Delagarza closed the holo. The enforcers and the Vortex had already declared it an illegal transmission from terrorist sources and announced that anyone found in the possession of it would be prosecuted as enablers of terrorism if not terrorists themselves.
The newscasters had run Tal-Kader propaganda since Clarke’s transmission reached the planet. They called Clarke an assassin, a liar, and a terrorist. His entire biography had been pulled from Alwinter’s databases and an official version declared him to be a former Defense Fleet officer who had left the service in ignominy after running away from combat during Broken Sky. They claimed that he avoided the firing squad thanks to Tal-Kader’s mercy, and that Clarke had answered that mercy by joining the EIF and becoming a pirate.
Vortex even announced that Clarke and the EIF had kidnapped an innocent Free Trader, the Beowulf, and spaced the entire crew when the Vortex had demanded Clarke’s peaceful surrender. They even showed the video feeds as proof. They had Clarke making demands, Captain Riley Erickson heartfelt plea for the Beowulf’s crew to be spared, Clarke’s brutal answer. They had shown a video of the spaced crew as they floated through space, bloated and lifeless, with the debris of their destroyed escape capsules floating behind them.
In this day and age, videos meant little. Too easy to doctor. Delagarza suspected most of that evidence had been crafted lovingly in Vortex’s own computers during the past few hours. Hell, in their haste, they had missed a few details. They claimed Clarke had spaced the crew, yet the videos showed destroyed capsules behind them.
I think I know who really killed those contractors, Delagarza thought. He recalled Clarke’s grave frown, and how it marked deep lines of expression in his forehead. The man was well aware of how much he was risking coming to Dione. He didn’t strike Delagarza as one of those hero-type insurgents that surfaced now and then in the newscasts before dying in a blaze of glory.
People like himself, and Hirsen, Delagarza could understand. Their motivations were clear. They wanted to survive. So they balanced risk versus reward and decided accordingly.
What did Clarke’s risk equation look like? Delagarza thought it imperative to find out. After all, when he reached Isabella Reiner and got her to the EIF, Delagarza’s own life would be in Clarke’s hands.
Don’t bother trying to understand that kind of person, Hirsen advised. They’re not acting rationally, and if you look too closely into their minds, you’ll find out their insanity can be contagious.
Funny, said Delagarza, I didn’t peg agent Daneel Hirsen for a jaded man.
Daneel Hirsen has outlived a dozen men like Joseph Clarke, and will outlive a dozen more, said Hirsen. Now, let’s focus on the present, Samuel. Clarke and the EIF are still days away from Dione. We need Kayoko’s information before we get Isabella. And we need to find us a way off the planet.
24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CLARKE
The TRANSMITTING screen disappeared, leaving Clarke to stare at the ceiling of Hawk’s bridge. The gyroscopes in his g-seat had positioned his back to lay flat against the pull of the destroyer’s engines as the ship decelerated through its approach to planet Dione.
Clarke let the tension escape through his shoulders. In a way, he had dreaded making that message more than reaching combat range. He had spent the many months of Alcubierre travel rehearsing it in his spare time, while the bulk of it he spent drilling Task Force Sierra through combat simulations of all kinds, and familiarizing himself with the crew and the ships themselves.
They were as ready as they could be. Clarke closed his eyes and abandoned himself to the call of the force pulling his body into his g-seat, allowed his mind to run free of all sensations and worries until he found his center. He filled his lungs with a deep breath, opened his eyes, and dove into the confusion of voices on Hawk’s bridge.
“Commander Alicante, what are our sensors telling us?” he asked.
“Our escorts are sending an updated report right now, Captain,” Alicante answered. “Have a look.”
Clarke opened a holo with a map of Elus Star System, its defenses, and the stream of civilian traffic buzzing around Dione’s starport—Outlander—like a swarm of flies attracted to an electrical lamp.
Dione wasn’t the only place blinking with activity. Asteroids equipped with automated turrets, patrols hunting for pirates in all corners of the map, military space stations stationed in the orbits of uncolonized planetoids, communication satellites, all blind to Sierra’s arrival for at least a couple more hours, until the photons bounced from the ships’ hulls reached Elus’ defenders.
This window of blindness would be crucial for Sierra’s victory. The Mississippi had proved the importance of striking first, and striking hard.
Clarke focused on Sierra’s position in the map. An arrow-shaped formation of five destroyers, with Hawk leading the charge, and all escorts and auxiliaries hanging at the flanks, scouting Elus with their sensors and targeting lasers. The information they got about patrols’ routes and position was outdated by five hours, but every new bit of data allowed the Task Force computers’ to predict the defenders’ current position and routes.
So far, everything was going according to the plan devised across many months of simulations. That would soon change, Clarke knew, but in the meantime…
He opened a communication channel with the five destroyer commanders and said, “Take out all unmanned, immobile infrastructure. Let’s give Tal-Kader something to talk about after our message reaches them.”
Sierra’s targeting computers produced a firing solution for all of Clarke’s highlighted targets and distributed the data to all ships.
“Acknowledged, Captain,” said Alicante when the data arrived carrying Hawk’s targets. Alicante switched to the bridge’s channel. “Weapon systems, open fire on that asteroid and its macro-turret. Coordinates are on screen, use kinetic rounds. Get me a targeting laser on that satellite line and take it down with turrets.”
Like shooting fish in a barrel.
Clarke’s map updated with red blinking dots representing lines of fire originating from Sierra and spreading like a flood through Elus, headed for several dozen different targets. It’d take days until Sierra’s attack made contact with the farthest ones.
“What about the military station?” asked Alicante.
Pascari, who had access to all of Sierra’s communications, butted in. “Yes, Clarke, what about that military station? What are we going to do about it?”
Clarke winced. Pascari knew the place was full of people. Edge’s citizens doing their jobs. Hell, not all the Defense Sailors were Tal-Kader’s. If lady luck had looked differently on Clarke, he’d be the one inside that station, with some other asshole taking aim at him.