Insurrection

by Steve White

  "Stupid of them, sir, if you'll forgive me," Tomanaga said.

  "Oh? And on what do you base that pronouncement, Commander?"

  "I don't think any 'mystery weapon' did in Admiral Ashigara, sir. The ops plan relied too much on surprise and ECM, and they screwed up when they tried a pincer. All it gave them was lousy coordination. That's why the diversion got chewed up when the main attack went wrong."

  "And how did it go wrong?"

  "I'm not certain," Tomanaga admitted, "but the survivors all agree BG 32 wasn't involved in the Gateway fighting till close to the end—so Trevayne must've been busy destroying the carriers. But carriers are faster than monitors, and Admiral Ashigara's fighters had more firepower than BG 32, which means that somehow or other he spotted them despite their ECM and clobbered them before they launched. It's the only answer I can think of, sir."

  "So it was bad luck?"

  "Maybe," Tomanaga said, "but it was compounded by bad planning. They should've concentrated in Bonaparte and taken everything in through the new warp point to pin the defenders against the Gateway. Then we'd've had tactical command exercised in one place over only one force that could've withdrawn down a single warp line. As it was, both COs were out of contact and neither could cut and run as long as that might leave the other unsupported—a classic example of defeat in detail, triggered by bad luck, but not caused by it."

  "You could be right," Han admitted, for she'd pondered much the same thoughts herself. "But why not new weapons, as well?"

  "The time factor, sir. I don't care if Trevayne is a special emissary from God Himself, it takes time to turn research into hardware. That's why we should hit them again now—immediately. Forget the border. We've got the Rump on the run; keep them there with feints and go for Zephrain now, before they really do get new hardware on line."

  "I'm inclined to agree, Bob. Unhappily, grand strategy is the First Space Lord's job. And whether you're right or not, it makes sense to picket the old Rigelian and Arachnid systems, whatever the Rim is or isn't up to."

  "Agreed, sir, but a monitor battlegroup with carrier support is hardly a 'picket.' It's a vest-pocket task force, and one cut for a mighty big vest. We'd be better employed striking directly at Zephrain rather than worrying about what they may do to us." Tomanaga sounded unwontedly serious, even worried. "If we don't hit them pretty quick, we may find ourselves up against exactly what we're afraid of right now. Give Trevayne time to get the new systems on line, and . . ." He shrugged eloquently.

  "Consider your point made," Han said softly. "Write up a staff appreciation and we'll sit on it long enough to see where they send us. If we wind up out near Rigel and we still agree you know what you're talking about, we'll update it and fire it off. Fair enough?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Good. Meanwhile, tidy up here and we'll transfer out to Bernardo da Silva."

  "Yes, sir." Tomanaga left, and Han frowned pensively down at the desk she would delightedly turn over to Jack Iskan in two days, wishing she disagreed with her chief of staff.

  * * *

  "Another day with nothing to report, sir." Tomanaga sounded disgusted. "I don't see why they're so damned mesmerized by the need to picket the Rim. Go in now and smash 'em up fast—take some casualties if we have to, but get it over with—and we won't need to scatter a quarter of our available strength out over the damned approaches."

  Han tried and failed to imagine Tsing Chang unburdening himself with equal frankness. It was strange how well she got along with someone so different from Tsing. Just as strange as to remember that she'd once distrusted Tomanaga's enthusiasm.

  "Well, Bob, we've sent off your appreciation," she said calmly. "In fact, we've done everything we can short of taking it upon ourselves to attack single-handedly."

  "I suppose so, sir," Tomanaga agreed sourly, "but the crews are beginning to go stale."

  "I know." Battlegroup 24 had maintained its long, slow patrol of the old Rigelian warp lines, with an occasional foray into dead Arachnid space, for almost five months without a sign of the enemy. They'd encountered a single Tangri battle-cruiser, but the horseheads had shown admirable restraint and declined to match themselves against four monitors, two fleet carriers, two light carriers, and four escort destroyers.

  Yet that very boredom had been a godsend for Han, and she would have been the first to admit it. Patrol duty wasn't glamorous, but at least it let someone a bit skittish over reassuming a space command ease back into it. Her worries had faded as she grappled with her new responsibilities, and she could look in her mirror now and recognize herself again.

  "Well," she said finally, "let's find something to occupy them, then." She swiveled her chair down and frowned—her equivalent of raging consternation—and tapped her terminal. "You've seen this from Shokaku?"

  "That freighter, sir?" The light carrier's recon fighters had found the remains of a freighter drifting erratically around the star Orpheus.

  "Yes. Does anything about it strike you as odd?"

  "You mean aside from what she was doing there to begin with?"

  "Exactly. There haven't been any inhabited planets in the Orpheus System since the Alliance dusted the Arachnids out eighty years ago. I suppose her skipper might've taken a short cut, but it's hard to believe anyone would try it unescorted this close to Tangri space."

  "But she's here, sir, and she was looted."

  "True," Han nodded. "But did you examine the passenger list Shokaku pulled out of her computers?"

  "Well, no, sir. Why?"

  "They recovered the bodies of all twenty-five crewmen," Han said.

  "So? The horseheads don't take prisoners, sir."

  "True. But the passenger and crew sections were undamaged. Whoever attacked raked the drive and command sections with primaries and needle beams, then looted the holds and finished off the crew in the process."

  "Yes, sir. Typical Tangri work." Tomanaga was puzzled. Clearly his admiral had noticed something he had missed.

  "Except this, Bob. According to the passenger manifest, there were fourteen young women aboard that ship. So where are their bodies?"

  "What?" Tomanaga rose and moved to her desk. "May I, sir?" he asked, laying his hand on the swiveled terminal.

  "Certainly."

  He turned the screen and peered at it thoughtfully, mind racing.

  "It doesn't make sense," he muttered. "Only the women are missing."

  "Exactly. And the Tangri have never shown any particular interest in kidnapping young, female Terrans."

  "Yes, sir. So it had to be someone with a use for them. . . . What about ransom? Were any of them wealthy?"

  "On a tramp freighter?" Han shook her head. "Navy nurses and doctors from Zephrain."

  "So whoever hit her didn't hail from the Rim, either." Tomanaga frowned. "I don't like it."

  "Neither do I. Nor, I suppose, did those passengers and crewmen."

  "Sorry, sir. I meant I don't like the implications. Whoever did it isn't based at Orpheus—we swept the place with a fine-toothed comb. That means inter-system raiding. And that, sir, means there's a joker in the deck. If we spot anyone, we can't know whether it's the Rim or these pirates."

  "Perhaps." Han cleared her screen and a warp chart flickered to life. She tapped it with a stylus. "Here's our patrol area. Here's Orpheus." She touched a light dot to one side of their patrol area. "Now, everything Rimward of Orpheus belongs to the Rim, and whoever it is can't operate from there, because both sides watch those warp points like hawks. And he can't operate from here—" her arcing stylus indicated their patrol area "—or we'd've spotted him. But that leaves this warp network over here, see?" She tapped the screen. "It connects with Orpheus from the back . . . and it also extends all the way to here. . . ."

  "My God! Right into our rear areas!"

  "Precisely. I don't know who they are or where they came from, but someone is raiding civilian traffic from a base somewhere along this warp network. There's nothing much out here but outpo
sts and mining colonies—no heavy traffic, sparse populations, slow communications. They could be almost anywhere. Take over a mining colony and the nav beacons and you control all communications with the system. Who's to know you've done it?"

  "Then we'd better get a drone off immediately, sir."

  "Agreed. But what then? It'll take two months just to reach Cimmaron. Then two more months for Admiral Iskan to reply or relay it—four months, minimum, for whoever it is to go on doing whatever they're doing. No, we have to deal with it ourselves."

  "But, sir, this area—" he indicated the suspect warp lines "—is outside our patrol area. It'd take us—what, five weeks?—just to get there, and it'd mean abandoning the picket. I don't think the Admiralty would like that."

  "The Admiralty isn't out here, Bob: we are. We won't take the entire battlegroup, anyway. We'll take one other monitor, Shokaku, and two of the cans and leave the rest here under Commodore Cruett. I suppose I could detach Cruett, but it's my responsibility if decisions have to be made."

  "Yes, sir. But—"

  "Bob, we're going. We're supposed to prevent things like this, war or no war. Understood?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Good. Then get together with Stravos and rough out a set of orders for Cruett. And ask Dick to lay out the best search pattern for us. I don't want to be gone any longer than we have to be."

  "Aye, aye, sir." He left and Han cocked her chair back once more, studying the star map and disliking her thoughts.

  * * *

  TRNS Bernardo da Silva plowed slowly through space, accompanied by her sister monitor Franklin P. Eisenhower and the light carrier Shokaku. Two escort destroyers watched the rear while Shokaku's recon fighters swept the detachment's projected track and flanks, and Rear Admiral Li Han sat on her palatial flag bridge, fingers steepled under her clean jaw line, contemplating her empty plot.

  A month of cruising the suspect warp lines, and nothing. Was she on the wrong track? Had she made a major error—one that validated her earlier fears over her judgment? Her face was calm as she silently reviewed her discussions with Tomanaga, her endless perusal of dry facts with Irene Jorgensen. The data was there, she decided once more; only her response to it was suspect.

  A bell chimed, and she roused, cocking an eyebrow at the com section as David Reznick bent over the battle code printer. He tore off the message flimsy and turned to her.

  "Signal from Shokaku, sir. One of the fighters is onto something."

  "I see." Han scanned the message. "Doesn't say much, does she?"

  "No, sir. But her fighter's going in for a closer look. Shall I sound action stations, sir?"

  "Not yet, Lieutenant. We're a good three hours behind those fighters—we'll have time. Excuse me a moment."

  Han summoned up the com image of Samuel Schwerin, her flag captain.

  "Good morning, Sam," she greeted him. "Shokaku's fighters have picked up something—no telling what yet—on our line of advance. They're going in for a closer look, but it'll take us about three hours to catch up with them, so I thought we might advance lunch to get it out of the way if we have to go to action stations."

  "Certainly, sir. I'll see to it immediately."

  "Thank you, Sam."

  Reznick's printer chimed again as Han signed off, and she waited patiently. If using coded whisker lasers delayed communications, it also eliminated the chance of message interception and greatly reduced the likelihood of long-range detection. Then Reznick handed her the message, and her face tightened almost imperceptibly as she read it. She turned to Lieutenant Jorgensen.

  "Irene," she said quietly, "punch up your shipping logs and double-check for me, please. According to Shokaku, this is what's left of a Polaris-class liner. I'm afraid it may be Argosy Polaris."

  "Yes, sir," the lieutenant was punching keys, watching the data come up. "Argosy Polaris, sir. Two hundred passengers and a priority medical cargo. Reported overdue at Kariphos ten months ago."

  "Damn," Han said softly.

  * * *

  "It's the Polaris, sir," Commander Tomanaga confirmed grimly, studying the drifting hulk on his screen. "Somebody ripped hell out of her, too. Must've been quick and dirty to keep her from even getting a drone away. Look at that." His finger indicated the relatively small punctures riddling the command section of the big liner.

  "Primaries and needles," Han said flatly. "They knew she was armed—not that her popguns would've helped much. So they closed in, tractored her, and blew her command and com sections before she could yell for help."

  "But how did they get close enough? And what's she doing way out here? We're six transits off the Stendahl-Kariphos route."

  "I don't know how they fooled her master," Han said, "but getting her here wouldn't be hard. There's no damage to her drive pods. They just blasted the command deck and then gave whoever was left his options: surrender or see two hundred passengers vaporized. After that, they used the engine room controls to bring her out here so they could loot her at leisure. Not the approved technique, but workable as long as they were in company with someone with intact nav capabilities."

  "Sounds reasonable." Tomanaga's words were calm; his face and tone weren't. "But it was sloppy to leave her intact. They should've blown her fusion plants or dropped her into the primary to hide the evidence."

  "No, Bob. This is a lonely spot, and that's a hundred thousand tonnes of ship. Lots of spares and replacements to be scavenged out of her."

  "Of course." Tomanaga shook his head. "Shall I send in the examination teams, sir?"

  "Yes. And call away my cutter. I'm going too."

  * * *

  Han swam down the passage of the dead liner, her powerful lamp illuminating the splendid furnishing of first class—marred in spots by laser burns and occasional scars of pure vandalism. The raiders must have damped the power before they depressurized the hull, for the blast doors stood open. She'd seen one grisly corpse—a crewman dead of explosive decompression—and she was coldly certain they'd dumped atmosphere intentionally to kill any fugitives.

  She turned a corner and spun gracefully, landing on her magnetized boot soles beside the Marine search party which had summoned her. Two troopers were busy sealing a transparent bubble to the bulkhead around a closed hatch.

  "Afternoon, Admiral." Major Bryce saluted her, and she returned his salute, then shifted her magsoles to the deckhead, hanging like a weightless bat to watch over the shoulders of the work detail.

  "This is the only hatch holding pressure, Major?"

  "Yes, sir. We checked out all the others and came up empty"—he seemed unaware of his own grim double entendre—"but there's atmosphere on the other side of this one."

  "How much longer, Major?"

  "We've just about got her sealed in, sir." He gestured at the plastic airlock. "Soon's we get a little pressure in there, we'll crack the hatch. Not that it's going to make any difference to whoever sealed it."

  Han nodded slowly within her helmet. After ten months, no one could possibly survive beyond that hatch.

  "Ready, Major," a sergeant said.

  "All right, Admiral," Bryce looked at Han, "would you like to go in?"

  "Yes, Major. I would."

  "Very good, sir." Bryce managed things smoothly, and Han found herself sandwiched between the looming combat zoots of a pair of Marine corporals as one of them fed power to the hatch from her zoot pack. The hatch slid open, and the plastic lock creaked as its over-pressure bled into the cabin. The corporals moved awkwardly to either side to permit Han to enter first, and she pushed off through the hatch.

  It was a tomb.

  The first things she saw in her helmet lamp were the rags and plastiseal packed into a pair of ragged holes; one of the primaries that took out the command deck had passed through this cabin. Someone had kept his wits about him to patch those holes so quickly, and the angle of the punctures might explain why the cabin hadn't been searched—they just about paralleled the passage outside, and the single bea
m had probably pierced at least a dozen suites. Much of first class must have died practically unknowing, and the raiders had probably assumed this cabin's occupants had done the same.

  Her evaluation of the patches took only seconds; then she saw the bodies, and her lips twisted with rage.

  Children. They were children!

  She counted five of the huddled little shapes, peacefully arranged in the beds as if merely sleeping, and saw the body of a single adult—a young woman—at a desk to one side. A candle stub was glued to the desk with melted wax, and her head was a shattered ruin, wrought by the heavy-caliber needler death-locked in her hand.

  Han looked away and felt her belly knot. There was no nausea—only a cold, deadly hatred for the beings who had wreaked this slaughter of the children she would never bear.

  She mastered herself and bent over the stiff corpse of the unknown woman. There was an old fashioned memo pad magsealed to the desk, and Han eased it gently loose. Then she turned back to the lock.

  "Dump the air, Major," she said, and for the first time she hated herself for sounding serene under pressure. "And transport the bodies to da Silva."

  "Yes, sir." Bryce sounded wooden, and she realized he'd been watching his minute com screen; he'd seen everything his corporals' pickups had seen. "We'll be taking them back to Cimmaron, sir?"

  "No, Major," Han said quietly. "It won't help their loved ones to see this. We'll try to identify them and then bury them in space."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I'm returning to the flagship, Major."

  "Yes, sir. Shall I assign an escort?"

  "No, Major. I'd rather be alone, thank you."

  "Yes, sir."

  * * *

  Han looked up as Tomanaga entered her cabin. He'd seen the pictures of that cabin and knew his admiral well enough to sense the fury behind her calm demeanor, and he took the indicated chair silently, feeling his way through the storm front of her rage.

  "You wanted me, sir?"

  "Yes," she said calmly. She tapped the memo pad. "I'll want you to drop this off with Irene. It may be useful."