Shadow of Victory

by David Weber

  “Which won’t be a bad thing.” Gold Peak smiled coldly. “And God knows, sometimes you have to be just a little obvious to make Sollies pay attention.”

  Her subordinates chuckled and Gold Peak began pacing again.

  “I need another new ops plan, Dominica. Assume Admiral Khumalo’s going to make his shipping goals and get, say, two thirds of his proposed planetary forces forward to Montana. Also assume he’ll meet his proposed timetable.”

  Adenauer nodded, entering notes on her memo board, and Gold Peak continued.

  “We’ll direct Tourville to await those forces at Montana. Once they arrive, he’s to sortie with them in company and rendezvous with us somewhere en route to Mesa. Get with Sterling Casterlin and pick a nice, deserted red dwarf somewhere in the general vicinity—within, say, ten or twelve light-years of Mesa—as an astrogation mark. Someplace we can join up and possibly conduct some brief training exercises before we move on.”

  Adenauer nodded again.

  “As for timing, figure we’ll aim for departure from Meyers by the middle of next month. Call it September fifteenth, although if we can get out a day or so earlier I won’t mind a bit.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “As for you, Cynthia,” Gold Peak went on, “I think I need to have another talk with Prime Minister Montview. We’ll be here longer than I expected, so I’m thinking we could help move King Lawrence’s perceived legitimacy along if the Prime Minister ‘spontaneously’ invites me to address Lawrence’s Parliament or a few news conferences.” She grimaced, yet she knew how important that was. And as not simply the local Manticoran military commander but also the Empress’ first cousin—and fifth in the line of succession for the throne, for that matter—reassurances from her carried just a tad more weight than they might have from someone else. “I hate the entire publicity business, but anything we can do to shore up his position before we pull out is worth doing.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Gwen and I will get right on that.”

  “Good! And while you’re doing that, and while Dominica’s putting that new set of movement orders together, I think Vicki and I should sit down in one of her simulators and start thinking about all the interesting options this—” she pulled one hand from a tunic pocket to gesture at the displayed list of warships “—will make possible.”

  She jammed the hand back into her pocket and smiled evilly.

  “I really, really wish I could see Kolokoltsov’s expression when someone tells him Manty and ‘Peep’ ships of the wall are cooperating to punch out one of his most lucrative corporate sponsors. I know I’m not going to get that, but what I am going to get to see is CEO Ward’s expression when I send the Mesa System Board of Directors my surrender demand in both star nations’ names. I am so looking forward to that!”

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  “This is going to end badly, Tomasz,” the silver-haired man on the display said coldly.

  Hieronim Mazur was very fit and—normally—very tanned, a consummate yachtsman who spent every moment he could steal from his busy schedule out on the water. At the moment, his tan was somewhat lighter than usual, however, because for the last month or so he’d been stuck off-planet, concentrating on staying out of Krucjata Wolności Myśli’s reach. That was wise of him, Tomasz Szponder thought. For a lot of reasons.

  Not least, because it looked like it was working.

  “I received word about an hour ago,” Mazur continued. “Commissioner Radisson informs me the Office of Frontier Security and Frontier Fleet are prepared to support the restoration of the legitimate government. When they do, things will be even worse for all those little people you claim to care so much about.” His smile was even colder than his voice. “I really think you’d do better to release Krzywicka and the others and make the best terms you can with us before the Solarians get here. Given how long we’ve known one another, and how close our families have been, I’ll even give you ninety days to liquidate investments here in Włocławek before I kick your ass out of my star system forever.”

  “Interesting choice of pronouns there, Hieronim.” Szponder’s tone was equally icy. “Your star system. I appreciate your generosity, but bastards like you hijacked Włodzimierz’s movement once. I don’t think we’ll do it that way again.”

  “I imagine your devoted followers will see things differently when the intervention battalions and Marines arrive. And I warn you, if it comes to actual fighting, if lots of people get killed, you won’t be going anywhere except on trial for mass murder.”

  “And I’m sure it’ll be a completely fair trial, too.” Szponder snorted contemptuously. “And don’t try to tell me you’re worried about loss of life, Hieronim! What you’re worried about is the damage the fighting will do to SEOM’s infrastructure on the planet. Trust me, it’ll be at least as severe as anything you could imagine. Because those ‘little people’ I’m so concerned about have had a bellyful of the Oligarchia and the Aparatczycy. I doubt they’d hand their guns back over to me so I could surrender even if I asked them to, and you—and the damned Sollies—will play hell getting them away from them.”

  “Then I don’t suppose there’s much point to continuing this conversation, is there?” Mazur sneered at him. “My offer’s open until Frontier Fleet actually gets here, but you know how OFS works as well as I do. If there’s not a legitimate local government in power when the Sollies arrive, they will install a puppet, and after that they’ll squeeze every centicredit they can out of this system for the next T-century. Trust me, it’ll be a lot worse for your friends and neighbors then.”

  He flicked the switch contemptuously, cutting the circuit, and Szponder sat back in his chair.

  The hell of it is that he’s right, damn him to hell, he thought bleakly.

  If only Mazur and Tymoteusz Miternowski had made it to the Dzień Przewodniczącego celebration! With Mazur in his hands, the rest of the Oligarchia would have dithered. They might have gotten themselves together and sent for the Sollies, anyway, but it would have taken them far longer. And with both Krzywicka and Miternowski in his hands, they’d have had no standing to claim to represent the legitimate system government. Especially not since between his own and Grażyna’s and—especially—Izabela Ziomkowski’s—efforts Szymon Ziomkowski had agreed to support not simply the Crusade’s overthrow of Krzywicka’s regime but a new constitution. One which would prohibit the restriction of all public offices to party members which had permitted the aparatczycy to usurp power in the first place.

  Unfortunately, while that had given them control of the capital and the official organs of government, Krzywicka had steadfastly refused to have anything to do with their effort. And with Miternowski available for Mazur to trot out as the only member of the legally constituted government who wasn’t in the hands of the “insurrectionists”—and thus the only one those paragons of virtue in the Office of Frontier Security could know wasn’t “acting under duress”—it wouldn’t matter a damn that Ziomkowski and the Izba Deputowanych—for that matter, the entire official government, since the Ruch Odnowy Narodowej’s control of anything except the Przewodniczący’s position had always been indirect—wanted nothing to do with Solarian intervention. No doubt as soon as OFS finished deposing the current government, they’d hold scrupulously free and open elections to create a new one.

  His teeth grated together as he contemplated that…and what would happen to anyone who’d supported his people. But the Manties were over two T-weeks late. Only his innermost advisors knew the schedule to which Dupong Mwenge’s superiors had agreed. They, like him, continued to hope the Royal Manticoran Navy had simply been unavoidably delayed. That it was truly coming.

  But also like him, they’d begun to face the sickening possibility—indeed, the probability—that the Manticorans weren’t coming at all. That they’d never intended to come…and that he, Tomasz Szponder, had doomed his star system’s last hope for freedom by allowing himself to be used as an expendable cat’s-paw to divert Solari
an attention from the Star Empire.

  Another T-week, he thought grimly. I’ll give them another T-week. But then…

  He shook his head, his face grim, and rubbed his eyes wearily.

  * * *

  The pinnace settled neatly onto the pad. The hatch opened, and Helen Zilwicki tried not to dance in place as she waited behind Commodore Terekhov and Commander Pope for the boarding ramp to run out. Under normal circumstances the tradition that seniors were the first to exit Navy small craft didn’t bother her especially.

  Today wasn’t normal.

  Terekhov glanced over his shoulder, then smiled and shook his head.

  “Patience, Helen. He’s not going anywhere.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Sir,” she replied as her face heated.

  “I suspect there’s probably a power tech third-class down in engineering somewhere who doesn’t know what I mean, young lady,” Terekhov told her with a twinkle. “You, however, know exactly what I mean. Or was there some other reason you finagled shore leave this morning?”

  “It’s not nice to pick on people younger than you, Sir,” she said, conceding defeat. “And, with all due respect, you seem awfully anxious to get dirtside today, too!”

  “Guilty,” he acknowledged cheerfully. “However, rank—”

  “—hath its privileges,” she finished for him. “Yes, Sir. I believe I may have heard that a time or two before.”

  “I believe you may,” he agreed. “But—” He broke off, leaning slightly to the side as he gazed out the hatch, then chuckled. “I see they finally managed to find the ramp. Please remember my advanced years and don’t trample me to death going down it.”

  There were times, Helen thought, when silence was golden.

  * * *

  “Oh, stop vibrating, Paulo!” Sinead Terekhov scolded.

  The preposterously good-looking ensign looked up at her. She wasn’t an extraordinarily tall woman, but that still made her six centimeters taller than he was. And at the moment, he looked considerably younger than his twenty-five T-years.

  “Am I really?” he asked with a smile.

  “In a word, yes,” she told him. “But it’s such a charming, puppyish sort of vibration that no one really minds.”

  “Ouch.” He winced, and she laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “I’m only teasing. And the truth is, I think I’m almost as happy for you and Helen as I am for me and Aivars.”

  “I don’t know where Helen and I are going,” he said, with the air of someone trying to be scrupulously honest with himself, as well as with her. “I mean, I know where I want us to go. But we haven’t even seen each other in over nine T-months. And I’m not…I mean…”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” she said. “And don’t bend yourself out of shape. You’re both Navy. You know about long absences, about slow communications, about career pressures.” She shook her head. “There are so many things that can stress any officer’s relationships, but both of you know exactly what they are. And the truth is, you’re both fairly levelheaded youngsters. Your relationship will go where it’ll go, and you’ll both be fine, wherever that is.”

  “I hope so,” he said, and smiled with what might almost have been a trace of bashfulness.

  During Charles Ward’s voyage from Manticore to Spindle, Sinead Terekhov had made a point of winning Paulo d’Arezzo’s confidence. She’d realized early on how important he was to Helen Zilwicki, who was very much a member of her official family now. And Paulo had responded by admitting things to her that she doubted he’d ever admitted to anyone else…except Helen. She knew exactly why he was so nervous.

  “You’ll do—”

  She broke off as a tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed Manticoran commodore came through the lounge door with a long, quick stride.

  “Aivars!”

  She flung her arms wide, and then she was in his arms, and any trace of concern she might have felt about his reaction to her arrival here in Montana vanished in the power of his kiss.

  * * *

  Helen watched Ms. Terekhov fly into her husband’s embrace and felt a quick surge of happiness for both of them. But her attention wasn’t really on them. She was staring at the fair-haired, gray-eyed young man standing just beyond them. Her stride hesitated for just a moment as she saw him with her own eyes for the first time in three-quarters of a year, but then she saw the almost wistful edge to his smile of welcome, and her hesitation vanished.

  “Hey, Ensign d’Arezzo,” she said with a huge smile of her own, holding out both hands to him. “Long time no see.”

  “At least I tried to write,” he said, gripping her hands in his while his gray eyes devoured her face.

  “Yeah. That does put you a meter or so up on most people with Y chromosomes,” she acknowledged.

  They stood for several seconds, still holding hands, looking at each other, and then Paulo gave his head a little twitch.

  “You know we’re not in the same chain of command anymore,” he pointed out.

  “No? Really?” Her eyes glinted at him. “Is there some special significance to that?”

  “Actually, there is,” he said, and her eyes widened as he released her hands and his arms went about her. “I always did hate Article One-Nineteen,” he said, his voice much huskier than it had been a moment before, and then his lips met hers.

  * * *

  “I don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved,” Captain Prescott Tremaine said as HMS Alistair McKeon accelerated towards the Golem System’s hyper limit.

  “Either way, we racked us up some more Sollies, Sir,” WO5 Sir Horace Harkness observed. “Didn’t have to kill any of ’em, even. Made a nice change.”

  “No, not this time,” Tremaine agreed.

  The only SLN presence in Golem had been a pair of hopelessly long-in-the-tooth destroyers, a handful of purely sublight customs vessels, and two squadrons of transatmospheric sting ships. And, as Harkness had just observed, their senior officer had recognized sanity when he saw it.

  The truth was, however, that using a formation as powerful as Task Group 10.2.9 to eliminate such a paltry force was a gross underutilization of resources. And despite the analysis which had suggested the possibility of unrest in Golem, no one on the planet had attempted to contact him—or any of the personnel he’d sent dirtside on one pretext or another—to request naval assistance. After three local days in orbit, he’d been forced to the conclusion that the Mesan Alignment hadn’t been tilling the soil in Golem after all.

  In many ways, that was an enormous relief. But as he’d just implied to Harkness, it was a disappointment, as well.

  You know, after so long running around with Lady Harrington, you really ought to begin to grasp the notion of boredom as a good thing, Scotty, he told himself.

  Well, perhaps he should. But he knew the real reason for his ambivalence. There was no telling what might have been happening in other star systems while he’d swung uselessly in orbit around the Golem System’s sole inhabited planet.

  “All right!” He straightened himself and turned from the visual display’s image of the slowly dwindling planet. “I feel the need for some exercises, Horace! Something to keep our people on their toes. Something…challenging.”

  “Oh, I expect Commander Golbatsi and I will be able to come up with a little something, Sir,” his staff electronic warfare officer assured him.

  “I knew I could rely on you.” Tremaine rested a hand affectionately on Harkness’ broad, muscular shoulder. “And go ahead and see if Captain Selleck would like to contribute to the mix. She always has such a nasty, devious streak.”

  “What I like most in the Flag Captain, Sir,” Harkness agreed with a huge smile. “I’ll just go get started on that.”

  “Good,” Tremaine said, patting his shoulder.

  Then he stood back, watching Harkness cross Alistair McKeon’s flag bridge. The warrant officer said something to Adam Golbatsi, and the ops officer looked up, then laughed.
He pointed at his console, and Harkness settled into the bridge chair beside him as the two of them began punching numbers.

  He could trust them to come up with something…suitable, Tremaine thought cheerfully. He really would ask Mary-Lynne Selleck to give it a little fine tuning after they did, too. And it would give them a chance to kick around the tactic Harkness had christened “Barricade” after Tremaine had suggested it to him. It was unlikely to be useful a lot of times—certainly not once the other side caught onto it—but based on the preliminary reports on Massimo Filareta’s fleet at Manticore it might just come as a nasty surprise the first time they tried it. Even if the logic behind it didn’t pan out when they tried it in the simulators, training was always useful.

  Besides, it would help pass the eight days to their next destination.

  * * *

  Sir Aivars Terekhov exited the inter-ship car and walked down the passage at the Havenite lieutenant’s heels with a hard, purposeful stride. There was no expression at all on his face, but his eyes were blue ice.

  He followed the youthful lieutenant with the sword-straight spine and the braided shoulder rope of a flag lieutenant around a final corner and she stopped at a closed door. She glanced over her shoulder once, then reached out and pressed the com key beside the door.

  “Yes?” a voice asked.

  “Commodore Terekhov is here, Sir,” she replied.

  “Thank you, Berjouhi,” the voice said, then the door slid open, and the dark-skinned, blue-eyed lieutenant stood aside and waved courteously for Terekhov to walk through it.

  He started forward with that same, hard stride, then stopped and looked at his guide.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” he said. “I appreciate the guidance…and the courtesy.”

  It would have been grossly inaccurate to call his voice warm, but those blue eyes of hers—darker than his, but just as hard as his had been—softened ever so slightly.