by Kalina, Mark
"No... no, that wouldn't quite fit, I think. I think that the destruction of the Conquering Sun has to play into this, but that's going to bring in more Fleet ships, sooner or later. I can't see how that would be any good for a system hoping to break away--" Muir stopped suddenly as his wrist-comp pinged.
"Captain, we just got past the encryption on that concealed comp," said Muir.
"Well, what's on it?"
"Not too much," said Muir, in a tone that belied his words, "but this might be of some interest; there's a code here that's designed to grant access to the Yuro Defense Fleet's Fourth Medical Annex building, in New Capital City, and then erase the record of the access. That's for starters. There's also a number of a medical neural net system in the Annex and shut-down codes for that system, and the shut-down codes have the same 'clean-up' program in them, so there'll be no record of the shutdown."
"What does that mean, Muir?"
"It means, this fellow has codes to enter into a military hospital, kill a daemon stored there, and leave, and leave no trace of how it happened."
"Shit."
"Right."
"How the fuck do you get codes like that?" asked Freya.
"I can think of two way, I suppose. You could run a long term, high-intensity data penetration against the Medical Annex's computer systems... or you could have access to those systems to begin with, and design these codes to do what they do from the inside. I know where my money would be in a wager though, Captain."
"At this point, Muir, mine too. So we weren't the only would-be victims on this amateur assassin's hit list. Do you know who else this bastard was supposed to kill?"
"Yes. The identification is here too; 'Deputy Wave Leader / Interceptor Pilot Alekzandra Neel; Sigma-99-Alpha-29-Theta-22, Conquering Sun.' The interceptor pilot we picked up."
---
Captain Nas Killick of the Brotherhood swift-ship Whisperknife snapped open his eyes. He had been dozing in his command pod, but the signal from one of his crew had woken him.
His ordinance master and gunner, Xulios Kavi, had something for him... something that the man had tagged as maximum priority and maximum security. Nas' eyes widened at that, and he plugged a data line into his implant.
"What is it?" he asked, vocalizing into the data link.
"Captain," the ordinance man said, "we have a really serious problem..."
---
The face on the display seemed to be made of shadow. There was a hint of a nose, darkness for eyes, shadow for a mouth. The voice was flat, the timbre metallic. Pyer thought the entire matter foolish. If this man's (if it was a man) face was so secret, why use a visual communication? None the less, he answered the first recognition phrase with the correct counter phrase, and waited for the second. It came, after a tiny pause, and Pyer nodded to the man.
"Alright. Report."
"We may have a problem," came the fake voice from the shadow face.
"Elaborate," said Pyer.
"The captain of one of the swift-ships. The control plan that was in place has suffered a major failure."
"What sort of failure?" asked Pyer, wondering what was happening here.
"One of our assets decided to improvise, to act on his own initiative," said the voice, and Pyer tried to keep the frustration off of his own face. Whoever this agent was, trusted through he was (and only a trusted agent would have had those code phrases) the man was far too fond of drama. Pyer waited for the voice to continue.
"An attempt was made, by this agent, to... eliminate the captain of the swift-ship."
Again Pyer was silent. Any exclamation would be useless, and perhaps this man would get to the point.
"The attempt failed," continued the voice. "Our agent was killed. Just as well, I suppose, with such proven unreliability, but this same agent was tasked with eliminating the surviving interceptor pilot. That didn't happen either."
"So you think the captain now suspects something?" asked Pyer.
"We have to assume so, do we not? This assassination attempt, together with some of the other, less... vulgar... aspects of the control plan; they might be enough to spur her suspicions."
"Is this captain in a position to do anything about it?"
"I can't rule out the possibility. The control plan was to..."
"I don't need to know!" Pyer interjected. Damned amateurs. Pyer hated working with amateurs, even though in deep cover situations they were all too common. When an agent was needed this deep, it was often easier to recruit in place rather than infiltrate a professional. Which meant that he had to work with amateurs at the exact moment that he would have most preferred to deal with fellow professionals. But that was part of the job.
Pyer took a deep breath. "All right. We'll assume that this captain is a risk. Do you have any data on... her, right? On her, that I can't get to through public databases?"
"I think I may have some, yes. Shall I transmit it?"
"Do that. Use the secure channel you were provided with," Pyer said. "And... good work getting this to me. Once you send that data, forget it ever happened."
"Of course, of course," said the voice, and again Pyer had all he could do not to wince.
---
"On some level, this is ridiculous," said Freya. "What the fuck would anyone accomplish by killing that interceptor pilot? Or by killing us?"
"I don't know, Captain, or I don't know yet. But..."
"Right. We need to find out," said Freya. "Revenge seems silly. It would imply that the Coalies have enormous covert influence here, and that they are willing to waste it acting like some sort of vid-show-style crime syndicate. At this point, even if they manage to kill us, there's going to be an investigation... whether they got us or not. I mean, if they did kill us; two or three Central Throne Fleet officers killed like this... there's going to be a Central Throne Inspectorate investigation. And if not, then there's sure as hell going to be an investigation when we report this."
"If we survive to report, sure, Captain. But I wonder... Would there be an investigation if we were killed? I suspect not. If the deaths looked like accidents... a tragic mix-up at the Medical Annex, a freak aircar accident... I think, Captain, that there would be no off-world investigation... or maybe not for a while, not for long enough, at any rate." said Muir.
"What I think, actually," he went on, "is that this attempt on our lives is part of a cover-up, an attempt to conceal the actual events of the battle at the Sigma-Charybdis Waypoint II system."
"I had that thought," said Freya. "I had it and I put it aside. I really hate where this seems to lead, Muir. Because if you're right, then there's the big question. A cover-up by whom? The Coalies? Some Hegemony faction? And I hate the answer I come up with. Just killing us wouldn't work; anyone with even the most tangential knowledge of the Fleet would know that. Ice Knife and Skyrunner both have precise records of the engagement. We've already placed that data into the Fleet's hands. That information wave is already propagating; once it's gone FTL, there is no way to get ahead of it and stop it."
"I'm not sure, Captain. I think... I think there is a way to stop it. And I think, I suspect, it has been stopped already."
"I know, Muir," Freya said, with more anger and sadness than she expected. "The only way to stop it is to have stopped it right at the source."
Muir said, "And that's what we're seeing, isn't it? Ice Knife is suddenly put under a new commander, and the weird behavior of the local defense fleet people. Skyrunner... we don't know where she is, and the lack of records about her refueling and refit... How hard would it be, to lose that data? If the repair crews are part of it... whatever 'it' is... the data might already be gone..."
"Right," said Freya, frowning. "And we can't forget my sudden 'new command.' So if the data is already gone, that would just leave us. I didn't play along quite right, and you left the Ice Knife. So someone noticed and got worried, maybe... and now someone wants us gone, too."
Muir stopped suddenly, and looked around with foc
used attention.
Freya looked also, bringing the laser up in her hand. "What is it?"
"I think we should not be here any longer, Captain. The smoke from our skimmer has risen quite high, and it just occurred to me that it's a pretty good beacon to our location. This fellow," said Muir, gesturing to the dead man, "may not have acted alone."
"You're right. And now that they've tried to kill us, they probably think that they have to finish the job; they're committed. Alright, we take his skimmer, then," said Freya, "and hope it doesn't have any tracking bugs."
Traffic control into the city had an option for hands-on control, so long as a pilot kept within the clearly delineated sky-lanes and didn't exceed a maximum speed. Which was just as well; Freya disliked mandatory central control; it galled her to place even an aircar under someone, or something, else's control.
There had been no traffic control at all on Tirod III, where she had been born. The planet, third in the Tirod system and unofficially called "Mistral" by its inhabitants, was a new colony, less than five hundred thousand hours old. It had been founded, rather than annexed, by the Hegemony of Suns. The population of this place, Yuro IV's New Capital City, was five million people, which was more than ten times more than the total population of her planet of birth.
But even on such out of the way colony worlds as Tirod III, the Hegemony made sure the Academy Tests were available to its citizens; just in case some commoner might have the aptitude to serve the Hegemony directly... for instance, a commoner like Freya Tralk, clone-daughter of a demoi electrical engineer, planned and born to boost the population of a new colony world.
Demoi did not usually reproduce by cloning; that option was more popular among the aristokratai. But on the newer colony worlds there were always lots of clones. Large families were common, and her father had had seven children, two direct clones and five mixed gene partial clones. For that matter crèches were common too, for clones that belonged to no family at all.
Getting away from Tirod, from the endless, windswept empty spaces of Mistral, had been Freya's driving goal since she was about a hundred thousand hours old. It had led her first to work as a technician at the tiny surface space port near her home, and then into the Academy and finally into the Fleet, changed from a demoi human to an aristokratai daemon.
And now the path led here, to the New Capital City of Yuro IV, a planet she had never heard of when she was a human on Tirod III.
The city's traffic swallowed Freya and Muir's skimmer. The sky above and between the spires and towers was full of hundreds of aircars, but the navigation computer showed the traffic lanes and interchanges clearly. Building-mounted beacons flashed red and amber and blue, visually confirming instructions sent to the navigation computer. There was some turbulence --the tall towers disrupted the wind and created eddying air-flows-- but the traffic control computers were routing the traffic lanes above or around the worst of the disturbed airflow and the skimmer's automatic anti-turbulence systems were compensating well enough for the occasional gusts.
Holographic billboards tracked the traffic from the corners of buildings alongside of the major traffic lanes, projecting their advertisements into mid-air, or onto the surface of the buildings. The Yuro system's star was low on the horizon, casting long shadows and making the glass of the towers that caught the light gleam red and orange. Other towers, silhouetted by the setting star, were black outlines speckled with patterns of their own lights. The orbital elevator tower loomed off the side, a needle-like spike lit with multi-colored lights. The elevator track that rose from the tower's top caught the setting sunlight too, looking like a vertical ribbon of golden light, fading to a silver thread that reached up forever.
Freya flew without direction, following the major traffic lanes as they crossed the city, then switching lanes to cross back as Muir continued working on the portable computer their would-be assassin had carried.
"You have a plan, Captain?" Muir asked, at length. Perhaps he had noticed that they did not seem to be going to anywhere in particular.
"Not yet," Freya said. "The power coils are still at better than sixty percent, and we're pretty sure there's no tracking beacon aboard. We can keep flying for a while. I think we're safer in the air than landing, for now. For one thing, I don't think another assassin is going to start shooting in the middle of the city's air traffic lanes. I mean, I could be wrong, but right now I'm willing to bet on it."
"All right, Captain... if not a plan per se, do we have a goal?"
"Yes. Yes, we do. I think we both agree that there's a conspiracy. Someone wants the engagement at Sigma-Charybdis Waypoint II, and the loss of the Conquering Sun, to be hushed up. Put that together with a new Coaly weapon that lets a lance-ship take on an assault-ship, and then with someone trying to kill us personally... I think we can both connect the dots."
"A traitor," said Muir. "Someone working for the Coalition..."
Freya said, "Yes, damn it. I wish it didn't add up so well. But it does. So yes, Muir, we have to assume there's a traitor: someone in the service of the Hegemony, right here on Yuro. Someone with the power to do what's been done... working for the Coalition."
She sighed, then went on. "This is pretty far from the border, but at this point I have to wonder if those two lance-ships picked a place within a single transit of Yuro because of the setup here at Yuro; because there was traitor in place. Because what happened at the waypoint system was an ambush, Muir.
"What I'm not willing to conclude, not yet, is that Acro-telestos Irular is the traitor. It looks like he is, or at least like he's involved. And I'm going to assume he's involved as far as planning goes, because it would be dangerous not to. But not any farther than that. It could a setup, he could be in some sort of double-game. Who knows."
"And you don't want to assume that a Hegemonic aristokratai of his standing could be a traitor, much less a traitor working with the Coalition," said Muir.
"Yes," said Freya after a moment. "I mean, he's a daemon. How could he work with the Coalies?" She shook her head. "I know, Muir. He could. Politics makes strange bedfellows.
"Anyway, it doesn't actually matter. But if," Freya went on, "if he is involved, he's still the fucking Central Throne representative. I'm not letting myself be certain yet, Muir, but if it is him, then he almost certainly has control of the data that we reported. Which means there is no data wave with our information propagating outward from here. We have to assume that it's been stopped pretty much at the source."
"Right, Captain," said Muir. "It wouldn't have been too hard, if he has enough resources. Just two ships' computer systems to corrupt, edit, erase, what have you. Top secret data, so there are no extra copies floating around."
"Yeah. And if the acro-telestos is, well... competent... in his betrayal, we have to assume he had the resources. If you turn traitor against the Hegemony, you don't just sit back and let things float till it comes to a head; you prepare your betrayals. So he might... he's likely to have all sorts of connections he has no business having. With the Yuro System Defense Fleet, maybe even with the Courier Service. So, if he's involved, then we have to assume non-trivial resources backing him up. Actually we have to assume that, no matter who's behind it."
"Quite, Captain. This does not make our task any easier. And I agree; Acro-telestos Irular does seem to be a likely suspect. But you do realize that 'likely suspect' is not going to be enough; even if we can get somewhere where we can trust the authorities, and report, we have nothing to prove it's him. We're not even sure; we certainly don't have enough to convince the Fleet."
"Yeah," said Freya, slowly. There was a moment of silence, only the whine of the skimmer's lift-fans, and Freya went on. "Actually Muir, I agree, but also, I just realized that I don't care. Like you said, for what it's worth I think Irular might be the traitor... I could be wrong, I hope I am. Or I could be right. But it doesn't matter, because dealing with him isn't our task."
"What's our task, Muir?" Freya continued
rhetorically, not really pausing to let Muir reply. "We know part of what's going on. Maybe enough. And we have some resources to act with."
"All right, Captain, I'll bite," said Muir with a tinge of amusement. "What is our task?" He had served with Freya for long enough to know that there were times when she was just competent, and then there were times when she flashed brilliant like a laser pulse. He had a feeling, and hope, that this was one of the latter.
"We need to do two things, Muir," Freya said. "First, we get that interceptor pilot, Alexzandra Neel, out of local medical custody. Even if we hadn't rescued her in the first place, she was member of our squadron, and that makes her one of 'ours.' I'm not letting them have one of my people, whoever the 'them' is. Hell, we gave her to them, and now they want to kill her. We owe her a rescue."
"And second?" Muir did not bother to ask how Freya expected to manage the rescue.
"Second, Muir, is that we get that data to someone in the Central Throne Fleet who will pass it on. I don't care who the traitor is, because it has really limited bearing. Getting that data back was our mission. We complete our mission."
"And to do that, to do both of those, Muir, we're going need to get a ship. And we can't use the guard-ship I'm in 'command' of; we have to assume that our enemy, whoever he is, will have agents in the crew, to the point of it being a death-trap.
"So we're going to have to take back the Ice Knife."
---
"Can you stop it?" asked Captain Nas Killick. Despite the unfolding crisis his voice sounded calm, but the utter stillness of his stance gave lie to that. Fury fought to break free inside Nas, but fury would not help right now, and Nas suppressed it with fierce will. The ordinance master was still looking for a hardware solution, but Nas' hope was focused on Ylayn now.
"Maybe..." Ylayn said, at length. "It depends on how it was done. If it's all hardware, there's nothing I can do directly, though I can probably hack the detonation controls and disable the command to detonate on launch. We could jettison them, then."