CHAPTER TWO
Jeremiah Llyn scowled. Where am I going, he quoted the old adage to himself, and what am I doing in this handbasket?
The whole Manticore project had been a complete fiasco. What was worse, the chaos hadn’t just engulfed his own part of the plan, but everyone else’s as well.
The Volsung attack on Manticore had failed. Gensonne and his mercs had been subsequently destroyed, but not nearly as cleanly as Llyn had hoped. There were still a couple of loose ends out there: one of them a Volsung ship that had managed to evade the Danak ambush, the other the still-unidentified force that had destroyed the Volsungs’ main base at Walther.
The Barcans who’d been sent to take over the Star Kingdom as its new puppet government were another loose end. They’d been chased back home and were cowering there, but the Grand Duke was still clamoring for explanations and additional payments. Unfortunately, their force had identified its point of origin during their brief pass through Manticoran space, and sooner or later the Manticorans would undoubtedly send someone there to find out what the hell had been going on. Closing off that line of inquiry would mean more expense, either in bribes or perhaps in sheer ruthless destruction.
All points which the project manager at Axelrod’s Solway station had taken care to list in excruciating detail during the other’s genteel, almost civil, tongue-lashing. Llyn had had to sit there and take it, just as he’d had to sit there and accept that he’d been bounced off the main Manticore campaign and transferred to the far less interesting Andermani diversion. But he was a professional, and knew how to take orders.
Which didn’t mean he agreed with a single damn bit of it.
Yes, the Volsungs had had their butts handed to them. But their defeat wasn’t Llyn’s fault. Their record had offered no hints of tactical incompetence, and on paper they’d still been more than a match for the Manticorans. The only reason they’d lost was that the Manticorans had managed to pull off a couple of incredibly lucky tricks that had cost the Volsungs two of their battlecruisers, which had unnerved them enough to break off the battle.
Still, it could have been worse. If the Haven and Andermani diversions had gone off on schedule, with the Manticoran goal as yet unachieved, the diversions would have had to be repeated at a later date, which would likely have raised suspicions all the way back to the League.
Fortunately, they’d been planned to take place months after the Manticore conquest, close enough to the event to draw those governments’ attention away from their neighbor but not so close as to make anyone wonder why there was so much carnage happening in the same sector at the same time. That built-in delay had enabled the Axelrod agents in charge to put those operations on hold while the architects on Solway worked out a new strategy.
Haven would keep. The Andermani, unfortunately, wouldn’t. That particular diversion had relied on the manipulation of two separate and equally unsuspecting people—PFT Chief Director Lucretia Tomlinson and Quintessence Commodore Catt Quint—neither of whom realized exactly what they were being used for.
In theory, that was a good thing, allowing Axelrod to hit the Andermani with someone else’s money and someone else’s ships while keeping Llyn’s bosses deeper in the shadows. It was also saving them a tidy sum in out-of-pocket expenses.
But that anonymity and manipulation had carried potential risks, and those risks had now come home to roost. Director Tomlinson had paid for a loaded gun, and that loaded gun was now cocked, ready to fire, and inexplicably still sitting on the table. She was beginning to wonder if she’d been had, and if that suspicion ever became certainty she would likely start making dangerous enquiries. If Llyn was to head that off, she had to see results, and soon.
At the same time the loaded gun was itself becoming increasingly frustrated at sitting on the table for the past year.
Freya Bryce was good at her job. Once she’d gotten Axelrod’s order to stand down she would have worked hard to stretch out the timeline: putting Quint and her crews through extra training, probably pausing now and then to upgrade their ships with new missiles and ECM suites that she’d “just” been able to get her hands on, and all the rest of the standard Axelrod repertoire for such things.
But by now even Bryce was almost certainly running out of wiggle room. The gun that was Commodore Quint was going to come off the table and be fired, and soon.
It would be Llyn’s job to make damn sure it was pointed in the right direction when that happened.
The timing wasn’t ideal. The next operation against Manticore was still a long ways away. But if there was one thing Gustav Anderman had never been accused of it was being oblivious to danger. Abteilung III, the Andermani Department of Naval Intelligence, was incredibly good, and if they got wind of Quint and her force the hoped-for diversion would end up as a stomping in the dark, with Quint on the underside of the boot.
Still, if the object was to keep Gustav’s eyes turned inward toward his own back yard for the next few years, even a rout would serve Axelrod’s purposes.
It wouldn’t do much for Quint’s purposes, of course. But in the grand scheme of things, that was irrelevant.
The Quintessence’s new fleet was floating just outside the hyper limit of FF-M-341-019/B: four refurbished SLN battlecruisers and their two heavy cruiser escorts, plus the three light cruisers, fifteen destroyers, and nine other support ships and civilian family transports that had survived Commodore Quint’s last disastrous job.
Mentally, Llyn shook his head. Four battlecruisers plus a small group of escort and support craft against Gustav Anderman’s five battleships, six battlecruisers, and dozens of smaller warships. It was probably a good thing that when Gustav decided to retire and relocate he’d picked a spot way the hell out at the edge of known space. A private fleet that size could make even major Solarian League worlds nervous.
The Quintessence ships were dark except for running lights, their nodes reading cold. Llyn’s hail was met by a polite but perfunctory welcome and directions to Quint’s new flagship Retribution. The shuttle pilot took him the last few kilometers to the specified battlecruiser, where he was met by a large lieutenant with a neatly trimmed beard and an equally perfunctory greeting.
Llyn was used to not always being welcomed with enthusiasm and open arms. Still, the overall coolness here was a bit disquieting.
Commodore Quint was sitting behind her desk when the lieutenant keyed open the hatch. Bryce was with her, seated in a guest chair at one of the front corners. Both women were gazing at Llyn as he stepped into the office, their expressions as neutral as the lieutenant’s face and the com officer’s voice.
Neutral, but Llyn could see the tension lines in both women’s necks and cheeks. A new metaphor flashed into his mind: not a cocked gun sitting on a table, but a full-grown tiger asleep in an oversized cat bed.
And Llyn’s job was to pick up the tiger, pat it on the head, and make friends with it.
Nice kitty.
“Good evening, Commodore, Ms. Bryce,” he greeted them as the lieutenant closed the hatch behind him. “I must say, your fleet out there looks quite impressive.”
“You must say that, must you?” Quint countered. “Well, then, I must say the following. I don’t like this, Mr. Llyn. I don’t like it at all. An immediate corollary is that I don’t like you.”
“I understand,” Llyn said in his most soothing voice. “It’s never easy—”
“No, I don’t think you do,” Quint cut him off. “Ms. Bryce and I have been working this project for nearly three years, through every problem and roadblock that the universe could throw at us. Now that it’s finally about to get underway, I find it highly objectionable that she should suddenly be shouldered aside for—” she waved a stiff hand toward him “—the likes of you.”
“I understand,” Llyn said again. He glanced at Bryce.
And took a second, longer look. It wasn’t just Quint who was feeling this way, he realized suddenly. Bryce was wondering the same thing, and apparently with much the same suspicion and animosity.
“But you’re laboring under an incorrect assumption,” he continued. Time to go full-wedge diplomatic. “Ms. Bryce isn’t being kicked off her project. I’m being kicked off mine.”
For a brief second a flicker of surprise replaced the suspicion and antagonism on Quint’s face. “Really,” she said in a flat voice.
“Really,” Llyn assured her. “And if you think about it, all the really hard work in setting you up with your new ships has been done. It’s now one hundred percent your show, and all Ms. Bryce or I will be doing is observing and maybe feeding you some last-minute intel if and when it becomes available. Having watched Ms. Bryce in action, I think you’ll agree that would hardly be the best use of her time or talents.”
“But a perfect fit for yours?” Quint asked.
Llyn shrugged. “The life of an employee is to go where our superiors believe we’ll do the most good.”
“Uh-huh,” Quint said. “So she gets the next big job and I get the screw-up?”
Llyn smiled faintly, suppressing the reflexive surge of annoyance. He was far better at this kind of Axelrod black op than Bryce, and he had the history and records to prove it.
But he was also realistic enough to concede that, while the Volsung screw-up wasn’t his fault, the fact that he’d hired them in the first place was. Live and learn, the old adage advised.
Learn and live was Llyn’s more pointed version. It was never a good idea to assume you could survive the same mistake twice.
But the question of whether the title of screw-up applied in this case was irrelevant. Part of Llyn’s competence was knowing how to play to an audience’s expectations and preconceptions in order to get the job done. “I don’t think I’d go that far,” he said, putting a hint of embarrassment in his tone. “This is just the decision our superiors have made, and we have no choice but to adjust to changing circumstances.”
“Uh-huh,” Quint said again. She still wasn’t happy about the sudden personnel switch, but with the implied insult to Bryce—and to Quint herself—now mollified she was beginning to come around, albeit reluctantly. “So when is the changeover?”
“Right now,” Llyn said, watching Bryce out of the corner of his eye. No change in her expression, but he could see the slight tightening of the muscles of her hands where they rested in her lap. Quint might be starting to accept this, but Bryce herself wasn’t.
“Right now, as in today?” Quint asked.
“Right now, as in within the hour,” Llyn said. “I know this is all very sudden, but the timing is critical. So critical, in fact, that we don’t even have time for Ms. Bryce to get to her personal ship and run up the nodes. She and I will have to swap ships: she’ll travel aboard mine, and I’ll take over hers.”
“You’re taking over her ship, are you?” Quint asked, flicking a glance at Bryce.
“Yes,” Llyn said. There’d been something in that glance, but he didn’t have time to chase it down now. “If you can detail someone to transfer my luggage from my shuttle and replace it with hers, she can be on her way.”
“No problem, Mr. Llyn,” Quint said, standing up. “I’ll see to it personally.”
“Thank you, Commodore.” Translation: she wanted to do her own quick inspection of what he was bringing aboard her ship.
Which was fine. Llyn didn’t have anything dangerous or secret, or at least nothing that even a serious search would spot, and he needed a moment alone with Bryce anyway. “With your permission, I have a few last-minute instructions for Ms. Bryce.”
“Certainly,” Quint said dryly. “My office is yours.”
She walked behind Bryce and left the office. As the door closed, Llyn caught a glimpse of the bearded lieutenant still standing outside, with no indication that he might be leaving any time soon.
Quint’s office might be Llyn’s office, but Quint’s ship wasn’t. Not yet.
“Seriously, Llyn?” Bryce growled. “They’re pulling me off this now?”
Llyn turned back to her. With no further need to keep up the illusion of corporate unity, Bryce’s face had gone dark and hostile. “They’re not pulling you off, Freya,” he said. “They’re putting you in—”
“Yeah, I heard your soap bubble,” she cut him off. “I don’t believe it any more than Quint did.”
“Well, you’d better, because it’s true,” he said. “You want to listen now? Or would you rather read the text on your way?”
She scowled. “Fine. What’s the deal?”
“A moment,” Llyn said, reaching into his jacket pocket. A merc commander didn’t usually bug her own office, but there was no point taking chances.
“It’s okay—I’ve already got a blocker going,” Bryce said. “Quit stalling.”
“We need to get someone on the ground,” Llyn said, passing over the implied insult. “That’s going to be you.”
“How are they sending me in?”
“We don’t know yet,” Llyn said. “Your orders are to proceed as quickly as possible or a little faster—their exact words—to Solway for a skull session. They’ll presumably have some ideas by the time you get there, but they’ll want your input to help tailor the role if necessary.”
“With the usual escape clause built in so that Axelrod can keep their fingers clean if something goes sideways?”
“Of course,” Llyn said. “We’re expendable. They’re not.”
A brief shadow passed across Bryce’s face. It was a shadow, and a thought, that Llyn knew quite well.
No matter how valuable Black Ops agents were to Axelrod, no matter how well they’d served over the years, if it came to a choice between them and the company’s standing, they would be abandoned without a second thought, to sink or swim as best they could.
So far it hadn’t happened to either him or Bryce. But it had happened to others. Not very many, but it had happened.
“Any other questions?” he asked.
The shadow faded from Bryce’s face. “Just one. Why me and not you?”
Llyn scowled to himself. Too many failures, too, could be grounds for leaving an agent twisting in the wind. “My face—or at least a variant of it—has been seen by too many Manticorans. My voice, even staged or altered, is on too many recordings. Even the best disguise can be cracked, and it’s been deemed too dangerous for me to take another shot at them.”
“So you weren’t lying,” Bryce said, sounding mildly surprised. “You are being kicked off your project.”
“I’m not off the project,” Llyn said stiffly. “I’ve been transferred to another theater. Not the same thing.”
“Sure,” she said, a faint smile creasing one cheek. “The great Jeremiah Llyn; and you don’t like it any better than the rest of us, do you?”
“You don’t have to like your assignments,” Llyn growled. “You just have to do them. Any other questions?”
“I presume everything else is in the file?”
“Yes.” Llyn pulled an envelope from his inside jacket pocket and handed it to her. “Your ID and other papers, and the data chips that should explain everything else you need to know. My captain’s name is Rhamas; he’ll get you to Solway and handle any last-minute details you might think of.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Bryce said, fingering the envelope a moment before putting it away. “One other thing. You talked earlier about switching ships with me. I don’t actually have one at the moment.”
Llyn felt his eyes narrow. “What are you talking about? What happened to Docent?”
“One of the nodes went iffy while we were installing the new launchers and Sandor took it to one of the Cormorant maintenance stations for refurbishing. Quint offered me a berth on Retribution, and it was so convenient to be right here on board that when the refurbishing was finished I told Sandor to go back to Transfer Three and wait there until we got the green light for the operation or until they needed him and Docent somewhere else.”
“Really,” Llyn said between clenched teeth. Technically, Bryce was within her operational discretion to dismiss her captain and ship. But joining a force of mercenaries about to go into battle without a means of quick escape if things went sideways was foolish in the extreme.
Unfortunately, her short-sightedness had now spilled over onto him. Unless he wanted to swing by Transfer and get Docent back, which would add extra delay to his already strained timing, he was stuck in the no-escape box she’d walked herself into.
Unless that had been the plan all along.
Axelrod Black Ops agents were the best of the best, their very anonymity and lack of public recognition perversely driving a quiet but vigorous internecine competition. In an operation as carefully compartmentalized as the Manticore project most of the agents didn’t know more than their own part of the job, which helped alleviate any overt one-on-one rivalry. But a few agents held multiple strings, and of course someone had to have a grip on all of them. Right now, Llyn’s boss was that someone.
But if Bryce didn’t have all the strings, she had almost certainly deduced the presence and general parameters of many of them. She knew what had happened with the Volsungs at Manticore, and might have anticipated that Axelrod would decide to shift Llyn elsewhere. With the Haven diversion on hold, the Anderman theater was the only logical place for them to shift him.
Was she angry that after all her prep work the glory of the actual battle was about to be taken away from her? Or was it more childish, a way to make Llyn sweat a little without his usual hole card?
Or was it an even longer game? Was Bryce trying to slowly erode Llyn’s position and reputation in a bid to succeed to his rank in the Black Ops hierarchy?
Bryce certainly would never sabotage an operation. That would be unthinkable, not to mention fatal to her own career. But bringing about a successful result while working against Llyn beneath the surface was entirely possible.
Bryce was well-respected, but she wasn’t the most respected. But she was definitely one of the most ambitious.
“I hope that’s not a problem,” Bryce said, her voice one hundred percent sincere and respectful. “If you’d like, I could swing by Transfer on my way to Solway and tell him to meet you somewhere.”
Which she couldn’t, of course, given the imperative nature of her orders. Which of course she knew. “That’s all right,” he told her, matching her sincerity and mixing in a perfect facsimile of nonchalance. “I’ve lived in worse places than a warship cabin. I’ll get by.”
“Okay,” Bryce said, standing up. “I’d better get going. Don’t want to keep Captain Rhamas waiting.”
“No, you don’t,” Llyn said. “Watch yourself, and good luck. We need this one.”
“You’ll get it.” Flashing a tight smile, she left the office.
Llyn scowled after her, wondering briefly if he should screen Rhamas and warn him about his new passenger. A waste of time, he decided—even if Bryce had designs against Llyn himself, Rhamas was certainly not in her sights. Messing with him could wreck her mission, and her reputation, before it even started.
No, Llyn’s best strategy at this point was to ignore Bryce and concentrate on making sure the Andermani part of the operation was a resounding success.
And, of course, not getting himself killed in the process.
* * *
He was sorting his clothing into the various cubbies in his cabin when he had an unexpected visitor.
“Settling in?” Quint asked, pausing just inside the doorway.
“Getting there,” Llyn assured her. “Ms. Bryce on her way?”
“Heading toward the hyper limit at an impressive two hundred thirty gees,” Quint said. “Your friends have interesting ships.”
“Yes, they do.” Llyn raised his eyebrows. “Fast and untraceable.”
Quint’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “Touché,” she said. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.” The smile faded. “Or can you?”
“Not at all,” Llyn assured her. “In your place, I’d have done the same thing. We’re both people who like to know who we’re working with. Sorry I can’t be more forthcoming.”
“Not a problem,” Quint said. “Your people are paying well for the privilege of being anonymous.” She held out her hand. “I brought you a present.”
“What is it?” Llyn asked, frowning as he took the data chip.
“Everything about my new fleet,” she said. “Stats, weapons systems, personnel—the works.”
“Really,” Llyn said, frowning a little harder. “Why?”
“You said earlier that you might have advice and fresh intel along the way.” She shrugged. “Advice is always better if you know as many of the parameters as possible.”
“I agree,” Llyn said, eyeing her. A hard, pragmatic merc chief. In some ways, she was just like the Volsungs’ Admiral Cutler Gensonne.
In other ways, she was an exact polar opposite.
“Thank you,” he said, tucking the data chip into a secure pocket. “As soon as I’m finished here I’ll get started on it.”
“Good,” Quint said. “Dinner’s in the wardroom at nineteen hundred. We’ll expect you there.”
“You—? Excuse me?”
“You said we’re both the type who like to know who we’re working with,” Quint said. “Might as well start out over a good meal.”
She nodded briskly and left the cabin.
For a long moment Llyn stared after her. He was used to not trusting people, and being not trusted in return. And civility and smiles aside, he certainly didn’t trust Commodore Quint. Not yet, anyway.
But at the very least, this trip was starting to look very interesting. Very interesting indeed.