Страница 63 из 151
Everyone turned as Al strode forward. There were grins, smiles, whoops, sharp whistles. He did the rounds, pressing the flesh, joking, laughing, thanking, offering encouragement.
Jezzibella followed a pace behind him. She and Leroy quirked an eyebrow at each other.
“So how’s it going?” Al asked a scrum of his senior lieutenants when he’d finished his processional.
“We’re more or less sticking to the timetable,” Mickey Pileggi said. “Some places put up a fight. Others just roll onto their backs and stick their legs in the air for us. We got no way of knowing in advance. Word’s getting out that we aren’t possessing everyone. It helps. Causes a shitload of confusion.”
“Fine from my angle, too, Al,” Emmet Mordden said. “Our sensor satellites have been monitoring some of the deep space message traffic. It’s not easy, because most of it is directional tight beam. But it looks like the rest of the system knows we’re here, and what we’re doing.”
“Is that going to be a problem?” Al asked.
“No, sir. We caught nearly forty per cent of New California’s navy ships in dock when we took over the orbiting asteroids. They’re still there, and another twenty per cent is on permanent assignment to the Confederation Navy fleets. That just leaves a maximum of about fifty ships left in the system who could cause us any grief. But I’ve got every SD platform on situation-A readiness. Even if the admirals out there get their act together, they know it would be suicide to attack us.”
Al lit a cigar, and blew a stream of smoke towards the screen. The near-orbit tactical display, Emmet had called it yesterday. It looked pretty calm at the moment. “Sounds like you’re handling your slice of the action, Emmet. I’m impressed.”
“Thanks, Al.” The nervous man bobbed in appreciation. “As you can see, there’s no spacecraft activity within a million kilometres of the planetary surface, except for five voidhawks. They’re holding themselves stable over the poles, seven hundred thousand kilometres out. My guess is they’re just watching us to see what’s happening.”
“Spies?” Al inquired.
“Yes.”
“We should blow them all to shit,” Bernhard Allsop said loudly. “Ain’t that right, Al? That’ll give the rest of those frigging Commie Edenists the message: Don’t spy on us, don’t fuck with us or it’s your ass.”
“Shut up,” Al said mildly.
Bernhard twitched apprehensively. “Sure, Al. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”
“Can you hit the voidhawks?” Jezzibella asked.
Emmet glanced from her to Al, and licked his suddenly sweaty lips. “It’s difficult, you know? They chose those polar positions carefully. I mean, they’re out of range of our energy weapons. And if we launch a combat wasp salvo at them, they’ll just dive down a wormhole. But, hey . . . they can’t hurt us, either.”
“Not this time,” Al said. He chewed his cigar from the left side of his mouth to the right. “But they can see what we’re about, and it’ll frighten them. Pretty soon the whole goddamn Confederation is going to know what’s happened here.”
“I told you they’d be trouble, Al baby,” Jezzibella said, on cue. Her voice had shunted down to a tart’s whi
“Sure you did, doll,” he said, not taking his eyes off the tactical display. “We’re go
“Well, hell, Al,” Emmet said. “I’ll give it a go, but I don’t think . . .”
“No, Emmet,” Al said generously. “I ain’t talking about five crappy little ships. I’m talking about what’s lining up behind them.”
“The Edenists?” Bernhard asked, hopefully.
“Partly, yeah. But they ain’t the whole picture, are they, boy? You gotta think big , here. You’re in a big universe now.” He had their complete attention. Damn, but Jez had been right. Typical.
“The Edenists are go
“We can fight,” Bernhard said.
“We’ll lose,” Al purred. “But that don’t matter. Does it? Because I know what you’re thinking. Every goddamned dumb-ass one of you. You’re thinking: We won’t be here. We’re go
Shuffled feet and downcast eyes was the only response he was offered. “Mickey, ain’t that right?”
Mickey Pileggi developed an urgent wish to be somewhere else. He couldn’t meet his boss’s interrogatory stare. “Well, you know how it is, Al. That’s a last resort, sure. But shit, we can do like Bernhard says and fight some first. I ain’t afraid of fighting.”
“Sure you ain’t afraid. I didn’t say you were afraid. I didn’t insult you, Mickey, you rube goof. I’m saying you ain’t thinking level. The Confederation Navy, they’re go
The left side of Mickey’s face began to tic alarmingly. “Sure, boss,” he said numbly.
“So you think that’s go
Al Capone gri
For five centuries after the first successful ZTT jump, governments, universities, companies, and military laboratories throughout the Confederation had been researching methods of direct supralight communication. And for all the billions of fuseodollars poured into the various projects, no one had ever produced a valid theory let alone a practical system to surmount the problem. Starships remained the only method of carrying data between star systems.