Defense (Silver Cane Book 2)

by James David Victor

  The police service and agent core still existed, but it was practically in name only. There were too few agents. They were no longer part of the capable service that they were just a few months ago. Now they were a band of ill equipped and poorly trained leftovers. Silver was determined the service would grow, but with the bomb attacks occurring with frightening regularity, she would have no time to oversee training and an investigation.

  A small part of Silver’s mind wanted to withdraw her agents from the field, to bring the group together, to regroup and recover their strength. They needed to work together to train a new crop of agents, and then that larger group needed to train an army of agents. It was the only way the service could be back to strength and effectiveness in less than a year. Unfortunately, society would have been brought to its knees by the time that happened.

  Without the luxury of time or resources, Silver knew she had to do her best with what she had. The whole of system society was relying on her small band of agents to find out who was trying to tear apart the fabric of society—and stop them. Silver picked up the now tepid coffee. She gulped it down. She would need the caffeine. It was time to get back to work.

  As Silver stood up to leave the canteen, an alarm sounded. Crewmen and officers sitting around the mess jumped up from their chairs. A passing crewman dodged past Silver who stood and watched.

  “What’s that alarm for?” Silver asked.

  “It’s the alarm for a high gee plasma burn.” The crewman told Silver. “We’re redeploying the Defender.”

  Chapter 6

  The Defender’s AI was engaged with a thousand tasks per second as the Defender prepped to move across the system. There was still capacity for the AI to send Silver a message with details of high gee protocols.

  “Fine, I get it,” Silver said to Arty as her AI reminded her of the protocols again. She stood at the holostage in the temporary PHQ. She sent messages to her remaining agents that the Defender was being redeployed to some other part of the system. Finally Silver contacted Skraf at Gov Central to inform the bureaucrat that police HQ was on the move.

  Skraf was standing at his desk. Several robed civil servants were milling about his office. A high-ranking military officer hovered just on the edge of the holoimage.

  “Yes, Chief,” Skraf said, barely looking up from his work, “The Defender has been redeployed.”

  Silver’s look of confusion was not lost of Skraf. He stopped what he was doing for a moment. “You haven’t been notified?” he asked.

  “About what?” Silver did not like being in the dark. It was what made her such an effective field agent, her desire to know the truth and a determination to find it. She didn’t like Skraf withholding information from her one bit.

  “There has been another bomb attack on a SV server hub. We’ve lost all surveillance over a quarter of the ring asteroids. Gov Central has deployed all military craft to strategic locations across the system.”

  “I should be notified immediately of any SV attacks,” Silver said.

  Skraf scowled at Silver. “And you should inform me of any attacks you are investigating. Why did I have to find out about the re-education facility bomb from the education service when you had agents on the scene?” Skraf waved away a civil servant who approached him and then fixed Silver with a fierce stare. “Your service is not really in any shape to help out, Chief Silver. The military is. The Defender and all destroyers are being deployed.”

  Silver took a deep breath. She was Chief. She should be involved in this sort of activity. “Where was the latest attack?” Silver asked. “And send me details of the fleet’s deployment.”

  “That’s need to know, Chief.” Skraf returned his attention to his work. “And you don’t need to know.”

  “As chief I need to be informed.”

  Skraf ended the holocall.

  Silver brought her fists down on the edge of the holostage hard. An alarm sounded again and Silver received another warning to enter the nearest inertia chamber. There were several available near the temporary offices of police HQ and one available in the office area itself.

  Silver contacted all her agents. The faces appeared in small images above the holostage. Some she knew well. Others she did not know so well but all were agents and she needed each one of them.

  “Agents,” Silver began. She noticed the swell of pride in the new recruits and a sudden seriousness in the faces of the experienced. “Gov Central has deployed all military resources in response to another attack on an SV server hub.”

  The experienced agents remained attentive, the inexperienced piped up with questions. Silver held up a hand to silence them.

  “I need you to find out where the attack took place. Lithium, you will then proceed to that location and gather evidence. And I need to know the location of every destroyer and any other military craft in the system.”

  The rookies groaned and complained that it was impossible. Again Silver silenced them with a raised hand.

  “It’s tough, I know. Impossible maybe, but our little agent core is the system’s only hope of ending these attacks. The military won’t discover the truth of these attacks, they’ll simply shoot down any attackers. Gov Central won’t find out the truth, they just want the attacks to go away. If the people of this system are to be safe, we must find out who, or what, is behind all of this. We must find the truth behind the attacks if we are to stop them. We must do this job. No one else will. No one else can.”

  The agents all nodded as they rose to the enormity of their task.

  “One last thing,” Silver said. “Where is Neon?” Neon Ryan was not among the holographic images displayed. Silver heard someone running into the HQ office, breathing heavily.

  “Chief, I’m here. They only just let me land my cruiser. They said I had seconds to spare before they closed the landing strips.”

  Silver looked at the newest and greenest agent. He had been recalled to HQ after his failed interrogation of Coris and had made it just in time.

  The alarm sounded again, and Silver received a final warning from the Defender’s AI to take position in an inertia chamber. Time was running out. There was no time to make it to individual chambers. Silver and Neon would have to enter the single chamber in the office. Lights along the wall and floor pointed Silver toward the chamber.

  “Will there be room for us both?” Neon said. “Oh, god, I shouldn’t have landed.”

  Silver grabbed his arm and ran with him, following the lights toward the chamber. The chamber door was open and there was room inside for two. It would be snug but they would fit. Silver pressed Neon into the chamber and then stepped in herself. The door began to close up behind them with a hiss. Then the chamber filled with stiff foam that pressed them closer together. And then with a final warning the Defender’s plasma jets fired throwing the million ton craft across the system.

  The flight was mercifully short. In no time at all the foam that had pressed against Silver and Neon holding them tight dissipated in a sweet smelling mist. The door popped open and Silver stepped out. Neon took a moment to adjust himself before following Silver.

  The offices were just as they had been a few moments ago. Silver stepped over to the holostage. She displayed the data from her agents that showed her the current movement of the fleet. The system image showed points of light representing the destroyers. Their course marked by streaks of light and their projected course marked by dotted lines.

  The Defender’s position was not marked. “Arty?” Silver asked, “Can you identify our position?”

  Arty responded immediately. “Yes I can. The Defender has taken position at central AI. I’m back home.”

  “Central AI,” Silver said. “That puts us way above the ecliptic plane. There’s nothing up here except...” Silver hesitated.

  “Nothing except central AI,” Arty interrupted. “The home of all artificial intelligence in the system.”

  “Where are all the destroyers heading?” Silver looked at
the holographic image of the system and the streaks of light that represented the movement of the military’s destroyer craft. The destroyer Rose was holding position. “What else is there?” Silver asked.

  “It’s a SV server,” Arty replied.

  “Extrapolate the courses of all other destroyers,” Silver said. “Do they pass any SV servers?”

  Several points of light appeared on the holostage. Everyone a SV server.

  “Looks like Gov Central is protecting the SV net. But..,” Silver rubbed her chin and studied the picture before her. There was something everyone was missing, she was sure of it.

  “All military vessels are deployed across the system.” Silver spoke to herself.

  “Best way to protect everything.” Neon was standing to one side of the holostage.

  “They’ve spread themselves pretty thinly.” Silver observed. “If there was a specific threat surely resources would be mobilized against it. With no obvious threat what do they do? Try and cover everything.” Silver paused. “You ever tried boxing, Neon?”

  Neon shook his head. “Not my style,” he said.

  “You need to keep your gloves up,” Silver said studying the image. “Need to protect the head. If you are on the defensive you need to protect your head or you’ll catch a knockout blow. Try and protect every part of your body and you’ll leave chinks in the armor.”

  Everyone was missing a piece of the puzzle. Bomb attacks had been occurring at regular intervals on SV servers that had been disabling surveillance. But it didn’t take long for new servers to be grown and dispatched. The engineering asteroids could turn out thousands of surveillance servers a month if they needed to. It was like trying to destroy a swarm of hornets by swatting one at a time. It was pointless. What the attacks on SV were doing was pulling resources all over the system.

  The attack on police HQ had come shortly after an attack on SV servers. Many agents and other operatives were at police HQ for briefing when the bomb attack hit. The service was in tatters now.

  With the military fleet scattered, it was difficult, if not impossible, for the ships to support each other should they came under attack. But Silver knew any attack on a military ship would be suicide. The Defender was an extremely powerful weapon. There was nothing in the system to challenge it. The destroyers, although much smaller than the Defender, were themselves powerful ships and capable of defending themselves against any conceivable force that could be thrown against it. The military was not, at this time, any sort of realistic target.

  But something was.

  “Protect the head,” Silver said to herself once again.

  She looked at the holographic image of the system and the scattered forces. She had spread her agents as widely as she could, and now the military had been instructed to do the same.

  She looked over to Neon to gauge his mood. Was he thinking and attempting to solve the problem as she was or was he just watching things unfold. A good agent needed to anticipate and take action, not simply respond to events. Neon was staring at the image of the planets moving slowly over the holostage. The planet pepper moved lazily about the middle of the image. Neon was looking at it.

  Pepper was in many ways the center of the system. It was the inner-most habitable world and closest to the sun. It held all major service headquarters. Police HQ was being rebuilt there. The science council sat there. The multi faith assembly sat there. And Gov Central was there. Power was concentrated there. Most civil servants and bureaucrats were based there and enjoyed the best conditions found on any planet. They were happily engaged in their work, concentrated in a relatively small area. They were an obvious target. They were exposed. They were vulnerable. They were in danger.

  “Agents,” Silver called out to her entire staff. “Converge on Pepper. I want everyone there as soon as possible. I want updates on anything and everything. Find out what’s going on around Pepper.”

  The responses came in from every agent. They were all dropping all their work to follow Silver’s order to move directly to Pepper.

  “What are we looking for?” Lithium Trel asked. “Are we heading into a combat situation?”

  “Be ready for anything, Lithium,” Silver said. “I don’t know what you are looking for, but hopefully we will know it when we see it.”

  Silver looked over to Neon. The rookie was looking at the holoimage and seemed absorbed by it.

  “Arty,” Silver said. “Ready Razor. We’re heading out.”

  Neon turned suddenly to face Silver. “What do you want me to do? Practice?”

  “You are learning,” Silver said.

  Razor raced toward Pepper. The planet was visible as a tiny speck of light as seen through Razor’s scanner. Other agents were already in orbit around Pepper. They were looking for something but, none of them knew what.

  Iron reported a power cut in a settlement at the southern pole but as soon as Silver and others took a look at the settlement the power was restored, a minor power reset that had been scheduled for weeks.

  A minor explosion on an island near the equator was detected and reported by Sodium but Silver cross-referenced and discovered it was related to a geological survey being conducted in the area.

  A civilian cruiser was late to arrive at Pepper’s main spaceport.

  “These civilian cruisers are always running late,” Iron said over the open channel.

  “Where is the cruiser now?” Silver asked.

  Arty spoke up first. “The cruiser is not appearing on any charts.”

  “Contact the cruiser AI.” Silver told Arty.

  “Cruiser AI is not responding,” Arty said.

  Silver tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair. The cruiser was a threat; she felt it in her gut. She needed to find that cruiser, and fast.

  The last known position of the cruiser was near Frost. It was a scheduled flight out to the moons of Titan. Silver knew the cruiser was not heading that direction any more. The only reason to disable the onboard AI and hide from all traffic control was to disguise its destination.

  There was surely no coincidence that this craft had vanished at a time when the military was scattered across the system. There was a nagging doubt in the back of Silver’s head.

  “Protect the head,” Silver said out loud. “Arty, if that cruiser had set a course for Pepper after it had last been seen on scanners what course would it be on?”

  Arty displayed a hypothetical course on the flight decks small holostage.

  “And where would it be right now if it had proceeded at maximum speed on that course?”

  A point on the projected course blinked, marking Arty’s best guess. “Assuming the craft was being manned by an experienced flight crew and the equipment was in good order, the craft would be at about this point.

  “Can we observe that point at all?” Silver leaned forward and looked at that small blinking point. Could she have found the missing craft already?

  “I can ask for assistance from military AI and Gov Central.”

  “No,” Silver jumped up from her chair. “Don’t inform anyone.” Silver had a suspicion that she should keep this information to herself, for now. “Any other way?”

  “I can take gravity flux data from civil satellites, deep space drones and other civilian cruisers. I can incorporate our own flight data and that of the other agent’s cruisers. I might find something amongst all that.”

  “Do it.” Silver said. She didn’t have to wait long before Arty processed all the data and a new point of light appeared on the small flight deck holostage near the predicted point.

  “I have found the missing cruiser,” Arty said.

  Silver paced back and forth across Razor’s flight deck.

  Clapping her hands in triumph Silver climbed back on to her chair. Set an intercept course my old friend. Let’s take a closer look at this cruiser.”

  Chapter 7

  The civilian cruiser was far larger than Razor. It was powerful but not nearly as fast or maneuverabl
e. Silver was catching up fast. Soon Razor’s sensors detected the missing cruiser and showed it on the flight deck’s small holostage.

  Silver was acting on a hunch and a hunch alone. She was convinced this craft was a threat, the latest attack from the group that was bombing SV servers. But this craft was not on course for any SV facilities; it was on course for Pepper. A craft this big was a danger in the wrong hands. Silver was concerned that this craft was being used as a weapon.

  “How many people are on board?” Silver asked.

  Arty used Razors scanners on the cruiser. The scan returned the results. “Three people are onboard.”

  “Only three?” Silver said, surprised. “Was it not carrying passengers?”

  “It left Frost with 238 souls, passengers and crew.”

  “What happened to all those people,” Silver wondered to herself.

  Razor closed in on the tail of the civilian cruiser. “I want to stay hidden,” Silver said, “but see if we can take a peek through one of those portholes.”

  Razor positioned itself alongside the cruiser. A zoom camera displayed what it saw on the holostage. It showed passengers slumped in their seats.

  “They’re dead.” Silver said. They looked asleep but there were only three living persons detected on board. And then, in the image on the holostage Silver spotted movement.

  “What is that?” Silver said. The camera zoomed in a little further. The image was grainy and unclear but Silver could tell for sure that a man was walking along the central isle of the cruiser, a weapon in his hand and breathing apparatus covering his nose and mouth.

  “Arty, put Razor underneath that cruiser. I need to get on that ship.”