At All Costs

by David Weber

  He chuckled at the thought and made himself stretch and yawn, then settled more firmly into the couch. His flight plan was just about to take him through the Arsenault Gorge, one of the most spectacular mountain passes on Haven. It was a huge, axe-blow of a chasm through the Blanchard Mountains, with sheer cliffs towering vertically for as much as two hundred and fifty meters in some places. It was quite a tourist attraction, and Grsoclaude himself loved it. He always programmed his flight path to take him through it, despite the need to slow down around its hairpin bends.

  Now the autopilot dipped the air car slightly, dropping a bit lower to give him a better view, and he felt a familiar stir of enjoyment as the rocky, tree-crowned cliffs loomed up on either side of his prow.

  And at that moment, something very peculiar happened.

  Yves Grosclaude felt something almost like a mental tickle. As if someone were running a finger down his spine, except that it was behind his eyes somewhere. He started to frown, but then the frown vanished into another expression entirely.

  He'd never noticed the almost microscopic capsule which had somehow found its way into the yogurt he'd enjoyed with his supper two nights ago. He hadn't been looking for anything of the sort, never suspected anything like it was remotely possible.

  Nor was it... for the Republic's tech base. That capsule's contents had been well beyond the capability of Haven's own scientists, and as the capsule itself disintegrated in his digestive tract, submicroscopic virus-based nanotech had infiltrated his bloodstream. They'd traveled to his brain, seeking very specifically targeted sections of it, and then waited.

  For this specific moment.

  Yves Grosclaude jerked in his seat as the tiny invaders executed their programmed instructions. They did no physical damage at all; they simply invaded his body's "operating system" and overwrote it with instructions of their own.

  He watched helplessly, screaming in the silence of his mind, as his hands switched off the autopilot. They settled on the stick and throttle, and his eyes bulged in silent horror as his right hand wrenched the stick suddenly to the right even as his left rammed the throttle to the wall.

  The vehicle was still accelerating when it struck a vertical cliff face head-on at well over eight hundred kilometers per hour.

  Chapter Seventeen

  "All right, Kevin. What's all the mystery this time?"

  President Eloise Pritchart's striking, topaz-colored eyes tracked slowly from the FIA director's face to that of the petite, dark-haired woman with him. Presidential Security was never happy when she met alone with anyone, even in her private office, out from under their protective oversight, although at least in this case the person she was meeting with was their ultimate boss. Which, she thought, had undoubtedly helped with Kevin's insistence that this meeting had to be completely off the record. Her personal detachment had made no more than pro forma protests before withdrawing and shutting down the various covert surveillance systems which normally let them discreetly monitor while remaining out of sight but ready to respond instantly. And Kevin's position meant they probably really had turned them off this time, which meant she was enjoying a novel sense of freedom for at least the next little bit.

  Of course, she was always more than a bit nervous about anything Kevin wanted kept black.

  "Thank you for clearing the time for us," Usher said, and Pritchart's eyebrows rose at his unwontedly formal-and somber-tone. "This, by the way," he indicated her other visitor, "is Special Senior Inspector Danielle Abrioux. Danny is one of my top troubleshooters."

  "And why am I seeing the two of you without the additional presence of the Attorney General?" Pritchart leaned back in her comfortable chair. "If I remember correctly, Denis is not simply your direct superior, but also a member of my Cabinet."

  "Yes, he is," Usher agreed. "On the other hand, much as I like Denis, and as much as I respect him, he's very much a connect-all-the-dots, follow procedure kind of guy."

  "Which is why he's Attorney General, and why the wild cowboy, seat-of-the-pants kind of guy works for him. Correct?"

  "Granted. In this case, however, I think you need to know about this before we decide exactly how to bring him into it officially. His principles are just as cast-in-battle-steel as Tom Theisman's. And in this particular instance, his own dislikes and distrust might push him into a more... confrontational stance than we can afford at this particular moment."

  "Kevin," Pritchart said, with very little humor, "you're starting to really worry me. What the hell is all this about?"

  The woman with him-Abrioux, Pritchart reminded herself-looked decidedly nervous as the President glared at the FIA Director. Usher, however, only settled deeper into his chair, herculean shoulders tensing as if under a massive weight.

  "It's about the diplomatic correspondence the Manties altered," he said.

  "What about it?"

  "Actually, what I ought to have said," Usher replied, "is that it's about the diplomatic correspondence the Manties are alleged to have altered."

  For an instant, Pritchart felt only puzzled by his choice of words. Then an icy dagger seemed to run down her spine.

  "What do you mean 'alleged'?" she demanded harshly. "I saw the originals. I know they were altered."

  "Oh, they certainly were," Usher agreed grimly. "Unfortunately, I've begun to have some serious questions about just who did the altering."

  "My God." Pritchart knew her face had gone white. "Please, Kevin. Please don't tell me what it sounds like you're about to tell me."

  "I'm sorry, Eloise," he said gently. "At first, I thought it was just because of how much I disliked Giancola. It seemed preposterous, even for him. And, for that matter, it seemed outright impossible. But I couldn't shake the suspicion. I kept picking at it. And a few weeks ago, I put Danny here on it, very, very quietly. It's not only possible, I'm pretty damn sure it happened."

  "Sweet Jesus." Pritchart stared at him, more flattened-more horrified-then she'd been even by the knowledge that Oscar Saint-Just fully intended to have Javier Giscard shot. In which case, he would inevitably have discovered just how she had been covering for Javier for so long.

  "How could he possibly have done such a thing?" she asked finally. "Not why did he do it-if he did-but how?"

  "Assuming the right accomplice in the right position, and assuming the sheer big brass balls to try it in the first place, it really wouldn't have been all that technically difficult to make the substitutions," Usher said. "I'd pretty much worked out how he could have done it before I ever brought Danny into it, and she's pretty much confirmed that it could have been-and almost certainly was-done that way. She can give you the technical details, if you want them. Basically, though, he could send out whatever version of your agreed-upon diplomatic notes he wanted to. After all, he's Secretary of State. And as long as the fellow playing mailman for him didn't blow the whistle on them, there'd be no way for anyone at this end to know he'd departed from the planned script. And we've also figured out how he could have had access to the Manties' Foreign Office validation key, which would have let him change the incoming correspondence, as well."

  "That-" Pritchart paused and drew a deep breath. "That doesn't sound good, Kevin. Especially given how black you wanted this meeting. If you've figured all that out, and you're not ready to seek an indictment or make open accusations, then there's got to be a boot in the works somewhere. Right?"

  "Right," he said grimly, and waved one hand at Abrioux. "Danny?" he invited.

  "Madam President," Abrioux said, her expression more than a little nervous, "I wasn't too sure Kevin-the Director, I mean-hadn't stripped a gear when he sprang all of this on me. I've known him a long time, though, and he is my boss, so I had to take the possibility seriously. And the more I looked into it, the more I realized it really could have been done exactly the way he'd hypothesized. But the key element, as he and I both recognized from the beginning, was that Giancola couldn't have acted alone, couldn't have done it all by simply man
ipulating the electronic message traffic. He had to have at least one flesh-and-blood accomplice. Someone who could cover for him at the other end and conceal the true content of our actual outgoing correspondence and the Manties' incoming traffic from anyone else in the Republic.

  "And as soon as we'd come to that conclusion, it was obvious who his accomplice-if he'd had one-had to have been: Yves Grosclaude."

  "Our 'Special Representative,'" Pritchart said, nodding her head grimly.

  "Exactly." Abrioux nodded back. "The fact that he had an accomplice was, frankly, the one real chink I could see in his armor. I'm sure there has to be other physical evidence, but we're up against the need to show probable cause before we can go looking for it. If I could pull Grosclaude in and sweat him a little, put a little pressure on him, he might give Giancola up. Or, he might at least provide me with something concrete to lend at least some credence to the rather preposterous scenario the Director had come up with. On the other hand, I needed to approach him a bit cautiously, hopefully without Giancola figuring out I was interested in him at all.

  "Unfortunately, either I wasn't cautious enough, or else Giancola's had his own plans for Grosclaude all along."

  "Meaning what?" Pritchart demanded when she paused with a chagrined expression.

  "Meaning Mr. Grosclaude was killed in a single-air car accident four nights ago," Usher said flatly.

  "Oh, shit," Pritchart said with soft yet deadly feeling. "An air car accident?"

  "I know. I know!" Usher shook his head. "It's like some sort of bad joke, isn't it? After all the inconvenient people StateSec disappeared in mysterious one-air car accidents, this is going to be just peachy keen when we have to go public, isn't it?"

  "Unless we can prove it wasn't one," Pritchart said, eyes slitted in intense thought. "Before, it was always the state claiming it had been an accident. If we claim it wasn't an accident-and if we can prove it-we might actually turn that around and use it in our favor."

  "If there is any way to turn this 'in our favor' you may have a point," Usher said. "Honestly, though, the more I've looked at this thing, the less sure I've become there is such a way. And even if there is, I'm afraid that so far it doesn't look as if we're going to be able to prove any such thing."

  "Why not?"

  "I've tapped very quietly into the investigation of his death, Madam President," Abrioux replied for Usher. "I've kept my interest in it entirely black, which has required calling in quite a few old markers. But the crash investigation team has been through the wreckage of his air car-which, by the way, was reduced to very small pieces-very, very carefully without finding any indication of any sort of mechanical or electronic sabotage. The black boxes came through more or less intact, and they all agree that for some unknown reason, Grosclaude suddenly disengaged his autopilot, put the throttle right through the gate, and flew straight into a near vertical cliff. He impacted at a speed somewhere around Mach one."

  "He did what?" Pritchart sat up straight and frowned at the senior inspector.

  "There's no question, Madam President. And there's also no explanation. That's one reason the Director and I didn't come to you sooner; we kept hoping we'd find something significantly bogus. But the weather was clear, visibility was good, and there was no other traffic on or near his flight path at the time; the crash team's pulled the air traffic satellite records to confirm that. There's no sign anyone tampered with his vehicle in any way, and there's absolutely no indication of any external factor which could have inspired him to do what he did. At the moment, to be perfectly honest, the crash team is leaning towards the theory that it was a suicide."

  "Oh, that's just wonderful!" Pritchart snarled, fear and the sudden cold suspicion that she'd gone back to war because of a lie driving her into an uncharacteristically savage fury. "So now we're not even claiming it was an 'accident.' Now we're going to tell the galaxy our suspect fucking committed suicide! That's going to give us a lot more credibility when we try to pin anything on him!"

  "I suppose it's possible it really was suicide," Usher pointed out. Pritchart glared at him, and he shrugged. "Just playing devil's advocate, Eloise. But it really is possible, you know. An awful lot of people have been killed since the shooting started again, and more are going to be killed, whatever else happens. If he was involved in anything with Giancola, he might well have been feeling a lot of guilt over all those deaths. Or, conversely, he may have wanted to come forward but been afraid Giancola would eliminate him if he tried. In that case, he might have seen this as his only way out."

  "And if you believe that fairy tale for a moment, I've got some bottom land I want to sell you," Pritchart said caustically. "Just don't ask me what it's on the bottom of."

  "I didn't say I believed it," Usher responded mildly. "I just said it's possible, and it is."

  "Bullshit," Pritchart said bluntly. "Much as I'd like to believe you're completely off the beam with this one, Kevin, you're not. God knows it would be better if you were, but Grosclaude's death-especially this way, at this time-is just too damned coincidental. And too damned convenient for Giancola. No." She shook her head. "I don't know how he did it, but somehow he got to Grosclaude."

  "So you believe he did alter the correspondence?"

  "I don't want to," she admitted heavily, "but you said it would take big brass balls. Well, that's one thing Arnold has. And he's not overly burdened with scruples, either. Certainly not burdened enough to offset his ambition. I doubt he wanted it to go this far, but...."

  She shook her head again.

  "There is one odd thing about Grosclaude's death, Madam President," Abrioux said after a moment.

  The President's topaz eyes swung back to the senior inspector, and she twitched the fingers of one hand in a "tell me" gesture.

  "Given the... peculiar circumstances of the 'accident,'" Abrioux said, "the crash team's lead investigator requested a complete toxicity screen and blood workup as part of the autopsy. Given the nature of the impact, the doctors didn't have a whole lot to work with, you understand. There was more than enough to make a genetic identification of the remains they could find, but nowhere near what they needed for any sort of regular autopsy.

  "The medical examiner, however, did note that there appeared to be 'unidentifiable organic traces and DNA markers' in one of the blood samples."

  "Meaning what?" Pritchart's expression was intent.

  "Meaning we don't know what the hell what," Usher replied. "When he says 'unidentifiable,' that's exactly what he means. All the organic elements he's picked up on could be explained away by a simple case of the flu, except that there's no indication of it in any of the other samples. If you really want to wade through his report, I can get you a copy of it, but I doubt it will mean anything more to you than it did to me. The key element, though, seems to be the DNA he turned up. There's been some speculation in Solarian medical literature for a while now about the possibility of viral nanotech."

  "Are they insane?" Pritchart demanded incredulously. "Didn't those lunatics learn anything from the Final War?"

  "I don't know. It's not my field, by two or three light-years. But apparently the people doing the speculating believe it should be at least theoretically possible to control their viruses and prevent unwanted mutations. After all, we've managed the same sort of thing with nanotech for centuries now."

  "Because the damned things don't have DNA and don't reproduce even in medical applications!" Pritchart said snappishly.

  "I didn't say I thought it was a good idea, Eloise," Usher said. "I just said there's been some Solly speculation about the possibilities. As far as I'm aware, and I've done some judicious research on the subject since Danny brought me the blood workup results, it's all purely theoretical at the moment. And even if the Sollies can do it, there's no one here in the Republic who could. So assuming these highly ambiguous results-found, I remind you, in only one of the blood samples-mean Grosclaude was murdered using that sort of technology, where the hell did
Giancola get access to it?"

  "You're just full of sunshine this evening, aren't you?"

  "If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella," Usher said philosophically, and she grimaced at him. Then she sat thinking hard for several endless seconds.

  "All right, Kevin," she said finally. "You've had longer to think about this than I have, and I doubt very much, knowing you, that you asked for this meeting without at least some idea of how we might proceed."

  "As I see it," Usher said after a moment, "there are four basic dimensions to this problem. First, there's the war itself and just why in hell we're fighting the damned thing. Second, there's the constitutional implications of treason on this level by a Cabinet secretary. Not to mention the fact that I'm not even certain what he did-assuming we're right, and he did actually do it-falls under the Constitution's definition of 'treason' in the first place. Abuse of office, conspiracy, malfeasance, high crimes and misdemeanors; I'm sure we could get him on any of those. But treason is a rather specific crime. Third, after the constitutional aspects, there are the purely political ones. Not in terms of interstellar diplomacy and wars, but in terms of whether or not our system is strong enough yet to survive something like this. And, of course, the question of just how effective your administration can be if it turns out one of your own Cabinet secretaries manipulated us into going to war. And, fourth, there's the question of just how we proceed with this investigation, bearing all those other aspects of this particular can of worms in mind."