Astor-Smath felt the need to put his back square against the solid bulk of his teak desk. “You are the one who is behaving like a child, starting at imaginary shadows and worries. In the wake of the Arat Kur victory, this can all be sanitized quite easily. Not that it needs to be, regardless of the outcome. There is not one piece of definitive evidence that links me to the Arat Kur or you prior to the invasion. And as concerns your safety, my secretary tells me that you are traveling with luggage, so you will not even be here much longer, will you?”
“No. I will be far away.”
“So. Even if the Arat Kur were to lose, and there was an investigation, your departure ensures that it can only come to a dead end.”
“What an apt phrase.”
The man with the sunglasses moved so quickly that Astor-Smath could not be sure if he had pulled something out of his pocket to wave about, or was jerking his arm up and down in the throes of some strange, spasmodic stroke. Astor-Smath moved forward to investigate, possibly help.
—and was distracted by a sudden catch in his throat; he was unable to swallow. He suddenly felt lightheaded, reached for a chair, missed, fell on his back, breathed in. Liquid went down into his lungs. He coughed, was confused—and then terrified—when the air he’d expelled carried up a thin shower of red droplets.
The man’s sunglassed face loomed over him. “It will not be long.” He reached down, his hand disappearing someplace just under Astor-Smath’s narrowing field of vision, and tugged. Astor-Smath’s throat suddenly filled with what felt like spinning shards of broken glass and razors. He screamed.
Except he couldn’t. As if at the end of a long tunnel, he saw the man hold up a strange implement, a hybrid between an overlong ice-pick and a throwing dagger, which was dripping blood. As the man wiped it on Astor-Smath’s shirt, he commented, “You are fortunate that I am so proficient throwing the esem’shthrek; you will not be long in dying. This kind of neck wound paralyzes the victim but is almost entirely painless.” He rose. “You should have followed my instructions. Precisely.” He removed a coffee-thermos from his briefcase, uncapped it. The thick reek of avgas was immediately clear even to Astor-Smath’s failing senses. The man dashed the contents about the room, paused, splashed the last of it directly on Astor-Smath’s suit. He leaned forward, studied Astor-Smath’s almost frozen face. “As I promised, little pain from the wound.” He leaned back, found and picked up Astor-Smath’s lighter, flicked it, watched the flame climb higher as he thumbed the butane choke to the full open position. “However, I can make no such promises about the avgas.” He took two steps back, smiled, tossed the burning lighter directly upon Astor-Smath’s chest.
Then he turned and left.
Chapter Forty-Four
Lieutenant Brill, senior Comms officer aboard the USS Lincoln, turned toward Ira Silverstein. “Admiral, I have Admiral Lord Halifax on priority lascom one. Says he’d like to speak to you ‘as soon as it’s convenient.’”
Ira smiled. That was Halifax’s mannerly way of saying “ASAP.” “Pipe him direct to me, Mr. Brill.”
Usually, Admiral Lord Thomas Halifax began his conversations in that animated Oxbridge manner that made it easy to believe you were about to go punting on the River Cam rather than wading into battle. This time, he sounded apologetic. “Ira, I know you’re not particularly keen about the InPic system that was installed last year, but we might need it for this engagement. If we get a few nasty surprises, or lose our comm links, there might not be enough time for thorough sitreps. So, I’d like you to be InPic in my Combat Information Center on Trafalgar for as long as possible. Just in case things get a bit dodgy.”
Which really meant “in case my flagship and I get vaporized, you need to have seen everything I’ve done, and every decision I’ve made, so you can carry the ball forward.” Ira swallowed. “Okay, Admiral. I will be going InPic within the minute.”
“Good show, Ira.” Halifax’s tone became subtly conspiratorial. “I must say, I’m no fan of InPic, either. Seems vaguely voyeuristic, wouldn’t you say?”
“Hadn’t really thought about it, Tom.” Like hell I haven’t. “Ruth, have the remote telepresence techs link us with Trafalgar.”
“Already done, sir. They are ready to put you In the Picture, Admiral Silverstein. We are receiving Trafalgar’s C4I five-by-five on encrypted redundant lascoms. Time to wear the crown, sir.”
“Very well. Tom, I’m told we’re ready.”
Halifax’s tone became jocular. “Then hurry to your box seat, Ira. Curtain’s going up.” His private channel snicked off.
Ira reached behind him for the crown: a framework headpiece that included multipoint speakers and a 3-D monocle. “Ruth, I want Commander Clute wearing one of these in the auxiliary bridge.”
“Yes, sir. Mind telling me why?”
“Because I want to be ready to toss this damned personal theater away at a moment’s notice if I need to. But if I do, I need my senior tactical officer to stay In the Picture. I’ll want a detailed report of anything I missed, presuming I don’t have the time to sit through a playback.”
“Seth—er, Commander Clute—reports he’s already strapping on the crown, sir.”
“Very good. I say three times, XO, that, as per the InPic Command Augmentation Protocol, you have the con for routine operations.”
“I say three times, Admiral, I have the con for routine ops.”
Ira sighed, held the InPic crown at arm’s length. Putting it on would put him in two worlds at once: on the bridge of his own ship, and on the bridge of Halifax’s Trafalgar. Problem was, Ira didn’t like being in two worlds at once. In point of fact, he loathed it. His boyhood dream, and adult training, had focused on the command of a ship. A single ship. The one he felt under his feet. To lose complete awareness of that hull was anathema.
He had argued long and hard against expanding the use of InPic so that ranking officers of a joint command or dispersed task force could see, hear, and if necessary, remotely control activity on the bridge of another ship. He had foreseen and forestalled the abuses that could have resulted from rear echelon officers using their “remote telepresence” to tell line commanders how to do their jobs.
But Ira had been forced to concede that in some scenarios, such as this one, InPic conferred immense advantages. As RTF 1 engaged the Arat Kur boosting up out of Earth’s gravity well, he needed a full and immediate understanding of what Halifax’s first echelon was achieving, what it was not achieving, and what had produced its successes and failures, respectively. And if, God forbid, something happened to Tom Halifax and the HMS Trafalgar, then Ira would be in a position to direct the first echelon so that its ongoing combat operations would dovetail with the evolving strategy for Ira’s own second echelon.
And it was almost unavoidable that the battle plans would evolve significantly over the course of the engagement. Given the challenges of dealing with a largely unknown enemy that possessed at least marginally superior technology, the admirals of RTF 1 had kept their strategy fairly straightforward. The first, or “Foxtrot,” echelon was led by Halifax and was the second largest. It had left its carriers behind with Ira’s bigger second, or “Sierra,” echelon for safekeeping because Foxtrot had to be drone-, FOCAL- and cruiser-heavy. Given its twofold mission objective, this particular concentration of ship classes was essential. The cruisers were required to put serious hurt on the Arat Kur, and the drones and FOCALs were needed to scatter the enemy by threatening him from widely separated points of the battlesphere. It was also anticipated that Halifax’s command would take the heaviest casualties. They were first in and committed to trading killing blows wherever possible, even if it meant sacrificing ships at worse than one-to-one odds to achieve it. His echelon was also a guinea pig. The other two echelons would be watching to learn what they could about their enigmatic adversaries.