The Oncoming Storm (21 page)

“I took the ship’s sensor system apart, piece by piece,” Lynn reported four hours later. He sounded tired but grimly amused. “She doesn’t have a lick of justification for such an elaborate sensor suite, Captain.”

Kat nodded, slowly. Taking a Theocratic ship, even a freighter, into custody would raise eyebrows right across the Commonwealth. There would be questions asked, both by Admiral Morrison and in Parliament. The evidence had to be gathered completely by the book, she knew, or someone would move to dismiss it as tainted. Luckily everything seemed to be in place.

“If she entered the Cadiz System,” she mused, “she would be able to determine much about 7th Fleet purely from her passive sensors.”

“Yes, Captain,” Lynn agreed. “The suite is really quite elaborate. They’d be able to intercept radio traffic and monitor the situation on the ground, as well as record the fleet’s emissions. And the only way to find it was to carry out a full search and examination of the ship.”

“Which you did,” Kat said, nodding to the XO. “What tipped you off?”

“The crew was just too good,” the XO said. “Most freighter crews are . . . well, not sloppy, but lax. They cut corners, don’t update records, wear their uniforms poorly if they wear them at all, all bad habits we try to keep out of the military. This crew was far too good to be true.”

“Better than you might think,” Davidson put in. His voice was very cold. “You noticed there were more crewmen than strictly necessary?”

The XO nodded, impatiently.

“I watched some of them through sensors as they filed into the holding cell,” Davidson said grimly. “I’d bet good money they’re special forces, not regular crewmen. There’s something about their cocky attitude that is familiar.”

“Theocracy marines?” Lynn asked. “Are they better than you?”

“Of course not,” Davidson huffed. He looked at Kat, his eyes worried. “Those guys are definitely trained soldiers, Captain. Give them weapons and armor and they’d be able to cause one hell of a mess on Cadiz.”

“Or onboard ship,” the XO said. “We do have them under close guard?”

“Yes,” Davidson said. “But they have to be watched carefully at all times.”

Kat rubbed her forehead. “And the other freighters?”

“We’ve searched two additional freighters,” the XO said. “They seemed normal, as far as we could tell, but we have four more to go.”

“It’s unlikely there will be more than one spy ship,” Davidson commented. “They wouldn’t want to heighten the chances of detection.”

The XO leaned forward. “And what do we do with our new prisoners?”

Kat had given the matter some thought. “We have to take them to Cadiz, along with their ship,” she said. Regulations admitted of no ambiguity in such matters. “Admiral Morrison will have to decide their fate. In any case . . .”

She took a breath. “We have legal authority to hold them for questioning,” she added. “And we have precedent on our side. The Theocracy has held some of our crews for quite intensive questioning in the past.”

“They’re not going to like that,” Davidson rumbled.

“Tough,” Kat said. “If they want to hold our crews, we can hold theirs.”

“Yes, Captain,” the XO said.

“But it could cause a diplomatic incident,” Davidson cautioned. “We could have made a fuss over them holding our crews, but we didn’t.”

Kat muttered a curse under her breath. The bigger shipping lines had been interested—very interested—in opening links to the Theocracy. They’d had visions of a colossal new market opening up in front of them, which had pushed them to ignore any reports of crews being mistreated or threatened with prosecution under Theocratic law. She sighed, inwardly. Her father, at least, should have known better. Trading was always unstable when one party felt free to ignore civilized convention at its leisure.

Evict the crews if you like, she thought. But holding them for crimes that aren’t crimes where they come from opens a dangerous set of precedents.

She pushed the thought to one side and forced herself to smile. “Search the rest of the freighters, then report back to me when you’re done,” she ordered. “I’ll be writing my own report.”

“Aye, Captain,” the XO said.

Kat watched him go, then keyed her console, accessing the live feed from the makeshift cells. She’d spent enough time with Davidson to recognize soldiers as well and she had to admit he had a point. The Theocracy crewmen didn’t look like crewmen. They had the finely honed confidence of men who knew they were the best of the best, just like Davidson and the other marines she’d met. And there were definitely too many of them to man the freighter.

She checked the manifest again. The crew manifest had only been submitted upon request, a slip that would probably have gone unnoticed under other circumstances. Who would have thought anything of a sloppy civilian crew? But if the Theocracy had been lucky, the soldiers could have been landed on Cadiz without anything counting them in and then counting them out again. Even now, they could walk off ship and make their way to the local guild house, then vanish after their mothership had left the system. It wasn’t as if anyone would be surprised to see a Theocracy freighter shedding crewmen.

Spies, she thought darkly. But she knew it had been a risky trick for the Theocracy to try to pull. They took a blatant risk in sending a spy ship into our space.

The thought didn’t bring her any comfort. There was no way to know how many other ships might have been slipped through as part of the regular convoys. Or, for that matter, if there were spy ships that weren’t part of the convoys. Perhaps the captain and her crew had been meant to find this one, just to convince them that they had caught all of the spies. But they might be wrong.

And if they’re sending spy ships now, they must be preparing their attack, she concluded. It might be too late to save 7th Fleet. Checking their figures before they launch a final assault.

She shuddered. How long would it take her father to arrange for the IG to make a visit to Cadiz? Weeks, perhaps months. Admiral Morrison had some damn good political cover. It might well be too late. And if that was the case . . .

She shuddered again. Cadiz wasn’t vital, but 7th Fleet was largely irreplaceable in less than a year. And the war might be lost along with it.

“That filthy unbelieving infidel,” the cleric thundered. “How dare he lay his hands on . . . ?”

“Enough,” Admiral Junayd said. There were times when he felt that clerics had their brains—or at least their common sense—removed before they were permitted to grow the unkempt beards that marked them as keepers of religious orthodoxy. “You never know who might be listening.”

The cleric shut up, at once. Junayd allowed himself a tight smile and then lay back on the bunk. As prison cells went, it was remarkably comfortable. The infidels hadn’t even broken out truth drugs or torture instruments, both of which would have been used by the Inquisition back home. It wouldn’t have helped—his crew all had suicide implants to prevent them from talking—but it did suggest the infidels weren’t taking the threat very seriously. In their place, Junayd would have destroyed his own ship to make sure there was no chance of any intelligence getting back home and sworn blind it had been a terrible accident.

He thought rapidly. Flying into enemy space himself had been a risk, he knew, but it had been necessary. It was difficult, if not impossible, to trust reports from spies, no matter how well the agents had covered their tracks. There was just too much temptation for the spies to send the reports they thought their superiors wanted to hear. But who would have thought the Commonwealth had finally decided to start giving freighters more than a cursory inspection before clearing them to dock at Cadiz? Really, it was quite surprising they’d worked up the nerve.

The cleric mumbled prayers to himself, clearly unsure what was about to happen. Junayd kept his thoughts to himself. It was unlikely the Commonwealth would detain them for long, unless they somehow figured out just who he was. And if they had . . . he thought briefly of the suicide implants, then sighed. He didn’t want to die, but he didn’t fear death. God was waiting for him in His Heaven.

He knew what would happen to a spy ship captured within Theocratic space. The crew would be interrogated, the technicians trying to beat the suicide implants, while the ship itself would be carefully dismantled. Did the Commonwealth have the nerve to kill him and his crew? It was possible, but the trade links the Theocracy had dangled in front of their greedy corporations would mediate against it. They wouldn’t want to give up the chance to make money, even if it meant accepting humiliation after humiliation. Really! It was unbelievable just how much the Commonwealth’s government was prepared to swallow in exchange for trade links and a few other concessions.

But he knew how they thought. Money talked; common sense walked. Everything had a price, even religious fervor. It was insulting to think that someone—anyone—believed the Theocracy would surrender its principles for money. But as long as the infidels believed they could manage the Theocracy, the Theocracy would have all the time in the universe to prepare. Even if Junayd didn’t return home, he knew, the attack would still go ahead.

And the Commonwealth’s rich worlds and industrial base would be theirs for the taking.

Duke Lucas Falcone disliked the houses of Parliament. As a veteran of the political wars that shaped Tyre’s government, he knew better than most that 90 percent of activity in Parliament was meaningless. Most political decisions were made after careful backroom discussions, well away from the media, and then presented to Parliament as a done deal. If the discussions were handled properly, there was little meaningful pushback from His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. They benefited from the end result as much as the government.

He silently cursed the planet’s founders under his breath as he took his seat and started to review his briefing notes. They had wanted to ensure that Tyre’s political system grew and changed as the planet itself changed, knowing that taxation without representation was sure to lead to an eventual revolt and civil war. But with the House of Lords and the king controlling much of the planet’s wealth—and thus power—the House of Commons had become more of a talking shop than its creators had envisaged. Anyone driven enough to become successful could simply take out a patent of nobility and advance to the House of Lords.

The chamber filled slowly as lords, MPs, and reporters slid into the room and found their seats. Lucas’s implants matched names to faces, although he didn’t need the data to identify the true movers and shakers of the Commonwealth. Others, elected on platforms that failed to match any of the political parties currently in existence, were strangers to him. They simply didn’t command enough of the vote, let alone political power, to be important. The hell of it, he knew, was that some of them knew it. Their showmanship did nothing more than waste time and amuse the reporters.

“This session will come to order,” the speaker said, the sound field automatically projecting his voice to every corner of the room. “The doors will now close.”

A dull thud echoed through the chamber as the doors closed with majestic grandeur. Lucas kept his face impassive with an effort. The designers of the chamber—and many of the chamber’s traditions—had wanted to create a sense of dignity, of timeless power and majesty, but he had a feeling they’d failed. There was no sense of forward thinking, merely staunch conservatism. The only advantage to the whole system, he’d decided long ago, was that anyone trying to be fashionably late would be barred from the chamber, unable to enter or cast a vote. A handful of MPs had lost their jobs over failing to vote, recalled and sacked by their constituents. It never failed to amuse him.

The party whips moved through the chamber, noting attendance as the dignitaries settled down. There was no need for the whips, Lucas knew, but their act was tradition too, warning any MP considering independent action that his or her party was watching. It wasn’t unknown for MPs to cross the chamber from government to opposition, yet there was always a high price tag. Only the most principled—or confident—MP would risk the recall election that would automatically be called if he or she switched party allegiance. Still, for some, the gamble paid off.