A Dark and Dirty War, page 6
**
“They’re armed, fueled, briefed, and on their way out of the star system,” Kowalski reported when Admiral Lowell stuck his head through her office door. “If that’s what you wanted to know, sir.”
“It was, though I’m not sure I’m overly fond of your flippant tone, Kathryn.”
She put on a contrite air.
“Sorry, sir.”
Lowell, balding, square-faced, in his early sixties, was clearly still a bit miffed at Kowalski for recommending Dunmoore to the Grand Admiral as the rescue task force commander without discussing it first. She figured he saw it as a poor way of repaying him for appointing her as an operations director despite being among the youngest two-stars in the Navy. On the other hand, he knew she had the top job in her sights and both the smarts and political cunning to get there.
“What about the avisos sent to warn our listening posts in the Protectorate?”
“We’ve not heard back from them yet, but it’s still early days even for ships that can almost outrun time itself.”
Lowell let out a soft grunt. “Anything on the intelligence channels yet?”
“No, sir. I spoke with Commodore Ezekiel Holt — the CNI’s action officer for this matter — an hour ago. But he’s heard nothing through intelligence and Special Forces channels, including both the 1st Special Forces Regiment’s deployed units and the Q ships. Zeke is in contact with the Colonial Office’s Intelligence Service as well. But, so far, they’re also coming up blank.”
“Or so they say. Those damned Colonial Office cowboys never inspired confidence. But as long as no one speaks with the Special Security Bureau, I’m happy. They’re more likely to be involved with the culprits than anything else.”
“Oh, I’m sure the SSB is in the thick of things, sir. They always were the SecGen’s covert attack dogs rather than a legitimate law enforcement agency. The Commonwealth would be better off without them.”
Lowell shrugged. “We’d still need a federal organization to coordinate star system police forces and take care of issues beyond their jurisdiction.”
“True. A paramilitary constabulary or gendarmerie with a proper disciplinary framework and an ethos resembling ours would do the trick.”
A bark of laughter escaped Lowell’s throat.
“Good luck obtaining SecGen and Senate approval for something like that. A real federal police force would reduce the opportunities for graft, tax evasion, interstellar fraud, and the Almighty knows what else.”
“True as well, sir. But we’re sliding back to the bad old days before the war when the outer star systems were increasingly at odds with Earth and the core systems on how much freedom they should enjoy from the central government. And when the differences become irreconcilable, well, we’ve seen how that ends twice now. But, unfortunately, a third time would mean the end of the Commonwealth as we know it and trigger a resurgence of Shrehari military adventurism.”
“You’re quite the pessimist, aren’t you?”
“I prefer the term realist, sir. There’s always been something wrong with how the Commonwealth functions. But we’ve muddled our way through since the Second Migration War. However, the Shrehari invasion and ten years of interstellar conflict fundamentally changed that equation. The outer systems have lost faith in Earth’s ability to protect them. Yet, any attempt at reform is rebuffed with the help of the core systems, who not only didn’t suffer from Shrehari depredations but became wealthy from war profiteering. And do the OutWorlders ever know it.”
“I’ll stick with pessimist if you don’t mind. The situation isn’t quite that dire in my eyes.”
“Fair enough.” Kowalski hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then, “Changing the subject ever so slightly, may I ask what, if anything, you have against Siobhan Dunmoore, sir? At least in the matter of appointing her as the senior officer for the rescue mission.”
“You were one of her bridge watchkeepers during the war, weren’t you?”
She nodded.
“In Stingray, as a two-ringer. I came out of that assignment as a two-and-a-half. Dunmoore was one of the rare fighting captains who had that special touch with her ship, crew, and the enemy.”
“I have nothing against Dunmoore as such, Kathryn. And I agree about her special touch. But she hasn’t adapted that well to the peacetime Navy. What worked during the war doesn’t work nowadays, and I think Dunmoore never wrapped her mind around the differences between the two. She was a terror at the War College and is reckoned the most difficult readiness evaluation team leader nowadays. Many promising officers saw their career hit a bump in the road thanks to Dunmoore’s uncompromising view of what a proper warship captain should be. Her often brutal frankness doesn’t help either. She makes people uncomfortable.”
Kowalski gave him a quizzical look. “Is that why she never made the commodore promotion list despite having worn a star at the end of the war while she led the raid that made the Shrehari ask for an armistice?”
Lowell nodded. “Largely, yes. But there are other factors.”
“So, the powers that be sidelined one of our most effective naval tacticians because she makes inadequate people feel uncomfortable about their inadequacy.”
The CNO gave Kowalski a stern look.
“That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?”
She smiled at him.
“Harsh, but true, sir. I can be just as brutally frank as Siobhan.”
“But you’re more circumspect than she is and know when such forthrightness is appropriate. If Dunmoore had learned that lesson instead of annoying people with her War College antics, she might be a two-star right now, perhaps even sitting in your chair.”
“Antics, sir? I was one of her students, and while she was the toughest instructor there, I wouldn’t call what she did antics.”
“The term was used by people who wore and, in some cases, still wear stars on their collars regarding her pushing for doctrinal changes. When she left the College, Dunmoore was essentially blacklisted instead of receiving the promotion she was due based on her war record. However, as I said, there are other factors. Dunmoore annoyed rather powerful people in the Special Security Bureau and the Colonial Office. As a result, it’s doubtful the SecGen will ever sign off on her promotion to flag rank.”
Kowalski’s eyes narrowed in thought.
“Should I infer from your statement that the SecGen runs our flag officer promotion lists past the Director General of the SSB and the Colonial Secretary?”
“Among others. A recent development since the end of the war, I’m afraid. Apparently, we pushed out the wrong people during the conflict and promoted politically unsuitable replacements.”
“The Fleet rid itself of politically connected incompetents who were largely responsible for our miserable showing when the Shrehari invaded, you mean. Maybe I should tell Siobhan to make sure the folks in Athena never come home.”
Lowell wagged his index finger and her as he scowled.
“Not even in jest, Kathryn. I’d rather your name didn’t join hers on the never to be promoted again list. You face a bright future, while Dunmoore’s career as a Navy officer is stalled for good. Once the Readiness Evaluation Division no longer needs or wants her, Dunmoore’s retiring. And that’s only if she doesn’t muck up the rescue operation. If she does...” Lowell made a cutting gesture across his throat. “RED One gets a new leader the moment Task Force Luckner returns.”
His scowl deepened. “How you talked me into reviving that illustrious name will forever be a mystery. I’m surprised we haven’t heard harsh words from the SecGen’s office yet.”
“Or perhaps they’re happy the task force that ended the war is back and under its old commander for this one, sir. And if nothing else, the names Luckner and Dunmoore might give the Shrehari pause if they decide our entering the Protectorate Zone is objectionable to the point of retaliation.”
He let out a soft grunt.
“I’ll say this in your favor, Kathryn — I’ve never seen a flag officer as young as you learn to navigate the murky politics of both Fleet and government so effectively, let alone so quickly.”
“Thank you, sir.”
— Nine —
Shortly after Task Force Luckner dropped out of hyperspace within easy distance of the last interstellar subspace radio array before the Protectorate Zone, Dunmoore decrypted a message from Fleet HQ. It was mostly an intelligence summary that gave her little if anything to go on. But the missive was signed K.K., and she wondered whether she should thank Rear Admiral Kathryn Kowalski for what would surely be her last command in space before retirement.
Dunmoore always felt pride at seeing officers and noncoms serving in her ships rise on their merits and enjoy successful careers. Kowalski was no different, but a slight twinge of jealousy made itself known, nonetheless. However, should her former communication systems officer be responsible for this appointment, Dunmoore owed her a vote of thanks. She knew navigating the corridors of power where the right moves meant early advancement was not a skill she would ever master.
She touched her desk’s embedded screen, posted the decrypted message from Earth in the mission repository, and then opened a link with her staff.
“Flag CIC, this is Dunmoore.”
“Zakaria here, Skipper,” the husky yet unmistakably feminine voice of her combat systems evaluation officer replied a few seconds later.
“Transmit a copy of the file I’ve just logged to all ships — it’s an intelligence summary from HQ — then execute the next phase in the navigation plan.”
“Aye, sir. Transmitting a copy of the file, then executing the next phase in the navigation plan.”
“Dunmoore, out.”
Moments later, the hyperspace jump warning sounded throughout Salamanca and her four consorts, a signal that Dunmoore received nothing from the array that would warrant a command conference. The next time she would speak with her captains, save for Piotr Rydzewski, would be at Kilia’s heliopause.
As she remembered from her time in command of the original Task Force Luckner, Dunmoore was now nothing more than a passenger aboard the cruiser, with no real responsibilities during their long hyperspace jump.
She and her staff were isolated from four of the formation’s five ships until they dropped out of FTL and experienced enough to avoid riding herd on Salamanca. It made for a mini-vacation she never really tolerated with complete equanimity, but she’d learned the importance of packing distractions in her dunnage, mainly in the form of books.
At this rate, Dunmoore could probably sit for the examinations leading to a doctorate in military science without further study. After all, she’d earned a master’s degree while teaching at the War College by publishing a long list of doctrinal papers, many of which received a rather chilly reception at Fleet HQ. Questioning dogma was never well-received in peacetime. It generally took a few bloody defeats before entrenched ideas were tossed out the airlock and replaced with new thinking.
Shortly after shaking off the transition nausea caused by Salamanca jumping to hyperspace, Dunmoore called up one of the books she was currently reading, a lesser-known analysis of the late 21st and early 22nd-century Corporatist War. A global conflagration, it was the last fought on Earth’s landmasses and oceans even as scientists were building the first faster-than-light starships which would carry humans to other star systems in the most significant migration ever recorded. And that migration not only ended with the second most brutal civil war in history but triggered a second migration which in turn gave birth to the most brutal one.
Considering the general mood in the Commonwealth since the armistice, especially among the colonies with no political representation on Earth, Dunmoore feared a third migration war wasn’t out of the question. There was already unrest in some star systems, and the well connected cheerleaders from Earth aboard Athena likely didn’t help.
**
Captain Roy LeDain’s mood had swung between rage and despondency ever since pirates, aided by infiltrators from among his own crew, hijacked the luxury liner Athena several days earlier. A wiry, dark-complexioned man in his fifties with short, graying hair and an equally short salt-and-pepper beard, LeDain was pacing around the passenger cabin where he’d been confined ever since, his meals delivered by members of his own crew working for the guest services department.
The hijackers took over running Athena, and the fifty crew members — out of a complement of one-hundred-and-fifty — responsible for engineering, environmental systems, navigation, and the like were equally confined. However, the other hundred who served the guests still carried out their jobs, albeit blocked from accessing any part of the ship or its systems not needed for hospitality functions. Those guests, all one-hundred-and-twenty of them, roamed the cruiser-sized liner’s passenger sections as they pleased. Armored doors and a segregated entertainment network kept them from accessing anything that might give the pirates trouble.
LeDain couldn’t fathom how the infiltrators passed Black Nova Shipping’s background checks. Sure, they were replacements for crew members struck by sudden illness or dealing with unexpected personal issues just before departure. But no sane company, especially not one owned by a leading zaibatsu like the Commonwealth Trading Corporation — ComCorp for short — hires a second officer without a thorough vetting.
And yet, that second officer, along with four newly arrived crew members from various departments, relieved him and his watchkeepers at gunpoint when the pirate sloops appeared. LeDain got out an emergency message complete with visuals in the ensuing confusion and hoped someone was listening.
But who they were and what they wanted was a complete mystery, as was their destination. Athena, presumably along with the sloops, went FTL a few hours after the hijacking and remained in hyperspace. Since then, the only faces he’d seen were those of the stewards bringing him his meals, and based on their body language, the pirates had ordered them to stay absolutely silent, probably with suitably blood-curdling threats.
Making a starship disappear in the galaxy’s vastness was easy. But since they didn’t plunder Athena and simply vanish, leaving the ship to her fate, or space everyone aboard and steal her, they surely entertained plans for the illustrious passengers, if not the crew. And hiding a ship her size in places where she might dock or at least either land everyone aboard or take on supplies was a somewhat different proposition. Which meant they were likely headed for the Protectorate Zone, that abomination negotiated by diplomats who possessed little more than the intelligence of unicellular organisms.
LeDain spent the war serving aboard various merchant vessels, moving cargo and people to support the Fleet. In that time, he never saw so much as a faint trace of Shrehari ships. And now, ten years after peace broke out, he was effectively a prisoner of war aboard his own liner along with everyone else. But who were their captors, other than human beings — at least the ones who’d taken Athena from within and those dispatched by the sloops to take over the other billets rendered vacant by the crew’s confinement?
Their ships didn’t conform to any known type he recognized. But adding a bit of hull plating here and there, perhaps a module or two, and you no longer saw a familiar silhouette. He stopped pacing and stared at the haggard man looking back at him from the full-length mirror. After this — if he lived to tell the tale — LeDain knew he was finished as a captain.
Black Nova wouldn’t look kindly on the man who lost a ship full of VIPs to hijackers, and no one else would hire an officer fired by one of ComCorp’s powerful subsidiaries. Especially not when Vitus Amali, ComCorp’s vice chair of the board, was among those VIPs, along with the eldest daughter of Charles Lauzier, the Commonwealth Secretary General who governed humanity across the stars.
**
In contrast to Captain LeDain, Sara Lauzier’s circumstances remained mostly unchanged. She still enjoyed the luxury of her quarters and the ship’s amenities and the obsequious service provided by its guest services personnel. A tall, athletic fifty-year-old with long black hair, haughty patrician features, and cold eyes, she was the junket’s informal leader even though she wasn’t acting in any official capacity.
Yet, as one of the SecGen’s closest advisers for the last ten years and the acknowledged forerunner to become Pacifica’s junior senator in the next general election — when her father would retire after two terms — she was the most powerful among Athena’s passengers.
That none of the hijackers had bothered to speak with anyone after the announcement over the public address system that Athena was under new management irked her fellow prisoners. But she remained calm and collected. The people around her needed a soothing influence — noblesse oblige, as her father often said. Coming out of this with a reputation for being unflappable would only help cement her lock on that Senate seat next year.
Still, not knowing who hijacked the liner and where it was headed ate at the passengers, though they thought they could guess the why. Lauzier and every single one of her travel companions was wealthy, powerful, and came from equally rich and influential families, and were worth astronomical sums. Alternately, some of the more cynical ones believed, if this was a political game rather than a money-making operation, the pirates might cause no end of mischief along the frontiers with the Shrehari Empire and the Protectorate Zone. Many influential people on both sides remained unhappy the war didn’t end with a crushing defeat for the enemy. Then there were those who profited from the conflict and unfettered access to a whole chunk of the galaxy unclaimed by either the Commonwealth or the Shrehari.
What Sara Lauzier thought, no one knew, and no one was courageous enough to ask.
“Are you dreaming up an escape plan, Sara?”
Vitus Amali’s voice cut through her thoughts, and she looked away from the soothing holographic aquarium dominating one corner of the small lounge she’d staked out for herself and her immediate entourage at the beginning of the cruise. So many of the lesser lights among the passengers were tedious in their attempts at currying favor with the SecGen’s daughter and principal adviser, and it wouldn’t do if Lauzier showed a glimmer of irritation in an unguarded moment.
