Звезда Пандоры

“A crowbar or even a slingshot can knock out a wormhole generator if you know which critical components to smash,” Wilson said. “The key is getting close enough to inflict the relevant damage. You can be sure the opening at this end will be defended by squadrons of ships, and the strongest force fields they can throw up. We would have to break through them to reach the station at the other end. At the moment, the kind of systems which can do that are not part of the armaments we’re fitting to the warships.”

“Then they must be designed and installed,” Dimitri Leopoldovich said forcefully. “Immediately.”

Patricia and Daniel looked at each other. Daniel inclined his head minutely.

“Very well,” Patricia said. “If that’s your team’s official recommendation, academian. Admiral, would your staff look into the proposal, please, and cost it out for the steering committee to review.”

“Certainly,” Wilson said.

…

In summer, Paula actually quite enjoyed sitting out on Paris’s pavement cafés. The coffee in the deeply nationalistic city was still bitter and natural, avoiding a great many UFN processing regulations, while the pastries accompanying them contained way too many calories. The sun and the people made a refreshing change from the sanitized office environment. But for this call she went inside a little bistro a few hundred meters away from the office, and took a private booth. She’d been using the same place for fifty years; the waitress showed her to the booth at the back without even asking. Paula ordered a hot chocolate, and one of the pastries with almonds and cherries.

Her e-butler said the call was coming through. She put a small handheld array on the table, and waited for its screen to unfurl. It wasn’t that she couldn’t take this call in the office, she just felt it was more appropriate to take it in her own time. Thompson Burnelli’s face appeared on the thin plastic; from the blurred gold and white background she thought he was in his Senate Hall office.

“Paula.” He gave her a relaxed smile. “No uniform?”

Anyone else would have earned a crippling stare for that dig, the Senator merely got a raised eyebrow. “It must be in the wash,” she said. The formation of a Commonwealth navy had caught Paula by surprise; she wasn’t prepared for the brand-new Planetary Security Agency to be switched to naval funding and change once again. But like it or not, she was now in naval intelligence with the rank of commander. The day after the changes had been announced to the Paris office, Tarlo had saluted her as he came in to work. Nobody would be doing that again. Nobody in the Paris office wore uniforms, either, although they were technically entitled to. Office rumor said that several members of the staff changed into them before going out for a night clubbing in town, testing the ancient theory that every girl loves a sailor.

Uniforms were the least of her worries. To start with Mel Rees had told them the whole office would be moving to Kerensk, where Vice Admiral Columbia was establishing his administration. That led to a showdown between her and Rees where calls were fired off to political allies with the speed of Prime missile salvos. Mel Rees desperately wanted the move to the navy’s planetary defense headquarters where his chances for promotion inside the new navy were considerable; Paula threatened to resign if any kind of relocation or team alteration went ahead.

Rafael Columbia solved the problem with his usual political deftness. Paula was appointed commander of the Johansson project, which would remain in Paris for strategic reasons. Mel Rees was also promoted, and would run a new unit on Kerensk dealing with the deployment of the wormhole detector network. She was rather pleased to find that her contacts outweighed his family connections.

“Sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you on this,” Thompson said. “Life in the Senate hasn’t been this exciting for… well, I don’t ever remember a session like this one before. Kime’s second flight really stirred things up. I never really thought we’d have to form a navy, and I was heavily involved in the early preparation work.”

“Did you know the old Serious Crimes Directorate would end up as navy intelligence?”

“No, Paula, I didn’t realize quite how ambitious Rafael was going to be. I heard about your fight with Rees. I’m glad they managed to work out a compromise that allowed you to stay on. Hell, we only just managed to hang on to Senate Security. Can you believe Columbia wanted that as well?”

“It can’t last, Thompson. We still need some kind of Intersolar department to track down criminals. Apart from Johansson, there is nothing for navy intelligence to do. My former colleagues are still working on their old cases. They just wear uniforms to do it.”

Thompson smiled sadly. “Not quite. There is a small amount of opposition to the navy taking shape. Disaffected hotheads for now, but they need to be monitored, those that don’t go and join the Exodus.”

“Local police can handle that.”