by L D Inman
~*~
“I want a personnel report,” du Rau said to Lord Admiral Wernhier. “Give me the intelligence file on Admiral Douglas and his relationship to Ryswyck Academy.”
“Who?” Wernhier blinked up from the projection at his com-deck. Like du Rau, he had been sleeping in chairs, leaving the palace tactics office only to wash and change.
“Lord Selkirk has put a child by the name of Walter Hale Douglas in charge of the enemy position at Ryswyck,” du Rau explained, with more patience than he felt. “Who is now demanding we give him General Barklay’s remains under international code.”
“Does he drag his balls around when he walks?” Wernhier said sourly. “Who are they to talk of abiding by international codes?”
“Quite,” said du Rau. “I want to know all that we know about him.”
“I can pull the dossier and send it to your com,” Wernhier said. “When do you want it?”
“Now would suffice.” Du Rau left without waiting for a reply.
Wernhier was prompt, which was definitely one way of earning du Rau’s favor. He had the file almost as soon as he sat back down at his desk. Du Rau expected it would have little substance, but he was wrong: the intelligence was patchy, but plentiful enough that he could almost fill in the gaps himself.
Admiral Douglas had attended university at Killness and gained a certificate in modern history, with a special in military movements of their region. He had then joined the army and sat the entrance exam for Ryswyck Academy after basic training. At Ryswyck, he had distinguished himself by winning a third year of study as a junior officer and then serving as a leader among the junior officer corps. At the end of his course of study he had been offered a commission as captain in the training corps at Cardumel Base—close to nine months ago.
Obviously, Douglas had not been at Cardumel Base when du Rau attacked it; he had been back at Ryswyck instead. Berenia had no agents at Ryswyck itself (an obvious oversight in retrospect), but did have position to gain a good deal of the gossip coming out of it, and the gossip said that Lord Selkirk was pursuing a vendetta against General Barklay for reasons that were obscure but salacious. This was no mystery to du Rau, who knew Barklay of old. According to the gossip, Barklay had attempted to head Selkirk off by calling a council at Ryswyck to present its own findings to Central Command.
This much du Rau already knew; he had depended on Central Command being distracted by Barklay’s antics for the timing of his operation. What was not clear was what Douglas had to do with it. Douglas had said that Lord Selkirk, not Barklay, had installed him as commander at Ryswyck. But a dogged request for Barklay’s remains wouldn’t come from Selkirk, who was hardly going to trouble himself if Barklay’s fey little mission resulted in his death. So who had Douglas’s loyalty—Selkirk or Barklay?
The next page in the dossier was a list of names: all those who were known to have been sent a request to appear at Barklay’s council. Douglas’s name was on it, along with another officer’s from Cardumel Base. Barklay had wanted Douglas for his council, so he evidently had had hopes of him. The dossier did not indicate who had answered the summons to Ryswyck, but Douglas clearly had. So Lord Selkirk had either found some leverage with Douglas, or he considered him disposable in much the same way Ahrens had been. Ahrens’s name wasn’t on this list, du Rau reflected. He never asked me, he had said. Barklay hadn’t asked Ahrens to carry the weight of his crimes, but that didn’t mean Barklay had asked no one to do it. Ask Douglas, Ahrens had said. Which meant that Douglas was known to be some sort of authority on Ryswyck or Barklay or both. There was nothing here to say what Douglas knew of Barklay that others did not. But du Rau could guess.
Unfortunately it didn’t offer du Rau much advantage as an attack: to devalue Douglas’s request as a lone plea from Barklay’s lover would be to devalue his own threat in hanging him on the Lantern Tower. It would then leave Douglas free to reframe the request as a personal favor; and du Rau had already done one personal favor for a Ryswyckian. Shaming a Verlaker man for having no masculine dignity would be superficially satisfying, but that was all.
The fact that Douglas had made the request at all proved that du Rau’s threat had limited force. Degrading Verlaker dead would not save Berenian lives, not if Verlac decided they had nothing to lose and chose to kill his people no matter what he did to them in return. Which they could do at any moment. Just by making the request, Douglas was forcing du Rau to take it seriously. Which was intolerable.
Worse: if he remained committed to his long-term plan for the region, his actions in the next twelve hours had to be perfectly executed and overwhelmingly effective. Or else he would have to make a new long-term plan that accounted for a sovereign Verlac. Neither seemed possible.
Du Rau’s gaze returned to focus, and he found himself staring at Barklay’s knife where he’d driven it into his desk, perfectly upright and still. He sat up abruptly and messaged the comms room.
“What progress has been made on identifying points of origin for enemy missiles?” he asked.
The comms commander blinked up on the projection. “Two possible points have been triangulated and identified, my lord. One mid-strait, and one near the shuttle depot on the east coast of the island. But at present no significant activity has been detected in either location, so if there’s a silo or a sub present, it’s not verifiable.”
“And even if we bombarded and destroyed both, it doesn’t bring us close to guaranteeing we’ve eliminated the missile threat.”
“That’s about the size of it, my lord.”
“Anything from our agents on location?”
“Nothing turned up by the analysts so far, my lord—and no contact made since the beginning of the operation.”
Which meant that any actionable intelligence would need to turn up immediately if they were going to make use of it in time to turn this about. “Thank you, commander,” du Rau said.
Opening distance was not going to be enough. Admiral Douglas had put him on his back foot; he was going to have to engage or retreat altogether. There was no more time for thinking. If he was going to gain Berenia any time or leverage, he would have to do it himself.
He messaged the comms room again. “I want to be connected with Admiral Douglas at Ryswyck One,” he said.
~*~
“Mind you, Douglas,” Selkirk said, “you have no leave to bargain with him. Stick to your bootless demands if you will, but you will not engage to offer anything on Ilona’s behalf. I doubt du Rau has had a change of heart in the last hour.”
“Understood, my lord,” Douglas said. He fully expected du Rau would want to test his intentions, draw out his game so that he could take it apart.
“I mean it, Douglas,” Selkirk said. He dropped from the projection, and du Rau flicked up. They had agreed Douglas would kill Selkirk’s visual and incoming audio, to avoid betraying any distraction, but Douglas was fully conscious of his presence on the line.
Du Rau did not waste time on greetings. “How old are you?” he demanded at once. “Admiral.”
“I will be twenty-seven come spring,” Douglas answered calmly.
Du Rau’s black eyes snapped. “I’ve been fighting this war since you were toddling around in napkins.”
With twelve older siblings, Douglas was used to slights on his youthfulness. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Lord Commander Selkirk says the same.” This was bound to annoy du Rau and Selkirk both, and if du Rau’s reputation were good, he would already have realized Douglas had a slightly adversarial relationship with his commander, so he wasn’t giving away much.
“I’m not the one who’s given command of a key installation to a boy fresh off some farm,” said du Rau. “Nor sent a war criminal to abduct a head of state and his wife. There’s nothing to excuse that. You, however, are merely impudent and ignorant.”
Douglas did not react to the reference to Barklay as a war criminal; he dared du Rau to take note of that. “Impudent, I may grant you, sir. Of what am
I ignorant?”
“Of what are you not ignorant?” he replied, with a dry smolder. “You ask for General Barklay’s remains as if he were a legitimate combatant, as if his rights as a soldier were not forfeit for his crimes on our soil. As if all of your rights were not forfeit. I promised Barklay I would slaughter every fatherless wretch in Verlac from the south coast to the north circle—and who would gainsay me? You?”
Shock tactics, Douglas thought. Du Rau was looking for a weakness. “You’ve certainly been making a creditable attempt,” he said serenely. “While I was toddling in napkins, your soldiers were desecrating every birthplace, records office, and ash garden they could reach. No doubt you would like to resume that project after a twenty-year hiatus. But you can’t defile General Barklay’s resting place unless I put him in it. And it could only help to legitimate you in the eyes of the world if you returned him to Ryswyck by the book.”
“Legitimate me?” Du Rau would have launched a deadly attack if they’d been in the same room; Douglas tamped down a smile of satisfaction, even as his feet instinctively braced for defense. But an instant later du Rau recovered himself and straightened on a breath. “Do you think I need to justify my treatment of Barklay’s corpse, after what he did to my countrymen?”
“I assume you’re referring to the incidents at Solham Fray,” Douglas said, calm. Out of his view Selkirk was no doubt putting his face in his hands.
A faint sneer tugged at du Rau’s lip. “And what do you know about that?”
“More than I should. But I’ve seen the classified file.”
“Why do you bother to classify it?” du Rau said. “It is a place here that any man may visit. With a memorial to those who died after Barklay was through with them. I spaded three of those graves with my own hands. But who of your people would believe it? You have persuaded yourselves that we are the self-degraded ones.”
Douglas gave him a heavy-lidded look and quoted: “‘I promised General Barklay that I would slaughter every fatherless wretch in Verlac from the south coast to the north circle.’”
“Do you dare compare my words to his actions?” du Rau hissed.
“No, sir,” Douglas said. His anger was now not ice but granite. “I am merely pointing out that there is but one lie operative in the whole dynamic. The men who suffered and died at Solham Fray were unquestionably human and wronged.” He drew in a breath. “And you know very well we are not fatherless wretches here.”
There was a silence.
Then for good measure Douglas said: “If you really have more honor than we—then prove it.”
Du Rau’s dark glare turned sardonic. “You are offering me the privilege of magnanimity. How precious. That should comfort me when you’ve poisoned all our water. Why should I accept your offer as a gift?”
“You need not,” Douglas said. “You could seize it instead. We are each to kill one another, after all.”
“One remise after another,” du Rau answered, with a thin smile. “You are a better foilsman than your master.”
“I’ve suffered my share of touches,” Douglas said.
“Of that,” du Rau said, very dry, “I have no doubt.”
Douglas let this pass.
“What you ask,” du Rau went on, “what you offer, is an impossibility. So then let me offer you an impossibility in return. I will give you General Barklay’s body, free and clear according to code, so that you may bury his ashes at Ryswyck Academy. If you will allow me personally to accompany his bier to Ryswyck and attend his funeral.”
It was such a brilliant stroke that Douglas couldn’t stop his smile. I would be delighted, he almost said before he caught himself. “If it depended wholly on me, it would be no impossibility at all,” he said instead. “I cannot engage for the rest of Ilona, however. I would have to ask.”
“By all means,” said du Rau indulgently, “ask. But the offer is not indefinite. The situation is bound to deteriorate—like General Barklay’s remains. Give my compliments to Lord Commander Selkirk, if you please. Bernhelm out.”
Du Rau’s connection dropped away, leaving Selkirk’s image on the projection. Sure enough, he had both hands up massaging his broad brow. He took them away and said to Douglas, “Did I not tell you he would find a way to make it worse?”
Douglas was still smiling. He waited.
“Now,” Selkirk growled, “not only does he have us in a cleft stick, he’s taken the moral high ground as well.”
“And what comfort would the moral high ground be to us?” Douglas said, reasonably. “As Lord Bernhelm said, not much, if we are all going to die.”
“Don’t look at me like that. It is impossible, Douglas.”
“Well, it’s certainly tricky,” Douglas said.
“Tricky! To allow an enemy head of state onto our soil, to make a personal visit to an active theater of war for a free look at the ground?”
“I’m sure he already has all the intel he wants about Ryswyck campus. And if he can convince his people to let him come alone, why shouldn’t we let him?”
“Yes, I’m sure the Bernhard corps would just roll right over and allow him to come unescorted—”
“We’d need to establish a neutral zone for the exchange,” Douglas said thoughtfully.
“Douglas—”
“And we’d need somebody or something for them to hold as security for du Rau’s return—”
“Douglas, stop.”
“Not to mention,” Douglas went on, warming to it, “the opportunity we have to get these Berenian wounded off our hands here. Speaking of moral high ground.”
Selkirk had given up interrupting Douglas, and waited wearily for him to finish his sentence. Then he said: “I know you’re enjoying spinning your little fancies, but allow me to dash some reality over them. We are under invasion. There is no way Central Command or the High Council will countenance Emmerich du Rau setting foot on this island. For any reason. And how do you think such a rank insult would sit with our troops? They’d mutiny on the spot rather than cooperate with such a scheme. Nobody but a Ryswyckian would think this idea anything but lunacy.”
“It wasn’t a Ryswyckian who proposed it, my lord.”
“No—it was a conniving, ruthless, vicious butcher of a Bernhard senior field officer. He’s baiting you, Douglas. Can you not see that?”
“No, my lord, I think he’s baiting you,” Douglas said.
Selkirk glared at him silently for a long moment. “And what exactly,” he said quietly, “would constitute my taking the bait?”
“Well, taking his insults seriously, for a start.” Douglas couldn’t stop now; he felt the rush of giddy commitment taking over. “He’d like you to doubt your own judgment, abandon your strategy, precisely because it’s been effective. You know you don’t have to like Ryswyckians to make good use of them, and he’d love you to forget it. Just consider, my lord: every hour du Rau spends on this island is an hour they can’t attack us. Take him up on the offer, and he has to figure out how to make it work.”
“Or take it all back and resume his offensive.”
“In which case he’s just sacrificed his own people as well. He could just as well have done that twelve hours ago.”
“Yes; he’d like more room to maneuver, I see that. Consider this, Douglas. Assume he still has some agents here as we have there. You think he wouldn’t try to win contact with them? I would, in his place.”
Douglas understood his drift. “Well, then. Have you read any other Ryswyckians into the missile project?”
“No,” Selkirk said. Douglas noted with interest that he looked briefly abashed. But then he said, “It’s just as well; that place leaks like a sieve with gossip.”
Douglas sighed. “I know. I don’t know what’s to be done about it other than build strategic channels for it.”
“You think that hasn’t occurred to me?” Selkirk said dryly.
“I’m sure there’s nothing that hasn’t occurred to you, my lord,” Douglas said.
/> Selkirk glared, evidently suspecting him of sarcasm.
“I don’t mind being dispensable, my lord,” Douglas went on quietly. “I do mind using dirty weapons that won’t buy us a minute’s survival. This could buy us twelve more hours. You could find better ground if it’s to be found. Just that. Not for my favor. I’m not asking you to favor me. Or any Ryswyckian.”
Suddenly Selkirk struck his desk; the projection shuddered briefly. “Damn it, Douglas! Do you think it gives me pleasure to see Barklay strung up like a plucked chicken? Do you think I take satisfaction in threatening noncombatants with a horrible death?”
“No—”
“Then stop trying to argue me out of a position I don’t occupy. Sacred lights, you’re not the only one who’s giving yourself over to end this war. You’re not the only one I’m having endless arguments with, and you’re certainly not the only one trying to do justice for a dead loved one.”
Selkirk had cracked open: his eyes were hard and wet in his exhausted face. A flinch of reaction went through Douglas’s insides, and he swallowed against a heavy ache in his throat.
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir. My lord.”
In the silence that followed, Douglas felt his face grow hot and then cool again. He couldn’t look up, not even when Selkirk spoke again, in a low rough voice.
“Give me,” he said, “some time to think.”
He could hear that Selkirk had come to the last ounce of his patience, but it was the steady note of compassion in Selkirk’s voice that drove the rebuke home. Douglas’s voice deserted him. He put his closed hand to his heart, digging in against the pain in his breastbone.
“And while I’m doing that, you will take the opportunity to have one of your staff spell you for a rest.” Before Douglas could pull together his gaze and his breath, Selkirk added, “That’s an order, Admiral. I trust you are familiar with the concept.”
