by David Weber
While she fully understood OFS’s mission and supported its objectives, Madhura Yang-O’Grady was more than smart enough to realize that the policies which supported those objectives had provided any number of completely rational—and justifiable, damn it—reasons for any Fringe System to prefer association with the Manties and their “Grand Alliance.” She didn’t like it, and she hated and loathed the uppity Star Empire for creating a situation in which the Solarian government literally could not continue to function in the fashion which had evolved over the last half-millennium. No doubt it was at least partly the bureaucracies’ own fault for having become so dependent on the cash flow from the Protectorates, but that couldn’t absolve the Manties. They must have known—they damned well had known—how attacking OFS’s ascendancy in the Protectorates would destabilize the entire Solarian League, the largest star nation in the history of humankind.
And now she had to deal with this. With the treachery of a full member system, a Core System which couldn’t possibly claim its rights or interests had been stepped on by Frontier Security or any other arm of the Federal Government. She could understand, even accept, that a Fringer might legitimately hate and despise the distant overlords who controlled his star system; she could neither understand nor accept the disloyalty of a system like Hypatia which, along with all the rest of the League, had profited from OFS’s thankless labors for so long.
“Mister President,” she said finally, “you’ve made your position abundantly clear. Now, unfortunately, I need to make mine—the Ministry of the Interior’s and that of the Federal Government as a whole—equally clear. The government’s first choice, obviously, would be for you and your star system to renounce the secession referendum—the almost certainly illegal referendum, when the Judiciary finally rules—and void the vote. Failing that, the government’s second choice would be for your government to voluntarily place the execution of the referendum on hold—as the injunction already granted against it requires—until the status of Article Thirty-Nine is fully determined by the courts. Since you refuse, for reasons I’m sure seem good from your perspective, to agree to either of those reasonable requests, I have no choice but to proceed to the government’s third and least desired option.”
She paused to look him square in the eye, then continued.
“No doubt you’ve observed the number of warships which have accompanied me to Hypatia, Mister President. These ships have been assigned to something called Operation Buccaneer, a commerce-raiding strategy directed against the Manticorans, their allies, and any star system complicit in lending the ‘Grand Alliance’ military, economic, or political support in their aggression against the Solarian League. Admiral Hajdu’s original destination was the Exapia System. He was diverted from Exapia to provide a suitable escort for my own mission. It gives me no pleasure to point this out, but if Hypatia follows through on its threat to secede from the Solarian League, and—even more—on the referendum’s express intention to seek political union with Beowulf, should Beowulf also secede and join its Manticoran friends in armed hostilities against the League—your star system will have placed itself in the category against which Buccaneer is directed.”
She paused again.
“Believe me, Mister President,” she said then, very softly, “Hypatia does not want to find itself in that category.”
* * *
“Do you think he really intends to poll his Cabinet about asking for a reconsideration?” Hajdu Gyôzô asked as the stewards finished serving and withdrew. He and Madhura Yang-O’Grady sat in Hajdu’s favorite spot in any Nevada-class battlecruiser. Theoretically, the armorplast dome over their heads represented a chink in Camperdown’s armor, but that was true only in the narrowest, most technical sense. The spacious compartment—listed on the ship schematic as “Flag Officer’s Dining Cabin”—was located on the centerline of the big ship’s dorsal surface. In combat, it was completely protected by the Camperdown’s impeller wedge. Or, if it wasn’t protected by the wedge, the ship was already in so much trouble that lack of armor would be the least of her concerns.
The compartment was much too big for only two people. Had the larger tables been set up, it could easily have seated fifty, which meant a table for two seemed lost and tiny in its vastness, but Hajdu loved the view, and he’d discovered Yang-O’Grady shared his tastes in that respect. And while the limitless starscape would normally have made the compartment seem even vaster, that wasn’t the case tonight. Camperdown was inverted, relative to the planet, and that gave Hajdu and his guest a magnificent view of Hypatia’s white-and-blue-swirled sphere as it floated against the stars.
The view of Hypatia’s low-orbit infrastructure was equally spectacular. Especially when he thought about what might happen to that infrastructure so shortly.
“I don’t know,” Yang-O’Grady sighed. “I think he probably took it to them but the real question is whether or not he’ll abide by the result if they vote in favor of putting the referendum on hold.”
She picked at the delicious Fatányéros on the traditional wooden platter in front of her. The grilled meats were surrounded by a frame of garlic mashed potatoes, rather than garnished with the traditional fried potato slices, and it smelled delicious. Unfortunately, she was in no fit mood to do justice to the admiral’s chef, and she laid her fork aside and reached for her wineglass.
“And do you think he will?”
“Honestly?” Her eyes were dark as she gazed at the beautiful blue planet “above” them, and she shook her head. “No. I don’t think he’s going to give a centimeter. He pretended to be neutral during the secession campaign because that was what was legally required of him, but everyone knows he was one of the referendum’s strongest supporters in private. I’m inclined to think he doesn’t really believe Buccaneer might apply to his star system, and in a lot of ways, I wish he was right. But he’s not, and in a lot of other ways, I’m perfectly all right with that if that’s the way these people want it.” Her lips tightened. “When you’re fighting for your life and someone’s announced she’s going to help the people trying to strangle you, she doesn’t have any kick coming when you break her arm before she can.”
“I see your point,” Hajdu murmured, and reached for his own wineglass. “So why do you think he took it to his Cabinet, then?”
“If he actually took it to his Cabinet at all—and I’m not sure he did; or, for that matter, that there’d be any reason for him to take it to them, since it seems pretty damned clear they all agreed with the referendum’s outcome—then it’s only to buy time.”
“Time for what?”
“Time for the dispatch boat he sent off to Beowulf the instant we appeared to come back with an ‘Alliance’ fleet,” Yang-O’Grady said flatly. “I told him Buccaneer specifies a seventy-two-hour grace period to evacuate system infrastructure. The only thing he could possibly be hoping for is to stall me—us—until the Manties arrive or he knows they’re going to arrive in less than seventy-two hours.”
“Actually, Buccaneer doesn’t mandate any specific ‘grace period,’” Hajdu observed, looking across the table at her, and she nodded.
“I understand that. For that matter, I was listening when Commodore Brigman briefed me on Parthian Shot. But these people are so damn sanctimonious, so full of the legalisms they think protect them from the consequences of their own actions, that if I hadn’t told him your orders dictate a specific timeframe, they’d figure they could spin it out indefinitely by telling us they ‘haven’t yet had sufficient time’ to complete the evacuation.” She shrugged. “I had to give them a definite time window if I wanted to…focus their thinking properly.”
“I see.”
Hajdu considered what she’d just said and decided she was probably right. She was definitely right about the Hypatians’ desire to defer and delay Buccaneer as long as possible, and it was hard to blame them for that.
No, he told himself after a moment, actually, it’s very easy to blame them for put
ting themselves in a position where they need to defer and delay anything. It’s their own damned fault, and any pressure she can bring to bear to get them to swallow their pride—and stupidity—and crawl back off the ledge is all to the good. Besides, a seventy-two-hour window won’t change things much from my perspective. It’s the next best thing to hundred and thirty hours one-way to Beowulf. If they sent a dispatch boat off the instant we arrived, we could wait six more T-days and still give them their frigging seventy-two hours and be gone by the time anyone got here from Beowulf.
And if it happened that somebody turned up sooner than that, he had an ops plan to deal with that, too.
He considered that thoughtfully for several seconds, then sipped wine and set his glass back down.
“I believe it was Gustav Anderman who observed that when a man knows he’s going to be hanged in a week, it tends to concentrate his thinking.”
“Was it Anderman?” Yang-O’Grady tilted her head, eyebrows furrowed. “I always thought it was Thomas Svartkopff.” She considered it for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, whichever one of them said it, it’s certainly true, and if there was ever anyone who needs to do a little concentrated thinking, it’s those idiots down on Hypatia.” Her smile was cold. “I’d have preferred to accomplish my mission without you having to accomplish yours, Admiral. If they decline to give us that option, though, I’m sure you and your people will be able to amply demonstrate why they shouldn’t have.”
“Indeed,” Hajdu Gyôzô murmured.
Gregatsoulis Park
City of Vivliothḗkē
Hypatia System
“Mom?”
Ingrid Latimer twitched as the plaintive sixteen-year-old voice summoned her back from her inner thoughts.
“Sorry, Peter.” She managed a quick smile for her son, although he was old enough—and smart enough—for her to be pretty sure he’d noticed a certain artificiality to it. “What can I do for you?”
“I told you Alethea and Alexia’ve asked me if we can go to their soccer game Friday first-half. You said you’d let me know.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?”
She gave him another smile, then looked down the length of the picnic table, across the hot dog buns, the potato salad, the chips and hummus, at her husband. Carl Latimer looked back with no expression at all, and she fought back an urge to scream at him. Why couldn’t he—he, of everyone in her entire universe—understand what was tearing her apart inside?!
No, that’s not the real reason you’re so angry with him, she told herself bleakly. The reason you’re so pissed is that he understands you just fine. He just doesn’t agree with you.
Even when she was most furious with him, she knew Carl would never try to dictate to her conscience. Nor would he deny her right to act in whatever way that conscience demanded. But he’d been on Hypatia too long. That was the only explanation she could think of. He’d been here too long, become too accustomed to a Hypatia-eye perspective on the galaxy. He wasn’t a Hypatian citizen, but he’d been a Hypatian resident long enough to recognize the justice of the referendum’s position.
Well, Ingrid recognized its justice, too; it was its legality she questioned. That and what she knew were going to be the nightmare consequences for Hypatia if her friends and neighbors pursued this madness to its ultimate conclusion. She remembered a conversation with Larry Kourniakis, one from years ago, when they’d talked about the need—the moral responsibility—to take a stand. About the fact that sometimes men and women simply had to stand up for what they knew was right, regardless of the consequences, or concede the fight to the forces of barbarism.
But those were the forces of barbarism, not the Solarian League, damn it! a voice wailed deep down inside her. And if Larry, and Angie, and all their friends carry through with this, the League is going to hammer this star system. It won’t have any choice, not with the Manties already at its throat. Can’t they understand that?!
Apparently, they couldn’t. Or, even worse, they understood perfectly…and they were stubborn enough they were going to do it anyway.
“Friday first-half?” she repeated looking at Peter.
“That’s what I said,” he replied impatiently.
“Well, I don’t see why not,” she said. “Assuming nothing comes up between then and now, of course.”
“Thanks, Mom!” Peter smiled so broadly that Ingrid wondered which of the Kourniakis twins—or which of their friends—had finally caught his eye.
The thought brought a little welcome and much-needed lightness to her day, but then she looked up at the cloudless afternoon sky, and any lightness disappeared.
Something, she suspected, was definitely going to “come up” between now and Friday first-half. That was the main reason she’d insisted on moving their scheduled picnic up. She’d wanted to get it in, put at least one last positive memory into the bank, before “something” came up. No one knew exactly what Madhura Yang-O’Grady had said to System President Vangelis, but the news that there was a deadline had leaked, and the existence of a deadline implied a threat of consequences if it wasn’t met. Worse, if the leaks were accurate, that deadline fell on Thursday.
Major Latimer was a Gendarme, not a naval officer, and she didn’t know exactly how much firepower had accompanied Yang-O’Grady to Hypatia. There was probably quite a lot of it, but she didn’t know how much, and that was what was truly torturing her. The thing she hadn’t so much as breathed to Carl. Because if she didn’t know that, she did know something else.
“How about a little more potato salad?” she asked her husband with a smile.
SLNS Camperdown
Hypatia Planetary Orbit
Hypatia System
“How would you assess the reliability of this intelligence, Captain Adenauer?” Madhura Yang-O’Grady asked. She sat back in her chair, rubbing her eyes—it was the middle of Camperdown’s shipboard night, and she’d been in bed for less than an hour before she was dragged back out of it. “Obviously, we have to take it seriously, but do you believe it’s reliable or simply a product of the rumor mill?”
“Ma’am, that’s a question I can’t answer,” Hajdu Gyôzô’s intelligence officer replied. “It comes from a Gendarme who, according to the system datafiles they sent out with us, is both apolitical and a career investigator. On the face of it, that would incline me to believe she wouldn’t be reporting rumors unless she thought there was a lot of truth in them, and that she’s trained to recognize when there is. From the perspective of whether or not she’s telling us what she really thinks, I don’t think there’s much question about her reliability. I might add that she was obviously stressed and unhappy in the data packet she encrypted and fired out to us. This is a woman who didn’t like what she was doing but did it anyway, because that was her duty.”
“So you think it is reliable?”
“Ma’am, the distinction I’m trying to make is between truthful and accurate, and the two aren’t always the same. She’s definitely not lying to us. The question is whether or not what she thinks she knows is accurate, and that’s what I can’t assess.”
“We understand the line you’re drawing, Denton,” Hajdu said. “On the other hand, you have to have some sort of feel for whether or not it’s likely to be accurate.”
“Yes, Sir.” Adenauer recognized Hajdu’s fish-or-cut-bait tone. He didn’t like it, but he did recognize it, and he inhaled deeply.
“First,” he began, “it would make a lot of sense. If the Hypatians are going to secede from the League and ask for political union with Beowulf, it would be logical for them to take the next step and request a protective naval presence here in Hypatia. The system authorities would have to be careful about how they handled that, at least until the referendum vote was tabulated, because direct contact with the Manties or the ‘Grand Alliance’ would be treason, now that the Manties have declared war on us. Contact simply with Beowulf might not be construed that way by the Federal Government. Direct military talks
with Manticore certainly would be, and the last thing they’d want would be to have the local Gendarmes arresting their System President, his cabinet, or members of the Yerousía—I mean their Senate—for treason on the eve of the referendum.
“So, from that perspective, an invitation to the Manties to send a substantial naval force after the referendum vote’s been certified would be a logical step. In fact, our operational planning assumed that was exactly what they would do.
“That brings me to my second point, though.” He looked around the briefing room table at faces showing different degrees of fatigue and hands clutching steaming mugs of coffee. “If they’ve been planning on inviting them in only after the referendum’s been certified, which is what we’d assumed based on our prior intelligence on Hypatia, then the invitation couldn’t have been sent more than about six hours before we made our alpha translation. So, in that case, we reasonably shouldn’t expect to see any Manties for at least another five T-days.
“For them to arrive sooner than that—which is what Major Latimer says her source in the Hypatian Customs Service let drop—they would’ve had to have been invited before the referendum vote was taken. Now, if I were the Manties and an entire League member system told me it wanted to leave the League and switch over to my side—which, let’s face it, is exactly what any union with Beowulf would mean, in the long run—then I’d damned well get my arse in gear and get my naval forces here in a hurry. I’m thinking that means they should already be here, if they were invited before polling began on the referendum. And we haven’t heard a word about that.”
“If Manty stealth systems are even half as good as the more pessimistic estimates suggest, finding them if they wanted to hide would be damned near impossible,” Commodore Koopman pointed out. Hajdu looked at his ops officer, and she shrugged. “Sir, a star system’s an awful deep pool for a single minnow. Shut down your impellers, go to emission-control, and maybe run your stealth field up to twenty or thirty percent, and somebody’d have to literally stumble across you to find you. We’ve got recon drones deployed to watch the entire hyper perimeter, so I’m pretty damn sure nobody’s going to sneak in past us. I can’t guarantee there’s not already somebody in-system, though.”