In Fire Forged by David Weber
“Make the best recording you can of the incident,” he told Ibo. “At this point, that’s all we can do.”
The seconds ticked by in silence. Weiss watched in horror-edged fascination as the markers indicating the missiles steadily closed on the Solly freighter. The Peep, meanwhile, was gunning away for all he was worth on his own chosen vector. So far, at least, the bogie was ignoring him.
Or maybe he was just waiting until after he’d dealt with the Winter Vixen.
There was a chime from the com. Stepping to Ibo’s side, Weiss touched the key. “Weiss,” he said.
“It’s Citizen Fisher,” the chief engineer’s taut voice boomed from the speaker. “I’ve just been informed there’s an unidentified ship in the system that appears to be firing on a pair of incoming freighters.”
“That’s correct, Citizen Fisher,” Weiss said. “Though for whatever comfort it might be, the bogie so far hasn’t attacked your own ore freighter.”
“Never mind our freighter,” Fisher said, a terrified bewilderment in his voice. “Who is it?”
Weiss looked at Ibo. The navigator had a grim set to his jaw. “I don’t know,” Weiss told Fisher. “I’ll look into that and get back to you.”
“Yes, but—”
“I have to go now,” Weiss said. “I’ll get back to you.”
He cut off the signal before Fisher could reply. “How are we doing?” he asked.
“Ninety seconds to impact,” Ibo said. “And you were right—that was not a normal translation footprint.” He looked up at Weiss, his expression dark. “Because I don’t think it was a normal translation.”
Weiss grimaced. There it was, out in the open. The thought all three of them were undoubtedly thinking, and undoubtedly trying to avoid. “Are you suggesting there’s a wormhole terminus in this system?” he demanded.
He hadn’t intended the words to come out nearly so harshly. But Ibo didn’t flinch. “I know it seems unbelievable that something like that could exist in an inhabited system without anyone having spotted it,” he said evenly. “But that was definitely not a normal translation footprint, and it definitely was consistent with a wormhole transit spike.”
“Was consistent with a transit spike?” Weiss asked. “You can’t tell for sure?”
Ibo shrugged helplessly. “Our sensor suite isn’t exactly warship-class,” he said. “But there are only two options. If it wasn’t an alpha transition, a wormhole is the only other possibility.”
“We’ll try doing an analysis of the recording later,” Forman said, his voice suddenly quiet. “There it goes.”
And as Weiss looked at the main display, the missiles reached the Winter Vixen.
There was no flash, of course. As the bogie’s transponder signal and emission pattern were still crawling toward them, so the light and gamma radiation from the freighter’s burst fusion bottles would be another ten minutes in arriving.
For the moment, at least, all there was to see was the Solly’s wedge disappear.
“One down,” Forman murmured. “Shall we try for two?”
Weiss held his breath. But the attacker seemed uninterested in the Peep freighter still running frantically away from him. Angling course back toward the edge of the system, he instead kicked his acceleration up to four hundred gees and headed for the hyper limit. “It would appear he’s gotten what he came for,” he said.
“Apparently so.” Forman cocked an eyebrow. “The question is, did we?” he asked.
Weiss gazed at the fleeing bandit. “Oh, yes,” he said softly. Charles was going to be paid for this one, after all.
In fact, the man might just be in for a bonus.
* * *
The Ellipsis was nearly to the hyper limit, and Charles was having a post-action discussion with Mercier in his quarters, when Captain Tyler strode furiously in.
“Look at this!” the captain snarled, jabbing the report practically in Charles’s face. “Look at the damage the alpha nodes took from that damn fool fake transit energy burst you insisted on.”
“What of it?” Charles asked, trying briefly to focus on the waving report. “I warned you that there might be some problems.”
“You didn’t say anything about this much damage,” Tyler bit out. “That one burst probably cost them half their working life.”
“Which is why we have a fully-equipped tender waiting at the rendezvous point,” Charles reminded him.
Tyler snorted. “And did you bother to mention that part to Citizen Secretary Saint-Just?” he demanded “Do you have any idea how much this will cost to fix? Or how much it’s going to cost us in acceleration and hyper speed until it is?”
“Yes, I do,” Charles said coolly. “Do you have any idea how ridiculous a captain of State Security sounds crying over a little damage to his ship?”
It was, in retrospect, probably not the best thing he could have said. Tyler’s eyes widened in anger or disbelief or both, and an instant later the report that had been waving beneath Charles’s nose had been replaced by the muzzle of the captain’s pulser, pressed against his throat.
“Captain!” Mercier snapped, taking a step forward.
“Keep out of this, Citizen,” Tyler ordered, his voice as crazy as his eyes. “This man is a traitor and an enemy. Why not just kill him here and now?”
“Because if you do, this whole thing will have been for nothing,” Mercier warned him. “Including the destruction of that tech shipment.”
And that, Charles knew, was what was really gnawing at Tyler’s gut. He’d given the orders as Charles had instructed, had sent the missiles flying in a calm, controlled voice. But it had been abundantly clear to everyone on the Ellipsis’s bridge that he was doing it under protest, and against a simmering lava bed of fury and frustration.
Not that Charles could blame him. The illicit traffic in Solly tech was the only thing that gave Haven even a chance of countering the Manties’ superior equipment. To have blown up one of those shipments—worse yet, to have blown up one of the shipment providers—had probably left Tyler feeling like he’d just cut off one of his own hands.
He was hardly alone in that, either, though Charles wasn’t about to tell him that. The freighter attack had also been Saint-Just’s biggest sticking point when the scheme had first been pitched. Charles had had to talk long, hard, and fast to get him on board with it, and even then the Citizen Secretary hadn’t been very happy about it.
And Saint-Just had just had to sign off on the orders. He hadn’t had to be the one to carry them out.
Which didn’t change the fact that the man who had carried out the orders was currently holding a gun to Charles’s throat. “I understand your frustration, Citizen Captain,” Charles said, his voice sounding odd with the pressure of the gun at his throat. At least, that was what he assumed was affecting his voice. “But this entire scheme depends on the Andermani believing there’s a wormhole terminus in the Karavani system that the People’s Republic hasn’t discovered but that the Manties have. We—the Ellipsis—have to be those Manties, which means we have to do everything a Manty would do under similar circumstances. As to the damage to the Alpha nodes, I do regret that. But the Andermani were watching, and our appearance had to look as much like a wormhole arrival as possible.”
“Fine,” Tyler said bitterly, his finger still pressed on the pulser’s trigger. “We’ve done all that. So tell me why we still need you alive.”
“Because he has to be the one to follow up with the Andermani,” Mercier said. “No one else can point them the right direction and spring the trap on them.”
“And what exactly is this trap?” Tyler demanded.
“The details are in your sealed orders,” Charles told him. “You’ll be able to open them at the rendezvous, after you drop us at our courier boat and the tender gets to work on your nodes.”
For another long moment the pulser muzzle remained pressed against Charles’s throat. Then, slowly, the pressure eased. “Any surprises in those orders?
“No,” Charles assured him. “At least, nothing that should be a problem for you.”
For another moment Tyler continued to grip his pulser, as if still trying to decide whether to use it. Then, reluctantly, he returned the weapon to its holster. “We’ll reach the rendezvous in six hours.” He looked at Mercier, then back at Charles. “Until then, both of you will stay out of my way.”
“As you wish,” Mercier said, inclining his head. “The People’s Republic will look forward to your fulfillment of your orders.”
“The People’s Republic will not be disappointed,” Tyler said shortly. “Good day, Citizens.” Turning, he strode from the room.
Mercier looked at Charles. “You play with fire, Citizen,” he warned. “He might easily have lost control and shot you.”
“Should I have babied him instead?” Charles countered. “He’s a StateSec officer. He knows the sort of duty he might be assigned to.”
“As do we all,” Mercier said. “Your duty right now is to not get yourself killed until your part in this is over.”
At which point, the Peeps would step in and take care of that? Probably. “Thank you, Citizen Mercier,” Charles said, managing a wan smile. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“See that you do,” Mercier said. “Go get a glass of water. It’s time for your antidote.”
* * *
Weiss had been back at his post in the embassy for nearly a week before Charles finally responded to his calls. “Sorry for the delay,” the Solly apologized on Weiss’s secure line. “I’ve been busy with something across town and couldn’t get free long enough to return your calls.”
“That’s all right,” Weiss said. “We need to meet.”
“We will,” Charles promised. “But not right now. I’ve just taken a new house in the Grandee District, and it needs some renovation before it’ll be ready to receive visitors.”
Weiss frowned. With the momentous events that had just happened at Karavani, Charles was squandering his time with real estate? “You’re not serious.”
“Of course I am,” Charles assured him. “It’s an investment, not only in my future but in my present. Nothing says enthusiastic supporter of the People’s cause like a foreigner buying a piece of the People’s land.”
He had a point, Weiss had to admit. Buying property on Haven automatically put the buyer under extra governmental scrutiny, and no one would do that if they weren’t as pure as a New Berlin snowfall. Assuming Charles passed all the hurdles, he would come out of the experience considerably lower on the Peeps’ list of suspicious characters.
“The downside is that StateSec will be watching the new place for awhile until they’re convinced I’m not up to anything,” Charles continued. “Two weeks, three at the most, and it’ll be safe for you to drop by.”
Weiss hissed a quiet German curse. This was incredibly bad timing on Charles’s part, in his opinion. But with the process already underway, the only thing they could do was see it through and wait for StateSec to get bored and move on.
Besides, there were other things Weiss could do in the meantime to keep this particular ball rolling. “Understood,” he said. “Let me know when it’s safe to meet.”
“I will,” Charles promised. “Auf wiedersehen.”
It was actually closer to four weeks before Weiss finally got the message he’d been expecting. It was short and unsigned and waiting in his inbox when he arrived at his desk: 1522 Rue de Leon, today, 10:20 am. Charles, it appeared was finally ready.
So was Weiss.
The address turned out to be a modest home in a neighborhood that had once been on the upper edge of Havenite elite but which had since fallen on somewhat harder times. Resisting the urge to look furtively around him, Weiss walked up to the front door and rang the bell.
Charles had the door open almost before the chime’s echo had faded away. “Come in,” he murmured, doing a quick visual sweep over Weiss’s shoulder as the Andermani slipped in past him. He closed the door behind his visitor and then led the way down a hallway into a small study reeking of fresh paint. “Sorry about the smell,” he apologized as he gestured Weiss to one of a pair of chairs in the center of the room. “A wise old ex-spy once told me that redoing a room with a metal-based paint would play havoc with any bugs in the vicinity.”
“I hope you used two coats,” Weiss said as he sat down in one of the chairs.
“Three, actually,” Charles said as he took the other. “Plus all the rest of the bug-sweeping routine, of course.”
He took a deep breath. “Well. The fact that you’re here implies you took my advice and sent an observer to the Karavani system.”
“I did you one better: I went myself,” Weiss said. “So tell me. Did I really see what I thought I saw?”
Charles’s gaze locked on Weiss’s face like a weapons targeting system. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice cautious. “What do you think you saw?”
Weiss braced himself. “I believe I saw a Manty ship come through a heretofore unknown wormhole terminus.”
Some of the rigidity vanished from Charles’s face and body. “I was right,” he murmured. “It really is there.”
“You weren’t sure?”
Charles waved a hand. “I’d heard rumors,” he said. “I spent—oh, hell; years—putting pieces together, analyzing thousands of reports, following the movements and activities of hundreds of Manty ships. It was only in the past three months that I began to suspect what was really going on.”
“What is going on?” Weiss asked. “I mean, here’s the problem. According to our Intelligence people, the Peeps have been bringing Solly tech into the Karavani system for at least the past few months. Why haven’t the Manties hit them before now? Or are you suggesting the Manties have hit other shipments and the Peeps somehow didn’t notice?”
“Even StateSec isn’t that stupid,” Charles said dryly. “No, from everything I’ve been able to pull together, the Manties have known all about these Karavani handoffs, but have been biding their time and saving their thunder for the big score. Actually, there are some indications that they’ve been subtly nudging at the Peeps’ other transshipment points, herding their operations to Karavani. This shipment was supposed to be the big one, the one with actual Solly missiles and stealth technology and who knows what else.”
Weiss winced. The People’s Navy with Solly missiles and stealth tech. God help the Manties, and everyone else in the region, if that ever happened. “Well, they won’t be getting anything from that shipment, anyway,” he said. “The Charger took care of that.”
“The Charger was the ship the Manties used?”
Weiss nodded. “It was keeping its ID quiet, but that’s what our analysis of its emissions gave us. Any thoughts as to why they didn’t just go back out through the wormhole instead of running for the hyper limit like they did?”
“They may have been a little rattled by the unexpected presence of an Andermani courier boat in the system they were hitting,” Charles said. “I’m guessing they hoped you hadn’t picked up the terminus’s precise location and didn’t want to give you another chance to locate it by exiting the same way. Besides that, the hyper limit’s obviously the closer escape route. The less time they gave you to study them, the better. What kind of energy spike did you pick up?”
“It was fairly small,” Weiss told him. “And frankly, I have to say that this whole thing is starting to drift into the interesting-but-not-very-useful category. Unless you want to run ore freighters to Manticore, there’s not a lot in Karavani that anyone would want. And while I’m sure the hyper-physicists would have a field day trying to figure out how a wormhole terminus can be twice as close to the hyper limit as any previously mapped terminus, that’s not exactly of galaxy shaking importance in the middle of a war, either.”
Charles gave him an odd look. “Who said the other end of the wormhole is in the Manticore system?”
Weiss frowned. “It’s not???
“Why do you think I came to you with this in the first place?” Charles asked, frowning in turn. “The other end of the wormhole doesn’t come out in Manty space.
“It comes out inside the Andermani Empire.”
* * *
For a long minute Weiss just stared at his host, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging slightly open. Charles sat perfectly still, letting the other have his moment. If he could convince Weiss, then the ball would continue rolling.
If he couldn’t, he would probably be back in the Peeps’ torture chamber by dinner time.
He was pondering that unappetizing possibility when Weiss seemed to shake himself. “Where?” he asked.
Charles started breathing again. “I’m not absolutely sure,” he said. “But I believe it’s somewhere along your border with Silesia, possibly in or near Irrlicht. It’s a small system with four uninhabitable planets and a couple of asteroid belts—”
“Yes, I’ve heard of it,” Weiss said. “Why do you think the terminus is there?”
“I’ve noted a significant number of reports describing attacks on Silesian pirates by unidentified ships in that area,” Charles said. “Even asteroid miners don’t stay in Irrlicht full-time, which means Manty ships coming and going wouldn’t even be noticed. My guess is that they’ve quietly set up a base somewhere, probably in the outer belt, to run their operations from.”
Weiss pursed his lips, then abruptly shook his head. “No,” he said firmly.
Charles felt his heart skip a beat. “I can show you the data,” he offered.
“No, I mean you’re wrong about the only two termini being in Karavani and the Empire,” Weiss said. “Karavani to Irrlicht has to be somewhere close to four hundred light-years. The terminus we saw at Karavani is far too close to the hyper limit for the wormhole to stretch that far in a single gulp. There has to be a junction somewhere considerably closer—sixty to eighty light-years away at the most.”
“Eighty light-years won’t get you to Manticore,” Charles said, frowning in feigned thought.