Even when he maneuvered to be part of Operation Rasputin, Klaus had never thought he’d receive authorization to go to the planet himself.
Then, suddenly, Dimitri placed Klaus in command of the mission.
Not only a command, a real force, but a chance to—
Klaus slammed his fist into the wall of the hemispherical observatory.
It had been prefect! Stage one of Operation Rasputin was to take a munitions company. A munitions company. The objective was almost tailored for him to target “Dominic.”
He looked out the holo-transparent walls and watched the mop-up operation. Klaus’ ship was settled in the landing quad, a Barracuda-class troop-carrier with oversized engines. It was modified and fitted with enough weaponry to conduct an air assault on a small city. The Paralian-designed ship was named Kalcthwee’rat. The translation was Blood-Tide.
The ship and 130 Occisis-trained marines, and the murderer got away.
“Colonel?”
Klaus turned toward the voice.
The woman addressing him was still in field combat armor, though she’d removed her helmet. Her hair was shaved into the transverse stripes that were the trademark of the Occisis marines. Her red hair and stocky build marked her as a native. She was the captain, the ranking officer among Klaus’ marines.
Klaus didn’t like her. He had been given a week to prepare himself for the mission and another week with the marines in Earth orbit. The briefings he gave on Bakunin and their mission—the part the marines knew about anyway—had been successful, for the most part. He felt he could count on the large majority of his troops.
But Captain Kathy Shane had remained aloof. She had paid attention to Klaus’ strategic holos, and the mission specs, but she’d remained uninvolved in Klaus’ discussion of Bakunin itself. She acted like a sympathizer.
Klaus turned to face a blackened spot where a laser had penetrated the wall. It obscured the world beyond. “Captain Shane.”
“You wanted to see me, sir?”
That wasn’t quite true. What he wanted to do was get some priorities straight. “I understand that you didn’t fire upon Dominic Magnus as he escaped toward Godwin. Is this correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
Klaus ran his hand over the marble desk. A corner was charred by the same shot that had pierced the wall. So close.
“Was there confusion about the identity of the target?”
“No, sir.”
Klaus turned back to the marine captain. Same nonexpression on her face. That annoyed him. “Perhaps you can clarify exactly why you didn’t fire on him?”
“Sir, we have standing orders from the Terran Executive Command not to widen the scope of any conflict on Bakunin—”
Klaus nodded. “Until our primary mission has reached the stage—etcetera, etcetera. I know that. You have not answered my question. Why did you not fire on him?”
Was that a trickle of sweat on her upper lip? Good. “Sir. By the time we had the craft targeted, he had left the perimeter of the complex. Our orders were not to expand—”
“I see.” Klaus paced around the desk. “Now, listen closely, Captain. Who is in charge of this operation?”
“You are, sir.”
“I am glad we have that straight.” Klaus sat in the chair behind the desk. “From now on I want you to act like it.”
“Sir?”
“TEC isn’t commanding this mission. I am. And when I give you a priority target, you take the target out!”
“But sir, our orders from command—”
“Only concern me.”
“Yes, sir.” Yes, he had her sweating all right. Now the hard edge in her voice was becoming a little more strained, a little more forced.
“I’m glad we have an understanding. Now here’s an order, and it takes precedence over everything— understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Even Executive Command.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Your orders are— If anyone, I mean anyone, sees ‘Dominic Magnus,’ they are to kill him on sight. I do not care if this means dropping a warhead in the center of Godwin. He is to be eliminated. No qualifications. No exceptions. No excuses. This isn’t going to happen again.”
She looked a little pale now. “Yes, sir.”
Klaus nodded, smiled to himself, and turned the chair around. He didn’t hear her leave. “Is there something you want to say, Shane?”
“Sir, there’s a question about what to do with the prisoners—”
Klaus closed his eyes and sighed. “What’s to question? Shoot them.”
Her voice finally cracked. “Sir?”
“Was I unclear?”
“No, sir.”
“I’m glad we had this chance to talk. Dismissed.”
Klaus listened to her leave. He hoped he wouldn’t have any more problems from that quarter, but he doubted it. Shane was on the top of a list of people Klaus saw as spots of potential disloyalty. Spots that would need to be cleaned before he went on to the second phase of this operation.
But not yet. First he had to get GA&A up and running.
The holo lit up above Dominic’s desk and Klaus turned to face it. It was the ground team’s chief engineer, Atef Bin Said. The TEC had recruited the tech on Khamsin, right out of Hegira Aerospace’s R&D department.
“Damage report.”
“Go ahead.” Klaus closed his eyes because the holo projection had been damaged. The unsteady image wildly shifted perspective and it hurt his eyes.
“As expected, the perimeter air defenses of the complex are a total loss. The attack wiped them out. The field generators and weaponry aboard the Blood-Tide can cover the same area until we can rebuild the ground units. Damage to the aboveground structures is superficial. I estimate repairs to be in the neighborhood of a hundred-thousand credits—”
“Gold, Said, we’re on Bakunin now. Gold or the equivalent—”
“Ah, yes, sir— I’ll get the estimates converted.”
“What else?”
“Well, I said most of the aboveground damage is superficial. One building—GA&A security from our intel schematics—is a near total loss. This is, again, something we can handle from the Blood-Tide. In fact it would be recommended that we do that, in any event, until we have thoroughly examined GA&A’s security setup. There could be some nasty surprises, given the environment.”
“I understand. Anything else?”
“Yes, and I am afraid it is something we didn’t anticipate. Ninety percent of GA&A’s processing capability, its records and mainframes, was bunkered two klicks below the surface. TEC didn’t anticipate any battle damage—”
Klaus nodded. “Booby-trapped. That was the subsurface detonation we detected, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. It’s too hot to make a direct assessment of the damage, but we can assume a total loss. The Blood-Tide doesn’t have the processing capacity we need for an operation like this. It’s a military vessel and the computers are too specialized.”
Klaus rubbed his forehead. The TEC’s little traitor, Helmsman, was to have been waiting in the bunker. Well, this saved Klaus the trouble of dealing with Helmsman himself. The agent down here had made a messy little deal to get Helmsman to even consider turning, but now there wasn’t any question of who was in charge.