Knight's Move

by Nuttall, Christopher

  Including someone lying silent and waiting, Glen thought, coldly. The unknown ship would slip off into hyperspace, without anyone even catching a sniff of its presence. Assuming, of course, that he was right. The raider backers could easily have established a listening post on a settled world. A passive sensor would go completely unnoticed, even if it was parked next to a naval base.

  He stood. “Commander Mannerheim, you have the bridge,” he said. “Coordinate with the station; see what they can do to help with repairs. I need to talk to the Governor.”

  ***

  Governor Chandra Wu stared down at the message from Bottleneck, then looked up at Windy. Her PR representative and manager looked uneasy; she knew that something had gone very wrong, something bad enough to justify a scapegoat or two being fired. Chandra could practically see the thoughts running through the woman’s head, but there was no time to soften the blow. No time at all.

  “I need to find Harrison,” she said. If the accusations were accurate ... she’d been played for a fool. Her career would pay the price. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know,” Windy said. She wilted under the Governor’s unforgiving stare. “He just walked out of the building and vanished.”

  Chandra threw the datapad to the floor, then turned to look out at the angry crowds besieging Government House. They looked threatening – she hadn't seen so many weapons in one place since an ill-fated review of the Federation Marines – but she knew Harrison Montgomery. He could probably make his way through them without being even remotely deterred. And then ... he could be anywhere on Fairfax. Hell, he might even have managed to slip off the planet, now that the Bottleneck Squadron was on its way back to Bottleneck.

  “I’ve been made a fool,” she said, sourly. Confessing that in front of Windy was a bad idea, no matter how much she trusted the woman, but she was too angry to care. “We almost started a war.”

  Windy said nothing. She just waited.

  “Get me the President,” Chandra snarled. She hated the thought of eating crow, let alone admitting her flaws; politicians who confessed to flaws were rarely elected, although she’d yet to meet a flawless politician. But her career was going down in flames anyway; the least she could do was try to manage the disaster. Maybe, just maybe, she could salvage her career for the second time. “I need to talk to him, now!”

  Windy jumped, then leapt to obey.

  Chandra sat back in her chair, thinking hard. Montgomery hadn't been working for himself, she was sure; there was no way he could benefit from the whole affair. No, he'd been working for someone else, perhaps someone out to ruin her career. Or had she merely been the unlucky person in Government House when the plan had gone into operation? There was no way to know, not really.

  All she could do was try to pour water on the flames.

  And pray.

  ***

  “He made a clean break, sir,” Cynthia reported.

  Glen nodded. Two weeks of floating in orbit in the Bottleneck System, while repair crews swarmed over Dauntless, had done nothing for his temper. Whatever else could be said about Fairfax, it lacked the colossal law enforcement structure of Earth. Harrison Montgomery had vanished, so completely that there was no way to know where he might have gone. It would be easy to find a new identity along the Rim.

  But it did prove the bastard’s guilt, Glen knew. Flight was enough proof for ONI, Federation Intelligence and the Colonial Militia to tear apart his past, looking for traces of his employers. And yet they'd found almost nothing ... the more Glen looked at it, the more he wanted to despair. Either Montgomery had been working for hundreds of organisations, which he had to admit was unlikely, or his employers had managed to hide themselves very well. Or maybe he'd just been mad as a hatter. It did seem to be the theory currently being advanced by the media on Earth.

  He sighed. The media frenzy had grown so demented that the Federation Navy had ordered Dauntless to return to Sol at once. Glen wasn't looking forward to the incessant demands for interviews; he would have preferred to duck them, but he knew that someone in Public Relations would manage to convince the Admiralty that interviews from him would make good publicity for the TFN. After all, they’d already managed to snag the lion’s share of the credit for averting war for the TFN ...

  And the President wants to meet us personally, he thought. It wasn't spacer duty, but there seemed to be no escaping it. And we’ll be kissing babies for months to come.

  “Never mind,” he said. At least the stand-off in the Fairfax Cluster had come to an end, with both sides backing down. God alone knew how it would end, but he’d quietly advised Sandy’s father to push for full autonomy for the Bottleneck Republic. It was quite likely that they would be able to get it before the forces that opposed it railed and found another angle of attack. “Just keep me informed.”

  Sandy had done all she could, as had the repair crews, but it was clear that they would be dependent on tugs to reach Sol. Dauntless would take two months to get home ...

  Should just go to the nearest shipyard, he thought. But the Admiral wants us home now ...

  He stopped as his mind produced the final pieces of the puzzle ...

  And he realised, to his shock, just who Montgomery’s backers actually were. Who they had to be.

  And just who benefited from an outbreak of civil war.

  Chapter Forty

  “I swear,” Theodore said darkly, “that the President gets more long-winded every year.”

  Glen shrugged. On the viewscreen, the President’s speech was being replayed for the benefit of anyone on Earth who hadn't seen it already. It was a masterpiece, everyone said so. The threatening storm between the Federation and the colonies was being swept under the rug in favour of the benefits of cooperation. Glen, Sandy and just about everyone else had been honoured at a reception, where they’d been given medals and praised to the stars. He would have preferred an improved refit schedule for Dauntless, but politics had ensured that they would be on Earth for months to come.

  “You should hire him a better speechwriter,” Glen said, finally. “Maybe someone who knows the value of short punchy statements, rather than long-winded hours of boredom.”

  “They get paid by the word,” Theodore said. He turned to face Glen. “The family was quite pleased by how you handled the affair.”

  “I dare say they were,” Glen said. He met his brother’s eyes and held them. “After all, their name stayed out of the investigation.”

  Theodore stared at him, his face expressionless. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Follow the money,” Glen said. He couldn't resist a smile at his brother’s expression. “You taught me that, didn't you? Follow the money, see where it goes and where it comes from ... you wanted me to be a corporate drone, so you taught me how to think like one. Once I started putting aside all the diversions, it was easy to track down the source of the money.”

  He took a breath, wondering if his next words would crack his brother’s composure. “You backed the raiders,” he said. “You wanted to trigger a war.”

  Theodore’s expression didn't change. “I have no time for paranoid ravings,” he said. “Can you even begin to prove these charges?”

  “We – the corporation – loaned billions of credits to the colonies in the later years of the war, as well as the aftermath,” Glen said. He refused to look away from Theodore’s face. “God knows we were involved with selling off older and decommissioned warships to the colonies and anyone else who wanted to buy them. You effectively bought the ships from yourself, then matched them up with the crews you hired to man them. And, as there was no actual financial shortfall, no one took a serious look at the accounts. It all vanished in the files.”

  He took a long breath. “Oh, there were lots of little clues,” he added. “The ships were all Federation, save for a handful of tiny modifications. There were no jury-rigged systems, nothing that might suggest the colonies – or even normal raiders or pirates. Then there was the actual
willingness to throw away starships, if necessary. Most pirates will run if their enemy has a pair of popguns.”

  “Really?” Theodore enquired. “How ... interesting.”

  Glen felt a spark of triumph. His brother would normally listen patiently, refusing to interrupt. If he said something, now, it proved he was rattled.

  “The only goal that made sense was to trigger a war between the Federation and the Bottleneck Republic,” Glen said. “Attack the alien camps to outrage liberal opinion on Earth; attack colonial populations to outrage the colonies, then finish with the attack on Xenophon. It forces the colonials to spread their forces to defend their homeworlds, while we’re demanding that they defend the aliens; it makes the Federation the villains as far as they’re concerned. And then, finally, the attack on Bottleneck, which is intended to look like an assault carried out by the Colonial Militia.”

  He paused. “With so many dead, there would be war.”

  “Interesting,” Theodore said, again. “But it doesn't seem to do much for colonial unity.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Glen said. “I think that was you hedging bets. After all, surely resistance would be minimised if the colonies were also suspicious of each other as well as the Federation.”

  He stared right at his older brother. “Why? Why kill so many humans and aliens? Why even try to trigger the war?”

  “Somehow,” Theodore said tonelessly, “I think you already know the answer.”

  “Money,” Glen said. He stared down at the carpeted floor, thousands of light years from the Fairfax Cluster. “You did it all for money.”

  “The economic problems caused by the end of the war are threatening the corporation’s integrity,” Theodore said, simply. “Vast sums of money were invested in the Fairfax Cluster alone, which would never be repaid if the colonies declared independence. Then there’s the whole edifice of the Federation itself. If the nationalist factions got their way, the Federation would come apart and corporations like ours would be grossly weakened.”

  “So you decided to start a war,” Glen said, icily. “A war that would force the Federation to remain united and, at the same time, prevent your money from vanishing. And no doubt earn you billions of credits in new war contracts.”

  “A short victorious war would bind the Federation together,” Theodore said. “And ...”

  Glen barked out a harsh laugh. “We fought the Dragons for more than forty years and I don’t think it did wonders for our unity,” he said, sharply. “And how do you know the war is going to be short?”

  “The Draconic War bound us together in many ways,” Theodore insisted. “Another war would bind the Federation closer ...”

  “Or shatter it,” Glen snapped. “This wouldn't be a war against the Dragons, no matter how you tried to spin it. How long would it be before the other cracks in the edifice loomed wide and shattered it?”

  He stared at his brother, as if he was only truly seeing him for the first time. Theodore was cold, calculating and completely devoted to the corporation. If the price of his ambitions was mass slaughter – millions of humans and aliens had already died – he would pay it without a second thought. After all, there were trillions of credits – and lives – at stake. The corporation’s billions of workers would lose their jobs if the economy contracted still further.

  “There’s no chance of the war being fought now,” Glen said. “After all, we’re such friends again after Bottleneck.”

  Theodore shrugged. “We will see.”

  “No, we won’t,” Glen said. “Because this is what you are going to do. You are going to extend interest-free loans to the colonies to help them rebuild. You are going to do the same for whatever world gets snapped up as the new alien homeworld, so they have at least a chance to build themselves into a proper civilisation. You are going to provide the level of investments the colonies need in order to rebuild after the war. And you are going to use your clout with the Senate to make sure that the TFN stations a proper formation in the sector to provide the assistance the colonies desperately need, with a commanding officer who actually knows what he happens to be doing.”

  Theodore snorted. “Putting more money at risk?”

  “Yes,” Glen said, simply.

  “And why,” Theodore demanded, “should we do anything of the sort?”

  “There’s enough clues for someone else to follow the trail back to you, particularly if I put them on the right track,” Glen said. “Maybe they can’t find absolute proof, maybe they cannot convict you, but the rumours will destroy the corporation.”

  Theodore snorted, again. “You do realise that we have been accused of everything from wanton ecological destruction to slavery rings? There are even people who believe that father triggered the Draconic War personally.”

  Glen lifted his eyebrows. “Really?”

  His brother smiled. “We control a good third of the media,” he pointed out. “Your charges would be dismissed as ... nonsense, conspiracy theories. There’s no shortage of such gibberish ...”

  “But do they come,” Glen asked slowly, “from one of the Knight brothers?”

  He slapped the table, hard enough to make Theodore jump. “The only reason I haven’t blown the whistle on you, you wretched bastard, is because it would threaten the family’s integrity,” he snapped. “Tell me! Did you arrange for me to be sent out there because I would have an excellent reason to hide the truth?”

  “Something like that,” Theodore said.

  Glen stared at him in absolute disgust, remembering the dead bodies and devastation the raiders had left in their wake. And it had all been organised by the man facing him, his own damn brother! And there was nothing he could do without making the whole problem worse ...

  “I shall be taking a much stronger interest in corporate affairs from this point,” he said, spacing out the words. His rage and frustration drove him onwards. “I intend to resign from the Navy.”

  Theodore stared at him. “Why?”

  “Someone has to come here and sit on the Board,” Glen snapped. He hated the thought, hated the prospect of condemning himself to a lifetime of meetings and endless boredom, but there was no choice. Theodore could not be left unopposed, nor did he dare bring the matter to everyone’s attention. It was quite possible that Theodore had acted alone. “I would sooner be dumped on a penal world and told to survive on my own wits, but I will take up my seat. And you will resign.”

  “Oh,” his brother said. “Make me.”

  “You had my proxy, but you were supposed to confirm important votes with me,” Glen said, dryly. “Surprise, surprise; you didn't bother to ask my opinion for a number of important votes. And – surprise, surprise – those votes benefited you, personally. How long do you think you would last as CEO once the rest of the family finds out what you did?”

  “Perhaps we could compromise,” Theodore said. “You wouldn't have to resign ...”

  Glen snorted. “You killed millions of humans and aliens, yet the law cannot touch you,” he said. “So I have to be here, to make sure you don't kill any more. And you will resign, because you cannot be trusted with such power.”

  “I will,” Theodore said. “If you keep this buried, I will resign. And then you can keep your career, if it is that important to you.”

  “I will be watching,” Glen warned him. He’d do more than just watch. If he wouldn't be on Mars personally, he would have words with his other brothers. They’d be watching Theodore like hawks. Even after his resignation, he would still have his shares in the corporation. He would still be able to meddle. “And one other thing ...”

  Theodore waited, patiently.

  “I assume that no one will find a trace of Harrison Montgomery,” Glen said. “Suffice it to say that there are copies of the files, stashed somewhere well away from you and your men. Should anything happen to me ...”

  He turned and strode out of the room, not looking back.

  It wasn't what he wanted, he admitted to himself
, as he walked down the stairs towards the main entrance. Theodore and his remaining accomplices would never be held to account for their crimes. How could they be, without triggering off the civil war Glen had fought to prevent? But at least he wouldn't have to tie himself to Mars, abandoning his naval career ... and there would be some compensation for the colonies.

  He’d done the right thing, hadn't he? The hell of it was that he might never know.

  His communicator buzzed. “Captain,” Sandy said as he stepped outside, “we’ve received our refit schedule. They want us on our way back to the cluster within two months.”

  Glen had to smile. “Understood,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

  The End