Victory Conditions (39 page)

When the Premier had closed the connection, Rafe sat and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to think what he should say, do, plan to have ready…he was usually the one driving events, pushing the pace, but now he felt sluggish, tumbled in a rushing stream…

His door clicked; he opened his eyes and realized that sluggish or not, his reflexes still worked: he had his Rossi-Smith out and his other hand on the alarm button. Emil was ushering in a woman with a meal cart. The food Emil had mentioned before. “I did food,” Emil said.

“So you did. Smells good. Join me? You and Gary both?”

As he’d expected, there was enough for all of them; they moved into the office suite’s small dining room. The attendant unfolded the meal cart’s several serving areas, set places at the table, and withdrew at Rafe’s nod.

“So,” Gary said, pouring himself a glass of water. “Are you off the hook?”

“Probably,” Rafe said. “Penny’s going over there to talk to him in person. Assuming she succeeds—and after that performance I imagine she will—he’ll be coming here.” He stared at the food cart. He’d skipped breakfast…he should eat…

“Soup,” Gary said firmly just as Emil said the same thing.

“Some CEO I am,” Rafe said, filling a bowl with soup and sitting down. “Can’t even decide what to eat.”

“If the Premier’s coming here for a briefing,” Emil said, “we’ll need the big briefing room. I’ll call down, make sure it’s clear, have a security sweep—” He left the room, a stuffed roll in hand.

“He wasn’t that smart when you took over,” Gary said, brows raised. “What about him and Penny?”

“Nothing so far as I know,” Rafe said. Even a few spoonfuls of soup had revived him. “But then, I’m beginning to wonder how much I know.”

“Beginning of wisdom,” Gary said. “Wisdom’s fine, as long as it doesn’t slow your gun hand.”

Rafe laughed. “So…are you coaching Penny in marksmanship?”

“Doesn’t need much coaching,” Gary said. “Didn’t know that, did you?”

“No,” Rafe said, taking a slice of roast lamb and some potatoes onto his plate.

“Her husband had started her on it; your parents didn’t. He gave her a lady’s pistol but the thugs took it; it was in her purse, across the room. If you really want to get on her good side, Rafe, you’ll take her shopping and get her what she needs. She’s been using one of the range loaners.”

“I still find this difficult,” Rafe said, through a mouthful of lamb and gravy. “She’s my little sister, dammit. Penny with a weapon—”

“Will be safer. Your admiral carried—”

“It didn’t keep her alive.” Lunch turned to stone in his belly.

“You’re sure—” Gary began. Rafe held up his hand.

“I don’t want to be sure,” he said. “But that’s all the evidence I have.” His skullphone pinged; he turned it on and activated the visual and recording.

“It’s me, Rafe,” Penny said. “I’m at the Residence.”

“I’m eating lunch,” Rafe said. “I missed breakfast.”

“I’m bringing the Premier over, unless you’re going to need the car this afternoon—or he can bring his own.”

Rafe forced a chuckle. “I’ve got enough work to keep me here well into the evening, Penny. By all means use our car.”

“He’s asked me to lunch first, though—I’m thinking we’ll be an hour, maybe two. I know it’s urgent, but is that all right?”

“Penny—” He wanted to say more than he could possibly fit into this kind of conversation. “It’s fine,” he said finally. “But you don’t need to ask me. Your judgment is good enough.”

“It’s with lemon-lime pie,” Penny said, sounding almost girlish. “And he says he has the same cook as before, back at their house—I remember that pie.” And she was being the perfect guest, attaching all those memory-hooks to the sweet-girl-Penny the Premier remembered splashing in the pool.

“Enjoy it,” Rafe said. “I hope the rest is as good.”

“Baked fish stuffed with crab and shrimp,” Penny said. “I’m sure it will be. See you after lunch.”

Emil came back in as Penny’s call ended. “Are you going to want archival material? And when do you think they’ll arrive.”

“My brilliant sister,” Rafe said, “got herself invited to lunch over there, ensuring that we have a couple of hours.” He was hungry again, to his own surprise. “As soon as I finish, I’ll tell you what I think we need. Gary, the Premier will arrive with his own security. Make sure we have tags ready, code-locked to his so they can’t roam around. Emil, make sure we have the VIP reception team rested and fed and ready to go.” He eyed the rest of the offerings on the cart and decided to skip dessert. It would not hurt him to look lean and hungry.

CHAPTER

TWENTY

Aboard Vanguard II, En Route from Moray

Ky rode out the downjump of
Vanguard II
in the CCC along with its specialists and her senior staff. The days in FTL flight had been nerve racking…what was Turek doing? Had the Spaceforce fleet left Slotter Key yet? Had the Nexus government come to its senses and asked its former allies for help? It was a relief to have the waiting over.

The beacons of the forward scouts showed up almost immediately, right where they should have been. Ky knew that an automatic arrival message had been shot to the Moray government as soon as their onboard unit detected normal space conditions again. Other than that, downjump turbulence obscured scan briefly, then cleared.

“There’s Ransome,” the CCC senior scan tech said. “And…a few light-hours’ scan lag…some unidentified—”

“Good thing I warned him we’d be coming in with some velocity on us,” Ky said, watching her own heads-up display. “We could have run right over him.” As planned, their formation executed a maneuver to clear space for ships following; she watched the ship icons seem to skid along the surface of her display.

“Contact with Ransome.”

“Transfer,” Ky said. Teddy Ransome’s face came up on the screen, and he did not look nearly as happy as she expected.

“They’ve gone.”

“Gone?”

“Went into FTL eight hours ago, about. Once I located them, and contacted you, I shifted around to find a better vantage point that wouldn’t be in your way if you followed the same path. A lot of com chatter, ships moving around. There’s some kind of installation there but I didn’t dare close in, just in case. A couple of days ago, standard, a good-sized ship arrived. Either no weapons, or weapons locked down. I’m guessing supplies, because there was a cloud of little stuff zipping back and forth, and when that ended there was a long transmission—I copied it for you—and then they moved into formations and boosted for jump.”

“Did all the ships leave?” Ky asked. “We’re picking up some presence, but several hours’ lag out.”

“No, there are still a few, maybe ten or twenty. But I haven’t picked up any chatter and none of those have hot weapons. I’ll send you scan history—” A light came on the data-only channel.

“Did you get an exit vector?” It might help identify Turek’s destination, though Ky felt she knew…it had to be Nexus.

“Better than that,” Ransome said. “They’re headed for Nexus, and they’re planning an eight-day hop. I couldn’t understand a lot, but I understood that much. I did transmit to Moray’s government, and they may have passed it on to the others.”

“How many?”

“I don’t have an exact count, but somewhere over three hundred.”

Ky’s mouth went dry for a moment. “Three hundred?”

“Yes.” Teddy didn’t sound ebullient at all now. “It’s mixed—the Moray ships he got are the biggest. But from somewhere he’s got seventy-two of the same size as the Bissonet cruisers, though not all the same design. He must’ve raided other systems.”

“No doubt,” Ky said. “Send us what data you have.” Three hundred. More than three hundred. More than three hundred anything was far more than she had.

“Any word from Captain Baskerville?” Ky asked.

Ransome shook his head. “I’m afraid he may have had a malfunction in FTL flight,” he said. “Or something went wrong on downjump.”

That was the most likely answer, Ky knew. “I hope he turns up,” she said. “But given the hazards on that route, I’m afraid you’re right.”

On scan, two of the icons moved, followed by short broad acceleration cones—low boost.

“Did you pick up any of his stealthed observers?” Ky asked.

“No…I was trying not to be noticed myself.”

“Contact Captain Yamini,” Ky said. “See if he’s seen anything.” Her senior communications tech nodded, but even as she reached for the controls, Yamini called in.

“Two watchdogs, system relative coordinates as follows—” Icons came up on the screen, translated from the coordinates he sent. “They just told their base you were here, and to lure you in—they’ve got fixed emplacements in something—big rocks I guess—”

“Let’s not take that bait,” Ky said. The CCC crew chuckled. “Captain Ransome, you’ll be part of the forward scout unit; you should be receiving updated navigational data. Move into position. There’s no green route from here to Nexus; all ships but medium and heavy cruisers should be aware of the effects of the mapped hazards that may affect fleet formations and the downjump exit location. Be prepared to make immediate adjustments. All ships: remember orders per rest period prior to downjump. We expect to come into trouble; we need to be ready for it.”

Nexus II

“They found the pirates’ base, and Nexus is definitely the target,” the Premier said, handing the hardcopy of the message to Rafe. In the days since Isaacs’ death and Penny’s intervention, the Premier had shown himself more competent than Rafe had expected, if not as swift in action as he’d hoped. He seemed more interested in finding out how Isaacs had died and investigating the connections between Parmina and various individuals in Defense than in prodding the government to do anything about the inevitable invasion. The pirates might attack Cascadia instead…that was the argument. Now he looked two shades paler than usual. “The Moray government says the enemy had left a staging area eight hours before their fleet arrived, but they had sent an advance scout…somebody named Ransome…who located the base days ago.”

Rafe grunted.

“You know this person?”

“Teddy Ransome. Yes. I met him on Cascadia Station. Flamboyant character, but capable.” Teddy Ransome had been glued to Ky Vatta’s side at that formal reception and dinner. Rafe was reasonably sure she wasn’t falling for him, but it had been painful to watch and now that she was gone forever, more painful to remember.

“The Moray government waited to inform us until the fleet arrived and confirmed Ransome’s report—apparently they weren’t convinced he was reliable—so we have ten or eleven days’ less warning than we might have had—”

“We’re fortunate they warned us at all,” Rafe said. “Did they say how many, and where they are—?”

“Over three hundred, ranging from the new Moray-built heavy cruisers to armed converted merchanters. Estimated that about twenty of the ships are resupply, but they may be troopships. And supposedly only an eight-day FTL transit.”

“Three hundred!” Even at his most pessimistic, he had never imagined Turek having that many ships. The fleet in Moray, even if it came directly to Nexus System, was hours behind and at most a third that size. And eight days? He had been lulled, he realized, by the same assumptions as the Premier. Moray was twenty days’ FTL…when twenty days had passed without an attack, he had imagined the pirates being still twenty days away…or at least ten. Rafe thought of the time wasted in investigation, consultation, discussion—days they could not get back now, when they needed them most. “You have notified the Moscoe Confederation?”

“Of course. Moray had already told them. And I requested assistance. They reminded me that we had refused to ally with them in this matter and said the ships they could spare were with the fleet coming from Moray, at least until reinforcements from Slotter Key arrive.”

“They’re getting more privateers from Slotter Key?”

“Spaceforce, this time, apparently. I’ve tried to contact Slotter Key’s Rector of Defense, but I’m told she’ll be unavailable for some hours. Their President says he would prefer to have the Rector communicate with me. I understand that’s another Vatta.”

“Grace Lane Vatta,” Rafe said. “I heard a lot about her from…the Vattas I met who knew her.”

“Is she likely to help us? Surely she’ll understand the importance of Nexus—”

“She’s said to be touchy,” Rafe said. “And as you may recall, both Secretary Isaacs and our ambassador said some harsh things about the Vatta family and my connection with it. And since her niece—great-niece, I think it is—Ky Vatta was killed, I suspect she may be touchier than usual.”

“Surely she wouldn’t let that influence her, with so much at stake—”

“We can hope,” Rafe said. “Any luck with Mackensee?”

“They have ships on the way, they said. But from the Mackensee home base, and those ships are not equipped with onboard ansibles, any more than the ISC fleet or our home guard ships are. Do you think Turek had enough to equip his whole fleet?”

“Maybe. It’s impossible to know,” Rafe said. “If not, he’ll probably cluster his ships, no more than a half-light-sec distance between those without and one with the onboard. Otherwise, he has too much lightlag for accurate control.” Rafe considered. “He probably has already sent stealthed observer/controller ships into our systems. You need to have someone go over the deep-space scans very carefully—”

“Nothing unusual has come through the jump points,” the Premier said. “I did think of that.”

“They won’t come in by the regular jump points,” Rafe said. How could someone get to be Premier and not understand even that much about war? “I’ll get our best people on this, too—they’re going to be hard to find. Ky—Admiral Vatta—told me how they operated in the Boxtop incident. She didn’t know how far in advance these ships were emplaced, but was sure they were there prior to the main attack. The stealthed observers will definitely have their own ansibles, and can serve as relay stations for conventional communications if necessary.”

“Eight days,” the Premier said. “Three hundred of them. Do you think we have any chance?”

“Not if we sit here doing nothing,” Rafe said. “Let’s get busy, instead.”

“Right.” The Premier stood. “I just—this isn’t really in my area of expertise…”

The Premier’s areas of expertise, Rafe thought sourly, lay in posing for photographs, shaking hands, and behind-the-scenes arm twisting of government opponents. “Nor mine,” Rafe said. “But we do have some competent military commanders, even if our resources are less than we could wish.”

“What about the civilian population? What can we do for—for the people out there?”

Not a thing, really, Rafe knew. From the evidence of a few past wars, the civilians might be killed even if the home fleet won. All an enemy had to do was throw large rocks at a planet to cause catastrophic damage, and the larger beam weapons could deliver deadly force through atmosphere. But it would not do to say so.

“Your emergency management personnel should know that…I’d hesitate to say. I need to get my people busy on looking for Turek’s advance ships, so if you’ll excuse me—”

“Of course. Go ahead.”

Rafe glanced up at the soft blue sky as he headed for his car. A lovely spring day, the scent of new-mown grass and the first of the roses, the very fragrant old white rambler trained up one side of the Premier’s residence, the fresh green of new leaves on the trees that edged the lawn, the low border of purple star-shaped flowers whose name he didn’t know, a bird’s call, the hum of distant traffic…it seemed unreal that somewhere out there three hundred hostile ships were coming to destroy all this. That this blue sky could be stained with fire and smoke, the grass blackened, the trees—

But that was as real as this. It had happened elsewhere; it could happen here. If things went badly enough, not only Nexus, but all the systems that depended on Nexus could be destroyed. Billions of people.

He looked out the window on the way back to ISC headquarters, trying to fix each scene in his mind—the streets, the buildings, the individual people walking or riding or standing, the trees and flowers of the median…and yet how did that help? If his worst fears came true, he would be one of those killed, and no memory of his would help.

Inside ISC, tense faces seemed to relax as he entered. Idiots. Fools. He was not a miracle worker; he could do nothing to stop what was coming. Rafe called Enforcement, gave them the bad news, and told them to set up a search pattern for the stealth ships he expected were in place or would arrive.

“And make sure you do full visual and instrumented inspections of all the system ansibles every four hours, with different teams,” Rafe said. He had said this before, but like the Premier they found it difficult to believe anyone really would attack Nexus. Now their expressions registered the shock they should have felt long before. “We’re very likely to have infiltration by Turek’s agents, possibly set in place years ago, ready to sabotage the system ansibles on his command or at a set time. You’ve got my information on the kinds of damage I found in other systems.”