Michael smiled as he tried to picture the surprise of some poor spacer crew centuries down the track as they tried to work out just what the hell a pinchcomms antenna was doing floating in interstellar space.
As Michael watched, performing his final duty as ex-captain of 387 and with orders posting him to Fleet freshly received, something made him look up. Across the massive hangar, a substantial orange figure emerged from a small personnel air lock and with considerable verve shot across the gap that separated them before coming to an impeccably judged halt only centimeters from Michael. The spacer barely had to move to touch helmets.
Michael only knew one very large spacer that good.
“Junior Lieutenant Helfort, sir. Leading Spacer Bienefelt reporting for duty, sir.”
“Benny, you are a fucking rogue,” Michael said with a broad grin. “Last time I checked, they said two more days.”
“I know, sir. I am a fucking rogue, and they didn’t want to let me go. But I can be very persuasive when I have to. I had to see 387 one last time before she went dirtside.”
Michael laughed.
He’d always believed that Bienefelt would make it, and even though it had taken months in regen, the news that she would be fine had set the seal on his own slow recovery.
Saturday, April 3, 2399, UD
Offices of the Supreme Council for the Preservation of the Faith, City of McNair, Commitment Planet
Chief Councillor Polk wearily rubbed his eyes. They felt like someone had poured sand into them.
He’d always wondered why Merrick had aged twice as fast as his peers. Now he knew. The pressure was unrelenting, the workload enormous, the torrent of issues that poured into his secretariat so huge that he felt like he was drowning.
But he was making some progress. It had taken time, but he now had people he was prepared if not to trust at least to let handle much of the day-to-day work he’d been forced to take on in the days after Merrick’s fall from power.
Day-to-day work! One crisis after another was more like it. He ran through the list in his mind.
The Hammer economy was completely stuffed. In truth, it was always stuffed, so maybe he shouldn’t classify it as a crisis; no change there. In any case, his handpicked successor at the Department of Economy and Finance, Tobias de Mel, was pretty competent, so Polk was happy to let him get on with it.
The riots in McNair provoked by his predecessor’s departure and execution were finally over. The city and the rest of the planet were simmering in unhappy silence, which was just fine with Polk. Let them simmer.
The situation on Faith was coming under control. Doc-Sec’s ruthlessness backed by marine firepower was slowly grinding the life out of the heretics, the ground having been cut out from under their feet by a carefully stage-managed upsurge of xenophobic anger and resentment after the Feds’ attacks on Eternity and Hell.
Of the really big issues, that left only what to do about those Kraa-damned and insufferably arrogant Feds.
Polk picked up the latest report from the negotiating team on Old Earth from a paper-cluttered desk. He snorted derisively as he reread the document. Councillor Albrecht thought the Feds might agree to let Brigadier General Digby carry the can for the Mumtaz affair. In return, Albrecht wanted the authority to agree to the Feds’ long-standing demand for a formal public apology before any further discussions took place. Polk snorted again. Stupid bastard. They might as well agree to what the Feds really wanted: referral of their outrageous demand for financial restitution to the interstellar court for determination, because they sure as hell were not going to stop at an apology.
Well, Polk thought as he flicked Albrecht’s report back onto his desk, many things might come to pass, but agreeing to Feds’ demands was never going to be one of them. Not while he was chief councillor.
In any case, he didn’t much care what Albrecht did, thought, or said. Short of complete capitulation by the Feds, whatever Albrecht achieved would not be enough to save him no matter how well he’d done under the circumstances. On his return from Old Earth, Albrecht would be arrested the second he stepped off the down-shuttle; the carefully doctored holovid of him in unwisely close proximity to known agents of the Old Earth Alliance would be more than enough to take him down. If the bastard lived for another week after that, he’d be Kraa-damned lucky, thought Polk with a small shiver of pleasure. He made a note to himself. He must be sure to get holovids of Albrecht’s execution. That would seal the moment. Yes, he’d enjoy that, he thought, as he jotted down a short note to get it arranged.
Flicking on his voicewriter, Polk pushed back in his chair and closed his eyes. His response to Councillor Albrecht was not going to be what the man wanted to hear.
Two minutes later a blunt, short, and dismissive note was on its way to Albrecht. Polk felt good, very good in fact. Telling Albrecht to tell the Feds to fuck off always made him feel that way. Knowing that Albrecht was finished made him feel even better. Of the remaining Merrick appointees to the Council, that left only Khan and al-Hamidi. Unknown to Khan, the case against him being put together by a secret DocSec task force was almost finished. Very compelling it was, too, Polk had been pleased to see when presented with a preliminary draft.
But al-Hamidi wouldn’t be so easy, far from it. Shifting him would be hard.
Unique among Merrick’s appointees to the Council, al-Hamidi was not from Commitment, and winning his support had been one of the keys to Merrick’s success. Al-Hamidi had a deep-rooted power base centered on his home town of Providence Sound. From there, he controlled the huge continent of South Barassia, the center of the Hammer’s substantial defense industry. Needless to say, it was a matter of considerable frustration to Polk that even after years of effort, his supporters, whose control over the rest of the planet Fortitude was total, had been unable to shake al-Hamidi’s grip.
Well, Polk thought, he’d be interested to see how well al-Hamidi coped now that Merrick was gone, along with control of DocSec. History showed that no single individual could stand up against DocSec, and in the end, that was all al-Hamidi was. Just one man, and like all the others, his time would come.
Polk sat for a while, comfortable in the warm glow of self-congratulation. The more he thought about it, the closer he was to securing his domestic power base, so maybe this was the time to start thinking about making the Feds wish that they had left the Mumtaz business alone. Yes, he decided, it was time, despite unanimous agreement at the last Defense Council meeting that the matter was probably best left alone. Fact was, he didn’t give a flying fuck what the Defense Council thought. They would do as they were damned well told.
He reached for the intercom. “Singh!”
“Sir?”
“Contact Fleet Admiral Jorge. See if he’s free for lunch tomorrow.”
“Sir.”
Polk flicked off the intercom.
By all accounts, Jorge was a good man. He was an off-worlder, which meant he probably wasn’t much of a Merrick supporter, though according to DocSec, he had taken scrupulous care throughout a long and competent career to stay well clear of factional politics, so who would know? Much more significantly, Jorge owed his appointment as commander in chief of Hammer Defense Forces to Polk, and Polk had made damn sure he knew it. He had plucked Jorge out of relative obscurity as the flag officer in command of Space Fleet research and development, promoting him two ranks over the heads of those Polk judged to be largely responsible for the Hammer’s spineless and incompetent response to the Feds’ attack.
Most of those men, Polk was happy to remind himself, were now anonymous bodies among the thousands in some DocSec lime pit somewhere.
The purge of Space Fleet in the weeks after the attack on the Hell system had been merciless. Senior officers had been cut down in the hundreds without appeal, the executioner’s bullet reaching deep into the organization to root out anyone even remotely connected to the humiliation dished out by the Feds at Hell’s Moons.
From Polk’s persp
ective, the daily reports from DocSec summarizing the previous day’s arrests, convictions, and sentences-all but a tiny minority of those arrested going to the firing squad the next day-had been profoundly satisfying. It was very simple. Most if not all of those condemned must have been tacit supporters of Merrick. Otherwise, how could they have flourished during Merrick’s time as chief councillor? Add in their contribution, actual or inferred-it didn’t much matter which-as Fleet’s senior management to the defeat at Hell’s Moons and it was pretty straightforward if you thought about it.
Polk’s enjoyment of the moment was interrupted by the carefully neutral tones of Ramesh Singh, his longtime confidential secretary. “Chief Councillor?”
“Yes, Singh.”
“Fleet Admiral Jorge would be delighted to meet you for lunch tomorrow, sir.”
I bet he would, Polk thought. As if he had any choice in the matter.
“Good. I’m so pleased to hear it,” Polk said sarcastically.
“I’ll arrange lunch for 13:00 at the residence.”
“Yes, that should be fine. What else do I have tomorrow?”
“Photo opportunity at 12:30, sir. Front lawn, weather permitting. Medal ceremony for crew members of the New Dallas. Ten minutes.”
“Ah, good. Will Jorge be there?”
“Not planned to be, sir. It’s a Space Fleet-sponsored affair, so Admiral Kseki will be there, and he’s hosting the lunch afterward.”
“Okay. Fine.” Admiral Kseki. Another one of his recent appointments.
As the intercom clicked off, Polk smiled a grim smile of satisfaction.
If necessary, Jorge would be left in no doubt that any reluctance on his part to commit body and soul to what Polk was beginning to think of as a righteous crusade against the Feds would be a career-, not to say life-threatening move on his part.
But somehow Polk didn’t think it would come to that.
Monday, April 19, 2399, UD
Conference Room 24-1, Interstellar Relations
Secretariat Building, Geneva, Old Earth
Three hundred forty light-years away from the Federated Worlds, the late-afternoon sun of an Old Earth day threw long bars of golden sunlight into the small conference room on the top floor of the Interstellar Relations Secretariat building on the outskirts of Geneva.
The room was empty except for a small table and a scattering of chairs. Two people were seated at the end closest to the window, the spring sun enjoyably warm on their backs. Giovanni Pecora had his head in his hands, the frustration obvious.
“You know, Marta,” he said despairingly, “I don’t think a single fucking word we’ve said here today to those Hammer bastards has had the slightest effect. They really are the most stiff-necked and obstinate people in all of humanspace. We’ve always been prepared to consider compromise, but the Hammer? Never. I was afraid that this mediation might be a waste of time, and so it’s turning out. I’d give it another week, maybe two, tops.”
Marta Diallo, Pecora’s deputy secretary responsible for the Hammer Worlds and one of the very few people in the Fed Worlds with a deep understanding of the Hammer psyche, nodded. Her frustration was obvious.
“Well, Giovanni, there was a chance, I suppose,” she said. “Small one, maybe, but there was a chance. If the Hammer had publicly blamed the whole affair on Digby and made the necessary apologies, then they might have been able to save enough face to look at the compromise positions we proposed.” Diallo sighed deeply, running her hands through thick black hair as if to push away the problem. “But I’m afraid that Polk’s intervention has blown that chance out of the water. Why he wouldn’t blame Digby is beyond me. He had his boss put up against a wall and shot, after all, and we’ve got Digby locked up, so who the hell’s going to argue?”
She paused for a moment before continuing. “No, stupid me. We know why, and it’s the age-old reason. Domestic politics is why he wouldn’t put Digby in the frame. Digby was a Merrick man, and everyone knows it. Blaming Digby is as good as blaming Merrick. But putting the blame on us gives Polk his best and probably only chance to gut the opposition and rally support behind himself as leader of the Hammers. I hate to say it, Giovanni, but unless we get something positive out of them at tomorrow’s session, and I don’t believe we will, I think there is a real risk that this is going to slide into full-scale war.”
“I’m very much afraid you are right, Marta,” Pecora said gloomily. “God’s blood! Another Hammer war? Just what we all need right now. Interstellar trade’s a bit soft at the moment, and one thing’s for sure: A war between us and the Hammer will push things right over the edge.”
Diallo shook her head. “Well, at least we’ll have some help. I got an update from the Frontier desk yesterday. They think it’s almost certain that Frontier will support us if we need them. There were a lot of their people on the Mumtaz. It was their terraforming package the Hammers stole, and I think it’s fair to say they owe us big-time.”
Pecora nodded. “I’ve seen the report. I’m going to send a high-level team to Frontier. We need to start tying things up.”
“We do,” Diallo said. “It’s the Sylvanians I’m worried about. They look soft.” Diallo’s face turned grim as she continued. “Though you’d have to ask why they wouldn’t support us.”
“Three words, Marta: tactical nuclear weapons. They remember Vencatia and Jesmond. They’re scared shitless the Hammer won’t hold back next time. Every survey confirms it, I’m sorry to say, and the appeasers are riding the wave.”
“Jeez, Giovanni. Surely they’re smarter than that. Can’t they see that now’s their best chance to put an end to the Hammer problem once and for all? Lot of economic upside for them and everyone else if the Hammer economy can be freed up and the instability in interstellar trade reduced. I see the insurers are already applying a war premium to traffic inside 100 light-years of the Hammer.”
If it were possible, Pecora looked even more depressed. He shook his head.
Diallo cursed under her breath as she got to her feet and started to pace up and down the room. She’d had enough of the Hammer to last her ten lifetimes. “Makes you want to cry, Giovanni. Bloody Polk. If the rebels on Commitment and Faith could have made life difficult for another few months, he might have been forced to make some concessions. But as you say, blaming us made the rebels look unpatriotic, and you can’t give a man like Polk that sort of advantage and still hope to win. Poor bastards. The INTSUMs don’t paint a pretty picture of what’s been going on.”
Diallo fell silent.
She’d seen the INTSUMs with their vids of streets lined by lampposts, each with a dead rebel hanging by one leg, the gloating vidnews reports as yet another heretic guerrilla group was hunted down and exterminated, the haunting images as the families of Merrick supporters-men, women, and children, all guilty by association-were dragged away to whatever awful fate awaited them. The images would live in her mind forever.
The surveys showed that it wasn’t just Feds who’d begun to ask how much longer humanspace could tolerate such a psychopathic society in its midst. But one thing was sure: All Polk had done was postpone the happy day when the Hammer Worlds would self-destruct or the long-oppressed people of those unhappy worlds would finally overcome the forces ranged against them and throw the Doctrine of Kraa where it belonged: into the rubbish bin of history.
Diallo’s arms went up as she tried to stretch the sick tiredness out of her body. “For what it’s worth, Giovanni, I think crushing the uprising on Faith has convinced Polk he can do the same to us. I hate to say this, but the more I think about it, te more I think that’s what the stupid bastard has in mind. I might rerun some of our sim scenarios to see what that might mean for us. And we need to follow up on those reports from Commitment that the so-called heretic opposition is not as ineffective and fragmented as the Hammer would have us believe. If it comes to a fight with Polk, we’ll need to be signing them up on our side.” She sounded exhausted.
A dispirited Pe
cora nodded in tired agreement. “We’ll do all of that, Marta. Come on. Let’s give Nikolas Kaminski and his people a call. I think a serious chat, a very serious chat, over a few drinks is called for. I’m going to ask him to set up a time for us to talk to the secretary-general. I’m rather afraid we’re going to need the Alliance’s support. Come on.”
Friday, April 23, 2399, UD
The Palisades, Ashakiran Planet
It felt like an age since he’d last stood on the deck of the Palisades. Now that he was back, he realized how much he’d missed it and how much his commitment to a Space Fleet career had cost him. He sighed as he commed his neuronics for the umpteenth time, checking that Anna was still on schedule before turning back to look out at the sunset.
As long as he lived, Michael knew he would never tire of the Palisades, a simple house tucked in under the enormous looming bulk of Mount Izbecki with a huge west-facing deck looking out across the Clearwater Valley.
As another day drew to a close, it was just stunning.
A bottle of Lethbridge pilsner in hand, Michael stood alone, looking out across the valley, happy to comply with strict orders to leave the dinner to his dad, a defective freshwater pump to his mom, and Sam to one of her never-ending calls to Arkady Encevit, her long-standing and sadly absent boyfriend.
Michael smiled.
His dad’s enthusiasm for the primitive art of cooking wasn’t quite matched by his skill. His mom, in contrast, refused point-blank to cook-why had chefbots been invented? she would always say when challenged-and she had a real way with the long-obsolete AIs embedded in the old and sometimes very recalcitrant systems that provided power and water to the Palisades. As for Sam, Michael wished she’d marry her heart’s desire and stop the long-distance mooning that seemingly filled her every waking hour.
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