Shadow of Victory - eARC (86 page)

And then, six minutes ago, the remote they’d left behind had confirmed the largest single detonation of Final Flourish—the forty-five-kiloton blast which had eliminated any physical evidence of the control center…and utterly destroyed the entire city of Haldane and at least five thousand people. That would be the actual body count. Given the anonymity the resort had always guaranteed to visiting celebrities, Houdini had been able to erase another nine hundred of its evacuees’ names in the same explosion.

“Should I send the code?” Haas asked.

“Might as well key it in.” Marinescu shrugged, her attention on the flight controls. “No point making them all sit around and wait for a ride that’s not coming any longer than they have to.”

“Right,” Haas said, and began punching the authorization code into the air car’s secure data terminal.

Marinescu left him to it, although she was tempted to enter the final commit code herself. It was the sort of thing a responsible craftsperson did, after all. On the other hand, even her appetite for homicide had been momentarily slaked. And she supposed almost anyone ought to feel at least a little guilty about the fact that they were about to kill seventeen thousand—give or take a thousand here, or a thousand there—of the onion’s inner membership. She’d never been very good at hypocrisy, though, so she wasn’t going to pretend that what she felt was anything but a sense of satisfaction for a difficult job achieved on time and under budget.

That asshole Chernevsky would probably be peeing himself about now, if he had to push the button, she thought. God, I know Collin had to pick somebody to put into Bardasano’s place, but why the hell did it have to be him? The man doesn’t have the stomach for it. Probably a damned good thing we got him out of here over a week ago. Wouldn’t put it past him to actually try to abort the operation at the last minute!

She couldn’t understand—literally couldn’t—how someone could have reached Chernevsky’s seniority and been so…so…squeamish. There wasn’t time to get everyone out, so another answer needed to be found. It was that simple—a binary solution, for God sake—so where did he get off looking at her as if she were something stuck to the bottom of his shoe when she explained how she intended to do it. As if there were something wrong with her because, unlike him, she understood what needed to be done and had no qualms about doing it. Maybe if she’d been willing to pretend, to display a little of the unhappiness he so obviously felt, he wouldn’t have felt so holier than thou.

Probably wouldn’t have helped, though—not really, she thought. He’d still be beating his breast over it, the idiot! Necessity’s necessity, so suck it up and then put it behind you. Done is done, and you move on to the next job. Why the hell doesn’t he understand that?

Well, there might just be some changes after they got things sorted out again in Darius. Right off the top of her head, Marinescu couldn’t think of a single other Alignment operative who’d ever managed something on this one’s scale so efficiently, and it wasn’t written in stone anywhere that Rufino Chernyshev would have Bardasano’s old job forever.

“Keyed in,” Haas said.

The announcement broke into her reflections, and she quirked a thoughtful eyebrow for a moment, then smiled.

Screw it. This is my op, and I think I’ll enjoy rubbing Chernyshev’s nose in it by telling him who actually pushed the button.

“My bird, I think,” she said, and reached past Haas to depress the last key.

A crimson light blinked obediently on the secure terminal as four more kiloton-range blasts eliminated 17,327 members in good standing of the Mesan Alignment. Another 42,612 innocent bystanders joined them in their moment of incineration, and Janice Marinescu felt a sense of almost sublime completion flow through her.

Then another light flashed on the terminal, and her earbug pinged with an incoming transmission.

“According to the terminal, you’ve just completed your part of Houdini, Janice,” Rufino Chernyshev’s voice said in her earbug. “I suppose congratulations are in order, so consider yourself congratulated. The truth is, I’ve been deeply impressed by the efficiency and…enthusiasm you brought to the assignment. In fact, I’ve been so impressed that I discussed another assignment for you with Collin just before I left.”

Marinescu’s eyebrows rose in surprise. Chernevsky had recommended her for promotion? She’d never seen that one coming!

“Collin fully approved my recommendation, especially in light of your perfectly correct insistence on operational security and tidying up loose ends,” the recorded message continued. “So ten seconds after the end of this message, the peewee one-kiloton charge hidden inside this data terminal will detonate. Consider it your severance package. Ten…nine…eight…seven…”

Janice Marinescu was still screaming curses when the warhead detonated.

Chapter Seventy-Five

“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Zachariah McBryde asked quietly, standing behind Gail Weiss on the balcony. She was a tall woman, but he was still taller, and he shook his head as he gazed out across the city’s lights across her shoulder. “I always figured there had to be some kind of…I don’t know…an arsenal world, I guess, like Haven’s Bolthole, out there somewhere, but I never imagined this.”

“I knew about it, in a general sense,” Gail replied. She stood with both hands on the balcony railing, looking out across the city of Leonard, named for the very first Detweiler to ever set foot on the planet Mesa. “I had to, given the work I do. But I didn’t know anything really specific, like its location.” She snorted harshly. “For that matter, we still don’t know its location, do we?”

“No, we don’t,” Zachariah agreed. “Probably just as well, though, don’t you think?”

“I do if the alternative is to fall afoul of a ‘security issue,’ anyway.”

Gail’s tone was bitter, and Zachariah reached out quickly to lay one hand on her shoulder. She turned her head and looked up at him, and he shook his own head, quickly but ever so slightly. Her mouth tightened but then she drew a deep breath and nodded.

“I know,” she said, reaching up to touch the hand on her shoulder lightly. “Security’s important. I understand that. If I didn’t before, I damned well do now, and given my specialization, I suppose I’ve always had to put up with more of it than most, even inside the onion. But while I’m sure Security has every square centimeter of Leonard wired for sound, I’m not going to pretend I enjoyed the trip out here. Or that I think it was all necessary.” She looked around the balcony, her gaze challenging, as if seeking the surveillance devices they both knew had to be there somewhere. “Anybody who’s read my dossier would know I was pretending if I did, and I’ve always figured that trying to slink around in the shadows and hide the way you truly feel is the best way to make people wonder what you’re really up to.”

Zachariah’s stomach muscles tightened, but after a moment, he realized she was right. Security had complete and detailed files on both of them, and he never doubted that the psych analysis programs based on those files would notice the instant either of them began displaying “aberrant behavior.” In fact, they’d probably pick up on it even faster here in Darius than they would have back home in Mesa. There were fewer people to provide background clutter…and everyone on the entire planet of Darius Gamma was part of the Alignment.

That was still taking some getting used to. He and Gail had been on-planet for less than two weeks, and after hiding any hint of his association with the Alignment—and especially with the inner onion—from almost everyone around him, he was surrounded by a system population of almost four billion people, every one of whom was a proud Alignment member. In many ways, it was an incredibly reassuring experience, especially after their harrowing journey to get here. To be able to talk to people openly about the Alignment, about the aspirations of the Detweiler Plan, was heady stuff. And the sense of personal security—of being safe—was almost overpowering.

In fact, it would have been overpowering…if not for that same harrowing journey. Of the five members of their initial party, only he and Gail had arrived alive. He didn’t know exactly how Lisa Charteris had died—whether she’d been executed by her Gaul keeper before he blew up the Luigi Pirandello in the Balcescu System to prevent its capture by the Royal Torch Navy or if she’d been killed in the actual explosion—but he knew exactly how Stefka Juarez had died aboard the Prince Sundjata in the same star system. And he also knew that he and Gail would have died with her…if the two of them hadn’t killed their keeper first.

He was positive Caroline Bogunov, Prince Sundjata’s captain, hadn’t believed very much of their story about how Anthony Zhilov ended up bleeding all over the deck in her officers’ lounge, but he and Gail had been the only witnesses, and they’d stuck doggedly to their story. Juarez had panicked when they saw Prince Sundjata blow up on the visual display and attacked Zhilov, and Zhilov—possibly because of the damage Juarez’s totally unexpected attack had done to his eye—had lost control of himself. He’d killed Juarez in what was arguably self-defense, but then he’d turned his weapon on Gail and Zachariah, as well. They’d managed to knock the gun out of his hand and, in the ensuing struggle, Zachariah had reached it first and killed Zhilov in self-defense.

Whatever Bogunov may have thought, their account matched the blood patterns and the bodies’ wounds, and she worked for the Jessyk Combine and Manpower. She’d never heard of the Alignment, but she knew all about not asking awkward questions and her orders about delivering her passengers to the next stage of their journey had been explicit. Unfortunate things could happen to Manpower minions who failed to carry out their orders, and it had been obvious to her—questions or no—that whoever her passengers truly were, she did not want to get involved with their superiors. So she’d decided to accept their story at face value…and kept them confined in a single cabin until she could be rid of them.

As it happened, their version of events was pretty much true. Juarez had panicked, and Zachariah had killed Zhilov in self-defense. And, in some ways, that might have been the best thing that could have happened. Nobody who knew anything about Gauls could find it difficult to believe Zhilov would have reacted exactly that way. If their Alignment superiors were surprised by anything, it was that Gail and Zachariah had managed to overcome him and survive. The fact that they had actually seemed to have improved their standing in Security’s eyes. And so had the fact that they’d dutifully continued the trip as planned. That had taken quite a lot of ingenuity on their part, since Zhilov was no longer available to guide them to their contacts at the next stage, and their willingness to risk finding those contacts rather than taking the easy way out and simply trying to disappear had demonstrated loyalty and reliability to go with the ingenuity only to be expected from a pair of alpha-liners.

So if Gail wanted to bitch about the way they’d almost been killed, she’d earned the right. And her argument in favor of being open about it had a great deal to recommend it.

Best to continue the way we started, as Mom used to say, he reflected with a pang of loss which had already become familiar. And it’s not as if it’s all bad. I’d never have met Gail without Houdini, and that’s damned well worth almost being killed. Of course, it’s the “almost” bit that’s important there.

He snorted in amusement, and she cocked her head, eyes narrowing in speculation. It was sort of scary, really, the way she’d already learned to read him like a book. He supposed the intensity of the moment which had brought them together might have something to do with that, but most of it was simply that she was possibly the smartest person he’d ever met…except for a deplorable taste in men, with himself as Exhibit A.

“Just thinking about everything we went through to get here,” he said.

“And that’s funny?” She shook her head. “You’re a very strange man, Zachariah McBryde!”

“Oh, that’s not what’s funny.” He shook his head. “I was thinking about the fact that you somehow managed to avoid being killed only to get stuck with me. Some people—like my sisters, for example—would probably question whether or not that was the best possible outcome.”

“Well, I think it’s worked out just fine…so far, at least,” she said, leaning back against him. He tucked his arms around her and rested his chin on the crown of her head, savoring the sweet, solid strength of her. “Of course, it’s still early,” she continued thoughtfully. “I usually give my men a six-month tryout, you understand.” A chuckle quivered through her. “I’m sorry to say that so far none of them have…stood up to the strain for the entire six months.”

“That’s why I’m taking vitamin shots and spending extra time in the gym,” he told her earnestly. “Trying to build up my endurance, I mean.”

“Oh, there are much better ways to build up endurance,” she purred. “In fact, why don’t we work on some of those better ways?”

“Sounds like a wonderful idea to me,” he told her, lifting his chin far enough to kiss the top of her head. “On the other hand, there is that little matter of starvation. I believe you told me you were faint with hunger when we placed the order. I wouldn’t want to have any unfair advantages in the endurance department because of your low blood sugar.”

“Low blood sugar, is it?” She squirmed away from him and turned to punch him lightly in the belly. “You are so going to pay for that one, Zachariah Thomas McBryde! But not—” she continued loftily “—until after I’ve eaten. Not because I need the sustenance, you understand, but as a way to emphasize my prioritization queue and make it clear which is more important to me. A meal or your pitiful attempts to meet my exacting standards in men.”

“Oh, that was a good one!” Zachariah congratulated her with a laugh. “It may have been just a little…I don’t know…wordy, maybe, for a truly first-rate zinger, but it was good. Very good!”

She stuck out her tongue at him and sashayed—veritably sashayed—off the balcony and into their sumptuous apartment. He watched her as she rolled her hips, winked at him over one shoulder, and headed for the bedroom suite to change into her version of “something more comfortable.” He was rather looking forward to finding out what fitted that label for her tonight.

He turned back to the vista of Leonard, marveling again at the stupendous residential towers, the broad avenues and green belts, the blaze of lights running up and down the flanks of buildings, the colorful lights of the pleasure boats on the lake at the heart of the city. Unlike a great many capital cities in a great many star systems, Leonard had been carefully planned from the outset and built with every advantage of a counter-gravity civilization. There were no older sections built out of native materials, no slums, no tenements. It was a brand-new city in every way—its oldest building was considerably less than a T-century old—but its population already exceeded ten million, and unlike Mesa, there were no seccies…and no slaves in that population.

That was probably the most remarkable thing about the entire Darius System, Zachariah reflected. As he’d told Gail, he’d always realized that something like Darius Gamma had to exist, if only to build the warships towards which so much of their research had been directed. They obviously couldn’t build them in Mesa! The last thing they’d needed was for any trace of the Mesan Alignment Navy to intrude into sight before the time came to actually use it. But somehow he’d pictured a grim, gray teeming hive of industry, with genetic slaves laboring under the harsh eyes of their overseers. A place where everything was geared towards wringing the maximum output out of every worker’s every waking hour. Where the human element in the labor force was only one more component to be managed with ruthless efficiency.

What he’d found was a world whose every citizen subscribed enthusiastically to the realization of the Detweiler Plan. More than three quarters of those citizens—well over eighty percent of them, in fact—were clones, produced and decanted with all the expertise Manpower Incorporated had developed over the centuries. The proportion was beginning to drop as the first generations aged and old fashioned natural childbirths expanded, yet for decades to come, vat-grown, cloned children would continue to hugely outnumber those born naturally. Under Mesan law—which wasn’t the same as Dariusan law, to be fair—those clones were the property of whoever had produced them. In that sense, they were genetic slaves at birth just as much as anyone Manpower had ever packaged and sold. But once these “slaves” had been decanted, they’d been raised by a human surrogate parents. They’d been educated and nurtured, not brutalized—treated as valued human beings, not so many animate pieces of property. They’d been encouraged to think for themselves, to value themselves.

Families on Darius Gamma tended to be…large. The average family had at least a dozen children at any given moment, and with prolong and modern medicine in the mix, a planetary population grew at an awesome rate when that was the case. And every single one of those people was at least a gamma-liner. Over half were betas and at least fifteen percent were alphas. Huge sections of their genetic code would have been identical to that of any Manpower slave, but that was largely because Manpower was the laboratory in which many of the star line genomes had been evolved.

Of course, there were a few small holes in the average Dariusan’s education. They knew about genetic slavery, for example, but they regarded it as a grim, dark and perverted legacy of the way in which the galaxy at large had demonized Leonard Detweiler and his fellow visionaries. They were taught that Leonard would have rejected the terrible cancer which had grown within the society of Mesa as its members gave up the struggle and accepted—embraced—the outlaw status the rest of the galaxy had forced upon them, and that the Alignment had arisen in large part as a reaction against that institution. The Alignment’s great mission was to reclaim Leonard’s original, glorious vision. To be its defender, its champion—its standard bearer. That vision must be carried to triumph, and if the benighted parochialism of the rest of the galaxy rejected the brightness of its promise, then the people of Darius were prepared for whatever struggle might be required.

Zachariah could literally feel the driving purpose, the enthusiasm and commitment which infused the billions of human beings in the Darius System. He only had to look up, past the sky glow of Leonard, to see the huge space stations gleaming in Darius Gamma orbit. And beyond them, he knew, were the asteroid refineries, the smelters, the fabrication centers churning out more and more infrastructure, more and more of the sinews of war. Much of that construction program was in the throes of modification, courtesy of the Star Empire of Manticore’s recently revealed capabilities, but the people of Darius were committed to the construction of Juggernaut, and for the part of Zachariah McBryde which had always been committed to the Alignment, that was an intoxicating brew.