Crown of Slaves

by David Weber

  "Personally, I remain to be convinced that Lassiter can even tell time."

  * * *

  Lassiter could tell time, of course. But, for almost a minute, he wasted it in a fit of screaming invective aimed at his subordinates in the control center of Congo's headquarters. There was no point to the shrieking, as, once it began tapering down, Lassiter's chief subordinate Homer Takashi pointed out. Sullenly:

  "It wasn't our idea to hire those crazy Masadans, boss. In all fairness, it wasn't even Diem's—and Ringstorff tried to talk them out of it. If you want to blame somebody, kick it upstairs. It was the Council that made the decision."

  Lassiter ground his teeth. Everything Takashi said was true. But Lassiter was the type of supervisor who fawned over his superiors and lorded it over his subordinates. He wasn't about to send a blistering message to the three Manpower top executives who were part of the Mesan task force lurking in the barren, unnamed star system thirty-six hours away through hyper-space.

  "And we're almost out of time," Takashi pointed out. None of Lassiter's other subordinates would have been that bold. But Takashi had his own patrons in Manpower's hierarchy, and beyond a certain point didn't have to put up with Lassiter's temper.

  Fortunately, Lassiter's tantrum had calmed him down a bit. He was still angry, but was able to think more or less clearly.

  "I don't have any choice, do I?"

  Takashi shook his head. "Not unless you want the big shots to hand your head on a platter to the Star Kingdom. And the Manticorans will demand it, if their princess gets killed, don't think they won't."

  Lassiter had already come to the same conclusion. If Gauntlet had been commanded by some other officer . . .

  But, she wasn't. Oversteegen, no less!

  Scowling, Lassiter brought the display back on. The image of Abraham Templeton returned. The maniac was still studying his chrono, with an intentness that made Lassiter's blood run cold.

  "All right, all right," Lassiter said hastily. "We agree. You can dock alongside the space station and we'll do the transfers there. Although I still think—"

  "Forget it, Lassiter," rasped the religious fanatic. "There is no way I'll agree to a transfer using shuttles. That would give you too many opportunities for an 'unfortunate lapse.' You can still try to double-cross us once we're docked, of course. But I can guarantee you that I'll take out your very expensive space station as well as the Felicia, if you try it."

  Lassiter had, in fact, planned to take out the Masadans during a shuttle transfer, if he could manage it without killing the princess. His security crew on the space station might not be quite up to the best professional military standards, but the technicians manning the space station's close-defense weapons were more than capable of swatting shuttles with ease.

  On the other hand, it had been a long shot anyway, given the need to keep the Manticoran royal alive. So, he mentally shrugged and made the best of a bad situation. A really bad situation.

  "We'll be waiting for you," he said curtly. "We'll indicate the docking bay as you approach. Remember: just you and the Princess, that's all. Leave the cargo under lockdown."

  A bit lamely, he added: "When I say 'you,' that means all of you."

  Templeton didn't even bother to sneer. "Do I look like an idiot? I'll leave two of my men here, Lassiter, until the transfer is complete, the Princess is handed over to you, and we've got control of the ship we'll be leaving the system in. Then—I warn you—even after those two are transferred there'll still be both a remote-controlled detonator as well as a delayed-action detonator left on board the Felicia. You can probably block the remote-controlled one, once we're out of orbit, but I can guarantee you that you won't find the hidden one for at least several hours. Long enough for us to reach hyper-space, at any rate. I'll send you a message letting you know where it is, once I'm sure we're safe from ambush."

  "How do I know you'll keep your word?"

  Templeton bestowed on him a look which combined fury and contempt. "I swore on the name of the Lord, heathen. Do you doubt me?"

  As it happened, Lassiter didn't. He found it hard to imagine himself, but on this subject his briefings had been clear. Crazed they might be, but the religious maniacs could be trusted to keep their word, if they took a holy vow.

  "All right. Let's do it, then."

  * * *

  As soon as the contact was broken, Victor Cachat heaved a little sigh of relief and massaged his throat. "That damn rasp is going to give me a permanent sore throat," he grumbled.

  From her seat, without looking up, Ruth said cheerfully: "Can't be helped, Victor. Nanotech will change your appearance or even adjust your vocal cords for the right timbre, but changing accents is harder. And—it's a bit shocking, really, for a secret agent—you've got a really thick Havenite accent and your attempts to mimic a Masadan one were pathetic. So, the rasp it is. Ah, the joys of combat injuries. Explains everything."

  Victor would have scowled at her, but there was no point. Everything she'd said was true, after all. He'd tried for hours to get a Masadan accent down, and had failed just as miserably as he'd always failed at attempts to disguise his own. That had been one of the few subjects on which he'd been given a barely passing grade in StateSec's academy.

  The other option would have been to let someone else undergo the nanotech procedures and try to pass himself off as the now-dead Templeton. But . . . everyone had agreed that, voice aside, Victor had been the ideal candidate. He more than anyone could act like a Masadan, as Anton Zilwicki had pointed out. Victor still wasn't sure if that was praise or insult. Probably both at the same time.

  "Are you ready to support Thandi?" he asked Ruth now, and the princess nodded.

  "Well, almost," she qualified. "We're still accessing, and the main security system looks like a stand-alone. But the com hierarchy ties it all together, and I've got access to the main system. And I've located the internal communications and surveillance systems. I'll be into them by the time she can get aboard the station, and I've already tapped the net between the station and Torch."

  Cachat grimaced. The ex-slaves had settled on a new name for Congo, after the liberation. "Torch," the planet would be called thenceforth. The debate had come down to a final decision between "Beacon" and "Torch," and Jeremy had carried the day. A beacon of hope was all very well, he'd agreed, but their world was going to generate more than just light. It was going to ignite the conflagration which would finally reduce Manpower and all of its works to ashes and dust. From the perspective of an agent accustomed to operating in the shadows, Victor found the name a bit overly flamboyant, but the servant of the revolution inside him was firmly on Jeremy's side.

  "So notify Thandi that Operation Spartacus is ready to roll," he said almost curtly.

  "Just did it," replied Ruth cheerfully. "God, is this fun or what?"

  * * *

  Thandi acknowledged the message from Ruth, then checked her chrono and nodded in satisfaction. She still had a few minutes—long enough for a quick last inspection of her troops. "Quick" was the right word, too. She was now in command of a battalion-sized unit of troops, divided into four companies. Each of those companies was positioned in one of Felicia's large bays, so Thandi had to visit each of them in her inspection tour.

  For all that the dispersal of her troops was a bit of a headache, Thandi found a grim satisfaction in the situation. It was ironic that the large bays Manpower had intended to permit the rapid murder of hundreds of slaves would also permit people wearing battle armor and Marine-issue armored skinsuits to launch a lightning mass assault on Manpower's space station. Anton Zilwicki called it "being hoist on their own petard," an archaic expression which Thandi understood once he explained, but still found a little silly.

  She was a bit nervous at the prospect of leading such a large unit into battle, but not much. First, because she had the experience and steadying influence of Lieutenant Colonel Kao Huang at her side. Second, because although Thandi had never herself comman
ded anything larger than a company before, she'd been an assiduous student since she first joined the Marine Corps. So she'd observed the process at first hand—which, for the past year working with Huang, had put her in close proximity to one of the SLN Marine Corps' premier combat commanders.

  But, finally—and probably most importantly—because this entire operation was so far outside normal Marine Corps practice that any amount of prior experience would have still left her jury-rigging almost everything. And, in practice if not in theory, she'd really only be leading a company-sized unit anyway. Her own company, as it happened. Bravo Company, Second Battalion, 877th Solarian Marine Regiment, which she'd been leading for months since its former commandant, Captain Chatterji, had been placed on indefinite medical furlough for the treatment of severe combat injuries.

  Bravo Company had been divided into its four platoons, and those platoons would be spearheading the assault on Congo's space station. In theory, they would do so as private volunteers acting as an integral part of company-sized units of the new "Torch Liberation Army."

  It was a threadbare mask, perhaps, but not unheard of by any means. OFS frequently used the practice of "granting leave" to entire units which then "volunteered" to "assist" some out-planet regime in the suppression of dissent. Or, more rarely, even in the outright conquest of someone else. The regular SLN and Marines did not, perhaps, but the precedent was there.

  Besides, it was supposed to be threadbare, she reminded herself. At the proper time, everyone in the civilized galaxy was supposed to see right through it . . . although, naturally, no one would officially admit that they had.

  So "the Torch Liberation Army" it was. In theory. In practice—as Thandi had made crystal clear to the Ballroom gunfighters and Amazons who filled out the ranks of the battalion—her regular platoons would do all of the fighting. That was true for the assault on the space station, at least, whatever might wind up happening later when the assault on the planet itself occurred. The "friendly fire" casualties and indiscriminate damage which would be sure to occur with a mob of amateurs storming a space station were enough to give her nightmares. The Ballroom and Amazon troops could tag along behind—and get most of the glory—but she wanted them in the back and effectively out of the action.

  She'd expected a ferocious argument, but there hadn't been one. For the first time, she and Jeremy X had faced a potential clash—and Jeremy, to her relief, had sidestepped it neatly. She was beginning to realize that a very shrewd mind was at work beneath the superficial appearance of a maniacal terrorist. Jeremy was no fool, and understood himself that a military assault on a gigantic space station was a different matter than an assassination carried out by a small unit of killers. All the more so, since they wanted to capture the space station—as intact as possible—rather than destroy it. This would become Torch's critical space station, after all, which would be useless if it had been gutted in the taking.

  So, in effect, she was leading a company-sized unit of Solarian Marines. Granted, in an operation which was hardly being done by The Book.

  The memory of the expressions on her Marines' faces when they were informed they had all "volunteered" to participate in the splendid project of liberating genetic slaves from Manpower could still bring a chuckle to her. Like all Solarian Marines, Bravo Company's people were hard-bitten professionals—the majority of them mercenaries, in all but name—with about as much in the way of idealistic impulses as so many Old Earth barracuda. But, they'd seemed more amused by the subterfuge than anything else. They certainly weren't going to argue the point—not with Lieutenant Colonel Huang scowling at them, and with their own several months' experience with Thandi in command. True, her Marines called her "the Old Lady" instead of "Great Kaja." But they said the words in a tone of voice which her Amazons would have recognized.

  * * *

  That had been Captain Rozsak's proposal, which he'd advanced the day after Thandi's resignation at a meeting of all the central figures involved. Easily and smoothly, Rozsak had explained all the advantages to the ploy. Not the least of them being the mutual benefits to Torch and the Solarian League's Maya Sector of establishing a publicly close relationship from the outset. A benefit to Torch, because Maya Sector would provide the new nation with the safe and powerful neutral base which gave any liberation movement an invaluable reservoir.

  From the other side, covering themselves with a thinly veiled halo of moral glory from their participation in the liberation of Congo would be of inestimable benefit to the Solarian political and military forces associated with Governor Barregos. Leaving aside the need to cover up the truth about Stein's murder—which only a few people knew about, after all—things were about to get very turbulent within the Solarian League. Barregos intended to stake out the moral high ground for himself, right from the beginning—and Congo was to be the proof of it.

  Thandi had been a bit dubious, but Du Havel had agreed immediately. And then later, in private conversation after Rozsak and his Solarian staff were gone, had elaborated on the logic.

  * * *

  "It's a very smart move, on their part. Whatever else he might be, Barregos is as canny a politician as any in the Solarian League. That means, among other things, that while he doesn't fetishize public opinion, he also doesn't make the more common mistake of seasoned politicians of underestimating it either."

  Thandi's expression must have been cynical. Catching sight of it, Du Havel shook his head. "Don't read the reality of the OFS planets onto the entire League. Yes, to be sure, actual control of the League—in the sense of day-to-day operations—rests in the hands of its bureaucrats and combines. But that's only true above the level of the great star systems in the Old League—and then, only on sufferance. The one thing which the powers-that-be in the League have always been careful about is not to get the huge inner populations stirred up about anything. Their luck is about to run out, however, unless I miss my guess. The liberation of Congo, followed immediately thereafter by the foundation of a star nation of ex-slaves and its declaration of war on Mesa, is going to shake everything up. That's why—"

  He smiled cheerfully, glancing at Anton Zilwicki. "—I'm so pleased that Anton called in every favor the Anti-Slavery League has piled up with the media over the past few decades. This flamboyant military operation is going to be happening in front of the galaxy's holorecorders, not in some obscure frontier outpost where the bureaucrats can keep the media away until the cover story is in place. I guarantee you that it will be headline news all over the Solarian League—and wildly popular with a significant proportion of the population. For years, every Solarian official has clucked his tongue at the iniquities of genetic slavery, while making sure that absolutely nothing was done about it. Now, their hands will be forced—with Governor Barregos standing out as the dynamic League leader who played a key role in the affair. They'll want to cut his throat, of course. But . . . he'll have made that ten times harder to do."

  "Especially after the Renaissance Association jumps into the act," added Anton. "They have even better connections with the Solarian media than the Anti-Slavery League, and they'll pull out all the stops as soon as I notify Jessica Stein of what's happening." He cleared his throat. "Which I will, the moment it's too late for her to meddle with it."

  * * *

  Her last-minute inspection tour done, Thandi returned to the bay where she'd be leading First Platoon. To her surprise, Berry was there. The Queen-to-be was making a last-minute inspection of the troops herself. Insofar, at least, as Berry's informal way of mingling with soldiers could be called an "inspection." Even those hard-boiled Marines seemed rather charmed. It was like getting a send-off from everybody's favorite kid sister.

  "What are you doing here?" Thandi demanded quietly, almost hissing. "The balloon's about to go up. Get yourself out of here, girl. We can't afford to lose you."

  Berry smiled. She took Thandi by the arm and led her to the hatch which led out of the great bay. "I'm leaving, I'm leaving. I re
ally came just to make the same point to you. Don't forget that you're now our new Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Thandi Palane. So none of your hair-raising personal charges, d'you hear? We can't afford to lose you, either."

  Thandi didn't quite know what to say.

  Berry did. "Your monarch has spoken," the girl said. With considerable royal loftiness, in fact, marred only by her stumble as she passed through the hatch.

  Chapter 45

  Like most space stations of its size and type, Manpower's installation in Congo boasted modestly respectable space-to-space defenses. There was no point trying to build something which could hope to stand off an attack by regular fleet units, but out in the back of beyond, people had to look after themselves. More than one unarmed station had been overwhelmed and looted by the equivalent of barbarian raiders in space-going rowboats, so it was generally considered a good idea to provide valuable pieces of real estate with sufficient defensive capability to at least make them unattractive targets for low-budget pirates.

  In addition, however, Lassiter's station served as not just the command center and freight transshipment point for the entire system, but also provided the primary defensive node for the planet of Congo itself, as well. Just as the guards in a prison were unarmed in order to prevent the inmates from seizing their weapons, the administrators and overseers on the surface of the planet had very few heavy weapons at their command. They scarcely needed them, with the equivalent of a battalion or so of Marines ready to drop on their heads at a moment's notice . . . supported by kinetic strikes from orbit. And especially not when Manpower had made it crystal clear that they would punish any rebellion attempt with a brutal ferocity that beggared the imagination.

  While it would have been impossible for anything which happened on the surface of the planet to directly threaten the space station, it was always theoretically possible that, despite everything, a desperate slave uprising might succeed in capturing some of the system's heavy-lift cargo shuttles while they were planeted and using them to attack it. If that happened as the first stage in an insurrection, then the lightly armed enclaves on the planet would be essentially at the mercy of the slaves who hated their inhabitants with a blazing passion. So, remote though the threat might be, Manpower's planners had provided the space station with sufficient light weaponry to annihilate any such attempt.