War of Alien Aggression 4 Taipan (10 page)

"How, exactly did you convince the Board of Directors to give you Cozen's flight school and his squadrons?"

"Blackmail," she admitted. "And a good presentation. That always helps."

Decide exactly how much you're willing to lose before you go in.
That's what Harry Cozen had told him. And Ram already had. He spent a few seconds looking into the stone eyes of the 2-meter-tall, Olmec head before he nodded at Witt and then sat on the couch next to her.

She suddenly stood up. "What happened on Moriah? You were there the first day – the very first engagement of the war. On the asteroid Moriah. With Harry."

"That's right."

"You crashed on an uncharted Jupiter Trojan after you found an alien vessel there. How did Cozen know about that rock? How did he know he'd find an alien ship there? Just lucky?"

Ram said, "The Squidies used an unknown, soft-kill weapon on one of our junks...
Mohegan
. We assumed Cozen extrapolated her most probable return course from her flight data like we did and went to investigate."

She said, "No. He knew to look for the Squidies there. I'll tell you how. He was in contact with them. You and Harry Cozen killed alien diplomats sent to Moriah to meet him and negotiate a treaty. It was Harry Cozen's murderous sabotage and not the Squidies that killed the ten miners aboard the junk
Mohegan
. But you know that. That's why you're here."

"Can you prove any of that?" Ram couldn't.

Matilda Witt looked down at him and half-chuckled and shook her head. "Oh, my dear Mr. Devlin... Ram. Sometimes you're so... adorably naïve. Men like Cozen do not
leave
proof behind." She smiled in the most patronizing manner. "But the lack of it won't stand in the way. Harry Cozen has plenty of enemies – more than you can imagine – more perhaps than any man on earth. He's a Staas Company Vice President and we'll deal with him ourselves."

"Deal with him how?"

"The Board of Directors will take control of all his operations, privateer and otherwise and redistribute them. They'll take
Hardway
from him, for example, and give it to me. I'll give
Hardway
to you, of course. There will be no trial or public disgrace for Harry. He'll simply die of boredom on Earth for a few months and then, have an accident."

Ram had practiced hiding the involuntary muscle responses across the face and body that can transmit emotion to an experienced observer. He decided he wasn't as good at being inscrutable as he thought. Or maybe Witt was just too good at reading him.

"Why do you look pale? Did you think there would be a trial that embarrasses everyone? This
is
what you wanted, isn't it? Justice?"

Matilda Witt didn't care about justice and Ram knew it. Neither did the rest of Cozen's enemies at Staas. Like Witt, they were all angling to get a piece of the military contracting wing that Cozen had built for Staas Company, currently, the most important business on Earth.

"What do you say, Ram? Justice for Harry Cozen?"

"Justice isn't
your
motive, Ms. Witt. To be blunt, you're only in it for the money. Or the power."

She smiled in the most completely relaxed manner as if there was no longer any need to pretend. "Both," she said. "But you, Mr. Devlin, should think of me as a means to an end, a means to achieve justice and maybe, just maybe achieve peace."

"Excuse me?"

"You heard the word. I can't tell you any more than that, but lines of communication have been opened. The enemy is not what the world thinks they are... Peace between us and the Squidies is actually possible. That should be good news to a man who helped start a war."

Ram didn't even know that anyone could communicate with the Squidies. "What do you mean
'lines of communication have been opened
'?"

"Negotiations," she said.

"Peace negotiations?" Ram's shock was genuine. "Who knows about this?"

"The negotiations are informal, of course, but... Well, I believe that this war, like most wars on Earth, is an extended negotiation determining the post-war landscape. The Squidies believe that, too. They believe it to the degree that they're willing to talk about peace even as they meet us in battle. The chance for peace exists. But like us, they have demands, Mr. Devlin. One of them is Harry Cozen." She said it with a smile. "The Squidies positively
hate
Harry. But... Staas Company's Board of Directors feel differently. They'll never give him up unless they have to. Unless, for instance, if I have a recording of Harry's confession about how he started this war. If they heard that, then they might be willing to give the Squidies what they want and we could have peace. As I said,
peace is possible
. Justice, too."

Ram held his face as still as the Olmec stone head in the corner and wondered what else the aliens would want. Then, he nodded very slowly. "Good," she said. "You're saving many lives, Ram. And
Hardway's
crew will be far safer under your command than it was under Harry's."

Now was a good time to ask. "Please send J. Jordo Colt to my longboat. And the other pilot, the Hellcat squadron leader...Lt. Hannah...Pooch. You don't need them. I do."

Witt stared into his eyes for half-a-second, obviously evaluating whether or not he could be trusted. "I should keep them," she said, "to make sure you honor our deal."

"About Harry Cozen," he said. "Exactly what do you want me to do?"

"I want you to bring him a present for me," she said. "And then, I want you to reminisce about old times."

"You want me to plant a surveillance device and get him to talk about what happened on the first day of the war?"

"And relevant events preceding that day."

It was Ram's turn to laugh. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to trivialize this. It's just that it seems... beneath you. Both of you, actually."

"You're quite right. Planting surveillance devices
is
beneath me. That's what little people are for." She smiled with closed lips. "Voice recording may seem antiquated, but quantum-linked audio-gravure is one of the few recording mediums that simply cannot be faked. It would show immediately on analysis due to the properties of the medium."

"Harry Cozen won't want to talk about Moriah."

"He will," she insisted. "When you report to him like a loyal first officer and tell him all my suspicions, then I'm quite sure he'll talk about it."

*****

Matilda Witt's Staas Guards carried the Brancusi sculpture to the longboat. When the 239-year-old, bronze sculpture wasn't levitating over its pedestal, it weighed over 50 kilos in
Taipan's
.5 gees. Once the longboat left the command ship's gilded launch bay and its gravity, the sculpture weighed nothing at all. When it drifted off the deck, Ram let the almost two-meter-long, swooping metal curve float in midair behind the pilots' seats because it just looked right flying like that.

Biko said, "The bloody sculpture?
That's
what she gave you?"

"'Bird in Space' by Constantin Brancusi, 1926. Bronze. She said it's a present for Cozen."

"Balls to that. What about Jordo and Pooch?"

"I think she just wants to keep them locked up for a day."

"We need those pilots to fly," Biko said. "Soon."

Biko turned around in his seat five times to look at the Brancusi on the ride back to
Hardway
. Ram asked him if he liked it.

"Uh-huh."

"Good. You can help me carry it up to Harry Cozen's office after you land us in Bay One."

"Gotta get him to promote me to full Commander so you can't pull that bunk anymore."

"I'd still have seniority."

The breaching ship,
Tipperary,
had already flown to the front of the battlegroup. It also now looked as if Witt's box carriers were only landing fighters and not launching any. "We're on the move," Biko concluded. "A surprise trip down the Groomsbridge-Castor Transit. That's what I'm betting."

Ram nodded.

"Incoming longboat, this is
Hardway
." It was Dana. "Cozen wants to know if you have them."

"Negative,
Hardway
."

"Well, get in the barn. We're moving out.
Taipan
sent orders and
Tipperary
is already warming up to breach space."

"Copy
that." Biko rotated the jets at the ends of the longboat's stub-wings, and with a single hard blast that pointed the nose up, he arrested the longboat right over Bay One. He dropped into the bay before Ram could get to the Brancusi. When they crossed the threshold into
Hardway
's .3 gees of artificial gravity, the 1.7-meter sculpture fell to the deck like a bronze tree limb.

It was slippery. The shape of it was just hard to grip. On the trip to Cozen's office, it began to slide out of his grasp every time he thought he had a good hold on it. Several crewmen offered to help him and Biko carry it, but he declined. He had no idea what Matilda Witt had done to the sculpture to turn it into a piece of surveillance gear. The less people that handled it the better.

Going up the aft tube of the command tower with it, Ram almost vomited in the lift. This is the only way, he told himself. Justice
was
what he'd wanted. This was justice for the dead – the ones Cozen had killed outright and the ones who died because of his war. And it was the only way to get his pilots out from in front of Witt's firing squad.
These are good reasons
, Ram told himself again, but he still didn't believe it.

The hatch hung open and Cozen sat at his desk, behind projections of the ongoing battle at Sirius. He didn't look up right away, and Ram made sure they carried the sculpture inside before Cozen could stop them.

"She said it was a gift," Ram told him. "She said she wanted you to have it."

"A gift." His nostrils flared. "It was
mine
before it was
her's
..." His eyes flicked around the compartment and fell on the corner. "Just put it there for now." He pointed.

Ram set the sculpture's anti-grav base on the deck and locked it down. The shaped field pushed his hands upwards and towards the center as he and Biko set the bronze arc in it vertically, hovering over the base.

Cozen said, "What about the two squadron leaders?"

"She's keeping them for now."

"Did she say for how long?"

"No."

Biko said, "What the hell does she want from us?"

"Let me worry about that, Mr. Biko," Cozen told him. "For now, I want you to go and figure out how we're going to deploy one-hundred and forty-four additional fighters from
Hardway
's bays. That's what Matilda Witt's new battleplan calls for." Hearing that didn't make Biko look any less worried as he went out the hatch.

After a few seconds of silence, Harry Cozen closed the hatch and sealed it. He said, "What does Matilda want in exchange for Jordo and Pooch?"

"You. She wants you," Ram said. "She wants to string you up. For what happened on Moriah."

"She wants to use it to blackmail me, I imagine. Take
Hardway
from me along with all my other operations."

"She'd like to cast you as the Butcher of Moriah and put you on trial as the man who started the war by slaughtering an alien diplomatic mission."

"If that is true of me, then it is also true of you, Mr. Devlin, never forget that."

"And
Mohegan
. She suspects you killed the ten miners aboard
Mohegan
."

"Yes, well, so do you," Cozen said. "I imagine the two of you had much to talk about."

Ram's stomach tried to climb up his throat. He reminded himself: This is what you wanted. This
is
what Cozen deserves. Ram told himself that in five different ways.

Matilda Witt was probably listening right now. He tried to ask Cozen to tell him the truth once and for all about Moriah, but the muscles in Ram's throat suddenly spasmed so he could barely speak.

"You don't look well, Mr. Devlin. I imagine Matilda poured a bit of liquor down your gullet." He made a show of sniffing the air. "I think I can smell it."

Ram nodded. "I'm fine."

"Go clean your blood," Cozen said. "That's an order."

Ten decks down, in the sub-tower where company officers bunked, Ram sat on his thin mattress. He held the simple, little clearzine patch between his thumb and forefinger. All he had to do was slap it on and the cat's tongue of microneedles on it would painlessly deliver the payload. His blood would be clean in fifteen seconds.

He brought it towards the side of his neck, but his hand stopped 10cm away. He tried again and balked again, thinking about the promise of a 15-second, full-on, head-splitting, ear-ringing hangover. That's what it would do, guaranteed. You'd feel that way no matter how much or how little the clearzine cleaned from your blood.

Ram put it down and got out the bottle of Scotch that Harry Cozen had given him. He decided he'd clean his blood in five minutes. A moment later, he lay back on his bunk and floated. It felt like the greensuits down in engineering had turned off the carrier's artificial gravity and draped a blanket of sunshine around him.

Metal impacted on metal three times fast on the other side of Ram's closed hatch. The sound of it made him sit up fast enough that he banged his brain against his skull. He reached for a fresh clearzine patch from the drawer and then staggered to the hatch. He spun the wheel and stepped back.

"12 fighters per 70-meter bay. That's the most I can safely fit," Biko said as he pushed the hatch open, came in, and closed it behind him. "So that's 12 more bays for 144 more fighters. Where the hell am I supposed to put the junks? I don't know why the 55th and the 38th SD both have to launch from
Hardway
." Biko finally looked at Ram. His eyes flitted to the discarded clearzine patch and the other one in his hand. "You gonna share?"

Ram told Biko everything, including Matilda Witt's appeal to his sense of justice and how she'd dangled the idea of peace in front of him. "She wants a confession from Harry Cozen...how he started the war. The sculpture is a surveillance transmitter of some kind. A q-link for a quantum audio-gravure, analog recorder. At least that's what she told me."