“The base has three orbital forts, you see,” Daniel said, now switching to intercom to keep private a conversation of no general interest. Carets of red light stabbed into the display. “Because of tidal forces from the primary, that’s Getica, they can’t use an automatic defense array—”
A constellation of nuclear mines in orbit, each ready to punch a light-speed rod of charged particles through a hostile vessel.
“—unless they were willing to renew it every week. The orbital forts are powered, of course.”
“I see,” said Adele to indicate her presence. As she listened, her wands called up a catalog of the frequencies and codes on which the Tanais forts had operated in the past. The information had been gathered by visiting RCN vessels over six decades.
The Strymon fleet didn’t pay nearly as much attention to communications security as it should: when a code changed, it generally reverted to one that had already been used in the past. The pirates who were the main threat to Strymon apparently didn’t concern themselves with signals intelligence.
“The Sailing Directions give a hailing point sixty thousand miles short of Tanais and in a direct line between the satellite and her primary,” Daniel continued. His highlight this time formed a tiny sphere in the blankness, trundling slowly across the screen in concert with the large, peach-colored Getica and the smaller, bluish ball that was Tanais. “We’re going to exit a little farther out than that just to be safe. We’re not expected, and I don’t want to startle some sleepy watch officer into thinking he’s being attacked.”
Adele created a probability rota for codes and frequencies. There was no reason to hunt for a solution if one were already at hand. With the algorithms Mistress Sand provided, the Princess Cecile’s main computer could turn any intercepted transmission into plain speech within minutes if not seconds, but even short delays could be significant.
A quarter second was enough time for Adele Mundy to draw her pistol and fire a pellet into the brain of another human being, for example; even less on a good day.
“Two minutes to exit,” Mon announced.
“Ah—it appears that Getica is on the other side of the sun from Strymon,” Daniel went on in sudden concern. “When we arrive and during the whole period we’ll be docked there. Will that be a problem for you, Adele?”
“There’s arrangements for message traffic between the base and Strymon, surely?” Adele said. Her wands quivered, putting her question into electronic form almost without her conscious volition. Data sprang to life on her display. “Yes, of course. A trio of transponder stations at three hundred million miles. There’ll be delays, of course, and probably some corruption, but nothing that will prevent me from carrying out my tasks.”
“As if anything could, short of death,” Daniel said. The intercom didn’t transmit his chuckle, but she heard it faintly from across the bridge.
“I like to think so,” Adele said. She allowed herself a smile, though there wasn’t a great deal of humor in it.
Her work for Mistress Sand would be mostly archival. Conspirators—competent ones, at any rate—would shut down their operations while a Cinnabar squadron was in port, but there would remain vestiges of past activities that they couldn’t remove even if they realized the need to do so.
Tanais would have a supposedly secure link to all government databases on Strymon proper. Adele would tap it within a few hours of the Princess Cecile’s arrival. Sorting for evidence of treachery would take time, but she was confident that before the squadron was ready to leave the system, the only thing that would prevent her from finding what she was looking for was total innocence on the part of Pleyna Vaughn and her government.
Adele’s smile grew minutely broader without gaining much in the way of humor. She didn’t believe in innocence as a concept, save perhaps in children like her late sister, Agatha.
Any responsible government in Strymon would have opened lines of communication to the Alliance. But if the present one had done so, its members would go the way . . . Agatha, say, had gone. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.