Shadow of Victory - eARC (15 page)

Chapter Twelve

“Now, Ansten. The first thing I want the yard dogs to do is—”

“The first thing, Skipper,” Ansten FitzGerald interrupted, “is for you to get into your dress uniform and get your posterior into a pinnace headed dirtside.”

Commander FitzGerald was still a bit short of anything Terekhov would have considered fully recovered from his wounds, but he’d returned to duty as Hexapuma’s executive officer, letting Ginger Lewis revert to her position as engineering officer. She’d been happy to surrender the responsibility to him—splitting her duties between XO and overseeing such massive repairs had been exhausting—and he’d dived back into his role with all his accustomed efficiency. Terekhov had been glad to see that, and not just for professional reasons. FitzGerald had become more than just a smoothly functioning XO.

Just at the moment, though, what the captain felt was intense exasperation.

“I know time’s tight, Ansten,” he said a bit testily. “But we still don’t even have her docked. For that matter, we don’t even have a schedule for when a berth will come open! They were supposed to have one waiting for us, but there’s been some kind of FUBAR—as usual—and that makes it even more important that we lock down as many details as possible right now.”

“Skipper, Ginger and I have this one. You’ve told us exactly what needs doing; we’ve got all your memos; we’ve got copies of all your message traffic and correspondence with Hephaestus; and I promise we’ll check off every box just as soon as the tugs get here. What you don’t have is time to dillydally.”

“Dillydally?” Terekhov repeated in the tone of a man who couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard.

“That was Chief Agnelli’s term, I believe.” FitzGerald smiled at him. “And while I realize you’re a captain, and so—obviously—not afraid of any chief steward ever born, I’m a mere commander. I don’t want to think about what she’ll do to me if you aren’t into that uniform and off this ship in plenty of time.”

He was smiling, but he was also serious. And he also had a point, Terekhov realized when he glanced at the chronometer. They’d been supposed to be berthed at Hephaestus by now, and they weren’t. That would make the shuttle flight at least ninety minutes longer, and that meant they really were cutting it close. And FitzGerald was also right that this was one schedule he couldn’t afford to bobble. But Hexapuma was his ship, his responsibility, and—

And you have perfectly capable subordinates—God knows they’ve proved that several times over! Ginger practically rebuilt Engineering by hand just to get her home, for God’s sake! I think you could probably trust her and Ansten not to break her again while you’re away!

And if you can’t, it’s no one’s fault but your own.

“All right,” he said. “All right!” He threw up his hands. “Tell Joanna to lay out my uniform because I’m on my way.”

“Skipper, I hope you realize just how pointless that message would be. She’s the one who told me she had it laid out fifteen minutes ago…about the time she ‘suggested’ I not let you dawdle up here. That was just before she used ‘dillydally’ on me.”

* * *

“Have you managed to find my wife, Amal?” Terekhov asked over his personal com as he half-trotted into the boat bay gallery.

“No, Sir. I’m afraid we haven’t,” Commander Nagchaudhuri replied apologetically. “We’ve tried all the combinations you gave us, Skipper, and all we’ve gotten is her voicemail.”

Terekhov scowled. Sinead Aurora O’Daley Terekhov was a daughter of two of the oldest naval dynasties in the RMN. She was also a cousin of the present Duke of Winterfell, and her ancestors had been commanding Queen’s ships—and serving in sensitive Foreign Office positions, come to that—for the better part of a T-century before the very first Terekhov’s shuttle ever touched down in Landing. She understood the realities of a naval career, and the one thing she’d never done, in the almost half-century of their marriage, was fail to answer her com within thirty seconds when she expected him to screen her. And she’d known exactly when Hexapuma was due back. For that matter, unless he missed his guess, Hexapuma’s and Warlock’s greeting from Home Fleet had been broadcast over the entire star system! So where was she?

“Keep trying,” he said as the flight engineer beckoned courteously but peremptorily from the inboard end of the boarding tube. “Put her through to me aboard the pinnace the instant you reach her.”

“Yes, Sir. Of course!”

Terekhov signed off and hurried towards the personnel tube. The flight engineer stood aside to let him dive headfirst into the tube’s zero-gravity, then followed. He was on Terekhov’s heels when the captain caught the grab bar and swung feet-first into the pinnace’s internal gravity, and as Terekhov headed for his seat, the engineer sealed the hatch and checked the telltales.

“Good seal!” he announced to the flight deck.

“Copy good seal,” the response came back, and the seatbelt signal flashed on the forward bulkhead.

Terekhov settled into place and looked out the port to watch the umbilicals disengage in spurts of vapor, retracting smoothly in the boat bay’s vacuum. The docking arms unlocked, maneuvering thrusters flared, and the boat bay bulkhead’s ranging lines slid vertically upward as the pilot eased the pinnace out of the bay. It was smoothly done, Terekhov noticed, and made a mental note to compliment the lieutenant when they landed, but it was a distracted sort of note.

Where are you, Sinead? he worried, turning his attention to the bulkhead display as Hexapuma’s huge bulk and the distant, gleaming mote of Hephaestus dwindled behind them. And why the hell aren’t you answering the damned com?!

* * *

She sat one of the VIP concourse’s almost sinfully comfortable float chairs, right inside the arrival gate, and her nimble fingers were busy with her pad and stylus. They almost always were when she waited. At least a dozen art critics would have been astonished—possibly even outraged—to discover that one of the Star Kingdom’s more acclaimed artists saw her paintings mainly as ways to keep herself occupied when she needed distracting.

It was very quiet in the superb soundproofing, and she supposed she was glad for that. A little bustle and flurry might have helped pass the time, but the newsies had been damnably persistent ever since word of Monica broke. That had eased a bit over the last month or two, as other stories filled the ’faxes, but with Hexapuma and Warlock’s arrival in-system, that was likely to change, so she’d been grateful when the respectful young lieutenant suggested—

“Aivars!”

* * *

His wife’s stylus and pad went flying the instant the lift car doors opened, and as he watched the pad hit the floor with a sharp, crunching sound, a corner of Aivars Terekhov’s mind found time to hope she’d saved her latest creation before she demolished it.

And then she was in his arms, slender and graceful, warm and soft, so heart-stoppingly beautiful his eyes burned and his vision blurred, and he forgot all about broken pads. He forgot about everything as he crushed her in his embrace and buried his face in the sweet-smelling silk of her feathery red hair.

“Oh, Aivars,” she whispered, and turned her face up to his. Her lips were soft and sweet, and he drank the fire of her kiss deep for endless seconds while her arms locked around him like iron.

But then, finally, he made himself step back slightly, easing the grip which had threatened to break ribs, and drew a deep breath of badly needed oxygen.

“And why—” despite himself, the first two words came out husky “—aren’t you answering your com, young lady?”

Her lips twitched at the long-standing joke—she was all of eleven hours, twelve minutes, and nineteen seconds younger than he—but her expression was puzzled.

“Answering my com? Aivars, I’ve been sitting here waiting for you to screen for over two hours!”

“What?” Terekhov frowned. “I’ve been trying to reach you ever since we tied into Hephaestus’ communications system!”

“You’ve what?” She blinked up at him. “That’s ridicu—”

She stopped, green eyes narrowing, and lifted her wrist. She tapped a quick diagnostic inquiry into her uni-link, and those green eyes narrowed still further.

“I’ll kill him,” she said in a conversational tone. “I won’t even need a pulser. He’s a dead man as soon as he comes in reach.”

Terekhov’s eyebrows arched, but then his expression changed and his own eyes narrowed.

“Charlie?”

“Charlie,” she confirmed grimly. “Unless you know someone else who could’ve hacked into my personal account and put your information on the blocked contacts list? Or let me rephrase that. Unless you know someone else who would’ve thought it was a good idea to hack into my personal account and put your name on the blocked contacts list on today of all days?”

“Not right off the top of my head, no.” His voice was suspiciously unsteady, and she glared up at him, as if daring him to laugh. But that was the sort of mistake no good tactician was likely to make.

The Honorable Charles Travis O’Daley—Charlie, to his friends and long-suffering family—was fifteen T-years younger than Sinead and universally regarded as a wealthy, overbred, conspicuously idle layabout who amused himself playing at the Foreign Office job he’d acquired solely through family connections. It certainly couldn’t have been because of competence, at any rate! Everyone knew that.

Or almost everyone, at any rate. Terekhov was one of a select few who knew Charlie O’Daley was a very tough customer, indeed, and that his Foreign Office position was pure window dressing. Charlie could have had a brilliant diplomatic career if he’d wanted it, but that might have been inconvenient for one of the Special Intelligence Service’s more accomplished field operatives. It would never have done for his cover to get in the way of what he actually did.

He did have an occasionally—no, permanently—dubious sense of humor, however, not to mention access to SIS’ cyber specialists, most of whom owed him favors for one disreputable reason or another. And given that combination, it was no wonder Sinead’s suspicions had instantly—

“Did I just hear my name taken in vain?” a pleasant baritone drawled, and Sinead whirled as a well-groomed gentleman in formal court attire, with hair exactly the same dark red as her own, strode into the VIP lounge.

“You are so going to die, Charles Travis O’Daley!”

“Now, now. None of that!” he admonished, reaching past her to extend his hand to Terekhov. His grip was hard and strong, at sharp odds with the foppish appearance he took such pains to project, and his green eyes were warm. But then they swiveled back to his irate sister and he released Terekhov’s hand to wave an admonishing index finger in her direction.

“If you and Aivars had been able t’ screen each other, we’d never’ve gotten you off the com in time for his appointment,” he informed her in the maddening, aristocratic drawl that was totally absent in her own speech. “And if you’d spent all that time talkin’ to him, there wouldn’t be time for him t’ muss you properly in the limo on the way t’ the Palace. Now, I ask you, in the view of any reasonable person, how else could a lovin’ brother determined t’ look after his sister’s best interests have responded t’ a situation like that?”

Despite herself, she giggled, although she also shook a fist under his nose. He looked down at it, eyes crossing, and her giggle became a spurt of laughter.

“All right, so you’re not going to die—this time! But you do remember the consequences the last time something like this happened, don’t you?”

“Such a petty, vindictive attitude,” he sighed. “Alas! It’s ever my fate t’ be maligned and abused. However, I’m accustomed to it. I’m sure I shall bear up with all my customary nobility when that small-minded moment arrives.”

He elevated his nose with an audible sniff, and she punched him none too lightly in the chest.

“Brutal woman,” he said, smiling as he rubbed the spot. But then his expression turned a bit more serious.

“Really, Sinead. If you want a few minutes—private minutes—before they drag him off t’ the reception, you’d better grab them in the limo on the way there. I’ve already told the driver when you need t’ arrive, and he’s ready t’ circle until then.” He reached out and touched her cheek lightly. “That’s the only place you’re goin’ t’ get him to yourself, away from newsies, court functionaries, and—God help him—Her Majesty, any time in the next, oh, five or six days. And that’s assumin’ they don’t have somethin’ else planned for him, as well.”

He glanced over her head at his brother-in-law and something tingled inside Terekhov. Their eyes met, ever so briefly, and then Terekhov nodded.

“He’s probably right,” he said, wrapping one arm around her shoulders.

“Oh, I’m sure he’s right.” She gazed at her brother with a fulminating eye. “He’s always right. It’s the only reason he’s still alive!”

“Maybe,” Terekhov acknowledged. “Doesn’t change his point, though.”

“No, it doesn’t,” O’Daley agreed pleasantly. “And times a-wasting.”

“All right,” Sinead said. “I’ll let you live. I may not even trip you down two or three flights of stairs. This time.”

“You’re so good t’ me.” He smiled and leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. “Now go, you two! And try not t’ look too disheveled when you finally get t’ the Palace. Mind you, I’ll be disappointed if you don’t look at least a little disheveled, Sinead, but it is a formal audience with the Queen, after all.”

Chapter Thirteen

Well, that was certainly a waste of time, Damien Harahap reflected as he completed his final editing pass and closed the file on his terminal.

It was a good report, concisely written and tightly reasoned, if he did say so himself. Unfortunately, the “revolutionaries” of Any Port had proved just as unsuitable as he’d expected them to.

He sat back for a moment, considering his conclusions, wondering if his expectations had colored his ultimate judgment. It was possible, he supposed…but not likely. He’d been doing this too long from the other side of the hill to let himself indulge in that kind of dangerous crap.

Besides, it’s not like Operation Janus needs every star system on the list to go up in flames. As many as possible, sure. But even Manpower’s resources have to be limited, ultimately. They can’t do everything they’d like to do and there has to be a limit on how many lunatics even they can support, if only because of logistics. So it’s at least as important to eliminate bad risks as it is to identify good…investment prospects.

It was to be hoped Isabel Bardasano saw things that way. He thought she would, but he’d also decided it was more important to give her his very best work than the work she perhaps wanted. That was why competent superiors wanted competent subordinates, and the fact that OFS—even the Gendarmerie—seemed to have forgotten that explained a great deal, in his opinion.

He shrugged. Either way, Any Port was a bust. Better to tell her that up front, whatever she wanted to hear, than to spin some song and dance about the wonderful opportunity it represented only to have that come home to haunt him later.

He punched up the next system on his list, and smiled with considerably better cheer as he tabbed through the files to the one on Somerton Spaceways. He didn’t really need to revisit it—they were less than three days out now, and he’d had ample time to go digest the files during the trip from Any Port—but professionalism was a hard habit to break. And the professional in him was very happy with the quality of his background brief on the Mobius System…especially since at least two thirds of the data in those files came from Trifecta Corporation sources rather than from OFS or the Gendarmerie.

He’d never met Esteban Gibson, head of Trifecta’s Mobius System internal security, but the man was a retired Gendarmerie brigadier, with lots of contacts. He was also a firm believer in the iron fist; he’d come up through the intervention battalions, and he’d never met a problem he couldn’t solve with enough nightsticks…or pulser darts. Despite that, he wasn’t stupid, and he was obviously far better tapped in than most to what was happening in Mobius. He’d identified several threats none of the League’s official intelligence services seemed to have noticed—or reported, at least—and his data suggested at least three possible contacts Harahap was certain weren’t on OFS’ screens at all.

Too bad no one else in the system’s capable of the same kind of analysis, Harahap thought cynically. Xydis seems reasonably competent for a senior OFS officer, I suppose. But that’s a pretty damned low bar, and the Gendarmerie’s even more useless. Hell, they don’t even have an intel detachment anywhere in the entire frigging system! Not My Job Syndrome again, I guess. He’d always hated that attitude when he was in the field, but it was only too common out here in the Verge, which was enough to drive any semi-competent person into a frothing fury. Not that I should be complaining too loudly, under the circumstances. Stupid is good from my perspective, and so is the fact that no one in Trifecta realizes Gibson’s selling his data to their competition. Or what he thinks is their competition, anyway.

He shook his head. Normally, he was a great fan of the KISS principle, especially when his own neck was involved, but sometimes he just had to stand back in admiration for a particularly artful triple or quadruple cross. In this case, Gibson was convinced he was dealing with Kalokainos Interstellar, which was engineering a takeover in the Mobius in cooperation with Kellerman, Kinross, & Watts of Terra. Bardasano even had an actual Kalokainos mid-level manager (who genuinely thought he was working with KK&W) on her payroll, and he’d convinced Gibson the new management would keep him on—with a substantial raise—after the dust settled. All he had to do was provide the sort of inside information someone like Harahap needed and then stay out of the way while that someone made use of it. No doubt Gibson had socked away incriminating recordings of his discussions with the go-between. His was not a trusting nature, or he wouldn’t have survived as long as he had. It wouldn’t do him any good in the end, since his true employers couldn’t have cared less if he tried to implicate Kalikainos in return for a lighter sentence, but considering what had almost happened on Myers, Harahap hoped he’d have a chance to use them.

Now, now, Damien. That would be the cherry on top, but for now, you have more fundamental things to worry about. Focus!

He took a sip from the coffee mug at his elbow, arranged himself comfortably, and opened the first folder.

* * *

“God, he gets more smug looking every year, doesn’t he?” Kayleigh Blanchard sounded disgusted, and Michael Breitbach turned to follow her gaze out the rather dingy apartment’s window.

The enormous permanent hologram of President Svein Lombroso towered over Freedom Park, the ten-hectare green belt around Presidential Palace. The same stern-jawed face looked out from the sides of at least a third of the city of Landing’s buildings, but the holo took pride of pace, dwarfing the most heroically scaled statues pre-Diaspora humanity had ever dreamed of creating, and it had just undergone its once-a-quarter update. It was almost half the height of the White Whore—otherwise known as Trifecta Tower—which dominated downtown Landing. Lombroso would undoubtedly have liked it to be even taller, but a hundred and twelve stories was probably enough, even for his ego, and it might have been…tactless to overshadow his corporate patrons’ headquarters.

“He does look smugger than usual, doesn’t he?” Breitbach agreed. “I trust you’re not going around making that observation to anyone else, though?”

“I even know how to seal my own shoes, Michael,” she replied scathingly.

“That was in the nature of irony,” he said. “You’re familiar with the concept?”

The look she gave him was even more scathing, and he chuckled. Blanchard was taller than he was, with dark hair and eyes, and even tougher than her obviously muscular physique implied. She was also a licensed private investigator, and those were rare on the planet Mobius. Just getting a PI’s license and—especially—the concealed carry permit that came with it in the first place required connections in the right places and more than a little juice with the local bureaucracy, but keeping both of those—and staying out of prison—depended in no small part on watching her mouth. There was no telling when an unfortunate remark might reach Olivia Yardley or Friedmann Mátáys’ ears, and they kept a closer eye on people with official licenses to meddle.

They also required periodic reports of suspicious or “disloyal” behavior. He knew how much Blanchard hated making those reports—especially accurate ones—but they underscored her own loyalty for the benefit of the regime’s security organs, and that was a significant part of what made her so valuable.

“Yes, I’m familiar with the concept, Michael,” she told him after a moment. “I just wish to hell I knew what he was up to this time around. God knows he’s only about a tenth as smart as he thinks he is, but I get nervous when he starts doing things that look exceptionally stupid even for him.”

“I’m inclined to think it’s Guernicke’s brainstorm. Or maybe Frolov’s.”

“I don’t think too much of either of their IQs, either, but are they really dim enough to support something like this?”

“Well, whether it was their idea or not, you know they must’ve signed off on it for our good friend Svein to run with it this way,” he pointed out. “I didn’t say it was a good brainstorm; only that it had to have the executive suite’s okay.”

“I only wish we knew why anybody on the inside of the SUPP would think this was even a half good idea,” she fretted. “Why should a covey of Party hacks decide to hold elections for the first time in almost forty years?”

“According to my sources,” Breitbach said, and she knew he wasn’t going to tell her who those sources were, “it’s been suggested—apparently based on a report from Trifecta’s security people—that a ‘free and open election’ which happened to return an overwhelming majority for Lombroso would go a long way towards quieting our more restive fellow citizens.”

Blanchard made a gagging sound, and Breitbach smiled thinly.

“We both know what the vote count’s going to be,” he agreed. “But let’s face it. It’s unlikely to make things a lot worse from Lombroso’s perspective, and if nothing else, anyone who tries to organize an opposition vote will paste great big targets on their backs for Yardley and Mátáys. I don’t know about Yardley, but Mátáys is actually smart enough to wait until a few months after the vote before he starts disappearing the new entries on his list of troublemakers.”

Blanchard frowned as she realized he had a point. But then, Michael Breitbach usually had a point. That was one reason his Mobius Liberation Front had survived when so many other resistance movements had disappeared into Yellow Rock Prison or one of the reeducation camps…or simply disappeared. He was a thoughtful, insightful man and he’d devoted plenty of research to the question of how a revolutionary built his movement and succeeded. The MLF, unlike most of its predecessors, used a tight cell system, and Breitbach was ruthless about maintaining security. That was Blanchard’s responsibility, really, and if she didn’t like some of the things it required of her, she liked the thought of a cell with a view—or an unmarked grave somewhere—even less.

“Okay,” she said after a moment, “I can see that. But they’re still taking a hell of a risk, Michael. Sure, it may work out that way, and I’m sure it will provide Lombroso and System Unity with at least a fresh paper mandate, whatever else happens. But an awful lot of people are going to recognize that it’s a put-up job. You know how much trust they put in the official news channels already. Just pumping out the Party line and telling everyone how well the elections are going is bound to convince those people exactly the reverse is happening.”

“Unfortunately, I’m not sure there are as many of ‘those people’ left as you think there are,” Breitbach said glumly. “By this time, almost half the theoretical electorate’s never lived under any other system. Just how critical can their thinking be with that background? You know what the education system’s pumped out since Lombroso’s ‘reforms’ went into place. Hell, you know even better than I do; it had already been coopted before you were out of high school yourself! And even if any large chunk of the population does see what’s really happening, so what? Like I say, it’s not going to make Lombroso any less popular with the people who already hate him.”

“No, but if it gets out of hand, leads to actual demonstrations that end up going off the rails—”

She broke off, shaking her head unhappily, and he nodded.

Svein Lombroso’s System Unity and Progress Party had seized power forty-eight T-years ago, following the disastrous Crash of ’73, in an election overseen by no less a paragon of impartiality than the Office of Frontier Security when it rallied to Mobius rescue. At the time, some had claimed Trifecta had deliberately engineered the massive economic collapse that wiped out more than half of the star system’s net worth in less than five months to drive down the cost of its ongoing takeover of the Mobian economy. Arrant anti-social, disloyal fabrication and vilification by the criminal element, of course, but it had been said.

Of course, most who’d said it had quietly changed their minds or faced the stern justice of the special courts set up to deal with the corrupt local plutocrats whose unbridled greed had really caused the collapse. All with scrupulous observance of the defendants’ legal rights, as OFS had solemnly attested when the families of some of those sentenced appealed to it.

That had been in the early days, before OFS, satisfied the fiscal chaos had been sorted out, officially withdrew from the system. The OFS Commission on Mobian Affairs had been discreetly disbanded in 1879, four months before the SUPP formally suspended elections. That was when Lombroso’s first—and, under the constitution, only—presidential term had been slated to end. In light of the massive majority which had elected him in the first place, and the unfinished nature of the SUPP’s “reform platform,” however, he’d clearly had no choice but to temporarily suspend the constitution’s term limits. Obviously, he’d step down as soon as he was confident all the reforms were solidly in place, and submit his actions to the judgment of the electorate.

It was possible that at least three or four particularly credulous twelve-year-olds had actually believed that. Unlikely, but possible.

That hadn’t mattered a great deal, though, since he’d also had Trifecta’s solid backing. And Trifecta had already been the Mobius System’s single largest employer and investor. Thirty-five percent of the system’s total workforce had been direct or indirect Trifecta employees even before the crash. Now that percentage was well over eighty-five, and Trifecta had finished demolishing every hope of competition for its control of the system and its economy.

Breitbach was an urban planner by profession, and he’d been better placed than most to see what that meant. His employer, City Solutions, Incorporated, had been a relatively small, privately owned outfit at the time SUPP came to power. Within five years, its original founding partners had been frozen out and President Lombroso’s second cousin, Jesper Lombroso, had become CEO, majority stockholder, and effective owner. At which time City Solutions had expanded by over five thousand percent as orders and projects came flooding in.

Financially, Breitbach couldn’t complain about what that had meant. Back in 1879 he’d been a very junior employee, fresh out of college and full of idealism. Now he was a very well paid department head in the biggest firm of its kind in the entire star system…and a member in good standing—very good standing—of the System Unity and Progress Party. He was also perfectly placed to know that somewhere around two thirds of the firm’s fees went straight into the pockets of Jesper and his cronies rather than into paying for the projects they were supposed to cover.