Shadow of Freedom-eARC

by David Weber

  Too bad, she thought. Takes a certain degree of moral courage for an officer who knows her duty to cut and run in the face of the enemy. Lots easier for a coward to make that decision, really. He deserves better than what’s going to happen.

  “I assume Captain Morgan’s staying in touch?” she asked now, glancing at Lieutenant Commander Edwards, her com officer.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Edwards acknowledged with an evil grin. Bill Edwards, who’d spent a lot of time at BuWeaps with Admiral Sonja Hemphill, wasn’t exactly a typical communications specialist. He was actually a lot more of a “shooter” than a technical weenie, and Michelle shook her head at him fondly.

  “Bloodthirsty, aren’t you?” His grin only grew broader, and she shook her head, then glanced at Commander Adenauer.

  The dark-haired operations officer had lost a lot of family in the Yawata Strike, and it had taken her a long time to regain her lively sense of humor. Indeed, there were shadows behind her eyes even now. It hadn’t affected her work, though, and she looked up and raised one eyebrow as she felt her admiral’s gaze.

  “Yes, Ma’am?”

  “What’s the latest on those merchies, Dominica?”

  “I think just about everyone who’s going to get her impellers online before we hit orbit already has, Ma’am.” The ops officer twitched her head in the direction of the master plot. “The only one that’s really got a chance to make it across the limit is that first one, the one that bolted the instant they picked us up inbound. Well, I suppose I should say the only one that thinks it’s really got a chance to make it across the limit is probably that one.”

  Her lips twitched, and Michelle sighed.

  “Bloodthirsty lunatics. I’m surrounded by bloodthirsty lunatics.”

  “In all fairness, Ma’am, I don’t think ‘lunatics’ is exactly the right word,” Cynthia Lecter said respectfully.

  “Oh, really? And what noun would you choose instead, Cindy?”

  “I think enthusiasts would be the best way to describe them,” the trim, blonde chief of staff replied.

  Michelle considered the suggestion for a second or two, then nodded.

  “Point taken,” she acknowledged, and turned her attention back to the plot once more.

  Thurgood’s battlecruisers had been accelerating away from Meyers for sixty-five minutes, and they hadn’t been wasting any time about it. In fact, they were accelerating at almost 4.8 KPS2, their maximum military power, without the inertial compensator safety margin upon which SLN doctrine insisted. As a result, their velocity away from the planet was up to 18,712 KPS, and they’d traveled 36.5 million kilometers. Assuming constant velocities, Thurgood would reach the hyper limit on the far side of the primary twenty-six minutes before Michelle could, which meant his battlecruisers would be able to slip away into hyper before she brought him into her Mark 16s’ effective powered envelope. She would have been able to get inside her Mark 23s’s much longer powered envelope, however, and her SD(P)s would have made short work of his battlecruisers and lighter units under those circumstances. It would have required the units she committed to the attack to simply overfly the planet without decelerating, but she had far more firepower than she’d ever need to deal with Meyers.

  The three merchantmen who’d broken away from the planet complicated the situation a bit more, but not enough to do Thurgood any good. They were slower, they’d gotten started later, and even though each of them had headed off in a different direction, her warships had ample acceleration advantage to run them all down. She could have diverted a single destroyer—or even a LAC from one of her carriers—to deal with each of them. For that matter, she could have sent a massive LAC strike screaming after Thurgood and brought him to action long before he reached the hyper limit. Of course, more people would probably get killed that way before Thurgood formally surrendered what was left of his command, but there was no doubt she could have done it if she’d wanted to.

  There was a much simpler and more elegant way to do the same job, however.

  “All right, Dominica,” she said after a moment. “Update the merchies’ course profiles. As soon as she’s done that, Bill,” she turned back to the communications officer, “pass all the tactical data on to Captain Morgan. Tell him I don’t want any of those freighters getting out with news of our arrival.”

  * * *

  “Message from the Flag, Sir,” Commander Frank Ukhtomskoy’s com officer announced.

  “Ah?” Ukhtomskoy turned his command chair towards HMS Talon’s com section. “Our marching orders, I presume?”

  “Yes, Sir. Latest update on enemy movements and target assignments for the intercepts.”

  “Good.” Ukhtomskoy nodded and looked at his astrogator. “In that case, I suppose we should be going,” he observed.

  Thirty-two seconds later, the destroyer disappeared quietly into hyper-space 198.2 million kilometers from the star called Meyers.

  * * *

  “That’s it, Sir,” Captain Wayne said quietly, taking the message board Lieutenant Commander Olaf Lister, Thurgood’s communications officer, had just sent to the briefing room. “Colonel Trondheim’s officially surrendered.” The chief of staff shrugged and handed the board back to the flag bridge yeoman who’d delivered it. He twitched his head at the briefing room door, and the yeoman vanished as Wayne turned back to Thurgood.

  “Not like he had a lot of choice once they dropped into orbit around the planet and demanded his surrender,” the commodore observed. “In fact, if I’m surprised by anything, it’s that it took that long for the Manties to find someone to do the surrendering!”

  And that we actually got the chance to run for it, he added mentally, trying to feel grateful for his good fortune.

  To be honest, he’d never expected the Manties to simply let him go, not with their acceleration advantage. They could easily have dropped a handful of cruisers into Meyers orbit and sent everything else after him, and he’d never had any illusions about what would have happened if they had. The fact that they’d opted to simply ignore him and continue on their profile to secure the capital planet had been an enormous relief, yet there was a part of him which almost…resented it.

  That wasn’t the right verb, and he knew it, but it came close. It was as if he and his ships were so sublimely unimportant that the Manty admiral couldn’t even be bothered to send someone to squash them. Francis Thurgood had never been one of those Battle Fleet idiots, and he’d never felt any particular urge to die for the honor of the flag. The lives of the men and women under his command were far too important to waste doing stupid things. But still that sensation of being casually brushed aside…

  Better that than being turned into glowing wreckage, he reminded himself. Not that your career isn’t going to get turned into wreckage when Old Terra finds out about this. Alonso y Yáñez will probably realize you did the right thing, but that prick Rajampet sure as hell won’t. The civilians are going to be looking for scapegoats, too, and you can bet your bottom credit they aren’t going to put any of the blame on Verrocchio. Hell, they’ll probably turn him and Hongbo into martyrs! The courageous civilian administrators who stayed at their posts while the military cut and ran on them. Blech.

  “I suppose we should head back to Flag Bridge,” he said out loud, pushing back from the table. Wayne and Commander Merriman followed him out of the briefing room, and he tried hard to shake free of the numb dejection which had flowed over him in the last three and three-quarters hours.

  It had taken the Manties roughly three hours and twenty minutes to reach Meyers, and Trondheim had surrendered the planet to them as soon as they did. No doubt they’d been “discussing” his options with him throughout their approach. Of course, it had taken another twenty-five minutes for Trondheim’s lightspeed message to overtake Thurgood’s fleeing command. Which meant he’d been up to a base velocity of almost 79,000 KPS, and only 89.6 million kilometers from the hyper limit—and safety—when Edgehill received the confirming transmis
sion.

  Trondheim’s career would be going down the toilet, too, he reflected. For that matter, plenty of other careers were going to get turned into mush right along with his before this rat fuck of a war was over. But at least his people were going to live to fight another—

  His thoughts cut off abruptly as an alarm shrilled.

  “Hyper footprint!” Captain Macpherson snapped. “Multiple hyper footprints at zero-zero-zero by zero-zero-two! Range eight-niner-point-seven million kilometers!”

  Thurgood’s breathing seemed to stop as the blood-red icons appeared on the master plot directly ahead of his battlecruisers. How—?

  The range was still the next best thing to five light-minutes. It was going to be a while before they had any lightspeed sensor results, but gravitics were FTL, and he watched silently as a pale-faced Macpherson leaned over a sensor rating’s shoulder, staring at the detailed information from CIC. The ops officer’s eyes darted from side to side, absorbing the data, and then she straightened slowly.

  “From the impeller signatures, CIC makes it at least six of those big battlecruisers of theirs, Sir. Looks like they’ve got four heavy cruisers and at least four light cruisers—or maybe those outsized destroyers—to back them.”

  “I see.”

  Thurgood looked back at her for a moment, then clasped his hands behind him and walked slowly over to the communications section. He paused behind Lieutenant Commander Lister, waiting for what he knew had to come.

  No wonder they didn’t chase us, his mind reflected in the still calm that followed utter disaster. They didn’t have to. All they had to do was send somebody back up into hyper to tell the people they’d left there where they had to go to intercept us. And all I managed to do was to build up enough velocity I can’t possibly avoid running right into that fucking long-ranged missile basket of theirs!

  He felt his jaw muscles ache with the pressure of his clenched teeth and forced himself to relax them. No doubt those fleeing freighters were going to find themselves picked off, too, he thought. Which meant Verrocchio and Hongbo weren’t going to manage to run out on their mess after all. That was something, at least.

  “We have a message request, Commodore,” Lister said quietly. “It’s from a Rear Admiral Oversteegen.”

  “I’ve been expecting it, Olaf,” Thurgood replied with a thin smile. “I suppose you’d better go ahead and put him through.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Michelle Henke rose behind her desk as her day cabin’s door opened. The man who stepped through it was of average height, with the dark hair and eyes which seemed to be the norm here on the planet of Meyers. He was well dressed, although the cut of his clothing was a T-year or two out of date by the latest Core World fashions, and he extended a well manicured hand as he approached her.

  “Prime Minister Montview,” she said, reaching out her own hand. His grip was surprisingly firm, not the perfunctory squeeze too many politicians had perfected from too many T-years of shaking voters’ hands, and his dark eyes met hers.

  “Admiral Gold Peak,” he responded.

  “Please, have a seat,” she invited, reclaiming her hand and indicating the pair of armchairs arranged on either side of the coffee table.

  “Thank you.”

  Montview accepted the invitation, and Chris Billingsley appeared as if by magic. Michelle’s steward was resplendent in perfectly turned out mess dress uniform, with a white towel over his left forearm which ought to have seemed out of keeping with his battered prizefighter’s face but somehow didn’t. He carried a tray of finger sandwiches, which he placed on the coffee table. Then he gathered up the silver coffee pot embossed with HMS Artemis’ crossed-arrow coat of arms and poured two cups.

  “Will there be anything else, Milady?” he inquired.

  “Just make sure Alfredo has fresh celery, please, Chris,” Michelle replied.

  “Of course, Milady.”

  Billingsley bowed slightly to her and to her guest, then withdrew, pausing to check with the treecat arranged on the perch behind Michelle’s desk. Master Sergeant Cognasso just happened to be the Marine sentry posted outside Michelle’s cabin door, and Alfredo—celery stalk clutched in hand—watched her and the prime minister with apparent indifference.

  Appearances, of course, could be deceiving.

  “Thank you for coming, Prime Minister,” Michelle said as the door closed behind Billingsley.

  “It wasn’t exactly as if attendance was discretionary, Admiral,” Montague pointed out with a disarming smile. “Although the invitation was phrased with admirable courtesy, I thought.”

  “There was no point being impolite,” Michelle responded with a smile of her own. Then her smile faded. “Of course, I’m afraid we’ve been rather less polite with some people than with you.”

  “I presume that refers to Commissioner Verrochio and Vice Commissioner Hongbo?” Montague inquired, and she nodded. “Ah.” He nodded, then shrugged slightly. “Understandable, I suppose.”

  Michelle sat back with her coffee cup, studying him thoughtfully. Thomas Montview was officially the prime minister of King Lawrence IX, titular ruler of the Kingdom of Meyers, which covered about three quarters of the surface of the planet of Meyers. In fact, Lawrence Thomas and his entire family had been little more than figureheads ever since Frontier Security’s arrival in the Meyers System. Still, the House of Thomas had provided a useful interface, and the Thomases had survived better than most local dynasties who found themselves engulfed by the protectorates system. They’d actually retained a sizable percentage of the family wealth, and everything Michelle and Cynthia Lecter had been able to find in the local system databases suggested that Lawrence and his parents and grandparents had done their best to mitigate the weight of the OFS yoke for the population of Meyers. They’d been active in philanthropic pursuits, and they’d given a great deal of support to public education out of their private coffers.

  None of which meant they hadn’t had to make their own accommodations with the Frontier Security system, and Montview, as Lawrence’s prime minister, had been the primary local front man for Lorcan Verrochio’s administration. It was apparent that he’d done quite well out of his position, but he was something of a cipher as far as Michelle and Lecter had been able to determine.

  “I’m afraid the two of them—and especially Commissioner Verrocchio—took it rather less philosophically than that,” she said now.

  “I’m sure they did.” Montview sipped his own coffee. “They had so much more to lose, after all. And I feel certain their superiors back on Old Terra are going to have a few harsh words for them, as well.” He smiled thinly. “The one thing you can depend upon is that everyone in OFS has a scapegoat ready and waiting should the need arise.”

  “I should take it, then, that you weren’t too fond of Frontier Security?” Michelle asked lightly, watching Alfredo out of the corner of her eye.

  “No one who’s ever had the dubious privilege of being gathered to Frontier Security’s protective bosom is ‘too fond’ of it.” Montview’s tone was as light as Michelle’s own, but there was a measured bite buried in it. “The more closely you find yourself compelled to work with them, the less fond of them you become, however.”

  Alfredo waved his celery stalk casually, confirming Montview’s sincerity. The fact that the prime minister didn’t care for Frontier Security didn’t automatically make him a paragon of virtue, but it was definitely a point in his favor.

  “Well, Mr. Prime Minister, as it happens, we’re not too fond of Frontier Security—or the Solarian League in general—at the moment, ourselves.” Michelle shrugged. “I think we can all take it as a given that relations between the Star Empire and the League are going to get worse before they get better.”

  “Would you be terribly disappointed, Admiral Gold Peak, if I told you that didn’t come as a huge surprise?” Montview inquired, and Michelle chuckled.

  “Not at all, Mr. Prime Minister. I only mentioned it as a prefac
e to what I really wanted to speak to you about.”

  She paused, head cocked, and he frowned thoughtfully. Then he shrugged.

  “I would presume that what you’re leading up to has to do with the long-term political situation here on Meyers,” he said, and Michelle nodded. She wasn’t really surprised by his comment—she’d already come to the conclusion he was no dummy—but she was pleased by his directness.

  “Precisely,” she agreed. “At the moment, I have no definitive instructions on political administration of territory captured—or liberated—from the Solarian League.” Which, she refrained from mentioning, was because she had no instructions about capturing or liberating that territory in the first place. “Because of that,” she continued, “I’m afraid I’m rather in the position of making things up as I go along. That gives me a certain degree of freedom, although it also obviously means any arrangements I might put in place would be subject to review by higher authority. On the other hand,” she looked directly into Montview’s eyes, “there aren’t a great many ‘higher authorities’ in the Star Empire.”

  Montview sat back in his armchair, sipping coffee and regarding her thoughtfully. It was clear to Michelle that he’d done his homework on her just as thoroughly as she’d done hers on him. What she wasn’t certain of was whether or not he realized she was effectively putting the honor of the House of Winton on the line. She couldn’t be certain even Beth would honor every detail of any arrangement to which she committed the Star Empire, but she was positive her cousin would never betray or abandon anyone Michelle had agreed to support.

  “I believe I appreciate your position, Milady,” Montview said, and Michelle raised mental eyebrows as he addressed her as a member of the Manticoran peerage rather than by her naval rank. “Should I conclude from what you’ve just said that you’re considering an arrangement which would involve my King?”

  “I am,” Michelle confirmed, leaning back in her own chair and resting her elbows on its arms to steeple her fingers in front of her. “Of course, the exact nature of that arrangement would depend on a great many factors.”