He pressed his palm onto the screen, which immediately glowed a dull gray. Lighted in this fashion, he couldn't even see his own reflection. The idea, he had been told, was that anyone spying could not get a full view of his face to read his lips. It seemed plausible enough, but without windows and all the viewscreens toggled to view only and not send, who was there to watch as he spoke?
He made no comment about that. His benefactor told him this was so. Therefore, it was.
"Weir is making his condolences speech now," he said when the gray pulsed once, silently showing the link had been established.
"Why did your spy feed cut out while you were with him?" No greeting, just an angry question.
"I don't understand how you expected to communicate inside a room so carefully blocked against radiation up and down the spectrum."
"I have my ways. What happened?"
Riddle considered the moment when his implant stopped relaying from his benefactor. He had moved about to stand closer to Weir. He said as much.
"There must be a new jamming device. I do not like being unable to tell you what to do."
"I'm capable of thinking for myself. I got to Low Guard Commander on my own."
"Did you?" The question hung in the air, taunting him, making him doubt his own ability.
"Yes, I did."
All the response he got was a bitter laugh. He startled to say more but was cut off.
"You have always been someone else's tool. You are mine now."
"If you didn't need me, you would be giving the eulogy, not Weir."
"So, a touch of anger remains in that worthless brain. Good. I was unable to learn where the CIO escaped. What more did Weir add?"
Riddle swallowed his anger. He felt as if he were nothing more than a pawn being edged across a board, forced into a move unnatural and definitely not according to the rules. If the unseen, unknown voice at the other end of the comlink hadn't been providing so much useful intelligence coupled with clever moves that took him ever closer to the power he desired, he would have tossed the comlink into a disposal unit. When the river of useful information dried up, he would track down his informant and deal with him. Or her. He had the gut feeling that a woman supplied him everything he wanted.
There had been several in Tomlins' immediate circle who silently suffered in his employ, ignored and unappreciated. Two assistants and a guard came to mind. Riddle idly made a notation in his cyberlocked notebook to that effect. Find them, find if their intimate knowledge of both Tomlins and his office would have allowed them to hide a sub-band repeater there. That was the only way a signal could have reached him, relayed through some device so cleverly placed that Weir's obsessive security searches never found it.
"The new Programmer General has directed his attention to the control algorithm, trying to circumvent the protections Tomlins installed, and turn it to his own use. He hasn't said, but I think he is using an AI program to attack the algorithm, no matter that this is illegal. There must be parts of Burran blocked to him by that CA or he wouldn't ignore Kori Tomlins' capture."
"Capture? He wanted her dead. The commandos were ordered to shoot on sight."
"What do you want? The same for her and her daughter? One was killed by a missile."
"Examine the wreckage and be sure of that."
"There's no way to do that. The carrier disintegrated completely. It was a small craft and the attacking force used a missile more suitable for a vessel ten times larger. Even analyzing the plasma left wasn't possible. That was a powerful warhead."
"Overkill." The word came out as if spit out. "Overkill there but Scarlotti still sneaked in, found the mother and daughter and escaped."
"Do you have any suggestions on finding them?"
"The CIO is the weak link. He has fallen in love with Bella Tomlins."
Riddle tried not to react. Again he heard bitterness in the voice in spite of an attempt to hide it. His benefactor held a grudge against Sean Scarlotti. That made it a high probability he or she was a member of Scarlotti's staff. A passed-over promotion or other slight? He made a new notation to find who this might be. Motivation meant everything because he knew he would be discarded the instant someone else became more useful.
"I will convince Programmer General Weir that this is a military matter."
"Are you in control? Weir sent a commando unit to Emerald Isle without your knowledge."
"He used the Programmer General's personal guard. I have no control over them." Riddle fumed over this. Worse, Weir must have used a Middle Guard warplane to shoot down Ebony Tomlins' plane without telling him. Hour by hour, Weir usurped control of the military.
"Consolidate your power quickly."
"I can take over the hunt for them. If Scarlotti speaks with Weir, he might convince him to be lenient. In spite of being such a slug, he does have a way of persuasion about him. That's why Tomlins kept him around. If there are only bodies, it won't matter what Scarlotti says."
"Dead bodies." The voice turned neutral. "There must be no bodies found. You said it was overkill using a missile designed for use against a cruiser to blow up the carrier. Think in those terms."
Riddle tensed. His benefactor knew Weir had sent the warplane and chided him over it.
"What of Sean Scarlotti? Him, too?"
"He is a traitor."
"Technically," Riddle said, "Weir is the traitor. So are we. Scarlotti worked to protect those legally in power."
"The family held no official position. The whore was the Programmer General's consort, and who knows who Bella's father was."
"That is the weak spot to attack. The feelings Scarlotti has for Bella."
"Exploit it."
"A moment." Riddle made another notation about the threads of truth he teased from the conversation, then brought up a command screen. He was more familiar with Burran ground forces, but he needed to expand the methods of searching because time was of the essence. Ground troops might find the CIO eventually, but a touch of orbital spysat time went a long way.
"You deployed a drone swarm. What are you seeing?"
Riddle's eyebrows arched in surprise. His benefactor had some capability to spy on him, but it wasn't complete. The swarm of gnat-sized drones sprayed along the coast opposite the Tomlins' island covered more than a thousand hectares and relayed the information to a comsat and back to him. He received it, but the person on the other end of the gray-screened comlink only knew he had deployed the swarm.
"I acquired a target, probability 95 percent that it is Scarlotti. That was fast, if I say so myself. He is flying a carrier away from the capital."
"He must have achieved whatever there was here that Kori wanted."
Riddle made another notation. His benefactor was in the capital.
"What would she want that Scarlotti would risk his neck to retrieve?" Riddle spoke rhetorically. He knew a great number of devices and access codes were stored in the CIO's office that Kori Tomlins would need if she intended to foment any revolt against Weir. Whoever controlled the database for the master computer controlled Burran. Scarlotti could never access its full power, but using information from it helped any effort to depose Weir.
"Could he have secured a backdoor into the Blarney Stone?"
"Tomlins would never commit such an error, either by installing or allowing a backdoor to exist. And recording such an access point rather than keeping it in his head would put the computer at risk."
Riddle wasn't so sure. The control algorithm was complex. He wasn't a programmer but had to use the resources afforded by the master computer and recognized that the CA contained millions of lines of code. Tomlins was good, genetically good, but committing everything to memory was risky in the days of Eire agents with brain scramblers infiltrating the capital. He had even heard of a k-chip that, rather than imparting it, sucked knowledge from a brain for recovery later.
"Locked in on his destination." Riddle sat straighter. He reached out and activated his HUD. It would be onl
y a few minutes before he snared Sean Scarlotti and along with him Kori Tomlins and her daughter.
All that remained for him was the decision whether to capture them or annihilate them, as his unseen, perpetually angry benefactor wanted. He had a few minutes to decide what benefitted him most. A smile crossed his lips as he blanketed the area with a new drone swarm. Being in charge now, he had no need to worry about budgets.
Chapter Nine
Donal Tomlins ripped the control helmet off his head. Pain stabbed into the irritated patches of skin where the electrodes had been matted down by dried blood. Blinking hard, he focused and saw the command deck around him where the surviving officers worked steadily to repair faulty equipment. The last thing he had touched was the program controlling the RRUs. The Shillelagh was airtight again and the major systems functioned properly. The parts of the dreadnought that didn't were hardly of any importance, though all but three of the laser cannon turrets had been vaporized, leaving the ship almost defenseless.
"Programmer General, there was a burst to Burran from the Highlander." The com officer called from the radiation-shielded alcove off the bridge.
Donal half turned and regretted the movement. He hadn't felt this debilitated since the first day he had donned the controller for the master computer and assumed the responsibility of taking care of a nation of more than a billion souls. The time spent working then had been brief, but it had taken a toll on his body. In spite of warnings and his intensive training, the extent of the agony inflicted by the Blarney Stone that worked its way down into muscles had been unexpected.
Now, as then, his head hurt, and his brain felt as if it would explode. And his back! Just turning in the captain's chair sent red waves crashing throughout his body. He glanced at the chair arm where the com officer should have signalled. A quick tap with his thumb knocked the indicator off, to go rattling across the floor. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he performed the calculations of the fall and speed of rolling and determined the artificial gravity was set too high. That might exacerbate his back strain.
"Sir!"
"Sorry. A signal from the cruiser?"
"I've tracked and recorded it. The message went from Captain Lochlan to Commander Riddle."
"There will be further communication. Monitor Riddle the best you can without being detected."
"I don't have the access codes, sir."
Reluctantly, Donal donned the helmet again and sent the com officer what he needed to trace Lochlan's report to whomever ordered the attack. Donal would have taken odds Riddle was not the one who had ordered the Programmer General's flagship attacked. One of two in the government had to be responsible. His bet would have been on Weir.
Then the real importance of the signal hit him.
"Lochlan set the message? Is he in control of the Highlander?"
"He reported being under attack."
"All sensors, focus on the cruiser." Donal barked the order to those on the bridge even as he pushed aside the torment of using the control helmet to access everything at once.
His HUD exploded with data. He cursed himself for not following his son and the Far Kingdom emissary more closely. The condition of the Shillelagh had been important, but he knew their mission could make all that moot if Lochlan called for reinforcements. Head spinning, eyes threatening to pop from his skull, Donal worked the sensors and got pings from the two exos on the cruiser's bridge. Concentrating his probes there, he watched as ionization trails snaked through the airless bridge and exploded. A spacesuited figure moved suddenly.
"Prepare for free space rescue!" He shouted the command even as he worked through the details using the helmet. As quick as he was, his command lagged what the ship's officers were already doing. What he wouldn't give for the Blarney Stone at his command now.
Polarizers blanked the sudden flare as the Highlander blew up. Donal maintained ultra short wavelength scanning to follow the exos blasting from the ship an instant before it destructed.
"Sir, only one exo on lidar."
He almost passed out as he whirled through a hundred different reports. Then he sank down, sobbing. Donal got himself under control and thought through the problem. He sat straighter as he issued the orders.
"They are magnetically linked. Two exos. Rescue them. Get a dartabout to them right now."
"Sir, all our smaller craft are damaged."
Donal heard the report and didn't bother identifying the source. The words carried the right amount of anguish. Whoever spoke felt the same as he did about losing Cletus and Leanne Chang. He blanked all the sensors save for the radar contact when he received no answer from them on any of the usual radio frequencies. A lasercom might work but not if they were tumbling. Sitting back in the captain's chair, he set the ship's computer to calculating an intercept vector.
"That's dangerous, sir, moving the Shillelagh to pick them up. They are traveling at a much slower speed than we can achieve. If we overshoot them ..."
"Do it. The solution is set into navigation."
The ship hummed as the engines began edging the massive ship forward. A touch of steering jet altered the vector, then came a huge blast that defied the artificial gravity compensation. Donal was pressed back hard in the chair. He readjusted the helmet and saw that the dreadnought had positioned itself between the joined exo armored suits and a cold death.
"Get a team out to fetch them."
An airlock at amidships opened. Donal switched to visual as two spacesuited crew launched themselves using rocket packs. They snared the tumbling exos and killed some of the rotation.
Donal checked the roster of those on the bridge. A lieutenant was the senior command officer.
"Lieutenant Sullivan, you have the conn."
"Sir? But I'm─"
"Senior surviving officer. You'll do fine."
"Yes, sir." The woman waited for him to vacate the captain's chair, then gingerly placed the helmet on her shaved head.
Donal wished he had corrected the gravity before heading for the airlock. His legs buckled more than once, forcing him to support himself against a bulkhead or grab a stanchion. He finally opened the last dogged hatch and stumbled into the assembly chamber just inward of the airlock.
"Stand back, sir. We need to decontaminate their suits." The cargo master held out a hand to restrain him. "Nothing serious. The frost on their exos is sodium. The cruiser's engines must have blown."
A quick microwave beam boiled off the sodium, turning it to vapor that the exhaust fans whisked away in a few seconds. Deadlier cargo had been unloaded here in the past.
"They were destroyed on purpose," came Cletus' voice over an open radio link. The exo opened like a clamshell, and he stumbled out. "Lochlan wanted to kill us and blow up the Shillelagh, too, in a suicide mission."
"He reported to Ballymore." Leanne had more trouble getting free of her exo. The hinges had been damaged in the bridge explosion. "There has been a coup to depose you and place Chief Operations Officer Weir in control."
"I know that," Donal said. "A burst was intercepted to Riddle and whoever he contacted. That verified what I suspected. Weir is responsible for our misadventures."
"Misadventures? Father, we were attacked. They tried to assassinate you."
"Us, Cletus, us." Donal put his arm around his son, as much for the comfort of touching him again as to support his own shaky legs. "Riddle already claims to be Commander in Chief Armed Forces."
"He resented my promotion over him. He never did a good enough job commanding the Low Guard to merit any higher rank."
"The decision was left up to the Blarney Stone. The computer chose you as the better choice. I wrote the selection algorithm but had nothing to do with the data input. The computer collected what it needed on its own."
"Such a sudden coordinated action against authority does not happen spontaneously. Weir and his confederates planned this for some time. I feel it had nothing to do with Cletus' promotion." Leanne stepped a pace away from them. "W
hat plans are in place to counter this treason?"
"We have a short time now while they think the Shillelagh has been destroyed. From the news reports beamed to the space station, Weir is saying that an unfortunate accident occurred when we came out of StringSpaceDrop."
"How does she explain the destruction of the Highlander?" Cletus considered his own question. Donal was pleased to see that his son found the answer himself. "Never mind. He doesn't have to admit it at all. Not right away. Lochlan might be blamed for the mishap."
"A training exercise gone wrong," Leanne said. "That is unassailable, save by those who know better. If Weir has successfully become Programmer General, who is there to oppose him?"
"There's one loose end. Or several," Cletus said. He looked at his father.
"Your mother and sisters. They were vacationing at Emerald Isle while we were gone, but none of them is a fool. They will oppose Weir publicly unless he removes them."
"What do you know, Programmer General?" Leanne moved closer to Cletus, their arms brushing. Donal noticed his son made no effort to put distance between them, but why should he? The two had escaped death aboard the cruiser. That bonded, forged a bond in fire. They started back to the bridge, the narrow corridor keeping them together.
"An undocumented source says Ebony died taking off in her carrier. From the description of the explosion, it wasn't an engine malfunction but a missile that took her out."
"Mother? Bella?" Cletus turned pale.
"I received a coded message which says they are all right. Sean Scarlotti rescued them before Riddle's marines could find and kill them."
"Scarlotti? He found the nerve to do something like that?"
"He risked his life because of Bella." Donal disliked putting such personal affairs out in public, especially in front of Leanne. She absorbed all this like a sponge. Fate had thrown them together, but considering her an ally─or Far Kingdom, for that matter─was stretching circumstance to the breaking point. She had come to Ballymore as an observer and not as an adviser.
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