Beta Sector- Anthology

by Stephen A. Fender

  General Oord looked into the device, then to the shattered remains of the interior of the command center, scoffing at the destruction. “These pitiful fools can’t even kill themselves correctly. It’s no wonder we have advanced so far, so quickly.”

  “Yes, General.” The Kafaran guard sneered.

  “Disgusting,” the general replied. “These weaklings beg for death. Taking back our remaining worlds will be child’s play.”

  “Sir,” sounded another soldier from behind the general, “we’ve found a survivor.”

  The two-meter-tall general turned to his subordinate. “It appears that this day may not have been entirely wasted. I have been anxious to try out some of the new interrogation methods devised by our scientists. Where is he?”

  “He’s outside, General. It appears he may have been thrown free of the explosion that killed his comrades. He is in need of medical attention.”

  The general, flanked by his aides, descended the two flights of stairs that brought them down to ground level and then exited into the destroyed courtyard. There, surrounded by Kafaran troops, was the broken body of Lieutenant Christopher Flynn.

  “He is alive?” the general asked, not averting his gaze from the fallen Marine.

  The Kafaran physician stood up from the wounded Marine. “Barely, General. His identity device.” The doctor produced a plastic card and handed it to the general.

  The general took the computer cartridge and slid it into the reader provided by another of his aides. “Colonel Zachary Gunda,” the general murmured.

  “Is he someone of great importance, sir?” the general’s aide asked.

  “Possibly,” Oord replied, handing the card reader back to his aide. “Healer, attend to his wounds and have him brought aboard the command ship. His knowledge may be of use to us . . . if he survives.”

  “Yes, General,” the physician replied, and then injected Flynn with a red substance. The human grumbled something unintelligible. A moment later the healer nodded, and two troops hoisted the human to his feet and all but dragged him to a waiting shuttle.

  “General, your orders?” the aide asked as Oord watched the procession leave.

  “Find any computer terminal—operational or not—and strip as much data from it as you can.” Looking down, he kicked over the corpse of a fallen Antosian—a flag officer, by the looks of his tattered uniform. “Once that is complete, we will destroy this entire installation from orbit. Our comrades are already establishing our own fortification several hundred kilometers from here in a much more fortified location. It amazes me that the Unified knows so little of ground warfare. This site is completely ill-suited for a base of operations.” Oord spat on the ground near the remains of another Sector Command Marine. “The smell alone of their decaying flesh is enough to turn even a warrior’s stomach sour. I wish to disintegrate it.”

  “I have my orders and I will obey, General.”

  “See that you do. Report to me anything you find here. I am returning to the ship to see if our prisoner has anything redeeming to say about the waste of life and resources Sector Command displayed here today. After that, I will destroy him as well.”

  The End

  The Best-Laid Plans (2354)

  When it comes to picking locks and cracking safes, I admit to no master. The door to Stanley Alvarez's private quarters had an old-fashioned tumbler drum that was easier to pick than my teeth. I went through that door without breaking step. Quiet as I was, though, Alvarez still heard me. The light came on and there he was: sitting up in bed, pointing a laser pistol directly at my abdomen.

  "You should have more brains than that, Trudeau," he snarled as he lowered the weapon. "Creeping into my room at night! You could have been shot."

  "No, I couldn't," I told him as he stowed the cannon back under his pillow. "A man with a curiosity complex as big as yours will always talk first and shoot later. And besides—none of this pussyfooting around in the dark would be necessary if your vid-phone was online and I could have gotten a call through."

  Alvarez yawned and poured himself a glass of water from the dispenser unit beside the bed. "Just because I head the local division for the OSI doesn't mean that I don’t require rest," he replied heatedly before he drained the glass. "I have to sleep sometime. My screen is open only for emergency calls, not for every agent who needs his hand held."

  "Meaning I am in the hand-holding category?" I asked with as much sweetness as I could.

  "Put yourself in any category you please," Stanley grumbled as he slumped in the bed. "And also put yourself out into the hall and see me tomorrow during official working hours."

  He actually was acting like I was going to listen to what he told me to do. Little did Alvarez know that I was going to be the one doing the telling.

  "Do you know what this is?" I asked him, activating a small holocube under his long, broken nose. One eye opened slowly.

  "Big warship of some kind, looks like Vralt Lines. Now, for the last time—go away!" he said.

  "A very good guess for this late at night," I told him cheerily. "It is a late Vralt warship . . . Titan class. Undoubtedly one of the most truly efficient engines of destruction ever manufactured. Over a kilometer of defensive screens and armament. It could probably turn any fleet existent today into fine radioactive ash—"

  "Except for the fact that the last one was broken up for scrap over 200 years ago," he mumbled. “We won that war, remember?”

  I leaned over and put my lips close to his ear. So there would be no chance of misunderstanding, I spoke both softly and clearly.

  "Very true," I said. "But wouldn't you be just a little bit interested if I were to tell you that one is being built today?"

  Oh, it was beautiful to watch. The covers went one way and Alvarez went the other. In a single unfolding, concerted motion, he left the horizontal and stood tensely vertical against the wall, examining the hologram with all the attention it was due. Stanley apparently did not believe in pajama bottoms, and it hurt me to see the goose bumps rising on those thin shanks he called legs. But if the legs were thin, the voice was more than full enough to make up the difference.

  "Talk, blast you, Trudeau—talk!" he roared. "What is this nonsense about a warship? Who's building it?"

  I had my file out and was touching up a nail, holding it out for inspection before I said anything. From the corner of my eye I could see him getting purple about the face—but he kept quiet. I savored the moment, to be sure.

  "Put Victor Trudeau in charge of the record room for a while, you said . . . that way he can learn the ins and outs of Metrade Sector. Burrowing around in century-old, dusty files will be just the thing for a free spirit like Victor Trudeau. They’ve been needing reorganization for quite a while."

  Alvarez opened his mouth, made a choking noise, then closed it. He undoubtedly realized that any interruption would only lengthen my explanation, not shorten it. I smiled and nodded at his decision, then continued.

  "I nosed through the files and found them most interesting. Particularly the C & M setup—the Categorizer and Memory. That building full of machinery that takes in and digests news and reports from all the planets in the known galaxy, indexes it to every category it can possibly relate, and then files it. Great machine to work with. I had it digging out spaceship info for me, something I have always been interested in—"

  "You should be," Alvarez interrupted rudely. "You've stolen enough of them in your time."

  I gave him a hurt look and went on—slowly. "I won't bore you with all the details, since you seem impatient, but eventually I turned up this rather devious plan." He had the data cartridge out of my fingers before it cleared my wallet.

  "What are you getting at?" he mumbled as he ran his eyes over the hologram blueprints. "This is an ordinary heavy-cargo and passenger job. It's no more a Titan warship than I am."

  * * * * *

  It is hard to curl your lips with contempt and talk at the same time, but with practiced ease
I succeeded. "Of course. You don't expect them to file warship plans with the Unified Government, do you? But as I said, I know more than a little bit about ships. It seemed to me this thing was just too big for the use intended. Enough old ships are fuel-wasters; you don't have to build new ones to do that. This started me thinking and I punched for a complete list of ships that size that had been constructed in the past. You can imagine my surprise when, after three minutes of groaning, the C & M only produced six. One was built for a self-sustaining colony attempt at the edge of our galaxy. For all we know, she is still on the way. The other five were all Ursa-class colonizers, built during the great Unified Expansion of 2210 when large populations were moved. Far too big to be practical now.

  "I was still teased, as I had no idea what a ship this large could be used for. So I removed the time interlock on the C & M and let it pick around through the entire history of space to see if it could find a comparison. It sure did. Right at the end of the Great Age of Vralt, the giant Titan warships. The machine even found a blueprint for me."

  Opening the hologram on the data cartridge I’d given him, Alvarez began comparing the two images. I leaned over his shoulder and pointed out the interesting parts, to which he simply grunted.

  "Notice—if the engine room specs are changed slightly to include this cargo hold, there is plenty of room for the Marines needed. This superstructure—obviously just tacked onto the plans here—gets thrown away, and turrets take its place. The hulls are identical. A change here, a shift there, and the stodgy freighter becomes the fast battlewagon. These changes could be made during construction, then plans filed. By the time anyone in the Unified Government found out what was being built, the ship would be finished and launched. Of course, this could all be coincidence—the plans of a newly built ship agreeing to six places with those of a ship built a few centuries ago. But if you think so, I will give you hundred-to-one odds you are wrong, any size bet you name."

  I wasn't winning any sucker bets that night. While he pulled on his clothes, he shot questions at me.

  "And the name of the peace-loving planet that is building this bad memory from the past?"

  "Agrona. It’s the second planet in the Nerva system. No other colonized planets in the system."

  "Doesn’t ring a bell," Alvarez said as we took the private maglift to his office, "which may be a good or a bad sign. Wouldn't be the first time trouble came from some out-of-the-way spot I never even knew existed. I’ll bet it’s not even in Metrade Sector, right?”

  “You are. It’s in Beleson Sector.”

  “It’s out of our jurisdiction.”

  “Do you really think that matters with something as dangerous as this?”

  With the automatic disregard for others of the truly dedicated, he pressed the scramble button on his desk. Very quickly a gaggle of multi-limbed androids were bringing in files and records. Stanley and I went through each of them together.

  Modesty prevented me from speaking first, but I had a very short wait before Alvarez reached the same conclusion I had. He hurled a folder the length of the room and scowled out at the harsh dawn light.

  "The more I look at this thing," he snapped, "the shadier it gets. Agrona seems to have no possible motive or use for a warship. But they are building one—that I will swear on a stack of credit notes as high as this building. But what will they do with it when they have it? They have an expanding culture, no unemployment, a surplus of heavy metals, and ready markets for all they produce. No hereditary enemies, feuds or the like. If it weren’t for this warship thing, I would call them an ideal Unified planet. I have to know more about them."

  "I've already called the spaceport—in your name of course," I told him. "Ordered a fast courier ship. I'll leave within the hour."

  "Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself, Trudeau?" he replied coldly. "I don’t care how successful you’ve been in the past, or what the top brass in the Inner Sphere think of you. This sector you’re assigned to is my sector. I still give the orders here, whether you like it or not."

  I was sweetness and light because a lot depended on his decision. "Just trying to help, Chief, get things ready in case you wanted more info. And this isn't really a massive operation, just a reconnaissance. I can do that as well as any of the experienced agents. And it may give me the experience I need, so that someday, I, too, will be judged worthy to—"

  "All right," he pleaded. "Stop shoveling it on while I can still breathe. Get out there. Find out what is going on in Nerva. Do it quickly. Do it quietly. Above all, do it cheaply. I’m not going to be buried in expense reports like your previous supervisors. And that's an order."

  “That’s more than one order.”

  Stanley narrowed his eyes. By the way he’d said it, I knew he thought there was little chance of its happening that way anyway. So much the better. The luxury yacht I’d chartered was waiting nearby.

  * * * * *

  A quick stop at supply and record sections gave me everything I needed. The sun was barely clear of the horizon when the silver needle of my ship lifted in the clear green skies of Lustrix, then blasted into space.

  The trip took only a few days, more than enough time to memorize everything I needed to know about Agrona. And the more I knew, the less I could understand their need for a warship. It didn't fit. Agrona was an associate member of the Unified Collaboration of Systems, and I had run into these AMs before, as I called them. They were all united in a loose alliance and bickered a lot among themselves, but never came to blows. This bickering, usually played out in the halls of the Unified Council chambers on Thress, is what usually relegated them to AM status and not into the elite, full-member club of the UCS. Still, all AMs shared one common theme—a universal abhorrence of war.

  Yet this one was secretly building a warship.

  Since I was only chasing my tail with this line of thought, I put it out of my mind and worked on some three-dimensional chess problems. This filled the time until the shuttle’s jump drive deposited me in the Nerva system and Agrona blinked onto the forward screen.

  One of my most effective mottos has always been "Secrecy can be an obviosity." It’s what magicians call misdirection. Let people very obviously see what you want them to see, and then they'll never notice what is hidden. This was why I landed at midday, at the largest spaceport on the planet, and after a very showy approach. I was already dressed for my role, and out of the ship before the landing braces stopped vibrating. Buckling the fur cape around my shoulders with its platinum clasp, I stamped down the ramp. The durable little Gamma-8 android rumbled after me with my bags. Heading directly toward the main gate, I ignored the scurry of activity around the customs building. Only when a uniformed under-official of some kind ran over to me did I give the field any attention.

  Before he could talk, I did, easily taking command of the encounter.

  "Beautiful planet you have here. Delightful climate! Ideal spot for a country home. Friendly people, always willing to help strangers and all that. That's what I like. Makes me feel grateful. Very pleased to meet you. I am Count Otto Waverly of North Kellib." I shook his hand enthusiastically at this point and let a one-hundred-credit note slip into his palm.

  "Now," I added, "I wonder if you would ask the customs agents to look at my bags here. Don't want to waste time, do we?” I offered a dismissive wave toward the landing pad. “The ship is open. They can check that whenever they please."

  My manner, clothes, jewelry, the easy way I passed credits around and the luxurious sheen of my bags, could mean only one thing: there was little that was worth smuggling into or out of Agrona. Certainly nothing a rich man would be interested in. The official murmured something with a smile, spoke a few words into his phone, and the job was done.

  A small wave of customs men hung stickers on my luggage, peeked into one or two for conformity's sake, and waved me through. I shook hands all around—a rustling hand-clasp, of course—then was on my way. A luxury transport was summoned,
and the second-ritziest hotel suggested. I’d done my homework. New accommodations were chosen, one suitable to my tastes and purposes. When all were in agreement, I settled back while the tube-shaped Gamma-8 loaded the bags about me.

  * * * * *

  My yacht was completely clean, because everything I might need for the job was in my luggage—some of it quite lethal and explosive, and very embarrassing if it were to be discovered in my bags. In the safety of my opulent hotel suite I made a change of clothes and personality . . . after the Gamma-8 had checked the rooms for bugs, of course.

  And very nice gadgets too, these OSI androids. This one looked and acted like a moron G-8 all the time. It was anything but. The brain was as good as any other android brain I have known, plus the fact that the chunky body was crammed with devices and machines of varying use. It buzzed quickly around the room, moving my bags and laying out my kit, all the time following a careful route that covered every square millimeter of the suite.

  "All rooms checked. Results negative except for one optic bug in that wall,” it reported in a monotone as it finished the sweep.

  "Should you be pointing like that?" I asked the machine. "Might make people suspicious, you know."

  "Not possible," the android said with mechanical surety. "I disabled it and it is now unserviceable."

  With this assurance I pulled off my flashy clothes and slipped into the ash-gray dress uniform of an admiral in the Sector Command fleet. It came complete with decorations, filigree, and all the necessary documents. I thought it a little showy myself, but it was just the thing to make the right impression on Agrona. Like many other planets, this one was uniform-conscious. Delivery boys, street cleaners, clerks—all had to have characteristic uniforms. Much prestige was attached to them, and my gray dress outfit should rate as high as any uniform in Beta Sector.

  A long cloak would conceal the uniform while I left the hotel, but the silver-trimmed hat and a briefcase of papers were a problem. I had never explored all the possibilities of the Gamma-8; perhaps it could be of help.