Backshot (3 page)

“Oh, come on! Are you joking? Palmer!”

“She thinks the man is no threat to the Confederation or to his neighbors on Atlas.”

“Well,” Amesbury turned to Adams, “we can discount that opinion! And the majority?”

“Lavager must be neutralized.”

“Palmer, you’ll come with me tomorrow. Bring copies of your full report for the other members of the Council. Now, gentlemen, we shall enjoy that sherbet and tomorrow—well, tomorrow, we shall propose picking somebody’s cabbages.”

CHAPTER THREE

Apartment 1F, 4816 Hale Boulevard, Hunter, Earth

“Anya, are you listening to me?”

Anya Smiler looked slowly away from the window. A fierce storm was raging outside but that was not what she had been watching. “We’ll have a meter of snow by midnight, if this keeps up,” she said, just to say something. Her mind was on the meeting in the morning. “If it snows hard enough maybe they’ll call it off and I can . . .” Her voice trailed off. She shook her head and turned away from the window.

“Anya, I was saying there’s an opera Saturday night and I have tickets for us. It’s Mozart’s
Idomeneo
with Carmaggilo singing the lead role.”

“That fat slob?”

“Anya!” Tim Omix snorted in exasperation. “What’s gotten into you? You’ve been somewhere else all evening. If it wasn’t snowing so heavily out there I’d go on home. It’s something in that damn job of yours, isn’t it? Don’t you know it’s not healthy to bring problems home from work?” He offered Anya a refill, and when she shook her head, he poured more wine into his own glass. He gulped it down and covered a satisfied burp with one hand. By Buddha’s balls, he thought, I may as well get drunk, there won’t be anything else here for me tonight. Tim and Anya had been lovers for a long time, were in fact on the verge of marriage, but Tim knew from past experience there’d be no romance between them that night, not with Anya so preoccupied. He also knew she wouldn’t tell him what was on her mind because her work as an analyst at the Central Intelligence Organization was highly classified. He poured himself another glass of wine. “I guess I’ll just get drunk and sleep on the couch, then,” he groused. Anya sat down beside Tim on the couch and took the wineglass he offered her. “I wish I could tell you about it, Tim.”

“Well, tell me. Just put blanks in for the classified stuff.” Anya laughed and kissed him. “Ah, you’re all right, babe.” He put his arm around her. “You haven’t washed your hair today, have you? It smells good when it’s dirty. In fact, I like you most when you’re dirty and smelly and . . .” his right hand began to wander.

Anya pushed his hand away. “Go easy on that wine would you?”

Tim leaned back. “I’ll get you later, lady. All right, go ahead, let it out.”

“Tim, the positions we advocate at CIO are formed from the top down these days, especially with that bastard—” she hesitated to mention Adams by name, so ingrained was her sense of loyalty toward the agency “—in charge. It used to be, agents passed intelligence to us analysts, we, well, we analyzed it and passed it up to the bosses, and then they’d formulate a position. Now it’s the other way around, we’re given subtle indications by the bosses what the political atmosphere of the moment demands and then we find the intel to support it.”

“So, if a certain analyst who shall remain anonymous develops an opinion that is contrary to that which is desired . . .”

“Yep. That’s me—more and more these days. The former director put me at HQ because he knew I was very good at what I did. I was a good field officer, Tim. I know the craft. But with this new crew at the top . . .” She threw her hands up in frustration. They were both silent for a while, sipping their wine. Anya and Tim were mid-level civil servants, professionals, the people who form the stratum of government that ensures its smooth functioning regardless of who was in charge. They were both at the height of their professional careers, both in their mid-forties, and very good at what they did, assured their assignments in Fargo at the seat of the Confederation government were gateways to further promotion. Tim’s field was epidemiology. He worked at the Ministry of Health.

“Sooo?”

Anya sighed. “So there’s this man somewhere. Some people think he’s a threat to the Confederation. They want him neutralized. But, Tim, I know he’s no threat to the Confederation.”

“Hmmm. All right. I’ll pretend to be a reporter from GNN. Now who is this guy?” Tim drained his glass, sat upright, thrust the empty glass out like a microphone, and stuck it in Anya’s face. “Well, lessee, where was your last assignment, Ms. Smiler? Oh, out there, huh? Well, your man must be—”

“You’d make a good analyst, Tim.”

“I am one, love. I analyze bugs, didn’t I ever tell you? And I could tell you about a certain place that’s

‘quarantined’ but really it’s off-limits because on this world out there are these really strange . . .”

Anya put a finger to Tim’s lips. “Don’t say one more word, darling, because if you do I’ll have to kill you.”

Anya had been recruited into CIO right out of college. She had the right prerequisites, a degree with honors in economics and a minor in statistics. In her interviews she had impressed the recruiters with her high degree of intelligence and enthusiasm for the work the CIO did. She passed all the background checks with flying colors, and was willing to travel to some very remote and inhospitable places in her assignments.

At the time she was accepted into the organization, the leadership had been a lot different than it became in later years. When she was younger, the analysts at Fargo and the higher-ups in the organization had tried to base their decisions on sound analysis from experts in the field; the organization’s top management was not so sensitive to politics then or as career oriented as it became under a succession of directors ending with Adams, the most careerist and politically astute of them all. Adams and his associates had fallen prey to the oldest pitfalls of the intelligence business: Information is power, and if information is shared outside the community in its totality, the power it confers is diminished; only those with a “need to know” should share sensitive information and that “need” was confined almost exclusively to those who gathered it; and no one outside the intelligence community could be trusted to evaluate or protect really sensitive intelligence. So Adams released only the intelligence he felt it safe to impart to other officials, and when he did, he put his own spin on what it might mean. Anya was not trained in clandestine, the so-called “black,” operations.

Her job as an analyst in the field was to fill a legitimate position in the economics section at a consulate or embassy and complete real work for the Confederation Diplomatic Service, but her pay and career track were controlled by CIO and, as she did her legitimate work for the embassy, she assiduously cultivated contacts among the local population, collected and analyzed all sorts of information on events in the world where she was assigned, and reported back to Fargo on a regular basis. As an adviser to the ambassador, Anya took advantage of every opportunity to meet the important people of the worlds where she was assigned, win their confidence, and pump them, ever so unobtrusively, for information of value to the Confederation. Many of those people knew full well what Anya’s real function was, but they trusted her anyway because she had the kind of personality that made men want to put their arm around her shoulders and women invite her home for tea.

One of her early assignments was the Confederation embassy to the Union of Margelan on Atlas, and she had gotten to know the Lavagers, Jorge, his wife Annie, and their daughter Candace, who was only an obstreperously precocious five-year-old at the time. That was in the days before Lavager rose to the political leadership of the Union of Margelan, but Anya saw it coming and duly advised her superiors. Events proved her to have been right and identified her as a rising star among the CIO’s analysts. Anya came to like the Lavagers and was often a guest in their home for private as well as official functions. When Jorge seized power, Anya was personally very satisfied that having a man like Lavager in charge would be the best thing for the Union of Margelan and Atlas as a whole. The prevailing attitude among the CIO leadership that Lavager was a threat to the Confederation really bothered Anya Smiler.

Tim had long ago passed out and now he snored happily on the couch in Anya’s living room, snored so loudly he’d have kept her awake even if she’d been able to sleep, which she was not. Anya tossed and turned, rearranged the bedclothes and pillows, but sleep would not come for her that night. Her mind ranged ahead to tomorrow—well, it was tomorrow already, as the clock by her bedside reminded her each time she turned in that direction. In a few hours Adams would meet with the President and inform her that Jorge Lavager posed a serious threat to the economic stability of the Confederation. If Madam Chang-Sturdevant accepted that analysis, the only course would be to remove him. The CIO had ways of doing that which were terminal and Adams had no compunction about using them. Would Madam Chang-Sturdevant agree, and authorize a clandestine operation to assassinate Jorge Lavager?

Anya had never met the President, but from what she knew of the woman, she didn’t think she was the type of politician who’d lightly order the murder of anyone, much less a head of state. Since she had been in office, yes, Chang-Sturdevant’s government had intervened in the affairs of other worlds, but those interventions had been conventional military operations. Anya smiled. Well, not all had been that “conventional.” She thought of the Marines the Attorney General had arranged to have sent to Havanagas, and how they’d managed to upset everything there, and that Marine who’d been left behind on Kingdom. He’d actually managed to overthrow the government there. What was his name? Charles something. She’d seen the reports. Yes, and there was that business of the aliens nobody at Fargo was willing to admit existed. One benefit (or curse, depending on how you looked at it) about being an intel analyst at Fargo was you got to know a lot that other people wished you didn’t—whether you were authorized to know those things or not, and there was a lot she knew that she shouldn’t.

Anya sighed and rolled onto her back. She flexed her knees. Ah, that was better. Tim continued to snore. Were the concussions of that enormous snoring really shaking the bedclothes? If they were going to stay together, Tim would have to get that snoring fixed. Back to Atlas. Anya reflected that dissident political elements on Atlas had already tried to kill Lavager, so she could see precisely how Adams would proceed to neutralize him. The CIO would use that as excellent cover to pull off a successful murder, blaming it on the Atlean factions that wanted Lavager dead. She could picture Adams smoothly assuring the President that no one would ever be able to trace the assassination back to Fargo.

Dammit, she thought, why can’t I just let this go? What can I do about anything? What should I do?

Events followed their own course, what effect could a slip of a thing like Anya Smiler have on them?

Besides, the CIO paid her, paid her well enough to afford a great apartment and the lifestyle she enjoyed at Fargo and as long as they did, she owed them her silence. Silence? There was none of that in this apartment tonight.

Anya got up, went into the living room, and rolled Tim onto his stomach. That was better. She picked up a half-full bottle of wine, pulled a chair to the window, and looked out into the storm. It was really snowing out there; there’d be a meter of the stuff by dawn. Nice, she thought, how nature still ruled human events. That was one thing mankind had not yet made entirely superfluous. Oh, she thought, we can travel faster than light and kill just about anyone we wish, but still, many people won’t make it to work on time today because of the snow. Maybe she’d be one of them. Well, she had enough leave saved up, she should take some of it, call in sick maybe. She took a long swig from the bottle. Good. She took another. Even better. She began to relax. Tim grunted from where he lay on the couch. That was nice, he’d stopped that infernal bellowing. Okay, I’ll just let it go. Why not? Bigger brains than mine will decide what to do about things on Atlas. I’ll plan for retirement instead of worrying about things I can’t control. The snow swirled outside the window in mighty gusts. The last thing she thought before drifting off to sleep was that snowdrifts would be meters deep in the morning. The wine bottle fell from her hand and rolled under the chair. She slept at last and the curtains trembled with her snoring.

CHAPTER FOUR

Headquarters, 104th Mobile Infantry Division, Confederation Army, Silvasian Peacekeeping Mission, Silvasia

Major General Fitzter didn’t bother looking at his primary staff when he said, “We need to find and fix their headquarters, ladies and gentlemen. I believe all of you understand the importance of finding and fixing it long enough for a reaction force to reach it.”

The assembled officers all studiously avoided looking at the commanding general’s eyes. The Silvasian Liberation Army’s headquarters had been located many times in the seven months standard the 104th had been seeking it. But every time it was found, it moved before the division could mount an operation against it.

“It’s evident that neither our own assets nor the navy’s vaunted string-of-pearls is capable of locating the SLA HQ.”

Lieutenant Colonel Kevelys, the division G2—intelligence—officer clenched his jaws and glared straight ahead; the assets that so far
had
located the enemy headquarters several times belonged to him. The problem wasn’t
locating
the HQ, it was
maintaining
contact once the HQ was discovered. To date, every recon team he sent out either had to break and lose contact, or was killed in place. And of course, the navy couldn’t locate the SLA headquarters, the rebels kept to deep forest where they were safe from orbital discovery and observation. If the navy had a warship in orbit, his recon teams could call down fire on the SLA HQ when they found it. But the navy didn’t have a warship in orbit. And the rules of engagement wouldn’t have allowed orbital fire on the HQ anyway.

“It’s imperative that we find, fix, and fuck up the SLA HQ in order to bring this campaign to a close, so I’ve put in a request for assistance,” Fitzter continued. This time he looked directly at Kevelys, who steadfastly glared at the same spot of wall at which he’d glared since the general began talking about the “intelligence failure.”

“I’ve asked the Combined Chiefs for a Confederation Marine Corps Force Recon team,” Fitzter said. Kevelys opened his mouth to protest and began to stand, then thought better of it and remained sitting with his mouth clamped shut. He believed that for the army to call in the
Marines
was taking the admission of mission failure too far, but he wasn’t about to argue with a two-nova officer, particularly one who happened to be his boss.

“Do you have something you want to say, Lieutenant Colonel Kevelys?” Fitzter asked coldly. Kevelys was a good enough intelligence officer, and he’d been riding his reconnaissance company very hard to fix the enemy headquarters’ location. He took it as a personal affront that the division’s recon company hadn’t yet been able to maintain contact long enough for a reaction force to hit it. But now General Fitzter asked for his opinion and he couldn’t restrain himself.

“Sir,” Kevelys said, lurching to his feet, “There is nothing the Marines can do that the army can’t. Just give me a little more time and we’ll find that HQ again and fix it this time.”

“You haven’t found it yet,” Fitzter snapped.

“We have, several times, sir—as you well know,” Kevelys rasped. “It’s a mobile HQ, it moves every time we locate it, and we haven’t been able to maintain contact when it moves—as the general also knows.”

The commanding general and his intelligence officer glared at each other for a moment. Kevelys looked away first.

“I know that,” Fitzter finally said. “And you’re probably right that the Marines can’t do a better job of locating the enemy HQ than our own assets can. But they can probably do
just
as good a job. A lot of good soldiers have died trying to fix the enemy’s location—as
you
well know. Marines aren’t very bright, and they don’t like to break contact with the enemy once they’ve established it. If a Force Recon team manages to survive discovery, they’ll most likely attempt to evade capture while maintaining contact. Maybe they’ll manage to stay alive long enough to find out in what direction the enemy HQ heads so we can land a reaction force in its path.”

Fitzter abruptly stepped away from the podium. “Let’s let some Marines die for a change. Maybe that’ll change our luck.”

“Attention!” shouted the division chief of staff as Fitzter strode out of the briefing room. Fourth Force Recon Company, Fourth Fleet Marines, Camp Howard, MCB Camp Basilone, Halfway

“ ’Bout time you got here,” growled Sergeant Major Periz. “Go right on in, they’re waiting for you.”

“Thanks, Sar’nt Major,” Sergeant Daly said, ignoring Periz’s remark; the company’s senior enlisted man always accused squad leaders of being late, even when they were standing right there when the call for them to report went out. Daly stood at attention in the doorway of the company commander’s office and rapped loudly on the frame.

“Come,” Commander Walt Obannion immediately replied. Daly took the two steps forward that placed him a pace in front of Obannion’s desk and fixed his eyes on the wall directly above the company commander’s head. He didn’t even glance at the others in the office: Lieutenant Tevedes, Gunnery Sergeant Lytle, and Staff Sergeant Suptra.

“Sir, Sergeant Jak Daly reporting as ordered.”

“At ease, Sergeant.”

“Thank you, sir.” Daly relaxed into a modified parade rest position, feet at shoulder width, hands clasped in the small of his back.

“Sergeant, we’ve got a recon mission for the army’s 104th Mobile Infantry Division on Silvasia. It’s pretty routine on the face of it, but there are extenuating factors that may require an extra measure of, ah, diplomacy.” The corner of Obannion’s mouth quirked in the beginning of a smile that he instantly repressed. “Everyone in the platoon’s chain of command,” he turned his hand to indicate the others in his office, “is in agreement that you’re the most ‘diplomatic’ squad leader in the company. That’s why I’m sending second platoon’s first squad on a mission that even the most junior squad leader could successfully command. Do you understand?”

Daly managed to remain expressionless. “More or less, sir. I’d understand better if I knew what it was I need to be particularly diplomatic about.”

“It’s simple enough—for the right Marine. The 104th’s G2, a Lieutenant Colonel Kevelys, believes that Force Recon has no capabilities his own reconnaissance people lack. And Major General Fitzter, the division commander, isn’t convinced Force Recon can survive the mission. You will need to convince them, before you start tracking your target, that FR
does
have greater capabilities and that you
can
survive.”

Daly lifted a hand and scratched the corner of his mouth. “Sounds pretty straightforward, sir. When do we leave?”

“Gunny Lytle has all your briefing materials. He’ll probably send you off in three days. Any questions?”

“Nossir. At least not until I study the briefing materials.”

“Then you are dismissed, Sergeant.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Daly came to attention, stepped back a pace, executed a parade-ground-sharp about-face, and marched from the office.

“Any words of wisdom for me, Sar’nt Major?” he asked as he paused next to the sergeant major’s desk.

Periz rolled the Davidoff Anniversario he was chewing on from one side of his mouth to the other before looking up. “Daly,” he drawled, “if you don’t know how to handle a simple op like this by now without having your hand held, I need to start processing the electrons to transfer your ass back to a FIST.”

Daly laughed. “Thanks, Sar’nt Major, I knew I could count on you.” He whistled an aimless tune as he left the company office and headed for his squad’s billeting area. Commander Obannion waited until Daly was out of the company office and Sergeant Major Periz rose from his desk to join them, then said, “Daly’s an outstanding squad leader. Or do any of you know something about him I don’t?”

“I think he’s about as good as I was before I accepted promotion to section leader,” Periz said.

“Right now I think he could make an outstanding platoon commander in a FIST,” Tevedes said. Obannion nodded. “Outstanding in a FIST, I agree. But what about in Force Recon?”

Gunny Lytle looked bemused. “You know, sir, every time I try to teach him something, he already knows it. I don’t know about platoon commander, but with a little seasoning, he could take on my job without missing a beat.” He glanced at Suptra and added, “Sorry. I don’t mean to imply that you couldn’t do just as well.”

“Anyone else?” Obannion asked, though Suptra was the only one who hadn’t yet offered an opinion. The section leader shrugged. “I wouldn’t have any problem following him.” He gave a wry smile.

“Provided we had a tour between me being his boss and him being mine.”

“Let’s see how he handles his little bit of ‘diplomacy,’ then readdress the question,” Obannion said. He turned to the waiting work on his desk and the others filed out. Aboard Confederation Navy Starship
City of Dundee
Three days later, second platoon’s first squad boarded a navy Essay ferrying cargo to the landing ship, freight, CNSS
City of Dundee
. A petty officer third met them at the docking bay, clipped them onto a guideline, and towed them through the weightlessness of a navy starship in orbit to the cabin that would be their quarters for the duration of their voyage to Silvasia. When they reached the cabin the third class slapped a diagram on the bulkhead just inside the hatch and said, “This schematic shows you where the galley, the gym, and the library are. You read it—”

“Thanks, petty officer,” Daly interrupted him. “I’ve sailed on
Homdale
class ships before, I know how to find my way around. Is our use schedule posted there?” He nodded at a blank screen next to the schematic.

“Whatever you say, Sergeant,” the third class said in a tone that made clear he meant anything but. “You know how to access it?”

Daly kicked into a gentle cross-cabin movement in the starship’s orbital null-G and stopped himself with one hand next to the control panel alongside the screen. He touched the controls and the panel sprang to life, displaying the Force Recon squad’s schedule for using the troop mess, crew’s gym, and ship’s library.

“If the jacks work, we won’t need to visit the library unless we want the exercise of getting there and back,” he said.

“I guess you know where the jacks are?”

“Wazzen, show the man.”

Lance Corporal Wazzen, the squad’s most junior man, grinned crookedly and reached over one of the wall-mounted bunks. He slid a small panel to the side, exposing the plug-in jacks for the ship’s library.

“Anything else we need to know?” Daly asked. The third class slowly shook his head. “Looks like you’ve got everything under control. Unless you need to know when we break orbit.”

Daly tapped his wrist comp and looked at its display. “Scheduled for twelve hours, seventeen minutes standard from now,” he said. “And the most junior of us has made more than a dozen jumps, so we all know that routine, too.”

“Happy sailing, then,” the third class said, backing out of the cabin. He closed the hatch, but not quickly enough to keep the Marines from seeing the disgusted expression that washed over his face—he’d been looking forward to making the Marines feel dumb by showing them things they didn’t know about. The Marines laughed at the closed hatch.

“Ah, sailors,” chortled Sergeant Kindy, the assistant squad leader. “I guess they don’t teach them anymore that one of the major functions of early Marines was keeping sailors in line aboard ship.”

“That meant we had to know our way around their ships better than they did,” added the senior reconman, Corporal Nomonon.

“They probably
do
remember,” said Lance Corporal Wazzen, “and that’s why they keep trying to make us look dumb.”

The trip to Silvasia was uneventful. The four Marines spent several hours a day in the crew’s gym, working out to maintain their physical edge. When they weren’t otherwise occupied, they were plugged into the ship’s library, refreshing their knowledge of the various Silvasian wars, learning everything they could about the current peacekeeping operation, the history of the 104th Mobile Infantry Division, and reading the bios and records of Major General Fitzter and Lieutenant Colonel Kevelys—Daly and his men wanted to hit the ground running, and they wanted to make an immediate and lasting impression on the army officers for whom they’d be working.

Receiving Barracks, Confederation Navy Base (Planetside), Silvasia

“So how are we going to convince that doggie light colonel?” Corporal Nomonon asked.

“
We
aren’t,
I
am,” Sergeant Daly replied. A wolfish smile flickered across his face as he looked at his men. “You know what a midnight requisition is. So does the army. But the army doesn’t have a clue how we do it. I’m going to show him.”

“Shit,” Lance Corporal Wazzen muttered. “You do that once the army knows how we do it; how are we going to get any supplies we need that Mother Corps didn’t have to give to us?”

Daly laughed. “Come on, he’s a doggie, he’s probably not smart enough to make the connection between what I show him and our midnight requisitions.”

Sergeant Kindy shook his head. “One of these days, boss, you’re going to say something like that where some doggie brass will overhear you. Then your sweet ass will be grass.”

Corporal Nomonon poked him on the shoulder. “How do you know his ass is sweet, you two been doing something Mother Corps might object to?”