Uncompromising Honor - eARC

by David Weber

  “That’s really more your bailiwick than anyone else’s,” Kolokoltsov observed, earning himself an annoyed look from the information undersecretary, as well.

  “I don’t know, Malachai,” Quartermain said. “In the short term, probably. As Innokentiy’s just pointed out, whoever—” she emphasized the pronoun “—leaked this didn’t mention that aspect of it. So presumably they don’t have any interest in leaking it later on. Unfortunately, the Manties aren’t that reticent. Terekhov already posted his entire com conversation with Yucel on the Mobius System’s info net. Weaver brought a copy of it with her. I’ve viewed it.” She shook her head, eyes bleak. “If the woman-in-the-street believes it’s accurate, not doctored or edited, it’s going to hurt us. Yucel comes off like a frigging lunatic and they’ve got her threatening to execute prisoners in mass lots if Terekhov doesn’t back off.”

  Kolokoltsov winced. That bit he hadn’t heard yet.

  “Doesn’t mean a thing,” Abruzzi said. The others looked at him, and he waved one hand in a dismissive gesture.

  “It doesn’t,” he insisted. “My people at Information could whip up that same ‘conversation’ in fifteen minutes from a standing start. Hell, we’ve done it! So the fact that the Manties are so obliging about sharing it actually offers us a way to attack it. We dig up Yucel’s records, demonstrate she’s always been firm about completing any mission but always scrupulously observed the relevant laws and regulations while she did it.” He smiled. “Trust me, whatever her record’s really like, I can make her look like a girl scout! Then we point out how easy it would be to manufacture something like that. We don’t usually want to draw attention to that, since it gives malcontents the opportunity to suggest we routinely do it, but in this case we might want to go ahead and produce a clip of our own, showing Yucel giving in the instant Terekhov demands her surrender. Then we put that up on the boards, side-by-side with her threat to start shooting people, and admit her surrender was created out of whole cloth. Admitting that won’t prevent it from having a certain subliminal impact, and it will conclusively demonstrate how easy it would have been for the Manties to do the opposite.”

  “That might—might—help defuse that threat,” Kolokoltsov said skeptically. “But what about the kinetic strikes? What happens when independent confirmation of those hits the boards?”

  And it will hit them, he thought glumly. The Manties’ve been too damned good about hauling “neutral” newsies—even Solarian newsies—around with them. Be a bit hard to sweep their imagery of the craters under the rug, Malachai!

  “We don’t deny they happened,” MacArtney said before Abruzzi could respond.

  “You’re not serious!” Wodoslawski protested, and Kolokoltsov understood exactly why. Every Solarian citizen knew the SLN prevented mass-casualty strikes. That was why there was an Eridani Edict in the first place!

  The fact that there’d been quite a few kinetic strikes by the SLN over the centuries was one of those unpleasant little truths which had somehow failed to make it into the same “everyone knows” territory as the Navy’s reputation as the guardian of truth and justice in a darkling galaxy.

  “Of course I’m serious,” MacArtney said impatiently. “Agatá, I understand the possible downsides, but we can’t pretend there weren’t any KEWs, and not even Malachai’s people could convincingly explain why the Manties would be bombarding Mobian towns and cities outside the capital. That means they had to come from our ships. But—” he raised his right hand, index finger extended “—they weren’t Yucel’s idea. They were called in at the urgent request of the legitimate system government and directed at centers of dug-in resistance—urban areas which had been evacuated of all civilians except those the rebels physically prevented from leaving to use as human shields—where the Mobian military and the Gendarmes would have suffered enormous casualties if they’d gone in on the ground.” He shrugged. “I admit it was regrettable, and no doubt a lot of innocent civilians were killed, but that was as a consequence of the Lombroso government’s decision—and, even more, of the rebels’ decision to use those innocent civilians as cover. Brigadier Yucel had been sent to assist the legitimate authorities, and it’s well-established that domestic police actions by legal governments don’t rise to the level of an Eridani Edict violation unless casualties are truly massive. In this case, they probably didn’t exceed a quarter million. A half million, at the most.” He shrugged again. “As I say, regrettable, but not our responsibility or our decision. And I expect Malachai’s people can do a pretty fair job of arguing that the Manties and their Mobian puppets are vastly inflating the fatalities, anyway.”

  Kolokoltsov puffed his cheeks, then took another sip of coffee. It didn’t help. The bad taste remained as he contemplated MacArtney’s glib proposal.

  “We can probably make that work—for a while, at least,” Abruzzi said, after a moment. “We’ve already been working on strategies headed in that direction to counter Manty claims once Buccaneer hits its stride. Not the same, of course, because we’re not talking about local governments’ assistance requests in Buccaneer’s case and it’s aimed at infrastructure, not mass casualties. But I’ve got plenty of talking heads on record explaining that Buccaneer doesn’t violate the Edict for several reasons, including the argument that it’s a legitimate exercise of the federal police power against treasonous Solarian citizens. It’s easier to justify the destruction of infrastructure in hostile, non-League star systems, but since we’re denying the legality of secession, we should be covered even someplace like Hypatia. Like I say, none of that speaks directly to Nathan’s suggestion, but it’s all groundwork we’ve already put in place. Eventually, the Manties’ version will gain traction in the opposition ’faxes, but they’re still pretty marginalized. And, frankly, the general public has the attention span of a gnat.” He raised both hands, shoulder high and palms uppermost. “By the time the other side’s version gets disseminated, most Solarians will already have internalized our version.”

  “The other side’s version,” Kolokoltsov thought. Even here, he’s not willing to call it “the truth.” Whoever said truth is the first casualty of war damned well knew what he was talking about!

  Which didn’t mean Abruzzi didn’t have a point. And as long as the Navy kept collateral casualties to a minimum and the Manties didn’t force the task force commanders to resort to Parthian…

  “Whether or not we can…mitigate that aspect, Mobius is still an economic and public relations nightmare,” he pointed out.

  “Economically, yes,” Abruzzi replied. “But in terms of public relations?” He shook his head, and to Kolokoltsov’s surprise, his eyes glittered with something that looked very much like genuine enthusiasm. “Oh, no, Innokentiy! This time, the fuckers have stepped right into it. They’ve given us the biggest club we’ve had since all this started.”

  “Excuse me?” Quartermain sounded as surprised as Kolokoltsov felt, and Abruzzi actually chuckled. It was not a warm and mirthful sound.

  “We’ve been telling everybody this is all about the Manties’ interstellar ambitions, right?” He looked around the conference room, then snorted. “Well, what else do you call a galaxy-wide operation to foment rebellion—violent rebellion, the kind that gets millions of people killed—throughout the Fringe in order to generate pretexts for military intervention to set up pro-Manty puppet regimes? I’m sure someone on their side is going to claim this is a purely defensive reaction on their part, prompted by our ‘senseless aggression,’ but there’s no way in hell something like Mobius happened overnight. This had to have been planned in detail, especially given the reports Nathan’s finally gotten around to sharing with us.”

  He joined the others in momentarily glaring at MacArtney, then shrugged.

  “What we’ve got, what we can dust off and send to the boards at the most strategic moment, is evidence—pretty strong evidence, that we can make even stronger, depending on how we go about presenting it—that the Manties started organ
izing this T-years ago. That it’s a long-term strategy, one they put in place before Raging Justice, before Spindle, before New Tuscany, before Monica—hell, before any open incident.” He smiled coldly. “Believe me, by the time my people are done massaging this, there won’t be any more questions about the Manties’ real aims.”

  Office of the Director of Naval Operations

  Gregor Mendel Tower

  City of Leonard

  Darius System

  “So what can I do for you today?” Benjamin Detweiler inquired as his brother Daniel appeared on his com.

  “You and Rochelle can meet me and Trudi for lunch, among other things. I might actually be able to entice your two older nieces to join us. Angela, unfortunately has informed me that her mare has just gone into labor and I’m afraid that when you’re eleven, the birth of a new colt is far more enthralling than lunch with a mere uncle.”

  “It’s good to see that your daughter has a proper sense of priorities,” Benjamin said gravely. “Dare I ask if she’s settled on a name yet?”

  “No, but she has narrowed the list. The remaining candidates are Donner, Blitz, Erdbeben, Fulmine, Laser, Molnienosnyj, Nova, Rayo, and Tsunami.” Daniel rolled his eyes. “Personally, I’m pulling for Nova or Tsunami, although I have to admit Molnienosnyj rolls trippingly off the tongue.”

  “I am so happy Susanna and Tabitha favored hamsters over horses,” Benjamin told him. “There was a lot less drama when a new one came along, and naming them never seems to be quite as…fraught as Angela seems to be making this.”

  “Go ahead—mock my pain!” Daniel made a rude gesture. “Names for hamsters? Somehow, ‘Nibbles’ doesn’t strike me as even in the same league as Erdbeben!”

  “No,” Benjamin agreed. “But I don’t suppose pet names were what you screened to discuss?”

  “They aren’t. Mind you, if you accept the lunch invitation, Sandra and Lindsey are going to bend your ear about it. Putting up with Angela’s quest for the perfect name has been a sore trial to them, and their mom and I haven’t been as sympathetic to their pain as they think we should’ve been.”

  “Can’t imagine.” Benjamin grinned, then cocked his head. “And so to business?”

  “And so to business,” Daniel agreed. “There are two or three projects we need to discuss—someplace besides over lunch in a restaurant, I mean—but the main thing is that, as of today, Silver Bullet’s ready for production. We still have a couple of bugs to address, but they’re mostly software issues. The prototype hardware’s performed almost perfectly, and Test and Eval signed off on it yesterday.”

  “That’s great!” Benjamin raised one hand in a thumbs-up gesture. “Faster than I expected, too.”

  “Well, most of the hardware was pretty much off-the-shelf. We’d already been tweaking the torpedo’s drive for you, and the gravitic sensors are out of our own grav com R&D. The biggest problem was power supply, really. My people haven’t been able to duplicate the Manty micro fusion plants yet. I think they’re on the track, and I’m actually predicting that they’ll pull it off in the next T-year or so, but it won’t be any sooner than that. Assuming Collin’s people don’t manage to steal the plans for us. Any chance of that?”

  “’Fraid not.” Benjamin shook his head, his expression much less cheerful than it had been. “I had a report from him a couple of days ago. Apparently, the Manties are rolling up his networks in a big way. We always knew there was a risk of that—once those bastards Zilwicki and Cachat blew the top off, they were bound to start looking under every rock—but this appears to be worse than our worst-case assumptions. So far, we don’t have a clue how they’re doing it, and however they’re pulling it off, they’re obviously working their way down from the top. It seems to be spreading to Beowulf, too, although it looks like it’s going slower there. And I’m afraid we took out his best bet for getting us the kind of info your people need ourselves. Oyster Bay killed a lot of the agents he’d managed to insert into their construction units.”

  “I wish I could say I was surprised,” Daniel sighed, then shrugged. “Well, knowing something can be done is two thirds of figuring out how to do it. I wish we’d been paying more attention to the hardware side of things and less to the political and diplomatic side when Collin set up his networks, but I think we’ve at least identified the right paths forward for a lot of their stuff. Now it’s just a case of hammering through, and God knows we’ve got enough motivation!”

  He smiled with very little amusement, and Benjamin nodded in both understanding and agreement.

  Daniel’s researchers had yet to duplicate most of the cornucopia of hardware which had flowed out of Roger Winton’s long-term prewar R&D. In fact, they hadn’t even identified all of it yet. As Daniel had just suggested, they were making progress—in fact, their rate of progress continued to increase—but they remained far behind and he was unhappily certain the Manties weren’t resting on their laurels. Worse, now they were comparing notes with Haven. There was a reason Sonja Hemphill and Shannon Foraker were right at the top of Collin’s Assassinate As Soon As Possible list. If there were two navies in the galaxy who understood the need to stay ahead of the technological curve, it was the RMN and the RHN, especially under Hemphill and Foraker. It was unlikely, to say the least, that the Alignment was going to overcome the edge in their hardware anytime soon.

  “Well, without micro plants of our own,” Daniel continued, “what my people had to do was to throw together a new fuselage big enough to let us graft together the power packs of two Wraiths. It’s…large.”

  Benjamin snorted. The Wraith was the Mesan Alignment Navy’s equivalent of the Manty Ghost Rider recon platforms, and without Manticore’s new stealth systems—and their damned thumbnail fusion plants—building something equally hard to see had been a challenge. The good news was that the spider drive’s gravitic signature was incredibly faint compared to conventional impellers, so it didn’t require as much stealthing in the first place. The bad news was that the drive itself took up a lot of space and its plasma-charged accumulators took up almost as much. From the sketchy information they’d been able to assemble on Ghost Rider, a Wraith was probably at least seventy percent bigger than a current generation Manticoran recon drone. It was also much slower and lacked Ghost Rider’s FTL capability, but it was probably at least as difficult to detect, and indications were that its onboard sensors were a bit better even than the RMN’s current hardware.

  But if Daniel was talking about something big enough to carry a pair of Wraith power packs, then he was talking about something which was probably at least two or three times as big as the MAN’s graser torpedo…which was already nearly twice the size of a Manticoran Mark 23 MDM. In which case, calling it “large” was something of an understatement, especially from the perspective of the man whose navy would be trying to deploy the damned things.

  “How large a ‘large’ are we actually talking about here?” he asked.

  “Try sixty-eight meters long and right on eleven and a half in diameter.”

  Benjamin winced. That wasn’t quite as bad as he’d feared, but it was still over ninety percent the size of a Manticoran Shrike-class LAC.

  “I imagine it’s fair to call that ‘large,’” he said judiciously.

  “The final version’s going to be at least a couple of meters longer,” Daniel warned him. “That sixty-eight meters is basically the carrier, the graser, and the power supply. We’ve designed four different nose sections, and I won’t know which one we’re using until I know how the software tweaks finally resolve.” He shrugged. “On the other hand, given that it’s already way too big to fire from anything we’ve got, including Detweiler’s torpedo tubes, I figure a few more meters here or there won’t hurt.”

  “Probably not,” Benjamin agreed. He sat for a moment, eyes gazing into the distance and fingers drumming on his desk while he thought. Then he nodded to himself and refocused on his brother’s face.

  “Unless we can figure out a
way to carry these things externally without anybody noticing them, which seems unlikely, we’ll have to swim them out of a standard cargo hold. Will that be workable?”

  “Don’t see any reason why not.” Daniel chuckled. “As a matter of fact, I figured you’d have to do that, so I’ve got another team busy designing what looks like a pair of standard Rhino-class heavy-lift cargo containers glued together end-to-end. We can fit one of these things into something that size and even tuck a presser into one end of the container. I figure that would let you drop the ‘Rhinos’ with the clock set for the Silver Bullet to deploy itself once the deploying ship’s gotten well clear.”

  “Sounds like a good idea to me.” Benjamin nodded again, more enthusiastically. “You say it’s about ready for production? How soon are we talking about?”

  “Pretty much as soon as we choose the definitive nose section. Call it…mid-October.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll add another couple of weeks and call it the end of October.” Benjamin’s smile was tart. “I’ve been bitten by optimistic schedules a time or two.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to have a couple of weeks’ cushion,” Daniel acknowledged. “Have you got any thoughts on how to get them deployed once my pet geniuses hands the design over to Production?”

  “Actually, I do. Or, rather, Collin and I do. I didn’t realize just how big these things were going to be, but that doesn’t matter. I’ve been operating on the assumption that whatever size they were, they’d be too big to deploy any other way from the get-go. And we just happen to have a Kalokainos freighter tucked away in Warner. So as soon as your Bullets are ready to go, we load them onto one of our streak drive freighters here in Darius and send them to Warner.”

  Daniel nodded his understanding. Darius was over 130 light-years—and one hyper-bridge translation—from the Felix System, which was just over ten light-years from the Mannerheim Terminus of the Mannerheim-Warner warp bridge. A streak drive-equipped freighter could make that entire trip in less than forty-eight hours.