I outlined everything that had happened — I’d been right; he hadn’t known I’d been kidnapped — and watched his expression carefully. I had hoped that it would prompt Fleet into more open intervention, but it wasn’t really proof, was it? The word of a mercenary trapped in a war that conventional wisdom said was hopeless, against a group of freedom-loving farmers and miners who only wanted to be rid of a tyrannical central government. I doubted that Fleet’s story would seem convincing to the Federation, or anyone else for that matter. It could tip over the applecart completely.
“It’s not the kind of proof we can use,” Daniel said, finally. I nodded in bitter understanding. He was right, of course; we’d still have to beat the farmers on the ground and hopefully capture the woman and her thugs in the process. “I don’t suppose you know her name, or any other details we can use?”
“Maybe,” I said. “We took a WARCAT” — War Crimes Assessment Team — “team through the house and they found DNA belonging to several people who weren’t among the dead or prisoners. We could compare it to your records…”
“It might work, but I doubt it,” Daniel said. “If mopping up the Freedom League was that easy, we’d have them by now.”
I sprung my little surprise. “The woman had a Heinlein accent,” I said, seriously. I saw his eyes go very wide. “There’s nothing quite like it outside Heinlein itself and I’m dead certain that that was what I was hearing. Is that any help?”
“It may not be,” Daniel said. “Tens of thousands of people from Heinlein fled in the wake of the Invasion and most of them never returned to the planet. It’s possible that we might get lucky and find a comparison, but we’d need ironclad proof before we challenged Heinlein directly. It’s one of a handful of planets that might be able to stand us off if we intervened. If the government is directly involved…”
He shrugged. “It’s far more likely that we’re dealing with a rogue group,” he added. “The Freedom League started out fighting the UN, after all, and they might well have had support from Heinlein before the Invasion. The UN suspected as much although it’s hard to know just how much the UN actually knew as opposed to guessed, or merely made up to justify the invasion. God knows; Heinlein isn’t the most controlled place in the galaxy, is it?”
I shook my head. Earth under the UN had probably had that particular distinction — it wasn’t something to boast about — and when John Walker launched his coup, the planet had fallen into civil war and environmental collapse. The centuries of repression had built up a layer of resentment and hatred on the part of the governed and they’d lashed out at everything representing the government. The chaos would probably take years to settle.
“No,” I agreed, tartly. “Is there any way you can intervene more openly?”
“I can ask the Captain to deploy several stealth sensor buoys to watch for any starship trying to come in on the other side of the planet,” Daniel said, after a moment. “They might cancel it, of course, now that you’re back in friendly hands. Even so, they might not manage to get the word out in time and we can keep an eye out for it. We might even manage to get the jump on it and capture it — along with all the proof we’d need, unless it actually was an innocent freighter.”
“I suppose,” I said, reluctantly. Fleet’s relationship with the hundreds of independent freighters, and the Merchant Guilds, wasn’t a very polite one. Fleet regarded the Merchant Guilds as supporters of black colonies and rogue groups, while the Merchant Guilds regarded Fleet as the successor to the UN, even though Fleet barely taxed them at all. It wasn’t a comfortable relationship. Fleet was opposed to armed merchantmen on principle — because they could so easily become warships — while the Merchant Guilds didn’t trust Fleet to defend them from pirates. “It probably would be, wouldn’t it?”
“Probably,” Daniel agreed. “I’ll keep feeding the images from the orbiting destroyer to your intelligence staff, but there isn’t much else I can do to help you directly. You’re on your own.”
“Thanks,” I said, sourly. “I’ll call you when I have something else.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Be seeing you.”
That afternoon, I spent an hour talking to Frida over the communications network — Peter and Robert wouldn’t let me go into the city — about whoever had started the rioting. Frida’s own internal investigation had revealed that several of her fellow Progressives had started the riot, but they’d been urged to time the riot carefully by someone else, who had bribed them with food supplies smuggled in from the farms. It wasn’t hard to figure out who had obtained the food supplies in the first place, or why they’d wanted the riot timed perfectly, but apparently the two Progressives knew nothing. Frida had them both under covert arrest and they would be tried publicly in a week.
“Unless you want them,” she added, hopefully. “If I try them here, my enemies will say that I’m trying to gather all of the power in my own hands. It could lead to further trouble down the line. I’m already under pressure to hold new elections and the Progressive Party is on the verge of splitting apart.”
I nodded in understanding. Frida hadn’t expected it, but I had — it had happened before. Whenever a political party became so powerful that no one on the outside could oppose it, the people on the inside tended to break up into factions, often largely invisible to the outside world. Eventually, the party collapsed into civil war — sometimes literally — broke up into several more parties, or created a dictatorship. I hoped it wouldn’t be the latter; a dictatorship worked fine in the short term and rotted away in the long term. I wouldn’t have advocated it for any planet, except perhaps Earth. Only a dictator could hold Earth together long enough to tackle the real problems.
“If they don’t actually have lines of communication that we can use to reach the enemy, there’s little point,” I said, even as I admired the enemy plan. The farmers had forced the Progressive Party into a near-civil war, just as a side effect of kidnapping me. I wanted the person who’d thought of it, although I wasn’t sure if I wanted to recruit him for the Legion or shoot him in the head and swear blind I never saw him. “I’d suggest holding them for a few more days and then moving to trial. If you gather the evidence to convict them quickly, you might be able to forestall a devastating counter-attack.”
Frida snorted. “One will happen, like it or not,” she said, tiredly. “It’s good to see you back again, Andrew.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s good to be back too.”
I spent the night in my depressingly cold and empty bed, before waking up early and going to inspect the intelligence section. TechnoMage met me at the door and invited me into his private office, where he showed me the remains of the telemetry from the UAV that had been shot down. Now that it had been carefully studied, it was obvious that an EMP cannon had been used to bring the craft down, creating a blank spot over our observation of the mountains.
“Anything could be happening there when the destroyer isn’t directly overhead,” he said, and I could only agree. Orbital reconnaissance was so important that it was devastating when it was lost… and we couldn’t risk another UAV flying over the mountains. “All they’d have to do is keep everything under cover when the destroyer is overhead and we’d miss everything.”