She’d already checked one of the disruptor pods—it was still in place—and she’d hoped to verify at least one more before activating them. But she was running out of time, and if one disruptor was still ready, then they all were. No, she had to get herself in place.
Pulling up into a sitting position at a junction of ducts, she reached out, scanning quickly for any active detectors. There was nothing unusual, and with a single micro-burst she transmitted the activation command. Four automated acknowledgements came back, but otherwise she detected no changes.
The disruptors were designed to be subtle, slowly building their interference in a way that would degrade, but not destroy, the enemy’s tactical picture. It would take at least fifteen minutes for the degradation to really kick in, and she could only guess at how long it would be before the Centauris figured out the problem and corrected it.
The first part of her mission complete, she braced herself against the sides of the duct and lowered herself down a level. The orbital network stations were no longer of any interest to her—her next prize was even deeper. Reaching out again, stilling her mind and really listening, she could just make out the tell-tale signal of Centauri agents.
* * *
The ship was being hailed by Abeona Traffic Control, and the tension level on the bridge rose significantly, but silence surrounded them.
Overvelde responded with his best Centauri accent, indicating that Moore was the private courier ship Bear Seven en route to Starfall. Such vessels often failed to log flight plans between worlds, having little interest in being formally tracked in their daily business, but it wouldn’t take Traffic long to figure out that there was no such vessel registered to any courier company.
Not that it really mattered, Thomas thought, glancing at the clock again. Twenty minutes to H-hour. All he had to do was keep the Centauris busy for a little while longer.
An alert ignited on the status board between him and Overvelde. The officer of the watch noted the warning lights, which connected to the port-side forward countermeasures battery.
“Looks like something’s really wrong down there, sir,” he said. “I’ll get the XO to send a team.”
“Just wait,” Thomas said quickly. “It’s probably Chen rebooting the system. I don’t want DCC distracted right now.”
“But, sir, the countermeasures—”
“And I don’t want you distracted, either,” Thomas snapped.
“Transfer system status to your second officer of the watch—I need you focused on driving this ship into battle, Mr. Overvelde.”
“Yes, sir.” Overvelde dutifully manipulated his console and simplified the display so that only ship movement and tactical information were displayed.
“I have control of system status,” Hayley called from her station just forward.
Thomas looked at Overvelde, and got a determined nod in return.
Singapore had fallen astern, maintaining her plodding course toward the launch point. She would likely be hailed any moment, as well—it was time for Moore to smack the hornet’s nest.
“Officer of the watch,” he declared, “increase to attack speed.”
* * *
Above her there was a sudden flurry of activity. Secondary network nodes activated as additional security stations flashed to life. Comms traffic exploded outward, and Katja recognized the machine responses from Abeona’s scattered array of surface weapons.
Thomas had made his move.
Her disruptors were already confusing the tactical picture—she just hoped they would do so enough to give his ship the edge.
Below her, she sensed new chatter from the Centauri agents. She’d identified at least four separate individuals, even if she couldn’t make out their messages. Three of them were in a single, large compartment less than two hundred meters away from her, and the fourth was rapidly closing that location. From the amount of encrypted data that was sizzling through, she suspected the compartment was a central control station. Special Forces had plenty of similar setups.
She increased her pace through the vents, figuring all eyes were looking spaceward, and she doubted the quantum-flux sensors would highlight her movement amid all the commotion.
More alarms sounded, both above and below her. She ripped off her jacket, abandoning it behind her and slipping down another tube, and smiled to herself at just how many people Thomas was frightening right now. She could feel the surprise, in some cases bordering on panic, as the defenses tried to make sense of what they were seeing in orbit.
Her feet slammed down on the metal trunking, her smile broadened as she scrambled forward along the vent.
He really could be a bastard.
Then behind her, she heard another slam against the metal, couched in a hiss of tapping feet. Spinning around, she gasped as the awful length of a milly revealed itself down the tube she herself had used. It scanned the vents and locked onto her, scuttling forward even as its body continued to descend from above.
Snapping a grenade from her belt, she threw it back at the beast and launched herself into motion. The explosion thundered through the venting, a wall of air knocking against her as she scrambled away. The clatter of mechanical feet resumed behind her, and she didn’t even spare a glance to confirm that the milly was still in pursuit. Reaching another vertical intersection she dropped down the tube, her body crashing against the next trunking below.
She released another grenade in her wake as she moved on all fours, toppling into a forward roll as the blast impacted her and rattled the entire tunnel. Leaping into a crouch she looked back, saw the milly slithering past the wreckage toward her. They were in a long, straight vent now, with nowhere to hide.
Drawing both of her pistols, she unleashed a hail of bullets. Sparks flew off the nose of the robot as it raced toward her, forward claws extending. Both of her pistols clicked empty. She tucked into a ball and held them up as shields.
Abruptly the milly collapsed, going limp as all power fled its body. It slid to a halt, unmoving.
Katja stared in shock, dimly aware of her hands going through the motions of reloading her pistols.
Jack!
No… That heroic jerk was ruining everything. Why couldn’t he just understand that she didn’t want to be rescued? Against the thumping heartbeat in her chest, Katja reached up and felt for where she knew her entangled particle device was. Jack was never going to stop this fool’s errand, so long as he thought she was still alive.
That left one option.
She pulled up her shirt and quickly felt for the tiny incision scar. There. Her knife was in her hand and without allowing herself to think she dug the point of the blade into her chest, just under her right breast. Grunting through the searing pain, she probed with the knife between her ribs.
As he no doubt burned through the various sensors in the Pierce Building, she felt her knife click against the tiny capsule attached to the top of her rib. With a sharp twist she cut it free, then reached in with her fingers, past the torrent of blood, to pull it out of the hot gash she’d made in herself.
implants.
Tears streamed down her face as she ripped open her medikit and sprayed her wound before pressing a bandage against it. She sat back against the wall of the vent, gasping for breath and waiting as the blood trickled hot down her stomach and the cocktail fought to seal the breach. Her head spun with the pain, but pain was like an old colleague, and she weathered it stoically.
Finally, she blinked open her eyes, clearing her vision. Her mission wasn’t over yet, but now she had to proceed without using her implants. No one—least of all Jack—could ever know what she was going to do next.
33
“We’re being illuminated,” the AAW director called out.
Ten minutes earlier one of the Space Guard cutters had broken from low orbit. Now it was closing on Moore, and had just activated its fire control radars to closely track the interloper. Yet the second cutter had not been baited, and was stubbornly sticking to its patrol pattern. The lone frigate in orbit had just started to move out of its geostationary perch.
With all of Moore’s active sensors on standby they were building the tactical picture based purely on passive input. It made for an eerie quiet.
Well, Thomas decided, so much for the cutter.
“Take hostile zero-three,” he ordered.
There was a flurry at the controls over his right shoulder in AVW, and then four dazzling orbs appeared in space outside the hull, blasting away from Moore in a slow spread before angling inward on their target. The Centauri cutter was so close that he doubted they even had time to activate defenses. The four missiles smashed into the bright hull, tearing through the frame as fires gasped through the escaping oxygen before dying in the vacuum. The wreck spun wildly, breaking apart.
The encounter lasted barely thirty seconds, but now Abeona knew there was a warship in orbit. Passive sensors all across the bridge sphere lit up as tracking radars bloomed to life on the planetary surface, filling a quarter of his view. On the local display Thomas saw the vectors of the remaining cutter and the frigate both increase, and they turned toward him.
Dead reckoning placed the silent Singapore a good ten thousand kilometers away and approaching the first inbound traffic lane—far enough to be clear of close combat, but not so far as to be out of Moore’s reach. Ideal.
“Go active on all sensors,” he ordered. “Target the frigate first and fire as soon as it’s in maximum effective range.”
Moore’s powerful search sensors came alive, flooding the displays with new information. Symbols burst to life across most of the starscape, computers and operators frantically trying to assign and classify all the objects. Two red symbols were immediately obvious ahead—the two fighting ships now accelerating to intercept Moore—but otherwise any identification was lost amid the sea of civilian craft. Including Singapore.
“Get an ID on Raffles,” he barked. “I don’t want to lose her in that mess.”
“ASW will track Raffles,” Micah called out, earning an appreciative acknowledgement from the anti-vessel warfare director. Thomas nodded. John had to maintain that track—and the less the other warfare areas knew, the better.
“Hostile zero-four is launching weapons,” called AAW.
Wow—their range was longer than intelligence thought. Thomas rechecked his own display. At this distance even Moore’s long-range missiles would fall short, running out of fuel and becoming mere ballistics.
“Vampires are not locking on!”
The enemy missiles were still distant, but as they approached their relative bearing took them clearly to starboard. They weren’t closing Moore at all. Thomas sat back in his chair and watched. The plan had called for the operatives to spoof the Centauri defensive systems. It appeared as if Jack and Katja had succeeded in their mission.
“Stay sharp for a small, inbound contact squawking Special Forces ID,” he shouted for the entire bridge to hear. “Our operatives will be trying to approach us at some point in the next two-zero minutes.”
At least, he hoped so.
His display indicated that the Centauri frigate had moved into missile range. At his order, long-range weapons loosed from their launchers embedded in Moore’s flanks, and rocketed into the darkness. Given the range, and against such a sophisticated enemy, scoring a hit was unlikely, but it would help to focus an entire world’s defenses on one ship. His ship. Thomas felt a rush of adrenaline. For the next five minutes, he and his cruiser were taking on the entire rebellion.
A blue symbol appeared on his display, just aft of the port beam. It was nearly lost in the swarm of civilian contacts.
“Positive ID on Raffles,” Micah announced. “She’s increased speed and is closing the launch point.”
Thomas checked the distance to Singapore. The gap had opened.
“Get us within eight thousand k of Raffles,” he said to the officer of the watch. “Maneuver as required to protect the ship, but stay inside that boundary.”
“Yes, sir.” Overvelde gave the order to turn Moore to port. On his display he created a sphere around Singapore to indicate his new zone. Thomas watched the relative vectors begin to converge, then turned his attention back to the battle.
“Status of our long-range strike?”
“Hostile zero-four knocked down all our missiles.”
“Re-engage hostile zero-four, salvo size eight.”
More weapons flashed free, the glow of their rockets quickly lost against the looming orb of Abeona. The first planetary missiles came blasting up through the atmosphere, but their aim was scattered by the Special Forces spoofing.
The sphere around Singapore enveloped Moore at the center of the display, and Thomas felt the faint accelerations as Overvelde weaved the big cruiser through a series of defensive patterns to throw off enemy targeting. Thomas glanced back to John, who gave him a quick thumbs-up, face grim.
Ten minutes to H-hour.
* * *
Katja peeked down through the grate. The Centauri ops center was crowded with people. Most were in uniform but four civilians stood out from the rest. The four were scattered along the rear of three rows of consoles, each hovering near a senior officer who clearly commanded a different area of warfare. The mood among the military personal was professional, but agitated. Even as Katja lifted the grate she heard the nearest senior officer curse in frustration as he slammed the back of an operator’s chair.
“Why are we not hitting anything?” he demanded.
Katja lowered herself through the opening and dropped to the floor of the ops center with a soft thud.
“Because you’re being spoofed,” she declared.
Dozens of heads snapped over at her voice, shock and confusion blossoming. She met the eyes of the nearest civilian woman, who was without question one of the agents, and placed her hands on her head.
“I surrender. Now let me save your planet.”
The agent stared back at her, not speaking—at least, not out loud.
“She’s a Terran operative! Take her down!” Down the long row of consoles she saw Valeria Moretti leap into the air, clearing half a dozen operators as she broke into a run. Katja dropped to her knees, hands firmly on her head.
“I surrender,” she repeated, imploring the nearest agent to listen to her. “We are all going to die unless you listen to me.”
The agent threw up an arm to block Moretti’s charge. All around them, military weapons were raised, and Katja flinched as every barrel was aimed at her.
“Speak, Terran,” the agent said.
“Your network is being spoofed by four disruptor pods placed two floors up in this building.” She rattled off their frequencies and locations. “If you can spot those signals, you can deflect them and get a clear picture of orbit.”
Moretti met the eyes of her fellow agent in a Cloud exchange. Moments later, the imagery on every display in the ops center jerked and reset.
“There is a Terran cruiser engaging your forces,” Katja said, her voice carrying through the room, “but it is not your tar
get—it’s the distraction. Your target is another Terran warship which is moving silently through your civilian traffic, closing Abeona.”
“A stealth ship?”
“No. Probably a destroyer.”
“Why?”
“Because it can slip through your defenses more easily than any other kind of warship, yet still keep the brane picture crystal clear.”
The senior officer spoke into his handset, and Katja heard voices raised further down the line of consoles. The general din of an active ops center returned, but Katja watched as the two agents conferred again, both staring down at her.
“We know who you are,” Moretti said finally.
“And I know who you are,” Katja replied, fighting the aggression which boiled up in her veins. The time for fighting was over, for many reasons. She felt the anger slowly drain out of her taut muscles, and grasped for whatever might take its place.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Moretti’s face hardened like stone. Behind her, operators reported a suspect vessel in descending orbit at the edge of the traffic lanes, less than eight thousand kilometers from the Terran hostile currently engaged in close combat with their frigate.
“That vessel,” Katja said, “is carrying a Dark Bomb, and its target is your planet’s core. That vessel is coming to destroy Abeona.”
She glanced at a nearby clock.
“You have four minutes to stop it.”
* * *
The Centauri frigate pulled back, reeling from Moore’s last barrage. For a small warship it was putting up a good fight, but Thomas could tell that he’d battered it into submission. As it turned and retreated he let it go, thankful for the pause in the action.
Unhooking from his chair, he floated swiftly over to John at ASW. The director’s face had an ashen coloring, but he met his captain’s eyes.
“Are you still solid in tracking Raffles?” Thomas asked.
“Yes, she’s here”—he pointed—“at speed and heading straight for the launch point.”
“Are you sure this contact is Raffles?” Thomas subdued a wince at the sudden tightening of his gut. “We can’t be wrong about this.”
March of War Page 32