As the troop transport passed near Dirluew, it reported an atmospheric disturbance and changed course northward to avoid chop, edging briefly into the no-fly zone over the Dirluew airspace. Eneshan transport command noted the correction but required the transport to return to its previous flight plan as soon as it edged past the turbulence. The transport did, its load two squads lighter, a few minutes later.
It was interesting what you could do, when your enemy was officially your ally. And unaware you knew it was your enemy.
The particle beams seared forth from the tugs assigned to the Kite and struck the Hierarch’s Palace. The first, the strongest of the beams by a significant margin, tore through six levels of palace, into the guts of the place, to vaporize the palace’s backup generator and, twenty meters below that, the main power line. Severing the main power line switched the palace’s electrical systems to the backup, which had been destroyed milliseconds earlier. In the absence of centralized backup power, various local backups sprang to life and locked down the palace through a system of security doors. The designers of the palace’s electrical and security systems reasoned that if both the main power and the backup power were taken down, the entire palace itself would probably be under attack. This was correct as far as it went; what the designers did not expect or intend was for the decentralized system of local backups to play an integral part in the attacker’s plans.
This beam caused relatively little secondary damage; its energies were tuned specifically to stay contained within its circumference and to bore deep into the Eneshan ground. The resulting hole was more than eighty yards deep before some of the debris thrown up from the beam’s work (and some of the debris from the six levels of palace) filled the bottom of the hole to a depth of several meters.
The second beam pierced the palace’s administrative wing. Unlike the first beam, this beam was tuned wide and designed to throw off a massive amount of waste heat. The administrative wing of the palace buckled and sweated where the beam struck. Superheated air tore through the offices, blasting wide doors and windows and igniting everything inside with a combustion point below 932 degrees centigrade. More than three dozen Eneshan night-shift government workers, military guards and janitors immolated, broiling instantly within their carapaces. The hierarch’s private office and everything in it, directly in the focused center of the beam, turned to ash only fractions of a second before the firestorm the beam’s heat and energy created blew those ashes to all corners of the rapidly deconstructing wing.
The second beam was by far the most destructive but the least critical of the three beams. The Special Forces certainly didn’t intend or expect to assassinate the heirarch in her private office; she was rarely in it on any evening and would absolutely not have been in it on this night, when she was attending to public functions as part of the Chafalan celebrations. She was on the other side of Dirluew entirely. It would have been a clumsy attempt at best. But the Special Forces wanted it to look like a clumsy attempt on the heirarch’s life, so the heirarch—and her immense and formidable personal security detail—would be kept far from the palace while the 2nd Platoon accomplished its actual goal.
The third beam had the lowest power of any of them and flickered as it surgically battered away at the roof of the palace, like a surgeon cauterizing and removing skin one layer at a time. The goal of this beam was not terror or wholesale destruction but to cut a direct pathway to a palace chamber, in which resided the 2nd Platoon’s goal, and the lever that, it was hoped, would serve to pry the Eneshans out of their tripartite plan to attack humanity.
::We’re going to kidnap what now?:: asked Daniel Harvey.
::We’re going to kidnap Vyut Ser,:: Jane Sagan said. ::Heir to the Eneshan throne.::
Daniel Harvey gave a look of sheer incredulousness, and Jared was reminded why Special Forces soldiers, despite their integration, actually bothered to meet physically for briefings: In the end, nothing could really top body language.
Sagan forwarded the intelligence report on the mission and the mission specs, but Harvey piped up again before the information could unpack completely. ::Since when have we gotten into the kidnapping business?:: Harvey asked. ::That’s a new wrinkle.::
::We’ve done abductions before,:: Sagan said. ::This is nothing new.::
::We’ve abducted adults,:: Harvey said. ::And generally speaking they’ve been people who mean us harm. This kidnapping actually involves a kid.::
::It’s more like a grub,:: said Alex Roentgen, who by now had unpacked the mission briefing and had begun to go through it.
::Whatever,:: Harvey said. ::Grub, kid, child. The point is, we’re going to use a young innocent as a bargaining chip. Am I right? And that’s the first time we’ve done that. It’s scummy.::
::This from the guy who usually has to be told not to blow shit up,:: Roentgen said.
Harvey glanced over to Roentgen. ::That’s right,:: he said. ::I usually am the guy you have to tell not to blow shit up. And I’m telling you that this mission stinks. What the fuck is wrong with the rest of you?::
::Our enemies don’t have the same high standards as you, Harvey,:: Julie Einstein said, and forwarded a picture of the pile of children’s corpses at Gettysburg. Jared shivered again.
::Does that mean we have to have the same low standards as they do?:: Harvey said.
::Look,:: Sagan said. ::This isn’t up to a vote. Our intelligence people tell me the Rraey, the Eneshans and the Obin are getting close to a big push into our space. We’ve been harassing the Rraey and the Obin on the margins but we haven’t been able to move against the Eneshans because we’re still working under the polite fiction that they’re our allies. This has given them the time to prepare, and despite all the disinformation we’ve been feeding them they still know too much about where our weak points are. We’ve got solid intelligence that says the Eneshans are right up front on any plan of attack. If we move against the Eneshans openly, all three of them will be at our necks, and we don’t have the resources to fight them all. Harvey’s right: This mission takes us into new territory. But none of our alternative plans have the same impact this one does. We can’t break the Eneshans militarily. But we can break them psychologically.::
By this time Jared had absorbed the entire report. ::We’re not stopping with kidnapping,:: he said to Sagan.
::No,:: Sagan said. ::Kidnapping alone won’t be enough to make the hierarch agree to our terms.::
::Christ,:: Harvey said. He’d finally absorbed the entire briefing. ::This shit stinks.::
::It beats the alternative,:: Sagan said. ::Unless you really think the Colonial Union can take on three enemies at once.::
::Can I just ask one question?:: said Harvey. ::Why do we get stuck with this crap?::
::We’re Special Forces,:: Sagan said. ::This is the sort of thing we do.::
::Bullshit,:: Harvey said. ::You said it yourself. We don’t do this. Nobody does this. We’re being made to do this because no one else wants to do this.::
Harvey looked around in the briefing room. ::Come on, we can admit this, to ourselves at least,:: he said. ::Some realborn asshole in military intelligence thought up this plan and then a bunch of realborn generals signed off on it, and then the Colonial Defense Forces’ realborn commanders didn’t want to have anything to do with it. So we get it, and everyone thinks we won’t mind because we’re a bunch of two-year-old amoral killers. Well, I have morals, and I know everyone in this room does too. I won’t back away from a stand-up fight. All of you know that about me. But this isn’t a stand-up fight. This is bullshit. First-class bullshit.::
::All right, it’s bullshit,:: Sagan said. ::But this is also our mission.::
::Don’t ask me to be the one who snatches the thing,:: Harvey said. ::I’ll have the back of whoever does it, but that’s one cup I’ll ask to have passed from me.::
::I won’t ask you,:: Sagan said. ::I’ll find something else for you to do.::
::Who are you going to get to
do the deed?:: Alex Roentgen said.
::I’ll do it myself,:: Sagan said. ::I’ll want two volunteers to go with me.::
::I already said I’d have your back,:: Harvey said.
::I need someone who will make the snatch if I get a bullet in the head, Harvey,:: Sagan said.
::I’ll do it,:: Sarah Pauling said. ::Harvey’s right that this shit stinks, though::
::Thank you, Pauling,:: Harvey said.
::You’re welcome,:: Pauling said. ::Don’t get cocky.::
::That’s one,:: Sagan said. ::Anyone else?::
Everyone in the briefing room turned to look at Jared.
::What?:: Jared said, suddenly defensive.
::Nothing,:: said Julie Einstein. ::It’s just that you and Pauling are usually a matched pair.::
::That’s not true at all,:: Jared said. ::We’ve been with the platoon for seven months now and I’ve had all your backs at one time or another.::
::Don’t get worked up about it,:: Einstein said. ::No one said you were married. And you have had all our backs. But everyone tends to pair off on missions with one person more than others. I get paired with Roentgen. Sagan gets stuck with Harvey because no one else wants to deal with him. You pair up with Pauling. That’s all.::
::Stop teasing Jared,:: Pauling said, smiling. ::He’s a nice guy, unlike the rest of you degenerates.::
::We’re nice degenerates,:: Roentgen said.
::Or nicely degenerate, anyway,:: said Einstein.
::If we’re all done with our fun,:: Sagan said, ::I still need another volunteer.::
::Dirac,:: Harvey prompted.
::Stop already,:: Sagan said.
::No,:: Jared said. ::I’ll do it.::
Sagan seemed about to object, but stopped herself. ::Fine,:: she said, and then continued on with her briefing.
::She did it again,:: Jared sent to Pauling, on a private channel, as the briefing continued. ::You saw it, didn’t you? How she was about to say “no.”::
::I saw it,:: Pauling said. ::But she didn’t. And when it comes down to it she’s always treated you just like she treats anyone.::
::I know,:: Jared said. ::I just wish I knew why she doesn’t seem to like me.::
::She doesn’t really seem to like anyone all that much,:: Pauling said. ::Stop being paranoid. Anyway, I like you. Except when you’re paranoid.::
::I’ll work on that,:: Jared said.
::Do,:: Pauling said. ::And thank you for volunteering.::
::Well, you know,:: Jared said. ::Give the crowd what they want.::
Pauling giggled audibly. Sagan shot her a look. ::Sorry,:: Pauling said, on a common channel.
After a few minutes Jared hailed Pauling on a private channel. ::Do you really think this mission is a bad one?::
::It fucking stinks,:: Pauling said.
The beams ceased, and Jared and the rest of the 2nd popped their parafoils. Charged nanobots extended in tendrils from backpacks and formed individual gliders. Jared, no longer free-falling, tilted himself toward the palace and the smoking hole left by the third beam—a hole that led to the heir’s nursery.
At roughly the size of St. Peter’s Basilica, the Hierarch’s Palace was no small edifice, and outside the main hall where the hierarch held formal court and the now-shattered administrative wing, no non-Eneshans were allowed to enter. There were no architectural plans of the palace in the public record, and the palace itself, constructed in the fluid and chaotically natural Eneshan architectural style that resembled nothing so much as a series of termite mounds, did not lend itself to easy discovery of significant areas or rooms. Before the plan to kidnap the Eneshan heir could be put into action, it had to be discovered where the heir’s private chambers lay. Military Research considered it a pretty puzzle, but one without a lot of time to be solved.
Their solution was to think small; indeed, to think single-celled—to think of C. xavierii, a Eneshan prokaryotic organism evolutionarily parallel to bacteria. Just as strains of bacteria live in happily symbiotic relationships with humans, so did C. xavierii with Eneshans, primarily internally but also externally. Like many humans, not all Eneshans were fastidious about their bathroom habits.
Colonial Union Military Research cracked C. xavierii open and resequenced it to create the subspecies C. xavierii movere, which coded to construct mitochondrion-sized radio transmitters and receivers. These tiny organic machines recorded the movements of their hosts by polling their positions relative to C. xavierii movere housed by other Eneshans within their transmitting range. The recording capacity of these microscopic devices was small—they had the capacity to store less than an hour’s worth of movement—but each cellular division created a new recording machine, tracking movement anew.
Military Research introduced the genetically-modified bug into the Hierarch’s Palace by way of a hand lotion, provided to an unsuspecting Colonial Union diplomat who had regular physical contact with her Eneshan counterparts. These Eneshans then transmitted the germ to other members of the palace staff simply through everyday contact. The diplomat’s personal brain prostheses (and those of her entire staff) were also surreptitiously modified to record the tiny transmissions that would soon emanate from the palace staff and all its inhabitants, including the hierarch and her heir. In less than a month Military Research had a complete map of the internal structure of the Hierarch’s Palace, based on the movement of its staff.
Military Research never told the Colonial Union diplomatic staff of its unintentional espionage. Not only was it safer for the diplomats, but they would have been appalled at how they had been used.
Jared reached the roof of the palace and dissolved his glider, landing away from the hole in case it collapsed. Other members of the 2nd were landing or had landed and were preparing for their descent by securing rappelling lines. Jared spotted Sarah Pauling, who had walked up the hole and was now peering down through the smoke and debris cloud.
::Don’t look down,:: Jared said to her.
::Too late for that,:: she replied, and sent him a vertiginous image from her point of view. Through their integration Jared could sense her anxiety and anticipation; he felt that way himself.
The rappelling lines were secure. ::Pauling, Dirac,:: said Jane Sagan. ::Time to move.:: It had been less than five minutes since the beams had torn down from the sky, and each additional second brought the increased chance that their quarry had been moved. They were also working against the eventual arrival of troops and emergency responders. Blowing up the executive wing would distract and delay attention to the 2nd Platoon, but not for long.
The three clipped in and dropped down four levels, straight into the heirarch’s residential apartments. The nursery was directly beyond; they had decided not to send the beam down directly on top of the nursery to avoid an accidental collapse. As Jared dropped he sensed the wisdom of that decision; “surgical” or not, the beam had made a mess of the three floors above the heirarch’s apartments, and much of the damage had fallen straight down.
::Activate your infrared,:: Sagan said, as they rappelled. ::The lights are down and there’s a lot of dust down there.:: Jared and Pauling did as they were told. A glow suffused the air, heated by the exertions of the beam and the smoldering remains below.
Residential guards assigned to the heirarch’s apartments flowed into the chamber as the three rappelled down, battering through doors to get at the invaders. Jared, Sagan and Pauling unclipped and dropped heavily into the debris pile below them, hastened by Enesha’s heavier gravity. Jared could feel the debris attempting to impale him as he struck it; his unitard stiffened to avoid that. The three swept the room visually and with infrared to locate the guards, and sent the information upward. A few seconds later there were several sharp cracks from the roof. The residential guards dropped.
::You’re clear,:: said Alex Roentgen. ::The wing is sealed off and we’re not seeing any more guards. More of us are coming down.:: As he said this Julie Einstein and two other members of th
e 2nd began their descent on the lines.
The nursery adjoined the heirarch’s private chamber, and for security purposes the rooms were a single sealable unit, impenetrable to most violent attempts at entry (save massively powerful particle beams shot down from space). Because the two rooms were assumed to be externally secure, the internal security between the rooms was light. A gorgeously carved but single-bolted door was the nursery’s only security from the heirarch’s chamber. Jared shot the lock and entered the room as Pauling and Sagan covered him.
Something hurtled toward Jared as he checked his corners; he ducked and rolled, and looked up to find an Eneshan attempting to bring an improvised club crashing down on his head. Jared blocked the hit with his arm and kicked upward, connecting with the Eneshan between its forward lower limbs. The Eneshan roared as the kick cracked its carapace. In his peripheral vision Jared registered a second Eneshan in the room, huddled in the corner and holding something that was screaming.
The first Eneshan lunged again, bellowing, and then stopped bellowing but kept lunging, collapsing in a pile on top of Jared. After the Eneshan lay on top of him Jared realized that somewhere in there he’d heard a burst of gunfire. He looked around the body of the Eneshan and saw Sarah Pauling behind it, reaching over to grab the Eneshan’s mantle, to pull the corpse off Jared.