“No kidding?” Olwen said.
“Sorry. I get kind of nervous around bombs like this.”
They followed the trollybot as it rolled down to the central payload bay. The Guardians started to attach the blimpbot’s internal hoist cables to the cylinder.
“We’re picking up a lot more rumors from the Institute troops,” Olwen said. “They’re all talking about some kind of attack on the Commonwealth.”
“The Primes again,” Stig said.
“Yeah, but, Stig, it was a big attack; they’re consistent about that. It’s making them very jittery. There’s even been talk about some of them breaking through to Half Way.”
“Stupid of them. They don’t know if there are any Carbon Goose planes left at Port Evergreen.”
“It was only a whisper.”
Probably true, though, Stig thought. Guardians and their supporters had taken jobs at the pubs and clubs that the Institute troops had established as their own in Armstrong City. They provided a slow but steady trickle of information on the troops and their assignments. Morale, already low, was heading downhill fast. The soldiers had all signed up for medium-term contracts to help the Institute combat raids from guerrilla bands out on the Great Iril Steppes; none of them expected to be doing urban paramilitary duties. Being the most hated group on the planet, subject to constant abuse and harassment, was taking its toll. Their officers had to let them out at night; safe together, they drank and bitched like any soldier since Troy.
“Anybody let on if they’re expecting an arrival?”
“I’d have told you. They don’t know, too low down the food chain.”
“It can’t be long now.”
She watched the heavy cylinder rise up into the cargo bay, flinching each time the ancient winch chains let out a creak of protest at the weight. “You’ve done everything you can do. It can only come through at preset times, and we know what those are to the second. We’ve got 3F Plaza covered by every kind of sensor the human race has ever invented. If those troops even so much as glance at the gateway we’ll know about it. So stop worrying, we’ve got it covered.”
Stig looked up at the blimpbots, and laughed at the audacity of the plan they’d come up with. “Right, who’s going to notice a goddamn airship on a bombing run? Dreaming heavens!”
“Nobody,” she said, smiling back with the same wild enthusiasm. “That’s the beauty. Fly them in low enough, and they’ll be over the walls of 3F Plaza before the Institute can aim a single weapon at them.”
“I hope you’re right.” He gave a start as the winch mechanism stopped with a nasty metallic grinding sound. The bomb was completely inside the bay. “Let’s work out how to get this brute secure. I really do want to have them all in the air by morning.”
***
Oscar didn’t expect a downtime of more than six hours. Enough to recharge the Dublin’s niling d-sinks, and reload the forward section with Douvoir missiles and quantumbusters. Fleet Command had indicated they’d be sent right back to Hanko. After the wormholes had vanished, they’d destroyed over eighty Prime ships before their armaments were depleted.
As soon as the starship eased its bulk into a docking station at Base One, the secure encrypted message popped into Oscar’s hold file. Admiral Columbia wanted to see him right away. Along with the rest of the crew, Oscar was still in shock by the way the War Cabinet had dumped shit from a great height on Wilson. Resentment was a strong twin of that feeling; he was tempted to tell his new commander where to shove his meeting, an impulse made worse by worry that Columbia was implementing a political clearout of his new office. Oscar had been one of the first people Wilson had recruited, making him a prominent loyal member of the old regime.
However, you can’t go around judging people on the basis of your own emotional prejudices. So Oscar did the mature thing, and sent a message back saying he was on his way. Sir.
“If the shit fires you, we walk, too,” Teague said.
“Don’t,” Oscar said as he left for the small shuttle craft. “The navy needs you.” Where have I heard that phrase before?
Nothing physical had changed at Pentagon II. Senior staff seemed twitchy as Oscar went through the offices and corridors, but then they were in the middle of organizing a battle to defend human worlds against forty-eight alien armadas. They were allowed to be twitchy.
Rafael Columbia had taken over Wilson’s sterile white office. He was alone when Oscar was shown in.
No witnesses, Oscar thought immediately. Oh, for God’s sake, get a grip.
Columbia didn’t get up; he simply waved Oscar into a chair with easy familiarity. “I have a problem, Oscar.”
“I’ll resign if it makes it easier. We can’t afford any more internal disruption.”
Columbia frowned in genuine surprise, then smiled briefly. “No, not that. You’re an excellent starship captain. Just look at the Dublin’s performance.”
“Thank you.”
“I have a problem somewhat closer to home. I might have made a mistake.”
“Happens to us all, sir. You should see my list.” Actually, you shouldn’t.
“I’m receiving a lot of information which indicates the Starflyer is a real and current threat. The evidence is building, Oscar. In the past I’ve always dismissed it, but I can’t do that anymore, no matter how personally uncomfortable that may prove to be.”
“It scared the living shit out of me when I found out.”
Columbia stared at him, before finally grinning a reluctant submission. “I might have known. Very well, this makes it easier. For both of us.”
“What do you need?”
“A confirmed traitor has turned up on Boongate, a navy officer called Tarlo. My Paris office is putting together an arrest team; but of course all the wormholes to the Second47 are shut by War Cabinet edict. I need that traitor, Oscar, he can prove or disprove the whole Starflyer legend once and for all.”
“You want me to fly there?”
“No. For the moment we’re keeping this dark; God knows what kind of shitstorm it would stir up if word leaks out before we’ve got it contained. I want you to be my personal emissary to Nigel Sheldon; you must emphasize just how important this is. Ask him to quietly open the wormhole and let the Paris team through. Nobody else, just them.”
“You want me to ask that?” Oscar couldn’t believe what he was hearing, even though it was very flattering.
“Your record ever since Bose witnessed the Dyson Alpha enclosure is impeccable. You were also highly placed in CST before the war. Nigel Sheldon will see you and listen to what you say; I don’t have that level of political capital with him today, and I’m reluctant to bump this up a level by asking Heather to intercede on my behalf. If he agrees to open the wormhole I want you on-site at Narrabri to oversee the mission. I need your dependability, Oscar.”
Oscar stood up. He damn near saluted. “I’ll do my best, sir.”
***
It was another beautifully clear dawn in the Dessault Mountains as the sparkling constellations slowly washed away into the brightening sapphire sky. Samantha had no time for admiration as the gentle early morning radiance filtered through the open doorway of the ancient shelter. Her skin was hot and sticky inside the thick protective one-piece garment that she and the rest of the team wore while they were working close to the niling d-sink. Modern d-sinks had integral reactive em shielding, but the ones she was dealing with were decades old, and their passive shielding had broken down long ago. This one had been in place for sixty years, receiving and storing power from the solid state heat exchange cable that had been drilled two kilometers into the base of the mountain. She’d spent all night modifying the power emission module. Its original control array had needed replacing, never an easy thing to do with a live system. And there was a lot of basic circuit maintenance that had to be carried out; the niling d-sinks were good high-quality systems, but they’d never been designed with sixty years of continuous use in mind.