McQueen regretted that as she had regretted very few things in her life. Not because of any great love for the Citizen Chairman, and certainly not because she’d intended to spare him indefinitely. If one thing in the universe had been certain, it was that she would have had no choice but to stand him up against a convenient wall eventually, and probably sooner rather than later. Which was a pity, in many ways, because for all of his failings, Pierre truly had managed to turn the corner on the fundamental structural reforms the People’s Republic’s economy had needed so desperately. But he would simply have been too dangerous to be allowed to live, and having profited from that sort of mistaken judgment on the part of the Committee’s master, Esther McQueen would not make the error of extending it to anyone else.
Saint-Just would undoubtedly have realized that, but McQueen felt certain that he would have at least paused to negotiate if she’d managed to sweep up Pierre in her net. Not that anyone would ever know if she’d been right.
“Have we heard anything from Admiral Graveson?” she asked.
“No, Ma’am,” Lieutenant Caminetti replied. The young man looked remarkably calm, under the circumstances, but she could see the fear for his brother in his eyes. “She hasn’t responded at all.”
“She may not even have gotten the heads-up signal, Ma’am,” Ivan Bukato pointed out. “We never had an opportunity to test that com link.”
“I know. I know,” she agreed unhappily. And if Amanda didn’t get the word ahead of time, she almost certainly didn’t have time to warn anyone else before the shit hit the fan. Damn Saint-Just and his purges! All I needed was one more week, and Amanda would have known ahead of time.
“If Graveson didn’t get the word, then we can’t count on Capital Fleet at all,” she said aloud. “It’s almost certain that Saint-Just got the word to his SS units before anyone else in the Fleet realized what was happening. And if they’re just sitting there, cleared for action and ready to shoot, nobody could possibly come out on our side without being blown out of space before they even got their sidewalls up.”
“But at least they don’t seem to be coming in on Saint-Just’s side, either,” one of her other staffers pointed out.
“Of course not!” McQueen snorted. “You think anyone in StateSec is going to be crazy enough to let regular Navy units clear for action at a time like this? If they ever did manage to get their wedges and walls up, it’s a better than even bet that whoever they wound up shooting at, it wouldn’t be us!”
“Agreed.” Bukato nodded, but his face was tight with worry. “But it may not matter what the Fleet does. I don’t like the reports coming in from the western part of the city, Ma’am.”
“They’re not too good,” McQueen agreed, “but they’re actually better than I was afraid they might be.” She turned back to Caminetti. “What do we hear from General Conflans?”
“His last report was that all three battalions from the spaceport have come over, Ma’am,” the lieutenant replied quickly. “One of them is on its way here to reinforce the Octagon perimeter. The general is personally leading the other two to support Brigadier Henderson.”
“We just got word from Colonel Yazov, Admiral McQueen!”
McQueen turned towards the commander who had just entered the conference room, and despite the thick haze of tension hovering about her, she felt an undeniable urge to smile in satisfaction. One way or the other, no one in this room would ever use that stupid, sycophantic “Citizen” crap again, and it felt unspeakably good to put on the persona of an admiral once more instead of wearing the ill-fitting, quasi-civilian mask of secretary of war.
“The Colonel estimates that at least a third of the atmospheric defense units are coming over to our side,” the commander went on. “He says he thinks we can swing still more of them if we keep hammering away at our message. For now, he feels confident that he can at least keep any of the satellite bases from getting organized strike elements into the capital’s airspace.”
“And the units already in capital airspace that haven’t come over?” Bukato asked with poison dryness.
“Those the defensive grid will just have to handle,” McQueen told him. “And at least the bastards haven’t started lobbing nukes at us yet.”
“Yet,” Bukato agreed. “But do you really think Saint-Just won’t use them if he figures the situation is going south on him?”
“If he could get them through to the Octagon without major collateral damage, yes,” McQueen said. “I think he’d use them in a heartbeat under those circumstances. But as long as the grid is up, he’s not going to get through it with anything short of a saturation strike, and that would rip hell out of the entire city. After what happened last time, I don’t think he’ll dare take that chance. Our isolated neighborhood, yes; that he’d nuke. But not the city in general. After all, it won’t do him any good to kill all of us if the way he does it outrages the rest of the Fleet so badly that they’ll turn on him regardless of what his SS goons do. And it would, you know, Ivan.”
Bukato grunted. The sound could have indicated disagreement, but it didn’t. No one could be absolutely certain how the People’s Navy would respond to yet another, even more massive use of nuclear weapons in Nouveau Paris, but the admiral was almost positive that McQueen was correct. Too many millions of civilians had already been killed, and with all of the Committee except Saint-Just in McQueen’s hands, someone in the Fleet was virtually certain to take his chances on survival if he could only get a clean shot at the StateSec commander if Saint-Just was stupid enough to destroy another huge chunk of the capital.
“All right,” McQueen said crisply. “So far, except for Capital Fleet and the fact that we didn’t get Pierre or Saint-Just in our initial strikes, things seem to be going pretty much to plan. Ivan, I want you and Commodore Tillotson to stay in close communication with Conflans and Yazov. Captain Rubin, you’re in charge of the Octagon defense grid. If they don’t have our transponder codes, then they don’t cross the threshold into our airspace, understood?”
“Understood, Ma’am,” Rubin replied grimly.
“Major Adams, you’re in charge of coordinating our garrison units with the grid. Stay close to Captain Rubin and see to it that your man-portable air defense units are put in the best places to back up the grid.”
“Aye, Ma’am!” the Marine major barked.
“Ivan,” McQueen turned back to Bukato, “where did we stick Fontein?”
“We’ve got him under guard in your office, Ma’am.”
“My, how appropriate,” McQueen murmured, and even here, even now, one or two people surprised themselves by laughing aloud at her wicked smile. She grinned back at them, then gave her head a little toss. “I think we can safely say that friend Erasmus is a realist and a practical man,” she told Bukato. “He really does support the Revolution, but once he knows Pierre is gone, I suspect that we can swing him over to our side if we can convince him that Saint-Just is going down, too. Or at least into pretending that he’s come over to our side, which would be almost as good in the short term. If I can talk him into endorsing our broadcasts, we should be able to split StateSec between him and Saint-Just. At least, it would certainly hamper Saint-Just’s ability to deploy his damned intervention battalions!”