Command Decision (41 page)

In the end, only six of the ISC ships made it out, and two of those had serious damage. The incoming Mackensee convoy had lost its scout ship and had damage to both troop carriers and the supply ship, with a number of nonfatal casualties. Five pirate ships had been completely destroyed; Baskerville, in
Courageous,
located another limping along under stuttering insystem power, shields down and the missile pods on one side half melted off. Not worth salvage or the risk to personnel if they tried to capture her.

“We can take care of it,” Ky told Bandes. “Or, if you want, you can have the honor.”

“Did you ask the ISC commander?”

“I’m not sure any of the ISC ships could take it,” Ky said.

Bandes chuckled. “Go ahead, then. You’ve earned the right.”

“It’s shooting fish in a barrel,” Argelos said when Ky told him what they were going to do next.

“Nasty fish. Poison fish. If it bothers you…”

“Me? Not at all. I was gloating, actually.” Argelos’ first salvo breached the hull, and moments later Ky’s and Pettygrew’s met in the center of mass and blew it apart.

As the scan for that area filled with multiple tiny returns, Pettygrew said, “Mapping this system is going to be a mess for a while. We’ll have to warn someone—I don’t even know who—to mark this system off limits for a while.”

Ky said nothing; Pitt glanced at her. “What is it, Captain?”

“Just—acknowledging their humanity,” she said. “Bad though they were, they were once people. Tiny babies, maybe even children someone loved. People who might have been something other than scum of the universe, if things had been different.” She met Pitt’s gaze squarely. “I’m quite willing to blow them away, but not to pretend it meant nothing.”

Pitt nodded. “I understand that, Captain. Doesn’t surprise me.”

When they got back to the others, close enough to communicate nearly in real time, Ky found that the ISC commander was particularly angry with her.

“It’s all your fault,” he said. “I lost ships, crews—all because you had to fiddle around with an ansible you had no right to approach, let alone touch. And as for that—thing—you’re using to communicate, it’s illegal. You’re going to be arrested and tried—”

“I don’t think so,” Ky said. “Have you picked up your messages from the system ansible yet?”

“What business is that of yours?”

“One of them concerns me, and it comes from a high source in your company. I suggest you retrieve it now.”

“You can’t give me orders—”

Ky fought her temper down. “I didn’t give you an order; I made a suggestion. If you want to ignore it and risk the consequences—”

“What consequences?”

“What would’ve happened if my ships and Mackensee had jumped out and left you to the pirates?”

That silenced him for a moment; his jaw worked. Finally he said, “All right. I’ll look. But I assure you that I am thoroughly familiar with ISC rules and regulations, and with the Uniform Commercial Code as it applies to ISC installations—”

“I’m sure you are,” Ky said. She looked at the scan of the system. “As it will be hours before you can retrieve your messages, we’re going to set up a defensive perimeter just in case. There will be no call on your resources during that time.” When she glanced at the ansible screen, Colonel Bandes’ image looked as if he might burst out laughing. She turned to that console.

“I’m impressed, Captain Vatta,” he said. “And you certainly picked the right moment to come in. I had just opened my mouth to ask you when you appeared on scan close in. And going after the commander alone—that was overly risky, don’t you think?”

Ky explained what she had told Yamini to do. “I hoped it would panic them either enough to let me get a good shot at them, which I almost did—or make them move, or even leave. They’d lost a third of their ships; our doctrine said most forces wouldn’t stay cohesive with quick losses that high.”

“That’s what our research shows, too,” Bandes said. “And I have recordings of ISC transmissions that show they were falling apart after they lost the third ship, but couldn’t figure out where to go. Their fire was never that effective, but some of them quit even trying to attack the pirates. If they’d had a coordinated fire pattern—but that’s post-battle analysis.”

“They’re really annoyed with me,” Ky said. “I hope they’ll be less so when they get the message that’s waiting for them.”

“You know what’s in it?”

“In substance, yes. In words, no.”

He tilted his head. “You’re a very interesting person, Captain Vatta.”

Ky could think of nothing to say to that.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

Nexus II,
ISC Headquarters

At the time he’d calculated the ISC fleet should arrive in the system where Ky was, Rafe found he could not sit still. He left Emil to forward messages and went down to Control, where the feed from ansible Boxtop-zip-figaro-112 was already shunted to a station set up for him. If only this had been a system ansible, with its array of sensors to monitor activity in its area, he could have seen for himself what was going on. But this ansible, intended only to relay messages from other ansibles, lacked such enhancements. The only thing he could tell about it was that it was online. Control had a record of the message he had sent earlier. Rafe could not resist adding another.
Do Not Attack Vatta Ships. Do Not Attack Space Defense Force under any circumstances.—Dunbarger, Chairman.

How long would it take them to retrieve their message? Had Ky at least moved away from the jump point, so they would have time to retrieve the message before they had a shot at her? She wasn’t stupid, but she was…
just as stubborn at you are,
something whispered in his head.

“Are you worried about our fleet, sir?” one of the technicians asked. “I’m sure they’ll be fine. We’ve never had any problem with privateers and such, once they recognize the ISC ship beacons.”

It would not help his authority to tell her there was always a first time. “No,” he said. “Or not the way you think. It’s a complicated situation out there.”

“Is it, sir? We haven’t had any alarms from the ansible.” Rafe glanced up. She stood just to one side and behind him, and seemed to have nothing to do but watch over him. Perhaps that was it. Even the Chairman couldn’t be left alone with Control equipment—after all, he wasn’t supposed to know how to operate it.

“We won’t have, from this ansible,” he said. “Relays can’t do anything but tell us if they’re tampered with. If it had the sensor capability of a full-service ansible, we could see exactly what’s going on.”

“But they might tamper with it again—”

“Who?”

“The people who tampered before—”

“They wouldn’t. All they did was fix it when it wasn’t working. That means they wanted it to work, so why would they turn it off?” From her puzzled expression, she wasn’t used to thinking that way. “If anyone does tamper with it, it’ll be someone else.” The pirates Ky had worried might come back, for instance. If they did, the ISC fleet—his fleet—would be in trouble. Statistics on that sector fleet were no better than the average—old ships, outdated equipment, inadequate training schedule.

Emil pinged him. “Your guards want to know what to do with Cuthen. He’s told them he’s going to sue—”

“He can’t do that if he can’t call out,” Rafe said. “But you may notify his family that he’s been unavoidably detained. I’ll speak to the guards myself.” He called down to the cells. “This is Rafe—I understand our friend is threatening?”

“Yeah. Says he’s going to have us all thrown in jail for unlawful imprisonment. Demands we let him out of this shielded room so he can use his skullphone.”

“Tell him that his family has been informed that he’s been unavoidably detained, but that he’s perfectly safe,” Rafe said. “Tell him that his safety still depends on the outcome of events now taking place, and I will let him know whether he’s got a future life when I know what that outcome is.”

“He says he needs rest,” the guard said.

“So do we all,” Rafe said. “He can rest when I’m satisfied. Are you…um…getting anything good out of him?”

“Oh, that pocket com you thought he had was full of data. I squirted it up to your office; Emil has it for you, or I can squirt it to you now.”

“No, that’s all right,” Rafe said. He stared at the screen in front of him, which remained obstinately blank. Time was passing, things were happening—things he could imagine vividly in sixty different varieties of disaster—and he was stuck here, out of contact. He wanted to use his internal ansible—he wanted Ky to use hers—but if she was in the middle of a fight, he couldn’t afford to distract her. Someone offered him a mug of something hot; he sipped it without noticing a flavor. His eyes itched and burned with staring at the console so long.

To distract himself, finally, he let himself think about his own family. His mother, his father, Penelope. His father’s behavior could be explained by the damage to his implant and to his brain, and the years of insidious conditioning by Lew Parmina. As predicted, his mental status had deteriorated after removal of the damaged implant, and neural regeneration was proceeding very slowly, in part due to his age and partly because the damage was extensive. His attitude toward Vattas had hardened from suspicion to outright paranoia, but his doctors said many brain-injured patients became suspicious and somewhat irrational until they recovered…if they recovered. Brain injury as extensive as his father’s often produced permanent changes in personality, one of the neurologists had said.

His mother, arbiter of family standards…she had seemed to come back rapidly after the rescue, but now, to his eye, she was looking more and more brittle. She scarcely ate that he could see, and her energy seemed more frenetic than natural. She called him daily at the office; she hovered over his father, over him, over Penelope.

Penelope…he could not imagine what it was like to lose a husband and a newborn by violence in such a short time. But he had no idea what she had been like before, as a grown woman. His clearest memories were of that night when she had been so frightened and he had been so…so mean. Why had he slapped her? He wouldn’t have done that when they were playing together, no matter how annoying she was. He had known better; it was something good children did not do. So why? He had a vague memory of watching a video of some kind—at home, at a friend’s house?—in which a man slapped a hysterical woman and she stopped crying. Was that why? Or was it his dark side, as the therapist had said? Even knowing the therapist had been incompetent didn’t erase that doubt.

The screen lit suddenly; his attention snapped back to it. “ISC scout ship
Beremund
. Message received. No Vatta ship located. Blueridge Defense Alli—” The message cut off.

“Did you touch anything, sir?” asked the comtech standing by.

“No,” Rafe said. He watched the technician manipulate controls.

“Ansible’s still up, but there’s no contact. Their equipment must have malfunctioned.”

Rafe felt cold inside. “They were blown,” he said.

“Blown, sir?” The comtech’s expression was utter confusion.

“Attacked. Blown up. Pirates,” Rafe said as she continued to look blank. “The Mackensee ship insystem wouldn’t have fired on ISC. Neither would Vatta. Whatever this Blueridge Defense whatsis wants people to think, it’s our enemy; most likely it’s the same pirate force that overthrew Bissonet System. And others.”

“But how can you tell that just because the message was cut off?” the technician asked. “Equipment fails for all sorts of reasons.”

“When you know you have the potential for hostilities, the safer bet is enemy action,” Rafe said. He called Emil. “We have trouble, almost certainly hostile action against ISC. Get me a conference call with all the sector commanders in Enforcement. Then I’ll want to contact Mackensee—locate their headquarters system, and if their system ansible isn’t working, dispatch a repair crew immediately, fastest route. And get me a list of the most reliable mercenary companies in our files. And—let’s see—get hold of our own System Defense, and tell them I want a meeting with whoever’s at the top.”

“What’s happened, sir?” Emil asked.

“I don’t yet know, for sure,” Rafe said. “But it’s bad, and we don’t have what it takes to handle it by ourselves.”

“What about Cuthen?”

“His life hangs by a thread,” Rafe said. “I’ll get back to you.”

By the time Emil had located the sector commanders and set up the conference call, more data had come in. The Mackensee ship in system, Ky, and the Mackensee relief convoy commander had all squirted data to the ansible, tagged for ISC headquarters, but the varying lightlags meant that data came in out of order in chaotic lumps.

Rafe did not wait for computer analysis to sort things into chronological order; he didn’t need to.

“We have a serious situation,” he said to the sector commanders, using another of Control’s modules. Two techs now hovered over the console, aligning the images for his convenience. “An ISC sector fleet has been nearly destroyed, and the only reason it wasn’t was the presence insystem of other ships that assisted our fleet.”

“Are you sure?” asked one.

“The data will be squirted to you in code as soon as analysis puts things in order,” Rafe said. “We’ve lost at least five ships—”

“Sorry, sir, new data, it’s now six…no, seven…,” a third technician murmured.

“Seven ships,” Rafe said. “I expect that number to rise as more data come in. Our ships were hit by something calling itself the Blueridge Defense Alliance, but the ships have false IDs. By a lucky chance, the captain of one of the friendly ships recognized a serial number as belonging to a ship from Bissonet System, which as you know—I hope you know—fell to a pirate coalition.”

“How many of these enemy ships?” asked one of the other commanders. “Any data on their weaponry?”

“Fifteen,” Rafe said. “And the technical data will be in the same squirt.” He paused; none of them spoke. “Now: in my short time as acting CEO, I have found that your maintenance, upgrade, and training budgets have been cut, and as a result our ships are markedly less able than those of other organizations, including this enemy. Some of you, I have no doubt, were colluding with Chief of Enforcement Cuthen to divert funds. I don’t care, at this point—it’s too late to worry about that. What I do care about is that you and your people aren’t thrown in the meat grinder to no purpose.” Another pause, longer this time. One of them—his implant informed him it was Bian Tarleton—opened his mouth and then shut it again.

“Go ahead, Tarleton,” Rafe said.

“Sir, I—there’s no way you can upgrade eighty percent of my ships at this point. They’re approaching the end of their structural reliability; they’d have to be completely rebuilt.”

“I know that. I also know that you have obsolete weaponry and some of you have dangerously old munitions. And your people haven’t done live-fire training for an average of six years.”

Now the resentment he saw on all the faces was replaced by dawning respect on some.

“How’d you know that?” Tarleton asked.

“I do my homework,” Rafe said. “Here’s the situation as I see it. All of you have what are essentially paper fleets: they look good on paper, they even look impressive in formation. As long as we had people convinced we were invulnerable, it didn’t matter…but there’s no way we can hide what happened. The enemy knows we’re a soft target, and we’re now a soft
rich
target.”

“I told headquarters years ago!” one of them said.

“Years ago isn’t our problem,” Rafe said. “Placing blame won’t get us out of this, though it certainly comes in later. So what I need from you right now is this: bring your fleets to what readiness you can, and start training your people for combat now. Review the data you’ll be getting, and revise your plans accordingly. By tomorrow, I want a list from each of you of the most critical needs. We can’t meet all of them, but we might meet some. Pick your best ships, however few that is, and get busy improving them. By tomorrow I want your assessment of the battle that cost us those ships; I want your plan for training that will address the weaknesses that made things worse.”

“By tomorrow?” asked one.

“Or if you can’t do it, I’ll find someone who can,” Rafe said. “If any of you feels unequal to command, I presume you have someone down the chain of command to whom you can hand over this onerous duty.” His voice, he realized, had hardened.

“What about our regular duties?” asked one of the others.

“Your top priority now is getting your command in as good shape as you can. Next is informing all legitimate governments that any entity calling itself Blueridge Defense Alliance is actually a swarm of pirates. Do not waste any time on routine enforcement; if systems want to repair their own ansibles, all the better. We get income from message traffic, and the more complete the communications net, the harder it will be for the pirates to evade detection.”

Heads were nodding now, all but two. “If anyone has comments, make ’em now, and then get busy. My assistant will set up another conference call tomorrow.” None of them spoke, and he clicked off.

“Another ship gone, sir,” said the tech who had spoken before. She looked very pale; glancing around the room, he saw that everyone was tense. And so they should be, but panic wouldn’t help, either.

Rafe stood up and raised his voice. “We’ve lost ships; we’ve lost people. Some of them may be your friends, or relatives, or just people you contacted regularly. It’s a blow, no doubt about it, but it’s not the end of ISC. I told our sector commanders to prepare for more trouble. But I’m hoping that we will find allies to help all civilized, legitimate governments and organizations survive and defeat these pirates.”