The stillness stretched out until the Fury broke it at last.
In truth, Little One, my promise to you may not matter in the end. I have not yet told you what I have learned.
"Learned?" Alicia stirred in her chair.
Indeed. While Megaira dispatched Procyon's AI, I sought a mind which could tell us more. I found one, and in it I found the truth.
Alicia snapped back to full alertness, driving the residual flicker of madness as deep as she could, and felt Megaira beside her in her mind.
The Fleet personnel who pursue us were most carefully selected by their commander, and their objective is to create such havoc as must force your Emperor to commit much of his fleet to this sector.
"We already knew that, but why? What can they possibly gain from it?"
The answer is simple enough, the Fury said grimly, for he who truly commands them is the one called Subrahmanyan Treadwell.
For just an instant the name completely failed to register, and then Alicia flinched in disbelief. "The Sector Governor? That-that's crazy!"
There is no question, Little One. It is he, and his objective is no less than to place a crown upon his own head.
"But... but how?"
He has requested massive reinforcements to "crush the pirates." Indeed, he has been promised the tenth part of your Fleet's active units and perhaps a third of its firepower. Once they arrive, Admiral Gomez will be relieved or die-it matters little to him-and replaced by Admiral Brinkman.
For a time, the pirates will prove even more successful. Their raids will spread across the border into the Macedon Sector, which is but lightly held, until they seem an irresistible scourge. And when the terror has reached its height, when the people of both sectors have come to believe the Empire cannot protect them, Treadwell will assume personal command of the Fleet and declare martial law. Brinkman will accept this, and they will relieve those captains most loyal to the Empire, replacing them with men and women loyal only to them, until Treadwell's control is total. And at that point, Little One, he will declare that the Empire has proven incapable of defending its people so far from the center of power. He will declare himself ruler of both sectors in the name of their salvation, offering to submit to a plebiscite when the "pirates" have been destroyed, and from that moment the raids will become less frequent. In the end, a carefully chosen squadron of his most loyal adherents will fight a false battle in which the "pirates" will appear to be utterly destroyed. He will then face his plebiscite, and even without manipulation of the votes, he will probably win.
"But the Emperor won't stand for it!" Alicia protested sickly.
Treadwell believes he will. That is the reason he seeks such naval strength. Surely the Emperor will realize that a civil war-and it would require nothing less, once Treadwell's plan has played itself out-will but invite the Rishathan Sphere to intervene? And remember this: none save Treadwell and his closest adherents will know what actually passed. All will believe, even the Emperor and his closest advisers, that he truly dealt, firmly and decisively, with a threat to the people he is sworn to protect. These sectors lie far from the heart of the Empire. Will the Emperor be able to rally sufficient public support for a massive operation against a man who but did what had to be done in so distant a province?
"Dear God," Alicia whispered. She licked bloodless lips, trying to grasp the truth, but the sheer magnitude of the crime was numbing.
"Megaira, did you get any of this from Procyon's computers?"
No, Alley. Even the brash AI was subdued and shaken. I didn't have time for data searches.
It would not have mattered, Megaira. There was no data for you to find. The details of the plan have never been committed to record-not, I venture to say, unreasonably.
"Yeah." Alicia inhaled deeply. The numbness was passing, and the flame of her madness guttered higher. She ground her heel upon its neck, driving it back down, and shook herself.
"Okay. What do we do with the information?"
Tell Ferhat? Megaira suggested hesitantly.
"Maybe. He'd believe us, I think, though it's for damned sure no one else will. I mean, who's going to take the unsupported word of a madwoman who talks to Bronze Age demons over that of a sector governor?"
I suppose I should resent that, but I fear you are correct.
"Yeah, and even if Ferhat believes us, he needs proof. They could never convict on what we can give them, and I doubt even O Branch would sanction a black operation against a sector governor."
Agreed. And that, Little One, is why my promises to you may stand meaningless in the end. I see only one way to destroy this traitor.
"Us," Alicia said grimly.
Indeed.
Now wait a darn minute! Do you two actually think we can get to a sector governor? What do you want to do, nuke the damned planet?!
It will not be necessary. Treadwell dislikes planets. His quarters are aboard Orbit One.
Oh, ducky! So all we have to do is fight our way in and punch out a six million-tonne orbital fortress with a third of my weapons so much junk? I feel lots better now.
"Are you saying you can't do it?" Alicia tried to make her voice light. "What happened to all that cheerful egotism when we busted out?"
Out is easier than in, Megaira said grimly, and you know damned well they'll have reworked their systems since, just in case we come back.
"So we can't get in?"
I didn't say that, Megaira replied unwillingly. I'll know better when I finish repairs-remember, that battlecruiser shot the hell out of me-but, yeah, I imagine we can get in. Only, if we do, I don't think we'll get out again, and I doubt anything I ever had was heavy enough to take out that fort. I certainly don't have anything left that could do the job.
"Oh yes, you do," Alicia said very softly. "The same thing that could have taken out Procyon."
Ram it? There was less shock in the AI's voice than there should have been, Alicia thought sadly. Like her, Megaira saw it as the possible answer to her fear of what she might become. I think we could do it, Megaira said at last, slowly. But there are nine thousand other people on that fort, Alley.
"I know."
Alicia frowned down at her hands and her shoulders hunched against the ice of her own words.
"I know," she whispered.
Chapter Sixty-Four
The black-and-gray uniformed woman looked up as a quiet buzzer purred. A light blinked, and she slipped into her synth-link headset and consulted her computers carefully, then pressed a button.
"Get me the Old Man," she said, and waited a moment. "Admiral, this is Lois Heyter in Tracking. We've got something coming in on the right bearing, but the velocity's wrong. They're still too far out for a solid solution, but it looks like our friend hasn't been able to hold the range open as planned." She listened, then nodded. "Yes, Sir. We'll stay on it."
She went back to her plot, and the close-grouped ships of war began to accelerate through the deep gloom between the stars. There was no great rush. They had hours before their prey dropped sublight-plenty of time to build their interception vectors.
***
James Howell glared at the enemy's blue dot and muttered venomously to himself.
He'd fired off over half the squadron's missiles, and he might as well have been shooting spitballs! It was maddening, yet he'd given up on telling himself things would have been different if Procyon's cyber-synth had survived to run the tactical net. To be sure, Trafalgar's AI was less capable than the dreadnought's had been, but not even Procyon's could have accomplished much against the alpha-synth's fiendish EW.
He knew that damned ship was badly damaged; the debris trail it had left at AR-12359/J would have proved that, even if its limping acceleration hadn't, yet it refused to die. It kept splitting into multiple targets that bobbed and wove insanely, and then swatted down the missiles that went for the right target source with contemptuous ease. What it might have been doing if it were undamaged hardly bore thinking on.
&nb
sp; But its time was running out. His ships would be into extreme energy torpedo range in seventy minutes, and even an alpha-synth's defenses could be saturated with enough of those. If they couldn't, he'd be into beam range in another eighteen and a half minutes, and no point defense could stop massed beam fire, by God!
***
"Admiral," Lois Heyter said tensely from Simon Monkoto's com screen, "we're picking up a second grav source-a big one-and it's decelerating hard."
"Put it on my plot," Monkoto said, and frowned down at the display. Lois was right; the second cluster of gravity sources, almost as numerous as those speeding towards them from AR-12359/J, was decelerating. He tapped his nose in thought. He supposed their arrival might be a coincidence... except that there was no star in the vicinity, and Simon Monkoto had stopped believing in coincidence and the tooth fairy years ago.
He juggled numbers, and his frown deepened as the newcomers' vector extended itself across the display. If those people kept coming as they were, things were about to get very interesting indeed.
***
A fresh sheet of lightning flashed and glared against the formless gray of wormhole space as Megaira picked off yet another incoming salvo, and Alicia winced. Thank God Megaira had no need of little things like rest! The "pirates" had been in missile range for over two hours, and if their supply of missiles was finite they seemed unaware of the fact. Anything less than an alpha-synth would have been destroyed long since.
They hadn't been supposed to reach missile range before turnover, but "supposed to" hadn't counted on Megaira's damage. Alicia's nerves felt sick and exhausted from the unremitting tension of the last hundred and thirty minutes, yet the end was in sight.
"Ready, Megaira?"
I am. I just hope the repairs are.
Alicia nodded in grim understanding. Megaira had labored unceasingly on her drive since their flight began, ignoring less essential repairs, and all they could say for certain was that it had worked... so far.
Maintenance remotes had built entirely new control runs in parallel with those cobbled up in such desperate haste, but they hadn't dared shut down long enough to shift over to test them with Howell's squadron clinging so closely to their heels.
Nor had they been able to test Megaira's other repairs. Twenty-five percent of her drive nodes had been crippled or destroyed outright by the same hit that smashed the control runs, and she'd had spares for less than half of them. Her theoretical grav mass was down five percent even after scavenging the less damaged ones, and while she'd bench-tested the rebuilt units, no one cut suspect nodes into circuit while underway in wormhole space.
Unfortunately, the maneuver they were about to attempt left them no choice. They'd been forced to leave their turnover far later than planned because of how much more quickly the "pirates" had closed the gap, and they would need every scrap of deceleration they could produce, tested nodes or no.
Coming up on the mark, Alley. Megaira broke into her thoughts quietly, and Alicia drew a deep breath.
"Thanks. Tisiphone?"
I am prepared, Little One. Relax as much as you may.
"I'm as relaxed as I'm going to get." She heard the quaver in her own voice and forced her hands to unclench. "Come ahead."
There was no spoken response, but she felt a stirring in her mind as Megaira extended a wide-open channel to the Fury with no trace of her one-time distrust. They reached out to one another, weaving a glowing web, and Alicia forced down a stir of jealousy, for she was excluded from its weaving. She could see it in her mind's eye, taste its beauty, yet she could not share in its creation. Beautiful it might be, but it was a trap-and she was its prey.
Currents of power crackled deep within her, and then the web snapped shut. She gasped and twisted, stabbed by agony that vanished almost before it was felt, and her eyes opened wide.
The seductive glitter of her madness was gone. Or, no, not gone-just... removed. It was still there, burning like poison in the glowing shroud Tisiphone and Megaira had woven, but it could no longer touch her. Blessed, half-forgotten peace filled her like the hush of a cathedral, and she sighed in desperate relief as her muscles relaxed for the first time in days.
"Thank you," she whispered, and felt Megaira's silent mental caress.
It is little enough, and I do not know how long we may hold it, Tisiphone replied more somberly, but all we may do, we will.
"Thank you," Alicia repeated more levelly, then gathered herself once more. "All right, Megaira-let's do it to these bastards."
***
Lois Heyter hunched over her console in concentration, then stiffened.
"Tell the Old Man we have decoy separation!" she snapped.
***
No more missiles fired. James Howell's lips were thin over his teeth as he waited out the last dragging seconds to energy torpedo range. If he were aboard that alpha-synth, this was when he'd go for a crash turnover -
There! The fleeing Fasset drive suddenly popped over, and he started to bark orders-then stopped dead. There were two sources on his display! One continued straight ahead at unchanged acceleration; the other hurtled towards him at a starkly incredible deceleration, and he swore feelingly.
He gritted his teeth and waited for Tracking to sort them out. Logic said the genuine source was the one charging at him in a frantic effort to break sublight and lose him... only it was coming at him at over twenty-five hundred gravities! How in hell could the alpha-synth produce that kind of power after its long, limping run? A fraction of that increase would have kept it out of his range, and alpha-synth point defense or no, not even a madwoman would have endured that heavy fire if she could have avoided it!
The source continuing straight ahead maintained exactly the same power curve he'd been watching for days, which might well indicate it was genuine, and that made his dilemma worse. If he decelerated to deal with the closing source and guessed wrong, the still fleeing one would regain a massive lead; if he didn't decelerate and the closing source was the genuine ship, he'd lose it entirely. One of them had to be some sort of decoy-but which one?
Whichever it was, he had to identify it quickly. The peculiarities of wormhole space augmented the deceleration of the closing source to right on three thousand gravities, and his squadron's acceleration translated it into a relative deceleration of more than forty-seven KPS per second. He had barely four minutes before it went sublight, and if he didn't begin his own deceleration at least thirty seconds before it did, he'd lose it forever.
***
Fasset drive generators were virtually soundless, their quiet hum as unobtrusive as a human heartbeat. But not now. Alicia clung to the arms of her command chair, teeth locked in a white, strained face, and the drive screamed at her like a tortured giant, shaking Megaira's iron bones like a hurricane until her vision blurred with the vibration.
The decoy, one of only two SLAM decoys Megaira carried, streaked away on their old course, and shipboard power levels exploded far past critical. Meters blew like molycirc popcorn, rebuilt control runs crackled and sizzled, patched-up generator nodes shrieked, and it went on and on and on and on....
***
"Turnover!" Lois Heyter barked. "We have turnover!" Her eyes opened wide, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "Dear God, look at that deceleration rate! How in hell is she holding it together?"
The cybernetic brain of the battleship Audacious noted the changing gravity signatures and adjusted its own drive. Vectors would converge with less than ten percent variance, it calculated with mild, electronic satisfaction.
***
Time was running out. Howell found himself pounding on the arm of his chair. If Tracking couldn't differentiate in the next ten seconds, he was going to have to go to emergency deceleration just to play safe. Losing distance on the alpha-synth if he'd guessed wrong would be better than losing it entirely, he told himself, and it did his frustration no good at all.
The leading source flickered suddenly, and his eyes narrowed. Ther
e! It flickered again, power fading, and he knew.
The range was down to four and a half million kilometers when Howell's entire squadron flipped end-for-end and began to decelerate madly.
***
Fifty seconds to sublight. Blood streaked Alicia's chin, her hands were cramped claws on her chair arms, and her battered brain felt only a dull wonder that they were still alive, but Megaira's mental voice was unshadowed by the hellish vibration. Forty. Thirty-fi-They've flipped, Alley!
***
"Here they come, boys and girls," Simon Monkoto murmured over his command circuit. He sat relaxed in his command chair, but his eyes were bright and hard, filled with a vengeful hunger few of his officers had ever seen in them. His gaze flicked over his display, and his mouth sketched a mirthless grin. The second group of gravity sources would drop sublight in nine minutes-out of range to hit the "pirates" but on an almost convergent vector.
David Weber - In Fury Born (ARC) Page 87