“Tactical, bring up the Hammer-III Program,” he ordered. “Activate on my command.”
The tactical officer looked up, sharply. “Admiral, the Hammer-III—”
“Is to be activated at once.” Henri reached for his pistol, bracing himself. If the tactical officer refused to carry out his orders, he’d have to be relieved from his post. And that might spark all kinds of problems. He’d chosen the crew for loyalty to himself, but there’d been limits. No one knew if someone would be mindlessly obedient until the order was issued and it was time to choose. “You have your orders.”
He watched as the tactical officer keyed his console. The Hammer-III program was extreme, even by the Theocracy’s standards. It was nothing less than the total destruction of the enemy’s capital city, along with every governmental installation, military base, and planetary infrastructure target on the surface. It would ensure the deaths of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people immediately, with millions more dying in the weeks and months to follow. The planners who’d devised the concept had assumed it would never be used except in the most extreme circumstances. Their imaginations had been sorely lacking.
“Missiles away, sir,” the tactical officer said. His voice shook. “Impact in thirty seconds.”
“Bring us about,” Henri ordered. The enemy ships were picking up speed—too late. They wouldn’t be able to come into missile range in time. “Jump us out as soon as the drives are ready.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
Henri nodded, watching as the missiles started to explode. The enemy capital vanished in an eye-tearing blast of light. The KEWs followed, systematically wiping out the planetary infrastructure. Quist was going to fall all the way back to the Stone Age, a harsh lesson for anyone who dared betray their oaths to the king. It was their fault, he told himself again and again, for electing a treacherous government. A smart population would have kept its word.
And everyone else will take heed. They won’t be plotting any longer, not anymore.
“Dear God.”
William came to his feet, watching helplessly as atomic fire consumed a city. A straight fusion warhead, according to his sensors. There would be no radiation clogging up the atmosphere, not like Hebrides. Anyone who wasn’t killed outright by the blast would have an excellent chance to survive, if they could get out of the city. If . . . He shuddered as he realized, in his heart, just how many people had been killed. And how many would die in the next few months.
“Admiral,” Yagami said. “The enemy fleet has jumped back into hyperspace.”
William clenched his fists. He wanted to hit something, but there was nothing to hit. He was no stranger to horror, yet the war had been relatively civilized . . . had been. Hadrian had gone mad. There was no way in hell the colonials, and even half his courtiers, would go along with mass slaughter. If they’d refused to bombard Tyre, they’d certainly be outraged at the bombardment of Quist.
If they find out about it in time. The planetary StarCom was gone. They might not know before the king has a chance to put his own spin on it.
He keyed his terminal. “Get the PR teams down there,” he ordered. The House of Lords should technically make the call, but he had wide authority. And if they didn’t move quickly, they wouldn’t be able to move at all. The king could not be allowed a chance to shape the narrative and blame everything on the House of Lords. “I want the entire galaxy to know what happened here. Total disclosure.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
CALEDONIA
The intercom bleeped, urgently.
Ambassador Francis Villeneuve rolled over in bed, brushing against his sleeping mistress as he reached for the terminal. He’d had a long day, talking with Hadrian and his cronies and plotting ways to assist the king in his war while setting up matters so his homeworld would come out ahead. The king’s recent setbacks had made him more dependent on his innermost circle, a group Francis hoped to enter. The king would never trust him completely, but, as long as Francis was delivering the goods, it didn’t matter.
“What?” His voice sounded thick in his ears. “This had better be important.”
“It is.” Admiral Giles Jacanas spoke with quiet urgency. “You’d better get out here.”
Francis scowled, then stood and reached for his dressing gown. It was barely 0400, local time. His internal clock was insisting, loudly, that he should go back to bed. He took a longing look at his mistress, wishing he had the stamina to wake her before deciding he simply didn’t have time. Whatever it was, it had to be urgent. Francis’s staff would have handled it if it was something that could wait until a more civilized hour.
He pulled the gown on and buckled the belt, then walked through the door. There were four guards on duty outside his suite, two more than usual. His eyes narrowed as he paced down the corridor. If the security commander had ordered the troops to go to alert—a very quiet alert—it meant trouble, yet . . . what sort of trouble? Francis knew he’d have been told to go to the emergency bunker or the aircars if the shit had really hit the fan. Anyone attacking the planet should know the embassies were off-limits, but accidents happened. He wouldn’t have been too surprised if the embassy had been targeted deliberately. Tyre would want to make it clear that they knew where the missiles had come from, without making it so obvious that they had to go to war.
Admiral Giles Jacanas was sitting in the office when Francis arrived, drinking a mug of military-grade coffee. The secretary’s assistant, a young woman on her first posting, poured a second mug and passed it to Francis, then left without saying a word. Francis tried not to stare at her retreating back, reminding himself sharply that she had friends and family back home who’d secured the posting for her. Had she picked the posting for herself, assuming it would be a springboard to something greater, or had her family assumed she’d be safe on Caledonia? If the latter, they might be in for a shock. The entire planet might be on the verge of becoming a war zone.
“Admiral.” Francis dragged his attention back to his subordinate. “What happened?”
“We . . . intercepted . . . a message from Quist,” Jacanas said. He sounded badly stunned. “It was sent by Tyre’s relief fleet, broadcast on all StarCom channels . . . by now, it will be all over the galaxy. Everyone will know what’s happened.”
Francis felt a lump of ice congeal in his heart. “What happened?”
“The king’s fleet attacked Quist,” Jacanas said. “The enemy fleet arrived in time to prevent them from occupying the planet. The king’s fleet retreated, but as they left they fired on the planet itself. Ambassador . . . they destroyed an entire city. They hammered an entire planet. The death toll is believed to be in the millions.”
Francis, for a moment, didn’t catch what Jacanas had said. “They . . . they destroyed an entire city?”
“That’s what the broadcasts say,” Jacanas said. “I have no independent confirmation, not yet, but it isn’t the sort of lie that can be maintained for long. There are . . . there were . . . over two million people in the capital city alone. It was practically a magnet for people who wanted to leave the farms and find work elsewhere. They might all be dead.”
“And if they’re not dead now, they may be wishing they were.” Francis sipped his coffee, grimacing at the taste. “Dear God. What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Jacanas told him. “But I doubt it was an accident. People don’t throw nuclear-tipped missiles around by accident. I’d believe a KEW strike could go wild and hit a school or a marketplace or somewhere where there were lots of civilians, but a nuke? That had to be deliberate. The broadcasts make it clear that it wasn’t a stray shot that missed its target and hit the planet itself.”
“Assuming the broadcasts can be trusted,” Francis said. He fought to keep his voice under control. “Can they?”
“So far, we haven’t caught them in any lies.” Jacanas sounded pessimistic. “Like I said, it isn’t the kind of deception that can be s
ustained for long. Every reporter in the sector will be racing there, hoping to be the first to broadcast even more gruesome images of death and destruction. A single freighter could collect enough evidence to prove the atrocity happened . . . or didn’t happen. Quist isn’t that far from Caledonia. The king could dispatch a fly-through mission now and get results in a couple of days. The lie wouldn’t last past that point.”
Francis stared at the black liquid. “Which means the reports might be accurate.”
“Substantially accurate,” Jacanas corrected, pedantically. “They could have made them a little worse.”
“Hah.” Francis felt no real humor, just a chill that sank into his bones. “I don’t see how they could have made it any worse. Assuming, of course, that the attack actually happened.”
There was no real conviction in his voice. He’d read the news broadcasts, both the puff and propaganda pieces and the more objective reporting from media outlets based hundreds of light-years from Tyre and Caledonia. Both sides had smeared each other as much as they could, but they’d drawn the line at implying genocide. No one would have believed them, not really. Smear campaigns had been a fact of political life since humanity had evolved governing structures more complex than warlordism. But . . . No, the reports had to be true. The king would be delighted if he caught his enemies in such a big lie . . .
He took another sip of his coffee, thinking hard. In one sense, nothing had changed. The king was still a useful tool, nothing more than a tool. Francis had his orders. He was to keep the king’s cause alive as long as possible, ideally long enough for the fighting to weaken the Commonwealth and the Border Nine to be occupied without resistance. If both sides started carrying out atrocities, the Commonwealth would be wrecked beyond repair. Francis admitted, privately, that such an outcome was greatly desired.
But, in another sense, everything had changed. The king would have real problems keeping his side together. His delicate balancing act between his courtiers and the colonials would collapse if both sides were shocked and appalled by the atrocity. Neither would want the war to turn savage, not when it might convince the House of Lords to take the gloves off and repay the atrocity in spades. It was terrifyingly easy to render a planet completely lifeless. A handful of strikes would be more than enough to shatter the Colonial Alliance, sparking off a series of atrocities and counteratrocities . . . Francis felt sick. His people would find themselves implicated in mass murder and outright genocide. They hadn’t encouraged the king to carry out atrocities. They certainly hadn’t ordered him to slaughter vast numbers of his own people. But they’d find themselves bearing a share of the blame . . .
“Merde,” he breathed. “What do we do?”
He sipped his coffee, thinking hard. His superiors had given him wide latitude, although he was honest enough, at least with himself, to admit that they’d also arranged matters so he’d take the blame if things went spectacularly wrong. He hadn’t minded that at the time. He’d known success would take him to the very highest levels, while refusing the mission would see his career permanently stalled. But now he was on the cusp of being pushed to exceed his authority. If he tried to encourage the king, or talk sense to him . . . either way, he needed permission from higher up the chain. And if he chose to abandon the entire mission . . .
“I need to speak to my superiors,” he said. He finished his coffee and put it to one side. “They’ll have to decide what to do.”
“That might not be possible,” Jacanas said. “The StarCom has been”—he made quotation marks with his fingers—“taken down for maintenance.”
Francis swore. “So quickly?”
“I believe so,” Jacanas said. “The king must have had a contingency plan in place.”
“I see.” Francis forced himself to think. “Has word got out? Yet?”
“I’d be surprised if it hasn’t,” Jacanas said. “The king couldn’t clamp down on the broadcast in time. I think it’ll be all around the planet by now.”
“I see,” Francis said again. “You put the guards on alert?”
“Yes.” Jacanas met his eyes evenly. “Mr. Ambassador, this could turn very nasty.”
“Prep the staff to evacuate the embassy if necessary,” Francis ordered. In theory, the embassy was impregnable to anything less than a full-scale assault. In practice, he didn’t want to test it the hard way. “I’ll try to speak to the king.”
“I doubt he’ll want to speak with you, not now,” Jacanas said. “All hell could be on the verge of breaking loose.”
“I know,” Francis said. “But I have to try.”
“The reports are, of course, total nonsense.” The king sounded convincing. Very convincing. “I’ve ordered the StarCom taken down to ensure the reports don’t spread further before we have a counternarrative in place.”
Governor Bertram Rogan kept his face under tight control. He didn’t believe a word of it. No, that wasn’t quite true. He believed the king hadn’t known the atrocity was coming—the simple fact he hadn’t prepared better for bad news suggested it hadn’t been planned—but he didn’t believe the story had been made up of whole cloth. The House of Lords was a snake pit of overprivileged aristocrats who’d been born with silver spoons in their mouths . . . he used a cruder analogy when addressing his people . . . yet they weren’t stupid. They wouldn’t tell a lie that would be disproven very quickly if it wasn’t true.
“I trust you’ll be sending a starship to Quist to find out what actually happened,” he said, knowing he couldn’t trust whatever answer he received. The king would have to be out of his mind to admit to such a crime, yet there was no way he could escape blame. “We need answers before the public goes mad.”
“It will be done,” the king assured him. “I trust that you will calm your hotheads before it’s too late.”
It was a statement, not a question, but Bertram chose to pretend otherwise. “I’ll deal with them personally,” he said truthfully. “And I expect you to make a broadcast as quickly as possible. The people will need to be reassured.”
He tapped the console, dropping out of the holographic conference. The meeting room faded away, to be replaced by his office. He stood and strode to the windows, peering into the sky. Dawn was breaking, slowly but surely. And yet . . . He looked down. He could see people forming mobs on the streets even at this early hour. He’d half hoped the king had succeeded in suppressing the news by shutting down the StarCom. Mobs were dangerous. Bertram was all too aware that he might be blamed for the atrocity, along with the king himself. He had spoken in the man’s defense over the last few months.
And I can’t pretend otherwise, not any longer. Bertram had planned for trouble, he’d planned to betray the king, but . . . the thought of breaking his word gave him an uneasy twinge. No one would trust him again, ever. They might agree, in private, that he’d done the right thing, but they’d never trust him. And why should they? It’s time to go.
He studied the mobs for a long moment, then walked back to the desk. The news report glowed on the terminal, mocking him. He wanted to believe that the report was all lies. He wanted to believe that the House of Lords had carried out the atrocity. He knew better. Of course he knew better. The king had been angry, and Quist had paid the price for daring to think its vote counted for something. A storm was about to break over the Colonial Alliance and he . . . he had to take control or get out of the way.
“I can accept dishonor,” he told himself, “if it saves my people.”
He keyed the terminal, bringing up a communications chain he’d planned weeks ago, when he’d first started discussing treason. The network was designed—cunningly designed—to impede, delay, or simply eat messages sent by the king’s enemies. A person could be shadowbanned, cut out of the system without ever knowing he’d been cut out, until it was too late. And yet, there were gaps in the system, chinks that could be exploited. Caledonia had never been as developed as Tyre. The locals had worked hard to maintain a degree of freedom the Tyr
ians lacked.
The message glowed in front of him, seemingly utterly harmless. It would jump from his account to another account, then propagate itself to its final destinations. No one would know what it meant unless they’d already been briefed, unless they already knew what to do. He shuddered, wondering if anyone would jump the gun. The communications network couldn’t be trusted. He’d scattered cells and assets all over the planet and fleet, yet . . . he was already cut off from the outside universe. The plans to take control of the remainder of the alliance were doomed. Unless . . .
He tapped a key, sending the message. His pocket terminals bleeped a second later. Sending a copy of the message to himself, to both his public and private terminals, was a risk, but it was the only way to be sure the message had gotten out. Unless they knew his private address and had made sure to copy the message there . . . He shook his head, telling himself there was no more time for second-guessing. The die was cast.
His secretary, Cathy, opened the door. “Sir, you’ve been summoned to the palace.”
“A little late.” Bertram opened his drawer and removed a pistol, pinning it to his belt. “It’s time to go. Are you ready?”
Cathy paled. “I’m ready, sir.”
Bertram nodded. Cathy had many advantages, not least an astonishing talent for looking completely harmless. Bertram had lost count of the number of men who’d turned into babbling idiots just by having her sit next to them. They never saw the sharpness in her eye because they were looking elsewhere. And she was very good at taking advantage of their distraction.
“Go now,” Bertram ordered. “Take your bug-out bag and don’t look back.”
Debt of War (The Embers of War) Page 29