by David Weber
“What is it, Helen?” he asked in a much gentler tone, feeling Pope and Lewis look at each other and then at him and his flag lieutenant.
“Lieutenant Archer just screened me with a message from Admiral Gold Peak, Sir,” she said in an unnaturally level voice. “We’ve received amplification on the flash dispatches from Manticore. Apparently, the original casualty estimate was low.”
She paused, and something about her manifest unwillingness to continue sent an icy chill through Sir Aivars Terekhov. He’d had two T-days to come to grips—intellectually, at least—with the devastating attack, but all of them had been dreading the more detailed dispatches they knew would follow once the Admiralty and the Grantville Government had time to begin sorting out the true extent of the damage.
“How low?” he asked.
“According to Lieutenant Archer, we lost between eight and a half and nine million people, Sir, and Weyland’s destruction’s been confirmed. And”—her voice wavered ever so slightly—“so has the Kitty’s.”
“What?”
Terekhov heard his own voice ask the question, but he didn’t remember telling it to. All he could do was stare at his flag lieutenant, understanding—now—the bright sheen of unshed tears, while his mind tried to cope with the totally unanticipated shock.
Why are you so surprised? a corner of that mind asked itself. You knew she’d be in yard hands for months. Where the hell else did you think they’d send her for that? Of course she was at Hephaestus! You just didn’t want to think about that, did you?
No, he hadn’t. But now he had no choice, and he drew a deep, steadying breath that seemed to help remarkably little.
“Personnel losses?” His question sounded preposterously calm in his own ears.
“Total, Sir.” The first word came out in bits and pieces and she blinked hard, fighting to control her voice. “Some of her people were probably out of the ship,” she continued huskily. “I don’t know how many…or who. And even if they were,” despite her hard-held control a single tear trickled down her cheek, “they were probably just somewhere else in Hephaestus and…”
Her voice trailed off completely, and she stood there, gazing at him through a silvery shimmer of tears.
Terekhov’s jaw tightened. He seemed about to reply, but then he stood instead and crossed the briefing room deck in two strides. Her eyes began to widen in question, but his arms went around her before she could speak.
She stiffened. Embracing one’s flag lieutenant wasn’t exactly forbidden by Regs, but the service’s traditions came pretty damned close to that, for a lot of reasons, most of them very good ones. But Terekhov didn’t seem to care, and all Helen felt in that moment were the arms of the father who couldn’t be there for her—the father who was all too probably as dead as the men and women of HMS Hexapuma. She tried to draw the Navy’s formalities about her, reached for the armor of an officer on duty, and they crumbled in her hands.
“I know, Helen.” His voice rumbled in her ear, and the tears burst free as one hand rose to gently cup the back of her head. “I know.”
* * *
Alcohol was only one of several substances prohibited in a naval officer’s private quarters. That prohibition did not apply to flag officers and captains, of course, but then again, flag officers and captains presumably found it more difficult to drink themselves into a drunken stupor without anyone’s noticing. It wasn’t that the Royal Manticoran Navy prohibited off-duty drinking; it was simply that the RMN prohibited drunkenness, whether on duty or off. It was that distinction which prevented the private possession of alcohol—among other substances—from becoming a court-martial offense unless it was abused. At which point, as Abigail Hearns’ father was fond of saying, “Hell wouldn’t hold” the consequences for the officer in question.
At the moment, she didn’t much care about Regs, and she lifted the bottle of Silver Falls Select and refilled Helen Zilwicki’s glass.
“I don’t really drink, you know,” Helen told her.
“I know. That’s why this is the last glass you’re getting.” Abigail smiled faintly. “Under the circumstances, though, I don’t see how it could hurt.”
“I’m not drunk,” the ensign replied, although her very careful enunciation suggested that might not be entirely accurate.
“I know that, too,” Abigail reassured her, capping the bottle she’d borrowed from Mateo Gutierrez and sliding it back into a drawer. She was glad Mateo’s taste in liquor was so good, although her own glass still contained a centimeter or so of the warm, golden glory she’d poured into it at the beginning of Helen’s visit.
She settled back into the chair in front of her small desk and picked up that glass to take another tiny sip while Helen sat on her neatly made up bunk. Then she smiled again, sadly, at her guest.
“Might not be the worst thing in the world to get you a little tipsy, though, Helen,” she suggested. Helen looked at her, and she shrugged. “I’m just saying you’ve been carrying a lot around with you ever since we heard about Green Pines. Piling this on top of everything else…”
She let her voice trail off, holding Helen’s gaze.
“I’m not the only one who’s lost people,” the younger woman said almost angrily after a moment. “Everybody’s lost someone! For that matter, you and the Commodore lost just as many people aboard the Kitty as I did. Why can’t I just…you know.” She waved her whiskey glass vaguely. “Why can I just…deal with it like he does? Like you do?”
“I’m not going to bring up anything about faith, or the Test, or any of those other Grayson notions about how to deal with loss,” Abigail said calmly. “Mind you, I’ve found they really do help me at times like this. But don’t think I’m ‘dealing with it’ as handily as you seem to assume. And neither is Sir Aivars. I do think, though, that it’s hitting you—and him—even harder than it’s hitting me or Captain Kaplan. We’ve lost the Kitty and all of our friends who were with her; you and he have lost a lot more than that. Your father, his entire squadron at Hyacinth. You’ve got more to deal with than we do. Including what happened to Weyland.”
Helen had been looking down into her glass. Now her eyes snapped back up to her friend’s face, and Abigail shook her head.
“Of course you do,” she said softly. “And I wish I could tell you he’s fine. But I can’t, and you know no one else can, and somehow, Helen, you’re going to have to deal with that until you do know, one way or the other.”
“But I never had time,” Helen half-whispered. “I never really had time to tell him.” Tears welled, sliding down her face, and her lips trembled. “All of them, Abigail. All of them! And I never had the time to tell him. I think…I think he knew, but I should’ve told him. I knew how much he distrusted…personal relationships. I knew why, and…and I didn’t want to…to scare him off by going too fast. But I should’ve told him, and I didn’t. And now I’ll never be able to, and…and…”
Her voice broke, and Abigail put her glass back on the desk. She crossed to sit on the bunk beside her friend and drew her into a fierce embrace.
“You don’t know you’ll never be able to, not yet,” she said softly, fiercely. “Maybe you won’t, and maybe the Tester will let you. But, trust me, Helen. I know exactly why he’s always ‘run scared’ where anything like the way the two of you feel is concerned. I’d probably feel the same way if I knew I’d been genetically designed as a ‘pleasure slave’ by those Mesan monsters. Of course it’s hard for someone like him to trust his own emotions, much less anyone else’s! But don’t forget, I was your training officer in the Kitty. I got to know all of ‘my’ snotties pretty darned well before we got back to Manticore, and whatever else Paulo d’Arezzo may have been or not been, one thing he wasn’t was stupid!” She smiled a bit mistily through her own tears, hugging her weeping friend with one arm, stroking her hair with her free hand, and shook her head. “You may not have told him, honey, not in so many words, but trust me, he knew. I promise you, he knew.”
“So,” Brigadier Simeon Gaddis said sourly, cupping his hands in front of his mouth and blowing on them as he stepped out onto the observation platform and the cold wind off Lake Michigan whistled around his ears. He glanced back and forth between Lupe Blanton and Weng Zhing-hwan with an edge of suspicion…or perhaps the proper noun was apprehension. “What brings us all together on this fine, brisk March morning?”
“It is brisk, isn’t it?” Lieutenant Colonel Weng acknowledged cheerfully, watching that same wind shred the steam rising from her hot cup of tea.
“Actually, it’s cold enough to freeze off certain important portions of my anatomy,” he replied tartly. “Couldn’t we have found someplace out of the wind for this clandestine discussion?”
Gaddis was from the southern hemisphere of Shakin in the Bootstrap System, and Shakin’s average temperature was well above Old Earth’s. Old Chicago in March, especially anywhere near the lakefront, was like a foretaste of hell as far as he was concerned.
“It’s not a ‘clandestine discussion,’ Sir,” Weng admonished him. “It’s just three professional colleagues out to enjoy the morning sunshine.”
“And if you think anyone is going to believe that, you need to find another line of work, Colonel,” the very tall, muscular brigadier—he was forty centimeters taller than Blanton and almost thirty centimeters taller even than Weng—replied. “Although,” he continued grudgingly, “I will concede that it’s nice to see at least some sunshine after the last couple of weeks.”
The brigadier had a point, Weng conceded. The temperature in Old Chicago in March seldom dropped below about minus seven degrees, and the average low was somewhere around freezing. For the last week or so, however, it had plunged well below that average, and the bright morning sunlight reflected dazzlingly off the white snow bordering the Solarian capital’s heated walkways and roadways.
And he also had a point that no one who noticed the three of them chatting was likely to think they’d just happened to run into one another. On the other hand, the three-hundred-and-twelfth-floor observation deck was on the west side of Smith Tower, and Smith Tower happened to house JISDCC, otherwise known as the Joint Intelligence Sharing and Distribution Command Center. As such, all three of them had every right to be there, although they seldom were. In theory, JISDCC was supposed to keep all the Solarian League’s myriad intelligence agencies on the same page. In fact, the “sharing” and “distribution” bits of the Center’s charter got very short shrift. Still, there were appearances to maintain, especially given the currently worsening situation vis-à-vis the Star Empire of Manticore, so it wasn’t exactly preposterous for them to have dropped by. In fact, they’d each casually mentioned to various colleagues that they were off for a visit to show how seriously they took that situation, even though everyone knew the visit wouldn’t actually accomplish anything…except to rack up bureaucratic brownie points against future need. And each of them had carefully—and “coincidentally”—engineered the time of his or her visit to ensure that they would, in fact, wander through Smith Tower on their flag-showing expeditions at roughly the same time.
And with all three of us in the same place at the same time, it would look suspicious if we didn’t get together for a brief huddle, she reflected. Not that anyone would actually expect us to tell each other anything substantive. It’s all just part of the coup-counting part of the job.
“This shouldn’t take all that long, Sir,” she said out loud. “Lupe and I just need a little advice.”
“And you couldn’t just screen me about it?” Gaddis demanded even more sourly. “I have a perfectly nice, warm office, you know.”
“And there are probably quite a few people keeping track of the conversations you have from it,” Blanton put in. Gaddis looked at her with arched eyebrows and she shrugged. “I’m sure you take the same kind of precautions Zhing-hwan and I take, Sir. But I also know all your official calls are logged, and I’d just as soon not have anything point people at this particular conversation.”
“I hope you know how paranoid that sounds,” Gaddis observed, and both women smiled with very little humor.
“And are you going to tell us paranoia isn’t a survival tool in our business?” Weng asked him.
“No.” He shook his head. “No, probably not. To be honest, though, I have to wonder why ‘spooks’ want to talk to a straight cop like me. Or, for that matter, why you couldn’t have simply sent me an interoffice memo about it, Colonel,” he said, looking at Weng rather pointedly. “Unlike Lupe here, we’re in the same chain of command, after all.”
Weng nodded, although it wasn’t quite as simple as the brigadier had just implied. Gaddis was the equivalent of her own immediate superior, Brigadier Väinöla, but in the Gendarmerie’s Criminal Investigation Division rather than Intelligence. That meant he was an actual working cop, with very little involvement in the Gendarmes’ support for OFS out in the Verge. He was also remarkably apolitical for someone who’d risen to his position, and he’d gotten there largely because he knew where too many bodies were buried. A lot of people would have preferred to see someone a bit more…amenable to the political realities of the Solarian League’s upper echelons in his job, but they’d had to be very careful about trying to break the bureaucratic kneecaps of someone with that much ammunition. And everyone knew he was a cop’s cop, determined to do his job and prepared to exhume any of those bodies he needed to if someone got in his way. As such, he tended to be regarded as some sort of rogue elephant and given a wide, wide berth by the majority of the intelligence and law enforcement community’s senior members, many of whom had good reason to worry about any exhumations he might undertake.
And that, of course, was the reason she wasn’t about to send him any direct memos. As he’d just implied, he had very little interest in the sorts of intelligence Weng Zhing-hwan and Lupe Blanton were supposed to develop. That meant there was little official pretext for them to route reports to him, and everyone in the intelligence community knew it. In turn, that meant any official contact would be likely to draw attention…and if there was any truth to the suspicions they’d begun to nurture, the last thing they needed was to be caught sharing information with what was probably the one man in the Solarian League’s senior law enforcement who’d earned a reputation for going wherever the evidence led him and damn the political consequences.
“We’re both Gendarmes, Sir,” she said now. “We aren’t really in the same chain of command, though, are we?”
“No. But is there a reason you’re talking to me instead of Noritoshi Väinöla?” Gaddis’ tone had turned stern, and his eyes were hard. “He and I do exchange information from time to time, you know. And we have those meetings—you know, the ones where we get together with General Mabley once every couple of weeks?—where we talk about all sorts of things. More to the point, I’ve known him for a long time. If you’re about to tell me he’s involved in something I need to be taking official cognizance of, you and I may have a problem, Colonel.”
“Sir, Brigadier Väinöla knows about most of what we wanted to talk to you about. I haven’t told him quite everything we’ve picked up because, frankly, if I did, he’d be legally obligated to report my conclusions to General Mabley. And I don’t want to put him in that position any more than Lupe wants to put Adão Ukhtomskoy into the same position over at Frontier Security.”
“Why not?” Gaddis sounded rather more wary, and Weng smiled crookedly.
“We’re not violating any laws, Brigadier. For that matter, we’re not even violating any regulations. What we are doing would probably come under the heading of…deliberately withholding raw data from our superiors to protect our sources.”
“Why does that word ‘probably’ make me nervous, Colonel?”
“Because you’ve been around Old Chicago a long time, Sir,” Blanton put in. She turned her back to the lake, her hands shoved deep into her pockets, and looked up at the towering brigadier. �
�The problem is that Zhing-hwan and I—and I’m pretty sure Brigadier Väinöla—are coming to the conclusion that there’s some truth to the Manticorans’ claims that the League’s being manipulated. Which leads us to the conclusion that anyone doing the manipulating must be plugged in at what I think we could agree would be called a very high level.”
“The sort of level where they might hear about it if the two of you started sounding any alarms through official channels?”
“Exactly,” Weng said. She sipped tea from her insulated cup, treasuring the hot tea’s warmth in the cold, windy morning…and wishing her stomach didn’t feel quite so cold for an entirely different reason. “At the moment, neither Lupe nor I are concerned about our physical safety,” she continued after a moment, not completely truthfully. “But if the Manties are right, these people don’t give much of a damn how many other people get killed. I’d imagine that what you’ve seen from the Technodyne investigation could be considered evidence pointing in that direction.”
Gaddis looked at her for a moment, then nodded slowly.
“We haven’t been able to prove Technodyne was directly involved in supplying those terrorists in Talbott,” he said. “Partly, Ms. Blanton, I’m afraid that’s because quite a few of your Frontier Security people out in the Verge have been…less than forthcoming, let’s say. But there’s no doubt in my people’s minds that even if Technodyne wasn’t directly shipping the weapons, they knew all about that part of the operation. We don’t have the same kind of access into—or leverage against, for that matter—Manpower or any of the other Mesan players, but the mere fact that they’re involved, assuming the Manties aren’t completely out to lunch, would certainly indicate no one’s worrying very much about body counts.”
“And judging by what happened to Admiral Crandall, they’re getting body counts,” Weng said flatly.
“Are you seriously suggesting this ‘manipulation’ goes deep enough to move seventy or eighty ships of the wall around like tiddlywinks?” Gaddis demanded.