The Kassa Gambit (3 page)

Someone in the crowd answered with a shout. “Get us out of here!”

The
Ulysses
was a freighter, not a passenger liner. Its life support couldn’t keep a hundred people alive for the four-day trip through node-space to the next colony, let alone the long journey to Altair.

“I can’t take you to off-planet,” she said carefully. Unhappy crowds were not prone to listening to reason.

But Brayson stared at her, his face set into ugly hardness, like badly poured concrete that could never be smoothed over. “We’re not running away. And we’re done hiding. Take us to the capital.”

TWO

Secrets

The
Launceston
came out of node-space fast, silent, and ready for anything. Regulations called for battle stations when exiting any node, since one was necessarily blind to local conditions on the other side, and “surprise” was a dirty word in military-speak.

Lieutenant Kyle Daspar had his own reasons to expect shenanigans. Following up on an anonymous tip wasn’t really what an up-and-coming police detective with political connections was supposed to be doing. But his orders came from on high, and plenty of hints had been dropped about how it might be important to the League, so there had never been a chance of saying no. His instincts told him there were unseen angles to the situation. And he didn’t like surprises any more than the military.

The trip had been miserable. Three nodes and twelve days out from Altair, on a small ship with six angry soldiers. They looked down on him for being a civilian, they despised him for being a League officer, but they hated him because their captain did. And their captain hated him for a perfectly good reason: the papers Kyle carried from the League gave him command of the ship.

You can’t make a captain a servant on his own ship, not even a patrol boat the size of the
Launceston
. Not without making him hate you and everything you stand for. The heavy-handed blundering of the League was its own worst enemy.

But the League had other enemies. Some of them were political, like the Alliance, the chief opposition party despite its sheer ineffectiveness. Some of them were vocal, like the vid celebrities and their talk shows, although equally ineffective. But some of them were secret: deep, dark, and biding their time, working from within to expose and destroy.

Like Lieutenant Kyle Daspar.

But that was a thought too dangerous to dwell on for a man as deeply undercover as Kyle was.

“Orders, Commander?” Captain William Stanton had been icily formal from the first instant his gaze had lighted on Kyle’s armband, back in the Altair spaceport. Kyle had hoped the man would at least swear out loud while reading the orders that had seized his ship, but he had been disappointed. Stanton had simply become colder. If Stanton had made an outburst, Kyle could have forgiven him, and then at least they could have had a human interaction. But the captain was too well trained. He folded up the orders precisely, handed them back to Kyle frostily, and proceeded to follow them literally.

That was part of the problem. Too many people followed orders without raising enough fuss. Furious that Stanton was going to make the trip unbearably difficult for him, Kyle had leapt into his role and played the tin horn to the limit. Theoretically, he meant to push Stanton to the point of rebellion, since making enemies for the League was part of his secret mission statement.

So much contempt crammed into the tiny confines of a patrol boat made for a very miserable trip indeed.

“Contact Kassa spaceport and get clearance to land.” Kyle could hardly admit he had no clue what to do next. All the tip had said was “Go to Kassa.” He still had a million kilometers before he had to come up with a new plan.

“Sir,” said the comm officer, “there’s no radio traffic from Kassa. Not even a navigation beacon.”

“What? That’s a violation of code, isn’t it? They can’t turn off their nav beacons.” Kyle was disgusted by the thought that he had come all the way out here to write somebody a maintenance ticket.

But Captain Stanton’s disgust had a more immediate target: Kyle. He could see it written all over the man’s face. It was an active kind of disgust, not the passive contempt he’d come to take for granted.

“Do you have something to say, Captain?”

Stanton answered in precise, clipped tones, each word carefully enunciated. “I believe the commander does not understand the full import of comm’s data.”

Kyle translated that in his head, from military language to ordinary speech.
I think you’re a fucking idiot. And I hate you. Idiot.

“Feel free to fill me in, Captain.” It must be something important for Stanton to have brought it up at all, instead of just letting Kyle make a fool of himself.

“There’s no radio from the colony. None at all.”

“Why would they be trying to talk to us? They don’t know we’re here.” That was the point of coming in silent, wasn’t it?

Gritting his teeth in frustration, Stanton tried again.

“Commander. There is no radio traffic on the planet. No one down there is talking to each other.”

A blip appeared on the console in front of Kyle. He didn’t know much about spaceships, but he knew what that blip meant.

“Well, they’re sending someone out to talk to us.”

That finally cut through Stanton’s ice-block reserve. He leapt to Kyle’s side, stared down at the console, and reached out for the controls.

At the last instant, he stopped, a testament to the rigidity of his training.

“Permission to assume the helm, Commander.”

It wasn’t really a question, but Kyle was too relieved that the man had finally asked to be picky.

“Granted, Captain.” Kyle stepped out of the uncomfortable chair. Stanton sank into it, his hands and eyes already fully engrossed in the task at hand.

“Not emitting standard FOF, Captain. Permission to query.” It was the first time Kyle had heard the comm officer speak without sneering. The crew was too busy with the current threat to remember they hated him.

Captain Stanton answered instantly, assuming the authority he should have had all along. “Granted, comm. Gunnery, you are live.”

The other two men on the bridge silently took up their duties, slipping goggles over their eyes. Stanton put on his own. They would see the battle from any of a dozen different angles, hopping between the external cameras and computer-generated displays, but all Kyle would get to watch were several men in funny glasses talking to each other. Not the excitement one expected from a space battle.

“Query is negative.” The comm officer didn’t sound worried. He was too professional for that. But Kyle was a professional at listening to what people didn’t want to be heard.

Unable to bear being completely out of the loop, he ventured a question. “What does that mean, Captain?”

Stanton flicked him a pitying glance, no mean feat considering his face was obscured by goggles.

“It’s not one of ours. Or anybody that we know.”

“An unregistered ship?” It wasn’t unheard of.

Stanton spared him one last comment before forgetting about him completely.

“It’s not a ship. Targeting, report.”

The gunnery sergeants spoke for the first time.

“DF negative.”

“T negative.”

They carried on like that for another thirty seconds, speaking their Fleet jargon so fluently it almost sounded like a real language. If it hadn’t been for the urgency in their voices, Kyle would have thought they were just putting him on.

Then Stanton reached for his console, pausing only long enough to direct a comment to Kyle.

“Hang on.”

To what? Instinctively Kyle went into a wrestling crouch, expecting anything. Stanton’s fingers moved, and the atomic engine flared into life, throwing Kyle to the deck with its force.

He slid to the back of the room, where he could at least latch on to a stanchion. Gravity moved under him, changing direction, made his stomach feel like it was pushing up to his mouth. The ship went both forward and up.

Stanton killed the engine, returning the world to normal. The grav-plating in the deck said down was down again, comforting Kyle’s whirling stomach.

A few seconds of tension, and then the comm officer made his pronouncement.

“NavProj says it’s null-vee.”

The words were gibberish, but the tone said victory. The men in the room relaxed, and Kyle relaxed with them. Stanton, perhaps rendered giddy with relief, offered Kyle an explanation without being asked.

“It’s a mine. But it’s powered by gravitics, not thrust. It can’t match our vector. This far from a planet, it maneuvers like a pregnant cow.”

Kyle paused, trying to formulate just the right response to show his legitimate respect without blowing his cover as a petty political hack. The delay cost him his chance.

“Captain! More bogies!” The comm officer, so recently urbane, now sounded perilously close to panic. “Five—six—seven!”

Stanton tried to focus his officer, get him back to thinking about his job instead of his possibly short future. “Mines or ships?”

“Too small to be ships, Captain. But…”

Kyle’s stomach got light again. Fleet officers were not supposed to say “but.” It wasn’t the kind of word you ever really wanted to hear. In the context of a space battle, it was positively ominous.

The comm officer paused for an agonizingly long time before continuing. “Only one is on an intercept vector, Captain. The others are … spreading out.” The officer punched at computer buttons furiously. “They’re ignoring our decoys, and blocking us. All possible escape routes are covered.” He sat back in defeat, disbelief written on his face. “One of them is even covering the node entrance.”

Stanton stared straight ahead, reviewing the situation through his goggles. Then he took them off and faced Kyle.

“You should begin preparing your final report, Commander. Our optimal course predicts approximately twenty-seven minutes before impact.”

Kyle was amazed at the captain’s sangfroid. “You’re giving up? Already?”

“I am not giving up.” The ice was back, all the more noticeable for its brief absence. “I am explaining the expected outcome. The
Launceston
is a patrol boat. Our chief defense is maneuverability. I foolishly revealed our maximum thrust while avoiding the first mine. Now we will all die because of my error.”

Putting the goggles back on, he began determinedly punching buttons on his console. Kyle could almost see him mentally paging through the Fleet tactics manual, trying every trick in the book. If they died here, it would not be from a lack of training.

“Why?” Kyle asked.

Stanton did not answer.

“Why did you reveal that information?”

Yanking the goggles off of his face, Stanton turned and all but snarled at Kyle.

“Because I am human and capable of error would seem to be an adequate explanation. Sir.”

Kyle didn’t believe that for a minute. The man was too much like a machine to claim to be human now. Even with his life expectancy reduced to less than half an hour, Stanton wouldn’t break protocol and
actually
snarl at a superior officer.

Following his hunches was what had got Kyle to where he was today. Not that being on a spaceship doomed to destruction was a particularly laudable destination, but it was too late to change methods now. “Did you break some kind of regulation when you took that first evasive maneuver?”

“No, sir, I did not. But I have already accepted blame for the situation, so I do not understand the commander’s line of inquiry.”

“Why isn’t there a regulation against what you did?”

Stanton stared at Kyle. Obviously he didn’t think it was an appropriate time to discuss Fleet regulations.

But the comm officer had been listening in, and now demonstrated that someday he would earn a command of his own. Assuming he survived this one, of course.

“Sirs … no known mine system would be able to take advantage of that information.”

Kyle could see Stanton’s face slowly changing from choleric to puzzled.

“You said it before, Captain. It’s nobody we know.” Kyle didn’t know how this information would help them, but he was sure it was important. He had to make Stanton realize that.

The comm officer interrupted. “Captain—I’m picking up another ship. An independent freighter, registered from Altair. Merchant class A, identifies as the
Ulysses
. It’s in low-orbit around the planet—just broke atmosphere.”

Stanton frowned at this new piece of the puzzle. “Maybe it’s someone
they
know. Give me a channel, comm.”

Kyle didn’t want to pull rank now that the captain was finally treating him like a human being, but he had to. Whoever had sent him on this mission had sent him for a reason. If that freighter was League-friendly, a League officer would have to make the call.

“I think I better handle this, Captain. It might be politically sensitive.” That was the most hint he dared to give.

Stanton paused, but only briefly. “Comm, give the commander a line.” Although it was what Kyle had hoped for, it still bothered him that even the suggestion of politics could scare off a Fleet officer so easily. Stanton went back to abusing his console, trying out new strategies.

Kyle went over to the comm officer’s console and accepted a headset.

“
Ulysses,
acknowledge. This is the Altair Fleet vessel
Launceston,
demanding acknowledgement.”

“And hello to you, too, Captain.”

A woman’s voice. Subtly exotic, with an accent he could not place. Cool, but inviting; assertive, but not aggressive.

Oddly tongue-tied, Kyle fell into a bad imitation of Fleet-speak. “Negative,
Ulysses.
This is Lieutenant Kyle Daspar, League officer and temporary commander of the
Launceston.
”

The voice hardened. Some part of Kyle, deep in the back of his mind, regretted that. “Acknowledged, Commander. This is Prudence Falling, captain and owner of the
Ulysses.
We’re glad you’ve finally shown up.”

His knowledge of Fleet jargon deserted him. “What do you mean?”