Threshold

"So, then we make them the deal that should have been made all along—for all three groups to work together. We'll even let them be in on the first landing on Enceladus. Yeah, we know, Captain," A.J. said. "And we blow the whistle on them if they tell us to screw off."

  "Exactly. And that would take us just a few seconds, right?"

  "Well, longer than that," A.J. said. "Not normally, but remember, we haven't even completely cleared Jupiter yet, and Io's going to be getting in the way. I figure it'll be another . . . what, six or seven hours, Larry?" The astronomer nodded. "Six or seven hours until we can punch through a message to Ceres, let alone Earth or Mars."

  "But it's only a few seconds of transmission, anyway. And they can't stop us from transmitting, correct? Jam us or something?"

  "Not a chance," said Joe. "At a range of thousands of kilometers, tens of thousands? Nope. We'll get through. They can't shoot us, and they can't jam us. They'd be crazy or stupid to do anything other than cut the deal."

  Jackie glanced at A.J. "You wanted to open the conversation. You wouldn't tell me why. Are you going to embarrass me?"

  "You might be embarrassed to do it," A.J. said. "But it's nothing too bad. I thought of a lot worse. Besides, all of you have been complaining about how I've been growing up too much. Consider this my one last great hurrah of immaturity."

  Jackie studied him, then smiled and shrugged. "I got my personal phone call on company time, I guess I can give you one last A.J. stunt, as long as you promise it's not too extreme. And you know what I mean by that."

  A.J. gave a little seated bow. "I do. And it will in fact be very much extreme, but not extremely embarrassing. And"—he gave the trademark A.J. grin—"extremely apropos to the situation, I assure you."

  "Then take your places, everyone," Jackie said. "We've got about seven minutes."

  "When will Nebula Storm be in view?" Hohenheim asked.

  Anthony LaPointe shrugged. "I would expect very soon, General. However, we do not know exactly what reaction mass they had to expend, what ISP they could manage to obtain from their necessarily improvised nuclear rocket, or exactly what course they intended to take. These will affect the exact point at which we will regain line-of-sight on the Ares vessel."

  LaPointe was clearly ill at ease, with his best friend currently held in the Odin's tiny brig. Hohenheim couldn't spare the time to reassure him—and if there were others harboring similar thoughts of sabotage or collusion with the Ares vessel, this would certainly make them reconsider. Hohenheim hated having to think this way, but despite Eberhart's appearances of sincerity, there did not seem to be any other reasonable explanation for the Odin's drastic misbehavior. He connected to Engineering. "Mia, how are things?"

  "I am trying to trace the faults, sir." Mia Svendsen's voice was tired and harried. "It really does look like the problem with the laterals is in the control nodes, probably in the firmware driving them. That's the only way I could see something being able to intercept and abort the commands from here. I've sent two people up to take one of them out of the housing, put in one of the replacement units, and bring the old one down for a full examination."

  "What about the NERVA systems?"

  "I only have so many people, sir. The NERVA engine is essentially out of the picture in terms of useful—or even nefarious—applications. The laterals, which share controls with our ion drive, could still be of very significant use. I am personally performing some pre-use testing of the control systems on the mass-beam, in case . . ." She hesitated, then went on. "In case the same person has managed to compromise those as well."

  Hohenheim nodded. "Any results?"

  "At the moment, all seems to be functioning normally, although I have been detecting slightly higher than normal RF noise, which I am trying to localize."

  "Nebula Storm in view, General!"

  Hohenheim turned. "Range?"

  "About ninety thousand kilometers, General. We are slowly overtaking them."

  Hohenheim breathed a sigh of relief, glancing at Fitzgerald. If the Ares vessel had been moving faster—had accelerated, rather than decelerated, strongly—the mission would have been almost certainly at an end, and probably his career with it. It seemed, however, that the Nebula Storm had no special tricks available to decelerate at Saturn, and therefore, even with the loss caused by the reversal of thrust on their Oberst Maneuver, there was a good chance that they could still beat the Ares vessel to Enceladus. It would just be a much, much closer race.

  He studied the viewscreen. This deep in Jupiter's magnetosphere, the Nebula Storm's captive nebula was vastly compacted, only a few tens of kilometers across; the vessel appeared as a tiny dot of light. "Any sign of communication?"

  "Not yet, General. Do you wish to initiate contact?"

  "In a moment. Let us take a closer look at our competition and see how they are doing from the outside."

  LaPointe brought the powerful telescopes of the Odin into play. The view dissolved, then reformed, the dusty-plasma sail of the vessel now filling a large portion of the screen. LaPointe gave a faint French curse of disbelief as the image came into focus.

  The Nebula Storm's sail was no longer an abstract mixture of light and fog; a great shield-shape was formed from the dust and plasma, a huge badge with a rising sun behind some tall building and the number "714" at the bottom. At almost the same moment, the Odin's speakers blared out with a simple fanfare, four emphatic notes followed by five more, and A.J. Baker's voice filled the bridge. "Odin, this is the Ares-IRI vessel Nebula Storm. You have the right to remain silent, but I don't think it will do you much good. Instead, I think you'd better talk to our captain. Captain?"

  "General Hohenheim, this is Captain Jacqueline Secord. Are you receiving me?"

  Hohenheim's mind was racing furiously. "The right to remain silent" was a phrase familiar to almost anyone who had followed any American entertainment, especially police dramas. The implications . . .

  "Odin receives you, Captain," he answered. To shape the material of the sail that way . . . He did not believe it could be done simply with the magnetic fields, even assuming the aliens' control mechanisms were indeed advanced. The material of the sail itself would have to be mobile, which now made all too much sense. "Am I to assume, from your rather unexpectedly confrontational contact, that you are responsible for Odin's current difficulties?"

  "We are, in fact," Secord answered. "My overly melodramatic sensor engineer will take the credit for much of that, of course."

  "Captain Secord," Hohenheim said carefully, "such actions are clearly an assault upon my vessel. Is it truly your intention to attack the European Union and, in effect, declare war between a small corporation and a U.N. agency and one of the most powerful political units on Earth?"

  Secord's smile was not comforting. "General, it was not Ares or the IRI which began this. And as of this very conversation, I now have incontrovertible evidence that the E.U., or at least some components of it associated with the final design and outfitting of Odin, have deliberately and with malice aforethought armed the Odin with a weapon—a coilgun—capable of firing projectiles at meteoric speeds. Combined with other evidence, we have sufficient justification to state with conviction that it was an attack by Odin, and not a meteor, which disabled the power station on Ceres and led to the injury and very nearly the death of one of Ares' personnel."

  Hohenheim felt the grim weight of the trapped descend upon him—but at the same time, a paradoxical lightening of his heart. "I see."

  "Do you deny these charges?"

  The general shook his head. "I would be a fool to do so, Captain Secord. If you had sufficient control of my vessel to force us to do what we have done, it would seem obvious you must have the evidence you mention. Yes, Odin did indeed fire a single projectile at Ceres. Is it your intention that we now proceed back to Earth?"

  "That is one possible path," Secord said. "However, we don't think that this is the best choice for all concerned."

  "What are you proposing, Cap
tain?"

  "A compromise, General. One that should have been done the moment Dr. LaPointe discovered the Enceladus connection. A joint venture, with Ares, the IRI, and the E.U. having equal shares of the discoveries, and perhaps even with E.U. personnel making the first landfall on Enceladus."

  She spread her hands in a pacific gesture. "We really don't want enemies, General. We are, as you implied, not nearly large enough to play with the big boys if they get rough. Certainly we could get you dragged back and arrested. But that would still be so completely embarrassing to the E.U. that we would be lucky to ever get any cooperation from them ever again—at least for years. And we don't have the resources to explore, catalogue, and properly exploit another alien installation, anyway. We've been running on a shoestring ever since this thing began."

  She laughed, and the sound made the bands of tension around the general's chest loosen for the first time in months. "Hell, look at our expedition here, flying after you in a sixty-five-million-year-old antique. We can't afford this kind of crap, and neither can the human race."

  General Hohenheim nodded thoughtfully, vaguely aware that Anthony LaPointe seemed to have slumped back in relief at his console. "I presume that this logic was what convinced Horst to cooperate with you?"

  "Horst?" For a moment, Jackie Secord looked completely taken aback. Then she laughed. "Oh, no, poor Horst! You think he sabotaged your systems?"

  The general blinked. The connection had seemed obvious, as well as the methodology he could have pieced together: signals hidden within the main transmissions, with Horst having the key in his own head or personal data unit. But her reaction . . .

  "Then how, please, did you manage to suborn my own systems? No member of Ares has ever been on board Odin, and, in fact, if you had managed to infiltrate the systems prior to our departure, this chase would never have been necessary."

  A.J. Baker's image joined Jackie's on the screen. "Thank Madeline Fathom for the idea, General, and me for my Faerie Dust, which is all over your ship."

  Anthony LaPointe sat up suddenly. "My God!"

  A.J. chuckled. "Yeah, I think you just caught on."

  Hohenheim understood suddenly. "Your supposed drive failure. It projected your Faerie Dust toward Odin, and eventually caught up with us." Hohenheim saw the sensor expert's grin widen. "And then, when you were close enough, you initiated contact to gather data and program the maneuver. And by now your Dust is spread throughout the main systems."

  It made sense. Horst Eberhart had been as blameless in this as he had been in the attack on Ceres. It appeared both sides would owe the earnest engineer an apology.

  "It seems that you do indeed hold all the cards. So, I agree in principle, Captain Secord. What would be the terms of this agreement?"

  "I am not a lawyer, General. The agreement would be based on the one currently existing between the IRI and Ares Corporation, which has been very satisfactory so far. The only additional stipulation is this." She looked suddenly stern, a judge passing sentence. "The people directly responsible for the attack on Ceres will be arrested and, whenever practical, sent back to Earth for punishment. And you and your crew will provide full statements as to their actions and complicity."

  And so ends my career. Well, it will be in a good cause. And I will at least be able to look at myself in the mirror. "I will allow you to choose the exact level of guilt that this encompasses, Captain. But I agree to your terms."

  "Level of guilt?"

  Hohenheim shrugged. "Such actions are taken by, and known to, different people at different times, and the responsibility for actions can be direct or indirect. For example, I myself did not directly order the attack. It was, however, done to accomplish ends which I had agreed to. And while it was from my point of view unnecessary and extreme, as commander I take the ultimate responsibility for those under my command, especially as I obviously colluded with those responsible after the fact. I will permit you the judgment of how widely you wish to spread your net."

  Secord nodded. "I see what you mean. I will—"

  The screen went blank. With sudden sinking conviction, Hohenheim glanced to his left.

  Richard Fitzgerald was nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter 34

  Once the talk-talk had started, Richard had realized that Hohenheim would be going along with anything the Ares captain suggested. The Odin's commander had always been unhappy with the whole situation, and this was just the kind of honorable exit the bastard was looking for. Unfortunately, that exit would inevitably include sending one Richard Fitzgerald up the river, and that would never do.

  But he'd prepared for this contingency, along with many others. While attention was focused on the Ares group, he'd slipped out, down the main shaft toward Engineering. The controls for the ship were still locked down in that area, with Mia doing the troubleshooting and all. The bridge might be the main control area, but it wasn't hard-connected. That was his first goal. Well, first after establishing all the control he could manage by remote.

  That bastard Baker. That would certainly complicate things; Richard's prior arrangements hadn't assumed a Faerie Dust wrench in the works. The real question was how many people were going to be a major problem. Eberhart wasn't even a question mark. He'd have to be dealt with. Hohenheim, the same, and that was the real pain in the arse. With the general on his side, even the straight arrows would probably have fallen into line, but with Hohenheim trying to make deals with the other side, it was going to get really sticky.

  First things first. He opened a channel that his people would be monitoring. "Code seven. Repeat, code seven." They'd spent a long time going over the various scenarios, but he had to admit he'd really never thought he'd have to go to code seven—taking control of Odin directly. If it didn't work out, he was going to be in for a long prison sentence. Even if things did work out, the situation would be chancy. But he thought the resounding success of seizing a major Bemmie base on Enceladus, even if some lives were lost as a result of violence, would satisfy the powers-that-be in the European Union enough to allow Richard to slip through the legal cracks—and now as a very wealthy man.

  Johnson replied. "Code seven, sir?"

  "You heard me. Seven." He cut off. It was remotely possible that his team would back out on him now, leaving him pretty much alone, but he didn't think so. The potential rewards were still extremely attractive, and the immediate risks were fairly minimal.

  The first thing to do was cut off the discussion. He'd arranged a pretty foolproof cutoff for communication—a major issue for any security chief, and in this situation doubly so. He triggered that code, saw it register. Good. No more talking with Ares.

  Now, what next? As he thought of the next step, General Hohenheim's voice suddenly boomed out, echoing throughout the entirety of Odin. "Attention all personnel. Attention all personnel."

  Silencing in-ship communications was of course another contingency, which Fitzgerald triggered immediately. Hohenheim was cut off in mid-sentence, before he got to the crucial point of informing the entire crew that the security chief was a mutineer.

  Not that Richard liked to think of it that way. He felt that he was simply doing the job he'd been hired to do, and assuring the success of the mission. It wasn't his fault that the commander of the expedition did not have a spine to match his reputation. Hohenheim had lost sight of the essentials.

  The biggest essential of all, of course, was to prevent Nebula Storm from talking. They'd said they had just found their evidence. That meant they hadn't had a chance to send it yet, and until they cleared Jupiter and Io there wasn't going to be a chance.

  He triggered his own controls. As he'd expected, the ship responded. Baker and the other Ares crew weren't trying to keep total control of Odin. That would be rude, a pain in the ass to handle, and they didn't have the crew to spend watching things anyway. Nor did they have the programming time to be able to trust it all to automatic. The Odin would line herself up for a shot right nice, especially since
his control protocols were separate from the others. Sure, Baker and his damn Dust would figure a way to cut it off, but if they didn't manage it in the next few minutes, it'd be too late.

  He just had to get to Engineering in time to make sure the deployment and loading worked right. The Nebula Storm crew weren't idiots; they'd be ready in case Odin fired on them. He had to anticipate that, and deal with it, and he'd been working on that issue for months.

  First, though, a clear and simple immediate task. He keyed his communicator. "Dominic."

  Alescio responded immediately. "Here, sir."

  "Deal with Eberhart. Code seven, remember."

  "Yes, sir."

  The main corridor running down the center of Odin was normally empty, especially under running conditions, which was why Richard had chosen this route—that and the fact that in zero-gee he could practically fly along, and could outmaneuver anyone else in the crew. The monitors would of course usually be able to pinpoint anyone's location, which is why he'd taken those out of the picture, too. He could use them, of course, but not on the run.

  A technician—Erin Peltier, that was it—popped suddenly out of a side passage. "Chief Fitzgerald, what—"

  Bugger. I don't have time for this. Peltier wasn't one of the mission-criticals, but she could have been useful, especially as they really didn't want to lose many people at this stage. But he couldn't afford someone who might talk to the wrong person at the wrong time, either, at least not for the next few hours. He kicked against the wall, hooked the shocked Peltier as he passed, and used leverage and angular momentum to slam her into the wall. The impact clearly stunned her. He gripped her throat, cutting off the carotid artery, and thus bloodflow to the brain, until she went unconscious.

  What now? That wouldn't keep her out long. He thought a moment, hands moving to a position that would snap Peltier's neck like a straw. Then relaxed his grip. He wanted to avoid killing except where it was absolutely necessary, and it simply wasn't in this case. With code seven in effect, most people on the ship would figure out what was happening in a few minutes, anyway.