Sertian Princess (13 page)

The Salamander had gone back into an orbit on the blind side of the sun from Andes, so that finding her and setting up the secure comms link did not take very long.  Zara had herself patched straight through to the main databanks.

"Sam, I'm going to send you the information which Khan has supplied, on all those joining the Aldebaran at Floreat and at Andes.  I want you to cross-correlate it with the results of that earlier research you did for me.  None of the names match, of course, but Khan has put in some other detail which you may be able to use."

She inserted the small optical disc containing the data into the laser reader and typed in the command to send it to the Salamander.  After only a few seconds, Sam came back on the air.

"There's nothing there on a preliminary scan, my lady.  I can dig deeper using the medical records but it will take time.  How long can you wait?"

It was a stipulation of the insurance companies handling the Aldebaran and other liners like her, that the medical records of each passenger must be supplied, before that passenger is allowed to board.  It was a rule that was strictly observed, and thus provided the various law enforcement agencies with an ideal mechanism for tracking the movements of suspects around the Galaxy.  Although in theory, medical records could be altered as easily as any other type of record, in practice, it was very rarely attempted.  The basic reason for this was fear: most people, whether criminally minded or not, wanted to ensure that they would receive the correct medical treatment in an emergency and this treatment was determined by the details in their Medical Records.  So, unless the alterations were done very skilfully indeed, enough factors would have to remain constant in the records, to allow the type of trace which Sam was proposing.

"I can't wait, Sam.  I have to get back to catch the shuttle.  If you come up with anything, you'll have to send me a coded cable on board the Aldebaran.  Is that ok?"

"Of course, my lady."

***

Inside the Terminal building, the four girls watching the entrances, had been having a very boring time of it: nobody even vaguely resembling Stefan Pulowski had turned up at all.  Corin arrived shortly before 15:00, having been equally unsuccessful.  If their man had been staying at any of the local hotels, he had not been using his real name and none of the hotel staff he had spoken to, could recognise the photograph.

Pulowski eventually entered the Terminal at 16:40 and went straight to the check-in desk, just beating the one-hour deadline.  He checked that the shuttle was on its approach and on schedule, and then retired to the Balcony Bar.  Cerys and Brianey had spotted him as he came in to the building and followed him now into the bar.  Once they were satisfied that he was sitting alone and not obviously waiting for someone, Cerys left Brianey to watch him, and went to report.

"We've got him!  He's in the bar."

"Is he alone?  Has he spoken to anyone?" Corin asked.

"No, he's on his own.  Bri's keeping an eye on him."

"You'd better get back there," Zara said.  "We'll collect Carly and Tessa and find a spot just outside the bar.  We won't all troop in and stare at him but if he makes any contacts at all, we'll be at hand to help you keep tabs on them."

In the event, the next hour was totally unremarkable.  Pulowski sat on his own at the bar.  He spoke to no-one except the barman, and gave no sign of recognising anyone either.  When the shuttle came in, bang on schedule, he joined the other passengers on the viewing balcony to watch the landing and then returned to his seat at the bar, again without speaking to anyone.

The shuttle was very nearly full, on landing: 98 passengers were disembarking at Andes, and the unloading of the shuttle took rather longer than normal.  When the final baggage cart was loaded and heading back towards the Terminal, the crew of the shuttle emerged and started to follow it.  They were about halfway to the building when the alarms in the shuttle went off.  The crew spun round as one, dropped their hand baggage where they stood on the field and began sprinting back to the shuttle.  A trickle of smoke started to rise out of the open hatchway and the ground crew were scattering in all directions as the alarms were taken up and repeated around the spacefield.

The crowd in the bar emptied back onto the viewing balcony again as the Spaceport Fire Service came rushing up with their specialised equipment.  It looked as though the shuttle pilot had to be restrained from re-entering the shuttle while the firemen hastily donned their breathing apparatus.  Four firemen in full gear, disappeared through the hatchway and for a while all visible activity ceased.  The trickle of smoke had never increased appreciably and now it faded away altogether.  One of the firemen reappeared in the hatchway, opened his face mask and shouted something to the others.  It must have been the all clear because the shuttle crew started towards the hatchway, while the firemen began packing away their equipment.

On the balcony, Zara turned to Corin and slipped a small plastic coated disc into his hand.

"Get up to the Field Controller's Office and find out what's going on, and if there's going to be a delay.  Don't use the disc unless you have to.  It identifies you as an agent of the Drug Enforcement Agency, but if you have to use it, say that you have a suspect waiting to board the Aldebaran shuttle.  They will co-operate with you: the Andeans hate drug runners."

"What about our friend here?"

"I'll stay down here with the girls and keep an eye on him.  We may get lucky.  The trouble on the shuttle may panic him into making a mistake."

***

The trouble on the shuttle proved to be not as serious as it had first appeared.  Jonas Middleton had spent a very worrying few days on the trip from Floreat, trying to think of an equipment failure that would look convincing and would produce the required delay.  The difficulty was, that any breakdown had to be repairable with the facilities on Andes but had to be serious enough to take at least six hours to fix.

Try as he might, Jonas had been unable to think of anything that would fit the bill, and so he had turned his mind instead to the possibilities of a small fire in the passenger compartment.  If he managed to judge it correctly, the Fire Service would use foam to put out the blaze.  The damage within the compartment need not be very great, but it would take hours to clean away all the foam and make it fit for use again.  If he needed any further time, the electrical and control wiring beneath the floor and behind the panelling of the passenger compartment, would have to be thoroughly tested, before the shuttle could be allowed to take off.  As a final touch, he had used a lighted cigarette end to ignite a small pile of rubbish beneath one of the seats, thus throwing the blame neatly onto one of the passengers.

Right now, though, Jonas had to deal with one of the most difficult parts of the whole exercise.  He was on a direct visual communication link to Captain Wainwright, who, according to the comms technician who had connected them, had to be scraped off the ceiling when he first heard the news.

"Why is it all going to take so long?  Why can't the wiring checks be done at the same time as the cleaning is going on?"

"There's only so much we can do from outside the compartment, sir.  We need to get in there to remove some of the panelling, and we can't do that until the cleaners have finished.  We can't risk traces of foam or cleansing agent getting behind the panels and into the wiring."

There was a muffled bellowing on the link which continued for several minutes, as Captain Wainwright "discussed" the alternatives with his Navigation Officer.  Eventually, he came back to Jonas.

"Very well, I've given orders to change our course into a parking orbit.  Navigation tells me that you will have seven hours 46 minutes to get that shuttle spaceworthy again or I will have to make a second orbit.  I do not wish to make a second orbit, Pilot.  Do I make myself plain?"

"Perfectly, sir," Jonas replied, hoping desperately that his contact would arrive within the six hours as he had promised originally.

***

The ship Jonas was waiting for, came in well under the six hours; a small, fast family cruiser.  Its flight log had been falsified to show that it came from Namdal, a small system whose virtue as far as this flight was concerned, was that it lay almost on a direct route from Vostov to Andes.  The five passengers on the ship all promptly made for the transit lounge to join the others waiting for the shuttle.  Jonas watched them crossing the field to the Terminal building and heaved a sigh of relief as he recognised one of the faces.

Fortunately Corin was still in the Field Controller's Office when the ship touched down, otherwise he might not have noticed the new arrivals.  He watched interestedly as the details of the transit passengers came up on the screens, and then hurriedly excused himself to find Zara.

"We should have noticed that we were five passengers short," she said when he told her.  "I suppose they are all scheduled passengers."

"Oh yes.  They're all on Khan's list."

"Still it is curious.  A fire on the shuttle; not serious but enough to delay it.  Then this ship arrives with five passengers who would otherwise have missed the connection.

"I think these five will bear a much closer examination.  Let's get a message off to Khan, and ask him to copy the results of the check to Sam, for incorporation into the research I've got underway."

CHAPTER 13

For the crew of the Cleopatra, the five day run across to the second rendezvous point was fully occupied with training exercises and rehearsals.  It always took a while for a new crew to get used to their ship, not only to find out what the ship itself was capable of, but also to establish their own rhythm to the functions they had to perform.  They practised countering the evasive manoeuvre with which the Andromeda lost them before and, once they had mastered that, Mikael had the probe programmed with other evasive manoeuvres, some standard and some unorthodox, and they practised countering those.

Some of the counter moves which they rehearsed, were the result of some hasty improvisation.  With the port laser turret out of action, all the manoeuvres had to be designed to bring the starboard laser to bear, which was not always easy if the target was banking to the left.  The damage to the port laser was clearly visible from outside the ship and so it was a reasonable assumption, that any ship attempting to escape from the Cleopatra, would either dive or climb to the left.  Accordingly Mikael had them rehearse over and over, a series of turns which would bring the starboard laser to bear in the shortest possible time, whatever evasion the target tried.

They also used up two of the spare probes.  With no computerised firing control possible on the laser, they had to rely on the skill of the two gunners manning the turret.  Firing at a static target is all very well but it does not provide the same experience as trying to hit a rapidly moving probe, programmed for evasive manoeuvres.  Under the circumstances, Mikael considered that the expenditure of the two probes was justifiable.

By the time they were approaching the second rendezvous point, he was satisfied that the Cleopatra was as near combat ready as he could get her, without actual combat experience.  The probe which they used for the final jump, reported a ship already in the target area, but it could not identify the type.  Mikael brought the Cleopatra to Action Stations before giving the order to complete the jump.

When they emerged into normal space, all of the scanning systems immediately began hunting for the unidentified ship.

"We've picked up the ship, sir," Frank reported.  "It's a civilian craft: a Super Galaxy class space cruiser."

"Good.  Let's hope it's the one we're looking for."

"Yes sir.... but there's something a bit odd about it, sir.  It's a civilian ship but it's transmitting an IFF signal, and that needs military hardware."

"I don't think we should expect this to be an ordinary civilian craft, Frank.  If this man is an agent of the Centre, their technicians have probably made so many modifications to the ship that its own shipyard wouldn't recognise it.  Open a comms channel and issue the challenge, precisely as it is specified in the orders."

Frank was back inside a couple of minutes.

"Challenge issued and the correct response received, sir.  It is our contact.  They want us to come alongside to receive a liaison officer on board."

"Dammit all, Frank, do they think this is a bloody battleship.  We're overcrowded as it is with that squad of Imperial Guard.  Tell them we haven't got room."

"I've already done that, sir.  I'm afraid they insisted, and quoted the Admiral's authority to do so."

Mikael groaned.  "All right, then.  Who is it they're sending across?"

"Apparently it's a Communications Specialist, sir."

"You mean they don't trust us to handle our own comms!  Very well, warn our comms people to keep on their toes.  And tell them they'll have to double bunk in that section to make room for him.

"Pilot, lay us alongside that civilian ship.  What's her name anyway?"

"Salamander IV, sir."

***

There are three common ways of transferring people between ships in deep space.  The first is to use a shuttle craft to carry them across.  This does, however, require docking facilities on each ship, large enough to take the shuttle craft.  The Salamander's dock was big enough to accommodate quite a number of smaller craft, but the Cleopatra only had docking facilities for its own Captain's launch and its own jolly boat.

The second way is for each person transferring, to use a spacesuit and to jet across the intervening void under independent power.  It was in this way that the Imperial Guard crossed over to the Cleopatra.  This is, though, probably the least frequently used method of transfer as it requires a degree of familiarity with spacesuit controls, which most people do not have.  It is very easy for a novice to become completely disorientated and either jet off in totally the wrong direction, or start spinning in a way which is very difficult to correct without training or experience.

The third way is to physically connect the two ships by an airtight passageway, along which people can float without needing spacesuits.  This link cannot be totally rigid because, however much the two pilots try to align the velocities of their respective ships, there will always be some slight movement of the one relative to the other.  And so most airlocks, at least on modern ships, are fitted with Li-Matsu flexible extension systems, permitting connection to another ship's airlock up to 400 metres away, or to another extension system, doubling the distance to 800 metres.

The Li-Matsu system is like an expanding, flexible, corrugated hose, fitted on the inside with handholds for people to pull themselves through, under the zero gravity conditions existing between the ships. The outer end of the hose has a transparent iris opening, so that the crewman who stands there can see where to guide the tube.  The steering controls consist of a number of compressed air jets, by means of which the crewman can aim the end of the hose for the target airlock.  Once connected and locked to the other ship, the Li-Matsu system has a comprehensive set of stress meters fitted, to alert the crew long before the limit of flexibility is reached and to allow the ships to either disconnect the passageway or to rematch their velocities.

The physical connection of ships is most commonly used if the quantity of people or cargo to be transhipped, is large, or if the connection is required for an extended period of time.  In this case, the rendezvous point had been arranged to be near the route of the Aldebaran, six days out from Andes and, therefore, just before the most likely region for any interference from Parm, if such was the opposition's plan.  As the Aldebaran was currently only three days out from Andes, they had roughly another three days to kill before the liner was due.

Although both ships were fitted with Li-Matsu systems, only the Salamander's system was being used as there was no particular reason to separate the ships by any great distance.  Simon, as Senior Officer aboard the Salamander, accompanied Suzanne across to the corvette.  When the crewman controlling the end of the extension airlock, saw them approaching, he moved to take down the force field barrier across the entrance, but Simon stopped him.

"No!  I want this force field kept in place at all times.  Any personnel moving between the ships, will have to use their personal belt fields."

The tailoring of a belt field to the wearer's body contours, is a time consuming exercise and so, although some belts were kept for general use, most of the Salamander's crew had their own personal belts.  These operated on the same standard frequency as all the other force fields on board the ship and neutralised the effect of these fields, thus allowing the wearer free passage.  In an off-ship environment, the operating frequency could be adjusted to allow the wearer to pass through any force field which might be encountered in a similar fashion.

Simon and Suzanne switched on their belt fields and pulled themselves through into the Cleopatra's airlock, where Frank and a bosun's mate were waiting.  The effect was startling.  Suzanne was tall, very slender, and had both dark hair and dark eyes.  Although she was very demurely dressed in a one piece coverall, her long legs drew admiring glances wherever she went.

Frank quickly recovered his composure and welcomed them on board. However, his composure only lasted until Simon introduced himself as the Officer temporarily commanding the Salamander, and Suzanne as the Communications Specialist.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am, but you are the Liaison Officer we were told to expect?"

"That's right, Lieutenant.  Is that going to cause a problem?"

"Well, it just might, ma'am.  You see we haven't got any facilities for ladies aboard this corvette."

"I'm not looking for any special favours, Lieutenant.  I can fit in wherever you've got a spare corner."

"Uh, yes ma'am.  I think we'd better go and meet the Captain.  He's expecting us on the bridge."

Frank turned to lead the way but then stopped and turned back as a thought struck him.

"Excuse me if I'm being impertinent, sir, but you obviously have a mixed crew on board the Salamander.  Could you tell me what percentage of your crew are female?"

"It's about 50 percent, Lieutenant.  We have a more or less balanced crew."

"50 percent; as high as that."  He pursed his lips in a silent whistle.  "Thank you, sir.  Bosun, I want a double guard mounted on this airlock immediately, with the men to be rotated every two hours. And pass the word for Prince Gerald, the Guards Commander to join the Captain on the bridge."

As Frank had anticipated, Mikael's reactions were broadly the same as his own had been.  "It's impossible."

"I'm sorry to have to insist, Captain," Simon said.  "But I'm afraid it's going to have to be possible.... and I have your Admiral's authority for it."

Cursing Admiral Wei silently but very comprehensively, Mikael tried again.  "I accept that I have to have a Liaison Officer on board, sir, but I'm sure, when he cut those orders, the Admiral did not realise that it would be a lady Officer.  Do you not have another Comms Specialist you could give me instead?"

"I'm sorry, Captain.  If it were only a question of normal comms systems, I'm sure your own people could handle the situation without any help from us at all.  However, Suzanne is a telepath, the best natural telepath we have and she can relay instructions direct from Lord David, even if no normal means of communication are available.  I regret any inconvenience that this might cause in your wardroom, but I'm afraid there is really no alternative."

Recognising the inevitable, Mikael sighed.  "Very well.  Frank, you'd better tell Georges Garcia to shift his kit into the berth we'd provisionally reserved for the Liaison Officer and she can have his cabin."

"Thank you, Captain," Suzanne said.

Mikael turned to Prince Gerald.  "Lieutenant, we've rigged an extension airlock between the Salamander and the Cleopatra but I want to ensure that there's no unauthorised movement of personnel between the ships.  Could your men take over the guard duty on the airlock and free my crew for their normal duties?"

"Certainly, sir.  It will give them something to do.  I'll see to it straight away."

"Thank you, and when you've done that, would you join us in my day cabin for a briefing on the mission."

***

The Captain's quarters on a corvette of the Cleopatra's class, consisted of a day cabin about three metres square, and sleeping quarters opening off there, of about half the size.  The day cabin had two entrances: one, direct from the bridge, was reserved for the Captain's personal use and was keyed only to his palm.  The second opened off the main passageway to the bridge, and it was through this entrance that the officers were assembling.

The tiny cabin was rapidly becoming crowded.  A large part of the floor space was taken up by a desk, an operating console allowing Mikael access to all of the ship's computers, and banks of small screens repeating the information on the main bridge displays.  Into the remaining space were crammed Mikael, Frank, Anton, Simon, Suzanne, and the rest of the Cleopatra's officers: Georges Garcia, Communications; Peter Chen, Navigation; Erik van Gelst, Electronics; and Andrew Frazer, Chief Engineer.  Last to arrive was Prince Gerald, squeezing in through the doorway with a quiet apology and then closing the entrance behind him.

When the round of introductions was complete, Simon quickly outlined the situation concerning Princess Nerissa and the perceived threat to her safety, and also Vostov's ambitions towards Serta.  Before going into the details of the operation, he paused and looked around to observe the effect of his disclosures so far.  He was particularly concerned about the reaction of Prince Gerald, as it was his sister who was the prime target in the affair.  However, after a brief moment of alarm had flashed across his face, his discipline and training, both as the son of a reigning monarch and as an officer in the Imperial Guard, had taken over and his face remained impassive.

There were all the usual questions, of course.  How good was the information on which this operation had been based?  Did we have any idea of the opposition's plans?  Why didn't we pre-empt the opposition and just go in and take the Princess off the liner?  Simon dealt with them each in turn.  Prince Gerald initially wanted to speak directly to his sister, but eventually agreed that, without any fresh evidence to offer her, he was unlikely to be able to change her mind.  She was, he admitted, a very independently minded young lady.

"So there we have it," concluded Simon.  "We have the best team we could possibly get, on board the liner.  They should be able to deal with any trouble which originates internally.  If there is any attempt at external interference with the liner....  well, that's where we come in.