Falcone Strike (32 page)

“Do
not
touch anything within the ship without permission,” William warned as they reached the airlock. “This is not a safe environment.”

The hatch hissed open, revealing two crewmen. Both of them had clearly taken the instructions to wear something piratical to heart. The red shirts and black trousers, with several weapons hanging from their belts, made them look like characters out of a bad romantic play rather than real pirates. William sensed Quietus having second thoughts, but it was far too late. He led the small group through the hatch and into a medium-sized cabin that was easy to secure.

“You are not to leave this compartment without an escort,” he said as he waved the women and children inside. “We will get you somewhere safe as quickly as possible.”

One of the boys glanced at his sister, then said something in a language William didn’t recognize. John snapped at him, raising a hand as if he intended to strike the child; the boy cowered back, then glowered at his younger sister . . . as if, somehow, it was all her fault. William felt cold; it looked, very much, as if John kept his family in line with a rod of iron. What had the boy
said
? Had he objected to sharing a cabin with the girls? Or what? “It . . . it would be better if you could put the girls in a separate cabin,” John said. “Is that possible?
”

“
Perhaps,” William said darkly. Although, judging by the expression on the boy’s face, it would probably be safer for the girls to keep the two sexes apart. “I will try and make arrangements.”

“Thank you,” John said.

William sighed and closed the hatch. “We’ll be casting off in five minutes,” he said once he showed Quietus to his cabin. “I need that data now.”

“Here,” Quietus said. He gave William a sharp look. “You’re not pirates or smugglers, are you?
”

“
No,” William said. “But we
will
keep our agreement, believe me.”

He closed the hatch, then keyed his wristcom. “Lieutenant, you may cast off when ready,” he said. “Take an evasive course back to the RV point.”

“Aye, sir,” Rasmussen said.

William smiled to himself, then sobered as he remembered the two women. Princess Drusilla hadn’t been so submissive, but she’d been a
princess
. Was that the fate awaiting every woman in the Commonwealth, if their homeworlds were occupied? He remembered everything that had happened on Cadiz, before the counterattack, and shuddered. Any woman who dared show an independent streak had been savagely punished.

“When you have a moment, clear a cabin for the girls,” he ordered. “And see if your XO can talk to them. They may respond better to another woman.”

“Aye, sir,” Rasmussen said.

William carried the datachip to his tiny cabin as he felt the patrol boat cast off, then plugged it into his isolated terminal. There was a pause, then long streams of data started to flicker up in front of him, everything Quietus had promised and more. He couldn’t help smiling in relief as he realized it had all been worthwhile, once the data was carefully examined. They now knew enough about the Theocracy to start hammering it apart, piece by piece.

Most of their shipyards, even their repair yards, are concentrated around their core worlds
, he thought slowly.
Even a naval base like Aswan has only a handful of repair facilities. Their ships have to limp all the way home for major repairs . . .

It made no sense, from a practical viewpoint, but the Theocracy was more interested in social control than building a formidable military machine. William was no expert, yet it seemed to him as though the enemy’s industrial base was already running hot. They’d practically bankrupted themselves just to build the military they had, let alone keep it going. And, without a network of repair yards, they couldn’t cope with increasing numbers of damaged ships.

His wristcom buzzed. “Commander,” Rasmussen said. “We are now in hyperspace. No sign of pursuit.”

“Good,” William said. He made a mental note to thank Scott when he next saw him, then nodded to himself. “Make sure our guests remain reasonably comfortable until we rejoin the squadron, Lieutenant. I want to keep them in a good mood.”

“Aye, sir,” Rasmussen said. He hesitated, noticeably. “Do you think we succeeded?
”

William looked at the data unfolding in front of him. “I think so,” he said. “But we may not know for several weeks, at best. And one other thing?
”

“
Yes, sir?
”

“
Not a word about this mission, not to
anyone
,” William warned. “This secret must remain secret for the nonce.”

“Yes, sir,” Rasmussen said.

“The younger of the wives has been . . .
treated
,” Doctor Katy Braham said. There was more than a little distaste in her voice. “Not to put too fine a point on it, she follows orders.
All
orders. She quite literally has no will of her own.”

Kat swallowed, tasting bile in her mouth. Princess Drusilla had explained, back when she’d defected from the Theocracy, that her father had intended to turn her into a Stepford Wife, but Kat had found it hard to believe that
anyone
could be so cruel. Kat’s father might have been exasperated with her from time to time, yet he’d never set out to steal her free will. But the evidence was right in front of her—a woman, barely out of her teens, who was helpless to resist any commands. Someone had rewired her brain to make her an obedient slave.

It was worse, she suspected. The woman
knew
what had happened to her—knew it, hated it, and yet was unable to resist. There was a helpless fury in her eyes that sent chills down Kat’s spine, the fury of a slave trapped in unbreakable bonds. She couldn’t so much as block her ears to prevent the commands from reaching her mind, let alone refuse to obey them. It was a chilling presentiment of what might be in store for Kat if the Theocracy won.

The XO looked pale. “Is there any way to reverse the treatment?
”

“
I’m not sure,” the doctor admitted. “These procedures were originally developed for patients who had serious mental problems; later, some very wealthy people on Earth used them to create a cadre of loyal servants before the whole practice was banned. In this case . . .”

She sighed, studying the medical readouts. “In this case, the brain might have adapted to the modifications,” she said. “This is far more complex than a simple conditioning—and a conditioning, while it can be removed, might well leave the victim in a state of shock for years to come. I suggest putting her in stasis until we get back to Tyre, then sending her over to a medical crew that specializes in brain injuries. There’s nothing more I can do for her here.”

Kat nodded slowly. “What else can you tell me about them?
”

“
The boys are healthy, if arrogant,” the doctor said. “They had some problems being examined by a female doctor, although I’m not sure if that was out of misogyny or a form of misplaced modesty. The girls, on the other hand, are too thin for their age; the senior wife, too, has not had enough to eat. She’s quite a piece of work herself, I might add. She didn’t hesitate to tell me I should have a husband and kids rather than be working as a doctor.”

“I see,” Kat said. “Is she conditioned too?
”

“
No,” the doctor said. “But I think she would be very unwise to disobey her husband, at least openly. My honest opinion, Captain, is that we should hang on to the women; the defector, if he wishes, can go to one of the independent colonies.”

“He’d want to take the boys with him,” the XO said. “It sounds like they need a healthy dose of boarding school.”

“That attitude would be knocked out of them pretty quickly on one of the independent worlds,” the doctor said, firmly. “Or they’d be killed by someone when they gave offense.”

Kat held up a hand. “Keep them separated for the moment,” she said. She couldn’t help thinking the doctor was right, but her brothers had been arrogant little shits when they’d been young too. On the other hand, they hadn’t been raised in such a poisonous atmosphere, nor had they been taught that their sisters were automatically inferior. “We can sort out their disposition later.”

“The Child Protection Service would not hesitate to remove the girls, at least,” the doctor warned. “This isn’t a typical case, but we have had other problems concerning immigrant children who were mistreated by their parents.”

“By your standards,” the XO said.

The doctor rounded on him. “I hardly think that programming a young woman into a life of helpless servitude and half starving young girls is acceptable by
anyone’s
standards,” she said. “Not to mention the sheer disgusting loss of potential this represents. The Theocracy is a cancer on the face of the galaxy, a perversion of everything we stand for. It has to be destroyed.”

She slapped the table hard. “
Fuck
cultural sensitivity,” she hissed. “There are some things we should refuse to fucking tolerate.”

Kat blinked in surprise. She’d never heard the doctor swear before, not even after the escape from Cadiz or the ambush at Morningside. But the doctor was right. There was no way that anyone could leave the girls with their father and brothers, not when they would be treated like dirt. It would be easy enough to arrange for them to be slipped into Commonwealth society, with foster families, while their mother was deprogrammed.

“Take care of them,” she said softly. “Mr. XO?
”

She turned and led the way back to her office, then sat down on the chair. “It’s going to be a headache explaining this to your friend,” she said. “He’s going to think we’re stealing his family from him.”

“I think we don’t have a choice,” the XO said bitterly. “But it’s still going to come back to haunt us.”

Kat looked into his troubled eyes. “Why?
”

“
Intelligence is a murky field,” the XO reminded her. “A defector, someone who can tell us a great deal about the enemy’s intentions, is a pearl beyond price. Treating them well, giving them money and places to stay—and making it publicly clear that that’s what we have done— helps to encourage other defectors. I have a feeling the CIS will complain, loudly, if the message we send is something else. Like, for example, come to the Commonwealth and have your family taken from you.”

“No,” Kat said flatly. “There are some lines we will not cross.”

“You might be surprised,” the XO said. “They had me making deals with smugglers—and some of the people I spoke to might have been pirates, the murderers and rapists we execute on sight. I don’t find it hard to believe that the CIS might make deals with people who are even worse, at least by our standards.”

Kat looked down at her hands. She didn’t want to believe him, but she had a feeling he might well be right. There was idealism . . . and then there was politics, and the demands of fighting and winning a war that could not be lost. She knew more than she wanted to know about the endless tussle for supremacy in Tyre City, the willingness to stoop to new lows just to gain a temporary advantage. Maybe the CIS would insist that the girls be returned to their father, even though they would be abused.

I’ll adopt them if that happens
, she thought darkly. Technically, that would require her father’s permission, but she had a feeling she could make it hard for him to deny her.
Let them try to take the girls from me, if I added them to the family. The bad publicity alone would be disastrous
.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” she said finally. “I understand you learned a great deal about our enemy?
”

“
Indeed,” the XO said. “And Davidson’s team of interrogators are learning a great deal more.”

He tapped the terminal, bringing up a star chart. “The enemy,” he said, as the display centered on their current location. “For the first time, we have a detailed outline of enemy space.”

Kat nodded slowly. The defector had definitely brought enough information to make the risk of smuggling him out of Aswan more than worthwhile. Now, she knew where the enemy based their major shipyards, although they were clearly too heavily defended for her remaining ships to attack. It wouldn’t be hard to slip more scoutships through the Reach and get hard data, then plot a major attack. Convincing the Admiralty to cut loose enough superdreadnoughts to mount an offensive would be a great deal harder.

But we’re already ramping up our production levels
, she thought. The intelligence analysts had already calculated that the enemy couldn’t have more than a hundred superdreadnoughts at most, despite the terrifying scale of their military buildup.
Give us a couple of years and we’ll have them outnumbered three to one.

“There’s something else of considerable interest in the Aswan System, something we missed earlier because none of our sources were in the know,” the XO said. “This place here.”

Kat’s eyes narrowed. The naval base orbited a Mars-type world that was slowly being terraformed, and there was a gas giant, but none of the other worlds in the system seemed anything other than utterly unremarkable. She’d glanced at the old files, dating back to the UN, yet nothing had stood out. But the XO was pointing to the fifth planet from the star . . .

“This planet is called Redemption,” the XO said very quietly. “Apparently, there’s a POW camp there.”

“
Mermaid
will need to take a look at the planet,” Kat said. It
could
be a trap . . . but Aswan was in a good location to serve as a clearinghouse for POWs: far enough from the front to make it unlikely a rescue mission could be launched, close enough to allow the enemy to sort through their prisoners and pick out anyone who might be useful. “If there’s a POW camp there . . .”

“If,” the XO said. “There’s at least one squadron of superdreadnoughts on guard at all times, Captain. Getting in would be a major headache if we had a battle squadron of our own.”

“Which we don’t,” Kat said slowly. She briefly considered attempting to get word to Admiral Christian, then realized he probably couldn’t spare the ships to mount an offensive so far behind enemy lines.
Her
ships were expendable;
his
superdreadnoughts were not. “If we could lure those superdreadnoughts away, somehow . . .”

“It might not be possible,” the XO said. “They’d be fools to leave Aswan uncovered.”

“True,” Kat agreed. She looked at the star chart, thinking hard. Could she
use
the spy’s communications codes, now that the enemy knew they could trust him? But unless he told them that she’d picked up reinforcements from somewhere, they wouldn’t deploy both squadrons of superdreadnoughts. “We could sneak a team of Marines down to the surface.”

“But then we wouldn’t be able to get the prisoners out without bringing in the squadron,” the XO countered. “They’d have ample time to intercept us.”

Kat nodded slowly. The enemy superdreadnoughts they’d sighted at Aswan might not be fully combat-capable, but they could lumber to Redemption and intercept her ships before they managed to pick up the POWs and retreat. She ran through a handful of possibilities in her head, yet nothing seemed to work. There was no way they could do more than attack the POW camp’s defenses before they were forced to run for their lives.

And that would tell them we knew about the camp
, she thought.
They’d either improve the defenses or move the prisoners to a different location
.

“We will need to take a careful look at that planet, under stealth,” she said. Redemption didn’t appear to be as heavily defended as Aswan— that would have tipped off her scouts that there was something there worth guarding—but it would certainly be surrounded by a handful of passive sensors. “Have
Mermaid
prepared for a deployment there.”

“Aye, Captain,” the XO said. He keyed his wristcom briefly, then smiled. “We do also have the convoy schedules. There’s a large convoy passing through Aswan in four days and another one, apparently an important convoy, passing through UNAS-G2-6585 in two weeks. I don’t think we’ve any hope of capturing the first convoy, but we could certainly have a go at
destroying
it.”

Kat accessed the file, then frowned. “It might easily be a trap.
”

“
In that case, our defector friend is a liar,” the XO pointed out. “But . . . if that’s the case, we’d know about it by now. The Marines were careful to make sure he was given a full-spectrum interrogation. If he was conditioned to resist interrogation, Captain, we’d know about it by now.”

“Because his brains would be leaking out of his skull,” Kat said. “We could slip into Aswan with
Mermaid
, then lurk in ambush while
Mermaid
prowls around Redemption, hunting for the POWs. If the convoy arrives as expected, we can launch a full spread of missiles and then drop back into hyperspace. There would be no time to engage the defenders . . .”

“Just a smash-and-run mission,” the XO said. He studied the convoy timetable, thinking it through. “It should be doable. And it will knock the enemy back over, after their success earlier.”

Kat nodded. The enemy’s morale had to have skyrocketed after their successful ambush, even if they hadn’t managed to destroy her entire squadron. She’d hoped her string of attacks had started to demoralize the Theocracy’s forces, even if it hadn’t convinced them to redeploy ships to hunt her down, but their victory would have reversed all that. Pulling off another ambush, right in the heart of their naval base, would hopefully send their morale back into a downward spin. Who knew? It might even lead to the death of the commanding officer who’d plotted the successful ambush in the first place.

There’s something unpleasant about hoping the enemy will off one of their own officers
, she acknowledged in the privacy of her own thoughts.
But if it gets rid of a dangerously competent enemy officer, it might be worth it
.