Dyson's Drop (18 page)

‘I take it they didn’t go back that way?’

‘No, sir. The unanchored portals couldn’t maintain stability for long. That’s what the orbital fleet was for.’

‘What was the cost? On both sides?’

‘Ah, we think we took out about sixty per cent of the invading force, including some transport vessels. As for our people, we lost over four hundred, and sustained severe infrastructural damage.’

‘Yes, but what was the political cost?’

‘Pardon?’

Black scowled. ‘Never mind. Why was no alarm given?’

‘Er, well, as I said, sir, the orbital shower was a fake and a feint at the same time. But one of my men did send a warning. Thanks to him we managed to mount some defence.’

‘And who was this?’

‘A relatively new foot soldier recruit, s1r. Sublieutenantjinks Heller.’

‘Is he here?’

‘Heller?’ The young officer Black had noted earlier stepped forward and saluted. There was a fresh wound on his face, and, like many there, he was soaked in blood.

Black nodded. ‘Good work, Heller.’ He turned to Argus. ‘Captain, you’re relieved of your command. I’m promoting young Heller here. He will assume command of Security. I will decide what to do with you in due course. Dismissed.’

Argus swallowed hard. He had too much sense to argue. With any luck, events would take Brown’s attention away from the personal fate of one lowly captain.

In that, he was right.

When they were alone, Black turned to the Envoy.

‘I have been stupid and short-sighted,’ he said. ‘I have allowed my obsession with the lost coordinates to blind me. I should have dealt with Myoto when I had the chance, finished them off once and for all.’

‘It is not too late.’

‘We must take Dyson’s Drop. What I could not do with this new technology. Imagine. Unanchored portals, opening wherever you wanted them. Even on Kanto Kantoris.’

‘Kanto Kantoris is not far from Dyson’s Drop.’

‘That has occurred to me. Perhaps again there is a way to kill two birds with one stone.’

‘There is always a way.’

IT was too weird. Peeing standing up. Who had designed human plumbing this way? Anneke finished at the urinal, zipped up, and moved to the washbasin, pausing to eye herself in the mirror.

The face that stared back wasn’t her own.

It was the face of Sublieutenant - no,
Captain
- Jinks Heller. Anneke ran a finger along her jaw line, poked her cheek, and prodded her nose. It never ceased to amaze her. She’d had renovations before, some more thorough than others, but this was something different. She felt like a stranger.

She was shorter, broader across the chest, more muscled, and hairier, too. Her breasts were gone. The first time she had gazed at her slab-like flat chest she’d almost cried. She’d never been renovated as a man before, except cosmetically, wrapping her small breasts to make herself appear even flatter. But she’d never before lost her womanhood.

It was disquieting. Profoundly so.

That, and having an extra appendage. She’d had to make a huge effort to avoid communal showers.

Fortunately, as a captain, she now had her own bathroom, a blissful luxury.

Suddenly, the whole room lurched. She grabbed for a stanchion and managed to stop herself cracking her head on the wall of the tiny washroom.

Must have hit some turbulence,
she thought. Even
n-space
wasn’t free of snakeholes; occasionally, entire ships disappeared into the higher dimensional realm, itself one big anomaly.

A scientist called Ernst Kobol had discovered
n-space.
He’d been investigating time travel, but discovered instead a place where space and time collapsed in predictable ways. He had gone on to develop the jump-gate technology that had revolutionised transportation and travel throughout the galaxy. In its own way, it helped unify the galaxy, heralding an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. The world on which Kobol had made his discoveries was a planetoid called Dyson’s Drop, which circled a rogue F-type star that had been making its way through Orson’s Drift for the last million years.

Anneke noted the time. Uh-oh, time to move. She was expected to give a security briefing in ten minutes. Or rather, CaptainJinks Heller was.

‘Okay, listen up everyone.’ Anneke’s masculine voice momentarily jarred her. But it reminded her that as a relatively inexperienced officer, she needed to exude some nervousness. She reached into a large three-di mensional hologram that floated midair in the centre of the briefing chamber. The room contained about twenty specialists, security troopers and advisers. In other words, her ‘assault’ team. Nathaniel Brown sat at the back, watching everything, and the Envoy stood near the door. From time to time the alien eyed Anneke-as-Heller, but Anneke could not read his expression. She learnt that it had been the Envoy’s idea to put Heller in charge of the security of this expedition, a fact Anneke found both curious and disquieting.

Anneke deliberately stumbled over several statements, but not enough to appear incompetent.

‘Our main task will be to reach the hub here - actually,
here,
as well as these three key installations.’ She pointed to each one in turn; as she touched the spots the locations in question turned red and pulsed.

‘Our primary mission is
not
to engage the enemy, so let’s leave the gung-ho theatrics for the experts.’ She grinned sheepishly, wincing inside. ‘No dead heroes on this trip. That’s an order!’

There were a few good-natured laughs around the room.

Just so I know you all understand this back to front, our job is simple. We pave the way for the attack troops. We infiltrate the target’s defences and bring them down.’ She looked around at those gathered before her. Several nodded. ‘Dyson’s Drop is no ordinary planet. It is almost completely artificial. And it is one of the most defended worlds you will ever encounter. Ernst Kobol wanted one thing above all: that his jump-gate technology be used for peaceful purposes only. He knew it would attract those with other ideas. So he made sure its defences were pretty damn impressive.’

A young woman spoke up. ‘But surely, sir, he had to know one day somebody would come along and clobber the place. That’s basic evolutionary tactics. There’s always a bigger fish out there.’

‘He did. So as well as building up the defences of Dyson’s Drop he also made it disappear. For nearly two hundred years nobody had a clue where it was. Then it re-emerged from the unscannable depths of Orson’s Drift about twenty years ago, by which time its defences were the best in the galaxy. But he had gone further. He decentralised the jump-gate technology. In effect, no one group can control the entire network.’

At the back of the room, Black smirked inwardly, and thought:
Unless one controls the entire galaxy.

The young woman persisted. ‘But then I don’t understand. Why did Myoto take Dyson’s Drop? And how?’

‘First off, Myoto did not take Dyson’s Drop militarily, but within the code of the Covenant of Militarised Companies and Clans. It was a hostile takeover, sure, but it was primarily a business takeover.

Myoto controls Dyson’s Drop - and the jump-gate technology - because they control the majority of voting shares in Dyson Enterprises and the Board that runs it. As such, they don’t need to have their hands on every jump-gate nexus and control centre. They own the whole thing.’

‘And we’re going in to take it back, right?’ someone from the back called.

‘That’s exactly what we’re going to do.’

‘But then we won’t control it either, will we?’

‘No, but we’ll control a great chunk of it. After that, I guess we’ll have to deal with those who control the other chunks. The system either all works together or it doesn’t work at all. That’s how Kobol designed it. Now, we need to go over the deployment tactics and timing. Everyone get out your e-pads.’

Black watched as Heller led the squad through their mission parameters and made sure each was familiar with the ‘terrain’ they would encounter on Dyson’s Drop and their own task. Black had to admit Heller was a natural. Once again, the Envoy’s instinct in picking the right human for the job amazed Black. And puzzled him. How did an alien get so good at reading human beings?

Heller finished with some sobering advice. ‘If we do this job right, there’s no need for us to suffer casualties. So make sure you know what you’re doing. Anybody unsure, come see me. In the meantime, everybody gets a memory tattoo of the layout inside Dyson’s and of the tactical schematics I’ve shown you. That’s all. Get going. And make sure you get a good night’s sleep.’

Interesting,
thought Black.
He genuine ;); cares about his
people. Maybe that’s what makes him different from Argus, who regarded his underlings as cannon.fodder.

Later, in her captain’s quarters, Anneke ate a solitary meal. She had gone over the mission again and again in her head, weighing all the variables. It was not her responsibility to safeguard the lives of the squad, yet she could not let them walk into danger without doing her best to prepare them, even though they were her enemies.

Nor was she willing to kill anyone on Brown’s behalf It had taken all her effort to stop herself just killing the mole herself, even if it meant sacrificing her own life. But in the end the only certain way to kill him would be to destroy the entire ship, and that - with its attendant death of innocents - she was not willing to do. Brown, she had discovered, never went anywhere without his superhuman bodyguard, the Envoy, as well as an array of sophisticated shielding devices.

She had opportunities to take a shot at the mole, but none certain, none without consequences. So she forced herself to play out the plan formulated back on Lykis Integer.

That, after all, was good tactics.

A knock on her door startled her. She opened it to find the young woman from the briefing standing there, looking nervous.

Anneke frowned. ‘Specialist Yosira, isn’t it?’ Yosira, a small, slim Eurasian woman with an attractive face, ski-jump nose and full lips, smiled.

‘Ever the joker ... sir.’

‘Can I help you with something?’

Yosira tilted her head. ‘It’s rather what I can do for you, sir. May I come in?’

Anneke stood back as Yosira brushed past her. Anneke shut the door, turned, and found the woman standing millimetres from her face. Then Yosira grabbed Anneke and planted her mouth on Anneke’s in a kiss off the Richter scale.

Anneke, for once, was at a complete loss.

She managed to disentangle Yosira only to find the young woman starting to unbutton her tunic.

‘Wait a minute!’ She grabbed Yosira’s hands, holding them tightly. The Eurasian looked at her demurely. ‘This isn’t going to happen, Specialist.’

Yosira pouted. ‘That’s not what you said on Procyon III.’

‘Procyon?’ Damn. Just what she’d hoped would never happen. Running into somebody who knew the real Jinks Heller. She should have invented a whole new personality, with officer status within Quesada, but that would have taken longer and been open to more uncertainty. Well, it had happened. She’d have to read the situation as carefully as she could.

‘That was ... uh ... different circumstances.’

‘Because you weren’t an officer then?’ Yosira accused. ‘Or because you were blind drunk?’

‘To my discredit, both.’ Blind drunk was good. And sudden rank superiority wasn’t bad, either.

‘So you don’t remember me?’

‘Sure. But that was then. This is now.’

Yosira stamped her feet petulandy. ‘We had so much fun!’

‘Yosira, we have a mission tomorrow and I’m now a captain. How would it look?’ Anneke tried to sound as reasonable as possible. And then had a brainstorm. ‘How about we continue where we left off when we get back to base? No prying eyes there. I’ll make it worth your while. Could be a promotion in it for you, too.’ Great. Just like a guy.

Yosira stroked Anneke’s cheek then kissed her again. There was no getting out of it so Anneke did her best. It wasn’t that bad. Yosira was a good kisser. Young Jinks Heller was in for some good times, if they ever ran into each other again. Not likely of course, not where she had him, out of harm’s way.

Anneke shut the door behind the young woman and breathed a huge sigh of relief If that was the worst that happened to her, she would count herself lucky.

She took two grams of
n-doze
and went to bed.

Anneke rose early, washed and dressed in combat fatigues, body armour, deflector and dampener shields. She checked her weapons, scanners and communications equipment, then went looking for her squad.

She found them assembled in the aft command bay, prepped and ready. She walked in to big grins and good-natured comments about captains who slept in and nearly missed their mission.

Anneke grinned back, taking it all in her stride.

‘Well, since you’re all so energetic this morning, let’s see you do two laps of the bay.’ As a testament to how quickly she had bonded with these young men and women, she didn’t even get one groan, just more cheekiness.