Страница 76 из 96
Chapter Twenty-eight
The battleship Audacious hung in geosynchronous orbit above the heat-glass scar of Raphael, and Simon Monkoto paced her bridge. His eyes no longer burned with hate; they were as hard as his face, filled with a bitter determination cold enough to freeze the marrow of a star.
He knew his people were growing restive as they waited for him to find a way to take the offensive, but none of them had complained. Professional warriors all, they accepted that warriors often died, yet they also knew this wasn't just about Arlen. It was about the civilians who had died with Arlen, as well. About the murder of a city and the radioactive filth the warhead had blasted into Ringbolt's atmosphere. Mercenaries tended to be loyal first and foremost to their own, but they understood justice ... and vengeance. That was why the other outfits had responded in such strength.
He paused by the master plot, studying the light codes. Meaningless to the untrained eye, they told Monkoto everything at a glance.
The Ringbolt System was alive with ships. Most were small—cruisers or lighter—but they included a solid core of heavy hitters. The Falcons, Westfeldt's Wolves, Captain Tarbaneau and her Assassins... . He couldn't have picked a more battle-hardened group, yet they, like his own Maniacs, expected the great Simon Monkoto to Do Something. They owed him, and they wanted the people who'd done this thing, but there was a limit to how long they could sit here losing money. Unless the El Grecan government agreed to put them on the payroll, they'd have to start pulling out soon, and—
A soft buzz drew his eyes to the gravitic plot. He stepped closer, then stiffened as the preposterous nature of the incoming Fasset signature penetrated. Whatever it was, it was moving faster than a destroyer, yet its drive mass was greater than a battleship's!
More buzzers began to sound as other eyes and brains made the same observation. Additional sensors sprang alive, battle boards blinked green and amber eyes that turned quickly to red, and Simon Monkoto smiled.
That was an Imperial Fleet drive, but the ships that murdered Raphael had been Empire-built, as well.
-=0=-***-=0=
"You don't think you could've come in just a bit more discreetly?" Ben Belkassem asked politely from the chair Alicia had installed beside her own on Megarea's bridge. "They're probably in hair-trigger mode, you know."
"We don't have time to be inconspicuous," Alicia said absently. She wore her headset this time, and readiness signals purred to her from her weapon systems. She didn't want to use them, but if she had to ...
"Howell won't stay at the rendezvous more than another three weeks, and it's a two-week trip from here even if we could make it a straight shot—which we can't. We have to come in on a Wyvern-based vector, or they'll know we're not Alexsov the instant they pick us up. That gives us less than two days' leeway, and I'm not going to lose them now."
"But—"
"Either your friend Monkoto helps us, or he doesn't," she said flatly. "Either way, I'm going to be at AR-12359/J within the next nineteen standard days." She looked at him, and that same, strange hunger flickered in her eyes. "Tisiphone, Megarea, and I aren't going to miss our shot. Not now."
He closed his mouth. Ben Belkassem didn't frighten easily, yet there were times Alicia DeVries terrified him. Not because she threatened him, but because of the determination that burned in her like fiery ice. People had called her mad, and he'd disagreed; now he was no longer certain. She wouldn't stop—couldn't stop—and he wondered how much of that sprang from Tisiphone, whatever Tisiphone truly was, and how much from herself.
-=0=-***-=0=
Audacious rendezvoused with the other capital ships of the mercenary fleet barely half a million kilometers out from Ringbolt, for it was obvious the bogey was far faster and more maneuverable than they were. So far it had shown no sign of hostility, but Monkoto spread "his" ships—tight enough to concentrate their fire, dispersed enough to intercept any effort to get by them—and readiness reports murmured in his link to Audacious's cyber synth.
He returned his attention to the bogey with a sort of awe. Whatever it was, it was pouring on an incredible deceleration. It was well inside the primary's Powell limit, but it was decelerating at over thirteen hundred gravities—which, if it kept it up, would bring it to a halt, motionless with regard to Audacious, just over five thousand kilometers short of his flagship. If its intentions were hostile, that was suicide range, and—
The light cruiser Serpent finally got close enough for a visual, and Monkoto gawked as CIC shunted it to his display. A freighter? Impossible!
But a freighter the image before him was, and a freighter it remained—a slightly battered, totally unremarkable freighter ... with more drive power than a battleship.
-=0=-***-=0=
"We're coming into com range, Ferhat. Want me to hail them?" Megarea asked eagerly through a wall speaker, and Ben Belkassem heard Alicia's soft chuckle beside him.
Megarea liked the inspector, and Ben Belkassem was bemused by how much he liked her in return—and how much he enjoyed her bawdy, wicked sense of humor. She'd even built herself a "Megarea face," a svelte, stu
"Have you identified Audacious?" he asked.
"Yup. Just as big and nasty as you said, but I could spot her half my drive nodes and still run her into the ground."
"Be nice," Alicia said, and Megarea sniffed.
"Never mind, Megarea," Ben Belkassem gri
"Sure thing," she said, and he twitched his uniform straight for the pickup. His own baggage remained somewhere on Wyvern, but Alicia and Megarea had outfitted him in "Star Ru
-=0=-***-=0=
"Admiral, the bogey identifies itself as the private ship Star Ru
Monkoto scratched his nose. Odder and odder, he thought with his first real smile since the Ringbolt Raid, but that "private ship" business had to be a fiction. Whatever that thing might look like, it was no freighter.
"Route it to my station," he said, and leaned back as a lovely young woman in dark blue and silver appeared on his screen. He eyed her high-piled, Titian hair admiringly while he waited out the transmission lag, then her own eyes sharpened and looked back at him.
"Admiral Monkoto?" she inquired in a musical contralto, and he nodded. There was another lengthy delay while his nod sped to her screen, then she said, "I have someone here who wishes to speak to you, sir," and disappeared, replaced by a small, hook-nosed man in a sling and the same blue uniform.
"Hello, Simon," the newcomer said, not waiting for Monkoto to respond. "Sorry to drop in on you without warning, but we need to talk."
-=0=-***-=0=
Ben Belkassem watched Alicia from the corner of his eye as they stepped out of the perso
"It's been a long time, Ferhat," a mellow tenor said, and Simon Monkoto held out his hand in greeting.
"Not that long," Ben Belkassem disagreed, returning the mercenary's clasp with a toothy grin.
"And this must be Captain Mainwaring," Monkoto said, and Alicia smiled tightly without confirming his assumption. He didn't notice; his eyes were locked on Ben Belkassem, and his humor had vanished.
"You said you have some information for me?"
"I do—or, rather, Captain Mainwaring does."
"What—?" Monkoto began eagerly, then chopped himself off. "Forgive me. My colleagues are waiting in the main briefing room, and they should hear this along with me. If you'll join us, Captain?"
Alicia nodded and followed the tall, broad-shouldered mercenary into a lift. She watched his face as the elevator rose, seeing the pinched nostrils, the deep-etched furrow between the eyes, and she didn't need Tisiphone to feel his hunger calling to her own, sharp-edged and jagged.
The lift doors opened, and Monkoto ushered them into a briefing room.
"Captain Mainwaring, Mister Ben Belkassem, allow me to introduce my colleagues," he said, and worked his way down the table, starting with Admiral Yussuf Westfeldt, a stocky, gray- haired man. Commodore Tadeoshi Falconi was as tall as Monkoto but thin, with quick, assertive movements; Captain Esther Tarbaneau was a slender, black-ski
Between them, Alicia knew, these people controlled over seventy ships of war, including two battleships, nine battle-cruisers, and seven heavy cruisers, and no regular navy could have matched their experience. They looked back at her with hooded eyes, and she wondered what they made of her.
Monkoto finished the introductions and took a seat at the center of the long table, across from her and Ben Belkassem. The outsized view screen at her back was focused on Megarea's freighter disguise, and she tried not to wipe her palms on her trousers as she faced people who fought for pay and remembered the million-credit reward the Empire had offered for her.
"I've dealt with Mister Ben Belkassem before," Monkoto informed his fellows, "and I trust him implicitly. Certain conditions of confidentiality apply, but he represents a ... major galactic power." The others nodded and regarded the inspector with renewed curiosity, wondering which branch of the imperial bureaucracy he worked for, as Monkoto gestured for him to take over.