from a renegade Marine officer. And we have reason to believe he has the backing of the Kona Tatsu . . . Now, tell me, Citizen—how well do you know this Taddeuz Bertingas? Well enough to entrust him with a few thousand ‘scaly wigglers’ under arms? I think not.”

  “I still say he’s—ah—politically naive. He doesn’t know where to lead those troops.”

  “If he has the sense to lead them against us, we will be in a very deep hole.”

  “He could hardly justify, or persuade, an attack against his own department head.”

  “I do not include you among ‘us’.”

  “Now, be subtle, Val. If Bertingas and his army of renegades were to attack the Haiken Maru, on any pretext, it would give you a grievance you could ride all the way to Central Center. You would have justification for any action you wanted to take in—and against—Aurora Cluster.”

  Elidor grunted.

  “Do I interpret that as a murmur of gratitude?”

  “Interpret it how you like. But let me assure you: if this blows up in my face, I’ll have you peeled back, layer at a time, until we come to a bloody pip. Then I’ll squeeze that pip between my fingers ’till you pop!”

  The hush of the fans wound down, and Praise could feel the aircar slide in for a landing, somewhere. He tossed off his drink before leaving. Mentally, he was scrambling for a last word, to take the sting out of the Trader General’s threat.

  “Oh, be subtle, Elidor!”