It took a lot more than an hour to get the satellite network fully online—not least because, as anticipated, X had left them several surprises in the code. Shvets responded to the viruses like an etymologist studying a fascinating new bug.

  Kelly was just glad the operative was skilled enough to make sure none of them made it into Rhapsody in Purple’s systems—and to finally have the network back. Her ship’s sensors were amazing, but nothing could compare to having twelve different angles on the target.

  Combining those thirteen sets of data gave them the answer they were looking for while they were still a full day out from Coupe-8.

  “I’ll want to get closer to confirm,” Kelly said quietly as she looked over the holographic presentation. “But that sure looks like somebody’s idea of being clever.”

  “It took thirteen angles and a full rotation of the moon for us to nail it down even this much,” Shvets reminded the others. “I’d say that is somebody being clever.”

  The port, such as it was, was concealed in a large natural rift that cut through a mountainous region of the cold world. A barely liquid saltwater river wound its way down the chasm, but it was clear that the river was taking advantage of the low ground. It had been created by tectonic movements, not erosion from the water now traveling down it.

  While the size of the rift meant that landing in it would be reasonably straightforward, its depth meant that everything inside it was invisible from orbit most of the time. The structures were decently camouflaged as well.

  “Hard to get away from the dome shape if you’re trying to efficiently preserve an artificial atmosphere,” Mike observed. “The landing pads are pretty standard—you can buy that as a single unit that includes the concrete and the robot to mix and install it.

  “Robot’s electronics are designed to be repurposed into part of the traffic-control system. It’s an efficient little concept, if on the pricey side.”

  “Once you’re talking about landing concrete on another planet, nothing is cheap,” Kelly said. “Even Mages can’t fix that.”

  She’d started on a merchant freighter and was intimately familiar with the economics that underpinned her husband’s part of that job: it cost basically the same to lift something out of a gravity well as it did to transport it half a dozen light-years.

  Mike Kelzin had flown the heavy-lift shuttles that did that for Blue Jay, the ship they’d met on. Rhapsody even had one of those shuttles to help with her occasional fast-freighter disguise, but most of Kelzin’s flying these days was done in assault shuttles.

  “If they’re running traffic-control radar and power generators, how are they avoiding attention?” she finally asked the others. “I know the Preserve Rangers are a joke, but the Mercedes Defense Force most definitely isn’t.”

  “I think… Yeah, look here,” Shvets told her. “Sides of the canyon have intermittent deposits of heavy metals and radioactives. If they’re using old-fashioned container fission plants, they could be pulling the water from the river and uranium from the planet—and the uranium is native enough that it wouldn’t draw attention.”

  “And the bottom of the canyon has higher atmospheric pressure than most of the planet, which makes it easier for breathers to operate,” Kelly concluded. “Okay, it’s not just someone’s idea of clever. They’ve done a good job hiding themselves.

  “No wonder they were only a theory to our people.”

  She traced something on the rim of the canyon, a shape that looked natural but…

  “How detailed can we get with the surveillance sats?” she asked.

  “Not much more than we’ve got,” Shvets admitted. “Remember that the closest of them is two full light-minutes away. We’re only going to get more detail as we move in closer—and we’ll need to position ourselves carefully.”

  “Which will be obvious,” Kelly agreed. “But I don’t think we have a choice.”

  She looked over at Xi Wu, still looking tired from the last jump.

  “How long until you can make us invisible, Xi?”

  “Could do it right now, but I don’t know how long we can keep it going.”

  Kelly studied the rock outcropping for a few more seconds.

  “We’ll need to calibrate things carefully between tech and magic,” she noted. “But I want us under our cloak of shadows now and staying under until we’ve taken a good long look down that chasm.

  “Because that, my friends”—she indicated the rock outcropping—“is a Republic Interstellar Navy twenty-four-cell surface-to-space vertical-launch system. And if they have one antispace defense system, they have at least two.

  “And that means we aren’t shooting our way in.”

  35

  “We are delighted to see anyone from the Royal Martian Navy here, Mage-Captain,” the woman on Roslyn’s screen declared.

  Governor Victoria Zinat Schuchard was a tall and lanky woman with skin the color of an aged oak. Her black hair expanded out from her head in a halo supported by clearly visible gold webbing and pins.

  The Governor of the Erewhonwen System looked exhausted.

  “No one is ever delighted to see the Navy unless something has gone very wrong,” Roslyn observed. “Voice of the Forgotten is on a patrol sweep looking for trouble, but if there’s anything you need, I will make certain that help is sent if we can’t handle the matter ourselves.”

  While her plans called for spending twenty-four hours in the system, she hadn’t planned on meeting anyone in person or even coming close to the planet. The look of the Governor was making her consider changing her plans. On the other hand, the entire conversation had a two-minute lag, as Erewhonwen didn’t have a military Link and Voice of the Forgotten didn’t have a civilian one.

  “If you’re looking for trouble, I can give you a list,” Schuchard said dourly after the two minutes passed. “I was hoping to ask you to patrol our surrounding jump points. We’ve been having some recurring piracy the last month or so—my Ministry of Defense was putting in a formal request for a destroyer sweep to send by the Link, but since you’re here…”

  Roslyn nodded and sighed.

  “I’m not sure, Governor, if it is good news or bad news then that Voice just completed a six-jump sweep of your immediate surroundings as part of our planned patrol,” she told the older woman. “We saw nothing out of the ordinary in the most common jump zones around Erewhonwen.”

  “Damn.” Schuchard looked more tired when Roslyn’s words reached her. “I guess that was the likely outcome, without a regular patrol like we don’t have the resources to deploy. It’s not like we’ve been losing every ship—I’ve heard rumors of the blockade at Condesa—but it’s… Well, even one ship would be bad enough, and we’ve lost seven in the last three months.”

  Roslyn pulled up data on the system—it was faster to look at the RMN files than ask Schuchard questions.

  “That’s a quarter of your regular shipping,” she noted. Guild files said that the system saw two freighters a week, with a destroyer about once a month. The last pass by the Navy had been three weeks earlier.

  “You didn’t mention anything to Petals of Forgiveness,” she noted. “I’m seeing some notes in our files around reports from your MoD, but Mage-Commander Church didn’t mention any special requests when she passed through.”

  “Four of the missing ships were due since Petals came through, Mage-Captain,” Schuchard explained after the lag. “The other three were over eight weeks. That was a concern, but not a panic.”

  “It’s just Captain, Governor,” Roslyn corrected absently as she considered the situation. “Or Mage-Commander. Mage-Captain is more specific.”

  The reports the Erewhonwen government had sent in to the Navy had probably been detailed enough, but by the time they were aggregated into regional intelligence alerts and sent back down to individual ships, a lot of information was lost.

  “I’d appreciate it if your Ministry could forward me all of the data you have on the missing ships,” she continued. “I presume you have not been able to scout the attack sites yourself, but I may be able to adjust my patrol route to check in on them.

  “I will also forward everything you send me to Mage-Vice Admiral Jakab. He was tasked with ending the blockade at Condesa, and the ship or ships involved fled the region before his arrival.

  “We are now attempting to locate those pirate vessels. He may be able to deploy a ship out here for a more extended patrol of your system.”

  Potentially, Jakab might even order Voice of the Forgotten to take on that patrol. Either option would address the Governor’s concern—though to Roslyn’s mind, it made more sense to send a new ship while Voice moved on to Rhodes as planned.

  They knew the jump points were clear at this moment, after all.

  “I appreciate that, Captain,” Schuchard said, nodding her understanding of Roslyn’s correction on the title. “All of the information we have will be forwarded to your ship.”

  She smiled sadly, the weight of her hairdo accentuating the lines it drew on her face.

  “My entire system security force consists of five Amber-built corvettes, Captain. None are jump-capable without assistance, so we certainly haven’t been able to investigate the attack sites.”

  Voice of the Forgotten could, and Roslyn mentally added that to her planned route. If one of the ships had been coming from Rhodes or Mercedes—and the latter, especially, seemed reasonably likely—they’d be able to sweep that freighter’s entire route.

  “We will do all we can,” she promised the Governor. “You have my word.”

  “The word of the Royal Martian Navy is a currency worth something here in the Fringe, Captain. Normally, I’d invite you to dinner, but my people tell me you aren’t expecting to make orbit?”

  Roslyn smiled and shook her head.

  “We’re scanning your outer system for spots pirates might be hiding, Governor,” she told Schuchard. “I don’t expect to find secessionist battlecruisers in orbit of Left Egypt, ma’am.”

  “You swept the region and there was nothing, correct?”

  “Yes, sir,” Roslyn confirmed to Jakab’s image on the screen.

  The disadvantage, she was realizing, of instantaneous communications was that a ship captain now had to report in whenever anything changed, instead of only when the voyage ended.

  “The most recently overdue of the missing ships was from Mercedes,” she told him. “Hitting every one of their jump zones would slow our patrol, but we could do that and stop at Rhodes. We’d be six days to Mercedes instead of four and a half.”

  Jakab started to growl at something, then swallowed the clearly irritated reaction.

  “My apologies, Mage-Commander,” he said levelly. “The reports from the other destroyers are…similar, if less extreme. Condesa was the only blockaded system, but it’s now looking like this entire region of the Fringe has been seeing a growing pirate threat for about six months.

  “My other reports, though, are looking at a ship a month or so going missing.” He glared at something Roslyn couldn’t see, then blinked the scowl away with a sigh.

  “Erewhonwen has seen an exceptional amount, which suggests to me that you are getting closer to something,” he concluded. “Governor Schuchard is also entirely correct in asking for assistance. Voice of the Forgotten won’t do for what she truly needs, though.”

  “Sir?” Roslyn asked, swallowing a momentary urge to declare that her ship could do anything.

  “You can’t fight a pirate cruiser, Mage-Commander Chambers,” he noted. “Hellbender, on the other hand, is a modern Salamander-class cruiser, and I’ll back her against any pirate ship. I’ll speak with the Governor shortly, once I’ve spoken to Mage-Captain Kudrna, and we’ll get Hellbender on her way to back up the Erewhonwenese.”

  “Should we add searching for Sounds of Rainfall at Dawn to our patrol, sir?” Roslyn asked.

  “Sounds of Rainfall at Dawn is a modern sixteen-megaton freighter that was sold to Mercedes at a discount as part of our rebuilding program for the Republic worlds,” Jakab said quietly. “The loss of her cargo will be a huge hit to Erewhonwen, but the loss of Sounds herself will be an ugly blow to Mercedes.

  “You’re to abort your patrol of Rhodes, Mage-Commander,” he finally instructed. “Follow Sounds of Rainfall at Dawn’s course back to Mercedes and try to find her.

  “I know you’re not likely to find much, but we need to at least try,” he concluded. “You can hit Rhodes on the way back and see what’s going on there.”

  “Understood, sir,” Roslyn said. Not only was she not going to argue with the Admiral—Medals of Valor or no, she was merely a Mage-Commander—but she agreed with him. Their best chance of finding their enemy was to find Sounds of Rainfall at Dawn.

  “I’ll check with Intelligence and see if there was anything on Sounds that will help us track her cargo if we can’t find the ship,” she continued. “I doubt we’ll be so unlucky that they’ve grabbed Link terminals again, but there are many things in the universe that get extra tracking beacons.”

  “That may help, yes,” Jakab agreed. “You’re to proceed on the reverse of Sounds’ course immediately, Mage-Commander.

  “Good luck.”

  36

  “I’m not sure there’s any good news in any of this,” Mac Thaidhg said dourly as the department heads watched the list of Sounds of Rainfall at Dawn’s cargo scroll in the middle of the table.

  “Two hundred thousand tons of antimatter?”

  “I’m curious as to how Mercedes had that much antimatter to sell them,” Roslyn replied. “Mercedes still does not have any transmutation facilities. All of their antimatter is imported. For them to turn around and fill a quarter of a ship like Sounds with antimatter fuel…it stinks.”

  Storage needs meant that every ton of antimatter required nineteen tons of equipment. Two hundred thousand tons of fuel was four million tons of cargo for all but hyper-specialized antimatter-transport ships.

  “I’m not sure why it’s coming from Mercedes, but that’s Erewhonwen’s regular energy shipment,” Salucci told them, the logistics officer looking at a different set of data on her wrist-comp. “It comes in twice a year, usually from the transmutation plants at Corinthian.

  “I’m guessing they relayed it through Mercedes because some quirk of shipping made it cheaper for them to ship it that way.”

  “If we weren’t already a light-year away, I’d ask the Erewhonwenese what they were thinking,” Roslyn said drily. “As it is, well. What else was she carrying?”

  “The usual kind of assorted mix of a big ship heading to a Fringe World,” Salucci said. “I mean, that’s everything from a small restock of missiles for the corvettes to hunting rifles to agricultural equipment.

  “All of it was preordered via a factor who works in Mercedes,” she finished.

  “Because I’m so much happier seeing the antimatter missiles on the manifest,” the XO noted. “If I was a pirate, those and the fuel alone would make Sounds an amazing target.”

  “Which is, sadly, almost certainly part of why she got hit,” Roslyn noted. “Everything we saw on Condesa suggests that these pirates have pretty decent intel. It’s not spectacular, not really, but it suggests that they’ve got access to the civilian Link network—and the decryption protocols to access shipping information that’s supposed to be secure.”

  “Plus, the ability to divert information to Link terminals other than the intended destination,” Salucci noted.

  “Potentially not…” Kumar said slowly, the engineer looking thoughtful.

  “Lieutenant?” Roslyn prodded him.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, Lieutenant Salucci,” the engineer told the coms officer. “I’m familiar with the hardware side of the Link terminals but less so on the software side.”

  Salucci gestured for him to continue, acquiring her own thoughtful look.

  “The Link system is based on quantum entanglement,” Kumar explained. “That’s a point-to-point link. Each entangled particle is mirrored by another entangled particle, both created at the same instant. That’s why all of the Link terminals for a given network come from one place—because the particles start together.

  “So, to create a network, each Link terminal is linked to a number of other terminals,” he continued. “The exact number varies from unit to unit, but it’s never less than sixteen and usually hovers around forty. A message to a terminal that isn’t directly connected is relayed via connecting nodes in a process that runs entirely in the background.”

  “Except that if someone has a terminal and wants to eavesdrop, they might well be able to access that process,” Salucci finished the thought. “Damn. I hadn’t considered that.”

  “So, they’re eavesdropping on whoever is linked to their individual terminal?” Roslyn asked. “Which means their intelligence, regardless of the decryption protocols or hacks they have, will be limited to only some systems?”

  “It would make sense,” Kumar said. “It would also…well, it would make them acquiring new Link terminals as they did at Condesa even more dangerous.”

  “Wonderful,” she replied. “Thank you, Lieutenants. That’s actually useful.”

  “Fortunately, there weren’t any Links on Sounds of Rainfall at Dawn,” Mac Thaidhg pointed out. “But that means we should be able to identify systems at risk for compromised communications if we review the attacks.”

  “That, Commander, is a task for Naval Intelligence and the MISS,” Roslyn said with a chuckle. “For right now, I’m looking for clever ideas to help us find Sounds as we follow her course.”

  “Militia-grade antimatter missiles do have tracking beacons,” Claes noted, the tactical officer having been quiet up to that point. “So, I believe, do antimatter-transport tanks. They’re call-and-response systems that will answer if we ping them.

  “Assuming that these people are as disturbingly competent as all evidence suggests, they’ve almost certainly stripped and dumped the beacons,” he continued. “But the beacons are pretty hardy and have self-contained power sources.

 

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