Barbarians at the Gates (49 page)

Marius wanted to smile at their astonished reaction, but he somehow kept his face calm and dispassionate. General Order Fifteen referred to mutiny and granted the fleet’s legitimate CO vast powers to investigate and punish any mutinous crewmen—or officers. It had been forced on the Navy during the early days of the Inheritance Wars. Somehow, it had never been repealed. The powers under General Order Fifteen were so vast that Marius could have had them all shot, and they knew it.

Of course, by invoking General Order Fifteen, Marius would probably face a court martial afterwards anyway, once the fleet returned to Federation space. But that wouldn’t make any difference to the dead.

“The Operations Plan we discussed when we were drawing up the orders for the fleet was a sham,” he continued. “I chose to develop it for two reasons: first, because it could easily be adapted to what I actually had in mind, and second, because I knew it would be leaked to Admiral Justinian. The warlord has already shifted his forces back to Jefferson to meet us when we advance from Marx—as planned. Therefore, we are not going to Marx. We’re going to Sphinx, and will advance from there.”

He watched their faces as they accessed their implants, working through the new concept. Marius had chosen it with extreme care, trusting that Justinian had enough faith in Hartkopf not to realize that there was a gaping hole in his defenses. If Bester fell, if the fleet passed through Hartkopf’s core systems unmolested, they could enter a new chain of Asimov Points that would allow them to enter Justinian’s forces by the back door.
If...

But it didn’t take too much imagination to realize just how many things could go spectacularly wrong. Fortunately, few officers would raise questions in front of the commissioners.

“We will proceed at once to Bester,” he informed them. “I believe that our psychological operations will produce fruit. But if they don’t, we will punch our way into the system and then cross to the other Asimov Point. We will not attempt to recapture Bester at present. It would only cost us greatly, for very little in return.”

He stood up, his gaze sweeping the compartment. “I trust that you all understand exactly why I had to maintain secrecy,” he concluded. “If Justinian gets a
hint
of our plans before we are in his backyard, we may find ourselves in a position where we are forced to retreat and impale ourselves on Hartkopf’s forces. If we lose here, it will be years before we can rebuild the fleet—and we will all be dead, of course.”

He let that sink in for a long moment.

“
Do not
attempt to leak the plan ahead of time. You have been warned.” He smiled coldly. “Now, are there any questions?”

There was a long pause. Several officers looked as though they wanted to raise issues, but the commissioners were still there.

“None, it seems,” he said, answering his own question. “The details of the operation have been forwarded to you. Consider them carefully, then contact me if you feel that we should discuss possibilities. Other than that, gentlemen...good luck to us all.”

He watched as the holograms popped out of existence. There were some details he’d been careful not to mention. The Brotherhood’s agent in the Bester System, for example, and the “secret package” Captain Garibaldi had delivered while departing the system. But they didn’t need to know
all
of the details.

Marius allowed himself an internal sigh as Commissioner Walters came over to him, his grey uniform matching his face. If he’d spent a day on a warship before being appointed as a political commissioner, Marius would have been astonished. The man seemed to have no concept of how a warship functioned. There were some people, even two thousand years after the birth of the Federation, who never really developed their space legs. Marius had been curious as to what Walters had been doing prior to his appointment to his ship, but the files had been carefully sealed. Even his access permissions hadn’t been able to open them.

“Admiral,” Walters said. His voice was thin, almost reedy. “The orders you presented today were not the ones my...ah...superiors forwarded to me.”

“Of course not, William,” Marius said. He was damned if he was going to call the little weasel “sir.” “I knew that the original orders would have been intercepted by the enemy.”

“The Senate is above suspicion,” Walters protested angrily. “Refusing to follow their orders...

“Are the Senatorial Aides above suspicion?” Marius asked mildly.

Walters flushed.

Marius pressed his advantage. “What about their families? Or the industrialists or investors who watch the war carefully? Can you guarantee that the secret wouldn’t have leaked?”

Walters ignored the questions. “But you’re exceeding your authority by a very long way...”

“Actually, I’m not,” Marius said pleasantly. He keyed his terminal and brought up the Senate’s instructions. “You will notice, when you read my orders from the Senate, that they include a line about carrying out offensive operations as I see fit. Should you feel that I am still exceeding my orders, you are welcome to drop a line to the Senate about it—after we hit Sphinx and start hammering our way up to Jefferson.”

He watched the Commissioner’s face; it was obvious that he was trying to do the math.

“It will be at least three months before you receive a reply,” he said, taking pity on the younger man. “And that assumes that they send one back at once. My backers may refuse to say anything until they learn if the operation has succeeded. You might end up looking like an idiot.”

Walters allowed that to slip past him. “Admiral, I must insist...”

“If you want to allow this opportunity to slip past us, you are free to do so,” Marius said. “You would, of course, have to explain it to the Senate—after all, you will have prolonged the war. I’m not going to call the operation off, William. If you want to cancel it, you can cancel it on your own authority.”

He had to smile as Walters wilted in front of him. The Commissioner had to know that Marius had powerful allies—and his wife had powerful relations. If he could talk Marius out of launching the operation, it wouldn’t rebound on him, but Marius wasn’t going to give him the easy option.

Besides, if Walters wanted to protect his skin so much, he shouldn’t have accepted transfer to a warship going into harm’s way.

“I will make an official protest,” Walters said as he stood up. His voice sharpened, although it still had the same unpleasant twang. “I believe that you have exceeded your authority, and that will be reflected in my official report to the Senate.”

Marius watched him storm out of the compartment, passing Tiffany as she walked into the room. His wife wasn’t smiling.

“You should arrange an accident for him,” she said flatly.

Marius gave her a surprised look. He’d known that Tiffany had a ruthless side, but he hadn’t known that she was
that
ruthless.

“He’s a small man,” she explained. “And if there’s one thing a small man can’t abide, it’s something that makes him look small. He’s too much of a coward to strike at you directly, but I’d bet anything you care to put forward that his dispatch back home will accuse you of everything from fornicating in public to high treason.”

“Fornicating in public and high treason,” Marius repeated. He allowed himself a slight grin, cracking a weak joke. “How will I ever get a job with a record like that?”

“I’m serious,” Tiffany said. She walked over to him and placed his hand on his shoulder. “You have to do something about him.”

He relaxed into her touch, wondering how he’d lived without a partner for so long.

“And the next one will probably be worse,” he predicted dryly. “But if the offensive fails, there is a good chance that we will all die, so his report will go nowhere. If we succeed, he’ll look like a moron.”

Tiffany snorted. “Do you think that that will stop him?”

“Not really, no,” Marius admitted.

He pushed the issue of Walters aside and smiled at her. “In two hours, the fleet will depart and head through the Asimov Point toward Bester. Do you think we can find something to do to pass the time?”

She pretended to consider it.

“I suppose.” Tiffany leaned down to kiss him deeply. Her hands reached down and stroked his chest. “I’m sure we can think of something.”

The Federation has complete freedom of the press, at least in theory. Ironically, it is the one promise that the Senate has never been able to subvert completely, although they have tried hard over the years. The sheer complexity of planetary datanets makes it very hard for the Senate—or a local government—to prevent the spread of information. This does not stop them from trying, of course.

-
An Irreverent Guide to the Federation,
4000 A.D.

Bester, Zathras System, 4097

“Two kilometers to target...”

Alicia allowed herself a faint smile as she drifted towards the massive fortress. It said something about Governor Hartkopf’s fear of his own people that he chose a mammoth orbital fortress as his command post. The fortress was armed to the teeth, with more weapons and defenses than the average superdreadnaught, yet it made him vulnerable. And never more so than now. Alicia’s secondary processor had been scanning news reports from the planet below, and it was clear that the governor was hanging on by the skin of his teeth. It wouldn’t be long before someone overthrew him, providing they managed to gain access to his fortress. The man’s paranoia was quite unbelievable, but not necessarily misplaced.

The average defense system was designed to track fast incoming targets, like missiles. They weren’t designed to track a single person in a tiny, completely silent combat suit. Alicia had been drifting in for four days, relying on her suit and augmentations to keep her on course while she allowed her mind to slip into a trance. Even a hardened vacuum-jockey would have hesitated to undertake such a mission, but Alicia had been enhanced far beyond the standard—or even legal—conventions. She didn’t have to worry about the sensory deprivation the average person would suffer after four days in a suit. It was, in a way, just another day at the office.

She kept a careful eye on her passive sensors. She had to be as careful as she could, considering the fortress looming directly in front of her, filling the sky. It was just possible that a man as paranoid as Hartkopf would have taken a few additional precautions, perhaps adding additional sensor networks or even having some men in suits patrolling the hull. That would have been taking paranoia a step too far, she thought to herself, and most security personnel would have objected strongly.

On the other hand, if she did pass through the sensor nets undetected, manned patrols were the only thing that would have a prayer of intercepting her short of her target.

No security guards appeared to stop her as she drifted the final few meters to the fortress’s hull. Her imagination filled in the
clang
as she touched down on the surface, even though she knew that no one would hear any sound of her presence. She checked around her automatically, activating the weapons built into her combat suit, before relaxing. No one was moving anywhere near her. The entire hull was abandoned.

Alicia grinned. She loved missions when she appeared right out of the target’s blind spot.

She walked toward the nearest airlock. It wouldn’t be long before she was safety inside the fortress. Then the real work could begin.

ONI hadn’t been able to provide her with any plans for the fortress, as it had been built after Hartkopf had declared independence from the Federation, but Alicia was used to going in blind. Indeed, the better the intelligence, the greater the complacency—and the chance for something to go spectacularly wrong.

She doubted that Hartkopf would have produced a completely new design of airlock and so it proved. The airlock waiting for her was Federation-standard. By law, she knew, each airlock was supposed to allow anyone to enter manually—in case of an emergency—but if Hartkopf hadn’t rigged up an alarm circuit, she would have been astonished. Hell, he might have seen fit to remove the manual overrides.

She studied the panel thoughtfully and allowed herself a tight smile. So far, so good.

She paced around the airlock until she located the command node and flipped it open. Placing her armoured hand against the panel, she extruded a small wire from her suit into the command node, hacking into its tiny brain. If the governor had been
very
paranoid, she’d just set off an alarm, but he would have to be clinically insane to even consider the possibility.

No alarms sounded.

She allowed herself a moment of relief before hacking deeper into the command node and rewriting the software to her specifications. As she had expected, there was an alarm circuit, which she bypassed, then dumped altogether. If she had to leave in a hurry, it was easier to have a way out that she knew was unguarded.

Swinging over to the airlock itself, she pulled the manual override and stepped into the airlock. A moment later, the other door hissed open automatically, and she was in. The easy part of the mission was over.

Hartkopf hadn’t realized it, but his paranoia had actually weakened his position. He’d set up hundreds of computer programs to watch his subordinates, yet he didn’t realize that those programs could be subverted. No one knew how Hartkopf had built the system, but Alicia had quickly discovered that he hadn’t developed something new or even—as the Colonial Alliance had done during the Inheritance Wars—worked an alien computer system into his network.