Gold Peak wasn’t certain she agreed with that policy, but Joachim Alquezar, the Talbott Quadrant’s prime minister, had been insistent. The Quadrant Guard hadn’t even existed before the Talbott Sector had become the Talbott Quadrant of the Star Empire of Manticore, and it had been created by merging the existing military establishments of all seventeen of the Quadrant’s star systems as a means of assisting in the Quadrant’s defense. It was still a very new organization, composed of individual “national” units brigaded together, each with its own organization and rank structure, and some of the newly united star systems had been less than fond of some of the other newly united star systems before their joint admission to the Star Empire. Given the opportunity for internal rivalries and potentially disastrous disputes over seniority and authority, Alquezar and Krietzmann had insisted that whenever the Guard was called to active imperial service, it must pass under the command of the Navy and Marines.
Gold Peak understood their logic, although she worried about the potential resentment of men and women who—like van Heemskerck—had spent their entire careers in their home star systems’ militaries, rising to general officers rank, only to find themselves subordinate to someone—like Hibson—two-thirds their age and junior in rank, to boot. She’d made it quietly clear to Alquezar, Krietzmann, and Baroness Medusa that she questioned the ultimate sustainability of that policy. For the present, however, she was prepared to accept it, especially in light of the still rather tentative nature of the merger of the individual militaries involved.
Fortunately, Krietzmann obviously hadn’t picked van Heemskerck at random to command the Expeditionary Force. She was a calm, competent, professional woman, and if she felt any qualms about serving under Hibson’s command, Gold Peak had never seen any sign of it.
“The reason I’m more worried about our ground forces than our naval personnel,” she continued, “is simply that our ground forces are going to have more contact with the Mesan in the street than the Navy is. They can’t help that. That means they’re going to be the ones most likely to run into actively hostile situations, and it’s essential that we avoid unnecessary escalations. Don’t mistake me, though. No, I don’t want unnecessary escalation, but given the situation dirtside, any sign of weakness or uncertainty on our part would be even worse. A lot worse. I’m not trying to create any wiggle room ‘ambiguity’ here. General Hibson, you and General van Heemskerck have my full confidence, and I have your backs. Use your judgment, but be guided by the firm understanding that the preservation of your people’s lives is your highest priority, followed by the preservation of public order and the Grand Alliance’s authority in the streets of Mendel and every other city and town on Mesa. That would have been a tough enough assignment under any circumstances, given the numbers of seccies and genetic slaves involved and how badly—and how justifiably—many of them want revenge on the pre-invasion system and the people who ran it. It’s going to be a hell of a lot tougher now, so it’s essential you coordinate as closely as possible with the Navy and with General Palane and her Citizens’ Union. And it’s also essential none of our people—Navy, Marine, Guard, Manty, Talbotter, Havenite, or Grayson—be in any doubt about who didn’t nuke the planet after it surrendered.”
She paused, looking grimly around the compartment.
“It ought to be simple to prove we didn’t do it. Unfortunately, the fact that we can’t prove who did do it means it’s very un-simple. Even a newsy like Audrey O’Hanrahan is drawing conclusions on the basis of what she knows and what we can’t disprove, and I expect that’s only going to get worse. The fact that there are undoubtedly people on our side who think we should have nuked the planet until it glows won’t help, and if anyone—and I mean anyone—is suggesting what happened is a good thing, I want that person stepped on. I want her stepped on immediately, and I want her stepped on hard. So far—so far—we have a confirmed death toll of over five million and still growing. Nothing could justify the cold-blooded murder of that many civilians, and I better not hear one single word suggesting something could have. I want that made abundantly clear to every single man and woman in uniform. Is that understood?”
Heads nodded all around the table. She let silence linger briefly, then returned those nods with one of her own.
“In that case, Cynthia,” she said, turning to, “what do we know at this point?”
“We don’t ‘know’ a lot more than we did, Milady,” Captain Lecter replied with neither hesitation nor apology. The chief of staff doubled as Gold Peak’s intelligence officer. It wasn’t an easy load for one person to carry, under the circumstances, but every time Peak thought about taking it off her, Lecter once again demonstrated that she was far and away the best person for the job.
Both jobs.
“We’ve sifted through a lot of data and refined what we know,” the captain continued, “but most of it only leaves us with more questions. The final count on planetary nuclear detonations is forty-one. In addition to the Lagrange One explosion, there were nineteen more in Mesa orbit and a total of twenty-three scattered throughout the outer system. Quite a few of the latter occurred in places where according to Mesa astro control there was nothing to explode.”
The chief of staff looked around the compartment.
“As the Admiral just said, the confirmed death toll as of two hours ago is five-point-three-two million. I expect it to top six million before we’re done, although given the nature of the attack, we won’t have anywhere near that many actual bodies to bury.” Her blue eyes were dark, her expression bleak. “That’s ‘only’ about one half of one percent of the total system population, and it’s heavily concentrated among the full citizens, but more than enough second-class citizens and slaves were killed, as well. I doubt there’s a single person on the planet—probably anywhere in the entire system—who hasn’t lost at least one friend or family member. And—” her eyes flicked to Commander Dominica Adenauer, Gold Peak’s ops officer “—if anyone in the galaxy understands the kind of hatred and bitterness that can generate, it’s us.”
She paused, letting that sink in, then inhaled.
“As to who did it, we don’t know. We’ve developed certain suspicions, but that’s all they are right now. Admiral Gold Peak’s requested the dispatch of intelligence teams from Manticore to assist us in figuring out what the hell is going on. Until we get a response, though, it’s up to us, and here’s what we have so far.
“First, all of those explosions, at least on the planet, where the result of nukes which were already in place, not of anything delivered to the surface from space. Second, every single dirtside explosion, and all the detonations in planetary orbit, occurred in the space of less than ninety seconds, which obviously ‘proves’ we did it.”
“Excuse me for interrupting, Captain Lecter, but how does the timing ‘prove’ anything of the sort?” Vice Admiral Jennifer Bellefeuille asked. The Havenite admiral who commanded Lester Tourville’s Task Force 101 sounded honestly curious, and Lecter smiled grimly.
“It’s the narrowness of the time window, Ma’am,” she replied. “If this were supposed to be a continuation of the ‘terrorist attacks’ Agent Cachat and General Palane have reported, they shouldn’t have been this tight. So the timing clearly indicates that they were intended to implicate us—Tenth Fleet, specifically—since we could, presumably, coordinate our mass-casualty attacks more tightly than a batch of terrorists using stolen commercial Mesan nuclear charges.”
Bellefeuille nodded in understanding of the point, and the chief of staff continued.
“We are a little puzzled by some aspects of the timing, but I think my people may be chasing shadows in that respect.”
“What respect would that be Captain?” The question came from Oliver Diamato, another of Tourville’s task force commanders.
“Lieutenant Weaver, one of my analysts, suggests that the pattern was almost too random,” Lecter replied. “He plotted the explosions in terms of time and distance from one
another, and found a pattern…of sorts. They sort of hopscotch all across the zone in which they occurred, and he has a naturally suspicious disposition. One of the things I like about him.” She flashed a quick smile. “He wondered why, if they were on timers, there was that big a spread to begin with. They should have been able to hit tighter than they did, which presumably would have been even more damning in terms of our responsibility for it. But if they weren’t going to be simultaneous, why should explosion number one be halfway around the planet from explosion number two with explosion number three less than five hundred kilometers from explosion number one and explosion number four in low-Mesa orbit? That was the first thing he noticed. But then he noticed that—allowing for transmission lag from the surface of Mesa—every explosion beyond Mesa orbit was simultaneous. So it appears clear, to him, that those explosions—the ones beyond Mesa orbit—where the result of a transmitted detonation signal. If that’s true, why weren’t the ones on the surface of the planet or in low orbit? Why put them on timers and then use a transmission to detonate the others?”
I’d have t’ say the same question would occur t’ me, Cynthia, given that data set,” Rear Admiral Michael Oversteegen put in, and Lecter shrugged.
“Weaver is a very smart cookie, Sir, so I haven’t written his observation off completely, but the simplest explanation would be that the transmission was on a timer. What I mean is that the deep-space charges were command-detonated by a single transmission, but that transmission was sent from a timer-controlled com somewhere on Mesa.”
Oversteegen nodded and the chief of staff shrugged again.
“Having said that, the alternate theory—the one Weaver’s suggesting, and I should add that even he is suggesting it only as one possibility—is that all of them were command-detonated but someone wanted to make damned sure no one could calculate where the detonation command originated by analyzing the timing of the explosions, allowing for light-speed delays, and backtracking a general locus.”
“So you’re suggesting there was some point, either on the planet or in near-orbit, from which that command was transmitted?” Bellefeuille thought out loud, her expression intent. “Some point the Alignment wanted to prevent us from identifying as its source?”
“I know it sounds bizarre, Ma’am, but as I say, I’m not prepared to write it off completely. I’m just not prepared to endorse it without more supporting evidence,” Lecter said. No one, Gold Peak noticed with a certain grim humor, considering what was still to come, disputed Bellefeuille’s identification of the party behind the explosions. “But it’s pretty damned clear that the people behind us were very sophisticated and that it wasn’t some hastily improvised response. So it is possible that he’s on to something, given how…thoroughly erratic the distribution of the attacks was. And even if he’s wrong about why they were so erratic, he’s right that the degree of erraticness is statistically unexplainable.”
“Interestin’,” Oversteegen said, his expression thoughtful.
“As I say, it’s an intriguing theory, but one I doubt we’ll ever be in a position to confirm or positively deny, Sir.”
Lecter paused, looking around the conference table as if inviting further comment.
“The third significant point about the explosions themselves,” she continued when no one spoke, “is that nobody seems inclined to accept the fact that the charges were clearly already in place.” Her expression had turned much grimmer. “The prevailing belief is that they were nuclear strikes delivered from orbit.
“That’s ridiculous,” Rear Admiral Onassis, BatCruRon 106’s CO, said flatly. “Those were nuclear explosions, and there’s no reason we would’ve been using nukes to take out planetary targets! KEWs would’ve been a lot simpler, a lot quicker, and a lot cheaper!”
“Of course they would, Shulamit,” Gold Peak said. Onassis looked at her, and she shrugged. “But any good conspiracy theorist knows why we didn’t. It’s precisely so we can make the argument that it wasn’t us when it actually was.”
“But what about the missile traces, Milady?” Diamato asked. “How are we supposed to have gotten missiles to the surface of the planet without anybody seeing them coming?”
“You expect that to derail a conspiracy theorist, Oliver?” Lester Tourville sounded disgusted, and the treecat draped across the back of his chair made a sound midway between matching disgust and dark fury. “There are plenty of people who’re going to point out that we’d taken possession of every Mesan warship in the system. We hadn’t gotten around to securing all of their deep-space platforms yet, but do you really think people are going to worry about that? In either case, we have complete control over any sensor data anyone in the system might have recorded, don’t we? Of course we do! And since we do, any data we turn over that doesn’t show missile tracks has obviously been scrubbed before we turned it loose. Besides, as Shulamit points out, we were close enough to use KEWs. No reason we would’ve needed to fire up the missiles’ impellers to deliver nukes to the bottom of a gravity well!”
“But even without impellers someone should’ve seen them entering atmosphere, Sir,” Diamato pointed out. “Especially on the night side of the planet.”
“We thought about that, Sir,” Lecter said, “and it’s definitely a point worth raising in our own press releases. But we had over three dozen pinnaces in atmosphere, headed for our initial landing zones—for that matter, we had a dozen already on the ground—when the explosions started. That means we didn’t have to deliver anything from orbit. We had plenty of platforms close enough to handle everything with old-fashioned free-falling bombs that never reached a velocity anyone would’ve seen coming, if we wanted to.”
Diamato looked incredulous for a moment. Then his expression tightened and he nodded.
“The bastards will say that, won’t they?” he said in tones of profound disgust.”
“Of course they will.” Tourville snorted. “Given time, any genuinely disinterested investigation’s bound to prove we didn’t do it. It’s going to take time, though, and it’s not surprising that newsies who don’t like the Grand Alliance very much to begin with, are piling on. Even those who aren’t biased against us, like a Hanrahan and Shigeru, have to wonder who really did it when all the evidence we can provide that it wasn’t us is negative and our only alternative villain is an interstellar conspiracy most of them don’t even believe exists! Unfortunately, what we’re looking at are the short-term consequences and the way the Mandarins can use an Eridani violation against us.”
“Agreed,” Gold Peak said. “Which brings us to another unpleasant point, I’m afraid. Cindy’s people have turned up something that actually worries me even more than the way the Alignment and the Sollies can use the explosions against us.”
Several eyes widened with apprehension—and disbelief—at the possibility of something worse than a purported Eridani Edict violation.
“So far,” Gold Peak continued, “we haven’t formally recognized General Palane’s Citizens’ Union as the legitimate government of Mesa. Even with her and Dusek strongly supporting our position in that regard, there are seccies and slaves who are increasingly disgruntled over that lack of recognition. Long-term, that’s another element we have to be worried about, because there are a hell of a lot more seccies and slaves than there are first-class citizens, and they’ve never been enfranchised. They want that to change, and they want it to change quickly, and they’re absolutely right to want both of those things. Until we can be convinced the Citizens’ Union isn’t going to turn into another Committee of Public Safety, though, we’re not going to legitimize it.”
She glanced at the senior Havenites seated around the table, and Tourville snorted and brushed his mustache with one knuckle.
“If you don’t mind my saying it, Milady, you’ve said quite a few smart things over the last few weeks. That may have been the smartest one of all, though.”
The other RHN officers nodded in profound agreement, and Gold Peak suppressed
a surreptitious sigh of relief. She’d expected—hoped, at least—that they’d respond that way, but the comparison had to be made. Not because she believed Thandi Palane or even Jurgen Dusek was a Rob Pierre or Oscar Saint-Just in the making, but because revolutionary movements had a habit of escaping their initial leaders’ control. And because there were so many people on Mesa with so many reasons to want bloody revenge on their erstwhile masters.
“As part of General Hibson’s pacification operations, we’ve established nodal security forces designed to cordon off direct contact between the Citizens’ Union and the areas still being administered—under our direction—by the existing civilian authorities of the Mesa System government,” she went on. “We’ve inserted ONI intelligence and Criminal Investigation Division personnel into those nodal forces and also into the various police forces we’re now supervising. Much of their function is open and above board and only to be expected, under the circumstances. They’re charting the existing law enforcement and administrative landscape for us because we didn’t really have time to do that before we moved in. We need to get control of all of those organs of authority as quickly as possible, but we need to learn enough about them to avoid breaking the system before we replace the system.
“Behind that open-and-above-board aspect of their operations, however, they’ve also been looking for the Alignment. The bad news—and I’m afraid it may turn out to be very bad news—is that they didn’t have to look very hard before they found it.”
A wave of confusion went through the compartment, and she smiled without a trace of humor, then gestured to Lecter.