Reclamation (Book One of the Art of War Trilogy), page 35
‘Is he going to kill him?’ Vondur asked.
‘No. It’s a chemical compound we developed in the wake of Hadan’s Reach. Tailored for kaygryn. Makes them talk.’
‘What, like truth serum?’
‘Sure.’
‘How long does it last?’
‘Never as long as you’d like.’
Halder jabbed the syrette into the thrashing Iyadi’s neck, squeezed the tube and tossed it away. He sat back and gave it a few minutes to work its way into the alien’s bloodstream. It was immediately clear when it had taken effect; Iyadi became woozy, his head lolled and his breathing became deeper and more laboured.
‘Commander Iyadi, why did you travel to Vos’Shan?’ Halder asked levelly.
‘To… plan,’ Iyadi replied after a good deal of staring into space. He spoke slowly, as if he was heavily intoxicated and each word had to be physically forced out of his mouth.
‘To plan what?’
‘To plan our… yenghari…’
‘What does yenghari mean? In Terran?’
‘Yenghari…’ Iyadi replied stupidly.
‘ZEN,’ Halder said. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It is difficult, Commander. I would say either revenge or reclamation,’ ZEN said. ‘It might be neither.’
‘Which is it, kaygryn?’ Halder growled.
Iyadi shrugged slowly and with a great deal of effort, as if there were weights piled on top of his shoulders. ‘Revenge.’
‘Revenge for what?’
‘For… Hadan’s Reach. You sold our land to the provar… they killed millions of us… the UN did nothing.’
‘You left for Anternis to plan your revenge,’ Halder said, immune to the anguish in the alien’s voice. ‘Who did you plan it with?’
‘Soldiers… comrades, friends…’
‘Give me names.’
‘Ventu, Havé… Lok, Bega… Oné. Others. Many others.’
‘Any UN personnel?’
‘… Yes.’
In the viewing chamber, Vondur stood up and moved forward so that his face was so close to the two-way mirror it was practically touching it. ‘Shit,’ he said, his features creased into a deep frown.
‘How many exactly? Give me names and details,’ Halder continued.
‘Three... they… didn’t tell me their names.’
Halder pressed a button on his wrist, and a holo flickered into life above it.
‘Is this one of them?’
‘Jesus Christ… that’s Karris,’ Lyra said.
‘Who?’
‘My fucking boss!’
‘I know him…’ Iyadi slurred. A slow, deliberate finger jabbed at the holo. ‘He, he was helping us.’
Halder nodded and deactivated the holo. There was a silence, during which Vondur assumed he was talking to Takach, because after a few moments Takach nodded and exited the room.
‘The man you have identified is a United Nations Intelligence Service agent called Karris Haig,’ Halder said grimly. ‘How did you meet?’
‘Two months after I arrived on Ashan he... found me. He told me that he had been listening to my conversations and that he could help. He... hated your treaty with the provar, even after all these years. He was embarrassed and... ashamed. He wanted to help us strike back against you.’ Iyadi was talking as though comatose, staring at the table in front of him.
‘How did he help you?’
‘He... told me that we were being watched by your UNIS. He told us that UNIS on Ashan had no money, that we were being treated as a... low priority. Told us how to avoid detection. Gave us your deadzone technology to hide our activities from your drones... helped us plan revenge.’
‘What was your plan?’
‘To… attack the provar.’
‘Why?’
‘So that they would attack you.’
There was a long silence. Halder rapped a finger absently against the table top, and Vondur had to marvel at how calm the man was. His own hands were clenched into fists – fists which he would have dearly loved to pummel Iyadi to death with. He lay the deaths of his men directly at the alien’s door.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Lyra breathed. ‘I don’t believe it…’
‘Tell me how you went about putting this plan together,’ Halder said calmly. ‘You attacked the Vadian Crusade Fleet.’
‘Yes.’
‘With ten clippers.’
‘Yes.’
‘Where were these clippers? Where did you keep them?’
‘On Uvolon.’
‘Not in Vos’Shan.’
‘No… we kept them south, on an island. Karris helped us smuggle them there… got weaponry on the black market. It took… months.’
‘Then you hacked the civil aviation VI. Hid the clippers in the civilian traffic.’
‘Yes.’
‘It was a suicide mission.’
‘They volunteered. The pilots… They knew what they were doing, knew… what was being asked of them. They… hated the UN for what it had done to us. They were more than… willing to give their lives to the cause.’
Halder reclined slightly. Vondur wondered how much of this EFFECT already knew. Intelligence heavyweights in SOC had clearly been on the case.
‘We need to get the word out,’ Lyra said, her voice shaky. ‘We are on the brink of all-out war. If the Ascendancy knew that they had been tricked into this by the kaygryn–’
‘Shh! Listen!’
‘The corvette that your comrades tried to escape on. The one that got shot down. Was that part of your plan?’
‘My plan… Karris’s plan. It left fewer who knew. My skarls did not know.’
There was a short pause.
‘Then the provar began bombarding your men. Four hundred kaygryn died in the Tiberean Mountains. You’re telling me that was part of your plan too?’
‘Yes… Karris told us that UNIS was watching from the mountains… We massed troops where he told us to so that the provar would fire on us and… kill the UNIS woman inside…’
‘… Oh my God…’
‘… Shit. Lyra…’
Halder clasped his hands together again. ‘You’re telling me that you sacrificed four hundred of your own men for the chance that the provar would accidentally kill one UNIS agent?’
‘They didn’t know… It was an officially sanctioned exercise. It had to be a large number with… anti-orbit weaponry to pose a threat to the provar… Your man told us that the… woman posed the greatest threat to the plan… told us she was already suspicious… that her death would help to anger the UN.’
‘I’m going to kill him, Ben. I’m going to kill him. I can’t… Jesus Christ that… motherfucker.’
‘He’s already a dead man, Lyra.’ Thoughts whirled around Vondur’s head. He had no idea what to say to her. It was all too much to take in, too insane to be real, as if he were in some movie and that as soon as he climbed back out into the cold air of Sophia, the entire interrogation would be consigned to memory, imagined and free of consequence.
‘What did you do after the second rail strike?’ Halder pressed.
‘I hid... and waited. That was only the first part… of the plan. Karris told us that the UN would be slow to get involved. Reluctant. He told us that we had to… keep building the pressure.’ Iyadi’s breathing was still laboured, though noticeably improving. ‘Your President is reckless… He would react badly…’
‘What was the second part of the plan?’
‘To kill your... Valleron.’
‘That word!’ Lyra exploded. ‘Valleron re-emplacement to centre!’
‘What are you talking about?’ Vondur asked irritably. He really wished she’d stop interrupting.
‘Salvaged intelligence from the mission station said “Valleron re-emplacement to centre”. This kag asshole’s just said it again.’
‘ZEN?’ Halder asked.
‘I do not know, Commander,’ ZEN intoned.
‘What’s a Valleron, kaygryn?’
‘Valleron is a kaygryn hero… old stories, like… moral stories. Valleron was a large kaygryn, undefeatable in combat. Was killed by Ing’hen. Ing’hen was pure, good man. Valleron was powerful and arrogant. Ing’hen was poor and weak.’
‘You mean like David and Goliath?’ Halder said, and then, nearly interrupting himself, ‘I see. Valleron is what you call a Goliath.’ He fiddled with his wrist holo, producing a picture of one. ‘This?’
Iyadi nodded slowly. ‘Yes. Karris said that there were seven… Goliaths on Uvolon. We were going to get the provar to kill them. Karris said that they needed it to look like… they provoked the provar into firing… said he had a way of making it look like the UN was the… aggressor.’
Behind his mirrored visor, Halder wore a sceptical look. ‘And how exactly did he do that?’
Iyadi shrugged. ‘I do not know.’
‘Want me to zap him?’ Cole asked.
‘No,’ Halder said, helmet twitching. ‘He’s telling the truth.’ The EFFECT commander stood up, causing Iyadi to flinch, and exited the room. A few seconds later, he opened the door to the room Vondur and Lyra were in.
‘Captain,’ he said levelly. ‘What happened on Anternis? Every news station in the UN says you fired first.’
Vondur grimaced, his face a rictus of distaste. ‘Someone remotely hacked my weapons suite and released half my surface-orbit battery. Completely undetectable. Lasted maybe thirty seconds.’
‘Someone who had to have been very familiar with Goliath firmware,’ Halder said.
‘Yes. It was a triple redundancy, UNAF-grade firewall. The base controller didn’t want to know. Said I had been in control the whole time.’
Halder nodded to himself. ‘That fits.’ He ducked back out of the room without another word. A few moments later, Vondur saw him re-enter the interrogation chamber.
‘So,’ Halder said, resuming his seat. ‘You hooked up with Haig, you cooked up a plan, you smuggled your clippers on to the planet, and you knocked off Agent Staerck.’ He spoke as if he were reading a shopping list. ‘Then you got four hundred of your own men killed, your skarls killed, you got a few Goliaths killed, you got a few provar killed, you got…’ He performed an elaborate shrug. ‘… a few thousand UN civilians killed. That was all part of your plan?’
Iyadi shook his head emphatically. ‘No. There was more to it... Much did not work. Corvette was supposed to be… shot down over… human city, for one.’
‘But that was the gist of it?’
‘The... what?’
‘The gist. The… that was broadly what you intended?’
Iyadi offered what could have been a shrug and a nod. ‘Do not ask me to… mourn for your people. I… hate them. I hate them.’ Tears suddenly brimmed in the kaygryn’s eyes, but it was difficult to tell whether they were the result of anger or distress. ‘Soon you will see… that your actions have… consequences.’
If the kaygryn’s comments fazed Halder in any way, his voice did not betray it. ‘Is that something that Karris Haig told you to say?’
Iyadi shook his head quickly, growling. ‘I have told you... everything I know.’
‘The dose is wearing off,’ Cole remarked. He was right. The transformation in Iyadi’s demeanour was slow but obvious.
Halder leaned forward. ‘What about the refugees? Your people crossed the border into Anternis – were you with them?’
Iyadi’s head lolled again. ‘… Yes. It was the only way to get me offworld, on your disaster ship. The other one told me.’
‘The other one?’
‘The UNIS agent. The woman told me. It was the plan. I knew that the provar would attack… Ashan. Need to move to next phase; needed to get offworld before… country destroyed.’
‘Why?’ Halder hissed, his curiosity getting the better of him. ‘What are you hoping to achieve? Once the provar find out that you’ve been manipulating them, they will destroy your people. They have already begun! Do you think that the UN will stop them?’
‘You have no… idea what is going to happen. No idea at all.’ A grin split Iyadi’s face. ‘It is too late for the UN now. Too late. The Reclamation has already begun.’
Halder leaned forward and grabbed Iyadi by one of his leathery ears. ‘Tell me what you know or I’ll pump you full of so many drugs it’ll make your fucking heart explode,’ he snarled.
Iyadi laughed, the final few drops of the serum metabolised by his system. The drug’s effects couldn’t have lasted more than ten minutes.
‘I don’t know anything else.’
‘All right,’ Halder said, letting go of the kaygryn’s ear. ‘All right.’ He took the knife from the pouch in Cole’s waist, and in one smooth movement jammed it into Iyadi’s left eyeball. The kaygryn threw his head back and screamed, writhing in his chair so hard it looked as though the chains would snap. Halder watched impassively as Iyadi roared in Argish, cursing so forcefully that the blood vessels in his neck bulged and pulsed visibly.
‘So you do torture people,’ Vondur said to Lyra.
‘Of course we do. So what? You feel sorry for him?’
‘… No. No, I… suppose I don’t.’
*
They tortured Iyadi for another three hours, but for all the EFFECT men’s numerous and imaginative efforts, the kaygryn yielded little further useful intelligence. Whoever had orchestrated the plan had compartmentalised information at least reasonably competently. Vondur left after twenty minutes and sat in the antechamber alone, listening to the screams.
At the end of the three hours, a single gunshot rang out from the interrogation cell. A few minutes later, ZEN and the three helmetless EFFECT agents walked out. Halder was sweating and his body armour was covered in kaygryn blood and brains. Takach and Cole looked as impassive as ZEN.
‘I want to find out who this third person is,’ Halder snapped to the other two. ‘I’ll speak to Johnson. Vondur, get Staerck and let’s go.’
Vondur stood and recovered Lyra from the observation room. She had opted to watch Iyadi’s torture and death via ZEN’s optic feed, so he had left her in there, unwilling to remain in her company.
‘We’re leaving,’ he said to her over his IHD. ‘Did you enjoy that?’ It was hard to keep the bitterness from his voice.
Lyra didn’t reply.
NERVE CENTRE
‘This human empire that we have built is fragile. Frighteningly so. You would not believe me if I told you what went on in the dark corners of the galaxy while the Veigis Worlds slept. Do not be fooled into thinking that the size of the United Nations makes it infallible. We have been to the brink and back so many times… The last great war, when it finally comes, will almost be a relief.’
UNIS Director Garlan Pol, during the Long Insanity
Josette hummed loudly to herself as she donned the sprite suit. Loudly and tunelessly. United Nations Solar Operations Command was a ghost town; there was no one nearby to hear.
The sprite suit slipped on easily enough, the fabric melding together in an invisible seam running from her navel to the crown of her smooth, bald head. Once it had closed, external nanosensors synced with her IHD, reuniting her with her sight. She gathered up her clothes, underwear and wig and folded them neatly into a sealed plastic bag, which, in turn, she placed into a holdall. She then dumped the holdall on to the chaise longue next to her and donned the rest of the suit: a featureless black helmet less than a centimetre thick, a pair of featureless black boots and a gauntlet with an inbuilt monofilament needleflex IHD scrubber.
She looked ludicrous, of course, but that was not the point. A sprite suit was the only technology capable of affording the wearer full-spectrum refraction shielding that was virtually impenetrable to EFFECT-grade LRIS. Even UNIS-issue Mantix, with its bulky power cells, could be cracked from prolonged invasive scanning. The sprite would stay cloaked indefinitely. Its only downside was that it was incompatible with UN issue rail weapons, given the particular electromagnetic interference, and chemical-based propellants were so loud they rendered the suit’s stealth capabilities pointless. For this particular murder at least, she was going to have to get within touching distance.
She activated the sprite’s refraction shielding with her IHD, then checked the mirror to make sure she was invisible. Once satisfied, she picked up the bag, exited the room and walked casually down the corridor. Beyond the floating black holdall, the foot-shaped divots in the carpet and the vaguely perceptible shimmer against the straighter lines of the hallway, even a determined observer would see almost nothing. Slow movements would shield her further still, and stillness granted complete invisibility, though given how empty SOC was, she was free to work up to a quiet run. She entered a stairwell at the end of the corridor, made her way up the steps and stopped at the fourth floor.
A scan of that storey told her that there were three warm bodies, including the one she was about to make quite cold. She tiptoed now, creeping along one side like a cat, running interference on all the sensors as she went. She stepped carefully through pools of watery orange light as the sun dipped below the horizon and moved to a large office that looked out across the boulevard at the front of the building.
Her quarry stood inside, facing out the window, animated in conversation. The door was closed, which was annoying, but far from insurmountable. She placed the holdall down and activated the suit’s audio damper as she turned the handle, fortunately concealing what turned out to be a penetratingly loud squeal, and slowly pressed the door open. Grimacing, she slunk inside, hoping desperately that the glass panes set into the door would not catch the sunlight, and carefully closed it again.
‘... It’s as we expected.... Yes, we’ll find them. I already have some ideas as to who it is... Excellent work, Commander... I look forward to receiving the debrief...’
Josette crouched at the back of the room, listening. Judging by the two-minute pause between every sentence, the target was talking via the FTL comms array to someone exceedingly distant.
