Maxwell Saga 5: Stoke the Flames Higher
Page 11
Sighing, he put on his jacket and tugged it straight. Picking up his briefcase, he took the high-speed walkway down the main corridor of the ship to the docking bay. Senior Lieutenant Laforet was waiting for him. She saluted smartly.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Morning, Number One. Everything in order?”
“Yes, sir. No problems to report.”
“That’s the way I like it. Any word from Senior Chief Aznar overnight?”
“Just a routine morning report that all’s well, sir. He’s hired two vans. They’re parked in the courtyard of the hotel.”
“That’s good to know. I hope we won’t need them.”
“You and me both, sir! If we do, it’ll mean things have gone pear-shaped in the worst way.”
“Yes. Well, let’s hope for the best.” He looked around as a red light came on above an airlock door. “That’ll be our liaison officer.” He turned back to Juliette and drew himself to attention. “You’re in command during my absence, Number One. Look after her until I get back.”
His subordinate saluted. “I have the ship, sir.”
He returned her salute. “You have the ship, Senior Lieutenant.”
The red light changed to amber, then to green. Lieutenant Chetty came through the airlock, saw him standing there, and saluted smartly. “Good morning, Sir.”
Steve returned his salute. “Good morning, Lieutenant. Ready to go planetside?” He ran his eyes approvingly over the Devakai officer’s immaculate uniform. He’d clearly taken a great deal of trouble over his appearance this morning.
“Ready, Sir.”
As the Devakai gig arrowed downward, Steve looked out of the windows, fascinated, as he always was, by the interplay of light and shadow as the craft sank deeper into atmosphere, the air lending depth and substance to the planet’s colors. A wide river, coming from a range of tall mountains visible on the horizon, terminated in a large harbor on the coast. Ships and small craft were clustered along its quays. Devakai’s capital city, Gangai, had grown up around the harbor, spreading up and down the coast and inland on both sides of the river. At least a dozen bridges and several ferries connected the city’s two halves.
“How many people live in Gangai?” Steve asked idly.
“Nobody’s sure,” Chetty admitted. “Its slums are so overcrowded that the census can only estimate them. They say it may have as many as ten million people.”
Steve’s eyes widened. “That’s… impressive,” he acknowledged slowly. “Most settled planets deliberately restrict the growth of their cities, to avoid the kind of urban sprawl that ruined so much of Old Home Earth. By the time a city reaches two to three million people, they’re actively looking to develop new towns and cities elsewhere, and move people and jobs to them. That’s also why planetary populations seldom exceed a couple of billion people. Most try to expand to new colony planets, encouraging emigration rather than growing too crowded on a single planet.”
Chetty nodded eagerly. “That’s what we’re doing, too, although it’s a very late start. The asteroid mining project started by the Kalla family is supposed to generate funds for the settlement of colony planets. We have more than enough people for that, but not nearly enough resources.”
“How many colonies have they started so far?”
“None yet, but they’ve only been at it for a decade or so. The news media say it won’t be long now.”
“I wish them luck. That’s a big undertaking, when their planet doesn’t have a large industrial and commercial base to support such projects.”
“Yes, but again, the asteroid mining project is supposed to make up for that. A lot of people have gone out there – well over ten thousand so far, if I understand correctly.”
Steve opened his mouth to make an astonished comment, but restrained himself just in time. Ten thousand people? Asteroid mines typically needed only a few hundred spacers, prospectors, miners and support personnel. Most of the heavy lifting and hazardous work was done by robots. Ten thousand people wouldn’t be able to substitute for such technology, and they’d require far more support equipment, facilities and supplies than any mining project he’d ever known. Such a cost burden would almost certainly make the entire enterprise uneconomic.
He said carefully, “That many people are almost a colony in themselves. I understood, from what I’ve heard since arriving here, that the project’s in an otherwise deserted system with no habitable planets. Where do they live while they’re working there?”
“I don’t know what the setup is out there. Kalla isn’t very forthcoming about it, and being a private company, they don’t have to be. I presume they’ve converted old freighters into accommodation ships.”
It’d take at least half a dozen good-size ships for that many people, Steve thought to himself, particularly if they wanted any sort of reasonable living space per worker. They couldn’t accommodate them all over the long term in the sort of cramped, overcrowded personnel pods they put into that big freighter we saw in the pictures – but I can’t mention that to Lieutenant Chetty. He doesn’t know, and he mustn’t learn, that we’ve seen them.
He felt a chill run through him, almost like an electric shock, and had to restrain himself from jerking bolt upright in his seat as he followed his thoughts to their logical conclusion. Is that where the insurgents on Athi are coming from? Devakai’s government has always maintained that they’re not traveling from here. They may be telling the truth, in a strictly technical sense. Perhaps the insurgents are being sent to the asteroid mining project, posing as workers, then traveling onward to Athi. That would keep the whole thing out of sight of any investigators, and allow Devakai’s government to claim they know nothing about it. In that case, is there actually an asteroid mining project at all, or is the whole thing just a front for the Kotai?
His mind was in such a turmoil, trying to figure out all the possible angles on the situation, that he hardly noticed as the gig’s pilot swung into the landing pattern for the spaceport on the outskirts of Gangai. He came out of his reverie as the gig descended over an industrial area, passed low across a military base at the edge of the spaceport, and settled onto its landing gear in front of a VIP reception terminal. He blinked. He hadn’t consciously been aware of anything in particular, but something in the past few moments of their flight had jogged his memory. What could it be?
Lieutenant Chetty unbuckled his seatbelt and stood. “If you’re ready, sir?” He gestured politely for Steve to precede him.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
Steve stretched as he disembarked, breathing deeply of the planet’s atmosphere. Its humid heaviness was overlaid with the scents of the industrial area, chemicals and exhaust gases hanging unpleasantly in the morning air. He grimaced as his eyes ran over a small craft hardstand, filled with two rows of assault shuttles. Formations of soldiers were drawn up between them. They were in combat gear, fully armed.
“What are those soldiers doing?” he asked.
“I don’t know, sir. I presume they’re conducting some sort of drill.”
“Probably,” Steve acknowledged – then he suddenly realized what he was looking at. On each side of the front panel of every assault shuttle was a triangular arrangement of sensors. It looked to be an infra-red projector on top, with a white light headlamp and a thermal sensor mounted next to each other beneath it. More to the point, the layout was an exact duplicate of what he’d seen in the pictures of the forty small craft that had been loaded aboard the freighter at the Kalla shipyard.
If those were assault shuttles, why were they taking forty of them to an asteroid mining project? They’d be of no use there – but they might make a hell of a difference if they were sent on to Athi!
He studied the shuttles’ upper surfaces. Each bore a plasma cannon barbette, plus eight missile tubes mounted at the rear in two sets of four. Those shuttles in the cargo hold were covered. Stretched over some sort of framework, the covers would conceal their weapons easily
enough, particularly if the barbettes were reversed, with the cannon pointing backwards and lowered between the missile tubes. The shuttles would look like cutters or other unarmed small craft to a casual observer.
Thoughts racing, Steve allowed Lieutenant Chetty to usher him towards a waiting vehicle. Its driver and a second man waited beside it, coming to attention as they reached them. They wore military uniforms topped by saffron-colored turbans, each bearing a bronze trishula. They carried flap holsters at their waists, from which protruded the grips of bead pistols.
The two ushered them silently into the rear seat of the vehicle, then took their places in the front. The car drove through the gates of the military base and turned towards the city. Steve sat silently, looking out of the windows, trying to keep mental track of their approximate location on the map he’d studied before leaving the ship. His mind raced as he tried to analyze the implications of all he’d just seen and heard. Each new item of information was like another piece of a giant jigsaw puzzle… and the more pieces he accumulated, the more ominous the overall picture began to look.
It took over an hour to make their slow, halting way through Gangai’s crowded streets to the diplomatic guest house assigned to the mission. As the car parked on the street outside, Steve turned to the liaison officer. “Thanks for escorting me, Lieutenant Chetty. I understand our meeting with the President is at fourteen. Do you have anything you need to do before then? I’ll be busy with the other members of the mission, so there’s no need for you to wait here.”
“Thank you, sir,” Chetty said eagerly. “With your permission, I’ll visit my parents. It’s been a month since I last saw them. I’ll take a taxi, and be back here by thirteen-thirty.”
“That will be fine.”
The young officer hailed a passing cab, a brightly-painted ten-passenger van already almost full of people, as Steve and his escorts turned to enter the building. A uniformed doorman came forward to meet them. Steve said to him, “Please arrange a room where these gentlemen can wait, and provide refreshments for them.”
“Of course, sir.” The doorman, a local employee, motioned to the two men to follow him. They hesitated, almost as if they expected to go with Steve instead, but he gestured towards the doorman. They slowly turned away and followed him, murmuring quietly to one another.
As Steve walked through the ground floor office area, he frowned. The standard-issue pen-shaped detector unit in his inside chest pocket began to vibrate silently. That indicated the presence of a listening device. He glanced around, but could see nothing out of place. He relaxed slightly as he recalled Peter Gallegros’ reference to a microphone in the conference room. That might be what the detector was picking up. He made a mental note to check on that as soon as possible.
He found the delegation gathered in the conference room, going through the presentation they would make to the President and his Cabinet that afternoon. Marisela looked up as he entered, but didn’t speak, motioning him to take a chair. Peter Gallegros was discussing a series of graphs and slides displayed above a three-dimensional projector on the tabletop. Steve sat down and listened intently to his presentation on what he’d learned from Devakai’s Ministry of Defense.
“In total, then, the Planetary Self-Defense Force has asked for something over twenty billion Lancastrian Commonwealth credits’ worth of aid and assistance from the United Planets,” Gallegros concluded, face twisting wryly. “Frankly, I can’t see the UP or the Commonwealth coming through with more than a quarter to a third of that amount, and it’ll almost certainly be restricted to internal security equipment and general-purpose aid to the civil power. There’s no way we can justify providing combat equipment and weapons under the present circumstances.”
“I agree,” the envoy said crisply. “You’ve done well to find out so much in so short a time. Thank you, Peter.” Marisela looked around the table. “Before we hear from Lieutenant-Commander Maxwell, I suggest we take a coffee break.”
Everyone got up from the table, some walking over to an urn of coffee on a side table, others leaving the room. Steve went over to Gallegros. “Can you switch off the microphone in here for a moment?” he asked quietly, and explained about the vibrating sensor in his pocket.
“Sure,” the diplomat replied. He opened a cupboard, reached inside and flicked a switch. “It’s off.”
Steve frowned. “The detector’s still vibrating. Have you got any other microphones or listening devices in here?”
“No.” Gallegros’ face was lined with concern. “Just a moment – let me ask Marisela.”
He went over to the envoy, who was talking to Solveig Soldahl, got her attention, and murmured in her ear. She frowned, then made an irritated gesture and muttered a reply. Gallegros tried to say something else, but she shook her head firmly and turned back to the journalist.
The diplomat came back to Steve. “She says she authorized the journalist to record this morning’s proceedings, and that must be what your detector is picking up. I asked her to have Solveig switch off her microphone, so we could figure out whether there was another one in the vicinity, but she wouldn’t hear of it. If it comes to that, she didn’t have this place swept for bugs when we arrived, either.”
“Damn!” Steve muttered vehemently, face creased in a scowl. “Has she no sense of security at all? We’re investigating an interplanetary terrorism problem, for heaven’s sake! Does she think she’s dealing with a Boy Scout troop? If I were the Devakai authorities, or the Kotai, I’d have this place wired to a fare-thee-well. By now, I’d know who among you snored in their sleep, and probably what they dreamed about as well!”
“You and me both! Unfortunately, this mission was put together in a hurry, and Marisela said she didn’t have time to wait for a security specialist to become available – they were all tied up on other assignments.” He switched on the microphone again, then closed the cupboard.
“That puts us in a fix, though,” Steve pointed out, still speaking softly to confuse any listening device. “The authorities probably know everything you’re going to recommend by now, even before we meet with the President. The same goes for the Kotai. If they’ve infiltrated the armed forces to the extent we think they have, they’ll surely have done the same to the foreign ministry.”
“D’you think they’ll try to do anything to force us to change our recommendations?”
“I don’t see what they could do to make that happen, unless they made sure you don’t report back at all – and that would create a diplomatic incident in and of itself. It wouldn’t help them.”
Steve was interrupted by the buzzing of his satellite phone. He took it from an inside jacket pocket and said simply, “Maxwell.”
Senior Lieutenant Laforet’s voice crackled in his ear. “Forest. I say again, forest. Over.”
Steve blinked as he heard the code word meaning ‘danger’. As he did so, Marisela called, “Let’s get on with it, people. Commander Maxwell, we’d like to hear from you next, please.”
“Wait one,” he muttered into the satphone; then, to the envoy, trying to ignore the sudden feeling of a hot wire running through his guts, “Please excuse me for a moment, ma’am. I’ve got to deal with a call from the ship.”
“Oh, very well. Sarah, would you please walk us through the state of the local economy while we wait for the Commander?”
Steve inclined his head briefly towards Peter Gallegros, who got the unspoken message and followed him out, closing the door behind them. Steve said into the phone, “I understand forest. Go to scramble. Stand by.” He flicked a switch on the side of his phone, and waited while the microprocessor inside synchronized with another aboard the spaceship. The two would break up conversation on the circuit into indecipherable bursts of static, converting it back to normal speech at either end.
He heard a low tone in the speaker, and said, “Scramble established. What’s going on? Over.”
Juliette said, “Wait one for the Intelligence Officer, Sir.”
Steve listened intently, then asked, “Are any convoys heading towards this location? Over.”
“It doesn’t seem so right now, sir, but if one of them turns off their present course, it won’t take them long to reach you. Over.”
“Understood. Does this look like a coup d’état in progress? Over.”
“Sir, if it isn’t, it’ll do nicely until the real thing comes along. Over.”
He couldn’t suppress a tight grin. “What’s happening in the city? Over.”
“Sir, the traffic was moving normally until a short while ago. Suddenly people started parking their vehicles anywhere they could, sometimes even in the middle of lanes of traffic, and disappearing into buildings. Some streets are already completely blocked. Over.”
“All right. We’ll treat this as the real thing until proven otherwise. Get word to Senior Chief Aznar to gather his people and head for the first emergency rendezvous, keeping a listening watch on the satellite circuit. Advise him of the location and movements of any military convoys in his vicinity. I won’t move right away – I want to give the convoys time to get past this area and head deeper into the city. As soon as the coast is clear, I’ll try to get the diplomats out of here. Over.”