"Wha hae y' come up wi?"
Before Cind could continue, Alex started swearing. He had figured it out.
Cind had become curious as to what had happened to those beings purged by Dr. Iskra in time past. Beings Iskra had guaranteed would be brought to trial.
She had heard nothing—and a quick subject scan through the logged media in the embassy records had also produced nothing. Nor did Sten's own highly experienced com officer, Freston, remember hearing anything.
She then checked with Hynds, the already-in-place Mercury Corps station chief. After the ambush in the slums, Hynds had lost complete faith in what little analytical abilities he had and now rated all his sources either Grade III: unreliable; IV: possibly doubled by the opposition; or V: double agent.
He did have three assets in the military, all low-grade and all out of the main circuits. Hynds contacted them. All of them were terrified, none of them would volunteer to find out any data, and none of them had heard anything about what had happened to the soldiers and bureaucrats who had been arrested.
Save one thing: They were, just as Dr. Iskra had told Sten, being held in Gatchin Fortress, far north of Rurik.
Kilgour rolled Cind's data around his mind. "Umm."
"You real busy?"
"Aye. Y' checked th' weather?"
"I did. Pack a parka."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
"We have the full projection—prog sixty-five percent accurate—in the battlechamber, if you wish to see it, sir."
"Negative, Admiral," Sten said. "I sure as hell don't have your skill at deciphering blinking dots of light—and the digest box tells me just how shafted we are.''
''I await your orders.''
Sten had had about enough of Mason's behavior. "Admiral? If I may speak to you privately?''
Mason nodded for the officer of the deck to take the con and followed Sten into the admiral's day cabin.
"Admiral," Sten began, "I directly requested you for this assignment believing you were enough of a professional to follow orders and leave personalities out of it.
"I was wrong. From the time that we arrived on Jochi, you've behaved like a sulking bratling who's just got his bars and who thinks that makes him God."
"Ambassador—''
"We'll start with that. My civilian rank is meaningless. I have never resigned my military rank, nor asked to be placed on reserve status.
"On Jochi, you asked if I was assuming command. I said I was. Therefore, referring to me by my military rank is perfectly acceptable.
"You will remain silent, Admiral Mason. And I would appreciate your coming to attention. I have neither the time nor the energy to get into a testes-measuring contest with you, nor is it necessary. If you wish, we will step out of this cabin, and I will relieve you of your command in front of your staff and the officers of the Victory. You will find that order will be considered quite legal, and will be considered admissible procedure at your court martial.
"Do you wish that?"
Mason remained silent.
"You will, until advised otherwise, refer to me as Admiral. I, in turn, respect your rank, and will continue to channel my orders through you as suggestions. I have no intentions of undermining your authority. Nor do I think it admirable for you to continue to behave in such a childish manner. You lessen yourself and your rank in the eyes of your subordinates.''
That got the clot. Mason flushed, stiffened, and took a moment to bring himself back to corpselike control.
"That is all I have to say. Do you have any comments or suggestions?"
"No. No, sir."
"Good. This problem will not repeat itself. Now. Shall we go out there and start keeping the peace?"
Mason's salute sonic-snapped; he about-faced and stalked back out onto the bridge.
Sten allowed himself a grin. Hell, all those absurd clichйs that had been snarled at him as he rose through the ranks still worked, given that the person on the receiving end really believed all that drakh.
Oh, well.
He followed Mason—promising himself that when this was all over he would decoy the bastard into a dark alley and blackjack him for a week and a half.
Sten's next action was to "request" that Admiral Mason assemble his top four staffers and the Victory's XO in a conference chamber and link, on secure screen, the skippers of the escort ships.
"Gentlebeings," Sten said without preamble, "the situation is pretty obvious."
There were nods from the officers.
The Victory was plunging through a rift between two rich open clusters. On a screen corrected for human eyes, human spatial prejudices, and human conditioning, the tiny fleet was flashing into darkest night, with high-banked lightclouds on either side. A more detailed screen would show tiny subsidiary splotches of light to the left and right of the Victory's projected orbit. These were, respectively, the Bogazi hastily assembled fleet(s?) ready to defend their capital world and cluster on the left; and, to the right, in the middle of the darkness that was the rift, the attacking Suzdal fleets. The battlechamber, of course, would show each and every world and ship, to the limits of its preset range.
The Victory would go hey-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle between the two fleets, in—
"Contact timetick," Sten requested.
"Rough estimate, two ship-days, sir. Exact—"
"Not necessary. Thank you, Commander. Is there any data suggesting they know we're inbound?"
"Negative, sir."
That was unsurprising—one continuing advantage Imperial ships had was vastly superior sensory systems. And one very secret gimmick: before any AM2 was released to non-Imperial sources it was given a "coating" made from a derivative of Imperium X. Any non-Empire ship on stardrive would produce a slight purple flare on Imperial screens, a flare that could be picked up at a far greater range than the unaltered Imperial drive signature. It wasn't much—just enough of an edge to win a war every now and then.
"The object of our little game," Sten began, "is obviously to keep our Suzdal and Bogazi allies from slaughtering each other. And, incidently, to keep either or both of them from deciding that anybody who breaks up a bar brawl between friends deserves a good one upside the head."
There were suppressed smiles. Admiral Mason did not give briefings like this.
"Right," Sten continued. "Obviously the only way that we can accomplish this is with pure guano. Fortunately, Admiral Mason is, as you all know, one of the most skilled Imperial leaders in deception."
Sten really wanted to phrase it differently and say that Mason was fuller of drakh and therefore more guano-qualified than almost any admiral he knew, but he refrained.
"He and I discussed our problem, and he had some interesting plans. I had a couple of ideas that might be worth considering. There will be five stages to our plan. Stage
One is appropriately evil; Stage Two is honorable; and Stage Four might give someone here a medal or two. Stage Five will be pure naked dishonesty, which I shall implement."
"Stage Three, sir?" The question came from the captain of the destroyer Princeton.
"That's my own cheap idea," Sten said. "All hands aboard the Victory have been spending their off-shifts working on it."
Sten flexed his fingers unconsciously. "All hands" was no exaggeration-his own itched from metal fragments and real wood splinters embedded in fingers and palms.
"We'll get to that in time. Stage One we will begin immediately, while the briefing continues. Order all weapons officers and all Kali crews to action stations."