“Sir?” Butcher’s voice interrupted his reverie and he turned around.
“It’s time,” his adjutant said.
Saahren nodded. He made one last small adjustment to the high collar of his dress uniform and walked out into the corridor, Butcher a step behind him. Formal receptions were probably the things he hated most about his job, but they had to be done.
In the hangar bay, the shuttles stood ready, engines idling. His escort slammed to attention, Saahren returned the salute and he and Butcher climbed into the nearest ship. In accordance with Fleet policy, senior command officers traveled in no more than pairs. Admiral Larsen and Captain Pedder would follow in other transports.
“Will it just be ptorix at this do, Butcher?”
“No. A few prominent humans have been invited.” Butcher showed him the list, with pictures. Business men, academics, nobody Saahren knew. Or wanted to know.
“Any news of Allysha?” Butcher asked.
Saahren shook his head and stared at the screen. It was a fine night. The Qerran capital was spread out before him. Even the streets were curved, not straight, clustered around both sides of a wide, meandering
river crossed by many bridges, their lights reflecting in the dark water. To the east, the space port was a bright oval. Their destination, the Suldan’s palace, lay in its own grounds by the river. It sparkled with colored light.
He stepped out into the glare of publicity that surrounded an event such as this. After all, that’s what this
‘good will visit’ was all about. He smiled at the cameras, shook hands and tentacles, exchanged pleasantries, until he was ushered forward to meet the Suldan himself. As always, he towered above even
the tallest ptorix. Suldan Bentrax was no exception but he had not tried to make himself taller by using a stage, as others had. Saahren greeted him as an equal, a strong leader doing a difficult job.
“I’m pleased to meet you in person,” he said to Bentrax, accepting the proffered tentacles. They writhed in his grip, firm and dry.
Bentrax spoke, eyes whirling green, while his assistant translated. “You have taken the time to learn something of us. I appreciate that.”
Saahren smiled. “The Suldan will know that I was well taught.”
“Your adviser, Professor Marten’s daughter.”
“Yes.” A single word that meant so much. “I would have liked to have met her father.”
“He was a most unusual human. And he is still missed.”
A few more words of friendship and support and then Saahren moved around the room, going through the motions, showing the flag. A number of other white uniforms did the same; Larsen, Valperez, Pedder,
several other ship’s captains. At last he considered he’d done enough and went in search of the one ptorix he really wanted to talk to.
He slipped away to the private room they’d organized and closed the door behind him. Professor Xanthor was already there.
“I am honored, Sir, honored to meet you.” Xanthor’s eyes sparkled greenish blue. He spoke Standard well, with the characteristic high pitch and sibilant consonants.
Honored. Saahren stared down at the elderly Professor. He seemed as pleased as he said he was, if he read the ptorix body-language correctly. “May I sit?”
“Of course, of course.” The eyes changed color, slightly more blue and the tentacles lashed. Just for a moment. “Is this about Allysha?”
Saahren sat in a chair brought here specially for him. It took the weight off his feet and made life a little easier for his companion, who settled onto a ptorix pad.
“In a way.”
“How is she? Safe in Malmos, I expect?”
Safe in Malmos. How he wished it were so. “I expect so.” He paused, rehearsing the words one last time. “Professor, you are the closest person she has. You know that.”
“She is dear to me. As dear as a daughter.”
Saahren leaned forward in his chair. “I wish to marry her.”
A trill of pleasure. Xanthor’s eyes danced green and gold. “Wonderful.” The light show faded. “You know she is married.”
“Yes.” His nostrils flared as the name popped into his head. O’Reilly.
“I tried to warn her. So did her father. He was unsuitable. But she insisted.” His tentacles swirled. “Has Allysha agreed to marry you?”
“No. Not yet. She blames me for her father’s death at Jossur.”
“Ah, yes. A tragedy… a tragedy. Your tactics, if I may say, were masterful.”
Saahren felt faint. “Masterful? She said that you accused me of bombarding the planet, that was how he died.”
Xanthor seemed to shrink a little. “So I was told. It was long after that I learned the truth, that the battleshipXeveres collided with the space station and both crashed to the ground. And by then, it was not
politic to tell the truth.”
“Politics.” Of course.
“Politics. I know, also, that you sent Admiral Xendo home and that the Khophir had him executed.” He rubbed at his speaking mouth. “Please understand, Lord Admiral, that even had I been permitted to tell Allysha the truth, she would not have listened. She had become estranged from her father for this… this O’Reilly. How much easier to blame a distant human admiral than face her own mistakes?”
“So you would not object to her marriage to me?”
“I would be delighted. Delighted.”
He’d be delighted. That’s what he said. Saahren’s spirit soared. One hurdle down.
Xanthor’s eyes swirled orange. “But what of O’Reilly?”
Saahren’s lips curved in a nasty smile. He did so hope O’Reilly would refuse to divorce Allysha. “I’ll deal with that. One way or another.”
Xanthor made a formal half bow, a difficult maneuver for a ptorix. “Lord Admiral, I would like to be present at your marriage to my dearest daughter, Allysha.”
“I’ll make sure of it.”
“And may I ask one more thing?”
“Of course.” Saahren had no trouble agreeing to that request, either.
ChapterThirty-Two
Allysha sat up and concentrated. The ship was back. The experiment conducted at Buena Suerte had been an ‘unqualified’ success. Galen and his colleagues had cheered and raised glasses again, seemingly oblivious to the deaths of however many people they’d sequestered there.
And now they were organizing a visual conference. Tepich and Frensberg stood together in front of a 2D screen, waiting. Both of them were dressed to kill. Frensberg wore elaborate robes of deep green encrusted with gold and jewels at the neck and sleeves; Tepich had exchanged his normal blue habit for deep burgundy.
The visual took form, shuddered a little. She couldn’t help a gasp. A ptorix. Why? Maybe Tepich and his people were simply mercenaries, looking to sell their goods to whoever would pay. Like van Tongeren on Tisyphor. It didn’t make sense, though. They were GPR fundamentalists who hated the ptorix even more than the machine-men she’d seen them murder.
The ptorix in the screen wore elaborate orange robes, a high-ranking official looking to make an impact.
He didn’t seem particularly nervous, judging by his tentacles. She couldn’t catch the color of his eyes.
A high-level meeting, then. Possibilities fizzed through her brain. Her Kentor theory was starting to look pretty solid.
“May I introduce Anton Tepich, Your Excellency? And Mister Tepich, His Excellency Lord Azzenaar, representing Lord Governor, His Excellency Anxhou.”
Anxhou. So Anxhou was involved in this.
They bowed, exchanged pleasantries, but Tepich and Frensberg seemed just a bit uncomfortable and trying hard not to show it.
“I understand your tests have been successful,” Azzenaar said in accented but excellent Standard. His tentacles waved inside his ornate sleeves, lazy as sea grass, with only the occasional flicker to show his distaste.
“They have. A resounding success,” Tepich said.
“This test; I
understand you had one satellite stationed over a group at Buena Suerte.” He stumbled a little over the pronunciation of the planet. “Do you believe that is sufficient proof that your device will work against a planet like Melchior?”
Allysha sucked in a breath. Melchior. The Confederacy’s capital planet.
“It is simply a matter of scale, Your Excellency,” Frensberg said, smooth as silk. “Indeed, since the communications satellites relay broadcasts from one to another, the spread will be faster and more thorough. No part of the planet will be immune.”
“What of warships?”
“They also are not immune. Warships have shields, of course, but they must, of necessity, receive communication broadcasts.”
He was right. Of course he was right. This death ray would kill as indiscriminately as any virus.
Azzenaar’s eyes faded to the orange of introspection. “I ask again; will you sell us your technology?”
Frensberg’s lips turned up in a mirthless smile.
“No. Well then, will you contract to perform a service for us?”
“I am authorized to consider any request you might make.” Frensberg said.
“A Confederacy fleet is at this moment in orbit around Carnessa, capital planet of the Qerran Suldanate.
We respectfully request that you send a ship to Carnessa and deploy your system there.”
Carnessa. She forced herself to concentrate while her whole body stiffened.
“Our understanding is that the fleet is there at the invitation of the Suldan,” Frensberg said.
“That is so.”
“This is well beyond what we agreed.” But she could almost see the cogs turning in the diplomat’s head.
“It is merely an extension of our understanding.” Azzenaar’s tentacles swayed a little faster. “You have already agreed that you will not intervene in our move to annex the Qerran Suldanate; we simply ask you to help us avoid unnecessary losses by removing the threat posed by the Confederacy fleet.”
Frensberg and Tepich exchanged a smile.
“And at the same time remove His Excellency’s bane, Grand Admiral Saahren?” Frensberg said.
Her heart froze. A rush of nightmare images rose in her mind; the test subjects, their contorted bodies lying on the ground. But now the faces were those of people she knew, lying dead on the decks while their ships drifted uselessly in space. Chaka, dead.Don’t think about it . She had to listen.
Azzenaar’s tentacles shimmered with amusement. “It may be a consideration.”
“Give us a moment.” Frensberg and Tepich stepped away, heads together.
Allysha enhanced the volume in her implant.
“Can it be done?” Frensberg said.
“Easily,” Tepich said. “We send the ship we have here on a normal commercial run to Carnessa. It broadcasts as soon as it gets close enough.”
“A pity we don’t have the Confederacy’s multi-dimensional comms systems. We could have done it from here.”
Tepich frowned. “That’s almost blasphemous, Ambassador.”
“True. All right. We will concur, I think. It will be a telling blow for us, too. Destroy their famous grand admiral and his fleet; insist they accede to our demands or more will die. If they argue, we’ll simply hit Melchior, as we originally planned.”
If they hit Melchior with this thing they would decapitate the Confederacy. Malmos’s glittering towers rose in her mind. The virus would destroy the government, destroy the Fleet hierarchy. She imagined the buildings, untouched, pristine, filled with bodies. The automatic cars would finish their journeys, avoiding collision, the occupants dead. Death; destruction. Just like the Tisyphor virus all over again, only in a different format on a different scale.
Frensberg returned to the screen. “I think we can do business, Your Excellency.”
Azzenaar’s speaking mouth jerked just a little and his eyes swirled green to blue. He was excited. And pleased. “This is most excellent, most excellent. I shall advise Lord Anxhou forthwith.”
Frensberg cleared his throat. “Will you still be wanting us to send you the woman?”
A horrible feeling snaked down Allysha’s backbone.
“It hardly matters now, I suppose. But then, why not? It might amuse His Excellency to taunt her with her lover’s death; and at her hand, too.”
Allysha reeled. Her? They were going to take her to Anxhou? How had they found out about her and Saahren? She shoved the thought aside. It didn’t matter a curse. Right now she had to deal with that death ray. Think; think.
With half an ear on the conversation as Azzenaar and Frensberg negotiated terms, she went through the options.
No use to destroy the function; Galen knew how to rebuild the software. It might take him a while but he would persevere. If she could at least say the technology was restricted to this one place and had not been disseminated she’d have a start. Yes. The ship had returned. Galen was paranoid enough not to share everything, she was sure. And although she expected he had made copies of the software onto data sticks, anyone who had worked on the project was here. She’d checked their profiles. Frankly, the best thing to do would be to destroy the base. With everybody in it.
She let that thought percolate for a moment. She would die, too. She felt calm about that. She had caused the problem; she had to fix it. There could be no possibility of another Tisyphor, where someone could inadvertently rediscover the code on a machine, or find a data stick with the function.
The question now was how to make it happen?
Perhaps a bomb. She turned to the inventory and searched. Nothing. Oh, maybe some scientist could concoct a bomb from ingredients listed but she couldn’t. What she could do was blow the ship while it was still in the airlock. She could get down into the propulsion units and damage the dampeners for the fusion generators. That meant getting on the ship undetected.
Movement in the conference room caught her eye. “A pleasure to do business with you, Lord Azzenaar,” Frensberg said.
He bowed, Azzenaar saluted with a swirl of both upper arms and the screen went blank.
Tepich turned his fat face to Agnita, who loitered against the wall, drab and inconspicuous in her brown robe and scarf.
“Fetch the woman.”
Allysha withdrew from the system.
Not bloody likely.
She waited, sitting on the edge of the bunk, her weight balanced forward, feet firmly planted. The door lock clicked. Agnita stood in the doorway.
Her head tucked in, Allysha launched forward with all the power she could muster straight at the woman. Her forehead connected with Agnita’s nose. She staggered backwards with a grunt of pain.
Allysha kept going, slamming her adversary against the wall. She sagged to the ground, blood streaming from a broken nose, head lolling to one side. Allysha dragged her into the room she’d just left. Agnita wasn’t light but if she could shift Chaka, she could shift her. Calmly, methodically, she removed Agnita’s clothes and put them on. She’d pass if nobody looked too closely. She stared down at the unconscious woman, the nerve stick in her hand. A large enough dose could kill. And the woman would die anyway when the station was destroyed. No, she couldn’t do it. She rolled Agnita over onto her stomach and tied the woman’s arms and legs together behind her back with the tasselled sash. That should at least slow her down. Out in the corridor she locked the door behind her and walked, firm and calm, toward the airlock, the robe whispering around her feet.
“Agnita. I told you to bring the woman.” Tepich’s voice snapped with irritation.
Allysha kept walking. Damnation. No chance of getting on the ship undetected now. One more corner.
Boots thudded behind her. She ran, the cumbersome skirt flapping around her legs. A guard loomed in front of her. The door to the right led to maintenance. If she could get there before him… The door began
to close. Summoning every bit of strength left to her, Allysha flung herself forward and underneath the man’s outstretched h
and. She hit the ground hard and rolled through the narrowing gap. Something fumbled at her leg but she wrenched free.
The door slid shut. For a moment someone tried to force it open again but Allysha used the system to keep it closed and locked it down. She lay face down, panting, while fists hammered uselessly for a moment.
“What are you doing, Miss Marten? The ship is ready to take you away.” Tepich’s voice, all sweetness and oiliness, boomed from the speakers.
“Not likely. I’m not going off to visit Anxhou.”
“Anxhou? The ptorix? What a foolish notion. We promised to—”
She shut down the speaker.
ChapterThirty-Three
Allysha dragged herself to her feet. Her leg hurt where it had caught on the door. She’d have a nasty bruise; not that it mattered. She smiled to herself and pulled off the headdress; Agnita’s headdress.
Horrible thing. So was the robe. All right, she’d escaped from Tepich but the maintenance unit was a dead-end. Shelves lined the module’s walls, stacked with spare parts and tools. Eight emergency air cylinders were lined up on a bottom shelf. A rack of survival suits hung on a rail near the station’s crawler.
APE. Assess, Plan, Execute. Werensa’s mantra had been drilled into her. She had to stop that death ray. And then she had to destroy this base. For a moment Chaka’s face appeared in her mind.I love you.
I’m sorry . Tears pricked her eyes; she pushed thoughts of him aside. She had a job to do.
The ship was still there, the connection to the base in place, but she wouldn’t have long. She changed into a survival suit even as her mind worked on the ship’s IS. A few small changes, that was all she could manage.
Galen’s intrusion as system administrator alerted her. She smiled mirthlessly. So he thought he could beat her, did he? She diverted him. Hopefully they’d give up and send out the ship. As soon as they did, she’d
begin plan B.
She commandeered the surveillance system and swiveled the cameras to show her Tepich and Frensberg still standing at the maintenance center door. He’d summoned guards. They’d shoot the doors.
The Iron Admiral: Deception Page 23