It had finally happened. U.C.S. had finally declared war on Sondak. But of all the places to do it, why Roberg? Almost as soon as he asked himself the question, he knew the answer. Roberg had a fleet repair base. It was so far off limits from everything Lucky was interested in on Roberg that he never really thought about its presence. Now it was important, very important.
The fleeties would be watching every incoming ship with sights trained on them. And when they let him land – if they let him land – they would be very interested in his cargo.
For a brief moment Lucking thought about spacing the two hundred crates of laser rifles now secured in Greyclound’s hold and letting them fall into Ivan’s Sun. He immediately discarded that idea. Sure, they were U.C.S. laser rifles, but he had bought them on the open market. They were legitimate cargo, if you stretched the rules a little. And now that Sondak and U.C.S. were at war, he might have a better customer for the whole lot of them than he could have found on his own.
Sondak would need lots of new weapons, and in a hurry. Lucky would be the last person in the galaxy to be opposed to a little war-time profiteering. Best to contact the fleeties and tell them he was bringing help.
Four hours later he got through on an open channel. “I said this is the space trader Greycloud. Im carrying a cargo –“
“From where?”
“From half a set of systems. . . sir,” he added as an afterthought. “I think your commander will be interested I what I have to sell.”
“You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t lock you up and swallow the key, the mood he’s in,” the voice responded. “What nav-beacons are you receiving?”
“Seventeen, thirty-three, thirty-nine and forty are coming in strong. The rest of it is garbage.”
“Tough. Follow thirty-nine until you get an alpha signal. Break and hold within a thousand kilometers of that spot. Don’t deviate off your course, and don’t move after you stopped. We’ve got all our remaining pipe jockies on patrol, and they would like nothing better than to blast something out of space. You got that?”
“I’ve got it. Now when –“
“Out.” The receiver went dead for a moment, then the voice started giving instructions to some fancy passenger liner, and Lucky knew there was no use trying to get any more information.
He locked Greycloud on beacon thirty-nine and went back to the galley to get something to eat. No sense in waking Marsha, he decided. She had stood the long watch coming around Ivan’s Sun. Besides, there was nothing so pressing that couldn’t wait until she woke up.
Just as he finished cleaning up the galley after his mean, the alpha signal went off. It was much sooner than he expected and by the time he got back to the cockpit, Greycloud was well on its way to violating the thousand kilometer limit.
He braked hard, but the dampers refused to absorb all the inertial energy. Moments after they came to a stop, Marsha was screaming at him from the companionway.
“What in the name of all that’s holy are you trying to do, kill me?”
He looked up with a smile on his face, but she didn’t give him a chance to answer.
“Sometimes I think you lived too damn long by yourself before I came along,” she said as she crossed the cabin in her easy stride and sat in the chair next to him. “You better have a zimbo of an answer for that stupid maneuver.”
“Sondak and the U.C.S just went to war.”
“Don’t give me that kind of –“
“Truth, Marsha. Just look at the screens.”
“Just because the screens are putting out garbage, you want me to believe a war is going on?”
“It’s the truth, I’m telling you. The Ukes hit Roberg like they really meant it. The fleeties told is to park here and wait for further instructions, or . . . get blown to space dust. Thought I’d just park it like they said.”
“Your serious, aren’t you?” Her face wrinkled with sudden concern. “The Ukes really did it?”
“That’s what the fleeties said. Who else would be crazy enough to attack them?”
Marsha waited a long moment before she said anything. “Lucky, do you trust me?”
“Lady if you don’t know the answer to that after five years of spacing together, I can’t give you one now.”
“We have to get out of here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We have to get out of here. We have to get back to U.C.S. controlled space. Believe me, Lucky, it’s important. It’s our lives.”
Now the concern was on both their faces. “What’s so important to risk getting shot here as we head for Uke space and risk getting blasted there?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“The hell you can’t. You want me to trust you on this, but you won’t trust me? What kind of deal is that?”
“It’s the only deal we can make. Please, Lucky, I made a promise, a promise I have to keep. As soon as I’ve kept it, I can tell you everything, but until then, you’ll . . .”
“I know. I’ll just have to trust you.” He looked at her, knew he loved her, and knew what he was about to do made no more sense that the garbage on the navscreens. “All right. I’ll turn us around nice and easy. Then I’ll blast us back toward Ivan’s Sun at full throttle. You pray that those pipe jockies out there aren’t paying too much attention to us, and I’ll pray that Greycloud holds up under the strain.” He turned away from her and cut off the next thought in his mind.
“Thanks, Lucky.”
“Don’t thank me until we are safe. Then the only thanks I want will be in the form of information.”
◊ ◊ ◊
Frye saw the look on her face the moment he walked in the door and knew that she had talked to Doctor Nise. She waited until he was almost to her before she stood up. Vinita always greeted him standing up. It was one of those traditions that started early in their marriage and had stuck from twenty-five years. Now, even though standing was difficult, she insisted on maintaining the tradition. It made him love her all the more.
An observer watching them wrap themselves in each other’s arms and kiss might have thought them newlyweds except there was no wasted motion, no frantic necessity in their embrace. It was a practiced passion that each of them cherished.
“Today was the day, wasn’t it?” Vinita asked as Frye released her.
“Today was a monster,” he said wearily.
“Not for me.”
He looked at her with surprise as she sat down and the chair adjusted to her frail body.
“Don’t look so shocked, darling. I’ve known about this for a long time. So have you. But I believed it. Now you must, too. What else made it a monster?”
“We attacked Sondak today,” he said flatly.
“Her eyes lit up. “Revenge? Revenge at last? That’s wonderful Frye! But how could you keep it a secret from me?”
“I don’t know. It’s the only secret I think I’ve ever been able to keep from you. I wanted it to be a surprise.” He sat down beside her and took her hand in his. “When did you talk to Doctor Nise?”
“Before he called you.”
“Oh.” She heard the disappointment in his voice and wished he had known. “He didn’t tell me he had talked to you.”
“I told him not to.”
“Did you tell him anything else?”
“I told him I wanted the special prescription. He sent it over, and it’s –“
“We can talk about that later,” Frye said as he released her hands and stood up. A huge chasm had opened inside him, and he was afraid at any moment he would fall in.
“I don’t want to put it off much longer, Frye,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to go on like this. Today . . . today I had to write down your name down because the first time I called Doctor Nise I couldn’t remember it.” She looked straight at him with anger burning in her eyes. “Do you understand that, Frye? I couldn’t remember your name. I had to write it down!”
Suddenly she was crying, and he was beside her aga
in, holding her in his arms. Never had he faced a more difficult decision nor one so impossible to come to terms with. This most precious of all women was deteriorating before his eyes. She wanted the only escape open to her from the madness that was eating away at her body and her mind, and he had agreed to help her with that escape.
When she finally stopped crying, she looked at him with an expression that he had to turn away from. “You promised me Frye. You promised to help me before . . . before . . .”
“I know,” he said softly as he rocked her gently in his arms. “I’ll do what I said. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you. I promise.”
Dinner was quiet and intimate despite the fact that Vinita kept asking questions about the attack on Sondak. After dinner he told her all he could about the war, and she rejoiced that the U.C.S. was finally going to have revenge – revenge it deserved for all that Sondak had done to the U.C.S.
Frye opened the vacuum bottle of liquor he had been saving for a special occasion. As they sipped the sweet liquor, their conversation gradually changed into reminiscence. Then from reminiscence it settled into the quiet, unspoken pleasure they had always enjoyed in each other’s presence.
“Lisa Cay will be coming home now,” Vinita said. “She’ll be coming home to help you, Frye. You can count on her.”
“I know,” Frye responded with a tiny catch in his voice. “I’ve been thinking about that.” As he refilled Vinita’s glass with the last drops from the bottle, Frye added the contents of the small capsule Doctor Nise had sent to her.
“To victory,” Vinita said after he handed her the glass.
“To love,” Frye answered.
Later he carried her to bed as usual. Then he lay awake all night, holding his dead wife in his arms and crying until he had no tears left for anyone in the whole universe.
2
“THAT’S WHAT OUR CRYPTOGRAPHERS BELIEVE HE SAID, SIR,” Rochmon said quietly.
“But you are not sure?”
“Nothing’s positive in this business, General. All I can tell you is that we made a major breakthrough in the Ukes code about ten months ago.”
“What kind of breakthrough?”
“We discovered they’re using a cycling key in their routine subspace transmissions.”
“A cycling key?”
Rochmon suppressed a sigh. He hated having to explain cryptography to staff officers. “That means they use a cycle of standard keys to encode their messages. Not very sophisticated, but difficult to break because the key changes at random times during the message. Anyway, since then we’ve been piecing lots of fragments together.”
“How accurate is that?”
Rochmon bit off his response and took a frustrated breath. “Well, sire, we feel it is pretty yanqui accurate. What you have in your hands has been part of half a dump of messages to high ranking commanders in the past several cycles. The fact that it was repeated in so many interceptions was what led us three days ago to the second major break – one of the cycle keys.”
General Mari frowned, then read the message aloud. “In the first year of the war…run wild over their systems. Victory will follow victory…build a stellar barrier which…be indestructible…no promise of success…not fully prepared for Sondak’s counter attack. Then we will fight a battle of wills testing…willing to make the sacrifices necessary to defeat us, and whether we are…necessary to hold what we have gained.”
General Mari placed the message carefully in front of him on the neat desk and loudly cleared his throat several times. “What about all the missing parts?”
“Key changes, sir. But I think what we have gives us a fairly good representation of their intent.”
“Yes, I guess it does. How determined are we? And how determined are they? I guess Charltos asked two good questions, didn’t he, Commander?”
“I’d say he did, sir. Charltos isn’t the type to make threats lightly – not promises either.”
“You talk like you know him.”
Rochmon smiled slightly. “Not really, sir. I did meet him once, very formally when he visited Drahcir and I was the senior cryptographer there. But, well, General, I guess studying Commander Charltos has become a kind of hobby of mine. Seems like an interesting enemy to me. He’s smart, and not just book smart, if you know what I mean.”
“So what is your military assessment of him?”
For all that he disliked General Mari, Rochmon admired him as a soldier. There were few men among Sondak’s military leadership who had General Mari’s skill and understanding. Yet somewhere deep in his heart Rochmon knew that Mari was not equal to the opposition presented by Commander Frye Charltos.
“Well, sir, if you want my honest opinion, I’d say that not only are we up against the best strategist the Ukes have to offer, but we’re also up against a man who understands the tactics of interstellar warfare better than anyone before him.”
“You’re discounting a great number of people when you say that, Commander.”
Rochmon heard the quiet censorship in Mari’s voice, but chose to ignore it. “I know that, sir, but you asked for my assessment. I’ve been following Charltos’s career for the better part of fifteen years, and it seems to me that the only thing we have going for us at the moment is that he has a respect for life that may prove to be his weak point.”
General Mari frowned. “Be specific, Rochmon.”
“That’s hard to do, General. It’s just that from all that I’ve learned about him, I’d be willing to bet on the design of his overall strategy.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning, General, that he will not risk any more lives on the Ukes’ side than is absolutely necessary to obtain the victory he’s promised them. That’s the way he is. He’ll fight for that victory – fight as hard and as well as any military commander we know about – but at the lowest possible cost in lives.”
“I suppose you have a suggestion of how we can take advantage of that weakness?”
Rochmon didn’t like the tone of Mari’s voice, but that wasn’t going to stop him from giving his opinion. “I do, sir, but I doubt if anyone is going to like it.”
“Don’t second-guess my reaction,” Mari snapped. “Just tell me what you would do if you were in charge of overall strategy against Charltos.”
“I’d back him into a corner every chance I got, sir. I’d raise the cost in lives as high as possible every time we faced the Ukes – in space or planetside.”
“And you think he would back away?”
“Not necessarily, sir. But I think it would make him more cautious. The more cautious he becomes, the better our chances of defeating the Ukes and whatever allies they pick up among the neutrals.”
“So you are advocating a bloodbath.”
“No, sir. Not at all. But I am saying we should make the Ukes pay in lives.”
“As I said, a bloodbath. Thank you, Commander,” General Mari turned and left the room.
Rochmon didn’t like having his words twisted like that, but maybe the general was right. Yet when he thought of all the lives Sondak had lost already, he didn’t care. Maybe he was advocating a bloodbath. But whatever anyone called it, Rochmon was sure it was the one tactic which gave Sondak a chance. He wasn’t willing to bet on anything less.
◊ ◊ ◊
Lucky Teeman stared at his viewscreens with the eyes of a man at once angry and confused. They had made good their escape from Roberg and dodged the fleeties through six warps. But now Graycloud was headed straight toward the most heavily fortified regions of Uke-controlled space.
And for what? That was the question which gnawed at Lucky’s thoughts. Why was he doing this? Oh sure, Marsha has asked him to, and that might have been reason enough for some other man. Marsha could charm the warp gyros off a fleety or intimidate the most arrogant bureaucrat if she wanted to.
No, there was more to it than the fact that she had almost begged him, and more than her promise of a future explanation. There was something
deeper, something inside Lucky himself that he wasn’t quite willing to admit out loud. But he knew what it was. He wanted the Ukes to win this war.
Lucky quickly shut down that thought and called Marsha on the vidcom. “We’re entering Uke space,” he said when her image appeared on the screen. “Want to give me some idea of what we’re going to do next?”
When she arrived in the flight cabin several minutes later she gave him a quick kiss before taking her seat beside him. Only then did Lucky notice the small star-map case in her hand. “What’s that for?”
“The kiss? Or the Case?”
Lucky snorted in mock amusement. “Both.”
“The kiss is because I love you. The case holds the information we’ll need to get where we’re going.”
“And do you think you can tell me where that is now?”
Marsha frowned ever so slightly and put one hand over his.
“Not yet, Lucky, please?” You’ll just have to trust me a little longer. All right?”
“Tensheiss! No, it’s not all right.” Lucky reached out and slammed the emergency braking lever. The inertial dampers vibrated in protest.
“Lucky! Don’t!”
“It’s still my ship,” he said calmly as he eased off on the braking lever, “and I’ll do whatever I spacing well please until you give me some answers.”
Marsha turned her chair so it faced him. “You won’t like it,” she said quietly.
He laughed. “I don’t like it now!” Lucky glanced at the viewscreens and then at his summary instruments . When he looked back at her, he felt a small stirring of regret. “Look, Marsha, I’m sorry I yelled at you. But this is a partnership remember? You have to trust me as much as I trust you.”
“It is not a matter of trust,” she said, looking down at the map case clutched in her hand.
Double Spiral War Trilogy Page 2
