by David Weber
"We've discussed the operational assumptions and concepts of Case Red Alpha in some detail. She understands that for it to succeed, we need to maintain the advantage of surprise. She also agrees that it's essential for us not to launch an offensive without clearly demonstrating to both domestic and foreign public opinion that we had no choice, however. And, frankly, I hope and believe she continues to agree that renewed hostilities against the Star Kingdom are a disaster to be avoided at almost any cost."
At least the first verb in that final sentence, he reflected, was still accurate. Unfortunately, he was no longer as confident as he would have liked to be that the second one was.
"This is not an order to commence operations," he said firmly. "It is, however, a heads-up. Eloise's new note will be dispatched to Manticore within thirty-six standard hours. I don't think anyone in the capital—not even Giancola—claims to have any idea how High Ridge will respond to it. But it looks like we're going to find out."
* * *
Arnold Giancola sat in his private office. It was very late, and he smiled in amusement burnished by an undeniable touch of anxiety as he contemplated the text of the document on his reader. The hour was entirely appropriate, he reflected. By long and venerable tradition, conspiracies were supposed to be executed by dark of night.
Not that he would have admitted to anyone else that what he was doing constituted anything conspiratorial, of course, but whatever he might have said to others, there was no point trying to deceive himself. Some might even argue that what he was about to do was illegal, but he'd researched the question with some care, and he rather doubted that a court would have agreed. He might be wrong, but his own judgment was that his actions represented at best a gray area. After all, he was the Secretary of State. Any communication with a foreign government was his responsibility, and the exact way in which that communication was delivered was arguably a matter for his judgment.
Still, the fact was that Eloise Pritchart and he had discussed this particular note at length and agonized over its phrasing. The President obviously expected him to send it in the exact form to which they'd both finally agreed. Unfortunately, she hadn't given him any formal instruction to that effect, and—upon more mature consideration, based solely on his extensive experience with the Department of State and the Manticoran government and acting on his own authority as Secretary of State—he had identified a few small modifications which would make it far more effective.
Although, he admitted with a thin smile as he studied the revised text, the effect towards which it was directed might not be exactly the one the President had had in mind. . . .
Chapter Forty-Four
Sir Edward Janacek had discovered that he no longer enjoyed going to work in the morning. He would never have believed that might come to pass when Michael Janvier first invited him to return to Admiralty House, but things had changed since that heady day of triumph.
He nodded to his yeoman and strode on into his inner office. His desk was waiting, and there in the middle of the blotter sat the locked dispatch case containing chips of the overnight communications. Like the trip to his office itself, that box had become something he dreaded, especially in light of the arrival of Eloise Pritchart's most recent missive the day before. He didn't really want to admit its existence, but he glanced at it as he started to walk past the desk towards the coffee carafe sitting in its accustomed place on the credenza. Then he stopped dead. A crimson light blinked on top of the dispatch case, and his stomach muscles tightened as it flashed at him.
Given the inevitable lags in communication time for units deployed over interstellar distances, there wasn't a great deal of sense in awakening senior members of the Admiralty when dispatches arrived in the middle of the night. Even if their contents were desperately important, getting them into the hands of their recipients an hour or two sooner wasn't going to have any significant effect on the turnaround time for a decision loop a dozen light-years or so across. There were, of course, exceptions to that rule, especially for star nations which possessed wormhole junctions, and senior communications staffers were expected to recognize when those exceptions occurred. Except in those very special circumstances, however, the Admiralty's most senior echelons could anticipate a night's sleep unflawed by the precipitate delivery of bad news.
But that flashing light indicated that Simon Chakrabarti, as First Space Lord, had already read the overnight dispatches . . . and that in his opinion one of them was of special importance.
The First Space Lord had been becoming steadily more unhappy for months now. Janacek was prepared to accept his in-house expression of a certain degree of concern, of course. It was the First Space Lord's job to warn his civilian superiors of any worries he might entertain, after all. But Chakrabarti had gone beyond private discussions of concern or even verbal expressions of those same concerns in face-to-face meetings. He'd actually begun drafting formal memos whose arguments were becoming steadily more pointed, and he'd been following the message traffic—especially from Silesia—with what Janacek privately considered obsessive attentiveness.
As part of that attentiveness, he'd taken to recording marginal notes on the dispatches he found of particular concern. Which, Janacek thought as he watched the malignant, blinking red eye with a sort of dread fascination, was not something he wanted to deal with just now.
Unfortunately, as Pritchart's response to Elaine Descroix's most recent note had reminded the entire High Ridge Government, what he wanted didn't always bear a great deal of resemblance to what he was going to get.
He squared his shoulders, inhaled deeply, and marched across to the desk. He sank into his chair, scarcely noticing its comfort, and reached out to key the combination into the dispatch case lock plate. The combination of fingerprints, proper numerical code, and DNA tracers convinced it to open for him, and he pulled out the chip on top of the pile.
For just a moment, he felt an undeniable sense of relief, because it was in a Fleet message folio, not one with the flashings of the ONI. So at least it wasn't a fresh admission from Francis Jurgensen that that insufferable son-of-a-bitch Theisman had managed to deceive them as to his navy's combat capabilities after all. But that fleeting relief vanished as he read the header that identified it as a message from Sidemore Station.
Oh my God, he thought around the fresh sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. What's that lunatic done now?
He drew another deep breath, slipped the chip into his desk top reader, and called up the message header.
* * *
"Just how bad is it, Edward?"
The Prime Minister's anxiety showed far more clearly than he wanted it to. Indeed, Janacek thought, it undoubtedly showed far more clearly than High Ridge thought it did. Not that the baron was alone in that, and the First Lord felt the echo of his own tension and strain coming back from the other members of the working cabinet. Aside from Janacek and High Ridge himself, that working cabinet currently consisted of Elaine Descroix, Countess New Kiev, Earl North Hollow, and Sir Harrison MacIntosh.
"That's very difficult to say," the First Lord replied. "I'm not trying to dodge the question, but all we have right now is Harrington's initial report about the Zoraster System incident itself. It will be at least a few days before we get anything more than that, I'd imagine. It would have taken at least that long for the Andies to respond to the incident—or to Harrington's message to their station commander in Sachsen. So any later report from her is going to be delayed at least that long before reaching here."
"But when those messages do get here," Marisa Turner pointed out anxiously, "the events in them will be over two weeks old. There's absolutely no way for us to tell how far Harrington may have pushed the Andies even as we sit here."
"Now, just a moment, Marisa," Janacek replied strongly. "Everyone in this room knows my opinion of 'the Salamander.' I'm not about to change it at this late date, either. But, much as I may distrust her judgment, in this instance she's certainly sh
owed far more restraint than I would ever have anticipated."
He tapped the hardcopy of Harrington's report, where it lay on the conference table in front of him. An identical copy lay in front of each of them, and he wondered for a moment if New Kiev had even bothered to read hers.
"To be perfectly honest, my initial fear when I read her account of the incident was that she was likely to head for Sachsen cleared for action to demand satisfaction from Admiral Sternhafen. Instead, to my considerable surprise, she actually seems to be working actively to reduce tensions. Of course, there's no way to tell how Sternhafen reacted to her suggestion of a joint investigation, but the fact that she came up with the idea at all has to be taken as a good sign, I think."
"On the surface," she agreed. Then she shook her head and made a face. "No, you're right," she admitted. "It's just that I worry about her temper. Her first reaction has always seemed to be to resort to force immediately—or, at least, to meet force with greater force. I suppose it's just . . . difficult for me to conceive of her in the role of peacemaker."
"For you and me both," Janacek admitted. "Nonetheless, that does seem to have been her initial response, at least, in this case."
"If so," North Hollow observed acidly, "it's undoubtedly for the first time in her entire life!"
"I won't disagree with you there, Stefan," Janacek replied.
"But you say there's no way to predict how Sternhafen reacted to her proposal," High Ridge pressed, and Janacek shrugged.
"Obviously not. If this really was an accident, an unintended confrontation, then the man would have to be a bigger lunatic even than Harrington not to seize this opportunity to back off and cool things down. Of course, given the provocative behavior the Andies have been evincing out there, it's impossible to say whether or not it really was accidental. Admiral Jurgensen, Admiral Chakrabarti, and I, are currently inclined towards the view that it was unintended. If the Andies had intended to begin a war with us, then surely they would have done it by attacking more than a single, isolated heavy cruiser. Moreover, it seems fairly evident that their ship took Jessica Epps by surprise. Whether that's the case or not, they'd at least managed to get into attack range well before Jessica Epps initially ordered this suspected slave ship to heave to. What that suggests to us, is that the Andies didn't go into this looking for a fight. If that had been their objective, then it's virtually certain that they would have fired sooner—probably before Jessica Epps even knew they were there."
"So you think they were responding to our effort to intercept this slaver, this Sittich," Elaine Descroix said.
"It certainly looks that way," Janacek agreed. "Precisely why they responded the way they did is more than we can say at this point. If Harrington's report's conclusions about the ship and the tonnage discrepancy our shipping list information indicated are correct, then I have to say I'm baffled by the Andy captain's actions. We may not get along with the Andermani all that well, but as far as we've been able to tell, they don't especially care for the slave trade, either. They don't have the long-term standing commitment to its suppression which the Star Kingdom's had, but they've certainly acted promptly to stamp on it whenever it's reared its head in their backyard."
"And very properly so," New Kiev put in. "But as you say, Edward, given that history of theirs, then surely their captain should have acted to assist Jessica Epps, not fired on her!"
"I believe that's approximately what I just said, Marisa," Janacek observed.
"I realize that," she said a bit snippily. "My point was that perhaps his reaction suggests that Harrington's suspicions about this particular ship weren't as well founded as she believes. Or, at least, as her report suggests."
"The same thought had occurred to me," Janacek replied. "But Admiral Jurgensen pulled the central file copy of the real Sittich's emissions fingerprint and compared it to the sensor data from Chantilly." He shook his head. "There's no question, Marisa—the ship squawking Sittich's transponder code wasn't Sittich. I can't say for certain who she was, but she wasn't who she claimed to be."
"I must say," Descroix observed, "that I'm afraid Harrington may have put us all in a false position with this quixotic crusade of hers."
"What 'quixotic crusade'?" New Kiev asked.
"This 'Operation Wilberforce' of hers," Descroix said.
"I may question her judgment and temper, and even at times her motivation," New Kiev said sharply, "but I hardly think it's appropriate to call the Star Kingdom's long-standing commitment to the suppression of the interstellar genetic slave trade a 'quixotic crusade.' "
Descroix glared at her and opened her mouth to fire back, but High Ridge interrupted before she could.
"Marisa, no one is suggesting that we ought to abandon that policy. For that matter, no one is suggesting that it was inappropriate for Harrington to act in accordance with it."
And we're especially not going to suggest it, he reflected, with that maniac Montaigne holding our feet—and yours—to the fire over the entire slavery issue in the Commons!
"Nonetheless, Elaine may have a point. Obviously, this entire incident only occurred because Harrington decided to act on the basis of testimony from a criminal caught in the act of committing an offense punishable by death. I think one might arguably call it a 'quixotic' decision to act so precipitously on the basis of such legitimately questionable 'evidence.' "
Janacek started to point out that, questionable or not, the fact that the suspected ship obviously had been squawking exactly the false transponder code Harrington's informant had told her it would seemed to suggest the evidence had been sound. But he didn't. Whether she'd acted precipitously or not was really beside the point, after all.
"So, Edward," High Ridge said after a moment, when it became apparent that neither New Kiev nor Descroix was prepared to continue their confrontation, however sullen they might be about it, "what does the Admiralty suggest we do?"
"Nothing," Janacek said with a promptness which caused the others to look at him sharply.
"Nothing?" High Ridge repeated.
"Until we know more, there's no point trying to formulate a response," Janacek said. "We could respond by immediately scraping up additional reinforcements and rushing them off to Sidemore. Unfortunately, we don't know that those reinforcements are going to be required. My current feeling is that Sternhafen is very likely to take the out Harrington has offered him and agree to a joint investigation. If that is his decision—or, more probably, given the time lag in our communications, was his decision—then it's probable that this particular crisis is well along the way towards being defused.
"If, on the other hand, he's decided not to take her suggestion, then all of the data ONI has amassed on Andermani deployment patterns suggests that it will take some time, probably at least a couple of months, for the IAN to redeploy for offensive operations against Sidemore. They can probably push her back from the systems we've been patrolling in the Confederacy itself, but the Fleet base is a much tougher nut than that. Even with the delay in communications between here and there, we should know within no more than another week or so whether or not he decided to go along with her. At that point, we can think seriously about sending additional forces to Sidemore."
Assuming, he carefully didn't add, that we haven't found out we need them much worse closer to home.
"So you think we'd have enough time to respond?" High Ridge pressed.
"That's the consensus at Admiralty House," Janacek assured him . . . almost accurately. In fact, Admiral Chakrabarti was far from agreeing. His steadily growing concern over how thinly spread the Navy's assets had become in the face of its commitments had only been made sharper by Harrington's news. But there was no point bringing that up just now.
"In that case," the Prime Minister decided, "I think we should draft fresh instructions for her to restrain her martial instincts and continue her efforts to keep a lid on the situation. To be completely honest, I must confess that at this moment the situation in
Silesia is clearly of secondary concern. In the end, we could afford to simply let the Andermani have the entire Confederacy without suffering any irreparable damage to our interests. Even our commercial interests would survive with only minor losses, especially in light of the offsetting access we've just gained to the Talbott Cluster and the shipping lanes on that side of the League."
"I agree," Descroix said decisively. "And if that's settled, I suggest we turn our attention to a matter of primary concern."
No one needed to ask which matter she had in mind.
"Very well," High Ridge agreed. "Would you care to open the discussion, then, Elaine?"
"If you want." Descroix folded her hands on the document holder in front of her and looked around the conference room.
"My staff has completed its analysis of Pritchart's latest note," she announced. "Needless to say, the distracting effect of Harrington's report from Silesia has scarcely helped, but I set up three separate teams to evaluate it. After they'd finished their initial work, I had all three reports combined for final analysis by a fourth study group.
"The conclusion those analysts have reached is that this note represents an effort to set up the moral justification to support its threat to break off negotiations if we don't accede immediately to their demands."
Complete silence greeted her announcement. It was the heavy silence of gloom, not the silence of shock, because everyone in that conference room had already guessed what the "experts" were going to tell them.
"What do you think they'll do after they break off negotiations—assuming, of course, that that's what they actually intend to do?" New Kiev asked.
"If they break off negotiations for a peace treaty, Marisa," Descroix replied with an edge of exasperation, "they really only have one choice, don't they?"