LMS Golden Gladiator, Lagerfeld system nearspace
“Captain says we’ve been given clearance to dock,” Shinoda said. “We’ll be at the orbital transfer station in a couple of hours.”
“And the President Cruz?”
“Arrived yesterday. She’ll be leaving for Scobie’s World on schedule, though we might have a problem.”
“A problem?”
“Yup. Seems somebody fired a couple of missiles at our beloved moderator’s shuttle. Sadly, the shuttle survived, and so did she.”
“An assassination attempt?” Michael said, frowning. His mind raced as he tried to work out what it all meant. “You sure?”
“It’s all over the news.”
“That doesn’t sound good. It’s going to destabilize everything, and that’s the last thing we need right now.”
“It gets worse,” Shinoda said. “The shit has really hit the fan. The Feds have arrested most of the officers above the rank of commodore in the fleet. They’ve been charged with everything from conspiracy to murder to stealing the office teacups.”
“What about Admiral Jaruzelska?”
“She wasn’t mentioned by name, but yes, almost certainly.”
Michael was still stunned by the news. “We’ll have to work out how this affects us.”
“That’ll be hard. Things are pretty chaotic. But there is some good news.”
“We could do with some.”
“They’re saying a large force of Fleet units left Terranovan nearspace without proper authorization only minutes after the arrests. Planetary defense told them to turn back, but they refused. The antiballistic missile batteries were ordered to fire on them, but there was a problem with their fire-control systems. The missiles refused to lock onto ships squawking friendly IFF codes, so they got away.”
“I’m shocked,” Michael said with a huge grin. “Such incompetence.”
“It gets better. Apparently the same thing happened at Comdur.”
“They’ve pushed the button on Juggernaut,” Michael said. Then it hit him hard. “The Hammers. They’ll know that we’re coming after them.”
“Will they? How?”
“Why else would an entire task force leave Terranova and Comdur nearspace without authorization from Fleet?”
Shinoda thought about that for a while. “Wouldn’t they think,” she said, “that it was just … I don’t know … a precautionary move following the assassination attempt?” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “No, that makes no sense. Warships don’t move without orders.”
“They don’t, and even if the Hammers aren’t sure,” Michael said, “they’ll assume an attack is on the way. Until the missing units are relocated, they have to, and don’t be surprised if they close their nearspace to all civilian traffic.”
“Damn,” Shinoda muttered, her face bleak, “that wouldn’t be good. What do we do now?”
“Push on, find the first dead-letter box on Scobie’s. It’ll have the latest update on the Juggernaut. There’ll be new orders for us.”
Shinoda nodded. “I’ll go brief the rest of the team.”
“Let me guess. On the mats again?”
“Yup.”
“Slow learners, you marines.”
“Watch it, spacer boy,” Shinoda replied with a feral smile as she left.
Michael sat back, wondering where Juggernaut stood now. With Jaruzelska under arrest, Rear Admiral Moussawi was now in command. He was renowned for his mix of surgical skill and ruthless aggression. Michael had heard Jaruzelska describe him as one of the best Fleet commanders the Federated Worlds had ever seen; coming from her, that was high praise. But with the Hammers now expecting an attack, the chances of the operation succeeding had to have worsened no matter how good the commander was.
The butcher’s bill for Operation Juggernaut had always promised to be high; it now looked to be much, much worse. Michael could only hope that Moussawi would not be deterred.
Michael dropped his gear onto the deck and rolled into the bunk that occupied most of the cramped economy-class cabin. In the time it had taken to clear arrival formalities-and they had been formalities; Michael had never seen people so disinterested as Lagerfeld’s border security officers-the newsvids had reported the closure of Hammer nearspace in anticipation of what Polk himself had said would be a full-scale attack by rogue elements from the Federated Worlds Fleet.
“You got that one right, you Hammer asshole,” Michael had muttered.
The mission was screwed. There was no way for him and Shinoda to get to Commitment. It was over. Juggernaut was doomed. And worse than any of that, his chances of seeing Anna again were … he wondered what was less than zero. And he was a nonperson, a dead nonperson. The false identities he had been given would get him dirtside on Scobie’s and then onto Commitment, but they weren’t good enough to last him the rest of his life.
If he discounted blowing his brains out, his options had dwindled to one: flee to the outer edge of humanspace. There he could find some ratfucked system a thousand light-years from the Hammer of Kraa where nobody gave a damn who you were or what you’d done.
Just the sort of place where a dead nonperson could forget the past and carve out a new life.