THE SILESIAN COMMAND
Evelyn Chandler did a last quick check on her new uniform before proceeding to the pinnace hatch. The uniform which no longer included a white beret. In the past, Chandler might have looked at it with apprehension; indeed there were times when she had dreaded the time when she would no longer be in charge of her own ship. Now, it was simply one more reality she had accepted.
The flight engineer gave the thumbs-up to indicate safe seal and opened the hatch. Eve stepped out and floated down the connecting tube. Captain Angelique Strauss, the other passenger aboard pinnace Juliet Papa One, was just two meters behind her.
A line on the deck indicated where the gravity field started again and also marked the official beginning of the boat bay of Her Majesty’s Ship Nicator. The boat bay was huge compared to the one Chandler and Strauss had just left behind them, and despite the fact that this was a pre-pod design, it also reminded Chandler of her old superdreadnought command, which she had held only three months ago.
She caught the grab bar and swung across the interface into Nicator’s internal gravity, and the bosun’s electronic pipes whistled sharply and the side party came to attention.
“Cruiser Squadron Fifty arriving,” the boat bay officer announced as Chandler’s foot touched the deck.
“Permission to come aboard, Lieutenant?”
“Permission granted, Ma’am.”
“Juggernaut arriving” was the next call as Captain Strauss stepped into the boat bay as well.
Eve exchanged salutes with the BBOD, and then the young lieutenant stepped aside and made room for the short dark woman in the white beret. Chandler herself was rather small, but this woman couldn’t be taller than one hundred and fifty centimeters. Twenty less than Chandler herself.
“Welcome aboard, Commodore,” she said. “And welcome to Silesia. I’m Captain Beáta Robinson. Admiral Sarnow sends his compliments and he is expecting you in the briefing room.”
“Thank you, Captain Robinson.” Eve shook her hand, then indicated Strauss, who was the tallest and also thinnest of the three of them. “This is Captain Angelique Strauss, my flag captain.”
Robinson and Strauss exchanged handshakes, and then Captain Robinson’s gaze shifted back to Eve. “If you’d follow me, Ma’am. Captain.”
The lift car trip was long, and Robinson tried to make small talk, but Chandler wasn’t in a talkative mood. Strauss however substituted nicely, and the other two women began to discuss the uneventfulness of the voyage to Silesia and then moved on to the issue of the events of the last few months. Eve listened, but she seldom volunteered any information. After all, why say anything? It had all been said before. After five years of armistice, the Star Kingdom of Manticore was once again at war against the Republic of Haven. As if that wasn’t enough, Manticore and the Andermani Empire had formed an alliance and carved Silesia in half. Combine that with the fall of the High Ridge government, the withdrawal of Erewhon from the Alliance, and the disastrous destruction of the Grendelsbane shipyards and it could be called a very interesting few months. In the Chinese sense of the word.
The sudden eruption of hostilities was also the reason one Captain Eve Chandler found herself promoted to commodore, given command of a heavy cruiser squadron, and expedited to Silesia, all in the space of a few weeks.
The lift car came to a stop and Robinson led them down the last few corridors before to the flag briefing room. The Marine sentry announced them, and Eve and the two captains entered.
“Commodore Chandler and Captain Strauss of Juggernaut, Admiral,” Robinson said.
Admiral of the Red Sir Mark Sarnow sat at the far end of the table. There were two other officers present. One was a captain of the list with the braided aiguilette of a staff officer, but the other was a captain (JG) who was neither a staff officer nor wore the white beret of a starship commander. He looked a little out of place, but Chandler focused on Sarnow, who smiled slightly as she entered, then stood up and walked towards the newcomers.
“Commodore Chandler, welcome to Silesia! And it’s good to see you again!”
“Thank you, Sir. It’s good to see you again, too,” Eve said and meant it. Sarnow had reminded her of the simpler times, before . . . Well, of happier times. “This is Captain Strauss, my flag captain.”
Another round of introductions.
“You didn’t bring your chief of staff with you?” Sarnow asked then.
“I don’t have a chief of staff at the moment. I’m afraid my squadron got its orders to sail at extremely short notice. I had a chief of staff, but he took personal leave two days before we departed—family issues—and BuPers didn’t have time to find me a replacement. So now Captain Strauss shares a piece of that responsibility along with my operations officer and my flag lieutenant.”
“No surprise. Last time I checked, you commanded Queen Samantha in Home Fleet.”
“You’re right, Sir. I commanded Samantha up until a few weeks ago. Then one day I got rushed to the Fifth Space Lord’s office with the explanation that I was being promoted to commodore, given a cruiser squadron, and spacing out to Silesia ASAP.”
Sarnow chuckled. “I know the feeling well. That’s how I got the Silesian command, except that I was ushered directly to the Queen.” He noticed the puzzled look on the other officers in the room. “Commodore Chandler and I served together on Nike at Hancock. She was Duchess Harrington’s tac officer.”
“Ah,” Robinson said, and a new look of appreciation came to her face. Duchess Harrington had attained almost legendary status and many of her former subordinates had risen high in their own careers.
“You were also bumped to exec after Hancock, am I right?” Sarnow continued.
“Yes, Sir. I was Nike’s executive officer during refit and then during the campaign at Santander and Nightingale under Captain Van Wyhe.”
Sarnow’s smiled disappeared. “I also heard about your daughter, Eve. You have my condolences.”
Chandler’s face lost all emotion. “Thank you, Sir.”
Strauss knew the story. The others apparently didn’t, but decided not to ask. Sarnow indicated the other two officers in the briefing room. The staff officer was a broad-shouldered man with dark hair and a double chin.
“This is Captain Avery Talisien, my chief of staff. And this is Captain Lucius Hagen of the . . . BuShips, Office of Maintenance.”
That made Eve pause while she shook hands. Hagen was a thin man with fair hair and totally forgettable features. He noticed Eve’s pause and a mischievous grin appeared on his face. A grin not even Sarnow’s trademarked fierce grins could match.
But why would an engineer be included in this meeting?
“Sit down, Commodore, Captain. Sit down,” said Sarnow as he returned to his own chair. “I’m afraid you won’t be here long, Commodore Chandler. Normally, I would love to give you a few days to get your bearings and to invite all your captains to dine with me, but unfortunately, I need to send you to your patrol area as soon as possible. What do you know about the current situation here in Silesia?”
“I got a full briefing with Admirals Caparelli and Givens before I was sent here, Sir,” Eve said neutrally, after everyone sat down. “I know some of the older units of Task Force 34 stayed when Duchess Harrington returned to Manticore. I know your order of battle.”
“Yes, yes.” Sarnow smiled. “Including this squadron and my own flagship. They are also due to rotate back to Manticore in a few months, but I need them here. By the way, the CO of this squadron is Rear Admiral Webster, another old hand from the Nike.”
Eve smiled. Those really were simpler times in many ways. Samuel Webster had been Sarnow’s comm officer back then. At that time, he’d been junior to her but she had long since stopped caring about such things.
“I guess you also realize that our forces are stretched extremely thin,” Sarnow continued. “It’s nice to have battle squadrons, but what I need are destroyers, light cruisers,” he nodded to Strauss, “and heavy cruisers. You’re only the second cruiser squadron to arrive here, Commodore. The goal of my station, and of the Admiralty as well, I might add, is to have at least one RMN unit in every system in our half of Silesia. But while that may be the goal to which we aspire, so far our forces are stretched too thin. And we still need to decommission the entire Silesian Confederacy Navy. That’s the important step for securing this whole area. The first step, I’d say. To ensure the ships don’t fall into the wrong hands.”
Eve nodded. Piracy was always a problem in Silesia, and the recent annexation by Manticore and the Andermani Empire had not so far done much to ease the problem. It would happen in time, but for now, Silesia was a hotbed for every type of problem. Eve had read the briefs about the new “liberation fronts” and “freedom alliances” that had spawned all over Silesia. Various planetary governors and naval officers had decided they had nothing to lose and started to wage their own little wars against Manticore; independence movements that had been long dormant saw the change coming and figured they could use the confusion to take a piece of some planet for themselves. Eve was prepared to admit that at least some of them genuinely believed Manticore was the “evil invader coming to destroy their way of life.” But most of them were just corrupt bureaucrats and officers who knew Manticore was endangering their profitable status quo and were trying to fight it any way they could. And of course, many SCN captains might decide to start freelancing and become pirates themselves. Eve had been deployed to Silesia several times during her early career and knew that at least some of the SCN officers had indulged in a little piracy on the side even then, and the current circumstances could only make that even more tempting. That was why securing all the SCN fleet bases and shipyards was the top priority.
“We’ve lost some ships already,” Sarnow said, as if reading Eve’s thoughts. “Some Silesian skippers in Posnan decided to ignore the orders of their governors and went freelance. We managed to destroy them, but not without losing two cruisers and a destroyer first. That’s why I’ve assigned an entire battlecruiser squadron to Posnan and plan to take my battle squadrons on a show-the-flag trip around Silesia. I intend to visit every sector capital and get to know the situation personally. But in the meantime, I have smaller units like yours to help me put out all the fires. Your squadron’s going to the Terrance Sector, Commodore. You’ll be our senior officer there for the time being.”
Eve nodded. During the entire voyage from Manticore to Silesia via Gregor, she’d wondered where she would be assigned. Now at least that guessing game was over.
The admiral continued. “Terrance is one sector where we plan to decommission SCN units. Specifically, in the Caroline System. I’ve spoken with several of my economic advisors and we’ve decided that if we decommission most of the ships in a few selected systems, we can provide local jobs. Which surely won’t hurt our prestige.” Sarnow smiled faintly. “You do know what my position here is, Commodore, right?”
“Er, I know you are the commander of the RMN forces in Silesia, Sir,” Eve said.
“Yes and no. I have the command, but I was nominated as governor-general by the Queen as well as the CO of the newly formed Ninth Fleet, and my job is likely to become less that of a naval officer and more that of a governor soon. So I have to focus on things like economic growth in the various Silesian systems, and figuring out where we’ll decommission SCN units is a good first step. In the Terrance Sector, it will be the Caroline System. We need to decommission the ships in orbit, then several local and Manticoran companies are interested in breaking them up for parts before they go to the smelters for reclamation.”
“Will the Silesian ships’ crews go there voluntarily, Sir?” Strauss asked.
“You have to remember that Manticore and Andermani didn’t conquer the Silesian Confederacy,” Sarnow replied. “We struck a deal with the Confederacy government. The SCN’s ships received legal orders from their government to report to the Caroline System. Having said that, with an organization as corrupt as the Silesian Confederacy Navy—and the Confederacy itself—many of their ships’ officers have decided to run for it and became pirates, freelancers, or mercenaries, or have joined revolutionary groups.”
“What do these groups want to achieve?” asked Eve.
Sarnow opened his mouth, but Captain Hagen was faster.
“The usual: liberty, equality, fraternity. The happy mix.”
If Sarnow was annoyed at being interrupted by an engineer, he didn’t show it. He simply continued.
“We’ve sometimes put an officer and a small cadre aboard an SCN vessel to make sure it will arrive where it’s supposed to, but that can be dangerous. If the crew decides to go rogue, there’s nothing our people can do to stop them, unless we put a platoon of Marines aboard with them. Which we’ve sometimes tried, as well.”
“I understand, Admiral.”
“Yes, such jobs aren’t usually very popular with the poor guys and gals who get volunteered for them,” Hagen snorted.
This time Sarnow did throw a warning glance at the engineer before continuing.
“And the Terrance System—in the Terrance Sector—is where I need to send you now, Commodore Chandler. So far I have only three warships there for the whole sector: Wolfhound, Testudo and Claymore. A destroyer, a light cruiser and one of those old Broadsword-class Marine transport cruisers, respectively. Additionally, there’s one repair ship and one ammunition ship and several dispatch boats. I also have a two-ship battlecruiser division under Captain Ellis on its way to the Chalice Cluster—which nominally belongs to Terrance as well. Remember Chalice, Commodore? It seems some people actually remember Warnecke’s rule and wanted a second shot at independence. Nothing widespread or serious, but I’ve decided to send Ellis’s division there to show the flag. Either way, you’ll be senior officer in Terrance for the time being. Your main goal would be to oversee the decommissioning.”
“I understand, Sir,” Eve said.
“I hate to send you away so soon after your arrival, Commodore,” Sarnow continued. “But I have a dozen fires in Silesia to put out and your squadron is the only screening element I have available for that sector. We need to secure and decommission all the SCN units ASAP.”
“I understand completely, Sir,” Eve repeated. She might not have been in command of a force that was stretched as thin as Sarnow’s was, but she could certainly imagine it.
“That’s where I come in,” Hagen said. “I hope you won’t mind if I enjoy the hospitality of your flagship during our trip to Terrance, Commodore.” Hagen flashed another of his mischievous grins. What was this guy grinning at?
“Captain Hagen is in charge of decommissioning the Silesian units,” Sarnow explained.
“Ah, I see. We’ll be glad to have you aboard, Captain.”
Hagen flashed another of those grins.
“Thank you, Commodore.” He looked at Strauss. “I won’t bother you aboard your ship, Captain Strauss. I’ll have only a small staff. For the decommissioning itself, I will require the help of your ships’ crews, though, Commodore. BuShips has promised me a bigger unit of trained people. Unfortunately, they seem to be in the same place as Admiral Sarnow’s reinforcements.”
“And that’s where?”
Another grin. “Not here.”
Sarnow cleared his throat. “There’s still a lot to be done, Commodore. I’d like your ships to be on their way within twelve hours. I know that there’s a supply ship in Terrance, but if you have any pressing logistical needs, please bring them to my logistics officer.”
“I will, Sir, but I don’t believe we’ll have any.”
“Good. Then I would ask your intelligence officer to confer with mine so they can get on the same page. Once you arrive at Terrance, you’ll pay a courtesy call to the local governor, who’s been very cooperative so far. And make sure any SCN units there are sent to Caroline for decommissioning. However, due to the instability of the situation, I don’t want your ships to wander alone. You can split your squadron into divisions of two but not into individual units. Those are my standing orders. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“All right, I believe I’ve addressed the main points.” Sarnow looked at his chief of staff, who nodded. “Now if you’ll follow me to the CIC, my operations officer can show you my force deployments in more detail.”
“So our first goal is to proceed to Terrance to pay a visit to the governor and other dignitaries. Then to assist in decommissioning the Silesian naval units.” Eve Chandler nodded towards Hagen, whom she had invited to this briefing with her staff while Cruiser Squadron Fifty accelerated towards the Silesia System hyper limit, less than twenty-eight hours after they’d made their translation into the system. “Beyond that, the deployment orders are up to our discretion, and I’ll be the senior officer in the sector for the time being.”
“Yes, the burden of responsibility,” Hagen mumbled.
Strauss shot a glance at him. The engineer produced yet another of those mischievous grins.
Eve decided not to react, although some other staff members looked irritated.
“What is going to be the squadron’s disposition?” asked Lieutenant Commander Norman Bettany, Baron Black Oak. Chandler’s ops officer was the most nobly born of her officers. It was also unusual for someone so young to inherit a noble title, as Bettany was only thirty-two T-years old. But his mother, Baroness Black Oak, had commanded an SD(P) division that was destroyed at Grendelsbane during the Havenite attack when hostilities were resumed.
We’ve all suffered losses.
Eve replied to his question. “I’m getting to that. The admiral’s standing orders are for our ships to travel at least in pairs. For the immediate future, I’ll keep the squadron concentrated into two divisions.” Nods. Heavy cruiser squadrons of eight units were typically split into two divisions. “What I’m thinking is that we’ll proceed directly to Terrance with the first division and send Captain Pankowski’s second division directly to Caroline to help with the decommissioning.” She looked at Hagen. “How many SCN ships are there already?”
“About a dozen,” he said lazily. “I’d have to check my memo.”
“Then check it, please!” Eve managed not to growl. Hagen seemed to be one of the brand of engineers who were . . . not really thrilled about military discipline and all that. She remembered a deputy commanding officer of the Vulcan who been like that, as well. Never held starship command, never seen action, but was a miracle worker and good at organizing things.
Of course, Eve wasn’t sure that Hagen was good at organizing anything or if he had some other redeeming characteristics.
Now the junior captain looked at his memo. “According to my information—which is three weeks old—there are currently sixteen ships in Caroline. Four Silesia-class battlecruisers, six Jarmon-class heavy cruisers, two Wroclaw-class light cruisers, four Joachim-something-I-don’t-know-how-to-read-class destroyers. And only one of our warships there, Claymore.”
“I thought the standing orders were for warships to travel in pairs,” Black Oak objected.
Hagen produced another grin. “I guess Claymore didn’t get the memo. No, those were originally escorted there from the Silesia System by two divisions of our battlecruisers, but then one division had to go back to Silesia and the other proceeded to Chalice. Admiral Sarnow put prize crews on most of those ships in Silesia, so we had nothing to worry about with them. Claymore is now keeping an eye on things in Caroline.”
“And are the prize crews and Claymore’s crew already working on those Silesian ships?” Strauss asked.
“Yes, Captain, what they can do. Mostly they help ferry spacers to Mariposa, that’s the planet in the Caroline System. We’d need more people for the decommissioning itself. Has any one of you ever been involved in decommissioning?”
“I was once in a team preparing for the decommissioning of a flight of twenty old Falcon-class destroyers,” Eve said. “That’s about it.”
“All right,” Hagen continued, mostly for the sake of the others. “I’ll require a team of spacers from each of your vessels to assist with that. We don’t have the manpower to move so many ships to Manticoran shipyards to be disposed of, which is why we’ll be doing it locally. We’ll need a large local workforce to cut the ships apart, but before we let the civilians poke into them, we’ll need to make sure they’re permanently shut down. That will consist firstly of removing ordnance, perishables, fuel and computer cores. Then we’ll move on to removing the fusion plants. Luckily for us lazy engineers, all SCN ships, including their battlecruisers, have fusion reactors that can be ejected. Finally, we’ll open all airlock hatches and release the atmosphere.”
“And that situation,” said Eve, “is why I’m sending Pankowski directly to Caroline. The ships’ crews can immediately assist with the decommissioning.” She looked again at Hagen. “While I’m thinking of it, maybe you’d like to go with them, as well?”
Hagen shook his head. “Thank you, Commodore, but with your permission, I’d like to continue with you to Terrance. I have a few contacts there I need to make first, so I’d like to go with you.”
Another grin.
Black Oak cleared his throat. “Ma’am, can I make a suggestion? For the decommissioning, we’d need larger crews, so I’d suggest sending our older Star Knights to Caroline while we retain our Saganamis for patrol duties. We’d have to break established divisions but . . .” He shrugged and Eve decided he had a point. It wasn’t as if the divisions had been given much time to train together properly, anyway, and mixing it up might work.
Cruiser Squadron Fifty had been patched together really quickly, out of whatever units were available, after the resumption of hostilities. Juggernaut, Eve’s flagship, was the only Saganami-B-class ship. Taylor, Borelli and Locatelli were Saganami-As and Fearless, Druid, Star Warrior and Apprentice were older Star Knights. They had much larger crews—and much larger Marine complements—which would undoubtedly prove handy in Silesia in a host of ways. And Black Oak was right that sending the Star Knights to Caroline would provide more warm bodies for the tedious task of decommissioning.
“Good idea, Commander,” she said. “Put the new unit composition in writing. I’ll discuss it with Captain Pankowski. And we may just have enough time to do some squadron exercises before we split to our different destinations.” She smiled and remembered a phrase of her old teacher in simpler times. “Let’s be about it.”
“Admiral, Mr. Marius is here.”
Marcus Bartoli finished pouring his wine and smiled.
“Let him in.”
The hatch to his main dining room opened and Captain Christian Venner—Bartoli’s flag captain—escorted Marius and his bodyguard Sheila Lubke into the room.
“Ah, Adrian, welcome back aboard the Scimitar!” Bartoli rose and walked around the table. Before he shook Marius’s hand, he bowed slightly and kissed Lubke’s. She was one of those bodyguards who looked like a decorative companion or a professional escort, and she wore a long blue dress made of the best Hume silk. Bartoli knew that this kind of camouflage could be successful even in this modern day and age. In Haven, society was slightly more conservative and egalitarian. No one would ever dream of greeting a woman by kissing her hand. But both women like the one Lubke pretended to be and manners like hand-kissing were common in some parts of Silesia, and Bartoli enjoyed playing the role he was expected to play. Of course, he knew Lubke had one loaded pulser in her handbag and another strapped to her thigh. He’d also made sure that Marius knew he knew and that he’d let her come armed into his presence. After all, Marius would have to be royally stupid to try to assassinate Bartoli aboard his flagship. Not to mention that Bartoli was fairly certain that Marius was quite happy with the partnership they shared.
“Ma’am,” Bartoli said, once he let go of Lubke’s hand. Then he turned to Marius and their hands finally clasped. “I heard your mission was successful.”
“Indeed it was,” Marius grinned. As the former senior administrator in the Terrance Sector, he managed to get access to a great deal of information. And he knew many Silesian senior officers.
Officers like those of the SCN battlecruiser Autonomy, who had decided—or had been persuaded—to volunteer their freelance services to Bartoli rather than turn their ship over to be scrapped and lose their extra income. If Bartoli understood correctly, Autonomy’s crew had been one of the few Silly BCs that operated independently under the old government . . . and whose captain had managed to make some private deals with various pirates on the side.
“It’s four battlecruisers, six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and five destroyers. All of them are going to be in Caroline by next week.”
Bartoli beamed. “Excellent! So, please, sit down!”
Both his guests and Captain Venner took their seats at the richly decorated table in a compartment that was equally richly decorated. Originally it had served as a flag deck gym, but Bartoli had refurnished it and now it was a luxurious dining suite. The deck was covered with what looked like old wooden parquet flooring and ancient-looking paintings—the best-looking replica of some ancient oil on canvas—hung on the walls. It didn’t follow any particular style. Bartoli didn’t know much about ancient interior decorating styles, but he liked it. Especially since his former colleagues in State Security would consider it “elitist,” “bourgeois,” “decadent,” and worst of all: “something Legislaturists would do; not something the warriors of the people should do.” There were many reasons why Bartoli had entered StateSec years ago. The desire to “fight for the people” was not one of them.
After his guests were seated, Bartoli selected a bottle of wine and personally poured a glass for each of them. That was another piece of theatrics he enjoyed. Everyone would expect someone in his position to have an army of stewards, and he liked to do these things himself to throw everyone off balance. And if StateSec had taught him anything, it was to function without a steward.
Marius wasn’t a fanatic, and neither was Lubke. Like Bartoli, they wanted to take the biggest bite possible from the carcass that now was Silesia. For many senior bureaucrats like Marius, the sudden imposition of Manticoran and Andermani rule meant they’d suddenly been cut off from their source of extra income. Bartoli, on the other hand, saw it as an opportunity. That’s why he decided to take Scimitar to Silesia. The full implementation of the new order would take decades, and change of regime always created opportunities.
He raised a glass. “So, here’s to our mission, ladies and gentlemen.”
The invitation called for mess dress uniforms, to the great dismay of everyone in CruDiv 50.1. But protocol had to be followed, so Evelyn Chandler, her staff officers, the captains of her ships and a few others had to don their “monkey suits.”
So now, Eve stood on the giant, luxurious open balcony in Governor’s Palace on Terrance. The palace was on the edge of the mountain ridge overlooking the capital city of Barnaros on one side and the Pinaros Mountains on the other. The panorama was spectacular and Eve enjoyed the view of the beautiful mountain massif that almost allowed her to forget that there was a city of five million on the other side of the palace.
There were about two hundred people on the balcony. Governor Braun had decided to throw a party in honor of the Manticoran people “finally stabilizing Silesia.” Eve didn’t doubt that Magdalene Braun was as corrupt as they came, but she seemed to realize that the old ways were over and that she needed to support Manticore and hope for the best.
From what Captain Blackridge, the CO of Testudo, told Eve, this was one of several parties, formal dinners and receptions the governor had organized since they’d been here.
Eve’s squadron had arrived two days ago and things seemed at least a little less hectic here than in the Silesia System. Blackridge, along with Commander Kozlov from Wolfhound, had explained the situation to Eve and discussed possible patrol areas for her squadron. The repair ship Anders was also in orbit, and Eve had given permission for her to repair the Number Two Gravitic Sensor Array aboard Locatelli before continuing to the Caroline System. That was why Captain Donner wasn’t at this party; she was overseeing the repairs to her ship.
So Evelyn Chandler was walking around, sipping her wine, mingling and making small talk. She had just tactfully disengaged from a conversation with a planetary agriculture minister who was telling her passionately how interested he was in the way farmers grew crops on Manticore, especially how they grew neocorn. Eve had had to bitterly disappoint him by telling him that she had no idea how Manticoran farmers grew neocorn.
After the minister left, she spotted Captain Lucius Hagen coming more or less toward her. He was laughing and several people in the vicinity turned their heads towards him.
“Are you enjoying yourself, Captain Hagen?” she asked politely when he was within earshot.
He chuckled. “No!”
“Why not?” she asked.
“Huh, what?” Hagen finally looked directly at her. Eve could guess from the smell coming off him that he found something considerably stronger than the local wine to drink. Terrance was famous for its brandy.
“I asked if you are enjoying yourself and you said no. Don’t you like this party?”
“Oh, enjoying myself! Yes, Ma’am. I’m enjoying this party a great deal. I thought you asked if I’m behaving myself.” He laughed again. People were starting to turn heads towards them.
Eve couldn’t believe this. For a few seconds she couldn’t comprehend this man, a Queen’s officer, behaving like that at the party like this.
Dignitaries, politicians, everyone was looking at him.
She took a step closer and fixed her eyes on him. “Pull yourself together, Captain Hagen!”
He laughed again. “Ma’am, I’m as together as I can be!”
The smell of brandy was strong enough to make her slightly drunk.
She grabbed his arm, then scanned her surroundings. She noticed Captain Veronika Salasek, the CO of Juggernaut’s Marine detachment. Next to her was one of Juggernaut’s midshipmen, who Captain Strauss had brought with her to learn the social skills required from any Queen’s officer.
Social skills indeed.
Both were already looking at Eve and Hagen and when the Commodore nodded, the Marine stepped towards her with the middy in tow.
“Major Salasek, take Captain Hagen back to the spaceport and hand him over to the shore patrol and Marines. I want him back aboard the flagship and under quarters arrest until I say otherwise. I’ll have words with him later.” She turned her gaze to the midshipman and ignored Hagen’s mumbled protests and laughs.
“Midshipman Hansen, I’m making you responsible for escorting Captain Hagen back to his cabin aboard the flagship. You are under my orders and you are going to ignore any attempts he may try at ordering you to do anything. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Ma’am!” the youngling said.
“Get him out of here!”
The guests at the party watched as Salasek and Hansen hauled the engineer away. Some politely turned away; no one dared to comment on it.
Eve tried to calm down and threw a reassuring smile at the minister who was standing nearby. He smiled knowingly back.
Who was this Hagen? Was he stupid or suicidal? This could very well cost him his career. Eve didn’t mind officers letting off a little steam. She had done that herself on more than one occasion before . . . before she lost Diana.
She put that thought quickly aside. Hagen was behaving like he didn’t have a worry in the world.
“I hope the Silesians don’t consider this guy a typical Manticoran officer,” she murmured to herself.
“Pardon, Ma’am?”
She cursed herself. She didn’t realize she’d said that so loudly. But when she turned, she saw only Commander Black Oak; thankfully no Silesian was within earshot.
“Commander Black Oak, I just said that I hope people won’t think Hagen is a typical Manticoran.”
“I still can’t get used to that name. I still don’t feel like a baron. But you’re right. He is strange. And frankly, I don’t understand his behavior.”
Eve wondered about the advisability of discussing a senior officer with another who was his junior, but given the situation, it didn’t matter much. Hagen wasn’t Bettany’s—Black Oak’s—direct superior and he wasn’t even a line officer. He was a yard dog and a pretty low breed at that.
“Like the fact that he is behaving like a disgrace to the uniform? I’ve had to straighten up some officer who got a little out of line on shore leave, but never a JG captain. How can he get this drunk?”
“No, Ma’am. I meant something else. Did you know that one of my uncles is an actor?”
Eve blinked at the sudden change of topic. “No, I didn’t know that.”
Black Oak smiled. “It’s not something you’d expect from nobility, right? Well, Uncle Theodore is rather far removed from our title, but I know him well. He’s a stage actor and works in the Royal Theater in Landing.”
“I see. And why are you telling me this?”
“Because I wanted you to know that I’m rather close to actors and acting, Ma’am. And because of that, I can tell the difference between someone being drunk and someone pretending to be drunk.”
Eve’s eyes widened. “You are saying Hagen isn’t really drunk?”
“Yes, Ma’am. He’s sober. He put on a good show, but you could see it in his eyes. They were still sharp and looking exactly where they wanted to. They were the eyes of someone who knew exactly where he was and why.”
“But why would he run around a party like this pretending to be drunk? Why did he let himself be dragged away?”
“I wish I knew, Ma’am.”
Hagen welcomed her with a smile and all-too sober expression when a Marine escorted Eve to his cabin aboard Juggernaut.
“Hello, Ma’am. It’s kind of you to visit.”
Eve wanted to say something but stopped herself. She turned to the Marine.
“Leave us, Private.”
“But, Ma’am . . .”
“I said leave us.”
The Marine didn’t argue anymore. He gave Hagen a stern look and then left the cabin and closed the hatch behind him.
“Captain Hagen, you’d better explain yourself.”
“Since you sent the Marine away, maybe you have some idea, Ma’am?”
Another mischievous grin.
Eve’s eyes turned cold. “My idea is that I can send you back to Manticore on the next dispatch boat with an efficiency report that’s going to guarantee that you’ll never ever wear this uniform again, Captain Hagen. And if you have something to say which would change my mind, you say it now. For one thing: Why pretend you were drunk when you weren’t?”
Hagen nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. But I needed your reaction to be genuine.”
“You what?”
“I work for the Office of Naval Intelligence. You could say I’m the chief spook for the Manticoran Sector here in Silesia.”
Eve stared at him for several seconds, then just nodded slowly. Somewhere inside, she had suspected. Or more precisely, she’d suspected that Hagen was not just an engineer. She just hadn’t known what Hagen really was. Black Oak had probably guessed more; that’s why he didn’t trust him.
And now the question was if anyone could trust him.
“You can verify my story in the last download you received from Nicator before leaving Silesia for Terrance. There’s a coded file named Report on the Export Values of Terrance Agricultural Products—strange how the best way to hide important documents is to give them a totally uninteresting title. You can open it using your flag officer command code. There you’ll find my name and confirmation of my position from Admiral Givens.”
Eve was still frowning. “I thought Sarnow’s intelligence officer was in charge of this kind of work in Silesia.”
“Captain Scott is a great guy, but his job is to analyze all the information that comes to him. My job is to travel around, make contacts, reestablish old contacts and be the point man for any intelligence operation in the field. Admiral Givens decided someone like me is necessary here after she discovered how her predecessor underestimated—and screwed up—the intelligence operations in Silesia . . . and everywhere else, for that matter. So, I use my job of decommissioning SCN units as an excuse to travel around Silesia. I’m naturally the pain in the posterior that makes lots of smartass remarks, so no one takes me very seriously.”
“Yes, you certainly excel at the last thing. But why did you need to pretend to be drunk?”
“So I could be seen like that in public—somebody who may have a little drinking problem who embarrassed himself so badly he had to be hauled away. Next time I’m on the surface, I’m the vulnerable link. Someone who’s made a mistake and whose career hangs in the balance. I know there are some people on the governor’s staff who would approach me. Who want someone on the inside on the Manticoran staff. They are going to court me and make me their snitch.”
“And who might want to do that? And why?”
“Admiral Sarnow got an intel report that some forces are not keen on our plan to decommission the SCN ships. And want to do something about that.”
“You mean on the governor’s staff?”
“On the staff, some separatists, or even the crews of those ships themselves who might want to try some piracy instead of turning their ships to scrap. Since I’m the engineer in charge of decommissioning, I’m the natural target for their interests.”
“So your plan was to make yourself an embarrassment and then wait and see who comes to you?”
“Essentially.”
Eve sighed. “And those are the admiral’s orders?”
“Yes, but the method is mine. No one suspects a loud total jerk of being a spy.”
Eve studied him for a moment. “The problem is that you’ve dug too deep a hole for yourself, you know. I can’t just let this slide. But there is a solution.”
“Yes?”
“You stay a few more days under quarters arrest, then you get to the planet. I’ll let the crew know that I dropped a hammer on you. Or let them assume it, to be exact. Then you’ll behave at all the staff meetings, to reinforce the fact that I’m giving you one last chance. I understand you are a spook, but I can’t have you embarrassing the whole squadron. Is that clear?”
Mischievous grin. “I believe I can work with that, Ma’am.”
“What the hell is going on?” asked Captain Oleg Pankowski, as he stormed onto the bridge of HMS Fearless.
Alarms were still ringing through the hull and he made his way to the master plot.
“Two bogeys, Skipper,” the exec said. “The impeller signature is huge.”
Pankowski saw it. It was decelerating directly toward the system’s sole habitable planet, where his division was supposed to start decommissioning the Silesian warships in orbit.
Pankowski’s four-ship division had arrived in the system barely thirty hours ago. They had decelerated to the same destination for Pankowski’s first courtesy meeting with Captain Johnson from HMS Claymore, whose people had already started working on two of the Silesian vessels. Pankowski’s officers were now putting together a plan to send teams from each of the four Star Knight-class ships to the Silesian vessels to start work on the decommissioning before the repair ship Anders arrived, along with Captain Hagen. Pankowski was actually looking forward to the job.
But now they had a bigger problem.
“One of the contacts is definitely in the superdreadnought range, Skipper,” the tac officer said.
“Is it ours or someone else’s?” asked Pankowski. But he’d been briefed on deployment patterns, the same as Commodore Chandler. No Manticoran superdreadnought was supposed to travel here. “And what’s a single superdreadnought doing out here?”
Ships of the wall didn’t operate solo, or with one smaller ship; they operated in entire divisions and squadrons. And if this was a raid, no sane Navy would have used superdreadnoughts in the first place. Hitting a system like Caroline with SDs would be an extreme case of overkill.
Unfortunately, their mysterious visitor didn’t seem to mind that it was overkill.
“It could be a CLAC,” his exec suggested. “Havenite CLACs are the same size as SDs . . . so are the Graysons for that matter.”
“Maybe,” Pankowski agreed. “What about the other ship?”
“CIC believes it to be battlecruiser-range.”
“When will they reach us?”
“Present course and acceleration, in three hours twenty minutes,” the tac officer said.
Pankowski watched the approaching icon. It would have been better if it was a CLAC. Against a bunch of LACs, his five cruisers would have at least some chance. The same chance as against a battlecruiser.
He was proud of his ship and he had a thing for the Star Knight class. His first assignment after his snotty cruise had been aboard Star Knight herself, a year before she was destroyed in the first days of the war. But four Star Knights and one Broadsword-class cruiser were no match for any ship of the wall.
“We seem to be too late,” Captain Venner said testily, as Bartoli studied the master plot.
Scimitar, accompanied by the Silesian battlecruiser Autonomy, was decelerating towards the depot.
The depot with four extra Manty ships.
“The intel said there would be one vessel as escort,” said Bartoli. “The intel could have been wrong, but I think they’ve arrived recently.”
“And what if they didn’t?”
“If all the Silesian ships have full Manty decommissioning crews aboard, there’s nothing we can do, and we’ll retreat. Win some, lose some. But I don’t think this changes anything just yet.” He kept looking at the master plot. “Send a signal to our people in the system.”
Pankowski watched the master plot and the icon coming towards them.
“It’s confirmed, Sir!” said the tac officer. “The battlecruiser is a Silesia class. The SD is definitely a Peep ship, though. CIC is ninety percent certain it’s a DuQuesne class.”
“Pre-pod design,” said the exec. “At least that’s something.”
“Not that it’s going to help us much,” said Pankowski. It was clear to him what had to be done.
He loved his ship. He knew that when Star Knight was the newest class of heavy cruisers, it had been the plum assignment for any young captain. Duchess Harrington had engaged a Peep battlecruiser—and won—with this very ship!
Pankowski knew these ships could do lots of things. But he wasn’t crazy. It would be something else if his ships had pods, but they didn’t even have that.
“We have to retreat,” he heard himself saying.
“Sir, our people are still on those SCN ships,” the exec said.
Pankowski closed his eyes. Most of the ships had a small, Silesian station keeping crew numbers of a few dozen people at most. But two of them, a destroyer and a heavy cruiser, had a big team from Claymore working there.
“Signal the work crews to evacuate immediately back to Claymore.” He turned to the astrogator. “Debra, do we have enough time to evacuate our people and avoid action?”
“Yes, Skipper,” the astrogator said. “Assuming the whole evacuation won’t take more than an hour, at least.”
“But we can’t pull out the Silesian station keeping crews, too,” the exec pointed out. “They can evacuate in lifeboats, but the window’s too tight to ferry them all aboard here.”
“Tell them to evacuate and set course to pick our people up,” Pankowski said.
“Skipper,” said the comm officer. “The Silesian crews aren’t responding to our hails.”
Pankowski turned to the comm station. “None of them?”
“Correction, all but two aren’t responding.”
“We got the message, Sir,” Bartoli’s comm officer said. “Lots of comm traffic in the clear, but our signal is amongst it.”
Bartoli smiled as his two ships accelerated towards the Manties and their Silesian prizes. “Very well, let me speak.”
“Yes, Sir. Live mike.”
“Attention all Manticoran units in the Caroline System, this is Admiral Sterling of the Republic of Haven’s ship Soult. We are liberating this system for the people of the Silesian Confederacy. You have no way of winning an engagement with us. Withdraw and we guarantee we won’t pursue you. To the Silesian vessels and crews: do not resist, we are on your side and we are here to help you maintain your independence against Manticore and the Andermani Empire.”
Pankowski exchanged looks with his exec.
What the hell?
“What’s the ETA on our returning crews?” he asked.
“The last shuttle is docking with Claymore right now, Skipper.”
“Good. And the Silesian ships?”
“Two have evacuated, the rest are not responding.”
Pankowski tried to think. He was responsible for the stationkeeping crews, but at least they could safely evac those ships. Hopefully the Havenites wouldn’t have any reason to blow up decommissioned ships and, whatever else had happened since the Theisman coup, the Havenites seemed to avoid atrocities. For a moment, Pankowski thought the Havenites might want to board those vessels, but that didn’t seem plausible. Why would they bother? Anything the SCN had was hopelessly obsolete even by the standards of the pre-war People’s Navy. Now that the Peeps had SD(P)s and CLACs themselves, they wouldn’t care for any Silly ship.
But they could blow them out of space just for good measure.
“Order the Silesian crews to evacuate the ships and make for Mariposa.” Mariposa was the sole habitable world in the Caroline System. “If the Peeps overtake them, they’re ordered to surrender.”
No one protested, but that didn’t stop Pankowski feeling like a traitor. He was responsible for those ships.
“Set a course towards the hyper limit and to give a wide berth to the Peep superdreadnought. Then contact Claymore. I want to speak with Captain Johnson.”
“What are your plans, Sir?” the exec asked.
“I’m going to keep the division in system to keep an eye on the Havenites. And I’m going to send Claymore to Terrance for help.”
As his division raced towards the hyper limit, he found out to his astonishment that the superdreadnought had started to send small craft towards the SCN vessels.
Oh my God, they are boarding the decommissioned vessels.
His decommissioning crews had slagged the engineering net’s computers aboard the heavy cruiser and the destroyer upon which they’d been working. Repairing that would require complete replacement, which no one would be doing anytime soon. But the rest of the ships had little more than caretaking crews that probably couldn’t even sabotage the ships in any meaningful way before they were boarded. And why had they stopped communicating?
As he sent Claymore out of the system to raise the alarm, all he could do was keep his four heavy cruisers on station and watch helplessly.
And try to come up with some semi-sane reason a Havenite superdreadnought with a Silesian battlecruiser would come and try to steal the Silesian fleet.
There were better days and there were worse days.
Eve Chandler had never been much for comfort and, as a naval officer, she had gotten used to the spartan accommodation a Queen’s ship offered. However, she couldn’t help but notice that, despite the smaller complement and high degree of automation, the flag quarters aboard Juggernaut were considerably smaller than the captain’s quarters aboard Queen Samantha, her last command. That was to be expected, as a Saganami-B-class heavy cruiser was almost twenty times smaller than a Medusa-class superdreadnought. She didn’t mind too much, but as Diana used to say, “one gets used to the better things fast.”
The thought of Diana hurt her, another stab of pain that she was now only too used to. Chief Steward Mandalo stopped pouring her coffee when he noticed her expression. She made a don’t worry gesture and he continued. Mandalo had been with Chandler for a short time; her previous steward Chief O’Keefe, who’d been with her ever since she’d made captain of the list, had retired from the Navy just a few months before the resumption of hostilities. Mandalo was a capable steward, but he was still learning the quirks of his new charge.
“Thank you, Denver,” she said to him, and tasted the coffee. One thing Denver Mandalo was not good at was making a proper cup of coffee. That was mostly her fault, since she’d grown accustomed to Army coffee, which—as everyone agreed—was something totally different from what spacers and Marines drank. Some said that most of the Army coffee ingredients weren’t even in the Periodic Table. Chandler’s ex-husband Mike was an Army reservist and he had introduced her to it. And Diana had loved it as well. Maybe that had influenced her decision to go into the Army.
Another stab of pain.
Chandler shrugged and tried to work on the regular paperwork as Mandalo left. Irrationally, she felt guilty, as well. She was supposed to get over it! So many people had lost their loved ones in the war. Her own ops officer had! Why was she like this even years afterward?
She remembered how hollow and broken Honor Harrington had looked when she reported back aboard Nike after Paul Tankersley’s death. How deep in grief she’d been. But that was only for a short time. Then the despair made way for purpose. Honor had first shot and killed Pavel Young, then basically helped build the modern Grayson Space Navy from the ground up. Eve Chandler had had to go on compassionate leave with half-pay for how long? Two T-years? More? Even now she didn’t remember how she survived those first days.
Her therapist had explained to her that each human reacts differently, that it wasn’t a competition. She had to face her own griefs. She knew all that, but it had still helped to hear it from somebody else, and the therapist might have been the sole reason she was still alive. She’d also come to realize that the pain would never go away, she’d only get used to it. And in time, she’d started to manage to function. Her therapist had suggested she get back to work and so she had. During the ceasefire and the Janacek downsizing, there hadn’t been that many billets, but her former CO from the Nike, Cindy Van Wyhe, now a rear admiral, understood her situation and got her the command of an SD(P) in the Home Fleet. While the Janacek-appointed Home Fleet CO had let the general readiness of the fleet slack, that hadn’t been true of HMS Queen Samantha or her squadron, and Eve had always loved the drills, the day-to-day work. She’d thought she’d get back on the horse.
And she had. To a point. But the job she loved and that she did well, had become . . . distant. Like she was dealing with every routine and every problem through a thick pane of glass. Like she was separated from it. Like there was just a huge momentum propelling her forward.
For some reason, the feeling had gotten worse once she got to Silesia. Maybe because life aboard a superdreadnought in Home Fleet was a comfortable routine. Here she had a command of eight ships and was responsible for their deployment across the whole sector. She knew she’d do her job well, and she trusted her own abilities, but the feeling of detachment grew even stronger.
And every once in a while, a dangerous thought crept in.
What if I can’t do it any longer, whatever I tell myself?
She kept on reading reports and managed to stay focused on them. Captain Donner had finally gotten the sensor array for Locatelli replaced and certified. They’d received a dispatch saying that the ammunition ship Katla was en route.
A buzz announced that she had a visitor.
“Commander Black Oak to see the Commodore,” the Marine sentry announced.
“Send him in.”
The youthful operations officer entered, and Eve wondered if he was struggling with the same demons as her.
It’s not a competition, a voice that sounded like her therapist’s whispered in her mind.
“Ma’am, I have the squadron deployment plan you requested.”
Eve nodded and invited him to take a seat. “All right, let’s do it. Do you want some refreshment?”
“Yes, thank you, Ma’am. If Denver can produce a cup of coffee that isn’t the awful Army stuff, I’d happily accept a cup.” He smiled and Eve found herself chuckling. It was as if her old personality always tried to pop out when she wasn’t looking. Her old cocky self.
Black Oak pulled out his minicomp. “Basically, Juggernaut and Locatelli would travel to Caroline on schedule. Taylor and Borelli would take the southern route towards Frieda, their first stop would be Margot and then . . .”
Twenty minutes later, she got a priority message from the duty comm officer that Claymore had translated out of hyper and Black Oak’s carefully planned deployments would come to naught.
“A superdreadnought!” Captain Strauss exclaimed. “A fucking Peep superdreadnought!”
“Is it one of the ships Duchess Harrington fought at Marsh this January?” Black Oak asked.
Captain Johnson of Claymore, who’d come aboard Juggernaut to present his report personally, shrugged. “There’s no way to establish that one way or the other. But it was definitely a pre-pod design. And they’re accompanied by the Silly battlecruiser.”
Eve’s staff had assembled in the flag briefing room along with Captain Johnson and even Captain Hagen, who had managed to behave himself since her talk with him and whom she invited to this meeting.
Now the commodore sat and watched as her command responsibilities became much more complicated.
“The Havenites who attacked our base at Marsh in January had both pod and pre-pod designs,” Lieutenant Basil Sit, Eve’s staff intelligence officer, said.
“And don’t forget that they’ll probably still be in transit home to Haven after Duchess Harrington licked them,” said Lieutenant Angela Garba, staff astrogator. “It’s a long way, especially if they have damaged ships, since they can’t use the Gregor or Basilisk Terminus.”
Angelique Strauss looked like a confused hexapuma. “I agree that once hostilities resumed, commerce raiding makes sense, especially since our forces in Silesia are stretched so thin. But it seems too soon.”
Eve looked at Johnson. “You’ve had the longest time to think about that, Captain. What do you think?”
The CO of Claymore shrugged. “I think this ship must have come out of the Havenite fleet while it was retreating. If I’d been the CO of that fleet, I’d definitely see the appeal of leaving some ships behind to attack our supply lines.”
“Yes, but why a superdreadnought?” Strauss asked. “That’s what seems crazy to me. Commerce raiding is part of every war, but why not leave a squadron of battlecruisers for that? Who’d send a lone superdreadnought?”
“A moron?” Black Oak asked and then shrugged. “Sorry, but I remember the saying that while we shouldn’t underestimate our enemies, it can be even more dangerous to overestimate them. It’s possible the Peep CO thought a superdreadnought would be useful. Or several of them. We’ve encountered only one so far, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any others.”
“I’d point out that ONI has confirmed that the Havenite fleet that attacked Marsh was commanded by Lester Tourville,” Sit pointed out. “I’d happily acknowledge that the man is an asshole, but he is not stupid.” He blushed a little. “Pardon my language.”
“I’m sure the good Commodore has heard the word before,” Captain Hagen mused.
“Why are you even here again?” asked Strauss, but Eve raised her hand. She’d have to tell the crew eventually, but that’d be for another day.
“To the point raised by Basil and Norman,” she said, nodding towards Sit and Black Oak and ignoring Hagen, “I’d point out that even the best of strategists can simply do a really stupid thing. As you probably know, I took part in the Sixth Fleet’s offensive towards Trevor’s Star, I was at Santander, Nightingale, Seabring . . . Earl White Haven and Admiral Kuzak are two of the best tacticians and strategists the Royal Navy has and even they made mistakes.” She should know; she’d commanded the Oracle as part of the screen at Seabring. White Haven had massively miscalculated there, and it had cost Eve a fifth of her crew. “Maybe Tourville saw something we didn’t or had a plan we don’t understand.” She shook her head. “But we should focus on the problem at hand, people. We have an enemy ship of the wall in our territory. And the fact is that it could destroy the infrastructure of every world in the sector before we get reinforcements strong enough to stop it.”
“True, although it’d need ammunition,” said Strauss, who had calmed down. She didn’t even spare a glance at Hagen. “Of course, the Havenites could have detached a supply ship to support her.”
“There’s another thing that concerns me,” Eve said. “Apparently it was sending boarding parties to the decommissioned Silesian ships. Why?” She glanced at Johnson. “Again, you’ve had some time to think about it, Captain. What do you think?”
“I think they may want to give those ships to some anti-Manticoran faction or liberation groups. Donating some of their own vessels to them like they did at Masada might have been better, since they’d be more modern and more dangerous, but using SCN ships makes sense if it was something the retreating Havenite CO—Tourville—conceived on the fly. If nothing else, their new owners would be more familiar with their systems and capabilities. Spares and ammunition would probably be easier to come by, as well.”
“And then it would make sense to use an old pre-pod SD,” Black Oak interjected. “At least some sense. They have very large complements so they can afford to detach lots of personnel as prize crews.”
Eve nodded. It was time for her to make some decisions.
She knew what she wanted to do and what she ought to do.
She still seemed detached from it all.
Looking at the problem through thick glass.
“All right, people. First, we need to send reinforcement requests to Silesia but, more immediately, we need to call in Captain Ellis’s battlecruisers. We have one dispatch boat. I plan to send her on the longer leg to Silesia and detach Commander Kozlov’s Wolfhound to Jarmon, where Captain Ellis should be by now. If she finds them there, they’d proceed over here.”
“And do you plan to go to Caroline immediately?” Strauss asked.
“No.”
Eve could tell they weren’t particularly happy about that. “We’ll wait for Katla. She should arrive any day now, and she has pods in her cargo holds. I know the Star Knights don’t have the fire control to handle many pods, but our Saganami As and Bs have, and so does Testudo.”
“But there’s a danger that the Peep will leave in the meantime, along with all the Silesian ships,” Black Oak observed. Some members of the staff used the term Havenite rather than Peep, to acknowledge the change of regime in Haven. But for Black Oak, they were always going to be Peeps. It was the current regime that had killed his mother.
“You’re right, Norman,” Eve said. “But some of those vessels were so far decommissioned it’ll take time to get them moving again.” She looked at Hagen. “Captain Hagen, how fast do you estimate the ships can be recommissioned? Is it even possible?”
“Of course it’s possible,” Hagen said. “Especially since we haven’t started to work properly on most of the ships yet. And . . . well, it doesn’t matter. They can get the ships underway and out of the system. Especially since the vessels still have their fusion cores aboard. But it’s not going to be that quick a process.”
“Either way,” Eve said, “we need to prepare to move on a moment’s notice. Cancel all leave and bring our impellers to standby. I have a few orders to write.”
Eve had just sent the dispatch boat and Wolfhound on their way and was in a meeting with Angelique Strauss over coffee—both the Army and the Navy versions—when the Marine sentry announced Lucius Hagen.
“Commodore, may I have a moment?”
“Captain Hagen, we’re really busy,” Strauss half snapped. The engineer had worn out his welcome as far as she was concerned.
“I know, believe me. Do I look like someone who would just bother you if it wasn’t important?”
“Yes!”
“Anyway, I’m sorry to disturb you both,” said Hagen with an expression that said that he really wasn’t. “I just need to ask you for a ride. I need to get down to the planet surface.”
“What?” Eve put her coffee back on the table. “Captain Hagen, you’ll need to accompany us and ascertain the condition of those Silesian ships if we find them in time.”
Another mischievous grin. “Don’t worry, I plan to accompany you, but I need to get to the planet now.”
Eve frowned. Apparently this was the spook part of his persona.
The persona Strauss didn’t know yet. As became painfully clear when the flag captain almost thundered: “You do recall that I’ve cancelled all leave and all our shuttles and pinnaces are now ferrying crews back to their ships. And we need you here.”
Strauss saw Eve’s expression and stopped. Then she looked again at Hagen. “Unless you are not really an engineer.”
“Oh, I am an engineer. It’s just not all I do. I work for the Office of Naval Intelligence.”
Strauss looked at Eve, and she nodded. “It’s true. I learned that after his . . . outburst at the reception on Terrance.”
“My drunken outburst bore fruit,” Hagen said. “I’ve made some contacts and as you remember, I told you about some forces that would like to get their hands on some Silesian Navy hardware. But I didn’t know they’d have a Havenite superdreadnought.”
Strauss was still gaping. “But why the charade?”
“If I look like a pain in the posterior, nobody takes me seriously.”
Eve chuckled. “Yes, you certainly excel at that. All right, so why do you need to get down to the planet?”
“Because I’ve made some contacts there and . . .” He looked at Strauss. “I originally wanted to tell you in private, but I can use the good captain’s opinion as well.”
“What is it?”
“I’m going to meet a Havenite official.”
“You’re what?” Strauss shouted.
“See? That’s the perspective I was talking about.” He turned back to Eve. “Yes, before the resumption of hostilities and the annexation, Haven had a trade consulate here. And as is usual, half of the people on the trade consulate were spies.” Another grin. “Amateur! An engineer is much better cover than a trade attaché.”
“Captain Hagen . . . !”
“My point is that these people are now waiting for a lift home. Their trade mission was officially closed here, and they need to go back to Haven, but it takes time. Anyway, when we visited the governor’s palace, and when I pretended to be drunk, you remember? I know I didn’t fool the good Commander Black Oak—must be his noble genes—but I may have fooled you. Anyway, I went into the city to establish some contacts. One of those contacts apparently got in touch with the local Havenite consulate and one of their liaisons, a gentleman named Preston, has contacted me.”
“And he wants to meet you?” Eve asked.
“No, he told me the short version, that the superdreadnought in Caroline is a renegade warship and not part of the Republic of Haven Navy.”
“That’s rubbish,” Strauss said.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Anyway, he’d like to meet me.” He looked at Eve. “And you too, Commodore. Apparently, he wants someone of sufficiently high rank to convince them he is telling the truth.”
“Absolutely not, Ma’am!”
Eve Chandler remembered the days aboard Nike when Honor Harrington returned broken with cold grief from Grayson, accompanied by the Grayson armsmen who guarded her overzealously.
At this moment, Captain Veronika Salasek, the CO of Juggernaut’s Marine detachment, was willing to give the Graysons a run for their money.
“I need to do it, Major,” Eve said to the Marine, using the traditional courtesy promotion, so there would be only one “Captain” aboard the ship. It was interesting that it was used only with Marines; other naval officers of the rank of captain were simply addressed by their rank and name, like Captain Hagen.
“No, Ma’am, you don’t,” Salasek said. “You’re a flag officer and you’re all too likely a prospect of assassination. Remember the Peeps have always loved their assassinations.”
Eve realized the prospect of potential assassination—and of being the victim of one—didn’t bother her in the least. And it wasn’t because of any bravery on her part, it was . . .
She pushed the thought aside.
“There’s a source of information about our current mission and I need to meet him,” she said again.
Salasek was not impressed. “Seriously, Ma’am, what if you get killed?”
More calmness. Eve looked at Angelique Strauss who was standing behind her commodore, apparently in agreement with her senior Marine.
“In that case, the mission will continue in Captain Strauss’s capable hands.”
“This is no joke, Ma’am!”
“I know it’s not, and I’ve made up my mind.” Eve said. “I’m going down to the planet. Unless you two,” she glanced at Strauss and back at Salasek, “want to tie me up in my quarters?”
Something in Salasek’s expression suggested that thought had occurred to her. She took a deep breath. “All right, Ma’am, but I’m going with you, along with a squad of my Marines. And that’s not negotiable.”
Eve sighed. “All right, just stay out of sight.”
“Oh, believe me, I’ll deploy my people around so that they stay out of your sight and out of sight of every Havenite assassin that might be lurking there somewhere.”
Eve was wondering if she needed another Army coffee or some booze. Things were happening really fast.
Salasek left and Strauss cleared her throat.
“Commodore . . .”
“Please, Angelique, I’m going down.”
“I know . . . I wish I could talk you out of it, but I know I can’t. I know you well enough for that. But I wanted to suggest you should take someone else with you.”
“Thank you for the offer, Angelique, but I need you here. Not to mention that I meant what I said to Salasek. You’re the most senior captain in the squadron, and you take over if anything happens to me.”
“I know. I’m not recommending myself. You should contact Locatelli and tell Captain Donner you need one member of her crew. A plotting specialist first class named Leo Statman.”
This was now beyond ridiculous. “A who?”
“Spacer First Class Leo Statman, a plotting specialist, Ma’am. He’s been adopted by a treecat.”
Eve opened her mouth and then closed it again. A treecat. She hadn’t even known there were any treecats in her squadron. The only treecat she’d ever served with was, of course, Nimitz when she was aboard Nike. She’d never doubted the ’cat’s intelligence or his telepathic abilities. She even knew that they’d mastered sign language since then.
And that they could tell if somebody was lying.
“I see,” she said. “I’d best contact Captain Donner then.”
Juggernaut’s pinnace arrived safely at the Barnaros spaceport on Terrance and Eve disembarked, accompanied by ten Marines and Lucius Hagen.
On the ground, she learned that the pinnace from Locatelli had already arrived. Captain Donner had accompanied her spacer herself.
“Commodore Chandler!”
“Captain, I didn’t expect you here.”
Donner glanced at Hagen. “Well, let’s just say I didn’t want to send my spacer alone . . . especially if ONI is involved.”
“Believe me, Captain, we’re mostly harmless.” Characteristic grin.
Donner was not amused and nudged the youthful spacer. “Here’s the one you wanted.”
The spacer was on the smallish side. Smaller even than Eve. He was a boy who probably wasn’t much over twenty, although it was hard to tell with prolong. His fair complexion and scared eyes made him look even more like a kid. He wore the blue stripe of the astrogation department and had spacer first class insignia. But his most distinctive feature was the cream-colored treecat on his left shoulder.
“Spacer Statman?”
“Y-yes, Ma’am! Leo Statman, Spacer First Class!”
“Keep calm, Mr. Statman. And what is your companion’s name?”
“Tebo.”
“Tebo?”
“Yes, Ma’am . . . like . . . ahem . . . like the magical tiger from the HD show Lost Mountain.”
Eve suppressed a smile. “I see. Do you know what you two are supposed to do?”
“Well, Ma’am, the Skipper—I mean Captain Donner—explained it to me sort of, Ma’am, but . . .”
“It’s simple. We need to know if the Havenite contact is lying. You’ll stand behind me, pretending to make notes like a yeoman would. Then Tebo will verify if what the Havenite said is true. Can you do that?”
“Well . . . I’ll do my best, Ma’am.”
“Just stand behind me and don’t draw attention to yourself. Can you do that?”
“I really don’t know, Ma’am! I’m no spy or diplomat! I just signed up so I’d have money for college.”
He looked like he would soon explode from pure nervousness. Eve remembered how Duchess Harrington told her treecats were supposed to make their adopted persons more composed and calmer. If that was true, she didn’t want to know how Statman had behaved before the ’cat adopted him.
“Don’t be afraid. It’s not that difficult. You’ll just sit and Tebo will do most of the work anyway.” Eve smiled at the treecat who bleeked happily.
“Y-yes, Ma’am.”
Eve turned back to Hagen and Salasek. “I guess it’s time we paid your contact a visit, Captain Hagen.”
It was late afternoon on the planet and Ragusa Park was almost empty. There were some animals in the river which looked like Old Earth coypu. Eve didn’t know enough about that to determine if they were real Old Earth rodents the colonists had introduced here or just something very similar looking.
But she did notice a man standing on the edge of the river and feeding the little animals, which surrounded him since he was giving them food.
She wondered if the old-regime Dolists worked in the same way.
The man turned toward them as Eve, Hagen and Statman—and Tebo—approached him. Captain Salasek had deployed her Marines. No one knew how exactly it worked now with the jurisdiction of the Marines and the local police, but luckily Juggernaut had a competent JAG officer who’d almost certainly figured it out.
And if not, well, Eve had bigger problems on her plate.
She focused on the man and there was something in his stance and posture that made her wonder if he was military. He had brown eyes that seemed too big for his small head, which was shaped like a ball mainly due to his very short hair. He was taller than Eve, and those large eyes quickly measured her and Statman—and Tebo—before turning towards Hagen.
“I was wondering if you’d come.” They turned to Eve again. “Commodore Chandler. Pleasure to meet you. I’m Rear Admiral Jeremiah Preston.”
“You’re the Havenite contact?”
“Yes. I wanted to talk to you personally, to tell you what’s going on. And I’ve studied a file on you.”
Eve didn’t know if she should be pleased to know the Havenites had a file on her.
Preston offered her a sad smile. “Yes, yes. We have a file on you. In fact, we stood against each other once in a battle. I was in command of Mustafa at Seabring in 1911.”
Eve’s eyes widened. That was the intel failure she’d mentioned before at the briefing. Her own ship, Oracle, had suffered heavy damage and she’d had to limp back to Manticore for repairs that took over three months.
Maybe it was some sort of maneuver from this man. Maybe that’s what Hagen thought, when he spoke a bit abruptly.
“You can exchange happy war stories later. But I believe you wanted to speak with the Commodore for a different reason. So speak. And I hate to tell you the unhappy news but, since you’ve identified yourself as an officer, you could technically be arrested. But I’m sure the Commodore will be kind if you just say what you came here to say.”
Preston chuckled. “I’m no longer an officer. After Seabring, someone in Haven considered me politically unreliable, so they sent me here on a trade mission. At least they didn’t shoot me. But yes, I want to tell you about the ship that pushed your forces out of Caroline.”
“That would be welcome,” Eve said. “And how did you learn about that?”
“We have our sources.”
Eve nodded.
“For our part, we’re still wondering what you’re going to tell us and if your story isn’t just an elaborate ruse to give us false information.” She smiled bleakly. “And given your government’s recent sneak attack and your doctoring of the diplomatic correspondence, we are hesitant to trust you.”
“We didn’t falsify the correspondence, but I know there is no point arguing about that now. And I believe I know enough about the Manticoran star system’s fauna to guess the reason you brought your spacer over there.” Preston smiled and looked sideways at Statman and Tebo. The young spacer blushed while the treecat simply stared at the Havenite intently. “So shall we get down to it?”
“You wanted to speak to us, so speak,” Eve said, refusing to be taken aback by the fact that Preston had guessed what Statman was there for and what treecats could do.
“As you wish.” Preston took a deep breath. “The superdreadnought that attacked you doesn’t belong to the Republic of Haven Navy. It’s a renegade ship commanded by a man named Marcus Bartoli. He used to be a captain in the State Security Fleet Forces. About two years ago, when we were about rounding up the last remnants of the SS loyalists, he was in charge of holding the New Rodrigo shipyards against our forces. Seven superdreadnoughts and numerous smaller vessels were docked there, and Bartoli didn’t have any staff to crew those ships. Just as our strike force was arriving in the system, Bartoli sent a proclamation that he and all his men and women ‘are children of the revolution and will never let any of the traitors lay one finger on a shipyard that belongs to the people.’ He then blew the shipyards up and all the ships with it. We assumed he went with it too. He even became a sort of martyr for the various former State Security groups in exile. Those who call themselves the People’s Navy in Exile and similar names.”
Eve spared one look at Tebo and the treecat nodded slowly.
Preston continued. “A few months ago, we got reports about a superdreadnought operating outside of Silesia and so I investigated. It turned out to be our old friend Bartoli, who never really exploded with the shipyards. He packed his bag and ran and took one of the superdreadnoughts along with him, as well as several service ships and smaller vessels. It’s ironic. He’s regarded as a martyr by many of the ex-SS goons, but he’s really just an opportunist.”
“And your fleet that attacked us at Marsh didn’t encounter him?” Eve asked.
“No, that wasn’t its job and even I wasn’t aware of its plans and goal.”
Tebo nodded.
“I won’t disclose any operational details and, in my position, I don’t know all that many. But we had some ships here before, tracking him, and we found one system where he does business, a system called Quatre Bras, to the galactic east of Silesia. But then the relationships between our nations . . . got worse and we had to focus on different problems. But we do know that, apart from his superdreadnought and a few support ships, he employed several former SCN officer and pirates.”
Another slight nod from Tebo.
“And why do you think he attacked Caroline now?”
“I believe he wants a bigger fleet—and it’s easier to get spares for cruisers and battlecruisers than for a DuQuesne-class superdreadnought. I understand he has already procured one Silesian battlecruiser. But for him, a ship of the wall is a matter of prestige. While many local star nations have cruisers and destroyers, no one has ships of the wall.”
Eve looked at him. “And why are you telling us? From your perspective, he’s helping Haven now, no?”
Preston shrugged. “Believe me or not,” he winked at Tebo, “I love the new regime, no matter what happened between our star nations. And I don’t want people to think Bartoli’s actions are sanctioned by us. And I think the galaxy would be better off with one less warlord like him.”
Tebo nodded again.
“And I want a piece of him, yes, even indirectly. Of him and all the SS bastards.” He produced a small data chip. “Here’s all the information I have. His base is in the Quatre Bras System. From what we know . . .”
“He said what?”
Despite being Baron Black Oak, Lieutenant Commander Norman Bettany sometimes had a tendency to forget protocol.
Not that anyone could blame him in this case, as Eve Chandler met with her staff in Juggernaut’s briefing room.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” Black Oak quickly added. “What I meant to say . . .”
“I understand, Norman, believe me,” Eve said with a smile. “I can understand that. And to answer your question, yes, Admiral Preston said that Marcus Bartoli wants to steal as many SCN units as he can before retreating from Silesia and founding his own empire somewhere to the galactic east of here. The Quatre Bras System is most likely going to be one such subsidiary. Preston thinks that Bartoli plans to subjugate one or more star systems in the area; some through bribes, some through a show of force, some through straight-out conquest. The first time the Havenites got wind of it was when a Havenite trader spotted his superdreadnought in Quatre Bras and reported it back home. They also have a few reports spotting Bartoli in several other places. Bartoli apparently flies in with his superdreadnought—originally it was named Soult, now he calls it the Scimitar—to demonstrate his power and invites the local government representatives to discuss alliances. To be honest, I don’t know enough about the local political systems to know what kind of response he’s likely to get, and our shipboard archives are very incomplete in this area. But it’s safe to say that Bartoli wants some of those systems east of Silesia. One way or another.”
“But . . . but that’s crazy, Ma’am,” Black Oak said. “He must know he can never get away with this!”
“Can’t he?” Captain Strauss asked quietly.
“Well . . . of course he can’t!” Black Oak was taken aback. “Once we know about him, we’ll shut him down!”
“Will we?” This time it was Eve who asked that question. “Think about it, people. From his point of view—Manticore and Haven are fighting for their lives. Haven can’t spare a force to send after him this far out. We may be almost next door to him, but we have our work cut out for us. Hell, half of the political commentators at home are saying Manticore’s bitten off more than it can chew with Silesia, and that’s not counting the Talbott Cluster. He knows that it may very well take a decade—or more—before we have Silesia in such order that we can feel really secure here. He undoubtedly plans to shift the blame to Haven, that’s why he claimed to be a Havenite admiral. And even if shifting the blame doesn’t work, he doesn’t know we know about Quatre Bras. From his perspective, he has a pretty good chance of becoming a king or some sort of ruler in his own little empire.”
“I still don’t believe he’ll pull it off,” Black Oak protested stubbornly.
“You don’t? Ask Gustav Anderman. In two hundred years, Bartoli might be seen by historians the same way we regard Anderman now. And Anderman certainly ‘pulled it off.’”
“Christ,” Lieutenant Sit murmured. “And here I was, thinking Silesia was crazy enough without mad StateSec officers turned renegades turned empire builders.”
“I’ll be the skeptical one, but can we trust this Preston in the first place?” Lieutenant Garba asked. “Granted, we talked with him with a treecat present and granted, he gave us some files but still. I find it hard to believe.”
“Well, the treecat confirmed Preston was telling the truth,” Eve said.
“Yes, Ma’am, I know.” The astrogator nodded. “But while I may not know much about treecats, they can’t be omnipotent lie detectors. People can train themselves to resist all kinds of interrogation techniques, so why not to resist a treecat? Especially since the Peeps seem to have a fairly good idea of how treecats work ever since they captured Duchess Harrington. For that matter, the ’cat can only tell if Preston believes he’s telling the truth. They could have planted him with false information.”
“I think you’re reaching, Angela,” Sit told her.
“I may be. But I am not prepared to just take Preston at his word. With or without the treecat.”
“We’re not taking him at his word,” Eve said. “Lieutenant Sit,” she nodded to her intelligence officer, “and his people will go through all the information in detail. In the meantime, we’ll proceed to Caroline once the squadron assembles here. If the Havenite ship is still there, and if we have the tactical advantage, we’ll engage her. If she’s not there, we’ll go to Quatre Bras. As for Preston telling the truth or not, well, I don’t believe anyone would try this as some sort of complicated ruse. What would they gain by that? Taking us to Quatre Bras on a wild goose chase? What difference would that make to them? We still plan to go to Caroline first, so it’s not like they’re diverting us from that system.”
No one said anything, and then Black Oak cleared his throat again.
“I understand that, Ma’am. I just . . . It’s hard to trust the Peeps. Especially after they falsified the pre-war correspondence and attacked us . . . But you’re also right, that . . . well, I can’t imagine this giving them any advantage. Falsifying the correspondence and the sneak attack clearly did give them an advantage. This? Not so much.”
“Exactly.” Eve took a small breath and looked over her officers. “We’ll definitely have to send another message to Admiral Sarnow. And in the meantime, we’re waiting for Katla and hopefully also our battlecruisers.”
Recommissioning vessels was a slow process, but not that complicated, given that the Silesian watch keeping crews hadn’t done any permanent damage to the ships.
The destroyer and heavy cruisers whose engineering systems the Manties had wrecked were inoperable, but the rest were serviceable and now in the process of being restored.
Four Silesia-class battlecruisers, five Jarmon-class heavy cruisers, two Wroclaw-class light cruisers, three Joachim Cheslav-class destroyers were in condition good enough to repair. Especially the battlecruisers were going to be a huge prize.
Marcus Bartoli was happy as he observed the work from Scimitar’s flag bridge.
His flagship was placed to cover a least-time approach to the planet, but it was also close enough to the hyper limit for a quick withdrawal, in case the Manties came calling with a much heavier force than expected. The battlecruiser Autonomy, supplied by Marius, had been stationed in planetary orbit to keep an eye on the Silesian ships.
Two battlecruisers had already departed from the system, as well as three heavy cruisers and all the destroyers. Scimitar had escorted each batch of ships to the hyper limit to make sure the Manties wouldn’t try anything.
The four Manty heavy cruisers watching the system worried some of his people, but Bartoli wasn’t concerned. After all he was part naval officer and part member of the secret police and there were some rules that were valid in both institutions. If you know who your spy is, you don’t remove them, because then you risk a new spy arriving whom you know nothing about. You let them be and they’d lead you to all their friends.
But soon Bartoli would leave the system with Scimitar, Autonomy and all their prizes.
The current standoff had lasted for seventeen days, now, and Bartoli knew that the voyage time from Terrance to Caroline was much shorter than that. So the Manties had to be assembling reinforcements before going against him with confidence of someone who knows (or at least thinks) they can take on a superdreadnought.
And on the seventeenth day, the Manties arrived.
“Talk to me!” he told his ops officer.
“CIC thinks the huge ship is one of their Volcano-class ammunition ships, the other big contact is probably some sort of repair or service ship,” the officer said. “These two aren’t accelerating towards us. The rest are warships, and the two biggest of them are definitely battlecruisers.”
Only two battlecruisers. Bartoli watched. The four Manty cruisers observing the system were now moving to rendezvous with the main Manty force.
Which meant they weren’t confident in their advantage. But on the other hand, they could be carrying pods.
Bartoli knew how effectively Manties could use pods even before they started building the hollow-hulled ships of the wall full of pods. They’d used pods effectively even at Hancock at the very beginning of the war.
He checked his plot. He knew the Manties could see his own superdreadnought so close to the hyper limit on the opposite side of the ecliptic. And they would soon realize they had no chance of catching Scimitar, so they’d proceed to the Autonomy and remaining ships with Bartoli’s crews aboard. And they wouldn’t be able to do anything against the Manties. Even if they didn’t have pods—which they damned well would have, with the ammunition ship along—two Manty battlecruisers against one Silesian wouldn’t even be comparable.
Bartoli had managed to get what he could from Caroline. But his time had run out, and he would have to cut his losses.
“I think it’s time we implement Silent Stalker,” he ordered.
Captain Venner looked at him from the screen that connected Bartoli to the main bridge. “Are you sure, Sir?”
Bartoli nodded. “Yes.”
“What about our people on those ships?” Venner asked quietly and Bartoli shook his head. They both knew what had to be done. In New Rodrigo, they’d blown up a whole shipyard to cover their escape.
The crews aboard the ships here in Caroline didn’t know that, but they knew they were playing a dangerous game.
Eve Chandler was also thinking about how she’d used pods to destroy lots of Havenite battlecruisers and even some dreadnoughts at Hancock. As the tactical officer of the squadron flagship, most of the nuts and bolts had been her job. But now, it was more complicated as her reinforced task group had joined with Fearless, Druid, Star Warrior and Apprentice and they were slowly decelerating toward the depot.
Wolfhound had returned in time with the two battlecruisers of Captain Ellis’s division, Royalist and Xerxes. Luckily they had only been wrapping things up in Chalice and Eve’s orders hadn’t really destabilized the situation elsewhere. What was better, Wolfhound had also found the light cruiser Aspis, a sister ship of Testudo in the system on an unscheduled visit. That was great, because newer vessels like the two Avalon-class light cruisers or her own flagship could handle many more pods thanks to their increased fire control.
So that was their plan. The task group was accelerating towards the Havenite superdreadnought—named Scimitar, according to Preston. The ammunition ship Katla had given pods to every vessel, and they’d all been slowly moving towards the system primary. A ragtag group of eight heavy cruisers, one Marine support cruiser, two Reliant-class battlecruisers, two light cruisers and one destroyer.
All fourteen of them massed barely more than half as much as their massive opponent, and not one of them could match her firepower or the thickness of her massive defenses. But simple size wasn’t everything.
Of course, Ghost Rider reported that the superdreadnought was already almost at the hyper limit. That geometry meant they were unlikely to catch the SD if she decided to run, and Captain Pankowski had already reported that several of the Silesian ships had left the system before Eve’s arrival, but the enemy battlecruiser and remaining SCN ships were too far in-system to escape.
Everything still seemed too distant to Eve. She was still watching it through that pane of glass. She hoped the battlecruiser crew wouldn’t be stupid and would surrender before she had to kill them.
But everything was distant.
Something was off.
“They must have expected us,” she said. “They’re waiting at the edge of the system.”
“In their place, I’d have done the same,” Strauss said. She was standing with Eve, along with Black Oak and Hagen. The flag captain would go to the command deck soon, but they still had time and she was still a member of Eve’s staff, and not everything could be discussed through visual pickup.
Like this strange feeling Eve had.
“Am I missing something?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t know, Ma’am,” Strauss said. “We can’t catch the Havenite; he was ready for us. But why hasn’t he translated out already? Maybe he’s just a cool customer. On the other hand, he has time and he can wait and see what’s going to happen.”
Hagen started whistling something on the flag bridge.
Which was even more annoying than his usual manners.
“What are you whistling?” Strauss asked.
“You don’t know? It’s an ideal melody for long deep space travels. It’s called The Blue Danube. I’m surprised you don’t know it, Captain. After all, your name is Strauss.”
“Tell me, does being so obnoxious come naturally to you, or is it part of your image or cover as a spook?”
“Well, I’d say half and half. On the other hand, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it as well. I always strive to be annoying in new and original ways.”
“Yes, and you’re succeeding,” Strauss said, but she also smiled. Given the danger that was coming at them, it was actually refreshing to be irritated by the simply obnoxious Captain Hagen.
Bartoli watched the Manty task force closing in. Autonomy’s impellers had been on standby when the Manties arrive, and the battlecruiser was already racing towards the hyper limit on the far side of the system, but it wouldn’t escape the Manties.
Neither would the remaining Silly ships with Bartoli’s crews aboard. Crews that knew about his base at Quatre Bras.
Only Scimitar would escape. She’d already crossed the hyper limit, which had taken her directly toward the enemy, but unlike Autonomy, she would disappear into hyper well before the Manties could range on her. Which left only one thing to do.
He entered a combination on his keyboard and the Scimitar sent a signal.
One hundred and fifty-two seconds later, the light-speed command reached its destination and Autonomy and the remaining SCN vessels exploded. The nukes he had installed aboard each of those ships did the job.
No prisoners the Manties could interrogate.
Bartoli didn’t like doing it. He’d once worked for StateSec and he knew how to be ruthless, but he wasn’t malicious. He didn’t enjoy it, and he knew that good people were hard to come by. More to the point, if his long-term plans were to work, he needed a cadre of loyal people. Of course, he still had lots of SS fanatics under his command who were almost eager to sacrifice themselves. Some had blown up on those ships, some remained on Scimitar. Unfortunately, he also needed people who weren’t fanatics, and by and large, he preferred living loyal people who weren’t fanatics.
But sometimes he had to be ruthless.
Like at New Rodrigo.
The flag bridge was very silent.
The sensors had noted the explosion of the parked decommissioned ships and of the enemy battlecruiser.
And now the Havenite superdreadnought’s icon vanished from the plot, as well, as she translated into hyper.
Eve watched it all helplessly.
Could she have prevented this? Come up with better strategy? Could she really not be as focused and involved as before? Before . . . ?
Was she just an automaton, performing a set function? It had worked in Home Fleet in de facto peacetime, but not here in Silesia!
“Lay in a zero-zero course for the depot,” she heard herself saying on autopilot. Other standard orders followed.
“Look for survivors from those ships. Then contact Mariposa. I’ll have to speak to the local authorities, hear it from their perspective and tell them what happened.”
“And then, Ma’am?” Black Oak asked.
She said nothing. They should go to Quatre Bras. Immediately. In Bartoli’s wake. But he could have many other SCN ships or maybe even ex-Havenite vessels. What she had here was ample to bring down one superdreadnought—if she used pods. But there was a limit to the number of pods she could tow, which imposed a limit on her maximum throw weight. If she had to face Scimitar when the SD was backed by many escorts and other ships, to help blunt her salvos . . .
But Bartoli could disappear. For six months. For a year. And then attack something else. Somewhere else.
Maybe someone with more vision should take over.
Someone who wasn’t totally detached from everything.
How she envied Honor Harrington. She could always go on, finish the job. Do what was needed.
Evelyn Chandler had thought she could too. But she couldn’t.
“I’ll inform you later,” she said finally. “Stand down from battle stations and bring the whole task group to condition two. Instruct Captain Johnson to take charge of the search and rescue; his ship is best suited for it.”
She left the flag bridge as soon as possible.
Chief Mandalo had prepared a cup of Army coffee for her along with some refreshments, but she didn’t want either. She just . . . wanted to be alone.
She had been in her quarters for barely thirty minutes when the Marine sentry announced Captain Hagen.
Her jaw tightened. The last thing she needed just now was the spook and his utterly annoying personality, and she hovered on the brink of telling the sentry just that. But she couldn’t, of course.
“Enter,” she said, instead.
He came in.
“Yes? What is it, Captain?”
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Commodore. Just wanted to point out that there were no survivors on those decommissioned ships, no one to interrogate.”
“I see.” The pane of glass was still standing. “You’re about to suggest we go to Quatre Bras?”
“Yes, the sooner the better.”
“I’m not sure we can accomplish anything without reinforcements.”
“Bartoli is still there, I’m sure you line officers can figure out something.” This time he grinned.
“I’m not sure I can, Captain. Maybe we’ve run out of tricks.”
“We? Or you?”
Eve frowned. “Captain Hagen, I’m sure you need to be elsewhere.”
He didn’t take the hint. Or more precisely, he did, and just decided to ignore it.
He stopped smiling.
“So, Commodore, how exactly did your daughter die?”
Eve’s head snapped towards him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I asked how did your daughter die, Ma’am. I understand I may be opening old wounds, but since we have so many fresh wounds, maybe we should open some of the old ones as well. Create a good mix. And since we aren’t going to pursue Bartoli, we don’t have much else to do except talk. Frankly, you look like you need to get that off your chest. You’ve been behaving like a tightly sealed pressure cooker ever since I met you. So I thought it might not hurt to talk about it. You certainly don’t talk about it to anyone else. But naturally, if you choose to answer ‘none of your frigging business, asshole,’ then I completely understand.”
Eve fought the urge to punch him.
This was really over the line. How dared this bastard ask about Diana in this way? Bringing back all those memories at a time like—
The mental pane of glass shattered.
“She was just twenty,” she heard herself say hoarsely. “She was in the Royal Manticoran Army, a private in the 198th Shadow Vale Regiment. I never forced her to join the Navy or any other branch but one day, in the last year of high school, she just decided to go. I was in deep space, fighting the Peeps, when I got the message. I remember how proud I was of her. The Royal Army expanded exponentially in wartime, you remember? She got through boot camp and other training and then she was shipped to one of the Peep star systems we’d conquered, Samson, two weeks before her twentieth birthday. She was there barely twenty-four days when she was killed along with eight other soldiers by a State Security suicide bomber with a small vest pocket explosive.” She looked at the ONI agent. “Just like that. He was just walking along their patrol. She was just twenty!”
“I thought the SS didn’t have enough fanatics to do something like that. It’s more fitting for a place like Masada.”
“That’s true. Diana was just lucky to get killed by ‘one of the few.’”
Hagen was silent.
“We were having a party on the Athena for the exec’s birthday when I found out,” Eve continued, still not believing she was telling this to Hagen, of all people. “The com officer took me aside and told me. I remember that I didn’t say anything. I just went to the forward observation lounge, and I just stood there. For hours. I don’t know. Looking at the stars. I asked to be relieved there and then and my request was granted. I still missed the memorial service. And then . . . commiserating with my ex-husband, family reunions . . . it all seems like a dream. Afterward, I thought I should just dig back into the job, but even that didn’t work, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t.”
A lone tear appeared on her cheek.
“I got compassionate leave of absence and went home. I just . . . couldn’t do anything. People around me were angry about the ceasefire, about Janacek. I got condolences from Duchess Harrington, Mike Henke, Cindy Van Wyhe, all my other colleagues and friends. But I couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t get back to work, do something, anything. They all suffered losses and could go on, were examples to others. I was just . . . broken. I just couldn’t. I’ve been like that for almost two years. Doing nothing. And when I got back to space and got a new command . . . it just was so different. Like it was all far away. Distant. I think of it as being behind a pane of glass. And I’ve lost something. My therapist would probably tell me there’s no shame it that. But Bartoli slipped away because of me.”
“No, he didn’t,” Hagen told her. “There was no way you could have caught him before he hypered out. Or done anything to save the ships he blew up. No one could have.”
“But if I’d waited to deploy Pankowski until Katla came up, sent him with pods in the first place, Bartoli could never have—”
“And you couldn’t do that, either,” Hagen pointed out. “Your orders were to deploy him as soon as possible, not wait weeks until Katla turned up.”
“But—”
“If this was a case of failure, I think it was a collective one,” Hagen said firmly. Then he looked at her, and for once there was no sign of his smartass personality in his expression.
“Commodore,” he said almost gently, “for what it’s worth, I’m sorry, Ma’am. I didn’t mean . . .”
Eve smiled weakly. Her brain was looking at all the shattered pieces of the mental glass. “You did mean to. You did.”
Hagen shrugged. “One advantage of being obnoxious is that I don’t have to worry about other people’s delicate feelings. Sometimes I have to poke the hornet’s nest.”
Eve shook her head. “So, what now?”
“I think you compare yourself too much to other people, struggle with accepting grief, and blame yourself for everything. There are no standard responses to losing a child or how long it should take to get back to your life and work, if you ever manage it at all.”
“Yes, my therapist told me all that.”
“Or course she did; she’s no doubt a smart woman. But she’s also not here. We are, and we have a StateSec warlord to catch.”
Eve looked at him. “Just like that? I have valid reasons to wait, you know.”
“Of course I know, Ma’am, but we both know that there’s also the fear that you’ve screwed up, you’re not up to it anymore, and that you can’t do it. And we both know that’s bullshit, Ma’am.”
Eve stared at him. “You do realize that you’re not supposed to talk to your superior officers like that?”
“Feel free to arrest me and demote me. But please don’t let my fate stop you from going to kick Bartoli’s ass. And unless I’m mistaken, you have a score to settle with the StateSec people, no?”
“You think you can motivate me with a vision of revenge?”
“You’d be surprised how well that works. As an ONI agent I can tell you that the best spies are those who are out for revenge. Idealists are unreliable, and those who do it for money can be bought by someone with bigger wallet. But revenge, oh my, that’s a great motivator.”
She let Hagen go. She still wanted to be alone. After he left, she was at first angry at the bastard. And he hadn’t really told her anything she didn’t know before.
But while she was alone, finally eating the food her steward prepared and drinking coffee, she found herself thinking about Bartoli and the whole situation.
Thinking . . . and being involved.
For the first time in . . . she didn’t even know.
And then she decided.
The flag bridge was rather quiet when Eve appeared.
“Set course to Quatre Bras, Ms. Garba,” she said to the staff astrogator. “The task group will depart as soon as we finish going over the wreckage.”
The crew snapped to action.
Eve Chandler wasn’t sure she wasn’t reacting anymore, but she intended to find out.
“The yard master says that the first Silesian ships can be ready within a few weeks,” Captain Venner stated, once he’d been ushered into Bartoli’s private cabin aboard Scimitar. “Per your instructions, I have them working on the battlecruisers first.”
Bartoli nodded. His richly decorated dining table supported an equally rich dinner. Venner knew his admiral’s routines and knew that Bartoli had to enjoy dinner even now. Or maybe especially now. He knew that Bartoli wasn’t just having dinner because he was hungry or because he wanted to show off. It was a psychological game. He’d contacted Prime Minister Montero and Prince Tannah while he was eating to make the slight suggestion that he wasn’t worried all that much about the recent unpleasantness and that he was feeling confident.
Venner had been invited to dinner, but excused himself, preferring to oversee the yard workers as well as the return of the prize crews back aboard Scimitar from the captured vessels docked at the Harlequin Station, the main shipyard and port in orbit around Navarra, which itself was the sole inhabited planet in the Quatre Bras System.
Venner was happy it had all worked out. He hadn’t wanted to encounter the Manties, and he was delighted they hadn’t had to fight their way out of Caroline. However, they might still need to—
A sharp buzz sounded from Bartoli’s desk and he reached for the intercom button.
“Yes?”
“Bridge, Lieutenant Daumier, Sir. We’ve just picked up a hyper footprint. A big one, coming in on a bearing for a least-time course from Caroline.”
Bartoli and Venner exchanged glances and Venner felt as if his bones were suddenly made of ice.
“The Manties,” Bartoli said, and Venner nodded.
“How could they have found us?” Venner asked.
Bartoli’s expression mirrored the surprise of his flag captain. He didn’t expect this. Not so soon. “Give me details!”
“It’s hard to tell at this distance, but the impeller signatures are almost identical to the ones at Caroline.”
Bartoli had already known that had to be the case. But how could they have found him? So soon!
He’d known that someone would spot him here eventually, but he’d hoped that by the time that happened it would be a done deal.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Don’t do anything yet. We’ll see what the Manties—if it is the Manties—do first, and we have plenty of time to go to battle stations later.”
“I understand, Sir!” Daumier was a fanatic. He still hated the Manticorans as symbol of everything that was bad in the universe. That would prove useful.
He turned to Venner. “I think I should contact Prime Minister Entebe.”
“There she is, right in orbit around Navarra,” Black Oak said, as the imagery came back from the heavily stealthed Ghost Rider drone, and Eve nodded. During the voyage from Caroline, she had managed to eliminate some more of her inner doubts and sense of detachment. And she’d even shared a dinner with Black Oak, during which they discussed their personal losses openly and painfully.
She wasn’t “okay” in any sense of the word now, but she was focused and ready for what was coming.
The superdreadnought was in front of them and her task group was steadily accelerating toward the ship. During the last nine days, they’d planned all kinds of contingencies, but the question was still about blunt force.
She’d halted her squadron just short of the hyper limit, ready to pounce whatever direction Scimitar might choose to run, and she’d distributed pods to all ships as before, but she still had a significantly small force. With pods, they could almost certainly destroy the monster before it escaped, but if it came into energy range, they’d be dead, too.
Plus there was this question of other Silesian ships.
“Any news of the SCN units?”
“Inconclusive so far, Ma’am,” Black Oak said. “The local space station in Navarra orbit has a great number of ships docked, and quite a few of them seem to be current or ex-ECN units. But so far we don’t have clear enough emission signatures to say positively that any of them came from Caroline.”
“Understood. But we need that nailed down ASAP, Norman.”
“Yes, Ma’am. CIC is working on it.”
The question would also be how spaceworthy the ships were and if they might pose a threat. Eve doubted that, but she also knew that other SCN units had defected to Bartoli and could be somewhere in the system.
“Commodore, we are picking up a transmission. It’s from Navarra,” Lieutenant Lindstrom said. “The header says it’s from the office of the Prime Minister.”
Eve nodded. During the voyage here, she and her staff had tried to learn as much as they could about Navarra. Not that there was much to learn. The Manticoran databases were rather sketchy and, as far as Eve knew, no Manticoran shipping charter had ever traded in the Quatre Bras system. Haven had had an occasional freelance trader visit the place; that was how Haven had learned about Bartoli in the first place.
Quatre Bras was a G1 star, with a twenty-two light-minute hyper limit, and Navarra was a relatively insignificant world. It had very few export values for a distant star nation like Manticore or Haven, or even Silesia, but it often traded with some of its non-Silesian neighbors. That was most likely why they had such a big shipyard, and maybe why the local rulers had made a deal with Bartoli. They might have a shipyard, but their own “navy” consisted of only about a dozen LACs for system defense and one obsolete Durandal-class destroyer, which the Navarrans had purchased from Haven some forty years ago.
Politically, Navarra was basically an autocracy with a ruling prince who appointed his own government. It had a parliament with elected officials, but the prince chose who to appoint as his prime minister.
And it seemed as if the current prime minister was calling. Which made a certain sense. There’d been just about enough time for their standard identification to reach the planet and the Prime Minister to react.
“Put it through.”
A small, balding man appeared on the display by Eve’s leg.
“Good afternoon. I am Prime Minister Dorsan Entebe, head of His Grace Prince Tannah’s government. I’m speaking to the approaching vessels. Please identify yourselves or you will be treated as hostile by the Navarran Navy.”
“Prime Minister Entebe, this is Commodore Evelyn Chandler of the Royal Manticoran Navy. We are chasing a pirate and terrorist out of Silesia. His name is Marcus Bartoli and he possesses a Havenite DuQuesne-class superdreadnought. The same ship which is currently in orbit around Navarra.”
After the inevitable light-speed lag, Entebe answered.
“Commodore Chandler, I’m aware of the superdreadnought Soult’s condition and of the fact that she has been in battle recently. As far as I know, she is a legitimate Havenite warship, not a pirate. According to the Deneb Accords, we are permitting her crew to conduct basic repairs to make her spaceworthy, but not to improve her fighting capability. However, since Navarra is neutral in your current war between Manticore and Haven, we have to impose the law of neutrality also defined by the Deneb Accords. Soult is in a neutral system and belligerent warships are forbidden to wage war in neutral territory. Also, when leaving the system, belligerent ships have to abide by the twenty-four-hour rule. I believe, Commodore Chandler, that you will abide by the Deneb Accords, since both Manticore and Haven are signatories.”
Eve stopped herself from opening her mouth. The Deneb Accords included several centuries’ worth of naval codes, rules of war and regulations on the treatment of POWs. But this particular part seldom came up in modern warfare. Technically, belligerent warships could approach no closer than twelve light-minutes to a neutral system’s hyper limit without that star system government’s permission. That was a rule that was most often ignored, however, especially by star nations with powerful fleets, and when it happened that belligerent warships entered a neutral star system, usually the combat erupted well outside the orbit of any inhabited planet. In fact, more often than not, any fighting was over before the neutrals ever realized there was any fighting. Eve didn’t remember any instance during the First Havenite War when this stipulation of the Deneb Accords had even come up.
The rule against fighting in neutral harbors was older than space travel, but it was usually very difficult to enforce.
As it would likely be now.
“Prime Minister Entebe, I’m well aware of the Deneb Accords,” she said and noticed Hagen winking at her. “However, since we have irrefutable evidence that the superdreadnought Scimitar—or Soult as you’ve come to know her—and Marcus Bartoli have committed numerous acts of piracy, we ask you to allow us to engage his vessel.”
Another wait for an answer and Eve looked up at Hagen.
“That was smart of them, coming up with Deneb Accords,” the ONI agent said. “It never even occurred to me. I just wonder how they think they’ll be able to enforce it.”
“And she damned well hasn’t suffered battle damage!” Strauss muttered.
“No, but I can see why Entebe is claiming she has,” Eve said dryly. Strauss looked at her, and she shrugged. “As long as she’s ‘repairing damage’ within the stipulations of the Accords, we can’t demand that Navarra order her to leave ‘neutral space.’ So if they want to buy a lot of extra time . . .”
“Bastards,” Strauss growled, and Eve surprised herself with a chuckle. She started to reply, but before she could—
“Commodore Chandler,” Entebe said, “I cannot confirm or disprove that RHNS Scimitar is a pirate ship when all evidence suggests that it is a legitimate combatant. As such, my government needs to err on the side of caution. As long as Scimitar is inside the Quatre Bras territorial limit—which, I remind you, begins twenty-four limits from the system primary, in our case—she is in neutral space and has a right to be protected.” Entebe’s mouth corners twitched slightly and Eve had the feeling that the Navarran was about to play his trump card.
“As it happens, I have here Mr. Alanis Fasman, a Special Envoy of the Solarian League Foreign Office, who is on Navarra on an official visit, and he confirms my view of the situation. Mr. Fasman?”
A new face appeared on the screen. This was a younger and taller man with long dark hair, smiling at the pickup. “Good afternoon, Commodore Chandler. Mr. Prime Minister Entebe is entirely correct. According to the Deneb Accords, RHNS Soult is protected in neutral territory. That is the stand of the Solarian League. If the Star Kingdom of Manticore were to violate that convention, I can assure you that the Solarian repercussions towards your Star Kingdom would be severe. Also keep in mind that while your own ships may currently be outside the Quatre Bras hyper limit, you are already well within its territorial limit. As such, they are also subject to the twenty-four-hour rule and will be prohibited from leaving the area earlier than twenty-four hours after the departure of the Havenite vessel.”
“Well, we can safely say we never saw that coming,” Hagen said twenty minutes later as they sat in the briefing room.
“The Solarian League was the last thing I expected here,” Strauss said with a sigh. “Do you think this Fasman is what he says he is?”
“A Solly official?” Hagen shrugged. “I’ll bet he has the credentials to prove it. But then, the Solarian League has so many secretaries, undersecretaries, liaisons and special envoys that the question really is, how important he actually is? My guess is not that much. No Solly bureaucrat with good connections or with power would voluntarily travel here to the ass-end of nowhere. Begging the Commodore’s pardon, Ma’am.” He produced a mischievous grin. “My other guess would be that he’s in Bartoli’s pocket and he has him exactly for something like this; to protect him with words like ‘the Solarian League doesn’t want you to do this and if you do, there will be repercussions.’”
“Well, it worked,” Eve said grumpily. Her task group continued to hold station outside the system hyper limit. “Even if we ultimately ignore his threat, they knew this would stall us. Especially since Bartoli knows or thinks that our ships aren’t enough to make the issue certain. We can still lose, so he gambled that we would wait for reinforcements. Maybe he assumes that his will arrive sooner.”
“Fasman is likely someone in a position to persuade his superiors to acknowledge Bartoli’s new little empire as an independent state,” Hagen said. “Because his superiors generally won’t care one way or another. But I don’t think he expected to come face-to-face with us directly.”
“Do you think he’ll manage to make any kind of repercussions for Manticore if we just go ahead and attack?” Black Oak asked.
“No one knows,” Hagen replied. “I guess that he might, or he might just count on his belief that we won’t risk it.”
“Maybe we should talk to Mr. Fasman,” Eve said. This was purely outside her area of expertise and maybe more in Hagen’s league, but it was enough. “I think I should visit Mr. Fasman and Prime Minister Entebe on Navarra.”
“Ma’am, are you—” Strauss started and then cut herself off.
Eve smiled. “Am I out of my mind? I don’t think so. I think that we need more information from the surface. So while the task group should stay outside the limit, I can pay an official visit to the Prime Minister.”
Strauss sighed. “I guess I won’t dissuade you, right?”
Eve grinned. It seemed more natural to her than it had in years. “Not really.”
“At least this time you won’t tell me the mission would continue in my capable hands.” She was right. While she was the most senior captain in their cruiser squadron, they’d added more ships to their task group, so Strauss was now junior to Captain Ellis of the Royalist and Captain Phelps of the Xerxes.
“No, I won’t,” Eve agreed. “And I’m just going to talk to the Prime Minister and to Mr. Fasman. I’ll have just a small group of aides with me.” She smiled. “I’m thinking Captain Hagen, Commander Black Oak and Spacer First Class Leo Statman.”
“Your Excellency, Commodore Evelyn Chandler, Captain Lucius Hagen and Lieutenant Commander Norman Bettany, Baron Black Oak, of the Royal Manticoran Navy,” the aide made the introductions—including Black Oak’s noble rank—without mistakes. Apparently, people were used to noble titles here. She also specifically didn’t introduce Leo Statman, as someone too junior, basically on the level of servant. Also, no mention was made of the treecat on Statman’s shoulder.
Prime Minister Entebe rose, but did not walk around his elaborate desk or offer his hand. He smiled and bowed his head slightly. “Welcome, Commodore Chandler, Captain Hagen, Commander Black Oak. Please be seated.” He nodded to a tall man standing by the Prime Minister’s office room window. “I have asked Mr. Fasman to join us here to provide the Solarian League’s view on the matter.”
“A pleasure to meet you all,” Fasman said, with a huge smile, as he took a seat in one of the luxurious armchairs with which the office was furnished.
“A pleasure to meet you Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. Fasman,” Eve said with a false sincerity that should have made even Hagen proud.
“I assume you wish to discuss the various implications of the Deneb Accords,” Entebe suggested. “I understand you claim that Admiral Bartoli and the crew of his flagship, the Soult, aren’t Havenites but in fact pirates and terrorists. Unfortunately, since we have no direct evidence on the matter, my government—held with executive powers after the passing of Prince Tannah—has to err on the side of caution. I discussed the situation with Mr. Fasman and he concurs that the precedents set by the Solarian League would agree with me. As long as Admiral Bartoli is in neutral space, no actions may be legally taken against him or his ship.”
“Oh, we understand that completely, Mr. Prime Minister,” Eve said with another smile that almost turned into one of Hagen’s mischievous grins. “We don’t intend to violate the Deneb Accords, but I’m sure you understand our need to contain this pirate.” She chose that word on purpose as if she was sharing some private joke with Prime Minister Entebe. “On the other hand, I must ask; do you plan to intern the Scimitar—Soult—here for the duration of the war, as is also stipulated by the Deneb Accords?”
Entebe’s smile disappeared, and even Fasman was taken aback. “I beg your pardon?”
“Article Eighty-Five, Section Seven of the Deneb Accords states that a neutral power has the authority to intern a belligerent warship in their territory. Especially if the warship in question has finished all of her repairs and is only using the neutral territory as a hiding place.”
Entebe may have been taken aback but, as a career politician, he quickly recovered and smiled. “It may come to that, Commodore. However, as you probably know, we are in no position to force such a huge warship to stay here.”
Eve smiled. “Oh, we understand that. Unfortunately, we also can’t let it leave without our knowledge, so I’m afraid we’d need to stay.”
The Prime Minister frowned. “Stay?”
“Yes, of course we’ll keep safely outside of your hyper limit, but we’ll need to stay; so will our reinforcements.”
“Excuse me, but you mean the territorial limit, don’t you?” Fasman said a bit sharply.
“No, Mr. Fasman, I mean the hyper limit. We will initiate no combat within the hyper limit or within Quatre Bras territorial limits unless Scimitar approaches within six light-minutes of our own vessels. Should that happen, we will be free to engage under Article Eighty-Five, Section Eight, Clause Three, which permits a belligerent power to assume hostile intent even in neutral space if approached by a warship of another belligerent.” Eve smiled. “I invite you to examine Solarian League-vs.-Allenton System, where that principle was upheld by a Solarian admiralty court.”
“And if the superdreadnought doesn’t approach within six light-minutes?” Entebe asked sharply.
“Why, in that case, we would be unable to engage, of course. However,” Eve’s smile turned sharklike, “my ships are outside the limit. I assure you that we can micro jump into a position which will force her to approach us that closely if she wants to cross that limit in order to translate out.”
“But you can’t do that!”
“I’m afraid we can, Mr. Prime Minister.” She looked back at Fasman. “Do you think the Solarian League will view this as an aggression, Mr. Fasman?”
The diplomat looked unhappy, and shrugged. “I’m afraid it will.”
Behind her, Tebo made the almost inaudible sound they had agreed on.
He’s lying.
“The Solarian League supports the neutrality of this world,” Fasman said. “As you know, the Solarian League has always striven to provide a channel for communication and diplomatic negotiation during the war between Manticore and Haven and this is a situation in which interstellar law must be followed. I’m afraid the Solarian government may view this as force majeure and react appropriately.”
Another he-is-lying sound.
“Well, I’m afraid I have my orders,” Eve said. “And since reinforcements are coming here anyway, I’m afraid we’ll have to stay put. It’s completely possible that Admiral Sarnow, my commander, will decide I was in the wrong, but we can wait until after his battle squadron arrives.”
Entebe froze. “What do you mean, battle squadron?”
“As in six superdreadnoughts, at least. I sent the admiral only a very preliminary dispatch, in which I emphasized that I had no information on the actual force we might encounter.” She shrugged. “I can’t be certain he’ll bring the entire Capital Squadron, but I’m confident he’ll bring most of it, under the circumstances.”
“Not to mention that, apart from Mr. Bartoli’s ship, we’re also looking for some stolen Silesian Navy vessels,” Hagen added with a mischievous grin. “And I’m afraid that several obviously Silesian ships are docked at your Harlequin Station.”
Entebe took a deep breath. “In that, you are mistaken. Yes, we have Silesian ships docked there, but we purchased those from the Confederacy.”
He’s lying, Tebo bleeked behind her, not that she needed him for this.
“I understand,” she said. “We would like to inspect the station, of course, and compare it with our notes on the ships in question. They still have their active IFFs, after all.”
Fasman cleared his throat: “I’m afraid the Solarian League would see this a clear violation and respond forcefully.”
He’s lying.
Eve smiled. “I understand. Well, we all have our orders. And mine mean I have to keep my forces here until my superiors arrive. You understand, I’m sure.”
Marcus Bartoli stopped the replay of the HD camera in the Prime Minister’s office.
He’d hoped Fasman would be more useful, but unfortunately, that hadn’t happened. Not when that Commodore brought a fucking treecat to the meeting. Bartoli had heard legends about those beasts, and he’d been at Barnett when they brought in Harrington as a prisoner with her treecat. He’d never known if she believed the stories about them being intelligent mindreaders but he knew Chandler wouldn’t have brought it to the meeting if she didn’t expect to gain something from it.
So the Manty task group did not plan to leave. And they were expecting reinforcements. Bartoli technically also had reinforcements he could call on, but they weren’t really reliable. And he wouldn’t be able to use the ships docked at Harlequin Station for several weeks. Not to mention the Manties would blow them apart if they tried.
No. He was in a corner. He’d hoped his involvement with Entebe and Fasman would stay secret for some more months for him to consolidate power. He’d helped Entebe . . . retire Prince Tannah, the local monarch. The general assembly of the planet—basically a bunch of oligarchs—were to assemble next month and vote for Bartoli as the new ruler. His superdreadnought was a pretty strong argument in favor. And Navarrans generally understood the advantages he would bring them with his ship. Not to mention that they were loyal to their monarch but didn’t really care who he was.
Unfortunately, now the Manties had endangered Bartoli’s scheme. He’d have to do something drastic. The Manties so far had only two battlecruisers. Maybe a frontal assault would simply solve things. Not likely, but Bartoli planned for everything.
He pushed the button on his intercom. “Captain Venner to my office, please.” When his flag captain arrived, Bartoli looked at him. “I think we need to implement the Second Death scenario.”
“Ma’am, you’re pretty good at bluffing,” Black Oak said then they were on their way back toward Juggernaut.
“Nonsense,” Eve said. “I suck at bluffing. I learned that years ago during the regular wardroom poker games aboard Nike. No, I simply needed to gauge how far they’re willing to go.” She nodded towards Spacer Statman and Tebo. “And to figure out how sure they are of their position.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Statman said and blushed. “If . . . if I may, what happens now?”
“Now we wait, exactly as we said we would. But I doubt that Mr. Bartoli will want to wait here for a squadron of superdreadnoughts.”
“She’s coming out, Sir!” Black Oak said from his station. “Her wedge is up and she is starting to accelerate!”
Eve was immediately behind him. “Course?”
“Looks like they’re coming straight at us, Ma’am.” He shook his head. “My guess is they want to force a battle.”
Eve nodded. “Bring the Task Group to Battle Stations. Ms. Garba, please set a course for intercept of the Scimitar.”
“Course is already set, Sir,” the staff astrogator said.
Eve was now back in her command chair and punched in a code for the Juggernaut’s bridge that connected her directly to Strauss.
“Captain here.”
“Angelique, it seems they want to force a fight with us. With the pods from Katla, we can kill Scimitar long before she can get into range of her missiles, let alone the energy range.”
“I know, Ma’am.” Eve hadn’t used Juggernaut’s captain as her sounding board very often, but she was trying to get back to her old habits. “Bartoli may not know we have pods. Or he has something up his sleeve anyway.”
“He may, but I can’t imagine what. A DuQuesne doesn’t mount the tubes for multi-drive missiles, so she can’t match our range with shipboard missiles. And he doesn’t have pods of his own.” Eve thought about it. “That we know of. I don’t want to overanalyze this, but I won’t risk our task group. We’ll fire the moment he’s in range.”
“Understood, Ma’am.”
“I just hope we won’t have to,” Eve said. Hagen had talked about her taking revenge against State Security people. She still didn’t know what she thought about it. These people were from the same cloth as those who’d killed Diana. But she wouldn’t just slaughter them.
Bartoli can’t be stupid, he knows he can’t just shoot his way out. He has to.
Or is it that he just doesn’t care?
She shook her head.
“Com, hail the approaching superdreadnought. Order them to strike their wedge and surrender.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
As the superdreadnought kept closing, Eve realized she felt more alive than she had for months. It might have been strange, considering they could be dead in a few hours, but she felt the cold anticipation mixed with an eagerness she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Bartoli sat tapping on the armrest of his chair, watching the plot as Scimitar continued her unwavering approach to the Manticoran formation.
He said nothing. Nothing remained to be said.
Not long now.
“We’ll be in range in one minute, Commodore,” Black Oak said.
Eve nodded. The glass pane had long been shattered. She saw Diana’s face, now, somewhere in the back of her mind as she watched the approaching superdreadnought. She wasn’t detached. Not anymore. She was involved. Very involved. And she felt a sort of savage hunger.
She shouldn’t. She was about to massacre thousands of human beings. But, in the past few years, she hadn’t behaved in the way she should have.
And Hagen was right. There was no formula on how she should behave or not behave.
She’d given them a chance to surrender. They’d ignored all her hails.
“Open fire,” she ordered.
The Manticoran pods, supplied by the ammunition ship Katla and controlled by Eve’s squadron, had been loaded with laserheads designed to kill capital ships. And they all had just one target.
For a long moment, Eve wondered if Bartoli had some ace up his sleeve, if Scimitar did have pods. But nothing happened.
The lasers bit into the massive ship. Scimitar was built to withstand great deal of punishment, but a “great deal” wasn’t enough.
The superdreadnought exploded.
“It’s confirmed, Ma’am!” said Black Oak. “She’s gone! The superdreadnought is gone!”
The flag bridge started cheering. Officers tried to calm people down, but not too hard. Scimitar was the only functioning enemy ship in the system and they knew it and were prepared to allow a small breach of discipline as long as their Commodore would allow it.
Eve was just staring at the master plot, again at the place where the icon was.
“You did it, Ma’am” said Hagen with a mischievous grin. “You did it!”
Eve was looking at the plot.
Yes. She’d done it.
But she was still looking at the plot. The elation wasn’t there. She didn’t cheer all those deaths. Neither did she feel satisfaction.
She only saw Diana.
And, as the crew was cheering around her, she realized something else.
She was back. Not a grieving soul, not an avenging angel, not an automaton.
Just . . . herself.
“Excuse me, Commodore.”
Evelyn Chandler raised her head as Captain Hagen came to the flag bridge.
She hadn’t seen him much in the eight days since the destruction of Scimitar. He’d been making some contacts on the planetary surface, as she understood it, but she and the rest of her people had been just a bit busy in orbit around it.
One day after the battle, the Marines from Claymore and Star Warrior had boarded Harlequin Station and secured the stolen Silesian ships. For a few hours, she’d thought they might meet actual armed resistance, but the fight had gone out of Bartoli’s remaining followers with his death, and apparently the Navarrans weren’t stupid enough to piss off a Manticoran task group which had just killed an SD in its space. The tense blockade had continued, but the Navarran Prime Minister had suddenly become much friendlier. Mr. Fasman had made a token protest on behalf of the League, but the captured Silesian ships were pretty strong evidence of Navarra’s involvement and this definitely wasn’t the hill Fasman wanted to die on.
He’d actually left the system two days ago.
Now Eve looked at Hagen.
“Yes, Captain Hagen? What can I do for you?”
“Can I speak to you? In private.”
Eve frowned. “Eh, sure.”
Eve climbed out of her bridge chair and led the way into the flag briefing room. Once they were alone, it was Hagen’s turn to frown.
“You know I’ve been spending time down on the planet, Ma’am?” he said, and Eve nodded.
“I assumed it had something to do with your ‘spook’ duties,” she said, and it was his turn to nod.
“It did,” he agreed. “I had a strange feeling I needed to confirm.”
“What kind of feeling?” Eve asked.
“I’ve been thinking about Bartoli’s tactics as he tried to leave the system. And I think it was pretty stupid of him.”
“I agree, but he probably wasn’t the type of person who’d surrender.”
“No, Ma’am, he wasn’t. What he was, was a pretty ruthless SOB. He blew the New Rodrigo shipyards to cover his tracks and then did the same thing in Caroline, when he didn’t want to risk his ships to fall into our hands. Or his people.”
“I know.”
“So, going on a suicide charge doesn’t seem to be his style.”
“Maybe he ran out of options?” Eve suggested.
“Maybe. But as I said, I went to the planet. Went to the dinner the very nervous planetary rulers prepared for us.”
“I know,” Eve said. She hadn’t gone, but she’d sent Captain Ellis as her most senior subordinate to serve as her deputy where the defeated oligarchs of Navarra wanted to appease the Manticorans.
The spook continued. “And—I’m sorry to admit—I did the ‘drunken officer routine’ again. With Captain Ellis’s consent this time. Anyway, afterwards, one of the oligarchs—who wanted to make Manticore happy no doubt, gave me some information. I don’t have any evidence to support it, of course. But he did give me some coordinates.”
Hagen pulled a small piece of archaic paper from his pocket. “And I believe you might want to find a group of Marines who could undertake an . . . let’s call it ‘unscheduled maneuver’ on these coordinates, Commodore.”
On the seashore of one of Navarra’s southern continents, there was a luxurious villa two hundred kilometers from the nearest urban center. For more than a year, it had belonged to a Mr. Olaf Falkberget, who actually never visited the place but paid a staff of maids and servants to keep the villa in shape.
Mr. Falkberget had appeared only a few days ago, to the staff’s considerable surprise. He’d brought a few friends with him and informed the staff that they were all going to live there for the foreseeable future.
Now, Marcus Bartoli—Mr. Falkberget—was walking in his garden and humming softly. The sadness over the loss of the Scimitar—and over the fact that he himself had been forced to send the code which blew the fusion bottle—was still there, but he was a realist enough to know that it had always been a possibility. That was why he and Christian Venner had developed the “Second Death” plan. That was why they’d had so many ex-SS fanatics on board. People willing to die for you—or at least risk almost certain death for you and for the cause—were always useful. There were enough of them to staff the Scimitar while the rest of the crew had disappeared into the planet’s population and awaited contact from Bartoli. Some of them might decide that living on Navarra was more comfortable than working for him, but he was used to that. That was part of the game.
What all of them needed now was to disappear for a while. Silesia would remain a hotbed of chaos and corruption for years to come before the Manties could put it into at least some semblance of order. They wouldn’t care about the area here, outside of Silesia.
Bartoli could wait. Yes, he’d lost his superdreadnought and with it his most powerful negotiating tool, but he was smart. He would find other means of achieving his plans. He still had some former SCN ships in other systems, and he still had Adrian Marius and other allies. He had lots of money in various bank accounts across the Solarian League and elsewhere. He was sure the Solarian Office of Frontier Security would love to have a partner like him in the area. So, most likely, would Mesa—even though Bartoli didn’t like them—and he might even get in touch with other ex-SS units in exile like that idiot Luff.
The possibilities were endless, and the sky was the limit, as they said, and with that . . .
A sudden high-pitched sound appeared somewhere above him. Bartoli’s head snapped up and he saw a blur streaking across the horizon. It must have been a pinnace or . . .
Then he noticed small dots in the sky left by whatever it was that had just overflown the garden. They were directly above the villa and—
Oh my God, those are antigravs. This is a drop!
His training took over and he ran to the villa. Ran past the computer panel in the main hall from which he and Venner observed the battle eight days ago. Next to the computer was a closet with a pair of loaded pulsers. If he could . . .
He heard shouts and screams from the outside, probably from some of his servants.
The roof came down as several figures in battle armor fell straight through it. Bartoli ducked as pieces of building blocks fell into the house. Clouds of dust made it almost impossible to see. He noticed shapes, raised his hand with the pulser . . .
A massive hand snapped his arm and he screamed with pain as he dropped the pulser. That same hand in power armor grabbed him by his shirt with all the subtlety of an Old Earth bull in a china shop.
The shock forced all thought of resistance out of Bartoli and the armored figure threw him over its shoulder and carried him away. He was disoriented, shocked, and could hear only his own breathing and the screams of the servants as they ran away. Then the armored figure took him back to the garden, where a pinnace was landing on the grass. He noticed another armored figure dragging Christian Venner out of the building. They’d taken the other senior officers who’d lived here with him. But they were letting the servants go.
Suddenly, they were aboard the pinnace and the armored figure dropped him on the deck. He noticed standard issue Manty Navy boots in front of him. No power armor. He raised his head weakly and saw before him a man in RMN uniform with a mischievous grin.
“Captain—or Admiral if you prefer—Marcus Bartoli, you are under arrest.”
Eighteen days after the battle, an entire battle squadron arrived in the Quatre Bras System, called in by the dispatch boat send from Terrance. It had gone first to Caroline and then to Quatre Bras, on the trail of Eve’s task group.
Eve Chandler found herself once again in a conference room aboard Mark Sarnow’s flagship.
“I think this is not how you imagined your first few months in Silesia, is it, Commodore?” the Admiral said with one of his fierce grins.
Totally different from those crazy grins of Hagen’s.
“No, Sir Mark. It isn’t,” she replied. “Especially after I had to kill so many people. After Bartoli sent Scimitar out to die.”
Sarnow nodded. She’d transmitted him her entire report as his squadron was decelerating towards Navarra. So he knew about the arrest of Bartoli who was now being interrogated—again—in Nicator’s brig by Sarnow’s intelligence officer and Captain Hagen.
He also knew that the escaping superdreadnought had been destroyed with no survivors, even if there’d been only a skeleton crew aboard.
“Her crew may have been StateSec fanatics, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about killing people he knew couldn’t fight back when he sent them,” Eve added, and she meant it, yet her regret was an emotion—a feeling—she recognized. She grieved for those deaths but it was an involved grief, something she knew. Something she could work with.
The pane of glass was gone, and it hurt, but she would no longer feel detached. She would live.
“A superdreadnought,” Sarnow said. “With a Havenite warlord. As if we don’t have enough problems in Silesia.”
“It’s not over yet, Sir Mark. Bartoli had an ally in Silesia, Adrian Marius. He also controls some ex-SCN ships and we haven’t apprehended him yet. Bartoli was only too happy to tell us all he knows about him—and we had a spacer with a treecat confirm his response, but this Marius no doubt went into hiding.”
Sarnow smiled at the mention of treecats and then nodded. “Yes, but you deprived them of a superdreadnought and of their most important base in the region. Don’t sell your achievements short, Eve, just because there’s still work to be done.”
“I understand, Sir Mark. I know. We’ve all done it. My people. But Bartoli killed a lot of people—got us to kill a lot of people—first.” She shook her head. “The price was high.”
“I know. It always is. We’ve both known that ever since Hancock, right?” He smiled a bit sadly, and she nodded. Despite the astronomical difference between their ranks, she and Sarnow had both gotten their first taste of a real battle at Hancock.
“Now then, I’m already scheduled for some meetings with the local government, and I’m sure there’s some peace treaty they’ll be only too happy to sign. After that, I want you to accompany my flagship back to Silesia. We’ll escort the retrieved SCN ships back to Caroline, where there should be more of our ships waiting.”
Eve nodded. “I understand, Sir Mark.”
“Good. Then I hope you and your staff officers and captains will join me aboard the Nicator for dinner. I recall that I’ve owed it to you since your arrival in Silesia.” He grinned. “And perhaps I should invite Captain Hagen as well.”
“CruRon Fifty arriving!”
As Evelyn Chandler stepped into HMS Juggernaut’s boat bay and heard the Bosun’s pipes, she smiled.
Then she greeted Captain Strauss and Commander Black Oak and her smile grew.
She was back.
In more than one sense.