Shadow of Freedom

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Yes, Augustus? What can I do for you this morning?” Dame Estelle Matsuko, Baroness Medusa, asked with a smile.

The expression felt a bit strange, but not because she wasn’t happy to see the face on her com. Although there’d been a time when Augustus Khumalo hadn’t been her favorite person, those days were gone. It was just a bit hard to find a lot of things to smile about in the wake of the dispatches which had finally reached Spindle two T-days ago. Close to two million dead—two million more dead—even if most of them were from the other side, and confirmation that the Star Empire truly was at war with the Solarian League, wasn’t the sort of news that made someone want to turn handsprings of delight.

Still, it’s better than having the two million dead on our side, which is what those Solly bastards had in mind, she reminded herself grimly. And at least the Solarian League’s present management obviously can’t find its own backside with both hands. That’s a two-edged sword, since it means they’re unlikely as hell to realize the smart move would be to rethink their policies and let both of us back away from a war that’s going to get God only knows how many more people killed. But if they’re bullheaded and arrogant enough to keep right on pushing harder, instead—and it looks an awful lot like they are—then thank God they’re at least incompetent about it! And having Haven—Haven!—on our side for a change is a lot better than a kick in the head, too.

“Good morning, Milady,” Admiral Khumalo responded. “Sorry to disturb you this early, but I’ve just received dispatches from Admiral Gold Peak.” There was something a little peculiar about his tone, Medusa thought. “Under the circumstances, I thought I should probably share them with you as soon as possible.”

“Is there a problem?” she asked, her smile fading.

“Not any immediate problem, no,” he replied. “But it’s definitely something we’re going to have to deal with, probably in the not too distant future. And I guarantee you you’re going to think it was as…unexpected as I did.”

“I’d feel a lot better without that qualifier, ‘immediate.’ And I’m not all that fond of ‘unexpected,’ now that I think about it,” she said sourly. He nodded, and she sighed. “Should I roust out Joachim or Henri for this?”

“At the moment, I think this is more of a matter for your Imperial Governor persona than for anybody in the Talbott Quadrant,” Khumalo said after a moment’s thought. “It may be appropriate for you to bring them in later—in fact, I think it probably will be—but for right now I think you should hear about this yourself before you decide what else to do.”

“You’re not making me feel any happier here, Augustus,” she said dryly as she tapped a command to open her daily calendar in a window in the corner of the com display. “I’ve got just under an hour and a half clear, starting now,” she told him. “Can you get here in that window? And if you can, should I see about clearing the rest of the morning?”

“I can be there in thirty minutes,” he replied. “As to how long this is going to take, in some ways your guess is as good as mine. It could take a while, though.”

“Wonderful. Should I ask Gregor to sit in?”

“Actually, I think that would be a very good idea. As a matter of fact, with your permission, I think it might be a good idea for me to bring along Loretta and Ambrose, as well.”

“Fine. In that case I’ll see you here in Government House in half an hour.”

* * *

Admiral Khumalo, his chief of staff, and his senior intelligence officer actually arrived in barely twenty minutes. In fact, Gregor O’Shaughnessy had reached Medusa’s office less than five minutes before the three naval officers were ushered through its door. He and Medusa stood to greet the newcomers, and the baroness’ eyes narrowed in speculation as she spotted the fourth member of Khumalo’s party. The one the admiral had somehow forgotten to mention to her might be coming.

The stranger was a civilian, and a supremely unremarkable looking one. His sandalwood complexion was perhaps a shade darker than Medusa’s own, his hair and his eyes were brown, and he was of average height. A Solarian by his dress, but not a Core Worlder; his standard upper-mid-level bureaucrat’s outfit was at least six or seven T-years out of date by Core World standards. Probably a fairly senior local employed in a managerial role by one of the transstellars doing business in the Shell, she thought.

And just what exactly does Augustus think he’s doing bringing a Solarian civilian into my office?

The thought was not a happy one, but she donned her politician’s face and smiled in welcome.

“Augustus. Captain Shoupe, Commander Chandler. Good to see you. And this would be—?”

She let the question hover and cocked her head at the Solarian.

“This is Mr. Ankenbrandt, Madame Governor,” Khumalo supplied. “And to be honest, he’s the reason for this meeting.”

“I beg your pardon?” Despite herself, Medusa’s response carried a sharp edge of surprise, and Khumalo gave her a slightly apologetic smile.

“Mr. Ankenbrandt arrived with a coded dispatch from Admiral Gold Peak, Milady,” he explained. “I’ve had my crypto section verify it, and it’s definitely from the Admiral. It explains why she sent Mr. Ankenbrandt on to speak to us, but she suggested—and I think it was a good suggestion—that you should talk to him yourself before reading her own report. I think she’d like you to form your own first impressions without any prior influence from her.”

“Well, that all sounds suitably mysterious,” Medusa said a bit tartly, then gazed at Ankenbrandt for several seconds. Despite his somewhat mouse-like initial impression, he looked back without flinching. Not that he wasn’t nervous; she could see that. But he concealed well.

“Very well, Mr. Ankenbrandt, I’ll listen to what you have to say. Why don’t we all be seated first though?”

Everyone found a chair, and the baroness sat back comfortably behind her desk.

“One thing I should add before we begin, Madame Governor,” Khumalo said. She looked at him, and he shrugged. “Admiral Gold Peak personally interviewed Mr. Ankenbrandt before sending him on to us. I thought you should know she did so with a treecat present.”

Medusa’s almond eyes narrowed for a moment, then she nodded.

“Very well,” she said again, then turned her attention back to Ankenbrandt. “Why don’t you start, Mr. Ankenbrandt?”

* * *

“My God, Admiral. Couldn’t you give us just a little warning before dropping something like that on us again?” O’Shaughnessy demanded acidly the better part of two hours later.

Medusa’s senior intelligence analyst was a lifelong civilian who had never been a huge fan of military intelligence before joining her own staff. Over the last few years he’d learned to get along better than he ever had before with his uniformed colleagues, but there were moments when he backslid. And it was seldom helpful when he did, the baroness thought acerbically, since he tended to engage his mouth before his brain when that happened. Which was a pity, since he really did have a very good brain when he remembered to use it.

“If I may remind you, Gregor,” she said, intervening before Khumalo could respond, “the Admiral specifically told us when he introduced Mr. Ankenbrandt that Admiral Gold Peak wanted us to form our own initial impressions cold. I happen to think that was a good idea on her part, but whether it was or not, he’d made it very clear before we ever began why he hadn’t pre-briefed either of us on it.”

O’Shaughnessy colored at the unmistakable frost in the Governor’s tone. He started to say something, then made himself stop, and his nostrils flared as he drew a deep breath.

“Yes, Milady.” He looked Khumalo in the eye. “My apologies Admiral.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Khumalo’s tone might have been just a little short, but he didn’t let irritation distract him. Instead, he turned back to Medusa.

“Milady, I very much doubt that you and Mr. O’Shaughnessy could have been any more surprised than I was when Ankenbrandt screened me and introduced himself with one of Admiral Gold Peak’s authenticator code words. And I know you couldn’t have been any more surprised than I was when he arrived aboard Hercules and handed over a secure Navy message chip from her. Having read her message—I’ve brought a copy of it along for you and Mr. O’Shaughnessy—and heard Ankenbrandt’s story, though, I think we’ve got a hexapuma by the tail in this one. And it’s not even really our hexapuma!”

“Assuming Ankenbrandt really is telling us the truth and not a plant who’s somehow found a way to fool even a treecat when he lies, I’m afraid it is our hexapuma, Admiral,” O’Shaughnessy said thoughtfully. He’d obviously gotten over his initial pique and reengaged his brain, Medusa noted. “This is incredibly clever on someone’s part. The potential consequences if dozens of planetary resistance movements get slaughtered when they believe—completely accurately, as far as they know—the Star Empire’s promised to support them…”

He shook his head, his expression grim, and Khumalo nodded.

“That’s approximately the analysis Admiral Gold Peak’s sent along.” The tall, heavily built admiral chuckled suddenly. “The analysis, I might add, which was initially proposed by Ensign Zilwicki.”

“No, really?” Medusa smiled. “The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?”

“I don’t believe she has any inclination to become a ‘spook,’ Madame Governor,” Khumalo said. “Doesn’t mean she doesn’t have the instincts, though. And personally, I’m pretty sure she’s onto something here. This has this Mesan Alignment’s fingerprints all over it.”

“Maximum return for minimum investment,” O’Shaughnessy agreed, nodding firmly. “And misdirection, and directed at at least three targets I can see already. God only knows how many secondary targets this thing is aimed at!”

“The question is how we respond to it,” Medusa pointed out. “I think you were right that this was something I had to hear first while wearing my Imperial Governor’s hat, Augustus, but I’m going to have to go ahead and brief Joachim and his cabinet on it. Among other things, if Ankenbrandt’s really a representative sample, the majority of messengers from any of these resistance movements are going to be heading right here to Spindle. The Quadrant’s government needs to know they’re coming.”

Khumalo nodded, and Medusa pursed her lips, thinking for several moments. Then—

“Should I assume Lady Gold Peak sent a recommendation along with her report?”

“She did, Madame Governor.”

“And you’re not going to tell me what it was unless I pull it out of you with a pair of pliers, right?”

“A simple order to come clean will do, Madame Governor,” Khumalo replied with a smile. “Still, I have to admit I’m curious to see whether your response parallels hers.”

“All right, I’ll give it to you.” Her own smile faded, and her eyes hardened. “I think we need to send back orders to treat any messenger from a genuine resistance movement—it was as smart of her as I would have expected to use a treecat to verify Ankenbrandt’s truthfulness—as if they really had been in contact with Manticore all along. I don’t see how we can afford not to. At the same time, though, we have to be cautious. We don’t know what kind of booby-traps the Alignment could have built into something like this. Don’t forget those invisible starship of theirs. A few of them tucked away to ambush our units responding to a resistance movement’s call for assistance could do a lot of damage.”

She cocked an eyebrow at Khumalo, and the burly admiral nodded.

“That’s almost exactly what Admiral Gold Peak recommended,” he said, and reached into his breast pocket. He extracted a chip folio and laid it on Medusa’s desk. “Here’s her actual report, including the treecat’s—Alfredo’s—assessment of Ankenbrandt’s truthfulness.”

“Thank you.” Medusa scooped up the folio. She looked at it for a moment, then tossed it to O’Shaughnessy.

“You take a run through it first, Gregor. Be thinking about it after you finish so we can exchange notes as soon as I’m through with it.”

“Yes, Milady.”

“Admiral Khumalo, unless Gregor and I come up with something that causes me to change my mind, we’ll be sending a dispatch to Lady Gold Peak before the end of the day confirming her own analysis and proposed course of action. At the same time, though, we obviously need to kick this further up the chain to Foreign Secretary Langtry, Prime Minister Grantville, and Her Majesty, as well. I’d like you, Captain Shoupe, and Commander Chandler to provide your own individual appreciations to accompany that report back to Landing.”

“Yes, Milady.”

“In that case, as Duchess Harrington would say,” she smiled, “let’s be about it.”