Shadow of Freedom-eARC (44 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

.“Well, it just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?” Albrecht Detweiler observed sourly. He tossed the document reader onto the small table beside his armchair and reached for his beer stein. He took a hefty swallow and shook his head. “I suppose we should at least be grateful we found out about it before that loose warhead Gold Peak!”

“It could be a lot worse, dear,” his wife, Evelina, pointed out, looking up from her own viewer and the analysis of the pros and cons of the weaponization of mutagenic nanotech she’d been studying. Her busy crocheting needles went right on working, and her expression was calm. She always had been more philosophical about bumps in the plan than he’d been, he reflected. “At least the battle itself worked out the way you had in mind.”

There was a certain satisfaction in her tone, Albrecht noted. Evelina had always personally despised Massimo Filareta. She’d been willing to admit the man’s competence, but she’d never been able to detach herself properly from the less savory ways in which Manpower’s endless supply of disposable slaves could be used to manipulate individuals like him. Despite which, she had a point. Filareta’s defeat had been as complete, total, and humiliating as Albrecht could have desired. Unfortunately…

“You’re right, of course,” he replied. “The problem is it could have been a lot better, too. We always counted on Beowulf supporting Manticore—as long as the Manties lasted, anyway—and that was part of our calculus for the League’s disintegration. But we’d hoped the Sollies would be able to at least give the Manties a run for their money. In fact, they were supposed to weaken Manticore to a point that let the Havenites plow it under at last. Nouveau Paris certainly wasn’t supposed to end up deciding to help the Manties kick the crap out of the
League
, instead! And by the time Beowulf started to figure out what was going on and began actively looking for military allies against us, Manticore wasn’t supposed to be around for them to ally
with
, much less the damned Havenites! Which doesn’t even consider the fact that no one was supposed to know about the Alignment’s existence until we were well into Phase Three, and we’re not even out of Phase
One
yet.”

“I know.” She nodded. “But like you’ve always said, we’ve known from the beginning that we were going to have to adapt and improvise, and you and the boys are pretty good at that.” She smiled reflectively. “They were always good at improvising to get out of trouble as kids, anyway!”

“Yes they were,” he agreed fervently, smiling himself. But then his smile faded. “They were, and they still are. But I can’t say I’m happy about accelerating Houdini as much as we’re going to have to.” He shook his head. “Ben and Collin and I have looked at this from every angle we could come up with, and we really don’t see any alternative to the Ballroom Option.”

Evelina’s face tightened unhappily. She started to say something, then paused and looked back down at her crocheting, visibly rethinking before she opened her mouth again.

“That’s…likely to cause problems,” she said.

“Oh, don’t I just know it!” His own expression was grim. “And I don’t blame the people who’re going to have problems with it. I just don’t see another way to go, now that those bastards Simões and McBryde have blown the secret.”

“They still don’t have any
proof
,” Evelina pointed out. “If they did have any, I’m sure they’d have trotted it out by now.”

“In a way, that only restricts our options further,” Albrecht said gently. “If they don’t
have
proof, then they’re going to be under a lot more pressure to
find
proof. And there aren’t a lot of places they can go looking for evidence…except right here. Which is the reason I’m glad Gold Peak doesn’t know about
this
yet.”

He tapped the document reader, and she nodded unhappily.

“I suppose you’re right,” she sighed. “I can’t help thinking it’s likely to cost us some…collateral damage, though. Besides the obvious, I mean.”

“I know what you meant,” Albrecht agreed. “And that’s why Ben, Collin, and I have scheduled a meeting with all of the inner onion section heads tomorrow. Well, everyone but Daniel’s section, since he’s still stuck out at Darius. We’re going to tell them what we have in mind—and why we don’t have a choice—and ask them to be thinking about any weak spots we need to look at. I’m going to have Psych start a prescreen for potential trouble spots, too.” He shrugged. “Frankly, I think those sorts of problems will be handleable. I don’t expect to like it very much, but I think we can get through it. What worries me more from a pragmatic perspective is that the more we have to rush Houdini, the more likely our cleanup teams are to miss something. Which, when you come down to it, is another reason to consider the Ballroom Option. Nobody’s going to vacuum anything out of a computer that doesn’t
exist
anymore.”

Evelina nodded again, thoughtfully.

“All right, dear. I can see you’ve thought it through. And however little I may like the conclusion you’ve reached, I can’t really argue with it. Sometimes, though, I wish your father hadn’t put all of his eggs in one basket the way he did.”

“Oh?” Albrecht straightened in his chair and lowered his brows ferociously. “I happen to think he came up with a pretty damned good basket, myself!”

“Stop fishing for compliments!” she scolded. “I think he did, too.” She smiled warmly at him. “But your decision to…diversify with the boys—and go ahead and bring them all in at the highest level early—was a good one. All of them know exactly what’s going on, and they’re not afraid to argue with you. But despite that, you’re still all alone in a lot of ways.” Her smile faded into a look of sadness. “I wish you’d had someone else to help carry the full responsibility when you were the boys’ age. In fact, I wish you had someone else to carry it with you
now
. Because I think you’re right about the need to push Houdini harder, and I think the decision is going to haunt you.”

Albrecht reached across from his chair to touch her hand gently.

“It is,” he agreed with a crooked smile. “Of course, that’s true of a lot of decisions I’ve had to make, and it’s going to be true of a lot more before this is over. But you’re wrong in one respect. I may not have anyone else to carry the
ultimate
responsibility, but as you say, at least I’ve got you—and the boys—to help me deal with the hard jobs…and the ghosts. And that helps, Evie. It helps a lot.”

* * *

Michelle Henke scowled at her display, then flipped her chair to a semi-reclining position and transferred her scowl to the inoffensive, indirectly lit deckhead of her sleeping cabin.

She wore her favorite set of academy sweats and her fuzzy purple treecat slippers, and Billingsley had left her an entire extra doughnut. She appreciated his solicitude, his effort to pamper her while she dealt with this particular can of snakes, but she made a mental memo to remind him she didn’t have Honor Alexander-Harrington’s metabolism and ask him to find something with a few less calories. Carrot sticks perhaps, or maybe celery, even if she wasn’t a treecat. Dietitians had been producing calorie-neutral “foods” for centuries now, but Michelle was old-fashioned. If she was going to eat food, she wanted it to be
food
, not just a space filler. At least she wasn’t one of those people who used nanotech to scavenge calories, sugars, and fats out of her digestive system so she could gorge on whatever she wanted, although there
were
times…

No, she told herself firmly. Carrot sticks. It was definitely going to be carrot sticks. She felt quite virtuous and ever so decisive, and she made a firm resolution to start her new régimen the very next day. In the meantime, however, being a person of deplorably weak will, she was already halfway through doughnut number two.

Thought being mother to the deed, she reached for the doughnut again, only to pause as a pair of soup spoon-sized paws reached up to knead her thigh gently. She looked down into the desperately appealing eyes of an obviously starving waif of a Maine Coon cat who looked like he could take out a Pekingese with one whack of a paw…and then eat it in fifteen seconds flat, hair and all.

“No,” she told Dicey firmly. “If you want a doughnut, go catch your own, you rotten feline! Or at least go pester Chris for one. This one’s mine, calories and all!”

Dicey only kneaded her thigh harder, purring insistently. It sounded like a shuttle turbine that needed alignment, she thought, wondering how even a cat his size could produce such a volume.

“No!” she said even more firmly, shaking the doughnut at him for emphasis. “
Mine
, not yours!”

Dicey’s eyes followed the doughnut as millions of years of his ancestors’ eyes had followed small prey animals and birds, and the tip of his tail lashed. Then his purr stopped. That was all the warning Michelle had, and it wasn’t enough. With an agility that ought to have been impossible for a creature of his bulk, Dicey launched himself vertically. The paws which had been patting her thigh pleadingly struck with unerring accuracy, and he thumped back to the deck with a third of her remaining doughnut firmly in his possession.

“Come back here!” she said, starting to jump out of her chair. “I swear, I’m going to turn you into a
vest
, no matter what Chris says!”

Dicey paid her command no attention. He was too busy emulating a streak of light as he shot triumphantly out of her sleeping cabin and disappeared under one of her day cabin armchairs with his prize.

Michelle stopped halfway out of the chair and regarded the shard of doughnut she still retained. Then she shook her head, settled back, replaced the surviving fragment on its plate, and reached for her coffee instead.

Somehow it doesn’t strike me as a good omen when a damned
cat’s
tactics are better than the fleet CO’s,
she thought.
Probably something I should keep to myself. Wouldn’t want the troops to come to the same conclusion. Or for Beth to decide Dicey’d make a better admiral than I do!

She smiled slightly at the thought, but then the smile faded as she contemplated the report she’d just finished viewing.

The dispatch had been forwarded to her by Augustus Khumalo the same day it reached Spindle from Manticore. That made it the very latest news…and seventeen days out of date from the moment it arrived. By now Massimo Filareta had certainly reached the Manticore Binary System, and while Michelle had no doubt the defenders had handled the threat, especially with Honor Alexander-Harrington in tactical command, she really would have liked to know just how bad things had gotten first.

Well, that information’s in the pipeline on its way to you by now, too, girl. And it’s not like they didn’t send along enough other things for you to be worrying about in the meantime!

The good news was that she now had a much more complete explanation of just what Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat had brought home from Mesa. She also had a personal message from Honor, confirming her and Nimitz’s confidence that Simões was telling them the truth. The bad news was that it was easy enough to understand why a hell of a lot of Sollies were going to demand ironclad proof of such “preposterous” Manticoran claims, and there was still no way to independently confirm a single thing he’d said. And the
worse
news, as far as Michelle was concerned, was that all anyone could tell her about the “Mesan Alignment’s” possible intentions in her own command area was “We don’t have a clue in hell what they’re going to do next, but we don’t expect you to like it.”

Very useful that was.

She grimaced. Her first inclination was to start kicking in doors on Mesa and drag the Alignment out into the open by the scruff of its misbegotten neck. Unfortunately, she still didn’t have enough information to know whether or not that was justified or even where to look for the Alignment after she
got
to Mesa. And while her opinion had been steadily hardening towards the desirability of taking the war to the League, whether she was in a position to go after Mesa or not, she needed to know what had happened to Filareta, first. If he’d been smart enough to surrender the way Honor wanted him to, this whole war might be in a way towards being settled. In that case, invading and conquering a half dozen or so Solarian-claimed star systems might not be the very best way to help the peace process along.

Maybe not, but the chance of the League actually backing down, whatever happened to Filareta, is—what? Maybe one in a thousand? And even
that’s
assuming somebody shoots Kolokoltsov and puts someone remotely rational into his place!

She grimaced some more, remembering that old aphorism about asking for anything but time. In her own mind, she was certain the confrontation with the League was far from over. It was possible her own experiences with people like Josef Byng, Sandra Crandall, and Damián Dueñas were prejudicing her thinking. She admitted that, but the admission didn’t change her analysis. And if she was right, if more and worse hostilities were still to come, she hated the thought of not moving as quickly and decisively as possible while she had the opportunity to do so effectively unopposed.

Calm down
, she told herself yet again.
Unless something changes radically, you’re going to be
effectively
unopposed for a long time to come, given the tech imbalance. Hell, just look what Zavala did in Saltash!

Which was probably true, but—

But it doesn’t mean they’re not going to
try
to oppose you—just like they did in Saltash, damn it—and if they do, you’re going to have to kill a hell of a lot more Sollies to take your objectives. And that’s what sticks in your craw, isn’t it?

She sighed, took another sip of coffee, and commanded herself to stop fretting over things she couldn’t change.

Besides, you may not have heard anything about what happened to Filareta yet, but you
are
going to hear about it a hell of a lot more quickly than any of the Sollies in the vicinity! You’ll still have the advantage of a shorter communication loop, better intel, and the strategic initiative when the time comes, unless those bastards in Mesa figure out some way to bollix everything up again
.