When Campbell pulled the trigger, two things happened. One is that the transmitter sent a signal to the receiver mounted on the tree two hundred yards behind him and slightly to his left. It set off a small firework designed to look and sound like a rifle muzzle flash. It also blew the small device off the tree, and it fell in the grass.
The other thing that happened is the air rifle fired with a small cough. The 50-caliber round left the muzzle subsonic, at about 500 feet per second. It passed between the frame of the windshield and the frame of the car door window, hitting Schmitt, who still had his head turned to his right to look for the door handle, in the left temple.
The round was hollow, scored along the sides, with a fragile nose piece. It blossomed as it plowed through Schmitt’s brain, building up a pressure wave in front of it. When it hit the back of his skull, it opened up a three-inch-diameter exit wound along the right lambdoid suture, showering brains, blood, bone fragments, and bits of scalp all over the rear seating area, including the consul and his wife. The bullet continued on to hit the rear window between them, shattering the window and showering them with glass as well.
Campbell let go of the air rifle, and it fell down into the refuse bin. The consul’s wife started screaming in shock and horror. The consul security man at the door shouted and pointed toward the muzzle flash he had seen in the park. All three security men pulled semi-automatic pistols out of shoulder holsters and ran down the driveway, across the street and past Campbell.
As the third man ran past him, Campbell pulled a suppressed semi-automatic pistol from the canvas bag. He stood up and shot the running security men in the back, a double-tap to the center of mass for each, beginning with the last one and working his way forward. Each fell down in turn.
Campbell ran to the fallen security men, and double-tapped each of them in the head. He ran back to the refuse bin. Staff were running out of the consulate now to see what was going on.
Campbell took careful aim at the streetlight covering his area, and shot out the light. He retrieved his canvas bag and the air rifle, and disappeared into the darkness.
Undisguised
As he walked across the park, Campbell unscrewed the B-nut and removed the barrel from the air rifle. He dropped both the barrel and the rest of the rifle into the canvas bag with the semi-automatic pistol. He walked back past the dead security men to the tree two hundred yards behind his sniper position, and retrieved his radio device off the lawn.
In the darkness, he pulled an inner plastic bag out of the canvas bag, turned the canvas bag’s cleaner inner surface out, and then put the plastic bag back inside it. He changed jackets for one of a different color from the canvas bag, and changed watch caps to one of a different color.
Police sirens were wailing as he walked out of the park and into the poor section west of the diplomatic district. When Campbell got back to his rented room, he washed the make-up off his face and hands, and changed clothes into civvies. He disassembled the weapons and replaced them in the cases carefully, then put those cases in a CSF gym bag, cushioned with towels.
He put the old clothes and anything else that might have his DNA on it, including the bar of soap, into the canvas bag. Then he went around the room spraying everything he touched with a reagent spray to clear his DNA. Toilet handle and seat. Sink faucet handles. Doorknobs. He put the spray in the gym bag at the door and looked around the room for several seconds. Got it.
It was still early as Campbell walked to the bar area. He cut through an alley and dropped the canvas bag in a dumpster behind a restaurant, where it would soon be covered over and soaked through with restaurant garbage.
When he got to the bar area, he got on a base bus that a bunch of spacers on liberty had just gotten out of. He flashed the driver his ID badge.
“Making an early night of it, Senior Chief?”
“Just visitin’ relatives. Not much of a bar fly.”
“Ah.”
Campbell was in bed by 23:00.
On Sunday, Campbell had a large mid-morning breakfast in the chief’s mess, then walked over to the Planetary Operations Headquarters. He sent a message to Durand back at Sigurdsen.
FROM: 2C68B1AB7218890C0483C993C600FDF4
TO: 22C5654753D58B8EE0591CD60BAE489B
SUBJECT: (none)
Completed.
He logged into each conspirator account at BCBS, all nine of them, and downloaded the entire account to a memory chip, then wiped the account.
He also saved all his archives, his datasets, his saved views, his notes, and his self-authorizations to access private financial data and personal mail data to the same memory chip. He made two spare copies on additional memory chips.
Campbell also entered orders for Senior Chief Phil Samples to report to Admiral Childers aboard the Patryk Mazur when she returned to Bliss orbit.
That done, he erased all his specialized software from the terminal, deleted all the data in this secure account, and closed the secure account with a secure erase request on the user space.
It was almost supper time by the time he completed. He walked over to the chief’s mess for supper and made an early night of it.
The next morning, Senior Chief Phil Samples checked out of base housing and took the bus to the shuttle pad for lifts to the Patryk Mazur, returning from her exercise drills with the Bliss local defense forces.
“Samples,” He said to the load master’s assistant as he handed off his duffel.
The load master’s assistant checked his list.
“Samples. Got it.”
“Careful. This one’s heavy.”
Campbell handed the canvas bag with the equipment case over. The assistant load master raised an eyebrow as he took the weight.
“Maintenance,” Campbell said, shrugging.
Campbell queued with everyone else and took the seat he was directed to.
The lift to the Patryk Mazur was uneventful.
Rear Admiral Jan Childers was reading reports on the just-concluded drills and exercises. With her force restricted to hyperspace transition outside the published system periphery, as an Outer Colony incursion force would be, the Bliss defense forces had handed her division its head in three successive incursion attempts.
That should go a long way to making them understand just how important the training was, and how necessary it was to stick with the standard Fleet Book of Maneuvers.
Childers had a well-deserved reputation as a tactical genius. She was the most decorated officer in the CSF, at any rank. She herself had written the Fleet Book of Maneuvers, while serving on the CSS Nils Isacsson. It had been so successful the CSF had made it the standard, imposing it on admirals and captains fleet-wide.
She smiled when she recalled what Vice Admiral Vina Novotny had told her after one particularly devious incursion attempt. “They’re over here shouting ‘We beat Admiral Childers! We beat Admiral Childers!’ I don’t think there’ll be any more questions or doubts about using the standard book, Admiral Childers.”
The door buzzer sounded. Childers pushed the button on her desk to open the door, and a middle-aged senior chief stepped through the door and saluted.
“Senior Chief Samples reporting as ordered, Ma’am.”
Childers hit the door button to close the door as she shot up out of her chair. She rounded the desk and threw herself into Campbell’s arms.
“Hey, don’t knock me down!” he said.
“You’re OK! I was so worried,” Childers said to his chest.
“Of course, I’m OK.”
“Well, there was some pretty lurid stuff in the Joy newsfeeds, and they haven’t given the identities of all the bodies yet.”
“Yeah, it got a little messy,” Campbell said.
“A little!”
“Schmitt, the security coordinator at the consulate, was the ringleader. But it was his security team that beat CSF Commander Michael Chey to death, and Chey was Intelligence Division. We can’t let that sort of thing go by without
letting them know we don’t like it much.”
“One against four, with guns?” Childers asked.
“That sounds dicier than it was. I just had to get them looking at that shiny ball over there, then I shot them all from the back. They weren’t even facing my direction.”
“Nice trick.”
“Yeah. It worked,” Campbell said, shrugging. “But now, mission is over. The CSF bad guys are all in jail – well, except one, so far – bound for Sigurdsen with the evidence to convict them, the non-CSF bad guys are in the morgue, and the Duval consul to Bliss knows he probably shouldn’t have let that sort of thing be run out of his consulate.”
“Do you think he knew?”
“If he didn’t know, he’s incompetent. And Outer Colony governments don’t normally post incompetents to their diplomatic missions within the Commonwealth. There are a lot of other Outer Colony worlds they can post those guys to.”
“He knew,” Childers said, “but you didn’t kill the consul.”
“No. That would be an escalation. They didn’t kill one of our high-ranking diplomatic people. The killed an intelligence officer.”
“And so you killed their intelligence officer.”
“Yes,” Campbell said. “And the men who actually carried out the murder.”
“But we lost one guy, and they lost four.”
“We lost two guys – Vilis Schenk killed the prior head of Housekeeping, Commander Jukai Clark – plus two destroyers, though not the personnel aboard them.”
“Now it sounds unfair the other way,” Childers said.
“The world is imperfect. Besides, it isn’t all over yet. Schmitt did get the information on the upcoming exercises to Duval. If Duval makes an incursion then, they’re going get hurt.”
“They’re gonna get creamed. But you’re done?”
“Yes,” Campbell said. “Mission completed.”
“And they’re not going to retaliate for Saturday?”
“No. The fellow who would normally have carried out that retaliation, and his goons, are all gone. Second, they don’t know who actually was the trigger man on Saturday, but they know it wasn’t me. I was reported on board the Patryk Mazur with a sprained arm.”
“So if they did retaliate–?” Childers asked.
“They know the trigger man is still running around somewhere, and that’s not good. They might consider retaliating against him, but without knowing who that is, they won’t do anything.”
“Because he might hit the consul next time.”
“Correct,” Campbell said. “Also, if they are planning an incursion during the upcoming exercises, they aren’t going to want to stir the pot. Rao might cancel the exercises and put the system on alert, and that could go very badly for them when their fleet shows up.”
“Then I don’t need to wear the body armor on-planet anymore?”
“No. Not on Bliss. Not on this visit, anyway.”
“Better and better,” Childers said. “Now what?”
“Two weeks on the beach?”
“I like the sound of that. But I do need to visit Admiral Rao first. She asked me to bring you along, actually.”
“Well, I have to get out of disguise first,” Campbell said. “And we’re going to have to borrow her car. I don’t have a driver anymore. He’s in the clink.”
“I’ll make it for tomorrow morning.”
Back in his own room, Campbell stripped out of his senior chief garb. He got the release agent for the contact cement out of his equipment bag and took out the crow’s feet, wrinkles, and scar he had applied. He took out the brown contact lenses. He then shaved his whole head to get rid of the dyed hair and so it could all grow out together.
He put on a shipsuit, and stowed all his Phil Samples gear in his bags. He carefully re-stowed the contact lenses and contact cement release agent in his equipment case.
Campbell then took the air rifle and the semi-automatic pistol out of their cases. He disassembled them and cleaned them to his own exacting standards. These were tools of his trade on which he relied, on which he risked his life, and he took his time. He reassembled them carefully, precisely, lubricating them appropriately as he went. He polished all his skin oils off the guns and stored them carefully back in their cases, with new desiccant packages from his equipment case. The gun cases went back in the equipment case.
When he finished, it was almost time for dinner. He changed into his uniform to match Childers and went back to her office to pick her up. He buzzed at the door and it slid open.
“Come in,” she called.
He walked into her office and the door shut behind him
“Hi, Hon,” Campbell said.
“There you are! Where have you been?”
“Oh, around and about.”
Childers laughed. It was an easy laugh, with him finally out of danger.
For the time being, anyway.
Duval
On Duval, Rear Admiral Frank Stenberg was once again meeting with his two-up boss, First Space Lord Admiral Carla Scola.
“You’re ready to depart, then, Admiral?” Scola asked.
“Yes, Ma’am. We’re loaded up and just waiting for some confirmation that the exercises haven’t been called off or otherwise changed.”
“Do you expect that confirmation to come shortly?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Stenberg said. “Our intelligence asset on Bliss knows our timetable. He’ll make an effort to confirm as late as he can and get word to us.”
“And Admiral Childers will be gone by then.”
“Yes, Ma’am. She’s leaving in two weeks, and the exercises are scheduled to begin four weeks from now. So she won’t be around. I still have concerns she’s built in some kind of trap for us, though.”
“But you’ve changed your strategy for this incursion, haven’t you?” Scola asked.
“Yes, Ma’am. If they’re prepared for the same thing, we probably have a chance of getting away with this. If not, I’m going to try to get out of there without taking significant losses.”
“All right, Admiral. I wanted to talk with you before you left, but it sounds like you have things well in hand. I’ll leave you to it, then.”
It was later that day that confirmation came in from Bliss.
“That’s it, then, Sir,” Stenberg’s chief of staff, Captain Maryanne Caro, said. “No change in plans.”
“I can’t believe they’re just going to do the same thing again,” Stenberg said.
“Well, there is that one quote from their Admiral Rao, Sir. ‘What are the odds of such a coincidence occurring twice?’ ”
“I’ve got a better question, Maryanne. What are the odds of a moron making line full admiral in the Commonwealth Space Force? Not good, I’ll tell you that.”
“You think it’s a setup, Sir?” Caro asked.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Admiral Childers will have spent eight weeks there by the time she leaves. They’ll have had to learn something from her. By osmosis if nothing else.”
“Yes, Sir. But they can’t have anticipated your change in strategy.”
“We’ll see,” Stenberg said. “That’s the goal, anyway.”
Stenberg sighed.
“All right, Maryanne. Let’s give the orders and get underway.”
In orbit about Duval, warships ceased spin, folded cylinders, and prepared to get under way.
Four light cruisers, four heavy cruisers, and four destroyers started accelerating toward the system limit and the hyperspace transit to Bliss.
Clean-Up
On Tuesday morning, Bill Campbell and Jan Childers took the Admiral’s launch down to the planet. They were met by Admiral Rao’s car and driver, and driven to the Planetary Operations Headquarters.
“Go right in, Admiral. Captain. She’s expecting you,” Lieutenant Commander Rita Allyn said.
“Thank you, Commander,” Childers said.
They went into the inner office, where Rao stood to greet them.
/> “Admiral. Captain. Have a seat, please.”
“Thank you, Ma’am,” Childers answered for them both.
“I wanted to meet with you both and thank you for your actions here in Bliss, as well as ask you each for a little favor.
“Admiral, I have heard nothing but good reports about the training and exercises you carried out here. At this point, if Duval doesn’t attack us during the upcoming exercises, I think people are going to be disappointed. They’re starting to call it ‘live-fire training.’ ”
Rao shook her head and Childers laughed.
“I’m glad they’re so enthusiastic, Ma’am,” Childers said. “From my own point of view, overall the personnel here handled the exercises very well. There are some standouts as well, such as Captain Tien Jessen. He’s an amazing talent.”
“Yes, and I think he’s underutilized, a mistake I’m going to fix.”
Jessen’s destroyer division had been part of Childers’ Red Navy for the last two weeks of exercises, and the man was a devious tactician, a natural talent who had blossomed with the training and exercises.
Along those lines, Admiral,” Rao said, “I was hoping you would sit in on our planning session this afternoon. We’re hoping to have a little surprise for the Duval forces when they come calling. Captain Jessen will be there as well, along with some other command and tactical personnel. I know you’re scheduled for planet leave, but I’m hoping I can delay you just a bit.”
“Of course, Ma’am. I’ll be happy to help.”
“Excellent. Thank you, Admiral.’
Rao turned her attention to Campbell.
Campbell- The Problem With Bliss Page 14