Every Loomisian in the underground room was looking at him now, eyes bright with the light of drowning men and women who’d suddenly seen a rope thrown in their direction.
“All you have to do is hold on,” Osborne told them. “Just hold on for another couple of T-weeks, three at the outside, and then I guarantee it’ll be the people on the other side’s turn to worry!”
Chapter Thirty-One
“I’d really like a little more time to think about things before Admiral Gold Peak sends Lieutenant Commander Denton on to Manticore,” Gregor O’Shaughnessy said from Baroness Medusa’s com display.
“Forgive me, Gregor,” she said dryly, “but unless I’m very much mistaken, you’ve just had better than a T-month to ‘think about things,’ haven’t you?”
“Well, yes. I suppose what I should’ve said is I’d like a little more time for you to consider my report and the two of us—and Prime Minister Alquezar’s Cabinet, of course—to kick it around before Reprise heads for Landing.”
“Somebody back on the Old Terra said ‘Ask me for anything except time,’” Medusa replied. “And it’s not as if Reprise is the only courier available to us. I understand exactly why Lady Gold Peak wants her on her way yesterday. We’re lucky as hell Denton spotted all those superdreadnoughts—and that the two of you were smart enough to pull out as soon as he did rather than trying to deliver my note to Commissioner Verrocchio anyway—and she’s not about to waste any of that luck. The Admiralty needs that information absolutely as soon as possible, and I’m pretty sure they’d really, really like to have Commander Denton and his people there for the most exhaustive debriefing they can arrange. Let’s just worry about getting that into the pipeline first. We’ll take our time to make sure we’ve considered all the political implications and then get our own messenger off.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” O’Shaughnessy said. “I’d just like our thoughts about those political aspects to get there at the same time as the military data. It’s not that—”
“It’s an imperfect galaxy, Gregor,” Medusa interrupted. “We’ll just have to do the best we can. And I suppose I should probably point out that it’s up to Admiral Gold Peak to determine when a warship under her command departs for Manticore. She might get just a little cranky if I tried to order her to hold Reprise while I got my own thinking in order. Especially since she’s quite well aware that I have four perfectly serviceable dispatch boats in orbit around Spindle. For that matter, I suspect I could probably hire another one if I really needed to.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Understood.”
“Good. But having said all of that, I want you here in my office fifteen minutes after Reprise reaches Spindle, understood?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Then I’ll see you then. Clear.”
Medusa cut the connection, then tipped back in her chair and looked across her desk.
“There are times,” she said mildly, “when I understand why you military types aren’t unreservedly fond of Gregor, Augustus.”
Augustus Khumalo smiled and shook his head. He’d taken a pinnace down from HMS Hercules, his superdreadnought flagship, for the regular mid-week conference with Baroness Morncreek and Joachim Alquezar later that afternoon. Because he’d already been at Medusa’s official residence when Michelle Henke’s first message to the imperial governor arrived, he’d actually beaten O’Shaughnessy’s com transmission to her.
“It’s not that we’re not ‘fond’ of Mr. O’Shaughnessy,” he said now. “We’re very fond of him, actually. Sort of the way you’re fond of a cousin you know is really, really smart…and still want to strangle from time to time.”
“You can’t imagine how that relieves my mind.” Medusa’s tone was desert dry, but then she gave herself a shake and let her chair come back upright.
“Still, he does have a point. The political implications are going to be about as hairy as anything I could imagine. I know he doesn’t trust you Neanderthal military types’ judgment in all things, and I think it’s silly of him to worry that an ‘unbridled’ military report may prejudice thinking in the Foreign Office and the Cabinet. But deciding exactly what us political authorities should be advising will be a handful. And I really would like our analysis and recommendations to reach Manticore before the Admiralty starts issuing movement orders.”
“Understood.”
Khumalo nodded. Despite the uniform he wore, his responsibilities and decisions carried an unavoidably political aspect. In effect, he was not simply the military commander on Talbott Station, but also the First Lord of Admiralty in Alquezar’s local Cabinet.
“I can’t argue with that,” he continued, “and one thing we can be pretty sure of is that Earl White Haven and Admiral Caparelli aren’t going to let any grass grow under their feet when they start considering new deployment orders. Like you just told Gregor, we’re incredibly lucky Denton—and Gregor—made the smart choice and headed straight back here. The question is how close behind them Crandall might be. Assuming, of course,” he added, his tone even drier than Medusa’s had been a moment earlier, “that this is Admiral Crandall and that she is headed our way.”
“Assuming that,” Medusa agreed, and rolled her eyes.
Michelle Henke had brought a treasure trove of information home from New Tuscany, including the entire classified database of every battlecruiser in the late, unlamented Admiral Byng’s task force. A complete copy of that data had already been forwarded to Manticore, where ONI would indulge in a gleeful orgy of analysis, so Reprise’s report that she’d detected seventy-odd ships of the wall in the Myers System wasn’t going to come at the Admiralty quite as cold as it might have. But while Byng’s files had contained the information that Battle Fleet was conducting some sort of training exercise clear out here in the Verge, those ships were supposed to be in the McIntosh System, not Meyers. There might be all sorts of innocent reasons for them to have changed their station, but according to the testimony of members of the New Tuscan cabinet (who’d fallen all over themselves cooperating with Admiral Gold Peak), the mysterious Aldona Anisimovna had informed them of Crandall’s presence as part of seducing them into serving as Manpower’s cat’s-paw. That implied all sorts of ugly possibilities, given Manpower’s earlier effort to prevent Talbott’s entry into the Star Empire.
And it also implies that this Admiral Crandall’s just as likely to do something spectacularly stupid as Byng was, the governor reflected grimly. It’d be a mistake—as I’m sure Gregor would point out—to automatically assume she’s stupid enough to attack us, but that’s where the smart money would go. And we’ll get hurt a hell of a lot less if we assume that’s what she’ll do and she doesn’t than if we assume she won’t…and she does.
“I’m sure Admiral Gold Peak and her people are discussing that very point as we sit here,” she said. “In the meantime, I think we’d better ask Joachim to get hold of Henri Krietzmann. Under the circumstances, it couldn’t hurt to have the Quadrant’s minister of war present for our regular weekly get-together, now could it?”
* * *
“Colonel Weng is here, Brigadier.”
Brigadier Noritoshi Väinöla, CO of Solarian Gendarmerie Intelligence Command, grimaced and checked the time display in the corner of the report he’d been reading. One thing about Weng Zhing-hwan, he thought; she was punctual as hell.
Well, that and she was actually willing to think, which was unfortunately rare in the upper reaches of the Solarian League’s intelligence services.
“Send her in,” he told his secretary, closing the report on his memo board.
His office door opened a moment later and Lieutenant Colonel Weng stepped through it.
“Zhing-hwan,” he said, nodding in greeting, and she nodded back.
“Good afternoon, Sir,” she replied, and one of Väinöla’s eyebrows rose at her unusually formal tone. Her memo requesting this meeting had sounded routine, but there was nothing “routine” about her expression. Or her body language, fo
r that matter.
“You said you had something we needed to discuss.” He rose and headed across to the comfortable armchairs arranged around the coffee table in the corner of his office nearest the window that looked out across Lake Michigan. A carafe of coffee and another one of hot tea for the lieutenant colonel were waiting on the table. He poured himself a cup, settled into one of those armchairs, and pointed at another one. “Should I assume whatever it is might be just a tiny bit more important than your memo seemed to imply?”
“Yes, Sir,” Weng said. “I’m afraid it is. Or that it may be, anyway.”
She sat, but she didn’t pour herself tea, even though it was her favorite blend. Väinöla’s platinum hair was even fairer than Weng’s, but he was twenty centimeters taller than she, and his dark brown eyes had a pronounced epicanthic fold. Now those eyes narrowed at her unusual abstention. It was the only really overt sign of anxiety she showed, and he took a slow, deliberate sip of coffee while he reflected upon how unlike her it was to show any at all.
“And why might that be, Colonel?” he asked, lowering his cup.
“Because I think Rajmund Nyhus is deliberately feeding Frontier Security bad information,” she replied bluntly.
“Now that,” Väinöla said softly after a ten-second pause, “is an interesting…assessment. And it brings to mind two questions. First, why do you think that? And, second, why are you telling me about it?” He paused again, cocking his head. “Now that I think about it, there’s a third one, isn’t there? Why is he doing it? Assuming he is, of course.” He smiled thinly. “You can answer them in order.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Weng drew a deep breath. She opened her own memo board, but she didn’t look down at it, and her blue eyes met his levelly.
“I try to stay at least broadly informed about what’s going on in the other intel shops,” she began.
“That would be a reference to your semiregular tête-à-têtes with Lupe Blanton?” Väinöla asked pleasantly. “The ones in which you share privileged internal information from the Gendarmerie with a minion of Frontier Security?”
“Well, yes, Sir.” Lieutenant Colonel Weng shrugged ever so slightly. “You and I have discussed the way intelligence data bottlenecks often enough, and I’ve known Lupe for a long time. She’s always respected the confidentiality of anything I gave her…just as I’ve done with her.”
“And she’s also one of the few people in Ukhtomskoy’s shop with a working brain.” Väinöla sipped more coffee. “I can’t say I’m wildly enthusiastic at the notion that anyone on that side of the aisle’s getting a look inside our intel gathering process. At the same time, I’m familiar with the need for workarounds to fill in holes in our own information, and Blanton’s one of the good ones, even if she did end up in OFS. So what can you tell me—without violating the confidentiality of anything she told you, of course—about Nyhus cooking his reports to Ukhtomskoy?”
“Actually, Lupe knows I’m bringing this to your attention, although her suspicions about what Nyhus is doing depend on information I shared with her, rather than the other way around. Do you remember a memo from Braxton Reizinger I copied to you back in June?”
Väinöla frowned, searching his mental files, then shook his head.
“Sorry, no.”
“It’s not like you don’t have enough other reports to read, Sir, and we didn’t really have anything concrete, anyway. But one of his analysts—Master Sergeant Roskilly—bird-dogged some interesting reports to him, and he forwarded them to me. Reports about levels of unrest out in the Verge.”
“Roskilly!” Väinöla snapped his fingers. “I do remember her, although she was only Staff Sergeant Roskilly when I had the Verge Desk. And I think I remember your memo, too, now. Something about deliberate provocations and outside support?”
“Yes, Sir.” Weng nodded. “I asked Reizinger to keep Roskilly on it and to keep me informed, and I’ve been coming steadily to the conclusion that she’s absolutely right. Somebody definitely is stirring the pot in at least a dozen star systems, and Roskilly’s right when she points out that, given the distances involved, it has to be the result of an interstellar effort. The problem is that Nyhus seems to’ve picked up on the same thing—which, to be perfectly honest, struck me as unusually competent for him—but he’s drawing radically different conclusions. Or that’s what he’s telling Ukhtomskoy, anyway.”
“What kind of radically different?”
“If you remember Roskilly, you know how good she is,” Weng said just a bit obliquely, “and she’s been working this hard. Despite which, she hasn’t been able to nail down who might be responsible for it. None of our sources have been able to shed any light on that, which hasn’t kept some of them from speculating, of course.” Her lips twitched. “And a lot of the speculation, not too surprisingly, perhaps, given what happened in Monica, has focused on the Manties.”
“I’m not surprised.” Väinöla snorted. “By this point, certain people are seeing Manties under every bed in the galaxy!”
Weng nodded. She knew her boss shared her own conclusions about just who’d done what to whom in the Talbott Sector.
“Roskilly’s problem is that no matter how far down she drills, there’s no reliable information on who’s poking up the fire, whatever certain people may be suggesting. None.”
“And this is significant because—?” Väinöla raised both eyebrows.
“Because according to what Lupe tells me, Nyhus is telling Ukhtomskoy he has ‘solid evidence’ from ‘confidential sources’ that the Manties are behind it. Now, I suppose it’s always possible Frontier Security has better ‘confidential sources’ in the Verge than we do, but if that’s the case, it’ll be the first time it’s ever been true!”
Väinöla chuckled harshly. There wasn’t a lot of amusement in the sound.
“You’re suggesting he’s fabricating that evidence and hanging it on ‘confidential sources’ to keep anyone from catching him at it,” he said.
“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting, Sir. And what worries me quite a bit is that I can’t answer that third question you posed. I know he’s in bed with dozens of transstellars, including Manpower, so on the surface, there’re plenty of people he might be shilling for. Given Frontier Security’s—well, Verrocchio’s, anyway—involvement in that business in Talbott, I’m inclined to focus on Manpower and Kalokainos as his most probable…patrons. I might’ve added Technodyne to that, if Technodyne didn’t already have enough trouble coming down on it. But if this is happening on the scale it looks like it is, it’s way too widely spread to be any transstellar, or even any consortium of transstellars, I can think of.”
“But if it’s not somebody like Manpower or Kalokainos, then doesn’t Manticore become the logical prime suspect?”
“In some ways, yes,” Weng conceded. “But there’s no evidence of that. That’s what I keep coming back to. Nyhus isn’t just suggesting the possibility, or even the probability, that it could be the Manties. He’s telling Ukhtomskoy his sources say it is the Manties.”
“And if he’s telling Ukhtomskoy that, then Adão doesn’t have much choice but to kick it up to MacArtney,” Väinöla said slowly.
“Exactly. Sir, can I ask if you’ve heard anything about this coming back down the chain?”
“You can ask, and the answer is that I haven’t. Which, I presume, answers my second question. The one about the reason you’re bringing it to my attention.”
“Yes, Sir. I don’t know what’s happening here, but Lupe and I both think there’s a hell of a lot more going on under the surface than we know about. I don’t want you—us—getting blindsided by it. And if you’ll pardon my saying so, if Ukhtomskoy really has passed this up to Permanent Undersecretary MacArtney, you should have heard something coming back down-chain.”
“Yes, I should have.” Väinöla’s tone was grim. “If nothing else, they should be asking for a crosscheck from us, shouldn’t they?”
“Yes, Si
r, they should.”
Weng’s eyes were somber, and Väinöla grimaced. He could think of several reasons that might not have happened, but none of them were good. And he knew exactly what the lieutenant colonel carefully wasn’t saying.
In his considered opinion, his immediate superior, General Toinette Mabley, the Gendarmerie’s commanding officer, hadn’t been the best choice for her job…and not just because one Noritoshi Väinöla could have been promoted into it, instead. Mabley wasn’t the smartest person he’d ever met, and he knew she’d been a compromise choice resulting from intense negotiations between Nathan MacArtney, Omosupe Quartermain, and Taketomo Kunimichi. Interior, Commerce, and Defense all had legitimate interests in the Office of Frontier Security, but those interests often conflicted, and none of them had been willing to sign off on someone who would favor one of the other department’s interests over their own. For that matter, none of them had been willing to accept a nominee who’d make waves for his or her department. And so, rather than competence which might prove…unruly, they’d chosen mediocrity. Mabley liked things just the way they were, and she would dutifully follow any order—or even any pointed suggestion—one of her political masters threw her way.
So the question, he thought bleakly, is whether MacArtney’s just quietly kept any reports from Ukhtomskoy to himself, or whether he’s told Mabley to sit on anything that might challenge those reports? Or, for that matter, if Mabley’s decided all on her own not to share Nyhus’ suspicions with those of us who might have been expected to confirm—or deny—them?
And what do I do now that Zhing-hwan’s brought this sack of snakes to my attention? I can’t go to Mabley and tell her an OFS intelligence section CO’s deliberately falsifying information for his superiors. First, because there’s no proof he is; second, because that could spark exactly the kind of turf war somebody like Mabley really, really hates; and third, because for all I know, MacArtney—or any of the other Mandarins, for that matter—could just as easily be in the pocket of whoever’s doing this.