Chương 66: Espionage

Academy Hill, Vidako Imperium Stellarum January 30, 2848 Arc waited at the top of the catwalk just long enough to watch Cassie approach Ryan McCarthy, who he was pretty certain would never, if he stayed in fleet for twenty years, get away from the story about falling into a latrine during Hard Burn. While they talked, he glanced over to the pod at the very end of the hall, where C'rise ducked past the signs that warned everyone else away and descended to her own pod.

For a moment, he considered whether or not it might be better to discard his plan, and get the information on exactly what mech Radecki had brought up to Chel from a different source. Jessica had already demonstrated that she had a nearly unbelievable degree of access to the Academy computer systems—she could probably find records of some kind. Would that be more, or less ethical than using a psycher to tell whether or not Chief Jastrow was lying about something?

Arc had a strong suspicion that Commandant Marlowe knew exactly what records Jessica had accessed, and was looking the other way at the imperial guard's abuse of her override codes. There was a point past which plausible deniability was strained, however, and Arc didn't want to set either her or the school up for more trouble if—when—Radecki's senator father came along asking questions. The only people who could get in trouble from his plan to use C'rise, instead, were the two of them.

Even Jastrow would be ethically and legally blameless. If it had been some Na'xir warrior who they'd captured and needed to interrogate—or, better yet, a pirate—Arc didn't think that he'd be having any reservations about using C'rise's abilities. A psycher who could tell what someone was thinking was certainly more humane than some kind of torture or interrogation, and plenty of long-ago governments had justified that in the interests of their own security. She wasn't going to hurt anyone, at least.

But what did it say about him that he was so willing to use this lonely young woman, who'd shown up to Vidako barely speaking imperial standard? She wasn't a newly released model with a neat special ability, ready to be assembled, painted, and experimented with on a terrain table. She was a real person, with her own hopes and fears—did he really have the right to just use her like this?

"Hey," Cassie said, stirring him out of his muddled thoughts when she placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Were you waiting for me?" The warmth of her smile made it evident that she hadn't guessed what was troubling him, and that Iceni hadn't passed the gist of it along to Lyra.

"McCarthy say yes?" he asked, rather than answer.

"I get the impression he saw it coming," Cassie admitted, with a laugh.

"He said he's hoping I can give him a few pointers. Come on!" She pulled her hand away from him and hurried down the steps to her simulator pod; Arc hesitated only a moment before following. Legislation regulating the use of LeShaii telepathic abilities is still being written and debated in the senate, Iceni told him, as he slipped into the seat of the simulator and strapped in. The Na'xir attack on their worlds has somewhat delayed the original timeline.

I would have told you if there was something currently illegal about what you are planning to do.

"There's a difference between what's legal and what's moral," Arc grumbled. Jastrow had been, so far as he could tell, a genuinely good person, and the chief had helped them out quite a bit more than he had the right to expect. He ended up chewing over the problem the entire time he was working in the simulator—not that what he was doing was terribly challenging.

Christina had sent, by means of her own AI, Sync, a terrain program meant to familiarize him with the area where they'd be spending their next patrol: the southern part of the peninsula, where the jungles gave way to brackish estuaries, sea-cliffs, and isolated beaches which hadn't yet become a playground for the wealthy of San Teodoro. There, rather than the sheltered waters of the enclosed bay, the open equatorial ocean stretched to the horizon, dark and deep.

It was the kind of terrain that made Arc want an Outrider. Between weeks of training with Lieutenant Estrada and testing out Lady Ren, he was beginning to get much too used to having thrusters, and the fact that a standard Tyro didn't have any made him feel like he was trying to swim in a full set of clothes.

The sandy-beaches and sucking mud of the estuaries were difficult to handle within getting mired, and he spent most of his session longing for the ability to just jump over the treacherous terrain on a plume of fire. By the end of the session, however, he'd decided what approach he was going to take with Chief Jastrow. It still didn't feel great, but Arc thought it was something that he could live with. He unbuckled himself, hurried up the stairs, and waited for his friends to catch up.

"How'd McCarthy do?" he asked Cassie, once she'd made it back onto the catwalk.

"He had some really, really strange instincts," Cassie admitted, with a bit of a grimace.

"He's always charging in—""I don't know anyone else who does that," Arc teased her, and was rewarded by a gentle poke from her elbow.

"Right, but he doesn't use plasma blades or anything," she explained.

"He just kind of panics and comes in swinging. I not only watched him drop his rifle, Arc, I actually got him to add sonic claws to his mech on the fourth run, and he still forgot to use them. It's like everything else goes out of his mind and he just tries to pound the other mech into the ground."

"Yeah, that's bizarre," Arc agreed.

"And if he tries it against a spiked terror, it's going to get him killed." He saw C'rise coming up the metal staircase from her custom pod, and gave a wave. By the time the psycher had walked over, the rest of their friends had gathered around, as well.

"So are we all going?" Vee asked, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet.

"I want to know what kind of weird secrets he's got." She was far too loud, and Cassie immediately began to hush her.

"We're not going digging for blackmail," Arc cautioned.

"All we want is the answer to one question. You can get that without hurting him, right?"

"I won't hurt anyone," C'rise said, meeting him right in the eyes.

"And if you'd asked me to, I would have walked away and gone directly to the commandant. But he's just as untrained as anyone else here; if you ask him a question, outright, he won't be able to stop himself from thinking about the answer, and I'll pick that up." Arc nodded.

"Good. The rest of you can take a walk with us if you want, but I think it's better if only C'rise and I talk to him." That way no one else could potentially get into trouble for what they were about to do. Pika shook his head.

"I can't. I'm taking the qualifier test tomorrow."

"And you shouldn't do anything that even has a possibility of getting you in trouble," Rain agreed.

"You can come and walk me to my appointment with the base psychologist. That way there will be multiple people who can tell the commandant you were somewhere else and had nothing to do with this."

"Good luck." Pika reached his hand out to clasp Arc's, and then the two Alu'kans turned and left. Arc, Cassie, Vee and C'rise waited for them to get a little bit of distance, and then made for the exit themselves.

"Cadet Sabran-Solaris," Lieutenant Commander Libby called out, as their group walked by.

"Yes, sir?" Cassie turned to face the instructor, while Arc and the rest paused so that they wouldn't leave her behind. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Libby seemed to chew his lip for a moment before speaking.

"Are you trying to prove something, cadet?"

"I'm not trying to prove anything," Cassie told him.

"I'm going to beat every other cadet in my year, so that you can't pretend you've got a reason for keeping me out of a cockpit."

"Careful, cadet," Libby said.

"That sounds awfully close to insubordination."

"With all due respect, sir, Cadet Sabran-Solaris was merely answering the question you asked," Arc broke in.

"This is none of your concern, Sandhurst," Libby growled.

"Don't you have someplace else to be?"

"We all do," Cassie said.

"Good afternoon, Lieutenant Commander." Arc half expected Libby to call them back or stop them, but they made it up the stairs and out into the campus, while the instructor said nothing. While most of the sky was covered by gray clouds, a few isolated rays of bright sunlight shot down through the mist at sharp angles, painting ghostly rainbows in the air far above the city. It was a rare moment of beauty in the otherwise miserable rainy season.

They set off south, leaving behind the academic and administrative buildings and the dormitories for the fenced-in hangar bays, testing fields, landing pads, and munitions warehouses that looked more like an industrial complex than a college. With Iceni and Lyra's help, they found Chief Dimitri Jastrow supervising the maintenance of a Tyro with the number '45' stenciled on the right side of its chest.

Arc was certain that Natalie would have recognized the tech students climbing over the armor of the mech, but he didn't know them by name.

"Chief!" he called up, cupping his left hand to the side of his mouth to make a sort of improvised megaphone. Jastrow was up on a catwalk, overseeing the use of a gantry while a stick-thin tech student loaded the right-shoulder autocannon with belts of twenty millimeter rounds. The loading machine made such a racket that Arc had to shout three times before the chief heard him and came down.

"What do you need, cadets?" the older man asked, pulling a rag off his belt and using it to wipe grease off his hands.

"We're trying to get unit forty-five squared away in time for your friend to use it tomorrow."

"This is going to be Pika's?" Cassie asked, and flashed Jastrow a grin.

"Can I take a look?"

"As long as you don't get in the way," Jastrow grumbled.

"Or mess anything up."

"Come on, Vee," Cassie said, grabbing their friend by her feathered arm and pulling her along toward the rope-ladder.

"Let's leave Pika a good-luck note or something." There, she sent in the private chat she and Arc shared. Now you've got him alone.

"I wanted to ask you something about the duel, actually," Arc said, turning away from where Cassie and Vee scrambled up the ladder toward the cockpit. Chief Jastrow didn't frown, but it was a near thing.

"Step on over here," he said, leading them away from the mech and deeper into the hangar, where a computer terminal rested atop a cheap desk.

"I can hardly hear myself think over all that racket." Arc and C'rise followed him, and if the chief was curious about the LeShaii's presence, he didn't say anything. Instead, he settled down into a wheeled, padded chair with a grunt, and leaned back, crossing his hands over his belly.

"If it's about trying to cram anti-missile turrets on somewhere, I already told you we can't do it," Jastrow began.

"Chaff launchers and flares are going to have to be enough. That mech is practically over-tuned already, and I don't want to mess it up."

"Actually, it's something else," Arc said.

"I was talking to Bill Tremblay earlier today."

"Good kid," Jastrow said.

"Right. Well, he told me that he was earning extra merits by taking a routine maintenance pass through a bunch of hangars the other day," Arc explained.

"And that he noticed there's a Kestrel stored in hangar three-fifty-six. Fletcher Radecki's Kestrel, specifically. And we got to thinking—if Radecki's mech is down here, what's he got up there on Chel?" Jastrow's face froze.

"I've done everything I can to help you within the bounds of the duel, Sandhurst," he said.

"Getting your mech ready to go and making certain it's safe—that's my responsibility as chief, right? But if I were to give you information on your opponent, that wouldn't be impartial, would it?"

"Of course not," Arc said.

"I understand. I just thought that if anyone would know whether he'd brought in a special mech for the duel, it would be you. After all, you have to check in every mech that arrives at the academy, don't you?"

"I do." Jastrow's eyes flicked to C'rise, and then back to Arc.

"And yes, if there were to be such a mech—which I can't comment on, one way or the other—then I would have had to go over it with a fine-toothed comb before sending it on up the elevator. Hypothetically speaking."

"Of course." Arc nodded.

"Sorry for bothering you, chief."

"Sorry I couldn't be of more help," Jastrow said.

"Collect your friends on your way out, please, and keep them out of my crew's way." Vee started talking as soon as they'd left the hangar and walked out onto the tarmac.

"Well? Did it work?"

"Not here," Arc said.

"Back in the war room." It was hard enough to hold himself in for the entire walk across campus, but Vee was practically buzzing with the effort of constraining herself. Once they were back in Tycho Hall, she rushed ahead of them to the study room, where she stood, fidgeting by the door until they'd all shuffled in and found a seat.

"Now?" Vee begged.

"Now," Cassie agreed, settling in at Arc's side.

"Jessica just did a sweep yesterday, and no one should have been in here since then."

"Did it work?" Arc asked C'rise. The other cadet's nacreous scalp-growths gleamed beneath the overhead lights when she ducked her head in a nod.

"Yes," C'rise said.

"It may not be as much as you wanted, but he definitely did think about it. Let me try to sort it out in my head."

"Iceni, please take notes." Arc leaned back to listen.

"Of course," the AI spoke up, through the speakers attached to the holo-projectors.

"The first thing is that we were absolutely right," C'rise said.

"When you told him what Cadet Tremblay had found, Chief Jastrow immediately started to think about whether he should try to give you an excuse, and say that the Kestrel was damaged. But he pushed that thought out of his mind pretty quickly, because he knew that none of the records would back him up, and he didn't want to actually lie to you."

"Then, when you mentioned the idea of Radecki bringing in a special mech, I got a glimpse of it," C'rise said.

"I wish you had an AI right now," Cassie murmured.

"To record exactly what you found."

"I'll do my best without one," C'rise said.

"He did have to check the mech over—in fact, he did a full diagnostic, because allowing Radecki to take it up meant that the chief would be responsible if anything went wrong on non-standard equipment."

"What is it?" Arc asked.

"The good news is that it's a modified Kestrel, rather than something built for him from the ground up," C'rise said. Cassie nodded.

"I didn't think his father would have either the time, or enough pull, to get something that good."

"They're calling it a Kestrel K, or Karabela," C'rise continued.

"It's mostly a Kestrel A, set up for dog-fighting, with lasers instead of autocannons. But he's brought some kind of special missiles—I didn't recognize the abbreviation, it didn't translate right. MIRV? And the big thing is that they swapped all the armor. Instead of ablative tiles for atmospheric entry, they've got it all fitted out with RSiNC ceramic plates." Arc's mind was already spinning, but he let Cassie speak first, as he knew she would.

"That's not a bad move." Cassie leaned back in her chair.

"He doesn't need to worry about going through any kind of emergency entry during the duel, and Chel doesn't have any atmosphere. Heat's not going to be a problem for him, and by trading out the armor he shores up the Kestrel's vulnerability to autocannons and rail guns without really giving up any effectiveness against lasers or plasma accelerators."

"And the missile choice lines up with what we've observed from his sim performance," Arc pointed out.

"He's going to just fill the area with missiles." He turned to explain to C'rise.

"MIRV missiles spit up into multiple independently targeted warheads," he explained.

"If he's packing the short range variant, three per missile. So he launches a first volley of eight missiles, it splits into twenty four, and the same thing another three times over. He's going to send nearly a hundred missiles at me from above and then wait to see if anything's still moving. If I survive, he'll snipe with those heavy lasers. And the better armor gives him a good chance to outlast anything I happen to be able to throw back at him."

"How much does it really change?" Vee asked.

"We always knew the missiles were going to be a problem. And it wasn't like you were going to haul a railgun around up there with a Tyro, anyway."

"It means we have to get really clever, I think," Arc said.

"Or there's no way I'm going to survive all those volleys." He considered for a moment.

"I'm going to talk this over with Natalie. There's no reason the Lady Ren can't hold something in her other hand, right?" he asked, turning to face Cassie.

"The plasma blades are carried on the chassis anyway," Cassie confirmed.

"Alright." Arc nodded.

"You did good, C'rise. Thank you. Now it's time to get Natalie down here and see what we can do to wreck this guy's day."