Shadow of Freedom-eARC (52 page)

For a moment, her eyes were fierce, proud. Then her shoulders slumped.

“Damned near wasn’t good enough, though. We had three quarters of the capital, five other cities completely, and most of the countryside on this continent, but we couldn’t break into the final compound, and then Yucel got here. Landed her damned intervention battalions and launched orbital strikes on half a dozen smaller cities and towns that had come over to our side. That’s when Michael pulled us out of the other cities. He wouldn’t give them any kind of excuse to do the same thing to a major population center. But he figured they wouldn’t try the same crap on Landing. Too much real estate they don’t want to lose, and any strikes would be too damned close to them. He was right about that, too, so they’ve been coming after us house by house.” She bared her teeth. “We’ve been costing them, but you’ve seen the news channels.”

“Yes, I have.” Terekhov’s eyes were fiery blue ice. “We haven’t seen any imagery about the orbital strikes, though. Do you have a casualty estimate from them?”

His tone was calm, almost conversational, but his expression wasn’t.

“Best guess is somewhere around four hundred and fifty thousand,” Blanchard said.

“I see.” Terekhov looked at her for a moment or two, then inhaled sharply. “Our recon platforms show you holding a crescent around the southern and western edges of the capital. Is that accurate?”

She nodded.

“And Yucel and Lombroso hold the area around the Presidential Palace?”

“They hold everything we don’t,” she said frankly. “Everything from the sports center to the tower complex just east of where I am now.” She managed a tired grin. “I’m assuming you’ve got my signal located?”

“We know where you are,” Terekhov agreed with a brief answering smile. “What about the eastern side of town, in closer to the Presidential Palace?”

“That’s mainly been cleared. I mean, they’ve run out all the civilians, except for a handful of residential towers dedicated to off-worlders and corporate employees.”

“And I gather from the newscasts that they’re holding their prisoners in the soccer stadium?”

“That’s right.” She nodded again. “President Lombroso Memorial Soccer Stadium. Son-of-a-bitch just loves naming things for himself.”

“What can you tell us about their security situation around the stadium?”

“Not much. They’ve pushed us too far back. I’m guessing you can see more from orbit then we can see from down here.”

“You’re probably right about that.” Terekhov nodded again. He stood thinking, arms still folded across his chest, then nodded slowly, more to himself than to Blanchard.

“Thank you, Ms. Blanchard,” he said. “I think it’s time I had a few words with President Lombroso and his associates. Perhaps I can convince them of the error of their ways.”

* * *

Brigadier Francisca Yucel took another quick, angry turn around the luxurious office she’d been assigned in the Lombroso Arms Tower. The Lombroso Arms was across President Lombroso Boulevard from the Presidential Palace, and its thick ceramacrete walls made it virtually impervious to anything the rebels had been equipped with when she first arrived. It also gave her a commanding height as an observation post and a ground-based communications station.

“Her” office was huge, lavishly decorated, with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked directly down on the roof and ornate façade of the Presidential Palace. She’d enjoyed its comfort since her arrival, and her communication section had set up along with the rest of her staff in the larger office suite next door. Her lofty perch had let her oversee the systematic destruction of the scum who’d been about to kick Lombroso’s worthless ass before she arrived, and she’d felt nothing but satisfaction as the effort progressed. She probably could have finished it sooner, but she’d wanted to be sure these worthless proles never forgot. That they never again even dared to think of raising their hands to Frontier Security or its allies.

Only now the fucking Manties had turned up and that worthless asshole Watson hadn’t even
tried
to stop them. He’d just rolled over and blown up his own ships so the Manties didn’t even have to waste any missiles on them! One of these days she’d settle his cowardly ass the way it deserved to be settled, but for now she had to deal with the goddamned
Manties
.

You didn’t believe it, did you?
she asked herself viciously
. Didn’t want to.
Wang
did, damn him. But not you
. You
knew better
.

She snarled, burying the fear she didn’t want to admit under fresh anger. They hadn’t had anything to go on, really. A couple of hints from interrogation. Nothing concrete, and God knew the lying bastards would say anything—invent anything—if they thought it was going to keep somebody they cared for alive.

Admit it
, she told herself.
You did believe the Manties were
involved,
it just never occurred to you they might be
this
involved. You figured you had plenty of time to settle these fuckers’ hash before anyone back in Spindle even knew you were here. Jerk their goddammed rebels out from under their feet, and they wouldn’t have any ‘spontaneous uprising’ to support. But you
didn’t
have time, did you?

No, she hadn’t, and she gritted her teeth as she remembered how positive she’d been that the Manties would back down. That even they had to realize taking on the Solarian League was nothing more than glorified suicide. Obviously they were even stupider than she’d thought, and even now she took a grim, vengeful satisfaction from the thought of what this was going to cost them in the end. They’d pay one day—pay in spades!—for everything they’d done, for all their treachery and deceit.

But this wasn’t “one day.” This was
today
, and today the Manties were sitting up there in orbit, and they hadn’t even tried to talk to her or that idiot Lombroso yet. They were just sitting there, letting her sit down here and rot, but it wasn’t going to work. She had their fucking number. If they thought they were going to waltz in here and—

“Excuse me, Ma’am.”

“What?” she snarled, wheeling around to face the Mobian communications tech who’d dared to enter her office.

“There someone on the com asking for you, Ma’am,” the Presidential Guard tech said nervously, sweat beading his forehead. “He says he’s somebody named Terekhov. Commodore Terekhov.”

“Oh, he does, does he?”

Yucel felt her lips twist in anger. Terekhov. The same son-of-a-bitch who’d shot up the Monica System and started this whole frigging nightmare. She should’ve guessed.

The Mobian only stood there, looking at her, obviously uncertain whether he was supposed to answer or not and terrified to make the wrong choice. Her fingers flexed with the urge to rip his head off, but she made herself draw a deep breath, instead.

“All right. Put him on my desk display.”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

The tech disappeared like smoke, and Yucel turned towards the office’s enormous desk just as the display lit with the face of a blond, blue-eyed officer in the black and gold of the Royal Manticoran Navy.

“What?” she snapped.

“I assume I have the dubious privilege of addressing Brigadier Yucel?” The contempt in Terekhov’s tone flicked Yucel like a whip.

“I’m Yucel,” she confirmed in a harsh, hard-edged voice. “What the fuck d’
you
want?”

“I thought, much as the idea disgusts me, that I might offer you a chance to get off this planet alive.” Terekhov’s voice was like ice, his expression one of indifference. “Personally, I’d prefer to kill you where you stand. I’ve had the opportunity to observe your handiwork in some detail. However, since we’re all civilized people here, I decided to give you my terms, first.”

“Your
terms?
” she sneered. “Who the hell do you think you are? You come waltzing into this star system, you attack Navy starships, and now you have the sheer, unmitigated gall to tell me you’re going to offer me
terms?
Well fuck you! One of us is here at the invitation of the legally constituted government of this star system,
Commodore
Terekhov, and it sure as hell isn’t
you!
”

“A legally constituted government that’s massacred—or allowed
you
to massacre—a half million or so of its citizens with kinetic strikes?
That
legally constituted government?”

“What a sovereign star nation does to suppress criminal insurrection is none of your goddammed business,” she said harshly. “And what the Solarian Gendarmerie does at the request of that sovereign star nation is none of your business, either! So get your ships the hell out of this system.”

“Not going to happen.” Terekhov’s calm, cold precision was a sharp contrast to the seething fury of her own tone. “To put this in terms even you may be able to understand, Brigadier, you’re screwed. I don’t care if we have to kill every single gendarme down there, and I certainly don’t care if we have to kill
you
. But I’d just as soon avoid any additional damage to the Mobians’ planet if I can. So here are those terms. You lay down your weapons, you march all your personnel out of Landing to a point to be designated by me, and you wait there until my Marines take you into custody.”

“And then what happens in this fantasy of yours?” she demanded. “You shoot us all on the spot?”

“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.”