A Rising Thunder-ARC (52 page)

“Completely off the record—and I’ll deny it if you ever quote me—but I’d just as soon go pick on someone who isn’t as tough as you guys for a change, myself,” Elizabeth told her, marveling even now at how close she’d become to the president of the star nation she’d hated with every fiber of her being for four standard decades.

“There are still some questions at the Nouveau Paris end, of course,” Pritchart went on in a more sober tone. “As they say, the devil is always in the details. With your permission, now that the original treaty’s been approved at both ends, I’d like to go ahead and get Admiral Hemphill’s mission off to Bolthole as soon as possible. I think that would help put a lot of those questions to bed with a shovel.”

“Tom and Hamish are still having to knock a few heads together over at the Admiralty,” Elizabeth said with an off-center smile. “I don’t think there’ll be any major snafus, though.”

I
hope
to hell there won’t be, anyway
, she added mentally. She truly didn’t expect any, but she’d been surprised upon occasion before. And she supposed it was inevitable that the more conservative members of the Royal Navy would be…uncomfortable about sending the entire surviving R&D staff of HMSS
Weyland
off deep into Havenite territory to share all of the RMN’s technical secrets with its traditional enemies. In fact, there were times
Elizabeth
expected to wake up with a terminal drug hangover any moment now.

But crazy as it sounds, it actually makes sense—a
lot
of sense
, she thought.
We’re pretty sure that if
we
couldn’t figure out where Bolthole was, the Sollies—and probably the Alignment—don’t know either. God knows we had a lot more incentive to find it than either of them did! So tucking our R&D projects away where no one with any invisible starships is likely to drop by to clean up what she missed the first time around strikes me as a very good idea. And from what Theisman and Eloise have shown us, Bolthole’s going to be a damned good place to start putting all that new hardware into production on a really large scale quickly, once we’ve made a few upgrades
.

There’d been arguments in favor of using Beowulf, instead. For one thing, Beowulf’s basic technology was considerably in advance of the Republic’s as a whole—or even of Bolthole’s, for that matter. In theory, Beowulf would be better placed to hit the ground running and improve upon the existing research more rapidly than the Haven could. But there was a difference between basic technology and war-fighting technology, and an even bigger difference between the mindsets required to successfully push military and civilian
R&D
. There was no doubt in Elizabeth’s mind—or that of any serving Manticoran officer, for that matter—that Shannon Foraker fully deserved her reputation. The staff she’d put together had done miracles to close the gap between Manticore and the Republic. With the destruction of
Weyland
and its Grayson equivalent at Blackbird, there was no one in the galaxy better qualified to push the bleeding edge of hardware development.

Besides, Beowulf was already busy doing other things.

Horrific as the casualties of the Yawata Strike had been, it had actually killed only a relatively small percentage of the total Manticoran workforce. But it had killed a
critical
percentage—the technicians, the logisticians, the supervisors, and the managers responsible for building the Star Empire’s starships, military and civilian. The smelters and the resource extraction platforms were still there. Much of the system’s consumer manufacturing still existed, although a frightening percentage of it had been wiped away with the space stations, as well. The service personnel who’d manned the service and repair platforms associated with the Junction were still intact, still available. But the Yawata Strike had destroyed the workforce whose skill set had made it the most efficient shipbuilding powerhouse in the explored galaxy. It had destroyed the heavy fabrication units, the skilled personnel who oversaw final component manufacture and assembly, the shipfitters and the ordnance specialists, the nano-farms that produced the critical manufacturing nanotech, the armorers and life support technicians, the planners who kept at all moving smoothly. They were all gone, and their disappearance had eliminated the very skilled work force needed to rebuild the hardware, the infrastructure, they’d once manned, as well. It was a case of the chicken and the egg; to build the one, you needed the other.

As Baroness Morncreek and Countess Maiden Hill had pointed out at that first dreadful cabinet meeting after the strike, they could rebuild and retrain. They still had at least some of the people they needed, once they could be recalled or transferred from other critical sectors of the economy. And the repatriated work force from Grendelsbane had been a godsend. For the matter, there were plenty of Manticorans who could acquire the necessary skill sets. The problem was how to do all of that quickly enough…and how even the Star Empire of Manticore could afford the price tag.

It looked like the answer was going to be Beowulf and the Republic of Haven. The loss of revenues Operation Lacoön had inflicted on the Old Star Kingdom would have been close enough to catastrophic under normal circumstances. Under the post-Yawata Strike circumstances, it came one hell of a lot closer. But when Lacoön was first formulated, no one had anticipated having the Republic of Haven available to step in as a full trading partner. Nor had it counted on Beowulf’s becoming for all intents and purposes a full ally against the Solarian League.

Haven offered enormous business opportunities for the Star Empire. It wasn’t going to come remotely close to replacing everything Lacoön had shut down, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to help a lot. And with Beowulf’s open alignment with Manticore, its economy had become part of the Grand Alliance’s dynamo, as well. Beowulfers had always been heavily invested in the Old Star Kingdom; now they were actually lining up to buy Manticoran war bonds.

Nor was that all Beowulf was doing. Dozens of Beowulfan repair and service ships had already streamed through the Junction, and the nuclei of new space stations were already taking shape—two each, this time, around Manticore and Sphinx. They were going to be different this time, too; built to a carefully thought out plan that allowed for systematic expansion rather than simply growing as need required. And with powerful self-defense capability, as well. There really was truth to the old saw about the burned hand teaching best, Elizabeth reflected grimly.

The tectonic shift represented by the Grand Alliance’s unexpected formation had hugely reduced even the most optimistic Manticoran estimates of how long it was going to take to rebuild the Old Star Kingdom’s industrial muscle. Which wasn’t to say it was going to happen overnight, even now. The process was still going to take T-years, and everyone knew it.

That was why Beowulf was already establishing its first MDM production lines. It had no pod laying superdreadnoughts of its own, but it’s basic technological capabilities required far less tweaking than Haven’s would to begin producing the mini-fusion plants and the miniaturized gravitic components required to build something like the Mark 23-E. So for the foreseeable future, Beowulf would be the primary missile supplier for the Grand Alliance. For that matter, if things worked out the way the planners were anticipating, in the next several T-months Beowulf would begin building Keyhole-Two platforms to be installed in purpose-built Havenite SD(P)s constructed in Bolthole and sailed to Manticore for final installation of the Beowulf-built components.

Just thinking about it could make Elizabeth’s head swim, but Honor and Hamish promised her it would work. As long as Beowulf remained intact, at least, and the two hundred pod-laying superdreadnoughts stationed there to protect the system suggested it would.

“Well, anyway,” Pritchard said, “it looks like this is actually going to work. I have to admit, there’ve been times when I wasn’t is confident of that as I hope I looked.”

“Eloise, you and I have to be the two stubbornest, most bloody-minded females in the galaxy,” Elizabeth pointed out. “If the two of
us
can agree on anything, it’s
going
to happen.”

“
I’m
not going to argue with you,” Pritchard said with a smile. “But on that note, I’ll let you get back to your family and that wedding. It’s probably more fun than this anyway.”

“It is, in a lot of ways,” Elizabeth admitted. “And the notion of having the President of the Republic of Haven present as an invited guest isn’t something I’d’ve given a lot of thought to until the last month or so.”

“I guess not.” Pritchart chuckled and started to press the button to terminate the connection, then paused. “Oh! While I’m thinking about it. One other point Leslie raised in her message was to ask where we were on the possibility of getting treecats assigned to critical personnel in Nouveau Paris. She knows that’s really up to the ’cats, and she’s not trying to push anybody into leaning on them, but it seems the security services back home are taking the possibility of nanotech assassinations very seriously.”

“I’ll discuss it with Dr. Arif and Sorrow Singer tomorrow morning, early,” Elizabeth assured her. “From my last conversation with them, I’d say we’ll probably be able to send at least a couple of dozen home with you after the wedding. Maybe more, for that matter.”

“Thank you,” Pritchard said with a warm smile. “And on that note, go back to your family, Elizabeth. I’ll talk to you later. Clear.”

July 1922 Post Diaspora

“You are
so
going to get all of us killed.”
 

—Lieutenant Colonel Natsuko Okiku,
 

Solarian Gendarmerie

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Sir Lyman Carmichael, who’d never expected to replace the assassinated James Webster as Manticore’s ambassador to the Solarian League, stood at a fifth-story window and looked down at a scene out of a bad historical holo drama. His perch in one of the Beowulf Assembly delegation’s offices gave him a remarkably good view of it, too.

Frigging idiots
, he thought disgustedly.
Only Sollies. Nobody else in the entire galaxy would’ve swallowed that line of crap Abruzzi’s passing out! But
Sollies?
Hook, line, and sinker
.

He shook his head. In a reasonable universe, one might have thought continual exposure to lies would instill at least a partial immunity. Looking down at the sea of angry, shouting humanity clogging the plaza outside the Beowulf residence seemed to demonstrate it didn’t. In fact, he was beginning to think continual exposure actually weakened the ability to recognize the truth on those rare occasions when it finally came along.

You’re being cynical again. And unfair
, he admitted unwillingly.
But not
too
unfair. It’s not like these morons hadn’t heard both sides of the story—or been exposed to them, anyway—before they decided to go out and demonstrate their stupidity
.

For the moment, Carmichael was relatively safe in a personal sense, here with the Beowulf delegation. That shouldn’t have been a significant consideration, but it was in this case. Under interstellar law as accepted by most star nations, his person was legally sacrosanct, no matter what happened to the relations between his star nation and another. Even in time of war, he was supposed to be returned safely to his government’s jurisdiction, just as any ambassadors to the Star Empire were to be repatriated under similar circumstances.

The Solarian League, however, had never gotten around to ratifying that particular interstellar convention. That hadn’t mattered in the past, since no one had been crazy enough to challenge the League, which meant Old Chicago had never been forced to deal with the problem. It left Carmichael in something of a gray area under the current circumstances, however, and he wasn’t at all sure how Kolokoltsov and his cronies might choose to interpret the law in his own case. That was why he’d moved into the Beowulf residence, which enjoyed extraterritorial status under the Constitution. Assuming anyone was paying
attention
to the Constitution. On the other hand, if things kept building the way they were, Beowulf wasn’t going to be enjoying any sort of legal status within the Solarian League very much longer.

He couldn’t hear the individual chants or shouts through the background surf of crowd noise, not from the fifth floor through a hermetically sealed window. But he knew what they were screaming. And even if he hadn’t known, he could read the placards and holo banners.

MANTICORAN MURDERERS!

BUTCHERS!

HARRINGTON + TREACHERY = MURDER!

REMEMBER FLEET ADMIRAL FILARETA!

ASSASSINS, NOT ADMIRALS!

THIEVES, LIARS, AND MURDERERS!

And there was equal time for Beowulf, of course.

TRAITORS!

MANTICORAN PIMPS!

WHO’S KNIFE IS IN ADMIRAL FILARETA’S BACK?

WHERE’S YOUR THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER?

BEOWULF HELPED MURDER ELEVENTH FLEET!

WHERE WAS ADMIRAL TSANG WHEN ELEVENTH FLEET NEEDED HER?

Carmichael sighed and turned away from the window only to discover someone had been standing behind him.

“Madam Delegate,” he said with a slight bow.

“Mr. Ambassador.” Felicia Hadley, Beowulf’s senior delegate to the Solarian League Assembly, returned his bow. She was a slender woman, with black hair, brown eyes, and a golden complexion. She was at least several T-years older than Carmichael, but the freckles dusted across the bridge of her nose made her look much younger, somehow.

“I was just watching the show,” he said.

“I know. I was watching you watch it.” She smiled slightly. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

“Not as impressive as the fact that Old Chicago’s highly efficient police force seems somehow totally unable to break up this completely un-authorized and spontaneous demonstration.” Carmichael’s tone was poison dry, and this time Hadley actually chuckled.

“The same thought had occurred to me,” she admitted. “Actually, I’ve been wondering whether or not I should add that to my daily indictment on the Assembly floor. It wouldn’t
change
anything, of course, but it might make me feel a little better.”