The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III by Roger MacBride Allen, David Drake

the opposition has killed every other full-time operative on the planet. It’s possible some of them went into hiding, the way I did—but I doubt it. All we have left are the sort of part-timers and occasionals that make dockwatchers and deep-cover types. The enemy knows who I am. I had no choice but to blow my cover and come in on a frontal, move fast before they could react.” She smiled grimly and shrugged. “The ‘bad guys’ would have blocked any covert approach. As for your last question, I don’t know how I knew you weren’t one of us. But you weren’t. I could tell.”
    She looked at him, her blue eyes deep and cold, her face drawn and worn, the image of a woman who has been frightened for a very long time. Spencer felt another layer of mistrust melt away. “Fine, I don’t look like a spy,” he said. “But even if we don’t know who the hell the bad guys are, you must have developed some information.” Spencer asked. “What’s going on?”
    “Ranger, download everything you’ve got on the local situation to—” She stopped in midsentence. “What’s your AID’s name?”
    Spencer shook his head. “Never gave it one.”
    McCain looked at Spencer oddly, then seemed to decide not to comment. “Download everything on the local situation to the captain’s AID. Meantime, I’ll give you the short form myself. I’ve been here three months, reporting regularly through my normal covert channels, receiving instructions back from Kona Tatsu headquarters. The planet has exactly one Hyperspace commlink, on a satellite in stationary equatorial orbit over København’s longitude. No other way to send messages to other systems, besides bribing a starship crewman to carry them, or using interstellar radio and waiting two hundred years for a reply. No commercial starships scheduled for a while, and the KT isn’t always that patient, so we had to use the Hyperlink. The KT agents have various ways of sending and receiving through the Hyperwave comsat, using miscellaneous cut-outs and dead-drops, both electronic and physical. The signals are carefully disguised. No one should even be aware that we’re using the Hyperspace link.
    “Except my reports and Kona Tatsu HQ’s instructions back don’t jibe. I’d send a report on StarMetal’s activities and get back a signal saying never mind reports on fruit export, they wanted data on StarMetal. I’d update my original report and ask what fruit reports. After two or three exchanges like that, I got a message warning that they thought my reports were being intercepted, blocked, and replaced by a bogus transmission—though that’s supposed to be impossible. I tried alternate means, but nothing seemed to get through. In their messages back to me, HQ starting getting mildly paranoid, to say the least. Then the tenor of their signals back to me suddenly changed.”
    “What were the new messages like?” Spencer asked.
    “They started asking for more details about the fruit.”
    There was a dead silence in the room for a long moment before McCain went on. “Either KT headquarters had been taken over by the Ministry of Agriculture, or else the opposition was playing a whole new game. Not only were they now blocking and replacing KT HQ transmissions—they were cocky enough to mess with my brain about it.”
    Suddenly Spencer’s AID spoke up. “Please terminate hardwire connection. It serves no further need.”
    “But—” Ranger’s voice began.
    McCain reached over absently and yanked the cable out of Spencer’s AID. “Shut up, Ranger. I was getting tired of being on a leash like that anyway.” With the cable between Ranger’s pouch and Spencer’s AID disconnected, McCain stood up and started to pace back and forth about the room. “Our mystery opponents were so sure of themselves, so sure that I couldn’t interfere, that they deliberately let me know they were screwing around with my signals. They wanted me to know what they could do. The bastards.