The Oncoming Storm (15 page)

The thought made her feel coldly furious at her father. She hadn’t even looked at the message, but she was sure Admiral Morrison wanted to make use of her. She’d run into other senior officers with the same ambition, yet this was different. This commanding officer, thanks to her father, had evidence that she was interested in pulling strings on her own behalf . . .

Gritting her teeth, she pressed her palm against the terminal, then frowned as the holographic image appeared in front of her. Thankfully, the message had been recorded and sent before they were close enough to Cadiz for a real-time conference. Admiral Morrison was strikingly handsome, with muscles on his muscles, his uniform tailored to show his looks and build off to best advantage. But his appearance was too handsome, too striking, to be real. It suggested deep insecurities that even a minor visit to a cosmetic bodyshop had been unable to cure. Even the genetic engineering that had shaped Kat’s appearance had given her something more natural.

But it’s easy to see why he impresses some civilians, she thought as she keyed the switch to start the playback. He looks the very model of a modern space admiral.

“Captain Falcone,” Admiral Lord Buckland Morrison said. His voice was perfect too, almost as practiced as one of the political leaders speaking in the houses of Parliament. But there was something about it that suggested it was far from natural. “Please allow me to welcome you to Cadiz.”

Kat nodded, impatiently. It wasn’t common for starship commanders to be sent messages of welcome by the station commander. They were meant to be good little subordinates and present themselves to the admiral’s office as soon as they entered orbit. Sending Kat a message, she knew, was not a good sign.

“I look forward to meeting you in person,” the admiral continued. “You are welcome to visit my office once your ship has entered orbit. I would also like to invite you to a party at my estate the following week. You would be more than welcome.”

“A party,” Kat repeated, incredulously. Who the hell did the admiral think she was? Candy Falcone? “He wants me to go to a party?”

“Your crew are, of course, welcome to begin their shore leave roster while the convoy prepares itself for its next destination,” the admiral concluded. He smiled at her. It would have been attractive if she hadn’t been so sure it was fake. “And I look forward to meeting you in person.”

Insecure, Kat thought as the message came to an end. She couldn’t help being reminded of her first boyfriend, although they’d both been teenagers at the time. He told me the same things twice, as if he were afraid I’d miss what he was saying or go somewhere else. And so did the admiral.

Her father would have wanted her to get to know the admiral, she knew, although it was because he wanted evidence he could use to stick a knife in Morrison’s back. Kat herself . . . would have preferred to spend as little time with the admiral as possible. But a direct invitation from her superior officer would be hard to avoid, even with her family connections. Someone without them would have had to humor the admiral, at least as long as they valued their career.

She winced. Suddenly, the condition of the orbiting superdreadnoughts made a great deal of sense.

You’re jumping to conclusions, she thought, coldly. You don’t know if the superdreadnought commanders have been spending too much time on the planet’s surface.

But it did seem alarmingly plausible.

“Record,” she ordered, after she was sure she could trust her voice to remain even. “Admiral Morrison, I will land on the planet’s surface once my ship has entered orbit. I look forward to meeting you in person. However, I have duties to my ship and I may not be able to attend your party. Thank you for your time.”

It was borderline rude, she knew; she’d known officers and aristocrats who would have exploded under much less provocation. But she had a feeling Admiral Morrison would let it slide. She sent the message with a tap of the console, then called the XO into her Ready Room. When he arrived, she replayed the message for him, smiling to herself at his reaction.

“I will not be attending his . . . party,” she said, making the word a curse. “But I can’t avoid visiting him in person.”

The XO didn’t disagree. “It’s protocol,” he said. He hesitated, noticeably. “You should take a Marine detachment with you.”

Kat made a face. The official press releases claimed that violence on the surface was declining, but the instructions for traveling from the spaceport to Gibraltar—the planet’s capital city—suggested otherwise. She would be traveling in an armored convoy, guarded by several platoons of soldiers. It didn’t suggest the planet was even remotely safe.

“That would probably violate some unwritten rule,” she said. She took a long breath. “Do we have a list of frontrunners for shore leave?”

“Yes, Captain,” the XO said. He pulled his datapad off his belt, then held it out to her. “I’ve put myself on the list, of course.”

They shared a smile. It was an old joke. An XO who couldn’t manipulate the system to his own advantage was in the wrong job.

“Once I return to the ship, I’d like you to go with the first party,” Kat said. “I need your impressions of the planet’s surface too.”

She paused. “Besides, you need some leave,” she added. “I know you haven’t had any for the last nine months.”

“I’ve had worse,” the XO said. He hesitated. “Captain, I don’t believe we should risk allowing more than fifty crewmen down to the surface at any one time. If the system comes under attack . . .”

He allowed his voice to trail off, but it didn’t matter. Kat had already thought of it for herself.

“See to it,” she ordered. There was one major spaceport on the planet and a handful of minor ones. Getting her crew back to the ship if the system came under attack would be a nightmare. “And make sure we have enough manpower on hand to fight if necessary.”

The XO saluted, then withdrew, leaving Kat alone with her thoughts.

“They’re diverting us to a different approach route,” Midshipman Thomas Morse said. “I’m not sure why.”

Kat nodded as the shuttle fell through Cadiz’s atmosphere, heading towards the giant spaceport thirty kilometers from Gibraltar. The locals might not have access to many heavy weapons, but the reports suggested that they had obtained some antiaircraft missiles they had fired at a handful of vehicles, including shuttles. Shooting down a helicopter would be annoying, but hardly fatal; shooting down a shuttle carrying a starship commander would be a political nightmare. Even Admiral Morrison’s backers would find it impossible to cover up the disaster.

She leaned forward as the spaceport came into view, a giant sprawling complex stretching out for miles. That alone was alarming, she knew; the average spaceport was nowhere near so large, even when handling military deployments. The briefing pack had noted that most of the shore leave facilities were within the wire, allowing starship crewmen to stretch their legs and relax without ever actually seeing the planet itself. Dozens of large hangars and military barracks dotted the landscape, while countless helicopters, attack craft, and shuttles sat on the ground, ready to launch at a moment’s notice. It looked very far from peaceful.

The shuttle came to a halt over the spaceport, then dropped down to the landing pad. Kat had a brief impression of hundreds of soldiers jogging over the base, all carrying weapons slung over their shoulders, then the shuttle hit the ground. The shock surprised her, although she knew it shouldn’t have. A hovering shuttle was terrifyingly vulnerable to more weapons than the expensive antiaircraft missiles that might have been smuggled into the district.

“The shuttle will be remaining here,” Morse said, consulting the live feed from the spaceport’s control tower. “Do you wish me to remain with it?”

Kat considered it briefly. She rather doubted she would be back anytime soon, even if the meeting with Admiral Morrison lasted less than an hour. The journey to and from the capital city alone would take quite some time. On the other hand, Morse was a young and inexperienced officer. Allowing him to wander the spaceport on his own might turn into a disaster. But it was his first time on the planet’s surface . . .

“You may explore the complex,” Kat said, after a moment. “I’ll call you when I’m on my way back to the shuttle. Keep your wristcom with you at all times.”

She paused. “And don’t drink anything even remotely alcoholic,” she added. “This isn’t shore leave.”

“Aye, Captain,” Morse said.

Kat smiled to herself, then scrambled out of the shuttle and onto the tarmac. The heat struck her at once, a wave of warm air that sent sweat crawling down her back. She looked round and saw a handful of soldiers wearing gray urban combat dress heading towards her, led by a corporal. He saluted as he approached, his eyes flickering over her and then meeting her eyes. Professional, Kat noted mentally. That was a relief.

“Captain Falcone,” the officer said. “I’m Corporal Whisper. I’ve been assigned to escort you to government house.”

“Thank you, Corporal,” Kat said.

She allowed him and his men to lead her through the complex towards the vehicle park, where they helped her into a large armored vehicle that seemed a cross between a truck and a tank. The windows were transparent battle steel, she noted, allowing her to see out, but proof against anything short of a nuclear blast. It didn’t bode well for the security situation either, she decided, as the vehicle jerked into life. A handful of smaller vehicles, some of them carrying mounted machine guns, followed them as they headed towards the gates. That definitely didn’t bode well for local security.

Corporal Whisper seemed to have appointed himself her local guide and pointed out a number of landmarks as they drove through the complex. The swimming pool, the library, the giant strip of shops, bars, and brothels intended to separate spacers from their money . . . and the prison, where irreconcilable insurgents were held, pending their exile to Nightmare. Kat made a mental note to ensure the pirates were handed over for transport, then pushed the thought aside as she saw a long line of locals being searched by military police.

There was almost no privacy, she realized. The locals had to endure countless humiliations just to enter the complex.

“They used to smuggle in bombs,” Corporal Whisper explained when she asked about the searches. “Eventually, we insisted that anyone who refused to actually live within the complex had to be searched thoroughly whenever they went in or out of the gates. We found quite a few nasty surprises over the years.”

Kat shuddered. She’d never liked being searched during security exercises—and the locals had to endure it almost every day. It was just another humiliation piled on top of losing control of their homeworld to outsiders . . . No matter the justification, she couldn’t help thinking the Commonwealth would come to regret annexing Cadiz. But what other choice had there been?

They passed through the gates and out into the countryside. The road was surprisingly wide, she noted, wide enough to make it difficult for someone to plant IEDs along the roadside without making them instantly noticeable. Defoliants had been used to clear the bushes away from the road, ensuring that it was hard to set up ambushes too. There would be no new growth for years, Kat knew. Just something else for the locals to hold against the occupation force. And the stripped roadway wouldn’t stop a sniper from taking a shot at the convoy as it raced towards the city.

Still, Cadiz was beautiful, she thought with a trace of wistfulness. She had never been able to climb mountains or even hike before joining the Navy, even when she wasn’t surrounded by bodyguards and interfering tutors. Davidson had taken her mountain climbing once or twice, before their relationship had come to an end. The mountains she could see in the distance looked challenging, just the type of experience he loved. But she doubted they were safe for anyone, unless they were surrounded by armed Marines.

She sucked in her breath as they entered Gibraltar, after being waved through the gates by armed soldiers. Inside, hundreds of cars and motorbikes—some so primitive they were actually fueled by gas rather than power cells—buzzed round, while the locals who were on foot glowered at the passing convoy. Kat frowned when she saw them, realizing just what—or rather who—was missing. There were almost no women. The only women on the streets were little girls or old mothers and grandmothers.

“Odd,” she said, out loud. “Where are the girls?”

“They’re normally kept indoors,” Corporal Whisper explained. “It’s quite a conservative culture here, Captain. A young woman’s reputation is the key to finding her a good match. If there are suggestions she . . . compromised herself with a young man, she won’t have a hope of getting married into a reputable family. She might even be kicked out of the house.”

Kat shook her head in disbelief. “And the young men?”

“No one cares about their experience,” Corporal Whisper said. “They spend more time at the brothels than working or even taking potshots at us.”

He smirked. “We have a medical clinic responsible for handling sexually transmitted diseases,” he added. “And do you know how many times it’s been attacked?”

“No,” Kat said.

“It hasn’t,” Corporal Whisper informed her. “None of the insurgents have ever gone anywhere near it.”

Kat started as a bullet pinged off the canopy, followed by a rocket that slammed into the vehicle and shook it, but inflicted no real damage. Their escorts opened fire, sweeping the nearby buildings with bullets, then relaxed as the incoming fire slacked off and died. There was no way to tell if they’d killed the snipers or merely forced them to take cover, but it hardly mattered. They weren’t sticking around for a fight.

She looked at the buildings and shivered. Half of them were pockmarked with bullet holes and other signs of damage, while the other half looked as though no one had bothered to do any maintenance for years. But she could hardly blame the locals, she realized as they swept past the buildings and across a firebreak. There was no point in repairing buildings that might be shot up again at any moment. She turned to look at Government House as it came into view and sighed again. It looked like a giant fortress, surrounded by solid walls and patrolled by soldiers on the battlements.