The ceiling crashed down around them.
Bruiser found himself laid out flat on his back for the second time in the same day, with pieces of the overhead on top of him. His head was still ringing from the sound of the explosion, his vision swam with overlapping circles of bright white and translucent grey. Smoke filled the air, his nostrils, his mouth.
“Caden?” He shouted.
“Here.”
A secondary explosion tore through the deck above, somewhere several compartments away; the clanging of scattering plasteel and a chorus of screams followed it. Bruiser felt the forces being transmitted through the floor beneath him, the rippling shudder as they faded away. The honking of alarms began.
He threw the metal plates and grilles off his body, and climbed to his feet.
“Where are you?”
“Behind you. I’m… actually pretty okay.”
Bruiser saw Caden had been thrown to the rear corner of the room, along with one of the guards. A cross-beam had wedged itself between the wall and the floor, and served to deflect the largest pieces of the deck above.
He cleared the fragments, then yanked the cross-beam away.
“That was an explosion,” Caden said. “What’s above us?”
“Conference room,” the guard on the floor coughed.
“Anything more explosive around it?”
“Just offices.”
Caden and Bruiser looked at each other.
“I think it’s been bombed,” said Caden.
“Who would have been using that room?” Bruiser asked. He hauled the guard to his feet.
“Thanks. I think probably Eyes and Ears. I’m sure there was some commotion going on with them earlier.”
“The Laeara situation,” Caden said. “Silane Creid would have been joining the emergency session.”
“That man will be dead now, Caden.”
“Yes, I expect so.”
“This place is not safe.”
“Now that’s an understatement. We need to get Castigon aboard the Disputer.”
“Do you trust him on that ship?” Bruiser asked.
“Not really, but he’s potentially something we can use as a weapon. I don’t want some Sleeper taking him out before we know more about him.”
Bruiser nodded slowly. It was the easiest of human gestures to emulate, and had so very many uses. He turned his attention to the guard.
“How do we get that man out?” He asked.
• • •
“Why did you call me here?”
Brant stared Herik Pammon right in the eyes, despite the discomfort he experienced in doing so. If Pammon was indeed a manifestation of Voice, then Brant did not want to show any fear whatsoever.
Pammon smiled, a disconcerting sight if ever there was one.
“It’s time for me to leave, Occre Brant,” the Mouthpiece said.
“Without Bel-Ures?”
“Oh, by all means produce her if you wish. That could be helpful.”
Pammon rattled the shackles which bound his wrists, as if requesting that they be removed.
“You… don’t want Bel-Ures?”
“Not particularly,” Pammon said. “She’s not terribly important, you know. Like most of you.”
He rattled the shackles again, still smiling.
“Then why did you come here asking for her?”
Brant folded his arms, stood his ground, made it clear he had no intention whatsoever of removing the chains which bound Pammon to his chair.
“So that you would believe we do want her.”
“I don’t understand. Why?”
“You’ll find out soon enough, I imagine. Now let me go.”
“No chance,” said Brant. “I want to know why you lied.”
“Oh, it wasn’t all lies,” said Pammon. “Our ships will be arriving in the system right… about… now.”
After a pause of one or two seconds, Brant heard the unmistakeable honking of general quarters. The whole fortress was being escalated to battle stations.
“I really think you will want to release me at this point.”
“It would appear that I don’t have much choice.”
“Ah, you’re catching on.”
“But you are going to tell me, why the deception?”
Pammon smirked; a smug, insufferable expression which creased all the wrinkles on his face. His eyes, usually so cold and lifeless, twinkled darkly in obvious delight.
“I give you a specific stimulus, you respond in a prescribed manner. It was all a matter of getting the right timing.”
Brant’s blood ran cold. “What have you done?”
“As I said; you will doubtless find out. I think it will be better for both of us if you do not know prior to my departure.”
Again, he levered his wrists towards Brant. He nodded suggestively at the manacles around them.
“Fuck this,” said Brant, and left the cell.
He was tapping his link when Tirrano appeared on the detention corridor, flustered and breathless.
“Peras. I was just about to call you.”
“What’s happening down here? Five dreadships just jumped in at the system periphery. Control is expecting an assault.”
“Voice has played us, Peras. He now says Bel-Ures is unimportant.”
“What? Then why—?”
“He’s used her to get us to do something.”
“Do what, Brant? Stop talking in riddles.”
“I don’t know. He’s refusing to say, but he seems very pleased with himself. He wants us to let him go.”
Tirrano looked as though she might explode. She slapped the controls to open Pammon’s cell, and Brant followed her in.
“Voice,” she snapped. “Stop fucking about. Tell me what you have done.”
Pammon appeared to be trying not to laugh. The inhuman sounds he made sent shivers down Brant’s spine.
“Voice, I swear I will shoot you in the face if you don’t tell me.”
Tirrano produced a service pistol, and pressed it between Pammon’s eyes.
“Please. You know perfectly well that I do not value this body.”
“Ah,” said Tirrano. “But you do, don’t you? Because you’re expecting to leave this place, and those ships of yours are risking damage just to retrieve you. Stop lying to me.”
For once, Pammon held his tongue.
Brant adopted Tirrano’s approach. “You want to get out of here in one piece, just tell us what you did. We won’t kill you for it; we don’t want to be destroyed by those ships out there.”
Herik Pammon looked from one to the other, and his grin revealed his teeth.
“Deaf and blind,” he said. “That’s what you are now: deaf and blind.”
“What are you talking about?” Brant asked.
“Oh my worlds, Occre,” said Tirrano. “They’ve hit Eyes and Ears.”
“The lady has it at last,” Pammon said. “So much for Imperial intelligence.”
Brant felt as though the cell was closing in around him; the corners grew darker, the walls bent inwards, he found it difficult to catch his breath.
“You don’t seem at all well, Occre Brant,” Pammon said. “Are you quite sure you don’t want to kill me now?”
Brant focused on Pammon’s gloating face, the cold eyes, the cruelly formed smile. In that moment yes, he did want Pammon to die.
He leapt at the chained man, grabbing for his throat.
Tirrano pushed Brant back, inserting herself between him and the prisoner. She shoved his chest with the palm of one hand, pushed his arms aside with the other.
“Stop, Brant. Just stop. Leave it. If he dies, we all die.”
“I’m going to kill that miserable wretch,” Brant hissed.
“Not today,” said Tirrano.
She pushed him back even farther, and waited until the fury left him.
“Okay,” said Brant. He looked Tirrano in the eye. “Okay, Peras. I’m good.”
Tirrano stared at h
im for a moment longer, then let go. She went to the door of the cell, called for the guards in the control room, then returned to watch over Pammon.
Pammon beamed when Tirrano instructed the guards to release him. He rubbed his wrists idly, as if he cared that they were sore.
“That’s better,” he said.
“Shut up,” Tirrano told him. “You shut up now, you leave this station, and you don’t ever come back.”
“I don’t think that will be a problem—”
“Shut up then.”
They moved out into the corridor, where Tirrano told the guards to wait.
“You,” she said. “Bring the other one.”
She nodded towards Naeb’s cell, and Brant went with the guard.
Amarist Naeb slouched from her cell with the air of someone who was finally being given the star treatment she so clearly deserved. She smirked her way down the narrow corridor, guided by the guard until she reached the others.
Tirrano looked at Brant, nodded towards Naeb.
“Remember what I said about this one, back on Kosling? Guess that would have been the right course of action.”
Brant did remember. He had argued that Amarist Naeb should not be summarily killed on the off chance she was an enemy weapon. Although his words had now come back to haunt him, he still could not quite accept that Tirrano’s proposal had been right. They were supposed to abide by a code of ethics, and the words ‘murder’ and ‘ethical’ just did not sit well together.
“Let’s move,” said Tirrano.
The guards ushered Pammon and Naeb out of the detention area. When they reached the main corridors of the level outside, Brant saw that warning lights had illuminated at every intersection. Printwalls now displayed emergency procedures and the locations of nearby survival shelters, and people ran past occasionally, out of breath and desperate to be somewhere else.
Herik Pammon was smiling again.
“This way,” said Tirrano, gesturing towards the nearest set of elevators.
They made their way to the departure ring, which was now devoid of any other travellers. The wide observation windows were covered already by metal blast shields.
Brant tapped his link. “Harbour control, Operator Brant. I need access to a shuttle or similar craft at… disembarkation eleven. Right now. Any ship will do, doesn’t matter who owns it.”
He waited for the reply, nodded, and looked around for the correct exit.
Pressure hatches opened to reveal one of the apertures, and the umbilicus beyond.
“There’s your damned ship,” said Tirrano. “You said you wanted to leave, so leave.”
Pammon pulled away from the guards and strode across the disembarkation area as if he owned it, followed by Naeb. He ducked into the aperture, took one last look at Brant and Tirrano, then disappeared down the umbilicus.
Naeb waved before she disappeared.
Tirrano’s pistol was pointing at Naeb’s back just before she vanished, and Brant pushed her arm to one side.
“Don’t,” he said. “This time we know it will have consequences.”
“I really want to shoot that bitch,” said Tirrano.
The pressure hatches slammed shut, seal indicators switched from red to green. Outside the station, in the airless docking area, the shuttle detached from the umbilicus.
The tension left Brant’s body. “They’re on their way.”
“We need to get to the control deck,” said Tirrano. “Make sure they actually leave.”
“And what if they don’t?”
“In that case,” Tirrano told him, “we had better hope we have enough ships here.”
• • •
“What the hell did you do?” Thande said.
She was secretly pleased to see that Caden looked shocked by the force of her question.
“Nothing to do with me,” said the Shard. “It would appear that a Sleeper has made a direct attack on Eyes and Ears. Bombed the emergency session.”
Thande raised an eyebrow, then turned to her COMOP officer.
“Start recalling our people from the fortress,” she said.
COMOP nodded. “Aye, Captain.”
Thande turned back to Caden, and folded her arms. “Am I correct in assuming that your party returned to Disputer because you all want to be elsewhere?”
“Exactly right, Captain. As much as I would like to hang around and investigate what just happened here, it now turns out we have a priority asset to protect.”
“And what might that be?”
“I’ll tell you later,” said Caden. “Walls have ears.”
Thande opened her mouth to object, then thought better of it. As much as she hated to admit it, the Shard was right. Rasas had tried to wrest her own ship from her at Meccrace, and they had actually managed it aboard other vessels. And now one of them had apparently detonated a device inside one of the empire’s supposedly secure battle stations. There was no way she could know for sure if someone on the command deck was not what they seemed.
“COMOP, what’s the word?”
“Captain, I’ve issued the recall notice; delivery is confirmed for everyone. They should all be on the way back to the ship.”
“Make preparations to cast off.”
Thande gestured for Caden to follow her, and retreated to the wardroom.
“What’s the plan?” She asked.
The hatch closed behind Caden, and he sat down opposite Thande.
“We’ve discovered—”
“No,” Thande said. “Don’t tell me what you know. I think it’s about time we started limiting the spread of information like that. Tell me where you need to be.”
Caden stared at her, nodded slowly.
“The guest I have brought aboard would like to go to High Cerin.”
“This would be the guest you placed in my brig, without so much as asking?”
“That’s the one.”
“I won’t ask,” said Thande.
“In the spirit of not sharing?”
“Exactly. And that’s absolutely fine. I have already supplied my debrief to the Keystone operational commander; we’re free to leave right now if we want to. I’ll take you to the Cerina system.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“I’m starting to think you are the only person actually working to end the war,” said Thande. “And I don’t mind telling you, now we’re alone, I’m starting to feel a little nervous about who is who in my ship.”
Caden looked as though her frankness perturbed him.
“Don’t get me wrong; I’m not about to go on a random killing spree,” she said. “But I would feel much safer if there were some way of telling innocent people apart from Rasas.”
“Then you’ll be relieved to hear that there is a test in the works,” Caden said. “A blood test, most likely. It ought to be ready soon.”
“It can’t come quickly enough. What those bastards did at Meccrace…”
Thande felt the black ocean of loss well up inside her, just as she had when she watched the Eighth Fleet turn on itself. All those people.
“It must have been a horrible thing to watch,” said Caden. “But we will weed them all out, I promise. We can’t afford to suffer another Meccrace.”
Thande pressed her fingertips to the corner of one eye, pulled them away and stared at them.
“There is not much in place to stop it from happening again,” she said. “Some new security protocols for personnel, essential systems protected from casual access, a hard override procedure on the command deck. But that’s about it. There’s no system invented that a sufficiently motivated mind cannot outwit.”
“Then we had better hope the test arrives before they have any other opportunities to wreak havoc.”
“I had thought we might be able to do better than a desperate race against time.”
“I think that’s out of our hands entirely. I don’t believe it’s something that can be rushed along, no matter how urgent we think it is.”
Thande looked at the desk, drummed her fingers on the wooden surface.
“It’s beyond urgent,” she said. “Ever since Meccrace, I’ve been thinking about what they might inflict on us. Imagine what a carrier like Disputer would do to an imperial city, if it were driven straight down into the heart of it. Imagine what a catastrophe we might face if someone in Command was a Rasa. The orders they could issue! It’s genuinely frightening.”
“Are there not checks and measures in place to stop that from happening?”
“Not really, no,” said Thande. “If a senior admiral tells a commander ‘go to this system here, I promise it’s not a trap’, then that is exactly what they will do.”
Caden’s face fell.
“What?” Said Thande.
“That might actually explain why they have captured so many of our ships, and sent them straight back at us.”
Thande gasped. “You know I had not actually considered that. I just assumed they were lifting them from the cordons at the minor worlds they’ve been hitting.”
“I think we all did.”
“That needs to be addressed.”
Caden thought for a moment. “What if fleet deployment orders required the word of three admirals? Somewhat like the quarantine networks.”
“Rasas could put themselves in a position to be those three.”
“Different every time, determined at random by computer?”
“That could work,” said Thande.
“Whatever process you have for suggesting such things to Command, you should use it as soon as possible. And suggest to them that they may already be compromised.”
“I will,” she said.
Her link chimed, and she answered it immediately.
The XO. “Captain, sorry to disturb you.”
“It’s fine Commander. Go ahead.”
“Priority bulletin from Fleet Command, your eyes only.”
“Send it to my holo.”
Thande read the message through, looked at Caden, then read it again. She could not quite believe her eyes.
“What is it?” Caden asked.
“Retreat, more or less.”
“You have got to be kidding.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Thande. “The orders are quite clear. All commands are now placed on notice, and must be prepared to jump to their primary fallback positions as and when instructed. Virtually the entire armada will be recalled within the six-thousand light year radius.”
Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Page 83