Cathy met his eyes. “Good luck, sir,” she said. “See you on the far side.”
She turned and left. Bertram felt a twinge of guilt, even though he knew Cathy was far from helpless. In theory, she shouldn’t have any trouble getting to the spaceport and booking travel on a courier boat. Bertram had absolutely no doubt that the combination of money and undisputed charms would override any qualms the boat’s commander might have. He’d take her straight to the nearest star system with a StarCom. And she could spread the word.
And who knows? Bertram cursed himself. She might just bring help back in time to save us if things go badly wrong.
The intercom bleeped. “Sir,” someone said. “The king’s agents are demanding to speak to you.”
“I’ll be down in a moment,” Bertram lied. If the king was demanding his presence . . . he knew. Or suspected something. It didn’t matter. “Tell them to take a seat and wait.”
His people had their orders. They’d been putting the contingency plans into effect ever since they’d seen the broadcast. The king’s men were going to find out, sooner rather than later, that the entire building had been abandoned. By the time they raise the alarm, it will be too late.
He kept one hand on his pistol as he hurried out of the office and down to the elevator shaft. The doors opened on his approach, revealing an empty chamber. He pushed his fingers against the scanner, ordering the lift to descend into the underground bunker. His staff had spent years preparing their line of retreat, fearing the House of Lords would one day move against the Colonial Alliance. Bertram had been careful to keep his precautions from the king. It would only have upset him.
His terminal vibrated. He pulled it from his belt and glanced at the screen. A handful of messages, all seemingly innocuous. No one would think twice about a message advertising sexual services, even if they were physically impossible. It would be just spam. But the mere fact the messages had been sent to him was a very real tip-off. The plan was about to begin. All hell was about to break loose.
And then we’ll find out just how good our planning actually was, he thought as the doors opened. The tunnel was ahead of him, the hatch already gaping open. The passage was connected to the sewers, a complex mess of tunnels that would confuse anyone who hadn’t spent years exploring them. And just what the king has in mind to deal with us.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
FOTHERINGAY
Kat had expected, as she sent messages arranging a meeting between herself and some of her most trusted officers, that Jenkins would have demanded to be included—or, more likely, lodged complaints about the deactivated StarCom. Kat hadn’t dared issue orders to slow the power-up sequence, not when she didn’t know who could be trusted to carry them out without question. The more she looked at it, the more she realized she was largely on her own. The king and his courtiers might not have intended to prevent a second round of mutinies, but they’d succeeded magnificently. Kat hadn’t felt so frustrated since her father had bought her promotion to command rank. The memory made her heart ache.
Her anger had turned to ice, a cold determination to exact revenge. If she’d been on Caledonia, she would have stormed the king’s palace personally—she was allowed to carry firearms, even into the king’s presence—and shot him before his guards could react. But the short distance from Caledonia in which she found herself might as well have been an impassable gulf. It gave her time to plan, to lay the groundwork for doing . . . something . . . about the king, yet it also limited her options. She needed to be a great deal closer to him before she could do anything.
She looked up as the hatch opened, revealing General Timothy Winters. The marine met her eyes questioningly, searching for answers she wasn’t ready to provide. Not yet. She felt her heart twist in pain, remembering Pat . . . Wherever he was, he had to be disappointed in her. Her father had to be disappointed in her. She’d gone to work for his murderer! She felt the urge to hit something—anything—boiling up in her. Her tutors had lectured her, more than once, about her temper. She’d learned to control it, after her father had pointed out how easy it was to lose respect from one’s peers. But now she wanted to wrap her hands around the king’s neck and squeeze as hard as she could. She wanted him to suffer. But she’d settle for putting a bullet in his brain.
“Hang on,” she said, as the hatch opened again. “There are a couple of others still to come.”
Lieutenant Kitty Patterson stepped into the compartment, followed by Captain Tony Procaccini and Commodore Fran Higgins. Kitty looked a little intimidated by being in such high company, although, as Kat’s aide, she’d worked closely with all of them. Fran seemed perplexed, clearly wondering why she’d been summoned in person. She was, perhaps, the only person who might guess what Kat had in mind. She’d been part of the conspiracy to save 6th Fleet, back before the Battle of Cadiz. It seemed so different, now she knew the king had planned to start the war. Or, rather, allow it to start.
Kat’s lips twitched. The people who wrote the history books would be very annoyed. They’d have to rewrite practically everything they’d written and published since the war began.
The steward appeared with mugs of coffee and handed them out before retreating as silently as he’d come. Kat felt her heart pounding loudly, knowing she was about to cross the Rubicon. If she’d misjudged any of her guests, she was in deep shit. She had a vague idea of how she might escape the superdreadnought, but she knew there was scant hope of it actually working. She’d drilled her crews too well. It was funny, she reflected sourly, just how something that normally worked in her favor could turn into a major liability if things were different. She certainly couldn’t trust her crews to be loyal to her, not any longer. She wasn’t their captain.
“Admiral,” Winters said. “Can I ask . . . ?”
“One moment.” Kat produced the two privacy generators, turned the devices on, and placed them on the small table. “We need to talk privately.”
Winters frowned. Kitty looked nervous. The other two showed no visible reaction. Kat wondered what they were thinking, then decided it wouldn’t matter. She’d have to act fast if they refused to believe her. She hated the thought of improvising a plan from scratch, but there might be no choice. Her two squadrons could hardly fight if they were being torn apart by internal conflict. She’d spent a lot of time trying to determine if there was a way to take control of Caledonia’s orbitals. Nothing had come to mind, not without an unacceptable degree of risk. Kat didn’t care if she got killed herself, as long as she took Hadrian with her, but she didn’t want to get anyone else killed if it could be avoided. Too many people had already died because of her.
“I had a visitor,” she said. She wondered, numbly, if the rumors had reached them. Probably. They were all plugged into the grapevine. “William. Admiral Sir William McElney.”
Kitty gasped. “Isn’t he . . . ? I mean . . . isn’t he . . . ?”
“On the wrong bloody side,” Fran said evenly. She knew William. They’d been friends, once upon a time. She knew him well enough to know William would hardly risk visiting enemy ships for a lark. “Admiral, what happened?”
“William brought a message,” Kat said. She picked up the terminal and held it out. “And”—it hurt to say the words—“we’re the ones on the wrong side.”
She passed the terminal to Winters, then ran through the whole story. Kitty paled, noticeably. Winters seemed impassive. Procaccini and Fran . . . They both looked as if they believed her, without question. Kat hoped that was true. If they had the wit to hide their disbelief until they could leave the room, they could stop her in her tracks. She tried to keep her churning emotions to herself as she brought the story to an end. The die was very definitely cast.
“Jesus,” Procaccini said when she’d finished. “Are you sure . . . ?”
The words hung in the air. Kat said nothing, unsure what she could say. She’d never been one for grand speeches. She’d certainly never been forced to attend elocution lessons, l
et alone been pushed to compose her own statements and deliver them. The navy had taught her how to argue her case, but that was different. She needed to convince her peers, and she wasn’t sure how.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I’m sure.”
“The data looks accurate,” Winters commented. “And there are no obvious flaws.”
“But that doesn’t mean anything, does it?” Procaccini sounded like a man who was clutching at straws. “They’d know how to make a deepfake that would fool us, right?”
“William wouldn’t cooperate,” Fran said coldly. “He’d never do anything like . . . like that.”
“Then they didn’t tell him,” Procaccini said. “He might have thought he was telling the truth.”
“As far as I can tell, the records are real.” Kat felt a stab of pain in her heart. “We sided with a mass murderer. A man who got millions of people killed.”
“He might not have been in the wrong,” Winters said. “The Theocracy was a deadly threat.”
Fran glared at him. “I was at Cadiz,” she snapped. “The fleet was hung out to dry. We would have been slaughtered effortlessly if Admiral Falcone hadn’t laid her plans. The living would have envied the dead. I don’t care what excuse he puts forward. He shouldn’t have done it and . . . and we bloody well shouldn’t be helping him.”
“No,” Kat agreed. “We made a mistake.”
“Many of us came because of you,” Kitty said very quietly. “Not because we supported the king.”
Procaccini opened his mouth, perhaps to rebuke her, but Kat spoke first. “I know,” she said. “I made a mistake and . . . I led you into making a mistake too. The fault is mine.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Fran said. “This is treachery on an unimaginable scale.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time someone provoked a war in the hopes of using it to bolster his position at home,” Winters said. “And he managed to bring most of it off.”
“And then he started a civil war, when the House of Lords refused to go along with him,” Kat said. She scowled at her hands. There was blood on them. The fact it wasn’t real wouldn’t make it any easier to wash off. “And I made things a great deal worse.”
Procaccini let out a long breath. “If this is true . . . fuck it.” He laughed, harshly. “If this is true, what do we do?”
“We have two options,” Kat said. “We can take the fleet to William and surrender. Or we could take the fleet to Caledonia and remove the king.”
“You mean kill,” Fran said. “He’s not getting out of this alive.”
“Probably not,” Kat agreed. She intended to kill the king personally. And yet . . . Drusilla was pregnant. Was that true? Or was it just more manipulation? Hadrian had wanted to delay the announcement . . . “I . . . I think we have to deal with him before he does something terrible.”
“There is a third option,” Winters said evenly. “We do nothing.”
Kat stared at him. “Whose side are you on?”
“Right now, that’s probably a dangerous question,” Winters said in the same dispassionate tone. “Point is, the king was not wholly wrong. Not when he planned to give the Theocracy a chance to start the war and not when he called out the House of Lords for playing petty politics while postwar space burned down and the colonials started to hate. His methods are unacceptable, but his motives are not. We do have the option of doing nothing.”
“He killed my father,” Kat said sharply.
“Admiral, your father was not universally beloved,” Winters said. “There were many on the colonies, even the world below us, the world we just saved, who cheered his death. He did great good, but also great evil. And they won’t rise up in his name.”
Kat balled her fists, then forced herself to calm down. “That might be true, on the surface,” she said, tightly. “But the king’s ultimate goal was not to make a new heaven and a new earth for us. It was to take power, supreme power. He wants the kind of power that no one, not even the House of Lords acting in concert, could have. I don’t believe he cares anything for us, not once we stop being useful. And even if he did, autocratic governments tend to decay sharply. His kids will be weaker than he is and his grandkids weaker still.”
She took a breath. “We do not have the option of doing nothing.”
“William will be glad to see us, no doubt.” Fran spoke calmly, although Kat could hear tension underlying her voice. “But will the House of Lords?”
“The fault was mine,” Kat said. “I led you to the abyss.”
“They won’t accept that argument,” Procaccini said. “You gave illegal orders, technically speaking, and we followed them. We’re not going to be given a slap on the wrist and generally let off.”
“No.” Kat knew he was right, no matter how much she sought to take the blame. There would be more than enough of it to go around. “I intend to . . . deal . . . with the king. Afterwards, I will surrender to the House of Lords and take whatever punishment they feel I deserve. If you want to leave before I surrender, I won’t try to stop you.”
“Understood,” Procaccini said. He looked around the compartment. “How many people can be trusted?”
“Not many.” Winters spoke with cold certainty. “Right now, we only have a single platoon of marines on each of the superdreadnoughts. The remainder of the berths are filled with colonial troops. They’d assume we were betraying the alliance and turn on us.”
“And Jenkins will be looking over our shoulders,” Kitty added. “His men are armed and presumably dangerous. They’d be loyal to the king.”
“We could deal with them,” Winters said. “The real problem would be getting the troops under control before they started an uprising. It isn’t easy to seal off sections completely . . .”
“No,” Kat agreed. “And we don’t know how many can be trusted to help.”
She winced, inwardly. There were two thousand crewers on the superdreadnought, most of whom didn’t know her personally. They hadn’t had time to get to know Procaccini personally. And enough of them were colonials that she knew they could take the ship, if they wished. She’d be surprised if they didn’t already have contingency plans. In hindsight, it had probably been a serious mistake to allow officers and crew to carry weapons. She’d only gone along with the setup because the king was trying to curry favor with the colonials.
And we can’t disarm them without setting off all sorts of alarms. Even if we did, taking control of the ship would be almost impossible.
“William presumably has troops under his command,” Fran pointed out. “We could ask him . . .”
“We’d be sunk if we tried,” Kat countered. She knew it wouldn’t be easy to link up with William without raising too many alarms. The colonials were already uneasy. They might do something stupid, setting off a civil war within the civil war. “Do we have any other options?”
“Not unless you want to slaughter the crews,” Winters said. “Sleepy gas is unreliable. The chances are good that most of the colonials are immunized already. Venting the ships would work . . .”
“No.” Kat shook her head. “I’m not going to slaughter people who made the mistake of listening to me.”
“You thought you were doing the right thing,” Winters said. “You’d hardly be the first person to make such a mistake.”
“I know,” Kat said. “That doesn’t make it any easier.”
Winters straightened. “I’ll speak to my men,” he said. “We could take Jenkins and his band of commissioners, then put the ships into lockdown. We’ve been running drills for so long that we could probably portray it as yet another exercise, at least until the hatches are firmly closed and bolted shut. Given time, we could probably secure most of the fleet. The remainder . . .”
His eyes hardened. “We might have to fire on them.”
“Not if it can be avoided,” Kat said.
“You might not have a choice,” Winters warned. “Then . . . once you have command, you link up with William
. Game over.”
“After we see what we can do to the king,” Kat said. She didn’t want to just give up, not when she wanted to deal with Hadrian herself. “If we went back to Caledonia . . .”
“It might be impossible to take the planet,” Winters said. “The system is heavily defended.”
“We couldn’t.” Kat shook her head. She’d helped design the defense plans. “Two squadrons of superdreadnoughts won’t be anything like enough.”
“Then we’re screwed,” Procaccini said. “Admiral, perhaps we should simply surrender the fleet.”
“I could get to the king,” Kat said. A desperate plan was starting to look like the best of a set of bad options. “If we go back and get into orbit, with no one having any reason to stop us, I could go down to the planet and kill him.”
“And then what?” Winters raised a hand before Kat could answer. “I don’t doubt you could do it, Admiral, but there’d be no orderly transition of power. They’d kill you. The king’s courtiers and the colonials would fight over what little scraps were left, triggering a full-scale civil war. The damage would be immense, no matter who won. I shudder to think how many people would be killed.”
Kat snorted. “For some strange reason, plotting coups was never taught at the academy.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Winters said dryly. “They were taught at OCS, as lessons in coup-proofing the regime. The king learned his lessons well, although I don’t recall him ever attending any sort of formal training. His regime is fairly well balanced. Anyone with the means and motives to launch a coup couldn’t possibly be unaware of the chaos that would follow in its wake. The only way to avoid it would be to have so many people involved that detection would be certain. I don’t think the courtiers and the colonials will be making common cause against the king any time soon.”
“No,” Kat agreed. “I don’t think they have enough in common to band together against the king.”
She finished her coffee, putting the mug to one side. There weren’t many options. She briefly considered a kamikaze mission for herself, but the hell of it was that Winters was right. She might kill Hadrian, only to set off a rolling wave of chaos that would take out everything else. There was no way William could put an end to the fighting in time to save Caledonia. The probability of someone accidentally hitting the planet was terrifyingly high.
Debt of War (The Embers of War) Page 30