by David Weber
"Perhaps not. But even if they didn't choose to speak out in my behalf, I'm scarcely without a power base of my own from which to defend myself against such libelous accusations."
"Well, 'libelous' is a very value-laden term," Zilwicki said. "For example, if someone were to go to the LCPD and provide them with evidence that a certain Elaine Komandorski, shortly before she vanished and one Georgia Sakristos appeared on the scene, was involved in the murder of one of the PD's own criminal fraud investigators, I'm sure they wouldn't consider that libel. Not until they'd investigated very thoroughly, at any rate."
"I see." There was nothing at all pleasant about her voice now, but it was warmer than her eyes as she glared at him. "On the other hand, when it turned out that it was impossible to prove those allegations—because, of course, they would be completely false—I'm sure the courts would be inclined to consider it libel, given that the allegations would have originated with a political opponent. The Crown looks with a certain disfavor on people who attempt to use the courts as a political weapon, Captain."
"They certainly do," he agreed. "And while it pains me to admit it, it's entirely possible that there are enough judges in your famous files for you to survive even with the interesting odds and ends of evidence I've already managed to assemble. On the other hand, it doesn't really matter. I don't need to go anywhere near the police. Or the courts."
"Meaning what?" she demanded tautly.
"Meaning that once I discovered Elaine's existence," Zilwicki said, "I found myself wondering where she'd come from? I mean, she just . . . appeared one day, didn't she? And with such a substantial store of initial operating capital."
"What do you mean?" Georgia heard the quaver in her own voice, and cursed herself for it. But there was nothing she could do about it, any more than there was any way to prevent herself from paling.
"Meaning that I found your first biosculpt technician," Zilwicki told her very, very softly. "The one who rekeyed the genetic sequence on your tongue."
Georgia Young sat absolutely still, stunned into a realm far beyond mere disbelief. How? How could even someone with Anton Zilwicki's reputation have dug that deep? She'd buried that. Buried it where it would never see the light of day again. Buried it behind Elaine, willing even for someone to find her original criminal record because they would stop there, without going still deeper into who she'd been before Elaine.
"Of course," Zilwicki went on, "there's no law against having the number removed, is there? Most freed slaves don't have the resources to pay for it, but having it removed certainly isn't a crime. But he kept the record of the original number, Elaine. The number of a slave the Ballroom has been looking for for years. The slave who sold out an entire freighter full of escaped slaves in return for her own freedom and a half-million Solarian credits. Do you know what they intend to do with that slave when they find her?"
Georgia stared at him, her vocal cords frozen, and he smiled thinly.
"I've never been a slave. I don't pretend to understand what someone who has been one would be willing to do to gain her own freedom. And, by the same token, I don't pretend to stand in judgment on those who want to . . . discuss her actions with her. But I think, Elaine, that if I were her, I'd be far more concerned about the Ballroom than about anything the Star Kingdom's courts might want to discuss with her."
"What . . . what are you offering?" she asked hoarsely.
"Seventy-two standard-hours' headstart," he said bluntly. "I won't promise not to hand the evidence I've assembled over to the Ballroom. Cathy's 'butler' would never forgive us if I did. But Isaac will give me those three days, as well. He and Jeremy are reasonable men. They'll be unhappy with me, but they recognize the realities of horse-trading, and they know what sort of political stakes we're playing for here in the Star Kingdom. They'll settle for knowing where to start looking for you again."
"So you want me to just vanish?" She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head. "No. You want something more than that. I'm not important enough for you to risk the possibility that the Ballroom might not be as 'reasonable' as you hope it will. Besides, you'd do much more damage to High Ridge and his government if you just told Jeremy where to find me." She shook her head again. "You want the files for yourself, don't you?"
"No." It wasn't Zilwicki. It was Montaigne, and her level voice was like liquid helium. Georgia looked at her in disbelief, and the ex-countess shrugged. "I won't pretend that a part of me isn't tempted. But those files have done enough damage already. Oh, I could probably convince myself that the real criminals, the bastards who've broken the law and gotten away with it, deserve to be turned in and brought down in public, as spectacularly as possible. But the other temptation . . . the temptation not to turn them in." She shook her head. "It would be too easy to turn into another New Kiev and convince myself that the nobility of my purpose justified whatever tool I chose to use."
"Not to mention," Zilwicki rumbled, "the fact that a good third of the 'evidence' contained in those files was probably manufactured in the first place."
"Not to mention that," Montaigne agreed.
"So what do you want?" Georgia asked flatly.
"We want the files destroyed," Zilwicki told her. "And we want it done in a way which proves they've been destroyed."
"How am I supposed to do that?" she demanded.
"You've already demonstrated that you're a very inventive and capable woman, Elaine," Montaigne told her. "And it's common knowledge that the files are stored in a high-security vault under the Youngs' townhouse here in Landing. I'm sure that you could arrange for that vault—and the house, for that matter—to suffer some spectacular mischief. Without, I hasten to add, any loss of life."
"You expect me to arrange all of that and get off the planet within three standard days?" She shook her head. "Even if I wanted to, I couldn't pull something like that off that quickly. Not, at least, and leave myself enough time to run to make any difference in the end."
"Your three days would begin the day after the files are destroyed," Zilwicki told her. "Unless, of course, you tried to leave the planet before they were destroyed."
"And if I refuse, you'd really hand me over to the Ballroom? Even knowing what they'd do to me?"
"Yes, I would," Zilwicki said flatly.
"I don't think I believe you," she said softly, then looked at Montaigne. "And despite everything I've heard about you and your relationship with the Ballroom, I don't think you'd let him. I don't think you'd care to live with what they'd do."
"Maybe I wouldn't," Montaigne replied. "No. I'll go further than that. I wouldn't like to live with it. But don't you think for one fucking minute that I wouldn't do it anyway. Unlike Anton, I've spent decades working with the Ballroom and with escaped slaves. Like him, I can't really put myself in their places. The living Hell any slave experiences—even you—is something I can only attempt to imagine. But I've seen what slaves have done to gain their freedom. And I've heard them tell about the other slaves—the ones who helped someone else gain her freedom, and what it cost them. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I require any slave to be that heroic, that self-sacrificing. But I have by God known slaves who were that heroic, and I know the tales of the ones who were that self-sacrificing. And I know that you were directly responsible for sending almost five hundred escaped slaves back into that Hell to save yourself . . . and for a tidy little profit, as well. So, yes, 'Elaine.' If Jeremy catches up with you, I'll live with whatever he does."
Georgia felt something shrivel deep within her as she gazed into those implacable green eyes.
"And think about this," Zilwicki told her. Her eyes snapped helplessly back to him, and the smile he gave her would have suited any shark. "Even if I didn't have the stomach in the end to turn you in to the Ballroom, I don't have to. I found the middleman you used to contact Denver Summervale. I have his deposition, too. I doubt very much that it would stand up in a court of law, but it wouldn't have to. I'd simply send
it to Duchess Harrington."
What had already begun to shrivel crumpled completely at the icy promise in Anton Zilwicki's eyes. Georgia Young, Lady North Hollow, looked back and forth between those two very different yet equally unyielding faces, and knew both of them had meant every word they'd said.
"So, 'Elaine,' " Montaigne asked softly, "what's it going to be?"
Chapter Fifty-One
"I wish we had some damned idea where they've gone," Alistair McKeon growled. He reclined in a deplorably unmilitary sprawl in his chair, tipped back with one heel resting on the beaten copper coffee table in Honor's day cabin. His uniform tunic hung untidily across the back of his chair, which constituted a substantial concession on James MacGuiness's part. He didn't allow just anyone to clutter up his admiral's quarters.
Alice Truman, on the other hand, was her neat, tidy self as she sat in the chair facing McKeon across the coffee table. Where McKeon nursed a stein of Honor's beer, Truman contented herself with a steaming cup of coffee and a small plate of flaky croissants.
Alfredo Yu, for his part, had seated himself at the writing desk and was idly doodling on a sheet of paper with an old-fashioned stylus, while Honor sat sideways on her comfortable couch. Her long legs were stretched out before her, lengthwise across its cushions, with Nimitz curled comfortably across her thighs, while she leaned her back against the armrest. A plate on the coffee table, within easy reach for a treecat, still held two uneaten stalks of celery, and Honor stroked the half-asleep treecat gently with her right hand while her left managed her cocoa mug.
It was all a very comfortable, domestic scene, she thought, regarding her three senior subordinates. Unfortunately, there was a decided air of the lull before the storm about it, and Alistair's question underscored that sense of tense anticipation altogether too well.
"We all wish we knew where they were, Alistair," Truman told him. "But we don't."
"We may not know where they are," Yu put in, "but I'm afraid we know where they're going to be once they get their orders."
The ex-Peep obviously didn't care a great deal for his own conclusion, but that didn't invalidate it, Honor thought moodily.
"Do you think the Andies know Haven is sticking a thumb into the Silesian pie?" McKeon asked.
"I don't see how they could," Honor replied after a moment. "We only know about them because Captain Bachfisch told us. Unless they've been a lot sloppier somewhere else, I can't quite imagine their letting the Andies get a peek at them."
"I don't know," McKeon half-argued. "Pirates' Bane spotted their destroyers in Zoraster, and we know Andie naval intelligence is pretty damned good. I'd think there was at least a chance that they'd notice a pair of brand-new Peep destroyers hanging around here in Silesia."
"If they can pick them out of the clutter of all of the older Havenite designs that've gone rogue out here," Yu responded sourly. "Remember, Admiral Bachfisch only noticed them because he realized they were new-build ships."
"Even if they noticed them," Truman observed, "they probably wouldn't guess the reason they were there. I mean, on the face of it, the whole idea is pretty absurd. I doubt that something so preposterous would occur to any rational analyst."
"Not 'preposterous,' " Honor corrected. " 'Audacious' would be closer to it."
" 'Lunacy' would be even better!" Yu shot back. "Or maybe it would be even more accurate to call it 'delusions of grandeur.' " He shook his head. "I hate thinking that Tom Theisman could become as guilty of strategic overreach as this looks like."
"It's only overreach if they don't actually have the combat power to pull it off," Truman pointed out.
"Alice is right, Alfredo," Honor said. "In fact, that's what worries me the most about it. I don't know Theisman as well as you do, of course, but what I do know of him suggests that he's not very likely to succumb to the temptations of overreaching. That's what I keep coming back to. He wouldn't have sent this force all the way out here if he hadn't thought he was retaining sufficient strength closer to home when he did."
"I know," Yu agreed. "Maybe I'm just trying to give myself some sort of false courage by convincing myself that Tom has screwed up by the numbers this time. But I guess what really bothers me the most about it is that Tom Theisman is the last person in the galaxy I would have expected to want to go back to war with the Star Kingdom. My God! Look at what the man's accomplished. Why in Heaven's name would he risk throwing that away when the diplomats are still talking?"
"It may not have been his idea," Honor said almost soothingly. "There are other decision-makers involved, you know. And, I hate to say it, but the situation may very well look different from his side of the line. As you say, the diplomats are still talking, but how long has it been since they actually said anything to one another? Or, at least," she corrected herself bitterly, "since High Ridge and Descroix have shown any sign of really wanting a treaty?"
"I hope you and Alfredo won't take this wrongly," McKeon said, "but the bottom line from our perspective out here is that it doesn't really matter why Theisman might have decided to send his 'Second Fleet' out to Silesia. Other than the fact that it's obviously here to attack someone, I mean." Honor and Yu looked at him, and he shrugged without straightening up in his chair. "I liked Theisman when I met him at Yeltsin's Star, too. And I wouldn't have picked him for the heavy in this piece, either. But whatever his motives, and however justified they may have been by the admitted stupidity of our own beloved Prime Minister, what we really need to consider right now are the consequences. And the consequences are that there's a Havenite fleet, of unknown size and strength, at a currently unknown position, for the purposes of carrying out a mission whose objectives I think we can all guess with a fair degree of accuracy. Which brings me back to my original point. I wish we had some damned idea where the hell they are!"
"Well, at least we know where they aren't," Truman said sourly. "Or, at least we know one star system where they aren't anymore."
"Yes, we do," Honor said, and Truman looked at her. So did Yu, and McKeon turned his head to give her a very sharp glance indeed as the thoughtful edge to her tone registered. The three of them gazed at her for several seconds, then looked at one another.
"And?" McKeon prompted after a moment.
"Um?" Honor shook herself. "I mean, what did you say, Alistair?"
"We all know that tone, Honor," he told her. "There's something going on inside your head, and I just wondered if you'd care to share it with the rest of us mere mortals."
He grinned impudently at her, and she shook her head.
"There will come a time, Alistair McKeon, when lese majesty will come home to haunt you. And if there is any justice in the universe, I'll be there to see it!"
"No doubt. In the meantime, you're still not sharing."
"All right," she conceded. "I was thinking about something—something you brought up earlier, in fact."
"Something I brought up?"
"When you were wondering whether or not the Andies knew the Republic was fooling around out here."
"What about it?" McKeon asked, cocking his head and frowning in thought.
"Well, it's just that if I were the Andies, I wouldn't be very happy about their presence. Especially not given how unhappy the Empire already seems to be about our presence out here."
"Forgive me, My Lady," Yu objected mildly, "but if I were the Andies, I might not be very upset at all by the prospect of having the Republic attack the people I'm already trying to squeeze out of Silesia. Worst-case scenario, either we beat them, or they beat us, and the winner is much weaker than he was before the engagement. Which means the Andies can basically either simply order the 'victor' out of the region, or move in with the virtual certainty that they can take whatever he has left."
"That's all true enough," Honor agreed. "But hasn't it occurred to you, Alfredo, that whatever the Andies are up to in Silesia may be the result of an error on their part."
"What error?" Truman asked. Honor looked at her,
and the golden-haired admiral shrugged. "I can think of several errors they could have made. Which one did you have in mind?"
"The same mistake High Ridge and Descroix have been making for years, in a sense," Honor told her. "Maybe they've been assuming the war between us and the Republic was effectively over, as well."
"If they ever thought that in the first place, surely they realized when Theisman announced the existence of his new navy that all bets were off," McKeon protested.
"Maybe not," Honor said. "We keep thinking about how good Andie naval intelligence is, but there are limits in all things. And even if their intelligence people got all the available information straight, it doesn't necessarily follow that the Emperor and his advisors drew the right conclusions."
"With all due respect, why should they care whether or not the war is over?" Truman inquired. "The new management in Nouveau Paris doesn't seem especially interested in conquering the known galaxy, and the Empire is all the way on the far side of the Manticoran Alliance from Haven. Under the circumstances, I don't see Gustav and his advisors considering the Republic much of a threat to the Empire, whatever happens to the Star Kingdom. In fact, they'd probably be just as happy to see us involved in a shooting war with Haven again, because it would prevent us from reinforcing against them out here. For that matter, that's what the mere threat of renewed hostilities with Haven is already doing!"
"I understand all of that," Honor said. "And you may very well be right, Alice. But if Thomas Theisman is prepared to go back to war with the Star Kingdom under any circumstances, or for any reason, then he and Shannon Foraker between them must have done a lot more to equalize our technology advantage than anybody in Jurgensen's ONI is prepared to admit they could have. And if that's the case, then whatever balance of power equation Gustav may have been contemplating is probably pretty badly out of date. And whatever the new management in the Republic might really want, Gustav Anderman is not the sort of ruler to rely on the good intentions of a powerful neighbor. Especially not a powerful neighbor which, up to four or five T-years ago was into the conquest game in a really big way."