Page 33 of Clan and Command

It was something else they never discussed, though Lidon had let his disappointment in the situation be known in hundreds of ways. Starting arguments. Storming out. Teasing Piras and then leaving once the Dramok was eager for lovemaking. Refusing to clan with Piras. And finally, the greatest insult of all, joining with Dramok Tranis with next to no warning.

It all started with that place, he thought, staring at Laro.The great love and heartbreak of my life.

Of course he would never target Laro for the mission. His love affair with Lidon had crumbled to dust, but Piras still regarded it with fondness. It had been a beginning of the most significant chapter of his life. Whatever had come later, Laro had been like the dawn of a bright day.

It still made sense to look it over, to make sure Piras took everything about the Bi’is border into account. He checked its specs, noting it held the typical number of personnel suitable to defend that part of the boundary. There were still no colonies in the area, and the nearest inhabited station remained five days’ journey away at standard speed. It was the closest to any of the known research stations Bi’is maintained off-planet.

Only one matter of significance had changed since Piras’s days of patrolling the perimeter. With the fleet focused on protecting Kalquor and its colonies from Maf’s odious ambitions, vessel patrols had lessened. Before the revolt had taken up arms, Laro could count on a destroyer passing by every other day. Now four days…sometimes even six…could go by before a patrol came to call.

Even the repair docks sat mostly empty now, since Bi’is had become a part of the Galactic Council of Planets and overt large-scale aggression between their kingdom and the Empire had ceased. Curious, Piras checked the last report from Laro to confirm his suspicions. As he’d suspected, a small courier ship was the only vessel currently undergoing repairs. It wasn’t even battle damage; just the replacement of an aging worn-out thruster.

Piras gave Laro a final affectionate smile and looked at his other options. He worked late into the night.

As the hours passed, a feeling of disquiet grew in his gut. For one reason or another, he crossed off one potential defensive station after another, discounting each as a tempting offer for Maf. Some of them were too close together, particularly in places where Bi’is military outposts crowded the border. Those as isolated as Laro had various drawbacks, such as larger complements of personnel or more frequently passed by patrols. Stations that developed and tested new weaponry were immediately rejected. Piras wasn’t about to give Maf that much offensive hardware and research. He most certainly wouldn’t hand over Penri Munitions Station, located in the corner of Empire space where the border of Bi’is and the Galactic Council’s territories met. He thought of Maf getting his hands on the plant there where destroyers were manufactured. The idea made him shudder. That was the last thing Kalquor needed.

Over and over, his attention strayed to Laro Station. Over and over, he resolutely looked away. There was something better out there. He was sure of it.

Yet in the end, he was left with five potential marks, Laro among them. They all had the smallest personnel complements. They were all without additional backup from destroyers for lengthy stretches of time. They all gave easy access to Bi’is space if captured. But only one was within a day’s journey of a Bi’isil scientific research station, one purported to carry out experiments on captured Kalquorians.

Laro.

Piras made his mind go blank. He ignored the knife-like pain streaking through his chest to check on the unmanned defense stations closest to Laro. Those facilities would automatically activate when they detected the ships recorded as captured by the Basma’s forces. Almost as deadly as Laro, the programmed stations, run entirely by computers, would continue to defend the perimeter in its absence. Taking Laro would open a hole in the defenses, but it would be a small one. Certainly not enough to tempt Maf, who would want a clear path into Bi’is space. The unmanned defenses near Laro would have to be brought down as well, and Piras knew there was no way Maf could shoot his way through all of them.

Like Laro, the unmanned stations had buffer shields, designed to absorb and disperse anything fired at them. They could be damaged and worn down until no longer operational, but an attack would not go unanswered. The firepower wielded by the automatic systems was devastating to any aggressors. It wasn’t true to say they were completely unapproachable, but no one, not even the Bi’is, chanced them often. The defensive stations along the Bi’isil border, manned and not, had a damage rate of ninety-seven percent, and a destruction frequency of seventy-four out of one hundred. It was formidable protection, and Kalquor’s enemies knew it.

Making it even harder to gain control over them, each station had a uniquely coded access, retained by one member of High Command. No officer had possession of more than one code, and therefore one station, per sector. Like Piras, the traitor Admiral Banrid would have been in charge of thousands of such codes, but each would have been linked to stations separated by thousands of miles. Banrid never could have offered the Basma enough information to punch a useable hole in the border. Not for a large-scale invasion, anyway.

But for a smuggling operation? A breach just big enough to transport Kalquorian prisoners to the Bi’isil research station? That wouldn’t require disabling as many of the automated facilities.

“Six unmanned stations to knock out around Laro,” Piras mused. “Six different codes held by six different members of High Command. Holy shit, could they have made it any easier on me? If I wasn’t going to use this oversight against the Empire, I’d implement an immediate remedy as soon as I walked into work tomorrow.”

He’d been trained by one of the best codebreakers in the Empire, hadn’t he? Cracking codes was Lidon’s specialty, next to kicking asses and quoting the Book of Life. As a member of High Command, Piras knew the agency computer’s protocols for coding. The system’s random selection make it impossible to decrypt any ciphers…but he didn’t have to.

He only had to break into his fellow fleet officers’ files and find those codes. Then hand them over to Maf. It was so easy, Piras could have wept. How could the fleet have overlooked this?

“Because so few in the fleet…in the entire damned Empire…have the skills to do this.”

Lidon had left the fleet, but he’d passed his abilities on to Piras. The Dramok had every assurance he could find the unmanned station codes. That he could change the codes, putting them under his sole control. He could render the installations useless, leaving Laro on its own to face the savagery of the Basma’s fleet. Even Laro could not stand up to a concentrated attack from a dozen or more ships. To hold the border lapse, Maf would send in a hell of a lot more than a dozen vessels.

Piras looked at the star chart, his hurt gaze aimed where the manned station was depicted. He felt a wave of grief as he thought of that first meeting with Lidon, of the promise of a lifelong love that didn’t happen. And now he was going to destroy that last sweet reminder, because it was his best chance to infiltrate the Basma’s inner circle and save the Empire.

Kila had claimed Piras was tough enough to go through with whatever duty demanded. Perhaps he was right, but he couldn’t have known the personal cost it would mean to the admiral.

“You’re making me kill the last remnant of the happiest time of my life,” he whispered to no one. “And he’ll think I targeted Laro out of spite because he left me for Tranis. He may never know it ripped the heart right out of me.”

Piras sat quietly for a moment, feeling the pain and betrayal he was to visit on himself and others. He let it sit, acknowledging it as it deserved. Then he swallowed, drew a deep breath, and sat up straight.

It was with the steady voice of a formidable Dramok that he ordered, “Computer, access time of next staff turnover of Laro Space Station. I want duty rosters, schedules, current fleet movements in the area. Also, bring up codebreaking program labeled Piras’s Favorite Music. Give me the access portal to all members of High Command as well as the unmanned defense stations in the Laro sector grid.”

The soulless voice of the computer replied, “Please stand by. Programs running.”

Piras dove into treachery.

Chapter 11

It was afternoon in Kalquor’s capital city, right below Kila’s orbiting destroyer. Since ship’s chronometers were set to coincide with Fleet Command Headquarters, it was afternoon on the vessel too.

Kila bustled around his quarters, putting the final touches on his plan. Nothing in the room showed signs of anything of particular note: the sleeping mat was made up tidily, and his desk had been cleared of everything, including his computer. His sturdier racing mementos were in place on their shelves. However, it was what didn’t show that had been arranged the most carefully.

---