“Of course not.” Commander Archer’s eyes wandered over Rachel’s chest. “All non-essential communications have been blocked.”
“Yes, sir.” Rachel tried to look endearing. “Please let me send the message. I’d be very grateful.”
She licked her lips, meaningfully. Commander Archer smirked and keyed his terminal. “One message,” he said. “And then you get down and suck.”
“Yes, sir,” Rachel said. It was hard not to shudder as his fingers slipped down to her rear and caressed her bottom. “Just let me send the message first.”
She checked the terminal, making sure he’d unlocked it properly, then turned and kissed him as hard as she could. Commander Archer kissed her back, unaware she’d secreted a drug within her mouth. She’d never liked the idea of using it, but it worked. The commander fell forward as the drug took effect. His eyes went dull. Rachel smirked as she muttered a handful of erotic suggestions into his ears. He’d believe she’d given him a blowjob - and perhaps more - no matter the evidence against it. Her instructors had been very clear. People would believe anything, if they wanted to believe.
The terminal glowed as she pressed her fingers against the system. Commander Archer had more clearance than Lieutenant Gresham, particularly now. Rachel cut herself a handful of orders, then forwarded them to the right departments. In theory, the system would let her do as she wished without opposition. In practice ... she shook her head. She’d have to find out later, when everything was in place. If she’d screwed up - or if someone noticed - she wondered, suddenly, if Commander Archer would get the blame. He didn’t have the clearance to send messages into the datanet, nor the training to do it without clearance, but ... it might take the enemy some time to realise it. And who knew? He might just be willing to join the fake coup himself.
Rachel finished her work, then stepped back from the console. Commander Archer would never ask about her sister. He simply wasn’t interested in anyone but himself. She glanced into his bedroom - the monitors were covered there, too - and then helped him to his feet. He came willingly, too entranced to notice that she was leading him to bed. She rolled her eyes as she spotted the bottles of cheap alcohol beside the bed. She’d never seen him drunk on duty. She hated to give him any credit, but ...
General Gilbert would probably kill him out of hand, she thought. Gilbert was an impressive figure. Or have him shipped away to some hellhole on the other side of the galaxy.
A thought struck her. She picked up the nearest bottle, sniffed it dubiously and then held it out to him. Commander Archer took it and drank, heavily. Rachel watched him finish the bottle, then gave him another and another. He nearly dropped the third one as the combination of bad alcohol and drugs overwhelmed him, sending him falling over backwards in a stupor. Rachel helped him into his bed. He was going to be in a very bad way when he woke up. She smiled coldly - she would have felt sorry for him if he hadn’t been such an asshole - then slipped back into the office and started to search it from top to bottom. She’d heard stories about officers who filled their desks with booze, but she’d never actually seen it until now. She couldn’t help wondering where Archer was getting the alcohol. There was normally a still somewhere within a giant starship, or a military base, but she doubted anyone running a still would trust Archer with the secret. Perhaps he was blackmailing them. It was quite likely.
And nothing of importance within the drawers at all, she thought. Commander Archer had worked on the anchor station, before the shit had hit the fan. She supposed his new office was a bit of a step down. He isn’t really doing anything here, is he?
She removed her top, then clambered into bed beside him. He groaned, loudly. She almost smiled as she closed her eyes, allowing herself to drift off to sleep. That wasn’t the sort of reaction she normally got, when she climbed into bed with someone. She felt a flicker of guilt, hastily banished. Commander Archer deserved every moment of the hangover he was going to have, when the alarm sounded ...
A hand struck her. The alarm rang, loudly. The lights came on. She jerked awake as Commander Archer spasmed against her, his hands covering his eyes. Rachel hid her amusement as she rolled out of bed, making a show of falling badly. Let him think he’d actually thrown her out of his bed, if he wished. It was important he didn’t see her as a threat. She was tempted to let him suffer, but instead she walked into the bathroom and poured him a glass of water. The medical cabinet included strong painkillers, including a couple she’d thought were only available on prescription. She hesitated, then took them with her. Combined with the hangover, and the hypnotic drug, his memories of the previous night would be very blurred indeed.
His eyes rested on her bare breasts as he swallowed the painkillers and washed them down with the water. “What happened?”
“We had a good night,” Rachel assured him. She forced herself to talk like a porn starlet. “You were fantastic.”
Commander Archer nodded, as if she’d given him his due. She hoped it wouldn’t occur to him to ask too many questions. If he started looking for the message she’d told him about ... she doubted he knew how to search the system, but ... she knew she could be wrong. Better he believed they’d spent the night in bed together than anything else ... she smiled, inwardly. He would really want to believe they’d shared a bed together.
“I have to go get something to eat, sir,” she said. She was fairly sure he wouldn’t offer to share his breakfast. “I’ll see you in the staff room.”
“And you’ll come back here afterwards,” Commander Archer said. His eyes lingered on her muscled arms, then drifted to her chest. “Understand?”
Rachel stood and reached for her top, pulling it over her breasts. “Yes, sir.”
She smiled, again, as she turned and left the suite. She’d done everything she needed to do to lay the groundwork, now ... Commander Archer didn’t know it, but he’d helped a great deal. And he was still helping her ...
In a few hours, we will see just how well my plan actually works, she thought. The plan was good, but no plan ever survived contact with the enemy. And if I’m really lucky, Commander Archer will get the blame.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The smaller aspect of the problem is that resentment will also start to fester. The concept of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” appears to make sense, in theory. In practice, who decides? The farmer who works his ass off, pardon the term, to support people he regards as idle layabouts is not going to be happy. Why should he? Is he not a needy person himself? It is simply impossible to keep people from exploiting the system, eventually bringing it down in ruins.
- Professor Leo Caesius, The Rise and Fall of Interstellar Capitalism
Rachel had never before been an object of pity. Not in her entire life.
She felt oddly exposed, as staffers - male and female alike - looked at her as one might look at someone who’d suffered a bereavement. Their eyes held nothing of spite or hatred, merely pity. She didn’t need her enhanced hearing to know that Commander Archer had bragged of his sexual conquest to anyone who’d listen, that his imagination - and the drugs - had filled in the gaps spectacularly. She’d heard more than her fair share of crude crap and innuendo during Boot Camp and the Slaughterhouse, but this ... she hid her amusement behind a carefully blank face as she worked her way through the daily tasks. Commander Archer would be amused, she was sure, to know he was cruder than the average recruit. She might tell him, right before she put a knife in his gut.
Commander Archer called her, the moment her shift ended. “Gresham, come with me.”
Rachel tried to look eager as the other staffers tried not to make their sympathy too overt. Commander Archer would not be too amused if he knew what they were thinking. He’d probably send them to the front lines or worse ... Rachel allowed herself a faint smile as she followed Commander Archer back to his rooms. Everything was in place. There was a good chance Commander Archer would be blamed for her actions. And if that h
appened, he’d probably be sent to the front lines himself.
Perhaps not, she thought. They want to win the war.
She showed no reaction as he opened the door and half-pulled her inside. The local security divisions had been going crazy, deploying troops and commissioners everywhere. Rachel had spotted two newcomers who were clearly more interested in keeping their eyes on their fellows, rather than their data screens. She was surprised they hadn’t scattered more security monitors around, although she was in their HQ. They were probably more interested in keeping the civilians under control. She’d overheard a couple of people whispering about receiving messages from the underground. It was enough to make her wonder if there really was an underground.
Commander Archer pulled her to him and kissed her, hard. Rachel slipped her tongue into his mouth and drugged him, catching his body before he hit the floor. The temptation to let him fall was almost overpowering, but she didn’t want to give him unexplained bruises that might jog his memory. Her instructors had warned her that the human mind was a funny thing. It was impossible to know what might bring a buried memory into the light, no matter what techniques were used to hide it. Commander Archer had to remain unaware of his role in the greater scheme of things until the time came for him to get the blame.
Rachel carried him to bed, muttered a handful of suggestions into his ears and then started to fiddle with the security monitors. The system would see her as sharing his bed ... she hoped. It was hard to tell if the enemy had improved the system in the last week or so. They knew they had problems, even if they didn’t know precisely what had happened. She’d heard a handful of other ex-imperial officers had been arrested and taken away. The poor bastards had made the mistake of reporting the messages they’d received to higher authority.
Which is never a good thing when higher authority is feeling paranoid, she mused, with a flicker of grim amusement. It wouldn’t be the first time a system’s paranoia about conspiracy had birthed a real conspiracy. They merely earmarked themselves for arrest.
She put the thought out of her mind as she checked the commander and stole one of his uniforms, then left the compartment and hurried down to the lower levels. The genius of the logistics system was that it allowed commanders to order what they needed and have it shipped to them; the curse that made life harder for them was that logistics officers rarely - if ever - questioned their orders. It was an improvement over the Imperial Army and Navy system, she conceded, but it was easy to misuse. She felt her heart start to beat as she walked into the garage. If someone had the sense to ask a few questions ...
Rachel smiled as she saw the hovertruck, waiting right where she’d ordered it. She clambered into the rear, feeling her smile grow wider as she saw the collection of antitank rockets and plasma grenades. The corprats had improved upon the latter - the military had always regarded the standard design as dangerously unstable - but the antitank rockets were identical to the ones she’d used in her early career. They were designed to punch holes through hullmetal. Anything less wouldn’t have any hope of slowing the rocket down for a moment.
She rigged the launchers quickly, moving with desperate speed, then climbed into the front seat and started the engine. The truck immediately came to life. Rachel smiled as she programmed a course into the ATC system, relying on the automated controllers to take the vehicle to its destination. The codes were all in place, insisting to anyone who cared to look that the hovertruck had military priority. She changed into the stolen uniform as the truck hummed down the ramp and onto the main road. It was packed with military convoys rushing half-trained troops to the front. Rachel smirked as the vehicles crawled along. She’d done her level best to ensure the locals called up the wrong classes of people. It was astonishing what you could do on a world where no one dared question orders.
Rachel kept a wary eye on her surroundings as the truck glided past a handful of patrols. The soldiers looked bored, rather than alert. Rachel supposed that they thought they were wasting their time. They were probably right. The patrols were in precisely the wrong area of town. They should have been in the poorer districts, making a show of force that might deter riots, rebellions and outright uprisings. Her lips tightened as the vehicle turned the corner and advanced towards the security headquarters. She was mildly surprised it didn’t look like a fortress. Imperial Intelligence’s headquarters on Earth had looked impregnable.
It’ll be gone now, she thought, with a twinge of nostalgia. The old universe was gone. It would never return. Between the riots and the falling asteroids, they’ll be hardly anything left.
The vehicle slowed to a halt automatically as it approached the checkpoint. Rachel felt a flicker of contempt. There were tanglefields and neural jammers, neither of which would stop a determined assault. She was fairly sure there’d be a QRA team somewhere within the building, but an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure. The contempt deepened as she spotted the security troopers manning the flimsy barricade. They looked too good to be true. The green tabs on their shoulders might be hellishly intimidating to the locals, but Rachel could tell they’d never seen a real fight. She wondered, idly, why their commanders hadn’t insisted on rotating the troops in and out of active duty. They’d be a great deal sharper if they spent half their time on escort duty, even if they weren’t put on the battlefield itself.
She checked the remote-control frequency as the guards ambled towards her, then opened the door and jumped to the ground. They were watching her hands - the first sign of actual competence she’d seen - but it wouldn’t make any difference. She could use her implants to set off the rockets. She smiled at the guard, his eyes going wide as he realised she was female. The uniform was so baggy on her that it was hard to be sure. She wondered if he’d try to write her up for it, as if he wasn’t about to have worse problems.
“Papers, please,” the guard said. “I want ...”
Rachel hit him, hard. She felt his neck snap. His body crumpled. Someone shouted, too late, as she triggered the rockets. A spread of antitank missiles launched from the truck and lanced towards the building, slamming into the facade. Rachel worried, just for a second, she might have done her work too well. If the rockets went right through the building without detonating ... she grinned as the warheads detonated, a chain of explosions tearing the building apart. She sent the second signal and then turned and ran, boosting her legs to run at breakneck speed. Someone started shooting, bullets zipping through the air. The guards had to be stunned. None of the bullets came anywhere near her.
She hit the ground as her implants flashed up an alert, an instant before the plasma grenades detonated. A wave of heat washed over her. Rachel rolled over, in time to see the remains of the building catch fire. The flames would consume everything, at least until they ran out of fuel. If there was anyone still alive inside the building, they were probably doomed. The EMP thumper that had detonated before the plasma grenades probably hadn’t helped matters any. The population monitoring system had been effectively disabled.
There was no time to waste. She picked herself up and continued to run, darting into an alley long enough to remove the uniform and tuck it up inside her shirt. The nearby buildings were emptying as the flames threatened to spread, men and women running in all directions as if the devil himself was after them. Rachel understood. Plasma fire was dangerous. A person who got burnt would be lucky if he only lost a limb. She forced herself to join the mob as it fled onwards, breaking free as she reached the military HQ. The guards were in a panic. Rachel had no trouble slipping past them and up the corridors to Commander Archer’s room. There were no alarms. She was almost disappointed.
Commander Archer was moaning in his drugged sleep. Rachel undressed at speed, dumped the stolen uniform into the cleaning basket and jumped into bed with him. He couldn’t be allowed to question his memories, not now. Her enhanced hearing picked out men running up and down the corridor, jackboots thudding against the floors as they swept the chambers ...
she tensed, wondering if she’d have to fight her way out after all. She’d covered her tracks, she thought, and she’d disabled the monitors, but ... what if there was a back-up? The records insisted there wasn’t one, yet ... it was hardly the sort of thing she’d put in a datacore that might be accessed by enemy spies. She would want to keep it to herself.
If nothing else, it’ll take them a long time to rebuild, she thought. The enemy would have to figure out what had happened first, not an easy task given that all the witnesses had died when the plasma grenades had detonated. The thumper would have damaged every exposed piece of technology within range. They may even think I died in the blast, too.
She lay back and accessed the datanet, tracking the distress signals and orders as they flowed through the system. No one seemed to know quite what to do, something that didn’t really surprise her. The locals had never prepared for an attack in the middle of their city. They’d put most of their trained troops on the front lines. It had taken longer than it should for someone to take command of the scene, let alone deal with the fires and start picking through the rubble. She sardonically wished whoever was in charge good luck. There was no hope of rebuilding the system in time to make a difference.
Rachel smiled, then started to compose another mass email. The enemy government would try to deny what had happened, but who could miss a giant explosion in the centre of the city? They’d make themselves looked like fools if they tried. There was nothing more guaranteed to destroy their credibility than telling obvious lies. And they’d offend their people by treating them as idiots. They’d be better off trying to blame everything on the marines. Perhaps they could claim the explosion was a long-range missile strike.
She finished writing the email, checked to make sure the population monitoring system was definitely down for the count, then uploaded the message to the server. It would pass through a dozen datanodes, wiping all trace of its passage, before finally being sent out to everyone on the planet. The chances were good it would also cross the front lines ... she’d written a handful of specific phrases into the message to inform her superiors she was still alive. She had no idea what had happened to the other three, but she was in place. They might even be able to get a message back to her.
The Halls of Montezuma Page 25