by David Weber
Dueñas stiffened. For a handful of heartbeats, sheer incredulity that anyone would dare to speak that way to a Solarian-appointed governor held him motionless. His eyes widened in shock, and then he felt his face darken with a scalding flush of fury.
“I beg your pardon?!” he bit out.
“You should,” Zavala said. “And you should come up with better lies next time, too, Governor. I doubt this one would fly even back in Old Chicago. And somehow I don’t think Permanent Senior Undersecretary MacArtney’s going to be very happy with you when this blows up as spectacularly as it’s about to.”
“What do you mean by that?” Dueñas demanded, his face still dark with rage, and Zavala shrugged.
“I mean there’s no medical emergency and your ‘quarantine’ is as bogus as it is stupid, Governor. You’ve chosen to unlawfully seize not one but two Manticoran merchantmen in flagrant disregard of several solemn treaties and at least two cardinal principles of interstellar law, and you’ve done it on a pretext you know would never stand up in any admiralty court. Your attempt to cloak your actions under the cover of a medical quarantine might fool a particularly credulous two-year-old, but no one else is going to believe it for a moment. I certainly don’t, and my orders from Lady Gold Peak are very clear on this point.”
“And what might those orders be, Captain?” Dueñas’ lips curled contemptuously, and Zavala shrugged.
“My instructions are to recover any unlawfully detained Manticoran vessels in this star system and to repatriate them to Manticoran space as expeditiously as possible, Governor.”
“And just how do you intend to do that, Captain? Despite your own reckless language and contempt for a legally declared medical emergency, I have no intention of releasing quarantined vessels until I’m thoroughly convinced no health risk will result.” Dueñas locked eyes with the Manticoran. “There may be a difference of opinion about the validity of that medical emergency, Captain Zavala, but its legal standing is beyond dispute.”
“Its legal standing is exactly zero, Governor, so let’s not waste each other’s time pretending otherwise, shall we? Under the Treaty of Beowulf, you’re required to grant my medical personnel access in order to determine the legitimacy of your personnel’s diagnosis. You’ve refused to do so, which means your declaration of quarantine has no legal standing whatsoever.”
“I’m afraid I disagree with your legal interpretation on that point, Captain,” Dueñas said inflexibly. “And absent instructions from higher authority, I’m also afraid I’ll have to act on my own understanding of the circumstances and the treaty’s provisions. I’ll be happy to request those instructions, of course, but”—he smiled again, coldly—“it will probably take some months to get clarification from Old Earth.”
“That’s unacceptable, Governor,” Zavala said calmly.
“I’m afraid it’s the best I can do, Captain. Under the circumstances, you understand.”
“Oh, I understand the circumstances better than you may believe I do, Governor. With all due respect, however, I’m not certain you do.”
“Meaning what, precisely, Captain?”
“Meaning I’m under orders to repatriate those vessels as quickly as possible by any means necessary. And if you need me to be more specific, Sir, ‘any means necessary’ does include the use of force.”
“Are you seriously proposing to commit an act of war against the Solarian League on its own territory?” Dueñas demanded.
“First, the Saltash System is not Solarian territory,” Zavala replied. “It’s legally an independent star system, and the Solarian presence in it is—legally—solely to serve as a peacekeeping authority to prevent hostilities between the Republic of MacPhee and the Republic of Lochore. Although the Office of Frontier Security does enjoy certain administrative rights as a result of its agreements with MacPhee and Lochore, that doesn’t make Saltash Solarian territory, no matter how much cash you squeeze out of it every T-year. Second, I’m not the one who’s committed an act of war; you are. In the absence of a genuine and legitimate medical emergency to justify your so-called quarantine, your actions amount to piracy. And I might point out to you, Sir, that piracy is a capital offense. And, third, I’m not proposing to use force if you refuse to release my star nation’s vessels and personnel peacefully; I’m promising to use force.”
Dueñas stared incredulously at the officer in his display. Zavala looked extraordinarily—indeed, one might almost have said insanely—calm for a mere captain who’d just threatened a Solarian League governor in language like that. Dueñas had anticipated intransigence. In fact, he’d counted on it. But he’d never contemplated the possibility that Zavala would step into his trap so quickly…and with such obvious contempt for the League in general and Damián Dueñas in particular. It cut deep, that contempt, coming from such a lowly officer in the neobarb navy of a pipsqueak little star nation with delusions of grandeur, and the governor felt his face flushing angrily once more.
“Should you attempt to carry out that outrageous and totally unacceptable threat, Captain, it will be the end of your career! I promise you that! And the consequences for your star nation’s relations with the Solarian League will be severe!”
“I doubt my career will suffer in the least, Governor, and even if I didn’t, it would take a worse threat than that to prevent me from carrying out my instructions. And as for the Star Empire’s relations with the League, I’ll take my chances on that, too. To date, the League’s been the instigator in every incident between the Star Empire and the League, including this one. And as my Empress and her government have attempted to make clear to Old Chicago, the Star Empire of Manticore is not prepared to allow the Solarian League to kill its personnel, insult its sovereignty, or seize its merchant vessels”—his eyes bored into Dueñas’—“without reaction. If you refuse to respond to an effort to resolve the crisis you’ve provoked by peaceful means, then I’m prepared to assume you prefer a more…bellicose resolution. In which case, Governor, my squadron and I are at your disposal.”
“I’ve heard quite enough of this!” Dueñas snapped. “Be advised, Captain, that in light of the threatening language you’ve seen fit to use in this conversation, I have no alternative but to consider that your vessels represent a hostile force. If you continue deeper into the star system, I will so regard your presence and I will use all means at my disposal to resist your intrusion into Solarian-protected space.”
“And would ‘all means at my disposal’ include the four Indefatigable-class battlecruisers currently approximately five thousand three hundred kilometers this side of Shona Station, Governor?”
Dueñas’ jaw tried hard to drop at the Manticoran’s level—and undeniably contemptuous—tone. Vice Admiral Dubroskaya had assured him that her vessels would be undetectable until the Manties got far closer than they were. The fact that Zavala already knew they were there was bad enough. The fact that he was prepared to issue such threats knowing they were present, though…
“You might want to inform the local senior officer that I have complete tactical readouts on his vessels,” Zavala continued. “Including the fact that one of them is down a beta node in her forward impeller ring. I’m perfectly aware of their locations, and also of the three destroyers hiding on the far side of Cinnamon’s moon. I’m not sure why you bothered to hide those, but I’m certain you had a reason that made sense to you, at any rate. To use your own turn of phrase, ‘be advised’ that I’m as well aware of the Solarian forces currently deployed in the Saltash System as I am of the SLN’s demonstrated proclivity for firing on unprepared vessels of sovereign star nations with no warning. In light of that demonstrated proclivity, please inform your local commander that I entertain no doubt of my ability to engage and destroy all of his units if I should be forced to do so. And since you’ve seen fit to threaten my command with attack by ‘all means’ at your disposal, I have no option but to consider your warships to be hostile units. As such, I require that they stand down immedia
tely. They will power down their impeller nodes and shut down all tracking and targeting systems, and their personnel will immediately evacuate to the surface of Cinnamon. And I should point out, Governor, that my sensor resolution of your vessels is more than adequate to determine their status and whether or not the life pods used to evacuate their crews are actually occupied. Assuming my requirements are met, your vessels will be left unmolested and you may…reclaim them following our withdrawal from the star system.”
“And precisely what do you intend to do if this pipe dream of yours fails to come to fruition?” Dueñas demanded furiously.
“If your crews haven’t abandoned ship within the next twenty-seven minutes,” Zavala said with a flat, implacable calm worse than any shouted threats, “I will construe that as an indication of hostile intent, and I will open fire. The decision is yours, Governor. In either case, my ships will be in orbit around Cinnamon in approximately one and a half hours. Whether or not any of your warships are still intact at that time is up to you. Good day.”
Dueñas was still staring at the display in disbelief when it went suddenly blank.
Chapter Twelve
“I didn’t realize the Commodore had such a command of diplomatic language, Ma’am,” Alvin Tallman observed from his position in Tristram’s Auxiliary Control over his private com link to Naomi Kaplan.
“He does have a way with words, doesn’t he?” Kaplan replied. “I’ve always admired a well-turned phrase, and I was impressed by his subtlety, too. That comment about Tango Three’s beta node was a nice touch, too. But at least nobody on the other side’s going to be able to get away with claiming he didn’t give them clear warning, now are they?”
“They may not get away with it, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to try to, Skipper,” Tallman pointed out.
“That much was a given going in. Personally, I’m with the Commodore. Better to be hanged for hexapuma than a pussycat. Besides,” Kaplan smiled coldly, “we tried it their way at New Tuscany. Now they can try it our way.”
* * *
“He’s got to be crazy, Ma’am,” Tucker Kiernan told Oxana Dubroskaya flatly. “Five light cruisers against four battlecruisers? They’ve got at most—what? Maybe eight tubes per broadside? Well, we’ve got twenty-eight per broadside!”
“Captain Kiernan has a point, Admiral,” Captain Maksymilian Johnson, SLNS Vanquisher’s commanding officer, said. “On the other hand, and not wanting to sound alarmist,” the flag captain continued, “if they’ve got the kind of range advantage some of the wilder reports from New Tuscany indicate, they may be planning on opening fire from well beyond our range.”
“Are you suggesting a batch of light cruisers is going to open fire at forty million kilometers, Sir?” Captain Kelvin Diadoro, Dubroskaya’s operations officer, sounded a little more incredulous than he probably should have speaking to someone with Johnson’s seniority, but the vice admiral couldn’t really blame him.
“I’m not necessarily suggesting anything of the sort, Kelvin,” Johnson replied with a touch of frost. “I would point out that forty million klicks does comport reasonably well with the claimed range at New Tuscany, but whether or not those claims have any relationship with reality is more than I’m prepared to say. What I am suggesting, however, is that this Zavala’s clearly suggesting he has a significant range advantage and he’s planning to use of it. And if it should happen he really does have that kind of range, it doesn’t matter how many missile tubes we have and how many he has, since we won’t be able to put fire on him without our birds going ballistic twenty or thirty million kilometers before they even reach him, at which point even a light cruiser’s counter missiles and point defense will eat them for lunch.”
“Maksymilian has a point, Admiral,” Captain Meridiana Quinquilleros, SLNS Success’ CO, said diffidently. All eyes swiveled towards her quadrant of the communications display and she shrugged. “I doubt any shipkillers a light cruiser could launch internally have anything like the range reported from New Tuscany, but they could still have more range than anything we’ve got. And whether or not it’s going to work the way he has in mind, that’s clearly what he has to intend to do if he’s actually planning on engaging us at all.”
“Point taken, Meridiana,” Dubroskaya said, and turned her own gaze on Diadoro. “Assume that is what he has in mind, Kelvin. Where does that leave us?”
“We’re talking about light cruisers here,” Diadoro pointed out, “and I don’t care how ‘missile heavy’ their tactical doctrine is, light cruisers—even big-assed ones like these—can’t have more than two or three hundred shipkillers on board. You just couldn’t fit them in, especially if they’ve got some kind of extended drive system to eat up still more mass and cubage. So call it fifteen hundred birds, each with the warhead of one of our own Spathas.” The Spatha was the SLN’s new-generation missile for destroyers and light-cruisers, with a considerably lighter laser head than the Javelins being issued to heavy cruisers and battlecruisers. “If they could hit us with all of them, it’d hurt, no question. But there’s no way one of them could put more than eight or nine—ten, max—birds into a single salvo, and at least some of those are going to have to be penaides. Without that, they wouldn’t have a prayer of getting through our missile defenses. So say they give up—what? a quarter?—of their total launch capability for penetration aids and electronic warfare platforms. That gives the five of them a maximum throw weight of about thirty-eight lightweight shipkillers per salvo against four Indefatigables. I’ve got to like those odds, Admiral.”
“And if they’ve got any missile pods along?” Dubroskaya asked.
“I know that’s what they probably used at New Tuscany—and Spindle, assuming there’s any accuracy at all to what we’ve heard.” Diadoro added the qualifier conscientiously, although he was one of the squadron’s officers who was confident the rumors about Spindle were wildly inaccurate. “And they could have a few along,” he continued, “but they can’t have many. They’d have to be tractored to their hulls, or our lightspeed platforms would have picked them up, and you just couldn’t fit more than a handful of pods big enough to carry that kind of missiles onto the skin of a light cruiser. Besides, there’re still the limitations of their fire control. A light cruiser’s only got so many telemetry channels; there’s no way they could control pod salvos big enough to get through our defenses. I’m not saying they might not get two or three leakers through, land a couple of lucky punches, and it’s possible they could have enough range on internally-launched birds to engage us before we could engage them. But they’re not going to be able to saturate our defenses heavily enough to let them win, especially with Spatha-grade laser heads. Not when they’ve got nine hundred thousand tons of warship and we’ve got three-point-four million tons.”
“I can’t fault Kelvin’s analysis, Ma’am,” Captain Ham Seung Jee of the Inexorable said. “The only problem I have is that the Manties have to be able to figure that out just as well as we can…and they’re trying it anyway.”
“I’d say that’s because they’ve screwed the pooch,” another voice said. The others looked at the com image of Captain Borden McGillicuddy, SLNS Paladin’s CO, and he waved one hand in a throwing away gesture. “They’re committed to coming down our throats,” he pointed out. “Even if they went to max decel at this point, they’re still going to have to come all the way to Cinnamon orbit before they can kill their current velocity. Whatever their damned range advantage, they’re going to enter ours, whether they want to or not.”
“You’re suggesting this is some kind of bluff on their part?” Ham asked.
“All I’m suggesting at this point is that I don’t think they got their ‘invisible recon platforms’ close enough to pick us up quite as early as they’d like us to believe,” McGillicuddy replied. “Maybe this Zavala character didn’t realize what he was walking into until just before he contacted Governor Dueñas. God knows we’ve all seen how arrogant Manties can be! Maybe h
e just came bulling straight in without bothering on scouting the inner system. After all, how likely was it that he was going to run into an entire division of battlecruisers in an out-of-the-way system like Saltash? By the time he figured out what he was actually up against, it was too late for him to fall back across the limit and hyper out. So maybe he decided that rather than rolling over he’d try to run a bluff on the strength of what’s supposed to’ve happened at New Tuscany and Spindle.”
“And when it doesn’t work?” Dubroskaya asked.
“Then he goes ahead and rolls over anyway, probably, Ma’am,” McGillicuddy said, and shrugged. “This time limit of his is going to put him a good thirty million klicks outside our powered missile envelope when it expires. That leaves him plenty of time to change his mind and adopt a more conciliatory tone before we could blow him out of space. If I were in his place, I might figure I didn’t have anything to lose throwing my threats around ahead of time. If the other side blinks; I run the table. If the other side doesn’t blink; I’m no worse off than I was and I can still surrender before he engages me.”
Dubroskaya nodded slowly. McGillicuddy’s hypothesis made a certain degree of sense, and Diadoro was certainly right about the limited magazine capacity and small broadside of a light cruiser. She wasn’t quite as confident as McGillicuddy about the Manties’ fundamental rationality, given the fact that they’d been foolish enough to pick a fight with the Solarian League in the first place, but the captain’s analysis of the other side’s unpalatable tactical situation had a lot to recommend it.
In fact, that was Dueñas’ basic plan in the first place, she reminded herself. The whole object was to draw the Manties into an untenable position—and get them to commit themselves in a way that clearly demonstrated their belligerence—before they ever figured out we were here. Which is basically what Borden’s arguing happened, after all.
