Sertian Princess (4 page)

At the centre of the Star Base was a shaft maintained at near zero gravity to facilitate vertical transfer to the various levels.  The artificial gravity generators which maintained a uniform field throughout the base were situated at the bottom of this shaft.  Shaping of the gravity field to restrict it to the sphere of the artificial moon was achieved by embedded interference generators between the inner and outer skins of the base: otherwise approaching spacecraft would be affected by the gravity field.  The central shaft was likewise surrounded by interference generators to provide a null gravity environment.

Around the central shaft was the so-called racetrack where the network of moving walkways and the passageways used by the scooters and gravsleds, all terminated in a traffic cop's nightmare.  From every tunnel, people were appearing, either on foot or on scooters, to dash around the racetrack and disappear down another tunnel.  A proportion of them would make for the edge of the shaft, pause for a moment to align themselves with a tunnel mouth either above or below, and then launch themselves across the intervening space.  To an unaccustomed observer it must seem little short of miraculous that so much traffic could negotiate the racetrack and the shaft without causing mortal injury.  Accidents did happen, of course, but even in the shaft, it was possible by a slight shift of the body to alter the trajectory sufficiently to make collisions rare events.

Mikael could still remember the first time he had seen the shaft; as one of a group of young cadets on a month's temporary posting to Runnymede.  He had gazed at the scene with a mixture of awe and admiration until a word from the officer who was showing them round brought him back to reality.  It had taken him most of that month to summon up enough courage to launch himself across the shaft.  Now he did not hesitate as he swung off the end of the moving walkway, seized his moment to dash across the racetrack and kicked himself upwards across the shaft.

The Space Admiral's office, he knew, was on the second level from the top of the shaft.  Although the gravitational pull within the shaft was virtually nil there was still some drag caused by air resistance and so it was not possible to travel the whole length of the shaft with one kick.  Mikael crossed backwards and forwards across the shaft several times to reach the Second Level.  Down the passageway he stopped outside the door to the outer office to check his uniform and to set his cap at the correct angle.  Then he pressed the stud, waited while the door slid aside, and went in.

"Lieutenant Commander Boronin, reporting as ordered, sir."

He addressed himself to the Captain sitting behind the big desk directly opposite the door.  In the room with the Captain were two computer technicians, fiddling with a bank of consoles in the corner, a clerk sitting disconsolately watching them, and the blonde and very shapely lieutenant whose interest he had been unsuccessfully trying to attract in the wardroom for several weeks now.  He smiled at her and was ignored for his pains.

The Captain finished speaking into the intercom.  "The Admiral is expecting you, Commander.  Go straight in."

Mikael knocked on the door and waited for the summons to enter.  When the door slid open the old Admiral was standing by a Stellar Display Tank watching with apparent fascination, the twinkling points of light.

"Lieutenant Commander Boronin, reporting..."

"Yes, yes.  I know who you are: dammit I sent for you.  Now come over here and tell me what you make of this."

As he crossed the huge office towards the tank, Mikael anxiously reviewed in his mind the patterns of the major stellar systems and wondered what sort of a test he was in for.  It was with a sense of great relief that he recognised the region around Rigel and concentrated his attention instead on making sense of the movements of the ships.

The objects identified in the tank were colour coded on a very simple basis: naturally occurring stellar objects (stars, planets, even asteroids if the resolution was sufficient) were white; artificial satellites and fixed navigational beacons were yellow; identifiably friendly spacecraft were green; identifiably hostile spacecraft were red; and all other spacecraft were orange.  All of the dots representing spacecraft were flashing and additional information about the type and status of these vessels could be displayed by varying the periodicity of the flashes, always providing that there was an appropriate source to supply such information.  Normal commercial information providers would not be able to report on the status of Naval warships but the data for the display at which Mikael was looking, was being taken directly from the Fleet Command Ship at Rigel.

The resolution of the tank could be increased if required so that any small cube of space could be expanded to fill the whole tank.  At the moment the tank was showing the region for about 100 light years around Rigel and so included most of the rebel bases.  Circling around each base was at least one green dot indicating the positions of the blockading ships.  Mikael's attention, however, was drawn towards one dot which was much larger than all of the others.  It was of indeterminate colour and was flashing rapidly.

"Action," he said feeling the excitement mount within him.  "There's some action at Rigel.  Judging by the size of that dot it must be Fleet action at least."

The old Admiral nodded and touched the controls.  The dot expanded and resolved itself into its constituent parts.  All the colours were red and green: there was no neutral orange because in a combat situation the computers were programmed to assume that any ship not continuously transmitting an IFF signal was automatically hostile.  It was difficult to count the numbers of ships involved in the action because they were continually flicking into sub-space and reappearing elsewhere on the display but Mikael estimated that there must be about a dozen red dots and maybe half as many again from the Fleet.

"They've finally come out in force.  Dammit to hell, why couldn't they have waited for another week?"

He recollected himself.  "I'm sorry, sir: it's just that in another week the Cleopatra would have been ready and we could have joined in the action."

"Afraid you're going to miss all the fun, Boronin?  You may not believe this but I know how you feel.  I would much rather be down there myself than be stuck here in charge of a Star Base.  Still there's likely to be more chances of action to come, at least for the likes of you.  Unless we can turn this action into a decisive victory the rebellion will drag on for a while yet."

He turned away from the tank and looked directly at Mikael.

"It was about the Cleopatra that I wanted to talk to you.  Another week you say, before she's ready?"

"Oh no, much less than that, sir," Mikael replied eagerly.  "Two more days with the Armourer and then she's ready for space trials.  Or, at least...."

He recollected his recent conversation with Tony.  "It would have been only two days but all of the Armourer's gangs have been diverted to the Pushkin."

"Well that's something that can easily be rectified."  Admiral Wei walked over to his desk and made a note.  "I've got a job for you, Boronin, but it's not at Rigel.  The Fleet there will have to manage without you for a while longer."

The Admiral tapped at the keys on his console and stared at the screen as if he could not quite believe what he saw there.

"It's an unusual request, Commander, and I'm not entirely happy with it.  But I've had my say and the request stands.

"Centre have requested a corvette to act as naval support to an operation they're running.  The tricky thing is, it's in a rather sensitive area and my orders are that you will rendezvous with the agent that Centre are putting in there and you will put your ship directly under his command.  He knows the political situation in the area and his decision on your actions is to be regarded as final.  When you reach the designated area, you are not so much as to blow your nose without checking with this man.  Is that understood?"

"Yes sir, perfectly sir."

"The Armourer's crews will be working on the Cleopatra again before you can get back to her.  I want the work completed in 24 hours.  You can conduct your space trials en route to the rendezvous."

"Yes sir."

"One final thing.  Do you carry a surgeon on board the Cleopatra?"

"I understand one has been appointed, sir, but he has not yet reported for duty.  I believe he is still in transit to Runnymede."

"Very well, I will chase one up for you.  Now you'd better get back to your ship and start your preparations.  I will have your formal orders transmitted to you."

Mikael saluted and turned towards the door.  Then he hesitated and turned back.

"Begging your pardon, sir."

"Yes, what is it?"

"I happen to know that Surgeon Commander Barasny has just come in on the Pushkin, sir.  He and I are old friends and... well, the Pushkin won't be going anywhere for a while.  I was wondering if he could be seconded to the Cleopatra for this mission, sir."

"Were you indeed.  I was not aware that the movement or otherwise of the cruiser Pushkin was a matter for your determination."

"No sir.  I'm sorry, sir."

"I'll think about it.  Now you've got the Pushkin's repair crews and you want her surgeon.  Is there anything else you'd like to strip from her?"

"No sir.  Nothing else, sir.  Thank you very much, sir."

Mikael saluted again and dashed from the office.  In the outer office the Captain and the shapely lieutenant were engaged in a deep conversation.  Heads close together, they did not even look up as Mikael hurried across the room and out into the passageway.

"Lucky bastard," he thought to himself as he turned back towards the shaft.  At the intersection he looked for the communications screen that was installed in all such places.  He went over and punched the Cleopatra's code.  The screen cleared to show the face of his Executive Officer.

"Everything under control, Frank?" he asked.

"More or less, sir, but I think you'd better get back here.  There are more fitters than I've ever seen in my whole life crawling over the ship."

"I'm on my way.  Keep an eye on them until I get there, Frank, and get the ship ready to hit space in 24 hours."

He broke the connection and turned away.  Admiral Wei had been as good as his word.  This must be some priority mission.

CHAPTER 4

It was not just on Runnymede that the naval action in the Rigel system was being closely monitored.  All through the civilised galaxy, Stellar Display Tanks were being tuned to the beacons around Rigel.  Not all of the tanks were capable of interpreting the coded naval signals from the Fleet Command Ship but the Rigellian navigational beacons were transmitting the movements of the ships involved in the action and these movements could be displayed by any commercial tank.

The precursor to the Stellar Display Tank was originally developed on Old Earth as a spin off from war-gaming technology.  When the first interstellar expansion occurred, the commercial rights to the technology were acquired by the firm of Leahy and Marcus who installed the first models as navigational toys in the space yachts of the rich and famous.  At that stage the tanks had a very limited range and relied exclusively on their own monitoring equipment to collect the raw data for display.

The breakthrough in commercial terms did not occur until Emperor Marcus I (the grandnephew of the eponymous Marcus) ordered that the whole of the known galaxy should have navigational beacons to mark the course of the main trade routes, sited at positions fixed relative to the movement of the galaxy, and that the information transmitted by these beacons should be available to all travellers.  Simultaneously with the installation of the first beacons, Leahy and Marcus announced the first model of the Stellar Display Tank capable of receiving and integrating information from any number of navigational beacons together with data from the ships own sensors.

From that point Leahy and Marcus rapidly became one of the most powerful industrial conglomerates in the Empire with trading offices and service facilities in every colony large enough to have its own spaceport.  Leahy and Marcus now offered a range of models from a basic fixed scale navigational tank with a simple processor only capable of listening to the nearest beacon, to sophisticated, variable scale models with processors which could be programmed to accept coded feeds from any source.

The naval model, which was in use at Star Base Runnymede, was a standard top of the range model with the addition of Top Secret Naval decrypt computers in the processing chain.  These naval models were manufactured under conditions of strictest security by a subsidiary of Leahy and Marcus and the senior officials of that company would have been as upset as the Space Admiralty itself if they thought that one of their very latest models was installed and working in the Presidential palace on Vostov. 

Standing watching that illicit tank on Vostov were two men.  The older of the two was very tall, slightly stooping with short, almost crew cut grey hair.  He was dressed in a plain grey tunic completely bare of any decoration or indication of his high rank.  It was almost as though he was making a deliberate statement of rejection of his previous existence which had so comprehensively rejected him when his attempted coup on Serta had failed.  Wolfram, ex-duke of Gan, now with the rank of Counsellor, and known throughout Vostov because of his appearance and dress as The Grey Wolf, turned and spoke angrily to his companion.

"Those rebel fools would not listen to me.  If only they'd waited another few weeks we could have caught the Empire from two sides.  If we'd split the Fleet then we could have taken Serta and those fools could have secured Rigel again."

The second man was a full 25 centimetres shorter than Wolfram and about 20 years younger.  In complete contrast he was brilliantly dressed in gold satin pants, a black silk shirt and a short cape also of gold satin, trimmed with ermine and draped casually over one shoulder.  The clothes were cut to disguise a slight tendency to paunchiness and the affected style of his speech was carefully chosen to deceive the unwary into thinking they were dealing with some sort of playboy.  But the eyes of the President of the Federation of Vostov were steely hard.  He had reached his present position by playing hard-ball politics amongst the different factions which made up the Federation and the path to the Presidency was littered with the ruined careers and, in some cases, shortened life spans of people who had been fooled by his casual appearance.

"I have no interest in the activities of those incompetents at Rigel," he replied to Wolfram.  "But you, my dear Counsellor, have been assuring me, these many months, that the disposition of the Imperial Fleet is of no importance: that we will take Serta while the Fleet stands by and watches us.  Are you now saying that, for our plans to succeed, it is necessary for the Fleet to be split?"

"By no means, Excellency."  A trace of deference hastily appearing in his tone.  "The Imperial Fleet will not take action within the Sertian System without the specific invitation of the King.  Once we have Princess Nerissa, that invitation will not be given.  Serta will be ours for the taking."

"But, Grey Wolf, we do not yet have the Princess and her companion.  The plan was for us to pick them up at Timet over two weeks ago: and we still do not have them."

"I don't know how they eluded us at Timet but we have them again now.  They are under constant surveillance and I have despatched one of our best teams to Andes to board the Aldebaran there.  Parm is willing and has forces in position to supply us with back-up."

"What if they leave the liner before your people are ready: at Floreat or even at Andes?"

"Andes is no problem: the team will not board until all the passengers have disembarked and we are sure that the Princess and my niece are still on board.  If they leave at Floreat, they will be kept under surveillance until the snatch squad can be diverted to intercept them."

"They were under surveillance before," the younger man reminded him.  "They eluded you that time."

"The agent concerned was a fool, Excellency.  He has been terminated.  Besides, with your permission, I shall go to Parm myself and take personal control of the operation.  I have a frigate standing by."

"You must do what you feel is necessary, of course.  But the time for this operation is running out.  I have had our forces at an advanced state of readiness for several weeks already.  In 11 days’ time, the liner Aldebaran will be at its nearest point to Parm.  That is all the time you have: 11 days.  If I have not heard within that time that the Princess has been seized, then I will abort the whole operation.  You realise the implications of such an action?"

Wolfram nodded: he understood only too well the implications.  The balance of power within the Federation was a very delicate matter.  The President could not afford to lose face by cancelling an operation which had been proposed as a major addition to the power and scope of the Federation.  Therefore, the President would not lose face: he would sacrifice his counsellor instead.  The prospect of starting a third career loomed suddenly before him.

"I will leave for Parm immediately, Excellency.  You will have the Princess."

He bowed and left the room.  As the door closed behind him, the President pushed a button and a door opened on the far side of the room.  Without turning his head, he spoke to the person who entered.

"You heard what was said."  Despite the casual pose, it was a statement not a question.

"Everything, Excellency."

"Vostov moves against Serta in 12 days’ time with or without Princess Nerissa.  But if we do not have her, I want her dead.  King Harald will be so distraught by her death that he may not react as quickly to our approach as he might otherwise.  That may just give us the vital edge.

"If you have to kill her, try to make it look as though the Empire was at fault.  Any rift you can cause there would be a bonus.  But if, in 11 days’ time, the Princess is not within Vostov's power, kill her any way you have to.  Do I make myself clear?"

"Perfectly, Excellency."

"Good.  Will you be able to get to Andes in time to board the Aldebaran?"

"Under normal circumstances, no, Excellency.  However, the man who Grey Wolf has on board watching the Princess, owes me a big favour: his life in fact.  It will be arranged that the Aldebaran will be unable to board her passengers at Andes and, during the unfortunate delay, some latecomers will be lucky enough to just catch the shuttle."

"Won't that rather draw attention to yourself?"

"I shall ensure that I am not the only latecomer, Excellency."

"Go on then, but be careful that Grey Wolf does not see you leave."

"He is already at the spaceport, Excellency.  He will be long gone by the time I get there."

The President turned then, an expression of mild surprise on his face.

"Your sources of information are good.  I was only informed of that fact myself, less than two minutes ago."

"Perhaps our sources of information are the same, Excellency."

The expression of surprise intensified.  "Why are you telling me this?  The man will be dead within the hour."

A shrug.  "If he is prepared to sell your information to me, Excellency, who else is he prepared to sell it to?"

The stare lasted a moment longer and then the President of the Federation of Vostov burst out into peals of laughter.

"You're absolutely right, of course, but then good help is so hard to come by.  You never know who you can trust these days."  And the laughter cut off as abruptly as it had started. 

"Now get out of here before I start to think that suborning one of my employees is more treasonous than insolent."