by Ron Collins
Kane was a man who liked certainty in every element of his life. He liked his calendar planned, his dinners charted out. He liked knowing where his people were. He liked understanding his relationships, and he liked those relationships clean and simple.
His office was small for his position, but the fact that he kept it spotless and he decorated it so sparsely made it feel bigger than it really was. His desk was simple, too, comprised only of a desktop that was a single large computer display, gently slanted to ease his viewpoint, and a stylus that lay like a gold slash in a marble tray along the right side of the display—an instrument that the president herself had personally given Kane.
Kane had fought for his place in this organization, and he would fight for it again.
The problem right now, though, was that while he felt the fog of war rising he didn’t yet have a grasp on where all the pieces were.
He sat back from his desk, admitting this whole thing was beginning to make him more than nervous. He stood up and pulled his memory cube out of the slot alongside the desk. The block was light in his hand. He pushed it into his pocket. Its sharp edges pressed against his thigh with a certain satisfaction.
An unattended memory cube was a dangerous thing, even in the personal office of a branch leader of the United Government Intelligence Office—or perhaps he should say especially in the personal office of a branch leader of said service. Carrying the cube was old-school security, yes. But it was also old-school certain. Carrying your secrets with you, his dad had always said, is the ultimate in security.
Maybe it was his dad’s tin-hat paranoia showing through, but the elder Kane had always been more concerned with things like double agents and internal espionage than he was with the fringy elements of external resistance, and that sense of paranoia had served to help his father live fifty years in the office and pick up a hell of a golden parachute on his way out. Given that the younger Kane could now cover himself by pointing to sensors and analytics, he expected it was about to serve him just as well.
He had no real concerns on the digital side of the security fence. His code junkies were topflight, so he would never believe any gaggle of independent software bandits could beat his team. But a memory cube was a cube, and if it fell into the wrong hands a memory cube could be made to sing. There were people here who could make interesting things happen if they decided to go rogue, and Kane was willing to bet his salary that there were rogue members in the organization who were closer to him than he would feel comfortable with.
Until now, for example, even Universe Three had been considered to be more of an annoyance than threat. But you don’t steal a pair of Excelsior class spacecraft and kill another one without having tendrils in places that no one can see. Who knew where they might have people, now? This was why the skin at the back of his neck bristled at the sudden summons. He needed to be prepared to explain exactly how he was going to bring heat to U3 and how he was going to skim his own organization for possible moles. And now it looked like he was going to need to explain all of that before he had time to get his people together.
He collected his thoughts as he traveled the maze of elevator tubes and underground passages that led to Matz’s office.
He needed time to get his people together.
That would be his play, he decided.
He would ask for two days, knowing she would then give him only one. He thought he could come up with a decent plan with a day to work with.
“The CIO will see you now,” the secretary said as Kane walked up.
No waiting and no defined agenda.
More bad signs.
“Good morning, Paul,” Matz said.
“Good morning, Sela.”
He sat down, crossing one leg over his knee. A speck of lint marred his dark pants. He took a moment to brush it away.
Matz’s office was larger than Kane’s.
A bay window opened up to a view of the massive artificially lit, underground chamber that served as an emergency egress. The security offices had been built here in the late 2100s as a response to concerns about the old North American Federation’s ability to withstand an all-out global attack. The cavern’s walls were veined limestone with crystalline white patches of mica flowers that clung to the ceiling and glowed purple and orange in the artificial light of the passages below.
The CIO had been reading a datapad, reclining in her chair with one leg curled over her desktop, her foot covered in a dark sock that matched her pants. She withdrew the leg to sit forward as he entered, and waited patiently until he settled into his seat to place the datapad onto the table in front of him.
Kane recognized the data she had been taking in.
It was Pinot’s work from some time back, with parts highlighted in light purple. Kane’s eyes, like everyone on his staff, had been augmented years ago, but it wouldn’t have been hard to read the highlights anyway.
“…heavy influx of equipment and material indicates possible tunneling activity,” one highlighted section read. “UG forces should be deployed to investigate the possibility that these signs are efforts to achieve additional surface access,” said another. “Perhaps geological teams could be justified without raising Universe Three concern.”
The date was three and a half years ago. Pinot had been an intern when he wrote it.
Kane fought an urge to run his hand through his thinning hair.
“Interesting in retrospect,” he said.
“What did you do about this?” the CIO asked.
“I funded the Marikal op.”
“Marikal was developed as a way to determine the quality of life in U3’s camp, not to investigate surface access.”
“We tried to get more out of it than that.”
Matz motioned him to continue.
“Obviously, it didn’t work out.”
“It didn’t work out because it wasn’t designed to run that way. Would you care to try again?”
“What do you mean?”
“What did you do about Pinot’s report?”
“We had other priorities, Sela. You know that.”
“This hits hard, Paul. You know it, and I know it. The military brass are stinging because they just lost three Star Drive spacecraft. They look silly to the public, and they’re ready to nuke the entire goddamned galaxy to get their revenge. We missed this one, and we missed it big.”
Kane held the datapad and distinctly heard the you hidden inside the word we in both cases. He understood then that this game no longer had anything left beyond pure attack mode and the raw struggle for survival.
“We’ll have to contain it, then,” he said. “I can have a story out in fifteen minutes. U3 operatives found in the Interstellar Command hierarchy. We all know Francis had to have someone in place there to pull off something like this. It won’t matter what we say—just that it’s something strong enough to give us a day or two to breathe, then maybe get the president to talk about the Europa situation, tie in a renegade camp or two—kill two birds with one stone.”
Matz pursed her lips.
He continued.
“We’ve been looking for something to take the wind out of the fringy elements out there for a while, anyway. So maybe we use this to make lemonade, right?”
Matz pressed a button on her tabletop display.
A holo-vid projection system rose up to cast an image of Sunchaser in the zone above the pad. An autodrone spoke in a chipper voice.
“In breaking news, Infowave sources report that Universe Three’s covert activity to dig secret launch bases was known by those inside the UG cabinet more than three years before this devastating loss of three Excelsior class space cruisers. The ships, better known as Star Drives, had taken twelve years and 59.8 trillion solar dollars to develop—and that’s on top of the eighteen-year round trip of the Everguard mission. Universe Three, a known group of renegade terrorists, destroyed one ship and captured two, then managed to avoid counterattack by using a previously hidden access
tunnel…”
Kane stared into Sela Matz’s eyes and knew what was coming.
“I’m sorry, Paul.”
“It was just one report,” he said.
She didn’t move.
“We filed eighteen thousand reports just last year,” he said. “You can’t take me down for one goddamned report.”
“It’s our business to pick the mushrooms out of the shit.”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
Sela Matz sat back and played her fingertips along the arm of her chair.
“There are four MPs in my waiting room right now,” she said. “They’ll escort you out. We’ll arrange a time where you can come back for your personal effects.”
Kane swallowed, and flexed his fingers.
“I understand,” he said.
He stood up and turned to leave.
“You can leave your M-cube with me,” Matz said.
Kane stopped, sighed, and reached into his pocket to withdraw the cube.
He rolled it in his fingertips, feeling the sharp edges of the crystal, then placed it gently on the corner of Matz’s desk.
Without turning back, Paul Kane walked past his chair, past the side table, and through the door.
It clicked shut behind him with the finality of a dead career.
Punch
CHAPTER 20
UGIS Orion
Local Solar Date: March 20, 2206
Local Solar Time: 1300 Hours
Jarboe sat with Nimchura in the squadron lounge of Orion’s rearward deck. Neither one was particularly happy, but Nimchura was as testy as Jarboe had ever seen him. Turkey and ham sandwiches and a pair of mugs sat across the marbled plastic table between them, coffee for Nimchura, tea for Jarboe.
They were reviewing the mission plan.
What there was of the mission plan, anyway.
The flight colonel had just told the entire squadron that the intel geeks out of CIO said U3 was using their Star Drive systems to retrieve their people one outpost at a time all across the Solar System. The problem was, no one knew where they were going to arrive next, so the entire freaking flight group was going to loiter in space here on Orion, on constant alert until the bastards made an appearance—then they would jump to that location and commence to cutting up space.
“That’s it?” Nimchura said. “We just sit here and twiddle our goddamned thumbs?”
“That seems to sum it up nicely.”
“I’m sure you’re fine and dandy with that.”
“I didn’t say that.”
Nimchura glared. “Well, Number One, you wouldn’t have to.”
Jarboe shrugged and tried to chuckle, but the sound came out wrong. So he just sighed. “I don’t like these phantom plays any better than you,” he said. “Plans with no timetable are like football plays drawn up in the dirt.”
“They’re the goddamned wet dreams of conference room flyboys,” Nimchura said.
Jarboe wanted to laugh at that one.
This kind of mission profile frustrated him because it meant they had to wait around until U3 just showed up, and even though Jarboe agreed with the expression of pure contempt on his wingman’s face, jumping into their conversation full bore would just make things worse. He was supposed to be a leader, after all, wasn’t he?
Jarboe scanned the mission profile again, which basically consisted of information about weak points of the Excelsior class spacecraft, one of which they were flying on now.
“It’s like reviewing a goddamned fire drill,” he finally said, deciding that complaining a bit couldn’t hurt too much. “All geared up, and waiting for the bell.”
Nimchura gave a grudging nod, which, to Jarboe, felt like scoring a clean goal in the eighty-ninth minute.
“It’s the shitty part of being a space jock they don’t tell you about in flight school, eh?” he added, pressing his luck.
Nimchura came as close to rolling his eyes as you can get without actually doing it. He crossed his arms and sulked.
The expression made Jarboe want to blow steam.
The guy was the biggest pain in the goddamned ass this side of Jupiter. Like a brick wall. Working with him was like perpetually taking one step forward and then a hundred-fifty back. He waited, looking around the flight lounge while his stomach acid settled.
Jarboe and Nimchura had come here directly after the brief. It was a smallish area, but well lit.
Its nooks and crannies were filled with plain furniture and just enough chrome and glass to lend the place an air of clean precision. The chrome was highly polished, the glass etched with 3-D images of several classes of historic spacecraft. The compartment’s acoustically sensitive noise-reduction system made it an easy place to either relax or focus if you wanted to, and its open design in several places made it useful for gatherings and group events—such as the collection of pilots who were gathered for lunch, each group telling stories or chatting about actions or complaining about their dumb-assed mission profiles.
“Let’s face it, Yules,” Jarboe said, going in again. “We can look at this from the downside or the upside. And the upside is that we’ve got a way to find the bastards when they show up in the Solar System, so that means we’ll get another chance to deal with them.”
Nimchura squirmed in his seat. “Wonderful.”
That seemed to be about as good as he was going to get, so Jarboe ate some of his sandwich.
UG scientists had used each ship’s plasma signature to confirm that Einstein had jumped back into the Solar System several times over the past week, obviously working to pick up members at the bigger outposts of Io and Europa. They still couldn’t trace the craft after it jumped back to superluminal flight, but they were now trying to identify patterns in U3’s missions that might suggest where the bastards might poke their heads out of the quantum foam next.
While UG intel didn’t have a goddamned clue on the whereabouts of any Universe Three outpost beyond the Solar System, they at least knew the locations of some primary outposts inside it. So given time, the political officers said they would be able to predict future U3 jumps. What that really meant was that they were putting every eye they had on the hundreds of known U3 operations centers, and that when a fish came into the net, they would ring up UG’s military boys to jump Orion to Einstein’s location, then hit them before U3 knew what happened.
He wondered how much money all that observation was costing.
“Feels screwed up to be fighting Einstein,” Nimchura finally said.
“Sucks skimmer dust,” Jarboe replied. He took a swig of his tea. It was tepid.
“I assume they’ve got Icarus in on it, too.”
“Probably.”
To date, the intel guys said they could confirm only that Einstein’s signature was appearing, but he didn’t see why U3 wouldn’t use both craft to make these kinds of runs. That’s what he would do, anyway, and the bastards were obviously not stupid.
The handheld projector on the table between the two men held the particulars of Einstein’s design parameters—defense systems, construction details, initial armament specs, and intelligence estimates of U3’s ability to wield Einstein’s full arsenal. Nimchura was right. It did feel odd to be plotting an exercise against their own equipment.
Whenever it came, the attack profile was simple enough at its root—Jarboe and Nimchura were to escort a squadron of Kennard Aerospace TK-6500P troop transports into contact with Einstein, where those transports would then each dump their two hundred space marines onto the Excelsior spacecraft, who were then charged with overwhelming the terrorists and reclaiming the ship for their own.
They went over the particulars again.
Since they had no idea when the next jump would occur, it meant the squadron was essentially on round-the-clock call.
When they were done with this second review, Jarboe watched Nimchura to see how he was taking it now.
Which was still not well.
Todias Nimchura was certa
inly a helluva pilot, but was also still a total pain in the butt pretty much any time his own ass wasn’t sitting in something that flew.
It was time, Jarboe thought. Time to fish or cut bait, as his grandfather would have said.
“What’s chewing your ass, Yules?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play dumbass with me. If you’re going to be an asshole, go all the way to full goddamned asshole. Just let it fly.”
“Let it fly?”
“Give me everything you’ve got.”
Nimchura picked up his mug and drank from it, setting it down with an amused expression on his stubbled face.
Jarboe set his own cup down, feeling the coarse grounds of his tea against his back teeth.
“You don’t wanna know what’s pissing me off.”
“Are you going out for drama queen master stripes, or what?”
Nimchura gave a shit-eating grin. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Maybe I would know you better if you ever opened yourself up at all. I mean, shit, we were in flight school together and I don’t even know where you went to goddamned college at.”
“You want to know about me?”
“Just the facts, ma’am.”
Nimchura gave a caustic laugh. “Just the facts.” He shook his head. “All right, here they go. Simple and straight on. I’m twenty-six years old, with degrees in aerospace engineering and micro-g bio. I’ve never had a damned thing given to me, ever. I was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. My daddy didn’t have any money bags strapped onto his hips. I worked a hundred grunt jobs to get through prep school. And now—after basic, and after ringing in at the top of the class in three flight schools—here I am, the best flier in the entire goddamned Academy, and still I’m sitting here flying right-side for you.”
Nimchura stared at Jarboe full on.
“Satisfied?”
“Very nice,” Jarboe said. “Your Momma and Daddy must be proud of you making the Academy coming from that kind a start.”