by Rick Partlow
Pirelli was about to admonish the Tactical officer for his outburst, but then she saw what he had seen: the protuberances on the raider ship that she had assumed were extra weapons pods were glowing blue, and then the ship abruptly disappeared from the optical cameras.
“Oh for God’s sake,” she bit off, fury filling her. When the image of the ship returned, simulated by the computer using the Triton’s gravimetic sensors, it was surrounded by a blue halo that she knew all too well was the computer’s way of indicating that the raider ship was surrounded by an Eysselink field. The Triton’s interceptor slammed into the field and was ripped apart by the tidal forces of rippling spacetime.
“How did goddamned pirates get ahold of Eysselink drive field generators?” Burckhardt exclaimed, unable to keep silent. “And antimatter?”
“Later,” Pirelli snapped, her mind racing.
The Triton wasn’t a Fleet cruiser: she wasn’t equipped with gravimetic projectors that could take out drive fields. No one thought she or the other Patrol cutters would need them, dealing with pirates and smugglers and putting down uprisings on the new colonies. Her sensor projectors could be modified to do the same thing, but that would take time they didn’t have.
Fortunately, there was one other way to take out a drive field.
“Helm,” Pirelli said, “set collision course. In one minute, initiate a three gravity burn.” There was a subdued groan from someone on the bridge, but she ignored it. “Engineering,” she called over her ‘link,
“Engineering here, ma’am,” the answer came over her ear bud.
“We’re going to be attempting a field intersect,” she told Commander D’Antonio, the ship’s Chief Engineer. “Prepare the backup power trunk because the primary one will fail. I need power up immediately after we hit.”
“Aye, ma’am,” D’Antonio’s reply was hesitant.
Pirelli understood why. No one on the ship except her had attempted touching drive fields with another ship. The resultant power surge would bring down both ship’s drive fields and the gravito-inertial feedback could cause some serious damage…to people as well as the ship.
The alarm sounded again and Pirelli tried to tense her core muscles, but it still felt as if an elephant were sitting on her chest. Breathing came with great difficulty and speaking was torture. They were burning a lot of antimatter and a cutter the size of the Triton couldn’t carry as much as the big Fleet cruisers---but the raider ship couldn’t carry even that much.
“C gate is deactivated,” Baker, the Commo Officer told her, gasping the words out.
Pirelli didn’t respond, but she knew closing the gate wouldn’t matter now. The raider had its own Eysselink field generator and could use it to expand the wormhole without the aid of the station’s hardware.
“Bogie is at two g’s,” Milankovic grunted the words out. “Field intersect estimated in three minutes, thirty seconds.”
“Ship that size would have limited fuel,” Burckhardt said. Pirelli was impressed with how clearly he was able to speak with the added g-pressure. “Won't be able to accelerate any faster. We'll overtake them."
"They should surrender," Baker muttered, barely audible. "They have to know they can't get away..."
As if the occupants of the raider ship had heard the man's words, the blue halo of the Eysselink drive field around their ship vanished and the image of the raider vessel was rushing up to meet them at breakneck speed...
"Full reverse thrust!" Pirelli was yelling, but it was far too late. One instant the raider ship was there, and the next it was nonexistent, shredded by contact with the Triton's drive field. "Cease acceleration," Pirelli countered her previous order before a stunned Burckhardt could carry it out. "Drive to station keeping."
The pressure lifted from her chest and zero gravity replaced it; she had to force bile back into her throat as the sudden release nearly caused her to throw up. Over on the other side of the bridge, she could see the junior Engineering officer heaving silently into a spacesick bag. Under other circumstances, she might have felt sympathy, but at the moment, all she could feel was impotent rage. Only the burden of command prevented her from launching into a fusillade of profanity.
"They dropped their field intentionally," Lt. Milankovic said, shaking his head in disbelief. "They committed suicide rather than face capture." He waved a hand at the empty space around them. "We've got nothing."
Pirelli sat motionless for a moment, trying to make her mind work, trying to stay calm.
"Baker, grab the feed from the gates and the long range sensors on Kali and around Vishnu," she instructed slowly and deliberately. "Find out which gate that raider came through and when. We are going to track this thing back as far as we can, and then we're going to report what we have to Fleet Intelligence." She snorted a soft, humorless laugh. "I hope General McKay can figure this out, because it beats the hell out of me."
Chapter One
Shannon Stark saw Jason McKay’s face cloud over as he watched the recording of Captain Pirelli’s message again. Normally, he wore a Boy Scout look of resolute sincerity, sometimes edging into sarcastic humor with a crooked grin; but the fierce scowl he wore at the moment transformed his boyish face into something much less pleasant.
“It’s not going to get any less infuriating no matter how many times you play it,” she told him, pitching her voice low so the flitter’s pilot wouldn’t hear their conversation from the cockpit.
“It’s the Protectorate,” he declared, tossing the tablet down on the seat beside him. “It’s gotta be.”
“You know, around the Capitol they’re starting to call you Captain Ahab,” she told him, a teasing grin glinting in her green eyes. “They say that every raider attack in the last four years sends you chasing after Antonov like he’s the great, white, Russian whale.”
“Come on, raider ships with antimatter and Eysselink drives?” He waved a hand at the tablet. “There aren’t too many other explanations for that.” He chuckled. “Besides, wouldn’t that be ‘General Ahab?’”
“We have antimatter production plants in every settled system,” she reminded him, “for the gate devices and to refuel our ships. It wouldn’t be too difficult for someone to grease the right palm and siphon some of it off here and there.”
“Maybe,” he admitted grudgingly. “But why would they nuke an oil tanker and then suicide unless they had something to hide? That’s not something your run-of-the-mill hijackers would do.”
“I’m on your side, babe,” she reminded him, putting a hand on his arm. “But that’s what he is going to say.”
“Yeah, he is,” McKay sighed, leaning back in the seat, closing his eyes for a moment. “If you’d told me nine years ago that I would be missing the good old days of the O’Keefe administration…”
“Have you heard from him?” Shannon asked.
McKay shook his head. “Not for weeks. He’s not very interested in being in the public eye. He spends most of his time with Natalia…which is why he resigned the Presidency in the first place, I suppose.”
“That and the economic collapse that followed the Protectorate attack,” Shannon reminded him.
“It still pisses me off,” McKay said, the fierce scowl returning, “that President Jameson gets to reap the benefits of us finding the way to open the wormhole gates on a mission that President O’Keefe ordered.”
“It opened up cheap and easy access to a hundred habitable worlds and millions of moons and asteroids that are easier and cheaper to mine than the ones in the Solar System,” Shannon pointed out. “It saved the economy and started an expansion of the Republic that will last decades. Someone was going to take credit for it, and President O’Keefe had already resigned.”
“He should have stuck it out,” McKay insisted. “He could have weathered the storm.”
“It wasn’t our call, Jason,” Shannon said, squeezing his hand.
“Two minutes out, sir, ma’am,” the pilot called back to them.
Sha
nnon glanced around and saw that their aircraft was descending towards the Capitol landing pad, the conjoined skyscrapers of the mega-city rising around them in a claustrophobic embrace. “Remember what this meeting is about, Jason,” she whispered, punching him lightly on the arm for emphasis. “It’s not another gripe-fest about how we haven’t invaded Novoye Rodina yet. If you bring up the raider problem, do it tactfully.”
“Yes, mother,” he muttered. “God, I remember when I didn’t need a handler with a muzzle sitting next to me when I talked to the President…”
“Jason,” she said with a laugh that still made something inside him go all warm and tingly after ten years, “you’re not even forty. You are not old enough to be starting a sentence with ‘I remember when’ yet.”
“This job is making me feel old,” he grumbled as the flitter touched down lightly on the concrete pad.
A government groundcar met them at the edge of the pad, automated as most were in the city, and took them toward the Executive Offices, past the towering cathedrals of the first unified world government, rising above them like the pyramids of old. They were silent for the ride, knowing how easy it was to bug such vehicles and knowing also how cut-throat the politics had become in this city.
Shannon used the time to review the files they’d been sent to prepare for the meeting, eyes scanning her tablet wordlessly. She’d heard that the bleeding edge tech types were forgoing handheld devices for contact lenses or even corneal implants that shot the data directly into the optic nerve, but she was a bit too old-fashioned for something that drastic---not to mention that the consequences of a malfunction in a tactical situation would be unfortunate.
The ride was mercifully short and soon they were descending into a restricted-access tunnel that led them past multiple guard stations, some automated and some crewed, but all covered by redundant scanners and both lethal and nonlethal weapons emplacements. All of them passed them through without a halt, and they cruised slowly through parking lots of automated vehicles, watching government employees, corporate lobbyists and military aides swarming through the area like worker ants.
They left them all behind as the road became narrower and the guard stations more prominent until there was no one else in sight in the dimly-lit tunnels and the only stop left was a single, unmarked elevator with a single parking space next to it. Their car stopped neatly in the space and Jason and Shannon shared a look as they stepped out and walked up to the elevator station.
Things had definitely changed in the last few years, Shannon thought as Jason palmed the access panel beside the elevator. The door opened to admit them, then closed behind them with a firm finality. She knew they were undergoing biometric scans as the car began moving. One identifying feature out of place and the elevator would be flooded with gas, followed by a disabling stun field, and they would be deposited in a deep, dark security cell.
Shannon could see in Jason’s eyes that he wanted very badly to break out another “I remember when” comment and was barely restraining himself. If the groundcar was arguably bugged, the elevator was one hundred percent sure to be monitored; and while Jason’s position was secure, it didn’t pay to make enemies carelessly. Of course, she’d had to drum that idea into his head through repeated lectures, but it had finally taken hold; Jason was stubborn but not stupid.
The lift moved very quickly, taking them not just up but diagonally through the office building, coming to an abrupt halt that had made them stumble the first time they’d ridden it. Experience allowed them to brace for the sudden stop, and then the door slid aside and they stepped out into a sterile, unadorned hallway. At the end of the narrow corridor was a bare metal door and a lone guardian stood there in a generic dark suit, his professional eye looking them both over as they approached.
“Good morning General McKay, Colonel Stark,” he said genially.
“Agent Proctor,” McKay said in return. He smiled. “Is it morning? We just came down from Fleet Headquarters…it’s hard to keep the time zones straight from up there.”
“Hope you had a pleasant flight,” the Presidential Security agent offered as he touched a button on the ear bud of his ‘link. “Alpha three confirm,” he muttered to his contact on the other side of the door. A slight hesitation and then he nodded. “You can go right in, sir, ma’am.”
The door opened and Shannon and Jason walked from the antiseptic halls of secrecy into the well-appointed and ornately adorned private offices of the most powerful man in human space, the President of the Republic. It was true of anyone who had held the office, but it was a particularly apt description of Greg Jameson, Shannon decided as she watched the man rise from his desk to greet them.
“Thanks for coming,” he said, his voice a modulated baritone that could have been booming if he hadn’t kept it under tight control.
“Mr. President,” McKay returned, shaking his hand.
Everything about the man exuded a sense of power and control. His imposing height and broad-shouldered athlete’s build were intimidating to most people, and his practiced and welcoming handshake gave the unmistakable impression that he could break every one of your fingers if he weren’t such a reasonable person.
The other man in the office gave none of those impressions. He was of average height and build, but there was something about him that made him seem both smaller and yet also simultaneously overinflated. He’d risen from his seat at their approach, but he didn’t offer a hand
“I believe you know Director Ayrock,” President Jameson said by way of introduction.
“Director,” Shannon said with a nod, since she knew McKay wasn’t about to offer the man a greeting.
And unfortunately, they did know Ayrock, all too well. The man had been promoted during Jameson’s clean sweep of all non-military government agencies four years ago. Before that, he’d had an unremarkable career that had dead-ended in ten years stuck in counterintelligence, and the swiftness of his ascent was inversely proportionate to his competence, as far as McKay was concerned.
“If you would have a seat,” President Jameson motioned towards a pair of chairs positioned across from Ayrock’s in front of the antique mahogany desk that Jameson had moved there from the museum that had been the American White House. It was purposely uncluttered, but he did keep one affectation there: a heavy crystal trophy he’d won as the quarterback at the University of Florida as a junior.
“I would like to go on record,” Ayrock said, his doughy white face going red in the cheeks, “that I oppose the idea of involving military assets in what is properly the jurisdiction of the Criminal Investigative Service. We are perfectly capable of handling this on our own, if we were…”
“Philip,” Jameson interrupted the man, his voice as final as the grave, “if your department were capable of handling this on your own, I wouldn’t be listening to daily complaints from the Southern States Governors’ Committee and the Pan-Asian Development Bureau that we aren’t doing enough about the hundreds of innocent civilians who’ve been killed in these terrorist attacks. So you can consider your objection noted and overruled, and now we will move on.”
CIS Director Ayrock settled back into his chair, rebellion in his eyes but his mouth obediently shut.
“So,” President Jameson continued, “we’re here about the recent attacks in the East and Southblocs.” He touched a control projected above the surface of his desk and a holographic display flickered to life above it, showing footage of the smoldering wreckage of high-speed trains, apartment buildings and auditoriums, with charred bodies being carried away by emergency workers. “I assume you’ve read the files.”
“Yes, sir,” McKay confirmed. “Four attacks over the last six months: Montevideo, Tegucigalpa, Pyongyang and Phuket. Over a thousand civilian fatalities and nearly one hundred million dollars’ worth of property damage, all told.”
“We could almost have read the whole file off the newsnets,” Shannon interjected, “for as much as any government agency knows abou
t the connection between the strikes.” She shrugged. “If there is any, other than temporal proximity.”
“The strikes were all carried out by locals,” McKay pointed out, steepling his fingers together as he considered the images in the file projection. “They all had long histories of involvement with local terrorist organizations and they all suicided in the commission of the attacks. All the attacks were committed in the old neighborhoods of regions where modernization lags behind the more developed areas by a hundred years, including security measures.” He gestured at the images of carnage. “It could simply be that the others got the idea for striking soft targets from the first attack and followed it up in their own backyard. It’s happened before.”
“The heads of the national and local governments in South and Central America and populated Asia think there’s a connection,” President Jameson said, “which means we are going to put the full resources of Fleet Intelligence and the First Special Operations Command into this operation until we can prove there isn’t.”
“Yes, sir,” McKay replied dutifully. Shannon knew what he was thinking though: that if it had been Daniel O’Keefe, he would have argued the point further, with some hope that his arguments would be seriously considered.
“Sir,” Shannon began slowly, “can I be frank here?”
“Colonel Stark,” Jameson said, smiling thinly, “I have never known reticence to be among your faults.”
“Sir,” she went on, “it would take months, if not years, to put an agent in place among the political malcontents of even one of those groups, and there’s no guarantee that we’d pick one that actually had any knowledge of the connection.”
“Are you saying you can’t do it?” Ayrock asked challengingly, resentment in his dark eyes.
“What I’m saying,” Shannon clarified, still looking at the President, “is that we can’t do any better than the RIS…if we treat this as a criminal investigation, as they are legally bound to do.”