by David Weber
Which could, of course, just be my own way of pretending that he had to grow into them instead of just admitting that we'd all underestimated his abilities from the beginning.
"At the moment, Sir," she continued out loud, "my gravest concern is the readiness state of my units. The shipyards back home are pushing so hard, that—"
"There's no need to explain, Milady," Khumalo interrupted. "I've been kept updated. I know they rushed all of your battlecruisers out of the yard, and I also know what short notice you received when they handed you this particular hot potato. I'm not at all surprised if you have readiness problems, and we'll try to give you as much time as we can to deal with them. And, of course, all of the assistance we can. Speaking of which, is there anything we can do to help with your current problems?"
"At this point, I genuinely don't think so," Michelle said. "We deployed with almost eighty of Hephaestus' yard dogs on board, and over the last couple of weeks they've dealt with most of our hardware problems. We do have a couple of minor faults we haven't been able to deal with out of shipboard resources, but I'm confident your repair ships can set all of them right fairly quickly and easily. What no one else can do for us, though, is to bring our people's cohesiveness and training up to Fleet standards."
"How bad is it?" There was no impatience or condemnation in Khumalo's question, only understanding, and Michelle felt herself warming further towards him.
"Honestly, it's not good, Sir," she said frankly. "And it's not my captains' fault, either. We simply haven't had time to deal with the problems that normally get handled in a routine working-up period. We've got a few weak spots among our officers—more than I'd like, really, if I'm going to be honest—thanks to the manning pressures Admiral Cortez has to deal with. And some of our ratings are a lot greener than I'd really like. On the other hand, I've just come from a tour with Eighth Fleet, and that's probably enough to give me a jaundiced view of just about anybody else's training and experience. I don't think we have any problems that can't be set right by a few more weeks—a T-month, if I can get it—of good, hard drill. Well, that and, possibly, a little judicious personnel reassignment."
"A month we can probably give you," Khumalo said, glancing at Shoupe as he spoke. "I'm not sure how much more than that's going to be possible, though. Both Admiral Blaine and Admiral O'Malley are under pressure to get their commands concentrated at the Lynx Terminus as soon as possible, for reasons I'm sure you understand at least as well as I do. That puts us under pressure of our own to get O'Malley relieved down on the 'southern frontier.' At the moment, he's still at Monica, but we've redeployed a support squadron to Tillerman. That's close enough to Monica—and to Meyers—to keep an eye on the Sollies without staying any more obviously in their faces than we have to. So as soon as our damaged units at Monica have managed to complete enough repairs to get underway for home—which will probably take another six to eight T-weeks—and Ambassador Corvisart completes the . . . treaty negotiations, we'll be withdrawing our forces as far as Tillerman."
"I'm confident of the month, Sir," Captain Shoupe said, answering his unasked question. "And I think we can probably squeeze out at least a few more weeks. As you say, it's going to be at least another month or two before Admiral O'Malley is going to be able to withdraw from Monica, anyway."
"Should we think about deploying my squadron—or some of it, at least—forward to Monica to support O'Malley, Sir?" Michelle asked.
"As a show of force for the Sollies, you mean?" Khumalo raised an eyebrow, and Michelle nodded. "I don't think that's really imperative at this point, Milady," he said then. "Frankly, if two squadrons of modern battlecruisers aren't enough to deter Solarian thoughts of aggression, then I don't see how three squadrons would have that effect. Unfortunately, it's entirely possible that a dozen squadrons—of anything less than wallers, at least—wouldn't deter some of the idiots we've seen out here. Even Sollies ought to be beginning to figure out that they don't want to tangle with Her Majesty's Navy on anything like even terms, but I'd be disinclined to risk any money betting on that possibility." He grimaced. "You'd think what Terekhov did at Monica would begin hammering at least a little sense into their brains, but I've come to the conclusion that their skulls are better armored than their wallers are."
His expression was profoundly disgusted looking, and Captain Shoupe looked, if possible, even more disgusted than he was.
"Is it really that bad, Sir?"
"It's probably worse, Milady," Khumalo growled. "I don't doubt you've had your own run-ins with League arrogance over the years. I don't know any serving officer who hasn't. But we've been rather more . . . irritating to them since the Talbotters applied for admission to the Star Kingdom. Or Star Empire, or whatever." He waved one hand. "I don't think there's much doubt Frontier Security was completely confident Talbott was just one more cluster they'd get around to gobbling up whenever they decided it was convenient. Instead, we turned up, and that really, really pissed them off. Which has only made them even more arrogant pains in the arse."
"You mentioned Ambassador Corvisart, Sir," Captain Armstrong observed quietly. "When we left the Star Kingdom, we were only beginning to get reports on what she was finding out there. May I assume she's dug a little deeper in the meantime?"
"Oh, yes, Captain." Khumalo showed his teeth in a tight smile. "I think you could safely say that. And the deeper she gets, the worse it smells."
"Was OFS directly involved, Sir?" Michelle asked.
"Of course it was, Milady." Khumalo snorted. "There's no need for any 'investigation' to tell us that! Proving it—especially to the satisfaction of the notoriously and scrupulously impartial League legal system—is something else, of course." The irony in his tone could have withered an entire forest of Sphinxian picket-wood. "Nothing happens in the Verge—nothing that could possibly have an impact on the League, at any rate—without Frontier Security's involvement. In this case, though, it's actually beginning to look like OFS wasn't the primary player."
"They weren't, Sir?" There was surprise in Michelle's voice, and Khumalo smiled again, grimly, as he heard it.
"That's what it's beginning to look like," he repeated. "As a matter of fact, most of the straws in the wind, including President Tyler's testimony, suggest that the prime mover was Manpower."
Michelle's eyes widened, and Khumalo shrugged.
"Commander Chandler and Mr. O'Shaughnessy will be able to give you a lot more detail on this than I can, Milady. But according to Ambassador Corvisart and her on-site investigators, our original theory that Manpower and the Jessyk Combine were being used as cat's-paws by Frontier Security had things reversed. We've known from the beginning that Commissioner Verrochio has a very . . . comfortable relationship with Manpower and several other Mesan 'corporations.' We assumed—wrongly, apparently—that it was him using that relationship to convince Manpower to serve as his deniable conduit to Nordbrandt and the other terrorist movements here in the Quadrant. From what Corvisart is turning up now, though, it looks like it was actually the other way around."
"Manpower wanted control of the Lynx Terminus?" Michelle shook her head. "I can understand why they'd want us as far away from their home system as they could get us. We've never made any secret of how we feel about the slave trade, after all. But my understanding was that the entire objective of the operation was for Monica to end up controlling the Cluster and the Lynx Terminus as a front for Frontier Security. That would suit Manpower a lot better than what's actually happening, of course, but going about it this way sounds awfully ambitious for a bunch of criminals."
" 'Ambitious' is actually a pretty severe understatement, Milady. They've tried a few other high-stakes maneuvers in the past, but right offhand, I can't think of another one that was this risky and 'ambitious' of them, either. Still, that's the way it's beginning to look. And, considered from one perspective, it's a perfectly logical extension of their usual mode of operation. Not only would it have pushed us six hundred-plus ligh
t-years farther away from their headquarters, but it would have given them another set of hooks, this time into Tyler and Monica. I'm sure they would have shown a substantial profit, over the long term, on their ability to manipulate traffic through the terminus, as well, and they didn't even have to come up with the battlecruisers they supplied. Those came from Technodyne."
"That's been confirmed, Sir?"
"It has." Khumalo nodded. "Apparently, they were officially stricken from the Sollies' shiplist to make room for the new Nevadas, and Technodyne saw a way to turn an extra profit on them. We've recovered some electronic records which make it pretty clear Technodyne, at least, has been paying some attention to the rumors about our new systems. It looks as if they expected to get the chance for a close look at our hardware when the unfinished terminus forts had to surrender to Tyler. And they were probably slated for their own share of the income Manpower expected to be raking off from Jessyk's manipulation of the terminus traffic."
Michelle nodded slowly. What Khumalo had just said made plenty of sense, but the notion was going to take some getting used to.
It does hang together, though, she reflected. And poking the Star Kingdom in the eye really isn't as risky for them as it would be for someone else. After all, we're already effectively at war with them over the slave trade. I suppose that from their perspective it was a question of how much worse it could get. And looked at that way, running even a fairly substantial risk to keep our frontiers from moving six hundred light-years closer to them would have an awful lot to recommend it.
"Well, whoever was really in charge, and wherever they were really headed," Khumalo continued, "I'm sure Ambassador Corvisart is going to uncover quite a few more things our good friend Commissioner Verrochio would just as soon stayed buried. But Monica and the Solarian League aren't our sole concerns here in the Quadrant, Milady."
He leaned back in his chair, his expression intent.
"As Captain Terekhov discovered during his brief tour with us before he went trotting off to Monica," Khumalo's smile was quirky, "the new influx of merchant shipping being attracted into the Quadrant by the Lynx Terminus is attracting pirates right along with it. We need to make it clear that this isn't going to be a healthy place for them to operate. That's going to get easier when those light attack craft everyone keeps promising me actually get here, of course. A couple of squadrons of LACs will keep just about any pirate I can imagine out of the star system they're patrolling, at any rate. And having 'their' LAC groups assigned to each new member system will help them realize we're really serious about integrating them into a Cluster-wide security system.
"At the same time, there are threats LACs alone aren't going to be able to deter, and we have to be aware of other potential flash points, whether with OFS or with one of the other single-system star nations out here. Her Majesty has made it quite clear that we're supposed to convince the locals that the Star Empire is going to be a good neighbor. I think she's right that, over time, quite a few more of the local star systems are going to recognize a good thing when they see it and seek admission to the Quadrant. That's for the future, though. For right now, it's our job to make it plain to them that while we're perfectly willing to assist them in dealing with mutual problems—like piracy—we aren't using that assistance as a way to wedge our foot into their doors so we can gobble them up more easily.
"And, of course, there are our equally good friends on New Tuscany."
"I gathered from Admiral Givens' briefings that New Tuscany wasn't exactly likely to be very happy with us," Michelle said.
"No, they aren't. And the fact that Joachim Alquezar's Constitutional Union Party has a clear majority in the new Quadrant Parliament isn't making them any happier. Andrieaux Yvernau hates his guts, and vice versa. In fact, probably the only person in the entire cluster Yvernau hates more than he hates Alquezar is Bernardus Van Dort . . . and the first thing Prime Minister Alquezar did was to name Van Dort a special minister without portfolio as soon as he got back from Monica aboard Hercules."
"I have to admit that I'm more than a little surprised Yvernau could have survived politically after the Convention repudiated his position so thoroughly, Sir," Michelle said cautiously, venturing warily into the political waters she normally kept her toes well clear of.
"I wouldn't say he came through it unscathed, Milady," Khumalo replied. "He didn't get hammered as badly as Tonkovic, of course, but he probably burned twenty or thirty T-years worth of political favors salvaging his position back home."
Shoupe stirred in her chair, and Khumalo glanced at her.
"I know that expression, Loretta," he said. "I take it you disagree?"
"Not entirely, Sir," his chief of staff replied. "I think O'Shaughnessy has a point, though. The real reason Yvernau's political career didn't come to a screeching halt is that a majority of his friends and neighbors back home agree with him."
Shoupe looked at Michelle.
"It's evident that Yvernau and those who think like him decided the citizens' rights provisions of the new constitution would upset their self-serving little applecart on New Tuscany. They aren't prepared to have that happen, so they opted out of the annexation. But one of the reasons they did that was because they figure they'll share in any general economic improvement in the Cluster due to simple proximity, and that our mere presence will protect them from Frontier Security whether that's what we're setting out to do, or not."
"I know that's what Yvernau thought, and I suppose I can't really dispute O'Shaughnessy's belief that quite a few of his fellow oligarchs think the same way," Khumalo said. It was obvious to Michelle that he was discussing the situation with Shoupe, and the fact that she seemed comfortable maintaining a contrary viewpoint—and that he wasn't hammering her for it—said good things about their working relationship, in her opinion.
"But even if that's what Yvernau and some of the others think," the vice admiral continued, "it's not what all of them think. Some of them are royally pissed that the Convention didn't do things Yvernau's way in the first place. Quite a few of them blame us—well, Baroness Medusa, at least—just as much as they do Alquezar and Van Dort. And for a lot of the others, the danger the example of the Quadrant and the Star Empire poses is going to far outweigh any trade advantages or protection against OFS. Nordbrandt's terror campaign against her own oligarchs on Kornati scares the stuffing out of that crew. What they're going to see is that their own lower class is going to be watching the example of what's happening to their counterparts here in the Quadrant. Which isn't exactly likely to contribute to the oligarchs' efforts to keep the lid screwed down."
"Which means exactly what for us, Sir?" Michelle asked, and he snorted.
"If I knew the answer to that question, I wouldn't need to work for a living. I'd just sit around picking winners in the local air car races! I know the baroness, Mr. O'Shaughnessy, Prime Minister Alquezar, and Mr. Van Dort—all of whom, frankly, are much better than I am at political analysis—are all thinking hard about that same question, and I don't believe they've come up with an answer for it yet, either. The thing I can't quite get out of my own mind, though, is that Yvernau and his crew were stupid enough to cut off their noses to spite their own faces when they couldn't get the Convention to swallow their line. I'm afraid I'm not prepared to put anything past anyone who's that stupid, and we're not exactly the favorite people on their list, either. So I just can't shake the suspicion that they're going to be looking for anything they can do to cause problems. The only real question in my mind where that's concerned is how much risk they're willing to run in the process. How far are they actually prepared to push us in order to demonstrate that we don't scare them?"
Michelle nodded again. If she'd been one of the chief crooks in one of the local kleptocracies, she would have been doing everything she could to avoid ticking off Manticore, whether it was the Old Star Kingdom or this newfangled Star Empire. The last thing she'd have done would be to risk goading it into some sort of unf
ortunately permanent reaction. Then again, she wasn't one of the chief crooks, and even if she had been, she wouldn't have been stupid enough to have embraced Andrieaux Yvernau's political strategy in the first place. Which meant she had no idea how valid Khumalo's concerns might be.
"Even if my concerns prove totally unfounded," the Talbott Station CO continued, "and, to be honest, nothing would please me more than to see exactly that happen, New Tuscany is still going to be one of our more potentially sensitive concerns. The disappearance of the various protective tariffs and other trade barriers here in the Quadrant is going to have a significant impact on local shipping patterns, and New Tuscany is probably going to be one of the major outside players in those patterns, at least in local terms. We're going to have to be careful about how we handle New Tuscan-registry merchant vessels, and I won't be a bit surprised if we encounter all kinds of customs disputes. So we're going to require at least some naval presence permanently in the vicinity of New Tuscany, Marian, Scarlet, and Pequod."
"Yes, Sir," Michelle agreed.
Khumalo started to say something more, but Shoupe cleared her throat quietly. He glanced at her, and she tapped one fingertip on her chrono.
"Point taken, Loretta," he said with a smile, and returned his attention to Michelle.
"What Captain Shoupe has just tactfully reminded me of is that dinner engagement with Baroness Medusa I mentioned to you. She's expecting us in Thimble in about three hours, and I imagine you and Captain Armstrong would like to return to Artemis to prepare. Mess dress, I'm afraid, since Prime Minister Alquezar will also be present. And the baroness also asked me to extend an invitation to all of your captains and their senior officers."
