“I’ll admit the thought has a certain appeal,” he said. “But, no. We take you into custody and we keep you there until a proper court can be convened to consider the actions of your personnel on this planet. All of you will receive a fair trial, and the guilty will receive the sentence commensurate with their crimes.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind.” Yucel’s voice was almost conversational. “You really think you’re going to get away with trying and shooting Solarian gendarmes?”
“I was thinking more in terms of hanging, actually, since that seems to be your own favored form of execution, but we’ll probably leave that up to the Mobians,” he told her, and she barked a scornful laugh.
“And just what the hell do you think is going to happen to your pissant little Star Empire when the League finds out about that?” she demanded.
“I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it,” he told her flatly. “Not that I’m particularly worried about it in the short term.”
“You may have kicked Crandall’s ass at Spindle, but it’s going to be different when the Navy knows what you’ve got and comes after you!” she spat.
“You obviously haven’t paid any attention to reality in some time,” Terekhov said. “And you’re just a bit behind the news, too. For example, on the basis of what you’ve just said, I don’t suppose you’ve heard about what happened to Vice Admiral Dubroskaya at Saltash, when five of our destroyers destroyed all four of her battlecruisers. Or about the fact that the Star Empire is now allied to the Republic of Haven. Or that between us, we now have somewhere around five hundred ships of the wall, any two of which could have controlled every missile we fired at Crandall in Spindle. Let’s do some math here, Brigadier. If two of our ships can kill seventy of yours, and we’ve got five hundred of them, that means we can kill every superdreadnought in Battle Fleet, including the Reserve, about three times each.”
He paused, smiling coldly at her, letting her see the total confidence in his eyes, then continued.
“According to the latest dispatches before I headed out for Mobius, your Admiral Filareta was on his way to Manticore with somewhere around four hundred of the wall. By this time, I’m sure he’s arrived…and if he was foolish enough to actually fight when he got there, I doubt any of his ships lasted long enough to surrender. I’m certainly not worried about the outcome, anyway. Now, do you accept my terms or not?”
Yucel stared at him, her face momentarily slack with shock. Manticore and Haven allied? Allied against the Solarian League? He was lying. He had to be lying! But even as she thought that, something with thousands of icy little feet started crawling up and down her spine. If he wasn’t lying, if he was telling the truth, that would explain why he’d been willing to take out Watson’s ships. And if he really was ready to do what he’d just said he’d do to her personnel, to her…
The ice moving up and down her back seemed to settle in her belly. It was odd. She’d never realized her stomach could be simultaneously nauseated and frozen into a solid lump.
Panic surged suddenly, rising into her throat like vomit, and she swallowed hard. For a moment, she knew exactly what it had felt like for countless malcontents and troublemakers when her gendarmes’ pulser butts hammered on their doors. But then she forced herself to push the panic aside and glared at Terekhov’s image.
“All right,” she said. “Those are your terms. Well, here are mine. You stay the hell off this planet. You put one shuttle down here, one frigging Marine, and I start shooting prisoners. I’ve got over thirty thousand of them in the stadium. You’re welcome to take a look for yourself. And I’ve got two companies of gendarmes over there. I can kill every fucking person in that stadium in five minutes flat, and if you try any shit like landing on this planet, I swear to God I will!”
“Courageous and determined to ‘serve and protect’ to the last, I see,” Terekhov observed contemptuously, and Yucel flushed as he tossed the Solarian Gendarmerie’s official motto into her teeth.
“Just try me and see,” she snarled through gritted teeth.
“One more time, Brigadier, and my patience isn’t unlimited. If you choose not to accept the terms offered, the consequences will be on your own head.”
“What? You think I believe you’d come down here after me? Wreck the rest of this podunk city coming after my people and get everybody in the frigging stadium killed?” She sneered at him. “Not you. You’ve got to be the goddammed white knight in shining armor. Well, you come down here and screw around with us, and you’ll get plenty of blood on that armor. I guarantee it!”
“I see. Perhaps I should be having this conversation with President Lombroso. He might be perfectly willing to hand you and your gendarmes over to me if he thought it would save his own skin.”
“Lombroso couldn’t hand you candy from a baby! He’s hiding in the damn basement—him and Hadley both! He deputized me to ‘negotiate’ with you, and I’m all done, friend. Now. Are you going to accept my terms? Or do I need to pass the order to shoot the first hundred or so prisoners to make my point?”
“Why is it,” Terekhov asked conversationally, “that people like you always think you’re more ruthless than people like me?”
Something about his tone rang warning bells in the back of Yucel’s brain, but she refused to look away. She held her glare locked on him, refusing to back down, and he shrugged.
“Stilt?” he said without glancing away from Yucel.
“Yes, Sir?” a voice replied from outside his com pickup’s field of view.
“Pass the word to Colonel Simak. Then set Condition Zeus.”
“Condition Zeus, aye, aye, Sir.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Yucel snapped.
“I can’t say it’s been a pleasure speaking to you, Brigadier,” Terekhov replied. “Educational, yes, in a disgusting sort of way, but not a pleasure. In fact, I’m just as happy we won’t be speaking again.”
“Good,” she said. “Now get the fuck out of here before I change my mind and decide to shoot a couple of dozen of them to hurry you on your way!”
“Oh, I’m not afraid of that,” he assured her. “In fact,” he raised his wrist and glanced at his personal chrono, “you should be receiving my response to your terms”—those ice-blue eyes flicked back to her face—“just about now.”
She frowned, wondering what the hell he was talking about.
She was still wondering two and a half seconds later when the kinetic projectile struck Lombroso Arms Tower at approximately thirty kilometers per second.
* * *
The Mark 87 “Damocles” Kinetic Strike Package was a containerized weapon system designed to fit into any standard shipboard magazine and sized to dep0loy through a counter-missile launch tube. The KSP could be configured with several different types of payloads, but the most common variant—like the one which had been deployed from Quentin Saint-James number three CM tube shortly after she’d entered orbit—carried a rack of six of the Royal Manticoran Marine Corps’ M412 kinetic penetrators. Each penetrator was a six hundred and fifty kilogram dart fitted with its own small, short-lived but powerful impeller drive, a capacitor ring for onboard power, and a guidance package. By controlling acceleration rates and times, the M412 could produce an effective yield of up to one megaton…but this particular application called for a slightly smaller sledgehammer than that.
The projectile impacted at barely one tenth of a percent of light speed. The tower was enormous, the projectile wasn’t all that huge, and its velocity might seem positively snail-like compared to the eighty percent of light speed a Mark 23 could attain, but it was sufficient. In fact, its produced an effective yield of just over sixty-seven kilotons as it struck dead center on the tower’s roof at an angle of exactly ninety degrees and punched straight down, pithing it with a spike of plasma that vaporized everything in its path.