by Mel Keegan
Marin knew those names. He had heard then from Rusch’s lips, not fifty yards from this terrace. “The captain and executive officer of the Chicago.”
“Run the message,” she suggested, leaning back on the pine uprights at the edge of the balcony. Her voice gave nothing away.
“All right.” Vidal set the handy on the shadowed end of the table and engaged the threedee function, which would swiftly flatten the power cell but would allow the display to be seen by all.
A threedee sphere the size of a beachball unfolded over the handy and in it, Colonel Allan Bronhill and Major Valerie Sung appeared to be seated at a desk. Marin guessed it was in the captain’s quarters, since the wall behind them was adorned with several pieces of nondescript art, atypical of the rest of the ship. Bronhill was a man of Shapiro’s age, but he seemed older, with the rich complexion, black hair and slate-blue almond eyes so characteristic of the homeworlder. He looked careworn, Marin thought, gray around the temples, and those eyes were nested in deep creases. By contrast, Valerie Sung was much younger, attractive without being in any way beautiful, and she gave the impression of being the more intelligent of the pair. She had the fair complexion and dark brown eyes which were also commonplace among homeworlders, but her hair was a mix of dark blond and fiery red, obviously cosmetic. Its natural color was impossible to guess. Both were in Fleet dress grays, solemn as CNS newscasters.
“President Liang,” the colonel began, “my name is Allan Bronhill, and I find myself in command of the Chicago at the darkest moment in the history of this ship. My orders are – and I quote – to suppress colonial insurrection by any means necessary. As you will expect, the conflict at Velcastra has been run over a hundred times in simulation. Fleet confidently predicts casualties over eighty million, with forty million dead and the biosphere of Velcastra damaged so profoundly, medium-scale terraforming will be necessary to rebuild it. The work would be prohibitively expensive for most colonies, but it might be part-funded by the Confederacy, following the unconditional surrender of Velcastra.”
His face was bleak, his voice guttural. “The duty of enforcing this situation has fallen to my ship, and my crew. And like any sane command corps, we have sought alternatives to the murder of civilians and the destruction of an Earthlike world.
“My Executive Officer, Major Sung, and I speak on behalf of the officers of the Chicago. By the time you receive this, my lighter will be at the coordinates appended to this message, and we will hold position for twenty hours. Launch a drone probe to scan the region and satisfy yourself that no element of the Chicago battle group is within sensor range, and there is no comm traffic in the tachyon band.
“A deal is on the table, Mister President, which will cause indignation and outrage in the homeworlds. My officers believe Velcastra might be saved. We cannot countenance the murder of forty million souls and the ruin of a viable world … we have no Fleet or Confederate government authority to strike any deal with Velcastra, but Major Sung and I will hold at these coordinates, and we request your presence, in the interests of Velcastra, if not the Deep Sky.”
The screen blanked and the ‘message ends’ flag appeared, along with the prompt to access the appended data. A pulse beat hard and fast in Marin’s temple as he looked down into Alexis Rusch’s eyes. “I remember you saying, you know these people personally. You said you’ve known Bronhill and Sung for years.”
She nodded deeply. “I have. They’re both scientists, like myself, and I couldn’t believe Allan and Valerie would take orders to bring a battle group out here and use it for old fashioned murder and demolition.” Her fingers drummed on the table as she frowned at the coordinates.
“Have you looked up those numbers?” Travers asked shrewdly.
“Of course.” Chandra Lang twisted in his seat to reach the handy. He turned off the sound and set the message to play over, looping, so he could study the two faces. “It’s a point midway between beacons in the data conduit. There’s nothing out there – certainly nothing large enough to be used either by Fleet or by us, to hide a ship. Just empty space.”
“And you’ve sent a probe,” Vidal demanded shrewdly, “haven’t you?”
Rusch stood, arms folded on her chest, hips leaned back against the handrail, while a squadron of rainbow parrots shot through the trees behind her. “I called Richard ten minutes ago, level five encryption. He could launch a probe, but the Wastrel itself can be there almost as fast. He agrees with me. We drop out way short of the region, use the tug’s deep-scan platform, which is several times more sensitive than the instruments aboard any probe. If we see a lighter – which ought to be something the size of the Mako – we take a closer look. Anything else, we bug out fast.”
Vidal’s face was grim. “It has the makings of a nasty trap.” He gestured at the faces in the handy. “They rig the lighter. We take it aboard and it detonates. They could be counting on us to do this, and give them the opportunity to take out a capital ship. Fleet Intelligence will know Velcastra has very few big ships that are battle-rated, and here’s an opportunity to kill one ahead of time.”
“This is the risk,” Rusch agreed levelly, “which is why we wouldn’t dream of taking the lighter aboard. They can shuttle across by pod.”
“And be scanned to the molecular level before they set foot on the Wastrel,” Vidal added. “If one of them has a device implanted, they can still wreak absolute bloody havoc.”
Her teeth closed on her lower lip, chewing there in thought. ”Neither of them was ever suicidal, and damaging one capital ship wouldn’t come close to influencing the action at Velcastra. The chances of them coming in rigged as human warheads would be one in a million.”
“Scan them, just the same,” Marin advised. “You have no idea what leverage is being imposed on these people.” He was still frowning at Bronhill and Sung. “I’m seeing something in these faces. They’re telling about one tenth of the truth.”
“Dendra Shemiji reading techniques?” Vidal asked quietly.
And Marin nodded. “Bronhill definitely isn’t lying. He just isn’t telling more than a tiny fraction of it.”
“Which would be wise,” Liang added. “He only has so many cards to play, and when they’re on the table, his power to negotiate whatever deal to his own advantage is shot.” He leaned back now, gazing blindly over the park. “The Wastrel is driving back over from Meredith. She’ll be in high orbit in half an hour. And I need to be there. If we can get the captain and executive officer of a super-carrier aboard the Wastrel, we’ll be negotiating from the high ground.”
“Allan and Valerie have to know,” Rusch said acidly, “once we have them in custody, we can keep them there indefinitely, perhaps use them as the leverage to strike a bargain with their own crew.”
“Why would they just hand us the gift of the high ground?” Travers demanded. “On the face of it, it sounds off. Fleet doesn’t promote fools into the top-end command jobs.”
“Absolutely right,” Rusch agreed, “so we might even assume Allan and Valerie want to be off the carrier.” Her brows rose. “I can think of several reasons.”
“One,” Marin mused, counting on his fingers, “they can’t, won’t, take responsibility for the bloodbath they see coming, and they’d rather spend the time in custody, offload the responsibility. Let somebody else be recorded in human history beside Genghis and Hitler. Two, they believe they have real value as bargaining chips, if they were deliberately placed into Velcastran hands … perhaps to force stubborn elements in their own command corps to accept alternatives to the bloodshed. Three, it’s a ploy to capture the President, and possibly General Shapiro too – the power and brains behind the coup. Liang and Shapiro buy into this, they go aboard the Chicago to negotiate some deal, and the next thing they’ll see is a military firing squad. Four … there’s a genuine deal on the table. Bronhill and Sung are actually on the level, not trying to hoodwink anyone. Putting themselves in the very real danger of being taken prisoner is … what, a ges
ture of good faith?”
“Damn,” Vidal whispered. “Triple think.”
“Dendra Shemiji made a science of it,” Liang said with a certain satisfaction. He gave Travers and Marin a speculative look. “Are you up to flying?”
“You mean, how hungover did we get?” Travers glanced sidelong at Marin. “We’re good. Why don’t we go prep the Capricorn?”
“Why don’t you?” Rusch agreed. “Michael, I want you to stay here.”
“Not a chance in hell,” Vidal said tartly.
She sighed. “Charles, he’s your son. You speak sense to him.”
The old man had hung on ever word, but had not attempted to add to the military or political argument. Now, he gave Rusch a hard look. “Allie, if I were twenty years younger, it would be me two steps behind Robert and one to the side, as the political attaché. You want Michael to stay here and babysit a geriatric? Never going to happen, my dear. Michael?” The younger Vidal turned toward him, and Charles offered a gnarled hand. Mick took it, and the old man said dryly, “Get out there and get into the thick of it. Be part of history, don’t just sit on your ass and watch it on some goddamned threedee.”
With a sharp chuckle, Vidal drew back his shoulders and sketched a salute which seemed to Marin’s eyes to mock the military. “I don’t know if I’ll be back,” he warned. “I’d expected to be here for a few days before I’m back on assignment, but if the Wastrel is pulling out, and I’m aboard…”
Charles waved him off. “You’ll be home again, and I’m not so far gone that I can’t wait. After all this is over – whatever the hell you people are up to! – you’ll be able to tell me about it without breaching every security protocol I never even heard of.” The words were brave but his eyes were bright with tears. “I’ll tell your mother you were here … and well.”
“My mother,” Vidal began, and relented with a sigh. “She’ll be the First Lady of Jagreth very soon.” He glanced at Marin with reluctant amusement. “It could be some time before we get back, Dad, but –” He looked at Rusch now, and she nodded faintly. “I’ll message you before we ship out. I promise you, I’ll send a drone courier.”
“Good enough,” Charles said gruffly.
Marin glanced at his chrono. “If you’ve anything to pack, Mister President, you have ten minutes.”
“Oh, please.” Liang made a face. “Call me Robert. I don’t know how much of this ‘Mister President’ nonsense I can stand. Leave the pomp and ceremony to CNS. I need to inform my security staff, have my associates cover for me. I’ll be with you in eight minutes. Sonja won’t be thrilled, but when I tell her I’ll be on the Wastrel, at least she won’t worry.” He gave Rusch and the elder Vidal a courteous nod, and stepped away toward the pine plank steps, the path to the bridge, and the terracotta courtyard behind his own home.
“We’ll be in the hangar,” Travers said to Rusch and Mick. “Mister Vidal, it’s been a pleasure.”
“Entirely my pleasure, Colonel Travers,” Charles said affably. “I wish you and Colonel Marin the best on this covert assignment of yours … of which Michael and Alexis won’t breathe a word.”
“Can’t,” Mick corrected. He took his father’s hand again, clasped it, and let it go. “You just do what the doctors tell you, and get well.”
“I could say the same to you,” the old man grumbled, before the hoverchair lifted, spun around, and he headed into the house via the wide windows at the end of the terrace.
“Time,” Marin said pointedly.
Rusch had turned off the handy, and slid it into the pocket of the sea green tunic she wore over white slacks, civilian attire in the Velcastran style. “Allan and Valerie might have heard the news from the Kiev. As I told you, my CMO fudged a series of medical tests and I committed myself to treatment in a private clinic in Elstrom. I ought to be dying right about now. Rickman Syndrome.”
It was one of the rarest, fastest and deadliest diseases of recent years, and profoundly incurable. Three percent of spacers who had been exposed to the fallout from Weimann Drive accidents fell sick, and in a few months the patient would be reduced to an urn of ashes and a memorial. Marin had heard of it, but had never met a sufferer. Two centuries ago, when the Auriga engine was state of the art, the syndrome was much more commonplace. The Weimann Drive had a stability which almost precluded accident, and Rickman Syndrome – named for the neurologist who identified the disease – was now obscure enough for it to be a safe cover, if Rusch had every intention of vanishing out of the Deep Sky.
They made their way quickly around the periphery of the Vidal property, and through the side gardens belonging to Liang. A service elevator better suited to drones and machinery dropped them into the hangar, where the Capricorn stood in a pool of blue-white worklights, locked up and cold.
The simple AI scanned and recognized faces as they approached, and the hatches popped with a hiss of equalizing air pressure. Marin and Travers headed into the cockpit, and while Travers ran through the fastest preflight sequence he could manage, Marin slid a combug into his ear. He configured the highband, engaged heavy encryption and called,
“Wastrel-101, calling home. Ops room, is Captain Vaurien there – or General Shapiro.”
Vaurien’s voice responded at once. “We’re on our way in, Curtis. Alexis sent the message. We’ve spent the last twenty minutes dissecting it with every trick of analysis we know. It looks, and I say looks, like it might be a genuine offer.”
“Trust nothing,” Marin warned as the engines fired up in test, flooding the hangar with heat and vapors which tested the extractors, “but keep an open mind. We’re coming up to join you – I already have you on tracking, Richard. Is the general there?”
And Shapiro: “I am. For what it’s worth, I know Allan Bronhill. I’ve met him several times, and I can tell you the same as Alexis would say of him. He’s a reputable scientist with an extended family and business interests in the Middle Heavens. If I’m remembering correctly, he invested in a civil engineering company. He might be an Earther, but I know him as a decent human being.”
“And if Fleet’s holding his kids or his partner in custody?” Travers speculated. “The threat of having your family taken apart by Fleet interrogators would make almost anybody do almost anything. Like Curtis just said, we can’t afford to take anything on face value. This could be an ugly trap.”
“It could,” Shapiro said baldly, not missing a beat. “It also could be a genuine offer we neither need nor want to accept. Is Robert with you?”
“We’re waiting for him right now,” Travers told him. “He’s arranging for his associates to cover for him. And I know what you’re saying. What could Fleet possibly have to offer, to interest the colony that just declared its independence? How about a fat deal to line a lot of politicians’ pockets, bribe ’em to rejoin the Confederacy?”
Now, Shapiro made sounds of grim humor. “Richard can have us at the coordinates in four hours. I’d like to spend the time examining the ramifications with President Liang.”
On cue, Liang hurried aboard as Shapiro spoke. The preflight test sequence was complete, the hangar blew down rapidly, and as Marin’s eyes skimmed the instruments the AI called StarCity ATC for takeoff clearance. “Twenty minutes, and we’ll be back aboard,” he told Shapiro. “We’re waiting for ATC advice … and we just got it. Launching momentarily.” He gave Travers a faint, wry smile as the hangar doors rumbled open to the blue sky of the Velcastran morning, and the forward armorglass darkened in response to the sunglare. “Here we go again.”
The Capricorn lifted on a hot bluster of Aragos, and Marin turned its nose toward space on a sharp ascent angle.
Chapter Twenty
Salvage Tug Wastrel
Space was clear, empty, between the nodes of the Deep Sky data conduit. The wake ghost of one ship appeared in the navtank, and a single hard marker, plotting the position of the ship itself, but otherwise nothing larger than a fist-size boulder of ice was tumbling in the intense cold and dar
kness between star systems.
And the ship was a Yamazake Starrigger, a luxury yacht, preferred by people in Chandra Liang’s social strata, to whom money was secondary to prestige. The Starrigger was Weimann enabled, more than capable of doing the run between Borushek and Velcastra. It had been idling for long enough for its engines to be cold, and it was hardly trying to conceal its presence.
Bright, loud beacons were calling on wide frequencies, announcing its position, and Richard Vaurien looked up over the navtank with a wry smile. The tank was half-lit in blues and reds, which coiled around his face in surreal, macabre patterns. “They look clean,” he told Shapiro. “We just scanned the whole thing with enough power to crash their AI and give any human aboard a nosebleed. They’re rebooting their flight systems right now. If I were them, I’d have expected the sensor probe.”
Any rational agent would expect it, Marin thought coolly as he inhaled the steam from a cup of white tea and watched the markers in the navtank shift as the Wastrel maneuvered. The tug pilots were taking her to a safe distance, where she loomed over the yacht like a blue whale beside a porpoise, and the comm was open, waiting for Robert Chandra Liang and Harrison Shapiro. They stood at the corner of the tank, wreathed in the odd illumination, and Marin shared a glance with Travers as they waited for the heads of state to reach a decision.
They had spent the four hours of the journey in conference, comparing data with Alexis Rusch, who knew Bronhill and Sung well, and running simulations. The odds of a trap appeared minimal, but neither Liang nor Shapiro was too swift to make the decision.
“Long range sensors?” Shapiro asked quietly.
“Nothing.” Vidal was monitoring them personally, though the AI would have reported the moment an incoming ship dropped out of e-space. “And yes, every cannon we possess is cleared and primed. Aragos are on standby, and we’re on Weimann ignition procedures, ninety seconds off a transit right back in e-space, headed for Alshie’nya. The Chicago itself could drop out, it wouldn’t hurt us before we were gone.”