by David Weber
“The Colonel estimates that at least a third of the atmospheric defense units are coming over to our side,” the commander went on. “He says he thinks we can swing still more of them if we keep hammering away at our message. For now, he feels confident that he can at least keep any of the satellite bases from getting organized strike elements into the capital’s airspace.”
“And the units already in capital airspace that haven’t come over?” Bukato asked with poison dryness.
“Those the defensive grid will just have to handle,” McQueen told him. “And at least the bastards haven’t started lobbing nukes at us yet.”
“Yet,” Bukato agreed. “But do you really think Saint-Just won’t use them if he figures the situation is going south on him?”
“If he could get them through to the Octagon without major collateral damage, yes,” McQueen said. “I think he’d use them in a heartbeat under those circumstances. But as long as the grid is up, he’s not going to get through it with anything short of a saturation strike, and that would rip hell out of the entire city. After what happened last time, I don’t think he’ll dare take that chance. Our isolated neighborhood, yes; that he’d nuke. But not the city in general. After all, it won’t do him any good to kill all of us if the way he does it outrages the rest of the Fleet so badly that they’ll turn on him regardless of what his SS goons do. And it would, you know, Ivan.”
Bukato grunted. The sound could have indicated disagreement, but it didn’t. No one could be absolutely certain how the People’s Navy would respond to yet another, even more massive use of nuclear weapons in Nouveau Paris, but the admiral was almost positive that McQueen was correct. Too many millions of civilians had already been killed, and with all of the Committee except Saint-Just in McQueen’s hands, someone in the Fleet was virtually certain to take his chances on survival if he could only get a clean shot at the StateSec commander if Saint-Just was stupid enough to destroy another huge chunk of the capital.
“All right,” McQueen said crisply. “So far, except for Capital Fleet and the fact that we didn’t get Pierre or Saint-Just in our initial strikes, things seem to be going pretty much to plan. Ivan, I want you and Commodore Tillotson to stay in close communication with Conflans and Yazov. Captain Rubin, you’re in charge of the Octagon defense grid. If they don’t have our transponder codes, then they don’t cross the threshold into our airspace, understood?”
“Understood, Ma’am,” Rubin replied grimly.
“Major Adams, you’re in charge of coordinating our garrison units with the grid. Stay close to Captain Rubin and see to it that your man-portable air defense units are put in the best places to back up the grid.”
“Aye, Ma’am!” the Marine major barked.
“Ivan,” McQueen turned back to Bukato, “where did we stick Fontein?”
“We’ve got him under guard in your office, Ma’am.”
“My, how appropriate,” McQueen murmured, and even here, even now, one or two people surprised themselves by laughing aloud at her wicked smile. She grinned back at them, then gave her head a little toss. “I think we can safely say that friend Erasmus is a realist and a practical man,” she told Bukato. “He really does support the Revolution, but once he knows Pierre is gone, I suspect that we can swing him over to our side if we can convince him that Saint-Just is going down, too. Or at least into pretending that he’s come over to our side, which would be almost as good in the short term. If I can talk him into endorsing our broadcasts, we should be able to split StateSec between him and Saint-Just. At least, it would certainly hamper Saint-Just’s ability to deploy his damned intervention battalions!”
“I can’t fault that, Ma’am,” Bukato said, “but I’m afraid he may be just a bit harder to turn than that.”
“You may be right,” she replied much more grimly. “On the other hand, if I screw the muzzle of a pulser far enough into his ear, I think I can convince him to follow me anywhere.”
She smiled at her followers again, and this time there was no humor at all in her expression.
Oscar Saint-Just’s habitually expressionless face was carved granite as he sat in the office just off his emergency HQ and listened to the latest reports.
“Sir, the troops are getting worried!” a citizen brigadier half-blurted as he burst into the Citizen Secretary’s office. “They’re hearing rumors that the Citizen Chairman is—well—”
Saint-Just turned his head, and the panicky report slithered to a sudden stop as the citizen brigadier quailed before those icy, basilisk eyes. The officer swallowed hard, and Saint-Just let him sweat for perhaps fifteen seconds while he held him pinned under his pitiless gaze. Then he spoke, very coldly and precisely.
“The troops will do what they’re told to do, Citizen Brigadier. As will their officers. All of their officers. We are now operating under Case Horatius. You will so inform all unit commanders, and you will also inform them that any measures of summary justice they may feel are necessary are approved in advance. Is that clear?”
“Y-Yes, Sir,” the citizen brigadier said quickly. He turned on his heel and hurried out of the office even more rapidly than he had entered it, and Saint-Just permitted himself a faint, bleak, death’s head grin. The citizen brigadier was an idiot if he hadn’t already figured out that Case Horatius was in effect. Although, in fairness, it might be shock rather than stupidity, for Esther McQueen had managed to take them all by surprise… again.
Saint-Just closed out the background chatter of combat reports and frantic requests for orders and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. What in God’s name had kicked the woman off now? Surely she had to have realized Rob wasn’t about to have her shot before he knew that the Manties and their allies really were on the ropes! Was it simply that she’d hoped to achieve surprise? If so, she’d succeeded, but for all the ferocious efficiency with which the first stage of her coup had been executed, it was obvious to Saint-Just that the follow-up stages were far less solid.
Not that they have to be all that solid, he admitted grimly to himself. The bitch got Rob. A fresh pain of purely personal anguish stabbed at him, and he suppressed it sternly. There was no time for that. Not now. And she’s got all the rest of the Committee in the Octagon with her. If she can get them to sign off on her actions, then—
A buzzer sounded the distinctive signal which informed him that the communication staff manning the secret, hidden command center which Tsakakis and Citizen Captain Russell had hustled him off to had just picked up a transmission they felt had sufficient priority to interrupt whatever else he might be doing. He grimaced at the thought of fresh tidings of still more disaster, but he also lowered his hands and reached out to stab one of the keys on his communications panel. The combat chatter vanished instantly, and his mouth tightened as Esther McQueen’s voice replaced it.
“To all loyal members of the People’s military! This is Citizen Secretary of War McQueen. The Revolution has been betrayed! I have received positive confirmation that Citizen Chairman Pierre has been murdered—murdered by his own State Security ‘bodyguards’ at the direct orders of Oscar Saint-Just! The reports available to me are still unclear as to what could have prompted the Secretary for State Security to commit this heinous crime, but the simultaneous attempt to take myself and all other members of the Committee into custody clearly indicates the existence of a far-reaching and dangerous organization of traitors within State Security. I call upon all loyal members of StateSec to remember that your oaths of loyalty are to the Revolution, the Committee, and to the Citizen Chairman, and not to the personal ambition of a man who has betrayed all of them! I call upon you to resist his illegal orders and his treasonous attempt to seize complete, personal power from the legitimately designated organs of government. Refuse to assist him in this despicable act of treachery and betrayal!
“To the regular branches of the People’s military, I say this. State Security is not your enemy! Only those individuals within it who choose to serve the pur
poses of a would-be tyrant and dictator are your foes! As you have so valiantly defended the People and the Revolution against outside enemies, so now you must defend them against internal enemies—enemies who are far more deadly than the Manticorans and their puppets because they strike from the shadows like assassins. I call upon you to honor your oath to the service of the People and the Committee of Public Safety!
“This is not a struggle in which ships of the wall have a place. Whatever Oscar Saint-Just may choose to do, we of the legitimate Committee of Public Safety refuse to turn Nouveau Paris into a wasteland of wreckage and bodies. We hold the Octagon, and we will defend it by whatever means are necessary, but we neither request nor will we tolerate nuclear or kinetic strikes within the area of the Capital! Should you be ordered by Saint-Just or his minions to carry out such strikes, you are instructed to refuse those orders, no matter what threats may accompany them.
“What the Committee most urgently requires at this time are additional loyal ground and atmospheric combat troops. I need not tell any of you how powerful the State Security intervention forces in and around Nouveau Paris are. I hope and believe that many of the personnel of those intervention battalions will remember their oaths to the Committee and refuse to participate in this naked effort to suppress and destroy all that Citizen Chairman Pierre fought so long and so hard to accomplish. But it must be anticipated that many others in those battalions will accept the illegal orders of those officers who have allied themselves with the traitor Saint-Just. The defenses of the Octagon are strong, but we cannot resist a mass attack out of our own resources for an extended period. It is essential to the survival of the Committee that loyal forces relieve the Octagon and escort the civilian members of the Committee to safety. I therefore call upon all Marine and Planetary Defense officers and charge you, as Secretary of War and in the name of the legitimate members of the Committee of Public Safety, to move at once to the relief of the Octagon and the suppression of any and all forces loyal to the traitor Oscar Saint-Just! In this moment of—”
Saint-Just stabbed the communications button again, and this time his expression was a vicious snarl as McQueen’s voice died.
She was good, he admitted. Every word vibrated with sincerity, passion, and outrage. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if even some of his own StateSec people believed her, and he had no doubt at all that a large majority of the regular military would want to believe her. How could they want anything else, when she was the one who had led them to victory and he was the one who had ordered countless of their fellows and their fellows’ families executed? And with Rob dead, they could believe her if they so chose. However senior to her his membership on the Committee might be, both of them were simply “citizen secretaries.” She had as great a claim to legitimacy as he did… at least for anyone looking from the outside into the chaos and confusion which she had sown across Nouveau Paris. Worse, she did indeed have every surviving member of the Committee in the Octagon with her, and he and Rob had spent years stamping out any hint of defiance among the Committee’s membership. Now McQueen had physical control of all those sheep, and Saint-Just had no doubt at all that she could… convince at least the majority of them into signing off on her version of what had happened. As for any of them who declined, he was sure it would turn out that they had been tragically murdered by traitorous StateSec units before McQueen could rescue them from his murderous minions.
And that bit about forbidding any nuclear or kinetic strikes on the capital—that was downright brilliant! It snatched the moral high ground right out from under his feet, and at the same time it posed a threat which was almost certain to hold his own SS-crewed warships at bay. Citizen Commodore Helft had already destroyed two superdreadnoughts which had looked like moving to support McQueen, and at the moment, the rest of Capital Fleet’s ships were under the guns of Helft’s battle squadron. He could undoubtedly destroy dozens of them before they could bring up their sidewalls, but there were too many of them for him to count on getting all of them before the survivors got him. And thanks to McQueen’s orders, it was virtually certain that at least some of them would try to stop him from bombarding the capital, even at the risk of their own near-certain destruction. And once he started killing them in large numbers, their consorts would almost certainly react, for how could they know where Helft would stop if they didn’t stop him.
Someone else knocked on the frame of his open office door, and he looked up to see a citizen colonel whose name he could not recall.
“Yes?”
“Sir, we just got another report from Citizen General Bouchard.” The citizen colonel paused, and cleared his throat. “Sir, the Citizen General says that his attack has been stopped. I’m… afraid they took heavy casualties, Sir.”
“How heavy?” Saint-Just’s expressionless tone never wavered, and the citizen colonel cleared his throat again.
“Very heavy, I understand, Sir. Citizen General Bouchard reports that both of his lead battalions are falling back in disorder.” The citizen colonel inhaled deeply, and straightened his back. “Sir, it sounds to me like what he really means is that they’re running like hell.”
“I see.” Saint-Just regarded the citizen colonel with a sharper edge of interest. “What actions would you recommend, Citizen Colonel?” he asked after a moment, and the officer met his eyes squarely.
“I don’t have any firsthand information, Sir.” The citizen colonel spoke with much less hesitation, as if what he’d already said had broken some inner reserve. “From the reports I’ve seen here, though, I don’t think Citizen General Bouchard is going to get through on the ground. They’ve got too much manpower and firepower, and, frankly, Sir, they’re much better trained for this sort of standup, toe-to-toe fight than we are.”
“I see,” Saint-Just repeated in a somewhat colder tone. “Nonetheless, Citizen Colonel,” he went on, “and notwithstanding the inferiority of our own troops, this mutiny must be suppressed. Don’t you agree?”
“Of course I do, Sir! All I’m saying is that if we keep hammering straight down the same approaches into their teeth, we’re going to take insupportable casualties and fail to achieve our objective, anyway. At the same time, Sir, it looks to me as if they can’t have much of a central reserve within the Octagon itself—not of ground troops, anyway. They’ve got more forces moving towards them from half a dozen Marine and Navy commands, but their reinforcements aren’t there yet. I believe that the organized units we retain on the ground in the vicinity would be better occupied throwing a cordon around the Octagon to keep additional mutinous units from reaching it. While they do that, we should move Citizen Brigadier Tome’s brigade up to support Citizen General Bouchard while we bring in reinforcements from outside the capital. If we have to, we can put in a frontal assault once we have the manpower to carry through with it despite our losses. In the meantime, Sir, I would recommend that we keep as much pressure on them with air attacks as we can, but without committing ourselves to a serious attack and the losses it would inevitably entail.”
Saint-Just regarded the other man thoughtfully. No doubt there was a great deal of military logic to what the citizen colonel had just said. Unfortunately, this was as much a political confrontation as a military one, and every hour that McQueen continued to pour her appeals into the listening ears of the regular military units in the Haven System moved the political balance further in her favor.
“I appreciate your candor, Citizen Colonel… Jurgens,” he said, squinting a bit as he read the name off of Jurgens’ name patch. “And if Bouchard’s people are falling back anyway, then no doubt ordering them to assume a defensive stance, at least temporarily, makes sense. But there are other factors to consider here, as well.”
The citizen secretary rubbed his forehead—the equivalent in him of another man’s raging tantrum—then shrugged.
“Please pass my instructions to Citizen General Bouchard to hold his positions and use his reserves to seal the approaches to the Octa
gon while he reorganizes,” he went on after a moment. “Then ask Citizen Brigadier Mahoney to step back in here.”
“Yes, Sir! At once!”
“General Conflans reports that his forces have linked up with Brigadier Henderson’s and that the enemy has broken off the attack!”
Someone in the War Room raised a half-cheer at the news before he could stop himself, but McQueen only nodded calmly. A part of her wanted to cheer herself, for Conflans’ report was the best news she’d gotten since the last of the Committee’s members had been rounded up. His attempt to take the StateSec intervention battalions in the flank must have succeeded, and that meant that the ground forces immediately available to Saint-Just had been effectively neutralized.
She glanced at her chrono. Strange. Time had felt as if it were dragging past with glacial slowness, yet over five hours had passed since her commando teams kicked off the operation.
Five hours, and I’m still alive. Now that I’ve gotten this far, I guess I can admit to myself that I hadn’t expected to be alive by now. But if Gerard is right and Bouchard really is pulling back, then it sounds as if the momentum is by God slipping over to our side after all!
She recognized a familiar danger sign, and made herself step back from her own enthusiasm.
Careful, woman! Get yourself all overconfident and stupid, and Saint-Just will put your head on a pike in the People’s Square by evening!
She turned to Bukato.
“Tell Gerard to turn over to Henderson the moment he feels sufficiently confident to do so, and to get himself back here to the Octagon,” she said crisply. “And tell him to bring as big a reinforcement with him as he thinks he can without weakening Henderson dangerously.”
“Of course, Ma’am,” Bukato replied. “You think it’s time to begin thinking about planning an offensive of our own?”