“There is no ‘achievement’ sought.”
“Then why do what you have done?”
“I do as nature binds me. As do you.”
“I do what my duty binds me to do. When you were on
the
Isakore
you told the marines that they would come to you in time. If that isn’t an objective I don’t know what is.”
“If you believe I will aid you to comprehend what has happened, you are mistaken.”
“Then why did you allow yourself to be captured? I’ve seen the power you possess; Murphy Hewlett is good, but not that good.
He couldn’t get you here unless you wanted to come.”
“How amusing. I see governments and conspiracy theories are still inseparable. Perhaps I’m the lovechild of Elvis and Marilyn
Monroe come to sue the North American Govcentral state in the Assembly court for my rightful inheritance.”
Samual Aleksandrovich gave her a nonplussed look. “What?”
“It doesn’t matter. Why did the navy want me here, Admiral?”
“To study you.”
“Precisely. And that is why I am here. To study you. Which of us will learn the most, I wonder?”
Kelven Solanki had never envisaged meeting the First Admiral quite so early in his career. Most commanders were introduced,
certainly those serving in the 1st Fleet. But not lieutenant-commanders assigned to minor field-diplomat duties. Yet here
he was being shown into the First Admiral’s office by Captain Maynard Khanna. Circumstances muted the sense of excitement.
He wasn’t sure how the First Admiral viewed his handling of events on Lalonde, and the staff captain had given him no clues.
Samual Aleksandrovich’s office was a circular chamber thirty metres across, with a slightly domed ceiling. Its curving wall
had one window which looked out into Trafalgar’s central biosphere cavern, and ten long holo-screens, eight slowly flicking
through images from external sensors and the remaining two showing tactical displays. The ceiling was ribbed with bronze spars,
with a fat AV cylinder protruding from the apex resembling a crystalline stalactite. There were two clusters of furniture;
a huge teak desk with satellite chairs; and a sunken reception area lined by padded leather couches.
Maynard Khanna showed him over to the desk where the First Admiral was waiting. Auster, Dr Gilmore, Admiral Lalwani, the Fleet
Intelligence chief, and Admiral Motela Kolhammer, the 1st Fleet Commander, were all sitting before the desk in the curved
blue-steel chairs that had extruded out of the floor like pliable mercury.
Kelven stood to attention and gave a perfect salute, very conscious of the five sets of eyes studying him. Samual Aleksandrovich
smiled thinly at the junior officer’s obvious discomfort. “At ease, Commander.” He gestured at one of the two new chairs formatting
themselves out of the floor material. Kelven removed his cap, tucked it under his arm, and sat next to Maynard Khanna.
“You handled Lalonde quite well,” the First Admiral said. “Not perfectly, but then you weren’t exactly prepared for anything
like this. Under the circumstances I’m satisfied with your performance.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Bloody ESA people didn’t help,” Motela Kolhammer muttered.
Samual Aleksandrovich waved him quiet. “That is something we can take up with their ambassador later. Though I’m sure we all
know what the outcome will be. Regrettable or not, you acted properly the whole time, Solanki. Capturing one of the sequestrated
was exactly what we required.”
“Captain Auster made it possible, sir,” Kelven said. “I wouldn’t have got the marines out otherwise.”
The voidhawk captain nodded thankfully in acknowledgement.
“None the less, we should have given your situation a higher priority to begin with, and provided you with adequate resources,”
Samual Aleksandrovich said. “My mistake, especially given who was involved.”
“Has Jacqueline Couteur confirmed Laton’s existence?”
Kelven asked. Part of him was hoping that the answer was going to be a resounding no.
“She didn’t have to.” Samual Aleksandrovich sighed ponderously. “A blackhawk”—he paused, raising his bushy ginger eyebrows
in emphasis—“has just arrived from Tranquillity with a flek from Commander Olsen Neale. Under the circumstances I can quite
forgive him for using the ship as a courier. If you would like to access the sensevise.”
Kelven sank deeper into the scoop of his chair as Graeme Nicholson’s recording played through his brain. “He was there all
along,” he said brokenly. “In Durring-ham itself, and I never knew. I thought the
Yaku
’s captain left orbit because of the deteriorating civil situation.”
“You are not in any way to blame,” Admiral Lalwani said.
Kelven glanced over at the grey-haired Edenist woman. There was an inordinate amount of sympathy and sadness in the tone.
“We should never have stopped checking, all those years ago,” she continued. “The presence of Darcy and Lori on Lalonde was
a rather miserable token to appease our paranoia. Even we were guilty of wishing Laton dead. The hope overwhelmed reason and
rational thought. All of us knew how resourceful he was, and we knew he had acquired data on Lalonde. The planet should have
been thoroughly searched. Our mistake. Now he has returned. I don’t like to think of the price we will all have to pay before
he is stopped this time.”
“Sir, Darcy and Lori seemed very uncertain that he was behind this invasion,” Kelven said. “Laton actually warned them of
this illusion-creating ability the sequestrated have.”
“And Jacqueline Couteur agrees he isn’t a part of this,” Dr Gilmore said. “That’s one of the few things she will admit to.”
“I hardly think we can take her word for it,” Admiral Kolhammer said.
“Precise details are for later,” Samual Aleksandrovich said. “What we have with Lalonde is shaping up into a major, and immediate,
crisis. I’m tempted to ask the Assembly President to declare a state of emergency; that would put national navies at my disposal.”
“In theory,” Admiral Kolhammer said drily.
“Yes, and yet anything less may not suffice. This unde-tectable sequestration ability has me deeply worried. It has been used
so freely on Lalonde, hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions. How many people does the agency behind it intend to
subjugate? How many planets? It is a threat which the Assembly cannot be allowed to ignore in favour of its usual horse trading.”
He considered the option of total mobilization before reluctantly dismissing it. There wasn’t enough evidence to convince
the president, not yet. It would come eventually, he was in no doubt of that. “For the moment we will do what we can to contain
the spread of this plague, whilst trying to find Laton. The flek from Olsen Neale also went on to report that Terrance Smith
has met with some success in recruiting mercenaries and combat-capable starships for Governor Rexrew. That black-hawk made
excellent time from Tranquillity; a little over two days, the captain told me. So we may just be able to put a brake on Lalonde
before it gets totally out of hand. Terrance Smith’s ships are scheduled to depart from Tranquillity today. Lalwani, you estimate
it will take them a week to reach Lalonde?”
“Yes,” she said. “It took the
Gemal
six days to get from Lalonde to Tranquillity. With the starships in Smith’s fleet having to match formation after each jump,
a single extra day is a conservative estimate. Even a navy flotilla would be hard pushed to match that. And those are not
front-line ships.”
“Apart from the
Lady Macbeth
,” Maynard Khanna said in a quiet voice. “I accessed the list of ships Smith recruited; the
Lady Macbeth
is a ship I am familiar with.” He glanced at the First Admiral.
“I know that name…” Kelven Solanki ran a search pro-
gram through his neural nanonics. “The
Lady Macbeth
was orbiting Lalonde when the trouble first broke out upriver.”
“That wasn’t mentioned in any of your reports,” Lal-wani said. Her slim forehead showed a frown.
“It was a commercial flight. Slightly odd, the captain wanted to export aboriginal wood, but as far as we could tell perfectly
legitimate.”
“This name does seem to be popping up with suspicious regularity,” Maynard Khanna said.
“We should be able to look into it easily enough,” Samual Aleksandrovich said. “Commander Solanki, the principal reason I
asked you here was to inform you that you are to act as an adviser to the squadron which will blockade Lalonde.”
“Sir?”
“We’re launching a dual programme to terminate this threat. The first aspect is a Confederationwide alert for Laton. We have
to know where the
Yaku
went, where it is now.”
“He won’t stay on board,” Lalwani said. “Not after he reaches a port. But we’ll find him. I’m organizing the search now. All
the voidhawks in the Avon system will be conscripted and dispatched to alert national governments. I’ve already sent one to
Jupiter; once the habitat consensus is informed, every voidhawk in the Sol system will be used to relay the news. I estimate
it will take four to five days to blanket the Confederation.”
“Time Universe will probably beat you to it,” Admiral Kolhammer said gruffly.
Lalwani smiled. The two of them were sparring partners from way back. “In this case I wouldn’t mind in the least.”
“Be a lot of panic. Stock markets will take a tumble.”
“If it makes people take the threat seriously, so much the better,” Samual Aleksandrovich said. “Motela, you are to assemble
a 1st Fleet squadron, a large one, to be held on fifteen-minute-departure alert. When we find Laton, eliminating him is going
to be your problem.”
“What problem?”
“I admire the sentiment,” Samual Aleksandrovich said with a touch of censure. “But kindly remember he escaped from us last
time, when we were equally hungry for blood. That mistake cannot be repeated. This time I shall require proof, even though
it will no doubt be expensive. I imagine Lalwani and Auster will agree.”
“We do,” Lalwani said. “All Edenists do. If there is any risk in confirming the target is Laton, then we will bear it.”
“In the meantime, I want Lalonde to be completely isolated,” Samual Aleksandrovich said. “The mercenary force is not to be
allowed to land, nor do I want any surface bombardments from orbit. Those colonists have suffered enough already. The solution
to this sequestration lies in discovering the method by which it is implemented, and devising a counter. Brute force is merely
dumping plutonium in a volcano. And I suspect the mercenaries would simply be sequestrated themselves should they land. Dr
Gilmore, this is your field.”
“Not really,” the doctor said expressively. “But we shall put our female subject through an extensive series of experiments
to see if we can determine the method of the sequestration and how to cancel it. However, judging by what we know so far,
which is virtually nothing, I have to say an answer is going to take a considerable time to formulate. Though you are quite
right to instigate a quarantine. The less contact Lalonde has with the rest of the Confederation the better, especially if
it turns out Laton isn’t behind the invasion.”
“The doctor has a point,” Lalwani said. “What if the Lalonde invasion is the start of a xenoc incursion, and Laton himself
has been sequestrated?”
“I’m keeping it in mind,” Samual Aleksandrovich said. “We need to know more, either from the Couteur woman or Lalonde itself.
Our principal trouble remains what it has always been: reaction time. It takes us far too long to amass any large force. Always
our conflicts are larger than they would have been if we had received a warning of problems and threats earlier in their development.
But just this once, we may actually be in luck. Unless there was some supreme diplomatic foul-up, Meredith Saldana’s squadron
was due to leave Omuta three days ago. They were in the system mainly for pomp and show, but they carried a full weapons load.
A squadron of front-line ships already assembled and perfectly suited to these duties; we couldn’t have planned it better.
It’ll take them five days to get back to Rosenheim. Captain Auster, if
Ilex
can get there before they dock at 7th Fleet headquarters and all the crews go on leave, then Meredith might just be able
to get to Lalonde before Terrance Smith. And if not before, then certainly in time to prevent the bulk of the mercenary troops
from landing.”
“
Ilex
will certainly try, First Admiral,” Auster said. “I have already asked for auxiliary fusion generators to be installed in
the weapons bays. The energy patterning cells can be recharged directly from them, reducing the flight time between swallows
considerably. We should be ready to depart in five hours, and I believe we can make the two-day deadline.”
“My thanks to
Ilex
,” Samual Aleksandrovich said formally.
Auster inclined his head.
“Lieutenant-Commander Solanki, you’ll travel with Captain Auster, and carry my orders for Rear-Admiral Sal-dana. And I think
we can manage a promotion to full commander before you go. You’ve shown considerable initiative over the last few weeks, as
well as personal courage.”
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” Kelven said. The promotion barely registered, some irreverent section of his mind was counting
up the number of light-years he had flown in a week. It must be some kind of record. But he was going back to Lalonde, and
bringing his old friends help. That felt good. I’ve stopped running.
“Add an extra order that the
Lady Macbeth
and her crew is to be arrested,” Samual Aleksandrovich told Maynard
Khanna. “They can try explaining themselves to Meredith’s Intelligence officers.”
The
Santa Clara
materialized a hundred and twenty thousand kilometres above Lalonde, almost directly in line between the planet and Rennison.
Dawn was racing over Amarisk, half of the Juliffe’s tributary network flashing like silver veins in the low sunlight. The
early hour might have accounted for the lack of response from civil traffic control. But Captain Zaretsky had been to Lalonde
before, he knew the way the planet worked. Radio silence didn’t particularly bother him.