“Well, that’s a pity,” he said between spitting bile from his mouth.
“What is?” the coroner asked.
“Wasting perfectly good sake like that.”
“Don’t think of it as a waste. Think of it as enjoying it twice. Thanks for hitting the basket.”
“You’re welcome.” Tyson picked up a paper towel to wipe the spittle from his mouth. “Are you going to tell me why you yanked out her tooth?”
“No, I’m going to show you.” She walked back to her desk and cleaned the tooth of coagulated blood and hanging tissue, then dropped it into a clear cylinder with a robust-looking black top that looked for all the world like a coffeemaker. She pressed power and the room was suddenly filled with a small, but discernable high-pitched whine right at the edge of Tyson’s hearing. A second later, the tooth simply vanished into a puff of fine powder.
“Acoustic pulverizer. Neat little gimmick, huh?”
“We’re a little beyond a stone and pestle, I see.”
“Quite.” She took up the glass cylinder with its tooth dust and fed it into an adjacent machine. “Our teeth are formed in the womb. They’re all there from the moment we’re born, and they’re fixed for life. Unlike the rest of our skeleton, they don’t heal or regenerate. The minerals that went into them in the beginning are there straight through to the end. So, they’re like a little time capsule of the environment we were in while our mothers were busy throwing us together.”
“Isotope ratios,” Tyson said as the woman’s words sunk in. “You’re using a spectrograph to pin down the isotope ratios of the minerals in her birth environment to tell us where she was originally from.”
“Very good, Mr. Abington. Got it in one.”
“How sensitive is it? I mean, can you narrow it down to a particular system, or planet?”
“Honey, we have enough profiles in the databank to narrow it down to a particular country or colony city in most cases. But then I’m going to do you one better. Do the same with a bone cross section and I can tell you where she’s been over the last seven to ten years. A lock of hair and I can tell you where she’s been and what she’s been eating, drinking, or snorting for the last eighteen months. Is that worth something to you, Mr. Abington?”
“How long will the results take?”
“Twelve hours, tomorrow for sure.”
“I assume you don’t need assistance collecting the bone cross section?”
The coroner laughed. “No, tough guy, I’ll spare you that sight.”
“Send the results to my office under encryption as soon as they’re ready. Do not include them in her police file.”
“That’s a pretty big breach of protocol.”
“I am the protocol in this city,” Tyson said firmly.
“Hey, you’re paying for the tests. I’ll send the bill along, too.”
“Do that.” Tyson pulled the blue gloves off his hands and dumped them into the wastebasket with his sake, then headed for the door to meet up with Officer Berg, relieved to be leaving the morbid sights, sounds, and smells behind him. Once he was back to ground level, he connected with Paris.
“Sir, where were you? I lost contact for almost an hour.”
“In Hell, Paris. Thankfully, I was just visiting.”
“I’m grateful for that.”
“You should be receiving an encrypted file from the coroner at Xanadu Hospital sometime tomorrow. I want to know the moment you have it.”
“Of course.”
“And Paris, make a note to double the coroner’s office budget.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And make a donation to the hospital of a half-million nudollars in the name of the Castalia Family.”
“Okay…”
“And Paris?”
“Yes, Tyson?”
“Tell the hospital to enforce its no-vaping policy in the basement levels as well.”
THIRTEEN
“Captain, you’re needed in the CIC,” OoD Esposito said through the com in the officers’ mess.
Susan looked down at the peanut butter and jelly sandwich hovering dangerously close to her open mouth and sighed. She was famished, and the sandwich represented the first shot of carbs and protein she’d had in twelve hours. This late, the kitchen was closed. Third-shift cooks were busy working, of course, but they were tied up cleaning sinks, ovens, dishes, and doing prep for the six meals they’d be serving over the next eighteen hours. PB&J was the only option at 0330.
“Can it wait five minutes?” she asked, even as she knew the question was rhetorical.
“Don’t think so, mum.”
“Fine, I’m on my way. Make sure to drag Mr. Nesbit out of bed, too.”
“I called him first, mum. You know how long he takes to powder his nose.”
“Play nice, Esposito.” She slammed the mug of square dog sitting on the table in front of her, nearly scalding her palate in the process, then topped it off with a long pour from the pot. Susan kept the sandwich and scarfed it down on the hoof.
“Captain on deck!” the marine guard shouted less than a minute later.
“Yeah, yeah. At ease,” Susan said as she took her seat. “Okay, OoD, hit me.”
Esposito looked back from the plot, smiling like the Cheshire cat. “You’re not going to believe this, mum.”
“The last time someone said that to me, my sister got a divorce three months later. This had better knock that memory out of position or you’re in trouble.”
“We’ve just heard from Grendel’s astronomy department, mum. They’ve found it.”
“Found what?” Susan’s sleep and nutrient-deficient brain asked before the answer floated to the surface. There was only one thing they could’ve found that would put such a ridiculous grin on the OoD’s face.
The Xre’s fleet oiler.
“Oh,” Susan said. “Ooooh! Where is it?”
“We’re calculating drift now, mum. They’ve only had intermittent contact, but it’s in a parking orbit, not under power. Should know in a minute or so.”
Susan looked up at the main plot hologram with invigorated eyes. Three tentative sightings had been pinned in the volume with yellow pyramids flanked by bearing and velocity data. The variables narrowed with each sighting until the cone of space the oiler could possibly occupy shrank to a tunnel in space.
“Where’s Miguel?” Susan shook alertness into her head. The caffeine had yet to catch her up. “I mean, where’s the XO?”
“In his rack, I hope. I only relieved him two hours ago.”
“Okay, let him sleep for now. How sure are they this bogey is the oiler?”
“Greater than ninety-five percent, mum.”
“That seems awfully confident.”
“There’s actually good reason for that.” Esposito zoomed the plot in to the space immediately surrounding the projected path of the bogey. A small constellation of Kuiper-belt objects shadowed its course. “Apparently, this cluster of asteroids sits on a damned elliptical orbit and makes a deep dive for the inner system every hundred and twenty local years or so. They were catalogued a couple decades ago by the first survey crew to come through here, both because they posed a potential impact threat to the inner planets, and because their spectrographics were interesting enough to warrant a closer look for a future mining claim. This cluster is well-known by the locals as a result.”
“And all of a sudden, there was an extra asteroid,” Susan finished the thought.
“Exactly.”
“What are the odds the cluster just happened to capture a stray asteroid?”
“With less than a percent standard gravity between the lot of them?” Esposito shook her head. “Not worth mentioning. Any captured object would’ve had to be moving in a nearly identical orbit at a relative velocity you could measure in meters per second, otherwise it would’ve just sailed right on by or pulverized one of the members of the cluster. The locals would’ve spotted it years ago. This was placed recently. That’s why the locals
are so sure. We just got really, extremely lucky the bugs picked a pile of rubble Grendel had already mapped to park their tender in.”
“But why could Grendel see it at all?” Susan asked, but the answer presented itself before the OoD could correct her. “Because it’s not stealthed. We don’t coat our oilers in expensive adaptive camo, why would the Xre? They’re logistics ships, not frontline combatants.”
“That was my thought as well, mum. They probably figured bringing it in cold and setting it on a wide orbit would be stealth enough. There’s no way we would’ve spotted it if they’d picked almost any other place to put it. Just bad luck on their part.”
Susan’s thoughts came to an abrupt halt as the marine at the hatch announced Mr. Nesbit’s arrival.
“CL on deck!”
“Jesus, son, people are trying to sleep,” Nesbit said as he stepped through the hatch. For once, Susan sympathized with him.
“Good to see you, Mr. Nesbit,” she said.
“Wish I could say it was good to be seen. What’s going on?”
Susan beamed. “Grendel’s astrogation department believes with a high degree of confidence that they’ve located the fleet oiler the Xre cruiser has been using for UnRep for its ongoing operations in system. We’re in the process of confirming their findings.”
Nesbit rubbed at his left eye. “English, Cap.”
“We found the bug’s gas can.” Susan bared her teeth. “And I’m going to blow it up.”
“You’re what?”
“It’s where they’re storing their antimatter and reactant mass. Take it out, and they have to schlep all the way to Blumenthal and back to refuel and refit. That’s a three-week round trip. Damn inconvenient.”
“Where is this ‘oiler’ now?”
Susan pointed at the shrinking yellow cone on the main plot. “We’ve marked it as Bogey Six.”
“I thought confirmed enemy targets were called ‘Bandits.’”
“They are. The astrogators on the surface have only had intermittent sightings, but there’s nothing else it could or should be. We’re still resolving its drift course, but it’s definitely somewhere inside that cone. Scopes will have a precise location for us shortly, won’t you, Mattu?”
Her drone integration officer pumped a fist in the air. “Yes mum!”
“See?”
“Where is it in relation to the treaty line?” Nesbit pressed.
“Charts?”
Broadchurch toggled an icon at their station and a red line representing the treaty boundary appeared nearly an AU behind the bogey.
“It’s in open space,” Nesbit barked.
“Yeah? And?”
“Aaaand blowing up a ship in fair trade space is a treaty violation and an act of war, Captain.”
“So is sending armed drones past the treaty line to destroy our remote platforms, Mr. Nesbit. We didn’t ask for this dance, but it’s time we took the lead.”
“Can’t we wait until it swings back over the treaty line?” Nesbit asked.
“That would be impractical, as its elliptical orbit won’t bring it back across the line for … Charts?”
“Ninety-two years,” Broadchurch said.
“Ninety-two years,” Susan repeated. “Which is a bit longer than I’m willing to commit to this enterprise.”
“I can’t advise this course of action, Captain. It’s exactly the sort of thing that could spark an interstellar incident.”
“We already have an interstellar incident, Javier.” Susan took off her top cover and ran a hand through her hair to scratch a sudden itch. “What if we don’t blow it up? Would that make you happy?”
“That’s exactly what would make me … wait a minute. Why did you stress ‘we’?”
“What if something else destroys the oiler?” Susan asked, thinking out loud.
“What, you expect to convince them to obligingly blow themselves up?”
“Not at all. But the outer system is a dangerous place. Lots of uncharted meteors and asteroids tumbling around out there.”
“You’re not seriously suggesting we—” Nesbit started, but Susan’s brain was already moving under its own power.
“Lieutenant Warner,” she called into the com.
“Go for Warner,” came her weapons officer’s sleepy voice.
“Get up to the CIC. I need a rock.”
“Are you proposing to me, mum?”
Susan smirked. “If you manage to pull this bullshit off, my dear, I just might.”
* * *
It took them the rest of a duty shift working with their civilian counterparts on Grendel to locate an appropriate meteor for the task. It was harder than Susan had first assumed. Despite a decade of constant human occupation, and many years of intermittent survey missions prior, they still didn’t have anything like a complete catalogue of all the rocks in Grendel’s outer system. Normally, this wouldn’t pose a huge problem because any asteroid or comet that did wander into the inner system could be intercepted and safely diverted or destroyed, so long as it was spotted with a few weeks’ notice.
For Susan’s purposes, they needed a rock in a specific orbit, at a specific period in that orbit, moving within a specific velocity range, that wasn’t so small that the oiler’s automated defenses could take it out, but not so big the booster packs Ansari had in inventory couldn’t overcome its momentum enough to adequately alter its trajectory.
But, in the second miracle of the day, find one they did.
It took a week for a three-person engineering detail to sneak out to the rock on a marine recon shuttle crammed with equipment, and another day and a half on the surface setting everything up for the attack. They were still making their way back to the barn.
“I almost feel bad,” Warner said as the rock they’d appropriated entered its terminal approach and the booster packs bolted to its surface used what was left of their propellant to self-destruct. There couldn’t be any trace left of their involvement when the rock struck the oiler. Naturally, the thruster packs had been arranged on the far side of the rock, which massed fully three-quarters as much as the Ansari itself, to shield their exhaust and eventual destruction from the oiler’s sensors. They’d taken the further precaution of keeping one of the other asteroids in the cluster between the target and their hot rock until it was too late.
“All boosters have detonated,” Mattu said quietly. They were committed, now. With the boosters gone, there was no way to alter the meteor’s course. In truth, they’d been past the point of no return for four minutes already, as they were almost half an AU away from the scene of the crime. Mattu had expertly maneuvered a recon drone running passive under stealth into a parallel course with the rock so they could get light-speed updates on the proceedings. Everything had already played out, they were just watching the rerun.
“The covering asteroid has drifted out of line of sight. Our rock has entered the tender’s threat envelope. Active scans have acquired. Countermeasures deploying.”
Despite years of active warfare and decades of an uneasy armistice, mankind had never been able to pin down the Xre’s homeworld. There was no single nexus point to their deployments or logistics. But war strategists had inferred from reams of tactical data, after-action reports, and capture hardware some of the underlying psychology of the enemy. They fought defensively, with more resources and equipment dedicated to repelling counterattack than offensive operations. They were cautious and calculating, which early in the Intersection War had been mistaken by overeager human commanders for cowardice or a lack of commitment. Many of them had paid for the miscalculation with their lives.
What it meant in practical terms was Xre ships were, without fail, tough nuts to crack. Not even this lowly fleet replenishment ship broke that mold. The sheer volume of point-defense fire that swarmed out of it like amorous fireflies on a hot summer night was testament to the aliens’ design philosophy.
“Are their resupply ships drones like ours?” Nesbit asked.
“I expect their oilers are, too, yes.”
“Why do you keep calling it an ‘oiler’?”
“It’s an old, old nautical term from just after the days of sail, back when ships burned heavy fuel oil. Their UnRep ships carried the oil, so, oilers. My military history instructor back in Academy used it and I guess it stuck with me.”
“Why doesn’t it just bubble away?”
“Charts? Would you like to answer the CL’s question?”
“Sure, mum,” Broadchurch said. “Not enough time to charge their rings unless they keep them on hot standby. Which not only puts unnecessary hours and wear on the components, but gives off IR and makes it harder to hide their little secret.”
“I see. Same goes with their fusion rockets, I take it?”
“Yep. Not as much lead time, but still too much if you’re starting cold.”
“Will the Xre cruiser know when it happens?” Nesbit asked.
“Are you kidding?” Miguel said. “When that much antimatter loses containment? They’ll see it in the next system in five and a half years.”
On the “live” feed, the front of the meteor boiled and hissed as the oiler’s version of CiWS lasers and mass-drivers desperately clawed at the newcomer in a bid to save their ship, but they’d been designed to swat down railgun slugs massing a few dozen kilograms up to anti-ship missiles of a few dozen tons. They were not meant to destroy a solid iron/nickel asteroid of over two hundred thousand tons. A well-placed salvo of ship-killers might have enough punch to nudge it out of the way. But then, tenders didn’t have missile tubes.
“What’s the closing rate?” Susan asked.
“Leveled off at three and a half klicks per second,” Mattu said.
Warner whistled low. “That’s going to leave a mark.”
“Ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Drone entering safe mode. Seven…”
In the Black Page 15