Empery (22 page)

Standing behind in four rows of ten abreast were the flag crews of
Charan
and
Wesley
, thirty-five men and five women dressed in the blue unisex jumpsuits that had been standard deepship garb since the Service’s earliest days. Compared with the front row, the crews seemed almost painfully young. Even so, they had well learned the stoic soldier’s mask: Their faces were as unmarked by emotion as they were untouched by time.

Berberon was at the podium now, and Sujata forced herself to listen, though she knew that his words were riddled within sincerity.

“Every great civilization draws much of its greatness from the quality of the men and women who answer the call to defend it,” Berberon was saying. “A city, a nation, a world, a species that does not enjoy the loyalty, does not inspire the sacrifice, of its strongest, brightest, and bravest men and women, cannot be called great no matter what its other accomplishments might be.

“Yet those who answer the call have been rarely accorded the depth of gratitude their service deserves. They perform their off times onerous duty in the twilight of our consciousness—we know they are there, but for some reason we do not see them. They do for the rest of us what we would have trouble doing for ourselves, asking nothing more than the opportunity to follow the dictates of honor. But they have earned much more.

“So it is altogether fitting that we take this occasion to say to the commanders and crews of the flagships
Tilak Charan
and
Joanna Wesley
, thank you. We thank you for what you have done and what you will do. We thank you for what you have already sacrificed and for what you will sacrifice. And we thank you for the courage you have shown, and the courage you will show as you face the challenge of keeping your homeworlds safe.”

A well-constructed speech, Sujata thought as Berberon interrupted himself by leading the enthusiastic applause for the crews. All the magic words—
bravery, duty, sacrifice, honor
—a paraphrase of Eric Lange’s famous quote about what the brightest and best mean to society. How could they doubt that you are their friend?

At Berberon’s prompting, Wells acknowledged the applause with a raised hand. That gesture drove the intensity of the tumult a notch higher. It began to fade only when Berberon stepped away from the podium, making way for Sujata to replace him there. It was as if the crowd wanted there to be no mistake about who was the object of their acclaim.

She had struggled with her own role in the ceremony. In the end she decided to keep it simple—a few words that were meaningless because they were merely the public echo of agreements already made.

But she had not realized the context that Berberon and the others who had preceded her would create, the climate in which her words would be heard. As she came to the podium she discarded her planned remarks and cast about for the minimum she could say to satisfy the expectations of both Wells and his supporters.

“Harmack Wells.”

Wells took one step forward and looked up at her.

“By the authority of the Chancellor’s Office, I hereby appoint you Commander of the Perimeter Defense Force of the Unified Space Service.”

The crowd roared its approval, and the sound rained down on Sujata as a tangible entity. Wells saluted, though whether he was answering Sujata or the crowd, she could not say.

“With the blessings of wisdom, may we have peace in our time,” Sujata said. “Commander, your ship awaits you.”

A second salute, this one clearly meant for Sujata, and Wells turned to face the uniformed assemblage. One row at a time, beginning with the rear rank, Wells’s party marched down the aisle that had been kept clear for them, across the center of the plaza to the spiral slidewalk that led down to the shuttle terminal. The thunderous applause continued long after the last of them had vanished out of sight.

The atrium’s high-intensity lights began to dim to permit the progress of the crew and the departure of the ship to be shown holographically in the middle of the atrium. Her presence no longer required, Sujata took advantage of the moment to descend from the rostrum and retreat to the privacy of her office. The only one who seemed to notice was Berberon, who fell in beside her wordlessly and escorted her out of the plaza and up-station to her office.

“Did you see that display?” Sujata demanded the moment the door closed behind them. She flung her jacket into a chair with an intensity that told her she was more disturbed than she had realized. “It isn’t just the Nines—you’re all crazy. What is it about you people that the prospect of a fight excites you instead of terrifying you?”

“I tried to tell you once,” Berberon said. “You’ll never understand us unless you embrace it.”

“I resist your explanation,” she said stiffly. “This has to be something you’ve taught yourselves, not something you inherit. You’d never have survived otherwise.”

“We almost didn’t,” Berberon said idly. “Mind if I watch the departure?“Sujata gestured with one hand. “I intended to watch. I just had to get away from that crowd. Holo on,” she said sharply.“Channel one. No audio.”

The holo showed a twenty-place bus with blue-and-white Transport markings jetting across from the station to
Charan
, which was waiting two klicks away with a caretaker crew aboard. Though there was no video from the bus’s passenger compartment, Sujata knew that it carried only half of those who had stood in the plaza. Against the small, but real, possibility that one ship or the other might be lost en route to Lynx Center, everything had been duplicated or divided, including personnel.

The Traffic Office’s lane regulations required a minimum one-day spacing between AVLO ships on the same route, but it would be as much as a month before the second half of the expedition left.
Wesley
would not be ready to leave the Yard for five days, and final preparations could add up to four weeks to that. With Sujata’s approval, Wells had chosen not to wait. .

So
Wesley
’s crew and passengers—which included Farlad, the vice chairman of the Strategy Committee, and one of its members, as well as two senior command officers—had parted company with their mates somewhere between the plaza and the terminal. Along with Sujata, Berberon, and a large fraction of both the Service’s million and Earth’s billions, those assigned to
Wesley
were now merely spectators.

Its thrusters showing as tiny orange halos, the bus edged alongside
Charan
and extended its transfer tunnel to the forward three-o’clock entryway. One by one
Charan
’s crew drifted down the tunnel, caught the circular handrail just inside the hatch, and twisted as needed to bring them down upright on
Charan
’s gravity-ducted decking.

“Is what they do so much more admirable than what we do?” Sujata asked as the net changed feeds to show the bridge crew settling into their couches. “Absent the martial context, that crowd out there never would have responded to either of us with that kind of enthusiasm.”

“A lesson learned by thousands of tottering dictators throughout history. No, of course they wouldn’t,” Berberon said. “There’s nothing in the genome to fire them up over diplomats and administrators. Government was invented by man, not nature.”

“You won’t give up on that, will you?”

“Not when I know I’m right.”

It did not take long for
Charan
’s crew to have her ready for departure, as the caretakers had already attended to everything that could not be handled by the crew and the ship herself in the last few minutes. As the scheduled power-up neared, Sujata walked to the greatport and opened the shade.

“Can you see
Charan
from there?” Berberon asked, crossing the room to join her.

Sujata waited until Berberon stood beside her, then pointed. “There—a couple of degrees southwest of Procyon, in Canis Major.”

“I see it now,” Berberon said. “Pretty thing, picking up the sunlight that way.”

Just then, Procyon and the other background stars forward of
Charan
’s bow and aft of her stern seemed to jump to new positions as the AVLO drive suddenly came alive. The distortion caused by the twin gravitational lenses was the only evidence of the tremendous power being drawn from the spindle by the tiny vessel. Within a few seconds the ship was perceptibly moving, the ripple preceding it growing ever larger as the drive built up toward the craze.

“Until just now I didn’t realize just how glad I am that he’s leaving,” Sujata said softly.

“I’m less pleased than I might be,” Berberon said brightly.“Who knows what the Nines will be turning their attention to now? Whatever their choice, it will mean headaches for the Council.” He glanced away from her and out the greatport.“Still, there is a certain satisfaction attached to the sight.”

But it was a sight they did not get to enjoy for long. In less than a minute
Charan
crossed the star field and disappeared into it as a fading pinpoint. They turned away from the great-port as one.

“If you were so inclined, you could leave office now,” Berberon said tentatively, less a suggestion than a question.

“I think not,” Sujata said, collecting her cloak. “I wouldn’t want to be responsible for cementing a tradition of midterm resignations.”

“Commendable.”

“But I do think I’ll take my sabbaticals four times a year instead of three from here on,” she added.

Berberon smiled and bowed graciously. “Since our most persistent nuisance just now courteously removed himself, you can do so in good conscience.”

How could we have been so stupid?
Berberon demanded of himself as he stood at the terminal waiting for a response.

Sixteen days ago
Charan
had carried Wells off toward the Perimeter. For sixteen days Berberon had been enjoying not thinking about Wells, enjoying the sensation of a complex equation suddenly reduced to manageable dimensions. For sixteen days he had allowed himself to celebrate his victory. Suddenly, with no warning, matters were worse than ever.

A voice whispered in Berberon’s ear, and he nodded to himself and turned away from the desk. “She’s coming down,” he said to his guest.

“I am very uncomfortable with this,” said Teo Farlad. He rose from the chair where he had been seated. “I should leave now.”

“You’ll stay and you’ll tell her what you told me,” Berberon said forcefully. “She has to know the source. She has to understand that we’re not guessing—that we know.”

“You can’t make any direct use of this.”

“Your job is to collect the information, not to decide how it’s to be used.”

“We don’t have the authority to put her in the picture.”

Berberon poured himself an ample serving of anisette. “I’m taking the responsibility. You don’t need to concern yourself on that account.”

“I don’t understand why you can’t handle this the way you always have.”

“Because she won’t want to believe it,” Berberon said bluntly. “Ever since the Erickson affair, Wells has been on his best behavior. He’s never given her any real reason not to trust him. On top of which the Liamese rebellion served to pull them closer together than I’d have predicted they’d be.”

Farlad nodded reluctant agreement. “Coming when it did, in her first year—”

“They worked very closely on how to handle that, and when the decision to enforce a general interdiction was made, Wells had the people in the right places to make it happen. You see, you have to tell her,” Berberon said. “She’ll be even less eager than me, to learn how stupid we both were.”

“All right,” Farlad said. “I accept what you say. But it isn’t just Sujata. There’s only six of us with access to these materials—three on
Charan
and three of us going on
Wesley
. If Sujata does anything openly because of what I tell her, it’s inevitable that Wells will trace the leak back to me. My usefulness will be over.”

Berberon could not let himself be swayed. “If that happens, it will be regrettable, but we have no choice. The situation is such that protecting you is a luxury we can’t afford.”

Farlad scowled. Less than five minutes later the door opened to admit Sujata to the office.“Teo,” she said, acknowledging him with a nod. “All right, Felithe. I’m here. What’s this about?”

The ambassador invited her toward a seat with a wave of his hand, then settled himself behind his desk. Farlad was standing stiffly by the chrome-steel sculpture in the center of the room, arms crossed over his chest as though hugging himself.

“Before I tell you, you need to know a little more about Teo and me,” Berberon said. Sujata’s brows knit in puzzlement. “Is this something personal, then? I don’t understand.” Berberon shook his head. “Teo, tell her who you are.”

His expression sour, Farlad complied. “Chancellor Sujata, my real name is Kris March. I’m a captain in the World Council’s Intelligence Operations Force.”

Sujata gaped at Berberon unbelievingly. “He’s a spy?”

“In a word, yes,” said Berberon. “Teo has been my primary source inside Defense since the day Wells became Director.”

“Which makes you—”

“A brevet major in the IOF, and coordinator of our operations here.”

Any other Chancellor would have filled the room with their fury at that revelation. Sujata might have been furious, but there was no outward sign. “I suppose there are more,” she said.

“Yes, but don’t ask me to tell you who they are.”

“In my office?”

“No. We place them where we need them. You’ve been open enough with me that it hasn’t been necessary.”

“I don’t know that I should be comforted by that answer. How long has this been going on?”

“Chancellor, I resolved to tell you who we are so that you would take what we have to talk about seriously. But I’m not prepared to be quizzed about the IOF,” Berberon said. “You know my reputation for knowing things I’m not supposed to. Now you know that my reputation is well founded.”

“I always thought that you’d simply cultivated a network of contacts over the years—”

“In fact, I have,” Berberon said. “It makes an excellent cover for the rest of my job.”

“You’ll have to leave the Service,” Sujata said tersely, looking at Farlad. A chink, however small, in her emotional armor. That Maranit reserve will be tested today, Berberon thought sympathetically.

“We can talk about whether that would be prudent some other time,” he said. “At this moment you need to listen to what Teo has to say.”

Sujata folded her hands in her lap and sat back. “Go ahead.”

“You need to understand the working relationship between the Director and myself,” Farlad said, taking a step or two toward her and dropping his crossed arms to his abdomen.“Though I’m his top aide, my clearance has never been as high as his. There have always been things that he’s done for himself or through others in the Branch, things that I’ve known nothing about until they were over with.”

“Teo joined the Nines solely to increase the chances of Wells confiding in him,” Berberon said. “It was only a partial success, unfortunately.”

“You’re a Nine too?” Sujata asked, taken aback.

Farlad nodded. “Fourth Tier.”

“Is this what you asked me here to talk about, then? Something regarding the Nines?”

Farlad glanced sideways at Berberon before answering.“No, Chancellor. Major Berberon tells me that you had some doubts about Director Wells’s motivations for moving the flag command. I think I know why he did it, and I think I know why he did it now.”

“I’m listening.”

“I didn’t know anything about the move until Director Wells asked me to confirm my willingness to go. When I did, I seem to have passed some kind of test, because the next day I was promoted from Director’s Adjutant to Chief of Staff for Defense, and my security rating was raised right to the top.”

“Equal to Wells’s?”

“Yes. I was given right-to-know on everything except personal datarecs, and invited to poke around. Wells himself even walked me through some of the new material the day before
Charan
left. He told me that he wanted me to be fully informed so that if something happened to him, I could be of assistance to Deputy Director Gaema.”

“And you learned what?”

Farlad drew a long breath before answering. “Chancellor, were you aware that the Danfield Device has been successfully tested?”

Sujata blinked several times. “No.”

“It has. It exists. It was tested five months ago, on a planetoid orbiting 41 Leo. The yield was 130 percent of design. The planetoid was nickel-iron and the deedee damn near melted it.”

Sujata was still hiding whatever anger or alarm she was feeling behind her highwoman’s mask. She looked at Berberon and said quietly, “I should have been told.”

“Yes, you should have,” Berberon said. “But did the research authorization
require
them to tell you?”

“I don’t remember, ” Sujata said slowly. “That was years ago. Perhaps it didn’t.” She looked at Farlad. “Is there more?”

“I’m afraid so. I know you were aware of the delays on Triad construction—”

“Yes. I understand the engineers were having trouble with the new series drive.”

“The trouble they were having is making the AVLO-T blow like a deedee on command. They had to redesign it so that it can be made to open an uncontrolled aperture to the spindle. It wasn’t easy to defeat the drive’s tendency to just shut down and close the tap when something goes wrong.”

“What are you saying?”

“That each element of the Triad will, in effect,
be
a Dan-field Device.”

Sujata brought her folded hands to her mouth and stared hard at the floor between her feet and where Farlad stood. Then she looked up and met his eyes again.

“I think I know what this has to do with,” she said. “Harmack did discuss with me the difficulty of any sort of rescue operation at these distances and under battle conditions. I don’t relish the thought of it ever having to be used, but it seems prudent and merciful to provide some sort of self-destruct. And we certainly wouldn’t want our most advanced technology falling into the hands of the Mizari.”

“Officially it’s described in just those terms,” Farlad said.“But I don’t think Wells held up construction of something he considers so crucial just to get a particularly nasty method of self-destruction, not with other perfectly effective options available. I think he wanted every one of the nine ships to be capable of making a planetary assault on its own.”

It took Sujata a moment to understand the implication.“But it would be a suicide attack.”

“The crews call it ‘volunteer’s honor,’ ” Berberon interjected. “As though it were a privilege to throw away your life.”

“But why? What possible use could they have for it?”

Farlad shrugged. “There are sixteen star systems in the Mizari Cluster, some as much as thirty cees from each other. You only gave Wells three Triads with which to cover them.”

“I authorized a fourth last year—”

“Yes—to allow for downtime and make certain that three groups are on-station at any given time,” Farlad said. “You gave him no more strength in the field, no more flexibility.”

“Are you saying he would deploy the Triad elements individually?”

“He’ll at least have that option now.”

Sujata was shaking her head. “I can’t believe he’d send them out alone. There has to be another reason.”

“It may just be insurance,” Farlad said. “Some of our studies show as much as a one-in-four chance that the carrier’s weapon could be intercepted far enough out to nullify it. If you have four deedees to play with, the odds drop to one in a hundred, factoring in the loss of surprise on the follow-up attacks.”

“So is this sort of death-dive in the Triad Force operational plan?”

“It’s not forbidden. I don’t know what kind of options Wells will allow the Triad commanders to load into their battle-management systems.”

“No,” Sujata said stubbornly. “I see nothing suspicious in this.”

Farlad and Berberon exchanged glances. “Then let me tell you something that
is
in the Triad operational plan,” Berberon said. “The Triads are going to be stationed at patrol circles ten cees beyond the Perimeter—inside the Mizari Cluster. They’ll be fully armed and ready to move the moment they receive ‘go’ codes.”

“Wells and I discussed this too. To have a credible deterrent you have to be in a position to make a quick response.”

“Yes. Ordinarily I would agree,” Berberon said. “Except I note that there is no provision for confirming an attack order with the Chancellor’s office. The ‘go’ codes come from the Defense Director through Perimeter Defense Command.”

“How else would you have it?” Sujata asked. “Wells can’t order an attack without prior authorization from me.”

The same benighted trust I so recently was forced to forgo
, Berberon thought.
You are too much the legalist, Janell
. “Teo, would you give the Chancellor your appraisal of Director Wells’s intentions?”

Her face still showing skepticism, Sujata turned toward the younger man.

“This is hard for me,” Farlad said hoarsely, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he stood with eyes averted downward. “You don’t work closely with someone fora long time without developing strong feelings about them, one way or another. I like the Director. And I believe in what he said he believed in. I guess I resisted seeing what should have been obvious to me a lot sooner.

“All along he’s had his sight set on one goal, and he’s never wavered. There’s been another purpose beyond the stated one to everything he’s done. When he redirected weapons research from defensive systems to offensive. When he engineered the replacement of an activist Chancellor with—forgive me—a caretaker. When he used the communications crisis as a pretext for moving toward the Perimeter.”

“What goal, Teo?”

“Isn’t it obvious? To destroy the Mizari. He never meant to build us a defense against them. His talk of deterrence and a balance of terror was a smoke screen. Yes, theoretically you control the Defense forces. But you do it through Wells. You depend on him and his good faith. The Triad commanders will be looking to him, not to you.”

“Wells won’t start a war simply because he can,” Sujata said with unwavering certainty. “He’s extremely stable—conservative. You should know better than anyone that he’s anything but reckless.”

“Chancellor, I’m sorry, but you don’t understand,” Farlad said. “Have you forgotten that he is a Nine, what their mind-set is? He
is
willing to start a war—because he’s incapable of believing that we could lose. And he always meant to lead the charge himself. Triad is a first-strike weapon. It’s a sneak-attack weapon. He’ll use them as soon as they’re ready—and they’ll be ready when he reaches Lynx Center.”

“But the Perimeter would be the worst place to be in a war,” Sujata protested. “Why would he go there?”

“Because his concept of honor demands it,” Farlad said quietly.

Reluctant though he had been to take part, Farlad had followed Berberon’s script flawlessly. The timing, the delivery, the careful unfolding of the story in such a way to maximize its impact—all had been perfect. And yet still Sujata did not react.

Berberon would have wagered heavily that no one could listen to what Sujata had heard and not explode out of their chair with fury at having been betrayed. He could not believe that it was solely her Maranit heritage that was to blame, that she was capable of holding such feeling behind her mask. At some fundamental level she was discounting what she had heard. Thankfully, against that possibility he had held back one card, which he now played.

“For whatever reason, you do not seem to be taking what we say very seriously,” Berberon said. “Would it make any difference to you to learn that there is something else that Wells kept from you? That the Triads not only now have a weapon but also have a target?”