Chapter 9
“Preparation for conflict is first psychology, viewing action through the eyes of your foe, then it is merely the pessimistic estimation of the possible.”
Devlin Sinclair-Maru, Integrity Mirror
Saef awakened the instant his UI flashed behind his eyelids. For a moment as he looked up to the stark ceiling of his cabin, he wondered if he was back on the intrasystem cutter he commanded back at Battersea.
The overlay of his UI quickly reminded him: the Goose.
Claude had called (chattering about his damned kilt, and, oh yes, a deadly explosion), then Saef had completed his workout, showered, and caught a few hours of sleep. The UI timer showed he had slept for exactly four hours.
His UI also displayed a low-priority message from Inga, received an hour earlier.
Saef sat up on the Spartan bunk and threw his legs over as he opened the message. It only provided a link to the crew-rating file he had sent her…six hours ago.
Frowning, Saef opened the link. He figured this must signal some insubordination by refusing to even try sorting through the stack of Fleet ratings, even though she had asked for it. He knew this situation with Inga was going to be a command nightmare.
Saef’s first jolt of surprise came in the instant he opened the file. She had clearly arranged the stack of ratings, because her own Fleet file now topped the list, and Saef found himself looking at Inga’s image in Fleet uniform, the details of her standard Fleet CV scrolling beneath. Saef felt suddenly self-conscious sitting naked on the edge of his bunk with Inga’s image not quite smiling at him, so he pushed the file aside, hit the shower, and dressed. He pulled on his boots just as the Goose made its N-space transition. He paused, feeling and seeing the effects of N-space all around him. The subtle brightening of light, an iridescence on some surfaces, and a polarized appearance on others—these were the external signs of the transition. Faint warmth emanating from the implant in his skull represented the only internal indication.
Saef shrugged off the sensations. It wasn’t his first transition.
He reopened the crew file to Inga’s CV and half-smiling image, and he began to read in detail: rated in crystal computer systems, rated in signals intelligence, advanced degree in psychology from Battersea University, one year System Guard service with highest marks, and then she made the cut in Fleet selection. The CV listed her age as twenty-five standard, but that didn’t seem to add up. Saef grunted, thinking back fifteen years to that young girl with her hair in disarray, clutching something in her arms…a doll or something, seeming so very pathetic.
Yes, her age would be about right, but her accomplishments in just fifteen years? Had Bess doctored her CV somehow?
At the bottom of the file Inga had affixed a personal note: THIS CANDIDATE IS RECOMMENDED. I KNOW HER VERY WELL, AND DESPITE CERTAIN MINOR FLAWS, SHE IS EXTREMELY RELIABLE AND NOTED FOR HER CLOAK-AND-DAGGER SKILLS. THE REMAINDER OF THIS RATING LIST I ORGANIZED IN ORDER OF CANDIDATES THAT I FIND MOST PROMISING.
Saef couldn’t help smiling a little at that, and continued flipping through the stack of ratings to see what criteria she might have used to sort all the ratings so very quickly.
The next CV displayed a distinguished engineering rating. At the bottom of the engineer’s CV Saef found a lengthy note Inga affixed that explained her reasons for placing this fellow at the top of the stack.
Saef flipped to the next CV and scanned down to the bottom: Another note from Inga. He quickly continued through the first dozen, finding a comment from Inga on every rating. The next dozen or so carried at least a single line from Inga. One such note on a rating said, SOMETHING ODD ABOUT THIS BLIGHTER, BUT GREAT MARKS. WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Saef’s UI chirped as he felt the transition back into normal space. It recalled him to the present moment, and he set aside the crew file, perplexed. She really had sifted the entire file, it appeared, and that must have taken all night. It provided a puzzlingly different picture of her, particularly combined with the information contained in her CV, if that was truly accurate.
Saef hadn’t even realized that Inga’s CV was among the collection of available ratings.
Still frowning, Saef opened his cabin door just as Inga’s cabin door slid open. She looked as fresh as a person could hope, dressed in her Fleet uniform and boots, her eyes wide as ever and her face untouched by any hint of fatigue.
“Good morning, Commander,” she greeted with her half smile.
“Morning, Maru,” he replied, somewhat self-consciously. “I just glanced at that crew file. Thanks for the help. I’ll sift it more later.”
“You’re welcome, sir,” she said primly, but Saef thought he saw a hint of mockery in her expression.
Saef paused a bare instant then nodded and turned toward the small galley and its equally small food-fab. “Hungry?” Saef asked.
“I broke my fast already, but I’ll join you if that’s an invite.”
“Well, indeed…excellent,” Saef said, feeling strangely out of his normal depth. “How’d you find their fab?”
They stepped into the tiny galley and Saef immediately detected the pleasing scent of real coffee.
“Oh, you’ll be pleasantly surprised, I think,” she said. “The marmalade tastes real, the eggs, the toast. All very nice. And Fleet-style coffee, too!”
Saef smiled, lifting a mug from the lock rack. “You must have worked up quite the appetite reading all those dull files, eh?”
Inga waved a dismissive hand, took a mug, and leaned back against a bulkhead. “That was fun. I like to stay busy.”
Saef breathed in the steam as he sampled the coffee. Inga had it right…Fleet-style coffee: thick, black and salted. “Fun? If that’s fun, what’s tedious, then?”
Inga answered instantly, “Empty time, bloviating fools, and losing.”
Saef smiled. “Bloviating fools? I hope I never qualify, but I fear that may be part of my new duties. It seems Fleet captains may do a fair bit of speechifying.”
Inga gazed at him, smirking as she sipped from her cup. “No, I don’t think blathering will ever be one of your great sins. But I will assist you in faking it.”
“Oh? You’re an expert in bloviating? But you hate it?”
Inga looked away. “Sure. We all pay more attention to what we hate than to what we love.”
Saef drank again from the aromatic cup, sizing her up. “That sounds like a psych degree talking.”
“You saw my childhood,” she said in a colorless tone, “you know what’s talking.”
Saef stared at Inga’s shadowed profile, puzzled, but before he could speak, his UI chirped with a summons from the captain.
“Our host calls,” Inga said.
“Shall we?”
With mugs in hand, Inga and Saef walked down the weary-looking corridor to the bridge.
The captain and his two crew sat on very old, well-worn acceleration couches, surrounded by the old-fashioned instruments of a pre-implant cockpit. Their eyes remained fixed upon a holo that seemed strangely out of place among all the artifacts.
The captain glanced at them, seeming to have a momentary double take at the sight of Inga’s Fleet uniform. “Thought you might want to see this,” the captain said by way of a greeting.
Saef could not guess how much magnification the ship optics employed in generating the holo image, but Core system’s sun did not appear on the holo, while a host of Fleet vessels did, every shadow sharp-edged. Several torched in under negative acceleration, and many more coasted to or from the Strand, Fleet’s orbital dock complex and shipyard.
“I’ve made this run many a year and never seen it like this,” the captain said. “All because a few systems rebel.”
Saef gestured toward one large warship at the edge of the holo. “Looks like there’s part of the reason for the stir, Captain.”
The captain leaned forward, squinting, made a hand motion, and the holo enhanced the image of the large warship. This made clear the pattern of damage, the blackened patches of overheated alloy, slumping weapon mounts, the gaping holes.
“That’s Victory, I think,” the captain muttered, staring. “Sixty thousand ton, and only forty, fifty years old. She got handled rough.”
“Had to be part of a squadron,” the mate said, shaking her head. “Where’s the rest of them? Still off-system? Or…?”
“Who knows?” the captain said, continuing to stare at the image of the battered ship. He shrugged and looked back to his passengers. “Just thought you might like to see this with your own eyes. Over four million ton of warship on the move, coming and going. It’s something to see.”
“Indeed,” Saef said, and the captain seemed to wait for more enthusiasm that was not forthcoming.
Inga stepped smoothly in. “To think, Captain, we might never witness such a sight again in our lifetimes!”
The captain turned his expectant face from Saef to Inga, smiling. “Exactly my thought! Precisely.”
“Thank you for…for sharing this moment with us,” she said.
“Pleased! Pleased!” he beamed.
“What’s our transit time to Core Alpha, Captain?” Saef asked.
The captain’s smile faded somewhat as he turned to Saef. “Well, let’s see…should be about twenty hours or so until we go in to dock.”
“Excellent,” Saef said. “I suppose I’ll go finish breakfast, if you’ll excuse us, Captain.”
“Of course, enjoy,” the captain said to Saef, then smiled in Inga’s direction again.
Inga and Saef strode the short distance back to the galley in silence, and continued in silence as they both selected a rather sumptuous breakfast.
As they ate very realistic eggs, and sipped Fleet-style coffee, Inga finally asked, “What do you think?”
“About breakfast? You were quite right, their food-fab is good.”
“No, not breakfast,” she said, lowering her eyebrows.
Saef smiled at her irritation and took a slow sip of coffee before answering. “I think,” he said at last, “that my spot on the Fleet seniority list just moved up a half-dozen places or so.”
Goose arrived in dock within a few minutes of the captain’s prediction, out on one of the fringe arms of Core Alpha.
Saef and Inga debarked with hasty farewells to the captain and crew, who immediately set to the unloading of their cargo. Inga, shrouded once again within her voluminous cloak, led the dumb-mech, while Saef walked close beside, now clad in his Fleet uniform, his shoulder tabs displaying the rank of commander.
As they moved deeper into Core Alpha, the immense orbital station in orbit above Imperial City, Saef’s Fleet command UI really came to life. He found dozens of optional feeds and overlays, facility readouts for everything from janitorial mechs to structural inspection data, and private mail drops and point communicator posts at every junction. From time to time, though, in the midst of the maelstrom of new data, he noted the new icon in his UI. It represented his body shield, the old Shaper tech gift passed down from Devlin Sinclair-Maru.
When he had prepared to leave the Goose, Saef had finally overcome his reluctance to use the priceless family heirloom, and now the warm oval of flexible material adhered to the skin of his low back. It linked with his UI, displaying an icon in an oddly antiquated font. Now, supposedly, the shield stood ready to deflect most any projectile of any substantial mass, moving at a velocity of at least one hundred meters per second. To Saef’s core instincts it seemed wildly improbable that an antipersonnel round, moving at two thousand meters per second, would bounce harmlessly away from the clear air, rather than pulping his scowling face. Of course Saef’s training in House doctrine made it abundantly clear that human core instincts were much better suited in finding tasty grubs or fleeing scary things than they were in “instinctively” grasping advanced technology of any kind.
So he wore the ancient gift and silently thanked Bess for the additional tool at his disposal, despite his mounting sense of obligation.
The mercantile wing of Core Alpha adjoined immense bays, filled with product from the many worlds of the Imperium, all awaiting the incoming Shaper Armada. Through the augmented vision of his new Fleet command UI, Saef observed the vast mechanisms at work beneath their feet, shuttling cargo containers disgorged from the dozens of merchant ships along a trackway, to rows of awaiting storage bays, each large enough to contain Lykeios Manor many times over.
Though it no longer required the obscene quantities of energy to lift products up out of the gravity wells, it was still pricey, so the variegated harvest of the Imperium lifted only once from any planet, and thence to Core Alpha in the holds of the many busy merchant carriers.
Much of Core Alpha, however, contained the apparatus of Fleet, rather than mere commerce. And another sizeable section provided space for a large, vibrant residential community, complete with lodgings, parks, malls, and entertainment facilities.
For some old reason, despite the fact that most Fleet command structure resided in Core Alpha (and the nearby Strand) along with the banks of QE comms that connected Fleet operations across the Imperium, the Fleet Admiralty Board operated from Imperial City, planetside below.
Thus, Saef, Inga, and the scampering dumb-mech walked from the prosaic corridors of the mercantile wing to the junction with the main disk of Core Alpha, on their way to transport planetward.
The Imperial Marines on duty at the junction eyed Inga and Saef with desultory interest. Two wore the sleek and imposing Imperial battledress armor, while the others wore the simpler shock armor which revealed their faces. Most of the Marines clearly displayed the marks of heavyworld parentage, and Saef pondered how Fleet security might ever sift the ranks for rebel sympathizers. Although Bess had not explicitly said that Saef’s heavyworld rivals might be rebel fifth columnists, Saef made that leap quite easily on his own.
Saef led the way to the arch for command level personnel, bypassing all intrusive security. He saw his UI accept the coded Fleet challenge signal, handshake, and saw it spool his retinue of one assistant and one dumb-mech with luggage, and they passed through. Saef could not see or detect their scan for fissionables, but he felt confident that whatever tricks Inga carried, a pocket nuke wasn’t likely to be one of them.
A central corridor, a tree-lined promenade, opened before them as Inga’s hand emerged from her cloak with a food bar. It had been at least two hours since they last dined.
“Shall we stop at one of the restaurants? There’s a lovely little place with a choice view of planetside,” Saef inquired innocently.
Inga swallowed a bite and smiled her half smile. “Not on my behalf. I’m watching my figure. My vanity, remember?”
Saef grimaced. “Don’t take that all too personally, Maru. If you’re raised like family, as Bess said, then you really should spend more time in high gee.”
Inga’s smile widened as they walked through the teeming crowd of mixed civilians and Fleet uniforms, the dumb-mech scampering along behind on its leash. “Perhaps, Commander, it will help you to think of me as ‘subtlety and the silent hand,’ if possible,” she said.
Saef nearly paused in mid-stride, surprised despite himself. “The ‘silent hand,’ you say? I think I heard Bess use that quaint phrase about my little gift from old Devlin.”
Inga took a bite from her food bar. “Yes, I thought that was quite fitting: Devlin’s gift and Devlin’s words.”
This time Saef did pause in his stride, and Inga stopped beside him with the dumb-mech skittering to a halt behind. “You have read Integrity Mirror?” he demanded.
“Oh yes!” Inga said, ignoring the harsh tone in Saef’s voice. “Delightful book. It’s a favorite of mine.”
Saef felt the hard lines of his face as he spoke. “Bess may have gone too far this time.”
“As she said, Commander, ‘raised like family,’” Inga said, her smile unchanged.
Saef flicked a glance at the unheeding people passing by, then back into the wide blue eyes of Inga Maru. “I cannot imagine what Cabot would say. It is beyond unorthodox.”
“Yes. Orthodoxy is killing the Family.”
“If you believe that—if Bess believes that—then you should be packing water for my brother, Richard.” Saef heard the anger, the betrayal in his own voice.
“Richard doesn’t need any help.”
Saef’s lips twisted. “And I do need help?”
“You will,” Inga said, popping the final morsel of the food bar into her mouth. “Don’t be vexed, Commander. I’d rather pack your luggage than pack water for Richard. I’ve always felt you to be the superior brother.”
“I’m gratified,” Saef growled, sounding far from gratified.
“Remember, Commander,” Inga said with her smile tightening into a line, “my great-great-aunt, Mia Maru, supplied half the blood, half the brains, and half the fight that you’re so damned possessive of.”
“I will strive to keep that in mind,” Saef grated out, turning to walk.
“You might also remember, Commander, she broke the Legacy Mandate to do it, speaking of unorthodox. She shared the Maru House doctrine with Devlin!” Inga cast this at his retreating back, then began to follow, the dumb-mech in tow.
They walked along the broad promenade for some long, silent moments before Saef spoke. “I don’t recall seeing law school on your list of accomplishments, Maru,” Saef said over his shoulder, feeling his outrage wither. In its place a spark of chagrin took hold.
“Meaning you see the irrefutable nature of my argument?”
“Meaning, if you politick like you argue your case, I’ll soon be an admiral.”
“I don’t argue my case, Commander,” Inga said, the tone of her voice causing Saef to turn and look at her. “I’m always arguing your case…whether you can see that or not.”
Saef stared at her. “Whatever do you mean, Maru?”
“Commander!” a passing Fleet captain called to Saef. “Are you on the outbound squadron for Marath?”
Before Saef could form a reply, the captain continued, a shocked expression on her face. “You’d better see this.” Saef’s UI chirped as a line-of-sight link opened. A flag for an Admiralty announcement appeared on his already-busy visual overlay.
“What a mess! What a damned mess!” the captain said and hurried on, as Saef quickly scanned over the Admiralty’s words.
The announcement decried rebel treachery, praised Commodore Thiel for exposing the “rebel’s soft underbelly” by “ravaging” one of the rebel’s heaviest warships in an unequal contest, and further praised several other captains for making the ultimate sacrifice to “greatly reduce the rebel’s available firepower.”
Saef pushed the post to Inga’s UI. “Sounds like Fleet squadrons took a beating,” Saef said.
Inga’s lips pursed as her eyes flickered through the announcement. She looked up at Saef. “So it appears. But you were wrong about your place on the seniority list. Your name isn’t up six places; you’re up eleven.”
That meant eleven senior Fleet captains and commodores dead or captured.
Saef brought up the seniority list on his own UI to see that he had indeed moved up eleven places in the last number of hours.
“Commander?” Inga said in a musing tone. “You know, I’ve heard the Admiralty use this expression, ‘underbelly,’ quite often when they speak of the uprising…”
“Yes?” Saef said, waiting for it.
“What exactly is an underbelly? Does that mean there’s an overbelly then? I hope I don’t have one of those. They sound disgusting!”
* * *
The view of Coreworld planetside from the observation decks of Core Alpha revealed an equatorial stretch of blue-green, not unlike many of the worlds favored by humanity. When night swept across the globe below, the sea of lights comprising Imperial City found a mirror of lights shining down from Core Alpha above, the glowing bow of the tether arcing up through the sky, meeting the shimmering plate in its fixed orbit. Upon this tether, globules of light moved up and down in a steady stream of traffic to and from the orbital station.
Inga and Saef rode the ribbon down from Core Alpha in a luxury compartment. Saef figured that he had economized sufficiently by foregoing a fast shuttle ride down, and the privacy afforded by the luxury compartment allowed him to safely set up the QE comm to contact his Imperial handler, whoever that was.
Inga lifted the heavy black case out of the dumb-mech’s clutch, passing it to Saef before visually scanning the posh compartment for any sign of surveillance eyes. Saef figured she wasted her time, unless her implant carried something special for just such a purpose. If a foe of any substance set their probes intelligently, they would be all but invisible.
The QE comm unfolded to reveal a quaint-looking private text feed and a randomly generated virtual keyboard. For being one of the most advanced comm units in existence, it seemed to provide I/O tools from antiquity; the benefit being the ability to send unreadable messages even if an enemy recorded every micro-movement of the agent composing the message.
Saef felt no need for such cumbersome methods as he considered the substance of his message. He keyed the voice input mode and sent his first message in his role as an Imperial freelancer, “In Imperial City, by twenty-two hundred, Odinsday.”
The text scrolled out and Saef triggered the transmission. He knew that somewhere in the galaxy those words instantaneously appeared on the screen of this comm unit’s twin, whether the receiving comm stood ten klicks distant, or ten light-years.
Saef moved to fold the comm back into its heavy case when a return message appeared, surprising him. He hadn’t expected a response any time soon.
The message read, AFFIRMATIVE. USE CAUTION IN THE CITY. REPORT BACK SAME TIME TOMORROW.
“Affirmative,” Saef replied, “same time tomorrow.”
He sent the message, waited a few moments, then closed up the QE comm.
He said nothing to Inga, and she asked nothing as he sat beside her, looking out through scattered clouds to the vast expanse of Imperial City stretching out beneath them.
Their compartment plummeted downward as the containers crept up the other side of the ribbon, on their way up to Core Alpha. The ribbon still provided the most cost-effective method of moving mass up out of a gravity well, and thirty Imperium worlds operated some form of a ribbon-tethered orbital platform. Several other systems now moved through the lengthy and intensive process of constructing their own.
Clouds whipped past the broad viewport before Inga and Saef, the city becoming ever more distinct to their vision, the elaborate Imperial City graphic UI overlay suddenly flashing into existence.
“This week’s skin is really quite tasteful,” Inga said of the complex overlay. Unlike most UI image augmentation, the Imperial City overlay textured and colored nearly every visible surface. Broad streets, normally gray to the naked eye, now glistened as a blackened mirror, while towers seemed to drip quicksilver.
The Imperial City overlay changed every week, a different corporation, guild, university, or Family laboring months to create their own seven-day display of artistry. Visitors and residents voted upon the qualities of each new overlay, the winning selection receiving a coveted award. But, more important, each overlay allowed subtle (or not-so-subtle) marketing messages across the length and breadth of the city.
“Do you see that golden dome just five degrees downhill from the Imperial Close?” Saef asked nodding out the viewport.
“I think so,” Inga said. “Just near the end of what looks like Grand Delhi Place?”
“Very good. That’s it,” Saef said. “That’s the old Sinclair-Maru estate.”
“Where old Devlin and Mia broke out onto the red force flank?”
“Yes…That’s where it happened.… We sold it over a century ago.”
Inga stared quietly for several moments as they dropped nearer and nearer to the city. “You want it back…in the Family.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“We will get it.”
Saef looked over at Inga’s profile as she stared, seeing the blond tendril falling over one wide blue eye, her smile absent. “Yes, Commander…you will get it. I will help.”