Polk sat for a while, comfortable in the warm glow of self-congratulation. The more he thought about it, the closer he was to securing his domestic power base, so maybe this was the time to start thinking about making the Feds wish that they had left the Mumtaz business alone. Yes, he decided, it was time, despite unanimous agreement at the last Defense Council meeting that the matter was probably best left alone. Fact was, he didn’t give a flying fuck what the Defense Council thought. They would do as they were damned well told.
He reached for the intercom. “Singh!”
“Sir?”
“Contact Fleet Admiral Jorge. See if he’s free for lunch tomorrow.”
“Sir.”
Polk flicked off the intercom.
By all accounts, Jorge was a good man. He was an off-worlder, which meant he probably wasn’t much of a Merrick supporter, though according to DocSec, he had taken scrupulous care throughout a long and competent career to stay well clear of factional politics, so who would know? Much more significantly, Jorge owed his appointment as commander in chief of Hammer Defense Forces to Polk, and Polk had made damn sure he knew it. He had plucked Jorge out of relative obscurity as the flag officer in command of Space Fleet research and development, promoting him two ranks over the heads of those Polk judged to be largely responsible for the Hammer’s spineless and incompetent response to the Feds’ attack.
Most of those men, Polk was happy to remind himself, were now anonymous bodies among the thousands in some DocSec lime pit somewhere.
The purge of Space Fleet in the weeks after the attack on the Hell system had been merciless. Senior officers had been cut down in the hundreds without appeal, the executioner’s bullet reaching deep into the organization to root out anyone even remotely connected to the humiliation dished out by the Feds at Hell’s Moons.
From Polk’s perspective, the daily reports from DocSec summarizing the previous day’s arrests, convictions, and sentences-all but a tiny minority of those arrested going to the firing squad the next day-had been profoundly satisfying. It was very simple. Most if not all of those condemned must have been tacit supporters of Merrick. Otherwise, how could they have flourished during Merrick’s time as chief councillor? Add in their contribution, actual or inferred-it didn’t much matter which-as Fleet’s senior management to the defeat at Hell’s Moons and it was pretty straightforward if you thought about it.
Polk’s enjoyment of the moment was interrupted by the carefully neutral tones of Ramesh Singh, his longtime confidential secretary. “Chief Councillor?”
“Yes, Singh.”
“Fleet Admiral Jorge would be delighted to meet you for lunch tomorrow, sir.”
I bet he would, Polk thought. As if he had any choice in the matter.
“Good. I’m so pleased to hear it,” Polk said sarcastically.
“I’ll arrange lunch for 13:00 at the residence.”
“Yes, that should be fine. What else do I have tomorrow?”
“Photo opportunity at 12:30, sir. Front lawn, weather permitting. Medal ceremony for crew members of the New Dallas. Ten minutes.”
“Ah, good. Will Jorge be there?”
“Not planned to be, sir. It’s a Space Fleet-sponsored affair, so Admiral Kseki will be there, and he’s hosting the lunch afterward.”
“Okay. Fine.” Admiral Kseki. Another one of his recent appointments.
As the intercom clicked off, Polk smiled a grim smile of satisfaction.
If necessary, Jorge would be left in no doubt that any reluctance on his part to commit body and soul to what Polk was beginning to think of as a righteous crusade against the Feds would be a career-, not to say life-threatening move on his part.
But somehow Polk didn’t think it would come to that.
Monday, April 19, 2399, UD
Conference Room 24-1, Interstellar Relations
Secretariat Building, Geneva, Old Earth
Three hundred forty light-years away from the Federated Worlds, the late-afternoon sun of an Old Earth day threw long bars of golden sunlight into the small conference room on the top floor of the Interstellar Relations Secretariat building on the outskirts of Geneva.
The room was empty except for a small table and a scattering of chairs. Two people were seated at the end closest to the window, the spring sun enjoyably warm on their backs. Giovanni Pecora had his head in his hands, the frustration obvious.
“You know, Marta,” he said despairingly, “I don’t think a single fucking word we’ve said here today to those Hammer bastards has had the slightest effect. They really are the most stiff-necked and obstinate people in all of humanspace. We’ve always been prepared to consider compromise, but the Hammer? Never. I was afraid that this mediation might be a waste of time, and so it’s turning out. I’d give it another week, maybe two, tops.”
Marta Diallo, Pecora’s deputy secretary responsible for the Hammer Worlds and one of the very few people in the Fed Worlds with a deep understanding of the Hammer psyche, nodded. Her frustration was obvious.
“Well, Giovanni, there was a chance, I suppose,” she said. “Small one, maybe, but there was a chance. If the Hammer had publicly blamed the whole affair on Digby and made the necessary apologies, then they might have been able to save enough face to look at the compromise positions we proposed.” Diallo sighed deeply, running her hands through thick black hair as if to push away the problem. “But I’m afraid that Polk’s intervention has blown that chance out of the water. Why he wouldn’t blame Digby is beyond me. He had his boss put up against a wall and shot, after all, and we’ve got Digby locked up, so who the hell’s going to argue?”
She paused for a moment before continuing. “No, stupid me. We know why, and it’s the age-old reason. Domestic politics is why he wouldn’t put Digby in the frame. Digby was a Merrick man, and everyone knows it. Blaming Digby is as good as blaming Merrick. But putting the blame on us gives Polk his best and probably only chance to gut the opposition and rally support behind himself as leader of the Hammers. I hate to say it, Giovanni, but unless we get something positive out of them at tomorrow’s session, and I don’t believe we will, I think there is a real risk that this is going to slide into full-scale war.”
“I’m very much afraid you are right, Marta,” Pecora said gloomily. “God’s blood! Another Hammer war? Just what we all need right now. Interstellar trade’s a bit soft at the moment, and one thing’s for sure: A war between us and the Hammer will push things right over the edge.”
Diallo shook her head. “Well, at least we’ll have some help. I got an update from the Frontier desk yesterday. They think it’s almost certain that Frontier will support us if we need them. There were a lot of their people on the Mumtaz. It was their terraforming package the Hammers stole, and I think it’s fair to say they owe us big-time.”
Pecora nodded. “I’ve seen the report. I’m going to send a high-level team to Frontier. We need to start tying things up.”
“We do,” Diallo said. “It’s the Sylvanians I’m worried about. They look soft.” Diallo’s face turned grim as she continued. “Though you’d have to ask why they wouldn’t support us.”
“Three words, Marta: tactical nuclear weapons. They remember Vencatia and Jesmond. They’re scared shitless the Hammer won’t hold back next time. Every survey confirms it, I’m sorry to say, and the appeasers are riding the wave.”
“Jeez, Giovanni. Surely they’re smarter than that. Can’t they see that now’s their best chance to put an end to the Hammer problem once and for all? Lot of economic upside for them and everyone else if the Hammer economy can be freed up and the instability in interstellar trade reduced. I see the insurers are already applying a war premium to traffic inside 100 light-years of the Hammer.”