By Other Means (19 page)

The Alliance ambassador looked rather ill at that moment, as most of the humans in the room gaped openly at her.

“Captain Aida!” The Ambassador, the human one, shouted at her, “Have you lost your
mind
!?”

“Probably,” Sorilla answered in a flat monotone, “Somewhere between Hayden and where Valkyrie vanished, I think.”

She turned her full focus on the closest alien holding a weapon on her, “So? You want to do him with my sidearm?”

The alien hesitantly reached out and took the proffered weapon, considering it closely for a moment before gripping it as he’d seen the other humans handle their weapons and turn it on the Ambassador.

“I suppose this is the best way to handle things,” He said coldly, his long digit curling around the trigger and squeezing.

When, a moment later, nothing had happened Sorilla dryly spoke again.

“The safety is on,” She said, “The lever on the side of the weapon.”

The alien scowled, turning the weapon to look down at it. “I see no lever.”

“Try the other side.”

Sorilla heard a snort from one of the security detail under Swift, and made a personal note to work on not broadcasting her opinions of people quite so clearly in the future. The aliens wouldn’t always be so ignorant of Human body language and tone.

Of course, it wasn’t strictly the alien’s fault; her weapon didn’t
have
a safety.

He twisted it over, shifting unconsciously toward her, and inadvertently wound up pointing the weapon directly at his closest comrade.

The Metalstorm weapon roared, a single round ejecting from each of the two barrels, and the half inch slugs tore into the alien at point blank range. The armor piercing rounds of the Metalstorm Tactical Pistol shredded the alien flesh, dropping the alien in place, as the leader of the alien group stared in total horror.

Sorilla took one step forward, grabbing the limb holding the weapon and twisting as she brought the weapon around and swept the room. The MTac roared again as the barrel crossed each of the terrorists she’d previously tagged.

The bullets in the barrel of the Metalstorm weapon weren’t fired by a mechanical trigger, instead they relied on electrical impulses delivered wirelessly via the gun’s onboard computer. A computer that interfaced seamlessly with Sorilla’s own implant suite.

She looped one arm around the leader’s head, such as it was, and muscled his arm around the room in a second sweep that fired another dozen rounds. By this point Swift’s men had reacted, their own more conventional weapons adding to the cacophony of fire and death that enveloped the room, and in seconds it was all over.

Sorilla considered the situation and the life she held in her arm, debating whether or not to snap its neck to cover her involvement from the alien rebels, but decided against it at the last moment. While masking her actions would be beneficial if she had to make a new first impression, preferably one that didn’t involve killing every rebel in the room with her, the rebel leader was likely going into lockdown anyway and if the Alliance couldn’t keep him on ice, someone would leak the exact nature of what had happened sooner or later.

Instead she twisted, using her hip as leverage to boost him off the ground, and tossed the shocked alien onto the nearest table where she planted her knee into his back and put the barrels of the pistol to his head.

“My gun doesn’t fire unless I allow it,” She hissed. “If you ever get another shot at something like this, I’d suggest being very suspicious of helpful people.”

“That will not be an issue,” The Alliance Ambassador growled, “He will not get another chance.”

Sorilla glanced up, noting that the Alliance security had been replenished, with the alien commando in the lead. She pushed off her victim and left him to his own, or as close as there was in the room.

“I hope you’re right,” She said, “It’s bad form letting a meeting of this level be interrupted by anything, let alone armed terrorists.”

“indeed,” The human Ambassador, Miram, agreed as she regained her composure quickly enough to make some points for the negotiations. “This is most irregular.”

“Yes, I apologize. It seems clear that we’ve had a most serious breakdown of security,” The Alliance Ambassador reluctantly said, “I will see to it that this doesn’t happen again.”

“While you’re working on that,” The Ambassador smiled, an expression fit for a shark… a polite shark, but a shark nonetheless, “Might I suggest we move our deliberations to the Mexico? For security purposes, of course.”

There was a long silence before the alien nodded, sounding like he was having his teeth pulled as he spoke, “Of course. Very well, we shall do just that.”

“Excellent.”

“Interesting weapon,” Sienele said dryly as they rewatched the scene for the fifth time. “Primitive, yet oddly sophisticated. Alliance personnel haven’t used purely chem-kinetics for over… what? A hundred light cycles?”

“Closer to a hundred and fifty,” Kriss responded, “which is one reason why we don’t have more effective armor against it, our issue kit is designed to protect against shrapnel, not armor perforating projectiles. For a Lucian it’s not as important, but against most of our armed forces the Terran anti-personnel weapons are very effective.”

“Honestly, I’m more interested in the fact that she can interface with the weapon at a distance,” Sienel said dryly. “Remind you of anyone?”

“The Ross, yes I know.” Kriss responded, “though we’ve not yet been able to determine what mechanism the Ross use, the Terran’s, however, is quite obvious. We removed multiple computing implants from many of the enemy soldiers we killed in the war.”

“I want the frequencies to jam those systems,” Sienele ordered, “I’m not comfortable with them being able to activate their weapons at a distance.”

“That’s what concerns you?” Kriss snorted, “I’d be more worried about what they tell one another that you can’t listen in on.”

Sienele’s eyed widened for a long moment, then he make a gurgling sound as he realized that he’d totally missed that.

I can’t believe I missed that. I’m supposed to be the intelligence officer here.

“Of course,” He grumbled, “Secure transmissions between the whole group of them, most likely… but we’ve never detected anything?”

“Neither did we,” Kriss admitted with a shrug, “Whatever signal band they use, it’s very difficult to pinpoint. If it were me, I think I would run it in the background radiation, encoded to appear as random signals.”

“Whatever it is, we need to locate it.”

*****

“Interesting negotiation technique, Captain.” The Ambassador growled, rolling her eyes as they walked along the corridors of the Mexico.

“Call her Major while we’re on the ship, Ambassador.” Admiral Ruger said, “A ship only has one Captain.”

“Right, of course.” The Ambassador said dryly, then sighed, “it worked out, I suppose. Next time I’d like a little advance warning before you hand a weapon over to an Assassin, however.”

“Operators can lock their weapons, Sir,” Ruger offered, “or fire them remotely, as you saw. She didn’t give him a weapon, she just used an alternative aiming mechanism.”

Swift snorted, “First time I ever heard an enemy operative called that before.”

“Really?” Sorilla asked, “Heard it a few times myself.”

Ruger smiled slightly at that, before speaking up, “The important thing is, how will this affect negotiations, Ambassador?”

“Well,” The Ambassador sighed, “On the plus side, we’re moving negotiations to our own turf. That’ll have an effect, but it’s too early to be sure just how much. They’ve also lost some face, which I’ll be able to turn into some ground for our side. The downside is that the Cap… sorry, the Major did expose some of our military capabilities. I’m no expert on what that will mean.”

“Negligable,” Ruger said, “We know they captured the bodies of our sailors and soldiers during the war, so it’s safe to say that they knew about our implants and had at least some rudimentary ideas of their capabilities.”

“I’ll take your word it, Admiral.”

“Security is going to be a nightmare,” Swift said, “We’ve never had the aliens on our ship before.”

“The crew of the America would beg to differ, Son.” Ruger told him, a brittle edge to his voice.

Swift stiffened, then looked away, “Sorry Sir.”

“No matter what, we’ve got a lot of work to do before tomorrow,” The Ambassador cut in, “I want everyone on deck for their arrival, full ceremony.”

“I’ll see to it,” Ruger said calmly, “We’ll trot the dog and pony for you Ambassador, don’t worry.”

“Good. Everything to the highest order for when they arrive, I don’t want the slightest slips. Chances are they wouldn’t recognize it anyway, it’s a matter of professionalism.”

“Relax, Ambassador, this is the Black Navy,” Ruger smiled, “Putting on a show is the second best thing we do.”

“And the first is?”

“Not something you talk about in polite company.”

*****

The old Parithalian stared silently at the bulkhead, his hand resting on the large canister by his side.

“This means we will have to fall back to our backup plan,” He said heavily, “and hope that it all works out for the best.”

“Master, this seems like a risky idea,” One of the few remaining members of his group said quietly. “There is no guarantee that the blame for this will fall as we hope… particularly not with the Ross in the system.”

“This I know, but we have no other alternatives.”

“The security will be intense, nearly impossible to break.” Another objected, “I am sorry, master, but we’ve lost our chance.”

“no, the Terrans will respect diplomatic privilege. Our contacts got us through security once, this time they will get us
into
security.”

*****

“I want this station locked down, double… no,
triple
security!... This humiliation is…”

Sienele listened with only a fraction of his attention as the Ambassador ranted while pacing the room and flailing limbs in all direction. Honestly he didn’t blame the man, the debacle in discussions had been one of truly
epic
proportions. They’d lost over ten security officers, and the Terrans had lost three of their own. Since it happened on Alliance territory, those three actually outweighed his ten unfortunately, losing a lot of face for the Alliance ambassador in the ongoing deals.

In reality it didn’t change much at all, really, he supposed.

Militarily the balance of power was still where it was, unfortunately that just meant that no one had the slightest
clue
where the balance of power really was since the Terran sector was basically a black hole for intelligence at the moment. One of the biggest goals of this whole treaty discussion was just to find out what the
abyss
had happened to the Alliance Fleet they’d sent against the Terrans.

“Calm down, Ambassador. Alliance Central Security has already assigned new officers to the detail, bringing our numbers up well past earlier strength.” Sienele assured him, “We’re above double strength and new personnel is being sent in as we speak.”

“I certainly hope so, I’ve never seen such a debacle in my time,” The Ambassador would be chewing the bulkheads if he could, not that Sienele blamed him.

The entire mess was almost beyond belief.

As the Intelligence chief for the sector, Sienele was well updated on every partisan and dissident group for at least ten jumps. None of them were remotely organized enough to have pulled off something like had just happened, in fact none of them would have been able to get onto the station to even
consider
it.

That meant they were looking at outside agitators having moved into the sector, which was big trouble. The Alliance was a large political entity, and it was virtually impossible to track every malcontent within its borders. Over the period since the original signatories of the Allied Treaties a lot had changed, and a lot of people had been seriously angered.

Since this group had membership from multiple races, that meant they were one of very few with enough organization to be considered an extra-planetary threat. That was highly unusual, most groups of dissidents were small, generally scattered across the population of planets of secondary and tertiary importance.

Core worlds were too highly digitized for such things to last long once they got out of the moaning and complaining stage, and few of the backwater worlds that weren’t had enough traffic to allow groups to easily hide in. So that meant they were dealing with one of perhaps six groups with that sort of organization and funding.

That sounded like a lot, Sienele supposed, but six groups across over six hundred planets wasn’t much in his opinion. No matter their internal ideology, he also suspected that their funding came straight from the core world corporations, however, and that was going to make things very difficult. Corporate dark funding was always hell to track down, especially since they never had the same goals as the people they were funding.

Unfortunately it was just in the economic best interests of many of those companies to foment trouble for various reasons. Sometimes it was as simple as drumming up business in any of several markets… weapons, security, medical… other times, well it could get complicated.

Generally, however, attacking a Central Alliance Diplomatic negotiation in progress was more than your average corporation would be willing to fund.

Now, all I have to do is find out which one of them overstepped their bounds so far that we have no choice but to slap them down. A career winning situation, this is not.

*****

“Getting our people onto the human ship will be easy, our connections with the Core Worlds will see to that… How do we bring the device on board, however, they are sure to check.”

“The core is cloaked, we can pass it off as a security scanner.” The elder Parithalian said, “Our own best detection systems can barely note the added gravity signature. The Terrans didn’t have any significant gravity technology at the start of the war, and reports from the capture of their vessel at the end of the war indicated that while they’ve adapted quickly, their control and detection systems are still extremely crude at best.”