New Contract (Perimeter Defense Book #3) (36 page)

Present Empire Military faction opinion of you: +28 (trusting)

* * *

Just an hour and a half later, all that remained as a reminder of the recent battle was a field of wreckage. Both
Trias
were conducting landing operations on the surface of the planet Sobj-5. The glitches in the computer system had just been fixed, and I was trying to get to the bottom of the computer issue. The engineers and technicians I called before me all asserted that the EMP bomb launched by the
Curse
was not the cause of the electronic and computer network failure, as no other fleet ship was affected in the same way. Also, the sensitive equipment on board was all well shielded at the time of the blast.

"Crown Prince Georg," the senior engineer lowered his voice practically to a whisper. "This looks like the work of saboteurs working in both the server room and the electrical substation. Someone was trying very hard to make sure
Joan the Fatty
had no energy shield and was blind during the battle. In both cases, the attacker was working remotely by linking into control systems, and had access to the administrator privileges needed to make changes to programming code. Unfortunately, all the logs were wiped in the attack, so it is impossible to figure out where the bad code came from. It is only clear that he or she had a perfect understanding of our utility functions, as the whole code-modification operation took only a few seconds."

"Only an android would be capable of such a thing," Marian Sabati said. "There are thousands of them on
Joan the Fatty
. We are not conducting adequate surveillance to point the finger at a specific android, though."

Bionica's face grew dark, but she did not object to the Truth Seeker's statement, as the hacking described was obviously far beyond the abilities of a person and was, in fact, reminiscent of the work of a robot.

"Popori de Cacha, order your subjects to check surveillance systems and figure out which of our crew members were near a computer terminal when the sabotage took place, or immediately before that. Bionica, you check all of the androids from
Joan the Fatty
. Florianna and Marian Sabati, I expect you to check all living creatures on this ship without exception. Find me the bastard who did this!"

"A
re you sure, Flora?"

"Yes, Crown Prince Georg. It's been a month and a half, and we have carefully checked everyone who was on
Joan the Fatty
. None of the forty-three thousand beings here was involved in the sabotage in the Sobj system. Marian Sabati and I have checked all races, even the Arites."

That meant it must have been an android, though Bionica has already assured me that none of the anthropomorphic robots on
Joan the Fatty
would have done something like that. I stood up thoughtfully from the table, a mug of my hot morning beverage in hand, and walked up closer to the tinted panoramic window. Once upon a time, when my flagship was still under construction, I had insisted that my entertainment room have real glass installed in it, instead of a mere screen broadcasting an image from an external video camera. It was true that any gap in the chassis would lower the strength of the starship, but not even the most perfect screen could replace the experience of actually seeing space... Or could it?

I involuntarily spun the ring on my finger. The same one I had looked deeply into on my very first day in
Perimeter Defense
, trying to see the pixels. I hadn't been able to see any then, and I still couldn’t now, though I could easily make out the individual points on computer monitors here. Was this ring evidence that what was happening was real? Or perhaps, in the game, the resolution on data panels was intentionally limited so that a human player would perceive it as a screen. In order not to scramble my brains in thinking over the nature of
Perimeter Defense
, I cast these thoughts aside. Just as Miya had said: " There is no difference whatsoever between a real and virtual world if you live in it, enjoy it and perceive it as reality." I suppose I had already started to agree with my wife on that count.

Through the thick armored glass with anti-radiation coating, a view opened up to the blue-silver planet D56KT-V. Even from orbit, you could see sparks on the planet’s surface and smoke plumes rising up from a great many fires. For the second day in a row, the battleships and heavy cruisers in my fleet were conducting bombardment of Alien positions, helping the Alpha-Iseyek terrestrial troops along. The invasion was underway on all fronts, and this was the fourteenth planet in Alien space we were attacking. And though none of the systems we'd been to, even in Swarm space, had been fully cleared of the Alien presence, my fleet was sinking its teeth deeper and deeper into Alien space, destroying ships and enemy infrastructure as we went.

Flora came closer and stopped her flying chair a step from me. One of the Beta Iseyek serving the paralyzed girl extended her a paper cup of juice, and she took it in her hand. The Truth Seeker's fingers trembled and falteringly interlocked around the paper cup. Her hand, grasping the object, began to slowly rise. I helped her a bit, as she was trembling quite a lot, spilling the orange drink all around.

"Please don't. I can do it myself."

The paralyzed girl raised the cup to her lips and opened her mouth with noticeable strain. She took two tiny sips, then her lifeless arm fell down, letting the paper cup fall with it, and emptying the juice out on the floor. In the paralyzed girl's eyes, I could read clear celebration, and I shared that feeling wholeheartedly.

"You're learning to control your body better and better, Flora. A year ago, we couldn't even have dreamed of this."

"Thank you, Prince. Marian Sabati is performing real miracles, trying to get me back on my feet. She is pouring oceans of energy into me, growing new cells and restoring my damaged tissues. I am very thankful to her, though her power seriously scares me. A Truth Seeker who lost her master shouldn't have such powers, even considering all the Beta Iseyek sharing energy with her on board the starship. After all, Marian Sabati has patients other than just me. There's also Ayna, for example. I do not understand what is going on. Something is clearly not coming together here."

"I am reminded of the meeting with the Swarm Queen when Marian Sabati declared that she was extremely weak and so wouldn't be able to fight in the ritual duel. Only two months ago, she truly wasn't in shape."

"Crown Prince Georg, was there anyone around then to check the veracity of her words?"

"Am I understanding correctly? Are you saying you are not strong enough to check Marian Sabati?"

"Yes, Crown Prince.
Marian Sabati is many times stronger than me, so her thoughts and desires are totally hidden from me.
The only thing I can say with any certainty is that I do not sense an immediate danger from her to myself or your Majesty."

And in fact, the story of the runaway Truth Seeker turned out to be quite fraught with potential issues. We only knew about Marian Sabati's condition through her own words. Where, then, did Marian Sabati get so much power now, if after the death of her long-time master, Duke Avalle, she was supposed to have gotten much, much weaker?

A beep came in over an internal channel, interrupting my thinking. It was Clay ton Avelle, captain of
Joan the Fatty
. I gave my permission to put him through.

"Crown Prince Georg, you asked me to immediately inform you of any movements of large Alien ships."

"Has the Alien Queen left Himora?" I guessed, worried. But the captain shook his head "no."

"I’m afraid, it's something else entirely. The gravimetric scanners from
Joan the Fatty
have detected a massive object near the uninhabitable second planet in the D56KT system, though our visual detection methods come up with nothing there. As such, I sent a corvette to study the strange anomaly. My Prince, I suggest very strongly that you come to headquarters to see IT with your own eyes."

It should be said that the captain succeeded at getting my attention. Taking quick steps, though still short of running in order to maintain my princely dignity, I set off for fleet headquarters. Despite the early hour on the internal ship clock, it was quite crowded. The night crew had already finished their shift, but was in no rush to leave the room. Many people were crowding around one of the screens, discussing animatedly. When I showed up, all conversations grew quiet, the officers made way for me to the monitor, and stood at attention.

Valian ton Corsa took a step forward, saluted, and reported:

"Your Majesty, this is a direct transmission from the corvette
Cannibal-71
. The quality of the picture isn't as high as it could be, and is often broken, but you can figure out what's going on."

"Everyone, as you were. Give me the chair." I sat in front of the screen, trying to understand what I was seeing.

There was some kind of colorful flickering with stripes running throughout... And suddenly the picture became clear, depicting a red-hot planet with oceans of boiling magma shot from low orbit. It then all abruptly shifted to the side and disappeared from the screen; the corvette made a turn. Then there was static, flickering, and stripes again until... The ship fell into a huge closed space.

Inside, there were thousands of robotic arms shifting and undulating. Moving on special rails, magnetic crane arms were transporting all kinds of mobile constructions. I saw piles of huge armor plates, each larger than the corvette filming them. In the distance, arc welders could be seen. The picture shifted. The body of a titanic ship came into the scene. It had gaping holes where armor plates and modules that had yet to be built would go. It took me fifteen seconds to recognize the unusually shaped starship in such an early stage of construction.

"A
Mammoth
?!" I turned to the officers behind my back in surprise.

Captain Clay ton Avelle, his face having dissolved into an ear-to-ear smile, confirmed:

"Yes, your Majesty! It is a huge
Mammoth
inside an even more gigantic dock. And, what's more, none of it is visible from outside. There's a complex masking system at work here that distorts electromagnetic fields and even partially warps space. The
Cannibal
has already measured the size of the construction. It is a spherical ellipsoid, approximately nine miles in length, and four miles in diameter at its widest point. The internal volume of the orbital construction is around fifty cubic miles, and our scanners haven't detected any living creatures inside. It all appears to be fully automated. Now we are trying to evaluate if there are enough parts and materials at the docks to finish building the ship, and also to make an at least approximate evaluation of how long it will take to finish."

I tried to digest all the new information and imagine the most obvious consequences of such an important discovery. The
Mammoth
itself wouldn’t be ready for a while, so my fleet wasn’t going to wait around here for it. That said, there would be plenty of people wanting to get their hands on the Alien ship, beginning with the Emperor and various civil servants from the Imperial Joint Chiefs, and ending with the Heads of the Great Houses, the Swarm Queen and her admirals. The discovery, in its present state, was nothing more to me than a huge headache. And it should be said that my head actually did start to hurt, and not just figuratively. I frowned and rubbed my temples. Bionica, standing next to me, walked up silently, and began massaging the active points of my skull, reducing the pain.

"So, we've found the dock. Our first mission isn't even so much figuring out how long until the
Mammoth
is finished, as it is keeping this thing a secret. The
Mammoth
all on its own is an extremely powerful combat unit and, what's more, is capable of transporting quite a large fleet between star systems. Having such a ship could totally change the balance of forces in the region and far too many, even those we consider loyal allies, would stop at nothing to keep the valuable ship all to themselves. So, we need to limit the circle of insiders as much as possible, and collect nondisclosure agreements from the whole crew of
Cannibal-71
. Florianna can make sure they’ll be upheld."

Everyone around went silent, recognizing the importance of the discovery and the complexity of the situation. In that silence, the communications officer's voice rang out especially sharply:

"Crown Prince Georg, we've received an urgent message from our cloaked frigates in Himora. The Alien
Queen
has left the system with her entire fleet. There were no active warp beacons visible from there, so we do not know the direction she was headed in."

With a smirk, I turned to those gathered:

"So you see, even the Alien
Queen
thinks this is a watershed moment. Until now, we've destroyed Alien ships, landed troops on planets, and brought down communications centers and orbital constructions, but only now have we found the thing the Aliens truly considered important and were prepared to defend. Tell all our allies: in a few days, there will be a major battle against the Aliens in this system, which doesn't even have a normal name, and is called only by alphanumeric code: D56KT. For the first time, we will not retreat before their overwhelming forces, but instead stay for a decisive battle with the
Queen
. We have time to prepare, so let's spend it as usefully as possible."

* * *

"How much time do we have left until the
Queen
arrives?" My cousin, wearing a light silver space-suit, was lounging lazily in a chair. Her helmet was sitting next to her.

In the seat next to that, exactly copying Katerina royl Unatari's pose and behavior, Bionica was sitting in an identical silver space-suit. The android couldn't have been tired from such a small excursion to the second planet, but I could barely hold back a smile from how authentic my synthetic assistant's imitation of tiredness was.

Ten minutes earlier, they had returned with a division of scouts from the docks we'd discovered and were in an overstimulated state. According to Katerina, the colossal automatic complex boggled the imagination. It appeared to be a never-ending hangar, in which thousands of robotic arms were constantly moving, and hundreds of freight drones were scurrying about. And inside all that buzzing commotion, was the huge skeleton of a starship.

"I believe we have six or seven days. That is precisely how long it takes to get from Himora to D56KT by normal warp beacons. And though the Alien
Queen
followed an alternative path, I do not think it will take more time than the transportation network we do know about."

"Six days is too little. I mean, Bionica suggested dragging this huge dock in its entirety to Unatari space, but we would need a few dozen tugs to transport it. We would also need time to do a huge number of preparatory tasks and complex synchronization calculations to make sure the whole construction doesn't fall apart during warp jumps."

"How much time is needed to bring the docks to Fia or another Unatari State system?" I wondered, and Bionica obligingly brought up her calculations on the nearest screen, explaining them.