"But the Emperor won't stand for it!" Alicia protested sickly.
"Treadwell believes he will. That is the reason he seeks such naval strength. Surely the Emperor will realize that a civil war-and it would require nothing less once Treadwell's plan has played itself out-will but invite the Rishathan Sphere to intervene? And remember this: none save Treadwell and his closest adherents will know what actually passed. All will believe he truly dealt, firmly and decisively, with a threat to the people he is sworn to protect. These sectors lie far from the heart of the Empire. Will the Emperor be able to rally sufficient public support for a massive operation against a man who but did what had to be done in so distant a province?"
"Dear God," Alicia whispered. She licked bloodless lips, trying to grasp the truth, but the sheer magnitude of the crime was numbing.
"Megarea, did you get any of this from Procyon's computers?"
"No, Alley." Even the brash AI was subdued and shaken. "I didn't have time for data searches."
"It would not have mattered, Megarea. There was no data for you to find. The details of the plan have never been committed to record-not, I venture to say, unreasonably."
"Yeah." Alicia inhaled deeply. The numbness was passing, and the flame of her madness guttered higher. She ground her heel upon its neck, driving it back down, and shook herself.
"Okay. What do we do with the information?"
"Tell Ferhat?" Megarea suggested hesitantly.
"Maybe. He'd believe us, I think, though it's for damned sure no one else will. I mean, who's going to take the unsupported word of a madwoman who talks to Bronze Age demons over that of a sector governor?"
"I suppose I should resent that, but I fear you are correct."
"Yeah, and even if Ferhat believes us, he needs proof. They could never convict on what we can give them, and I doubt even O Branch would sanction a black operation against a sector governor."
"Agreed. And that, Little One, is why my promises to you may stand meaningless in the end. I see only one way to destroy this traitor."
"Us," Alicia said grimly.
"Indeed."
"Now wait a darn minute! Do you two actually think we can get to a sector governor? What do you want to do, nuke the damned planet?!"
"It will not be necessary. Treadwell dislikes planets. His quarters are aboard Orbit One."
"Oh, ducky! So all we have to do is fight our way in and punch out a six million-tonne orbital fortress with a third of my weapons so much junk? I feel lots better now."
"Are you saying you can't do it?" Alicia tried to make her voice light. "What happened to all that cheerful egotism when we busted out?"
"Out is easier than in," Megarea said grimly, "and you know damned well they'll have reworked their systems since, just in case we come back."
"So we can't get in?"
"I didn't say that," Megarea replied unwillingly. "I'll know better when I finish repairs- remember, that battle-cruiser shot the hell out of me-but, yeah, I imagine we can get in. Only, if we do, I don't think we'll get out again, and I doubt anything I ever had was heavy enough to take out that fort. I certainly don't have anything left that could do the job."
"Oh yes, you do," Alicia said very softly. "The same thing that could have taken out Procyon."
"Ram it?" There was less shock in the AI's voice than there should have been, Alicia thought sadly. Like her, Megarea saw it as the possible answer to her fear of what she might become. "I think we could do it," Megarea said at last, slowly. "But there are nine thousand other people on that fort, Alley."
"I know.' Alicia frowned down at her hands and her shoulders hunched against the ice of her own words. "I know," she whispered.
Chapter Thirty-two
The black-and-gray uniformed woman looked up as a quiet buzzer purred. A light blinked, and she slipped into her synth link headset and consulted her computers carefully, then pressed a button.
"Get me the Old Man," she said, and waited a moment. "Admiral, this is Lois Heyter in Tracking. We've got something coming in on the right bearing, but the velocity's wrong. They're still too far out for a solid solution, but it looks like our friend hasn't been able to hold the range open as planned." She listened, then nodded. "Yes, sir. We'll stay on it."
She went back to her plot, and the close-grouped ships of war began to accelerate through the deep gloom between the stars. There was no great rush. They had hours before their prey dropped sublight-plenty of time to build their interception vectors.
James Howell glared at the enemy's blue dot and muttered venomously to himself. He'd fired off over half the squadron's missiles, and he might as well have been shooting spitballs! It was maddening, yet he'd given up on telling himself things would have been different if Procyon's cyber synth had survived to run the tactical net. To be sure, Trafalgar's AI was less capable than the dreadnought's had been, but not even Procyon's could have accomplished much against the alpha synth's fiendish ECM.
He knew that damned ship was badly damaged; the debris trail it had left at AR-12359/J would have proved that, even if its limping acceleration hadn't, yet it refused to die. It kept splitting into multiple targets that bobbed and wove insanely, and then swatted down the missiles that went for the right target source with contemptuous ease. What it might have been doing if it were undamaged hardly bore thinking on.
But its time was running out. His ships would be into extreme energy torpedo range in seventy minutes, and even an alpha synth's defenses could be saturated with enough of those. If they couldn't, he'd be into beam range in another eighteen and a half minutes, and no point defense could stop massed beam fire, by God!
"Admiral," Lois Heyter said tensely from Simon Monkoto's com screen, "we're picking up a second grav source-a big one-and it's decelerating hard."
"Put it on my plot," Monkoto said, and frowned down at the display. Lois was right; the second cluster of gravity sources, almost as numerous as those speeding towards them from AR12359/J, was decelerating. He tapped his nose in thought. He supposed their arrival might be a coincidence … except that there was no star in the vicinity, and Simon Monkoto had stopped believing in coincidence and the tooth fairy years ago.
He juggled numbers, and his frown deepened as the newcomers' vector extended itself across the display. If those people kept coming as they were, things were about to get very interesting indeed.
A fresh sheet of lightning flashed and glared against the formless gray of wormhole space as Megarea picked off yet another incoming salvo, and Alicia winced. Thank God Megarea had no need of little things like rest! The "pirates" had been in missile range for over two hours, and if their supply of missiles was finite they seemed unaware of the fact. Anything less than an alpha synth would have been destroyed long since. They hadn't been supposed to reach missile range before turnover, but "supposed to" hadn't counted on Megarea's damage. Alicia's nerves felt sick and exhausted from the unremitting tension of the last hundred and thirty minutes, yet the end was in sight.