This Day All Gods Die (4 page)

When he neared the front of Warden's desk, he stopped; glanced around him for a chair. But he didn't presume to sit until Warden made a gesture of permission with one blunt hand.

"Don't apologize, Hashi," Warden said harshly. "Explain. Tell me why we've been twiddling our thumbs here for the past ten minutes as if we didn't have anything better to do."

Warden Dios, Hashi noted, was not in a good mood.

With an effort he stifled his impulse for obfuscation.

"Lane Harbinger has been studying the kaze's remains." His glasses had slid too far down his nose to muffle him from Warden's gaze, but he didn't push them up. "I waited as long as I could—

until I received your summons. Then I took the time to obtain a preliminary report."

For the sake of his own dignity, he declined to comment on whether or not Lane's report had been worth hearing—

or

worth waiting for.

Warden studied Hashi as he spoke, then nodded once, brusquely. "All right. We're in a crisis—

the worst crisis any

of us has ever seen. But the fact that the rest of us have just wasted ten minutes probably doesn't increase the danger."

Hashi blinked owlishly. Did Warden consider Imposs/

Alt's attack "the worst crisis any of us has ever seen?" Impossible. Surely he could not be so entirely divorced from the world of the real. To call that attack anything less than an emergency was foolish: to call it anything more was madness.

"You think we're here to discuss Suka Bator," Warden rasped. "And some of you"-- he seemed to concentrate briefly on Hashi—

"are wondering why I took so long to summon you. Well, we are going to discuss Suka Bator. I want to know what happened. More than that, I want to know what it means.

"But an attack on the Council is only one side of our predicament. Before we go on, I'll tell you what else has happened. Then you'll understand why I didn't call for you right away."

What else has happened. Hashi smiled his relief, despite the grimness of Warden's tone. After some anxious moments, he felt suddenly sure that the UMCP director was about to justify the confidence Hashi had placed in him.

"Crudely put," Warden announced as if he were full of a bitterness he could neither contain nor release, "the situation is this. For all practical purposes, we are at war."

Chief Mandich stiffened. He took a step toward the director's desk, perhaps without being aware of it. His blunt features became as hard as Warden's.

Koina leaned forward, her lips parted slightly. Her eyes were dark with shock and dread; with a human being's essential genetic horror of the Amnion.

War? Hashi's heart skipped a beat, then started rattling in his chest like an electron barrage. At war? With some difficulty he refrained from asking, Is this why you accepted Milos Taverner as a control for our Joshua? Did you foresee it? Is it what you hoped to gain?

"Two hours ago," Warden continued, "I received a message from Min Donner by gap courier drone from Valdor Industrial. More precisely, the message is from VI Security, but she ordered them to send it. She reports that an Amnion 'de-fensive' has entered the Massif-5 system. A Behemoth-class Amnion warship.

"At that distance from forbidden space, I think we can dismiss the idea that she's there by mistake. According to VI Security, Punisher has engaged the defensive, but the fight isn't going well. Punisher is damaged, not at full capacity. The defensive's shields and sinks are holding. On top of that"—

he

paused darkly—

"she's armed with super-light proton cannon."

Mandich swore under his breath. Hashi would have done the same if he hadn't been armored against betraying his emotions. Warden's tone conveyed images of bloodshed and destruction. They constricted the air in his small office, making it hard to breathe. A super-light proton cannon was especially fearsome because it could wreak havoc through a planetary atmosphere. Matter cannon were useless for that: air protected the surface better than any particle sink. And lasers were too precise to unleash wholesale ruin. In addition, they tended to lose coherence across large distances. A super-light proton cannon, however—

Warden didn't stop.

"VI is scrambling support for Punisher," he went on.

"Unfortunately those ships aren't in range yet. For some reason the defensive isn't anywhere near the main shipping lanes

—

or the Station itself, for that matter. And our cruiser Vehemence is too far away to be involved in the action."

How entirely typical, Hashi thought. His attention was fixed on Warden; nailed there. Nevertheless his mind ran off on several oblique angles simultaneously. Vehemence's record was far from illustrious. No matter who commanded her, or how her crew was composed and trained, she seemed inherently luckless or incompetent. To all appearances Nathan Alt's months as her captain had put a curse on her.

"What are your orders, Director?" Chief Mandich put in abruptly. Tension strained his voice to a croak. "Director Donner isn't here. I have to—

"

He may have been as honest as an iron bar, but Hashi considered him inadequate to take Min Donner's place.

Koina had better sense than the Security Chief: she waited her turn.

Warden stopped the Chief with a rough gesture. The movement of his single eye was sharp as a slap.

"Since then," he pronounced trenchantly, "I've been making preliminary preparations for our defense. Our shipyards have gone to emergency work shifts. We need to get every ship we can into space. UMCPHQ is on alert. I've ordered Sledgehammer back. And I've sent out drones to recall Valor and Adventurous."

Sledgehammer was a full battlewagon, the biggest and most powerful warship the UMCP had ever built. Currently she was executing shakedown maneuvers out between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn; training her crew to handle a vessel that massive. Too near to return to Earth by crossing the gap: too far to arrive at space-normal speeds in less than days.

As for the other vessels Warden named, the destroyer Valor was on patrol around Terminus, the station in human space farthest from the Amnion. The obsolete cruiser Adventurous had been assigned to supervise exercises for the cadets of Aleph Green.

Other ships were available, of course. Hashi could think of half a dozen gunboats and pocket cruisers within Earth's control space. They were paltry, however, for a task the size of defending a planet.

UMCPHQ itself couldn't do that job. The Station had scarcely been designed to defend itself. It possessed shields and sinks; cannon of various kinds; but nothing that would be effective on such a scale. Any war which came close enough to Earth to threaten UMCPHQ was presumed to be already lost.

"But," Warden pursued, "I don't want to leave us spread too thin elsewhere—

as if we weren't already—

because I don't

know what the Amnion are going to do next. From a strategic point of view, VI isn't exactly a logical target for an act of war."

Indeed. Hashi followed his director's reasoning at the same time that he chased his own thoughts. Humankind's ability to give battle would hardly be diminished—

at least in the

short term—

by VI's complete destruction. In addition that Station was too well defended, as well as too difficult to approach, for a single assailant to be sure of success. Any attack on Valdor would probably be a waste of effort.

"I have to assume," Warden stated, "that subsequent threats might not be logical either. I mean strategically. Since the Amnion aren't prone to either waste or foolhardiness, I also assume that this incursion doesn't imply a full-scale assault on human space. It has some other objective.

"I can guess what that is, but I can't guess where it might go. So I can't predict where to concentrate our defenses."

Koina had been silent too long. Now her dread seemed to.

compel her to speak.

"Please tell us, Director," she murmured softly. "I think we need to know."

"I'm sure you do," Warden snorted. However, his sarcasm or disgust did not appear to be directed at her.

"You're all aware Min Donner is aboard Punisher," he answered between his teeth. "And you've probably guessed that I ordered her there to help protect Trumpet."

"No, wait," Koina protested. "I'm sorry, you've lost me.

All I know about Trumpet is what you and Director Lebwohl told the Council. Angus Thermopyle and Milos Taverner stole her—

"

"No, I'm sorry," Warden interrupted. For a moment he gave the impression that he'd been overtaken by weariness.

His personal defenses had flaws he couldn't afford. "It's all these damn secrets. I've been carrying them around too long."

With the fingers of one hand, he rubbed his forehead briefly.

"Sometimes I forget I haven't told you something critical.

"Angus Thermopyle didn't steal Trumpet. He's a cyborg.

We welded him after we reqqed him from Com-Mine Station.

He works for us. We sent him into forbidden space to carry out a covert attack on Thanatos Minor. And we sent Milos Taverner along to keep an eye on him. The story that they stole Trumpet was just cover. We didn't want to make the wrong people suspicious.

"If Igensard asks in front of the Council," Warden added, "you can tell him that."

"But I still don't—

" Koina bit her lip. "Never mind. I'll need the details later. For now the present is more important."

The director nodded like an act of brutality. "I sent Punisher to the Com-Mine belt," he resumed, "to wait for Trumpet to escape back into human space. Then she followed the gap scout to Massif-5.

"Why Trumpet went there I don't know.

"But if the Amnion chose to commit an act of war by entering that system—

and chose to do it now—

for reasons that

don't have anything to do with Trumpet, it's the biggest coincidence in history. I think we can be sure the defensive is after Trumpet."

Hashi felt the tension in the room. Chief Mandich radiated dismay; the anxiety of vast responsibilities. Koina struggled to manage the scale of her incomprehension. Warden had the air of a man who was determined to hold the center of a whirlwind. At the same time, however, the DA director rode an entirely private swirl of oblique inferences and intriguing possibilities. An act of war? Fascinating! Whose game was this?

Warden's? Nick Succorso's? The Amnion's?—

with or without

Captain Succorso's participation?

Uncertainties proliferated like ecstasy, weaving unknowns out of the quantum mechanics of the known. In his excitement Hashi dared to say, "It might be argued that we would do well to let this defensive succeed against Trumpet."

Holt Fasner would surely approve.

Koina drew a sharp breath. Chief Mandich swore softly.

At once Warden's gaze focused on Hashi. He could almost feel his electromagnetic aura frying under the intensity of the director's IR sight.

"Explain," Warden demanded.

Hashi shrugged; smiled. The risk he took pleased him: it might prod Warden to reveal more of his intentions. The director could stop him if he went too far.

He directed his words and his gamble at Warden, although they were superficially meant for Koina and Mandich.

"Director Hannish and Chief Mandich have perhaps not been informed that our Angus Thermopyle, Isaac ne Joshua, has escaped forbidden space with a remarkable combination of companions. In particular I refer to Morn Hyland, first Captain Thermopyle's victim, then Captain Succorso's.

"This is an unexpected development for several reasons.

On your direct orders, Isaac's datacore was explicitly written to preclude the possibility that he might save Ensign Hyland's life." Then Warden had switched that datacore for another; a new set of instructions. But this secret was Warden's to reveal or hide: Hashi had no intention of exposing it. He only used it to put pressure on the director. "She is—

or has been—

thought

dangerous to our purposes. Only a strange, unforeseeable sequence of events could have led to her presence aboard Trumpet:'

"What 'purposes'?" Koina asked quickly; intently.

Hashi ignored her to concentrate on Warden.

"In addition," he continued, "we have reason to suspect that she has been a prisoner of the Amnion, delivered to them by Captain Succorso to gain some end we can hardly imagine.

Thus it is doubly strange that she now accompanies our Captain Thermopyle. Did she escape? If so, how? Was she released? If so, why?"

The DA director was not entirely prepared to surrender his hypothesis that Morn might be a type of genetic kaze: ruin aimed at the UMCP. Angus had rescued Morn—

privately

Warden had admitted as much—

but that didn't erase other

possibilities.

Warden frowned as Hashi finished. For a long moment he kept his grip on Hashi's eyes: he may have been searching to find out how much Hashi knew—

or guessed. Then he nodded.

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Forgive me, Director," Koina put in insistently. She remained almost motionless in her seat, yet she gave the impression that she'd risen to her feet. A low tremor flawed her tone without softening her manner. "Director Lebwohl said 'purposes.' 'Our purposes.' In what sense is it conceivable that Ensign Hyland could be a threat to any purpose of ours?

"I heard Director Lebwohl tell the Council why we let Captain Succorso have her. I didn't like that, but this sounds a lot worse. She's one of our people. Why in God's name would a UMCP cyborg's datacore be 'explicitly written to preclude'

rescuing her? I would have said that violates our purposes more than anything she might say or do."

No doubt Min Donner would have approved Koina's objection. To the extent that he was capable of thinking clearly, Chief Mandich surely felt the same. Nevertheless Hashi was not swayed by it. Deliberately he pushed his glasses up on his nose. The smear of the unnecessary lenses aided his concentration.

Now more than ever he needed to understand Warden Dios.

Although Warden sat still, his frame seemed to intensify, almost to swell, as if he were taking on mass from the air and ambience of his office. He faced the PR director with an un-giving glare while she spoke. When he responded, his voice was gravid with bile and self-coercion. Each word was as exact as the flash of a laser.