Possibly. Or at least until the Eternal Emperor figured out a response.
More importantly, the Heorot had recorded a second, equally mysterious signal to nowhere, this time from the relay station.
If they could home on its target... Sten would be one step closer to finding the AM2.
And one step closer to destroying the Emperor.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
41413... 31146... 00983... 01507...
Far beyond the stretch of the most sensitive sensor, far beyond die Bhor picketlines, an Imperial destroyer, modified into a special-missions delivery craft, dumped a tacship into space and fled.
The tacship, completely unarmed, its weapons systems replaced with massive electronic suites, slid toward Vi, the Bhor home world and capital of the Lupus Cluster. There were just five crewmen aboard, plus one Internal Security agent, fresh from her training and initial intern assignment.
09856... 37731... 20691...
It found a parking orbit offworld, hiding behind one of the planet's moons until the ordered time came around.
Then, under partial and muffled drive, it set a landing trajectory. A somewhat unusual one. From the ground, it would appear that the tacship was coming "straight down," toward one point on the planet—a wilderness near the capital city. Speed was kept low to reduce skinheating and subsequent infrared printing by Bhor scanners.
It was still waiting for the correct moment, which came when one of the great Bhor intercontinental suborbital transports lifted from a field and bellowed for nearspace.
The tacship went for ground, using the cover of the transport's electronic, infrared, and physical turbulence.
On board, the dispatcher waited next to the spy. The compartment was lit with eye-saving red nightlights.
The spy was heavy-laden, McLean pack on her chest and a backpack containing a weapon and a travel case that would pass unnoticed as a civilian's valise. Inside the case were clothes, normal espionage gadgetry, plus a great sheaf of Imperial credits and Bhor currency.
Strapped to her leg was the heavy dropbag containing that most necessary and dangerous tool of a spy, a transmitter/ receiver. The com buzzed.
"Coming in on Delta Zulu," the tacship pilot announced.
"Aye, sir," the dispatcher said.
"We're at dropspeed. On approach."
The dispatcher felt the tacship chop power and level out of its dive.
"Aye, sir. Hatch opening."
The dispatcher touched a button, and a circular hatch yawned. There was moonlit night and, far below, gleaming snow. Two corrugated steel plates slid out, into the middle of the open hatch. To one side, the dispatcher could see the flickering from the Bhor transport's stern as it drove on and upward, unseeing.
The spy shivered. But the compartment was heated.
"Looks cold down there."
"Your friends'll be waiting," the dispatcher soothed. "Now. Position."
The spy stepped onto the plates. She swayed in the airblast from the hatch, men recovered. As trained, she locked her hands tightly on the two handles of the McLean pack. One of them held the drive activation switch.
"Count thirty before you drop your bag," the dispatcher reminded. The spy nodded, not really hearing.
The com buzzed.
"Ten count... nine... eight... seven... six... five... four... three... GO!"
The steel plates snapped back into their housing, and the spy plummeted down toward Vi. The dispatcher keyed the mike, as the hatch slid shut.
"One away, sir."
"Affirm. Return to your post."
The tacship lifted toward space. The temptation was to hit full drive and hare away. But the tacship pilot was a professional—the drive signature at full power would very likely be picked up, wasting all the trouble they'd gone to for the insertion. The dispatcher looked down, at the now-closed hatch.
"May all your eggs," he said, "be double-yolked."
A spy needed all the luck that could be wished for.
43491... 29875... 01507...
Marl, now promoted out of tech ranks and commissioned as ensign, and the Bhor constable, Paen, watched one of the nightscreens in their gravlighter.
The image blurred, and Marl touched a button, and the picture was razor-sharp.
"You would not ever get me leaving a perfectly good tacship in flight," Paen observed.
"Nor me," Marl agreed.
The message had been coded and blurted out from Vi toward an Imperial Intelligence receiving station, located as close as safety would permit to the Lupus worlds:
41413 urgently
31146 require
00983 additional
01507 agent(s)
30924 reports
32149 ‘s
37762 ‘t
11709 e
23249 n
03975 begins (beginning?)
26840 plans
41446 to use
37731 system(s)
03844 the basalt has come in again
09856 delivery
37731 system
20691 in
43491 will
29875 recover
01507 agent(s)
Marl was particularly proud of 03844, since she'd observed that Hohne was not exactly the most skilled of coders. Kilgour had been right in thinking Hohne a bit of an amateur since he was using an extant code. It wasn't significant to Alex that at least Hohne had chosen a prehistoric system, dating back to the dark ages when idiocies like obsidian daggers and onetime pads had been used.
She figured the Imperial who decoded the message would swear a lot, scratch his/her/its head(s), reconsult the code fiche, substitute 03843, meaning for a base, and the message would make sense. The mad Scotsman would be proud of her sneaki-ness.
Damn, but she was starting to miss Alex. When he got back, now that she was commissioned and all, and he was technically not in her chain of command, she planned to cozen him into drinks, dinner, and... who knows?
If nothing else, she wanted to find out the truth about that title, Laird Kilgour of Kilgour. If he was really some land of baron, what was he doing in this revolt, instead of sucking up to the Emperor?
"The human looks cold," the Bhor said, not a shred of sympathy to his rumble.
"She does."
Marl felt momentarily empathetic for the doomed spy drifting toward them, still about a kilometer above the ground. She pushed it away. The woman has a choice.
"More stregg?" Constable Paen asked.
"I say again my last—humans can't be swilling stregg like you folks, and still function."
"Kilgour can."
"Kilgour isn't human, either."
"That is true."
Paen drained his cup—& duplicate in miniature of a drinking horn—folded it, and put it away.
"Shall we collect our new friend?"
Both beings slid out of the gravlighter, careful to not shut the doors behind them—the sound of a slamming door carries forever on a silent night. Around them, hidden in the blackness of this thicket, were twenty heavily armed Bhor policemen.
Above them the spy touched buttons, and her rate of descent slowed as much as the McLean generator could overcome gravity. The age of the fantasized strap-on-your-back personal flier still hadn't arrived, even with the antigrav capabilities of the McLean system. But at least it had replaced all varieties of the incredibly dangerous parachute.
The spy directed her descent toward one end of the huge open meadow that was the dropzone, the final end of delivery system M. Below her was tranquil forest. Far, far away—at least five klicks, she estimated—she saw the lights of a tiny farmhouse.