Shadow of Freedom

Chapter Thirty-Four

Michelle Henke rose behind her desk as her day cabin’s door opened. The man who stepped through it was of average height, with the dark hair and eyes which seemed to be the norm here on the planet of Meyers. He was well dressed, although the cut of his clothing was a T-year or two out of date by the latest Core World fashions, and he extended a well manicured hand as he approached her.

“Prime Minister Montview,” she said, reaching out her own hand. His grip was surprisingly firm, not the perfunctory squeeze too many politicians had perfected from too many T-years of shaking voters’ hands, and his dark eyes met hers.

“Admiral Gold Peak,” he responded.

“Please, have a seat,” she invited, reclaiming her hand and indicating the pair of armchairs arranged on either side of the coffee table.

“Thank you.”

Montview accepted the invitation, and Chris Billingsley appeared as if by magic. Michelle’s steward was resplendent in perfectly turned out mess dress uniform, with a white towel over his left forearm which ought to have seemed out of keeping with his battered prizefighter’s face but somehow didn’t. He carried a tray of finger sandwiches, which he placed on the coffee table. Then he gathered up the silver coffee pot embossed with HMS Artemis’ crossed-arrow coat of arms and poured two cups.

“Will there be anything else, Milady?” he inquired.

“Just make sure Alfredo has fresh celery, please, Chris,” Michelle replied.

“Of course, Milady.”

Billingsley bowed slightly to her and to her guest, then withdrew, pausing to check with the treecat arranged on the perch behind Michelle’s desk. Master Sergeant Cognasso just happened to be the Marine sentry posted outside Michelle’s cabin door, and Alfredo—celery stalk clutched in hand—watched her and the prime minister with apparent indifference.

Appearances, of course, could be deceiving.

“Thank you for coming, Prime Minister,” Michelle said as the door closed behind Billingsley.

“It wasn’t exactly as if attendance was discretionary, Admiral,” Montague pointed out with a disarming smile. “Although the invitation was phrased with admirable courtesy, I thought.”

“There was no point being impolite,” Michelle responded with a smile of her own. Then her smile faded. “Of course, I’m afraid we’ve been rather less polite with some people than with you.”

“I presume that refers to Commissioner Verrochio and Vice Commissioner Hongbo?” Montague inquired, and she nodded. “Ah.” He nodded, then shrugged slightly. “Understandable, I suppose.”

Michelle sat back with her coffee cup, studying him thoughtfully. Thomas Montview was officially the prime minister of King Lawrence IX, titular ruler of the Kingdom of Meyers, which covered about three quarters of the surface of the planet of Meyers. In fact, Lawrence Thomas and his entire family had been little more than figureheads ever since Frontier Security’s arrival in the Meyers System. Still, the House of Thomas had provided a useful interface, and the Thomases had survived better than most local dynasties who found themselves engulfed by the protectorates system. They’d actually retained a sizable percentage of the family wealth, and everything Michelle and Cynthia Lecter had been able to find in the local system databases suggested that Lawrence and his parents and grandparents had done their best to mitigate the weight of the OFS yoke for the population of Meyers. They’d been active in philanthropic pursuits, and they’d given a great deal of support to public education out of their private coffers.

None of which meant they hadn’t had to make their own accommodations with the Frontier Security system, and Montview, as Lawrence’s prime minister, had been the primary local front man for Lorcan Verrochio’s administration. It was apparent that he’d done quite well out of his position, but he was something of a cipher as far as Michelle and Lecter had been able to determine.

“I’m afraid the two of them—and especially Commissioner Verrocchio—took it rather less philosophically than that,” she said now.

“I’m sure they did.” Montview sipped his own coffee. “They had so much more to lose, after all. And I feel certain their superiors back on Old Terra are going to have a few harsh words for them, as well.” He smiled thinly. “The one thing you can depend upon is that everyone in OFS has a scapegoat ready and waiting should the need arise.”

“I should take it, then, that you weren’t too fond of Frontier Security?” Michelle asked lightly, watching Alfredo out of the corner of her eye.

“No one who’s ever had the dubious privilege of being gathered to Frontier Security’s protective bosom is ‘too fond’ of it.” Montview’s tone was as light as Michelle’s own, but there was a measured bite buried in it. “The more closely you find yourself compelled to work with them, the less fond of them you become, however.”

Alfredo waved his celery stalk casually, confirming Montview’s sincerity. The fact that the prime minister didn’t care for Frontier Security didn’t automatically make him a paragon of virtue, but it was definitely a point in his favor.

“Well, Mr. Prime Minister, as it happens, we’re not too fond of Frontier Security—or the Solarian League in general—at the moment, ourselves.” Michelle shrugged. “I think we can all take it as a given that relations between the Star Empire and the League are going to get worse before they get better.”

“Would you be terribly disappointed, Admiral Gold Peak, if I told you that didn’t come as a huge surprise?” Montview inquired, and Michelle chuckled.

“Not at all, Mr. Prime Minister. I only mentioned it as a preface to what I really wanted to speak to you about.”

She paused, head cocked, and he frowned thoughtfully. Then he shrugged.

“I would presume that what you’re leading up to has to do with the long-term political situation here on Meyers,” he said, and Michelle nodded. She wasn’t really surprised by his comment—she’d already come to the conclusion he was no dummy—but she was pleased by his directness.

“Precisely,” she agreed. “At the moment, I have no definitive instructions on political administration of territory captured—or liberated—from the Solarian League.” Which, she refrained from mentioning, was because she had no instructions about capturing or liberating that territory in the first place. “Because of that,” she continued, “I’m afraid I’m rather in the position of making things up as I go along. That gives me a certain degree of freedom, although it also obviously means any arrangements I might put in place would be subject to review by higher authority. On the other hand,” she looked directly into Montview’s eyes, “there aren’t a great many ‘higher authorities’ in the Star Empire.”

Montview sat back in his armchair, sipping coffee and regarding her thoughtfully. It was clear to Michelle that he’d done his homework on her just as thoroughly as she’d done hers on him. What she wasn’t certain of was whether or not he realized she was effectively putting the honor of the House of Winton on the line. She couldn’t be certain even Beth would honor every detail of any arrangement to which she committed the Star Empire, but she was positive her cousin would never betray or abandon anyone Michelle had agreed to support.

“I believe I appreciate your position, Milady,” Montview said, and Michelle raised mental eyebrows as he addressed her as a member of the Manticoran peerage rather than by her naval rank. “Should I conclude from what you’ve just said that you’re considering an arrangement which would involve my King?”

“I am,” Michelle confirmed, leaning back in her own chair and resting her elbows on its arms to steeple her fingers in front of her. “Of course, the exact nature of that arrangement would depend on a great many factors.”

“Factors such as…?” Montview raised his eyebrows as he allowed his voice to trail off.

“At the moment, Mr. Prime Minister, no one outside the Meyers System knows what’s happened here. No hyper-capable unit made it out, which means it will be some time—probably T-months, in fact—before anyone else realizes anything’s happened at all. That gives us some time to work with. Unfortunately, we’re in what you might call a…dynamic situation, and my military capabilities are a bit lopsided.” Michelle showed her teeth briefly. “I’ve got oodles—that’s a technical term, Mr. Prime Minister; it means lots and lots—of naval combat power, but I’m severely strapped for ground combat power.”

Montview nodded gravely, although Michelle doubted that he truly realized just how short of ground troops she actually was. Colonel Liam Trondheim, the senior Gendarmerie officer present, had surrendered the system to her as soon as her ships entered Meyers planetary orbit. He hadn’t had a great deal of choice about that, under the recognized interstellar laws of war. For that matter, Michelle had been perfectly willing to take out every Gendarmerie base on the planet from orbit (also as the interstellar laws of war permitted for planets which didn’t surrender), and he seemed to realize that fact.

She rather regretted that Brigadier Yucel hadn’t been here to do the surrendering herself. Everything she and Cynthia Lecter had been able to dig up on the brigadier suggested she was an ugly piece of work, even by the standards of the Solarian League Gendarmerie. On the other hand, according to Trondheim, one reason he’d been so quick to surrender was that Yucel had taken two full battalions of her best troops (although Michelle doubted Yucel’s definition of “best troops” would have matched her own) off to the Mobius System. She didn’t like to think about what someone like Yucel might have been doing with those troops, but she felt confident, somehow, that Sir Aivars Terekhov would experience no insurmountable difficulty in dealing with the brigadier.

Here in Meyers, however, Michelle was left with the problem that she simply didn’t have the troop strength to garrison what she’d captured. The planet Meyers itself was home to 3.6 billion people. Another thirty-two thousand lived on the next planet out, Socrates, which was very like the Sol System’s Mars but with a slightly thicker atmosphere. The Truman Belt was home to another 843,000 people, most committed to routine mining and other resource extraction. And then there were the two hundred thousand living on the moons of the gas giant Damien, mining the planetary atmosphere for hydrogen and rare gases.

That wasn’t very many people by the standards of one of the League’s Core Worlds, but it very nearly equaled the total population of the Manticore Binary System, and there was no way in the universe her own limited Marine strength could possibly hope to control them.

On the other hand, Frontier Security hadn’t been able to ship in enough troops to actually garrison the system, either. The Sollies had been forced to rely on local police forces to maintain public order and enforce civil law. That was always the case, of course, but generally those local police forces took their cue from the OFS administration which had co-opted their services. That was one reason Michelle had dreaded what she’d find when they reached Meyers, given Yucel’s reputation.

To her surprise, however, local law enforcement appeared to have avoided the brutality and repressiveness she’d anticipated. Partly that was because Yucel had been assigned to the Madras Sector fairly recently. Another part of it, she’d been forced to admit—grudgingly, grudgingly!—was probably due to Lorcan Verrochio and Junyan Hongbo. In fact, she suspected more to the vice commissioner than to Verrocchio, although it was early to be drawing that sort of conclusion. But even more of it, she thought—hoped—stemmed from the example of King Lawrence and his family.

Michelle Henke wasn’t about to conclude that the Meyers police forces were miraculously free of the corruption which followed Frontier Security like a pestilence. But they clearly took their responsibility as the guardians of public order and safety seriously, and because they did, she was inclined to cut them a substantial amount of slack. The question was who they ultimately answered to.

“I anticipate receiving additional ground troops as soon as they can be forwarded from the Talbott Quadrant,” she continued. There was no need to tell him just how long “soon” might be. “In the meantime, however, we have to make do out of the forces currently available to me, and most of my ground personnel are trained as Marines—as combat troops—not law enforcement personnel. Under the circumstances, I think it would be to everyone’s advantage to keep a trained and experienced police force on the job. Assuming, of course,” she looked into Montview’s eyes again, “that I could come to some sort of mutually acceptable arrangement with some local authority who could command that police force’s loyalty and obedience.”

“Actually, Milady,” Montview said after a moment, “our law officers’ formal oaths of office are sworn to the House of Thomas, not to the Solarian League or Frontier Security.” It was his turn to show his teeth. “An unfortunate oversight on their part.”

“Yes, it was,” Michelle agreed.

It was also fairly standard operating procedure for OFS, however. The legal fiction that the Protectorates were still independent star systems simply “under the protection” of the beneficent Solarian League required local régimes. Those régimes were well aware of the fact that they actually possessed no authority of their own, yet the forms were important. Michelle sometimes thought that was due to the Solarian League’s unhealthy worship of bureaucratic paperwork, but it was also a fig leaf which could be hauled out if some Solarian newsy muckraker started poking about. Imperialism? Oh, my, no! Perish the very thought! We’re simply here as advisers to support yet another neobarb star system in its painful march towards truly representative and democratic government! See? We can’t even give any direct orders to the local police force. They all have to go through the local, duly elected government.

“Should I take it, Mr. Prime Minister, that if I were to recognize—provisionally, of course; as I say, any decision I make would be subject to review by higher authority—King Lawrence as the local, legitimate head of state and charge him with creating a provisional government for the entire star system, he would be prepared to accept that responsibility under the protection of the Star Empire of Manticore?”

Montview’s eyes flickered. For a moment, Michelle wondered why. Then it hit her.

“Forgive me.” She shook her head. “That was clumsily phrased, especially in light of your star system’s experience of Frontier Security’s notion of ‘protection.’” She shook her head again. “Allow me to clarify what I actually meant.”

Montview took a slow sip of coffee, then set the cup on the saucer in his lap and nodded.

“While many of my decisions will be subject to review, Mr. Prime Minister, one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty at this time is that my Empress and her government have no intention of adding independent star systems forcibly to the Star Empire. Nor are we interested in controlling nominally independent star systems through puppet governments and protectorate arrangements. In fact, our recent expansion is going to leave us with some significant problems when it comes to integrating our new citizens into our existing political and economic system. We still don’t know how those problems are going to work out, although I’m optimistic that they will work out, but no one in the Star Empire’s government is eager to add still more potential headaches to the list. Holding down forcibly annexed populations would probably rate pretty on anyone’s list of headaches, I’d think, and that doesn’t even consider the fact that we literally cannot afford to fritter away the military resources we need against something the size of the League by tying them down on occupation duty just to keep our boot on the neck of someone who doesn’t want us running their star system.

“Because of the nature of our conflict with the Solarian League, however, it’s inevitable that we’re going to find ourselves doing very much what we did here—taking star systems away from Solarian control. When that happens, we automatically assume a moral responsibility for the future well-being of those star systems. We don’t want our actions to lead to wholesale violence, political instability, or the emergence of warlordism, and that means we can’t simply pull back out as soon as the local Sollies surrender. For that matter, if we did any such thing, it would simply invite the Sollies to return to the vacuum we’d leave behind us.

“As I see it, that means our best course of action is to encourage the formation of stable system governments. Independent stable system governments. In many cases, that’s going to be very difficult, for reasons I’m sure you understand.” Michelle’s Brown eyes turned grim. “Frankly, Mr. Prime Minister, the Meyers System’s been incredibly fortunate compared to the vast majority of protectorate systems. That’s the reason you and I are having this conversation. I believe there’s an excellent chance King Lawrence can form a genuine, popularly accepted government with our support, and I’m prepared to offer that support as long as he’s committed to forming a government prepared to safeguard its citizens’ fundamental civic rights and safety. I am not prepared to support him in the formation of any government which does not safeguard those rights and that safety.”

She paused to let that last sentence sink in, then leaned forward, resting her elbows on her thighs and clasping her hands under her chin.

“Should King Lawrence be interested in forming such a government, and should he be prepared to demonstrate guarantees for his subjects’ rights and safety, I’m prepared, provisionally, speaking for the Star Empire of Manticore, to acknowledge him as the rightful sovereign of the Meyers System, and to offer him a military and economic alliance with the Star Empire. We’re not interested in policing, occupying, or owning your planets, Mr. Prime Minister. We are interested in depriving the Solarian League of a foothold here or elsewhere in the Madras Sector, and our experience has been that offering a potential ally a helping hand instead of an iron fist is the best way to achieve a stable, long-lasting relationship. You might want to study the relationship we’ve achieved with the Yeltsin System and the Protectorship of Grayson.”

Montview sat silent, gazing into her eyes very intently for several seconds. Then he drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders.

“Obviously, I’ll have to discuss this with His Majesty, Milady. I believe, however, that you’ll discover this is no more than what he’s always wished it had been within his power to accomplish. I don’t say there won’t be problems. Among other things, I expect the Damien Moons to argue in favor of independence from the Kingdom. That’s where the most…recalcitrant of our people have relocated since Frontier Security’s arrival. They haven’t thought much of our ‘inner world’ softness and collaboration.” He smiled briefly. “Hard to blame them, really, but I’ve often wondered if they realized how much that ‘collaboration’ of the King’s had to do with Frontier Security’s leaving them alone out there.

“Aside from that, I think the political equation would work itself out much more smoothly than you might have anticipated. I also think our local police forces would be extremely grateful if we could establish a clear-cut source of local authority as quickly as possible. At the moment, everyone’s operating in something of the vacuum, and that means all of them are also looking over their shoulders, wondering what’s going to happen if and when you and your ships pull out.”

Michelle had gazed attentively at—and past—him while he was speaking. She’d watched Alfredo the entire time, and the treecat had sat upright on his perch, his full attention focused on Montview. Now he looked away from the prime minister, directly at Michelle, and nodded slowly.

“In that case, Mr. Prime Minister,” Michelle said, “I think it would be a good thing if you could arrange a direct meeting between me and the King, don’t you?”