“Land and step out of the flyer!” he told the pilot.
There was a split-second pause, and then the flyer leapt ahead with blinding acceleration. But unlike Stevens’ killers, Graywolf was fully enhanced, and the exploding flyer gouged a fifty-meter trench in the street below as its drive unit vanished into hyper-space.
Lawrence Jefferson completed his report with profound satisfaction.
He’d never really been happy about penetrating security on Birhat. The distance was too great, and any communication with agents there was vulnerable to interception. But that was no longer necessary; his plans had matured to a point at which it no longer mattered what the military did, and he controlled Earth’s security forces from his own office.
His lips pursed as he considered his intertwining strategies. His latest ploy should remove Francine from any suspicion. She’d openly become the Church of the Armageddon’s leader, but as one who denounced the Sword of God’s fanaticism. Her masterful pleas for nonviolence only underscored the Sword’s growing ferocity, yet she was emerging as a moderate, and Horus and Ninhursag were obligingly accepting his own “astonished” conclusion that she was someone they could work with against the radicals.
Now his security forces’ defeat of the Sword’s attempt on her life would make her whiter than snow. He’d wondered if he was being too clever, for it would never have done for any of Stevens’ people to be taken alive and disclose the truth about Imperial Terra, but he’d chosen his agents with care. All were utterly loyal to the Imperium … but each had lost friends or family to the Sword. He was certain they’d tried to take the terrorists alive—and equally certain they hadn’t tried any harder than they had to. And, of course, he’d known he could trust Stevens’ fanatics to resist.
He was just as happy to have that loose end tied, for Ninhursag’s decision to flood Earth with ONI agents worried him, especially since he didn’t know why she was doing it. Her official explanation might be the truth, for reinforcing Earth Security and opening a double offensive against the Sword made sense. He didn’t like it, but it did make sense. Yet he wasn’t quite convinced that was her real motive. At first he’d been afraid she was somehow onto him, but five months had passed since she’d started, and if he had, indeed, been her objective, he’d be in custody by now.
Whatever she was up to, it enforced greater circumspection upon him. Since taking over from Gus, Jefferson had found it expedient to make adjustments in certain background investigations, culling his own cadre of fully-enhanced personnel from the Ministry of Security itself. It was so convenient to have the government enhance his people for him, but Ninhursag’s swarm of busybodies had forced a temporary shutdown in such activities.
Not that it worried him too much. His plans were in place, centered upon the crown jewels of his subversions: Brigadier Alex Jourdain and Lieutenant Carl Bergren. Jourdain’s high position in Earth Security made him invaluable as Jefferson’s senior field man and cutout, but Bergren was even more important. That lowly officer was the key, for he was a greedy young man with expensive habits. How Battle Fleet had ever let him into uniform, much less placed him in such a sensitive position, passed Jefferson’s understanding, but he supposed even the best screening processes had to fail occasionally. He himself had stumbled upon Bergren almost by accident, and he’d taken pains to conceal Bergren’s … indiscretions, for thanks to Lieutenant Bergren, Admiral Ninhursag MacMahan had just over five months to do whatever she was doing before she died.
Senior Fleet Captain Antonio Tattiaglia looked up in surprise, trowel in hand and his newest rose bush half-planted, as Brigadier Hofstader entered his atrium. Hofstader was a small, severe woman, always immaculate in her black-and-silver Marine uniform, and this hasty intrusion was most unlike her.
“Yes, Erika?”
“Sorry to bother you, Sir, but something’s come up.”
Tattiaglia hid a sigh. Hofstader had commanded Lancelot’s Marines for over a year, and she still sounded as if she were on a parade ground. The woman was almost oppressively competent, but he couldn’t warm to her.
“What is it?”
“I believe we’ve just detected a Sword of God strike force en route to its target, Sir,” she said crisply, and he forgot all about her manner.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, Sir. The scanner tech of the watch—Scan Tech Bateman—decided to run an atmospheric-target tracking exercise, in the course of which she detected three commercial conveyors with inoperable transponders executing a nape-of-the-earth approach to the Shenandoah Power Reception Facility.”
Hofstader had her expression well in hand, but excitement was burning through her professionalism for the first time since he’d known her.
“Have you alerted Earth Security?” he demanded, already trotting towards the transit shaft.
“No, Sir. Fleet Captain Reynaud informed ONI.” She moved briskly at his side, and her smile was cold. “ONI has requested that we investigate.”
“Hot damn,” Tattiaglia whispered. They stepped into the shaft and it hurled them towards Lancelot’s bridge. “Do we have something in position?”
“Sir, I alerted my ready duty platoon as soon as Bateman reported the conveyors. They’ll enter atmosphere in approximately—” she paused to consult her internal chronometer “—seventy-eight seconds.”
“Good work, Brigadier. Very good work!” The shaft deposited them outside the planetoid’s bridge, and Tattiaglia rubbed his mental hands in glee as he raced for the command hatch.
“Thank you, Sir.”
Captain Tattiaglia arrived on his bridge just as Hofstader’s assault shuttle entered atmosphere at eleven times the speed of sound. A corner of the command deck display altered silently, showing them what the shuttle pilot was seeing, and the captain dropped into his command couch with hungry eyes.
“Listen up, people,” Lieutenant Prescott said as his shuttle hurtled downward. “We don’t know these’re terrorists, so we ground, watch ’em, and get ready to move if they are, but nobody does squat unless I say so. Got it?” A chorus of assents came back. “Good. Now, if they are bad guys, ONI wants prisoners. We take some of ’em alive if we can—everybody got that?”
The fresh affirmatives were a bit disappointed, but he had other things to worry about as the shuttle grounded to disgorge his Marines, then swooshed back into the heavens in stealth to give air support if it was needed. Prescott didn’t even watch it go; he was already maneuvering his troops into the hastily chosen positions he’d selected on the way in.
Three big conveyors ghosted to a landing in a patch of woods, and forty heavily armed people filed out with military precision. The raiders moved quietly towards the floodlit grounds of the Shenandoah Valley Power Receptor, then split, diverging towards two different security gates.
The commander of one attack party studied a passive scanner as he neared the perimeter fence, hunting security systems their briefing might have missed, then stiffened. He whirled, and his jaw dropped as his eyes confirmed his instrument’s findings.
Well, they sure as hell aren’t picnickers, Prescott thought as his armor scanners confirmed the intruders’ heavy load of weapons, and— Oh shit!So much for surprise!