Mission of Honor-ARC (40 page)

"First of all, Admiral Crandall," Medusa said calmly after the inevitable delay, "no one's transgressed against the sovereignty of the Solarian League. We've simply taken exception to the massacre of our ships and our personnel and insisted that the man responsible for that massacre answer to the applicable provisions of interstellar law. Interstellar law, I might add, which has been formally recognized and codified by the Solarian League in several solemn treaties.

"Admiral Gold Peak gave Admiral Byng every opportunity to avoid any additional violence, and when he refused to take any of them, she fired on only one of his ships—the one he happened to be aboard at the moment, to be precise—when she could just as easily have fired on all of them. She also
ceased
fire and extended yet another opportunity to avoid bloodshed—
further
bloodshed—after Admiral Byng's . . . demise."

Crandall's expression was livid, but Medusa continued in that same tone of deadly calm.

"Secondly," she said, "we happen to be in possession of the file copies from Admiral Sigbee's flagship of both her own and
Admiral Byng's
standing orders, which I presume must have been at least generally similar to your own. Oddly enough, there's nothing in them about committing blatant acts of war against sovereign star nations. Aside from little things like 'Case Buccaneer,' that is, but we won't go into that particular 'contingency plan' at this point. Unless you insist on discussing Frontier Fleet, OFS, piracy, and 'disappeared' merchant ships officially and on the record, of course."

Her dark eyes glittered, and Shavarshyan inhaled sharply as the Manticoran's steely smile challenged Crandall to press her on that point in an official exchange both sides knew was being recorded.

"I make this point only to clarify the fact that we're well aware you're acting at the present moment on your own authority," Medusa continued after a moment."Mind you, I'm equally well aware that one of the functions of a flag officer this far from her star nation's capital is to do precisely that in moments of crisis. However, you would do well to consider that in this instance the Star Empire of Manticore has already communicated formally with the Solarian League on Old Terra about both New Tuscan incidents. I am in receipt of copies of the League's official responses to those communiques, should you care to view them. And if you would care to avail yourself of the Lynx Terminus, we would be quite happy to send your own dispatches directly to Old Chicago, should you wish to seek guidance from your superiors before we have another of those . . . misunderstandings, I believe you called them? I suspect those superiors might not be entirely pleased if some avoidable
'misunderstanding
' on your own part leads to a further regrettable escalation of the tensions between the Solarian League and the Star Empire."

From the corner of his eye, Shavarshyan saw Ou-yang Zhing-wei purse her lips as that salvo went home. Medusa's confirmation that Manticore had not simply captured Sigbee's databases but hacked their most secure files was bad enough. The Manticoran's pointed suggestion that she knew far more about the League's official reaction to New Tuscany than Crandall possibly could had been even worse. Whether Bautista and Crandall were prepared to face the implications or not, Ou-yang clearly recognized the diplomatic minefield Task Force 496 was about to enter. And, just as clearly, she understood that no naval officer's connections were so good she couldn't be thrown to the wolves if she screwed up too egregiously. Crandall, fortunately for her blood pressure, if not for anything else, was too busy glaring at Medusa to notice the ops officer's expression. It was, perhaps, less fortunate that she was so totally infuriated that she also completely ignored Medusa's offer to put her into direct communication with her superiors on Old Terra. Clearly, the baroness was telling her it wasn't too late to take a deep breath and back down under cover of the diplomatic smokescreen of seeking guidance from above.

It was a pity Crandall wasn't paying attention.

"I have no intention of sitting here for a solid T-month while you and your 'Star Empire' redeploy your own warships, Madame Governor," the admiral said coldly. "My standing orders require what
I
believe my standing orders require, and the terms I've already stated are the minimum I'm prepared to accept."

And then she sat there again, glaring at Medusa's image, while rage and fury fermented inside her.

"And if I should happen to reject your 'minimum terms'?"

Shavarshyan couldn't decide whether the ever so slight curl of Medusa's lip was deliberate or an involuntary response which had escaped her formidable self-control. In either case, the unstated contempt came through quite nicely.

"In that case,
Governor
," Crandall responded, "I will advance upon the inhabited planet of your star system. I will engage and destroy every military starship in the system. And after I've done that, I'll land Marines on your planet and secure control of it in the name of the Solarian League until an appropriate civilian administration can be set up by the Office of Frontier Security. And, I feel confident, Frontier Security will continue to administer this world—and every other planet of your so-called Talbott Quadrant—until such time as the Solarian League's just requirements for accountability and redress are fully satisfied."

She paused very briefly, her smile thin and cold, as she deliberately raised the stakes. Then she continued in that same, cold voice.

"I'm prepared to to give you the opportunity to comply with my reasonable demands without further loss of life or destruction, but the Solarian League Navy doesn't intend to permit an act of war against the League to pass unanswered. I have no doubt you have indeed been in communication with the League. I also have no doubt of where my own duty lies, however. Because I have no desire to see additional avoidable bloodshed, I will give you precisely three T-days from the moment my ships made their alpha translations to accept my terms. If you do not do so within that time, I
will
cross the limit and proceed exactly as I've described, and the consequences of that will rest upon
your
shoulders. In the meantime, I'm uninterested in any further communication of yours, unless it is for the purpose of accepting my terms. Good day, Governor."

She stabbed a button, and the display went blank.

* * *

"All right, Clement," Karol Østby said quietly, "let's not stub our toes at this point, okay?"

"Yes, Sir." Commander Clement Foreman, Østby's operations officer, smiled tautly at him on MANS
Chameleon'
s
cramped flag bridge.

The scout ship had reached her rendezvous with
Ghost
and
Wraith
as all three of them crept ever so cautiously towards the final deployment point. This was, in many ways, the most critical aspect of their entire lengthy mission—or the riskiest moment of it, at any rate; all of its elements had been "critical" to the operation's success—and the tension on the flag bridge could have been carved with a blade.

Foreman considered his displays for a moment, then keyed his mike.

"All emplacement teams, this is Control," he said. "Proceed."

Absolutely nothing changed on the flag bridge itself, yet Østby felt an almost tangible release as the order was finally given. Which was about as irrational as responses came, he supposed. The scout ships themselves were extraordinarily stealthy, and the arrays they were about to emplace were equally so. Which meant they were actually entering the moment of maximum danger as they deployed their work parties with the tools and equipment necessary for their task, since those tools and that equipment, while still very hard to detect, were considerably
less
stealthy. And still, however unreasonable it might be, there was that sense of relief—not relaxation, only
relief—
as they actually set about it at last.

He watched his own displays, listening over his earbug as progress reports flowed into flag bridge. He knew perfectly well that it wasn't really taking as long as it felt like it was taking, just as he knew how critical it was that they take the time to be sure it was done right, but whatever he might know intellectually, it didn't
feel
that way.

He looked at the date/time display, and a fresh sense of confidence swept through him. His people had trained far too hard, mastered their duties far too completely, to screw up now. They would fail neither him nor the Alignment . . . and in another fifteen days, the entire galaxy would know that as well as
he
did.

"All right, Jacomina," Sandra Crandall said flatly. "These people have just run out of time."

"Yes, Ma'am." Captain Jacomina van Heutz, SLNS
Joseph Buckley
's commanding officer, nodded from the small display on Crandall's flag bridge. The admiral looked over her shoulder at Bautista and Ou-yang, and both of them nodded, as well. Shavarshyan thought Ou-yang's nod seemed less cheerful than Bautista's, although that could have been his imagination.

But whatever the ops officer might be feeling, it didn't matter. Not anymore. As Crandall had just observed, the Manties' time had run out, and she wasn't wasting any effort on additional attempts to communicate. Nor was she demonstrating a great deal of finesse, although the intelligence officer supposed there wasn't much point being fancy when you were a sledgehammer and your target was an egg.

He'd helped Ou-yang work on her analysis of the sensor ghosts her recon platforms had been picking up, and he'd come to the conclusion that the operations officer was correct. Those "ghosts" really were there, although it had proven impossible to wring any details out of the frustratingly vague data. Apparently the reports about the efficacy of Manticoran stealth systems had actually understated the case, which didn't make Shavarshyan a lot happier when he reflected on all the
other
reports which had been so confidently dismissed by naval intelligence at the same time. And to add insult to injury, it seemed the ops officer's fears about the Manties' ability to pick up
their
recon platforms had been well founded. They'd tried getting in close enough for a better look, and each time their platforms had been detected, localized, and killed before they could get close enough to penetrate their targets' stealth. He wasn't at all certain Solarian sensors could have locked them up that well, but from Ou-yang's reaction, he suspected it would have been at best a toss-up.

On the other hand, there were only ten of those ghosts. Even if every one of them was a superdreadnought, Crandall's force still outnumbered the enemy by a margin of almost seven-to-one, and even if every single story about Manticoran capabilities proved accurate, those were still crushing odds. And if, as seemed much more likely, they were simply more of those outsized battlecruisers, Bautista's confident expectation of a rapid, devastating victory was amply justified.

Shavarshyan wondered if he was the only one who felt dismay at that prospect. He'd continued to hope the Manties might recognize the insanity of taking on the entire Solarian League. Both sides had painted themselves thoroughly into corners, yet he'd hoped—almost prayed—that Medusa would recognize she was dealing with a maniac. That Crandall really would destroy every single Manticoran ship in the star system unless the Manticoran governor gave her what she wanted.

But it would appear Medusa was just as done talking as Crandall. Despite the horrific odds, she'd declined to take the only escape available to her uniformed men and women, and now Hago Shavarshyan was going to be an unwilling party to their massacre. That was bad enough, yet what was going to happen when word of this reached the capital system of the Star Empire of Manticore would be even worse. When the SLN did come face-to-face with a true Manticoran battle fleet—when Manty superdreadnoughts squared off against their Solarian counterparts in anything remotely resembling even numbers—the carnage was going to be incredible. Whatever Crandall and Bautista thought,
he
knew better, and so did Ou-yang Zhing-wei. And the inevitability of the League's final victory was going to be very cold consolation to the mothers and fathers and wives and husbands and children of the thousands of people who were going to be killed first.

It was like watching helplessly from an orbiting satellite as an airbus loaded with schoolchildren plummeted directly towards a mountainside, and even though none of it had been his decision, he felt contaminated—unclean—as the eagerness of Crandall, Bautista, and the others like them flowed about him.

At least it should be fairly quick
, he thought grimly as the battle boards at Ou-yang's station flickered from the amber of standby to the unblinking blood-red of readiness. Then he grimaced at his own reflection.
Sure it'll be "quick;" and isn't it a hell of a thing when that's the best I can think of?

* * *

"So much for any last-minue outbreak of sanity on their side."

Captain Loretta Shoupe looked up from her displays and wondered if Augustus Khumalo was as aware as she was of how calm his voice sounded. She glanced at his profile as he studied the icons in HMS
Hercules
' flag bridge master plot, and the calmness of his expression, the steadiness of his eyes, were not the surprise they once would have been.

He's grown
, she thought, with a possessive pride whose fierceness
did
surprise her a bit, even now.
He's no happier about this than anyone else, but if there's a gram of hesitation anywhere in him
, I
can't see it
.

"Well," Khumalo said with more than a little regret, "I suppose it's time." He raised his voice slightly. "Communications, pass the word to
Tristram
. Instruct Commander Kaplan to execute Paul Revere. Then contact Commodore Terekhov and inform him that Code Yankee is now in effect. Captain Saunders," he looked down at the command chair com display tied into
Hercules
' command deck, "tactical command is passing to Commodore Terekhov at this time."