Shadow of Freedom

Chapter Nineteen

“—haven’t heard anything new out of Gold Peak or Medusa, anyway,” Captain Sadako Merriman said, looking up from the notes on her minicomp’s display. “That doesn’t mean they aren’t up to something, of course, Commissioner.” She grimaced. “The truth is, we’re pretty sure they are up to something. We just don’t have a clue what.”

The slender, fine-boned Frontier Fleet officer wasn’t one of Lorcan Verrochio’s favorite people for several reasons. Among other things, she had an annoying habit of seeming unimpressed by his own august presence, but she also had an equally annoying habit of telling him the truth. He supposed that counted for something, even if “don’t have a clue” wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear out of his senior naval intelligence specialist.

“We’re trying to get better information, of course, Commissioner,” Commodore Francis Thurgood (who had the distinction of being someone Verrochio liked even less than Merriman) put in. “In the wake of what happened to Admiral Crandall, though, we’re not in a position to push as hard for it as I’m sure we’d all like to. I don’t think the Manties would be very receptive to any ‘port visits’ on our part, for example.”

“I’m aware of that, thank you, Commodore,” Verrochio said as pleasantly as he could.

The stocky commodore had a weathered-looking appearance which Verrochio found strange in someone who spent his entire working life in artificial environments. And, although Thurgood was reasonably careful to avoid emphasizing it, he’d also tried to warn Sandra Crandall about what she was walking into. Of course, even his gloomy projections had fallen well short of the reality; they’d just been closer than anyone else’s.

“The Manticorans’ decision to recall their merchant shipping from Solarian space isn’t helping, Governor,” Merriman added. “I realize we didn’t have much of their shipping here in-Sector to begin with, but there was always at least some…cross-pollination, let’s say. Merchant spacers talk to each other wherever their paths happen to cross. They always seem to know a lot more than you think they should about what’s going on, and you can usually pick up a lot listening to them. In this case, though, there’s no one to do the talking.”

Verrochio nodded, not that he needed reminders about how painfully the Manties had wounded the League’s interstellar commerce. He’d managed to sidestep any responsibility for Sandra Crandall’s decision to attack Spindle, but its disastrous consequences had created enough crap to splash everyone in the sector, especially its commissioner. Official news of the Manty merchies’ recall had reached Meyers less than two weeks earlier, and the ruinous consequences of the withdrawal of Manticoran vessels from the League’s shipping lanes had been none too gently pointed out to him by higher authority. Some of those higher authorities hadn’t been shy about suggesting that it was the direct result of events in his sector, either.

“With all due respect, Commissioner, it’s also possible we’re not hearing anything because there’s nothing to hear about,” Brigadier Francisca Yucel put in.

The Madras Sector’s senior Gendarmerie officer had blonde hair, gray eyes, and the short, square muscularity of a heavy-worlder. She also had an unhappy expression, and Verrochio scowled mentally as he looked at her. She’d never liked Thurgood (whom she referred to as “that old woman”) or Merriman (who she regarded as an interloper into internal security matters which were none of her affair), and she disagreed strenuously with their analysis of the Manticorans’ probable intentions. She was also a bigger pain in his posterior than Merriman and Thurgood combined, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was wrong.

“I realize you have a different perspective from the Navy’s, Francisca,” the commissioner said. “But it’s Commodore Thurgood’s and Captain Merriman’s responsibility to look at the worst case from a naval perspective.”

“I agree.” Yucel didn’t try very hard to sound as if she meant it, Verrochio observed. “I’m simply saying we shouldn’t scare ourselves into hiding in a corner on the basis of what happened at Spindle. By this time, even that moron Gold Peak has to realize how badly she fucked up at New Tuscany and Spindle! Their government has to be shitting bricks thinking about the mess she’s dragged them all into. If the order relieving her ass and hauling her home hasn’t gotten to Spindle yet, it’s damned well on its way, Commissioner!”

Verrochio nodded in acknowledgement, although he was a far cry from agreeing with her. Nothing he’d seen out of the Manties suggested any inclination on their part to give ground, and he very much doubted Elizabeth Winton was going to recall her cousin from Talbott anytime soon. He did have to agree with at least one of Yucel’s underlying premises—that no one except a maniac would willingly contemplate an all out war with the Solarian League, no matter how good his weapons technology was. Unfortunately, every indication he’d seen said the Manties were maniacs. That was why he rejected her opposition of anything that smacked of “appeasement.” It was her view that giving ground to Manticore would only increase the Star Empire’s arrogance and ambition, whereas refusing to be bullied and panicked into giving it whatever it wanted would cause it to pull in its horns. She might actually be right about that. In fact, he hoped she was. But after the string of disasters which had landed on his doorstep, he had no intention of being the one who refused to be “bullied” and found out the Manties weren’t bluffing after all.

“It’s possible Brigadier Yucel is right about that, Commissioner,” Thurgood said. Without, Verrochio noticed, sounding any more sincere than Yucel had. “For the moment, however, Gold Peak’s still in command—according to our most recent information, at any rate—and I think we can safely assume she’s going to at least redeploy her forces. She may be more…confrontational than her government would like, but in a tactical sense, at least, she’s demonstrated she’s nobody’s fool. And, as she demonstrated for better or worse at New Tuscany, she’s not afraid to act on her own authority, either.” He smiled thinly; he’d tried to warn Josef Byng, too. “I anticipate encountering a heavier Manty naval presence along our frontier very soon now. I’ll agree that I don’t think she’s going to push any confrontations with the League if she can help it, but she’s not going to be backing down, either.”

“Are you suggesting she’s likely to begin offensive operations into the Madras Sector, Commodore?” Vice Commissioner Junyan Hongbo asked.

“To be honest, Mr. Vice Commissioner, I don’t see any reason she should, if not for exactly the same reasons as Brigadier Yucel. The truth is, though, that it’s not like we’ve got the firepower to threaten the Talbott Quadrant. I’m sorry, the Talbott Sector.” The commodore grimaced slightly as he corrected himself. Obviously he found Frontier Security’s continued insistence that the Talbott Quadrant’s incorporation into the Star Empire of Manticore was legally suspect more than a bit silly. “I don’t see Manticore wanting to push any sort of conquest in our direction, for a lot of reasons, including the desire—as the Brigadier’s suggested—to keep some kind of lid on this whole confrontation. I don’t expect her to back off if push comes to shove, but I also don’t see her going looking for unnecessary fights or dissipating her resources against anything she doesn’t consider is a genuine, immediate, and pressing threat. So, since we don’t have any naval bases that could threaten them, I’d expect her to look elsewhere in an operational sense. Frankly, little though I’m sure any of us would like to admit it, we’re just not important enough for her to be worrying about at the moment.”

Oh, thank you, Commodore, Verrochio thought sourly. “Not important enough” to worry about. Doesn’t that just underscore the hit Frontier Security’s prestige has already taken!

That thought wouldn’t have bothered him so much if he hadn’t suspected Thurgood took a certain satisfaction in pointing it out. The commodore would have been more than human if he hadn’t felt gratified—or justified, at least—at having been right when everyone else (especially Sandra Crandall) had all but accused him of cowardice for warning them the Manties might just conceivably be serious when they said they were.

“So your recommendation would be that we should basically stay home and avoid provoking her,” Hongbo said, and Thurgood shrugged.

“I wouldn’t put it quite that way myself, Mr. Vice Commissioner. We don’t have the capability to ‘provoke’ her. What I’m saying is that unless we’re significantly reinforced, about the best we can realistically expect to do is to police our own merchant traffic—such as it is, and what there is of it—and provide reaction forces if any of the sector’s planets should get…restive. Obviously, that constitutes ‘staying home,’ but that’s another way of saying it constitutes doing our job, too.” He regarded Hongbo levelly across the conference table. “If anyone wants us to do something more proactive, they’re damned well going to have to send us the means to do it. And given the weapons capability the Manties have demonstrated, I don’t know that anyone has the means to send.”

Hongbo looked back at him for a moment, then nodded.

“Point taken, Commodore,” he said in an almost conciliatory tone. “I didn’t mean to sound as if I were suggesting you intended to shirk your responsibilities. I guess I’m just not any more immune to frustration and, well, nervousness than anyone else.”

Thurgood’s fleeting smile acknowledged the vice commissioner’s semi-apology, and Merriman cleared her throat.

“At any rate, Commissioner,” she said to Verrochio, “I’m afraid that really does constitute all the Navy can contribute to the intelligence picture at this point. I wish we could tell you more, but we can’t.”

“In that case, if you don’t mind, Commissioner, I’ve got a couple of points I’d like us to consider,” Yucel said harshly.

“Oh?” Verrochio looked at her. “What would those be, Brigadier?”

“Ms. Xydis’ dispatches from Mobius.” Yucel’s voice was flat, and Verrochio was conscious of a distinct sinking sensation.

“I realize President Lombroso’s concerned about the situation,” he said, “but, let’s be honest, Francisca, he’s always concerned about the situation.”

“I’m aware of that, Sir.” Yucel’s tone carried a hint of frost. “But ‘the situation’s’ changed significantly, given the sophistication of the weapons used against the Presidential Guard this time around. Nobody cooked those up in some backwoods workshop, Sir, and nobody bought them for hunting or even self-defense, either. Someone damned well sent them in from the outside specifically to be used exactly the way they were used.”

“I think we want to be a little careful about leaping to conclusions about those weapons reports, Brigadier,” Junyan Hongbo said coolly. He and Yucel saw eye-to-eye on very few subjects, and especially not on her theory that there was no such thing as “excessive force.” In her view, there was no problem she couldn’t solve by killing enough people, and the two of them seldom found themselves on the same side of any policy debate.

“Lombroso, Yardley, and Mátyás are scarcely disinterested observers,” the vice commissioner added, “and they’ve been trying for years to get an official OFS presence to back up the local régime.”

Verrochio felt himself nodding slowly in agreement. Given the way Svein Lombroso had become steadily more hated by the Mobius System’s citizens, virtually from the first day he’d taken power, it wasn’t surprising he saw clearly visible OFS backing for his régime as the only way to stave off disaster. A smarter (and less brutal) president might have reflected that inviting Frontier Security in was like a farmer inviting a fox to a slumber party in his henhouse, but Lombroso was obviously feeling the strain.

“Yes, I’m aware of that, too, Mr. Vice Commissioner,” Yucel said. “I’d just like to point out, though, that according to Xydis’ messages, President Lombroso definitely isn’t fabricating this. It really happened, he’s got a lot of civilian casualties, and the terrorists opposed to his administration are clearly better organized—and one hell of a lot better armed—than they’ve ever been before. There are signs Mobius isn’t the only place this is happening, too. In fact, he’s scarcely the only local reporting evidence of Manty involvement in providing both weapons and financial support.”

Verrocchio managed not to roll his eyes. It wasn’t easy, given how persistently Yucel, despite her firm belief that Manticore wouldn’t dare confront the League openly, seemed to be finding Manty plots under her bed every night. Apparently she had no problem at all with believing Manticore would resort to any clandestine means of opposing OFS it could come up with, regardless of the risk of Solarian retaliation, which struck him as more than a bit inconsistent. Maybe she’d spent so long arranging “deniable” operations of her own that she was simply programmed to assume everyone else thought the same way she did? Now that was a frightening concept. At the same time, however, she had a point about Lombroso’s reports.

“I realize we’re all under a lot of strain,” Hongbo said, “and I fully agree that we need to be more safe than sorry about the Manties, but I also think it would be a mistake to rely too heavily on those reports, Brigadier.” Yucel glowered at him, and he shrugged. “The unrest in Mobius started well before Admiral Byng’s deployment, and I fail to see any reason for the Star Empire to have invested in the considerable effort and expense to foment general unrest in our vicinity before they even knew he was coming!”

“Someone’s providing modern weapons, and not just to Lombroso,” Yucel said stubbornly. “If it’s happening on anything like the scale our reports indicate, that same someone is obviously willing to invest the effort and expense you’ve just mentioned. And at the moment, I don’t see anyone with a better reason than the Manties to be doing that.”

Her gray eyes challenged him coldly across the conference table, but he didn’t back down.

“Neither do I,” he said. “Which, I’m afraid, suggests to me that the reports you’re referring to are exaggerated. Understandably, I’m sure,” he added, not trying to sound any more sincere than she or Thurgood had, “given all the unrest that’s been swirling around since the Battle of Monica, but nonetheless exaggerated. And while I’ve just agreed it’s better to be safe than sorry, our resources—as Commodore Thurgood has just pointed out—are limited. I don’t think it would be wise to waste them responding to threats which may not even be real.”

“I’m inclined to agree, Junyan,” Verrochio said quickly, before Yucel could fire back. “I’d like to stay focused on the specific case of Mobius at this point, though. Brigadier?”

Yucel sat in brief, fulminating silence, then inhaled deeply.

“It’s possible President Lombroso is seeing Manticoran involvement when there isn’t any,” she conceded, although her tone made it obvious she thought nothing of the sort. “Nonetheless, it’s clear his problems are much more serious than our earlier assessments suggested. And I think it’s equally clear he’s losing whatever nerve he may once have had. That’s not a recipe for success, so I think we have to decide whether we’re going to support him or the time’s come to go ahead and supplant him. And the Vice Commissioner—and the Commodore—are right that we have limited resources. We can’t afford to waste them, and, frankly, providing a garrison to maintain direct control on a long-term basis would cut deeply into my available strength.”

Verrochio winced. One thing of which no one could ever accuse Francisca Yucel was subtlety. Still, she had a point. Lombroso was a lot less valuable to Frontier Security than he might think he was. In fact, under normal circumstances, as Yucel had just implied, Verrochio would have been simply biding his time until things got bad enough to provide OFS with an unassailable case for—regretfully, of course—moving in to restore public order and safety. In the process of which, Mobius would just happen to find itself an official protectorate and President Lombroso would just happen to find himself unemployed.

Circumstances weren’t normal, however, and the last thing he needed was to have Mobius melt down right on his doorstep. Manty meddling in the Mobius System or not, the restiveness of Lombroso’s opposition undoubtedly owed a lot to what had already happened in Talbott. The example of a whole cluster of worlds seeking and receiving admission into the Star Empire hadn’t been lost on any of the nominally independent planets in the vicinity. They were bound to see that as a better deal than being systematically sucked dry by one transtellar or another or engulfed by Frontier Security, at any rate, and he never doubted that his ultimate superiors back in Old Chicago would recognize that as well as he did. And they wouldn’t thank him for allowing the dike of OFS’ prestige and power to spring any fresh leaks, either.

Which didn’t even consider the way Trifecta Corporation and its economic allies would react if he let anything like a genuine Mobian régime topple Lombroso. It might take years for Trifecta to get its hooks properly into Lombroso’s successor, and they’d undoubtedly raise hell about it the entire time.

“Should I take it you concur with Brigadier Yucel’s reading of the situation, Colonel?” the commissioner inquired, looking at Colonel Armand Wang, Yucel’s equivalent of Captain Merriman.

Wang was a good forty centimeters taller than Yucel, with dark hair, dark eyes, and a high-arched nose. He was also, in Verrochio’s opinion, rather less of a blunt object. Now he glanced at Yucel from the corner of one eye, then shrugged.

“It’s possible”—he stressed the adverb ever so slightly—“President Lombroso and General Yardley are overreacting. As you say, Sir, they’ve insisted the sky was falling in the past. But we’ve looked at their reports, especially the most recent ones from General Mátyás, and at Ms. Xydis’ messages carefully. We’ve also sent back a request for additional information from Trifecta Corporation’s sources in the system, although it’s going to be a while before we hear from them in reply.” He shrugged. “On the basis of all information currently available to us, there’s no question but that at least some modern weapons have found their way to President Lombroso’s opposition. That’s obvious, however they got there, and even if the local authorities are overreacting, this isn’t the time to let something like this get out of hand.”

Well, Verrochio really hadn’t expected him to contradict Yucel. The commissioner looked at Hongbo, who also shrugged. Which was a lot of help, Verrochio reflected sourly.

The commissioner suppressed a temptation to gnaw on a fingernail. Anything he dispatched to Mobius would be unavailable if something decided to blow up on one of the Madras Sector’s planets, and the excuse that he’d been trying to prevent a Mobius meltdown was unlikely to appease critics in Old Chicago if the troops he needed to prevent his own sector from burning to the ground were elsewhere at the critical moment. But if he let Mobius turn into another Talbott Quadrant…

“All right,” he sighed. “I see your point, Francisca. And yours, Colonel Wang. And, all things considered, I don’t think this is the time for us to be supplanting any more local régimes. So, having said that, what would you recommend?”

“I think we don’t have any choice but to meet Xydis’ request for boots on the ground.” Yucel smiled unpleasantly. “The locals may be willing to come out into the open against Lombroso’s Presidential Guard, but I doubt they’ll be so eager against an intervention battalion or two.”

“Is that strong a response really necessary, Brigadier?” Hongbo asked distastefully.

“We don’t have a lot of options here, Mr. Vice Commissioner.” Yucel pointed out testily. “Anybody I send to Mobius will be out of my order of battle in-sector for months, so if we’re going to send troops at all, we have to send enough of them—and with clear enough rules of engagement—to break these terrorists’ backs quickly. Get in, kick the shit out of them, turn the situation back over to Lombroso—maybe with a Gendarmerie adviser or two and a company or so of troops for support—and then get the rest of our people back here. Do it hard and fast and we may just be able to complete the entire operation before anyone here in the Madras Sector even realizes we’ve diverted any of our strength elsewhere.”

“Something to be said for that, Mr. Commissioner.” Thurgood clearly didn’t enjoy saying that, but his expression was unflinching when Verrochio looked at him.

“Whether it’s a good idea to intervene at all is outside my area of competence, Sir,” the Frontier Fleet officer said. “I’m no expert at controlling insurrections on the ground. But if the decision’s that we ought to intervene in Mobius, I’m in favor of getting in and getting out as quickly as possible.” His lips tightened in distaste. “If we’re sending in troops on the ground, I’ll need to come up with at least a couple of destroyers to control space around the planet. If for no other reason than to make sure no more shipments of modern weapons get through to the other side while we’ve got troops down there. That means that in addition to any troop strength Brigadier Yucel has to divert, I’m going to have to divert naval strength, as well. And, frankly, the longer any of my ships are away, the more likely it is that something’s going to get past us here at home.”

It was obvious that, outside his area of competence or not, Thurgood was opposed to the entire notion. That didn’t invalidate his points, unfortunately.

Verrochio closed his eyes for a moment, thinking, then sighed.

“I want an estimate of the troop strength you’re proposing to commit, Francisca,” he said. “And I want to see your operations plan before I make any hard decisions. Having said that, I think you’re probably right and we need to get support in there for Lombroso before bad turns to worse. Commodore,” he turned back to Thurgood, “as soon as the Brigadier and I have determined exactly how many troops we’re committing, I’m going to need your best numbers on transport requirements and what kind of warship support you expect to be necessary.” He smiled bleakly. “If we’re going to do this, let’s at least try to get it right.”