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  General Anders Aguinaldo glanced over at Porter and said, reluctantly, “No, ma’am, I am not. But we discussed it, all the Chiefs did, and the consensus was to ask for an invasion. I did not think at the time, nor do I think even after what we’ve just been presented, that the evidence for a full-scale military intervention is compelling. But I’ll support Admiral Porter if that is your decision, ma’am, even though my Marines are really spread pretty thin right now.” He paused, reflecting.

  “Well, Anders, we weren’t going to rely on the Corps—” Admiral Porter began, but Chang-Sturdevant cut him off with a wave of her hand.

  “Do you have something more to add? she asked Aguinaldo.

  “Ma’am, Mr. Gustafferson’s report said the Cabbage Patch facility is being used to develop a crop-killing fungus. But what I can’t get out of my mind is the facility’s history as a weapons research center. Gustafferson as much as said his conclusion wasn’t confirmed yet. In whatever we do, we have to take into consideration the fact that the Union of Margelan might have a new weapon we know nothing about and have no effective defense against.”

  “I understand,” she said, then turned to the Attorney General. “Mr. Long?”

  “No, no, no, Madam President. A covert action is what we need here, not an invasion force. General Aguinaldo is right, there’s not enough evidence to support the Admiral’s plan. We need to know more—particularly if there are new weapons involved.”

  “Jay?”

  Adams smiled to himself before he gave his opinion. He really didn’t care how Lavager was removed, so long as he, as Director of the CIO, got the credit for starting the operation. He gave a mental shrug and thought, Sometimes you’ve got to goose the goose. “I think something must be done and soon, Madam President. Lavager must be neutralized, and however that is done is fine by me. I would urge discretion, however. Perhaps breaking down the door, as Admiral Porter recommends, is a bit too much.”

  “Marcus?”

  “Send someone in there to find out exactly what Lavager is up to. I think this is a job for Marine Force Recon.”

  “Gentlemen?” she asked her advisors. They all began talking at once. She held up her hands. “All right, gentlemen, all right, that’s enough. Here is what we will do. General Aguinaldo, send a Force Recon team to Atlas to conduct up close reconnaissance of the Cabbage Patch. Find out what they’re doing there. If Lavager is preparing to extend his power by starving the member worlds of the Confederation, I shall authorize any, I repeat, any, operation to remove him, up to and including assassination.

  “Admiral Porter, keep that corps-size force at the ready. General Aguinaldo, send out the word. AG, see what precedents we have for filing murder charges against a head of state. Gentlemen, thank you all for your hard work, you in particular, Jay. CIO has come through again. Good morning to you all.”

  R-76 Desk, a Week Later

  So that’s the plan? Anya Smiler wondered, sitting at her cubicle and reading the report Murchison had filed on his meeting with the President. They were going to send in a reconnaissance team to see what Lavager was doing. The Chief had generously offered the expertise of the CIO’s laboratories to analyze whatever the team found. It was nearing the end of the day. Well, she didn’t feel like going home. She opened the file of recent dispatches from the R-76 Quadrant. It was the usual stuff: recent economic statistics on the various worlds in the Quadrant, analyses of recent political events on different worlds. Nothing she wasn’t familiar with. She exited the file and sat staring at her console, wondering what was happening back on Atlas.

  Anya Smiler possessed not only a very brilliant mind but also a photographic memory, an invaluable tool for an intelligence analyst. She had the highest security clearances and sat on a good number of task forces so she had access to a lot of extremely sensitive intelligence information. She wondered if she knew any of the current staff at the embassy in New Granum. Using passwords and codewords from her Atlas assignment, she called up the personnel roster for the embassy. And got in! Someone had forgotten to remove her from the access list. Each CIO station chief reported regularly on the embassy staff and official visitors; information about their personalities, their shortcomings as individuals, their assignments, the purpose of all official visits to embassies from off-world government officials. Often the information contained in these reports could be used to get unwilling staffers to cooperate in clandestine operations, but it is the very nature of intelligence types to collect information for its own sake, because one never knew, even the most inconsequential fact could some day prove useful. Names and faces flashed across Anya’s screen. She didn’t recognize any of them. She scrolled down to the listing of recent notable arrivals and departures. Suddenly she saw a face she recognized among the recent visitors. It belonged to someone calling himself Heintges Germanian, “courier.” He had arrived the day before Gustafferson’s murder and departed the day after. The face was an ordinary one, but she recognized it at once because it belonged to someone she’d seen before, a man named Wellers Henrico, not Germanian. He’d visited the embassy at New Granum when she was assigned there and that time, too, his visit had been a very short one. He had arrived at New Granum just before the bungled assassination attempt on Lavager, the one that had resulted in the death of Lavager’s wife, and he’d left immediately afterward. On that occasion “Henrico” had also been a courier sent to deliver high-priority messages that could not be left to an FTL drone so his brief stay had seemed perfectly normal. But why the name change? Was it coincidence that twice he had arrived just before and then departed just after an assassination? That sinking feeling that had been sitting on her stomach for days suddenly became very acute.

  Anya exited the Atlas file and, hands shaking, entered her password to open an Ultra Secret listing of “special agents” assigned to Atlas. Henrico was a contract assassin. So that was it: The military would send in a deep recon team to penetrate the secret lab and find out what was going on. Meanwhile, CIO would infiltrate an assassin who would stand by for word from headquarters, probably based on what the lab analysis revealed, but maybe only on the whim of Adams, and then Lavager would be assassinated. Or maybe he would be murdered anyway, because the Director thought he knew better than anyone else in the Confederation how to solve problems among the member worlds. She controlled her stomach only with difficulty.

  Anya got unsteadily to her feet. She took a few moments to compose herself and then headed for the CIO laboratory facility.

  Office of the Director, CIO Laboratories

  Dr. Blogetta O’Bygne, director of the labs, was a heavyset, middle-aged woman who made a show of wearing very thick lenses in her spectacles. She could easily have had her vision corrected through minor surgery but preferred the old-fashioned glasses because she thought they added a scholarly air to her appearance. But over the years, as one pair after another of her spectacles had gotten lost or broken, Blogetta had wondered if she should have the surgery after all and just keep the spectacles as props. As Anya Smiler came through the security door into the inner sanctum of the labs, Dr. O’Bygne was silently considering that possibility. Her health insurance would cover the cost of the procedure.

  “Annie!” she exclaimed, noticing Anya.

  “Bloggie!” The two women embraced warmly. They had known each other for years and got along famously.

  “Well, my dear, you certainly look glum. Has Annie taken Atlas’s job and put the world on her shoulders?” She laughed enormously at her pun. Anya smiled wanly. “It sure feels that way, Bloggie, it sure does.” She took a stool beside her friend’s workbench and sighed. “Not much going on down here today,” she commented. Usually the labs were crowded with industrious technicians, analyzing specimens, testing new devices, or whatever else technicians did.

  “Yes, it’s a slow day.” O’Bygne grinned. “I let everybody go early to get a jump on the weather. Don’t tell old Adams.” She put a finger to her lips. Anya laughed. She felt better. “Blo
ggie, can you do me a favor?”

  “Anything.” She nodded.

  “In a while you’ll be receiving samples from a presidentially authorized operation we’re conducting on Atlas. Would you let me know when the stuff comes in and would you—,” she hesitated, “—let me know what you find out?”

  “Ummm, ‘presidentially authorized,’ eh? Ohhh, Annie! What are you up to now? You old field officers positively scare the joss sticks right off my mantelpiece.”

  Anya grinned. “The usual, but as desk officer I want to know what you find out first.”

  “I’ll bet you do.” O’Bygne made a disparaging noise. “But hey, anything as long as it stands a chance of putting the screws to Adams. Count on me.” She held out a pudgy hand and they shook.

  R-76 Quadrant Desk, CIO Headquarters, Hunter, Earth

  Back in her cubicle Anya sat at her station and tried to calm herself. Her hands were shaking and she was nearly in tears. She took several deep breaths. Okay, okay, she told herself, take it easy! With effort she managed to control her breathing. After a few moments her hands stopped shaking. What to do?

  Well, first priority was get out of the CIO! But not before she got to the bottom of what Adams was up to on Atlas. She had a friend at the Ministry of War. That ministry hated the CIO. But not yet, not yet. On her way home Anya Smiler stopped at an FTL Union office and paid a week’s salary to send a private message to Jorge Lavager on Atlas. Tim Omix called her that night, she put him off, something about a headache.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Operations Division, Fourth Fleet Marines, MCB Camp Basilone, Halfway

  The call for the commander of Fourth Force Recon Company to report to the Fourth Fleet Marine G3 was routine enough, right down to the “. . . at your earliest convenience . . .” which is military politesse for “Drop whatever you’re doing and get over here right now!”

  Commander Walt Obannion, CO Fourth Force Recon Company, dropped whatever he was doing and called for his driver. Five minutes after receiving the call, he walked into the innocent-looking, but nearly impregnable building that housed Fourth Fleet Marines’ Operations department.

  “Good morning, sir,” Commander Ronzo, the assistant G3, greeted him. “Th—He’s waiting for you.”

  “Thanks,” Obannion said, and headed for the private office of Colonel Lar Szilk, the G3. Had Ronzo begun to say “They’re waiting” and changed his mind? Obannion wondered. Never mind; he’d find out soon enough.

  “Come!” Szilk said when Obannion knocked on the frame of his office door. He gestured for Obannion to close the door behind him.

  “Good mor . . .” Obanion saw that Szilk wasn’t alone and came to attention, facing the Marine sitting on the sofa to the side of the G3’s desk. “Sir!”

  “At ease, Walt,” Lieutenant General Indrus, the commanding general of Fourth Fleet Marines, said mildly. “Sit down, get comfortable. This is informal, that’s why I sent for you to come here instead of to my office.”

  “Very good, sir.” It might be an informal meeting, but a lowly commander still called a general officer

  “sir” no matter how much the general first-named him.

  “Have you ever run an operation by presidential special order?” Indrus asked casually.

  “None that were presented to me as by ‘presidential special order,’ nossir.”

  “I didn’t think so. I’ve been a Marine for forty-five years, and this is only the third one I’ve seen.” He paused and looked inward, wondering if he should restate that; one of the other two orders had to do with whatever it was that was going on with 34th FIST, and he’d only heard of that one, he hadn’t actually seen it.

  Indrus leaned forward and handed over a sheet of paper. Obannion raised his eyebrows. Force Recon missions of whatever classification were always need-to-know, some even Ultra Secret, need-to-know. But what kind of mission was so secret that it had to be hand-delivered by a top-level Marine general, so secret that it had to be committed to easily destroyed paper rather than crystal? He gingerly accepted the sheet and read.

  FROM: The President of the Confederation of Human Worlds TO: Commanding General, 4th Fleet Marines RE: Special Orders

  CLASSIFICATION: Ultra Secret Eyes Only

  1. Fourth Force Recon Company will deploy Force Recon resources to the geopolitical entity called the Union of Margelan on Atlas for a classified mission. See Annex 1.

  2. Appropriate transportation will be provided from Halfway to Atlas and for the Force Recon resources’ return. See Annex 2.

  3. The nature of Objective One is twofold:

  a) To determine whether or not the facility near the mountain town of Spondu, called the “Cabbage Patch,” forty kilometers from New Granum, the capital city of the geopolitical entity called the Union of Margelan, is a weapons research facility or manufactory, or in fact an agricultural research center.

  b) If the facility is determined to be a weapons reasearch facility or manufactory: To conduct a raid to destroy it and, if possible, secure evidence of weapons research or manufactory to bring back to Fourth Fleet Marines HQ.

  c) If the facility is an agricultural research station: To collect specimens of what is being developed and analyze said specimens using equipment to be provided to the Force Recon resources tasked with the mission. See Annex 3.

  4. The Marines participating in this mission will:

  a) Make planetfall via surreptitious means to be provided by the Confederation Navy;

  b) Wear appropriate uniforms and conduct themselves at all times as in hostile territory;

  c) Do their utmost to avoid all contact with locals with the single exception of the raid, if necessary, on the facility.

  5. The Marines participating in this mission will, upon completion of the mission, whether or not said completion neccessitates a destructive raid on the “Cabbage Patch” facility, depart Atlas in a surreptitious manner so that no one on Atlas will know they have departed.

  Annex 1. Personnel:

  1. The mission is to be conducted by one Force Recon Platoon, plus one navy corpsman, minus its sniper squad.

  Annex 2. Transportation:

  1. Transport from Fourth Fleet Marines Headquarters to Atlas. a) Personnel will depart Fourth Fleet Marines Headquarters on the fast frigate CNSS Admiral Nelson , currently en route to Halfway.

  2. Transport from Atlas to Fourth Fleet Marines Headquarters. a) The CNSS Admiral Nelson will remain in orbit around Atlas until completion of the mission. Marines from Objective One will rendezvous with CNSS Admiral Nelson for return transport to Halfway.

  Annex 3.

  1. A compact genetic analysis machine will be provided to the Force Recon resources conducting Objective One with which to analyze organic specimens from the so-called “Cabbage Patch.”

  by Special Order,

  Madam Cynthia Chang-Sturdevant,

  President,

  Confederation of Human Worlds

  Obannion looked at the back side of the paper after reading the orders, then at Indrus. The orders didn’t contain anything so far out of the ordinary that they required a special presidential order, or hand-delivery by a lieutenant general. But there was that puzzling “Objective One” without an “Objective Two” mentioned, plus paragraphs 3A, 4A, and 5A without “B” paragraphs. “Sir?”

  Indrus looked at Szilk. “I’m sorry, Lar. Need-to-know. Would you excuse us, please.”

  “Certainly, sir.” It may have been phrased as a polite request, but Lieutenant General Indrus had ordered Colonel Szilk to leave his own office. The colonel obeyed the general’s order.

  “There’s more,” Indrus said when he and Obannion were alone. This time he handed over two sheets of paper.

  Obannion read the first page, which was exactly the same as the first page he’d read. Then he read page two.

  “Allah’s pointed teeth,” he breathed when he finished reading. He looked up at the commanding general and, before he could think about it, blurted, “Has th
is been authenticated, sir?” Had he thought about it, he might not have asked.

  Indrus looked at him with approval. “I’m glad you asked that, Walt. That was my first reaction, too. I sent a back-channel to Marcus Berentus, asking for verification.”

  Obannion fleetingly wondered how many regulations Indrus had violated, bypassing the chain of command and going directly to the Minister of War for verification of orders.

  “I’ve never seen orders with a Darkside penalty attached to them before.”

  “I have, Walt. You do know what that means.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Anyone who says anything . . .”

  “If anyone who knows about Objective Two says anything to anyone who doesn’t, everyone who knows about it goes to Darkside.”

  To most citizens of the Confederation, Darkside was a mythical place; a bogeyman used by frustrated parents to frighten misbehaving children into good behavior. But it was real, very real. Nobody who didn’t need to know where it was knew its location. A sentence to the penal world called Darkside was for life; nobody committed to Darkside ever left, not even in death for burial on their home world. If everyone with the need-to-know about the mission was under threat of sentence to Darkside, that explained why Obannion had never heard even a whisper of an assignment like the one before him carried out by Force Recon—if there ever had been such a mission. Indrus gave Obannion a moment to absorb the implications of the penalty, then got briskly back to business.

  “I know that all of your Marines have high enough security clearances for the mission on the first page of these orders, and I believe you have snipers who have high enough clearances for the second mission. Is that right?”