Knight's Move (46 page)

But we’d be delighted if the Federation cut contact with us
, she thought, choosing to ignore the fact that she was still a TFN officer. 
It would be painful, but we’d survive
.

She pushed the thought aside as her new supervisor came strolling over to her console.  “I have a new tactical exercise for you,” he said.  He dropped a chip into her lap, then smirked at her as she picked it up.  “I need at least four possible attack plans by the end of the shift.”

Bastard
, Sandy thought.  She’d had to deal with dozens of officers in the TFN who’d thought that the colonies had nothing to teach them and
none
of those assholes had had half the superiority complex this one officer showed.  There were no personnel files on
Extreme
, but she would have bet good money that he'd been dismissed from the TFN after offending one too many officers or crew.  She slotted the datachip into her console and ignored him until he stalked off to bother another crewman, then made a one-fingered gesture at his back.  The datachip opened up in front of her, revealing a tactical chart.  It was a very odd star system – and strangely familiar.

It struck her in a moment of horrified realisation. 
Bottleneck
!  It couldn't be anywhere else.  There was a giant orbital base in the system, a single inhabited world ... and nothing else, apart from a small handful of monitoring satellites.  They’d carefully scrubbed out the data about how dangerous the system could be when approached through hyperspace, but if they came through the Bottleneck that wouldn't be so much of a problem.  And yet ... they’d have to be out of their minds if they thought they could just hit the system and run.  The raider squadron wasn't the First Strike Fleet.  There was enough firepower based at Bottleneck to wipe the entire squadron out a hundred times over.

Fleet carriers, superdreadnaughts, even a handful of escorts
, she thought, savagely. 
They wouldn't even find it so easy to run, not in a system fizzing with hyperspace energy spikes.  They’d be roundly fucked ...

She shook her head in disbelief.  The tactical outline didn't mention the Federation Navy warships, merely noted that the base might –
might
– have some starfighters devoted to its defence.  Those bases were tough customers, Sandy knew; they were tougher than the orbital battlestation that had defended Xenophon ... and
that
battlestation had only been taken out by treachery.  Even without the starships that were supposed to defend it, the battlestation alone might pose a match for the entire raider squadron.

But she wasn't supposed to
know
that, she realised.  She wasn't even supposed to be able to identify the system.

They’d carefully scrubbed out almost everything that might serve as a clue, she decided, as she worked her way through the information on the chip.  They wanted attack plans, but at the same time they didn't want her to know the exact target ... or the crew might mutiny, if they thought they were going to fly to their deaths.  And yet, the whole exercise seemed pointless.  Even if the starships were gone, the raider squadron was still going to take hideous punishment ...

They might have a second freighter lined up to ram the base
, she thought. 
But after what happened to Xenophon no one would let it close enough to ram without taking every possible precaution first.  Or do they have access codes from Earth too?  But even Admiral Porter would hesitate after Xenophon, no matter what the codes ordered ...

She closed her eyes for a long second, then worked out a handful of attack plans, based on what the chip told her.  They would work, she knew, if the chip had told the full story.  But she knew better than that ... it just didn't make sense.  If they'd wanted to kill their own crewmen, they could just decompress the ships.  She honestly couldn’t see how else they might gain from the whole affair ...

Unless they want the ships destroyed publicly,
she added, in the privacy of her own mind. 
Do they want to give the TFN credit for destroying them?

She saved her work to the chip, then returned to quietly monitoring the computer network through her console.  As long as she didn't try to alter any of the core files, she’d discovered, the computer network ignored her.  But it was difficult to see what was related to what ...

“What the hell were you thinking?”  The XO demanded, loudly.  Sandy glanced over and saw that he was berating the helmsman, who seemed to have little experience with light cruisers or indeed anything larger than a starfighter.  “If that had been real, we would have crashed into that motherfucking asteroid!”

He must have sent a command through his implants, for the helmsman started to scream in pain.  Sandy watched with a kind of horrified fascination as he scratched and clawed at his collar, which remained immobile.  It had to be directly simulating his pain nerves, she knew; it was the most economical form of torture human ingenuity had been able to devise.  If it had been an interrogation, the helmsman would have been spewing out his secrets within seconds.  Instead ...

She looked at the XO’s face and had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting.  The XO couldn't be the helmsman’s friend – they had to maintain a distance – but it was clear that the bastard
enjoyed
tormenting his subordinate.  Maybe he had screwed up, but still ... Sandy looked away as the helmsman collapsed to the deck, pleading for mercy in a voice that was cracked and broken.  The XO kicked him in the side, then ordered him to leave the bridge and recover before returning for his next shift.

Sandy sighed, then returned to her console.  Almost immediately, she saw something different.  The local processors hadn't monitored the XO’s implants – or the transmission they had to have sent – but they had triggered the collar.  If she was right, and she prayed silently that she was, the collars were activated by the computer network.  And that meant that they could be neutralised.  All she would have to do was jam or destroy the network completely. 

Which would be dangerous, if we were in open space
, she thought. 
But ...

She was still contemplating possibilities when her shift came to an end.  The XO took the chip and motioned to the hatch, ordering her to leave.  It was sloppy – on a TFN ship an officer couldn’t leave his or her post without special permission – but they
were
at rest, orbiting the nameless asteroid.  Sandy didn't bother to argue; instead, she just grabbed her jacket and walked off the bridge.  Her cabin bunk suddenly seemed very welcoming.

“Attention, all crew,” the Captain’s voice said, suddenly.  It echoed through the starship’s hull.  “We will be departing in five hours; I say again, we will be departing in five hours.  All crew are required to be onboard one hour prior to departure.  Failure to report will result in severe punishment.”

And they’re not joking
, Sandy thought, remembering the helmsman’s contorted face. 
Poor bastard.

She shuddered.  He’d been in agony, so much agony that he would have done anything just to make it stop.  It reminded her of slaves they’d liberated during the war, slaves the Dragons had believed to be important enough to try to brainwash.  They’d either become vegetables or they'd become cringingly eager to please their alien masters.  The same technique was used along the Rim for creating pleasure slaves.  It was thoroughly illegal, which didn't stop it from happening wherever law and order was weak.  There were even rumours of secret pleasure slaves being conditioned on Earth as courtesans for the rich and powerful.

Her fingers touched the collar at her neck.  If she was caught, she would be tortured to death ...

***

Primus Omega had never been a heavily-settled world, according to the files.  It’s local ecosystem had fought back more effectively than most against the influx of flora and fauna from Earth, ensuring that the first group of human settlers had had to work hard to clear the ground for their crops.  The war had put an end to most settlement activities, ensuring that the few survivors didn't really complain when they were evacuated after the world had been liberated.  Only a handful of humans remained on the planet, all not entirely sane after a year of isolation.

They should have turned this place into a penal colony
, Glen thought, as he looked around the settlement.  It was decomposing rapidly, the wooden buildings collapsing as the local ecology exacted its revenge.  Only a handful of building seemed remotely intact, all held together by spit and baling wire. 
It isn't as if the planet is really habitable
.

He kept his face expressionless as the Marines searched the settlement, finally locating three older men, two middle-aged women and a handful of children.  One of them was still a baby, born after the colony had been evacuated, but the others would have been alive when the Colonial Militia had left the planet.  Glen couldn’t help wondering why they’d decided to leave the children on the hostile world; it wasn't as if they could make such decisions for themselves.  But the colonies had always taken a more relaxed view of life and parental authority than Earth.

The adults looked half-crazed, apart from one of the women, who just seemed broken by life and kept her eyes on the ground.  Glen wondered, briefly, what horrors they’d had to endure; few of the tales of spacer stranded on alien worlds ended well.  The kids looked almost feral, even the two girls who looked old enough to have had some proper education before the evacuation.  One of the girls had a nasty scar on her face, one of the boys looked to have broken his nose and not received any proper medical treatment.  But there would be none available on the abandoned world.

Once, years ago, he’d watched
Robinson Crusoe in Space
, an entertainment flick about a spacer who crash-landed on a deserted planet and ended up building a small settlement for himself.  Years afterwards, he’d watched it again at Luna Academy, where the survivalist tutor had pointed out, piece by piece, the many inaccuracies in the flick.  Crusoe had been hellishly lucky not to die when he started eating the planet’s native fruit, he’d pointed out, and a whole army of settlers (even with the help of the planet’s native race) couldn’t have hoped to produce as many buildings as Crusoe himself.  The original book, which he’d looked up during one of the handful of free moments he’d had at the Academy, hadn’t been much more realistic.

“This world is ours,” the eldest man said.  His beard was straggly, suggesting poor nutrition at the very least.  Glen shuddered when he opened his mouth.  Tooth decay was unknown on almost every settled world, but his teeth had clearly been decaying for years.  And his voice ... he sounded so badly accented that it was hard to believe that he had ever been part of the greater human community.  “We live here.  We’re not leaving.”

Glen found himself torn in two.  Part of him wanted to abandon the man, if not his children; part of him wanted to drag all of them into the shuttle and take them back to
Dauntless
, to see what sickbay could do for them.  At the very least, some proper medical care might ensure that the little community lasted more than a dozen years.  They hadn't even taken precautions against inbreeding!  Glen knew that there were worlds that lacked taboos against incest, no matter how sickening the rest of the Federation found it, but they knew the dangers.  This community would
have
to inbreed within a generation or two ...

“We’re going to give you medical treatment,” he said, finally.  He nodded to the Marines, who hefted the men up and carried them towards the shuttle.  The women didn't argue at all; the kids looked half-fascinated, half-terrified.  To them, the healthy spacers must look like creatures from another world.  “And then you can decide what you want to do with your lives.”

He took one last look around the settlement, then returned to the shuttle.  Thankfully, the Governor’s planned political gesture included prefabricated settlements his crews could drop on the planet’s surface, after using plasma grenades to clear away the local ecology.  It would be a crude settlement at best, yet the aliens would be capable of turning it into a proper place to live.  Exactly who owned the planet was in dispute – the war had shattered the former system for claiming star systems – but most of the claimants could simply be bought off.  If the Governor refused to pay, Glen suspected that he could make a convincing offer out of his own funds.

Particularly as they won’t be seeing much from this world
, he thought. 
Unless the aliens produce something really interesting
.