Backshot (30 page)

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, which Obannion finally broke.

“He’s got you there, XO. From where most people stand, Marines
are
arrogant. Us more than most.”

Captain Wainwright, the operations officer, chuckled. “Skipper, I can just imagine writing an operation order for a platoon-size mission for Daly. The afteraction report wouldn’t much resemble the original mission order.” He shook his head. “Not that afteraction reports are all that close to operation orders to begin with, especially for us.”

“ ‘No plan, no matter how well designed, ever survives the first shot,’ ” Obannion quoted the ancient military aphorism. “But for us, they should.”

Qindall looked reflective for a moment, then said, “An officer does need to be flexible. Daly’s proven that he’s capable of flexibility in stressful circumstances.”

“If nobody has any further objection,” Obannion said after giving the others a moment more to speak up, “Sergeant Major, would you get Sergeant Daly, please.”

Periz pulled out his personal comm and punched one button. “Skipper wants to see you. Now,” he growled into it when Daly answered. Without being told to, he got up and opened the office door. Daly appeared quickly. Evidently he’d been waiting outside the company office for the call.

“What took you so long?” Periz growled.

“At ease, Sergeant,” Obannion said. Daly assumed a relaxed parade rest.

“You did quite a good job,” the company commander said. “Lieutenant Tevedes said you were outstanding after he was injured. So did everyone else in the platoon. And we all know how hard Force Recon Marines are to impress.” He gave Daly an expectant look. Daly didn’t know what to say, so he merely said, “Yessir.”

“You’ve had a taste of being a platoon commander,” Obannion went on. “How would you like to have platoon commander be your usual job?”

“Sir?” The question caught Daly by surprise.

“If you would like to apply for Officer Training College, I will give my endorsement to your request. I’m sure Captains Qindall and Wainwright, and Sergeant Major Periz would add theirs as well.”

“Sir, I—I hadn’t given applying for commissioning any thought,” Daly said, slightly flustered by the question.

“Well, I have. And so have these gentlemen. We believe you would make an outstanding officer. Of course, we’d like for you to come right back to Force Recon after your commissioning.” He turned and looked out the window for a moment, then turned back. “I believe that when Lieutenant General Indrus reads the afteraction report of the mission, he’ll be happy to add his endorsement as well. So what do you say, Sergeant, would you like to be an officer?”

“Sir, if I go for a commission, I’d become an ensign. Force Recon platoon commanders are lieutenants. I’d have to go somewhere else first. I like being in Force Recon.”

“Force Recon has staff positions open to ensigns with prior Force Recon experience. And a promotion can come fast for a sharp ensign.”

“Sir.” Daly was visibly dazed; he really had never given any serious thought to applying for a commission.

“You don’t have to make a decision right now,” Obannion said. “Sleep on it. Go out with some other squad leaders and discuss it over a drunken night. Whatever you need to do. When you report back for duty four days from now, I’ll have an application filled out and waiting for your signature.” He stood, so did the others. “That’s all, Sergeant. Enjoy your liberty. That was a good job you did on Atlas.”

“Aye aye, sir. Thank you, sir.” Daly snapped to attention, about-faced, and marched from the company office.

When Sergeant Daly reported back for duty four days later, the application for commissioning was waiting for him. Endorsements from Commander Obannion, Captain Qindall, Captain Wainwright, and Sergeant Major Periz were already attached to it. So was an endorsement from Lieutenant General Indrus. Daly signed the application. That afternoon, orders arrived for him to report to Officer Training College on Arsenault. He left the next day.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Office of the Director, CIO Laboratories, Hunter, Earth

The lab was busy. Anya was intrigued by what she saw going on in the main area of the laboratory, particularly a device a technician was testing, a laser gun disguised as an eyebrow highlighter. “You’ve miniaturized these things since I was in the field,” she remarked to Dr. Blogetta O’Bygne. “We thought the laser pen was the hottest new thing in defensive weapons.”

Several technicians waved in a friendly way to Anya as she and Dr. O’Bygne made their way to the rear of the laboratory. “Come in here, Anya.” O’Bygne swiped her access card through the security device set into a massive door that slowly swung open to let the women into a small lab area crowded with instruments. Pieces of equipment Anya could not identify lay scattered on tables. On one of the tables were two huge flowerpots each containing a plant. Both pots contained what looked like rich, dark soil. Each plant had extended runners down to the floor and all the way to the opposite wall, a distance of perhaps six meters. One was obviously dead, its thick tendrils shriveled and brittle looking. At intervals along the tendrils were shriveled green things that looked like tiny pepper plants. But the other plant was thriving and it was obviously a cucumber plant. But—the cucumbers! They were huge!

“You should water your cukes more often,” Anya remarked wryly, nodding at the dead plant. It seemed odd to Anya that O’Bygne or someone was growing vegetables in the lab, but she and her staff were known to be a bit oddball. “Are these artifacts the Marines brought back from Atlas?”

“Yes they are, and no, lack of water had nothing to do with that cucumber plant’s untimely and lamented demise. I have the answer in here to what Lavager was up to in those labs of his.” She paused and looked frankly at Anya, who nodded and waited patiently for the scientist to announce what she’d discovered.

“Well?” Anya asked at last.

“Let me show you something,” O’Bygne flicked on a 2-D viewer. “These are images the Marines took during their raid on the Cabbage Patch. These are shots one of them took inside a building they concluded was not being used to develop weapons components, so they left it alone. Look.”

All Anya could see were huge vats. “Yes. Well? What’s in those vats?”

“Those are fertilizer vats, Annie. Everything the Marines brought back from Atlas, even the uniforms they wore on the reconnaissance and raid, were shipped here for analysis. Often in weapons labs chemicals get into the environment and by subjecting impregnated clothing to microscopic examination we can tell what kind of explosives are being manufactured in them. We even collected the soil and dirt on their boots and analyzed that. You will be surprised at what we found.” She nodded at the cucumber plants.

“Come over here.”

O’Bygne guided Anya to the table where the two plants, one drooping, the other flourshing, sat in their pots. O’Bygne lifted a petri dish and shook it. Inside was dirt. “This is soil that came from the building with all the vats in it. We’ve analyzed it carefully. Would you like to guess what it contains?” Anya shook her head. “It contains refined plant nutrients like boron, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, a whole array of nutrients and,” here she paused, “a catalyst we haven’t yet been able to identify, probably because it’s an artificial agent developed in Lavager’s Cabbage Patch. Ah, what an appropriate name!” She opened another dish and took out a seed. “This is an ordinary cucumber seed,
Cucumis sativus
. This particular seed is of the gherkin variety. They usually grow to only two to seven centimeters in length. Remember that. Those two plants came from seeds like this one. One is dead, the other thriving. Do you know how long it took us to grow those plants, Annie?”

Anya shook her head. “I’d guess weeks, but I know you haven’t had the seeds here but what, only a few days?”

“Now you’re catching on! They were both planted forty-eight hours ago.”

“What!”

O’Bygne nodded. “Forty-eight hours ago, dearie. We took only a pinch of this soil from the boots, put it in the big pots, added a little water, and voilà! Take a look at the live one. Go on, examine the leaves, pick up one of the cucumbers.”

Cautiously Anya bent and took hold of a cucumber and, with some effort, she detached it from its runner. It was hard and solid to the touch but blotched, as were the leaves and the stems. But it was about sixty centimeters in length! “My God, it weighs at least a kilo!” she exclaimed. “What is happening here, Bloggie?”

“Coffee?” O’Bygne asked, offering her a cup and pouring hot kaff out of a beaker. “Sip some of this coffee. That plant is already dying. See the wilt? By the end of the day it’ll be as shriveled up as number one over there.” O’Bgyne grinned. “Dearie, your old buddy, Lavager, he’s not building a weapon, he’s developing a miracle fertilizer. Either he hasn’t yet figured out how to stabilize the growth process, or we just haven’t found out what it is but, Anya, if he has found out, that fertilizer will totally revolutionize agriculture on every world in the Confederation. If those plants were regular cucumbers, not gherkins, the cukes would be two meters long.”

“My God,” Anya whispered, setting her coffee cup down gently. “Cucumbers sixty centimeters long?

Why—”

“The fertilizer in that petri dish could grow tomatoes as big as a house.” She finished her coffee and poured more into Anya’s cup.

“Food for everyone in Human Space! Instant crops! Lavager is—”

“An agricultural genius, Annie. The old man just wants to be a farmer. But there’s a downside.”

O’Bygne held up a forefinger. She changed the images on the viewscreen. “Do you know what that little sucker is?”

Anya stared at the image on the screen. “Some kind of microscopic germ?”

“
Bacillus postii,
Annie. It’s been around for ages. It’s a form of bacterial wilt. At least that’s what it was. We’re not sure if this is a mutated variety or not. We sent a sample to Dakota University’s agronomy lab and should have a report in a few days. But this bacterium is deadly when it comes to cucumbers. No, no, it’s been safely isolated so it had nothing to do with what you just saw. Those plants died of ‘old age,’ I guess. But do you know where this little devil on the screen here came from?”

Anya shook her head.

“Off the Marines’ uniforms. Bacillus postii is not native to Atlas. The Marines went in clandestinely. Get the picture?”

“Oh, Allah’s pointed teeth!” Anya wailed. “They couldn’t have been sanitized! Atlas has a strict decontamination procedure. They brought this bacterium in with them.”

“Yes. Have you seen the Board of Trade reports lately? There was a sudden dip in Atlas’s crop exports yesterday. It’ll get worse, much worse before they figure out what hit them.”

“Does the Director know any of this?” Anya’s voice had gone tight and slightly high-pitched.

“Sure. We filed a full report. He has all the data.”

“Can you do me a really big favor? Can you download this data onto a crystal for me? I have the necessary need-to-know.”

O’Bygne waved a hand. “Don’t pull that crap with me, dearie. We’ve been friends too long. You bet your sweet ass you can have the data.”

R-76 Quadrant Desk, CIO Headquarters

Back in her cubicle Anya Smiler rested her head in her hands. She felt like crying. She had just checked the outgoing messages, and so far Adams had not reported O’Bygne’s findings to anyone. Would he?

Well, that was the question. What advantage would there be to withhold something like this? Anya thought she knew.

It was then she was summoned to the Director’s office. Office of the Director, Central Intelligence Organization Anya Smiler stood hesitantly in the middle of the Director’s inner sanctum, a nervous smile on her face, and after the briefest hesitation, gave his proffered hand a perfunctory squeeze. J. Murchison Adams beamed beatifically at the young woman. “Please, have a seat, Anya. My, my, my, we haven’t had a chat in a long time,” he said as he guided her to the coffee table arrangement where he entertained visitors in a relaxed atmosphere.

They took seats in ortho-sofa armchairs opposite each other. Anya had never sat in one of the things before. They were too expensive for her. Besides, she’d heard too many stories of them malfunctioning, particularly the one about the senator who’d been assassinated when someone rigged her chair to crush her to death. Almost as if he read her mind, Adams grinned and said, “Wonderful things, aren’t they?”

He adjusted his position and moved his chair closer to Anya, to where their knees almost touched.

“Perfectly safe, these conveniences,” he smiled. “Anya, excuse me, but some caviar?” He gestured at a sideboard containing crackers and cloacaian caviar. Anya shook her head. “When was the last time we had a talk, my dear?”

“Uh, we never really have, sir.” Anya felt faintly uneasy, being this close to Adams, whom she’d never really liked but had grown to hate. The director was too thin for one thing and his face too narrow; to Anya, he always looked as if he were hunting for something to eat. When he grinned at her, as he was doing now continuously, showing his long, yellow teeth, she had the uncomfortable impression he was regarding her as—prey. She longed for that highlighter she’d just seen being tested in the lab. She imagined what it would be like to direct a laser beam into Adams’s Adam’s apple, watching him die screaming, blood spurting from his ruptured aortas. Oh, it would be so nice!

“Well, more’s the pity, my dear. Valued employees such as yourself, Anya, deserve more attention.” He waved a finger, as if to forestall contradiction. “Yes, ‘valued employee,’ Anya, that’s you! I know a lot about you, my dear! You are a top-notch analyst! That is why I personally—personally, Anya—selected you to replace old Whatsisname in R-76. You’re on your way up now, my girl!” He beamed.

“Thank you, sir—”

Adams held up a hand. “You are disappointed at the transfer, I know. What professional wouldn’t be?

You know your sector, you’ve spent time on one of the worlds there, you are experienced in field work, wonderful combination of talent and practical knowledge, Anya. But I am thinking of bigger things, Anya.”

“Sir—?”

“I am thinking of the future of the Confederation Intelligence Organization, Anya. Oh,” he shrugged,

“Atlases come and they go; political and military crises boil up all the time everywhere in Human Space. Dealing with such things is the price we pay as professional servants of the Confederation, Anya! But the crisis of the moment passes and we move on. My job is to see that we all remain sharp and engaged and that I have the best possible people in the right positions to deal with things.” He leaned close and placed a hand on her knee. The hand was cold.

“Sir, I appreciate that you took the time out of your busy schedule to see me. But—”

“Never too busy for one of my best analysts, Anya!” His hand remained on her knee.

“—but I would like to ask to be sent back to the Atlas desk, sir—”

Adams leaned back in his chair. As soon as he removed his hand from her knee, Anya let out her breath. He tilted his head to one side and regarded her with one eye half closed, as if he were a huge bird eyeing a potential meal. “Um,” he said, steepling his fingers, “impossible.”

“But, sir, now you need me on that desk more than ever! I-I know that sector better than anybody. I see a trend in the reports coming from Atlas that is very disturbing, sir, and—”

“Yes, very disturbing, Anya, so disturbing that I have personally taken over monitoring the events on Atlas. As you know, I’ve already had two conferences with Madam Chang-Sturdevant about events there. But Atlas is in good hands, and so is R-76. The former because I am closely watching things there and the latter because you are now on the job. And I might add, Anya, that my job is made all the easier because of the fine work you did down there. You really know what’s up, and your profile of this Lavager fellow has been most helpful.”

So far, no mention of O’Bygne’s report. Anya felt a flush of anger. And was he saying to her now that her profiles on Lavager were being used to portray the man as a threat to the Confederation? How monstrous! Her face reddened and thinking it was modesty on her part, Adams hurried on. “But Anya, that was then, this is now. Must I point out to you, my dear, the substantial increase in pay that your new job carries with it? Your base pay rises by three thousand credits per annum and your locality allowance by an equal amount. Now, my dear, you can afford one of these.” He thumped the ortho-sofa he was sitting on and grinned. The grin bore no warmth and Anya detected a hint of impatience in the way Adams inflected the words. Clearly, the interview was near an end.

“Yessir, thank you. Uh, sir, has the lab reported yet on the materials brought back from Atlas?”

“No, no, net yet, my dear. Maybe in a couple of days.” Adams smiled again, this time more relaxed. “I think we should have these talks more often, Anya.”

“Yessir. May I ask one question, sir?”

“Certainly.”

Anya hesitated. “Well, what are we going to do about Atlas, sir?”

Adams did not let his expression show what he was thinking: This goddamned meddlesome little bitch!

Another one of these dedicated fools who refused to see the Big Picture. It’s a good thing I got her in here and felt her out like this. She’s trouble. Time to send her little ass far, far away. “Well, Anya, of course we need to know more about what Lavager is really up to out there. We’ve sent our own team, undercover, of course, to investigate. One can never really trust these military folks completely, you know.” He moved his chair back to its original position and stood. Anya felt sick. A “team”? Did that mean someone like Wellers Henrico? Among Anya Smiler’s many fine qualities, stupidity was not one. “Well, I understand, sir, but I only thought I could be of more immediate service if I volunteered to return to my old job. Thank you very much for explaining things to me, and thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me.”