Cauldron of Ghosts

by David Weber

  Of course, like everyone, she reflected, there were a few private and personal facets of her personality and her life which she kept to herself. Like the minor fact that she was a Mesan alpha-line.

  She smiled slightly at that thought. Her carefully designed genotype gave her certain . . . advantages over the pure strain humans around her, but she’d still had to put in the long, grueling hours—years and years of hours—to earn her position of trust and her reputation as a muckraker. And perhaps the most ironic part of all was that she truly was a muckraker, that she truly did live to expose hypocrisy, deceit, corruption, and the abuse of power, position, or wealth. It might have seemed odd in someone whose entire life was dedicated to the oldest, most deeply hidden conspiracy in galactic history, yet she absolutely hated the personal greed, avarice, and narcissism that lay behind so much corruption and manipulation. In fact, the genuineness of that hatred, of the passion she brought to her reportage, was one of the great strengths which had allowed her to establish her well-earned—and much feared—reputation.

  And then there was the other edge of the sword, the hidden reason that made her stature as a teller of truths and slayer of giants so important to the Alignment.

  As usual, her instructions had been not so much vague as . . . broad. Despite the security of her communications chain, her superiors hadn’t wanted to be too explicit. That, she had decided long ago, was one of the hallmarks of your true conspirator, and she supposed it made sense, even if it did occasionally make things a bit more difficult for the people in the field. Still, she was an alpha-line. She’d learned how to read between the lines around the same time she’d learned how to talk. Well, by the time she graduated from high school and been recruited as an active operative, at any rate. She knew the basic parameters of her assignment, and she found it interesting that she’d been given precise and specific instructions to rent a small suite in a moderately priced hotel named the Huntington Arms. Now why, she’d wondered, had they wanted her in that particular hotel? That sort of decision was usually left up to her.

  The reason for the instruction was becoming clearer now, however. And she was beginning to suspect exactly why her superiors had given her the other instructions she’d received, as well.

  O’Hanrahan had never been part of the plans for Operation Houdini. In fact, she’d never heard of Houdini, other than as the name of an obscure ancient magician and trickster. But she was one of the tiny handful of human beings who knew not only of the Mesan Alignment’s existence, but of its actual purpose, as well, and she’d realized T-months ago that the Alignment’s master plan was entering a critical phase. She strongly suspected that it was happening sooner than anyone inside the onion had anticipated, and she was an astute and expert analyst of interstellar political affairs. And of military affairs, as well, since the two subjects overlapped more and more these days. It had become obvious to her that Mesa—more precisely, the political setup on Mesa that had existed for the past several centuries—was doomed. Doomed in the near future, not in some misty, far off temporal Neverland. Given that, and what she knew about the Alignment’s ultimate objectives, even someone far less gifted than an alpha-line could have figured out that something like Houdini had to be in the offing.

  She knew, as did most alpha-line operatives, that while the majority of the Alignment’s core members were no longer located on Mesa—had not been for decades, in fact—there were still an awful lot of them residing on the planet.

  How many? That, she didn’t know, but the number had to be somewhere in the low to middle five figures. Until the time came to abandon the mask which had served it so well, at least some of the members of the onion—the core group, hiding behind the millions of members of the Mesan Alignment who’d never heard of the Detweiler Plan—had to remain here, on Mesa itself, to manage all the levers of power the onion had spent so long putting in place. Some of those managers would be ultimately dispensable, if that became necessary, but many—most—would not. That meant they had to be gotten off the planet, in complete secrecy, leaving not a trace behind of where they’d gone, who they’d truly been, or what had happened to them. And now, given the unexpected rapidity with which the situation had gone pear-shaped, they had to be gotten off quickly.

  Much more quickly, she was sure, than any plans would have provided for when they were first laid down. And that meant . . .

  Drastic measures. Drastic ones. She could see no other way to manage such an evacuation under the current circumstances. And that assessment fitted perfectly with her new assignment . . . and with the fact that her lodgings had been specified. Her superiors hadn’t suggested that she stay at the Huntington Arms; they’d made it an order—a very explicit order. The sort of order someone gave to a very important asset who might have been at risk if she’d stayed anywhere she might choose.

  They wanted her safely out of any possible target zones. So whatever evacuation plan might have been put into place was about to be—might already have been—set in motion, and that made her instructions to cover the official Mesan System government’s posture and actions make perfect sense. They would require her to step farther than usual out of her role as reporter into her role as commentator and analyst, but this wouldn’t be the first time that had been true, and she was equally comfortable in either. She knew exactly how to craft her reports to accomplish her assigned mission.

  One. Harshly criticize—no, lambaste; not even that, excoriate—Mesa’s authorities for their past, present, and future brutality dealing with their own slaves and the citizens those authorities disdainfully labeled “seccies.”

  Two. Disparage—ridicule, deride, even sneer at in every way possible (without, of course, compromising her reputation for impartiality)—the incompetence of those same authorities when it came to actually catching and suppressing real terrorists instead of terrorizing innocent people.

  Three. Advance the proposition—as a conjecture, at least—that the Audubon Ballroom’s presence and capacity for action on Mesa might be a lot greater than the authorities wanted to admit. That last part, her superiors had cautioned her—as if she’d needed them to!—had to be done carefully, lest suspicion arise that she was inflating the threat for the sake of sensationalism.

  But, of course, that wouldn’t be a problem. First, because she’d always conscientiously avoided any reputation for sensational reportage. And, second, because if she was right about the immediacy of whatever evacuation plan was in place, and if the concerns of those same superiors about where she was to stay were well placed, it would soon be all but impossible to oversensationalize the events that would actually be occurring.

  It was a good thing, she reflected, that The Truth Will Out allowed her such a generous operating budget. She’d need it. Within two days, at the outside, she had to hire some good bodyguards. An attempt on her life was very likely, and it couldn’t be obviously fumbled, either. It would have to look quite serious—the sort of murder attempt that might be made either by Ballroom killers or (take your pick) agents from one or another disgruntled official body or aggrieved transstellar who’d finally decided she’d made herself a pain in the posterior once too often.

  Two such murder attempts had been made on her before. In both cases, the perpetrators’ identity had never been established, although theories abounded. And in both cases, that hadn’t mattered at all. One of those attempts had been completely genuine, as a matter of fact, and that hadn’t mattered, either. The attempts had sent viewership through the proverbial roof—and, of course, cemented the seriousness with which her reports were seen by the public. After all, if they hadn’t been accurate, why would anyone have wanted to shut her up?

  Luckily for her—well, no, it had been planned for, generations before—her genetic line had as one of its characteristics a pronounced taste for excitement. Some people called it adrenaline junkie.

  A crude and rather silly term, she’d always thought. Adrenaline was the effect, not the cause. The cause lay
in a complex constellation of genes carefully nurtured by the Alignment’s gengineers.

  * * *

  The next morning, she began recording her first report.

  “This is Audrey O’Hanrahan, reporting from Mesa, where disaster and catastrophe are in the air.”

  Good, she thought. It’s not just a decent intro; it’ll make a good tease before the report actually runs.

  “Viewers who followed my reports on the events on Mesa after the Green Pines terrorist attack may recall that I was both skeptical of the official accounts and critical of the behavior of Mesa’s security forces at the time. Their brutality—I would not and did not shy from the term bestiality—was astonishing. Coupled to that, however, was the incompetence I suggested was running in tandem. Brutal people are not necessarily stupid; but the fact remains that brutality tends to stupefy. That is just as true of the perpetrators as it is of their victims.

  “It now seems my cautions were justified. A highly placed spokesman for the government admitted to me yesterday that the claims made at the time by Mesa’s security agencies that they had crushed the Audubon Ballroom and its associated terrorist cells among the so-called ‘seccies’—Mesa’s second-class, largely disenfranchised citizens—were ‘magnified by optimistic bias.’

  “This is what’s known in the journalist’s trade as a weasel statement. What he really meant was: ‘We were so besotted with vengeance that we never actually bothered to check our victims’ guilt or innocence.’ Which also meant, of course, that those who might actually have been guilty would have found it much easier to escape punishment. This is the sort of ineptitude that makes it possible for a society’s enemies to evade apprehension while they lay plans for further outrages.

  “Brutality married to ineptitude—Mesa’s Office of Public Safety ought to use that slogan instead of the preposterous one they now have: ‘Always vigilant, always prepared.’ ”

  She looked directly into the pickup and shook her head.

  “Talk about ‘magnified by optimistic bias’!”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, she’d finished the rough recording and replayed it, considering it this time from an editor’s perspective. It was good, she thought. Possibly a little over the top in a few places, but not bad at all for a rough cut. She could always tone those places down a bit if they really needed it, but she’d learned long ago to put at least a few hours between the actual recording and any editorial decisions.

  Besides, now that she’d had a chance to appreciate it properly, she’d probably better not wait about that other little matter.

  She activated her com and punched in the combination of the private security force she’d used before on Mesa. It was not an Alignment front, as such, but it had been carefully vetted—and in some cases staffed by—the onion’s own security experts.

  “Cerberus Security? This is Audrey O’Hanrahan. Could I speak to Lee Seagraves, please. Yes, I’ll hold.”

  She loved her job.

  Chapter 42

  The down-at-the-heels freighter came over the alpha wall just over twenty-three and a half light-minutes from the F7 star which had been christened Balcescu by its ethnic Hungarian settlers. Its Warshawski sails flashed blue brilliance as they bled transit energy before reconfiguring into a standard impeller wedge. It took a moment orienting itself—even the best astrogation was usually off at least a little—then began its steady acceleration towards its destination, just over eleven light-minutes farther in-system.

  * * *

  “We’ve got a hyper translation,” Sophie Bordás, Balcescu Station’s sensor officer, reported.

  “Really?” The station’s CO, Zoltan Somogyi, set his coffee cup aside and rotated his comfortable station chair towards the sensor section. “And what can you tell me about it?”

  “Not much,” Bordás replied, carefully not adding the word “obviously” to her response. “It’s right on the hyper limit, and all I got at this point is the FTL signal from its impeller wedge. Looks to be somewhere around one million tons, give or take, from its wedge strength, and it’s only hitting about one hundred and seventy-six gravities’ acceleration.” She shrugged. “The little I can see so far, looks like it’s probably a tramp freighter. They only brought about fifteen hundred KPS across the alpha wall with them, so assuming constant acceleration, we’re looking at about four hours and twelve minutes for them to reach Debrecen orbit, with turnover in just under three hours.”

  Somogyi tilted back in his chair, his expression thoughtful. The hardscrabble colony on Balcescu’s only habitable planet of Debrecen didn’t ask many questions about the goings-on aboard the installation orbiting it. Until some OG’s superiors in the Jessyk Combine had stepped in to take over its management, Balcescu Station had been slowly disintegrating from lack of maintenance. And it had suffered that lack of maintenance because the entire star system didn’t have a collective pot to piss in and there had been no real traffic through it for at least the last forty T-years or so. As far as the people of Debrecen were concerned, it didn’t matter why Jessyk had wanted the derelict platform. What mattered was that it actually offered to lease it, repair it, and bring at least a trickle of trade into the system. If anyone on Debrecen had really thought about the economics involved—or been sufficiently aware of those economics’ reality—he would quickly have realized that the in-system “trade” carried out by Jessyk’s corporate partners couldn’t possibly allow them to recoup even the pittance they paid the system government for their lease. It was highly probable that none of them would have cared, either, of course.

  Balcescu Station was divided into two parts. The main body of the station was exactly what it appeared to be—a somewhat rundown trading depot. The slave trade was conducted entirely out of a portion of the station that was kept segregated from the rest, with only limited access from one part to the other.

  As deceptions went, this one was awfully threadbare. Few if any of the people working in the legitimate area of Balcescu had any illusions about what was happening in the restricted area. But the old expression applied to them—see no evil; hear no evil; speak no evil—or they’d be looking for another job. And jobs on Balcescu Station paid far better than most jobs planetside.

  Furthermore, the Jessyk Combine had a quite clear—and mutually lucrative—understanding with the local OFS authorities, which meant that unlike the situation in the nearby Maya Sector, the Solarian League Navy would never dream of dropping by Balcescu without warning them to get any embarrassing evidence of prohibited activities out of sight before its arrival. Nobody else was likely to have much interest in this armpit-of-the-universe star system—they were over two light-centuries from Erewhon—much less one of those busybodies like Haven or Manticore. And from the most recent news reports, Manticore had enough problems with the League already without adding another unauthorized incursion into Solly-climb space to the pot. Still . . .

  “Keep an eye on it, Sophie. Make sure it’s really alone. And let me know as soon as it squawks its transponder code.”

  “Sure,” Bordás responded. “I already requested them to, but it’s going to be another eight minutes or so before my transmission reaches them.”

  “Understood,” Somogyi said, and reached for his coffee cup once more.

  * * *

  “They’re requesting our transponder code,” Hali Sowle’s com officer said crisply.

  “Why, that’s right neighborly of them,” Ganny El observed, raising her battered, silver-chased coffee mug in salute.

  “Should I respond?” Lieutenant Frank Johnson looked up, his eyes settling on a point midway between Ganny El and Lieutenant Colonel Kabweza.

  “Well,” Kabweza smiled faintly, “I think we should leave that up to the experts. Ganny?”

  “Wouldn’t want to be all neat and orderly on the bastards,” Ganny replied. “Last thing we need is for the misbegotten SOBs to think we might be . . . oh, military or something. Let ’em wait for another six or
seven minutes, Frank. Then switch ’er on and let’s see if they welcome us back with a big slobbery kiss.”

  * * *

  “I’ve got the transponder code from our visitor,” Sophie Bordás said with an expression of mild surprise. “It’s the Hali Sowle. Were we expecting them back this soon?”

  Zoltan Somogyi swiveled in his chair to face her again. He was a bit surprised by the identification himself, but not so surprised that he spilled any coffee from his cup.

  “No, we weren’t. The impression I got from their captain—what was that harpy’s name—?”

  “Gamble Las Vegas.” Bordás had rather enjoyed the older woman herself, although she was admittedly a bit odd. She wondered if the name meant something in Vegas’ native tongue, whatever that was.

  “Yeah, her. What a piece of work. Anyway, she did say they’d be coming back this way, but I got the impression they were headed for Prime next and then on to Ajay.” He pursed his lips. “Although, now that I think about it, I can’t recall her saying anything specific. Maybe I misunderstood her.”

  He leaned forward to study the sensor officer’s display. “Anything look wrong to you?”

  “Not really. Hold on. Let me check.” Sophie tapped commands, bringing up some data, and examined it for a few seconds.

  “Nope. Everything looks the same. Signature matches the database from her last visit perfectly.”

  Satisfied, Somogyi leaned back in his chair and lifted his cup. “Well, we’ll find out soon enough.”

  There was nothing in sight for her to do for a while—as usual, here at bustling Balcescu Station—so Sophie brought the romance she was reading back up on her display. People could say what they wanted to about Somogyi—yeah, sure, he could be an asshole sometimes—but he wasn’t given to fussing over pointless rules like the prohibition against personal entertainment on the job, even when the alternative was twiddling your thumbs.