Sigismund Alpha
Slocum System
July 27, 1907 PD
“you’re kidding.”
“No, Citizen Commissioner. Citizen Captain Rummo just confirmed it.”
“He’s positive it’s not Citizen Commodore Androcles?”
“That’s what he says, Citizen Commissioner.”
“Oh, shit.”
People’s Commissioner Danielle Barthet glared at Porthos Radeckis. She knew it wasn’t his fault, but he was the only person available to glare at. Even he wasn’t close enough for her to do it in person, and all he could see was her com’s personal wallpaper, anyway, since he’d just woken her up less than two hours after she’d gotten to bed. At the moment, he wore the crimson tunic and black trousers of the Office of State Security while she wore nothing at all.
Her current bed partner had started yanking his trousers on the moment the com jangled and she sat up in bed. Now she jerked her head at the sleeping cabin hatch, and he vanished through it, carrying his boots in one hand and the rest of his uniform in the other.
The hatch closed behind him, and she ran her fingers through her short-cropped blond hair while she tried to kick her brain fully awake.
“How bad?” she asked after several seconds.
“Rummo doesn’t have definite numbers or classes yet.” Radeckis shrugged unhappily. “His people picked up their hyper footprint about fifteen minutes ago. He says they’re sixteen light-minutes from the primary—about seven from us—which is why he’s sure it’s not Androcles. There’s been plenty of time for an arrival ID from her to reach us. As far as numbers are concerned, we don’t have first-line sensor capability.” That, Barthet reflected bitterly, was a colossal understatement. “But he says his people have identified at least three dreadnoughts or superdreadnoughts, five cruisers, and nine destroyers or light cruisers. So far.”
Barthet’s jaw tightened.
So much for its being Androcles. She didn’t know exactly how powerful the citizen commodore’s task group was supposed to be, but she did know its heaviest unit was supposed to be a battleship.
Damn it. I told them we needed to reinforce the system pickets! We’re too exposed out here! But did anyone listen? Not until it was too frigging late!
“What does he mean ‘so far’?” she demanded.
“He says they’re picking up five impeller wedges that could be additional dreadnoughts.” Barthet flinched, but Radeckis wasn’t finished. “As I say, he said they could be dreadnoughts, but at the moment he’s inclined, based on their formation, to think they’re tankers, instead.”
Barthet puffed her lips, then nodded grudgingly. That actually made sense, even if it didn’t make Slocum’s situation any better. The entire existing “Slocum System Defense Force” consisted of exactly six destroyers, which might—might—have been capable of scratching a single ship-of-the-wall’s paint.
On a good day.
“So they figure they can steal our reactor mass, do they?” she growled.
“That’s what it sounds like, Citizen Commissioner.”
“Well, we’ll see about that!”
Barthet glanced at the time display.
“How long for them to reach us?”
“They’re still over a hundred and twenty million klicks from the platforms.” Radeckis glanced down to consult his notes. “Current velocity is about thirteen hundred KPS, and they’re pulling two hundred fifty gravities. That puts them just under four hours—three hours and forty-seven minutes, to be exact—from a zero-zero with Sigismund.”
“Wonderful.” Barthet inhaled sharply. “All right. Go ahead and activate Omega. And tell Rummo I’ll be speaking to him as soon as I get dressed.”
“Of course, Citizen Commissioner,” Radeckis replied, and Barthet killed the circuit with a furious finger stab.
Radeckis’ response had been just a little too toneless for her taste, but that wasn’t surprising, given how little Omega appealed to him. Fortunately, he also knew better than to argue.
Unlike Barthet, Citizen Captain Porthos Radeckis had a lengthy history in the People’s Republic’s security forces. In fact, he’d been an Internal Security sergeant before the Legislaturalist coup attempt. That, however, was scarcely a ringing endorsement in Barthet’s opinion.
Oscar Saint-Just’s Office of Internal Security might have been instrumental in defeating the coup attempt, yet however quickly and effectively InSec had responded after the traitors’ initial attack, no one had seen it coming in time to stop it.
That was what had prompted the fundamental consolidation and reorganization of the People’s Republic’s entire security apparatus. And Saint-Just’s decisive response to the coup had made him the only real candidate to command the newly created Office of State Security when the Committee of Public Safety folded Internal Security, the Mental Hygiene Police, and half a dozen other, smaller security services together.
After their leadership positions had been purged of Legislaturalists, of course.
Radeckis had come over to StateSec from InSec. Barthet hadn’t. She’d been a member of Cordelia Ransom’s Citizens’ Rights Union, the proscribed action arm of the Citizens’ Rights Party. In fact, she’d been one of the CRU “terrorists” people like Saint-Just had hunted for decades, while Radeckis had been one of the InSec thugs who’d done the hunting. That created a certain . . . tension in their relationship. And, frankly, she distrusted his commitment to the new regime trying to clean up the Legislaturalists’ mess. In particular, he was far too prone to defer to Citizen Captain Rummo.
Barthet’s own relationship with Rummo was less than congenial. Two T-years ago, Citizen Captain Rummo had been Lieutenant Rummo. He hadn’t been a Legislaturalist himself, or he wouldn’t still be in uniform, but anyone who’d been commissioned before the coup bore watching. That was Danielle Barthet’s job. And part of that job was keeping him aware that he continued to serve only on her sufferance.
She stood and reached for her own uniform.
* * *
“With all due respect, I think that’s a bad idea,” Citizen Captain Abelin Rummo said.
“Does that mean you intend to protest the Citizen Commissioner’s orders, Citizen Captain?” Porthos Radeckis asked him.
“It means I think those orders should be . . . carefully considered,” Rummo replied. His tone was respectful but unflinching, and Radeckis gave him points for intestinal fortitude. Arguing with Danielle Barthet wasn’t the best tactical decision a man could make, though. Radeckis knew he should shut down this entire conversation quickly, but—
“Why?” he asked.
“I don’t have any objection to destroying the tank farms or the refining platforms, to prevent them from falling into Manty hands, Citizen Captain,” Rummo said. “If we’re going to do that, though, we should do it immediately. Or at least as soon as they formally demand our surrender. What the Citizen Commissioner is proposing could very well be interpreted as a violation of the Deneb Accords.”
“I understand your concerns,” Radeckis said after a moment. In fact, Rummo’s “concerns” were a close mirror of Radeckis’ own reservations. “But as far as not immediately destroying the storage and refining facilities is concerned, the Citizen Commissioner is basically playing for time. Citizen Commodore Androcles was already supposed to be here, and the Manties will be pinned down here for at least a couple of days, if they really intend to transfer all that reactor mass to their tankers. If Androcles turns up in the next, say, twenty-four hours, she may be able to drive them off without what they came for.”
Rummo’s eyes rolled ever so slightly, but he kept his mouth shut. He and Radeckis both knew how unlikely it was that any picket force the People’s Navy might have scraped up for a hole-in-the-wall system like Slocum would have a chance in hell to “drive off” three dreadnoughts. It was remotely possible. So was the possibility that the system primary would go nova in the next twenty minutes. In the real world, the People’s Republic was going to lose the storage tanks and the refinery platforms, one way or the other. That being the case, Rummo was exactly right, in Radeckis’ opinion. They ought to blow all of them immediately.
And they sure as hell shouldn’t blow them with Manticoran tankers docked to them. If they did that, if they killed the crews of those ships, the Manties would be fully justified under interstellar law in destroying every habitat platform in the system . . . without evacuating the Havenite personnel. Radeckis had pointed that out to Barthet when the people’s commissioner first hatched Omega, only to be told that she had no intention of waiting that long. Obviously, the tank farm would have to be destroyed before the Manties actually docked to it!
But Radeckis had enjoyed more access to InSec’s pre-coup files on Barthet than the people’s commissioner might realize, and based on her CRU cell’s taste for spectacular, mass-casualty events, he didn’t trust the ex-terrorist’s assurance about exactly when she intended to blow up the storage facility any more than Rummo did. Nor did he care for Barthet’s decision for the system’s SS personnel to “go to ground.” He didn’t object in the least to her decision against trying to defend the platforms when the Manties arrived. It seemed unlikely the Royal Manticoran Marines aboard those incoming warships would find it difficult to deal with little more than three hundred StateSec troopers, after all. And he wouldn’t have had a problem with just stripping off his uniform and disappearing into the two-thousand-strong Slocum workforce. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what Barthet had in mind.
“As I say, I appreciate the reason for your concerns,” he said, “but we both have our orders, Citizen Captain. Don’t we?”
He held Rummo’s eyes with his very best bleak, InSec gaze, and the naval officer inhaled deeply. His wife, two kids, three brothers, and parents lived in Nouveau Paris. Which meant he wasn’t about to do a single thing that could point StateSec at the people he loved.
“Yes, we do,” he said, and Radeckis nodded.
“The Citizen Commissioner will join you in Command One shortly,” he said.