He screened quickly through the technical data, eyebrows quirking as he noted the rating of Star Runner's Fasset drive. She was as fast as most cruisers-which, he thought wryly, coupled with her limited cargo capacity, was a glaring tip-off as to her true nature. Not that Jungians minded smugglers … as long as they didn't run anything into the Association.
Um. Crew of only five. That was low, even for a merchant hull. Must indicate some pretty impressive computer support. Captain's name Theodosia Mainwaring … young for her rank, from the bio, but lots of time on her flight log. The rest of her people looked equally qualified. Not a bad bunch for a merchant crew, in fact. Of course, free traders tended to attract the skilled misfits-the square pegs with the qualifications to write their own tickets-away from the military or the big lines.
As No incoming manifest. He snorted, remembering the diplomatic gaps in the last few entries from the Melville data base. So Captain Mainwaring had gotten her fingers burned? Must not have been too serious-she still had a ship-but it probably meant she was hungry for a cargo.
A signal chimed, and Giolitti glanced at the view screen as his vessel began its docking sequence on Star Runner's sole unoccupied shuttle rack. A somewhat battered cargo shuttle occupied one of the other two racks, not that old but clearly a veteran of hard service to collect so many dings and scrapes. Yet it wasn't the cargo shuttle that caught his attention.
Another shuttle loomed on the number one rack-a needle-nosed craft, deadly even in repose. He was familiar with its basic stats, but he'd never seen one, and he wasn't quite prepared for its size. Or its color scheme.
Giolitti winced as he took in the garish crimson and black hull. Some unknown artist had painted staring white eyes on either side of the stiletto prow, jagged-toothed mouths gaped hungrily about the muzzles of energy and projectile cannons, and lovingly detailed streamers of lurid flame twined about the engine pods. He had no idea how Mainwaring had gotten her hands on it, though she must have done so in at least quasi-legal fashion, since the Empies had let her keep it when they suggested she explore new frontiers, but the visual impact was … extreme.
He grinned as the docking arms locked. The Bengal looked out of place on its drab, utilitarian mother ship, but free traders tended to find themselves back of beyond with only their own resources, and he suspected ill-intentioned locals would think twice about harassing a cargo shuttle with that thing hovering watchfully overhead. Which, no doubt, was the idea.
The personnel tube docking collar settled into place, and Giolitti gathered up his notepad, nodded to his pilot, and opened the hatch.
Alicia watched the heavyset young customs officer step through Megaira's port and hoped this worked. It had seemed simple enough when she was thinking it all up, but that was then.
Oh, be calm, Little One! the Fury scolded. We have already accomplished the difficult parts.
Yeah, Alley, Megaira added in unusual support of Tisiphone. There's only one of him, and Tis is gonna knock his shorts off.
A somewhat inelegant turn of phrase, but accurate.
Then why don't both of you be quiet so we can get on with this? Alicia suggested pointedly, and stepped forward to shake the inspector's hand.
Giolitti was a bit surprised to find only the captain waiting for him, but he had to give her tailor high marks. That severe, midnight-blue uniform and silver-braided bolero suited the tall, sable-haired woman perfectly.
"Lieutenant Giolitti, MaGuire Customs Service," he introduced himself, and the woman smiled.
"Captain Theodosia Mainwaring."
She had a nice voice-low and almost furry-sounding. He found himself beaming back at her and wondered vaguely why he felt so cheerful.
"Welcome to MaGuire, Captain."
"Thanks."
She released his hand, and he brought out his notepad.
"You have your crew's updated med forms, Captain?"
"Right here."
She extended a folio of chips, and Giolitti plugged them into the notepad, punching buttons with practiced fingers and scanning the display. Looked good. He supposed he really ought to insist on meeting the others immediately, but there was time for that before he left.
"Ready for inspection, Captain?" he asked, and Mainwaring nodded.
"Follow me," she invited, and led him into the lift.
The customs officer's vaguely disoriented eyes were a vast relief, but Alicia made a point of punching the lift buttons. Tisiphone chuckled deep inside her mind, enjoying herself as she worked her wiles upon their visitor, yet Alicia knew the fewer perceptions the Fury had to fuzz the better, and there was no point letting Megaira move the lift without instructions.
She escorted Lieutenant Giolitti into her quarters and watched him carry out his inspection. He clearly knew the best places to conceal contraband, yet there was a mechanical air to his actions. His voice sounded completely alert as he carried on a cheerful conversation with her, but its very normality was almost bizarre against the backdrop of his robotic search.
He finished his examination with a smile, and she drew a deep breath and led him back outside. She paused for just a moment, watching his eyes go even more unfocused, then turned and escorted him right back into her cabin.
"My engineer's quarters," she said, and he nodded and went to work … totally oblivious to the fact that he had just searched exactly the same room.
Alicia hardly believed what she was seeing. She'd counted on it, but actually seeing it was eerie and unreal, and she felt Megaira's matching reaction. Tisiphone, on the other hand, took it completely for granted, though she was obviously bending all her will upon the lieutenant to bring it off.
Giolitti completed his second examination and turned to her.
"Who's next?" he asked cheerfully.
"My astrogator," Alicia said, and led him back out into the passage.
Giolitti made the last entry and wished all his inspections could go this smoothly. Captain Mainwaring ran a taut ship. Even her cargo hold was spotless, and Star Runner was one of the very few free traders whose crew hadn't left something illegal-or at least closely regulated-lying around where he could find it. Which made them improbably law-abiding or fiendishly clever at hiding their personal stashes. Given his impression of Mainwaring's people, Giolitti suspected the latter, and more power to them.
It was funny, though. He'd been impressed by their competence, but they hadn't really registered the way people usually did. Probably because he'd been concentrating so hard on their captain, he thought a bit guiltily, and glanced at her from the corner of his eye as she escorted him back to the personnel lock. It was unusual for a captain to spend his or her precious time escorting a customs man about in person. Even the best of them seemed to regard inspectors as one step lower than a Rish, an intruder-and, still worse, an official intruder-in their domains. Giolitti didn't really blame them, but it was a tremendous relief when he met one of the rare good ones.
And, come to think of it, it wasn't really all that strange that the rest of her crew seemed somehow faded beside her. He'd never met anyone with quite the personal magnetism Theodosia Mainwaring radiated. She was a striking woman, friendly and completely at her ease, yet he had the strangest impression she could be a very dangerous person if she chose. Of course, no shrinking violet would be skippering a free trader at such a relatively young age, but it went deeper than that. He remembered the grizzled petty officer who'd overseen the hand-to-hand training of the "young gentlemen" at OCS. He'd moved the way Mainwaring did, and he'd been sudden death on two feet.
The lieutenant shook the thought aside and ejected the clearance chip from his notepad. He held it out to the captain, then extended his hand.
"It's been a pleasure, Captain Mainwaring. I wish every ship I inspected were as shipshape as yours. I hope you do well in our area."
"Thank you, Lieutenant." Mainwaring clasped is hand firmly, and for just an instant, he seemed to feel an odd, hard angularity in her palm, but the sensation vanished. A moment later, he didn't even remember having felt it. "I hope we run into one another again," the captain continued.
"Maybe we will." Giolitti released her hand and stood back, then raised an admonishing finger. "Remember, any of your people who come dirtside will be subject to individual med-scans to confirm their certification."
"Don't worry, Lieutenant." Mainwaring's rather amused smile made him feel even younger. "I don't expect we'll be here long enough for liberty-in fact, most of my people are going to be busy running maintenance checks on the Fasset drive before we pull out-but we'll check in with the medics if we are."
"Thank you, Captain," Giolitti gave her a crisp salute. "In that case, allow me to extend an official welcome to MaGuire and bid you good bye."
Mainwaring returned his salute, and the lieutenant headed back for his shuttle. He had two more inspections to make by shift end, and he wished, more wistfully than hopefully, that they might go as smoothly.
Alicia let herself sag against the bulkhead and sucked in a deep, lung-stretching breath. Dear God, she'd known Tisiphone was good, but the Fury's performance had surpassed her most extravagant hopes.
She doubted they were likely to meet a brighter, more conscientious customs inspector than young Lieutenant Giolitti, and she no longer doubted their ability to razzle-dazzle him if they did. It had been unnerving enough to watch him "search" her quarters five separate times, but that had been nothing compared to watching him walk right past the feed tubes from the main missile magazine without even batting an eye. He'd had to climb a ladder to cross one of them, yet it simply hadn't been there for him, and neither had the energy batteries or the armory. He'd seemed perfectly content with his "inspection" of the control room, as well, though only an idiot-or someone under Tisiphone's spell-could have looked at those blank gray walls and the alpha link headset without realizing what he was seeing.
Of course he did not, Tisiphone observed. You are correct about his intelligence-a very bright young man, indeed-yet it is far simpler to suggest things to intelligent people, for they have the wit to add the details with little prompting. And, she added graciously, you and Megaira were wise to suggest that we create your "crew's" personalities in such detail. It allowed me to project personalities with much greater depth.
"Yeah." Alicia drew another breath and straightened. "Still, you seemed to be concentrating pretty hard. Could you have handled more people?"
I believe so, yes. Numbers of minds are not the difficulty, Little One, but rather the detail of the illusion I provide them with. Of course, it would be wise, in the event that we must deal with several people at once, to include a disinclination to discuss their inspection at a later date lest they discover too great a degree of similarity among their recollections.
You're probably right, Megaira put in, but unless there's a glitch in the documentation, one-man teams are the rule out here.
"I know." Alicia stepped back into the lift and punched for the flight deck. "Are we clear on our docking and service fees, Megaira?"
Sure. Tis cooked the books just fine when she dropped our flight log on them, and Ms. Tanner took care of the bookkeeping while Captain Mainwaring was showing Lieutenant Giolitti around. We've covered all our fees out of her bogus credit transfer with a balance of eighty thousand credits left.
"What about service personnel?"
No sweat. Lieutenant Chisholm dealt with them, and they'll be waiting for our shuttle to pick up the consumables. We're gonna have to dump most of them in deep space, since I had to order enough for a crew of five to make it look right, but our Melville download shows a complete overhaul six months ago, so I didn't have to fudge any servicing requirements.
"You're a sweetheart," Alicia said fervently.
She'd been astounded by the verisimilitude of the computer images and voices Megaira could produce. It was a good thing the AI could, too, since they had to convince anyone who got curious-No, scratch that. They had to keep anyone from getting curious, which meant they had to provide crewmen other than Captain Mainwaring in one form or another. Megaira's ability to carry on com conversations, or even several of them at once, would be invaluable in that regard.
Thanks. You and Tis did pretty good, too.
Yet could we have accomplished but little without you, Megaira. It is the combination of all our skills which makes us formidable.
"You got that right, Lady," Alicia agreed. "But I take it no one raised an eyebrow over your faces?"
Nary a twitch. Wanna see my latest efforts? I finally got that lisp down pat on "Lieutenant Chisholm," you know.
"Sure." The lift slid to a halt and Alicia stepped out onto the flight deck. "Let her roll."
Watch monitor two.
The flat screen flickered for just an instant, then cleared with the face of a thin, auburn-haired man with heavy-lidded eyes.
"How do I look, Thir?" the image asked, and Alicia grinned.
"I think maybe you got the lisp down a little too pat, Megaira."
"That'th eathy for you to thay," "Lieutenant Chisholm" returned aggrievedly. "You haven't been teathed about it all your life. I tell you, it'th been a real pain in the ath for me!"
"Do you say that, or do you spray it?" Alicia giggled, and the image raised a hand into the field of the pickup and made a rude gesture.
"Oh, that's perfect, Megaira! Of course, I imagine poor Chisholm won't be handling much of the com traffic, given his lisp."
"No." Chisholm's baritone was replaced by a soprano and the image changed to that of a square-faced, silver-haired woman Alicia recognized as Ruth Tanner, her purser. "Poor Andy hates it when he has to talk to strangers. That's why I usually handle the com watch when you're not aboard, Ma'am."
"So I see," Alicia propped a hip against a console and grinned. The AI had outdone herself. No one who spoke to any of Megaira's talking heads would suspect there was only a single human aboard Star Runner. Coupled with the AI's ability to handle both shuttles through her telemetry links, Captain Mainwaring's crew would be very much in evidence-so much so that no one would ever realize that they'd never actually laid eyes on any of them.
"Okay, I think we're set. But if it's all the same to you two, I need a good night's sleep before I get started hunting up a cargo."
Right.
The screen blanked as Megaira returned to direct contact, and Alicia started back towards her quarters, shedding her tight jacket as she went. She tossed the garment to one of Megaira's waiting remotes, which whisked it neatly into a closet.
Uh, say, Alley, Megaira said as she undressed, you haven't had time to go through the full data download from the MaGuire port admiral, have you?
"You know I haven't." Alicia paused with her blouse half off. "Why?"
Well, I didn't want to worry you with it while Giolitti was aboard, and I wouldn't want to give you bad dreams or anything, but we're in it.
"What do you mean, 'we'?"
I mean the "we" that stole me from Soissons orbit. Specifically, Captain Alicia DeVries and the illegally obtained alpha-synth starship Hull Number Seven-Niner-One-One-Four.
Indeed? what has the data to say of us? Tisiphone asked curiously.
It's not real good.
"Meaning what?" Alicia asked sharply. "That they know where we're headed or something?"
No, not that bad. But there's an entry in here all about you, Alley-says you broke out of psychiatric detention and have to be considered extremely dangerous-and another bunch of crap about me. Fairly accurate summation of my offensive and defensive capabilities, though they're playing a lot of the details close to their chests and they don't say diddly about the other things I can do. No, what bothers me is this last little bit.
"What last little bit?"
The one that says Fleet's offering a one million-credit reward for information leading to your location and interception, Megaira said. Alicia swallowed, but the AI wasn't quite done. And the last little section that says the Jungian Navy's officially adopted Governor General Treadwell's instructions to his own Fleet units.
Alicia sat down on the bed with a thump as Megaira finished her report.
It's a shoot on sight order, Alley. They're not even talking about trying to get us back in one piece.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Benjamin McIlheny racked his headset and stood, rubbing his aching eyes and trying to remember when he'd last had six hours' sleep at a stretch.
He lowered his hands and glowered at the record chips and hard-copy heaped about his office aboard the accomodation ship HMS Donegal. Somewhere in all that crap, he knew, was the answer-or the clues which would lead to the answer-if only he could find it.
It seemed a law of nature that any intelligence service always had the critical data in its grasp … and didn't know it. After all, how did you cull the one, crucial truth from the heap of untruth, half-truth, and plain lunacy? Answer: hindsight invariably recognized it after the fact. Which, of course, was the reason the intelligence community was constantly being kicked by people who thought it was so damned easy.
McIlheny snorted bitterly and began to pace. He'd seen it too many times, especially from Senate staffers. They had an image of intelligence officers as Machiavellian spy-masters, usually in pursuit of some hidden agenda. That was why everyone knew the civilians had to watch the sneaky bastards so closely. And since they were so damned clever, obviously they never told all they knew, even when they had a constitutional duty to do so. Which, naturally, meant any "failure" to spot the critical datum actually represented some deep-seated plot to suppress an embarrassing truth.
People like that neither knew nor cared what true intelligence work was. Holovid might pander to the notion of the Daring Interstellar Agent carrying the vital data chip in a hollow tooth, but the real secret was sweat. Insight and trained instinct were invaluable, but it was the painstaking pursuit of every lead, the collection of every scrap of evidence and its equally exhaustive analysis, which provided the real breakthroughs.
Unfortunately, he admitted with a sigh, analysis took time, sometimes more than you had, and in this case it wasn't providing what he needed. He knew there was a link between the pirates and someone high up. It was the only possible answer. Admiral Gomez's full strength would have had a tough time fighting its way into Elysium orbit against its space defenses, yet the pirates had gotten inside in the first rush. McIlheny had no detailed sensor data to back his hunch, but he was morally certain the raiders had slipped a capital ship into SLAM range under some sort of cover. The shocked survivors all agreed on the blazing speed with which the orbital defenses had been annihilated, and only a capital ship could have done it.
But how? How had they fooled Commodore Trang and all of his people? Simple ECM couldn't be the answer after all the sector had been through. No, somehow they'd given Trang a legitimate cover, something he knew was friendly, and there was simply no way they could have done that without access to information they should never have been able to reach.
It all fit a pattern-even Treadwell was showing signs of accepting that-but the colonel was damned if he could make it all come together. Even Ben Belkassem had thrown up his hands and departed for Old Earth in the faint hope that his superiors there might be able to see something from their distant perspective which had eluded everyone in the Franconia Sector.
The colonel hoped so, because what bothered him even more than how was why. What in God's name were these people up to? He hadn't said so (except very privately to Admiral Gomez and Brigadier Keita), but it passed sanity that they could be garden-variety pirates. That didn't make sense just based on cost effectiveness! Anybody who could field a force the size of the one these people had to have didn't need whatever they were making off their loot.
No doubt plunder helped defray their operational costs, but his most generous estimate of their take fell short of what it must cost to supply and maintain their ships. Just look at what they were taking: colony support equipment, spaceport beacon arrays, industrial machinery, for God's sake! They scooped up some luxury goods, of course-they'd scored over a half-billion in direcat pelts, alone, from Mathison's World-but no normal hijacker or pirate would touch most of what they took.
And even aside from their unlikely loot, there were the casualties. McIlheny didn't believe in Attila the Hun in starships. Stupid people, by and large, didn't become starship captains, and only someone who was stupid could fail to see the inevitable result of pursuing some bizarre scorched-earth policy against the Empire. That was why massacre for the sake of massacre wasn't a normal piratical trait; it didn't pay their bills, and it did guarantee a massive response. Yet these people were deliberately maximizing the devastation in their wake. From everything the Elysium survivors could tell him, they hadn't even tried to loot beyond the limits of the capital, but they'd nuked every city from orbit! Nine million dead. What in hell's name could be behind that kind of slaughter? It was almost as if they were taunting the Fleet, daring it to deal with them.
It was maddening, yet the answer was here, right here in his office and his brain, if he could only bring the pieces together. Any group who could penetrate security as if it didn't exist and use their stolen data to mount such meticulous, lethal attacks couldn't be mere loose cannons. They had an ultimate objective which, in their eyes at least, made all the killing worthwhile, and that was frightening, because he couldn't imagine what it might be and it was his job to do just that.
There were times, McIlheny thought wistfully, when a return to the simplicity of combat looked ever so attractive.
The admittance signal hauled him out of his thoughts. He pressed the button, and his eyebrows arched as Sir Arthur Keita stepped through the hatch.
"Good evening, Sir Arthur. What can I do for you?"
"Probably not much," Keita rumbled. He removed a carton of chips from a chair and settled onto it, holding them in his lap. "I just dropped by to say good bye, Colonel."
"Good bye?" McIlheny repeated in surprise, and Keita gave a sour grin.
"I'm only punching air out here. This is a job for you and the Fleet-and Treadwell, if he ever stops screaming for more ships and uses what he has-and I've been here too long."
"I see." McIlheny sank into his own chair and swivelled it to face Keita. The brigadier's gravelly voice was as steady as ever, but he heard the despair within it. He knew what had kept Keita on Soissons so long … and there hadn't been a single report of the alpha-synth in ten weeks.
"I imagine you do, Colonel." Keita's eyes were sad, but he gave McIlheny a less strained smile and nodded. "But I can't justify staying on in the hope that something will break, and-" his jaw tightened "-if she's spotted now, she's your job, not mine."
"Understood, Sir," the colonel said. "I wish it weren't true-God knows Captain DeVries deserves better than that-but I understand."
Keita looked down at the carton of chips, stirring them with a blunt index finger.
"I wish you could have known her before, Colonel," he said softly. "She was … special. The best. And to have it end like this, with an imperial price on her head … ."
The silver-maned old head shook sadly, and then Keita looked up at McIlheny's combat ribbons.
"You've been there, Colonel. If it has to be one of our own, I'm glad it's someone who can understand. Whatever she is now, she was special."
"I know she was, Sir Arthur."
"Yes. Yes, you do." Keita inhaled deeply, then rose and held out his hand. "I'll be going, then."
"Yes, Sir. I'm going to miss you, Sir Arthur. I want you to know how much I've appreciated the insight you gave me between your … other duties."
"Keep swinging, Colonel." Keita's grip crushed McIlheny's hand. "Between us, I'm convinced you're on the right trail, so you watch your six. Something stinks to high heaven out here. I intend to say as much to Countess Miller and His Majesty, but you be careful who you trust. When you can't tell the bad guys from the good guys … ."
His voice trailed off, and he released McIlheny's hand with a shrug.
"I know, Sir." The colonel frowned a moment, then looked deep into Keita's eyes. "A favor, if I may, Sir Arthur."
"Of course," Keita said instantly, and McIlheny smiled his thanks.
"I've made a complete duplicate of my files. Technically, they're not supposed to leave my office, but I would be very grateful if you'd take them to Old Earth with you. I'd feel much happier with someone I know is clean in possession of my data in case-"
The colonel broke off with a crooked smile, and Keita nodded soberly.
"I will-and I'm honored by your trust."
"Thank you. And with your permission, Sir, I'll arrange a periodic security download to you. One outside my normal channels."
"Do you have a feeling?" Keita's eyes were suddenly intent, and the colonel shrugged.
"I … don't know. It's just that I suspect we've been penetrated even more deeply than we've guessed. I don't want to sound paranoid, but these people have certainly demonstrated they're not shy about killing people. If I get too close to their mole … Well, accidents happen, Sir Arthur."
Vice Admiral Brinkman lit another cigar, tipped back his chair, and frowned meditatively up at the overhead. Things were getting complicated. Of course, they'd known they would-they had to, in fact, if this was going to work-but keeping so many balls in the air wore on a man's nerves.
He thought back over his discussion with Howell. He could certainly understand the commodore's concerns, and, frankly, he would have balked at hitting someone like the El Grecans if not for McIlheny. The collateral objectives would be valuable even without the troublesome colonel, but he was the real reason they had to strike at least one non-imperial target to prove they really were "pirates." Not that Brinkman expected even the Ringbolt attack to throw him off for long. It should create confusion among the people to whom he reported, but it was unlikely to create enough.
And that was because McIlheny wasn't going to give up. He might not realize what he had his teeth into, but he knew he was onto something, and he wasn't going to turn loose. The use of classified data to plan the squadron's operations had always been the shakiest part of the entire plan, yet there'd been no other way. Howell was good, but Fleet only had to get lucky once to blow his entire force out of space, so Fleet couldn't be allowed to get lucky.
If Lord Jurawski and Countess Miller hadn't insisted on sending Rosario Gomez out here, Brinkman could have made certain no luck came Fleet's way, but they didn't call Gomez "the Iron Maiden" for nothing. The nickname was, he admitted with a smile, a base libel on her sex life, but she'd earned it when she was much younger, and nothing about her style had changed since. They'd known Lady Rosario would be a problem when her assignment was announced, yet there'd been nothing they could do. They'd already taken out Admiral Whitworth to clear the second in command's slot for Brinkman; two flag officers' mysterious deaths would have been too much to risk, so they'd had to accept Gomez and concentrate on hamstringing her efforts from within.
Unfortunately, she'd assembled a staff whose tenacity mirrored her own-and one that was damnably close-knit and loyal to her. Brinkman more than suspected that she and McIlheny had begun compartmentalizing more tightly than they were telling, and that was bad.