Shadow of Freedom-eARC (8 page)

“Yeah, I can see that,” Indiana acknowledged.

“To be honest, one of the things we’re still working on is the best way to coordinate your actions with ours. You’re obviously going to need some fleet support to keep Frontier Fleet from just securing the planetary orbitals and dropping gendarmes and kinetic weapons on your heads. We’re probably not talking about any really heavy units of our own—just something big enough to keep Frontier Fleet off your backs. But we’re either going to have to have a firm schedule for when you’re going to move, or else you’re going to have to have some way to communicate with us to tell us when
you’re
ready. And, frankly, providing a communications loop that’s both secure and reliable
and
covert is going to require some thought. The good news is we’ve got some time to think about it before the first big shipments start coming in. If anything inventive occurs to you folks, don’t be shy about sharing it. I said you’re amateurs, and you are, but sometimes amateurs think outside the box in ways that would never occur to us stodgy old professionals.”

“We’ll think about it,” Indiana promised him. “I don’t really expect we’ll come up with anything that won’t already’ve occurred to you ‘stodgy old professionals,’ but if we do we’ll certainly let you know.’”

“Good!” Firebrand cocked his head to one side, eyes narrowed for a moment, obviously running back over all they’d said. “I think that’s about everything, then,” he said finally. “For now, at least. I’ll be on-planet for a few more days, and I’ll use the channels Clambake set up to get back in contact with you before I leave. I’ll also be setting up a message account here in Seraphim—I’ll give you the access code so you can ‘hack’ the account rather than being an official addressee—and we’ll use that for me to get you the information on the shipment schedules. I’m assuming you still have that one-time pad Clambake gave you?”

“Yes,” Mackenzie said dryly. “I’ll agree we’re amateurs, but we have managed to hang onto the secret code book, Firebrand.”

“I was sure you had.” This time, he gave her a dazzling smile, no mere grin. “In that case, though, I think we’re through here. And now that we’ve had a chance to get to know one another, so that you’re not likely to be, oh, waving any pistols around the next time we meet”—he darted a humorous look at Indiana—“I think we can probably arrange to get together somewhere a little more comfortable and dryer next time. A nice little mom-and-pop restaurant with tables in the back where no one’s likely to overhear a conversation, maybe.”

“Sounds like a winner to me,” Indiana agreed with heartfelt sincerity.

“Good.” The Manticoran agent held out his hand. “In that case, I think we should all be going. And if you don’t mind, I’ll let the two of you leave first.”

“Not a problem.”

Indiana and Mackenzie each shook the offered hand in turn. Then they nodded to him, headed back out across the loading dock, and climbed into their battered old ground car.

The man called “Firebrand” watched as the car vibrated to life, backed out of its parking space, and headed off into the rain once more.

They were bright kids, he reflected. In fact, he estimated they probably had at least a five or ten percent chance of actually pulling it off. Of course, their chances would have been one hell of a lot better if they’d actually been dealing with Manticore.

Well, you can’t have everything, “Talisman,”
Damien Harahap, one time Solarian Gendarme, more recently agent of the Mesa System government, and currently in the employ of the Mesan Alignment, thought dryly.
And at least they’re a lot closer to sane than that maniac Nordbrandt!

He smiled and shook his head. He actually had nothing at all against “Talisman” and “Magpie,” when it came down to it. In fact, he wished them well, not that he actually expected things to turn out that way. Still, it was nothing personal. Only business.

He watched the ground car disappear through the drooping gate and checked his chrono. Seven and a half minutes, he decided. That ought to be a sufficiently random interval before he headed off in the opposite direction himself.

Chapter Five

Chris Billingsley poured the final cup of coffee, set the carafe on the small side table, and withdrew without a word. Vice Admiral Gloria Michelle Samantha Evelyn Henke, Countess Gold Peak and commanding officer, Tenth Fleet, Royal Manticoran Navy watched him go, then picked up her cup and sipped. Other people were doing the same thing around the conference table, and she wondered how many of them were using it as a stage prop in their effort to project a sense that the universe hadn’t gone mad around them.

If they are, they aren’t doing a very good job of it
, she thought grimly.
On the other hand, neither am I because as near as I can tell, the universe
has
gone crazy
.

The first intimation of what looked like it was going to come to be called “the Yawata Strike” because of the total destruction of the city of Yawata Crossing had reached Spindle twenty-six hours ago. At that time, all they’d had was the flash message telling them the Manticore Binary System itself had been attacked and that damage to the Star Empire’s industrial capacity had been “severe.” Now the first follow-up report, with a more detailed estimate of the damage—and the casualties—had arrived, and she found herself wishing the message transit time between Spindle and Manticore was longer than eight days. She supposed she should be glad to be kept informed, but she could have gone for years—decades!—without this particular bit of information.

“All right,” she said finally, lowering her cup and glancing at Captain Lecter. “I suppose we may as well get down to it.” She smiled without any humor at all. “I don’t imagine any of you are going to be any happier to hear this than I am. Unfortunately, after we do, we’ve got to decide what we’re going to do about it, and I’m going to want recommendations for Admiral Khumalo and Baroness Medusa. So if any of you—and I mean
any
of you—happen to be struck by any brilliant insights in the course of Cindy’s briefing, make a note of them. We’re going to need all of them we can get.”

Heads nodded, and she gestured to Lecter.

“The floor is yours, Cindy,” she said.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Lecter didn’t look any happier about the briefing she was about to give than her audience looked about what they knew they were going to hear. She spent a second or two studying the notes she’d made before she looked up and let her blue eyes circle the conference table.

“We have confirmation of the original reports,” she said, “and it’s as bad as we thought it would be. In fact, it’s worse.”

She drew a deep breath, then activated the holo display above the conference table, bringing up the first graphic.

“Direct, immediate civilian loss of life,” she began, “was much worse than any pre-attack worst-case analysis of damage to the space stations had ever suggested, because there was absolutely no warning. As you can see from the graphic, the initial strike on
Hephaestus—
”

* * *

“I never realized just how much worse a victory could make a defeat taste,” Augustus Khumalo said much later that evening.

He, Michelle, Michael Oversteegen, and Sir Aivars Terekhov sat with Baroness Medusa on the ocean-side balcony of her official residence. The tide was in, and surf made a soothing, rhythmic sound in the darkness, but no one felt very soothed at the moment.

“I know,” Michelle agreed. “It kind of makes everything we’ve accomplished out here look a lot less important, doesn’t it?”

“No, Milady, it most definitely does
not
,” Medusa said so sharply that Michelle twitched in her chair and looked at the smaller woman in surprise.

“Sorry,” Medusa said after a moment. “I didn’t mean to sound as if I were snapping at you. But you—and Augustus and Aivars and Michael—have accomplished an enormous amount ‘out here.’ Don’t ever denigrate your accomplishments—or yourselves—just because of bad news from somewhere else!”

“You’re right, of course,” Michelle acknowledged after a moment. “It’s just—”

“Just that it feels like the end of the world,” Medusa finished for her when she seemed unable to find the exact words she’d been looking for.

“Maybe not quite that bad, but close,” Michelle agreed.

“Well, it damned well should!” Medusa told her tartly. “Undervaluing your own accomplishments doesn’t necessarily make you wrong about how deep a crack we’re all in right now.”

Michelle nodded. The Admiralty dispatches had pulled no punches. With the devastation of the home system’s industrial capacity, the Royal Manticoran Navy found itself—for the first time since the opening phases of the First Havenite War—facing an acute ammunition shortage. And that shortage was going to get worse—a
lot
worse—before it got any better. Which was the reason all of Michelle’s remaining shipboard Apollo pods were to be returned to Manticore as soon as possible. Given the concentration of Mark 16-armed units under her command, the Admiralty would try to make up for the differential by supplying her with all of those they could find, and both her warships and her local ammunition ships currently had full magazines. Even so, however, she was going to have to be extraordinarily circumspect in how she expended the rounds available to her, because there weren’t going to be any more for quite a while.

“At least I don’t expect anyone to be eager to poke his nose back into this particular hornets’ nest anytime soon,” she said out loud.

“Unless, of course, whoever hit the home system wants to send his ‘phantom raiders’ our way,” Khumalo pointed out sourly.

“Unlikely, if you’ll forgive me for sayin’ so, Sir,” Oversteegen observed. Khumalo looked at him, and Oversteegen shrugged. “Th’ Admiralty’s estimate that whoever did this was operatin’ on what they used t’ call ‘a shoestring’ seems t’ me t’ be well taken. And, frankly, if they
were
t’ decide t’ carry out additional attacks of this sort, anything here in th’ Quadrant would have t’ be far less valuable t’ them than a follow up, knock out attack on th’ home system.”

“I think Michael’s probably right, Augustus,” Michelle said. “I don’t propose that we take anything for granted, and I’ve got Cindy and Dominica busy working out the best way to generate massive redundancy in our sensor coverage, just in case, but I don’t see us as the logical candidate for the next sneak attack. If they
do
go after anything in the Quadrant, I’d imagine it would be the Terminus itself, since I can’t see anything else out this way that would have equal strategic value for anyone who obviously doesn’t like us very much. And that, fortunately or unfortunately, we’re just going to have to leave in other peoples’ hands.”

Her uniformed fellows nodded, and Baroness Medusa tilted back her chair.

“Should I assume that—for the moment, at least—you feel relatively secure here in the Quadrant, then?”

“I think we probably are,” Khumalo answered, instead of Michelle. He was, after all, the station commander. “There’s a great deal to be said for Admiral Oversteegen’s analysis where these mysterious newcomers are concerned. And, frankly, at the moment, the League doesn’t have anything to send our way even if it had the nerve to do it. That could change in a few months, but for now, at least, they can’t pose any kind of credible threat even against ships armed ‘only’ with Mark 16s.”

“Good.” Medusa’s nostrils flared. “I only hope that sanity is going to leak out somewhere in the League before anyone manages to get additional forces out our way. Or directed at the home system.”

* * *

“Any change in the escorts’ formation, Guns?” Commander Naomi Kaplan asked.

“No, Ma’am.” Lieutenant Abigail Hearns replied. “They’re maintaining interval and heading.”

The slender, brunette lieutenant didn’t add that the escorts in question had to have picked up the impeller signatures of the two destroyers overtaking them from astern. Naomi Kaplan had been HMS
Hexapuma
’s tactical officer when Abigail Hearns had been the heavy cruiser’s
assistant
TO, and Abigail had learned a great deal from her. Including the fact that only rarely did the commander need the painfully obvious explained to her in detail.

“I see.” Kaplan nodded acknowledgment and tipped back in her command chair, frowning, as she contemplated the current tactical situation as seen from the probable mindset of one Captain Jacob Zavala.

Zavala had originally been the senior officer of Destroyer Squadron 301’s second division. He’d inherited command of the entire squadron from Commodore Ray Chatterjee following the massacre of three quarters of DesDiv 301.1 at New Tuscany, however, and reorganized the squadron’s surviving five ships into two understrength divisions. As part of that reorganization, he’d shifted his flag from HMS
Gawain
to HMS
Kay
and left
Gawain
in DesDiv 301.2, where her skipper, Captain Frank Morgan, had become the division’s new senior officer. At the same time,
Kay
had been detached from DesDiv 301.2 and, along with Kaplan’s own
Tristram
, now constituted a half-strength DesDiv 301.1. They’d been promised enough ships to make up the squadron’s losses and bring both divisions back to full strength, but that had been before the Yawata Strike. Now it was anyone’s guess how long they’d have to wait…or, for that matter, if they’d ever see the promised replacements at all. Frankly, Kaplan didn’t think it was likely they would.

In the meantime, it seemed probable the squadron was going to find itself tasked for independent operations. Its
Roland
-class destroyers were big, powerful units, and the devastating, long-range punch of their Mark 16 missiles made them ideal commerce-raiders. They also made excellent convoy escorts, of course, but locating convoys in hyper was hellishly difficult, and the Talbott Quadrant’s member star systems were already well protected against raiders once a ship dropped back into n-space. That meant
Tristram
and her sisters could be dispensed with in the escort role, which left them available for other duties. Given the fact that Manticore’s confrontation with the Solarian League was likely to get a lot worse before it got any better, and given the further fact that the Madras Sector’s star systems were
not
well protected against
Manticoran
raiders, whatever Frontier Fleet might fondly imagine, it wasn’t hard to figure out how DesRon 301 was likely to find itself employed in the painfully near future.