The birdlike alien scratched its long neck with one foot as it gestured at the holo with its three-fingered hands. The three joints made its arms move with a liquid grace. “The Blood-Tide is a class of ship that was first designed as a fast troop-carrier. He is as large as a cargo ship. He deceives with that. The original model was extremely overengineered. His design incorporates a tach-drive, conventional maneuvering drives, and a contragrav generator. A quantum extraction contragrav, not the slower, safer, catalytic injection drive. Because of the multiple systems his original model could never move more than five hundred troops—”
Flower went on at length on the ship that had landed on the GA&A complex. It was the third time Tetsami had heard it all. The important points of Flower’s speech weren’t the reassessing of the Barracuda Class-Five’s military role—a reassessment that added dozens of weapons and heavier armor and reduced its carrying capacity. The important point was the multiple redundancies of the craft. Redundancies such as total separation of the defensive field generators from the drives, allowing the Blood-Tide to power a defensive screen over the whole GA&A complex without running the drives. Redundancies such as a spare computer system that could be hijacked to run the security system for GA&A from the ship—barely.
Flower took the holo’s remote and called up various schematics. Some were public domain, some had been bought or hijacked from various nets in the last few days, and a few Flower had drawn up itself. The people paying the most attention to Flower’s assessment of the Blood-Tide were Mosasa and, predictably, Ivor.
“Here, and here—” Flower used the pointer to indicate places around the landing gear, “are access points to the secondary Emerson field generator. Like most Confederacy battlecraft, the Barracuda has a multiple-layer system that can generate concentric fields of differing frequencies to deal with multiple laser hits. From the information I have been given, the Blood-Tide has only a single screen up, covering the diameter of the entire complex. Even one layer at that diameter would be a major drain on his power systems, even if he taps the GA&A power grid. With the landing gear down, it is possible to access the Emerson field generator directly through these circuits.” Two spots lit up red. “This bypasses the control computer.”
Random Walk’s robot rose and tilted at the holo. “And what about accessing the computer itself?”
“Theoretically, he could be accessed from the GA&A security grid, since they are using the ship’s computer to run the complex. This is not a good option since we know nothing of the interface they are using, only that it was designed by TEC programmers on-site. The better option is direct access to the core system of the Blood-Tide himself.”
The image rotated, pulled back, and dropped electronic schematics in favor of structural detail. “Here is the secondary core. He is placed as central to the ship as possible—”
Ivor spoke up. “What’s that big sphere crowding the starboard bulkhead?”
Flower shrunk the image even further to allow more of the internal structure to be seen. “That is the contragrav generator, which is at the center of the ship. The secondary core is central to avoid battle damage, the generator is there for maneuvering—”
“I was afraid of that,” Ivor said.
“Isn’t it dangerous to get that close to a quantum extraction system?” asked Zanzibar.
Flower bobbed its head. “There is only a radiation hazard when the drive is running, and he is shielded.”
Ivor sighed. “Those things are hideously cranky.”
Flower made a circular gesture with his foot. “We do not intend to fly him—”
“Right, we don’t,” said Tetsami. “Which brings us to the ground team, and how we’re getting Random to that computer core.”
The floating robot tilted in a bow.
“The surface team is Shane, Mosasa, and Random—or specifically, that briefcase Random’s simulacrum is holding.”
The robot placed an aluminum briefcase on the table. “I don’t show this to just anyone, but in that case is a fifth part of my brain, a crystal matrix with RF and a few I/O ports, what makes me me.”
“I was wondering how that thing was being piloted when we’re supposed to be RF shielded in here,” Zanzibar muttered.
The robot used a manipulator to open the case and revealed a keyboard, a number of cables, a small holo display, and a lot of access ports. One of them was a bio-interface jack. Tetsami didn’t want to think about that.
“Mr. Mosasa built this for me,” Random said. “So I could go out, see the world—etcetera.”
“Anyway,” Tetsami said, “Random is going to be the major cog in getting TEC security off everyone’s backs. I’ll be backing him up from the security grid end, but we need someone at the core of the Blood-Tide to make sure we pull this off. Stage one of the op is getting Random’s briefcase to the secondary core of the Blood-Tide.”
Tetsami took the remote back from Flower and changed the display. Now, floating above the table was the globe of Bakunin. The globe looked like a map someone had left unfinished, even though it was an accurate picture from orbit. Most of the globe seemed white, all except a strip around the equator where Bakunin’s one continent shot from north to south at an angle, ice cap to ice cap. A little red dot glowed on the equator of that continent, on the western side of its mountainous spine. A large blue dot glowed to its immediate west. “The red dot is GA&A and the blue dot is Godwin.”
Tetsami started to circle the table, pacing the slowly rotating globe. “Our first problem with the ground team is getting them in without flagging security. It calls for a distraction to misdirect everyone so we can get Shane up to a perimeter guard. The first problem we have is the Emerson field. A military screen can detect any EM active source crossing the perimeter—that includes Shane’s armor and Random. Second problem is the RF traffic and the transponder codes—obviously altered since Shane defected. We need to knock out all that to give Shane a window. And do it without letting them realize something’s up.”
As she passed Zanzibar, Tetsami heard her mutter, “Good luck.”
“Gladiatorial combat to the rescue.”
Not a few people said, “Huh?”
Tetsami hit the remote and a small yellow speck appeared over the planet’s equator, pacing the planet’s rotation. “The problem of getting Shane in baffled me for a while—I mean, what kind of massive ECM could I pull on the whole GA&A complex that wouldn’t look like someone deliberately fucking with them? The solution is bonehead simple—if you ever watch the public airwaves on this rock. That yellow speck there is a Troy Broadcasting Corp satellite.” Tetsami realized that her smile had grown hard. This part of her plan was petty revenge. However, it did have an elegance about it.
“The sat’s a new one, right over Godwin, and it’s been blasting anything that gets close to it.”
Tetsami punched the remote and on came footage from the wattage war between the gladiators and the demolition derby. “Troy Broadcasting has been beaming targeted high-power broadcasts straight into Godwin. They overpower any ground-based transmission, and when they really get happy, they bleed their broadcast over every holo channel available. Folks have been picking this stuff up on computers, aircar autopilots, power cables—you get the picture. Someone eventually is going to nuke that terrorist sat, but while it’s there ...”