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Double Spiral War Trilogy

Page 22

by Warren Norwood


  “Clear as steaming piss, Commander.”

  “Good. Now you can get back to work.” Rochmon held his grin back until she left his office and shut the door. But as quickly as the grin came, it faded.

  Bock’s comments shouldn’t have aroused that anger in him. After all these years he had gotten used to her sarcasm and innuendos about others and had tolerated her remarks about himself because she always made them directly to his face. It was only Bock’s references to Mica that irritated him, and that told him something he didn’t want to face. Whatever the center of his feelings for Mica were, they were deeper and more complicated than Rochmon wanted to admit. The only thing he allowed to the surface was an irrational desire to have her back from Matthews and away from danger.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Pilot Da B’Barbara felt his usual rush of pleasure as Long Range Reconnaissance Ship One-Zero-Two entered subspace for the third time. They were within seven seconds of the original schedule, and that pleased him also.

  “Da, I’ve got an echo,” Louise said from the ops position behind him.

  “What kind of echo?”

  “Double one,” she answered after a long pause. “Neutron clouds splitting in quadrant four, bearing two-seven-seven.”

  Sounds like what we’ve been looking for. Kimkey, notify headquarters and tell the admiral we will break schedule.”

  “Da?”

  “What, Louise?”

  “It’s fading, Da – fading fast.”

  “What do you mean it’s fading?” He didn’t want to lose this one. If it was the Ukes, he wanted to be the one to discover them. “Can’t you pull it back?”

  “I’m trying,” Louise said curtly. She wanted to find the Ukes as much as Da did, but getting angry wasn’t going to help her do it.

  “Kimkey, send the message anyway.” Da stared at the blank vista through the viewport. “Come on, Louise,” he said finally. “Find those damn Ukes.”

  “Shut up, Da,” Louise said as she searched for the echo with minute adjustments of her detection gear. The problem was one of range. If she searched too short or too deep, she might as well not search at all. This new detection gear was supposed to overcome that problem, but adjustments at faster than light speed were delicate at best, impossible at worst. There were just too many variables to account for.

  “Message sent,” Kimkey said in their earphones.

  “It’s gone, Da. We have to go back.”

  “Back to where?”

  “Where I found them the first time.”

  “But, Louise, that will take at least an hour. They could have gotten away by then.”

  “Maybe so. But if you want them, Da, that’s our best chance. All I’m doing now is guessing. Take us back as close as you can to our original heading in normal space and go for it.”

  “You sure, Louise? I mean, couldn’t we –“

  “You’re wasting time.”

  Da shook his head sadly. “Right. Kimkey, alert HQ to what we’re doing.”

  “Will do,” Kimkey responded.

  It took the better part of an hour and a half with all the ship’s dampers working at redline temperatures for B’Barbara to bring One-Zero-Two almost back to the entry point in normal space. “Ready, Louise?”

  “Ready as we’re going to get.”

  “Subspace in twenty-seven seconds,” Da said calmly.

  Only the sound of breathing came through their earphones as they waited for the slow seconds to tick away. “Five, four, three, two, ONE!” Da said.

  Louise stared at her screens, praying for the echo to reappear. “There it is! There it is! Same quadrant. Split farther apart now.” She fine-tuned her instruments and gave him the readings. “First bearing two-seven-five. Second bearing two-eight-one. Those are the Uke fleets, Da. They have to – Damn! I’m losing them again!”

  “Kimkey –“

  “Already started, Da.”

  “They’re gone,” Louise said quietly. “Why can’t we hold them longer?”

  “I don’t know, lady,” Da said with a smile of triumph, “but at least we got the admiral some information to work with. Think we should go back for another try?”

  “Absolutely. Ought to see if I can figure a better angle for us on this run, though.”

  “Better figure a long range one, ‘cause if we try to do this loop as fast as we did the last one, we won’t have any dampers left to stop us.”

  “How much time?” Louise asked.

  Da looked at his equipment monitors and the smile of triumph faded slowly from his face. “Four hours. Maybe five. And that’s the best we can do.”

  “Damn.” Louise shook her head. “Damn, damn, damn.” Then she clamped her jaws and set to work on the calculations. With some good numbers and a little luck, they would find the Ukes one more time. There were only eighty-million people on Reckynop – and Admiral Pajandcan and all of Sondak depending on them.

  21

  THE SWITCH CLOSED.

  The two tiny lead spheres in the giant crucibles at opposite ends of the test chamber exploded almost simultaneously. The crucibles shattered in the beginning of a chain reaction.

  Thick chunks of metal slammed against the shockproof walls. Burning gobs of safety glass arced in fiery trails across the chamber. Plastic and wire vaporized.

  With slow grotesque movements equipment collapsed into smoldering, molten heaps as the helite crystals over the observation cameras cracked in fine weblike patterns that distorted the view.

  In the security bunker, Sjean turned to Caugust with an embarrassed grin on her face. “Did I tell you I wasn’t sure how much force we would get?”

  “You certainly did,” he said, still staring at the fuzzy picture on the observation screen. “How soon do you think it will be safe to go in there?”

  She glanced at the temperature and radiation monitors, then up at the screen. “An hour or two at most. The vaporized material will condense out of the air fairly quickly, but it will take awhile longer for the system to cool off the debris. Say, three hours – just to be safe.”

  “Doesn’t look like we’ll salvage much.” Caugust shook his head and let out a long breath. “Do you know what you did, Sjean? I mean do you really understand it?”

  For a moment she wasn’t sure what he meant. After a long, deliberate pause she took a chance at giving him the answer he was looking for. “No, I don’t. I know what was supposed to happen, but not what did. Given the display we just saw and the mess it made of the equipment, I doubt if we will know for some time either.”

  “You’re missing the point.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You proved the equations, Sjean. You made the numbers work on reality. You made the weapon!”

  “No, not a weapon. We made some test equipment that destroyed itself. I don’t see how that is much of an accomplishment.”

  “Sjean,” he said with a smile filling his face, “the numbers worked. You made them work. You proved reciprocal action at a distance. Wallen’s equations are valid.”

  His words finally hit the center of her mind. She had been so concerned about monitoring the experiment, so startled by the ferocity of the demonstration, that the realization of what had actually happened had not struck home. “They did work,” she said softly. “They really worked.”

  “And you made them,” he said, putting his burly arm around her shoulders.

  “With a good team behind me,” she whispered. “They worked.”

  “When can we begin phase two?”

  Sjean pulled herself away from Caugust and sat heavily in her chair, her fingertips pressed against her temples. “I don’t know,” she said, looking at him finally. “It will take some time to evaluate the data we captured here. A month, maybe two or three before we can construct the equipment for something bigger.” It all seemed so immense a project that she was not quite sure where to start. “I don’t know, Caugust,” she said, hearing the fatigue in her voice. “I just don’t know.”
r />   He patted her shoulder. “You get some rest. Tomorrow we’ll talk about it some more. In the meantime I have to contact Sci-Sec and tell Inspector Janette. If you can build a weapon around Wallen’s equations, so can he.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  “So when have the Gilberts ever gone strictly by the book?” Mica asked. “Did you always go by the book when you thought something was wrong?”

  Gilbert smiled at his daughter. “Not according to my superiors, I didn’t. But this case is a little different. I am your superior.”

  “And you’re going to make me follow the rules?” Mica couldn’t believe it.

  He paused before he answered. “No. If you think it’s important enough, go ahead and tell me.”

  “Mica swallowed hard. “Before you even got back to Nordeen, Admiral Stonefield made me an honor trustee,” she said, looking her father squarely in the eyes.

  “I am aware of that.”

  “I know you are. But did you also know that I am supposed to watch you just like I watch everyone else?”

  “Of course.”

  She released her tension in a long sigh. “You don’t know how much better that makes me feel. I’ve wanted to come tell you so much it hurt.”

  “Is this what this all about?” Gilbert was slightly surprised that Mica was so concerned about it. Perhaps it was just her lack of experience.

  She looked up at the overhead then back at him. “No, there’s more to it than that. There’s a spy – a traitor – both in our security set-up. Someone’s been sending defense status information about Reckynop and Matthews system to the Ukes – someone with classified information.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. There are thousands of people in the system with access to that information, and millions more with eyes and ears who can –“

  “But how many of them have access to subspace transmission equipment? How many of them could be sending –“

  “More than we’ll ever know,” Gilbert said with a grim smile.

  Mica paused and looked at him questioningly. “If I wasn’t your daughter, I’d say you were acting far too calmly about something this serious.”

  “If you weren’t my daughter, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But if for some reason I were discussing this with some other junior officer in your position, I would tell that officer that security is both fundamentally important and fundamentally impossible in wartime. Then I would press that officer to get to the point of this discussion.”

  “If I knew the point, I’d tell you,” she said quickly. No matter how she sorted this problem, she wasn’t sure where to begin. That was why she had come to him now. “Commander Rochmon sent me a copy of a message – an intercept from one of Pajandcan’s Long Range Recon Ships. From the notations that came with it, I’d guess that Bock forwarded it to –“

  “Bock?”

  “His civilian cryptography chief – a strange woman, but a brilliant one. Anyway, I’d say she forwarded the message. And that’s what bothers me.”

  “That she sent it? Surely Rochmon has more important –“

  “No, not that she sent it, but her notations with it. Something about them hits me the wrong way.”

  “What she said, or how she said it?”

  “That’s it!” Mica looked at her father with a sudden grin. “That’s it, Dad. It’s not what she said, at least not exactly, but she didn’t say it right…almost as though…”

  “As though what, Mica?”

  Her grin turned quickly to a frown when she realized where her thoughts were leading her. “I’m afraid to think it, much less say it to anyone.”

  “Then let me second-guess you for a moment. Could what she said have been intended for more than one recipient?”

  “Yes,” Mica said slowly, “but who?”

  “The Ukes?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t believe that. Bock’s the one who broke the Uke code in the first place.”

  “So?” Despite the seriousness of their discussion, Gilbert enjoyed watching her dig into this problem – and he enjoyed helping her with it.

  “So why would she break the Ukes code then turn around and send them information? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t make any sense because you haven’t considered all the possibilities. Did she break the code alone?”

  “No. She and the lead team –“

  “Then how do you know that the team wasn’t on the verge of a breakthrough, and she just let it happen?”

  “I don’t, but –“

  “That’s right. You don’t. You don’t know anything for sure. All you have is a set of possible theories. Now you have a new theory to work with.”

  “I still can’t believe it. Rochmon says she’s the best cryptographer we have – maybe the best he’s ever seen.”

  “If she was working for the Ukes, it would seem to me –“

  “Suppose she’s not working for the Ukes?” Mica said suddenly.

  Gilbert gave her a small smile. “Yes, suppose she’s working for someone else. That’s possible, too, isn’t it?”

  Mica leaned back in her chair with sudden fatigue. “A wise man I know once said that anything in the universe is possible, but that probability was a totally different matter.”

  “Then maybe you ought to be asking yourself what the probabilities are, and how you can determine them.”

  “You’ve told me that before, too.”

  “Indeed I have.”

  With a slow gathering of resolve she stood up. “Thanks, Dad. I think I know what to do now.”

  “Want to share it with me?”

  “Not yet. I have to get it straight in my head first. But if I figure it out before the Ukes get here, I want to talk to you about it before I do anything.”

  “By all means,” he said with a proud smile. “Didn’t that wise man also say never to attack a problem on any empty stomach?”

  “You did.” Mica didn’t want to eat, but knew he would insist. “Shall we eat?”

  As she followed him out of his office toward the mess, her mind churned with ideas and notions that refused to stay still long enough for her to examine them. Maybe eating was a good idea after all.

  “Still nothing further on the Uke fleets?” Gilbert asked.

  “No,” she answered. He already knew that, but she was glad for the change of subject. “Pajandcan is working on it from two angles, the subspace monitors and the LRRS reports, but no further contact since that LRRS spotted them moving. All we really know is that the Ukes are on their way.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  “I still don’t understand why you want me to go to Cloise,” Lucky said. There was something more going on than Delightful Childe had admitted to him. “What’s in it for us?”

  “Ah, yes, our profit motive, as you like to call it. That, my dear partner, depends upon what you accomplish there. This Proctor Geril demands a personal conference with one of our representatives. And since you can, shall we say, move more easily through Sondak, it falls on you to do the negotiating.”

  “Yeah, but even if they grant us the methane franchise, what’s to keep Sondak from setting the price they want to pay, or just flat taking it from us?”

  “Proctor Geril said that Sondak had, uh – burned its fingers to use her words – trying to take the methane by force and would be most happy to pay whatever price we set.”

  “Doesn’t sound like Sondak to me. Anyway, what about that cargo and passenger run from Patros to the U.C.S? How are you going to handle that one?”

  “By ignoring it for the moment. My cousin has exhibited his usual reluctance to offer sufficient advance recompense for such a hazardous task. Until such time as he is ready to pay, we will let him sit on his cargo and defer his profit.”

  The more time he spent with Delightful Childe, the more Lucky liked him. Sometimes he seemed almost human – especially when it came to the way he made business decisions. “What if your cousin comes around?”

/>   “Comes around? Ah, I see. You mean, what if he agrees to our terms? Well, then you can fulfill that contract after you leave Cloise.” Delightful Childe watched his partner’s reaction and saw the displeasure in his face. “Something bothers you?”

  “No…I guess not. I just wish you weren’t going to be tied down here. Suppose I get into trouble?”

  “There are always risks. We will do what we can to assist and protect you. I have already explained –“

  “I know that.” Lucky frowned. “I’d just feel more comfortable if…” He let the sentence trail off.

  “Yes. I think I understand. You will feel vulnerable conducting these transactions, and wish for some greater assurances from me. Is that not so?”

  “Something like that.”

  “We have already armed your Graycloud. Is that not sufficient? Is there something else we could do?”

  “Yes,” Lucky said with sudden inspiration. “Make me a citizen of Oina.”

  “Impossible!” Delightful Childe snorted. Business was important, but such a request was not only impossible, it was intolerable.

  “Why? You’ve registered Graycloud to Oina. Why can’t you register me, too?”

  “Never! No. Absolutely not. Impossible. No alien has ever become a citizen of Oina!”

  “There’s a first time for everything,” Lucky said with a determined smile. “If this trip to Cloise is so damned important to you and your people, and if you want me to risk my neck in the partnership while you screw around for a year, then maybe you’d better find a way to make it possible.”

  Delightful Childe understood Lucky’s logic, but the very idea was repugnant. Still, he was asking a great deal of a mere human. Perhaps there was a way…”Suppose we offered you, uh, a form of conditional citizenship? Suppose –“

  “Conditional on what?”

  “Suppose,” Delightful Childe continued, ignoring the interruption, “that we made you a citizen inreprus.”

  “What the tensheiss does that mean?”

  “It means, my agitated partner, that as a representative of Oina, you would be a citizen in fact if not in duties and obligations. We could give you documents asserting that, of course, and –“

 

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