by David Weber
Personally, Tyler doubted OFS or its friends—and especially Technodyne—had a hope in hell of pulling that off. Fortunately for him, Manticore seemed unwilling to take that chance. Which, now that Tyler thought about it, might be wise of them, considering the general credulity of the Solly man in the street.
“Ms. Corvisart,” he said as reasonably as he could, “you’ve already acquired more than enough physical and documentary evidence to support or disprove your version of what happened here. Obviously, there’s nothing anyone in the Republic of Monica can do to prevent you from doing whatever you wish to do with that evidence. But surely you understand that a sovereign star nation can’t simply hand over its own raw diplomatic correspondence and intelligence data. There are some records whose confidentiality simply have to be preserved if a star nation hopes to have any credibility at all in sensitive interstellar negotiations. No one would just roll over and give you that sort of access! It’s out of the question!”
“Under normal circumstances, perhaps,” Corvisart said implacably. “The circumstances aren’t normal, however, Sir. In fact, they’re decidedly abnormal, and I’m afraid you and I both know how they came to be that way. The evidence we already possess was acquired by force of arms. In other words, it’s our legitimate prize by right of capture and, as you say, we can do whatever we wish with it. There are inevitably going to be those in the League who discount that evidence as fabricated by the Star Empire for some nefarious purpose of our own, however. That’s going to happen whatever else happens, and you know it as well as we do. But the Star Empire intends to make it as difficult as possible even for someone like Malachai Abruzzi to say that with a straight face. That brings us back to the point of today’s conversation, and, Mister President, without wishing to be unpleasant about this, you’re not really in the best position to tell us what’s acceptable and unacceptable at the moment.”
Tyler felt his face darken with anger, but he bit down on the furious response boiling behind his teeth. Corvisart had made her position amply clear. Either he handed over the records—all the records—she’d demanded, or else she, Augustus Khumalo, and Quentin O’Malley completely disarmed the Monican Navy, Army, and Internal Security Force. They probably wouldn’t be able to get all of those weapons out of Monican hands, especially the ISF’s small arms, but they’d be able to get enough to guarantee the overthrow of his presidency. The consequences of that would be highly unpleasant—probably fatal—for a significant percentage of the Tyler family and its supporters.
But if he caved to their demands, gave them what they wanted, Corvisart was prepared to sign a nonaggression pact between the Republic of Monica and the Star Empire of Manticore. What was left of his battered armed forces would remain intact and under his command, although he’d still have to deal with some highly restive elements within them, and the Republic would be left in one piece. In fact, she was prepared to sweeten the deal by offering to include Monica in the domestic trade zone being established in Talbott, which would make his currently unhappy kleptocrats almost as happy as if his effort to seize the Lynx Terminus had succeeded. The regime’s survival would remain problematic, perhaps, but by Alfonso Higgins’ calculations, the odds would be heavily in Tyler’s favor.
Domestically, at least. When the Solarian League finally got around to pulverizing Manticore for its effrontery, OFS might have a page or two in its plans for the client regime which had turned upon it.
But that will be then, and this is now, isn’t it? Tyler thought. There’s a certain…immediacy to the situation, and this bitch’s made it abundantly clear that she doesn’t plan to wait around forever. Time to crap or get off the pot, Roberto. Besides, it’s not like I owe those OFS or Technodyne bastards a damned thing after the shit pot they’ve landed me in!
“Very well, Ms. Corvisart. Understand that we are complying only under protest, but the records you demand will be made available to you.”
“Under the conditions specified?” Corvisart pressed, and his eyes flashed.
It wasn’t enough for her that his IT people hand over the documents. Oh, no! Her people had to have access to his central filing systems to extract the information themselves, making any redaction impossible. God only knew what else they might find while they were about it, either! And she’d have her damned representatives of the Solarian League press with her techs the whole way.
It was intolerable, and he hovered on the very brink of telling her exactly that. But then his nostrils flared, and he nodded.
“Under the conditions specified,” he grated, and Corvisart nodded as if she hadn’t just performed a double orchiectomy upon him.
“Thank you, Mister President,” she said courteously. “Commander Chandler and Commander Bonifacio will be in touch before the end of business today to arrange the details.”
JUNE 1921 POST DIASPORA
“’Cept there’s also that bit in the Constitution ’bout property rights and trespassers and how a woman’s got the right to defend her property against ’em, ’specially after she’s already warned ’em they’d best get. Right this minute, I’ve got a real itch to exercise my constitutional freedoms. So I think it’d be a real good idea if the sergeant here escorted Mr. Omikado off the premises. Be a whole lot easier if there aren’t any more bodies to drag out on the porch.”
—Eileanóra Allenby,
Owner, Whitewater Hollow Outfitters,
Swallow System
Chapter Nine
“We should make Halkirk orbit in another ninety minutes, Mr. Brown.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Damien Harahap said, not looking up from his cabin’s workstation display. “Let me know as soon as I’m cleared to go planet-side, please.”
“Of course, Mr. Brown.”
The intercom went dead, and Harahap shook his head, his expression wry. He’d had more aliases than he could possibly count in his career. Some had been more imaginative than others, and he had a greater fondness for some, but few had been as…bland as “Mister Brown.” It was certainly serviceable, and he heartily approved of not letting anyone know anything he or she didn’t absolutely have to know, but still…
He put that thought away and turned his full attention back to the display. It no longer featured the reams of data he’d studied on the three T-week voyage from Mesa. Instead, it showed a spectacular vista of the Loomis System’s twin inhabited planets—brown-and-tan Halkirk and gorgeous sapphire Thurso—and floating head shots of both the people he intended to meet on Halkirk and the ones he intended to avoid at all costs.
There was really only one of them he absolutely had to avoid: Lieutenant Ottomar Touchette, Solarian Gendarmerie. Not only was Touchette the senior intelligence officer assigned to Loomis, he’d also worked with Harahap in the Madras Sector less than five T-years ago. Fortunately, according to the confidential Frontier Security files Bardasano had provided, Touchette wasn’t in particularly good odor with Nyatui Zagorski, the local transstellar’s rep. Probably because of Touchette’s habit of providing good, honest analysis…whether it said what his superiors wanted it to say or not. From Zagorski’s record, the last thing he wanted was honest analysis of Loomisian public opinion and its possible ramifications.
From Harahap’s new perspective, that was all to the good. Loomis was close enough to the Madras Sector for him to have been at least generally aware of what was happening in the system even before Major Eichbauer seconded him to Bardasano and Anisimovna for the Talbott operation. He hadn’t realized then quite how bad things were getting, however, which promised fertile ground for Operation Janus. Of course, it remained to see whether it was fertile enough.
* * *
“And where do you think you’re going, Innis MacLay?” Maggie MacLay demanded, propping her hands on her hips and tilting her head back to glare up at him better. “I’ve a list of chores for you a meter long!”
“Ah, now!” Innis smiled down at his wife, then scooped her up and kissed her soundly. “It’s not lik
e I’ll be gone forever, Rùnag. And you know I’ll get right on that list the instant I walk back in the door.”
“And if you do, I’ll want to know where my husband is and what you did with him!” Maggie said, swatting him across the top of his head. “There’s a reason that list’s a meter long, you know.”
“And what would that be?” Innis set her back on the floor and tucked an arm around her. He was a tallish fellow, very nearly two meters tall, and she was more than thirty centimeters shorter than him.
“Well, let’s just say that last week it was only two thirds of a meter long. And the week before that it was only a third of a meter. Are we seeing a pattern here?”
“That you’re a bit OCD about adding to lists?” Innis asked innocently.
“That’s one possible explanation. On the other hand, if this list isn’t shorter by the end of the weekend, there will be sanctions.” She batted her eyelashes at him and rolled her hips. “Painful sanctions.”
“In that case, I’ll make this as quick as I can!”
“That would be wise of you,” she told him, and rose on tiptoe to kiss his cheek before he headed out the door.
He smiled to himself as he crossed the modest house’s front yard with its brilliant flower garden and headed for the ground car parked at the curb. That house was a sign of just how light Halkirk’s population remained, even now, and of its modest tech base. Most places, the citizenry would have been packed into towering spires of ceramacrete to utilize limited space most efficiently, but even though Conerock was a major regional administrative center, it retained a broad belt of suburbs dominated by individual family-sized units. Innis was more than glad it was, although he had to agree that there were probably certain advantages—in theory, at least—to apartment towers…assuming Halkirk had possessed the technology and industry to build them. For one thing, a tower had a much smaller footprint for the same population. For another, he supposed it would be convenient to live only thirty or forty floors up or down from his place of employment. Except, of course, that his “place of employment” was out in the midst of the continent of Stronsay’s hushed, green forests.
And except for the fact that you were brought up wanting at least a little space to call your own, he reflected as he unlocked the ground car’s door. And not just a light well inside a tower, either. Real space, with real green in it. And bless Maggie and the kids’ green thumbs for all those flowers!
He smiled again at that thought, but this smile was fleeting. If SEIU had its way, he and a quarter or so of Halkirk’s population were going to be out of a job within ten T-years—fifteen at the most. He was more than a little ashamed it had taken that to get him to wake up and smell the coffee, but his eyes were open now. Which was the real reason he was headed for Fingal’s Tavern this clear, cool Saturday morning. Not for the pint and darts he’d told Maggie about, either.
He started the engine and pulled away from the curb, wondering exactly what Tad was going to tell him.
* * *
“Come in, please, Mr. Henry,” the dark-haired and dark-complexioned woman said, rising behind her desk and extending her hand in greeting as the receptionist ushered Damien Harahap into her office.
“Good afternoon, Ms. MacRuer,” replied, taking the proffered hand and gripping it firmly. “I’m glad you were able to see me on such short notice.”
“Well, I have to admit I was a bit puzzled by your call.” Nessa MacRuer sank back into her desk chair as Harahap seated himself in one of the comfortable but old-fashioned chairs in front of it. “MacNish, Tonnochy, and Duncannon is one of Elgin’s older law partnerships, but I’m a bit perplexed by just how it is we can help you.”
“I can’t say I’m hugely surprised by that.” Harahap smiled pleasantly. “It’s been my experience, though, that the fastest way to accomplish something is to go directly to the person you need to talk to. Or, in this case, one of that person’s closer associates.”
MacRuer tilted her chair back slightly and raised one eyebrow. She was a striking woman, Harahap thought, especially here on Halkirk, which had one of the less genetically diverse planetary populations. There was clearly a lot of Old Earth Asian genetic material in Ms. MacRuer, and he wondered if her exotic—by local standards—appearance had been a factor in her professional success. The odds were good that it had. On the other hand, that same exoticness was likely to be just a bit of a handicap in her current unofficial and very quiet avocation.
“Really?” She cocked her head to one side. “My understanding is that you’re in Loomis as a silver oak purchaser for”—she let him see her checking a memo on her display—“the Hauptman Cartel. That’s a Manticoran firm, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.” Harahap nodded. “And I realize I’m a bit far from home, but let’s face it, you don’t find silver oak growing on just any planet.”
“No.” For just a moment, something bitter might have flashed in the depths of MacRuer’s tone, but if it had, she controlled quickly. “No,” she went on more pleasantly, “silver oak really is Loomis’ main claim to fame, I suppose.”
“And well it should be,” Harahap said, and meant every word of it. The dense-grained, gorgeously patterned and colored wood was incredibly beautiful, which explained the staggering prices it commanded from Core World sculptors and interior decorators. “I have to say I understand why the market is prepared to snap up every square meter of it it can get!”
“Yes, it is.” This time the bitterness was more pronounced, and her smile looked a little forced. “But, as I say, I’m not quite clear on how our firm can serve you. MacNish, Tonnochy, and Duncannon specializes in real estate law and transactions, not the commodity market. Besides, if you’re in the market for silver oak, you’d really need to speak to the Cooperative.”
“I understand that.” Harahap acknowledged, then opened his slim briefcase in his lap and arched an eyebrow of his own. “Perhaps it would move things along a bit if I showed you what I have in mind?”
“If you’d like to.” MacRuer sounded a little puzzled, but she nodded.
“Thank you,” Harahap said, and extracted a compact electronic unit. He leaned forward to lay it on the corner of MacRuer’s desk, and her almond eyes went wide as he pressed a stud and a green light flashed.
“There. Now we can talk,” he said, and hid an inward smile as MacRuer darted a quick, nervous look around her office. Her body language seemed to put physical distance between them without ever actually moving. That was good; he’d hoped she’d recognize the unit.
“May I ask what that is?” she said after a moment, although her assumed ignorance fooled neither of them, and this time he allowed his smile to show.
“It’s only a privacy unit, Ms. MacRuer,” he replied. “Of course, it’s an off-world privacy unit, and I suppose it’s remotely possible I failed to register it with the local authorities when I landed. Is that a problem, do you suppose?”
His gaze held hers very levelly across her desk. To her credit, she neither swallowed nervously nor wiped sweat from her forehead, but he could see the intense thoughts churning away behind her eyes. Loomis was one of the star systems whose law codes required all anti-surveillance devices to be registered with their security forces. Quite a few systems, especially in the Shell and Verge, had regulations like that, although most Core World populations refused to tolerate them. On the other hand, only a minority of the systems which did have them were quite as ferocious as Loomis in enforcing them.
“Actually,” she said after a moment, “it could be quite a significant problem. As an officer of the court, I’m obligated to report any unlicensed privacy units, and I’m afraid the penalties for possessing one are quite severe. Especially for off-world units.”
“I’m not surprised.” Harahap set his briefcase on the floor beside his chair and leaned back, crossing his legs. “I’m sure Ms. MacQuarie and the UPS get nervous when there’s no software backdoor to let them listen in on a conversation anyway. Oppressive
regimes tend to be fussy that way.”
“I’m afraid this conversation is over, Mr. Henry,” MacRuer said. “As I just pointed out, as an attorney I’m an officer of the court. Not only am I obligated to report your unit, but I feel I should also point out to you that there are limits to acceptable criticism of our star system’s government.”
“And I’m sure Ms. MacLean and Ms. MacFadzean would never dream of transgressing those limits,” he said calmly, and watched her nostrils flare as those two names hit home. “Otherwise, as an officer of the court in good standing, I’m equally sure you would have reported them to the authorities long ago.”
“I don’t think I’m acquainted with either of those people,” she said.
“A word of professional advice, Ms. MacRuer. When someone walks into your office and hits you cold by mentioning the names of your coconspirators against the government, the shortest response is usually the safest one. Too many syllables tend to indicate nervousness. And it’s never a good idea to deny you know someone when the local authorities already know you’ve met with them. Next time, I’d recommend just saying ‘Who?’ and leaving it up to the other fellow to steer the conversation into something which will incriminate you properly.”
She sat very still for several seconds, then sat back and crossed her own legs.
“Who are you, really?” she asked.
“A Manticoran representative. And I really am here about the silver oak. Just not in quite the way you may have assumed.”