The Stone Dogs (69 page)

"Staff conference, immediate," she said. "Forcecon 7."

"… And all nonessential traffic between sectors has been closed down," the civilian administrator was saying.

Yolande looked around the table. "Mark?" she said.

The Aerospace Command Strategos shrugged. "We've moved all the available units into sheltered orbits," he said. If there was one thing that a generation of skirmishing in space had shown, it was that ships were helpless in confined quarters with high-powered energy weapons.

"Move them out further," Yolande said. "Outer-shell orbits fo'

the Cislunar Command zone. Sannie, start pumpin' down the bulk water in the dome habitat, fill the reservoirs."

"That'll play hell with the Ecology people's projects," she warned.

"Don't matter none." The other officers around the table glanced sidelong at each other; Yolande saw carefully controlled fear. This was the nightmare that had haunted them all from their births. "And yes, that means I knows somethin' y'all don't.

Somethin' bad—and somethin' good, too."

"Now, and this is crucial,"—she paused for effect—"startin' i
mmediately
, and
while
yo' moving to full mobilization, bring yo'

redundant compunits on-net. Then do a
physical separation
of the main battle-units, and run simulations of actual operations—everythin' but the final connections to the weapons units." She held up a hand to still the protests. "Y'all will find malfunctions, I guarantee it. Report the make an' number of the malfunctionin' cores,
immediate,
to Merarch Willard here, who's now Infosystems Officer fo' Aresopolis. We'll patch across to maintain capacity. Believe me,
it's necessary."

CLAESTUM PLANTATION

DISTRICT OF TUSCANY

PROVINCE OF ITALY

NOVEMBER 2. 1998

"Vene, vene
, keep movin'!" The serf foreman reached out to stop a fieldhand family; one of the children was cradling a kitten.

"No livestock in the shelter, drop it." The girl began to cry in bewildered terror.

The bossboys were as ignorant as the rest of the serfs, but they had caught the master's nervousness. John Ingolfsson whistled sharply to catch the man's attention and jerked his head; the foreman's rubber hose fell, and the line began moving again as he waved the serf girl through with her pet.

Makes no nevermind,
the master of Claestum thought, watching the long column disappearing into the hillside. He swallowed to moisten a dry throat, pushed back his floppy-brimmed leather hat, and wiped at the sweat on his forehead. It was a clear fall day, and still a little hot here in the valley below the Great House. The shelter was burrowed under that hill, quite deep; begun in the '50s, and refined and extended in every year since. This entrance was disguised as a warehouse, but behind the broad door and the facade was a long concrete ramp into the rock. The elevators were freight-type, and the thousand-odd serfs would be in their emergency quarters in another hour or so. Armorplate doors, and thousands of feet of granite—

It should be enough, if we have an hour,
he thought. There was hatred in the glance he shot upward. Nothing but the coded messages over the official net, but you could tell…
I always
grudged the money and
effort
. Full shelter for all the serfs, sustainable if crowded; fuel cells, air filters, water recyclers, and food enough for three years on strait rations. He had had just time enough to put most of the farming equipment under wraps; the sealed warehouses held seed grain. There was even room for basic breeding stock, on the upper level.

The last of the fieldhands passed through, and the overseer looked up from the comp screen by the door. "That's the last of them," she called. Rumbling sounded within, as thick metal sighed home into slots.

Silence fell, eerie and complete. Nothing but the hot dry wind through the trees, and the tinkle of water from one of the village fountains. He stood in the stirrups and looked around; the land lay sere and dry with autumn, rolling away in slopes of yellow stubble, silver-green olives, dusty-green pasture and the lush foliage of the vineyards. Commonplace, infinitely dear. Yesterday his only worry had been the falling price of wheat and the vintage.

"Run one mo' check," he said. "Wouldn't want to leave one of they brats out by mistake." The overseer was taut-nervous herself, but her fingers were steady on the keyboard.

"All of em."

"Right." He ran a soothing hand down the neck of his horse as it side-danced with the tension. "Sooo, boy, easy. Now, let's go jump in a hole and pull it in aftah us."

WASHINGTON HOUSE

NEW YORK CITY

FEDERAL CAPITAL DISTRICT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

NOVEMBER, 1998

0700 HOURS

"Could it be a drill of some sort?" one of the figures in the screen said.

The Conference Room was nearly empty; the president, and a few of her chief aides. The Alliance Chairman was in the center of the holoscreen, with the military chiefs and some of the most crucial administrators. In theory the other Alliance heads of government were co-equal, but this was a time for practicalities, and the American head of state was still much more than
primus
inter pares.

Carmen Hiero forced herself not to sigh in exasperation. "

Amigo
, they've started closing down factories and evacuating the population to the deep shelters," she said. "Look at the reports; there are abandoned dogs walking through the streets of Alexandria! You think they're doing this—it must be costing them astronomically—for a
drill?
"

Allsworthy tapped his fingers together and looked to one side, toward his pickup of the ACI chief. Hiero frowned slightly; she thought the chairman tended to rely on his Intelligence people rather too much.
Enough
, she thought.
Listen.

"Anything congruent? Any reason for it to start now?" the chairman said.

The ACI man licked his lips slightly. "Nothing we can spot on short notice, Mr. Chairman," he said; his face was calm, but the tendons stood out in the hands that twisted an ivory cigarette-holder. His Australasian accent had turned slightly nasal.

You too, my friend
, Hiero thought.

"But…" he continued. "Well, something jolly odd
did
happen yesterday, up on Luna. The
Mamba
—that's the personal yacht of their Commandant of Aresopolis—did an unauthorized takeoff and is running for the Belt. Continuous boost trajectory for Ceres; should be there in about ten days."

"That quickly?" Johannsen, the Space Force CINC.

"Well, it's got one of their new fifth-generation pulse-drives,"

the ACI commander said. "And whoever's piloting it isn't leaving any reserve for deceleration, we think. They've got two Imperator class cruisers trying to catch it, and they've been beaming a series of demands that the
Mamba
stop, and warnings to everyone else to stay clear. We've no earthly idea what it's about, really. The yacht is either unwilling or unable to communicate."

Hiero leaned forward and touched the query button on her desk. "Can they catch it? Can we?"

"No; and yes, if we have something start matching velocities now. Considerably sooner than it might reach Ceres, if we use one of the
New America's
auxiliaries." A collective wince; that would mean blowing the Project's last line of cover. "Under the circumstances, I'd say it's justified."

"I say we do it," Hiero said.

"Sir?" The ACI man looked to the chairman, who nodded abstractedly.

"Ah, sir?" That was Donatei, the OSS chief of staff; he was looking off-screen, and his fingers were busy. "We do have— yes, we do have something significant, just now. They're… ah, yes.

Trying very hard to keep it quiet, but our ELINT is picking it up.

They're pulling up their backup comps on… hell, one sector after another. Running some sort of check program on the central comps. Then—they've just put out an all-points to their military, to downline the AV-122 series. That's their most recent battle-management comp."

Hiero's own fingers moved; yes, everyone here was cleared for the fourth layer of the
New America
project.

"Is that one of the ones we managed to infect?" she said.

Chairman Allsworthy's question came on the heels of theirs.

There was a long moment of silence. "
Mierda
," she whispered.

"A leak."

Allsworthy grunted, as if someone had hit him in the belly.

"We…" He looked down at his hands. Hiero felt herself touched with sympathy, and a moment's gratitude that the final decision was not hers. The life of the planet lay in those palms.

"Recommendations?" he continued.

"Attack immediately; we're already at Defcon 4," Hiero said.

"Attack." Donatei, more decisive than usual.

"With all due respect, Mr. Chairman, that would be premature." The ACI commander's balding head shone. "If… A leak in the Project security would not be enough to put them up to this level of alert. They'd know it would focus our attention; they'd try and isolate the infected comps clandestinely, so that we wouldn't know it's been done. There's another factor here, one we haven't grasped… Maybe the
Mamba
has the answer.

Whatever it is,
God
, sir, even if we
win
with the present inadequate level of infection in their infosystems, we're talking
hundreds
of millions of dead.
Everybody
, if they use Fenris. We have to play for time."

Hiero sat silent, listening to the debate. This was not a committee, could not be, and she had said what she believed… At last the chairman raised a hand for silence.

"We'll present an ultimatum," he said. "How long until the
Mamba
is intercepted?"

"Twenty-four to thirty hours, sir."

"I authorize immediate interception. Take whatever measures are necessary. Secretary Ferriera, draft an immediate note to the Domination; their mobilization is an intolerable provocation and threat, and we will consider ourselves in a state of war unless they begin withdrawal by exactly," —his eyes went to a clock—"1000 hours tomorrow. General Mashutomo, all Alliance forces to Defcon 5, and proceed on the assumption that hostilities begin as of the expiration of the ultimatum." He looked around. "Any questions?"

Hiero waited until she was sure there would be none, before she spoke. "No. I disagree with this course of action, but we must have discipline or we are truly lost." A weary smile. "And I very much hope I am wrong and you are right,
Senor
Chairman."

"Roderigo," she said, as the last of the president's council were leaving. "Wait a moment." When they were alone. "Miguel and the grandchildren are still on Ceres. Send a message, tightbeam, priority.
Stay.
He will understand."

EAST TENESSEE

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

NOVEMBER 3, 1998

1500 HOURS

"Captain, what the hell is this place?"

The trooper was nervous. They all were, after the sudden Defcon Four and the scramble of orders that had sent them haring off into the hills, away from any news of what was going on.

The Ranger officer looked up from his maps; they had walked the last half-mile, up into the hills. The air was cool here in the high Appalachians even in summer, chill with winter now the steep mountain ridges were thick with oak and maple and fir, the scars of the mines long healed. He had been born not far away, and he remembered the deep woodland smell of it, a little damp and musty, deeply alive. There were few enough left who could call the mountains home. Unforgiving hard country to scratch a living out of, once the pioneers had taken the first richness; the timber companies and the coal-miners had passed through, and then the people had followed, down to the warm cities and the sun.

"It's a disused coal mine, son," the captain said.
They're
supposed to be independent-minded
, he reminded himself.
And
they're feeling lost, yanked out of their regular units
. Most of the Rangers were helping with the last crates, up from the disused road and through the carefully run-down entrance. The shielding started a little way beyond that, and then the storerooms and armories. "You married, son? Close relatives?"

" Nnnno, sir," the soldier answered. He was in his late teens, with a fluffy yellow attempt at a mustache standing out amid the eye-blurring distortions of a chameleon suit that covered his armor. "Not really."

"Nobody here does," the officer continued. "And in that cave there's everything we'd need for a long, long time."

The soldier swallowed. "Yessir. I get the picture." The officer noted with pleasure that he did not ask if there were other refuges like this.
I suspect so,
the captain thought.
But neither of
us needs to know
. One of the noncoms below called with a quietly menacing displeasure, and the young Ranger saluted and turned to go. That gave him a glimpse of the last contingent, looking unaccustomed to their fatigues and carrying various items of black-boxed electronics.

"Girls?
" he squeaked, then remembered himself and saluted again.

"Technicians," the captain said softly to himself, looking up.

"Edited out of the comps, like all the rest of us. Unlikely to be missed. Not on paper either, anywhere."

The last chameleon-suited troopers were following up the trail, replacing bent branches and disturbed leaves, spraying pheromone-neutralizers. He folded the map and tucked it into a shoulder-pouch. It was going to create the biggest administrative hassle of all time, getting this set up again when they had been stood down.

"I hope," he murmured. "I sincerely hope."

NORFOLK. VIRGINIA

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

MALVINAS
SSN-44

NOVEMBER 3, 1998

1700 HOURS

"Take her down to a hundred meters," the captain of the submarine said. "All ahead full."

Commodore Wanda Jackson glanced around the command center. It was up forward, near the bows of the metal teardrop.