by M. D. Cooper
“And….” Jason pressed.
“And a lot of them are transiting at twenty, up to thirty gs or more.”
“Not a problem,” he said instantly. “I have pilot’s mods, I can take it.”
“And Tobi, boyo?” Tobias asked gently.
Jason thought a moment, shooting Terrance a glance. “A stasis pod,” he said abruptly. “That should take care of our problem, shouldn’t it?”
Noa leant forward, a concerned look on his face. “Do we want to risk having the very tech they want there for them to take, if you’re discovered?”
Jason felt irritation at the physicist for throwing a wrench into the plan, but before he could voice it, Jonesy interrupted.
“Actually….” Jonesy drew the word out, his tone thoughtful. “We can insert a command code, one that can trigger a self-destruct, if you find you need to scuttle it.”
“Bonus points if it can be used as a tac-nuke.” Jason’s tone was dry.
Jonesy shook his head with a grin. “Sorry, sir, it’ll be a standard detonation,” he said. “But I’ll be sure to make it a nice, earth-shattering kaboom.”
The session went on for another two hours, Jason pressing Simone to go back over minor details, until finally Terrance stopped him.
“Enough,” the exec said wearily. “We’re rehashing old information. We need a break. Food. Rest. We’ll reconvene tomorrow before we arrive.”
“I’m fine,” Jason said shortly. “I want to go over the New Pejeta terrain one more—”
“Jason.” Terrance’s voice, sharp and hard, cut him off. “Stand down. That’s an order.”
Jason’s head snapped back, his eyes hot with anger. “Not a normal human, dude. And I’m not about to waste precious time feeding my goddamn face,” his voice rose, “or sleeping with my goddamn wife, when I could—”
Terrance’s fist shot out as Jason sprang away from the table. Tobias leapt up at the same time Khela, Landon and Logan did. Jonesy just sat there, mouth hanging open, while Logan held Khela back, Landon went for Terrance, and Tobias wrapped an arm around Jason’s cocked fist.
“Haud yer wheesht!” the Weapon Born bellowed.
Silence descended upon the ready room.
Shannon’s avatar appeared. Her arms were crossed, her silver eyes solemn.
“First,” the ship’s AI said quietly to the room as her eyes swept the tableau before her, “no one wants Calista back more than I do.”
She looked squarely at Jason as she approached him, silvery hair drifting softly around her, her eyes holding a sympathy rarely seen in the spirited, sharp-tongued AI.
“I’ve known her longer than you have, Jason. A lot longer. She’s like a sister to me.”
Jason took a breath and then nodded at Shannon. He released his clenched fist, and Tobias relaxed his hold.
“Second….” She turned to Tobias, one eyebrow cocked, as she planted her hands on her waist, all attitude once again. “Seriously? ‘Haud yer wheesht’? That is so not Irish.”
The comment had its desired effect. A ripple ran through the humans—a nervous cough from Jonesy, a short bark of a laugh out of Terrance, even a snort from Jason.
The Weapon Born managed to look embarrassed. “I, ah…it’s a long story, lass….”
“Well,” Khela shot one final glare Jason’s way, and he raised a shoulder in a half-shrug of apology that she chose to ignore. “If everyone is ready to act their age now, I’m going to grab something to eat and get some sleep.”
“Good idea, love. I’ll join you….” Terrance began, but Khela threw him a dark look, and Jason smirked as Terrance’s voice trailed off. “What? He started it!”
“And that’s our cue to leave, boyo,” the Weapon Born said. He hooked an arm around Jason’s neck, steering him out of the room.
Tobias forced him to eat, get some sleep, and then refused to allow him back on the bridge. Instead, he dragged Jason down to the bay to help certify that the newly-rebuilt shuttle, Eidolon, was ready for flight. It had most likely kept Terrance from throwing another punch at him—and Khela from poisoning him.
THIMBLERIGGING
STELLAR DATE: 03.12.3272 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Presidium Offices, Humans’ Republic
REGION: Barat, Little River
As Giovanni entered the premier’s oak-paneled conference room in the Presidium, his attention was arrested by the sight of a woman sitting in the chair he usually occupied. He looked around, realizing the only open seats were against the wall among a sea of aides.
On the outside, looking in.
He seethed silently at one more indication that he had been replaced—as if the fact that he had not been informed about this meeting wasn’t indication enough.
Back ramrod straight and pride stung, Giovanni made his way stiffly to the single remaining chair as the premier’s inner circle of advisors began recapping for the group at large the strategies being enacted.
He glared at the profile of Citizen General Jones, the soldier who sat in the chair he’d occupied just yesterday, her expression one of veiled triumph.
Giovanni had figured out what had transpired the night before. In retrospect, it had clearly been a setup. It was the only possible conclusion he could come to—once he’d found the missives that had been sent out in his name. All official correspondence, from the offices of Public Safety and Information.
His organization. Compromised.
He’d discovered the agent Jones had subverted and had neutralized her—permanently. He’d backtraced a forgery of his own auth token, convincingly done. The instructions sent to Phaethon’s outpost ordered his agent to ship the Avon Vale captain to Gehenna. En route, they were to interrogate the subject, and harvest all available tech. He raged inside, knowing that last had been what had sealed his removal from the premier’s ranks.
Jones knew it, too. She’d passed him a single, shrewd look as he entered the chambers just now, and then a visual dismissal, as if his influence on Barat was a chapter that had ended.
“And where do we stand on our acquisition of the stasis tech?” he heard the premier ask, her gaze settling squarely on Jones and ignoring him completely.
The snub did not go unremarked. Giovanni caught side glances from both Willa Savin and Natasha Coletti as Jones began her report.
“We are doing what we can to salvage the situation by harvesting as much tech from the subject as possible, given the unfortunate mishandling of the prisoner,” Jones replied. Her voice rang with confidence as she added, “Our doctors tell us they’ve harvested a few promising bits already, including a superconducting battery more efficient than our own.”
“Very good, General,” the premier practically purred. “It is gratifying to hear you’ve achieved so much in such a short time.”
Her words soured Giovanni’s stomach, more so because it had been Jones who had mishandled the Avon Vale’s captain—not him. He’d advocated that they leave the prisoner unharmed. Her cadre of generals had been the ones to botch the situation.
“As for the stasis tech itself,” Jones continued, “our agents inside State House tell us the Centauri ship should reach Godel late tomorrow. Once the tech has been traded to Godel, it should be an easy matter to relieve our neighbors of it.”
“Speaking of relieving our neighbors of something they hold and we need, where are we on obtaining that vein of high purity silica?” Natasha Coletti leant forward, eager to hear news of the Verdant mining operation.
Giovanni noted with some satisfaction that the question caused Jones to deflate a bit. “Our friends on Godel suspect our hand in the uprisings there. They’ve sent notice that they will defend the asteroid, if we approach,” the general admitted. “But I’ve devised a solution that will effectively divert them.”
“Oh?” The premier cocked her head. “And what would that be?”
Jones’s confidence rallied, and she sat taller, leaning forward to deliver the news. “We’ve instructed patrols along
the shipping lanes to renew their harassment of Godel container vessels, and have sent orders for our ships to execute close passes on three other mining concerns.”
The premier crossed her arms, blood-red nails tapping a finely-tailored sleeve in irritation. “This has been done before, General,” she reminded the woman.
“It has,” Jones agreed. “And they may even recognize the ploy for the tactic it is. But they cannot let the aggression go unanswered, which means their forces will have to be spread across greater distances. In the meantime….”
She drew her lips back, baring her teeth in a feral grin. “We go forward with our plan to destroy their planetary storehouses. That distraction—combined with the thinning of their forces—will leave Verdant poorly defended.” Jones sat back, raising a hand in dismissal. “A simple conquest.”
Giovanni caught the look of avarice shining in Natasha Coletti’s eyes and knew the general had made a convert by doing nothing more than co-opting his own plan and adding a bit more firepower—something she had conveniently refused to give to him a week earlier, claiming she had no vessels available for the task. Now he knew why.
Well, shit.
A glance around the table showed the general had managed to gain the approval of everyone else, as well.
But Jones wasn’t done.
“Of course, it would be a shame,” she added with a studied nonchalance, “to have Godel in such a uniquely vulnerable position and not take full advantage of it….”
Her voice trailed off, and she looked over at Feretti, her expression calculating.
The premier returned the gaze, her own eyes narrowing. “Go on,” she said, after a moment.
“It would be interesting, would it not, to have Godel dependent on us for a critical resource for a change, and not the other way around?”
Jones now had the complete attention of everyone in the room, including Giovanni. She nodded, as if she’d received unanimous agreement to her statement.
Their attention surely implies tacit agreement, at the least, was Giovanni’s passing thought.
“We’ve expanded our planetary operation to include their top farming operations, in addition to the planetary storehouses. Additional Digital-to-Biological units, DBCs, are en route now and will soon be emplaced. With a single encrypted signal sent, we will be able to decimate Godel’s food supply.”
It took a moment for the implications of her statement to sink in. Once it did, Giovanni felt gut-punched at the general’s words. This wasn’t warfare; it wasn’t even terrorism. The scale to which Jones had escalated the situation threatened to wipe out a large portion of Godel’s population.
Have we no decency? Or, at the very least, a sense of self-preservation?
There was a reason the ancient saying ‘don’t poke the bear’ existed. A world facing an existential threat could feel they had nothing to lose….
And then Jones upped the ante.
“Consider this.” The general’s face was intense as she leant toward those seated at the table. “Once we acquire Enfield’s stasis tech, we will have the ability to preserve fresh produce in a way cryogenics has never allowed. No cellular damage of delicate fruits and vegetables. For the first time, we will truly be able to store up reserves in case of famine.”
She paused for effect. “Or for famine on another world. Which would place us in a position to render assistance to a neighboring planet that finds itself faced with a food shortage. For a price, of course.”
Stars, the woman is a greedy, ambitious bitch, Giovanni thought. High risk does yield high reward, but what she has orchestrated could also galvanize Godel against us and plunge us into war.
He sat up suddenly as realization hit him.
She knows this. She’s been lobbying for a stronger military presence against Godel for years. She wants this.
The nods of the people around the table gave him chills. Jones’s madness was a contagion that was spreading, he could see it happening before his very eyes.
He knew then what he had to do.
To save his people, he would first need to betray them.
* * * * *
That evening, junior analyst Molly Chaudry checked her internal chrono one last time before boarding the elevator that would take her to the New Kells Spaceport. She cursed the last-minute string of reports that had showed up unexpectedly, demanding her attention.
Charlotte, the AI aboard the courier ship Charade, had assured Molly that her brother’s two girls could wait in the diplomatic lounge just off the main concourse if their timing didn’t quite match up, but she hated the thought of leaving them alone any longer than necessary.
It had been kind of Simone to take an interest in Molly’s nieces and check on them on her way to Phaethon. Molly had very nearly cried when Simone had sent her a message saying the girls would arrive on Godel in three days’ time. She owed her.
Molly exited the elevator and pinged the spaceport’s NSAI for directions to the diplomatic lounge. A map appeared on her overlay, and she reversed her course, turning down a side corridor and taking a lift up two levels.
Her steps quickened as she approached the lounge, a smile playing over her face. Twenty meters from the lounge, she received a priority ping. Automatically, she accepted the token, realizing just as she did so that the sender’s tag had been truncated.
Her eyes widened and her heart began pounding. She looked around wildly, then bolted for the lounge at a dead run.
She ground to a halt, hands fisted at her sides, her breaths coming quick and shallow.
* * * * *
“Citizen General!”
Jones looked up irritably as one of Giovanni’s Citizen intelligence officers came barreling into her Combat Ready Room.
Jones jerked her head at the Citizen major standing guard by the door, and the woman moved to cut off the interloper.
“But, sir,” the young man protested as the major crowded him and began pushing him bodily back through the entrance, “it’s about the DBCs!”
Jones had returned her attention to the Godel map she’d been studying, but at the man’s words, she blanked the holo and swiveled to meet his gaze.
The young man took a nervous breath, his eyes darting about the room as he straightened his uniform. Licking his lips, he turned back to lock eyes with Jones, the adam’s apple just above his uniform’s neckline bobbing as he swallowed.
“I’m listening,” the general prodded, and her tone held a clear “this better be good” warning. She crossed her arms and raised one brow, waiting impatiently for the man to speak.
“I…we just intercepted a transmission to Godel, Citizen General,” he began. “It relayed the locations of each of the Digital-to-Biological Converter units that our agents have planted in Godel’s food supply chain.”
“What?” Jones’s two-star demanded from where he stood next to her.
Fury engulfed Jones at the news of this betrayal. She had not worked on this plan so hard and for so long to see it destroyed from within by some spineless traitor.
She swiveled, pinning the Citizen major-general beside her with a look. “Go with him,” she instructed, tilting her head to indicate the twitchy intelligence officer. “Track the traitor down. I want that leak plugged!”
The major-general drew himself up with a crisp salute before dou
ble-timing it toward the door and waving the young man back through it with an impatient gesture.
Jones pivoted, allowing a glare to sweep the occupants of the room. “If Godel is aware of the DBCs, then find me another solution, and find it now.” Her words were harsh and staccato, striking with the force of a projectile, and several in the room flinched as if struck. “One way or another, their food supply will be taken out. Am I understood?”
Heads nodded vigorously as suggestions began to fly around the room. Jones braced her hands on the War Room’s holotable as she silently observed the interchange.
“Nanophage?” one suggested, and another dismissed it with a wave of her hand.
“Too slow,” she countered. “What about a fast-acting poison?”
“The DBCs could have printed that,” another pointed out. “And besides, if we introduced a toxin, they could quickly engineer a cognate antitoxin to neutralize.”
“True, what about—”
“Enough!” Jones interrupted the debate, clenching her teeth in annoyance. “We have neither the time nor the margin for error to rely upon clever solutions. I want a decisive victory, Citizens.”
Her fierce gaze swept the room and, when she was certain she had captured their undivided attention, she spoke once more.
“This time, we use a blunt instrument. Have our agents plant explosives everywhere. No food storage facility, no processing plant, no stars-be-damned farmer’s market is to be left out, am I understood? I want their food supply taken down, Citizens. And if that means we take a tac-nuke to a knife fight—then so be it.”
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
STELLAR DATE: 03.13.3272 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: State House, New Kells
REGION: Godel, Little River
Zola sent her a swift thank you and then consulted the calendar on his HUD. It was as he’d thought; there was no meeting scheduled with Celia today.