Read Online The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III by Roger MacBride Allen, David Drake - Free Book Online Page B

is seeing justice being done. You could see far enough ahead to know they needed that. I couldn’t.”
    “Nonsense. You’d have known what to do. And you deserve the chance to command. So I’m changing my plans. I’m bucking you up to Commander and giving you the Banquo.”
    Tallen sat up straight and looked at Spencer. “What about Tarwa Chu, the Banquo’s XO? Shouldn’t she get the job?”
    Spencer shook his head and grinned. “Tallen, you’ve got to stop thinking that way. Every time something good comes your way, you think of reasons it shouldn’t happen. I’m dispersing all of the Banquo’s officers, putting them on the Duncan, the Macduff, and the Lennox. Better for officer and enlisted morale than leaving the same officers in charge of a crew they couldn’t protect from Rockler. I’m bringing Chu over here to take your job. She doesn’t have your experience, but you’ll be able to keep an eye on her if need be. By all reports she’s a good officer—but she’d have trouble convincing the Banquo’s crew of that. After all, she had to sit there and follow Rockler’s orders. You were the one who stopped the mutiny, and had the nerve to arrest the mutineers and Rockler. They’ll trust you.”
    “I don’t want it,” Tallen said flatly. “I just got through saying I’m not up to the job of commanding a ship.”
    “And I just got through telling you you’re wrong. Besides, I’m not offering you the Banquo. I’m ordering you to take her. I need an experienced officer riding herd on the three destroyers. Your fitness reports make it clear that the Duncan needs some serious work done. We can get it done fast if she makes planetfall at Daltgeld, leaving the three destroyers in orbit.”
    “Planetfall?”
    Spencer winced inside, knowing how flimsy it sounded. But such were the consequences of moving around capital ships and whole task forces as covers for KT agents. The entire purpose of this operation was to get Suss to Daltgeld, and to get her in contact with her fellow operatives. If, as seemed possible, the local KT talent was having trouble using electronic communications, then Suss would have to be in direct, physical contact with them—which meant getting her down to the surface and keeping her there. So long as the Duncan remained in orbit, her cover as the captain’s courtesan, posing as Spencer’s putative personal assistant, didn’t provide any particularly convincing reason for her shuttling back and forth to the planet. She might travel on the captain’s arm, or else go on shopping sprees—but neither of those activities allowed an agent much freedom of movement, or could be kept up indefinitely.
    Which meant a Warlord-class cruiser, all one million metric tons of it, with one thousand crew aboard, would have to be coaxed down out of the sky and into a repair yard for the convenience of one forty-five-kilo secret agent.
    “Yes, we’re making planetfall for repairs. Do you have objections?” Spencer asked, a bit sharply.
    Tallen started to speak, hesitated, and then decided to launch in directly. “Al—Sir—with all due respect, I have to say that this is a case where your lack of naval experience might get you into trouble. Getting a ship the size of the Duncan down out of orbit is no minor matter. We’d have to do a water landing and tow her in. Those are expensive procedures, and not without a certain amount of risk both to the Duncan and to any landscape she might have to overfly. A ship this size is very rough to handle in atmosphere. It’s dangerous.”
    “So is flying a ship when an uncertain number of unlogged repairs and pilferages have been performed on her,” Spencer said, trying to sound convincing. “We still don’t know what Kerad’s cronies took with them, what bulkheads they might have weakened by punching doors through them, what of the equipment that has been left behind is low-grade junk they installed instead of proper military spec gear. Those