Battlecruiser Alamo: The Price of Admiralty (16 page)

"Mr. Dietz?"

"Checking, Captain." He looked over the console for a moment. "It seems that a spurious signal was sent from the ship's communications array two-point-one seconds before the missiles went dead. Logged from Lieutenant Caine's quarters."

Marshall did a double take, then sat back in his chair, tapping a button, "Sub-Lieutenant Tyler, please proceed to Lieutenant Caine's quarters on the double."

"Sir?"

"On the double, Tyler. Details to follow." He changed frequencies, "Lieutenant Caine, report."

His only reply was a cough and a couple of grunts, followed by a sleepy, "What's up, Captain?"

"Are you asleep?"

"I was until you woke me up. Is there a problem?"

He paused for a second, "We just launched our tracking missiles, but they failed shortly after we fired them. According to the computer, the command to deactivate them came from your quarters."

"Danny, I've been asleep for three hours at least. Nodded off reading a book. I give you my word."

Dietz walked over to stand beside Marshall, "Sir, Lieutenant Caine must be investigated by security. I will handle the command supervision if you wish."

He looked up at the operations officer, nodding. He didn't like the idea for a moment, but there could be no hint of partiality. "Very well. I personally rate that the fact the computer trace was so easy is suspicious in itself."

"I agree, sir. I will conduct my investigation bearing that possibility in mind."

"Make it quick, Dietz."

"Yes, sir." Dietz nodded, curtly, then turned and made his way off the bridge. Marshall frowned for a second, stood up and headed into his office.

"Cellini, you have the bridge. Contact me when we get to interception point with the satellite."

"We're not going after the missiles, sir? Right now it would be straightforward to retrieve them."

He shook his head, frowning, "No, Sub-Lieutenant. We'd have to break orbit, and we'd be off station for hours. Nor do I want to use our only remaining shuttle. We're going to have to try a different approach."

Marshall walked into his office, the door sliding shut behind him, as he sat down in his chair. He called up the personnel records of Caine, though he was already familiar with most of them. They'd served together for the majority of the war, a proven flight team moving from one posting to the next. Nothing suspicious.

Of course, anyone decent would take that into account, and make sure that there was nothing in the records that could cause attention. He shook his head, then turned the record off. The road he was on led to nothing but paranoia; obviously someone was out to isolate him.

He called up the tactical display again. Dietz's plan had been a good one, possibly too good. There were a lot of ways that missiles could be tampered with, and the inventory was low enough that it wasn't a trick he wanted to repeat. Two ships could evade one using Gatewood to hide behind for as long as they wanted, potentially, even if he broke orbit.

He started to scan through the records of the rest of the senior staff again, going over them to see if there was anything that might be revealing, but knew even as he was doing it that it was a waste of time. Records could be altered and manipulated too easily; short of returning to Sol he couldn't check any of the information anyway.

"Cellini here, Captain. We've reached the satellite."

"Good. Tell Corporal Stiles to go out and have some fun pulling out circuits."

"Yes, sir."

Figure that they'd be watching Alamo from the surface, and would already be thinking that they were planning to do something to one of the satellites. A minute or so for them to work out where the two spacesuited espatiers were going, a little longer for them to notify higher authority, and he'd find out exactly what their threshold of non-communication was. If it meant taking out the entire satellite constellation, that sounded fine at this point. About the least that Wolfe deserved. He kept his eye on the clock, and almost on cue, the communicator chirped again.

"Cellini again. We're getting a tight-beam message from the ground, addressed to this ship."

"Are we now? Call Stiles and tell him to hold off for a moment, but he is to remain on station, then patch the call through to my office."

"Yes, sir. Patching you through now."

A face resolved itself on the screen opposite his desk, one that screamed military. The close-cropped haircut, a suit that was worn as if it might have been a uniform. Cold blue eyes obviously prying for a weakness.

Marshall began, "I am Lieutenant-Captain Daniel Marshall, commanding Triplanetary Spaceship Alamo. To whom am I speaking, please?"

"Isaac Hall, Governor-General of Ragnarok Colony. I formally protest your sabotage of our satellite, and the landing of your combat team on my planet."

Interesting that he regarded the planet as his, Marshall thought. "No sabotage has been conducted, Governor. My team is simply conducting a safety inspection. As for the landing, that was a single shuttlecraft bearing my representative to meet with your government, and they were met by a group of people who set out to arrest them."

"A misunderstanding, Lieutenant-Captain, nothing more."

"Indeed. One of my men is dead as a result of your misunderstanding, Governor, and I believe you experienced casualties as well. For which I express my sympathy."

The Governor's face hardened. "I must ask you to retrieve your people and leave orbit. I am willing to guarantee safe passage for one of your shuttles to land."

"I am not a diplomat, Governor, but a soldier. So you will forgive me for being blunt – but I have no intention of turning over another group of potential hostages to you. My mission is to investigate the disappearance of three freighters in this system, as well as an unprovoked attack by forces based in this system on a vessel that was previously sent to investigate. We ourselves have come under attack since our arrival."

"Are you denying us our rights to defend ourselves? This is a sovereign system, Lieutenant-Captain, and although my orbital defenses do not permit me to shoot you down, I will use all force necessary."

Folding his hands on the table, Marshall attempted to soften his tone, "And if you try that, I will destroy all of your communications satellites before leaving the system. Governor, if you were truly threatened by these vessels, then the Triplanetary Confederation will simply wish to repatriate the crews. If you wish to bring them up on criminal charges, then it is your planet, and your jurisdiction, but I would require a representative to attend the trials."

The governor frowned, as if thinking it over, "It is I suppose possible that we got off on the wrong foot, Lieutenant-Captain. Perhaps if we were to meet to discuss our mutual problems, some sort of arrangement could be made."

Knowing precisely what was coming, Marshall moved to preempt him, "I would be only too happy to accommodate you on board, Governor.  As well as a limited number of advisers, two, say?"

"Agreed." The frown suggested that this was a man who was used to getting his own way. "I will arrive in eight hours from now, and provide full details to your staff of the required protocols for my arrival."

"I will see that they are followed." An honor guard would protect the ship as much as it would protect the Governor. "In eight hours, then, Alamo out." He closed the channel before the Governor could reply.

Chapter 13

The squad trudged through the deepening snow, the wind steadily increasing, tearing down from the mountains and ripping at the hoods on their jackets. Forbes was maintaining a brisk pace, periodically pulling a navipad out of his pocket, poking at it, and adjusting their path accordingly.

There had been no sign of pursuit, no sign that anyone was chasing them, and with the wind rising to an impending storm, it seemed unlikely that anyone would come after them now. Potentially, they wouldn't have to – the temperature was dropping fast, and everyone was beginning to feel the bitter cold. The rest of Forbes' men had gone a different way; he'd not volunteered what they were doing.

Forbes waved an arm in the air, then pointed to the north-east; Esposito squinted, but could see nothing but a bare patch of rock, but their guide had increased his pace to a jog, so the squad followed suit, Orlova swearing in four languages under her breath. A bright flash of light shone out of the rock when they grew closer, a hatch thrown back to reveal a hole carved into the ground, the light so bright that none of them could see what was at the bottom.

"Down you go! Hot tucker waiting for you when you get into the hutch," Forbes said, and the beginnings of a blizzard compelled them all to obey, one by one scrambling down the old, rusty ladder for at least fifty feet to emerge in the cabin of an old shuttle, the fixtures and equipment ripped out to turn it into a metal cave, seat material thrown out on the floor to serve as makeshift bedding, a few computer consoles displaying
flickering
maps of the area, a rack on the wall holding a dozen of the old rifles they'd been using, ammunition clips carelessly tossed onto a shelf.

A couple of people sat at the back, a bald man as black as night itself, and a boy with a faint straggly beard, their eyes narrowed as they held pistols in their hands, looking at the newcomers; both were wearing what looked like home-made winter camouflage painted onto storm jackets.

"Home sweet home, cobbers," Forbes said. He turned to the pair, making a thumbs-up gesture, "They're on our side. Put on some coffee and a few ration packs."

"We've got our own; don't want to deplete your stocks," Riley said, pulling a couple of foil packs out of a pocket.

Esposito looked at him, then back at Forbes, "I think we'd all take the coffee, though."

The squad sat on the cold floor, bundling up their coats as makeshift cushions, Orlova poking around at one of the computer consoles while Forbes started passing around tin mugs filled with a hot brown liquid that was at least a passable imitation of coffee. The other two rebels ducked through a hatch, taking some of the food with them.

"This is one of the old transit shuttles," she said. "I saw one of these in the Aerospace Museum."

Forbes nodded, "She crashed during the establishment of the colony. Big smash-up, engines torn out. We found her and thought she'd make a good little base."

"Must have been a big job to bury her," Hunter said, a tone of respect in his voice.

"Used a crevasse, filled it up and put in the shaft. Hardest part was making sure the Governor's goons didn't find out about it."

Folding her legs under her, Esposito took a sip of coffee then rested her mug on the floor. "We've got a hell of a lot of questions, Mr. Forbes."

He looked at her, slightly irritated, "I suppose I'd better start thinking up some answers. I'll want some questions answered as well, though."

"To begin with – there is no record of any colony established here. The UN survey twenty-three years ago reported this world was uninhabited."

He snorted, "The UN's still around? That who you are with?"

She looked at Hunter, then turned back to Forbes. "I am the commander of the Espatier forces of Alamo, a spaceship in the Triplanetary Fleet."

"I still don't buy that first part. You've got to be twenty-two. What about your husband?"

Hunter sighed, looked around, then stood up, "I'm getting tired of you carrying on with this bullshit about our commander. My lads are getting tired of it as well."

"Sergeant," Esposito said, "sit down." Hunter sat down, and Esposito caught the subtle wink that he threw her; nicely played.

Forbes, looking slightly chastened, continued, "So this Triplanetary thing? Earth and who?"

"Mars, Callisto and Titan. The Triplanetary Confederation was formed when the outer colonies rebelled against the United Nations in 2149. The war lasted for eight years; needless to say, we won."

"No shit!" His face brightened. "Then you aren't from Earth or those bastards from the Moon?"

Orlova looked sharply at Esposito, "You know about the Lunar Republic?"

"We fled from those bastards. At least, their ancestors."

"It might be better if you fill us in on some background," Esposito said.

He took a deep swig of coffee, then pulled a flask out of a pocket on the inside of his jacket and tipped some of its contents in, stirring them around with a gnarled, weather-beaten finger. "I was born in 2043, in a place called Coober Pedy in the Australasian Republic."

"That's more than a century ago!" Riley said, her eyes widening.

"Yeah, but I slept through most of it. I grew up wanting to explore the wild black younger, so ended up in ASRI as a shuttle jockey. Our tech boys had spotted Ragnarok swinging around this star, and we decided to take a crack at it right after the Indo-Pakistan nukewar."

Esposito shook her head, "You planned an interstellar expedition in, what, 2067? Right before the Third World War?"

"Mars Colony was only ten years old back then," Orlova said. "If you aren't giving us a load of crap, you've got guts."

He snorted, taking another swig of his augmented coffee. "Obviously you survived, but take a look at where we were back then. Earth in the middle of a mass extinction, half a dozen wars going on and it looked like China and the Yanks were about to finally start the Big One. Mars and the Moon? Hell, the Chinese had snatched Luna back in '55, so that was out, and Mars was a few domes and no air to breathe. Here we figured we might have a chance."

Orlova shook her head. "I'm not buying it. FTL was decades away back then, and you'd have taken centuries to get there. Even given that you might have managed to sleep through the trip in cryogenic suspension, you'd still be traveling now."

The old man stood up, pushed her roughly away from the computer screen she was standing near and began to call up a schematic, thumping the display with his hand. "That's what let us do it in eighty years rather than eight hundred. We didn't have FTL, but we did have STL."