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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

TFNS Lelantos

Wormhole Space

November 29, 2552


“Four,” Captain Ozbey said.

Oooh.” Commander Alioto looked at his cards dubiously. “I was gonna bid nil.”

“Sure you were.” Vice Admiral Rajenda Thakore looked at his own hand. “And if I believed that, I might be worried.” He rubbed the tip of his nose with his right index finger. “Three,” he said finally, and looked at Alioto. “And your nil bid?”

“Five,” the commander said with a grin, and Thakore shook his head.

“One of these days you may actually learn to bluff,” he said dryly, then cocked an eyebrow across the table.

“Well,” Commodore Christina Zebić said, “since Saffiro isn’t going nil after all, I suppose I should.” She shrugged. “Or are we playing ‘no ace, no face, no Spades’ and I get to throw it in?”

“Talk about people who can’t bluff,” Captain Ozbey observed to no one in particular, and Zebić chuckled.

“Okay, skeptic. Wait and see for yourself,” she said. “Go ahead, lead something.”

Ozbey glanced at his cards, then played the three of Hearts. Thakore dropped the Jack on it, Alioto followed with the Queen, and Zebić played the ten.

“One away,” she said, and Alioto led the five of Clubs. She dropped the six on it, Ozbey played the Ace, and Thakore took the opportunity to get rid of the three.

“And that’s two,” he said.

The hand proceeded, but the truth was that Thakore was on autopilot. He supposed he should be paying more attention, but he was an excellent Spades player, so his “autopilot mode” was pretty damned good. And despite the much-needed relaxation, he had other things to worry about.

Lelantos had departed the Sol System on October twelfth, and by the rest of the galaxy’s clocks, it was November twenty-ninth. But while forty days had been passing by those other clocks, only about five and a half had passed aboard Lelantos as she hurtled through wormhole space at 99.9 percent of light speed.

He wished the voyage had gone equally quickly for the galaxy at large.

Too long, he thought, playing the Queen of Diamonds to take another trick. God only knows what Terry’s been up to with that much time.

A dull burn of rage went through him, although no sign of it showed in his expression. His family didn’t show its emotions, although Simron had always been something of an exception in that regard. Of course, Simron’s judgment wasn’t always the best, as Rajenda’s current mission demonstrated. He’d told her to turn down Terrence Murphy’s proposal. He’d told her. Warned her Murphy would never be a comfortable fit in the universe of the Five Hundred. But had she listened? Hell, no! And now there was hell to pay, because she hadn’t. Bad enough for the rest of the Federation, but potentially disastrous on so many levels for the Thakore family.

Alioto played the six of Hearts, and Zebić grimaced as she dropped the nine on it. Ozbey chuckled and sluffed a diamond, then grimaced in turn as Thakore played the two of Spades.

“Nice try,” he told Lelantos’s commanding officer, and led the Ace of Spades. Zebić played the Ace of Hearts and grinned at the flag captain.

“Well, I may have fibbed a little bit about not having any face cards, but I wasn’t lying about the Spades.”

“So I see, Ma’am. Well, we’ll just have to work a little harder. Or possibly set the Admiral.”

“Who already has two of his three tricks,” Rajenda pointed out. “I’ve got a feeling I may not be the one getting set around here.”

Ozbey chuckled and led the seven of Spades. Rajenda played the Jack and sat back in his chair.

This would be their last Spades game before Jalal, he thought. After which, they’d have a rather more serious game to play. And that could get tricky. Especially after this much delay. It had taken entirely too long to put together his task force, but at least they’d given him plenty of power when they finally sent him off.

It irked him that his command was designated Task Force 804. Twenty-four FTLCs—twenty-five, counting Lelantos—with their embarked sublight parasites should have been designated a fleet, in his opinion. Especially, he acknowledged, if it was under his command. In fact, they had been designated a fleet until they’d actually been concentrated and sent off to Jalal. But the Prime Minister and the Oval had been adamant. They couldn’t designate the force sent off to deal with a single ragtag would-be warlord a “fleet” without alarming the public. And it would never do to alarm the public, now would it? So instead of sending Eighth Fleet, the Federation Navy’s strategic reserve, they’d sent only a single task force from it, instead.

Apparently they actually believed—hoped, anyway—that no one would notice that the “task force” in question contained every single one of the “fleet” in question’s FTLCs.

In Rajenda’s opinion, anyone with two functioning neurons was already “alarmed” by his brother-in-law’s antics, and fiddling around with “reassuring” unit designations was unlikely to change that. On the other hand, he wasn’t exactly in the best position to go pushing demands right now. Terrence Murphy might be only his brother-in-law, not a Thakore by blood, but his antics threatened to splash all over the entire family. Rajenda was more than sufficiently pissed off with Murphy to do what needed to be done, even if Simron would never forgive him for it, simply because of the threat he posed for the Federation. But he never knowingly lied to himself, so he couldn’t pretend that the need to protect the family didn’t add significantly to his determination.

He and his staff had considered their options carefully, and Zebić wasn’t simply an excellent chief of staff, she was also a first cousin on his mother’s side. In fact, aside from her fairer complexion, she looked a great deal like his sister, complete to her blue eyes, although hers were the ice blue of a Norwegian fjord, a lighter shade than Simmy’s. They were very much the same height, however, and Christina’s brain was every bit as sharp as Simmy’s. Maybe even sharper, given his sister’s taste in husbands.

Rajenda was confident they were as prepared as they could be, but that wasn’t remotely the same as being as prepared as he would have preferred to be. They simply couldn’t know what Terry had been up to since his last report to Olympia. If the marshals sent to arrest him had succeeded, then the problem was under control. If they’d failed, somehow, it could be…bad. And unlike some members of the Five Hundred, Rajenda was less than confident of the marshals’ success. He wouldn’t know for certain until he reached Jalal, of course. There’d been time for Captain Lipshen, or at least dispatches from him, to get that far. But his orders in the event that Lipshen wasn’t waiting for him there with Murphy in custody were clear. And if that happened…

The Oval insisted Murphy couldn’t possibly have more than the seven FTLCs he’d short-stopped before the League attack on New Dublin. Rajenda wasn’t so sure. There was too much unrest in the Fringe, and much as he detested Terrence Murphy, he’d come to the conclusion that he’d badly underestimated his brother-in-law’s personal charisma, at least with Fringers. He would never have expected the second-rate officer he’d always known, the man who’d yearned for survey duty in the middle of humanity’s bloodiest war, to get away with appropriating even four additional carriers. He would have been wrong about that, and he wasn’t prepared to compound the error by assuming he might not have added another handful to them. But even if he’d somehow managed to secure command of every Navy picket within seventy light-years of New Dublin, TF 804 would still hold a seventy-plus percent edge in hulls. And that didn’t include Clarence Maddox’s carrier division, waiting for him at Jalal Station, either. With them added to his task force, he’d have the next best thing to a two-to-one advantage even if Terry had picked up every FTLC in the vicinity. It wouldn’t be as good as the four-to-one advantage the Oval had promised him he’d have, but it would be more than enough.

I’d feel even better if I knew what the hell he’d used against the Leaguies in New Dublin, though, he acknowledged. That was another place he found himself in less than complete agreement with the Oval’s assessments.

Officially, Admiral Fokaides had assured him that all available intelligence indicated that Terry had significantly exaggerated the odds he’d faced at New Dublin. He’d undoubtedly inflated them in order to bolster his claims that he’d had no choice but to violate his very specific orders from Olympia. After all, the CNO had pointed out, he hadn’t said a word about exactly how he’d managed to defeat twelve League FTLCs with only seven of his own. Under the circumstances, that had to suggest there hadn’t actually been twelve of them to begin with. Indeed, given the historical League deployment patterns in the region, ONI was convinced TF 1705 had actually had at least parity with—and more likely the numerical edge over—Second Admiral’s Xing’s raiding squadron. In which case, there was no reason to assume Terry had devised some new, super-powerful wonder weapon or tactics no one else had ever thought of. Certainly Rajenda should be wary, but the last thing they could afford was to let Terry bluff them into weakness with a secret weapon that probably didn’t even exist.

Rajenda had nodded, but inside he’d wanted to smack Fokaides across the top of the head.

He didn’t like Terrence Murphy, and he never had, but one thing Murphy had never been was stupid enough to be caught in a blatant lie. His claims about Rishathan involvement were clearly ludicrous, but, then, Terry had always had a few loose screws about the Rish. He’d even confided to Rajenda once, when they’d both had a bit too much to drink, that his analysis of the Brin Gap action suggested the possibility of Rish tech transfers, and everyone knew his buddy O’Hanraghty was a card-carrying member of the tinfoil-hat brigade. But Rajenda very much doubted that he’d have falsified his after-action reports, especially given the way he knew the sensor data from them would have to be reviewed. Nor did Rajenda think he was lying when he said he really had found and destroyed a major League shipyard the Federation hadn’t known thing about.

For that matter, the New Dublin numbers been signed off on by Commodore Esteban Tremblay, and Tremblay was—or had been, at least—as loyal a Federation officer (and Heart Worlder) as Rajenda had ever known.

True, he’d allowed himself to be co-opted for Terry’s defense of New Dublin, but Rajenda could understand that, in many ways. There had been a hundred million Federation citizens on Crann Bethadh. Fringers, perhaps, but still citizens. And Tremblay had always chafed over the way FTLCs’ strategic value made it impractical for the Navy to defend every pissant system in the Fringe. So, no, his willingness to stand with Terry in New Dublin’s defense was no great surprise. And he’d also appended his own report to Terry’s report on the battle they’d fought there. No doubt it had been censored by Terry—or, more probably, by that asshole O’Hanraghty—since it didn’t mention exactly what Terry had done to take down no less than eight FTLCs, either. But it supported Terry’s op force analysis, and one thing Esteban Tremblay would never have done was falsify a report like that.

That was why Rajenda was pretty certain Tremblay was no longer in command of his carrier division. Not if Terry had successfully defied arrest. He sure as hell hadn’t done that without somebody—probably quite a few somebodies, given the Army Hoplons sent to back Lipshen and the marshals—getting killed along the way, and that would have been a bridge too far for someone like Tremblay.

None of which told him what rabbit Terry had pulled out of his hat in New Dublin, and assuming Tremblay’s report was remotely accurate, it was obvious his brother-in-law had come up with some edge Second Admiral Xing had never seen coming. That was why, Fokaides and ONI intelligence appreciations notwithstanding, he intended to approach that system with extraordinary caution after he picked up Maddox’s carriers at Jalal.

And whatever the hell it was, at least I know to be watching for something, don’t I? That’s more than the idiot League admiral who sailed right into whatever it was managed. For that matter, it’s even possible Terry will just throw in the towel when he sees how much firepower I’ve got. Simmy would probably prefer that. That’s because she doesn’t want to admit that, one way or the other, unless he’s already in custody, he’s a dead man. The rest of the Five Hundred can’t let it end any other way. If they managed to arrest him, then they may settle for breaking him out of the Navy and sending him to prison for a decade or two for corruption.

A corner—a tiny corner—of Rajenda’s brain winced at that. No one who knew Terrence Murphy, not even—or perhaps especially—Rajenda Thakore, would believe the charges of corruption and embezzlement for a heartbeat. But Murphy had better hope to hell the rest of the Federation did, because if the Five Hundred decided it couldn’t sell that narrative—

They have to bring him down, and if they can’t railroad him into prison, what other option do they have? New Dublin has to have made him a hero to the Fringe. A Heart World admiral who defied orders to protect a Fringe system? Of course it has! And the Federation can’t afford to give the lunatics in the Fringe someone to rally around. So if he’s defied arrest, and he—and whoever may have helped—aren’t turned into examples pretty damn quick, we’ll be looking at whole star systems going out of compliance, and probably sooner rather than later. That’s why I hope he isn’t smart enough to cave, if it comes down to it.

He told himself that firmly, and it was true. But there was another reason he hoped Terrence Murphy didn’t surrender as soon he came face-to-face with the Federation’s hammer, as well. After his actions, suspicion must always linger where the Thakore family was concerned. After all, Terry was a Thakore, even if only by marriage, wasn’t he?

That sort of suspicion could be fatal for a family’s position in the Five Hundred. Unless, of course, the family in question demonstrated its reliability by dealing with the threat itself. If Terrence Murphy was a dead man anyway, there was no reason at all Rajenda Thakore shouldn’t personally deliver his head to Olympia to prove his own and his family’s loyalty.



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