“Plausible? To a snake?” Bradamont laughed shortly. “Actually, from what I know of them and other bureaucracies, the stupider the directive, the more realistic it might seem to them. How many really dumb directives did you get in the course of a year before you revolted against the Syndicate Worlds?”
“You should measure that in days, not years,” Diaz said. “Otherwise, the number gets too big.”
“They might think this is legitimate because it doesn’t make much sense?” Marphissa asked Bradamont. “You know, that’s possible. That’s really possible. All right, I’m approving the message,” she said to Diaz. “Transmit, and if you still believe in any deities, pray to them to convince the snakes to believe this when they get it.”
Further sleep was impossible. Marphissa tried to work in her stateroom, got irritable, went to the bridge, almost bit the head off of a watch specialist who made a friendly comment to another specialist in too loud a voice, went back to her stateroom, then finally went to Bradamont and sat talking with her.
One hour short of the jump point for Atalia, Marphissa returned to Manticore’s bridge, aware that she looked like hell and feeling just as bad as she looked. “No response from the snakes?” she demanded of Diaz.
“No, Kommodor.” Diaz rubbed his eyes wearily, then slapped onto his arm one of the stimulant devices that everyone called an up patch. “No reply.”
She tried to remember the last time she had come onto the bridge and not seen him there. Diaz had apparently kept himself on duty for the entire transit. “No signs of alerts in the star system?” Marphissa pressed. “Still no indications of any reaction? No fast ships suddenly heading for the hypernet gate as if they were carrying an urgent message?”
“No, Kommodor.”
What are they doing? Marphissa glared at her display. The snakes must at least suspect something. Are they laying some trap? Are they awaiting approval from some CEO who has strict instructions not to be awakened unless Black Jack himself comes storming in here with his fleet? “We keep going. We get to the jump point and head for Atalia, no matter what happens from this moment on.”
To her surprise, the tension level on the bridge seemed to relax considerably. She gave Diaz a questioning look.
“The uncertainty,” he said to her in a low voice. “It’s driving us all crazy. But you just gave them some certainty. We’re going to keep going. Now they know what’s going to happen.”
“What’s going to happen in the next hour,” Marphissa grumbled. “After that, it’s anybody’s guess.”
“It could be worse,” Diaz suggested. “We could still be wearing Syndicate suits, and there could be a snake standing at the back of the bridge listening to our every word.” He paused, an intent expression crossing his face. “That would really suck.”
“Have you been taking too many meds?” Marphissa demanded.
“Maybe.” Diaz leaned back, his eyes on the overhead. “I don’t think I like Indras. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a big display over us that looked like the stars so it would be like we were on the outside of the hull and had a window above us?”
“Kapitan Diaz, one minute after we enter jump for Atalia, you are ordered to turn over the bridge to another officer, go to your stateroom, take a crash patch, and get at least eight hours’ sleep. Is that understood?”
“Uh… yes, Kommodor.”
“I know you’re feeling the responsibilities of being a ship’s commanding officer, but the point is not to stay on duty until you are half-delusional unless there is no alternative. The point is to get sufficient rest so that you can make decent decisions and be at your best when it’s needed. And, yes, I am fully aware that I have done a poor job of that in the last several hours. I’m going to be crashing once we enter jump, too.”
“Incoming transmission,” the comm specialist warned. “Snake cipher, the same one we used.”
Marphissa closed her eyes, exhaled slowly to calm herself, then answered the specialist. “What do the snakes say?”
“Just… we understand.”
“What? They said what?”
“That’s all, Kommodor. The entire message. We understand.”
Diaz roused himself to glare at the specialist. “Are we certain that there is no worm or virus or Trojan horse attached to that message?”
“There is nothing, Kapitan. It’s far too small to carry any of those, and there are no attachments. It’s just the address header and those two words.”
Marphissa exhaled again, this time heavily. “They know. They’re playing with us. The snakes have figured out we’re not who we say we are. But they probably don’t know who we are. Maybe they hope that message will provoke us into telling them by implying they know more than they do.”
“That’s an old snake trick,” Diaz agreed.
“And they don’t know why we’re going to Atalia, and I will bet my life that the snakes have no idea that we intend going to Alliance space from there. They’ve probably got hidden agents in Atalia, and they’ll find a way to get those agents to report on what we’re doing.” She turned a triumphant look on Diaz. “But we’ll have more firepower than anyone else in Atalia if Captain Bradamont’s information is still good. We’ll block anyone from leaving Atalia for Indras until the freighters return from Varandal and we jump out. The snakes won’t know what we were up to until we get back here; and then it will be too late for them to interfere with us.”
I hope.
Forty minutes later, they reached the jump point. “All units in Recovery Flotilla, jump now,” Marphissa ordered. She barely felt the mental jolt of entering jump space, barely noticed the stars and blackness of normal space replaced by the unending gray sameness of jump space, and only noted in passing the blooming off to one side of Manticore of one of the strange and unexplained lights that came and went in jump space. “I’m getting some sleep. So are you, Kapitan Diaz. Make sure I am notified of any emergencies,” she added to the watch specialists, then marched off the bridge toward her stateroom.
They had to go through Kalixa to get to Atalia. Kalixa had been a fairly well-off star system, bristling with defenses and home to many millions.
Then the enigmas had caused Kalixa’s hypernet gate to collapse in hopes that it would set off a wave of retaliatory actions by the Syndicate and the Alliance against each other.
“There’s nothing left,” Kapitan Diaz breathed in shock as he gazed at the dead remnants of the star system. “Even the star has become unstable.”
“You can still see some ruins on what used to be the habitable planet,” Marphissa replied somberly. “There’s not much atmosphere left to block our view of them. If the enigma plan had succeeded, a lot of star systems belonging to the Syndicate and the Alliance would be like this.”
They couldn’t rush through Kalixa, not with the freighters along, but they made the best time they could to the jump point for Atalia, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief as the gray of jump space replaced the dead remnants of Kalixa.
Captain Bradamont’s information about Atalia was still good.
Marphissa relaxed as her display updated to show only a single Hunter-Killer orbiting near the star system’s primary inhabited world and a single Alliance courier ship hanging near the jump point for Varandal. Getting out of the eerie gray isolation of jump space, returning to normal space, where stars glowed all around once more, was always a relief. But it was often also rendered tense by wondering what might be waiting outside the jump exit.
“That’s it,” she told Bradamont, who had come to the bridge to observe the entry to Atalia just in case other Alliance ships were present. “Let’s get you over to that freighter. I’m going to keep Manticore and Kraken here near the jump point for Kalixa to keep anyone from going on to Indras and taking word to the snakes of what’s happening. The light cruisers and our HuKs will escort your freighters to the jump point for Varandal, then wait there for you to return.”