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CHAPTER THREE

City of Korinthos

Planet Odysseus

Bellerophon System

Terran Federation

September 25, 2552


“There you are!” Isadora Tolallis said, bestowing an enormous hug on Captain Achilleas Rodoulis. “You’d better have an excuse for how long it’s been since we’ve seen you here!”

“Misery,” Rodoulis said promptly.

“Misery?” Isadora was a slim, attractive woman, twenty centimeters shorter than her towering husband, and she stood back, hands still on Rodoulis’s shoulders, shoulders, to raise both eyebrows skeptically.

“Of course misery!”

“And just why should that be?”

“Because of the way you feed my worthless cousin.” Rodoulis put on his very best woebegone expression and managed a fairly credible sniff. “Every time I do come over, you put all that delicious food on the table. And I know, even as I’m eating it, that no one else is going to feed me that well. So it’s better if I just stay away and stop tormenting myself with such brief, fleeting moments of epicurean bliss.”

“You’re a lunatic. Did you know that?”

“I understand that’s been said by some who fail to appreciate the true keenness of my trenchant wit. By the way, where’s my favorite first cousin once removed?”

“Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately, given what you two are like whenever you get together—Grigorios is visiting with friends in Égina. Which is just as well. They’re studying for their finals, and they don’t need the distraction.”

“Distraction? What distraction? The only thing for which I am more famed than my trenchant wit is my academic brilliance. As long as it’s not math. Or physics. Or geography, come to think of it. But for anything else, I’m your man! Except for spelling.”

“Oh, my God.” Isadora looked at her husband and rolled her gray eyes. “Do you believe this guy?!”

“You should have tried growing up with him,” Menelaos Tolallis said dryly.

“By the way, what’s for dinner?” Rodoulis interjected hopefully.

“Kleftiko, feta salad, and spanakopita, although I’m really, really tempted to not share it with you,” his hostess replied.

“I’ll be good!” he promised. “At least till we’re done eating.”

“Idiot!” Isadora swatted him, then shook her head. “Well, it won’t be ready for a while. I knew you and Menelaos’s other lowbrow friends were going to be playing cards for at least a couple of hours first. But if you’re really nice to me, I might just see my way to laying out a little tzatziki for you in a half hour or so. Purely to stave off starvation while you deal.”

“Bless you, my daughter!” Rodoulis gave her a hug and she laughed, then headed for her kitchen.

Rodoulis smiled after her…until the instant the door closed behind her.

“She doesn’t have a clue, does she?” he asked then, frowning at his cousin.

“She knows it’s more than just cards, and she knows enough to be worried,” Tolallis replied. “I haven’t told her anything specific, but she knows me too well.” He grimaced. “She knows something’s up. That’s the real reason Grigorios is in Égina. He may be only fourteen, but she knows how he idolizes you, and he’s smart as a whip. She doesn’t want him figuring out anything it’s better he not know about.”

“Menelaos, she deserves to know!”

“Of course she does!” Tolallis more than half-snapped. “But we’re not telling anyone unless we absolutely have to. That was the President’s call, and I think it was the right one. But I can’t justify making an exception for my wife when there won’t be one for anyone else’s!”

Rodoulis started to say something even sharper, but then clamped his jaw. The iron code of personal honor which refused to make an exception even for the woman he loved was one reason Menelaos Tolallis was the Bellerophon System Defense Force’s CO. And it was also the reason his other guests might just trust him enough for them to pull this off.

Or die trying, at any rate.

At the moment, he suspected the odds favored the latter.

“Come on,” Tolallis said after a moment, twitching his head towards the stairs, and Rodoulis nodded.

He followed his cousin down the interior stairs to the spacious rec room Isadora Tolallis insisted on calling her husband’s “man cave.” One entire wall was glass, looking out over the dark waters of the Thálassa Krasioú Ocean from the house’s clifftop perch. The Kórinthos city skyline caught the golden afternoon sunlight to the east, on the far side of the Bay of Kórinthos, but clouds were rolling in on a brisk northerly that sent waves crashing steadily higher on the rocky beach at the foot of the cliff.

A pair of card tables sat in front of that wall, surrounded by comfortable chairs. Decks of cards, glasses, bottles of whiskey, and even a bottle of Bellerophon retsina had been set out, but none of the five men and two women occupying seven of those chairs seemed particularly interested in them. Their heads snapped around as Tolallis and Rodoulis walked in, and the captain felt the tension level ratchet even higher.

“Find a seat, Achilleas,” Tolallis said, pointing him at the chairs as he continued across the room to the smart wall at its end. He tapped the master screen alive, then entered a complicated code. Nothing happened for a moment, and then an odd, eye-twisting shimmer seemed to flow down the glass wall.

“There!” He smiled thinly. “Some advantages to having a home office when you’re the defense force CO. I got really good security systems on the taxpayer’s credit card.”

“Which I’m sure is very reassuring,” Commissioner Lazaros Ganatos observed. The commander of the Bellerophon Unified Police Force was tall, heavyset, and gray-haired, with a lined face whose expression fell well short of cheerful. “I’m sure any of my people who happen to be looking this way won’t feel at all curious as to why you’ve turned them on for a friendly card game.”

“But it’s your card game,” Tolallis pointed out. “I’m sure the UPF wouldn’t be spying on its own chief!”

“Not officially, no.” Ganatos shrugged. “I can’t promise there aren’t a few ochiés carrying water for the Hearts buried in the Force, though.”

“We’ll just have to hope none of them get curious in the next week or two, then,” Tolallis said. “In a lot of ways, I’d rather not have pulled you out here for this, Lazaros. You’re not part of my usual card-playing circle, so having you join us might raise an eyebrow or two. But we’ve got to have you on board, and this isn’t something we can afford to discuss—especially at this level—any way except under four eyes. Even if we do happen to have eighteen eyes present at the moment.”

Ganatos grimaced in unhappy agreement, and Tolallis considered his other guests.

Yeorgia Elitzi, his own executive officer, was brown-haired, gray-eyed, and petite. Like him, she was a veteran of the Federation Marines, but while he’d been medically retired with an artificial left calf, she’d managed to hang on to all of her original parts. And, aside from Rodoulis, she was the one person in the room he already knew was absolutely committed to what they were about to discuss.

His other five guests all wore the uniform of the Terran Federation Navy, at least when they were on duty. In point of fact, three of them were the commanding officers of TFN carriers, and people didn’t get picked at random for those billets.

His cousin Achilleas, only a centimeter or so shorter than Tolallis himself, was TF 1709’s senior captain and commanded the Baldur-class FTLC Freyr. Captain Madelien Hoveling, CO of TFNS Perseus, was ash-blond, aqua-eyed, and twenty-four centimeters taller than Elitzi. Captain Khairi al-Massoud, Ninurta’s skipper and the most junior of the task force’s COs, was of only medium height, thin and quick-moving as a whippet, with dark hair and eyes. And Commander Lloyd Marchant, the only one of Tolallis’s commissioned guests who didn’t command his own ship, was seven centimeters shorter than Tolallis, with brown hair and brown eyes. A totally unremarkable-looking fellow…until one looked into those mild eyes and saw the dagger-sharp mind behind them.

Then there was the only person present who wasn’t an officer. Senior Chief Master Petty Officer Weldon O’Cahill was a square-shouldered, square-faced fellow with a shaven head, a hooked nose, and the hard, competent features of a noncommissioned officer who’d served the Federation for going on forty years. And if he felt the least uncomfortable in his astronomically senior company, there was no sign of it.

“All right.” Tolallis pulled out a chair of his own, sat, and began idly shuffling a deck of cards. “I guess we should get right down to it. Lazaros and Yeorgia, I know you’re up to speed because I issued the invitation directly. But I want all the cards on the table—you should pardon the expression”—he flipped an ace of spades face-up on the table—“before we go any further. I won’t have anyone involved in this unless he—or she—knows exactly what we’re getting into.”

“I think you can assume Achilleas brought us pretty much up to speed, General,” Madelien Hoveling said dryly. “He’s not a lot better at lying to people or double-dealing than you seem to be.”

“Hey, I can lie with the best of them!” Rodoulis objected.

“I didn’t say you couldn’t lie. I said you couldn’t lie well. There’s a reason you never leave a poker game with as much money as you had when you came,” Hoveling pointed out, and looked back at Tolallis.

“I can’t say I didn’t think he was out of his mind when he started sounding me out,” she continued in a more serious tone. “But assuming President Xeneas’s intelligence from New Dublin’s solid, maybe he’s not totally crazy.”

“Not as crazy as I am, anyway,” Tolallis said. “But, just to make sure we’re all on the same page, let’s be clear that what I’m proposing here is an act of mutiny and arguably an act of treason. That’s certainly how Olympia will regard it, at any rate. And that means that if it goes south on us, the consequences not just for us, but for everyone we care about, will be…extreme.”

“Actually, General, that’s more likely to be true for the native Odyssians in the room,” Marchant pointed out. “You’ve all got family right here in-system. If it falls into the crapper, you’re the ones with the most to lose. The worst any of us ‘foreigners’ has to worry about is getting killed.”

“I know. Believe me, I know!”

Tolallis’s face tightened for a moment, then his nostrils flared and he shook himself.

“I know,” he repeated, “and Isadora and I have three kids right in the line of fire. I’d do just about anything to keep them safe, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that Konstantinos—I mean, the President—is right. Whether we do anything to prepare for it or not, the shit storm is coming. I wish to hell we had more information, but what we already know is more than bad enough.”

“I have to say I wish New Dublin hadn’t gone off the deep end,” Elitzi said. The others looked at her, and she grimaced. “I’m not saying they didn’t have plenty of cause. Hell, I don’t think there’s a single Fringe system that wouldn’t have plenty of cause. But they’ve lit a fuse—all of us know that!—and God only knows what’s going to happen when it reaches the main charge. I’d really have preferred to have a little more time—you know, like maybe an entire month—to plan something like this.”

“What we’ve got is what we’ve got,” Tolallis replied. “Not that I don’t totally agree with you. It’s just that what we’d prefer doesn’t mean squat compared to what we actually have.”

“We could take a little longer than you and Konstantinos are contemplating, though,” Ganatos pointed out. Tolallis looked at him, and the police commissioner twitched a shrug. “We only know about it because Timoleon happened to be in New Dublin and came straight here and her skipper told him about it. It’ll be a while before anyone else in Bellerophon, much less the rest of the sector, finds out. So it’s not like we have to pull the trigger tomorrow to stay in front of the news.”

“You’re right, at least in some ways.” Tolallis nodded. “But we all know damned well the news will hit Olympia and the Oval like a sledgehammer when they find out about it. And if this business about the marshals trying to arrest Murphy’s accurate, they already knew they had a problem building in New Dublin. That suggests that as soon as they have confirmation it’s hit the fan, they’ll at least send out precautionary warnings to the other Fringe sectors. Including Cyclops. If that happens, the chance of our pulling off something like this at all will nosedive. And the chance of our pulling it off without a bloodbath will dive even faster and deeper.”

“And there’s another factor,” Rodoulis said. Eyes turned towards him, and he shrugged. “President Xeneas can’t send word to New Dublin until he knows what word to send, and the communications loop isn’t really on our side. We’re eighteen light-years closer to New Dublin than we are to Sol, but we’re almost a hundred light-years closer to Sol than New Dublin is. If Schleibaum and Fokaides decide to start flinging around orders—or task forces—they can get them to Bellerophon a hell of a lot faster than to New Dublin. And Admiral Murphy isn’t between us and Sol. If we’re going to do this, we need to get it done and get word to him and this Free Worlds Alliance as early—and as fast—as we possibly can.”

Ganatos didn’t look any happier, but he nodded heavily, and Tolallis leaned forward in his chair.

“I don’t have anywhere near as good a feel for the Navy side of things as I’d like,” he said. “As far as the System Defense Force is concerned, sure, Yeorgia and I can lock things down. Our people trust us, and we know exactly who to bring onboard when the token drops. But Achilleas tells me it’s likely to be more of a crapshoot from the system picket’s perspective. And that a lot of it will depend on you, Commander.”

He looked at Marchant, and the commander shrugged unhappily.

“He’s probably right, General. About its being a crapshoot, I mean. Sure, sixty or seventy percent of our personnel are Fringers, and the Heart doesn’t have a lot of friends among them. But we’ll have to be insanely careful about who we approach.”

“Well, we can start right out by crossing Admiral Adamovič off our Christmas card list,” Hoveling said dryly, and al-Massoud cracked a barking laugh of agreement.

Rear Admiral Arshula Adamovič, who commanded both Task Force 1709 and FTLC Squadron 62, was a hard-bitten, not particularly imaginative officer. But she was also related to at least a half dozen Five Hundred families, and none of them needed to guess how she would respond if she heard about their current tête-à-tête.

“And, unfortunately, Captain Aguayo,” Marchant said heavily. “I hate that. Pascual’s a good man in an awful lot of ways, but he’s a Heart to the core.”

“I know.” Rodoulis’s expression was even unhappier than Marchant’s. “I’ve known him since the Academy. Hell, I’m his daughter’s godfather!” His jaw tightened for a moment. “I know exactly how he’ll react to something like this if he has time. That’s why you were one of the first people I talked to, Lloyd.”

“I wish I could think you’d been mistaken about that,” Marchant said. “But you’re not. Which means I have to figure out a way to neutralize both of them. And, God help me, so far I haven’t been able to come up with a…nonlethal approach. Or not one without entirely too much potential to turn lethal, anyway.”

“I may be able to help a little with that,” Tolallis said. Marchant looked at him, and he raised one hand in a tossing away gesture. “The President’s planning on inviting Ramsay to a meeting at Ithaca House to discuss certain ‘troubling indications’ he’s heard about Fringe unrest. If he phrases it right, and if I sign on with him, we can probably convince her to bring Adamovič along with her and have both of them sitting in a conference room with him.”

“That would help—a lot,” Marchant said.

Mollie Ramsay was the Bellerophon System Governor, which meant Adamovič came under her orders. If she invited the admiral to a conference with the system president, Adamovič would damned well be there.

“Yeah.” Al-Massoud nodded feelingly. “Still gonna be tricky, though. Especially setting up the conduits to the lower deck. Be kind of hard for one of us to sit down in the chiefs’ mess and just start shooting the breeze.”

He was looking across at SMCPO O’Cahill as he spoke, and O’Cahill looked back steadily.

“Which, obviously, is the reason I brought the Senior Master Chief along, Khairi,” Rodoulis said just a bit testily.

“I know that.” There was a genuine, if faint, note of apology in al-Massoud’s tone, but he didn’t look away from O’Cahill. “And I know you and he have been together a long time, Achilleas. But I don’t know him as well as you do, and a lot’s going to depend on him.”

Rodoulis opened his mouth, but O’Cahill held up a hand before he could speak.

“That’s a fair point, Sir,” he said. “And can’t say I blame you for raising it. On the other hand, you might want to ask Charlene Dabrowski about me.” He smiled very faintly. “She’s an old drinking buddy of mine.”

“You and Senior Master Chief Dabrowski?” Al-Massoud raised his eyebrows.

“She was Spacer Third-Class Dabrowski when I first met her, Sir. You might say we go back a long way.”

Al-Massoud regarded him very thoughtfully indeed. SMCPO Dabrowski was Ninurta’s boatswain, the ship’s senior noncommissioned officer, the same post O’Cahill held aboard Rodoulis’s Freyr.

“I was wondering how I might approach the Boatswain,” the captain said after a moment. “Obviously, I need her onboard for this if I expect the enlisted to go along with it. Should I take it you don’t think that will be quite as much of a problem as I was afraid it would be?”

“You’re worried because she’s a Heart, like me,” O’Cahill said calmly.

“That…and the fact that I’ve known her for less than two years, standard,” al-Massoud admitted. “And now that you brought it up, that is one of the reasons I mentioned the fact that I don’t really know you, either.”

I do,” Rodoulis said flatly. Al-Massoud looked at him, and he snorted. “I met O’Cahill on my snotty cruise, Khairi. I’ve known him for damned near twenty-five years. That’s why I specifically requested him for Freyr.”

“Skipper,” O’Cahill gave Rodoulis a crooked grin, “don’t worry so much! I know exactly why Captain al-Massoud’s sweating it, because I am a Heart. At least—” he looked back at al-Massoud, and his grin vanished “—by birth. But I’ve worn the uniform since I was twenty-seven, and that’s forty years standard next month. I’ve seen a lot of this war—I signed up right after the Brin Gap—so I know exactly how fucked up it’s been for the last thirty years. And my wife’s from Hathaway. We’ve been married for thirty-two T-years, Sir…and our daughter Kimberly was killed in action four years ago. For that matter, we’ve got two boys still in uniform. Trust me,” he shook his head, “I’m over being a Heart by birth.”

“I see.” Al-Massoud nodded, slowly at first, and then more briskly. “I see, Senior Master Chief. And I’m sorry to hear about your daughter.”

“So were we. And a hell of a lot more Fringers than Hearts get the same letter we got. I don’t know what kicked them off in New Dublin any more than you do, Sir. But I do know it’s been too damned long coming. And I know exactly which ‘troublemakers’ in my ship to approach. I’ll damn straight bet you Charlene knows which ones to talk to in Ninurta, too. I wouldn’t get Senior Master Chief Silvestre involved, Captain Hoveling. She’s not a big one for sticking out her neck, and I figure there’s a fifty-fifty chance she’d rat you out the minute you approached her, but Master Chief Jahoda’s a good man. Charlene and I could work with him. And Brewster’s as solid as they come, Commander Marchant. He’s been with Captain Aguayo a while, but he’s got a nephew and three cousins who never came home again.”

O’Cahill looked around the circle of monumentally senior officers, and his eyes were hard.

“If you’re serious about this, I can get the ball rolling tomorrow below decks. Probably faster than you can do it in officers’ country, really. But this is all or nothing. Even if we pull it off, we all know the Oval’s gonna send some hardass Heart out here with every ship they can scrape up. Aside from the ones this Murphy may have distracted, at least. A lot of what you people are talking about is above my pay grade, but I think President Xeneas is right that the entire Fringe is going up in flames, one way or the other, when it hears about New Dublin, and the Five Hundred’re going to put it down hard. They won’t give a single, solitary damn who gets ground up in the process, either. Hell, the more examples the better, from their viewpoint! It’s gonna be Gobelins all over again, only worse…unless we stop ’em. So I don’t see where we have a lot of choice. But I’m not gonna go and talk to any of my men and women and invite them to step out the lock without a suit with me unless we are going all the way. So, are we?”

He looked around the suddenly silent rec room. No one spoke for several seconds, and then al-Massoud inhaled deeply.

“Yes, Senior Master Chief,” he said into that silence. “Yes, we are.”



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