by David Weber
She'd loved her husband, sure enough. But there hadn't been a day go by since his death decades earlier, that she hadn't cursed his shade. Michael Parmley hadn't had a malicious bone in his body—but he hadn't had a very responsible one either. An inveterate gambler, he'd lost three fortunes already before he completely bankrupted himself and his kin building the station.
And, in doing so, condemned at least one entire generation of his extended family to lives that were distorted by isolation and would surely end in early graves. Ganny knew full well—had known for years, now—that the day would inexorably come, assuming she survived herself, when she would be grieving at the death of her beloved great-nephew Andrew Artlett. He'd die of old age—while his great-aunt still had perhaps a century of life ahead of her.
"Never mind, Andrew. It's a long story. Make sure you send the financial records within ten minutes—but not too much before then. They won't expect a tramp freighter in orbit to be all that alert."
He nodded. "And how long do we stay?"
"Until the freighter from Gupta brings us the goods. If they time it right, they'll arrive two or three days before our deadline here in orbit runs out. It'll take less than a day for customs to check everything. Then we're on our way to Palmetto, just as our—completely legitimate—papers say we are. A quick swap of the jewels on Palmetto for a cargo of sutler goods, and we're back again. That shouldn't take more than two weeks. By then, we'll have established our bona fides with Mesan customs, and we should be able to get permission to stay in orbit for up to thirty T-days."
"And what if Anton and Victor need to make an escape during one of the stretches while we're gone?"
"Then they're shit out of luck. There's simply no way we can stay in orbit indefinitely, given our cover story. Not anywhere that has a functioning planetary government, much less Mesa. They're on the paranoid side here, and for damn good reason, as generally hated as they are." She shrugged. "But if those two characters are as good as they think they are—which is probably true—then they'll have enough sense to time whatever they might be doing that's likely to set off any alarms for one of the stretches we're in orbit. Of course, it's always possible they'll get caught by surprise by something unexpected. But that's the risk they run, in that business. Either way, I made sure we're covered in the contract. We get paid, no matter what happens."
She didn't see any reason to explain that the "contract" amounted to nothing more than a verbal agreement between herself, Web Du Havel and Jeremy X, and a representative of Beowulf's BSC. She knew, from a lifetime's experience, that she could trust the BSC and if she couldn't trust the Torch people there was nothing she could do about it anyway. But she couldn't see any way to make that clear to Artlett without undermining her years-long campaign to get her reckless great-nephew to stop trusting the fates so much.
Besides, the BSC would be footing most of the bill anyway. They'd agreed to pay the Butry clan an annual stipend for the use of the station. The stipend was more than enough to pay for the expense of providing every one of its members still young enough with prolong treatments—and with plenty left over to send them away for a regular education. The contribution of the Ballroom—technically, the Torch military and if you accepted that at face value you were a moron—was mostly going to be muscle. They'd be the ones who staffed the station, maintained the pretense it was still a slaver entrepot while actually using it as a combination stellar safe house and way station for covert operations—and treat themselves to shooting down the stray slaver ship that showed up from time to time.
It was over. Regardless of what happened to Ganny and the few members of her clan on the Hali Sowle, she'd finally managed to save the clan itself.
She heard the three boys squabbling over something, in a nearby compartment. The mess hall, from the sound of their voices. She couldn't quite make out the words. Ed and James were going at it and Brice seemed to be trying to act as peacemaker.
If they survived this expedition—and whatever other adventures their none-too-cautious souls got them into thereafter—all three of them would live for at least two centuries.
For the first time in years, Elfriede Margarete Butry discovered she was crying.
* * *
"The financial data from the Hali Sowle's contract of carriage checks out okay, E.D." Gansükh Blomqvist pointed at the screen in front of him.
She leaned over and looked. Sure enough, the logo and seal of the Banco de Madrid was prominently displayed.
"Okay, then." She went to her own work station and spent a minute or so keying in some instructions, before hitting the send button. The Hali Sowle's legitimacy, heretofore provisional and temporary, was now established in the data banks of the Mesan System Guard. The next time they came through, if they ever did, the routine would go much more quickly.
She hadn't bothered to check the details of the data on Blomqvist's screen. There was no reason to waste the time. Faking that seal and logo was effectively impossible for anyone except maybe a handful of governments in the galaxy. It was certainly beyond the capability of a gypsy freighter.
* * *
It was not, however, beyond the capability of the government of Erewhon—or any of its major families, even using their own private resources. Jeremy X had been quite right. The great families of Erewhon were still the galaxy's premier money-launderers.
When one of his subordinates brought the news to Walter Imbesi that everything had cleared for the Hali Sowle in the Mesa System, he simply nodded and went back to his business. The only reason he'd asked to be notified at all was because of the political sensitivity of the project. In purely financial terms, measured against the fortune of his family, it all amounted to chicken feed.
Still, even chicken feed was not to be sneered at. The Imbesis would very likely turn a small profit. The jewels were perfectly legitimate and there was a market for them, after all. Even the sutler trade on the reverse leg shouldn't do worse than break even.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
"All right, Luiz, what do you and your minions have for me?"
Oravil Barregos sat in a chair at the head of the conference table in the high-security briefing room attached to Luiz Rozsak's personal office. Vegar Spangen was parked in another chair, against the briefing room's back wall, and Rozsak, Watanapongse, and Commander Habib sat facing the governor from the far end of the table.
"A lot," Rozsak said. He grimaced and nodded to Habib. "Edie?"
The admiral's chief of staff brushed a hand over her short-cropped, dark, reddish-brown hair, then straightened in her seat as she turned slightly to face Barregos fully.
"The general strategic situation's experienced what you might describe as a . . . 'significant shift,' Governor," she said. "Most immediately pressing from our perspective is what happened at Manticore last week." She shook her head, and even her normally unflappable expression showed more than a little lingering shock. "As near as we can tell, both sides got royally reamed. Manticore's Home Fleet is just plain gone, and it sounds like their Third Fleet got hit equally hard. We don't have any official confirmation of those numbers, of course, and all the information we've got on Haven's losses is secondhand, at best, via the Manties. Bottom line, though, is that it looks like the majority of Theisman's numerical superiority just got blown out from under him."
"That was my own impression," Barregos said quietly. He shook his head. "What in God's name did Theisman think he was doing?"
"He rolled the dice, Sir," Habib replied flatly. Barregos raised one eyebrow, and the chief of staff shrugged. "After what happened at Lovat, it was pretty obvious the Havenite fleet was going to be toast going up against whatever it was Harrington's Eighth Fleet used on Giscard. Our best guess"—she twitched her head sideways at Watanapongse—"is that Theisman already had the strike force he used at Manticore assembled under Tourville when he found out about Lovat. We're guessing he'd started putting it together as part of a contingency plan either before the summit talk was e
ver proposed, or when Elizabeth deep-sixed the idea, at the very latest. At any rate, he had the operation already planned before Lovat—he had to have had it ready, or he couldn't have gotten it off the ground so quickly. When Harrington hammered Giscard, Theisman and Pritchart must have figured their only real chance was to score a knockout before the Manties got the new targeting systems into general deployment. Even with everything ready to go, it took someone with one hell of a lot of nerve—not to mention pure gall—to go for all the marbles that way. I doubt very much that anyone in Manticore ever even dreamed they'd pull the trigger on something like this, but one thing Theisman's already demonstrated pretty damned conclusively is that he's got enough guts for any three or four normal people."
"And he came damned close to pulling it off, too, as far as we can tell," Rozsak put in. "We still don't have the details, of course, but it sounds like he had a pretty good ops plan. Unfortunately—from his perspective, at least—it also sounds like the Manties were further along in deploying the new hardware than he'd hoped. And, unless I miss my guess, Murphy put in his centicredit's worth, as well."
"Not to mention Duchess Harrington's minor contribution," Habib added.
"Not to mention that," Rozsak agreed with a nod.
"So both sides are basically neutralized, you're saying?"
"Not exactly, Governor," Habib replied. "For the moment, yes, both sides are pretty much at a standstill. Theisman's lost his major striking force, but at least he's got a lot of new construction currently working up to give him coverage in his rear areas, for whatever good it's going to do against the Manties' new fire control. Manticore and the Alliance, on the other hand, still have Eighth Fleet, but they don't have anything else left to cover Manticore if they cut Harrington loose for additional offensive operations. They don't have as many new-build wallers already working up as Haven does, but they've got quite a few, and they've got a bunch of new construction getting ready to come out of the yards. After the Battle of Manticore, they may be a little short of experienced personnel for crews, but they're going to have a lot of hulls available shortly. Not as many as Haven has, even now, but a lot . . . and I think we have to assume all of their new wallers are going to have their new fire control. So while neither side has anything it can use to go after the other one right now, in another few months, Manticore is going to be in a position to reach right down Haven's throat and rip its lungs out."
Barregos grimaced at the chief of staff's choice of phrases, but he also nodded in understanding.
"What kind of implications does all this have for us, Luiz?" he asked.
"Edie and Jiri have a complete brief for you," Rozsak replied. "They'll be taking us step-by-step through our best current estimates of force levels and probable intentions. You want the short version first?"
Barregos nodded, and Rozsak shrugged.
"Basically, we're currently in a strategic vacuum. Nobody's got a lot of firepower to spare or to throw around, but as Edie says, once Manticore's new construction starts really coming forward, that's going to change. All of those 'minor distractions' the Manties are facing in Talbott are going to have a braking effect on their deployment postures, of course, but even so, I give Haven another six T-months—nine at the outside—before Harrington is sent off to turn the entire Haven System into one huge scrapyard. And unless Pritchart and Theisman are prepared to surrender, I think that's exactly what's going to happen. I sure as hell don't see them coming up with some kind of silver bullet in time to save them, anyway.
"In our immediate area, I've got a feeling Erewhon is going to be very carefully staying close to home until the situation between Manticore and Haven finally works itself out. I'm certain the Erewhonese were as taken by surprise by the direct attack on Manticore—and, for that matter, by whatever new toy Admiral Hemphill's come up with—as we were. I think they probably view the fact that Elizabeth was prepared to ask them to provide security for Torch when it looked like the summit was going to meet as a provisionally good sign. At the same time, though, they have to know Manticore generally is still pretty pissed off with them. I think they're going to want to make it as evident as they can that, despite any mutual defense treaties with the Republic, they're about as neutral as anyone can get and still be breathing where the current unpleasantness is concerned. Preliminary indications are that they're basically forting up at home, aside from routine commerce protection missions, and I'll be surprised if that changes.
"Which brings us to our other little problem area."
"Luiz, I always hate it when you use that particular phrase," Barregos said almost whimsically. "What knuckleduster is waiting for me this time?"
"Possibly not one at all," Rozsak replied.
"I hate that word 'possibly' almost as much as I hate 'little problem area.' " Barregos sat back in his chair. "Go ahead. Tell me the worst."
"It's not a case of 'worst,' but we are turning up significant—and, Jiri and I are both inclined to think, reliable—indications that Manpower is planning to mount an operation directly against Torch."
"It is?" Barregos abruptly sat back up, eyes narrowing.
"That's what it looks like," Rozsak said. "We're still working on trying to confirm the intelligence. Frankly, I don't think it's going to be possible to positively confirm it one way or the other, but if we're right, what's happened to the Manties and to the Republic is only going to make their job a lot easier. Especially if Erewhon's going to keep all of its heavy units home the way I expect it to. Unless, of course, someone else does something about it."
"The 'someone else' in question being the someone else who has a defensive treaty with the Kingdom of Torch, by any chance?" Barregos inquired.
"Pretty much," Rozsak replied.
"And what sort of position would we be in to do anything of the sort?"
"A lot better one than we would have been a year ago," Rozsak said frankly. "I'm not going to say we're anywhere near what I'd consider full readiness yet, of course. We've got significantly more capability than I really expected to have by this point, though. Which, of course, raises the interesting question of exactly how much of that capability we want to risk revealing by actually using it."
"Um."
Barregos frowned thoughtfully. He sat silently, obviously thinking hard, for several seconds, then refocused his attention on Rozsak.
"How much of the new stuff would we have to trot out if we wanted to defend Torch?"
"That depends on the exact force level Manpower would be able to commit against us." Rozsak shrugged. "I'm not trying to waffle; it's just that we don't know, at this point, exactly what kind of resources are involved from the other side. Before the Battle of Monica, I would have felt fairly confident we wouldn't be facing anything except the ex-StateSec ships we know they've recruited and probably another double handful or so of other pirates or mercs. Nothing bigger and nastier than two or three backgrounders, in other words, and mostly getting pretty long in the tooth, as well. As things stand now, I'm not prepared to rule out the possibility that they've got a few more Solarian Navy—or ex-SLN, at least—warships to make available to them. Against the level of opposition I'd have anticipated before Monica, I think we could probably do a pretty good job without bringing everything we have to the party. Against what we may actually be looking at, we'd probably need just about all of our new units."
"But, Governor," Watanapongse put in diffidently, "we need to bear in mind where we'd be using them. If we intervene to defend Torch, there's no way the Torches would be telling anyone anything about how we intervened if we asked them not to. And assuming this really would be a Manpower operation, the other side wouldn't have any powerful motive that we can see to make Old Chicago privy to whatever information might get back to it with the survivors."
"So you're saying you think letting the cat out of the bag in Torch would constitute an acceptable risk, Commander?" Barregos said.
"What he's saying, and I happen to agree with him, is tha
t risking letting the cat out of the bag in Torch is a more acceptable risk than depriving ourselves of the firepower we might need to win in Torch," Rozsak said, and Barregos nodded.
"Before we start reaching any firm decisions, though," the admiral continued, "I think you should go ahead and hear Edie and Jiri's full brief."
"I think you're right," Barregos agreed, and Rozsak leaned back and waved one hand at his subordinates.
"That's your cue, Edie," he said.
Chapter Forty
"He doesn't look like much," said Jurgen Dusek, after studying the holopics on his desk. But the man who was the acknowledged boss of the Neue Rostock seccy district of Mesa's capital city was simply making a comment, not a reproach. Triêu Chuanli was his top man. He wouldn't have brought this matter to Dusek's attention if he hadn't had good reason to do so. "What's the guy's name?"
"Daniel McRae. What he claims, anyway. He also claims to be another StateSec on the run. I couldn't tell you if that's true either, but he does have a Nouveau Paris accent. That's hard to fake."
"Did you send him to Cybille and her people?"
"Yeah. They spent hours with him. Cybille says his story checks out down the line and he's okay." Triêu made a face. "Well . . . 'okay' is not exactly the right word. She's says McRae's probably a psychopath. Most of those really hardcore StateSec guys were. But this one's pretty tightly wrapped, she figures. The fact that he was that close to Saint-Just means he can't just be a screwball. Whatever else he was, Saint-Just was thoroughly practical. He wouldn't have tolerated anyone around him who was so crazy he couldn't keep the lid on."
Jurgen Dusek nodded. Over the past few years, he'd become a lot more familiar with the history and inside practices of the former People's Republic of Haven's security forces than you'd expect anyone on Mesa would be. More familiar than he wanted to be, for that matter. But the business of brokering between StateSec mercenaries and the people who'd been hiring so many of them had turned out to be a more profitable line of business than anything else he was engaged in.