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Chapter Twenty-one
The pages of Colonel McIlheny's latest report lay strewn about the carpet where Governor General Treadwell had flung them. Now the governor, his normally bland face an ugly shade of puce, half stood to lean across the conference table and glare at Rosario Gomez.
"I'm tired of excuses, Admiral," he grated. "If they are excuses and not a cover for something else. I find it remarkable that your units are so persistently elsewhere when these pirates strike!"
Gomez glared back at him with barely restrained fury, and he sneered.
"At best, your complete ineffectualness cost nine million lives on Elysium, and now this." His nostrils quivered as he inhaled harshly. "I suppose we should be grateful that the million-and-ahalf people in Raphael weren't imperial subjects. No doubt you and your people are, at any rate. At least it didn't require you to face the enemy in combat!"
Rosario Gomez rose very slowly and put her own hands on the table. She leaned to meet him, her eyes flint, and her voice was very soft.
"Governor, you're a fool, and my people won't be your whipping boys."
"You're out of line, Admiral!" Treadwell snapped.
"I am not." Gomez's words were chipped ice. "Nothing in the Articles of War requires me to listen to insults simply because my political superior is under pressure. Your implication that I am unconcerned by the massacre of civilians—any civilians, imperial or El Grecan—is almost as contemptible as your aspersions upon the integrity and courage of my perso
Treadwell went absolutely white as the last salvo struck, and McIlheny held his breath. Fury smoked between those two granite profiles, and the colonel knew his admiral well. That last blow had been calculated with icy precision. The Iron Maiden didn't know what retreat was, but she was a just, fair-minded person, acutely sensitive to the total unfairness of such a remark. She knew precisely how wounding it would be, which said a great deal about her own emotional state. Yet it had been born of more than simple fury. It was a warning that there was a point beyond which Lady Rosario Gomez would not be pushed by God or the Devil, far less a mere imperial governor, and McIlheny prayed Treadwell retained enough control to recognize it.
Apparently he did. His knuckles pressed the tabletop as his hands clenched into fists, but he made himself sink back into his chair. Silence hung taut for a long moment, and then he exhaled a lone breath.
"Very well, Lady Rosario." His voice was frozen helium, but the venom was suppressed, and Gomez resumed her own seat, eyes still locked with his. "I ... regret any aspersions I may have cast upon your honor or that of your perso
She nodded curtly, and he went on with that same frozen self-control.
"Nonetheless, and whatever our past force structure differences may have been, we now face a significantly graver position. The Empire hasn't suffered such casualties, military or civilian, since HRW-II, and the El Grecans' losses are proportionally far worse. You will, I trust, agree that it is no longer sufficient merely to deter or stop these raiders? That it has become imperative that we locate, pursue, and destroy them utterly?"
"I do," Admiral Gomez said shortly.
"Thank you." Treadwell produced a tight, bitter smile, devoid of any hint of warmth. "I may, perhaps, have been in error to oppose your earlier requests for lighter units. That, however, is now water under the bridge, and I have personally starcommed Countess Miller and Grand Duke Phillip to lay the situation before them. My impression is that they are fully aware of its seriousness, and the grand duke informs me that Senators Alwyn and Mojanek are pressing for a more vigorous response. I feel, therefore, that it has become far more likely that Lord Jurawski will respond favorably if I renew my request for additional battle squadrons with your support.
Gomez's lips thi
Not, perhaps, too well, judging by the exchange which had just ended.
Yet Treadwell was right in at least one respect. The situation had changed. The pirates, or whatever the hell they really were, had to be hunted down and destroyed, not merely stopped, and the political pressure to use whatever sledgehammer that required could not be ignored.
"I still feel that response is neither required nor the best available," Gomez said at last. She flicked her eyes briefly aside to Amos Brinkman, who had sat prudently silent throughout. He showed no inclination to break that silence now, and her gaze returned to Treadwell. "Nonetheless, sir, anything that gets us off dead center is better than nothing. I will support you if you will also request an immediate dispatch of all available light units in the meantime."
Treadwell sat like a stone, his mouth as tight as her own, and matched her glower for glower. Then, at last, he nodded.
-=0=-***-=0=
Soft music played in the background as Benjamin McIlheny leaned back and plucked at his lower lip. The latest report from his handpicked internal security commander lay on the desk before him, and it made disturbing reading.
Enough Elysium survivors had been interviewed to conclusively prove that Commodore Trang had been duped into letting the enemy into decisive range without even alerting the planet. The colonel had run every possible reason for such suicidal overconfidence through the tactical simulator, and only one of them made any sense. The pirates had to have been detected on the way in, and that meant they had to have been identified as friendly. And, given the high degree of alert the entire sector had maintained for months, no system commander could have been fooled. Therefore, the incoming warship must have been friendly ... or else have arrived at such a time and under such circumstances that Trang's people had very good reason to "know" it was.
So. Either it had been a real Fleet unit, or else it had timed its arrival to coincide with a scheduled arrival by something that was. Only there had been no scheduled traffic. McIlheny knew, for he'd personally read every official communication to Elysium. There were many ways pirates could have gotten their hands on ex-Fleet hulls—some members of the Ministry had argued for years that Fleet disposal policies were badly in need of overhaul—yet that wouldn't have helped without proper transponder codes and a scheduled arrival. A low-level agent might have provided the codes or, at least, enough data to cobble up something that looked legitimate, but no one below flag rank could have engineered a false shipping report to open the door.
No. Someone of the rank of commodore or—McIlheny shuddered—higher must have inserted a fake schedule into Trang's routine message traffic. Someone with access to the authentication protocols required to sneak it in and the ability to extract and wipe the routine acknowledgment Trang must have sent back. Worst of all, someone who knew there would be no heavy units in the system when the raiders arrived.
The penetration was worse than he'd thought. It was total. Whoever was behind it must have access to his own reports and Admiral Gomez's complete deployment orders—must even have known El Greco was pulling its units out of Ringbolt for maneuvers.
He closed his eyes in pain at the scale of the treason that implied, but it wasn't really a surprise. Not anymore.
All right. No more than forty people had access to all of that data, and he knew precisely who they were. Any one of them might, conceivably, have passed it to someone outside the loop who had the command authority to doctor Trang's starcom traffic, but if they could do that without his spotting them, their chain of communications had to be both short and hellishly well-hidden. In his own mind, it came down to no more than a dozen possible suspects ... all of whom had passed every security check he could throw at them. It couldn't be one of them, and at the same time, it had to be.
He straightened and lifted a chip from his desk, weighing it in his fingers. Thank God he'd arranged a link to Keita. He was becoming so paranoid he no longer completely trusted even Admiral Gomez, and the deadly miasma of distrust and fear was getting to him. He'd started seeing assassins in every shadow, which was bad enough, if not as bad as the sense that nothing he did could stop the inexorable murder of civilians he was sworn to protect.
But worst of all was his absolute conviction that whatever twisted strategy lay behind these "pirates" was winding to its climax. Time was ru
He stood, face hard with purpose, and slipped the chip into his pocket beside the one already there. One would be dropped into his secret pipeline to Keita; the other would be delivered to Admiral Gomez, and both contained his conclusion that someone of flag rank was directly involved with the raiders. But unlike the one to Keita, Admiral Gomez's stated unequivocally that he would know the traitor's identity within the next few weeks.