by David Weber
* * *
“Excuse me, Governor,” Julie Magilen said, “but there’s someone I think you’d better see.”
Oravil Barregos looked up from the never ending flood of paperwork with raised eyebrows. Magilen had been with him for almost thirty T-years, and she was his personal secretary and office manager, definitely not his receptionist. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d told him someone wanted to see him, especially someone without an appointment, and something about her tone…
“By all means, Julie,” he said, bookmarking his place and closing the file he’d been perusing. “Who is it?”
“I think I’ll let her introduce herself, if that’s all right with you, Sir.”
“Of course it is,” he replied, his expression slightly puzzled, and glanced at the tall, red-haired man seated in the corner of his office as she stepped back through the door to collect his visitor. Vegar Spangen had headed his personal security detail for almost as long as Magilen had run his office staff. Now he stood and moved casually to one side, unsealing his tunic and placing himself where the governor wouldn’t be in his line of fire if that became necessary.
Which it won’t, of course, Barregos told himself. On the other hand, a little constructive paranoia never hurt anyone.
Magilen returned, and Oravil Barregos frowned as a tallish woman followed her into the office. It took a moment, since she was in expensive, well-tailored civilian clothing, but he’d done his homework well, and he felt his eyebrows trying to disappear into his hairline as he recognized her. If she’d been in uniform, that uniform would have been the black and gold of the Star Empire of Manticore, not the white of the SLN. It would also have borne the shoulder flash of the Office of Naval Intelligence and the four broad gold cuff bands of a admiral.
“Admiral Givens.” It took every year of his political experience to keep the utter astonishment out of his voice. “This is an…unexpected honor.”
“I certainly hope it’s ‘unexpected,’ Governor Barregos,” the Second Space Lord of the Royal Manticoran Navy said dryly. “If it’s not, I’m afraid I’m about to get you into a lot of trouble with Old Chicago.”
“Actually,” he replied with a smile, “I think we’re already in a fair way to getting me into trouble with the Mandarins. Of course, hopefully they won’t know about that for another few months.”
“Oh.” Givens cocked her head. “You’re that far along?”
“Excuse me?”
This time he couldn’t keep the surprise out of his tone, and she frowned. For some reason, her expression sent a chill through him, and he waved at the same conference table where he’d met with Ellingsen and Abernathy.
“Why don’t you have a seat, Admiral,” he invited, “and tell me why Empress Elizabeth has sent her senior uniformed intelligence officer all the way to Maya?”
* * *
“She said what?!”
Luiz Rozsak stared at Oravil Barregos’ com image, and the governor tried to remember if he’d ever before seen Rozsak display an expression of sheer, stunned disbelief. He didn’t think he had. In fact, he doubted anyone had. In this case, though, God knew the admiral had every excuse.
“She said she’d come to Smoking Frog personally instead of simply sending a message—or a messenger—because Elizabeth and President Pritchart felt it was important to impress upon us the seriousness with which they view a false-flag operation the Alignment appears to be running. One in which they pretend to be Manticoran agents provocateur and make all sorts of promises about weapons and naval support in order to provoke insurrections that will divert Solarian resources from the Grand Alliance.” He smiled thinly. “Does that remind you of any conversations you and I may have had recently? Like, oh, three days ago?”
“Son of a bitch,” Rozsak said. Then he shook himself, and his eyes hardened. “I told Edie Abernathy was a spook, not a shooter. But, God, Oravil! It took great big brass ones to waltz into your office and sell us that bill of goods. Damned if they didn’t do it, too!” Those brown eyes got even harder. “I don’t like being played for a fool, but they managed it nicely, didn’t they?”
“I think there was a politician back on Old Terra who said something about being able to fool some of the people some of the time, but nobody being able to fool all of the people all of the time,” Barregos replied. “And I have to say Admiral Givens’ reaction when I told her about our recent visitors and showed her the security cameras’ imagery was…energetic. She was not amused.”
“Well, they took a hell of a chance, but they did their prep work, didn’t they?” Rozsak tipped back in his chair. “That holo of ‘Langtry’ was a nice touch, too. If Givens hadn’t come out here in person, I might’ve been inclined to wonder which batch of Manties we should be listening to!”
“I know. And I’m wondering about ‘Mr. Ellingsen’s’ resemblance to the Winton Dynasty, too. Biosculpt, you think?”
“Almost certainly,” Rozsak agreed. “Bastards thought of everything, didn’t they?”
“Just about. Although, if I hadn’t mentioned those missiles Delvecchio’s promised us to ‘Ellingsen’ on his first visit, you might’ve tripped Abernathy up when you started talking force levels. I find that more than mildly irritating.”
“You’re probably right, but the bastard was quick on his feet. He might’ve brushed through it anyway. And there’s no point kicking yourself over it at this point. For that matter, I’d’ve done the same thing in your place. Why not? You were talking to one Manty about another Manty, and both of them were supposedly on our side.” Rozsak shrugged. “The important thing is that now we know. I wonder…”
His voice trailed off and Barregos tilted his head.
“Wonder what?”
“Oh,” Rozsak smiled almost beatifically, “I’m just hoping Captain Abernathy plans on dropping in on us again. I’d really like to discuss our joint operational plan with him.”
“I’d pay money to see that conversation,” Barregos said feelingly. “In the meantime, though, you, Richard Wise, Commander Watanapongse and I have to sit down and go back through all those rumors about ‘unrest’ we’ve been hearing out of places like Kondratii. If there’s anything to them—if these ‘Alignment’ bastards really are trying to touch off a wave of rebellions in our neighborhood—I think we should make it clear that we take…a dim view of that sort of shenanigans.”
“Just how ‘dim’ a view did you have in mind?” Rozsak asked.
“Interesting you should ask. I’ve just been discussing that very point with Admiral Givens, and she’s going to join both of us for dinner. I think you should fix something special, because afterward, the three of us are going to give some thought to how we might make the punishment fit the crime.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
“Can you believe this?” Jan Cabrnoch demanded. “Who the hell does Sabatino think he is?”
The Kumang System President looked considerably less photogenic than usual as he glared at his chief of staff. His dark hair—dramatically silver at the temples—seemed to bristle with anger, and his normally piercing blue eyes blazed with fury.
At the moment, the last thing in the universe Zuzana Žďárská wanted was to answer his question. Unfortunately, not answering it wasn’t an option.
“I don’t know who he thinks he is, Mister President,” she said, with rather less than total truthfulness and addressing him far more formally than usual. Informality seemed contraindicated at the moment. “But I think this is a panic reaction to last month,” she continued “If we just ride it out, then—”
“Ride it out? Christ, Zuzana! He’s ‘requested’ an answer by this afternoon! How the hell am I supposed to ‘ride out’ a five-hour deadline?”
Žďárská bit her lip, trying frantically to think of a response.
Cabrnoch exploded out of his chair and began stalking back and forth across his office’s deep carpet with angry, jerky strides. He frequently paced while wrestling with problems, but n
ever like today. He’d been president for thirty-five T-years, and in all that time Žďárská had never seen him so elementally furious.
Of course, he’d never before been told he’d just been fired, either.
“This is your fault!” Cabrnoch snapped, whirling to stab an index finger at her. “You were the one who advised me to send in the Safeties when those lunatics started burning down Velehrad!”
Žďárská started to open her mouth, then closed it firmly. That accusation, she thought, was totally unfair. She hadn’t advised him to send them in; she simply hadn’t argued when he decided to do it! But if she said that…
“Mister President,” she said instead, “it’s obvious Mr. Sabatino’s reacting to the riots. It doesn’t really matter to him why anyone rioted. What matters is that the level of violence—violence provoked by the rioters, not the Velehrad PD or the CPSF—has him scared that there’s still more unrest on the horizon. But there’s no provision in the Constitution for the simultaneous resignation of both the President and the Vice President! Whatever Mr. Sabatino may want, there’s no legal way to give it to him! I think we should make that point. At the very least the legal obstacles have to give him pause, and once he’s been forced to stop and think about the difficulties involved, there’s an excellent chance his initial panic will ease.”
“Hah!” Cabrnoch snorted. “He’s had damned near a month for his panic to ‘ease,’ Zuzana. What the hell makes you think he’ll change his mind just because I tell him ‘Oh, I’d love to resign, but I can’t do it legally?’ He’ll only demand we change the frigging Constitution, too!”
“Even if demands that, it’ll take time, Mister President. And our people control the news channels and the electoral process.”
“For now,” Cabrnoch grated. “If he starts waving money around, how long will ‘our people’ still be ‘our people’?” He shook his head angrily. “He’ll yank them out from under us and throw their support behind that bastard Šiml. You know that’s who he’s planning on bringing in to replace me!”
He had a point, Žďárská admitted bleakly, and anger of her own churned through her at the thought. She’d taken so much pleasure in kicking Šiml’s sorry ass out of Jan Cabrnoch’s path to power. And the bleeding-heart had been so holier-than-thou in his ‘principled opposition’ to Cabrnoch’s—and Zuzana Žďárská’s—rise to the top. She’d helped turn him into a pauper, banished to his pathetic position at Sokol, and now this. Cabrnoch was right about what Sabatino had in mind…and if he fell from power, what happened to her? Especially if Šiml took his place? She rather doubted anyone was going to offer her a golden grav harness or any off-planet retirement villas!
Cabrnoch stopped his furious pacing and dropped back into his enormous desk chair. His shoulders sagged, and when he shook his head again, it was no longer an angry gesture. This time, it was one of resignation, and an icy chill ran through Žďárská as she watched the energy flow out of him.
“Mister President,” she began, “I don’t—”
“It’s over,” he cut her off flatly. She stiffened, and he leaned back, his expression grim. “He’s got all the cards. If I don’t accept his ‘generous offer’ he’ll call in his OFS lapdogs. If he drops all that evidence on the news channels and starts buying support for his recall petition, Verner will jump to give it official OFS backing. And if that happens, you and I’ll be lucky if we don’t go to prison as part of the window dressing for a Frontier Security takeover of the entire system.”
“But—”
“There aren’t any ‘buts,’” Cabrnoch said. “If he didn’t have Šiml sitting in the wings as a replacement, it might be different, but he does. So I suppose I should start giving some thought to how to compose my letter of resignation, don’t you think?”
* * *
“Is he really going to resign, Teta Zuzana?” Edward Klíma sounded as if he couldn’t believe it. “Just roll over and give up?”
“He doesn’t think he has any choice,” Zuzana Žďárská told the man she’d personally picked to head Jan Cabrnoch’s security team. Klíma wasn’t the brightest LED on the display, but he was a long way from stupid, and he was also her cousin. There were over thirty T-years between them, which was why he called her Teta—Aunt—rather than cousin, and he’d always been very loyal to her. And despite the nepotism which had earned him his position, he was also good at his job…and proud of his position as the president’s chief bodyguard.
“But he’s the President!” Klíma protested. “Nobody can make him do anything he doesn’t want to!”
“Unfortunately, in this case someone can,” she said bitterly. “As long as that zkurvysyn Šiml’s whispering in Sabatino’s ear, the deck’s just too heavily stacked against him, Edward.”
Klíma glowered at her for a moment, then turned and walked angrily out of her office. She thought about calling him back, but what was the point? She wasn’t going to be able to make him any happier, and nothing would change. Besides, she had more pressing concerns, if Cabrnoch really was going to resign. One thing she damned well wouldn’t have in a Šiml administration was a job, so it was time to start reminding certain important people about all the bodies she’d helped bury over the last three T-decades. She was sure she could convince them to contribute to her retirement fund if that was the only way to keep those bodies safely interred.
She punched up her contacts list and placed the first call.
* * *
“I sure hope this works the way you think it will, Adam,” Zdeněk Vilušínský said as the armored air limo Karl-Heinz Sabatino had financed settled towards a parking slot outside the restaurant.
“I do too. But while I try to remind myself that nothing’s certain—or foolproof—it’s hard to see how it won’t. At least as far as the election’s concerned. Hell, Zdeněk! You and I’d win an honest election! Assuming anyone on Chotěboř would recognize one of those after thirty-five years of Cabrnoch.”
Vilušínský nodded, although he was less certain about his own ability to win the vice presidency in an honest election. Šiml’s stature, especially since the Velehrad Riots, would have made his election to the presidency a shoo-in, but both of them represented Chotěboř’s agrarian interests. Admittedly, agriculture was a critical component of the planetary economy, but it wasn’t the only component, and in any sort of open, honest election, a running mate from one of the major cities would probably have been a better choice.
Fortunately, this wasn’t going to be an open, honest election, however much both of them might have preferred that. And it probably would have been at least moderately…injudicious for a system president planning to engineer what amounted to a coup against the Constitution to select a running mate who wasn’t part of the plot.
“You’re probably right,” he said out loud. “I guess I just find it hard to believe everything’s coming together this way. Or maybe I’m afraid that if I let myself believe it’s all going to work I’ll jinx it! Either way, I’ll feel a lot happier after Cabrnoch announces his resignation this evening.”
“Me, too,” Šiml admitted as the limo touched down neatly.
The turbines whined as they spooled down and Filip Malý climbed out of the passenger side front seat and opened the rear door. Šiml smiled at Malý and climbed out of his own seat.
“Thank you, Filip,” he said.
“You’re welcome, Sir.” Filip smiled back, although his eyes continued to scan the local slidewalk and sidewalks. “Just polishing the apple with you. I always did want to work Presidential Security, and now—”
The pulser dart crackled past Šiml’s right ear with the pistol-crack of its hypersonic velocity. It struck the limo and punched a pin-sized dimple into the vehicle’s thick armor, and Malý reacted instantly by dropping a shoulder into Šiml’s chest and driving him back into his seat, behind that protective armor.
Šiml tumbled awkwardly backward, sprawling across the seat he’d just climbed out of, while his brain tried
to catch up with what was happening. He landed heavily and bounced, then shoved himself back into a semi-sitting position as Malý wheeled away from the limo, his right hand darting inside his tunic to produce his own pulser.
Another dart shrieked past Šiml, passing through the still-open door, and he heard Vilušínský swear viciously as the dart creased his cheek, opening a bloody slash like a razor blade, before burying itself somewhere in the limo’s luxuriously upholstered interior.
Malý moved sideways, screening that open door with his own body, and the pulser in his hand rose. It fired…and in the same instant, a third pulser dart slammed into—and through—the light armor he wore under his tunic.
Blood exploded from between his shoulder blades and he dropped without a sound.
* * *
“I want that bitch arrested, charged, and damned well convicted!” Karl-Heinz Sabatino snarled.
“Mr. Sabatino, I understand you’re angry. For God’s sake, I’m angry! Adam Šiml’s a personal friend of mine! But there’s no evidence Ms. Žďárská had anything to do with this,” Daniel Kápička replied.
“The hell she didn’t!” Sabatino snapped from Kápička’s com display. “The son of a bitch was her own cousin—and Cabrnoch’s security chief, for that matter! You think the two of them didn’t know exactly what he was doing?!”
“Frankly, no, I don’t think they did,” Kápička said. “And, for what it’s worth, neither does Adam.”
“Adam’s entirely too trusting a person,” Sabatino fired back. “And who else had a motive to see him dead?”
“Mr. Sabatino, I don’t doubt Klíma was motivated by President Cabrnoch’s decision to resign. And like anyone else who can count to twenty, he must’ve realized Adam’s the most likely person to succeed the President. But everything I’ve seen so far indicates he acted on his own. I don’t doubt his relationship to Ms. Žďárská played a part in his motivation, but I think she was genuinely shocked by his actions. And whether or not I’m right about that, there’s certainly no evidence—at this time, at least—that she knew anything about his plans. Obviously, under the circumstances, we have to assume both she and the President might have their own motives for wanting to…remove Adam from the political equation, and I promise we’ll continue to look at that possibility closely. But I can’t justify arresting and charging her when there’s absolutely no evidence of her complicity.”