They shook hands. Michael was wondering why Jaruzelska would need a superannuated Marine Corps general when a third person—this one in planetary defense uniform—saw them from across the room. “General,” Jaruzelska called out. She waved at a tall, cadaverous woman with a bleak and emotionless face illuminated by penetrating blue eyes to come over. “General Fahriye Yilmaz, meet Michael Helfort.”
“Good to meet you, sir,” Michael, even more puzzled now, said as they shook hands. What was a pair of long-retired generals doing in Karrigal Creek? None of this made any sense, and his confusion was made all the worse by the abrupt change in his fortunes. It was so abrupt that he had to keep reminding himself that it was real, that it was no dream no matter how bizarre and unexpected it seemed.
“And you, Michael,” Yilmaz said, her face transformed by the sudden warmth of her smile. “You’ve done well. We owe you an enormous debt.”
“Not really, General,” Michael said, bobbing his head, embarrassed.
“We’ll catch up later, Fahriye, Adam. Michael, this way,” Jaruzelska said. She threaded her way through the controlled confusion and into a small room off to one side. “Sit!” she said, pointing to a chair.
“I get it now,” Michael said as Jaruzelska found her seat. “All of that out there—” He waved a hand in the direction of the command center. “—that’s the planning team for a military coup. You’re going to kick Ferrero out and take over, aren’t you?”
“I wish we could,” Jaruzelska said, laughing, “but no, sadly, we’re not. That was our initial thought, but we realized that a coup would tell the Hammers that something was up. No, we want them to think that nothing has changed right up to the point when it’s too late to stop us.”
“You’re going back to Commitment?”
“We are.”
“But there’s no way to do that without the government knowing, surely. It’s impossible!”
“We don’t think so. You should know that. After all, you stole three dreadnoughts from under Fleet’s nose. We’re planning to do the same, only on a larger scale.”
“Hijacking three ships is one thing,” Michael protested. “Making off with an entire battle group is quite another, and that’s what you’ll need. It can’t be done. The operation to get the support the NRA needs will be huge. It’ll involve tens of thousands of people and fifty, sixty ships, maybe more. There’s no way you can maintain operational security. Someone will talk.”
“All good points, but stay with me while I go back a bit. I need to give you the full story.” Jaruzelska was quiet for a long time. “Did you ever wonder,” she continued, “why I threw you to the wolves?”
“A million times a day,” Michael said with a flash of resentment, “and don’t think for a second that I’ve forgiven you for that, because I never will.”
“We had our reasons.”
“Which were?”
“We needed Fleet in particular and the marines and planetary defense as well to see Caroline Ferrero and her government for what they were: lackeys of the Hammers, puppets dancing as Jeremiah Polk pulled the strings. And to do that, I needed to turn you from villain to victim.”
“Villain to victim?” Michael shook his head. “That makes no sense.”
“Oh, but it does,” Jaruzelska assured him, “and here’s why. When you stole those three ships, nobody in Fleet agreed with what you’d done. Many felt your arrest was a good thing. They thought it wiped away one of the worst stains on Fleet’s record. But a few things changed that. The first was your speech in mitigation at your trial.”
“My speech? World News called it … let me see if I can remember their exact words … yes, ‘a tissue of self-serving lies.’”
“Well, since the Hammers were paying them at the time, what else would they say? But I can tell you this: I have heard a lot of speeches in my time, but yours was a work of genius. Do you know how many times it has been downloaded?”
“No.”
“Over a half a billion times, and that’s just here on the Federated Worlds. Your speech is famous, Michael, right across humanspace.”
“It wasn’t me,” Michael said, his cheeks reddening with embarrassment. “The credit should go to my dad. I told him what I thought, what the rest of the team thought, why we did it. He was the one who turned all that into something worth hearing.”
“He didn’t tell you that your speech was put together by the best psycholinguistics team in human history?” Jaruzelska asked with a half smile.
“It was?”
“Oh, yes,” Jaruzelska said with a nod. “Their job was to craft the most persuasive speech ever written. You had to convince everyone that even though you were as guilty as hell, you didn’t hijack those dreadnoughts because you were a lovelorn fool. You did it because your motives were good, because you could see what the rest of us were too slow, too stubborn, too self-interested to see: that it was only a matter of time before the Hammers smashed us into the dust. And guess what? It worked. Right across the Federated Worlds and especially in the military, your approval rating soared. It’s never dropped, and we’re making sure it never will. You are a genuine hero, Michael, and you might as well get used to it.
“The death sentence was the second step, and we made sure there was plenty of commentary pointing out that execution is a barbaric institution that has no place in a civilized society. We also made sure that everybody knew that your sentence was imposed because that was what the government wanted.”
“Despite the fact that it was handed down by a court? The judge wouldn’t have been too happy.”
“Let’s just say that she is a friend of ours,” Jaruzelska said. “We owe her big time.”
“You didn’t stop there, though, did you?” Michael said. “You spread the idea around that the government pushed for the death penalty only because that was what the Hammers wanted. Am I right?”
“Ferrero the puppet having her strings pulled by Polk the puppet master,” Jaruzelska said. “You know what? I think we’ll make you a psyops man of you yet,” she added with a smile.
“I don’t have your sneaky, devious mind, sir. Niccolò Machiavelli would have been proud of you, though. So what came next?”
“The final step was persuading President Diouf to—”
“Whoa, hold on, sir! The president is in on this?”
“No, she’s not. All you need to know is that a mutual friend, a man whose advice and guidance Diouf has relied on for most of her adult life, convinced her that the Federated Worlds would be at grave risk if she did not turn down your request for clemency. The president was told only as much as she needed to understand why she was being asked to do something … so extraordinary. In the end she agreed to go along with us, but only when we convinced her that you would not actually be executed.”
Relief flooded through Michael; he had not been wrong to trust Diouf.
“And that was when things got very dirty,” Jaruzelska went on. “When Diouf turned you down, we had to convince the Worlds that you had been unfairly treated. The Hammers helped us there. We have holovid of the dumb bastards trying to bribe Diouf to let your execution go ahead. Twenty million FedMarks they offered her. She refused it, of course, but we slipped a story to the trashpress saying that she had taken the money. To muddy the waters a bit more, we concocted another story that the Hammers were so pissed by Diouf’s refusal that Polk forced Moderator Ferrero to blackmail Diouf into turning down your appeal for clemency.”
“Diouf’s the closest thing I know to a saint,” Michael said; he looked incredulous. “How do you blackmail a saint?”
“Easy. You cook up a story, backed by lots of seemingly credible evidence, that Diouf financed a child slavery racket operating out of the Rogue Planets in the ’50s, and then …”
Michael grimaced; that would have hurt Diouf.
“… you give it to the trashpress and tell them that Ferrero was using it to blackmail the president. The story was so juicy, so hot, they just
couldn’t resist the temptation. They went public with it the day you were executed. The timing could not have been better.”
“Then what?”
“The story’s already been retracted—needless to say, that’s seen by some as part of the government’s cover-up—and Ferrero and Diouf are going to sue for defamation. But that still leaves people wondering if they’ll ever get the truth. Was the president bribed by the Hammers? Did Ferrero blackmail her into abandoning all her principles? And if Diouf wasn’t bribed or blackmailed, then why did she go against all her principles and allow your execution to go ahead? Not that it matters, not now. We’ve got what we need. We’ve turned you from villain to victim, and the process has seriously undermined Ferrero’s credibility, so much so that the average Fed now thinks her appeasement of the Hammers will come back and bite the Federated Worlds in the ass. They don’t know how, they don’t know when, but they think it will. And that’s the environment we need to support what we’re trying to do here.”
Michael shook his head. “That’s really … I was about to say clever, but maybe evil would be a better word.”
“I prefer to call it a work of genius,” Jaruzelska said with a touch of smugness.
“Maybe it was,” Michael snapped. Jaruzelska’s conceit angered him, and it showed. “I understand why it had to be done, but from where I’m sitting, it looks much more like a work of bloody-minded torture. I thought I was about to be executed. You could have told me it was all an elaborate hoax. You should have!”
“But we did,” Jaruzelska protested. “We made sure Colonel Kallewi told you.”
“Hah!” Michael snorted with derision. “That was way too late. By then I wanted to believe what she was saying, but I couldn’t. When they strapped me down, I knew for a fact that I was about to die. Didn’t matter what anyone had said. I thought they were just trying to make things easier.”
“I’m sorry,” Jaruzelska said, her voice soft, “really I am.”
“You damn well ought to be. You should have told me sooner. And there’s one more thing you should know.”
“Oh?”
“I got a message from Chief Councillor Polk.”
“From Polk?” Jaruzelska’s stared at Michael, eyes wide with disbelief. “How could you?”
“One of the guards smuggled it in. I wish I could show it to you, but it was one of those damn one-time messages.”
“What did it say?”
“That Polk had authorized my old friend Colonel Hartspring to set up a team to snatch Anna; Team Victor he’s called it, and that’s a v for ‘vengeance’ in case you’re wondering.”
“I remember Hartspring,” Jaruzelska said, “but why would they do that?”
“Polk was happy that I was to be executed, but not that happy. If he couldn’t have me killed his way, then he wanted to me to die knowing that Hartspring was going after Anna, knowing what would happen to her once Hartspring got his hands on her, and—” Michael broke off, unable to speak anymore.
“Oh, Michael,” Jaruzelska whispered; she stretched out her hand to take his. “We had no idea. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“What difference would it have made?” Michael said. “I’ll tell you: none. After all, what was I? Just another pawn in the game.”
“We should have told you earlier,” Jaruzelska conceded, “but the group was concerned it would take the edge off what had to be the performance of your life. I’m sorry, but there was a lot at stake, and before you ask, your parents—”
“Shit! I’d forgotten. They think I’m dead! Anna too.”
“I’m sorry about Anna. There’s no way we can tell her what’s really going on, but your folks are both in on the conspiracy, have been for a while now, so don’t worry.”
Michael’s head went down; he was quiet for good minute. “I don’t think there’s much to be gained in going over this anymore,” he said at last, looking up. “What’s done is done. All that matters to me now is making sure Anna is alive and stays that way. Well, that and hunting down Polk and Hartspring and killing them when I find them. And I will,” he added, his voice raw with anger. “But do me a favor, please. All that Team Victor stuff—can you keep it to yourself? Hartspring is my problem, and I’ll deal with him. And I don’t want Anna to find out. She has enough to worry about.”
“I won’t tell anyone. Now, any more questions before we move on?”
“Yes, one. You said there weren’t many spacers who agreed with what I did … not to start off with, I mean.”
“Yes. Most of Fleet thought you were nothing more than a criminal.”
“But what about you? Did you agree with that?”
“Initially, yes, of course I did. Mutiny is mutiny, and we needed those three dreadnoughts you smashed into Commitment planet. But as I read and reread your message telling me what you were doing and why, I began to understand. Then it became obvious that Ferrero would form the next government sooner than anyone thought. When I worked out what that meant, I realized that you and your people had been right and I had been wrong.”
“So when you came to Asthana looking like you wanted to tear my head off, that was all an act?”
“Yes.”
Michael shook his head. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
“You will be, almost certainly,” Jaruzelska said with a faint smile. “Now, here’s how we’re going to do this. Juggernaut, we call it, and it starts with …”
• • •
Michael sat tucked out of the way, a welcome cup of scalding hot coffee in hand, content to let the fear-induced stress of the past months leach out of his abused psyche. It felt good to know that the controlled chaos around him marked the beginning of the end for the Hammer of Kraa, that soon he would be on his way back to rejoin Anna, that the time when he would stand over Polk and Hartspring and see the terror in their eyes before he killed them both was coming.
Oh, yes, he thought as he took a sip of coffee, I do feel good … not that I don’t have my doubts.
What Jaruzelska and her fellow conspirators planned to do was mind-boggling in its size and complexity. For all her reassurances, for all her confidence, for all her steely determination not to fail, Michael was struggling to believe they could pull it off. There were a million things that could go wrong, and Michael was in no doubt that his old friend Mister Murphy would be hard at work to make sure they did.
Even if everything did go right, none of it would count if Anna did not make it; he wished he knew how she was. What with her joining the NRA to fight the Hammers and the fact that Hartspring and Team Victor were after her, her life was hanging by a thread. He sighed in frustration. Jaruzelska had promised him a detailed briefing on the situation back on Commitment but wasn’t sure when that would happen, so he would have to wait.
Michael put the mug to his lips only to choke on the burning hot coffee, distracted by the arrival of a familiar figure. “I don’t believe it,” he muttered. He got to his feet and threaded his way across to where a woman in dark gray one-piece shipsuit had followed General Yilmaz into the room.
“Lieutenant Commander Fellsworth!” Michael said, putting out his hand, a broad grin splitting his face.
“Hey, Michael! Admiral Jaruzelska told me I’d find you here,” the woman said, taking his hand before folding him into a crushing bear hug. She pushed Michael back and put her hands on his shoulders, then looked right into his face. “It’s good to see you,” she went on. “I really thought you were a goner this time.”
“You and me both.”
“I take it you know each other?” Yilmaz said with a good-natured smile.
“Sorry, sir,” Fellsworth said. “This man saved my ass back on Commitment. And not just mine. He saved the lives of my people. I … we owe him.”
“I remember,” Yilmaz said. “After the Ishaq was ambushed, right?”
“Yes,” Fellsworth replied; her face twisted with pain for an instant. Michael understood. Pain had nothing to do with it; guilt did.
“I’ll catch up with you later, Captain,” Yilmaz said. “I need to see Admiral Jaruzelska before she heads back.”
“Sir,” Fellsworth said.
“Captain?” Michael said when Yilmaz had gone, spotting Fellsworth’s rank badges for the first time. “I’m sorry. I didn’t notice. Congratulations. Well deserved, I’m sure.”
“Thanks, though it has little to do with my talent, such as it is. No, we’ve lost a lot of good people, too many, so promotion’s been fast.”
“A bloody war and a sickly season,” Michael said.
“An old saying but a good one, and it’s certainly been a bloody war. But if those Hammer pigs think we’ll let them come out on top after all we’ve been through, they’re damn fools. Right, enough of that. The admiral says I’m to answer any questions you have, but before I do, are you hungry?”
With a start, Michael realized he was, ravenously so. He had lost a good ten kilos since his arrest. Now his body was telling him it was time to put the weight back. “Since you mention it, I am.”
“Me too. Come on; the canteen’s this way.”
• • •
“That’s better,” Fellsworth said, pushing her tray away. “So how’s Anna?”
“Anna? Wish I knew,” Michael said. “That bloody woman always was a wannabe marine, and now she is one. Last time I heard from her, she was a captain in the NRA’s 120th Regiment, so she’ll be in the thick of things.” Michael sighed. “She always is. Oh, and we’re married now. It’s Anna Cheung Helfort now.”
“I’ll be. Well, congratulations and all that. The bride wore white, I hope.”
“Combat fatigues, actually. Weddings back on Commitment are low-key affairs.” The pain in Michael’s voice was obvious.
“It must be hard,” Fellsworth said, her voice soft. “Leaving her, I mean.”
“It was. It still is. But what’s worse is knowing that she’ll think me dead, though at least I can see a way through now.” His eyes locked onto Fellsworth’s. “Will it work?”
The Final Battle Page 7