Uncompromising Honor - eARC

by David Weber

  There were some things better contemplated in silence.

  He stopped pinching his nose, picked up his cup of coffee, and climbed to his feet. He carried the coffee over to the wall, sipping from the self-heating mug—the big liter-sized one he used only on the long nights, when he worked alone and no one could see the depth of his addiction—while he gazed moodily out across the beauty that disguised such an ugly reality.

  I wonder how many other people have stood looking out across cities like this and wondered what the hell they were going to do next? he thought. I guess this kind of view is one of the perks of being a big shot. Too bad it doesn’t do a damned thing to help you figure out how to un-fuck the worst damned mess you’ve ever contributed to.

  Oh, how he wished he could lay the responsibility for all of this off onto someone else! In some ways, he could; his fellow “Mandarins”—even they had started using the pejorative that smart-arse O’Hanrahan had pinned on them—had contributed at least as much to the disaster’s preconditions as he had. And he could legitimately argue that Nathan MacArtney and Rajampet Rajani, between them, had contributed one hell of a lot more than he had. Rajampet, in particular, with his inspired personnel choices like Josef Byng, Sandra Crandall—even Massimo Filareta!—couldn’t have done more damage if he’d wanted to do. Indeed, there were moments Kolokoltsov almost wished the Manties were onto something with their hysteria about secret conspiracies and genetic supermen out for galactic domination. It would be so comforting to think he and his bureaucratic colleagues were the victim of malign manipulation rather than a bunch of frigging idiots who’d managed to shoot the entire Solarian League in the foot out of sheer incompetence.

  But if he’d ever been tempted to believe there was a word of truth in the Manties’ and Havenites’ “explanation” for their actions, the cascade of reports pouring in from the Fringe—and even the Verge—would have quashed the temptation.

  His jaw tightened as the dull throb of rage rippled through him once more and his nostrils flared.

  What had happened in Mobius was no longer a single straw in the wind. Dozens of similar situations were being reported. Some of the reports came from systems where carefully fomented unrest had already spilled over into open violence; others were from systems whose panicky OFS administrators—or, in some cases, even more panicky local oligarchs—had simply become aware that someone from outside was stirring the pot. All those people were screaming for help, for support—for the Navy! And as the fresh threat to the Protectorates and their already strangling revenue streams mounted, they’d had no choice but to send that support. To slice it off of Kingsford’s available strength. Thank God they’d decided to postpone the second phase of Buccaneer! But those diversions were eating away at the Navy’s available battlecruiser strength like acid. Whether this was the Manties’ work or not, its effects couldn’t possibly have suited their purposes better. And whoever it was, they had to get to the bottom of it. Had to find the guilty parties and stop this sort of crap before it got still worse. That was the reason he’d demanded an independent analysis of every known instance of…artificially induced unhappiness in the Protectorates.

  He’d handed that task to Brandy Spraker. Not only was Spraker one of the best analysts Foreign Affairs boasted, but she’d also been openly skeptical of arguments about Manty imperialism from the outset. She had to be aware “Manty imperialism” was the party line, the justification for the League’s policy vis-à-vis the Star Empire, but she’d stubbornly refused to toe that line. MacArtney had read a couple of her scathing dismissals and demanded Kolokoltsov fire her and replace her with someone who, as MacArtney put it, “was at least smart enough to figure out water’s wet!”

  Kolokoltsov had considered pointing out that he wasn’t too sure MacArtney was aware of that fact, himself. He hadn’t. Instead, he’d simply kept Spraker exactly where she was, doing exactly what she was doing, because even if it was…inconvenient to have her dispute his own policy justifications, even if only in-house, he needed that kind of honest criticism. The last thing he’d wanted to do was to buy into his own cover story!

  Especially now. Over the last few T-weeks, he’d found himself wondering if perhaps he hadn’t inadvertently told the truth about Manticoran motivations. It had struck him as unlikely, but not nearly so unlikely as the Manties’ version of what had happened in Mobius. They actually wanted the galaxy to believe that somebody else, pretending to be them, was running around fanning the fires of rebellion? Ridiculous! No, it was far more likely they truly had been looking beyond the Talbott Sector from the very beginning.

  Spraker hadn’t believed that. That was the reason he’d assigned the job to her, and she’d delivered her report this afternoon.

  “I’m sorry, Sir,” she’d said. “I’m really sorry, but…it looks like I’ve been giving you bad analysis for months now.”

  “Don’t be silly, Brandy,” he’d chided her. “The one thing I know for sure is that you’ve been giving me your best analysis.”

  “Maybe I have,” she’d said heavily. “But maybe I haven’t, too. Maybe I’ve just been willfully blind because I couldn’t see any sane motivation for the Manties to deliberately go up against the Solarian League.” She’d shaken her head. “Maybe I just didn’t give enough weight to their analysis of the balance of military power. Maybe that’s why I thought somebody as smart as they’ve always been would never deliberately pit themselves against the League. And the truth is, I still can’t think of any rational reason for them to do something like that. But I’ve come to the conclusion that I was wrong.”

  He’d looked at her, trying to hide his own conflicting sense of dismay and grim, satisfied justification, and reminded himself to go slowly.

  “Wrong in what way, Brandy?”

  “I won’t pretend I’m really satisfied with some of the data we’re getting from Frontier Security even now, Sir,” she’d said, and he’d nodded. That was another thing he treasured about Spraker. She was thoroughly aware of the way in which OFS and, to a lesser extent, the Gendarmerie tended to “cook the books” in the data and analyses they passed on to Foreign Affairs, and she factored that into her own analyses.

  “Having said that, though, I’ve turned up some evidence—pretty damning evidence, really—of exactly what Nyhus over at Frontier Security’s been claiming. Evidence that didn’t come from him.”

  “Really?” Kolokoltsov had tipped back in his chair, his eyes intent, and she’d nodded unhappily.

  “Yes, Sir. I’ve verified at least the basic accuracy of his version of what happened in four different star systems, and I’ve turned up at least two others that fit the same profile but that he never mentioned in any of his reports. That’s bad enough, but I’ve also confirmed that some of them started well over a year ago. In fact, it looks like some of them may have started as much as two T-years ago, or even a little longer.”

  She’d paused, looking at him, and he’d drawn a deep breath and gestured for her to continue.

  “There are at least three that fit that timeline, Sir, including the one that came to a head in the Loomis System ten months ago. In fact, Loomis is a pretty good example of what seems to be going on. When the ‘Loomis Liberation Front’ went up in flames in January, everyone thought it was the result of purely internal factors. God knows the situation had been festering for quite a while.”

  An angry light had flickered in her eyes. Despite her position—or possibly because her position gave her a far better appredciation than the average Solarian for how it worked—Brandy Spraker was not a great admirer of Frontier Security or the Protectorate system in general.

  “Unfortunately, about two T-months ago, the Loomis System authorities captured one of MacFadzean’s—she was the Liberation Front’s leader—last remaining cell leaders. He’s been executed since, but under interrogation, he was very bitter about the false promises of naval assistance they’d been made. Apparently, that was a tightly held secret within the LLF, which
is why no one reported it earlier. Either that or somebody on the ground—probably with the local OFS office—had picked up on it and concealed the fact to cover her arse. Wouldn’t want to admit they’d missed something like that being orchestrated right under their noses, would they?”

  “No, I imagine they wouldn’t.”

  “I’m not saying that’s what happened, Sir. I think it could’ve been, though. At any rate, if this guy—his name was MacGill, and he seems to’ve been the last member of their senior leadership on the loose—was telling the truth, MacFadzean was first contacted by someone claiming to represent the Manticorans as early as May or June of last year. Sir, that was at least six T-months before the New Tuscany Incident. So either we have to accept that somebody who knew New Tuscany was coming half a year before it ever happened—more probably at least a full year, really, given the time needed to find MacFadzean and allowing for travel time—orchestrated all of this to make us blame Manticore for it, or else it really has been the Manties all along.”

  “Is the timetable equally clear for any of the other incidents?” Kolokoltsov had asked quietly.

  “According to the Manties’ own chronology, someone—of course, they claim it was someone else—initially contacted Breitbach’s organization as early as July of last year. That’s still four months before New Tuscany. Same thing’s true in at least four other cases. It might be as many as five, but we can’t nail down the sequence at Locklear from what we know now. So unless we’re ready to accept that the ‘Mesan Alignment’ really exists and really has the reach to manipulate not just Fringe star systems but our own naval deployments, it has to’ve been Manticore all along.” She’d shaken her head disgustedly. “Maybe you should get yourself an analyst who can find her own backside, at least if you let her use both hands.”

  “I see.”

  He’d gazed at her for a moment, then stood and walked around his desk to her and extended his hand.

  “I can’t tell you how much I’ve always appreciated your honesty, Brandy,” he’d said. “I know you’ll always tell me the truth as you see it. And the fact that you walked into this office to tell me you’ve decided you’d been wrong only underscores the fact that I can’t afford to lose you. I want you to stay on this. And I want you to tell me if you see anything—anything—that conflicts with Permanent Senior Undersecretary MacArtney’s people’s analysis going forward. You’re my watchdog, my sentinel. I shouldn’t admit this, but I don’t fully trust OFS Intelligence, myself.” He’d waved one hand. “Oh, I know all the ministries have their own axes to grind, their own rice bowls to guard, but Frontier Security’s too willing to think of itself as the essential organ of the Federal Government. We can’t afford to have their view of their own importance shaping the intelligence narrative. Not at a time like this.”

  “I understand, Sir,” she’d said, “and I’ll give you my best. It may not be as good a ‘best’ as I used to think it was, but whatever it is, I’ll give it to you.”

  “I already knew that, Brandy,” he’d said, gripping her hand firmly. “After all, it’s what you’ve always done.”

  He’d meant every word he’d said to her, but now, as he sipped coffee, gazing out over that glittering lightscape, he let the anger flow through him, thinking about it. Thinking about the bastards’ sanctimonious superiority. About the way they’d lectured him on the difference between their own moral, upright foreign policy and the Solarian League’s. The contempt in their eyes and their voices. The arrogance with which they’d claimed their pissant little Star Kingdom wasn’t simply equal to the Solarian League. Oh, no! It was better than the League. It intended to replace the League as the beacon of hope and progress to which the galaxy should aspire. And the entire time they’d been doing that, they’d been spreading their poison in the Protectorates. It made sense of this entire “Lacoön” strategy of theirs, too. They’d recognized the Federal Government’s Achilles’ heel, its dependence on the cash flow from the Protectorates and its shipping and service fees. And so they’d started lighting fires all across the Fringe to destabilize the Protectorates and the revenue stream they generated, and then deliberately smashed the League’s interstellar economy to finish off that cash flow once and for all.

  And the timing even makes sense, he thought bitterly. We didn’t begin to realize how much technological superiority their navy had, but they knew. And they also knew that once we did figure it out, we had the basic tech and the industrial base to bury them under their own new weapons. But only if they gave us time. And so they set this whole thing in motion, then took advantage of that incredible, frigging stupidity at Monica—and of Byng’s anti-Manticore biases—and manufactured this whole damned military confrontation to accomplish their goals before we could rebuild the SLN into something that could crush them like the insects they are. And that fucking idiot Rajampet and his good friend MacArtney stepped straight into their trap with Byng, Crandall, and Filareta. Hell, and I went right along with them.

  That, he realized, was what really stuck in his craw. He’d thought he was the one calling the shots, gaming the situation with all his accustomed, polished expertise, because he’d had the entire Solarian League at his back and the League always called the shots. But it hadn’t been that way at all. No, the Manties had played him, manipulated him even more surely than they had any of those poor damned fools in the Fringe, and that was an offense Innokentiy Kolokoltsov would never—could never—forgive.

  But what could he do about it? They were right about their technological superiority, and Wodoslawski and Quartermain’s projections said their basic strategy was working. The government’s debt, and the interest it was compelled to pay to borrow more, were spiraling upward like the helium level in the heart of a star. The Federal Government was so huge, so vast, that its collapse would be like a slow-motion shipwreck—initially, at least. Wodoslawski, especially, was warning that when the end came, it would come quickly and catastrophically. That everything they’d done to stave it off as long as possible would only make the ultimate collapse even more devastating. They might be able to sustain the current spending levels for six more months. Perhaps even as many as seven. But then, unless they could come up with some fundamentally new funding mechanism to tap the bottomless potential wealth of the Solarian League, the ship would founder.

  And we can’t find a new mechanism, he thought despairingly. Any other government in the frigging galaxy could enact new taxes, generate new revenue streams. But not us. We’re stymied by the damned Constitution.

  It was right there in Article I. The Federal Government could not, under any circumstances, enact any form of direct or indirect taxation not generated by levies on interstellar commerce and/or specific services it provided. Indeed, it used the very words “under no circumstances.”

  We need to find some way around that, but how? How do we do it without admitting what we’ve been doing in the Protectorates all along? Without validating the Manties’ claims about our rapaciousness? In order to convince the Assembly to let us fix the problem, first we have to tell them what the problem is, and that’s a public relations battle we can’t win. Not the way things stand now. Even if we introduced legislation, and even if someone didn’t run straight to the Judiciary, it would only take a single vote—just one—to kill any statutory authorization to collect taxes. And the last thing we can afford at the moment is to call a constitutional convention to amend Article I. The way feelings are running all across the League right now, not even God knows where that would end! But—

  The musical chime of his official com floated across the office, and he turned from night-struck Old Chicago with a frown. He always had to leave word of where he was with his staff, but who’d have the temerity to screen him this late at night?

  He stomped across to the desk with ill grace.

  “Identify caller,” he growled.

  “Admiral Winston Kingsford, Chief of Naval Operations,” the office computer responded, and his frown d
eepened. He’d thought Kingsford was all the way out at Ganymede!

  “Accept,” he said.

  “Transmission is a recorded message,” the computer told him. “Message length eleven minutes and seventeen seconds.”

  “Recorded?”

  The computer didn’t respond to the obviously rhetorical question, and Kolokoltsov’s nostrils flared.

  “Very well. Play recorded transmission.”

  “Message commencing,” the computer said, and Winston Kingsford appeared on Kolokoltsov’s desk display.

  “I hope I haven’t caught you at an inconvenient moment, Sir,” he said, “but if you have a few minutes, there’s something I need to tell you about. I expect—” he smiled quickly “—you can always put me on hold until it is convenient, but I think this is something you’re really going to want to hear.”

  The CNO stopped speaking for a moment, obviously giving Kolokoltsov the opportunity to pause the record until a better time. Then he continued, his eyes bright and intense.

  “I know I’m the one who’s warning everyone not to think in terms of magical equalizers,” he said. “And I don’t think that’s what we’ve got here. But I’ve just watched a full day of simulations and three live-fire demonstrations of a new system. I caution you that it isn’t on the same level as what the Manties appear to be capable of, but, in some ways, it’s close. Very close. In fact, Sir, it’s close enough that—in sufficient numbers—I think it may be an actual game changer.

  “They call it ‘Hasta,’ and I don’t want to tell you too much about how it works in a transmission, however good our encryption is. But without going into the details of how it does what it does, let me tell you a little bit about its potential.

  “First—”

  OCTOBER 1922 POST DIASPORA

  HMS Imperator

  Manticore Binary System

  “We meet again, Mister Harahap,” Honor Alexander-Harrington said ironically as Damien Harahap followed the Royal Manticoran Navy captain who’d greeted him in HMS Imperator’s boat bay past the pair of tough-looking green-uniformed men stationed on either side of the hatch. The compartment beyond was much more spacious than anything he’d ever before experienced aboard a warship, Solarian or Manticoran, and the long table was covered in a spotless linen cloth and set with glittering tableware.