Shadow of Freedom-eARC

by David Weber

  “Ah, yes. ‘Unusual,’” she repeated. “That does seem an appropriate adjective. And this”—she transferred her gaze to the civilian at Terekhov’s side without extending her hand—“must be the mysterious Mr. Ankenbrandt.”

  “Yes, Admiral.” Ankenbrandt gave her a small bow.

  He was one of the most unmemorable people Michelle had ever seen: well dressed and well groomed, but with an almost mousy look. The sort who was obviously a numbers kind of person, a master of the internal dynamics of a corporate office, perhaps, but not the kind who got out much.

  That was her first thought, but then her eyes narrowed slightly. According to Terekhov’s briefing, Michael Ankenbrandt hadn’t known a thing about her before the commodore agreed to get him in to see her. He hadn’t even known the Manticoran fleet commander’s name, much less who she was related to. Yet even though he was obviously more than a little nervous, he was also composed. There was anxiety in his eyes, perhaps, but not a trace of panic.

  “So what can I do for you, Mr. Ankenbrandt?” she inquired, pointing at the pair of chairs arranged to face her desk.

  She glanced up at Billingsley and nodded in dismissal while her guests sat. The steward gave her a grumpy look—obviously, he didn’t much care for the thought of leaving her with a stranger in an age of nanotech assassinations—but he didn’t argue. He did exchange a speaking look with Master Sergeant Cognasso before he withdrew with what he probably thought was reasonable gracefulness, however.

  Michelle did her best to ignore the exchange, although her lips twitched ever so slightly as she gazed at Ankenbrandt attentively.

  “The situation’s a bit…awkward, Countess Gold Peak,” the civilian said after a moment. “To be frank, when I left Mobius, no one had any idea there might be a fleet presence this powerful at Montana. This was supposed to be just an intermediate stop on my way to Spindle and Baroness Medusa.”

  Despite herself, Michelle’s eyebrows rose, and he shook his head.

  “As I said, it’s awkward. Under the circumstances, though, I felt I had no choice but to dust off one of the optional plans I was given when I left.”

  “Optional plans?” Michelle repeated.

  “The people I represent have been in communication with the Star Empire for some time now, Admiral,” Ankenbrandt said levelly. “It’s been an indirect communication, through some fairly roundabout conduits, and I don’t know whether or not you’ve been briefed on it from Manticore’s end.”

  His rising tone made the last statement a question, and Michelle shook her head.

  “To be honest, Mr. Ankenbrandt, what I know about the Mobius System is minute, to say the very least. And nobody in Spindle—or anywhere else—has briefed me on anything where the system’s concerned.”

  “I was afraid that would be the case.” Ankenbrandt sighed. “I hoped I might be wrong, though.”

  “Why?” Michelle asked bluntly.

  “Because I’m afraid time is running out for Mobius,” Ankenbrandt replied flatly. “If you’d been briefed, you might be prepared to do something about that. Since you haven’t been…”

  His voice trailed off, and he shrugged heavily.

  Michelle looked at him for a moment, then glanced at her desktop display. It was set to mirror mode, showing the reflections of Master Sergeant Cognasso and Alfredo, and she reached out to fiddle with a crystal paperweight engraved with the hull number of her first hyper-capable command. An instant later, Alfredo casually laid his left true-hand on Cognasso’s head.

  So whatever else is going on, this fellow at least thinks he’s telling us the truth, she thought. Which is all just as mysterious as hell, isn’t it, Mike? Oh, the joys of senior flag rank!

  “No, I haven’t been briefed,” she said calmly, tipping her chair back and resting her elbows on its arms so she could steeple her fingers under her chin. “If you’d care to tell me what’s going on, though, I’m more than willing to listen. Whether I’ll be prepared to believe you, or to act on whatever you have to say, is another matter, of course. So, on that basis, is there something you’d care to tell me about?”

  * * *

  “I’m sorry, Milady, but that’s got to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of,” Aploloniá Munming said some hours later. Then she seemed to realize what she’d just said and shook her head. “Scratch that. We’ve been hearing some pretty damned ridiculous things generally over the last few months, and it seems an appalling number of them are more accurate than we’d like. So let’s just say I find this Ankenbrandt’s story a bit difficult to accept.”

  “I’d put it a bit more strongly than that, myself, Admiral Gold Peak,” Rear Admiral Mickaël Ruddock said.

  The red-haired, blue-eyed Ruddock commanded the second division of Munming’s superdreadnought squadron, and he was even more bluntly spoken (if possible) then Munming, Michelle reflected. That could be because he was on the smallish side and felt a little defensive about his lack of centimeters. Or, even more likely, it could be because he was a Gryphon highlander…and on the smallish side.

  “I’d be inclined t’ go along with Admiral Munming and Admiral Ruddock,” Michael Oversteegen mused out loud, “if Alfredo and Master Sergeant Cognasso hadn’t vouched for him.”

  “I thought the same thing,” Michelle admitted, sipping from the steaming mug of coffee Billingsley had deposited on the briefing room table at her elbow. “But Alfredo does vouch for him. Whatever else he may have been doing, he wasn’t lying. And Alfredo also confirms that his anxiety over what’s going on in Mobius is genuine.” She shrugged. “However bizarre it sounds, Ankenbrandt really is playing messenger for a bunch of people who’ve been—or who think they’ve been, anyway—in contact with and receiving clandestine support from the Star Empire.”

  “Forgive me, Ma’am,” Cynthia Lecter said, “but that’s crazy. I mean, from the timetable he’s described, they’ve been in contact with us since before Commodore Terekhov even sailed for Monica.” She nodded respectfully in Terekhov’s direction without ever looking away from Michelle. “We had absolutely no interest in this region at that point. Why in God’s name would we have been making clandestine contacts with a resistance movement directed at Frontier Security?”

  “Now, now, Cindy,” Michelle corrected, waving an index finger gently. “It’s not a resistance movement against OFS. It’s a resistance movement against this President Lombroso. He’s just an OFS lackey, not the real thing, like they have in Madras.”

  “That doesn’t change my point, Ma’am,” Lecter replied with a certain respectful asperity. “It would still have been an incredibly foolish, risky, ultimately pointless thing for us to have done. And if we had been doing anything of the sort, and if Baroness Medusa really knew about it, do you think she would’ve sent us out here without at least mentioning it to you?”

  “No, Cindy, I don’t,” Michelle said calmly. “That doesn’t mean they haven’t been in contact with somebody, though. And it doesn’t mean they don’t believe it’s Manticore they’ve been talking to.”

  “But…what would be the point?” Lecter asked almost plaintively.

  “Aivars?” Michelle invited, looking at the tall, blond commodore.

  “The same points you’re raising occurred to me when I first heard Ankenbrandt’s story, Captain Lecter,” Terekhov said, looking down the table at Michelle’s chief of staff. “In fact, I was inclined—especially in the absence of a treecat lie detector of my own—to write him off as either a complete crackpot or a Frontier Security plant trying to suck us into a misstep. Frankly, I’m still not completely ready to dismiss the second possibility. Even if he believes he’s telling us the truth, he and all of his friends in Mobius could’ve been set up by OFS for that very purpose. On the other hand, as you pointed out yourself, there’s the timetable. I can’t see why Frontier Security would have been worrying about setting anything like this up before we ever crossed swords with Monica.

  “As I say, I was about to write him
off when Ensign Zilwicki suggested a third possibility to me. I realize some people”—he carefully refrained from looking in Admiral Munming’s direction—“may be inclined to wonder if her father’s…radicalism, let’s say, might affect her judgment. I don’t happen to think that’s very likely in her case, but even if it were, her suggestion still made a lot of sense to me.”

  “And that suggestion was, Sir Aivars?” Munming asked, but she was eyeing him intently, and her tone suggested she’d already figured out where he was headed.

  “Ensign Zilwicki suggested that it’s possible we—and, for that matter, the resistance people in Mobius—are being set up, but not by Frontier Security. As she pointed out, it’s obvious from Crandall’s movements that Mesa must have put her into play at the same time they started providing battlecruisers to Monica. Which, just coincidentally, would have been about the same time Ankenbrandt says his resistance organization was initially contacted by ‘Manticore.’ Or, for that matter, the time somebody began talking to Mr. Westman here on Montana and Nordbrandt in Kornati.”

  “You’re suggesting it’s actually this Mesan Alignment, Commodore?” Roddick said slowly.

  “The original notion wasn’t mine, Admiral, but I think it makes a lot of sense. Especially if the rather sketchy information we have so far from home is accurate and Mesa’s been maneuvering us into a shooting confrontation with the League all along. If one of the local régimes or OFS itself were to break a resistance movement, all of whose leaders genuinely believed they’d been instigated, coordinated, and supplied by the Star Empire, how do you think the League would have reacted even before our current confrontations?”

  There was silence for several seconds. Then Oversteegen nodded.

  “Always did think Helen had a pretty good head on her shoulders,” he drawled. “An’ sometimes a little paranoia’s a useful thing. And speakin’ about bein’ paranoid, does anyone think—assumin’ this little scenario holds atmosphere—that the bastards would’ve stopped with settin’ up one resistance movement?”

  “I don’t know about ‘anyone,’” Michelle said, “but I don’t. Assuming, as you say, Ensign Zilwicki’s hypothesis holds atmosphere. And I’m very much afraid it could. For that matter, I’m afraid there’s still worse to come” She cocked her head at the commodore. “Would you care to go ahead and share the rest of your unpleasant ruminations with everyone else, as well, Aivars?”

  “I wouldn’t like to take complete credit for them, Ma’am,” Terekhov pointed out. “In fact, once Helen—Ensign Zilwicki, I mean—had gone that far, another rather nasty thought occurred to her. If this really is Mesa, and if they’ve contacted not just Mobius but other independent or protectorate star systems out this way, what happens when the balloons start going up? When OFS and Frontier Fleet move in to put down the ‘rebellions’ and the blood starts to flow? It wouldn’t just be a matter of the PR damage we’d take in the League. Bad enough hundreds or thousands of people would be killed, but if dozens of resistance movements start sending us messengers like Mr. Ankenbrandt, expecting the open assistance and support they’ve been promised, and we don’t deliver, what happens to the tendency for independent star systems to trust us more than the Sollies?”

  “Those fucking bastards,” Ruddock said softly, then shook himself. “Sorry about that, Milady,” he said apologetically, “but I believe Commodore Terekhov and—Ensign Zilwicki—have just converted my skepticism into something else.” His eyes hardened dangerously. “You’ve almost got to admire them. Aside from the time they’ve invested in it, look how little it’s cost them to set all this up!”

  “That thought occurred to me, too, when Commodore Terekhov first shared this whole fascinating train of thought with me,” Michelle said sourly. “And it leads to an interesting quandary, doesn’t it?”

  Heads nodded all around the table, and she inhaled sharply.

  “All right.” She sat up straighter, tapping an index finger on the table for emphasis as she continued. “All of this is hypothetical, of course. I’m not going to pretend I don’t think there’s something to it, though. And, to be honest, there are some potential upsides to the situation. For one thing, although I don’t think the strategy ever actually occurred to anyone on our side, it really is a damned good way to force the League to disperse its efforts. That’s one of the things that’s going to make our supposed complicity so convincing to the Sollies when the shit finally gets around to hitting the fan. At the same time, we don’t have any way to know how many other Mobiuses may be ticking away out there. And the truth is that Ensign Zilwicki’s final hypothesis is downright scary. The damage this could do to the Star Empire’s reputation outside the League doesn’t bear thinking about.”

  She looked around the table again.

  “So we’re going to begin contingency planning now. Especially after how effectively Captain Zavala’s squadron performed in Saltash, I don’t think it’s going to take wallers to support something like Mobius. A destroyer division or a couple of cruisers should be able to handle anything Frontier Fleet’s likely to be able to spare for rebel-thumping. I’m not going to disperse my main combat strength, but I want plans to peel off light forces to respond to any of these ‘Manticore-supported rebellions’ we hear about. We can’t do anything about the ones we don’t know about, and I sure as hell don’t want to encourage even more ‘spontaneous uprisings.’ For that matter, what I’d really prefer would be to turn up in the role of peacemaker before things get too far out of hand. In the real world, that’s not going to happen, though, and we all know it. So the way I see it, in this respect at least, we have no choice but to dance to the Alignment’s music…assuming Mesa really is behind it, of course. I’ve already sent a dispatch boat on to Spindle with my conclusions, and to be frank, I’d be delighted to have guidance from Baroness Medusa and Prime Minister Alquezar before things get even more lively out here. In the meantime, though, I’m not going to let Mesa get away with branding us not just as instigators of rebellion but as the sort of people who abandon our catspaws when the blood actually begins to flow.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “What the hell was Kazuyoshi thinking?” Kayleigh Blanchard demanded.

  Almost a week had passed since the apocalyptic conclusion of Kazuyoshi Brewster’s attack, and she and Michael Breitbach sat at a picnic table in Landing’s Central Park. A checkered cloth covered the table between them, and their plates were piled with potato salad, baked beans, and hot dogs. Sitting out in the open was enough to make Blanchard nervous, but she knew Breitbach was right. Security forces paid less attention to people eating picnic lunches out in the sunlight where everyone could see them than they did to people who seemed concerned with hiding in the shadows. Their current table was on a little point of land, pushing out into the lake. Directional microphones could undoubtedly hear every word they said, if anyone were suspicious enough to point one of them in their direction, but there weren’t going to be any other diners near enough to overhear casual conversation.

  Breitbach took another bite of his hot dog, chewed with every evidence of enjoyment, swallowed, and took a swig of beer. Then he shrugged.

  “We’ll never know, for sure,” he said. “Personally, though, I think it was just as straightforward as it looks.” He shook his head. “Kaz and his entire cell just plain lost too many people they cared about. He didn’t kick an authorization request up the ladder because he knew damned well he wouldn’t get it, and he didn’t care.”

  “But—” Blanchard began.

  “Eat your hot dog,” Breitbach interrupted, and waited until she’d obediently taken another bite.

  “I don’t say it doesn’t piss me off, because it does,” he said then, putting ketchup on his own hot dog as he spoke. “And it’s going to play hell with all our plans. At the same time, I can’t be too mad at him. I knew his family, you know. I wasn’t supposed to, but I did. So, yeah, I understand exactly what was pushing him. I didn’t know the others, but from
what we’ve seen, they were cut from the same cloth. And don’t forget—four members of his cell walked away clean. We haven’t tried to contact them yet, and they’re keeping their heads down just the way they ought to, but it looks to me like they’re probably the ones who didn’t lose family in the May Riots. They helped Kaz and the others get in, set up the van bombs, then got the hell out of the way.”

  He put down the ketchup and bit into the hot dog again.

  “You’re probably right,” Blanchard said after a moment. “And I’m like you; I can’t really blame them either, however much I wish they hadn’t done it. But what do we do now? Whether we like it or not, they were effective—and visible—as hell. Now that they’ve hammered Yardley’s bastards so hard, some of the other cells are going to want to hit back, too. For that matter, I’m thinking a lot of this ‘freelance’ stuff we’re seeing is probably our people.”

  “Probably,” Breitbach agreed. “And it’s going to get even harder to hold them now that Yardley’s started arresting ‘dangerous dissidents.’” He grimaced. “Once people in general figure out how many people she and Lombroso are ‘disappearing’ it’s going to get really ugly. And once the Gendarmes get here, it’s going to get even worse.”

  He seemed remarkably calm about the prospect he’d just described, Blanchard thought.

  “So you’re sure now that Verrochio’s going to send them?” she asked, and he snorted.

  “After Kazuyoshi’s operation?” He shook his head. “I think they were probably going to send them in the first place; after Kaz and his people took out a whole fucking regiment of the Guard—and a Solly operations manager—our Ms. Xydis for damned sure started screaming for everything she could get! If they weren’t already in the pipeline, I guarantee Verrocchio’s going to cough them up now, damn it. That’s why I sent off another message to the Manties three days ago.”

  “You did?” She blinked at him in surprise, and he shrugged.