“Wonderful,” Colonel Weng sighed.
“Actually, what I want to get out of her—Bolton, I mean—” Blanton said, “is just who the hell the Other Guys really are. I mean, it is conceivable that despite everything we think we know, it really is the Manties.”
“There’s a tiny difference between ‘conceivable’ and more-likely-than-the-apocalypse,” al-Fanudahi said. “I realize we have to maintain our objectivity, Lupe, but really. The Manties?” He shook his head.
“I didn’t say it was, Daud. I said it was conceivable that it could be, which is damned well the argument the Mandarins will prefer to hear. My point is that while I don’t think it is the Manties, I still find this whole ‘Alignment’ business awfully hard to accept. Not only would it be harder than hell to keep a conspiracy on that level a deep dark secret for centuries, but the whole concept is stupid. The Final War’s been over for more than seven hundred T-years, damn it. By this point, any lingering prejudice against genies is a prop for people who want to feel superior to genetic slaves, not a burning issue people give a rat’s arse about. Do you really think a majority of the human race is still so adamantly opposed to genetically improving the species that somebody with the resources the Other Guys must’ve required to put all this in motion in the first place couldn’t simply have financed a PR campaign to convince the League to revoke the legal prohibitions supporting the Beowulf Code’s ban on genetic manipulation?”
She looked skeptical, and al-Fanudahi couldn’t really blame her.
“I’ve wondered about that,” he acknowledged. “Like you, I find it difficult to credit. The Manties and Havenites obviously do believe it, though, and they’re more than smart enough for that same argument to have occurred to them. I realized that some time ago, so I’ve been pushing a notion around lately, looking at it from different angles, and I started to wonder. What if the ‘Alignment’ is actually a bit of disinformation planted on the Manties?”
“Excuse me?” Blanton’s eyebrows rose, and he snorted.
“Look, assume someone, for some reason, wants to destabilize the League. I think we could all agree that if that is what the Other Guys are after, they’re doing a damned good job. And I can think of several plausible scenarios, ranging from a would-be God Emperor hiding out in the Fringe somewhere with designs on galactic hegemony, to a bunch—and I mean a bunch—of transtellars who see a chance of make even more money, like Technodyne is doing right this minute, to an independent warlord in waiting who’d like to see OFS pruned back so he can expand his own local power base. Whoever it is, he’s using the ‘Grand Alliance’ as his sledgehammer, so suppose someone like that—someone who knew he’d need a sledgehammer—sat down and carefully crafted the sort of ‘evidence’ he knew the Manties and the Havenites, both of whom have hated Mesa’s guts ever since they signed the Cherwell Convention, would jump for. We’ve had plenty of evidence of how our own so-called intelligence people follow their preconceptions straight down a dead grav shaft rather than consider alternative possibilities. The fact that Manticore and Haven have demonstrated their competency in other areas doesn’t mean they’re competent in all areas.”
“So you’re suggesting the Other Guys are manipulating the Manties, too,” Okiku said thoughtfully.
“I’m suggesting they may be,” al-Fanudahi corrected. “And it’s also possible the Manties are absolutely right. I spend a lot of time dealing with motivations and intentions, Natsuko, and I’ve read a lot of history along the way. As a way to stretch mental muscles, you might say. So I’ve seen people just as nutty as the ones the Manties are describing, all the way back to Ante Diaspora history. It’s possible this Alignment exists; I just find it improbable.”
“That’s probably fair,” Weng Zhing-hwan said after a moment. “And when you come down to it, if the Other Guys are manipulating the Manties, they’ve managed to push them into a position most Solarians figure is somewhere west of insane.” She shook her head. “We know about it because a single nutty scientist—” she grimaced as she deliberately reused al-Fanudahi’s adjective “—with obvious mental issues, attested by at least a half-dozen official Mesan sources, somehow fled Mesa in the wake of a nuclear terrorist incident the Mesans say was orchestrated by Manty operatives and poured out his heart to Manty intelligence, revealing the existence of a massive conspiracy no one else in the entire galaxy ever even heard of.” She rolled her eyes. “As flimsy evidence goes, that’s even more…outré than usual.”
“Granted. Granted!” Al-Fanudahi waved one hand. “Even if every single thing this Simões had to say is pure distilled truth, nobody’s willing to believe it once Abruzzi and Public Information get done ridiculing it. And we should be skeptical of it, to say the least. But we have—we, the Ghost Hunters, I mean—have awfully damned convincing evidence the Other Guys do exist. The Manties may have misidentified them, but they are out there, Zhing-hwan. And an awful lot of both the pressure to flatten Manticore and the physical support to do that flattening—like Technodyne’s Cataphracts—are coming out of Mesa or a Mesan connection. Is that more misdirection aimed at the Manties? Or is it evidence the Manties may actually be onto something?”
“Are you deliberately trying to fry my brain, or is that just collateral damage because you’ve already fried your own?” Weng demanded in an exasperated tone, and al-Fanudahi chuckled.
“Neither. I’m just saying that a question we need to keep constantly in mind is, if it isn’t the ‘Alignment,’ who the hell is it? And whatever else may be true, the Manties managed to survive the short end of the odds against the People’s Republic for the better part of two T-centuries and kicked its arse into the bargain. So they clearly haven’t deluded themselves into any fatal missteps before this one. I’m simply saying it behooves us to keep our own minds open to the possibility that whoever the Other Guys are, their objective is neither what we thought it was nor what the Manties think they’ve found.”
* * *
“Sorry to be calling so late in the afternoon,” Rajmund Nyhus said from Adão Ukhtomskoy’s com display. He’d caught the Section Two head just as Ukhtomskoy was heading for the door, and his blue eyes were as unhappy as his tone. “I know it’s Friday, too, but I thought I’d better get you up to speed on this before the weekend.”
“Up to speed on what?” Ukhtomskoy asked warily. “You’ve managed to ID your so-called sources in Maya?
“Not yet. I’m trying to nail down the source of my second report, but there hasn’t been time for any response to my queries to come back. Even if there had been, you know how hard it can be getting field agents to come in for interviews…and how unhappy they are about giving up sources when they finally do come in.”
Ukhtomskoy’s nod was impatient, and Nyhus shrugged, his expression grim.
“Well, there may not have been time for any responses to my queries, but MacQuilkin—you remember, our senior agent in Sprague?” He paused, and Ukhtomskoy nodded again, even more impatiently. “Well, she’s sent a follow-on. In addition to the stringer in Smoking Frog who got the photos of our mysterious Manty meeting with Barregos, she’s got several sources in Erewhon. One of them’s a senior exec in the shipyards building those locally-financed warships for Barregos and Roszak. And according to him, they’re building one hell of a lot more ships than they’re telling anyone in Old Chicago about. Not just cruisers and destroyers, either, Adão. He says they’re building superdreadnoughts. Pod-laying superdreadnoughts, complete with Manty technology. The whole nine meters: FTL coms, stealth, better compensators, those god-awful missiles. The whole shooting match.”
“My God,” Ukhtomskoy muttered. Then his eyes narrowed. “What kind of corroboration has she got?”
“Nothing concrete yet,” Nyhus conceded. “According to her message, she was leaving for Erewhon herself a couple of days after it was dispatched. Which means she’s there by now, maybe even on her way back to Sprague. She says she thinks her source can get her close enough to the shipyards for som
e visual imagery. But if this guy knows what the hell he’s talking about, it’s not just Maya we have to worry about. If the Manties really are giving Erewhon access to their latest tech, especially after Erewhon already jumped ship to the other side once, then they must have some pretty damned ironclad guarantees it won’t be used against them this time. And if Barregos and Erewhon don’t need it to stand off the ‘Grand Alliance,’ I can only think of one other adversary they could be worried about.”
SEPTEMBER 1922 POST DIASPORA
HMS Tristram
In Hyper-Space
“Would you pass the rolls, please, Mister Harahap?”
“Of course, Captain.”
Damien Harahap passed the basket of yeast rolls to Lieutenant Xamar, who passed it on to the small, dark, extremely attractive woman at the head of the table.
“Thank you,” Commander Naomi Kaplan said. She took one of the rolls and began buttering, and Harahap hid a faint smile as he sat back in his chair.
He’d been a Gendarme during his career in the service of the Solarian League, not a naval officer or a Marine, but he had been aboard Solarian warships upon occasion. None of the really big ones, mostly destroyers and cruisers. That experience was enough to tell him that HMS Tristram was much larger than any Solarian destroyer ever built. In fact, she was bigger than some of the light cruisers he’d seen, despite the small size of her complement. Unless he was seriously mistaken, however, she was also incomparably more lethal than any ship—any other ship—he’d ever been aboard.
And despite the courtesy of Commander Kaplan’s request, he was not an honored guest.
No, he thought, but at least I’m still alive. That’s something. Quite a lot, in fact.
He glanced across the table at Indiana Graham, the youthful—and very dangerous—head of the Seraphim Independence Movement. He’d been surprised when Indy decided to “accompany him” to Manticore. Almost as surprised as he’d been when he realized Indy wasn’t going to shoot him out of hand and avoid all the bother. Harahap wasn’t certain he’d have made the same decision, in Indy’s place. On the other hand, he understood why the Manties were determined to get him home in excellent health. What he didn’t understand was why he was still in the aforesaid excellent health. It was more than two T-weeks since he’d found himself a Manticoran “guest,” and he’d expected whatever suicide protocol his recent Mesan employers had implanted to change that state of affairs rather drastically. Unless…
“More coffee, Mister Harahap?” Chief Steward Clorinda Brinkman murmured in his ear, and he nodded.
“Please,” he said.
Brinkman refilled his cup, then turned to the attractive—and very young—lieutenant at his left elbow.
“Lieutenant Hearns?”
“Yes, please, Chief.”
Hearns’s soft accent fascinated Harahap. Her uniform was of a totally different color and cut from that of anyone else around the table, and he’d realized early on that she must be a Grayson, one of the personnel on loan to the RMN from its ally. The fact that she was a woman was rather surprising, given what he understood about Grayson social mores, but what he found especially fascinating was that he’d heard an accent almost exactly like it many years ago, and not from a Grayson. She sounded for all the world like a younger version of Colonel Bronwen Prydderch, one of the few native Old Terrans with whom Harahap had ever been professionally associated. Prydderch had also been one of the more competent people for whom he’d worked, but she’d tended to run on—endlessly—about the beauties of her hometown, someplace called Llandovery on the Old Terran island of England. Although, now that he thought about it, he didn’t think that was what she’d called the island. In fact, she’d gotten pretty upset the one time Harahap had called it that.
Unlike Prydderch, thank God, Lieutenant Hearns didn’t talk much about her hometown, but he’d still picked up a few details. Enough to know that, in addition to being one of the vanishingly few women in the Grayson Space Navy, she was also the daughter of a steadholder, which made her the equivalent of a royal princess. That was even more intriguing to someone in Harahap’s line of work—or what had been his line of work—than her accent. His experience with the high and mighty of the Solarian League didn’t include any one who’d voluntarily risked his own rosy arse for even his own star nation, much less someone else’s! That said some very interesting things about Grayson and Manticoran social dynamics.
“Lieutenant Simpkins informs me we’ll be arriving in Manticore in about thirty-six hours, Mister Harahap,” Kaplan said as she finished buttering her roll. Harahap twitched internally, but aside from a politely arched eyebrow, his expression didn’t even flicker. “I’m sure our intelligence people will be very interested in talking to you.”
“Yes, Captain.” Harahap allowed himself a faint smile. “I imagine they will.”
Indy Graham looked at him rather sharply across the table, and Harahap gave him a tiny shrug. Unless he was mistaken, that was an edge of concern in Indy’s eyes. Rather touching, really. Especially considering the way Harahap had played Indy in the Mesan Alignment’s service. Still, there’d never been anything personal in it. He hoped Indy—and his sister Mackenzie, especially—understood that.
“I’ll remind you, Sir,” Kaplan continued in that same, serene tone, “that you’ve given your parole. I realize that for a covert operative such as yourself, lying and swearing false oaths go with the territory. I mention this—” she smiled at him, reminding him in that moment of a small, very attractive tiger “—because I’m a naval officer and, unlike covert operatives, I take oaths very seriously. I won’t like it if you should happen to violate this one. And if I don’t like it, you’ll like it even less.”
“Understood, Captain.” He returned her smile with a rather broader one. “And we covert operatives are very pragmatic sorts. For some reason, we don’t think it’s a good idea to give someone who probably already wants to shoot us an even better reason to squeeze the trigger. I’ll behave, I promise.”
* * *
Abigail Hearns sipped from her fresh cup of coffee and suppressed a headshake of amusement.
Damien Harahap was a very dangerous man, and if he truly was the “Firebrand” who’d orchestrated the anti-annexation movement in Talbott, he was responsible—albeit indirectly—for the deaths of hundreds of Royal Manticoran Navy personnel, many of whom had been Abigail’s personal friends. She was pretty sure he was that “Firebrand,” and whether that was true or not, he was definitely the agent provocateur who’d falsely promised Indiana and Mackenzie Graham Manticoran naval support for their rebellion against their own corrupt system government. Nor was the Seraphim System the only place he’d spread his webs in the service of the Mesan Alignment. God only knew how many people had been killed as a direct consequence of his actions.
And despite that, she actually liked him. A little bit, at least. He was charming, intelligent, and possessed a lively sense of humor. And despite all the carnage in which he’d had a hand, she sensed absolutely no malice in him. Which was probably one of the things that made him so dangerous, actually. He hadn’t done what he’d done out of malice. It was simply his job—or his craft, at least—and he was good at it. She didn’t know how he’d become what he was, and she wondered if his ability to manipulate and betray so many thousands of people—millions, really—without any personal sense of malice meant he was a sociopath of some sort.
She didn’t think so. She didn’t know what to make of him, but she didn’t think he was a sociopath. No doubt successful sociopaths had to be able to pretend they weren’t, but her personal armsman, Mateo Gutierrez, seemed to like him, too, and Mateo was an excellent judge of people. Of course, the fact that Mateo might like him wouldn’t prevent the armsman from shooting him squarely between the eyes if he even looked like posing a threat to Abigail or anyone else aboard Tristram. On more mature consideration, she decided, Mateo might be willing to shoot to wound if the threat was to someone besides her, bu
t that was about as far as he’d be prepared to go.
She looked across the table at Indiana Graham. The brown-haired Seraphimian was actually a couple of T-years younger than Abigail herself, although he carried himself with the assurance of someone much older. Abigail knew she did, too, and probably for some of the same reasons. She’d never imagined leading a rebellion to free her star system from what amounted to social and economic slavery, but she suspected it must have much the same…clarifying effect as knowing you were about to die in a hopeless battle on someone else’s planet.
She saw a lot of the same ghosts when she looked into his eyes, anyway.
She’d also discovered that she liked Indy quite a bit more than she liked Harahap. In some ways, he reminded her of a lot of Graysons she’d known. The Seraphim System hadn’t tried to poison him every time he drew a breath, but it had offered its own survival challenges, especially after his father was arrested and he and his sister began organizing the SIM. But in other ways, he was very different from anyone she’d ever known back home, and almost equally different from most of the Manties she’d met. Actually, who he reminded her of the most was her friend Helen Zilwicki. Possibly with a little bit of Helga Boltitz thrown in for good measure. He had that same spit-in-your-eye sense of independence, that awareness of where he’d come from, what he’d overcome, and the determination to handle anything the galaxy threw at him or die trying. No one could possibly come from a background more different from her own wealthy, privileged, thoroughly protected upbringing, yet behind those brown eyes was someone she really wanted to get to know better.