“Admiral,” she responded, and smiled at him, then turned to her escort from the boat bay and shook her hand, as well. “Thank you for taking such good care of me, Ms. Pittman,” she said, and the young woman smiled, then faced the admiral and braced to attention. He nodded dismissal, and she disappeared back out the door as Sinead turned back to Khumalo.
“Aivars didn’t have very long at home before they deployed him back out here, but he told me how much he respected—and appreciated—your response to his discoveries about Monica,” she said. “And I’ve viewed all the reports on the news channels. So, before we say anything else, let me tell you how very grateful I am for your decision to support him.” She shook her head. “I come from Navy families on both sides, you know. So I understand exactly what sort of risks you took when you did that.”
“Oh, well,” the tall, powerfully built admiral seemed a bit nonplussed, and he patted her hand once before he released it, took her elbow, and guided her to the old-fashioned, unpowered but sinfully comfortable couch in the corner of the large compartment.
“There really wasn’t any option,” he said as he seated her, then sank into the facing armchair. “I mean, his logic was compelling, he’d shown an enormous amount of moral courage in acting upon his conclusions, and if he was right—and I believed he was—then it was essential to take swift, decisive action.” He smiled crookedly. “The truth is, he’d already taken the decisive action, and it was undoubtedly easier to support him after the fact than it would have been to make the same decision in his place.”
“Even if that’s true, it doesn’t detract one bit from the moral courage it took to back him so completely once you got there.” Sinead shook her head again. “And it wasn’t exactly ‘after the fact,’ either, since you had no idea what had happened, how the Solarians might react, or when—or if—you’d be reinforced from home. I admit I’m rather proud of Aivars, but don’t sell yourself short, Admiral. I promise you, Aivars never will.”
Khumalo smiled and dipped his head in brief gratitude, but his brown eyes were intent as he leaned back in his chair.
“I appreciate that,” he said, “but while I’m very pleased to see you here aboard Hercules, I’m also surprised. No one warned any of us you were coming.”
“That’s because I only decided to come after the Yawata Strike,” she replied, green eyes darkening, and he nodded.
“I assumed that was the case,” he said quietly, “and I can’t tell you how devastated I was personally by what happened to Hexapuma. I know we lost a lot of other ships, a lot of other people, but she was…special. To a lot of people out here, not just to me.” He shook his head sadly. “But I’m afraid Aivars is forward-deployed to Montana, not here in Spindle.”
“Captain Lewis already shared that information with me.” Sinead shrugged. “We noticed as we came in that there seem to be very few warships here in Spindle at the moment.”
“No, there aren’t. Frankly, we’re thin enough on the ground that I’d like to shortstop some of Captain Grierson’s units right here. I think, though, that Admiral Caparelli’s right. Admiral Gold Peak needs them worse than I do.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” she said. “And while I hope we’ll be here in Spindle long enough for me to renew my acquaintance with Baroness Medusa, I’m also eager to catch up with Aivars.”
“I see,” he said, and that slight edge was back in his tone. He looked at her steadily for a moment, then inhaled and squared his shoulders.
“I’m afraid I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Ms. Terekhov,” he said. She arched an eyebrow at him, and he leaned forward in his chair. “I’m sure you want to see your husband. And I’m confident he’d love to see you, too. But we’ve adopted a strict policy where Tenth Fleet’s dependents here in Talbott are concerned. The situation’s highly fluid. We don’t know which way the Sollies are likely to jump next, and that means we don’t know where Lady Gold Peak’s units are going to be. For that matter, we’re not certain where they actually are right now, given the delays in message transmission. Because of that, we’re quartering all Navy dependents here in Spindle rather than forward-deploying them. To the best of my knowledge, your husband’s squadron’s in Montana, but they may not be there next week, and we’re not in a situation that allows any of our units to be officially homeported anywhere here in the Quadrant. So, while I understand your reasons for coming all the way out here, I think it would be best all round for you to remain in Spindle, as well. I’ll be delighted to include any personal messages from you to him aboard our next dispatch vessel, and I’m sure Quentin Saint-James will cycle back through Spindle…eventually.”
“I’m afraid I have no intention of remaining in Spindle,” Sinead replied.
“And I’m afraid, Ms. Terekhov, that I’m going to have to insist. And not just because we can’t be positive where your husband is at the moment. Oh, that’s a significant part of my thinking—somehow I don’t think he’d be happy about the notion of your chasing around trying to catch up with him. But—and this is the real reason Tenth Fleet’s in-Quadrant dependents are here in Spindle—this is also the safest place for you just now. We have enough missile pods in orbit to prevent anything the Sollies are likely to scare up from breaking our defenses.”
“I’m sure I’d be equally safe on any planet protected by Admiral Gold Peak’s ships,” Sinead said.
“Perhaps you might be. In fact, once you got to Montana and safely down on-planet, you’d probably be just fine,” he acknowledged. “But before you got to Montana, you’d be aboard a Queen’s ship in a war zone. And, forgive me for saying this, Ms. Terekhov, but I have the strangest suspicion that if you discovered upon your arrival that your husband’s squadron has been deployed elsewhere, you’d immediately set out for wherever ‘elsewhere’ might be. And that, I’m afraid, would take you directly into an area of active operations.”
“I have Admiralty authorization to travel aboard the Charles Ward, Admiral,” she told him just a bit frostily.
“Forgive me for pointing this out, but that authorization was for travel to Spindle, not to Montana,” he said in a tone of genuine regret.
“As the station commander, you could extend that authorization,” she observed rather pointedly.
“I could…but I won’t.” He shook his head again. “I deeply admire and respect your husband, Ms. Terekhov. And I believe I truly do understand why you want to join him. But I’m afraid I can’t permit it.”
* * *
“I can’t believe that man!” Sinead fumed.
“Oh, I can,” Ginger said from the other side of the table. The expensive Thimble restaurant surrounded them like some rich, quiet cocoon, and she snorted as she reached for her wine glass. “And, to be completely honest,” she continued, “I think there’s some point to his argument, Sinead.”
“Traitor!” Sinead shook a finger at her across the tablecloth. “Don’t you dare get all ‘reasonable’ about this!”
Ginger chuckled and sipped her wine, then her expression sobered a bit.
“Seriously, Sinead. I might not worry as much as Admiral Khumalo does, and I doubt I’d feel too concerned if you continued forward on a personnel transport. Not even Sollies are going to be deliberately shooting at unarmed people-haulers, except by mistake. But the CW’s a legitimate target, and as crazy as things have been out this way—hell, everywhere!—there really is the chance someone could get into range to do that shooting. I don’t plan to face the Commodore and tell him I let you get killed aboard my ship.”
“Don’t be silly. First, nothing’s going to happen to ‘your ship.’ Second, if it did, Aivars would never blame you for my stubbornness. And, third, the personnel transports aren’t continuing forward, either.” Sinead glowered down into her own wineglass. “The Admiral’s unloading everybody he can right here in Spindle because he plans on packing them to the bulkheads with reinforcements for Admiral Gold Peak.”
“Well, there you are.” Ginger sh
rugged. “I’m sorry, and I know it’s disappointing, but there’s really not anything I can do about it. And I won’t pretend I’m entirely brokenhearted that I can’t, for all the reasons the Admiral’s already given you. I like you, Sinead. I like you a lot.”
“Thank you.” Both Sinead’s voice and eyes softened. “I appreciate that. But neither you nor Augustus Khumalo are going to prevent me from doing exactly what I came out here to do. I trust you understand that?”
“Sinead, somehow I doubt anyone’s stopped you from doing exactly what you wanted for a long, long time,” Ginger told her. “But that doesn’t mean the Navy’s going to help you do it this time.”
“Then I’ll just have to do it without the Navy,” Sinead said composedly. “In the meantime, rather than continue to argue or berate you for your indescribably treacherous support of Admiral Khumalo, why don’t we order? I understand the Beef Wellington is marvelous here.”
* * *
“This,” Adam Šiml said quietly to Filip Malý, his recently acquired personal bodyguard, “is not looking good.”
Malý, who’d risen to the rank of lieutenant in the Chotěboř Public Safety Force before Šiml had selected him from among the dozen or so officers Daniel Kápička had personally recommended to him, nodded. In fact, he thought, his new boss had a pronounced gift for understatement.
It was raining hard, and it was winter in the planetary capital of Velehrad. The temperature hovered only a few degrees above freezing, the football pitch was a frigid sea of mud and water—every time the Mělník Warriors’ keeper came out of the net curtains of spray flew everywhere—and the players were cold, wet, miserable…and more than a little pissed. In fact, the game should probably have been postponed (or moved to one of the covered stadiums) but the playoff schedule was already complicated and the weather front had moved much faster than the forecasters and weather satellites had predicted. In fact, the sun had been shining brightly through the gathering clouds less than forty-five minutes before the start of play.
And the first rain had begun to fall three minutes into the first half.
Of course, the weather wasn’t the only thing on Šiml’s mind just now. The rivalry between the Warriors and Velehrad Lions was of ancient lineage, dating back—quite literally, in this case—to the years the Kumang system was first colonized, when the Lions had been the Lvi and the Warriors had been the Válečníci. It was also bone-deep and bitter at the best of times, which today wasn’t. The winner of tonight’s game went on to the planetary finals; the loser went home, and neither club had any interest in doing that. Nor did their fans, and the home crowd had been expressing its disapproval of the officials for most of the second half. The fact that the Lions had advanced to this point only because they’d eliminated the Benešov Dragons on the basis of the away goals rule after tying their semi-final match with them made the home team’s partisans no happier, because the Lions’ regular-season record against the Warriors was one-and-three…and the Warriors’ fans had made their opinion of the way the Lions had “squeaked into” the playoffs abundantly clear.
The players on the field were pulling no punches. It was a wet, brutal, aggressive game, and each team had already been yellow-carded at least once. In the Lions’ case, there were no fewer than three of them, including one on Štěpán Jura, their star striker. From where Šiml sat in his warm, dry box, the officials were doing an excellent job under extraordinarily trying circumstances, but he was hardly surprised diehard fans sitting in the cold, drenched open didn’t share his opinion.
And the fact that they were in the last two minutes of the second overtime period with the score still tied 2–2 wasn’t making them one bit cheerier. If the Lions couldn’t score in the next hundred and twenty seconds, they’d be eliminated in exactly the way they’d eliminated the Dragons, because the Warriors had scored seven regular season goals in Velehrad during the regular season and the Lions had scored only three in Mělník.
Šiml punched a combination into his com.
“Yes, Adam,” a voice responded instantly.
“I’m not sure if it’s going to be worse if the Lions score or if they don’t, Eduard,” Šiml told Eduard Klíma, Sokol’s Director of Safety and Security. “Either way, this could get ugly.”
“No! You think?!” Klíma had known Šiml since they were boys, and his own profound worry burned through his sarcastic tone. Then Šiml heard him draw a deep breath at the other end of the com link.
“I’ve screened the Velehrad PD for extra officers,” he said. “And they’re watching the game live downtown, so they already had a pretty good idea how things’re looking. The Commissioner’s calling in every off-duty cop he can, and they’re handing out the riot gear.”
“And our own people in the stadium?”
“I’ve passed the word—to the cops working the crowd, as well as our people—and they’re ready to cover the touchline if anybody tries to storm the field. We’re trying to get more of the PD’s people in here to cover the exits and at least try for crowd control if it turns ugly, but frankly…”
His voice trailed off in the verbal equivalent of a shrug, and Šiml sighed. Chotěbořian football crowds in general weren’t noted for reserve and calm during the playoffs. And, unfortunately, the Velehrad fans were even less noted than most for off-field restraint. All of which suggested that unless—
A massive roar went up from the crowd as the Lions’ right wing cut inside the Warriors’ left wing back and headed the ball sharply to Jura. The entire stadium came to its feet as the striker feinted to the inside, then cut toward the outside. The center back turned to intercept in a blinding blur of motion, mud, and spray, and—
The ball bounced away, spinning out of bounds, and Štěpán Jura lay on his back both hands clutching an obviously broken leg.
Trainers and medical personnel rushed onto the field. It took them several minutes—minutes during which the crowd noise rumbled with mingled anger and shock—to get Jura’s leg splinted, lift him onto the counter-grav stretcher, and get him off the field. Finally, though, it was time to resume play…and the referee handed the ball to the Warriors.
For just an instant, shocked silence enveloped the stadium. Then the cheers and whistles began from the Mělník side of the field one bare instant before the Velehrad crowd realized that not only had no penalty been called, but the throw-in had been awarded to the Warriors.
“Oh, shit,” Eduard Klíma said almost conversationally over Šiml’s com, and then all hell broke loose.
* * *
“Christ, Zdeněk!”
Adam Šiml strode back and forth across his office like a caged, unkempt tiger, badly in need of a shave, a shower, a change of clothes, and at least ten uninterrupted hours of sleep. He ran his fingers angrily through his hair, his expression ugly, and his voice was harsh with much more than his obvious exhaustion.
“What a frigging nightmare!” he jerked out. “Bad enough for a football match, but this—!”
“It would’ve been a lot worse without you, Adam,” Zdeněk Vilušínský said. “A lot worse. I don’t think anyone else could’ve done as much to get them out of the streets again.”
“And that’s going to be one hell of a lot of comfort to their families, isn’t it?” Šiml grated, and Vilušínský was forced to nod unhappily.
The riot in Velehrad Stadium had spread rapidly. At least some of the fans had smuggled truncheons past security—Klíma and the Velehrad Police were asking some very tough questions about just how that had happened—but there’d been plenty of beer bottles and temporary overflow seating to use as improvised weapons. And then the riot inside the stadium spilled out into the capital’s streets. The replay video of the incident—which clearly showed Jura sliding on the treacherous footing and going down with no contact between any defender and him or the ball—hadn’t done one thing to quell it…especially when some Lions supporter announced it was obviously computer-generated to justify a terrible call! The insanity
to which rabid sports fans could fall prey never failed to amaze Adam Šiml, even after all these years.
But once the riot hit the streets, it had only grown in fury, and hastily assembled riot police had moved in. Unfortunately, no one had seen the madness coming. The cops had been assembled on too little notice, and there’d been too few on duty at the outset to deploy in the department’s standing riot control plans. They’d done their absolute best, Šiml knew…and, in too many cases, they’d simply been plowed under. Ground cars and trams had been overturned, windows smashed, shops and businesses looted. Then the arson had started.
And that was when Jan Cabrnoch ordered Daniel Kápička to deploy the Safety Force to support the city police and “restore calm and public order.”
To his credit, Kápička had argued, but Cabrnoch had simply repeated the order. And, as Kápička had feared—and Šiml could have predicted—the instant CPSF uniforms appeared in the capital’s streets, what had been a riot of infuriated sports fans became something else entirely. All the resentment which had festered since the Náměstí Žlutých Růží demonstrations had exploded and, for the first time in anyone’s memory, rioters—regular citizens, many of whom had been nowhere near the Stadium—actually attacked the CPSF with their bare hands.
Šiml and Sokol’s leadership had done everything humanly possible to quell the rioting. They’d been everywhere, with Šiml at their head, helping fight fires, helping medical teams, appealing over bullhorns and on the public boards for calm, pleading with the rioters to just go home to their families. They’d snatched what sleep they could when they could, and there’d been damned little of it. For that matter, Šiml’s face and torso had been badly bruised when he’d personally intervened at one point and been trampled for his effort.
“Three days, Zdeněk! Three days!” He was literally shaking with anger. “If that idiot—no, if that frigging murderer—hadn’t sent the Safeties into that mess, we could’ve…we could’ve—!”