The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [110]
‘Not even if the public saw that report?’ she said.
‘They’ve already seen it,’ said the drone. ‘At least, they’ve seen a modified version of it … ’
One of the holopanels flashed on and showed an abbreviated version of the Farag report, its heavy edits overlaid with ships that had never appeared in the original and intercut with brief clips from some vee-drama clearly selected to make the whole thing seem ridiculous.
‘What is this?’ she said.
‘Netspiders got to it,’ the drone said. ‘Commersector grey-grid operations that filter and modify any media object that matters. Anything that could adversely affect the general populace’s understanding of the Earthsphere–Hegemony pact gets this treatment.’
‘Are there such things as underground news nets?’ she said. ‘Samizdat was the old Rus word for it.’
‘The unregs,’ Reski Emantes said. ‘Unregulated casters. They’re always being hunted so they’re always on the move. They don’t reach more than five per cent of the population, however.’
Julia felt a kind of dull, persistent anger gnawing at her.
‘And the leadership?’ she said. ‘What about the president or any of the planetary leaders?’
‘Most of them rise out of the same layer of elites, and none of them would ever reach an elevated status without the commersector’s approval. And that’s before anything resembling a vote takes place.’
‘You’re saying that there’s no hope of stopping or delaying even just the Earthsphere fleet?’
‘There is always hope,’ the drone said. ‘And there may be a way, a one-shot gambit that could work. But first let’s have my tactical system work up some mission profiles while we try and find where Talavera’s got to.’
Harry chuckled. ‘And will this plan of yours involve stupendous levels of personal risk and possible oblivion?’
‘All the best plans do, Harry. Now – I’ve plotted a spread of possible launch locations for those missiles, going by Julia’s guess on their hyperspace range … ’
In the holopanel the swathe of target stars was surrounded in an opaque cocoon that encompassed thousands more stars and worlds.
‘This is the course she and her Vor escorts were taking,’ the drone went on. ‘Including extrapolated course changes.’
A blue line appeared, then splayed out into a bright plume through one part of the opaque cocoon. The screen perspective zoomed in a bit closer as sparkling pinpoints spread within the plume.
‘These represent star systems that are either uninhabited or sparsely so,’ the drone said. ‘Or at least where ship traffic is low and sensor coverage is scant.’
‘Of course,’ said Harry. ‘A place where the launch of five hundred missiles can proceed without being observed or interrupted.’ He frowned. ‘Doesn’t explain those Vor ships, however.’
On the big holoplane, small name-tagged images began to appear around the edge of the main display, each one tethered to its own sparkling pinpoint. Many of the tag images were of a basic sun-dot plus planet-rings icon while others showed a coloured planet plus satellite, and a few had additional emblems for cultural prohibition, military presence or navigational hazard. As they appeared in overlapping clusters she noticed one that resembled a branching spike of some kind, just a simple black symbol on white background, but as the other images mounted up she could not shake it from her mind. Something about it was familiar, something …
‘That little picture,’ she said. ‘What is it?’
‘A marker for the Great Hub,’ said the drone. ‘The Hegemony’s AI master nexus … ’
The drone moved a pulsing cursor over it and a larger image expanded up from it, a grainy view of a large polyhedral structure with treelike, branching antenna towers protruding. Recognition flashed, a picture on a wall, over a bed recess …
Harry was watching her. ‘Julia, what is it? Have you seen this before?’
‘I saw a picture of this very thing above Talavera’s bed aboard the Sacrament,’ she said. ‘Caught sight of it through one of the polymotes I was using to aid my escape.’ She stared