The Iron Admiral: Deception (20 page)

“All right. But I don’t like it; I don’t like it at all.”

“Then the sooner we get it over with, the better. Don’t you think?”

Saahren’s fingers strayed to his scar. “Hm. I’ll have to involve the local security people. Come with me, Allysha. You can rest in your quarters while I organize something.”

“Don’t you think it would be better if I go and talk to the others? Tell them what’s happening?” She looked up at him, sad and tired but determined. “They have a right to know. From me.”

She was keeping herself going, he knew; unwilling to stop in case she couldn’t start again. And the worst of it was, he needed for her to keep going. He hated himself, hated what he had to do. But at the very least, he could try to keep her safe.

“I’ll get you an escort.” She opened her mouth to protest but he forestalled her. “Whether you like it or not.”

Having sent Allysha off with two troopers, Saahren headed for his office. On the way he spoke to Butcher.

“I’ll need to talk to the planetary president,” Saahren told him, “and then I want you to inform Admiral Larsen that I want one of his commanders for this operation. And I want to see SenComm Ernshaw.”

Butcher was waiting when Saahren entered his office. “The President is awaiting your call, Sir. Admiral Larsen acknowledges and has nominated Commander Eildon for the job. He should be on his way here now, as should SenComm Ernshaw.”

“Thanks. Get me the President straight away, will you?”

****

Saahren took Allysha down to the hangar bay himself. She’d had a chance to have a shower and change and though she still looked pale and tense, at least the blood and dirt was gone. A protesting med tech had given her another dose of pain killers. No more for at least a full thirty-hour day, he was told. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. It shouldn’t. The light-weight body armor she wore covered the cast on her arm.

 

Her team waited for her, similarly attired in body armor for their trip to the planet. He chose to ignore Bristol’s attempt to hide his dissatisfaction. He wasn’t the only one unhappy about how this was playing out.

Commander Eildon saluted. “Lieutenant James is in charge of the platoon, Sir.”

James took a step forward.

Just another fresh-faced, determined young trooper officer, a lad he couldn’t remember ever having seen before. He had to trust Eildon’s judgment, but at least he could emphasize the young man’s responsibility.

“Your primary concern is Miss Marten’s safety, Lieutenant,” he said. “She is not to be left alone.”

“Sir.” James squared his jaw and snapped a salute.

Saahren’s gaze shifted back to where Allysha stood, pale and resolute. He hated this; hehated it.

She smiled at him, meeting his eyes. “I’ll be okay. Back soon.”

A tingle of anticipation slid down his spine. The way she said the words; the way she smiled. He nodded, unwilling to trust his tongue with words.

 

ChapterTwenty-Three

Allysha watched on the view screen as the gunship dropped slowly past walls and windows to finally settle in what she presumed would be the street, raising whirlwinds of dust and debris as it did so. The local militia had already surrounded the general area and set up a cordon. Beyond it, a small crowd watched the Fleet troopers as they disembarked, armor activated, weapons ready.

“This is it, ma’am.” Lieutenant James gestured with his AR70 at a three-story building directly to one side of the gunship.

The old house, just one of a number like it, was a relic of a grander past. The once elegant façade had peeled and corroded in the acrid atmosphere of what had become an industrial slum. Already, Allysha’s eyes itched and she tasted a tang of something in the air, competing with the stink of overflowing garbage bins. But at least her arm didn’t hurt.

“Stay here and we’ll check inside,” James said.

She nodded and he went off, giving orders to his troopers while Allysha looked around the squalid, dirty streetscape. Graffiti defaced the walls, rubbish lined the streets. A broken pram stood forlorn and moldering under a sagging verandah. The aura of hopelessness was palpable. The only people in sight were the spectators behind the cordon. Allysha wondered if they were locals or gawkers. Or maybe a bit

of both. Sullen youths with hands in pockets, a couple of women, a gaggle of round-eyed kids peering through the temporary fence.

James was back faster than Allysha could have imagined.

“The house is empty ma’am—of people anyway. It’s stacked to the rafters with combat equipment. And there are two rooms with computer equipment. Would you like to see them?”

“I certainly would.” Anything to get off this depressing street. “Lead on.”

As the lieutenant had said, two rooms with similar equipment. Allysha assessed them as modern, human machines. It should be simple enough. Maybe she ought to have the team do the work.

“Todd, you and Anna take this one, and Hassan and Siri take the one next door. I want to know if these machines are connected in some way and if so, how. Is one a backup for the other? Do they do the same

or different jobs? You know the score.” She looked between the four.

“Do we start with the InfoDroids?” Sirikit asked.

 

“Do any of you have a better idea?” She looked between them. “I’ll just supervise. But remember, we’re looking for fast answers.”

“We always are.” Hassan put a companionable arm around Sirikit’s shoulder. “Yes, Siri, we start with InfoDroids, then we find out what they missed.” He led her to the other room.

“Get on with it, then.” Allysha waved an arm at Todd and Anna. She chose to ignore Todd’s worried frown. She was okay. She had to be. For now. Later she might throw herself into Saahren’s arms and cry. The thought caused her to smile. If she did that he might be just a little bit disappointed. At least until she stopped crying and he had a chance to comfort her.

They set to with a will, enthusiastically putting their training to the test. Allysha went between the two rooms, checking, encouraging and, very rarely, advising. The rest of the building was busy with activity as

James’s people and the local militia moved cartons or dragged items. Boots clumped on stairs, muted voices passed along corridors.

Lieutenant James still hung around. It seemed he had taken to heart Saahren’s instruction that she was not to be left alone and interpreted it as ‘never out of your sight’. Well, James was young and Saahren was… It never ceased to amaze her, the extent to which he was held in absolute awe by his people.

James had nearly burst when Saahren himself appeared in the hangar bay as they were about to embark.

Commander Eildon had given the last instructions to his troops, but then Saahren had stepped over to James and given his own final instruction to the young man. Maybe awe was the wrong word. Probably more like respect and trust. Yes, trust. He took the time to know about their jobs, about them. He wasn’t some disembodied voice giving orders to people he didn’t know, about places he hadn’t seen.

As her attention drifted, a question niggled, an idea jumped up and down in the corner of her mind, clamoring for attention. Something she’d recognized, up there in the machine room in warehouse 30-Hector. Something familiar.

“Did you see any other computers anywhere, Lieutenant?” she asked James. “Any machine, any condition?”

“There’s one in a junk room downstairs,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “But my techs didn’t get an echo from it.”

“Show me.”

“This way.”

He led her along a corridor, stinking of mold, the walls ragged with layers of peeling wallpaper stinking of mold, and down a flight of worn stone steps.

“Was this place ptorix?” asked Allysha, looking around her as they descended. The walls here were whitewashed, not decorated, but the place had a feel.

“The very bottom bits, ma’am, so I was told. The house seems to have been built on top of the ruins of a ptorix house.”

It made sense. The steps were very worn, the smooth depression the result of many, many years of wear. And the treads, even at the edges, were the rounded ones favored by the ptorix, so that the steps seemed to flow down.

James opened a door at the foot of the stairs and gestured her inside. “Be careful. There’s all sorts of stuff in here.”

She picked her way between cartons and broken furniture.

“I don’t know how they can look at something like that.” James shook his head and blinked at the ptorix decorations on the back wall, visible above the clutter.

“They see things differently to humans.” The artwork was in surprisingly good condition, the colors still vivid, the outlines sharp after all those years. How many years? She shrugged the question aside.

“Where’s the machine?”

James pointed at an old machine on a desk in a corner. “Seems a bit silly to imagine this old heap is important. The InfoDroid didn’t seem to think so.”

Not a bad ploy, really. Set up the real machine in a messy cellar and have sparkly new machines on the ground floor, holding the inventory. All the important stuff would be here, hidden in plain sight. It reminded her a little of what she’d done at Tisyphor.

“Okay.” She looked around for something she could sit on. “You can leave it to me.” She pulled over a carton, judging it to be more comfortable than the three rickety-looking chairs.

“Treb, you guard the door,” James said, while he himself took up a position with his back to the ptorix wall.

She shot James a look. “There’s no need for anybody to stay with me.”

“Orders, ma’am.”

She shrugged. “Seems a bit silly.” That was Saahren being overprotective. “Oh well. Make yourselves comfy, Treb, Lieutenant.”

She set up her techpack and slipped into the system. The machine wasn’t as old as it looked. Human, certainly, but cleverly disguised to hide its real purpose, even from an InfoDroid. Sean? Or somebody else?

****

The muffled bang from upstairs jolted her out of her thoughts. She peered up at dust drifting down from the ceiling. James demanded information from his sergeant. It hardly needed the man’s words to state the

 

obvious; the building was under attack.

“You’d better get up there and do something, James,” she said.

“Yes.” He hesitated a moment. “Treb, you stay here.”

 

“Silly. I’m safe in here.” A blast shook the walls. One of the rickety chairs clattered to the floor. “Take her with you.”

“Ma’am, I…” The young man’s eyes went between her and the ceiling. The noises of battle sounded all around the house—running feet, shouts, the staccato rasp of rapidly fired AR70s.

“Look, I’m okay down here. There’s only one way in or out and that’s it. You can lock me in if it makes you feel happier.”

“Well…”

“Go away and let me work.” She turned back to the machine. She heard the door lock behind her and turned her attention to breaking through the rather clever, rather familiar function that protected the machine from intrusions. A few moments later she was in the real system, a distribution network. Ah. A list of names and locations. She stored them on her implant and carried on searching.

“Hello again, Ally.”

The voice was like a bomb blast in her brain, shattering her concentration. She recognized him this time.

She sprang to her feet and spun to face him, her heart hammering.

Sean stood at the ptorix wall, which now revealed a door, a pistol in his hand. Another two men stood behind him, also holding weapons.

“You’re a clever girl. I knew you’d make your way here.” He glanced at one of his two companions.

“Get the machine, Orac.”

“There are troops upstairs,” Allysha said, as the man came around her to remove the computer. He walked carefully, eyes on her all the time. Not much chance for her there.

“Yes. Lucky they’re not here. They’d be dead. Now come along quietly and you won’t get hurt.” Sean frowned and looked at her more closely. “Looks like you’ve been hurt already.”

She nodded. “Yes.” Her eyes flicked around for options; keep him talking, delay him. Vague sounds of battle filtered through from outside, but further away now. “Your friend, Astin.”

“Astin,” he sneered. “He did his job.”

“And what was that?”

“Give you something to find, get you here.” He stepped toward her. “Come on, time to go.”

“You did it.” She pointed a finger at him. “I thought I recognized the function. It was based on mine.”

Sean frowned. “Come on, Ally. Time’s a wasting.”

She took a slow step forward. If she could get behind the carton, she could buy some time, but it would have to be the left hand. What would Werensa do?

“I was lucky to find it when I did. I could have missed it altogether.”

 

The pistol; she needed the pistol and Sean wasn’t going to let her do what she did at her apartment.

“It was set to repeat. Come on, Ally, quit stalling.”

She took a step toward him, then raised her hand and turned back.

“Can’t forget this, can I?” She picked up her techpack and put it in her belt pouch.

In the littered space she feigned a trip and fell toward Sean to grasp his arm. He lurched backwards, unbalanced by her weight.

“Dart her,” he hissed as they wrestled. She felt a blow, a sharp prick to the back of her neck, above the body armor.

The room spun. She swayed, fighting for balance. Sean’s face slid out of focus. “You bastard,” she said.

She might have had a chance if her arm wasn’t damaged, if she wasn’t filled with painkillers.

They grabbed her arms and dragged her through the doorway, still conscious, still aware but unable to resist. Her arm hurt, her damaged arm, the right one and the pain was spreading, down her side and into her stomach. Her heart galloped, her lungs labored, her nerves burned like fire and still they dragged her along.

“What’s wrong with her?” The words clanged through a swirling red mist of fear and nausea.

“Nothin’. She’s acting.”

Her body burned. She gasped for air and the pain in her stomach was unbearable. She vomited abruptly, explosively and they let her go as she groaned, her body convulsing in violent spasms. She vomited again, felt her body empty itself and smelled the stench of urine and feces and death.