Hiero leaned forward and touched the query button on her desk. “Can they catch it? Can we?”
“No, and yes, if we have something start matching velocities now. Considerably sooner than it might reach Ceres, if we use one of the New America’s auxiliaries.” A collective wince, that would mean blowing the Project’s last line of cover. “Under the circumstances, I’d say it’s justified.”
“I say we do it,” Hiero said.
“Sir?” The ACI man looked to the chairman, who nodded abstractedly.
“Ah, sir?” That was Donati, the OSS chief of staff; he was looking off-screen, and his fingers were busy. “We do have—yes, we do have something significant, just now. They’re . . . ah, yes. Trying very hard to keep it quiet, but our ELINT is picking it up. They’re pulling up their backup comps on . . . hell, one sector after another. Running some sort of check program on the central comps. Then—they’ve just put out an all-points to their military, to downline the AV-122 series. That’s their most recent battle-management comp.”
Hiero’s own fingers moved; yes, everyone here was cleared for the fourth layer of the New America Project.
“Is that one of the ones we managed to infect?” she said. Chairman Allsworthy’s question came on the heels of theirs.
There was a long moment of silence. “Mierda,” she whispered. “A leak.”
Allsworthy grunted, as if someone had hit him in the belly. “We . . . ” He looked down at his hands. Hiero felt herself touched with sympathy, and a moment’s gratitude that the final decision was not hers. The life of the planet lay in those palms. “Recommendations?” he continued.
“Attack immediately; we’re already at Defcon 4,” Hiero said.
“Attack.” Donati, more decisive than usual.
“With all due respect, Mr. Chairman, that would be premature.” The ACI commander’s balding head shone. “If . . . a leak in the Project security would not be enough to put them up to this level of alert. They’d know it would focus our attention; they’d try and isolate the infected comps clandestinely, so that we wouldn’t know it’s been done. There’s another factor here, one we haven’t grasped . . . Maybe the Mamba has the answer. Whatever it is, God, sir, even if we win with the present inadequate level of infection in their infosystems, we’re talking hundreds of millions of dead. Everybody, if they use Fenris. We have to play for time.”
Hiero sat silent, listening to the debate. This was not a committee, could not be, and she had said what she believed . . . At last the chairman raised a hand for silence.
“We’ll present an ultimatum,” he said. “How long until the Mamba is intercepted?”
“Twenty-four to thirty hours, sir.”
“I authorize immediate interception. Take whatever measures are necessary. Secretary Ferriera, draft an immediate note to the Domination; their mobilization is an intolerable provocation and threat, and we will consider ourselves in a state of war unless they begin withdrawal by exactly”—his eyes went to a clock—“1000 hours tomorrow. General Mashutomo, all Alliance forces to Defcon 5 and proceed on the assumption that hostilities begin as of the expiration of the ultimatum.” He looked around. “Any questions?”
Hiero waited until she was sure there would be none, before she spoke. “No. I disagree with this course of action, but we must have discipline or we are truly lost.” A weary smile. “And I very much hope I am wrong and you are right, Señor Chairman.”
“Roderigo,” she said, as the last of the president’s council were leaving. “Wait a moment.” When they were alone. “Miguel and the grandchildren are still on Ceres. Send a message, tightbeam, priority: Stay. He will understand.”
EAST TENNESSEE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NOVEMBER 3, 1998: 1500 HOURS
“Captain, what the hell is this place?”
The trooper was nervous. They all were, after the sudden Defcon 5 and the scramble of orders that had sent them barging off into the hills, away from any news of what was going on.
The Ranger officer looked up from his maps; they had walked the last half-mile, up into the hills. The air was cool here in the high Appalachians even in summer, chill with winter now the steep mountain ridges were thick with oak and maple and fir, the scars of the mines long healed. He had been born not far away, and he remembered the deep woodland smell of it, a little damp and musty, deeply alive. There were few enough left who could call the mountains home. Unforgiving hard country to scratch a living out of, once the pioneers had taken the first richness; the timber companies and the coal miners had passed through, and then the people had followed, down to the warm cities and the sun.
“It’s a disused coal mine, son,” the captain said. They’re supposed to be independent-minded, he reminded himself. And they’re feeling lost, yanked out of their regular units. Most of the Rangers were helping with the last crates, up from the disused road and through the carefully rundown entrance. The shielding started a little way beyond that, and then the storerooms and armories. “You married, son? Close relatives?”
“No, sir,” the soldier answered. He was in his late teens, with a fluffy yellow attempt at a mustache standing out amid the eye-blurring distortions of a chameleon suit that covered his armor. “Not really.”
“Nobody here does,” the officer continued. “And in that cave there’s everything we’d need for a long, long time.”
The soldier swallowed. “Yessir. I get the picture.” The officer noted with pleasure that he did not ask if there were other refuges like this. I suspect so, the captain thought. But neither of us needs to know. One of the noncoms below called with a quietly menacing displeasure, and the young Ranger saluted and turned to go. That gave him a glimpse of the last contingent, looking unaccustomed to their fatigues and carrying various items of black-boxed electronics.
“Girls?” he squeaked, then remembered himself and saluted again.
“Technicians,” the captain said softly to himself, looking up. “Edited out of the comps, like all the rest of us. Unlikely to be missed. Not on paper either, anywhere.”
The last chameleon-suited troopers were following up the trail, replacing bent branches and disturbed leaves, spraying pheromone neutralizers. He folded the map and tucked it into a shoulder pouch. It was going to create the biggest administrative hassle of all time, getting this set up again when they had been stood down.
“I hope,” he murmured. “I sincerely hope.”
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
MALVINA SSN-44
NOVEMBER 3, 1998: 1700 HOURS
“Take her down to a hundred meters,” the captain of the submarine said. “All ahead full.”
Commodore Wanda Jackson glanced around the command center. It was up forward, near the bows of the metal teardrop. Only half a dozen in the bridge crew, a score more in the rest of the vessel. The drive was magnetic, superconductor coils along the length of the hull; most of that was filled with the nuclear power plant, essential life support, and thirty torps. Hypervelocity sea skimmers with multiple warheads, on a ship that could do better than fifty knots, or dive as deep as the water went, in most places. The finest class of submarine the Alliance had ever built, and the last, nearly obsolete.
“Well, they seem to have found some use for us,” she said. “Number Two.” The Executive Officer came to stand by her chair. “We’ll open the sealed orders now.” Their squadron was spraying out from Norfolk like a fan of titanium-matrix minnows, each with its own packet of deadly instructions.