A Rising Thunder-ARC

by David Weber

  Not that either of them was in much of a mood to appreciate the view at the moment.

  “I wish I were.” al-Fanudahi sounded entirely too calm for Teague’s mood, and she glared at him.

  “Calmly, Irene,” he said, gazing serenely past her towards the lake water so far below. “I don’t think anyone’s listening to us out here, but I’d just as soon not give anyone a reason to think they should be listening to us, if you know what I mean.”

  Teague looked at him for a moment longer, then nodded and reached for her own fork.

  “Granted,” she said. “But I stand by my original reaction. Please tell me you were just making a really bad joke.”

  “Wish I were,” he repeated with a sigh. “Unfortunately, the official request for intelligence updates will be coming through this afternoon sometime. As far as I can see, they’re very serious about it.”

  “After what happened to Filareta?” She scooped up a forkful of delicious tuna salad and chewed without tasting it at all. “I knew Rajampet wasn’t what anyone would’ve called brilliant, but I thought Kingsford had a working brain!”

  “As far as I can tell, he does,” al-Fanudahi replied. “I don’t know that this is his idea, either. But given the kinds of intelligence data they’re going to be requesting, there’s no question what they’re looking at.”

  “A military operation against Beowulf?” She shook her head. “That’s got to be the worst idea I’ve heard since Operation Raging Justice itself!”

  “I don’t know.” Al-Fanudahi shrugged. “It depends on the mission parameters and the available resources, I guess.”

  “Mission parameters?” She rolled her eyes at him. “Just what sort of ‘mission parameters’ are going to make our superdreadnoughts survivable against their superdreadnoughts, Daud?”

  “None that I can think of right off hand,” al-Fanudahi conceded. “But the evidence from the merchies who’ve been passing through Beowulf since Raging Justice does seem to suggest that the Manty forces in Beowulf space are concentrated around the terminus, not the planet.”

  “So what?” Teague demanded. “Superdreadnoughts are mobile, you know!”

  “Yes, and the Beowulf System Defense Force is a nasty handful all on its own, which doesn’t even consider the system’s fixed defenses,” al-Fanudahi agreed. “What I suspect our lords and masters are thinking about is that the Manties appear to be trying to avoid stepping on any Solarian sensibilities, especially until the final tally is in on Beowulf’s plebiscite. It may be politics on their part, for all I know.”

  “Politics?”

  “If they want to encourage other star systems to follow Beowulf’s example—to encourage the fragmentation of the League—they’d want to avoid any suggestion that they’re using force majeure to turn Beowulf into some sort of Manty puppet régime, don’t you think? One way to do that would to be to let Beowulf defend Beowulfan space while they defend the terminus, instead of putting a batch of their wallers into Beowulf orbit. It avoids the appearance of iron fist pressure on Beowulf’s voters at a particularly delicate moment…and just happens to put their superdreadnoughts a couple of light-hours away from Beowulf itself.”

  “You mean Kingsford and Bernard are thinking in terms of pouncing on Beowulf—coming straight in across the hyper limit and going flat out for the planet—before any Manty forces at the terminus can intervene?”

  “I think that’s about the only thing they could be thinking of,” al-Fanudahi said. “I don’t know if it would work, but assuming Beowulf hasn’t been completely surrounded by new and nasty missile pods, a big enough force of superdreadnoughts, especially with enough of the new Technodyne missile pods, probably could fight its way in through the BSDF and the fixed defenses. And once they controlled the planetary orbitals, they’d be justified under interstellar law in demanding the system’s surrender.”

  “And exactly where in this fascinating analysis of yours do the Manty superdreadnoughts come in?” Teague inquired politely. “You know, the ones over at the terminus? The ones who are going to come right back over to Beowulf and kick our sorry asses out of the star system?”

  “Oh, those superdreadnoughts?” Al-Fanudahi smiled crookedly at her. “Well, I suppose the idea would be that once the system government surrendered to us, we’d announce special emergency elections—called at the insistence of the Beowulfan public, of course—in light of the existing Board of Directors’ high-handed and probably treasonous actions. And no doubt that new, legitimate system government would denounce the previous system government’s decision to even consider seceding from the Solarian League. Obviously, it would be incumbent upon us to recognize new, legitimate—I did mention that it would be legitimate, didn’t I?—system government’s position. And, equally obviously, Manticore would be on very thin ice when it came to denying the legitimacy of that new system government, given their desire to avoid the puppet master image. So the logic, I imagine, is that since what Manticore really needs is control of the Beowulf Terminus, the Manties would recognize a fait accompli when they saw it and let us have the Beowulf System back.”

  “And if the Manties don’t roll over that way?”

  “In that case, I would imagine, our fleet commander negotiates a withdrawal from the star system. Probably on the grounds that the orders which sent him there in the first place had misread the true sentiments of the Beowulfers. Now that he’s had the opportunity to observe firsthand that the decision to secede enjoys genuine popular support, of course he’s prepared to acknowledge that and retire from the lists. Of course, if Manticore is so unreasonable as to deny a negotiated, peaceful withdrawal with no further combat, our commander can’t be held responsible for any collateral damage that might befall the system infrastructure—and population, unfortunately—in the course of an unprovoked Manticoran attack upon his peaceably departing forces.”

  Teague scooped up another forkful of salad, chewed slowly, and swallowed, all without taking her incredulous gaze from al-Fanudahi. Then she shook her head.

  “That may be less totally insane than Rajampet’s attack on the Manty home system, but that’s not saying a hell of a lot, is it?” she observed caustically.

  “No. On the other hand, they’re in a hell of a crack at the moment,” al-Fanudahi pointed out. “I think they figure they’ve got to do something, and I’m afraid they may decide this is the best option they’ve got. And there’s actually at least a chance—a remote one, I’ll grant you, but still a chance—they could pull this one off.”

  He shrugged and popped an olive into his mouth.

  “Personally, I wouldn’t want to make any heavy bets on our ability to get away with it, but the Manties are going to be cautious about inflaming Solarian public opinion any more than they have to, especially if Kingsford can get this up and running before any of the other Core Worlds choose to follow Beowulf’s example. The question would be whether Manticore would decide it would look more like an outside tyrant intervening to protect a collaborationist clique or like a liberator intervening to prevent the reimposition of an illegitimate, unconstitutional tyranny of bureaucrats.”

  He chewed and swallowed, then inspected his salad plate for another olive before he looked back up at Teague.

  “Interesting choice, don’t you think?”