Shadow of Freedom-eARC (48 page)

“Yes, Milady.” He looked Khumalo in the eye. “My apologies Admiral.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Khumalo’s tone might have been just a little short, but he didn’t let irritation distract him. Instead, he turned back to Medusa.

“Milady, I very much doubt that you and Mr. O’Shaughnessy could have been any more surprised than I was when Ankenbrandt screened me and introduced himself with one of Admiral Gold Peak’s authenticator code words. And I
know
you couldn’t have been any more surprised than I was when he arrived aboard
Hercules
and handed over a secure Navy message chip from her. Having read her message—I’ve brought a copy of it along for you and Mr. O’Shaughnessy—and heard Ankenbrandt’s story, though, I think we’ve got a hexapuma by the tail in this one. And it’s not even really
our
hexapuma!”

“Assuming Ankenbrandt really is telling us the truth and not a plant who’s somehow found a way to fool even a treecat when he lies, I’m afraid it
is
our hexapuma, Admiral,” O’Shaughnessy said thoughtfully. He’d obviously gotten over his initial pique and reengaged his brain, Medusa noted. “This is incredibly clever on someone’s part. The potential consequences if dozens of planetary resistance movements get slaughtered when they believe—completely accurately, as far as they know—the Star Empire’s promised to support them…”

He shook his head, his expression grim, and Khumalo nodded.

“That’s approximately the analysis Admiral Gold Peak’s sent along.” The tall, heavily built admiral chuckled suddenly. “The analysis, I might add, which was initially proposed by Ensign Zilwicki.”

“No, really?” Medusa smiled. “The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?”

“I don’t believe she has any inclination to become a ‘spook,’ Madame Governor,” Khumalo said. “Doesn’t mean she doesn’t have the instincts, though. And personally, I’m pretty sure she’s onto something here. This has this Mesan Alignment’s fingerprints all over it.”

“Maximum return for minimum investment,” O’Shaughnessy agreed, nodding firmly. “And misdirection, and directed at at least three targets I can see already. God only knows how many
secondary
targets this thing is aimed at!”

“The question is how we respond to it,” Medusa pointed out. “I think you were right that this was something I had to hear first while wearing my Imperial Governor’s hat, Augustus, but I’m going to have to go ahead and brief Joachim and his cabinet on it. Among other things, if Ankenbrandt’s really a representative sample, the majority of messengers from any of these resistance movements are going to be heading right here to Spindle. The Quadrant’s government needs to know they’re coming.”

Khumalo nodded, and Medusa pursed her lips, thinking for several moments. Then—

“Should I assume Lady Gold Peak sent a recommendation along with her report?”

“She did, Madame Governor.”

“And you’re not going to tell me what it was unless I pull it out of you with a pair of pliers, right?”

“A simple order to come clean will do, Madame Governor,” Khumalo replied with a smile. “Still, I have to admit I’m curious to see whether your response parallels hers.”

“All right, I’ll give it to you.” Her own smile faded, and her eyes hardened. “I think we need to send back orders to treat any messenger from a genuine resistance movement—it was as smart of her as I would have expected to use a treecat to verify Ankenbrandt’s truthfulness—as if they really had been in contact with Manticore all along. I don’t see how we can afford not to. At the same time, though, we have to be cautious. We don’t know what kind of booby-traps the Alignment could have built into something like this. Don’t forget those invisible starship of theirs. A few of them tucked away to ambush our units responding to a resistance movement’s call for assistance could do a lot of damage.”

She cocked an eyebrow at Khumalo, and the burly admiral nodded.

“That’s almost exactly what Admiral Gold Peak recommended,” he said, and reached into his breast pocket. He extracted a chip folio and laid it on Medusa’s desk. “Here’s her actual report, including the treecat’s—Alfredo’s—assessment of Ankenbrandt’s truthfulness.”

“Thank you.” Medusa scooped up the folio. She looked at it for a moment, then tossed it to O’Shaughnessy.

“You take a run through it first, Gregor. Be thinking about it after you finish so we can exchange notes as soon as
I’m
through with it.”

“Yes, Milady.”

“Admiral Khumalo, unless Gregor and I come up with something that causes me to change my mind, we’ll be sending a dispatch to Lady Gold Peak before the end of the day confirming her own analysis and proposed course of action. At the same time, though, we obviously need to kick this further up the chain to Foreign Secretary Langtry, Prime Minister Grantville, and Her Majesty, as well. I’d like you, Captain Shoupe, and Commander Chandler to provide your own individual appreciations to accompany that report back to Landing.”

“Yes, Milady.”

“In that case, as Duchess Harrington would say,” she smiled, “let’s be about it.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“You know,” Michelle Henke said thoughtfully, “I’m beginning to wonder exactly what qualifications the Sollies look for in candidates for their naval academy. I mean there has to be a filtering process. You couldn’t just go out and pick middies at random and get such an invariably stupid crop of flag officers. There
has
to be some kind of system. If you just picked names out of a hat, for example,
somebody
would have to have a functional brain. Right?”

“You’d like to think so, anyway, Ma’am,” Gervais Archer replied. He’d been working quietly on his minicomp when the dispatches couriered to Tillerman from Spindle arrived. “May I ask what prompted the observation at this particular time, though?”

“Oh, you certainly may,” she said much more grimly, and entered a command. The dispatch she’d been viewing appeared on Gervais’ display, and his eyes widened slightly as he saw the security header. He started to ask her if she was sure about giving him access but quickly changed his mind. Countess Gold Peak didn’t make that sort of careless mistake. Besides, as her flag lieutenant, he needed access to all sorts of information that didn’t generally come the way of someone as junior as he was.

The message had come directly from the Lynx Terminus, relayed to the Tillerman System and addressed to Admiral Bennington for his information, since the Lynx CO hadn’t been aware the countess had moved to that system herself. The addressee list in the header showed the same message had been sent to Admiral Khumalo and Baroness Medusa in Spindle. It would have reached the Quadrant’s capital star system just over two weeks ago, but the decision to copy it to Bennington in Tillerman meant Tenth Fleet’s CO had gotten the information at least four or five days sooner than she would have if she’d had to wait for it to be relayed from Spindle. Now Gervais sat back, reading quickly, and his expression grew bleaker with every sentence. Then he came to the tabular data at the end.

“
Shit.
”

He blushed suddenly, that dark magenta shade only a true redhead could accomplish, and looked up.

“Sorry about that, Ma’am. But…but—”

“But shit,” she said, nodding. “I’ve heard the term before. Even used it on occasion, Gwen. And I can’t say I fault your word choice.”

“What was the lunatic
thinking?
” Gervais shook his head. “I don’t think even Crandall would’ve fired in a situation like that!”

“I’m not so sure there’s
anything
Crandall wouldn’t have done,” Michelle. “On the other hand, you may have a point. And apparently there’s been some speculation back in Manticore about just how he might have been ‘helped’ into doing it.”

“More of that mind control stuff, Ma’am?” Gervais’ tone mingled disgust, apprehension, and doubt, and Michelle shrugged.

“I didn’t know, Gwen. Nobody knows what the damn stuff is or exactly how it works, and we’re way behind the curve out here, thanks to how slowly information from home gets to us. According to the most recent speculation Duchess Harrington’s shared with me, it’s not really
mind
control, though, and I have to wonder whether or not it would be capable of arranging something like this.”

Michelle sat silent for a handful of seconds, eyes narrowed and lips pursed while she considered the possibilities. Then her eyes refocused and she shrugged again.

“I’m afraid the most important point isn’t
why
he did it but
that
he did it,” she pointed out. “The cat, as my mother was always fond of saying when someone screwed up, is definitely amongst the pigeons now. Pile this on top of what happened to Crandall, and everybody’s on the back of the hexapuma. So if we don’t want to end up inside—or to lose a few fingers and toes to it, at least—I think it’s time we do something a bit more proactive than just waiting around for the next Solly fleet to sail obligingly into disaster.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Gervais nodded in understanding. “Do you want me to set up an electronic conference, or would you prefer to have them over for supper tonight?”

“A rule I learned from Duchess Harrington a long time ago, Gwen,” Michelle said with a smile. “Two rules, actually. Never discuss electronically what you have time to discuss in person, and nothing builds a sense of teamwork and mutual trust like talking things over across a meal. You might want to write that down for your own later career.”

“Yes, Ma’am. I will,” Gervais replied. “So who do you want invited?”

“Better make it all the task group and squadron commanders,” she said after a moment. “Talk to Chris, though. If there’s room in my dining cabin to fit in the divisional commanders, as well, that might not be a bad idea. And see to it that Commander Adenauer and Captain Armstrong are on the guest list. For that matter, let’s get Commander Larson into the mix, too.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Gervais nodded. “I’ll get right on it.”

* * *

Chris Billingsley had done his usual efficient job of arranging the dining cabin. They’d been able to fit in more people than Michelle would have thought possible, and all of her divisional commanders were present, after all. It made for a large crowd, and she doubted they were going to accomplish a great deal of detailed planning and organization for what she had in mind, but that wasn’t really why she’d called these people together. She and her staff had already completed most of that.

She waited until the excellent supper had been completed, the deserts had been consumed, the dishes had been cleared away, and her subordinates sat back with their beverages of choice. Then she tapped her crystal brandy snifter lightly with a fork. It chimed musically, and she cleared her throat as heads turned towards her all along the linen-covered horseshoe of the supper tables.

“I trust all of you enjoyed the meal?” she asked with a smile, and a rumble of approval came back. “Good.” Her smile grew broader. “I wouldn’t want Master Steward Billingsley to get a swelled head or anything, but he does set a nice table, doesn’t he?”

This time the rumble was one of laughter, broken here and there by a few fervent declarations of agreement. She let it subside, then sat back in her chair and surveyed the officers of her fleet.

She’d arrived at Tillerman only ten T-days ago, and she could have wished for a little longer to exercise with her complete order of battle—minus, of course, what she’d sent off to Mobius and what she’d left in Montana. Admiral Bennington had obviously kept his people on their toes, however, and the units she’d brought with her from Montana had slotted smoothly back into place with them.

No admiral’s ever really satisfied with how much time she’s had to work up her command, Mike
, she told herself.
Or at least, no admiral worth her
beret
is ever satisfied, because you can always tweak things somewhere. But they’re good. They’re really good, and there’ll be time enroute for more exercises. If you screw up, it won’t be because of them
.

“I’m sure you’ve all had time to at least skim the dispatches we’ve received from Spindle,” she continued, her expression and voice both considerably grimmer than they had been. “And I’m also sure that, like me, you find it difficult to believe even a Solly flag officer could have been stupid enough to pull the trigger when Duchess Harrington had the deck so totally stacked against him. Nonetheless, he did, and that leaves me with some decisions to make.”

She paused, and the dining cabin was silent, every set of eyes fixed upon her. Somehow the stars on her collar seemed heavier than they had when she sat down.

“The Solarian League has now deliberately violated the territory of the Star Empire of Manticore twice. Both of those violations were clearly preplanned acts of military aggression in what the perpetrators believed would be overwhelming force. In both cases, the senior Solarian officer was offered multiple opportunities to rethink his or her actions and back off. In both cases, the officer in question chose not to do so. The Star Empire’s sought a diplomatic resolution to this confrontation—which, I remind all of us, began when a Solarian admiral destroyed a Manticoran destroyer division in time of peace and without warning—from the beginning. The Solarian League has declined to meet our efforts even halfway.

“I realize there’s considerable evidence to support the idea that the League is being manipulated by this Mesan Alignment. In fact, I believe that to be true. But however it’s happened, we’ve been placed on a collision course with the Solarian League and it shows absolutely no sign of being willing to turn aside. Moreover, Mesa couldn’t manipulate the League into such actions if the League weren’t already primed for them and corrupt enough to find them a comfortable fit.”

She paused once again, briefly, letting eyes like brown flint sweep the assembled faces.

“What we face is a war against the largest, most populous, most powerful star nation in history. Not a confrontation, not a conflict, not a crisis. Not any longer. A
war
. And wars, as we’ve discovered against the People’s Republic of Haven, aren’t won by standing on the defensive. At the moment, we enjoy a crushing combat advantage. How long that advantage will last is impossible to estimate, and it seems evident to me that it’s our duty to our Empire and our Empress to use that advantage as decisively as possible and as quickly as possible. And it’s also this fleet’s specific responsibility to safeguard the star systems and citizens of the Talbott Quadrant. The best way to do both of those things, in my opinion, is to take the war to the Sollies. We didn’t start it; they did, and now they can deal with the consequences of their own actions.”