by David Weber
On the face of it, it was ridiculous, and Pang would be surprised if as much as five percent of the total Solarian population had a clue—yet—about just how vulnerable the League really was or how bad it was actually going to get. Something the size of the Solarian League’s internal economy? With literally hundreds of star systems, system populations running into the tens of billions, and the mightiest industrial capacity in the history of mankind? That sort of Titan couldn’t possibly be brought to its knees by a “Star Empire” which consisted of no more than a couple of dozen inhabited planets!
But it could, if its pigmy opponent happened to control the bulk of the shipping which carried that economy’s lifeblood. And especially if the pigmy in question was also in a position to shut down its arterial system, force its remaining shipping to rely solely on capillary action to keep itself fed. Even if Solarian shipyards got themselves fully mobilized and built enough ships to replace every single Manticoran hull pulled out of the League’s trade, it still wouldn’t be enough to maintain the shipping routes without the termini.
Of course, it’s not going to do our economy any favors, either, Pang told himself. Not an insignificant point, especially after the Yawata Strike.
He wondered if the Star Empire’s continued possession of the termini would be a big enough economic crowbar to pry a few Solarian star systems free of the League’s control. If the bait of access was trolled in front of system economies crippled or severely damaged by the termination of cargo service, would those systems switch allegiance—openly or unofficially—to Manticore instead of the League? He could think of quite a few in the Verge who’d do it in a second if they thought they could get away with it. For that matter, he could think of at least a handful of Shell systems that would probably jump at the chance.
Well, I guess time will tell on that one. And there’s another good reason for us to make sure we’re the ones who control the hyper bridges, isn’t there? As long as we do, no one can launch naval strikes through them at us…and we can launch naval strikes through them at the League.
Attacking well defended wormhole termini along the bridges between them was a losing proposition, but the tactical flexibility the network as a whole would confer upon light, fast Manticoran commerce-raiders would be devastating. For all intents and purposes, the Star Empire, for all its physical distance from the Sol System and the League’s other core systems, would actually be inside the Sollies’ communications loop. The League’s limited domestic merchant marine would find itself under attack almost everywhere, whereas the Manticoran merchant marine would continue to travel via the termini, completely immune to attack between the star systems they linked.
No wonder Chalker was so livid. He might be so stupid he couldn’t visualize the next step, couldn’t see Lacoön Two coming, but he obviously did grasp the Manticoran mobility advantage which had brought Pang’s squadron to Nolan. He might not have reasoned it out yet. Solarian arrogance might have blinded him to the possibility that Manticore might actually conduct offensive operations against the omnipotent League instead of huddling defensively in a frightened corner somewhere. But the mere presence of Pang’s ships this deep into the Solarian space would have been enough to push his blood pressure dangerously high, and Pang suspected that deep down inside, whether Chalker consciously realized it or not, the Solarian officer probably was aware of the implications of Manticoran mobility.
He glanced at the date-time display in the corner of the master plot. Over ten minutes since he’d bidden Chalker good day, he noticed. If the Solly had been infuriated—and stupid—enough to do anything hasty, he’d probably have already done it. The fact that he hadn’t (yet) didn’t mean stupidity and arrogance wouldn’t eventually overpower common sense and self-preservation, but it seemed unlikely.
“Unlikely” wasn’t exactly the same as “no way in hell,” Pang reminded himself. All the same, it was time to let his people get a little rest…and it probably wouldn’t hurt for him to display his own imperturbability, either. Confidence started at the top, after all, and he looked back down at his link to AuxCon.
“I think Commodore Chalker may have seen the error of his ways, Myra,” he told Lieutenant Commander Sadowski. “We’ll stand the squadron down to Readiness Two.”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” she acknowledged.
Readiness State Two, also known as “General Quarters,” was one step short of Battle Stations. Engineering and life-support systems would be fully manned, as would CIC, although Auxiliary Control would be reduced to a skeleton watch. The ship would maintain a full passive sensor watch, augmented by the remote FTL platforms they’d deployed as soon as they arrived, and the tactical department would be fully manned. Passive defenses would be active and enabled under computer control; electronic warfare systems and active sensors would be manned and available, although not emitting; and Onyx’s offensive weapons would be partially manned by their on-mount crews. Readiness Two was intended to be maintained for lengthy periods of time, so it included provision for rotating personnel in order to maintain sufficient crew at their duty stations while allowing the members of the ship’s company to rest in turn. Which still wouldn’t prevent it from exhausting Pang’s people if they had to keep it up indefinitely.
“Let Percy take AuxCon while you head back over to the Bridge to relieve me,” he continued to Sadowski. Lieutenant the Honorable Percival Quentin-Massengale, Onyx’s assistant tactical officer, was the senior of Sadowski’s officers in Auxiliary Control. “We’ll pull Smilodon and the tin-cans back and let Onyx take point for the first twelve hours, or until our friend Chalker decides to take himself elsewhere. After that, Smilodon can have the duty for the next twelve hours. We’ll let the cruisers swap off while the destroyers watch our backs.”
And while we keep Othello out of harm’s way, he added silently to himself. Unlike her more youthful consort, Tornado, the elderly destroyer wasn’t armed with Mark 16s, and Pang had already decided to keep her as far to the rear as he could.
“Run a continually updated firing solution on him, Guns,” the commander said out loud to Lieutenant Commander Frazier. “And have CIC keep a close eye on his emissions. Any sign of active targeting systems, and I want to hear about it.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper.”
Jack Frazier was normally a cheerful sort, fond of practical jokes and pranks, but no trace of his usual humor colored his response.
“Good.” Pang nodded curtly, then looked back down at Sadowski. “You heard, Myra?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Well, I figure you already know this, but to make it official, if it should happen that Chalker is stupid enough to actually fire on us or one of the merchies, you’re authorized to return fire immediately. And if that happens, I want him taken completely out. Clear?”
“I acknowledge your authorization to return fire if we’re fired upon, Sir,” Sadowski said a bit more formally, and Pang nodded again, then stood and looked back to Frazier.
“You have the deck until the XO gets here, Guns, and the same authorization applies to you,” he said. “I’ll be in my day cabin catching up on my paperwork.”
April 1922 Post Diaspora
“Like the old story about the mule, first you need to hit it between the eyes with a big enough club to get its attention.”
—Hamish Alexander-Harrington,
Earl of White Haven
Chapter Two
“You can’t be serious!”
Sharon Selkirk, Shadwell Corporation’s senior shipping executive for the Mendelschon System, stared at her com display, and the man on it shook his head regretfully.
“I’m afraid I am,” Captain Lev Wallenstein of the improbably named Manticoran freighter Yellow Rose the Third said. “I just got the dispatch.”
“But…but—” Selkirk stopped sputtering and shook herself. “We’ve got a contract, Lev!”
“I understand that,” Wallenstein said, running one hand through his unruly thatch of red hair. �
�And I’m sorry as hell. It wasn’t my idea, Sharon! And don’t think for one minute that the front office’s going to be happy when I get home, either! Running empty all the way back to the Star Kingdom?” He shook his head. “I don’t know whose brainstorm this was, but it’s going to play merry hell, and that’s the truth!”
“Lev, I’ve got one-point-six million tons of cargo that’ve been sitting in orbital warehouses for over two T-months waiting for your arrival. One-point-six million tons—you understand that number? That’s the next best thing to a billion and a half credits of inventory, and it’s supposed to be in Josephine in less than four weeks. If you leave it sitting here, there’s no way I can possibly get it there.”
“I understand.” Wallenstein shook his head helplessly. “And if I had any choice at all, I’d be loading your cargo right now. But I don’t. These orders are nondiscretionary, and they don’t come from the front office, either. They come direct from the Admiralty, Sharon.”
“But why?” Selkirk stared at him. “Why just…yank the carpet out from under me like this? Damn it, Lev, you’ve been on this run for over twelve T-years! There’s never been a problem, not from either side!”
“Sharon, it doesn’t have anything to do with you. Or with me.” Wallenstein sat back in his chair aboard the Yellow Rose, gazing at the image of a woman who’d become a friend, not just another business contact. “You’re right, there’s never been a problem…not here in Mendelschon.”
Selkirk had opened her mouth again, but she closed it once more and her eyes narrowed at his last four words. Or at the tone in which he’d spoken, to be more accurate.
“You mean this has to do with that business in, where was it, New Tuscany? And Spindle? That’s what this is about?”
“No one’s specifically said so,” Wallenstein replied, “but if I had to guess, yeah, that’s what it’s about.”
“But that’s stupid!” She sat back in her own chair, throwing both hands up in frustration. “That’s seven hundred light-years from Mendelschon! What possible bearing could it have on us?”
Despite his very real affection for her, Wallenstein found it difficult not to roll his eyes. Unlike the majority of people who found their way to her seniority in a Solarian multi-stellar, Sharon Selkirk had always been friendly and courteous in her dealings with the merchant service officers who transported the Shadwell Corporation’s goods between the stars. She’d never held the fact that Wallenstein wasn’t a Solarian against him, either. In fact, that was the one thing about her which had always irritated him. She didn’t even realize she was being condescending by not holding the fact that he wasn’t a Solarian against him. Why, she was treating him just like a real person!
He was confident she’d never actually analyzed her own attitude, never realized how it could grate on anyone’s nerves, because she was, frankly, too nice a person to treat someone that way if she’d ever realized she was doing it. But that was part of the problem. Solarian arrogance, that bone-deep assumption of superiority, was so deeply engraved into the Solarian League’s DNA that Sollies never even thought about it.
“Look, Sharon,” he said after a moment, “I agree that what happened in New Tuscany and what happened in Spindle don’t have anything to do with you, or me, or Mendelschon. But they had one hell of a lot to do with the people who got killed in both those places, and you may not realize just how completely relations between the League and the Star Empire are going into the crapper. But they are, believe me. And looking at these orders, I think it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets any better.”
“But that’s crazy.” Selkirk shook her head. “I mean, I agree it’s horrible all those people got killed. And I don’t know what happened any more than you do. But surely nobody wants to get more people killed! They’ve got to settle this thing before that happens!”
“I agree with you, and I wish they would. But the truth is, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. And I’m guessing the government back home’s decided it’s time to get the Star Empire’s merchant shipping out from under before it all comes apart.”
“I can’t believe this is happening.” She shook her head again. “I’m sure that if your people would just sit down with our people we could work this out. There’s always a way to work things out if people are just willing to be reasonable!”
“Unfortunately, that requires both sides to be reasonable,” Wallenstein pointed out, and Selkirk’s eyes widened in surprise. She started to say something back, quickly, but stopped herself in time, and Wallenstein smiled a bit grimly.
Almost said it, didn’t you, Sharon? he thought. Of course we’re supposed to be reasonable. And I’m sure you meant what you just said about reasonable people working things out. Unfortunately, the Solarian view of “reasonable” is people “reasonably” agreeing to do things the League’s way. The notion that the League might have to be reasonable doesn’t even come into it, does it?
“Well, of course it does,” she said instead of what she’d been about to say, and she had the grace to look a little uncomfortable as she said it. But then she scowled.
“So you’re just going to turn around and head back to Manticore? Just like that?”
“Actually, I’m going to turn around and head back to Beowulf, and from there to Manticore,” he said. “But, yeah, that’s pretty much it.”
“And our contract?”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to discuss that with the front office.” He shrugged unhappily. “For that matter, you may end up discussing it with the Foreign Secretary’s people before this is all over. Since the orders came from the government, I’m guessing the government’s going to be responsible for any penalties the shippers collect.”
“If they collect them, you mean, don’t you?” she asked bitterly. She’d had more than one unhappy experience dealing with the Solarian government’s bureaucracies.
“I don’t know how it’s going to work out. As far as I know, nobody knows how it’s going to work out in the end. And I know you’re unhappy, but you’re not the only one. Don’t forget, Sharon, I hold a reserve commission. When I get back to Manticore, I’m likely to find myself called to active duty. If this thing goes as badly as it could, I’m I may just end up hauling something besides freight back into the Solarian League.”
She looked at him blankly for a long moment, as if she simply couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. Then she shook her head quickly.
“Oh, no, Lev! It’s not going to come to that! I know your people are angry, and I would be too, if what they think happened had happened to my navy. And I’m not saying it didn’t happen!” she added even more quickly as Wallenstein’s expression hardened. “But surely your Star Empire isn’t crazy enough to actually go to war with the League! Why, that would be like…like…”
“Like David and Goliath?” Wallenstein provided a bit more sharply than he usually spoke to her, and her eyes widened. “I think that’s probably the comparison you’re looking for,” he continued. “And I’ll even grant that it’s appropriate. But you might want to think about how that particular confrontation worked out in the end.”
They looked at one another in silence for several endless seconds, and as he gazed into Selkirk’s eyes, Lev Wallenstein saw understanding dawning at last. The understanding that Manticorans really weren’t Solarians. That they truly could conceive of a galaxy in which the Solarian League wasn’t the ultimate arbiter and dictator of terms. That they might actually be so lost to all reason that they truly were prepared to fight the Solarian juggernaut.
For the first time, Sharon Selkirk saw him as someone who truly believed he was her equal, whatever she thought, and he wondered if in the process she’d finally realized how unconsciously condescending she’d always been before. He was surprised and more than a little dismayed by the satisfaction that dawning awareness gave him, and he drew a deep breath and made himself smile at her.
“Of course I hope that’s not going
to happen,” he told her as lightly as he could. Whatever else, she’d always been courteous, and he owed her a little gentleness in return. “In fact, I hope it all blows over and I’m back on my regular run ASAP. And if it happens, the front office may find itself cutting some special deals in order to earn back all the goodwill this is going to cost us. But whatever happens down the road, I don’t have any choice but to follow the instructions I’ve been given. That’s why I commed you in person. Like you say, we’ve known each other a long time and we’ve always done right by each other, so I figured I owed you a personal explanation. Or as close to an explanation as I can give you with what I know. But either way, I’m supposed to be underway for Beowulf within six hours.”
“There’s going to be hell to pay for this, Lev. You know that, don’t you?” Selkirk asked. “I’m not talking about between you and me. I mean, I understand it’s not your idea and you don’t have any choice, but my bosses aren’t going to be happy about this. And their bosses aren’t going to be happy about it. And eventually it’s going to go all the way to the top and members of the Assembly aren’t going to be happy about it. For that matter, if Manticore’s really recalling all of its merchantships, this is going to hammer the interstellar economy. It’s not just the transstellars that’re going to be pissed off once that happens—it’s going to be everyone!” She shook her head. “I don’t know what your government hopes this is going to accomplish, but I can tell you what it’s really going to do, and that’s to squirt hydrogen right into the fire!”
“Maybe it is,” Wallenstein conceded, “but that’s a decision that’s way above my pay grade, Sharon.” He smiled again, a bit crookedly. “Take care of yourself, okay?”
“You, too, Lev,” she said quietly.
“I’ll try,” he told her. “Clear.”
* * *
“I don’t care what your damned orders say,” Captain Freida Malachai said flatly. “I’ve got three and a half million tons of cargo onboard, and I’m supposed to deliver it in Klondike one T-month from today. Do you have any frigging idea what the nondelivery penalty on that’s going to be?! Not to mention the question of piracy if I just sail off with it into the sunset with it!”
