FENRIR: Chapter 37

[seawasp]

And this is the last chapter to post, because Fenrir will be out tomorrow! 

 

Chapter 37: Resetting the Clock

Days to Launch: 12 5

     "Roger, it's good to see you back," Jeanne Sacco said, and didn't restrain herself from giving him a hug.

     "Gentle!" he said, with a pained chuckle. "Still not nearly all the way back, but I forced them to let me out." He pushed his wheelchair farther into the room. "If both of us nearly died for this, there's no way I'm going to miss it."

     She briefly considered telling him to get back to the hospital – his pale face and shaky movements showed he still needed time for recovery – but dismissed it as impossible. Roger Stone wasn't any different from the rest of them in being a part of Carpathia, and she wasn't going to deny him that. Though I'm kicking him out for a month when this is done. He needs rest, time with his family, and by God he'll get it.

     "All right, Roger. Just don't push yourself, I want you intact for my next term in office too."

     "Yes, Madame President," he said with a wan grin.

     "You've brought yourself up to date?"

     "Wouldn't have dared come back here if I hadn't," he assured her. "Just had a talk with Werner, and I've gone over all the reports. Everything looks like a go."

     "The launch charges? I'm still amazed they didn't go off at once and kill us all."

     "Give credit to our adversaries," Roger said. He tapped a few commands on the presentation computer. "Here's the report summary from the demolitions group. The point of the explosion was to tip Carpathia over. Detonating all of the charges would just have just been a full-power launch test, and since Carpathia's center of mass is very low, would almost certainly have just resulted in the ship bouncing up and coming back down; the shock absorber assembly would have taken it all easily.

     "So they needed to detonate only on a narrow arc on one side. More, they had to prevent the rest from going off. That's one of the things they used their control of our systems for, to not notice how they separated the charges. There were only a few unplanned detonations and they didn't spread. The plan was not to slaughter everyone in the area; they wanted to stop the antimatter tankers, then detonate them in one of the craters, kill key people, and then drop Carpathia, damaging key parts of the ship."

     "So the charges were mostly recoverable?"

     "About fifty percent. A lot of them were damaged beyond recovery when Carpathia shifted, but didn't go off."

     Jeanne looked out the window, where the gigantic ship's squat profile loomed sharply against the clear blue of the desert sky. "Can we really shave a week off the launch date?"

     "I… believe so," Roger said finally. "The entire crew has been working as hard as possible, extra shifts and long hours. All the consumables are onboard. The ACES are fully supplied and ready for launch for support, defense, or assault roles. Crew quarters are all assigned, scientific labs completed and equipped."

     "What about the crew? We lost quite a few people in that attack."

     "We had alternates for all selected crew, sometimes two or three deep. A couple of crew also lost their alternates, but fortunately all of those had second alternates. Those all passed the basic requirements; they'll have to do some catch-up, but fortunately none of the people crucial for launch were lost."

     President Sacco nodded. "I have discussed the situation with the General Secretary, and he agrees on the expedited launch. We also agree that it's to be kept quiet until launch day. If the Group still has any shots to take, let them think they have more time."

     "Five days; I suppose there's actually a chance of keeping it dark for that long." Roger looked cynical, and she couldn't blame him. An awful lot of people would know launch had been moved up, just by watching preparation. Even a few days left an awful lot of minutes for someone to let all the cats out of the bags.

     There was a knock on the door, and it opened to show Hailey Vanderman. "Madame President, can I – Roger! They let you out!"

     "I insisted," Stone said, accepting a handshake from the CIA head.

     "Good to see you up. Sorry to interrupt, Madame President."

     "No problem, Hailey. I assume you have news?"

     "We've found the other two members of the cell that the Duchess was in."

     "Thank God." A moment of relief washed through Jeanne, making her feel momentarily years younger. "Who are they? Are they in custody?"

     Vanderman grimaced. "Only if being in a morgue counts as custody."

     Good feeling gone. "That can't be coincidence. They didn't get killed during an attempt to catch them, did they?"

     "Not this time. Both of them died the same day as the attack on Carpathia, in apparently completely unrelated events."

     "The Duchess?"

     "Fragmentary records imply that strongly, yes. Apparently she thought she no longer needed their services, or their awareness of her identity."

     "Dammit!" Jeanne gritted her teeth, took a few breaths to calm herself. "I assume we're going over their history with a microscope?"

     "Absolutely, Madame President. And these two explain the problems we've had very well. One, apparently nicknamed 'Keys,' was Martin Grant."

     "Grant?" Roger said, incredulously. "The author of Seven Keys to Master Coding?"

     "The same." Hailey looked at Roger with the same bemusement Jeanne felt. "You read it?"

"When I was some younger, I was a CompSci major before I decided it wasn't for me. Grant's book was practically a bible for the department."

"He kept up with his field," Hailey said with a nod. "He was their computer coding and espionage wizard. Connections both legit and underground. We're not yet sure what his particular reason was for wanting Carpathia to fail, but he must have had one, and a very strong one. He was assaulted while out walking; assumed to have been a mugging, but that was likely just a cover.

"Second member of the cell, called 'Lathe,' was Michelle Anson-Stewart, yes, that one. Engineering process lecturer and publicity maven. This explains how they were able to get someone into so many manufacturing processes; if anyone had more contacts in the manufacturing world than Anson-Stewart I'm sure not thinking of any. Her car went off a bridge and into a river; I'm betting that we'll find evidence it was no accident once forensics gets through with the car and the site."

Jeanne considered this for a moment. "These two presumably didn't expect to be killed. So for the moment, this Group is headless, right? Falling back on the next cells down, which aren't connected to each other?"

Vanderman's lips tightened, causing a similar reaction in her gut. "I wish it were that simple. But whoever put the Group together certainly had contingencies in place. The Duchess – who was called 'Needle,' by the way – certainly threw a few wrenches into the works, but I'm not entirely counting out the possibility that they can get their act back together. If you're really moving up the timetable –"

"—we are," Jeanne confirmed.

"Well, in that case there's a good chance they can't get reorganized before it's too late. But…"

She waited. "But?"

A long exalation. "But George and I think this top cell might have been anomalous – with one or two more members."

"You mean the Duchess wasn't at the top?"

Roger's breath hissed between his teeth. "Makes too much sense, Madame President," he said. "We already know that the Duchess was in this for a specific and practical reason. She's not the sort to run a completely separate organization like this.

"Martin Grant… he was known as almost a recluse. Very private guy, apparently friendly to his small circle of friends but really introverted. Someone like that isn't going to be the center of the Group or anything like it. Anson-Stewart… Don't know as much about her." Roger looked to Hailey Vanderman.

"Much more gregarious," the CIA head said. "Certainly could promote and run such an organization. She clearly did do a lot of recruiting and influencing to get her agents into the right position to sabotage components of Carpathia. But how she'd have known to recruit someone like the Duchess is a lot harder to figure. We think we're missing someone."

"I think that just makes it more important to launch," the President said finally. "The faster Carpathia is out in space, the faster we make their efforts useless."

"I agree," Hailey said. "The others in the Cabinet probably will as well."

"Then we move forward. Keep me posted, Hailey. Roger, you contact Director Bronson and tell her…

"…the word is GO."

Go, indeed!