|
The body floated, a tiny star around Reega's primary moon Tiger Eye One. Brilliant white thermoskin over a latticework of tough fibers reflected enough light from the suit to brighten a large room. Dimmer and small like a grey round pebble, Tiger Eye Two hung in the background guarding its part of the sky.
Suddenly a white dot appeared on the green scan screen and pinging from the speaker confirmed. Both were parts of the MVS, the Multi Verification Scanner system implemented two revs ago during some retrofit and upgrade. Elsewhere, computers recorded full spectrum input from the scan to permanent storage for possible later study if needed.
"It's a bio signal Jenner, human I think" said Luft Wren, turning to his junior. "Shoot a copy to Ops Central, urgent status. Looks like he's one of ours. Just a second...damn! ID echo from a cranial chip says its a Quadrant Watch agent. Code One that copy pre-transmit."
"OK Luf, on it's way right...now." Jenner Tal punched a bright red, square button recessed into his panel, then leaned back and sighed nervously. "Uh, Luf, I'm not supposed to know, but that's the third one in four weeks. A rev of this and we'll all be up in orbit without air."
Luft looked back, a finger to his lips. "Watch your mouth junior, and go down to Clearance and finish your security upgrade. You'll need it by tomorrow. I've already sent my attest and rec's to Sec Chief for your file. We'll probably be living at these damn panels for awhile. You'll also need to cancel any leave down planetside, not sure how long. Something's goin' on, and it's no vee screen comedy. See you at evening chow." He turned back to his panel with a whispered "damn." He was worried.
In three revs of duty Jen had never seen him this serious.
"Steve, Watch three-vee-two got another one. Here's the sheet. They probably think it's the third or fourth this month. Do I tell 'em?"
"No Dal, don't just yet, 'till we're certain. Who knows, It just COULD be the wildest set of coincidences in history," Steve caught Dal's eyes with no trace of mirth, "but I doubt it. God, we need more intel. I can't believe how tight these Torsell lines are shut down. Either they have stopped all traffic, which is crazy, or they've developed a vastly tighter system. I just don't know. Nothing we do brings 'em out of the woodwork. Nothing to trace to anywhere. Dammit! DAMMIT!!" Steven Kallum slammed his hand on his desk with frustration built over months of running into nothing but duratite walls. "No intel, no data, no reports except for dead tortured agents floating in orbit from here to galrim. Sadistic bastards."
Morale was at risk, with more than usual fights breaking out among the troops. It was impossible to hide ALL the facts. The tide must turn. But how?
That night, scowling at grey walls looming in his cubicle in the command ship Phoenix Flight, Steve drew up the general specs of a sweep grid. It was a data gathering net of electronics, human observers, telescopic outposts, audio receptors, paid rats, and the list went on for a grade one major galactic intel sweep.
But then he multiplied the figures by twenty five. This sweep would be twenty five times larger and deeper than the largest ever carried out in a busy five thousand rev history.
The only problem, however, was nothing to sweep. No activity to trace, no signal to record. Not a peep. Something would have to lure the rats from their nests. A bait of the most brilliant gems for the richest man in the galaxy. An unendurable temptation.
He had known what it would have to be all along -- something one didn't dwell on. But now he would have to use it.
Six months were laid out on a tight time grid with each
step and layer of the effort planned and fit into the
largest net ever woven. But finer than the finest silk ever spun.
Meetings were packed and code channels heated to a
frenzy. Stations and outposts were stocked and manned and set up in advance to settle to a tuned hum well before the trap would be sprung.
Every leave and liberty was cancelled and training drill schedules raised to unprecedented levels. Exhausted men and women sunk in welcome slumber nightly or daily depending on their shifts.
Someone quipped that it felt like the plans were being carried out to move the entire civilization to a brand new galaxy. "Why not, we've seen most of the stars in this one. And the nebulae over there are so pretty I hear."
"Gonna need alot of cardboard boxes."
It got laughs and broke the tension and allieviated some of the mystery.
Even in the prisons; "Yeah, the devil knows my coordinates real good by now. A move might throw him off, maybe I can stay outta that place after all, ha ha."
But everyone knew something was up.
Steve was sighting in his secret weapon. Honing the finest blade ever heated and folded into multi-layered Damascus perfection. He ordered a rumor started, an intel leak, backed with detailed documentation to be stolen at the right time and place by someone without a past to trace. A ghost in a world of secrets.
The agent to be hit and from whom the documents would be stolen would be left with the injuries required to make the play a success to its audience. The blood would be real, with some left at the scene, smeared into the floorboards, able to be checked by those who would need to know, and the agent would barely escape with his life.
The one doing the hit would be a bird dog, planted on the enemy intel grid long ago.
It would be the finest scene ever played out across the boards, but Broadway it would never see.
The word spread among the troops, but some of the whispers were lies, necessary to the staging. A meeting was to take place, a secret rendevous critical to the onward march of the suns of the great spiral wheel of the galaxy. Yes it would be dangerous but precautions would be taken. They always were of course.
Many dribbles of data from here and there, each one small, flowed like tributaries to the larger river of knowledge. Many of the small channels directly fed to Steve could be decyphered only by him. He had set up a separate layer of intel posts personally run by him alone, so he saw things as no one else, and no one knew the true plan but him.
Most felt they knew the scope of the evolution, but in fact only three had a clue. Steve and two proven deputies. Overall security of the galaxy was therefore divided into three major sections with Steve's extra duty that of Chief. A cell system from there on down prevented anyone from knowing too much.
It was nearing Finale, the term chosen to help preclude a sense of doom. Steve had taken a few hours to visit his wife and pretend he had yet another dreary operation to drag through, and he wanted to see her in case it became drawn out unexpectedly. He knew she was smart, but he had never guessed she was practically a white witch -- one of considerable acting talents.
They strolled in nearby hills and chatted quietly. It was evening and the sunset alive. And dying.
It was hardest for him to watch her bear the dangerous missions, which she did without blinking an eye. If he was tough, she was indestructable.
She looked into his eyes and saw the galaxy in all its dazzling glow and the myriad of happy free people winding their ways through life adding talents and sometimes crimes to the whole spinning spiral dance. She saw the sweat and the blood spent building a civilization. And the people, joining in love for future generations. She saw the tears for those who had paid the ultimate sacrifice for them all.
And then she saw his horrible dread of its demise. His worst nightmare. Stars winking black one by one. Children crying under cold dark suns. And there she could have fallen and cried.
But she stood.
With the strength and will which were the reasons he had married her, she painted a rosy smile made of tears and blood. A smile was more than a smiling face, and he must believe her, so from wracking hollow depths of loss she knew might one day haunt her, she played at Alchemy. And grief became the gold of joy which she showed to him and made him believe. He would not go out to face the cold distracted by her worry.
Some things were beyond the deepest intel probes. She said the sound was her spine popping as usual. It does that you know. In their final embrace he cracked her rib. But she didn't mind at all.
Back in the Phoenix Steve kissed her picture "see you later" and stowed it. No personals on this kind of operation. Nothing to trace or provide ident.
Finale was near and everything ready. Would it work? It had to work. They'd shot the wad on this big party. Time to blow out the candles and pop the champagne.
Steve pulled on the conservative business suit and got the courier bag ready with the wrist cuff. Christ, why don't they pad these things. Cut your whole hand off. Crims aren't nuts because they steal and might go to prison, but because they might have to wear these damn things. He grinned.
He looked at the wall, and it could have melted. He didn't consider himself any different than anyone else. But he'd never gone up against himself. Well, they say I'm tough, but really...hmmm...I think I just care. Why else do all this madness. I guess it occupies my attention. That I have plenty of.
He switched it all off and got ready. Time to party folks. He went to a sub deck and entered the little sprint ship for the hour run to Finale Way, code for the ops site. The ship was a beat up junker on the outside. It matched alot of ships running around these days. People loved to fix
the old ones. Overhaul or repair the mechanicals and hydraulics, electrics and electronics. Save alot of galnotes.
"Dal, I'm gone. Keep 'em tight and ready. You should have intel pouring out your ears by tonight."
"Yeah Steve. I was wondering...uh, never mind. After
the op. We're go. Send it on."
"OK Dal. One more thing. In case there are any, uh, problems, you have the code to my safe?"
"Yes."
"Great. Dal, you're second in command. Uh..."
"Shut the fuck up Steve, I hate this shit. Your ass is mine tomorrow at darts." He squinted for some time at the wall. It didn't quite melt.
Steve smiled to himself. Dal was ready. If need be.
He landed in the busiest port on Perron. Penta City,
galdock four. He off loaded himself and his case and started
the walk to the business district. Strolling along, he
reflected.
No one knew what he knew about the Torsellians and their views about him. They hated him with a crimson lust, and one for one they would shred him, if they had the chance, and lace their boots with him. Or they would eat him alive, slowly. They were cannibals but technically brilliant, and their technology was applied to the torture they enjoyed.
His own secret intel showed he was something they would break security for. He was the prime mover in blocking every attempt they made to infiltrate the galaxy in force. Stop stop stop. He drove them nearly berserk. They would feed their young to diseased krudge rats to get to him, and finally had chanced upon gold and had learned of a meeting he would attend. And there they would get him, and his precious papers would be an extra treat.
The documents he would carry had made it worthwhile to refrain from simply gassing and multi-fragging the entire city during his visit.
Their plan for the docs was probably to grab them and toss them into a small Screeza Pierce Needle, the fastest small load rocket known, and send them away for retrieval. A P-Needle could cross the galaxy in about five minutes, and it was rumoured that anyone within four feet of the flight path of one could die. Reports of hearing loss within a hundred feet of one had also circulated. In any case they were nothing to dally with once fired.
Steve knew that his people assumed adequate security was planned for whatever the ops site would be.
Would the psychotic Torsellians reveal themselves or risk a major confrontation if they knew the area would be tighter than a drum? Certainly not, despite the bait. So Steve had leaked the meeting and the lack of security for it.
They would, at last, be lured from their nests of hate and provide an info grid never dreamed of on their patterns of operation.
He calmly stepped up the wide front steps and tilted
his head for a better view of the high ironstone facade
rising up like a square sawn mountain. He sighed and trudged
through the tall double doors to the entry manager who
nodded him through with a polite half-smile while checking off a log entry under appointments. Steve noted, with a wry grin, that whereas he might be late for the dart game tomorrow with Dal, he was arriving precicely on time for his own asassination.
THE END
Copyright, 1999, Kent Davis
Los Angeles, California
|
