What’s the difference, really? She was planning to blow this rock whatever happened. “I don’t know.”
“I came here for another reason, too.”
“What?” She didn’t like him just changing the subject like that.
“The window is closing. According to Shane, GA&A is part of a larger Confed operation. Once they get GA&A fully operational, they go on to Phase Two.”
“Which is?”
Dom shrugged. “Need to know, Shane didn’t. Anyway, getting GA&A operational requires a new mainframe. They’re importing one from off-planet. It’ll be here in little over a week. Ten days, installed.”
“And a new mainframe means a new security system.” Great, just what we needed.
“So we have to go before it goes on-line or me, Zanzibar, and a dozen Paralian ship experts won’t make a difference.”
“You just made my day. A week?”
“Ten days, partner.”
Tetsami looked at Dom and smiled. “You bastard.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“I’m sure.”
“We need to fill the holes left in the team, and you need to polish up our plan for getting in.”
“And out.”
“And out,” Dom agreed.
“All we need is a ship expert and a driver. Levy said he knew a ship expert, and the pilot I contacted is back in Godwin by now.”
“Good, take Zanzibar and Shane back to Godwin and get things moving.”
“What about you?” Tetsami tentatively stuck out her hand toward him.
“I’ll meet you at the warehouse in a couple of days. I have to do things here.” He reached in the pocket of his jumpsuit and pulled out a small computer and placed it in Tetsami’s outstretched hand. “Here’s a line on our liquid assets, in case you need anything.”
Tetsami stared at her hand, taken by surprise again.
She could swear that she could feel the weight of the three hundred-some K they had left in the account. Dom left her there, staring at the computer that held all that money in virtual limbo.
She felt vaguely pissed again, but for no real reason.
I’m his partner all right.
Bastard.
Only a week....
* * * *
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Leaks
“We are the property of those we hate.”
—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
“It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty.”
—Francis Bacon
(1561-1626)
“I don’t like insubordination, Captain Murphy.”
Murphy was rigid and as unmoving as a statue. “No, sir.”
Klaus was receiving Murphy is his current command center, Dominic’s old office. By all rights, Klaus should have been happy with the way the operation was going. Phase one of Rasputin was proceeding apace. In eight Bakunin days the new mainframe would arrive. The residence tower was now filled with Confederacy people, his people.
However, Klaus wasn’t happy.
First there’d been his brother.
Then there was Shane.
Now this.
“I don’t like disobedience.”
“No, sir.”
Klaus sighed. Was he getting through to this man? Did Murphy understand what this meant? First there was Shane, then these five marines, then ... It was like a virus, it had to be excised before the entire company was infected.
“What am I going to do with these people?”
“I have them under house arrest, sir.”
“Is that a suitable punishment for mutiny, Murphy?”
Murphy’s gaze looked shallow and far away.
“The teams I’m sending into Godwin are necessary to this mission. I cannot accept any disobedience. Especially because, thanks to one traitor, there are nearly fourteen hundred enemy agents still unaccounted for.”
“Yes, sir.”
“An extreme circumstance calls for extreme measures, don’t you think?”
Murphy was silent.
“Don’t you think, Captain Murphy?”
After a long pause, Murphy said, “Yes, sir.”
“Good. I want the first of them, the squad leader, prepped for the interrogation room in the Blood-Tide. The rest, I want them to observe.”
Murphy stood there.
“Dismissed.”
Murphy turned on his heel and left.
Klaus knew he was having this trouble because of Shane. If it weren’t for her sending the containment operation balls-up, none of these solders would even think of disobeying his orders.
Shane and command at TEC. His subordinates were quoting TEC orders back at him. “No widening of the operation beyond the complex until phase one is completed.”
Damn it. He was the one on the ground here. He was the one who gave the orders. He was the one who answered to the TEC. He was in control of an operation once it hit dirt—
Why did they sabotage his authority?
Why did Dimitri sabotage his authority? Klaus knew he was doing what the old man wanted. Klaus had thought long and hard, and he’d decided that neutralizing “Dominic Magnus” had to be part of his unwritten mission.
Otherwise, why send him?
Klaus turned the chair and faced Godwin out the side of the transparent dome. The city looked like a glowing fungus in the sunset. Some malignant growth that you’d find under a rock. All of Bakunin was like that, a throbbing cancer in the side of the Confederacy.
He was the surgeon.
He would have advocated blasting this place to the bedrock. Flash this entire criminal nation into infinity from orbit. That would have solved both problems, his and the Confederacy’s.
No, Klaus thought, that would be too easy. And they need a planet with a population of a half-billion or so. Half a billion people and eighty years standard.
Bakunin had over a billion people, and it’d been occupied for a hundred and four years.
“You did pick the perfect place to nest, didn’t you— brother?”
A cesspit of disease and perversion. A boiling swamp just like the one Klaus had thought his brother had died in.
No mistakes this time. Klaus wouldn’t finish until he had Dom’s corpse in his arms.
The holo built into his desk beeped for his attention. Someone had finally gotten around to fixing the thing so it didn’t give Klaus headaches every time he looked at it. He answered the call.
Looking out of the holo was Jonathan Whissen-Hall, one of the civilians who’d come on the Blood-Tide. He was the TEC communications officer, the one with the security clearance to handle the coded messages.
“What is it, Mr. Hall?” Klaus was aware that truncating his hyphenated name was irritating to Whissen-Hall, but the damn thing was too long, and Whissen-Hall kept any irritation below the level of insubordination.
“Our first synchronization call came in on the tach-comm.”
“Oh?” Things were speeding along. “How’s our schedule?”
“Well within the margin. The first sync signal was pulsed from Earth day three-oh after we left.”