Traitor's Duty

by Richard Tongue

   “A Cabal ship, though? Why not a Triplanetary one?”

   “How well do you know transports, Ryder? Speaking purely personally, without the computers, I couldn’t tell one from another. All it has to do is drop into some out of the way spot, Triton Colony maybe, and send its message home from there. No-one at that flea-pit could tell the difference.”

   Managing a thin smile, she said, “You realize you’re probably talking about my next posting. Assuming I have a next posting.”

   “Intelligence will always give you a job if it comes to it. If I ever get back in touch with them again. Failing that, perhaps we could all just take off and seek adventure in the far stars.”

   “You don’t strike me as the explorer type.”

   “I grew up reading the same books that you did, and you might be surprised at how much time I’ve spent on the frontier.” Looking out at the stars, he continued, “I’ve spent more of the last decade outside Sol than back home.”

   “But, before…”

   “There are some routes that were well-worn even before Alamo set off on that first expedition, you know. Proxima Station, Omicron Eridani, far-flung outposts where there was still some freedom.”

   “I thought you were an information broker.”

   “Specializing in exotic alien artifacts. Not that getting hold of them was particularly easy. The industrial archeology companies are extremely jealous with their findings, especially the ones with a United Nations contract.”

   “Thinking of going back to that?”

   “Possibly. There’s a lot more stars to look at now than there were a few years ago, that much is certain, and the Cabal must have some interesting stories to tell. From what I picked up out of Alamo’s files, there’s plenty of scope for exploration.” He grinned, then said, “That’s one good thing about commanding this ship. Full access to the mission logs.”

   “I wish I hadn’t missed the trip,” Ryder said, looking wistful.

   “I’m sorry about that,” he replied. “I needed you on Spitfire, and I need you now. I promise that I won’t hold you back next time.”

   Shaking her head, she said, “I won’t hold you to that, Logan. What you said back at Carter Station was quite right; I go where I am needed, not where I want. Not while I’m wearing this uniform. For however much longer that turns out to be.”

   “You might be surprised. I was out for a decade, and they brought me back in eventually. And I wanted to leave.”

   “You’ve never told me what happened.”

   “No, I haven’t. And for the present, it’s going to stay that way.” He looked down at his uniform, and said, “Let’s just say I had a lesson in what this costume means, and that it soured me on it for a while.”

   “Yet you came back.”

   “There’s wasn’t much choice at the time, and maybe I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. Besides, I can’t deny that my life has been a lot more interesting since I put this thing back on.” He looked at the door to the bridge, and asked, “What about the crew? You know them a lot better than me. How are they holding up?”

   “Quinn and I are keeping them as busy as we can. Not hard, with so few of us on board. I don’t think they’ve really thought about what is likely to happen too much, though that’s liable to change later on.” She paused, then said, “They’ll do what they have to do. That much I do know.”

   “And afterward?”

   “I don’t think anyone’s given it too much thought. As I said, we’re keeping everyone moving fast enough that they aren’t getting any time to think. At least it will be over soon.”

   “Four and a half days to Hades Station. We’re going to have to be ready for anything when we emerge, up to and including a full Cabal task force armed for war.”

   “By now, the Triplanetary force will have arrived.”

   “And for all we know, we’ll find their component atoms scattered across the system, and a dozen battlecruisers lined up, pointing at the egress point. In which case I have no intention of fighting to the finish.”

   “Reassuring, though some of this crew have already been held captive by the Cabal once. They won’t let it happen again. We could go to a different egress point. There are several in that system.”

   Shaking his head, he replied, “Ending up too far to influence anything, or at best with a long delay. We haven’t just got to get out here, remember, we’ve got to get back, and as fast as we can. I don’t think we’ll have as easy a time of it on our return, either. Talking our way through Spitfire Station will be a lot tougher now they know we’ve borrowed this ship.”

   “It’ll be a whole task force though, surely.”

   “We can but hope. We could easily all be arrested as soon as we arrive.”

   “You’re in an optimistic mood today.”

   “The burdens of command.” He looked down at the desk again, and said, “Can we fight a battle?”

   “Let’s hope we don’t have to.”

   “But if it comes to that, could we?”

   She frowned, saying, “We’ll leave hendecaspace at battle stations and make sure everyone is well-rested before we return to normal space. As long as any fighting doesn’t last too long and we have someone to help us clean up the mess at the end, I don’t see any reason why not, but we’re going to be a glass fist, Logan.”

   “Damage control.”

   Nodding, she said, “We’ve only got three teams, and they’ve got an awful lot of ship to cover. Aside from the really critical areas, I think the odds of us making any repairs during a battle are next to none.”

   “Which means a near-instant tactical assessment, and getting any shots off first, while we have the ability to make them count.”

   “Agreed.”

   “Our goal is still to keep the peace, Ryder. We’ve got to hold onto that. It would be downright stupid for us to come all this way and end up starting the war we came out here to stop.”

   “I’m aware of that. I’m just not sure how many options we’re going to have. Don’t forget, this is still at least nominally enemy territory that we’re flying through.”

   “True.” He looked up at the countdown clock on the wall, patiently ticking down the seconds before Alamo could enter the safety of hendecaspace, and said, “Does it always count down so slowly?”

   “Unless you want it to.”

   “Figures.” Glancing down at the desk, he saw the reports log flash to indicate another batch of paperwork appearing in his message queue. “If you ignore all of this long enough, does it go away?”

   “I know there are some commanders who set the messages to automatically reply, but Captain Marshall used to find it therapeutic. Something to do while he was waiting for the action to start.”

   “Is that a not-so-gentle hint?”

   “You don’t want to leave too big a mess for your replacement, do you?”

   “I guess not.” He pushed a button at random, and read, “Fuel consumption status report. I thought you were keeping the crew busy?”

   “Three people worked for four hours to prepare that report for you.”

   A smile creeping across his face, he said, “Ah. Understood.”

   “It’s not just what’s out there waiting that’s bothering you, is it. It’s what we left behind.”

   “I should be back there, Ryder. That’s my job, and I’m good at it. I’m not a ship driver, I’m an intelligence agent. It wasn’t fair to dump all of that on Orlova and Harper.”

   “Don’t you have faith in them?”

   “Of course.”

   “Then what’s the problem?” She shook her head, and said, “Like it or not, for the moment you are a capital ship commander, which means that your place is on the bridge or in your office. Preferably the latter as a rule, because the crew never reacts well to someone looking over their shoulder. You’ve got to delegate.�
� Pausing, she added, “It’s Chambers, as well, isn’t it.”

   “She almost died because of the danger I got her into. She was just a political aide, damn it, not a combat soldier.” Shaking his head, he added, “The bastards we're fighting don't seem to care who strays into their line of fire.”

   “Melissa knew the risks she was taking when she signed up. More than most. That didn't stop her volunteering.”

   “The President talked her into it. Used words like duty and patriotism.” Sighing, he said, “Words that don't seem to mean a damn thing anymore.” Looking up, he said, “You know why I like being an agent? I like to know what’s going on, behind the scenes. I haven’t been this blind in a long time.”

   “Think of it this way. This is just a temporary assignment, and if you do a good enough job, you’ll be able to hand it over to someone else in a few weeks and get back to the seedy alleys and dodgy bars you like so much.”

   “Music to my ears.”

   She smiled, and turned for the door, saying, “If you’ll excuse me, I need to start finding myself things to do. The last thing I need is to start thinking about what we’re doing.”

   There was a chirp from his desk, and he responded with a start, tapping a control and saying, “Logan here.”

   “Bridge here, sir. We’ve got something from the freighter, sir. A message in code.”

   “How did you manage that, Weitzman?”

   “Steele here, sir. I suggested in our message that we were on a secret mission for Admiral Tramiel, and that we needed a situation update.”

   “They fell for that?” Logan said, incredulous. “This really is amateur hour.”

   “Not entirely, Captain,” the watch officer replied. “The response was encrypted, and Alamo’s database doesn’t have the key.”

   “Never mind, Sub-Lieutenant,” Ryder said. “That’s still good work.” She looked across at Logan, and asked, “Why didn’t you try that?”

   “I didn’t think it would work, and it was a bit obvious. It could be a deception, of course, some sort of false message, but we’re heading in the right direction for Steele’s story to work.” He tapped a series of controls, and pulled a worn datarod from his pocket. “Let’s see if I can open that file.”

   After a moment, he smiled, and said, “Got it. Apparently there was an attack on Hydra Station…”

   “Not Hades,” Ryder interrupted.

   “No,” he replied, shaking his head. “A Cabal task force, two battlecruisers and four scoutships. I’ll let you take a look at the details, but the basic gist is that they were repelled with light losses, and that Hydra is secure.” He paused, then said, “Damn.”

   “What’s the problem?”

   “If the Cabal launched an attack,” he looked at the date stamp and continued, “two weeks ago, that might suggest that they never had any intention of honoring the peace treaty in the first place.” Shrugging, he said, “Of course, this might just be a trick, as I said, and we don’t know what’s happened out here since the task force left. Tramiel might not have needed any help to start a war.”

   “Then we might have come out here for nothing.”

   “Hardly that,” Logan said. “In the worst case, we’ve just thrown another laser battlecruiser at the front line. I doubt we’ll get any serious complaints about that. Not until the dust settles, anyway.”

   “And when it does?”

   “My advice? Be elsewhere.”

  Chapter 5

   Orlova took a sip of her coffee, and glanced around the restaurant for the fifth time. The view was perfect from her table, looking out across the street to the nondescript building on the far side, the one with two security guards standing in front of it. To the casual observer, they were just private guards, nothing to attract attention, but they were carrying last-model Triplanetary sidearms at their belt, and standing in a perfect ‘at ease’ stance.

   She glanced down at her datapad, looking at the specifications again. Former Cornucopia offices, sold to a holding company six months ago, listed as Progressive Party headquarters for Sagan City. Evidently those plans had changed; no placards, signs or banners trying to tempt people to yield them their vote, just two stony-faced guards.

   Again, to the casual observer, the former owners of the building would have meant little other than another collapsed company, which had managed to cause a nine-month slump on their way down. Given that Cornucopia was a Cabal front, however, she was willing to bet that there were some interesting surprises waiting in that building, gadgets that the new owners might well be making use of. They could hardly hold the Commandant in a Triplanetary facility; using one of the open ones would have led to a lot of questions no-one wanted to answer, and Intelligence wasn’t co-operating sufficiently to let them use a safe house.

   The second hand of her old watch continued to count down, slowly heading for the deadline. The wonderful thing about living in a completely artificial environment was that everything had to be controlled, and therefore could be taken over. Naturally, most of the systems had lots of redundancies and back-ups. Taking out the life support systems would never be permitted to happen, but the more cosmetic features had rather less security. Such as the lighting, for example. She reached into her pocket for her sunglasses, closed her eyes, counted to five, and slipped them on.

   Harper had done her job well, and the blinding light had everyone unprepared in a daze, including the two guards at the door. As she raced across the street, all the exterior lights went out, and her glasses automatically switched to night-vision, giving her a perfect view of the pandemonium taking place outside. From a far corner, out of sight, a pair of blowguns, wielded by two soldiers from the Ragnarok Embassy who had volunteered for the assignment, fired two darts at the guards, who slumped down to the ground as Orlova raced past.

   By now, security would be all over the place, but their priority was going to be dealing with the sabotage to the lighting systems, with everything else permitted to wait. There was no way that they could permit any risk that someone might escalate to the heating. The lights flashed on again, and Orlova slid her reliable hacking datarod, recently augmented with Cabal programming, into the door slot, and with a series of quick clicks, it opened.

   For a brief second, she paused. All of this was going a little too smoothly, too much according to plan. Regardless, she pressed on into the building, heading for the central corridor. It was only a three-floor office complex, and at a single glance she realized that the plans filed in Central Records were complete fiction; nonetheless, the top levels were unlikely to have anything interesting. Too easy to access by members of the public.

   Downstairs was the key, into the basement level, and as she suspected, there was a hatch access to the old shelter complex, a ladder leading down into the gloom. An ear-shattering alarm began to sound, and she tensed up before realizing that it was the depressurization alarm, again, Harper’s work. While actually knocking out the protective dome or messing with the atmosphere was something she’d never consider, the alarm systems were surprisingly easy to set off. One more distraction.

   Moving quickly, she scrambled down the ladder, tossing a small sphere above her as she slid down the shaft, hearing it rattle on the floor above. She planted another on the wall, tucking it over one of the old light fittings; the equipment here was a century old, but the pioneers built it to last. Not that they would have ever considered that an enemy intelligence service would make use of their work.

   She dropped down to the floor, and immediately found what she was looking for – a series of cells running the length of the corridor, the old living quarters re-tasked to a new function. Each of them had their own airlock, bulky and old-fashioned, intended as an emergency shelter back in the old days. The systems had recently been updated to top-of-the-line Cabal standards, but she had plenty of experience at hacking them. It was easy to tell which of them had been used recently
, the trails on the floor were testament to that, and at the first try, she peered through the viewing window at the Commandant, sitting cross-legged on the floor in meditative pose.

   Rolling another sphere across the ground, she quickly started the work on the lock, and got her first shock when a loud report sounded when she opened the door; the pressure inside had been left slightly higher than in the corridor, enough that the echo reverberated around the walls. The Commandant rose to his feet with a smile.

   “What kept you?” he asked.

   “You’re damn lucky that I came at all,” she replied. “Come on. We need to move.”

   She turned to see a familiar figure walking down the corridor, and snatched her pistol from her holster in time to match his draw. The two of them stood, facing each other, guns out and pointed in textbook fashion.

   “Captain Tarrant,” she said. “I should have expected you to be here yourself.”

   “I’m surprised at you, Maggie,” he said. “To have fallen for so obvious a trap.”

   “I was in a hurry. Nevertheless, unless part of your plan was an elaborate murder/suicide pact, I don’t think things are working out for you.”

   Shaking his head, he replied, “You have no intention of shooting me, and the two of us know it. So why don’t we stop the pretense and get on with our business. My offer for you to join our cause remains.”

   “I never thought I’d say this, but I’ll stick with the Commandant.”

   With a wide grin, the Cabal officer said, “I’m very pleased to hear it, especially after everything we have been through together.”

   “You’d side with an enemy over a person wearing the same uniform as you?”

   “All I see in this corridor is a traitor and a prisoner.”

   “I’m doing…”

   “Your duty,” she said. “We’ve covered all of this before. I haven’t changed my mind, and I have no intention of so doing.”