Last of the Immortals (The Jessica Keller Chronicles Book 3) (10 page)

The wine steward and waitress were dealt with in short order.

Sykes found himself seated across from his contact as the restaurant’s tide of restless energy receded. He had not taken great note of the woman as she had entered, focusing most of his concentration on everyone else around him, looking for other spies that might represent danger.

He took the time now, letting the calm silence stretch.

Lemieux had treated the evening, and his expense account, as an excuse to dress to the nines. It wasn’t his money, so he didn’t care. The results had been worth the risk of appearing in such a public venue. Nobody would even remember his face tomorrow.

She was wearing an outfit that was entirely backless, largely frontless, and appeared to be comprised of two pieces of bright green cloth, tied behind her neck and just wide enough to cover her small breasts from casual observation, provided she did not move suddenly. At least intentionally. The color complimented her dark brown skin.

The top was attached to a skirt cut asymmetrically, from her left knee to her right ankle, in a manner that should have been disturbingly wrong, but somehow worked.

She had taken the time to do her hair and makeup as if she were preparing to appear on a videocast.

While this woman was not a great traditional beauty, the effect was memorable. Men were glancing as subtly as possible at this woman, craving her as an object of outright lust. Women, if any more circumspect, were more likely to be staring daggers at her, or their dates. Probably both.

If anyone even remembered that there was a man with her, he would simply fade from memory.

Sykes had spent decades perfecting that technique.

He nodded to himself.

“This is within your normal range of expected public behavior?” Sykes asked her. They had several minutes before the salad course.

She smiled around a piece of fruit she was nibbling from her mixed drink. The face was that of a debutante. The voice was deadly serious. The smile never wavered. They might have been discussing the latest fashions as far as someone could tell from farther away.

“Entirely,” she replied in a tone that suggested he should use his tradecraft to teach his own grandmother to suck eggs. “You are a wealthy off–world client that needs entertaining while we discuss outrageous prices for First Editions and dicker values against the possibility of fraud in the author’s signature.”

That caught him off guard. Sykes had never dealt in rare books. He had no idea how rampant that sort of corruption was. But then, he was an assassin, not a literary critic. Although he supposed that the two might not be that far removed, all things considered.

He nodded as a placeholder. This woman was a highly respected deep–cover agent. Obviously, she would know the proper bounds of behavior for a place like
Ballard
. He was the blundering outsider, reliant on a local to know the shoals and reefs.

In that, the rules and relations would be the same.

“This mission may compromise your cover to the extent that extraction is necessary,” he said to fill the space.

She continued to nibble at the fruit with a coquettish tilt to her head. From across the room, a bubbly airhead serving as eye–candy for a wealthy businessman.

“So you are either assassinating the governor,” she said without a trace of emotion on her face, “or attacking
The Station
.”

The way she said it suggested that there was only one station in orbit. In a way, that was true. Almost every inhabited planet had at least a half–dozen orbital platforms of various sizes, for transshipping or manufacturing.
Ballard
was no different. But there was really only one that mattered here.

“The latter,” Sykes said and took a sip of his wine.

She smiled as if he had just told a droll joke, but her eyes never changed.

“How grand of an attack are you planning?”

Sykes let his own smile turn frosty. “I will be a distraction and a guard at the rear door to keep someone from escaping. An Imperial Fleet will be arriving in approximately two weeks to destroy the station.”

He watched her eyes grow slightly larger. She did not actually speak the words aloud, but he could read her lips as she repeated
Imperial Fleet
to herself.

Finally, she spoke.

“And who are you here to assassinate?”

“The
Sentience
.”

“You’re going to kill Suvi?” she whispered in sudden awe. “Is that even possible?”

“We are going to find out, madam,” he replied with a pleasant smile. “That is my mission. To kill Suvi.”

Chapter XIV

Date of the Republic June 2, 394 Fleet HQ, Ladaux System

“Are you sure?”

Nils scanned the report again, as if the words would change the second time he read them. The temperature in his office seemed to have dropped ten degrees in as many seconds, although he was sure it was just him.

“Confidence is extremely high, First Lord,” the woman standing before him replied. That was almost her patent phrase in situations like this.

She had no name that he had ever been told. The section of Naval Intelligence where she worked was highly compartmentalized away from the rest of the Fleet, almost an appendix stuck on to the organization as an afterthought. Nils liked to think of them as ghosts, or the faeries of ancient legend that came out at night and magically did chores.

He had that sort of relationship with these people. Nils knew better than to ask them pointed questions. He would either get rebuffed, or outright lies.

“How high?” he countered. The words on the page still did not change when he read them again.

“This is one of our most trusted sources, First Lord,” she said. “Someone in the Imperial Household itself who very infrequently feeds us information that has never been wrong.”

“Thank you, then,” Nils said, “I’ll take it from here.”

“Happy to serve, First Lord.”

She opened the hatch and departed without another word. Nils knew better than to be offended. They weren’t technically in the Fleet, that group, and certainly didn’t answer to him in any social or legal sense of the word.

Faeries
.

“Kamil,” Nils called through the open doorway. “Could you come in, please?”

His assistant, his right hand, entered immediately. Kamil had known the signs attendant on such a visitation as well.

Bad news.

“Yes sir?”

“Find the Premier and roust him out of wherever he is, immediately, highest possible priority,” Nils said, “while I figure out my next step.”

“Right away, sir.”

Nils watched the door close.

Very bad news indeed.

Ξ

Tadej Horvat, the Premier of the Republic Senate, appeared on a small screen at an odd angle. Nils guessed he was using the video camera on his own secured comm, rather than relying on a public channel. Considering the message, that was probably the best choice.

“What’s the emergency, Nils?” Tadej asked breathlessly. From the way the camera image bounced Tadej might be jogging up a flight of stairs.

“Are we secure, Tadej?” Nils asked.

“Yes,” the Premier replied, “barring words that might be overhead as I pass people on the way to my office. Or should I be headed up to yours?”

“Yours is fine, Tad. This will take some time to resolve.”

“What’s important enough to roust me from dinner? Not that it was anybody critical.”

“I am looking at an Intelligence Briefing Note that was just delivered to me. Long story short, there was never any risk that Wachturm was going to attack
Ladaux
. That was merely a ruse. This was planned as a surgical strike against
Ballard
only. In and out. I could have moved the entirety of Home Fleet to
Ballard
with almost zero risk.”

“We suspected that already, Nils,” Tadej replied. “Why the sudden emergency?”

“It’s a trap,” the First Lord replied flatly.

“Again, we knew that. Talk clearly please, Nils.”

A moment of silence passed.

“Nils?”

“It’s the timing, Tad,” Nils finally said.

“How so?”

“The reports of the planned assault were timed to arrive on
Ladaux
on a specific day, Tadej,” Nils said. “Specifically, the day
Auberon
got home.”

Even on the tiny screen, Nils could see his friend’s face pale. “Oh, dear.”

“Yes,” the First Lord replied. “The Red Admiral went to
Ballard
specifically to kill Jessica. And I handed him the blade.”

“Okay,” Tadej said. His image had stabilized, so apparently he had stopped moving. “What do we do next?”

“I’m going to take
Athena
and her consorts,” Nils said, “and see if there’s anything left to salvage when we get there.”

At the very least, he could give his warriors a proper burial.

Chapter XV

Imperial Founding: 172/06/08. Jumpspace en route to Ballard

“So what do we know of the
Sentience
, gentlemen?” Admiral Wachturm asked the group of intelligence professionals arrayed to the left about his briefing table, across from Captain Baumgärtner and his various command staff and lieutenants.

They were a necessary evil, these men. In a war to the death with
Aquitaine
, it was necessary to have people that lived in the shadows, fencing with one another. Better if they were the sort that enjoyed it.

They certainly weren’t the type you invited to dinner. Or introduced to your daughters.

Emmerich held his counsel and waited for the one in charge to speak.

“The station that houses the
Sentience
was originally lifted into orbit above
Ballard
late in the second generation after they had achieved starflight. Their industrial base was sophisticated by that time and they were able to build a fairly large initial station. That was a little over twelve hundred standard years ago.”

Emmerich nodded and took a drink of water to forestall himself from asking any questions at this point. The less time he had to spend with these men, the better. He considered again whether he should have the entire room disinfected and sterilized when they left.

That was just being petty, but they left a stench in any room, at least psychically.

“While we have deep cover agents in place and send occasional observation missions, we have never attempted to penetrate the security on the facility itself,” the head agent continued. “While scholars and tourists are fairly free to come and go in the section of the station dedicated to the university, casual travelers are prevented from accessing the facilities section and the computer cores that house the
Sentience
itself.”

“Where are those located physically?” Emmerich perked up. Most of this briefing would be a waste of time, background information that might spark a tactical idea or defense arrangement later. But the engineering aspects would be crucial.

“The station is actually an oblate spheroid, flattened at the poles, rather than a true sphere,” the man replied. “If you envision it as an onion, accreting layers over the decades and centuries, the original fusion reactor and computer cores that were removed from
Kel–Sdala
are located at the very center.”

Emmerich was surprised to hear such an artistic reference from one of the intelligence officers. He tended to think of them as the accountants of hell, rather than actual people. It was safer that way.

“Weak points?” Captain Baumgärtner piped up, taking notes literally in a paper notebook with an ink pen, a habit he had picked up over the years from his boss.

“The station itself is just shy of seven kilometers across the equator, and five and a quarter at the poles,” the man replied, warming to his audience and sounding less like a bureaucrat and more like an Imperial gentleman. Go figure. “But almost all of the landing facilities are located on the equatorial belt, meaning fewer bulkheads horizontally than vertically, and generally weaker, at least on the university side of things. The station was not built to modern warship standards, but it was significantly over–engineered from the outset.
Intelligence
is of two minds as to the reason. First, it was possible that they built this to the specifications of the
Sentience
, planning this level of reinforcement so as to add all of the outer layers that have been accumulated in the time since. Alternatively, it may have been done to protect the station against tidal forces from
Ballard
’s moon, which is going to occasionally be close enough to affect the station’s superstructure.”

“Are we aware of any defenses?” Emmerich asked keenly.

All the men around him, on both sides of the table, seemed to simultaneously recoil in horror at the thought of a
Sentience
in charge of modern naval weaponry.

“None on the station itself,” the man replied quietly after a moment.

The men all started to breathe again.

“However,” he continued, “there is a naval station in a different orbit. It has a few beam weapon emplacements, both Type–1 for defense and Type–3 for warships, plus an oversized flight wing, a full dozen M–5
Harpoon
fighters, rather than the usual nine that a Republic force would normally field. Strictly second–line crews, generally dedicated to Search and Rescue and light customs enforcement. There are also two Revenue Tugs with twenty–man crews and extremely light ordinance. Nothing that would even be much of a threat to fighter craft, if we were a carrier.”

“We will reduce it last,” Emmerich said. “The
Sentience
is the greatest threat to mankind. Keller will be the most dangerous opponent.”

“A question, Admiral,” the Briefing Officer continued.

Emmerich nodded to the man.

“According to our research, the station could not be successfully evacuated in the time from our emergence to our expected engagement, even with time taken out for a significant naval engagement with
Aquitaine
forces.”