Shadow of Victory

by David Weber

  The target selection itself was proof enough that whatever else might have happened, it hadn’t been a coordinated terrorist operation. One deserted, near-derelict tower. One top-secret facility which obviously belonged to someone other than the system government. And one residential park where over three hundred children had been caught in the blast, not counting all the other civilians who’d died in the surrounding residential towers.

  There’d been no reason to take out Buenaventura Tower. A little discreet investigation told Harahap it had been effectively uninhabited for over five local years while the city authorities dealt with more immediate projects. Demolishing a ceramacrete tower the better part of a kilometer in height was what one might call a nontrivial exercise. Renovating one of them was easier and much more cost-effective, but that didn’t for a moment mean it was cheap. So until there was a pressing need for that space, Green Pines had elected to simply maintain its approach landscaping and façade while abandoning its interior to the local equivalent of rats, bats, snakes, and a double handful of squatters. All of which made it about as useless a target for a “terrorist strike” as Harahap could imagine.

  The Pine Valley Park attack made sense only if one assumed the people behind it were unhinged…and unhinged people out for the maximum atrocity quotient didn’t also waste nuclear devices attacking empty targets. Anyone who wanted to kill hundreds of kids would have hit a fully occupied residential tower, not one that had stood empty for years.

  And then there was Suvorov.

  Damien Harahap was no demolitions expert, but a man in his line of work picked up all sorts of odd bits of knowledge, and the planetary news feeds were still showing aerial shots of the blast sites virtually round-the-clock. He’d looked them over carefully, and he was convinced the device which had shattered Suvorov and inflicted significant damage on its neighboring towers had been detonated under the structure.

  In fact, it had been detonated inside the facility to which Chernyshev had taken him. That was the only possible explanation for the pattern of destruction. And it hadn’t been done by any “terrorist organization.” Grievous as the damage was, it was also sharply contained. In fact, it was so sharply contained Harahap was certain he’d been looking at the aftermath of a suicide charge designed by the facility’s owners to completely obliterate it while minimizing collateral damage.

  Of course, “minimize” was a purely relative term for anyone willing to use a nuclear demolition charge inside a densely populated city.

  But why? What could have possessed Bardasano’s unnamed superiors to destroy their own facility? The only explanation that made even halfway sense was that their “Mesan Alignment” had fallen afoul of the system government. That the situation had been so dire they’d decided they had no choice but to destroy something as big, carefully hidden, and obviously expensive as the facility Harahap had visited lest its contents—and records, perhaps?—fall into…unfriendly official hands. But the major corporations—especially Manpower, Incorporated—ran the Mesan government, and Bardasano’s Alignment was obviously in bed with at least several of those corporations, which made official displeasure unlikely. Besides, if Bardasano’s people were in that much trouble with the local cops, he’d be having a lengthy discussion with someone in a uniform right now. Yet that only brought him back to the virtual impossibility of anyone else’s getting a nuclear bomb through the security he’d observed.

  No, something had gone wrong—something internal to the Alignment—in a major way. It might be being blamed on the Ballroom, and he could see all sorts of upsides to that from the viewpoint of the Mesan government, but whatever it had been, it hadn’t been “terrorists.”

  All of which led to some very interesting speculation indeed.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry it took us so long to bring you in for a proper debrief, Mr. Harahap,” the man in the counter-grav chair said.

  He looked to be about Harahap’s own age, although that was always tricky with prolong involved, and it would appear he hadn’t gotten off unscathed during the recent excitement. Quick-heal had healed whatever soft tissue damage he’d taken in the T-month since the attacks (or whatever they’d been). There were still signs, though, if one knew where to look, which suggested some of that damage had been damned severe. More to the point, quick-heal was slower where bones were concerned, and the counter-grav chair—and the pair of folding canes hanging from one armrest—suggested the bone damage had been even worse.

  “I’ve been watching the news feeds,” Harahap replied to the semi-apology, and shrugged. “From what I’ve seen, you all have your hands pretty full. I can understand how schedules might have gotten…disarranged.”

  “Oh, they’ve certainly been that,” the other man said dryly. “In fact, that’s why I’m handling your debrief instead of Ms. Bardasano.” His mouth twisted, his eyes bitter. “I’m afraid she was killed by the terrorists.”

  “I…see,” Harahap said. That was one he’d never seen coming. Bardasano, dead? That was interesting, especially given his conclusions about where the Suvorov Tower bomb had actually been placed. In fact…

  So if it wasn’t terrorists, then maybe someone inside the Alignment managed to smuggle one in. Or maybe someone inside the Alignment just hacked the software and used a bomb the facility’s builders had conveniently parked there for him? That would make a lot more sense than believing someone from the outside could smuggle one past their security. But if that’s the case, what the hell is going on? Somehow I doubt it was just someone with a personal grudge against Bardasano!

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he went on after a moment. “I can’t say I’d really gotten to know her well, but I’ve always preferred working for professionals, and she was clearly that.”

  “Yes, she was,” the other man agreed. “And, as you’ve probably already concluded, Isabel worked for me. That’s why I’m handling your debrief. There’s been some…significant confusion since the attacks. Frankly, there was more to them than just the damage everyone in general knows about. In addition to the nuclear devices that were used, we got hit with a highly sophisticated cyber attack.” He sat back in his grav-chair, his expression one of profound disgust. “We’re working on reconstituting the data that was destroyed or corrupted, but until we complete that we can’t really bring any new people up to speed on ongoing operations. That’s why debriefs like yours have to be handled by someone who already knows what’s going on.”

  “I see,” Harahap said again, filing away the additional evidence that whoever had hit the Alignment had done it from inside.

  “For whatever it’s worth,” he went on, “I have the complete data set she gave me as part of my initial mission brief in the computers aboard ship.”

  “Really?” The other man straightened. “What sort of data set?”

  “As far as I know, the complete raw data and a complete file of her people’s analysis of it.” The other’s eyebrows rose, and Harahap shrugged. “I asked her for it because I wanted to make my own analysis. And from what I saw in the field, I think she really did give me all of it.”

  “That will be very welcome,” the other man said. “I’m confident we can reconstitute all of it, ultimately, given how many places its bits and pieces were stored, but getting that big a chunk back intact will help a lot.”

  He sounded a bit less certain of his people’s ability to do all that reconstituting than he probably wanted to, but that wasn’t Harahap’s problem.

  “It was delivered to me originally hand-carried on chips, not transmitted,” the ex-gendarme said. “I presume that was because of its sensitivity. I can go back up and bring it down myself, or I can give you the security codes to retrieve it without whoever you send wiping it…or blowing himself up.”

  “I think enough things have blown up already.” The other man smiled thinly. “We’ll probably send you back up in person. But first, tell me about your conclusions.”

  “Of course.” Harahap settle
d back in his chair. “From this trip, the two that stand out to me as having potential for Janus are Włocławek and Swallow. Wonder’s pretty much useless from Janus’ perspective, but it has potential value as a place outside Swallow where our people can meet with one of the locals who’s involved in the Cripple Mountain Movement up to his neck. He’s got a legitimate business interest that takes him to Wonder on a semiregular basis.

  “As I say, I don’t see much point in looking for revolutionaries in Wonder. There is a lot of general unhappiness, but it’s basically the same situation I found in Any Port. There’s a lot of talk and any number of people who’re willing to complain and play at rebellious attitudes—even turn out for protest marches—but that’s as far as it’s likely to go. I have a complete report on the system, including the analysis behind my conclusions. I brought that much down with me”—he opened his briefcase and extracted a data chip—“for someone else to crosscheck, but I really think any additional effort there would simply waste time and resources.”

  His debriefer took the chip with a nod, and Harahap sat back once more.

  “Now, Swallow’s an entirely different situation,” he said. “First, what’s going on in that system’s been brewing for years, and there’s deep, personal involvement by a significant segment of the population. It’s not the biggest segment, but it has a disproportionate amount of influence, and the people in it are about as bloody-minded as it comes. I spoke to one of them, and—”

  * * *

  “He’s good, Father,” Collin Detweiler said several hours later. He and his father sat on the veranda of Albrecht Detweiler’s island mansion, cold drinks in hand while they listened to the surf and enjoyed the sea breeze. “In fact, he’s very good. Just as good as Isabel said he was.”

  “In that case, I have to wonder what conclusions he’s drawn about Green Pines,” his father said.

  “I didn’t ask him, and I don’t intend to.” Collin sipped whiskey, then set his glass down carefully. “For one thing, he knows damned well that the Gamma Center was under Suvorov.”

  “He knows about the Gamma Center?” Albrecht Detweiler’s expression tightened ominously. “Just why the fuck does he know anything about the Gamma Center?!”

  “He doesn’t know how big it was, he doesn’t know what we were doing down there, and he sure as hell doesn’t have a clue about how important it was,” Collin said soothingly. “Isabel was really rushed when she had him prepped, though. You know the suicide-protocol nannies have to be genetically coded and programmed before they can be injected. If she was going to get that done before she sent him out, the Gamma Center clinic was the best place to do it. But I don’t think you have to worry about anything he may have seen there. Among other things, she had Chernyshev personally escort him.”

  His father glared at him for another handful of seconds, then—slowly—relaxed back into his chair.

  “All right…I suppose,” he growled, then wagged an index finger. “I don’t like it, though. We’re getting way too close to be bringing any outsiders that deep into the onion.”

  “I suspect Harahap’s figured out there is an onion, Father.” Collin shrugged. “I don’t think there’s any way he could have a clue as to exactly what it is, though. And if we’re going to make use of him—which I really think we should—we’re just going to have to accept that when you use a man this smart, he’s bound to figure out at least a few things you’d rather he didn’t. The only way to avoid that would be to use people too stupid to do the figuring out…which would be a really, really good way to shoot ourselves in both feet.”

  “Granted. Granted!” Albrecht waved one hand. “And if you agree with Isabel that we need to use him, then I suppose I’m willing to sign off on it.”

  “I don’t think we have a lot of choice, really.” Collin shrugged again. “We’re still trying to get ourselves reorganized after that cyber attack, and we lost both of Isabel’s deputies—not to mention Jack McBryde—along with the Gamma Center. That means we’re stretched thin for ‘upper management’ people all the way inside the onion, and that means we need to draft senior field operatives to fill the gaps. Frankly, I’m thinking we’re going to have to pull Chernyshev in and give him Isabel’s job.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Albrecht frowned. “He’s been awfully effective in the field for a long time.”

  “Which is why we need Harahap to replace him—or at least partially replace him. Unfortunately, I can’t think of anyone else we still have who (a) has the ‘hands-on’ field ops experience Isabel had, (b) is as fully briefed on her various ops as he is—you know she was using him virtually as a third deputy—and (c) is just as smart and capable as she was. And while it was never really a problem, he’s also quite a bit more stable than she was. For that matter, his entire geno’s more stable than the Bardasano line, and you know it.”

  Albrecht frowned some more, then nodded.

  “Point taken,” he said. “So how is Harahap going to replace him?”

  “I’m going to give him primary responsibility for Włocławek and Swallow. I’ll be sending him back to Mobius first, though. He made the initial contact there, so I want him to make the introductions for whoever replaces Chernyshev in that system. It’s too far from the others for him to take it over permanently, though.”

  “I can see that.” Albrecht nodded again. “The only thing that bothers me is that if he’s as smart as you say, then the information we’ll have to give him to steer things along properly is also going to give him a much better look inside than I’m really comfortable with.”

  “He may not get as deep a look as you’re afraid he will, Father,” Collin said, reaching for his whiskey glass once more. “And even if he does,” he paused to sip from the glass, then smiled coldly, “he did make that trip to the Gamma Center clinic, didn’t he?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Well, it’s certainly impressive, Luiz,” Oravil Barregos, the Office of Frontier Security’s governor for the Maya Sector, said.

  “Please, Oravil.” Admiral Luiz Rozsak winced. “We’re traditionalists around here. A ship—even one that hasn’t quite been completed yet—is she, not it.”

  “Really?” Barregos looked at the slightly shorter admiral, dark eyes innocent, and Rozsak snorted.

  “All right, you got me.” He shook his head and beckoned the governor through the open door into the very large, very comfortably furnished cabin—small suite, really—on the other side. “Am I really that predictable?”

  “Only in some ways, Luiz. Only in some ways.”

  Barregos walked to the middle of the spacious flag officer’s day cabin and turned to look at the smart wall which covered one entire bulkhead. The cabin itself was buried deep at the heart of the armored core hull of what would someday soon be the battlecruiser SLNS Sharpshooter. Its—no, her, he corrected himself with a mental grin—originally assigned name had been Defiance, which he still thought would have been a perfectly splendid name, given the reason she’d been laid down. On the other hand, Sharpshooter was even better…and one hell of a lot more meaningful after the Battle of Torch.

  The governor’s mouth tightened, mental grins forgotten, as he thought once again of the losses, including Sharpshooter’s cruiser predecessor, Rozsak and his men and women had suffered defending the Kingdom of Torch and its ex-genetic slave citizens. He deeply regretted those deaths. He couldn’t possibly regret what they’d died doing, but all those people, all those ships…

  He shook his head sadly, eyes on the smart wall, gazing at the sun-burnished images of the other ships taking shape in the dispersed orbital yards of Erewhon. There were a lot of those ships, and construction on several of them was as advanced as it was in the case of Rozsak’s flagship-to-be.

  “I miss them too,” Rozsak said quietly. He’d stepped up beside Barregos while the governor drifted in his own thoughts. Now Barregos glanced sideways at him, and the dark, trim admiral shrugged. “I know what you were thinking. I
think the same thing a lot when I look at this.” He jutted his chin at the smart wall. “I think about how Commander Carte and the rest of them never got a chance to see it. And about exactly how they’d look forward to those bastards in Old Chicago finding out about it.”

  “I know.”

  Barregos rested a hand on Rozsak’s shoulder for a moment. Then he turned and seated himself in one of the day cabin’s chairs and pointed at the identical chair facing it across a coffee table which looked like hammered copper.

  “I realize this is actually your cabin, not mine,” the governor said in a considerably lighter tone, “but seeing as how I’m the Governor and you’re only the Admiral…”

  “And so becomingly modest, too,” Rozsak marveled, sinking into the indicated chair, and Barregos chuckled, wondering how certain members of his staff might have reacted to the admiral’s flagrant lese majesty. No doubt many of them, especially in the outer circle, would have been outraged. Oravil Barregos wasn’t. There might have been as many as three human beings in the entire galaxy he trusted as totally as he did Luiz Rozsak; there damned well weren’t four of them, though.

  “All of us would-be megalomaniac tinpot dictators are modest,” he said in reply. “We only think we’re half as godlike as we really are.”

  “One of the things I like most about you,” Rozsak agreed affably.

  “In addition to becomingly modest, however, I’m also a bit pressed for time,” Barregos went on, his expression more serious, “and there are a few things we need to discuss under four eyes before we sit down with anyone else.”

  Rozsak nodded, his own expression attentive. “Under four eyes” was an Erewhonese idiom he and Barregos had adopted long since. It described a discussion between only two people—one secure from any eavesdropping and totally unrecorded. Which, given the nature of their discussions and the Solarian League’s penalties for treason and mutiny, seemed like a very good idea to him.