A Matter of Intelligence, Chapter Three
By
(UCSBdad)

Disclaimer: Once again, profitlessly stolen from Henson, et al, David Drake and anyone else I need to borrow from. Rating: K+ Time: Some twenty five cycles after PKW and a bit after my Warriors for the Working Day.

"The Luxan is starting to head our way, sir." The sensor officer announced.

Darlan leaned over to catch a glimpse of the sensor readouts. "How much power did we need to outrun Okrana?"

"Sixty-two point five percent, sir." Commander de Glatigny said promptly.

"Good!" Darlan pronounced quickly. "Increase power to sixty three percent and head for Marble Fudge."

Marble Fudge was the name we had given to the largest planet in this solar system, a super-Jovian gas giant that just barely missed having enough mass to become a star in its own right. Its name came from the brown and white swirls on its surface.

We had hardly made our course correction to head for Marble Fudge when the sensor officer announced that the assault piercer was gaining on us.

"Increase to seventy percent, please." Darlan said quietly.

And still the Luxan ship gained on us.

"Increase to seventy five percent, if you please." Darlan said.

We kept increasing our power and the Luxan kept gaining on us. We were not going to avoid a fight this time.

"Sir," announced a comm from Engineering. "We are at one hundred percent of military power. Do you intend to go faster?"

By disabling certain safety protocols, we could increase our speed slightly without undue danger to us. By disabling certain other protocols, we could increase our speed by some fifteen percent. That would cause damage to the engines, which might explode without notice.

Captain Darlan and Commander du Glatigny exchanged glances. Then Darlan spoke.

"No, Engineering. No further speed will be required. In fact, as soon as we pass over Marble Fudge's north pole, I'll be ordering our speed to be cut to ninety three percent. That should he in about six minutes."

Captain Darlan turned to our gunnery officer. "Charles, when the Luxan closes to within one hundred and ten thousand kilometers of us, I want a full spread of missiles fired at him. Considering he'll be headed straight at us, and at our missiles at near his full speed, that should just be within missile range. Plus, he's totally unfamiliar with our weaponry and tactics.

We had fired one missile at Okrana. However, we had a total of thirty-two missile tubes that could be fired simultaneously. Of the thirty-two missiles, eight would be penetration aids, missiles without warheads but that would help the other twenty four missiles hit their target. Four of these missiles were spoofers. They would cause the Luxan's sensors to show missiles where there were none. The other four were jammers. These would jam our enemy's sensors and prevent them from finding the real missiles.

The single missile we had shot at Okrana had self-destructed when it ran out of fuel and had been only a simple nuclear explosion. The missiles we were about to fire were detonation lasers. At the moment of the nuclear explosion, a gravitic lens would be formed which would focus a small part of the nuclear blast as a laser aimed at the Luxan. Even a small amount of the energy of a nuclear explosion was enough to cut through the armor of a warship and bite deep into her vitals.

As soon as the Luxan ship saw our missiles on his sensors, he turned hard to port. What he hadn't seen was Chacal hidden among the rocks and other spatial debris surrounding Marble Fudge. As soon as the Luxan made his move, Chacal lit him up with its sensors and fired its missiles at him.

Now the Luxan found himself turning away from our thirty-two missiles, but headed into Chacal's dozen missiles. All he could do was to try to steer between the two groups of missiles and shoot down as many as he could.

We watched as the missiles closed on him and silently counted as his frag cannons shot down missiles. Then, in an instant, his luck ran out. Fourteen of our missiles exploded followed shortly by five of Chacal's. It took a few seconds for our sensors to clear and show the wrecked Luxan ship hanging in space.

Amazingly, we got a comm from the ship. The Luxan captain, bleeding dark colored blood from his head, glared at us. "You are not honorable. You did not advise me that you have two ships. You are not honorable."

Darlan shrugged. "We have more than two ships. You never inquired as to how many ships we had, you just began threatening us."

"You are dishonorable!" The Luxan bellowed.

"Whatever." Darlan said dismissively. "If your crew can abandon your ship, we will be happy to pick them up."

If anything, the Luxan captain's glare intensified. "I will never be taken prisoner!"

Darlan did his best to smile in a reassuring manner. "Captain, we are not savages. We will not enslave you or dishonor you. We will simply set you free on Forest of Bazil. There is no need to hazard the lives of your crew any further. Please, captain."

The glare faded from the Luxan's face. But whatever he might have said or done was lost in a sudden explosion that reduced the ship to a cloud of radioactive atoms.

"The Luxan's fusion bottle has breached, sir." Announced one of the sensor crew.

There was nothing to do but retrace our path back to Forest of Bazil with Chacal in company.

Once we had taken up a distant orbit beyond the reach of the frag cannons on the moons, Pa'u Civa reiterated her regret that a communications failure had prevented her from advising us of the arrival of the "unknown" Luxan warship. Captain Darlan nodded and said that modern communications systems were often too complex. Then he introduced Pa'u Zhaan as the envoy from Garden of Galil. Pa'u Civa announced that she was thrilled to see another member of the Seek, and further, that she had always believed that Captain Darlan would return as he had promised.

I decided I had enough of the diplomatic chatter and went to work on my workstation trying to find anything we had on Delvians.

It was almost six hours later when I got a chance to talk to Captain Darlan again.

"You did well identifying the Luxan warship, de Gautier." The captain said without preamble.

"No I didn't, sir." I confessed. "Pa'u Zhaan touched my head and I heard her voice in my head telling me what the ship was. I'm afraid we may have had a telepath with us for the whole trip."

Darlan scowled. "By the good God! Do you mean she may know everything about us? Everything?"

We talked about this potential problem for nearly an hour, but could find no solution other than to try to bluff our way through and always consider that the Delvians might be able to read our minds until we could prove otherwise.

Be that as it may, in less than a week we were headed back to Garden of Galil with a cargo of pharmaceuticals. There, we found Whistling Dixie ready for her first run to Forest of Bazil. Austerlitz escorted Whistling Dixie back to Forest of Bazil.

I, regrettably, was assigned another mission. Chacal took me back to Karraid on business.

Karraid is a dreadful place. It is a large moon of a gas giant. It is quite cold and the atmosphere is largely methane. The installations are dug into the surface of Karraid and the standard of the original workmanship was exceedingly shoddy. As the sole reason that one would come to Karraid was to make money and quickly leave, maintenance of the facilities were wretched. The place was cold and stank. Perhaps that explained why so many of the inhabitants drank raslak in excess.

I quickly finished my business and decided to have a drink. There were some people that I wanted to talk to on Karraid.

After checking a half a dozen wretched bars, I found who I was looking for. Alas, there seemed to be no decent wine anywhere in this universe, but the bartender, a large, friendly wolf-like fellow provided me with a beer that was quite adequate.

I carefully sat down near a group of ships' officers wearing the gaudy red, black and gold uniforms of the Empire of Cho-Sen.

When I sat down, the conversation among the officers ceased. Finally, the political officer, for only a political would have talked to a stranger, spoke to me.

"You served the French Emperor, sir?" She said politely.

"That I did. Past tense, of course." I replied.

She nodded solemnly. "We still serve our Emperor." She waited a second and then moved in. "Perhaps you would like a drink, Lieutenant?"

She had one of the junior officers pull up another table and I joined them.

"The raslak they drink here is an acquired taste, but once you try it, I think you'll enjoy it." She said, resting the tips of her long, slender fingers on my thigh.

I shrugged and accepted the alien drink. Five raslaks later, my voice was starting to slur just a bit.

"You are off the destroyer, Frederic?" Lin sighed as she snuggled against me. "The Chacal?" Somehow we had been separated from the rest of her party and were now in a darkened booth in the back. A booth with a privacy screen and wide, well-padded seats, I had noticed.

"I came here on Chacal, dear Lin." I said seriously. "But I'm on the staff of Rear Admiral Darlan. Chacal is normally part of the screen for our task force."

"You are on the staff of an admiral? And he commands a task force. How exciting." Her hand moved up and down my thigh.

I nodded. "It's not like the old days. Our flagship is only a heavy cruiser, Jena, 48, and she's damaged. We have two smaller cruisers and half dozen destroyers, plus some scouts."

I stopped speaking and clumsily picked up a fresh glass of raslak which I managed to spill down the front of her uniform. After helping her to dry off, I accepted another raslak from her and downed it in one gulp.

"But, once we get Jena repaired, we're going after a very wealthy target." I stopped again and carefully looked around. "And the bastard comes right here. It'll be a cinch to take him down when he's not expecting it. The next time you see me, dear Lin, I'll be rich."

Somehow Lin had unbuckled the belt of my trousers. "Rich?" She moaned in my ear. "How will you become rich?"

"There's a tax collector for a nation called the Ilanics that operates out of here. The Ilanics have been at war with some people called the Scorvians for decades. Admittedly, he's a little bit more than an extortionist, but he's a very successful one. And there's more."

"More? She sighed.

"More!" I said, forcing her head down.

I continued to talk. "The Scorvians have a long standing friendship with some people called the Luxans. You've heard of the Luxans?"

Lin mumbled something. I took it for an affirmative.

"The Luxans have provided volunteers and ships for the Ilanics. But the Scorvians haven't been beaten. So, several of the more pro-Ilanic Luxan worlds have put together a huge sum and intend to go to Marshal O'Donnell to try to buy some modern human weapons. The money has already been transferred to the Ilanic ship, my love. The Ilanic will pick up the Luxan delegation the next time he's here."

We were too involved to talk any further for the next few minutes.

"What is this Ilanic's name, Frederic?" Lin asked.

"Secret, m' love." I said, slurring my words more. Then I let my head slide forward onto the table.

When I lifted my head off of the table a half an hour later, Lin and her companions were gone. As I was making myself presentable, I noticed a small group of humans in the dark blue uniforms of the Republic of Cymru had entered the bar.

An intelligence officer's work is never done. I went over to join them.

When I finally left the bar, two humans in civilian clothes fell in step with me.

"You've had a great deal to drink, sir." said the male.

They were two of the more presentable of Julia Boisferaus' thugs who had been assigned to Chacal.

"Not at all." I said cheerfully. "I did ingest a great deal of alcohol, but thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, none of it has entered my bloodstream. Once we are back aboard Chacal, I'll have Surgeon-Lieutenant Lyautey remove the alcohol from my body.

Surgeon-Lieutenant Beatrice Lyautey was a slender woman in her forties. In spite of the baggy hospital scrubs she wore, one could see that she kept herself in excellent condition. I also knew that she had no interest in dashing intelligence officers. So, I sat quietly on an examination table in the sick bay of Chacal and watched her work.

"The contents of your stomach include beer, de Gautier." She said suddenly. "You haven't been with the Goddamns again, have you?"

"The English?" I replied. "Of course not."

"The remainder of this seems to be local raslak, except for….." she stopped talking to further examine something. "Aha! One of the so-called truth serums, nothing but a central nervous system depressant, of course, was also in your stomach. And it is one you have been inoculated against in the course of your training, de Gautier."

"Alas." I said with deep sadness," To think that dear, sweet Lin did not believe I would tell her the truth."

"No woman should believe you, Lieutenant." She shot back.

I hopped off of the examination table and leaned in to kiss Beatrice quickly on the lips. I danced out of the way of the slap she aimed at me.

"Impudent boy! See to it that you do not need to see me again, de Gautier."

I gave her my best smile. "If I do need to see you, I know that your professional scruples will protect me, dear Beatrice."

She was looking for something to throw at me when I left the sick bay.

We returned to Garden of Galil to find both Austerlitz and Whistling Dixie were already there. I was advised that Captain Darlan wanted to see me at once, and I soon found myself reporting to him in his office. He waved me into a chair.

"I have some good news, de Gautier." He began.

"Yes sir?"

"The Delvians aren't telepaths. We got that from Brother Saul's people. However, they do practice something called Unity which is almost as bad. There's a full report at your workstation. Read it fully and never let one of the Delvians do this Unity to you. That's an order."

"Yes sir." I decided to read the report and snoop around a little to see what I could learn about this Unity. It sounded useful, if dangerous.

"Also," Darlan went on. "we're in a little better favor here now that we've started escorting Whistling Dixie to Forest of Bazil. The local Delvians no longer treat us like pirates and I've met with Marshal O'Donnell's Liaison Officer here, Commodore Graham. He was friendly, but non-committal about a treaty of friendship. However, he did allow Brother Saul to sell us some non-lethal supplies and even let the local shipyard work on our aft grav sensor. It works better than it did when Austerlitz was first launched."

"You've heard of Sir Robert Knowles, haven't you?" Darlan said, changing the subject.

"Merde!" I let slip. "That bastard isn't around here, is he, sir?"

Darlan laughed. "His head is decorating the Governor's Palace of some place called Jolo. Knowles had set himself up on Jolo until some Extramaduran admiral showed up and flattened Knowles. The admiral then promptly pledged fealty to Marshal O'Donnell. It's obvious O'Donnell set the whole thing up, but no one can prove it."

I nodded. "Who'd want to prove anything against someone as well armed and well connected as the Marshal anyway?"

Darlan favored me with a broad smile. "So, do you have good news for me, de Gautier? Is Cheka dead?"

I shook my head. "If he is, I had nothing to do with it, sir. I was unable to locate a suitable assassin."

"By the good God!" Darlan said, shaking his head. "You couldn't find an assassin on a place like Karraid? Why, when I was your age, there was an assassin at the end of every bar on worlds like Karraid."

I managed to look apologetic. "I could not find a suitable assassin, sir. The kind that can be found at any bar would fail. Cheka is too well guarded for them. The few truly competent professionals on Karraid have other concerns."

"What concerns?" Darlan asked.

I shrugged. "Cheka has been a good customer for the rulers of Karraid. He pays well, he pays on time and he pays in cash. They would be very unhappy were he to die and the income he generates were to dry up. Competent assassins don't make enemies like that."

Darlan growled softly under his breath. "Lieutenant Boisferaus says you were quite drunk on Karraid and were very indiscrete with a political officer from the Cho-Sen Empire."

"What did Surgeon-Lieutenant Lyautey say about my condition?" I shot back.

"That you were quite sober. She advised me that she medicated you so that you did not absorb any alcohol." Darlan smiled at me. "She also said that lying to women is second nature to you.

I told the captain about my discussion with Lin, the political officer.

"Do you think they'll go after Cheka?" Darlan asked. "You didn't give them all the information they'd need, de Gautier."

I avoided laughing. "Sir, you can't give an intelligence officer everything he needs or he'll become suspicious. Even the Cho-Sens should be able to puzzle out who Cheka is. And I hope I've convinced them that they have little time. It would take them years to discover that we don't have a heavy cruiser off in some deserted spot in interstellar space being repaired. Given the number of factions among the Luxans, it would take them longer to discover there is no vast Luxan treasure loaded aboard Okrana."

"And," I went on, "they're well set up to try to take Okrana. In orbit around Karraid were two heavy cruisers, two lights and five destroyers. There should be another light cruiser and four or five destroyers off someplace, sir."

Darlan gnawed on his mustache. "Cho-Sen ships are hardly first class. Would the Emperor try something like that?"

A good question and one on which much hung. A thermonuclear warhead was a wonderful device for turning a warship and its contents into a slowly expanding radioactive cloud. It was much, much harder to only damage a warship sufficiently to be able to board it and take something off. Especially since your target was doing his best to destroy you and you were only trying to damage him. It was so hard in fact, that few tried it. Fewer succeeded. Of those who had tried, our French Empire had succeeded on two occasions. We were happy to hide the fact that we had succeeded entirely due to dumb luck and put it out that we had developed special weapons and tactics to do the job.

I nodded my head. "The Emperor of Cho-Sen is widely regarded as a megalomaniac. He'd never accept that we could succeed and he could not. He'd throw any officer who suggested such a thing out the airlock. Consequently, none of his officers will tell him the truth."

Darlan stared straight ahead for a minute or so. Then he shrugged. "If nothing happens, all we've lost is a few minutes of your time. The best case scenario is that Okrana is destroyed and a lot of damage is done to the Cho-Sens."

"And, I may have some other good news, sir." I continued.

Darlan nodded for me to continue.

"On Karraid, I met a Captain Gareth ap Owen, late of the Navy of the Republic of Cymru. He commands four missile frigates, sir. They're our N-14s, built by Cymru under license. They won't be any problems with logistic support, anyway. Three of them are N-14bs and one is an N-14d, slightly larger with a more powerful engine and better command and control…"

"I do know the Imperial Navy's ships, Frederic." Darlan interrupted. "You needn't lecture me. "

"Yes sir." I said, coloring slightly. I hurried on. "They came through about six months ago and are about out of supplies by now, although they don't admit it."

Darlan shrugged. "Six months? They could do that and still have supplies left."

"They have their families with them, sir. From what I could pick up at Karraid, they have about half again the number of people on board the ships as they are designed for."

Darlan shook his head sadly. "Families? That many? And six months in those tin cans? They must have been living right at the limits of their life support systems."

Missile frigates were about half the size of a destroyer, but were equally fast and had as many missile tubes. Naturally, they had fewer missile reloads and other supplies.

I suspected that their air and water purification systems must be on the verge of collapse from over-use by now.

"Why did they not simply offer their services to Marshal O'Donnell, Frederic?"

I smiled coldly. "Luckily for us, sir, the Governor of Arsenal is an Admiral Cunningham. Back on the other side, he demolished the navies of the League of Armed Neutrality, of which Cymru was a member. In addition, one of the Marshal's top corps commanders thoroughly wrecked Cymru's only colony world. He's a Sikh. I think his name is Singh."

"All Sikh generals are named Singh, I believe, Frederic." Darlan said with a slight smile.

"Anyway, sir, Captain ap Owen will be trying to check us out, as we'll try to check him out. But he's desperate, no question about it."

The captain nodded gravely. "They are desperate and so I will be generous. That is how one binds others to one's cause."

Once again, the captain stared into space beyond my right shoulder. "Four missile frigates. We'd have enough for a proper screen, wouldn't we? Enough to set up two actual task forces, if needs be."

I interrupted the captain's reverie. "And, the more ships we have, the more willing other warship captains will be to serve with us. And the happier merchant captains will be to sail in our convoys and pay for the privilege."

Darlan just nodded and stared. I was positive Captain ap Owen would join us, but if he didn't, I didn't want to be around when Captain Darlan found out about it. He was having too much fun commanding an imaginary fleet.

Darlan suddenly shook his head. "Enough of future possibilities, Frederic. Did you see this Litagaran?"

"Yes sir. He provided sufficient evidence that he represents Captain Cheka. I turned over Cheka's twenty percent to him. I also advised him that Whistling Dixie had joined us and that the split would be twenty five percent for us, twenty five for Captain O'Hara, thirty percent for Pa'u Civa and the usual twenty percent for Captain Cheka."

"Who knows," I finished, "since Whistling Dixie has twenty times our cargo capacity, perhaps Captain Cheka will make enough money to retire."

This had been the most logical solution to our problem, of course. We had no real desire to fight Captain Cheka, and he had no interest in fighting us. When Captain Trinquier of Chacal had run into Captain Cheka at Karraid he had instantly seen that a deal between our two forces was in both of our best interests. At least in the short run. In the long run, one of us would destroy the other. Or, rather, we would destroy Cheka.

I frowned. "I was advised that Captain Cheka was very upset about the near miss with the nuclear missile. I told the Litagaran that we had everything under control and that we just wanted to make the battle look good. I pointed out that Okrana hadn't had so much as its paint singed. I refrained from mentioning that we were upset with Captain Cheka sending that Luxan assault piercer after us. After all, that would compromise a perfectly good intelligence source."

Sooner or later we would have to rid ourselves of Captain Cheka. He was no better than a common criminal, even if he did pretend to collect taxes. At least we provided actual services in return for the money paid to us.

Darlan nodded. "I have more work for you, I'm afraid. In addition to keeping an eye out for some way to rid ourselves of Cheka, and looking for warships to join up with us, I've been thinking we need to own a merchantman."

I raised an eyebrow and Darlan went on. "If we had a good, fast merchantman of our own, we'd be able to cut out the middleman, so to speak. Say a small ship of five hundred to six hundred thousand tons, fast, with good defensive armament. Something like that could carry two or three hundred times what Whistling Dixie can carry."

I nodded . One does not contradict ones captain.

Darlan continued. "With that kind of tonnage coming in from Forest of Bazil, we'd be too important economically for Marshall O'Donnell not to sign a treaty of friendship with us. It shouldn't take more than a few years to make enough to buy a proper heavy cruiser."

That was perhaps a bit optimistic, but I would never have believed how far Marshal O'Donnell had come in the short time he had been here. Who knows?

Captain Darlan began opening a file on his workstation to indicate he was done with me. I rose to leave.

"Oh, I almost forgot, Frederic. We're taking Pa'u Zhaan back to Forest of Bazil. She's to be something like an ambassador combined with visiting professor of philosophy. My translator microbes made nothing of her title. But, she wants to see you alone in her quarters."

"Alone, sir?" I asked.

"Alone." Darlan confirmed. "And none of that Unity, Frederic. As for anything else, use your best judgment and keep me informed."

As I headed for Pa'u Zhaan's quarters, I wondered if I should stop by my quarters and clean up.

The End