Koban 6: Conflict and Empire (47 page)

He grinned, “We obviously can’t advertise our departure with a thunderous Jump back to orbit. We’ll take the leisurely and scenic Normal Space drive route, even avoiding turbulence.”

Alyson offered an objection. “I think Carson and I make a better pair for that future mission. Our Secretary of Defense, slash Fleet Admiral, and the Federation’s Ambassador at Large, shouldn’t be risking their butts in enemy territory this way.”

Aware that others would echo that sentiment, Mirikami stopped it cold. “We don’t have a small child to leave orphaned, as you and Carson do. Besides, Maggi can use the visit to explore the living area near the Emperor a bit, and to see how the noble and royal Thandol live. We intend to conduct a partly psychological war on them, and the two people organizing that war need to know more about how the upper crust Thandol nobles live and think.”

Then Maggi revealed what was probably the true reason. “The two of us never get to have any fun in the field. If we screw this up and get our butt’s caught in a crack, we can fight them off as well as any of you can. I don’t see how they could stop us from reaching a stealthed Scout. If they do, we’ll hide or run until someone pops a Scout down to rescue our clumsy asses and recovers or destroys our ship. The Empire doesn’t have detectors that can see through our stealth, at least not yet. We’re doing it, so live with it! That means you too, Sarge.”

The silence was as eloquent as it was rare.

Mirikami broke the awkwardly quiet moment with cheerful banter. “OK, people, let’s go tippy toe once around Wendal.”

The five small ships followed separate paths around the heavily developed planet, recording what was seen in permanent orbit and on the surface. Not a thorough recon, but good enough for now. Three of them managed to cross over the thirty miles wide palace complex, with elaborate and expansive gardens, lush browsing areas, and elaborate security around the walls, and restrictions on traffic passing over at low orbitals.

There were several elaborate and presumably luxurious living areas, at least for an elephant-like browsing species. One, at the highest levels near the center of the large complex, seemed to be the most often used. It featured multiple large rectangular plots of a golden haze of knee high grass, waving gently in the breezes. This was presumably the highly prized golden sugar spears, and was reserved for the Emperor, royal nobles of the Imperial Court, or special guests of the Emperor.

Maggi told Tet, “If golden sugar spears are restricted to consumption by royalty, it’s the cultural equivalent to royal jelly for Earth honey bees. That’s a nutritious secretion fed to selected bee larva, causing them to develop into new queens. Having a plot of that royal grass give a totalitarian Emperor a case of the royal shits, is a small measure of justice.”

She was going to enjoy contaminating those plots with the fast maturing, hard to eliminate intestinal parasites. “Let the lords of the Thandol empire reap some of what they sow, when those lords are displeased with their unwilling peons.”

Maggi had learned from the Hothor that several of the plots were always in the process of being replanted, and rich new soil was dug for each one, by low class Thandol, which alien servants saw haul to the palace compound. The plots were worked only by those same trusted, wrinkled and elderly looking Thandol gardeners, who earned that honor over a lifetime of work.

Manual labor was normally reserved for alien workers, which were not permitted above the first level inside palace grounds. Where the plots were located was likely near where the exalted Farlol the 84th lived. Per the rough diagram the Hothor had provided, the throne room was ten levels below these open grazing areas, and the throne room itself was several levels above ground level.

“I’ve found an isolated roof where a scout can land, and is inaccessible to foot traffic, where any one of us could easily get down and back up. From there we could infiltrate to the grazing plots. I’m less certain we could do that while the emperor is in residence, with increased patrolling and unknown security precautions surrounding him. There could be pressure sensors in floors and walls, for example. He’d likely need to be away, with most of his security guards with him, and less attention paid to the empty quarters. I saw a lot of Thandol in fancy uniforms, moving all around that area right now, so he may be home.

“I simply don’t know if we can risk a direct landing with that unavoidable pop sound. That might force us to use a slow Normal Space drive approach, which could make us an incoming blip on a mass detector. Sneaking in might not be as practical as we hoped. Too bad. Maggi really wants to give the top brass, particularly the Emperor, the dribbley never-get-overs from parasites. That would affect his decision making when she fabricates conspiracy theories about coups, and stokes general paranoia about revolts within the empire. We want them too worried at home to engage in adventures outside the empire.”

Sarge asked, “Do the Thandol like fireworks shows, or other noisy ceremonies? They have that Marching Army of the Emperor, with that phony army that stomps their feet as they march. I see what looks exactly like a wide reviewing stand not too far from his quarters, looking out over a long wide avenue, with a parade ground on the other side, or at least an area where a big crowd can gather, to admire the high mucky mucks.

“I mean, why have a parade route and a flashy display army if it never marches to impress the ego driven nobles and Emperor? Find out from their servants if they conduct noisy scheduled events. Plan your infiltration then, if they do.”

“Good idea, Sarge.” Maggi offered him a rare complement. Rare, to keep him from figuring out she valued his input.

Mirikami shifted attention back to their plan to find where the Thandol were gathering their naval forces for attacking Tanner’s World. “Maggi will try to contact the Hothor with the Prada com set here on Wendal, to see what he learned. She can also ask about local celebrations. To protect our contact, she can only flag the device to show him we called when he checks. When he feels safe and is alone, she’ll receive a Comtap link.

“While she does that, I’ve decided where we’ll set up the atmospheric bulges. The five of us will string out along the equatorial orbit of the Crusher segments, just on the dayside of the terminator. The atmosphere of any world expands when the sun heats it after the night’s cooling caused it to contract. We’ll make certain the expansion today is greater than normal, so it might not be noticed, or at least not detected as quickly as it would be on the night side.

“I want your AI’s to time the projected gentle gradient gravity fields, and center them a hundred fifty miles above the planet, to start to draw atmosphere up above that hundred thirty-mile orbit. My own AI has calculated how far ahead in minutes and in distance that should be, to allow time for each atmosphere bulge to get at least to that altitude before the corner sections reach there in their orbit. We want them to spend five minutes passing through the slightly denser air of each of our five bulges. Kill your projector’s field five minutes before the first section passes below your focal point. We don’t want to raise the Crusher segment’s orbits, which they would notice, and the atmosphere will then be gently descending under Wendal’s gravity when they pass through. It needs to be a subtle effect.

“Noreen gets to go first, next Carson, Thad, Carol, and then my ship. We start just as the leading segment crosses the dayside terminator into the warming side. They take eighty-six minutes per orbit, so we have plenty of time. Noreen will start forming her bulge ten minutes ahead of them, measured from when they will cross the terminator line. We have forty-four minutes of dayside orbit time to work with.

“If we keep a string of five bulges forming in front of them, one after another, that should represent about twenty-five minutes of slightly increased drag. It’s more than the twenty minutes Noreen’s main AI calculated would be enough. I’m a bit uncertain if what we’re doing here will cause a steady enough drag effect as needed, using the minimum time Karl calculated. I want to reduce how much time they have to correct the slow orbital decay when it’s noticed. We likely can’t stick around two days to watch what happens, but our Hothor contact will eventually mention the Thandol misfortune if it happens. We’re not telling him or the Hothor government that we were involved, or were ever near Wendal. We want to be somewhere else causing mayhem that we do get credit for, when it happens here.”

The five Scouts moved into their positions, which didn’t need to be close to the planet for their projectors to influence such a broad target zone, so they moved out several thousand miles. An hour after they were in position, they caused a string of what seemed to be unusual natural events, which soon would have dire consequences for some of the equatorial industries of Wendal. They would only have a day and a half, at most, to start evacuations, once they determined the three likely impact zones for tens of thousands of tons of metal. They would add three new planetary scars, to match the one left a year earlier.

Two days prior to the disaster, a humble Hothor servant, in his own quarters, spoke to a mysterious alien using a small paw held device. He knew the device could instantly communicate with similar devices at home, and using a different address, it could reach someone he was told had been an alien visitor to his home world a year ago.

He had no idea who or where this creature was, and wasn’t even shown pictures of one of them from their previous visit to Canji Mot, which was not publicized. What he didn’t know, he couldn’t reveal.

However, he’d heard the rumor at home that it was from another galactic civilization, which was opposed to the Thandol Empire, and was allied with the Olt’kitapi. Therefore, he and his government wanted to help them. He told mystery contact of the kitchen rumors heard at Thandol noble dinners, about where a fleet was being gradually assembled, and kept secret from even their own three security forces. This Hothor had never heard of the place, but he provided the name to the mysterious contact, and some numbers he didn’t understand, which supposedly indicated where it was located. He was thanked, and told to hide his device again, and to check it once a day. There would be requests for information from the alien, or instructions from his own government. It was an exciting time for a subservient species, and for a humble servant. Gimtha Pradwal hated those he was compelled to serve.

****

Maggi, looking for fresh ideas, linked to the other nine Kobani. “Our Hothor contact, Pradwal, called the star system a term in the subservient Thandol grammar that my new data base translated into a meaning that matches either with
outcast two
or
outlaw two
, which may not be good matches, but we don’t navigate by star names anyway. There also was a general location using Thandol coordinates, of where the star is in the galaxy.

“My problem is that when I look at that location on our navigation computers, which all use a recent copy of maps that an automated Olt’kitapi system on our clanships update, I found no stars within six light years of that location. That spot does fall within a twenty light year wide void in the Sagittarius Arm, within a region where the Finth perform Imperial security. They number their security sectors, and the Finth sector is number two.”

To head off questions, for which she’d already found answers, she added, “It shouldn’t be a case of our maps being incomplete, because clanships have advanced quantum computers that use a method, which the Torki and Raspani just told me they can’t duplicate yet, to update the galaxy map on a regular basis. The Olt’kitapi used the vast amount of information gleaned from large-scale tachyon background flows, which is somehow related to mass distribution in our nearby Universe, which for us is the Milky Way. What I mean, is that I believe our map is accurate, and I got fresh confirmation of that from our experts on Haven.”

Having framed the problem, she posed her question, “How can we find this damn place, without a week of searching stars at the edges of that void?”

Maggi had been determined to solve this on her own, because it involved, she thought, her translation of the Thandol dialect used by the Hothor’s personal translation device, which involved her Mind Taps of the Thandol officers.

On his first hearing of the problem, which she’d kept private while the other nine screwed with the atmosphere of Wendal; her husband inadvertently pissed her off, even as he impressed her. It was the simple tap of his lower lip, and not a long drawn out tug indicating deep thought, that accomplished the irritation, and also provoking admiration.

“Why not accept the coordinates as correct? It would be a secret base if concealed from their three security forces, and who says it has to be around a star? Perhaps
outlaw two
or
outcast two
actually translates into something like
rogue two
, which is a relatively minor difference. That might mean there’s no star involved, if it’s a rogue planet.”

For a change, Sarge seemed to be defending his usual verbal antagonist. Perhaps it was payback for the earlier complement. “What difference would the translation make, Tet? Like Maggi said, we don't navigate by star names anyway, and a planet stuck out in a void? How would the Thandol move one there?”

He had an answer. “If the base is on a planet, slung out of some stellar system millions or even billions of years ago, those could be found anywhere. In Standard we call them rogue planets, but they are like an outcast. The more isolated the better, for a hidden base.”