The Elysium Commission (29 page)

Barely after I'd eaten breakfast on Miercen, one-handed, Shannon appeared in my personal rehab room, carrying a black case and pushing a high, wheeled table. He set down the case and moved the table until it was a meter from the one medunit to which I remained attached. Then he walked out and returned with two chairs. He placed them next to the one already in the room.

“Are you ‘Captain' or ‘Colonel' today, ser?” I asked.

“From you, Donne, it doesn't matter. You can make any title sound like an expletive.” He did grin. In fact, he was beaming. He opened the case and put a small device on the table. “You're not mobile yet, and we need to begin briefing you and the pilot. After the morning briefing, the doctor should be able to disengage the medunit, and you'll be able to get dressed. We'll have a pleasant lunch, and then everyone will go into separate afternoon simulation sessions.”

“You're briefing us?”

He shook his head. “I'm just the ops designer. The intelligence head will do the briefing.”

“Who's that?”

He gestured.

A tall woman in RT royal green entered the room. I'd met her before. Fiorina Carle.
That
definitely explained why it had taken so long for RT to send a flitter after me and why RT had made no fuss about my “crash” on the corpentity's lands.

“Captain Donne.” Her words were clipped.

I should have felt that my former military rank was a good sign. I didn't. Especially not in my present situation. “Are you a former Assembly intel type?”

“Colonel, third sector, retired.” She smiled politely.

“And RT is working with the sisters?”

“Not all of RT. Just those who count. We call it enlightened self-interest.”

“Isn't all intelligent self-interest enlightened?”

“Donne…we need to get on with the briefing,” interjected Shannon.

“I thought there was going to be a pilot here.”

“Oh…there is.” Shannon's words were dry.

“When am I going to meet this mysterious pilot?”

“In a moment.” He grinned again. “I'm going to enjoy this.”

“Don't tell me that our pilot is Officer Javerr.” That would have been hard to accept.

“He's qualified. He's a one-term space service pilot, but he's far from the best. You know that he's not acceptable for other reasons. Besides, we have one far better qualified. Far better.”

From Shannon's grin, I should have guessed. I should have. I didn't.

I couldn't say anything when Siendra walked into the room. She wore the same unmarked dark gray shipsuit she had worn on Senen evening when she'd vidlinked. I thought I saw the faintest hint of an embarrassed smile on her lips and face, but it vanished so quickly I wasn't sure. Again, I could have been wrong. “Colonel Carle, Colonel Shannon, Captain Donne.” Her voice was pleasant but professional.

Shannon motioned to the empty chairs. Siendra took the one closest to me.

Colonel Carle had remained standing. A quick link flashed somewhere, then the chamber closed in on us. The walls remained in place, but a top-level security screen dropped around the space, and the door locked.

Carle began to speak. That allowed me to swallow and regain a bit of composure. “Major Albryt has extensive experience in high-speed space and atmospheric insertion maneuvers. She was rated as the top ship-handler in third sector the year before she completed her Assembly obligation.” Fiorina Carle turned to Siendra. “Captain Donne was awarded the Assembly Star of Honor for neutralizing an entire planetary defense system as well as rescuing another SpecOps officer. He managed most of the recovery with one arm while paralyzed from the waist down.”

From Siendra's reaction, muted and concealed as it was, I could tell that was news to her. It should have been. The service had never given out the details—for obvious reasons—and I'd never told anyone. I'd been stupid and fortunate enough to survive and redeem most of my mistakes, but I hadn't cared to have Krij or anyone else pointing out all the stupidity I'd exhibited dealing with the Frankans on Pournelle II.

“Now that everyone is here, I'd like Colonel Carle to begin,” Shannon announced.

“The mission objective is simple,” Carle stated. “To render the technology and equipment being assembled at Time's End permanently inoperable and incapable of being repaired or understood by anyone. The conditions under which the mission must be undertaken are what make its accomplishment difficult. First, there is already an Assembly politico-socio-monitoring team in place on Devanta with observers and snoops widely placed. While we think we have located most of them, we know we do not have all of them under observation. Second, an Assembly fleet is on standby should the monitoring team determine the political situation on Devanta requires prereformulation assistance.”

None of us could have missed the cynical dryness of Carle's words there.

“Third, a Frankan combat-engineering team is maneuvering what appears to be a Hawking field generator in-system. Fourth, the Assembly space service knows this and is permitting it to occur. This is most probably being allowed so that the space service will have a documented and definitive reason to launch a full-scale attack on Pretoria. Successful deployment of the Hawking field will also neutralize Devanta's influence in the Assembly of Worlds for the foreseeable future.”

“The space service views the situation as without a downside to them, regardless of outcomes,” suggested Siendra.

“Exactly,” replied Carle. “If the Civitas Sorores manage the situation so that nothing overt occurs, the Frankans lose a combat-engineering team and some costly equipment, and it costs the space service nothing. In addition, Eloi Enterprises will be neutralized, and the Assembly will quietly claim that the sisters acted in response to Assembly pressure. This will reduce perceived Devantan influence. If Legaar Eloi and Judeon Maraniss succeed in destroying Thurene and escaping, blame will fall on the sisters and the Frankans, and the space service and the Assembly will have the provocation to do what they've wanted to do for decades.”

I had a question. I hesitated, but finally asked, “Don't the Frankans see that? Why would they risk an interstellar war just to meddle in one system?”

Carle's smile was cold. “We believe that they are nowhere as weak as the Assembly space service believes. Certain analysts have noted that a small but significant fraction of total Frankan energy usage for more than a decade cannot be accounted for. In addition, there are certain energy fields in the third sector. We believe, but cannot prove, that Devanta is a trap. It is likely that the Assembly sector fleet will be destroyed, as will the fleets being sent against Pretoria.”

The more I heard, the less I liked what I'd learned. “And the Assembly cannot deduce what you have?”

“They do not wish to speculate upon what they cannot prove. That is always the weakness of those who control vast bureaucracies. Now…” Carle's voice turned brisk and cool. “The mission is simple in concept. Major Albryt will take a modified corvette, accelerate to the highest in-system velocity possible, and release an equally modified armed combat flitter. That will be piloted by Captain Donne and will be targeted at the Frankan Hawking Assembly. Captain Donne will have two special torps. Either should be sufficient to deal with the Frankans at the comparatively high velocity involved. Major Albryt will recover Captain Donne and proceed to Devanta. There she will accomplish a high-speed insertion that will release Captain Donne on target for Time's End.”

I hadn't volunteered for a suicide mission. My face must have showed that because the intelligence colonel smiled. “We're not making you a suicide missile, Captain. One of the features of the technology being employed by the Elois is that there is a temporal component associated with transport, especially transport attempted within a planetary gravity well—or a relational relativity field, if you prefer. We also possess this obsolete technology, and it will be used to project your flitter temporally behind the Frankan defenses. You will be required to hit two checkpoints, Captain. One to get behind the defenses, and one to escape the ensuing catastrophic explosion. In a capsule, that is Phase I of the operation.”

Obsolete technology? Was Phase II, presumably Time's End, even worse?

“You're suggesting that this…Elysium technology isn't particularly new,” I said.

“It's not.” Carle's voice was somewhere between clipped and resigned. “The technology that Classic Research has rediscovered dates back half a millennium. It was abandoned for several reasons. It's highly unstable. The backlash when it's confronted with powerful shields will wipe out the entire operating system. The damage to the space-time fabric in the surrounding area will often create swirling singularities of an unpredictable nature for centuries, if not longer. Residual singularities in sections of the former Naquyl Confederacy still claim ships that ignore the warnings.”

I was supposed to transit that madness of space, knowing its less-than-jocular procreations?

“The Assembly's IS high command knew Eloi and Maraniss were planning this, then?” asked Siendra. “It's a power play to remove the Civitas Sorores?”

“We're not privy to their motivations,” replied Carle, “but that is the most likely probability. Devanta has the greatest degree of local autonomy of any system in the Gallian sector.”

“Particularly economic independence and autonomy?” I asked.

Carle nodded. “We need to get on with what you need to know about the mission.” She cleared her throat. “Even without a link to the Hawking field, the Elois have enough power at Time's End to use the projection field to level all of Thurene. Phase II is more complicated, unfortunately, and will require a greater use of Captain Donne's and Major Albryt's considerable skills.” She nodded to Shannon.

“Phase II requires a targeted attack on the master controls to the technology. These are located at Time's End,” Shannon began. “In the Classic Research laboratory there…”

The first holo projection was a satellite view of Time's End. Colonel Carle zoomed it in, not on the Classic Research laboratory, but on the low hill less than half a klick to the northwest of the lab.

“There is a class-one fusactor under this hill. Rather, the hill was built around it. Classic Research obtained the permits for an old-style class-three fusactor. That was actually built and is currently operating. What was not known at the time was that Legaar Eloi had already built a shielded class-one facility beneath the class-three facility. It was not brought up to operating levels until the legally permitted power facility was already operating. The existence of the class-one facility was not determined definitively until Captain Donne accomplished an instrumental sweep of the area several weeks ago.” Carle nodded at me.

I'd never had instruments for that. How had the sisters…? “You added detectors to Lemel Jerome's detector, didn't you?”

“That was Colonel Shannon's idea.”

“So you caused his death.”

“No. We didn't change anything,” Carle replied. “We just added a few items. Legaar Eloi would have traced the tap back to Jerome even if we had done nothing. Like you, Captain, we didn't anticipate Legaar's immediate and violent reaction. He's generally used credits to obtain his ends, indirectly and without tracks.”

“There were tracks in Lemmy's death?” I raised my eyebrows.

No one said anything.

“Can you explain why I got a disrupted signal on Domen, but Lemmy died on Senen?”

“Why don't you just let the colonel brief us, Donne?” suggested Shannon. “You might get your answers more quickly, and the rest of us could learn something as well.”

Shannon was probably right, but I was feeling even more manipulated than ever, and I hadn't thought that possible. I should have. I nodded.

“The time differential is a result of the temporal backlash channeling associated with the technology.” Carle waited until the second holo projection appeared. It was a schematic floor plan. “This is the floor plan for the operations area of the Classic Research laboratory. The ramp from the maglev enters here…” After that came a whole series of interior views of the facility, ending with one that displayed the operations center main controls. “These are controls you'll have to operate, Captain Donne. We've built a complete duplicate of this board.” Carle looked at me. “Some functions we know; others are probabilities; still others are unknown.”

I didn't doubt her. What I didn't understand was how they could have information in such detail and yet not know how some controls and systems worked or even need me to charge in and muck with things.

“You might wonder how we can provide these views and know so little,” the intelligence colonel went on. “That has to do with the projection technology itself. It creates a two-way, space-time conduit—if you happen to have the equipment to monitor it. We've been careful not to alert the Elois to our possession of this mirror-equipment. We've only used it when they've powered up. Their power usage and field projections overshadow our passive observation. Also, we can't draw the kind of power they have. Even the Civitas Sorores can't divert the power output of two full fusactors on demand. You will notice that the controls are far more manual than at most installations. That is not deliberate lower tech, but a necessity. Wireless and broadcast signals or inflected power controls have a tendency to create unplanned and unpredictable variations in the projection field. Virtually every control device in these boards is insulated and served by insulated conduits and leads. It is designed to be impervious to implant controls or other energy fields.”

At least that explained one reason why they needed a physical presence in the operations center.