A Rising Thunder

Chapter Twenty-Three

Fleet Admiral Imogene Tsang sat up as the attention signal on her bedside communicator chimed. She raked hair out of her eyes, glanced at the bedside time display, and grimaced. She’d been down for less than three hours, her eyes felt dry and scratchy, and the throbbing ache behind her forehead suggested that last pair of tequila sunrises might have been just a bit too much.

The com chimed again, and she stabbed the voice-only key with a vicious forefinger.

“What?” she snapped.

“Sorry to disturb you, Ma’am,” Admiral Pierre Takeuchi said quickly, “but the dispatch boat just came through the terminus.”

“It did?” Tsang turned sideways, sitting on the edge of her bed and planting her feet on the decksole. “How long ago?”

“Just over three minutes, Ma’am.” She sensed Takeuchi’s unseen shrug. “It took Lieutenant Trudeau, the dispatch boat’s skipper, a couple of minutes to spot Ranger and for Ranger to relay to us.”

“Understood.” Tsang felt a spike of irritation she knew was completely irrational (and probably owed at least a little of its strength to her headache). There was no way this Trudeau could have known where TF 116 was located relative to the Beowulf Terminus before he actually arrived. And it wasn’t as if the slight extra delay was going to make any difference to Tsang’s movements.

She’d deliberately held the task force ten million kilometers clear of the terminus. It was inconvenient as hell, and it was going to take the better part of an hour to reach the terminus with a zero-zero velocity and make transit, but it had the benefit of keeping her far enough out to avoid offending Beowulfan sensibilities any worse than she had to. She’d considered deploying recon platforms and communications relays closer to the terminus, where she could cut down on any confusion on the part of the incoming courier boat. That would have been pretty blatant, though. It would undoubtedly have undone her efforts to placate Beowulf’s ire, and it wasn’t as if the Beowulfers were going to sneak up on her and attack!

Even from here, though, her gravitic sensor sections had monitored the impeller signatures of at least sixty or seventy Beowulfan freighters shuttling back and forth through the terminus. Obviously, while that terminus might be closed to other Solarian shipping, the Beowulfers were doing quite a bit of trade with the Star Empire. She’d gone so far as to ask the system government for an explanation, and been informed that what she was seeing were “humanitarian relief” efforts, not anything so crass as “trade.”

Sure, and I can believe just as much of that as I want to, she thought sardonically. Oh, I don’t doubt those cargoes are being used as part of the Manties’ rebuilding effort, but I’ll bet Beowulf’s making a pretty centicred off their “humanitarian” concern!

Beowulfan profiteering hadn’t been very high on her list of concerns, however; steering clear of any avoidable incident had been, and so she’d contented herself with observing their activities from afar. And she’d also concentrated on staying far enough out from the terminus that none of those freighters were likely to see very much of her actual strength. There was no telling which of the merchant skippers sailing back and forth through the terminus might be tempted to tell friends in Manticore about the enormous SLN task force hovering on the far side. Fortunately, commercial-grade sensors weren’t going to pick up diddley at just over half a light-minute.

She’d gone ahead and posted a single destroyer, SLNS Ranger, closer in, however, with her transponder online. The courier boat ought to have spotted that without too much difficulty, even allowing for the limitations of dispatch boat’s sensor suites, but there was no point pissing or moaning over a couple of minutes either way.

“Have you already waked Franz?” she asked, massaging her temples with both hands.

“I told Sherwood to get him up while I got you up, Ma’am,” Takeuchi said wryly, and Tsang snorted. Admiral Franz Quill, her operations officer, tended to wake up grumpy, and he didn’t like Captain Sherwood Marceau, her com officer, very much anyway.

“As soon as you and I are done here,” Takeuchi continued, “I’m getting Captain Robillard up, too. I already put out the general order to bring up the task force’s impellers, and I figure she’ll forgive me for waking you up first.”

“Probably.”

Actually, Tsang wasn’t all that sure about Sanelma Robillard’s forgiveness. Robillard was good, or Tsang wouldn’t have picked her as her flag captain, but she was also a prima donna, even by the often prickly standards of the Solarian Navy. She was likely to make herself a pain in the ass if she decided Takeuchi had trespassed against her prerogatives by passing an order which would have her engineering department up and stirring before she was informed, even if he was the task force’s operations officer.

“All right,” the fleet admiral said. “It sounds like you’ve done everything right so far, Pierre. I’ll meet you and the rest of the staff on Flag Bridge in twenty minutes. Clear.”

* * *

It was actually twenty-five minutes later, not twenty, when Tsang, headache banished by a quick squirt from her preferred morning-after inhaler, stepped onto SLNS Adrienne Warshawski’s flag deck. Not that the extra five minutes really mattered. A quick glance at the readiness display showed that Warshawski’s impeller nodes were still fifteen minutes from full readiness.

“Where are we, Pierre?” she asked brusquely.

“We should be able to get moving in another fifteen or twenty minutes, Ma’am,” he replied, twitching his head in the direction of the display Tsang had already consulted. “Franz transmitted the preparatory order for Arbela twenty minutes ago, and all tactical crews have acknowledged. And Sherwood’s copied Lieutenant Trudeau’s transmission to your console if you want to view it personally.”

“I’ll take a look at it in a minute,” she said. “Unless there’s something in it you think would affect Arbela?”

“No, Ma’am.” Takeuchi grimaced. “All he knows is that the system was reported under attack. Well, that and he did confirm that assuming the Manty traffic control people were giving accurate time chops, they really do have FTL com capability.”

“Marvelous,” Tsang said sourly. It wasn’t that much of a surprise by now, but the confirmation emphasized the Manties’ tech capabilities unpleasantly. Especially now, when Operation Arbela had moved from a future probability to a present certainty.

“All right,” she went on a moment later. “I’ll take a look at Truman’s message. Meanwhile I think you and Franz should probably get on the net and touch base with our squadron commanders. Be sure we’re not looking at any unanticipated delays.”

* * *

“Captain Robillard would like to speak to you, Fleet Admiral,” Sherwood Marceau said, and Tsang looked up from her CIC repeater.

“Put the Captain through,” she said.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

The image of Adrienne Warshawski’s commanding officer appeared on Tsang’s com a moment later.

“Sanelma,” Tsang said. “What can I do for you?”

“I just wanted to report we’re ready to proceed, Ma’am,” Robillard replied, and Tsang suppressed an ignoble temptation to smile. Her flag captain’s tone could not have been more respectful, yet there was a certain tartness to it. She was obviously still irritated by Takeuchi’s decision to wake Tsang — and to order the entire task force (including her ship) to bring up its impellers — before he woke Robillard. She must have been sitting there, watching the engineering displays with her thumb on the call key to make sure she got Tsang notified before Takeuchi could. For that matter, she might even have instructed her engineer not to simultaneously report readiness to her and the task force operations officer, as SOP required.

“Thank you, Sanelma,” the fleet admiral said as gravely as she could.

“You’re welcome, Ma’am,” Robillard responded with barely a trace of satisfaction, and Tsang chuckled as the display blanked.

“So I guess I did piss her off,” Admiral Takeuchi observed with a wry smile.

“She’ll recover,” Tsang said dryly, and glanced at Admiral Quill.

“Let’s get the task force moving, Franz,” she said.

“At once, Fleet Admiral!”

Of all of Tsang’s staffers, Quill came closest to being genuinely enthusiastic about Operation Arbela. In fact, he was the one who’d come up with the operation’s name. Personally, Tsang was less confident than he was that it was going to work out as well for TF 11.6 as the original battle had for Alexander of Macedon, but she’d been willing to go along with his chosen name. And at least it wasn’t as if Quill were one of those hidebound, blinkered, Solarian bigots who refused to acknowledge the possibility that the Manties might actually be able to give the SLN a genuine fight. A skeptic where the more extravagant claims about Manticoran technology were concerned, yes, but not a blind skeptic…unlike certain other officers Tsang could have named.

She stood watching the master plot for two or three minutes as her task force began accelerating towards the terminus. Then she turned back to Marceau.

“Sherwood.”

“Yes, Ma’am?”

“I suppose you’d better go ahead and notify Terminus Traffic Control that we’re going to be making transit shortly.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Well, I bet that’s going to make the Beowulfers happy,” Takeuchi murmured, his voice low enough for only Tsang to hear.

“They’re just going to have to live with it,” Tsang replied flatly. “And it’s not as if they haven’t had enough time to adjust—”

“Excuse me, Fleet Admiral.”

Tsang broke off in midsentence and turned back towards Marceau, eyebrows rising as the com officer’s peculiar tone registered.

“Yes, Sherwood?”

“You’ve got an incoming priority com request, Ma’am.”

“From Traffic Control?” Tsang was surprised. She didn’t doubt the traffic control authorities were going to be unhappy with her announcement that she was coming through their terminus anyway, whatever the Beowulfan system government might have decreed. But the terminus was thirty-three light-seconds from Warshawski; there was no way Marceau’s transmission could have reached it yet, and any response would be at least a half-minute behind that.

“No, Ma’am,” Marceau said, still with that peculiar edge to his voice. “It’s originating from near the terminus, but it’s from Vice Admiral Holmon-Sanders, not Traffic Control.”

Tsang glanced quickly at Takeuchi. Marianne Holmon-Sanders was the Beowulf System Defense Force’s senior in-space officer, ranking just behind Admiral Corey McAvoy, the chief of naval operations. She was also the commanding officer of the BSDF’s First Fleet — its only fleet, really — which made the fact that the incoming message was from her even more interesting.

“I see,” the fleet admiral said after a moment, and walked across the flag bridge to her command chair. She took her time, settling herself comfortably, then nodded to Marceau.

“Put her through, Sherwood.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

The woman who appeared on Tsang’s display a moment later had brown hair, brown eyes, a wide, firm-lipped mouth, and a determined chin which went just a little oddly with her pert, undeniably snub nose. But what Tsang noticed most strongly, what caused her eyes to widen, was the fact that Holmon-Sanders wore not the maroon tunic and charcoal gray trousers of the Beowulf System Defense Force’s usual uniform, but a skinsuit.

And so did every other officer and rating visible behind her. The officers and ratings manning their consoles and displays on what was obviously a capital ship’s flight deck at general quarters.

“Vice Admiral?” Tsang said after a moment, slightly but firmly emphasizing Holmon-Sanders’ lower rank. “What can I do for you today?”

She sat back, to wait the minute necessary for her transmission to reach the terminus and Holmon-Sanders’ reply to reach her, but then, barely one second later—

“You can stand down your impellers and assure me you have no intention of making transit through this terminus against the expressed will of my star system, Fleet Admiral,” Holmon-Sanders said flatly.

Tsang’s head whipped around towards Sherwood Marceau’s station. She heard Takeuchi mutter something short, pungent, and surprised sounding, then cursed herself almost instantly for revealing her own astonishment so clearly. But—

Marceau was staring at his own console and looked, if possible, even more surprised than she felt. He looked down for another moment, then raised his eyes to hers.

“Another transmitter just came online, Ma’am,” he said. “It must be some kind of relay. It’s less than ten thousand klicks out from Warshawski!”

“No doubt your com section has detected my communications relay, Admiral Tsang,” Holmon-Sanders’ voice continued, and Tsang looked back at her display. “It’s a receiver, as well as a transmitter, you know. I thought it would probably be a good idea not to have any…avoidable delays in our conversation. Particularly not given the strength and clarity with which my government has set forth the Beowulf System’s position on your proposed operation. Again, I formally request clarification of your intentions.”

Tsang had her expression back under control, and her mind raced. Holmon-Sanders hadn’t just idly decided to speak to her in real-time. She’d done it to make a point; that much Tsang was certain of. But what point? So far as Tsang knew, the only people who were even rumored to possess FTL communications ability were the Manties and — possibly — the Havenites. Which meant the only place Holmon-Sanders could have gotten her FTL relay was from Manticore. But why had she gotten it? And why was she telling Tsang she had it? Surely not even the Beowulfers had been crazy enough to—!

“Use their damned relay, Sherwood,” she said.

“Yes, Ma’am. Give me just a second.” He entered the commands to redirect his communications laser to the far closer relay, then nodded to Tsang.

“My intentions, Vice Admiral Holmon-Sanders,” the fleet admiral said then, her voice hard, “are to carry out my orders, as previously explained to your system government.”

“In other words,” Holmon-Sanders said, still with that impossible quickness, “you do intend to transit this terminus?”

“I do,” Tsang said flatly.

“Then I hereby inform you that you will not be permitted to do so,” Holmon-Sanders said, just as flatly. “The federal government has no authority to overrule the Beowulf System government in this regard in the absence of a formal declaration of war. Do you happen to be in possession of such a formal declaration, Fleet Admiral?”

“I’ve already had this discussion with Director Caddell-Markham,” Tsang replied. “I told him then, as I tell you now, that my understanding of the Constitution is that the federal authority supersedes that of any single star system in this situation. And, as I also informed him at the time, I intend to carry out my orders regardless of your own system government’s interpretation of their legality.”

“I don’t think you want to do this, Fleet Admiral,” Holmon-Sanders said, and smiled thinly. “I really don’t think you want to do this.”

That smile sent a bolt of anger through Imogene Tsang’s surprise and confusion. There was no amusement in the expression, only challenge. And, even more infuriating, more than a hint of disdain. Possibly even contempt. Somehow, that smile made Tsang abruptly aware that she’d felt more anger over the Manties’ defiance of the might, majesty, and the power of the Solarian League than she’d previously realized.

“In that case, Admiral, you think wrong.” Her tone was an icicle. “I have every intention of carrying out my orders.”

All my orders, she thought, remembering the secret clause covering her response to this very situation. My God, I wondered what whoever wrote that part must’ve been smoking. Now it turns out they nailed it!

“And I, Fleet Admiral Tsang, have every intention of preventing you from endangering the lives of Beowulfan citizens of the Solarian League,” Holmon-Sanders replied equally coldly.

“Ma’am,” Franz Quill said quietly, “I’m picking up sensor platforms.”

Tsang glanced at the display, and her mouth tightened. Cascades of icons appeared as least two or three hundred reconnaissance platforms went active, lashing her starships with radar and lidar. Some of them were even closer than the FTL relay, and threat receivers warbled in warning. She had no idea how they’d gotten that close without being detected in the first place, but there was no mistaking Holmon-Sanders’ message. She was telling Tsang that, unlike Tsang, she had detailed tactical information on the SLN task force.

“Status change!” Quill announced an instant later, and Tsang’s right hand clenched on her chair arm as thirty-six impeller signatures appeared on her plot, roughly nine million kilometers from Adrianne Warshawski…and directly between her and the Beowulf Terminus.

“Thirty-six superdreadnoughts at eight-point-eight-seven million kilometers,” Quill confirmed. “Impellers active. I can’t tell yet if their side walls are up.”

“Are you actually proposing to fire on units of the Solarian Navy?!” Tsang demanded, eyes blazing at Holmon-Sanders.

“I’m proposing to exercise the sovereign right of my star system to defend its citizens against the orders of an un-elected clique of corrupt bureaucrats with no trace of constitutional authority to give the orders you propose to execute,” Holmon-Sanders replied. “And you, Fleet Admiral, know as well as I do that they have no authority. That if you proceed with this operation you will be doing so in direct violation of the Constitution you swore an oath to protect and defend. That may not mean much to you, but it means quite a lot to us here in Beowulf.”

Anger darkened Tsang’s face. How dared this jumped up pretense of a flag officer in her comic opera little system-defense force talk to her that way? Of course she’d sworn to protect and defend the Constitution! Every Solarian officer did that. But the Constitution was what accepted practice made it, not some dead-letter document which hadn’t functioned properly in over six hundred T-years! Holmon-Sanders knew as well as she did that the League would have fallen apart centuries ago if the people truly responsible for governing hadn’t made accommodations with the more absurd provisions of Holmon-Sanders’ precious Constitution!

“I disagree with your…unique interpretation of current constitutional law,” she said flatly. “And I repeat that I intend to pass my command through that terminus.”

“Not without the assistance and cooperation of Terminus Traffic Control, you aren’t,” Holmon-Sanders replied. “I’m sure your staff astrogator will be aware, even if you aren’t, of just how disastrous any effort to make a simultaneous transit through this terminus without Traffic Control’s guidance is going to prove. Do you intend to place armed parties on the control platforms and compel our personnel to coordinate your transit at pulser point?”

“I intend to do whatever it requires, Vice Admiral! And if that means my Marines are forced to take control of your control platforms and ‘compel’ your personnel to do their duty as Solarian citizens, then that’s precisely what I’ll do!”

“And the instant you attempt to do so, the Beowulf System Defense Force will open fire upon you in defense of our citizens.”

Tsang inhaled sharply as the words were finally spoken.

“In that case, Admiral Holmon-Sanders, you will commit an act of treason.”

“In that case, Admiral Tsang, one of us will have committed an act of treason,” Holmon-Sanders replied, and her contemptuous challenge smile was no longer thin.

“And you and the vast majority of the personnel aboard your superdreadnoughts will also be dead,” Tsang said flatly. “You’ll be in my powered missile envelope in approximately nineteen minutes. If at that time you have not stood down and withdrawn your units, I will engage you, and the deaths of your spacers will be on your own head and that of your system government.”

“I take it that’s your final word on the matter?” Holmon-Sanders inquired almost calmly.

“Damned right it is.” Tsang glared at her. “Get out of my way now, Admiral, or I will by God blow every one of your fucking ships out of space!”

“I think not,” another voice said suddenly, and the image on Tsang’s display split as another woman appeared on it, speaking from another command deck.

The blue-eyed newcomer had golden hair…and her skin suit was definitely not Beowulf-issue.

“Vice Admiral Alice Truman, Royal Manticoran Navy,” she identified herself coldly. “You might want to reconsider your belligerence, Fleet Admiral Tsang.”

“Status change!” Admiral Quill’s sharp voice wrenched Tsang’s eyes from Truman’s image back to the master plot as at least fifty new icons appeared on it. “Confirm sixty — repeat, sixty—additional superdreadnoughts!” Quill continued, and the bottom seemed to fall out of Tsang’s stomach as her numerical superiority over Holmon-Sanders abruptly disappeared.

Impossible. Impossible! There was no way sixty Manty superdreadnoughts could possibly be here in Beowulf space! Even if they’d dared to divert any of them, how could they have gotten them here? It was ridiculous, unless—

“I think you should have taken a closer look at the freighters moving back and forth between Beowulf and Manticore, Admiral Tsang,” Truman said in that same cold voice, smiling faintly. “Surely not even the SLN was stupid enough to think we couldn’t foresee the possibility of something like this once we figured out Filareta was coming! Or perhaps you really thought we couldn’t. Especially if you judged us by your own service’s demonstrated levels of competence.”

The contempt in Truman’s tone bit like a lash, and Tsang felt her jaw muscles bunching.

“I knew your system government was being run by lunatics,” she grated, glaring at Holmon-Sanders, but I hadn’t realized they were goddammed traitors!”

“An interesting characterization coming from someone who proposes to kill Solarian citizens for having the audacity to resist the unconstitutional, illegal policies of a bevy of unelected bureaucrats,” Holmon-Sanders replied.

“Don’t hand me that bullshit!” Tsang snapped. “You’ve actively connived with a hostile star nation in time of war to offer armed resistance to the League’s own military!”

“In time of war?” Holmon-Sanders cocked her head. “Not unless there’s been that formal declaration of war you don’t seem to be able to provide me with, Fleet Admiral Tsang.” Her tone could have frozen a volcano.

“Don’t you dare parse semantics with me! I represent the Solarian League!”

“You, Admiral Tsang,” Truman said dispassionately, “represent Innokentiy Kolokoltsov, Nathan MacArtney, and the rest of their bureaucratic clique. And, as the Star Empire has repeatedly warned the League, they — or their policies, at least — are being manipulated by a non-Solarian power.”

“Bullshit! Don’t any of you ever get tired of that same old tired song and dance routine?!”

“In this case, no,” Truman replied. “Since, unlike the nonsense you’ve just been spouting, it bears at least a nodding acquaintance with the truth.”

“You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you on the ass!” Tsang snarled back. “And even if there were some tiny particle of truth to it, that doesn’t change the fact that the Beowulf system government has actively colluded with another star nation which has killed God only knows how many Solarian naval personnel!”

“In resisting God only knows how many illegal, unilateral acts of aggression, you mean?” Truman inquired.

“Stop twisting my words!” Tsang’s face was dark with anger. “And no matter how you try to twist things around to make it our fault, how do you think the League is going to react to this shit? You think the rest of the League’s members systems are going to side with Beowulf? After Beowulf’s actively connived to help you ambush a Solarian task force in Solarian space?!”

“Your ability to interpret a tactical situation would appear to be every bit as good as Josef Byng’s and Sandra Crandall’s, Admiral,” Truman observed with icy disdain. “If we’d wanted to ‘ambush’ you, you’d be as dead as they are by now. Your reconnaissance provisions were so pathetic that the first thing you would have known about our presence would’ve been the impeller signatures of incoming missiles! Fortunately for you, nobody’s particularly eager to murder spacers whose only crime is serving under criminally stupid superiors. If that was what we’d wanted to do, we would have let you make transit straight into the fire of our Junction forts and killed every one of your ships before you even scratched our paint. Instead, we’ve chosen to save your lives — or your crews’ lives, at least — from the towering incompetence and unbridled arrogance of the Solarian League Navy’s senior officer corps.”

For the first time in her life, pure, distilled fury reduced Imogene Tsang literally to speechlessness. She could only glare at the Manticoran officer as Truman continued in that same precise, scalpel-edged voice.

“Had you shown a modicum of reasonableness, even a trace of respect for your own Constitution and the constitutional rights of the Beowulf System and its citizens, you would have chosen to abide by the Beowulf system government’s decision to deny you transit through this terminus. And had you done that, my forces would simply have stood by in stealth as observers, without interfering in any way. Unlike the League, we have no desire to kill anyone we can avoid killing. But you couldn’t do that, so we found it necessary to present…an additional argument in favor of sanity, shall we say.”

“And, as for how the rest of the League’s systems are going to feel about this,” Holmon-Sanders put it in, “every word of our conversation has been and is being recorded, and it will be released to the news media, without cuts or censorship, as soon as possible. You’d made your intention to violate our sovereignty — and the Constitution — abundantly clear long before the first Manticoran naval unit arrived in Beowulf space, Fleet Admiral. Indeed, the only reason Admiral Truman’s ships remained stealthed as long as they did was to give us time to let you explain yourself for the newsies’ benefit. I don’t think there’s going to be very much question in the mind of anyone who bothers to think about it that if Admiral Truman hadn’t been here, you would indeed have opened fire on the units under my command in pursuit of what you know, whether you admit it or not, is an unlawful order. Of course, the odds have changed somewhat from the ones you thought obtained when you were so courageously prepared to slaughter your fellow Solarian citizens in pursuit of that order, haven’t they?”

The Beowulfer showed her teeth, and her brown eyes were just as hard, just as cold, as Truman’s blue ones.

“As Admiral Truman says, we don’t want to kill anyone who doesn’t have to die. But if you’re still prepared to fight your way through this terminus, Fleet Admiral Tsang, then you just bring it on.”