"I think the Ambassador's right, Sir," Commander John DesMoines, Roland's CO and Chatterjee's flag captain, said somberly, and Chatterjee snorted.
"Of course she is, Jack! First, because she's the Ambassador and we're the people who are supposed to be supporting her mission, which makes it her call. And, second, because I happen to agree with her. What I'm trying to do is to get a feel for how we want to handle it. Do we just ignore the Sollies? Pretend they aren't even here unless they decide to talk to us? Or do we treat this as a normal port call and follow the protocols for exchanges between friendly powers meeting in a neutral port?"
"I don't think there's any point being too disingenuous about it," Corvisart said after a moment. Chatterjee waggled one hand in a gesture which invited her to continue, and she shrugged. "There's no way this many Solarian warships would just happen to be parked in an out-of-the-way star system like New Tuscany unless they'd been invited. And the only thing that could have gotten them all the way here from the Madras Sector would have been a fairly urgent invitation. Something accompanied by a note about all of those nasty Manticoran depredations against innocent New Tuscan merchantships, for example. So I think we have to assume the Sollies aren't here by accident, that they're predisposed to be hostile to us, and that we'll have to put up with quite a bit of unpleasantness from them while we're here."
"Well, at least that won't be anything we don't have experience with!" Lori Olson's muttered comment was just low-voiced enough for Chatterjee to pretend he hadn't heard it. Not that he didn't agree with it wholeheartedly.
"On the other hand," Corvisart continued, "they're still at least technically neutral and impartial bystanders. Our business is with the New Tuscan government, not with the Solarian League Navy, and that's the way we ought to approach it. If the senior Solarian officer chooses to insert himself into the process, I'll have to deal with it as it occurs. But until and unless that happens, I'm going to ignore them completely—after all, I'm a civilian here to deal with other civilians—while you and your staff make the normal courtesies of one navy to another."
"My," Chatterjee said dryly. "Won't that be fun."
Several hours later, Commodore Chatterjee found himself still on Roland's flag bridge.
There were really two reasons for the Rolands' huge size compared to other destroyers. One was the fact that they were the only destroyers in the galaxy equipped to fire the Mark 16 dual-drive missile. Squeezing in that capability—and giving them twelve tubes—had required a substantial modification to the Mod 9-c launcher mounted in the Saganami-C class. The Rolands' Mod 9-e was essentially the tube from the 9-c, but stripped of the support equipment normally associated with a standalone missile tube. Instead, a sextet of the new launchers were shoehorned together, combining the necessary supports for all six tubes in the cluster. Roland mounted one cluster each in her fore and aft hammerheads, the traditional locations for a ship's chase energy weapons. Given the Manticoran ability to fire off-bore, all twelve tubes could be brought to bear on any target, but it did make the class's weapons more vulnerable. A single hit could take out half of her total missile armament, which was scarcely something Chatterjee liked to think about. But destroyers had never been intended to take the kind of hammering wallers could take, anyway, and he was willing to accept Roland's vulnerabilities in return for her overwhelming advantage in missile combat.
The other reason for her size (aside from the need to squeeze in magazine space for her launchers) was that every member of the class had been fitted with flagship capability. The Royal Manticoran Navy had been caught short of suitable flagships for cruiser and destroyer service during the First Havenite War, and the Rolands were also an attempt to address that shortage. Big enough and tough enough to serve with light cruisers, and with a substantial long-range punch of their own, they were also supposed to be produced in sufficient numbers to provide plenty of flag decks this time around. They weren't anywhere near as big or opulently equipped as those of a battlecruiser or a waller, but they were big enough for the job and, even more important, they'd be there when they were needed.
Which was why Ray Chatterjee came to have such spacious comfort in which to sit while he stewed.
I didn't really expect this to go smoothly, he thought. I didn't expect it to be quite this complicated, either, though.
He could hardly say he was surprised the New Tuscans were stonewalling to avoid making any sort of meaningful response to the note Ambassador Corvisart had delivered. They could scarcely acknowledge the note's accuracy, after all, so he supposed simply refusing to accept it was their best move at the moment, although he was a little surprised they hadn't already appealed to the Sollies to intervene on their side, at least as a friendly neutral.
Probably means they don't have all of their falsified data in place yet, the commodore reflected. Even a prick like this Byng probably wouldn't be very amused if they handed him something too crude. I wonder if they even knew he was coming this soon?
Whatever the New Tuscans' attitude towards Amandine Corvisart might be, though, there was no question about Admiral Josef Byng's attitude towards the Star Empire of Manticore. The New Tuscans' senior traffic control officer had looked and sounded as if someone had inserted a broom handle into a certain orifice, in Chatterjee's opinion. He'd been just barely on the stiffly correct side of outright incivility, although Chatterjee hadn't been able to decide whether that was because he knew exactly what was going on and was part of it, or whether it was because he didn't know what was going on and genuinely believed his own government's horror stories about vicious Manticoran harassment. There hadn't been much doubt about what Byng believed, though.
"So long as the New Tuscan system government is prepared to tolerate your presence, 'Commodore,' " Byng had said, biting off each word is if it had been a shard of ice, "then so shall I. I will also do you the courtesy—for now, at least—of assuming that you, personally, have not been party to the gross abuse of New Tuscan neutral rights here in the Cluster. The Solarian League, however, does not look kindly upon the infringement of those neutral rights, and especially not upon the destruction of unarmed merchant vessels and their entire crews. I have no doubt you are under orders not to discuss these matters with me, 'Commodore,' and I will not press you on them at this time. Eventually, however, what's been happening out here will be . . . sufficiently clarified, shall we say, for my government to take an official position on it. I look forward to that day, at which time, perhaps, we will have that discussion after all. Good day, 'Commodore.' "
It had not been an exchange—if the icy, one-way tirade could be called an "exchange"—designed to set Chatterjee's mind at ease. Nor was his mind particularly comforted by the Solarian battlecruisers' actions. None of them had their wedges or sidewalls up, but close visual observation—and at a range of under five thousand kilometers it was possible to make a very close visual inspection, even without resorting to deployable reconnaissance platforms—made it evident that their energy batteries were manned. Sensors detected active radar and lidar, as well, which CIC identified as missile-defense fire control systems. Technically, that meant they were defensive systems, not offensive ones, but that was a meaningless distinction at this piddling range. Those battlecruisers knew exactly where every one of Chatterjee's ships were, and at this distance, it would have been extraordinarily difficult for them to miss.
Stop that, he told himself sternly. Byng is an asshole, but he's not a crazy asshole . . . I hope. And only someone who was crazy would start a war just because he's feeling pissed off. Corvisart is going to finish her discussions with Vézien and Cardot one way or the other within the next day or so, at which point we can get the hell out of here. In the meantime, all we really need is for everyone on our side to stay cool. That's all we need.
He told himself that very firmly, and the reasoning part of his brain knew it was a logical, convincing analysis of the situation.
Still, he was just as happy he'd left Naomi K
aplan and Tristram to watch his back.
"I'm liking this less and less by the minute, Skipper," Lieutenant Commander Alvin Tallman murmured.
"I suppose that's because you have a functional brain, Alvin," Naomi Kaplan replied, looking up at her executive officer. "I can't think of any other reason you wouldn't like it, at any rate."
Tallman's lips twitched in a brief smile, but it never touched his eyes, and Kaplan understood perfectly. The tension must be bad enough aboard the other three ships of the division, but in its own way, the tension aboard Tristram was even worse, because Kaplan's ship was over ten light-minutes from New Tuscany. Thanks to the Ghost Rider platforms, they could see exactly what was happening—or, at the moment, not happening—in the volume immediately around the planet, even if the data and imagery was ten minutes old when they got it. Even with Mark 16s, though, there wasn't anything they could do about whatever might happen that far away, and their own safely insulating distance from the Solarian ships only made them feel perversely guilty over their helpless inviolability.
Kaplan glanced around her bridge, considering her watch officers thoughtfully. She'd had time to get to know them by now, although she still knew Abigail better than any of the others—including Tallman, for that matter. That was changing, though, and she'd become aware of their strengths and weaknesses, aware of the way those qualities must be blended together so that strength was reinforced and weakness was compensated for.
For example, there was O'Reilly's continuing, festering resentment of Abigail's position. She'd managed to keep it sufficiently in check that Kaplan and Tallman hadn't been forced to take official notice—or, at any rate, any additional official notice—of it, but she wasn't convinced things were going to stay that way. At the same time, she'd found that despite O'Reilly's unpleasant personality, she was actually quite good in her own specialty. It might have taken Tallman's kick in the pants to get her off her ass to prove it, but she'd turned the com department around quite nicely since. In fact, it irritated Kaplan that the lieutenant had managed it, although she recognized that it was rather foolish of her to want the other woman to be bad at her job just because she couldn't warm to her.
And then there were the others. Lieutenant Hosea Simpkins, her Grayson-born astrogator. Lieutenant Sherilyn Jeffers, her electronic warfare officer, as Manticoran and secular as anyone was ever likely to get who nonetheless had formed a smoothly functioning partnership with Abigail . . . unlike O'Reilly. Lieutenant Fonzarelli in Engineering, Chief Warrant Officer Zagorski, her logistics officer . . . They were like the strands of steel layered through one of those swords a Grayson swordsmith hammered out so patiently. They weren't perfect. In fact, they remained far short of that forever unattainable goal. But they were good, one of the best groups of ship's officers she'd ever served with. If she managed to screw up, it would be her fault, not theirs.
Now there's a cheerful way to look at things, Naomi, she told herself tartly. Any more doom and gloom you'd like to rain on yourself this afternoon?
Her lips hovered briefly on the brink of a smile for a moment, but then she drew a deep breath and returned her attention to the silent, glittering data codes on her plot.
Lieutenant Léopold Rochefort checked his chrono unobtrusively for no more than the five hundredth time since receiving the activation code and wished his palms didn't feel quite so damp.
This had all seemed very simple when it was first described to him. After all, Rochefort was one of the small handful of New Tuscan officers who knew what was actually going on, since his older brother was Admiral Guédon's senior communications officer. So he knew, whether he was supposed to or not, that what he'd been asked to do was only another facet of the master plan. The fact that someone was prepared to pay him so handsomely to do something which could only contribute to his own government's objectives was merely icing on the cake.
That was how it had seemed when he was originally recruited, at any rate. He'd discovered, however, that now that the moment was here, it no longer seemed quite so simple. He was operating outside the normal naval chain of command, after all, which meant there would be no official cover for him if he managed to screw this up. On the other hand, he was acting under the direct authority of Minister of Security Dusserre. That ought to give him at least some protection it things went wrong.
But they aren't going to go wrong, he told himself firmly . . . again. After all, how badly can I screw this up?
Remembering certain events in his career as a junior officer, he decided it would probably be better if he didn't dwell too deeply on that last question.
He looked away from his chrono, glancing around the compartment. Rochefort was an assistant communications officer aboard the space station Giselle, the primary communications and traffic control platform of the New Tuscany System, as well as a major industrial node in her own right. As the inspector from Security had explained to him, that meant Giselle was the logical place from which to insert the "Manticoran" worm into the system's astrogation computers. Rochefort had wondered why they'd chosen to use the com section rather than someone actually inside traffic control, but the nameless, anonymous inspector had explained it willingly enough. Obviously, for the Manties to be responsible for the attack on the computers, it had to come from outside. It had to be inserted into the system through a com channel, since the Manties would have had no physical access to the computers. So what would happen would be that Rochefort would send it from his station to a com satellite near the Manties' position and parking orbit, and the satellite would relay it back to Traffic Control, where it would faithfully attack the computers.
From Rochefort's perspective, it seemed like an unlikely thing for the Manties to do. Fortunately, perhaps, it wasn't his job to critique the strategy he'd been ordered to execute, and presumably those who were in charge of that strategy had come up with some way to make it seem like a logical move on the Manties' part.
And speaking of the Manties . . .
It was time, he realized, and reached out to punch the function key he'd set up weeks ago.
Unfortunately for Lieutenant Rochefort, he had never actually been approached by a member of the Ministry of Security. Or, rather, not by a current member of the Ministry of Security. The man who had passed himself off as a Security inspector had been an employee of Dusserre's ministry some years ago, but he'd been far better paid by Ambassador Metcalf and his new Mesan employers for the last couple of T-years.
Like Lieutenant Rochefort, the bogus inspector had wondered just how Manpower was going to convince anyone to accept that the Star Empire of Manticore had wasted its time trying to insert a worm into the traffic control computers of a third-rank star system like New Tuscany. Also like Lieutenant Rochefort, however, he had decided the answer to that particular question lay at a level well beyond even his current pay grade. So he'd passed on his instructions and provided the lieutenant with the necessary prerecorded transmission and the activation code which would tell him it was time for him to do his bit for New Tuscany's national interests.
Promptly after which, he had met with a fatal accident named Kyrillos Taliadoros and quietly and completely disappeared.
That meant there was no one who could possibly have tied Lieutenant Rochefort to Manpower or Mesa before he pressed that function key.
And no one could possibly tie the lieutenant to anyone after that, since the message he transmitted was actually the detonation command for the two-hundred-kiloton device hidden inside a cargo container a Jessyk Combine freighter had transshipped to Giselle a month before . . . and which was now stored in a cargo bay approximately one hundred and twelve meters forward and three hundred meters down from Lieutenant Rochefort's compartment.
Ray Chatterjee was sipping from a coffee mug when he heard an odd sound. It took him a moment to realize it was the sound of someone sucking in air for an explosive grunt of surprise, and he was turning towards the sound, his brain still trying to identify it, when he realized it h
ad come from Lieutenant Commander Olson. Then her head came up, and she turned towards him.
"Sir! The space station—Giselle—it's just blown up!"
"What?"
Despite his own earlier thoughts, for just an instant, it completely failed to register and he simply stared at the ops officer. He'd been focused on the Solarian ships, worrying about the future, trying to figure out the past. . . . None of that had prepared his mind for the possibility that a space station the better part of ten kilometers in length should just suddenly blow up.
His eyes whipped around to the visual display, and he froze as he saw the awesome spectacle. Sheer shock and disbelief held him there, staring at it, trying to wrap his mind around the unexpected enormity of it all. It was more than he could do as the seconds dragged past, but then, suddenly—
"Communications!" he snapped. "Raise Admiral Byng immediately!"
"What the—!"
Josef Byng was watching the visual display, not the tactical plot, at the moment Giselle blew up. The sudden eruption of light and fury that wiped away the forty-two thousand men and women aboard the space station took him totally by surprise. The view screen polarized instantly, protecting his eyes from the blinding flash, but it was so close, so powerful that he flinched back from it involuntarily.
"Sir!" Captain Aberu half-shouted. "Sir! The New Tuscan space station's just blown up!"
"The Manties!" Byng snapped, and whipped around to punch a priority key on his com. Captain Warden Mizawa, Jean Bart's commanding officer, appeared on his display almost instantly.
"Case Yellow, Captain! The Manties have just—"
"Sir, I know the station's been destroyed," the captain said, speaking quickly and urgently, "but it was definitely a nuclear explosion—a contact explosion; CIC sets the yield at at least two hundred kilotons—and not an energy weapon. But we didn't pick up any missile trace, so—"