David Weber - In Fury Born (ARC)

by In Fury Born (ARC)(lit)

  She doubted they were likely to meet a brighter, more conscientious customs inspector than young Lieutenant Giolitti, and she no longer doubted their ability to razzle-dazzle him if they did. It had been unnerving enough to watch him "search" her quarters five separate times, but that had been nothing compared to watching him walk right past the feed tubes from the main missile magazine without even batting an eye. He'd had to climb a ladder to cross one of them, yet it simply hadn't been there for him, and neither had the energy batteries or the armory. He'd seemed perfectly content with his "inspection" of the control room, as well, though only an idiot-or someone under Tisiphone's spell-could have looked at those blank gray walls and the alpha link headset without realizing what he was seeing.

  Of course he did not, Tisiphone observed. You are correct about his intelligence-a very bright young man, indeed-yet it is far simpler to suggest things to intelligent people, for they have the wit to add the details with little prompting. And, she added graciously, you and Megaira were wise to suggest that we create your "crew's" personalities in such detail. It allowed me to project personalities with much greater depth.

  "Yeah." Alicia drew another breath and straightened. "Still, you seemed to be concentrating pretty hard. Could you have handled more people?"

  I believe so, yes. Numbers of minds are not the difficulty, Little One, but rather the detail of the illusion I provide them with. Of course, it would be wise, in the event that we must deal with several people at once, to include a disinclination to discuss their inspection at a later date lest they discover too great a degree of similarity among their recollections.

  You're probably right, Megaira put in, but unless there's a glitch in the documentation, one-man teams are the rule out here.

  "I know." Alicia stepped back into the lift and punched for the flight deck. "Are we clear on our docking and service fees, Megaira?"

  Sure. Tis cooked the books just fine when she dropped our flight log on them, and Ms. Tanner took care of the bookkeeping while Captain Mainwaring was showing Lieutenant Giolitti around. We've covered all our fees out of her bogus credit transfer with a balance of eighty thousand credits left.

  "What about service personnel?"

  No sweat. Lieutenant Chisholm dealt with them, and they'll be waiting for our shuttle to pick up the consumables. We're gonna have to dump most of them in deep space, since I had to order enough for a crew of five to make it look right, but our Melville download shows a complete overhaul six months ago, so I didn't have to fudge any servicing requirements.

  "You're a sweetheart," Alicia said fervently.

  She'd been astounded by the verisimilitude of the computer images and voices Megaira could produce. It was a good thing the AI could, too, since they had to convince anyone who got curious-No, scratch that. They had to keep anyone from getting curious, which meant they had to provide crewmen other than Captain Mainwaring in one form or another. Megaira's ability to carry on com conversations, or even several of them at once, would be invaluable in that regard.

  Thanks. You and Tis did pretty good, too.

  Yet could we have accomplished but little without you, Megaira. It is the combination of all our skills which makes us formidable.

  "You got that right, Lady," Alicia agreed. "But I take it no one raised an eyebrow over your faces?"

  Nary a twitch. Wanna see my latest efforts? I finally got that lisp down pat on "Lieutenant Chisholm," you know.

  "Sure." The lift slid to a halt and Alicia stepped out onto the flight deck. "Let her roll."

  Watch monitor two.

  The flat screen flickered for just an instant, then cleared with the face of a thin, auburn-haired man with heavy-lidded eyes.

  "How do I look, Thir?" the image asked, and Alicia grinned.

  "I think maybe you got the lisp down a little too pat, Megaira."

  "That'th eathy for you to thay," "Lieutenant Chisholm" returned aggrievedly. "You haven't been teathed about it all your life. I tell you, it'th been a real pain in the ath for me!"

  "Do you say that, or do you spray it?" Alicia giggled, and the image raised a hand into the field of the pickup and made a rude gesture.

  "Oh, that's perfect, Megaira! Of course, I imagine poor Chisholm won't be handling much of the com traffic, given his lisp."

  "No." Chisholm's baritone was replaced by a soprano and the image changed to that of a square-faced, silver-haired woman Alicia recognized as Ruth Tanner, her purser. "Poor Andy hates it when he has to talk to strangers. That's why I usually handle the com watch when you're not aboard, Ma'am."

  "So I see," Alicia propped a hip against a console and grinned. The AI had outdone herself. No one who spoke to any of Megaira's talking heads would suspect there was only a single human aboard Star Runner. Coupled with the AI's ability to handle both shuttles through her telemetry links, Captain Mainwaring's crew would be very much in evidence-so much so that no one would ever realize that they'd never actually laid eyes on any of them.

  "Okay, I think we're set. But if it's all the same to you two, I need a good night's sleep before I get started hunting up a cargo."

  Right.

  The screen blanked as Megaira returned to direct contact, and Alicia started back towards her quarters, shedding her tight jacket as she went. She tossed the garment to one of Megaira's waiting remotes, which whisked it neatly into a closet.

  Uh, say, Alley, Megaira said as she undressed, you haven't had time to go through the full data download from the MaGuire port admiral, have you?

  "You know I haven't." Alicia paused with her blouse half off. "Why?"

  Well, I didn't want to worry you with it while Giolitti was aboard, and I wouldn't want to give you bad dreams or anything, but we're in it.

  "What do you mean, 'we'?"

  I mean the "we" that stole me from Soissons orbit. Specifically, Captain Alicia DeVries and the illegally obtained alpha-synth starship Hull Number Seven-Niner-One-One-Four.

  Indeed? what has the data to say of us? Tisiphone asked curiously.

  It's not real good.

  "Meaning what?" Alicia asked sharply. "That they know where we're headed or something?"

  No, not that bad. But there's an entry in here all about you, Alley-says you broke out of psychiatric detention and have to be considered extremely dangerous-and another bunch of crap about me. Fairly accurate summation of my offensive and defensive capabilities, though they're playing a lot of the details close to their chests and they don't say diddly about the other things I can do. No, what bothers me is this last little bit.

  "What last little bit?"

  The one that says Fleet's offering a one million-credit reward for information leading to your location and interception, Megaira said. Alicia swallowed, but the AI wasn't quite done. And the last little section that says the Jungian Navy's officially adopted Governor General Treadwell's instructions to his own Fleet units.

  Alicia sat down on the bed with a thump as Megaira finished her report.

  It's a shoot on sight order, Alley. They're not even talking about trying to get us back in one piece.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Benjamin McIlheny racked his headset and stood, rubbing his aching eyes and trying to remember when he'd last had six hours' sleep at a stretch.

  He lowered his hands and glowered at the record chips and hard-copy heaped about his office aboard the accomodation ship HMS Donegal. Somewhere in all that crap, he knew, was the answer-or the clues which would lead to the answer-if only he could find it.

  It seemed a law of nature that any intelligence service always had the critical data in its grasp... and didn't know it. After all, how did you cull the one, crucial truth from the heap of untruth, half-truth, and plain lunacy? Answer: hindsight invariably recognized it after the fact. Which, of course, was the reason the intelligence community was constantly being kicked by people who thought it was so damned easy.

  McIlheny snorted bitterly and began to pace. He'd seen it too many times, es
pecially from Senate staffers. They had an image of intelligence officers as Machiavellian spy-masters, usually in pursuit of some hidden agenda. That was why everyone knew the civilians had to watch the sneaky bastards so closely. And since they were so damned clever, obviously they never told all they knew, even when they had a constitutional duty to do so. Which, naturally, meant any "failure" to spot the critical datum actually represented some deep-seated plot to suppress an embarrassing truth.

  People like that neither knew nor cared what true intelligence work was. Holovid might pander to the notion of the Daring Interstellar Agent carrying the vital data chip in a hollow tooth, but the real secret was sweat. Insight and trained instinct were invaluable, but it was the painstaking pursuit of every lead, the collection of every scrap of evidence and its equally exhaustive analysis, which provided the real breakthroughs.

  Unfortunately, he admitted with a sigh, analysis took time, sometimes more than you had, and in this case it wasn't providing what he needed. He knew there was a link between the pirates and someone high up. It was the only possible answer. Admiral Gomez's full strength would have had a tough time fighting its way into Elysium orbit against its space defenses, yet the pirates had gotten inside in the first rush. McIlheny had no detailed sensor data to back his hunch, but he was morally certain the raiders had slipped a capital ship into SLAM range under some sort of cover. The shocked survivors all agreed on the blazing speed with which the orbital defenses had been annihilated, and only a capital ship could have done it.

  But how? How had they fooled Commodore Trang and all of his people? Simple ECM couldn't be the answer after all the sector had been through. No, somehow they'd given Trang a legitimate cover, something he knew was friendly, and there was simply no way they could have done that without access to information they should never have been able to reach.

  It all fit a pattern-even Treadwell was showing signs of accepting that-but the colonel was damned if he could make it all come together. Even Ben Belkassem had thrown up his hands and departed for Old Earth in the faint hope that his superiors there might be able to see something from their distant perspective which had eluded everyone in the Franconia Sector.

  The colonel hoped so, because what bothered him even more than how was why. What in God's name were these people up to? He hadn't said so (except very privately to Admiral Gomez and Brigadier Keita), but it passed sanity that they could be garden-variety pirates. That didn't make sense just based on cost effectiveness! Anybody who could field a force the size of the one these people had to have didn't need whatever they were making off their loot.

  No doubt plunder helped defray their operational costs, but his most generous estimate of their take fell short of what it must cost to supply and maintain their ships. Just look at what they were taking: colony support equipment, spaceport beacon arrays, industrial machinery, for God's sake! They scooped up some luxury goods, of course-they'd scored over a half-billion in direcat pelts, alone, from Mathison's World-but no normal hijacker or pirate would touch most of what they took.

  And even aside from their unlikely loot, there were the casualties. McIlheny didn't believe in Attila the Hun in starships. Stupid people, by and large, didn't become starship captains, and only someone who was stupid could fail to see the inevitable result of pursuing some bizarre scorched-earth policy against the Empire. That was why massacre for the sake of massacre wasn't a normal piratical trait; it didn't pay their bills, and it did guarantee a massive response. Yet these people were deliberately maximizing the devastation in their wake. From everything the Elysium survivors could tell him, they hadn't even tried to loot beyond the limits of the capital, but they'd nuked every city from orbit! Nine million dead. What in hell's name could be behind that kind of slaughter? It was almost as if they were taunting the Fleet, daring it to deal with them.

  It was maddening, yet the answer was here, right here in his office and his brain, if he could only bring the pieces together. Any group who could penetrate security as if it didn't exist and use their stolen data to mount such meticulous, lethal attacks couldn't be mere loose cannons. They had an ultimate objective which, in their eyes at least, made all the killing worthwhile, and that was frightening, because he couldn't imagine what it might be and it was his job to do just that.

  There were times, McIlheny thought wistfully, when a return to the simplicity of combat looked ever so attractive.

  The admittance signal hauled him out of his thoughts. He pressed the button, and his eyebrows arched as Sir Arthur Keita stepped through the hatch.

  "Good evening, Sir Arthur. What can I do for you?"

  "Probably not much," Keita rumbled. He removed a carton of chips from a chair and settled onto it, holding them in his lap. "I just dropped by to say good bye, Colonel."

  "Good bye?" McIlheny repeated in surprise, and Keita gave a sour grin.

  "I'm only punching air out here. This is a job for you and the Fleet-and Treadwell, if he ever stops screaming for more ships and uses what he has-and I've been here too long."

  "I see." McIlheny sank into his own chair and swivelled it to face Keita. The brigadier's gravelly voice was as steady as ever, but he heard the despair within it. He knew what had kept Keita on Soissons so long... and there hadn't been a single report of the alpha-synth in ten weeks.

  "I imagine you do, Colonel." Keita's eyes were sad, but he gave McIlheny a less strained smile and nodded. "But I can't justify staying on in the hope that something will break, and-" his jaw tightened "-if she's spotted now, she's your job, not mine."

  "Understood, Sir," the colonel said. "I wish it weren't true-God knows Captain DeVries deserves better than that-but I understand."

  Keita looked down at the carton of chips, stirring them with a blunt index finger.

  "I wish you could have known her before, Colonel," he said softly. "She was... special. The best. And to have it end like this, with an imperial price on her head...."

  The silver-maned old head shook sadly, and then Keita looked up at McIlheny's combat ribbons.

  "You've been there, Colonel. If it has to be one of our own, I'm glad it's someone who can understand. Whatever she is now, she was special."

  "I know she was, Sir Arthur."

  "Yes. Yes, you do." Keita inhaled deeply, then rose and held out his hand. "I'll be going, then."

  "Yes, Sir. I'm going to miss you, Sir Arthur. I want you to know how much I've appreciated the insight you gave me between your... other duties."

  "Keep swinging, Colonel." Keita's grip crushed McIlheny's hand. "Between us, I'm convinced you're on the right trail, so you watch your six. Something stinks to high heaven out here. I intend to say as much to Countess Miller and His Majesty, but you be careful who you trust. When you can't tell the bad guys from the good guys...."

  His voice trailed off, and he released McIlheny's hand with a shrug.

  "I know, Sir." The colonel frowned a moment, then looked deep into Keita's eyes. "A favor, if I may, Sir Arthur."

  "Of course," Keita said instantly, and McIlheny smiled his thanks.

  "I've made a complete duplicate of my files. Technically, they're not supposed to leave my office, but I would be very grateful if you'd take them to Old Earth with you. I'd feel much happier with someone I know is clean in possession of my data in case-"

  The colonel broke off with a crooked smile, and Keita nodded soberly.

  "I will-and I'm honored by your trust."

  "Thank you. And with your permission, Sir, I'll arrange a periodic security download to you. One outside my normal channels."

  "Do you have a feeling?" Keita's eyes were suddenly intent, and the colonel shrugged.

  "I... don't know. It's just that I suspect we've been penetrated even more deeply than we've guessed. I don't want to sound paranoid, but these people have certainly demonstrated they're not shy about killing people. If I get too close to their mole... Well, accidents happen, Sir Arthur."

  ***

  Vice Admiral
Brinkman lit another cigar, tipped back his chair, and frowned meditatively up at the overhead. Things were getting complicated. Of course, they'd known they would-they had to, in fact, if this was going to work-but keeping so many balls in the air wore on a man's nerves.

  He thought back over his discussion with Howell. He could certainly understand the commodore's concerns, and, frankly, he would have balked at hitting someone like the El Grecans if not for McIlheny. The collateral objectives would be valuable even without the troublesome colonel, but he was the real reason they had to strike at least one non-imperial target to prove they really were "pirates." Not that Brinkman expected even the Ringbolt attack to throw him off for long. It should create confusion among the people to whom he reported, but it was unlikely to create enough.