Merrick cursed quietly to himself as Polk refused to be moved. Polk’s association with the late and unlamented Herris was the only chink in the bloody man’s armor, and Merrick had tried every way he could to exploit that weakness. But Polk had not given an inch and wasn’t going to.
Time to call off the dogs, Merrick thought. This is going nowhere.
He smashed his hand down on the table, the noise cutting through the argument. “Enough! The situation on Faith has clearly deteriorated to a point where I intend to establish a formal inquiry into the causes of the problem. We need to know why we’ve ended up where we have and what we can do to avoid further outbreaks. I’m sure I have your support on this.”
Nice try, you old buzzard, Polk said to himself, but there was no way he was going to let Merrick off the hook. Polk loaded his voice with what he fondly imagined to be equal parts sincerity and doubt. Merrick thought he just sounded sarcastic. “Well, Chief Councillor, I’m not sure we need one. We-”
Merrick could not contain himself. “Not sure?” he shouted, voice crackling with anger. “Not fucking sure? What was I just watching? A bloody high school debate? Nothing is more obvious than the fact that we need an inquiry. If the Council cannot agree to that, then what good is it?”
“I’m sorry, but I am afraid I cannot possibly agree,” Polk said smoothly, eyes flitting across the faces of the rest of the Council as he double-checked that he had the numbers. He was pretty sure he did; he wished he could be absolutely sure. His heart pounded at the terrible risk he was about to take.
Pushing any doubts aside, Polk forced himself to radiate confidence. “No, as I say, I cannot agree, and I think you’ll find if you put the matter to the vote that the Council does not agree, either. It is of course up to you, but I do think we have talked enough.”
In the face of Polk’s cool assurance, the brief glimmer of hope that had sprung into Merrick’s eyes as Polk had made the challenge died as quickly as it had come. Shit, Merrick thought. He thinks-he knows he’s got the numbers. A quick look at the faces around the table confirmed his worst fears. Kraa damn it. The nonaligned councillors refused to look at him, so they were gone, and even his own supporters looked shaky. He’d lost.
Merrick’s voice was quiet, barely concealing his bitterness at the defeat he’d just been handed by Polk. “No, Councillor. I don’t think that will be necessary. Unless anyone thinks it should be voted on right now, why don’t we sleep on it? I’ll put it on the agenda for next week.”
Polk’s triumph was obvious. Got you, you Kraa-damned son of a bitch, he thought. He’d taken Merrick to the edge, and the bloody man hadn’t liked what he’d seen. But Merrick had better get used to it because the next time he wasn’t going to let him back away.
With a stomach acid-bitter with defeat, Merrick had no option but to move the meeting on. He had needed that inquiry to give himself the best possible chance of shifting the blame away from himself and onto Herris and, by extension, Polk. But Polk knew that as well as he did, and so did the rest of the Council. Much as they hated Polk, they needed him if only to keep Merrick in check.
Merrick cursed silently.
He shouldn’t have been surprised. Things had changed, and maybe Jesse Merrick was no longer a man to be feared. But Polk was.
Saturday, October 31, 2398, UD
DLS-387, Hell-14
No matter how hard he tried, Ribot’s neuronics refused to let him sleep. The piercing comm alarm relentlessly dragged him up from the depths of a wonderfully dreamless slumber, his first in a long time.
Groggy, Ribot commed his bunk light on, oriented himself, and accepted the call.
Helfort had the watch. His voice was hoarse with stress, and his avatar made him look like shit. “Captain, sir. Officer in command. Sorry to bother you, but I thought you would like to know.”
“No problem, Michael,” Ribot muttered groggily. “What is it?”
“The interceptbots, sir. They’ve finally broken in, and we have just begun getting good-quality datastreams. The intercept AI is just starting its analysis of the Hammer’s data structures, and we’ll have a definitive data model shortly to allow us to attack the knowledge base. I’ll draft a message to Fleet for your release, sir.”
Ribot’s mind was a mass of wet concrete, and he had to struggle to think straight. “Uh, no, Michael,” he said after a moment’s thought. “Wait. Hang on for a moment. I’d like to go to Fleet with specific data rather than the promise of specific data, in particular the first of the Mumtazers we can identify, where they are, and so on. Otherwise, we’ll just get another damn pinchcomm urging us to try harder. You know how twitchy they’re getting.”
“Oh, okay, sir. That’ll take us at least three or four days, maybe more. Makes sense, though. They have been nagging us somewhat.”
“Understatement, Michael. No, sit tight for the moment. We’ll put a pinchcomm through to Fleet as soon as we have something specific. Anything else now that I’m awake?”
“Not really, sir. The Hammer’s pretty quiet tonight. The light escorts Regan and Bates moved from Fleet base to Hell Center two hours ago and are now alongside the planetary transfer station. Verity and the rest of the Hell flotilla are alongside at the flotilla base, though Mother thinks that at least four of them are preparing to get under way. The usual premission stuff: sensor testing and so on. There’s one light cruiser, two heavy escorts, and a heavy scout doing a lot of systems testing, all fire control systems but not much else, so Mother’s not sure what they’re up to, but we’ll know more in the morning. Hammer ships tend not to unberth much before 08:00. Loads of commercial traffic as always, but Mother’s watching the vectors pretty closely, and there’s nothing unusual going on.”
“Okay. Let me know if we get anything specific out of the interceptbots. Night.”
“Night, sir.”
Ribot commed the light off and lay back. For once, sleep came quickly, and in minutes he was down somewhere deep and black, snoring lightly.
Monday, November 2, 2398, UD
City of McNair, Commitment Planet
“The Feds have done what?” Merrick roared. “Put a ship into orbit around one of our planets? And sent a lander dirtside? I don’t fucking believe it! What in Kraa’s name do those stupid bastards think they are doing? I want a full report together with your recommended response within the hour!”
Merrick slammed the phone down on his long-suffering councillor for war and external security. As if he didn’t already have enough to worry about.
Kraa-dammed Feds. The bastards had put an Abydos class deepspace heavy patrol ship in orbit around Hammer 14-1. It was way too big for a genuine survey operation, as the Feds claimed it was, but not small enough to be pushed around.
Why, for Kraa’s sake, why? What were the Feds up to now?
Maybe he’d missed something. Merrick grunted as he pulled up the file on the planet 14-1. He snorted derisively as he quickly scanned the data. No, he hadn’t missed anything. It was a miserable apology for a planet. Thanks to a severely elliptical orbit, it was a frozen inhospitable waste most of the time, scoured by endless storms that ripped its methane/ nitrogen atmosphere apart, the sky thick with the sulfurous smoke and dust belched out from the thousands of active volcanoes that punctuated a planetary surface wracked with endless earthquakes triggered by two massive moons orbiting far too close for comfort. A worthless piece of dirt.