Literally.
Twenty-six small but exceptionally dirty nuclear demolition charges blew Giro's automated computer center—which meant the Empire's main securities computer—off the face of the planet. The charges had been designed and built by Kilgour, the super-mad-bomber, before he had wandered off on his own mission.
Total casualties: one custodian who had passed out in a mess area instead of clocking out in a mess area, and a handful of security goons.
Nanoseconds later, the disaster rippled out, across livie channels and business "wires." Panic. Who... why... what could anyone... how could anyone... anarchy... atrocity... against the rules of something or other...
The market free-fell hundreds of thousands of points. And then instantly recovered, as sanity returned.
The horror was not that horrible. There were backup comput-ers, of course. And certainly the monster who could even think of destroying a staple of civilization wouldn't know that.
The main backup computer went online.
Wild's program began running.
A junior trader saw it first, as he activated his workstation. The screen, instead of giving him a market display, showed a portrait of the Eternal Emperor. Scowling. In full uniform. Finger pointing directly at the clerk. The voicesynth boomed, "YOUR EMPIRE NEEDS YOU." And the image hung there, hung there, and the trader swore something about clotting politicians and clotting— stopped, broke off, looked guiltily around, since Internal Security had begun investigating the business community, and rebooted.
The rebooting activated Ida's virus, and quite suddenly the Empire wanted everybody, and everybody swore to themselves just as they swore when the omnipresent antipiracy warning came on their screen when they fired up their stations and then they rebooted...
... and the virus spread some more. Spread and grew and spread and grew...
... and the backup computer system blew, and, as it blew, sent the virus on to yet another backup system.
The Empire's securities trading network went to La-La Land.
It was almost a full cycle before any trading floor approached normalcy. The first panic reaction of a good capitalist is to go for the gold Liquidate everything into something secure.
Orders went out—but could not be implemented. Several exchanges were closed for trading. Banks declared holidays. Some very healthy corporations were forced into bankruptcy as shareholders dumped their holdings. And, conversely, some truly hemorrhaging entities were not only given a prolonged lease on life, but able to establish themselves firmly as successes. Traders sometimes had to actually keep notes—in hand writing. Buy/sell orders were handled verbally and manually!
Sten was quite pleased. Especially since Ida's grand scheme produced the desired end result: as investors liquidated, and bought into safety, which of course was the AM2-secured Imperial credit, those credits became more expensive as they became scarcer. And for a while, no matter how many credits the Empire's main bankers dumped out, the crash seemed unstoppable. Eventually the Empire's emergency financial dumping worked and the pendulum stopped swinging.
But the midget had swung his feather—-and the ball had moved. It was yet another beginning on another front of Sten's total war.
Sten was rather morosely preparing himself a solitary meal, trying to remind himself that the best revenge is living well. Yet another pastime he had sort of picked up from the Eternal Emperor.
His meal was, by description, a simple Earth sandwich. Its filling would be a rib-eye steak from a steer.
But it may have been the Ultimate Steak Sandwich.
Earlier that day, before the paperwork and Go Higher And Hither orders had a chance to consume him as usual, he'd cut diagonal slices in the three-centimeter piece of meat. The steak went into a marinade—one-third extra-virgin olive oil, two-thirds Guinness—the remarkable dark beer he had been introduced to just before his last face-to-face meeting with the Eternal Emperor—salt, pepper, and a bit of garlic.
Now it was ready for the charbroiler.
He took softened butter, and beat a teaspoon of dried parsley, a teaspoon of tarragon, a teaspoon of thyme, and a teaspoon of oregano into it. He spread the butter on a freshly baked soft roll, foil-wrapped the roll, and put the roll in to warm.
Next he sliced onions. A lot of onions. He sauteed them in butter and paprika. As they started to sizzle, he warmed, in a double broiler, a half liter of sour cream mixed with three tablespoons of horseradish.
Next he'd charbroil the steak just until it stopped moving, thin-slice it on the diagonal, put the meat on the roll, onions on the meat, sour cream on the onions, and commit cholesterolcide.
For a side dish he had thin-sliced garden tomatoes with a vinegar/olive oil/basil/thin-chopped chive dressing and beer.
The com signaled. It was Freston.
He asked if Sten's com was shielded and scrambled. It was, of course. Freston said he had just finished an interesting analysis on that strange signal that had been beamed into nowhere from the lead ship in the AM2 convoy as it arrived in the Dusable system and robotically realized it was under attack.
Sten decided to wait until Freston was finished before eating his ass out and reminding the officer he was no longer a technowonk communications specialist but a combat leader with his own ship, and to leave his clottin‘ com techs alone.
The signal, Freston went on, didn't go to nowhere. It went to a dead system, somewhere between forgotten and lost. Freston had chanced borrowing one of the Bhor ELINT ships, bread-boarding their sensors into some measure of the sophistication he was used to in his access to the Empire's best gear, and then sneaking the ship into the dead system.
On one world the ship had found a small relay station. He didn't chance ordering a landing or trying any electronic prob-ings, since he surmised the station would be booby-trapped.
He started to explain what he thought he had accomplished. Sten didn't need one. Preston had traced the mysterious robot AM2 supply convoys back one stage.
Sten surmised that the robot convoy would appear in this particular system from its origin in a still-unguessed place and receive either a GO, NO GO or DIVERT COURSE from the relay station, and, depending on the signal, either continue to Dusable or whatever other AM2 depot it had been intended for, or divert to a secondary destination, or...
Or any number of interesting possibilities.
"Is the ELINT ship still in-system?"
"That's affirm," Freston said. "I ordered it to lie doggo, all passive receptors on full, and not to attempt any active sensing without a direct order from me."
"Were there any transmissions when the Bhor ship first arrived?‘
"None reported."
"Have there been any since?"
‘Technically, none," Freston said. "However, the electronics ship has recently reported increased power output from the station on all lengths. As if it's coming up from standby."
Preston's reaming—and Sten's dinner—was forgotten.
"Is the gear on the ELINT ship good enough to pick up another transmission like the one you flagged off Dusable?"
"Easily."
"What's the distance?"
"You could be there in three E-days."
Sten grinned: Freston knew his boss. "Okay. Is the Aoife ready to lift?"
"Affirm."
"I'm on the way. Tell its skipper—"
"Waldman, sir."
"This is his or her big chance to step off his sex organ for that convoy disaster. I want couplings ready to hook a tacship up to the Aoife. And I want you to set up a tightbeam com, set up to link between the tacship and destroyer. Yesterday."