“I did not know he ever had a son,” L’Houillier said quietly.
“Is not widely advertised fact, it seems.” Zhukovski took a sip of the cold vodka, feeling it warm his insides against the cold wind that blew in his heart. “And that is where tale becomes strange. You see, public records about Borge and Thorella families are almost blank for roughly year after accident. Very odd to say for one of Earth’s richest families and popular young politician, especially when such tragedy is involved.”
L’Houillier’s brow creased. “Wait just a moment, Evgeni,” he said. “I remember that there were many reports on that accident, and on the Thorellas, especially. I do not recall reading about Borge, specifically, but it was so long ago I probably would not remember, anyway. But I am sure the press was full of things.”
With the smile of the angler who had hooked his prize, Evgeni began to reel L’Houillier in. “And that is my point, admiral,” he said. “I remember much being in press, too, even as young weapons officer on destroyer patrolling Rim. It was ‘Big News’ at time. But now, most information is gone from available records. Disappeared. For example, article about Borge’s son was text only, and last name was spelled wrong.”
“Are you suggesting,” L’Houillier asked incredulously, “that someone has somehow tampered with the information in the Central Library?” The Central Library had been created nearly two centuries before as a storehouse of human knowledge and information. Over the years, the various client states and colonies had come to rely on it almost exclusively for their information needs, and most smaller information libraries were not in themselves unique, but were abridged versions of the Central Library that carried a smaller quantity and narrower scope of data. The funding of the library was ostensibly from multi-source government appropriations to keep it “bias-free,” but there were many significant individual contributions, as well. The Librarians had become a quasi-religious sect, guarding the integrity of the information under their care, and were expected to operate the Library with standards of intellectual and moral purity that would have astonished the most conservative of religious monks.
Zhukovski nodded grimly. “Library has been tampered with, admiral,” he said. “I cannot tell how much or when, but things are not as they should be, and common factor seems to be Fearless Leader.”
“Evgeni, if this is true, our… our entire history, the core of our knowledge… everything could be corrupted.” L’Houillier was horrified at the thought.
“I believe that few records I found were missed for some reason: typo in text, bad picture that did not register on scan, and so forth,” Zhukovski said. “I discovered other holes in information regarding past of close associates of president, information which is routinely reported by press or government register, but that is either gone entirely or selectively edited. There is no doubt. Originals are perhaps behind locked files, but in open domain where they should be? Nyet.”
L’Houillier sat back in his chair, looking out the port of his friend’s room at the starfield of ships that were gathered, a third of the fleet that was about to strike at the Kreelan homeworld. But who, he wondered silently, was the enemy now? And what was he to do about it?
“There is also matter of Reza Gard to consider,” Zhukovski said quietly, interleaving his own thoughts with L’Houillier’s.
“What do you expect me to do, Evgeni?” L’Houillier asked tiredly. “We have gone through this before. I know you are convinced that he is not guilty, but that is out of our hands. We cannot override the Council’s decision. Reza and Mackenzie will face a civilian tribunal and no doubt will be executed.” He shrugged. “I do not like that kind of justice any more than you, my friend, but we are faced with less and less authority these days.”
“Vote was not unanimous,” Zhukovski said. “Perhaps we should speak to opposition–”
“One vote hardly qualifies as ‘opposition,’ Evgeni, and you know it. I admire what Councilman Braddock has done as much as you, but his days are numbered, as well. Borge will not tolerate him for long, and he will no doubt join our other redoubtable colleagues in ‘retirement.’”
“Even more reason to consider other alternatives.”
L’Houillier rolled his eyes. “You never give up, do–”
The comm panel beeped, accompanied by a blinking red light. L’Houillier slapped it with his hand. “Oui?” he barked.
Admiral Laskowski’s face appeared on the panel. Out of sight from the comm panel’s view, Zhukovski made an expression of exquisite disgust.
“The prisoners are about to arrive from Furious, sir,” she said. “The president ordered–”
“I am aware of the president’s orders, admiral,” he snapped. It must be an effort for her, L’Houillier thought, to conceal her sentiment that the old Grand Admiral was long past retirement, holding a position that she was rightfully entitled to. Well, he thought sourly, she would just have to wait a bit longer, now wouldn’t she? “I shall be down at once.” He snapped the circuit closed.
Zhukovski was already on his feet, straightening his uniform, setting his face into its accustomed stony expression. “Since I was little boy, I always like to see parade,” he said. “But not this time. Not today.”
“Nor I,” the Grand Admiral said quietly as he stood up to follow Zhukovski from the room. Pausing at the door, he looked back at the partially emptied bottle of vodka and suddenly wished that he could sit here and finish the rest of it, rather than participate in the spectacle that Borge had prepared.
Sighing, he relinquished the thought. Maybe when I retire with a bullet in the brain, he told himself bitterly.
***
Admiral Laskowski fumed at L’Houillier’s brush-off. Your day of reckoning is coming, old man, she thought angrily. She knew he had been President Nathan’s military pet, but it was a new administration, a new leader, and she was already on the inside track. For now, she would have to bide her time and be patient.
She was just about to head out of the Combat Information Center, or CIC, for the president’s ceremony when she saw the sailor manning the STARNET terminal suddenly stiffen. He was obviously reading an incoming message, probably from one of the scoutships that were probing ever deeper into Kreelan space.
While she technically wasn’t in charge of the watch – the officer of the deck was a full commander who was otherwise occupied on the far side of the dark, sprawling compartment – she was the senior officer present and had the privilege to poke her nose into whatever might be going on.
Curiosity drawing her onward, she walked over to the rating who was now staring in wonder at the STARNET display. “What’s going on, sailor?” she asked.
The man turned to her, a look of awe on his face. “They found it,” he said in little more than a whisper. “One of the scoutships – SV1287, commanded by Lieutenant Weigand – found the Kreelan homeworld!”
A tingle of excitement ran up Laskowski’s spine. “Are they sure? Have you gotten confirmation?”
“There’s none needed, ma’am,” the sailor told her, his voice now laced with excitement. “Look at the plot: there are thousands of ships in the system they found. Thousands!”
Laskowski’s eyes grew wide as she looked at the display sent in by the aptly – if informally – named Obstinate. She knew Lieutenant Weigand only by reputation, but in about ten minutes she would make sure that he was Lieutenant Commander Weigand. She quickly scanned the report: he had taken some incredible chances, doing a series of jumps along the vector of one of the Kreelan battle groups he had picked up. Hoping to emerge from one of the jumps close enough to pick up readings from any inhabited systems along that vector, he finally struck not just gold, but platinum. There were nearly three thousand combat vessels – the same number she had predicted, she thought smugly – in that system, and spectral analyses and neutrino readings indicated an incredibly advanced civilization was present. Most of it was concentrated on a planet and major moon in the system at a distance from t
he sun where water could exist as a liquid, and thus support carbon-based life. There were other targets in the system, including the asteroids, but the fourth planet from the star was obviously the primary target, along with its orbiting moon.
There was no mistake, no room for doubt. They had found it.
“My God,” she whispered. Turning to the officer of the deck, who was heading her way to see what was going on, she said, “Commander, I want this information to be held closely until I say otherwise. No one – no one – else is to see or hear of this report until I have a chance to discuss it with Admiral L’Houillier. Is that clear?”
“Aye, ma’am,” the commander replied crisply.
Satisfied, Laskowski turned on her heel and hurried out of CIC. But she had no plans of telling L’Houillier, at least not until after she had told the president himself.
***
“Tony?” Enya called above the murmur of the crowd. “Tony Braddock?” Her shuttle had arrived scant moments ago. After being led away from the landing zone by the courteous crew chief, she found herself among the crowd of dignitaries and other military and civilian personnel who had assembled in the Warspite’s starboard landing bay.
“Enya!” Tony shouted, waving his arm for her to join him. He stood off by himself, his glum face brightening at her appearance. “What are you doing here?”
“I was chosen to represent Erlang on the Council,” she told him, her eyes wide at the sight around her, the hundreds – thousands? – of people filling the great ship’s landing bay.
But the sight of Tony Braddock and the look on his face diverted her attention to the here and now, as well as reaffirming her suspicions about the dark nature of the gathering of people around her. Looking around quickly, deciding that it was safe amid the background noise, she quietly told him, “We were told to supply a representative for the expedition or be cut off from all Confederation aid. Borge’s hands around our throat are as tight as ever.”
Braddock nodded grimly. “You aren’t the only ones. He made the same speech to the entire Council, telling us all that anyone who doesn’t toe the line is going to be cut off. Or worse.”
Enya shook her head incredulously. The Kreelans had done damage enough. Now, humanity had inherited a maniacal leader, as well. “Where is Nicole?” she asked, hoping to brighten the conversation.
Tony frowned. “I don’t know. They have me billeted with the rest of the politicos, and I haven’t been able to spend much time with her since we left Earth.” He craned his neck around, his eyes searching. “I haven’t spotted her in the crowd, but I’m sure she’s here somewhere.”
“What is going on?” Enya asked. “Why is everyone gathering together like this? Is Borge going to address everyone, or what?”
Braddock was incredulous. “You didn’t know?”
“Know what?” From the look on his face, she was sure she was going to regret finding out.
“They’re transferring some Kreelan prisoners from the Furious,” he paused, “along with Reza and Jodi Mackenzie. They were captured on their way to Erlang.”
“I had heard a rumor, but didn’t believe it. You don’t believe it, do you?” she asked him. “I know that Reza is different from anyone I’ve ever known, but he would not have killed Nathan. I just can’t accept–”
A glance and a frown from a nearby councilwoman caught Braddock’s eye.
“Yes, I know,” he said, raising his voice to make sure the eavesdropping councilwoman heard, “it amazes me that President Borge is even going to bother with a tribunal.”
“Tony?” Enya said, confused at his turn of his speech, but stopped when his hand gripped her arm tightly, almost painfully.
Braddock watched out of the corner of his eye as the councilwoman turned back to her conversation, apparently satisfied. Then he guided Enya to the open space beneath a nearby Corsair’s wing. “Enya,” he whispered after they’d moved out of earshot of their neighbors, “you’ve got to be very careful about what you say and who hears you. Since Nathan died, the changes on the Council have been nothing short of terrifying.” He glanced around quickly, and she recognized the look from her time in the resistance: he was making sure the area was secure.
“Almost all the old members of the Council – everyone who supported Nathan and his policies – are gone,” he whispered. “Since he declared martial law after Nathan’s death, Borge has dismissed most of the Senate and Council. He’s installed sympathetic supporters or simply eliminated representation for some worlds in the legislature. Some of them, the most vocal opponents, have died suddenly and inexplicably.” He looked around again. The crowd had grown larger, closer. “The checks and balances system is gone. Even the judiciary has been subverted since Savitch was killed. We’ve got a dictatorship with a rubber-stamp body masquerading as a democracy.”
“And what about you?”
A look of shame crossed his face. “I’ve tried to make a stand for the things I’ve felt are really important, but it’s no use,” he said wearily. “My only hope is to try and gain enough support in an underground movement to restore some kind of order to the government. In public, I have to appear as just another lackey, or I face the same fate as the others. Then none of us will have any hope.”
Enya took his arm. “Don’t be ashamed,” she told him. “Sometimes there is no alternative but to dress like the enemy so you can defeat him.” She, of all people, knew the truth of that. She had worked against Belisle’s corrupt government on Erlang by masquerading many times as a Ranier. Some of the things she had to do…
He managed a grim smile. “That’s what worries me,” he told her. “I don’t want to become the thing I’m trying to destroy.”
“May I have your attention, please!” a voice suddenly boomed over the PA system. Braddock recognized it immediately: Voronin Hack, the Council’s Master-at-Arms and ceremonial mouthpiece. The crowd quieted down immediately. “Ladies and gentlemen,” his smooth baritone voice continued, “honored guests and dignitaries… the President of the Confederated Alliance of Humanity!”
A massive cheer went up as Borge took his place at the podium, the white presidential robe billowing about his ample stomach, his face flushed with supreme confidence. He raised his hands to the crowd, basking in their adulation.
The applause, Braddock noted sadly, was enthusiastic and sincere. There were no guns at people’s backs, no cue cards or faked admiration. With the exception of those on the Council or in the upper circles of the military, few people here knew or understood the implications of the transformation that had occurred in the Confederation government at Borge’s hand. Most of them saw him as the inheritor of Nathan’s tragic legacy, as the man who had pursued a humble life in the unglamorous world of creating and guiding the law, but who now was determined to end the war and bring peace to the galaxy.
After what was to Braddock an interminable interlude of applause, Borge finally gestured for the crowd to be silent. Slowly, unwillingly, they began to comply.
“Fellow citizens of the great Confederation!” he declared as the crowd at last was still. “Fellow humans, hear me:
“For many long years we have suffered and died at the hands of the alien enemy, losing our loved ones, our children to the claws of this insidious infestation that has swept across our galaxy like a plague. Campaign after campaign have we fought, not for glory or bounty, but for our very survival.” His voice deepened, his tempo slowed as he went on, “For nearly a century have we lost world after world, colony after colony invaded, burned, destroyed. Neither man, nor woman, nor child has been spared this agony, this devastation.”
He looked down at the podium, as if in communion with the now-thoughtful members of the audience, as if offering a silent prayer to those who had died in the century-long invasion. “But, my friends, the tide has turned,” he said, looking up, casting his gaze upon the crowd before him. “The aliens have lost their strength, their will to fight,” he told them. “They have run in full retreat
from our worlds, fleeing to the sector of space from which they were spawned. We may never know the nature of the divine intervention that has driven them from our homelands, but know you this…” He paused, his brow wrinkling in righteous fury. “They cannot run far enough to escape our vengeance!”
The assemblage broke into a roar of cheering and whistling, voices taking up the challenge that Borge had laid before them.
Borge patiently waited for the tremendous reaction to subside, the shower of voices finally falling into silence within the great cavern of the landing bay.
“And seek vengeance we will, my friends,” he promised them. “That is why we are gathered here this day, why tens of thousands of sailors and Marines, Coastguardsmen, and so many others have gathered in these three great fleets that shall sail as one toward the enemy’s shores, the greatest armed force the galaxy has ever known.” He was interrupted by more cheers and applause.
“As many of you know,” he continued, “the Armada set out without us knowing the exact location of the Kreelan homeworld, only a comparatively vast area of space where we knew the enemy must be hiding.” There were low murmurs in the audience, particularly among the naval personnel: many of them had thought it was insane to start the operation without knowing exactly where to strike. “My friends, just before taking the podium,” he went on quietly, the thousands before him now utterly silent, “I was informed that one of our brave scoutships has pinpointed the location of the Kreelan homeworld, and has confirmed that their own battle fleet is assembling for a knockout blow against the Confederation.” His fist suddenly hammered on the podium. “But we shall strike first! We shall strike at the enemy’s heart with all our might, and for the first time in a century carry the battle into the enemy’s territory. We shall end this terrible war with a single crushing blow, and we shall lead humanity to victory!”
Despite how much he hated Borge, Braddock found himself swept up in the religious fervor that washed over the audience in the landing bay like a tidal wave, carrying away all doubt, all reservations, all fears of what the immediate future held. Borge’s words were irresistible to men and women who had fought and lost again and again in a war that had begun when their great-great-grandparents were children. Nearly everyone in the bay had lost a friend or relative, a spouse or a child, to the Kreelans. Their thirst for blood ran deep, and they were willing to sacrifice everything for a moment of that soon-to-be finest hour promised by Borge’s words.
In Her Name Page 87