by David Weber
But I suppose the brain and the heart don’t always work smoothly together, and she really did love him. That’s always been obvious. And maybe, down the road, she’ll be able to remember all the good parts, all the joy, without feeling like she just abandoned them all. And it’s not like they all died, or anything. She may be dead as far as they know, but she’ll always know they’re still there, still living and loving and remembering her. That’s not so shabby, when you think about it.
“Well, nobody’s told me so, you understand,” he said out loud, resolutely ignoring the Gaul behind them, “but my brother Jack used to be up to his armpits in this kind of operation. Based on conversations I had with him, Marinescu and her people are going to have to come up with explanations for our disappearance. We can’t just inexplicably drop out of sight without raising the very questions Houdini’s supposed to prevent. It won’t be the real explanation, and in that sense I suppose we are being dishonest with the people we’ve left behind. But it’ll be the sort of explanation that makes it clear we didn’t deliberately disappear. And that means Jules and your daughters—and my family—won’t think we just abandoned them. I imagine the simplest way to do that will be to convince everyone we’re dead. Probably in an air-car accident, or stepping in front of a ground car, or something like that. It may not make Jules any happier about losing you, but he’s not going to blame you for running away from him if he thinks you’re dead. And the truth is that you really didn’t have much more choice than you would’ve had about a real air-car accident, Lisa. We’re both too deep inside the onion for any other outcome. So, in a way, we’re not being dishonest with the people we love at all. We didn’t leave them because we chose to; we left them because we’re part of something that didn’t give us any choice.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Lisa smiled up at him, briefly, then patted him on the arm. “And at least if I had to drop my entire life without any warning at all, I’ve still got at least one friend I can talk to about it. That’s something.”
“And once we get to Darius, we’ll probably find out we have quite a few friends who were on the list,” Zach told her, covering the hand on his forearm with his own. “Once we get past the upheaval, it’ll sort itself out, Lisa. It always does.”
* * *
Rufino Chernyshev reached the final screen, closed the report, and sat back in his chair with a frown. Not because Marinescu’s proposals weren’t workable. In fact, he suspected, the fact that they were workable was what bothered him the most.
Not your call, he reminded himself. And not really your responsibility, either. Which doesn’t change the fact that you wish like hell you were still out in the field getting shot at somewhere, instead.
His frown turned into a scalpel-thin smile, and he shoved up out of his comfortable chair to take a quick turn around his spacious office. Exercise, physical exertion—that was something else he missed about the field. Gym time just wasn’t the same, somehow. Maybe because there was no adrenaline rush to go with it? But at least his workspace was big enough he could actually work up a sweat if he tried hard.
Marinescu’s revised Houdini plan should accomplish everything Albrecht Detweiler wanted. Probably. The one imponderable was how long the Manties would give them, because it would take time to set the stage for Marinescu’s “incidents.” And even if that hadn’t been true, they’d have to lift more personnel out in much bigger chunks than the original Houdini plan had envisioned. Rather than moving people in dribs and drabs, they’d have to put as many as several hundred warm bodies each aboard a much smaller number of ships. That promised to be ticklish. The existing plan had called for them to evacuate no more than eleven or twelve hundred critical personnel per month, and that would have been no problem at all. The normal mortality rate from all causes in the Mesa System ran to about four percent. In a star system with the next best thing to thirteen billion citizens, “disappearing” an additional 0.0000001% of the total population each month wouldn’t be even a blip. But they couldn’t do it that way under the accelerated timetable, and pulling out thirty or forty times that number in a single month, the way the new plan envisioned, would be something very different. Hence the “terrorist” scenario.
But even with “terrorist attacks” to explain people’s disappearance, physically moving that many bodies would be another serious challenge—one which precluded the original intention of sending them out in small groups aboard ships which were part of the normal traffic flow. That meant juggling shipping movements to get the needed transport where it was required at the time it was required, and that equated to additional risk. And to the use of…suboptimal vessels in too many cases.
Marinescu’s right about that, too…damn it. An awful lot of our people are going to have to travel aboard Manpower’s slave transports. In fact, they’ll have to travel in the slave quarters—and won’t they just love that!
He was entirely happy that he wouldn’t be the one listening to alpha and beta-liners from the upper strata of Mesa’s scientific, political, and financial sectors who’d just found out they were traveling in the same quarters as genetic slaves. He didn’t care who did end up listening to them, as long as it wasn’t him!
And it beats hell out of what’s going to happen to an awful lot of people right here on Mesa, he reflected grimly.
One of the aspects of Marinescu’s revised plan that he least liked was the way she’d cut down on the evacuation lists. A lot of people who’d thought they’d be leaving on that far distant day when Operation Houdini was put into effect wouldn’t be. Marinescu had concluded that there simply wouldn’t be time and personnel lift capacity enough to pull all of them out on the accelerated schedule, and she’d cold-bloodedly narrowed the list by removing “nonessential” names from it.
But the people to whom those names belonged couldn’t be left behind, either, because they knew too much about the inner onion. None of them were deep enough inside to know the details—that was why she’d classified them as “nonessential” in the first place—but all of them were aware of the existence of the Detweiler Plan, and the galaxy at large could not become aware of its existence yet. The fact that Herlander Simões was available to spill what he knew about it to the Manties and the Havenites was bad enough; if a few thousand more Herlanders turned up right here on Mesa to confirm his “lunatic ravings” things could get very bad. And so, quite a few loyal members of the Alignment would gather at their evacuation points…only to become additional victims of those vicious “Ballroom terrorists.”
He didn’t like it. In fact, he hated it. But there truly wasn’t another option, and Marinescu was reptilian enough to embrace that without flinching. Which confirmed a decision Chernevsky had made some time ago…without bothering Albrecht or Collin Detweiler about it.
But if all those people were going to die anyway, then surely he could at least make their deaths mean something. Contribute to the movement to which they’d dedicated their lives, even if at the very end that movement was forced to sacrifice them. The mere fact that they were “terrorist victims” would strengthen the narrative Albrecht and Marinescu were constructing, but there were going to be so many angry voices—Mesan and Manticoran, on both sides—shouting so stridently that the narrative was likely to get lost in the weeds. Unless…
He paused in his pacing, his eyes widening, and then he smiled. In fact, he chuckled at the first truly amusing thought to come out of the entire Houdini bloodfest. He crossed to his desk and punched the key on his com.
“Yes, Sir?” Samuel Hairston’s voice replied almost instantly.
“Samuel, I need a message sent to Old Terra.”
“Of course, Sir. To whom should I address it?”
“To Audrey O’Hanrahan,” Chernevsky said with a broad smile. “I think it’s time our wandering girl paid us a visit and did a nice human relations story right here on Mesa.”
JULY 1922 POST DIASPORA
“Tell me, Elizabeth. Do you really think Mi
ke Henke wouldn’t’ve gone right ahead and responded exactly the same way even if the Governor had told her not to?”
—Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington,
Duchess and Steadholder Harrington,
CO Grand Fleet.
Chapter Fifty-One
The sky over Lake Michigan was gorgeous, a flawless vault of midnight spangled with the glittering lights of mankind’s original starscape and so clear of clouds not even the sky glow from the Solarian League’s capital could hide it. The light-spangled flanks of Old Chicago’s towers, rising sheer and tall out of the lake, reflected from its mirror-smooth surface like brighter, far more numerous stars, and the breeze rising from the water was a welcome kiss of coolness through the evening’s residual heat.
Brigadier Simeon Gaddis sat on the balcony of his five-hundredth-floor apartment, gazing out across that panorama, and sipped thoughtfully at the tall, cold drink in his hand.
It seemed so calm, so peaceful, he thought. As if everything was just the way it had been before word of the Battle of Manticore reached Old Terra. Before the Navy discovered that Massimo Filareta’s entire fleet had been captured or—in the case of what sounded like at least half his superdreadnoughts—destroyed by the “Grand Alliance” of Manticore and the Republic of Haven.
Never saw that one coming, he reflected. Which probably says something about my own underestimate of what Manty weapons can do. But Manticore and Haven allied with each other? Maybe some of the spooks saw it on the horizon, but me? He shook his head. And whatever anyone like that idiot Nyhus has to say about it, that strikes me as pretty conclusive evidence the Manties—and the Havenites—are damned serious about this “Mesan Alignment” they claim is out there. Unless he wants to come up with something else that could make them not just stop shooting at each other but both shoot at us after the last eighty or ninety T-years of hating each others’ guts!
All of which gave added point to the information Lupe Blanton and Weng Zhing-hwan had shared with him.
He’d been through their documentation at least a dozen times in the months since they’d handed him their data chip. He’d been damned careful to keep that chip out of anything except his own personal, standalone reader, too. And he’d done a little very quiet, very cautious poking around of his own.
So far, as much as he’d have liked to conclude they were suffering paranoid delusions, he’d found no evidence of anything of the sort. Worse, he’d come to the conclusion that Rajmund Nyhus was actively manufacturing evidence that Manticore was orchestrating the unrest sweeping through the Verge. Gaddis was willing to concede that assuming Manticoran involvement was a natural leap, given the state of war—now a formal, declared state of war, thanks to the Manties—between the League and the Star Empire. But Nyhus’ reports (which Gaddis wasn’t supposed to be seeing) were far too definite in their conclusions in that respect. The brigadier couldn’t even have begun to guess how many other falsified documents he’d seen in the course of his career had carried that taint of fitting together too deeply, too perfectly. No, he was convinced they were a put-up job—or at least filled with data, much of it sketchy, to say the very least, which had been skillfully shaped into a deliberately misleading mosaic. So either Nyhus was a hell of a lot smarter than Gaddis had ever believed he was, or else he was fronting for someone.
Most likely, he’s just being someone else’s mouthpiece. Of course, that leaves the question of who “someone else” is. It really could be just your typical rotten-to-the-core transstellar trying to break the Manties’ kneecaps, but I don’t think so. I think Lupe and Weng are onto something, and that scares the shit out of me.
He took another small up from his glass, feeling the alcohol glow its way down his throat, and sighed.
And now Natsuko’s getting involved, he thought glumly. I wonder if she even begins to guess just how risky that could be?
Given the choice of which of his subordinates he most trusted, he would have picked Lieutenant Colonel Natsuko Okiku without hesitation. And not just on a personal level. He’d seen her work—worked with her—for over ten T-years, and he’d learned to trust her instincts. She was quite young for her rank, not yet forty-three, but she was as determined to catch the bad guys—whoever they were and whatever friends they might have—as Gaddis himself. And she was also as sharp as they came and a brilliant, tenacious investigator who simply would not give up once she had her teeth into a problem. That was what made her so incredibly valuable.
And it was also likely to get her killed.
Gaddis was reasonably certain—but only reasonably certain—no one else had noticed her covert meetings with Captain Daud al-Fanudahi. He couldn’t be positive, but he was pretty sure Major Bryce Tarkovsky, from Meindert Osterhaut’s shop in Marine Intelligence, had also been privy to several of those meetings, and he knew Irene Teague had been present. That said quite a lot right there, since Captain Teague was Frontier Fleet and al-Fanudahi was Battle Fleet. But the question in Gaddis’ mind was exactly what Okiku was doing as part of that thoroughly ominous little gathering.
No, he told himself. It’s not a “question” at all. What scares you is that you’re pretty damned sure al-Fanudahi reached out to her through Tarkovsky for exactly the same reasons Lupe and Weng came to talk to you, Simeon. And, knowing Natsuko the way you do, you’re equally sure what she told them.
He drank again, then sighed once more, set the glass down, and reached for his personal com. He punched in a combination.
“Yes, Sir?” a voice replied, no more than ten seconds later.
“I know it’s after hours, Natsuko, but there’s something I’d like to discuss. Could you drop by my office about oh-nine-hundred tomorrow morning?”
“Of course, Sir. Should I ask what it’s about?”
“Nothing that won’t keep until then,” he said calmly. “See you tomorrow.”
“Yes, Sir. Good night.”
“Night, Natsuko.”
He cut the connection and gazed out over the placid, brilliant starscape of the water and the more distant, far vaster starscape of the heavens, and wished with all his heart the galaxy truly was that peaceful.
But it’s not, Simeon. And if Natsuko’s going to put her butt on the line, you damned well need to be out there at least covering her back. Besides, his lips quirked briefly as he reached for the glass once more, you’ll be a much more difficult target than one more lieutenant colonel who’s only trying to do her job.
* * *
“So, what do you make of all this?” President Eloise Pritchart waved one hand at the display where they’d just finished viewing the latest dispatches from the Talbott Quadrant.
“Well,” Empress Elizabeth Winton replied, “I’m sure I’m naturally inclined to go along with Mike—Countess Gold Peak—simply because she’s my cousin, but I think she’s made a pretty compelling case, actually.”
“I’ve known Mike almost as long as you have, Elizabeth,” Honor Alexander-Harrington observed, “and I’ve never known her to go off after wild hares…in her professional capacity, at least.” Her lips twitched. “Now, in her personal life, from time to time…”
“Just be glad you never knew Aunt Caitrin when she was Mike’s age.” Elizabeth shook her head and rolled her eyes. “That aside, however, should I assume you endorse her conclusions?”
“Of course I do.” Honor shrugged. “I suppose I ought to admit I’m genetically predisposed—you should pardon the expression—to be suspicious as hell wherever Mesa and Manpower are concerned. Having said that, it makes perfect sense from their perspective, given what we know about the ‘Alignment’ thanks to Captain Zilwicki and Agent Cachat. It’s probably not costing much more than their efforts in Monica did, and look at the potential payoff from their side! I doubt they’d anticipated what we did to Filareta last month, but they have to know how this would be the equivalent of a red flag for OFS and the Mandarins. Given what Lacoön’s doing to the League’s cash flow, they literally can’t affo
rd to lose Verge systems. So this is guaranteed to draw the strongest response the Sollies are capable of. In the meantime, it’ll play wonderfully to the Solly public when Abruzzi’s shills at Education and Information present it as yet more evidence of our ‘imperialist’ ambitions. As for what happens when ‘our’ promised naval support doesn’t turn up on schedule…”
She shook her head, her expression grim, and Benjamin Mayhew nodded.
“As someone whose star nation’s been the beneficiary of Manticoran trustworthiness, I can tell you exactly how valuable the Star Kingdom’s reputation for keeping its word really is.”
“And as someone who was royally shafted by that bastard High Ridge, you’ve also had first-hand experience of what happened when the Star Kingdom didn’t keep its word, too,” the Earl of White Haven said grimly.
“I wouldn’t go that far, Hamish,” Benjamin disagreed gently. “I never thought the Star Kingdom wasn’t keeping its word. I do have to wonder, though, how his and Descroix’s foreign policy played into the thinking behind this.”
“I’m sure it did,” Pritchart said. “On the other hand, Arnold Giancola’s…creative editing must’ve been at least as much a part of it. The way you and I were proclaiming diametrically opposed versions of our diplomatic correspondence did Manticore’s reputation a lot of damage, I’m afraid, Elizabeth.”
“Couldn’t have done it if High Ridge hadn’t set the stage for it,” Elizabeth replied. “Which is taking us a little afield. Your question was whether or not I think Mike’s uncovered an actual Alignment operation, and my response is that I definitely think she has. And I also completely approve of Baroness Medusa and Admiral Khumalo’s reaction to it.”
“I do too,” Honor said, with something that looked suspiciously like a grin. Elizabeth quirked an eyebrow at her, and Honor chuckled. “Tell me, Elizabeth. Do you really think Mike Henke wouldn’t’ve gone right ahead and responded exactly the same way even if the Governor had told her not to?”