Sertian Princess (2 page)

"All stations manned my lord.  All systems being brought to readiness.  We have 58% power available."

"Thank you.  Navigator, lay in a course for Andes.  Report back when the first jump is prepared and clear."

"Yes, my lord."

There would be plenty of time to refine the final jumps to ensure that the Salamander would arrive on the far side of the sun from Andes and, therefore, be undetected by the radar and other tracking equipment at the spaceport.  There were of course, other ways in which he could have approached much nearer to the spaceport and remained undetected but the far side of the sun was quite near enough to leave a partially crippled spacecraft to limp in. 

He turned to Zara.  "There will be a conference of Senior Officers in Briefing Room 1 in 15 minutes."

"I will make the arrangements" she replied smoothly. 

He watched her walk away and found himself wondering for the umpteenth time why she chose to stay with him.  Lady Zara Chekova, descended from the great Chekov trading dynasty that had been so powerful before the Canine Insurrection, great-granddaughter of old Baron Theodore Chekov himself.  Of course the power of the Chekov house had been broken and diminished after that but there had been something about her even when he had first seen her, as a thirteen year old girl left bruised and bleeding in a cat-house on Bellum.  He was still not sure what it was that had caught his eye that time; her carriage or the way she held her head; some spark of defiant pride.  He had bought her release from the Madam of the house: it had cost him 2500 credits.       She was a scrawny waif in those days, painfully thin and neglected.  Now she had developed into a slim, dark-haired beauty who brought an air of elegance to everything she did.  He had taken over her education sending her to the best schools and then on to University.  In the vacations she had joined him aboard the Salamander and he had provided tutors in many subjects which young ladies are not normally taught.  She proved a remarkably adept student becoming not only a Doctor of Philosophy but also a Master of Bujutsu and remarkably proficient with a number of weapons, both conventional and unusual.  She could pilot and navigate a spacecraft as well as he could and could pass herself off in difficult or undercover situations with the consummate ease of a practised actress.

One day he had told her that her education was complete and she was now ready to fly solo.  She had not wanted to leave him but he had been hard with her and had left her standing in tears on the edge of a remote spacefield in the Xantherides System.  He had gone straight to a dingy little bar he knew in a system some 500 light-years away and went on a bender that lasted for seven days.  When he came round she was there: he never learned how she had found him.  Much later he discovered that during that week, to the mystification of the local police force, a well-known brothel on Bellum had burned to the ground and the Madam who ran it had totally vanished.  He had not seen her cry since but neither had he tried to make her leave again. 

CHAPTER 2

He walked over to the zerograv chute and pushed himself down from the Command Level to the level of the main living quarters. 

The Salamander IV was a Super-Galaxy Class luxury space cruiser built to a design originally perfected by the naval architects on Rigel VII.  Saucer shaped and about 400 metres across, the main levels were divided into four quadrants with a central core which carried the trunking for the power, computer-links and environmental controls as well as the zerograv chute. 

The first quadrant, which lay behind the main airlock, was arranged in a pattern of reception rooms for ceremonial purposes and trading halls which were kept permanently filled with displays of the goods and artefacts which the Salamander carried.  After all, he was a junior scion of the powerful trading Barony founded by his great, great grandfather Thomas Held.  He had never quite managed to shake off his trading roots nor, he suspected, did he really want to.  Unlike the Chekov's, however, the House of Held had managed to remain neutral throughout the Canine Insurrection and so retained its powerful influence.  The current head of the dynasty was his uncle, Baron Frederick who, while he did not always approve of the activities of his nephew, was shrewd enough to ensure that the Salamander was always fully stocked with the latest offerings from the House of Held.

The second quadrant contained the ship's offices and the living quarters of the crew.  The sickbay, briefing rooms and training facilities including the flight, navigation and weapons simulators were all located here.  The third quadrant consisted of the guest quarters, currently unoccupied, and the recreational facilities for the whole ship. 

But it was the fourth quadrant which was his chief delight and pleasure: the garden on the far side of which were his personal quarters.  So many experts had told him that such a garden was an impossibility because it would not be possible to maintain the ecological balance between the plants and the insects and other creatures which were a necessary part of the plants' life cycle.  Time and again he had been offered some variant of a hydroponic garden with ingenious devices to achieve pollination and eliminate the need for insects.  But he had persisted and eventually with the help of the brilliant biologists on Linnayus II he had built the garden  surrounded on all sides, above and below, by a force field strong enough to keep all of the inhabitants inside.

The garden itself he had then proceeded to stock with the most beautiful and fragrant plants from all the planets which he visited, together with their necessary insect life.  Constant monitoring of the population levels was essential as was monitoring of the amount of interbreeding and mutation.  In the last resort, if the ecological balance became perturbed so far that it could not be restored by chemical or genetic engineering, he would have to flush the whole garden out in deep space and then start over.  So far that had not been necessary. 

On the level below the living quarters was the machine level.  Powerplant, computer halls, life support systems; all were situated here.  The maintenance of all this equipment was itself largely performed by robot technicians and so it was rarely necessary for the human crew to descend to this level.  Here also were the vast storage rooms filled with supplies and trading goods and the workshops capable of repairing or replacing any component part of the Salamander.

Finally, on the fourth and lowest level was the docking area containing scout craft, small one and two man penetration craft capable of slipping unnoticed through the most complex detection screens and, incongruous against the modern, tiny scout craft, an old and very battered Star class freighter, the Phoenix.  It was, of course, not quite as old and battered as it appeared and furthermore, contained one or two modifications which would have startled the original designers.  The Phoenix tended to blend naturally into the background on any spacefield in the known galaxy and on many operations had served to provide cover, as a decoy or, as in this case, as a most mechanically unreliable form of transport. 

He walked into the Briefing Room still thinking of the role the Phoenix would have to play. 

"Sam, what would be the most convincing breakdown we could arrange on the Phoenix?  Nothing too serious: she's got to be able to limp in and land under her own power but then be stranded for several days for repairs."

"How about a hairline crack in the casing of the Main Drive so that she can only operate at reduced speed or at full speed for only very short periods?"

"Hm, that wouldn't actually stop her from making sub-space jumps to Quental and limping in for repairs there."

"Well, how about if we put the crack in the lining of one of the powercells?  That would stop the sub-space jumps."

"Come off it Sam.  If we crack a powercell there will be a radiation spill and the ship and crew will be put into quarantine until they're clean even if they're allowed to land at all.  We need something that isn't going to cause any panic."

"Ok then, what about an intermittent hardware fault on the power supply computer causing an occasional power loss?  I could have a defective chip made up in the workshop.  If we also disable the auto diagnosis module it would take about three days to run a full component level check manually."

"That's better Sam: have the chip made up.  Meanwhile, have the archive material on Wolfram and the Sertian Royal Family available on-line for the briefing and stay listening in yourself."

"Yes Boss."

The door slid open and Zara entered.  "The Senior Officers are here, my lord.  Are you ready for them?"

"Yes Zara, wheel them in."

He watched them as they entered the Briefing Room:  Zara, of course, Elida the Navigation Officer and Corin the Pilot had been on duty when the message had come in from Centre. Mtebe, the giant Chief Engineer, whose huge hands were so skilful that he could strip down and repair almost any piece of equipment on the ship faster than a specialised robot technician.  Suzanne, the natural telepath, who was in charge of all the communications equipment but who could, if necessary, communicate without any equipment at all.  Simon, the ex-Imperial Guards Officer, who was responsible for all offensive and defensive weapon systems.  And lastly, Julia, who commanded his personal bodyguard and who trained the crew for all off-ship activities.

They seated themselves around the oval table.  There was a giant display screen occupying most of one of the end walls of the room and small repeater screens in front of each of them.  Each position had an access panel for directing enquiries into both the Main and the Archive Databanks and switching facilities for routing the replies to any other position around the table or up to the big display screen.

"Good morning", he began the meeting.  "I hope I haven't disturbed your beauty sleep too early this morning."

A smirk appeared on a couple of faces, quickly suppressed and he felt a faint surge of irritation with himself as he realised that he had used that particular opening line last time.  It was time to change the patter.

"Centre have got a job for us."

He turned to the main display screen.  "Sam, key the pictures to the names as I run through them."

He laid out the problem and then quickly sketched in the background details rounding off with the current military situation between Vostov and Serta.

"Right, that's the problem.  Questions, analysis, recommendations?"

Elida spoke first.  "Ok, I'll get the obvious question out of the way.  Why don't we just intercept the Aldebaran at her next port-of-call, inform Princess Nerissa of the potential danger and escort her back to Serta?"

"Two reasons", he replied.  "First, it is believed that Princess Nerissa has developed into a spoilt and very stubborn young lady who would not necessarily be responsive to warnings of a potential threat for which there is not actually any hard evidence.  Second, at this point in time we do not know what strength the opposition has in the field or precisely what their intentions are.  A kidnap attempt is the most likely scenario.  Sam how do you calculate the probability?"

"Probability of a kidnap attempt is 86.1% plus or minus 7.7%."

"However, if we foil the kidnap by pre-emptive action, they may panic or they may simply choose an alternative course of action and take the Princess out of the game on a more permanent basis.  Probability Sam?"

"Probability of an assassination is 21.2% plus or minus 9.6%.  However, if the kidnap option is removed, the probability of an assassination rises to 67.2% plus or minus 13.4%."

Suzanne leaned forward.  "Could Vostov already have someone on board the Aldebaran?"

"It's possible but they would have to have moved dammed fast.  They may, of course, have already had somebody on board the liner in their pay; a crew member maybe.  But if they have it's likely to be only a low grade operative, capable of maintaining a surveillance operation but no more than that until a superior arrives."

"I take it that the plain fact that we have been called in at all means that a military operation has been ruled out."  This from Simon.

"Quite so.  This whole operation is too close to Parm to risk major Naval Manoeuvres.  Centre did promise to arrange a corvette as back-up but only to be used in extremis.  I don't even have confirmation of the corvette's availability yet."

"So we are on our own then."  Corin looked at Elida.  "Can we get to Floreat ahead of the Aldebaran?"

"Yes we could but our current course is laid in for Andes.  My lord, would it not be better to get a team on board the Aldebaran as quickly as possible?"

He sighed gently.  They were all young and enthusiastic, and without exception, very good within their specialised fields but none of them showed the potential to develop the broad range of skills essential to the survival of a successful agent.  None of them except Zara, that is.  Of all the young hopefuls he had identified as having some potential and, therefore, being worthy of his time and effort in training them, only Zara had lived up to his expectations.

"My lady, is there any factor which has been overlooked in the analysis so far?"

"I would say the biggest thing is that they will be expecting us.  They obtained their information from one of our agents.  They must assume that she had already reported in to Centre or maybe she even confessed as much.  Therefore, they will be expecting us to take some action.  Any new passengers or crew joining the Aldebaran at either of the next two stops will need a watertight cover story or else they will immediately be tagged as our agents."

"So far so good, my lady.  Now follow that line of reasoning through to a conclusion."

"If we go charging in like a bull in a china shop, without any idea of the strength of the opposition, we will give them a virtually unbeatable advantage.  At best they will be able to neutralise all of our operations: at worst, we may be consigning a group of agents to their deaths."

"But," interrupted Julia, "if they can identify our agents so easily, surely we can identify theirs?  After all, they will also have to join the ship either at Floreat or at Andes."

"I have no intention of allowing our agents to be easily identified," he said sharply.  "Furthermore, I have to assume that the Vostovian Field Controller will be equally as alert to the risks and will be providing equally good cover for his agents.  Never underestimate the opposition.  It could be the last mistake you ever make."

Zara cut in quickly, attempting with the tone of her voice to lower the tension around the table.   "As you have directed us to head for Andes, my lord, instead of Floreat, what do you have in mind for us to do?

At the back of his mind he realised that she was gentling him as one would a fractious animal and instinctively rebelled against it.  But then the training and years of self-discipline took over and he admitted to himself that she was right as usual.  He took a deep breath and forced himself to reply calmly. 

"We have to establish the cover story.  The main team will be the Blue Star Streak Group, five female vocalists plus their manager en route to Quental for an engagement at a nightclub there.  The actual booking is being set up now and will be authentic.  They will be stranded on Andes when the ship on which they are travelling, the Phoenix, breaks down with an intermittent power failure.  The breakdown will also be genuine: the main power supply computer will contain a defective chip which is being constructed in the workshops at this moment.  Mtebe, you will see to its installation.  You will also disable the auto diagnosis module at the same time.  We will drop the Phoenix off on the far side of the Andean sun and they will make their way to Andes spaceport as best they can.  They will have just over three days to get there.

"Julia, we have used the Blue Star Streak Group cover before so you shouldn't have any difficulty in finding four volunteer singers.  Zara, I would like you to be the lead singer and you, Corin, to be the group's manager."

He had no worries about Zara's ability to carry off this particular role.  She had a voice of such clear quality that even her ordinary speech was a pleasure to listen to.  She had often sung as part of the entertainment programme on board the Salamander and his one regret was that if on this operation, she was actually called upon to sing, her voice would be mingled with four others which, however skilled, he would regard as inferior.

There was, he had to admit, a good chance that they would be called upon to perform.  Even if the Captain did not seize the opportunity provided by having a group of professional singers on board his liner, it was likely that the opposition would contrive something in order to test the group's cover.  In the next few days they would have to organise some stage costumes and rehearse a few routines.