Across the Great Rift
Page 46
“A dangerous thing it is to make assumptions about what the Protector would want,” said Frichette. But then he nodded and seemed to relax. “And yet I am convinced.” He motioned at Regina with his pistol. “Go.”
Regina flung herself into the mangled chair and began pushing buttons. Crawford glanced at Frichette and went to stand beside her. Ramsey was sputtering a protest, but Frichette now had his pistol pointed in his direction.
“Can you do it? There’s no code lock-out?”
“No, not for this! If an abort became necessary, we couldn’t risk any delay. I can render all the bombs inert, but that would ruin the whole TEP. If I can just figure out how to deactivate the extra bombs and leave the original plan intact…” While she spoke, her hands were flying over the controls.
“We’ve got about ninety seconds until first detonation,” said someone.
“We noticed that none of the extra bombs had transponders, Regina.”
“Really? That’s great! I can segregate them that way.” Her fingers continued to dance. “Shit!”
“What?”
“Nothing! Stop distracting me!”
“Okay! Okay!”
“Sixty seconds,” said that person again.
“Shut up!” snapped Crawford and Regina in unison.
Lights were flashing all over the control screen as Regina worked faster than Crawford could follow. Suddenly he was pushed aside and Jeanine was working right alongside her. “The G-19 interface, Reggie.”
“Right! That’s it! Isolating all penetrators from the original TEP… deactivating the rest…Now!”
Crawford looked up at the main display. It showed several thousand red icons moving down toward the surface of the planet. Suddenly about half of them flashed briefly and then changed color from red to green. “We did it!” cried Jeanine. Regina touched a few more controls and then leaned back with an outrush of breath. The display changed from the diagram to an actual view of the planet. The brown and gray sphere hung there with one ice cap almost completely in shadow. Then there was a flash. Almost instantly there were more—and then a lot more. The whole ice cap was bathed in a dazzling radiance.
“Came the dawn,” whispered Crawford. It was the only sound in the whole room.
The glow persisted as more and more bombs came down, adding their heat to what the others had already provided, bathing the frigid place in a nurturing warmth. Then there was another flash, well away from the ice cap, in the barren lands off to the side. One of the authorized magma pockets. It was followed a few seconds later by another in the same spot. Flash, flash, flash… But each flash was dimmer than the one before it. The penetrators were going deeper and deeper. Finally they could not be seen at all.
“What happened?” asked Crawford. “Didn’t it work?”
“Keep watching,” said Regina with a smile. After perhaps a minute, a red glow could be seen in the spot where the flashes had been. By this time, the glare around the ice cap had diminished almost completely, making the red light all the more noticeable. Slowly, very slowly, it seemed from this distance, a boiling red cloud rose up from the surface. Higher and higher, broader and broader, the cloud grew and grew. Brighter flecks were flung well beyond the cloud’s edges.
“God, some of that stuff’s getting thrown above the atmosphere!”
“Why do you think we’re in such a high orbit? All traffic has been cleared out of the low orbitals today.”
“I’d sure hate to be down there close to that.”
“Anyone would.” Regina turned and fixed a withering stare on Doctor Ramsey, who obstinately refused to be withered.
“What about the bombs you deactivated?” said Crawford following her stare. “They’re all down there right? Could they survive the impact and be detonated later?”
“They were built to survive, but since their final penetration thrusters didn’t fire, and by not detonating in sequence, they are all just piled up close to the surface. If they were detonated now they would make a hell of a bang, but they’d never break through to the magma pockets.”
“They could still kill a bunch of people.”
“Yes, I am going to lock them out with a personal code right now, but I’ll give some thought to a permanent solution later.” She did some more typing and then stood up and stretched. He smiled at her and she smiled back.
“Good to see you.”
“Yes.”
* * * * *
Carlina waited until the shuttle pilot turned away and then she shifted over until she was very close to Brannon. It was hard to move with her hands shackled together in front of her and a strong chain linking them to more restraints on her ankles. “You can breathe this air for a while, can’t you?” she whispered.
“Yes. Why…?” He flinched when she used her shoulder to dislodge his breathing mask.
“Pretend to be unconscious.” He stared at her for a moment and then nodded and closed his eyes. The stink of chlorine assaulted her, and she had to turn away. But she endured it and didn’t say anything. It wouldn’t take long for the gas to spread in the small, enclosed shuttle…
“God! What the hell is that?” cried the Anderan after less than a minute.
Carlina gave in to a loud cough. “Chlorine!” she gasped. “His breath mask is loose! Help him!”
“Shit! The hell with him, help the rest of us!” snarled the man. He came over to Brannon as Carlina curled up into a ball, coughing horribly.
As soon as the man was within reach, she uncurled—very rapidly.
Her feet caught him right in the solar plexus and he was flung backward to slam into the bulkhead. He slumped to the deck and didn’t move. Carlina lurched to her feet and turned to face Brannon. He hunched over so she could use her hands to put his mask back into place.
“Did… did you kill him?”
“I don’t think so. See if he has a key for these shackles on him will you?”
Without waiting to see if he would obey, Carlina hobbled forward, into the small control cockpit. She thanked the Maker when she saw that all the systems were still activated. She cursed when she couldn’t quite reach the controls because of the chain. “Have you found the keys?” she shouted over her shoulder.
“Not yet.”
“Does he have a weapon?”
“Yes, but it looks like a stunner.”
Which would not cut through a chain. Still cursing, she hopped up in the pilot’s chair and by squatting there and resting her knees on the edge of the control panel, she could just reach the controls. She hit one switch and then called back to Brannon: “Are the airlock doors closing?”
“Yes, they are.”
“Okay, I’m detaching us from the hull. Get back into one of the chairs, there could be some high accelerations soon.”
“All right.”
She deactivated the magnetic grapples and the shuttle was free from the hull of the ship. She studied the sensor read-out for a moment and then gingerly activated the maneuvering thrusters. The Anderan battlecruiser was hanging out there, only a kilometer away, and would notice if she went zipping off into the black. All right, she would have to block their view. She piloted the shuttle slowly around the curved hull of the terraforming ship until the warship was not in direct view. Okay, now a vector to keep us out of sight for a while.
“Damn!” she snarled when the chain pulled her hands up short. “Have you found that key yet?”
“Uh, you told me to get in a seat.”
“Never mind, he was the pilot, the guards probably took the keys with them. Just get ready.” Awkwardly she typed in the course she wanted and the shuttle turned to match it. She checked over all the readings, silently thanked the small-craft instructor she’d had during her training, scrunched herself down in her seat, and then hit the main thruster controls.
A powerful force pressed her back against the padding as the shuttle leapt away toward freedom.
* * * * *
Regina snuggled against Charles as they
stared out the large viewport at the planet below. There was an enormous swirling storm of white clouds growing out from the one pole that they could see from here. A similar storm existed at the other pole, invisible behind the curve of the planet. A smaller, orangeish cloud was spreading from another point to meet the white one. At the edges they were already merging in a pink smear. Preliminary reports were good and there had been almost no damage among the Frecendi. They didn’t seem to have any clue how close they’d come to extinction.
“Y’know, I always thought I did big projects,” said Charles. “But they all pale in comparison to this. It must be very satisfying work.”
“It is. Very. It’s a shame we can’t do a better job of this here.”
“I think you’ve already done a very good job.”
“We all have. But I think I’m going to need some serious help keeping the nightmares away tonight. Damn, that was too close!”
“I’d be glad to help. Want to get a head start?”
“That sounds like a very good…” She stopped short when she saw Petre Frichette and Jeanine approaching. A chill went through her. She’d actually liked Frichette! Thought of him as a friend! How could she have been so completely wrong about him?
“Hello,” he said as if he were passing the time of day. They all stared at each other for a long moment.
“You would really have done it, wouldn’t you?” said Regina, at last. “You’d have let all those people die.”
“If you had not convinced me otherwise, I might have,” he admitted. He didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed.
“So, all of that ‘a million people will die’ stuff you threw at Citrone to get the code was just an act?” demanded Charles.
“Putting the subject into a highly emotional state is an effective interrogation technique,” said Frichette with a shrug, neither confirming nor denying Charles’s statement.
Another silence followed until both she and Charles asked simultaneously: “Just who the hell are you? Really?”
A tiny smile played over his face. “My name really is Petre Frichette, and I really am from those Frichettes. But I’m not seventeen, I’m thirty-five standards. My youthful appearance is part natural and part cosmetic surgery. People don’t tend to be suspicious of kids—a very useful thing in my line of work.”
“Just what is your line of work?” asked Regina icily.
“I’m a captain in the Protector’s Special Security Forces.”
Regina gasped. The SSF had a reputation for efficiency and… ruthlessness. She could understand how they’d gotten the reputation if Petre Frichette was a typical example.
“I joined the navy at fourteen,” Frichette explained. “Made it to lieutenant commander by twenty-five, got tapped by the SFF, and I’ve been with them ever since.”
“That would explain… a great deal,” said Charles slowly.
Frichette nodded. “I was one of an eight-man team the Protector sent along to keep an eye on things. But when Citrone killed off all the rest of the team—including my boss—I had to… improvise.”
“Well, you did a pretty good job—up until about an hour ago.”
“I serve the Protector and his interests. I won’t apologize for that.”
“I don’t think I like you much anymore, Petre,” said Regina.
He shrugged. “One of the more common hazards in my business. But if it will help you think less badly of me, I have been rather thoroughly trained to act in the Protector’s best interests. To unilaterally decide to nullify one of his orders because of a changing situation was… difficult. We’re trained to use our initiative, but still… I’m not sure I could have done so without your help. Simply being ‘the right thing to do’ isn’t usually good enough. Thank you for finding additional reasons. I have enough blood on my hands as it is, I don’t need any more.” He looked at her and she looked back. After a moment they both dropped their eyes.
“So what do you want now?”
“Oh, I was chatting a bit with Jeanine, here, and she mentioned that Doctor Ramsey had threatened to place the ‘blame’ for killing the Frecendi on you and turning you over to the locals. Is that true?”
“That’s what he said, yes.”
“And he implied that Governor Shiffeld was fully aware of those activities?”
“Yes, but why the concern? If you were willing to let a million people die, what do you care about what happens to me?”
“It’s a matter of… jurisdiction, I guess you could say. The Frecendi aren’t Protectorate citizens and not really my concern—until you convinced me otherwise. But you, Dame Regina, are a peer. Granted that you were made a peer by the governor, but even so, a plot to wrongly accuse you of a very serious action—and possibly subject you to some very serious consequences—is something I have to take notice of.” He stared out the viewport for a moment before continuing.
“I think I shall have to pay a little visit to our dear governor. I’d like you to all attend and…” He paused when his communicator buzzed. He pulled out the device and held it to his ear. After a moment he frowned. “I’ll be right there.”
“Trouble?” asked Charles.
“Yes. It seems that the shuttle we came here in is gone.”
“Gone?” said Regina. “But what could have…” She stopped when she saw Charles’s face.
“Citrone was on board that shuttle, Regina.”
Chapter Twenty-five
“You all ready for this?” Charles Crawford looked to where Regina, Jeanine, and Petre were waiting. The two women nodded nervously. Petre just nodded. All during the voyage back to the fleet, Crawford had been studying Frichette. It seemed like he was acting differently: older, more confident, and in-charge. Or was it his imagination? Had he really been acting that way all along, and it was only the revelation of his true identity that was coloring Crawford’s observations?
The voyage back had been at a much more sedate pace than the voyage out had been. It had taken a week and that was rather nice. Having Regina there was even nicer. Not that the week had been free from work—or worries. A steady stream of reports had come in that had to be read and answered; mainly reports from the construction site and damage reports from his squadron. Casualty reports. Casualties from the battle had been, well, Petre said they were gratifyingly light, but Crawford found them pretty shocking. Nearly a thousand dead, mostly from Felicity, New Umbria, and Agamemnon, and another thousand wounded. Petre said it was the usual ratio in space combat where the vacuum contributed to make survivable wounds fatal. He’d been relieved that Greg and Sheila were unharmed, but over a hundred of his own people were dead, including Beshar Hannah. He could not help but think if he’d just let Beshar escape with the family ships he’d still be alive. But if he’d let that happen, how many others would be dead now as a result? Sometimes there weren’t any right answers.
The ships of the Rift Fleet were battered to a greater or lesser degree. Temporary repairs had been made where possible, but there was no sense of urgency. With the Venanci taken care of, there were no other threats on the horizon. The two Venanci transport ships had fled the system, and the other warships were either destroyed or captured. The odds of anyone else arriving were almost nil, and the only other possible source of danger would be the clans and—at least for now—they were still friends. Their losses had been relatively light, too, although any losses at all were very shocking for them. Overall, the feeling in the fleet and among the clans was one of relief. The crisis was over and everyone could get back to their real business.
That, in fact, was the most urgent task. They needed to get people back to work. The construction on the gate had fallen dangerously behind schedule and everyone was going to have to work like mad to catch up. The main induction ring pour was proceeding on schedule, but the assembly of the supporting equipment was over a month behind. He had to get the workers transferred from the warships back to where they really belonged. And that included himself: he’d been playing hoo
ky far too long.
Unfortunately, there was still one, very unpleasant task to do.
“Dame Regina, Sir Charles, Jeanine,” said Petre, “I’d strongly urge you to let me do the talking here. We cannot just go barging into the governor’s office and accuse him of conspiracy.”
“But that’s what he’s guilty of!” said Regina.
“That’s what we think he’s guilty of. The only evidence we have is Doctor Ramsey’s claims.”
“Then why are we even doing this?” demanded Crawford.
“I’m starting to have second thoughts about it, I’ll admit. But I do want to see what we can shake out of Shiffeld while the incident is fresh. But please don’t go flying off the handle in there, okay?”
Before anyone could answer, Shiffeld’s receptionist appeared and directed them into the governor’s private office. Shiffeld certainly did not look like a man worried about being accused of a serious crime: he smiled and stood up from his chair when they entered. “Ah, Lord Frichette—I suppose I should say: Lord Admiral Captain Frichette, shouldn’t I? I must say you had me completely fooled! Although I suppose I should have wondered how someone so young and supposedly inexperienced could have done all the things you did. In any case, congratulations on your victory! And congratulations to you, too, Sir Charles, and to you, Dame Regina.”
“Congratulations?” said Regina suspiciously, “for what?”
“Why for saving the Frecendi from annihilation! I’ll tell you that I was stunned to learn of Doctor Ramsey’s madness. I had talked with him a few times and I could see how jealous he was of your abilities, but I never dreamed it would drive him to something like this! Thank God you were able to stop him.”
Regina’s mouth was hanging open, but before she could say anything, Frichette stepped in. “Uh, yes, it was a near run thing, for sure. Before we left Bastet, I was going through Ramsey’s records in search of evidence. You know, trying to find out who else was involved. He certainly could not have done it alone.”