“It’s not Hamilton’s fault, Madam President,” Vladimir Penkovsky, former head of the Terran Intelligence Agency and now the director of the new Confederation Intelligence Service, said quietly. “We have been reporting for several years on the rearming of Saint Petersburg and the quiet return to power of people who still hold the ideologies and policies that led to the war twenty years ago. The armistice left a power vacuum in its wake that was filled by a weak government, and over time that government has been suborned by the survivors of the old guard. There can be no doubt. Our sources have been excellent; the information is very detailed and we believe it to be quite reliable.”
Penkovsky wished he had intelligence half as good on the other problem areas he faced. Saint Petersburg was a special case: there was a great deal of yearning by many of the ethnic Russians there to have the freedoms that their Terran cousins enjoyed, and many Saint Petersburg citizens had secretly provided information to the TIA.
Like the other major powers of the time before the Diaspora, Russia had been devastated by the wars that had led to a frenzy of interstellar colonization missions as the world teetered on the brink of total annihilation. China, its natural resources guttering out, launched a massive invasion of Russian Siberia to take by force what it needed, with a simultaneous attack against northeastern India to secure that strategic theater. Totally overwhelmed, the Russians fought back the only way they could: they obliterated the invading Chinese armies with nuclear weapons. The Indians, also reeling from China’s attack, followed suit. Once the mushroom clouds had dissipated, half the major cities in India and Russia were burning nuclear pyres. In China, no city with a population over a hundred thousand people was left standing.
After the war, the Russians who were left banded together politically with the other major survivors of the wars, notably the United States and India, and the resulting unlikely melting pot had, by and large, been extremely successful. It had been a long road back from the brink, but since then Earth’s inheritors had enjoyed a kind of global peace that modern humankind had never before known.
Saint Petersburg, on the other hand, had gone the opposite direction. The colonization mission had been led by a small oligarchy of powerful men and women who had been able to muster the resources to finance the mission. Their vision was to create their ideal of “Mother Russia” on a planetary scale, free of the external influences and threats that Terran Russia had suffered. Paranoid, ruthless, and power-hungry, successive generations fell into tyranny in a variety of guises. At last, a form of neo-Communism arose that fostered atrocities that would have made Josef Stalin proud, and eventually led to war with Earth and the Alliance Française. The armistice had ended the ordeal twenty years ago, but old ways often died hard. Sometimes, they didn’t die at all.
“If we had that much intelligence information,” McKenna growled, “then why didn’t we do anything about it. Why the hell wasn’t I informed?”
“You were, Madam President,” Barca told her as gently as he could, deciding to dive with Penkovsky into the vat of boiling oil, figuratively speaking. “We got the reports, and plenty of the information showed up in your daily briefings over the last several years. But none of us, least of all me, was going to make more of an issue out of it than was absolutely necessary.”
“My God, Hamilton,” McKenna said, turning to face him, her face a mask of shocked anger, “why didn’t you?” She turned her glare on Penkovsky. “Why didn’t both of you?”
“Economics,” Barca answered bluntly. “After the war, Saint Petersburg was an economic disaster. But Korolev, the new bastard in charge, managed to turn things around by exporting strategic minerals and other raw materials that are always in critical demand. Everybody lined up for the peace dividend.”
“Including us,” McKenna said softly, closing her eyes. She had been in the Terran Senate then, and had voted for the trade treaty with Saint Petersburg. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time.
“And the Alliance, as well,” another voice sighed. Laurent Navarre looked down at the polished wood surface of the coffee table. The former ambassador from the Alliance Française to the Terran Planetary Government, he was now McKenna’s vice president. Intelligent, charming, and extremely competent, he was a much-valued addition to McKenna’s leadership team. “As you may recall, our economy, and Earth’s, was in a very bad state in the years after the war. Korolev’s government made such a handsome offer to all of us that it was impossible to refuse.” He shrugged. “Without that agreement and access to their resources, it would have been at least another decade before our economies would have recovered.”
“We made a deal with the Devil,” McKenna grated.
“It was not the first time, Madam President,” Navarre told her levelly, “and it will not be the last. It is the nature of what we must do sometimes. You know this.”
“Yes, I do,” she said tiredly as she sank down into the wing-back chair at the end of the coffee table, facing the others. Barca and Penkovsky had been part of her cabinet since her first administration in the Terran Planetary Government. The other key member she had brought along was Joshua Sabine, the Defense Minister, who was away with the Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Phillip Tiernan, to review the new ships coming off the ways in the orbital shipyards. Navarre was a recent addition, having been the Alliance ambassador to Earth prior to the Confederation's founding. “So, it seems we have a bit of a quandary,” she told them. “Saint Petersburg has rearmed in violation of the armistice: so do we go after them, or ignore them and focus on the Kreelans?” She sighed. “I suppose we could count that on the good side of things, in that it potentially gives us more firepower against the Kreelans.”
Penkovsky snorted, shaking his head. “They would defend their own world, Madam President,” he told her, “but they would never send forces to the aid of another system. I doubt they would even bother to defend Riga. There would be no tears shed by Korolev if Riga shared Keran’s fate.”
McKenna frowned. “Which brings us to the next problem: if we accept Riga into the Confederation, how is Saint Petersburg going to react?”
“Saint Petersburg’s reaction is almost immaterial,” Navarre pointed out, “because we do not really have a choice about accepting Riga. The Confederation charter is explicit: membership is open to every world that is willing to help provide for the common defense of humanity. If Riga is willing to meet the requirements of raising a Territorial Army and provides the designated per capita quota of manpower and resources for combat units and shipbuilding, which their envoy indicated that they can, they must be accepted. The Confederation will then be obligated to help train, arm, and equip them. There are some stipulations to keep out the rogue worlds, but not many: a planet led by anything short of an outright dictatorship can meet the basic political requirements.” He shrugged. “Saint Petersburg could join if they wanted, and we would be obligated to give them the same benefits.”
“Okay,” McKenna conceded, “we don’t have any choice about accepting Riga. That still doesn’t answer my question: how will Korolev’s government react?”
“Despite the armistice conditions that made Riga independent,” Barca told her, “Saint Petersburg has never really accepted it. They’ve made placating noises and done the minimum required to observe Rigan sovereignty, but that’s it: they still believe that Riga is nothing more than a breakaway state that will someday be brought to heel.” He scowled. “Frankly, I’m surprised Riga was able to get an envoy here. If Korolev had known...”
“There would have been no envoy,” Penkovsky finished for him.
“Just how far is Korolev willing to go on this?” McKenna asked. “We can’t afford to have a second front, a civil war, going on while we’re trying to save ourselves from the Kreelans!” Fortunately, the enemy had made no further major moves against human space in the months since the fall of Keran. There had been unverified reports of Kreelan ships in many sectors, but most of them were thought to be either
erroneous or even fabricated. The only attacks on shipping had been from pirates, and none of the colonies had reported anything unusual. In some quarters, this long lull was being called the “phony war,” and an increasing amount of the Confederation government’s efforts were being devoted to keeping the Kreelan threat foremost in the mind of a public that was easily distracted. McKenna, however, didn’t believe that this lull was going to last much longer: she thought of it more as the calm before the storm.
“If we arm Riga and provide them a guarantee of protection — which applies to any external threat, not just the Kreelan Empire — as written in the Confederation charter,” Penkovsky said with a look at Barca, “Korolev will simply not allow it.”
Barca nodded in agreement.
“He’s willing to go to war with the Confederation over this?” she asked Penkovsky.
“I believe so, yes.”
“Bloody hell,” McKenna breathed.
“There may be worse,” Penkovsky ventured, clearly uncomfortable about what he was about to say. “I happened to have a report flagged for my review this morning that we recently received from a new source on Saint Petersburg. I...can barely credit the information, but in light of this discussion I cannot in good conscience not mention it.”
“Spit it out, Vlad,” McKenna ordered tersely.
“You must keep in mind that we have not yet had time to validate this source or the content of the report,” he went on hesitantly. “The source indicates that Saint Petersburg has been secretly building a stockpile of thermonuclear weapons.”
There was stunned silence around the room. Terran forces had nuclear weapons, as did the Alliance, but the stockpiles amounted to only a few hundred weapons. None had been used, anywhere, since the last wars on Earth before the Diaspora. After the devastation Earth had suffered, the hundreds of millions who had died, no one had ever wanted to unleash them again. With the threat from the Kreelans, McKenna had very reluctantly given authorization to increase the Confederation’s weapons stockpile, but only slowly. If the Kreelans used them first, she would give the Navy all the nukes they wanted. But she would not be the first one to open Pandora’s Box in this war.
“I do not believe it,” Navarre said carefully. “Saint Petersburg has very little in the way of accessible uranium deposits, and what nuclear material they import for their power industry — virtually all of it from the Alliance in the form of pre-manufactured fusion cores — is carefully tracked by an Alliance regulatory commission. I do not see how Saint Petersburg could be getting the uranium and plutonium they would require without smuggling it in. That would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, with the tight controls over uranium mining and production of fissile materials.”
“That is what I thought, too,” Penkovsky told him, “until I read this report. Tell me, Laurent,” he said, “with a power industry that has been based on fusion, solar, and wind generation for generations, why would they have built a few dozen massive coal-fired power plants in the last seven years? And why put them in out of the way locations that must make getting power to the grid extremely costly and difficult?”
Navarre sat back, thinking. He knew a great deal about the planet, having been stationed there as part of the peacekeeping force after the armistice. “Saint Petersburg has a great deal of coal, formed just as it did on Earth, and with very similar qualities. It is easy, if ecologically devastating, to mine it. But I cannot think of why they would need coal power plants: the fusion plants alone give them a net excess of electrical power. As for why they would put them in odd places, I cannot say.”
“I must have missed something,” McKenna interjected drily. “I thought we were talking about nuclear weapons here, not fossil fuel for electricity.”
“Madam President,” Penkovsky said, “a fact that was previously unknown to me is that coal typically contains between one and ten parts per million of a particular element that, theoretically, can be captured from the fly ash, which is a byproduct of burning coal.” He looked her in the eyes. “That element is uranium. And of that, just under one percent is uranium-235, which is the key ingredient for making nuclear weapons. They would need to burn a lot of coal to get what they need. But if the source’s information is correct, the coal burning facilities they have could produce several metric tons of uranium-235 per year. They would still need to refine it, but based on the enormous quantity of coal these plants are reportedly burning, and assuming they have been producing uranium-235 for at least the last three years, they may already have a stockpile of several hundred weapons.” He grimaced before he went on, saying, “My analysts also say that this is a very conservative estimate. The information also suggests they are manufacturing tritium, which is a key ingredient for making fusion weapons, but the source did not know where or how they were doing it.”
“Good God,” Barca breathed.
“Vlad,” McKenna said, careful to keep her voice level, “we simply cannot have a nuclear war in the human sphere. I would say that under any circumstances, but especially with the Kreelan Empire stalking us.” Penkovsky made to speak, but McKenna silenced him with a raised hand. “I know the information isn’t verified. I understand that. But you’ve got to pin this down. If the Confederation has to defend Riga against Saint Petersburg, I don’t want our forces facing nuclear weapons. Nor do I want to give Korolev the chance to use them to terrorize other worlds beyond Riga. Pull out all the stops on this one, Vlad. We have got to know if this is true and how far they’ve gotten. And if it’s true, we’ve got to find a way to stop them in their tracks.”
Penkovsky, his face grim, nodded. “Yes, Madam President.”
Turning to Navarre, McKenna said, “Get with Defense Minister Sabine and Admiral Tiernan on this right away and put together a contingency deployment plan. If we get hard confirmation that this information is true, I want a Navy task force and Marines ready to go in right away...”
* * *
Lost in thought as his limousine whisked him from the presidential complex back to the newly constructed Confederation Intelligence Services headquarters building, Penkovsky came to the rapid conclusion that their best chance of finding out what was happening on Saint Petersburg lay with a particular special asset.
Her codename was Scarlet.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“So, what trouble are you going to get into while I’m gone?” Confederation Navy Commander Ichiro Sato said as he ran a finger down his wife’s nude back.
“Who says I’m going to let you go?” Stephanie Sato — Steph to her friends — purred as she arched against her husband’s chiseled body, goosebumps breaking out over her skin at his touch. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, her back to his chest, burying his face in her hair. “And I never get into trouble,” she said primly.
“Liar,” he said, playfully nipping her shoulder.
She laughed, but then settled back against him, quiet. Thoughtful. “I’ll miss you,” she whispered.
“I’ll miss you, too,” he breathed.
The two of them were an unlikely pair in some ways, but had been brought together by events that had shattered humanity’s view of the universe forever. Ichiro had been a young midshipman aboard the survey ship Aurora when Mankind made its first contact with another sentient species: the Kreelans. He was the only survivor of that encounter, and had been sent back in his ship by humanity’s new enemy to warn his people of the coming war. A year and a half later, the Kreelans had attacked the human colony on Keran, occupying it after a brief but vicious battle with the human defenders. Ichiro had been there, too, on a destroyer of the Terran fleet in the battle that had raged in space. And there he had again lost most of his shipmates, and again the Kreelans had spared his life when they could easily have taken it. It was something he had managed to come to grips with, but he had never truly decided which troubled him more: having so many others die around him, or the enemy letting him live. He had gone to see several counselors to help him com
e to grips with all that had happened, but in the end the best therapy had been Steph.
She had been a journalist hungry for the big break she needed to make it into the major leagues. Before she met him, Steph had thought nothing of shamelessly using her body to advance her career as a journalist. When then-Midshipman Sato came back to Earth on a ghost ship with his improbable story of bloodthirsty aliens, she had been at the right place to get an exclusive story from the Navy, and his fame had taken her higher than she had ever imagined. She could have taken terrible advantage of him, but that temptation had fallen away when she first met him as a lonely, guilt-ridden soul. They soon became friends, and just before the battle of Keran, they became lovers. After the nightmare of that battle, which she had experienced first-hand as a journalist embedded with the ground troops, they had returned home to Earth, marrying soon thereafter.
Ichiro was Japanese by descent, born and raised on Nagano. Five centimeters shorter and nearly ten years younger than Steph, he was a handsome young man with a lean muscular body and a mind that had been keen enough to record everything he had learned of the enemy on his long, lonely return to Earth aboard the ill-fated Aurora. His knowledge had not saved Keran, but it had given humanity the only edge it had in preparing for the coming war. His body was young, but his eyes might have belonged to someone far, far older.
Prior to the war, he would have been considered absurdly young to hold the rank of commander in the Terran Navy. But his performance under fire and the heavy losses among command qualified officers at Keran had changed the rules, and rapid promotion of promising junior officers had been necessary to fill the many new critical positions opening up as the new Confederation’s fleet rapidly expanded. Ichiro had also had the benefit of the sponsorship of the Navy’s Chief of Staff, Admiral Phillip Tiernan. Some might have thought that Ichiro’s rank had been bestowed by the admiral as an act of favoritism. But the Medal of Honor on Ichiro’s uniform told a different story.
In Her Name: The Last War Page 51