by Terry Mixon
“If the mission is too difficult, then you’re going to have to take everything that we’ve captured back to the Empire and leave Audacious here,” the Fleet officer said with a scowl. “The Empire needs that information and hardware.”
“The Empire needs the information, yes, but I’m not just leaving you here. Castille stirred up the Clans. They’ll figure out what they need to do to get through the multiflip point eventually. I’m not leaving you here for them to kill.”
“They may never come,” Zia insisted. “If they do, they do. Kelsey, you have to accept that you can’t save everyone. Sometimes you’ve got to do what’s best for the greatest number of people. Right now, that’s the Empire.
“The loss of one carrier and everyone aboard would be a drop in the bucket compared to how many people would die if we don’t get the Dresden information and that critical hardware for making the sentient AIs back to the Empire as soon as possible. You and I both know that. The smart thing to do is for you to accept that.”
This was the kind of argument Kelsey was used to having with Talbot or Jared. God, how she wished her brother was here right now. He’d know exactly what to do. She worked off instinct where he was a planner. He could orchestrate this entire mission down to the smallest detail.
But he wasn’t here and she had no way to talk to him. She’d just have to do the best she could. And that meant not leaving any of her friends behind.
“Zia, have you met me? That’s not how I work. And unfortunately for you, I have this thing called a title that lets me tell you what I want accomplished and then we get to do it my way.”
She smiled to take any sting out of what she was saying. She wanted to get across how inevitable this was, not just sound bossy.
The other woman sighed and rubbed her face. “What great sin have I committed against the universe to be strapped with such a stubborn friend?”
“Some of us just get lucky,” Kelsey said with a grin. “Let’s get the team together. We’ve got a mission to plan and I want to be underway within twenty-four hours.”
16
Zia wasted no time calling Angela Ellis and asking her to join her on Audacious. The woman was recovering from her final Marine Raider surgery, but she’d want to know what was going on. As expected, Persephone’s executive officer came right over.
This time, Angela was able to walk even though she’d had surgery today. This set of operations involved the work on her torso, upper body, and arms. It was going to take the woman some time to adjust to the artificial musculature, but this was it. The surgeries were complete. She was a now a Marine Raider.
Zia wondered if Kelsey understood that meant she might be ordered to turn the Marine Raider strike ship over to Angela once they got back to Avalon. That made the most sense. Kelsey was the crown princess and had more important things to do than commanding a specialized ship.
She grinned and stood at the tall woman as she came into her office. “So, what does it feel like to be the second Marine Raider in the New Terran Empire?”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I stop crushing things with my hands,” Angela said as she gingerly sat down in one of the chairs to the side of the desk. “Apologize to your maintenance teams for me. I accidentally ripped a support off a bulkhead when I was getting into the lift. My bad.”
Zia chuckled and joined her friend. “I’ll do that. Are you glad it’s over?”
“I’m glad that I didn’t have to do it all at one time. What Kelsey went through with the Pale Ones was a nightmare that I am thrilled I didn’t have to repeat.
“It’s still been painful and it’s going to take a while before I’m fully recovered and can start getting up to speed at being a Marine Raider. My only consolation is that Talbot gets to be next. He’s been an ass. A friendly, good old boy ass, but still an ass.”
Zia shook her head. “I’m glad the two of you get along so well. Having Kelsey as your shared charge has got to be mentally draining. Even at one step removed, she exhausts me. At least now you’ll have a chance at keeping up with her and maybe heading her off from doing dangerous things.
“Dangerous things like leading a mission into the Archibald system. And by leading, I mean personally taking the teams in to scout out a Rebel Empire system. That’s what she just got finished telling me we needed to plan for. The mission launches in twenty-four hours.”
Angela said something pithy that couldn’t be repeated in polite company. “I knew this was coming. Really, it was the only way things could possibly go. You couldn’t talk her out of it? Obviously not. So, what do we do?”
“We do the best we can to keep her alive and make this mission a success. We’ve got a lot of really talented people that we can put on board Persephone to help with this. I’ve called you over to start coordinating how we can use that talent to shield Princess Kelsey from herself.”
The tall marine shifted in her chair resulting in a loud crack as she broke one of the hand rests off. Bemused, the marine held it up and stared at it.
“I hope you weren’t attached to that chair. Sorry.”
She carefully set the hand rest down on the small table and sighed. “We’re going to have to approach this as cautiously as me sitting down. Kelsey isn’t going to want to be protected. That has to be a side effect of what we’re doing, not the goal or she’ll get mulish.
“The best thing we can do is get all the main players together and start doing wargaming on how we might approach this mission. Obviously, the goal is going to be getting in and out without revealing we were ever there. Or at least not having anyone connect us to what’s going on while it matters.”
“Agreed,” Zia said. “We’ve got Cain Hopwood and his merry crew of recovery agents to start with. They’ll blend in, I suspect, based on what I saw on Harrison’s World. Fourteen heavily trained specialists skilled in breaking and entering will be very helpful.
“We can add Commander Giguere. She passed Fiona’s inspection. The shipyard has a lot of Fleet officers moving through it, so she’s going to be invaluable in that aspect of the mission.”
Angela grimaced. “She might be able to help us get in, but she’s not going to be able to work the equipment we need. For something like that, you’re going to need Carl, aren’t you?”
Zia smiled apologetically. “I’m afraid so. I already have the broad outlines of a plan in mind. The specifics are really going to depend on a couple of factors. If we can take a flip drive in whole, in parts that they’ve already manufactured, or if we have to get into their equipment and build something from scratch.
“That last option would be the worst, I suspect. Not only would we have to keep them from realizing we were there, we’d leave tracks that we built something unusual. I’d rather not give them any more information than we absolutely have to. Unfortunately, I really do suspect that’s how things are going to go.”
The marine settled back in her chair a little. “Could we even steal a flip drive? Those aren’t small.”
No, they weren’t. The burned-out unit on board Audacious was about twenty meters in every direction. If they had to steal a completed unit, they couldn’t exactly sneak it out in their pockets.
“I haven’t got the slightest idea,” Zia said with a shrug. “That’s why we’re going to consult with experts. The first stage of the mission has to come first, though. We have to know the landscape. We have to know exactly what we’re dealing with as far as getting in and getting out.
“Once we have all the information we can get on the facility—or I should say facilities—then we’ll start devising plans to cover every option we can: stealing a completed flip drive, stealing parts, co-opting the manufacturing equipment to build our own, etcetera.”
Angela’s eyes narrowed. “You said facilities plural. What does that mean?”
“That’s the next complication,” Zia said with a wry smile. She proceeded to explain Commodore Murdoch’s requirements for her cooperation.
The marine
huffed in irritation. “As if this wasn’t going to be difficult enough. Do we really have to do it?”
“What would Princess Kelsey say?”
Angela slumped a little. “She’d say we’re going to make it happen and then tell me to figure out how.”
“So tell me how we’re going to make it happen,” Zia said with a smirk.
The marine laughed a little in spite of herself. “That’s just cruel. I’d say we need to bring Doctor Parker and her researchers in on the discussions. While they may not be medical researchers, they probably can tell us a lot more about how to fit into a place like that than we would guess on our own.
“If we have Doctor Zoboroski helping them, they might be able to tell us how to probe the place and figure out what we’re going to need to gain access. Then, what we need to do when we get inside.
“What a nightmare. How long did you say we had? An entire twenty-four hours? That’s a different kind of joke all in itself.”
“Look on the bright side,” Zia said. “At least we’re going to a civilized system and we can do some shopping.”
“I hate shopping,” Angela muttered. “Nothing ever fits me. I think I hate you.”
The two women laughed, but Zia could hear an edge of tension in both their voices. They might make light of it, but there were so many ways this could go very wrong. If the Rebel Empire captured any of them, the New Terran Empire was screwed.
Veronica had given up any hope of finding additional information that would be useful on the raid Princess Kelsey was planning when she chanced across something in the data from a previous mission.
Her new friends had captured the Rebel Empire destroyer R-7386 during a previous supply mission to the Erorsi system. They’d captured the ship mostly intact but had only collared one officer. That man, Lieutenant Commander Michael Richards, had eventually decided to cooperate with the New Terran Empire in exactly the same way Veronica had.
He wasn’t what had triggered her curiosity, though. It was his dead commanding officer.
According to the report, her name had been Commander Diane Delatorre. She’d apparently been a real piece of work. Just the kind of person Fleet liked to put in charge of a ship. A backbiting, political animal determined to command a task force before she was fifty.
While there was some basic information about the woman in the reports, what caught Veronica’s eye was her planet of birth: Archibald.
Much like Commodore Murdoch, the deceased commander started her career on the planet they were targeting. All well and good, though not exceptionally useful in and of itself.
What was useful was the fact the woman had blackmail material on various people that might well be on the planet they were interested in.
None of the juicy details were included in the reports she had access to, but Veronica hoped it would be able to put various people into compromising positions. That kind of clout might enable them to get into places that the Rebel Empire wouldn’t want them to be.
But first she needed to know for a fact that they had the critical information.
She glanced over at where Carl Owlet and Doctor Parker were still busy working on the FTL com testbed, walked over, and cleared her throat.
“If the two of you would excuse me, I’m going to leave you to what you’re doing and go talk to Colonel Talbot about someone interesting. It seems that one of the destroyer commanders you captured was born in the Archibald system. The one you captured at Erorsi.”
Carl’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean the one with a bedroom like a bordello? I couldn’t believe it when I saw the place.”
Now it was Veronica’s turn to have her eyebrows rise. “You were there?”
The young scientist nodded. “I cracked her personal communications console while Princess Kelsey and Talbot searched the bedroom. Holy cow.”
Doctor Parker shot Carl a sidelong glance. “Just exactly what was in her bedroom?”
Carl Owlet turned beet red, making both women laugh as he squirmed, trying to come up with some kind of answer.
“Let’s not get sidetracked,” Veronica said smoothly. “The file I accessed said the woman kept blackmail material. None of that is in what I have access to. Can you provide a bit more information about what and who the material covered?”
Obviously relieved to have a way out of answering the previous question, Carl nodded enthusiastically. “There were several encrypted data chips that I haven’t taken the time to get into, but there were also a number of printouts in the safe.
“I have no idea who the people were, but since the data seemed… sensitive, I scanned them in and put them into a segregated drive space. I figured we could bring any portion of it we needed to into primary memory if it became important enough.”
“Can you give me access to those files? Maybe find a little bit of time to take a look at those data chips?”
“I’ll take the data chips,” Doctor Parker said. “One of my people is an absolute whiz at breaking codes and data encryptions. One of the side effects of being a primary designer in systems that utilize them. Frankly, it’s possible they’re encrypted with one of the programs he created. If so, that might give him some unique insight into cracking them.”
“I’ve got them in my office,” Carl said. “I’ll get them as soon I add Commander Giguere to the access list for the scanned documents.”
Veronica smiled her thanks. “I’ll just head back over to my console. Let me know when I can access them and where they are.”
“You’ll have access by the time you sit down. I’ll send you the path to the data as well. Thank you.”
The man was as good as his word and she already had a pop-up sitting on the screen waiting for her. She accepted the access, went to the files, and started reading.
She was impressed. The dead commander had certainly been building up enough dirt to get that command she wanted. There was evidence in these files of everything from infidelity to murder. And these were only the ones that she kept printed out. The really sensitive information was probably still locked up on the data chips.
Veronica turned the computer loose on the files and had it start searching for any matches in the data the new Terran Empire had collected.
Moments later, she had pay dirt. A number of the people and locations mentioned in the documents were at Archibald.
That made her grin widely. While it was true that some of them would be dead or have moved on, that still probably gave Princess Kelsey a handle to pull on, if she needed it. With any luck at all, the encrypted data chips would open to the researchers’ skills and provide them a treasure trove of additional access.
Veronica scrolled back and looked at the image of Commander Diane Delatorre again. A small woman, with a cold face and hard eyes. A very small woman.
A woman with about the same build and size as Kelsey Bandar.
Well, that presented some interesting possibilities.
17
Talbot gave Veronica Giguere an uncertain look. “I remember Delatorre. The Rebel Fleet officer with that wild bedroom and even wilder closet. Are you sure she’s from Archibald? If so, that seems like a negative point. People there will know that Kelsey isn’t her.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. It’s been a long time since she left. I know her by reputation. She was working out of Dresden though I don’t know that I ever met her in person. She did a lot of solo work for Fleet security. She had the personality for it, I understand.
“If her early career was anything like that, people will remember basic things about her: her height, her build, and her attitude. Minor changes can be written off as cosmetic face work or some such. Princess Kelsey has the perfect build to mimic her.”
“But not the correct implant serial numbers,” he said. “In a society like the Rebel Empire, that’s going to give her away immediately.”
Veronica gave him a smile. “You don’t realize it, but you’ve already solved that problem. Carl tells me the latest updates in hardware
he’s developed allow for something he calls ‘stealth mode.’ The purpose of that being that people can pretend to be devoid of implants.
“Carl also informs me that he can put together some kind of interface that will present a false serial number to the world at large. From what he says, it would act as kind of a buffer between the real implants and any outside communications.
“If Princess Kelsey wants to interface with a piece of equipment or computer, the outgoing signal will go through the interface and it would leave her with the false serial number. Any communication to the false serial number would go through the interface and directly to her.”
She paused for a few seconds. “That takes care of your other concern. If someone sees her and doubts it’s really her, they’ll check her implants. People will see what they want to see.”
“I understand where you’re coming from,” he said slowly. “But this is going to be a very risky venture, even if everything goes well. I’m not certain I want to trust her safety to unproven hardware. Carl is a genius, but he makes mistakes. Trust me, I’ve seen a couple of spectacular ones.
“Kelsey advanced the schedule and this mission kicks off shortly. Once we’re committed, there’s no going back. Did he tell you how long it would take to implant this false interface?”
The formerly Rebel Empire commander nodded. “He already has the hardware on hand. Doctor Zoboroski and his staff can put it in place in about twenty minutes. It’s a very simple procedure. The princess already has the upgraded implants that would support stealth mode.
“Most people won’t need a false serial number. However, if they get the false interfaces, they can program their own fake identities. Pick somebody off the street that has implants, clone their serial number, and suddenly you can pretend to be them. I’m actually shocked no one has tried to do this inside the Empire already.”