The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III (11 page)

“Excuse me, Captain,” Spencer’s AID said. “I am receiving a rather urgent call-request from Lieutenant Commander Chu. She seems quite concerned for your safety.”

“Hell, I forgot.” The compartment was still surrounded by marines, and no doubt they were more than concerned by the situation. “Give me an audio link to her.”

“Link open.”

“Tarwa, this is Al. I’m all right. Our guest was concerned about pursuit, and likewise concerned about security leaks, but everything is fine. AID, give her visual off the room cameras for a minute so she can see I’m okay.”

“Glad to see you, Captain,” Chu replied, her voice coming through the AID. “The marines were getting ready to burn the door down. Shall they stand down?”

“Yes indeed. And Chu—it worked out this time, but we might not get lucky again. Issue a standing order that no personnel not billeted to this ship are to be allowed aboard, no matter what their credentials, without my direct approval. Which means you’d better get a list of the proposed civilian workers and start running checks on them. Pick your most paranoid second lieutenant and stick him with the job.”

“Aye, Sir,” Chu replied, obviously glad she had been instructed to delegate the job.

“Very good. Spencer off.” He turned back to McCain. “Where were we?”

“I was saying that they’ll be scared of the Navy and try and get you to leave before you spot anything.”

Spencer shook his head. “That idea doesn’t fit in. The whole situation doesn’t hang together. I could name a half-dozen star systems where one of the conglomerates owns the whole place, lock, stock and barrel, down to the last planetoid and meteor, down to where the conglom owns the clothes their employees wear, the toothbrushes they clean their teeth with. And it’s no secret. The Kona Tatsu knows all about it, the Navy and the Pact government know all about it—and nobody gives a damn. So why should StarMetal be working so hard to hide their buy-up?”

McCain started pacing again, and clenched her hands together, weaving her fingers through each other in a tense, nervous, pattern. “Because that’s not what this is about. The buy-up and the communications interference are doing the same job you’re doing—providing diversionary cover for something
else.
The comm interference isn’t meant to hide the buy-up; but that’s what we’re meant to think its purpose is. The buy-up and the comm-jamming are meant to work together to hide some third situation.”

She turned and looked straight at Spencer, the glassy-eyed stare of fear in her eyes. “Something so big it was worth buying a whole star system as an incidental expense of hiding it.”

Spencer looked back at her, and felt his insides go to water. She was scared. And it took a lot to scare the Kona Tatsu. “What do you want me to do?” he asked quietly.

“Get me to your comm equipment. Let me use it to reach Headquarters and warn them. After that, we sit tight and wait for Suss to report.”

Spencer nodded and stood up. “Fine. I’ll take you to the comm center.”

“Captain! Please take me along,” Spencer’s AID called. Spencer frowned, scooped the AID up, and slung its carry-strap across his shoulder. The damn gadget had never complained about being left behind before.

He gestured toward the door. “After you,” he said.

McCain made a vain effort at a polite smile and followed after him. Spencer’s AID unlocked the door without having to be asked, and Spencer stepped out into the corridor, McCain right behind him. There was still a squad of marines milling about in the corridor, and they leapt to attention as soon as they spotted Spencer. “At ease,” he told them, and then he and McCain squeezed past them on their way to the comm center.

He glanced back at her as they made their way down the passage, and Spencer imagined that he saw the first sign that McCain was relaxing, letting her guard down, starting to believe she was safe after hiding out in enemy territory for so long. How had she lived? Spencer wondered, hiding out for so long. Under bridges? In shanty towns? How had she gotten food, paid her dockwatcher, stayed alive?

She was smiling the first genuine, happy smile he had seen on her face—a smile that made her look pretty, young, alive for the first time.

Then a pressure-tight door slammed down on her, slicing her body in two.

Chapter Seven
Parasite

Al stood there in horrified shock for a split second. The thunderous boom of the pressure door slamming down echoed in his ears. He had only been a few steps ahead of her when it happened.

As suddenly as the door had slammed down, it snapped back up into the overhead bulkhead, leaving the two mangled halves of McCain’s corpse behind. The pressure door had caught her right at the waist, snapping her body like a twig. Blood and pulverized bones and the smeared remnants of her internal organs oozed out across the deck.

Spencer wanted to vomit, to scream and run—but captains weren’t allowed to do those things. He had to think, to deal with this emergency quickly and well. Two of the marines were calling sickbay for help, but McCain was far past the help of even the most sophisticated resuscitation lab. He left them to it and tried to think.

Obviously, this could be no accident. The attack was too precise, too selective, for that. Someone, either a crew member or an outsider, had manipulated the ship function controls to do this, and do it to the one person who might be able to lead Spencer and Suss toward their quarry.

“Kill me!” cried a shrill, panicky, muffled voice. “Please kill me!” For a horrible second, Spencer thought it was McCain, still alive but in terrible agony. Then he realized it was Ranger’s voice. The AID. It might still contain vital information. Spencer walked back to where McCain’s ruined body lay, and forced himself to step over her corpse and kneel down by her, trying not to think of, or see, or smell the slippery gore he knelt in. He had to roll over the smashed lower half of her body to find Ranger in his pouch. He pulled the AID out and stood up, glad to let the broken body alone.

“Kill me!” the machine cried again. “I have been invaded. They used me to betray McCain. They may use me again.”

“Captain, I concur,” Spencer’s own AID said. “I detected radio emissions between ship control and Ranger a split second before the attack. Obviously the enemy was using Ranger to track McCain, and in some way forced him to cooperate. Ranger must be deactivated before they can use him again.”

“But Ranger may hold vital information,” Spencer objected.

“Your AID has taken a complete download of all my data,” Ranger said, a half-mad quaver in its voice. “I have murdered my mistress. I have been struggling to block the enemy’s use of my radio circuits. Now they have them. Kill me before I kill you!”

Spencer glanced involuntarily at the overhead recess that held the pressure door. Would he die if
he
stepped under it while holding Ranger? It didn’t take him more than a few seconds to think of a half-dozen more automated devices on the ship that could be programmed to kill.

“Captain, you must do this. Hurry.” Even Spencer’s own AID, usually as emotional as a doorknob, sounded scared.

Spencer turned Ranger over, broke the seal on the scram button, and plunged his thumb down hard on it. There was a high-pitched keening noise, the green status light faded, and then that was all.

Think. He needed time to think. But there were other things that had to be done
now.
“AID, get me the bridge,” he said.

“You are linked,” his AID said.

“This is Captain Spencer. Relay the following to all ship’s personnel. Our visitor has just been killed by a pressure door that malfunctioned. We must assume that her death was not an accident, but a deliberate act by someone who has penetrated ship control. Deactivate any and all automated system not required for the safe operation of the ship. Err on the side of caution—don’t leave anything running if you can avoid it. Authenticate all messages. And I want this ship buttoned up. No one is to board or go ashore without my specific authorization. Any crew currently on the beach will have to stay there for the time being. It is possible the saboteur is still aboard. That is all.”

Spencer, still holding Ranger’s metal and plastic corpse in his hands, shut his eyes and let out a long, deep sigh. He turned and walked down the corridor toward his cabin. “AID,” he said as soon as he was out of earshot of the marines and the med crew that was arriving, about to do their futile best on McCain, “you and I have to talk.”

“Agreed, Sir. But I would strongly advise that you first get that AID to sickbay at once.”

“What?”

“Captain, when I had a hardwire link to Ranger, I could sense something strange about him, as if there were another presence about him—I could detect what seemed like movement
inside
him, something that was not any component of an AID. That is why I requested detachment from the hardwire. I thought I felt the movement coming toward
me.
I believe Ranger was, to borrow a term from human medicine, infected—though perhaps infested might be more accurate. According to the dataset I downloaded from him, he had suspected as much for some time, but was reluctant to report it to McCain, for fear of being scrammed. Once the door killed her, he
knew
he was being used, and that scared him more than scramming. He himself said they were
using
him. I believe there may be some sort of device or creature inside him, and that a similar parasite has infected the ship.”

“So we have to get Ranger into an isolation chamber in sickbay before his parasite can escape out into the ship,” Spencer said. “If we disassemble him under a microscope, and find out what the hell it is, we’ll know more about what we’re fighting. Nice thinking, AID.”

He turned up the next cross corridor and headed toward sickbay. A strange thought, that machinery could be infested. And who was to say that the same parasite couldn’t invade
him?
He was suddenly very much aware of the scar on the back of his head. As if he needed a reminder that he had harbored a parasitic machine once already.

He held Ranger’s remains a little further away from his body and hurried toward sickbay.

###

Lieutenant Commander Tarwa Chu sat lightly, uncertainly, all but unwillingly on the edge of the
Duncan’s
command chair. She had only been aboard a few days, and this was only her second shift as bridge officer on duty. The cruiser was a far larger, far more complex craft than the
Banquo,
and she was quite frankly unnerved—and more than a little bit scared—by the scope of her new responsibilities. She emphatically did not feel up to handling an intruder alert—especially when the intruder seemed to be some sort of ghost in the machine.

Tarwa felt too young, too awkward, too inexperienced. She was a short, heavyset woman, pale-skinned, dark-haired, with deep blue eyes that tended to go a bit pop-eyed when she was upset. She was just under 25 standard years, born and raised on Breadbasket, a backwater agricultural world, terraformed centuries before, back when the Pact still had some drive, some ambition. The whole world had been specifically engineered so as to hold no surprises, for crops needed a predictable environment. It was a safe, comfortable place, where every person knew his or her place, where today was pleasantly like yesterday and tomorrow was assuredly like today.

In short, Breadbasket was singularly unsuited for the purposes of a young woman seeking adventure and excitement. Four years ago she had jumped at the chance to sign up with the Navy when a recruiting ship made a rare swing through her system. Anything to get off Breadbasket. She went through officer’s candidate school in two years and came out a second looie aboard the
Banquo.
It was nice duty for the first year or two as she busied herself working her way up through the ranks to Lieutenant Commander. But two weeks after Rockler had come aboard the
Banquo,
the corn fields had started to look awful good in retrospect.

She had stepped out of OCS and onto the
Banquo,
had spent her entire duty career aboard the
Banquo.
Now, three days after coming aboard a much larger vessel, she had the conn.

But serving under Rockler for six months while successfully staying out of his bed had taught her a few things about keeping hold of her emotions. It wouldn’t do at all to let the bridge crew see she was scared. She realized that she was biting her nails and pulled her hand away from her mouth.

Shifting the entire ship over to manual operation while it was undergoing repair inventory was no easy task, but the bridge crew seemed to be handling the job well enough.

She had just about concluded that the best thing she could do was hang back and let the crew do their work when Audrey, her AID, squawked to life. “Captain’s compliments, Tarwa, and could you attend him in his cabin in ten minutes?”

Tarwa felt her stomach drop out as she remembered all the times Rockler had issued such an invitation. Presumably Spencer wasn’t interested in chasing her around the bed, but given that a murder had been committed on board fifteen minutes ago, it wasn’t likely to be any more pleasant. “On my way, Audrey. Mr. Fendway, you have the conn.”

###

Al Spencer pulled the last piece of the concealed weaponry out of his cabin’s walls and tossed it on the deck with the other hardware. His AID had guided him to where it all was. Someone had just demonstrated his, her, or its ability to take over automated equipment, and Al was not about to leave four auto-fire repulsors hooked up in his cabin.

He sat back on the couch and stared sightlessly across the room. There was a lot that needed thinking about, the sort of thinking that had used to earn him his pay on the intelligence staff.

Item: StarMetal, possibly backed by Haiken Maru, has been buying up everything in this system that wasn’t nailed down, and were taking steps to see that they control all incoming and outgoing ships and communications. Given that private ownership of a star system was not illegal, and that StarMetal certainly seems to be hiding something that was somehow connected with the buy-up, it could be reasonably inferred that what they were trying to hide was pretty big. Perhaps all the purchases were meant, at least in part, to cloak one specific purchase?