Shadow of Freedom-eARC

by David Weber

  “Yardley’d already begun her crackdown, Kayleigh,” he pointed out. “It was obvious things were only going to get worse, and I had to make a quick call. There was a fast Trifecta freighter heading for Montana to follow up on the contract our first contact was sent to negotiate. Of course, that whole deal was one of Guernicke’s brainstorms, so it’s possible Frolov will scrub it now that she’s so fortuitously retired. But in the meantime, the first freighter was off to pick up whatever their agents had been able to purchase, and we had another ‘secret friend’ in her crew.” He shrugged again. “The opportunity wasn’t likely to present itself again anytime soon, so I decided to take it.”

  “I see.” She regarded him steadily for several seconds. “Do you think the Manties are actually going to respond?”

  “I wish I were as confident that they’re going to as I am that Verrocchio’s going to,” Breitbach admitted. “Having said that, though, I do think it’s more likely they will than that they won’t.” He shrugged slightly. “They committed themselves to, and they have to figure that if we go down, Yardley and Lombroso are almost certain to find evidence of that in the wreckage. Having the rest of the galaxy find out they encouraged us and promised us support and then pulled the plug on us when we needed them most would hurt them badly with the independents out here in the Verge. And not coming through for us wouldn’t do them any good with the Sollies, either. The League’s going to be almost equally pissed off even if we do go down, especially because they’ll blame the Manties for encouraging us in the first place.”

  “Cynical…but probably accurate,” Blanchard conceded after a moment, taking another bite of her own hot dog.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Breitbach replied. “I don’t think it was all cynical calculation on the Manties’ part in the first place. I think they really do hate the Solarian League and OFS, and I think they find people like Lombroso and Yardley almost as morally reprehensible as we do. But let’s be realistic, Kayleigh. All the moral revulsion in the universe isn’t going to bring somebody into conflict with something the size of the Solarian League unless there are good, solid and pragmatic reasons to go with it. From everything I’ve seen, it looks like Manticore realizes it’s fighting for its life, and if it’s going to win, it’s going to have to fight smart. That means not throwing away its claim to the moral high ground by encouraging people to revolt against régimes like Lombroso’s and then just walking away. And to be honest, I don’t care whether or not they’re saints as long as it’s in their own best interests to help us take down him and that butcher Yardley.”

  “I can get behind that,” Blanchard agreed feelingly.

  “I figured you probably could.” Breitbach smiled at her, but the smile faded, and he shook his head.

  “I figured you probably could,” he repeated, “but that doesn’t make me any happier about this mess. Yardley is going on the offensive, and I think she’s doing it deliberately, trying to force our hand.”

  “Push the entire Resistance out into the open where she can get at it?” Blanchard looked unhappy at her own suggestion, and Breitbach nodded.

  “That or pull it out into the open,” he agreed. “I’m not sure she realizes just how well organized we actually are, but even if she does, she probably figures that if she hits us hard enough—especially after Kazuyoshi hit them as hard as he did—she can goad our people into coming out where she can get at them. She’s got to be pretty damn confident she’s still got a lot more heavy weapons than we do, not to mention the Guard’s air assets, satellites, surveillance systems, and spies. I’m pretty sure her thinking’s going to be that if she can only get us out in the open she’ll be able to smash us once and for all, or at least prune us back pretty damned drastically.”

  “And if she’s wrong about that little calculation?” Blanchard asked with an unpleasant smile.

  “And if she’s wrong, she figures she’s got Yucel coming in right behind her,” Breitbach said, and Blanchard’s smile disappeared.

  “So what do we do?” she said after a moment.

  “For right now, we go ahead and try to keep a lid on things.” Breitbach finished his hot dog and picked up his beer in both hands, propping his elbows on the picnic table so he could nurse the stein properly. “I’d say the odds are at least sixty-forty against our being able to do that, but we’ve still got to try. We just plain aren’t ready yet, Kayleigh.”

  “And if it turns out we can’t keep a lid on?” Blanchard’s eyes were troubled, and she shook her head. “I’ve got to tell you, Michael—I don’t think we are going to be able to.”

  “To be honest, neither do I,” he said heavily. He sipped beer, his own eyes hooded, then shrugged.

  “Neither do I, and the hell of it is that I don’t really want to. I wouldn’t have approved Kaz’s operation if he’d asked me to, but I would have wanted to. There’s nothing I want more than to see Lombroso and Yardley hanging at the ends of ropes the way they damned well deserve. So the whole time I’m standing there waving my hands and screaming ‘Stop! We’re not ready yet!’ what I really want to be shouting is ‘Kill the bastards!’”

  He managed to keep his picnicker’s expression in place, yet his voice was harsh and ugly and his hands tightened convulsively on the stein.

  “But my brain knows better than that,” he continued in a voice which sounded more like his own. “So before we do anything else, I’m going to do my damnedest to sit on the other hotheads—the hotheads just like me—until I hear something back from the Manties. Which doesn’t change the fact that I agree with you that I’m not going to be able to in the end.”

  He swallowed a little more beer, then set the stein down very neatly and precisely in front of him.

  “If we’re both right and it looks like we’re going to lose control, I really only see one thing we can do. What we can’t do is allow everything we’ve managed to build to just come apart, and that’s what’s going to happen if more of our cells start doing what Kazuyoshi did. So however unready I may think we are, we’ll just have to go for it. Now.”

  “‘Go for it’?” Blanchard repeated carefully, and he gave her a thin smile.

  “The only reason we’ve gotten as far as we already have—further than anyone else’s ever gotten against Lombroso—is that we’ve been organized and disciplined, Kayleigh. If we lose that, Yardley breaks us even without the Gendarmerie’s support. And one of the most important principles of successful command I came across in all my research is that you don’t give an order you know won’t be obeyed. If we’re going to maintain our discipline, we’ll have to get out in front of our people’s anger. We’ll have to demonstrate to all those other Kazuyoshis that we’re committed to move and that we are moving. If we do that, and do it effectively, they’ll get behind us and push instead of dragging us all out into Yardley’s sights behind them. And whether I think we’re ready or not, we’re a hell of a lot closer to ready than anyone else’s ever been. I think we’ve got a shot—probably a pretty good one, and sure as hell a better one than Yardley thinks we do—against the Guard and Lombroso. Which really leaves only three things to worry about.”

  “Only three?” Blanchard looked at him with what might have been an engine of incredulity, and he smiled.

  “Sure. First, whether or not I’m right that we do have a shot at winning. Second, whether or not we can pull it off before the first intervention battalions get here. And, third, whether or not Verrocchio and Yucel will back off and throw in their hand if we do pull it off before the gendarmes get here.”

  “And just what do you think the odds of that are?” she demanded, and his smile grew thinner than a razor.

  “Just about zero,” he said softly. “Which is why I really, really hope the Manties get here before the Sollies do.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  .“Well, it just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?” Albrecht Detweiler observed sourly. He tossed the document reader onto the small table beside his armch
air and reached for his beer stein. He took a hefty swallow and shook his head. “I suppose we should at least be grateful we found out about it before that loose warhead Gold Peak!”

  “It could be a lot worse, dear,” his wife, Evelina, pointed out, looking up from her own viewer and the analysis of the pros and cons of the weaponization of mutagenic nanotech she’d been studying. Her busy crocheting needles went right on working, and her expression was calm. She always had been more philosophical about bumps in the plan than he’d been, he reflected. “At least the battle itself worked out the way you had in mind.”

  There was a certain satisfaction in her tone, Albrecht noted. Evelina had always personally despised Massimo Filareta. She’d been willing to admit the man’s competence, but she’d never been able to detach herself properly from the less savory ways in which Manpower’s endless supply of disposable slaves could be used to manipulate individuals like him. Despite which, she had a point. Filareta’s defeat had been as complete, total, and humiliating as Albrecht could have desired. Unfortunately…

  “You’re right, of course,” he replied. “The problem is it could have been a lot better, too. We always counted on Beowulf supporting Manticore—as long as the Manties lasted, anyway—and that was part of our calculus for the League’s disintegration. But we’d hoped the Sollies would be able to at least give the Manties a run for their money. In fact, they were supposed to weaken Manticore to a point that let the Havenites plow it under at last. Nouveau Paris certainly wasn’t supposed to end up deciding to help the Manties kick the crap out of the League, instead! And by the time Beowulf started to figure out what was going on and began actively looking for military allies against us, Manticore wasn’t supposed to be around for them to ally with, much less the damned Havenites! Which doesn’t even consider the fact that no one was supposed to know about the Alignment’s existence until we were well into Phase Three, and we’re not even out of Phase One yet.”

  “I know.” She nodded. “But like you’ve always said, we’ve known from the beginning that we were going to have to adapt and improvise, and you and the boys are pretty good at that.” She smiled reflectively. “They were always good at improvising to get out of trouble as kids, anyway!”

  “Yes they were,” he agreed fervently, smiling himself. But then his smile faded. “They were, and they still are. But I can’t say I’m happy about accelerating Houdini as much as we’re going to have to.” He shook his head. “Ben and Collin and I have looked at this from every angle we could come up with, and we really don’t see any alternative to the Ballroom Option.”

  Evelina’s face tightened unhappily. She started to say something, then paused and looked back down at her crocheting, visibly rethinking before she opened her mouth again.

  “That’s…likely to cause problems,” she said.

  “Oh, don’t I just know it!” His own expression was grim. “And I don’t blame the people who’re going to have problems with it. I just don’t see another way to go, now that those bastards Simões and McBryde have blown the secret.”

  “They still don’t have any proof,” Evelina pointed out. “If they did have any, I’m sure they’d have trotted it out by now.”

  “In a way, that only restricts our options further,” Albrecht said gently. “If they don’t have proof, then they’re going to be under a lot more pressure to find proof. And there aren’t a lot of places they can go looking for evidence…except right here. Which is the reason I’m glad Gold Peak doesn’t know about this yet.”

  He tapped the document reader, and she nodded unhappily.

  “I suppose you’re right,” she sighed. “I can’t help thinking it’s likely to cost us some…collateral damage, though. Besides the obvious, I mean.”

  “I know what you meant,” Albrecht agreed. “And that’s why Ben, Collin, and I have scheduled a meeting with all of the inner onion section heads tomorrow. Well, everyone but Daniel’s section, since he’s still stuck out at Darius. We’re going to tell them what we have in mind—and why we don’t have a choice—and ask them to be thinking about any weak spots we need to look at. I’m going to have Psych start a prescreen for potential trouble spots, too.” He shrugged. “Frankly, I think those sorts of problems will be handleable. I don’t expect to like it very much, but I think we can get through it. What worries me more from a pragmatic perspective is that the more we have to rush Houdini, the more likely our cleanup teams are to miss something. Which, when you come down to it, is another reason to consider the Ballroom Option. Nobody’s going to vacuum anything out of a computer that doesn’t exist anymore.”

  Evelina nodded again, thoughtfully.

  “All right, dear. I can see you’ve thought it through. And however little I may like the conclusion you’ve reached, I can’t really argue with it. Sometimes, though, I wish your father hadn’t put all of his eggs in one basket the way he did.”

  “Oh?” Albrecht straightened in his chair and lowered his brows ferociously. “I happen to think he came up with a pretty damned good basket, myself!”

  “Stop fishing for compliments!” she scolded. “I think he did, too.” She smiled warmly at him. “But your decision to…diversify with the boys—and go ahead and bring them all in at the highest level early—was a good one. All of them know exactly what’s going on, and they’re not afraid to argue with you. But despite that, you’re still all alone in a lot of ways.” Her smile faded into a look of sadness. “I wish you’d had someone else to help carry the full responsibility when you were the boys’ age. In fact, I wish you had someone else to carry it with you now. Because I think you’re right about the need to push Houdini harder, and I think the decision is going to haunt you.”

  Albrecht reached across from his chair to touch her hand gently.

  “It is,” he agreed with a crooked smile. “Of course, that’s true of a lot of decisions I’ve had to make, and it’s going to be true of a lot more before this is over. But you’re wrong in one respect. I may not have anyone else to carry the ultimate responsibility, but as you say, at least I’ve got you—and the boys—to help me deal with the hard jobs…and the ghosts. And that helps, Evie. It helps a lot.”

  * * *

  Michelle Henke scowled at her display, then flipped her chair to a semi-reclining position and transferred her scowl to the inoffensive, indirectly lit deckhead of her sleeping cabin.

  She wore her favorite set of academy sweats and her fuzzy purple treecat slippers, and Billingsley had left her an entire extra doughnut. She appreciated his solicitude, his effort to pamper her while she dealt with this particular can of snakes, but she made a mental memo to remind him she didn’t have Honor Alexander-Harrington’s metabolism and ask him to find something with a few less calories. Carrot sticks perhaps, or maybe celery, even if she wasn’t a treecat. Dietitians had been producing calorie-neutral “foods” for centuries now, but Michelle was old-fashioned. If she was going to eat food, she wanted it to be food, not just a space filler. At least she wasn’t one of those people who used nanotech to scavenge calories, sugars, and fats out of her digestive system so she could gorge on whatever she wanted, although there were times…

  No, she told herself firmly. Carrot sticks. It was definitely going to be carrot sticks. She felt quite virtuous and ever so decisive, and she made a firm resolution to start her new régimen the very next day. In the meantime, however, being a person of deplorably weak will, she was already halfway through doughnut number two.

  Thought being mother to the deed, she reached for the doughnut again, only to pause as a pair of soup spoon-sized paws reached up to knead her thigh gently. She looked down into the desperately appealing eyes of an obviously starving waif of a Maine Coon cat who looked like he could take out a Pekingese with one whack of a paw…and then eat it in fifteen seconds flat, hair and all.

  “No,” she told Dicey firmly. “If you want a doughnut, go catch your own, you rotten feline! Or at least go pester Chris for one. This one’s mine, cal
ories and all!”

  Dicey only kneaded her thigh harder, purring insistently. It sounded like a shuttle turbine that needed alignment, she thought, wondering how even a cat his size could produce such a volume.

  “No!” she said even more firmly, shaking the doughnut at him for emphasis. “Mine, not yours!”

  Dicey’s eyes followed the doughnut as millions of years of his ancestors’ eyes had followed small prey animals and birds, and the tip of his tail lashed. Then his purr stopped. That was all the warning Michelle had, and it wasn’t enough. With an agility that ought to have been impossible for a creature of his bulk, Dicey launched himself vertically. The paws which had been patting her thigh pleadingly struck with unerring accuracy, and he thumped back to the deck with a third of her remaining doughnut firmly in his possession.

  “Come back here!” she said, starting to jump out of her chair. “I swear, I’m going to turn you into a vest, no matter what Chris says!”

  Dicey paid her command no attention. He was too busy emulating a streak of light as he shot triumphantly out of her sleeping cabin and disappeared under one of her day cabin armchairs with his prize.

  Michelle stopped halfway out of the chair and regarded the shard of doughnut she still retained. Then she shook her head, settled back, replaced the surviving fragment on its plate, and reached for her coffee instead.

  Somehow it doesn’t strike me as a good omen when a damned cat’s tactics are better than the fleet CO’s, she thought. Probably something I should keep to myself. Wouldn’t want the troops to come to the same conclusion. Or for Beth to decide Dicey’d make a better admiral than I do!

  She smiled slightly at the thought, but then the smile faded as she contemplated the report she’d just finished viewing.

  The dispatch had been forwarded to her by Augustus Khumalo the same day it reached Spindle from Manticore. That made it the very latest news…and seventeen days out of date from the moment it arrived. By now Massimo Filareta had certainly reached the Manticore Binary System, and while Michelle had no doubt the defenders had handled the threat, especially with Honor Alexander-Harrington in tactical command, she really would have liked to know just how bad things had gotten first.