by Phil Geusz
Harlowe blinked. "But sir! I'll have—"
"Nothing left," I interrupted. "Except the empty assault vessels themselves, of course, which are of considerable value in their own right. That's why I'm entrusting you with their return. I'll be providing you with what destroyers I can as an escort."
"Think of the training schedules, sir!" Harlowe continued. "And the leave rotations, and everything else! This'll throw everything out of balance! The administrative shock waves will affect every marine depot everywhere!"
"The service will recover," I predicted, crossing my arms. I'd expected Harlowe to be unhappy, but I'd also hoped that at least he'd at least be more honest with me about the real reason why. The fact was that he'd just recently been promoted early into the dream assignment of an officer of his specialization, but when I sent his force back home minus its marines and aerospace fighters he'd suddenly find that, as the commander of a hollowed-out shell, his meteoric rise was over. It'd be at least months and maybe years before his assault team was reconstituted as an effective fighting force, and in the meantime he as the assault-group's commander would be stuck with long hours of the most tedious and unexciting sort of hard work putting everything back together. Harlowe would never have snapped back at an admiral, or even a commodore. But we were nominally of equal rank—I had several more weeks of seniority than he did, was all. Yet here I was, dashing his elevated hopes and in general raining on his career. "I'll be taking personal command of the landing force," I continued, still staring him directly in the eyes. "Just as soon as we've gotten everyone dirtside and the situation is stabilized."
This time, Harlowe visibly paled. From his point of view, now I was stealing all the glory as well. "Y-you… You don't have the—"
I turned away and spoke to Commander Mane before my fellow captain could say something he might regret. "I'm holding you back, Jessie," I explained to him. "As a second despatch-vessel. Cataract is our fastest destroyer, and I've been very impressed with your engineering reports. So she's probably the most reliable as well—this is why you were chosen. Your job will be to stand by, maintain readiness for anything, and react to a changing situation without orders if need be. Do you understand?"
"Thank you, sir!" a beaming Commander Mane replied. As well he might; I'd just placed enormous trust in him.
"Sir!" Captain Harlowe objected. "S-s-sir!
Once again I ignored him, hoping that he'd have sense enough to calm down and accept what was in fact a perfectly honorable bit of duty. Not just honorable, even—because he'd be in command of his escort as well as his own assault ships, it'd count as being in charge of a task force under combat conditions. This would look excellent indeed on his resume, if he'd just give it a chance. Not as good as continuing in command of his marines, granted. But still better than just okay. "Josiah," I said, turning towards him, "will be taking command of Javelin. I'm sending her on a deep raid." Even though I'd already warned my old friend, he still seemed to be slightly shocked as he read the single page of instructions that were all I'd felt necessary.
"Sir!" Harlowe objected again, this time rising to his feet. "You have no authority! Neither to give up your own command nor to take my marines from me! It's against regulations, sir!"
He was right, of course. Only a flag officer could remove a captain from his command—even his own—save for medical reasons. And while his assertion about the marines was arguable—to my knowledge no one had ever attempted such a thing before—it did at least have a basis in fact. "Sit down!" I ordered, a slight growl entering my voice. Was the man a big enough fool to force me to make it official? Didn't he understand how close James and I were? Did I have to rub everyone's noses in it?
"You have no authority!" Harlowe shouted again.
And that was that. Scowling hard, I picked up my portfolio and slammed it down on the table. Then I leafed through a whole series of documents, all of which carried an entirely authentic Royal Seal. Some of them even Nestor didn't know about. Frankly, it'd be better if no one ever did. One last time I looked into Harlowe's eyes, silently appealing for him to show the common sense I'd always known he was so bereft of. But instead of backing down, he just returned my glare.
Which approach would be most appropriate, I asked myself as I leafed through the pages. Certainly not the document that named me an ambassador extraordinaire, if I ever needed to become one. Nor the one that made me a Royal Herald, able to lawfully speak in James's own name—that'd be overkill, and dangerous for a Rabbit in any event. Nor did I wish to become a Royal Governor or Constable or Revenue Agent just yet, and certainly I hoped I'd never need the blank but signed-and-sealed death warrants… Then I came to the very last one. In some ways I hated the thing even more than the death warrants—I hadn't wanted to join the navy in the beginning, but since then I'd come in many ways to love and respect the king's service more than anything else in my life. It felt wrong, even a little perverted, to do what I knew must come next. But in truth my rank had been mismatched to my duties ever since I'd founded the fencibles, and the resulting need for workarounds had always been a major headache. So, I chose that envelope, yanked it out of the portfolio, and tossed down in front of Captain Harlowe. "Open that!" I demanded. "Read it!"
He blinked at James's personal mark, then paled.
"You demanded this," I reminded him. "Now, open it and tell everyone what's inside."
He kissed His Majesty's seal as was traditional before ripping the packet open. Then he read the order that, had he not been so lacking in imagination, he would've guessed I'd be carrying with just this sort of difficulty in mind. "Congratulations, Commodore Birkenhead!" he finally whispered.
There was a long, shocked silence at the table, until finally I spoke again. "Thank you, Thomas," I replied, my voice calm and proper once more. "This is to remain our secret for now, however. There's no need for anyone outside of this room to know." Then I licked my nose and looked down at my feet. It was a little frightening sometimes, what came of being His Majesty's blood brother. Even more frightening was what havoc an unscrupulous or even merely incapable man might wreak with such a portfolio as mine. But there wasn't time to muse on that just now. "The surprise attack takes place at eleven-fifty hours, and the landing commences at twelve-hundred hours. As for the rest, you have your individual orders." I looked around and met their eyes. Some were still a little shocked at what they'd just seen, but the others were—trying to hide smiles? That could only be a good sign, I decided. The morale of the rest of the officer corps was the reason I'd not been promoted to commodore back on Earth Secundus to start with; both James and I feared that a too-rapid rise might be resented. Perhaps we'd been overly concerned?
"No more questions?" I asked one last time. But I was greeted by silence. "Excellent," I continued. "In that case… I'm confident in each and every one of you to do your duty. Dismissed, and godspeed."
20
The rest of the morning went relatively smoothly. I recalled Ambassador Vorsage for "urgent consultations" at nine, employing a code phrase that he knew to mean "Get yourself and your people out of there now, no questions asked." Then half an hour later I rang up Will of the People and asked to speak to Sir Jason.
"Good morning, Captain Birkenhead," he greeted me with a slight smile. "How are you this morning?
"Quite well, Sir Jason. Thank you for asking." Then I let my own smile fade. "I'm afraid our pleasant little interlude of civility is over. We're about to return to being active enemies, sir."
His smile faded, then he rose to his feet. "What do you mean, David?"
"Exactly what I said, I fear. You're here under a flag of truce. I've accepted and honored that up until now, but will do so no longer. Honor compels me to allow your ship to leave the system unharmed and unpursued. This will be granted, but no more. You have one hour to collect Ambassador Kiril and his staff plus anyone else you may have dirtside. If you're not thrusting towards either Point Three or Point Five and the Empire beyond in an hour
and fifteen minutes, sir, I will no longer feel compelled to withhold my broadside."
I examined Sir Jason's face carefully as he digested my words. His rage appeared both genuine and spontaneous, even though he had to know why I'd made the decision and what most likely would follow next. Successful spies had to be master actors and superb liars—I decided it wasn't any accident that Sir Jason had lasted so long. "But… Sir! The shuttle trip alone will take him thirty minutes!"
"Yes," I replied with a nod and a smile. "I expect that it will. You therefore have twice as long as you require. So I can't see where you have any cause for complaint, sir. Birkenhead out." Then I cut off the circuit, even though Sir Jason was still spluttering.
"Very nicely done, sir," Josiah offered.
"Thank you," I replied. Then I sighed and leaned back in my chair. The Wilkes people would now know that something was going very wrong for them, but that was inevitable. All that could be done was to grant them too little time to act upon their suspicions. Both ambassadors simply had to be extracted from the Palace before I nuked it, the one because he was a loyal man doing the best he could for his kingdom and the other because he genuinely was present under a legal flag of truce.
As expected, it wasn't ten minutes before I got another call from the planet's surface. "Sir!" Lord Randolph Wilkes declared after I'd kept him on hold for long enough to ensure that Kiril had been forced to launch in order to meet my deadline. "Have you gone utterly mad?"
"I don't think so," I replied. "Though I haven't had a checkup lately. Why do you ask?"
"You're ruining everything!" Lord Wilkes declared. "Now the prisoner-exchange will never happen! Hundreds of non-combatants are involved, sir! Hundreds! Some of them quite important personages!"
I nodded slowly. "This is royal space," I explained. "While I recognize the right of the Imperials to leave in peace, well… I grew tired of sharing, you see." Then I let my face grow hard and cold. "I have excellent reasons for my actions, my Lord. As an officer of His Majesty's fleet, I'm under no obligation whatsoever to justify myself to you."
Wilkes blinked, and for an awful moment I thought he was going to take the kind of swift, unreserved and decisive action that might spoil my entire plan. Then at the last second he reverted to form. "We're going to hold an emergency House meeting about this!" he declared. "And debate an appropriate response to such high-handedness, sir! You can expect a very stiff diplomatic protest, at the very least!"
I nodded. The meeting would be held at the Palace, of course, conveniently gathering even more of the leadership than usual in one place. It was almost ten in the morning; my guess was that it'd take about two hours to bring everyone together in one room to talk. And that's exactly what they'd still be doing when the nukes went off, I reckoned—or at least that'd been my plan from the very beginning. It was appropriate enough, I decided, that the leadership of what had turned out to be the greediest and most obstructive of all the Noble Houses should die talk-talk-talking when they should've been fight-fight-fighting. So I lowered my ears like a bunny-slave about to be disciplined and did my best to appear worried at the threat of a particularly nasty diplomatic riposte. "I fear that you must do what you must do, and I must do what I must do."
The Wilkes-Lord, interpreting my expression and posture exactly as I'd hoped, smiled evilly. "You've grown altogether too big for your britches, David Birkenhead. Now you're going to learn how professionals handle this sort of thing." Then he switched off with a flourish…
…and I kept my eyes fixed on the blank screen for a long moment thereafter, not sure whether I should laugh or cry at the sheer wretchedness of it all.
21
We had a live newsfeed from the Wilkes Palace playing on the screen when our nukes went off; one moment a pretty blonde-haired journalist was reporting on the sudden departure of Ambassador Kiril, and the next there was only static. I forced myself to look directly into her eyes to the very end, though it ripped my heart out. It's for the greater good, I whispered to myself over and over again. Innocents are dying by the million all over the galaxy, and this is the best, least-bloodiest way to bring it to an ultimate end. But I felt a strong urge to vomit regardless. Did she have children? A little baby, perhaps? Maybe even right there with her somewhere in the building? I'd never, ever seen a single senior officer climb the Academy's mast to greet the dawn, I suddenly realized as Josiah turned off the static and replaced it with a tactical schematic of local space. Only the young ever did so. Perhaps this was because all the rest of the navy's brass were as sickened by what their responsibilities had made them as I was, so that they didn't feel worthy either? Yet, given the chance to do it all over I'd have nuked the place again just the same. The chains of duty were forged from cold, pitiless iron. Oh how they chafed!
Will of the People had left orbit by now, though of course she still had a ringside seat for the upcoming show. "Initiate jamming," I ordered. While the Imperials were free to gawk all they pleased, I didn't want them sharing their thoughts and opinions.
"Aye-aye, sir," Lieutenant Clarke replied, flipping a long-prepared switch. A midshipman sat beside him at an improvised console of his own. His only job was to endlessly scan the various communication frequencies and quash the Imperial transmitter with our far more powerful one wherever it might appear. Then the aerospace fighters began launching and forming swarms like angry bees. Once these were all nicely organized the first wave of assault boats leapt into space as well and, covered by the fighters, began spiraling down to the surface of Wilkes Prime.
"Status report?" I demanded into the intership channel.
"We're at T plus four minutes, sir," Captain Harlowe reported from the bridge of his command ship, Gallipoli. His voice was completely impassive—if he was still enraged at me, at least he was hiding it well. "Everything is nominal. So far we've encountered no sign of opposition. It's as if they haven’t even noticed they're being invaded yet, sir."
"Good," I replied. "Thank you." That was my exact intention, of course—to make use of the sheer shock value of the initial attack as a sort of cover for the landing. I had no future use for the ornate Wilkes Palace, but the more intact the rest of the planet remained the better.
Nine more minutes passed before anyone dirtside noticed much of anything but the disappearance of their own highest levels of command. "Traffic control to senior officer, royal task force! Traffic control to senior officer! Urgent! Do you read?"
I hit the button and replied. "This is Captain Birkenhead."
"Sir…" The voice sounded choked and indecisive. "I… Sir, we have no clearance on file for your boat launch, sir!"
I smiled to myself. 'Boat launch' was one way to put it, I supposed. The red pips must've been forming clouds on his screens. "Check your records again," I replied, keeping my own tones calm and reasonable. "We've had this exercise scheduled for two days. Your House Lord himself approved—I spoke to him personally on the subject. He was looking forward to watching, in fact."
"I… Uh…" he stuttered. Meanwhile with every passing second my forces were gaining a greater and greater positional advantage, especially the aerospace fighters. "Sir," he said at last. "We just got word that someone's destroyed the palace, you see. Probably Imperial saboteurs. So…"
I nodded slowly, though of course he couldn't see it. "I'm hearing the same up here," I replied. "It sounds as if there are many dead. I'm sorry, son." This last wasn't a lie, technically speaking.
"Yes sir. And thank you. But… I'm really at a bit of a loss, sir. A launch of this magnitude—we really should have been informed, you see."
I nodded again; the controller's voice sounded young. He was being called upon to make important decisions many levels above his paygrade without support, warning, or half enough time for reflection. What he'd want most of all was for things to slow down so he could think matters through. "Well…" I said after a moment. "I have dozens of ships in the sky by now; trying to recall them without a preset plan would create
even more chaos. Probably even collisions."
"Right," he agreed. "But… All of my lines to my superiors are out of service, sir. Or else busy."
"I can imagine! What a shame that all this had to happen at once! But… Maybe you should just ground everyone on your end of things until our stuff's safely landed? Prohibit any and all launches for any reason until then, I mean, and divert all other traffic to the nearest landing zone or compatible airlock? For my part I'll warn my men to be extra-careful. If we work together, we ought to be able to get through this thing without any more tragedies."
"Yes, sir!" the young man replied, grateful for direction at long last from an authority figure. "I'll do exactly that—it's clearly the only safe way out of this mess. Thank you, sir!"
"No," I replied softly. One of the inherent weaknesses of a conspiracy is that by its very nature it must be kept a deep, closely-held secret in order to be effective. The House of Wilkes had chosen to betray the kingdom via conspiracy, but with any luck enough of the relatively small group of conspirators were now dead that I could safely treat the rest of the planet's population as if their loyalty had never even wavered. Which, of course, it hadn't. And probably wouldn't, at least until they found out who'd nuked their palace. How long would that be? Who could know? Someday it'd leak, of course—something that big just about had to. On the other hand, my key men and officers had all sworn mighty oaths of secrecy. "Thank you, son. You've done a very good job today indeed." For all of the people of Wilkes, I didn't add aloud. Better than you'll ever know.
22
It took three long weeks for Will of the People to make her jump out of the system at Point Five. She could've made the journey much more quickly, but seemed to be in no particular hurry. Nor did I rush her along; there would've been no profit in doing so. The longer she dilly-dallied at Wilkes Prime, the longer it'd be before word got back the Empire that things weren't going quite according to plan. It was unlikely that Will would encounter the main Imperial battle fleet on the way home—there were dozens of equally-good potential routings, and most likely no alternate rendezvous had been set given the limitations of time and distance and the way the Imperials had yanked the cruiser off of convoy duty without warning. So she'd have to carry her information all the way back home, then it'd have to catch up with the main fleet from behind before it could be of any use to anyone. Poor Sir Jason! He was certainly intelligent enough to know to race for home at full speed, yet he continued to crawl across the sky, presumably "making further observations" for as long as he could reasonably stretch them out. Perhaps the ambassador had requested that he do this? I rather hoped so. That'd give Sir Jason all the cover he needed for what was clearly a less-than-optimal command decision.