Therret kept his mouth shut. He had never understood the odd bond between Chernock and the brutish, self-indulgent Tresca. Obviously Tresca possessed both patrons and an excellent performance record, or he would never have been selected for a post as sensitive as Camp Charon's warden. But Therret had seen enough evidence to make some pretty accurate guesses about the sort of gross sensuality and permissiveness Tresca had extended to his Hades personnel. Nor did the citizen colonel doubt the rumors of prisoner abuse and mistreatment. And while Therret would shed no tears for enemies of the New Order, he considered that sort of behavior destructive of discipline.
None of that should have been tolerable to Seth Chernock. The citizen major general was an intensely self-disciplined man, and one of the few true intellectuals who had served State Security since the very beginning of the New Order. He'd been a sociology professor before the Harris Assassination, with a tenured position as assistant department head at Rousseau Planetary University in Nouveau Paris. As such, he'd needed all his self- discipline under the old regime to conceal his disaffection with the Legislaturalists and his disgust over their insistence on propping up the moldering remnants of capitalism and its unequal distribution of the fruits of society's productivity. Not only had the RPU faculty senate never realized his true feelings, but he'd also managed to conceal his membership in the Citizens' Rights Union from Internal Security. After the Harris Assassination, he'd emerged as one of the leading intellectual supporters of the Committee of Public Safety, although Therret suspected his enlistment in State Security represented a sense of disappointment with the Committee. Chernock obviously realized that Citizen Chairman Pierre was unwilling or (more probably) unable, in the middle of a war, to complete the sweeping program of change Chernock had endorsed. But his own zealous commitment to it had never wavered, and State Security was certainly the logical place for someone committed to preparing the groundwork for his grand plan.
Since joining StateSec Chernock had become even more disciplined... and much colder. Therret had known him for only six T-years, but he'd seen the change in him even over that time period. The citizen major general remained capable of astounding warmth and friendship, but it was as if he were rationing the ability to feel human emotions solely to those in his inner circle. As far as the rest of humanity was concerned, he had retreated behind the icy armor of his intellect and his commitment to the ends of the Revolution, deliberately making himself hard as the accepted price of achieving his goals.
All of that should have made Chernock loathe Tresca, who was certainly no intellectual, about as undisciplined as a man could be, and (as Therret felt certain Chernock recognized) far more committed to the cause of Dennis Tresca than that of the People. Yet the citizen major general had taken to the ex-noncom the first time they met. In fact, Chernock was one of the patrons who had gotten Tresca his current assignment, and he looked forward eagerly to the slow, stretched-out moves of their interstellar chess games. And crude as Tresca might be, he did play an extremely good game of chess, Therret admitted. But then, the citizen colonel had never thought there was anything wrong with Tresca's basic intelligence; Therret's problem was with how the citizen brigadier used it... or didn't.
'No,' Chernock went on, rising to pace back and forth, 'Dennis would have sent his move. But he didn't —not unless Heathrow and that hysterical citizen ensign are both lying, and as you just pointed out, that would be incredibly stupid of them when we could check their stories so easily. Hell, all we'd have to do is ask Dennis to verify their version of events in our next dispatch to him!'
The citizen general fell silent, hands clasped tightly behind him while he paced faster and harder. Therret watched him moving back and forth, back and forth, until he felt like a spectator at a tennis match. Finally he cleared his throat.
'So what are you saying, Sir?' he asked.
'I'm saying something is wrong on Hades,' Chernock said flatly. His voice was decisive, and he turned to face Therret as if grateful to the citizen colonel for pushing him into stating his conclusion out loud.
'But what could be wrong, Sir?' Therret asked, honestly bewildered. 'Heathrow was just there. Surely he would have known if anything hadn't been kosher!'
'Not necessarily,' Chernock said in a more reluctant tone. 'He would have known if anyone had attacked the planet from space and captured it, yes. I'm sure there would almost have had to be gaps in the orbital defenses, wreckage, any number of things to suggest combat, if that were the case. But if the attack didn't come from outside...'
His voice trailed off, and Therret blanched.
'Sir, are you suggesting the prisoners somehow—? But that's impossible, Sir!'
'I know. But so is the idea that Dennis didn't send me a chess move—or at least a reason for why he didn't send it. I'm telling you, Brigham; something had to happen to prevent that. And if it wasn't an external attack, then somehow the prisoners must actually have gotten to Camp Charon. And they must have done it successfully, too. If they'd attacked and been suppressed, Dennis—or his XO, if Dennis had been killed—would surely have reported it to the next competent authority on Heathrow's flight plan. And that competent authority would have been Danak HQ, which means me.'
'Sir, you realize what you're saying here?' Therret said very carefully. 'You're telling me, on the basis of a chess move that wasn't sent, that the inmates of the most escape-proof prison in the history of mankind have somehow overpowered their guards and taken possession of the planet.'
'I know it sounds crazy,' Chernock admitted. 'But I also know it must have happened.'
Therret looked at him for a small, endless eternity, then sighed.
'All right, Sir. I don't know if I agree with you—not yet, anyway— but I can't refute your reasoning based on anything we know at this moment. But assuming the prisoners have taken the planet, what do we do about it? Alert Nouveau Paris and the other Sector HQs?'
'No,' Chernock said decisively. 'We move on this ourselves, Brig. Immediately.'
'Sir, we only have two or three of our own ships here in Danak right now. And if the prisoners have managed to take Styx, I think we have to assume they've also taken over the armories, the battle armor storage and vehicle parks... We'll need troops and additional firepower, not to mention a way to deal with the orbital defenses.'
'Orbital defenses?' Chernock looked startled by the citizen colonel's last remark.
'Sir, it's a logical consequence of your basic assumption,' Therret pointed out. 'Assuming they've actually taken Styx, then they must have taken the central control room pretty much intact—and broken most of the security codes—because they were able to receive, read, and respond to the message traffic Heathrow delivered. That being the case, can we afford not to assume they have control of the orbital defenses, as well?'
'No. No, you're right,' Chernock said, and grimaced sourly. 'All right, we need a ground combat element —probably a good-sized one—and an escort capable of taking on the orbital defenses. Damn!' He slammed a fist down on his com unit. 'That probably means we do have to send all the way back to the capital!'
'Not necessarily, Sir.'
'What do you mean?' Chernock turned back to the citizen colonel, and Therret shrugged.
'I read a report on the Cerberus defenses a couple of months ago, Sir. It was generated by the NavInt Section after that disgrac—' He stopped himself as he remembered who had been responsible for the tardy response to another escape attempt to which he had been about to apply the adjective. 'After that unfortunate business with Citizen Secretary Ransom and the
'And?' Chernock chose to ignore his chief of staff's self-correction.
'It pointed out that the system was much more vulnerable to external attack than anyone with InSec or, for that matter, with our own HQ staff had ever realized. Apparently there's some way to attack unmanned orbital weapons from long range and take them out without ever entering their own engagement envelope.' He shrugged again. 'I didn't understand it all—it was written from a naval perspective—but the conclusion, I believe, was that even a few battlecruisers could probably blow a way through the defenses. Our own ships here in Danak might not have enough firepower, but if we conscripted a few naval units, we could almost certainly shoot our way in if we had to.'
'We could?' Chernock looked disturbed by the thought that Hades was so much more vulnerable than he'd assumed. Or perhaps he was disturbed by the notion that he might have to become the one responsible for blowing a hole in the defenses StateSec had always thought were impregnable... and use units of the distrusted regular Navy to do it. He frowned in silence for several long seconds, then sighed.
