I also request that if Commander Winston Turner should appear within your area of control, any messages he might have for me should be given the highest priority. This message should arrive the day before Confederation Day leaves begin. I am sorry to ruin the holiday for you and your personnel, but for the good of the Confederation I deem it to be essential.
Banbridge-CICCONFEDFLT
Skip examined a hardcopy of the letter one more time and cursed under his breath while taking a sip of Scotch.
Hell of a way to run the fleet, he thought coldly as he folded the letter and sealed it inside a secured, scanproof envelope. The envelope, in turn, went into a red-Class A Priority-Fleet Dispatch Pouch. A ship was departing from Houston within the hour to rendezvous with a priority shipment of spare parts heading straight to McAuliffe. McAuliffes translight burst signal station was again on the blink, probably due to the damned solar storms rippling between its two suns. Even if the line was open, he still preferred to send a message of this nature by hardcopy. There was no telling if the Cats had broken their latest coding.
Word had only come in the night before that yet another infiltration team had disappeared attempting to cross into Kilrathi space. Unfortunately, this one had been made public. The poor bastards had not blown their ship in time, and the Cats had a vid of one of the prisoners confessing.
The flood of reporters eager to greet him as he appeared at the president's office had turned his stomach. Didn't any of the slime realize that they were playing straight into the hands of the Cats?
He sipped again at his drink, looking at the second letter on his desk. He knew it was a melodramatic gesture, but perhaps nis resignation in protest over current policy was just the gesture that was needed. That was the rub of it now. Resign, and More and the opposition will turn it around as the president attempting to shift blame from himself for the current flap. Stay, and it's the president protecting a CIC who never should have authorized the mission, which threatened to expand the war far beyond its current scope. More had adroitly ducked a stand on the issue with the statement that the "President should know how to handle his military, especially in this time of delicate negotiations to reduce tension."
Skip poured another drink, realizing that he was on his third of the afternoon and it was best to nurse this one for a while. Damn, I was meant to fight a ship, not this vicious web of backstabbing and deceit called politics. And the timing of the flap could not have been worse. Speedwell had turned in yet another report, which he had been planning to share with the president this morning. Remote intel, which was monitoring Kilrathi private and commercial signals, was picking up a ripple in their economy. Shipping to half a dozen worlds along the border had fallen over ninety percent in the last forty-five days. There was report of famine on one world due to a major flare of the star in that system, which had caused a radical climate shift.
Normally, even the Cats would have been sending emergency relief since it was one of their colonial outposts, but only one ship had come in to evacuate some key personnel, leaving over a million to starve to death. A message had been intercepted openly stating that no shipping was available. A counterresponse was sent back, demanding that the military provide some form of relief. The following day the transmitter was suddenly knocked off the air, the strange part of it being that a destroyer was reported to have gone into orbit above the planet.
Could it be that the Cats had fired on and destroyed one of their own transmitters because it was saying too much and could not be controlled? That was Speedwell's read on it, that their shipping was completely tied up in preparation for a military move of unprecedented magnitude, and that every civilian ship had been pressed into service. There was also the report of a Cat smuggler in a trade rendezvous in the demilitarized zone claiming that half a dozen of their own smuggler ships accompanying him on a run had been destroyed without warning by an Imperial Fleet frigate. The captain of the frigate had thus thrown away tens of thousands of credits in prize money. The system of prize money was the way the Imperials convinced their own personnel to aggressively pursue smugglers. So why wouldn't they board and capture unless the orders were to move quickly, eradicate and then move on rather than waste time with long chases and prize crews.
In and of themselves, each piece of evidence, if taken in isolation, could mean nothing, but put together the picture was starting to come into focus. But it was still not enough, especially in light of the media hysteria that More, and the crowd in the news offices who thought like him, were now saying.
"We have to wait to the day after the election," the president had told him. "If the signs are still as strong, I'll give you authorization then to come to Defense Level two and start mobilizing the active reserves, and release the Ninth Fleet from its position at Sirius, but not until then, or we lose the election and you'll be taking orders from More."
Skip looked back again at his letter of resignation, and with the foulest of oaths he crumpled it up and threw it into the shredder.
Twelve days to Confederation Day, he thought. Dear God, at least let that day be a peaceful one.
Traffic out to the airstrip outside of Houston was lighter than usual for this time of day and Lieutenant Anderson looked at his watch. The Old Man had promised him the afternoon off and Nancy was waiting. He had never expected the Old Man to turn around and keep him waiting for three hours, just to run a courier pouch out to the airstrip. Nancy was so ticked she had turned off her personnel pager after his third call begging for her to wait.
Nancys place was only a block off the main run, and on a last minute impulse he pulled over, ran up to her flat and knocked on the door. There was no answer. Cursing the Fleet, and the Old Man in particular, Lieutenant Anderson pulled back out and headed for the main run, only to find that the entry ramp was jammed due to an accident. Weaving his way through back streets he lost seventeen valuable minutes before getting back on the main road and flooring it… he missed the departure of the courier ship by one minute and twenty seconds.
Looking at the pouch resting on the passenger seat he felt a cold knot in his stomach. To go back and face the Old Man was impossible… and besides, Nancy had blown him off for the evening. Still cursing, he settled down and decided to wait for next ship, which wouldn't leave for another six hours. He did not know until long afterwards that the second ship missed its connection with the McAuliffe courier ship by fifteen minutes, and thus the pouch would be delayed by a precious twenty-four hours. And as the pouch sat in its priority shipment container, waiting to be loaded, the fleets of the Kilrathi Empire continued their journey towards the frontier.
CHAPTER TEN
The Hell Hole-capital of the Landreich.Confederation date 2634.226
Shaking with exhaustion, Geoff nervously looked down at his stained coveralls, wondering if they were the ones he had thrown up on, or if it was the other pair he had packed along for their trip. It was hard to tell now, after weeks of standing watch. He rubbed his chin, surprised at how the stubble had turned into a full beard. Most amazing of all, though, was the simple fact that they were still alive.
He looked up at the blazing sun of the Hell Hole and did a slow walk around Lazarus. When Hans had said that they were going for an atmosphere landing he was half tempted to simply kill the damned pilot, fearing that after all that they had been through the icy bravado of Kruger would still wind up killing them. Part of their starboard wing was gone, there was no telling what other structural damage they had endured going through the stresses of skirting the very edge of a black hole, let alone the half dozen skirmishes fought on the way back to the Landreich. He had expected Turner to object, but the only comment was that it'd save precious time by going straight down to the surface.