The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III (9 page)

Spencer decided to let the new XO, Tarwa Chu, handle him. God knows she ought to be able to handle corrupt officialdom by now, after six months of holding her nose while dealing with Rockler. Captain Allison Spencer didn’t feel up to dickering with the locals at the moment—not after sweating out the
Duncan’s
reentry. That had been a tough ride down. Being on the bridge, in the captain’s chair, surrounded by worried crew members who knew just how touchy the Warlord-class ships were in atmosphere, hadn’t made it any easier.

And if the
Duncan
was tricky in atmosphere, she was a miserable pig-wallower in the water. The twelve-hour ride from the splashpoint was a seaborne nightmare, the whole ship pitching and heaving, riding at the end of a tow line. The ride had filled the sick bay with patients and emptied it of anything and everything that might handle seasickness. Al was glad that ordeal was over—except, quite literally, for the mopping up. It was good to be safely tied up alongside the pier. He watched as a mobile gangway swung out from the pier and extended itself out to rest its far end on
Duncan’s
hull.

Spencer found himself with a sudden impulse to take a look around at the outside world. He left the bridge and made his way through the maze of passageways until he came to the main cargo lock, now pressed into service as the main gangway off the ship. He climbed the gangway up and stepped out through the topside hatch to get a look at the day. The Marine guards on duty at the hatch sprang to attention and saluted. He returned their salute absent-mindedly and muttered, “At ease.”

His mind was elsewhere, experiencing what was a very unusual sensation for a modern naval captain: Standing on the hull—or should it be called the deck under these circumstances?—of his craft, his face exposed to the weather, a fresh sea breeze tickling his face and fluttering through his shipboard uniform, the ship beneath him actually
rocking
as a gentle tide played with the stern.

All ships must have been this way, one time, Spencer decided, back on Earth, back before the Pact, before the exodus into space. Now humanity ruled who knew how many worlds, how many solar systems.

How many subject races had been made “aliens” on their own worlds under Pact laws that made humans first-class citizens and made every other race subservient? How long was
that
likely to last, anyway? The aliens already outnumbered humans at least a hundred to one—and human birth rates were declining almost everywhere . . .

Well, none of that was his worry just now. He had a ship to run, repairs to oversee, a small fleet to manage—and a spy to cover for. But he was scared, and it helped to think about anything but what lay ahead. He found himself suddenly very much aware of the lumpy little scar on the back of his head.

He forced the gloomy thoughts from his mind and looked around at the bustling quayside, the impossibly purplish-blue sky overhead, the bright, clear blue of the sea beyond.

He wished he were back in the past, back on Earth in the old wet-Navy days, when sea and storm were all there was. Things must have been simpler then, he thought as he walked along the wide expanses of the deck.

On second thought, probably they weren’t. After all, the captains of those ships and the governments they served, were run by humans, probably just as crazy as the present-day examples of the species. Quite capable of making a mess of things.

He heard brisk footsteps behind him, turned and found Suss appearing through the hatch. She was dressed in youthful, bright colors this time, a billowy orange blouse and a blue skirt, both of which got caught by playful gusts that sent the thin fabric fluttering capriciously in all directions. Al Spencer hadn’t figured out much about his resident KT agent, but there was one thing he was certain of: she enjoyed playing dress-up. At times he wondered if she had taken up spying simply because it allowed her to indulge her flair for the dramatic.

She spotted Al and waved to him as he walked back toward the hatch. “Good morning, my brave captain.”

“Good morning,” he said, getting closer. “You look very happy.”

“Why not? It’s a beautiful day, I’m out under the sky instead of cooped up in that ship, and finally I can get on with my job.” She noticed his nervous expression, correctly guessed what inspired it and waved it off deprecatingly. “Relax, we can talk here. Santu would squawk in a second if she detected any listening gear—and who’d bother to rig it on the outside of a hull that’s usually in vacuum?”

“All right—just make sure Santu keeps it on the record that
you
were the one to say it was all right. What’s your plan?”

“I’m going to see what I can pick up around the docks about StarMetal,” Suss said. “There’s been enough
we
know’s been happening there that there must be rumors.”

Her face smoothed into a false nonchalance. She went on, “I want to track down that deep-cover agent at StarMetal. And given the previous trouble with electronic communications, I figured that I’d better do it in person.”

“Be careful where you go,” he said earnestly. “København is supposed to be a pretty rough-and-tumble place. You should carry a weapon. I could draw you one from . . .” Spencer’s voice trailed off as he remembered just who and what Suss was. Probably she was already packing armament that could leave a glowing hole where Spencer was standing right now. Spencer decided that her flair for the dramatic, her skills as an actress paid off—she was acting and looking so much like a chirpy college student that even Spencer, who knew the truth, was responding as if that was what she was, rather than an extremely deadly secret agent. “Okay, so maybe you don’t need to borrow a gun.”

She laughed happily, then smiled in a way that let him know she was laughing with and not at him. “Thanks for your concern,” she said. “But I’m carrying everything I need. Loose, baggy clothing can hide
lots
of hardware. And remember, I’ve left a defense set for you in your cabin. If you leave this ship for any reason,
wear it.
Bear in mind that
you’re
the one the bad guys are supposed to be using for target practice. If you need to reach me, your AID will be linked to Santu.” Neither bothered to remind the other that Suss had just got done saying electronic communications could not be trusted. “You take care of your ship in the meantime—and if the harbormaster shakes your hand, count your fingers afterwards.”

She turned and walked away, toward the gangway leading to the pier. She looked back as she stepped aboard the gangway, and waved to Spencer, the very image of a young woman playing tourist.

Suss didn’t notice the small, glistening droplet of metal that dropped from the gangway to the
Duncan
as she hurried across. And Al didn’t notice the droplet when it crept past him a few minutes later. It scuttled toward the main hatch and slipped between a guard’s legs as it entered the ship. Much later, the board of inquiry agreed that no one could have possibly been expected to have spotted it.

But by then it was too late, of course.

###

Al went back below-deck, happy to get back inside the seeming safety of an armed and armored spacecraft. Even with Tarwa taking the lead on getting the repairs done, there was plenty of work for him to do on the ship’s overhaul. Phase one was simply to take a complete inventory of needed work. Before any dockside workers could come aboard to set things right, the crew of the
Duncan
needed to go over the cruiser from stem to stern, examining every centimeter of the craft, looking not only for the sort of capricious changes Kerad had ordered, but also for the sort of maintenance jobs that been deferred too long, while Kerad pocketed the upkeep money to buy her trinkets with. It wasn’t as if the problems had started with Kerad either. Given the general level of maintenance on the Fleet in the last few decades, there were probably serious deficiencies dating back to before Kerad was born.

There was also human nature to deal with: morale had hit rock bottom under Kerad, and unhappy sailors were just like anyone else. They tended not to do their work very well, tended to let things slide. But it was also difficult to get them to admit to sloughing off that way. If they reported the problems to their crew chiefs, they were in effect admitting to incompetence. That could land them in plenty of trouble.

None of which changed the fact that the work needed doing. Long before they had reached Daltgeld, Al had found a way to let the crew ’fess up without landing half the crew in the brig. He put anonymous repair suggestion boxes up all over the ship—and was rewarded with thousands of “suggestions” to look at the portside mid-ships thermal control system, or to reline the stators in the number two docking port.

But that was only the start of it. The crew suggestions had to be integrated with the repair calls proceeding through normal channels, and each repair call evaluated and logged into the maintenance computer.

It was a dauntingly long list, long enough that Spencer soon came to the conclusion that grounding the
Duncan
would have been justified even without the need to plant a spy.

By the time the
Duncan
landed on Daltgeld, the maintenance computer had a relatively complete list of proposed repairs. With that part of the job done, Al was now faced with the endless headache of planning the work priorities. There was no point in replacing a bulkhead if you were only going to have to rip it out again to repair the wiring underneath—but what if you needed the bulkhead in place for a stress test that had to come before the wiring could be done? The computers and diagnostic circuits could handle most of the priority-planning, but even aboard a fairly modern ship like the
Duncan
a lot of the repair evaluation had to be done on hands and knees, peering into an access tunnel. Al had crew members all over the ship, inspecting reported defects. They were assigned to confirm not only the existence of the faults, but their severity and importance.

It was soon apparent that a lot of triage decisions would have to be made. There wasn’t time enough or money enough to do all the repairs. So Al had to decide which jobs
had
to done immediately if the ship was to fly, which could be put off but scheduled for later work, and which defects they would just have to live with indefinitely. Spencer was just launching into that part of the planning job when his AID picked up a report from the main hatchway.

“You have a visitor,” Spencer’s AID announced.

“Who is it?”

“Query set indicates female human Kona Tatsu operative, identity and mission unknown.”

“That sounds familiar,” Spencer replied. The same AID had described Suss in almost the same words, that first time, a hundred years ago, thirty days ago, back when he was flying in a sealed cab halfway across a world. “All right, have her escorted down here.”

“She is already en route. The ship’s access security system cleared her at once. Her AID confirms that no escort was required. She claims Kona Tatsu priority and has been cleared through by the Marine guards, as per their standard orders when presented with such credentials.”

Spencer looked at the AID in shock. Hell’s bells, she was on her way down without any sort of guard. “AID, seal this compartment, and order Marine guards down here on the double.”

“But she is a confirmed KT agent, with full authority—”

“And you’re supposed to be working on the assumption that all electronic communications are being manipulated. We have no way of knowing that she’s legita—”

“I am being scanned and jammed,” the AID announced calmly. “I am hardwired into the ship’s computers, and am thus able to defeat much of the jamming. But I cannot seal the compartment or call for help—another AID device has blocked my command circuits. I should regain control via backup circuits momentarily. However, the door is about to—”

Al Spencer reached for his sidearm and had it trained on the doorway when it slid open—but there was no one there to shoot at. A flash of movement flitted through the doorway, and Spencer could barely follow the motion as the alleged KT agent landed in a classic tuck and roll, coming out of it perfectly, kneeling on the floor to provide a minimum target, her own heavy-duty repulsor trained perfectly at Spencer’s forehead. “You aren’t Kona Tatsu,” she said flatly. She was a tall, pale-skinned woman, her red hair tied back short, her body hard and muscular.

“Who the hell ever said I was?” Spencer said. “This a Navy ship and I’m the captain. Who are you?”

“Attention, intruder,” Spencer’s AID announced in a loud, booming voice. “I have taken control of this room’s hatches away from your AID. I am in control of this compartment’s covert defense devices, and have programmed them for deadman mode. Should you wreck me or kill or disable Captain Spencer, those devices will fire, destroying you and your AID. Furthermore, all exits to this room, as well as the compartments above, below, and on all sides, are now being secured by marines. You will not be able to escape through any door or by blasting through a bulkhead.”

“Ranger, is that tin box for real?” the woman demanded.

“The AID is counterjamming me with some effectiveness,” replied a muffled voice coming from a pouch strapped to the woman’s hip. “Sensors confirm the AID has locked-in control of this room’s defenses. The weaponry is of KT design and could defeat us. Sonic analysis and what data I can get from the ship’s computers confirm that marines will have this compartment sealed within thirty seconds.”

“Okay, Captain Spencer, we seem to be in deadlock,” the woman said through a feral smile. “But if we’re really on the same side, that shouldn’t matter, should it? Ranger, try an interface with his AID, see if you can confirm he’s legit.”

“Do you authorize, Captain Spencer?” Al’s AID asked.

“Go for it, AID,” Spencer said. He hadn’t even known that the room
had
a defense system. Something Kerad had left behind, or was Suss taking care of him? “Interface authorized. And see if you can confirm ID on
them.”

There was a brief pause as the two machines radio-linked and exchanged data. “We provisionally agree that both Spencer and McCain are mutually allied,” Spencer’s AID said.