by David Weber
“If they do, God only knows what they’ll come up with as an equalizer,” Hemphill finished for her when she allowed her voice to trail away. The Manticoran admiral’s expression was grim as she recalled the Janacek Admiralty’s hubris…and what that had cost the Royal Manticoran Navy in dead ships and personnel.
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” Shannon Foraker said quietly. “Given their performance to date, it’s tempting to think every Solly’s an idiot. But they aren’t, and if some of those not-idiots convince the Mandarins to listen to them, our current technological edge could disappear a lot sooner than anyone wants to think it could.”
The Golden Olive Restaurant
City of Old Chicago
Sol System
Solarian League
“So what do you think of Rajmund’s latest revelation?” Lupe Blanton asked as she and Weng Zhing-hwan finished punching their orders into the privacy-screened booth’s terminal. “From where I sit, if there’s really anything to it, we may need to rethink our position on who the Other Guys really are. Or if they exist at all, for that matter!”
“First, let’s remember we’re talking about Rajmund,” Weng observed, pouring tea into her cup from the self-warming pot which had been waiting in their booth when they arrived. “That automatically means there’s an agenda behind it. You know that even better than I do, since you, unfortunately, have to work with him—or around him—on an ongoing basis. Second, we know damned well that all of his patrons—or the ones we’ve been able to identify, at least—have strong vested interests in ‘proving’ the Manties are behind anything that goes south in the Fringe. And, third, I don’t believe for one second that Oravil Barregos would be careless or stupid enough to be caught talking to the Manties—or anyone else—if he seriously contemplates anything of which your esteemed superiors might disapprove.”
“A masterly summation.” Blanton smiled thinly. She sat back on her side of the table, playing with a fork, and, despite the smile, her eyes were dark. “What really worries me is that Adão doesn’t have any option but to take his reports seriously. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t trust the…disinterested impartiality of what Rajmund’s reporting any farther than I do, but there’s so much of it.”
“And he’s upping the ante if he’s handing over genuine photos of Manticoran naval officers,” Weng agreed. “Especially if they turn out to be genuine Manticoran officers. And I’m assuming from Ukhtomskoy’s reaction that they did?”
“Of course they did,” Blanton said. “Frankly, though, that worries me less than some other aspects of it. Imagery—especially bad imagery that has to be digitally enhanced as much as this did—is easy enough to fake. And there’s no telling who may have slipped file imagery of completely nonexistent Manticorans into Frontier Security’s databases for it to be compared to. I doubt Rajmund did it, because there’d be too much risk of that blowing up in his face if anyone starts fact-checking his reports. He’s been around the block way too many times to leave a trail of breadcrumbs that might lead back to him. But do either of us really think he’s the only mole someone like the Other Guys have in place? Assuming they exist, that is,” she added piously.
“Of course not. Doesn’t make me any happier contemplating what we’re up against, though. Assuming they exist.”
Weng’s smile was even thinner than Blanton’s had been.
“Actually, I’m more intrigued by your third point,” Blanton said after a moment. “The bit about Barregos not being careless or stupid if he does ‘seriously contemplate’ anything that might piss off MacArtney. Or Kolokoltsov and the rest of the Mandarins, for that matter. Do you think he really could be contemplating something?”
Weng gazed down into her teacup for several seconds, lips pursed while she considered her response. Then she looked back up to meet Blanton’s gaze.
“Last year,” she began, “Noritoshi had me send one of my most trusted people—Jerzy Scarlatti; he’s a major, I don’t think you know him—out to Maya.”
She arched an eyebrow at Blanton, who nodded. Brigadier Noritoshi Väinöla, CO of the Solarian Gendarmerie Intelligence Command, was Weng’s immediate superior, Adão Ukhtomskoy’s Gendarmerie counterpart.
“Officially, Jerzy was there to conduct an inspection of the local Gendarmerie Intelligence operations because he’d heard reports that the…complex relationship between Erewhon, Haven, and Manticore was spilling over onto Maya. Actually, we’d had reports that Barregos and/or Roszak were skimming—skimming more than usual, I mean—off all the contracts they’d been placing with Erewhon. And the reason I chose him was that he and Philip Allfrey, Barregos senior Gendarme, go back a long way. I figured Allfrey would be more likely to cooperate with a friend. And if he didn’t—if there was something going on and Allfrey was part of it—Jerzy knew him well enough he’d probably pick up on it.”
Blanton nodded again. It was a given that any sector governor, and the vast majority of Frontier Fleet sector commanders, would find…extracurricular ways to line their pockets. In fact, that had been going on for so long the systematic graft was factored into their salaries. There were, however, limits to how blatant their superiors could permit them to be.
“Anyway, Allfrey assured Jerzy there was no significant peculation going on. In fact, there was less than usual, and he showed Jerzy his own internal documentation to prove it. I’m pretty sure from what Jerzy said in his off-the-record report to me that he thinks Allfrey has a very comfortable relationship with Barregos, but his documentation checked out after the best analysis we could give it.
“On the other hand, he was there during the Congo Incident.”
“He was?” Blanton’s fingers stopped turning her fork over and over and her eyes narrowed.
The Congo Incident was the label the newsies had pinned on Admiral Luis Rozsak defense of the planet of Verdant Vista.
The League was officially ambivalent about Verdant Vista, known to its current occupants as Torch. The Congo System had never been claimed by the League, nor had it been an OFS protectorate system, so its original Mesan claimants had possessed no official League recourse to reclaim it when its population, backed by an astonishing united Manticoran-Havenite front, rebelled against their ownership in August 1919. Even if they’d tried to call on their many friendly Solarian bribe-takers, the fact that ninety-plus percent of the Verdant Vistans had been genetic slaves would have…complicated Solarian public opinion. Genetic slavery was something of which all “right-thinking” Solarians disapproved, even if only a tiny percentage were willing to get off their comfortable posteriors and do anything about it, so even Solarian bureaucrats had to be careful about anything that smacked of collusion with Manpower, Inc. On the other side of the ledger, the strong ties between the rebels, the new Torch government, and the Audubon Ballroom had allowed its detractors to suggest it would inevitably become a haven for terrorists. But that had been offset in turn by the Antislavery League’s vociferous agitation in favor of officially recognizing Torch as a haven and homeworld for any liberated genetic slave.
Overall, it had seemed a situation tailor-made for the Solarian League to stay well clear of. Which had made Oravil Barregos’s decision, as the Maya Sector’s governor, to enter into a defensive agreement with Torch the cherry on top for some of Frontier Security’s policymakers here in Old Chicago.
But Barregos had strenuously, plausibly—and successfully—argued in favor of the agreement as a way to minimize Manticoran and Havenite influence in the system. Nothing could completely freeze them out, he’d acknowledged, especially since the Queen of Torch was the adopted daughter of the infamous Anton Zilwicki and even more infamous Catherine Montaigne. But given the fundamental tension between Manticore and Haven, the united front they’d presented at the time of the rebellion couldn’t last, and drawing the newly independent star system into the relationship he was currently cultivating with Erewhon would position the Maya Sector to step into the gap when it inevitably occurred
. His prediction about the Manty-Havenite relationship’s stability had been proven correct barely two T-months later, when Haven resumed hostilities against Manticore, and judging by the Torches’ scrupulous official disavowal of the Ballroom’s terrorist tactics, his accompanying argument that he’d be better able to moderate Torch’s behavior through a policy of constructive engagement had seemed to make a lot of sense.
But then, the preceding October, after less than two T-years, Frontier Fleet had been forced to make good on that defensive agreement. Luis Roszak and his men and women had paid a heavy price to protect Torch against what certainly looked like an intended Eridani Edict violation financed by “parties unknown.” The actual culprits had been renegade members of the People’s Republic of Haven’s State Security, although no one had been prepared to explain exactly what their motives might have been and it was obvious that only a very well heeled patron could have provided the logistical support the attack had required. Their survivors had been handed over to Eloise Pritchart’s Republic for trial, so the League’s courts had taken no official cognizance of exactly who might have backed their effort, but there wasn’t much question in anyone’s mind, and public opinion had shed very few tears over anything that happened to Mesan proxies.
“I wondered about the official accounts,” Blanton said now, her voice ending on a questioning note, and Weng snorted.
“You’re not alone in that,” she said, “and I’ve actually discussed that a little bit with Daud in light of Jerzy’s reports. He—Daud, I mean, not Jerzy—was pretty bitter about the fact that no one higher up the chain of command had paid any attention to the reports he and Irene put together after it on the basis of Roszak’s after-action report.
“He says Roszak’s been telling people for years that the Manties and Havenites were outstripping the Navy in terms of both weapons and technique, and nobody’s paid any damned attention. In fact, it turns out that for at least three T-years, Roszak’s reports were being suppressed before they ever got to Daud, much less went farther up the tree, and it looks like, in the absence of any direction from Old Chicago, the people on the ground have been trying to do something about it.
“Officially, Barregos has been buying locally produced warships from Erewhon as a way to inveigle the Erewhonese back into our sphere of influence, and that seems to have been working. But it’s painfully evident that another reason Barregos’s done it is to get some kind of window into the new technologies. Erewhon’s only a minor power compared to Manticore or Haven, and its navy is outside the loop on these latest, god-awful weapons the Manties are deploying against us. But it’s pretty clear the investment in new hardware is the only reason Roszak was able to defend Torch, although his losses were still pretty damned brutal. More brutal, I think, then was ever officially announced, although Jerzy didn’t have any confirmation of that at the time and Daud hasn’t found any since. But what pisses Daud off is that he worked up an analysis that strongly recommended Vice Admiral Hoover and the Office of Technical Analysis go through Roszak’s reports with a fine-toothed comb. If they had, even they would probably have figured out the Haven Sector was producing exactly the sort of innovations Hoover’s analysts had systematically dismissed for decades. Nothing in them hinted at the missiles they used against Crandall and Filareta, but at least we might not have gone into this with such total complacency.”
Blanton made a harsh sound of agreement, and Weng shrugged.
“At any rate,” she went on, “Jerzy’s report officially cleared Barregos of any financial wrongdoing. After reading it and discussing it with him, I think it raised some fresh questions about just how tight he’s gotten with Erewhon, but not financially.”
“Are you suggesting you’re worried Maya might be…fertile ground for someone to plant seeds of disunity, whether it’s the Manties or the Other Guys?” Blanton asked in a careful tone, and Weng shrugged again.
“I wouldn’t say I’ve been worrying about that,” she said. “Obviously, with the entire galaxy hell-bent on coming unglued, I’m not prepared to categorically rule it out, but Jerzy didn’t come home with anything that set off any alarms in that respect. My impression of Barregos—and I hasten to add that this is only my impression; he’s one of your people, not ours, and I don’t think anyone else in the Gendarmerie’s really thought about it that much—is that he’s the sort of fellow who considers all possibilities. He’s living in a dangerous neck of the woods, on the periphery of the longest lasting, most destructive war in galactic history—so far, at least—and I think he’s a historian. I think he saw the possibility of something like our confrontation with Manticore coming a long time ago, and I think his relationship with Erewhon’s designed to provide as close to a pocket of stability as he can create if all the rest of the galaxy goes to hell in a hand basket. How far he’s prepared to go to make that happen is an entirely different question, and I don’t have anything like enough information to offer an informed opinion on that.”
“But it’s the sort of situation, assuming you’re right, that could make someone else regard him as either potentially susceptible to seduction or as someone who could be credibly passed off as being susceptible to seduction.”
“Exactly. But if I am right, then he’s been doing this tap dance of his for a long time without anyone figuring it out. I admit Maya’s a long way from Sol, but that’s still an impressive accomplishment. From everything Jerzy had to say, he has a genuine knack for attracting personal loyalty, too. So does Admiral Roszak, apparently, and that can be a dangerous capability. Leaving that aside, though, someone able to keep so many balls in the air without anyone back home noticing would never be clumsy enough to let anyone, far less one of Rajmund’s people’s paid stringers, discover that he was meeting secretly with Manty representatives.”
“You’re right about that,” Blanton said thoughtfully, beginning to play with her fork again. “Especially since he’d take particular precautions against anyone in Frontier Security finding out about it. I imagine he’d be a lot more worried about in-house leaks than about your people.”
“You probably have a point.”
Weng sipped tea. They sat in silence for twenty or thirty seconds, then she set the cup down and sat back.
“I think we’d better find out about this,” she said. “And I can only think of one way to do that.”
“Assuming there’s time,” Blanton pointed out, and Weng nodded. The travel time to Maya was fifty-one days, one way.
“I know,” she said. “But I don’t see another option.”
“Neither do I. Can’t be one of my people, though. Even at the best of times, I’d be poaching in Rajmund’s preserve. And these are hardly ‘the best of times.’ If we’re right about him, the last thing we need is to warn him anyone—especially me—might be looking in his direction. Send your Scarlatti back again?”
“I don’t know,” Weng replied, answering Blanton’s professionally thoughtful tone. “On the one hand, I trust him and he was the one who first suggested Barregos’s relationship with Erewhon was closer than most people here in Old Chicago thought it was. He wouldn’t have done that if he’d been in Barregos’s pocket. On the other, he is Allfrey’s friend, and if Barregos is up to something, Jerzy didn’t get a clear sniff of it—or report it, anyway—the last time he was there. And,” she added, “coming up with a plausible reason to send him back again so soon without making someone as smooth as Barregos suspicious could be a nontrivial exercise.”
Blanton’s expression showed her agreement with Weng’s thought train.
“I’ve got at least a half-dozen other people I could send if I don’t send Jerzy back,” the colonel said with a shrug. “And if I need to, I’ll go to Noritoshi and get him to let me pick one of Simeon’s people from CID. Either way, I can get someone off to Smoking Frog within a couple of days, outside.”
“The sooner the better,” Blanton said. “Even if she leaves tomorrow, it’s going to be mid-September by the time she
gets there.”
“And the soonest she could get back would be the end of November,” Weng agreed. “And that’s assuming someone’s stupid enough to leave that ‘smoking gun’ lying around for her to stumble over the instant she steps off the landing shuttle! Not going to happen.”
“So we’re probably really looking at not hearing back before the new year.” Blanton’s expression was sour, and Weng snorted.
“Any dinosaur’s nervous system has a certain amount of built-in delay,” she pointed out, and Blanton grimaced.
“Under the circumstances, I wish you’d picked a different metaphor,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because the dinosaurs are extinct,” Blanton replied grimly.
AUGUST 1922 POST DIASPORA
SLNS Québec
Cachalot System
“You can’t be serious!”
The woman on Vincent Capriotti’s com display was platinum-haired and dark-skinned. It was a striking combination, and she was so photogenic he suspected she’d been the recipient of quite a lot of biosculpt. Politicians, as a rule, found physical attractiveness a valuable asset—far more valuable, in fact, in Capriotti’s opinion, than simple competence. On the other hand, Cachalot System President Miriam Jahnke had amply demonstrated her own competence over a forty-T-year political career.
And, at the moment, the fury blazing in her brown eyes honed her attractiveness in much the same way lightning honed a thunderstorm’s.