Eric Flint - Threshold

"You think there's amutiny on board? That's crazy, isn't it?"

"Undoubtedly crazy," she answered, keying in commands and looking over scenarios. "But people like Richard Fitzgerald are only technically sane. Jackie, I want our rotation stopped. We don't need any additional stresses on the ship if we need to maneuver, especially with damage." "Slowing rotation. Won't take that long to stop-a few minutes." "A.J., I need some intelligence. They know about the Dust now, so there's no need for subtlety. Talk to me." The blond head nodded as A.J. fixed his helmet on. "I'm on it. At this range it may take a while-remember how much interference there is, and how very low-power the Dust's transceivers are. Evenen masse they're not up to significant broadcast strength. But-" His tone sharpened. "I can confirm something's very not right. Odin is swinging ship, which would bring the coilguns to bear on us." "Have you managed to cut their controls to the weapons?" Madeline asked. "Not yet. I was starting to get in there during the conversation. Then the Dust went to sleep with the cessation of their transmissions. I've finally got it woken up again, and I'm starting the process. Damn this separation! I've got actual speed-of-light delay on everything I'm doing, and I feel like I'm typing my commands out on some stone-age three hundred-baud terminal. And the bandwidth sucks, since I have to duty-cycle everything to match the available scavenged power." "They are closing with us, correct?" "As planned," Larry said. "But not all that fast.

We've got a differential of less than four kilometers per second.

It'll be hours before we reach near approach, which isn't going to be all that near anyway. We cross each other's courses, heading…"

Maddie saw the slight shift of the astrophysicist's posture. "What's wrong, Larry?" There was a pause, as Larry seemed to be checking something. When he spoke, his voice was grim. "Odinhad better get its personnel issues sorted out reasonably soon. Near as I can tell, they're headed for a landing on Io. AndOdin isn't meant for landing, even if you could do it on Io, which I'm not sure any ship could."

"What about us?" "We'll be quite a ways from Io, though still in spitting distance in astronomical terms. Our really close approach will be Europa. But it's not looking like a dangerously close approach." Jackie looked pale. "But with their communications out…" "We can't warn them right now. I know. They have their own navigators on board, of course, but if Maddie's right and there's a mutiny going on, they're not going to be looking at that aspect yet.

Hell, they probably alreadyknow, but if this goes on, they may not maneuver in time." Conley shook his head in bemusement. "What are the odds? Space is practically empty. A random course change should have almost zero chance of sending you on a collision course with anything." "Someone's definitely running out the guns," A.J. interjected from his own position. "And he's using his own protocols and controls, different from the ones normally in place."

"Fitzgerald," Madeline said, her tone of voice making the name a curse. "Just the type to do that." "Hey, it's not all that different from what you did on boardNike," A.J. pointed out mildly. Maddie restrained a sharp reply. After a moment, she shrugged. "You're right, of course. The difference is that I think Richard Fitzgerald is doing this for himself, not for the mission. Like a lot of people in my profession, he's a past master of justifying any action that he takes." "It's still insane," A.J. said. "He can't possibly believe he can get away with it." Maddie laughed bitterly. "How I wish I could agree with you. But he probably does believe it, and if he can get rid of us, he may even be right. It's not as if there are any police out here to check the crime scene to see if it matches the suspect's story." "I'm getting into the coilgun control systems," A.J. announced. "Damn slow work, comparatively, but it shouldn't take too much longer." "You'd better hurry," Larry said bluntly. "Odin's just about finished lining up for the shot." "But there's no real danger, right?" Helen said. "You guys told me that." Maddie looked at the screen with gathering foreboding. From everything she knew, Helen was right. There wasn't a chance in hell that the coilguns could fire anything effective at this range. Even the molasses-slow reactions of theNebula Storm would be sufficient to evade, or should be. The problem was that she found it difficult to believe that Richard Fitzgerald didn't know that as well as she did. His actions so far might be reprehensible and even crazy from some perspectives, but he'd been playing in her league all along. "Thereshouldn't be any danger,"

Madeline Fathom said finally. "But I'd feel a lot better if they never got to fire at us anyway." She looked at A.J. "Shut them down."

"Working on it," A.J. said absently. "Just a few more minutes, and we can all relax."

Chapter 35 Horst Eberhart sat quietly in the tiny, almost featureless cell. Outside he looked calm, but inside he was raging.

And, he had to admit, afraid. He didn't know what was going on outside, but the situation couldn't be good. It was still gnawing at him how he'd managed to end up here in the first place. Heknew he hadn't touched the controls and ruined theOdin 's maneuver, yet he also had yet to figure out a plausible alternative. Fitzgerald?

Couldhe be doing it? Horst was intrigued by the idea, now that he thought of it. Wasn't one of the classic intelligence-agent ploys to make allies look like enemies? If Fitzgerald was really on Ares' side-workingwith Madeline Fathom, and just making it look like they were enemies-that would explain what just happened. But, no, that didn't make sense. If he was working with them, there was no way that Joe Buckley would have been within a kilometer of the power-control facility whenOdin blew it to powder. Fitzgerald might be cold-blooded enough to think it'd help things look more convincing, but there was no way Fathom would have done so. Besides, if Fitzgerald were on their side, they'd have known what they were up to from the beginning. He shook his head. There had to be another explanation. Mia Svendsen? As the engineer, she could have pulled that off. Maybe. Certainly after the overrides were authorized-by the general. But before that… and again, the same objections applied to her. The reason it made all too much sense for him to have done it-and he gave a weak grin as he realized that he was now arguing the prosecution's future case-was that he'd developed a personal relationship with an important member of the Ares/IRI grouplong after the mission began. And while his relationship with Jackie Secord had remained undefined, it had been getting increasingly close-certainly enough to give credence to the charges against him. Added to that, he had discovered the treachery ofOdin considerably after they'd left. In this scenario, he would have gotten guilty over his initial, smaller betrayals, and then, after finding out that his own people nearly killed Buckley and did cripple the base, would have decided to turncoat. It was neat and made perfect sense, and even fit with Horst's gut feelings on the whole situation. "The real problem," he said finally to empty air, "is that I didn't do it!" Given that this was true, though… what happened? Horst didn't believe it was an accident, any more than did the general or Fitzgerald. It was too exact, too carefully timed and totally unstoppable by any ordinary means, to be a random glitch or set of glitches. There had been a couple of other close friendships between Ares/IRI andOdin personnel, like that between Dr. Conley and Anthony LaPointe, but none of the people there were capable of the "black ops" programming necessary to pull this off, as Horst was. He leaned back and folded his arms, then continued to think on the problem, as there wasn't much else to do in his current situation.