Shadow of Victory

by David Weber

  “We could do that,” Indy replied. “In fact, why don’t we do this? You heat up the spaghetti, I’ll grab a bottle of Chianti on my way, and there’s still time for us to take in the sunset if we eat on the roof.”

  “Sounds like a deal to me. Thirty minutes?”

  “Make it forty-five. The queues at the tram stops are running a little long.”

  * * *

  “You know, Uncle Thad does make good spaghetti,” Indy said, sitting back from the table in the small dining area atop Mackenzie’s apartment building.

  Like much of Cherubim’s architecture, Mackenzie’s building had been erected long ago. It was barely ten stories tall, and while the neighborhood was considerably better than the one in which Indiana currently lived, it still wasn’t exactly on the good side of town. Despite her “respectability,” she remained the daughter of an enemy of the people, after all. Despite that, its occupants did their best to maintain at least some of the amenities, including the rooftop tables where they frequently dined.

  This evening, as Indy had known would be the case, Mackenzie’s neighbors most likely to eat up here were otherwise occupied. He wondered, sometimes, how those neighbors would feel if they knew how intensively he’d studied them, figuring out who they worked for, mapping their normal movement patterns. Digging that deeply into other people’s lives made him a little queasy, as if he were becoming too much like Tillman O’Sullivan’s scags. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a lot of choice. Not if he meant to keep himself and his sister alive, anyway.

  “Yeah, he does.” Mackenzie used a bit of garlic bread to soak up the last of Thaddeus Lucchino’s spaghetti sauce. “One thing we can be sure of is that at least she’s eating pretty well,” she added a bit more darkly.

  “True,” Indy acknowledged. Then he sat back with a glass of Chianti, gazing at the crimson and black coals of sunset’s funeral pyre.

  “So, are you going to tell me how it went?” Mackenzie asked in a somewhat lower voice as she drew her sweater closer against the undeniable chill of the breeze. “I’m assuming that’s why we’re eating up here, anyway.”

  “And here I thought you’d so cleverly set it up yourself!”

  She stuck out her tongue at him, and he chuckled. Weather permitting, they ate on her apartment building’s roof at least a couple of nights a week, and Indy had made a point of discovering exactly where the SSSP’s bugs had been put. That task had been made easier by the fact that the bugs in question were fairly shoddy workmanship that hadn’t been hidden particularly well. Obviously the scags didn’t regard the apartments as a hotbed of subversive conspiracy. If they’d had the least suspicion of the discussions which had been held on this roof, they’d have devoted their best equipment—and their best maintenance techs—to making sure they heard every syllable. As it was, his and Mackenzie’s favorite table happened to be located in what was very nearly a dead zone. Not quite—even scags were better than that—but close enough, especially on evenings like this when a brisk breeze blew across the microphones.

  And the wind chimes I got Kenzie for her last birthday don’t hurt, he thought cheerfully, listening to their musical but undeniably loud voice as the wind sent them clamoring into one another. He hadn’t been stupid enough to hang it directly on top of a microphone, but he had hung it between their table and the nearest mic. As long as they kept their voices down, the chance of their being picked up was almost nonexistent.

  “All right,” he said. He drained his wineglass, then set it on the table and leaned forward, folding his hands and propping his elbows on the table top and dropping his own voice just a bit. “Either the scags have figured out what we’re up to and set some kind of incredibly subtle and complex trap for us, or else this guy—‘Clambake,’ he said to call him—may be the real deal. In fact, he could be exactly what we need.”

  “I get very nervous when somebody we never heard of just turns up out of the blue to be ‘exactly what we need.’” Mackenzie’s expression was somber.

  “You’re not the only one.” He smiled thinly. “And I didn’t fall all over myself accepting his offer, either. I told him I was too junior to make any commitments—figured it couldn’t hurt, assuming he was working with the scags, to keep them guessing about just who’s in charge on our side—and I set up a contact procedure for when he comes back to Seraphim.”

  “Comes back?” she repeated, and he shrugged.

  “He says he’s got other people to talk to, and this will give me time to ‘talk to my superiors’ before we have to give him an answer. Frankly, I don’t want to give him the impression we’re rushing into anything even if he’s completely legitimate. And if he’s not…”

  “Okay, I can see that. But what’s this about ‘other people’?”

  “I wondered about that, too, Kenzie, so I asked. And that’s where it got really interesting.” Indy leaned a bit farther forward. “When he told me he’d hunted us up because the people he works for are in the business of supporting ‘subversives’ here in the Verge, I told him I didn’t believe in the Tooth Fairy. He only laughed and admitted I had a point. But then he told me why they’re willing to support people like us, and damned if it didn’t actually make sense.”

  “Yeah. Sure!” She rolled her eyes skeptically, and he chuckled, but his expression and his voice were serious.

  “I want you to think about this as critically as you can, Kenzie. I know I tend to jump as soon as I think the jumping’s good, and we have to consider this one very, very carefully before I imitate any frogs. But if he’s really who he says he is—and like I say, his story seems to me to make sense—we can’t afford to not jump.”

  Mackenzie gazed at him for several seconds, her eyes shadowed in the deepening twilight. Then she nodded.

  “Tell me,” she said simply.

  “Okay. Remember the stories we heard about what happened over in Talbott? Well, it seems they were accurate, and—”

  * * *

  Rufino Chernyshev sat at his second-class table aboard the Krestor Interstellar liner Mary Ellen, savoring the first-class single malt in his glass and permitted himself a mild self-congratulatory glow.

  He didn’t know who the youngster he’d met in the library really was, although he suspected he was considerably more highly placed than he’d chosen to imply in whatever subversive organization was ticking away here in Seraphim. Chernyshev’s preliminary briefing had been able to provide virtually no information on it—the Alignment was fortunate to have discovered its existence at all, much less learned anything about it—but unless he missed his guess, young “call-me-Talisman” was a member of its senior cadre.

  Well, he had the pictures from his shirt-button cam, and one of their sources in Seraphim would have acquired a lot more information on him by the time he returned. In the meantime, “Talisman” and his colleagues would have plenty to think over. And—again, unless Chernyshev missed his guess—they’d jump at the chance for “Manticoran” support. Of course, he’d be better placed to shape his offer once he knew more about who he was dealing with, especially if that information offered an insight into exactly what had drawn Talisman (and, presumably, his associates) into attempting to build an effective resistance group.

  Not that Jacqueline McCready and her administration didn’t amply deserve to be kicked out on its collective ass, preferably with pulser darts delivered to at least a dozen ear canals in the process. God knew any number of people had perfectly legitimate reasons to do just that, and his impression of young Talisman was that he’d make a formidable foe. He might be inexperienced, but he clearly had good instincts.

  Which is why I had to take care of that little housekeeping chore before I left. Not that it wouldn’t have been worth doing on its own. I know we have to use whatever tool we can find in this business, but still…

  When Isabel Bardasano started building the groundwork for Janus, she and her analysts had looked for any sources they already had in the star systems they’d identified a
s possessing potential for their purposes, and Bledsoe had been one of them. An organization like the Alignment never knew where it was likely to need a set of ears on the ground, and smugglers who were none too choosy about what they’d smuggle often drew the eye of Manpower, the Jessyk Combine, or any one of the Alignment’s manifold black-market and criminal tentacles. Bledsoe had been recruited—by Jessyk—over ten T-years earlier, and his name had bobbed to the top for Janus, despite the fact that he was about as unreliable as a contact got, when he offered the information that he’d been approached by some kind of revolutionary group. Personally, Chernyshev wouldn’t have trusted him as a dog-walker, much less a revolutionary, but the lead had been worth following up and he’d been instructed to accept recruitment. And it would appear they’d struck gold despite the unpromising geology.

  Unhappily for Mr. Bledsoe, he’d turned out to be as stupid as he was corrupt and greedy. He’d actually suggested that, given his position inside the organization, he was worth more than the Alignment was already paying him. He’d suggested a modest little three hundred-percent raise, and—of course—Chernyshev had agreed.

  Which was why in the next week or so—long enough to be sure Talisman wouldn’t associate it with Chernyshev’s visit—Richard Bledsoe would become the unfortunate victim of a fatal mugging. It wasn’t that Chernyshev begrudged the extra money. It was that he’d had the chance to take Bledsoe’s measure, and there was no doubt in his mind the smuggler would happily sell out everyone in sight. It would have been only a matter of time before someone like him dropped into SSSP headquarters and suggested he had some confidential information someone might be interested in. For that matter, someone stupid enough to try to turn the screws on his current employers might very well let something slip entirely inadvertently.

  Which, Chernyshev thought, sipping the excellent whiskey appreciatively, wouldn’t be happening now.

  NOVEMBER 1921 POST DIASPORA

  “They’ll not do to my uncle what they’ve done to the rest of my family! But I’ll pull the lads and lassies back onto MacRory land. We’ll keep our heads down, mind our manners, and stay as far out of the public eye as we can. But know this, Megan MacLean—Hell won’t hold what’ll happen when the first Uppy sets foot on MacRory land after us!”

  —Raghnall MacRory,

  MacRory Militia,

  Loomis system.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Damien Harahap frowned as the needle-nosed transatmospheric sting ship followed Факел into Mesa orbit and took up a position astern and outside the yacht’s designated parking orbit. The good news was that the deadly little ship hadn’t simply opened fire. The bad news was that neither Harahap nor any member of Факел’s crew had any idea why the star system’s armed forces and security agencies had gone to such a state of hyper alert.

  “Delta One-Niner-Seven-Three, power down your nodes,” the sting ship’s command pilot said over the com, his crisp tone just short of curt. “You’ll be met by a Peaceforce shuttle that will transport your passenger. Confirm copy.”

  “Mike-Papa-Papa Seven-One-Two, Delta One-Niner-Three-Seven confirms copy your instructions,” Yong Seong Jin replied. “We’re powering down now.”

  “That’s affirmative, Delta One-Niner-Seven-Three,” the sting ship pilot said. “Have a nice day. Mike-Papa-Papa Seven-One-Two, clear.”

  “And what the hell was that about?” Harahap asked, and Факел’s skipper shook her head with an expression one of baffled anxiety.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “In fact, I don’t have the least damned idea…except that whatever it’s about, it’s not going to be good.”

  * * *

  Not good, Harahap decided several hours later, was a significant understatement.

  No wonder the Peaceforce and the Internal Security Directorate have their panties in a wad, he thought grimly.

  He could see the shattered ruins of Suvorov Tower from the windows of the apartment in which he’d been parked until Bardasano had time to talk to him. He didn’t have a good angle—the view was constricted by residential towers which hadn’t been involved—but what he could see suggested the official death toll reported by the ’faxes he’d so far seen was probably at least close to accurate.

  Well, for certain values of “accurate,” anyway, he corrected himself. It must’ve been an interesting call. Do they understate the death toll, trying to convince everyone they’re in complete control of the situation and there’s no reason for their fellow citizens to worry about additional attacks? Or do they overstate the death toll to justify the security crackdown?

  At the moment, he was inclined to think it had been the latter. While he could see the wreckage of Suvorov, where the first “terrorist” bomb had gone off, he couldn’t see Pine Valley Park…or, rather, where Pine Valley Park used to be. Nor could he see the ghetto towers where the “seccies”—the “second-class citizens” descended from the genetic slaves who’d earned manumission, back when the Mesan constitution had actually allowed for that—lived and labored for their betters. He could, however, make out armed air cars and sting ships of the Mesan Internal Security Directorate and the Planetary Peaceforce circling above the nearest of them. He was sure he could have seen the same thing above any of the seccy towers, since the planetary government had loosed the MISD upon them. Whether the hunt for the Audubon Ballroom terrorists being blamed for the attacks was genuine or simply a convenient pretext to hammer the seccies lest any of them get ideas about emulating the Green Pines Atrocity attacks was another interesting question.

  I wonder…are they so insistent it was the Ballroom to keep the MOI out of it? I mean, sure, branding Manticore as the “Ballroom enabler” could have upsides for both the government and the Alignment, and having Zilwicki available as a public face for Manticore’s support of Torch and all those other terrible Ballroom-associated things is tailor-made for that. But by treating it as terrorism directly linked to the seccies, they keep the MOI safely sidelined. And who does that suit better? The system authorities, or Bardasano’s people?

  The Mesan Office of Investigation was one of the best civilian police organizations in the entire galaxy. It was also, however, specifically prohibited from any involvement in seccy affairs, which only seemed odd until one examined the logic. The people who’d created the MOI wanted to make damned sure it remained a police organization with a genuine respect for the civil rights of Mesa’s full citizens. The last thing they’d wanted was for the MOI to become a repressive, suppressive, callused institution accustomed to cutting corners in the investigation and prosecution of citizens. Under normal circumstances, one would have assumed the authorities would have pulled out all the stops and unleashed MOI’s superb investigators and forensic specialists as part of the unyielding demand for answers.…

  Unless, of course, someone doesn’t want those answers to ever see the light of day. But why would they want that? To cover the Alignment’s tracks? Or to avoid anything which might undermine the justification for the seccy crackdown? Or maybe a combination of both?

  From all he’d been able to pick up so far, the current crackdown was the most savage any seccy had seen in at least fifty T-years. Harahap doubted the MSID was even trying to distinguish between anyone who might actually have been insane enough to launch a nuclear terrorist attack in Mesa, of all places, and those who’d had nothing at all to do with it. They were simply breaking heads—and necks—throughout the seccy districts to “send a message.”

  If Damien Harahap had had a credit for every government which had decided to “send a message” and, in the fullness of time, been handed its collective ass, he could have bought himself a nice little planet for his retirement.

  Whoever this “Mesan Alignment” of Bardasano’s is, it’s not the system government, he decided, turning from the window and reaching for his bottle of Old Tillman once more. Bardasano’s way too smart to be part of something as ham-handed as the security forces here in Mesa. Hell, she’s
got me out prospecting for revolutionaries on planets where there’s one hell of a lot less legitimate reason for rebellion than the seccies have right here in her backyard! Somehow I don’t think she’s stupid enough to miss the parallels.

  And then there was the minor fact that he was confident the Suvorov Tower bomb had never been set off by terrorists, whether from the Audubon Ballroom or strictly homegrown. And the reason he was confident was because he’d been to the facility underneath Suvorov Tower on his last visit.

  From Rufino Chernyshev’s body language as he’d escorted Harahap into the carefully unnamed facility, having him there hadn’t been high on his list of Really Good Ideas. That, in turn, had suggested to Harahap that whatever the facility was, it was far more than simply the place Isabel Bardasano’s private medical clinic called home. He’d scarcely been given a tour of the place—indeed, he’d seen only a lift shaft and lobbies on two floors, although the shaft panel had indicated there were at least a dozen levels below the ones he’d seen—but the security had been formidable. Formidable enough for him to find it extremely difficult to believe even the Audubon Ballroom, arguably the galaxy’s most effective terrorist organization (or freedom fighters, depending upon one’s perspective) had managed to smuggle a nuclear device into the tower.

  Besides, nuclear acts of terror were far more apocryphal than actual. First and foremost, perhaps, because the use of nuclear fusion as a means of political protest was…frowned upon. Any group which resorted to that would unite every security agency in the galaxy—including the ones who were bitter enemies in every other way—to hunt them down. Even nuclear acts of vengeance were vanishingly rare, and Harahap found it difficult to believe even the Ballroom could suffer a sudden hankering for revenge sufficient to generate three separate nuclear attacks on a single bedroom suburb of the planetary capital. Besides, anyone who could get all three of those into place—especially through the security around Suvorov Tower—could certainly have taken out far more important and painful targets in Mendel itself.