Huron’s ears pricked to attention at the slight hesitation and change in tone.
“There have been some developments—perhaps you’re aware—that argue strongly for shortening the approval cycle on this business.” Thus did the Chief of Naval Operations inform him that the odor of the rat they’d been smelling must be getting strong indeed, for a man like Westover to connive so blithely against what ordinarily was considered properly constituted political authority. “So I’ve talked to Zeke Perry. If you can get a firm fix on Mankho, he’ll loan you CAT 5.”
That brought Huron’s smile out into something close to a grin. Covert Action Team 5 was Sergeant Major Yu’s team, and one couldn’t ask for better. Their nickname was, unsurprisingly, the Hurricanes. Huron recalled that when a lieutenant named Richter took over CAT 3; he’d lobbied—successfully—to have the unit designation changed to CAT 10. No one could accuse the special forces of lacking a sense of humor, such as it was.
“I understand you’ve already shanghaied old Fred.”
“Well, it saved a trip, sir.”
“Considerate of you.” Westover’s smile spread a little wider behind the immaculate gray moustache. “Now officially, this is still in my in-box. I expect it will be there a good while. Then I’ll subject it to the most careful scrutiny—can’t be too careful these days. Apt to be a lot of debate. Probably have to kick it upstairs—you understand how things are.”
“I do, indeed.”
“So don’t expect to hear anything for at least six weeks. Longer, if the PC gets a hold of it.”
“Very good, sir.”
“In the meantime, Joss knows what’s afoot. He’ll make sure Lo Gai doesn’t have any questions. That’s why I called. I’ve given Trin a privileged channel so she can keep me in the loop. She’ll give you the yea or nay when we get to that point. When do you think that’ll be, by the way?”
“It all depends on how long it takes to isolate a reasonable target set. I’m afraid there is a lot of uncharted ether to cover.”
“That’s generally the case,” Westover agreed, nodding. “Has anyone talked to Old Moe yet?”
Until that moment, Huron had been unaware there was an ‘Old Moe’ to talk to. “Not to the best of my knowledge.”
“Moses Sanderson—lieutenant,” the admiral elucidated. “Might want to look him up. By the way, don’t ever call him Old Moe, or he’ll likely stop speaking to you.”
“Yes, sir. But I haven’t noticed him on any rosters.”
“That’s because he doesn’t work for us. He’s Terran Navy.”
“I see.”
“Very senior. Spends about half his time on long leave. Always haring off after one thing or another. Last time, it was bustards, if I recall correctly.”
“The fowl, sir?”—wondering if he’d heard correctly.
“As I understand it. A time before that—years ago, now—it was bumblebees. He pursued them all over Yorkshire with pitch pipe.”
“Indeed.” That seemed a singularly whimsical pastime for anyone, not to say a naval lieutenant.
“Yes. He had this idea that the tone their wings made as they flew was related to impending climatic changes. Went on about it all through lunch. I dare say it would have been mighty edifying, if any of us could have understood it.”
“Quite so.” Huron drowned a chuckle by clearing his throat. “And was it? Related, I mean.”
“I gather not. He said the bees had proved froward.” A slight pause. “That’s the way he likes to talk.”
“Froward?” Huron enunciated. “As in difficult, contrary or obstinate?”
“I suppose. I never did bother to look it up. It sounds like you two will get along famously, though.”
“I hope so, sir.”
“In any case, see if you can get them to winkle him out of wherever he is. He’s excellent for this sort of issue—by far the best they have, I’d say. Could save you a great deal of time.”
“I’ll get right on it, sir.”
“There has to be an MOU we can exhume to cover his participation in the effort. I’ll light up Candace for you, if you like.”
“That would be very helpful, sir.” How Admiral of the Fleet Candace Smith, Commander in Chief of the Terran Navy, would feel about being lit up Huron could not say, but happily that was far beyond his remit.
“Glad to contribute something useful.” Huron was fairly sure the Admiral had almost winked. “So once you have your target set, what do things look like?”
“Recon could take as long as three weeks before we move to Phase 3. If we get a short list, it might be as little as two, but Phase 3 can go almost immediately after that, if we can stack the resources we need during the recon.”
Westover nodded, pleased. “Take some art, but that can be managed. We’ll let the dog and pony show run its course and hope for not too much more than the usual foolishness. With this nonsense about the ultimatum going on, I expect a distracted audience, which is all to the good.”
Huron nodded in response.
“So this will be our last intimate little chat on the matter.”
“Of course.”
“How’s your father keeping? Well, I trust?”
“He’s still adjusting. Doing okay at it though.”
“I still remember that hunting expedition we took to Pohjola in ‘85. Don’t ever let him talk you into a shortcut. You know all about that, though.”
“Quite so, sir.”
“Give him my best. Nil desperandum.”
“Absolutely.”
“And enjoy the rest of your AM.”
“You too, sir.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
CGHQ Main Annex
Lunar 1, Tycho Prime
Luna, Sol
Admiral Westover had exaggerated neither Lieutenant Sanderson’s eccentricities nor his analytic gifts. In response to Huron’s carefully worded request, Terran Navy Supreme HQ’s G2 Section, knowing their man and being adept at winkling, swiftly located ‘Old Moe’ in the Outer Hebrides, where he was busy lowering himself down cliff faces, by a system of blocks and tackles of his own devising, to study the domestic economy of otherwise inaccessible hirundines. Establishing a code channel, they forwarded Kris’s data dump to him—data upon which some hundreds of man-hours had already been spent trying to find a match in the catalog of known planets within the target regions—and asked for comment. By lunch, Lieutenant Sanderson produced the following response:
“Most interesting. Sounds rather like Rephidim, especially from the odor. Be so good as to ask the midshipman if she happened to notice any of the shrubbery [see attached]. Very singular shrubbery there, especially the carnivorous Odis Tardactilynia, as we seem to be dealing with the northern hemisphere. A rare specimen, it produces a peculiar keening or whistling after sunset, and if she heard such or saw one, we could confidently narrow the location to a tolerably few places, all within 1300 km or so. Do note they have a seasonal migration, so we must account for the fact she was there near the vernal equinox.”
Attached were images of the plants in question, with a full botanical description.
Kris’s astounded response—she’d said, “Those were plants? Carnivorous plants? Whistling carnivorous plants that walk?” followed by a string of muttered imprecations—had borne fruit: approval had been granted to dispatch a stealth probe, which readily identified a compound matching Kris’s description on Rephidim’s northern continent, near the tundra line, and COMINT confirmed Mankho’s presence there.
Rephidim was a cold, mountainous, inhospitable world, quite active geologically, steeped in petrochemicals, with a long and tortured settlement history. Like many planets, it was initially a mining settlement, but the veins weren’t as rich as the original assays suggested, and it was subsequently abandoned. The first serious colonists were therefore religiously heterodox Amalekites trying to escape oppression by the Sultanate of Andaman and Nicobar. At first, the Sultanate tried to exercise suzerainty over the c
olony, but after their disastrous war with the New United Kingdom, they relinquished it.
The planet then became a point of dispute between Outremeria and the Bannermans, who both claimed it as being within their sphere. The Amalekite settlers decamped en mass, a few for an almost sterile world in an uninhabited, asteroid-filled system far off in Cygnus that they dubbed Asylum, and the rest for the primitive pastoral world of Harkness, where they hoped to find a more fertile environment for their strict and ardent faith.
Upon the departure of the Amalekites, groups from Outremeria and Bannerman began resettling the planet. The Bannermans believed that new techniques would make the planet’s unexploited resources accessible. Outremeria wanted to expand its influence in the region through settlement. Later, some Tyrsenians also arrived. These competing factions, alternately hostile and collaborative as whim and opportunity dictated, made the planet a perfect stew of lawlessness—an attractive haunt for a terrorist warlord who dealt heavily in the slave trade. Accordingly, after years of moving from one base to another, Mankho settled on Rephidim with his Black Army and declared his own sovereign state.
For a time, the Black Army was able to dominate much of the planet. Things began to deteriorate when their relationship with the Tyrsenians soured. According to conventional wisdom, they came to view the Black Army as an unwelcome competitor and were hostile to Mankho’s anarchist credo. Whether for these reasons or others, there were a series of sharp engagements between them and the Black Army when the latter was at the height of its powers. This was thought to have played a role in the decision to attack Knydos, leading to the Black Army’s downfall and Mankho’s eviction. The Tyrsenians then got the upper hand in local affairs and had kept it ever since.
Rephidim had thus been widely disregarded as a possible refuge for Mankho after Lacaille. His discovery there was viewed as vindication by a small cadre of analysts who maintained the hostility between the Tyrsenians and the Black Army was more theoretical than real; some even thought it was largely a blind. Indeed, this group proposed the Tyrsenians, not the Bannermans, as the Black Army’s most likely state sponsor, and held that the Tyrsenians fell out with Mankho over the failure at Knydos (which, in their view, the Tyrsenians were invested), rather than the other way around. How right they were remained unclear, but there was no doubt that Mankho was firmly reestablished on Rephidim in a major new installation.
A model of that installation now hovered over the briefing table, while the 2D data and various reports lay scattered about the table itself. Old Moe himself stood, or rather stooped, above it. He was uncommonly tall and round-shouldered as well as old—the oldest lieutenant in the Terran Navy, in fact, a distinction he’d achieved by the simple expedient of refusing promotion once he had attained that rank. Superannuated lieutenants were not normally tolerated, but given his talents and impressive personal fund of information, the Service made an exception for him, just as they did for his uniform, which was at least twenty years out-of-date; his shock of unruly white hair that would not submit to headgear of any kind; and his frequent long leaves, such as the one he’d just been recalled from.
If he regretted that (he’d left behind not only his beloved nesting swallows, but also a rare oyster catcher who was about to bring off her brood), no trace of it showed in his seamed face or pale eyes under the sparse gray eyebrows that waved about to a surprising degree as he talked. He was talking now, presenting his assessment of Mankho’s compound.
“Not the best model, I’m afraid”—rotating it with a long, thin, translucent forefinger. “Regrettably, the probe could not cover all the favorable aspects given the time constraints. What you need for a really superlative model is—” Huron cleared his throat. Sanderson might be an excellent analyst, but he also tended to be prolix and easily distracted, as Huron had been warned. He got the hint this time, however, and forged on. “Yes. What you see is a rather well thought-out installation. Quite a defensible location, good orbital access, close enough to Tirana to receive support, but not so close as to suffer the, shall we say, the inconvenience of having pesky visitors about.
“You will have noted, of course, the perimeter fence, well placed, and the walled main compound with towers commanding all the approaches, and these hardened bunkers here and here”—he highlighted them in red with his stylus—“that look very much as if they house an IADS, probably employing plasma guns. These towers are likely to mount gatlings: 30-mm or so, I would say. You can see what look like ammo hoists there on the inner walls. There are quite likely antipersonnel measures as well. In one of those images you can see a number of pallets being unloaded. It’s difficult to tell, needless to say, but enhancement suggests they are cases of mortar rounds: semi-active, two-inch—five-centimeter, if you prefer—typical of Bannerman, Tyrsenian, most of the armed groups in that neck of the woods, so to speak.
“Now turning to infrastructure: power is local, as is water. Note the wells between the fence and the compound. The generators would appear to be underground—there are significant underground facilities, a garage for vehicles and water treatment, environmentals and the like.”
He tapped the model and magnified a portion. “These are very likely quarters, and here is a large main residence structure. The compound is thermally shielded and caged against sounders, so little can be determined regarding the inside, though as you can see, it is well supplied with windows.”
Here he paused, for the presence of so many windows had caused a small stir. Mankho’s compound on Lacaille had also been notable for having a lot of windows, which was somewhat unusual from the security standpoint. Ensign Jaelin from GS2 straightened in his chair.
“Have the windows some special significance, possibly?” he asked.
“To look out of, I should think,” Sanderson replied solemnly, without a trace of sarcasm. Observing the look on the ensign’s face, he added, “But perhaps you had something less canonical in mind.”
At the far end of the table, Kris leaned closer to Huron and whispered, “He hates feeling closed in.”
Huron dipped his head next to hers. “He’s claustrophobic?”
“I guess that’s what you call it. Enclosed spaces freak him out. He’s gotta have lots of windows.”
Noting the quiet interchange, Sanderson peered down the table to where Kris sat. “Ah yes, I am forgetting. I’ve been given to understand one of you has experience of the place.”
Huron nodded as Kris sat unmoving and no one else saw fit to respond.
“Well, better to leave those matters until later then. So . . . um, yes. In sum—an installation suited to a number of functions, including training, conferencing, staging for modest operations, as well as a fortified refuge and residence. A tough nut in any case. Perhaps you have specific questions.”
“How many people could be quartered there?” asked Sergeant Major Yu.
“Based on the size of the leach field, we can estimate that no more than a hundred people are expected to be in residence for an extended length of time—the number of bottoms per square meter of leach field is a remarkably stable indicator. Naturally, twice that number could be accommodated for short periods of time, but currently the telemetry from the septic system indicates about sixty or so. Also, you will note the limited garaging space, if vehicles are not to be left in the open. That reduces the likely upper limit somewhat.”
“Reduces by how much?” Huron wanted to know.
“Oh, ah . . . to a hundred and fifty, I should say. Assuming they don’t have people perched on the outsides of their vehicles. Not an altogether unlikely situation, given these sorts.”
“You mentioned possible support from Tirana,” Lieutenant Crismon said. Tirana was the major city and starport on the northern continent. “Any estimates on that?”
“I’m afraid nothing new. The situation is tolerably fluid and we’re not quite sure how well Mr. Mankho gets on with his neighbors. You can clearly see that, if such support is available, it is only about forty
minutes away by air. I should point out that because of the abundance of petrochemicals and the general state of things, they rely a great deal on wheeled transport, and that would be a matter of some ten hours away—perhaps as much as most of a standard day, depending on the state of the roads, unpredictable that far north.”
“What sort of comms infrastructure do they have?” Ensign McCaffrey asked.
“A very standard RF suite—you find the details in that third insert. But there’s also a buried hard line—we were able to map it for about twenty kilometers, until it went under an especially dense strata. We did not note any isolated RF repeaters in the vicinity so it’s possible it goes all the way to Tirana. Unfortunately we cannot identify a building there to which it might connect.”
“Do you see evidence of an active security enclosure?” Yu inquired.
“Nothing definite, the imagery being insufficient. It is possible, given the power capacity. You see here”—he highlighted a number of structures on the roof over what they took to be the underground garage—“those are heat-exchangers. Characteristic of systems from ABR Nevis—the Bannerman firm. Class-B devices; high-end, quite well made. With their standard rating, an active security enclosure for the main compound is not out of the question. Not to cover the whole perimeter, certainly not, but the compound itself could be managed, or perhaps just the main residence building, though I shouldn’t think they would be able to run it for long—not more than a few hours—twenty-percent duty cycle, something like that. Less, if they indeed have plasma mounts in their IADS.”
Lieutenant Crismon spoke next. “What about the environmentals? If there is no security enclosure or they can’t run it for long, would the compound be susceptible to gas?”
A chime interrupted them, and Huron took a quick glance at his xel. He lifted a finger and nodded to Yu. Yu nodded back and Huron said, “Excuse the interruption—this will just take a moment.” At the press of an icon, the briefing materials obediently cloaked themselves and Huron unlocked the door.
The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set Page 54