“You got that right,” Chomps agreed, his nose wrinkling. “If it hadn’t been for Commander Donnelly—”
He broke off at a sudden violent klaxon blared from the intercom. “General Quarters, General Quarters,” the cool voice of Phoenix’s Weapons Officer, Lieutenant Commander Bajek, came from the speaker. “Set Condition Two throughout the ship. Repeat: set Condition Two throughout the ship.”
Travis felt a sudden tightness in his stomach. Readiness Two? Sixty seconds ago Phoenix had been at Readiness Five.
What the hell had just happened?
“Looks like I spoke too soon about this being boring, Sir,” Chomps said, the easy familiarity abruptly gone.
“I guess we’ll find out, Chief,” Travis said, hearing the same military precision and formality in his own voice. “We’ll talk later.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Travis found Lieutenant Brad Fornier, commander of Phoenix’s Missile Division, hovering off to the side in Forward Weapons, watching silently as the partial crew summoned by the Readiness Two order glided in and strapped into their consoles. “Bit late, Long,” Fornier commented as Travis joined him.
“Sorry, Sir,” Travis said, running his eyes over the monitors. Forward Weapons wasn’t ready, but the systems were coming up with gratifying speed.
Those that would be coming up, anyway. One of the tracking sensors and one of the fire-control repeaters were dark, and the electronic warfare assembler was hovering on the edge of failure. Like every other ship in the Navy, Phoenix didn’t have enough spare parts or people to keep everything together. “What do we have here, a drill?”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” Fornier said. “Apparently, CIC’s reporting a hyper footprint on a least-time course from Casca.”
“Could be the Havenite freighter that’s scheduled to be in next week,” Travis suggested.
“If it is, it’s early,” Fornier said. “Not unheard of.”
“But not common.”
“No.”
Travis scowled as the assembler flickered and died. “There it goes.”
“Damn,” Fornier muttered. “Skorsky?” he called. “Get that assembler back up.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Anyway, it sounds like the captain’s not in a particularly trusting mood,” Fornier continued. “We’re moving to intercept.”
Travis squinted at the range display, running a quick calculation. About ten minutes to com range. “Well, we should know something soon.”
“If the captain decides to hail her as soon as she’s in range,” Fornier pointed out. “He might prefer to wait until we’ve closed a little more distance.”
“He won’t,” Travis said. “She’s already spotted our wedge and knows we’re heading her way. If we don’t hail as soon as we can she may figure we’re a pirate and run.”
“Which would be pretty much the same response she’d show if she was a pirate,” Fornier conceded. “Which means we wouldn’t learn a thing by doing that.”
“Right.”
“Let’s see if the captain follows your logic,” Fornier said. “Not to mention regulations. Pull up a chunk of bulkhead, and make yourself comfortable.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“I assure you, Captain Castillo,” Captain Shresthra said, a layer of sweat sheening his little brown face, “that there is nothing at all irregular about my ship, my crew, my passengers, or my cargo. I had no idea that traffic to the Star Kingdom of Manticore was so rigorously monitored and controlled.”
Floating behind him in the Izbica’s cramped bridge, the man who called himself Grimm watched silently while Shresthra’s engineer, Pickers, ran a diagnostic probe along the circuits of one of the switching boards. There was nothing seriously wrong with the board—or the entire computer, for that matter—but Grimm had made a point of introducing the occasional harmless hiccup into the system over the year that he and his two colleagues, Bettor and Merripen, had been aboard. There was a good chance he would need to engineer a major collapse sometime in the next couple of weeks, and he needed to make sure the problem was adequately set up in the crew’s minds.
Shresthra finished speaking, and the long time delay to the Phoenix’s reply began. “You don’t suppose he’ll want to board us, do you?” Pickers asked nervously. “We’re behind schedule enough as it is.”
“Now, now—he sounds like a reasonable enough man,” Shresthra soothed. “Still, I have no doubt he’ll do whatever he chooses. It’s small-world mentality. They tend to lord it over people from more advanced systems when they have the opportunity.”
Grimm smiled to himself. Like Shresthra had any right to talk. The Solarian League might be the undisputed big dog on the street, but not all of the League’s worlds were up to that exalted standard. As far as Grimm was concerned, Shresthra’s own homeworld of Berstuk was definitely one of those holding the average down.
“But besides possible damage to our schedule, this presents no real difficulty,” Shresthra continued. “It’s Mr. Grimm and his friends who have the most to lose.”
“Indeed we do,” Grimm agreed, turning to face the captain. Shresthra was right on the money, though he had no idea how right he was. “We can only hope that Captain Castillo will accept and honor our documents, should he choose to send boarders.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Shresthra pressed. “Will the Minorcan government invoke their penalties even if a disclosure isn’t your fault or your doing?”
“I certainly hope not,” Grimm said. “Unfortunately, the nondisclosure agreement makes no specific allowance for such things, so it will be entirely at their discretion.” He nodded toward the gravitic display and the mark that indicated the Phoenix’s position. “Even more unfortunately, Manticoran meddling would be the worst meddling of all.”
“I can imagine,” Shresthra said, nodding.
“Actually, you can’t,” Grimm said, putting some iron into his voice. He doubted Castillo would bother chasing down and boarding a clearly harmless freighter, and with their equipment still packed away in their crates a simple Navy spacer wouldn’t see anything suspicious.
But Grimm’s policy was to avoid even small risks; and if the Manticorans decided to board, he wanted Shresthra to be as solidly on his side as he could make the little man.
“I’ll tell you this much,” he continued. “What we have in the hold is a completely revolutionary system of—well, I can’t really say. But the fact that the Minorcans will be the only ones in the region with it will translate into huge profits over the next few years. If a nation with Manticore’s industrial base and funding was able to get even a hint of what it is and what it can do, they could conceivably undercut Minorca’s monopoly and its future profits. With a world their size, that would be a financial disaster.”
“Understood,” Shresthra said, importing some of Grimm’s iron into his own tone. “Do not fear. Even out here, Solarian-flagged freighters have certain rights. Rest assured that I will do everything in my power to make sure your secret cargo remains secret.”
“Thank you,” Grimm said, bowing his head. “Not just for us, but for the people of Minorca.”
He looked back at the computer. “And speaking of our cargo, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go check on it.”
“Of course,” Shresthra said. “Again, have no fear. I’m sure we’ll be fine, and that this Manticoran won’t cause us any further delays.”
Grimm’s two companions were inside Number Two hold when Grimm arrived. “How’s it look?” he asked as he sealed the door behind him and glided over to join them.
“I did what diagnostics I could,” Bettor reported. “Everything seems intact. Do you want me to start setting up?”
“Not yet,” Grimm said. “There’s an inconveniently positioned RMN ship out there asking questions. My guess is that they came out to escort that Havenite freighter that was still loading at Casca when we left.”
“Let’s hope they stick with that mission and leave us alone,” B
ettor said.
“I think they will,” Grimm said. “Their interest is probably just a matter of traffic being so sparse that every newcomer raises eyebrows.”
“Maybe,” Bettor said. “So we leave things packed until we’re clear?”
“Yes,” Grimm said. “Shouldn’t be more than a few hours at the most.”
“Let’s hope it’s less,” Grimm warned. “We’re cutting it close enough as it is, time-wise, especially if you want me packing up again before we hit orbit. A few lost hours out here could be awkward at the other end of the trip.”
“You’ll be all right,” Grimm soothed him. “Unless Shresthra manages to really raise their suspicions, they’ll probably let us go and continue to wait here for the other freighter.” He looked at Merripen, lifting his eyebrows in silent invitation to weigh in.
But Merripen just shrugged. He was a man of few words, Grimm had long noted. On a voyage of this length, that was more of a plus than a minus.
“So what kind of warship is it?” Bettor asked.
“Destroyer,” Grimm said. “HMS Phoenix. I’ll let you know when you can start setting up.”
“Okay,” Bettor said. “But I meant what I said about the timing. It’s going to take all the way in, plus whatever time you can get Shresthra to spend hustling for cargo, plus all the way back out. Even all that might not be enough. Especially with this extra delay.”
Grimm wrinkled his nose. But it couldn’t be helped. The incredibly delicate, double-incredibly expensive equipment they’d brought aboard should theoretically map the gravitational subtleties in the Manticore system well enough to nail down once and for all whether or not there was a wormhole junction here.
But as Bettor had pointed out, such things took time, and distance, and then more time.
“Just make sure you stay on top of it,” he said. “By the time we leave orbit, I need to know how much extra time you’ll need.”
“You’ll know when I do.”
“Good enough.”
And one way or another, Grimm reminded himself, by the time the Izbica left the Star Kingdom they would know whether or not a Manticore junction existed.
One way, or another.
* * *
Three hours later, Phoenix returned to the humdrum boredom of Readiness Five. Apparently, Travis concluded, whatever concerns Captain Castillo had had about the unexpected visitor had been satisfactorily resolved.
Resolved enough, in fact, that Phoenix was apparently also going to return to her patrol duty and let the visitor head in toward Manticore without escort.
Travis was of two minds about that one. On the one hand, their orders were to patrol the hyper limit, and such orders weren’t to be discarded without good cause. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure it was wise to allow an unknown ship free and unfettered access to Star Kingdom space. Especially not when Phoenix had barely gotten close enough for a full sensor scan.
Still, in the year since Travis had come aboard, he’d found that Captain Castillo generally knew what he was doing. Presumably he did here, as well.
It was four days later, as Lieutenant Commander Bajek took advantage of the ship’s idle time to run her weapons crew through combat drills, that Travis received a message to contact Chomps at his earliest convenience.
In this case, Travis’s earliest convenience turned out to be six hours later.
“Thanks for coming, Sir,” Chomps said as Travis floated through the doorway into the Aft Weapons monitor room. His tone, Travis noticed, was back to formal officer/petty officer mode.
And there was something odd displayed on the station where he’d been working when Travis entered.
“I wanted to run something past you,” Chomps said, casually reaching over to blank the display. Maybe a little too casually… “Can you first tell me what you know about the League freighter we let pass four days ago?”
“All I know is what Captain Castillo has released to the rest of the ship,” Travis said. “Her name is Izbica, out of Beowulf, carrying a chartered cargo for Minorca. She’s been tramping a few stops along the way to try to pull some extra business. Why?”
“I was hoping I could run a theory past you,” Chomps said. “It’s a bit…odd…and I know you’re pretty good at outside-the-line thinking.”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“Okay.” Chomps took a deep breath. “Here’s the thing. I’m wondering if that exiled dictator from Canaan—General Khetha—might still be alive.”
“I thought the Cascans said Khetha was one of the men who was murdered.”
“They also thought the murderer was blond with a mustache,” Chomps pointed out. “And even the Cascans admit the victims’ DNA was degraded, and that they only identified one of the samples as Khetha’s after they knew what to look for. Who’s to say it was actually him?”
“Let’s assume for sake of argument that you’re right, that Khetha’s still alive,” Travis said. “I assume you have more theory to go along with it?”
“Yes, Sir,” Chomps said. “Okay. Khetha kills someone—probably a random guy in the street—who’s close enough in height and build to pass as him after some time in a denature bag. Maybe he substitutes the guy’s DNA for his own in his mansion’s records; maybe he just assumes the degrading will be enough to do the trick. In that case, it could have been Khetha, not the killer, who took the courier ship and made a run for it.”
“Or else they’re both aboard?” Travis suggested.
“The Cascans said the security cams show only one man getting aboard the shuttle.”
“Any description?”
“None they shared with us.”
Travis nodded. “Okay, so now it’s Khetha and not the killer who escapes from Casca. Go on.”
“The killer now goes to ground on Casca for a couple of years,” Chomps said. “Not impossible if he’s prepared the papers and has enough money. Somewhere along the way, Khetha decides there’s something he needs from Canaan, either more looted treasure or something else. So he sends a message to someone in the League, who then charters Izbica. This someone and a buddy come aboard as passengers. The freighter heads to Canaan, bouncing around a few more ports on the way just to muddy the waters, where Khetha’s agents pick up the goods. Then they head to Casca.”
“Hold on a second,” Travis said, quiet alarm bells going off in the back of his head. He hadn’t heard anything about passengers, and he certainly hadn’t seen a copy of the freighter’s itinerary. How was it Chomps knew all this? “So they just pick up these gold bricks or whatever and stash them aboard?”
“Izbica’s passengers have taken over two of the holds and loaded them with a secret cargo,” Chomps said. “Supposedly running under diplomatic privilege via the Minorcan government. The treasure or whatever could be in there. So they head to Casca, where they do a little more trading and add the killer to their party. That now makes it the party of three that Izbica shows on their personnel list.” He lifted his hands. “Does this make any sense? Or am I just spitting at a radiator?”
“I think you’ve been reading too many thrillers, Chief,” Travis said. “Why would Khetha go to all that trouble? And I mean as far back as Casca. The courier boat was his—he could have just taken off whenever he wanted.”
“Unless he was also conning his own entourage,” Chomps said. “If he was running out on them too, or else trying to throw off other enemies, going to ground on Minorca is about as deep a hole as you can find to lose yourself in.”
“It’s still way more complicated than necessary,” Travis said. “New topic. How exactly do you know so much about Izbica and her particulars? I don’t even know all that.”
“I have sources,” Chomps said evasively. “If you think it’s too complicated, then I’m probably blowing smoke into—”
“Hold it,” Travis cut him off as the visual memory of that blanked display suddenly bounced back into his mind’s eye. “What did you just have on that display?”
“It was n
othing,” Chomps said, a little too quickly. He pushed off the side of the compartment with one of his large fingers and began floating almost imperceptibly toward a spot directly between Travis and the display. “Just some stuff I was working on.”
“Like hell,” Travis bit out. “It was confidential ship’s data, wasn’t it?”
Chomps’s face had gone wooden. “No, Sir.”
“Don’t lie to me, Chief,” Travis warned, pushing off the bulkhead toward the display.
Chomps got there first. “I can’t let you see this, Sir.”
“Why not?” Travis demanded. “Because I’d report it?”
“Yes, Sir, you would,” Chomps said. “And that would be bad. For both of us.”
“Chief—”
“Sir.” Chomps’s throat worked. “Travis. Please. I need you to trust me. Like you did back in boot camp.”
“That wasn’t about trust, Chief,” Travis bit out. “That was about me sticking up for someone in my squad.”
“It still is, Sir.” Chomps braced himself. “What are you going to do?”
Travis felt his gaze slip to Chomps’s shoulder, trying desperately to come up with a solution that would let his friend off the hook. He’d done it once, back in boot camp. Surely he could do it here, too.
Only he couldn’t. Then, it had been a question of dangerous malnutrition, and Travis had been able to see his decision as the morally right thing to do.
But there was no such moral gray area here. Someone—Chomps or someone else—had hacked into Phoenix’s records and accessed confidential information. That was a clear violation of Naval Code.
And unfortunately, it put Chomps’s actions over the line.
“I need to know who gave you that information, Chief.”
Chomps’s face hardened even more. “No one, Sir,” he said. “I accessed it by myself.”
“How?”