The Elysium Commission (31 page)

“What are you doing next?”

“Nav work. Standard positioning won't work the same way once we near the projection fields.”

I had the feeling nothing would work the same way.

“Donne! You ready for the Phase II intro?” Shannon's voice echoed through the artificial cavern. But then, what was real in a high-tech society?

“Coming, Colonel.” I stood and smiled at Siendra. “Till later.”

I got a warm smile in return. It was better than words.

Shannon led me to the far end of the simulation bay. The mock-up of the Classic Research center took up that entire end, a space a good fifty yards wide. When I stepped into the “operations center,” I found myself facing four operator stations. Those seats were vacant. The boards themselves were almost six yards wide, slanted panels filled with mechanical switches and gauges. Mechanical? Even after Carle's emphasis on the mechanical nature of the setup, the extent of those devices brought me up short.

I took a position roughly in the middle of the board.

The main projection field power controls to twenty percent.

The boards had actual rheostats. I reached out and turned the oversized dial.

Fifty-one percent.

I readjusted the power.

Set the beam focus at ten yards, coordinates to follow…

Where were the focus controls?

I had to search for the information, then move to the second station. The focus controls were calibrated levers. The coordinates were established by three flat matrices above the focus controls.

Wrong sector.

Frig! Sectoral controls had to be entered semimanually.

From there, Colonel Carle's familiarization techniques got inexorably more demanding.

I was so tired that my entire body was shaking by the time I finished the session with the mocked-up control boards.

I just wanted to sit down. Instead, I had to trudge to the med-chamber for a short session with the doctor, then back to the small and elegant dining chamber with the less than elegant food.

This time, we were served second-rate tournedos with oversautéed white mushrooms, and brown rice that was too crunchy. The servers left, and the doors locked. The security screen shielded the chamber.

“The Frankan team has been detected,” Fiorina Carle began. “We can run you through two more days of sim training here. On Sabaten, you'll be shuttled to the
Aquitaine
. Late on Sabaten, once all systems check, we'll begin to shift you to the attack point. We estimate three shifts.”

Shifts? I raised my eyebrows.

“We'll be using the projection field equipment to move the ship. That way, the Frankans and the Eloi team won't see any energy emissions moving toward their field local point, not until the very last phase of the attack. Their EDI screens might show momentary leakage flashes…if they're watching, but those will be far below the levels for even a scout. The main emissions will appear in back-time and presumably forward-time loci. You'll just have to sit tight until everything lines up.”

“How long before they're in position?” asked Siendra.

“Anytime from early on Sabaten to sometime late on Domen. It will take a minimum of ten stans to power up.”

“What about Legaar?” I asked.

“The justiciary hearings will end tomorrow. We expect he'll return to Time's End.”

“The Assembly fleet?” asked Siendra.

“It's out of range,” Carle admitted, “if it's there at all.”

“Convenient. Close enough to mop up, but not interfere.”

“Why do you think you're here, Donne?” growled Shannon.

“Because you can't get anyone better without involving SpecOps and making matters worse, and because I still have a few shreds of idealism remaining. Those are in danger of vanishing as it is.”

I caught the hint of…something…from Siendra.

“Enough. We can only use the tools we have.” Carle's professional smile at Shannon was cold enough to freeze a warm-water lake solid.

It also chilled the conversation.

I'd barely finished eating when Shannon announced. “Major…you have another nav session. Captain, the doctor and the therapists are waiting for you.”

In the end, after mechanically swallowing the last of some sort of flan that was really a pudding, I walked back to the med-chamber. There the doctor ran brief diagnostics, then replaced the nanite cast on my still-recovering arm with a light nanite med-sleeve.

A massage followed.

Eventually, I collapsed onto the bed.

I
had
left SpecOps, hadn't I?

Three long days of hearings had frayed Legaar even beyond his normal impatience. For the last day, every word out of earshot of the Devantan Justiciary had been growled or barked at those around him. I'd hoped that he would calm down once he returned to Time's End, but that had not occurred. He'd sent me back by flitter, then showed up later. If anything, his level of irritation had increased, and his attention span had decreased. Yet he clearly had gone to one of his spas. His skin was softer, and he reeked of oils, of midnight nothings with near-mindless cloned nymphs, not that clones ever had to be mindless. That was just one of his precautions, and doubtless necessary for them to stand him.

For all that, he kept pacing back and forth behind the operators of the control boards.

“They're beginning their approach, ser,”

“It's about time,” Legaar growled. “We wait here. We're exposed, and they scuttle through the darkness. How long before they can bring the field online?”

“Online with minimal power would be two stans after arrival at the focal point,” I said. I'd told him that before, at least once. “Four hours for low-level full power. They're roughly two days out. We'll know more later.”

“You're sure that the PDF and the Assembly can't detect them?”

“They're stealth to all EDI and standard detectors. We're using projection-type tags that only register on our screens. You can tell that because there's no PDF or Assembly reaction. Don't you think that there would be a reaction to a Frankan craft otherwise?”

“The sisters are devious. So is the frigging PDF.”

“That could be, but until we activate the full fields, there's no link to us. It's just a hostile Frankan force with which we had nothing to do,” I pointed out. “Even after that, it would be difficult to prove anything even if the sisters could take this facility, and they can't.”

“Assembly Special Operations could,” Legaar snapped.

“They have to have proof. They invade Devantan private installations without solid evidence, and half the Assembly would secede.” I refrained from checking the backlinks.

Legaar whirled. “This had better work, Maraniss.”

It was more than a little late for that kind of irrational reproach, more like the mythical Lucifer asking if he should revolt after he'd already raised his standard, but Legaar was far less intelligent than Lucifer, and appearing less so than before the hearings, not that his intelligence had ever been excessive.

“Oh, it will work.” Indeed it would. It just wouldn't work quite the way Legaar thought it would or that the Frankans thought.

For the next two days, I moved from one training setup to the other and back again. By the end of Jueven, Shannon was also adding warm-up and refresher exercises from SpecOps. There wasn't time for more than that, but I'd kept in shape.

“You haven't lost much,” Shannon had admitted grudgingly.

Working in the shadows had provided some benefit, it appeared.

Early on Sabaten, Siendra and I were strapped into a military hilifter—a fast high-gee courier. Except for helmets, we were in space armor. I had the feeling it was the first time we'd been together without an overriding imperative in three days—or without the feeling of someone eavesdropping.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Rushed, but good. How about you?” I shifted my weight slightly in the acceleration couch and checked the restraints again.

“I'd rather not be a passenger.”

I laughed. “Pilot's syndrome. We'd all rather be at the controls. That's because we know everything that could go wrong. That's even when the probabilities are low.”

Final check on restraints. Two minutes to liftoff.
That was the pilot. I didn't recognize her from the link, and we'd never seen her.

Restraints checked
, I pulsed back, a moment after Siendra had.

Neither one of us spoke, just waited.

Commencing liftoff.

Unlike the old-style torches, the hilifter started with a moderate two-gee acceleration that increased to six plus before dropping to about a half gee. The last ten minutes brought a one-gee decel. The hilifter rendezvoused directly with the
Aquitaine.
The corvette was tethered to the PDF geostationary orbital station. Tethered, not locked, and without a life-support umbilical. The only connection to the station was the tether and a power/comm cable.

Locked to target. You're cleared to proceed. Good luck.

Proceeding,
replied Siendra.
Thank you.
“Helmets.”

I put on my helmet and checked it.
Helmet on. Armor security checks.

Armor secure
, Siendra reported.
Proceeding to lock.

The ship-to-ship seal wasn't perfect. That showed in the low lock pressure that dropped once the hilifter's outer hatch opened. The
Aquitaine
's lock opened to Siendra's codes. We didn't waste time in squeezing into the courier's small lock—and cycling it and getting out of it into the corvette. There's nothing romantic about two sets of space armor in that tight a space.

Once inside the
Aquitaine
, Siendra ran through a habitability check, then linked,
You're clear to enter and inspect the scout, Captain.

Yes, ser. Proceeding this time
. I did take a moment to put my small gear bag in the net in the copilot's minute compartment—essentially a sleeping space padded on all sides.

Unlike battle cruisers, corvettes weren't designed to carry other ships, even those as small as single-person scouts. Some of the modifications were invisible, such as the beefed-up screens and the detectors that were almost as powerful as those on a battle cruiser. Others were clunky, such as the access to the scout that was attached “below” the corvette.

I had to unfasten a hatch in the passageway aft of the cockpit manually, then refasten and seal it behind me while floating standing in a tubular space that barely allowed me to squirm around to unfasten a second hatch in the outer hull of the corvette. Below that hatch was the outer lock of the scout. It had been reconfigured with an iris lock so that the scout could be entered while still attached to the underside of the corvette.

I pulsed the access codes. The lock did iris open, and I pushed and squirmed “downward” through the lock. Then, with one boot under a hold, floating roughly “upright” in the scout lock, I had to shut the lower corvette hatch manually, ensuring the seals were tight. From there, matters were more routine.

Scouts had no cabins or spaces, just a cockpit that could barely hold a single pilot in space armor. I wedged myself into the couch and tried to link to the ship. That took a moment because I'd almost forgotten I needed to turn a manual lever to connect to the corvette's power. Or rather the power from the station currently powering the corvette.

Then I ran through the diagnostics and the prelaunch checklist. Other than the lock modifications and the power linkage, the scout controls were standard. It could have been any of those I'd used over the years in Special Ops. It wasn't, not with the beefed-up drives, but it looked that way from the checklist.

When I was done, I reported.
Scout is green and ready for prelaunch check-off, Major. Request permission to return to courier this time.

Granted.

I left the power link in the connected position but powered down everything except minimal habitability. Then I had to go through the lock and two hatches in reverse to return to the corvette and its cockpit. There I took off my helmet and racked it, then levered myself into the copilot's couch.

Siendra was already there, ready to begin the departure checklist.

“Did the hilifter pilot know our mission?” I finished checking my restraints.

“No. She only knows it has to be secret and dangerous. We were delivered to the ship without going through the station, nor was she ever told who we are. She might guess at me. She'd be hard-pressed to come close to you.”

“Do you know her?”

“It felt like Captain Delacroix, but that's a guess. Stand by for departure checklist.”

“Yes, ser.”

“Restraints.”

“Set and locked.”

“Drives.”

“Off-line.”

“Screens and shields.”

“Off-line.”

“Habitability.”

“Minimum…”

The checklist showed no problems, and she brought the fusactors online smoothly, then the rest of the ship's systems up to full.

“Tether and station power.”

“Disengaged.”

Siendra looked at me, then nodded before link-transmitting,
Delta OpsCon, Coyote Alpha, ready for departure.

Coyote lead, cleared to depart. Traffic at your two six five, orange, inbound.

OpsCon, commencing departure this time. Inbound traffic noted.

Stet, Coyote lead.

I didn't say anything for a good half stan, not until we were clear of traffic and well established on an outbound vector.

“There's no sign of the Frankans on the EDI.”

“There won't be, Captain. Neither of them nor of any Assembly vessels. The Frankans are shielded, and any Assembly warships will be beyond EDI range.”

“What's the trade-off between shielding and power…weapons?”

“Almost half of the available power for drives, Captain.”

Siendra was sending a clear message. I heeded it. “Thank you, ser.”

She was a good pilot. Even with automatics and the ship's system vector analysis, most pilots still have to make several course corrections on the shortest of in-system hops. That's with a defined physical body as a destination. Three stans later, with only minimal words between us and one minor course correction, we came to rest in a relatively dust-free area well out-system of Devanta and its moons. “Rest” was a relative term as well. Our position was close to stationary with regard to the system bodies.

“Now what, ser?” I knew very well. But what else could I say?

“We wait. It could take as much as a stan for them to check all the vectors before they can use the projection field to move us.”

“I think Eloi or his people used something like that to move me, but it didn't take a stan.”

“They moved you from a predetermined position at a close to predetermined time to another predetermined location. Even so, you're fortunate you survived.”

“I did have a nanite bodyshield.”

“You triggered it before you knew what was happening, didn't you?”

“Yes. If you wait until you know what's happening, it's too late.”

“That's true of the best in any high-intensity occupation. It's why you survived your tours in Special Operations and why Colonel Shannon pushed for you.”

At least, she wasn't calling me “Captain.” “Do you know if Colonel Carle wanted someone else?”

“She never indicated that to me, one way or the other.”

I didn't know what exactly else I could say. The dichotomy in Siendra between the person I'd glimpsed at times in recent weeks and the dispassionate consultant and professional officer left me disconcerted. I understood the need, yet I felt that, in her, those two individual aspects of her being were far more separate than in anyone else I'd ever known. I also felt that the width of the gap between the two “selves” was anything but good for her.

Yet…who was I to make any judgment of her, even silently? I had my own dichotomies. Was that because I felt each man must become the hero of his world? Or that I struggled to escape a permanent dream, one interrupted neither by day nor night?

Neither by day nor night? That sounded like a phrase of Siendra's…and someone else's as well. But whose?

Words and phrases swirled through my thoughts. I didn't need the distractions, and I pushed them away and accessed the shipnet, carefully, checking indicators and screens. Our detectors could barely make out Devanta, Bergerac, and Voltaire. I still didn't pretend to understand why a field that would eventually focus on Time's End required or used a Hawking field so far away, but Carle had just said to think of it in terms of a lever and a fulcrum, with Voltaire as the fulcrum, and the distance from the field multiplying the impact in both time and space.

The space around me seemed to contract.

“Ser…they're locking in.”

At that moment, a brilliant light, intensely white and intensely blue, both and neither, blotted out everything. Then, as suddenly as it had flared through the corvette, it was gone. We were back in normspace. Somewhere else.

Even as I tried to locate us, Siendra was faster.

“We're within half an emkay of target point two.”

That was good. Any distance of less than one point five emkay was acceptable.

“Frig…” Siendra murmured.

“Ser?” I could tell she was focused on the comparator. I didn't understand the physics behind it, but it used the stellar field of the local sun to determine absolute system time. Or whatever it was that we perceived as such. There was no such thing as absolute universal time. More than a few of the deists had been appalled when early interstellar travel had proved that. Most, like humans throughout history, still denied what technology and science had verified. Often time after time, century after century.

“The field displaced us foretime almost two stans.”

That had been presented as a possibility, if remote. It also meant I had less than a stan to get into the scout and ensure all systems were green and ready for launch. “I'd better get moving.”

“Go.”

I was already out of the copilot's restraints. I made sure that they were retracted before I donned my helmet and left the cockpit to wrestle with the two hatches.

A quarter stan later, I'd finished the checklist and had the scout's fusactor on line. I was sweating inside the armor, and that would leave me clammy later.

Coyote lead, Coyote one, ready for launch. Interrogative estimated time.

Estimate one eight minutes before projection transfer.

Understand one eight minutes. Standing by.
What else could I do?

I checked the EDI, but there were no major energy sources within range of the scout's detectors. Several beacons appeared, basically locators on dark bodies in the Trojan group, the kind of space junk that screens and detectors didn't always pick up.

As I waited, I found my thoughts drifting back to Siendra. Just who was she? The quietly humorous and witty woman who saw far more than she let on? The brilliant reg compliance consultant? The extraordinary pilot? Of course, she was all three, but…behind the different facades which attribute was paramount? Or was the gestalt something beyond the attributes?

Was I being fair or accurate? Could anyone be described in terms of perceived attributes? Could I? Why was I trying so hard to define a woman I'd ignored for years? And why had I ignored someone so quietly attractive and intelligent? Merely because she was my sister's business partner?

The second field transfer swooped in on me even more quickly than the first and with the same bicolored brilliant light. That I hadn't sensed anything jolted me as much as the sudden shift in position. My personal questions about Siendra had to wait.

In the instants after we were hurled back into normspace at an impossibly high velocity relative to system bodies, I ran through the system diagnostics. All indicators remained in the green.

Coyote lead, Coyote one in the green. Ready for launch.

Stet. Coyote one, commencing acceleration this time.

Ready for acceleration
. I was pressed back into the scout's couch even before I finished my link to Siendra. Gee forces continued to build before leveling out at close to six, jamming me into the back half of my armor. That was the way it felt, anyway.

Except for the comparatively large-mass system bodies, my detectors showed nothing. I would have liked to link into those of the corvette, but that link didn't exist. All I could do was watch and wait. The theory behind the attack approach was simple—seemingly impossibly high in-system velocities, coming in-system from out-system, at such high speeds that no standard defense could adapt, and so suddenly that the defenders had no time to react by spraying all sorts of matter into the scout's flight path.

The gee forces remained stable.