by David Weber
“A point,” she agreed.
Unlike Chernyshev, she’d been alerted fairly late for Houdini, and he’d managed to avoid discussing the most…unpleasant aspects of Marinescu’s plans with her. The same intelligence and capability that made her so valuable meant that she’d almost certainly figured out what a lot of those unpleasant aspects had been, but at least he’d kept her out of direct contact with the sociopathic bitch and her associates. And during the voyage to Darius, he’d discussed the mechanics of actually moving that many people with her in some detail. Even if she might have been a security risk under other circumstances, she’d hardly been one under the circumstances which applied, after all!
“I wouldn’t have liked to take the long route,” she went on now, hopping off his desk and crossing to the crystoplast wall. “Traveling aboard a slave ship at all would be bad enough, but being stuck there for weeks?” She shook her head.
“Not much choice.” Chernyshev climbed out of his chair and crossed to stand beside her. “They’re freighters, not passenger liners or dispatch boats, and none of their captains and astrogators have any idea where Darius is. We had to get them all off Mesa and filter them out to the collection points where they could be put aboard actual transports—the kind with individual cabins—for the final leg to Darius. If we’d had more time, we could have arranged something…less arduous, but we had to start them moving as quickly as possible.”
“Especially the potential problem children,” she murmured, and he nodded.
“Especially the potential problem children,” he agreed, then shrugged. “By the time you and I left, we were making better progress, but we were lucky to have one of the VIP ‘yachts’ available when we needed it. At least we’ve managed to assemble enough personnel lift to pull out the rest of the Houdini evacuees directly here without any doglegs.”
“That’s good,” she said, and he nodded.
Of course, it’s not quite as “good” as you think it is, Lucinde, he thought. Yes, we got the ships into Mesa—fast transports, equipped with the streak drive and disguised to look like freighters—and by now, all of their passengers are on board and they’re headed for Darius. But I hope you’re a long time learning about all of the members of the onion we couldn’t get on board.
He stood beside her, gazing out into the golden morning of Leonard and felt the semipermanent lump of ice somewhere under his heart. He’d never wanted an office job, and he especially hadn’t wanted this one, but he had it. And he’d by God do it. But he didn’t have to like it.
It’s not your fault, he told himself again. In fact, it isn’t anybody’s fault. It’s simply the way it worked out. There was no way to move enough additional ships through Mesa—or to smuggle that many “dead people” aboard them—in the time we had. Another couple of months—hell, one more month!—and that might not’ve been true, but we didn’t have another couple of months. And so, as much as you hated her, Marinescu was probably right, damn her black soul to hell.
Maybe that was true, and maybe he’d shuffled a lot of his own sense of culpability off onto Marinescu, made her the scapegoat for his own blood guilt. In fact, he was perfectly prepared to admit that was exactly what he’d done. But that didn’t change his analysis of her fundamental character, and the Alignment was entering a new phase. There’d still be times, lots of them, when they needed people capable of “wet work,” but the bare-fanged savagery Marinescu had specialized in under cover of Manpower or the other Solarian transstellars’ covert operations was about to become a thing of the past. The Alignment was about to make the transition from a conspiracy into a genuine star nation, whether the rest of the galaxy knew of its existence or not, and the rules were different for star nations. With any luck at all, it would be T-decades at the very least before anyone outside Mesa or the allied star systems of the Renaissance Factor knew a single thing about it, but it was time to begin weaning the Alignment away from the sort of wholesale slaughter Marinescu had orchestrated for Houdini.
That was the argument he’d used with Collin Detweiler, and Collin had bought it. Although Chernyshev suspected—more than suspected—he’d had more than one reason for going along with it.
Ironic, isn’t it, Janice? he thought now, gazing out that window at the city Janice Marinescu would never see. All those arguments you came up with for using Houdini as a “filter” for the undesirables and eliminating people to maintain security…Never thought about whether or not someone was ruthless enough to apply them to you, did you?
That was the real reason Collin had gone along with her “severance package.” She and Kevin Haas and their Haldane staff were the only people—aside from Chernyshev and Collin himself—who’d known all the details of the revised Houdini schedule. A lot of other operatives had known bits and pieces of it, but most of the men and women involved in its execution had been tightly compartmentalized. A lot of them had been lifted out before Final Flourish. Those who’d remained to execute its final stages hadn’t realized that they were among the loose ends that had to be “tidied up,” to use Marinescu’s favorite phrase. He found it fitting that Marinescu herself had seen to the elimination of virtually all of her Final Flourish operatives. The ones she hadn’t shuffled off to the nuclear fireballs of the “evacuation centers” to await the shuttles that would never come would die of a plethora of “natural causes” when their nanotech didn’t receive its next reset signal.
She simply hadn’t expected to be “tidied up” herself.
Never planted a bomb that gave me a greater sense of satisfaction, Chernyshev admitted in the privacy of his own thoughts, but I’m not going to lie to myself. Burying what actually happened as deep as possible—even from the rest of the onion, if we can—was just as important.
It wouldn’t stay buried forever, of course. Something on that scale, with so many “serendipitous coincidences” simply couldn’t. Eventually, once the Alignment had won, its own scholars and historians would undoubtedly unearth at least some evidence of what had actually happened. But there’d be no hard evidence, and most would reject the work of the “paranoid conspiracy theorists” out of hand.
Wouldn’t want anything to sully the names of the Founders, now would we? he thought cynically. But the truth is, you don’t succeed in something like the Detweiler Plan without doing some of those things you wish nobody had to do.
And that, he reflected, was true of every star nation, to one extent or another.
He drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders. He’d be a lot happier, he admitted to himself, when Collin reached Darius. And a lot happier even than that when Albrecht and the final tranche of evacuees arrived. He’d argued against Albrecht’s decision to wait until the final wave, despite how relatively new he was to his current position, and he knew that both Collin and Benjamin had done the same. But Albrecht Detweiler could have been used to illustrate the dictionary definition of stubborn.
And whatever the galaxy may someday say about the Alignment, Chernyshev reflected, no one will ever be able to fault Albrecht’s sense of personal responsibility and duty. I think the real reason he stayed was to pressure Marinescu to get the most people out that she possibly could. Oh, he agreed with her arguments, and “ruthless” is right up there with responsibility and duty in his personal pantheon. He’s prepared to kill however many people—however many millions of people—he has to, but that’s the difference between him and Marinescu. He’ll kill however many as he has to; she’ll kill as many as are convenient, and he figures his presence will be highly inconvenient for her in that regard. I wonder if Collin told him about her severance package? I hope he did. Albrecht would appreciate the irony…and I’m pretty sure he needs a laugh at least as badly as I did.
Chapter Seventy-Six
The com chimed softly, and the very dark-skinned woman sat up in bed. The attention key blinked in the darkened sleeping cabin, but she couldn’t reach it immediately. Sitting up was about as far as she could get just at the moment, a
nd the enormous cat who’d been busy anchoring her feet sat up with a querulous sound as his pillow shifted under him.
At least she’d finally convinced him to sleep on her feet instead of her chest, she thought as she rubbed her eyes. Being unable to move beat the hell out of being unable to breathe.
“Out of the way, horrid beast,” she said sternly, poking hard with a toe, and he rolled to his feet, rose to his full height, and gave her a glare of martyred patience. Then he raised his enormous tail straight up behind him and stalked indignantly away.
Now if only he’d be so offended he’d leave her feet unanchored for a night or two, she thought. Not that she expected any such outcome.
The com chimed again, and she swung her liberated legs over the side of the bed and hit the acceptance key.
Dominica Adenauer’s face appeared on it, and she went ahead and tapped a key to accept full visual. Fortunately, unlike certain people she could mention, she wasn’t one of those who preferred to sleep in the nude.
Not when she was sleeping alone, anyway, and Dicey didn’t count.
Besides, we’re all girls here at the moment, she thought dryly. Damn it. I knew there were downsides to commanding a fleet. There’s not one single male in the entire damned thing who’s not in my direct chain of command as far as Article One-Nineteen’s concerned!
“Yes, Dominica?”
“Hyper footprint, Ma’am. A big one.”
“Ah?” She ran a hand through her short, tightly curled hair. “I’m assuming it’s on the right bearing?”
“Oh, yes, Ma’am. It definitely is.”
“Good! I’ll be on Flag Bridge in fifteen. Tell Bill to warm up the com.”
* * *
It was actually closer to ten minutes than fifteen when Admiral Gold Peak strode onto her flag bridge. Despite that, and despite the fact that it was the middle of HMS Artemis’ shipboard night, its stations were fully manned, and she smiled wryly as she crossed to her own command chair.
“Any word from our visitors?” she asked.
“Not yet, Ma’am,” Lieutenant Commander Edwards replied.
“Well, I suppose it would only be polite for us to extend a welcome to the newcomers,” she said. “Raise them, Bill.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
SCY-146-H was an M9-class star, with a hyper limit which lay only fifteen light-minutes from the primary. At the moment, the thick cluster of incoming impeller signatures was just inside that limit, still six light-minutes from Artemis’ current position, but the newcomers’ com officers had obviously been expecting her to call. Barely ten seconds after Edwards hit the send key, a man with a mustache and what was definitely not Manticoran uniform, despite the treecat perched on his shoulder, appeared on Michelle’s display.
“Good evening, Lady Gold Peak,” he said.
“And good evening to you, Admiral Tourville,” she replied. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“I hope we’re not late,” he said barely six seconds later, courtesy of the FTL com.
“I didn’t really expect you until tomorrow, actually. You must’ve made a fast passage.”
“We tried not to let any grass grow under our feet,” he acknowledged. “I understand we have an appointment in Mesa, and my people are looking forward to it with what you might call eager anticipation.”
“Odd.” Michelle cocked her head. “By the strangest coincidence, so are my people.” The two of them smiled at each other for a moment. Then Michelle shrugged. “We’re eager to get on with it, but it’s the middle of the night, our ship time.”
“And ours,” Tourville told her. “We adjusted our chronos to Landing Standard when they sent us off to reinforce you.”
“That’s very convenient,” she said. “But, in that case, it’s the middle of the night for you, too. May I suggest that we both complete a good night’s sleep and that you and your people come aboard Artemis tomorrow morning, after breakfast, so we can all sit down face-to-face? And I think you’d better plan on staying for lunch, as well, come to that.”
“That sounds like an excellent idea,” Tourville agreed.
“Until tomorrow, then,” Michelle said. “Gold Peak, clear.”
“Tourville, clear.”
* * *
Lester Tourville swung himself from the pinnace’s boarding tube into the boat bay gallery of HMS Artemis. For a fleet flagship, he reflected, Artemis was a little on the small side. As battlecruisers went, she was enormous, far larger than any ship of her class in the RHN, but she was still much smaller than a superdreadnought, and he wasn’t certain he approved of keeping fleet command in something that fragile. On the other hand, he remembered his own battlecruiser flagships. There was always something special about them. Heavy enough to fight a rugged round if they needed to, but fast, maneuverable.
And independent, he thought. The kind of ship that suits a man who doesn’t want to be tied to the fleet’s apron strings.
And, a corner of his mind added as he landed on the gallery deck, back in the bad old days, battlecruiser admirals had been junior enough to avoid the sort of scrutiny that had sent so many good officers to the wall under Rob Pierre and Oscar Saint-Just.
The woman waiting for him had probably never had to worry about that, though, he reflected.
He shook that thought aside and saluted the lieutenant with the brassard of the boat bay officer of the deck.
“Permission to come aboard, Ma’am?”
“Permission granted, Admiral,” the young woman replied, returning his salute. “And welcome aboard Artemis.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant Franklin,” he said, reading the name from the plate on the breast of her space-black tunic.
“And allow me to repeat the Lieutenant’s welcome,” a throaty contralto said, and he turned to face Admiral Gloria Michelle Samantha Evelyn Henke.
The name rolled through his mind with a certain sonorous majesty, and he felt his lips trying to twitch in an inappropriate smile. As a citizen of the Republic of Haven, where there were no official titles of nobility, he often found the Manty tendency to hang those titles on everyone in sight more than a little amusing. Given his new commanding officer’s full name, however he could see where she might find “Gold Peak” preferable.
And some of the people who get titles hung on them damned well deserve them, Lester, he reminded himself as he reached out to shake the extended hand. She may be Queen Elizabeth’s cousin, but she’s one of the best they’ve got, too. You’ll need to stay on your toes to keep up with this one.
“Thank you, Milady,” he said, and discovered she had dimples when she smiled.
“Don’t strain yourself, Admiral Tourville,” she advised. “We all know you’re a good, egalitarian republican. ‘Admiral’ is a perfectly acceptable way to avoid all those decadent forms of address.”
The smile which had threatened to elude his control a moment earlier broke free, and he shook his head.
“Actually, we simple republicans are more sophisticated than some people seem to think, Milady,” he replied. “Why, just last week I finally figured out which fork to use for dessert at a formal dinner!”
He sensed a certain tension from the officers who’d followed him off the shuttle and remembered how the State Department experts had warned all of them against giving offense to possibly prickly Manticoran aristocrats. That warning must have a certain point for them at the moment, giving just how towering this potentially prickly aristocrat’s family connections were. But Gold Peak’s smile only turned into a grin.
“Really?” she said brightly. “In that case, maybe you can help me figure it out at lunch!”
“I’d consider it an honor,” he assured her, and she chuckled.
“Speaking of Honor,” she said, “she told me once that she thought I’d really like you if we ever met, and she’s generally a pretty good judge of those things. Of course, on the other hand, she does screw up every once in a while. Even with Nimitz to help her along,” she added,
fingers flickering through the sign for “hello” to the treecat on Tourville’s shoulder.
“Well, we’ll just have to hope that in this case the Duchess got it right, Milady,” he said gravely, and waved the rest of his party forward. “For now, though, allow me to present my task force commanders and my staff.”
* * *
It was a good group, Michelle Henke decided later that day as she and Lester Tourville sat across from one another at the table in her spacious dining cabin. There were, inevitably, some rough edges here and there. For example, Tourville’s chief of staff, Captain Molly Delaney, seemed a bit…uncomfortable working so closely with Manticorans after so many years of enmity. She was clearly aware of the problem and working hard to overcome it, though, and that was about the best anyone could ask for. From the Manticoran side of the table, it turned out that Joshua Madison, Carrier Division 11.2’s CO, had much the same problem where Havenites were concerned. Madison had been detached from the rest of Craig Culbertson’s carrier squadron to support Michelle when she moved on Madras. That had deprived him of the opportunity to interact with Second Fleet’s officers the way the rest of Culbertson’s people had in Montana, and she suspected that even he hadn’t realized it was likely to be a problem. Addressing the issue was clearly something of an uphill struggle for him, as a result, but she knew him well enough to be confident he’d get there in the end.
And if I’d had any doubts about Tourville’s ability to work with Manticorans, just watching him with Aivars would have knocked them on the head, she reflected with intense satisfaction. She’d expected to like Tourville herself, based on both his dossier and Honor Harrington’s description of him, but seeing Terekhov’s comfort with him had been one of the day’s more gratifying moments.
Overall, she was impressed by the rest of Second Fleet’s senior officers, as well. Vice Admiral Bellefeuille, Task Force 21’s CO, was another Havenite who’d crossed swords with Honor and lived to tell the tale. In fact, she’d done remarkably well against Eighth Fleet, given the crushing technological inferiority under which she’d labored in the Chantilly System. She was young for her rank, but most Havenite flag officers were. So were Manticoran flag officers, for that matter, but at least Manticoran losses had been from enemy fire. They hadn’t had to worry about being purged by their own government.