“Now that we are truly alone,” the admiral said, taking a seat at a round table in the middle of the room, “what is it that we want to talk about?”
“Several things,” Kris said, settling into the chair across from him. Jack sat to Kris’s right, Vicky to her left. The two technical experts set themselves up at the next table over and quickly lost themselves in their own separate world.
“As I would not mention in a potentially public forum, my local network has been jammed several times of late,” Kris said.”
“Short-range local networks can’t be jammed,” Vicky said.
“Yes, I know that, and Nelly made sure to remind me of that well-known fact every time it happened, but it just kept happening. That usually was when there was a Peterwald interest at work in my life.”
“Us?” Vicky said in such surprise that Kris doubted even a Peterwald could fake.
Or a Longknife.
“You remember the first time you tried to kill me on New Eden,” Kris said.
Vicky nodded.
“The shooters you hired were pretty lame at the assassination business, but the whole time I was running from them, something was jamming the net connection between Nelly and my automatic. In order to get a sight picture, I actually had to risk putting my eyeball behind my weapon. No remote sight picture. Quite a problem at the time.”
“I didn’t hire anyone to jam you,” Vicky said, thoughtfully. “I didn’t even think to try. Even I knew that you couldn’t jam a local net.”
“But somehow someone has been doing it,” Kris said slowly
“Admiral,” Vicky asked, “do you know of anything we’ve got that could do that?”
The Navy officer shook his head. “No, I don’t, and since tonight I’ve had my nose rubbed in Wardhaven’s electronic superiority over Greenfeld time after time, I’m kind of hard-pressed to believe that we have anything like that.” He paused for a moment, then continued. “However, I do not doubt Your Highness’s word at all. If you’ve encountered it, it is there.”
“I think we just encountered it,” Vicky said, glancing at the techs mumbling behind her.
“It seems to me,” Kris said, “that there is a cluster of excellence in electronics somewhere in Greenfeld that has not been brought to the attention of your father, Vicky. Quite probably very intentionally not brought to his attention.”
“I do not like that,” Vicky said darkly.
“But why would they do that?” Jack said. “I thought that people that won Henry Peterwald’s good attention were the ones who advanced in Greenfeld. Am I missing something?”
For a long moment, Vicky let that question hang in midair. Finally, she said, “Some people seek my father’s support and become his supporters as well. But I’ve come to realize that there are many games going on in the Palace, and many people may gain aces in one game but choose to keep them up their sleeves to play in others.”
“Wheels in wheels inside wheels,” the admiral said, “and please, Commander, you need not point out that these games are now deadly and driving people to risk their lives in flight across the stars. It is the fate of us in this time to pay the price for a foolish game that has been long in progress.”
“I’m sorry if I made it sound like we folks at Wardhaven had all our problems solved,” Kris said. “We have our own set. If we didn’t, no one would have been able to manipulate our politics to let six strange battleships almost flatten Wardhaven.”
“Thank you,” Vicky said. “For what it’s worth, I envy you your problems. I’d gladly swap with you.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Kris said dryly.
There was a brief pause before Jack leaned forward, and said, “So, what does all this tell us?”
“Someone in Greenfeld has some pretty fancy listening devices,” the admiral said. “You can spot them. We cannot. I can understand the need for you to hold certain technology close to your vest, considering the present state of affairs between our two alliances. Still, I most certainly wish that I could protect my conversations with Lieutenant Peterwald from eaves-droppers. I will leave that for you to think about, Commander. You said there were other things you wanted to talk about?”
“Yes,” Kris said. “There’s the matter of the pirates. You’re experienced enough with ship maintenance, Admiral, to know that they must have a base to outfit them and supply them.
“Apparently Major Jackson knew of such a base. At least she led a merchant officer to think that once they had a ship for him to go pirating in, she would tell him where to buy armament and sell off any cargo they didn’t want to use on Kaskatos. Unfortunately, she died without telling anyone where this base is, and her computer was reduced to even smaller pieces than her person. Rocket grenades do that to a body.”
“Yes, they do,” the admiral agreed.
“Kris, I figured that you’d want some help with the pirate problem,” Vicky said, “and they are operating on our front door, so I tried to find out something about them. Follow the money is my dad’s usual advice on problems like this. So I had my accountants do a search on money or goods going out of our exchange system. They also searched for goods suddenly showing up with little or no documentation.”
“How’d it go?” Kris asked.
“Nothing. Not. A. Thing. Even in these troubled times, every item of production is accounted for. No money is unaccounted for. No goods for sale without full documentation to point of origin. I would have expected a few things to get lost. A few accounts not to balance. But everything is just perfect. Not so much as a hair out of place”
Kris waited as a grin spread on both her and Vicky’s faces, then said, “Too perfect,” at the exact second Vicky did.
“Just so,” Vicky said. “Now, before tonight’s demonstration of computational wizardry, I was under the impression that the computers used by my dad’s Department of Taxation were the best available. Now”—Vicky brought a thoughtful forefinger up to her lips—“I’m not so sure.”
“Interesting,” Kris said. “You think all hundred planets in your father’s alliance are linked into one big fake accounting scheme? Could anyone pull off such a huge Potemkin economy?”
The admiral scowled. “Only if everyone is helping to pull the wool over each other’s eyes. Isn’t this what I was telling you, Lieutenant?”
Now it was Vicky’s turn to sigh, like a hot-air balloon letting go of its last gasp of support.
“The admiral has pointed out to me places where warehouse inventories say there are plenty of this or that, yet when the fleet needs something, it is strangely not available or takes half of an eternity to get it, leaving a fighting ship tied up at the pier. Don’t tell your Admiral Crossenshield I said that.”
“I won’t,” Kris said . . . and meant it.
Vicky went on. “The admiral here tells me that you cannot build six super battleships in secret without causing shortages. You can’t slap a cruiser squadron together so my brother can play commodore and not pay the price somewhere. I didn’t want to see what the admiral was pointing out to me, but I’m not blind. I can’t afford to be like my brother. Or my dad.” Vicky’s voice now dripped with bitter irony.
“So, if the Navy’s supply system is a mass of lies twisted together to support things that never happened or to feed the vanity of one little boy, what else about my Greenfeld is nothing but smoke and mirrors?”
Vicky pursed her lips. “Before today, I didn’t see how it could be done. Now, I think someone is laughing at us as they make us dance to the tune their superior electronics are blasting out for us. Kris, I think I’m ready to let you and your Nelly audit Greenfeld’s economy. Would you like the chance?”
To Kris’s surprise, the admiral didn’t even bat an eye.
“It’s that bad, huh?”
“Do you think a Peterwald would turn to a Longknife if it wasn’t?” Vicky let that hang in the air for a long moment before she went on. “There is one other matter. One I would talk with you in private, please.”