A Rising Thunder-ARC (48 page)

“I don’t know how much faith I’d care to invest in that particular theory, but it’s not as completely insane as I thought it was going to be before you explained,” Quartermain said. “On the other hand,” her eyes narrowed once more, “that still doesn’t explain why you specifically wanted to see me and none of the others.”

“It wasn’t because I wanted to see you and
none
of the others,” Kolokoltsov corrected. “I wanted to see you without seeing
all
of the others. In particular, without seeing Nathan and Rajani. I figure there’s actually a pretty good chance the two of us can stay below their radar horizon, but if I’d started adding others…”

He let his voice trail off, and she nodded. She’d thought that might be it. For that matter, she’d made a mental bet with herself about the topic he wanted to discuss.

“All right,” she said. “We’re here; they aren’t. What is it you want to talk about?”

“This damned Manty blockade,” he said frankly. “One reason I didn’t want Nathan or Rajani here was because the last thing we need right now is more posturing. But having said that, I have to admit the Manties have moved faster and a lot harder than I thought they were going to. Closing their own termini is bad enough; if these reports that they’re closing down other people’s termini are true, they’ve escalated it further than I really expected they were going to.”

Quartermain started to say something sharp and pungent, but she didn’t. At least he was admitting he’d made a mistake. Besides, it wasn’t as if kicking him the way he deserved was going to do any good at this point.

“And?” she said instead.

“And I need to know where we stand as of what we know right now. And where you think it’s going to go in the next few months. Even in a best-case scenario, our economy’s going to get hammered—assuming Filareta hasn’t already solved all our problems, of course. I know that. But I need to know what you and Agatá are planning to do to mitigate the damage. I’m not expecting any kind of miracles,” he added hastily as her blue eyes began to harden once more, “and that’s not why I’m asking. I’m asking because I need to know how to go about positioning us to implement the best patch-up job the two of you can do. I know you and Agatá are working closely together, so I figure talking to you is pretty much the same as talking to both of you, without the problem of talking to Nathan and Rajani at the same time.”

“You’re going to have to talk to them sooner or later,” she cautioned in a slightly mollified tone. “The economic implications for any kind of sustained war effort are going to be painful—
incredibly
painful, to be honest—in the long run. We’re going to find ourselves needing the protectorate service fees worse than ever, even in the best case I can imagine, and that’s going to be Nathan’s and Frontier Fleet’s bailiwick.”

“I’ve already figured that out, and when I have to bring them in, I will. But before I do that, I want the best briefing I can get. I want to speak to them from a position of strength, and that means knowing what the hell I’m talking about and knowing you, Agatá, and I are all on the same page. Fair?”

“Fair enough,” she conceded, and settled back in her chair.

“First,” she began, “as Agatá and I have already pointed out, the effect on our interstellar commerce is going to—

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Are you sure about this, Commodore?”

The man on Commodore Sean Magellan’s display wore the gray and black uniform of Agueda Astro Control and a profoundly worried expression. Magellan didn’t blame him; he was more than a little unhappy about his assignment himself.

But unhappy wasn’t the same thing as hesitant, and he felt the eagerness simmering in his blood as the moment approached.

“Yes, Captain Forstchen,” the commodore replied far more calmly than he felt. “I’m quite sure.”

Captain Lewis Forstchen’s gray-blue eyes looked even more worried at Magellan’s response. He clearly didn’t like where this was going, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it.

“My government’s not going to like this,” he pointed out.

“I’m afraid there’s a lot of that going around these days, Captain,” Magellan said. “And the good news is that we don’t really need your help for this transit. So you can just sit back and watch, and your own sensor records will prove that’s all you did.”

Forstchen started to say something else, but he stopped himself in time. As Magellan had just pointed out, electronic records of his and the Agueda System in general’s innocence might come in very handy in the not-too-distant future. Personally, Magellan expected that “not too distant” day to be considerably
more
distant than Forstchen apparently did.

On the other hand, it could turn out Forstchen had a point.

“For the record, Captain,” he said, “your objection and your government’s protests are formally noted. And on behalf of
my
government, I extend the sincere regrets of the Star Empire of Manticore for the potentially invidious position in which the Agueda System’s been placed. Unfortunately, the current…unpleasantness between the Star Empire and the Solarian League leaves us little choice. I regret that, but I’m afraid I’ll have to be moving on now.” He inclined his head courteously at the com. “Magellan, clear.”

The display blanked, and he turned to the compact, squarely built captain on the far smaller display linking him to HMS
Otter
’s command deck.

“Are we ready, Art?” he asked.

“Just about, Sir,” Captain Arthur Talmadge replied. “Mind you, I’d really have preferred not to dispense with Astro Control’s services quite so cavalierly.” He smiled. “I know our charts were updated just before we left, but I find myself longing for a local guide.”

“And if we could’ve found a local guide for this terminus anywhere in the home system, he’d be right there on the bridge with you,” Magellan pointed out with a half-smile of his own. “Since we couldn’t, he isn’t. So let’s not spend our time dwelling on things we wish we had and don’t.”

“Point taken, Sir,” Talmadge agreed, and the glanced at his own executive officer. “Ready, Colleen?”

“Yes, Sir.” Commander Colleen Salvatore nodded.

“David?” Magellan asked, looking at Commander David Wilson, his own chief of staff.

“Yes, Sir. Jordan just receipted
Malcolm Taylor
’s and
Selkie
’s readiness readiness signals.”

“Thank you.” Magellan looked back at Talmadge. “The Squadron’s ready to proceed when you are, Captain Talmadge,” he said in a much more formal tone.

“Very good, Sir,” Talmadge responded with matching formality.

“In that case, let’s move them out.”

“Aye, aye, Sir.” Talmadge turned his command chair to face Senior Chief Cindy Powell. “Helm, take us in.”

“Aye, aye, Sir.”

Otter
ghosted forward at a bare twenty gravities, moving into the invisible flaw of the Agueda Terminus. Under normal circumstances, she would have been aligned for transit and cleared by Agueda Astro Control, which would have monitored her approach vector, double and triple checking her entry into the terminus. Under the circumstances which currently obtained, she and the rest of the Thirty First Cruiser Squadron were on their own, dependent on their own charts of the terminus and its tidal stresses. The good news was that they’d been provided with the very latest charts for the terminus before they ever set out; the bad news was that none of the squadron’s ships had ever transited this particular terminus before. And the potentially
really
bad news was that they had absolutely no idea what they’d be sailing into on the far side.

Oh, stop that!
Magellan told himself irritably.
You
do
know what’s on the far side…more or less, anyway. And it’s not like you’re about to poke your nose into the Junction Forts, now is it?

No, it wasn’t. On the other hand, if Lacoön Two was going according to plan and no one else had managed to jump the gun, he was about to become the first naval commander in history to seize a Solarian wormhole terminus by force.

And isn’t
that
going to make the Sollies happy?
he thought dryly.

Magellan’s slightly understrength squadron of
Saganami-C
-class cruisers was a long way from home: four hundred and forty-five light-years from the Manticore Binary System through hyperspace, and three hundred and twenty-seven from Beowulf. Of course, he hadn’t had to make the trip the long way. Instead, he’d moved transited from the Manticoran Junction to Beowulf, then crossed sixty-three light-years from Beowulf to the Roulette System, then transited the Roulette-Limbo hyper bridge and crossed another forty-nine light-years of hyperspace from Limbo to Agueda.

Spreading sunshine and light the entire way
, he reflected.
Amazing how unpopular we are
.

Amazing, perhaps, but scarcely surprising. Roulette, Limbo, and Agueda were all independent (or at least nominally so) star systems. Actually, Limbo was an OFS client state, with a particularly unpleasant fellow sitting in the system’s executive mansion. President for Life Ronald Stroheim had been
most
unhappy to see a Royal Manticoran Navy task group suddenly appear through the wormhole terminus which he regarded as his personal cash cow. As a good, loyal OFS henchman, he got to keep somewhere around three percent of the terminus’ total revenues for himself, which made him an incredibly wealthy man. Apparently he hadn’t heard that the Star Empire had decided to start collecting termini, however, and CruRon 31’s unannounced arrival had come as a distinct shock. He seemed to feel very ill used that his neighbors in Roulette hadn’t warned him his guests were en route.

In fairness, the Roulette System’s government hadn’t been enthralled by the Manticorans’ arrival in
its
system, either. Although Roulette normally enjoyed cordial relations with both Beowulf and the Star Empire, it had been deliberately distancing itself from Manticore ever since news of the New Tuscany Incident hit the Solarian ’faxes. Given that Roulette was little more than a hundred light-years from the Sol System itself, it was difficult to blame President Matsuo or the rest of his government for not wanting to irritate the League. Unfortunately for them however, the Roulette Terminus was on Lacoön Two’s list, and Magellan had swooped in across the alpha wall and secured control of the terminus before anyone could make transit through it to alert Limbo of what was coming.

He’d detached one of his escorting destroyer squadrons and the CLAC
Ozymandias
to sit on the Roulette Terminus, then headed through to Limbo, where his ships’ emergence from the terminus associated with that star system had taken the locals completely by surprise. Unlike the Manticoran Junction, the Limbo Terminus was unfortified, and the “Limbo
 
Space Navy” consisted of two elderly destroyers—only one of which seemed to be actively in commission at the moment—and eight LACs which had to be at least fifty T-years old. Despite their no doubt undying loyalty to President for Life Stroheim, the commanding officers of those antiquated deathtraps had declined to match broadsides with seven
Saganami-C
-class heavy cruisers.

Magellan couldn’t imagine why.

He’d detached his second destroyer squadron and the CLAC
Midas
to cover the Limbo Terminus, and then moved briskly on to Agueda.

Agueda had been just as surprised as Limbo, and not much happier to see him, although he suspected that quite a bit of President Loretta Twain’s fiery denunciation of Manticore’s “high-handed and flagrant disregard for the rights and sovereignty of independent star nations” had been more for the official record than from the heart. Unlike Roulette, Agueda was almost three hundred and fifty light years from Sol, and the citizens of Agueda didn’t much care for the repressive government of Limbo and its…affiliation with the Office of Frontier Security. Still, there were appearances to be observed, and Magellan had rigorously respected the Agueda System’s twelve-light-minute territorial limit and restricted his activities to the terminus itself. He’d been scrupulously polite, as well, and assured Captain Forstchen and President Twain that he had no intention of forcibly seizing control of Agueda Astro Control’s platforms.

Of course, he also had absolutely no intention of allowing a single Solarian-registry ship to pass
through
the Agueda Terminus, either, but that was quite another matter.

One nice thing about moving along the hyper bridges
, he thought.
Unless you call ahead, no one knows you’re coming until you arrive
. He smiled thinly.
Pity about that
.

“Stand by to reconfigure to Warshawski sail on my command, Rung-wan,” Talmadge said.

“Aye, Sir,” Lieutenant Commander Hwo Rung-wan,
Otter
’s engineering officer replied. “Standing by to reconfigure.”

Talmadge nodded, watching the maneuvering plot as Senior Chief Powell gently, gently aligned
Otter
for transit. The ship’s icon flashed green as Powell put her flawlessly into position.

“Rig foresail for transit,” he said.

“Aye, aye, Sir. Rigging foresail—now.”

Otter
’s wedge fell abruptly to half-strength as her foreword alpha nodes reconfigured to produce the circular disk of a Warshawski sail instead of contributing to her n-space drive. The sail was over six hundred kilometers in diameter, and completely useless in normal-space, but the forward end of HMS
Otter
was edging steadily
out
of n-space.

“Stand by to rig aftersail,” Talmadge said as his ship continued to creep forward under the power of her after impellers alone. A readout flickered to life in the corner of the maneuvering plot, and he watched its numerals climb steadily upward as the foresail moved deeper and deeper into the terminus. Compared to the Manticoran Wormhole Junction, the Agueda Terminus was little more than a ripple in space, but that was still orders of magnitude more powerful than anything a ship’s impeller nodes could have produced. If their charts were as accurate as everyone thought they were, he had almost twenty seconds either way as a safety margin, but if they
weren’t
, and if
Otter
strayed out of the safe window before she got her aftersail rigged, they’d never even realize they were dead.