Guys —
I am WAY too busy to spend time on the forums the way I would like to. There are some health issues involved as well, but mostly I have been working on a book which has been kicking my butt. My original plan didn't work . . . but I didn't realize that until I'd written about 100,000 words. So I had to . . . dispose of those and start over again. Ah, the joys of authorship!
Because I haven't been here in a while and because I'm not certain when I'll get back again, I'm going to give you a rather larger snippet than usual. The E arc is due out April 1, for those of you who have decided to purchase it. I will try — operative word being "try" — to get a few additional snippets in. I really prefer to do them myself because I want to make sure that the italics and the boldface are where they are supposed to be.
Anyway, here's the new snippet. I'm not certain what the official number should be. Thus the title of the thread.
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Lieutenant Colonel Weng Zhing-hwan sat back from the terminal, rubbing tired eyes with her left hand, and her tone was as sour as her expression. Then she inhaled deeply and reached for her cup of tea. She sipped, grimaced at the way it had cooled, and refreshed it from the pot at her elbow.
That pot had come from her own apartment. The dingy little office buried in the bowels of a building the Commerce Department used primarily for storage had been sealed and unused for over thirty T-years before Major Bryce Tarkovsky discovered it a couple of years ago. At the time, he’d planned to put it to use as a spot for friendly interservice games of chance at which he and his fellow spooks could talk shop without any inconvenient superiors catching them at it. Under the circumstances, he’d decided she and her co-conspirators needed it rather more badly, and she supposed she was grateful. It would have been nice if it had come with at least some amenities, though.
And the dust had been pretty bad, too.
“The interesting thing,” Captain Daud al-Fanudahi replied in a more philosophical voice, tipping back in his chair and resting his heels on one end of the desk between them, “is how long how many of our potential moles have been in position. Or working their way into it, at any rate.”
“Assuming they really are bad guys,” Weng pointed out. “Even if they are, getting into some of these slots —” she waved her teacup at the neat columns of names on her display “— was bound to take a while. And if they aren’t — bad guys, I mean — then what looks like ‘working their way into position’ is simply the normal pursuit of an open and aboveboard career.”
“Which is exactly how any defense counsel would present it.” It was al-Fanudahi’s turn to look sour.
“It has occurred to you, I trust, that we may all be suffering from paranoia?” Weng asked.
“Upon occasion.” He snorted. “On the other hand, I’m not in favor of finding out whether or not we’re paranoid by going public. What about you?”
“Not just yet, thank you,” she said dryly.
“Pretty much what I thought.” He shrugged. “And apropos of that point, and bearing in mind your comment about search algorithms, I’m a little nervous about our potential exposure. I really appreciate Brigadier Gaddis’s support, but if anybody happens to look over his shoulder at the computer runs involved in all this . . . .”
He let his voice trail away, and Weng nodded. Her expression seemed rather less concerned than his, though.
“He’s been playing this game — well, this sort of game — for a long time, Daud,” she said. “He got the Criminal Investigation Division because he’s damned good at his job and because he’s interested in really catching bad guys, and no one gives him any crap because he knows where way too many bodies are buried. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”
“Oh, of course!” al-Fanudahi agreed.
“Well, I thought it was an important distinction.”
She sipped more tea while he chuckled, then lowered the cup once again.
“My point is that people — especially people with something to hide — tend to stay far, far away from anything that might draw his attention. Given the . . . summary fashion in which he’s dealt with anyone poking into one of his investigations in the past, snooping around in one of his data searches is what I believe you military types call ‘contraindicated.’”
“Under normal circumstances, I’d feel reassured by that,” al-Fanudahi said soberly. “But if we’re anywhere close to right about what’s going on, the people we’re looking for this time around are the sort who’ve never seen a problem they weren’t willing to kill. I don’t see any reason they wouldn’t be willing to apply the same prescription to him. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’d be perfectly happy to kill him and however many other people it took if they got even a hint of what he’s looking for.”
“CID is the last place anyone would expect to find a counterintelligence op. That’s Noritoshi Väinöla’s bailiwick . . . and exactly the reason neither Lupe Blanton nor I went anywhere near him with this. And it’s a pain in the arse, too, because I’m pretty damn sure Väinöla’s as straight as they come in the Gendarmerie.” She grimaced in obvious frustration. “The problem is —”
“That if he is straight, and if this is the kind of operation he’d normally be in charge of, then he’s the one our bad guys are going to keep the closest eye on,” al-Fanudahi finished for her, and she nodded.
“Exactly. Simeon, on the other hand, always has at least a dozen sensitive investigations underway at any given moment. Adding one more’s a lot less likely to trigger any alarms than sudden activity on Väinöla’s part would.”
“I can see that.” Al-Fanudahi nodded, and he sounded a bit less worried, although his expression still wasn’t what anyone would have called happy.
“The other thing he’s got going for him,” Weng continued, setting her cup back on the saucer and paging ahead through the file on her display, “is that he’s spent the last twenty or thirty years assembling a team whose primary loyalty is to him. He calls them his ‘Outcasts’ because the only thing they give a solitary damn about is catching the bad guys, whoever they are and whatever the consequences to their careers might be.”
“Like Okiku?”
“Not so much, really.” Weng frowned for a moment, obviously looking for exactly the right way to explain. “Okiku’s got exactly the same attitude, but he’s kept her outside the Outcasts. Pissed her off a time or two, too.”
“Why?” Al-Fanudahi’s eyebrows arched. “I’d think she’d be a perfect fit!”
“Oh, in so many ways, she would,” Weng agreed, and smiled. She’d come to know Lieutenant Colonel Natsuko Okiku rather better in the past few weeks, and in the process, she’d come to appreciate exactly why Simeon Gaddis had kept her away from his ‘Outcasts.’ In fact —
“Why did you tell Irene to keep her mouth shut and let you take the heat for being right about the Manties’ capabilities?” she asked.
Al-Fanudahi looked at her, then nodded.
“Point taken,” he said. “He thinks she’s too valuable down the road for him to burn her career at this point.”
“Which makes it sort of ironic that she was so busy sneaking around behind his back when Bryce brought her into your little conspiracy.” Weng chuckled. “She didn’t want to risk any of it splashing on her boss, and now her boss is keeping her outside his circle of analysts to keep anyone from linking her with them.”
“I don’t have any problem with that,” al-Fanudahi told her. “Especially if anyone’s noticed that she’s been talking to me and Irene — or you and Lupe, for that matter. The last thing we’d need would be for someone to connect her to us and then connect her to some supersecret research project over at CID.”
“Exactly.” Weng said again. “But my point is that unless one of his Outcasts is working for the bad guys, nobody’s going to get a look inside his data searches. If someone’s keeping a really close eye on him, they may be able to figure out what kind of information the Outcasts are looking at, but none of it’s really all that unusual for a CID investigation, and there’s a complete air break between their computers and the rest of the universe. That’s pretty much standard, too.”
It was al-Fanudahi’s turn to nod again. The computer upon which he and Weng worked in their sessions here in their dingy little office was a portable unit completely isolated from Commerce’s — or anyone else’s — central core and processors. Nor was any of their data stored on it. All actual work was done on external memory chips, and he, Weng, Lupe Blanton, and Natsuko Okiku each had custody of a single chip biometrically coded to their personal DNA. That meant at least one of them was usually out of date, but it also meant no one could compromise their data without their knowing about it.
Of course, it also means that if it does get compromised, it’ll probably be because at least one of us is dead, he reflected. Still, if it was easy, anyone could play!
“Well, like I say, either there are more of these people than we’d hoped there were, or else these ‘Outcasts’ of his are pretty bad shots,” he observed.
“One way to look at it.” Weng tipped back her own chair and rotated it to face al-Fanudahi fully. “But let’s not get too carried away just yet. What the Outcasts are telling us is that the names on this list all appear to be associated with at least one of the people we’ve already concluded is probably working for the bad guys. It’s still way too early for us to conclude any of them are working directly for the bad guys. Or, for that matter, that they even realize the bad guys are out there!”
“Maybe it is, but we’ve got to get off the centicredit, Zhing-hwan. After what happened to Eleventh Fleet, I don’t even want to think about what these people’s next production’s going to be like!” Al-Fanudahi shook his head, his dark brown eyes haunted by the thought of the hundreds of thousands of Solarian League Navy spacers who’d already died.
“Agreed. But until we have at least some idea of just what the hell is going on, nobody’s going to take us seriously, and especially not if somebody they trust is telling them we’re a bunch of lunatics.”
“I know. That’s why we’ve got to really drill into this. We think we know what they’re doing, but until we’ve got that idea about why they’re doing it we can’t expect to convince anyone else we aren’t lunatics. I’m beginning to think Bryce may have a point!”
“Major Tarkovsky is a very fine Marine,” Weng said with a crooked smile, “and a superior analyst. He is, unfortunately, still a Marine. And there are occasions — difficult though I know he finds that to accept — when something moderately more subtle than a pulser dart or a KEW is called for. Especially since Simeon’s probably right about just how bright our pool of suspects actually is. Like our friend Rajmund, for example. I know it pained Lupe when Simeon suggested Rajmund might not really be the unimaginative, corruptible clod she — and I, to be fair — always figured he was. For that matter, I’m still not thoroughly convinced he isn’t. But it’s a lot smarter for us to assume he isn’t stupid than it is for us to assume he is. Because as successfully as these people seem to have set up their networks, the one thing they aren’t is dumb. So while the notion of grabbing one of them and sweating her in a quiet little room somewhere possesses a certain appeal, I suggest we hold off on it at least a little longer.”
“I know,” al-Fanudahi repeated, then puffed his cheeks and exhaled noisily. “I know! But we’re not going to get any official warrants on the basis of any ‘probable cause’ we can share with anyone higher up the food chain. That means the time’s likely to come when we have to do it Bryce’s way.”
“Of course we are. I’m not looking forward to it, for a lot of reasons, but you’re probably right about where we’re going to end up. But if we’ve got to go entirely off the reservation and grab someone without benefit of due process, then I want to make sure we grab the right someone. Someone who really is the link we need between people like Rajmund and whoever the hell he’s working for. Which is exactly what this —” she jabbed a finger at the columns of names “— is going to give us. Somewhere in all these names, Daoud, there’s a handler. Somebody has to be managing their communications and coordinating their operations, and that probably means that whoever’s doing it is in contact with more than one of their agents in place. That’s who Simeon’s Outcasts and their numbercrunching is going to find for us. And once we’ve found her, I’m likely to be just a little more inclined to give Bryce his head.
Office of Frontier Security HQ
Interior Department Tower
City of Old Chicago
Sol System
Solarian League
“Yes, Marianne?” Adão Ukhtomskoy tried not to sound impatient as Marianne Haavikko’s image appeared in a window in the notes he’d been reviewing before his scheduled meeting with Nathan MacArtney, the Permanent Senior Undersecretary of the Interior.
Haavikko had been his secretary for a long, long time, and he knew she wouldn’t have interrupted him on a whim. At the same time, she knew his schedule better than anyone else in the universe . . . including him. That meant she knew how important his review and preparation for this meeting was. As the CO of Frontier Security Intelligence Branch, Ukhtomskoy was MacArtney’s senior “spook,” and as the confrontation with the Star Empire of Manticore and its allies went further and further into the crapper, his meetings with his superior had become less than pleasant affairs. The permanent senior undersecretary had always had a tendency to take out his frustrations on his subordinates. He was also a micromanager, the sort who demanded detailed reports. Worse, he knew what he wanted — and expected — to hear before the reports were ever written. He could be counted upon to break the kneecaps of any subordinate who gave him the “wrong” details, but was equally vindictive with people who told him what he expected to hear . . . and were wrong about it. That made working for him challenging at the best of times, and with so many wheels coming off in the Fringe and Verge, there was no way to get reports right no matter how hard someone tried.
“I’m very sorry to disturb you, Sir,” Haavikko said, and he realized she wasn’t speaking into her hush phone. “I’m afraid Mister Nyhus is here. I told him you’re reviewing for an important meeting, but he insists on speaking to you.”
He must really have pissed Marianne off for her to be making certain he can hear her. That was Ukhtomskoy’s first thought. The second was: And he’d better have a damn good reason for pissing her off, too. The bastard knows I’m meeting with MacArtney in less than an hour!
“Did he say what he needs to speak to me about?”
“No, Sir. Just that it was urgent.”
“I see.” Ukhtomskoy frowned. Then he shrugged. If Nyhus was wasting his time, he was just likely to get his head ripped off this time. But if he wasn’t . . . .
“Send him in,” he said.
“Yes, Sir.”
His office door opened, and Rajmund Nyhus came through it. He was tall, with very fair hair and a dark complexion, and his expression was far from cheerful.
“I apologize for barging in this way,” he said quickly, before Ukhtomskoy could speak. “I wouldn’t have, except that I know you’re supposed to be talking to MacArtney this afternoon. Under the circumstances, I thought I’d better bring you this immediately. And, frankly, it’s sensitive enough I wanted to brief you on it personally.”
Ukhtomskoy’s eyebrows rose, despite himself. As the head of OFS Intelligence Branch’s Section Two, Nyhus was responsible for analysis of internal threats to Frontier Security’s operations. He was also deeply in bed with several of the Solarian League’s more corrupt transstellars, and in most star nations, that would have been considered a conflict of interests. The Solarian League wasn’t “most star nations,” however.
“Brief me about what?” he said, waving the other man into one of the comfortable chairs in front of his desk.
“I got a pair of very disturbing reports this morning.” Nyhus sank into the indicated chair. “One’s about a problem we’ve been keeping an eye on for some time, but it’s not really our responsibility, thank God. In fact, it was copied to me ‘for information’ from the Gendarmerie, not because anyone expects us to take any sort of action about it. According to the Gendarmes’ sources, though, all indications are that the Hypatia referendum’s going to come out with a clear majority for secession and political association with Beowulf. That’s going to have some nasty implications for us — for the entire League — down the road, I think. But scary as it is, it’s not nearly so worrisome, from our perspective, as the one I’ve received from the Maya Sector.”
Ukhtomskoy frowned. He didn’t like the sound of that at all, especially not if Nyhus thought whatever was happening in Maya was worse than the notion of a member system of the League deciding to follow Beowulf’s example, kick the League to the curb, and sign on with the Manties. True, Hypatia was only modestly prosperous by Core World standards, but like its interstellar neighbor Beowulf, it had been a member of the League since the day it was founded. Its defection would have major implications for the League’s cohesion, and Nyhus thought the Maya report was worse?
I really don’t want to hear about this if he’s actually onto something and not just seeing shadows in the corners. I know I need to hear it, but Vishnu! Now we’ve got problems in Maya?!
The Maya Sector had been one of Frontier Security’s success stories for well over a T-century. In fact, in most ways, Maya was the crown jewel of the Protectorates: a highly prosperous, nine-star system sector, which had actually petitioned for Solarian “protection” a hundred and fifty T-years earlier. That was . . . unusual, to say the least, but the Mayans had seen Frontier Security coming for some time. Recognizing that OFS clienthood was clearly in their future, they’d begun preparing well ahead of time to make clienthood as tolerable as they could.
They’d understood they needed bargaining chips, so they’d actively courted investment by Solarian transstellars. But they’d simultaneously put local protections and controls into place — the sort of protections and controls Frontier Security clients were seldom in a position to hold out for. They’d wanted their investors to make a healthy profit, and they’d been willing to cooperate to make that happen, but they’d also wanted to be sure they retained a powerful voice in how those profits got made.
Their object had been to make the sector even more attractive to the League but in a way which would give them a certain leverage when the moment came. They’d made themselves into a golden goose, with such valuable pre-existing relationships with so many transstellars that no one really wanted to destabilize them. In fact, they’d succeeded in turning the transtellars in question into their champions, ready and able to protect their existing relationships against interlopers when OFS started looking their way. At the same time, they’d made quiet contact with many of the bureaucrats who really ran the Solarian League. They’d understood discreet gifts could buy a lot of friendship, and they’d been careful to get on the career bureaucrats’ good side.
And then they’d offered OFS a deal. They would accept Frontier Security protectorate status and an OFS-appointed sector governor, but they would retain local self-government and the appointee would have to be confirmed by a majority of the sector’s voters. If he was rejected, OFS could always select another one, until a mutually acceptable candidate was reached, but whoever it was would have to be mutually acceptable. They would cough up the usual OFS “administrative fees,” their transstellar “friends” would restrain the slash-and-burn rapaciousness which had devastated so many Fringe economies, and in return, they’d continue to manage their local affairs without infusions of Solarian Gendarmes or intervention battalions.
The arrangement had worked well for the last T-century and a half, although signs of increasing restiveness had begun to emerge among younger Mayans. For that matter, the Mayan business community was none too pleased by the way OFS had increased its fee schedules steadily for the last sixty or so T-years. Maya might not have been bitten as badly as many of the other Protectorates, but those “administrative fees” were taking a steadily bigger chunk of its revenues. Besides, whatever else they might be, Mayans were Fringers. They didn’t much care for OFS’s progressively uglier exploitation of other Fringe star systems.
Fortunately, Governor Oravil Barregos had proved capable of gentling a restive mount. He’d barely squeaked through the Mayan Assembly when he was first appointed as governor in 1912, probably because of the mounting local unhappiness with OFS’s fee demands. But five years later, he’d been reconfirmed for a second term with sixty-eight percent of the vote. And in 1920, he’d won yet a third term — this time with a seventy-six-percent majority. In an era in which OFS governors considered themselves popular if no one was actively trying to blow up their air cars, Barregos genuinely was popular. Not only that, he seemed to be in the process of wooing Erewhon — and its wormhole — back into the Solarian fold from its alliances with first Manticore and then Haven.
At a time when the entire galaxy seemed to be catching fire, Maya represented a welcome corner of tranquility.
For the moment, at least.
“What sort of report are we talking about?” Ukhtomskoy asked unhappily. If he had to tell MacArtney Barregos’s popularity was starting to wane and the days of Maya’s tranquility might be numbered . . . .
“I have two separate sources who each tell me Barregos has met directly with representatives of Manticore,” Nyhus said flatly.
For a moment, Ukhtomskoy was certain he’d misunderstood. Then he straightened in his chair.
“What did you say?”
“I said I have two separate reports that Barregos is meeting with the Manties.” Nyhus shook his head, blue eyes worried. “Separate reports from two different sources, Adão. And neither one of the sources knows about the other.”
Ukhtomskoy’s jaw tightened at the implication.
“I wouldn’t have been in such a rush to tell you about it if it was only one report,” Nyhus continued. “But when I’ve got two separate channels confirming each other, I’ve got to take it seriously.”
“Are you suggesting Oravil Barregos is contemplating treason?”
“I don’t know what he’s contemplating,” Nyhus shot back with an unusual note of frustration. “All I know is that I have usually reliable sources telling me he’s talking to Manties. And, frankly, it worries me a lot more than it might have otherwise because of all the other reports I’ve been getting — and sharing with you — about Manticoran involvement in stirring up the Fringe.”
Ukhtomskoy glared at him, but Nyhus looked back steadily. And, Ukhtomskoy was forced to admit, he had a point. Almost a year ago, Brigadier Noritoshi Väinöla, Ukhtomskoy’s counterpart with the Gendarmerie, had kicked across a report of what appeared to be orchestrated restiveness across wide stretches of the Fringe. Ukhtomskoy hadbeen inclined to write it off as a case of too much imagination, until Nyhus had come to him six or seven months ago with a report of his own. One that suggested not only that Väinöla’s analysts might be onto something but that the Star Empire of Manticore might be behind it.
To date, any corroborating evidence had been thin, to say the least, and entirely too much of Nyhus’s information came from “confidential sources.” At Ukhtomskoy’s insistence, he’d sent urgent queries back to his agents in place, demanding IDs on those sources in hopes of gaining some insight into their reliability. Field agents were always reluctant to reveal sources’ names to higher authority, for a lot of reasons, however, and sheer distance complicated the situation because of the built-in data transmission delays. So far, only a tiny handful of those sources had been positively identified and the process of evaluating their trustworthiness was only beginning.
“And would it happen that this time we at least know who those ‘reliable sources’ are?” he asked tartly.
“As a matter of fact, I do know who one of them is,” Nyhus said. “I know both agents — one of them personally, and one only by reputation — pretty well. Keiran MacQuilkin, the senior agent in our Landing office in Sprague, is the one I know personally. I sent her out to keep an eye on things when the Havenites and Manties started shooting at each other again. One of her stringers on Smoking Frog is a security guard on Barregos’s staff in Shuttlesport. And he got this.”
Nyhus tapped his uni-link, and a holo of a dark-skinned, strong jawed face appeared in Ukhtomskoy’s display. He glanced at it, then looked back at Nyhus.
“And ‘this’ is who, exactly?” he asked.
“We’re not entirely positive,” Nyhus conceded. “Whoever he is, though, he’s met very privately with Barregos in his office well after normal hours. That struck me as ominous, given all the recent . . . agitation in the Fringe, so I had that —” he twitched his head in the direction of the holo “— put through a full facial recognition pass.”
Ukhtomskoy arched an eyebrow. Given the sheer, staggering quantity of imagery, a “full facial recognition pass” could take weeks, sometimes months, even at modern data processing speeds.
“I got a hit . . . sort of.” Nyhus tapped his uni-link again and a second holo appeared beside the first one. This one was much poorer quality, although it was obvious it had been digitally enhanced. “I’m sorry it’s no sharper,” he said, “but it’s only a part of the original imagery. The newsy who took it was using a concealed camera and trying to get pictures of Baron High Ridge.”
“The Manty prime minister?” Ukhtomskoy looked up sharply, and Nyhus nodded.
“The newsy was doing an undercover piece on High Ridge’s meetings with some of his more camera-shy donors. He shot this outside the Manties’ Parliament and just caught the fellow we’re interested in in one corner of the frame.”
A flashing cursor appeared in the image, above the head of a tall, broad shouldered, deep chested individual. The camera had caught him in three quarters profile, his head turned as he spoke to a much shorter uniformed man beside him.
“We’re not sure who the shorter guy is,” Nyhus said. “Whoever he is, he’s wearing a Manty commodore’s uniform, though. And the computers call it a ninety-three percent probability that the taller one is the man in MacQuilkin’s holo of Barregos’s midnight visitor.”
SLNS Québec
Dzung System
Solarian League
Admiral Capriotti tipped back his chair, holding his coffee cup in both hands, and looked around the briefing room table aboard SLNS Québec at the senior members of his staff.
“All right,” he said. “Now that we’ve covered the bare essentials, does anyone have any immediate brilliant observations?”
The expected chuckle ran around the table, and he smiled. Then he sipped coffee, lowered the cup, and allowed his expression to sober.
“Seriously,” he said, “this whole thing is coming at us pretty damned fast. I know all of you have a lot of i’s to dot and t’s to cross — and, if I haven’t mentioned this, I’m very happy with all of you for the way you’ve already dug in on that — but we all know perfectly well that the people who planned this must’ve missed something. Hopefully, it’s something minor, but it might not be. So I want each of you to spend the next twelve hours or so going over your individual parts of the ops plans. If there’s anything — anything at all — you think could, should, or might be tweaked to our advantage, I want to hear about it before we leave Dzung. The one thing we know for certain about what happened to Eleventh Fleet is that it got the holy living hell kicked out of it. I have no intention of allowing that to happen to my task force. Is that understood?”
He let his eyes circle the table again in a brief bubble of silence, and then Vice Admiral Helland replied.
“Yes, Sir,” she said. “I think I can speak for all of us when I say we have no more intention than you do to put on a repeat performance of that disaster. I believe you can safely conclude we’ll be thinking very hard about ways to make sure we don’t.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear, Angelica.” Capriotti smiled. Then he nodded at the briefing room hatch. “So that’s about it for now, people. Go see about finding some supper. Angelica, I’d like you, Lyang-tau, and Jason to stay behind for a moment.”
“Of course, Sir,” Helland replied as the remainder of the staff stood, came respectfully to attention, and saluted. Capriotti, with his customary deplorable lack of formality, waved his coffee cup in general acknowledgment and the staffers filed out of the compartment. The hatch slid shut behind them, and he let his chair come back upright and set the coffee cup back down on it saucer.
“The truth is,” he said, “I’m not entirely happy about this entire operation. I don’t expect that to go beyond the four of us and Gabby, but I want to be sure we’re all on the same page.”
“May I ask in what way you’re unhappy, Sir?” Helland asked in a careful tone.
“From a purely military perspective, I have two concerns, only one of which our orders explicitly approach. The first is that Cachalot is only fifty-seven light-years from Beowulf. Strategy and Planning are busy assuming, on the basis of intelligence data they haven’t seen fit to share with us, that neither Beowulf nor the Manties have seen any reason to station a naval picket there, and I’m a little less confident on that head than Admiral Bernard. As nearly as I can follow the logic, Cachalot is seen as safely in their column, so there’s no need for the ‘imperialists’ to coerce the system, on the one hand. On the other hand, especially with the Beowulf plebiscite still up in the air, they don’t want to look like they’re strong-arming Cachalot. I’m inclined to think Strategy and Planning’s probably right about the absence of a major Manty picket, for whatever combination of reasons, but I’m a long way from certain of it.”
“Sir,” Commodore Jason Schlegel said, “you know I’m not a big fan of the analyses we’ve seen coming out of Old Chicago. Having said that, I think the odds are good S&P is right about this one.” He shrugged. “There aren’t many things I’d put past Beowulf at the moment, but they do seem to be bending over backward to present themselves in the most favorable light. And the Manties are generating enough bad press in the League by this wormhole offensive of theirs that they’re unlikely to up the ante by effectively occupying a neutral system as populous and wealthy as Cachalot.”
Capriotti considered the younger man thoughtfully. Schlegel was TF 783’s intelligence officer. He was also an extremely bright officer and, at only fifty-six T-years old, young for his rank, even in the gold braid-heavy SLN. Unlike altogether too many of his ilk, he brought a skeptic’s eye to any intelligence report that crossed his desk, and Capriotti normally valued his input. He did in this case, as well, actually, but he also remembered that Schlegel considered Beowulf guilty of treason. The commodore fully accepted the argument that Imogene Tsang’s prong of Eleventh Fleet’s disastrous attack would have suffered an even worse slaughter than Massimo Filareta if Beowulf hadn’t stopped her ships from transiting the Beowulf Terminus. However, he also believed — probably with reason, in Capriotti’s opinion — that Beowulf was the source of Manticore’s original intelligence about Operation Raging Justice. And he also believed Beowulf’s “complicity” in Manticore’s obvious swing to a rawly imperialist foreign policy and its evident intention of seceding posed an existential threat to the Solarian League.
“I said I was inclined to think Bernard’s people are right, Jason,” he pointed out mildly. “Since we don’t have any actual pre-attack reconnaissance to confirm that, however, I’m certainly not going to operate on the assumption that they have to be.”
“Of course not, Sir.”
“However, the possibility that they aren’t brings me to my second military concern— the one where we have clear direction: what we do if it turns out there is a Manty picket.”
His tone was considerably grimmer, and his three staffers glanced at one another.
“Sir, I know you won’t like what I’m about to say,” Admiral Helland said after a moment, “but Strategy and Planning have a point. We can’t afford to look . . . ineffectual, especially after what happened at Spindle and Manticore.” She did not, Capriotti noticed, mention other events at places with names like Zunker and Saltash. “Under the circumstances, pulling back at what we all know the newsies would label ‘the first sign of resistance’ would undercut Buccaneer’s entire strategic premise.”
Lyang-tau Rutgers stirred but said nothing.
“I’m fully aware of that, Angelica.” Capriotti’s voice was a bit frostier than the one in which he normally spoke to his chief of staff. “I’m also aware of the reported loss of life in that mysterious attack on the Manties’ home system. I know there are some who believe their officially released casualty numbers are inflated. Given what obviously happened to their industrial base, though, I doubt they were. And if it hadn’t been for Spindle, how do you think League public opinion would have reacted to them?”
Helland started to reply, then paused. After a moment, she nodded slightly. One thing about her, Capriotti thought. She’d subscribed fully to Battle Fleet hubris — at least before the Battle of Spindle — and she still considered both Manticore and the Republic of Haven “uppity neobarbs” who needed to be taught their manners. Despite that, her brain actually worked.
“Point taken, Sir,” she said. “If it hadn’t come so close on Spindle’s heels, the ‘Yawata Strike’ would’ve gotten an enormous amount of sympathetic play on the boards.”
“And with damned good cause.” Capriotti leaned forward, planting his forearms on the briefing room table. “That was a sheer, wanton slaughter, with no attempt at all to minimize civilian loss of life. Leave the kinetic impact damage on Sphinx completely out of the equation, and it was still unconscionable.”
“Sir,” Rutgers said cautiously, “should we gather from where you’re going with this that you’re . . . not in favor of Parthian?”
“I believe that would be a safe assumption on your part, Lyang-tau.” Capriotti smiled thinly. “I always was a transparent, easily-read sort.”
“Sir, I understand your concerns — and your repugnance. I really do,” Helland said. “But as I just said, if Parthian’s taken off the table, then Buccaneer’s fundamental strategic premise is compromised.”
“It may be compromised,” Capriotti corrected her. “A lot would depend on how it was taken off the table. If there is a Manty — or Beowulfan — naval presence in Cachalot, and if I choose to avoid Parthian on the basis that it would result in unnecessary and avoidable civilian deaths and make it clear that that’s the only reason I’m not executing Parthian, we come off looking restrained, not ineffectual. Especially in the aftermath of all the contradictory stories about what happened to Eleventh Fleet.”
Helland looked less than convinced, but she clearly recognized that this wasn’t a good place to push. Capriotti gave what he’d just said a few seconds to sink in, then sat back once more.
“I don’t see any need to discuss this particular concern with the rest of the staff,” he said. “If S&P’s right and there’s no picket to get in our way, it will never arise. If there is, then the final decision on Parthian will be mine, anyway. I want all three of you, though, to be thinking about the possibility that S&P isn’t right and considering what I suppose you might call a partial Parthian. The outer system’s infrastructure, especially in the Snapper Belt, has a much lower population, and the people in it are much more lavishly equipped with life pods and small craft. Given even a few hours’ warning, they should be able to evacuate almost totally. Going after Snapper would make Buccaneer’s point, I think, and if I emphasized to the system government that we were deliberately avoiding heavier casualties, we should get credit for showing restraint, as well.”
Helland nodded with what might have been a bit more enthusiasm. If so, it was a very small bit, Capriotti reflected. But he’d settle for it.
“All right,” he stood. “I think we could all use some supper of our own. Why don’t the three of you join me in my dining cabin?”
“Of course, Sir. Thank you,” Helland said, and the three staffers followed him from the briefing room.
Angelica has a point about Buccaneer’s premise s, Capriotti thought, as they headed for the lift shaft. She’s not the only person who’s going to make it, either. For that matter, it’s a virtual certainty that sooner or later somebody is going to execute Parthian, whatever I do.
He hid a mental grimace. Parthian was the one part of the detailed ops plan with which he’d totally disagreed from the instant he read it.
The new, improved Cataphracts in the pods which had been delivered along with TF 783’s instructions, had effectively unlimited range. Well, all missiles had effectively unlimited range, really, but the Cataphract’s second stage meant it was capable of terminal maneuvers at the end of its run as opposed to a purely ballistic weapon coasting helplessly through space after its impellers burned out. That meant, in theory, that missiles launched from well outside the 15.84 LM hyper-limit of the Cachalot System’s K4 primary were fully capable of hitting targets in the vicinity of Orca, the system’s inhabited planet, despite the fact that Orca’s orbital radius was less than three light-minutes. For that matter, Orca’s orbital infrastructure wasn’t what one might call an elusive target. Capriotti had no doubt that Lyang-tau Rutgers and his tactical officers would be capable of taking out every bit of it without ever crossing the limit inbound.
But there were two things no tac officer could possibly guarantee if Capriotti ordered them to do that. First, they couldn’t guarantee Orca wouldn’t suffer exactly the same sort of collateral catastrophe which had destroyed the Manticoran city of Yawata Crossing. And, second, and even worse, if he executed Parthian — essentially a hit-and-run strike from extreme range to avoid entering the Manties’ missile envelope — there would be no time for an orderly evacuation. They’d probably save more lives than the Manties had managed to save in the Yawata Strike, but almost a billion of the Cachalot System’s 6.9 billion citizens lived and worked in that infrastructure.
In the course of his career, Vincent Capriotti had done more things he hadn’t liked than he cared to contemplate. Committing mass murder wasn’t going to be one of them, whateve r Operation Buccaneer called for.
But sooner or later, someone will, Vincent, he thought. It’s the next best damned thing to an Eridani violation, but someone will. And what the hell do we do when th e Solarian League starts violating the Edict?
He didn’t like that thought.
He didn’t like it at all.
SLNS Leonhard Euler
Unicorn Belt
Manticore B
Star Empire of Manticore
“Sir, I think I’ve got something here you need to look at,” Midshipman Dimas said.
“That would make a nice change.”
Commander Bill Knight sounded more than a little sour, although that was scarcely Dimas’s fault. In fact, Knight liked Dimas quite a bit more than an evaluating officer was supposed to admit to a midshipman on his snotty cruise. Dimas was smart and competent . . . and so bouncy he reminded Knight irresistibly of a labradour retriever he’d had when he was a kid himself. That dog had been smart, too . . . and despite what some people might think was possible, he’d definitely had a sense of humor. One that had gotten both him and his youthful master into what his mom had always referred to as “a heap of trouble” more than once. Dimas’s humor never got him into trouble — or not, at least, with his superiors; his fellow snotties might have disputed that value judgment — but he loved practical jokes and he was an accomplished amateur ventriloquist. His ability to mimic sounds and throw his voice into unlikely places had kept Midshipman Styles running around the compartment looking for his “lost” unilink for almost fifteen minutes a couple of days ago.
Young Dimas had also won the Lester Allen Kovalenko Prize as the top math graduate in his senior class, however. He’d been the starting goalie on the Saganami lacrosse team during his junior and senior forms, as well, and he took the team’s motto — “Live life fearlessly!” — to heart. In short, he was an outstanding young man who was going to be an outstanding officer.
None of which made Bill Knight any happier about their current duty.
There were a lot of things he’d rather be doing than sitting on the command deck of yet another hulked Solly superdreadnought. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be doing any of them for the immediately foreseeable future.
He grimaced at the thought and shoved up out of the captain’s chair at the center of Leonhard Euler’s bridge. He wasn’t certain who Euler had been — a mathematician, he thought — but his namesake had seen better days. Less damaged than a lot of her consorts, she’d still suffered over four hundred casualties, and lucky it hadn’t been worse. Not that anyone looking around her pristine bridge and smelling its cool, fresh air, would have imagined how severely damaged she was.
He crossed to the communications officer’s station, where Dimas was ensconced. Knight had been forced to concede that young Dimas had a better touch with Solly computers than he did. He hoped that didn’t say anything about unfortunate, hidden character flaws on the young man’s part. But what had started with Dimas “riding shotgun,” shadowing the older and more experienced Knight while he learned his way around, had segued into something a lot more like a partnership, and the boy had more than held up his end. Along the way, they’d discovered that the com system actually had the best reach into the ship’s computer net, although no one was quite certain why the com officer had needed more access than, say, the tactical officer or the astrogator.
Probably because there’s a right way, a wrong way, and the Solly way to do just about anything, he reflected as he came to a halt at Dimas’s shoulder. Although, come to think of it, “wrong way” and “Solly way” is probably redundant.
“So, what’ve you got, Elijah?” he asked.
“I’ve got the standalones running the deep core analysis, Sir,” the middy said, looking back and up at him, and Knight nodded.
The reason he and Dimas were currently parked aboard Leonhard Euler was that — for their sins — they were among the better of the Royal Manticoran Navy’s cyberneticists. In fact, both of them had been assigned to HMSS Weyland prior to the Yawata Strike. Knight had been aboard the spacestation for almost two T-years before the strike, assigned to the R&D side of its complement because of his expertise. Dimas had been sent aboard for his snotty cruise deployment to give him the hands-on, real world experience his Academy instructors had been unable to provide, and he’d ended up under Knight’s mentorship. They were alive today only because Vice Admiral Faraday, Weyland’s CO, had called an emergency evacuation drill which had left the entire R&D staff planet-side when the deadly sneak attack tore the spacestation apart.
Technically, Dimas’s snotty cruise had ended five days ago, but things were still badly unsettled following what had been dubbed the Second Battle of Manticore. The lad had been left where he was, assigned to Knight’s team, for the forensic examination of the wreckage. The commander hadn’t told him he’d specifically asked to be allowed to keep “his” midshipman a little longer because he was so good at his job. Nor did young Elijah know about the glowing efficiency report Knight had already composed. But the same gift for computers and — especially — for deep-diving into the cyber depths which had made Dimas so useful aboard Weyland made him even more valuable aboard a hulk like Eule r.
One of the conditions upon which Massimo Filareta’s survivors had been allowed to surrender had been the preservation of their computer cores. Several commanding officers had scrubbed their computers anyway, which was why those particular COs were spending their current confinement in somewhat less than palatial conditions. Most, however, had honored their promise. A lot of them had figured — quite reasonably, in Knight’s opinion — that after what the RMN had done to Sandra Crandall it already had plenty of classified computer banks to play with. There were unlikely to be any shattering new intelligence landfalls in Eleventh Fleet’s memory.
At the moment, Knight and Dimas were busy probing the memory of their twelfth superdreadnought, and they weren’t the only team involved in the effort. And, so far, no shattering new intelligence had come to light, which tended to suggest those captains had had a point.
Dimas’s “standalones” were designed to carry out a point by point comparison between Leonhard Euler’s memory and the computers they’d already stripped., There was far too much data for any mere human to sort through, and — in theory, at least — the standalones would make sure anything that wasn’t already in the database would be added.
The communications logs were another matter, however. Even there there was far too much information for organic brains to keep track of, but it also tended to be more chaotic than the other data. Computers did a wonderful job of searching for things they were told to look for, and they were doing just that with all of the com traffic. But in something that tended to be as . . . free-form as inter-human communication, telling them where to look could sometimes be a nontrivial challenge. That was why he and Dimas had made it a point to at least skim the traffic for the last couple of hours before the Solarian surrender. The computers were looking at the same timeframe, but it was entirely possible they’d miss something.
“Should I take it the standalones have found something earthshattering?” Knight asked now, with a smile.
“Actually, Sir,” the middy said seriously, “I think I really may have found something.”
“Like what?”
“A fragment of a com conversation between Leonhard Euler and Philip Oppenheimer from about the time the Sollies opened fire. From her flag bridge.” Knight’s eyebrows rose, and Dimas nodded.
“You’re kidding,” the commander said.
“No, Sir.” Dimas shook his head, and Knight’s eyebrpws arched.
They’d been searching for some window into whatever insanity had led Filareta to open fire in an absolutely hopeless situation. Unfortunately, none of Eleventh Fleet’s surviving units had been in direct communication with Admiral Filareta or his staff at the critical moment, and Philip Oppenheimer herself was not among the survivors. They’d found a few megs of recorded com traffic between Oppenheimer’s CO and other units of the fleet from that time window, but nothing that came from her flag bridge . . . or that shed any light on his decisions. So if his middy —
“Somebody on this ship was actually in communication with Filareta when everything went to hell?” he demanded.
“Not quite, Sir.” Dimas shrugged. “What I’ve got here is part of a conversation between Leonhard Euler’s com officer and one of her cousins, Captain Sedgewick.”
Knight’s eyes narrowed. Captain Reuben Sedgewick had been Filareta’s staff com officer.
“It’s from the com officer’s private files, not part of the official logs,” Dimas continued. “Maybe that’s because there wasn’t time to worry about anything like that before everything hit the fan. Or it might be because they were violating regs tying up bandwidth on personal matters at a moment like that.”
“I could see that.” Knight nodded, trying to imagine what would have happened to a Manticoran communications officer who’d been gabbing away with her cousin at “a moment like that.”
“It’s not quite as bad as you may be thinking, Sir,” Dimas said. “They weren’t on any of the active command net channels; they were talking on one of the redundancy sidebands.”
“Marginally better, I suppose,” Knight allowed grudgingly. “But if this wasn’t part of the official fleet traffic, why do you think anyone’s going to want to see it?”
“Well, I sort of doubt that Captain Clarence — she was Leonhard Euler’s com officer — has any idea there was anything significant in what she had here, Sir. For that matter, I’m not even certain she realized she’d recorded it in the first place. If she did, though, I can see why she’s kept her mouth shut since we started beating the bushes trying to figure out why Filareta opened fire.”
“What are you talking about?” Knight demanded a bit more impatiently, and Dimas gave him a crooked smile.
“Let me show you, Sir,” he said, and hit the playback button.
HMS Imperator
Manticore A
Star Empire of Manticore
“— and after that, Your Grace, you’re scheduled for the state dinner at Mount Royal,” Lieutenant Luca Tomei said. “Under the circumstances, I think it might be better if you attended as Steadholder Harrington rather than Duchess Harrington.”
Honor Alexander-Harrington tried very hard — and almost successfully — not to roll her eyes. It wasn’t Tomei’s fault, but she’d managed her entire career without a dedicated public information officer. Partly, she acknowledged, that was because she’d avoided the limelight as much as possible. More of it was that she’d held primarily combat commands, where providing public information had not been high on her list of priorities. And still more of it was the fact that, unlike some officers she could have named, she vastly preferred to get on with whatever the current job in hand might be and let other people worry about who got public credit for it.
And not just because I’m such a naturally modest and self-effacing typ e, either, she thought, remembering the bitter political infighting after the Battle of Hancock and following Paul Tankersley’s death and her own duel with Pavel Young. Then there’d been all the vicious innuendo about her and Hamish during the High Ridge premiership. And that didn’t even count the Meuller dome collapse back on Grayson!
If there was anyone in the entire Star Empire of Manticore who wanted the spotlight less than she did, she’d never met her.
Unfortunately, she’d had to accept years ago that she couldn’t avoid it, and she had to admit Tomei made it a less excruciating experience. A year and a half younger than Waldemar Tümmel, he was far more comfortable than the flag lieutenant when it came to social events, like tonight’s state dinner to bid Benjamin Mayhew an official farewell. He was less adroit than Tümmel on the purely military side, but between the two of them — with prodigious assistance from James MacGuiness — they got her most everywhere she needed to be almost on schedule.
And in between dinners, meetings, interviews, baby-kissings, ribbon cuttings, and photo sessions, I actually get to spend a little time thinking about how to fight the Solarian League! she thought wryly.
“I think you’re probably right about that, Luca,” she said now. “Of course,” she gave him an amused look, “there’s still the question of whether I go in uniform or civilian dress, isn’t there?”
“I suppose there is, Your Grace, but —”
A soft chime interrupted him, and Honor touched the stud on her desk.
“Yes?” she said.
“I hate to interrupt you when I know you’re so deeply involved in something you enjoy so much, My Lady,” Major Spencer Hawke, Honor’s senior armsman, said over the intercom, “but Captain Reynolds would appreciate a moment of your time.”
“Gosh,” she said, giving Tomei a wicked look, “I really hate to break this off, but if Captain Reynolds needs to talk to me, by all means send him in!”
“You do realize I’ll be back as soon as the Captain leaves, Your Grace?”
“But if I’m quick enough, I can sneak out the back way before you get here!” she said, and Nimitz bleeked a laugh from his bulkhead perch.
“There isn’t a back way, Your Grace.” Tomei’s lips twitched, but his tone was admirably grave.
“You just think there isn’t,” she told him, then looked up as the cabin door opened and George Reynolds, her staff intelligence officer, stepped through it.
“George! Just the man I wanted to see!” she said enthusiastically.
Reynolds smiled, but it was a brief and fleeting expression, and her own eyes narrowed.
“What is it?” she asked in a rather different tone.
“Your Grace, I’ve got something you need to hear.”
