“The Beowulf Terminus is administered and controlled by the Beowulf Terminus Corporation, a civilian corporation based in Beowulf, but the Terminus’ actual sovereignty rests with Manticore, as its discoverer. Whether or not we would have the legal authority to allow you passage against Manticore’s will, even if we wished to, is a question complex enough to keep battalions of lawyers busy for decades. But the bottom line is that neither we nor the BTC have any desire to assist you in this madness to begin with and that virtually all the personnel manning the traffic control platforms on the terminus are Beowulfan citizens. Solarian citizens — civilians — over whom the Solarian military has no jurisdiction in time of peace. For that matter, the Solarian military has no jurisdiction over Solarian civilians even in time of war unless a legitimate declaration of martial law has first been issued. None has. Since that’s the case, the Beowulf System Defense Force would be morally, legally, and constitutionally justified in protecting our citizens against illegal coercion by whatever means may be necessary. And in case I haven’t been sufficiently clear, ‘whatever means may be necessary’ does include the use of deadly force.”
“Mr. Director, are you actually threatening to fire on the Solarian League Navy?” Tsang demanded, brown eyes widening.
“I’m telling you as an official representative of the Beowulf Planetary Board of Directors that we will not assist you in making transit, that BTC’s astro control personnel will refuse your orders to do so, and that should you attempt to unlawfully coerce them into doing so, we will resist. If you persist despite that warning — if shots are fired and blood is spilled — it will be a consequence of the unconstitutional actions of the federal government, and Beowulf will not be responsible for the potential consequences for the League’s stability which will undoubtedly follow. I don’t know how I can be any clearer than that. And since I’ve been as clear as I know how to be, I see no point in continuing this conversation. Good day, Admiral.”
The display blanked, and Tsang sat looking at it for several seconds, grappling with the fact that Caddell-Markham had literally hung up on a senior flag officer of the Solarian Navy. As far as she knew, nothing like that had ever happened in the SLN’s entire previous seven and a half centuries.
Finally, she shook herself and looked up at the officer across the briefing room table. Admiral Pierre Takeuchi, Task Force 11.6’s chief of staff, looked just as astonished as she was (and, she thought, even more outraged) by Caddell-Markham’s peremptory departure.
“Are these people as crazy as those Manty lunatics?” Tsang demanded rhetorically. She shook her head. “Where the hell does a cabinet minister of any system government — and I don’t care if it is a frigging Core World government — come off talking to the federal government that way?!”
“I don’t know, but somebody clearly needs his ass kicked up between his ears, Ma’am!” Takeuchi replied harshly. “And, frankly, a part of me wishes his damn system-defense force really would try to stop us.”
Tsang grunted in agreement, but her brain was busy with the potential ramifications. And with that secret clause of her orders. She hadn’t liked it when she’d seen it, but she’d comforted herself that it was going to remain a moot point. Now it looked like it might not, and the potential consequences of the Beowulfers’ position appalled her.
Her task force consisted of just over a hundred superdreadnoughts, accompanied by two dozen supply ships and transports and screened by twenty-five cruisers and forty destroyers. That was a hell of a lot more tonnage than she could possibly fit through the Beowulf Terminus in a simultaneous transit, but the ops plan called for her to provide additional reinforcements for the main body of Eleventh Fleet after the Manties’ surrender. And it was also the next best thing to three times the total combat strength of the Beowulf System Defense Force’s thirty-six superdreadnoughts. If the Beowulfers were stupid enough to provoke a shooting incident, it would be a very short and — from their perspective — very ugly affair.
That’s probably what Crandall was thinking before Spindle, a corner of her brain suggested, but then she scowled.
Maybe so, she told that corner, but Crandall was going up against Manties, and whatever new designs the Manties may’ve come up with, we know what Beowulf has. Oh, they might have a couple of little wrinkles we don’t know about, but they sure as hell don’t have the Manties’ new damned designs! If they did, we’d know about it already.
“They’ve got to be bluffing, Ma’am,” Takeuchi said. “They can’t really want to get thousands of their people killed just to protect a bunch of neobarbs against their fellow Solarians!”
“You’re probably right,” Tsang agreed. “At the same time, let’s not let ourselves invest too much confidence in that theory.”
“Are you — Forgive me, Ma’am, but are you serious?” Takeuchi demanded, and she barked an unhappy laugh.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But this is Beowulf, Pierre. The rest of the League may see the Manties as neobarbs, but Beowulf’s right on the other side of their Junction. Beowulfers have been marrying Manties for centuries, and they do one hell of a lot of business with each other. That’s bound to shape how they see Manticore. Worse, they’re probably the only people in the explored galaxy who’re even more paranoid about Mesa than Manticore is! You know they’ve rejected Mesa’s version of Green Pines, and from what Caddell-Markham just said, their government officially buys this Manty fantasy about some kind of plot coming out of Mesa. So, yeah, I think it is possible — remotely possible — they might order their wallers to fire on us if we try to carry out our orders.”
“If you say so, Ma’am.” It was obvious from Takeuchi’s tone that he found it difficult to wrap his mind around the possibility that she might have a point. “If they do, though, what do we do?” he asked.
“Well,” she said, thinking about that secret clause yet again…and of the catastrophic consequences to the career of any flag officer who failed to carry out Fleet Admiral Rajampet Rajani’s orders at this juncture in the Solarian League Navy’s history, “given the disparity in combat power between the task force and the BSDF, there’s no way in hell they could actually stop us. They have to know that as well as we do. So if it looks like they’re genuinely contemplating forcible resistance, we’ll give them their choices: stand down or be fired upon. And if they choose not to stand down, then we will fire on them.”
Chapter Fifteen