Scornful Stars Read online

  The courier’s captain, a thin middle-aged Cygnan who wore her hair in a ponytail threaded through an old cap, came to check on Bleindel and his comrades when Asfoor got under way. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Liddle,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m Perla Sozzini, ship’s captain. We’re now accelerating along our transit course and expect to activate our warp ring in about four and a half hours. That should give us a fifty-six-hour transit to Meliya. You’re welcome to spend time in the crew lounge or other common spaces, but the engine room is off-limits to passengers—there are some safety concerns, as I’m sure you can imagine—and we really can’t accommodate more than one guest on the bridge at a time. You’re welcome to visit if you like, but if our watchstander is busy and he or she asks you to leave, we’ll need you to return below.”

  “I understand,” Bleindel said. The name Liddle was part of his operational cover. For that matter, so was Icarus Technologies, the firm for which Mr. Liddle purportedly worked. “We’ll make sure we stay out of your crew’s way.”

  Sozzini smiled without much humor. “Asfoor is tiny, Mr. Liddle. We get in our own way even when we don’t have any passengers aboard. Anyway, you’re on your own for breakfast and lunch—you can help yourself to anything in the pantry or the cold storage case with the blue door. I’m afraid it’s not much more than prepackaged frozen meals and a selection of spreads for toast and such. Oh, and you’re welcome to join the crew for dinner, although it’s whatever our cook fixes. We’ll probably eat in two shifts because we only have six seats at the mess table.”

  “We understand that we’re not paying for fine dining and four-star service, Captain.”

  “Good.” Sozzini glanced around the tiny cabin, perhaps making sure that Bleindel and Holm hadn’t somehow managed to trash it already after an hour’s occupancy. “So what does Icarus Technologies do, anyway?”

  “Advanced materials manufacturing,” Martin Holm replied, making use of the cover story. If anybody bothered to check, they’d find a small company called Icarus Technologies listed in Dahar’s regional business directories, and not much more than that. “We’re based in Neda, but we’ve got a customer in the Electorate who requested urgent consultation about a problem. We’re bringing special samples to Meliya to meet our local sales representatives.”

  “Okay, then. Just let me know if there’s anything you need.” Sozzini went back to her duties, her curiosity evidently satisfied.

  For two and a half days, Bleindel had his team carefully survey the cramped passageways and compartments of the tiny ship and keep watch over their special equipment under the guise of stretching their legs or making themselves comfortable in the crew lounge. He instructed Weiss and Mayer, the other two members of the team, to avoid unnecessary conversations with the crew—not much of a difficulty, since neither specialist spoke much Jadeed-Arabi—and stick to Standard Anglic when they talked among themselves. For their own part, Asfoor’s crew of seven seemed content to leave their passengers alone. They had their own duties to attend to, after all.

  When they reached Meliya, Bleindel noted with some satisfaction that Vashaoth Teh occupied her customary berth at the planet’s orbital dock. Meliya’s spaceport was constructed around a small asteroid that had been towed into a high orbit; the military section of the spaceport consisted of a set of docking cradles fashioned from the upper surface of the rock, and an adjoining supply depot. Asfoor assumed a higher orbit a few hundred kilometers from the station, and Sozzini offered the courier’s launch to ferry over her passengers.

  “How long do you expect to remain in Meliya?” he asked the courier captain when his team was ready to depart.

  “Twenty-four hours,” Sozzini said. “We turn things around pretty quickly here. If you need to arrange passage back to Dahar, we come through Meliya about once a week.”

  “Depending on what our local representatives tell us, some of us might actually go back to Dahar with you tomorrow.”

  “Well, you know our rates. If no one books the guest bunks before you decide, we’d be happy to accommodate you, Mr. Liddle.”

  “I will let you know,” Bleindel told her.

  The flight from Asfoor to the station took only half an hour. He spent the trip in the launch’s tiny cockpit, watching the station—and the moored Velaran cruiser—growing larger and larger in the armored glass windows. Bleindel had made this same trip just two weeks ago, studying the normal traffic patterns and quietly working out the logistics of his scheme. Fortunately, everything seemed to be exactly where he expected it to be—he’d been worried that some unannounced arrival or unexpected bit of maintenance work in the wrong part of the station might upset his plans. Conditions are exactly as required, he mentally noted for his report to Vogt. So there!

  The launch nestled into a public-access docking cradle. Bleindel tipped the Asfoor crewman who’d piloted them to the station, then helped his small team with their personal luggage and the awkward cases containing their mission’s special equipment. The cases did indeed hold authentic-looking material samples in case anyone demanded an inspection … but, as Bleindel’s earlier reconnaissance had established, anything small enough to be carted around in a wheeled case didn’t need to pass through any sort of station security screening on arrival. He led the others to a self-storage facility on one of the station’s higher levels, and let himself into a small unit he’d rented during his last visit.

  “Is this it?” Holm asked, looking around at the ugly little locker.

  “This is it. We are exactly twenty-two meters beneath the centerpoint of the naval dock here.” Bleindel nodded to Weiss and Mayer, the weapons technicians he’d brought along for the mission. “Assemble the device. Holm and I will keep watch.”

  “Yes, sir,” Weiss replied. “Give us half an hour.” She and Mayer began opening cases and removing the compartments holding the fake samples. Beneath those, heavily shielded secret compartments held the carefully arranged components of a Vampir warp torpedo’s microfusion-bomb warhead.

  “Take your time,” said Bleindel. “We’re not in any great hurry.” He and Holm moved into the passageway outside the storage locker and made a show of fussing over the sales samples from one of the cases just in case anyone happened by … but no one did. It was the middle of the workday by Meliya Station time, and no one had any pressing need to retrieve anything from a locker during the time that Polarstern’s weapons techs were engaged in their work.

  Forty minutes later, Weiss emerged from the locker and handed Bleindel a small remote such as one might carry for a private flyer’s doors and ignition. “It’s ready, sir,” she said. “The button on top doesn’t do anything, but this small catch here”—she demonstrated it for him—“opens the case, and the real button is this, right here. Press and hold it for three seconds, and you start a one-hour timer. You’ll see a little green light here to show that the device has confirmed the signal. Press the hidden button five times quickly, and you detonate it immediately. Needless to say, you want to be at least four hundred meters away when you do that.”

  “Will the remote’s signal penetrate the station interior?” Holm asked.

  “It should, but I wouldn’t count on it if you’re more than a kilometer or two from the station. It’s a surprisingly strong transmitter for its size, but there’s a lot of rock around us.”

  “Understood,” Bleindel said. He stepped into the storage locker to examine the installation; the techs had tidied up, returning the material samples to their travel cases and arranging the cases in the back of the locker. He took a moment to fix a button-sized vidcam on one wall of the locker so that he could keep an eye on the device, then pulled down the locker door and secured the lock. “Good work. Let’s go get something to eat—we’ve got some time to kill.”

  They returned to the station’s commercial corridors, this time carrying only their personal bags, and found a completely forgettable station restaurant offering a passable selection of pub fare. Bleindel ate well, enjoying t
he taste of a meal prepared with somewhat fresher ingredients than those available in Asfoor’s tiny galley. Just in case anybody was inclined to listen in on their conversation, Holm started a vigorous discussion on the state of Neda’s professional-soccer season with Mayer, who held up his end fairly well. Weiss picked at her meal until Bleindel discreetly tapped her foot under the table. “Relax a little,” he told her quietly. “We don’t want to be conspicuous.”

  “I know. I just … there are a lot of people here.”

  “All of whom are passing through, Luna. Many of them won’t be anywhere nearby later.” Well, the restaurant staff probably would be, but Bleindel kept that observation to himself; Torpedo Technician Luna Weiss didn’t need to hear it. When the time came to settle the tab and carry on with the operation, he made sure to give their server an average tip. It might have been pointless, but there was no reason to leave the young Meliyan fuming about a stingy customer for what remained of his shift.

  After their meal, Bleindel used the station’s info assistant to book return passage for four aboard Asfoor, and commed Sozzini to confirm. “It turns out our local office had someone waiting to pick up our samples,” he told her. “I wouldn’t have brought my sales team along if I’d known. We’ll be heading back to Dahar with you after all.”

  “No problem, Mr. Liddle,” Sozzini replied. “I can send our launch over to pick you up this evening, or very early in the morning. Which do you prefer?”

  “This evening, please.”

  “Okay. Meet you at the public docking cradles at … 2200, station time. Enjoy the rest of your visit.”

  Now that the bomb was in place, Bleindel was anxious to be on his way. Unfortunately, he didn’t think he could do much to push Sozzini for an earlier departure without raising suspicions, and arranging different transportation would create more loose ends to take care of later. He resigned himself to wasting a few more hours on the station, and instructed his team to split up and look like bored travelers trying to entertain themselves for a few hours while awaiting their departure. Luna Weiss he kept with him, though. He didn’t really think she would give away anything to the sleepy Electorate security guards on the station, but he wasn’t in the business of taking unnecessary risks. He took her to a cinema on the station’s lower levels to watch a holofilm, then turned around and bought tickets for the next available show to keep her occupied until it was time to leave. In between, he sneaked peeks at the security locker’s buttom-cam feed to make sure no one took an interest in the travel cases they’d left inside.

  At 2200, Bleindel and the others met Asfoor’s launch at the docking ring, and carried their bags back on board. While Holm distracted the pilot by complaining about the lack of a good pub on Meliya Station, Bleindel quietly opened the remote and held down the trigger button until the tiny green light came on. “Well, let’s be on our way,” he announced.

  When they returned to the courier ship, he issued one more set of instructions to his team, and then went up to the tiny pilothouse. He found Perla Sozzini there, reviewing the ship’s sailing plan. “Mr. Liddle,” she said, acknowledging his presence. “You’re welcome to take in the view for a bit if you like, but I’m afraid I’m a little busy. I have a long pre-transit checklist to complete and some documents to file with Meliya Traffic Control before we depart.”

  “Please, don’t let me interrupt you,” he said. The pilothouse did offer a good view, in fact; Asfoor was too small for her bridge to be buried in the center of the hull, and the ship actually had real windows—small and armored, but windows nonetheless—that looked out on the warm green curve of the planet below and the glittering pinpoints of ships and boats in flight. Bleindel located the dark mass of Meliya Station with its blinking nav beacons, and quietly manipulated the window controls to augment the image. He didn’t have to wait long.

  Precisely on time, the uppermost level of Meliya Station blew apart in eerie silence two hundred kilometers away. The blast swallowed Vashaoth Teh’s midsection in an eruption of shattered rock and steel that hurled away docking cradles that massed hundreds of tons. Even through the protection of the smart glass that composed the bridge windows, the flash seared Asfoor’s pilothouse and left spots dancing before Bleindel’s eyes. When his vision cleared, he could make out the Velaran cruiser drifting amid clouds of molten debris, twisted and tangled in the wreckage of its docking cradle. Amazing the ship is still in one piece, he mused. Twenty meters of rock and steel must have been enough to absorb quite a lot of the warhead’s detonation. Then again, warships were quite well armored.

  “Holy shit!” Sozzini cried out, staring at the distant station in astonishment. “What the hell was that?”

  “Someone detonated a microfusion warhead on Meliya Station,” Bleindel told her. Then he drew a small mag pistol from his pocket and shot her in the head with a low-velocity round.

  More pistol shots chirped through the tiny ship’s passageways below. The Dremish agent eyed Captain Sozzini’s slumped body, twitching in the pilot’s acceleration couch, and decided that no more shots were needed. He didn’t derive any particular enjoyment from killing her—or whatever unfortunate passersby and spaceport workers and Velaran navy personnel he’d just wiped out with the bomb in the storage locker—but he needed Asfoor to complete the operation, and he simply couldn’t leave any witnesses who’d be able to tell anyone where his team had come from or where they’d gone. No, the courier ship would never be seen or heard from again … but that, of course, would reinforce the story he intended to leave behind for the Meliyan authorities.

  Martin Holm appeared at the pilothouse door, pistol in hand. He took one glance at Sozzini, and holstered the weapon. “All targets accounted for, Senior Agent,” the big lieutenant said. “The ship is secure.”

  “Good. Any difficulties?”

  “Mayer is wounded—the engineer had a weapon and a moment’s warning when we forced the hatch. Weiss is taking care of him.”

  “I’ll see what I can do for Mayer in just a moment. First give me a hand with the captain.”

  The two men removed Perla Sozzini from the seat in which she’d died, setting her down on the deck at the back of the cramped bridge. There would be time to tidy up later, but right now Bleindel had things to do. He took his dataslate from his jacket pocket, and forwarded a message he’d composed earlier to the ship’s communications system. In a few hours, it would be delivered to several news agencies down on the planet after bouncing through dozens of comm hubs … just the sort of thing a group of radicals might do in order to safeguard their true location when claiming responsibility for an attack.

  Holm glanced at the text scrolling across the comm display. “Who the devil is the Meliyan Human Revolution?” he asked.

  “Oh, I made them up,” Bleindel said, and grinned. The Velaran Electorate security forces would turn Meliya upside down for weeks chasing after that particular fiction. In fact, he wouldn’t be surprised if his imaginary terrorist group lingered on in police files and intelligence summaries for years after the authorities took stock of the manifesto he’d attached to the message—he’d always had a knack for revolutionary literature. “Let’s get out of here, Leutnant. Set course for Dahar, if you please.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Holm said. He activated the ship’s maneuvering console and powered up the drive plates, confidently spinning Asfoor’s bow toward its new course. It was the reason Bleindel had brought one of Polarstern’s officers along on the mission—he needed someone who knew how to pilot a ship and plot a warp transit.

  Two and a half days later, the Dremish agents abandoned Asfoor in the outskirts of the Dahar system, where a launch from Polarstern waited to pick them up. They pointed the empty courier ship toward interstellar space, and set her on her final course into the void.

  10

  Mersin, Dahar II

  After days of entertaining various dignitaries aboard Decisive and attending events ranging from school graduations to business-association banqu
ets to local parades, Sikander was more than ready to be on his way. He didn’t mind the parties and official affairs all that much—he’d become accustomed to those sorts of occasions growing up, after all, and he’d long ago learned that time passed much more comfortably when he made an effort to enjoy them—but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he and his ship were simply playing parts in a small spectacle that no one of importance was paying attention to any longer. As long as he was making his carefully rehearsed remarks at some little gathering or chatting with the local business leaders at another, he was conspicuously engaged in doing exactly what he was supposed to do … and Decisive was making no progress in the effort to secure Zerzura’s shipping routes or counter whatever scheme the Empire of Dremark had in mind for the region.

  He bumped into the Dremish diplomat Hanne Vogt once or twice; they exchanged no words beyond the absolute minimum acknowledgment the occasion called for. Otto Bleindel simply dropped out of sight altogether, which made Sikander wonder what exactly he was up to. Elena Pavon, on the other hand, he encountered two more times within five days of her visit to Decisive: first at a cocktail party at the Montréalais consulate in Mersin, and then again at a ceremony dedicating a new academic building at Dahar Planetary University. On the first occasion he had only a moment to chat with her before he was steered away into a conversation with the Montréalais consul, but at the reception following the dedication ceremony they found themselves virtually alone in a gallery room adjoining the reception area … or as alone as either of them normally was, since Darvesh and Elena’s personal assistant hovered nearby.