Gibraltar Stars Page 33

  Unfortunately, the treachery of a few greedy individuals sabotaged the anti-war position. The ensuing paranoia led to the current full-scale militarization.

  The Expansionists romanticized the war as a case of David versus Goliath. Vasloff had a different mental image.

  Back in primary school in Russia, he’d seen a holo about African monkeys. One young primate showed a morbid fascination with a boa constrictor that shared the limb on which the monkey sat. Every few seconds, the monkey reached out and grabbed at the snake’s head. For its part, the snake did nothing but flick out its tongue. With each touch and passive response, the monkey grew bolder.

  Quite unexpectedly, the snake opened its mouth, clamped down on the monkey’s arm, and slowly and horribly, wrapped its coils around its victim’s torso. As the young Mikhail and his classmates watched, the snake crushed the life out of its victim and slowly swallowed it.

  In Vasloff’s view, the Expansionists were like that little monkey. They insisted on poking the giant snake. Soon, the snake would strike, entrap Earth in its coils, and crush the life out of the human race.

  Vasloff lost no time after the collapse of the anti-war effort to build anew. His Terra Nostra organization proved the perfect instrument. They gained support and power steadily until, two years ago, he himself had been elected to parliament, representing the Lowlands District of Europe.

  “Mikhail, are you busy?” the box on his desk squawked. The voice was that of Claris Beaufort, his long time assistant.

  “No, not busy. What is it?”

  “I just received a report from one of our people in Toronto. It concerns old friends of yours. Guess who met with the World Coordinator this afternoon?

  “Who?

  “Admiral Daniel Landon, and Commanders Mark and Lisa Rykand.”

  “What?” he asked. “They’re all supposed to be Beyond the Crab.”

  “Apparently they arrived on the courier ship this morning and were whisked by chartered suborbital to Toronto.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “According to our source, they left for European Headquarters with Admiral N’Gomo. They should be in Meersburg this evening.”

  “Find out where they are staying and get me on a flight to Zurich.”

  #

  Mark, Lisa and Dan Landon strolled into the Meersburg Yacht Club on the north shore of Lake Constance, which is called “the Bodensee” on the north shore. They were in civilian clothes, having walked the kilometer along the promenade from the small country inn where they were staying.

  “I think you will like the food here,” Mark said as he ushered the other two into the bar to wait for a table, “although the waitress’ attitudes leave something to be desired.”

  “Have you been here before?” his wife asked.

  He nodded. “I ate dinner here, once.”

  “With Moira Sims?”

  “No, it was a business meeting,” he responded without elaborating.

  A waitress in a low-cut dress took their order for drinks and disappeared. Lisa noticed both men’s eyes following her. She had gotten used to that reflex in her husband, but the Admiral surprised her. Then she wondered why. After all, he was a man…

  He interrupted her train of thought by saying, “When we go to headquarters in the morning, I will get you settled with the people in Strategic Plans, and then I will be leaving you for a few days,” Landon said.

  “Sir?” Mark asked.

  “This is the first time I’ve been home since we decamped for Brinks in force. I want to see my daughter.”

  Both of them blinked. Landon never talked about his family. They knew he was divorced, a not uncommon condition for the Space Navy, and had a son and daughter. The son was serving on a starship somewhere, but the daughter was a mystery.

  “How old is she, sir?”

  “Twenty-four. She’s about to make me a grandfather. She and her husband live in Spain, so I thought I would pop down there for three or four days.”

  “How wonderful,” Lisa replied.

  “Think you can hold down the fort?”

  “We’ll do our best, sir.”

  “I’m just Dan in civvies, Mark. We’ve been through enough together to be on a first-name basis.”

  They had conferred with Admiral N’Gomo on the suborbital transport from Toronto to the small airport on the Swiss side of the lake that served European H.Q. All agreed that the presentation went well and that the Coordinator was intrigued, as was N’Gomo.

  Before the Navy would commit to authorizing an offensive, however, it would have to pass a rigorous screening and simulation process.

  That is what they would start in the morning.

  Planning would feed everything they learned at Sabator into the big computers in the basement of H.Q., where it would join years of Q-ship observations and a goodly portion of the data from the Pastol database. They would run simulations on various battle strategies to see what worked and what did not.

  “Your table is ready, Meine Dame und Herren,” the waitress said upon her return. She balanced three golden beers on a tray, which she did not put down. Rather, she led them into the restaurant and deposited the drinks on their table.

  Mark and Lisa sat on one side, with Landon opposite. They had just opened their menus and were discussing a choice of wine when Mark looked up and groaned.

  “What is it?” Lisa asked, following his gaze. She emitted an unladylike expression, causing Landon to swivel in his seat. If he had a response, he kept it to himself.

  Threading his way among the crowded tables, aiming right for them, was a smiling Mikhail Vasloff.

  #

  “Good evening, former teammates!” he said as he arrived. “The lady at your villa said that you’d gone out. I thought you might have come here.”

  “Why would you think that?” Lisa asked, perplexed.

  “This is where Mark and I ate dinner the night we met,” Vasloff replied, causing Lisa to turn and stare at her husband.

  He shrugged. “I told you it was a business dinner.”

  “What business?”

  “Finding out what happened to Jani. I paid this scoundrel and he never gave me anything useful in return.”

  “You had found your own way into the project before I had a chance to report,” Vasloff replied. “May I sit down?”

  Everyone turned to Landon, who seemed on the verge of refusing. “Sure, Mikhail. Good to see you again. Have a seat. I hear that you have come up in the world.”

  “No more than you, Admiral. I understand you are in overall command Beyond the Crab!”

  “More to the point,” Landon said, “how did you know where we were staying?”

  Vasloff shrugged. “As you say, I have come up in the world. I now have people who can find out things I need to know relatively quickly. In this case, it was a simple matter of pulling up your hotel reservations.”

  “But that is against the law…” Lisa exclaimed.

  “Yes, it is. Luckily, the man who did it for me didn’t get caught. There is nothing against the law about using the information once it has been obtained, however. If the Polizei ask me about it, I can truthfully tell them I have no idea who the hacker is.

  “I see you are looking at the wine list. The fish here is quite good. Might I suggest a Riesling Heiligenstein?”

  Dan Landon nodded. “We will bow to your expertise. Where we’ve been, the vintages all come from vacuum sealed aluminum kegs.”

  The waitress returned and the four of them ordered dinner: three fish courses and a steak. Mark had never cared for seafood and was not picky about his wines. After the waitress punched in the orders, she left them alone.

  Vasloff said, “Now, let us get the business of the evening out of the way so that we may then relax and enjoy each other’s company. What are the three of you doing on Earth?”

  “We’re on leave,” Landon said.

  “Come now, Admiral. You were in the Coordinator’s office in Canada by 09:0
0. Later, Admiral N’Gomo gave you a lift here, you checked into your hotel, cleaned up, took a walk, and still made it in time for dinner. A frenetic leave, is it not?”

  “When you’ve been in the deep vacuum as long as we have, you don’t want to waste a minute. Besides, whatever reason we have for being here is none of your business.”

  “I’m sorry, Daniel, but I am now an elected member of parliament. The war effort is my business and having the Commanding Admiral arrive unannounced says something important is afoot.”

  His comment was met with silence.

  “Well then, I tried. Now we can all relax and enjoy our meal. You won’t let me in on your secret; I, however, have no such reticence. Let me tell you how my life has been going since last we were together…”

  #

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “How did it go?” Claris Beaumont asked Vasloff when he returned to his office in Amsterdam.

  “I learned what I needed to,” he said. “Call for a conference this afternoon. We have actions to plan.”

  “They told you why they have come back to Earth?” his assistant asked incredulously.

  “Of course not. Mostly we talked about sports. I did most of the talking. They have been gone so long that they were interested in the standings.”

  “Then what did you learn?”

  “That something big is going on. It was in their faces and the carefully casual way in which they feigned interest in what I was saying. And it was in their evasions when I drifted onto the subject of how the war is going. And mostly it was in the way they drank.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “We had a couple of glasses of wine with dinner and they called it a night. Most people spending their first night on Earth after years in space would have littered the table with empty wine bottles. They strolled back to their hotel. Most spacers would have had to be delivered by cab and helped to bed. They drank like they were on duty, which means they had an early meeting at headquarters this morning.

  “Get me Bruno Hauser on the phone once you’ve set up this afternoon’s conference.”

  “Yes, sir,” Claris, snapping shut her dictation screen.

  Vasloff leaned back in his chair and activated the swivel that would rotate him to face the window. An electric tour boat was gliding downstream in the canal, half full of tourists. Not bad considering the weather. The skies were leaden, with a slow drizzle falling.

  His screen beeped a few minutes later. He swiveled back and pressed the accept key. His screen cleared to show the features of a short, jowly man. It took a few seconds for the image to build, indicating that call encryption was set on high.

  “Hello, Mikhail. What can I do for you this fine day?”

  “Speak for yourself, Bruno. It’s raining here.”

  “Too bad. We have scattered clouds and a cool breeze off the lake. How may I help you?”

  He told his caller about his evening.

  “It sounds most pleasant. I have eaten at the yacht club many times. The service could be improved, but the food is first rate. What has this to do with me?”

  “They went to Headquarters this morning. I would like to know who they met with.”

  “You know we haven’t anyone inside Navy Headquarters, not since they discovered our young man who was watering their plants.”

  Vasloff nodded. The era when nations spied on one another had not outlived the nations themselves, but the spy trade was very much alive. Commercial firms used confidential agents to gain competitive advantage, and of course, political factions strove to find out what their opponents were up to. Peace Now! had its own security department in charge of ferreting out those whose loyalty was suspect. So, too, did the Space Navy.

  “Do what you can. If it were just the Rykands, I would not be concerned, but Dan Landon is in overall command. His coming back to Earth indicates that whatever it is, he is willing to be away from his desk for at least two and a half months. That means it is important. We don’t want to be caught flat-footed the way we were when Sar-Say pulled his prison break!”

  “Understood, Mikhail. I will run the trap lines and see what I can learn. I’ll report tomorrow.”

  “Excellent, Bruno. Say hello to your wife for me.”

  #

  Strategic Plans occupied one floor of Fleet Headquarters and their computers took up a full subbasement. Mark, Lisa, and Dan Landon delivered their cargo of encrypted data cubes the next morning. Mark and Lisa helped the technicians catalog the data and prioritize it for input while Landon talked to Admiral N’Gomo about their unexpected visitor the previous evening.

  “I don’t like it,” N’Gomo said. “The man has too damned many spies in parliament, and I fear, in this building.”

  “They’re good, all right,” Landon agreed. “Who knew we were meeting with the Coordinator and that we were returning here with you?”

  “I’ll put Security on it. These political types think that anything that gives them a leg up is fair game; but, damn it, we’ve a war going on. Perhaps I can get whoever tipped off Vasloff shot.”

  “If not, sir; send him my way. I’d like to introduce him to a couple of years on Nemesis.”

  By the end of a long first day, the computer techs were clear on what was needed to set up a simulation of a general offensive against the Broa. All they had to do was break down the raw data, put it into a form the computers could understand, and then input it and a few billion other tidbits.

  Landon said goodbye at 16:00 and rushed to catch a flight to Spain, leaving Mark and Lisa to interpret for the techs. That night, back in their room at the Villa am See, Lisa remarked that interpreting High Broan was easier than some of the things she’d been asked at H.Q.

  They spent the next three days building the timeline for the Battle of Sabator in a way that it could be coded properly. For this they used records from Galahad. The specialists were interested in all manner of minutiae, from how long after the explosion the interception order went out, to how quickly the local system government organized the massive response following their ships’ destruction.

  Mark handled those details while Lisa helped with the communications intercepts. She’d spent a full week working watch and watch, listening to Broan chatter and computer directives that flooded out from the planet and Sabator space installations. Even so, she had barely skimmed the surface, catching brief snippets of those intercepts the computers thought might be important. There were literally millions of other signals the computers recorded and filed away for later review.

  These had to be run through specialized translation programs, categorized, time stamped, and assembled into a searchable database. Just as a single innocuous order to clear a stargate had led to the Broan home system, there was no telling what small tidbit might prove crucial in developing their battle plan.

  By the end of the week, they were ready to run a calibration test on the model. After breakfast at the villa, Mark and Lisa reported to H.Q. and were ushered into the auditorium that had once been the press briefing center for the Stellar Survey. The podium was still there, but suspended over it was the largest holocube either of them had ever seen.

  “We’ll start with a simple calibration scenario,” Lieutenant Hector Cruz, the officer leading the team, said as he led them to two comfortable seats down front. Save for his uniform, Cruz didn’t look much like a naval officer. He was a small, nervous man with an indefinable birdlike quality about him. He had the quality of a university grad student about him. That was what he had been before being drafted.

  The holocube lit to show a G-class star surrounded by twelve multicolored planets. The planets followed circular and elliptical threads of light around the star. Two flattened blue tori represented asteroid belts spread out between the fifth and sixth, and sixth and seventh planets.

  “Recognize it?” Cruz asked.

  “Sabator,” Mark replied.

  “Now then, let’s add our operational space.”

  He did
something with his hand control and a red haze appeared, surrounded the star to form a hollow sphere. The seven inner planets were in the clear center of the sphere while the outermost five were submerged in the haze.

  “One thing highlighted by your adventure, Mark, is the importance of the critical limit. That defines the ‘terrain’ of this particular battle space.

  “The critical limit for Sabator is just beyond the seventh planet. Inside that limit, we cannot use our stardrives, meaning that battles must be fought in normal space where we lose our ability to materialize and dematerialize at will.

  “The effectiveness of our primary weapon is also degraded inside the limit. Beyond it, a superlight missile has essentially infinite range. Down close to the fifth planet where the battle was fought, a superlight missile can’t punch through more than a few million kilometers before stress overloads the generator.”

  “Which means that we need to do our fighting outside the limit,” Mark said, remembering how he had wished Yeovil or Galahad would swoop down to rescue him.

  “True. However, even that constraint is an advantage. The Broa have to place their stargates beyond the limit to make them work properly. That puts them out of their zone of optimum operation and into ours.

  “What you are about to see is a simulation of an Alpha Attack on Sabator. Our ships are staging from one light-month out in deep space. The mission parameters are to destroy the system stargates in minimum time and escape. We are running this in real time. Ready?”

  “Let’s see it,” Lisa answered.

  In addition to the star, the planets, and the asteroid belts, there were six golden hourglass symbols representing the stargates. All were in the plane of the ecliptic and within the red haze. Two were close to the critical limit, while one was out at the distance of Planet Eight.

  “Beginning now,” Cruz said, pressing a stud on his hand controller.

  On the screen, a cluster of green dots appeared near each hourglass, then disappeared five seconds later. Sometime in those seconds, all six hourglass symbols vanished.