“Very well,” Micah growled, and the marine retreated out the hatch. Micah looked at his bedside clock.
Almost twelve hours since Kedron’s attack, and still no gravs. No comms either, he guessed, or Van-Lyn wouldn’t have sent a marine for him.
Van-Lyn was waiting for him on the bridge. “Admiral, a few hours ago, Harpy broke orbit and swung close alongside Fearless. Then, a few minutes ago, both of them broke orbit and are now driving at maximum for number one jump point.”
“They’re deserting, then. Is there anything we can do to stop them?”
Van-Lyn nodded. “Yes, sir, I assume they’re deserting. However, something’s strange. The ships are so close together they’re almost touching. Any Captain would be a fool to maneuver so close to another vessel.” He shook his head. “And I doubt we can stop them. Nemesis has no weapons, of course, and we have no comms to send another vessel, even if we could be sure which ones we can trust. The only thing we can even possibly do is send a flight of strengls after them; and against a destroyer and a battle cruiser, they wouldn't have a chance.”
Micah’s shoulders sagged. Damn Kedron anyway! How could one jumped-up marine so thoroughly complicate his plans?
He sighed. He should have known when the officers dispatched to Harpy and Fearless had failed to return or report. Micah watched the tiny blips crawl across the screen toward the jump point. Vidsen and Jamro were obviously defecting to Cord. He sighed. He should have moved faster on the accidents scheduled for those two.
It took more than forty-eight hours to restore all of Nemesis ’ systems, many hours after Kedron’s ship and that damned tramp had jumped. It was also just too late to stop Fearless and Harpy. By that time, Micah had regained control of his flotilla, but it had been a near thing.
Even among Nemesis ’ handpicked crew, several dozen had to be confined to the brig. There’d been actual hand-to-hand fighting aboard all the other ships. He’d had to send over a hundred marines to secure Dauntless, and he was convinced that only the threat of Nemesis ’ weapons had prevented Raptor from following Harpy ’s lead and deserting.
Then there was the base on Thaeron. He’d been infuriated when communications had been restored and the base’s CO had reported. After thinking about it, though, Micah had to consider it a case of mixed emotions. Evidently, at the time Kedron had been sabotaging Nemesis ’ systems, a force of armed men in marine uniforms had mounted an attack from that damned tramp.
They’d destroyed almost every shuttle and orbital lifter he had, which was a serious problem; but they’d also kept the base’s personnel too busy to react to Chu-Lo’s message. Now, using the attack as an excuse, Micah had two hundred armed marines occupying the base. He didn’t have to worry about being cut off from the base’s supplies and personnel.
In addition, his counter-propaganda seemed to be working; at least physical resistance had ceased. He’d visited all the ships of the flotilla, and on all of them, he’d harped and continued to harp on the theme that Kedron was an imposter sent by Cord to demoralize and cause dissension among the Fleet personnel, and the message a hoax and a fake. Calm was finally restored, but casualties had been heavy.
Micah sighed. It was going to take months to recover from this. Moreover, he wasn’t sure he could hold it together that long. He shrugged. He’d have to. If his plan failed, he was a dead man.
There were three bright spots though, two of which involved personnel. For one thing, Van-Lyn had turned out to be a pleasant surprise through the emergency. Oh, the old man had been shocked by his inclusion in Chu-Lo’s message. Now, he seemed resigned to his own disgrace and death. Surprisingly, Van-Lyn had become determined that if he were going out, he'd go out fighting. The doddering, uncertain Van-Lyn of a week ago was gone, replaced by the strong, determined commander he must have been in past years.
Micah could also be certain he knew where all his Captains stood. No more doubts could be entertained. They all finally knew that their fates were tied to his. He’d have to tolerate no more opposition and agitation from within his own command ranks.
Raptor ’s Captain’d had to die in the fighting, but his replacement, his inexperienced XO, was controllable. The fool was focused only on his own ambition, and was sure that his only chance of surviving this episode with his career intact was to blindly follow the orders of duly constituted authority — Micah.
A slight smile flitted across Micah’s face. The third bright spot was that the turmoil had given Micah an opportunity to eliminate four investigators and quite a bit of evidence. He’d still have to be watchful, of course. Some of the investigators could still be undercover. However, most of the documentary and computerized evidence had been destroyed.
Those were the only bright spots, though. Damn Kedron! His ten-minute visit had caused months of delays. What if Cord announced the release before Micah was ready?
It appeared, though, that Cord wasn’t ready for a confrontation, either. The very few intelligence reports he’d been receiving indicated that Cord had all the shipyards on Outback working day and night, doing something involving those damned tramps. He slammed his fist on his desk. He had to give Cord some credit, at least. The man understood security. Every MI agent Micah had tried to infiltrate into the shipyards had been caught, and the three agents remaining on Outback were unwilling to try it again.
Evidently, Cord was using his viceregal access to Fleet records to identify Micah’s agents. Micah frowned. All right, so he couldn’t get an agent into the yards. However, over the years, Micah’s Intelligence chief had recruited a number of those tramps’ captains — and their names wouldn’t be in Cord’s files. It was time to lean on them. Oh, they were all provincials, so he couldn’t expect too much, but he should get something useful, even from them.
In the meantime, he’d ordered every ship’s launch, gig, or barge transferred to the base below. Only his own barge remained in space, so that the force had at least some intership movement capability.
It wasn’t going to be enough. Launches, gigs, and barges weren’t the same as cargo lifters. He slammed his desk again in frustration. Kedron’s attack had been almost completely successful. Micah wondered whether the idea had been Cord's or Kedron’s. He really hadn’t thought that a bumpkin like Kedron could have that sort of tactical sense.
Micah shrugged. Whoever it was, he’d slowed Micah’s timetable by months.
It appeared he’d have to do something about this Kedron, though. The man was proving to be entirely too effective. He sighed. Micah could have used a man like Kedron in his organization.
It was nearly time for his tiny fleet courier to sneak into the Haven system anyway. He dug through the papers on his desk, and located the timetable. Yes. The courier should be leaving in about nine hours. Excellent. He’d send along a message for his Military Intelligence agents on Haven.
The fleet courier was Micah’s secure communication line with his agents. The agents beamed messages to a certain area of empty space at prearranged times. They also maintained listening watches at those times.
The fleet courier would emerge into Haven's system through a little-used jump point a short time before the messages arrived at the target area. Hovering at the edge of the system, it would squirt-beam coded messages toward Haven, then wait. At the appointed time, it would intercept the messages previously sent by the agents, then jump back to Thaeron.
Since the courier didn’t dare approach the planet closely, light-speed lag times made two-way communication impossible; though of course, secure communications could scarcely be maintained anyway, with messages being beamed at a whole planet.
Micah scrawled a message, then grabbed his codebook and laboriously translated the message into unbreakable code. He could have just used the computer to code the message into standard fleet codes, of course, but Micah didn’t want this message seen by anyone but the agent concerned.