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Chapter Seventeen
Benjamin McIlheny racked his headset and stood, rubbing his aching eyes and trying to remember when he'd last had six hours' sleep at a stretch.
He lowered his hands and glowered at the record chips and hard-copy heaped about his office aboard the accommodation ship HMS Donegal. Somewhere in all that crap, he knew, was the answer—or the clues which would lead to the answer—if only he could find it.
It seemed a law of nature that any intelligence service always had the critical data in its grasp . . . and didn't know it. After all, how did you cull the one, crucial truth from the heap of untruth, half-truth, and plain lunacy? Answer: hindsight invariably recognized it after the fact. Which, of course, was the reason the intelligence community was constantly being kicked by people who thought it was so damned easy.
McIlheny snorted bitterly and began to pace. He'd seen it too many times, especially from Senate staffers. They had an image of intelligence officers as Machiavellian spy-masters, usually in pursuit of some hidden agenda. That was why you had to watch the sneaky bastards so closely. And since they were so damned clever, obviously they never told all they knew, even when they had a constitutional duty to do so. Which, naturally, meant any "failure" to spot the critical datum actually represented some deep-seated plot to suppress an embarrassing truth.
People like that neither knew nor cared what true intelligence work was. Holovid might pander to the notion of the Daring Interstellar Agent carrying the vital data chip in a hollow tooth, but the real secret was sweat. Insight and trained instinct were invaluable, but it was the painstaking pursuit of every lead, the collection of every scrap of evidence and its equally exhaustive analysis, which provided the real breakthroughs.
Unfortunately, he admitted with a sigh, analysis took time, sometimes more than you had, and in this case it wasn't providing what he needed. He knew there was a link between the pirates and someone high up. It was the only possible answer. Admiral Gomez's full strength would have had a tough time fighting its way into Elysium orbit against its space defenses, yet the pirates had gotten inside in the first rush. McIlheny had no detailed sensor data to back his hunch, but he was morally certain the raiders had slipped a capital ship into SLAM range under some sort of cover. The shocked survivors all agreed on the blazing speed with which the orbital defenses had been a
But how? How had they fooled Commodore Trang and all of his people? Simple ECM couldn't be the answer after all the sector had been through. No, somehow they'd given Trang a legitimate cover, something he knew was friendly, and there was simply no way they could have without access to information they should never have been able to reach.
It all fit a pattern—even Treadwell was showing signs of accepting that—but the colonel was damned if he could make it all come together. Even Ben Belkassem had thrown up his hands and departed for Old Earth in the faint hope that his superiors there might be able to see something from their distant perspective which had eluded everyone in the Franconian Sector.
The colonel hoped so, because what bothered him even more than how was why. What in God's name were these people up to? He hadn't said so (except very privately to Admiral Gomez and Brigadier Keita), but it passed sanity that they could be garden-variety pirates. That didn't make sense just based on cost effectiveness! Anybody who could field a force the size of the one these people had to have didn't need whatever they were making off their loot.
No doubt plunder helped defray their operational costs, but his most generous estimate of their take fell short of what it must cost to supply and maintain their ships. Just look at what they were taking: colony support equipment, spaceport beacon arrays, industrial machinery, for God's sake! They scooped up some luxury goods, of course—they'd scored over a half-billion in direcat pelts, alone, from Mathison's World—but no normal hijacker or pirate would touch most of what they took.
And even aside from their unlikely loot, there were the casualties. McIlheny didn't believe in Attila the Hun in starships. Stupid people, by and large, didn't become starship captains, and only someone who was stupid could fail to see the inevitable result of pursuing some bizarre scorched- earth policy against the Empire. That was why massacre for the sake of massacre wasn't a normal piratical trait; it didn't pay their bills, and it did guarantee a massive response. Yet these people were deliberately maximizing the devastation in their wake. From everything the Elysium survivors could tell him, they hadn't even tried to loot beyond the limits of the capital, but they'd nuked every city from orbit! Nine million dead. What in hell's name could be behind that kind of slaughter? It was almost as if they were taunting the Fleet, daring it to deal with them.
It was maddening, yet the answer was here, right here in his office and his brain, if he could only bring the pieces together. Any group who could penetrate security as if it didn't exist and use their stolen data to mount such meticulous, lethal attacks couldn't be mere loose ca
There were times, McIlheny thought wistfully, when a return to the simplicity of combat looked ever so attractive.
The admittance signal hauled him out of his thoughts. He pressed the button, and his eyebrows arched as Sir Arthur Keita stepped through the hatch.
"Good evening, Sir Arthur. What can I do for you?"
"Probably not much," Keita rumbled. He removed a carton of chips from a chair and settled onto it, holding them in his lap. "I just dropped by to say good bye, Colonel."
"Good bye?" McIlheny repeated in surprise, and Keita gave a sour grin.
"I'm only punching air out here. This is a job for you and the Fleet—and Treadwell, if he ever stops screaming for more ships and uses what he has—and I've been here too long."
"I see." McIlheny sank into his own chair and swiveled it to face Keita. The brigadier's gravelly voice was as steady as ever, but he heard the despair within it. He knew what had kept Keita on Soissons so long ... and there hadn't been a single report of the alpha synth in ten weeks.
"I imagine you do, Colonel." Keita's eyes were sad, but he gave McIlheny a less strained smile and nodded. "But I can't justify staying on in the hope that something will break, and—" his jaw tightened "—if she's spotted now, she's your job, not mine."
"Understood, sir," the colonel said. "I wish it weren't true—God knows Captain DeVries deserves better than that—but I understand."
Keita looked down at the carton of chips, stirring them with a blunt index finger. "I wish you could have known her before, Colonel," he said softly. "She was ... special. The best. And to have it end like this, with an imperial price on her head... ." The silver-maned old head shook sadly, and then Keita looked up at McIlheny's combat ribbons.
"You've been there, Colonel. If it has to be one of our own, I'm glad it's someone who can understand. Whatever she is now, she was special."
"I know she was, Sir Arthur."
"Yes. Yes, you do." Keita inhaled deeply, then rose and held out his hand. "I'll be going, then."
"Yes, sir. I'm going to miss you, Sir Arthur. I want you to know how much I've appreciated the insight you gave me between your ... other duties."
"Keep swinging, Colonel." Keita's grip crushed McIlheny's hand. "Between us, I'm convinced you're on the right trail, so you watch your six. Something stinks to high heaven out here. I intend to say as much to Countess Miller and His Majesty, but you be careful who you trust. When you can't tell the bad guys from the good guys ..."
His voice trailed off, and he released McIlheny's hand with a shrug.
"I know, sir." The colonel frowned a moment, then looked deep into Keita's eyes. "A favor, if I may, Sir Arthur."
"Of course," Keita said instantly, and McIlheny smiled his thanks.
"I've made a complete duplicate of my files. Technically, they're not supposed to leave my office, but I would be very grateful if you'd take them to Old Earth with you. I'd feel much happier with someone I know is clean in possession of my data in case—"
The colonel broke off with a crooked smile, and Keita nodded soberly.
"I will—and I'm honored by your trust."
"Thank you. And with your permission, sir, I'll arrange a periodic security download to you. One outside my normal cha
"Do you have a feeling?" Keita's eyes were suddenly intent, and the colonel shrugged.
"I ... don't know. It's just that I suspect we've been penetrated even more deeply than we've guessed. I don't want to sound paranoid, but these people have certainly demonstrated they're not shy about killing people. If I get too close to their mole ... Well, accidents happen, Sir Arthur."
-=0=-***-=0=
Vice Admiral Brinkman lit another cigar, tipped back his chair, and frowned meditatively up at the overhead. Things were getting complicated. Of course, they'd known they would—they had to, in fact, if this was going to work—but keeping so many balls in the air wore on a man's nerves.
He thought back over his discussion with Howell. He could certainly understand the commodore's concerns, and, frankly, he would have balked at hitting someone like the El Grecans if not for McIlheny. The collateral objectives would be valuable even without the troublesome colonel, but he was the real reason they had to strike at least one non-imperial target to prove they really were "pirates." Not that Brinkman expected even the Ringbolt attack to throw him off for long. It should create confusion among the people to whom he reported, but it was unlikely to create enough.
And that was because McIlheny wasn't going to give up. He might not realize what he had his teeth into, but he knew he was onto something, and he wasn't going to turn loose. The use of classified data to plan the squadron's operations had always been the shakiest part of the entire plan, yet there'd been no other way. Howell was good, but Fleet only had to get lucky once to blow his entire force out of space, so Fleet couldn't be allowed to get lucky.