The Unincorporated War (28 page)

Justin said nothing. Once more the buzz of the holo-tank was all that could be heard in the near-empty room. He brought his hands to his chin, forming a temple with his fingers. His eyes were focused and steely.

“Go on.”

“Justin, didn’t you ever find it strange that a man as competent and energetic as Mosh just up and left the corporate world without a fight?”

“No. Why should I?”

“Because had you known the Mosh that existed before this one, you would’ve.”

“Before this one? What on earth are you talking about?”

“Justin, Mosh has been psyche-audited.”

“What?! By who?! How do you know this, Eleanor?”

“I know this, Justin, because I was the one who did it.”

Justin was flabbergasted. He sat across from Eleanor looking anew at the suddenly unfamiliar woman in front of him. He’d taken Mosh’s explanation of his divorce from GCI at face value and now his wife was offering up another one entirely.

Eleanor explained to him that she’d at first been assigned to get close to Mosh. Her mission was to catch him in an unguarded moment and then scan his brain as prep for a “new” experimental audit. She was then to make sure his schedule was such that no one would miss him for the ten hours it would take to complete the procedure. She’d further explained to Justin how the “pre-altered” Mosh was ambitious and driven by a need to become the next Chairman of GCI. And how much he’d hated the man who eventually got the job. Mosh had felt that the Se nior V.P. of Special Operations was dangerous, unprincipled, and had to be stopped.

The audit techniques she eventually applied were designed to change only small aspects of his personality. The nanites were programmed to take advantage of his
preexisting dispositions. Some emotional responses were to be amplified while others were to be tapered.

Justin listened quietly and waited patiently for her to finish.

“So you brainwashed him.”

“Yes, Justin,” she answered, “I did. But I also saved his life. My assignment was to tweak his brain in such a way as to make his actions so disruptive and suspect that the board would have no choice but to either censure, fire, or liquidate him.”

“Why go through all the clandestine activity, Eleanor? Why didn’t the V.P. just get rid of him?”

“You don’t reach Mosh’s level without friends in high places, Justin. Everyone had to be convinced that he’d become a liability—even his closest friends. That way the V.P. of Special Ops would’ve been asked to eliminate him.”

“Nice trick.”

“The future Chairman was a very calculating man, as you well know.”

Justin nodded, thinking back to his brief encounter with the man who’d already set so much in motion. “Go on.”

“Something … or more specifically
someone
got in the way of my mission.”

She smiled forlornly and continued speaking, noted Justin, as if he were no longer in the room. “He was easily the most pompous and demanding man I’d ever met. Damned fool was so convinced that he was right about everything. But he could also be so sweet and generous and protective.”

“Eleanor,” said Justin, interrupting her brief reverie, “you fell for him, didn’t you?”

She nodded, wiping a tear from her eye.

“During the audit I upped the level of affection he felt for me, increased his disgust with corporate politics, and lessened his need for total control. It took time for the effects to kick in, but when they did it was child’s play to steer Mosh toward Colorado and away from New York.”

Once again Justin remained silent. Attempting to understand the implications of what he’d just been told.

“And how,” he asked, “did the Chairman react to your disloyalty?”

“Oh, I was fired and we never spoke again, but other than that why should he care? He got what he wanted … if not in the way he wanted.”

“And you got what you wanted.”

“No, Justin, I didn’t. I love him. I know I do. After all these years my heart still jumps when he walks into the room. What do you think I’d give to know he loved me the same?”

“Of course he loves you, Eleanor.”

“Yes, but I’ll forever be haunted by one question—”

“Would he have?” finished Justin.

“I’d give up a lot to know the answer to that.”

Justin nodded gravely.

“But I also know,” she continued, “that if I hadn’t acted the man I love would now be dead. As long as Mosh stood in the future Chairman’s path he would’ve been eliminated. If not by me, then by the person who came after. You met the guy, Justin, and know he would have destroyed half the system to get what he wanted.”

He still might get his wish,
Justin thought ruefully.

“And you’re absolutely sure you can’t get him back, Eleanor? I mean technology has to have advanced since the procedure was initiated.”

“It works both ways, Justin. I’ll assume that with Hektor at the controls it’s become even more insidious. The procedure, at the time I was involved, dealt with some of the most delicate regions of the brain and was done in such a way as to make any meddling fatal. On top of that, if Mosh were to even learn of his audit it could kill him or trigger behaviors that would be just as destructive. He would become suicidal, homicidal, or quite possibly both.”

“And you know this because—”

“I read the reports … saw holo-casts.”

“Eleanor, you’re talking about crimes against humanity.”

“What do you think GCI and the other corporations are, Justin? They exist solely to maintain and grow their power—at all costs. When I was briefed what the black bag unit of Special Operations had in mind for Mosh I knew I had to get out and take him with me. And, Damsah help me, that’s exactly what I did. If I’d have just taken him and run, he would’ve come right back, stayed, and tried to fight it out in the boardroom.”

“… and,” added Justin, “been killed for his efforts.”

“Exactly. The old Chairman would have blown up the whole board to get at him if it had come down to that. I’m convinced he’d even have taken out half the Beanstalk to achieve his goals.”

Justin shuddered as he remembered the devastation of New York and the role the old Chairman had played in its destruction. Reluctantly Justin had been forced to agree that Eleanor—albeit a new, more dangerous and calculating Eleanor—had a point. He manipulated the holo-tank so that once again the smiling picture of himself and Neela filled the large, central screen. He stared at it forlornly. His breathing was heavy and labored.

“Alright,” he asked sullenly, “how can we know for sure?”

“It will happen slowly if it happens at all. We have spies who can report on her behavior. If she’s been audited she’ll at first behave in a manner consistent with the Neela we all know. But over the next few weeks and months if her actions begin to aid the Confederation, well …”

Justin nodded affirmatively.

“If, as I suspect, she’s been audited, she’ll become a full-fledged and public supporter of the Confederation.”

“At which point,” he said, staring at the picture, “you say it’s hopeless.”

Eleanor smiled sadly. “Let’s plan your rescue, Justin. It’ll still take weeks to organize and put the resources into play. By then if Neela shows no change in behavior we can go ahead.”

“And if she does?”

Eleanor left the rest unsaid. In all likelihood, realized Justin, a hopeless path was already being trod.

Bridge of the TFS Vishnu

A
dmiral Abhay Gupta was pacing the bridge of his personally named flagship, the
Vishnu.
He wasn’t angry or even agitated. Pacing was just his way of thinking through problems. And his biggest one at the moment was getting his officers to understand how much they still needed to learn. In the more than five months that had elapsed since the disastrous Battle of the Cerian Rocks, the Terran Confederation had done amazing things. They’d built a new fleet of sixty modern warships and they’d fully crewed those ships with volunteers eager to avenge the loss the Belters had inflicted on core world pride. The Terran Confederation had elected Hektor Sambianco as President, a proud minority Shareholder like himself. Plus Abhay sensed that the President knew how important it was to win this war for the future of a united humanity. But Hektor Sambianco was only President-elect and the old administration was pressuring Abhay to launch his fleet and attack the Belters now. They’d wanted a victory to ensure their legacy and not appear as total failures in the eyes of the people.

But Abhay Gupta knew this fleet wasn’t ready for any offensive action. The officers were mostly executives from the major corporations who’d joined up thinking a stint in the war would pad their résumés. There was a contingent of trained mercenary officers assigned to the fleet, but they were too few to be properly dispersed. This resulted in a plethora of new warships without any warriors aboard. It also didn’t help that most of the experienced mercenaries were currently biding their time in Alliance prisons thanks to the stupidity of Admiral Tully. Abhay would have been among their ranks but for a deep-seated animus between himself and the now-incarcerated Tully, who’d left Abhay on Earth as the fleet advisor to the President. Now there was only one admiral left with real fleet command experience and Gupta was it. Even so, he almost didn’t get the command of the new Martian fleet. He’d had to fight it out with the CEO of CourtIncorp, who’d only lost because of so obvious a lack of qualifications that the celistocracy in charge of commissions had to admit there was a line of ineptitude that even they weren’t willing to cross.

But the executive officers were more of a problem than they were worth. Each had been successful in the corporate world and had assumed that would
translate over. They did have skills and many had training that would make them useful … one day, but they still had to learn how to be military. Gupta also knew full well that his sailors were in almost as bad a shape. They’d been “volunteered” by their corporations, as almost none had majority. And even though they tended to have a fair amount of technical skills they were still too new to life in space. Gupta paced. He needed more time to turn his “crap” into crews.

But as far as the officers and even many of the sailors were concerned they had more and better-equipped cruisers then the forty-odd vessels of the Alliance. It took all of Gupta’s time and some quiet help from the President-elect to keep stalling the “great new offensive” that would win the war in one fell swoop. Given another two months he knew he’d have over eighty ships and his crews would then be well trained enough to win against the irascible Alliance fleet. He knew it wouldn’t be the cakewalk his young officers thought it would, in fact it would probably be a bloody mess, but with enough ships, training, and equipment he believed it could be won. Just engage and slog, nothing fancy. Some more time and he could break the Alliance fleet and win this war.

“Sir!” screamed the comm officer, interrupting Gupta’s ruminations. “Contact with unidentified ships! Damsah, there seem to be dozens!”

Time had just run out.

On the bridge of the
War Prize
Admiral J. D. Black reviewed the holographic battlefield. The theater was relatively small and the plan simple. Far to the rear of the possible engagement area were the space stations of Mars with enough orbital batteries and armed platforms to make approaching that quadrant suicide. To the very fore of the engagement area, about a fifty-minute boost from Mars, was a well-salted minefield. There were enough atomics, noted J.D., to effectively cover all the approaches to the staging area of the Martian fleet, made up of three squadrons of about twenty ships each. One squadron, she could see, was in orbit around the far side of the planet practicing defensive maneuvers. J.D. admired the gumption of the Fleet Admiral. He was using his time well.

Smack-dab in the middle of the theater, and within shooting distance of the minefield, was an enormous supply and fitting chain that involved platforms and supply ships for the second, now-inactive squadron of twenty. However, for J.D. it was the shipyard that held far more interest than the twenty Confederation cruisers currently being fussed over. Although it was only a medium-sized facility compared to those in orbit around Earth and Luna, it was by far the largest shipyard near the asteroid belt.

The holo showed an enormous amount of supplies and raw materials in a vast field of carefully arranged and categorized asteroids. Because the field was so im mense it had to be positioned
outside
the protection of the minefield.

Under any other circumstance, the setup J.D. was now viewing would’ve been of great strategic advantage to a war time fleet. Ships coming in or out could be retrofitted on the fly—especially given the proximity to so large a supply chain. J.D., however, was now determined to turn the Terran Confederation’s strategic advantage into a tactical advantage of her own. Her only problem was with the third portion of the fleet patrolling the outer perimeter of the minefield. Because, as they were in defensive maneuver training they’d have their guns at the ready.

But she was ready too. Though she felt she could have used a little more time to turn her crews into combat-ready warriors, she did have the advantage of experience. Not so much hers as her crews’. Her entire fleet was made up of people for whom the rigors of space, as well as life on ships, were as natural as breathing. But now that J.D. had gotten a good look at the facility and the rapidity with which it was turning out all manner of war craft she thanked God for unanswered prayers—to have waited any longer would have been dangerous.