Battle Cruiser (31 page)

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Chloe met us inside. She was surrounded by a trio of her agents. They snarled at Zye and myself, lifting weapons distrustfully.

“They’re friends,” Chloe said.

“They let the assassin into the House,” the agent leader argued.

I thought I recognized him, but I couldn’t be sure. They were all the same breed.

“The assassin?” I asked. “Are you talking about Miles? He’s dead. Zye here killed him. Did he injure anyone else?”

“Seven of my men lie dead around the house,” the leader said. “They were taken by surprise in most cases. He wandered the halls, indicating he needed help. The moment anyone turned their back, he struck without hesitation.”

“That must be why security never came to my aid,” I said. “I’m sorry for your losses. He was probably searching for me. He did find me in the end, but at that point he paid for his evil with his life.”

The leader of the agents was clearly unsatisfied. He stepped between Chloe and I.

“Why did a man from your House attack Astra agents, Sparhawk?” he demanded.

“His plan was to kill government officials. As several of them were here tonight, he wanted to slay both the Lady Astra and myself. More importantly, however, he wasn’t a man of House Sparhawk.”

“Nonsense. We have on vid file—”

“He was an infiltrator,” I said, interrupting. “A Stroj assassin like the one that ambushed Lady Astra the Elder or the one that attacked my father during his speech months ago.”

The agents were understandably upset, but Chloe managed to placate them in time. After several minutes of explanations, they allowed her to accompany me to the kitchens. They followed us in a pack. Zye walked among their number, watching them even as they watched her.

“I’m sorry I left you,” I told Chloe.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I understand your motives. You wanted to lead the Stroj away, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but the plan almost didn’t work. These creatures are very difficult to destroy.”

“You shouldn’t have left my room without this,” she said, returning my cloak.

I took it and swept it over my shoulders.

Behind us, the agents and Zye listened to our words in dismay. I don’t think any of them were happy to learn Chloe and I had shared a bed last night—but no one complained aloud.

We ate in the kitchens, serving ourselves as the mansion had largely been abandoned by the staff. There was no one in the breezy building other than agents, dead men and us.

Before I could finish my meal, I was contacted via my implant. With some degree of irritation, I answered the call.

“Lieutenant Commander Sparhawk?” a familiar voice asked. “You’re to report to CENTCOM immediately.”

“Admiral Cunningham?” I asked in surprise. “What’s this all about?”

She didn’t answer. The channel had closed as quickly as it had opened. I frowned into the distance.

“What’s wrong?” Chloe asked.

“I’m not sure, but I’ve been summoned by the Guard.”

“Must you leave so soon?”

I turned to her and smiled. “I don’t want to, but I must.”

Zye shifted uncomfortably.  Her eyes traveled from Chloe to myself and back again.

“Allow no one unexpected to enter the house,” I told Chloe. “Have your Guardians check the identity of every visitor. I would go so far as to suggest you invest in a fluoroscope. You may be able to penetrate the veneer of these creatures. Unless they copy every bone so accurately—”

“They don’t,” Zye interrupted. “There are bulbs on their bones at the joints, protuberances…you can detect them that way.”

“All right then,” I said, standing. “I must take my leave.”

Chloe embraced me suddenly. Zye and the agents shifted uncomfortably. None of them liked to see us touch. I felt self-conscious, and I found myself annoyed that the Stroj had decided to reveal themselves right when I most wanted personal privacy.

A few minutes later, I was flying up into the sky aboard my air car. It was odd to think that I was piloting a vehicle that had so recently been driven by an alien being.

“The Stroj seem to be everywhere,” I said to Zye. “How can we defeat them if they are already hiding among us?”

“There aren’t many,” she said. “I would guess there are no more than a few thousand in the star system. According to reports on the net, many have already struck. Seventy-nine of your Public Servants were attacked in the last twenty four hours.”

I turned to her, stunned. “Seventy-nine? How many survived?”

“Six, including you.”

“They must be finishing their mission, then,” I said. “Moving into their final phase. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have revealed themselves all over the globe.”

“I agree.”

We flew on toward CENTCOM at the air car’s top speed. In less than an hour, I landed on the roof. A dozen guardsmen, cloaks flapping, came out to greet me. They encircled the aircraft with their pistols drawn.

Stern faces regarded us through the canopy from every direction.

“Zye,” I said, “do not reveal your weapons. Do not behave in a hostile fashion. They’re paranoid after all the attacks.”

“I understand their motivation, but their attitude is upsetting me as well.”

“Act as naturally as you can—wait, on second thought, act like a normal Basic human from Earth.”

“I’m not sure I can do that.”

“Try,” I ordered, releasing the canopy and standing up with my hands on my head.

Zye followed my lead. The guardsmen recoiled upon seeing her great size and stern demeanor.

After a period of confusion, various methods of identification were employed. We were led at gunpoint into the bowels of the building.

The elevator hummed, taking us down with sickening speed. It moved almost as far and as fast as the sky-lift itself.

In time, Zye turned to me in alarm. “We’re below the surface of the Earth,” she said. “We have to be.”

“Yes. CENTCOM is like an iceberg. It’s much larger underground than it is above.”

“I thought the Guard had no budget.”

I shrugged. “Most of the building is empty,” I admitted, “but we still use as much of it as we need to. Ships cost much more money to maintain than buildings, so this place was never dismantled or reassigned.”

“When was this structure built?”

“CENTCOM predates the Cataclysm. Back then, there was a lot of traffic to manage and protect. Thousands of naval vessels were directed from this building.”

Impressed, Zye stopped talking. We finally reached the level the elevator had in mind, and it slowed.

The truth was, I was as impressed as Zye herself. I’d been to CENTCOM of course, but never below ground where the brass lived exclusively. The upper levels were dedicated to equipment and to the Academy. These institutions were the pride of Star Guard. They exhibited the last vestiges of the power that Earth’s military had once wielded.

When we exited the elevator at last, we were searched again. I was weaponless, and I felt naked. What if the Stroj had penetrated this, our only fortress?

Making the best of it, I walked out into the tactical galleries. Most of the big chambers were dark, but one had been lit. Inside, Admiral Cunningham and a circle of her officers stood around a sparkling display.

A three-dimensional representation of the Solar System was depicted in fantastic resolution. The display loomed high, with no visible means of projection. Earth and Luna seemed to hover in the air. The missile platforms were also displayed.

Admiral Cunningham was talking as we approached.

“We lost too much ordnance against the battle cruiser,” she said. “We used our best missiles—a mistake. The warheads in the rest are old. Half the payloads we have left may not even detonate if they reach their targets.”

“The warheads will go off,” argued another, older male. He wore the insignia of a vice admiral.

“The half-life of plutonium is an implacable enemy,” Cunningham insisted. “Those warheads haven’t been recharged for thirty years.”

“Yes, they should be up for maintenance and rotation every seven years,” the older man said patiently. “But there’s a better than fifty-percent chance of detonation—”

Admiral Cunningham cut him off with a gesture. They’d noticed my approach.

“Lieutenant Commander,” the older man said. “I’m so glad you could make it in to see us today.”

I detected the sarcasm in his voice, but I didn’t understand it.

“Sorry sir,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting to be summoned to CENTCOM. I was on leave and—”

“Yes, yes,” the vice admiral interrupted. He turned back toward Cunningham. “This is the man, is it? I must say that before I met him, I didn’t think you were serious. Now, I’m frankly shocked.”

Confused, I looked from one of them to the other. I had the feeling something of great importance was going on, but I had no idea what it was.

“I’m always serious, Halsey,” Cunningham said. “This is the man. We don’t have anyone else.”

Admiral Halsey made a sweeping gesture with his arm. “On the contrary, there must be a hundred more qualified officers in this building right now!”

It was then that I noted a figure standing in Halsey’s shadow. His face was familiar—but I wasn’t happy to recognize him. He was Midshipman Taranto. The last I’d seen of him, he’d been locked in a cell aboard
Defiant
. Apparently, they’d let him loose when I’d handed over the ship at Araminta Station.

“No, we don’t have a hundred qualified commanders for this ship,” Admiral Cunningham said, shaking her head. “The technology is too divergent from our own. Perhaps you’d be right if we had the time to train them. But we don’t. We don’t even know
how
to train them.”

“Excuse me, sirs?” I said, unable to stay silent any longer. “May I ask what’s going on? Is this related to the assassinations sweeping Earth?”

They looked at me. “Yes, and no,” Cunningham said. “We have an even bigger problem now.”

“That’s on a need-to-know basis!” Halsey objected.

“He needs to know.”‘

Halsey glowered and shuffled from foot to foot. Taranto cast dark looks at me from behind the admiral’s bulk.

Cunningham turned toward me again. “The rock rats—excuse me, the Independent Miner’s League, have announced war on Earth.”

I would have laughed aloud, but they didn’t look amused. Every face was sour, worried.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I know they have a militia consisting of a few dozen small ships, but—”

Cunningham made a sweeping gesture with her arm. The display that hung in the air between and above us shimmered, changing. It showed a large number of red contacts on the very upper edge of its range.

“They’re about fifteen million kilometers out,” she said. “They’re coming in quietly, gliding from deep space.”

“Fifteen million kilometers from Earth?” I demanded. “That’s well beyond legal limits. They’re in violation of numerous laws.”

“Exactly. We’re fortunate in one respect, however. They’re approaching at a relatively slow pace. I don’t think they intended for us to spot them. They’re not burning their engines.”

Admiral Halsey interrupted. “We’ve done all the math. They’ll turn and perform a hard acceleration once they pass Luna. After that, they’ll be all over us.”

He touched the display controls, and the image spun. Reflecting Earth’s rotation and Luna’s orbit, time was sped up and the progress of the miner’s fleet was theoretically predicted. The red contacts slid in close, braked, and curved into a low orbit over Earth.

“How many ships?” I asked.

“Over three hundred contacts have been identified,” Cunningham said.

“Three hundred…? They can’t have that many militia ships!”

“They do. They’ve apparently converted most of their mining vessels into small warships. They’re operating as long range fighters, essentially.”

“What about our destroyers?” I demanded. “Where’s Admiral Hedon and his task force?”

Halsey swept weary eyes toward Cunningham. “That’s a good question. Perhaps you’d like to explain, Admiral?”

He crossed his arms and waited. Cunningham shook her head.

“We knew the miners were a threat. It’s been kept quiet, but over the last few months, the shipments of ore from the rocks have slowed to a standstill. So, we sent Hedon out on a patrol in force. He reached Ceres just yesterday—”

“Only to discover it was virtually empty,” Halsey finished for her. “That’s when we began looking for this incoming fleet.”

“Proving,” Cunningham said loudly, “that sending the fleet to the rocks was a wise move in the first place. We wouldn’t have known they were attacking if we hadn’t sent them.”

Halsey shook his head. “But we left Earth open in the meantime.”

Cunningham sucked in a breath and released it slowly. “Yes,” she admitted. “The question now is what to do about it.”

“The answer is obvious,” Zye said.