Crazy, he told himself. It was just the drugs and his injuries, the constant worry about his eyes. That had to be it. All the reassurances in the known universe weren’t going to mean squat until they took the bandages off and he knew for a fact that he could see.
But the disconcerting fear did not evaporate on identification. Exhaustion and drugs were dragging him deeper into sleep, but the fear remained like a wall through the night. He slept restlessly, woke, slept again. It wasn’t until waking for the second time that the word was clear in his head and he understood.
Cardiff. Who the hell was Cardiff? Tony Lucca had been a history buff all the way through school. He knew the stories of most of the cruisers’ namesakes. Salah AI-Din, Alexander Haig, Hamilton, Morwood, Bolivar. He’d known them all, their exploits and places in the history of humanity. But Cardiff? He’d never heard the name, he was certain.
Come off it, he told himself. You don’t know the name of every hero of humanity of every planet for all time. What do you think you are, some kind of professor or something?
But the name kept running in his mind and he couldn’t sleep. The whole thing was somehow—skewed. A name he didn’t know. A friendly weapons officer. And a strange ship near Bainbridge. To his knowledge there wasn’t anyone else in the vicinity. Salah AI-Din should take care of business just fine.
So he must have wandered onto one of the “dark” missions that were so popular as plot devices on at least sixty-seven of the omni series that he was familiar with. His mind was crystal clear and his curiosity was sharp, but suddenly he found the anxiety of the earlier evening gone. This time he really knew what was wrong, and it was exciting enough to induce fantasies of revenge on all those in training who had laughed at him. Maybe the surgery had corrected his eyes, and by the time he was healed they would be out of range of the Salah AI-Din, and he would become an undercover operative who was legally dead in the Alliance. And at the very end he would come back and testify in front of the men who’d called him a coward and a weak sister.
All a plot from a bad late-night series if he’d ever heard one. But then, life sometimes imitated trash. Tony Lucca fell asleep and this time he had pleasant dreams.
* * *
“Hey, Alex, who was Cardiff?” Tony asked the next day when breakfast was brought. “I never heard of him, and I sort of collect stories from different ships I’ve been on.”
Alex hesitated. Tony could hear the coffee mug being set back on the tray. “I’m not sure I really know,” Schurr answered slowly. “I mean, I haven’t been aboard very long and haven’t quite gotten all the details yet. If you want to know, I’ll bet Kassa knows. You know, the medic who bosses us around. I have this funny feeling that she does that mostly because we rank her and she likes having us in her power. You think?”
Tony agreed and continued the conversation but his mind was elsewhere. He’d never in his life met anyone in the Fleet, officer or enlisted, who couldn’t tell the story of his ship’s namesake with pride. It was the sort of thing everyone learned as soon as they got an assignment, practically. And not only didn’t Schurr know, but he had tried to distract Tony from the question as well.
Slowly the clarity of the night came back. Only this time he didn’t embellish it with his own fantasies, lifted wholesale from omni entertainment channels. This time he decided to help reality along. After all, he had watched the same scene on Early Earth ten million times. The perfect sting when the victim didn’t even know he’d been taken. Somehow that seemed a more appropriate image this morning.
So he followed Alex’s chatter, noticing that the other was eliciting information that could actually be useful to the Fleet’s enemies. Objectives on Bainbridge, for example, along with operating methods in this sector and which ships were where in the occupation process.
By the time Kassa served lunch Tony knew he’d been pumped by an expert. No, the right word was interrogated. Even though he usually associated that with pain and resistance, with drugs and pointed questions, he knew that somehow Alex had gotten him to talk freely. Maybe the drugs they fed him had something to do with that, but Lucca felt sure that the whole thing was a setup. Alex was too friendly for a weapons officer, too interested in things that most people in his position would find actively boring.
“Yeah,” Alex was saying, “I loved omni as a kid. Couldn’t get enough of it. I think I just about lived for Hawk Talon. I used to make up Hawk stories on the way to school in the morning.”
“Yeah, me too,” Tony agreed. “And when I had to study or take a test I always played I was Hawk at the Academy.” A plan was starting to form in his mind, nebulous and uncertain. A test of something, that’s what he needed. So far Alex had flunked on everything a Fleet officer in his position should know. But Tony needed something more, something final, something that couldn’t be explained away, either by personality or cultural differences.
Alex laughed. “I’ll bet that’s why they had those flashback scenes, to make sure the kids buckled down to the books. “
“What was your favorite episode?” Tony asked innocently.
“Wow, I’d really have to think about that,” Alex answered reasonably enough. “I loved the whole third season and most of the fourth. Not that I didn’t like the others, but those years they were the absolute best. Or maybe I was just the right age.”
“Mmm,” Tony agreed. “I liked that one where Hawk tells his brainship to shoot, and the brainship asks who. And Hawk says, ‘The bad guys.’ I always thought that was a great line. And the brainship was pretty good. What was its name? Dove?”
“Yeah, Dove,” Alex agreed. “I hadn’t thought about that one for a long time. I always liked it especially when Lisa Nakumba was playing the senator’s daughter. She was something, though. You know what she’s doing now?”
Tony answered, somehow managed to keep talking casually while his mind raced. Because he knew. Maybe he had set Alex up, maybe the other really didn’t remember. But Tony Lucca couldn’t buy that. No one who had been that much of a Hawk Talon fan could forget the brainship’s name. The brainship had been a more popular character than Hawk himself. Derv, not Dove, he thought. Lisa Nakumba. They had prepared Schurr extremely well. He knew the details, the things that should throw someone like Tony way off the track.
Only he couldn’t know all the details. No one who hadn’t been born and raised Alliance could know all the tiny nuances that cut across the various planets and cultures that comprised human space. Alex Schurr was an imposter.
But Tony kept talking, pretending that he hadn’t noticed the slips. Like yesterday, he thought. Only the drugs weren’t affecting him so much, or maybe he was simply healing enough to need less of them. He had to play along, somehow keep Schurr from guessing that he knew. Tony went through Lisa Nakumba and then through almost every other actress of the period, and almost every one of their features. He hadn’t been an omni buff for nothing.
Finally it was time for dinner and sleep. Lucca was docile, didn’t resist the drugs Kassa poured into his hand. She didn’t see that he held the pills firmly anchored under his tongue while he sipped the water and then lay back to feign sleep.
* * *
Waiting was hard. He made his body relax and concentrated on his breathing. Just like Sri Hananda on the education yoga program on channel eighty-nine had instructed his students. Count to four while breathing in, hold for four and then count four while exhaling. At least the counting and breathing gave him something to do.
He waited until he thought it was safe and then he waited more. There wasn’t going to be a second chance, he told himself. Better to do it right the first time. So he went through the breathing exercise and reran old Hawk Talon episodes in his head. And waited.
At some point he thought he heard a rustling in the chamber, but he couldn’t be sure. The sound was so soft, as if whoever was making it was being very careful. If anyone was mak
ing any sound at all.
Finally he couldn’t wait any longer. He lifted his good arm and pulled the gauze from his face. For a moment he was still in darkness, until he realized that this darkness had a different quality to it. There was shadow and shape around him and he could see into the depths of the dark and perceive the subtle play of ambient light through the gloom. So he could see. The bandages had been to keep him from searching his surroundings or his companion.
He glanced over at the other bed, where according to Alex’s voice the other bed should be. It was there, all right, made up in stiff military style, the white sickbay sheets gleaming dull gray against the pitch-black. No one was in the bed. It looked deserted, abandoned, as if Alex had never existed.
And for a moment Tony wasn’t sure he had. After all, without seeing the other, it was always possible that a computer-simulated voice had questioned him. Not that it mattered. What mattered was that they had the information. And more. He had taught them a few more angles to this sting, this very complicated con game. And if they could dupe other Fleet officers, pilots, and weapons types and tacticians, then they were more dangerous and more treacherous than he had realized. After a lifetime of the Khalia, it was hard to think of any humans as the enemy. But there was no doubt in Tony’s mind that these were, and were a hundred times more dangerous because of it.
Carefully he removed the two tubes in his arm. The drip had to contain drugs to dull his critical thinking and make him more receptive to the interrogation—to giving the Syndicate all the details it needed. Once free of the drug IV, he slipped out of bed. At least they had seen fit to keep him dressed in sickbay-issue pajamas. He hoped to find some more suitable garb somewhere in the vicinity. He began to rummage through the doors and lock component for something to wear.
Finally he found what appeared to be a medical uniform. No more question of the Fleet here, the symbols and cut were nothing Tony had ever seen before. No wonder they had bandaged his eyes. He dressed quickly, and then stuffed the old pajamas under the covers to make an acceptable lump on the bed. Not quite enough, really, but in the dark it would cover for an hour or so.
And then, as he made his way to what he hoped was the door out of the sickbay, he froze. He didn’t know what he was going to do. Escape, his mind jabbered, send a message and tell the Fleet about this Syndicate plot to trick Fleet captives.
And who would believe him? Tony thought, anger lancing through the hurt. Those Marines who left feathers in his locker? The officers who couldn’t wait to get rid of him? None of them would even listen, let alone believe. As for Intelligence, they barely recognized that anyone else in the Fleet could talk and walk on two legs, let alone come across data that Intel did not have prior knowledge of. No, Tony realized the more he thought about it, there wasn’t anyone he could tell. Anyone who would listen and do something.
And meanwhile the Cardiff would go on, collecting strays and getting better and better at its game. The Cardiff had to be destroyed. Lucca came up hard against that single fact. The Syndicate had to learn that they couldn’t get away with this scam, that any Fleet member could find them out. Then maybe they wouldn’t try it again.
Nor could he let the Cardiff go with the data he had given them about Fleet plans for Bainbridge and this region. The Alliance hold was still too fragile here to risk. The presence of the Cardiff proved that this area was sensitive for the Syndicate, as well. No one, not even the shadowy human enemy that Tony Lucca still could scarce believe existed, would commit a ship of the Cardiff’s size and special capabilities just to prove a point in some unimportant sector of space.
What the hell would Hawk Talon do?
Tony found himself smiling. Hawk would blow the Cardiff to smithereens while escaping in a fast scout. Which, come to think of it, was not a bad idea. Only two things were wrong. First off, Tony didn’t know where the scouts were on this ship or even if he could fly one. Second, he wasn’t sure they could blow the cruiser. That was all easy enough on the Omni, but real life made things difficult.
One thing was certain. He needed a plan before he left sickbay, and he had to leave before the night crew was replaced by the fuller day-cycle staffing. He didn’t even know the layout of the Cardiff, where he could hide or where the weak points were.
Well, small details like that never bothered Hawk Talon. There had to be some immediate, direct action. Of course, if he could melt down the plasma cannon so that when they fired they would explode in the ship itself, that would be ideal. But Tony didn’t know if the Syndicate even had plasma cannon, and if they did, he didn’t know where they were or how to go about sabotaging them. No, there had to be another weakness to exploit. Something that not even the alienness of the Syndicate ship could completely eliminate.
And then a smile spread slowly across his face. He found what he needed easily enough in the coffee cabinet in the sickbay. One large box that he tasted and verified. And one large size old-fashioned lighter. Someone had left it lying out next to a heater ring that indicated the whole rig was set for experimentation. A beaker rested above filled with black liquid, and a single sniff assured Tony that the whole setup was some ancient, complicated coffee-brewing mechanism.
Good enough. The lighter disappeared into a pocket hidden in the cuff, and the box he held casually in his hand. No one would think twice about an off-duty med carrying around an extra-large ration of powdered sugar.
Thank the fates that the ship was large enough that new faces didn’t attract undue attention. Nor would newness to the ship’s complement. He found an equally new-seeming youngster without any rank markings on either her sleeves or collar and asked how to get to the observation deck. The young woman didn’t seem to find the question untoward. Two decks above and at the end of the main corridor. He hurried, before he lost the stamina or the nerve.
On arrival of the observation deck he was pleased. There were certain things that humans took for granted, needed in great quantities, and did not deviate from some prehistoric norm. The need for open space and to see the sky and smell growing things was the same, Alliance, Fleet, or Syndicate. The observation deck here was not much different from any of those he had seen before. Oh, some of the plantings were unique. These seemed to tend toward aromatic fruit trees and overhanging arbors, but the basic idea was the same.
The large, open space felt like a park. Smelled like one, too. It had to be used for oxygen production as well as foodstuffs, not to mention the necessary psychological balance. All around were observation-transparent walls. Outside he could see the stars glittering cold against the eternal night. He spared one last, loving glance at those distant points, and then turned his attention to the task at hand.
There had to be a feeder duct around here somewhere. Sitting very still, just like Sri Hananda taught, he listened for the half-hidden sound of an intake valve. A tiny hiss caught his attention and he prayed quickly. Theresa would hate him forever. He just hoped that she understood that he really had no choice at all. That it didn’t have anything to do with the Marines or Hawk Talon or any fantasy. That just at that moment he would give a very great deal to wake up home.
He sniffed at the valve. Pure oxygen intake filter, just as he had hoped. There were a few ideas so good they had to be universal. Tony peeled back the bladder of the box and fit it into the intake. Only seconds went by until the whole vent resembled some fabled Christmas snowfall. He watched as the white powder drifted deeper into the ventilation system. With pure oxygen and a little something to burn—
Tony muttered a quick prayer and silently asked Theresa and his parents to forgive him. Then he flicked the mechanism on the lighter and watched as a long torch flame was sucked into the oxygen hole.
* * *
By the time the Salah AI-Din responded to the emergency hot-spot in the vicinity there was nothing even their most advanced fire-fighting equipment could do. The blaze had raged down to the munitions locke
r and blew enough ordnance to supply the Weasels with another six months of resistance. There was nothing left to mop up except random chunks of debris.
“At least the crew suffocated fast,” one of the Marines on cleanup muttered.
The others didn’t respond. Burned bodies stuck to melted metal made them want to retch in their suits. Not a good idea. It didn’t pay to look too closely.
It wasn’t until the wreckage was analyzed days later that they found Tony Lucca, perfectly identifiable in the debris. He had barely been singed. The fire had been sucked down into the oxygen mix, depriving the observation deck of breathable air.
“What the hell was he doing on a Syndicate ship?” the officer in charge of the investigation asked no one in particular.
“Exactly what any Fleet officer would have done,” the Marine captain responded. “Blowing it up. He finally found a target so big even he couldn’t miss.”
IN A FEW seconds a ship using FTL drive could travel several million miles. The beam from a power laser traveling at the speed of light, in effect, took only a small fraction of a second to reach an opponent during ground combat. Too often the duel between two small ships was resolved in a matter of seconds. Hand-to-hand combat between a Marine and a Khalian pirate typically lasted under thirty seconds, no matter who won.
In contrast, the time required for a Fleet warship to travel between stars could seem very long; it took a newly completed heavy cruiser almost two months to make the journey from a Vegan shipyard to Duane’s fleet where it was massing off Khalia. Even a fast courier boat couldn’t make the journey from the high-command Port to Khalia in less than a month. A typical scouting mission would last six months and include less than two dozen systems. Some of the specialists were trained for almost a decade before being adjudged sufficiently skilled to dismantle and assemble such delicate. items as the Cooper FTL drive.
The Fleet05 Total War Page 22
