Double Spiral War Trilogy

by Warren Norwood

“I wouldn’t know. That’s classified information.” That Janette knew about those experiments only added to Sjean’s tension. She rolled her head around in an attempt to relieve the aching stiffness in her neck.

  “Of course it is. But you forget that I have the capacity to monitor such experiments.”

  Sjean stared at this tiny woman, who seemed to radiate power, and again felt her own sense of helplessness. She was caught up in the system, obliged to work around the clock on the Wallen – or the Ultimate Weapon, whatever they wanted to call it – yet every day she felt a growing resistance to this project and everything connected with it. Did Inspector Janette know about the festbid and Caugust’s secret negotiations to get the prototype Wallen back? It didn’t matter anymore. Regardless of how important the weapon might eventually be to Sondak, the horrible implications attached to it were becoming far more important to Sjean.

  When she realized how her thoughts were drifting, she began to understand just how tired she was. I need rest, she thought, and good riddance from the inspector.

  “Are you ill?” Janette asked suddenly as she noticed a little twitch of Dr. Birkie’s head.

  “No more than you, Inspector.” Sjean rose slowly from her chair, forcing her lethargic muscles to hold her upright. “I have to leave you now and get back to work. If you need anything, one of Dr. Drautz’s assistants should be able to provide for you.”

  ‘’I’ll manage, Dr. Birkie,” Janette said, rising out of politeness, “but I would appreciate it if you would answer a few questions for me before you go. You’re still working on the Ultimate Weapon, I assume?”

  “What?” Sjean asked, surprised by the sarcasm she heard in her voice. “You mean you don’t know? I thought Sci-Sec knew everything that went on around here.”

  Again Janette noticed the twitch of Dr. Birkie’s head. ”What is the matter with you, Doctor? Have I said something to offend you, or are you just angry about life in general?”

  “Listen, you little bitch,” Sjean said, spitting out the last word in a sudden surge of anger. “I don’t need you snooping in my life or my health or anything else.”

  “Please, Dr. Birkie, there is no need for you to get –“

  “Damn you! Who in the holy halls do you think you are? Some kind of deity who can meddle in other people’s lives?”

  Sjean heard the rising hysteria in her voice but had no desire to fight it. “Or do you think you’re even better than that?”

  Janette quickly decided to let Dr. Birkie’s outburst run its course. The woman was obviously suffering from extreme fatigue and wasn’t thinking right.

  “Answer me!” Sjean screamed. “Answer me!” When Janette only stood there, staring at her, Sjean felt a second rush of anger and wanted to knock the smug look off Janette’s face. Picking up the ore sample that Caugust kept as an ornament on his desk, she flung it at Janette and felt a great sense of satisfaction when it hit the tiny woman on the shoulder.

  The next few moments were a blur as Janette launched herself across the room and buried her shoulder in Sjean’s stomach.

  Surprise and pain mixed as Sjean hit the floor with Janette on top of her. As she fought for breath, Janette flipped her over and pinned her arms behind her back. .

  “What the crazy hell is going on here?” a voice asked from behind them.

  Sjean recognized Caugust’s voice and felt Inspector Janette turn on top of her.

  “Hysteria,” Janette said firmly. “She’s having some kind of breakdown, I think.”

  “No!” Sjean screamed. “No! Caugust, help me!”

  “Let her up, Inspector.”

  “As you wish,” Janette said, releasing Dr. Birkie’s arm and rising quickly to her feet, “but I think you should – Yowl!” Her statement was cut short as Sjean rolled over, grabbed one of Janette’s legs, and sank her teeth as deeply into Janette’s calf as she could.

  Thirty minutes later, as the sedative began to push her toward sleep, Sjean thought about what had happened as though remembering a dream – a bad dream. Caugust had attacked her! Sided with that terrible Inspector Janette! He shouldn’t have. He had no right, no right at all. She hadn’t told Janette their secret. She hadn’t…but she could now…She would if she got the chance. Then why had he come back early? Because he deserved it…would tell everything she knew…damned Caugust…not his fault. The weapon, the damned Wallen that was the problem. Get rid of Wallen…have to get rid of the Wallen…be all right…all right.

  8

  A DEEP FROWN CREASED FRYE’S BROW. “How did we get this information, AOCO?”

  “It arrived in a sealed pouch this morning, sir,” Melliman said, “along with all the routine correspondence. I should have noticed it sooner, but with all the –“

  “Doesn’t matter. What does matter is how reliable this information is and who sent it to me.”

  “I think the most obvious answer to that is Lieutenant Oskar himself By referring to himself in the third person, he could deny everything contained in that memo if it were intercepted by one of Marshall Judoff’s people.”

  “Or,” Frye said with a deepening frown, “that could be exactly what Judoff’s people want us to think. Then they could use this method as a source of information we would come to rely upon and later… “

  “They could feed us false information,” Melliman said finishing the sentence for him. ‘

  “Exactly.” He shook his head. “So which is it, AOCO? Someone under Judoff’s command who wants to set us up for some later deception? Or a patriotic Lieutenant Oska whose true concern is the welfare of the U.C.S.?”

  “For the time being, sir, I’d guess the latter.”

  “Sit down and tell me why.”

  “Because we have nothing to lose that way,” Melliman said, taking the chair beside his desk. “We can evaluate whatever information he gives us as it comes in and get some idea –“

  “But either way we’re going to get good information to begin with,” Frye said.

  “True, but I think we’ll be able to tell after a while whether or not our source is a loyal Oska just from the information we receive.”

  “Maybe I’m too tired to follow that.” Frye leaned back, closed his eyes, and massaged his temples with his fingertips. “What makes you think we’ll be able to tell?”

  “Well, in the first place, sir, as one of Judoff’s Junior AOCO’s, Oska would naturally be limited in the kind of information he had access to. Furthermore, his youth and general inexperience will probably show up in whatever reports he sends along to us. There is certain innocence in that memo, don’t you think?”

  “Perhaps, but I’m more interested in your reactions at the moment. What makes it innocent?”

  “The fact that he assumes you will be interested in having a spy on Judoff’s staff, the fact that he is ready to begin communications immediately because he is sure you will want this information he possesses and perhaps most importantly, the fact that he dared approach you at all.”

  Frye quit massaging his temples, resigned himself to put up with the headache for a while, and opened his eyes. “I suppose you could be right, but I still think the potential is there for a grand deceit engineered by Judoff.”

  “Of course there is, sir. I wasn’t suggesting that we accept this without question, but does that mean that we should totally reject this offer? Might we not learn something from the deceit itself?”

  “Very well, Melliman. As long as we are both aware of the danger, I guess it can’t harm us to take the first step. How long will it take you to get to the lock-box and back?”

  “Less than an hour.”

  “Then go now. I’d like to know what’s in that first packet before this afternoon’s Bridgeforce meeting.

  While Melliman was gone, Frye drafted replies to most of the day’s routine correspondence, which consisted. Mostly of denying his various space commanders more ships, more equipment, and more personnel. He was sure their requests were legitimate, but he was just as s
ure that there were no surpluses he could spare for them. Every reserve the U.C.S. had was being prepared for the big push into Sondak. When that came, his sector commanders wouldn’t need to worry about their shortages.

  He had almost finished the stack of requests when he came to one that stopped him cold. It looked routine. All the proper spaces on the microspooler form were properly filled out. But the narrative explanation set alarm bells off in his head.

  It was from her. How many years had it been since he had heard from her? Or had it been decades? He didn’t care how long it had been. That she had contacted him at all sent an uneasy feeling churning through his stomach. As he deciphered the message coded into the narrative, using the modified Playfair cipher he had taught her, the feeling got worse.

  “Father,” it said, “if you do not bring this war to a close, I will see that you taste ultimate defeat.”

  There was no name, but Frye knew exactly who sent him this message. But how? How had she gotten it into his routine correspondence? How had she known the form and recognition codes? Where in the voids of space was she?

  “Somewhere in the U.C.S.,” he said aloud. “Has to be.”

  But did it have to be? She had surprised him once before by knowing far more than she should have about his actions, chastising him for marrying Vinita, and threatening to claim her birthright as his firstborn. Four messages she had sent him then, and he still remembered every one of them with a dark, hollow feeling under his heart. She hadn’t carried out her threat to tell Vinita back then, but only because he had managed to get a response through to her that openly begged for her understanding.

  Apparently that appeal had worked, because he hadn’t heard from her after that for almost ten years. Then, when he was on the brink of promotion, she had sent him a message demanding that he credit an anonymous account on Patros with five thousand credits. For reasons he wasn’t sure of at the time, he had done it. Maybe it had been guilt. He never could decide.

  Now, after almost fifteen years, she had contacted him again with a threat that sent chills down his spine, not because he believed for an instant that she could do what she said but because the way the message came made it obvious that she had penetrated countless layers of security.

  That on top of the Oska message touched a highly sensitive nerve in his military mind. There was something very wrong with security around him when messages like this could slip through so easily. What is it? He wondered. What in the galaxy is going –?

  “I’m back, sir,” Melliman’s voice said from his speaker, “and you’re not going to believe what I found.”

  “Whatever it is, bring it in,” he said with a feeling of resignation. “Looks like this is going to be a day full of surprises.”

  “It is a ‘she,’ sir,’’ Melliman said as she opened the door between their offices and ushered in a slightly built woman wearing a dark, formal suit. “Admiral Charltos, I’d like for you to meet Anshuwu Tashawaki, Lieutenant Oska’s mother.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  “And I don’t care what he told us,” Marsha said angrily. “If we fail, if we can’t find this Xindella and his stolen weapon before the festbid, the whole galaxy is going to be in a hurt.”

  “Easy. Take it easy, Mars.” Lucky said, running his hand lovingly over her arm. “I’m not arguing with you. I think you’re absolutely right. All Delightful Childe said was that if we couldn’t steal the thing away from Xindella there were other alternatives.”

  “None of which make any sense,” she said, shaking off his hand and crossing her arms over her bare breasts. “I can t let him and the snakes back Sondak in the bidding. You know that. It wouldn’t be fair.”

  “But it was Sondak’s to begin with. I don t see how-“

  “It’s not theirs now, though. That’s the problem. It’s going to the highest bidder. If Delightful Childe and the damn snakes want to be fair, they ought to back the U.C.S. In the bidding. Then each side would have a potential star-buster, and neither would dare use it because they would know the other side could and would retaliate.”

  “I wish it worked that way,” Lucky said as he rolled onto his back and pulled the blanket up over both of them. He hated having discussions like this in bed, yet he knew that Marsha needed to talk about it. “Mars, if the history of war teaches us anything, it teaches that-”

  “I don’t need a history lecture. I don t care about history,” Marsha said. “What I care about is whether or not the U.C.S. gets cheated out of a fair chance to win this war.”

  “Somebody had better care about history,” Lucky said softly, trying to be as patient and understanding as he could. “We’d better hope that the powers that be on both sides care about history, because…it teaches that if the opposite sides have equally devastating weapons, the only guarantee is that one side will try to cripple the other to prevent the other from striking first. Why should it be any different just because we’re talking about a weapon that can destroy a complete solar system?”

  “Whose side are you on?” she asked, avoiding the question.

  “Our side,” he answered, wishing there were some way he could defuse her anger. “Only our side, Mars. I want us to survive, you and me, and the aliens because they’re trying to stay neutral. Beyond that I don t really care.”

  “You’d better care, because I do.”

  Lucky pushed himself up on one elbow so he could look her directly in the eyes. “What do you want from me, Mars? You want me to side with the U.C.S.? I won’t do it.”

  “But I thought- “

  “No,” he said. “Just let me finish. I told you before, and I’ll say it now. If I could pick the winner in this war, I d pick the U.C.S.-but only because I dislike their Trade bureaucracy a little less than I dislike Sondak’s. However, I don t like the way they started this war with sneak attacks, and I don’t like what your father did to us, and I hate all of the restrictions they put on the freespacers, so I don’t think I’ll ever be an enthusiastic supporter of the U.C.S. Can’t you understand that?

  As she looked at him, a slight smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. She shouldn’t be taking her frustration out on Lucky, and she was a little chagrined with herself for having let the discussion get this far. “Of course I understand that Lucky. I know that at heart you are really an anarchist and I thought I was, too, until now.” ‘

  “I still think you are,” said, leaning down and giving her a quick kiss on the nose. And a cute one, too.”

  “Maybe... but there’s still an awful lot of allegiance to the U.C.S. in this anarchist’s heart.”

  “Allegiance? Or just sympathy for them? I mean, is it real allegiance because you really think they’re right in this war or is it because that’s where you were born and it’s home no matter where else you go?”

  He wasn’t asking her anything new, but then, he didn’t have the same feelings about where he was born as she did. The only allegiances he had were the ones he gave his word on – or pledged his love to. Lucky had certainly made his allegiance to her plain enough. But for Marsha the questions of allegiance were more complicated, and she had questioned her motives and true allegiances over and over since the very beginning of the war.

  “Yes,” she said finally, “I feel allegiance and sympathy for those reasons and more. It’s allegiance because it’s home but also because Sondak did such rotten things to us after the last war, and now we are only getting the revenge we deserve, and that’s why I think the U.C.S. should at least have a fair chance to get this star-buster.”

  “And so we come full circle,” Lucky said with a sigh. “But

  I guess the only real question for you and me is what we do not why we do it. Right?” ‘

  “Right.” She looked up at his wonderful face and wished there was a way for the two of them to escape all this together. “So,” she said with a teasing smile and a wink “if we make love right now, we don’t need to know why, do we?”

  “Of course we do. That’s one of th
e few things we do know the reason for.”

  “Because we’re sex-addicts,” she said, putting her arms

  Around him and pulling his head down to her breasts. “Right,” he whispered, “because we’re sex-addicts.”

  Marsha let her fingers play along his ribs, enjoying the familiar feel of his flesh as it tightened and prickled under her touch. “Not because we love each other.”

  “Nothing to do with it,” he said as his fingers caressed her thigh. “Nothing at all.”

  “I didn’t think so,” she managed to whisper as his tongue started doing erotic things to her nipple.

  His only response was to flick his tongue faster, as though his tongue alone could rout the questions that troubled them so.

  9

  ROCHMON SAW THE SMILE CREEPING onto Bock’s lips and wished he could signal her somehow to keep a straight face. She wasn’t supposed to be amused by Admiral Stonefield’s lecture about security and the restrictions that were going to be placed on her, but apparently she was.

  As though sensing Rochmon’s distress, she gave him a little wink. Then she confirmed his suspicion when she interrupted Stonefield and said, “Tell you what, Stony, you keep the job. I don’t need somebody sitting under the pot every time I piss.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Stonefield said, his face flushed with anger and his tone full of indignation.

  “Beg all you want,” Bock said with a satisfied sneer. “SciSec likes the work I do for them, and I don’t have to ask their permission to blow my nose or wipe my ass. I think I’ll just stay where I’m respected for the work I do.”

  Twice Stonefield started to speak, then clamped his jaws tight and turned toward Rochmon and Gilbert. “I expect you to feel free to comment on this, gentlemen,” he said through almost-clenched teeth, “as it seems Bock here needs some further persuasion.”

  Rochmon held his tongue in check. He was angry with Bock and proud of her at the same time. She had been charged without evidence and treated with scorn by the Service. Now the Service wanted her to come back on terms that would be humiliating for anyone, much less someone of her intelligence and talent. He also sensed that something else was going on under the surface of this exchange, but he wasn’t about to share any of those thoughts with Stonefield.