Victory Conditions (42 page)

“But—” one of them said.

“We’ll just wait,” Penny said. She had no special goggles, like her escorts, but with the slow return of emergency lighting in buildings across the boulevard, she could see well enough. She didn’t tell them to be quiet—she didn’t care if they talked—but they just sat there as if frozen in place. One of her escorts went out, and came back with a set of goggles he handed to her. His weapon was out; she set hers down and put on the goggles. Now she could see the little pile of Rafe’s jacket and shirt by the wall.

Her skullphone pinged. She tongued it to internal only, and a tinny voice spoke. “All the auxiliary power’s down. We’re working on it. External security will go up first, but we should have emergency lighting in the next fifteen minutes. No need to answer.” She didn’t. It hadn’t been Rafe or Gary. Outside, she heard sirens in the distance.

When the lights came back, dimmer than usual, Penny removed the goggles and smiled down the table at the others. “Well, that was exciting,” she said. “I would offer something to settle your nerves but I suspect kitchen service isn’t back up yet.”

“Aren’t you scared, Sera Dunbarger?” asked the woman with the frizzy hair.

Penny shook her head. “Not after my other adventures,” she said. “Though I don’t recommend them as a preparation for a power outage.”

“But if there’s someone in the building—they could shoot us or blow us up or—”

“Or we could be hit by a rock someone sent this way weeks ago,” Penny said. “I don’t see any of that as reason to panic.”

“When can we leave?”

“When my brother gets back,” Penny said.

Rafe eased past the amateurish barriers that might have been an effective warning system if he’d been in the dark without goggles. His suit warning pinged. Some surveillance system had picked him up. It might be ISC’s internal system, which should be functional again. Or it might be something the traitor had set up. Rafe didn’t care. He was happy as he had not been happy since he first came back to Nexus.

Lightly, silently, he moved across the corridor and eased along the wall to that almost-closed door. Someone was in there—he didn’t hear more than one, even when he boosted the implant’s audio. The man—it was a man’s voice—was muttering to himself. “Come on, come on…stupid piece of garbage…”

Rafe pivoted around the door frame, pointing his weapon at the man bent over the ansible, prodding its controls.

“Need help?” he asked silkily.

The man whirled, nearly falling over, mouth open. He reached toward his pocket.

“Oh, don’t do that,” Rafe said. “You really, really don’t want to do that.”

“I…don’t?” The man’s voice squeaked.

“No,” Rafe said. “Because then, when I shot your hand off, I might damage that piece of…garbage, did you say?”

The man said nothing.

“What is that, by the way?” Rafe pushed the door shut behind him, moved a waste container in front of it. “That thing you can’t get to work?”

“Er…nothing,” the man said. “I mean…it’s a…a machine. You wouldn’t understand. Look, I’m an employee, I’m not an intruder. I’m supposed to be here.” He pointed to the ID card hanging from its chain, the ISC logo on his tunic.

“An employee,” Rafe said. He hitched a hip onto a low counter beside the door. “I see. And your name?”

“Olin. Olin Zennarthos. TS-3.” Zennarthos sounded more confident now. He could soon find out how mistaken he was. “I guess you’re from Security—something happened and the lights went out and you’re checking things?”

“You might say that,” Rafe said. “What’s your emergency station, Olin Zennarthos?”

“Why, it’s—it’s—” He looked around the room as if he expected to find the yellow square with its big black number somewhere on the walls. “It’s here.”

“Oh, Mr. Zennarthos,” Rafe said, shaking his head. “I do believe you just told a lie. Do you know what happens to people who tell lies to…to Security?”

Zennarthos glanced from side to side, then his wavering glance came back to Rafe. “I—I was scared. It was…dark?”

“Dark, yes. And you put those boxes out there, with glasses and forks and spoons in them, so if the bogeyman came down the dark, the very dark corridors, you would be warned, is that it?”

Zennarthos completely missed the implications in Rafe’s tone, and nodded. “Yes. Yes, I was scared, I thought—with the invasion coming—it might be somebody bad coming.”

“It was,” Rafe said. He would not have the chance to kill the man who had killed Ky, not personally, but this one—this one who worked for the man who killed Ky—would do.

“Uh?” Zennarthos stared at him, confused and scared and not understanding. Rafe wanted him to understand.

“I mean, I am somebody bad. For you.” He stood up again, and took a step forward, then another. “I know what that is, you see. That’s an ansible. That’s a portable ansible. And the only way you, Olin Zennarthos, could have a portable ansible is if you were sent it by our enemies—because our friends don’t have any to share.”

His gaze held Zennarthos immobile until he was almost within reach, but then the man broke, scrambling back to put the ansible between himself and Rafe. “I—I didn’t—don’t—”

Rafe vaulted over the ansible and grabbed Zennarthos by the tunic neck, swinging him around and shoving him back hard against the ansible case. He laid the muzzle of his pistol against Zennarthos’ cheek. The man’s eyes rolled, struggling to see it, and his breath came in ragged gasps. “You are in trouble, laddy, and any more lies will cost you blood.”

“I—I didn’t…I don’t…don’t hurt me…”

Rafe stepped back, yanking Zennarthos forward to meet the pistol with his nose. “Don’t
hurt
you? Are you giving me orders?”

“No…no…I—”

Rafe swung the pistol as if to hit Zennarthos again; as the man flinched away, Rafe used that movement to swing him farther, then kicked the side of the man’s knee and let go of his tunic. Zennarthos fell on his side against the cabinets on that wall. Before he could get up, Rafe grabbed a shelving unit stuffed with heavy-looking boxes labeled with parts numbers, and pulled it over on Zennarthos’ legs; the man screamed. “My legs!”

“Your legs are safe for the moment,” Rafe said. “I can’t shoot them without breaking something more valuable.”

“Who
are
you?” Zennarthos whimpered. “You’re not Security—”

“I’m your worst nightmare,” Rafe said, intentionally copying the wording and tone of a vid-cube villain. He’d found it effective before. “The one where you dream you’re about to die…and you are.” He moved around the mess on the floor and crouched behind Zennarthos’ head. The man tipped his head back. “Don’t move your arms,” Rafe said. “Unless you want me to shoot your head off right now. You picked the wrong employer. If you’d been loyal to me—”

Zennarthos finally caught on. “You’re—you’re Chairman Dunbarger?”

“I am indeed,” Rafe said, and tapped Zennarthos’ forehead with the muzzle. “Maybe you do have something inside that skull after all. We’ll find out later. For now—have you contacted Turek yet?”

“I—I didn’t know—”

Rafe slipped the smallest of his knives out of its sheath into his left hand. He moved it into Zennarthos’ range of vision. “Do you know what this is?”

“A—a knife?”

“Yes. A very, very sharp knife. Now, if you tell me the truth when I ask questions, without making excuses, things will go marginally better for you. If you don’t…I will use this knife in ways you find very unpleasant.”

“But—but you’re a rich man—you wear a suit!”

Rafe chuckled. “Olin, you have some very wrong ideas about rich men. Enough time wasting. Who have you contacted with this ansible today?”

“I—I don’t know his name…
OW!
” Rafe had yanked one of the man’s arms up, bent his hand, and parted the finger web. Zennarthos stared at his hand, where blood dripped from between his fingers.

“Put it back down,” Rafe said. Zennarthos obeyed, trembling. “That answer was not responsive,” Rafe said. “If you do not know a name, give me a location and as much as you do know.”

“He—he is on a ship. A kind of spy ship, I think. I don’t know for sure where it is—I don’t—I think it’s in this system but I don’t know…” His voice trailed away in a wail as Rafe touched the knife to his lips.

“Next question,” Rafe said. “When did you get this ansible?”

“About three years ago,” Zennarthos said. “It was shipped in; I was supposed to watch for it, take care of it—”

“And use it?” Rafe asked.

“Well…yes.”

“Were you given access numbers to load into it, or were they stored when you were contacted?”

“I—I had a list of numbers. A file. But it wasn’t supposed to be loaded until I got a signal. That was nine days ago.”

“So all the access numbers are in it now?”

“Yes. And they use this funny code—that’s in there, too.”

Rafe grinned. “So I don’t need you at all, do I, Olin Zennarthos?”

“But—but you can’t just shoot me!”

“Wrong again,” Rafe said.

“But I told you everything you asked—I cooperated—”

“You did,” Rafe said. “And that saved you a great deal of pain, but here’s the thing: the man you chose to work with killed the woman I love, and since I can’t kill him—yet, anyway—you will have to do.”

Zennarthos moaned. Rafe ignored him and considered his options. The pistol would make a lot of noise and mess this close, and there might be damage to the ansible. He put the pistol away, aware of Zennarthos watching avidly, and pulled out the needler. Quiet, less messy.

“If you believe in a deity, this would be a good time to pray,” he said. “And if you believe in reincarnation, remember to be good next time.”

Zennarthos jerked as the poison-tipped needles, a full load, entered his body. It was a quicker death than he deserved. Rafe stood, letting himself enjoy that moment before working his way back around the fallen shelf to the ansible. Zennarthos, in a rush, had tried to stuff the power supply’s prongs in backward, and luckily had not succeeded. Rafe gathered up the power cord and pushed the unit toward the door. When he opened it, he could hear voices down the corridor.

Gary had already told Penny, on her skullphone, that Rafe was safe and had found the traitor. She had not expected that Rafe would reappear in a perfectly tailored suit, all signs of the rogue-Rafe once more concealed, or that Gary, with him, would look quite so grim. Rafe had the portable ansible on a wheeled frame and a smug grin.

“Stella can sue me later,” he said, “but we’re going to use this. The fellow who had it loaded it with the access codes for all Turek’s ansibles and Turek’s codebook or the equivalent.” His diamond-bright gaze challenged them to ask unnecessary questions…and regret it. “I need to fiddle with it a bit, make sure we don’t transmit on one of Turek’s channels by accident.”

“Where’s the traitor?” asked the astrophysicist.

“Dead,” Rafe said, as if that should have been obvious. He pulled the cart over near a power outlet. Almost on cue, the lights brightened. “Ah. We’re back on main power, I gather. Good. Penny, our guests may wish to leave; if you could take care of that and any incoming calls, I can tinker with this.”

“Rafe—” Penny began, then subsided and did as he asked.

“How’s it feel now?” Gary asked, after the others had left the room.

“Satisfying,” Rafe said. “If I can’t get Turek—”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it. I saw the body.”

“He’s got one small mark on him, is all,” Rafe said. “And to answer the question you intended, it felt lousy. I’ve apparently been contaminated by upper-class squeamishness again. That’s what you used to call it.”

“Or her,” Gary said. “You know she wouldn’t like it.”

“She’s dead,” Rafe said. “She wouldn’t know.”

“Ah, but you would. Actually…aside from wanting to wring your neck for chasing off alone and not calling in your location…you did well.”

“Yeah, well, that was a mere snippet. There’s the rest of the war. Speaking of which, I need some tools. That fake china cabinet over there—second drawer on the right.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

Aboard Vanguard II, in FTL Flight

“It’s time, Admiral.”

Ky opened her eyes to the smell of breakfast and the chime as the compartment door closed. Time. They would be dropping out of FTL into Nexus System in forty-five minutes; most of the crew would have been up just a half hour longer. She had insisted on arriving rested, at peak, because the most dangerous time was that downjump insertion. They had no way of knowing where Turek was, how he had arranged his fleet, or even if Nexus still existed.

Now she rolled out of bed, her implant picking up the timing and bringing her to full alertness. Shower, dress, eat. She was in the CCC, in her seat, fifteen minutes before transition, feeling the knot in her stomach familiar from every downjump transition—had the drives functioned properly, were they reasonably close to where they meant to be?—familiar yet always a little different, because no one could see past the wall of uncertainty. Here, where they came into an inhabited, busy system but not at its mapped jump point, and into the near certainty of hostility, the uncertainty reached unity.

“Thirty-second warning,” came over the ship com. “All personnel take downjump precautions. Weapons hot—confirm all stations.” Ky’s display showed the confirming blinks from each of
Vanguard II
’s weapons stations. She, like others in the CCC, wore her protective suit, helmet in ready position on its mounting rack.

“Fifteen-second warning. Scan positions ready.” Screens flicked from clean blue or green to the swirling multicolored hash that was all scan provided in FTL flight. From across the CCC, Pitt gave Ky a thumbs-up.

“Ten…nine…eight…” Ky checked all her hookups again, and lowered the command canopy; the sound of voices and hiss of air from the ventilators fell away, and the final countdown continued.

“Two…one…downjump transition…successful…”

Ky let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. Scan looked dark, which was good, with wobbly streaks of light—downjump turbulence.

“Ansible contact, Admiral!”

“Patch it,” Ky said. She listened as the five forerunner ships—Ransome and four other fast, smaller ships—reported in and transferred clearer scan data to
Vanguard
and the others in that formation. Red blurs sprang up on the displays—enemy ships, weapons hot, their positions inexact, shown by fuzzy ovals. Smaller green blurs: ISC and Nexus Defense ships, many fewer of them.

“System ansible in operation. Third formation downjump successful, ship-ansible contact confirmed—” That from the bridge, but she could see it on the CCC screens as well. Moment by moment, their movement and the decrease in downjump turbulence combined to produce better data, more accurate positions. Ky had tried to come in well off the ecliptic, avoiding the big rocks and the most traveled traffic lanes, but even with good charts that was difficult to do when not using mapped routes. They were only eleven degrees off, not the seventeen she’d tried for, but they looked to be a comfortable three light-hours from any of the enemy icons—or where the enemy had been when those images reached them.

Ships had drifted out of alignment during the days in FTL flight; Ky listened as the group commanders chivvied them back into place and locked their chronometers.

“Ready, Admiral,” she heard from one and then another.

“Scouts two, Formations primary five,” she said. The battle plan had defined concentric spheres around Nexus and its primary, with jump maneuvers to shift from one to another. First the scouts—Ransome, Yamini, and the others—microjumped into place fairly close in—the second sphere, and then the fleet—the tiny fleet, compared with Turek’s—split up, microjumped to form a vast globe eight light-hours across, centered on Nexus’ sun. From there, each jumped out another light-hour.

“That should confuse somebody,” Pitt said. “We came, we danced around, we ran away.”

“He’s not going to think we ran away, but his scan techs will be struggling,” Ky said. “Ah—here comes something we want—” Scan data relayed from the scout ships began to come in, data only a few minutes old.

“He’s changed his formations,” the Moray liaison said. “It looks like clusters.”

“If he doesn’t have enough ansibles, he’ll cluster for command and control,” Ky said. “If we can figure out which of them has the ansible—how many clusters, do you think?”

“I can’t tell yet.”

Yamini’s voice came in. “They’ve knocked out one system ansible platform; Nexus has—had—six. There’ve been missile launches at the planet itself, apparently targeting urban areas; they’ve already knocked out a couple of satellites. Minimal damage so far onplanet, but one of the orbital stations has heavy damage.”

Ky imagined terrified civilians on the orbital station—there would be families, not just adult workers. Fires, decompression, death…she pushed that aside.

Yamini went on. “There are boosters all over the place, so communication’s really good, but collisions are taking out the boosters. I’m in contact with an ISC admiral…two-second lightlag. He’s just squirted me some data you’ll want—oh, damn. They’ve hit the main ISC formation near Platform Two.”

Ky left analysis of the data squirt to the techs for the time being and directed her ships out-sun of Platform Two to microjump in and engage the ten enemy ships that had just savaged the ISC formation. Ransome, the nearest of her scout ships, provided current position data on the enemy.
Victory
and
Guardian,
two of the new Moray heavy cruisers, and three lighter craft caught the enemy clusters in the flank. Two converted merchanters blew at once; the stolen military craft returned fire that splashed off shields without causing damage.

“They’re converging on the fight,” Yamini reported. “Just as you thought they might.”

“Polson Three, execute Backdoor.” Her third formation, high above the ecliptic, was best placed to run up the rear of Turek’s massive fleet. She watched as they microjumped into position and struck; the rear clusters of Turek’s fleet disintegrated as captains microjumped their ships into diverging vectors.

“Bissonet Two, disengage. Number four, rabbit-hunt.” Formation four consisted of the boldest of the privateers, those who had been most impatient with Ky’s planning sessions.
Termagant
blinked offscan at once, reappearing briefly as Merced popped out to fire at one of the scattered ships then jumped back out. That ship’s shields flared but did not give.
Polygony,
on a slightly different vector, was a precise two seconds behind and hit the same ship; this time its shields did go, and apparently damaged its inspace drive. As it drifted past the moon of Nexus I, one of the fixed installations there blew it to bits.

Once, Ransome’s Rangers would have been among these, but not anymore. Teddy Ransome was exactly where Ky had asked him to be, onstation and staying out of trouble. Now she contacted him directly. “Watch the clusters re-form,” Ky said. “Maybe we can figure out which ships have the ansibles, so we can target those.”

“They’re splitting,” Yamini said suddenly. “Looks like five separate formations, dispersing—they may be coming after you—”

“They shouldn’t have us yet,” Ky said. “Have you located their observer?”

“No, haven’t had time. They may have somebody far enough out to give a real-time position on one of our formations.”

“We’re jumping to ring three,” Ky said. Just as she gave the order to the fleet, Yamini was reporting the disappearance of most of Turek’s ships.
Vanguard II
and the others reappeared closer in; if Turek’s stealthed observer had reported their true position, he would have overjumped them and been nine hours out…and probably furious.

The ships Turek had left behind still seemed intent on attacking Platform Two.

“Somebody’s gotten stubborn,” Ky said. “Or there’s something about that ansible platform that we don’t understand.”

“Or it’s a trap…they’d like to lure you into showing the size of your whole force.”

“That, too. Ransome, Yamini, see anything?”

“It’s the platform closest to the primary mapped point, entry to the usual inbound lane. Fixed defenses along the lane—”

“I’ll bet they want to mine the jump point,” the Moray liaison said. “They don’t want a functioning ansible there able to tell someone where the mines are.”

“They may be laying mines now.”

“Well, we don’t want them blowing that platform. There’s what—three or four thousand people on it?” She looked at the various readouts. “
Angelhair, Greeneyes, Hawkwing,
and
Guidon,
you need to get them away from that platform. If you run into mine drifts, call on
Bluebells.
” Her two minesweepers were far in reserve, but to save a platform she’d risk them.

Platform Two was far enough from her observers that Ky had to depend on reports from the attack force; she would not get lightspeed reports for several hours. But Turek’s ships jumped out the instant her ships appeared on their screens;
Angelhair
had programmed to fire immediately out of jump, and those missiles sped away, part of the dangerous debris of a space battle. The other ships withheld fire, and quickly returned to their stations.

“I was afraid they wouldn’t stay stupid,” Ky said. “And that bunch coordinated very well…I wonder if he left ships that all had ansibles.”

“Twenty ships, six clusters, near Platform Three,” Yamini said.

“Formation five,” Ky said. Turek had plenty of ships for a strong attack on each platform if he chose…and it was his habit to knock out ansible communication first. Why wasn’t he doing it that way? She watched scan from
Cobani,
the nearest observer ship to Platform Three; a ten-minute delay was better than hours, but still too long for planning.

The enemy appeared suddenly on scan, along with flares from the platform’s defensive weaponry. Enemy weapons detonated on the platform’s shields. The clusters moved as one, but independent of other clusters. Then their formation five appeared, and scan data for the exchange went current.

“Tobados Yards was so right, putting in all those extra screens,” Ky said. The Moray liaison grinned. On the old
Vanguard,
they’d lacked the capacity to display data from separate scan inputs, let alone integrate them with the right time delays.

The ships exchanged fire, Turek’s force proving slightly less accurate, but all shields were flaring. The Platform Three ansible suddenly went off—possibly debris damage, possibly something else…but there were still people to protect.

“Another attack group, Platform Four.” Ransome called that in. Ky sent her third formation after it, and looked at what she had left. She had lost only one ship so far, the privateer
Lady Gina,
but the smaller Moray ships,
Rothes
and
Kyle,
had taken damage. With the numerical advantage Turek had, the damage she’d inflicted so far merely nibbled at his force’s strength.

“We’d better be very smart mosquitoes,” she said, unaware she’d spoken aloud until several people turned to look at her. “Dancing with the bear, people. It’ll take us awhile to suck him dry, so we’d better be really smart.”

“Any idea when the Slotter Key contingent will arrive?”

“Any time now would be good,” Ky said. “But no, I don’t know.” She looked at the chronometer. Hours had passed that felt like crowded minutes…she didn’t feel tired yet, but the time would come—and more for her force than Turek’s—when exhaustion would slow reflexes, perhaps fatally. Turek could send part of his force out far enough to be safe and rest them, and still keep hers busy trying to protect the critical targets.

“Ansible contact from Cascadia, for the commanding officer. Does the admiral want it?”

“I’ll take it,” Ky said. It was too late for the Moscoe government to send help; even if they were willing, by the time they arrived the battle would be over, one way or the other. She could, however, tell them what was going on.