Shadow of Victory - eARC (40 page)

“Then I by God want the relevant constitutional language included in that written authorization! Maybe that will—”

She cut herself off, but Osborne heard her anyway and shook his head sadly.

“He’s running—they’re all running—too damn scared, Captain. I understand why you want the documentation, and you’ll have it within the hour, I’m sure. But just making them sign off on it by name in the official record isn’t going to make them stop and think. Not now.”

“Maybe not. But I can frigging well give it my best shot first.”

“Yes, you can. And between you and me, I hope you have a lot more luck in that respect than I did. I’ll get that documentation to you ASAP. Osborne, clear.”

* * *

“What did you say?” Megan MacLean’s face went white and she stared at Tammas MacPhee. “Starships?”

“I just found out,” MacPhee said harshly. “The bastards are sitting on the information, but our people on the inside say there’s a lot of com traffic going on between Boyle’s office and whoever’s in command.”

“Dear God.” MacLean turned from her friend to stare sightlessly out across the smoke-hazy vista of the city of Elgin. The LLF controlled half of that city now, and they’d overrun the spaceport. They had the McMinn Administration—although everyone knew it was really Tyler MacCrimmon calling the shots now—on the ropes. Just another few days, and MacCrimmon would be either surrendered, dead, or fled!

And now this.

“We’re not equipped fight Marines in battle armor, Megan,” Tad Ogilvy told her bluntly. “We could probably cost them a few people, but not enough to stop them. Uppies in armor would be bad enough; Solarian Marines who know what the hell they’re doing are a whole ’nother proposition, though.”

“What about intervention battalions?” Erin MacFadzean asked. “We could handle those, couldn’t we?”

“If that’s what they were stupid enough to send…maybe,” MacPhee said. “Even there, it’d be a hell of a lot uglier than anything we’ve seen yet.”

“‘Ugly’ I can handle.” MacLean rubbed her temples with both hands. “But this could be a lot worse than that, Tammas, and you know it.”

“Even if we order the lads and lassies to lay down their weapons, you know a third of them won’t,” MacPhee said. “Stirling, for example. The only way you’ll get his people’s guns would be to pry them out of their cold, dead hands!”

“I that’s what it takes, I’d be willing to do that myself rather than risk a kinetic bombardment of the entire damned planet!” MacLean snapped.

“It’s not likely to come to that,” MacPhee argued. “Outside the towns and cities, we’re too well dispersed and camouflaged for them to pick our people out for bombardment. And it’d be even harder to find individual targets in any of the urban areas. Besides, not even MacCrimmon could be crazy enough to take out our own towns and cities!”

“Do you want to bet your people’s lives on that?” MacLean demanded.

“I’m just saying that until they at least threaten us we don’t have any evidence of what they’ll do. We can probably convince the majority of our people—even Stirling’s—to accept at least a temporary cease-fire, and that’ll buy us a little breathing space. Then, when MacCrimmon issues his demands, we already have a firebreak in place while we try and talk sense into the hard cases.”

“And what kind of ‘sense’ would that be?” MacFadzean demanded bitterly. MacPhee looked at her, and she pointed out the window at the smoke-laden air. “What do you think will happen to the leaders of this ‘treacherous’ rebellion if we surrender? Do you think somebody like MacQuarie or MacCrimmon would take her boot off the backs of our necks? After we’ve come this close, scared them this badly? Hell, no, they won’t! They’ll keep that boot right where it is until they get the pulser darts into the backs of our heads!”

“And if the alternative’s a kinetic bombardment?” MacLean shot back angrily. She shook her head. “No, Erin. Tammas has probably come up with the best of the bad options available to us.” She looked her second-in-command straight in the eye. “Pass the word. We’re standing down and holding in place until we know exactly what they’re going to demand.”

* * *

“Targeting queue uploaded and locked, Ma’am,” Lieutenant Commander Sharon Tanner told Captain Venelli. Her tone and expression made it clear what she thought of that targeting queue, Venelli thought. “Atmospheric penetrators deployed and ready. Prepared to execute on your command.”

“Thank you, Commander,” Venelli said, speaking to her tactical officer much more formally than usual.

She glanced at the com displays showing Captain Alec Sárközy of the Yenta MacIlvenna and Commanders Gwang and Myrvold of the Abatis and Lunette. None of them had been assigned any of the targets on Boyle’s list. Hoplite had more than enough launch capability to handle all of them, and Venelli refused to spread the guilt around if she could help it.

Their expressions told her all she needed to know about how they felt about their orders, and their eyes looked back at her grimly. She forced herself not to wilt under the anger in those eyes—anger she knew wasn’t directed at her—and drew a deep breath.

“Very well, Commander Tanner,” she said. “Execute.”

“Executing, aye,” Tanner replied harshly and punched a button.

Eighty-seven seconds later, nine regional administrative centers which had gone over to the LLP ceased to exist. As did eight smaller towns, seven staging areas, and four major ex-UPS district bases…along with just over 3.3 million citizens of the Republic of Loomis.

Chapter Thirty-Six

“So I’ll expect to see you and Mother for dinner Wednesday,” Sinead Aurora O’Daley Terekhov said into her minicomp. “If you’re late, I’ll feed your supper to Alvin and Theodora,” she continued in a stern voice. “You know how much German Shepherds like roast beef, and Theodora’s due to drop her litter sometime in the next week. She’s eating for eleven at the moment, and she’s getting ‘notional’ about her diet, too. Last night, she ate two of my shoes—from different pairs, of course! So don’t think I won’t fend off her crazed appetite with your beef Wellington if you don’t make it, Charley!”

She grinned, imagining her brother’s reaction to the voicemail when it arrived. At the moment, he was on Gryphon, which would have made any kind of real-time conversation impossible even if there’d been an FTL link between Manticore-A and Manticore-B. Still, she had plenty of time to transmit it to the regular morning Admiralty courier. Light-speed transmission time between the Manticore Binary System’s two components was almost eleven hours, whereas messages aboard the Admiralty couriers who jumped back and forth every four hours on a regular schedule—or more frequently, if an emergency message came up—made the transit in about half an hour. Use of the couriers was partly a security measure, since highly classified messages were routinely hand-carried, anyway. For routine traffic where time—or security—wasn’t a significant issue, laser transmission was cheaper, although the difference wasn’t as great as one might have thought, given the necessary infrastructure.

Another advantage the Admiralty couriers afforded Navy personnel and their families, however, was that space aboard them was available on a first-come first-served basis for physical packages, as well as electronic messages. Sinead had already taken advantage of that this morning.

Tomorrow was Captain (JG) Ginger Lewis’ birthday, and Aivars had told his wife about Ginger’s hobbies. For someone who’d spent her entire naval career in engineering, it probably made sense that Ginger was an inveterate model builder, but she also hand-fabricated and painted miniatures. Why she didn’t simply go ahead and print them out instead of individually sculpting them in wax, then preparing the molds, then casting them in old-fashioned resin obviously perplexed Aivars, but Sinead understood it perfectly. She loved her husband, she knew how much he loved her art, and he was one of her greatest boosters, but he simply didn’t understand how the artist’s creative process worked. Didn’t grasp the sheer, sensual satisfaction of being “hands-on” at every stage in the conception and production of a thing of beauty…or of sculpting the wax by hand instead of simply programming the printer. Sinead did, just as she understood the passion for creating hand-built art of any sort, and she’d spent the better part of a week—and pulled more than one string with an old family friend in BuShips—to come up with the old-fashioned model of HMS Wayfarer.

Officially, the Caravan-class Q-ships were still on the Official Secrets List, for reasons Sinead found difficult to understand. The armament and capabilities of the converted freighters had been leaked to the press shortly after Duchess Harrington’s return from Silesia, and detailed schematics of the pre-conversion Caravans had been available from open-source publications like Jayne’s for at least three T-decades. But, no! The Navy had, by God, classified the Q-ship design fourteen T-years ago, and it was staying classified!

Fortunately, there were ways, and Captain Fenris had agreed to release the necessary information for one of his own senior master chief petty officers to fabricate the pieces of a detailed model just over a meter and a half long. In white resin, so she could spend weeks getting the paint exactly right.

Even packed flat, the pieces—individually printed from the master builder’s draft—filled a carton two meters long, fifty centimeters wide, and seventy-five centimeters deep…and weighed almost thirty kilos. Putting it together—and painting it—would keep even Ginger Lewis occupied for weeks, and Sinead looked forward to her reaction to the gift.

The completed model would be too large to keep aboard ship, given normal space allotments, but Ginger’s newly-assigned quarters aboard HMSS Weyland, the major space station orbiting Gryphon, were considerably larger than those aboard most warships. She’d be close enough to home to have it stored dirtside if she needed to, for that matter. In fact, Sinead had already hit on the ideal way to “store” it when she was next deployed out-system. After Captain Fenris agreed to release the information Senior Master Chief Glendie needed, Sinead had approached Commodore Leschinsky, who current History Department Chairman at Saganami Island and suggested to him that it was past time the Caravans—and especially Wayfarer, the most famous of them all—were suitably represented in the Academy’s museum. And the fact that this model would have been built by one of Wayfarer’s surviving engineers (there’d been only twenty-one, and this was one who’d received the Osterman Cross for her performance in Wayfarer’s final engagement) would lend it even more historical significance.

There were advantages, she thought complacently, to growing up in a Navy family. And it was particularly satisfying to use some of those advantages for Ginger Lewis.

Sinead could see why Aivars had been so taken by Ginger. Some wives, she knew, would have been nervous about the relationship between their husbands and such an attractive young woman, but Sinead wasn’t. She saw why Ginger might remind Aivars so strongly of her—they had the same coloring, they were the same height, and both had the same slender but solid build. In fact, Ginger looked like exactly what Aivars had come to regard her as: Sinead Terekhov’s younger sister…or daughter.

Sinead’s mouth tightened for just a moment, eyes dark with memory, but then she inhaled deeply and shook her head, once. No, she understood what drew her husband not simply to Ginger Lewis but to other young women, as well, like Abigail Hearns, or Helen Zilwicki…or Ragnhild Pavletic, and there wasn’t anything remotely romantic or sexual about it.

I really should tell Ginger about Nast’ka the next time I see her, she thought now. And I should see her sometime soon. She’s too sturdy a personality to feel like she’s being slotted into someone else’s place, but there is some subtext here she should probably be aware of. Besides, she grinned suddenly, it’ll give me an excuse to pop over to Weyland!

Vice Admiral Claudio Faraday, who’d recently assumed command of the RMN’s primary R&D installation, was another O’Daley cousin she hadn’t seen in too long. If she hopped over to Manticore-B for a daytrip, she could probably inveigle an invitation to Weyland for lunch, and it would be only reasonable for her to see Ginger and young Paulo d’Arezzo while she was there. In fact, Claudio would almost certainly invite them to lunch, as well, since he undoubtedly knew they’d been with Aivars at Monica. And career-wise, it wouldn’t hurt Ginger or Paulo to be brought to their CO’s attention on a more personal basis.

Yes, that was an excellent notion, she thought with another, broader smile. And from what Aivars had let drop, she should be able to amuse herself gently teasing Paulo about Helen. Now, would Ginger help her do the teasing? Or, as a considerate superior officer, would she provide covering fire for Paulo?

Sinead snorted in amusement, then glanced at the time display on the shuttle’s forward bulkhead. They were well behind schedule, thanks to a twenty-minute ground delay, but the shuttle should be docking with Hephaestus in another twenty-five minutes or so. Technically, with Aivars’ promotion and redeployment to Talbott, there was no longer a direct connection between Sinead and the Hexapuma families. Ansten FitzGerald, however, was unmarried. Amal Nagchaudhuri, who’d become Hexapuma’s executive officer, was married, but Rebecca Nagchaudhuri was a professor of hyper physics who’d accepted a one-T-year guest lectureship at Clemson University on Old Terra shortly before Hexapuma deployed to Talbott. No one had expected the ship to return as soon as she had, and the opportunity to teach at what was widely regarded as the first or second best multi-spatial research school in the Solarian League wasn’t lightly come by. Her teaching commitment would end in another few months, at which time she and their two sons come home to Manticore. But until she did, neither of Hexapuma’s senior officers had a spouse handy to step into Sinead’s role. Lieutenant Commander Brenda Howell, who’d been assigned to Ginger’s old position as chief engineer, did, but Lewis Howell was only twenty-five. That was a tad young for the job, so Sinead had agreed to stay on until Rebecca got home.

Oh, sure, Sinead! What a sacrifice you’re making! You know damned well that you’re going to miss them all when Rebecca does turn up and evict you from your matriarch status!

Well, maybe she would, but she didn’t have to admit that to a living soul. And in the meantime, she’d be having lunch with Ansten, his officers, and at least thirty of Hexapuma’s dependents at Dempsey’s in another couple of hours. Where, she was reasonably certain, she’d discover just how disappointed those officers were that the Nasty Kitty had been denied the chance to serve under Aivars for the Battle of Spindle.

The catastrophic defeat Countess Gold Peak’s command had handed Sandra Crandall in Spindle—some of the newsies had taken to using the term “battle of annihilation,” which was probably fair enough, although more her ships had been captured than destroyed outright—was still reverberating through the Navy. God only knew what would happen on the Solly side of the fence once word got back to Old Terra. No wonder all the Nasty Kitties wished they’d been along!

She sat back in the comfortable seat, listening to the classical music offering, and gazed at the forward bulkhead display, which was centered on the slowly, steadily growing HMSS Hephaestus. Sinead Terekhov literally couldn’t have counted the number of times she’d been to that huge, sprawling hive of activity, but it never lost its fascination for her. When she’d been a girl, visiting her naval-officer father’s workplace, it had been far smaller than it had become as a result of King Roger’s buildup, but even then, daytrips to Hephaestus had been one of her favorite treats. The later, massive military construction requirements of the war against the People’s Republic of Haven had driven that growth even farther and harder, yet that only made it still more fascinating to an older and wiser Sinead who truly understood what it meant and represented.

Today, the station was no longer simply huge…it was stupendous. Its central spine was over a hundred and ten kilometers long, and branches and lobes reached out in every direction. The longest of the secondary arms was sixty kilometers in length, and it wouldn’t be the longest for long. The entire, enormous, perpetually expanding agglomeration of industrial modules, habitats, shipyards, hospitals, communications and banking offices, and freight terminals stretched out with the total lack of grace possible only in microgravity, yet Hephaestus had its own beauty. Flanks gleaming in Manticore-A’s reflected light were separated by chasms of total blackness where that sunlight couldn’t reach, and constellations of warning lights, navigation beacons, and docking stations blazed like their own galaxies along the space station’s skirts. It was hard to believe, looking at that child’s model on the bulkhead display, that there were two million human beings bustling about inside the station, and Sinead found herself wondering—again—how many of those two million ever stopped, stepped outside the lack of wonder of their familiar daily routines, to consider just how marvelous Hephaestus was.

Well, maybe they don’t, she thought. But gawking, awestruck visitors like me can always make up for them!

* * *

“What the fuck?!”

Jansen Mandrapilias, third officer of the liquid gas tanker Bernike, looked up sharply from the shipping manifest he’d been updating for their arrival at the Draco Seven orbital refinery. At the moment, Bernike was accelerating steadily away from Hephaestus, fourteen minutes and 691,000,000 kilometers out from the station on her regular bi-monthly round-trip to Draco, the central of the Manticore-A’s system’s three gas giants. Trundling back and forth between the refinery and Hephaestus’ enormous tank farm wasn’t the most exciting occupation in the world, but there was a certain solid satisfaction to the job.

Besides, Jansen had earned his watch-standing ticket just last December, barely two T-months ago, so it was all still brand, shiny new for him. Especially when the Skipper had seen fit to hand over to “Mister Mandrapilias” after clearing the Hephaestus departure perimeter. Zinaida Merkulov, who had the sensor watch, on the other hand, was at least two and a half times Mandrapilias’ age and made it a point of pride never to be surprised by anything. In fact, Jansen rather suspected the Skipper had left her unofficial instructions to keep an eye on the newbie, given that she was something of a legend in the Hauptman Cartel’s service who probably should have retired at least a T-decade or so ago. Unfortunately for those who felt she’d earned a vine-covered cottage somewhere, she routinely maxed the cartel-wide proficiency tests every year. In fact, she’d been seriously pissed this year when she came in third, instead of first.

She’d also been known to refer to one Jansen Mandrapilias as “Sonny” on certain off-duty occasions.

Under some circumstances, that could have led to a discipline problem, but not aboard Bernike, and not with Zinaida Merkulov, who was always professional on duty. Which made the totally unexpected outburst even more shocking than it might have been out of someone else.

“What?” Jansen demanded now, but she ignored him. She was punching numbers into her console at lightning speed, and then she whipped around to Cathal Viñas, the helmsman of the watch.

“Hard skew one-two-five, niner-seven-zero!” she barked. “Now!”

Jansen’s mouth dropped open, but Cathal had known Zinaida longer than Jansen Mandrapilias had been alive, and he recognized the hammered-battle steel urgency of her tone.

He snapped his joystick hard over, sending six million tons of tanker into a steeply climbing starboard turn. Warning hooters sounded as she departed radically from her filed course profile, and Jansen could already hear the reaming Management would give all of them when ATC levied the fines. If they docked his pay to cover it, he’d still be working it off when he was twice Zinaida’s age!