by Mel Keegan
And then Marin clicked up to the security band and listened to Vidal and Rusch. They were talking to Haugen, Morrison and several of the command corps. The stress was clear in every voice, but as Shapiro’s countdown wore away the painstaking preparations for this enterprise began to pay off.
“Relax,” Travers said quietly.
“I am relaxed.” With the ease of a decade’s practice Marin’s hands went to his weapons, slackening them in the holsters.
Neil’s eyes were dark in the dimness of the passage, just rims of blue around wide pupils. “Let it be, Curtis. It’s set, it’s in motion. Clockwork, the man called it. Shapiro and Rusch designed this between them. It’ll work.”
He was right, and Marin set his shoulders back against the wall, dropped his eyelids, the better to listen to the loop. “They’ll dine out on this for the rest of their lives. So would we, if we didn’t mind telling the story a thousand times over.”
“Classified,” Travers warned, amused.
“Not for long. The war’s going to be done.” Marin looked sidelong at him. “I suppose we ought to feel honored, being here at the crux of it, watching history unfold.” He heard the cynicism in his own tone.
“And you don’t?” Travers flexed his neck and hands.
“I guess I do,” Marin admitted, “but if you want the truth, I’d rather be watching a CNS documentary about it, five years from now.”
“May you live in interesting times,” Travers said glibly, the ancient Chinese curse which had followed the pioneers out to the stars.
At just over 83 minutes, spinners and sirens announced the return of the Trofeo, and Marin stood at Travers’s shoulder to watch it slide back into the claustrophobic little hangar. Two minutes to blow air and heat back into the compartment, and they saw Roark Hubler come stomping down the ramp with Asako Rodman on his heels.
Both were in uniform grays with no insignia of ship or unit. The garb was calculated. It would let them pass by unnoticed on this or any Fleet ship, and for the moment, the less eyes were drawn to them, the better. Now the Trofeo powered down, and Perlman and Fargo would kill time, listening to the loop, waiting.
In Hubler’s right hand were six datacubes, and these, he passed to Travers. “The navtank load and a backup,” he said unnecessarily.
The load could have been transmitted, but the unscheduled and large datastream might have alerted the AI, and would certainly have pinpointed the Wastrel’s position. The tug should be pulling out even now, but like any ship she would leave the sizzling, aromatic wake of sublight engines. She would be easy to track, given a known starting point. The cubes were anonymous, safe. Travers accepted them without comment, and followed Marin back to the elevator.
The lights were out, the auditorium was almost dark. Vidal, Rusch and Shapiro sat under a single glowbot just inside the door, talking quietly, and as Marin approached they stepped out. Travers placed the cubes into Vidal’s open hand, and Vidal rolled them like dice. A gleam lit his eyes, some mix of amusement, zeal, ambition, as if he had waited all his life for this moment.
“Ops room,” he said with a hard look at Rusch. “Your people already know there’s a Tac team coming in. Have them stand down right now. Give us time to load the tank and settle in, yes?”
“Yes.” Rusch seemed resigned now, ready for this because there was no other option, even though she had spent months arranging it.
A curious sensation twisted through Marin’s chest as the elevator went up. He knew Neil was watching him, but he was silent until the others had gone ahead toward the wide, open armordoors that would close over Kiev Operations when the action began. They were out of earshot when he said, for Travers’s ears,
“When I was twenty, I thought I wanted this. Carrier command. As a student, I spent hundreds of hours observing the command corps at work.”
“And I,” Travers said blithely, “have never even seen the inside of a carrier’s Ops room, let alone set foot in one. Not,” he added, “that I ever wanted to.”
“And you don’t want to be here today.”
“Want to?” Travers’s brows rose. “No. No more than you do.” His face darkened. “Let’s just get this done, and get the hell out.”
The layout of Kiev Ops was not very unlike Wastrel Ops, but the easy, relaxed atmosphere of Richard Vaurien’s ship was entirely absent. Marin might almost have expected to see Tully Ingersol sprawled in his big chair at the workstation where Weimann and Arago functions were monitored, dressed in kneeless denims and a rumpled plaid shirt, coffee in one hand, croissant in the other; or Jazinsky in bronze skinthins, prowling like a big cat around the tank, juggling two or three handies while Vaurien himself looked on and commands were given softly in a deep voice rich with the familiar French accent.
Instead, the Fleet crew were in crisp dress grays, every one of them straight-backed, riveted into position at their posts according to service regulations, and any communication was spat or barked in some odd, clipped language which scraped the nerve endings raw. Marin and Travers shared a look; Travers turned his eyes to the ceiling, or the gods, and Marin shot a curious glance at Rusch. She wore a pained expression, and as she caught his glance, shrugged eloquently.
Her voice was so soft, he almost did not hear what she said. “It’s Fleet, they’re Academy grads. Rank and prestige is the game they love to play – what are you going to do with them?”
The most relaxed of them all was the XO, and even Patricia Haugen looked stiff, with a face like a mask. Marin cut her the slack of acknowledging she was tense as a runner under the gun, and he saw an expression of some gratitude as she, Kotaro, Frezza and Lau stepped back from the navtank and the workstations, ceding their positions to the incoming specialists.
Normally there would have been resentment when they were replaced, but Marin saw none of it here, now. This job was as unpleasant as it was exacting, and no one among these Academy grads wanted to take the responsibility. The instinct was ingrained in+ them, in the three years they spent in classrooms: Fleet punished failure pitilessly, and suspected disloyalty would bring a promising career to a shuddering halt.
The Kiev’s own department heads slipped back into the shadows as Vidal, Hubler and Rodman stepped up to the navtank and examined the workstations flanking it. Rusch said nothing; she and Shapiro drew away into the corner by an autochef from which issued the aroma of fresh coffee. Marin glanced once at the chrono displayed in the top of the tank: 71 minutes and counting down. He watched as Rodman’s hand hovered over the data socket, ready to drop in the three cubes.
“You have the AI under your control?” Vidal asked quietly. His face was lit from beneath by the writhing, coiling patterns from the tank, where Omaru and its moons, the smelters, the civilian facilities and the ships of the blockade were depicted in a rainbow of colors.
It was Major Charles Frezza, the Data Processing head, who answered. “The AI’s expecting a simulation designed to check navigation and target acquisition systems. Your data’ll be okay, Mick. It’s going to look like the load for a hypothetical engagement … a sim.”
“Inform the AI the sim is about to begin,” Vidal said in the same quiet tone, preoccupied with the tank. His eyes quartered it, taking in the positions of the moons, artificial satellites, Omaru’s ATC feed, the pocket-sized gas giant, Shikoku, the smelters, every skerrick of positional data he could glean. “Roark?”
The big man was on Tactical, with weapons and Aragos at his fingertips. “No problem. Any time.”
“When you’re ready, Chuck.” Vidal glanced over his shoulder. “Hey, wipe the worried look off your face, man. You know me, you know Roark.”
“Used to know you,” Frezza muttered. “Jesus, Mick, I’d have walked right past you in the street. You know. You’re…” He was busy at the AI workstation.
“I know what I am,” Vidal admitted. “Better than the alternative, though, right?”
“What was it, crash and burn?” Frezza’s eyes were large, his brow furrow
ed. “The AI’s standing by.”
“Thanks. It was more like crash and wait – for way too long.” Vidal gave Rodman a nod, and the datacubes slipped into the socket. “I was busted up, it was cold, no food, you know how it goes.” The lies were smooth. This was the cover story Shapiro had authored, and as soon as it was told to one old folgen buddy, it would race like wildfire through the upper decks.
“You always had the luck of the devil, you and Roark both.” Frezza stepped back into the shadows with Kotaro, Lau and Haugen.
For a moment a smile tugged at Vidal’s thin face. “Hold onto that thought, Chuck, and trust us.” His eyes flicked on, past Frezza to Shapiro and Rusch. “We’re showing 57 minutes. You’re cool?”
“We’re cool,” Rusch assured him. “How’s the data load?”
“It’s coming up now.” Vidal leaned on the side of the tank and cast one long glance over the three-meter display. The simulation his team had worked on for days had overlaid the reality in ghost images, transparent hues, false colors. “Roark?”
“Running the numbers, Mick … all right.” Hubler pulled up a chair and took the weight off the biocyber legs. “Tactical’s friendly. I’ve got every cannon slaved to this station.”
“Asako?” Vidal prompted in a soft but piercing tone.
She was wrangling a difficult, challenging tangle of data, the human comm and AI channels of every ship in the fleet. “Give me a minute. It’s like a bloody bird’s nest.” And then, “Got it. We’re configured to show big, fat flashing purple lights if any ship goes on alert, and the comm scanner’s keying on voice stress patterns. We can do this.”
They had run the whole operation in simulation scores of times, but an element of doubt would always linger, Marin knew, until it ‘went live.’ He and Travers had drawn together with Shapiro and Rusch, and he saw a muscle twitching in Alexis Rusch’s cheek, betraying grinding teeth.
“We’re set up. We can do this any time,” Vidal told her.
“We’ve no reason to delay.” She glanced at the chrono, and away. “Time to have the battle group come to set coordinates. Harrison?”
“Time,” he agreed.
To bring every ship in the blockade into the lee of Bahrain could take as long as an hour, Marin knew. Travers leaned closer and said against his ear, “We’re dead on time.”
Marin answered only with a nod. A fist had closed around his innards and he did not envy Vidal’s team. The fact this ship had been home to him and Hubler for years figured large in their decision to do this, and Marin could only respect them for it.
“Major Haugen,” Rusch said in a careful, cool tone. “Call the battle group to Bahrain. The coordinates are in the navigation tank at this time. Have them form up, earliest possible.”
“There are at least eight transports and gunships in the air across the blockade, ma’am,” Haugen warned. “It’ll take time to dock them.”
“I realize that, Patricia.” Rusch smiled thinly. “We’re not tied to the clock, but – have them commence now. Major Frezza, the AI is your ‘puppy,’ as you’ve always been fond of saying. Keep it sweet.”
The color had drained from Frezza’s face. “It’s going to know this isn’t a simulation – not when every ship in the battle group is moving.”
“I realize that, too.” Rusch was watching the tank, where Vidal had dragged the display and zoomed on Bahrain and its environs. “All the AI needs to know is, this is an authorized operation. Give it any clearance code you like … keep it sweet for an hour. We won’t need longer.”
“Problem?” Shapiro asked sharply.
But Frezza’s dark head was shaking. “Not so long as I’m authorized to break just about every rule in the book. The stuff I’m going to do would get me busted right out of the service, with one bastard of a flogging before they threw me back into civvy street, carrying a criminal record as long as your arm.”
“You’re authorized, Major,” Shapiro told him. “You’ve been serving with the Nine Worlds Commonwealth Fleet for the last hour or so.”
“And this ship is the Sark,” Frezza muttered, “she just doesn’t know it yet.”
“She will soon,” Vidal said with grim satisfaction. “Come on, Chuck, let’s just get this show on the road.”
The man pulled a chair up to a workstation several meters from Hubler and Rodman and splayed his hands over a keypad. Sweat broke from every pore, leaving his face shining as his fingers began to patter. Marin watched him until he gave Haugen a nod, and without a word the XO transmitted the order for every warship to pick up its small craft and assemble at Bahrain.
Predictably, the comm began to chatter within seconds. Haugen was primed. Head of the Communications department Brett Morrison fielded as many calls for confirmation as Haugen took; the message was always the same. Operation Weigong. Standby.”
“They know the code,” Travers whispered to no one in particular.
Haugen’s eyes were weird, filled with the witchfires of reflections off the tank and flatscreens. “It was ‘leaked’ in unofficial dispatches, as Colonel Rusch specified. Every commander on the blockade knows the code – they also believe it’s so classified, they shouldn’t know it.”
“Sneaky.” Marin favored Shapiro with a smile.
“You think Dendra Shemiji invented the fine art of triple-think?” Shapiro tapped his own temple with one forefinger. “Weigong. Back in the homeworlds they still use the term ‘checkmate,’ but the Slingo weigong you hear out in the Deep Sky has many more layers of meaning: a siege, an endplay, a termination … an invitation to roll over and surrender.” He nodded, obviously calculating the odds for the final time. “Every commander on the blockade is thinking, right now, we’re about to launch some ‘final solution’ strike against Omaru. It’ll never enter their minds that it’s themselves who’re about to be checkmated.” He made dismissive noises. “Fleet arrogance can be a potent weapon.”
“And you planned this – how long ago?” Travers wondered. “Or is that classified too?”
“It was loosely planned months ago,” Shapiro told him. “The details were tightened up ten days ago. Suffice to say, Colonel Rusch and I have been … somewhat busy.”
“Somewhat,” Marin echoed. “And – here we go.”
Heat blooms were showing across the battle group, energy and engine signatures ramping up as flocks of smaller vessels scudded back to their hangars like so many wasps returning to the nest. The Kiev itself was maneuvering, with constant crosstalk between the flightdeck and the engine deck, while the Ops room fell oddly quiet.
In the navigation tank the plot of the Omaru system wheeled about, and Marin watched the big moon centralize in the threedee display. Bahrain was larger than moons of Borushek and Jagreth, and just a little smaller than Velcastra’s big moon. It was heavy with metals, and the mass gave it enough gravity to consolidate into a sphere. It orbited at more than a half million kilometers from Omaru, in captured rotation. For more than a century, mines had been hollowing it out into honeycomb, and the dark side was bright with the lights of industrial towns.
Between the moon and the planet, space was busy with the civilian traffic that played tag with the Fleet patrols. On any normal day skimmers, gunships and sometimes the flights of Rapiers from the Kiev would disrupt civilian business, harass even legal traffic which had an excuse, and authorization, to ply between Omaru and the moons. Today the patrols were recalled, and since the militia was standby, on Tarrant’s order, space was uncharacteristically quiet.
The blockade ships formed up like a pod of orcas in the shadow of the super-carrier, and the Kiev was the last element of the battle group to slide into place in the deep shadow of Bahrain. Marin’s eyes were on the chrono as the engines switched onto station keeping, and he murmured a grudging appreciation of Fleet efficiency. It was just 50 minutes since the command had been given, and the code Operation Weigong.
“We’re ahead of time,” Travers observed. “Mick you need the wiggle room?”
“Nope.” Vidal looked up through the blue-mauve haze of the navtank at Hubler and Rodman. “Roark?”
“Aragos are pre-programmed and on standby,” Hubler reported in the level tone of the consummate professional. “I can’t load the firing solution till we own the AI, but it’s also on standby.”
“Asako?” Vidal prompted as he came around the tank and pulled a chair up to Tactical.
“Their AI traffic is all routine,” she told him. “They’ve got nothing … but there’s a bunch of chit-chat on the encrypted highband. A lot of commanders are comparing notes.”
“They’re up on their toes, expecting a fight – pound Hydralis to rubble once and for all.” Marin glanced sidelong at Travers. “They’re just waiting for the order.”
“Doesn’t make any difference.” Vidal laced his thin fingers and flexed them with the crackle of knuckles. He gave Shapiro and Rusch a speculative look. “Any time.”
For the space of a heartbeat Harrison Shapiro seemed to hesitate; his eyes skimmed every display, and after more than three decades in Fleet ships, he could have slid in at any workstation and taken over. For him there were no mysteries on any vessel from a troop transport to the super-carrier itself, and Marin was recalling the days of his own youth, when he had watched such senior officers and been envious.
Then Shapiro gave a sharp nod and said one word. “Proceed.”
With a heavy, thrumming drone the blastdoors closed over, sealing the Ops room. Clockwork, the man had said. In the last hour, Marin and Travers had reviewed the entire plan, and the term Marin would have used was elegant. Mark Sherratt himself could not have been any more thorough – or more devious. Dendra Shemiji had a reputation for triple-think, but Shapiro had studied strategy, tactics, at the feet of the masters, and the colonies underestimated Fleet at their cost.
Without a word spoken the Kiev’s AI scrammed and the comm went down, ship-wide. The AI would reboot in five seconds, which gave Rodman ample time to drop a cube into the data socket and run the startup routine which would bring the core computer back up as a loyal servant of the Nine Worlds Commonwealth. The comm blackout continued but the instant the AI came back online, Vidal pounced.