"I can't say your report is very cheerful reading, Michelle," Augustus Khumalo said heavily. "On the other hand, I completely endorse all of your actions."
"I'm glad to hear that, Sir," Michelle Henke said sincerely. She and Khumalo sat facing one another in comfortable armchairs in his day cabin aboardHercules, nursing large snifters of excellent brandy. At the moment, Michelle was far more grateful than usual for the way the brandy's comforting warmth slid down her throat like thick, honeyed fire.
And I damned well deserve it, too, she thought, allowing herself another sip. Maybe not for what happened at New Tuscany, but definitely for putting up with Baroness Medusa's tame newsies!
Actually, she knew, the newsies in question—Marguerite Attunga of the Manticoran News Service, Incorporated; Efron Imbar of Star Kingdom News; and Consuela Redondo of the Sphinx News Association—had been remarkably gentle with her. None of them had been gauche enough to say so, but it was obvious to her that they and their editors back home had been very carefully briefed before they were allowed in on what promised to be one of the biggest news stories in the Star Kingdom's history.
Especially now that things had just finished going so badly south in New Tuscany.
Unfortunately, they were still newsies, they still had their job to do, however nonadversarial about it they'd been this time, and she still hated sitting in front of their cameras and knowing that the entire Star Kingdom would be seeing and hearing her responses to their questions. It wasn't nervousness—or she didn't think it was, at least. Or maybe it was, just not on a personal level. What really worried her, she admitted finally, was that she'd say or do something wrong, and the combination of her naval rank and her proximity to the throne would elevate whatever mistake she made to the level of catastrophe.
"I agree that there's nothing particularly cheerful about the situation, Sir," she continued out loud after a moment, shaking off—mostly—her reflections about potential media disasters with her name on them. "In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if it was such a good idea to sendReprise off to Meyers before we knew exactly what was going to happen at New Tuscany. Especially since I didn't manage to keep the Sollies from getting a dispatch boat out."
"That decision was Baroness Medusa's . . . and mine," Khumalo told her. "As I recall, you were against it at the time, too."
"Yes, Sir, but not for exactly the same reasons I'm regretting it now. I didn't want to telegraph anything to Frontier Security and Frontier Fleet. I wasn't worried about one of our ships sailing into a broadside of missiles the instant she showed her face!"
"Commander Denton is a competent, conscientious officer, and no fool," Khumalo pointed out. "I think he demonstrated that pretty clearly in Pequod, and he'll follow the established protocols. BeforeReprise ever gets into range of any Solarian ship, Mr. O'Shaughnessy will have delivered Baroness Medusa's note via com. And Commander Denton will also, by my specific instruction, carry out a Ghost Rider sweep of the system before Reprise even squawks her transponder. I authorized him to use his discretion if he happened to spot anything of concern, and he is specifically directed to remain outside weapons range of any Solarian unit until and unless Commissioner Verrochio has guaranteed our envoy's safety as per the relevant interstellar law."
"I know, Sir." Michelle's expression was grim. "What concerns me is that Verrochio might give that guarantee, then have Reprise blown out of space, anyway."
Despite everything that had already happened, Khumalo looked shocked, and Michelle smiled tightly at him.
"Mr. Van Dort and Commodore Terekhov and I have discussed this situation at some length, Sir. It's evident to us from what Vézien and his people had to say that we're looking at a very complex, very expensive, and extremely far-reaching operation. I'd call it a conspiracy, except that it looks very much to us—to me—as if some outside party is pulling all the strings and most of the people actually carrying out the dirty work don't have any clue what the ultimate objective is. They may be conspirators, but they're not part of the same conspiracy as the puppeteer behind them, if you see what I mean."
"And all three of you believe the 'puppeteer' is Manpower?"
"We do, Sir."
"Well, so do Baroness Medusa and I," Khumalo told her, and smiled faintly at her surprised expression. "As I say, we've both read your report already, and we find ourselves in fundamental agreement with your conclusions. And, like you, we're deeply concerned about the apparent scope of Manpower's intentions and ambitions. It's completely outside anything we would have expected out of them, even after the business with Monica and Nordbrandt. And I find the degree of reach and influence required to position Byng as disturbing as you do. I think you're absolutely right; they are acting as if they thought they were a star nation in their own right."
"What's even more worrisome to me, especially where Reprise is concerned," Michelle said, "is that they'd managed to maneuver an officer like Byng—one who would pull the trigger without even blinking when they presented the right scenario—into a critical position in New Tuscany. If they've done the same thing in Meyers, and if there's another Anisimovna placed to provide the right stimulus at the right moment, some 'out-of-control' Solly officer may go ahead and blow Denton away whatever guarantees Verrochio may have given. After all, they've already got two incidents. Why shouldn't they go for three?"
"Now that is an unpleasant thought," Khumalo said slowly. "Do you think Verrochio would be in on it?"
"I genuinely don't have a clue what to think about that particular aspect, Sir." Michelle shook her head. "We know he was more or less in their pocket last time around, so I don't see any reason to assume he's going to be pure as the driven snow this time. By the same token, though, they had Vézien at least as firmly in their pocket this time around, and they obviously cut him entirely out of the loop when they punched Byng's buttons. I'd say they've shown a remarkably good grasp of what they could reasonably—and I use the term loosely—convince one of their tools to do. If they need something they're pretty sure she won't be willing to do, then they manipulate the situation without warning her until they get it. That's what happened to Vézien. I don't doubt that he was entirely prepared for an incident between one or more of Byng's ships and our vessels, and I don't think he would have shed any tears about getting quite a few of our people killed. But there was no way he expected the incident to happen right there in the middle of New Tuscany, and he certainly never counted on having Giselle blown up to provide the necessary spark! Besides, he knows what the Star Kingdom's policy has always been when someone fires on one of our ships without provocation. Trust me, he didn't plan on doing the firing himself, and he sure as hell didn't plan on its happening right on his doorstep. So I don't see any reason to assume Verrochio would have to know what's supposed to happen if they really have arranged a Byng Mark Two in Meyers."
"Wonderful," Khumalo sighed.
"I'm afraid it gets even better, Sir. All they managed to give Byng was battlecruisers. This Admiral Crandall they were telling Vézien about apparently has a lot more than that under her command."
"Do you think 'Admiral Crandall' really even exists?"
"That's a good question," Michelle admitted. "Anisimovna told Vézien and the other New Tuscans about Crandall, but no one on the planet ever actually saw her or any of her ships. Given what happened toGiselle, it's pretty evident Anisimovna wouldn't have suffered any qualms of conscience over lying to them about a little thing like fifty or sixty superdreadnoughts. And I'd really like to think that it's one thing to get a Battle Fleet admiral with a pathological hatred for all things Manticoran assigned to a Frontier Fleet command but another thing entirely to get an entire fleet of Battle Fleet ships of the wall maneuvered this far out into the boonies. If Manpower has that kind of reach, if it can really move task groups and battle fleets around like chessmen or checkers, we've obviously been underestimating the hell out of them for a long, long time. And if that's true, who knows what else the bastards are up to?"