Legion Of The Damned - 06 - For Those Who Fell (29 page)

The sword, an ancient weapon named Head Taker, had been handed down through Doma-Sa's family the way all things were.
By force
. It had two edges, one straight and one with teeth. Metal flashed, and the real Doma-Sa was forced
to jump into the air as his double attempted to take him off at the knees.

There was a realistic cry of anguish as the head of state hacked downward, sliced through his opponent's collarbone, and cut deep into the other Doma-Sa's chest. That was when the holo exploded into a thousand motes of light, which sparkled as the disappeared. Doma-Sa turned to greet his visitor. “Good morning. Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

Vanderveen shook her head. “No, Excellency. It's
I
who should thank you.”

“Maybe, and maybe not,” the Hudathan answered. “Like my sword, your visit could cut two ways. You may live to regret it.”

“Yes,” the human acknowledged soberly. “In some ways I already do.”

Doma-Sa's craggy brow rose a fraction of an inch. “Really? Then why come?”

Vanderveen thought for a moment. “All of us battle ourselves. You do it with a sword. I fight battles in my mind.”

The Hudathan gave his deepest bow. “You are wise beyond your years. Come . . . You will talk, and I will listen.”

Five minutes later the human diplomat found herself in a private dining room where Doma-Sa sat down to breakfast and she was served what turned out to be a surprisingly good cup of coffee. “All right,” the Hudathan said, as he tucked into an enormous bowl of what looked like steaming oatmeal, “start at the beginning. I want to hear
everything
.”

So Vanderveen told the head of state about the party, her trip to the restroom, and the liaison between her boss and a certain Clone. Doma-Sa stopped eating long enough to utter the Hudathan equivalent of a chuckle. “No wonder you were hesitant to share the information with your superior.”

Vanderveen nodded, felt another pang of guilt, and managed to suppress it. With the situational material out of the
way, the diplomat told Doma-Sa about the meeting between the Thraki foreign minister, Oholo Bintha, and the Ramanthian ambassador, Alway Orno. She finished with the details of the financial part of the deal, the mutually beneficial trade agreements that were supposed to follow.

A human, or a Dweller, might have reacted with surprise and anger, but Doma-Sa was Hudathan and therefore
expected
those around him to be treacherous. He wiped his mouth with a napkin the size of a dish towel. “Someone will catch up with Ambassador Orno one of these days, and I hope that person is me. In the meantime we need to expose the Thrakies for the liars they are . . . and force them to sever the relationship with the Ramanthians. That will slow efforts to retrofit the Sheen fleet, buy the Confederacy some much-needed time, and aid the war effort. Doing so will require two things, good i
ntelligence and a bit of muscle. You supply the first . . . and I'll take care of the second. Agreed?”

Vanderveen took a sip of coffee. It suddenly tasted bitter. Intelligence? How would she get that? Especially with Wilmot looking over her shoulder. But she was committed by that time, so there was nothing to do but nod. “Yes, Excellency. We are agreed.”

There were 642 observatories in orbit around Hive's sun, which sounded like a lot, but given the vastness of space were comparable to individual atoms in an ocean of black seawater. Through normally focused on scientific research, the advent of the war had caused the platforms to be “repurposed.” Now, like it or not, each tiny space station had been transformed into a two-person observation post.

So, when an alarm went off, and the onboard computer informed astronomer Hotho Ackla that the observatory's sensors had detected an intruder, the scientist dropped what
he was doing to scan the heavens for an invading fleet. Within a matter of moments a powerful telescope and other sensors were focused on the object in question, and data began to arrive. It soon became apparent that rather than a ravening horde of barbaric humans, Ackla had discovered a heretofore-undocumented short-period comet.

But, even though it was clear that the incoming object was something other than a fleet of bloodthirsty Hudathans, there was something else to be concerned about. Based on data gathered so far, the comet was going to pass within a few million units of Hive. Nothing to cause much concern, especially given the object's small size, but still worthy of note. For that reason, Ackla added his observations to the report that he and his companion sent out every eight days, then went back to work on his
real
love, which was electromagnetic radiation.

 

The ship that constituted Moya Frenko's body looked more like a spaceborne chemical plant than the warship it actually was. The vessel consisted of six globe-shaped tanks, positioned in two rows of three each and connected by a cylindrical cross member to form the letter H. Powerful engines, both mounted aft of the trailing tanks, provided in-system propulsion.

But, unsightly though they might be, the tanks were necessary if the
Flaming Bitch
was going to pass for a comet. The big globe-shaped containers held a highly pressurized mixture of gases, which, when released through nozzles and injected with dust particles, created a long tail similar to that of a comet. The guise wouldn't hold forever, the mission planners knew that, and so did Moya. But it didn't matter. All the
Bitch
had to do was penetrate far enough to close with Hive, plunge through the atmosphere, and hit the ground.

There were targets, plenty of them, but any sort of touchdown would do. The whole point of Operation Deep
Strike was to scare the crap out of the bugs, force them to pull naval assets back into their home system, and boost the Confederacy's morale.

That's why the possibility of a full crew had been rejected in favor of a single cyborg, an officer with combat experience, who was the sole survivor of a battle with a Ramanthian cruiser. A woman who had been killed once—and wasn't afraid to die again. The truth was that Lieutenant Commander Moya Frenko was a little crazy, a little
too
focused on revenge, which was exactly what the mission called for. A guidance system that cared, was capable of hate, and could improvise if called upon to do so.

And so the goddess of death fell through the emptiness of space, her long silvery hair streaming out behind her, mind focused on a pinpoint of distant light. That's where the Ramanthians were—and that's where Frenko was determined to go. Victory may be sweet—but payback is a bitch.

In spite of the fact that the Hudathans weren't supposed to have any ships as part of the peace pact that Doma-Sa had negotiated with the Confederacy, a few had been manufactured out beyond the rim and crewed by the offspring of veterans from the last war. The
Deceiver
was one such vessel, and ironically enough, the stealth technology that theoretically made her invisible to conventional sensors had been illicitly acquired from the Thrakies more than a year before.

Vanderveen felt the usual moment of nausea as the Hudathan warship dropped out of hyperspace and into the Erini system. But rather than disappear as it usually did, the hollow feeling was still there well after the transition was over, and the diplomat knew why. She was scared. And for good reason. Having secured Doma-Sa's promise to help expose the true nature of the relationship between the Ramanthians
and Thrakies, she had needed intelligence about where the clandestine conversions were taking place. Unfortunately, the diplomat didn't have the foggiest notion of how to obtain it. N
ot until she spotted Wilmot and her Clone lover sneaking off for a three-hour lunch and had a moment of inspiration. After hostilities between the Clones and the Thrakies, the relationship had warmed once again, which meant that even if she couldn't come up with the necessary information, Jonathan Alan Seebo-11,602 probably could. Especially if the right sort of pressure was applied to him.

Having lied to the ambassador and withheld information from her as well, the FSO-4 proceeded to compound her crimes by blackmailing Wilmot's lover into using his position in the Hegemony's armed forces to learn where the conversions might take place. For there was no greater sin within the highly regimented Clone culture than for an individual to have free breeder sex and thereby run the risk of creating a functionless life. So, rather than face the possibility that Vanderveen would rat him out, Wilmot's lover handed over three sets of coordinates, two of which had already proven to be wrong.

Now, as the
Deceiver
entered Erini system, it was the diplomat's last chance to succeed. Failure would not only bring disgrace to her, but to her father as well, given all the unethical things that she had done. So even though it made sense to be scared, the knowledge did nothing to make her feel any better, as the crew waited to see if the ship would be challenged.

But it seemed that the Thraki stealth generator that lay at the heart of the ship's defensive capabilities was working because even though the
Deceiver
's sensors registered the presence of other ships in-system, no attempt had been made to contact the Hudathan vessel. Vanderveen was seated in an enormous chair at the rear of the control room. Doma-Sa swiveled to look at her. “Everything looks good so
far. Most of the system's electromec
hanical activity seems to be centered around the fourth planet from the sun. We'll start with that.”

The human nodded, felt some additional gees, and awaited her fate.

 

The Thraki picket ship hung motionless in space, its stealth generator on, its sensors reaching out to monitor electromechanical activity within a full quarter of the Erini system. Not because the Thrakies were expecting trouble but because the admiral with responsibility for the sector was so cautious that he often wore a belt
and
suspenders. A habit that seemed to have stood him in good stead since no one had ever seen the officer with his pants down.

More than that, Admiral Nukama was a crafty soul, who was well aware of the fact that rather than reserve Thraki-developed stealth technology for the military, thereby ensuring that the navy would have an important edge over potential enemies, his civilian counterparts had sold it to anyone who had sufficient money or political leverage. Which explained why Nukama not only placed obvious picket ships around Erini IV, but salted the area with vessels like the Ghost-class PSS-789 as well, hoping that intruders would focus their attention on what they could electronically “see”
and thereby give themselves away.

All of which was fine in theory, except that it hadn't worked, not yet anyway. That's why Nubu Harl, the tech on duty, yawned when the alarm went off, flipped a series of switches, and waited for the system to clear itself. False readings were common, and there was no reason to believe that this one would be any different.

But it
was
different, something that quickly became apparent as a series of readings scrolled onto the screen in front of her, and Harl summoned her commanding officer. Flight Warrior Stee Hoso was an industrious sort who had a
tendency to take everything a bit too seriously. Still, that was a good characteristic where the business of threat detection was concerned, and he frowned when he saw the screen. Not just because someone equipped with stealth technology was approaching Erini IV, but because the readings suggested a ship unlike anything cataloged in the Thraki data banks,
which constituted a threat in and of itself. “Shall I summon the crew to battle stations?” Harl inquired hopefully, eager for some excitement.

“Yes,” Hoso replied, “but leave all the weapons on standby. Let's follow our visitor for a while and see what he's interested in.
Then
we'll take him out.”

It was a good plan, a smart plan, and Harl felt confident as she touched a button, heard the klaxon, and sent the balance of the small crew to their battle stations. The hunt was on.

 

Thanks to the Thraki-manufactured stealth generator, the
Deceiver
was able to slip between the picket ships guarding the approach to Erini IV and drop into high orbit. Meanwhile, Thraki vessels came and went all around them, seemingly unaware of the spy in their midst, as Vanderveen continued to hold her breath. The human had never been so frightened. But if the Hudathans felt the same way, the huge aliens gave no sign of it as they activated the ship's sensors and started to collect information on the number of ships in orbit, the way they were configured, com traffic, surface
installations on the planet itself, and much more. “There they are,” a tech said matter-of-factly. “The force fields must be set low, just enough to block orbital debris, but you can see the telltale shimmer.”

Vanderveen felt a sense of triumph as she looked up at the main screen and saw a much-enlarged image of three alien warships floating over the heavily marbled planetscape below. They were Sheen ships all right—and the energy fields that protected them flickered as tiny bits of matter hit
them. “We've got them!” the human said excitedly. “You're recording this?”

“Of course we are,” Doma-Sa replied matter-of-factly, “but I can't say that I agree with your overall assessment. This proves the Thrakies have some ships they aren't supposed to have, and while that might prove embarrassing, there's no link to the Ramanthians. And that's what we came here to find.”