John Ringo: Against the Tide

The girls were kept in close confinement, a large compartment in a castle that had been converted to living quarters. There were only two entrances, both blocked by high-technology proscriptions. The walls were stone, which she could deal with, the same way she intended to “deal” with Paul when the time came. But even if the girls somehow made their way past those defenses they were surrounded by the guards of New Destiny, both Paul’s special guards, all of them highly trained fighters who were bound to him by Net-imposed loyalty proscriptions, and the Changed legions that made up the bulk of New Destiny’s army.

She had only one idea and it was a long-shot. The council members were also called Key-holders because the physical token of their position was a titanium strip. The protocols associated with transfer of “ownership” of the keys were ancient and even baroque. A council member could not “lose” a key; if they absentmindedly left it somewhere the AI that ran the Net, Mother, would simply port it to their location. Paul had told her one time of his early days as a council member when Mother, apparently in exasperation, had ported it One More Time and molecularly glued it to his forehead so he couldn’t remove it without a majority vote of the Council. It had taken him a week to build up the votes, over the chuckles, and she sometimes wondered if the compromises over that had led, inexorably, to the present war.

But Keys could be transferred. They could be transferred voluntarily, say if a council member wanted to retire… But if a council member died it was “finders keepers.” Minjie Jiaqi, who had been one of Paul’s first and closest allies on the Council, had been killed by his military aide, who had taken his Key. Paul, in turn, had had the aide assassinated. But both methods of killing were out of Megan’s reach. Minjie’s death was from a binary neurotoxin, and although she had a fairly decent chemical laboratory disguised as a “perfumery,” binary toxins were a bit out of her league.

His aide had been assassinated, in turn, by being attacked “in flagrante delicto.” Council members habitually used personal protection fields. The fields were impermeable to any harm possible to man, certainly given the explosive protocols. But they had to be lowered at certain times. Such as during sex or any sort of intimate contact. Paul always dropped his when he was in the harem and had to recite a pass code to raise it. Thus he was vulnerable.

The problem was Paul also had functional medical nannites. The nannites would scavenge any simple toxin before it took effect. Megan wasn’t sure of the extent to which they could cure him from a serious injury. But she was sure that if she could destroy his cerebral cortex, there wasn’t much the nannites were going to be able to do.

Therefore, if she could only figure out where he kept his Key when he came to the harem she could kill him, take the Key and port out.

If.

She had been with Paul… well she’d quit counting. A large number of times. And she thought she had subtly checked most of his body. So far, he didn’t seem to have it on him. He, conceivably, could have it up his rectum. But Paul’s personality mitigated against that. She simply could not envision him slipping the key up his ass before he ported to the harem.

But it had to be there, somewhere, and as soon as she figured out where, he was going to be a footnote in history.

No matter how much she loved him.

“Ya gotta love it,” Gerson Tao said, collapsing theatrically on Van Krief’s bunk. The ensign was larger than most of his class, if not of the massive stature of their instructor, and while he kept up with the studies, he was never going to make honor graduate. “Come up with three alternates to a campaign I’d never heard of before today?”

“Two campaigns,” the ensign said. “And get up, you’re ruining my dressing.”

“Well, excuse me,” Tao said, getting up and expertly tightening the blue woolen blanket on the bunk. When he was done a bronze chit would bounce off it.

“Hmmm,” the female ensign said, picking up a book and leafing through the pages until she got to a map. “I read the alternate plans in here somewhere…”

“What?” Tao replied, sitting up as the door opened. “What is that?”

“Mo,” Ensign Asghar Destrang said, walking into the room without knocking. The ensign was a tall, elegant young man with sandy hair and an abstracted manner. But the three had sparred enough to know that while he did not have Tao’s mass he was lightning quick. And all the thoughtfulness he gave to his studies came out when he had a sword in his hand. “I’m reading about the Myanmar campaign…”

“Is that Defeat Into Victory ?” Van Krief asked, not bothering to look up. “Read it.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Destrang said with a grin. He was a thin young man, just starting to get his full adult form. But his forearms were corded with wiry muscles and like the rest he moved with a confidence that was sometimes belied by his abstracted frown. “What have you got?”

“ American Caesar ,” Van Krief replied. “It’s the biography, more of a hagiography, of MacArthur and covers Korea in great detail. There’s things in it that only make sense if you know some of the details the writer left out, though.”

“My brain hurts,” Tao said, grabbing his head. “Who is MacArthur? Where in the hell is Myanmar? Why does any of this matter? How do you know what to study? In advance ? Been getting some sideline tutoring?”

“Tao…” Destrang warned, angrily.

“Jesus,” Tao said, immediately, looking at Van Krief. “I didn’t mean it like that, you know that Mo.” He looked at the female ensign pleadingly.

“As far as I know, Captain Herrick has never even noticed me as a female,” Van Krief said, tightly. “I’ll assume that you’ve just managed to put your foot in your mouth, again. God knows it’s big enough.”

“I said I was sorry,” Tao said. “But, really, how do you know?”

Van Krief thought about that and then she shrugged.

“Captain Herrick is not much older than we are,” she said. “And while he’s far more experienced in war, he, from what I’ve gleaned, was not a scholar before he was assigned to the Academy. He hits particular areas and stays there for a while. He caught me out when he started talking about the communist war in Chin and the American defeat in Vietnam, but after that I realized he was concentrating on the twentieth century in Asia. From there I researched all the books related to that area and period and started reading them as fast as I could. There are only so many that survived the Fall. Captain Herrick has access to Duke Edmund’s library, as well, but he seems to be drawing on historical actions that are in books in the Academy library. Personally, I think he’s doing that so we can do the research he assigns and tries to limit himself to what he knows is available. So if you work at it, you can stay ahead of the assignments.”

“That’s… twisted,” Destrang said.

“It’s using intelligence and planning to stay ahead of your enemy’s thoughts,” the female ensign said with a grin. “Call it… subtle. Now, Asghar,” she continued, looking at Destrang. “I’ll help you find the relevant sections in there if you’ll help me with that damned engineering assignment.”

“What’s so hard?” the ensign replied, picking up a sheet of paper with a vague sketch on it. “It’s just bridge design.”

“It’s the schedule he required,” Van Krief answered. “I can design the bridge, it’s a straightforward pile bridge like we made in Blood Lords school, just bigger. But first you have to come up with the materials list, then a plan to gather the materials, then implementation. With a single legion.”