Shadow of Victory - eARC (16 page)

Not that he meant to say a single word about that, although he’d allowed Caleb Turner to compromise his computer access codes.

Turner was one of the better cyber security people on Mobius, who did a lot of consulting with the Landing City Police Department. That was how he knew Blanchard, who’d been a sergeant in the LCPD’s homicide department until the criminal investigation side of the force had been downsized eighteen years ago in favor of beefing up Colonel Grigori Petulengro’s Security and Intelligence Branch. They’d worked together on several occasions and become personal friends, and he hadn’t been quite as discreet with her as he’d thought. He still didn’t know Blanchard was the one who’d arranged his recruitment into the MLF, though, nor did he have the least idea that she was a member.

He also did some consulting for City Solutions, which was how he’d come to know Breitbach, as well. Turner didn’t much like or trust him, given Breitbach’s lucrative position and fervent support of the regime, but he’d been more than willing to…acquire access to Breitbach’s codes when the engineer carelessly left them lying about unencrypted. He’d recognized their value instantly, just as Breitbach had intended, and he’d used them to hack into the Presidential Guard’s files for the MLF by going through City Solutions’ interface with the Department of Housing and Urban Planning.

If anyone in the PG or over at DHUP discovered the hack, the consequences for Turner would be most unpleasant. Breitbach, on the other hand, might get a slap on the wrist for allowing his credentials to be compromised, but he was too well covered within the Party to worry about much more than that. He hadn’t liked treating Turner as an expendable cat’s-paw, and Blanchard knew he’d agonize internally if anything happened to the other man. That hadn’t kept him from doing it, anyway…which was why someday the MLF might actually succeed where every other resistance and reform movement of the last half T-century had failed.

“Wasn’t Joseph supposed to be here already?” she asked, deliberately changing the subject, and Breitbach nodded.

“He was. You know Joseph, though. If he said he’ll be here, he’ll be here. He just…marches to another drum where timing is concerned.”

This time she chuckled. Joseph Landrum was the head of one of the MLF’s alpha-level cells, but it was larger than almost any of the organization’s other cells and, unlike the other alphas, it was completely compartmentalized, with no subordinate cells below it. Outside its own members, only Breitbach and Blanchard even knew it existed, much less who was in it, because he and his people were simply too valuable to even risk compromising.

Landrum was an executive in Somerton Spaceways, an intra-system cargo line owned—inevitably—by yet another clutch of Trifecta flunkies. Somerton did a lot of business for Trifecta, and although none of its vessels were hyper-capable, its activities were closely integrated with Trifecta’s interstellar operations. That gave Landrum a wide range of contacts with freight agents, pursers, purchasing agents, and starship personnel, with all sorts of useful implications for the MLF. Still, Breitbach had a point. Landrum was a very smart man, intensely organized professionally, but outside the calendar kept for him by his secretary, he’d probably never been on time in his entire life.

“Do you have any idea what he wants to talk about?” she asked.

“Of course not,” Breitbach said, giving her a chiding look, and she snorted in acknowledgment.

All of them knew better than to say anything important over a com or in any office, whether it belonged to the SUPP or not. Communications Security Act had exterminated the last tattered shreds of privacy thirty-five T-years ago. Of course, the CSA had only regularized something which had been going on for years, and every Mobian routinely assumed any public venue was thoroughly bugged by the regime’s security services. Or by Trifecta’s internal security people, on retainer to the Presidential Guard or the MSP, more often than not. Finding places that weren’t bugged for face-to-face conversations—the only safe sort of conversations—was a nontrivial task, but it wasn’t impossible. Especially not for someone like Breitbach, who had access to the records on so many of the regime’s failed housing projects. He’d compiled a list of suitable sites long ago and each alpha-level cell had its own dedicated set, with identifying code words for each.

“He’ll be along when he gets here,” he said now. “And, fortunately…”

He reached into a pocket, and Blanchard groaned only half-humorously as he produced the deck of cards.

“Oh, come on, Kayleigh! You know it’ll help pass the time. Besides—”

Fortunately for Blanchard, someone knocked on the apartment’s door at that very moment. She recognized the light, apparently patternless series of knocks instantly, but that didn’t keep her hand from sliding the pulser holstered under her jacket. She had no illusions about her ability to stand off a Presidential Guard SWAT team, but she could at least guarantee neither she nor Breitbach would be available for interrogation.

Breitbach gave her a crooked smile which understood exactly what she was thinking and stepped past her to open the door.

“Joseph,” he said dryly. “How nice of you to drop by. Eventually.”

“Yeah, sure.” The man who stepped into the wretched little apartment’s front room was even shorter than Breitbach, and his bright brown eyes darted around the apartment. They settled on Blanchard, and he nodded in greeting.

“Still complaining about my scheduling, Kayleigh?”

“Always, Joseph.” She took her hand from the pulser butt with a smile. “God forbid you ever get actually get somewhere on time. I’m pretty sure that’ll trigger the energy death of the universe.”

“Touché,” he conceded with a chuckle. “But we can’t all be OCD about things like that.”

“That’s CDO,” she told him with a straight face. “At least get it in the right alphabetical order.”

He grinned appreciatively, but then his expression sobered and he turned back to Breitbach.

“I’m sorry to’ve dragged you out here on so little notice, Michael, but I think this may be important. In fact, it could be very important. Of course, it could also be a trap, which is why I was even later than usual today. I took five different tubes and spent two hours window shopping in every mall in Landing to make shake any tail.”

“Really?” Breitbach gestured for Landrum to follow him into the apartment’s kitchen, which had no windows or exterior walls, and pointed at the rickety-looking chairs around the small table. “In that case, you’d better tell me what this is all about.”

“What it’s all about,” Landrum said, settling cautiously into one of the chairs, “is that I got a very unexpected contact. A fellow turned up in my office, completely out of the blue. He says he’s an independent analyst surveying systems out this way for the Hauptman Cartel, out of Manticore. He may really be Manticoran, too, but he sure isn’t surveying economic prospects.”

“No?” Breitbach leaned back in a chair on the far side of the table and arched his eyebrows.

“No. And I really think you should give some consideration to meeting with him. Or at least authorizing me to meet with him for you. It’s pretty obvious he already knows a lot more than I’d like him to about what I’m up to, but there’s no sign he knows a thing about you, and I’d just as soon keep it that way. Still, if he’s legitimate, he could be the answer to at least half our more pressing problems.”

“In what way?” Breitbach’s eyebrows came back down, the eyes below them suddenly very intent, and Landrum shrugged.

“Let me lay it out for you the way ‘Mister Dabilenaren’ laid it out for me, and then you can make up your own mind. First—”

Chapter Fourteen

“It’s good to see the Skipper back home,” Ginger Lewis said as she and Ansten FitzGerald found themselves in a quiet corner of the spacious ballroom in the Landing townhouse. That townhouse, known as Three Oaks in honor of the Old Earth oak trees which had been planted on its grounds within the first decade after the shuttle Jason touched down (and which were green and standing to this day), had been a wedding present from Sinead Terekhov’s father and mother.

“Yes, it is,” FitzGerald agreed. “And it’s not exactly a hovel, either, is it?” he added.

He swept the flute of champagne in his right hand in a slight arc, taking in the entire ballroom which had been transformed into a banquet hall for the evening, and Ginger had to agree he had a point. The Terekhovs weren’t exactly paupers, but Sinead Aurora O’Daley’s family had been around a long, long time. During that time, it had long since passed from the “not-exactly-paupers” into the “next-best-thing-to-stinking-rich” category. And that, she conceded, was saying quite a bit, given Manticoran standards for wealth.

The ballroom, for example, measured the next best thing to forty meters on a side, and Three Oaks was located less than four kilometers from Mount Royal Palace on one of the most expensive parcels of real estate in the entire Manticoran Binary System. She didn’t even want to think what the townhouse’s beautifully landscaped, modest little six-hectare lot was worth on a square-meter basis. As for the house itself—!

She sipped from the champagne in her own hand and watched Aivars and Sinead Terekhov circulating gracefully through the throng. The dinner party had been Sinead’s idea. Ginger was pretty sure it had, anyway. And it constituted a significant sacrifice on her part, too. They’d arrived in system only late the previous afternoon, and the Captain had been whisked straight off to Mount Royal Palace for a special audience with the Queen. Then there’d been the state banquet—and the endless speeches—afterward. They couldn’t possibly have gotten home before the wee hours of the morning! After all that, she wondered, how many women who so obviously loved their husbands would have given up their second night after his return from a year-long deployment for a chance to meet his officers and senior enlisted?

I’m astonished she didn’t just drag him off to bed and keep him there for at least a week, she thought with an inner grin. Don’t think she’d have gotten much resistance from him for that notion, either! Just look at the way they’re glued to each other’s sides. But if she’s faking all this happiness to see us, she’s an even better actor than she is a painter!

“No, not a hovel,” she acknowledged. “But I can’t think of anyone who’s done more to deserve it.”

“No argument from me,” FitzGerald said. “No argument at all.”

* * *

“You have a wonderful crew, darling,” Sinead Terekhov said when his subordinates granted her and her husband a fleeting eye of calm. “And I especially like young Helen…and Ginger.” He looked down at her, and she laid her left hand on his elbow. “She reminds me quite a bit of Nast'ka.”

“And me, of course,” he agreed quietly, covering her hand with his own. “They’re both quite extraordinary young women on their own, though.”

“Oh, I’ve already realized that.” She raised the empty champagne flute in her right hand, catching the eye of a liveried server, and smiled up at him. Perhaps there were shadows behind those eyes, but the hand on his arm squeezed gently. “And I doubt I could ever tell them, and all the rest of your people, how grateful I am to them for bringing you home to me,” she said very softly.

“Best crew God ever gave a captain,” Terekhov said, his smile only slightly crooked. “I guess you’ve heard me say that a time or two, but every time it’s been the truth. At least this time I brought more of them home, too.”

Her hand tightened on his elbow, and he made his smile relax. Then he bent to brush a kiss across her lips.

“Sorry,” he said. “And I really am in a lot better place than I was after Hyacinth, sweetheart. It’s just…hard. When I look at them, I can’t help thinking about all the faces I won’t be seeing again.” He shook his head. “I really wish you could’ve known Ragnhild Pavletic, for example.” Sadness touched his eyes. “She was special. But then, they were all special.”

Sinead started to reply, then stopped herself. The server had arrived, standing one diplomatic meter away until Sinead handed her the empty flute. The woman offered a refill, but Sinead shook her head with a smile. She watched the other woman filter away through the crowd with the seeming effortlessness of her profession, then looked back up at her husband.

“I know they were. I viewed every one of your letters about them at least half a dozen times, Aivars. And I only have to look at these people—” the hand which had held her champagne swept a brief arc “—to know how special they are. How could their shipmates have been anything else? Did you think someone who was born an O’Daley wouldn’t recognize that?”

“You know, I knew there was a reason I fell in love with you. Other than your good looks, money, and decadent aristocratic sensuality, that is.”

“‘Decadent aristocratic sensuality,’ is it?” She gave a delighted gurgle of laughter and her eyes sparkled, shadows banished. “This from the spacer who only comes planet-side once a year…unless it’s raining! Just where did you think all of that ‘decadent sensuality’ comes from, stranger? The heart isn’t the only thing absence makes grow fonder!”

“Odd.” He rubbed his chin, squinting his eyes in contemplation. “I never really thought absence had that much to do with it. Unless memory fails, back when I was a Foreign Office wonk with an office three doors down from your brother’s—you remember, back when I came home every single night?—there was the time you’d spent the entire day at Genevieve’s and gotten your hands on that phrenome-laced perfume. Not to mention that teeny tiny, lacy little—”

“Oh, shut up!” She smacked him across the chest. “You know perfectly well that was our anniversary! And don’t pretend you weren’t just as enthusiastic when there weren’t any phrenomes involved!”

“Excuse me, young lady, but I never implied for an instant that I wasn’t just as decadently sensual. I only said that was one of the things that attracted me to you in the first place. Well, that and the fact that you’re as smart and talented as you are beautiful.”

“No wonder you were so successful on the diplomatic circuit!”

“No, not really. I was never able to tell straight-faced lies. It’s much easier when you can fall back on just telling the truth.”

He captured the slender hand which had smacked his chest and carried it to his lips. He pressed a quick kiss to its back, smiled deep into her eyes for a moment, then thought about how very much he loved her as he looked back out across the ballroom.

He would never in a million years have asked her to sacrifice his second night home to anything except the two of them, but she’d insisted. For that matter, she’d started planning it the moment the Navy gave her a definite arrival time for the ship.

The rush to assume command and get Hexapuma deployed on such short notice had prevented Sinead from hosting the traditional pre-deployment party, and she’d hated that. As the daughter of generations of naval officers, she understood the responsibilities of a Queen’s officer’s spouse only too well. Civilians generally failed to understand that for any married naval officer, his or her career was a partnership. That was true for any officer, but especially for any commanding officer. A captain wasn’t responsible solely for the men and women under her command. She was responsible for their families, as well. And because she—or, in Aivars’ case, he—couldn’t be there to tackle those other responsibilities, she had to rely on someone else, which was where her spouse came into it.

Sinead had never had time to meet the families of Hexapuma’s officers and enlisted personnel before she deployed, but she’d met all of them since. As the captain’s wife, she was the head of the Hexapuma Support Group, the network of family members which the RMN officially recognized. She was the one in charge of interfacing between the support group and the Navy in general…and BuPers and BuMed in particular. The one who arranged periodic gatherings and dinners for the ship’s dependents. The one who saw to doctors’ appointments, birthdays, kids’ school holidays, and all the thousand and one other details which inevitably cropped up as soon as a father or mother or a husband or a wife deployed. The fact that Hexapuma was such a new ship, with the reduced personnel made possible by the Navy’s adoption of far more automation—and far less manpower redundancy—than in any prewar design, had helped. In fact, Hexapuma’s crew had actually been smaller than Terekhov’s last ship, the light cruiser Defiant.

Which meant I had fewer condolence calls to make this time, she thought, her mood darkening again. God, why do you do this to him?! Wasn’t Hyacinth bad enough?

But then she gave herself a mental shake, reminding herself of how much she had to be grateful for. Unlike HMS Defiant, Hexapuma had survived, and this time the man she loved had come back to her without the bleeding wounds the Battle of Hyacinth and the brutality of a Peep POW camp had left in mind, heart, and soul. They were guaranteed a minimum of two weeks’ survivor’s leave before he had to report back to duty, too, and she intended to make him take every second of that leave, no matter how much he itched to get back to his ship to heal her wounds. And they were going to be a wonderful two weeks, because despite Monica, despite everything the universe had done to him, he’d come home whole and complete, with the demons of Hyacinth laid at last. And these were the people who’d brought him back to her.

Nothing she ever did could repay the men and women of his crew who’d survived with him and given him back to her. She knew none of them would ever think of it in those terms, any more than Aivars himself did, but that didn’t change what they’d done, where they’d been with him, and her eyes burned for a moment as she looked around the ballroom at the dress uniforms and the comfortable conversational knots.

“The best crew God ever gave a captain, I think you said?” she said now, reaching up to touch the side of his face. “And how did they get that way, Aivars Terekhov? I don’t suppose you had anything to do with it, did you?”

“Well, maybe it has been sort of a joint effort,” he acknowledged. “And I have to admit I’m nervous over how many I’ll be able to keep.” He shook his head. “I’ve been over the damages list with the yard dogs. It’s going to take a long time to complete our repairs, and you know how BuPers is about raiding ships on the binnacle list! They’ve already as good as told me Ginger’s going to be shipped off to Weyland, and God only knows what they’re going to do with Abigail. For that matter, Ansten’s due for his own command, and you know Cortez has to have a ship in mind for him. As soon as they actually let us dock her, they’re going to start poaching my very best people. And on top of that—”

“Aivars, shut up,” she said sweetly. He twitched and looked down at her sharply, and she shook her head. “You and I have been to this dance more than once, dear,” she said then. “You’ll deal with it, they’ll go on to other duties, and they’ll perform them just as splendidly as they did for you, because that’s the kind of people they are. And one day we’ll run into them again, when you and they are all disgustingly senior officers, and look back at this commission while you tell each other splendid lies about everything that’s happened since. It’s the way the Navy works. You know that as well as I do, and if you can’t take a joke—”

“—then I shouldn’t have joined,” he finished for her, and she nodded.

“Exactly. And while you may be the commanding officer of HMS Hexapuma, she’s not going anywhere at the moment and there isn’t a solitary thing you can do to make those repairs go any faster than the Navy’s going to push them anyway. So instead of dwelling on the inscrutable challenges of the future, why don’t you and I invite our guests to be seated so Master Karl’s henchpeople can serve?”

“You do have rather good ideas upon occasion, don’t you?” He smiled. “And this is one of them.”

He linked one arm through hers and led the way out to the center of the huge room. Heads turned and eyes tracked them, and the background murmur of conversation died as he raised his free hand.

“It’s just been pointed out to me by higher command authority,” he said easily into the silence, “that you were all invited here to eat. And those of you who know Chief Steward Agnelli will appreciate that there are certain forces of nature it’s wiser not to resist. If we let Master Karl’s dinner get cold, the consequences will be severe. So, if you’d all be kind enough to find your places, I think we’d better let his minions serve.”

* * *

Karl Koizumi, who’d ruled Sinead O’Daley’s kitchen long before she’d become Sinead Terekhov, wasn’t quite the tyrant her husband had implied. Not quite. He was, however, an absolute despot in his own realm, and given the quality of the meals he produced, there was no threat of any revolutions.

Terekhov had forgotten just how good a chef Koizumi was, and from the expressions of his officers and noncoms, this was a repast they’d spend years recounting over many another table. He remembered a few bull sessions like that of his own, especially when he’d been a junior officer, and it amused him that—

His thoughts broke off as Valentine Manning, Three Oaks’ majordomo, slipped in through a side door and made his discreet way towards the head table.

Oh, shit, he thought, watching Manning’s approach and taking in the majordomo’s expression.

“Aivars,” Sinead said. “Don’t you dare—”

“Don’t tell me,” he replied. “You know Valentine as well as I do. Do you think he’d be interrupting right now if he thought he had a choice?”

“Damn it, I haven’t had you back for two days yet! They can’t—”

She made herself break off, and he smiled crookedly at her.

“Of course they can,” he told her, then turned his head as Manning slipped up behind his left shoulder.

“Yes, Valentine?”

“I’m very sorry to interrupt, Sir, but I’m afraid there’s an Admiralty courier here.”