The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (108 page)

The dog was still barking excitedly, her tail wagging furiously. Barry made a fuss of her when he climbed up the small chrome ladder to the main deck. He started to reach for one of the boiled eggs from the salad Liz was setting out. “Clean up and dry out first,” his mother warned him.

Mark helped Sandy onto the dive platform. She lifted her mask off, and smiled happily at her father. “I saw a grog down there, Daddy. It was hugely big.” Her arms stretched out wide to show just how big.

“That’s lovely, darling,” he said as he pulled his own flippers off. “Did you put your sunscreen on before you went in the water?”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded vigorously.

Even though Sandy’s skin was a lot darker than his, he was suspicious about the back of her neck and arms; they looked slightly sunburnt to him. “Well, let’s put some aftersun salve on, shall we?”

Happy with the attention, she agreed readily.

“You shouldn’t have taken him out for so long,” Liz chided when he sat down and began applying the salve to Sandy’s back. “I was getting worried. And look how far away from the boat you got.”

“But, Mom, it was so clear down there today,” Barry protested. “You could see for kilometers. It’s never been so good before.”

Mark gave his wife a helpless look. How could you prevent a kid having that much fun? She gave the pair of them an exasperated stare, and carried on with the salad.

The catamaran belonged to David and Lydia, who used it during the summer months to explore the little coves and inlets along Trine’ba’s shoreline. In wintertime it was hauled up the Randtown yacht club’s slipway, so on the weekends David could spend hours in the boatshed painting the hull and repairing the rigging ready for the next season. Mark loved the yacht, and had already begun to think seriously about getting one himself. Not that they could afford one yet. It was a bit like having a dog and a four-by-four, all part of Randtown.

When everyone was finally washed and dry and sitting down to lunch, the catamaran’s electromuscle rigging unfurled its sails and set off for one of the tiny conical atolls that poked up from the very deepest part of the lake. They’d promised the kids they could visit one in the afternoon to see if the balloon flowers were inflating yet. It was almost time for the annual event, which Randtown celebrated with parades and a huge lakeside barbecue in the evening.

“The vineyard association said they haven’t noticed any decline on orders,” David said when the kids had all gone to sit on the stern to eat their lillinberries and ice cream. “I was at the meeting last night. You should have come, Mark.”

“Not sure I’d be welcome.”

“Don’t be so paranoid,” Lydia told him. “You didn’t even get your fifteen minutes of fame; you were just a one-minute wonder that evening. All the media cares about right now is the Burnelli murder.”

“That Baron woman is still using the phrase,” Mark said. “According to her show all of Randtown is antihuman.” Everyone in the district was worried about the effect Baron’s propaganda would have on their small economy. So far it hadn’t been bad. After a five-day standoff, the navy trucks had eventually retreated back down the highway, and the tourist buses had returned. Of course, the summer bookings had been made months before; it was too late for anyone to cancel. The true test would be next season’s bookings. A surprising number of visitors had congratulated the residents on making their stand—Mark’s interview was politely never mentioned. In the meantime, people were watching to see what would happen to their small export trade of wines and organic food.

“Nobody on Elan is going to organize a boycott, for heaven’s sake,” Liz said. “In any event, half of the wine we make is sold right here in the district; and the kind of people who buy proper organic produce support what we did anyway.”

Mark nodded glumly, and poured himself some more Chapples wine. “I might have got away with it, then.”

David leaned over and touched his glass to Mark’s. “I’ll drink to that. Come on, the future’s looking good. Liz has almost cracked the Kinavine’s rhizome sequence; once we have that fixing its own nitrogen we can sell it for cultivation right across the valley. People will be ripping up their old vines and replanting. There won’t be a vineyard on Ryceel that can compete against that wine when it crops.”

“It’s going to take a little while yet,” Liz said.

Mark put his arm around her. “You’ll do it,” he said softly.

She grinned back at him.

“What in God’s name are those?” Lydia asked. She was shielding her eyes with one hand, pointing back toward Randtown with the other.

Blackwater Crag dominated the skyline behind the town, then there was a short break in the mountains to the west of it where the highway valley led back into the Dau’sings. After that the rugged peaks rose again to stand guard over Trine’ba’s shore. One of the tallest peaks on the western side was Goi’al, the southernmost of a cluster collectively called the Regents, where the district’s snow bike sports and racing was based. Only now, in midsummer when the ice and snow finally lifted from the sheltered high ground, did the little machines pack up for a few months.

Black specks were circling slowly to the side of Goi’al. To be visible from this distance they must have been huge.

“Bloody hell,” David muttered. He went straight to the cabin, and brought back a pair of binoculars from the locker. Electromuscle pulleys began to furl the sails, reducing speed to make the catamaran more stable. “Helicopters,” he said. “Bugger, but they’re big brutes. I’ve never seen anything like them before, they’ve got double rotors. Must be some kind of heavy cargo lifter. I make that at least fifteen of them up there, could be more.”

He offered the binoculars around to the others. Liz took them. Mark didn’t bother, he slumped down into the middeck’s semicircular couch. “It’s the detector station,” he said in dismay. “After everything we did, everything we said, they brought it in anyway. The bastards.”

Liz handed the binoculars to Lydia. “You knew it was going to happen in the end, Mark. Something that big isn’t stopped by a bunch of people standing in the middle of the road.”

“I thought we lived in a democracy.”

“We do. We exercised our democratic right to protest, and they ignored us. Ultimately, the navy is a government department, what did you expect from them?”

“I don’t know. Would a little sensitivity be too much to ask?”

She went over and sat beside him. “I’m really sorry, baby. I don’t want them here any more than you do. But we’re going to have to knuckle down and live with it for the duration. These are strange times, we have to make allowances for that. Once this whole Prime thing is over, and the warmongers and profiteers have finished frightening the life out of everyone, then the station will be gone. We’ll make damn sure they take all their crap with them, as well, I promise that.”

“Yeah,” he sighed, conscious how he must be coming over as a petulant brat to the Dunbavands. “Yeah, I guess so. But I don’t have to like it.”

“Nobody’s asking you to.”

He drained the last of the Chapples wine from the glass, and looked back across the cool calm waters of Trine’ba. The helicopters had already begun to land on the other side of Goi’al.

....

“Our worst fears have been proved right,” the Guardians’ spokesman said in a calm, significant voice. “The Dyson aliens are preparing to invade the Commonwealth. They have an overwhelming force pouring through Hell’s Gateway which will be unleashed against us any day now. We warned you this would happen, and now sadly, millions if not billions of citizens will be killed to confirm everything we have always said is tragically true. They will die because our Commonwealth’s defenses are completely inadequate. We know that every person serving in the navy will do their utmost when the invasion begins—we support them wholeheartedly in their awful task—but there are too few of them, and not enough ships. If we could provide them with assistance, we would, but that is not our arena.

“We will carry on our own lonely fight against the Starflyer creature who has brought about this disaster. It is not often we are able to expose one of its agents, for they are normally hidden and protected. However, in this case, the evidence is overwhelming. One person put forward the proposal to launch a starship to investigate Dyson Alpha. One person now governs the size of the navy budget. One person knows the true size of the resources we need, and continually denies us those resources. One person sends their murderer to kill their opponents. This one person is the most powerful puppet the Starflyer has ever used against us. It is President Doi herself.

“Be warned, and remember the true crisis we are facing is not the physical one from the Dyson aliens. It is the one corrupting us from within. We have always been honest with you. Now, in humanity’s darkest hour, we ask you to believe in us this one last time. Doi and her master are our enemy, she will obliterate us if left unchallenged.

“Challenge her.” The spokesman bowed his head. “I thank you for your time.”

....

The whole office was spending the morning filing reports and filling in finance department forms to cover the cost of the LA deployment. Thankfully, Paula just had to skim the summaries and attach her authorization code. That left her with some time to contemplate what had happened, although all she could really think about was Thompson Burnelli’s murder. Tarlo and Renee were busy sifting through the pitifully small amount of leads resulting from the pursuit so they could draw up an action plan. Alic Hogan had chosen to examine the camera images from LA Galactic in a virtual projection to see if the software had been handed over inside the station terminal. She didn’t object; for all he was Columbia’s placeman, Hogan was relatively efficient at his job, and it would keep him away from her for most of the day.

As so often happened with the Johansson case, LA had become a problem that had multiplied unexpectedly, and always in the wrong directions. Although on the positive side, she at least knew that Elvin was putting together another smuggling operation.

At eleven o’clock Rafael Columbia appeared in the office. He was dressed in his full admiral’s uniform, with several staff officers in attendance. Everyone in the office stopped what they were doing to look at him.

Paula stood up just as he reached her door. “Wait for me,” he told his officers, and closed the door.

“Admiral,” Paula said. She closed the file in her virtual vision that had been displaying the names of everyone she’d informed of a target arriving at Seattle, along with their time frame.

He gave her a humorless smile as he sat in the visitor’s chair. “Commander.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Ordinarily, I would say you can explain your latest fuckup. But, frankly, I think we’ve gone beyond that, don’t you?”

“Los Angeles was unfortunate, although we did learn that …”

“Not interested. It was a half-assed operation from the start. And that is indicative of the way you run things. Some
target
appears out of nowhere, and without any planning or prior notification you put an underresourced team on pursuit duties. Not only that, but when things go wrong, you drag half of the LAPD into the operation just in time for them to watch it blow up in our face. We’re a fucking laughingstock, Commander. And I will not tolerate that.”

Paula saw how much anger was behind Columbia’s steely expression, and realized she was going to have to confide in him. “I’m sorry about the negative publicity, but I can assure you the operation was planned with considerable forethought. I used a small team for a reason.”

“Which was?”

“I believe there is a leak of some kind in navy intelligence. I have been running isolation and identification operations for some time in an attempt to identify the source.”

Rafael Columbia’s face darkened. “A leak?” he said with false calm.

“There has to be.”

“And you didn’t bother informing me nor Lieutenant Hogan about this?”

“I was waiting for some concrete results first.”

“So then you don’t have a suspect, yet?”

“No, sir, not yet.”

“Outside your suspicions, is there a single shred of evidence to back up this allegation against your fellow officers?”

“I believe Venice Coast was …”

“Ah! The other very public setback you inflicted on us.”

“As I was saying,” she said forcefully. “Venice Coast was leaked. The unknown attacker must have received information from a source inside the navy.”

“And this unknown attacker, who was wetwired with the most sophisticated armaments the Commonwealth can produce, is working for Johansson’s Starflyer?”

“That is an option.”

“An option you’ve been shouting very loudly to your political allies.”

“Somebody has been deflecting my investigation for decades. I need to start widening my approach.” She just held back from telling him what Thompson Burnelli had told her.

Rafael Columbia took a small paperscreen from his pocket. He held it up as it unfurled. “Recognize him?”

Paula stared at the image on the paperscreen. “That’s the Venice Coast attacker.” The image had been taken from a bad overhead angle, and he was wearing sports whites, but she would never mistake that face.

“I’m glad we agree on something. That image was given to me by Senate Security. It was taken by a camera at the Clinton Estate. That is the man who walked out of Thompson Burnelli’s squash court after the Senator was murdered.”

“He wouldn’t,” she whispered in horror.
Sheldon eliminating his political opponents? I don’t believe it. That’s not how the Grand Families and Intersolar Dynasties operate. Something is wrong about this. Badly wrong.

“Who wouldn’t?” Rafael demanded.

“The murderer. Why would he be used to kill the Senator?”

“I don’t fucking know. But according to you, he goes around causing mayhem on the orders of a navy officer.”

“I did not say that, and you’re a fool if that’s what you think.”

Rafael Columbia sat back in the chair and gave her a steady look. “When I became chief of the Directorate I was just as impressed with you as all those media morons you play up to in your trials. The legendary Paula Myo, who solves all her cases except one, and she’s still working on that after all these decades—never giving up. So like all the other chiefs before me, I gave you plenty of space, and never questioned your methods. After all, Johansson and his sidekick are just a pair of lunatic conspiracy fanatics spouting paranoid propaganda. Kind of romantic really, like pirates in sailing ships. Because the only physical damage the Guardians cause is on Far Away, where nobody ever goes, and certainly nobody cares about apart from the Halgarths, and they can afford it anyway. Except, the pirates were actually the most bloodthirsty psychopaths, who slaughtered the crews of entire ships and wrecked economies because of the trade routes they closed down. You see the parallel here? It took decisive naval action to eliminate piracy. Now I gave you an entire department, with unlimited government resources, tasked to do one thing. I gave you that in good faith, because you are
the
Paula Myo, and everyone believes you are the one person in the Commonwealth who can run down Bradley Johansson for me.”