Retreat And Adapt (A Galaxy Unknown) (14 page)

The assassin had already checked the complete background of each of the three targets using the planet's 'Open and Transparent Society' database. The janitor had been suspended from school for two weeks when he was seven for making a threatening gesture towards a fellow male student— he'd pointed an index finger at another small boy. The woman had slapped another six-year-old who ratted her out while she was trying to shoplift a candy bar from a sweets shop. The busboy had kicked another child in pre-school when the other youth took one of the toy farm animals he was playing with. These violent and antisocial episodes were responsible for the three never having been able to get a decent job, but in the mind of the assassin, the three targets were milquetoast. The payment of a hundred-credit fee to the government's Citizen History Department had bought him the same hundred-page biography that was available to all prospective employers. Another five credits bought him a file history from Boogel.com of every product each target had ever purchased or looked up on their computer. A quick scan revealed no purchase of dangerous self-defense weaponry, such as pocketknives, or attempts to acquire knowledge regarding the manufacture of explosives from ordinary household or gardening chemicals. Having the full details of a target's life was always a justifiable expense in his business.

In three days' time the three targets would be dead. One would die horribly in an elevator accident, another in an apartment fire, and the third by a drug prescription error for a common sleeping aid. Then the assassin would be off to his vacation lodge for a month of rest and relaxation.

* * *

Nicole Ravenau was so ill that she never came out of her suite after boarding the passenger liner. Her body needed food to fuel the changes being made, so she forced herself to eat the six meals delivered to her cabin each day. Immediately after eating, she generally took a pill so she could sleep until it was mealtime again.

The news had confirmed the
accidental
demise of the three people whose deaths Ravenau had arranged, as well as the explosion at her former lab. Her name was on the list of people who had died that day. She had used yet another identity when buying the tickets for the cruise, so no one should make a connection even if she showed her face outside her suite. When she did reveal herself next, she would look radically different than when she had boarded. She already had another cover identity that matched her expected appearance.

The passenger liner would be underway for months, stopping briefly at six planets before reaching Ravenau's destination: Pelomious. As Mikel Arneu, she had once purchased a ranch there under a cover name and constructed a deluxe underground bunker using funds siphoned from the Age Prolongation project. The sparsely populated agrarian planet would be her home until it was time for her to surface again and carry out the rest of her plan.

* * *

"This is
very
disturbing news," Arthur Strauss, the chairman of the Raider Lower Council said to longtime councilmember Bentley Blosworth at a regularly scheduled meeting. "You're saying that after we gave a complete laboratory analysis of Dakinium to the Uthlaro,
free of charge
, in order for them to duplicate and manufacture the material for us, they're
selling
the formula to everyone who can meet their price?"

"Not a formula to produce Dakinium," Blosworth said calmly, "just the laboratory analysis we sent. It appears that they've been unable to reproduce Dakinium and are hoping that one of the purchasers of the analysis will develop a formula and then share it with the Uthlaro, at which time the Uthlaro will return the fifty trillion credits paid for the analysis."

"It doesn't matter that it's not the actual formula," Strauss snapped. "We gave them that analysis and now they're profiting from it. We could have sold the laboratory report ourselves. We didn't need them for that. And you've said that they've also offered to sell the formula, once it's developed, to any interested parties for a hundred trillion credits."

"Yes, that's perhaps the most disturbing part. It's one thing to seek help with the development but another to sell something that results from what we sent as part of our deal."

"Our deal required them to manufacture Dakinium exclusively for us."

"And they say they will honor those terms. But they also say that the agreement doesn't specifically preclude them from selling the
formula
to others so Dakinium can be manufactured by other parties who are not operating under the manufacturing exclusivity agreement. And we can't exactly take them to court to prove our case."

"Damn all Uthlaro businessmen. You can't trust any of them." Strauss leaned back in his chair and appeared to be studying the ceiling as he thought. Suddenly he sat back up and said to no one in particular, "What do you think Admiral Carver would do if she learned that the Uthlaro were selling an analysis of Dakinium to all interested parties?"

"She'd probably do what she should have done initially—" Councilmember Erika Overgaard said, "return to Uthlarigasset and blast them back to their stone age, as she almost did to the Milori home world."

"Yes," Strauss said. "What a delightful thought."

"But what about the warships the Uthlaro are building for us?" Councilmember Frederick Kelleher asked. "We're depending on getting those ships by the promised delivery dates. We need them to continue our efforts against the Aguspod."

"Those ships are being built a thousand light-years from Uthlarigasset, just outside GA Space in unclaimed territory. Space Command won't venture there and I doubt they have any idea what's going on out there anyway. The foundry and shipyard will continue production regardless of what happens on Uthlarigasset. Besides, once their home world is destroyed, the shipyard will be all the workers have, and they'll blame the destruction on Carver. The question now is: how do we alert Carver in a way that she'll believe the information is credible and take action? If Ravenau were still alive, I'd have her send a vidMail. Carver would have believed her in an instant."

* * *

The subject in the message that appeared in Jenetta's message queue was simply marked 'Vertap.' The sender name and date was scrambled. Jenetta walked to her safe and removed the box of data rings she kept there. Pushing the rings around with her finger until she found the silver one with the delicate filigree decoration, she lifted it out, then returned the box to the safe and closed the door. Once back at her desk, she touched the ring to the small, flexible spindle on the keyboard, then leaned in towards the monitor to provide the required retinal scan. When the sender name and date unscrambled, she took her seat and pressed the play button.

"Greetings, Admiral Carver," the image of the Hudeerac Minister of Intelligence said. "It was so nice to hear from you again. Thank you for inquiring after my king's health. I'm delighted to inform you that all is well here. In fact, it's better than it has been in decades. The leadership King Jamolendre has displayed since the Milori first attacked the GA has fostered greater support from the nobility than any king has enjoyed in thousands of annuals. The nobles who tried to usurp his throne by pushing us into war during that terrible time are in such disgrace that they fear to show their faces in the capital. We've worked to restore the structure of government on the planets the Milori had occupied, and the kingdom is once again united. We owe you much and are happy to share any intelligence data we have for our mutual benefit.

"With regard to your questions, I can offer only a small amount. We know the Ruwalchu adopted an extremely aggressive posture approximately an annual ago. They have been building new warships and expanding their military at an unprecedented rate, but we haven't been able to ascertain their future intentions.

"It's confusing because they've always been a benign neighbor who, by our evaluation, only wished to live in peace. Their technology was advanced enough to ensure that Maxxiloth, aware that he probably couldn't win a war, didn't attack them as he revived his grandfather's delusions of manifest destiny. At best, a conflict might have ended in a draw, so Maxxiloth was wise enough to wait until he was stronger before deciding if he should attack them.

"To learn recently that the Ruwalchu seem to be on a war footing has been distressing. There's speculation that they may fear a neighbor, but we know little of neighbors who might border their territory on the side away from the one we share with them.

"The Uthlaro are quite another story. After you defeated them and annexed their territory, they became much more secretive within their top ranks. Our contacts have not been able to penetrate the new inner circles. The story we hear is that they so fear your promises of punishment for sedition that information regarding their future plans is limited to a select few.

"We do know that the planetary government has recruited tens of thousands of workers and sent them somewhere, but we haven't been able to find out where. The talk is that they've been sent off-world to a place where they could build a base that would allow them to prepare for a future war with the GA. We assume that means it's outside GA space since more than half the space bordering your Region Three is still unclaimed. They can work there, free from worry that you'll happen across them. Even if you do, you have no authority to stop them or even question them. They might even establish a new nation and claim the territory. That would give them very real sovereign rights under Galactic Alliance law. You would not be able to enter their territory without permission unless you first declared war, and you would have no justification for making such a declaration. I'm tempted to state that it's an interesting dilemma, but I don't wish to minimize the danger in any way. It's a situation you must both be aware of and prepared for.

"Finally, there's speculation that the Ruwalchu and Uthlaro are working together. We know that the Uthlaro Intelligence Service has been in close contact with the Ruwalchu Intelligence Service since you defeated the Uthlaro, but we haven't been able to examine any of their communications. Some of my people even believe that Ruwalchu is making preparations to go to war with the Galactic Alliance.

"I would welcome any updated information you secure, and I wish you well."

"Minister Vertap Aloyandro, end of message."

Jenetta leaned back in her chair to stare at the ceiling while she thought. The SC databases contained no images of Ruwalchu warships and just a basic description of the nation's primary population. Until Transverse Wave Travel was discovered, speeds beyond Light-450 were considered impossible with current technology, and no one ever really expected the GA to have contact with such a distant neighbor. But now that the GA bordered directly on Ruwalchu space, the Confederacy might be fearful that the GA was casting jealous eyes on their territory. Since the GA knew nothing about the Ruwalchu, it made sense that the Ruwalchu knew nothing about the GA. If their only information about the GA was coming from the Uthlaro, that information was sure to be tainted. Jenetta wished she'd originally asked Vertap for images of Ruwalchu warship designs.

"Well, that's easily correctable," she said aloud, and she leaned forward to prepare a new message. "Too bad it takes a minimum of six weeks to hear back."

~ June 12
^th
, 2286 ~

"I've got news," Admiral Poole said to Jenetta via the vid call to her office in the palace. "Little of it good."

Jenetta sighed lightly. She'd had too much bad news lately. She could use some good news for a change, but it was in short supply these days. "I've never known bad news to improve with age. Tell me, Augustus."

"We've found the
Salado
. Its condition is similar to the
Yenisei
. All aboard were killed in the conflict. Worse, we lost crewmembers aboard the
Gambia
and
Vistula
when the unknown enemy showed up."

"What? How could that happen? We issued orders
not
to engage."

"The captain of the
Yukon
reports that their search group found the
Salado
. SC Engineers and Marines from the
Gambia
went aboard to search the interior for survivors and to download the ship's logs while engineers from the
Vistula
were investigating the exterior so they could produce a report about the hull damage. The
Yukon
then took up a circling picket defense three billion kilometers out.

"When the enemy showed up, there wasn't time for the
Gambia
and
Vistula
to get their people back aboard, so their captains ordered them to occupy undamaged life pods in the
Salado
, use the stasis beds, and maintain radio silence.

"Even without recovering their people, the
Gambia
and
Vistula
didn't have enough time to build their envelopes, so the
Yukon
tried to distract the enemy ships to give the others a little more time. It had to keep an adequate distance from the enemy ships and never dropped its envelope to fire torpedoes, but it came to a halt and fired its laser arrays. The ruse worked and delayed the enemy's approach enough that the other two ships were able to complete their envelopes before the enemy ships got within range to fire their missiles. So we've only lost the people who ducked into the
Salado
, or were there already. If they all made it to intact life pods, and if the enemy didn't return to further destroy the ship, they may be able to recover them. We don't know. The captain of the
Yukon
reports that they would have stayed and fought if Standing Orders hadn't called for them to evacuate the area immediately."

"I'm glad they didn't try to be heroic and sacrifice their ships and crews needlessly."

"I get the impression they were incredibly upset about leaving comrades to die, and that's completely understandable. I sent a message applauding their adherence to orders and tried to make them feel better by congratulating them for taking exactly the right action to save their ships and the rest of their crews. It probably won't make them feel any better right now, but eventually they'll understand it was absolutely necessary."