by David Weber
He shrugged and took a sip of water, giving them time to absorb the fact that nice-guy Firebrand was looking out for them.
“At the same time, though,” he continued, lowering the glass again, “I can see where raising all the hell we possibly can in the Sollies’ backyard would work to everyone’s advantage. Especially if I’m right, and the Admiralty is planning on kicking in the League’s front door. In fact—”
He paused, obviously considering what he was about to say, then shrugged.
“Beowulf didn’t let the Sollies through the Beowulf Terminus to support the attack on the home system,” he said softly. “Instead, they’ve signed on with us.” He smiled thinly. “That means we’ve got a protected avenue directly into the heart of the Core Worlds. I think the Admiralty’s planning on using it, too. But when they do, they want the Sollies looking over their shoulder. Given what’s already happened to Battle Fleet, the League is probably going to have to call in Frontier Fleet units to reinforce closer to home. What I think my bosses have in mind is to make such a ruckus out here in the Verge that OFS won’t turn loose a damned thing without kicking and screaming the whole way.”
“Beowulf’s sided with the Star Empire?” Indiana asked half-incredulously. His knowledge of astrography outside a twenty or thirty-light-year radius of Seraphim wasn’t exactly profound, but he knew Beowulf was no more than a T-week or so from the Sol System itself for a ship with a military grade hyper generator and particle screens.
“That’s what the dispatches say, and, frankly, it’s the only way we could know what happened in the home system this quickly,” Harahap pointed out. He shrugged. “Only way the home office could’ve gotten a dispatch boat out here this fast would have been through the Beowulf Terminus, which suggests to me that—”
He shrugged again, holding up one hand, palm uppermost, and Indiana nodded slowly.
“So just how soon would ‘your bosses’ like us to start raising a ‘ruckus’ here in Seraphim, Firebrand?” Mackenzie asked, her eyes narrow.
“As soon as you feel you possibly could,” Harahap replied. “Hopefully within the next three T-months or so.”
“Ninety T-days, in other words,” she said flatly.
“Yes,” he said.
“And you can get us naval support in that timeframe?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“How?” Her tone was a bit skeptical. “I’m as excited about the possibility as Indy is, Firebrand. But if your navy’s going to be going directly after Sol, how is any of it supposed to make its way all the way out here?”
“It’s not.” He shook his head. “What’s going to happen is that Admiral Gold Peak is about to launch an offensive out of the Talbott Cluster in the next month or so.” He met Mackenzie’s eyes levelly, confident in his ability to lie convincingly. “Her main objective is going to be the Madras Sector,” he continued, blithely ignoring the fact that Gold Peak almost certainly wasn’t going to do anything of the sort. “That’s going to require most of her heavy units, but it should leave plenty of cruisers and destroyers available for…other duties, let’s say. Like turning up here in Seraphim to provide you with some orbital support. And to make sure Frontier Fleet doesn’t provide any orbital support to McCready and O’Sullivan.”
Mackenzie looked at him for several moments before, finally, she nodded slowly. It actually made sense, she thought. Assuming Gold Peak managed to meet the schedule Harahap had described. And assuming there was some way to coordinate properly.
“Do you need an answer tonight?” she asked.
“To be honest, I’d prefer one as soon as possible,” Harahap said, and this time he was telling the truth. “On the other hand, I know this came at you completely cold, and the last thing either of us needs is for you to rush into something that’s just going to get you all killed without accomplishing anything for us. I’ll be on-planet for another couple of days, so you’ve got that long to think about it, but then I’m going to have to move on to my next destination.”
“I don’t know if we can have a decision for you that quickly,” Indiana put in. He looked across the table at his sister, then back at Harahap. “We’d be putting a lot of people at risk, and we’re going to have to go back and evaluate the assumptions of our contingency plans.”
“I can understand that. But if I head out of the Seraphim System, I take your communications link with me.” He grimaced. “Once I’m out of here, I won’t be able to communicate with Admiral Gold Peak to warn her you’re planning to move.”
“We might be able to work around that,” Mackenzie said slowly, and Harahap’s eyebrows rose. He hadn’t expected to hear that.
“How?” he asked. He’d hoped giving them a two-day window would push them into making a decision, and he was none too delighted by the suggestion that there was a factor in the equation that he hadn’t known about.
“Mendoza of Córdoba imports beef from Montana,” Mackenzie said. “They make regular trips, and they maintain an irregular schedule of dispatch boats between here and Meyers. About half the time, the boat stops off in Montana to check on market conditions, see about renegotiating contracts if the market price’s changed, that sort of thing.” She shrugged. “We’ve got contacts in the crews of some of the freighters on the Montana run. For that matter, we’ve got contacts on at least two of the dispatch boat crews. It’s about twenty-eight T-days from here to Montana by dispatch boat; more like six T-weeks for one of the high-speed freighters. If we can use the dispatch boat, we could get a message to Meyers in a couple of T-months. If we have to use the freighter and arrange a message relay from Montana, we might be looking at as much as four T-months. Maybe even longer.”
“I didn’t know about that,” Harahap admitted truthfully.
And I wish you didn’t know about it, either, he added silently. On the other hand, as far as I know Gold Peak isn’t going anywhere near Meyers without direct orders from home. So, worst-case scenario, you get a message to Montana in two months. Hmmm…
He thought about it. The odds were that any messenger from Seraphim would be regarded as a nutcase, if not a Solarian agent provocateur, by any Manticoran naval officer. The Manties certainly weren’t going fall all over themselves dispatching warships into Solarian territory on some wild goose chase substantiated by nothing more than somebody who claimed his revolutionary organization had been in contact with them all along! In fact, he could probably help that reaction along just a bit.
“All right,” he said, nodding with an expression of profound relief. “Actually, I’m relieved to hear you have another means of communication. I’d still prefer to know what your plans are before I have to leave, for a lot of reasons, but I can understand why you’re going to have to think about this, and at least you’re not as dependent on us as I thought you’d be to communicate with Admiral Gold Peak. Is your contact arrangement such that you know now if you’d be able to send a message off?”
“The schedules aren’t cast in ceramacrete, if that’s what you mean,” Mackenzie said. “They usually hit within, oh, a local week or so of their regular departure times, though.” She shrugged. “That’s for the freighters, of course. The dispatch boats are on a lot more irregular schedule.”
“But you could count on getting one off within a one-T-month window?”
“Oh, that we could do,” Indiana assured him.
“All right. I’m going to give you a code phrase for Admiral Gold Peak. When she hears it, she’ll know I sent you, and on that basis, she’ll be prepared to dispatch an appropriate naval force to support you immediately.” Actually, it would probably finish off any chance Gold Peak might believe them. Since there was no such code phrase, she’d have to take it as proof that their messenger was an imposter, but there was no point worrying them with that, he thought. “With that in mind, would you be prepared to go ahead and kick off your ‘short-range’ plan within, say, two T-months of having sent off your messenger?”
“I don’t know,” Mack
enzie said hesitantly. “Without having coordinated directly with Gold Peak, without knowing support is on its way, we’d be asking our people to take an awful risk.”
“I realize that, but this is the kind of business risks have to be taken in,” Harahap pointed out. “And you’d be in complete control of whether or not you sent the messenger in the first place. It would be a case of your having looked at the situation here in Seraphim and decided you really can pull it off, assuming you get Admiral Gold Peak’s naval support before anybody from OFS or Frontier Fleet could respond to McCready. If you aren’t satisfied you can do that, then you never send your messenger off in the first place.”
Indiana was nodding thoughtfully, and Mackenzie looked at her brother with a worried expression. He saw it and smiled at her.
“I’m not going to rush off into anything without your support, Max,” he reassured her. “But Firebrand has a point. We’d be the ones calling the shots.”
“Could we do that and then wait until Admiral Gold Peak actually gets here?” Mackenzie asked.
“I suppose.” Harahap injected a doubtful note into his tone, and both Grahams looked at him. He shrugged. “Look, I understand your concerns. But the Star Empire’s up against it, too, you know. We’ve supported you this far, as the weapons shipments you’ve already received indicate. We’d like to support you further, and as I explained to you the first time we met, it wouldn’t be in our interest to encourage people to revolt and then stand back and watch them get the chop.
“All of that’s true, but I also have to say that we’ve got to allocate our resources carefully. Not things like weapons shipments. Those we can arrange basically whenever and wherever we need to. But we’re talking about warships, about naval support, and we’re up against the Solarian League, the biggest navy in the history of the galaxy. If you can’t commit to a specific date for your own organization to strike until you’ve actually got Manticoran warships in orbit around the planet, you’re probably going to get pushed further down the priorities queue. I’m not trying to make any kind of threat here, or give you any kind of ultimatum. I’m just saying that if Admiral Gold Peak is looking at requests for support, she’s probably going to give priority to the people running the greatest risks. And if she’s strapped for light units, she’s probably not going to give very much priority to somebody who tells her they can’t take action until they have Manticoran units actually in their skies. She’ll figure that if you’re waiting for that kind of response, you won’t be coming into the open until you get it, and if you’re not out in the open, you’re probably not going to take any heavy hits from the scags, so she can afford to let you wait while she deals with more pressing commitments.”
“You’re saying she’d refuse to send us support?” Indiana asked.
“No, I’m saying there’d be a good chance she’d move you down the list.” Harahap shrugged. “She’d probably send word back by your contact telling you how soon she’d be able to free up units to send in your direction. It might not be very long. On the other hand, given how other operations go, it could be you’d be looking at your original two or three-T-year timeframe. More probably, it would fall somewhere in the middle.”
The Grahams looked at each other again. Indiana raised one eyebrow, and Mackenzie shrugged. Then he turned back to Harahap.
“We understand what you’re saying. We understand the logic behind it, too. And the truth is, as I’m sure you realized before you said it, that there’s no way we want to leave our dad—or anyone else—rotting in Terrabore Prison one minute longer than we have to. We’ll look at our options, and at our communications channels, and see what we can do. I don’t think there’s any way we could possibly give you an answer before you have to leave the system, but we will make our minds up as quickly as possible.”
“That’s all I can ask for.” Harahap smiled. “Like I say, no one wants you running stupid risks, so look at those options carefully. But if you do decide to move, Admiral Gold Peak will be there for you.”
“Good.”
Indiana looked as if he wanted to say more, but at that moment Alecta reappeared, carrying a tray laden with steaming bowls. She set it down and began distributing food, and Harahap settled back, sniffing appreciatively. The curry smelled just as good as she’d promised, and he allowed himself to look forward to it.
He wasn’t completely satisfied with the evening’s work, and his bosses wouldn’t be either. Fortunately, they were professionals who understood timing was always a problem in an operation like this one, and no one could ever predict how it would work out in the end. Not really. There was always some damned unknown factor waiting around to screw things up, like that idiot Zagorski in Loomis. An entire T-year of preparations and quiet contacts right down the tubes because of him and MacQuarie, and the fumblers hadn’t even turned up evidence that Manticore had been involved with the LLL! Talk about wasted effort! As a general rule, incompetent opponents were a blessing, but when they were too frigging stupid to do their own jobs just when you actually needed them to…
He brushed that thought aside. Done was done, and Loomis hadn’t been his op, anyway. This one was, and he was a craftsman who took pride in his work.
So did those superiors of his who weren’t going to be happy if he couldn’t convince these kids into accelerating their schedule. He didn’t know exactly why that was, and those superiors weren’t about to tell him, but that was fine. He understood the rules, even if they could turn around and bite someone on the arse too often for comfort, and he’d do his best to pull it off. It was obvious he wasn’t going to rush these two after all, though. Indiana was clearly more inclined to act quickly, yet it was equally clear he wasn’t prepared to overrule Mackenzie’s more cautious, analytical approach. His employers were just going to have to settle for the best he could do, and at least they were far more pragmatic—and aware of operational realities and limitations—than some of the people he’d worked for in the past. As long as he was honest in his reports to them they were unlikely to send him a pulser dart just because he hadn’t been able to accomplish the impossible.
Harahap considered the odds as he began ladling curry over a plate of rice. Fifty-fifty, he decided. Maybe as high as sixty-forty, his favor, given Indiana’s aggressiveness, but not any better than that. Still, he’d won a lot of bets at worse odds than that, and if this one didn’t work out, all he and his employers lost was the time and the piddling expense of the weapons they’d provided. Whereas if it did work…
I can live with fifty-fifty, he decided. After all, it won’t be my ass, whichever side craps out.
August 1922 Post Diaspora
“And best of all, if we do it right, the bastards won’t even realize we’re onto them until we hand them over for trial!”
—Captain Cynthia Lecter,
Royal Manticoran Navy
Chapter Thirty-Three
“I suppose that’s just about it, then.” Michelle Henke tipped back in her, rested her right ankle on her left knee, and clasped her hands behind her head. “Unless anyone else has something they think we should be looking at?”
She looked around the officers gathered at the long table in her dining cabin, most of them sipping coffee or munching their chosen form of fingerfood, and quirked an eyebrow. It was an informal looking group, which wasn’t too surprising, considering the fact that their commanding admiral had chosen to hold it here, rather than in her briefing room…and to attend in her Academy sweats and treecat slippers. None of the others were quite that informal, of course—rank did have its privileges, which none of them were so rash as to usurp, however congenial their CO—but there was still an undeniably casual, comfortable feel to the meeting.
“It looks to me like you’ve covered all the points from the agenda, Ma’am,” Gervais Archer said, consulting his minicomp. Then he smiled wryly. “For that matter, you’ve, ah, hit on at least a few additional points.”
Several people chuckled, and Michelle gri
nned unrepentantly. Organization was a good thing, and she was as organized as anyone until she was certain she’d covered all the points she’d planned on covering. After that, free association was the order of the day as far as she was concerned. In fact, she encouraged it as a way to expose points she hadn’t thought about ahead of time.
“Obsessive organization is the sign of a mind not prepared to thrive upon chaos,” she pointed out, and the chuckles were louder.
“Actually, there is one thing it might be appropriate to bring up, Ma’am,” Veronica Armstrong said after a moment. The flag captain sat at the opposite end of the table from Michelle, flanked by Commander Larson, her executive officer, and Commander Wilton Diego, her tactical officer. At the moment, Armstrong’s green eyes were unwontedly serious, and Michelle frowned mentally.
“Go, Vicki,” she invited.
“Well, I’ve actually been thinking about this for a while,” Armstrong continued with a slight shrug. “The thing is that as honored and pleased as I am to be your flag captain, I have to question whether or not a battlecruiser—even a Nike like Artemis—is the best place for you to keep your flag. We’ve got two and a half squadrons of modern ships-of-the-wall now, and they’ve not only got better flag deck accommodations, but they’re a hell of a lot tougher, too.”
“Trying to get rid of me, Vicki?” Michelle asked quizzically, and Armstrong shook her head.
“No, Ma’am. Of course not!” She smiled. “I’m just pointing out that a superdreadnought is more traditional for a fleet commander’s flagship. When it’s available, of course.”
“You may have noticed that I’ve never been exactly trammeled by the bonds of tradition,” Michelle said dryly. Then she straightened in her chair, leaned forward, and folded her hands on the table in front of her.
“I appreciate the sentiment, Vicki,” she said in a considerably more serious tone. “And I’ll admit I considered—briefly—whether or not it would be a good idea to move to one of the SD(P)s when they became available. But I decided not to for several reasons. One is that for the immediately foreseeable future, I don’t think the question of survivability really enters the equation. Unless we screw up, the Sollies aren’t going to be able to threaten us significantly. For that matter, even if they manage to get into range, a Nike like Artie is a hell of a lot better protected against anything but pointblank energy fire than almost anyone else’s ships-of-the-wall.
