by David Weber
He chuckled gleefully at the thought of his coup. He supposed it could be reasonably argued that the Shilo Sector was also at least a two-star command... and the one to which he had been assigned. But that was the point. It could be argued either way, and he was the senior officer on the spot who had to decide the argument. And so, regretfully, he had concluded that Seabring's proximity to the front, coupled with the reported refractory attitudes of its citizens, gave it priority over a quiet sector a light-century and a half from the nearest fighting. That being the case, there was no way he could justify remaining in the safety of his formally assigned billet, which had left him no choice but to turn Shilo over to his exec and take command of the Seabring expedition. If Citizen General Tomkins disagreed, he could always tell him so... in about six and a half months, when the reply to Thornegrave's first report from Seabring got back to him from Nouveau Paris.
The chuckle he couldn't quite suppress threatened to turn into a gleeful cackle, but only until the citizen lieutenant darted a look over his shoulder at him. For a moment, the bland-faced young man looked frightened, but then he began to chuckle himself and gave the citizen major general the broad, vapid smile of someone "sharing" in a joke he didn't have a clue about. That, unfortunately, was one of the things Thornegrave could not abide. It was one thing for a senior officer to invite a junior to share a joke; it was quite another for some kiss-ass young prick who thought he was showing his sophistication to deal himself into a joke he didn't even begin to comprehend.
The citizen major general cut his own chuckle off instantly and gave the citizen lieutenant—Rodham, Guillermo, the kid's name patch said, he noticed—a sudden, cold glance. The citizen lieutenant immediately stopped laughing, swallowed hard, turned away, and punched the lift button again, as if that could somehow magically conjure the slow-arriving car into existence. He stood absolutely silent, as erect as if someone had inserted a broom handle up his backside, while small beads of perspiration dewed his hairline, and Thornegrave looked away once more, satisfied with the effect.
Unfortunately, in looking away his eye fell on Farnese's crest, and he felt a familiar sour distaste as it did. The crest said "PNS Farnese" and that always irritated him. After all, the battlecruiser wasn't a Navy ship; she belonged to State Security, and her designation should reflect that. Except that the Navy's position was that she was only a Navy ship which was assigned to StateSec, as if the true guardians of the People's safety had no right to put on the airs of "real" warriors.
Of course, Thornegrave conceded, hanging SSS on the front of a ship's name would probably look a little funny, but it's the principle of the thing! The Navy and the Marines represent vestigial holdovers from the decadent elitism of the Old Regime. It's past time that State Security absorbed them both into a single organization whose loyalty to the People and State can be absolutely relied upon. The people's commissioners are a move in the right direction, but there's still too much room for recidivists to secretly sabotage the war and the Revolution alike. Surely Citizen Secretary Saint-Just and Citizen Chairman Pierre realize that, don't they?
No doubt they did, he told himself once more as the lift finally arrived and Citizen Lieutenant Rodham bowed and scraped him into it. And he had no doubt that, in time, they would act upon their realization. But timing continued to be the problem. Making changes like that in the middle of a war fought on such a scale would always be difficult, and the fact that McQueen and her uniformed, elitist relics had finally knocked the Manties back on their heels made it even more difficult now... for the moment, at least. Well, he'd seen to it that the Navy knew who was in charge here in Shilo, at any rate! And he supposed StateSec would have to settle for a gradualist approach... at least until McQueen overstepped and gave Saint-Just an excuse.
And for now, he thought with a lazy sense of triumph as the lift door slid closed and the car moved off, at least I've put that poisonous little fart Citizen Commodore Yang in her place. Argue that convoy escort is a "Navy responsibility" indeed! Hah! One star loses to two stars any day, Citizen Commodore, especially when the two-star in question is SS!
* * *
Citizen Commodore Rachel Yang nodded to acknowledge the report of Citizen Major General Thornegrave's arrival. She actually managed not to spit on the decksole at the news, too, which she considered a major triumph of self-discipline. Citizen Major General Harris had also been SS, and no doubt the woman had had her faults, but at least she'd recognized that running warships was a job for someone trained to run them. Thornegrave didn't. Or perhaps he simply believed that someone whose devotion to the Revolution was pure as the driven snow and utterly devoid of personal ambition (Hah! I'll just bet it is!) was automatically more competent than someone who'd merely spent thirty-three years of her life training for the duty in question.
Damn it, I believe in the Revolution, too! she thought viciously. All right, maybe I do think there've been excesses, but you can't build an entire New Order without some individual cases of injustice. Who was it back on Old Earth who said that liberty was a tree which had to be watered occasionally with the blood of patriots? So where does Thornegrave get off climbing into my face this way? Why does he think Citizen General Harris specifically asked for a Navy officer to command the escort? Does he think my staff and I like being stuck here on an SS ship where we're the only regulars aboard? Does he think we actually requested the duty or something? And he's a frigging ground-pounder, for Christ's sake—not even trained as an air-breathing pilot, much less a naval officer—so what does he know about escort tactics and convoy security? Zip-zero-zilch-nada, that's what!
Unfortunately, he'd also dealt himself the command slot, and all Yang could do was accommodate herself to his demands as unconfrontationally as possible and hope it did some good.
"Has Mardi Gras finished loading?" she asked her com officer.
"No, Citizen Commodore. Citizen Commander Talbot reports that he'll have his last vehicles aboard by twenty-two hundred."
"Very good. But send him another signal. Tell him that the convoy is leaving for Cerberus at twenty-two-thirty and not a moment later."
"At once, Citizen Commander!"
Yang nodded and returned her attention to her plot.
* * *
"The convoy is underway, Citizen General."
"Very good, Citizen Commodore. Thank you for informing me. Please let me know a half hour before we cross the hyper limit. I'd like to be on the flag bridge when we make translation."
"Of course, Citizen General."
The expression of the face on his com screen didn't even flicker, but Thornegrave heard the gritted teeth Yang didn't display and hid a smug smile of his own. God, the woman was easy to goad. And he was taking careful note of her behavior, as well as her words, naturally. Every little bit of ammo would help justify decisive action when the time came for the regular officer corps to be completely suppressed at last.
"Thank you, Citizen Commander," he replied with a graciousness as false as her own, and cut the com link.
* * *
Citizen Lieutenant Commander Heathrow sat up in bed when the com warbled at him. The CO and XO of a courier boat were the only members of its complement who actually had cabins to themselves, which was a luxury beyond price. Unfortunately, the designers had been forced to squeeze those cabins into an oddly shaped section where the hull narrowed dramatically towards the after impeller ring, with the result that the curved deckhead offered barely sixty centimeters of headroom above Heathrow's bunk. Under normal circumstances, it was second nature to remember that and allow for it when getting up. He had a tendency to forget when awakened in the middle of the night, however, and he yelped as his skull smacked into the deckhead.
Fortunately, the designers had padded it—presumably to avoid killing off captains in job lots. He smothered a curse as he rubbed the point of contact, but he hadn't done himself any lasting damage, and he reached for the audio-only com key.
"Yes?" he growled.
"Sir, it's Howard. I— Sir, we've got a problem up here, and I—"
The citizen ensign broke off, and the ache in Heathrow's head was suddenly forgotten as he heard the barely suppressed panic in her voice. He could actually hear her breathing—she sounded as if she was about to go into hyperventilation any moment—and he slammed the visual key.
Howard blinked as her skipper's bare-chested image appeared on her screen. It was highly irregular for the citizen lieutenant to accept a visual com connection out of uniform, and the fact that he'd overlooked the minor consideration that he slept in his briefs, not pajamas, added to the irregularity, but vast relief bloomed in her eyes as she recognized the supportive concern in his expression.
"What's wrong, Irene?" he asked, racking his brain for possible answers to his own question even as he spoke. But nothing came to him. After all, what could be wrong sitting here in Danak orbit?
"Sir, it's Groundside," Howard said. "I told them we didn't have any— But they wouldn't listen, and now Citizen Colonel Therret says Citizen General Chernock himself is— But I don't have any more traffic for them, Sir! I sent it all down yesterday, when we arrived! So—"
"Hold it. Hold it, Irene!" Heathrow managed to sound soothing and firm and commanding all at the same time, though he wasn't quite certain how he'd pulled it off. Howard slithered to a stop, staring at him pleadingly, and he drew a deep calming breath. For both of them, he thought wryly.
"All right," he said then. "I want you to begin at the beginning. Don't get excited. Don't run ahead. Don't assume that I know anything at all about whatever is going on. Just tell me what's happened step by step, okay?"
"Yes, Sir." Howard made herself sit back and took a visible grip on herself. Then she, too, inhaled deeply and began in a voice of determined calm.
"I didn't want to disturb you, Sir, or... or make you think I wasn't willing to take responsibility, and everything started out sounding so routine that I thought I could handle it." She swallowed. "I was wrong, Sir."
Her expression showed the humiliation of a bright, eager young officer who'd wanted to do her job and win her CO's approval only to see the attempt blow up in her face, but her voice was unflinching as she admitted her failure.
"As you know, Sir, we transmitted all the message traffic for Danak on our arrival in Danak Alpha orbit." She paused, and Heathrow nodded encouragingly. "Well, that was all the traffic there was, Sir. There wasn't any more at all, but they don't believe me Dirtside."
"They don't?" Heathrow raised a perplexed eyebrow, and she shook her head.
"No, Sir. First, I got a standard request from StateSec Sector HQ for a recheck of the message storage files to be sure everything had transmitted. So I did that, and told them everything had gone, and they went away. Only then, about fifteen minutes later, some SS citizen major turned up and demanded another recheck. And when I told him I'd already done it, he insisted on remote access to the message files. But he didn't find anything either, and when he didn't, he accused me of having somehow screwed up the message storage. But I told him I couldn't screw it up, that it was all automated. So then he accused me of having done it on purpose, if it couldn't happen by accident, so I told him that I couldn't deliberately tamper with the files because I didn't have a list of their contents—that I didn't even know how many messages had been loaded to the Danak queue, much less what those messages were about! Sir, I can't even unlock the central directory without the authenticated security code from the ground station the traffic is intended for—you know that!"
"Of course I do, Irene," he said soothingly, drawing her gently back from the brink of fresh hysteria.
"Well, I told him all that over and over—I don't know, maybe as much as nine or ten times and in five or six different ways—and he finally went away. But then this Citizen Colonel Therret called. He's Citizen General Chernock's chief of staff, and he started out just like the Citizen Major. Sir, he insists there has to be a message we haven't delivered, and... and he says he's sending a full security detail up here to 'talk' to me about it!"
She stared at him with huge eyes, panic once more hovering just under the surface, and now Heathrow understood completely. He didn't understand what was happening, or why—or even how, for that matter—but he understood Howard's terror only too well. And, truth to tell, he felt a swelling panic of his own, for if StateSec decided something had happened to its secure traffic aboard Heathrow's ship, there was no way their headhunting would stop with the lowly citizen ensign serving as his com officer.
"All right, Irene," he said after a moment of furious thought. "I want you to pull a complete copy of all com traffic between you and Dirtside on this. I'm going to get dressed while you do that. When I've got my clothes on, I'll buzz you to pipe the copies down here and let me view them. Then I'll want you to connect me directly to this Citizen Colonel Therret. I'll take it from there, and any further traffic from on this is to be routed directly to me as it comes in. Is all that understood?"
"Yes, Sir. It's on the com log, Sir." He heard the enormous relief in her voice, but her eyes were troubled. "Sir, I swear I didn't do anything to their message files. You know that."
"Of course I do, Irene. Hell, like you already told them, you couldn't have done anything without their own authentication codes!"
"I just— I'm sorry, Sir," she said in a small voice. "Whatever happened, it was my job, and—"
"Irene, we don't have time to sit here and let you beat yourself up for something you didn't do, couldn't have helped, and aren't responsible for," he told her. "So hush and get started on those copies ASAP."
"Yes, Sir."
He killed the com, rolled out of his bunk, and reached for the uniform he'd discarded three hours earlier.
* * *
"—so I assure you, Citizen Colonel, that I've looked into the matter thoroughly. There are no additional messages for Danak in our banks, no messages for Danak have been erroneously transmitted at any of our earlier stops, and no messages have been tampered with in any way."
"So your citizen ensign has already told me, Citizen Commander," Citizen Colonel Brigham Therret said coldly. "I must say, I find this all extremely suspicious."
"If I may be so bold, Sir, could you tell me anything at all to explain what, precisely, you're looking for?" Heathrow asked as courteously as he possibly could. "At the moment, we're shooting blind up here. We know you're looking for something, but we've checked all the places that something ought to be without finding it. Maybe if we had a better idea of what we were trying to find, we could make some educated guesses as to where and how it might have been misdirected, mislabeled, or misfiled."
"Um." Therret frowned, but his expression actually lightened a tiny bit, as if he hadn't considered that. He pondered for several moments, then made a face that might have indicated either indecision or annoyance. "Hold the circuit," he said abruptly, and his face disappeared, replaced by a standard com link engaged, please stand by image.
Heathrow looked up from it to smile encouragingly at Howard. After viewing her message logs, he'd decided to conduct this conversation from the bridge rather than his cabin terminal for several reasons, not the least of which was a desire to place himself in as official a setting as possible. Not that he expected an SS citizen colonel to be particularly impressed by a Navy citizen lieutenant commander, bridge environment or not, but it could hardly hurt. More to the point, he wanted immediate access to Howard and her console in case other questions came up... and, he admitted, exercising a soothing influence on the distracted citizen ensign seemed like a good idea, too.
He only wished someone could exercise one on him.
The standard holding pattern vanished, and Heathrow blinked at the face which had replaced it. It wasn't Therret. This man also wore StateSec uniform, but he had three stars on his shoulder boards, and Heathrow swallowed hard as he realized he was looking at Citizen General Chernock himself. The Citizen General had a dark face, a strongly hooked nose,
and eyes that looked as if someone had figured out a way to carve the vacuum of deep space to order.
"Citizen Lieutenant Commander," the sector CO said flatly, and Heathrow nodded. He knew it looked jerky, despite his effort to appear calm, but all he could do was the best he could do.
"Yes, Citizen General?" he said. "How can I help you, Sir?"
"You can give me my goddamned mail, that's how you can help me!" Chernock growled.
"Sir, I have personally checked Citizen Ensign Howard's documentation on your message traffic—the upload logs, as well as the download logs. And every single message file logged in for you here on Danak has been delivered, Sir. We aren't privy to the contents of those files. Couriers never are, as I'm sure you're aware, so I can't say unequivocally that you received every individual message you should have. But I can tell you that no message with a Danak header is still aboard this ship."
"I would like to believe you, Citizen Commander," Chernock said flatly. "But I find that very difficult to do."
"Sir, if you could see your way to giving me even the smallest hint as to where this message might have originated, at least, then I might be able to shed some additional light on the situation. Without that, there is literally nothing I can do. And, Sir—" Heathrow drew a deep, anxious breath "—I must respectfully point out that State Security regulations pertaining to the safeguarding of classified traffic mean that I cannot give you access to any other addressee's message files." Chernock's brow darkened thunderously, and Heathrow hurried on quickly. "I didn't say I refused to, Sir; I said I couldn't. It's physically impossible for me or anyone else in this ship to open those files or even their directories without the addressee's authorization codes."
"I see." Chernock regarded him with lowered eyebrows, long, tapering fingers drumming fiercely on the edge of his own com console, then twitched his shoulders in a shrug. There might even have been an edge of grudging respect in those flat, cold eyes.
