by Nancy Kress
Luis Martinez could not become CEO. He was military, and the protestors would see him as a Peregoy puppet, no matter what Martinez did.
SueLin as heir was out of the question. So was her mother, Candace, who had never wanted anything to do with business, governance, or responsibility for even her own children.
SueLin’s brother, Tarik, was five years old.
So—when this war was over, if the Landrys did not win, who would run the Peregoy worlds?
And how?
57
* * *
NEW UTAH
Thirty hours. That’s how far out the Landry fleet was from New Utah. Martinez had thirty hours to either retreat through the New Utah-New Yosemite gate or try to save the planet, the thirty-eight officers held hostage downstairs, and possibly the rest of the Peregoy worlds. All without radiation weapons.
He needed to force Scott Berman, or whoever had ended up in charge on New Utah, to listen to him. Hourly the Skyhawk had been trying to raise the planet, with no response. He needed something new to arouse them.
Unless, of course, the milder version of J. randi hadn’t been that mild after all, and they were all dead.
“Bring Caitlin Landry to the bridge,” he linked to Henderson on his wrister. The guard’s face registered brief surprise before saying, “Yes, sir.”
Caitlin came blinking sleep out of her eyes. Her gaze swept around the bridge, full of officers and soldiers and data on wallscreens. Under truth drugs, she’d said that she’d never been aboard a Landry warship. The last of sleep left her eyes and she studied everything. Martinez couldn’t begin to guess how much she understood.
He had already told her what he wanted her to do. On the viewscreen Elizabeth Vondenberg, linked in from the Green Hills of Earth, pressed her lips tightly together and set her brows in a straight-across line. Vondenberg didn’t know Caitlin the way Martinez did.
Did he really know her?
“I see,” Caitlin said. “All right. Yes. I will.”
Martinez opened contact with the planet. “New Utah, this is Captain Luis Martinez on the Skyhawk. I have made repeated attempts to contact you and received no response. Here is someone else to explain the gravity of your situation. If you won’t listen to me, perhaps you will to her.”
Caitlin stepped in front of the screen. “This is Caitlin Landry, Rachel Landry’s granddaughter. You probably don’t have my retina scan in your database, but I’m going to lean very close, just in case. Otherwise, you’ll have to just I.D. me visually. I was captured by this Peregoy warship while on my way to New Prometheus to try to destroy the bioweapons lab built there by my sister, Jane Landry, commander of the Freedom Enterprises fleet. I have an important message for everyone on New Utah. No one is compelling me to say this. I want to say it. I want to help stop this war. New Utah, please respond.”
No reply. Vondenberg looked stony.
Caitlin said, “I’m a biologist. I helped create the sickness that has infected you all. I did that because I believe it’s the only way to protect you against the virulent form of the disease, which my sister is bringing to your planet. She will kill you all, as an act of war. I know this. I also know that right now you’re sick, but not very sick. In another day or so you’ll recover. But you won’t recover from what Jane is bringing to you. You’ll all die, and die horribly. You’ve seen the images.”
Caitlin paused, waiting for a response. Nothing.
“The Landry ships are thirty hours out. Whoever is in charge down there, please act now. Talk to Captain Martinez. Would I, a Landry, be warning you about my sister if I didn’t know what she would do and if I didn’t want to help stop it? What I’m doing now—what I did in the creation of the milder version of the virus—is against Landry interests. I’m a traitor to the Landry Libertarian Alliance, and because of what I’m doing, I’ll never be able to go home again. Why would I do this if not to help stop this horrible and unnecessary war?
“New Utah, please at least talk to us!”
Silence.
And then the screen brightened and Christine Hoffman appeared.
Her young face shone with sweat, her eyes with fever. Her scowl could have killed saplings. But she said shakily, “You are Caitlin Landry.”
“Yes. Who are you? Are you in charge?”
“Compatriot Scott Berman is in charge. But he’s still too sick to talk.”
Caitlin nodded. From his position behind her, Martinez watched her short curls bob on the back of her neck. She said, “He’ll be better by tomorrow.”
“Some of us are better now. But I speak for Compatriot Berman.”
Oh, Christ, she and Berman must be romantically involved. Martinez could think of no other reason why a competent leader would leave decisions to someone as hysterical as this woman had proved herself to be. Martinez should have realized it earlier. And what had happened to John, the thug who’d beaten Naomi Halstead?
Caitlin said, “What’s your name, please?”
“Compatriot Christine Hoffman.”
“Christine, I hope you believe me when I say my sister is thirty hours out with a bioweapon that will not only kill everyone on New Utah but also everyone else on the other Peregoy worlds it’s carried to.”
“I do believe you,” Hoffman said bitterly. “Leaders and owners are capable of anything. Sloan Peregoy used a bioweapon on prisoners on an island on New California. Compatriots of ours.”
“I heard that,” Caitlin said. “And I’m an owner, too. You know that. But I am telling the truth.”
“I know you are because we’re not all dead.”
“What needs to happen,” Caitlin said steadily, “is for Captain Martinez to install your radiation weapons on this ship. He will try to stop my sister. I know you were—”
“Why can’t he use his own weapons?”
“I know you were told that the two Peregoy ships have radiation weapons,” Caitlin said, and Martinez felt his throat tense. This was the crux. “But they don’t. They had to strip the ships of radiation weapons to get through a gate.”
“So we were lied to again!” Hoffman shouted, and Martinez watched her face change from quasi-reasonable to outrage.
“Yes,” Caitlin said, “but not by me, Christine—not by me. This is the first time I’ve talked to you, and you know that everything else I’ve told you is true. You’re in charge down there. You want to save all your people. I can’t prove to you anything I’m saying, but it is the truth. And it’s your only chance against my sister.” Caitlin took a deep breath. “Who is crazy. She is.”
Hoffman’s face had purpled. She was going to accuse Caitlin of being a Peregoy pawn, she was going to cut communications, she was going to shut down her deluded band of idealists’ last chance for survival—
Instead Hoffman said, “Your sister is crazy?”
“Yes.”
“So are some people here.” And then, in almost a whisper, “I want to believe you. Scott…he’s very sick. Sicker than the rest. The antivirals don’t work.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” Caitlin said, “not against this new pathogen. Are you giving him antibiotics against a secondary infection?”
“We don’t have any left.”
“I’m sorry,” Caitlin said, and in her voice Martinez heard what neither he nor Vondenberg could have given: genuine sympathy for a person afraid that her loved one would die. The little picture, lost for Martinez in gazing at the larger one.
Caitlin added, “Give him a lot of fluids and don’t let him get out of bed.”
Hoffman said, “I will talk with Captain Martinez.”
Before he stepped forward into the holofield, Martinez had a moment of dizzying unreality. His military operation had been made possible by two civilians conferring over a sick lover. His military operation was necessary because a mystic lunatic had closed gates, forcing warships to strip off their weapons. The warships were in play because some Landry had done something “by accident.” The war had shifted from standard
space battles to biowarfare directed by two women who were both nominally subject to two leaders who had never wanted war in the first place.
The moment passed, and Martinez fastened firmly on the here-and-now. He outlined to Christine Hoffman what he planned to do.
• • •
There wasn’t enough time, but this was what they had.
Martinez sent DiCaria to New Utah in the class 6A vessel that had brought resupplies from New Yosemite. Twenty-five crew rode downstairs to Cascade City. “Maybe I’ll keep this ship,” DiCaria said. “Much better quarters than on the Skyhawk.”
“Don’t get too used to luxury,” Martinez answered. Both attempts at easing tension fell flat.
Martinez would have preferred to go to New Utah himself, but he had to hold off his exposure to J. randi mansueti as long as possible, which would be twenty hours after DiCaria was exposed. The exec had only that long to remove what planetary defense weapons he could, load them onto the Princess Ida, and transport them to the Skyhawk. Then six hours to install the weapons upstairs, while lead data specialist Tiana Stevenson took software control of orbital defenses. None of it would be much use against K-beams, but Martinez didn’t know for sure that Jane Landry had K-beams. Maybe she had been delayed obtaining more pathogen. At any rate, the New Utah weapons were what he had.
During installation, everyone on the Skyhawk would be exposed to the cowpox option. Two days later, people would fall ill from their protection against the more virulent virus—at least, anyone who survived the battle.
Meanwhile, the Green Hills of Earth had come alongside the Skyhawk. Vondenberg had not liked this part of the OpOrd. Martinez had listened to her reasoning, as he always did, and then overrode it. People were being transferred between ships; Martinez would send all non-necessary personnel through the gate to safety at New Yosemite, along with both the Zeus and the Green Hills of Earth. The enemy had three warships on the way. Vondenberg’s and Murphy’s weaponless vessels would be no help. Better to save both for future battles.
Martinez watched DiCaria’s vessel descend to New Utah.
If Christine Hoffman had been deceiving him, if she—or any other of the rabid lunatics down there—fired on the ship, then DiCaria was dead. Martinez had a backup plan for that, but he didn’t want to use it.
New Utah didn’t fire. The small ship landed and its crew were taken to the command area where not only Hoffman but also Scott Berman waited. Following DiCaria’s transmitted images, Martinez now saw that it was an underground bunker at the spaceport, equipped for war-room status. Good.
“Berman,” Martinez said. “You’re better.”
“No, he’s not,” Hoffman snapped. “But he insisted.”
Berman looked bad. Raspy breathing, sweat gleaming on his forehead, head shaky when he tried to lift it from the robogurney. But he was here, which Martinez respected.
Martinez said, “Please widen the holofield so I can see the whole room.”
Berman whispered, “Do it.”
Now Martinez could see DiCaria’s crew already at work, disconnecting control mechanisms for the radiation weapons around the continent. Techs had been dispatched to the weapon sites themselves; Hoffman had had all the necessary transport ready. Martinez was reassured. Their cooperation was genuine.
“Compatriots,” he said, not allowing himself any distaste at the silly title, “here is what we’re going to do.”
58
* * *
NEW UTAH
Twenty hours after he’d left for the surface of New Utah, DiCaria’s team returned to the Skyhawk, hauling upstairs a load of planetary defense weapons. Everyone in Cascade City who’d been able to drag themselves from sick beds had helped remove, transport, and load the weaponry.
“Well done,” Martinez said to DiCaria. “I’m sorry they wouldn’t let you see your sister.” Berman had kept the PCSS thirty-eight officers. Trust extended only so far. Martinez understood; if this plan succeeded, the Movement might still have to negotiate with Sloan.
DiCaria said, “At least Serena’s still alive. Or so they said.”
DiCaria didn’t look sick, merely exhausted. But he would be sick, and Martinez had made sure that everyone remaining aboard the Skyhawk was exposed to J. randi mansueti, including himself.
He sent half of DiCaria’s team to the Green Hills of Earth, just before Vondenberg took her through the gate to New Yosemite. DiCaria’s exhausted crew, who had been awake nearly forty hours, would roam the corridors of the Green Hills of Earth, breathing on everybody. Then Sean Mueller would arrange for the cowpox option to be carried downstairs.
Martinez said, “Zack, tell your men to get some sleep. We’ll need them eight or nine hours from now. You, too.”
“Yes, sir. Sir…”
“That’s an order.”
DiCaria stumbled from the bridge. Martinez checked on the progress of the weapons installation and diagnostics. Then he went to Caitlin’s cabin.
It was important that everyone aboard the Skyhawk be infected.
Henderson had already been dismissed. Caitlin Landry had played one important part in Martinez’s plans, and would play another. She was not going to try to sabotage anything, or to take her own life, or to play any of the other nasty tricks that prisoners were prone to. She was no longer a prisoner. There was a strong chance that neither of them would survive the coming battle, but if they did, she too needed to have the protection of the cowpox option.
She rose from her table as he came into the cabin. When her gaze met his, her eyes widened. Later, he couldn’t have said which of them moved first, or faster. Her arms went up around his neck, he crushed her close, and their lips met.
Almost sweet enough to die for.
When the kiss finally ended, she said softly, “Luis.” Just that.
“Caitlin…”
“Don’t say it. Don’t say anything. I know the odds, and I know we can’t…even if we survive, we can’t. Kiss me again.”
He did. She said, “Is there time to…”
“No.” He wanted it, wanted her more than any woman since Amy. But he had to return to the bridge; in an emergency he could not be found with his uniform around his ankles, making love to his prisoner-of-war-turned-defector.
She pulled slightly away and smiled up at him. “So that kiss was just your way of infecting me with a plague.”
God, he’d never known such gallantry. He tried to meet it. “Yes, no more than that.”
She laughed at him. “Uh-huh. Go back to the bridge, Luis.”
“Someone will bring you there when it’s time.”
“All right. We have a saying on Galt…no, never mind, it’s stupid.”
“Tell me anyway.” He wanted everything he could have from her, even if it was a stupid Libertarian saying.
“‘Do the profitable thing.’ That’s supposed to be what’s best for everyone. And you know what—it is. Only ‘profitable’ doesn’t always mean money. Not here, not now. Profit everyone, Luis.”
“Caitlin, I—”
“No, don’t say it now. You don’t need the complication. I’m sorry. Go now, before we both get too riled up.”
The moment he closed her door behind him and started down the corridor, Martinez saw how right she’d been. He needed to be calm, focused. There would be time later.
Or not. In which case, she already knew how he felt about her. Next to that, words hardly mattered.
Words, however, would be his first attack on Jane Landry. Christine Hoffman and Scott Berman were ready, Caitlin was ready, the Peregoy crew was ready. And if words failed, he was once again armed. Or would be when the installation crew finished.
Five hours till battle.
• • •
When Martinez opened communication with Jane Landry, she was nearing New Utah. She had not attempted to link with the Skyhawk, although of course Peregoy and Landry vessels had recorded and analyzed each other’s emission signals. The largest of the Landry fleet was a D-c
lass warship named the Raptor. Not subtle, Caitlin’s sister. Martinez felt briefly grateful that he’d been an only child.
“Raptor, this is the Peregoy Corporation Space Service ship Skyhawk, Captain Luis Martinez commanding. Do not approach New Utah. Repeat, do not approach New Utah. We are equipped with weapons that will destroy your entire fleet at greater range than you can reach us. Retreat now.”
Martinez had expected a delay, but Jane Landry’s face immediately appeared on the viewscreen. She was beautiful, far more beautiful than Caitlin, a face out of legend. Her bright green eyes gleamed with madness.
“Martinez. You’re lying. Even if you installed planetary defense weapons from New Utah, you don’t have the advanced weaponry I do. You have one ship and I have three. You’re dead, Martinez. You have nothing.”
“Are you sure of that? And I have at least one thing—your sister.”
A crewman thrust Caitlin into the viewfield, her hands bound with tanglefoam, her hair disheveled, a bruise on her cheek. Martinez watched Jane’s eyes widen. He said calmly, “I’m willing to negotiate.”
All at once Caitlin screamed, “He’s lying! The planet wouldn’t let him take any weapons they’re in rebellion and—”
She was knocked out of the viewfield, falling to the deck.
DiCaria cut the link. A moment later the screen brightened again, this time showing the war room on New Utah. Martinez spared only one glance at Caitlin, rising to her feet and cradling her left arm. Her face distorted in pain. Martinez kept his attention planetside.
Come on, Landry…
Two long minutes later, Jane’s voice came from the war-room viewscreen on New Utah. Martinez couldn’t see her viewscreen but he could hear her. Jane said, “This is the Freedom Enterprises ship Raptor, Commander-in-Chief Jane Landry. Come in, New Utah.” And then, almost childishly peeved, “I know that you know we’re here.”
Scott Berman—not Christine Hoffman—said, “This is Compatriot Berman on New Utah.”
Martinez leaned forward, as if that would bring Berman into view. Berman sounded weak, and Martinez hoped to hell that Jane didn’t realize how sick Berman still was. It was supposed to be Christine who spoke to the Raptor. She would have sounded properly agitated. Although maybe Berman was preferable, after all. Christine wasn’t a good liar.