Redoubtable

19

“How do you strip away a facade of lies?” Kris asked.

“Without the cops hauling us off to jail . . . or worse?” Jack added.

“I’ve heard tell,” Professor Scrounger rumbled, “that the truth will set you free. It’s been my experience that it can’t do much of anything without a helping hand or two.”

Vicky nodded. “I know it’s not going to be easy. Just on the planet below us there are a half billion hungry people. The infrastructure is a mess. There are at least four major population centers, none of which is talking to any other, and none of them is really interested in seeing my sailors or Marines march through their streets. At least they aren’t shooting at us. Not lately.”

Vicky glanced at Chief Meindl; he gave her an approving nod.

“Nelly, could you give us a map, please?” Kris said. “I think better if I can see something.”

A lovely seascape at sunset on the left bulkhead swiftly changed into a map of the planet below. Most of the human presence on St. Petersburg spread around an inland sea someone had aptly named the Middlesea. A large peninsula jutted out into that sea; the city of St. Petersburg was located about halfway down it. The whole thing reminded Kris of something.

Then it came to her. While the peninsula looked nothing like the Italian boot back on old Earth, the blend of sea and land did have the look of the Mediterranean of humanity’s home planet.

St. Petersburg was about where Rome was. Off to the west of the nonboot was a river about where the Rhone was in France. Here the city at the mouth of it was Kiev. Almost directly south of it, on the opposite coast, was Sevastopol. The mountains behind it were actually called the Atlas Range. Far to the east, where the Nile would have been on Earth, was the River Don, with a huge estuary and the city of Moskva.

Behind each of these major cities were extended hinterlands of farms and mineral extraction that fed their industry. St. Pete and Kiev were connected by thin rail lines, as were Sevastopol and Moskva. Still, most trade between them had to be done by sea.

“Can you superimpose the basic data net?” Kris asked. Lieutenant Kostka took a minute to work the interface between his commlink and Nelly.

KRIS, THEIR GEAR IS KLUDGE CITY.

YOU CAN TELL ME THAT, BUT DON’T YOU TELL THEM.

DON’T WORRY. I AM LEARNING HOW TO LIE. I MEAN BE TACTFUL.

Leaving Kris to wonder if a tactless computer had been less trouble than one that now could lie. Oh bother.

“The official data repositories are located in the four cities. St. Petersburg is supposed to be the official one. The others are only supposed to be backups of that main one. However, the four systems have not been synched in over six months. God only knows what is going on,” Lieutenant Kostka finished with an expressive shrug.

“I really don’t see a problem,” said Chief Beni. “We’re after the data that wasn’t there in the first place. I suspect we can ignore the official data. Do you have any idea where the other databases might be physically located?”

“Or the databases involved in producing the 5-inch lasers that we’re capturing on pirate ships?” Kris added.

“The Greenfeld Navy Yard is outside St. Pete,” the admiral said. “I sent a detachment down to secure it as soon as we arrived. It had been looted and stripped bare of everything that could be carried away. Trust me, nothing is coming out of that yard but weeds.”

That left Kris with a puzzle to solve. “St. Pete’s closest to the Rim. I thought for sure it would be involved somehow in the pirate business.”

“It probably was,” Vicky said. “That’s why we’re here. We’re not just keeping an eye on you, you know. The reports we were getting back said that St. Pete was still shipping a lot of stuff through this station, but we couldn’t find out where the ships were going. Once Admiral Krätz’s squadron showed up, the station’s business has halved. And we know where everything is going and what’s in every container,” Vicky said proudly.

“Is that based on reading the bill of lading, or are you actually eyeballing the contents of the boxes?” Jack asked.

Vicky wilted. “We are reviewing the bills of lading. But with battleships tied up to the station, who’d dare lie?”

Kris didn’t say a word.

After a bit of a pause, Vicky went on. “So, we should have sailors and Marines actually break the seals and look in the containers.”

“Starting tomorrow,” Admiral Krätz said.

Kris got up and walked over to study the map. “So, where might 5-inch lasers be coming from? You said somebody wrecked St. Pete’s industry. Do any of these other cities have heavy industry?”

Vicky joined Kris at the map. “Kiev and Moskva don’t have easy access to minerals. Sevastopol has some mining going on in the Atlas Mountains. It also has several mines located down the coast of the Great Ocean. It’s set up a colony in Georgia. In the two weeks we’ve been watching, we’ve seen several ships make port at Sevastopol loaded with raw materials for the portside factories.”

“Is anyone beside me wondering how come Sevastopol is still up and running, and St. Pete took it on the chin?” Jack asked.

“Most likely it was our mistake,” the admiral said. “Once General Boyng suffered his nine-millimeter stroke, it was thought necessary to take down State Security everywhere and very quickly. I believe a cruiser was ordered to St. Pete. The Aurora had a skipper who was young and very enthusiastic, if not all that experienced. He landed at St. Pete in the middle of the night, rounded up all the black shirts, and dispatched them before dawn. By sunset that day, the city was totally out of control. Need I say more?”

Kris shook her head.

“You know, when all this is over, someone must write a book,” the professor drawled, “on how to conduct an effective coup de main. Amateurs trying their hands at it for the first time could really use some educational advice.”

“Amateurs aren’t the only ones who are out of their depth,” the admiral said, raising an eyebrow at Vicky.

She laughed. “My dad is no better than an amateur in the present situation. He’s run things the way his father and his father did before him. Then he wakes up one morning, and the same old same old isn’t there to do his bidding. Dad’s muddling through. We’re muddling through. Please, Professor. Write your book. I promise you that I and my friends will make it a best seller.”

“I will definitely think about it.”

“Well,” Kris said, returning to the topic, “if St. Pete was a disaster, why wasn’t Sevastopol?”

“There is a city manager there,” Vicky said, as if repeating what she had memorized from some report. “He is young. Eager to learn. Eager to serve. We think Manuel Artamus is his name.

“He woke up one fateful morning to find that all his black shirts had hotfooted it out of town. I imagine he rejoiced in that for all of five seconds. Then the thought must have struck him: ‘How do I run this place now?’ ” Vicky said with a lovely shrug of her shoulders.

“I guess he was smarter than the average city manager. Most know they have a black market operating in town. Every city does . . . at least here in Greenfeld territory. He either knew who headed the gangs running things or knew how to get in touch with them. By noon, he’d recruited all the smugglers and black-market types to take over the guns the black shirts had left behind. He kept his town going under new management, with hardly a hiccup.”

“And you think he may have made a deal with the pirates?” Kris said.

“Or at least with someone who knew someone who knew what the pirates needed and could match the need with a supplier.”

“And you haven’t sent your Marines to visit this guy?” Jack said.

“It didn’t seem wise,” the admiral said. “This goose is still laying eggs, even if they are of unspecified type, and it’s not like I have enough Marines that I can afford to lose a lot of them even if it is in a winning fight. And then, as you learned on Kaskatos, if I broke the place, I’d have to run the place. No thank you.”

“So we need to slice Sevastopol open and take a long, hard look at their books. Only we can’t just walk in, or even walk by and send a little bug to do it,” the professor said.

“Yes, I believe you have it right,” the admiral said.

“Kris, could we talk for a moment?” Vicky said, and drew Kris out of hearing of the others.

“Dr. Margarita Rodriguez is on St. Pete. As you can tell from the name, she comes from old Earth’s Spanish roots. In the mess that followed the shooting of the State Security troops, it didn’t pay to be a different shade of white from those around you. Her apartment house in St. Petersburg was burned, and she fled. The last report I have on Doc Maggie is of her taking passage on a small fishing vessel for Sevastopol. I don’t know if she made it, but if she’s still alive, she’s somewhere around there.”

“Oh my,” Kris said, for want of something stronger. “So my lasers and pirate gear are likely buried in the same haystack as your Maggie.”

“I believe so,” Vicky said.

“And you don’t dare run a Marine op in that area.”

“Correct.”

“And you’re looking at me because?” Kris said.

“Because your Captain Montoya is dark, as is Abby. Compared to my pale skin, you’re positively tanned. Kris, I don’t have a single officer who can walk the streets of Sevastopol without starting a riot or getting hauled in for being a spy from St. Pete. You’re my only hope.”