“Is that what you think?”
“I said that’s the operative theory. Not my theory.”
“What does everyone else think?”
“Define everyone.”
Huron shrugged with an open-handed gesture. When Trin got into this mood, it was usually better just to let her talk.
“Since Nedaema has a new government and the orgy of finger-pointing has died down, most people have lost interest. A few outlets are still flogging the story but no one is paying much attention. The official response was initially so incoherent people are pretty well satisfied that it’s just a case of government bungling.”
She paused, rubbing her lower lip with an index finger. “You know they arrested that guy who put out the mash-up of the firefight, don’t you?”
“No. I missed that. How’d they justify that?”
“Badly. First they said the video had enough ‘potentially valid’ details in it to make him a person of interest—unquote. Sent this poor woman out to brief the media on it. Then they got caught when someone ID’d the clips he used to put the whole thing together. So then they said their spokesperson misspoke and hung her out to dry. That only confirmed people’s opinion they were just trying to cover up their incompetence.”
“Not like the former Archon to bungle something that badly.”
“He didn’t. The Foreign Secretary was feeling a lot of heat and needed a distraction while she got her story together. Thought she could feed this guy to the media to buy some time and then explain it away afterwards. Typical of a political appointee trying to get clever.”
“What happened to the guy?”
“The vid author? He’s still under arrest.”
“For making a video?”
“Sort of. Turns out he had a prior conviction for malicious slander and virtual trespassing. Terms of his sentence prohibit him from posting anything to the clouds.”
“What did he do?”
“He was on this personal antislavery crusade—”
“At least his heart was in the right place.”
“Sort of. He made these ‘documentaries,’ he called them, exposing ‘tools of the slave trade’—real conspiracy theory stuff. He’d go after just about everyone who is anyone.”
“Did I at least get a cameo?”
“In a manner of speaking. You and your father were held up as paragons of righteousness.”
“I think I just got my feelings hurt.”
“Do tell. Anyway, then he got ambitious and went after Jackson Holder.”
“That’s ambitious?” The combative CEO of Caelius Protogenos had more enemies than he had hair follicles. Slandering him was a favored way of breaking the ice at cocktail parties.
“More specifically, he went after Holder’s daughter. Hacked her Zeta account.”
“Okay. That’s ambitious.”
“Turns out she’d posted quite a number of private videos there. Intimate get-togethers with a few dozen of her closest friends. That sort of thing. The proceedings tended to get a little outré—even by New Californian standards.”
“I see.”
“I’m sure you do. He put together what you might call a highlight reel and included it in one of his documentaries to demonstrate the perfidy of Holder senior and show what he was spending his shareholders’ money on.”
“Now let me see if I have this right: this guy made a video accusing Jackson Holder of procuring sex slaves for his daughter’s kinky parties?”
“You should really come over to the intel side, Rafe. Your perspicacity never fails to amaze.”
That was either a jibe or a genuine compliment. Either way, Huron ignored it. “I’m a little surprised he still has the use of his limbs.”
“He might be too. Certainly he seems comfortable enough in Nedaeman custody.”
“So it’s a win-win. What’s the feeling inside the community?” Guiding the conversation back to the subject at hand.
“Not that much different than outside it.” Trin’s expression had settled into a decided scowl. “The Board still meets—in fact, it met again last week to review the lightspeed data we’re starting to collect. As usual, that generated more heat than light.”
Huron knew the Board in question: the League had established it at Nedaema’s request to independently investigate the failure of the Lacaille operation. He knew most of the people on it, too. With a few exceptions, generating light was not among their outstanding qualities.
“So they are falling in with the general consensus?”
“I think so. The final postmortems aren’t all in yet, but the prevailing opinion seems to be that the op plan was fragile, the team underestimated the opposition or somehow blundered and the Lacaille forces caught them by surprise.”
Huron agreed with the first and third points.
“The Messian rep even quoted ‘never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.’ I think Mayfield would have strangled him, if he could have found a protocol that covered it.”
Carter Mayfield was the deputy head of NDIA’s counterintelligence branch; Huron had testified before him during the Alecto investigation. The idea of the short, stuffy Nedaeman trying to figure out how to strangle a corpulent Messian aristocrat ‘by the book’ was irresistibly droll.
“I suppose it’s lucky then that Nedaema’s not a dueling culture.”
“If they were, half the Board would be fertilizer now.” Trin’s scowl twisted at the edges. “Of course, now that I come to think of it . . .”
Huron cleared his throat diplomatically. “No one’s raising any red flags, then.”
Trin flipped both hands—exasperation mingled with disgust. “No one’s really looking for them. The new government isn’t interested in digging too far into the failures of the old one, and those people who’ve survived the purges are keeping their heads down. I think there’s a hope that this asinine ultimatum will moot the whole question one way or another and honor will somehow be satisfied.”
The way things were heading, it certainly did look as though there was a good chance the whole question would be moot—once the shooting started. He nodded. “So I think you’ve just talked yourself into going ahead with this. Based on what you’ve told me, what have we got to lose?”
Sagging back in her chair, Trin regarded her almost untouched coffee, which had achieved room temperature some time ago. “You are wasted over there. Do you think she’ll agree to cooperate?”
“Kris? Maybe. If we can avoid treating her like a subhuman who’s just learned to wear shoes.” Kris’s interview with NDIA regarding the Alecto investigation had lasted all of two minutes. The interviewer had seen fit to start off with “Now, young woman, you are in the Homeworlds, and I want to you to understand that it is very, very important that you tell the truth.” Things had gone downhill from there, and the interviewer hadn’t yet reached the verb of her third sentence when Kris got up and left. Personally, Huron, when he’d heard about it, commended her restraint.
“NDIA won’t be involved,” Trin said succulently; she’d heard the same story.
“It would be good to keep participants to a minimum, and I imagine the Academy would prefer that anyway. Have they agreed yet, by the way? Hoste is a bit doctrinaire about protocol and he may not be entirely happy about our wanting to hijack a first-year cadet. Especially given the security implications.”
“I’m going to Nereus on other business, so I plan on talking to them personally—find out their ground rules before we get deeper into this. My faith in v-mail isn’t so high just now.”
“That’s convenient.”
“You know how ONI is fond of holding coordination meetings. Besides, I’m a bit overdue for my annual security update.”
“Come to think of it, I probably am too. Maybe I should tag along. Save a lot of time that way.”
“Be my guest. As long as you can be reasonably discreet about it.”
“I suspect it’s time for the admiral to send ou
t a memo upbraiding us lax staff officers for not keeping all our certs current.”
“That should do it.”
“What are your thoughts about attending the meeting then? If it happens?”
“I can’t say yet. This should be as low-profile as possible. We’ll have to include someone from CID, since we’re talking about slaver ops, and SECNAV will want to send a senior navy rep. And you, of course, since you’ll be the mission’s ops officer. I’d like to keep it to that.”
Three wasn’t too many. SECNAV—Huron did not think they would be a problem. Their operations people weren’t likely to be fussy as long as they saw the right boxes were being checked. Inviting CID was a professional courtesy and also to ensure they didn’t crash the party—and vice versa. But there was still the issue of why they were questioning a cadet on such a sensitive topic in the first place.
“How do we explain Kris?”
“As far as ONI and CID are concerned, she’s a PLESIG-vetted asset.”
“A reliable HUMINT source?”
“Actually, no. She’s officially listed as just a knowledgeable resource. That way she’s not associated with any specific events.”
“And d’Harra and the Inner Trifid are still the fruits of tech exploitation.”
“That’s our story and we’re sticking to it”—with the glimmer of a smile.
That should fly, Huron thought, if they could avoid getting a busybody with an enthusiasm for connecting the dots. “Any idea who CID might be sending?”
“If we’re clever about scheduling it and don’t give them any more notice than we absolutely have to, I think we can ensure it will be someone relatively harmless. The higher-ups hate these things.”
“Excellent. They’re in the middle of War Week right now, so we’ll have to wait until after the end of the term to schedule this anyway. That should provide plenty of flexibility on the timing.”
“Quite. I’ll keep you in the loop, and once I’ve talked to them, we’ll plan accordingly.”
“Looking forward to it.” Huron stood. “By the way, how’s Nick doing these days?”
“Now you’re going to start prying into my private life?”
“So you and Nick do have a private life.”
“Don’t start.”
Chapter Eighteen
CEF Academy Orbital Campus
Deimos, Mars, Sol
“Welcome to today’s op, Cadets.” Commander Buthelezi looked out at the twelve expectant faces before her—expectant, but not universally eager. It was the last day of War Week, and aside from the fact that it actually lasted ten Terran days, not seven, it was specifically designed to be brutal. Buthelezi could see the effects of sleep deprivation on several faces, and on a couple, the despair born of repeated crushing defeats. She predicted that less than half of the prospective pilots before her were going to come back next term for more.
Two she was sure would: Cadets Kennakris and Basmartin. Kennakris was waiting eagerly, almost fiercely, for their assignment. War Week had awakened something in her that one rarely saw, and she’d actually seemed to get stronger as the days progressed. Basmartin’s enthusiasm, though certainly marked, was of a less ferine nature. As a student, he was solid, steady, precise and seemed almost indefatigable. There was chemistry between them; they made a good team, with Basmartin’s uncommon common sense anchoring Kennakris’s inveterate seat-of-the-pants risk-taking. And they were almost tied for the lead in War Week points—Kennakris leading by only two.
“This is a Red Team/Blue Team op for all the marbles,” Buthelezi continued, flashing the point total on the screen. Ten faces fell: it was almost equal to the possible score of all their exercises so far combined. Kris’s eyes narrowed slightly and Buthelezi could have sworn they got a little brighter, while Basmartin just looked over at her and smiled. “And you get to pull out all the stops. Here we go.”
Buthelezi adjusted the display and brought up a star system in the holographic volume of the classroom’s big omnisynth, now configured as the Ready-Ops room of a light carrier. “Lacaille,” Buthelezi announced to a general murmur. Lacaille had been even more in the media since the change in the Nedaeman government; the ongoing drama surrounding the proposed ultimatum had kept it a top-line item almost every news cycle.
“This is the situation: The Lacaille government has detained a diplomatic packet carrying sixteen of our people, including a senior consular official, sent there to negotiate the extradition of Nestor Mankho.” Murmurs of approval and nodding heads were cut short by the commander’s sharp look. Kris was, she noticed, the only one who had not taken her eyes off the display.
“They are blaming irregularities in some of our people’s credentials for the delay and claim the meetings will commence when those are addressed. But they’ve disabled the packet’s jump convolver, and we have evidence they are in communication with the Bannermans. Our sources indicate that once they have active Bannerman support, they intend to use our people as hostages to get a number of unacceptable concessions. The packet is still in orbit around Lacaille and our best intel is that our people are still on it. Our response is to dispatch two corvettes transporting a team of marines to rescue our people and then recover or destroy the packet. Your mission is to affect this rescue. Four of you will be assigned to the corvettes. The rest will provide fighter cover for the operation.”
Louder murmurs now, with three cases of indiscreet eye-rolling. This scenario was vastly more involved than anything they had previously been presented with.
“Focus, people,” Buthelezi snapped, recalling all eyes to her. “Lacaille’s Navy, such as it is”—smiles at this—“is stationed at their primary moon, where their main orbital base is. You’ll find what we know about their current order of battle uploaded to your xels, but briefly, their heaviest combatants are destroyers, mostly old Halith refits, although they do have two newer ships that were domestically produced. Only six can be considered up-to-date and operational, and of those, we believe two are undergoing refit in airdock at this time. The older ships are either mothballed or laid up in ordinary.
“In addition, we estimate they have four new frigates, two of which we know to be operational. The other two were recently undergoing OPEVAL trials and may still be fitting out. They also have twenty older boats—again, originally Halith—of which at least six are undergoing refit with new weapons and sensor systems.”
Commander Buthelezi scanned the little group to see how this info was being received. Overall, pretty well, she thought. “So as far as major combatants go, we estimate only four destroyers and perhaps eight frigates are ready to sortie on short notice. Sortie time from their moon to planetary orbit is sixty to ninety minutes. It is unlikely that they have more than one destroyer and two frigates hot”—meaning they could sortie within the hour—“the rest will take at least twelve standard hours to get underway.
“Normal patrol duties in Lacaille space are handled by corvettes and LMACs. They do have quite a number of light interceptors and some strike fighters but they do not use these for patrol. They are attached to their main orbital base and don’t operate independently.
“We are here”—Commander Buthelezi highlighted a jump field just at the limit of deep-radar range from the Lacaille system—“and these are Lacaille jump fields.” She highlighted these as well; there were three, almost equally spaced just outside the orbit of the lone gas giant in the system and more-or-less synchronous with it. “You will jump into this field here”—Buthelezi indicated the jump field closest to the gas giant—“and make a transit along this route to Lacaille orbit.” An orange line skirting the gas giant curved in gracefully to intersect the planet.
“Estimated transit time is two-hundred-sixty minutes. If you maintain schedule, you will reach the packet’s position while it is at its maximum distance from their primary moon, adding an extra thirty minutes or so to their response time. Once you intercept the packet, you in the fighters will establish overwatch while the
marines from the corvettes board and recover our people. You will see that we have allowed forty-five minutes for this operation. You will then escort them to the jump field that provides the best avenue for exit, getting your jump convolver settings from the corvettes. Questions?”
Basmartin raised a polite finger. Buthelezi nodded to him. “Do we know who’s keeping an eye on the packet?”
“There have been one—sometimes two—corvettes in company most of the time. We believe there have been one or two LMACs visiting sporadically as well. Our corvettes will handle any corvettes or LMACs in company. You will intercept any craft approaching the packet or who appear to be intent on interfering with the rescue operation. Yes, Cadet Brunner?”
“Are we allowed to fire on approaching craft, ma’am?” asked Minx.
“If you witness a hostile act, you will return fire. If a Lacaille craft attempts perimeter breach, you may prevent that by force. Full ROEs are on your xels and you will submit your acknowledgement with the op-plan, as per usual.”
Kris raised her hand. “Ma’am, what about patrol routes and sensor coverage?”
“All the latest is in your TAC upload. You’ll note they don’t have the resources to maintain leakproof surveillance. Your approach has been plotted and timed to avoid the routes we know about and any buoys we’ve been able to detect. Once you get inside the hundred-minute mark”—Buthelezi indicated the time tick—“you’ll be detectable to their listening nets if you aren’t careful. So keep it dark and quiet after that point.”
“Ma’am?”—Basmartin again—“Are we sure they won’t move our people downside?”
“We’ve informed the Lacaille government that if our people are removed from the packet, we will consider that an act of war which will be met with a maximum response.” Buthelezi smiled. “That is not a victory condition, people. There will be special negative grades for anyone who involves us in another major war over this. Understood?” A chorus of nods assured her that it was. “Good. Otherwise, scoring is the same.”
Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks Page 14