The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III (12 page)

Item: Haiken Maru is suspected or implicated in several plots against the Pact government, possibly including the assassination of the High Secretary.

Item: Judging from the records Spencer’s AID downloaded from Ranger, McCain’s problems in communicating with KT HQ started about the time of the assassination. However, that might be a coincidence.

Item: StarMetal, Haiken Maru, or allied parties unknown seemed to be capable of intercepting and manipulating KT communications. In the present case, this was presumably done via the “parasite” in Ranger. Ranger knew the codes, times, frequencies and so on for McCain’s transmission, and thus the AID could pass them on to the opposition, perhaps without even knowing that he was doing it. That capability should have been shut down when McCain shut down the radio circuit in Ranger—but was it restarted when she switched it back on today?

Item: This remarkable interception capability had been handled poorly, in a way that suggested the job had been handled by an overloaded or confused computer. The job
should
have been handled by a skilled operative, but instead was badly fumbled, alerting McCain to the intercept. It had to be a badly managed machine that had screwed up: Any human or alien of moderate intelligence could have done a better job of concocting phony message traffic. That such a delicate task had been delegated to a machine implied that the opposition either foolishly assigned a low priority to stopping the KT and left the job to underlings, or else that they did not have the personnel to do the job right in spite of having great hardware; in other words it was either a large, inept team or a well-financed but understaffed operation. Given the usual psychology of a covert operation, small and rich is an unpleasant combination. Wealthy, understaffed teams usually get that way by being paranoid, vicious, and greedy. The latter was more likely than the former.

Item: Within six hours of the
Duncan
tying up at the pier, and within one hour of McCain coming aboard, the opposition kills McCain in a way that revealed a great deal heretofore unknown about their abilities, to wit, that they can infiltrate and manipulate Navy ships. They spent a lot of their intelligence capital to keep her from communicating. This strongly suggests a high priority to stopping the KT, and underscores the likelihood of it being a small team. Note also the vicious nature of the attack, likewise matching a small-team profile.

Corollary item: The opposition—whoever that was—scored a big plus by blowing cover on the penetration of the
Duncan.
Al Spencer now could not trust his own ship. Until the hypothetical intruder who slammed doors shut was detected and deactivated, it would be madness to lift this ship to orbit. If the enemy could control the doors, perhaps it could control the main engines and weaponry. Spencer could not even allow repairs to proceed in the meantime. He dare not allow civilian workers aboard, not when he had to presume that every one of them was a potential saboteur.

Provisional conclusion: StarMetal or its unknown ally had developed a weapon, planned to use it against the Pact government, and was willing to go to extremes to prevent its discovery. StarMetal had an entire star system and the resources thereof on its side.

Al Spencer had a grounded cruiser he knew had been sabotaged and three elderly destroyers, one of whose crew had been in a state of mutiny a month ago. Among non-naval assets he could count a dead KT agent here, another he hoped was still alive on the outside, and himself.

Himself. An ex-Guard, ex-wirehead who had been in the Navy just under two months, regarded by those who had assigned him this task as being useful primarily for target practice. So far he had only drawn the interest of friendly elements, and indirectly caused the death of a key ally.

Potential intelligence assets: Ranger’s download to Spencer’s AID might well prove valuable, in the right hands. No doubt Suss would be better at reading it than Spencer. The chief engineer and the chief medical officer were working over Ranger right now—and McCain’s body was next on the list for examination. There was no need to determine cause of death, of course, but there was the distinct possibility that she had worn an implant device of some kind. Something that might give them some information.

Right now the ship was useless, its comm equipment worse than useless because it was potentially compromised. However, it was vital to get the latest information back to the KT. The data he had so far was more important than the cruiser.

There was a tentative-sounding knock at the door. “Lieutenant Commander Chu to see you,” Spencer’s AID announced.

“Let her in, AID.” Damn! Even the compartment doors on this ship were automatic. Shifting over to manual was going to be a daunting job.

The door slid up and Tarwa Chu stepped through, not without an apprehensive glance over her shoulder as she stepped over the threshold. No one would be willing to trust the doors on this ship for a while. “You wanted to see me, Sir?”

“Yes, Tarwa. Come and sit down.”

Chu came over and took a seat in the chair opposite where Al sat on the couch.

Spencer didn’t quite know where to start or how much to tell her. “Tarwa, we’ve got some very serious problems. I’ve got to give you some information, and it’s all got to remain top secret. Things are even worse than they would appear. That woman who came aboard, the one who was killed, you know she was a Kona Tatsu agent. So is the woman posing as my personal assistant. The KT caused this entire task force to be diverted to this system. They suspected that something very nasty was going on in this system. As things now appear, it would seem they are right.

“I am possessed of important information I don’t dare trust to any comm or recording device aboard this ship. I don’t even dare pass it on to you or another crew member now, for fear that the enemy could hear us, or read what I entered into a computer, or look over my shoulder from a monitor camera as I wrote. I have therefore concluded that I must go off the ship and attempt to contact the other ships and give them whatever information I can in the hopes that they can get the data home even if
Duncan
doesn’t make it. Which means I must leave you in command. I must also contact Suss, face to face. I can send messages to the orbiting ships with a secure beam, but we can’t reach Suss that way. I have no choice in the matter. Do you understand?”

Tarwa noticed that the captain had not asked her if she felt ready, or competent, to take on the job. Did that mean he felt that confident of her ability—or that desperate about the situation? “Yes, Sir, I understand. I’ll do my best. But do you think the
Duncan
is in serious danger?”

“She’s been sabotaged once already. Given her current state of disrepair and disarray, a second attempt might also succeed. If the enemy took over a more critical system than the doors—”

“There is a priority call for you from sickbay,” Spencer’s AID interrupted.

“Put it through,” Spencer said eagerly.

“Sir, this is Chief Engineer Wellingham up in sickbay. I believe that we have something for you.”

“On my way, Chief, and I’m bringing the XO.”

###

Five minutes later, Tarwa and Spencer were standing over the chief as he sat operating the isolation chamber’s remote operator. “The little bastard has got away from me again,” the chief muttered. He was a gruff-spoken man, favoring a short salt-and-pepper crewcut. His thick-necked, burly physique seemed more suited to wielding a sledgehammer than operating micro-remotes, but he handled the controls with an easy, unconscious grace.

Inside the glass case, the robot arms picked through the disassembled heaps of sealed circuitry that had been Ranger an hour ago. “Let’s get this junk out of the way once and for all,” Wellingham said. “Waldo, get me a sample isolation bag. And be ready with that laser to goose him.”

“Yes, Sir,” said a small voice from the tele-operator. Wellingham had plugged his AID into the control console. A plastic bag spooled out of a slot on the side of the glass case, and two more arms swung into action, holding the bag open. Wellingham picked up the broken bits of Ranger one after another, examined each one carefully, and tossed each into the isolation bag. It was a slow, tedious, process, and Al was tempted more than once to ask the man to hurry it up—but clearly this was a job that had to be done thoroughly, and right.

Finally, the last section of Ranger’s carapace was lifted into the bag, leaving the case seemingly empty. “There he is, the little devil,” Wellingham said. “There, in the corner. Waldo, seal and stow the bag, then put the close-up camera on the intruder and give him a tenth of a second at a microwatt. Show the captain what our visitor looks like.”

The two arms holding the bag sealed it and set it on a shelf in one corner of the chamber. A monitor snapped on over the isolation box, and showed the view from a camera at the end of another arm that swung down from the top of the box. At first, the picture wasn’t very informative to Spencer. It just showed a silvery blob of old-fashioned solder that had fallen off Ranger when Wellingham took him apart. It was sitting in the corner of the isolation chamber. Spencer was mildly surprised that the KT would have used anything as crude as solder on a high-tech AID like Ranger, but thought nothing more about it.

Until Waldo fired the microwatt laser burst at the blob—and it recoiled, backed away, and
slithered
away to the far side of the chamber, trying to escape the beam.

Wellingham turned toward Spencer. “There it is.
What
it is, how it works, what it does, I don’t know. I can’t even say for sure if it’s a living thing or a machine. But it certainly isn’t anything known in the Pact. Presumably, there’s another one of these somewhere inside the ship control circuits—unless it’s slunk off to hide somewhere now that it’s shown itself. The next step is to use this little beastie as a guinea pig, see if there is any way these things can be detected at a distance. If we find something that works, then we scan the ship until we find the other one. I just hope there’s only one, and that the damn things can’t reproduce somehow.”

“Excellent work, Chief.” He turned toward Tarwa. She was staring at the parasite, which was now trying to work its way up the glass to the top of the case. Waldo gave it another taste of the laser and it dropped back down.

“Come on, Commander. Let’s get back to my cabin. We’re not done talking yet.”

###

Spencer waited until the door was closed on both of them before he said anything more. “Now I am convinced. I think the
Duncan
is potentially in very serious danger. If that thing could control a door, it could control the ship, order her to wreck herself. I want you to launch, get this ship away as soon as possible. The information we have now is vitally important, and I don’t think it wise to use the
Duncan’s
comm system to report it. I want to keep the data as closely held as possible. So this is what we are going to do. My AID will prepare a full report on our information set so far. AID, commence compiling that report now. I want it ready in five minutes. Once that is complete, download a copy of it to a record block for Tarwa.

“I will then depart the ship and use my AID to contact the destroyers in orbit, ordering them to carry the information back to Navy headquarters when they depart. I wish we could use the Hyperwave system, but that is definitely compromised.”

Spencer smiled bitterly. “I expect the KT will hear all about it from the Navy—even if the Navy doesn’t know that the KTs listening. Once I have transmitted that message, I will attempt to find the other KT agent and bring her up to date. We’ve seen how small the parasites are, and must assume that whoever controls them will attempt to get more of them aboard. They might easily secrete themselves in someone’s clothing, or cause themselves to be ingested and carried aboard that way. How many ship’s personnel are ashore?”

“Sixteen, including three officers. Sent out to buy provisions, line up shore leave accommodations, and negotiate with the shipyard.”

Tarwa didn’t need to check her AID, Spencer noticed. The kid was doing her homework. “Good,” he said. “Not as bad as I thought. None of them, in fact no one at
all,
will be permitted back aboard ship until Wellingham has perfected a means of detecting and deactivating the parasites. That includes myself. In dire need, personnel will be permitted into the bioguard bubbles for treatment and care.” The
Duncan
had four of the extrudable bubbles, each sealed off from the ship proper, each a sort of disposable sickbay intended for the treatment of infectious casualties without endangering the crew.

“But we might need the bubbles later,” Spencer went on, “and I don’t want them used lightly. I will carry sufficient local currency for my needs, and have the purser arrange accommodation for those crew that are already ashore.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“All right then. Take a moment and let this sink in: the moment I step out that hatch, you are in command of the
Duncan
and of the task force. That’s not some legal fiction, not some symbolic gesture. It will be real, immediate command. We are in a very dangerous situation, and I think the odds aren’t going to be with me or with Suss. The home team has already demonstrated that it’s very efficient, and doesn’t mind playing rough. Your primary goal: discontinue all repair tasks and prepare the ship for immediate boost out of here. If I have not contacted the ship in thirty hours, you are to operate on the assumption that I am dead. The report my AID is preparing will include all the data I have. You are to use that data, and the ships at your disposal, as best you can. You are to determine the nature of the threat to our forces and neutralize it. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sir.” Tarwa’s eyes had widened, and there seemed to be a sort of catch in her throat. But she kept control. “I will do my best.”

“Good. The best advice I can give is to listen to Commander Deyi aboard the
Banquo.
He’s a very experienced officer. Now I must prepare to leave, and you’d best take the conn back and make sure you’re familiar with the situation. I expect to depart in a half-hour. I’ll check in with you before then.”