She looked around the room. “Any planet attacked with one of these weapons will suffer the loss of its atmosphere, at a minimum. And the kryolon weapons launched into the star will trigger a massive flare that will destroy any units of the Kreelan fleet remaining in-system, as well as any planetary bodies that may have survived or escaped the thermium attacks.” She paused dramatically, savoring her moment of triumph. “If all goes well and the intelligence estimates of the Kreelan population in-system are within expected parameters,” she glanced significantly at Zhukovski, who pointedly ignored her, “we should be able to destroy most, if not all, of the entire Kreelan race.”
Everyone in the room was quiet, considering the significance of her last words. To destroy an entire species was certainly nothing new to Mankind. Humans had eradicated thousands of unique forms of life on Earth and on colony worlds, and had even attempted over the centuries to eliminate some varieties of their own species. But to openly pursue the goal of annihilating an entire sentient race, regardless of the damage and loss of life it had incurred upon humanity, made some people uncomfortable. It hearkened back to the times of “racial purification” and “ethnic cleansing” that had been carried out by despotic powers against other humans in the darker times of Earth’s history.
L’Houillier frowned. He wanted the war stopped and human lives saved, but the potential risk of what Laskowski presented was unfathomable. It was not an issue of hypothetical morality regarding the intentional annihilation of another sentient species. That, to L’Houillier, was not a concern in this case: the war must be brought to an end, and if the Kreelan race had to be exterminated, so be it.
But there was the question of repercussions. Who was to say that the ships gathering beyond the Inner Arm were but a token showing of the entire Kreelan fleet? How many colonies did they have beyond their homeworld from which another vengeful campaign of large-scale destruction could be waged against human worlds? The Kreelans, for reasons fully understood only by Reza Gard, did not engage in campaigns of wanton destruction, obliterating entire colonies without at least giving them the chance to fight back; they came looking for a fight for fighting’s sake, and the humans had been forced to oblige them. But could they take the chance that the Kreelans would not retaliate in kind if the thermium weapons – let alone the kryolon star killers – were used? They had demonstrated with Hallmark that they could obliterate an entire world, and if those means continued to exist after the Kreelan homeworld was destroyed, Laskowski’s plan could open the door to an interstellar Armageddon that would leave every human colony nothing more than a mass of molten rock.
He suddenly remembered Zhukovski’s recounting of his conversation with Reza, recalling how long-lived had been the Kreelan civilization. Over one hundred thousand years since the current Empire’s founding, he thought. And how many of those thousands had they been in space? Or developing weapons, a worthwhile pursuit for a race that thrived on warfare? How many planet-killers might the Kreelans have? And what other hideous weapons of mass destruction might they possess? The thought sent a chill up his spine. Glancing at Zhukovski, L’Houillier could see that his intelligence officer had come to similar conclusions. His perpetual scowl was deeper than usual. He was practically grimacing.
Laskowski was waiting with barely contained excitement for what L’Houillier would say about her plan. She had taken certain defeat and turned it into victory, coming up with a plan that dealt a massive and mortal blow to their enemy. While it was really more a consequence of the weapons she wished to employ than some kind of grand master strategy, the thought that humans could pay the Kreelans back in blood for human lives lost in the century-old war was one that she relished. Vengeance, she thought, would surely be sweet.
“Admiral?” she asked finally, becoming annoyed at L’Houillier’s extended silence.
“It is impressive, Yolanda,” he said finally, “and I wish you to pursue detailed planning along this line as a contingency–”
“As a contingency?” she blurted, unable to restrain herself. “Sir, with all due respect, this can give us victory! We have the opportunity here to destroy the Empire! We–”
“And that,” L’Houillier said firmly, forcing himself to forgive – this once – her near insubordination, “is why you are to prepare contingency plans for an offensive. However, I think I see potential risks here that you may not have taken into account. For example, what happens to the scenario if there is a significant influx of Kreelan ships into the fray? Or if the target system is protected by automated defenses that do not rely on this ‘psychic link,’ as Admiral Zhukovski has related to us from Reza Gard, and is therefore not subject to whatever has caused their state of confusion?”
“But sir,” she said, shaking her head, “the Kreelans could not possibly have more ships than I calculated into the probability matrix. And as for automated defenses, we’ve never seen any evidence of–”
“You are not answering my questions, admiral, unless you know for certain the size of the entire Kreelan fleet, which I doubt anyone does,” L’Houillier said coldly. “The question, admiral, was, what if? That is the purpose for a scenario in the first place, is it not?” Laskowski, belatedly realizing her error in trying to tap-dance around L’Houillier, nodded sheepishly. “I ask you again: what if?”
“The operation would fail, sir,” she said quietly.
“Casualties?”
“Depending on when the balance of forces shifted against our fleet, up to ninety-nine percent of the attacking force that had been committed to battle would be lost.”
Which would be the entire human fleet, Zhukovski thought bitterly. Every armed vessel that could be gathered together in a forty-eight hour period, as Laskowski had put it.
“Repercussion extrapolation?” L’Houillier asked.
“Based on what little we know of their psychology and motivations, anywhere from fifty to one-hundred percent.” Laskowski took a deep breath. She had not expected this… inquisition. “Using the Hallmark case as a benchmark, the matrix yields a minimum of twenty colonies destroyed in toto within six months.”
“And what is maximum?” Zhukovski growled.
Laskowski looked at her feet. “All human inhabited domains: planets, moons, asteroids, orbital and deep space stations, and any surviving ships.” In other words, the Kreelans were expected to destroy humans anywhere they lived, breathed, and used technology that could be identified and tracked. Any survivors would have to live at not just a pre-atomic level of civilization, but pre-electricity.
“Lord of All,” someone whispered.
L’Houillier looked up at her. “I know you were given this task on the side, Yolanda, unofficially,” he told her, “and you did an excellent job. But we must have another option. That is your task from me now. Find me that option, one that does not leave the fleet open to destruction and our homeworlds utterly defenseless if something goes wrong, as it inevitably does in such matters.”
Making one last try, Laskowski said, “But the negative angles are all at the extremes of the matrix, admiral. I admit that the probabilities are not negligible, but the potential gain is more than worth the risks involved.”
“That is not for us to decide,” L’Houillier said. “That is for the Council and the president.”
“Yes, sir,” Laskowski responded tightly. You fool, she thought sullenly. Your only viable option is right in front of you. And if you won’t listen to me, I know someone who will.
Forty-Two
Jodi smelled a rat, and it smelled suspiciously like Markus Thorella.
ACCESS DENIED.
The study cubicle’s main screen displayed the words in blood red letters. Those two words had become her constant companions during the last half-hour of her informal – and strictly unauthorized – research.
“Eat me,” she murmured, glaring angrily at the terminal. Had she bothered to look at the local time display in the lower right margin of the screen, she would have noticed that
almost nine hours had passed since she left the hospital after Thorella’s intrusion and Reza’s mysterious fainting episode. And that was why she was here. It was just too convenient, she had told herself as she stalked out of the hospital, almost unconsciously heading for the General Staff HQ research center where she had spent most of her waking hours the last few months, studying for her doctorate in applied military theory. Reza was probably the most superb physical specimen the human race had ever known as far as endurance, strength for mass, and sheer toughness. He had only very recently awakened from a coma, true, but that did not seem enough to her to explain the spell that had visited him the moment he demonstrated aggression toward Thorella. And Thorella’s own behavior: it was if he had been taunting Reza, deliberately trying to provoke him, to see… what?
“To see if something would work,” she had thought aloud to herself as she strode into the building, startling the guard at the entrance. Working on the theory that Thorella was somehow exerting an unnatural influence over Reza, Jodi had begun to dig.
And, hours later, the gems she had found. She glanced down at the tiny storage card that now held all the information she had retrieved in the course of her travels through the center’s vast databases. She had not hit the mother lode yet, had not found the answer to her underlying question, but she had discovered a cornucopia of “nice to know” items.
“Know your enemy” was the route she had initially taken in her quest, and Jodi had begun prowling for any information she could find on one Thorella, Markus Gustav.
At first, she had been disappointed. Born into a wealthy Terran industrialist family, Markus Thorella had been an excellent student in his primary and secondary schools, and quickly demonstrated his prowess at team and individual sports, as well. He was never in trouble with the law, attended church regularly with his parents, and even worked frequently as a volunteer, donating his time to a local hospital as an orderly. On the face of it, he looked like every parent’s dream: bright, almost brilliant, physically superb, and selflessly dedicated to those around him.
That person, Jodi told herself, was definitely not the same Markus Thorella that they all knew and loved.
Then she found out about the crash. For Markus’s fourteenth birthday, his parents took him on a cruise to the Outer Rim, to a group of worlds that had been – for the most part – free of Kreelan attacks over the years, a place where tourism was still a thriving industry. In a freak accident while departing Earth orbit, the starliner had somehow collided with another ship that had been inbound. While such collisions were extremely rare, they did sometimes happen, and when they did, they were disastrous. Over fifteen thousand people lost their lives that day. Only eighty were finally rescued from residual air pockets in the shattered hulls; the collision had occurred so suddenly and unexpectedly that none of the passengers or crew of either vessel had been able to reach a single lifeboat.
One of the survivors had been Markus Thorella, who had been terribly injured. According to a subsequent press account of the incident, the body that bore the clothes of Markus Thorella had been reduced to little more than a pulsating lump of flesh.
And that is where Jodi began to run into dead ends. Curious as to what happened afterward, during his physical reconstruction and therapy, she could get no closer than a hospital record certifying his release more than a year later. Everything in between, everything, was either barred from her or listed as “information unavailable.” That is when her unofficial research methods began to pay off. Using an unlocking program she had acquired from a young graduate student eager to impress her (too bad it had to be a guy, she lamented sourly), she began to worm her way through the passages that blocked access to Thorella’s past.
The program finally turned the key to the information she wanted, and she was literally deluged with data ranging from Thorella’s daily urine tests to the books the nurses read to him during the early phases of his recovery when his eyes were still regenerating in their sockets. While a medical student might have found interest in such things, the only thing she cared about was the DNA fingerprint.
The results, when she found them, did not surprise her as much as she would have liked. According to the official records, the DNA sample could not be firmly identified as belonging to Markus Thorella. The reason, she found out after doing some backtracking through press and a few restricted government files, was because all of Markus Thorella’s previous medical records – from his schools, the two hospitals he had visited since he was born, and the Thorella family physician – had mysteriously disappeared. However, since the boy had been in possession of Markus Thorella’s identity card and other personal effects when he was found in the starliner’s wreckage, everyone assumed he was Markus Thorella. On top of that, no one could positively identify him physically because his entire body – including fingertips and teeth – had been damaged beyond recognition. When the surgeons rebuilt him, they used some old holos that the schools were able to provide. When they were finished, he again looked like Markus Thorella.
But was he? Jodi asked herself. Had the physical and emotional trauma of the crash altered his personality? Or had he always had a sadistic streak that never showed up in any of his early psychological profiles? Or was there something else?
As she followed the history of the “new” Markus Thorella, she discovered that he had become incredibly rich after the death of his parents. Since they had died and he had no surviving family members to contest the estate, he was awarded the entire Thorella inheritance. He was instantly worth hundreds of millions of credits. But in Earth’s jurisdiction, he still had to have a legal guardian at that age.
The guardian’s name turned out to be Strom Borge. The name rang a bell with her, but she could not quite place it. She knew she had seen or heard that name before, but where?
Running a search, it did not take long to find out. Strom Borge was a Terran Senator to the Confederation, member of the Confederation Council, and chairman of a dozen major committees within the government. The hairs at the back of her neck tingled.
“Now I remember you,” she murmured to herself. He had been the leader of the group opposing the confirmation of Reza’s citizenship after returning from the Empire, and had been in favor of the radical psychotherapy procedures demanded by Dr. Deliha Rabat, another of Jodi’s personal favorites.
But there was something else. She had seen that name earlier this evening, during her research. Running another search on Borge, Strom Anaguay, she excluded all references after the crash and before Markus Thorella was born, limiting the search to the first fourteen or so years of Thorella’s life. In but a few seconds, she had her answer.
“Jesus Horatio Christ,” she breathed as the information scrolled up on her screen. Borge had been on the starliner with the Thorellas. He had been a friend of the family for some years, or so the records indicated, and he was frequently to be found in their company. Along with his son, Anton Borge.
Twenty minutes more of digging through increasingly compartmented files in the research center’s data network for Anton Borge’s DNA fingerprint confirmed what she suspected: “Markus Thorella” was Strom Borge’s biological son.
She sat back, imagining to herself what must have happened. Borge, an aggressive and ruthless politician, had received the support and friendship of the Thorella family, who themselves had much to gain from Borge’s rapidly growing political influence in the defense sector, since the Thorellas owned one of the largest shipbuilding firms on Terra.
But the genial relationship between the parents was not shared by the two boys, who apparently loathed each other. Not surprising, since psychologically Anton Borge was the complete antithesis of the Thorella boy: while they were in fact similar physically, Anton was arrogant and hateful, never failing to make those around him miserable. Arrested on a dozen charges ranging from petty theft to sexual assault against a seven year old boy, he always managed to avoid punishment because of his father’s influence.
Another thought nagged at her: how had Borge and his son managed to keep their true relationship a secret? Borge had obviously gone to great lengths to conceal the true identity of “Markus Thorella” by somehow destroying or confiscating all of the Thorella boy’s medical records (and, she found out, the records of his parents, too, to prevent any DNA tracing). Not surprisingly, the official investigation into the disappearance of those records ended rapidly and prematurely, no doubt under the shadow of Senator Borge’s influence.
But aside from all the possible paper trails that he had deftly covered up, how had his son reacted to suddenly becoming someone else? The boy was certainly old enough to know that he was not Markus Thorella, and all it would have taken was for him to call Borge “Dad” in the wrong company and someone might have become suspicious.
The answer was in a name that Jodi knew all too well: Dr. Deliha Rabat. Jodi reviewed the medical records again. She was looking for some clue as to why no one had suspected that Strom Borge and Markus Thorella were really father and son. Borge’s wife wasn’t part of the equation, since she had been killed in a Kreelan attack on a colony world not long after Anton was born. But then Jodi discovered that “Markus Thorella” had undergone psychotherapy at the hands of the young and ambitious Dr. Rabat, who treated him for emotional trauma. The reports showed that the newly reconstructed Thorella boy was having delusions that he was actually the son of Strom Borge.
In Her Name Page 79