by David Weber
"Yes, Milady, they are. My best prediction at the moment is that there's about an eighty percent chance they'll leave Yvernau here, still heading their delegation. I figure there's a seventy percent chance they won't send him any new instructions, either. They'll let him continue standing in front of the air lorry until it runs him down, hoping for the best. After that, though, I don't know what they'll do. That's why I was asking you. It looks to me as if it's too close to call at this point. There's almost an even chance they'll buy into this notion of his that they can do just fine without us, thank you."
"That's my reading of the situation, too," Medusa said. "And he's probably right that we'll find ourselves obliged to prevent anyone else from moving in on them. But for the rest of it—" She shook her head. "Either New Tuscany's going to turn into some sort of police state, or else the current management's going to get bounced out on its collective posterior when the New Tuscan electorate sees what's happening to the rest of the Cluster without their participation."
"Which could be even messier than Nordbrandt's efforts on Kornati," O'Shaughnessy said grimly.
"That's what happens to closed, exploitative ruling classes which insist on trying to tie the cork down more tightly instead of reforming themselves or at least venting the pressure in some controlled fashion," Medusa agreed sadly. Then she shook herself.
"There's not much we can do if they're going to insist on some sort of mutual suicide pact," she said. "On the other hand, it looks like the rest of the Cluster's falling into line behind Alquezar and Krietzmann quite nicely."
"Yes, it does." O'Shaughnessy made no particular effort to hide his satisfaction, and the Provisional Governor returned his broad smile with interest. "Given what Terekhov and Van Dort did to Nordbrandt and the FAK, and now the approval of the Alquezar draft Constitution virtually in its entirety, I'd have to say the annexation logjam seems to be breaking up. The one thing I was most worried about—once the Government finally decided to go ahead and impose a hard and fast deadline—was the effect all of the death and destruction on Kornati was going to have on domestic political opinion back home. Tonkovic and Yvernau's delaying tactics never had a hope of standing up to the threat of exclusion, but I had my doubts about whether or not Parliament would approve the annexation, even with the Queen getting behind and pushing hard, if it thought we were going to be looking at a constant, running sore in Split."
"I think you might've been underestimating both Her Majesty's grip on the present Parliament and the electorate's intestinal fortitude," Medusa said. "On the other hand, you might not have been. Either way, I'm glad there's not going to be any more spectacular bloodshed and explosions coming out of the Cluster."
* * *
"Very well, Amal," Terekhov said. "General signal to the Squadron. All units prepare to depart Montana orbit and proceed in company to Point Midway."
"Aye, aye, Sir," Lieutenant Commander Nagchaudhuri acknowledged, and Terekhov glanced around his bridge.
Hexapuma was understrength, what with the Marines she'd left on Kornati, the casualties she'd suffered when Hawk-Papa-One was destroyed, and the detachment of Ansten FitzGerald's party to Copenhagen. The same number of casualties and detached personnel would have made a relatively minor hole in the company of an older ship, like Warlock or Vigilant. Aboard Hexapuma, it represented a significant reduction in manpower. He'd been tempted to "borrow" a few people from the other ships, but not very strongly. He knew the temper of his weapon. He preferred to see it slightly understrength rather than risk introducing flaws into it at this critical moment.
He turned his attention to the main plot. The green icons of twelve ships gleamed upon it now. In addition to Hexapuma's own, there were two other heavy cruisers—Warlock and Vigilant—and three light cruisers—Gallant and Audacious, both sisters of his dead Defiant, and Aegis, one of the new Avalon-class ships, almost as modern as Hexapuma. That was the core of "his" squadron's combat power, but they were supported by four destroyers—Javelin and Janissary, both relatively modern, and the ancient (though neither of them was really any older than Warlock) Rondeau and Aria. The ten warships were accompanied by the dispatch boat he'd impressed from its assignment to the Montanan government and by HMS Volcano.
He let his attention linger on Volcano's light code for a moment, then laid his forearms precisely along the armrests of his command chair and rotated it to face Lieutenant Commander Wright.
"All right, Tobias," he said, his voice calm, unshadowed by any trace of uncertainty. "Take us out of here."
Chapter Fifty-Three
HMS Ericsson erupted over the hyper wall into the Spindle system in a starbust of blue transit energy twenty-seven days after leaving Dresden.
She sent her identity and notice that she carried dispatches to HMS Hercules via grav-pulse as soon as she made translation, and a trickle of consternation flowed uphill as the news of her arrival wended its way towards the superdreadnought's flag deck. Ericsson was a depot ship. She wasn't a dispatch boat, and she was supposed to be permanently stationed in Montana, supporting the Southern Patrol.
No one knew what she was doing here, but no one expected it to be good.
* * *
"Dispatches?" Captain Loretta Shoupe frowned at Hercules' com officer. "From Montana?"
"That's what I'm assuming at the moment, Ma'am," the lieutenant commander said. "But assume is all I can do. Unless you want me to send a query back?"
Shoupe considered. According to the time chop on the arrival message, it had been receipted nineteen minutes before it was actually delivered to her. Allowing for decryption time and the fact that the communications officer had hand-delivered it to her, which had required him to walk it up six decks and down the next best thing to a quarter-kilometer of passages, that wasn't too bad. But the total transit time for Ericsson from the hyper limit to Flax orbit would be approximately two and a half hours, which meant it would be another two hours and fifteen minutes before she reached Hercules.
She scanned the brief message again. Whatever dispatch Ericsson was carrying, it was obviously important, since she'd listed it as Priority Alpha-Three. That called for it to be delivered via secure recording medium rather than transmitted.
"Yes," she said. "Ask them to confirm the originator and the addressee of their dispatches."
* * *
"From Terekhov, you say?" It was Rear Admiral Augustus Khumalo's turn to frown. "Aboard Ericsson?"
"Yes, Sir." Shoupe stood just inside the hatch of his day cabin, and he beckoned for her to come further in and take a seat. "It's from Terekhov," she continued as she obeyed the silent order, "but she didn't come direct from Montana. According to her arrival message, she's inbound from Dresden."
"Dresden?" Khumalo sat straighter behind his desk, and his frown deepened. "What the hell was she doing in Dresden?"
"I don't know yet, Sir. I'm guessing Terekhov sent her there for some reason before she came on to Spindle."
"But she's carrying Alpha-Three priority dispatches from Terekhov, not from anyone in Dresden?"
"That's correct, Sir. Lieutenant Commander Spears requested and received confirmation of that."
"That's ridiculous," Khumalo fumed. "If his message is so damned important, why send it so roundabout? Going by way of Dresden added almost three weeks to the direct transit time! Besides," his frown became an active scowl, "there's a dispatch boat assigned to the Montanan government, and she could have made the trip direct from Montana in ten days, a fifth of the time he he took sending it this way!"
"I know, Sir. But I'm afraid I don't have enough information even to speculate on what's going on. Except to say we'll know one way or another in about—" she checked her chrono "—another hour and fifty-eight minutes."
* * *
"He's done what?"
Baroness Medusa wasn't doing any frowning. She was staring at Rear Admiral Khumalo in stark disbelief.
"It's all in his dispatch, Milady," Khumalo said in the voice of
a man still dealing with his own disbelief. "He's come up with some wild suspicion that the Republic of Monica—Monica, of all damned places!—is preparing some lunatic military operation here in the Cluster."
"So he stole a merchantship—a Solarian merchantship—put a Navy crew on board her, and sent her off to violate Monica's territorial space?" the Provisional Governor demanded.
"Ah, actually, Milady," Shoupe said a bit nervously, "that part of it makes a certain amount of sense."
"None of this makes any sense, Loretta!" Khumalo snarled. "The man's chasing phantoms!"
"That's obviously one possibility, Sir," Shoupe acknowledged. "But it's not the only one," she added stubbornly. Admiral and Provisional Governor alike turned to stare at her, and she shrugged. "I'm not saying he's right, Sir. There's no way for any of us to know that at this point. But if he is right, the sooner we confirm it, the better. And if we can possibly keep the Monicans from realizing we have confirmed it, the advantage could be enormous. And—"
"And going to call on Monica to investigate with a Queen's ship would make that impossible," Baroness Medusa finished for her.
"Exactly. A freighter, on the other hand, especially a Solly freighter, probably has a pretty good chance of getting in and out without arousing any suspicion."
"But if it does arouse any suspicion, and it's stopped and searched, the discovery that it has a Navy crew—a Navy crew that stole the ship in the first place—will make the situation ten times as bad as if he'd sailed straight through Monica in Hexapuma!" Khumalo threw in.
"Excuse me," Gregor O'Shaughnessy said, "but I came in on this late. What makes Captain Terekhov think the Monicans are up to something in the first place?"
"That's . . . a little involved," Commander Chandler said. Khumalo's intelligence officer glanced at the rear admiral considerably more nervously than Shoupe had. "He's included a summary of all the evidence which forms the basis of his analysis, and he's copied his intelligence files for you and the Provisional Governor, so you can check both the evidence and his conclusions for yourself. The short version's that he and Van Dort have an informant who claims the Jessyk Combine delivered a large number of shipyard technicians, well versed in naval applications, to Monica. Apparently, according to this same source, Jessyk's sending in a flock of freighters configured as minelayers, as well. At Jessyk's cost, not Monica's. And the same ship that delivered the technicians saw what looked like two very large repair or depot ships in Monica, at Eroica Station, its main naval yard, when it dropped off the techs. And it was also the ship used to run arms to Nordbrandt and Westman."
"Westman!" the baroness said suddenly. "That's another thing. What's happening with Westman in the middle of all this?"
"That's actually one of the bright points, Milady," Chandler replied. "Apparently, Westman's laid down his weapons and accepted an amnesty offer from President Suttles."
"Well, thank God there's some good news!" Khumalo grated.
"Forgive me, Admiral," O'Shaughnessy said, "but assuming this merchantship—Copenhagen, you said it was called?" Khumalo nodded, and the civilian intelligence specialist continued. "Well, assuming Copenhagen gets into and out of Monica without being intercepted or boarded, where's the problem?"
"Where's the problem?" Khumalo repeated. "Where's the problem?" He glared at O'Shaughnessy. "I'll tell you where the problem is, Mr. O'Shaughnessy. Not content to steal a Solarian-registry freighter—a fact which is going to come out, eventually, you may be sure—and use it to violate a sovereign star nation's territoriality, Captain Terekhov's also seen fit to order every unit of the Southern Patrol in Tillerman, Talbott, and Dresden to join him in Montana. He's assembled himself an entire squadron—somewhere between eight and fifteen Queen's ships, depending on who was in-system and who was in transit between—and, assuming he kept to the schedule which he so kindly provided to us, he left Montana with that squadron ten days ago."
"Going where?" O'Shaughnessy was noticeably paler than he'd been a moment before, and Khumalo seemed to take a certain gloomy satisfaction in the change.
"His immediate objective is a point approximately one hundred light-years from Montana—thirty-eight light-years from Monica—where he expects to rendezvous with Copenhagen sometime in the next ten days to two weeks."
"Jesus Christ," O'Shaughnessy said prayerfully, "please tell me he's not going to—?"
"It's the only explanation for why he chose this peculiar way to get his dispatches to the Admiral in the first place, Gregor," Shoupe said heavily. "He's made it physically impossible for us to stop him."
"He's a frigging lunatic!" O'Shaughnessy snapped in a horrified voice. "What kind of loose warhead is the Navy giving ships to, goddamn it?"
Shoupe glared at him, anger sparkling in her dark brown eyes, and even Khumalo gave him a dirty look. The rear admiral opened his mouth, but Dame Estelle's raised hand stopped him. The Provisional Governor gave O'Shaughnessy a stern look, and pointed one index finger at him like a pistol.
"Don't let your prejudices run away with your mouth before you engage your brain, Gregor." She didn't even raise her voice, but it stung like the flick of a whip. O'Shaughnessy flinched visibly, and she gave him a cold, level stare. "Captain Terekhov's intentionally arranged matters so that he becomes the obvious sacrificial lamb if one becomes necessary. I once knew another Navy captain who would've done precisely the same thing if she'd believed what he apparently does. He may be wrong, but he is not a lunatic, and he's deliberately placed his career on the chopping block. Not simply to back up what he believes in, but so that the Queen will be free to court-martial him if she needs to prove to the galaxy at large that her Government had nothing to do with his totally unauthorized foray."
"I—" O'Shaughnessy paused and cleared his throat. "Forgive me, Admiral. Loretta. Ambrose." He bowed to each uniformed officer in turn. "The Provisional Governor's right. I spoke before I thought."
"Believe me, Mr. O'Shaughnessy," Khumalo said heavily, "I doubt very much that you could possibly think of anything unflattering to say about Captain Terekhov's mental processes which hasn't already passed through my own mind. Which isn't to say the Provisional Governor's wrong in any way. It's just that the entire notion seems so preposterous, so bizarre, I simply can't believe it's possible."
"I think . . . I think I can, actually," O'Shaughnessy said after a moment.
"Excuse me?" Khumalo blinked at him.
"If—and I say if—someone in the League's been deliberately stirring up and arming people like Nordbrandt and Westman to destabilize the Cluster, and if that same someone's prepared to upgrade the Monicans' naval capabilities, then it could actually make sense," the civilian said slowly.
"If they expect Monica to take us on, it had better be one damned massive upgrade of their capabilities!" Khumalo snorted.
"Granted. But maybe not quite as massive as you're assuming, Admiral."
Khumalo started to say something quickly, but O'Shaughnessy shook his head.
"I'm not questioning your naval judgment. But if Terekhov and Van Dort have put this together the way it sounds to me they have, then this is essentially a political operation which simply happens to have a military component. Oh," he waved both hands, "it's far too complicated, and it requires a degree of confidence verging on blind arrogance, but God knows the Sollies have demonstrated plenty of arrogance in the past. I think it's literally impossible for the sort of people who'd try something like this to conceive of a situation they can't control—or at least spin the way they want it—because they're so confident they have the power of the entire League behind them."
"Maybe so, but it's still ridiculous," Khumalo said. "Let's say they've tripled the Monican Navy's combat power." He barked a harsh laugh. "Hell, let's say they've increased it by a factor of ten! So what? We could still wipe them out in an afternoon with a single division of SD(P)s or a squadron of CLACs!"
"Possibly. All right, probably," O'Shaughnessy amended at the rear admiral's exasp
erated look. "But it's entirely possible that whoever put this thing together doesn't really care what happens to the Monicans. All they may care about is creating a pretext—an armed clash in the Cluster—that gives the Monicans an initial victory or two. Are you going to argue that an upgraded Monican Navy couldn't defeat your presently deployed forces? Especially if it caught them dispersed, by surprise, and engaged them in separate, isolated actions with its own forces concentrated for each attack?"
Khumalo glared again, but this time he was forced, grudgingly, to shake his head.
"Well suppose the Monicans did just that, and then called in Frontier Security, claiming we'd started it and asking for Solarian peacekeeping forces. What do you think would happen then?"
Khumalo's jaw clamped hard, and O'Shaughnessy nodded.
"It sounds to me as if Terekhov's already neutralized the terrorist movements which were supposed to destabilize things from the civilian, political side," he said. "If the Monicans or their Solly partners are looking for something they can use to spin the Solly media, they may already have everything they need, but at least it's not going to get any worse. And if he can neutralize the Monican Navy—assuming the Monicans really are part of a coordinated operation—he may just manage to stall the entire operation."
"Then you think he's right?" Shoupe asked.
"I don't have the least idea whether he's right or not," O'Shaughnessy said flatly. "In fact, I'm busy praying he's dead wrong. But I think it's possible he isn't, and if there really is something to his suspicions, then I hope to God he manages to pull this off."
"I don't know what I think," Khumalo said after a few heartbeats of silence. "But if he is right, we're going to need more firepower than I have right now. Loretta," he turned to his chief of staff, "draft a message to the Admiralty, highest priority. Attach copies of Terekhov's dispatches—all his dispatches—and request immediate reinforcement of the Lynx Terminus. Further inform them that I'll be ordering the remainder of my present forces to concentrate to cover the southern edge of the Cluster and that I'm moving on Monica personally with every ship available here in Spindle as soon as possible. Inform them," he looked across at the Provisional Governor, meeting her eyes levelly, "that although I remain uncertain of Captain Terekhov's conclusions, I endorse his actions and intend to support him to the best of my ability. I want that off by dispatch boat to Lynx and Manticore as quickly as humanly possible."
