“I dare say we can convince him to cooperate,” Stewart said. “I’ll go see to the shuttle now.”
Jasmine nodded. “Do we have control of the bombardment package?”
“Aye,” Watson said. “Halcyon was kind enough to give us the codes ... not that it would have taken long to hack it, seeing they used a very primitive system. They didn't want to waste a more advanced weapons package on this world.”
“Good,” Jasmine said. She mentally outlined their next few steps. Get a crew up from the surface to assist with the prisoners, drop the prisoners somewhere safe ... then recover the rest of her people from the POW camps. And then destroy the POW camps, just to hide the evidence of what they'd done. “Deactivate it for the moment. We won’t be using it until after we take a starship.”
“Of course,” Watson said. “I’ll get right on it.”
Jasmine nodded, then sat down at a console and brought up the station’s backlog of classified files. There wasn’t much, beyond a simple list of notations of when and where prisoners had been taken, but none of it was good news. Most of the prisoners had come from Thule - or worlds she assumed to be within Wolfbane’s space - yet a number had come from Commonwealth worlds along the border. The war might not be going well.
They won’t have told anyone here more details, she thought. Wolfbane seemed to be as careful about sharing information as the Empire, which had insisted that only it could determine who had a need to know. In the end, it had cost the Empire dearly. We may have to make guesses about just what’s happening out there.
The intercom buzzed. “I’m ready to go back down to the surface,” Stewart said. “They managed to get most of the crap out of the shuttle before we took the station, so there will be room for newcomers.”
“Good,” Jasmine said. “Have a safe flight.”
She turned back to the list of bases on Meridian and shook her head, ruefully. There were fourteen prison camps - including two so far from Sabre that the resistance hadn't known about them - but not much else. The Wolves hadn't bothered to establish a garrison, beyond the POW guards, let alone a shore leave resort. Maybe Halcyon hadn't wanted to risk his men having unguarded conversations with the locals ... or maybe he’d just been worried about the potential for incidents. She knew just how much trouble young men could get into on shore leave, both with the local law enforcement and their superior officers. And, of course, someone could bribe or seduce them.
“We could try seeing if any of the guards want to defect,” Watson offered. “They can't have enjoyed being out here.”
“Worth a try,” Jasmine agreed. She pulled up a star chart and examined it, thoughtfully. It might have been outdated by at least a decade, but stars remained firmly in place even if political boundaries were incredibly fluid. They were at least nine weeks from Avalon, assuming a modern phase drive. “But the locals will want their scalps and ...”
She hesitated, then pressed on. “Leave it until we have this place secure,” she said. They’d have to search the entire station for unpleasant surprises, a task that would be far from easy without skilled manpower. “We can make them an offer afterwards, once we know where they’re going.”
“Understood,” Watson said.
***
Gary let out a sigh of relief as the shuttle landed neatly in front of the control tower, then broke character and ran out to greet the marine as he opened the hatch. Thomas Stewart - if that was his real name - had always intimidated him on some level, yet he’d also had a sense of abiding decency that reminded him of Yates. Maybe it was something marines were taught to project, he wondered, as he came to a halt. Being trusted by the people they served would be very helpful for them.
“Success,” Stewart said. “The station and fifty-seven prisoners are in our hands.”
“Thank God,” Gary said. He waved to Austin, who was standing at the edge of the spaceport, then turned back to Stewart. “I think the troops are five minutes away, waiting in the jungle. Can you fly them back to orbit?”
“Yep,” Stewart said. He sounded distracted, rather than pleased, as if he were occupied by some greater thought. “We also need technical experts, if you are hiding any of them.”
“Just me,” Gary said. The handful of other technical experts on Meridian were long gone; as far as he knew, none had been hidden in time. “And I was never ... never that much of an expert.”
“Needs must when the devil pisses on you,” Stewart said, crudely. “Can you come join us?”
Gary hesitated. Part of him would love to go back into space, he knew, but the rest of him was nervous. Being around so many people, all stronger and tougher than him, was not a pleasant thought. But then, it had defined so much of his life.
“I will,” he said, finally. He was damned if he was going to give Barry’s shade one last crude laugh. “But I don't know how much help I will be.”
Austin came up behind them before Stewart could make a response. “The troops will be here in a minute,” he said. “Should we pass the word to hit the camps? I don't know how the guards will react to losing the station.”
“I’ll check with the boss,” Stewart said. “But you’re right. You probably should move now.”
Gary swallowed, thinking of the scouts who made up the resistance army. He’d done his fair share of learning to shoot, but he knew he would never make a soldier. He simply didn't have the nerve to stand up for himself, let alone others ... and he hated the thought of pain and suffering. One would have thought he’d get used to it, but he never had.
And those scouts were going to put themselves on the line for the POWs, for men and women they’d never met. It wasn't something he could have done. If he’d ever had any bravery in him, it had been battered out of his soul by Barry ... and just about everyone else he’d ever met. He could never have hoped to become someone like Stewart ...
... And that thought tore at his mind, mocking him.
Stewart stepped away and tapped his radio. There was a brief discussion, too quiet for Gary to hear, then Stewart looked back at Austin.
“Tell your people to move,” he said. “And once we get the others up to orbit, we can start shipping the prisoners down here.”
Chapter Thirteen
Idealists would say otherwise. But idealists have no practical understanding of the battlefield. It is simply unrealistic for the attacker to allow the defender to hide behind the laws of war, not when the laws of war are slanted against the attacker.
- Professor Leo Caesius. The Empire and its Prisoners of War.
Avalon, Year 5 (PE)
“Colonel,” Kitty said. “Do you have a moment?”
Colonel Stalker looked up from his data terminal. “I have nothing but moments for you,” he said, tiredly. “The paperwork can wait.”
Kitty shrugged as she stepped into the office and closed the door behind her, then reached for the bug detector in her belt. Colonel Stalker eyed her with some irritation as she swept the room for unexpected listeners, but said nothing. She understood his irritation - she would have disliked someone checking her office - yet she could do nothing about it. A bug in the right - or wrong - place could be far more dangerous than a single spy.
“We caught a second message last night,” she said, slipping the detector back onto her belt and dropping into a hard wooden chair. “It was ... odd.”
Colonel Stalker frowned. “How so?”
Kitty met his eyes evenly. “We spent the last week inserting pieces of false information into political briefings,” she said. “Group One was told about a mythical foundry ship; Group Two was told about a planned reinforcement of Base Zero; Group Three was told about an encounter with another successor state on the other side of Wolfbane’s territory ... there were ten pieces of information in all. No one should have had access to more than one piece of information.”
“I know the theory,” the Colonel said, impatiently. “Am I to understand that more than one piece of information leaked its way into the
message?”
“Four pieces of information appeared in the message stream,” Kitty confirmed. “That gives us fifty-seven suspects, all of whom should have known only one.”
The Colonel scowled. “Are you suggesting we’re looking at an entire ring of spies, including at least four senior politicians?”
“That’s one possibility,” Kitty said. “But I would have thought that such a development would have been impossible. It would only take one badly-handled approach to reveal the existence of the spy ring. They would have to be incredibly lucky to pick four people, all of whom were willing to commit treason.”
“I see your point,” the colonel said. “What - exactly - does it mean?”
“I wish I knew,” Kitty said. She sighed, resting her head in her hands. “I’ve got people breaking down the lives of all of the suspects, looking for common strands, but nothing quite seems to make sense. They can't all imagine they’re going to be made rulers of Avalon if Wolfbane wins the war.”
“People have been stupider in the past,” Colonel Stalker said.
“This isn't Earth, Colonel,” Kitty said, more sharply than she’d intended. “The politicians and businessmen here had to work to earn their places. I don’t think stupidity is part of their mindset. They might be greedy bastards intent on squeezing the last credit out of a trade deal, but they have to understand the dangers of betraying the Commonwealth.”
“True, I suppose,” the Colonel said. He didn't seem to take offense at her tone. “But one of them might think he can put a lock on politics or the market permanently.”
“That didn’t do the Empire any good,” Kitty said. “And I highly doubt it will do Wolfbane any favours either. And we would have to have at least four people making the same, highly-stupid decision, at more or less the same time.”
“Too many coincidences,” Colonel Stalker agreed.
Kitty nodded. She had been taught, during training, that most people were self-interested rather than selfish. A man could be relied upon to follow his own self-interest, as he saw it, rather than acting out of altruistic motives. And while she could understand Wolfbane being willing to make all sorts of offers to get a highly-placed spy on their side, someone smart enough to carve out a business or political empire in the Commonwealth would want something more than empty promises. She did have teams looking for sudden displays of wealth, but she had a feeling that would be too obvious.
“This leaves us with a problem,” Colonel Stalker said. “Do we start narrowing down the focus by providing false information to more people, or do we start compartmentalising information more than we already do?”
“I would prefer to do nothing, for the moment,” Kitty said. “There’s a chance, now we have a smaller number of suspects, that we can turn up something useful.”
“There’s also a chance that the bastard will transmit something dangerous to the Wolves,” the Colonel snapped. “What happens if they learn something they can use to win the war?”
Kitty met his eyes. “The vast majority of the data we intercepted was political information, rather than military secrets,” she said. “Whoever is behind the spy ring, I suspect, is a politician. Maybe even a conventional politician.”
“You mean someone from the pre-Commonwealth council,” Colonel Stalker said. “Are there any of them left?”
“Not in power,” Kitty said. “But the old council did have a number of teenage children who were deemed not to be involved with their parents.”
“Some of them were lucky to escape,” the Colonel pointed out. “Their parents were not the nicest of people.”
“True,” Kitty agreed. “But others might have considered them good parents.”
“And one of them might be in a position to hear something,” the Colonel mused. “It’s too thin.”
“I know, sir,” Kitty said. “I would prefer to continue data-crunching, for the moment. Now we have a smaller number of suspects, we can do proper work-ups of their lives. There may be something they have in common ...”
“Or three of them might be bragging and the fourth might be the spy,” the Colonel said. “But even bragging could get someone in trouble for releasing classified information.”
“Yes, sir,” Kitty said. “With your permission, sir, I will return to my office.”
The Colonel nodded, curtly, then picked up his datapad. Kitty rose to her feet, then left the compartment and slipped down the corridor to her own office. The guard outside nodded to her, then ran a DNA scan even though he knew who she was. Kitty waited patiently - she would have sacked him if he hadn’t carried out the checks - then stepped into her room. The terminal was lit up, indicating that yet another package had arrived from her agents.
And I still need more manpower, she thought, sourly. Avalon hadn't had many detectives, police officers, marshals or anyone else with experience that could be used to detect and identify a spy. The handful of agents she did have had no time to serve as training officers, not when she needed them on the streets. But I'm not going to get it, am I?
Shaking her head, she sat down, poured herself a cup of coffee and started to read through the reports. Luckily, most of the suspects were public figures; privacy laws or not, it was hard for them to go anywhere in person without being noticed and leaving a trail. Councillor Sims had spent the week alternating between the various offices under the council chamber and his own business office ... hadn't he been reported for abusing his power by granting contracts to his cronies? A quick check revealed that Sims had been sharply rebuked by the council and was unlikely to remain in office for long, once his constituents finished organising a recall election. There was self-interest and then there was greed and most people on Avalon could tell the difference.
Did that make him the spy? It was possible, but any spy worthy of the name wouldn't do anything to threaten his own position. She shrugged, then checked his movements. A number of reporters had followed him every time he’d left his rooms, showing her where he’d gone in considerable detail. The only place he’d gone that stood out was a party, four days ago, at Governor Brent Roeder’s mansion. Reporters were largely barred from attending, unless they had been cleared by the former Governor personally ...
Her eyes narrowed. Governor Roeder had no power; hell, it was questionable if he still had any real right to the title. The Empire he’d served was gone. He’d had a courtesy seat on the first post-Empire council, but after that he’d voluntarily stepped aside. Reading between the lines, Kitty had a feeling he’d been privately told he wouldn't be allowed to remain on the council, now there was a new generation of politicians coming into the public eye, and he’d chosen to claim to leave of his own free will. Not that she could really blame him; leaving willingly would be less humiliating than simply being outright forced off the council.
“Do a cross-reference,” she muttered, as she hastily pulled up the other records. She would have liked an AI to handle it, but Imperial Intelligence had never been able to produce one that matched a human’s ability to draw conclusions from isolated snatches of data. “See how many others went to his party.”
It took her far too long to crunch the data manually, but she finally had her answer. Of the fifty-seven suspects, seventeen had attended the party ... and, collectively, they would know all four pieces of falsified information. It could be a coincidence - she’d been an intelligence officer long enough to know that damning, and completely inaccurate, patterns could appear in the data if one looked hard enough - but she had a feeling she’d stumbled across a very important clue. If all four pieces of information had been at that party, they could have been scooped up by the spy, either through simply bugging the rooms or listening to politicians showing off just how important they were.
The Governor might be tempted, she thought. He was denied power by the Old Council and then by the New. What if Wolfbane offered him Avalon as his private fiefdom?
She sighed. It didn't sound right. She’d met the Governor once or twice, b
ut he’d never struck her as insanely ambitious. Being Governor of Avalon - or at least the pre-independence Avalon - wasn't that important a job. It made him a big fish in a very small pond ... and still left him a tiny fish, in the Empire’s colossal pond. He’d have known that Avalon was a dead end, if he’d wanted to become a Sector Governor ... unless he’d had some sense the Empire was doomed. The Old Council had had their own thoughts on the matter too.
It was unlikely, but she had to admit it was possible. And she knew she would need to talk to someone who had attended one of the parties. She looked down at the list, hunting for familiar names. Only one stood out.
Bastard, she thought, unsure if she was directing the frustrated curse at the Governor or God Himself. The only person I can talk to is a goddamned reporter.
***
Emmanuel Alves had never really expected to work for Commonwealth Intelligence, rather than the Avalon Central. He was a reporter, nothing more; he wasn't a dashing spy or cold-hearted counterintelligence agent. Indeed, if he hadn't been deeply worried about his lover, who might be a POW or dead, he would have thought twice about accepting the invitation to Commonwealth Intelligence. Having a good record would be helpful, later, when the government was trying to locate reporters interested in embedding with the troops, but it also risked compromising his neutrality.
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